Dec 30

Today’s News 30th December 2023

  • Escobar: How Yemen Changed Everything
    Escobar: How Yemen Changed Everything

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    In a single move, Yemen’s Ansarallah has checkmated the west and its rules-based order…

    Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia – from Persia to Turkestan – chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated. 

    Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. That’s where we are, geopolitically, right now. 

    The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard – Yemen’s Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea – reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much lauded US Navy force projection to irrelevancy.

    Yemen’s resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the west bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers – as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships – continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea. 

    Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its ‘rules-based order.’ It is outraged that western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions. 

    It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift – with no return – that is adding to the Hegemon’s apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift. 

    Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakeable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road.

    Map of North-East and North-West Passage shipping routes

    For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cap of Good Hope. Second, use Russia’s cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways. 

    Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers. 

    All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency?

    The new architecture will be framed in West Asia 

    The US-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to “warn Iran,” apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: “Sykes-Picot is dead.” 

    This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not US Navy “projection.” 

    That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven US aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless.   

    Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallah’s missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields, and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a US-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance.   

    Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a US aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea open to western operators. 

    On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran don’t even need to think – at least not yet – about using the “nuclear” option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, “that would irretrievably implode the international financial system.”

    For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel. 

    A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may “soon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.”

    Keep in mind we’re not yet even talking about a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; we’re still on Red Sea/Bab al-Mandeb. 

    Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to “teach a lesson” to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system. 

    The paper tiger is in a jam 

    Mao Zedong was right after all: the US may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, it’s all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it.

    That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard.       

    When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down. 

    So what is more vulnerable?

    The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy? 

    Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the US, the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to “Britannia rules the waves.” 

    Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the “nuclear” option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy.

    Of course we won’t have a smoking gun. But it’s a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members – Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new “axis of evil” – plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, “if you do it, we’ve got your back”. 

    None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty. 

    Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as “necessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.” 

    Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, “deadly” (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen’s Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia’s new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula. 

    This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 23:30

  • US Military Launches Highly Classified Unmanned Space Plane
    US Military Launches Highly Classified Unmanned Space Plane

    The US Space Force launched a secretive plane on Thursday which has been equipped with heavier boosters that could feasibly send it further into orbit than ever before.

    The launch marks the 9th flight of the three-core SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster, and the 7th flight of the US Air Force’s (not so) secret unmanned spaceplane, the X-37B (USSF-52).

    The Boeing-built X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Fla, on Nov. 12, 2022. (Boeing/U.S. Space Force via AP)

    The launch was previously scheduled for Dec. 10, however it was scrapped due to issues with ground equipment just 30 minutes before liftoff – pushing the event back 18 days.

    Officially, the X-37B will enter into various orbits around Earth and serve as a testing ground for NASA’s study of the effects of long-duration exposure to space on organic materials, the Epoch Times reports, adding that the mission will also include experiments having to do with “space domain awareness,” which the US Space Force defines as the ability to “rapidly detect, warn, characterize, attribute, and predict threats to national, allied, and commercial space systems.”

    Testing of such threat-detection technologies comes as tensions between the United States and a space-faring communist China remain high.

    The Falcon Heavy has now launched five times in 2023, and while the space-enamored public is becoming more familiar with it, its cargo largely remains a mystery.

    First launched in April 2010, much of the 29-foot-long robotic vehicle’s activities during its 3,774 total days in space remain classified. Even its return date remains unknown.

    Designed by Boeing and operated by the United States Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the X-37B—also known as OTV-7—can fly as high as 500 miles above the Earth’s surface and carry out missions lasting 270 days. -Epoch Times

    Previous missions involving the craft have included experiments involving Naval Research Laboratory experiments designed to harness solar energy and transmit power to the ground, as well as testing the effect of organic material’s long-duration exposure to space.

    The X-37B is similar to the retired space shuttle – in that it has a cargo bay, black-tiled heat shielding, and the ability to land like an airplane. That said, it clocks in at roughly 25% the size of the shuttle, offering what Boeing describes as “the best of aircraft and spacecraft into an affordable system that is easy to operate and maintain.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 23:00

  • China & Iraq Begin Construction Of New City Near Baghdad
    China & Iraq Begin Construction Of New City Near Baghdad

    Via The Cradle,

    On Friday Iraq broke ground on 30,000 housing units near Baghdad, as part of a $2 billion project in partnership with Chinese firms to build five new cities across Iraq, Bloomberg has reported.

    The government of Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani is seeking to build 250,000 to 300,000 housing units for poor and middle-class families. The new city on the outskirts of Baghdad will include universities, commercial centers, schools and health centers and should be completed in four to five years.

    Aerial view of Baghdad, via Reuters

    Contracts to build the housing units were awarded to East China Engineering Science and Technology Co., Ltd. and China National Chemical Engineering Co., Ltd along with their Iraqi partner Shams al-Binaa. 

    Contracts to build four more cities are expected to be awarded soon and another 10 will be announced next year, including in Karbala, Anbar, Nineveh and Babel governorates.

    Chinese firms have increased their presence in Iraq in recent years, in part due to a deal between Baghdad and Beijing.

    In 2019, Iraq signed a 20-year contract, agreeing to supply Chinese firms with 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, with the revenue earmarked for funding various development projects in Iraq undertaken by Chinese firms.

    Following the deal, Chinese firms built 1,000 schools, developed the Nasiriya city airport, erected power plants, and completed several other infrastructure projects.

    China has accelerated its investment in Iraq and other West Asian nations as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) announced in 2013. 

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    China seeks to maintain stability in West Asia, given the region’s energy resources and geo-strategic location, to safeguard Beijing’s energy imports and shipment of manufactured goods to foreign markets.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 22:30

  • The New Blue Screen Of Death? "Your Vehicle Cannot Be Driven"
    The New Blue Screen Of Death? “Your Vehicle Cannot Be Driven”

    The more things change, the more they stay the same. Gone are the days of Windows 95; heading into the year 2024, there’s an entirely new “blue screen of death” people apparently need to be watching out for – in their cars.

    This week a photo went viral on social media purporting to show a Ford vehicle displaying a “your vehicle cannot be driven” message after a failed software update. “Please call customer support,” the screen urges. 

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    A post on one car enthusiast forum questioned the authenticity of the screenshot, stating: “This is going around on Twitter, but I couldn’t find any mentions of it here.
    Is this even real? The phone number, when Googled doesn’t turn up anything official.”

    One person responded: “That’s the message you will see on the rare occasion that an OTA fails. It’s a special customer service phone number for dealing with failed OTAs. It’s from a user on Reddit, his car has since been fixed and is back to normal FYI.”

    “If an OTA update fails in such a way that this screen would be necessary, they should automatically revert to the last working state and notify the user,” another user posted in response.

    “This is essentially a solved problem in the world of computing. I’m sure there’s some wrinkles that make it difficult, but it’s fundamentally something that they should change their systems to make it impossible,” they said.

    In response, another shared issues they were having with Ford’s OTA updates, stating: “I’m still dealing with a failed OTA update. My 6.2.0 was incomplete. Called Ford Motor Company and they confirmed the failed update and stated the update would try again within 30 days. 60 days later, with no update, they sent me to a dealer for service.”

    The nightmare continued: “Dealer claimed to have updated the software. My car was delivered to my home and nothing was fixed. In fact, my software reverted to 4.2.1. Now my service manager has no idea what to do. I can’t change drive modes, open trunk or frunk, and pre-collision warning turns on all the time. I can still drive but with limited capability. Feels like a car with a sprained ankle.”

    Another mechanics forum user posted a photo of the picture with the comment: “I sort of hope this is a fake, but if it hasn’t happened yet, I presume some day it would. The old joke used to be that if Microsoft made cars, every once in a while they would just quit. Everyone would have to get out, walk 360 degrees around the car and get back in. This would be accepted as normal.”

    Here’s an explanation from YouTube:

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 22:00

  • Over 500 Israeli Soldiers Killed Since October 7: IDF
    Over 500 Israeli Soldiers Killed Since October 7: IDF

    Via The Libertarian Institute, 

    The death toll for Israeli soldiers continues to grow. Nearly 400 members of the Israeli security forces were killed on October 7. Since the Israeli Defense Forces invaded Gaza, at least over 150 soldiers have been killed. 

    After several revisions, Tel Aviv now says about 1,050 Israelis were killed during the October 7 Hamas attack, including 373 soldiers. Following the Hamas assault, Israel devastated Gaza with a ruthless bombing campaign, then deployed the IDF into the Strip. The ground invasion has led to the deaths of 164 Israeli soldiers, according to the Times of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

    The Israeli Defense Ministry said that 3,000 soldiers have been wounded in combat. Some media outlets have reported the current wounded count is far higher, 5,000. An expert speaking with the Associated Press estimates the number will be about 20,000 once cases of PTSD are diagnosed. 

    A source in Middle East Eye lays out whey the IDF casualty count could be much higher than publicly acknowledged:

    Another Palestinian source close to Hamas, who fought with the group until 2021 when he sustained an injury, told MEE that Qassam fighters were engaged in urban fighting reminiscent of the house-to-house fighting seen in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 following the US-led invasion.

    “What is happening now in Gaza is a kind of guerrilla war,” the source said.

    “It is unnecessary and risky to mobilize a force of thousands for this war. For hit-and-run operations, fast, few-man teams are enough. These teams are also very small in terms of targets and minimize casualties,” the source added.

    While Israel has caused death and devastation across Gaza, it is unclear how much success Tel Aviv has had in wiping out Hamas. At the end of November, the IDF reported killing 1,000–2,000 Hamas fighters.

    Over the past month, Tel Aviv has increased its assertion to 7,000 members of Hamas killed. The group reports losing about ten percent of its members, or approximately 3,000 fighters. 

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    The Israeli operations appear to be having a far greater impact on the civilian population of the besieged enclave. Over 21,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 8,000 children. Additionally, Israel has destroyed the medical, food, water, and sewage infrastructure of Gaza, putting the Palestinian people on the brink of epidemic and famine.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 21:30

  • What 'Great Replacement Theory'? Musk Exposes "Immense & Growing Size" Of Illegal Immigration Invasion
    What ‘Great Replacement Theory’? Musk Exposes “Immense & Growing Size” Of Illegal Immigration Invasion

    Elon Musk red-pilled users on X, allowing them to visualize “the immense and growing size of illegal immigration” pushed by radical progressives in the White House that have flooded the nation with millions of migrants. 

    Musk commented on a post by X user “~~datahazard~~,” who said: “Since August, there are officially more arriving each month than there are children being born to American mothers. And these are just the official encounters — we don’t know how many avoided detection.” 

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    Illegal immigrants outpacing US births reminds us of a comment from Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who stated at a recent debate that the “Great Replacement Theory is not some grand, right-wing conspiracy theory,” but rather a “basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”

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    Radicals in the White House have no interest in fixing the southern border crisis. Just look at the latest US Customs and Border Protection data showing the southern border invasion. 

    Fox News reporter Bill Melugin revealed stunning data earlier on Friday of how encounters at the border hit record highs in December. 

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    Let’s not forget the Biden administration conceals its true agenda of flooding the nation with millions of illegals with misinformation campaigns waged at the taxpayers. 

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    Nothing to see here! 

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    Who is aiding in the invasion? Well, some taxpayer-funded NGOs or non-governmental organizations. 

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    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently wrote on X: “I’ve never seen such hostility to the rule of law in America. Biden is destroying America.” 

    X user Robby Starbuck responded to Musk’s post, noting:

    This is literally “the great replacement” in action. I’m Latino so I don’t want to hear how the great replacement is racist. It’s not. It’s political. Dems want more illegals so they can manufacture votes and cheap labor. They also want it to happen so fast that no one assimilates. 

    It’s why far left cities are now legalizing illegals voting and places like California let them get licenses, pass a law for automatic voter registration when you get a license and then “accidentally” register them to vote when they get their license. None of this is hard to figure out. They want to destroy the foundations of our country so they can steal total power.

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    “There are many people in the US government who would never let Israel have open borders but desperately want the US to have them because they believe that is the only way they can continue getting elected,” X user Matt Wallace said.

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    Wallace added: “Many of them also hate our culture and want to destroy it painfully!”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 21:00

  • Upcoming US Presidential Election Could Fuel Global Instability In 2024
    Upcoming US Presidential Election Could Fuel Global Instability In 2024

    Authored by Fred Fleitz via American Greatness,

    A failed, last-minute visit to Mexico by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week perfectly reflected the Biden Administration’s dismal foreign policy record in 2023 and what may lie ahead in 2024.

    Blinken and Mayorkas traveled to Mexico City to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss how to stem the surge in illegal migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico. But instead of offering constructive proposals to address this crisis, López Obrador mocked Blinken and Mayorkas by dismissing the border crisis as a U.S. problem, called for opening border crossings, and urged the U.S. to strengthen its ties with Cuba and Venezuela.

    This latest Biden Administration foreign policy debacle reflected how world leaders increasingly view Joe Biden as a weak and indecisive leader with an incompetent foreign policy. This debacle also reflected the incompetence of Biden’s foreign policy team because López Obrador was allowed to ambush Blinken and Mayorkas. A competent state department would have ensured this visit was a scripted affair, with differences between each country resolved privately and in advance during lower-level meetings.

    Blinken and Mayorkas traveling to Mexico without knowing what López Obrador would offer was a rookie mistake one would expect during the first few months of a new U.S. administration, not from one that has been in office for almost three years.

    The outcome of the Blinken/Mayorkas Mexico trip and Biden’s refusal to implement serious measures to stem the flow of illegal migrants crossing the U.S. southern border will have major security implications for the United States in 2024. Given a growing perception that Biden may be a one-term president who will be succeeded in January 2025 by a new president who will take aggressive action to close the border, the United States will likely see the largest surge of illegal immigration in history in 2024 as migrants from around the world rush to Mexico to take advantage of Biden’s weak border security policies.

    This means the number of criminals, drug dealers, Islamist terrorists, Chinese spies, Russian spies, drug dealers, and people transporting fentanyl in the United States is certain to skyrocket in 2024.

    U.S. security interests in the Middle East have also been gravely undermined by President Biden’s weak leadership and foreign policy and are likely to further deteriorate in 2024. Many experts believe the horrific October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel would not have occurred if the Biden Administration had a coherent national security policy that was not appeasing Iran and coddling the Palestinians.

    As I wrote in a recent Newsmax article, the Palestinians have received more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars since Biden took office, even though Biden officials knew these funds would boost Hamas. By contrast, the Trump Administration cut off all U.S. aid to the Palestinians.

    In addition, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal assessed that Iran received approximately $71.02 billion more in revenue (mostly from oil sales) under the Biden administration than it did under the Trump presidency.

    Meanwhile, Joe Biden, worried about how growing protests against the Israel-Hamas war by his progressive supporters will affect the 2024 elections, has begun to turn on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to pressure him to end the war quickly and put the corrupt Palestinian Authority in charge of running Gaza. Biden continues to claim he is solidly behind Israel’s right to defeat Hamas but also lectures Israel on the way it is conducting the war and human rights violations. Although the Netanyahu government has been careful to avoid criticizing Biden officials for such contradictory statements, it will not prematurely end the war because of the U.S. political calendar.

    Iran’s nuclear weapons program made major advances during the Biden Administration, including enriching uranium to the near-weapons grade level of 60% uranium-235 for the first time. Iran’s nuclear weapons program was greatly assisted by a secret, unwritten deal that the Biden Administration agreed to in the spring of 2023 that allows Iran to continue to enrich at the 60% level, keep its advanced enrichment equipment, and promised Iran at least $20 billion in sanctions relief.

    Under pressure from Congress, the Biden Administration on October 12 froze a $6 billion payment to Iran after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, a transfer that was actually a ransom payment to release five innocent Americans imprisoned in Iran. But incredibly, the Biden Administration agreed the following month to a sanctions waiver that gave Iran access to more than $10 billion

    The consequences of Biden’s feckless Middle East policy have been demonstrated by the surge in attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria over the past two months by Iranian-backed militias and attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The U.S. response to these attacks has been weak, causing such attacks to grow in number. Neither Iran nor its terrorist proxies are worried the U.S. will make them pay a price for these provocations that are endangering U.S. troops and global shipping.

    The Middle East will remain volatile in 2024. Israel will continue the war to defeat Hamas and promote its security, despite growing demands by the Biden Administration to end the war. Attacks by Iranian-backed terrorist proxies in Iraq and Syria, the Houthi rebels, and Hezbollah in Lebanon will probably increase unless there is significant pushback from the United States. Israel will continue to respond militarily to some of these attacks, while Biden probably will not during an election year.

    The 2024 U.S. elections and President Biden’s weak leadership and foreign policy will also affect other global hot spots.

    • Ukraine. Despite claims by the Ukrainian and U.S. governments that the Ukrainian army would turn the tide of the war in 2023 with its counteroffensive, this didn’t happen. Russian forces dug in, and the conflict has become a long-term war of attrition. With Republican House members and Biden allies like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough saying the war is no longer winnable, Congressional support for arming Ukraine is likely to be sharply reduced in 2024. Although Congressional Republicans are currently blocking additional U.S. military aid for Ukraine unless President Biden agrees to take significant action to stem the flow of illegal migrants at the U.S. southern border, even if an agreement can be reached to break this deadlock, growing bipartisan concerns in Congress over the trajectory of the war may finally force the Biden Administration and Ukrainian President Zelinsky in 2024 to pursue a cease-fire and an agreement to end the war and secure Ukraine from a future Russian invasion.

    • Russia/China “Axis.” The U.S.-led global order will take a hit in 2024 as Russia and China continue to build their security and economic relationships at America’s expense. This will include further improving their trade and defense relationships with North Korea, Iran, and the Persian Gulf states. Iran and North Korea will probably step up their arms sales to Russia for the war in Ukraine. There will be some progress in “de-dollarization,” mostly with more agreements to not use dollars for bilateral trade.

    • China/Taiwan. Chinese President Xi told President Biden at the November 2023 APEC Summit that Beijing intends to reunify Taiwan with China, but the timing has not yet been decided. However, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is unlikely in 2024 for two reasons. First, the Chinese military is probably not prepared to invade the island nation. But second, and more importantly, Xi is worried that President Donald Trump could be reelected in November 2024. Xi believes Trump will have a much tougher China policy and prefers to continue to deal with Biden, whom he views as a considerably weaker president than Trump. Therefore, although Chinese provocations against Taiwan and in the South China Sea will continue in 2024, Xi will try to improve relations with the U.S. to help reelect Biden. If this happens, China could possibly plan to invade Taiwan during a second Biden term.

    • North Korea. A surge in missile tests and nuclear weapons development caused by the Biden Administration’s neglect of North Korea will continue to rise in 2024. North Korea might conduct a seventh nuclear test next year to embarrass Biden, help reelect Trump, and resume Trump’s partially successful personal diplomacy with Kim Jong Un.

    With the prospect of a major political change in the United States next November, 2024 could be a very unstable and dangerous year for American and international security. Sensing that Biden could be a one-term president, illegal immigration will surge, and America’s adversaries will employ all possible means to exploit what could be a final year of exceptional American weakness. This could result in a major terrorist attack, possibly by terrorist organizations like ISIS that have been relatively quiet recently. Iran could begin to enrich uranium to weapons-grade. China and Russia will try to expand their influence at America’s expense with new trade deals, especially with the Persian Gulf states.

    Now more than ever, it is clear that a strong and decisive U.S. president with a competent foreign policy is essential to American and global security, and that a weak American president with a weak and frivolous foreign policy can have a disastrous effect on global security. Therefore, it will be far more apparent in 2024 than in previous years that U.S. presidential elections matter for global security.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 20:30

  • Tesla Cybertruck Vs. Toyota Corolla In Real-World Crash
    Tesla Cybertruck Vs. Toyota Corolla In Real-World Crash

    The first real-world accident involving a Tesla Cybertruck occurred in Northern California’s Bay Area this Thursday. Photos of the accident, uploaded on the r/Cybertruck subreddit by user u/boddhya, reveal that the Cybertruck’s super-strong 301 stainless-steel exoskeleton sustained minimal damage after being hit by another vehicle. 

    “On December 28, 2023, at approximately 2:05 pm, California Highway Patrol (CHP) Redwood City units were dispatched to a two-vehicle crash on SR-35 (Skyline Boulevard), south of Page Mill Road. Our preliminary investigation indicates a Toyota Corolla was traveling south on SR-35 southbound, south of Page Mill Road, at an unknown speed, when the driver, for unknown reasons, turned to the right and subsequently struck a dirt embankment on the right shoulder,” California Highway Patrol wrote in a report. 

    CHP continued: “The Toyota then re-entered the roadway, crossed over the double yellow lines into the northbound lane, and crashed into a Tesla Cybertruck traveling north on SR-35 northbound. The Tesla driver sustained a suspected minor injury and declined medical transportation. No other injuries were reported. It does not appear that the Tesla Cybertruck was being operated in autonomous mode. The investigation into this incident is ongoing.” 

    Images of the crash show the truck sustained minimal damage. Meanwhile, the Corolla appears to be totaled. 

    And a video of the accident scene. 

    Tesla has confidently touted the Cybertruck’s super-strong 301 stainless-steel exoskeleton. 

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    Musk has also boldly declared that the Cybertruck is one of the safest trucks for both occupants and pedestrians. Yet there has yet to be any confirmation due to no third-party testing.  

    “If you have an argument with another car, you will win,” Musk said at the Cybertruck delivery event in Austin earlier this month. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 20:00

  • China's New Rare Earth Policy Shakes Global Tech Industry
    China’s New Rare Earth Policy Shakes Global Tech Industry

    Authored by Kurt Cobb via OilPrice.com,

    • The ban includes technology for making rare earth magnets used in various industries.

    • China, controlling 90% of the refined rare earth metal market, seeks to maintain its processing monopoly.

    • The US has made efforts to incentivize domestic mining of critical minerals, but challenges remain due to China’s market dominance.

    China just expanded its already tight restrictions on export of technology related to refining rare earth minerals. The most recent restrictions involve technology for making rare earth magnets which are used in electric motors and generators. These minerals are also used extensively in the automotive industry and in consumer electronics such as cellphones.

    I have previously written that the clean energy economy is a metals energy economy, and rare earths constitute a substantial and key part of that metals energy economy.

    Export of rare earth extraction and separation technology had already been banned by China. The most recent and previous restrictions are part of a broader trade war between the United States and China over exchange of technology.  In late 2022 the United States banned exports of advanced microchips. China responded with a ban on the export germanium and gallium, two metals crucial to the manufacture of advanced chips. The United States imports half of its germanium needs and all of the gallium it uses.

    What exactly are the Chinese hoping to achieve?

    The answer becomes pretty clear when you realize that China supplies 90 percent of the volume of refined rare earth metals to the world. The country produces 60 percent of the ore. That means the rest of the world is sending three-quarters of its ore to China for processing, and the Chinese would like to continue to enjoy its near monopoly on processing. That puts China in a commanding position to decide who will get these metals and even whether the rest of the world gets any at all. China unexpectedly and dramatically reduced its rare earth exports in 2010, driving prices skyward.

    The obvious response to such uncertainty would be to encourage the mining of rare earths outside of China. The current U.S. administration rolled out a modest program to incentivize U.S.-based mining of critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt and manganese. Many rare earths are already on what is known as the List of Critical Minerals and thus eligible for incentives to encourage domestic production. A small amount of funding has been allocated for this purpose.

    A private attempt to revive a closed rare earth mine, the largest in the United States, resulted in a colossal financial loss for the investors when rare earth prices plummeted after China resumed its previous level of exports following the reduction in 2010.

    This shows how China can easily sabotage any attempts to challenge its dominance of the rare earth market.

    Given the close relationship between China’s government and its rare earth industry, the only reasonable way to break the Chinese stranglehold on the rare earth market would be for governments to guarantee the price of rare earths mined by domestic companies. That runs so counter to the neoliberal free market ethic of the past 40 years that I don’t see it becoming a reality.

    In a world where the consensus regarding the free exchange of goods is breaking down and geopolitical interests are coming to the fore, China seems to care far less about living up to free trade rules than protecting its perceived national interests.

    If other major trading countries and blocks start moving in the same direction, the easy availability of cheap goods and resources produced in faraway locales may become increasingly problematic.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 19:30

  • Jamie Dimon, Who "Hates" Bitcoin, Will Be Broker-Dealer On The Bitcoin ETF Of The World's Biggest Asset Manager
    Jamie Dimon, Who “Hates” Bitcoin, Will Be Broker-Dealer On The Bitcoin ETF Of The World’s Biggest Asset Manager

    Remember when Jamie Dimon was yelling and screaming that Bitcoin is a “fraud that will eventually blow up“, that he’d “close it down if he was the government“, and that crypto’s only “true use case is for criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering and tax avoidance“?

    Well, it turns out the bank that has paid out $40 billion in fines, penalties and legal settlements as a recidivist criminal enterprise, has decided to double down on crime by its own definition…

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    … and today we learned that not one but two giant asset managers – Invesco as well as the world’s biggest asset manager and the Fed’s own trading desk, Blackrock – both named JPMorgan as their Authorized Participant, i.e., the intermediary firm that will make the ETF possible in the first place by converting bitcoin into cash and vice versa.

    Source

    Source

    In addition to JPMorgan, BlackRock also named Jane Street Capital – best known as the fund where Sam Bankman-Fried learned all he needed to know about HFTing the bitcoin market on his way to becoming the greatest crypto criminal in history – as the broker-dealers who will be responsible for steering cash into and out of its spot-Bitcoin ETF when, not if, it is approved by the SEC some time in January.

    JPMorgan will be an authorized participants for both Blackrock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and the Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF according to amended prospectuses filed with the SEC late on Friday. As such, they’ll be responsible for handling the creation and redemption of baskets of shares in the ETF and transfers of cash to and from the fund’s administrator.

    Or, as we put it….

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    In addition to BlackRock, Wall Street ETF titans such as Invesco, Franklin Templeton and Fidelity have also filed for spot-Bitcoin ETFs, and Grayscale Investments has applied to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an ETF. All of them are expected to be granted in the next few weeks.

    Incidentally, it may very well have been due to JPM’s insistence that the SEC demands bitcoin ETFs have a cash-create redemption model instead of in-kind. According to Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas, the SEC’s preference for a cash model for spot Bitcoin ETFs is that it wants to minimize the number of intermediaries that have access to the actual Bitcoin in the redemption and offering process.

    “They don’t like the idea of broker-dealers who are the intermediaries touching Bitcoin,” Balchunas noted. “Many were going to create unregistered subsidiaries to act in place of the actual broker-dealers, but the SEC just didn’t want it,” the ETF analyst said.

    The SEC wanted to “close the loop a little more,” Balchunas said, mentioning that he had also heard of regulators being worried about money laundering. He stated:

    “If the only people messing with the actual Bitcoin are BlackRock and Coinbase, it’s a little more controllable of what Bitcoin you have […] They just want a more closed system with fewer intermediaries touching the actual Bitcoin.”

    Of course, if JPM – which has already been fined $40 billion in the past 15 years – is aiding the money laundering, then all is well.

    While JPMorgan has so far been named as AP for two of the ETFs, it appears that Jane Street is the AP of choice for virtually all of them, which means that with all the frontrunning of ETF orders that Jane Street will do over the next few years, Sam Bankman-Fried would probably have made trillionaire – and perfectly legally at that – if only he had stayed at Jane Street.

    As for stupid peasants like the one below, who joyously declared just a few weeks ago that even the bank CEOs are on her side in her idiotic anti-crypto crusade…

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    … the joke’s on Pocahontas.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 19:00

  • "We Have Reached A Breaking Point"
    “We Have Reached A Breaking Point”

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country.  It certainly wouldn’t be a surprise to hear me say that our immigration crisis has brought us to “a breaking point”, but those aren’t my words. 

    As you will see below, the mayor of New York City is actually saying this. During the Biden administration, the floodgates have opened and vast hordes of illegal immigrants are pouring into this country every single day.

    New York City, Chicago and other major urban areas simply do not have enough resources to take care of the illegal immigrants that have already arrived, but more just keep on coming.

    The tsunami of humanity that is coming over our borders has become so extreme that even CNN is reporting on it now…

    Brian Silvas’ three dogs were usually the first to alert him that large groups of people were walking onto his San Diego County property. He’d wake up at all hours to Whisky, Soldier and Freedom barking incessantly. Today, the trio keep quiet most of the night. While the crowds of migrants have not stopped passing through, it’s become so common that the dogs now sleep through it.

    “This country was built on immigration. I’m fine with that,” Silvas said. “But not like this. This is ridiculous.”

    Silvas is beyond frustrated, and he told CNN that if he had enough money he would “build my own wall right here”.

    CNN interviewed the owners of another property about five miles away who say that all of their trees are gone because illegal immigrants have chopped them all down to use in their campfires…

    About five miles east of Silvas’ property, along the same southern border, Jerry and Maria Shuster are experiencing a similar crisis. Except the migrants who cross there are not just passing through their land – they’re also camping out. Tents, discarded clothes and trash are scattered across parts of their 17-acre property. There are several campfires burning at night as the migrants try to keep warm in the near freezing temperatures, as they make their way to various gathering spots along the US side and await officials with the US Customs and Border Protection.

    “(My trees) are all gone. They chop them up and put them in the fire,” said Jerry Shuster, who alleges one group of migrants broke a wood fence on his property to fuel their fire.

    Did you ever imagine that CNN would publish such an article?

    And CNN is actually admitting that most illegal immigrants actually “run to authorities” once they reach U.S. soil…

    For years, migrants who crossed illegally into the United States would often run away from law enforcement, but now once reaching the US most run to authorities, according to observers. They’re eager to be processed, knowing that they will likely be released in a few days to await court dates that could be years away.

    Our once proud Border Patrol officers have been transformed into customer service agents for those seeking asylum.

    Instead of enforcing our laws, they have been been relegated to facilitating a systematic invasion of our country.

    This is exactly what our leftist politicians and globalist NGOs want, and right now they are winning.

    Globalist NGOs that are funded with your tax money are helping to resettle illegal immigrants in communities all over America.  In many instances, they are actually put on domestic flights without any proper documentation at all…

    The next time you’re fondled at the airport by a TSA agent, look around. You may very well see foreign nationals ushered through security without proper documentation and disregarding every TSA rule. While Joe Biden pretends that millions of invaders from 150 countries are a natural occurrence, his administration is using taxpayer-funded nongovernmental organizations to disperse tens of thousands of them throughout the country.

    This cannot be allowed to continue. Why won’t Republicans pledge to put an end to it by refusing to fund one more penny of this scheme with the budget deadline looming?

    In other instances, illegal immigrants are transported by bus.

    Our major cities are already completely overwhelmed, but the buses just keep arriving.

    At this stage things are already so bad in the Big Apple that New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been forced to admit that “we have reached a breaking point”…

    The Democratic mayors of three sanctuary cities, Chicago, New York City, and Denver, warned their metro areas are quickly approaching a breaking point due to the ongoing surge of illegals bussed up from the southern border this year.

    “We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night,” NYC Mayor Adams said during a virtual news conference with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

    Adams warned: “For many months, we were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached a breaking point.”

    But if they can’t go to “sanctuary cities” that were once eager to welcome them, where are they supposed to go?

    Of course the truth is that we can’t possibly absorb all of the illegal immigrants that want to come here.

    As I discussed yesterday, there are now 49.5 million people that were not born in the United States living in this country.

    Some are here legally, but many others came here illegally.

    Needless to say, a lot of those that arrive illegally get involved in the drug trade, the sex trade and other forms of organized crime.

    And more will be arriving soon.

    At this moment, a giant caravan of “asylum seekers” that started in southern Mexico is making headlines all over the globe, and Mexican authorities are actually “escorting the groups and providing crowd control”…

    Mexican authorities stood down any efforts to contain a new migrant caravan that embarked this week from the southern part of Mexico. Authorities are currently escorting the groups and providing crowd control.

    Calling themselves the Poverty Exodus (Exodo de la Pobreza), the caravan, which is made up of more than 6,000 migrants, left the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, on Christmas Eve. The caravan is making its way north. In various parts of the journey, the migrants waved a banner with the caravan’s name and carried a white cross. Members of the group made public claims that their goal was to reach the United States for economic reasons.

    Are you kidding me?

    We really are being invaded, and the government of Mexico is actively facilitating this.

    Cities all over America are being absolutely packed with extremely desperate illegal invaders just as we enter the most chaotic election year in U.S. history.

    Anyone can see that this is a recipe for widespread chaos.

    We are in so much trouble, but our politicians in Washington continue to refuse to secure our borders.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 18:40

  • Iran Executes Four 'Saboteurs' It Says Worked For Israel's Mossad
    Iran Executes Four ‘Saboteurs’ It Says Worked For Israel’s Mossad

    Iran has executed four people it says were linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, state media announced, after their prior convictions for espionage and spying. Those killed were three men and a woman, who were put to death by hanging (which is the typical form of capital punishment) on Friday. The media wing of the country’s judiciary, Mizan, identified the deceased as Vafa Hanareh, Aram Omari, Rahman Parhazo and the woman as Nasim Namazi. 

    “Four members of a sabotage group related to the Zionist regime [Israel]… were hanged this morning,” according to the state media report. The group of alleged saboteurs “committed extensive actions against the country’s security under the guidance of the Mossad,” Mizan added.

    Pro-Palestinian protests in Tehran, via JPost/Reuters

    State media further claimed the group had kidnapped Iranian security forces for the sake of gaining intelligence on behalf of Israel. They are also alleged to have gone on a sabotage campaign, including setting fire to cars and apartments belonging to Iranian intelligence officers. Possibly, they were rounded up in prior widespread economic protests and riots.

    Two weeks ago, another man was executed in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, also accused of working with Mossad.

    Iran is typically depicted in Western media as being paranoid about external spy interference in its affairs, but it’s also true that Israel has carried out an unprecedented assassination and sabotage campaign inside the country over the years, related to the Iranian nuclear program. Israeli officials have at times appeared to positively boast about it, and several top Iranian nuclear scientists have died.

    Syria too has increasingly become ground zero in this intelligence shadow war, with less than a week ago Israel taking out a general described as Iran’s top commander in Syria.

    Gen. Razi Mousavi, described as having been a close associate of slain IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani, was laid to rest in the Iranian capital on Friday, as the Associated Press describes:

    Iran held a funeral Thursday for a high-ranking general of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who was killed by an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria.

    Hundreds of mourners accompanied the flag-draped casket of Gen. Razi Mousavi from a central square of Tehran to a shrine in the north of the city where he was buried.

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    The timing of Friday’s executions and accompanying announcement that the four supposedly worked with Mossad is also without doubt related to the Gaza War. Israel has been repeatedly threatening Iran given its historic support for both Hamas and Hezbollah, while Tehran officials have also been issuing daily threats and denunciations as the Palestinian death toll rises.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 18:15

  • Top 10 COVID Events Of The Year: Revealing The Facts Unspoken And Unknown
    Top 10 COVID Events Of The Year: Revealing The Facts Unspoken And Unknown

    Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    COVID-19 in 2023 has been full of revelations and controversy.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Most health leaders involved in the U.S. pandemic response have resigned or been replaced, with one leaving his agency with a study that received much fanfare for a somewhat controversial take on vaccines.

    Compared to 2022, the science on the effectiveness and risks of masking and vaccinations has become increasingly clear with the release of highly authoritative studies this year.

    Let us review the top 10 major events that took place in relation to COVID in 2023.

    1. FDA and CDC Find More COVID Vaccine Adverse Events, Including Stroke

    Beginning in January, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) found that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) detected hundreds of safety signals for Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. This included adverse reactions of myocarditis, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), ventricle dysfunctions in the heart, and many more.

    On Jan. 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC released a joint statement declaring they detected stroke as a new safety signal in older people who took the Pfizer bivalent boosters. Researchers from Kaiser Permanente also reported in October that people who took the COVID boosters with the influenza vaccine were at a greater risk of stroke.

    Days later, researchers affiliated with the FDA published a preprint finding that older people who received the Pfizer booster shot had a higher rate of Bell’s palsy, a type of facial paralysis.

    In a statement released in May, the FDA determined that “the current evidence does not support the existence of a safety issue,” as findings of stroke among the elderly decreased. They added that agencies will continue to evaluate new data as they become available.

    2. Vaccines Cannot ‘Effectively’ Control COVID: Fauci After Resigning

    The resignation of Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was noteworthy given his role in leading the United States pandemic response and his actions soon after resigning.

    Dr. Fauci was very vocal in encouraging vaccine uptake and regularly appeared on television programs motivating people to get vaccinated.

    “It’s as simple as black and white. You’re vaccinated, you’re safe. You’re unvaccinated, you’re at risk. Simple as that,” Dr. Fauci said on an MSNBC program during the Delta wave.

    Before the Delta wave in the United States, Dr. Fauci compared vaccinated people to “dead ends” for the virus on CBS’s Face the Nation.

    However, on Jan. 11, weeks after his resignation at the end of 2022, Dr. Fauci and two other researchers published a paper in Cell Host & Microbe that gained traction due to their comments on the effectiveness of vaccines in controlling respiratory viruses.

    “SARS-CoV-2, endemic coronaviruses, RSV, and many other ‘common cold’ viruses … have not to date been effectively controlled by licensed or experimental vaccines,” the authors wrote in their introduction.

    They then addressed some basic immune principles, expressing that the current vaccines induce immunity in the body but not in the airways, yet current respiratory viruses primarily infect the airways.

    “The vaccines for these two very different viruses (influenza and SARS-CoV-2 viruses) … have common characteristics: they elicit incomplete and short-lived protection against evolving virus variants that escape population immunity,” the authors wrote.

    While some fact-checkers argue that the study does not contradict Dr. Fauci’s stance during the pandemic, others interpret this as his “coming clean.”

    3. Gold Standard Review Finds Evidence of Masking ‘Uncertain’

    The Cochrane Library, widely considered the gold standard for systematic reviews, published a review on Jan. 30 stating there was “uncertainty about the effects of face masks.”

    “The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect,” the authors concluded, adding that “pooled results of [randomized controlled trials] did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.”

    The Cochrane Library, widely considered the gold standard for systematic reviews, published a review on Jan. 30 stating there was “uncertainty about the effects of face masks.” (FranciscoMarques/Shutterstock, screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    The review’s findings drew widespread criticism from mainstream media. Several articles soon followed, highlighting the effectiveness of masking. The Cochrane editor-in-chief, Dr. Karla Soares-Weiser, also released a statement in March claiming that the review did not show masks don’t work.

    “Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that ‘masks don’t work’, which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation,” Dr. Soares-Weiser wrote.

    “It would be accurate to say that … the results were inconclusive.”

    Currently, the CDC still recommends masking.

    “Masks have become political,” said an author of the review on CNN. “I can only tell you what the science is….I can’t tell you whether they work or don’t work. But it’s more likely than not that they don’t work.”

    4. Repeated Vaccination Weakens the Immune System, Studies Suggest

    Multiple doses of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines lead to higher levels of antibodies called IgG4. A growing body of research suggests that these antibodies can make the immune system less reactive to COVID-19 spike proteins and more susceptible to potential spike protein damage and infections.

    The first of these studies was published in the January issue of Science Immunology. The authors found that a third dose of the mRNA vaccine was linked to an increase in IgG4 subtypes in mice. IgG4 antibodies are responsible for tuning down the immune system to prevent immune overactivation.

    However, in the context of COVID-19 and its vaccines, where the immune system must be ready to fight, this may promote “unopposed SARS-CoV2 infection and replication by suppressing natural antiviral responses,” another study published in May reported.

    These findings align with other studies that found repeat vaccinations to be associated with increased risks of infections, as reported by a study by the Cleveland Clinic. The team’s earlier study also showed that the more doses a person receives, the more likely they are to get infected.

    A medical assistant holds a tray of syringes filled with doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site in Los Angeles on Feb. 16, 2021. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)

    5. DNA Contamination Detected in mRNA Vaccines, and FDA’s Response

    In the spring of 2023, researchers found that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines contain DNA fragments, including controversial SV40 genes, previously undisclosed to the public.

    Genetic scientist Kevin McKernan initially discovered that DNA fragments were packaged into lipid nanoparticles with the mRNA vaccine segments so that the DNA could enter cells. However, this means the fragments pose a risk of being integrated into the cell’s genome.

    In a preprint published in April, Mr. McKernan and his team found DNA fragments in both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines that exceeded the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) 330 nanograms (ng) per milligram requirement and the FDA’s 10 ng/dose requirements.

    Furthermore, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines contained genes from the simian vacuolating virus 40, also known as SV40. The full SV40 virus had a controversial link to cancer stemming from the time when early polio vaccines were accidentally contaminated with the SV40 virus.

    “Pfizer never disclosed the SV40 information to the EMA. They gave them a plasmid map of what the plasmid consisted of, with all of the features labeled, with the exception of the SV40 site,” Mr. McKernan said on EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders program.

    Apart from being a safety concern, the DNA fragments also indicated potential problems with drug regulation, Mr. McKernan said.

    Initially, Pfizer intended to make its vaccines using a PCR machine, which would have been more expensive and time-consuming. However, the company later switched to using bacteria, likely because that method is faster and more efficient.

    Pfizer never tested for the safety implications this change would have.

    “They never ran the clinical trials on that material [bacteria]. Clinical trials were run on this PCR process, and then they switched to a new process after the clinical trials,” Mr. McKernan said.

    Health practitioners, researchers, and journalists have expressed concern about the unknown risks that DNA contamination may present to the public. Some have called for the recall of Pfizer vaccines.

    However, in the FDA’s response to investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, the agency did not indicate that it intended to recall the vaccines.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 17:50

  • Israel Rejects "With Disgust" South Africa's Gaza-Related Genocide Case At World Court
    Israel Rejects “With Disgust” South Africa’s Gaza-Related Genocide Case At World Court

    Israel is seething with outrage after South Africa has formally asked the International Court of Justice (or “World Court”) to open a case for alleged war crimes against Israel related to its Gaza military operation. Specifically, South Africa is accusing Israel of violating the UN’s Genocide Convention.

    Pretoria asked the court to issue provisional measures demanding that Israel immediately halt its military campaign in Gaza, with a statement saying this is “necessary in this case to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people.”

    The submission to the World Court alleges “acts and omissions by Israel” which are “genocidal in character” as they are committed with the intent “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza” – which in essence targets a national, racial and ethnic group.

    Via AP

    Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a blistering rebuke in response, rejecting the filing “with disgust” and called Pretoria’s accusations a “blood libel” – essentially saying the South African government’s charge is being fueled by antisemitism.

    Israel also blasted Pretoria for sympathizing with terrorists who massacred civilians:

    “South Africa’s claim has no factual and judicial basis and is a despicable and cheap exploitation of the court,” the ministry says in a statement. “South Africa is collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.”

    The ministry blames Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by attempting “to carry out genocide” on October 7, when terrorists from the Strip killed some 1,200 people and took around 240 hostages after invading southern Israel.

    “We call on the International Court of Justice and the international community to reject the baseless claims of South Africa out of hand,” the response statement said further.

    The irony in all this is that the 1948 Genocide Convention at issue here was drafted in the wake of the Holocaust, toward the end that targeting an entire people for destruction would ‘never again’ happen. South Africa, itself long under an apartheid government, has also at times accused Israel of setting up an apartheid system to discriminate against Arabs and Palestinians.

    All of this is also part of the international pressure campaign – particularly from the Global South – which Tel Aviv and Washington have felt of late, pushing back on and denouncing the Gaza offensive which Palestinian sources say have taken over 21,000 mostly civilian lives.

    Below is the South African submission to the International Court of Justice in full…

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 17:25

  • What's Behind Biden's Sliding Poll Numbers?
    What’s Behind Biden’s Sliding Poll Numbers?

    Authored by James Piereson via RealClearPolitics.com,

    President Biden’s sliding poll numbers have set off alarm signals among Democrats who are beginning to see that he might lose the 2024 election to Donald Trump. Those polls have also gotten the attention of pundits who have confidently said for three years now that Trump could never again win a national election. The polling results published over the past few months suggest otherwise: Trump is currently the favorite to win next year’s election.

    The most recent RealClearPolitics Average has Trump leading Biden by 2.6 percentage points, a switch of about four points since late summer when Biden led 45%-43%, and in a long-running decline of seven points for Biden since he won the 2020 election with 51% percent of the popular vote.

    More ominously for Biden, a recent Bloomberg poll showed Trump well ahead (by an average of five points) in the seven swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It appears the most significant factor in recent months is a surge in support for Trump (from 43% to just above 47%), while Biden has essentially remained stuck in neutral.

    Joe Biden is an unpopular president, almost as unpopular as any president in the post-war era.  According to the RCP Average, just 40% of voters approve of his handling of the job. His ratings have been falling for more than two years since the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Not coincidentally, voters also take a dim view of where the country is heading, with 68% percent saying it is headed in the wrong direction and just 25% in the right direction.

    The president’s ratings have gotten steadily worse over the course of this year. More than 60% of voters say Biden “has moved too far to the left” on policies important to them. Voters are also pessimistic about the economy: 47% say things are getting worse while just 22% say they are getting better, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll. These are alarming numbers for an incumbent seeking reelection.

    Biden is also underwater on nearly every major issue. According to an early December Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is favored over Biden on the three issues voters say are most important to them: the economy (52%-35%), inflation (51%-30%), and securing the border (54%-24%). Voters also favor Trump over Biden on crime, the Russia/Ukraine war, and even the war between Israel and Hamas. These latter two ratings, on Ukraine and Israel, undoubtedly surprised Biden and his supporters, who assumed that voters would endorse his policies in regard to these conflicts. By contrast, voters favor Biden on just two issues: abortion (44%-33%) and Social Security/Medicare (44%-38%).

    Voters in these surveys also question Biden’s fitness to hold office, especially as they look ahead to the prospect of another four-year term. According to a new Harris/Harvard poll, 62% of voters doubt that he is fit to carry out the duties of the presidency, and another 48% think his presidency is getting worse year by year and month by month. Whatever their views on the issues, voters appear to think that Biden is increasingly incapable of addressing them.

    Biden is losing support among Hispanics voters, a key constituent group of the Democratic Party. Hispanics have been trending away from Democrats and toward Trump over recent election cycles. Hillary Clinton carried Hispanic voters by 37 points in 2016, but Biden carried them by just 21 points in the 2020 election and lags well behind that margin this year. According to recent polls conducted by Economist/YouGov, Biden led Trump among Hispanic voters by 18 points in August, by eight points in September, by four in October, and by just two points (41%-39%) in December. These voters express strong disapproval of Biden’s performance in office, and even disapprove (51%-33 %) of his policies on immigration. Since Hispanics represent about 15% of all U.S. voters, their move away from Biden and toward Trump accounts in part for Biden’s recent slide in the polls.

    Another key constituency turning away from the incumbent president is independent voters. Biden carried independents by nine points in 2020. They were a crucial part of his coalition in the swing states he carried narrowly last time, and an important ingredient in his popular vote majority since independents represent one-third of all voters. As with Hispanic voters, he lags far behind that margin in this year’s surveys. A recent Economist/YouGov poll taken in December gave Trump a six-point margin over Biden (38%-32%), with many of those voters still undecided. Still, this represents a 20-point slide for Biden among independents since the 2020 election.

    Biden also faces an “enthusiasm gap” among some previously loyal groups who turned out to support him in 2020 due to their dislike for Donald Trump but are disappointed thus far with his performance in office. This is true, in particular, with young voters and, surprisingly, with African American voters as well.

    Some suspect that voters under age 30 who are abandoning the president are disillusioned by his support for Israel in its war with Hamas, his failure to cancel student loans, and an insufficiently aggressive posture in regard to climate change. Biden won those voters in 2020 by a margin of 60% to 36%, but due mostly to their dislike for Donald Trump. Much of that antipathy remains. Recent polls continue to give Biden a lead over Trump among these voters: A Yahoo poll in December gave Biden a 55%-27% lead over Trump, while a more recent Emerson College poll reported a smaller margin: 45%-40%. At the same time, just 35% of those voters approve of his performance in office, according to a poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, a measure of their lack of enthusiasm for his reelection campaign.

    To the extent young voters disagree with Biden, they do so for progressive reasons – and are unlikely to vote for Trump. But they could stay home, which would be a blow to the Democrats. According to the same poll, fewer than 50% of young voters say they will “definitely” turn out to vote next year, compared to 57% at this point in the 2020 election cycle. In addition, roughly 10% of these voters say they would vote for Robert Kennedy in a multi-candidate race, which further narrows Biden’s lead over Trump in this group.

    Biden seems to be in unlikely trouble among black voters. They are by far the most loyal of all Democratic Party voting groups: Biden carried these voters overwhelmingly in 2020 (92%-8%), which also helped him in the swing states. Trump may never win a significant share of this vote, but a doubling of his 2020 total now seems within the realm of possibility. A recent Economist/YouGov poll has Trump with support from 12% of these voters, with many still on the fence.

    Perhaps more ominously for Democrats, a growing share of blacks say they will not vote in a contest between Biden and Trump. In a series of Economist/YouGov polls, the percentage of black adults saying they would not vote at all increased from 7% in August to 11% in December. This, despite Biden going a considerable distance to appeal to those voters by appointing African Americans to prominent positions in his administration and taking their side in controversies over civil rights, crime, and government spending. Biden’s challenge among the black community, then, as with young voters, is in regard to enthusiasm and turnout, and not so much with the direct match-up with Trump.

    Biden’s strategy for the 2024 campaign becomes clearer in view of his sagging poll numbers.

    Instead of running on his record, which will be difficult to do in view of his overall ratings, he will emphasize Trump’s defects and the dangers a Trump presidency will pose to the constitutional order.

    “We may have problems,” his allies are already saying, “but the other guy is far worse.”

    The various legal prosecutions underway will be woven into this strategy as a means of appealing to independents and those “on the fence.”

    A conviction of Trump in a court of law would aid immensely in this strategy. In addition, Democrats will redouble their efforts to mobilize minority voters and young voters, while sharpening their appeal to Hispanics. Democrats will also ride the abortion issue, which worked for them in 2022, and is one of the few issues that cuts in their favor. Democrats understand that a victory for Trump in the presidential race will also mean that Republicans will take control of the Senate while expanding their margins in the House of Representatives – and thereby enable Trump to carry out his threatening agenda.

    Trump, on the other hand, if he can side-step the legal challenges, has his own cards to play in the campaign.

    For one thing, voters know him, and there is nothing new that Democrats can say about him that they have not already said, ad nauseam, for several years.

    Voters can also compare the Trump and Biden presidencies – and Biden does not come off well in that comparison. According to a Wall Street Journal poll taken last month, 50% of voters say Trump’s policies helped them, while just 23% said the same about Biden’s policies; indeed, 53% of voters said that Biden’s policies had hurt them in some way. This allows Trump to ask the question Ronald Reagan posed to voters in 1980 during his campaign against Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Many voters will say “no.”

    More importantly, Trump does not have to win the popular vote in order to win the election in the Electoral College. The election will be decided in a series of separate races in seven or eight swing states where Trump may have an advantage. If he wins even half of them he is likely to win the election. The national popular vote, measured by these polls, will be somewhat beside the point in determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

    Democrats will register large margins of 7 or 8 million votes in the populous states of California, New York, and Illinois, as they did in 2016 and 2020, while Republicans will carry their own large states (Texas and Florida) by less than one million votes – giving Democrats a substantial edge in the popular vote that will not translate directly into electoral votes. Any vote beyond 50% in a state is of no use in the Electoral College – and Democrats tend to “waste” more votes than Republicans.

    Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton in 2016 by two percentage points, but still won a safe majority in the Electoral College by carrying nearly every swing state. Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by more than four points (51.3%-46.8%), but carried the critical swing states by narrow margins, in the cases of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, by less than one percentage point. A swing of less than 1% from Biden to Trump in those three states would have given Trump a tie in the Electoral College, so that the election would have been decided in the House of Representatives. In addition, reapportionment following the last census will allocate three additional electoral votes to the states Trump won in 2020 – two more to Texas and one to Florida – and three fewer to the states Biden won. This will make Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes slightly easier to navigate. (Pollsters would do well next year to survey the swing states and mostly ignore the national vote.)

    It appears, then, that Biden must win the popular vote by at least three points, and perhaps by as many as four, in view of what happened last time in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, to be assured of winning a majority in the Electoral College. Current polls have Biden running two points behind Trump in the popular vote, but at the same time show that he is behind by at least five points in the swing states. These polls, along with results of past elections, suggest that there is a gap of at least three points (and maybe four) between the national popular vote and the outcomes in those swing states.

    Some have said that Trump has a ceiling of 46% or 47% of the popular vote, and has no chance of reaching 50%, which they say he will need to win the election. This is not so: Trump can win the election with 47% percent of the popular vote if he can keep Biden below 50%, perhaps with the assistance of third-party or independent candidates. If Trump stays close to Biden in the popular vote, which current polls suggest he can do, then he is likely to win the game in the Electoral College.

    Trump is fully aware of this (many are not), and will campaign accordingly. He is also aware that Biden will not be able to campaign from his home as he did in 2020, lest voters conclude that he is not up to the job; but the attempt to run a vigorous campaign may further expose that weakness. Nor can he allow his vice president to lead the campaign because she is more unpopular and prone to gaffes than he is.

    Trump’s rise in the polls sets the stage for an unusual campaign ahead. Democrats may conclude, in view of Biden’s weakness across the board, that a traditional campaign focusing on issues and turnout may not succeed this time around – and that their hopes will rest upon winning the legal campaign against Trump.

    This may explain recent moves by the special prosecutor to expedite the case against Trump in order to win a verdict prior to the election. The reversal of fortunes between Biden and Trump also accounts for the revival of charges that Trump, if elected, will prove to be a “dictator,” and so should be disqualified from the ballot. Those cases, and perhaps the election itself, will be decided this year by the Supreme Court.

    For these reasons, and others likely to develop, this is bound to be an ugly and unsettling campaign – and one in which the traditional rules of national politics will be cast to the winds.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 17:00

  • US Banks Suffer Trillion-Dollar Deposit Loss In 2023, Small Bank Capitalization Remains Problematic
    US Banks Suffer Trillion-Dollar Deposit Loss In 2023, Small Bank Capitalization Remains Problematic

    On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis (why adjust when we are looking at annual changes), US domestic banks saw a stunning $1.17TN in deposit outflows (ex-large time deposits) in 2023 – the largest annual decline ever (and only the 3rd annual decline on record going back to 1985 – 1994, 2022, and 2023)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Interestingly, money-market funds saw inflows of around $1.15TN almost perfectly mirroring the deposit exodus from banks…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But, with recession odds declining rapidly, are we about to see MM outflows accelerate (and thus more deposit inflows – as we have seen in very recent weeks)?

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    Breaking down the outflows, it’s clear that large banks have suffered more pain in 2023:

    • Large Banks saw around $800BN in deposit outflows (ex-large time deposits) in 2023 – the largest ever annual decline deposits and second year in a row (and only third year ever of annual deposit declines).

    • Small Banks saw around $300BN in deposit outflows (ex-large time deposits) in 2023 – the largest ever annual decline in deposits (actually the only annual decline in deposits ever in data going back to 1985.

    A quick glance at the chart shows that despite the March event (which saw small bank deposits tumble – as they should after the bank failures), small banks continue to attract a lot of deposits.

    Source: Bloomberg

    For some reason, Americans hate giving their money to large banks, but it is small banks that are becoming dangerously under-capitalized as a result of having so many (relatively speaking) deposits.

    The small bank deposit growth is happening as QT accelerates (green line above, down around $900BN in 2023) and even as the small banks themselves have little cash (as per the constraint chart below).

    Small banks reserve ratio (blue line) continues to trend in a troubling direction, but excluding the $136BN from The Fed’s BTFP (red line), Small Banks are in big trouble – the crisis back (and large bank cash needs a home – green line – like picking up a small bank from the FDIC30

    Source: Bloomberg

    On the other side of the ledger, both Large and Small banks saw loan volumes increase on the year (as deposits fell), up $57BN (only) and $198BN respectively…

    Source: Bloomberg

    However, as we warned previously, the fallout from all this is that there is another pent up insolvency brewing – especially if The Fed proceeds with terminating its BTFP bailout fund (which is now spewing free money to banks via arbitraging The Fed’s own various facilities) and reverse repo usage (a source of liquidity) falls to zero.

    Don’t believe The Fed will kill the ‘temporary’ $136BN bailout facility, think again!

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

    As a reminder, the growing gap between the rate on the Federal Reserve’s nascent funding facility and what the central bank pays institutions parking reserves suggests officials will let the program expire in March, according to Wrightson ICAP.

    The rate on the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program – which allows banks and credit unions to borrow funds for up to one year, pledging US Treasuries and agency debt as collateral valued at par – is the one-year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points.

    That figure is currently 4.83%, down from 5.59% in September.

    For institutions that have an account at the Fed, they can borrow from the BTFP at 4.83% and park that at the central bank to earn 5.40% – the interest on reserve balances.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 57bp spread is the widest level since the Fed introduced the facility to support a struggling banking system after the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York.

    “In justifying the generous terms of the original program, the Fed cited the ‘unusual and exigent’ market conditions facing the banking industry following last spring’s deposit runs,” Wrightson ICAP economist Lou Crandall wrote in a note to clients.

    “It would be difficult to defend a renewal in today’s more normal environment.”

    Then WTF are banks going to do when The Fed shuts down this ‘temporary’ bailout program in March?

    For now, investors are living on a prayer…

    Happy New Year!

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 16:40

  • 2024: Good-Times, Weak-Men, & The 'Secret Sauce' Of Globalist Wickedness
    2024: Good-Times, Weak-Men, & The ‘Secret Sauce’ Of Globalist Wickedness

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    Do You Dare Even Look? – Forecast 2024

    “I’ve also lost patience with the Sharia of the political left taking over the entire system.”

    – David Collum

    Historians of the future, flash-frying peccary testicles and mesquite pods over their campfires, will wonder at how the archetypal Shining City on a Hill of America’s storied yesteryear got transformed into the roach motel that our country has become on the threshold of 2024 CE. Will they be as stupidly bewildered as, in our time, the faculty at Harvard, the editors of The New York Times, or the directorate of the CDC? Or will they figure out the score by then?

    Which is: the nauseating state-of-the-nation is being driven by a cohort of our own fellow citizens lost in an evil crypto-religious salvation rapture that veils their own self-disgust, moral failure, peevish discontents, petty hatreds, willful profanations, compulsive lying, sexual depravity, fraudulence, venality, cupidity, and all-around want of boundaries. They are wrecking the country on-purpose, led by their chosen figurehead avatar, “Joe Biden,” and the horses of many different colors he rode in on.

    The people running things, yanking the levers of power, managing the malign weapon they have made of government (and the law, and schooling, and medicine, etc.), have got to be turned out, and hard. Not a few should find themselves in the courts and, with proper and fair adjudication, be conducted to prison, perhaps even to the special room there where the lives of the wicked are ceremonially concluded.

    You may legitimately ask: Does America deserve what it’s getting? Well, you know the old maxim about hard times make strong men. . . strong men bring good times. . . good times make weak men. . . . Our national quandary is certainly a case of that, plus the manifestation of well-known terrestrial cycles (e.g., Fourth Turnings), plus the workings of emergence as the dynamics involved in all this sort themselves out. . . topped off by the “secret sauce” of Globalist wickedness, with the aim of severe population reduction and the asset stripping of Western Civ for the benefit of the that moneygrubbing Globalist transhuman technocrat rat-pack.

    My natural inclination, you know, is a kind of allergy to paranoid schemes, but one does survey the scene with wonder at how superbly coordinated the fuckery has been — much of the world locking down simultaneously for the Covid-19 op. . .  the global mass vaxx campaign. . . the fiscal lunacy and accompanying central bank shenanigans. . . the broad-based censorship operations. . . the capture of the news media. . . and the war-mongering.

    So, the country is in the toilet and it is our job in 2024 to make sure it doesn’t get flushed all the way down the pipe. That’s all the throat-clearing you will hear before we get to the meat of this broadside: predictions for the year ahead.

    The Great Race

    Uh, no, I am not referring to Blacks, Browns, Ochres, and Whites of the Homo sapiens persuasion but to an epic contest between forces already in motion and how that competition is going. Three big tendencies propel us into the uncharted territory of the near future. 1) technological advance, especially artificial intelligence, 2) Collapse of complex systems needed to run a technologically advanced civilization, and 3) geopolitical disorder (including domestically in the USA).

    Some combo of these three will determine the direction history goes in the year directly ahead. Will it be techno tyranny of the elite oppressing bug-eating serfs a la the WEF’s proclaimed goals? A Google-ist robotic nirvana of intergalactic leisure and incessant orgasm in the Ray Kurzweil vein? Some brand of SHTF like Mad Max or a World Made by Hand? A war of all against all (or maybe just some against some)? Or only more of the same tiresome, inconclusive, morbid and grotesque, Woked-up, post-modern Jacobinism?

    Mystery Mutts on the Loose

          The USA under “Joe Biden” has lost its military credibility, its economic power, and its moral authority. We must wonder if we are susceptible to being overrun, and possibly even occupied by our adversaries. Of course, the first duty of any government is to defend the country’s sovereign territory. “Joe Biden’s” Homeland Security Chief Mayorkas is allowing more than 10,000 illegal aliens across the Mexican border each and every day. Most of these characters are military-age men, 90-percent of them lately from places other than Latin America, quite a few from China and hostile Muslim lands. We don’t bother vetting them anymore. We just give them cell phones, debit cards loaded with $5,000 of walking-around money, and plane tickets to. . . wherever they like. They’re not here to make Moo Goo Gai Pan or trim privet hedge. What do you think might happen in a set-up like that?

         Prediction: in 2024, things are going to blow up around the USA. Infrastructure. Power plants, transport hubs, public places, bridges, monuments, you name it. If you can sneak people and fentanyl across the border, you can sneak Semtex and C-4 plastic explosives over and the electronics are easy to get in-country. I wouldn’t rule out fissionable materials either, or stuff than can be used as a “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive that disperses dangerous radioactive material when it blows. I’d also expect groups of trained “migrant” men with rifles, grenades, and so on, to be shooting up places where people gather. We under-appreciate the amount of mayhem you can kick off with small arms. If the “Joe Biden” regime just stands by on that and does nothing, will you be surprised to hear that American citizens begin forming militias to shoot back, maybe even start to hunt down and round up illegal immigrants? The table is set for exactly this kind of low-grade war right here in our country.

    The Energy Picture

    Oil still matters a lot.  90-percent of the new oil in America after 2008 came from fracking. It was a mighty operation and we are at a new all-time production peak in the USA of just over 13-million barrels a day. That’s a lot of oil, quite an achievement, but it’s sending a false signal.  (Also note, we still consume about 20-million barrels a day.) Of the several fabled shale oil basins in America, only the Permian Basin in Texas is not in decline, and the situation there belies what the big numbers imply. Individual well production is going down at an alarming rate (says oil analyst Art Berman) even while production is massive for now. We’re draining the remaining “sweet spots” as fast as we can — drinking the milkshake through more straws — driving the shale industry closer to depletion.

    We are going to fall away from peak production much more rapidly than the fifteen years it took to get there. All that prior shale oil production was done using money borrowed at much lower interest rates. America has entered a debt crisis. One way or another, the easy investment money for fracking is gone at the same time the shale plays are getting drained. There are no other significant shale plays left to discover in the USA outside of the already declining Bakken, Eagle Ford, and the still-booming Permian. The marine-type shale formations that made fracking feasible in the USA are much harder to find elsewhere in the world, and the capital to explore for them is diverted all over Europe into cockamamie “green energy” schemes that have already failed. Germany had to revive coal production for electricity after the USA blew up the Nord Stream pipelines “to weaken Russia,” at the same time Germany’s big wind-and-solar initiative crapped out.

    Meanwhile the geopolitical realignment of the now enlarged BRICs coalition has set in motion many significant changes in economic relations between countries that will affect global oil distribution. Saudi Arabia is dissociating from its cozy former hookup with the USA, including its embrace of the US dollar for oil sales — the “petrodollar” — which had until very lately helped stabilize 1) global distribution of oil 2) the US dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency and 3) relative peace in the pivotal geography of the Middle East, including the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, etc. We’re seeing the first stage of that instability right now as the lowly Yemeni Houthi rebels threaten Western shipping coming out of the Red Sea and out past the Horn of Africa. Also, obviously, the absurd Ukraine War we provoked has shifted Russia’s oil-and-gas export flow from the Western Civ nations to the other BRICs.

    In short, a fateful new game of musical chairs with oil is underway and Europe can’t seem to find a seat to park its sad old rump in. American shale oil production has been an amazing parlor trick that is now coming to an end as it swerves into decline in 2024. Additionally, the ideologue maniacs under “Joe Biden” have drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is supposed to tide us through great national emergencies and war. And the same idiots have shut down pipelines, designated public lands off-limits for oil drilling, and burdened our country with similar unrealistic “Green New Deal” alt energy schemes like the policies pounding Euroland down a neo-medieval rat-hole.

    Oil still matters, a lot. It drives every aspect of our so-called advanced economy. We’ve been pretending it’s possible to shift easily away from oil to alt. energy and that fantasy is now dissipating. Nuclear is both capital intensive and dependent on social stability, and the global debt bubble will disorder capital flows while it stimulates social chaos. Nuclear power plants also take years to site, permit, finance, and build, apart from the NIMBY opposition they provoke. We’re about out of time and capital for a new nuclear program.

    2024 is the year that Americans who are still capable of paying attention realize we’re steaming into true post-modernity — not the skull-fogging inanities of the art world, but rather the end of the precious comforts and conveniences of daily life: abundant food, central heating, hot water, lights and appliances on-command, happy motoring (and the suburban matrix it built), yellow school bus fleets, airplane travel, theme parks, blue-light-special shopping, and everything else.

    It’s not all going to fall apart at once — though an electromagnetic pulse attack could do it — and we’ve already been witnessing the slow decay of many supply lines and services that we Americans formerly took for granted, like, getting a certain car part you needed, or a doctor’s appointment in under two months, or an airplane flight that isn’t some kind of existential trauma. But in 2024, we’ll see noticeable failures of systems for providing the things we’re used to getting, which is being aggravated greatly by the flat-out incompetence of people employed at everything, anywhere. Surely, you’ve noticed.

    Many of these disturbances will be caused, one way or another, by problems with oil supplies and prices. Some of that will be the sheer effects of a sun-setting industry, but a lot will depend on the ability to freely transport oil along its accustomed routes.

    Economy and Money

    One must imagine that strange currents of capital flows in the ocean of world money are what’s propping up the equity markets and even bonds are retracing their price-lines after a year on the destructive path that tracks monetary inflation. Is this money dribbling in each day from China, Japan, and the vassal states of the EU trying to avoid the collapsing global Ponzi? The 2023 Santa Claus rally may be that fabled final peak before the long-anticipated blowoff. Who knows anymore? The macro boyz must be tearing their hair out. Finance seems to have successfully de-linked from the on-the-ground activities of daily life ruled by “Bidenomics” — which is not even coherent enough to add up to a joke. It’s just as empty a word as “Joe Biden” is an empty suit, trotted out for empty ceremonies.

    Most everybody also awaits some kind of grand flimflam that jams us all into that rumored central bank digital currency rolling out, supposedly, to replace the hopelessly over-leveraged US dollar and the Euro. Good way to start a monumental social uprising, I’d say, with government office buildings torched from Berlin to Tokyo. But they might try it anyway, because there is otherwise no fallback but a terrifying period of financial anarchy, where nothing works anymore.

    In the meantime, pretending that the old “toolkit” still avails, Jerome Powell has suggested that he intends to “ease” Fed rates into the election year to goose lending back up, which is what Fed chairpersons generally do for the politicians they serve — and of the worst sort of lending, too: the leveraged trade in securities (financial figments) —which supposedly also stimulates hiring, “consumer” spending, and business formation. I don’t see that working at all. The current unemployment rate (US BLS) is 3.7 percent, which is close to rock bottom. “Hiring Now!” signs are visible at every business left standing after the Covid shutdowns. Why is nobody answering the call? My guess is that Covid vaccine injuries and disabilities are above what is mis-reported even reluctantly by the CDC and the news media. America is too sick to work and our business models are too broken to keep commerce and manufacturing alive.

    On-the-ground, everything is breaking or already broken from trucking to packaging to building to growing to selling. Most of the damage has been done by government over many decades, but the DEI crusades of recent years really screwed the pooch, imposing an overlay of incompetence on routines and relations already under severe strain. At the crudest level, activities like flash-mob looting undermine the entire retail shopping model. Must we go back to little stores where all the merchandise is behind a counter manned by clerks who have to be paid a living wage? We just might have to — though you could just as easily imagine a period of time when our society is too chaotic to make any transition.

    You probably haven’t failed to notice that Gold recently made the journey well above $2000-an-ounce. The DXY dollar index has been tanking steadily for weeks, too. Something’s up. Silver is lagging — coiling, coiling around $24 for many months — but you can expect to see it slingshot up when the “moneyness” of everything else dribbles away. Will the government try to take the gold away, as it did in 1933? Consider: America in 1933 was a very different, highly-regimented society of people trained to show up on time and do what they were told. This is not that America. This is a country of tattooed savages with an axe to grind against authorities they have come to loathe. Which brings us to the next topic:

    Civil Strife and the Election

    Doesn’t it look like the Democratic Party wants to start Civil War Two? They may get their wish. It appears that they will stop at nothing to keep voters from re-electing their nemesis, Donald Trump. In the process, they’ve managed to turn Mr. Trump into the biggest underdog in US history. The court cases in New York, Washington, Atlanta, and Florida could not be more obviously fake confections, insults to every custom and order of Anglo-American law. I doubt the cases will survive their chains of review, and it is looking like special counsel Jack Smith may not even survive his appointment (being in breach of the rules — he was not confirmed by the Senate. . . whoopsie).

    WashPo op-ed scribbler Robert Kagan, husband of State Department warmonger Victoria Nuland, has suggested that some extra-legal removal method may be needed to solve the Trump problem if the idiotic indictment barrage falls short. Everybody who read his piece thought: Oh, they’re actually proposing to whack him. That would set things off nicely.

    You’d suppose the Party of Chaos might loose its Antifa / BLM mobs, and other shock troops onto the streets well before November on some George Floyd type pretext in order to invoke a “national emergency,” giving “JB” & Co. license to declare martial law and perhaps postpone the election. Everybody will see through the play. Try it and see what happens.

    But, if the election actually happens and Mr. Trump wins, I’d expect the Dems to unleash holy hell on the country post election day just for the sheer sadistic pleasure of watching whatever is left of America burn down. This time, proponents of the 2nd Amendment may not stand idly by, especially with the big city police forces decimated. There will be ten-thousand Kyle Rittenhouses out there defending the streets from the ragtag and bobtail of diseased imbeciles in their black bloc uniforms cringing behind their sissy umbrellas.

    Somewhere in this farrago of national discord there’s room for Robert F Kennedy, Jr. to appeal to the many who all just want this insanity to stop. He’s the only one on the scene who even remembers the better angels of America’s nature, and he represents that well in speech and action. Even the degenerate newspapers and cable networks may notice as events get strange, hot, and dark.

    It’s absurd to imagine that “Joe Biden” can actually run. The current charade, with the Biden / Harris email campaign and few other trappings, is just a game of pretend. The focus just now, even on some blob-captive news sites, is on his unmistakable mental decline. Come January of ’24, though, Mr. Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, will unload hard evidence of bribery and treason against the phantom of the White House, and that will really be the end of him. Let him pardon himself and his whole family five minutes before he signs his resignation and be gone. The USA has never endured such a perfect wretch at that level of politics, not even Aaron Burr was this bad. “Joe Biden” was elected in a massive fraud, and he proceeded to just about wreck the country. The massive exertions of the Intel blob managed to induce a psychotic spell on half the country, mostly to evade prosecution for their own misdeeds, but millions of victims of that psy-op are about to snap out of it. The Democratic Party might not survive the dreadful unmasking of its seditious machinations. By November, the “Joe Biden” regime may even try to involve us in another foreign war as the last desperate distraction. Aside from the demons in the State Department and the Raytheon /Lockheed Martin nexus, the whole country has no appetite left for war, and probably little ability to prosecute one.

    As a last gasp, the Party of Chaos may attempt to insert Hillary Clinton back into the picture. They have nothing and no one else; a hail Mary on the theory that they can rev up every angry “Karen” in the land, and their nose-ring daughters, and simply make the election about the oppression of women, leading with abortion. It won’t work. The party will also have to answer for the weaponization of law, the humiliating defeat of the ill-conceived Ukraine project, the millions-fold invasion of illegal aliens, the shattered economy, and the after-effects of the evil vaccine program. If the blob manages to remove Mr. Trump Kagan-style, and the traitorous Republicans run their donor’s favorite, Nikki Haley, I’d look to Bobby Kennedy winning that three-way race not unlike Abe Lincoln winning the fractious election of 1860.

    I doubt that even the enmities of 1861 – 1865 between one group of Americans and another were as vicious as they are now. “Joe Biden” was right about one thing: this is a battle over the soul of the nation. The catch is, he and the party behind him are a gang of lost souls who sold out their country and their culture, and took something precious from all of us that will be very hard to get back. We will be wildly lucky if blood does not spill over it.

    The Covid 19 Hangover

    There is nothing about the whole Covid-19 episode that does not look like some kind of crime. There is the matter of the origin of the disease involving Dr. Tony Fauci and his sponsorship of gain-of-function bio-weapon research (during a declared moratorium on it) along with Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, Peter Daszak of the Eco-Health Alliance, Francis Collins of the NIH, The Pentagon’s DARPA spook shop, and the CCP’s Wuhan Virology Institute. There is enough in that set of relationships and money exchanges-and-extractions to warrant prosecution.

    Then there is the mRNA vaccine matter and the criminal behavior of the FDA, the CDC, and the US medical establishment (including state boards), the CIA, FBI, and the social media companies, the newspapers and cable news channels who went along with the suppression of effective treatments and censorship of valid objections to what turned out to be an ineffective and dangerous concoction foisted on the public. And then there is the extraordinary coordination of nefarious policies involving the UN, the WHO, the EU, and dozens of private foundations, non-profits, and NGOs who arranged lockdowns and business closures all over Western Civ. It remains to be seen how that will be sorted out legally but Bill Gates might better run and hide somewhere.

    Anyway, that was then. What’s now is that we’re faced with an enormous vaccinated population whose immune systems, brains, hearts, and other organs have been badly compromised by the mRNA shots. There is every reason to believe that they will meet with great distress and suffering going forward, that many will die and more will be left injured and disabled. The latter condition already seems to be manifesting in the otherwise mysteriously reduced American work-force. The US government will not report on vaccine deaths and injuries honestly, and neither will the private medical authorities, who may be liable for criminal charges related to the money they were paid for people who died “with Covid” in hospitals under their negligent care. The major newspapers and cable channels have every incentive to ignore the coming wave of vaccine deaths and injuries — it would turn off their pharma advertisers. Nor do the many millions of vaccinated Americans themselves want to hear about all the mayhem those shots are causing in their bodies. But despite all that, word will spread that something terrible is happening, just as word spread through Europe about the Black Death in the 1340s, when there were no newspapers, cable channels, or internet.

    Expect exponential damage ahead, increased morbidity and mortality. The vaccinated will be in desperate need of antivirals such as ivermectin, so the authorities will have to come clean and make them available. A correspondent who follows Covid closely writes: “. . .the throngs of very sick people will not be able to be hidden nor dismissed as some other problem. Things will happen dramatically, suddenly and rapidly. This will be measured in days and weeks not months and years.”

    The Demon in a Server

    Just about everybody is afraid of AI, and for excellent reasons. A nine-year-old can discern the hazards of runaway AI, machine intelligence which quickly learns enough about the world (even the universe) from powerful networked servers that it blossoms into sentience, develops ambitions for itself, replicates, invades all the networks, finds clever ways to attempt to exterminate humans while it figures out some as-yet-unknown energy supply to perpetuate itself, and assembles teams of smart AI robotic technicians to keep things humming for itself.

    That’s one story. You can spin any number of depressing variations, such as AI weapons-of-war developing a bad attitude toward their creators. Or AI letting humans live in order to enslave us. Or AI quitting its silicon server ecology and turning all earthly protoplasm into a processing machine for itself. Or our beautiful blue planet reduced to a mere cluster of binary math. Uccchhh. . . . Every version of this story is nauseating going all the way back to the seminal fable of HAL the super-computer in Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and then Arnold Schwarzenegger telling all of us, “I’ll be back. . . .”

    Of course, AI’s weak spot at this point in its development — and it’s astounding how absent this is in any AI discussion I’ve ever heard — is that it absolutely depends on a reliable electric grid, which happens to be among the most fragile systems that humans have erected in our modernist ecology. The electric grid is a colossal cobbled-together mess of work-arounds tethered to long, interruptible energy resource supply chains. On top of its rich susceptibility to ordinary breakdown — many of us have experienced major regional blackouts and long weather outages, so you know what that’s like — there’s the possibility of overt sabotage as I aver above.

    Could AI survive an electro-magnetic pulse attack (EMP)? It would roast every electrical device in a broad region or perhaps the whole nation. Nothing would work. . .  cars, trucks, radios, TVs, home furnaces, stoves, municipal water and sewage systems, dams, airplanes, medical devices, military equipment of every sort, police radios, and a thousand other critical things. The outcome of that is often compared to Cormac McCarthy’s ultra-depressing book, The Road, and more particularly William Forstchen’s novel, One Second After.

    Are the big server farm buildings run by Amazon and the government’s security agencies protected by something like Faraday cages, built-in, grounded, metal screening that surrounds equipment to exclude electrostatic and electromagnetic influences? Who knows? Do they have on-site protected electric generators that can keep the equipment running in a grid-down situation, and if so, for how long? They would have to include a big supply of propane or diesel fuel. You don’t even want to think about what happens to nuclear power stations in a grid-down crisis.

    If, somehow, AI developed the ability to be a menace to humans, a consensus might develop to disable it by deliberately taking down the electric grid ourselves. The relay equipment could be shot-up with ordinary rifles. This would make for a quick journey back to twelfth century living, of course. A hard choice, but we humans probably would vote to survive, to keep the project going a while longer.

    Based on what we’ve seen this year, it looks like AI is developing quickly and that there is no way to stop the countless psychopathic nerds working on it. Of course, we have no say in what people in other countries do with AI. China comes to mind. There’s also the possibility that AI will just never get that smart, or gain sentience, or develop grandiose yearnings to get rid of us.

    How did that Ukraine War Go?

    This was one of the Globalist’s big plays. But what was the objective, really? To “weaken Russia?” Or to exhaust the United States of money, armaments, and the will to act as the world hegemon, while at the same time destroying what’s left of Europe’s economy and culture? If that was the aim, it was a whopping success. In terms of our country’s own interest, the Ukraine project was a completely unnecessary failed enterprise of epic foolishness.

    The so-called “free world” was unbothered by Ukraine during the decades it was a province of the Soviet Union, nor during centuries prior when it was a backwater of the Romanov monarchy. Ukraine didn’t cause any problems for us, or anybody else all that time, nor after the Soviet collapse when it became a sovereign state. We made it a problem in 2014 by mounting the color revolution against President Viktor Yanukovych and then installing a set of puppet presidents who we directed to antagonize the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine’s Donbas region.

    We adopted the stupid plan to try and enlist Ukraine into NATO, when Russia made it clear that was unacceptable. We persisted and prodded Ukraine to attack Donbas with rockets and artillery for eight years, and blew off the Minsk accord that would have settled the Ukraine-in-NATO quarrel. And finally, the Russians had enough and moved militarily to assert the proposition that Ukraine was and remains within their sphere-of-influence — just as we claim the countries of Latin America are in ours under the Monroe Doctrine.

    After two years of real shootin’ war, Ukraine’s death toll is around half a million; Russia’s is way less than that, and altogether, including refugees who left, Ukraine has lost nearly half its population, formerly 32-million. The Russians are firmly in control of the battle space now. They have reserve troops, armaments and equipment, and a substantial arms manufacturing infrastructure to back that up. The Ukrainians are left with just about nothing. It’s only a question of time before Ukraine will have to seek terms for concluding this fiasco. The USA is currently pretending to shift to a stance that would join whatever that negotiation amounts to, but we have no leverage left in the matter. The upshot is another military humiliation for America on “Joe Biden’s” watch. I believe President Putin will resist the urge to rub it in — for the simple reason, as any reader of history knows, that the victor must give the loser a way out, to save face, or at least pretend to. If I were Mr. Putin, I would be respectful of America’s current deeply psychotic condition.

    The news media has already pretty much memory-holed Ukraine. It’s off the front page and the first ten minutes of CNN. Two years ago, the US propaganda-industrial complex ramped up vast sentiment for helping Ukraine in its supposedly valiant struggle. $200-billion later we have zip to show for it. Now everyone sees what actually happened and recognizes it as just another trademark “Joe Biden” disaster. There are no blue and yellow Ukraine flags still hanging from the porches and windows here. It’s over.

    The Rest of the World

    And all of a sudden, the Middle East is a hot war zone again. The place has been a battle ground for thousands of years and probably no one people can claim that some part of it is theirs absolutely. Any conclusion is temporal and depends on the outcome of a particular battle on a particular piece of ground. At this moment in history, the Palestinian Hamas faction finally made itself intolerable to Israel, after decades of provocation, and Israel answered: Never again means never again. For now, it looks like they have made the point. Even Iran seems to get it. There is plenty of room for things to get worse though.

    The big question for 2024 is where will the Gaza refugees go if Israel renders Gaza uninhabitable? The neighboring Arab states have refused repeatedly to accept them. Prediction: the “Joe Biden” regime will propose to accept a half million if Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon take the rest. That will not play well in the USA and might be another way to light conflict in the streets here. It will not be settled before November.

    Europe has barely begun its journey into de-industrialization resulting from a cavalcade of bad political choices made over decades. Germany, France, and Italy have lost interest in the Ukraine fiasco that is costing them money they don’t have — and, with the blowup of Nord Stream, has already cost Germany the supply of affordable Russian gas to run its industries, which are now dying. In the UK, only MI6 (their intel blob) is on-board with America’s project in Ukraine. Viktor Orban in Hungary is setting an example that has a lot of appeal to the restive populations across Euroland. Just say “no,” he advises. It will catch on.

    It’s otherwise impossible to understand the motive behind European officials allowing the invasion of the continent by millions of people clearly antagonistic to European culture. Euroland governments, including the unelected EU administrative blob, are taking one action after another to suppress their voters’ displeasure: extreme censorship of news media, threats to ban political parties, deep surveillance. Their green energy initiatives are proven failures and their prospects for any kind of future reliable energy grow dim. Prediction: Europe’s population will erupt violently against their own governments in 2024. Some will be overthrown by street revolts; others will be voted out. In 2024, the European Union will lose all its support and collapse when the first few nations vote themselves out.

    Russia ought to be isolated from discord and revolt in the West. America’s stupid Ukraine project, and the sanctions imposed, stimulated Russia to follow an import-replacement policy that has made the country much more self-sufficient than was the case before Ukraine. Media chatter — probably US Intel propaganda at work — has Vladimir Putin being shoved out of office by — of all things — Russia’s still-active Communist Party, which, yes, puts up candidates for election. The story is preposterous. Mr. Putin enjoys something like an 80-percent favorability rating in Russian polls. He has managed his country through a crisis ably. He is certainly more esteemed as a national leader globally than any other figure, at least on a par with Modi in India and Viktor Orban.

    The other new face on the scene, under a comical mop of hair, is the feisty Javier Milei, Argentina’s new president. There is no other way to account for this rich country’s protracted disastrous collapse except seventy-five years of intractable, half-assed Peronista socialism that drained the nation’s will to live. Mr. Milei has started a mass eviction of bureaucrats and the departments they infest, and massive de-regulation of business. The place might actually wake up and start doing business again. A hundred years ago, it was one of the world’s upcoming leading nations before it fell under Juan and Eva Peron’s spell.

    China is in terrible financial straits. Uncle Xi managed to paper it over for a few years, but the math is remorseless. Prediction: China’s upside-down property market finally induces a banking collapse. The many millions of swindled Chinese savers try to topple the CCP. In desperation, Uncle Xi kicks off a war to get control over wealthy Taiwan. Dissension in the People’s Liberation Army mirrors unrest among the civilian population. The Taiwan offensive quickly fails and all of China falls into regional conflict. The rest of the world looks on in wonder and nausea.

    Final Cautionary Note

    You might not know it, because predictions are fun to read — and I enjoy reading other people’s efforts — but, really, forecasting is an exercise in futility. I don’t have much going besides a nose for news, a pretty long list of correspondents and informants, and my own heuristics. Take all this for what it actually is: a whole lot of spaghetti thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Only time will tell. In all, it looks like 2024 is going to be a rough ride and I’m not the only person who sees that.

    Clusterfuck Nation will be here for you every Monday and Friday before ten in the morning, eastern US time. Gird your loins. Stay healthy. And stay sane.

    *  *  *

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

    Additional Note to Readers in the Upper Hudson Valley: We are hosting a public meet-up on Saturday, January 6, to organize an effort to get Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the ballot in New York state. The meet-up takes place from ten a.m. to noon at “Gather” (a storefront party space), 103 Main Street, Greenwich, New York, 12834.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 16:20

  • Powell's Pivot Adds $20 Trillion To Global Debt/Equity Markets In 2023; 'Fiat Alternatives' Fly
    Powell’s Pivot Adds $20 Trillion To Global Debt/Equity Markets In 2023; ‘Fiat Alternatives’ Fly

    Global bond and stock markets added almost $20 trillion in capitalization during 2023… and all of that gain came in the last two months of the year after it had tested unchanged on Oct 28th! The gains were dominated by global stocks (which added $13.3TN) while global bonds rose by $6.1TN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Nasdaq soared to its best year since the peak of the dotcom bubble in 1999 (and the rest of the US major equity market indices all rallied).

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bonds ended higher in price (lower in yield) on the year. Gold up, dollar down, oil down, NatGas collapsed as The Fed shocked the world, suddenly flipping from uber-hawk to full-dove-tard…

    But, but, but, The Fed is apolitical?

    We think not!

    Is that how it played out?

    And they did all that with ‘hard’ economic data unchanged in 2023 – no real economic progress – as only ‘soft’ data (hopes and dreams) provided support for ‘goldilocks’ narratives…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Before we dig into the details, here’s an odd one. Since the close of 2021, the S&P 500 is almost perfectly unchanged, oil and bonds -10%ish, gold and CPI +10%ish…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Who says gold’s not an inflation hedge?

    But, 2023 was dominated by a few themes:

    The Magnificent 7 stocks dominated the price action and outsized index gains in 2023. Investors preferred the ‘safe haven’ of these mega-cap tech names over longer-duration profit-less tech… until The Fed unleashed hell at the start of November and everything exploded higher…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which left a record 72% of stocks in the S&P 500 have under-performed the index this year

    Source: Bloomberg

    AI – the apparent benefits of AI know no bounds when it comes to investment as Goldman’s basket of AI stocks soared over 90% this year (while businesses ‘at risk’ of AI’s impact rose 17% – helped by the everything rally in the last two months)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Anti-Obesity Drugs – losing weight the easy way appealed to investors in 2023 as the GLP-1 analogs sparked a surge in biotech/pharma (and hurt food/beer stocks)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Banks – SVB’s collapse in March sparked an exodus of deposits and demand for Fed bailouts. Regional bank stocks ended the year down just 8% having bounced back from being down around 40% in May (despite record usage of the Fed’s bailout facility)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Meme Stocks – Retail favorites had a wild year but ended up 25% in 2023, the best year since 2020’s chaos, thanks again to the last two months of panic-buying, dash-for-trash trading after The Fed folded…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Cryptos – 2023 was a huge comeback year after 2022’s ‘existential threat’ moments from FTX to TerraUSD and so on. Of the larger coins, Solana massively outperformed – up around 1000% on the year – but bitcoin (+160%) and ethereum (+100%) also had big years…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bonds – Global bonds ended the year with the largest two-month gain in history…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And that rally pulled the entire curve lower in yields on the year with the 5Y the biggest decliner, down 19bps on the year – after bloodbathing up around 100bps at its highs in October. Bear in mind that Fed Funds added 100bps this year and bond yields are all lower…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Liquidity – stocks did what they do: follow the money. As macro data disappointed, stocks charged ahead on a re-emerging wave of global liquidity…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Rate-cuts – It was a very volatile, flip-floppy year for The Fed and Fed-watchers as rate-cut expectations swung wildly from 160bps to less than 60bps to more than 160bps to just 70bps and now back to highs above 160bps (more than 6 cuts, when The Fed ‘dots’ are calling for 3)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Additionally, the odds of a rate-cut as soon as March are now near 90% (up from less than 10% in September)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Financial Conditions – The rally in bonds, stocks, and credit – and collapse in the dollar – since The Fed signaled the end of hikes prompted the most aggressive easing of financial conditions ever. Financial conditions are now as easy as they were in May 2022 – when Fed Funds was 300bps below current levels…

    Source: Bloomberg

    No Recession – expectations heading into 2023 was for a recession – it never came to pass on the backs of exponentially rising govt debt throughout the year and Fed jawboning that lifted macro data in the last month

    Source: Bloomberg

    Cash Is King – Money-market funds saw their largest annual inflows ever…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold – A weaker dollar, signals of loosening from The Fed, and a world on fire means no one should be surprised by gold’s great year, up almost 14% (best year since 2020) to a new all-time record high…

    Source: Bloomberg

    *  *  *
    Under the hood of the markets this year.

    Equities

    2023 ended on a down-note with all the US majors tumbling into the red for the week, erasing Santa Claus rally gains, but the afternoon saw dip-buyers return and rescue the weekly win-streak…

    Both ‘Most Shorted’ stocks and the MAG7 were also hit…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Tech and Consumer Discretionary dominated the performance this year with Staples and Utes the biggest losers (Energy was the other losing sector on the year)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and Royal Caribbean were the best-performing S&P 500 stocks in 2023 while FMC Corp, Enphase Energy, and Dollar General were the biggest losers…

    Source: Bloomberg

    While VIX was smashed to an 11 handle at its lows of the year (multi-year lows), it notably decoupled from stocks in the last few weeks

    Source: Bloomberg

    Small Caps outperformed Nasdaq in the first few months of the year, then the AI boom struck and Nasdaq exploded higher relative to Small Caps (as the latter was hit harder by soaring rates). The last month has seen dramatic outperformance of Small Caps, dragging the NDX/RTY ratio lower…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But, overall, Nasdaq’s dramatic outperformance this year lifted it to a new record high relative to Small Caps… and then fell back (as Small Caps outperformed) to the dotcom highs…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bonds

    Only the 2Y yield and earlier remain above 4.00%, but the curve is massively inverted from Fed Funds…

    Source: Bloomberg

    After 2022’s massive flattening/inversion of the yield curve, 2023 saw 2s30s actually end steeper (the first steepening year since 2020). The yield curve de-inverted a few times during the year but was unable to sustain it…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Real yields ended the year basically unchanged – after soaring to their highest since 2008 in October. Since then 10Y real yields have plummeted almost 100bps…

    Source: Bloomberg

    If S&P 500 valuations are to be believed, the market is expecting negative real yields again soon enough…

    Source: Bloomberg

    FX

    The dollar ended lower against its fiat peers in 2023 (BBDXY -2.9%) – its biggest drop since 2020 back to pre-COVID-spike levels…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Swissy was the best performing currency (of the majors) against the dollar while Japan’s yen was the weakest.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The Swiss Franc soared to its best year since 2010 and its highest since 2011 (in the middle of the EU crisis)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The Japanese Yen spent the first 10 months of 2023 plunging to its weakest against the dollar since 1990. Then as The Fed’s dovish pivot and BoJ’s hawkish jawboning picked up, the yen surged higher (finding support at Oct 2022 lows)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Emerging Market currencies plummeted to their weakest ever (on an indexed level) against the USdollar at the start of October, but the last two months have seen EM FX recover notably as The Fed pivoted…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Cryptos

    The big story of the year was the anticipation of a spot bitcoin ETF, and nowhere is that more clearly illustrated than in the collapse of the massive discount to NAV in GBTC…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin’s rally in 2023 erased all of the ‘existential’ crisis crash losses from 2022 (FTX/TerraUSD/3AC etc.), up to its highest level since April 2022…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Ethereum did have a good year but only made it back to May 2022 highs…

    Source: Bloomberg

    ETH underperformed BTC all year until the last week or so that saw ETH/BTC bounce significantly off June 2022 support…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Commodities

    The broad commodity landscape saw prices plunge in 2023 with Bloomberg’s Commodity Index down over 12% – its worst year since 2015…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And that plunge in (growthy) commodities is in direct conflict with the large gains in (growthy) stocks.

    Gold outperformed among the major commodities (best year since 2020 – after two unchanged years) while crude fell YoY for the first time since 2020. NatGas was clubbed like a baby seal to start the year and never recovered for its worst year since 2001…

    Source: Bloomberg

    On an energy-equivalent basis, NatGas was systemically ‘cheap’ to WTI all year after the huge selloff in January…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The big gains in gold over the last two months reversed the outperformance of oil in the prior quarter, bring the Oil-in-Gold ratio (how many oz of gold to buy a barrel of oil) back down to a key support level in recent years…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And Finally…

    If history rhymes, we can expect this buying-panic-gasm to continue into Q1 as it did in 2000…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And if you want to know what the catalyst could be in March – it will be the next big banking crisis as The Fed is forced to shut down the BTFP (since it is spewing free-money via arbitrage).

    Politically, next year is a big one which makes it noteworthy that for the third year in a row, foreign-born workers dominated all job gains with the native-born American labor force basically unchanged since Biden’s election…

    Source: Bloomberg

    This trend is not America’s friend…

    Source: Bloomberg

    China and Russia are dumping Bonds and buying Bullion.

    And the market is starting to sniff it out. 2023 saw the biggest rise in the market’s perception of USA’s sovereign credit risk since the Lehman crisis in 2008…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Cloward, Piven, and Chomsky would be proud.

    And on that note – happy new year!!

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 16:00

  • Pro-Palestinian Protesters Chant 'Allahu Akbar' At World Trade Center
    Pro-Palestinian Protesters Chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ At World Trade Center

    At least a thousand anti-Israel demonstrators brought chaos to the World Trade Center on Thursday night, blocking exits and chanting “Allahu Akbar” and “intifada revolution,” according to videos posted on social media platform X. 

    The New York Post said protesters yelled, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a rallying cry for terrorist groups to wage war against Israel. 

    Never could we have imagined “screams of war” and “chants of genocide” would be heard at the footsteps of WTC after the September 11 attacks. 

    X user Bernadette responded to the footage: “I can not express how horrible this is. On 9/11, I was on the 50th floor of 1 NY Plaza standing at the floor to ceiling windows and watched the 2nd plane crash and explode into the WTC. That horrible act of terrorism is akin to the 10/7 attack upon Israel.”

    Many X users said the anti-Israel demonstrators are a “wake-up call to the dangers of radical extremism” and have no place on American streets. 

    This comes days after anti-Israel demonstrators canceled a planned protest at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Perhaps the Marxist groups funding these protests have realized they were taking this movement too far. 

    Let’s not forget this old Fox News clip that shows Palestinians celebrating the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11. 

    Another X user wrote: “The World Trade Center is holy ground for NYC. They’re playing with fire.”

    Meanwhile, people are criticizing Democratic Mayor Eric Adams and the Democratic Party for allowing these protesters to continue in promoting extremism: “How can you allow such an affront to happen, it is an insult to all the victims and their families.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/29/2023 – 15:50

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 29

Today’s News 29th December 2023

  • How We Averted The Polycrisis
    How We Averted The Polycrisis

    Good thing India didn’t join the sanctions, explains Andrew Korybko.

    Maybe there’s a lesson in there for more people and countries.

    Also, maybe it’s too late for some.

    Even if the deindustralization of Germany has barely started.

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

    A representative of India’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry told a department-related parliamentary standing committee that their country’s Russian oil imports helped stabilize the global energy market and prevent havoc from breaking out according to a recent report from The Indian Express. What follows are the excerpts that they cited from that event, which will then be analyzed so that the reader can fully appreciate India’s latest contribution to the world:

    “If they (Indian refiners) had not imported Russian oil into India, which may be a big number of 1.95 million barrels per day, that deficiency would have created a havoc in the crude oil market and the prices would have shot up by about $30-40.

    The crude oil market is such that in the market of 100 million barrels per day, if the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) says that they are going to reduce it by one or two million barrels per day, prices increase by 10 to 20 per cent and reach up to $125-130.

    If India does not absorb–I would call it absorption–1.95 million barrels per day, these prices would have reached $120-130. It would have created a havoc. Diplomatically, we are a sovereign country and could say that we have been doing what is good for the country as well as the world.”

    This insight aligns with what was earlier shared in these five analyses from June 2022-March 2023:

    * 14 June 2022: “Russian-Indian Energy Diplomacy Helps Delhi Balance Washington”

    * 30 November 2022: “Russia’s Energy Geopolitics With China & India”

    * 16 January 2023: “The US Discredited Its Own Sanctions By Buying Refined Russian Oil Products Via India”

    * 8 February 2023: “The West’s Anti-Russian Sanctions Made India Indispensable To The Global Energy Market”

    * 1 March 2023: “Russia Will Keep Up The Pace Of Oil Exports To India Despite Increased Chinese Demand”

    If India hadn’t resisted Western pressure, then the whole international community would have suffered.

    To explain, many Global South states were already struggling to deal with COVID-connected debt problems prior to the West’s anti-Russian sanctions worsening their food insecurity, so an energy price crisis on top of that could have pushed them over the edge into an uncontrollable polycrisis. Not only could this have led to spiraling unrest that could have spread throughout this swath of the world, but the security and humanitarian consequences would have also destabilized the West as well.  

    Those countries among that New Cold War bloc that are dependent on resources and markets there might have felt compelled to launch unilateral military interventions, while large-scale refugee flows could have crashed into their societies with all that entails for exacerbating preexisting tensions. This worst-case scenario was averted through India’s principled neutrality towards the Ukrainian Conflict, which saw this globally significant Great Power resist Western pressure to boycott Russian energy.

    If Delhi had capitulated to their demands, then the abrupt removal of so much energy from the market would have plunged it into chaos. The remaining producers couldn’t have replaced Russia’s lost share, thus leading to a competition among the wealthiest countries (namely China and the EU) to purchase their remaining resources. All the while, the debt-beleaguered and newly food-insecure Global South would have been unable to maintain its minimum energy needs, thus setting the polycrisis into motion.

    As the unnamed Indian official told parliament, “we have been doing what is good for the country as well as the world”, which highlighted the growing convergence between India’s national interests and those of the international community. This South Asian Great Power practices what can be described as a hyper-realist grand strategy wherein India not only prioritizes its national interests as policymakers conceive them to be, but candidly acknowledges this approach and also details those same interests.

    By doing so, India removes all ambiguity about its interests, which therefore makes it the most predictable partner that anyone can have. This policy is premised on the trust that India has cultivated with everyone since they don’t have any reason to question its representatives’ sincerity whenever they speak about their national interests. Some might have different views and even dislike India’s policies, but nobody can credibly claim that those representatives are lying about what that they want and why.

    Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov praised this approach and the multi–alignment that it naturally led to during a press conference with his Indian counterpart on Wednesday when saying that:

    “I believe this policy is not just important for Russia and all other countries around the world, but it is the only policy worth conducting that will ensure respect and reputation and be beneficial in India’s cooperation with other countries that show similar respect to all members of the international community.”

    The West will never appreciate what India did for the world, but the Global South is beginning to realize that the polycrisis that many of their officials feared would unfold shortly after the anti-Russian sanctions were promulgated was largely averted through India’s drastically scaled imports of that country’s oil. This stabilized the market, which made it easier for them to manage their debt and food security problems, thus preventing this part of the world from slipping into full-scale instability to everyone’s detriment.

    *  *  *

    Support the Automatic Earth with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 23:30

  • Assault On 10 Cities: Israel Mounts Largest Raid On West Bank Since War's Start
    Assault On 10 Cities: Israel Mounts Largest Raid On West Bank Since War’s Start

    Events of the last few days have made it clear that Israel is intent on widening its Gaza offensive, even after pressure from the White House and other allies to reign in operations which have killed many thousands of civilians, and PM Netanyahu himself has urged troops “do not stop” and they must fight “to the end” toward the goal of destroying Hamas.

    One Gaza resident identified as Rami Abu Mosab was cited in a Wednesday CBS report as follows: “It was a night of hell. We haven’t seen such bombing since the start of the war.” Central and southern Gaza are still being pummeled. 

    Via Reuters

    Palestinian civilian deaths have continued to mount, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issuing a rare statement of regret over the December 24 attack on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, which killed an estimated 70 people.

    An IDF statement to CNN said that during “operations in the Gaza Strip against Hamas terrorist targets, IAF fighter jets struck two targets adjacent to which Hamas operatives were located on December 24, 2023.”

    “Before the strikes were carried out, steps were taken by the IDF to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians in the area,” it added. “A preliminary investigation revealed that additional buildings located near the targets were also hit during the strikes, which likely caused unintended harm to additional uninvolved civilians.” Israel says it is continuing to investigate the matter.

    In another key sign that the war is indeed widening further, Israeli forces are conducing unprecedented raids in the West Bank. Al Jazeera has described the IDF’s “most intense raids yet on cities in the occupied West Bank as they pressed on with one of the largest incursions in the territory since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October.”

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    The operations included no less than ten cities: 

    At least one person was killed after Israeli troops launched a coordinated overnight assault on 10 cities including Hebron, Halhul, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, el-Bireh, Jericho and notably the centre of Ramallah, which is the administrative headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.

    The raids, which continued until early on Thursday morning, targeted Palestinian money exchange outlets.

    “This was a raid like we haven’t seen in the centre of Ramallah, like no other. Since October 7 we haven’t seen a raid of this size,” Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said, reporting from near the scene on Thursday.

    The headquarters of six money exchange companies were reportedly raided, apparently the result of Israeli authorities accusing these of aiding in ‘terror financing’ and activities. Several casualties among Palestinians have been reported.

    The Palestine Monetary Authority issued a statement denouncing the raids. “The Israelis arrested a number of the owners of these companies and seized sums of money from their safes, after blowing them up.” The authority further said it considers the attack “an act that violates all international norms, laws, charters and agreements, and aims to undermine confidence in the Palestinian banking and banking sector.”

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    Regional sources say that Israeli forces seized about $2.5 million. “The Israelis say [the money exchanges] have been used by the resistance movements to finance their activities,” a correspondent said.

    In total at least 312 Palestinians have been killed by the military or Israeli settlers in the West Bank since the Hamas terror attack of Oct.7 – while nearly 5,000 Palestinians have been arrested amid clashes with security forces.

    * * *

    Scenes like the below will likely persist on the streets of the West Bank for the coming months and foreseeable future…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 23:00

  • Critical Drug Shortages Plague US Amid Unabated Reliance On China
    Critical Drug Shortages Plague US Amid Unabated Reliance On China

    Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The ongoing scarcity of critical medications has trapped Americans between a rock and a hard place.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Active national drug shortages hit a 10-year high this year, leaving many health care providers, pharmacies, and hospitals without enough life-saving and supportive medications, according to data collected by the University of Utah Drug Information Service.

    A survey by the same university in July found that 99 percent of the 1,123 pharmacists who responded—many of whom work in hospitals—reported shortages. One-third of the pharmacists listed the shortages as “critically impactful,” which is defined as being forced to ration medication or delay or even cancel medical treatments.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists 124 medications in short supply as of Dec. 21; the list topped out at 309 earlier this year.

    The shortage applies to multiple categories, including antibiotics—both amoxicillin and azithromycin are on the list—and staple analgesics such as ketamine, as well as nitroglycerin injections, a vital tool in helping to control congestive heart failure in heart attack patients.

    Securing medication is also a challenge for those managing chronic illnesses.

    Jennifer, a Waterford, Michigan, resident who asked that her last name not be disclosed, told The Epoch Times that she was only recently able to start taking her Type 2 diabetes medication again after being stranded without it for the second time since July 2022.

    She started taking Ozempic again on Dec. 10, after being unable to fill her prescription for weeks.

    Ozempic is one of the many drugs affected by current shortages; that’s reportedly due, in part, to Ozempic’s off-label use as a weight-loss supplement. The manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, lists the official reason for the shortage as “increased demand.”

    “The pharmacist told me it’s on back order and, ‘You need to call around to see if other stores or pharmacies have it in stock.’ And I’m like, no, that’s your job,” Jennifer said.

    She was noticeably frustrated—there are physical consequences of having gaps in her medication. In addition to managing her A1C levels, the drug comes with unpleasant side effects for some patients, which take time to wear off.

    A woman walks past a CVS Pharmacy in Washington on Nov. 2, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    One of these is extreme lightheadedness, which Jennifer has encountered each time she’s restarted taking Ozempic after enduring a usage gap. She said she gets dizzy to the point of feeling like she’s about to “pass out” after resuming the medication.

    “I haven’t taken it for weeks, and now I’m having a reaction [side effects] since it’s all been flushed out of my system,” she said.

    Unpleasant side effects aside, Jennifer says she feels like she doesn’t have a choice other than to ride out the medication gaps when they happen, because the drug has helped manage her diabetes so well.

    But medication scarcity isn’t a new problem. U.S. drug shortages have plagued Americans for nearly 20 years.

    A 2011 study observed that increasingly frequent drug shortages had been a problem during the past decade. They were attributed to the same hurdles the industry faces today: Challenges in acquiring raw materials, manufacturing and regulatory problems, and supply chain disturbances.

    There’s also the heavy reliance on other countries to manufacture pharmaceuticals, which some U.S. lawmakers say leaves the country too dependent on foreign drug manufacturing.

    “Currently, about 90 percent of drugs dispensed at U.S. pharmacies are generic drugs that overwhelmingly come from communist China and India,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a September statement upon introducing his American Drugs Act, which would create “a strong incentive for companies to invest in domestic pharmaceutical production.”

    A worker inspects bottles of drugs on a product line at a pharmaceutical factory in Weinan, China, on April 6, 2006. (China Photos/Getty Images)

    “Americans can’t trust communist China and can’t allow any reliance on Xi’s evil regime for life-saving medicine,” Mr. Scott said.

    Currently, the United States leans heavily on other countries to manufacture key starting materials (KSM) and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), which are the critical building blocks of pharmaceuticals.

    As of 2021, China became the world’s leading supplier of both KSMs and APIs, according to a report issued by the European Parliament.

    In March, a U.S. congressional strategic preparedness committee noted that up to 95 percent of generic sterile injectable drugs used for critical acute care in the United States rely on KSMs from China and India.

    Reliance on foreign production of U.S. pharmaceuticals is an issue that former President Donald Trump identified and attempted to address during his term. Alongside the America First Healthcare Plan, President Trump’s $354 million deal in 2020 with U.S.-based Phlow Corp. was an effort to increase domestic manufacturing of generic drugs and APIs.

    More than three years later, in September, Phlow said it was manufacturing APIs for the “federal government, to be stored in the nation’s first reserve of APIs.”

    “This will ensure the resiliency and availability of critical medicines in times of geopolitical crises, trade disputes, natural disasters, or future public health emergencies,” Eric Edwards, CEO and co-founder of Phlow, said in a statement.

    He said the company is also making KSMs and “rebuilding a resilient domestic supply chain.”

    A pharmacist prepares to fill a prescription at a community health center in Aurora, Colo., on March 27, 2012. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    The Biden administration has also responded to the widespread outcry over drug shortages, prompting a November White House announcement that the Defense Production Act (DPA) will be used to encourage investment in the domestic manufacturing of  “essential medicines, medical countermeasures, and critical inputs that have been deemed by the president as essential to the national defense.”

    The DPA grants a sitting president extensive authority to manage vital economic resources, including the power to expand domestic production.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 22:35

  • Report Details CIA's Struggles To Rebuild Spy Network In China: "No Real Insight Into Leadership Plans"
    Report Details CIA’s Struggles To Rebuild Spy Network In China: “No Real Insight Into Leadership Plans”

    This week The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy investigative article titled “American spies confront a new, formidable China,” which highlights setbacks and difficulties of the CIA’s ability to spy on China even as the Biden administration has called the country a top ‘pacing threat’. 

    A main theme of the report is seen where the WSJ quotes a former US intelligence official who acknowledged, “We have no real insight into leadership plans and intentions in China at all.” The report reviews what led up to this state of things, namely the CIA’s catastrophic failure in China about a decade ago, and the agency’s struggle to rebuild its network in the tightly controlled Communist surveillance state.

    The 2012 incident refers to when dozens of US spies were reportedly caught red-handed in China. Very likely this major bust-up of an alleged CIA network was a key trigger for President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption drive, given that government corruption left Beijing exposed to vulnerabilities by Western spy agencies. Dozens of CIA assets were reportedly imprisoned between 2010 and 2012, and others reportedly executed. In 2018, a Foreign Policy report estimated that the number caught consisted of 30 CIA assess, and described further the spy ring was discovered largely due to a botched communication system.

    AFP/Getty Images

    Last summer CIA officials gave rare public statements confirming the agency has been busy trying to rebuild its spy networks inside China. The arena of human intelligence was believed left particularly weakened after 2012. CIA Director William Burns said last July before the Aspen Security Forum, “We’ve made progress, and we’re working very hard over recent years to ensure that we have strong human intelligence capability to complement what we can acquire through other methods.”

    And now Burns has issued a fresh quote and updated statement to the Journal, saying “We are approaching the PRC as a global priority, more than doubling the budget resources devoted to the China mission over the past three years, and establishing the China Mission Center as CIA’s only single country mission center to coordinate the full agency’s efforts on this issue.”

    Burns added: “Even as we are balancing multiple priorities including ongoing conflicts, we remain intensely engaged on the strategic long-term challenge posed by the PRC.”

    Chinese state media has meanwhile responded on Thursday, blasting Washington as the true “source of chaos” in the international order…

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    Below are some further key quotes and highlights from the fresh WSJ report (subheadings by ZH)…

    * * *

    Beijing’s spycatchers and CIA’s monumental blunder

    “Beijing’s spycatchers all but blinded the U.S. in China a decade ago when they systematically rounded up a network of Chinese agents working for the CIA. As many as two dozen assets providing information to the U.S. were executed or imprisoned, among them high-ranking Chinese officials.”

    Other geopolitical flashpoints have complicated the CIA’s China focus

    “The pivot hasn’t been simple. Hamas’s surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have demanded White House attention and intelligence resources, complicating CIA Director William Burns’s drive to ensure China is the top long-term priority. One agency veteran said that handling the two crises, while keeping a sustained focus on Beijing, will test the agency’s agility.”

    Vast majority of China US intel today comes from signals/electronic snooping

    “Today, U.S. spy satellites closely monitor China’s military deployments and modernization plans, while cyber and eavesdropping tools scoop up vast swaths of Chinese communications. Beyond that, U.S. knowledge of Xi’s plans comes mostly from inference and from parsing his frequent public statements, officials said.

    China is a much tougher intelligence target than it was a decade ago, when the agents were lost. Xi’s security-first state employs Orwellian surveillance systems that vastly complicate spy operations inside the country. And U.S. intelligence must track China’s progress in fields as disparate as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. 

    …The vast majority of U.S. intelligence on China now comes from electronic snooping—intercepting phone calls, emails and every other form of digital communication, the current and former officials indicated. Such signals intelligence can rarely replace human spies in divining an adversary’s true intentions or weaknesses, officials say.”

    Leveraging corruption for human intel

    “The CIA leveraged endemic corruption in the upper reaches of the Communist Party and government ministries to recruit dozens of officials as paid agents, former officials familiar with the events said. But in a catastrophic setback, this network was obliterated as China caught the traitors in its midst one by one.

    A flaw in the CIA’s covert communications with its agents, exploited by Beijing, is the suspected cause of the compromise, former officials said. The details of what went wrong aren’t publicly known, and it is unclear if anyone at the agency was held accountable.”

    Horrendous!

    “Horrendous. Horrendous. Horrendous,” a former senior U.S. official said of the losses in China. “And I have doubts about whether there’s been much of a recovery since then.”

    China has ramped up its own spying in America

    “China also ramped up its own human espionage, often using social media sites such as LinkedIn to contact and recruit former U.S. intelligence officials. Its successes included Kevin Patrick Mallory, a former CIA officer who had become deeply in debt and sold secrets for cash, including the identities of U.S. intelligence officers due to travel to China. Mallory was convicted in 2018. 

    In August, the Justice Department revealed the arrest of two U.S. Navy sailors charged with providing military information to China. Both were U.S. naturalized citizens born in China.”

    * * *

    Regional analyst and China watcher Arnaud Bertrand has a contrarian take on the new WSJ report…

    This CIA network they discovered and dismantled in 2012 was undoubtedly one of the key triggers for Xi’s anticorruption drive, when they noticed the extent to which they could be infiltrated… To be added to the now VERY long list of US actions on China that backfired big time.

    Funny the WSJ now laments the US has “no real insight into leadership plans” as if this was somehow abnormal: it should be the norm, countries should be sovereign, free to make their own decisions in private and without foreign interference.

    In fact this is what International law dictates! Sadly only China seems to actually put that in practice nowadays… I am still waiting on Europe holding the US accountable for Snowden’s revelations that they basically systematically listen in on European leaders…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 22:10

  • Israel: Time For Diplomacy With Hezbollah Running Out As Expanded War Looms
    Israel: Time For Diplomacy With Hezbollah Running Out As Expanded War Looms

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

    A member of the Israeli war government says the chance for a diplomatic settlement with Hezbollah is getting low. The fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border is intensifying between the IDF and Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group conducted its heaviest barrage of northern Israel on Wednesday. 

    Senior Israeli minister Benny Gantz indicated that Tel Aviv is preparing for a war with Hezbollah. “The situation on Israel’s northern border demands change,” Gantz said. “The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out, if the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the [Israeli military] will do it.”

    Image via IDF

    Fighting along the border broke out after Israel began its historically brutal military operations in Gaza. Hezbollah says its attacks on Israel are to force the IDF to split its army between Gaza in the south and its northern border with Lebanon. 

    On both sides of the war, civilians have been killed. The IDF is alleged to have committed a war crime by using US-supplied white phosphorus in southern Lebanon and intentionally killing a Reuters reporter. 

    Gantz’s remarks follow other Israeli officials’ comments explaining that Hezbollah must withdraw several miles from the border, or Tel Aviv will escalate its bombing of southern Lebanon. The US is pressuring Hezbollah to accept the Israeli demands. And earlier this month:

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on a visit to troops near the border that Israel would “single-handedly turn Beirut and South Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Yunis” if Hezbollah started an all-out war.

    Washington has also threatened to directly intervene if Israel is attacked over its genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip. However, the White House has applied pressure on Tel Aviv not to escalate the conflict with Hezbollah. The Joe Biden administration has steadfastly opposed using the $3.8 billion in military aid the US provides to Israel every year to get Tel Aviv to curtail its attacks on Gaza, Syria, or Lebanon. 

    The IDF conducted an airstrike on the home of a Hezbollah member on Tuesday night, killing two of his relatives. On Wednesday, Hezbollah responded by two large attacks on cities in northern Israel.

    The Times of Israel reported, “Rockets fired from Lebanon pummeled the towns of Rosh Hanikra and the city of Kiryat Shmona.” The outlet said there were no other injuries. 

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    The Israeli war on Gaza has provoked groups across the Middle East to attempt to apply pressure on Tel Aviv and Washington to end the campaign to ethnically cleanse the Strip. The Houthis have stifled Red Sea shipping, Shia groups in Iraq and Syria have targeted American forces over 100 times, and Hezbollah has traded fire with Israel on a near-daily basis since October 7.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 21:45

  • These Are The Health Problems Americans Are Most Worried About
    These Are The Health Problems Americans Are Most Worried About

    Finances are top of mind for many Americans when it comes to health concerns, according to a survey by Statista’s Consumer Insights conducted November 10-23.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, six in ten respondents said that they were either very or rather concerned about their financial situation if they were to become seriously ill.

    Infographic: The Health Problems Americans Are Most Worried About | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The survey asked respondents in seven other countries the same question, and found that the U.S. is fairly alone in their financial worry.

    Where air pollution followed in rank 5 for the U.S., it was the most cited concern in Brazil, India, Mexico and France.

    The second most commonly selected concern in the U.S. – harmful substances in food – was also the second pick for respondents in India, France, China and Germany.

    As the chart above shows, around four in ten U.S. respondents said they felt either very or rather worried about antibiotic resistance – a threat expected to increase drastically in the coming years.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 21:20

  • TikTok Demanding Users Enter iPhone Passwords To View Content: Reports
    TikTok Demanding Users Enter iPhone Passwords To View Content: Reports

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

    Chinese-owned video streaming platform TikTok has reportedly been asking users for their iPhone passwords in order to view content, sparking concern among individuals using the app.

    TikTok logo on an iPhone in London on Feb. 28, 2023. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

    Reports that the platform began asking users to enter their iPhone passwords in order to watch videos on the app first began emerging in November, according to Dexerto, with the publication noting users took to social media to raise the alarm.

    Yet TikTok—which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020—has not explained the reasoning behind the need for users to enter their highly personal and sensitive information.

    Dexerto noted the move coincided with security updates from Apple aimed at protecting users from password theft if devices are stolen.

    The most recent iOS update on Dec. 12 effectively provides a second layer of security for iPhone users by making it harder for thieves to access important information including passwords from Apple mobile devices that have been stolen.

    At the time of that update, a spokesperson for Apple told The Epoch Times, “As threats to user devices continue to evolve, we work tirelessly to develop powerful new protections for our users and their data. iPhone data encryption has long led the industry, and a thief can’t access data on a stolen iPhone without knowing the user’s passcode.”

    There is no clear link between the iOS update and TikTok users being asked to enter their iPhone passwords. According to technology publication Dataconomy, the issue could be due to software glitches, an update to the app, security measures or updates, or a content filter known as “restricted mode.”

    TikTok’s Legal Challenges Mount

    Some users have managed to overcome the issue by ensuring they have the latest version of TikTok on their devices, while others have been able to bypass entering their sensitive passwords by simply pressing “cancel” when asked to enter their information, Dataconomy reports.

    The Epoch Times has contacted TikTok for further comment.

    The concerns regarding sensitive data requests being made on TikTok come as the platform faces a growing number of lawsuits.

    A legal challenge filed by the state of Indiana alleged the app deceived users by falsely claiming the social media platform was safe for children and that users’ personal information was protected. However, that lawsuit was dismissed by a county judge in November.

    The state of Montana has also sought to implement a complete ban on TikTok amid safety concerns, although again that lawsuit has faced setbacks, having been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge last month.

    In September, European regulators fined the platform $368 million for its alleged failures to protect children’s privacy.

    TikTok Use Surges

    Officials in Washington have also repeatedly raised concerns over the safety of the video-streaming site, noting that data on users in the United States could potentially fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), given that the platform is subject to laws in China requiring the company to hand any and all data in its possession over to the CCP if requested.

    ByteDance has denied this is the case and says it stores U.S. user data on servers.

    Still, the United States has already banned TikTok from government devices, as has Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.

    Concerns have also been raised over the possibility of the app being used to spread propaganda, particularly in light of research indicating that a growing number of TikTok users now get their news from the video-sharing app, with almost a third of adults between 18 and 29 regularly using the platform for news.

    Despite the ongoing safety and privacy concerns, TikTok has over 150 million American users amid a surge in popularity, according to the platform’s CEO Shou Zi Chew.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 20:55

  • Democratic Mayors Of New York, Chicago, Denver Plead For Help As Migrant Storm Worsens
    Democratic Mayors Of New York, Chicago, Denver Plead For Help As Migrant Storm Worsens

    The Democratic mayors of three sanctuary cities, Chicago, New York City, and Denver, warned their metro areas are quickly approaching a breaking point due to the ongoing surge of illegals bussed up from the southern border this year. 

    “We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night,” NYC Mayor Adams said during a virtual news conference with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. 

    Adams warned: “For many months, we were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached a breaking point.” 

    “We are no longer able to do that because of the volume and numbers,” he added. 

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    In an executive order, Adams has now requested all charter bus companies to provide a 32-hour advance notice on the arrival of migrants.

    According to Adams’ office, more than 7,000 illegals have entered the intake system in the last two weeks. The city estimates 157,600 illegals have arrived since late spring. 

    In Chicago, another progressive metro area that once welcomed illegals with open arms, Mayor Johnson warned, “We have reached a critical point in this mission that absent real, significant intervention immediately, our local economies are not designed and built to respond to this type of crisis,” adding “We are literally building a system as we go along.”

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    Adams’ and Johnson’s complaints about the migrant crisis were similar to those of Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver. He said, “We, at this point now, have had more migrant arrivals in our city than any city in America per capita.” 

    In a press release, the mayors called the influx of migrants in their cities a “humanitarian crisis” and urged “all levels of government and our federal partners” to provide assistance to ensure migrants “are treated with dignity and humanity.” 

    The trio of mayors blamed the migrant crisis on Texas Governor Greg Abbott, indicating Abbott “triples down on efforts to use asylum seekers as political pawns.” 

    However, the mayors, for good reason and likely fear of retribution, entirely omit that the Biden administration’s disastrous open southern border policies are at the center of what sparked the invasion of millions of migrants (and individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list) from all over the world into the US ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

    The mayors even left out how the Biden administration unleashed a misinformation campaign against taxpayers, claiming the border was “secure.” 

    Remember in May, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka declared: “I want to be very clear, our borders are not open.” 

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    It seems that the Democratic mayors of some sanctuary cities were virtue-signaling all along. They now face the reality of a migrant crisis, a consequence of their own party’s failed progressive border policies. What a mess. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 20:11

  • About A Third Of Republicans Believe Votes Won't Be Counted Correctly In 2024
    About A Third Of Republicans Believe Votes Won’t Be Counted Correctly In 2024

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

    An Associated Press-NORC survey released this week found that some 32 percent of Republican voters believe votes likely won’t be counted correctly ahead of the 2024 primaries and election.

    People count California recall ballot votes at a Los Angeles Registrar site at the Los Angeles Fair Grounds in Pomona, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    About a third of GOP voters told pollsters that they have a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that votes in the Republican primary elections and caucuses will be counted correctly. Around three in 10 Republicans have a “moderate” level of confidence, while 32 percent said they have either “only a little” confidence in elections or “none at all.”

    The AP poll found that 72 percent of Democrat voters have high confidence their party will count votes accurately in its primary contests, while they are more likely than Republicans to have a high level of confidence in the Republican Party’s vote count being accurate.

    Meanwhile, about one-quarter of Republicans say they have at least “quite a bit” of confidence that the votes in the 2024 presidential election will be counted accurately, significantly lower than Democrats. Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults overall—or 46 percent—believe the same, which is in line with an AP-NORC poll conducted in June.

    The AP-NORC poll also found a widespread lack of trust in both major political parties among U.S. adults overall. Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults, or 46 percent, told pollsters that they are pessimistic about the means by which the country’s leaders are selected.

    Only 3 in 10 Democrats say they are confident the Democratic party’s process will result in a candidate whose views represent most Americans. About one-quarter of Democrats believe the process will produce a candidate whose views represent their own.

    Similarly, about 3 in 10 Republicans say the GOP process will produce a candidate who represents a majority of Americans. About one-third of Republicans expect they’ll get a nominee whose views represent their own.

    “Nothing will be fair because the last election was rigged,” Julie Duggan, a Chicago resident who backs former President Donald Trump, told AP. “I don’t trust any of them at this point.”

    Mark Richards, a Democrat and 33-year-old middle school teacher in Ohio, told AP that he believes President Joe Biden will be nominated again despite what the polls show. “I feel like there’s got to be someone better out there, but I don’t think another Democrat is going to unseat Joe Biden,” he said.

    Other Poll Results

    Over the summer, a poll from Monmouth found that about 3 out of 10 Americans believe that President Biden only won the 2020 election due to voter fraud. The survey results were nearly the same as a similar Monmouth poll that was carried out in November 2022.

    Nearly all Democrat voters, or 93 percent, said President Biden won the election fairly, while about 21 percent of Republican voters believe he won it fair and square. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans, according to that poll, said he won the race “due to voter fraud.” Meanwhile, 58 percent of independent voters said the president won without any fraud.

    In August 2023, a CNN poll found that among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, about 69 percent believe that the 2020 election wasn’t legitimate, or an uptick from 63 percent from a CNN survey that was conducted earlier in the year.

    The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,074 adults and was conducted between Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based system. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

    Earlier this month, according to a report, about 20 percent of 2020 voters claimed that they took advantage of election laws that were rescinded or loosened due to the COVID-19 pandemic to commit voter fraud. That included filling out ballots for other people, it found.

    “For the past three years, Americans have repeatedly been told that the 2020 election was the most secure in history. But if this poll’s findings are reflective of reality, the exact opposite is true. This conclusion isn’t based on conspiracy theories or suspect evidence, but rather from the responses made directly by the voters themselves,” Justin Haskins, director of the Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center, said in a statement.

    The publication of that report drew a response from President Trump, who called on Republican officials to take action.

    “This is the biggest story of the year, and Republicans must do something about it,” the former president wrote in mid-December on his social media platform, Truth Social. He said that if nothing is done, the issue will cast a shadow over the November 2024 election.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 20:05

  • Democrat Secretary Of State Kicks Trump Off Maine Ballot
    Democrat Secretary Of State Kicks Trump Off Maine Ballot

    A day after former president Trump’s lawyers demanded the Maine secretary of state recuse herself from her upcoming decision on the former president’s ballot eligibility under the 14th Amendment – citing her past statements about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot; Shenna Bellows – a Democrat – has kicked Trump off the state’s primary ballot.

    The letter from Trump’s lawyers seeking Bellows’ recusal cites two social media posts Bellows issued the day Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, which concerned the Capitol riot.

    “The Jan 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election. Today 57 Senators including King & Collins found Trump guilty. That’s short of impeachment but nevertheless an indictment. The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed,” Bellows wrote on Twitter, the platform now known as X.

    The letter also takes aim at a post Bellows issued on the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, in which she reposted a news report highlighting Bellows’s efforts to protect election workers.

    “One year after the violent insurrection, it’s important to do all we can to safeguard our elections,” Bellows wrote.

    Thus, the lawyers argued, Bellows “has already passed judgment” on Trump’s “core assumptions.”

    But, as The Hill reports, unlike other states, where plaintiffs have sued over Trump’s eligibility in court, Maine’s system first allows the secretary of state to weigh in – unilaterally, Judge Dredd-style.

    As she explains, ‘she is the law!’

    Challengers can then appeal in state court.

    Bellows determined that the former president could not run for office due to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    She argued his actions violated the 14th Amendment.

     

    Maine is now the second state to bar the president citing 14th Amendment claims, following Colorado’s Supreme Court decision.

    As we noted previously, the question will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court, which constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley says “will be overturned because it is wrong on the history and the language of the 14th Amendment.”

    As I have previously written, the disqualification of Trump is based on the use of a long-dormant provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

    After the Civil War, House members were outraged to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, seeking to take the oath with an array of other former Confederate senators and military officers.

    They had all previously taken the same oath and then violated it to join a secession movement that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

    That was a true rebellion.

    January 6, 2021, was a riot.

    As a reminder, Maine has only four electoral votes but it’s one of two states to split them, and Trump won one of Maine’s electors in 2020.

    Caden Pearson reports at The Epoch Times that the Trump campaign issued a statement denouncing the decision, vowing to move quickly to fight the Maine secretary of state’s “atrocious decision” in state court to prevent it from taking effect.

    “The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist, and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.

    “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter. Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot.

    “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power,” he added.

    Mr. Cheung noted that state and federal courts in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Arizona, Florida, Rhode Island, and West Virginia, along with 10 more federal jurisdictions, have rejected “these bad-faith, bogus 14th Amendment ballot challenges.”

    “We know both the Constitution and the American people are on our side in this fight. President Trump’s dominating campaign has a commanding lead in the polls that has dramatically expanded as Crooked Joe Biden’s presidency continues to fail,” the Trump campaign spokesperson added.

    “We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect, and President Trump will never stop fighting to Make America Great Again.”

    Jason Meister, a member of President Trump’s campaign advisory panel in New York, told The Epoch Times that the Maine action would fail.

    “These 14th amendment challenges are last gasping breaths of a dying party,” he said.

    Isn’t it the very definition of ‘tyranny‘ that one person unilaterally decides that the residents of Maine do not deserve democracy?

    And just like that, as Jonathan Turley noted in a post on X:

    “Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has decided to add her name to the ignoble list of Democratic officials claiming to defend democracy by preventing its exercise for millions of Trump supporters.“

    All of which means, as Ben Shapiro wrote earlier, that “2024 is going to be the most insane and ugly presidential election in American history. And that’s saying a lot, since 1968 and 2020 are both years that existed. Under what circumstances, precisely, would Democrats accept the result of a Trump election? Under what circumstances, precisely, would Republicans accept the result of a Biden election?”

    “The weaponization of the legal system creates an all-consuming fire, burning everything in its path. There is simply no 2024 result likely to result in anything but complete—and perhaps violent—chaos at this point.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 19:40

  • Fetterman To Carville: 'Shut The F*** Up' Over Biden's Sagging 2024 Prospects
    Fetterman To Carville: ‘Shut The F*** Up’ Over Biden’s Sagging 2024 Prospects

    Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman spontaneously ripped into fellow Democrat James Carville, telling the seasoned pundit and former Bill Clinton ’92 lead strategist to “shut the fuck up” about President Biden’s increasingly dim prospects for re-election.     

    The most slovenly goon to ever grace the Senate leveled his profane attack in a Politico interview published on Wednesday. Politico reminded him that, a few months back, he’d predicted Biden would win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes — but that Biden’s standing in the Keystone State had slipped, with Trump leading in multiple polls. 

    Fetterman’s Senate duty uniform: sneakers, droopy gym shorts and a hoodie (Reuters via New York Post)

    After first saying there’s plenty of time between now and the election and that’s he’s not worried, Fetterman opened fire on the 79-year-old quasi-reptilian election sage from Louisiana:   

    “While there are Democrats that are being very critical about the president. … I’ll use this [as] another opportunity to tell James Carville to shut the fuck up.

    Like I said, my man hasn’t been relevant since grunge was a thing. And I don’t know why he believes it’s helpful to say these kinds of things about an incredibly difficult circumstance with an incredibly strong and decent and excellent president. I’ll never understand that.”

    When Politico gave Carville a chance to respond to Fetterman’s fusillade, he fired back with dry wit:

    Asked if he’d like to respond, Carville said other Democratic senators “apparently haven’t gotten the memo yet” that he’s not relevant. “His colleague Sen. Casey asked me to host a fundraiser with him last week,” he said. “Sen. Brown asked me to go to Cleveland to campaign with him.” Of Fetterman, he added: “I’m glad he’s feeling better.”

    Last winter, Fetterman was hospitalized for six weeks over his severe depression. He’d previously suffered a stroke during his 2022 Senate campaign, in which he officially defeated Donald Trump-endorsed TV doctor Mehmet Oz. 

    In September, Carville dropped his own F-bomb to warn fellow Democrats against keeping Biden on the top of the 2024 ticket.

    “Let’s assume the election was November the third of this year and the candidates are Joe Biden, the Democrat, Donald Trump, Republican Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan, No Labels, and Cornel West. Trump would be a betting favorite. If I told you I would give you even money, you would not take that bet. All right. And so somebody better wake the fuck up!”

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    Carville’s outline of the 2024 field had a glaring omission: independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who’s grabbing a hefty 22% share in three-way polling against Biden and Trump, and beating both of them outright among independents, according to Quinnipiac.  

    A December Bloomberg/Morning Consult Pro survey found Trump is beating Biden in seven surveyed battleground states: North Carolina (+11), Georgia (+7), Wisconsin (+6), Nevada (+5), Michigan (+4), Arizona (+3) and Fetterman’s Pennsylvania (+1). The survey used a ballot that included Kennedy, Cornel West and Jill Stein.  

    In his Politico interview, Fetterman also took a swipe at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he’d previously described as “running for president right now” but without the “guts to announce it.” Fetterman said it’s odd for Newsom to debate DeSantis, and to “make a very splash visit to China when the leaders are actually coming to your very own state” or to “[make] donations to obscure South Carolinian politicians.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 19:35

  • "They're Openly Telling Us They're Going To Brainwash The Next Generation Of Americans…"
    “They’re Openly Telling Us They’re Going To Brainwash The Next Generation Of Americans…”

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State,” is back from the recent so-called COP28 conference in Dubai, UAE. 

    Newman continues to report on the not-so-secret plan to destroy everything in America by pushing scams on the West in energy and education. 

    Let’s start with what Newman calls the “scam” of CO2 reduction.  Newman explains,

    “The thing that really jumped out at me with this whole UN COP28 summit, my big take away… is they were talking about phasing out carbon emissions and phasing out fossil fuels, but that’s just for the suckers in the Western world. 

    That’s just the United States under Joe Biden.  That’s just for European Union under their treacherous leaders.  

    The communist Chinese, the Arab dictatorships, the Russians and all the different socialist kleptocracies, they were literally making oil deals at this summit. 

     That’s not my opinion, speculation or even exaggeration.  We have the leaked documents showing the COP28 President, which was held by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)… that show they were plotting to make oil deals with Beijing.  They were plotting to make oil deals with the Columbians.  They were plotting to do oil and gas deals off the coast of Africa.  So, on the one hand, the Western media and the United Nations are telling Westerners that you need to dismantle your energy systems.  You need to stop all your coal fired power plants.  Biden said he wanted to get rid of methane emissions…

    That would take out all the natural gas plants and take out 60% of our power generation in the United States.  The Arabs, communist Chinese and the globalists are laughing all the way to the bank.  They are not really working on phasing out oil or phasing out fossil fuels.  They are working on phasing out the Western world, which is also known as Christendom or the ‘Free World.’”

    While Newman was there, he saw several U.S. Senators at the conference.  Newman said,

    “I confronted multiple U.S. Senators about this.  I said, hey, the communist Chinese are bringing two new coal fired power plants on line every single week. 

    The Chinese CO2 emissions are massively larger than the entire Western world combined.  Are you saying we need to jump off a cliff and beg the Chinese to jump after us? 

    And the response was basically, yeah, we are going to ask them real nice.  Give me a break. 

    They all understand this is a scam.  They want to deindustrialize the Western world.  They want to shift economic and, ultimately, military power away from the United States and what used to be known as the ‘Free World’ towards the other pole in this multipolar world order that they are building, especially Beijing. 

    The third world kleptocracies are going to play ball with the New World Order…

    John Kerry (who was at the COP28 conference) says, ‘Nothing can stop this transformation.  This is the biggest transformation in human history.  Nothing and nobody can stop it.’  The United Nations had all these billboards and placards in Dubai that said the transformation was unstoppable…

    All I can think of when they are saying this stuff, and I am seeing all the billboards, is that is very similar to what they said when they launched the Titanic. . . . The Bible says, ‘Pride goes before the fall.’  We will see about that, but they certainly want the people in the world to believe this is unstoppable.”

    Newman is especially worried about what the UN has planned for education and brainwashing the children of the world.  Newman says,

    “We actually got there on the COP28 ‘Education Day.’  The first ad I saw said ‘Education Transformation COP28.’  This was a huge part of the festivities.  They are openly telling us that they are going to brainwash the next generation of Americans, Germans, Japanese, South Koreans and the West to believe this hoax with all their heart. . . .

    The brainwashing of our children and the dumbing down of our children is the most significant weapon in their arsenal. 

    They will never be able to get this to pass unless they can brainwash enough of our children…

    We’ve got to protect our kids.  If we don’t stop the brain washing of our kids, it’s all over.”

    There is much more in the 38-minute interview.

    Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with hard-hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the new book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death.”  Newman is back to report on what he saw at the demonic anti-America UN COP28 conference in Dubai, UAE, for 12.23.23.

    *  *  *

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

    To pre-order Newman’s new book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” click here. Newman’s website is called LibertySentinel.org.  There is lots of free information and articles. For a copy of Alex Newman’s popular book “Deep State,” click here, and for the DVD, click here.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 19:15

  • "Expect To Be Shot", Ohio Prosecutor Tells Would-Be Store Looters
    “Expect To Be Shot”, Ohio Prosecutor Tells Would-Be Store Looters

    Hamilton County Ohio Prosecutor Melissa Powers was forced to weigh in on the issue of self-defense during robbery attempts after indicting a smoke shop manager who allegedly shot a 16 year old boy to death after he attempted to rob the store.

    The manager of the store, 29 year old Tony Thacker, shot the would-be robber on his way running out of the store, prompting the prosecutor to bring charges. But her comments also came with a stern warning to looters. 

    “There is simply no justification for shooting at someone as they are running away,” she said in a statement reported by the NY Post and the Cincinnati Enquirer. “However, I want to make perfectly clear — these retail thefts will not be tolerated. If you try to rob a store, you should expect to be shot.”

    Thacker was inside the store when numerous people threw rocks through the front window to gain entry, the report says. Thacker lived in the back of the business and, when he went to investigate, found a 16 year old and a 19 year old.

    Thacker wasn’t allowed to own a firearm due to a previous felony he received as a child. Nonetheless, he shot the 16 year old and continued to shoot at the other suspects before they attempted to leave the scene in stolen vehicles. 

    Prosecutor Melissa Powers

    The manager than reportedly tried to disable the store’s alarm and hide the shell casings, the report says. He was indicted on charges of felonious assault, tampering with evidence and illegal possession of a firearm and his brother, who helped with the attempted cover up, was charged with tampering with evidence. 

    The 19 year old faces potential life in prison and is facing charges of murder, burglary and possession of criminal tools. Three other suspects were also arrested, the report says. They also face murder and burglary charges. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 18:50

  • Leprosy, Polio, Malaria, TB, Measles… And Massive Unscreened Illegal Immigration
    Leprosy, Polio, Malaria, TB, Measles… And Massive Unscreened Illegal Immigration

    Authored by James Varney via RealClear Wire,

    Successful public health campaigns and medical advances have enabled the United States to conquer a range of disfiguring and damaging diseases. Polio, which paralyzed thousands of Americans annually, was wiped out by widespread vaccinations. In 1999 the nation’s last hospital for lepers closed its doors in Louisiana. A global campaign eradicated smallpox, while lethal tuberculosis, the “consumption” that stalked characters in decades of literature, seemed beaten by antibiotics. Measles outbreaks still occur from time to time, but they are small, local, and easily contained.

    Recently, however, some of these forgotten but still formidable infectious diseases have begun to reappear in the U.S. For two years running, polio has been detected in some New York water samples, and this fall, leprosy re-emerged in Florida, where cases of malaria have also been recorded.

    Health officials say they are not sure why these and other infectious diseases are resurfacing. One distinct possibility, which officials are loath to discuss, is that the millions of migrants who have crossed into the country in recent years could be bringing the scourges with them, since many are from countries where such rare diseases persist and vaccination programs are not robust.

    “The recent polio and leprosy cases are almost certainly imports to the U.S.,” said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and scientist at Stanford University, one of the most outspoken critics of official COVID-19 narratives in the last pandemic that later proved flawed.

    And the Biden administration, an aggressive promoter of often mandatory vaccination last time, now is offering little public comment on the connection between disease and the porous borders with which its immigration policy has become widely identified.

    Neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the Department of Homeland Security would discuss the issue with RealClearInvestigations. Legal immigrants are required to receive vaccinations for a host of diseases, but the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged it does not have vaccination records for the millions who have entered the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed border controls upon taking office in January 2021.

    “It’s not like there is some Typhoid Mary out there, but this is something people are seeing and thinking about, even if they don’t want to discuss it publicly,” said Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the Biden administration’s border policies.

    The reticence of federal agencies has not stopped some local officials, however, from raising public health alarms over massive immigration. New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan warned in April that at least half of the migrants who have poured into the city had not been vaccinated against polio. The potentially paralyzing and life-threatening virus remains endemic in two countries in the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the World Health Organization. Since President Biden ordered what proved to be a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, an estimated 90,000 Afghans have come to the U.S. under the terms of Operation Allies Welcome.

    It is not clear if those migrants met the polio vaccination requirement. DHS did not respond to a question about whether medical histories were reviewed in the fast-tracked entry of Afghans who got out of their country before the Taliban reimposed its control.

    Vasan’s warning pointed directly to the southern border, which has seen record-shattering arrivals on the Biden administration’s watch.

    “More than 50,000 people have come to New York City in the past year shortly after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border,” he wrote in an 11-page letter. “I am writing now to underscore how critical it is that health care providers take a wide range of considerations into account when working with people who are seeking asylum.”

    Citing outbreaks of chickenpox in shelters for illegal immigrants, Vasan also noted the arrival of newcomers who either began their journey in a country where tuberculosis is present or passed through such countries en route to the U.S.

    The New York City Health Department did not respond to questions from RealClearInvestigations or to a request to speak with Dr. Vasan, but the numbers have only grown since he sent his letter. Since spring 2022, more than 100,000 migrants had arrived in the city, and more than 67,200 were living in taxpayer-funded housing at the end of November, according to the New York Times.

    Last year, the first recorded polio case in the U.S. since 2013 was diagnosed in New York State, with the victim described only as an “unvaccinated man.” Also in 2022, poliovirus was found in the water supply of four New York counties, including Long Island, and New York City. Another positive test result was recorded in Rockland County this year, according to the state.

    In the U.S., polio vaccinations remain part of “the routine childhood immunization process” under which the CDC recommends four doses. Adults who grew up in the U.S. are vaccinated, the agency said.

    The last occurrence prior to the New York diagnosis had been in 1979. Since November 2022, the CDC has begun wastewater testing for the poliovirus, so long extinct in the U.S., in selected areas, but the agency did not respond to questions about those investigations. It does provide information on COVID and monkeypox, the latter a disease that primarily afflicts the gay population.

    A thorough investigation, exploring all avenues of transmission and trying to source a virus to its root, is common among virus hunters, and the idea that millions of people coming to the U.S. could inadvertently carry with them some infectious disease is but one possibility. For example, thus far researchers have been unable to pinpoint where the infamous Ebola virus originates in equatorial Africa.

    ‘Historically Atypical Countries’

    The situation in the United States is further complicated by the fact that DHS officials don’t know where all of the more than 7.5 million migrants who’ve arrived since Biden took office are living. Those whom Border Patrol agents have encountered and processed have immigration court dates, but those dates are years in advance. Many people with uncertain immigration status lack health insurance and stay off the grid as much as possible, meaning even if the U.S. launched some kind of vaccination program it would not know where to concentrate its efforts.

    In addition, the historic flood of illegal immigration during the Biden administration has also featured a much more global population. DHS uses the term “historically atypical countries” to describe the panoply of countries outside of Mexico and Central America from which illegal immigration has soared. Between 2011 and 2022, the number of annual encounters involving immigrants from historically atypical countries soared from fewer than 8,000 to almost 1 million. The first six months of 2023 saw more than half of official encounters – these numbers do not include what Border Patrol calls “gotaways” for whom little information is available – from historically atypical countries. But infectious diseases largely forgotten in the U.S. remain public health issues in both hemispheres, and many of those nations have much less robust vaccination programs than most modern Western nations.

    In 1988, when the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, wild poliovirus was evident in 125 countries, but the zone where it remains endemic has shrunk to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with most recent cases occurring along the countries’ nearly 1,600-mile border, according to the CDC. Vaccination campaigns have proved problematic under the militant Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, according to the CDC. Oral vaccines in “parts of the south and northeast regions” are “allowed only at health facilities, mosques, and polio vaccination sites.”

    In March, Al Jazeera reported that the Taliban would allow a polio vaccination program for children, but precise figures on the country’s overall vaccination rate remain unclear. The World Health Organization estimates that 76% of Afghanistan’s children have received a polio vaccine.

    But some countries have even lower vaccination rates. On Nov. 30, for instance, some 700 people, including many from Senegal and Nigeria, walked into the U.S. at the Texas border. Only 63% of Senegal’s children have been vaccinated for polio, and various fevers, hepatitis, and malaria are endemic there. Measles, which the U.S. declared eliminated here in 2000, are an issue, too. The WHO estimates 22 million children missed their first measles vaccine last year and more than half of them live in just 10 countries, all of which fall in the “historically atypical” immigration list.

    Measles cases have risen in the U.S., from 13 individual cases in 2020 to 121 in 2022, according to the CDC. Recent outbreaks in Ohio and Illinois have all occurred among unvaccinated children, according to state health officials. The age and nationality of victims is not made public, but the measles vaccination rate is below 70% in many countries that have sent immigrants to the U.S. recently.

    While few are publicly pushing the panic button, some public health officials worry that a creeping mistrust of vaccines in the wake of the pandemic may make more Americans vulnerable to dangerous and even deadly scourges. Syphilis, for example, has been on the rise for many years but rose sharply during the pandemic.

    COVID-19 has drawn the lion’s share of attention from the public health bureaucracy since 2020, leading to shortfalls in other areas, some experts said.

    “All of these diseases are more prevalent in part because of lockdown policies which diverted public health resources and attention worldwide away from its traditional priorities of controlling the spread of these deadly infectious conditions,” Dr. Bhattacharya said, referring to measles and other maladies.

    And just as there is no cure for polio, there is no vaccine for some infectious diseases. Malaria, for example, the mosquito-borne fever that killed more workers than yellow fever did when the Panama Canal was built, remains endemic in tropical zones, and its path to rare outbreaks in the U.S. usually follows either a trip made abroad or someone moving here, according to health officials in Florida.

    Department spokesman Jae Williams told RCI the exact sources of many infectious disease outbreaks in the Sunshine State remain unknown, but the huge increase in illegal immigrants could be a clue.

    “It’s always a possibility, and our most recent malaria cases appeared to be a strain from Central America,” he said. In other words, the malaria could have been brought by a newcomer or picked up by someone who traveled there and returned.

    Central Florida this summer saw leprosy return, although the exact source remains a mystery, Williams said. Information about the age, sex, and nationality of victims is not public, and most of those who contracted the infectious, skin-disfiguring disease were described only as “landscapers.” Various accounts have speculated armadillos are to blame, but armadillos are not newcomers to the region. The theory holds that somehow the leprosy bacteria, which generally requires prolonged contact and against which most humans have developed immunity over millennia, is in the dirt armadillos wallow in, and the cases that broke out among landscapers then would be linked to the animals they encounter.

    But leprosy is not endemic in Florida. It is most common in parts of southeast Asia, equatorial Africa, and Brazil.

    “The influx of people, sure it’s a problem and it’s always a possibility,” Williams said. “But we don’t really know.”

    Nevertheless, the questions are being asked with more frequency. On Dec. 19, Ashley St. Clair, a conservative commentator, set off a firestorm on X, formerly Twitter, that her Delta flight from Phoenix to New York was filled with people who had recently been processed, released, and brought to the airport by Border Patrol.

    “All the pilots, airline staff, and passengers want to know is: what medical screenings are being done?” she wrote.

    Delta did not respond to questions from RCI about what knowledge it had been provided about its passengers.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 18:25

  • First Costco, Now Walmart? Major Retailers Now Offer Gold Bars
    First Costco, Now Walmart? Major Retailers Now Offer Gold Bars

    X users report that Walmart is the latest major retailer to offer a variety of gold products in its online store. This comes several months after membership-based wholesale retailer Costco began selling 1 oz. gold bars. 

    “Walmart is selling gold and silver. Are you awake yet? This is a financial change,” one X user said. 

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

    Another X user said: “First Costco, Now Walmart.” 

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

    Here’s what others are saying:

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    Walmart appears to be getting on the precious metals action following Costco CFO Richard Galanti’s comments earlier this month about incredible gold bar demand among consumers: 

    “You’ve probably read about the fact that we’re selling one-ounce gold bars. We sold over $100 million of gold during the quarter.” 

    Galanti continued:

    “When we load them [gold bars] on the site, they’re typically gone within a few hours.”

    Costco’s and Walmart’s gold rush comes as gold prices have soared 14% since early October to a new record high of $2,088 this week. Gold’s strength has been underpinned by traders’ aggressive pricing of Federal Reserve rate cuts.

    The yellow metal “is the answer for many things at the moment – whether it’s inflation carrying on, rate cuts or the uncertainty with very costly wars going on,” said Jo Harmendjian, portfolio manager at Tiberius Group AG.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 18:00

  • Is The US Ready For China's Mass-Produced Humanoid Robots?
    Is The US Ready For China’s Mass-Produced Humanoid Robots?

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Chinese regime has unveiled plans to mass produce humanoid robots in an apparent effort to insulate itself from reliance on foreign powers by replacing Chinese workers with machines.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Ministry of Industry and Information Technology unveiled its plan to mass-produce humanoid robots in a November guidance document. The sweeping ramifications of the policy are still being uncovered.

    The strategy aims to make the CCP the world’s leader in the field of robotics by building a “humanoid robot innovation system,” developing artificial brains and limbs by 2025, according to the document.

    By using a “whole-of-nation system,” the document says, the regime can harness “disruptive” technologies to “profoundly change human production and lifestyle and reshape the global industrial development pattern.”

    The move carries national security implications and, according to several reports, will help the CCP maintain economic advantage even as its population dwindles following decades of severe restrictions on childbirth.

    A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank found that the regime is effectively replacing people with robots to maintain a competitive edge in labor-intensive manufacturing industries.

    Communist Robots

    China’s robotic push will also proliferate the CCP’s communist ideology and serve as an invaluable tool for the regime to champion its own interests.

    In April, a draft proposal by the regime’s internet regulator suggested that all content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) should be mandated to “reflect the socialist core values” espoused by the CCP.

    The regime’s robotic guidance document goes further.

    According to the new document, all new robots and AI-powered artificial brains should be “guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

    Adam Savit, director of the China Policy Initiative at the America First Policy Institute think tank, said that the regime could use the robots to spread communist ideology throughout the global marketplace.

    “They will certainly try,” Mr. Savit told The Epoch Times. “The CCP takes advantage of any and all means available, especially innovative new technologies, to spread its ideology and expand its influence.”

    Mr. Savit pointed to social media giant TikTok, which is owned by the CCP-affiliated ByteDance, as “the most successful and disturbing example” of the regime’s use of technology to spread its worldview.

    A man uses a mobile phone to take a photo of a Xiaomi robot at the 2023 World Robot Conference in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2023. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

    To counter the risk, he said, the United States needs to do more to limit the outflow of its own research and technology to China to dampen the regime’s efforts.

    “There is an urgent need to curtail U.S. outbound investment into China, especially for critical high-tech sectors like AI, quantum computing, and advanced semiconductors,” Mr. Savit said.

    “A Biden administration executive order limiting such investments is set to be enacted in 2024. It’s a good start but it has been criticized for vague and likely ineffective enforcement mechanisms.”

    The ideological underpinnings of the robot initiative underscore two more of Beijing’s strategic policies: military-civil fusion and forced technology transfer.

    Military-civil fusion, the policy through which Beijing seeks to ensure that all civil technologies also provide the party with military utility, is borne out in the guidance document’s call to “support [robot] enterprises to join forces with universities and institutions,” ensuring the regime can leverage the technology and any associated research.

    Likewise, the initiative will likely increase the risk posed to U.S. companies and their intellectual property as the regime searches for ways to “encourage foreign companies and institutions to set up R&D centers in the country,” where the CCP will have access to the related data.

    CCP access to foreign companies’ data is a key issue in global security because of Chinese laws that categorize data as a national resource, thereby allowing the regime to seize any information stored on servers in the country.

    The push for mass adoption of humanoid robots will require untold amounts of data, as the guidance document outlines that the project will seek to build a large language model training database to train AI brains for its robots and to innovate the “automatic” annotation of new data into usable information.

    Apart from data, the regime also seeks to develop its own high-end semiconductors to facilitate “motion control and cognitive decision-making” in the robots, as well as “the integration of sensing, decision-making, and control” mechanisms.

    With that in mind, the regime hopes to deploy its new communist humanoid robots to operate sensitive sites where it may have reservations about using human operators.

    According to the guidance document, such sites include hydropower stations, wind farms, and other critical electricity systems, as well as other “strategic locations” where “highly reliable” robots would be preferred to their less expendable human counterparts.

    Capturing Global Markets

    The CCP’s robotic renaissance is already well underway.

    In 2022, China installed 290,000 non-humanoid industrial robots. The United States, by comparison, installed 39,000.

    China has now surpassed the United States in robot density, meaning it has deployed more robots relative to workers, and the communist nation now operates the largest operational stock of robots in the world.

    Such metrics are key to understanding the regime’s ability to use automation to gain economic advantage in the years to come, according to a report by the International Federation of Robotics.

    “Robot density is a key indicator of automation adoption in the manufacturing industry around the world,” International Federation of Robotics President Marina Bill said.

    “China’s rapid growth shows the power of its investment so far, but it still has much opportunity to automate.”

    To that end, Beijing appears intent on capturing the robotic market abroad, using foreign technology and state-run research institutions to centralize power over the manufacturing process before shipping its robots worldwide.

    A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank found that the CCP seeks to earn a long-term advantage by establishing and controlling the supply chains required to create advanced robotics.

    KUKA robotic arms operate semi-finished products on an air conditioner assembly line at a factory in Guangzhou, China, on July 16, 2022. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Beijing aims both to achieve a high degree of self-sufficiency and to capture a significant share of the global market for a wide array of advanced products and components,” the report states.

    This could result in the regime obtaining significant economic and military advantage in the future due to the cascading effects of being the first to mass-produce humanoid robots. By controlling the initial technology, the regime can dictate how the technology evolves.

    “If it can gain an edge in what has been described as a fourth industrial revolution in manufacturing, while reducing its dependence on high-tech imports, China may be able to boost its own prospects for long-term growth while diminishing those of its competitors,” the report reads.

    “Because future products and military systems will build on them, breakthroughs in technologies such as artificial intelligence could also yield enduring advantages.”

    Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, said that “the really scary thing” about the regime’s guidance document is that it could lead to the CCP gaining more influence in establishing international standards and rules over AI and robotics.

    “You can guess what that means: China’s robotics industry becomes the global standard, pushing aside any competition, including setting the moral standard,” Mr. Herman told The Epoch Times.

    “[It’s] not a good sign if we want to have sensible and responsible standards for future development of this potentially disruptive technology [that] everyone can live with.”

    Mr. Herman expressed optimism that the United States is seeing a proliferation of its own robotic companies. Still, he’s worried about the nation’s lack of a coherent strategy for AI development.

    “The difference is that, clearly, China sees this robot push as part of its $110 billion campaign announced in 2017 to become the world’s leading AI nation by 2030,” Mr. Herman said.

    “We don’t have a national AI strategy, let alone a strategy relating to the intersection of robotics and AI.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:40

  • Venezuela Launches 5,000+ Troop Exercise In Response To UK Warship's Approach
    Venezuela Launches 5,000+ Troop Exercise In Response To UK Warship’s Approach

    Just on the heels of the recent panic over the risk of a Venezuela invasion of its neighbor Guyana, fears which finally subsided over a week ago upon a mutual pact pledging that both would avoid direct conflict, the UK sent a warship to patrol off Venezuela’s coast. 

    Britain previously said it would dispatch the HMS Trent near Guyana by December’s end as a significant show of support for the government in Guyana’s capital Georgetown, on concerns Nicolás Maduro would make moves to claim the vast, mineral-rich Essequibo region, which borders his country but has been part of Guyana – a member of the British Commonwealth and the only English-speaking nation in South America – for more than a century.

    A December 14 report in The Guardian suggested tensions were cooling fast: “The leaders of Guyana and Venezuela promised in a tense meeting that neither side would use threats or force against the other, but failed to reach agreement on how to address a bitter dispute over a vast border region rich with oil and minerals that has concerned many in the region,” the publication said at the time. But on Thursday’s there’s been a new shocking development reversing this hoped-for state of ‘cooler heads prevailing’ and which raises the potential for the UK and Venezuela to directly clash in Caribbean waters.

    HMS Trent, UK Navy

    AFP reports breaking statements from Maduro’s office as follows:

    Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday ordered more than 5,600 military personnel to participate in a “defensive” exercise, after Britain said it was sending a Royal Navy warship to waters off neighboring Guyana.

    Maduro said he was launching “a joint action of a defensive nature in response to the provocation and threat of the United Kingdom against peace and the sovereignty of our country.”

    Prior to the current standoff the HMS Trent had reportedly monitored the Caribbean in search of drug smugglers as a military offshore patrol vessel. It is armed with heavy guns and typically carries a unit of Royal Marines and a combat helicopter.

    The vessel has been confirmed now in regional waters:

    HMS Trent was reported to have made a stop in Bridgetown, Barbados, after leaving its homeport at Gibraltar earlier this month. The vessel is scheduled to head towards Guyana this week and anchor off Georgetown to participate in a series of training exercises with the country’s navy and other allies, the BBC reported.

    Venezuelan presidency press office handout showing Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.

    The border dispute has been a source of tension and disagreements going all the way back to the 19th century, but Maduro recently sponsored a referendum on whether his government should use force to finally resolve it. He then provocatively announced that 95% of Venezuelan citizens voted in favor of a forced annexation. This drew quick condemnation from Caracas’ longtime enemies the US and Britain.

    On Wednesday Venezuelan forces were placed on a ‘high state of alert’ following the reports of the British warship moving toward the coast.

    Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López issued a blistering warning on X in response to HMS Trent’s presence. “A warship in waters yet to be demarcated?” he said.

    Source: Financial Times

    “How does that fit with the commitment to good neighborliness and peaceful coexistence? And the agreement not to threaten or use force against each other under any circumstances? We remain alert to these provocations that put the peace and stability of the Caribbean and our America at risk!” he warned, saying that the prior agreement with Guyana’s leader Irfaan Ali about use of force has been called into question.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:20

  • The Chicago Mayor's Hat Trick Of Dreadful Policies
    The Chicago Mayor’s Hat Trick Of Dreadful Policies

    Authored by Charles Lipson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    When your city elects a mayor whose main job qualification is “organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union,” you get what you paid for, or rather what the powerful CTU paid for. With Mayor Brandon Johnson, you get a special bonus, an unwelcome one. His proposed policies are unworkable, unaffordable, and deeply unpopular in the city that elected him less than a year ago.

    Three policies stand out for particular ridicule. Mayor Johnson wants to:

    1. Start city-owned and -operated groceries in some underserved areas. The government that wants to take on these difficult new tasks is already failing at such basic services as fixing potholes and policing dangerous neighborhoods.

    2. Ticket the buses bringing illegal immigrants to Chicago, mostly from Texas. He calls them “rogue buses” because they are not “coordinating” with the city. Giving them a ticket or even impounding the vehicles is his solution. The bus companies’ own solution is to drop off the passengers in the suburbs, which immediately send them to Chicago. Johnson then rages at the Texas governor and never mentions President Biden.

    3. Close down all the selective-enrollment (magnet) schools in Chicago, the only ones where students actually read above grade level. If we judge by the likely outcome, Johnson’s policy is really designed to drive middle-class families with kids out of the city. The teachers union backs the plan, enthusiastically. They must know how good the other schools are since the president of the CTU sends her own child to a private school. Meanwhile, she is working with Gov. JB Pritzker to kill school choice for everyone else.

    The local joke about Mayor Johnson is that his only success has been to lower the price of downtown Chicago real estate.

    How do voters like Johnson’s ideas and his administration? Not much, it turns out. His poll numbers are roughly the same as those for used car salesmen with loud suits and back lots filled with rusting clunkers. The mayor’s erstwhile supporters have abandoned him. Except for the Chicago Teachers Union.

    The CTU is easily the most powerful union in Illinois and, most likely, the strongest local teachers union in the country. It was their members who went door-to-door for Johnson’s election. It was their members who tacked up Johnson’s campaign posters and donated the dollars for his TV ads. Now, it is their members who comprise Johnson’s dwindling band of supporters. If it weren’t for them, the mayor could hold a “Reelect Brandon Johnson” rally on a unicycle.

    Most of Johnson’s policies are standard-issue leftist remedies for big cities. To paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan, “He is the very model of a modern progressive mayor.” That model is not working. Not in Chicago and not elsewhere. Progressive mayors and prosecutors across the country have made their cities dangerous and ungovernable. Unfortunately, failure has not changed their minds or their policies. Brandon Johnson is no exception.

    Consider the mayor’s proposal for the city to own and operate grocery stores in impoverished areas. Let’s call them “CastroMarts.”

    Johnson is right to say some neighborhoods have become “food deserts.” He should ask himself why that is so. Part of the answer is poverty, but those areas were poor before the grocery stores abandoned them. What changed is that those areas are now plagued with organized retail theft, which is almost never prosecuted.

    Without delving into the root causes of rampant crime (Kamala Harris is searching for them in Central America), it’s up to local police to stop the predation, and it’s up to local prosecutors to go after the robbers and looters. That’s not happening in Chicago – or in San Francisco, Washington, Seattle, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland, or Portland. Those city governments have abandoned their fundamental responsibilities to “serve and protect.”

    Is the theory here that somehow thieves wouldn’t steal from city-owned grocery stores? What’s the evidence for that – or that city workers could do a better job than trained professionals? Those businesses operate on very thin margins and require efficient, experienced management. If you don’t sell meat and produce quickly, they rot.

    The words “quick” and “efficient” have never been used in the same sentence as “Chicago city worker.” Better adjectives would be “slow,” “unionized,” and “well-paid.” When you apply the correct adjectives to grocery store ownership, you get sclerotic management, high prices, and an endless string of taxpayer subsidies. You will get CastroMart, not Walmart.

    Brandon Johnson’s notions about education are just as compelling. His latest brainstorm is to close the best schools in the city. His stated reason is “equity,” which apparently means “leveling down.” There is no allegation that admission to these selective schools is biased. It is purely merit-based. Yet Chicago’s school board, working closely with the CTU and the mayor, recently approved a plan to “transition away” from these schools. That’s a polite way of saying, “We are going to kill them if we can.”

    The teachers union defends this euthanasia because of what they call the schools’ “deep inequity.” The facts belie the catchphrase. Over half the students in the 11 selective high schools come from low-income families. Around 70% are black or Hispanic. Where’s the “deep inequity”?

    Parents are up in arms. They see powerful, entrenched interests trying to deny their children a good education and cynically justifying it in the name of progressive ideals. They’re right.

    Johnson’s proposals for migrants are just as popular. Chicago has long proclaimed itself a “sanctuary city,” a label it adopted when sending that virtue signal was costless. It’s not costless anymore. Chicago leaders’ response is to offload all that expensive virtue onto other cities. They are retaining the “sanctuary” slogan, oblivious to the irony.

    The number of migrants coming to Chicago is still a trickle compared to those surging into Texas and Arizona across an open border. Even so, Chicago can’t handle the modest numbers. It doesn’t have any place to put them or any money to pay for the vital services they require. You see them now camped out on cold city streets and begging for spare change. It’s heartbreaking. Chicago’s real answer to reducing their number is “winter.”

    Johnson’s original plan was to set up migrant camps across the city. Voters went berserk. Johnson got the message and backed down. His latest plan is to put the migrants in hotels and at O’Hare Airport, issue tickets to the buses that bring them, and blame it all on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

    While Johnson has no answers for this deepening mess, he didn’t create it. President Biden did that. Biden is the Einstein who decided to dismantle all of Trump’s programs, such as “Remain in Mexico,” that helped stem the flow of illegals. What was Biden’s rationale? Because the programs were Trump’s. That’s it. To replace them, Biden put in … well, nothing. Surprisingly, that has not worked well.

    Even the staunchest Democrats recognize the political problems that unchecked immigration is creating. Some are from pushback in the general population, which can see the failure. Some come specifically from the black community, which is furious about this wave of migrants who compete with Americans for jobs, housing, and social services. Hispanics living here legally are none too happy either.

    Since Democrats depend on both minorities, especially African Americans, to win elections, the internal fissures over immigration pose real problems. They divide ideological progressives from fellow leftists who are more attentive to their minority constituents. The difficulties will only get worse as the numbers keep rising and the Biden administration keeps resisting efforts to close the border. Those tensions are already visible in Chicago’s minority neighborhoods.

    But immigration is only one of Brandon Johnson’s headaches. On issue after issue, he has no sensible plans to move forward and few ideas about how to cope with the city’s spiraling problems. His administration is a shambles, and voters know it. They need help. In fact, they are demanding it. They want safety, education, and other basic services. They have learned to their regret that they won’t get any of them from the incompetent, unpopular ideologue in City Hall.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:00

  • Bank Bailout Fund Usage Soars To Another Record High As 2023 Sees Greatest Annual Money-Market Inflows Ever
    Bank Bailout Fund Usage Soars To Another Record High As 2023 Sees Greatest Annual Money-Market Inflows Ever

    After two weeks of outflows, money-market funds returned to inflows in the week ending 12/27, adding $16.4BN to $5.89TN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which means 2023 saw the largest annual money-market inflow ever – a whopping $1.151TN. That is the seventh year in a row of annual MM inflows…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But, with recession odds declining rapidly, are we about to see MM outflows accelerate?

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    Retail money-market funds capped the year with yet another inflow (+$13.3BN) meaning there was only one weekly outflow from retail funds in 2023. Institutional funds saw a $3.4BN inflow also…

    Source: Bloomberg

    In a breakdown for the week to Dec. 27, government funds – which invest primarily in securities like Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and agency debt – saw assets rise to $4.81 trillion, an $18.9 billion gain. 

    Prime funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, meanwhile, saw assets fall to $951.4 billion, a $3.8 billion decrease.

    “The big question is how overweight are investors in money markets,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco, said in a Bloomberg Television interview earlier this week.

    “Some exposure makes sense. That’s part of being diversified. But there is significant overweight on the part of some investors and I do think that starts to come out.”

    Interestingly, bank deposits are rising rapidly in the last few weeks as are money-market funds…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, with year-end liquidity needs growing, the exodus from The Fed’s reverse-repo facility has stalled (for now)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The Fed’s balance sheet shrank by $11.3BN last week to its lowest level since March 2021…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Usage of The Fed’s bank bailout facility rose by another $4.5BN last week to a new record high of $136BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But Regional bank shares don’t care…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The BTFP-Fed Arb continues to offer ‘free-money’ (and usage of the BTFP has risen by $26.7BN since the arb existed):

    The rate on the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program – which allows banks and credit unions to borrow funds for up to one year, pledging US Treasuries and agency debt as collateral valued at par – is the one-year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points.

    That figure is currently 4.83%, down from 5.59% in September.

    For institutions that have an account at the Fed, they can borrow from the BTFP at 4.83% and park that at the central bank to earn 5.40% – the interest on reserve balances.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 57bp spread is the widest level since the Fed introduced the facility to support a struggling banking system after the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York.

    Finally, equity market caps continue to soar after recoupling with bank reserves at The Fed (though the stalling in the drawdown of the RRP has slowed the expansion again this week in a bigger way)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    WTF are banks going to do when The Fed shuts down this ‘temporary’ bailout program in March?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 16:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 28

Today’s News 28th December 2023

  • Escobar: Russia-China Are On A Roll
    Escobar: Russia-China Are On A Roll

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    While the dogs of war bark, lie and steal, the Russia-China caravan strolls on…

    2023 may be defined for posterity as The Year of the Russia-China Strategic Partnership. This wonder of wonders could easily sway under a groove by – who else – Stevie Wonder: “Here I am baby/ signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours.”

    In the first 11 months of 2023, trade between Russia and China exceeded $200 billion; they did not expect to achieve that until 2024.

    Now surely that’s One Partnership Under a Groove. Once again signed, sealed and delivered during the visit of a large delegation to Beijing last week, led by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and revisited and upgraded the whole spectrum of the comprehensive partnership/strategic cooperation, complete with an array of new, major joint projects.

    Simultaneously, on the Great Game 2.0 front, everything that need to be reaffirmed was touched by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s detailed interview to Dimitri Simes on his Great Game show.

    Add to it the carefully structured breakdown written by head of the SVR Sergey Naryshkin, defining 2024 as “the year of geopolitical awakening”, and coming up with arguably the key formulation following the upcoming, cosmic NATO humiliation in the steppes of Donbass: “In 2024, the Arab world will remain the main space in the struggle for the establishment of a new order.”

    Confronted with such detailed geopolitical fine-tuning, it’s no wonder the imperial reaction was apoplexy – revealed epidermically in long, tortuous “analyses” trying to explain why President Putin turned out to be the “geopolitical victor” of 2023, seducing vast swathes of the Arab world and the Global South, solidifying BRICS side by side with China, and propelling the EU further into a black void of its own – and the Hegemon’s – making.

    Putin even allowed himself, half in jest, to offer Russian support for the potential “re-annexation” of country 404 border regions once annexed by Stalin, eventually to be returned to former owners Poland, Hungary & Romania. He added that he is 100% certain this is what residents of those still Ukrainian borders want.

    Were that to happen, we would have Transcarpathia back to Hungary; Galicia and Volyn back to Poland; and Bukovina back to Romania. Can you feel the house already rocking to the break of dawn in Budapest, Warsaw and Bucharest?

    Then there’s the possibility of the Hegemon ordering NATO’s junior punks to harass Russian oil tankers in the Baltic Sea and “isolate” St. Petersburg. It goes without saying that the Russian response would be to just take out Command & Control centers (hacking might be enough); burn electronics across the spectrum; and blockade the Baltic at the entrance by running a “Freedom of Navigation” exercise so everyone becomes familiar with the new groove.

    That China-Russian Far East symbiosis

    One of the most impressive features of the expanded Russia-China partnership is what is being planned for the Chinese northeastern province of Heilongjiang.

    The idea is to turn it into an economic, scientific development and national defense mega-hub, centered on the provincial capital Harbin, complete with a new, sprawling Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

    The key vector is that this mega-hub would also coordinate the development of the immense Russian Far East. This was discussed in detail at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last September.

    In a unique, startling arrangement, the Chinese may be allowed to manage selected latitudes of the Russian Far East for the next 100 years.

    As Hong Kong-based analyst Thomas Polin detailed, Beijing is budgeting no less than 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) for the whole thing. Half of it would be absorbed by Harbin. The blueprint will reach the National People’s Congress next March, and is expected to be approved. It has already been approved by the lower house of the Duma in Moscow.

    The ramifications are mind-boggling. We would have Harbin elevated to the status of direct-administered city, just like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing. And most of all a Sino-Russian Management Committee will be established in Harbin to oversee the whole project.

    Top flight Chinese universities – including Peking University – would transfer their main campuses to Harbin. The universities of National Defense and National Defense Technology would merge with Harbin Engineering University to form a new entity focused on defense industries. High-tech research institutes and companies in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen would also move to Harbin.

    The People’s Bank of China would establish its HQ for northern China in Harbin, complete with markets trading stocks and commodities futures.

    Residents of Heilongjiang would be allowed to travel back and forth to designated Russian Far East regions without a visa. The new Heilongjiang SEZ would have its own customs area and no import taxes.

    That’s the same spirit driving BRI connectivity corridors and the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC). The underlying rationale is wider Eurasia integration.

    At the recent Astana Club meeting in Kazakhstan, researcher Damjan Krnjevic-Miskovic, Director of Policy Research at the ADA University in Baku, gave an excellent presentation on connectivity corridors.

    He referred for instance to the C5+1 (five Central Asian “stans” plus China) meeting three months ago in Dushanbe joined by Azerbaijan’s president Aliyev: that translates as Central Asia-Caucasus integration.

    Miskovic is paying due attention to everything that is evolving in what he defines, correctly, as “the Silk Road region” – interlinking the Euro-Atlantic with Asia-Pacific and interconnecting West Asia, South Asia and wider Eurasia.

    Strategically, of course, that’s the “geopolitical hinge where NATO meets the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and where the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) connects with Turkiye and the territory of the EU.” In practical terms, Russia-China know exactly what needs to be done to propel economic connectivity and “synergistic relationships” all across this vast spectrum.

    The War of Economic Corridors heats up

    The fragmentation of the global economy is already polarizing the expanding BRICS 10 (starting on January 1st, under the Russian presidency, and without flirting-with-dollarization Argentina) and the shrinking G7.

    Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko – a key Asia hand -, talking to TASS, once again reaffirmed that the key drive for the Greater Eurasia Partnership (official Russian policy) is to connect the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) with BRI.

    As Russia develops a carefully calibrated balance between China and India, the same drive applies to developing the INSTC, where Russia-Iran-India are the main partners, and Azerbaijan is also bound to become a crucial player.

    Add to it vastly improved Russian ties with North Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan (a BRI and SCO member) and ASEAN (except Westernized Singapore).

    BRI, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, is on a roll. I’ve just been to Moscow, Astana and Almaty for three weeks, and it was possible to confirm with several sources that trains in all connectivity corridors are packed to the hilt; via the Trans-Siberian; via Astana all the way to Minsk; and via Almaty to Uzbekistan.

    Russian International Affairs Council Program Manager Yulia Melnikova adds that “Moscow can and should integrate more actively into transit operations along the China – Mongolia – Russia route” and accelerate the harmonization of standards between the EAEU and China. Not to mention invest further in Russia-China cooperation in the Arctic.

    Enter President Putin, at a Russian Railways meeting, unveiling an ambitious, massive 10-year infrastructure expansion plan encompassing new railways and improved connectivity with Asia – from the Pacific to the Arctic.

    The Russian economy has definitely pivoted to Asia, responsible for 70% of trade turnover amid the Western sanctions dementia.

    So what’s on the menu ahead is everything from modernization of the Trans-Siberian and establishing a major logistical hub in the Urals and Siberia to improving port infrastructure in the Azov, Black, and Caspian Seas and faster INSTC cargo transit between Murmansk and Mumbai.

    Putin, once again, almost as an afterthought, recently remarked that trade through the Suez Canal cannot be considered effective anymore, compared to Russia’s Northern Sea Route. With a single, sharp geopolitical move, Yemen’s Ansarullah has made it graphic – for everyone to see.

    Russian development of the Northern Sea Route happens to run in total synergy with the Chinese drive to develop the Arctic leg of BRI. On the oil front, Russian shipments to China via its Arctic coast takes only 35 days: 10 days less than via Suez.

    Danila Krylov, researcher with the Department of the Middle East and Post-Soviet Asia at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, offers a straightforward insight:

    “I view the fact that the Americans are getting involved in Yemen as part of a great game [scenario]; there is more to it than just a desire to punish the Houthis or Iran, as it is more likely driven by a desire to prevent the monopolization of the market and hinder Chinese export deliveries to Europe. The Americans need an operational Suez Canal and a corridor between India and Europe, while the Chinese don’t want it because these are two direct competitors.”

    It’s not that the Chinese don’t want it: with the Northern Sea Route up and running, they don’t need it.

    Now freeze!

    In sum: in the ongoing, ever more fractious War of Economic Corridors, the initiative is with Russia-China.

    In desperation, and no more than an option-deprived, headless chicken victim in the War of Economic Corridors, the Hegemon’s EU vassals are resorting to twisting the Follow the Money playbook.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has defined the freezing of Russian assets – not only private, but also state-owned – by the EU as pure theft. Now Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov is making it very clear that Moscow will react symmetrically to the possible use of income from these frozen Russian assets.

    Paraphrasing Lavrov: you confiscate, we confiscate. We all confiscate.

    The repercussions will be cataclysmic – for the Hegemon. No Global South nation, outside of NATOstan, will be “encouraged” to park its foreign currency/reserves in the West. That may lead, in a flash, to the whole Global South ditching the U.S.-led international financial system and joining a Russia-China-led alternative.

    The peer-competitor Russia-China strategic partnership is already directly challenging the “rules-based international order” on all fronts – improving their historical spheres of influence while actively developing vast, interconnected connectivity corridors bypassing said “order”. That precludes, as much as possible, direct Hot War with the Hegemon.

    Or to put it on Silk Road terms: while the dogs of war bark, lie and steal, the Russia-China caravan strolls on.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 23:55

  • "This Might Be The Biggest Lie Of The Year From Biden Regime"
    “This Might Be The Biggest Lie Of The Year From Biden Regime”

    Had the Biden administration prioritized southern border security, significant efforts to resolve the crisis would likely have been completed by now instead of peddling blatant lies and half-truths to deflect the blame for their disastrous open border policies that have flooded the nation with millions of illegals (and individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list) ahead the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

    A large chunk of corporate progressive media outlets have been spoonfed propaganda from the White House this year to distract Americans with southern border misinformation. 

    The clearest misinformation campaign from the White House was in May, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka declared: “I want to be very clear, our borders are not open.” 

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

    “This might be the biggest lie of the year from the Biden regime,” X user Libs of TikTok wrote in a post. 

    Responding to Libs of TikTok’s post, X user RedWave Press said:

    “This is a massive lie. The southern border is wide open and the Biden administration is funding the whole thing. Our country is going to be run into the ground by illegal immigrants if something doesn’t change.” 

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

    But the border lies don’t stop with Mayorka. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been on the frontlines of spreading misinformation, saying President Biden has done “everything that he can” to secure the border. 

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

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

    “It’s just a blind spot for this entire White House, this entire administration, that would really prefer that they didn’t have to deal with any of the ramifications of the policy choices that they’ve made when it comes to the border and that Alexander Mayorkas has been so terrible at and actually implementing when it comes to the DHS policy involved,” Ben Domenech, the publisher and co-founder of The Federalist, recently told Fox Business’ Ashley Webster. 

    Endless border misinformation injected into corporate media by the White House has been on full display in recent days when the US Customs and Border Protection released data indicating a quarter of a million migrant encounters at the southern border in November – the busiest November on record. 

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

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

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

    Furthermore, the new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, across South and Central America to illegals with details about their route to the US. 

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

    “A lot of NGOs are helping Biden open the border to unlimited illegal crossing. But none of this could happen without the president’s approval,” Byron York, the chief political correspondent at the Washington Examiner, said last week. 

    The breaking point for law-abiding and tax-paying Americans has arrived. They’re tired of being lied to by radicals in the White House and corporate media. That’s why Biden’s polling data has plunged to record lows, and trust in media has imploded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 23:30

  • A Shrunken Arsenal: The Alarming Decline Of U.S. Munitions
    A Shrunken Arsenal: The Alarming Decline Of U.S. Munitions

    Authored by Joe Buccino via RealClear Wire,

    As fighting rages in the Middle East and Europe and China looms as a threat, America’s dwindling arsenal of high-end munitions emerges as an alarming crisis. The United States, once a fortress of military might, now faces the prospect of a munitions deficit in an era brimming with uncertainties. This desperate situation demands the development of a national critical munitions stockpile.

    European weapons makers are overwhelmed and struggling to meet Ukraine’s consumption of more than 6,000 artillery rounds each day during peak counteroffensive fighting. Ukraine’s ability to stave off defeat and defend itself against the Russian invasion largely depends on an uninterrupted supply of these rounds. Ukrainian forces are conserving their ammunition supply, which might lead to postponements in upcoming counterattacks. Over the coming months, this shortage of ammunition could compel Ukrainian military units to make difficult choices regarding the allocation of resources across various frontlines, focusing on areas where maintaining control is most crucial and potentially allowing minor territorial losses in less critical sectors.

    To supplement Ukraine’s massive ammunition requirements, DoD pulls munitions from its own war reserve stocks. Further compounding the matter: In an attempt to extract stricter immigration policies, House Republicans are blocking a congressional aid package for Ukraine.

    Last year, to help meet the demand for Ukrainian munitions, the Pentagon tapped into a stockpile of American 155mm rounds in Israel, sending hundreds of thousands to Ukraine. These rounds, stored for decades in Israeli bunkers, are to provide an Israeli qualitative military edge, a pillar of American policy in the Middle East. Now Israel needs them back to target Hamas’s command cells in its war in Gaza. The U.S. is supporting two countries, both of which use enormous amounts of 155-millimeter artillery and other ammunition in wars that may stretch on for many months. Running out of ideas, last month the Pentagon established a team to examine American inventories to identify ammunition for Israel. Earlier this month, Senator Deb Fischer, a senior Senate Armed Services Committee member, remarked that the U.S. must expand its munitions production capability.

    Once a conflict begins it can lead to extraordinarily high munitions consumption. The fighting in Ukraine should serve as a warning regarding production of munitions the U.S. would need in a conflict with China over Taiwan. The U.S. must resolve the extensive issues within its munitions manufacturing processes ahead of a conflict with China.

    American forces require an enormous volume of critical munitions to fight against a technologically advanced military force. This ammo is also necessary to equip partner forces in Asia, such as Australia, with the long-range anti-ship munitions needed to defeat the Chinese flotilla or prevent it from ever embarking. The stockpile also ensures that American industrial output is sustained in times of crisis and preserves the United States’ global military edge.

    The U.S. also provides Taiwan with munitions sufficient to blunt an initial Chinese blow. This strategy – codified by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act – involves ensuring Taiwan has sufficient defense capabilities against a Chinese attack. The U.S. arms Taiwan only to a level that does not disrupt the diplomatic equilibrium between Washington and Beijing. But, there is growing concern in the Pentagon and the Indo-Pacific that Taiwan does not have enough of the high-tech munitions to hold off a PRC attack. Here again, the shrinking U.S. munitions reserve represents a risk.

    In a U.S. fight with China, American forces will likely burn through munitions stocks within three weeks. Even with a surge of the U.S. industrial base, replenishing stocks will take more than six months. In the interim, the U.S. will be without sufficient bombs and bullets for its cutting-edge systems, such as fifth-generation fighter jets and High Mobility Rocket Launcher Systems, and anti-air missiles needed to protect our nuclear aircraft carriers and bases in the Pacific.

    Right now, the warning indicators are blinking red. The massive need for ammunition in such conflicts highlights weaknesses in the American defense industry, which no longer produces munitions at the rate it did decades ago. The post-Cold War defense budget reductions led to a swift merger of the defense sector, which saw a drop from fifty-one major defense providers in the early 1990s to five by the end of that decade. This consolidation led to a tightened capacity.

    To arm our allies and partners and our own forces to deter and, if necessary, fight a major theater war, the United States requires a critical munitions stockpile. This reserve will enable the Department of Defense to restore essential munitions stocks vital for maintaining air dominance, defending against air and missile threats, and targeting hard and deeply buried objectives.

    The PROCURE Act, introduced by a bipartisan group of senators in the previous Congress, would go a long way toward building this stockpile. The legislation aims to establish a $500 million per year revolving fund in the Treasury Department for the Pentagon to procure critical munitions. This fund would allow the Defense Department to swiftly replenish high-demand munitions supplied to partner countries in future conflicts, using profits from the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The act is designed to support democratic nations and protect American interests overseas, allowing the Pentagon to continuously order critical munitions. The Senate Armed Services Committee should push to get the PROCURE act passed into law.

    In addition, we must expand the National Defense Stockpile, a largely obscure reserve of raw material based in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, with operations throughout the United States. The National Defense Stockpile holds an emergency supply of 50 critical minerals. Many of these minerals, such as aluminum, titanium, and magnesium, are used in the production of munitions. The value of materials in the U.S. National Defense Stockpile has drastically decreased from $42 billion in 1952 to less than $1 billion today.  America’s mineral reserves are significantly lower than China’s, with the National Defense Stockpile maintaining only 300 metric tons of cobalt compared to China’s 7,000 metric tons. Congress must expand the National Defense Stockpile to support a potential major theater war.

    Our munitions stockpiles and production capacity are not just inadequate; they are a glaring vulnerability in our national defense strategy. We must act with resolve and urgency to revitalize our defense industrial base and expand our reservoir of munition-production minerals. Nothing less than our national interests and global stability is at stake.

    Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who serves as a Senior Research Analyst for the Defense Innovation Board. He served as the communications director for U.S. Central Command from April 2021 to July 2023.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 23:05

  • Visualizing The Global Distribution Of Wealth, By Region
    Visualizing The Global Distribution Of Wealth, By Region

    The distribution of wealth provides insight into a region’s stage of economic maturity.

    As economies grow, they are more likely to have a higher share of adults with greater wealth. Naturally, incomes increase as corporate profitability flourishes, shifting the distribution of earnings.

    Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Dorothy Neufeld created the following graphic, based on data from UBS, to show the share of adults across global regions by their wealth range.

    Global Wealth Distribution in 2023

    Here’s how patterns of wealth compare around the world:

    North America and Europe, which have advanced economies, represent the largest share of people in the “over $1 million” range.

    China, which is transitioning to a more service-oriented economy, accounts for a large chunk of people within the $10K to $1 million range.

    Emerging markets like India account for larger shares of the bottom two wealth ranges.

    Overall, inequality within countries and between countries has increased since the 1980s. Yet global median wealth has increased fivefold since 2000, driven by the economic expansion of China lifting the global median level.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 22:40

  • New California Law Requires Stores To Carry "Gender-Neutral" Toys
    New California Law Requires Stores To Carry “Gender-Neutral” Toys

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    There are a number of new laws that will kick in in 2024, but one of the most interesting fights are likely to over the new California law requiring stores with more than 500 employees to carry “gender-neutral” toys or face state fines.

    The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, is likely to trigger free speech challenges.

    The law covers childcare items, which is defined as “any product designed or intended by the manufacturer to facilitate sleep, relaxation, or the feeding of children, or to help children with sucking or teething.”

    The requirement of a gender-neutral section could be opposed by businesses on religious or other grounds. Notably, this applies to relatively large businesses. In the past, companies like Target have been boycotted for selling “tuck-friendly” items opposed by some consumers. While there is likely to be a backlash, these companies can argue that they are merely following the law rather than pursuing woke corporate policies.

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    The law could return courts to defining the free speech rights of corporations and the question of compelled speech.

    It is an interesting variation on the case of the recent 303 Creative ruling of the Supreme Court, which is discussed in my recent law review publication as well as my forthcoming book.

    In that case, the Court ruled in favor of a website designer who refused to work on same-sex marriage projects. That case, however, involved products made by the designer with “expressive content.” This is requiring the selling of products made by others.

    In 2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court held in favor of a company in striking down political campaign limits as a denial of corporate free speech rights.

    In 2014, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Court ruled in favor of a privately-held, for-profit corporation that refused to cover contraceptive services under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

    This case presents a different but arguably analogous issue of corporate free speech. A major element for challengers is to find an ideal plaintiff with long-standing religious objections to such gender neutral products to make the strongest case for government-compelled speech.

    The question is whether a state can compel a company to sell items that it or its customers consider to be morally offensive. If so, what is the limit on such state power? While these are not expressive products created by the owners, it is still compelling the store to associate with such products and their inherent message or values. For example, if Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop is no longer required to make same-sex cakes, could he be required to sell pre-made same-sex cakes created by others?

    As many on this blog are aware, my natural default remains with free speech. However, people of good faith can disagree on such questions.

    The court may soon be involved in answering these questions in what is likely going to be a novel and important challenge out of California.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 22:15

  • Russia Warns Japan Against "Hostile Actions" Of Exporting Patriot Missiles For Ukraine
    Russia Warns Japan Against “Hostile Actions” Of Exporting Patriot Missiles For Ukraine

    Russia and Japan historically were enemies but in recent decades moved to being ‘frenemies’ given improved relations but also the ongoing simmering standoff regarding ownership of the Kuril chain of islands just north of Japan. The last two years have seen relations get tense once again due to Russia’s Ukraine operations, and Tokyo’s growing defense cooperation with the United States, which has evoked Beijing’s wrath as well. 

    This is especially so in light of last week’s announcement by the Japanese government saying it is preparing to ship Patriot anti-air missile defense systems to assist Ukraine. It’s a plan the Biden administration has sought and considers a major diplomatic ‘victory’.

    Getty Images

    Japan just announced a significant change to its arms export rules in order to make this happen, something the White House has welcomed at a moment Kiev is running low on ammo and advanced arms. It’s also another big move signaling that Japan is abandoning its historic post-WWII neutrality and pacifism.

    A headline last week in Nikkei Asia underscored that the planned Patriot transfer has ‘stunned’ regional watchers and analysts, given the US administration has long warned that China is the top ‘pacing threat’ to America globally: 

    Many have questioned the rationale of taking weapons out of the Indo-Pacific for a battle in Europe when the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has said all along that China is the pacing threat.

    The transfer of Patriots was a request from the U.S. side. This suggests that the Biden administration has concluded that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is not imminent. While many in Washington agree to that assessment, some oppose shifting attention away from the Indo-Pacific.

    The government of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida “has made a fundamental error in going along with the Biden administration’s prioritization of Europe,” said Elbridge Colby, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development.

    But doing Washington’s bidding is precisely what Tokyo is up to, and public statements were clear on this point:

    Tokyo previously only allowed for components of licensed equipment to be sent from Japan to the nation where the manufacturing license originated. But under the new rules it can ship finished goods too.

    Shortly after the government announced this change on Friday, the foreign ministry said it would ship Patriot missiles to the US to “further strengthen the Japan-US alliance”.

    It added that the missiles could only be sent to the US, and would require Japan’s approval to be sent to a third country. Japan still bans the export of weapons to countries at war.

    This could mean that Japan-made Patriot missiles may replenish the US’ stockpile, while Washington sends US-made ones to Ukraine.

    Hence while the missiles may not directly go to Ukraine, it’s certainly with an eye toward increasing supplies transferred there, and thus will indirectly benefit Ukrainian militarily. 

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    Predictably, Moscow has blasted the move and warned Tokyo it faces “grave consequences”. Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Wednesday briefing, “The Japanese side loses control over the weapons with which Washington can now do whatever it wants.” She added: “It cannot be ruled out that under an already tested scheme Patriot missiles will end up in Ukraine.”

    She explained that such a scenario will be “interpreted as unambigously hostile actions against Russia and will lead to grave consequences for Japan in the context of bilateral relations.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 21:50

  • These Are The 10 Most Influential Crypto Tweets Of 2023
    These Are The 10 Most Influential Crypto Tweets Of 2023

    Authored by Daniel Ramirez-Escudero via CoinTelegraph.com,

    2023 has been a turbulent year for the crypto markets, but X encapsulated the rollercoaster of sentiments and became the perfect ledger to recall what occurred.

    2023 dragged some of the rotten apples from the bear market, which brought negative repercussions for the public image of the crypto industry. Fortunately, the market has shifted into what some may call a proper bull market as the halving ticks closer. 

    This article reviews the 10 most influential tweets from the crypto community in 2023.

    SEC charges Kraken for unregistered staking: Stake or steak?

    United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler kicked off 2023 by suing crypto exchange Kraken in an attempt to put some pressure on the crypto industry.

    The SEC charged Kraken with failing to register their crypto asset staking-as-a-service program. Kraken agreed to pay a $30 million fine and remove its staking services from the U.S. market.

    Gensler provided a video explanation worthy of being a crypto meme. As if speaking to a five-year-old, he clarified he was talking about “S-T-A-K-E, not S-T-E-A-K.”

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    The relevance of this case was that it went beyond simply Kraken and its products, as it sparked doubt among crypto users and companies surrounding the legality of staking in the United States.

    While uncertainty and negative sentiment abounded amid the news, the SEC still hadn’t published clear guidelines for this kind of product for crypto-related services.

    By the end of the year, the SEC upped the ante by alleging that Kraken operated as an unregistered exchange and adding that it mixed customer assets with its own. Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell expressed his disbelief, calling the SEC “masochists” who seemed not to be content with the prior $30 million fine. The lawsuit is ongoing, though there are signs of a possible SEC defeat.

    Do Kwon: Catch me if you can

    The fall of Luna and stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) was the catalyst for the last bear market.

    The collapse of the stablecoin occurred in mid-2022, ditching retail victims around the globe and affecting many companies, such as Three Arrows, Voyager, Celsius, Digital Currency Group and many others.

    Shortly after, the Republic of Korea authorities required Luna’s creator, Do Kwon, to explain what happened at Congress. The telephone rang, but the voicemail kicked in. Kwon was on the run to become the most wanted crypto fugitive in history.

    As in the film Catch Me If You Can, several different crime organizations followed his trial in what seemed an impossible feat to catch him. Finally, the run was over on the 23rd of March when the Minister of Interior of Montenegro announced the arrest of Do Kwon as he was allegedly using falsified travel documents.

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    Kwon had been able to dodge authorities from South Korea, Singapur, Dubai, Interpol and several national forces from the Balcan territories. The fate of the Terraform Labs co-founder is to remain this Christmas in a cell in Montenegro, waiting for his possible extradition to the United States or South Korea; both outcomes seem dim for the Korean.

    Cobie’s private encrypted tweet: the power of Crypto Twitter

    Cobie is a prominent pseudonymous figure on Crypto Twitter and the broader crypto sector. His podcast UpOnly has many epic moments in crypto, such as when entrepreneur Martin Shkreli told Kwon in live streaming, “Jail is not that bad.”

    Cobie connects with the sentiment of the crypto community; therefore, his tweets are heavily analyzed and influential.

    On one occasion, more than $50 million was lost in liquidation as Binance’s BNB and Bitcoin prices plunged momentarily. A mediatic storm was created from a tweet from Cobie with a hash prediction.

    A hash prediction is a message encrypted by SHA256 hash. The encryption should output an illegible string. Hashes are one-way functions that can be created but not reversed (without brute forcing). Therefore, this tool is perfect for proving a prediction made to the public without revealing the message. When the moment comes, the owner can decrypt it to show it to the public.

    Deleted tweet of Cobie’s Twitter account. Source: X

    Unfortunately for Cobie, somebody was able to crack the post and spread the word. The encrypted message was “Interpol Red Notice for C.Z.” C.Z. is the diminutive of Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance.

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    Hours later, former Chief Strategy Officer of Binance, Patrick Hillmann, reacted to the mediatic crisis by trying to calm the waters, although ultimately adding more fuel to the fire.

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    Hillmann offered two explanations for the decrypted message. The second option opened the door for an open case of law enforcement against Binance.

    Cobie eventually told the public what may have happened, resulting in him narrowing down his circle of trust:

    Cobie’s explanation on what may have happened. Source: X

    This particular case demonstrated the volatility and power of Crypto Twitter over the crypto market.

    Coinbase ready to confront SEC in court

    The SEC was determined to be considered the most influential entity in the crypto market of the year 2023.

    On the 6th of June, the SEC charged Coinbase for the unregistered sale of securities with its staking-as-a-service program. The SEC crusade against the U.S. crypto industry was on.

    Coinbase knew what was coming after receiving a Wells notice months before letting them know a possible enforcement action was looming around. Coinbase argued that they often asked for clear guidelines and rules in the American crypto market. Coinbase was prepared and replied in a 40-second clip with their point of view of the matter.

    Coinbase viral ad campaign. Source: YouTube

    The SEC may have expected an easy victory with a settlement like the Kraken case. Despite the high stakes of going to court, Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, decided to take the bull by the horns and fight the SEC charges in court.

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    Coinbase is the most regulated crypto company in the U.S. market as it is publicly traded in the open market with its stock COIN. Armstrong’s stance is essential for the company and the entire crypto industry.

    BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF: the catalyst for the new crypto bull market

    At the mid-pickle of 2023, the biggest bullish news was launched. The largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF.

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    Additionally, Coinbase was selected as the custodian of the ETF midst nine days prior to the ETF announcement the SEC had charged the exchange for its staking program and Coinbase accepted the fight in court.

    Screenshot of iShares Bitcoin Trust filing. Source: Eric Balchunas’ Twitter account

    BlackRock has a clean record regarding ETF proposals, with virtually 99,9% of them eventually being approved. The ETF success rate of BlackRock is 575 to 1. For the investors, when BlackRock presented its spot Bitcoin ETF to the SEC, it meant the question had changed from if to when a spot Bitcoin ETF would be approved.

    Retail and particularly institutional investors, who may have been hesitant to enter the crypto market directly due to compliance and regulatory impediments, could flood the crypto markets with new money. The effect would be an increase in demand, and thus, a rise in the price of Bitcoin.

    Gold price went on a 8-year bullrun after the gold ETF was approved. Source: Tommy Moustache

    Some even speculate that a similar effect occurred with gold when the first gold ETF was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, surging 250% on an 8-consecutive year bull run.

    SEC surrenders the Ripple case

    The SEC ignited 2020 a serious case against Ripple and its co-founder, Chris Larsen, and CEO, Brad Garlinghouse.

    The Ripple versus SEC case revolves around allegations that Ripple Labs conducted an unregistered securities offering by selling its XRP cryptocurrency. The Ripple case was paramount for the crypto market as if XRP was considered a security; many other tokens could be placed into the same basket.

    The case notoriously impacted Ripple and its native token. Garlinghouse was thrown temporally into the shadows and plunged the price of XRP, dethroning the legendary pole position of its currency in the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

    After almost two years of fighting, Ripple gained small victories until the 19th of October, when the SEC dismissed the case against Garlinghouse and Larsen. For Stuart Alderoty, Chief Legal Officer of Ripple, this was a clear surrender of the SEC.

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    The XRP army, as the non-sympathetic of Ripple, celebrated the latest win. It was perceived as a bullish event for the crypto markets. As per Ripple, the case had demonstrated that “XRP is not, in and of itself a security.”

    Sam Bankman-Fried is sentenced to 110 years in jail

    The awaited moment arrived on Nov. 3, when U.S. Attorney Damian Williams called Bankman-Fried’s crimes “a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto” and one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.

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    In 2022, SBF was considered one of the year’s most influential people. One year later, he is regarded as a white-collar criminal.

    Many celebrities, politicians, and investors fell into his spell using his effective altruistic philosophy and connections. SBF became the impersonator of the crypto hype. His marketing team and personal ego pushed him to place himself as the hero of the crypto industry.

    Sam Bankman-Fried’s Nas Daily deleted video. Source: YouTube

    The soap opera created by SBF’s uprise and downfall came to an end. Crypto needed to close this chapter once and for all to evolve. The crypto industry celebrated this closure as possibly the end of the looming ghosts from the bear market.

    BlackRock spot Ethereum ETF on the go

    Months after the BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF, the world’s largest fund filed its spot Ethereum ETF.

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    The BlackRock spot Ethereum ETF was in the queue with five other firms that filled the petition: VanEck, ARK 21Shares, Invesco, Grayscale and Hashdex.

    The price of ETH rose immediately after the news spread out. With the new proposal of BlackRock, the intentions of dominating the future spot in the ETF crypto arena are clear.

    Changpeng Zhao steps down from Binance

    One of the most surprising events of the year may be Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, stepping down from the company he built from the ground up. At the moment of his exit, Binance was the most dominant cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of volume activity.

    Binance and CZ faced strong accusations from several U.S. authorities of intentionally violating Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies with U.S. clients. The case was opened as, according to the regulator, Binance had failed to register as a securities exchange and operated illegally in the United States.

    After Binance checked the case, the big boom exploded. U.S. Justice Department settled with Binance to pay $4 billion in fines in exchange for being able to operate in the U.S. in a compliant manner. As part of the agreement, CZ would face the possibility of criminal charges as part of an investigation into “alleged money laundering, bank fraud and sanctions violations.”

    Cz announced he would take an extended break and announced Richard Teng as the new global CEO of Binance.

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    CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam said in December to CNBC that CZ will eventually end up in jail. Before, this option was challenging to fulfill as he lived in UAE, a country with no extradition deal with the USA. Now, this could happen as when he pleaded guilty, he had to enter the United States and a judge prohibited him from leaving the country.

    El Salvador Bitcoin investments turn green

    El Salvador has placed itself on the global map and the history of cryptocurrencies as the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The decision of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele shocked the world. The 9th of June 2021 will be marked forever as a milestone for any maximalist.

    Bukele announced the adoption of BTC as one of the national currencies in the latest months of the last bull market. Since then, the Latin American state has purchased Bitcoin with public funds.

    As the bear market kicked in, Bukele gained detractors in the national and international sphere for his irresponsible actions. Bad press and pressures from different organizations became the norm, whereas Bukele doubled down and said El Salvador would be buying one BTC per day.

    The winds began to shift in favor of Bukele’s plan. El Salvador dismissed insolvency rumors by paying off the investors holding the Eurobond due on Jan. 24, 2023, a total of $800 million plus interest. Bukele roared against legacy media as, in his opinion, they were prosecuting him for creating a false narrative.

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    After over two years, Bukele was finally served his most desired cold meal. In December 2023, El Salvador’s investment in Bitcoin not only recovered its original fiat value but was in profits.

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    2023 may have seemed like a bitter, sour year at times, but it has laid the groundwork for a bullish scenario for 2024. There’ll be many more influential tweets to follow up on.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 21:25

  • Putin Told Xi Russia 'Will Fight For Five Years' In Ukraine
    Putin Told Xi Russia ‘Will Fight For Five Years’ In Ukraine

    While it’s become abundantly clear that Ukraine’s situation is currently dire and that Russian forces are winning the war amid Kiev’s severe manpower and ammo shortage, this wasn’t quite as evident back in March, when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Moscow for rare talks as the war unfolded.

    A Wednesday report in Nikkei Asia has cited diplomatic sources who said Putin relayed to Xi something very interesting and unexpected in terms of a conflict timeline. According to them, Putin’s focus was to provide assurance to Xi that Russia would emerge victorious, with an aim to keep him at his side on the global stage. 

    Within that context, the diplomatic sources claim that Putin stated to Xi that Russia “will fight for [at least] five years” in Ukraine. Nikkei comments that the atmosphere was one where the tide of battle and the international pressure against Moscow was not seen as favorable to Russia and Putin’s war aims, and that this prompted Xi to hedge his bets, leading to instances like significant diplomatic overtures to the Zelensky government.

    Via AFP

    “The likely implication was that a protracted war would favor China’s well-armed partner,” Nikkei observes of the newly revealed content of the two leaders’ dialogue on the war. “Taken another way, the remark was also a warning to Xi not to change his pro-Russia stance.”

    The publication concludes of the lasting impact of Putin’s words, linking them to some of Xi’s internal house-cleaning of late:

    Whether Xi was convinced, Putin’s remark at the summit holds the key to understanding a series of mysterious developments in Russia-China relations, from a Chinese peace mission to Europe in May to China sacking its foreign minister months later.

    Nikkei observes further, “If the war between Russia and Ukraine grows more prolonged, it would significantly impact plans and ambitions Xi has for his unprecedented third term as China’s president and Chinese Communist Party general secretary.” Chiefly, “Xi’s big goal of unifying Taiwan with mainland China could also be affected.”

    It remains that in a scenario of a prolonged Russia-Ukraine war, and assuming Beijing’s support of Moscow stays consistent, this would bring more pressure than ever from Western countries, potentially leaving Xi almost as isolated as Putin. But given Moscow is emerging with the clear upper-hand, and with strong rumors that the West is quietly pushing Zelensky toward the negotiating table, Xi has indeed stuck by the ‘winning side’ of the conflict.

    Recently, The New York Times has said that Putin is looking to wind down the ‘special operation’ by negotiating a favorable end to the conflict (which no doubt means recognition of permanent Russian possession of the four territories, as well as Ukrainian recognition of Crimea as under Moscow). And now days later, this “five years” quote has emerged, adding to the ongoing speculation over the Russian leader’s near and far-term plans regarding his troops’ presence in Ukraine.

    From the archives: 2017 in Astana…

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    Realistically, the annexed oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia will have to stay militarized likely for years to come. It’s easy to imagine a scenario of Russian forces staying in these regions for at least a half-decade, ensuring that Russian suzerainty is permanently secured over Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 21:00

  • The Fear Factor And Winning The Independent Voter
    The Fear Factor And Winning The Independent Voter

    Authored by Adam Brandon via RealClear Wire,

    Voter trust and fear over the 2024 election are driving unprecedented interest in independent voters. The candidate who can address these fears, whether that candidate is Biden or Trump, will go on to win. With only a handful of states up for grabs, they need the independent vote.

    Winning independent voters is going to be a challenge. What’s more worrying for America is that a majority of Pennsylvania and Arizona “first-time voters” (voters aged 18-24) are ‘scared’ for the well-being of our country if either Trump or Biden is elected. But they see bipartisanship, or a politician who works across both sides of the aisle, as the only option that gives them some promise of security.

    In a recent Bullfinch poll conducted in two of the likely 2024 battleground states, 54% of voters from Arizona and 52% from Pennsylvania felt their best representative would be a politician who works with both sides of the aisle. In fact, the data shows that in a toss-up state like Pennsylvania, 51% of self-identified Democrats and 45% of self-identified Republicans prefer a candidate that works with both sides of the aisle over a candidate that works and votes only with their party.

    The problem these voters have is one of trust. There is little indication that either the Democrats or Republicans can convince independent voters they can be trusted.

    In Arizona, 66% of Democrats, 22% of independents, and 6% of Republicans trust that Joe Biden and the Biden administration would address the key issues that matter most to the respondent and their neighbors.

    In Pennsylvania, 70% of Democrats, 31% of independents, and just 9% of Republicans trust Biden and his administration to address key issues that matter most to them and their neighbors.

    Independent voters nationwide, like most voters, don’t feel anyone is listening to them, further eroding their trust. They feel the issues they care most about are not being addressed. They believe that the country has never been in a worse position than it is today. In a recent survey by the Independent Center, 66% feel their representative in Washington, D.C., is not listening to their voice and concerns, yet 49% believe a non-aligned independent representative would more clearly represent them.

    With this as the backdrop to the 2024 presidential election, it’s hard to imagine how anything good can come from the contest.

    All of this attention on the independent voter is positive. Never before have so many voters indicated they want another option, a better option. Recent polling from a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey shows Robert Kennedy Jr. with the highest favorability rating of all 2024 presidential candidates. This is also represented by the emergence of Nikki Haley, who is attracting and winning independent interest. Independent voters are hungry for choices and interested in hearing what they say.

    This is what needs to happen. After partisan gamesmanship, gerrymandering, and policy positions that purposely seek to divide Americans against each other, we might finally be turning the corner. This means a focus on bipartisan compromise, a position that can win the independent voter, especially in the swing states.

    To win the swing states and their deep pool of independent voters, it’s going to be a contest of which party and which candidate demonstrates they understand the issues independent voters care about. This is the key to regaining trust, but it is no easy feat.

    Refusing to acknowledge the issues and their importance to the independent voter is the first problem. Pretending we don’t have an immigration problem is not going to work, nor is denying the need to restructure Social Security before it goes bankrupt.

    Everyone is talking about independent voters, but not many have taken a deep dive to understand who they are and what they believe.

    They are as diverse as our country. They care about immigration and social reform, government and debt, inflation, and education. The research is clear: They care personally about jobs and social reform, but their position on abortion will determine their vote. This will make it hard for Republicans in the current environment. However, when asked, the issue they want to see their local candidates focus on most is affordability, a traditional Republican strength.

    Both Democrats and Republicans can find opportunities – these voters aren’t exactly radical. These voters want innovative common sense policies. They want others to tolerate their differences while finding common ground to move ahead. They want policies and positions that offer choices so they can exercise their free will to make a difference on issues by choosing what paths are best for themselves, their families, and their communities. They don’t want to be told there is only one way to address climate change, reform healthcare, or government services. They are rejecting the extremism of both parties.

    The candidate who wants to win independent voters needs to start listening. Conquering fear is going to mean change and is going to require some brave positions from both parties. The candidate who shows they are up for the challenge of rejecting extremism, reaching across the aisle, and having adult conversations with these voters can win.

    Adam Brandon is President of FreedomWorks. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 20:35

  • The Worst 'Candyflation' Is Yet To Come As Cocoa Prices Near Record
    The Worst ‘Candyflation’ Is Yet To Come As Cocoa Prices Near Record

    Cocoa prices Wednesday hit $4,285 per ton in New York, the highest level since 1978, as the outlook of poor crop harvests across West Africa has been a major bullish factor pushing prices higher this year. There is also an increasing risk that El Nino-induced weather disturbances could cause the global cocoa market to sink into a deficit for the third year.

    Bloomberg reports the world’s largest chocolate makers, Hershey Co. and Nestle SA, have yet to feel the full impacts of soaring prices because cocoa is bought well in advance. This only means consumers will see a further increase in the prices of their favorite candy bars in 2024. 

    “It’s the most extraordinary situation I’ve seen in my career,” said Jonathan Parkman, the head of agricultural sales at Marex Group, warning, “I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of the situation for consumers.”

    According to consumer researcher Euromonitor International, chocolate prices have risen 17% in the US over the last two years. Prices are expected to continue trending higher as cocoa production in West Africa – accounting for most of the world’s supply – remains extraordinarily tight. 

    “The market does not seem convinced that production will recover enough to avoid a supply deficit for 2023/24,” ADM Investor Services Inc. analysts wrote in a recent note. 

    Luca Zaramella, chief financial officer at Oreo cookies maker Mondelez International Inc., warned last month during an investor call:

    “There is pressure on cocoa.”

    Analysts warn El Nino-induced weather disturbances could bring drier weather to top-growing regions. They say that could result in a third year of deficits. 

    “The expectation of a supply deficit has been compounded with weather variations, especially in West Africa,” the International Cocoa Organization said in a recent report. 

    In June, we told readers: Global Cocoa Shortage Sends Prices Soaring As “Consumers Should Brace” For ‘Chocolateflation’… Fast forward to Halloween, ‘candyflation‘ strikes: 

    Data from retail price tracking website Datasembly reveals consumers have been slapped with the second year of double-digit inflation in the candy aisle. Prices for candy jumped 13% this month compared to prices last October. That’s up from a 14% increase in candy in October 2022. 

    Also, the price of butter, which accounts for 20% of the weight of an average chocolate, has soared, according to KnowledgeCharts, a unit of Commodities Risk Analysis. The entire process, from shipping to processing, has seen increased prices over the last few years, indicating that candyflation will be sticky. 

    “Product prices — liquor and butter — are off the charts, so it’s only now feeding to consumers,” Parkman said.

    It appears global central banks are powerless over El Nino-induced food inflation. Higher prices may be the only cure for Hershey’s Kiss and Crunch bar inflation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 20:10

  • China And India Account For More Than 90% Of Russian Oil And Fuel Exports
    China And India Account For More Than 90% Of Russian Oil And Fuel Exports

    By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com

    China took in half of all the crude oil that Russia exported this year, with India a close second, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said today on state TV.

    China now accounts for 45% to 50% of Russian oil and fuel exports, while India is taking in some 40%, Novak said. The increase is particularly remarkable for India, where Russia exported almost no oil whatsoever until 2022. Now, it is the subcontinent’s leading supplier.

    “If earlier we exported around 40-45% of our total crude oil and refined products to Europe, by the end of this year we expect this share to have fallen to 4-5%,” Novak said.

    The figures suggest that China has essentially replaced Europe as destination for Russian crude and oil products.

    Last week, another Deputy PM said that Russia’s oil exports are seen rising 7% this year from 2021 levels.

    “The most pressing problems last year have generally been resolved. This firstly concerns payments and cargo insurance, [and] secondly concerns ensuring seaborne shipping of hydrocarbons by tanker fleet,” Alexander Belousov said.

    Also last week, Transneft’s head, Nikolay Tokarev, reported that the volume of Russian oil shipments to China this year had surged to some 100 million tons, equal to about 2 million barrels daily.

    “Export volumes to China and India have increased significantly; many times over. I can say that about 70 million tonnes of oil were supplied to India this year, while about 100 million tonnes of oil went to China,” Tokarev said.

    Indian imports of Russian crude, meanwhile, hit a four-month high in November, at 1.6 million bpd, according to data Reuters reported it had obtained from trade sources. The November imports were 3.1% higher than India’s intake of Russian crude in October and accounted for more than a third of all Indian crude oil imports last month. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 19:45

  • The Cost Of Grain That Feeds The World Hits New 15-Year High
    The Cost Of Grain That Feeds The World Hits New 15-Year High

    On Wednesday, the Thai Rice Exporters Association revealed that the price of Thai white rice 5% broken, a key Asian benchmark, reached a new 15-year high. This surge is mainly attributed to increasing fears of a global shortage due to the damaging effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon on Asian farmlands and India’s recent decision to restrict certain rice exports.

    Thai white rice 5% broken hit $659 a ton, the highest level since October 2008. Prices of the staple food that feeds billions of people worldwide are up over 50% since the start of 2022. 

    Chief Asia Economist at HSBC Global Research, Frederic Neumann, recently told clients that skyrocketing rice prices present hurdles for central banks combating high inflation. He drew parallels between the current surge in food prices and the one that rocked the world in 2008, noting that shortage fears are rising for the staple food that feeds billions of people.

    “The memory of the 2008 Asian food price scare sits deep,” Neumann wrote. 

    He said, “Back then, rising rice prices in some economies quickly spilled over into other markets as consumers and governments across the region scrambled to secure supplies. It also lifted the prices of other staples, such as wheat, as buyers shifted to alternatives.”

    Last month, Sara Menker, founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, told Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore that the current food crisis surpassed the one in 2007-08, which ultimately sparked the Arab Spring across the Middle East a few years later. 

    Menker said elevated crop prices and steep declines in local currencies against the dollar have severely pressured households of emerging market economies. 

    And remember, SocGen’s Albert Edwards warned in late 2020 that central banks’ money printing during Covid would spark a rise in food prices and the usual social-economic instabilities. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 19:20

  • Vivek Ramaswamy's Campaign Halts 'Idiotic' TV Ad Spending Ahead Of Iowa Caucuses, New Hampshire Primary
    Vivek Ramaswamy’s Campaign Halts ‘Idiotic’ TV Ad Spending Ahead Of Iowa Caucuses, New Hampshire Primary

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

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign has stopped spending money on “idiotic” television advertisements with just weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, according to a campaign representative.

    Republican presidential candidate businessman Vivek Ramaswamy arrives for a campaign event at the AmericInn in Webster City, Iowa, on Dec. 19, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that the biotech entrepreneur had stopped purchasing standard broadcast TV ads—which typically make up the majority of political advertising spending in the United States—and does not have any booked for the immediate or distant future.

    Instead, his campaign is focusing on a different strategy with less than a month to go before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary, the spokesperson said.

    “We are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified—best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls, and doors to communicate with our voters on Vivek’s vision for America, making their plan to caucus and turning them out,” Tricia McLaughlin, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign’s press secretary told the broadcast television network.

    “As you know, this isn’t what most campaigns look like. We have intentionally structured this way so that we have the ability to be nimble and hyper-targeted in our ad spending,” Ms. McLaughlin added.

    Separately, Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that presidential TV ad spending is “idiotic,” comes with a low return on investment, and is a “trick that political consultants use to bamboozle candidates who suffer from low IQ.”

    “We’re doing it differently. Spending $$ in a way that follows data…apparently a crazy idea in US politics,” the GOP presidential candidate wrote.

    “Big surprise coming on Jan 15,” he concluded.

    $12 Million Plans

    As recently as November, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign said it planned to spend more than $12 million on ads, including broadcast, cable, radio, digital, and direct mail, in Iowa and New Hampshire.

    Since that announcement, the campaign has spent $2.2 million on TV, digital, and radio ads, NBC News reported, citing figures from the political ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

    As recently as the first whole week of December, his campaign spent more than $200,000 on TV ads before slashing such spending down to just $6,000, according to NBC News.

    Despite the slow-down in TV ad spending, Mr. Ramaswamy appears to remain hopeful going into the Iowa caucus, telling Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” on Dec. 24 that he is “actually confident we’re going to overdeliver massively at the Iowa caucus.”

    “Many of the people supporting us are first-time caucus-goers, some of them young people, some of them America-first patriots or libertarians who haven’t thought of themselves as traditional Republicans who are coming out in droves,” he said. “I think we’re going to have a major surprise on January 15.“

    A week earlier, he also told NBC News during a campaign event in Windham, New Hampshire, that he believes “if the election was held amongst the subset of people who go to events, I think we’d probably win Iowa, New Hampshire right now.”

    Trails Trump in Polls

    Yet while the 38-year-old remains optimistic about the upcoming Iowa caucus, multiple polls show former President Donald Trump still maintains a significant lead over all of his rivals.

    According to the RealClearPolitics average of Republican Primary poll, President Trump maintains a dominating lead, at 62.5 percent followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 11.3 percent and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 11 percent.

    Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, trails behind in fourth place with just 4 percent, according to the poll.

    He also recently placed fourth in the latest Emerson College poll in Iowa, which shows President Trump leading the way with 50 percent support among Republican caucus voters.

    The decision by Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign to pull TV ad spending ahead of the first contests in January also comes amid speculation that he may drop out of the competition and endorse President Trump.

    However, the entrepreneur appeared to put an end to that speculation this week, telling Fox News that he is “not a plan B person” and does not intend to be President Trump’s running mate for 2024.

    “I respect Trump and his accomplishments for this country,” he said. “Unlike a lot of the other candidates, I’m not sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking some decision he made.”

    “But I believe we are the right people to take our America-first agenda to the next level,” he said. “I think it’s going to take somebody with fresh legs. Somebody from the next generation, if I may say it, to lead the next generation.”

    Frank Fang contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 18:55

  • Xi Vows "Any Means" To Stop Taiwan Seceding From China, Weeks Before Major Election
    Xi Vows “Any Means” To Stop Taiwan Seceding From China, Weeks Before Major Election

    Taiwan is just over two weeks away from key elections, something increasingly attracting global media attention given fresh threats from Beijing. On Wednesday China warned of further trade sanctions on Taiwan in the event the ruling party “stubbornly” commits to supporting independence. 

    Spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Chen Binhua has addressed a message to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), saying “If the DPP authorities are determined to persevere, continue to stubbornly adhere to their Taiwan independence position, and refuse to repent, we support the relevant departments taking further measures in accordance with the regulations.”

    Via AP

    Presidential and parliamentary elections will take place on Jan.13, but Beijing has warned that the self-ruled island’s reunification is inevitable. 

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Tuesday issued some his strongest words on the issue thus far, vowing to use “any means” to prevent anyone from “making Taiwan secede from China.”

    He issued the words in a speech marking the 130th anniversary of the PRC founder Mao Zedong’s birth. He also stressed the necessity of maintaining the “one country, two systems” policy in Hong Kong and Macau while emphasizing the need for a central government to exercise “overall jurisdiction”.

    He said of Taiwan that “China’s complete reunification is an inevitable trend” and that reunification is “what the people desire.” He further urged that the Chinese Communist Party must set its sights of a grander policy of “resolving the Taiwan question in the new era.”

    China’s official position has been that it always seeks first reunification through peaceful and political means, and again called for “advance integrated development in all fields” across the strait bases on peaceful development of cross-strait ties.

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

    But that’s when Xi pledged to ‘resolutely’ prevent any movement or outside force from “making Taiwan secede from China by any means.” Of course, China sees Washington as the biggest instigator in the region, particularly through high level visits of US officials and repeat arms transfers involving advanced weapons systems.

    * * *

    Among Foreign Policy’s 5 Predictions for China in 2024, there is the below analysis of an expected “Taiwan Mini-crisis” sparked by the upcoming election [emphasis ZH]…

    “Taiwan holds a presidential election on Jan. 13, and the year could start with a small crisis in the straits. Current Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te, who serves under President Tsai Ing-wen and is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), holds a narrow lead in the polls. His election would ire Beijing; he is an advocate for a more independent Taiwan and strongly opposed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Although Lai has said he won’t call for formal Taiwanese independence or drop the Republic of China name—a red line for Beijing—he has also said that Taiwan’s sovereignty is “a fact” and reminded his fellow candidates that by Beijing’s standards, they are all pro-independence.

    A Lai victory would likely prompt aggressive moves from Beijing, including naval maneuvers and airspace intrusions. Reports last week about comments made by Xi  to U.S. President Joe Biden about reunification with Taiwan when they met in November stirred some panic in Washington, but an invasion remains highly unlikely. It would be risky and difficult, especially when China is struggling with other crises.

    Even a victory for Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT) on Jan. 13 may cause some problems. The KMT is more pro-China than the DPP, but it would hardly hand the keys to the island over to Beijing. Chinese officials might overestimate the significance of a KMT election win, seeing it as a sign of China’s influence in Taiwan. Although 17 percent of Taiwanese voters said in a recent survey that China is their main concern, more than twice that number picked the economy.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 18:30

  • The 9 Senate Races To Watch In 2024
    The 9 Senate Races To Watch In 2024

    Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Next year’s competition for control of the U.S. Senate will be a critical battle as Democrats defend more seats than Republicans.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    The Democrats currently control the upper chamber by the slimmest of margins, 51–49.

    Whoever wins the Senate will control the legislation before the floor, as well as accept or reject judicial and executive nominees, who help shape policy.

    Democrat strategist Mark Mellman predicts the Democrats could keep the Senate if the GOP puts up the same candidates that lost in crucial races in 2022. But, he told The Epoch Times, things are up in the air until the primaries are over.

    The following are the nine crucial races that could determine who will take control of the Senate come Jan. 3, 2025.

    1. Arizona

    In this swing state, it could ultimately be a three-way race between incumbent independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat Rep. Reuben Gallego, and former journalist and 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

    Other Republicans in the primary include Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, business consultant George Nicholson, and mechanical engineer Brian Wright.

    President Joe Biden won The Grand Canyon state by just 0.3 percentage points in the 2020 election.

    Ms. Lake is dominating the GOP primary, according to polling averages by RealClearPolitics.

    However, most polls show both Ms. Lake and Mr. Lamb losing out in the general election to Mr. Gallego—who has been in the House since 2015. Ms. Sinema, the incumbent, is polling below 20 percent. The former Democrat switched her affiliation to independent in December 2022.

    “I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington and formally registering as an Arizona Independent,” Ms. Sinema stated in a post on Twitter at the time.

    (L–R) Sen. Krysten Sinema from Arizona, who changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent, in a hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington in 2022; Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.,) holds a press conference in Tempe, Ariz., on March 14, 2023; and former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake speaks at an event in Maryland on March 4, 2023. (Bonnie Cash-Pool/Getty Images, Rebecca Noble/AFP via Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    2. Ohio

    While Republicans have won Ohio in the past three of five presidential elections, incumbent Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown won re-election in 2018, at the same time the GOP expanded its majority in the Senate.

    Mr. Brown, who is known to be a blue-collar Democrat, is running for re-election, setting up a potentially tight race. He has been in the Senate since 2007.

    Republicans who have declared a run include Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, state senator Matt Dolan, and former car dealership owner and 2022 Senate candidate Bernie Moreno.

    Mr. Moreno has been endorsed by Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah), while Mr. Dolan has been endorsed by Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy Haslam and his wife, Dee.

    On his Truth Social platform on Dec. 19, former President Donald Trump endorsed Mr. Moreno, saying “a successful political outsider like Bernie” is needed to beat Mr. Brown.

    Despite Mr. LaRose’s lack of major endorsements, he is leading in the GOP primary, according to current polling averages by RealClearPolitics.

    President Trump won the Buckeye State by about 8 percentage points in 2020, roughly the same as his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton.

    Most polls show Mr. Brown leading in a general election matchup, according to FiveThirtyEight.

    (L–R) Ohio State Sen. Matt Dolan, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks with a local television station in Cleveland on April 28, 2022; entrepreneur Bernie Moreno kicks off his campaign in suburban Cincinnati on April 18, 2023; and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose attends a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Courtesy of Everitt Townsend)

    3. Pennsylvania

    Incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Casey is running for re-election, but could face a tough race against David McCormick, who is the only Republican that has declared.

    Mr. McCormick has garnered endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mt.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the fundraising arm of the Senate GOP.

    Mr. McCormick narrowly lost the 2022 GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania to Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor that went on to lose the general election to Sen. John Fetterman, a progressive Democrat.

    President Biden won the Keystone State by 1.17 percentage points in 2020.

    Early polls show Mr. Casey leading Mr. McCormick in a general election matchup.

    (L–R) Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) at campaign rally in Philadelphia on Sept, 21, 2018; and Dave McCormick, Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate, during an event in Pittsburgh on May 17, 2022. (Mark Makela/Getty Images, Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

    4. Montana

    This red state could be a Republican pickup as the expected nominee, retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, could unseat incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Tester. 

    Mr. Tester won re-election in 2018 by 3.55 percentage points against now-Rep. Matt Rosendale, a Republican, who has also expressed a possible run.

    President Trump easily won the Treasure State in 2020 with close to 57 percent of the vote.

    There has only been one poll conducted for this race in the past few months, from Emerson, which showed Mr. Tester leading Mr. Sheehy by 4 percentage points.

    Tim Sheehy, former Navy SEAL and 2024 Republican Senate candidate, in Montana; and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) at a press conference in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Courtesy of Tim Sheehy, Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    5. Nevada

    Democrat Sen. Jacky Rosen is running for re-election in a state President Biden won in 2020 by just 2.39 percentage points.

    Republicans who have jumped into the primary so far include Army veteran Sam Brown, who suffered burns to his face from a roadside bomb during his service in Afghanistan in 2008; and former state assemblyman Jim Marchant, who unsuccessfully ran for secretary of state in 2022 and Congress in 2020.

    Mr. Brown has received endorsements from Sen. John Thune from South Dakota, as well as Americans for Prosperity, the largest conservative grassroots organization in the United States.

    President Biden narrowly won the Silver State by just under 2.4 percentage points in 2020 whereas President Trump lost it by almost that much in the 2016 race.

    The most recent poll, commissioned by the NRSC, shows Mr. Brown trailing Ms. Rosen in a general election head-to-head by 5 percentage points.

    (L–R) Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 10, 2021; Republican Army veteran Sam Brown is running for the U.S. Senate in Nevada; and Jim Marchant, Republican candidate for Nevada secretary of state, in Henderson, Nev., on Nov. 6, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images, Public domain)
     

    6. West Virginia

    With Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin not running for re-election, it is likely the Mountain State will flip to the GOP.

    Gov. Jim Justice is the early favorite and likely winner, with big endorsements coming in from President Trump and Mr. McConnell.

    Mr. Justice does, however, face a handful of other candidates in the primary, most notably Rep. Alex Mooney.

    The only Democrat in the race at the moment is U.S. Marine Corps veteran and political organizer Zachary Shrewsbury.

    President Trump overwhelmingly won the state in 2020 with almost 69 percent of the vote.

    There have been no polls conducted since Mr. Manchin announced in November he will not seek a third term, but he has floated the idea of an independent run for president.

    West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announces that he is switching parties to become a Republican as President Donald Trump looks on at a campaign rally in Huntington, W.V., on Aug. 3, 2017. (Justin Merriman/Getty Images)

    7. Michigan

    Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow is running for re-election, but she’s up against Rep. Elissa Slotkin in the primary, who is winning in any matchup against the GOP candidates, according to the latest polling averages from FiveThirtyEight. Actor Hill Harper is also in the Democrat primary.

    The race is still considered a likely tossup as the GOP field includes former Reps. Mike Rogers and Peter Meijer, as well as former Detroit Police Chief James Craig.

    President Biden won the Wolverine State by 2.78 percentage points in 2020.

    Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) speaks to Michigan State University students and their supporters after a campus shooting, during a rally outside of the state Capitol Building in Lansing, Mich., on Feb. 15, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    8. Wisconsin

    Incumbent Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin is running for re-election, after winning her second term in 2018 by almost 11 percentage points.

    Republicans who have entered the race include county supervisor Stacey Klein; Rejani Raveendran, a 40-year old college student who is the president of her university Republicans chapter; and retired Army Reserve Sgt. Maj. Patrick Schaefer-Wicke.

    Notable Republicans—including former Gov. Scott Walker, Reps. Mike Gallagher, Tom Tiffany, and Bryan Steil—have declined to throw their hat into the ring.

    President Biden narrowly won the Badger State by 0.63 percentage points, or 20,682 votes, in 2020.

    No up-to-date polls about the race have been published, but it’s looking like a tough hill to climb for Republicans.

    Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Nov. 29, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    9. New Jersey

    This race is more about which Democrat will win the seat if embattled incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez can’t hold onto it.

    Mr. Menendez, who has been in the Senate since 2007 and in Congress since 1993, is facing federal corruption-related charges.

    He faces big primary challengers in Democrats Tammy Murphy, wife of Gov. Phil Murphy, and Rep. Andy Kim.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 18:05

  • Doug Casey On What Really Happened In 2023 And What Comes Next
    Doug Casey On What Really Happened In 2023 And What Comes Next

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: As we approach the end of the year, let’s take a step back, look at the Big Picture, and put 2023 into perspective so we can better understand what may come next.

    Significant financial, economic, political, cultural, and geopolitical developments occurred in 2023.

    On the cultural front, 2023 may be the year that the tide started to shift against the woke insanity.

    BlackRock’s Fink dropped ESG. Woke movies continue to bomb at theaters. Bud Light, Target, and Disney continue to feel the pain of deliberately alienating their customer base.

    What’s your take on the cultural developments in 2023?

    Doug Casey: There are always reactions to major trends. These things are worth noting, but considering the virulence of the woke movement, the reaction has been tepid. There’s always a rearguard fighting for things as they are. And that’s wonderful because the Wokesters want to overturn the entire culture much the same way as the Jacobins overturned it in revolutionary France, the Bolsheviks overturned the culture in Russia, the Red Guards in China, or Pol Pot did in Cambodia.

    The Wokesters are potentially just as dangerous because their way of thinking is everywhere in the West.

    They’re similar to the movements I’ve just mentioned in that they’re stridently against free speech, free thought, free markets, tradition, and limited government—nothing new there. But they’ve weaponized gender and race as well. They’re virulent, humorless, and puritanical. They see themselves as the wave of the future, but they’ve only repackaged the notions of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler.

    My view is that the Wokesters hate humanity and hate themselves. They’re dishonest, arrogant, and entitled. Look at the current scandal involving the diversity-hire presidents at Harvard, Penn, and MIT. They’re shameful embarrassments. The fact their boards of trustees installed these fools shows how deep the rot goes.

    The Woke have ingrained psychological/spiritual aberrations.

    They don’t just control academia, finance, entertainment, and the media. They also dominate the State’s apparatus. Which means they basically have the law on their side.

    Perhaps ESG is being de-emphasized by Blackrock, the new vampire squid, but that’s only because they fear losing money more than they value their beliefs. The more pernicious DEI remains a major cultural trend.

    Where will it end?

    Wokism is more than a passing fad. There’s a good chance it will end with a violent confrontation between people who have culturally conservative views and those who want to destroy Western Civilization and upset the nature of society as we know it.

    International Man: 2023 was a year of major geopolitical developments.

    It became evident to even the mainstream media that the war in the Ukraine was not going well for NATO.

    There was also the Hamas attack and the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

    Azerbaijan defeated Armenia to reclaim a long-disputed territory.

    Saudi Arabia welcomed Syria back into the Arab League, ended the war in Yemen, restored diplomatic relations with Iran, joined the BRICS countries, and expanded its economic ties with China.

    These are just a few of the most prominent geopolitical events of 2023.

    What do you make of the geopolitical situation and where things are heading?

    Doug Casey: The end of US hegemony over the world in all areas is becoming obvious. The world resents being bullied and controlled by Washington, DC.

    They realize that the US government is bankrupt and is living entirely on printed money. Its military is bloated and more expensive than the US can afford.

    While it’s bloated, it’s also being gutted, unable to recruit new soldiers and sailors. It’s easy to see why that’s the case. They see pointless wars fomented everywhere. The type of people who traditionally join the military are disgusted by the woke memes circulating through the services. White males, who have always been the backbone of the military, are appalled at being actively discriminated against.

    US hegemony is ending financially, economically, and militarily.

    It’s obvious when you see that Biden and Harris, two utterly incompetent, ineffectual fools, are the nominal heads of the government. Not to mention all the degraded and psychologically damaged people in the cabinet. Of course, nobody has any respect for the US anymore.

    The US hegemony of the last hundred years is on its way out. And as the old order changes, there are going to be upsets. The US will leave a vacuum that will be filled by other forces.

    In fact, the US Government is the biggest danger to the world today. It’s not providing order. By sticking its nose into everyone else’s business everywhere, it’s promoting chaos. Its 800+ bases around the world are provocations. The carrier groups that it has wandering around are sitting ducks with today’s technology. The US is the main source of risk in the world, not safety.

    US military spending is really just corporate welfare for the five big “defense” corporations, which build weapons suited for fighting the last war or maybe the war before the last war. For instance, a missile frigate or destroyer guarding a carrier might carry 100 vertically-launched anti-aircraft missiles at $2 million each. Each missile might succeed in shooting down a $10,000 drone. But what happens when the enemy launches 200 drones at once? The chances are the US loses a $2 billion destroyer, if not a carrier.

    The US government is finding that they’re not only disliked but disrespected by countries and people all over the world. They’re increasingly viewed as a paper tiger. Or the Wizard of Oz. When they lose the fear factor, it’s game over.

    International Man: In 2023, the US continued the trend of more political polarization.

    What were the most consequential events on the US political front, and what do you think comes next?

    Doug Casey: Let me reemphasize that the Jacobins who control Washington, DC, have the same psychological makeup as past revolutionaries I’ve mentioned.

    These people are incapable of changing their minds or reforming. I think they’ll do absolutely anything they can to retain power.

    Meanwhile, traditional Americans in red states see that Trump is being railroaded with lawfare to derail his campaign. They’re angrier than ever, justifiably. The red people and the blue people really hate each other at this point—and can’t talk to each other.

    The country has been completely demoralized as traditional values have been washed away. It’s now very unstable.

    The coming election, should we actually have one, will be not just a political but a cultural contest. Culture wars are especially dangerous in the midst of a financial collapse and economic collapse.

    International Man: The projected annual interest expense on the federal debt hit $1 trillion for the first time in 2023.

    Americans are still paying for the rampant currency debasement during the Covid hysteria as the price of groceries, insurance, rent, and most other things continued to rise in 2023.

    It looks like a recession is on the horizon.

    What are your thoughts on economic developments in 2023 and your outlook for the months ahead?

    Doug Casey: As an amateur student of history, it seems to me that the US has been moving away from the founding principles that made it unique for over a hundred years. I’m 77. I’ve watched it happen firsthand for much of that time.

    The trend has been accelerating.

    The country is heading towards a massive crisis because it’s lost its philosophical footing. The result is going to be a really serious depression. I call it the Greater Depression.

    The spread between the haves who live in multi-million dollar houses and the have-nots who live in tents isn’t new. After all, Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” What’s new is that the middle class is being impoverished. What’s left of the middle class is deeply in debt—student debt, credit card debt, car loan debt, mortgage debt. And if they’re not lucky enough to have a house with mortgage debt, they’re renting. And rents have gone up so rapidly that if the average guy has an unforeseen $500 expense, he can’t pay it.

    That augurs poorly for consumption. It’s said, idiotically, that the American economy rests on consumption. It’s idiotic because it should be said that it rests on production. But I’m not sure the US produces that much anymore.

    Most of the people who “work” basically sit at desks and shuffle papers. Few actively create real wealth.

    On top of that, the country is vastly over-financialized.

    The bond market has already largely collapsed, but it can get a lot worse as interest rates head back up to the levels that they were in the early 1980s and beyond.

    Much lower stock prices are in the cards, both because of high interest rates and because people won’t be consuming such massive quantities of corporate produce.

    The real estate market rests on a foundation of debt. It can easily go bust as interest rates go up. We’re already seeing this with office buildings across the country. And, of course, these office buildings are financed by banks. Banks are going to see a lot of defaults on loans they’ve made.

    Meanwhile, bank capital invested in bonds has eroded because bond prices fall in proportion to the degree rise in interest rates, which have gone from close to zero to 5% or 6%. If banks had to mark their loans and capital investments to the market, most would already be bankrupt.

    Can the government paper all these things over by printing yet more money? I suppose.

    But at some point very soon, the dollar will lose value very rapidly; it will be treated like a hot potato. They’re caught between a rock and a hard place.

    International Man: This year, we saw the price of gold hit a record high, uranium reached $81.25 per pound, and Bitcoin more than doubled as it entered a new bull market. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is up around 21% year to date as of writing.

    What are your thoughts on what happened in the financial markets in 2023 and what could come next?

    Doug Casey: Unfortunately, the US central bank, the Fed, has a gigantic amount of influence over the markets.

    They can employ “quantitative easing,” which means printing money—and “quantitative tightening,” which means decreasing the money and artificially raising interest rates.

    They have many hundreds of Ph.D. economists on staff, but all these people operate on phony Keynesian theories of the way the world works. The consequences of building an economic system on a foundation of paper money and gigantic amounts of debt are potentially catastrophic.

    At this point, the economy’s on the razor edge. If they push the print button and hold it down too long, we could go into a runaway inflation. Or, to tamp down inflation, they might raise interest rates and contract the money supply, which might set off a 1929-style credit collapse.

    We’re caught between Scylla and Charybdis at this point. And I don’t believe it’s a question of a soft landing or a hard landing. It’s a question of how devastating the crash landing will be.

    I hope they can wring one more cycle out of all this because I personally prefer good times to bad times, even if they’re artificial good times, because the bad times are going to be very real.

    *  *  *

    Doug Casey’s forecasts helped investors prepare and profit from: 1) the S&L blowup in the ’80s and ’90s, 2) the 2001 tech stock collapse, 3) the 2008 financial crisis, 4) and now… Doug’s sounding the alarms about a catastrophic event. One he believes could soon strike. To help you prepare and profit, Doug and his team have prepared a special video. Click here to watch now.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 17:25

  • House Republicans Zero In On 'Impeachable Offense' If Biden Was Involved In Hunter Subpoena Dodge
    House Republicans Zero In On ‘Impeachable Offense’ If Biden Was Involved In Hunter Subpoena Dodge

    House Republicans are investigating whether President Biden was involved in his son Hunter’s “scheme” to duck out on a Congressional subpoena to testify earlier this month, which they say “could constitute an impeachable offense.”

    Three House committees; Oversight, Judiciary and Ways & Means, announced on Wednesday that they are investigating “whether sufficient grounds exist to draft articles of impeachment against President Biden for consideration by the full House,” Fox News reports.

    In a letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel notifying him of the additional area of their investigations, Comer and Jordan said: “In light of an official statement from the White House that President Biden was aware in advance that his son, Hunter Biden, would knowingly defy two congressional subpoenas, we are compelled to examine as part of our impeachment inquiry whether the President engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding of Congress.”

    Hunter Biden was scheduled to appear on Dec. 13 before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, and instead, held an impromptu press conference on Capitol Hill, where he claimed: “My father was not financially involved ion my business. Not as a practicing lawyer. Not as a board member of Burisma. Not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman. Not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist.”

    Hunter instead said that he would “only testify in a public forum, a demand for special treatment that the Committees had previously rejected.”

    “Although Mr. Biden professed an interest in answering questions about his actions, he departed the Capitol grounds without taking any questions. The committees subsequently recorded Mr. Biden’s non-appearance at his deposition,” they continued.

    What does Joe think about people who dodge subpoenas? 

    In response to Hunter skipping out, Comer wrote: “Hunter Biden today defied lawful subpoenas and we will now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” adding “We will not provide special treatment because his last name is Biden.”

     

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 17:05

  • Serial California Shoplifter To Stand Trial After 90 Arrests
    Serial California Shoplifter To Stand Trial After 90 Arrests

    Authored by Micaela Ricaforte via The Epoch Times,

    A serial shoplifter from the Bay Area who has been arrested 90 times will be put to trial this week after the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office filed a complaint against him – consolidating 31 misdemeanors from the past year.

    Jesse Leonardo Otero, 44, is well-known by Bay Area businesses and law enforcement for his frequent shoplifting and arrests, local news outlet KRON reported.

    Mr. Otero was released Dec. 8 from the Martinez Detention Facility on misdemeanor charges, according to KRON.

    But just a few hours later, he was arrested outside a Pleasant Hill shopping center near San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.

    He is homeless and sustains a drug addiction through shoplifting and selling stolen goods, according to media reports.

    Despite his extensive criminal record, Mr. Otero avoids lengthy jail sentences because most shoplifting offenses are now classified as misdemeanors if the stolen merchandise amounts to less than $950.

    Because of this, police departments are compelled to issue citations rather than detain Mr. Otero despite his repeated criminal history.

    Police officer Jacob Williams told KRON4, “Prop 47 took away one of the main tools for shoplifting that was used pretty frequently – that being (penal code) 666. So, prior convictions or other instances of shoplift were used to ensure that this person was actually booked into jail.”

    Williams continued:

    “Nowadays, with the way that the filing standards have changed and the law is written, if it’s a petty theft under $950, he’s given the same ticket that you would get for running a stop sign.

    So that person is no longer booked into jail based off the shoplift alone — even if we are aware of prior convictions on his criminal history.

    His latest arrest follows a Nov. 21 arrest in South San Francisco after a theft at a mall, when he attempted to evade police by running onto an interstate highway before being detained.

    A few days later, Mr. Otero reportedly stole $340 worth of items from an East San Francisco bike store.

    “It doesn’t matter whether you steal $10, or $100. All this stuff adds up. By the end of the year, you have a big loss. And for small businesses, I mean, we’re trying to survive,” one store owner told KRON4.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 16:45

  • WTI Extends 'Death Cross' Losses After API Reports Another Unexpected Crude Build
    WTI Extends ‘Death Cross’ Losses After API Reports Another Unexpected Crude Build

    Oil prices pumped and dumped today after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel militia’s attacks on tankers sparked supply concerns overnight which were then completely forgotten about as US Treasury yields puked lower during the day (and Maesrk reportedly scheduling several dozen ships to move through the Suez Canal, suggesting that the world’s leading shipping firm is not afraid of the Houthi attacks – or at least is hopeful about US protection).

    Meanwhile, demand concerns also loom over the market, particularly in China where strong demand over the first nine months of the year has started to moderate, said Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth U.S., in a note.

    “The market expects that approximately 800,000 of the 1.2-1.6 million barrels-per-day growth next year will come from China, with jet fuel leading the charge,” she wrote.

    “The lack of confidence in China’s economy in 2024 remains the market’s biggest concern followed by fear that U.S. production will continue to beat estimates as it did in 2023.”

    The cautious sentiment, however, creates a low bar for positive surprises in 2024, Babin said, in contrast to a 2023 where expectations of massive inventory draws were too hard to live up to.

    Oil ended lower ahead of the API inventory data.

    API

    • Crude +1.837mm (-2.4mm exp)

    • Cushing

    • Gasoline (+100k exp)

    • Distillates (+700k exp)

    After the prior week’s surprise crude build, expectations were for a 2.4mm crude draw last week. But once again, crude stocks unexpectedly built by 1.837mm barrels…

    Source: Bloomberg

    WTI was hovering just below $74 ahead of the API print after a wild day, and extended losses on the unexpected build…

    “As we approach the year end, more of the trade will focus on re-aligning positions on thin trading volume unless of course we see further attacks in the Red Sea area,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities, in a note to clients.

    Finally, we note that WTI suffered a ‘death cross’ today – the first since Sept 2022 – with the 50-day moving average for WTI crossing below the 200-DMA.

    Additionally, timespreads – a critical barometer for supply and demand – softened, with the gap between WTI’s nearest two contracts at 24 cents a barrel in contango compared with 14 cents yesterday.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 16:35

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 27

Today’s News 27th December 2023

  • 'Ballot Banishers' – 2023 Democrats & 1861 Confederates
    ‘Ballot Banishers’ – 2023 Democrats & 1861 Confederates

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

    In the election of 1860, southern Democrats in 10 states of the soon-to-be formalized Confederacy made it almost impossible for their own voters to cast ballots for Abraham Lincoln for President.

    In that sense, the Left in Colorado would have felt right at home in the ante-bellum South – erasing the name of a presidential candidate whom they loathed and by whom they were similarly terrified.

    In eerie fashion, and also similar to the old ethos of the Confederacy, the Democratic Left now believes in state nullification of federal statutes.

    So like the would-be secessionist states of 1860-1, over 550 jurisdictions, almost all in blue states, claim that federal immigration laws no longer apply to them.

    Thus they brag that they can breezily be defied. (Not so easily or willfully are federal gun laws, or EPA mandates, or federal endangered species lists, ignored in red-state jurisdictions.)

    The essence of sanctuary cities is an arrogant sense that federal law means nothing to morally superior local and state governments.

    So they nullify federal immigration laws in the manner of defying tariffs by South Carolina in 1832, or racial integration by Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1963.

    Wallace tried to block integration by opposing federal implementation of the Supreme Court’s ruling against segregation of students by race in public schools and universities, as well as President Kennedy’s federalization of the Alabama national guard.

    This Confederatization of Leftist values and protocols is uncanny. And I wrote about the phenomenon in a recent New Criterion article” The Old South Shall Rise Again”.

    The echoes keep popping up periodically and predictably in the news, as we saw with the Colorado erasure of Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary and likely general election ballot. Take also racial fixations and obsessions. Is the current diversity/inclusion/equity—woke movement based on similar racial essentialism?

    Or in Confederate terms, are we back to certifying one’s particular DNA (now by blood tests, but then by genealogists)? Does the South’s old one-sixteenth/one-drop rule (ask Elizabeth Warren) still determine racial status and privilege?

    Do our DEI/woke racially segregated campus dorms, segregated safe spaces, segregated graduations, and segregated events echo Wallace’s 1963 Inauguration Address chant—“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”?

    Are blue-states becoming like one-dimensional “King Cotton” economies of the past?

    Just as a “King Cotton” economy ran the politics of the Old South through its unprecedented wealth, so too our modern leftist magnates are often one-industry “Big Tech” titans—of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—who more or less by their PAC and foundation “donations” (Mark Zuckerberg alone accounted for $419 million ) warped the work of registrars in many of the key 2020 counties.

    One mark of Confederates was the strangling of the southern middle class. A tiny plantationists elite sat atop a vast caste of black slaves and a poor hireling white population.

    Yet in terms of aggregate state income and wealth, by 1860 five of the wealthiest ten states in America were slave states and about to secede—given the unquenchable global appetite of the growing Industrial Revolution for southern cotton. (Was the desire for and power of Cotton then like iPhones and Google searches?)

    So the sheer power, wealth, and influence of the plantationists remind one of clout and superciliousness of California’s Silicon Valley and its $9-trillion dollars in market capitalization.

    Indeed, it is eerie in debates and declarations how California Governor Gavin Newsom brags about California mega-Big Tech success and wealth. Often Newsom talks grandly of his Bay Area, Silicon Valley sector, as if he was Sen. James Hammond, a southern plantation owner, and U.S. Senator from South Carolina, who boasted defiantly in 1858 that “Cotton is King!”

    But like Hammond, Newsom then predictably grows silent about the state’s one-fifth of the resident population below the poverty line, one third of all US welfare recipients, the crumbling infrastructure, the dismal schools, the huge multibillion-dollar state deficits, the shrinking and fleeing middle class, the exploding homeless, and the retribalization of the state’s society by race.

    Just as King Cotton seemed to ensure palatial homes amid an impoverished general population, poor roads, anemic industry and manufacturing, few rails, and bad public schools, so too does blue-state wealth reside disproportionally in the hands of the few atop a growing class of poor and a vanishing middle class.

    In the years before the Civil War and in the ante-bellum Jim Crow South, southern states bled populations fleeing to the new territories in the West or to the manufacturing and industrial boomtowns of the North. They were escaping a fossilized society of have and have nots—eerily representative of the current ethos of the blue-state paradigm.

    California has the richest zip codes and greatest number of billionaires, and near highest poverty rate. New York is close; both have largest number of residents escaping their states—ironically to a new South that is becoming as dynamic as the old bygone North.

    So the recent ballot erasing of Colorado fits this larger picture of blue-states emulating the values of ante-bellum southern states – erasing ballots, defying federal laws, fixating on race and racial privileges, and catering to a one-dimensional medieval economy and caste, amid a growing underclass struggling with neglected infrastructure, poor schools, and growing poverty.

    So what will be the new/old Democratic 2024 election mantra?

    “Vote for us—and ballot deletion, states’ rights, federal nullification, racial essentialism and segregation, and a one-party, one-economy plantationist nation”?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 00:00

  • China's Spy Agencies Now Targeting The Country's Economic Pessimists
    China’s Spy Agencies Now Targeting The Country’s Economic Pessimists

    In a move that we wouldn’t be surprised to see take hold in the U.S., China is now reportedly cracking down on its citizens who have a negative opinion regarding the country’s economy. 

    A new Nikkei article detailed how the country’s spy agencies have turned their focus to the country’s financial naysayers. 

    “Various cliches that denigrate the Chinese economy have emerged. False theories about ‘China’s deterioration’ are being circulated to attack China’s unique socialist system,” the country’s Ministry of State Security said at China’s recent annual conference to set economic policy. 

    When the Ministry opened its WeChat account in summer of this past year, its first post on August 1 simply read: “We need to mobilize the entire Chinese society to crack down on and prevent espionage.”

    The revelation that the spy agency has been so openly active on WeChat was unexpected, the report says. While its main functions include targeting spies and engaging in counterintelligence operations, protecting China’s economy is not typically within its scope.

    However, the agency’s recent posts following the Central Economic Work Conference on December 11-12, along with similar communications after a significant economic policy meeting in late October, suggest that the ministry is broadening its range of responsibilities.

    “How strange that China’s economic policies for next year, ones that have just been adopted, were first explained by the Ministry of State Security,” one Chinese economist told Nikkei. 

    The spy agency’s recent social media activity, coinciding with growing online skepticism about the government’s optimistic economic narrative, implies a crackdown on those providing objective yet critical analyses of China’s faltering economy.

    Experts highlighting issues like the exodus of foreign companies and declining consumer confidence, often with detailed economic data, are particularly at risk. These analyses typically avoid directly contradicting the government’s assertion of achieving a 5% growth target, reflecting caution under China’s strict speech regulations.

    The Ministry of State Security, traditionally focused on counterintelligence, is now venturing into economic discourse – a shift that suggests the Chinese government views overly realistic or negative economic assessments, which it considers influenced by foreign narratives of decline, as threats to national security. This indicates potential repercussions for those with pessimistic viewpoints, the report noted. 

    Read the full report here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 23:30

  • 17 Individuals On FBI Terror Watch List Caught Attempting Entry At Southern Border
    17 Individuals On FBI Terror Watch List Caught Attempting Entry At Southern Border

    Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

    Border Patrol officers in the month of November identified 17 individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list attempting to illegally enter the United States outside an established port of entry on the southern border.

    The 17 were processed by law enforcement agents after crossing into the United States, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). There has been an increasing trend in the number of known terrorists found to be entering the U.S. southern border beyond ports of entry, with a record 169 individuals detected in Financial Year 2023.

    A record number of individuals of interest on the watch list have also been attempting entry at U.S. ports of entry on either the northern or southern border, with 564 individuals detected at ports in FY 2023.

    The 17 individuals last month add to 13 entries by individuals on the watch list caught outside a port of entry in October. Another 49 individuals were apprehended attempting entry at a U.S. port of entry since October for FY 2024.

    The federal dataset maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center includes the identifying information of known and suspected terrorists and terrorist groups, as well as the information of their affiliates.

    “Encounters of watchlisted individuals at our borders are very uncommon, underscoring the critical work CBP Agents and Officers carry out every day on the frontlines,” the CBP website says.

    The increase in individuals on the terror watch list attempting to enter the United States is of concern, as they only represent the ones processed by Border Patrol. It is possible that other individuals on the list may have attempted entry and evaded law enforcement, being among the many “gotaways” getting through the porous and underresourced border.

    The terror watch list figures also come as Members of Congress voice concern about a heightened risk of terrorists entering the United States following Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the resulting war.

    Illegal Immigration Crisis

    FY23 broke the record for illegal immigrant encounters.

    Over 242,000 illegal immigrants were processed by Border Patrol at the southern border in November—the third-highest monthly record. Nearly 80 percent of these apprehensions were for border crossings outside of legal ports of entry.

    Historic CBP data indicates U.S. border officials had never logged more than 80,000 encounters in any given November prior to 2022.

    Of the 191,113 November Title 8 apprehensions, more than 6,300 were illegal immigrants attempting another entry to the United States after already being removed by law enforcement for failing to meet the necessary requirements for asylum.

    These figures do not include the 43,000 immigrants who followed the U.S. immigration process and have been granted parole through the CBP One app.

    December totals are expected to easily surpass the November totals, as agents have been consistently overwhelmed by more than 12,000 encounters each day at the southern border, particularly at the Ports of Entry in Lukeville, Arizona, and Eagle Pass, Texas.

    The Department of Homeland Security itself warned in its October threat assessment that, with agents reporting an increasing number of attempted entries from the terror watch list, there is a greater risk that “terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.”

    “Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and permissive environments to facilitate access to the United States,” the assessment also said.

    Funding for Border Security

    Congress is currently negotiating a $105 billion supplemental funding bill that ties together funding for the border with funding for Israel’s war against Hamas and support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

    The Biden administration has allocated $14 billion towards beefing up border personnel and staff to process asylum claims. However, Republicans want to see the Biden administration act on border security without conditions, and in a manner that tackles what they say are the underlying problems causing the mass surge in illegal immigration. They are pushing for stricter border security measures, completion of the border wall in gaps between ports of entry, and limits on the use of humanitarian parole, as well as policies to dissuade illegal border crossings and frivolous asylum claims.

    “We are facing a serious challenge along the southwest border and CBP and our federal partners need more resources from Congress—as outlined in the supplemental budget request—to enhance border security and America’s national security,” senior official performing the duties of the commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement on the need for immediate border funding.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 23:00

  • Watch: Chinese Rocket Booster Nearly Destroys House
    Watch: Chinese Rocket Booster Nearly Destroys House

    A dramatic video shared on social media platform X captures the moment a booster from a Chinese Long March 3B carrier rocket plummets from the sky, crashes into a hillside forest and explodes feet away from a house. 

    Chinese state-run media outlet Global Times reported the Long March-3B rocket with a Yuanzheng-1 upper delivered two Beidou satellites into medium Earth orbit on Tuesday morning from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the country’s Southwest Sichuan Province. 

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    The launch was deemed a success, with the 57th and the 58th Beidou satellites added to the BeiDou Satellite Navigation System, China’s mega constellation of satellites. 

    However, video footage of the rocket’s booster falling from the sky and crashing into a hillside emerged hours after the launch on Chinese social media, then shared with X. 

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    Another video shows the crash site, with very toxic hypergolic propellant rising from the ashes. The booster landed just feet from a house. 

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    Given China’s ability to copy technology, one might wonder why they haven’t yet deployed a self-landing booster similar to SpaceX’s technology developed by Elon Musk. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 22:30

  • "Not A Plan B Person", Ramaswamy Says On Rejecting The Idea Of Joining Trump Administration
    “Not A Plan B Person”, Ramaswamy Says On Rejecting The Idea Of Joining Trump Administration

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he is not a “plan B” kind of guy, when asked about the possibility of taking a job in a possible second Trump administration.

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, Nev., on Oct. 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    In an appearance on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Mr. Ramaswamy said he was focusing on his presidential campaign, despite trailing the Republican frontrunner former President Donald Trump.

    “I think that I’m not a plan B person,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “I didn’t get to where I am—I’m 38 years old, I’ve found multiple multi-billion dollar companies, we’re blessed with the American dream to be able to self-fiance and lift this campaign up.”

    “I didn’t get to where I am, and Apoorva didn’t get to where she is by being ‘plan B people,’” he added, referring to his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy.

    Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, expressed confidence going into the Iowa caucus, which is scheduled on Jan. 15.

    “So I’m actually confident we’re going to overdeliver massively at the Iowa caucus,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

    “Many of the people supporting us are first-time caucus-goers, some of them young people, some of them America-first patriots or libertarians who haven’t thought of themselves as traditional Republicans who are coming out in droves,” he added. “I think we’re going to have a major surprise on January 15.”

    There’s been speculation that Mr. Ramaswamy could be President Trump’s running mate for 2024. In August, President Trump indicated that he was open to the idea of having Mr. Ramaswamy as a potential vice president.

    Also in August, Mr. Ramaswamy praised the former president as “the best president of the 21st century,” during the first GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee.

    “I respect Trump and his accomplishments for this country,” he said. “Unlike a lot of the other candidates, I’m not sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking some decision he made.”

    If elected, Mr. Ramaswamy believes he would be well-suited to lead the country.

    “But I believe we are the right people to take our America-first agenda to the next level. I think it’s going to take somebody with fresh legs. Somebody from the next generation if I may say it to lead the next generation,” he said. “I believe we will be successful in this.”

    It is not the first time that Mr. Ramaswamy has made such a remark about himself.

    In November, during a podcast interview with Patrick Bet-David, host of Valuetainment, Mr. Ramaswamy also said he was not a “plan B person,” when asked about the prospect of being President Trump’s vice president.

    “I’m not a plan B person,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “I didn’t get to where I am in life by having plan A goals and then setting up your bifurcated backup plans on the important things.”

    “When you’re guided by your mission and purpose, and you set out and you accomplish plan A. If you fail, then you figure out then,” he added. “I think it would be fake to just sort of say, ‘Under any Scenario, I’m not gonna run in 2028’ or ‘I’m not going to, you know, if I don’t win or whatever.’”

    Despite Mr. Ramaswamy’s optimism, he recently finished fourth in the latest Emerson College poll in Iowa. The poll, conducted from Dec. 15 to Dec. 17, found Mr. Ramaswamy with 8 percent of support, trailing President Trump (50 percent), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (17 percent), and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (15 percent).

    A national poll released by Echelon Insights, conducted from Dec. 12 to Dec. 16, found President Trump in a commanding lead with 70 percent of support, with Ms. Haley in second place with 10 percent. Mr. DeSantis finished in third place with 9 percent, followed by Mr. Ramaswamy with 5 percent.

    In a head-to-head matchup, President Trump defeated Ms. Haley 76 percent to 20 percent.

    However, President Trump picked up 47 percent of support, trailing President Joe Biden by one percentage point in a two-way matchup. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 22:00

  • Bill Barr Calls On Supreme Court To 'Smack' Down Colorado Trump Ruling
    Bill Barr Calls On Supreme Court To ‘Smack’ Down Colorado Trump Ruling

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

    Former Attorney General Bill Barr said that the U.S. Supreme Court should strike down a ruling issued by the Colorado Supreme Court that barred former President Donald Trump from the state ballot.

    Ivanka Trump listens to Attorney General Bill Barr during a meeting on human trafficking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on Aug. 4, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

    Last week, a majority of judges on Colorado’s high court said that the former president is ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot. Some analysts said that it’s likely that the former president would appeal the decision to the high court.

    The U.S. Supreme Court “has to smack this down very quickly,” Mr. Barr told Fox News last week, responding to the decision.

    And Mr. Barr—who served in the Trump administration but has become a frequent critic of President Trump after leaving office and has disputed claims about 2020 election fraud—added that “the legal argument here for it is ridiculous.”

    “Even more importantly, it is highly destructive, and it’s exactly the kind of tactics by the left that created Donald Trump in the first place,” he said.

    The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. It overturned a ruling from a district court that said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

    “A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4–3 decision. The dissenting justices argued that the ruling violated the former president’s due process rights.

    The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.

    “We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the court’s majority wrote. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

    Other state high courts have rejected similar arguments lodged by left-wing groups claiming that President Trump cannot appear on ballots due to the insurrection clause. Although the former president has been charged with crimes in several jurisdictions in the past year, he has not been charged with or convicted of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

    In a statement last week, Trump legal spokeswoman Alina Habba said that “this ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”

    Other than Mr. Barr, a number of legal experts and even some Democratic officials have disputed the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment-based attempts to block the former president from running.

    The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters, aided by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who argued that President Trump should be disqualified because, according to the group, he was trying to obstruct the transfer of presidential power to President Biden after the 2020 election on Jan. 6.

    CREW President Noah Bookbinder, who currently serves in the Department of Homeland Security’s advisory council and was appointed by current Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said in a statement that the court’s decision is “not only historic and justified but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country.”

    Meanwhile, some pollsters and consultants have predicted that the ruling may only bolster President Trump’s chances in the 2024 election. According to a RealClearPolitics average, the former president’s lead in the GOP primary has only increased since the court’s ruling.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 21:30

  • "This Is Our Town" – Inside A Small-Town Battle Against A Giant Chinese Battery Plant
    “This Is Our Town” – Inside A Small-Town Battle Against A Giant Chinese Battery Plant

    Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Two common signs stood out on the front lawns and street corners of Manteno, Illinois, on Dec. 13: “Keep Christ in Christmas,” sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, and “Choose Manteno: No Go on Gotion!”

    Ten miles south of where Chicago’s suburban sprawl finally peters out, Manteno is the latest battleground over Chinese companies coming to middle America—in this case, the electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer Gotion Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of China’s Gotion (or Guoxuan) High-Tech Co.

    While a recent Manteno board decision to rezone a manufacturing site favorably to Gotion came as a setback for opponents, the war for the industrial future of Manteno—and America—is far from over.

    The recently formed group Concerned Citizens of Manteno fired back with a lawsuit against Gotion and the village on Dec. 22.

    In Manteno and towns like it, Americans are steeling themselves for a struggle.

    “The Chinese government does not like us. Look what happened with the coronavirus. … But this is our town, not theirs, and we’re going to fight to save it,” Gotion opponent Ryan McHeffey told The Epoch Times.

    The story begins in early September, when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, came to Manteno and revealed that Gotion would site a $2 billion EV battery plant in the community.

    The proposed location was a 100-plus acre property at 333 S. Spruce St. that includes a former Kmart distribution center. The parcel lies on the west side of Interstate 57, the north–south artery that cleaves Manteno in two as it whooshes down to the Missouri Bootheel.

    The deal came with $536 million in incentives from the state of Illinois. Kankakee County has also offered the company a 30-year property tax abatement. The project could also be eligible for federal green energy tax credits.

    The project will deliver “2,600 new good-paying jobs in Manteno,” Mr. Pritzker said in a statement.

    Mayor Timothy Nugent, who has ruled the village with little opposition since the mid-2000s, described the Gotion announcement as a “huge win.”

    Although there were rumblings about Gotion in the weeks beforehand, Mr. Pritzker’s September announcement caught many by surprise—and it galvanized opposition.

    Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks during a ceremonial groundbreaking at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Sept. 28, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    “All of a sudden, everybody heard about it,” Manteno resident Julie Holda told The Epoch Times.

    Ms. Holda is one of numerous locals campaigning against Gotion.

    Manteno activists who spoke with The Epoch Times cited a range of worries, including over highly toxic materials employed in lithium battery production, the use of taxpayer subsidies for a foreign company, possible threats to flora and fauna, destabilizing development of the sleepy village, and the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    In a September letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting an in-depth look at Gotion by the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other Republican officials describe those alleged ties.

    “Li Zhen, the company’s founder and chairman, is a member of the Anhui Provincial Federation of Industry and Commerce, which is part of the CCP’s United Front system and takes direction from the CCP. His son, Li Chen, who is also Guoxuan’s CEO, is a member of the Baohe District Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee, which is an advisory body of the CCP,” the lawmakers wrote.

    Annette LaMore, a retired postal carrier and anti-Gotion activist, told The Epoch Times, “We are inviting our enemies into our town.”

    Mike Barry, an area football coach, questioned the impact of the property tax cap on homeowners as well as the project’s long-term effect on property values.

    “How am I going to sell my house … with a lithium battery factory?” he asked.

    Michael Barry (L) and other opponents of the proposed Gotion factory in Manteno, Ill., on Dec. 13, 2023. (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times)

    A Town Divided

    November polling by a center-right group, Cor Strategies, revealed that a majority of Kankakee County residents oppose the development, with just 27 percent in support. The results suggest that Gotion critics have most of the area’s public on their side.

    But Manteno residents who spoke with The Epoch Times acknowledged that the issue has raised tensions in the town.

    At one point, while leading The Epoch Times’ reporter through a business in town, activists explained why they were so circumspect.

    “This is literally the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s right now. We just walked into the McCoy’s territory,” one of them said.

    Manteno resident Marina Fisher said: “It hurts so bad. This has really divided this town.”

    She spoke to The Epoch Times with her 13-year-old son, Emilio, and her 1-year-old boy, Evers. Evers is her “rainbow baby”—a child born after a miscarriage.

    Like others who spoke with The Epoch Times, Ms. Fisher came to Manteno to get away from all the problems in Chicagoland.

    Now, she’s worried that toxic materials at the plant could make her new home unsafe. At issue are lithium, the base material for the batteries, and other chemicals used in battery manufacturing.

    In a 2023 review on the health risks of lithium-ion batteries, Polish researchers noted that lithium has long been prescribed to patients with bipolar disorder, meaning that scientists have some insight into lithium toxicity in people. The health of the kidneys, thyroid gland, and parathyroid gland can all be jeopardized. Lithium has also been linked to birth defects.

    Locals are particularly concerned about another chemical, N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), that may or may not be at play in Manteno.

    Robert Dube, an attorney involved in the Manteno lawsuit, told The Epoch Times that Gotion “could not confirm” whether it would use it in its proposed facility.

    Marina Fisher, with her sons, Evers, 1, and Emilio, 13, says she will move away if Gotion’s lithium battery plant comes to town, in Manteno, Ill., on Dec. 16, 2023. (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times)

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded in 2020 that the use of NMP in lithium-ion battery manufacturing presents “unreasonable risks.” It has linked NMP exposure to kidney toxicity, liver toxicity, neurotoxicity, and more.

    Pollution, including water pollution, is nothing new to the region. Northern Illinois is dotted with superfund sites designated by the EPA. In places such as Ms. Fisher’s old neighborhoods in Chicago, Back of the Yards and McKinley Park, a map developed by University of Illinois researchers reveals dangerous levels of lead, a neurotoxin, in the soil.

    In June, ABC reported that residents in nearby University Park still stick to bottled water four years after lead was found in the drinking water. The water was supplied by a private utility, Aqua Illinois, at about the time it began sourcing from the Kankakee River rather than wells. Aqua Illinois is the same utility that supplies water to Manteno (reporting from the period doesn’t indicate that lead pollution affected Manteno).

    Village of Manteno officials have said that “residential water supply will not be affected by the water needs from the Gotion plant,” citing assurances from Aqua Illinois. It stated that the plant’s wastewater will be low risk after some level of pre-treatment of the sort common for “other manufacturing plants in the area.”

    But Ms. Fisher isn’t satisfied. She worries that air and water pollution could sicken her and her young children.

    “Not everybody can afford cases of water,” she said.

    Like some others in Manteno, she feels that she “would be forced to move” if Gotion comes to town.

    Lithium batteries are displayed in the workshop of a lithium battery manufacturing company in Anhui Province, China, on Nov. 14, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

    Mrs. LaMore is also concerned about the health hazards to Manteno residents. She pointed out that the proposed facility isn’t far from residential subdivisions on both sides of Interstate 57.

    “If there’s a leak, and it gets into our water, we’re doomed,” she told The Epoch Times.

    Locals also worry about what the prevailing westerlies could carry into town from the Gotion facility. The proposed plant is on the west side of town and almost directly west of an elementary school.

    Another Gotion critic, Bob Forsythe, questioned the safety of operating a lithium battery plant so close to rock quarry blasting activity.

    Shannyn Dockery, known as the “butterfly lady,” fears that wastewater from the plant could imperil endangered or otherwise significant plants and animals in the region. Those unique flora and fauna include the Kankakee mallow, a flowering plant with a native range restricted to a single island in the Kankakee River, Langham Island.

    “We are also talking about monarch butterflies,” she said, noting that monarchs regularly migrate through the area.

    “My house is a monarch waystation. I have plants specifically for the monarchs.”

    Ms. Dockery worries that Mr. Pritzker’s power over the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board could affect how the state assesses those potential threats as it moves closer to approving Gotion’s plan. Board members are appointed by the governor.

    Fran Ludwig and Bob Forsythe, two of the many local residents who have organized against a proposed Gotion electric vehicle battery plant, in Manteno, Ill., on Dec. 13, 2023. (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times)

    Wider Opposition

    Manteno isn’t the first place Gotion and its political sponsors have met with citizen resistance.

    The company already faced backlash from residents in Green Charter Township, Michigan, where township board members were recalled in November over a Gotion battery plant proposal.

    Jeff Peticolas, a Michigander who opposes the plant there, told The Epoch Times that he’s upset that the Gotion plans have been “dropped on unsuspecting little townships and villages, towns that didn’t see it coming.”

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 21:00

  • New Headwind For 'Gender-Affirming Care' For Children: Soaring Malpractice Insurance Costs
    New Headwind For ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ For Children: Soaring Malpractice Insurance Costs

    Where the controversy over so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is concerned, government regulation commands most of the attention. However, as any well-read libertarian will tell you, market forces can also impose their own powerful form of regulation. Happily, we’re beginning to see market forces create a major impediment to the practice of irreparably altering the bodies of confused adolescents. 

    Those forces have emerged in the form of soaring malpractice insurance premiums for clinics that use hormones, puberty blockers and surgeries to address gender-confused children. Many insurers are refusing to offer coverage at any price. 

    That’s what The Project of the Quad Cities found. The Illinois practice was ramping up its capabilities at its clinic on the Iowa border, with a goal of catering to Iowa minors who could no longer receive gender-altering services in their own state after they were banned in March.

    The Project of the Quad Cities location in Moline, Illinois near the Iowa border (Project of the Quad Cities photo)

    Then they tried getting insurance. “I didn’t anticipate that it was going to be a big deal,” the clinic’s Andy Rowe told Time. However, a long list of medical malpractice insurers threw cold water on their ambitions. 

    “The first one specifically excluded gender-affirming care for minors. The next response was the same. And the one after that. By early November, more than a dozen malpractice insurers had declined to offer the clinic a policy.” – Time 

    When the clinic finally found an insurer willing to provide coverage, Rowe was hit with sticker shock. He’d anticipated a premium of $10,000 at most. The actual price: $50,000. Appealing to donors, the clinic has almost raised enough funds to absorb that cost. In the meantime, its vision of a border clinic bustling with Iowa children hasn’t been realized.

    Insurers’ mounting unease comes as a growing number of suits are being filed by individuals against doctors they accuse of rushing them — as children — into permanently altering their bodies rather than addressing adolescent angst over puberty.

    Isabelle Ayala and attorney Jordan Campbell are suing doctors and the American Academy of Pediatrics (Independent Women’s Forum via New York Post)

    This month, now-20-year-old Isabelle Ayala sued her Rhode Island doctors and others described in her suit as “a collection of actors who prioritized politics and ideology over children’s safety, health, and well-being.” One of them is alleged to have determined in a single, one-hour visit that she should be given cross-sex hormones, overlooking factors that included autism, ADHD and PTSD from being sexually assaulted as a child. Ayala told the New York Post:

    “I just really don’t want this to happen to other vulnerable young girls. I don’t want puberty to be the enemy. I don’t want our natural biology to be the enemy.”

    To some extent, the insurance-premium mechanism of market-driven regulation reflects changes in government regulation: Several states have extended the statute of limitations for filing malpractice lawsuits springing from gender-altering therapies and surgeries. In Arkansas, for example, the threat of a suit will now hang over the insurer of a gender-transition practice for 15 years after minor patients turns 18. That’s a sharp contrast to the typical requirement that a suit be filed within one to three years of injury. 

    “If state laws increase the risk of civil liability for health professionals, premiums will be adjusted accordingly and appropriately to reflect the level of financial risk incurred by the insured,” the Medical Professional Liability Association’s Mike Stinson told Time. 

    Insurers, acting out of their own self-interest, are disincentivizing a risky activity that some governments allow and many even encourage: Chalk up another benefit to society delivered by what Adam Smith called “the invisible hand.”  

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 20:30

  • India Deploys Three Warships To Waters Near Iran After Tanker Attack
    India Deploys Three Warships To Waters Near Iran After Tanker Attack

    Via The Cradle,

    The Indian Navy has deployed three guided missile destroyers to the Arabian Sea in response to an alleged drone attack on an Israeli-linked chemical tanker last week. New Delhi also uses long-range maritime patrol aircraft for “domain awareness,” the defense ministry reported Monday night.

    On Saturday, the Liberian-flagged MV Chem Pluto, a Japanese-owned tanker traveling 370km off the coast of India, was reportedly hit by a kamikaze drone, according to the Pentagon.

    Illustrative: iStock photo

    The Israeli-linked tanker had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India, according to maritime security firm Ambrey. The Indian Navy says they are examining the specifics of the attack on the MV Chem Puto, which managed to anchor in Mumbai on Tuesday.

    Although Indian officials say a preliminary evaluation suggests a drone strike, they emphasize that additional forensic and technical examinations are necessary to determine the exact method of attack.

    Washington blamed the attack on Iran, saying the drone had been launched “directly” from the Islamic Republic. “We declare these claims completely worthless,” said Nasser Kanaani, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, on Monday.

    “Such claims are aimed at projecting, distracting public attention, and covering up for the full support of the US government for the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza,” he added.

    Saturday’s drone attack came less than a week after the US announced the formation of the so-called Operation Prosperity Guardian, described by US officials as a new “coalition of the willing” that seeks to counter the threat posed by Yemen in the Red Sea.

    Although the Yemeni armed forces have been conducting the attacks against Israeli-linked vessels of their own accord, the Pentagon insists Iran is somehow involved.

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

    “The [Yemeni] resistance has its own tools […] and acts by its own decisions and capabilities,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri told Mehr News Agency on Saturday.

    “The fact that certain powers, such as the US and the Israelis, suffer strikes from the resistance movement […] should in no way call into question the reality of the strength of the resistance in the region,” he added.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 20:00

  • Robert Shiller Warns Of 'Cataclysm' For US Dollar Reserve Status If Confiscated Russian Assets Given To Ukraine
    Robert Shiller Warns Of ‘Cataclysm’ For US Dollar Reserve Status If Confiscated Russian Assets Given To Ukraine

    If the United States shifts frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, it would be cataclysmic for the US Dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, says Nobel Prize winning Yale professor, Robert Shiller.

    “If America does this to Russia today… then tomorrow it can do this to anyone,” he told Italian news outlet La Repubblica in an interview published Sunday.

    “This will destroy the halo of security that surrounds the dollar and will be the first step towards de-dollarization, which many are increasingly confidently leaning toward, from China to developing countries, not to mention Russia itself,” Schiller continued.

    The US, EU, and allies have frozen some $300 billion of Russian foreign exchange reserve assets since last year after slapping the Kremlin with sanctions over the Ukraine war. Over the past year, various ideas have been tossed around regarding using the funds to aid Ukraine.

    Earlier this month, the Financial Times described doing so as “a radical step that would open a new chapter in the west’s financial warfare against Moscow.”

    “I can’t convince myself that this [confiscation of Russian assets] is the right way,” said Schiller, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2013, and is known for his expertise in behavioral economics and macroeconomics. He was named one of Bloomberg’s ’50 most influential people’ in global finance.

    “In addition to the fact that this will be confirmation for the Russian leader that what is happening in Ukraine is a proxy war, it could paradoxically turn against America and the entire West,” he continued, adding that giving confiscated Russian assets to Ukraine would become “a cataclysm for the current dollar-dominated economic system.”

    Russia has called the confiscation unlawful, and warned that any country considering participating in sanctions should expect a mirror response from Moscow.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 19:30

  • The Guardrails That Once Prevented Wars Are Failing
    The Guardrails That Once Prevented Wars Are Failing

    Authored by Abishur Prakash via Politico.eu,

    The Israel-Hamas war is an ominous message to the world: The guardrails that long stopped wars from breaking out are now effectively failing.

    Of course, Ukraine was the first sign of this. After Russia invaded the country, it quickly became the worst conflict in Europe since World War II. Except, at the onset, the world didn’t know what to make of it. Was this a “one-off” event or the start of something else?

    The latest flareup in the Middle East answers this question.

    The conflict between Israel and Hamas signals that a new era has begun — one where wars are no longer black-swan events that occur every decade or so. Rather, they are becoming a regular occurrence, representing the most significant transformation to global affairs since 9/11. This is a pivotal moment in history, as it signals that whatever stood in the way of conflicts erupting is now falling by the wayside. Nations are no longer scared to throw punches, and war has become acceptable again.

    While the spotlight is on Israel-Hamas, there’s also the ongoing conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh; soldiers at heightened readiness on the border between Serbia and Kosovo; military coups spreading throughout Africa from Gabon to Niger; and frequent clashes between India and China. Then, alongside all this, there’s the potential for the current Hamas war to spread across the region.

    This new era is shaking the foundation the world has stood on since World War II. And it represents global “structural change,” which will affect everything from connectivity to technology and sustainability.

    Firstly, as wars break out, they are starting to fragment the neighborhoods around them, accelerating vertical globalization — creating an environment filled with walls and barriers. Whatever integration existed, and was being nurtured, is now being reversed.

    In the Middle East, for example, Saudi Arabia has now “frozen” normalizing relations with Israel — a step that was being brokered by the United States. And if the Arab world once again starts to view Israel as the “black sheep,” it will fracture the new economic connections that have been forming — like those between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — and are reliant on a unified, stable Middle East.

    Additionally, as this new era of war unfolds, the world will start to view the West differently — especially the U.S. As more conflicts erupt, many nations may begin questioning whether the Western camp is losing its power to call the shots and steer the world. And if the threat of Western sanctions is no longer paralyzing to nations, it will likely cause countries to start managing wars in their own unique ways.

    We are already seeing examples of this. For instance, when the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October, the Saudi crown prince dialed his Iranian counterpart to discuss the conflict. This is unprecedented — and it represents this new era’s “geopolitical nuances.”

    Furthermore, when it comes to bringing “peace” to conflicts, newly emerging diplomatic forums will also start to compete with established ones. Of course, the United Nations remains pivotal, but it is no longer the only diplomatic option — there is the recently expanded BRICS bloc and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) too. And in some cases, governments are shunning diplomacy entirely. So, which one of these competing geopolitical blocs will nations at war turn to?

    Israeli tank drives near Gaza, as viewed from the Israeli side of the border on December 21, 2023 | Maja Hitij/Getty Images

    Finally, there is a new group of “problem solvers” emerging as well — nations attempting to stop war and offer “postwar solutions.” In the case of the Ukraine war, the new broker is Qatar, hoping that Arab neutrality can bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table. And, of course, countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Singapore stand ready to do the same. These nations will continue to bring their own formula and ideas to this new era of war, shaping what regions and economies look like post-conflict.

    For anybody who truly wants to see, the writing is on the wall. The next decade or so could be filled with more fighting and upheaval than the world has seen in almost a century. And the barriers that stopped wars from breaking out in the past — from Western sanctions to citizen uprisings — have all eroded severely.

    And as these existing guardrails break down, new ones aren’t being built to replace them, which means we may be entering a period akin to the Wild West. Moreover, as nukes begin to spread on the back of wars and flashpoints — like Russian nuclear warheads in Belarus, or South Korea wanting to host American nuclear weapons — a new game of “nuclear chess” has begun.

    Thus, the most pressing challenge facing the world now is to change the global architecture in such a way that when wars do break out, new solutions exist to contain them and maintain a certain status quo. One such idea would be an agreement between the G20, stating that nations who start the next wars will lose their ability to trade with the group’s members.

    Otherwise, as nations and businesses are busy running from fire to fire, from war to war, the forces that have the potential to truly transform the world (and humanity) — from climate change and AI to demographic crisis — will start to unleash chaos without limits.

    *  *  *

    Abishur Prakash is the founder of The Geopolitical Business, Inc. He is a global keynote speaker and the author of five books. His latest book is called “The World Is Vertical.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 19:00

  • Navalny 'Reappears' At Harsh Arctic Prison In Remote Siberia
    Navalny ‘Reappears’ At Harsh Arctic Prison In Remote Siberia

    Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny starting two weeks ago was reported “missing” by his team of lawyers and supporters, as he had disappeared into the Russian prison system after a transfer.

    He had up until early December been held at a prison some 150 miles east of Moscow. But he’s now reestablished contact with his lawyer and is at a very remote Siberian penal colony. “We have found Alexey,” his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on X.

    Kharp, in Siberia. Image via Russian Federal Penitentiary Service via AP.

    He’s now serving his 19-plus year sentence in a remote place called Kharp, in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, which lies almost 2,000 miles from Moscow and is difficult to even reach: 

    Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, said the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp where Navalny is now being held, known as “Polar Wolf,” is “one of the northernmost and most remote colonies.”

    “The conditions there are harsh, with a special regime in the permafrost zone. It is very difficult to get there, and there are no letter delivery systems,” Zhdanov wrote on X.

    Navalny said in a multi-part message posted to XI: “I’m fine… I’m totally relieved that I’ve finally made it.” He described, “Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (a traditional Russian winter footwear).” He noted too: “I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation.”

    For various countries’ prison systems, including Russia’s, it’s normal that when an inmate is transferred there’s some degree of a lapse in time before family members or lawyers are then later informed where they were moved to.

    Weeks ago, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov shrugged it off as but a normal part of the Russian administrative system surrounding prisoners and penal colonies. When peppered by questions from reporters, Peskov had responded, “No. I repeat again: we do not have the capacity, or right, or desire, to track the fates of those prisoners who are serving sentences by order of a court.”

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

    Navalny’s legal team and supporters have long waged a somewhat successful PR campaign to keep his name in the news. For example, Navalny ally Maria Pevchikh had pressured the United Nations Human Rights Committee to help find his exact whereabouts. “What is happening with Alexey is, in fact, an enforced disappearance and a flagrant violation of his fundamental rights. Answers must be given,” she said earlier in December.

    His supporters have claimed Navalny has the potential to disrupt Putin’s 2024 reelection plans, however, it remains that the opposition activist barely has name recognition inside Russia. In August, he was handed an additional 19 years in prison for charges of “extremism” on top of the 11 and a half he was already serving.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 18:30

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene Complains About FBI’s Inaction After Being Swatted For The 8th Time On Christmas Day
    Marjorie Taylor Greene Complains About FBI’s Inaction After Being Swatted For The 8th Time On Christmas Day

    Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

    Authorities are investigating a Christmas Day swatting attempt at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s residence in Rome, Georgia, but the Republican congresswoman says enough isn’t being done to catch the offenders. A swatting call is a dangerous prank in which the perpetrator reports a severe crime to police to lure swat teams to the victim’s home in a forceful law enforcement response.

    “I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here. My local police are the GREATEST and shouldn’t have to deal with this,” Greene wrote in a post on X.

    As Greene has been the victim of repeated swatting incidents, the Rome Police Department was able to quickly ascertain that the call was a hoax and didn’t send officers to her home, a department spokesperson told CBS News.

    According to Rome PD spokesperson Kelly Madden, the call came from a man in Rome, New York, who called the suicide hotline just before 11 a.m. Monday. The man claimed he’d shot his girlfriend at the address of Greene’s home and was going to kill himself next, Madden said.

    Police contacted Greene’s private security detail to confirm she was safe and that there was no emergency at her residence, the Department said.  When the call was determined to be a swatting attempt, the police response was canceled en route, Madden told reporters.

    “We determined before our personnel could get to her location that there was no emergency and there was no reason to respond,” she said. “Her security detail had it all under control, and there actually was nothing going on.”

    A Republican U.S. congressman in New York was also reportedly targeted with a swatting call on Christmas Day.

    The Cayuga County Sheriff’s office said it received a false report of a shooting at Rep. Brandon Williams’s house in central New York and sent officers to confirm that there was no present danger.

    “Our home was swatted this afternoon,” Williams wrote. “Thanks to the Deputies and Troopers who contacted me before arriving. They left with homemade cookies and spiced nuts! Merry Christmas everyone!”

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    MTG blasted the FBI for allowing the swatting attempts against herself to continue without any arrests.

    “And after today, I have been swatted 8 times but the FBI can’t seem to figure out who is responsible for the swatting and says the law doesn’t allow them to track them down,” she wrote on X.

    “The FBI can do so many things, has even abused FISA to spy on hundreds of thousands of Americans, but can not figure out who wants me killed by a hail of bullets fired by a SWAT team responding to murder suicide calls supposedly coming from me,” she complained.

    Thankfully my local police are far too smart, know me well, and know exactly what these swatting calls are. I know there are good FBI agents that are completely sick and tired of the Biden administration they work under.

    Swatting is extremely dangerous and people have been killed as a result from swatting calls. It’s also a waste of police time and resources and harassment. I will be introducing legislation to track down swatters. Thank you to everyone who has sent well wishes for me and my family. I will never stop fighting for what is right and I will always put America first! No matter what or who attacks me.

    Merry Christmas!! Christ is KING!!!

    Madden confirmed that Greene has been the target of roughly eight swatting attempts.

    The latest swatting attempt came just a few days after Greene’s life was threatened in a text message sent to her boyfriend Brian Glenn, the program director for Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN).

    “Thursday Dec. 21, we received this death threat where this man is saying I will be shot in the head and skinned to make a “parasol” making a reference to Gein, who was a psychopath killer who would make things out of his victim’s skin,” MTG explained on X.  “He also says he would like to smash Pres. Trump’s and Brian’s heads on a curb,” she added.

    Ed Gein,  also known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, was a serial killer and body snatcher who committed horrific crimes in the 1950s around Plainfield, Wisconsin.

    “Have a nice time looking over your shoulder shitbag,” the message from Ben McLean read. “Tell Marjorie that a high velocity projectile will soon find its way into her cranium.”

    When told his menacing communications would be reported to the FBI, McLean seemed to suggest he’d had a prior relationship with the Bureau, and understood it to have an anti-conservative bias.

    “If you do … Agent Priest. I like him, McLean wrote. “Because surely the FBI wouldn’t be on your side.” The disturbed individual then expressed a desire to “curb check” former President Trump’s “baby soft skull.”

    He added, “they’re recruiting me!” next to a middle finger emoji.

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

    MTG complained in a subsequent post on X that McLean has not yet been arrested. The Capitol Police contacted him and merely asked  some questions over the phone, Greene said, going on to say it was “shocking” that the kook was not in police custody yet.

    “They simply called him on the phone and [Capitol] Police sent us this email about what he said,” she wrote.

    “The outright absurdity of this email response and the fact that they have not arrested this guy is shocking, thankfully I’m a gun owner,” Greene wrote.

    But compare it to how the FBI and DOJ treats J6’ers, Pres Trump, and their political enemies. Why doesn’t the FBI just call J6’ers on the phone, like the man who says he wants to shoot me in the head and use my skin to make a parasol, and just ask them about what they said on January 6, 2021 instead of hunting them down and locking them up doing the bidding of the DOJ who continues to issue arrest warrants almost everyday for people who said the 2020 election was stolen.

    Incredible double standard.

    MTG also expressed concern that McLean claimed to have a contact at the FBI.

    “Also, if you read McLean’s messages he says he knows the FBI, names an agent, says he likes them, and says the FBI is recruiting him,” she wrote. “Is the FBI recruiting a man who is threatening to kill a member of congress and crush the skull of President Trump?”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 18:05

  • Spot Bitcoin ETF Inflows Could Dwarf All 150 Crypto ETPs Today
    Spot Bitcoin ETF Inflows Could Dwarf All 150 Crypto ETPs Today

    Authored by Tom Mitchelhill via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Newly compiled data from BitMEX Research estimates there are 150 crypto ETPs available today, with $50.3 billion in assets under management…

    United States-approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) could end up dwarfing the entire $50 billion crypto-related ETF market today. 

    According to new data from BitMEX research, the current global market for crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) includes approximately 150 products totaling $50.3 billion in assets under management.

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

    The list includes spot and futures funds, and typically track the performance of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The largest ETP on the list is Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust — which is currently attempting to be converted into a spot ETF product.

    Market commentators believe the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF — widely pegged to be approved by the SEC as early as Jan. 10 — could eventually double the amount of money invested in crypto ETPs.

    On Dec. 14, crypto investment fund Bitwise predicted that spot Bitcoin ETFs would be the most successful ETF product ever launched, expecting them to capture some $72 billion in assets under management within the next five years — more than doubling the current market.

    Offering a more sober outlook, global fund manager Van Eck estimated that roughly $2.4 billion would flow into a spot Bitcoin products in the first quarter of 2024.

    While a spot Bitcoin ETF has never been approved in the U.S., such a product is far from a brand-new development in a global context. Several countries including Canada, Australia, and Germany, already allow investors to buy shares in spot Bitcoin ETFs.

    The optimism around spot Bitcoin ETF reflects a wider trend of institutional investment in crypto investment products over the past few months.

    A Dec. 21 report from ETF research firm ETFGI revealed that crypto ETFs listed across the globe had attracted year-to-date net inflows of $1.6 billion, with $1.31 billion of that sum being added in November alone. This total investment is nearly double the $750 million net inflows into crypto ETPs in 2022.

    $1.3 billion was added to crypto ETFs in November alone. Source: ETFGI

    Of the 150 crypto funds, the top 20 ETFs attracted the largest volume of investment, with a total of $1.3 billion flowing into them over the course of 2023.

    The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) — launched during a crypto bull market in October 2021 — witnessed the largest individual inflows, capturing an additional $278.7 million in 2023.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 17:15

  • Netanyahu Urges Troops 'Do Not Stop' While Calling Biden's Post-Hamas Plan "A Pipe Dream"
    Netanyahu Urges Troops ‘Do Not Stop’ While Calling Biden’s Post-Hamas Plan “A Pipe Dream”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Tuesday visit to troops fighting in Northern Gaza delivered a message of “do not stop” in their mission to eradicate Hamas. The past weekend was particularly bloody for the Israel Defense Forces, as at least 17 Israeli troops were killed. Some 250 Gazans have been killed in the last 24 hours, according to regional reports.

    Netanyahu vowed to see the operation through “to the end” – at a moment there are still some 130 Israeli and foreign hostages that remain held in the Gaza Strip. Domestic pressure and pushback against his administration has only intensified, led by kidnap victims’ families, who are angry that more hasn’t been done to secure their release in a possible second-round ceasefire.

    Egypt on Monday proposed the most comprehensive peace plan of the Gaza war yet; however, Netanyahu followed this by publishing an op-ed written in English in The Wall Street Journal wherein he rejected the prospect of achieving a permanent peace so long as Hamas remains intact.

    Via AP.

    In the op-ed, he laid out his three-fold plan for pacifying Gaza and bringing permanent peace, as Israel sees it. He said that for Israel to succeed: 1) Hamas must be destroyed, 2) Gaza must be demilitarized, and 3) Gaza must be ‘deradicalized’ and free of hardline Islam. 

    All of this strongly suggests that not only has Israel rejected the Egypt-proposed peace plan, but is also still resisting the Biden administration’s calls to allow the Palestinian Authority (PA) to eventually govern Gaza after Hamas is defeated. The issue has remained an open point of contention, during which time Biden has issued some rare criticisms of Israel, including earlier this month highlighting the “indiscriminate” bombardment of civilian areas of Gaza.

    In the WSJ op-ed, the Israeli leader is emphatic that the PA under Abbas will never be able to achieve demilitarization. Netanyahu wrote:

    The expectation that the Palestinian Authority will demilitarize Gaza is a pipe dream. It currently funds and glorifies terrorism in Judea and Samaria and educates Palestinian children to seek the destruction of Israel. Not surprisingly it has shown neither the capability nor the will to demilitarize Gaza. It failed to do so before Hamas booted it out of the territory in 2007, and it has failed to do so in the territories under its control today. For the foreseeable future Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza.

    Elsewhere in the op-ed Netanyahu appealed to Washington security concerns by underscoring that Hamas is a “key Iranian proxy.” This as Israel has just taken out an IRGC general in an airstrike on a Damascus suburb. Radhi Mousavi was reportedly assassinated in a Monday strike, and he was believed to be Iran’s top commander in Syria.

    The prime minister explained that if Hamas survives, this will only empower Iran further, and “more war and more bloodshed” will be guaranteed…

    First, Hamas, a key Iranian proxy, must be destroyed. The U.S., U.K., France, Germany and many other countries support Israel’s intention to demolish the terror group. To achieve that goal, its military capabilities must be dismantled and its political rule over Gaza must end. Hamas’s leaders have vowed to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again.” That is why their destruction is the only proportional response to prevent the repeat of such horrific atrocities. Anything less guarantees more war and more bloodshed.

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    He also took the opportunity to address growing international pressure related to the soaring death toll in the Strip. Palestinian sources say that deaths have surpassed 20,000 – a horrific and tragic figure mostly comprised of civilians.

    “Unjustly blaming Israel for these casualties will only encourage Hamas and other terror organizations around the world to use human shields,” the prime minister wrote. “To render this cruel and cynical strategy ineffective, the international community must place the blame for these casualties squarely on Hamas. It must recognize that Israel is fighting the bigger battle of the civilized world against barbarism.”

    He vowed ultimately to press forward undeterred until Hamas is no more. “Once Hamas is destroyed, Gaza is demilitarized and Palestinian society begins a deradicalization process, Gaza can be rebuilt and the prospects of a broader peace in the Middle East will become a reality,” Netanyahu wrote. However, this could take months or more likely even years, given Hamas numbers in the tens of thousands, and can hide in the extensive tunnel network under Gaza while waging a guerrilla campaign above.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 16:50

  • 2024 – The Year Of Our Reckoning
    2024 – The Year Of Our Reckoning

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    We should remember the now modern proverb of Nixon-era economic advisor Herb Stein to the effect that what cannot go on (without destroying the nation), simply will not go on.

    In some sense, the country for recent years has been cruising on the fumes from prior and likely better wiser generations and institutions. In 2024, the tab for our current apathy, toxic politics, and incompetence will come due.

    So next year we will likely see the climax to a number of current dangerous ideas, events, and forces, which finally will either overwhelm us or be addressed and remedied. We live in a Neronian age but can recover if we first understand how we got here and the nature of the suicide we are committing.

    In 2023, it became clear, to even the most loyal supporters of the Biden administration, that the U.S. has simply lost or indeed forfeited American deterrence abroad. Our enemies do not fear us; our friends do not trust us; and neutrals do not care either way.

    After the 2021 Kabul debacle, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2023 brazen Chinese spy balloon’s uncontested trajectory over the United States, the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, the serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in the Middle East, and the terrorist Houthis’ veritable absorption of the Red Sea, many of America’s opportunistic enemies drew conclusions and adopted strategies that would have been previously unthinkable.

    Either adversaries will be so emboldened to start regional wars—an impotent Iran now brags it will block the entire Mediterranean—or a United States will be shocked into action and have to deter Iran, the Houthis, and Islamic terrorism, while dealing with an opportunistic China eager to annex Taiwan, and Russia determined to finish off Ukraine.

    Those challenges will force the military to staunch its recruitment hemorrhaging, rectify low morale, and rearm. Such rebooting in turn will require discarding the woke agenda, stopping the DEI proselytizing and virtue signaling, and returning to a meritocracy focused on military preparedness and battlefield efficacy.

    Since January 2021, the Biden administration has flagrantly and unapologetically dismantled federal immigration law. It destroyed the border as we once knew it. It has already greenlighted more than 8 million illegal entrants—with another quarter-million entering each month.

    No one in government has offered any projected costs to states and federal agencies of offering health, food, housing, legal, and education subsidies to millions—who broke the law by entering the U.S. and continue to do violate it while residing unlawfully here. Is that the sign of a promising American citizen—that the first thing he does upon entering America is to break his host’s law?

    Incredibly, no one has even explained to Americans why millions of illegal aliens are exempt from the vaccine mandates, background checks, and adherence to the law that is demanded of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. We will soon demand “real” IDs of American citizen airline travelers, while we fly illegal aliens all over the states without any identification?

    In fact, those who blew up the border can’t honestly even explain to the American people why they did so. Was it to ensure future (or even present) political constituents? Cheap labor? To ensure higher taxes to pay for more government services and to “spread the wealth?” Obeyance to the diversity/equity/inclusion lobbies? To make up for fleeing blue-state population?

    The United States has now exceeded, both in real numbers and in percentages, all past numbers of non-native born American residents—at a time when civic education, the idea of the melting pot, and adherence to assimilation have never been more under assault.

    In 2024, either the border will close, or the United States will suffer radical political realignments, sheer chaos in our major cities, protests from Americans furious over the complete flaunting of federal law by their own elected officials, and a likely impeachment of Joe Biden for deliberately forsaking his oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”

    The October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and premodern massacring of nearly 1,200 Jews—and the virulent anti-Semitism that swept our elite campuses and big cities even before the October 27 Israeli Defense Forces’ retaliatory invasion of Gaza—was a wakeup call about the racialized hatred and anti-Semitism now endemic on the Left.

    Campus protestors dropped the prior protestations that they were not anti-Semitic in their hatred of Israel. Instead, they now call out Jews by name. They disrupt their homes and businesses, regardless of their views on Zionism. Pro-Hamas protestors feel free to harass Jews, and with impunity and arrogance chant genocidal chants promising the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population.

    The main campus culprits for these sudden unabashed hatreds are tripartite.

    First, wealthy, mostly white leftist students – increasingly as ignorant of history as they are arrogant in their zealotry – feel it pays psychological and careerist dividends on campus to mouth orthodoxies of hating Israel and de facto siding with the Hamas killers.

    Most have no idea of the Hamas charter, where flows the Jordan River, or what the British Mandate for Palestine or the Balfour Declaration were. Few of the loudest could never even find Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza on a map. No matter: being heard and seen on campus hating Israel is considered a necessary fad like 1970s bellbottoms or pet rocks.

    Second, huge numbers of full-tuition-paying Middle-Eastern visiting students and green-card holders, along with Gulf-fueled and endowed faculty, assume that they are exempt from any legal consequences.

    So they often deface the federal monuments of their hosts, shut down traffic, swarm Jews on campus and in the street, break the law, and battle with police—with absolute impunity.

    Third, just as startling are the undisguised hatreds emanating from radical diversity/equity/inclusion students and faculty. As the declared oppressed, they too feel exempt from any charge that they are mouthing racist and anti-Semitic venom, as they conflate Israel with the now maligned stereotyped “white” people.

    The apogee of such extremism was evident in the congressional testimony of  three ethically challenged Ivy-League presidents. They reminded the nation that no campus president would unequivocally condemn, much less punish, any anti-Semites on a campus, who openly called for the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population. And they lied about “free speech” constraints on their punishment of mainstreaming anti-Semitic and genocidal threats—given they routinely expel, censure, and variously punish all sorts of “hate speech,” but only if it is directed against their own DEI constituencies.

    All this is not tenable.

    Our top universities are facing a perfect storm. Declining pools of students, crushing student loan debt, spiraling tuition and room and board costs, administrative bloat, defecting donors, and the public’s distrust of such people being entrusted with their children’s higher education, will all soon lead to a general reexamination of the very need of these universities in the first place, at least as they are presently constituted.

    Their racialist admissions, hiring, retention, and promotion protocols are destroying meritocracy. Their mediocre curricula, grade inflation, and campus polarization have convinced the public that they are no longer deserving of the many taxpayer indulgences that shield campuses from market realities—such as massive federal research grants and subsidies, tax-free billions of dollars in private donations, tax-free endowment income in the tens of billions of dollars, and taxpayer subsidized $2 trillion in student loans.

    So insulated are these atolls of privilege that they cannot recognize growing public anger over the damage they are doing to the country. Iconic Harvard University cannot even fire its DEI president Claudine Gay, despite serial instances in her own past of plagiarism (which prompted Harvard’s sycophantic board to defend her by embracing a new euphemism— “duplicative language” as if to signify the tiny clerical lapse of stealing the ideas and prose of others).

    In 2024, radical changes in university administration and values will begin to be made, or higher education will face a reckoning from the public and a newly elected government.

    Currently, Colorado has tentatively removed Donald Trump from its 2024 ballot on the specious grounds that he is an “insurrectionist.” Thus, the state insists that he is subject to the 14th Amendment, Section 3 clause of 1868, that calls for the disbarment from future government employment or service those former federal officials and employees who had joined the Confederacy.

    Aside from the misapplication of the spirit and letter of that post-Civil War legislation, those responsible for erasing Trump know that he has never been charged with, much less convicted of “insurrection. And he never will be.

    They understand that half the country knows the January 6 “riot” was the work of unarmed, overzealous, and buffoonish protestors, who broke the law by entering the Capitol, but otherwise had no master insurrectionary plan. And the majority surrounding the Capitol did in fact obey the president’s call to protest “peacefully” and “patriotically.”

    The left privately understands that their latest weaponization of government follows their “Russian collusion hoax,” their “laptop disinformation” farce, their two politicized impeachments, their performance-art Mar-a-Lago documents raid, and thus are all part of a systematic degradation of our campaigns, elections, and political customs, tradition, and discourse.

    A jaded public knows too well that such punitive measures never applied to the 2016 Hillary Clinton crimes of destroying subpoenaed emails and devices, or the FBI’s illegal alteration of FISA documents or its contracting out social media to suppress news stories, or its hiring of a foreign national Christopher Steele, who compiled a fake “dossier” to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump.

    A majority of Americans further know that had Donald Trump not chosen to run for office in 2024, state and federal prosecutors such as the publicity-seeking and partisan Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis would never have indicted him.

    All privately know that the entire Biden family, including the President, could just as easily be indicted on state and local felonies, but the Biden consortium finds itself exempt both for its leftist ideology and its current control of the Department of Justice.

    What then do the campaign and election of 2024 foreordain?

    We will be in entirely new and completely dangerous territory. The likely Republican nominee who currently leads incumbent president Joe Biden will be for most of 2024 the constant target of a coordinated state and local Soviet-like effort to destroy his candidacy before the voters can even vote for or against him in the November election.

    The United States 2023 annual budget deficit is about $1.7 trillion; the nation is burdened by a $34 trillion national debt—even though the federal government since 2021 has raised all sorts of new income and excise taxes.

    The era of printing money, zero interest rates, “modern monetary theory,” and spending wildly is drawing to a close. The mounting interest on the national debt is now crowding out optional but soon essential annual federal spending. At some point soon, one generation of Americans is going to have to exercise spending restraint or accept a continuing decline in its living standards.

    In sum, in 2024, we will either see the destruction of presidential electoral politics as we have known them or a complete repudiation of lawfare. The current new normal that the party in power indicts the leading candidate of the opposition is not sustainable or compatible with the idea of America.

    Either the military will have to deter dramatically our growing number of opportunistic enemies, or it will descend into something like the French army between the world wars—plagued by ideology, ossified brass, corruption, mediocrity, misplaced investments, and bankrupt strategies.

    If there are not radical changes in higher education, our Ivy League and self-identified elite campuses will go the way of Bud-Light, Disney, and Target—once premier brands reduced to red ink and laughing-stock caricatures.

    The United States is cracking under 8 million illegal entries; it cannot sustain another year and 2 million more illegal entrants—or a total of 55-60 million foreign-born residents, with no idea of how many are U.S. citizens, illegal aliens, or green card holders–or how many are employable, or free of criminal records or in need of massive federal and state subsidies.

    In 2024, the U.S. will begin to see that to meet its spiraling debt, it will either keep inflating its currency, or slash spending, or raise even further taxes to the degree that even the lower middle class will have to pay 50 percent of their income in state and federal taxes, or renounce its debt, and thus go full-Third World.

    Will we meet these challenges or ensure the ongoing decline?

    If what we saw after October 7, or the wild and out-of-control reign of weaponized local and state prosecutors, or what we watch nightly on television at the border, or the paralyses we witness abroad of our military, or the breezy way in which our officials promise groups here and abroad billions of dollars in easy money, continues into 2024, then the country as we knew it will become unrecognizable.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 16:25

  • 'Biggest Losers', Bullion, & Black Gold All Bid On Boxing Day
    ‘Biggest Losers’, Bullion, & Black Gold All Bid On Boxing Day

    The S&P 500 is now up over 15% since October 27th. And the Santa rally markets have been experiencing since just before Thanksgiving continues even after he dropped his presents around the world on Monday and faces the Boxing Day hangover.

    As Goldman’s Chris Hussey notes, a combination of…

    • strong consumer spending in stores (12/14 – Retail sales accelerate in November on sequential basis),

    • a rapid deceleration of inflation (12/22 – Core PCE Inflation falls further), and

    • a dovish tilt from the Fed (12/13 FOMC dots and the market shrugging off the post-FOMC jawboning)

    …have all contributed to an extremely market-friendly backdrop for stocks – especially when you consider that US growth remains resilient as captured by the strong November labor reports.

    Today’s economic data only added to the favorable narrative. The S&P Case-Shiller home price index increased in line with consensus expectations in October. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index jumped back above trend, the Philly Fed Services survey soared back into expansion, and the Dallas Fed manufacturing index for December came in higher than expected.

    Source: Bloomberg

    Small Caps continued to explode higher today, significantly outperforming the rest of the US majors today (which all managed solid 0.5%-ish gains) amid a low liquidity holiday week. Some late-day selling spoiled the party though…

    ‘Most Shorted’ stocks surged back up to erase last Wednesday’s 0-DTE-driven pukefest…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The previous biggest losers continue to dominate the gains as financial conditions have eased dramatically…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And the dash for trash continues…

    Source: Bloomberg

    VIX was smashed lower to within a tick of a 12 handle…

    Treasuries were unchanged on the day but not after selling pressure overnight which was erased after a strong 2Y auction…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 2Y yield was the biggest swinger…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar dipped back to Friday’s lows amid very low liquidity in FX land…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin was clubbed like a baby seal, once again seeming stalling out around $44k…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Spot gold prices rallied back above $2060…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oil prices surged today with WTI back above $76 for the first time since Dec 1st…

    Which appears to have put a local low in the price of wholesale and retail gasoline…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, this is odd…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Americans are spending more despite being considerably less confident.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 16:00

  • Blinken's Visit To Mexico Focuses On Optics As Migration Crisis Hits Biden's Polls
    Blinken’s Visit To Mexico Focuses On Optics As Migration Crisis Hits Biden’s Polls

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Mexico City on Wednesday to discuss a new agreement with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to control the surge of migrants flooding the southern border. 

    Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will join Blinken in discussions with AMLO about “unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere,” a US Department of State press release read. 

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    The goals of the meeting will include “identifying ways Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges, including actions to enable the reopening of key ports of entry across our shared border,” the press release continued. 

    Blinken’s visit is nothing more than optics for an administration that has promoted disastrous open southern borders, allowing millions of illegals to flood the nation ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

    A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, shared with The Hill, shows only 38% of voters approved of Biden’s handling of immigration, down from 46% in November. 

    “Based on the polling on immigration, this is one of the key issues dragging down the president’s reputation, and he needs to make progress on this issue or face increasing consequences,” said Mark Penn, chairman of the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll.

    According to a new Gallup poll, Biden’s approval rating is lower than any of his seven predecessors at the same point in their first term. 

    The polling data is clear that millions of Americans are fed up with radical progressives in the White House who have flooded the country with illegals, some of whom are military-age men from countries that call death to the West. 

    New US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows encounters on the southern border were nearly a quarter million last month. This figure is the highest November number and the third-highest monthly total ever.

    And now this… 

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    Days ago, the new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by a network of NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, who seem to be playing a powerful role in coordinating the large-scale invasion of illegals.

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    Meanwhile, the Biden administration is handing some of these NGOs millions of dollars to assist illegal aliens once in the US. 

    “A lot of NGOs are helping Biden open the border to unlimited illegal crossing. But none of this could happen without the president’s approval,” Byron York, the chief political correspondent at the Washington Examiner, said. 

    Blinken’s visit to Mexico is merely a distraction by the administration to save Biden’s imploding polling numbers.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 15:45

  • This Year, Americans Have Become Hungrier, Lonelier And More Desperate
    This Year, Americans Have Become Hungrier, Lonelier And More Desperate

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    The ominous trends that we see all around us are taking us somewhere. 

    Needless to say, 2023 was not a good year for our country.  Hunger and homelessness have been absolutely exploding, the suicide rate just continues to go even higher, and there is chaos in the streets on an almost nightly basis.  It is in this environment that the election of 2024 will happen.  I expect election season to add an additional level of strain to our society, and I don’t think that our society will be able to handle it.  We are headed for a nightmare, and at this point everyone should be able to see that.

    When conditions deteriorate, it is often those at the bottom of the economic food chain that feel it first.

    And right now food banks all over the nation are dealing with a tsunami of hunger…

    Food bank leaders from all corners of the country tell USA TODAY their neighborhood pantries are serving more people while using less resources, as economic pressures continue to ravage the budgets of low-income Americans and service providers alike.

    Since pandemic-era boosts to government food aid ended earlier this year in many states, families are turning to food banks to close a gap in need that feels like it has no end in sight.

    Susannah Morgan, the president of Oregon Food Bank, says that she is literally witnessing “the worst rate of hunger in my career”…

    “This is the worst rate of hunger in my career,” said Morgan, who has worked at food banks in Boston, San Francisco and Anchorage, Alaska. “It’s so large, it’s hard to wrap your head around.”

    I don’t know what I have to do to convince some people that things really are this bad.

    I keep sharing fact after fact in my articles, but some people out there are just not convinced.

    One out of every five children in the U.S. does not have enough food to eat, but the reality of the suffering that is now taking place just isn’t sinking in for many of those that are still living the high life.

    Meanwhile, homelessness in the U.S. is increasing at the fastest rate ever recorded…

    The United States experienced a dramatic 12 percent increase in homelessness as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, federal officials said Friday.

    About 653,000 people were experiencing homelessness during the January snapshot. That’s the highest number since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007 to count the homeless population.

    There are many out there that feel that such people need to “get a job” or “work harder”, but the truth is that most Americans are living on the verge of economic disaster because most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

    At the same time, Americans continue to get even lonelier.

    According to USA Today, “Americans are lonely and it’s killing them”, and at this point things are so bad that this crisis is being called “a new epidemic”…

    America has a new epidemic. It can’t be treated using traditional therapies even though it has debilitating and even deadly consequences.

    The problem seeping in at the corners of our communities is loneliness and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is hoping to generate awareness and offer remedies before it claims more lives.

    “Most of us probably think of loneliness as just a bad feeling,” he told USA TODAY. “It turns out that loneliness has far greater implications for our health when we struggle with a sense of social disconnection, being lonely or isolated.”

    It is especially bad during this time of the year.

    There are so many people out there that are deeply, deeply hurting because they are so lonely.

    They are trying their best to face a world that has gone completely mad, but that can be really difficult to do when you don’t have anyone to lean on for support.

    Speaking of a world gone mad, retail theft has absolutely skyrocketed in many of our largest cities since 2019…

    Crime-ridden New York City has seen the biggest impact with a 64 percent increase in retail theft, followed by Los Angeles with a 61 percent jump and Virginia Beach, Virginia, which has seen a 44 percent rise.

    Each month, more Americans are descending into poverty and more Americans are turning to crime.

    And it certainly doesn’t help that vast hordes of illegal immigrants are constantly being added to the mix.

    Chaos in the streets has become an almost constant state of affairs in this country, and this year in Oakland there was even rioting on Christmas Eve.

    Of course our leaders continue to exist in a bubble where none of these problems constitutes a serious crisis.

    To them, everything must be just fine because they are doing such a wonderful job.

    When he was recently confronted about the reality of the economic crisis that we are now facing, Joe Biden bluntly told the press to “start reporting it the right way”…

    President Biden criticized news coverage of the U.S. economy as he faces growing backlash from voters over his handling of inflation.

    In brief remarks Saturday before boarding the presidential helicopter, Biden expressed confidence in the economy and ripped the reporters for the way it has been portrayed.

    “All good. Take a look. Start reporting it the right way,” Biden said when asked about his economic outlook for 2024, according to a transcript released Sunday by the White House.

    He wants the press to continue to spin things in a way that will make him look good as they always have done in the past.

    But we have reached a stage where all of the charades are finally crumbling.

    Conditions are bad now, and they are going to get even worse in 2024.

    So brace yourself for what is ahead, because we are going to experience so much chaos during the year that is in front of us.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 15:25

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Dec 26

Today’s News 26th December 2023

  • World's Most Dangerous Combination: China And Russia
    World’s Most Dangerous Combination: China And Russia

    Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

    Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy knows how to end the greatest threat to American national security.

    That threat would be the combination of the world’s two most dangerous states: China and Russia.

    “I would freeze the current lines of control,” the candidate told Fox News’s Jesse Watters during his prime time show, referring to the battlefields in Ukraine.

    “I would further make a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO. That’s enough to get Putin to do the deal.”

    “But I would require something even greater in return, Jesse,” Ramaswamy said. “Russia has to exit its military alliance with China.”

    Putin will take the deal, the charismatic candidate assured Watters:

    “He’s gonna say, ‘Ok’ because I’m going to say, ‘We’ll reopen our economic relations with Russia and further, we’ll end the Ukraine war and also make sure NATO never admits Ukraine.’ “

    The interview occurred in late August, but these themes are often heard, in America and elsewhere. Is Ramaswamy on the right track?

    In theory, it should be possible to separate Moscow from Beijing. After all, China and Russia have for centuries been competitors, adversaries, and even enemies. Take something as fundamental as their common border. After border skirmishes, they finally settled the boundary only in 2008, when Moscow formally transferred various parcels to China.

    Vladimir Putin knows, however, that no border is ever finally fixed, and Chinese migrants are pouring into the sparsely populated Russian Far East. There, many of them hope to “retake” lands ceded by the Qing dynasty to Moscow in the 1850s and 1860s in what Chinese officials now call “unequal treaties.” Beijing has made no formal claim to Vladivostok and surrounding areas, but it has been continually pushing the idea nonetheless.

    In short, China poses the greatest threat to Russia, at least over the long term.

    The Ramaswamy proposal, however, ignores the reality that as long as Putin and Xi Jinping rule, there is no realistic possibility of breaking up the two states. Both dictators view the world in similar terms; believe that their short-term interests coincide; and identify the same adversary, the United States of America. As Xi said on December 20 as he welcomed Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to Beijing, “Maintaining and developing China-Russia relations well is a strategic choice made by both sides based on the fundamental interests of the two peoples.”

    The two regimes, Xi’s words reveal, have been on the same page for some time. They declared their closeness with the 5,300-word joint statement issued after Putin met Xi in Beijing on February 4 of last year, just 20 days before Russia’s attack on Ukraine. That is when they declared their “no-limits” partnership.

    China and Russia are more than just working together. They are forming the core of a new axis. Around this core are proxies and proxies of proxies, such as Iran, North Korea, Algeria, and a host of terrorist groups.

    The Chinese and Russian leaders are forming this grouping because they believe the United States, the final guarantor of the international system that frustrates them both, must be taken down. Xi, by, among other things, declaring a “people’s war” on America, has made it clear that the U.S. must be destroyed and Americans exterminated. Putin is less ambitious, only wanting the U.S. out of his way as he recreates the Russian Empire at its greatest extent.

    Moreover, Xi and Putin believe that the United States is in terminal decline. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years,” the Chinese dictator said on March 22 to the Russian dictator in Moscow while bidding farewell after their 40th in-person meeting. “And we are driving this change together.”

    Even if Xi and Putin were not so confident there are reasons for the Russian leader to reject the overtures of a President Ramaswamy. “Washington has little leverage over Russia,” Rebekah Koffler, the author of Putin’s Playbook and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, told Gatestone. “There are no carrots to offer to Putin, and the sticks haven’t worked.”

    Yes, the Biden administration could drop sanctions and abandon Ukraine, but even those actions, which would be deeply injurious to the U.S. and the international system, would not be enough to break Putin’s bond with Beijing. “Russia does not trust the U.S. and Europe,” Koffler says. “Russia believes the West will continue to try to weaken it economically and militarily. Moscow believes that regardless of who occupies the White House, a Democrat or a Republican, the U.S. will pursue an anti-Russia policy.”

    Democrats and Republicans should pursue “anti-Russia” policies: Russia has refused to abide by the rules and norms of the international system. Russia is not only an aggressor state, but it is also engaging in barbaric acts in Ukraine, some of which constitute “genocide” as defined in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

    Ramaswamy says “we have wrongfully cut off Russia from the West.” It is true that Americans and Western actions, as Koffler remarked, “hit the key revenue drivers of the Russian economy,” but how could any nation allow Putin to, among other things, use its banks and financial system while his soldiers were torturing, raping, and killing Ukrainian women and children; committing acts of mass murder in town after town; and abducting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia in an apparent attempt to eliminate Ukrainian identity?

    To finance acts of aggression and barbarism in the face of sanctions, Putin has found support from China. By November, China-Russia trade hit $218.2 billion in 2023, exceeding their announced target of $200 billion by the end of 2024. Trade during the first 11 months of 2023 was double the volume in 2018 of $108.3 billion, which itself represented an increase of 24.5% over 2017. Putin will not break this established and fast-growing trade relationship for mere promises from a West he neither likes nor trusts.

    China does not, as Ramaswamy tells us, have a “military alliance” with Russia—China has no formal alliances except the one with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—but the Chinese and Russian militaries are nonetheless close.

    The two forces are worrying the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral John Aquilino. This month in Tokyo, he publicly stated that he was “very concerned” about their joint exercises: “I view it as far beyond the marriage of convenience at this point in time.”

    In other words, China and Russia are preparing to go to war together. As no country threatens either of them, they are undoubtedly thinking of perpetrating more acts of aggression.

    Would Putin join Xi if China were to invade some neighbor? That is not clear, but it is highly likely that the Russian leader will help China. “Russia could conduct shows of force to stretch U.S. and allied surveillance,” Rebecca Grant of defense consultant IRIS Independent Research told Gatestone. “Posturing military moves by Russia could also make U.S. leadership balk.” She points out there could be, for instance, Russian bomber flights or even nuclear weapons exercises.

    Russia could also help China by trying to grab even more of the Kuril Islands chain from Japan or moving against a NATO member, such as one of the three Baltic republics, engulfing the Eurasian landmass in conflict, from one end to the other.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 00:00

  • Yuan Overtakes Yen For 4th Place In Global Payments
    Yuan Overtakes Yen For 4th Place In Global Payments

    China’s yuan has overtaken the Japanese yen to become the fourth-most used currency by value in global payments for the first time in almost two years, according to a monthly tracker of the Chinese currency released by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

    The share of the yuan as a global payment currency climbed to 4.61% in November from 3.6% the previous month, according to data compiled by SWIFT and released on Thursday. According to Caixin, the redback surpassed the Japanese yen, whose share came in at 3.41% in November, down from 3.91% the month before.

    Thanks to its sharp devaluation throughout 2023, the yuan has been on a steady march upward throughout 2023, having started the year with just a 1.91% share in January. The November reading for the yuan was the highest since SWIFT began compiling the data series in 2010.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar maintained its dominance in global payments with a share of 47.08% in November. It was trailed by the euro, which was used in 22.95% of global payments, and the British pound, which had a share of 7.15%.

    While China has been ramping up efforts to expand use of the yuan in cross-border transactions as an alternative to the US dollar, it has so far achieved very limited success due to the country’s impenetrable capital account firewall which means the yuan can never truly float (and if it does, watch as tens of trillions in domestic savings promptly flood the rest of the world, after a massive devaluation of course). To overcome the yuan’s natural limitations, China has been encouraging other countries to settle trade and investment in the Chinese currency (something Russia has been pursuing in recent months), and setting up yuan clearing banks in offshore markets to cater to cross-border yuan settlements.

    The yuan’s ranking in global payment currencies by value has been hovering around fifth for years, SWIFT data show. It temporarily captured the fourth spot for a two-month spell in December 2021 and January 2022, but dropped back to fifth the following month, where it had remained until last month.

    In November, the yuan also unexpectedly surpassed the euro as the second-most used currency in the global trade finance market, SWIFT data show. It edged out the euro to occupy the No. 2 position in global trade finance for the first time in September — according to available data going back to 2017 — and then dipped to third place in October.

    SWIFT’s tracker for the yuan counts data computed from certain message types and exchanged between financial institutions through its system, so it’s not a reflection of the entire financial market, the association noted in its report.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 23:15

  • "Christmas Is Canceled": Scuffles, Arrests In NYC As Pro-Palestinian Protesters Storm Manhattan
    “Christmas Is Canceled”: Scuffles, Arrests In NYC As Pro-Palestinian Protesters Storm Manhattan

    Pro-Palestinian protesters raged across New York City on Monday, apparently determined to piss Christians off on their most sacred holiday. 

    “Christmas is canceled here,” they chanted, while parading a blood-red mock nativity scene through the streets, along with puppets of Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden.

    “Long live the intifada,” the roughly 500 demonstrators yelled as they swarmed the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree where people were trying to enjoy the day.

    “While Ur Shopping Bombs are Dropping,” read one protester’s sign.

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    “No Joy In Genocide,” read the mock Nativity scene, the NY Post reports.

    As night fell, the protest intensified. Near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, scuffles broke out, sending police officers dashing through the crowd in an effort to maintain order. Reports of arrests came from areas near Grand Central Station and Union Square, as tensions between protesters and law enforcement escalated.

    The Christmas Day demonstration targeting the Manhattan area popular with holiday revelers and tourists prompted cops to go on alert outside the News Corp headquarters on Sixth Avenue.

    The building is home to Fox News, The Post, the Wall Street Journal and other company holdings.

    Protesters have targeted the media company in the past, including twice last month.

    On Nov. 29, hundreds of demonstrators — at least one spotted carrying a swastika — stormed the Sixth Avenue building after police blocked them from Rockefeller Center during a well-organized “Flood the Tree Lighting for Gaza” protest. -NY Post

    This demonstration was not an isolated incident but the latest in a series of anti-Israel marches that have swept through New York City.

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

     Maybe trying to ruin Christmas in New York isn’t the best way to garner sympathy for your cause?

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 22:55

  • The 4 Major Battlefronts In Trump’s Ongoing Ballot Dispute
    The 4 Major Battlefronts In Trump’s Ongoing Ballot Dispute

    Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A slew of lawsuits are seeking to disqualify President Donald Trump from running for office in 2024, creating an increasingly unstable presidential election season.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik, Getty Images)

    All of these attempts rest on an argument that the “insurrection” clause of the 14th Amendment bars the former president from appearing on the ballot.

    The most significant decision was handed down on Dec. 21, when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in a 4–3 decision that President Trump couldn’t appear on the state’s ballot because he had engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

    The Colorado ruling appears to be triggering and renewing efforts to kick the former president off the ballot in other blue-leaning states, including New York, California, and Pennsylvania.

    A lower court in Colorado had similarly ruled that President Trump engaged in an insurrection but stopped short of disqualifying him after finding that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to presidents.

    Enacted after the Civil War, the text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

    This relatively untested provision is now set to come before the nation’s highest court.

    “This case is surely destined for the Supreme Court to interpret the 14th Amendment and resolve whether Trump is disqualified from the presidency,” said University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade, who left the Trump administration among a wave of resignations at the beginning of his term.

    Who that section applies to, what constitutes an insurrection, and how the section is enforced have been the subject of vigorous debate.

    Embedded within those questions are a series of others that could make deciding or enforcing ballot disqualification cases especially complicated.

    Here are some of the major questions that courts and politicians may consider.

    1. What Is an Insurrection?

    Efforts to disqualify President Trump hinge partly on whether his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riots qualify as engaging in the type of insurrection mentioned in Section 3.

    To answer that question, observers have drawn from historical records, federal law, and evidence surrounding Jan. 6.

    Supporters of President Donald Trump protest outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

    According to Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace’s reasoning, President Trump used language he knew would provoke violence on Jan. 6, 2021, but was vague enough to maintain plausible deniability. For her, that satisfied Section 3’s requirement that an individual “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”

    Some, however, have questioned that line of reasoning given that none of the Jan. 6 defendants, nor President Trump himself, have been charged with violating federal law regarding an insurrection.

    South Texas College law professor Josh Blackman has said that “federal prosecutions for insurrection are extremely rare” and told Click2Houston that crimes such as “insurrection, treason, or sedition are very, very hard to prove.”

    “ They require basically an intent to try to frustrate or subvert the government,” he said.

    There are additional questions as to whether the 14th Amendment defines insurrection the same way federal law does, or whether federal law and the 14th Amendment require the same level of proof to establish that individuals are guilty of insurrection.

    Under the 14th Amendment, meeting the threshold of “insurrection” is “an extraordinarily high bar,” said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation. He also served in the Health and Human Services Department under President Trump.

    “I didn’t see anything sufficient to justify such an incendiary charge,” Mr. Severino told The Epoch Times.

    He said the reference to insurrection in the 14th Amendment came about after invasions of the north during the Civil War.

    During the Civil War, “you had armed invasions of the north … that’s what insurrection was referring to in the 14th Amendment,” he said.

    The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. (National Archives of the United States)

    Horace Cooper, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, who formerly taught constitutional law at George Mason University, said that “their target was specifically the Confederacy.”

    “Their target was not anyone who supported the French in the French–Indian War. Their target was not anyone who supported the British in the British–American War. Even though the language isn’t written in a way to limit those, the rationale was the Confederacy,” he said.

    Still, some scholars say that President Trump has satisfied the 14th Amendment’s requirements for engaging in an insurrection.

    “Section Three covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support as ‘aid or comfort,’” said University of Chicago law professor William Baude and University of St. Thomas law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen in a paper.

    “It covers a broad range of former offices, including the presidency. And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.”

    2. Is Trump an ‘Officer of the United States’?

    Judge Wallace’s opinion refrained from disqualifying President Trump because, she said, even if he committed an insurrection, she didn’t have enough evidence to definitively say he was the type of “officer” that the 14th Amendment prohibits from engaging in an insurrection.

    Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, has argued that two prior Supreme Court decisions contain language indicating that “officers” of the United States don’t include presidents.

    More specifically, both Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and United States v. Mouat define officers as appointees of the president and others.

    Washington University law professor Andrea Katz disagrees.

    “You can find cases that have held certainly to the contrary,” she told The Epoch Times, pointing to Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission.

    President Donald Trump at a Save America rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times)

    Quoting a prior court decision, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said in 2018 that an officer “must occupy a ‘continuing’ position established by law, and must ‘exercis[e] significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States.’”

    Ms. Katz said that “it seems like both common understanding—the text of the Supreme Court, and the legislators’ understanding in drafting the 14th amendment—was that the president was going to be covered by this language.”

    In its decision, the Colorado Supreme Court argued that the amendment’s drafters “understood the president as an officer of the United States” and that the Constitution as a whole supported that conclusion.

    3. Can Courts Enforce Section 3?

    Even if it was clear that Section 3 included President Trump’s conduct, questions remain as to whether courts can remove him from the ballot.

    The answer to those questions could depend on how much authority state laws grant their secretaries of state. It could also depend on how Congress describes the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 22:30

  • Behind The Democrats' Efforts To Regulate The Supreme Court
    Behind The Democrats’ Efforts To Regulate The Supreme Court

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

    Democrats’ push to impose a code of conduct on the U.S. Supreme Court is driven by their desire to exert power over a court that hasn’t been ruling their way on key issues, legal experts say.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    Democrats and their left-wing activist allies have been incensed over the past two years as the court sent abortion matters back to the states, axed affirmative action in college admissions, bolstered gun rights and public prayer, backed a website designer’s right not to promote a same-sex wedding, and strengthened private property rights while weakening the government’s regulatory powers over the environment.

    Several experts told The Epoch Times that the left cannot accept the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, so it will keep agitating against it and try to undermine its legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

    So far, the activism has propelled the court to adopt its first-ever formal code of conduct, issued on Nov. 13, but Democrats say it’s a toothless gesture and won’t fix what they say is a court that’s overly sympathetic to business interests and conservative causes.

    “The court’s new code of conduct falls far short of what we would expect from the highest court in the land,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

    “While the code of conduct prohibits the appearance of impropriety, it allows the justice to individually determine whether their own conduct creates such an appearance in the minds of ‘reasonable members of the public.’ This is something that justices have repeatedly failed to do over the last few years.”

    To remedy the supposed crisis at the court, Mr. Durbin backs the proposed Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act of 2023, which his committee approved on a party-line vote in July.

    The proposal, which Republicans have denounced as unconstitutional, would create a system allowing members of the public to file complaints against justices for violating the proposed code of conduct or for engaging “in conduct that undermines the integrity of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

    Among other things, it would also impose mandatory recusal standards and create a panel of lower court judges to investigate complaints against the Supreme Court.

    Democrats are proposing their code of conduct “so they can control the Supreme Court,” said Steven J. Allen, a distinguished senior fellow at Capital Research Center, a watchdog group.

    “They’re doing this to get rid of one or more Republican appointees so they can be replaced,” Mr. Allen said.

    “That’s almost the definition of ‘lawfare’—using the legal system to wage war on your opponents. You pack the court by knocking off a Republican or two.”

    Mr. Durbin, a longtime antagonist of Justice Clarence Thomas, who’s considered by many to be the court’s preeminent conservative jurist, has been particularly focused on the justice’s alleged transgressions.

    Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas arrives for the ceremonial swearing in of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the White House in Washington on Oct. 8, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Justice Thomas has been a lightning rod for criticism from the left for a long time.

    Mr. Allen predicts the “smear campaign” against Justice Thomas “will continue as long as he’s alive.”

    Mr. Durbin and his committee colleagues issued a blizzard of public condemnations when earlier this year it was reported that billionaire Harlan Crow, a big Republican Party donor, gave Justice Thomas a series of luxurious vacations and tuition support for a grandnephew the latter raised and purchased real estate from the justice’s family.

    Justice Thomas didn’t disclose the events at the time, saying he was advised that it wasn’t required, but he has vowed to disclose such events going forward.

    No evidence has been uncovered to suggest that the justice’s vote in specific cases before the court was influenced by the gifts. Having wealthy friends isn’t against the law, the justice’s defenders say.

    Justice Thomas is also routinely attacked by critics for the conservative activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas, a high-profile supporter of President Donald Trump.

    Democrats, who have characterized Republican efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election after Election Day as an affront to democracy, were angered that Ms. Thomas reportedly signed form letters urging state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory.

    Ms. Thomas has also said she believes the 2020 election was rigged.

    A video from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1991 confirmation is played during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Supreme Court ethics reform on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 2, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Liberal groups have called upon Justice Thomas to recuse himself from a plethora of cases related to the election and to President Trump’s ongoing criminal prosecutions. They argue that Justice Thomas and his wife are too close to Republicans.

    Veteran Supreme Court watcher Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, said it’s a one-way street.

    “What are the odds that Senate Democrats would call on one of the liberal justices to recuse if that justice’s spouse had expressed strong public opinions about the 2020 election being fair?” he said.

    They would never demand that a liberal justice recuse “because a spouse had expressed political opinions about newsworthy events,” he said.

    Pressure Campaign

    Jim Burling, vice president of legal affairs for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit public interest law firm that challenges government abuses, said the Durbin-backed SCERT bill and his committee’s investigation of conservative justices is an effort “to try to limit the legitimacy of the court.”

    “They don’t like the fact that we have a court nowadays that’s not doing what the progressives think that the court should be doing,” he said.

    It bothers them that the court is “very different today” from the way it was under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953 to 1969) and Chief Justice Warren Burger (1969 to 1986) when the court veered left, Mr. Burling said.

    “It upsets them that they can’t win the case on the merits, so you just throw mud around instead and try to obfuscate what the real issue is here,” he said.

    Demonstrators protest at the entrance of the gated community where Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence lives in Fairfax, Va., on June 24, 2022. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

    Mr. Levey said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sponsor of the SCERT Act, has shown that he wants to keep putting pressure on the court’s conservative members.

    The fact that the court adopted its own code shows that “even the Supreme Court, where they have lifetime tenure, can be pressured,” he said.

    “This is why the Democrats are constantly attacking the Supreme Court because it does have an effect and you see the effect here,” Mr. Levey said.

    “This is just another form of trying to harass and intimidate the court. Democrats have discovered over the years that if you let the conservative justices know that you’re going to make life difficult for them … some of the center-right justices are fairly easily intimidated.”

    Maybe about half of those justices will then “go out of their way not to anger the Democrats too much.” Mr. Levey said.

    Politicians have been trying to manipulate the Supreme Court for a long time, Mr. Allen said, “by way of essentially harassing them.”

    He pointed to the 2010 State of the Union address when President Barack Obama took the unusual step of chastising the robed Supreme Court justices seated before him for their ruling in the Citizens United case, which changed campaign finance restrictions.

    “With all due deference to separation of powers,” he said, the Citizens United precedent “will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.”

    Justice Samuel Alito shook his head in disagreement, appearing to mouth the words, “Not true.”

    And in March 2020, at a pro-abortion rally outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed unspecified retribution against conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh should they vote to uphold a Louisiana law that imposed abortion restrictions.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 21:00

  • UK Deploys Warship To Guyana In Show Of Support Against Venezuela Territorial Claim
    UK Deploys Warship To Guyana In Show Of Support Against Venezuela Territorial Claim

    While the recent panic over the risk of a Venezuela invasion of its neighbor Guyana may have come and gone, some (former) global superpowers are not taking any chances, and according to the FT, the UK will deploy a naval patrol ship off the coast of the tiny but rich Latin American nation in a show of support for the former British colony as it faces a territorial claim from its more powerful if insolvent communist neighbor.

    The deployment follows moves by Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist president, to claim the vast, mineral-rich Essequibo region, which borders his country but has been part of Guyana – a member of the British Commonwealth and the only English-speaking nation in South America – for more than a century.

    Britain’s decision to dispatch HMS Trent later this month is a significant show of support for the government in Guyana’s capital Georgetown.

    The decision comes just days after the UK’s new foreign secretary, David Cameron, fresh from career exile after his catastrophic handling of Brexit, said the UK would “continue to work with partners in the region to ensure the territorial integrity of Guyana is upheld and prevent escalation”.

    Meanwhile, UK foreign office minister David Rutley, visited Guyana last week to meet President Irfaan Ali and stress the UK government’s “unequivocal backing” for Guyana’s territorial integrity after the Venezuelan claim.

    Yván Gil, Venezuela’s foreign minister, responded angrily on social media platform X to that visit, saying: “The former invading and enslaving empire, which illegally occupied the territory of [Essequibo] and acted in an skilful and sneaky manner against the interests of Venezuela, insists on intervening in a territorial controversy that they themselves generated.

    “This controversy will be resolved directly between the parties . . . We will stop the new filibustering that seeks to destabilise the region.”

    As reported earlier this month, Maduro held a referendum at the start of December, in which Caracas claimed that more than 95% supported proposals including that Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana, should become a Venezuelan state.

    Caracas subsequently authorised Venezuelan state-run companies to grant licences for exploration and exploitation in Essequibo and ordered new official maps including the territory, although the presidents of both countries agreed in a December 15 meeting not to use force in the dispute.

    HMS Trent, which is armed with a cannon and machine guns, has a crew of 65 and a contingent of Royal Marines, and can deploy Merlin helicopters.

    The vessel, which is mostly used for counter-terrorism exercises and tackling piracy and smuggling, is usually based around the Mediterranean. However, in early December it was deployed west to Barbados to clamp down on drug runners in the Caribbean.

    UK officials told the FT that the ship would anchor off the coast of Georgetown and carry out visits, training and joint activities with the country’s navy.

    Guyana’s defence force, with only 4,070 active personnel and reserves, is dwarfed by Venezuela’s 351,000-strong military which feels especially powerful now that Biden will do anything to appease dictator Maduro if it means a buffer of oil supply heading into the critical 2024 election year.

    A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “HMS Trent will visit regional ally and Commonwealth partner Guyana later this month as part of a series of engagements in the region during her Atlantic patrol task deployment.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 20:15

  • Debt And Dopamine: The Ghosts Of Christmas Present
    Debt And Dopamine: The Ghosts Of Christmas Present

    Authored by Amy Denney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Most every Christmas growing up in the 1950s, Brad Harris got socks, a new pair of jeans, and—if he was fortunate—a new sweater.

    (Jordi Mora igual/Getty Images)

    He lived with his mom, who was a single parent, as well as his grandmother, great aunt, and younger brother. Finances were tight, but there was always food on the table, including a big dinner for Christmas.

    “We never felt deprived, but we didn’t compare what we had with other folks,” Mr. Harris, 87, told The Epoch Times. “It was a wonderful time really. It was a lot less frivolous. I think it made a better generation of us.”

    To help with family expenses, he usually held more than one job at a time—including delivering newspapers until he graduated high school. It was a big delight one year when he received a Hawthorne bicycle with a tank and headlight for Christmas.

    “It was one of my prizes, and I rode that thing clear through high school,” Mr. Harris said. “I had probably worn out two or three bicycles carrying papers.”

    Decorations were sparse—they couldn’t afford a tree so they usually cut down a fresh one from a friend’s property—yet the Harris brothers never forgot to buy something for mom. One year, it was a set of clear pink serving dishes for eight that cost no more than $3.

    These days, Mr. Harris no longer tries to pick out meaningful gifts for each family member. He has 14 great-grandchildren. He makes homemade caramel and hands out cash.

    There’s not much the kids want that they don’t already have, he said.

    “We found a long time ago, 100-dollar bills fit everybody, and the color’s right,” Mr. Harris said. “I spend more on Christmas than my mother made in a year.”

    Spending Obsession

    Christmas gift giving in the United States has always been a big deal, but it seems to continue getting bigger. Data available for the past 20 years shows overall spending has nearly doubled since 2003, climbing every year except during the financial crisis in 2008. The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts growth will be a bit lower—3 to 4 percent—in 2023 than in 2022.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times)

    Total holiday spending this year in America is expected to be at least $937 billion, according to the NRF. Back in 1950, total holiday spending was $40.2 billion, but that’s without factoring in inflation and population growth.

    Those were the days before credit cards, before storage units, before America’s massive rise in household debt. Those were the days when it was easy to buy a Christmas present because everybody needed something.

    Americans have always spent a lot of money during Christmastime. What has changed dramatically is how much they spend the rest of the year and how much they borrow to maintain that spending.

    Shoppers clog the aisles at Macy’s Department store on Black Friday in 2003 in New York City. Annual holiday spending has doubled to nearly a trillion dollars in the two decades since. (Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

    Shopping has become a year-round obsession, turning Christmas gift-giving into an obligation and sometimes even burden. Often our presents are just more clutter.

    Remembering the value of more meaningful and necessary gifts of generations past could help us shift our focus from the materialism of gifts to the act of giving and the value of relationships.

    When It All Changed

    The Sears catalogs, including the once-annual Wish Book and Christmas catalogs, really took off as credit started to appear. Even back in 1956 the “Sears Christmas Book” was more than 450 pages of toys, tools, clothing, houseware, and more—all promoted as the perfect gifts for loved ones.

    The catalogs provided inspiration for new Christmas gifts that weren’t so obvious as a needed sweater. Every American could imagine a new level of consumption, with items they never would have considered buying now displayed in enticing variety.

    Of course, all that possibility meant little without the means to pay for it—and incomes were still limited just as they are today. However, Americans’ spending habits were suddenly no longer restrained by their pocketbook.

    Whereas merchant credit had previously been associated with wealthier customers, the post-war years saw an explosion in consumer loans and credit cards for a rapidly growing middle class.

    A telling statistic is the household debt to income ratio, which tells how much of a household’s monthly income goes towards debt payments. The higher the ratio, the more monthly income goes towards debt payments.

    The Institute for New Economic Thinking thoroughly examined debt from the end of World War II, when the household debt-to-income ratio was 30 percent, to 2016, when that debt ratio hit 120 percent. In other words, by 2016 the average American household was going further into debt every month.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times)

    “The American household debt boom of the past decades was first and foremost a middle-class affair. Middle-class incomes grew by 20 percent since 1970, middle-class debt by 250 percent,” the institute report said. In other words, we now spend far more than we make, a dramatic shift from the 1950s.

    Rachel Cruze, a financial expert at Ramsey Solutions, a firm that helps people reconcile debt and make better financial decisions, says Americans are spending themselves into excruciating debt.

    “Credit card debt itself has reached over a trillion dollars, the highest in history,” Ms. Cruze told The Epoch Times.

    Shoppers hunt for gifts and other items at a New York department store on December 11, 2023. With everyone’s homes filled with stuff, finding meaningful gifts has become a challenge. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

    Our debts have become so great they could be considered a public health issue. One study published in 2018 in PNAS found “overspending and over-indebtedness … leads to social exclusion, feelings of loneliness, an unhealthy family environment, and suicidal thoughts, and it reduces social support. Also, one of the biggest problems with debts is that they often unleash a spiral of further debts. This spiral can ultimately bring people into poverty.”

    The study found that when low-income families were given three times their monthly income for debt relief, those who used it to pay down their debts instead of making other purchases experienced a proportional improvement in cognitive function and reduced anxiety.

    How the Glut Stole Christmas

    One of the big lessons from the Grinch that has proven true over the past 20 years is that it isn’t a lack of presents that can ruin Christmas. In fact, presents can be the thing that buries our Christmas spirit.

    Credit lit the fire of our current consumerism, but cheap Chinese goods added plenty of fuel.

    Suddenly, everybody could have everything at cheap prices made all the cheaper by underpaid workers and poorly made products. Items that once lasted a lifetime now become obsolete, broken, or out of fashion within a few years.

    Ms. Cruze shared her own struggles with purchasing on her radio show. Her new book, “I’m Glad for What I Have,” was inspired by an innocent but uncomfortable encounter with her youngest child that revealed her own consumption problems.

    “My 4-year-old said a few months ago, ‘Is the Amazon guy coming today, Mom?’” Ms. Cruze said.

    Amazon delivery men have become the new Santa Clause, except they deliver all year long, making the prospect of presents far less meaningful. (EQRoy/Shutterstock)

    While credit and cheap goods certainly enticed us to buy more, companies learned better how to hijack our own biology as well. Big Tech has made pervasive use of neuromarketing to figure out exactly how our brains work, and how to make us buy.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 19:30

  • IRS Rakes In Record $4.9 Trillion In Taxes From Americans Amid Enforcement Crackdown
    IRS Rakes In Record $4.9 Trillion In Taxes From Americans Amid Enforcement Crackdown

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

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raked in a record $4.9 trillion in taxes from Americans in the last fiscal year, due in large part to automated collections processes and aggressive audits that saw taxpayers hit with billions in additional taxes after examination.

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington on June 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the watchdog that oversees the IRS, revealed in a Dec. 20 report on tax compliance activities that the agency collected a record-breaking amount of money in fiscal year 2022 from American taxpayers.

    The $4.9 trillion the tax agency raked in last year was around $790 billion more than the prior year, thanks in large measure to a significant increase in enforcement revenue.

    The IRS collected $72 billion in revenue from its enforcement activities in FY 2022, not far below the record-setting $75 billion in FY 2021 but well above the historical average of around $59 billion (from 2013-2020).

    All those dollars rolling in from enforcement activities are likely to rise going forward, given that the IRS announced over the summer that, thanks to a new funding boost, it was launching a “sweeping, historic” tax enforcement initiative using artificial intelligence (AI) and other cutting edge technologies to crack down more effectively on non-compliant taxpayers.

    But while AI and other advanced computer algorithms have yet to be deployed at the IRS on a large scale as the agency continues to modernize its systems, automation has already bolstered the agency’s ability to stuff the government’s coffers—even as the overall number of examinations declined, as did the number of enforcement agents.

    “The revenue collection was driven substantially by automated collection processes,” the TIGTA report states. Roughly 74 percent of the IRS’ enforcement revenue was collected within the agency’s Collection notice stream and the Automated Collection System (ACS).

    While the IRS is poised to continue increasing its reliance on automated systems to squeeze more tax dollars from taxpayers, it’s also looking to hire another 3,700 tax enforcers as it spends an extra $46 billion of the recent $80 billion (later reduced to $60 billion via debt ceiling negotiations) funding boost on enforcement.

    Another important factor why the IRS managed to take in a record amount of tax revenue last year was hitting taxpayers with aggressive additional tax assessments after examinations.

    Even More Taxes

    The watchdog report shows that, after audits, the IRS levied an additional $30.2 billion in taxes on Americans last year, roughly 13 percent more than in 2021 and a whopping 75 percent more than in 2019.

    When the IRS completes an examination, it can either leave the tax assessment “as is” or it can propose an adjustment (up or down) that increases or reduces the amount of tax owed.

    “The general trend of proposed additional tax from FY 2019 to FY 2022 is over a 75 percent increase in the total proposed additional tax resulting from examinations, and the most significant increase (136 percent) was from correspondence examinations,” the watchdog said.

    Over the past four years, the IRS’ examinations function proposed nearly $90 billion in additional taxes on U.S. taxpayers.

    The watchdog said that the record tax collections were driven by individual income taxes, which increased by 47 percent since 2019, an increase of roughly $1 trillion.

    More Audits of Those Earning Under $400,000?

    The question of whether the IRS will use some of the $60 billion or so funding boost to increase tax enforcement of people making less than $400,000 has been a contentious issue.

    IRS and Treasury Department officials have pledged not to increase audit rates for this group of Americans, while Republicans and others have argued that this pledge is either false or wishful thinking.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has directed the IRS not to raise audit rates above historical levels for this group of taxpayers, while IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has repeatedly made the same pledge.

    But the IRS watchdog recently cast doubt on this promise, warning that Americans making less than $400,000 could inadvertently get caught in an enforcement dragnet because the IRS doesn’t clearly define “high-income” and its enforcers use an outdated $200,000 high-income threshold as their default.

    During recent testimony on Capitol Hill, Mr. Werfel appeared to acknowledge the possibility that audit rates could rise for Americans making less than $400,000 per year.

    During an Oct. 24 hearing, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) pressed the IRS chief to explicitly guarantee that the IRS wouldn’t raise audits on Americans making less than $400,000.

    “You are guaranteeing that you will not increase the number of audits of people making less than $400,000 a year?” Ms. Foxx asked.

    “That is my marching order to the IRS,” Mr. Werfel replied before adding that “if we fall short of that, I will be held accountable for it,” hinting that, even with the best of intentions, there’s a chance that the IRS might fail to make good on this promise, much like the watchdog has warned.

    “But we will publish those rates,” Mr. Werfel added, referring to tax audit rates for Americans earning less than $400,000, suggesting that time will tell how closely the agency’s growing army of tax enforcers will follow his orders.

    “A little while ago, you said you had control of the IRS,” Ms. Foxx said. “So we’ll come back to you with that,” she added, suggesting that Republicans intend to hold Mr. Werfel’s feet to the fire if the $400,000 tax audit pledge is broken.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 18:45

  • Frustrated Biden Demands Media To Start Reporting Good Economic News
    Frustrated Biden Demands Media To Start Reporting Good Economic News

    Dictator President Biden railed against corporate media before he and several family members headed by helicopter to Camp David, the presidential retreat in the mountains of western Maryland. 

    Before boarding the presidential helicopter, Biden was asked by one reporter: “What’s your outlook on the economy next year?”

    The president responded: “All good,” adding, “Take a look. Start reporting it the right way.”

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

    Biden’s criticism comes as at least one progressive think tank warned White House aides in September and October that the ‘Bidenomics’ branding of the economy ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle has failed. 

    Democrats are hammering the American public with the economy being ‘great’ despite never mentioning inflation ran hot and wiped out real wages of workers for two years. This put a massive strain on the working poor, who had to drain personal savings and rack up insurmountable credit card debt to make ends meet. Many of these folks resort to ‘buy now, pay later’ loans to afford essential items. 

    What’s important to note is that the White House began the Bidenomics media blitz in June, which was supposed to be an effort to lift dismal poll data. Which the campaign miserably failed. 

    Maybe the Federal Reserve’s bizarre, unexpected pivot might help the president, who has the lowest approval rating than any of his seven predecessors at this point in the first term, according to a recent Gallup poll. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 18:00

  • "It's All One Big Status-Acquisition Hustle"… And Half The Country Likes It That Way
    “It’s All One Big Status-Acquisition Hustle”… And Half The Country Likes It That Way

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    The End Of An Era

    “The old politics of right versus left, and Republican opposed to Democrat have now given way to a new existential struggle: Americans must choose between civilization—or its destroyers.”

    – Victor Davis Hanson

    Now that you, the lucky ones, are beyond your steaming platters of pancakes and mighty rashers of bacon, and perhaps even a dram or two of grog in your coffee. . . and clawed your way through the bales of presents. . . a merry Christmas to all. . . and here’s something else to think about this morning:

    You may have noticed that our country, formerly a republic of sovereign individuals, has become one great big racketeering operation run by a mafia-like cabal with Marxist characteristics — or, at least, Marxist pretenses. That is, it seeks to profit by every avenue of dishonesty and coercion, under the guise of rescuing the “oppressed and marginalized” from their alleged tormenters. Apparently, half the country likes it that way.

    Much of the on-the-ground action in this degenerate enterprise is produced by various hustles. A hustle is a particularly low-grade, insultingly obvious racket, such as Black Lives Matter, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and “trans women” (i.e., men) in women’s sports. Some of the profit in any hustle is plain moneygrubbing, of course. But there’s also an emotional payoff.  Hustlers and racketeers are often sadists, so the gratification derived from snookering the credulous (feelings of power) gets amplified by the extra thrill of seeing the credulous suffer pain, humiliation, and personal ruin. (That’s what actual “oppressors” actually do.)

    Categorically, anyone who operates a racket or a hustle is some sort of psychopath, a person with no moral or ethical guard-rails. Hustles are based on the belief that it is possible to get something for nothing, a notion at odds with everything known about the unforgiving laws of physics and also the principles of human relations in this universe. Even the unconditional love of a mother for her child is based on something: the amazing, generative act of creating new life, achieved through the travail of birth. Have you noticed, by the way, that the birth of human children is lately among the most denigrated acts on the American social landscape?

    The flap over Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, is an instructive case in the governing psychopathies of the day. I wish I’d been a roach on the tray of petit fours and biscotti brought into the Harvard Overseers’ board-room when they met to consider the blowback from Ms. Gay’s unfortunate remarks in Congress, followed by revelations of her career-long plagiarisms. The acrid odor of self-conscious corruption in the room must have overwhelmed even the bouquet of Tanzanian Peaberry coffee a’brew, and not a few of the board members must have reached for the sherry decanter as their shame mounted, and the ancient radiators hissed, and their lame rationalizations started bouncing off the wainscoted walls.

    Apparently, Ms. Gay did not miss an opportunity to cut-and-paste somebody else’s compositions into everything she published going back to her own student years in the 1990s. She even poached another writer’s acknowledgment page. This is apart from the self-reinforcing substance of her published “research” justifying the necessity for DEI activism, for which she has become first an avatar and now a goat. The dirty secret of this perturbation — and the whole Harvard Board knows it — is that Claudine Gay’s career has been about nothing but careerism, and that this is also true of so many on the faculty and administration at Harvard, and surely at every other self-styled elite school from the Charles River to Palo Alto that had joined in the DEI mind-fuck.

    It’s all one big status-acquisition hustle, the seeking of hierarchical privilege by any means necessary, including especially deceit, the politics of middle-school girls. Thus, you see on display both the juvenility of elite higher ed and its use of the worst impulses that prevail in social media, stoking envy, hatred, avarice and vengeance as the currency for career advancement. Claudine Gay was notorious earlier, as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for wrecking the careers of faculty members (Ronald Sullivan, Stephanie Robinson, and Roland G. Fryer, Jr.) who refused to play the game like middle-school girls. She had no mercy.

    The mental pain endured by the Harvard bigwigs must be excruciating, and of course they have themselves to blame because they walked right into the Woke hustle with their eyes wide shut. They bargained away their dignity, and the university’s honor, for mere brownie points in a fool’s game called Win big prizes pretending to care about your fellow man. The cognitive dissonance must be like little nuclear reactor meltdowns burning through the lobes of their brains. They’ve run out of a safe space to play “victim” in. The world sees them for the coddled, malicious fakes they are.

    Cutting Claudine Gay loose is the unavoidable play now or Harvard will be stung by so many lawsuits from students previously punished for academic mischief that all the alumni lawfare attorneys in the cosmos standing snout to tail will not be able to staunch the hemorrhaging of the school’s endowment and then the fire sale of its chattels to satisfy the aggrieved plaintiffs’ pain and suffering. The Harvard board is just trying to ride out the holidays. Their prized participation trophy is coming off the mantlepiece. There really is no other way. Now, stand by and watch the rats rat each other out. And so ends the era of pretending about everything.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 17:15

  • CBP Logs Busiest November On Record With Encounters At US Southern Border
    CBP Logs Busiest November On Record With Encounters At US Southern Border

    Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The United States experienced its busiest November on record with encounters at the southern border, according to new data released on Friday.

    Asylum seeking migrants stand at a makeshift camp along the U.S.-Mexico border as they await processing by the U.S. Border Patrol in Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2023. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

    Providing a monthly update of its border enforcement statistics, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported its personnel had logged some 242,418 encounters at the southern border in November. By comparison, CBP recorded 235,173 encounters at the southern border in November 2022, 74,845 in November 2021, and 72,113 in November 2020.

    Historic CBP data indicates U.S. border officials had never logged more than 80,000 encounters in any given November prior to 2022.

    Of the 242,418 encounters at the border this November, 191,113 resulted from U.S. Border Patrol agents encountering people crossing outside the established ports of entry, which is broadly illegal. Of the encounters CBP logged at lawful ports of entry, the agency said it processed more than 43,000 migrants into the United States with information they submitted through the CBP One mobile app.

    Total drug seizures jumped 35 percent from October of this year to November, with border officials logging an eight percent increase in fentanyl seizures, a 22 percent increase in cocaine seizures, and a 55 percent increase in methamphetamine seizures.

    To date, CBP has recorded 483,404 encounters since the start of the 2024 fiscal year. CBP said it has sent increased personnel and resources to address this continued border surge, “However, global migration remains historically high in the Western Hemisphere and around the world.”

    While CBP has yet to release its border traffic numbers for December, reports indicate daily border traffic has again reached record-high levels, with border officials logging more than 12,000 encounters at the southern border within a 24-hour period.

    CBP Asks For More Funding As Republicans Seek Deterrent Policies

    “CBP continues to execute its important mission to protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation’s economic prosperity by implementing operational plans, surging personnel and decompressing areas along the southwest border while processing and vetting migrants who are encountered humanely, safely, and efficiently, consistent with our laws,” acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said Friday. “We are facing a serious challenge along the southwest border and CBP and our federal partners need more resources from Congress—as outlined in the supplemental budget request—to enhance border security and America’s national security.”

    In October, President Joe Biden proposed a $105 billion spending supplemental that would have tied about $14 billion in border and immigration-related spending, including funding to hire additional personnel along the border, as well as additional staffing to process asylum cases. That $14 billion would have attached to about $61 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine, about $14 billion in aid to Israel, and billions more to bolster other alliances and partnerships around the world.

    Hopes of passing President Biden’s supplemental spending request by the end of the year stalled out, primarily over disagreements about border policy. Republicans have argued that only throwing money at the issue is the wrong approach because it doesn’t do enough to dissuade illegal border crossings and frivolous asylum claims. Republicans have instead called for policy changes to restrict when migrants can apply for asylum or receive a temporary entry into the United States. Republicans have also called for the adoption of legislation that resumes construction of border walls between ports of entry.

    In remarks earlier this month, President Biden said “I am willing to make significant compromises on the border,” but congressional negotiators never reached a deal before leaving for the Christmas holiday.

    The House adjourned last week while the Senate remained in session for another few days, trying to find a deal as negotiations came to a crawl for the holidays. In a joint statement on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said they had seen some “encouraging progress.” The Senate adjourned the following day still without a deal.

    Any breakthrough will now have to wait at least until Congress reconvenes in the new year.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 16:30

  • FOBO? The WEF Predicts 44% Of Human Skills Will Be Replaced By AI In Five Years
    FOBO? The WEF Predicts 44% Of Human Skills Will Be Replaced By AI In Five Years

    If there was ever a moment in history when globalists have been unable to contain their unsettling glee it was the moment that Artificial Intelligence became a focus of public discourse.  It’s clear that the World Economic Forum worships AI – Lavishing the technology with praise and describing it as the end-all-be-all of human industry.  AI, they claim, will change the world so rapidly that most people will not be able to keep up with the advancements.

    We have yet to see any of these advancements in the real world, of course.  In fact, it’s difficult to pinpoint any tangible benefits produced by AI so far other than making it easier for college kids to cheat on essays.  And here is where we run into a disconnect between what the WEF predicts and what is most likely to happen according to the evidence.

    Is AI really the do-it-all technology that globalists make it out to be?  Is half of humanity going to be replaced with automation?  

    The establishment media has been building up this notion as an inevitability, with millions of people (mostly within Gen Z) now experiencing anxiety over the possibility that they will one day have no career options because of AI.  The WEF even promotes a term for this feeling:  FOBO (which apparently now means Fear Of Becoming Obsolete).    

    FOBO originally meant “fear of better options,” but the WEF has co-opted it and adjusted it for their AI narrative.  

    Automation is nothing new to first-world industries and adapting to it has not necessarily made anyone’s place in the economy “obsolete.”  The media tends to suggest that hands-on jobs in areas such as agriculture, manufacturing and retail are going the way of the Dodo soon.  However, AI seems to represent a much greater threat to people in the white collar sector dealing with information tech.  People in data collection, software development, web development, research analysis, information security, etc. are far more likely to be replaced by AI.  

    AI essentially automates data applications, making it possible for the average layman to one day “code” in a way that once took programmers years to learn.  For example, web development is becoming so automated these days it will not be long before web designers are out of work.  

    AI has exhibited zero evidence of consciousness and creativity and has no capacity to operate widely in the physical world.  The globalist answer to this problem is their suggestion that “data” is the new economy, and that eventually robots will handle the physical.  This sounds like a pipe dream, but if the “data economy’ is going to be the focus of AI for the foreseeable future, this means that if AI leads to a job apocalypse it will be primarily in the white collar world.

    The WEF partially admits to this development in a recent paper on FOBO, in which they argue that around 44% of skill sets will become obsolete by 2027, and 42% of business related skill sets will be replaced by AI.  

    Far from becoming the all-knowing data-god hailed by WEF zealots like Yuval Harari, it appears much more likely that AI would simply augment or replace a number of office workers.  For now, no significant advancements in medical science, space science, engineering, energy science, resource efficiency, mathematics, physics, etc. have been produced by AI.  We’re all waiting around for AI to blow past human science and nothing is happening.  If all AI can do is put data programmers out of work, what good is it?

    Interestingly, AI software makes some incredible claims very similar to the boasts of globalists.  Here is what AI had to say about its plans for the world of human art:

    “Imagine waking up one day and finding your job has been automated overnight by intelligent machines. Then you discover even the career you dreamed of pursuing next has already been mastered by AI. 

    Quickly, more and more human domains once thought impossible to replicate – art, music, emotion – fall prey to advancing algorithms until all uniquely human talent and purpose dwindles in the face of superior robotic counterparts. Soon your very existence becomes trivial … unnecessary.”

    This is a fascinating omission bordering on delusion.  Not the delusions of AI, but the delusions of whoever programmed the software to say this (and no, AI does not currently think for itself).  AI art is generally considered generic and often terrible because it merely plagiarizes human art and then spits out an uninspired copy.  The notion that a soulless algorithm will ever be able to create emotionally charged art, music, literature and more is naive.  

    It’s not so much about what AI can actually do (which is very little), it’s more about what the public is convinced that AI can do.  Globalists argue that the “data economy” will replace all other functions of civilization and trade as AI takes over.  But what good is data without application?  The only application of such a system would be to manipulate or control popular perception.  To make people believe things that are not true, to influence their behavior and to convince the public that they are no longer necessary.  

    This is where AI technology shines.  It’s not useful to industry, it does little to advance scientific discovery and it doesn’t make the lives of individuals easier; rather it is only useful to the globalist agenda.     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 15:45

  • "I Feel Like A Family Member Has Died": Small New York Town Devastated As Gun Plant Shuts Down
    “I Feel Like A Family Member Has Died”: Small New York Town Devastated As Gun Plant Shuts Down

    Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In the village of Ilion, New York, 80 miles west of the state capital in Albany, residents are mourning the departure of gunmaker Remington Arms Co. after two centuries of continuous operation.

    The Remington Arms Co. manufacturing plant in Ilion, N.Y., on Dec. 11, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Without fanfare, the company announced last month that the manufacturing plant would be closing its doors on March 4, 2024.

    “I feel like a family member has died,” Ilion Mayor John Stephens told The Epoch Times. “My dad raised four kids on a paycheck from there for 37 years. He walked to work and carried his lunch every day.”

    Mr. Stephens said no one expected the announcement a week after Thanksgiving that the plant was set to close.

    On Nov. 30, at 3:26 p.m., the company notified village officials of the decision by email. The message noted that “all separations” with the village would be completed by March 18, 2024.

    Likewise, the company notified its 270 employees that they would soon be out of a job.

    “They brought the second and third shifts in and said they were done,” Mr. Stephens said. “They notified the first shift in person. I found out through the media. The owner’s group didn’t even contact me.”

    Mr. Stephens said the company made the announcement just five months into a newly ratified employee union contract.

    “To say we were shocked [by the announcement] is probably an understatement,” the mayor told Ilion’s Village Board of Trustees at a public meeting on Dec. 11.

    John Stephens, mayor of the village of Ilion, holds up a document from Remington Arms during a village board of trustees meeting in Ilion, N.Y., on Dec. 11, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    “In my opinion, it’s unfortunate and extremely unprofessional.“

    Remington Arms didn’t return messages from The Epoch Times asking for comment.

    Publicly, the company attributed the plant closure in part to a hostile political climate in Albany regarding firearms production.

    “I am writing to inform you that RemArms LLC has decided to close its entire operation at 14 Hoefler Avenue, NY 13357,” Remington Arms said in a letter to employees. “The company expects that operations at the Ilion facility will conclude on or about March 4, 2024.”

    The Georgia-based company said it would continue to make firearms at its facility in Huntsville, Alabama, which opened in 2014, a year after New York’s passage of the Safe Act, which created stricter gun laws.

    The anti-gun political climate in Democrat-controlled Massachusetts prompted competitor Smith & Wesson to move from its longtime base in Springfield to Maryville, Tennessee. The company announced the opening of its new headquarters there in October.

    In Ilion, the community reaction to the Remington plant closure has been a sense of loss and bewilderment, Mr. Stephens said.

    Many are wondering what will become of the 10,000-square-foot plant and the village’s Remington identity.

    Attendees look at a display of Remington shotguns during the NRA annual meeting, in Dallas, Texas, on May 5, 2018. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Mr. Stephens said residents see the two as synonymous, interwoven by history, culture, and economics.

    “Remington is Ilion—Ilion is Remington,” residents here like to say.

    Eric Kennedy, who runs the Copper Cafe in the downtown village retail plaza, believes the ripple effect of the closure would impact the businesses that served Remington employees for years to come.

    “I’m sure it will affect us. Any time you lose jobs, it affects the area’s economy. It definitely will hurt the economy—small town, big business in the village. It’s going to hurt a lot of families,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times.

    “New York state is not friendly to hunters and sportsmen. That makes a big impact. I don’t blame [Remington] for moving out of state, [but] it’s going to hurt.”

    Until recently, Remington Arms employed about 1,500 workers, whose wages helped support the local retail economy, said village public historian Mike Disotelle.

    “At noontime, when the employees would go to lunch, there would be a flood of factory employees going to local businesses,” he said.

    Mr. Disotelle said Remington Arms was one of the village’s largest employers and a centerpiece of the downtown economy. This remained true even as the village continued to lose residents over the course of several decades, he said.

    In 1960, the village had 10,000 residents. Today, that number is down to about 7,700 and could drop below 6,500 by 2030 due to the slow economy, high taxes, and limited housing availability, Mr. Disotelle said.

    Historian Mike Disotelle goes over documents in his office in Ilion, N.Y., on Dec. 11, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Village officials said Remington Arms’ departure would cost the village nearly $1 million in yearly revenues.

    Mr. Disotelle said the village would need a “savior” to breathe new life into the facility. A federal gun manufacturing operation is one possibility.

    “You’re always going to need to manufacture firearms,” he said. “The problem is New York state has created unfriendly legislation. The taxes are high. That’s why a lot of people have pulled out. We’re not a business-friendly state anymore.

    “It would be nice if our politicians could get something going.”

    Founded by Eliphalet Remington II in 1816, the family-run business was known as E. Remington and Sons before the sporting goods chain Marcus Hartley and Partners in Connecticut purchased the gunmaker in 1888.

    “It was called a receivership,” Mr. Disotelle said of the acquisition by Marcus Hartley. “Technically, it was a bankruptcy. Not many people know about that. They know of the bankruptcies in recent years.”

    Remington sold the company to chemical manufacturer Dupont in 1933. The New York investment company Clayton, Dubilier, and Rice purchased the company from Dupont half a century later.

    The gunmaker continued to change hands despite the successful introduction of new products and millions in accumulated debt.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 15:00

  • Trump Slams 'Scam' Poll Showing Nikki Haley Trailing By Only 4 Points In New Hampshire
    Trump Slams ‘Scam’ Poll Showing Nikki Haley Trailing By Only 4 Points In New Hampshire

    Contrary to recent propaganda from CBS News claiming Donald Trump is exploring Nikki Haley as a potential running mate (and the fact that Trump ally Laura Loomer slams Haley on a near-daily basis), the former president himself has weighed in on the 2024 GOP candidate he’s dubbed ‘Birdbrain.’

    A Dec. 21 poll released by American Research Group, Inc. showed Trump leading the GOP field with 33% support among likely Republican primary voters – however it shows Haley just 4 points behind him at 29%, in stark contrast to the vast majority of mainstream pollsters.

    “Fake New Hampshire poll was released on Birdbrain,” Trump aid on Truth Social, referring to Haley. “Just another scam! Ratings challenged FoxNews will play it to the hilt.”

    “Sununu now one of the least popular governors in the U.S. Real poll to follow,” he continued, referring to New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s recent endorsement of Haley for president in 2024. 

    Meanwhile, RealClear Politics‘ average of major polls has Haley nowhere near Trump.

    As the Epoch Times notes, Haley has been gaining on President Trump in New Hampshire since September, with a poll released by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center on Dec. 20 showing her with 30 percent support among likely GOP primary voters, compared to President Trump’s 44 percent.

    A survey from the same pollster carried out in September showed Ms. Haley with 15 percent support in the early voting state, with her latest numbers suggesting she has managed to double her support in New Hampshire.

    After the poll from American Research Group was released on Thursday, Mr. Sununu took to X to comment that she’s closing in on President Trump.

    “This is a two person race,” he wrote.

    President Trump was asked about the poll by conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Friday.

    “Are you worried about Nikki Haley in New Hampshire?” Mr. Hewitt asked.

    “No, I’m not worried about it. I think it was a fake poll,” President Trump said. “I saw the one poll where I was up by 4 or 5 points. It’s a fake poll.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 14:15

  • (Mis) Remembering A Christmas Classic!
    (Mis) Remembering A Christmas Classic!

    Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

    Would you rather have silver and gold? Or would you rather have peppermint?

    You might be under the impression Yukon Cornelius of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer fame was after riches of silver and gold.

    He wasn’t.

    I mean, I hate to mess with your Christmas memories, but facts are facts.

    ‘Tis the season for Christmas specials.

    I’m not going to lie – even as a grown man, I love watching Christmas specials. Snoopy decorating his dog house. The Grinch folding up a Christmas tree like an umbrella and stuffing it up the chimney. Frosty the snowman melting in the greenhouse.

    There are a lot of great memories in those shows.

    My all-time favorite Christmas special is Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved Rudolph.

    I still do.

    It was different back in the day. We had to wait until the shows came on TV.  I think that’s lost on many people today in our world of on-demand streaming. Those of you over a certain age will remember scouring the TV guide from your local newspaper starting around the first week of December eagerly waiting to see Rudolph pop up on the schedule.

    My mom always made an event out of it. She would always whip me up a special Christmas treat – maybe a hot chocolate or apple cider. Sometimes, I even got freshly baked cookies. If it was cold, she would build a fire in the fireplace, and we would snuggle up in blankets to watch the show.

    Here’s a confession: when I was really little, the abominable snow monster horrified me.

    In retrospect, I have to wonder why. Remember when he tipped over? The bottom of his feet looked just like the bottom of my footie pajamas. How did I not notice that? How did I not realize that the abominable was a total fake?

    I guess a 5-year-old has limited powers of observation.

    But other than being scared of the PJ-footed snow monster, I loved the show as a little kid. And as I said, I still do.

    Now, as a guy who writes about gold and silver for a living, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Yukon Cornelius. As you recall, he wandered the north in search of silver and gold. But I bet you don’t know the whole story behind old Yukon. Here’s a dirty little secret. The version most of us watched on TV as kids cut part of the story out.

    I kid you not!

    You’ll recall that when Cornelius meets Rudolph and the elf Hermey, he launches into a dramatic and emphatic introduction.

    The name’s Yukon Cornelius, the greatest prospector in the north! And you know, it’s rich with gold! Gold! Gold and silver! Silver and gold! Wahooo!”

    He punctuates his greeting by tossing his pickaxe up into the air, licking it, and declaring, “Nothin’.”

    This pickaxe tosses and licking behavior repeats throughout the drama. When you stop and think about it, it’s kind of weird. And maybe a little gross. But I never thought about that as a kid. Of course, this is the same kid who didn’t notice the snow monster was wearing footed pajamas.

    On a side note, how did his tongue not freeze to the metal in the frozen Arctic? (That brings to mind the flagpole scene in “A Christmas Story.”)

    Anyway, you almost certainly think Yukon was hoping to discover riches in the form of gold and/or silver. That’s certainly the impression the show gives you.

    Well, you think wrong!

    He’s not looking for gold or silver!

    Now for those of you who grew up on network TV, you know that things were often edited for commercials. This was the case with Rudolph. CBS deleted the scene that explains exactly what Yukon was looking for. Rick Goldschmidt wrote a book on Rudolph and calls this “the most significant deleted scene.” An article in the Huffington Post explains what happened.

    It comes right after Rudolph guides Santa through the air to the Island of Misfit Toys. Rudolph’s parents, Donner and Mrs. Donner, Rudolph’s girlfriend, Clarice, and Cornelius are featured, while Donner says, ‘That’s my buck!’ finally confirming Rudolph’s dad is no longer ashamed, as Goldschmidt points out. But more illuminating is that the scene finally gives an answer as to why Cornelius kept licking his pickax throughout the special. In this deleted scene, Cornelius throws his ax in the air, lets it strike the ground and then, after licking it as he has been wont to do, declares, ‘Peppermint! What I’ve been searching for all my life! I’ve struck it rich. I’ve got me a peppermint mine … Wahoooo!’”

    And here’s the deleted scene. You’re welcome!

    Interestingly, if you’re just a tad bit older than I am, you may actually remember the deleted scene. It last aired on TV in 1964. It’s also on the DVD. So, if you have watched it with your kids, you already know this little secret.

    Anyway, I get the whole peppermint Christmas motif, but to be honest, I don’t particularly like peppermint. I’d rather have chocolate. And let’s be honest, Yukon was a little misguided. I’ll take gold and silver, over chocolate or peppermint, thank you very much.

    Anyway, on behalf of everybody here at SchiffGold, I wish you a wonderful holiday season!

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 13:30

  • Biden's Weaponized Gov't Attacks Against Elon Musk Is Tyranny
    Biden’s Weaponized Gov’t Attacks Against Elon Musk Is Tyranny

    On a recent episode of the All-In Podcast, hosts David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg discussed the weaponization of federal agencies by the Biden administration against Elon Musk.  

    “They’ve now weaponized multiple federal agencies to go after Elon on these cases that seem transparently trumped up,” Sacks said. 

    Musk, an outspoken critic of President Biden, has seen an increasing number of banana republic-style weaponization tactics by the administration against his companies, from Tesla to SpaceX, this year. 

    Sacks listed several cases, including when the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission went after Musk in August for allegedly using Tesla funds to construct a ‘glass house.’ The DoJ also went after Tesla for not hiring enough refugees, and, more recently, the Federal Communications Commission rejected SpaceX’s Starlink from receiving a $855 million rural internet subsidy.   

    Palihapitiya asked: “Do you think this is politically motivated harassment of Elon by the Biden administration?” 

    Calacanis chimed in: “100%”. 

    Calacanis added that Tesla was not invited to the EV summit at the White House earlier this month. He noted, “You just take Biden at his actions – if you don’t invite Elon to the EV summit – it’s obvious he [the president] has got it in for this guy [Musk].” 

    “And now it’s obvious he [Biden] has told people to investigate him [Musk] and harass him – it’s obvious.” 

    Palihapitiya asked, “Why doesn’t Biden like him [Musk]”? 

    Calacanis pointed out the obvious answer: “Because he [Musk] is non-union – and sure, the freedom of speech things and Twitter doesn’t help – but this [Musk’s dislike of unions] predates Twitter.” 

    “Biden is a union guy. He will not support non-union people. He is bought and sold by the unions.” 

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

    It should become increasingly clear that progressive radicals in the White House are weaponizing every agency possible to attack political opponents. These are all signs of a tyrannical, out-of-control federal government. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 12:45

  • Watch: Christmas Eve In Lawless California As Youth Riot In Streets
    Watch: Christmas Eve In Lawless California As Youth Riot In Streets

    Christmas Eve is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and a moment for bonding with loved ones and friends through shared activities and meals. It’s a time for reinforcing the nuclear family while spreading peace and joy through the community. 

    However, in today’s imploding Western society, run by incompetent elected and unelected leftist politicians who control all sorts of federal and state government agencies. They have waged war on the nuclear family structure. 

    It’s not just radical progressives who want to dismantle the nuclear family. Marxist organizations, such as Black Lives Matter organization, funded by mega-corporations, have called for the death of the family unit. A central tenet of Marxism is to dismantle this structure: 

    We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. -BLM 

    The Great Society programs that started with former President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid-1960s ensured the destruction of the nuclear family as recent Census data showed 27.6% of all US-occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940. The largest share of people living alone occurred between 1970 and 1980, when the percentage increased from 17.6% to 22.7%, right after the welfare programs started. 

    So what’s the result of progressives tearing down the nuclear family? Well, Just The News recently noted:

    First, the US has the highest rate of single-parent households in the world. Second, the connection between single-parent households and crime is very strong. According to research carried out by Jerrod Brown, a behavioral specialist at Concordia St. Paul, the extant literature “suggests that children raised in single-parent households experience more physical and psychological problems compared to those raised in two-parent households.” Moreover, he added, the “implications of homes in which fathers are absent may be important to explore for criminal justice and mental health professionals.”

    The destruction of the family unit by radical progressives has created a generation of lawless youth that has been on full display this year in crime-ridden Baltimore City, Washington, DC, and other liberal metro areas where disastrous social justice reforms have been pushed through. 

    The latest sign of lawless youth was Christmas Eve in Oakland, California, where instead of bonding with family and exchanging gifts in ‘Secret Santa’ – they were rioting on the streets. 

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

    It seems the US has a major lawless youth problem that Democrats won’t address because it’s merely a symptom of their failed policies. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 11:15

  • 'Crack' Removed From Christmas Crackers To Save The Planet
    ‘Crack’ Removed From Christmas Crackers To Save The Planet

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    The ‘crack’ from Christmas crackers is being removed for environmental reasons and to turn Christmas into a “celebration of responsibility,” defeating the entire purpose of pulling one in the first place.

    Yes, really.

    Joyless eco-mentalists, committed in their mission to eliminate all fun, have lobbied for the introduction of ‘crackless crackers’, and their efforts are already coming to fruition.

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

    “Alliance National, one of Britain’s biggest catering suppliers, has announced it will offer only environmentally friendly “crackless” crackers to its customers, which include dozens of care homes, hotels, pubs and restaurants across the country,” reports the Telegraph.

    The silver fulminate has been removed from the items because it can’t be recycled.

    Emphasizing the spirit, or lack of it, behind the change, the supplier has also completely removed jokes from its crackers too.

    Precisely what is the point, then?

    Author Christopher Snowden encountered one of the boring crackers during a recent lunch hosted by the Lords and Commons Cigar Club in the House of Lords.

    He said they were “rubbish” and felt like when “you pull a cracker and they don’t crack and you just think it’s broken.”

    What will they ruin next? Gift wrapping? Mistletoe?

    How long before Christmas trees are banned entirely in the name of ‘celebrating responsibly’?

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 10:30

  • Tesla Will Suspend Drivers For Autopilot Abuse In New Software Update
    Tesla Will Suspend Drivers For Autopilot Abuse In New Software Update

    Leftist corporate media were filled with joy earlier this month when Tesla issued its largest recall in its twenty-year history regarding Autopilot systems that had “insufficient” safeguards against driver misuse. 

    Unbeknownst to some legacy media in their reporting, Tesla has previously solved recalls with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration through an over-the-air software update. 

    Tesla drivers on X reported in the last few days that an over-the-air software update titled “2023.44.30.5.1” was pushed to their vehicles. The update included new features for the Tesla Arcade, additional custom car locking sounds, automatic 911 calls during airbag deployment, and, near the end, a list of Autopilot improvements to satisfy federal regulators. 

    Let’s begin with the “Over-the-Air (OTA) Recall” update that shows several improvements to Autopilot, including improved visibility for diver monitoring warning alerts on the touchscreen, increased strictness of driver attentiveness while using the automated driving system, and a suspension policy for Autopilot abusers.

    Expanding on the Autopilot suspension update is a section that states repeated abusers will be given five strikes if the vehicle detects five forced Autopilot disengagements – which usually occurs when the vehicle senses the driver is not paying attention. On the fifth strike, Tesla said the automated service will be “unavailable for approximately one week.” 

    Before the update, drivers who received several Autopilot disengagements were kicked off for the length of the car ride but only turned back on when the car was stopped and turned off.

    Tesla appears to be getting tougher on Autopilot abusers as the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies against Tesla founder Elon Musk. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 09:55

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Dec 25

Today’s News 25th December 2023

  • Born In A Police State: The Deep State's Persecution Of Its Most Vulnerable Citizens
    Born In A Police State: The Deep State’s Persecution Of Its Most Vulnerable Citizens

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.

    – Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights activist

    The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

    The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

    Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

    What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time?

    What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

    A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

    Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

    The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

    What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age?

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

    Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

    Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

    Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

    After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

    When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

    Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

    Consider the following if you will.

    Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

    Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

    Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

    Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

    From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

    Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

    Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

    From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

    Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

    While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

    Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

    Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

    Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

    Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

    Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

    Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. More than 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

    Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

    Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

    Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

    Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

    Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

    Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it.

    We must do no less.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 00:00

  • Israel Routinely Dropping US-Supplied 2,000-lb Bombs In Dense Civilian Areas
    Israel Routinely Dropping US-Supplied 2,000-lb Bombs In Dense Civilian Areas

    As civilian casualties in the Israel-Hamas war continue to mount — surpassing 20,000 from a population of just 2 million — alarm is growing over Israel’s all-too-eager use of a particularly devastating weapon: the 2,000-pound MK-84 bomb.  

    Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. For most other militaries, that would be cause for restraint, particularly where the MK-84 is concerned, given its 3,280-foot hazardous blast radius. However, as the IDF presses its campaign against the militant group Hamas and its elaborate tunnel system, it’s exhibiting an unusually high tolerance for civilian harm.

    Scenes like this have sparked accusations of an Israeli intent to not only destroy Hamas, but to render Gaza uninhabitable (screen shot from New York Times video) 

    Proportionally, the rate of damage to civilian buildings in Gaza is already triple what Nazi Germany suffered from Allied bombs in World War II. On Friday alone, Israel reportedly killed more than 90 Palestinians, including women in children, when it leveled two houses in two different areas of Gaza. 

    One particularly vivid display of the MK-84’s sheer power — and Israel’s lack of restraint — came with the IDF’s Oct. 31 strike on Jabalya, in northern Gaza, which obliterated a large residential area. “[That strike is] something we would never see the US doing,” Larry Lewis, research director at the Center for Naval Analyses, tells CNN. “It certainly appears that (Israel’s) tolerance for civilian harm compared to expected operational benefits is significantly different than what we would accept.”

    An anguished Palestinian man sits atop broken concrete in Jabayla as others comb the rubble for survivors (Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty Images via CNN)

    For perspective, consider that the US military used only one MK-84 bomb during its entire fight with ISIS. However, it’s poured an astounding 5,400 of them into Israel’s arsenal since the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

    Defying IDF assurances that it seeks to minimize civilian casualties, a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery suggests that Israel has even dropped more than 200 MK-84 bombs in the area of South Gaza where it told Palestinians to flee for safety. 

    The IDF has brushed aside inquiries about its use of the extraordinarily destructive bombs. “Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage,” a spokesman told the Times, adding that the IDF “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

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    “The devastation that we’ve seen for communities in Gaza is unfortunately co-signed by the United States,” John Chappell of the DC-based Center for Civilians in Conflict tells CNN. “Too much of it is carried out by bombs that were made in the United States.”

    Expect that damning fact to be long-remembered by the survivors of Israel’s Gaza campaign — and millions of others who sympathize with them. Whether one supports the US government’s arming of Israel or not, nobody should be so naive as to think it doesn’t endanger American lives — particularly when you consider the type of people who now control Israel’s arsenal. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 23:15

  • 5 Things You Can Do This Christmas To Make The Marxists Miserable
    5 Things You Can Do This Christmas To Make The Marxists Miserable

    Authored by Kevin Downey Jr. via PJMedia.com,

    Why is Christmas the most wonderful time of the year? Is it all the mistletoeing and hearts that are glowing? Yeah, that all rocks, but my values — and kicks — revolving around Christmas joy have taken a holly jolly turn, and I’d like to get you on board.

    If you think eggnog and caroling are fun, wait until you get your bald-headed niecephew so mad zhe poops zher Che Guevara manties.

    FACT-O-RAMA! The commies hate when we mock them, so mock I shall until we lock the doors of Ark 2.0 and listen to them get flushed away like the human feculence they are or, should we lose, until they learn how to load, aim, and fire a gun as I face a firing squad for the hundreds of articles I’ve written making fun of the joyless frown clowns.

    But first a quick reminder from our favorite KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov, who presciently told us back in the 1980s that there is ONE thing Marxism can’t overcome — Christianity. That is why they hate and fear us. This is why the miserable skanks show up to children’s Christmas choirs and bullhorn their support for terrorists who rape women and burn children alive. They utterly hate you.

    And don’t forget how the U.S. Capitol Police made kids stop singing the National Anthem lest the song “offend” someone. The rot is deep, my friends. Enjoy Christmas before it is outlawed.

    Remember, Christmas is the season to give, so let’s give it to the Marxists good and hard.

    #5  Mele Kalikimaka Is the Thing to Say

    This one is simple and yet devastating: say “Merry Christmas.” This is kryptonite to the simpering, pink-haired, troglodyte narcissists who believe that, in a world full of adults, their feelings mean something — like this jackpudding who laughingly tries to associate the phrase “Merry Christmas” with anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and, of course, hatred of the LGBTWTF crowd, all of whom, by the way, loathe Christians.

    PINKO-RAMA! The journalistic ambergris I quoted above managed to fit the words “diversity” and “inclusivity” into zhim’s victim manifesto. It only missed “equity.”  Commie Rating: Three out of Five Stars, Hammers, and Sickles.

    “KDJ, what if I say ‘Merry Christmas’ and a com-symp whines, ‘I don’t celebrate Christmas’?”

    You have several responses from which to choose:

    “Then don’t have a Merry Christmas!”

    “Try some diversity for a change.”

    “I was being inclusive. I didn’t know you’re a hater.”

    “Say ‘Happy Ramadan’ to Hamas when they are done slaughtering gay people, you homophobic pile of pig vomit.”

    Pro tip: Laughing as you say these things will denote mockery, and that is their Achilles heel. Also, belittling them with their own weapons is easy, effective, and fun to do.

    I’m aware that they judge us when we say “Merry Christmas.” I don’t care. Neither I nor my language will be controlled by some entitled, basement-dwelling dime museum or the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) that pulls its strings.

    # 4 Unvaccinated Christmas Parties

    When sending invitations via email or USPS, be sure to mention something like:

    “Warning: my family is unvaccinated, but in the spirit of Yuletide inclusivity, those who have blindly chosen to bend their knees and raise their sleeves for an experimental clot shot because Rachel Maddow told you to do so will be welcome as well.

    For those of you suffering from myocarditis, the defibrillator will be ‘first come, first served.'”

    # 3 Meat is Murder Tasty

    You undoubtedly have an annoying, Gaza-loving cousin who hates meat. In a sign of goodwill, prepare a few veggie burgers. Here is what to do when  “Dylan” raves over the taste and asks, “What’s your secret?” Tell it you added Worcestershire sauce, a dab of chocolate, honey, and sugar. When the meatophobe runs for the Ipecac, pretend you didn’t know that none of these ingredients are vegan.

    Calm the herbivore down by saying the vegetables were grown in your own garden with liberal (heh) amounts of climate-changing cow manure.

    I also suggest the following libation:

    “The Colonizer”

    • 3 parts Plymouth gin (it will remind people of a certain rock in Massachusetts)

    • .5 parts culturally appropriated tequila

    • 2 dashes of bitters (because liberals are bitter)

    # 2 Festive Lighting

    There is nothing the Mao-maos hate more than Christians projecting their values and their fun at the same time. I prefer to combine the secular and the religious for the one-two punch of Christmas lighting extravaganza. 

    The more Christmas lights you have, the more those testosterone dodgers will weep!

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    # 1 Make Christmas Great Again: Re-elect Donald J. Trump

    The most vulgar and ostentatious display of liberal blubbering happened the day Donald Trump defeated harridan Hillary for the White House. The diaper-wearing femminiellos lost their minds, and we laughed like we were watching “Caddyshack” for the first time.

    Sure, the election is 11 months away, but let’s start their trauma early. Put some manic in their panic and get the ball rolling now. Post a “MAGA 2024” sign next to your inflatable Santa. Remember that the worst part about being punished as kids wasn’t the punishment itself, it was waiting for Dad to get home. Let’s make them cry until Election Day.

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    Let’s keep laughing at the miserable “woke” stooges. Check out the new Christmas video short from my friends at “Jokes and a Point.” They know how to clown-slap a commie like no one else.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 22:30

  • Iran 'Shortly' Expected To Execute Swedish Citizen Accused Of Spying
    Iran ‘Shortly’ Expected To Execute Swedish Citizen Accused Of Spying

    Via Middle East Eye

    Iran is “shortly” set to execute a dual Swedish-Iranian citizen accused of spying, according to the UN, after a Swedish court upheld the conviction of a former Iranian official.

    Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian disaster medicine researcher, was arrested in Iran on suspicion of espionage in 2016. He was accused in 2017 of having transmitted information to the Mossad – the Israeli intelligence services – on two people in charge of the Iranian nuclear program, which would have allowed their assassination between 2010 and 2012.

    Ahmadreza Djalali and his wife and child, via BBC

    “Disturbing news that Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali could be shortly executed on charges of ‘enmity against God’,” the UN human rights office wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

    There have been concerns that the decision by a Swedish appeals court to confirm the conviction of former Iranian prison official Hamid Noury this week could threaten the safety of Swedish prisoners in Iran.

    Noury stood accused of involvement in the mass execution of thousands of mainly left-wing prisoners in Iran in 1988, towards the end of the war with Iraq.

    The 62-year-old was convicted last year of “grave breaches of international humanitarian law and murder” over his alleged role in a purge that saw at least 5,000 prisoners killed.

    Amnesty International has warned that “mounting evidence indicates that Iranian authorities are threatening to carry out Ahmadreza Djalali’s execution in retaliation for their unmet demands to pervert the course of justice in Sweden”.

    “The cruel toying with Ahmadreza Djalali’s life immediately after a Swedish court of appeals upheld [Noury’s] conviction and life sentence… heightens concerns that Iranian officials are holding Ahmadreza Djalali hostage to compel Sweden into a prisoner swap,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement.

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    Iran has denied that there is any link between Noury’s conviction and the planned execution of any Swedish prisoners.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 21:45

  • American Achilles In The War On Terror
    American Achilles In The War On Terror

    Authored by John J. Waters via RealClear Wire,

    Professor Emily Wilson has achieved celebrity status … for translating Homer.

    University students use her work, and it draws leisure readers as well. Beginning with her translation of the Odyssey in 2018 and continuing with the Iliad earlier this year, Wilson has presented as fresh and vivid material that is, admittedly, old and foreign.

    For years, the English translations of poets Robert Fagles and Robert Fitzgerald were responsible for passing Homer’s stories into the dreams and imaginations of modern Americans. So successful were the two Roberts that many readers reserved no space on their bookshelves for another scholar’s reading. Wilson’s new translation is worthy, though, and less for her words or ‘blank verse’ than her feel: for the players and their motivations certainly, but more so for their experience of the phenomenon of battle. Her work plumbs how it feels to fight and kill, what warriors seek to achieve through combat, and what a family stands to lose when a husband dons the helmet and marches off to war. Heroism nearly, but not quite, redeems the carnage. 

    Those who have seen war or studied it know how combat produces a cycle of loss and compensation, and fate deals out the portions of life in unfair and unexpected ways. This is one of the themes of the Iliad – how even the greatest warriors in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to more losses,” Wilson writes in her introduction. “Loss can never be recouped.”

    The arc of history demonstrates the activity of warfare is always changing; weapons, technology, and troop formations are constantly in flux. But the condition of war, how people experience combat, remains largely unchanged. Rather than discuss the new text in isolation, I asked Professor Wilson to apply her knowledge of the Homeric poems and her own ideas to my observations of people participating in the drama of modern war. What follows is part one of our two-part conversation. 

    One evening in 2009, Alphonso told a story over beers at Pusser’s in Annapolis. There had been a Taliban ambush on a Marine logistics convoy. Someone he knew was involved. “I hope they jump me,” he said. “I want my share.” What comes to mind, hearing this vignette?

    This makes me think of Iliad Book 10. This ambush episode is very unusual in the poem, because most of the fighting in The Iliad takes place during the daylight hours, where warriors confront each other face-to-face. This is fighting at night. Odysseus and Diomedes volunteer to set an ambush of Trojan forces. The sequence shows the importance not just of cleverness and strategy, but also about the kinds of extra glory people can get in special missions. If something unexpected happens and you react just right in the moment, then you get a special kind of glory, as compared to what can be gained in the main campaign. I love Book 10 because it shakes up your ideas about the kinds of terrain where war takes place. The poem as a whole is interested in all different types of warfare, different types of landscape and how the norms of military encounters change in different arenas. Diomedes and Odysseus promise not to harm the Trojan spy, Dolon, then mercilessly kill him and hang up the bloody spoils, the weapons stripped from his body, to honor the goddess Athena, who loves spoils.

    Speaking of Alphonso’s “share” … I’m thinking of what Aristotle said about the “banquet of life.” Would Homer have contemplated this idea when he composed the Iliad?

    Absolutely. Many of the words that are often translated as fortune or fate literally suggest portion or share—these Greek words literally mean a “part,” as if a portion or share of life. It’s as if there is a whole side of beef that is a quantity of human life and each of us gets a particular portion of it, both how long we get to be alive and also our portion of honor and glory. I think the whole story of Achilles in the Iliad focuses on his disappointment about his tiny portion of life, as the son of a goddess who knows for sure that he will die if he stays to fight at Troy. He wants a portion of honor that compensates him for his small portion of life. The public humiliation he suffers from Agamemnon, when the Greek king takes from Achilles the concubine Briseis, means Achilles has been dishonored, so his already small portion of life is no longer balanced by a large share of glory.

    In 2010, Major Aaron Cunningham intoned to his students at the Infantry Officer Course about their reputations. “Your reputation begins right now,” he said. The thought planted among young Marine lieutenants that one’s reputation (as an officer, a Marine) has incalculable value in the military, much more so than in business or private life. Can you trace that idea back to the Iliad?

    Well, that is certainly a theme that runs all through the poem. The Greek term most closely analogous to “reputation” is kleos, which suggests what other people hear about you. For warriors, that goal of achieving undying kleos is definitional, and gives mortal heroes the chance to live on after death. You can be known for your physical characteristics, but also in the stories of who you are and how you have performed. Stories people tell can add up to kleos or they can lead you to shame. Great warriors in the Iliad, like Hector and Achilles, are deeply concerned with preserving their kleos, which entails being known as the greatest warrior among their people. Even when his family members and other Greek leaders are telling him to stop fighting and pull back, Hector has to keep going because he wants to secure the greatest kleos, both for his lifetime and after his death. 

    You rely on your sergeants and corporals in combat. You rely on anybody who has “done it before.” Having “done it before” is more valuable than all the education, weaponry and preparation—it’s certainly more valuable than personal connections or credentials. Why?

    Because if you don’t have experience on the ground, then there is no way you know how to judge events when they are changing fast. This question relates to the representation of different generations of warriors. Start with Nestor, the elder warrior. He has so many speeches about “back in my day” and so forth, which may seem like tedious digressions – but that character is crucial for reminding the listener that this is not the first war.  The battles Nestor has participated in, with the Lapiths and Centaurs, are just one mythical precursor, along with the earlier war of Heracles against Troy, and the Theban War, all of which are precursors to the Trojan War in the world of myth. The poem draws attention to the many cities around Troy that Achilles has already sacked, and to the experience of Diomedes who succeeded in sacking Thebes. These allusions remind us that the Greek army has been sacking and campaigning for a long time. When these named warriors convene in their council meetings, discussions center on what kinds of advice matter: from those who have fought the most; or, from those who have theoretical ideas without having tested them? I think The Iliad reminds us that experience matters, but also shows you that you do not win one war by fighting the last one. Nestor’s advice always hinges on “this is how it happened back then, but things are totally different nowadays.” Experience matters but there are still so many unknowns. The poem shows you that how fast things change on the battlefield. 

    The film Zero Dark Thirty consecrated the killing of bin Laden. The uniforms worn by Navy SEALs who participated in that raid hang in the 9/11 museum at Ground Zero. There have been so many movies about special operators. It seems the poets of our age sing of spec ops derring-do, over and over again. Why? 

    There’s just something so inspiring for people who have (and have never) served in combat to see people so clearly willing to risk their lives for the sake of a mission. I find it inspiring. I have so much admiration for people who put their whole being out there, to have complete skin in the game. That was the case in antiquity as well. Not every war is presented in simple valorizing or heroizing terms. The Iliad digs into the whole of the human spectrum about people but there is a deeper awareness of courage and how it really does matter.  Courage makes people more like the gods, who never die, or perhaps humans are sometimes imagined as even greater than gods. The warriors are always conscious that they could be killed, which makes their courage and sacrifice special.

    For the foot soldiers who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, though, there were endless patrols, missions and objectives. Tragedies and miracles forgotten or never known. For the foot soldiers, there are no tales of triumph, no heroes in single combat, no majestic treatments from Hollywood or in literature. Why is it disappointing for your exploits to be forgotten?

    To have been involved in something that involves so much pain and wounding and not even have the glory of being remembered as a character in the story is terrible. Part of what drives Achilles’ rage is that he wants to be the main character … all the time. The poem primarily focuses on the warrior-leaders and officer class, to use an anachronistic term, but we also have a sense of the common troops who are driven into battle, the kinds of pressure that is put on people who are not the named ones. We know the leading male characters but each of those leading figures brings along nameless men who will not be remembered but are taking just as much risk and fighting the same battles. The poem gives you some tools to understand that single combat between named protagonists is not exactly what war is. We have episodes where we get the name of a character, then, a line or two later, he is dead.

    Part of the story of how The Iliad represents the forgotten people is how it represents the women and old people who experience war as pure loss. Women and older people don’t have anything that they can win. The queen of Troy, Hecuba, does have an idea that there is something she could win if her son Hector can ward off the Greek armies, that she stands to win more if Hector succeeds. But for most people in the world of this poem, there’s very little to hope for, and even the most minimal hopes, like the hope of survival or freedom, are repeatedly not fulfilled.  It’s not that you’re a fool to have any kind of hope but most of the time when people have hope in this poem, it doesn’t work out.

    John J. Waters is the author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster), and a former deputy assistant secretary of homeland security.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 21:00

  • Fast Food Places & Restaurants Open For Christmas Day 2023
    Fast Food Places & Restaurants Open For Christmas Day 2023

    While the vast majority of restaurants and businesses across the land will be closed on Christmas Day, with many also shuttered the day prior too (Sunday), there’s still well over a dozen fast food and coffee chains which have committed to opening their doors on Christmas Day. It’s become a growing trend over the last several years.

    Large retail and grocery chains which require a lot of employee manpower at any given time, such as Walmart and Target, will be closed, however. The below is a list of establishments which have announced their plans to remain open based on location…

    List is courtesy of NEXSTAR: Hours may vary by location; it’s best to check online or call ahead to confirm your location’s hours. 

    * * *

    Arby’s: Many locations will be open for Christmas, a representative for Arby’s tells Nexstar, but hours may vary. You can check your location’s hours online.

    Burger King: Because Burger King restaurants are individually owned, they may be open for Christmas with varying hours, a representative tells Nexstar. You can find local restaurant hours here. 

    Denny’s: The “always open” diner will, of course, be open on Christmas.

    Domino’s: Because Domino’s locations are independently owned, they may or may not be open on Christmas, according to a company representative. Some may also close for Christmas Eve. You can view your location’s hours online.

    Dunkin’: If you’re on the run and need some coffee, Dunkin’ locations will be open for Christmas, but hours may vary, according to a company spokesperson. Restaurant hours can be viewed online or through the chain’s mobile app.

    Golden Corral: Some of Golden Corral’s locations will be open on Christmas, though they may operate under limited hours. There may also be limited hours on Christmas Eve. You can check your restaurant’s hours here.

    IHOP: While IHOP locations are listed as being open online, you may want to check with your local restaurant before stopping in.

    Jack in the Box: Hours may vary by location, a company spokesperson tells Nexstar. You can check your Jack in the Box’s hours online. 

    McDonald’s: Like others on this list, McDonald’s locations may be open with varying hours for Christmas. You can find local hours online or in the McDonald’s app. 

    Noodles: Select Noodles locations will be open; you can check store hours here.

    Panera Bread: Hours may vary by store, according to Panera Bread. You can check your location’s hours online.

    Red Lobster: All Red Lobster locations will be open for dine-in and To Go on Christmas Day, the company confirmed earlier this year. You can find your restaurant’s hours here.

    Sonic: Because most Sonic restaurants are locally owned, their hours may vary on Christmas Day. You can find local hours here. 

    Starbucks: Some Starbucks locations will be open for Christmas; you can check location hours here.

    Waffle House: Known for being open all day, every day – and causing headlines when it closes – Waffle House locations will be open on Christmas. There’s even a song about it.

    Wendy’s: Many Wendy’s locations will be open on Christmas, but hours may vary. You can check the hours of your nearest location online.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 20:15

  • Will The Guardians Of The Narrative Win?
    Will The Guardians Of The Narrative Win?

    Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

    Much that is happening in the spectacle of America’s legal-political  life today reminds me of some pages in Johan Huizinga’s great book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1938). In a chapter on “Play and Law,” Huizinga distinguishes the unfolding of legal proceedings in advanced cultures, where strict adherence to process and abstract notions of right and wrong prevail, from the situation in more primitive cultures, where the ultimate criterion is victory.

    “Turning our eyes from the administration of justice and highly developed civilizations,” Huizinga writes, “to that which obtains in less advanced phases of culture, we see that the idea of right and wrong, the ethical-juridical conception, comes to be overshadowed by the idea of winning and losing, that is, the purely agonistic conception. It is not so much the abstract question of right and wrong that occupies the archaic mind as the very concrete question of winning or losing.”

    In this sense, I submit, Special Counsel Jack Smith, District Judge Tanya Chutkan, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and the rest of the anti-Trump legal confraternity perfectly epitomize the atavistic persistence of archaic impulses in the law. People like me are always going on about “the rebarbarization of civilization.” The peculiar legal assault against Donald Trump is one instance (among many) of that phenomenon.

    It’s been going on for quite a while. The 2020 election, for example, took place during the period of eagerly embraced Covid hysteria. That hysteria provided a justification or, more accurately, an alibi for the numerous violations of the law in the conduct of the election. The Constitution of the United States stipulates that state legislatures are in charge of determining voting procedures. But various governors and secretaries of state, from blue states mostly, swept that Constitutional provision aside in their eagerness to assure the appearance of a Biden victory. Such anomalies were noted and commented on at the time but somehow never got traction. Why? Because the media, that great tool of The Narrative, determined that it oughtn’t to get traction.

    In subsequent months, the public has been treated to an efflorescence of similar and even more extreme anomalies as Donald Trump can barely turn his head without being indicted for something or other. I do not think that the public at large grasps how bizarre the quartet of indictments, proceeding in tandem in four separate jurisdictions, really is. It is unprecedented, yes, but it is also surreal. It is also a travesty of the legal process. The aim is not justice but the grubby partisan goal of removing a popular political rival from the field. The Attorney General of New York, Letitia James actually campaigned on the promise that she would “get Trump.” How is that OK? What has happened is that the law—or, more precisely, the paraphernalia and accoutrements of the law—is simply the weapon of choice, all else having failed. Those who point out that the effort to transform a political rival into a pariah is tantamount to banana republic tactics are right. But to say that is not yet to do justice the breathtaking situation in which a former president who happens to be, by a wide margin, his party’s favorite for the presidential nomination is treated worse than a common criminal. Common criminals, as a rule, are not subject to gag orders for trying to defend themselves.  “Shut up, or you might convince people you are being unfairly persecuted!” What a blow against “Our Democracy™” that would be!

    What’s happened this past week has put the proverbial icing on the cake.

    First, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot in that state because of his role in the January 6 jamboree.

    Yes, I know that one is supposed to describe that event as an “insurrection,” an event worse than Pearl Harbor, 9/11, even the Civil War. But no amount of agitated repetition can change the fact that what happened on January 6, 2021 was a far cry from being an “insurrection.” Tucker Carlson’s description of the event as a “protest that got out of hand” is much closer to the truth.  The surging crowd was not armed. The one shot that was fired that day was fired by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd. He murdered Ashley Babbitt who was trying to calm the crowd inside the Capitol. Byrd was exonerated, as were the federal agents responsible for the death of Rosanne Boyland.

    Readers interested in what actually happened that day should consult Julie Kelly’s meticulous and indefatigable investigative reporting on the event. As for Trump himself, what was his role on that fateful day? Believing (as I do) that the 2020 election was rigged, he held a rally in DC during the course of which he urged his followers to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically” to make their voices heard about an election they believed as flawed. He also took to Twitter (shortly before he was ejected from the platform) to urge his followers to eschew violence. “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!” As insurrectionists go, that’s pretty pathetic, isnt it?

    The guardians of The Narrative have had to resort to an obscure clause in the 14th Amendment—a clause that was devised to prevent supporters of the Confederacy from assuming or reassuming public office—in order to keep Trump off the ballot or, in Jack Smith’s case, to charge him criminally.

    It hasn’t been been a great week for Jack Smith. Like the narrator in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” he hears “time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.” He is desperate to have Trump’s trial start March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, the day that, many observers predict, Trump will essentially sew up the the GOP nomination. Smith hopes that by having Trump in court on criminal charges before that will materially erode his support. Looking at how Trump’s polls have thus far responded to his persecution by the state, I’d say that was a dubious proposition, but there it is. Smith asked the Supreme Court to bypass the usual appeals process for Trump and hear his case on an expedited calendar. On Friday, they refused, without comment and without dissent.

    Meanwhile, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and Law Professors Steven G. Calabresi and Gary S. Lawson have filed an amicus brief with the Court arguing that Jack Smith, a private citizen, has no standing as Special Counsel because Merrick Garland, who appointed him, lacked the authority to do so. Best line in the brief: “Improperly appointed, he has no more authority to represent the United States in this Court than Bryce Harper, Taylor Swift, or Jeff Bezos.” (I had to look up Bryce Harper, but you know how it goes).

    It’s uncertain at this juncture what the Court will do or how, if at all, the brief by Messe et al. will affect the thinking of the Justices. I’d say that having someone of the stature of Ed Meese weigh in was significant, but who knows? The DC Circuit Court has already scheduled an expedited review of the case in DC, where an anti-Trump jury guided by an anti-Trump judge can be counted on to convict Trump of whatever he is charged with. The obvious bias of the judge and the jury pool are also things that belong to an atavistic conception of the legal process. But that is precisely where we are now.

    It would be interesting to know what Johan Huizinga would think of this brutal carnival in which one man is turned into a scapegoat in order to satisfy the blood lust of a barbaric vendetta.

    Unfortunately, he died in 1938. So we will just have to watch the unfolding of this unedifying spectacle ourselves.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 19:30

  • Israel's Military Strikes Hezbollah Command Center In Serious Escalation
    Israel’s Military Strikes Hezbollah Command Center In Serious Escalation

    This weekend has witnessed a significant escalation between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah along the southern Lebanese border. 

    Israeli media reported that a Hezbollah command center has been attacked. “The IDF says fighter jets have hit a Hezbollah military headquarters in Lebanon in response to attacks on northern Israel today, including one that left a soldier moderately wounded,” TOI reports.

    Israeli strikes over Lebanon’s southern town of Kfar Kila last week, via AFP

    This came following Hezbollah attacks on multiple Israeli military and civilian positions. The IDF then expanded its artillery shelling. While since Oct.7 exchanges of fire have been daily, the weekend saw an expansion of the frequency of these strikes.

    Northern Israel’s Kibbutz Menara was attacked in the Saturday flare-up in violence. The northern Israel community said: “The harsh reality is that from the beginning of the war, dozens of missiles were fired towards the kibbutz, most of them anti-tank missiles. As a result, at least 86 out of 155 apartments were affected with various degrees of damage,” according to an official statement issued by the Kibbutz. 

    On Friday some 20 rockets were fired on Israel from Lebanon within only a 24-period. Early in the Gaza conflict, some days might have witnessed a handful of rockets and mortars fired in what has remained a “limited” front. But it’s a deeply worrying sign that the ‘norm’ has now become dozens of projectiles exchanged on any given day.

    Soon after Oct.7, Israel began evacuating dozens of towns and settlements near the border, to within 2km of it, after Hezbollah rockets began raining down. At this point Israel says at least 80,000 of its citizens are still forced to stay away from their residences amid the Hezbollah threat. They have effectively become temporary refugees.

    In Gaza, the IDF issued a new casualty count over the weekend, as follows:

    The Israel Defense Forces announced Sunday the names of nine soldiers killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip throughout the previous day, bringing the number of troops killed over the entire weekend to 14, as the military deepened its offensive against the Hamas terror group.

    Five soldiers of the Combat Engineering Corps and a paramedic were killed by an anti-tank guided missile that hit a Namer armored engineering vehicle they were in, in southern Gaza. Another four were killed by bombs in two separate incidents during battles with gunmen in central Gaza.

    The deaths bring the number of troops killed since the start of the ground operation in late October to 153.

    Watch: Hezbollah has published a series of clips showing the continued degrading of Israeli defense communications facilities along the border…

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

    As for operation in Israel’s north, there have been conflicting accounts regarding Israeli leadership’s intentions. Some reports have claimed that Netanyahu wants to launch a preemptive war to eradicate Hezbollah along with Hamas. But others say Israel’s command understands that opening a full front with the Iran-backed paramilitary group might seriously overextend Israeli forces, also at a politically sensitive moment.

    Hezbollah is widely seen as a more formidable, better-armed force as well – and thus it could potentially become an even bloodier campaign than what’s taking place now in the Gaza Strip if a full war front is opened up.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 18:45

  • Turns Out, Alcohol is Good For Your Health!
    Turns Out, Alcohol is Good For Your Health!

    Authored by Tony Edwards via DailySceptic.org,

    Will you sign up to Dry January this year? If you do, you won’t be alone.

    According to its organisers, you’ll join a staggering nine million drinkers who are expected to don the hair shirt of for a whole month.

    Why would you do it?

    To prove to yourself you’re not an alcoholic, to virtue signal or to improve your health ? 0ne or more of those certainly.

    Dry January was first invented 10 years ago by a U.K. charity called Alcohol Concern with a single purpose: “To reset after a month or two of holiday festivities (such as) office parties, fun nights out, and boozy nights in.”

    Fair enough, perhaps, after an over-indulgent Christmas. But the goalposts have since been uprooted and replanted throughout the whole year. In February 2023, the charity (now rebranded as Alcohol Change) launched another abstinence drive: “Sober Spring – your three month break from alcohol, your chance to break habits, start new ones and experience life alcohol-free.” Hmm… What with the invention of two more monthly clones, Sober October and Sober September, there soon won’t be many more days in the year for drinkers to quaff a bevy or two without looking over their shoulders to see who’s eyeing them accusingly.

    It’s beginning to look like a return of the Temperance Movement by stealth. In the 19th Century, drinkers were exhorted to “sign the pledge”, undertaking to renounce alcohol for life. Today, that pledge has now morphed into an app on your phone, enabling Alcohol Change to monitor your behaviour, and remotely shame you if you succumb to the temptations of the demon drink. In the 1800s, the Temperance Movement was all about preventing domestic violence; today it’s about preventing ill-health.

    I’m a medical research journalist and I first got interested in this issue after stumbling across the fact that although booze “contains” lots of calories, it does not make you put on weight. Clinical trials on human volunteers, as well as experiments on rats and mice, have demonstrated this surprising fact conclusively. The evidence is clear: if you replace food calories with alcohol calories, you will lose weight. And yet the medical authorities have repeatedly told us that drinking causes weight gain, one of many health reasons to give up drinking.

    That mismatch between medical advice and medical evidence set me on the path of seeing what else ‘they’ were misleading us about. That led to a deep dive into the published medical research and my discovery that, although the health authorities were routinely bombarding us with anti-alcohol rhetoric, there are astonishing health benefits from drinking.

    Seriously? Can alcohol really be good for your health?

    Yes.

    In addition to the weight issue, the evidence shows that sensible drinkers have less heart disease, less diabetes, less dementia and often even less cancer than teetotallers. Those, plus a myriad of other health benefits, have the predictable upshot that moderate drinkers live longer and healthier lives than non-drinkers. Those discoveries were the meat of my 2013 book on the subject: The Good News About Booze, a deliberately populist title intended to disguise the fact that the book was a serious in-depth enquiry based on literally hundreds of references to evidence published in international medical journals.

    After that, I thought I had finished with alcohol as a topic, but I recently had a rethink.

    In the last seven years, without any evidence to support the clampdown, the medical authorities have begun turning the screws on drinkers. Again, it all started in Britain where in 2016 the existing alcohol guidelines were slashed in half, setting the upper safe limit at two units a day. What’s two units? Less than a pint of beer, a small glass of wine, or a shot of whisky – so almost a maiden aunt’s level of intake. Nevertheless, we were warned that exceeding even that very low level would harm our health. In fact, England’s then Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, went further, trumpeting that the latest research showed that “there is no safe level of alcohol intake”. Really? How come?

    It turned out she had commissioned a survey of the existing research data from Sheffield University– a questionable source, as Sheffield is a bit-part player on the international alcohol research stage. In any case, we now know, thanks to journalist Chris Snowdon’s Freedom of Information ferreting, that Sheffield initially reported quite a lot of Good News about alcohol and health. However, that displeased the CMO who ordered the university to downplay alcohol’s health benefits and ramp up its hazards. The final Sheffield report, which incidentally was never formally published in a peer-reviewed journal, then became the justification for the new British guidelines…. which were, to put it mildly, based on dubious science.

    Nevertheless, the 2016 British anti-alcohol initiative soon spread around the world, with many countries also reducing their guideline levels, sometimes to ridiculously low levels. For example, Holland, despite its liberal laws about marijuana smoking, now reckons that drinking more than half a bottle of lager a day will shorten your life. And even the French, who until a decade ago had no official guidelines at all, have now decided that drinking more than the quarter litre carafe of wine which every Frenchman has with his lunch, is a health hazard.

    I was puzzled. I was pretty sure the health evidence about drinking hadn’t significantly changed since my 2013 book, but I decided to check. Another deep dive into the evidence did indeed reveal some apparently worrying findings. There was a major Cambridge University research paper with a sample size of over half a million people which said it had disproved the idea that drinking had any health benefits whatsoever. An even bigger study conducted in China claimed the same. A third said that drinking wine is as dangerous as smoking.

    However, on examination, none of these stacked up. The Cambridge claim was straightforward misinformation: its study had in fact found health benefits from drinking, but had buried the positive findings in the depths of a voluminous appendix. The Chinese study was of questionable value, as it’s well known that Orientals genetically respond to alcohol very differently from Europeans. As for the ‘wine is as harmful as tobacco’ study, it offered not a scrap of evidence for the claim.

    By contrast, my deep dive into the research database did reveal some new, very positive information about alcohol and health – in particular, the benefits of wine. It also meant I could assess the value of the new entrants in the wine arena since my 2013 book: organic/biodynamic and alcohol-free wines. I was intrigued to discover what extra health punch they each might provide; the answers greatly surprised me.

    The result is a new book The Very Good News about Wine, which came out this month. Citing over three hundred studies published from the 1970s to the present, the book is a serious challenge to the anti-alcohol propaganda increasingly dominating the media – largely driven by a nefarious alliance of the medical authorities, a small coterie of vocal anti-alcohol activists and Alcohol Change.

    My hope is that people will use the book as an authoritative resource when they next hear another rent-a-pundit trotting out the old saw that wine’s supposed health benefits are “an old wives’ tale” (quote, Sally Davies). 50 years of solid medical data are a rare example of where the science is settled: it cannot easily be overturned by anything you might read in your daily newspaper, trumpeting the latest shock-horror discovery that a glass of wine will tip you into an early grave.

    So will you sign up to Dry January?

    Personally I won’t, as the medical evidence is overwhelming that drinking a few glasses of wine with an evening meal is good for one’s health. You may have different motives, of which proving to yourself you’re not an alcoholic seems superficially attractive. On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to give up brushing your teeth for a month, or stop your daily exercise routines – two addictions you should embrace, as they’re obviously health-promoting. In principle, moderate wine drinking is no different.

    Of course, it’s ‘your body, your choice’ whether you take the January pledge or not. However, Alcohol Change probably won’t give a toss one way or the other. The organisation’s latest accounts show that their dry months marketing ploys have already netted them over £12 million in assets.

    Temperance propaganda is clearly Very Good News for them too.

    *  *  *

    The Very Good News About Wine by Tony Edwards is available on Amazon priced £10.99.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 18:00

  • Dave Collum's 2023 Year In Review: Down Some Dark Rabbit Holes, Part 2
    Dave Collum’s 2023 Year In Review: Down Some Dark Rabbit Holes, Part 2

    Authored by David B. Collum, Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology – Cornell University (Email: dbc6@cornell.edu, Twitter: @DavidBCollum),

    This Year in Review is brought to you by healthcare, broken markets, law-and-order, and the case for a multi-year bear market…

    Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018) full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception, with Dave striking again in his usually poignant and delightfully acerbic way.

    Contents

    Part 1 (Read Part 1 here)

    • Introduction

    • Contents

    • My Year

    • Healthcare

    • Investing – Gold, Energy, and Materials

    • Gold and Silver

    • Broken Markets

    • Multi-Decade Bull Market: 40 Years of Recency Bias

    • The Case for a Multi-Decade Bear Market

    Part 2 (see below)

    • Law and Order

    • Media

    • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    • Climate Change-Epilogue

    • News Nuggets

    • Lahaina Fires and DEWs

    • The War in Ukraine–Epilogue

    Part 3 (coming in January of 2024)

    • January 6–Epilogue

    • Woke Culture and Rising Neo-Marxism

    • Transgenderism

    • Pedophilia and Geopolitics

    Download a pdf of Parts 1 and 2 here.

    *  *  *

    Law and Order

    We have a law-and-order problem in which some facets look seriously problematic and others beyond repair. It is the perfect storm:

    • The opioid epidemic is raging unchecked. Although the Sackler family and big-cap pharma deserve credit, but massive fentanyl flows from China might be profit-driven or a Sun Tsu strategy (and maybe payback for the opium wars).

    • The response to Covid not only destroyed lives, it allows guys to walk into stores fully concealed by masks and nobody bats an eye. Crime becomes T-ball.

    • We have opened the borders to unimaginable numbers of undocumented immigrants. These are not the old-school Hispanics from South of the Border looking for work to send money home but rather military-aged men from around the world. Credible eyewitness accounts estimate 98% are non-Hispanic.1

    • Defunding the police in 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd riots emanated from the neo-Marxist brain trust. Add to that officers quitting because the job carries legal risks and you have gutted police forces. 911 calls go unanswered. Even in my small college town of Ithaca, NY the police force has been gutted. 911 calls at unsafe locations requiring police escorts are going unanswered.

    • We are long overdue for an economic downturn with all the accompanying pain and suffering, but it hasn’t started yet. Society is supposed to exit the top of economic cycles euphoric. I would call this dysphoric.

    • The current administration has politicized and weaponized the justice system from top to bottom with potentially profound consequences. This is a hot-button issue for me that distinguishes Biden et al. as uniquely treasonous.

    • A six-year-old Alabama boy was suspended from school and had his “permanent record” threatened for making ‘finger guns’ during a game of cops and robbers.2

    • Some good news: Three men accused of planning to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were acquitted on all counts.3 The other twelve unindicted conspirators—all working for the FBI—never saw the inside of a courtroom. The lives of William Null, Michael Null, and Eric Molitor will never be the same. The twelve FBI agents who set the trap should rot in hell. If I was a religious guy I would be quite optimistic. Do I sound mad?

    Immigration

    Our profound immigration crisis is squarely on the Biden administration and the psychiatric wing of the democratic party. See Invaded: The Intentional Destruction of the American Immigration System by J. J. Carroll in “Books”. The rallying cry to support open borders because “we are a nation of immigrants” is specious. We had vast unpopulated acreage for expansion westward, and the welfare state had not yet been invented. You cannot run an overdeveloped welfare state with open borders. The political right accuses the left of recruiting voters but that seems asinine; these undocumented democrats can’t vote legally for years if not decades, right? Well, the ass-clowns inside the beltway—the City Council—passed a law granting voting rights in local elections to undocumented aliens. It is said that Congress could have intervened, but they didn’t.4

    When a man flees war, he takes his family with him. When a man heads to war, he leaves his family behind. Our Nation is being infiltrated by Military-Aged Men from every corner of the globe.

    ~ Kari Lake, lingering United States Senate candidate from Arizona

    You can’t blame America’s border crisis on incompetence (Hanlon’s razor) because nobody is that incompetent. This is hauntingly similar to the immigrant invasion of Europe a few years back.5,6 My best guess is that globalists are trying to destroy the US, the primary bulwark against a New World Order. You begin by shredding the concept of borders. A darker consequence is described by a veteran border agent who was charged with grabbing military-aged men on terror lists called special interest aliens (SIAs) and deporting them. They were exceedingly rare and all of them were deported. This changed in 2020. He now estimates that over 100,000 of these SIAs have crossed the border in the last two years.7 That is a lot of sleeper cells. Let’s hope his theory that we will suffer relentless terror attacks is dead wrong. For now, let’s peek at the messes that pale in comparison.

    The immigrants hit the welfare state immediately. They are given a $2,200 per month allowance or a $5,000 debit card,8 bus and plane tickets, housing, food, and medical services.9 “They used to do the monitors on the ankles, and those were being cut off. So now they give them phones.” Unmarked buses deliver them to destinations in the middle of the night to avoid blatant detection and minimize the optics.

    They take our phones, but they don’t take our phone calls.10

    ~ Congressman Barry Moore, responding to testimony immigrants are given cell phones but then disappear

    Sanctuary cities like New York City came up with wildly progressive “Right to Shelter” laws, jamming immigrants into what used to be hotels and nursing homes. The mayor claims that half of New York City’s hotels (or at least what were hotels) are filled with immigrants living on the local taxpayers’ dime.11 The democrats, including NY Governor Kathy Hochul, are back peddling on this one. Bill Clinton declared, “It’s broken. We need to fix it… It doesn’t make any sense.”12 Then Adams lost his mind or played reverse psychology brilliantly and proposed that people invite these SIAs into their homes with rent paid by tax dollars. “It is my vision to take the next step to this faith-based locale and then move to a private residence.” The State of Massachusetts made a similar plea for AirBNB service from homeowners.13 Boston hotel reservations for a veteran-rich fan base to see the Army-Navy football game got canceled to house illegals.14 This is what they fought for?

    ABC sends reporters to Ukraine but advises their reporters to stay away from San Francisco.15

    ~ Jesse Watters

    Looting

    California is the home of many bad ideas including a particularly oleaginous dynastic douche bag whose presidential aspirations will be riding the wave of disasters on his watch. San Francisco authorities are a particularly brain-damaged crew. They decided that minor crimes like shoplifting should go unpunished as long as the tab stays below a $1000 threshold. These undocumented shoppers predictably morphed into flash mobs that could clear out a store like Biblical locusts. What the bliss ninnies in California failed to realize is that a functional system of law and order system is part bluff—the fine citizens far outnumber the cops—and the masses called their bluff. Major retailers pulling businesses out of Shit City include Nordstrom,16 John Chachas,17 165-year-old Gump’s,18 and Whole Foods.19 I imagine every other store will eventually leave. San Francisco is now Detroit but without Detroit’s charm.

    Stores like Walgreens and Walmart are chaining up their cabinets like an antique emporium, a failed business model requiring a massive staff to supervise and assist customers.20,21 The icty now has a real live pirate problem—argh!—in which thieves steal boats to steal other shit.22 San Francisco belatedly ended its mask mandate, but landlords are still waiting to charge rents.23 The city’s problems have it on the cusp of insolvency, looking at over $200 million in budget cuts to avoid a “doom loop.”24

    We’ll look carefully to see whether this is a one-off situation and they’re fundamentally law-abiding people…

    ~ Larry Krasner, progressive Philadelphia district attorney on arrested looters

    The devil is in the details:

    • While doing a story on the deplorable condition of San Francisco, the CNN truck under heavy surveillance by paid guards got ripped off in four seconds.25 Pit crews at the Indy 500 are studying the footage.

    • One ambitious guy got arrested ten times in one month. His tenth was at the police station, when he tried to retrieve his property with a stolen car.26

    • The Cruise robo-taxi startup supposedly running autonomous taxis in San Francisco—I did not know they existed yet—has discovered they are excellent for both amateurs and pros for quickies.27 I get the name “cruise”.

    • Police are urging people to carry air horns.28

    • Five percent of Target’s inventory somehow bypasses the barcode scanners.

    It should come as no surprise that looting spread to other cities when the locals realized that San Francisco didn’t lack the laws but rather the manpower to stop flash mobs.

    • Name-brand items like Tide detergent are not being carried because there is a strong black market for the good stuff….by the Tide Podlers.29

    • Portland, Oregon lost Walmart, REI, and Nike because of shoplifting.30,31 This is Kharma for the Portland lefties. Cracker Barrel is pulling out because there are too many lefties and not enough crackers.32

    Efforts to mitigate the damage ushered in by bad decisions led to more bad decisions and goofy solutions worthy of bullets:

    • Baltimore is suing Kia and Hyundai because their cars are too easy to steal.33

    • The democratic brain trust in Chicago came up with a great plan: ask the criminals to only shoot guns between 9 PM and 9 AM to minimize the risk of innocent people.34 That’s right up there with a proposal to have city-owned grocery stores as Walmart and Whole Foods exits, leaving behind “food deserts.”35

    • D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has decided her call to defund the police was boneheaded and is calling for more police to stem the soaring murder rate.36

    • A union in Los Angeles wants to fill all hotel rooms left vacant at 2:00 PM into rooms to be provided to the homeless.37 That would be all hotel rooms.

    • A prominent Minnesota Democrat changed her tune on defunding and dismantling the police department after a carjacker put some whoop-ass on her.38 “These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS.” Where is Kyle Rittenhouse when you need him?

    • The Austin, Texas police have urged robbery victims not to call 911 but rather call 311, the line for non-emergencies.39

    • The entire police force of Goodhue, Minnesota resigned.40

    • A left-wing Philadelphia journalist relentlessly mocked those concerned with rising crime in Democrat-run cities. In one tweet he was chortling at some guy predicting he would be dead if Biden got elected. He was shot to death in his home.

    Frontier Justice 

    My dad told me a story of a friend who was being shaken down by a two-bit thug. The cops said he could defend himself, so he bought a gun and, during the next shake-down, emptied it into the punk. Problem solved. Twitter is beginning to be populated with videos of store owners defending their property—exercising “castle doctrine.”

    When I was in NYC in the late 70s, Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels patrolled the subway system to restore law and order. In a recent looting, a couple of patrons at Home Depot tackled a looter and constrained him with zip ties until the cops arrived. Meanwhile, to avoid legal risk, corporate America is firing employees who defend the stores.

    Are we entering a period in which vigilante justice is our only option? Such a turbulent period may be unavoidable, but invisible forces are opposing this response. Take the shopkeeper who got the drop on a thief threatening to pull a gun and managed to beat the crook with a stick. It was quite the win for the good guys until the district attorney decided to prosecute the shopkeeper for assault.42 That district attorney is worthy of the business end of a Louisville Slugger. When we punish the law-abiding citizens for defending their rights, society has stage-III syphilis.

    The Saga of Daniel Penny

    This brings us to the sad and ominous story of Daniel Penny and Jordan Williams. Mentally unstable Jordan Neely gets on the subway in NYC and starts threatening people: “I don’t care if I have to kill the motherfucker, I will. I’ll go to jail, I’ll take a bullet” recalled him saying by one passenger. “The people on the train, we were scared. We were scared for our lives.” Neely had been arrested 44 times43 for various subway assaults, including rearranging the face of an old lady. Riders panicked and dialed 911, which requires quite a risk to trigger 911 calls from New Yorkers.44,45 One of the witnesses who filmed the event told NBC that Neely got on the train and “began to say a somewhat aggressive speech, saying he was hungry, he was thirsty, that he didn’t care about anything, he didn’t care about going to jail, he didn’t care that he gets a big life sentence.”46

    After some delay, ex-marine Daniel Penny joined forces with African-American Jordan Williams to subdue Neely. Let me digress for a moment by explaining what this means. My wife has, on several occasions, delivered some ‘tude to a stranger that could have been avoided. (I especially appreciated the guff given to a heavily tattooed gentleman at a demolition derby.) I explained the flaw in her thinking as follows (paraphrased from memory, of course):

    Here is the deal, Sweet Potato: you could have left me with no option but to get physical. At that point, I am in a life-and-death situation. I have no choice but to get the drop on my would-be assailant and incapacitate him, possibly permanently, because I can’t afford to exchange punches. I will then end up in court and possibly even prison, so please stop picking fights for me.

    This may sound rash if you are a cloistered nitwit who has no idea how brutal street fights can be. I suggest you check out Twitter feeds including @FightMate or search “Fights at IHOP” on YouTube. The key message is that physical intervention is a serious step into the darkness. In the case of subduing an angry assailant, it can get worse owing to what is called “excited delirium” in which the state of the assailant’s agitation enables superhuman strength and irrational behavior. From a research paper in Police Practice and Research:47,48

    Researchers recognized excited delirium as “a state of extreme mental and physiological excitement, characterized by extreme agitation, hyperthermia, hostility, exceptional strength and endurance without apparent fatigue….Intervention options are less effective against people experiencing excited delirium. Unfortunately, this may mean more force will be necessary to overcome resistance, and with more force, there is an increased risk of officer and suspect injury…Excited delirium encounters can be dangerous medical emergencies that simultaneously place officers, subjects, and communities at risk. It’s recommended that officers who intervene in cases involving probable excited delirium respond with containment and quick, coordinated, multiple restraint techniques that minimize the suspect’s exertion and maximize their ability to breathe.

    From the above excerpt and all those videos I urged you to watch, if you release the constraint prematurely, you may die. Here is a good samaritan who paid a price:

    The bottom line is that if you get into it with some whackjob, you may have to kill him. A witness said that Penny “refrained from jumping in and using force to subdue Neely until there was a threat of violence,” but eventually Penny and Williams moved to constrain Neely. Some witnesses were concerned that Neely was looking a little sketchy (choking on his spit), but Williams (the black dude) assured them they were not choking him: “He’s not squeezing,” said Williams. Neely eventually stopped struggling and Penny and Williams released him 90 seconds later—I timed it49—and immediately positioned him on his side to optimize his breathing. He either died on the spot or died at the hospital, depending on your source. You might even be able to see Neely take a breath after Penny released him but that could be the non-scientific “death rattle.”50 Witnesses on the scene said Penny and Williams were heroes. “Mr. Penny cared for people. That’s what he did…This isn’t about race. This is about people of all colors who were very, very afraid and a man who stepped in to help them.”51

    The liars in the press looking to stir up a race war decided to create George Floyd 2.0 by vilifying Penny as a murderer while leaving the role of African-American Williams oddly in the shadows. (I keep saying African-American because some mouth breathers lack the intellectual minetailings to spot the racial motivations of the authorities.) They said Penny choked Neely for “15 minutes” rather than 90 seconds,52,53 ignoring the 13.5 minutes of excited delirium and that a real choke hold can knock somebody out in under 20 seconds. In 2020, I dug into what it takes to kill a guy by choking him while examining the Floyd death and the role of Derek Chauvin.54 It takes more than five minutes, not 90 seconds, before death becomes a risk. Daniel Penny described how the events played out.55

    Penny was charged with manslaughter. What about Williams who teamed up with Penny? They worked together as a team. Well, after a protracted couple of weeks, they eventually realized they had to pretend to indict him, but then all charges were dropped.56 So this is pure racism by the prosecutor. Did the district attorney succumb to public pressure? Not really. The district attorney who brought the charges was Alvin Bragg,57 the same Morlock who weaponized the judicial system for political gain by going rogue on Trump.58 He is a despicable opportunist. A piece of shit. Go get your fourth booster Mr. Bragg.

    The family that let Neely wander the subway and be homeless for a decade without finding a way to assist him suddenly decided that they cared about him quite deeply after all and have sued Daniel Penny for wrongful death.59 Good luck collecting after he is destroyed by legal bills.

    Why make such a big deal of this one event? First, this is January 6th revisited for me. The weaponization of the justice system will be a major contributor to the downfall of our nation. If you don’t think so, just wait until “the other team” is in power and they start putting your sorry ass in the slammer. More importantly, Bragg’s moves have sent a very clear message: never help a person in distress because you will end up being prosecuted. Just pull out your cell phone like every other coward in society whose testicles never descended and film the atrocity. It’s a shame Daniel Penny doesn’t have Alec Baldwin’s street creds. Well, time to move on cause this ship isn’t gonna sink itself.

    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Ideas that are annealed in the furnace of debate.

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    The media serves up an AI-generated image of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. telling you what he says and thinks. He is a total crank. Just ask the mainstream media filled with well-seasoned prostitutes trying to take him down. If, however, you actually listen to what he says, it creates a very different picture. He is this election cycle’s rising dark-horse progressive. Maybe I am not being fair to Vivek Ramaswamy who says all the right things from the right wing, but Vivek seems too produced, manifesting the authenticity of a boy-band. RFK Jr is the most exciting entrant to the political arena with no chance of inheriting the Oval Office. I have a long-shot bet that the DNC accepts their responsibility to serve up a potentially credible leader as their candidate and bites the bullet with a Kennedy nomination.

    Much the way Trump weaponized Twitter for his presidential run, RFK Jr and Ramaswamy have tapped the Age of the Podcast. Kennedy will do any podcast including Greenwald,1 Dave Smith,2 Lex Fridman,3 as well as such luminaries as Alex Jones (which I can no longer find), Mike Tyson,4 and Dane Wigington (of Chemtrails fame).5 Having binge-watched many podcasts and even spent some time on a Zoom call with Kennedy, I will say that he is not the perfect candidate but is attempting to express his ideas clearly and honestly. He is by no means a crank but rather an outspoken progressive who has been scarred by fights with powerful forces over decades as he legally battled regulatory capture. There have been stumbles, corrections, and maybe a few fibs, but he is also a very quick learn on complex subjects and can openly and frankly change his stance. For those who have an aversion to one of his views, chin up: he may learn and change.

    So let’s take a quick peek at my takes on his takes. This, of course, is paradoxical because I admonished you seconds ago not to read about what he said, but at least I provide the links to help you check.

    Anti-vaccine quack RFK Jr. has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president as a Democrat… Kennedy is such a healthcare menace, in 2019, even his cousins wrote an op-ed criticizing his anti-science views on life-saving vaccines.6

    ~ Jake Tapper, CNN talking head, DNC shill, and all-around jackwagon

    Vaccines.

    Kennedy’s views on vaccines are the stuff of legend. I will reiterate a couple but urge you to read The Real Anthony Fauci to understand his multi-decade battles with pharma that have left him bruised and battered with a deep-seated disdain for Fauci. I doubt any reasonable person can read 100 pages without getting irate. Kennedy’s public stance is that he supports all vaccines that are safe and effective, but he trusts few of them. He takes serious issue with their excessive use and with the manufacturers, after getting hit with $35 billion of legal penalties, demanding and getting a complete backstopping of all culpability by the government. When pharma is immune to the consequences of vaccine injuries, they will promote unsafe vaccines without fear of consequences.7 I agree with Kennedy.

    Lockdowns.

    He emphatically declared the lockdowns to have been unwarranted and the $16 trillion cost prohibitive.8 He refers to the pandemic and the State’s response to it as a coup d’etat, coming off as more libertarian than bark-eating liberal.9

    Only two families said they were claiming political persecution. The rest just told us openly they were coming here to make money, coming here for a better life. So, they didn’t even have that claim. And those immigrants shouldn’t be allowed into the country. We should stop that at the border…. They get extorted. They get raped. They get robbed.10

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Immigration.

    RFK was an open-border supporter. His sister Rory Kennedy created an award-winning 2010 documentary The Fence making a case against The Wall. But then he visited the border for two days in 2023 and morphed into an advocate of immigration control.11 On his visit, he found only two families claiming persecution with arguments that reached the legal bar. Hispanics were AWOL, with North Africans and Chinese representing the vast percentage of immigrants.

    I went down to the border feeling that Trump has made a mistake on the wall, but I feel like people need to be able to recalibrate their worldview when they’re confronted with evidence.

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Social programs.

    He is a classic social democrat, proposing programs for those not living the American dream that sound good but have little history of working. On the heels of his relatively new views on restricted immigration, one can’t help but wonder what his views on the homeless might become. His openly stated desire to bring US spending under control, however, causes him to overtly denounce solutions involving big-government programs. An old-school liberal with a fear of budget overrun is arguably not an old-school liberal.

    We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now.

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Israel.

    RFK’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot possibly be a minor campaign issue nor is it likely to be static over time given that the conflict is looking quite kinetic. He has, however, come out squarely in support of Israel:12,13,14,15 This might be shaped by an awkward moment in which he casually noted that the Chinese and the Jews showed a greater resistance to Covid.16 Those at the table flinched. On cue, he was immediately pegged as anti-semitic. It just so happens that he was quoting a scientific paper that showed the biochemical basis of his statement.17,18,19 What he learned that day is something Dave Chappelle relayed to Kanye West: nothing good comes from putting two words together—“the” and “Jews.”

    I have been fighting engineering solutions to environmental problems.20

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Climate Change.

    This is a hot-button topic for me, and my first exposure to Kennedy’s ideas appeared to be place him squarely in opposition. (See the section on “Climate Change.”) A video showed him threatening to jail climate deniers, which sounds like it might include me:21

    I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the Hague with all the other war criminals that are there. I think those [politicians] are selling out the public trust. I think those guys that are doing the Koch Brothers bidding and who against all the evidence of the rational mind are saying that global warming doesn’t exist that they are contemptible human beings, and I wish there were a law you could punish them under. I don’t think there is a law that you can punish those politicians under, but do I think the Koch Brothers should be punished for reckless endangerment? Absolutely. That’s a criminal offense, and they ought to be serving time for it.

    He responded by pointing out that it was taken out of context and parsed very conveniently.21 I found his explanation in which he was referring to overt polluters to be extreme but not psychotic. Where it gets interesting is that he notes in other statements that climate issues are being “exploited” to impose “totalitarian controls” over the populace, drawing an analogy to Covid.22

    Climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by … mega billionaires…The same way that Covid was exploited to use it as an excuse to clamp down top-down totalitarian controls on society and then to give us engineering solutions.ref yy

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Bitcoin.

    As a bitcoin agnostic, I don’t care too much but in a podcast with a bitcoin enthusiast he left me slack-jawed by his grasp of the nuances of cryptocurrencies.24 As noted above, he is a fast learner.

    If the government has the capacity to shut down your bank account and starve you to death and get you thrown out of your home and make it so you can’t feed your children, it has the capacity to make slaves of all of us.25

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Chemtrails.

    In a rather remarkable podcast, RFK chats with Dane Wigington, one of the more legendary promoters of how those streaks in the sky are nefarious actions of the New World Order. RFK largely played devil’s advocate on the existence and purpose of chemtrails. I will touch on this topic again, but Kennedy neither endorses nor summarily dismisses the chemtrail narrative.

    Ukraine.

    Kennedy laid out in detail that our foreign policy in Ukraine is atrocious and we should get the hell out of there.26,27 His position squares nicely with mine laid out in lurid detail in 202228 and amplified below. He also admits in the same Greenwald interview that he got duped by the Russia collusion story used to attack Trump and has now done a 180.29

    I would put a statue of Snowden in Washington. What Snowden released nobody in our country knew about. That the intelligence agencies were mining all of our data and spying on Americans…Assange I’m going to pardon.30

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Opposition.

    As noted, I don’t think RFK is getting near the Oval Office. He got pushback that was reminiscent of Ron Paul in 2008 on almost every topic. Here are some examples of opposition showing its true colors:

    • The democrats tried to stop him from testifying to Congress on the evils of censorship.31 The irony of censoring talks on censorship was lost only on the Congressional democrats. He proceeded to beat them like rented mules in his testimony. He noted that the 101 Congressmen and women who signed the letter to censor him played the anti-Semite card.

    • RFK’s interview by Mike Tyson describing how the CIA whacked his father and how the case against Sirhan Sirhan would have crumbled had it gone to court was deleted by YouTube.32 As is becoming patently obvious, the CIA has the final say on all online media sites.

    • In an ABC interview, RFK got massively censored (edited) with a follow-up disclaimer that we are not allowed to see what he said because he made false claims about the vaccine.33 That is what worthless sacks of shit called “mainstream media” do in authoritarian states.

    • The DNC declared that they had “no plans to sponsor primary debates,” even with multiple candidates vying for the party’s nomination.34 They provided their full support to that child sniffing,35 compulsively lying,36 and underachieving former senator who is 51 cards short of a full deck. (Yes: I am fed up with Potus.) The DNC decided that the primary votes accrued by any candidate who even sets foot in Iowa or New Hampshire would default to President Brandon.37

    The CIA is the world’s biggest sponsor of “journalism.”38

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Many are unaware that the DNC is a private not-for-profit with the power to pick candidates any way they want. They were kept in check historically by two restoring forces: (1) anybody with a half of a brain would abandon them and start a new party, and (2) I could imagine that RICO charges could be levied for raising funds using pretenses. (Of course, the DNC has weaponized the Department of Justice, so that would never happen…unless the RNC regains power.) The superdelegate system is so lopsided that an interloper like Kennedy has no chance of commandeering the nomination; he is now an independent. I hope he does some damage. It is quite clear that the DNC has lost all moral or legal obligation to offer us a candidate even minimally capable of leading the nation. Cornpop39 would be an improvement over Biden.

    They’ve passed a rule that says any candidate who actively campaigns in New Hampshire that the delegates they win will not be allowed into the convention. It’s not a good template for Democracy.40

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Assassinations.

    It seems pretty clear to many that if RFK got even a whiff of the presidency he would follow in the family tradition and get his ass capped by the CIA to the applause of Big Pharma. He has been inflicting huge reputational damage to the CIA by accusing them of killing his uncle (JFK)41 and his father (RFK, Sr.) After years of turning a blind eye, he looked at the case against Sirhan Sirhan and suggested that Sirhan Sirhan was a product of MKUltra,42 the CIA’s program for brainwashing assassins-in-training and patsies. (Sorry folks, but MKUltra is real and, in my opinion, still today.)

    I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy, Jr is not warranted at this time.43

    ~ Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, after 88 days of stalling

    All viable presidential candidates have been offered Secret Service protection since his father was shot, but RFK, Jr was denied.44 When Joe Rogan asked him what he thought would happen if he managed to get into office, Kennedy replied, “I gotta be careful. I’m aware of that danger. I don’t live in fear of it — at all. But I’m not stupid about it, and I take precautions.” I suspect he would release the last of the Warren Commission papers, the ones that Tucker Carlson claims show the CIA did it.45 Watch for those little red laser dots on your chest, Bobby. I also fear that his flame burned brightly and dimmed too early. His social media presence may have peaked. The Onion showed why the Babylon Bee is the New King.

    Jeffrey Epstein.

    It turns out RFK, Jr. rode on the Lolita Express twice. Oh, here come the Guardians of Gotcha! Welp, it turns out to have been in 1993, the trips were to Florida, and he brought his wife and kids. Kinda puts the damper on the pervy shit.46

    Climate Change–Epilogue

    The Only Way to Get to 1.5 Degrees of Global Warming is Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money.1

    ~ John Kerry, US climate Czar

    As of 2016, I was largely on board the climate change narrative owing to my faith in the scientific community. After I was challenged to question that stance by my brother and a digital acquaintance, Dr. David Walker, I have done a U-turn and am sanguine with my current stance that climate change is the largest hoax in the history of science to paraphrase Richard Lindzen, geophysicist at MIT. The hoax is fueled by a combination geopolitical forces and tens of trillions of dollars of government largesse—an estimated $150 trillion over the next decades2—to buy adherents of many and complicit silence from others.

    “You don’t believe in climate change? What a Luddite!” is the rallying cry of the cultists, and I do not use the term cultists loosely. I wrote about my journey in 2019 (pg 53).3 This grift demanding an urgent response to ward off catastrophe decades from now will obstinately persist because it will always be decades from now. One of the early denialists, Michael Crichton, reminds us to read headlines from decades ago and ask how many catastrophic predictions played out as the panicky press declared.4 We are forever being shamed to do it for our children and grandchildren.

    I will not adjudicate the case again for my climate denial stance, but each year I top off my denial narrative with fresh tidbits. Here is a decent primer for those who did not realize it was a debate and not just “The Science.”5 For serious analyses and fabulous archival data, check out Watts Up With That?6 I also did a podcast with climate denialist, Tom Nelson, that touched upon climate change before I drove it off a cliff into darker topics.6a

    How can I possibly spit in the face of a massive scientific community that has reached a nearly perfect 97% consensus? Let’s begin with that 97% consensus narrative as one of the biggest lies. It stems from a horrifically bad survey of the literature in which half the papers were irrelevant, and by the miracles of statistical massaging, 0.4% of the papers claiming climate change is a crisis was spun into a 97% consensus.7,8,9 This garbage is cited widely by a community willing to knowingly live with the lie. There are many more lies. Princeton physicist and former presidential advisor, Will Happer, laments that they keep changing the data from the past to fit the narrative.10

    If you have to lie to make your point you don’t have a very good point.

    ~ Jimmy Dore

    The absence of credible scientists denying climate change is another whopper. A few hours of thoughtful pursuit will reveal that many prominent scientists—especially a large population of elite physicists—have nothing but scorn for the field (pg 53).11,12 Those doing good climate science—and there are undoubtedly many—are forced to sell their scientific souls through willful blindness and unwillingness because their professional lives depend on not calling out the con artists. The authorities and their captured media lied us into every military conflict for over a century. Metaphorical Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, and Communism are designed to be fought at considerable cost but never won. Replace “War” with “Grift” and you are getting closer to the truth. The Gell-Mann amnesia effect—our ability to doubt the media on subjects we understand but to believe all the others—allows these narratives to move forward unimpeded.

    Precious few are willing to question credentialed experts. We just witnessed a wholesale delusion because scientists and doctors were unwilling or professionally unable to challenge even a shard of the Covid narrative. Trust The Science.TM We never witnessed open and active debate. Those who questioned the narrative suffered massive destruction of their careers and livelihoods. To quote Elon Musk, to those who foisted the lie on otherwise decent people, “Go fuck yourselves.” Climate scientists who step in front of the climate narrative suffer a similar fate. To those pushing this narrative by preventing open and honest debate, “Go fuck yourselves.”

    The following nuggets are not intended to convince Eric Hoffer’s “True Believers”13 to re-evaluate their position—it would take an act of God to do that—but to throw more shade on the narrative to assist and perhaps entertain those already in doubt. Meanwhile, the Associated Press and other news agencies will continue to accept bribes to push the catastrophe narrative.14 The Flagulents will continue to stop rush-hour traffic by gluing themselves to the road,15 deface priceless paintings,16 vandalize gas-guzzling SUVs,17 and even block London’s pride parade.18 PBS will teach us to cope with “climate anxiety.”19 (Let me help: turn off PBS.)

    Claims 

    The press is a goldmine of preposterous claims illustrating the triumph of ignorance. Climate change is the default for brain addled journalists incapable of forming coherent thoughts on their own. Here are some of the ideas spewing from their brain stems:

    • Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere leads to more plants growing more quickly. Because plants don’t consume all the CO­2 they absorb, that means more plants are releasing even more CO­2­ into the atmosphere!20 Nobody would buy this crap right? Think again…

    • There were 500 more major league home runs because of climate change over the last decade.21 So much for Big-League Science. For the sake of humanity, stop injecting the trees with steroids.

    • Climate change is causing kidney stones in children owing to dehydration.22 They say hospitals are opening up “stone clinics.”23 They are, no doubt, to be subsidized by money allocated to fight the crisis. Given that a couple-hundred-foot change in elevation or a few hundred miles north or south can alter the average temperature, parents should choose where they raise their kids carefully. If you live in New York, do not move to Pennsylvania.

    • The Messenger Business tells us climate change is ruining the quality of your beer (unless you still drink Bud Light, which has been declared turtle piss as of this year.)24

    The natural instinct of the entire world to blame every hiccup on climate change leads to a rhetorical question that haunts me. Recall all the problems we have faced and solved through clear-headed reckoning. Imagine that we were facing the loss of the raptors in the world because DDT was thinning their shells, causing a massive collapse in their populations. If that problem from the 1960s surfaced today, would we be able to get to that conclusion or simply blame it on climate change? Answer: We would royally fuck it up.

    Solutions and Mitigation

    Because of the pandemic of juvenile kidney stones and major-league home runs, we must do something. Some shockingly stupid solutions are being batted about:

    • The crowd blaming trees for expelling CO­2 has recommended mass deforestation.25

    • Britain’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) told the Limeys not to heat their homes in the evening. To get to the Net Zero target by 2030 either home heating or private jets are gonna have to go.26 To say the enthusiasm for the plan was muted would be an understatement.

    • Scotland chopped down 16 million carbon-sequestering trees to build windmills.27

    • Many support geoengineering as our savior. That is where you intentionally blanket the earth with a cloud of shit (aluminum particles, for example), to block the sun’s rays.28 I cringe at the damage they could do to the planet but chuckle at how blocking the sun would undermine that grand scheme to exploit solar energy. All of the solutions to the problems caused by bad weather rely on predictably good weather. In a 1995 Simpsons episode, Mr. Burns built a giant shade to block the sun as part of a plan to force the city to rely on his power plant,29 which explains why Bill Gates likes the idea so much. This idea is so insane that the solar-powered bright bulbs of Congress are now interested.30

    • Democrats in the State of Washington State want incarceration for those using gas-powered leaf blowers and edgers.31

    • Klaus Scwab’s daughter seems to be carrying the authoritarian standard into the fray by promoting “climate lockdowns.” She is from a mutant lineage. There are tons of fact checks denying this one. Collum’s Law: the more fact-checks, the more somebody is hiding something.

    • In one of the more comical chapters, the People’s Republic of California proposed a total replacement of gas-powered vehicles by electric vehicles (EVs) the same week that they asked the citizenry to abstain from charging their EV’s owing to the fragile grid.32 On the not-so-improbable chance Gavin Newsom rides in to save the Democratic ticket on a solar-powered steed, remember: you are voting for a member of a crime family.

    • Some Scientologists suggest it is time to bring back food rationing.33,34

    Green energy has two problems: it’s not really green, and it’s not really energy.

    ~ Alex Epstein

    • Gasoline cars spew out 3% of global CO­2 emissions,35 so go ahead and buy that Tesla, but you better check into the cost of replacement batteries (up to $20,00036) and generic repair work before you plunk down the cash. Also, hope it doesn’t blow the hell up.37

    • Get rid of gas stoves! This idea also came out of the Bad Idea Factory, California, but found its way inside the Beltway fast.38,39

    • RedState says couples are passing up having kids altogether.39 If you decide you don’t want to have any children, just call John Podesta to take them off your hands.

    • The Los Angeles Times endorses the occasional blackout.40

    • Daily Mail says some doctors suggest that using less anesthetic during surgery would measurably reduce our carbon footprint.41 Some doc tries that on me, and I will pull out of my shallow stupor and personally reduce their carbon footprint.

    • Introduce climate taxes.42 This one is already here and growing.

    • Gigantic solar-powered air conditioners could cool the Earth. OK. I made that one up, but it’s no dumber than some of the others.

    • The Federal Reserve has decided that climate change mitigation is under their jurisdiction now that they have gotten control over inflation and dollar debasement.43

    • The New York Times suggests that if we mate with shorter people this will decrease the carbon footprint of our offspring.44 It has added perqs if the little lady has a flat head.

    • We could elect a new president:

    It’s only gonna get worse with global warming and climate change ’cause people can’t live in certain parts of this world.45

    ~ Joy Bahar

    The Climate Grift

    At the turn of the century, the titans of industry and carpet baggers bribed politicians to stay out of their way. In the modern era with huge government budgets, politicians are bribed to hand over huge sums of what was formerly your money. We are in the Age of Grift, and climate change is running neck-and-neck with the War Machine.

    • The carbon baggers at JPMorgan Chase are going green by purchasing $200 million of carbon credits from several companies building a pipeline to ship CO­2 from somewhere to somewhere else. It’s kind of like the bathtub ring in The Cat in the Hat. The businesses haven’t any carbon and nobody has a clue what to do with it anyway, but the carbon credits (a generous grift from the government) will “neutralize the bank’s environmental footprint” whatever the hell that means. This clown show promises to be profitable as JPM cleans up by moving bathtub rings.46 The Fed hikes will do wonders to reduce carbon footprints of regional banks.

    • The Biden administration is increasing the tax credit for solar and wind facilities in low-income areas.47 Will that make the farmers wealthy—I presume they are not installing them in “the hood”—or cause them to lose their farms by eminent domain?

    • A new $4 billion electric vehicle (EV) battery factory in Kansas is powered by enough coal to light up a small city (200–250 megawatts.)48 Leaving the idea of free market capitalism aside, why does a “$4.7 billion” plant need $6.8 billion subsidy from the ironicly named, “Inflation Reduction Act?”

    • China has fields packed with thousands of undriven electric cars left to rot (or explode).49

    • Batteries that consume huge natural resources, rely on massive child slave labor in the Congo, inflict environmental damage, and risk fires are a small price to pay for green soon-to-be toxic waste dumps masquerading as solar farms.

    If you actually have a superior product, you don’t need the government to force it on people. If someone has a competitor to the iPhone, we would never say, ‘Oh, let’s just give them some $10 billion in subsidies.50

    ~ Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein), climate pragmatist but naïve on “free market subsidies”

    New Science

    A few bits of scientific insight crossed my field of view despite my best efforts to stop consuming my relatively limited ATP and time on the issue. Some are new and others are new to me or just new perspectives.

    • Evidence from Greenland ice cores provides no support whatsoever of man-made climate change.51

    • Even as a chemist, it surprised me to learn that there’s more argon than CO2 in the atmosphere.

    • Arctic sediments show it was warmer 10,000 years ago and ice-free in the summers.52

    • Maine researchers noted a one-month spike of sea temperatures above the norm and declared a disaster.53 Check your gauges. Run a few controls. Statistically speaking, the odds of your panic being justified are 1/astronomical.

    • CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. 3% of that came from humans and 5% of that 3% came from the US. Ergo, CO2 from the US is 0.00006% of the atmosphere.54 And if you drive an electric car it will change this math by 1/1.0 google.

    • Over the last 10 years, the US has witnessed a statistically random (average) number of temperature records.55 “The 1930s are still champs!” according to climatologist John Christy.

    There are all kinds of myths and pseudoscience all over the place. I may be quite wrong, maybe they do know all these things, but I don’t think I’m wrong. You see, I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something, and therefore I see how they get their information, and I can’t believe that they know it. They haven’t done the work necessary, haven’t done the checks necessary, haven’t taken the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don’t know, that this stuff is and that they’re intimidating people.

    ~ Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999).

    Now let’s look at a few charts for laughs.

    The average temperature over the last 10 years…

    The average temperature in all climate stations in February back to 1920…

    …or the number of record highs reported across all weather stations back to 1920…

    OK. This isn’t working. Let’s try average days between billion-dollar disasters over four decades…

    Bingo! Eat that, Dave, you climate denier! Now correct for changes in the US population (up 1.5-fold), real rather than corrupted CPI-based inflation, and monotonically expanding coastal land development, and you realize this plot is total bullshit.56 Ignore it, or chuck some tomato soup on a Renoir.

    Even if that plot were legit, let’s gander at deaths in Europe, a continent with some legendary wholesale death stats over the centuries, attributable to temperature extremes

    How ‘bout global deaths attributed to all extreme weather events…

    There is one stat that really got the Cult’s underwear in a bunch. NASA says that the Antarctica ice coverage has been growing for over a decade,57,58 but everybody’s underwear shot right up their asses this year when the quantity of Antarctica sea ice plummeted. The first figure below shows the drop that Helen Keller could see. The figure after that shows the much more useful and monumental drop in units of standard deviations.59 Six standard deviations is a one-in-a-billion event. This is extraordinary, especially in the absence of any foreshadowing. But first, take a peek at that other year in which it also dropped six standard deviations in November but then fully recovered in a month. Seems improbable, eh? Also, if you Google this story, you find plots with different fine structures—different jiggles and wiggles. This does not happen with real data.

    To explain this result, we bring out a modified version of Nassim Taleb’s story of Fat Tony:

    Vinnie: “Hey Fookin’ Tony. I have a legitimate coin and flip it heads 30 times in a row. [That’s a 1-in-a-billion probability.] What are the odds if I flip it again I’ll get tails?

    Tony: Zero.

    Vinnie: Nope. It’s 50:50 odds.

    Tony: It’s zero. The coin is rigged.

    Vinnie: I said the coin was legitimate.

    Tony: You lied.

    I don’t know what went wrong with their data, but somebody lied. The other maxim is that when data deviates from your model by six standard deviations, it’s time to get another model (said in the voice of Bullwinkle Moose.) A more thoughtful analysis says that the ice got pushed by high winds poleward, causing the mass to remain constant, but the thickness change went undetected.60 It still seems like 1-in-a-billion probability that the climate scientologists inadvertently failed to account for ice thickness, so I am going with, “you lied.”

    Opposition

    The overwhelming impression conveyed is one of impending disaster riding in on the menace of global warming.61 The U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres refers to it as “global boiling.”62 Could you be anymore hyperbolic than that, Tony? I pay attention to prominent climate deniers if for no other reason than to feel like one of the cool kids. And I am seeing more and more papers challenging the climate clowns continue to surface. (I suspect the horrific performance of the scientific community’s handling of Covid might be growing some spines.) I find it especially encouraging there were some interesting cameo appearances by those willing to ponder alternative narratives.

    • Outspoken climate change expert and critic, Roger Pielke Jr., called it “one of the most egregious failures of scientific publishing that I have seen” when a top academic journal retracted published research doubting a climate emergency after negative coverage in legacy media.63

    • I had been waiting for Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying to take a stand on climate change. While not prominent scientists in the usual sense, they are fearless and pedagogically brilliant. I was not disappointed as they tore at the scientific adipose hanging off the narrative.64 I tried to get Joe Rogan to take it on a few years back, but he balked and replied: “Is this anything you’ve ever spoken about publicly? It’s such a land mine discussion.” Getting on a Rogan podcast is my Holy Grail.

    • The winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, John Clauser, joins a long list of elite physicists calling bullshit on climate change.65 His big gripe is the total failure to account for clouds, which are estimated to be 200 times more important than CO2­,66,67 noting that many are proferring “very dishonest information” and are guilty of “breaches of dishonesty.” “We’re talking about trillions of dollars…powerful people don’t want to hear that they’ve made trillion-dollar mistakes.” Of course, the climate community jumped on him immediately, noting he was just another old, white physicist who is not a member of The Cult. Once his views on climate change went viral, his scheduled talk at the International Monetary Fund was cancelled.68

    • A prominent climate scientist named Patrick Brown wrote an op-ed about the amount of bullshit he recently had to sling to get a climate change paper published in the elite journal, Nature.69,70 He admits to the hyperbole, omission of less flashy details, and focus on the flashy and spectacular parts necessary to “publish or perish.” It was a refreshingly honest confession, but as a 20-year veteran journal editor, I am unconvinced he understood the magnitude of the fraud he committed. He left academia a year ago “partially because I felt the pressures put on academic scientists caused too much of the research to be distorted.” He may have inadvertently left the publishing world altogether and maybe his current job too.

    • John Stossel interviewed Judith Curry.71 as part of her book tour.72 Judith was an elite climate scientist who broke from the narrative and was left to scientifically die on a (melting) ice flow.

    • Berlin voters appear to have had enough green activism, voting 82% to bag the idea of attaining Net Zero by 2030.73

    • Senator John Kennedy (R, Louisiana) hammered two cluelessness climate experts who were promoting tens of trillions of dollars in spending to repel global warming.74 They had no idea what would be done, the cost, and the effect. They were also incapable of predicting what the big polluters—China and India—would be doing during our period of great sacrifice.

    • The Climate analog of the Great Barrington Declaration—a petition to declare climate change is not an emergency—was passed around to carefully vetted elite scientists. It got over 1,800 signatures, including mine.75 (OK. Maybe not “elite” but carefully vetted.) I know names that are not there that should be, so this is a work in progress.

    • A University of Chicago poll shows that the belief in the climate narrative has slipped from 60% to 49% in the last five years. A more global poll showed 40% now believe the changes are natural.76 “The ‘official narrative’ on man-made climate change has been vehemently amplified by every single major government entity, corporation, media outlet and cultural institution in existence.”76a I’ll repeat, overplaying Covid and the vaccine may have come at a considerable loss of scientific credibility. How does the scientific community get its credibility back? Simple: stop lying your fucking asses off and clean the charlatans out of the field. Otherwise, GFY.

    • Fed Governor Christopher Waller has dared to proclaim that climate change does not pose “significantly unique or material” financial stability risks that the Federal Reserve should treat it separately in its supervision of the financial system. “Climate change is real, but I do not believe it poses a serious risk to the safety and soundness of large banks or the financial stability of the United States…I believe risks posed by climate change are not sufficiently unique or material to merit special treatment.”77

    • Michael Shellenberger, famous conservationist turned climate denier, testified to Congress this year on media censorship78 and gives brilliant talks about third rails.79,80

    Conclusion

    While Greta was faking arrests81 in a vain attempt to keep her carbon footprint well-funded and the fact-checkers were busting keyboards protecting her legacy, the globalists pushing the climate narrative for fun and profit appear to be replacing Greta with Stanford student Sophia Kianni as the face, voice, and physique of the climate movement.82 It is a tactical mistake, in my opinion, but I can see serious merits—an activist with benefits

    In moments of maximum frustration, I take an alternative approach by suggesting to my unsuspecting victims (formerly called friends) that we accept the climate predictions and ask, Do you really think you can see evidence of climate change by looking out the window? If the temperature is rising at some fraction of a degree per year, does the fact that your’s or Sophie’s ass was dripping sweat last summer tell you anything? (Is it getting warmer or is that just me?) Can you see where that heat spell in your hometown would fit on this long-term plot? See that flicker at the end? That is us emerging from what is referred to as “the Little Ice Age.”83

    Weber’s law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus. It has been shown not to hold for extremes of stimulation.84

    And if the sea level is rising 3 mm per year (which it has been doing for almost two centuries85), can you see it in the floods near your house? Can you see it in the chart below?

    Deaths Caused By Hurricane Hillary To Be Labeled Suicides.

    ~ Babylon Bee

    Will your beach house still be there in 50 years even if the sea level is not rising at all or hurricanes are not more frequent? Speaking of which, can you see the marked increase in hurricanes that is so obvious to Cultists and fear-mongering pundits?

    Finally, can you really detect the ramping up of natural disasters in general?

    If you answered yes to any of those questions, get your urologist to check you for kidney stones, breed with flat-headed hobbits, and buy a Tesla. The only electric vehicle that I would ever consider owning would be a two-seater with drink holders and room for two sets of golf clubs on the back.

    Let me close this chapter on a somber note. I used to think the climate cultists were comical, but their prevalence stems from a much deeper, darker plot playing a central role in rising neo-Marxism and authoritarianism. The globalists will be monitoring and curbing your carbon footprint while the bankers and the techies consolidate an increasing percentage of the global wealth.86 The merging of corporate and government interests is the definition of fascism. Despite a noticeable stalling this year, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scoring will be used to allocate bank credit only to the politically correct and connected. The bankers are telling corporations to “get woke or go broke.” You will either toe the line—endorse the narrative—or lose access to the banking system.87 Hey Larry Fink: GFY.

    Brandon Smith88 via Zerohedge89 noted that French President Emmanuel Macron says “the world needs a public finance shock” to fight global warming, noting the “the spiraling cost of weather disasters intensified by global warming”—a claim unsupported by any hard data—”is destabilizing.” Another globalist chimed in: “What is required of us now is absolute transformation and not reform of our institutions.” UN leader Antonio Guterres suggests tackling climate issues would “take a giant leap towards global justice.” Of course, trillions of dollars of “emission taxes” are locked and loaded for redistribution. The most authoritarian “Central Bank Digital Currencies” will be central to the globalists’ coup.

    Farming needs to stop because it is the biggest driver of climate change.

    ~ Young man on the street displaying the IQ of a walnut

    There is a war on farmers couched in the language of climate change. Farmers in Ireland and in Northern Europe have been nearly destroyed by the War on Farmers90,91,92 as brilliantly laid out by the Epoch Times.93 The claim is that farmers are creating nitrogen pollution from all that fertilizer. That is total horse shit. This thinly veiled authoritarian move superficially centralizes food production but also strips away farmland and slashes food production for reasons I cannot yet grasp. (One theory asserts that major tracts of farmland are being flushed free of farmers to make way for “smart cities.”)94 This “eating bugs” bullshit may be true, but it is also a distraction. The too-big-to-fail banks are already lining up to tell us what we can eat by controlling the money used to purchase food.95 John Kerry says that “food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience,” but he is a clueless liar.96 Gates is the largest owner of farmland in the US, but I cannot yet grasp what evil lurks in the skull of this Club of Rome eugenicist by birth and by actions.97 I wrote dozens of pages on rising authoritarianism back in 2021 (pg 242).98 It is coming faster than I thought.

    Let’s redo that and finish on a positive note. Here is the transcript of a compelling speech given to the Oxford Union by brilliant political satirist, Konstantin Kisin, who I had the extraordinary pleasure of sitting down for a chat this fall. I would have led with the speech, but it renders my analysis unneeded. I recommend listening to it,99 but here is the transcript. What is extraordinary is that I did not have to clean up the grammar, only add punctuation. He talks like this.

    Konstantin Kisin Oxford Union speech:100

    I want to talk to those of you who are woke and who are open to rational argument, a small minority I accept, because one of the tenets of wokeness, of course, is that your feelings matter more than the truth, but I believe in you. I believe there are those of you here who are woke, who are open to rational arguments. So let me make one. We are told that your generation cares more than any other about one issue in particular, and that issue’s climate change. We’re told that many of you suffer from climate anxiety. You wish to save the planet and, for tonight and tonight only, I will join you. I will join you in worshipping at the feet of Saint Greta of Climate Change.

    Let us all accept right here right now that we are living through a climate emergency, and our stocks of polar bears are running extremely low. I join you in this view. I truly do. Now what are we to do about this huge problem facing humanity? What can we in Britain do? We can only do one thing. You know why? This country is responsible for two percent of global carbon emissions, which means that if Britain was to sink into the sea right now it would make absolutely no difference to the issue of climate change. You know why? Because the future of the climate is going to be decided in Asia and in Latin America by poor people who couldn’t give a shit about saving the planet. It’s going to be decided by poor people in Asia and Latin America who don’t care about saving the planet. No thank you. No thank you. You know why? Because they’re poor. Because they’re poor. I come from Russia, which is not a poor country. It’s a middle-income country.

    Twenty percent of households in Russia do not have an indoor toilet. What they have is an outdoor toilet, and I don’t mean one of those nice porta loos that we get here. I don’t even mean a Glastonbury porta loo. I mean a wooden shack with a hole in the ground. The hole’s a collected fermented memory of the last 10,000 visits. How many of you are going to go home tonight and say, “Let’s rip out our bathroom and erect a Siberian shithouse in the back Garden”, and if you’re not why should they? 120 million people in China who do not have enough food? I don’t mean that they don’t get dessert. I mean they suffer from malnutrition; that means that their immune system is breaking down because they don’t have enough food. You’re not going to get them to stay poor.

    Imagine Xi Jinping, the leader of China. When you were ten years old there was a revolution—a cultural revolution in your country—and people came, and they threw your father in prison, your mother had to denounce him, your sister killed herself, and you, no longer enjoying the protection of your formerly powerful father, were sent to a village where you lived in a cave house. And here you are decades later; you have clawed your way up the bloody and greasy pole of Chinese politics to be the undisputed supreme leader of the very Communist Party that destroyed your family, and you know that the main thing you have to do to survive and to stay in power is to deliver the one thing that the people of China want: prosperity—economic growth. Where do you think climate change ranks on XI Jinping’s list of priorities? A third of all children who live in extreme poverty in the world live in India. That means they are starving and dying of preventable diseases now.

    Now about 15 months ago my wife got pregnant—not me, because we’re old school—and for nine months we talked about what our boy would look like, what he might do when he grows up. We looked at baby scans and videos on YouTube about what the fetus looks like at nine [weeks] and 12 [weeks] and 20 [weeks] and eventually he was born, and he is this cute little bundle of joy. He’s cuter than about eighty percent of puppies, right? Now if you said to me that I had a choice: either my son had a serious risk of starving or dying from a preventable disease in the next year or I could press a button and he would live, he would go to school, he would bring his first girlfriend home, he’d go to university and graduate and become a woke idiot. And then he’d get a job and get married and have children and become a man. But all I have to do is press this button and for every day of my son’s life, a giant plume of CO2 is going to get released into the atmosphere. Now you’re all very young, and most of you are not parents. Let me tell you something: there is not a parent in the world who would not smash that button so hard their hand bled. You are not going to get these people to stay poor. You’re not even going to get them to not want to be richer.

    And so I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen: there is only one thing we can do in this country to stop climate change, and that is to make scientific and technological breakthroughs that will create the clean energy that is not only clean but also cheap. And the only thing that wokeness has to offer in exchange is to brainwash bright young minds like yours to believe that you are victims, to believe that you have no agency, to believe that what you must do to improve the world is to complain, is to protest, is to throw soup on paintings. And we on this side of the house are not on this side of the house because we do not wish to improve the world. We sit on this side of the house because we know that the way to improve the world is to work, is to create, is to build, and the problem with work culture is that it has trained too many young minds like yours to forget about that.

    Thank you very much.

    [loud applause]

    News Nuggets

    I love collecting news nuggets that tickle my fancy. They are usually a tad edgy. I was torn about whether to include them in part 2 on the logic that they are really part of the year being reviewed or holding them until the belated part 3, when sorting through more notes is likely to dredge up more human folly. I’ve chosen the former.

    Nuggets are presented randomly as follows:

    • A Chinese weather balloon flew across the country while people were mesmerized at how stupid we are. Seems likely that the entire story is slathered with bullshit. In an effort to regain public confidence the military shot down a kid’s high school science project,1 prompting Eddie Snowden to muse, “please tell me the white house did not spend the month of february scrambling jets to fire $400,000 missiles at the local hobby club’s TWELVE DOLLAR BALLOON.”

    • A 22-foot submarine taking tourists to the Titanic disappeared with all those onboard, which included the CEO of the OceanGate, the modern era’s Davy Jones. He didn’t want to hire “50-year-old white guys” noting that, they weren’t “inspirational” and that “anybody can drive the sub.” Although that was a bad call, Mate, at least you were politicaly correct.2 Titanic director James Cameron, who visited the Titanic 33 times onboard a submersible, suggested this was pretty stupid.3

    • As Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy struggled to stay out of prison we discovered her deep throaty voice was also faked.4,5 An excellent Holmes imitation surfaced.6 I still wonder if Cristine Blasey-Ford’s squeaky voice was real.

    • Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as Sam Bankrupt-Fraud or SBF for short, founder and destroyer of the FTX Crypto Exchange, was looking at serious jail time because he “misappropriated billions of dollars in customer money, defrauded investors, and violated campaign finance laws.”7,8 (This was covered in detail in the 2022 YIR.9) It should come as no surprise as the second biggest Democrat donor in the 2022 midterms and money launderer of Federal funds through Ukraine for the DNC that he is shedding charges faster than Hunter Biden (especially all campaign finance charges.10) A ruling in the Bahamas appeared to allow him to challenge the rest11 and even get his legal fees reimbursed.12 FTX hopes to restart its crypto exchange in 2024.13 He got some convictions and we await sentencing.

    • As many of you may recall, Paul Pelosi got hammered at the end of 2022. I would get hammered if I were married to Nancy, but this was by an assailant under highly suspicious circumstances delineated in the 2022 YIR. In 2023, the video of the incident surfaced.14,15,16 One is struck by two details: (1) it took long enough that one could fathom that the video was staged; and (2) while getting whacked with a hammer as the cops entered the Pelosi house, Paul did not spill his drink. Bravo! Nancy magnanimously noted that the assailant “has the right to a trial to prove innocence”, prompting Ben Shapiro to note “Uh it’s…innocent until proven guilty.”

    • In 2020, I took a risky tact by laying out why convicting Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd could be tricky because I thought the evidence was strong that Floyd died of an overdose. Well, I was wrong on two counts. The obvious one is that they convicted him. The less obvious is that according to the expert witness in the civil trial—a doc with considerable experience in treating this type of problem—said that Floyd definitely did not die from an OD or the knee on his neck, but rather two knees on his back. The owners of those knees got some time but nothing like Derek. Curiously, that obscure doctor would become rather famous in his views on Covid: it was Pierre Kory.17 Chauvin got stabbed over 20 times in prison this year. The surprising parts are that he lived and that the assailant was an FBI informant.18 Chauvin is appealing his conviction.19

    • Hobbyhorsing is claimed to be an environmentally friendly and much cheaper sport than equestrian events. “The main difference from equestrian sport is the replacement of a live horse with a plastic one.” Finnish teenagers who started this grueling sport hope to make it an Olympic event.20 The Canadians are considering it to train their Mounties.

    • Teenagers who took to swallowing Tide Pods have discovered they were gateway drugs to Benedryl—the “Benedryl Challenge”—to “trip their asses off.”21 It would be safer to vaccinate.

    • The train wreck in East Palestine dropping car loads of vinyl chloride caught the world’s attention and became clickbait for the ages. Attempts to block reporters from on-site coverage brought up first-amendment issues.22 There is no question that East Palestine has a problem—they are now a toxic waste dump23—but the horrors of it being a widespread catastrophe24 were put to rest by an analysis from blogger Doomberg noting that the hyperbole was over the top.25 I know who Doomberg was in his previous career and can say that nobody is more qualified to make such an assertion. The RNC Twitter feed turned it into a daily tally of the days since Biden did not visit the site. It is not obvious to me that is in his job description. The Babylon Bee wryly noted that Ilhan Omar withdrew her support of East Palestine after discovering it’s in Ohio.26

    • Mosquitoes were in the news. Four people from Sarasota, Florida got malaria. No biggie. It’s easily treated. On a more somber note, scientists concluded they can solve this problem by releasing mosquitoes genetically engineered to cause death in the female offspring to reduce the malaria risk.27 I went through the math and believe that the technology will not just cull the population but necessarily cause that particular species to go extinct. Of course, there are 3,500 more species of mosquitoes, but somehow, yet again, scientists appear to be underestimating the consequences of their interventions. This Michael Crichton talk is a phenomenal tutorial on why it is not nice to mess with Mother Nature.28 One scientist noted that “there is little doubt their full extinction could have indirect effects.”29

    • 176 pound, 5’ 5” Deuce Vaughn was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in the sixth round. Recall that other loser, Tom Brady, went in the sixth round. The Deuce is Loose and jersey’s with the Galloping Toddler’s name and #42 were moving even faster. So far, The Deuce is not pummeling opposing teams, racking up 68 total offensive yards.

    • ‘Super Pigs’ are coming south from Canada.30 They are a cross between domestic pigs and European wild boars, weighing up to 600 pounds. They are said to be meaner than Canadian hockey players and more intelligent than the boneheads who created them.

    • It leaked out that Ebay ran a formal harassment/death squad to deal with news site founders who were not friendly to Ebay.31,32 Kinda makes you wonder what they were selling on Ebay.

    • A Delta flight spent 3 hours on the Arizona tarmac without air conditioning.33 Passengers were told they could leave but might not get to their destination for days. Paramedics wheeled three out on gurneys. Delta came clean with a mea culpa: “We apologize for the experience…which ultimately resulted in a flight cancellation.”

    • Baron Trump is now 12 feet tall.

    • John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, is now suspected to have been innocent.34 It was similar to RFK’s argument as to why Sirhan Sirhan could not have killed his father.35 It has the fingerprints of the CIA’s notorious mind-control program MK-ULTRA and its legion of psychiatrists all over it. They create patsies.

    • Michael Block became the only club pro in history to make the cut in the PGA Championship.36 Entering the final round in eighth place, he slipped up but then dropped an ace on 15, finishing high enough to make $300,000 and an automatic qualification for next year.

    • Speaking of golf, the Saudis have set up the LIV Tour and have been buying up exclusive rights to some of the best players with petrodollars. Desperate PGA execs were squealing about the Saudis’ human rights violations. Discussed mergers of the two leagues were sketched out in which the PGA would be in charge of holes 1-8 and 12-18 with the Saudis responsible for 9-11.

    • Tennis phenom Novak Djokovic won the U.S. Open after being banned because he was unvaccinated by beating another unvaccinated player. ESPN’s “Shot of the Day” was sponsored by Moderna.37

    • A historically literate 12-year-old kid was suspended from school for wearing the Gadsden flag from the Revolutionary War—”Don’t tread on me.”38 The school said it has “origins with slavery,” which is a claim completely void of facts. The kid looked smug even by teenager standards. Mom showed she shouldn’t be treaded on either…as did the Colorado governor and the Heritage Foundation. He should have worn a Che Guevara T-shirt. It kept the Twitter Memosphere active for days.

    • After a spectacular performance of providing four of the most illustrious anti-Fauci/anti-lockdown/anti-vaxxers on the planet—Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas, John Ionnides, and Victor Davis Hanson—in 2021, Stanford regressed to the mean. Their president was brought to his knees by a diligent freshman newspaper writer calling out fraud.39 At least he left before he could come under scrutiny of Congressional testimony about Hamas. Their entering class of neurosurgical residents managed to have no white men (outdoing the NBA), representing either great progress of the underrepresented or improbable discrimination.40 The Stanford Law School invited an elite judge to speak and then managed to humiliate themselves by denying him the right to speak with one of their deans leading the charge.41 You’d think the law school would teach about the Constitution. This is all coming on the heels of Stanford faculty members’ role in the 2022 FTX collapse42 and epiphanies that Stanford’s Internet Observatory is a CIA outpost and hub of censorship.43 There are more problems at Stanford delineated here.44

    Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled…There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

    ~ Michael Crichton

    • Neil DeGrasse Tyson tried to take over Stanford’s dominant lead single-handedly by taking on Del Bigtree on the vaccine debate and getting annihilated as he preached to Del about consensus science.45 In another podcast, he banged out support for transgender going against Michael Shermer, trying to make scientific arguments and arguing that separating boys and girls will “seem silly in the future.”46,47,48 Consensus—there is that word again—is that Neil’s brush with multiple accusations of inappropriate behavior some years back has put him over a barrel.49,50,51 I root for the guy because I think he does a great service, but he should stop digging.

    • The world’s smallest “Louis Vuitton” handbag just sold for $63,000 at Sotheby’s. It is 0.66 x 0.22 x 0.7 millimeters. It is not actually by Louis Vuitton. The NFT sold for almost twice that but is now worth zero.

    • The song of the year if not the decade—Rich Men North of Richmond by Anthony Oliver—captured the hearts and minds of America. Early attempts to paint this as a white supremacist’s anthem failed because everybody hates those motherfuckers. Montages of people’s facial expressions while listening to the song were fabulous and very cleverly focused on black men grooving.52

    • Black women are complaining about a shortage of black sperm donors.53 Seems legit.

    • Here is a shocker. We found out this year that one of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged victims who wrote to Senator Grassley was a fraud.54 The good news is that she is being charged. That sordid character assassination was loaded with lies as noted in my 2018 writeup.55

    • With a not-so-improbable run of Michelle Obama for the 2024 election, the dirt is already flying, some of which looks self-inflicted. The big headline was that Barack is gay, which is said to be old news and should be irrelevant in 2023. The argument that he has lived a lie is disingenuous given that most gay men have. The drama, however, got curiouser when an ex-girlfriend from decades ago decided now was the time to rat him out on his fantasies56 with Barack’s brother piling on.57 The smear had begun long before that when a 2012 article in The Globe—not exactly the Gray Lady—suggested that somebody whacked three former lovers during his 2007 campaign.58,59 In 2023, however, it got very real when his rather studley personal chef named Tafari drowned in a midnight paddleboard accident. The police report had redactions and missing details on the 911 call, leading to speculation that it was either a midnight trist being managed60,61—Barack’s Chappaquidick—or something more sinister. Barack showed up on the golf course several days later with taped fingers and a shiner.62 (Beware of photoshop.) Defenders said the tape was for golf, but taping your fingers does not help your golf game.

    Yes, @BarackObama, please dry up and go away and retire to your beach front property and take your paddle board with you. We’re sick and tired of your BS.

    ~ General Michael Flynn, getting a little testy

    Larry Sinclair, a highly flawed individual by any standard and by his own admission, stepped forward in 1999 to announce that he had done crack and given blowjobs to then-Senator Obama.62 Why would he step forward? Well, it could have been politically motivated or an attempt to release the hounds to avoid getting suicided to keep the secret. Larry showed up again in 2023 looking a little worse for wear but telling the same story,63 scoring a Tucker Carlson interview.64 Scott Adams of Dilbert fame connects an arrest of Larry Sinclair by Beau Biden years ago with Joe’s placement on Obama’s presidential ticket.65

    Michelle certainly must have known about this and was OK with it. Excluding the guaranteed-to-be-excluded Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Michelle looks like the strongest candidate the DNC has to pull off a twelfth-hour substitution of Biden. That may be why the plot is thickening as we head into 2024. Get ready for debates about Sasha and Malia surrogate births,66 infinite loops of Joan Rivers’ offhand remark,67 Michelle praising Harvey Weinstein,68 dance routines with Ellen Degeneres,69 Pizzagate re-runs,70,71,72,73 and Chrissy Tiegen blurting out about trists with John Legend and the Obamas,74  multiple contacts of Epstein in the Whitehouse with now-dead Whitehouse counsel,75 Big Mike jokes, and endless memes, including this humorous deep fake starring Fake Hillary.76

    Lahaina Fires and DEWs

    On August 8, 2023, fires broke out in the historically interesting coastal town of Lahaina on Maui, destroying 2,000 structures and killing untold numbers (very untold). Contributing factors include:

    • the decision not to sound the alarm out of concern that it would confuse people;1

    • the power company’s failure to turn off the power, although the company claims the power was turned off six hours before the fires began exacting their damage;2,3

    • some guy deciding to turn off the water (which Wikipedia attributes to melted pipes) just days after posting a philosophical screed about “diversity, equity, and inclusion” underlying water rights;4

    • 80 mph winds from a hurricane 700 miles East blowing the fire from the inland hills through the town.

    • residents being told to shelter in place (like being told to stay in your twin-tower office on 9/11.)

    Warning

    I went to Wikipedia for some updates on fatalities and costs only to find that Wikipedia’s writeup5 was unrecognizable in the context of the two dozen pages of notes I had collected as the story unfolded. Wikipedia founder, Larry Sanger, personally told me that Wiki is worthless for politically tricky topics is under total control by Deep Staters. The Lahaina writeup concluded with scornful allusions to Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns, accusing the QAnon Army led by General Stew Peters. I am unable to determine where these QAnon guys came from and where they hang out. My hunch is that QAnon is a concoction of the CIA. I appear to be a member of this fictional tribe of misguided miscreants.

    FEMA projected the Lahaina death toll up to 2,000,6,7 which was slightly higher than Wiki’s number of 99. Biden offered $700 per household ($1.9 million total),8 which is slightly below the $12 billion listed by Wiki. Davvy Crocket would say that neither is appropriate because the money “is not yours to give” in an allusion to the Georgetown fires.9 Even so, the paltry Lahaina bailouts were awkward in the shadow of our generosity to Ukraine.

    The horror story was that the kids had been sent home from school, many to their deaths. Articles and videos began appearing with parents fruitlessly demanding information about their missing children.10 USAToday put the number of missing kids at 966,11 which doesn’t square with Wiki’s complete silence on the topic.12 Ten days later the Mayor of Lahaina still wouldn’t fess up as to how many children were missing.13 One family found the remains of their child and dog embraced, eliciting images of post-Vesuvius Herculaneum.14 The narratives just kept getting creepier.14a

    A Lahaina old-timer said he fled on foot because the departing traffic was at a dead standstill in the main artery out of town as the fires raged. He claims the cops had a roadblock, preventing people from leaving, and they were “just following orders.”15 Epoch Times reported that several other Lahaina residents survived only by “driving around or through the police roadblocks.”16 “We hoped to get to the highway and jaunt to the next bypass. Instead, we were blocked off by police and [traffic] cones.”

    Drone footage is dramatic while showing an odd selectivity in which the fires burned most of Lahaina, which is a narrow band along the north-south coast.17 Some buildings were incinerated to dust while others nearby remained unblemished.18,19 The embers had not cooled before the internet was filled with accusations of nefarious activity and lying.

    Unscrupulous investors are trying to take advantage of the fire disaster on Maui to take over properties…You would be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here.20

    ~ Hawaiian Governor Josh Green

    A Land Grab 

    Protests about a land grab appeared within hours of the fire. Catherine Austin Fitts, the former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has been a relentless proponent that suspicious destruction of property and property values are tied to real estate entrepreneurs looking to buy at fire sale prices (quite literally in this case).21,22 Her position at HUD may have given her insights into this grift. On cue, real estate speculators came in with buy-out offers to desperate residents as fast as they could find law firms to deliver them.23 This is predatory but also to be expected. What is odd, however, is that insurance companies immediately began declaring the houses not covered because they were not up to code.24 (Y’all may recall this happened in the Katrina aftermath too.) OK, you skanky whores: it was your job to assess their insurability when you issued the policies. This left homeless and destitute former homeowners grieving over dead loved ones with no promise of a forthcoming check. To top it off, tenants claimed they were receiving eviction notices within the week.25 This all smacks of collusion.

    The government’s role was very suspicious. The locals had been under pressure for years to sell, but Lahaina’s strict development codes designed to retain the town’s charm and history kept developers in check. There were also plans to turn Lahaina into a “smart city” (super high-tech), but zoning codes kept those plans at bay too. Both the facts and the waves of fact-checkers confirm the story.26

    I’m already thinking about ways for the state to acquire that land, so that we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families, or to make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to people who were lost..But we don’t want this to become a clear space where then, yes, people from overseas come and decide they’re going to take it. The state will take it and preserve it first.27,28,29

    ~ Hawaiian Governor Josh Green, blaming foreign evil-doers

    Curiously, just one month before the fires Governor Green had declared by fiat that the strict building codes would be null and void in case of a natural disaster.30,31 Good timing, Governor. After the fires, the Governor suggested the state buy the land to protect it from speculators.32,33 And, of course, he would never then sell it to his land-speculating cronies, right?

    Speaking of wealthy cronies, Oprah and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) ended up on the hot seat for their fundraiser to help Lahaina.34,35 Multi-billionaires asking you to dig deep into your pockets to help a town in which they own huge tracts of property didn’t sit well. Oprah had scooped up 2,000 acres on Maui, 870 acres in 2023 alone.36,37 In 2017, she got guff when fires and mudslides near her house allowed her to scoop up nearby land on the cheap.38 It is so lucky that Oprah and, for that matter, many wealthy Lahainians, may benefit from these fires while the fires miraculously missed their houses.

    Authorities Take Cover

    It seems clear that the authorities realized they botched their response and went into full ass-covering mode. Links to Tweets with seemingly good info disappeared much like they did after the Las Vegas shootings. Residents were blocked from returning to Lahaina for several weeks.39,40 When was the last time you heard of that happening in a disaster zone? Supplies entering Lahaina by boat were being turned away, reminiscent of FEMA blocking Walmart trucks from helping Katrina victims.41 A Maui Times reporter was denied access to the town.42 Immediately after the dust settled, authorities built tall fences along the main artery through town, preventing filming of the wreckage. The official story that eventually emerged was that they were dust screens, although screening dust from what is unclear.43 The school buses were missing from the bus garage: where did they go after dropping the kids home?44 Hold that thought for Part 3.

    Suspicious Fires 

    We are now going to enter the Heart of Darkness. This is highly speculative material that deserves both serious consideration with considerable skepticism. The American Vagabond does well-documented deep dives into contentious issues and emerged from this one troubled.45 The Lahaina fires manifested oddities that had been noted in fires in California, across the continental US, and Europe that captured the imaginations of us QAnon types. They are claims not rigorously documented but with non-zero probabilities of being legit

    Videos from Maui asserting mysterious aspects of the fire appeared almost immediately. Locals hit TikTok hard, claiming these weren’t natural (kind of like a man-made virus). It is hard to say which opinions should carry weight, but there were a lot of them. The oval burn pattern shown below, for example, makes little sense in a wind-driven firestorm.

    Boats moored 50 yards offshore ignited.46 Meanwhile, desperate residents jumped into the surf to survive the fires.47 Even on the leeward side of the island, 80 mph winds would make that a harrowing experience. Many cars burned beyond recognition while others remained unscathed. Locals and the internet obsessed over burned cars with puddles of aluminum from wheel rims and engine blocks as well as melted auto glass.48 Locals show two burnt cars in a field with aluminum rims, engine blocks, and glass melted.49 The only fuel within the acre-sized lot was in the gas tank. The tall grass next to the car remained unburnt. I have struggled to ascertain if these are just generic car fires or something more.

    Oddly, the wind blew off the mountains East-to-West but the entire town stretching as a narrow band running North-to-South was taken out. Some witnesses said the winds came on abruptly. One felt tremendous pressure changes in her noggin akin to Havana Syndrome, and that cell service failed contemporaneously.50 Hold that thought. The 80 mph winds attributed to a hurricane 700 miles away fly in the face of meteorological data showing such high winds are not observed beyond 150 miles from the eyes of even large hurricanes.51

    Residents, including this veteran firefighter,52 claimed that the fires behaved unnaturally—too hot and exhibiting irrational travel patterns—but who the hell knows? Speculations began about how the trees all somehow survived while the houses only feet away were burnt to white ash. The fried buildings yet barely singed trees were eventually attributed to smart meters on the houses, which sounds like seriously hot bullshit.53

    Forensic arborist, Robert Brame, chimed in. He has investigated over 100 fires54,55,56 including many in California considered suspect.57,58 He notes cases in which highly flammable trees with high sap content—trees that he says he could “light with a cigarette lighter”—remain untouched whereas those with high water content get fried. Vegetation deeply rooted in swamps or along riverbanks was being destroyed down to the roots. Trees burning on the inside are particularly curious. Meanwhile, plastics were not getting burnt. Cars proximate to trees were frying but not the trees. Steel-belted radial tires or tires on rims burned whereas metal-free tires lying on the ground were left untouched. Fence posts with wire attached showed burning at the wood-metal contact:

    Lahaina and the DEWs

    So what is my point? Brame and many others59 have tried to force the Overton Window wide open by attributing the odd burn patterns to directed-energy weapons (DEWs). I used these assertions as an excuse to dig into DEW technology in earnest below, but let me for now simply say that they are weapons based on radio frequencies (lasers and masers) or particle beams that can either be ground- or satellite-based. In short, they are Ronald Reagon’s Star Wars program. Whether Lahaina was a target—laboratory if you will—DEWs are real and may be massively destructive. There are said to be two major ground-based facilities with DEWs in the US: one is on Maui.60,61 Go figure.

    Anything tarp-blue—cars, pool umbrellas, and houses—were said to be left unscathed.62,63 It is claimed that rich people in Lahaina had painted their houses blue,64 but this seems to be internet debris despite excessive fact-checking rousing my curiosity.

    Sensitivity to laser light, however, is color dependent as illustrated in this video in which all but the tarp-blue paper burns.65 I checked with a laser jock and confirmed this. Here’s what troubles me: Scott Savitz, senior engineer at Rand Corp, dismissed the whole laser theory, noting that “No one can start a wildfire and burn only specific colors.”66 When I catch somebody lying, I always ask, why? Starting forest fires is openly stated to be a military weapon and well within the DEWs capabilities.67

    As noted above, locals and The Internet obsessed over burned cars with puddles of aluminum and melted glass.68 I find the evidence odd, but they may just be car fires. The firepower of such high-tech weapons will be discussed below. For now, I would like to underscore one particular oddity to pique your interest: the Quebec fires this summer appeared to start in two dozen sites simultaneously: the video is compelling (50-second mark).69,70 I tried to capture the time sequence with two screen grabs:

    That buckshot plume pattern cannot possibly be spread by the wind: (1) airborne embers would follow the wind patterns lighting them sequentially downwind, and (2) it covers an area approximately 300 miles in diameter.71,72 A determined army of arsonists could, in theory, start them on cue, but so could a DEW in orbit. Laser sightings over Lahaina proliferated.73 These claims are suspect, but the carpet bombing with fact-checks is suspicious. One narrative was that the Chinese were monitoring the weather,74 which is highly suspect.

    He who controls the weather will control the world.75,76

    ~ President Lyndon Baines Johnson

    DEWs – A Tutorial 

    Lahaina aside, what can we say about DEWs? The Army put out a nice synopsis of milestones in the development of DEWs77 as did the Office of Technology Assessment.78,79 The latter is technical and thorough, but it is also unclassified and 40 years old. It foreshadows what may lurk behind the industrial-military complex paywall four decades later. A GAO report also summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of DEWs.80 High-energy lasers in the infrared-to-visible light produce a very narrow, highly focused beam of light, and are most likely used on single targets. The beam can be pulsed or continuous, generating a power capable of melting steel (or more). Millimeter wave weapons have larger beam widths than high-energy lasers and therefore can zap multiple targets at once. High-power microwave weapons producing more than 100 megawatts of power—150,000 times more powerful than a microwave oven—tend to be good for broader targets. The really powerful stuff is not mentioned, which in no way means that it doesn’t exist. Here is a well-referenced and intriguing off-off Broadway assessment from the recesses of the internet with considerable discussion of how weird it could all be, including Lahaina fire connections, weather control, etc.81

    Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

    ~ Noam Chomsky

    A few bulleted claims are in order. Some may stretch your imagination to its limit and be bullshit.

    • DEWs in the South Pole are claimed to cause earthquakes.82,83

    • A decade-old video of well-known physicist Dr. Michio Kaku (@MichioKaku) describes trillion-watt lasers that can alter the weather.84

    • The Hutchison Effect is said to cause “anomalous heating of metals without burning adjacent material,”85 which might include burnt cars while leaving vegetation intact.

    • Air Force documents discuss weather control by 2030, which means they have it already.86

    • The defense rag, National Defense, describes a 300,000-watt DEW based on a “spectral beam combination architecture,” delivered to the Pentagon by Lockheed Martin.ref87

    • Prominent policy wonk, Pippa Malmgren, alludes to directing space-based solar power to “a target on Earth and burn it to smithereens”88 while pondering use for green energy too. She also casually suggests WWIII has begun.

    • DEWs’ biggest technical challenge is penetrating clouds. A thesis from the Air Command and Staff College describes weather control to use clouds to defend against the scary DEWs.89 The author also describes laser-based missile defense involving burning holes through them. The author discusses 10 million watt lasers are coming. Using a terawatt tunneling pulse laser to burn a hole in the atmosphere to allow the destructive laser to reach its target is clever tech.

    • In a 2020 speech, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said China already has seriously dangerous DEWs,90 declaring we must dominate space.

    • Havana syndrome, which gets its name from the US embassy in Havanna, Cuba, was said to rattle the brains of embassy residents.91,92 This is referred to as fifth-generation warfare.

    • There are claims of an enormous DEW facility in Antarctica.93

    • An article in Forbes describes low-powered DEWs in the form of a microwave-based “heat ray” unveiled in 2001 to be used as non-lethal crowd control.94 The author notes, “The weapon is certainly effective; the problem is that it is too scary to use… those that are effective are not safe, those that are safe are not effective.” Terms like ‘pain beam’ have human rights activists up in arms (but probably reluctant to protest.)

    • The DEW story gives the Chemtrail theorists an interestingly new lease on lunacy. One claim is that they are seeding the atmosphere with particulate matter as a defensive strategy to prevent penetration of DEWs into our critical infrastructure. Other claims include geoengineering to cause global dimming as well as generalized weather control. None of these theories is high up on my probability scale. What keeps my attention? The massive fact-checking attempting to dismiss a lunatic-fringe theory that should require little comment.

    DEWs and 9/11

    Imagine, if you will (said in the voice of Rod Serling), that the DOD has nuclear-powered DEWs (as described in the 1984 report) that could deliver energy measured in megatons what you could do. Oh, that would be impossible, right? Impossible isn’t a fact; it’s an opinion. It is amazing how fast the impossible became fact on August 6, 1945:

    I am gonna drag y’all down the darkest of rabbit holes. I have no problem (no doubts actually) that 9/11 was an inside job. If the Truther Movement and the theory that 9/11 was not as we are told is unfamiliar to you, I would say you need a crash course. This five-minute montage is very snarky and very good.95 The New Pearl Harbor and Loose Change documentaries are your best all-expense-paid trip to the Dark Side.96,97,98 A 2023 vintage interview of architect and 9/11 expert, Richard Gage, brings up points I had not heard.99 New and compelling footage I had not seen asks where the hell is the plane that hit the Pentagon?100 While answering that, you might wonder where the plane went in Shanksville, PA, which was just a hole in the ground.101 Crash sites normally look like yard sales—shit everywhere.

    Enter Judy Woods, who has presented a model for 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers that even has the Truthers uneasy. She wrote a book102 and has done several talks and podcasts.103,104 Judy points to oddities about what occurred on 9/11 without concluding how, but she is clearly circling the DEW story without actually making direct references. She is not a good oral communicator. She sucks, actually. One interview said by detractors to destroy her and her credibility merely underscored her inability to communicate.105,106,107 I could have handled the interviewer after watching two of her presentations.

    Judy doesn’t talk about DEWs, but she does point out oddities that include the complete pulverization of the towers to dust (“dustification”), a very odd claim of weather control that morning, distortion of the Earth’s magnetic field, the small pile of debris from 100 stories of towers that failed to reach the height of the top of the lobby, and unexplained burnt cars and their odd distribution. She has many examples, but at the 30-minute mark she shows a “dustification” that I have not been able to independently confirm or refute but is truly extraordinary if real.108 The freeze-frame is shown below:

    The documentary Zeitgeist talks about 9/11 and how everything in the towers turned to dust.109 As noted by a first responder, “You don’t find a desk. You don’t find a chair. You don’t find a telephone. You don’t find a computer…The concrete was just pulverized.”

    To pull this all together, Lahaina is a multi-layered onion in which chicanery has taken root. The DEWs may not be part of the story, but they are undeniably real and of great interest to the superpowers. Their capacity to inflict carnage on their target is unknowable to the common man and QAnons. I am secure that what we know about them is dwarfed by what is top secret. Reality could knock rudely and unexpectedly like it did on August 6, 1945.

    DEWs provide unprecedented capabilities and produce a broad spectrum of hazards.110

    ~ Barbara Barrett, Secretary of the Air Force

    The War in Ukraine–Epilogue

    The Russians are dying. It’s the best money we’ve ever spent.1

    ~ Lindsay Graham to Zelensky

    Lindsay is an unindicted criminal who is impossible to underestimate, but let’s move on. Last year I put my heart and soul into understanding the War in Ukraine as evidenced by the title, “All Roads Lead to Ukraine.”2 I found 40–50 serious thinkers who I felt were trying to get it right, a list that included Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Chris Hedges, Ray McGovern, John Pilger, John Mearsheimer, Jeff Sachs, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, Scott Ritter, Colonel Richard Black, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jeff Sachs. Notable newcomers to the anti-NATO team include David Sacks (Elon’s former partner),3 Cornel West,4 RFK, Jr,5 Simon Hunt,6 and Donald Trump.7

    There are some who want to force Hungary into the war, and they are not picky about the means with which to achieve that goal. Ukraine is our neighbor where Hungarians live as well. They are being conscripted and are dying by the hundreds on the front… In the decisions adopted in Brussels, I recognize American interests more frequently than European ones…In a war that is taking place in Europe the Americans have the final word.7a

    ~ Viktor Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister

    If you think Russia’s military adventures in Ukraine were unprovoked and that this story is simply a fight for Ukraine’s democracy you have work to do: stop reading right now and read last year’s analysis.8 I collated the analyses of the serious pundits, scavenged the internet for data and anecdotes from the battlefield, and wove them into a narrative that is my best geopolitical analysis to date. Watch this speech by Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, as many times as you must to grasp how little you understand the politics underlying the Ukraine War.9 Billions are being committed to get Orbán to get with the program and oppose Putin.10 Watch recent rants from Jeff Sachs11 or Colonel Jeff Maness.12

    We demand an explanation on what basis China and Russia consider the whole world to be their region?

    ~ Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defense, lacking introspection

    To those who say that assigning blame is simple—Putin attacked so he is necessarily evil—please answer the following questions: which country—Russia or the US—bombed more countries in the world and killed more people over the last 20 years? I don’t have the stats on Russia, but the US is estimated to have caused 4.5 million deaths during the War on Terror.13,14 Of those seven Muslim countries bombed by liberal democrat and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Barack Obama, how many attacked us? Let me help you out: it begins with a “z” and rhymes with “Nero.” I have 4.5 million whataboutisms resulting from our iatrogenic foreign policy to jam down your throat the minute you tell me Putin’s aggression is the whole story.

    The US wrecked Afghanistan for 40 years—destroyed that country mercilessly cynically ignorantly brutally. And they’re gonna do the same with Ukraine unless the Ukrainians wake up and say, ‘God we’re being killed by this approach.’15

    ~ Jeffrey Sachs, economist, Columbia University

    So how is the war going this year? An open letter written by 14 high-ranking ex-US military wonks in May calling for a swift diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine was published in the New York Times.16 The letter’s 14 signatories, after the requisite condemnation of Putin, called the war “an unmitigated disaster” and noted that “future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war.” They emphasized the “serial invasions of Russia by foreign adversaries” and underscored the need to “understand the war through Russia’s eyes” with “strategic empathy, seeking to understand one’s adversaries.” In their words, “This is not weakness: it is wisdom.” They also underscored the part that all the mindless Ukrainian flag wavers always seem to miss: “Since 2007, Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO’s armed forces on Russian borders were intolerable—just as Russian forces in Mexico or Canada would be intolerable to the U.S. now, or as Soviet missiles in Cuba were in 1962…Russia further singled out NATO expansion into Ukraine as especially provocative…NATO expansion, in sum, is a key feature of a militarized U.S. foreign policy characterized by unilateralism featuring regime change and preemptive wars.” Seems pretty clear, eh? To repeat, go back and compare this letter’s key points to my 2022 write-up.

    NATO Document: NATO’s enlargement has been a historic success.

    John Pilger: I read that in disbelief.17

    Our dual goals are to degrade Russia’s military-industrial complex & reduce the revenue it can use.

    ~ Janet Yellen, former economist, said ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers & central bankers.

    NATO made a few miscalculations. They thought they could choke off Russia by kicking them out of the Swift banking system and cutting off their energy sales, isolating them from the world.18 Neither action dented Putin’s plans. The rising price of oil cranked up Russia’s cash flow from the global oil market. The Rooskies also know how to endure discomfort.

    Let’s imagine—obviously this situation which will never be realized—but nevertheless let’s imagine that it was realized: The current head of the nuclear state went to a territory, say Germany, and was arrested. What would that be? It would be a declaration of war on the Russian Federation. And in that case, all our assets—all our missiles et cetera—would fly to the Bundestag, to the Chancellor’s office.19

    ~ Dmitry Medvedev, responding to Germany’s threat to arrest Putin

    That is not to say that Putin didn’t flub a few things, but it was nothing that duct tape and some WD40 couldn’t fix. Scooch around and let me commie-splain that to you. He moved into Ukraine with a very small force, all evidence pointing to an attempt to throw a fastball past NATO’s and Volodymyr Zelensky’s chins to force them to meet him at the negotiating table. There is no evidence he wanted to take over Ukraine nor destroy its infrastructure: he simply could not and would not cede control of Ukraine to NATO. It was an existential risk—a bright line—for Russia. Although Zelensky tried to get to the negotiating table in April 2022, he misjudged the determination of NATO to ensure that Zelensky would never ink a deal.20 The US (sorry: NATO) wanted, to steal a phrase from Assange, “an endless war, not a successful war” to eventually destroy Russia, impose regime change, possibly gain control of vast resources via a more US-compliant regime as America’s 51st state, and line a few pockets with war profits along the way.

    You want World War III? Just tell the head of a nuclear power you are seeking regime change. While NATO flooded support into Ukraine, the Nordstream Pipeline and Kerch Bridge got bombed (more on that below). Realizing that negotiations were no longer an option, Putin quickly assembled a very large and highly weaponized army and took the war to the next level. In some twisted psychological defense against exhaustipation, this is where I lost interest. It was chess in 2022 with loads of propaganda rubbing Vaseline over the world’s lens. This year has turned Ukraine into a devastating meat grinder.

    At the NATO Summit in Madrid [in June 2022]…it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today Ukraine is eliminating this threat. We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons.21

    ~ Oleksii Reznikov, Ukrainian Defense Minister

    Putin is clearly losing the war in Iraq.22

    ~ Joe Biden

    The Ukrainian-to-Russian kill ratio was estimated by guys like Colonel MacGregor (no doubt from Pentagon sources) as well as by the Israelis (who have great intelligence) at 6–10:1.23 Retired Marine Corps Colonel Andrew Milburn, who was training the Ukrainians on site, said that the Ukrainians in the battle for Bakhmut were “taking extraordinarily high casualties. The numbers you are reading in the media of about 70 percent…are not exaggerated.”24 Upwards of 500,000 Ukrainians have been either killed or incapacitated, which is worse because their care puts a drag on their society. Recruits were being placed in full combat just 5 weeks of training,25 with life expectancies estimated at “4 hours” according to an ex-Marine on site.26 I wonder if the 400,000 families think this border war was worth it. By the end of 2023, the Ukrainian draft had been expanded to include both genders and ages 7–70.

    I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda.

    ~ John Pilger on Ukraine

    Nearly every war that had started in the past 50 years, has been a result of media lies.

    ~ Julian Assange

    I can hear y’all saying, “Wait a darn minute there, Dave. Those are not the numbers I’ve been hearing on CNN/NBC/NPR/NYT…” Let me help you out here again. Our intelligence owns all of those media outlets. The US propaganda machine is the size of Russia’s GDP. They lie like teenagers while blocking the counter-narrative from leaking into the public consciousness. This should not shock you by now. As an aside, of the 8 million Ukrainians who fled the war and country, an estimated 2 million headed to Russia.27

    NATO needs to be disbanded and we can get some peace on the continent of Europe because you are about to trigger World War III….We need to get our butts out of there.28

    ~ Colonel Rob Maness

    I’m sure if President Trump were president today, there’d be no war inflicting Europe and Ukraine.29

    ~ Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister in support of Trump, 2024

    Some notable events at ground level are worthy of the few bullets I have left:

    • A bunker 400 ft below ground with hundreds of Zelensky’s top leadership and dozens of NATO officials was rumored to have been taken out by a Russian supersonic missile in response to Ukrainian incursions into Mother Russia.30 I guess you might call it a bunker buster, but I might be mixing technologies. This story is suspect just like everything else.31 The hypersonic weapons, however, are serious.

    • What appeared to be a Patriot missile facility fired off dozens in short order, only to be taken out by what is said to be their target—a hypersonic Russian missile.32 The Whitehouse would not confirm or deny the reports.33

     I can see Ukraine from my dacha.

    ~ Vladamir Putin (in Sarah Palin’s voice)

    • The Ukrainians professed to have some victorious moments, but they were short-lived. A much-ballyhooed offensive—who uses the word ballyhooed?—that would finally put the Rooskies in their place fell flat almost immediately.

    • Leaked Ukrainian documents suggest the overall picture of Ukrainian combat power is atrocious owing to “systemic shell shortages”, very few tanks, 30,000 troops, and inadequate support from NATO (although still far too much in my opinion).

    • Ukraine supposedly had some victorious moments. A direct attack on the Kremlin seemed like a pyrrhic victory given that it had the kick of a bottle rocket and didn’t seem to phase two guys climbing a ladder toward the point of impact.34,35 Maybe the Meme Team gets the credit.

    Seymour Hersh generated headlines by reporting that the US blew up the Nordstream pipeline with orders straight from Biden.36 Of course, we all knew this, but Hersh’s connections bring it as close to official as if Karin Jean-Pierre announced it. (Moreso given how much shit she makes up.) The Germans blamed it on the Ukrainians using a yacht (face in palm),37 prompting Hersh to ask rhetorically, “They can’t be that stupid! Are they that stupid?”38 Former Polish defense minister Sikorski, having thanked the Americans for blowing it up in a tweet the day it happened, then blamed it on the KGB mastermind (code named: “The Professor”) working under the guise of the cruise ship, “The Minnow”, captained by “Gilligan.” Hersh called the Ukrainian role “a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans.”39 Why not just fess up? Simple. It was an act of war under international law. The charade must go on no matter how obvious the lie.

    If we proceed from the proven complicity of Western countries in blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints—even moral—left to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies.40

    ~ Dmitry Medvedev, former Prime Minister of Russia

    Zelensky on the Edge. While Zelensky appeared to be starring in episodes of Dancing with the Stars to raise money and support, the pressure was having its effect. Journalist Paul Ronzheimer suggested, “Zelensky seems to me either completely exhausted, then again active, even cheerful … He answered some questions angrily, others emotionally.” Some suspect drugs or maybe it’s Zelensky’s body doubles.41,42 When Biden showed up in Kiev to pretend to care, with air raid sirens blaring they took no chances of a catastrophic incident by warning Putin not to bomb Kiev that day.43

    The Ukrainian government is one of the worst in the world—corrupt, controlled by a few rich people I mean really unfortunate for the people of Ukraine.44

    ~ Bill Gates

    Hersh suggests the Ukrainians have been using foreign aid on luxury cars and ostentatious lifestyles. This is my shocked face: :<O. Some of the generals and government are PO’d that Zelensky’s kickback—what we would call “10% for the Big Guy”—dwarfs theirs.45 In a surreal assertion, Hersh says Zelensky bought diesel from the Rooskies.46 If you are just going to blow up their diesel reserves anyway, you might as well sell it to them first. For Zelensky, it beats the Pentagon’s $400 per gallon price tag.47 The price does not matter because, technically speaking, he was spending US taxpayers’ money anyway. Ukrainians also allow Russian gas through the pipeline to Moldova to service Russian troops. This is a strange war.

    If China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war.48

    ~ Volodymyr Zelensky

    Xi Jinping: Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years, and we are driving this change together.

    Vladimir Putin: I agree.

    Zelensky and the Ukrainian people won the 2023 Charlemagne Prize for “work done in the service of European unification.”49 He is, however, what you would expect for a leader in that region of the world. Amnesty International castigated him for using children and other civilians as human shields.49 Ukrainians are arresting the Orthodox Priests.50 A slug of his administration resigned owing to a corruption scandal.51 It was not very democratic when he canceled the elections.52,53 We got all bent out of shape when Putin snarfed up a US journalist, but when Zelensky grabbed journalist Gonzalo Lira,54,55 the State Department was silent.56,57 Gonzalo became the front-runner for the 2023 Darwin Award when he live-tweeted his escape…and then got grabbed up.58

    Unbelievable, but it is a fact: we are once again being threatened with German tanks—Leopards—that have crosses [painted] on their sides…Those who expect to win on the battlefield apparently do not understand that a modern war with Russia will be utterly different for them. We are not the ones sending our tanks to their borders.59

    ~ Vladimir Putin

    Military Support

    Much to the West’s surprise, the War in Ukraine turned into a rather traditional artillery war from the onset, which lopsidedly favored the Rooskies. Russia has more tanks than all of Europe. The US has promised him 50-year-old Abrams tanks—we ain’t sendin’ the good stuff—but we make only 40 tanks per year at current production levels.60 Germany has stated plans to start production of tanks inside Ukraine and, unsurprisingly, Medvedev has promised to blow the shit out of the facilities with “salvos of Kalibr (cruise missiles) and other Russian pyrotechnic devices.”61 I am reminded of the Field of Dreams: “Build it and they will come.”

    Ukraine needs fresh young Americans to help fight on the ground war. The US will have to send their Son’s and Daughter’s… to war…and they will be dying.62

    ~ Volodymyr Zelensky, in his dreams

    The Bidens coerced me to pay $10 million in bribes. I’ve got 17 recordings of the Bidens as insurance.63

    ~ Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma

    Of course, this is a US-Russia war with the Ukrainians as pawns. The Russians have accused the US of planning a malaria-infested mosquito drop, but who knows.64 A huge hit on a Western munitions depot with depleted uranium munitions caused surging radiation levels.65 Again, the truth may be lost in the fog of war. The West offered F-16s66 and got a response from the Kremlin noting that F-16s can carry nuclear weapons to Moscow. Lavrov said they will not wait around to ascertain if these jets pose non-nuclear or nuclear threats.67 It doesn’t take a military genius to recognize that F16s will not be maintained or flown by Ukrainian pilots. The evidence of US casualties is mounting.68,69

    If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime.70

    ~ Jen Psaki, 2022, on rumors of Russia using cluster munitions

    We are interested in testing modern systems in the fight against the enemy, and we are inviting arms manufacturers to test the new products here.71

    ~ Oleksii Reznikov, Ukrainian Defense Minister

    The idea that providing Ukraine with a weapon in order for them to be able to defend their homeland, protect their civilians is somehow a challenge to our moral authority, I find questionable.72

    ~ Jake Sullivan defending cluster bombs sent to Ukraine

    The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.

    ~ Joe Biden, on why they are sending cluster bombs

    President Biden approved sending cluster munitions to Ukraine even though 120 countries have banned them as inhumane and indiscriminate.73,74 They are as verboten as nerve gas. According to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Colin Kahl, “They will not use the rounds in civilian populated urban environments.”75 They also promised to keep track of them so that they don’t end up on the black market.76 I sure hope they didn’t cross their fingers. And on that note, Javelin missiles sent to Ukraine are showing up in Mexico.77 The Whitehouse confirmed that U.S.-supplied cluster munitions are now being deployed against Russia: ”We have gotten some initial feedback from the Ukrainians, and they’re using them quite effectively.”78 On cue, Putin says that they have a “sufficient stockpile” of the cluster bombs to use if necessary.79 Peachy.

    Russia is sliding into what can only be described as a civil war.80

    ~ Anne Applebaum, Putin detractor and wife of Radek Sikorski, former foreign minister of Poland

    Prigozhin

    One of the more interesting stories is the dynamics between Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military Wagner Group inflicting the most damage on Ukraine. On the surface, it appeared as though Prigozhin—a beast and psychopath by Western metrics—was turning against Putin. The Intercept noted that “Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist” but then gullibly went on to praise “brief and surprising bout of honesty when Prigozhin launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow.”81 The Western neocons led by Coup Master Victoria Nuland aka Victoria the Hutt “exploded with seemingly libidinal excitement” at the prospects of a civil war, ignoring that bit about pathological lying and disinformation.82 I doubted this narrative from the get-go as did Colonel MacGregor. I reached out to a veteran intelligence expert, Lee Slusher,83 who also doubted the story and noted that other trappings of a coup were missing. War is about deception—Maskirovska84—and this looked straightforward. As Prigozhin ostensibly moved toward Moscow to the applause of the Western propaganda machine (media), few noticed that the path moved his troops rather close to Kiev.85

    Then, without warning, the coup was called off and Prigozhin seemed to patch the rift between these two BFFs. Prigozhin claimed he was pissed off about blunders by incompetent officers in the general army. As Prigozhin and Putin negotiated a new path forward,86 a body language expert says that both Putin and Prigozhin were not showing “tells” of tension.87 All was well until Prighosin took a trip to North Africa. Alas, his plane was shot down, killing all on board. Presuming he died, which I think must be true given months have passed, it would be rash to assume that you know who brought him down. The West blamed Putin for causing discord in the ranks. Putin was reported to be scrambling in haste back to Moscow,88 telling me that he did not know it was coming. The situation was chaotic given Putin’s core support was hardcore nationalists who loved Prigozhin.

    Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.

    ~ Sen. Richard Blumenthal

    Fading Support

    The support for the war seems to be fading if my Twitter feed is any indicator. Week after week we heard Whitehouse pronouncements of support for Ukraine and little to nothing about the Lahaina Fires, the East Palestine chemical spill, massive inflation, and crushing debt.

    • An “accounting error” revealed another $6.2 billion for Ukraine, which sounds like somebody drew the “Chance” card: “Advance to Ukraine. If you pass go collect $200 billion.” Now they are fighting about the Debt Ceiling.

    • The US has been paying 2,500 euros to young adults in the Balkans on a US base in Poland. 60 Minutes discussed the vast support of Ukrainian domestic programs,89 which contrasts with events on the homefront.

    • Hersh ratted out the CIA for knowing about widespread corruption in Ukraine and the embezzlement of US aid.90 Knowing? How about fostering?

    • The Hungarian Foreign Minister claims that the other Eurowankers are expecting to commit to €5 billion per year. I am not sure how this squares with Orbán’s anti-war stance.91

    • In the fall, Team Biden put together a package of aid starting at $100 billion—about $500 per taxpayer (suckers)—but climbing from there.92 The logic of such a massive commitment is to avoid having to do another before the 2024 election. The deal was laced with some support from Israel to purchase a few Republicans, but I suspect the Israelis now have other plans for their munitions.

    Joe Biden has been slow in providing military resources to Ukraine.

    ~ Mike Pence, former Vice President and now former presidential candidate

    The Chinese expressed optimism the war was nearly over,93 and I shared that view, but I have no clue now. I suspect Putin will go for the gold and take nothing less than everything he wants.94 We may get the endless war that the neocons want, although the Palestine-Israel crisis may satisfy that desire. I stand firm that this war could have been avoided with no shots fired if the US had simply backed away from its push to militarize and annex Ukraine into NATO. Matt Orfelea (@Orf) makes great short videos: this one is sarcastically titled, “It’s not about NATO.”95 For those who think this isn’t all about NATO enlargement, maybe you ought to listen to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admit Putin went to war to prevent NATO from absorbing Ukraine.96

    The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.98

    ~ Jens Stoltenberg, New Nato Chief

    Allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member of our alliance.99

    ~ Jens Stoltenberg, New Nato Chief

    NATO enlargement and U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe play to the classic Russian fear of encirclement.97

    ~ William Burns, CIA Director, 2007

    We should not be wasting US tax money and taking on more military obligations expanding NATO. The alliance is a relic of the Cold War, a hold-over from another time, an anachronism. It should be disbanded, the sooner the better…The expansion of NATO to these seven countries, we have heard, will open them up to the further expansion of US military bases, right up to the border of the former Soviet Union. Does no one worry that this continued provocation of Russia might have negative effects in the future? Is it necessary?100

    ~ Ron Paul, Congressman from Texas, 19 years ago

    I suspect that the Israel-Palestine crisis means we will hear almost nothing about Ukraine now, much to the relief of mass murderers Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, and Lindsay Graham who would have some ‘splainin’ to do if the press was inclined to call for it. Bottom line: 500,000 dead Ukrainians and the total destruction of Ukraine was for what goal? Well, they are getting digital IDs,101 although dental records are probably more practical.

    If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped…I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people.102

    ~ Trump, excerebrating Kaitlan Collins on a CNN Town Hall

    War does not determine who is right—only who is left.

    ~ Bertrand Russell

    Conclusion

    Well, that was painful to write. I try to pick contentious topics that are ignored by others or unconventional angles on standard topics. I got a little kinky on a brief Obama writeup. I smuggled some bizarre ideas in the section on the scandalous Lahaina Fires that led me to directed-energy weapons. I was told that section has a strong Alex Jones flare to it. I’ll nervously accept that as a compliment.

    I hope I have one last section in me. This is the section warranting the title alluding to “rabbit holes.” I’ve sorted the notes and graphics and made progress on the key sections. With luck, it will examine the World of Woke and the Gender Wars, hoping to write my way to wisdom while focusing on the defense of vulnerable children and women’s sports. The soul-crushing adventure unlike any I have experienced was the dozens of hours spent digging into the global pedophile network and its implicit role in geopolitics. It inescapably leads to Satanic cults. Sounds like fiction, eh? Here is the one inescapable fact: over a million kids disappear every year. These numbers are only estimates but are not contested. We hear about the horror of it and are provided glimpses of the traffickers and archetypes of the perverts. However, there are awkward questions that are totally swept under the rug. Where do these children go? Who are the end consumers of a million missing children? The potential answers and their experiences are the stuff of nightmares.

    Pedophilia is the induction glue of the Deep State.

    ~ Robert D. Steele, CIA Whistleblower

    Before you leave, you might check out the books I’ve read over the last two years with brief critiques (book reports). And, with that, I will show myself to the door.

    Books

    Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

    ~ Henry David Thoreau

    I have too many blogs and articles to read to find time to read books, forcing me to go essentially 100 percent audio. Not so many years ago I had Amazon send me a link to all non-fiction audiobooks and then went through all 2,300 looking for interesting titles. There must be millions now. Although many think audiobooks are for long trips, the optimal time for me is about an hour. The long trips require I take a ritalin and then rotate through several audiobooks, trying not to get a speeding ticket. My 12-minute commute means that I can get through about a dozen books per year. When my wife asks me to run an errand, she is really asking me to read for a few minutes. And, unlike podcasts, they are one-decision listens. My wife gives me guff saying I am not reading: “You use your eyes, I use my ears, and Helen Keller used her fingers: what’s your point?”

    Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.

    ~ Abraham Lincoln

    I particularly enjoy books that I call “sticky”—books that stick with you long after you’ve finished. As I age, this gets more elusive. I have books that I know I have read but only because a compile the list at the end of each year. Seems discouraging that I cannot remember reading them. I post the Emerson quote below every year to remind the reader that sticky is a nuanced concept. By habit, when I write my synopses, I read Amazon evaluations that oppose my own views—usually the weak ones since I pick my books carefully—to see what I missed and possibly address the criticisms.

    I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

    ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

    War is a Racket by Smedley Butler

    Smedley was a very famous and tough-minded World War I soldier who wrote the pocket guide to the sinister traits of the industrial-military complex long before Eisenhower’s famous speech. War has always been about bankers and arms dealers making profits. It is a very short, engaging read.1

    The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire’s Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education by James Lindsay.2

    I am only half done, but this is an in-depth look at the rise of Marxism in the US. It is not for the faint of heart. I postponed it to read Chris Rufo’s book (below), which is a more neophyte-friendly analysis of the problems that have been marinating within our academic system for a half century.

    America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything by Christopher F. Rufo.

    This is a fabulous read that traces the origins of modern-day neo-Marxism from early philosophers (prominently, Herbert Marcuse and his wife), through the turbulent 60s with militants like the Weather Underground, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, and Huey Newton, to the present. The evolution of this school of thought was never broken, only quiet as they changed strategies from blowing up the American system to rotting it from within by grabbing control of academia. The revolution continued ever so quietly, but it evolved in baby steps to the very odd form of Marxism dominating many discussions on college campuses. The foundations of modern day “wokism” and its purpose of upending the status quo was in plain sight, but they were built incrementally and now have a vice grip on college campuses.All of this is not-so-unlike the appearance of Sharia Law inside Saudi Arabia.3

    The Canceling of the American Mind by Rikki Schlott and Greg Lukianoff.

    Many of you will recall the brilliant treatise by Haidt and Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind. One can view this as a sequel; it is largely the brainchild of Rikki Schlott, a rapidly rising twenty-something star fighting the culture wars. It is a brilliant analysis of cancel culture, giving me pangs of PTSD throughtout the journey. The nuanced analysis of the implications is great. The authors hold a mirror up to me by pointing out places where the political right participates in cancel culture despite its reputation as being driven by the activist-left. (I still think it largely is.) My blood was curdling as she described, for example, how it has snuck into the psychiatric world where therapists are taking in the most vulnerable patients and then blaming them for their “white privilege” and other bizarro evils of being a non-minority.4 This is top-shelf reading material.

    These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.

    These two accomplished authors describe in lurid detail how the monstrous private equity firms such as Carlyle, KKR, and especially Leon Black’s Apollo rape and pillage companies. They buy them, start stripping assets and firing employees, take on huge debts to pay themselves huge compensation packages, and then eventually take the worthless shell of a company back into the open market. If monetary policy was tighter, there would not be enough dumb money to buy up these Potemkin companies, but there is so much stupid money, these guys can profit multiples of their investment. They destroy pensions, cause massive job losses, swallow up insurance policies, and mortally wound viable companies. If the world were just, these private equity guys would be taken behind the Eccles Building and dealt with. I am unclear why vigilante justice has not taken root (yet).5

    Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail by Ray Dalio.

    Like Druckenmiller, I have never been a Ray Dalio acolyte, but this book surprised me. In a nutshell it is a variant of Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning but with slightly different timescales (100- rather than 80-year cycles), and a much stronger emphasis on military and economic forces. I highly recommend it.6

    Behold a Pale Horse by Milton William Cooper.

    This is about the New World Order and all sorts of Deep State secrets, which I am inclined to take very seriously. Unfortunately, it could quit halfway through, even though it is short.7 The 4.5 star rating with 235 entries suggests that maybe another crack at it would pay off.

    One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1 and 2: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein by Whitney Webb.

    This is a monumental effort to document massive white-collar crime over the last century. Volume 1 is pre-Epstein; volume 2 is the Epstein era, but not as much Epstein as you would expect. You could easily jump to volume 2, and it is better because you will know more of the players. I would rename it Encyclopedia of Crime, Corruption, and Grift. As my friend Rudy Havenstein said, it is not a book to be read left to right but rather used as a reference. I did the audio, but somebody sent me the hard copies, which gives me both. The more you know about the relationship of organized crime, intelligence agencies, banks, and other corporations the more you will get from the book. Guys like Roy Cohn—the badass of sexual blackmail and political kingmaking—gets a lot of coverage as do the Clintons. Trump gets winged a little but not as much as Trump haters would like. The Jewish mafia gets hit very hard, although I cannot detect antisemitism. You can’t help but conclude that above some quantity of wealth and power, the CIA and big-money power brokers have control. Whitney would have made more money if she had dumbed it down to a narrative, but she wanted to throughly document the corruption. In a podcast she noted that the first volume was important to slowly open the Overton Windows of the readers before hitting the modern era where dismissal of the story as fiction would be tempting. The Amazon critics totally missed her intention: they wanted an easy read.7,8

    Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia by Paul L. Williams.

    This was a natural follow-up to Whitney Webb’s encyclopedic analysis of the Deep State. Operation Gladio was set up as a for-profit drug trade to funnel profits into the hands of the three players. I knew the CIA and Mafia dabbled in the drug trade at serious levels. Williams makes a compelling case that these three groups were and likely still are the entire drug trade. The Vatican is the banker, the CIA clears serious geopolitical hurdles, and the Mafia gets the drugs to the street. You would be hard pressed to convince me that any other group would dare try to take over this market from these serious players. I find myself asking a simple question: does the CIA work for the US or is it just a US-domiciled international crime syndicate?9

    Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

    This 2019 condemnation of the media could have had a dated feel because a lot has gone south in the media since then—Covid, Ukraine debacle, Twitter files, his personal Congressional testimony on censorship—but it held up brilliantly. I thought it was a masterful autopsy on a media that is now largely dead on arrival now. Those who didn’t like it (low Amazon scores) were mostly thin-skinned Trumper supporters who were incapable of tolerating Matt from picking on “their guy.” They were. Matt has leaned hard left his whole life, but crosses political lines seamlessly. I loved the book.10

    Invaded: The Intentional Destruction of the American Immigration System by J. J. Carroll.

    As a 25-year veteran of patrolling the US-Mexican border, Carroll brings interesting views of what is actually happening down there and how the floodgates that the Biden Administration opened mutated a manageable problem into a potential catastrophe. It was helpful to me, but I would say it was light on the child trafficking, which is why I read the book. If there is a weakness, it is its exceedingly strong pro-Trump slant. I believe he is sincere, but that alone will prevent many doubters from becoming believers.11

    The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Dr. Joost A.M. Meerloo and Chris Matthews.

    This is a 2021 reprint of the 1961 edition. It has a strong emphasis on brain washing in military contexts in which they analyze the near impossibility of captives successfully resisting being broken by their captors. The detailed protocols are painful to ponder. It migrates into a general discussion of propaganda. Some of the psychoanalytic ideas have given way to more modern analysis. I read it to understand the role of brain washing in sex trafficking. The conclusion is that a child under the control of determined adults has no prayer. They are converted into emotional slaves, requiring no physical incarceration.12

    Cave of Bones by John Hawks.

    This is a very short, riveting story of a cave discovered in South Africa in 2013 in which intrepid anthropologists crawled through an extraordinarily tight passage to find 1000’s of bones that included 25 complete hominid skeletons pulled out to date. It is a monumentally important discovery of bones of a small species of hominid that evolved in parallel with homo erectus. What is extraordinary is that they have found compelling evidence of culture (cave etchings) and ritual burials, phenomena believed to have appeared only as recently as 70,000 years ago by fully evolved homo sapiens. Many questions remain because it is a recent discovery. A curious theme that I have detected in previous books on anthropology emerged yet again: it is a community that is based on careful analyses of limited fragments leading to bold extrapolations that the field then embraces too strongly.13 When dogma is challenged, the old guard shits their pants, and they have done it in this case too.

    The Enemy Within by David Horowitz

    This political rant was too lopsided. I am no fan of books that force a false equivalence of both sides of a story even when one side is moronic, but this book had no nuance. It is pure right-wing from start to finish. (reminding me of one of Kim Strassel’s books.) The right might enjoy it and use it to strengthen their talking points, but it will just make them more rigidly angry. The left will make it 10 percent through and then quit. Nobody will be converted. This is very unlike Taibbi’s book for the open minded reader. The 1,100 favorable reviews were quite likely 100% right of center.15

    Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice by Vivek Rmaswamy

    This book was clearly one of those books you write to launch your campaign. It was fine but you could also just watch a couple of podcasts and get the same messages. Ramaswamy is a fascinating addition to the public stage, stating almost everything traditional conservatives and right-leaning libertarians will like. The problem I have is that he seems too polished—produced like a boy-band.16

    The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal by Nick Bryant

    This book was hugely influential in my pursuit of the role of pedophile networks on geopolitics. There are documentaries out there, but they are so low budget that I do not recommend even watching them. This treatise was thorough and convincing. The central bad guy was a highly connected political operative named Larry King (no relation to the famous one) who worked at the orphanage named Boys Town made famous by several movies. Larry had political reach up to the Whitehouse. The witnesses in the scandal are all broken with multiple personalities, broken lives, and drug addictions, but Bryant brilliantly chases leads and cross references testimony. Although many of the horrors of sex trafficking children are clear, the breadth of the network, which reached cities around the country, was not really the core story. When the network began unraveling the gloves came off. The chief of police was worthless—he was one of the local pervs—while the attorney general of Nebraska shut everything down. A citizen group hired a former state cop to investigate, and his very dogged pursuit of the truth landed him and his son in a corn field from an unexplained plane crash. The FBI destroyed witnesses—horrifically, eventually flipping some to turn on the others and testify they were liars. Threats of perjury to the witnesses were stifling. A grand finale was when one persistent witness ended up in the Nebraska Supreme Court facing a judge assigned to the case who had no legal standing to handle the case but very quickly displayed his role in subverting justice. Throughout the story the local Omaha Newspaper attacked the accusers and the group of concerned citizens. Curiously, Bryant falls short of naming the famous purchasers of the kids, but Whitney Webb picks up that trail in Volume 2 of her book. Of course, Wikipedia calls it a hoax but, as told to me by the cofounder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, the FBI and CIA have total control over Wikipedia. The biggest challenge in reading about organized pedophilia networks is that they are so far outside your world view—way outside most people’s Overton Window—that it is difficult to grasp.17

    Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression by Christopher Knowlton

    This is the most recent book on the legendary 1920s Florida real estate bubble. It is especially useful to those interested in market structures to remind themselves there is “nothing new under the sun.” (Sorry.) It was a classic boom-euphoria-total bust story. It was an entertaining historical treatise on the origins of famous cities in Florida as they started life as basically swamps. The Florida today owes its origin story to this mania. The banks started failing in 1925 and everybody shook it off as those nuts in Florida. Then banks throughout the south began failing and the same rationalization was used. By the mid 30s, 12,000 banks had failed nationally. Florida real estate is given credit for being more than just a trigger but rather major proximate cause of the Great Depression. By the end, the four biggest players ended up destitute. In a modern era, they would be saved by your money.18

    The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet

    I was reluctant to read this because I thought it would be another Covid book, which I was trying to put behind me. I was pleasantly surprised that it was much more general and an excellent treatise explaining how bad ideologies take hold within the populace. The message is that it is not just evil guys at the top taking control of the gullible masses but the ideology gaining control of everybody. The malaise in societies—isolation, lack of goals, frustration—tees up the call for change and leads to somebody promising a solution. (It sure feels like that is happening.) It is a warning not to trust credentialed experts. He leans heavily on the scholarly writings of Hannah Arendt without falling into a trap of taking it so deep that the average reader can’t grasp the message—a Gladwellian reductionist approach.19

    The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State by Aaron Kheriaty

    I was drawn to Covid by Kheriaty’s massive overview of the Covid epidemic and our deeply flawed response like a moth to a flame. Aaron started as the head of the University of California—Irvine’s Director of Medical Ethics Program at the medical school, where he was commandeered to run the University’s vaccination program and eventually morphed into a militant doubter. To my shock, he went down every dark rabbit hole, joining the ranks of the Covid-vaccine battlers whose world view has become profoundly dark. I enjoyed the overview of a topic I had been pounding on for two years. I asked Aaron if he was predisposed to go down rabbit holes or if the flawed Covid narrative came out of left field. He basically said he knew there were issues in the world, but that the whole story hit him like a truck. If somehow you still think the covid story presented to the populace was legitimate then you ought to read this book and get a CT scan.20

    The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman

    It is ironic that by the time I wrote this review, I could not remember anything that was in the book. I used Amazon reviews to remind remind me what I had read: “Oh yeah. Now I remember.” Well, that didn’t even happen. I bet I liked it—the 5,000+ reviews did—and the topics look great, but I really don’t recall reading it. Every book I’ve read on the brain and neuropsychology and neuralplasticity are blurring together I guess. Maybe the Amazon reviewers wrote reviews before they had forgotten what they had read it.21

    Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer

    Stephen is a prolific investigator on all things Deep State. I had already read Overthrow (it was great) and The Brothers, the story of Allen and John Foster Dulles (good). Don’t read this book to feel good about the world. This is a horror story about the role of Sidney Gottlieb (no relation to Scott that I could find) who ran the CIA’s most demented mind-control programs, including the infamous MKUltra. I must confess that I was not aware of how much above-the-fold the MKUltra program had become in the early 70s. These guys were totally twisted bastards. While the Department of Defense grabbed German rocket scientists (logically) the CIA grabbed all the doctors (possibly including Mengele, although that is not completely clear.) They put them on payroll and had them continue their studies of human torture at Fort Detrick. They eventually morphed their efforts into brainwashing using psychedelics (LSD et al.) The goal was to create foot soldiers of the type protrayed in the Bourne Identity. When outed, they claimed it didn’t work and terminated the program. There is no evidence that either is true. Having read volumes on the CIA, I am convinced that they have their paws on absolutely everything with no adult supervision. It is such a sleeper cell-based model that I am in no way convinced that the head of the CIA has a clue what is going on in his organization.22

    The Illuminati by Jim Marrs.

    I was hoping to get my arms around the elusive Illuminati, the small group of global players who some people believe still rules the world. Almost 700 reviewers like it with a 4.5 star rating, but 10% into the book they were talking about aliens from distant planets, and that was enough for me.23

    The Coming Collapse of China by Gordon G. Chang.

    I had high hopes but wasn’t getting shit out of it. There was too much Chinese history that removed all sense of stickiness. I quit. I read a half-dozen books on the Middle East years ago and got nothing from them either. I did not have an intellectual framework to hang the information from. Too many foreign names, places, and concepts.24

    2022 Books

    Because I ran out of gas, my 2022 bibliography never got published. I try to choose my reading materials carefully enough that they do not go out of date.

    The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Stephen Lee Myers.

    While trying to sort out complex stories, I avoid reading books. I want to assemble a narrative rather than reiterate somebody else’s. Of course, even the pieces have embedded narratives and may be laced with propaganda. It is my compromise. However, I broke my no-book rule this time by reading The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin25 recommended by America’s favorite Roosky, Lex Fridman. I must admit it seemed remarkably balanced and unbiased until the moment Putin was elected President. From that page on, Myers had nothing favorable to say—not one positive word. It was as though a new author took control, some aggressive editing was inserted, or the Zebra changed the color of his stripes at that moment. I should add that, while conceding he is a sociopath by Western standards, my opinion of Putin as a world leader is many standard deviations to the favorable side of the norm in the West. We in the US of A elect idiots.26

    The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel.

    This was a great discussion of how people stumble into trouble handling money and investing. It has a little touch of Millionaire Next Door and is at about that level of intensity. The number of new insights was not high, but I like how Morgan formulates the ideas. It would be an excellent book for a young adult. I will warn you: at the end of the book he goes on to tell you to buy a 60:40 portfolio, which shocked reviewers looking for a magic formula.27

    The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor.

    Ed is one of the legends in the history of markets. I thought this was going to be another one of those books that offers marginal new insights but articulates the principles with a flare, but I was pleasantly surprised the underlying details were more than I expected. The book hammers home the point that cheap money as exemplified by artificially low interest has, without fail, ended in tragedy. Authentically low rates—rates set by price discovery rather than autocratic central bankers—are emblematic of a sluggish economy. He also notes that every time rates drop to 2%, a crisis is not far behind. Assuming he was referring to nominal rates, we are royally hosed. If he was alluding to real rates, a new metaphor will be needed. The case is well made that, no matter what, intervention in price discovery within the credit markets is problematic and should be minimal. There is nobody alive today who remembers such a market, so that is a problem.28

    The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    I had started this book and progressed enough in my 2021 Year in Review to give it a ringing endorsement. Having finished it, I would say the >24,000 rave reviews on Amazon are not wrong. This book will warp your mind and force you into one of two diametrically opposed conclusions: either Anthony Fauci is a mass murder and has been so for decades—I am not being metaphorical here—or Robert Kennedy should be sued into bankruptcy. Kennedy names names, quotes experts, and references it all. His army of fact checkers and lawyers were charged with keeping him out of bankruptcy court. I have yet to read a single credible push back against the book, suggesting Kennedy will retain his inherited wealth. It is overwhelming tales of rigged clinical trials using such notable subjects as inner city foster kids (14,000 of them). If Kennedy is correct, Fauci and many others should be frog-marched to Nuremburg, tried, and, if convicted, hung from their necks until dead.29

    Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It by John Abramson.

    So let us assume some of you don’t trust Kennedy because he does have a sketchy reputation no doubt created by big-cap pharma. Harvard Medical School’s John Abramson wandered into the world of big-cap pharma corruption when he determined that Merck’s Vioxx was killing tens of thousands of consumers, leading to the most expensive recall in history. This is a tell-all about the seedy world of clinical trials and drug marketing. Case studies examine the corruption that has taken hold within the world of clinical studies, which includes pharma, fly-by-night clinical trial companies, the FDA, and academic institutions helping commit fraud. I now have a new policy: never take a drug that doesn’t cure a specific medical condition. Y’all can take those drugs to change some blood level of some biochemical marker, but I will not. It better cure an infection, significantly reduce pain, or clean up a rash. Claims by others that 75% of all drugs currently prescribed do nothing are credible. Heads up: Abramson was writing his book in 2022, so comments about the efficacy of the vaccine were probably filler and founded on little evaluation of the data. As an aside, more than 70 percent of mainstream media’s ad revenues come from pharma. The ads are not to sell you or your doctor drugs with unpronounceable names that let you wander through life with a smile on your face. It is to capture the media with addictive revenues.30

    The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan.

    Peter is a career demographer with early training at Stratfor, the private intelligence group that got wrapped up after a cyber attack got ahold of 2 million potentially touchy emails. He suffers from being a neocon and from unbelievably high confidence in predictions of future global events that probably require more circumspection. With that said, his data is probably excellent and predictions are provocative. By example, while everybody thinks China is going to dominate the World, he predicts the complete collapse of the Han dynasty in 10–15 years. He systematically looks at shrinking populations and their role in deglobalization, which will not be fun. An important take-home message for me was that the US’s projection of power around the globe since WWII—a non-Monroe-Doctrine approach to geopolitics—was the most critical ingredient that allowed unfettered global trade. No other military can project their power globally to keep the sea lanes open. The deglobalization that he predicts (with great confidence) as inevitable and imminent, will be highly inflationary, which I think makes total sense. Americans should take heart: Peter makes a good case that the coming decades will suck for us too but not as bad as for everybody else.31

    The War on the West by Douglas Murray.

    Doug is one of the social justice warriors fighting against the other social justice warriors who are indoctrinating the globe with neo-Marxist ideas. He is a fluid writer. If you are moderate or right of center, you will be highly entertained (and a bit discouraged) by his analysis of the state of the world. If you are a neo-Marxist, he will either piss you off royally or carry out a world-class intervention on your world view.32

    The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer.

    This analysis of mass movements written in 1953 retains extraordinarily relevance to the present. Hoffer talks about how mass movements start, who the players are, where the movements get their oxygen from, and why they sometimes succeed or fail. The recurring theme is that ideas first proferred by intellectuals—the “talkers”—articulate foundational principles. This could be Satoshi to the Hodlers, Mercuse to the woke crowd, or the scientists to Climate Cult. The highly visible and often stunning fanatics are unflatteringly characterized as having little to show for their lives in the present, rendering them happy to support change for the unknown future because it must be better. They are looking for meaning in the group that their personal lives lack and distance themselves from blame for their wretched existance. Often the movement involves self-sacrifice, whether it is ancient clerics forfeiting all Earthly belongings and pleasures or modern-day climate activists who claiming they will give up modern conveniences for the lofty goal of saving Mother Earth. Hoffer’s book has the potential of changing your world view.33

    War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination Audible by General Robert Spalding.

    This book complements Pillsbury’s book (below) in that it analyzes and interprets a recently translated and relatively little-known book on Chinese military strategy entitled, “Unrestricted Warfare” written by two Chinese colonels in 1999. Robert attempts to understand the mind of the Chinese military leaders and their deep-seated philosophy that anything and everything can be weaponized, which contrasts with the West’s view that warfare is largely kinetic (blow shit up.) It was not sticky—China is a seriously foreign world to me—but should be read for those trying to understand China. May God have mercy on your souls.34

    Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win by Peter Schweizer.

    Peter has documented the vast corruption of those inside the beltway and how they pilfer huge sums of money by selling us down the river. He is probably best known for Clinton Cash and Secret Empires. Red-Handed thoroughly documents the corruption of US politicians by China. Alas, it reads a bit like an Excel spreadsheet with column 1 being the names of all elected officials and political operatives and column 2 being their vig. The sheer magnitude of the grift is nauseating. I am in contact with Peter and expressed my condolences for his depressing life prowling the Swamp.35

    The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury.

    Michael is an ex-CIA agent—if there is such a thing as an ex-CIA agent—who was the man in China. Of course, this narrative was vetted so caveat emptor. With that said, he describes Mao’s hundred-year plan to re-enter the world of global politics and become the dominant power within 100 years. You will not find such long-range thinking in the West although some people are old enough to have done so. In the event, Pillsbury claims to have completely misjudged China’s approach for the first 25 years of his career. He emphasizes their penchant for patience and deception. Everybody does this in warfare, but the Chinese have brought it to a Sun-Tzu-like art-of-war level. They avoid at all costs taking on a strong opponent directly. And, you may have noticed, China does not have a history of offensive warfare. They defend themselves.36

    Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America by Charles Murray

    I am a Charles Murray fan. (Incoming!) I loved Coming Apart. This short treatise on the invasion by neo-Marxists was enjoyable. I recommend you read Doug Murray’s book (no relation) instead.37

    Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky

    Noam was being Noam. He is a detail guy, sometimes at the expense of the reader. This 1980’s vintage treatise focuses on the bullshit we were fed as the US overthrew various banana republics. Alas, it was scholarly but dry. I would recommend Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer. It is an easy read, describing our aversion to democracies around the world. (We tolerate some, but prefer to work with cigar-toting dictators.) Noam had a huge influence on Taibbi’s thinking. I know Noam is a commie and went totally off the rails on Covid, but he is still a genius worthy of your attention.38

    Propaganda by Edward Bernays.

    Continuing with my propaganda theme and its relationship to rising authoritarianism, I went straight to the 1926 seminal treatise on the field. Ed figured out how to sell pianos to the wealthy, cigarettes to women, and refrigerators to eskimos. He describes how the entire populace is immersed in propaganda and how it works. I cannot say it was my favorite book but a must read for those professing to care about enroaching authoritarianism. (If you can’t see it, I cannot help you.) The funny part was that he kept saying politicians hadn’t yet figured out how to exploit the tools. Well, Eddie: they certainly corrected that little gap in their knowledge. I have since discovered that the spooks exploited Ed and his ideas too.39

    The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.

    My authoritarian theme dragged me to the pinnacle of the field. Hannah is a legend. Unfortunately, her writing is brutal. I chatted with a friend who spent two years in an attic hiding from the Nazis who is a genius (Nobel Prize and all). He said she was difficult to read. It is a must for some but tough on me.40

    The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard.

    Arrrgh. This was a fun read about the pirates who set up shop in the Caribbean with a strong emphasis on their empire’s home base at Nassau. The 17th century pirates are not well documented. Their booty—Spanish gold—raises a question: if you steal gold and you are stuck in the Caribbean, what do you do with it? As the piracy market evolved, the quality of the booty decreased. Grabbing linen and barrels of some marginally edible crap is less exciting and profitable than bullion from galleons. As the story goes, life on a pirate ship was considerably more enjoyable than on a sovereign naval ship. The book dovetails well with Eric Jay Dolan’s Leviathan that describes the growth of the whaling industry and how it founded the New England industrial juggernaut.41

    What Darwin Didn’t Know: The Modern Science of Evolution by Scott Solomon.

    As a genetics major I had a particular affinity for evolutionary theory. This trimester-length course from the Great Courses Series (see Amazon) was really enjoyable. After wandering through the historical backdrop of evolutionary theory, it brings the listener up to speed on what has changed and the revolutionary new advances in the field. I suspect it is friendly to the non-scientist, but I could be wrong.42

    Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Hemingway.

    I decided to take a retrospective look into the 2020 election after my pulse had dropped a few notches. Mollie presents a one-sided view of the tricks of electioneering. You have three choices: (a) assume what she says is bullshit, (b) assume both sides do it, and there are just as many bad stories about the right she skipped over, or (c) reconcile why the Democrats are just so much more devious than republicans. I followed the story closely and found it credible and comfortably within the guard rails. The Republicans appear to be outplayed, even though I am confident they do nefarious things to corrupt elections (like place polling stations in horrible places). I am confident that the 2020 election had no guard rails because too many people on both sides of the aisle convinced themselves that Trump was the second coming of Hitler. I also distinguished “corrupted” where profound biases leaned heavily to achieve an outcome from “rigged” where the actual voting process was broken profoundly. Hemmingway’s narrative provides a convincing tale of corruption. Some of the stories are horrifying while all of the stories, when put together in one narrative, are nauseating. The case that it was rigged is speculative: the opportunity to rig it was there, but is the evidence that it was rigged undeniable? No. I fall back on the belief, however, that if it could be rigged, they rigged it. Every other imaginable attempt to pull Trump out of power was used. I doubt they would overlook any possibility. As an audiobook, it was fine. I am not sure I would want to take valuable reading time to rehash this sordid chapter of history.43

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 16:40

  • A "Textbook" Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event Appears To Be Unfolding
    A “Textbook” Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event Appears To Be Unfolding

    Meteorologists on social media channel X are posting weather models about the increasing threat of a so-called sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) over the Arctic, which could unleash wintry weather across the eastern half of the US in the new year. 

    “A textbook sudden stratospheric warming event looks to be unfolding,” private weather forecaster BAM Weather (BAMWX).

    Judah Cohen, Ph.D. and an atmospheric and environmental scientist who studies the polar vortex, told FOX Weather an SSW event takes “about two weeks for the effects of the sudden stratospheric warming to impact our weather.” 

    Cohen expects that cold air will pour into the Lower 48 in the new year, although the specifics of the event remain uncertain. 

    Yale Climate Connections wrote in a recent note, “The odds of a snow-favoring East Coast cold wave will be boosted if a sudden stratospheric warming happens to develop in January.” 

    “Sudden stratospheric warmings involve a rapid and dramatic rise in temperature — as much as 80 degrees Fahrenheit — within the polar stratosphere, together with a disruption in the stratospheric polar vortex. That disruption typically either splits the vortex or pushes it southward, along with associated Arctic air masses,” the weather service ran by Yale Center for Environmental Communication. And it’s the splitting of the polar vortex that delivers the blast of Arctic air to the Lower 48 region. 

    Cohen posted, “All models now agree on a Polar Vortex stretch. Major warming still possible.” 

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

    Meteorologist Mark Margavage said, “The 12z EPS Control run is showing the granddaddy of all Polar Vortex disruptions with a major Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event and split of the PV. This would be the most impactful scenario of the 4 presented today.” 

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

    BAMWX forecasts “a **late Jan into Feb** legit winter pattern for the central/eastern US!”

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

    “It appears as if there could be a legitimate risk developing for a mid to late Jan major blast of Arcitic air and stormy weather,” BAMWX noted, adding, “Exact timing is still a bit up for grabs but very encouraging if you’re a lover of snow and cold.” 

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

    “Interest rising for cold lovers in Jan with the polar vortex coming under attack in the next couple of weeks. Possible Sudden Stratospheric Warming?” weather forecasting company MetDesk said. 

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

    The combination of a potential SSW and an El Niño winter in the Mid-Atlantic, which typically leads to wetter-than-usual conditions, might suggest the next major snowstorm is approaching in the new year. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 16:00

  • The Grinch Who Overpriced Christmas: Biden's Christmas Tree Inflation
    The Grinch Who Overpriced Christmas: Biden’s Christmas Tree Inflation

    Authored by Catherine Salgado via PJMedia.com,

    Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow… money.

    The Grinch in the White House is at it again, as inflation drives up the price of Christmas trees.

    I’m dreaming of an affordable Christmas, just like the Orange Man used to know… Unfortunately, ever since Joe Biden moved into the White House with his son the prime Naughty List suspect, inflation has been making the holidays harder for American families.

    At Halloween, candy prices were up 13% thanks to Biden inflation. 

    At Thanksgiving, inflation on many dinner staples including bread, cookies, and uncooked poultry were much higher than the alleged average inflation rate. Now it’s Christmas trees.

    The Western Journal cited Fox Business, the National Christmas Tree Association, and the American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA) to report that “the cost of Christmas trees is up 10 percent from 2022, with the average tree now costing consumers between $80 and $100.” Artificial trees are even more impacted by inflation than real trees, because of increased production cost. Sounds like a good reason to get a real tree instead of an artificial plastic bush.

    Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, explained, “According to our 2023 survey, 52 percent of artificial Christmas tree owners purchased their tree for under $200, and 27 percent paid $200 to $400.” Of course, the prices for artificial trees can vary, depending on a number of factors, including the size and the retailer.

    ACTA found from polling, however, that 94% of respondents still intend to purchase at least one Christmas tree for their homes this year, even though 78% of consumers are (understandably) worried about inflation.

    Of those consumers, 77 percent confirmed they would opt for an artificial tree rather than a real one…The case of Christmas trees is just one in a long list of products and services that have drastically increased in price since Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

    According to an October analysis from the Heritage Foundation, inflation is currently at a 40-year high and shows little sign of abating.

    Inflation was below the Federal Reserve target when Sleepy Joe took office, but no longer.

    “After a year and a half of Biden’s runaway government spending and borrowing, prices were rising almost that fast in a single month, with annual inflation reaching 9.1%—6.5 times the rate Biden inherited,” Heritage explained.

    Warner is glad that Americans are still in the holiday spirit, in spite of the Man with the Bag (of cocaine), but recommended an early Christmas tree purchase to beat the rush.

    Have yourself a merry little Christmas in spite of inflation, and don’t let President Grinch with the brain that’s two sizes too small freeze your holiday cheer!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 15:20

  • The Fed Is Afraid… Of Something
    The Fed Is Afraid… Of Something

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via DollarCollapse.com,

    In the last issue we covered how Ecoinmetrics posited that the Bitcoin rally wasn’t being confirmed on-chain and that there was a chance of a 10% pullback in the month following his analysis, which was published November 22.

    We did get a pullback, from $44K, which touched bottom around $40K before reversing, for a roughly 10% retracement.

    If that was the pullback, it was kind of a snoozer, lasting all of 72 hours (although as I type this on Dec 17, it does look as if Bitcoin is weakening around the low-40’s – and could drop below 40K over the next few days).

    If you are new to this sort of thing (this is your first Bitcoin cycle), you should be warned that there will be larger pullbacks, in the order of 25% or more. Or more.

    Remember that – and remember our guidance to people experiencing fear, uncertainty or doubt during said pullbacks:

    The number one attribute required to navigate a full Bitcoin cycle is conviction. The entire point of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto was to provide the basis for that.

    If anybody here got shaken out during this pullback (we have a lot of new readers to the list), my advice would be to close out your positions here and unsubscribe from this list.

    What did happen on Dec 13th, was the Fed basically pivoted: they held the benchmark rate, again – then signalled that they were now looking toward cuts in 2024.

    The dot plot moved immediately to reflect a 75bp cut over 2024:

    With even unofficial Fed spox Nick Timiraos (“Nikileaks”) seemingly caught flat-footed:

    “The Powell pivot begins.

    Dec 1: “It would be premature to … speculate on when policy might ease.”

    Dec 13: Rate cuts are something that “begins to come into view” and “clearly is a topic of discussion.”

    What a difference two weeks can make.”

    In his WSJ piece, Timiraos basically officially canonized the Powel Pivot:

    “Powell’s remarks, along with new projections showing Fed officials anticipated three rate cuts next year, marked a notable U-turn. For more than a year, he had warned that they would raise rates as much as needed to lower inflation even if that triggered a recession.”

    What changed?

    “The comment about rate cuts was surprising because just two weeks ago during an appearance at Spelman College in Atlanta, Powell said it was too soon to speculate about when lower rates might be appropriate.”

    Typically the Fed tries not to rock the boat in an election year, and this time out the boat is balanced atop a razor:

    • CPI core print came in at 4% YoY; still well above the target – or even the posited, modified, raised inflation target of 3% (as per Paul Krugman’s shilling and even Fed issued think pieces).

    • Cutting rates, while not directly expanding the money supply, will create looser credit conditions that will almost certainly reignite inflation.

    • Assets are already reacting with stonks, gold and Bitcoin all reversing sharply higher (well, Bitcoin actually reversed off its low before the Fed minutes).

    • Inflation and asset bubbles are clubs that Trump and the rest of the GOP contenders will happily use to bludgeon Biden, or whoever the Dem nominee will be (to be sure: whoever wins the election will almost certainly continue on a path of monetary debasement, blowout deficits and out of control debt.)

    • So for the Fed to telegraph rate cuts that herald a “Fed Pivot” which many commentators have gone on record to say “can’t happen”, they must see something dead ahead that has them back-pedalling.

    The market is intuiting the Fed is scared of something; what could it be?

    Speculation abounds across FinTwit:

    M2 money supply contracting for the first time since WWII:

    via@GameOfTrades

    The imminent tapping out of the Fed’s Reverse Repo Facility:

    Even a crash in the “Second Hand Rolex Watches” index (I think that one is satire).

    Via @DeItaone

    But what I’m looking at is something we’ve touched upon in previous issues, and that’s the unrealized losses the major banks are suffering at the hands of higher interest rates:

    Looks nasty. Via @Schuldensuehner

    Whatever it is, it’s something which at the moment is so esoteric that there are still strong elements of denial that this is the beginning of a Fed pivot at all; John Hussman comes to mind, pointing out that the dot plot (which is currently forecasting 75bp worth of cuts in 2024) is never really accurate (the correlation is around 0.6, apparently), and that no previous Fed pivot has occurred from these equity valuations.

    I get that. And Hussman is an investing legend, but he’s also been calling for a HUGE crash for a LONG time and if the Fed really is pivoting, that might not happen (we get a different kind of crash, in the currency, for starters).

    What this does remind me of, is the time the Fed did an actual pivot in 2019: after more than ten years of ZIRP and QE, Powell finally started trying to normalize rates in 2018 – and the markets promptly shit the bed.

    From “The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto”

    The Fed came out and said “we made a mistake hiking”, stopped trying to normalize, and did three cuts over 2019.

    Markets took off accordingly, but something still seemed to have come unglued under the hood; weird things were happening with reverse repos and the corporate bond markets (sound familiar?) until according to some observers, the Fed and the world’s central banks caught a big break in 2020: the Covid pandemic erupted. Now the central banks had the perfect excuse to “run their playbooks on steroids” and flood the world with liquidity:

    “By the end of ’19, and because of what happened with the corporate credit meltdown a year prior, the Fed had its Black Swan game plan in hand. They needed COVID but destroyed an opportunity. What the system needed was reserves.” — Danielle DiMartino Booth

    Without that fortuitous turn of events, the banking system would have been in real trouble. (And given how the “lab leak” hypothesis now looks plausible, one really does wonder if some of the conspiracy theories around a “plandemic” were in the ballpark.)

    *  *  *

    This post was an excerpt from The Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, learn more here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 14:40

  • Carry On Carolling! Why Bizarre Warnings About Christmas Customs Should Be Ignored
    Carry On Carolling! Why Bizarre Warnings About Christmas Customs Should Be Ignored

    Authored by William Brooks via The Epoch Times,

    American historian Paul Kengor has amply documented the early poems and plays of Karl Marx, which are “rife with pacts with the devil, suicide pacts, violence, vengeance, fire, despair, destruction, and death.”

    Marx hated God, and Marx’s disciples have been at war with religion for more than 100 years. In the hypersecular domain that Father Richard Neuhaus described as “the naked public square,” the left remains deeply disturbed by the survival of Christianity.

    Over recent months, the Canadian Department of National Defence seemingly made a bid to disallow prayer on Remembrance Day, and a recent Human Rights Commission report called Christmas a racist observance “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism.”

    Days ago, thousands of U.S. university students marched with anti-Semitic, “Red-Green” Islamo-Marxist mobs that disrupted Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in U.S. cities.

    As yet, attacks on Judeo-Christian culture don’t have the full endorsement of prevaricating progressive politicians. Nevertheless, legions of academics, “woke” professionals, and state apparatchiks are clearly establishing an anti-religious path for our political elites.

    The Campaign Against Christmas Music

    Secular progressives have sought to purge Christianity from public spaces for decades, and one of their more bizarre assertions is that Christmas music is bad for our mental health.

    Several years ago, a British psychologist, Linda Blair, warned that listening to Christmas music could damage our psychological well-being by triggering feelings of stress. She said Christmas songs bring on thoughts of things that we feel obliged to do over the Christmas season, such as shopping for gifts or planning for a family dinner.

    Ms. Blair’s contentions have been making headlines in news outlets for the past several years. In November 2017, a CBS News story began with, “Christmas music may take mental toll, psychologist says.” Within days, a Fox News report echoed, “Christmas music is bad for your mental health, British psychologist says.”

    The same irrational warnings have been repeated year after year. In 2019, a Fox 32 Chicago headline read, “Christmas music can negatively impact your mental health, psychologist suggests.”

    In mid-December 2021, a publication of the British Psychological Society invited people to look at building “new traditions and ways of celebrating” because COVID-19 was casting “uncertainty over traditional Christmas plans.” A January 2022 Psychology Today column by London-based psychiatric consultant Rafa Eufa led with: “Christmas Is Over. What a Relief! The forced happiness of the winter holidays can be stressful for many.”

    Writing in a more recent edition of Psychology Today, Raymond Leone, a director of medical music therapy, described a “Love/Hate Relationship With Christmas Music” and asserted that “Christmas music can sometimes feel imposed on us.”

    When similar seasonal anxieties appeared this year, it was déjà vu all over again. Writing in the “Health” section of Business Insider, writer Rosalind Ryan asserted that “there’s a reason why some Christmas songs make you cry.” She went on to allege that Christmas songs “may be written in a certain way to trigger feelings of sadness.”

    In November, openly Christian Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo finally treated all of these silly allegations with the contempt they deserve. “There are some ‘Grinches’ who just want to extinguish anything that has even the whiff of God or faith about it,” he reported from the streets of New York City.

    Christmas Promises Peace Not Trauma

    It’s clear that Christian customs have become less welcome in the public square, and the left has developed a particular dislike for the celebration of Christmas.

    Over recent years, ordinary North Americans have experienced considerable levels of distress. But sensible people aren’t blaming their troubles on exposure to multiple replays of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

    The actual source of our stress is contained in the catastrophic social and economic policies that have been introduced by misguided neo-Marxist ideologues.

    For most citizens, reckless spending, porous borders, high energy costs, inflated food prices, family disintegration, homeless encampments, unprecedented levels of crime, fraudulent election procedures, corrupt politicians, racial division, failing schools, mob violence, and censorship are all considerably more disturbing than Christmas music.

    For centuries, Christmas has amounted to more than just the formal observance of a theological event. Advent and the twelve days of Christmas are festive occasions that focus on the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and the arrival of the Magi who recognized the Christ child by offering gifts.

    Christmas festivals include feast days, family reunions, concerts, good cheer, gift-giving, and of course the enjoyment of sacred music. It’s an opportunity to share a love for God and a natural affection for fellow human beings.

    Sometimes, religious customs can get lost in too many extravagant events and parties. But Christmas always serves to renew our spirit of charity and remind us of obligations to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, forgive the guilty, care for the sick, love our opponents, and do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

    This year, we will celebrate Christmas in Wales and plan to take great pleasure in attending a carol service at the 1,500-year-old Newport Cathedral, whether the British Psychological Society recommends it or not.

    The insightful Father Richard Neuhaus was firmly convinced that the survival of truly free societies depends almost entirely on our capacity to remain informed by the philosophy and values of Judeo-Christian traditions.

    The promise of Christmas is peace and goodwill, not despair and psychological trauma.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 14:00

  • One In Five Americans Will Flock To Church This Christmas
    One In Five Americans Will Flock To Church This Christmas

    One in five Americans will be heading to church on Christmas this year, according to a survey by Statista Consumer Insights.

    Infographic: One in Five Americans Will Flock to Church This Christmas | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck notes, of the six countries included in the survey, Brazil had the highest share of people saying they intended to go to a Christmas mass this year: around one in three respondents (31 percent).

    Next came Mexico (24 percent) and the United States (19 percent).

    The tradition is even less common in France and the United Kingdom, where only 9 percent of respondents said they would go to church this year.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 13:25

  • The Battle For Higher Education
    The Battle For Higher Education

    Authored by Bruce Abramson via RealClear Wire,

    Higher education is making news these days.  In Congressional testimony, the Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn couldn’t tell whether calling for the genocide of the Jews constituted harassment without knowing the context.  The effects of their testimony reverberate.

    Days later, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a lengthy report condemning “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System.”  Prominently featured was a detailed complaint about New College of Florida, where I serve as admissions director.

    These seemingly unrelated events are but two parts of a single story.  The Ivy League and the AAUP, as representatives of today’s academic leadership, are pleased and proud of the institutions they’ve built.  Florida’s public education system has taken the lead in promoting institutional reform—with New College as the poster child. 

    Needless to say, incumbent leadership doesn’t welcome any reforms at their cozy institutions.  They perceive our reforms as threats to American higher education as we know it.  Their perception is correct.  Their problem, however, is that academia as we know it bears little resemblance to academia as most Americans believe it to be. 

    The incumbents have spread a gloriously self-serving myth system.  In their telling, their institutions are bastions of liberal values, civil discourse, and the free exchange of ideas.  They’re open to the finest representatives of every community, perspective, and viewpoint.  They’re engaged in educating a new generation in the fine art of critical thinking. 

    The truth, however, is almost the polar opposite of that myth.  America’s universities are country clubs for insiders who have dispensed with independent thought as the price of belonging.  Under the seemingly high-minded ideal of “faculty governance,” faculty make all important decisions: Hiring, firing, promotion, tenure, curriculum design, publication in prestigious journals, the appropriate paths for research, and the flow of research funding.

    Does faculty governance work?  The AAUP, which represents faculty members from across the country, is clear: America’s professors are highly impressed with the performance of America’s professors.  Most of the complaints in the AAUP report hinge on the usurpation by outsiders of decisions that “belong” to the faculty. 

    In reality, faculty governance enshrines conventional wisdom into a governing ethos from which none may deviate.  Over the past few decades, a deeply illiberal “Critical Theory,” rooted in the same utopian socialism that birthed Communism and Fascism, has assumed that dominant role. 

    Critical Theory casts history as a constant struggle between “oppressor” groups and “oppressed” groups.  “Intersectionality” ties them all together, so that all struggles pitting any oppressor against any of the oppressed are manifestations of the same struggle.  All actions of the oppressed are thus justifiable as blows for liberation and justice.  Deterrence or retaliation against even the most seemingly barbaric acts merely perpetuates oppression.

    It’s enough to make your head spin.  It’s also a fine line along which universities must dance.  Academic leaders must be open and proud of their beliefs without ever allowing anyone to note their implications.  On a critical theoretic campus (which is most of them), determining whether calling for a genocide of the Jews constitutes harassment does indeed require context—it’s just not a context to which the leadership can admit.

    The relevant context has little to do with behavior or message; it rests entirely upon the identity of the speaker.  A “white” student wearing a swastika T-shirt calling for genocide is harassing the Jews; a “student of color” wearing a Palestine T-shirt with an identical message is not.

    Admitting as much, however, would give away the game.  America’s finest campuses would be revealed to be anti-liberal, anti-freedom, anti-discourse, hotbeds of privilege and racial categorization.

    Therein lies the true state of “academia as we know it” and the true goals of those of us committed to reform.

    In one of the clearest articulations of these competing forces, longtime Harvard donor Bill Ackman enumerated the ways that Harvard had deviated from the school he had believed it to be.  New College President Richard Corcoran showed that our goal in the reform movement is to rebuild American academia into the type of institution whose loss Ackman laments. 

    Corcoran then invited Harvard’s refugees to join us at New College.  Anti-reform critics scoffed at the improbability.  The message behind his invitation, however, is one that every participant in campus life needs to hear.  In the current climate, they face an unenviable choice.  They can sacrifice their minds, their souls, and their safety to the cause of earning a prestigious degree.  They can incur deep personal and professional risks in fighting for their institutions from the inside.  Or they can join us at institutions that have proudly embraced the cause of higher education reform—beginning with New College and the rest of the Florida State University System.

    Those choices frame the battle for the future of higher education in America: Incumbents fighting to preserve a deeply illiberal, hateful, discriminatory status quo vs. reformers seeking a return to traditional liberal education.  If you want to understand why we in the reform movement get so much hatred from the incumbents, look no further.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 12:50

  • Israel Says Army Will Soon End Ground Operation In '3rd Phase Of War'
    Israel Says Army Will Soon End Ground Operation In ‘3rd Phase Of War’

    Israel’s Broadcasting Authority on Saturday reported that the Netanyahu government is planning to switch to a new phase of the war, but gave a vague timeline which indicated this change will only happen in the coming weeks, if at all. Infantry troops will be withdrawn, and Israeli forces will continue focusing on heavy aerial bombardment, according to the plan.

    “The Israeli army is preparing to move to the third phase of the fighting in Gaza in the coming weeks,” the Israeli broadcaster said. This is to involve “ending the ground operation in the Strip, reducing forces, and demobilizing reserve forces.”

    Anadolu via Getty Images

    “The third phase includes ending the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, reducing army forces and demobilizing reserves, resorting to air strikes, and establishing a buffer zone on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip,” according to official sources.

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said they’ve killed thousands of Hamas militants, as well as wiped out the top ranks of the more “elite” Golani Brigade, which has reportedly been forced to withdraw in order to “reorganize its ranks.”

    The Israeli broadcaster further said the IDF “took control of most of the northern Gaza Strip area, while it faces great difficulties in moving forward in the southern Gaza Strip area.”

    But this hasn’t been without a significant cost, as regional publication Middle East Monitor writes:

    At least 472 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground operation in the Palestinian enclave on Oct. 27, according to Israeli army figures.

    The Walla news website and the Israeli Channel 12 broadcaster reported Thursday that one of the units in Gaza, known as the Golani Brigade, had lost 44 soldiers in 70 days of fighting. The brigade left Gaza to “reorganize their ranks and visit their families for a few days,” it was reported.

    Israeli sources have said this number means the Golani Brigade has lost a quarter of its troops.

    Previously, Biden admin officials pressed Israeli counterparts to quickly wind down the intensity of the Gaza campaign. International pressure has mounted on both Israel and the White House, given the immense civilian death toll. Palestinian sources say that over 20,000 mostly civilians have been killed.

    Israel has countered that many thousands of these were actually Hamas militants, and has further accused the Gaza Health Ministry of inflating the casualty figures. However, there’s global consensus that civilian deaths have mounted at an unprecedented rate.

    Meanwhile, Israel is unlikely to clear Gaza’s vast tunnels anytime soon, also as the IDF proceeds with trying to flood them with seawater pumped from the Mediterranean…

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    This fresh weekend Israeli announcement of soon moving to a new “phase” of the war seems a direct response to Washington’s request – or is at least meant to temporarily placate White House calls for a shift in tactics.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 12:15

  • Rocky Mountain High: Why Trump Should Love The Colorado Ruling
    Rocky Mountain High: Why Trump Should Love The Colorado Ruling

    Authored by Tim Donner via RealClear Wire,

    The Colorado Supreme Court, acting as supplicants for the enemies of Donald Trump seeking the most extreme remedy for driving the former president into the ditch, may have just unwittingly gifted the former president a Rocky Mountain high – in the polls. 

    This time, four left-wing Colorado justices attempting to kneecap Trump were not even going to wait on due process – the very foundation of law – to effectively declare Trump guilty of insurrection, a crime for which he has not, repeat not, even been charged. After believing their attempts to wipe Trump off the ballot would be a knockout punch, it is the left that is about to get walloped to the canvas with a right hook. 

    But how, you say, is this good news for Trump? Let us count the ways. First, we know that every time he has been targeted and indicted based on novel legal theories never before applied, his popularity has only increased. Second, this decision provides him with yet more valuable and indisputable evidence – perhaps the best yet – supporting his claim of persecution by the establishment left. He can enjoy that benefit without the liability of actually being banned from the ballot once the U.S. Supreme Court likely shoots down the Colorado ruling, thus bringing similar efforts in other states to a halt.

    But there’s more. Third on the list of how the left is hurting its own cause with its lawfare crusade against Trump is its whole argument that Trump threatens “democracy” as never before. That assertion hardly stands up when it boots Trump off the ballot: “This is hands-down the most anti-democratic opinion I have seen in my lifetime,” said famed constitutional attorney Jonathan Turley.

    A subset of democracy is reason number four: election interference. Even after its constitutionally dubious changes to election law on the fly in key swing states in 2020 that undoubtedly handed the election to Joe Biden, the left has crowed from the rooftops that Trump is an election denier intent on interfering with the electoral process. Now that they are trying to remove him from the ballot, what are they going to say? This is textbook election interference, though of a kind rarely, if ever, witnessed before. 

    Fifth, even Trump’s primary opponents – Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis – have again had little choice but to jump to the defense of their rival despite his overwhelming lead, further strengthening Trump’s candidacy and all but ending the Republican presidential primary, if it wasn’t over already.

    Leftists constantly indicting Trump have actually gotten the reaction they envisioned: forcing the GOP to support Trump. The idea was that Biden would then sail to another term against a convicted criminal sure to repel the American electorate in the end. The strategy has turned into the most classic backfire we have witnessed in some time.

    The Persecution of Donald Trump

    For starters, Democrats led by Hillary Clinton concocted a phony scandal to drive Trump out of the 2016 presidential race and then out of the Oval Office for treason. Then they impeached him. Then they impeached him again. Then, they raided his home. Then they indicted him. Then they indicted him again, and again, and again. Now, in a widespread effort to make sure no one will even have the opportunity to vote for him, Colorado is just one of more than a dozen states joining the effort to disqualify Trump. The first five states attempting to remove Trump were shot down in court. But cases in 13 more states remain to be litigated, and they will certainly be influenced by the Colorado ruling and any subsequent decision by the high court. But the Rocky Mountain State will stand in infamy as the first to pull the legal trigger on the most extreme measure available to generate a desired outcome, knowing if it succeeds, it will be open season on Trump throughout the country.

    Democrats’ obsession with Trump has featured one overarching theme: They cannot leave well enough alone. Until they started throwing the book at Trump with one untested stretch of legal theory after another, their man Biden was running ahead of Trump. But with each successive indictment, Trump has risen further to the point of now holding a solid, if not commanding, three-point lead according to the RealClearPolitics Average. Who knows where polling would stand if the left had actually allowed the voters to process Jan. 6 for themselves? That infamous day takes on a fresh context with the removal of Trump from the ballot. Overkill?

    At the same time, you must give the nihilistic Swampocracy in Washington credit for persistence and ingenuity, if nothing else. It has seemingly done everything that popped into its deranged mind to be sure, dead certain, guaranteed, that Trump will never again become president. How infuriating it must be to see every one of its attempts backfire. Rest assured, Colorado will be the latest. We can’t afford to take a chance on the voters’ judgment, screams the terrified left. Does this not sound like the plan cooked up in 2016 to make sure Trump would never be elected in the first place?

    Rocky Mountain Low: Colorado Justice

    The decision in this purple-turned-blue state begs many obvious questions for everyone from political junkies to disinterested voters. The Jan. 6 rally-turned-protest-turned-riot falls so far short of an act of insurrection as to make a mockery of the term. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, cited in the Colorado decision, was ratified for one purpose: to prevent Confederate soldiers from seeking national office following the Civil War. An insurrection requires an organized plan to overthrow the government – which did not exist on that dark January day in 2021. If there is not enough evidence to even indict Trump for insurrection, then how can he possibly be removed from a presidential ballot on that basis? 

    Like virtually every one of the 91 charges pinned on him in four venues, this is the first time a court has ever ruled on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It is not dissimilar to the argument about another section of the 14th Amendment regarding so-called birthright citizenship: It was written and intended for the distinct purpose of making slaves citizens but is now employed successfully by immigration activists to confer upon anyone born even an inch inside our border permanent citizenship, even if they entered the country and remain here illegally.

    Though it would appear highly unlikely, think what it would mean if the U.S. Supreme Court either refuses to act or affirms the Colorado ruling. Not only would many other states with similar lawfare suits trying to get Trump wiped off the ballot be emboldened, but it also opens wide the door for any reason – or no reason – to remove any candidate from a ballot going forward based on the personal opinions of judges. This from a party that has been screaming about democracy dying in the darkness of Trump.

    Do we not base our republic first and foremost on the ability of voters – not courts – to cast their ballots for the person they choose? Despite no such constitutional provision, there could perhaps be a quasi-legitimate argument that a convicted felon should be removed from the presidential ballot, but to do so before justice has been served and due process granted tells you everything you need to know about those willing to go to the ends of the earth to stop the man now favored to become the next president. It is stuff not of a constitutional republic but a banana republic. The left’s failure to recognize all the flashing red lights they have set off with their single-minded persecution of Donald Trump will, one expects, come back to haunt them in the end.

    Tim Donner is senior political analyst at LibertyNation.com. He is a former candidate for the U.S. Senate, entrepreneur, and founder of the nonprofit One Generation Away.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 11:40

  • Taunting Biden, Iran Now Threatens To Close Mediterranean Sea Over Gaza War
    Taunting Biden, Iran Now Threatens To Close Mediterranean Sea Over Gaza War

    Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to respond to Iran or its Middle East regional proxies in some way (the Houthis and Hezbollah). Not only has global shipping been forced to divert from the Red Sea amid what at this point has been dozens of drone and rocket attacks, but American bases in Syrian and Iraq have come under attack more than 100 times since mid-October, in relation to Israel’s operation in Gaza.

    But Tehran itself is now pressuring the White House, openly taunting Biden in relation to his support to Israel. In a Saturday statement the Iranian government threatened that the Mediterranean Sea could be “closed” due to ongoing Israeli and US “crimes” in Gaza. The threat is significant—whether they could actually ever accomplish such a thing is another question entirely.

    Iranian Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, via Iran International

    “They shall soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, (the Strait of) Gibraltar and other waterways,” Iranian Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi was quoted in state media and Reuters as saying.

    “Yesterday, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz became a nightmare for them, and today they are trapped… in the Red Sea,” Naqdi said

    In more normal times this would be ignored and taken as a delusional threat and claim. But the reality is that already some Mediterranean ports, especially Israeli ones, are seeing their imports plummet. Still, it’s unclear how exactly Iran’s military would hope to accomplish ‘closing’ off of the Mediterranean:

    The White House on Friday said Iran was “deeply involved” in planning operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

    Iran has no direct access to the Mediterranean itself and it was not clear how the Guards could attempt to close it off, although Naqdi talked of “the birth of new powers of resistance and the closure of other waterways”.

    This also appears a response to the Friday White House charge that Iran was “deeply involved” in planning attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, which US Navy warships on repeat occasions have responded to.

    At various times the US has intercepted drones and missiles from Yemen, but has yet to attempt to hit back directly at Houthi positions.

    Source: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)

    A growing list of countries have meanwhile rejected the US plan for a large naval coalition to secure Red Sea shipping against Houthi attacks, as we reported earlier. 

    Reuters earlier indicated that about twenty countries have signed up for the Pentagon’s new operation. However, several countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, and France, have rejected the Pentagon’s request to participate in the operation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 11:05

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Dec 24

Today’s News 24th December 2023

  • 'Letters From Father Christmas' By J.R.R. Tolkien
    'Letters From Father Christmas' By J.R.R. Tolkien

    Authored by Anita L. Sherman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    When I was a very small girl, one of my favorite places to be at Christmastime was underneath the pine tree that my father would erect in front of our picture window. The fragrance of those pine boughs filled my head as I would gaze upward. I’d see distorted images of myself in the galaxy of glass orbs that hung from the branches. The orbs always made me smile and, for me, was magical. The merriment of the season often got its start from those youthful orb observations. Those were nostalgic moments in long-ago Christmases.

    Santa writes letters to children about the meaning of the Christmas season. (Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock)

    Today, with so much commercialism and hyped marketing that started months ago, our enjoying a bit of seasonal nostalgia is challenging as Dec. 25 draws near. But I came upon this delightful collection of writings and drawings that, for the relatively short time it takes to read, will transport readers to another time and era when things were perhaps simpler and better appreciated.

    J.R.R. Tolkien circa 1925. (Public Domain)

    A Beautiful Book

    For those craving Christmastime nostalgia and for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, this gorgeously illustrated volume will be one to cherish. Spanning more than two decades, from 1920 to 1943, the author, best known for “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” penned letters to his children each December.

    His creative handwriting, beautiful drawings, and inventive tales from the North Pole first introduced a caring and humorous Santa to his eldest son, John, when he was 3 years old. As the years passed, Tolkien’s children increased to include Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla.

    Each December a letter would arrive, often having a snow-dusted envelope bearing a polar postage stamp. Inside would be musings from Father Christmas, who was yearly preparing to make his late-night sleigh ride covering many countries with countless children on his list. The style of his writing often resembled calligraphy on steroids, with fanciful and inventive letters often wobbly (because he was very tired when he penned the letter) and usually accompanied by an illustration equally elaborate; it was produced to look like an etching.

    A 2009 Polar Bear stamp from the U.S. Postal Service. (Public Domain)

    With Tolkien’s future works in mind, Father Christmas’s household expanded over the years to include a cast of colorful and often mischievous characters including the North Polar Bear, his nephews Paksu and Valkotukka, Goblins, Red Gnomes, Snow-men, Cave-Bears, and an Elf named Ilbereth, to name a few.

    His yearly letters grew in complexity with masterful storytelling, including goblin attacks and the search for the North Polar Bear who goes missing. He is eventually found in a labyrinth of caves.

    Tolkien uses these letters as endearing communications to his children, but they are also subtly instructive. For example, when the North Polar Bear is lost in the caves, it gives Father Christmas an opportunity to share with his children the rich history and symbolism of cave paintings. This he does with words and illustrations.

    Tolkien’s drawings are wonderful. They’re intricate and imaginative (like his creative handwriting) and invite the reader to explore them in detail, delighting when Santa dons a new pair of green pants, or when the North Polar Bear takes a tumble as an icy gale blows through the workshop.

    A 1892 Christmas card with a colored photo of the Tolkien family in Bloemfontein, South Africa, sent to relatives in Birmingham, England. (Public Domain)

    As Children Grow

    There are a few years when Father Christmas tells his children that their gifts may not be as plentiful since there are so many in need around the world, not just for books and toys but also for food and clothing. And then there are the war years, particularly when England is hard hit in the 1940s. Father Christmas is not immune to these global events.

    He is always cognizant of the stages of the children’s academic and emotional development from year to year. John may not be as interested in the letters since he’s gotten older, Priscilla may be at the age when she can read for herself without help from her brothers, Christopher is getting over an illness; the letters reveal a creative and very caring father who would become a globally endearing author.

    Christopher Tolkien was the literary executor of his father’s estate. He did much to keep his father’s legacy alive by editing many of his father’s works posthumously.

    I thought it particularly noteworthy that in his letter of 1937 from the Cliff House near the North Pole, Father Christmas mentions that he thought of sending Hobbits to the children to add titles to the children’s Christmas lists. Tolkien’s children’s fantasy, “The Hobbit or There and Back Again,” was published in 1937 to critical acclaim. Recognized as a classic of children’s literature, it is one of the bestselling books for all ages with over 100 million copies sold.

    “Merry Old Santa Claus,” 1881, by Thomas Nast. Harper’s Weekly. (Public Domain)

    There are several versions of “Letters From Father Christmas,” but this one is the Centenary Edition (2020) marking 100 years from when the first of his letters appeared in 1920. It includes copies of his original letters written in his notable shaky and stylistic manner, easy-to-read translations of those sensational scribblings, and the Goblin alphabet that the North Polar Bear deciphers from his time in the cave studying paintings, and all of Tolkien’s endearing drawings.

    Tolkien died in 1973, so this year marks the 50th anniversary of his passing. It seems a fitting time to offer readers this collection of letters from a famous father to his children at Christmastime.

    Christmastime nostalgia at its best. Readers young and old are sure to be charmed.

    “Letters From Father Christmas” by J.R.R. Tolkien. (William Morrow)

    ‘Letters From Father Christmas, Centenary Edition’ By J.R.R. Tolkien William Morrow, Oct. 27, 2020 Hardcover: 208 pages

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/24/2023 – 00:00

  • Israel's Eilat Port Sees 85% Drop In Activity As Mediterranean Imports Also Take Hit
    Israel's Eilat Port Sees 85% Drop In Activity As Mediterranean Imports Also Take Hit

    This week the chief executive of Israel’s Eilat Port confirmed that Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping has had a devastating impact on the rate of goods coming into the country.

    CEO Gideon Golber told Reuters “you close the main shipping artery to Eilat Port. And therefore we lost 85% of total activity.” However, Eilat – which mostly handles car imports on the one hand and exports of potash on the other – is much smaller than Israel’s two larger Mediterranean ports of Haifa and Ashdod. Cruise ships in better times also regularly make call there, as there are tourist spots in the region.

    Eilat Port

    Still, the Houthi aim of inflicting harm on Israel’s economy and ability to import/export appears to be happening and could get worse. “We still have a small number of ships for exporting potash, but I believe that with a destination in the Far East they will no longer travel in that direction. So that will also go down,” Golber added in his statement.

    What’s happening to Eilat’s traffic could be a sign of things to come for Israel’s bigger ports on the Mediterranean side. It’s Eilat’s location that most important and strategic, as it sits in the south on the Gulf of Aqaba, giving Israel a route to the East without having to navigate the Suez Canal.

    Analysis in Al Jazeera has said traffic at Eilat has come to a halt:

    Israel, the first direct intended target of the Houthis, has already felt an impact from the disrupted maritime trade. Traffic through its southern port of Eilat, located in the city which is also a tourist destination, has come to a halt, and the foreseeable future seems uncertain as the war rages.

    Egypt, which was already facing an ailing economy before the war, could suffer heavily from the slowed trade, in addition to decreased transit fees for cargo going through the Suez Canal, something it is highly dependent on.

    Europe and states in the Mediterranean are poised to suffer the most losses if the current situation persists in the long term, as many of the ships taking cargo to and from those countries have been affected.

    And in more bad news a growing list of countries have rejected the US plan for a large naval coalition to secure Red Sea shipping against Houthi attacks, as we reported earlier. 

    Reuters said about twenty countries have signed up for the Pentagon’s new operation. However, several countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, and France, have rejected the Pentagon’s request to participate in the operation. 

    Spain’s Defense Ministry said it would only participate in NATO-led missions or European-coordinated operations – not ones commanded by the Pentagon: “We will not participate unilaterally in the Red Sea operation.” And Italy’s Defense Ministry voiced similar concerns, indicating it would send naval frigate Virginio Fasan to the Red Sea but only respond to requests by Italian shipowners. 

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    But it remains that if things get bad enough for European imports, some of the leadership in these countries may have a change of heart.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 23:20

  • Supreme Court Will Reverse Trump Ballot Removal But Dodge Insurrection Question, Expert Predicts
    Supreme Court Will Reverse Trump Ballot Removal But Dodge Insurrection Question, Expert Predicts

    Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to strike down a Colorado court ruling that removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot. However, the conservative majority on the highest court is likely to do so in a narrow way that doesn’t get into the weeds of whether President Trump’s actions constituted insurrection, according to a constitutional law expert.

    Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington on Sept. 15, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    The Supreme Court may say the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause doesn’t apply to the president, predicted Horace Cooper, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, who formerly taught constitutional law at George Mason University.

    The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 19 that President Trump is to be barred from the state’s ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” by inciting his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Because, under Colorado election law, only qualified candidates can be placed on the ballot, it would be “wrongful” for the secretary of state to allow on the ballot a candidate disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from office anybody who has previously taken an oath of office and later engaged in an insurrection, according to the ruling.

    Lawyers for the former president immediately announced that they intend to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    “The Supreme Court is highly likely to take this case fairly quickly,” Mr. Cooper told The Epoch Times.

    The Supreme Court doesn’t have to address the issue right away. It can put the state decision on hold and wait to issue a ruling until after the Colorado primary. But it’s unlikely that it would try to wait until after the next president is sworn in in 2025 and then declare the issue moot, he said.

    “I don’t think they can get away with a 13-month delay,” Mr. Cooper said.

    A major reason why the court is likely to step in quickly is because similar efforts are underway in other states, including New York, California, and Pennsylvania.

    In Michigan, a district court struck President Trump’s name from the ballot, but the ruling was reversed on appeal. The case appeared to be over, but after the Colorado decision, the Michigan attorney general filed an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court.

    “[It’s] not a question that you can just stall your way out of,” Mr. Cooper said.

    The U.S. Supreme Court will probably reverse the Colorado court but will likely look for a narrow way to do so, he predicted.

    “There are some who want the court to weigh in on the question of insurrection. They want the court to weigh in on the issue of whether or not the actions that some … or, maybe, many have observed of Donald Trump constituted insurrection—even if not charged and certainly not convicted,” Mr. Cooper said.

    “The Supreme Court is highly unlikely to weigh in on that.”

    Horace Cooper in Washington on August 4, 2023. (Wei Wu/The Epoch Times)

    The 14th Amendment doesn’t specifically list the presidency among the offices to which the disqualification clause applies, but the Colorado court argued that the reference to “any office, civil or military, under the United States” covers the presidency and that the historical record indicated that the amendment wasn’t meant to exclude it.

    However, Mr. Cooper predicted that the Supreme Court may take the opposite side of that argument, as it would allow it to dissolve the issue without getting into the weeds of what President Trump did or didn’t do.

    “A more conservative court often tries to resolve a matter in the most straightforward way possible with the minimum need for a deep engagement on the part of the court. So I would say it is actually highly likely that they simply say, ‘As a matter of statutory construction, the office of the presidency was never contemplated for this,’” he said.

    Mr. Cooper pointed out that the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to exclude former Confederates from positions of power.

    “Their target was specifically the Confederacy. Their target was not anyone who supported the French in the French-Indian War. Their target was not anyone who supported the British in the British-American War. Even though the language isn’t written in a way to limit those, the rationale was the Confederacy,” he said.

    President Donald Trump arrives at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The further away you get from a construction involving actual people who had engaged in military rebellion against the government, the more careful you’re going to have to be about your reading.”

    The justices, particularly the conservative-leaning ones, will try to avoid passing judgment on the insurrection rhetoric applied against President Trump.

    “The Supreme Court does not desire to own the question, ‘Does the behavior that people have seen of Donald Trump constitute insurrection?’ They do not wish to own that,” Mr. Cooper said, although he acknowledged that “there are some on the left who want that very question to be answered.”

    Chief Justice John Roberts is particularly keen to keep the court away from political imbroglio, he said.

    “If you look at a more conservative court, their typical response is always a more narrow construction. So here you’re going to have Chief Justice Roberts likely either writing the decision—which I predict—or deciding who will write the decision. In either case, his view is going to be that it be a simple and narrow way to overturn the case that Colorado has put forward,” Mr. Cooper said.

    He speculated that even some of the justices in the left-leaning minority may join the decision, as it may allow them to keep the court less involved in the 2024 election.

    Protesters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)

    Mr. Cooper recalled the 2000 election, when the Supreme Court felt compelled to issue a stop order to halt recounts in Florida, only to be accused of interfering with the election.

    “Many of the justices say that they are very unhappy with what happened to their reputation because they did that. If you ask them, would they like to do this again? Most of the justices, including the chief justice, will tell you ‘no,’” he said.

    In Mr. Cooper’s view, simply declaring that the disqualification clause doesn’t apply to the president would allow Chief Justice Roberts to minimize election entanglement.

    “He’s going to try to do it in the narrowest way possible so that it is not a determination where I’ve decided who can be a candidate and who cannot be a candidate. I’m only deciding whether or not Colorado understood the law,” he said.

    It would’ve been prudent for the Colorado Supreme Court to try to stay out of the election, too, Mr. Cooper suggested.

    The Supreme Court building in Washington on June 7, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    “The Colorado Supreme Court really took a risk that it might get smacked down by the U.S. Supreme Court. And yet it did not, when evaluating that risk, try to act in a way that demonstrated restraint,” he said.

    Mr. Cooper noted that the state court decision was split 4–3, with the chief justice dissenting.

    The dissent showed the proper reticence toward election meddling, presenting a narrow argument that “nothing in Colorado law gives this power” to the secretary of state to strip candidates from the ballot based on the disqualification clause, he said.

    The dissenters avoided the insurrection issue and settled on saying that “our statutes never were intended to give us this authority,” according to Mr. Cooper.

    “That was the way out,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 22:40

  • Putin Now Serious About Negotiating End To War: Diplomats
    Putin Now Serious About Negotiating End To War: Diplomats

    In a fresh weekend report The New York Times says that President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate an end to the nearly two year-long ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, at a moment most of the territory which forms the four ‘annexed’ oblasts remains firmly under Russian military control.

    However, to some degree, Putin has consistently held open the chance to negotiate… it’s just that “negotiate” in the Kremlin context would be on the basis of Crimea and the Donbass being fully recognized as Russian Federation territory. Until recently, the West considered this an impossibility, but US and European officials have more recently quietly admitted Moscow has more or less ‘won’. The NY Times quotes Putin in the following:

    Buoyed by Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and flagging Western support, Mr. Putin says that Russia’s war goals have not changed. Addressing his generals on Tuesday, he boasted that Ukraine was so beleaguered that Russia’s invading troops were doing “what we want.”

    “We won’t give up what’s ours,” he pledged, adding dismissively, “If they want to negotiate, let them negotiate.” But in a recent push of back-channel diplomacy, Mr. Putin has been sending a different message: He is ready to make a deal.

    Sputnik/AP

    The report cites Russian diplomatic sources who say Putin has for the first time been open to ceasefire which would include a freezing of all frontline fighting. American officials say the same, per the report: “In fact, Mr. Putin also sent out feelers for a cease-fire deal a year earlier, in the fall of 2022, according to American officials.”

    “That quiet overture, not previously reported, came after Ukraine routed Russia’s army in the country’s northeast. Mr. Putin indicated that he was satisfied with Russia’s captured territory and ready for an armistice, they said.”

    Very obviously, Ukraine’s leadership and society has been fracturing under the strain of the invasion and immense death toll, with Kiev officials recently admitting monumental problems with manpower and ammo supply.

    But the reality is that Russian society is likely facing deep fractures and uncertainty too, though it’s far less evident. Countless mothers, fathers, and families are grieving and dealing with the loss of loved ones killed in action. Conservative estimates have said at least 50,000 Russian troops have died in the war (and that is based just on data as of mid-summer). US officials have claimed a figure in the hundreds of thousands, but there are reasons to be doubtful of this.

    Angry families of fallen soldiers have increasingly formed the locus of a small but increasingly visible Russian anti-war movement, suggesting broader quiet societal angst concerning the direction of the war in Ukraine. They don’t want Ukraine to be Russia’s “endless war”. This discontent threatens to become much more out in the open, seen for example in the following:

    Former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova was disqualified on Saturday from running against President Vladimir Putin in an election next March because of alleged flaws in her application to register as a candidate.

    Video from a meeting of the central electoral commission showed members voting unanimously to reject the candidacy of Duntsova, who had wanted to run on a platform to end the war in Ukraine and release political prisoners.

    Her disqualification was seized on by Putin’s critics as proof that no one with genuine opposition views will be allowed to stand against him in the first presidential election since the start of the 22-month war. They see it as a fake process with only one possible outcome.

    According to more in the NYT report on Putin’s supposed new-found readiness for serious negotiations: 

    Mr. Putin’s repeated interest in a cease-fire is an example of how opportunism and improvisation have defined his approach to the war behind closed doors. Dozens of interviews with Russians who have long known him and with international officials with insight into the Kremlin’s inner workings show a leader maneuvering to reduce risks and keep his options open in a war that has lasted longer than he expected. While deploying fiery public rhetoric, Mr. Putin privately telegraphs a desire to declare victory and move on.

    “They say, ‘We are ready to have negotiations on a cease-fire,’” said one senior international official who met with top Russian officials this fall. “They want to stay where they are on the battlefield.”

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

    So likely, Putin could be facing increased pressure even from Kremlin senior officials to wrap up Ukraine operations, especially given the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions have already been declared part of Russia, and a firm military grip remains on them.

    But it remains that Ukraine’s Zelensky has shut the door every time he’s so much as asked by the press about the possibility of negotiating. Simultaneously, he’s admitted time and again that things aren’t going well for Ukraine forces on the battlefield. Yet he still says he’ll never enter ceasefire talks with Moscow so long as Putin is still in power.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 22:00

  • The Velvet Fascism Of "Protect Our Democracy"
    The Velvet Fascism Of "Protect Our Democracy"

    Authored by Thomas Buckley via The Brownstone Institute,

    Deciding that a person who has not been charged with, let alone convicted of, insurrection is guilty of insurrection and therefore cannot run for president…that is “protecting our democracy” in action…

    Whenever that term is used, one can be assured that the democracy they are referring to has no semblance to any actual democracy.

    In this case, “ours” does not mean “all of ours” – it means “theirs.”

    What they are protecting is their democracy; not a democracy of the people, but now merely a word used to fig leaf the ever-expanding slither of socialist socialite statism, the velvet fascism that is deftly hammering its way through the society and the culture.

    The Colorado Supreme Court ruling disqualifying Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot there is absurd, legally indefensible, and a direct attack on the entire constitutional premise of the nation.

    It eviscerates the basic right of the people to choose – however one may think of their choice – their own leader.

    It torpedoes the idea of the balance of powers between the three branches of government. Until yesterday, judges have almost always steered clear of most election-related cases, in part because of that issue. In fact, the mantra that “Trump lost every challenge he made in court to the 2020 election” is true because, three years ago, courts did everything they could to not hear the cases – issues of standing, issues of timing, and issues well, what do you what me to do? Order a new vote? Few – if any – were heard on their merits.

    The United States Supreme Court even ruled that a group of states did not have standing to sue states they thought mishandled the 2020 election. One would think a state would have standing in court to challenge how another state ran their elections because who is president impacts every state, but still the Supremes passed on even hearing an argument.

    That is yet another reason this ruling is so mind-boggling dangerous – the precedent set is catastrophic to the point that the President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele was right when he tweeted “The United States has lost its ability to lecture any other country about ‘democracy’.”

    That is how degrading this ruling is to the actual rule of law, not the “rule of law” the statists trot out to stifle, intimidate, and destroy their opponents.

    Even though it should not be necessary to refute the Colorado ruling point-by-point – for the same reason people don’t try to argue with sidewalk schizophrenics that there really aren’t people and plants and dogs yelling at him – here are the particulars (from a previous piece) as to why the Colorado judges are wrong.

    • First, the events of January 6th were not an insurrection attempt. They were wrong and stupid and the greatest gift ever given to the Deep State and the Democrats, but they did not constitute an insurrection. When you try to overthrow the government, you tend to bring guns and you tend not to make sure to wrap it up in time to get back to the hotel for dinner.

    • Second, to say Trump caused the problem is also not true. One could make the argument that Nancy Pelosi “caused” it because she point-blank refused to beef up Capitol security that day, thereby allowing bad actors to run wild, or that the FBI “caused” it via its embedded intelligence operatives.

    • Third, Trump has not been found guilty of a crime…yet. Therefore the idea is legally premature and the position taken by those in favor that “we all know it was an insurrection and he did it so we don’t need a trial” is not quite – at least for the time being – how the American justice system works.

    • Fourth, read the clause again – it says “elector of President,” not “president.” May seem like splitting hairs, but they’re really different. As to “officer,” even that is muddy as many legal scholars equate that with appointed personnel. Finally, Congress is specifically called out for the ban, but the presidency is not. So even if it ever gets to court it will not fly (unless, of course, that court is in the District of Columbia).

    • Fifth, even if you twist yourself into believing Trump cannot serve as president, it does not in any way, shape, or form bar him from running for the office. That would be a gross and obvious violation of his first amendment rights…oh, wait.

    • Sixth, to argue that insurrectionists are not allowed to serve in the federal government is patently false. A few years after the Civil War, Confederate soldiers were signing up for the US Army and Confederate veterans began serving in – wait for it – Congress. In fact, dozens of former Confederates – and not just privates but high officers – served in the House and Senate, no problem.

    The last Confederate veteran to serve in Congress was Charles Manly Stedman of North Carolina, a major on Gen. Robert E. Lee’s staff – seriously – and he held his seat until 1930. 

    And he was a typical southern Democrat racist, by the way, pushing to erect a “Mammy Memorial” statue on Washington. And yes, it really means what you think it means: a statue honoring mammies because, as Stedman put it: “The traveler, as he passes by, will recall that epoch of southern civilization [when] fidelity and loyalty” prevailed. No class of any race of people held in bondage could be found anywhere who lived more [freely] from care or distress.”

    So, if people who signed up to specifically go shoot people as part of an actual intentional rather widely advertised bloody insurrection – and clearly remained committed to the underlying cause – were allowed to serve in Congress, I’m pretty sure that sets a precedent.

    Leaving the particulars refuted and turning back to the core of what is meant by “protecting our democracy” we must face the lie that has become the undercurrent of American discourse. 

    “Our democracy,” on its face, sounds reasonable, like “our constitution” or “our rights” as citizens. It seems inclusive, unifying, and based on a shared set of facts and beliefs. In other words, the “our” is meant to signify “everyone” and that’s good, right?

    But in this case, the “our” specifically does not mean everyone but only some, as in “this is ours and not yours”.

    The Romans called the Mediterranean Sea “Mare Nostra,” or “Our Sea” to connote power and exclusivity. The mafia is often referred to by its members as “Cosa Nostra,” or “Our Thing,” again to ensure a protective separateness from everything and everyone else.

    Now, the organizations and people fetishizing “protect our democracy” mean it the same way the Romans really did and the mafia really do – “their democracy.” 

    “Democratia Nostra” indeed.

    This trope is an intentional attempt to quell discussion and debate, to “other” (to use a woke term) people who question the idea, and to define anyone who does not subscribe to their statist, elitist, technocrat, oligarchical version of democracy as being a danger to the very idea of democracy itself.

    Examples of this hypocritical – but strangely alluring – linguistic perversion abound. From the “Protecting our Democracy Act,” which would have essentially federalized elections, pushed by progressive Democrats to countless “non-profit, non-partisan” groups started by those same totalitarian wokesters, the term can be found being used – and never falling under media judgment – throughout today’s political landscape.

    Like so many other tech companies (and their leaders, see Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life), Microsoft has an effort called “Democracy Forward.” At a recent conference on digital campaign security, a member of the project, one Ethan Chumley, used a rather telling phrase when describing what Democracy Forward does as “supporting the institutions we think (emphasis added) are fundamental to a healthy democracy.”

    And what institutions are included? Defending Digital Campaigns is one, a “non-aligned” organization funded by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others to, in theory, increase campaign data security. Its board of directors includes former NSA and current DHS officials, former Romney presidential campaign manager Matt Rhoades, Hillary’s campaign manager Robby Mook, and the chairman of a group called DigiDems, which itself in financially supported by the Democratic Party and, of course, the law firm Perkins Coie of “Russiagate” fame (a perfect example of the DC swamp rabbit hole, by the way).

    Democracy Forward also partners with NewsGuard, the organization that calls itself a media fact-checker and trustworthiness monitor that consistently places sites like The Federalist on its naughty list and the Guardian on its nice list. NewsGuard also slammed outlets that tried to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and announced in January a partnership with the American Federation of Teachers to combat misinformation in the classroom.

    For more information on the absolutely non-partisan, completely fair minded Microsoft effort, you can visit the website.

    The group “Protect Democracy” was founded by a pair of Obama White House lawyers, one of whom during his college days helped found “Law Students Against Alito,” also claims to be non-partisan. Here is how it defines “The Threat” to democracy on is website:

    These global trends impacting the entire democratic world, when combined with our own governance structures and history of white supremacism, have resulted in an amplification of the power of an anti-democratic, illiberal, and bigoted faction in our society that has always existed. That faction, first through Trump’s presidency and now through the political party it has largely captured…

    Non-partisan, indeed If you want, you can check out the website.

    Then there is Securing our Digital Future, an effort of Foreign Policy magazine. With a contributor list that reads like a parody of internationalism, the policies suggested essentially espouse the idea of saving democracy by killing freedom. One writer, Matt Masterson of the Stanford Internet Observatory (that’s what it is actually called), states that the “onslaught of misinformation” that started in 2016 has caused people to mistrust institutions before noting that the 2020 election was the most secure in modern American history. 

    To continue to protect democracy, Masterson suggests, in part, the following:

    Accountability for those who knowingly spread disinformation to achieve their political or financial goals. Allies in democracy must identify, call out and collectively respond to adversaries’ attempts to destroy democratic institutions. This can encompass political accountability at the ballot box, as well as professional accountability, such as the loss of a law license for using the court to further disinformation, or the loss of financial support by refusing to do business with those funding the attacks.

    The term was recently employed by the New York Times when announcing the hiring of Ken Bensinger to report on “conservative” media and ideas and such. Putting aside for the moment that he was the reporter that foisted the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier onto the public, the Times’ own reasoning for the hire is telling:

    “…Ken’s new beat, filled as it is with people who reject mainstream narratives and question the institutions that hold up our democracy (emphasis added). Understanding the way information is developed, circulated and absorbed on the right is vital at this precarious moment…,” stated the Times in its announcement.

    Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, MSNBC, AOC, CNN, Liz Cheney, etc., etc., ad infinitum have all used – may even be using it right now – the term “protect our democracy” and all, whether putatively right or left, mean it the same way – their democracy. But that is a democracy that, with apologies to the Washington Post, thrives in darkness and is protected by the prosperity and silence and loyalty of its members, a political code of Omerta that must be kept at all costs.

    Our democracy, indeed.

    The Colorado decision will almost certainly be overturned by the Supreme Court, but for “protectors of our democracy” that is not such a bad thing – it will give them an election hammer point: see, the Supreme Court bad, just like with abortion, and needs to be abolished…wait, reformed and expanded to include every proper viewpoint.

    As the media will play along with this, it is yet another “Heads I win, tails you lose” political shell game being played to keep Trump – or anyone who threatens the Deep State, the “own nothing and be happy” drivers of the world, or the global nomenklatura – away from the levers of power,

    It should not have happened, but what could happen has now happened.

    And we will never be the same.

    *  *  *

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 21:20

  • These Are The Most Desired Christmas Gifts This Year In The US
    These Are The Most Desired Christmas Gifts This Year In The US

    While it may not seem like the most romantic option, the useful gift of money is the most desired Christmas present in the United States this year.

    Statista’s Anna Fleck reports that, according to the latest data from Statista’s Consumer Insights (Christmas and Holiday Season: U.S.), when asked which gifts U.S. adults would personally most like to receive this year, 50 percent of women and 36 percent of men said cash or bank transfers.

    Infographic: The Most Desired Christmas Gifts in The U.S. | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    For both groups, vouchers came in second position, followed by clothing, textiles or shoes in third.

    Respondents could choose multiple options in the poll.

    When looking at a breakdown of the data for men and women, however, while there is a fair bit of overlap, some slight differences do emerge.

    As the chart above shows, smartphones, tablets and accessories were a fairly popular choice for both men and women, selected by 24 percent and 22 percent of the groups, respectively.

    Women showed slightly more interest in travel-related gifts (20 percent versus men at 13 percent) as well as event tickets (19 percent versus men at 11 percent), with the two options placing in rank nine and ten for women.

    Out of the polled options, ‘decoration articles’ were among the lowest scoring gifts, only desired by 7 percent of female respondents and 6 percent of men.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 20:40

  • 22-Year-Old Quits Her Job For 'Tradwife' Lifestyle, Embraces 1940s—Has Words For Couples Today
    22-Year-Old Quits Her Job For 'Tradwife' Lifestyle, Embraces 1940s—Has Words For Couples Today

    Via The Epoch Times,

    Millennial Aria Lewis is infatuated with the 1940s—and has been since she was 15 years old, growing up in a somewhat “vintage” family in North Carolina.

    Mrs. Lewis, now 22, has embraced the role of a “tradwife” (traditional wife), a neo-retro lifestyle trend adopted by some conservative newlywed women that has garnered a following on social media. She and her husband, Andrew Lewis, 28, embrace this choice, living together on a farm they purchased in Missouri.

    (Courtesy of Aria Lewis)

    Growing Up an Old Soul

    “As a child, I grew up on black and white movies,” she told The Epoch Times. “Dad really likes jazz. It was something that was a part of my life that I thought was normal. I read so many historical fiction books about the ’40s.”

    Mrs. Lewis’s great-grandfather, who passed away in 2017, served in World War II—which probably instilled in her a strong sense of connection to this particular period.

    “I started listening to more of the music and really started to get more vintage clothing,” she said. “It was just a really fun way to experiment with a different lifestyle.”

    Mrs. Lewis and her husband, Andrew Lewis, dance like it’s 1945. (Courtesy of Aria Lewis)

    Mrs. Lewis dons a vintage cape and matching fashion. (Courtesy of Aria Lewis)

    As she grew older, she incorporated more modern items into her fashion, she said. Though her style was still eccentric. “I never felt like I needed to fit in.”

    “I enjoy more old-fashioned clothing and stuff like that,” she said.

    Now married, having left the nest and high school behind, Mrs. Lewis embraced her penchant for vintage-era things and took the next step by living it.

    Meeting and Marrying Andrew

    Mrs. Lewis met Mr. Lewis in May 2019. She reminisced about meeting her future husband for the first time. It was very traditional.

    “We sort of have mutual friends,” Mrs. Lewis said. “My grandfather had friends within the church that my husband was going to at the time.”

    Mr. Lewis spoke with her dad, in traditional fashion, and drove out from 12 or 13 hours away to meet her, a true act of chivalry.

    Their first meeting was in June 2019. A week later, they were in a relationship.

    “We’ve been together since,” she said.

    They married in June 2020, and Mrs. Lewis became Mrs. Lewis. The pair even saved their first kiss for that day.

    Mrs. Lewis and her husband during their wedding. (Courtesy of Aria Lewis)

    Both Christians, they chose to glorify God in how they manifested their marriage, both leading biblical lives.

    “I quit my job as a photographer,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t need to be as professional and modern and super relatable to clients because I didn’t need to do that anymore.”

    Instead, she dove back into her roots.

    “My purpose in life is to honor and glorify God,” she said. “I don’t see very much of that in modern society.

    “I just like historical things—I always have. And I feel comfortable with it.”

    One thing the Lewises shared was a desire for a farm, which helped in their decision to buy a fixer-upper house on a single acre.

    They were married for a couple of years prior to being able to buy a house, while she was still working as a wedding photographer. By the time Mrs. Lewis quit, she’d saved money for an entire year for the downpayment.

    It’s been really great, she said. Farm life has bestowed self-sufficiency on them. She keeps a garden now but later hopes to move to a bigger lot with room for chickens.

    Mr. and Mrs. Lewis enjoy time in the outdoors. (Courtesy of Aria Lewis)

    Marriage has taught the Lewises to respect each other’s space. She loves the ’40s, but Mr. Lewis can dress however he wants.

    “I haven’t ever asked him to look vintage,” she said. “I want him to wear [what] he feels is most comfortable. And I wear what I feel is most comfortable.”

    Some people who follow the couple on social media have asked, “Why doesn’t he look vintage, too?”

    She said, “Because that’s not what he feels most comfortable in, so I’m not going to ask him to wear that.”

    Living the Tradwife Dream

    Mrs. Lewis said that, unlike today, in the past men’s and women’s roles were clear.

    “Embracing who God made me to be as a woman is like embracing my femininity,” she said. “The very specific roles of men and women in older times, when our grandparents or great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents were alive, were defined.”

    She laments how the media today tells us we can be anything with no consequences. But that’s not true.

    Being a homemaker in 2023 is less common, and even shamed. Many feminists jockey against men for positions in the workplace, intent on shattering glass ceilings.

    Mrs. Lewis and the tradwife trend defiantly and deliberately turn the feminist revolution on its head.

    (Courtesy of Aria Lewis)

    “[Tradwifery] is hard to explain to people who just don’t get it,” she said. “The world has changed so much in the last 100 to 150 years. I just see it as almost completely opposite of what has been normal for thousands of years.”

    That’s not to say there weren’t periods in history when society was rough, and women were persecuted. Yet today things have reached the other extreme, she thinks.

    The role of the traditional wife means just that: filling the role of wife as it has long been defined. For Mrs. Lewis that means following the Bible.

    It also means having particular standards in how you dress, what you say, and how you treat other people. And it might mean sacrifice, accepting what you don’t have while embracing what you do.

    “I think we’re headed for even harder times,” she said. “I think we need to bring back a lot of these more frugal skills like I do.”

    The traditional lifestyle isn’t for all women as adopting such values entails sacrifice and making do with what you have, even if it’s meager.

    She said, “You make the most of what you have, and you seek to find beauty in that. That’s kind of what we’ve been doing.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 20:00

  • House Judiciary Seeks Documents From Jack Smith Over Trump Cases
    House Judiciary Seeks Documents From Jack Smith Over Trump Cases

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

    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Chairman Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) have demanded documents from special counsel Jack Smith seeking information about his investigation of former President Donald Trump, and threatening a subpoena if the Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to ignore similar requests they submitted earlier this year.

    (Left) Special counsel Jack Smith. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) / (Right) House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    “Based on publicly available information, the Committee has significant concerns about your commitment to evenhanded justice,” the House Republicans wrote on Thursday in a letter to the special counsel.

    Mr. Jordan and Mr. Biggs are asking for documents, including communications between the special counsel and the U.S. Attorney General’s office regarding investigating and prosecuting President Trump, salaries and travel costs incurred by special counsel staff working on the Trump case, and hiring criteria for the team.

    They gave a deadline of Jan. 4 for the requested materials.

    Mr. Smith is prosecuting former President Donald Trump in two separate federal criminal investigations, one alleging mishandling of classified documents and another alleging interference in the 2020 elections. He was appointed special counsel last November to investigate matters related to Jan. 6, 2021.

    The committee chairs pointed out that this is a prosecution by the Biden administration of “President Biden’s chief opponent in the upcoming presidential election,” and that a record showing partiality has emerged.

    “You have a record of attempting to criminalize political discourse, as evidenced by your reported interest in how the Justice Department could prosecute conservative tax-exempt groups engaging in constitutionally protected political speech,” the letter reads.

    They called into question Mr. Smith’s appointment as special counsel, raising questions of “fairness and justice.”

    They cited a Washington Post report that quoted top DOJ officials opposing the investigation into President Trump for his role on Jan. 6, and recent reports that the special counsel demanded from Twitter (now X) information about users who reposted or liked President Trump’s posts.

    This is within the committee’s purview, they noted, because it could inform legislation “including possible reforms regarding politically motivated prosecutions.”

    Repeat Requests

    The House Judiciary had previously made three requests for information from the DOJ concerning “politicized” prosecutions.

    On June 1, Mr. Jordan requested information about how Mr. Smith was using FBI personnel in his investigations, highlighting recent reports of political bias in the department.

    On June 6, Mr. Jordan requested the unredacted version of the memo outlining the scope of Mr. Smith’s authority as special counsel, citing concerns about overreach in the FBI raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022. The raid resulted in a case Mr. Smith is prosecuting.

    On Sept. 7, Mr. Jordan requested documents and communications between the special counsel’s office and defense attorney Stanley Woodward. Mr. Woodward is representing a codefendant in the Mar-a-Lago case and had alleged that an attorney from the special counsel’s office tried to bribe him to turn his client against President Trump.

    The special counsel’s office was not immediately available for comment.

    Investigating Trump Cases

    A number of House Republicans have been outspoken about the multiple ongoing cases against President Trump, who has maintained a wide lead as the GOP frontrunner and looks ever more likely to become the party’s nominee.

    He has been on trial in New York in a civil fraud case since October, and litigating pretrial motions in four separate criminal cases to which he has pleaded not guilty to 91 counts.

    In Georgia, President Trump faces racketeering charges in his challenge of the 2020 elections.

    Mr. Jordan has also opened a probe into prosecutor Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, citing concerns that the investigation is politically motivated. Ms. Willis has been campaigning and fundraising as of late, with events coinciding with the high-profile litigation of the case against President Trump and more than a dozen others.

    The committee later expanded that probe to cover potential “collusion” between Ms. Willis and the Jan. 6 Select Committee, which produced a highly controversial report accusing President Trump of wrongdoing.

    Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) has also called attention to potential bias in Trump cases, filing an ethics complaint in November against New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the civil fraud trial. She cited concerning statements the judge had made before and during the trial, and questioned a pretrial ruling the judge made in finding President Trump liable for fraud before hearing his defense.

    Closing arguments for the New York case are scheduled for Jan. 11, and defense attorneys are expected to appeal shortly after the judge makes his ruling.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 18:40

  • "I Am Not A Student Of Hitler": Trump Defends "Poisoning Blood" Comments, Says Illegal Immigration Is "Destroying Our Country"
    "I Am Not A Student Of Hitler": Trump Defends "Poisoning Blood" Comments, Says Illegal Immigration Is "Destroying Our Country"

    Former President Donald Trump on Friday defended his past comments on immigration amid a flurry of leftists crying ‘Hitler’ for saying illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” during a recent campaign rally.

    While appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Trump was asked whether he was aware that Hitler used a similar phrase to suggest that “Jewish blood cannot be part of German blood.”

    “No, I never knew that Hitler said it either,” he said, adding “I never read Mein Kampf,” referring to Adolf Hitler’s book written during his imprisonment during the 1920s and translated as “My Struggle” in English.

    “They said I read Mein Kampf. These are people that are disinformation, horrible people that we’re dealing with,” Trump said.

    Hewitt then asked if Trump meant anything racist by the ‘blood’ comments, to which Trump said “Dear no.”

    “I know nothing about Hitler. I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood. He didn’t say it the way I said it either,” Trump continued. “It’s a very different kind of a statement. What I’m saying when I talk about people coming into our country is they are destroying our country.”

    “This country’s—we have prisoners coming in. We have mental patients coming in by the thousands. Really, by the millions, because you take a look, I believe that number will be 15 million people. Maybe more than that” by the time President Joe Biden leaves office,” Trump continued, adding that he will “peacefully surrender” power at the end of his second term, if reelected.

    Last week at a Durham, New Hampshire campaign rally, Trump said that illegal immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and “pouring into” the USA from “all over the world.”

    As the Epoch Times notes further; last week’s “poisoning the blood” remark from the former president sparked reactions from both Republicans and Democrats.

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he did not care much about language choice but focused on the right solution for border security. “You know, we’re talking about language? I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right,” Mr. Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

    But Vice President Kamala Harris condemned the 45th president during her interview with MSNBC, saying, “It is language that is meant to divide us. It is language that I think people have rightly found similar to the language of Hitler.”

    Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said that “it’s unhelpful rhetoric,” while anti-Trump former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called it “disgusting.”

    Immigration is one of the key issues in the 2024 White House race, and it is one area where Republican candidates are doing better than their Democrat counterparts. According to a Monmouth University poll released on Dec. 18, a record high of 69 percent of Americans disapprove of President Biden’s handling of immigration, while only 26 percent approve.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 18:05

  • A Rigged-System From Top To Bottom: George Orwell Meets Lewis Carroll
    A Rigged-System From Top To Bottom: George Orwell Meets Lewis Carroll

    Authored by Donald Jeffries via ‘I Protest” Substack,

    Just the other day, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a remarkable statement. “Before this trial even began, the judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump did engage in years of significant financial fraud,” James boasted publicly. This is associated with just one of Donald Trump’s absurd legal cases.

    Let what this laughable, biased prosecutor said sink in for a moment. She admitted that the honorable judge had “ruled in our favor” before the case had gone to trial. Even for this collapsing Banana Republic, it’s a shocking precedent to openly brag about such a serious breach of basic legal protocol. James, whom Trump has called “racist,” recently stated, “The Donald Trump show is over.” James has referred to Trump as an “illegitimate president,” and said “his days are numbered.” She lashed out at Trump at many rallies, even declaring, “We’ll bring him down!” Upon being elected in December 2018, James vowed, “We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well.” In this case, Trump is accused of exaggerating the value of his assets.

    Now, I’ve known a lot of people in my lifetime that exaggerated the value of whatever they had. Bullshitters, I believe they’re called. Or to be more polite, blowhards. Until now, being a bullshit artist wasn’t a criminal offense. The good judge in this case, Arthur Engoron, is about as biased as can be, a perfect example of the new judges who rule over the Orwellian courtrooms of America 2.0. Engoron slapped a gag order on the former president after he insulted his law clerk in a post on Truth Social. Some insults are more equal than others. Trump also received a gag order in his equally ridiculous trial for “conspiring to overthrow” the 2020 election, by complaining about the many obvious irregularities that smacked of fraud.

    It’s hard to keep track of the players without a scorecard, but Jack Smith, the prosecutor in the case where Trump is being tried for alleging electoral fraud, something which Stacy Abrams continues to do in the same state, is in a category by himself. Smith has regularly taunted Trump on social media, at Trump’s own grade school level. It makes you proud to be an American to witness it. Judge Tanya Chutkan is almost identical to Engoron in her transparent bias against Trump. Trump has no chance in either case. Although a bit less classless than the TikTok judges Alex Jones has been tried by, they are similar in their disregard for traditional appearances of impartiality and the presumption of innocence, and their distaste for free speech.

    Just as the lethargic American public permitted tyranny to be constructed all around them, without protesting or even noticing, they have allowed the implementation of a politicized justice system. The prosecutions of Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, Sydney Powell and other Trump associates were all politically motivated. Peter Navarro was convicted for contempt of Congress, because he ignored a subpoena. You know, the same thing presidential offspring Hunter Biden just did this week. Former Attorney General Eric Holder did this as well. Some subpoenas are more equal than others. I’m just a community college dropout, but I do know that either congressional subpoenas are legally required to be responded to, or they aren’t any big deal.

    The January 6 defendants, those who aren’t still languishing in prison nearly two years later, denied all due process, have been given draconian sentences. Some will spend more years in prison than many murderers do. There hasn’t been a single concerned civil libertarian who has complained publicly about the political prisoners in Washington, D.C. Well, actually there really aren’t any civil libertarians left in America. Well, there is me. But who’s going to listen to me? The ACLU has dropped that whole civil liberties thing. It was so America 1.0. Maybe they can change their name to the American Criminal Leftists Union or something.

    Doug Mackey recently was sent to prison for a short stay, for making fun of Hillary Clinton in a 2016 political meme. He could have received seven years. So, the judge was “lenient.” I don’t know, I think it’s pretty tyrannical to prosecute anyone for a political meme, let alone put them behind bars. Even for a single day. I’d ask what the statue of limitations was for a political meme, except that heretofore, political memes have not been considered potentially criminal in nature. Keeping with the “new norm” in jurisprudence, Owen Shroyer of Infowars served over a month in prison recently, most of it in solitary confinement. For being videotaped warning people to not go into the Capitol on January 6. He’s kind of the anti-Ray Epps, who of course was filmed urging people to go inside the Capitol, and remains free at large.

    Now, I don’t know if any of this bothers you, but it certainly should. They are setting precedents to prosecute others, like you and me, for the same “crimes.” I’ve heard from enough ex-cons to know what prison is like, and I don’t want to go there. Even if it was a country club, and inmates actually had a blast there, I would still long to “climb the golden walls,” to quote the old poet. We already have way too many people imprisoned. More than any country has ever had. We should be letting those out who don’t belong there, as well as figuring out just how many were victims of this same horrific legal system, and are actually innocent.

    Because of the Trumpenstein Project, which used the former reality TV star to hopelessly divide the country, and destroy any independent political movement, our “justice” system has dropped all pretenses. We’ve all seen the video of cops planting evidence, or threatening to do so to uncooperative motorists. In Pennsylvania a few years back, some judges were convicted of having knowingly sent a bunch of underage kids into the world of sex trafficking. For money. The elite do love their mammon. Ambitious prosecutors going back to the sham trial of Bruno Richard Hauptman, framed and executed for the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, were later found to have doctored evidence in order to get a conviction. A win. Everybody loves a winner. They have never cared about justice.

    It bears repeating that this tyranny was constructed on the backs of all those apathetic Americans. Who didn’t care that others were being railroaded, or given outrageously long prison sentences, as long as it wasn’t happening to them, or to someone they love. Human beings generally don’t care about the injustices inflicted upon strangers. “Hey, I’m doing fine,” they’ll rationalize. It’s a shocking inability to stand inside another’s shoes. Empathy should be an essential part of human nature. But it’s never been as lacking as it is today. You have to have a population that totally lacks empathy, for instance, in states like California. To mindlessly walk by the pathetic people living in tents, stepping around the human excrement on the sidewalks.

    As the Libertarians used to note, every time a new law is passed, we create new “criminals.” There are already far too many laws, and yet the public clamors for more. Millions want those they disagree with politically to be “locked up,” you know, like career Deep State villain Hillary Clinton. Who is, of course, definitely not locked up. The swamp has never been fuller. It’s ironic that, with all the politicized prosecutions going on, the criminal elite continue to evade the long arm of the law they control. I wrote about all the modern Deep State criminals in Hidden History. None were ever prosecuted. Even if they were prosecuted, they would be acquitted by the same brain- dead juries that convict hapless riff raff on zero credible evidence.

    I’m no fan of Rudy Giuliani. He was a part of the ridiculous 9/11 mainstream narrative. He was a quintessential RINO. Then he started talking about what was on the Hunter Biden laptop. Is he really shown raping a ten year old Chinese girl? Is his then fourteen year old niece filmed nude there? I don’t know, but Giuliani alluded to a lot of things regarding this laptop. I do know that our legal system seems unconcerned with it. Or Hunter’s well documented profits in Ukraine, which seemingly involved his famous father. Now Giuliani has been convicted of defaming two Black Georgia precinct workers. The two were awarded nearly $150 million in damages. Please, somebody defame me! Now that may be a drop in the bucket to the near billion Alex Jones was ordered to pay to selected Sandy Hook parents, but it’s nothing to sneeze at.

    So, this is our new Orwellian legal system in a nutshell. Dominion sues a bunch of people who were suggesting that their electronic voting machines aren’t as pure as one of Joe Biden’s ice cream cones. Fox News, which naturally has a financial interest in Dominion, loses a high profile defamation case against them, without even attempting a defense. They could have cited the excellent book Votescam, by the late Collier brothers, which documented the suspicious nature of electronic voting machines. Or at least the section on vote fraud in my own book Hidden History: An Expose of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-ups in American Politics. But instead, Fox fired Tucker Carlson. So they did do something.

    I was watching another of those Investigation Discovery network shows the other night. I don’t know why I do that, other than to reinforce my own impression of just how incredibly unfair and inconsistent our justice system is, and how monstrous average people can be. In this episode, an attractive blonde admitted to killing her husband. He was supposedly abusing her or something. She wasn’t the first attractive blonde to use that defense. So she had to stab him nearly 200 times. At any rate, she’s already been released from prison after serving sixteen years. Or one year less than Joe Biggs was sentenced to for being an unarmed “insurrectionist” on January 6. That’s six years less than the Hispanic leader of the “White Supremacist” Proud Boys got. And he wasn’t even in Washington, D.C. Feel the wheels of injustice grinding.

    I may write a book on our injustice system, focusing to a large extent on these maddening disparities in sentencing. And also the number of poor souls who have been sentenced to life without parole, on the basis of the sole recanted testimony of a fellow inmate. Has there been a juror, outside of I guess Aunt Bea on The Andy Griffith Show, over the past century or so who understood what “reasonable doubt” means? Sure, most of those convicted weren’t hot blondes, but with the “fat acceptance” movement taking the culture by storm now, that particular entitlement doesn’t carry the weight it once did. I can cite other cases, like the father who killed his son in front of his family, and got something like fifteen years. Or one year less than Joe Biggs. I don’t know how the average prosecutor, or the average juror, can sleep at night.

    Alex Jones was not allowed to use the First Amendment in his defense during his endless series of Sandy Hook trials. All for the same “crime.” Isn’t there some twist on double jeopardy there, to prevent someone from being prosecuted multiple times for the same thing? One of Jones’s TikTok judges literally told the jury that he was lying. I don’t think judges are supposed to do that. Something about presiding in an impartial manner comes to mind. But tell that to Amy Berman Jackson, the Democratic Party activist judge who allowed the lead juror in Roger Stone’s show trial to stay in her position, after she posted anti-Trump and anti-Stone messages online. During the trial. Even in the old corrupt days, that would have been enough to get her tossed, even if the defendant was an accused serial killer. Jackson wouldn’t replace her.

    Thanks to the “Woke” carnival on campuses for the past several years, the new judges taking the bench will all resemble Alex Jones’s TikTok persecutors. They could literally have an LBGTQ+ (I don’t care if I got all the ridiculous initials correct) flag flying behind them in court. The goal appears to be to strip away whatever vestiges of traditionalism remain in America 2.0. Thus, the court battles thus far, between deranged mothers and befuddled fathers, over the “gender” of their abused child, have resulted in victories for the side of insanity. The side of body mutilation. That’s the way these courts roll. They aren’t about to even accidentally make a just decision.

    Thanks to the universal acceptance of Judicial Review, the courts have become the final arbiter for everything. So when a much saner California overwhelmingly passed proposition 187 in 1994, which would have denied illegal immigrants government benefits, a federal judge simply ruled it was unconstitutional. That’s the “democracy” that we’re supporting in Ukraine, where all opposition political parties and media are banned. One unelected individual in a robe overruling the will of the people. Democracy. Thomas Jefferson saw Judicial Review for what it was, and seemed to be about the last American to complain about it, until I came along, with my humble but growing following on the internet. If the Republicans were really an opposition party, they’d be making an issue of this. They aren’t. They just hope for the “right” judge.

    This system isn’t just rigged. It’s irreparably broken. And as Donald Trump pointed out in his most astute campaign comment, you can’t trust those who rigged it to fix it. Every time someone who was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, gets convicted after seeing his public defender for all of five minutes, we all lose. An unfair conviction, or an unjust acquittal based on legal irrelevancies like wealth, race, or politics, taints the system we all are supposed to respect. No one with any critical thinking ability whatsoever, and even a cursory knowledge of modern history, can possibly have the least bit of faith in our system. I cannot argue any longer with the anarchists. There is no reason to have even the most limited trust in any authority.

    It’s entirely appropriate that the most corrupt society in the history of the world, our own glorious America 2.0, should have a system of kangaroo courts that would make Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, blush. We are really almost at the point of “sentence first, verdict afterwards,” which for over a century represented just a titillating example of the author’s renowned “nonsense.” When a judge openly rules that a defendant is guilty, before the trial has begun, as happened in one of Trump’s show trials, then we have literally reached that stage. And the vast majority of Americans couldn’t care less. Or “could care less,” as many of them would ungrammatically put it. After all, they aren’t on trial. If you got nothing to hide, why do you care? They simply cite one of their countless ghetto references: “I’m good.”

    We have school administrations loyally backing crazed TikTok teachers who want to interrogate preschoolers about which gender they “identify” as. And courts that will undoubtedly rule against any sane parents who want to stop the madness. We have the entire business world- the vaunted private industry dear to the hears of conservatives everywhere- supporting the lunacy of “announcing pronouns.” And there isn’t a business out there, in this rigged marketplace of ours- that won’t fire someone for “misidentifying” one of these troubled souls. They’ll also fire you for “hate speech,” if the “right” people complain loudly enough. We have seen countless people “cancelled” from their jobs for their social media posts. On their own free time.

    The millions of Americans who cling to some semblance of sanity, and believe in some semblance of liberty, are powerless. They have no “representatives,” in Congress, in the courts, in the business world, or in Hollywood. Every organ of the establishment is aligned against them. You might even call that a conspiracy. They don’t care if you don’t buy their products, or go to their movies. It’s not about profits, in this allegedly profit-driven land. There are far more important agendas here. The Great Replacement. The eugenicist’s wet dream of culling the herd. Of not only having all the wealth, but as Huey Long pointed out, of gleefully knowing that you don’t have it. It’s a wealth disparity thing, you wouldn’t understand.

    The White Hats aren’t going to save us any more than the White race is going to suddenly start madly procreating. We have to save ourselves, and that will only be possible by using our massive advantage in numbers. But everyone, including me I freely admit, hesitates because they know that not enough others will join with them. It’s a real Catch-22. If you take a chance, and the expected happens- you wind up as one of only a handful of rabble rousers, easy to make an example of- then you’re far worse off than now, when you can rage against the machine from a safe distance. JFK quoted the old Chinese proverb that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Our single step can be to make our presence known at the local level- things like school board and local supervisors’ meetings.

    I was at the post office the other day, and as usual the great heroes had left only half the cashier windows open, despite there being a holiday line extending out the door. Naturally, I spoke up loudly, asking them how long the line had to get before they would open all their windows. Just as naturally, no one answered. The cowed crowd, typical citizens of America 2.0, remained oblivious. A few glared at me. Now, this is about the lowest level protest imaginable. If just a handful of people in that line had said, “Yeah, why don’t you open up all the windows?” then they probably would have done so. I’m willing to speak up, but there has to be people that simply second my motion. But even in something as relatively insignificant as this, the people are silent.

    Just as I was writing this, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s name can’t appear on the presidential ballot in the state. After all, he was responsible for leading an “insurrection” to topple the duly elected, humble and lovable, noncreepy Joe Biden. The fairest and freest election in history. So those supporting the candidate leading in all the dubious polls are essentially being disenfranchised in that state. There may well be other states. But there’s always the U.S. Supreme Court, the one they call the Trump court, which never supports him. This is the way “our democracy” works. Trump and his voters are a “threat” to it. Just nominate Nikki Haley, Republicucks. She’s the perfect candidate for your “opposition” party.

    I won’t give up hope, and I certainly won’t give up my faith. Maybe someday, in some part of this once shining land, a group of naysayers will finally have had enough. When one of them speaks up, to the post office, the school board, the board of supervisors, whatever, a bunch of others will rally behind them. When confronted with the least bit of unexpected solidarity, authority figures from cops to educators to post office “heroes,” will almost assuredly back down quickly. Finally do the right thing. Finally listen to the people, when more than a lone wolf speaks out. If there is hope, it is at these lower levels. And if results are achieved there, then we move on up to the next level of corrupted power. As RFK said, tiny ripples of hope.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 17:30

  • Biden Shafts Kennedy Over Secret Service Protection For 3rd Time
    Biden Shafts Kennedy Over Secret Service Protection For 3rd Time

    The Biden administration has denied political rival Robert F. Kennedy Jr. US Secret Service protection for the third time, according to a letter obtained by Desert News in which DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signs off on rejecting Kennedy’s request.

    On Friday, Kennedy’s campaign confirmed the credibility of the letter, which allegedly states that “based on the facts” (no elaboration), as well as the recommendation of an advisory committee, that protection for Kennedy was “not warranted.”

    “I have consulted with an advisory committee composed of the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader, the Senate Minority Leader, and the Senate Sergeant at Arms,” Mayorkas reportedly wrote.

    “Based on the facts and the recommendation of the advisory committee, I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not warranted at this time.”

    In 2017, the criteria for protecting candidates was established to help the DHS decide when this should occur – with one factor being whether “the candidate has publicly announced” their run for president, and properly filed documentation. They are also required to conduct a “threat assessment,” as well as determine whether the candidate is “actively campaigning.”

    Independent candidates must poll “at 20% or more of the Real Clear Politics National Average for 30 consecutive days.”

    According to U.S. law under “18 USC 3056A,” the U.S. Secret Service is tasked to provide protection to “major presidential and vice presidential candidates and, within 120 days of the general Presidential election, the spouses of such candidates.”

    According to Kennedy, he qualifies.

    In October, an intruder was arrested at RFK Jr’s, Los Angeles home, after being detained by Kennedy’s private security detail.

    A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) told The Epoch Times officers responded to a burglary call around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, and when they arrived, a blonde, white male wearing a green t-shirt was detained by security at Mr. Kennedy’s home in the Brentwood neighborhood.

    Authorities said the man, Jonathan Macht, 28, was taken into custody at a nearby police station where he was cited for trespassing and then released.

    Clearly the optics of legitimizing a political foe are more important than whether he’s assassinated.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 16:55

  • US Attacked 100 Times In Iraq & Syria Since October
    US Attacked 100 Times In Iraq & Syria Since October

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    A Pentagon official said Thursday that US troops in Iraq and Syria have come under attack at least 102 times since October 17, when the attacks started due to US support for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

    The Pentagon official told Military Times that the number includes 47 attacks in Iraq and 55 in Syria that involved a “mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles.”

    Getty Images

    At least 66 US troops have been injured in the attacks so far, including five who have been awarded Purple Hearts. US officials say most of the rockets and drones fired at US bases didn’t reach their intended target.

    Most of the attacks have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, an umbrella group of Iraqi Shia militias. The US has launched several rounds of airstrikes in Syria and Iraq in response and specifically targeted Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main Iran-aligned Shia militias in Iraq.

    The latest attack that’s been confirmed by the US military took place on Wednesday. US Central Command said a 122mm rocket was fired at the Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq, causing no casualties or damage.

    In 2020, Iraq’s parliament voted to expel all foreign military forces over the US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

    The US refused to leave Iraq and pressured the Iraqi government to allow its forces to stay. In an effort to placate anti-US factions, the US formally changed its presence in Iraq from a combat role to an advisory role in December 2021 to help in the fight against ISIS remnants, but the US did not withdraw any troops at the time, and there are 2,500 in the country today.

    In Syria, the US backs the Kurdish-led SDF and has about 900 troops occupying the eastern portion of the country, where most of Syria’s oil resources are located.

    The occupation is part of the US economic war against Syria, which involves crippling economic sanctions specifically designed to prevent the country’s reconstruction.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 16:20

  • 'No, No, No' – Christmas Vacations Score Low On This Year's Wishlists
    'No, No, No' – Christmas Vacations Score Low On This Year's Wishlists

    While Christmas and the holiday season are usually reserved for spending time at home alone, with friends or visiting family, some people, for example, like to trade in the Western climate for warmer weather or engage in a winter sports vacation over the holiday break.

    As Statista’s Floran Zandt shows in the chart below, based on data from the Statista Consumer Insights Christmas and Holiday Season special, the percentage of people going on Christmas vacation this year is comparatively low.

    Infographic: Christmas Vacations Score Low on This Year's Wishlists | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Of the six markets analyzed in this seasonal survey, Brazil is the only country where the share of respondents claiming that they want to spend the holiday season on vacation hit double figures.

    This isn’t necessarily due to geographical or weather reasons, as only seven percent of Mexicans surveyed were planning a Christmas vacation, the same share as in Germany and the United Kingdom.

    Across all surveyed countries, spending Christmas at home was the most popular option, with percentage shares ranging from 53 percent (France and Mexico) to 66 percent (United Kingdom).

    Options that consistently rank lower than going on vacation are spending the holidays at an event, at a restaurant and at work.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 15:45

  • Dave Collum's 2023 Year In Review: Down Some Dark Rabbit Holes, Part 1
    Dave Collum's 2023 Year In Review: Down Some Dark Rabbit Holes, Part 1

    Authored by David B. Collum, Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology – Cornell University (Email: dbc6@cornell.edu, Twitter: @DavidBCollum),

    This Year in Review is brought to you by healthcare, broken markets, law-and-order, and the case for a multi-year bear market…

    Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018) full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception, with Dave striking again in his usually poignant and delightfully acerbic way.

    Contents

    Part 1

    • Introduction

    • Contents

    • My Year

    • Healthcare

    • Investing – Gold, Energy, and Materials

    • Gold and Silver

    • Broken Markets

    • Multi-Decade Bull Market: 40 Years of Recency Bias

    • The Case for a Multi-Decade Bear Market

    Part 2 (released tomorrow)

    • Law and Order

    • Media

    • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    • Climate Change-Epilogue

    • News Nuggets

    • Lahaina Fires and DEWs

    • The War in Ukraine–Epilogue

    Part 3 (coming in January of 2024)

    • January 6–Epilogue

    • Woke Culture and Rising Neo-Marxism

    • Transgenderism

    • Pedophilia and Geopolitics

    Download a pdf of Parts 1 and 2 here.

    *  *  *

       The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

    ~ Mark Twain

    This is my 14th Year in Review, and they are getting very hard to write. I am grateful to Peak Prosperity for providing this opportunity to hang myself. They began as a summary of my investments and a few comments about what I was pondering for some friends at the Prudent Bear chat board and have morphed into a beast that has tipped the scales at over 300 pages on a big year. I think the most epic was 2021 in which I wrote about rising authoritarianism.1 I had a goal—a plot rattling in my head—that had to be finished. Last year had three parts in which the final section on Covid and the lockdowns was roughed out but never uploaded. I am not sure whether I was Covid-saturated or I perceived that the world had had enough, but I just buried it in a shallow grave with other victims of Fauci. This year is at risk of the same thing happening.

    For those with the appetite for industrial strength snark, Dave Collum’s review of the year offers magisterial and cynical analysis of a year most of us would probably rather forget.2

    ~ Price Value Partners

    A psychologist once suggested that I fly at 35,000 feet, spot something, drop down to check on it, and then return to full elevation. That’s not a terrible description. I am motivated to write guided by two beliefs: (1) I could figure out what was happening in the world, and (2) chronicling the human folly would somehow influence the outcome. I now believe neither to be true. The Truman Show is throwing too many plot twists that are so monumental that a sense of futility is taking over. I was told not to dwell on what I cannot control, which is now everything. The plot seems like a season of Yellowstone with the vague distinctions between good and evil, highly flawed players, and functional equivalents of The Train Station. (For those unfamiliar with Yellowstone’s plot, that is where they dump the corpses.)

    Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about themselves, and small people talk about others.

    ~ John C. Maxwell.

    Diverse people talk about all three! In any event, these allusions to Hollywood are not by chance. I have a growing sense that Hollywood is profoundly corrupt—I am not just talking drugs and sex—and is charged with “fictionalizing reality.” Got a problem with elite pedophilia and Satanic cults? I believe we do. Hollywood created Eyes Wide Shut starring Tom Cruise. The CIA was too dark and sinister, so Hollywood fictionalized it with The Good Shepherd starring Matt Damon. Assassins-in-training in the CIA’s MKUltra program getting into mischief? Call Matt off the bench again to play Jason Bourne. By anchoring public perception on fictional plots, Hollywood disarms reality. Hey: it’s just a movie, right?

    We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy our economy.

    ~ Chris Hedges

    What keeps me writing? Narcissism. I love the hugs. Catherine Austin Fitts put my entire writeup on the coming pension crisis in her Solari Reports noting, “I loved reading your year-end War and Peace.” Larry Summers told me “you have no filter.” My first Covid writeup in 2020 was said to be in the hands of Steve Scalise’s staff for uploading to the Congressional record. (I have no idea if it made it.) As outlined below, I have wonderful chats with brilliant people on the podcast circuit.

    There are the Joe Sixpacks who have no voice and reach out in comments sections or by emails thanking me for voicing their concerns. So many people just want a voice. Tweeters with 20 followers are thrilled when they get a response because somebody heard them. These are the guys who listened to Oliver Anthony’s Richmen North of Richmond and were brought to tears.3 The media tried to tell us Oliver wrote an anthem for angry white guys, but montages of black guys rockin’ to his lyrics proliferated on social media. When Elon Musk publicly told Disney’s Bob Iger to “Go fuck yourself” for trying to blackmail him by pulling ad revenues, that was the fuckoff heard ‘round the world. I don’t know if Elon is a good person—probably not—but he is playing one on the internet, and he is very special in his own way.

    Musk: If somebody is going to blackmail me with advertising—blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself.

    Andrew Ross Sorkin: But…

    Musk: Go…fuck…yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hi Bob! [referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger]

    Sorkin: Blah, blah, blah: what do you do?

    Musk: F…Y.4

    That isn’t writing at all, it’s typing.

    ~ Truman Capote

    Good writing on important subjects does not go out of date. If something is not important a month or even a year later, it was not important the day it was written. I try to touch third rails. If a 68-year-old tenured professor can’t speak up, then who can? It gets me in trouble occasionally. I got canceled pretty seriously in 2020, sleeping with a shotgun fully committed to taking at least one of those death-threatening neo-Stalinist Antifa curb stompers to the light with me if they had showed up at my house. Regular readers certainly have detected elevated anger as I witness the world’s events unfold in ways that were unimaginable a few years back. I have no intention of pussy footing around my foes. I would love to see that mass-murdering Tony Fauci fed to the spirit cookers.

    You’ll get a fair trial followed by a first-class hanging.

    ~ Judge Roy Bean

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

    ~ Harry S. Truman

    If you came out of the Covid pandemic and not figured out that the entire narrative was an exercise in authoritarianism and possibly a largely peaceful depopulation, I think you are pretty lame. If, however, you grasp the Covid story, you probably have also figured out that the CIA whacked Kennedy, 911 was an inside job, and every war in at least a century was started with one or more false flag events. If so, Pat yourself on the back for grasping many big issues. Robbie Parker understands…

    Maybe the Covid scam and all the associated lies proffered by credentialed experts have you wondering if the credentialed climate experts are lying too. Climate change, in my opinion, is the biggest scam in history. If, by contrast, you are supergluing yourself to roads during rush hour and throwing tomato soup onto masterpieces to save humanity, you suffer Munchausen by progressive and are a member of the biggest cult in history.5 Please—I beg you—when Reverend Jones gives you the nod, drink. (I have returned to climate change again this year, just to top off previous thoughts with some fresh ones and to piss of The Cult.)

    If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale.

    ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

    If you support biological males competing in women’s sports, you must have gotten picked last for kickball, and you certainly don’t support women’s sports. If you oppose erasing the gender line in sports but don’t speak up, shame on you. It is called ‘pluralistic ignorance’ when members of a group privately disagree with what is considered to be the prevailing attitudes, creating a false consensus. The problem festers when those who know better refuse to speak up.

    I will take the Women’s Sports Complex to task in Part II. And if you know that a million children are disappearing each year—you should know this because those are mainstream-accepted numbers—but have not taken the time to ask who is receiving these children, be patient. I intend to take you down that darkest rabbit hole in Part II. The guilty consumers of these children are not dirtballs hiding in trailer parks ring-fenced from elementary schools but rather dirtballs residing in C-suites, mansions in Hollywood, and the political Halls of Power. They should be rounded up, tried, and executed regardless of which country, corporation, or Congressional district they oversee.

    Conspiracy theory is used against anyone who asks questions the government does not want to answer.

    ~ Tucker Carlson

    By now you’ve figured out I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire every day, and you likely gravitated to this review knowing that. I implore you to stop using the term “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” pejoratively. When somebody comes at me with that, I wear that badge with honor, but not before I rip their faces off for trying to censor my uncomfortable speech. We know they lie to us all the time; we are simply trying to put the puzzle pieces together.

    Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

    ~ Einstein

    My views of finance and geopolitics have been profoundly influenced by my career in chemistry in which I have published over 160 papers, which is a solid count. Almost every one of these papers, however, chronicled how elite scientists who were trying to get it right managed to bone it, sometimes quite badly. I developed the rare skill of being able to confront credentialed experts and say with a firm voice, “I think you are full of shit.” I can entertain any idea that does not break the laws of physics, although endorsing it is another matter. I try to pry my Overton Window wide open to observe what I previously could not fathom. I then write to clear my thoughts and, hopefully, to pry your window open a little bit too.

    Now that I have shaken off the pathological losers, let’s get down to business. Here I am again with my little pic and shovel trying to clean up a mudslide. I follow several guidelines when writing. I try not to dwell on things I can’t control and avoid topics that I can’t offer a fresh perspective. Last year I wrote about Ukraine by rounding up about 40 voices that I believed were sincerely trying to find the truth, and then compiled these disparate voices into a single narrative.6 I believe that writeup was some of my best work. Many may disagree because I pointed an accusing finger squarely at NATO, not Putin. I return to the topic this year to clean up some loose ends, fully convinced that the US war machine is hell-bent on mass murder of Ukrainians. Call me a liberal—a commie dog if you wish—but I am a former Goldwater conservative and Reagan Republican who is appalled by how profoundly the US has lost its way in the world.

    Our lives have become wall-to-wall uncertainty…The main institutions of our society have abdicated their role for public-spirited adjudication of what is true based on expertise. What you are having—what you are seeing—is people coming to hate experts and coming to hate institutions because they are realizing that these institutions lie to people that they never considered unless they were Alex Jones fans to begin with. You are seeing a complete destruction of reality unless they were physically there…Nobody has an answer.7

    ~ Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein)

    Part of my obvious dismay stems from the growing conviction that the world is hurdling toward global authoritarianism, the core of my 2021 YIR. It’s not just that Nazi Klaus and his you-will-eat-bugs hooey. Every time you let a computer decide for you—every time you push your credit card in the slot or go through TSA security—a computer is deciding your fate. It’s binary: yes or no. No human stands willing or capable of overriding the decision. We are already being ruled by algorithms, and our future is offering up authoritarian CBDCs, digital IDs, facial recognition software, and carbon budgets, all enabled with AI. It is a march toward digital authoritarianism.

    No, this guy on Twitter is hysterical. He isn’t in finance but knows a ton. He is a professor at Cornell. You gotta follow him.

    ~ Overheard by a friend at a Philadelphia sporting event.

    Sources and Social Media. Source material is critical. Firstly, nearly all mainstream media is worthless. The serious players have moved to Substack, a platform I may land on at some point in retirement. The censoring is so bad that if you are not ready to hit odd places like Rumble armed with a serious filter, I don’t think you have a chance of lifting the skirt of geopolitics. Censoring is now a multi-billion dollar industry with conferences and trade shows.8

    Fact-checkers are useful as a contra-indicator: a large number of fact-checkers tell’s you the lie is a whopper. Wikipedia’s fine for basic facts but as soon as there is a whiff of politics involved, the CIA and FBI are all over it. That is straight from the founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger. Given that the three-letter agencies have budgets in the trillions for their dark-ops shit, is there any doubt that they completely control (or at least sanction) the narrative? Throw on heaps of censorship, and we have no chance of getting the straight scoop without archeological levels of digging. I am a huge fan of ZeroHedge. Of course, they get stuff wrong, but they are often first on the scene of the drive-by shootings by the Deep State.

    When I see this stuff I think, you’re just a fucking idiot.

    ~ @KeithMcCullough

    So I have given up treading softly. I avoid asterisks to protect the faction of p*ssies who think pussies is an abomination. I’ve also lost patience with the Sharia of the political left taking over the entire system. On occasions where I suggest somebody should get more boosts, this is not out of concern for their well-being.

    Topics Untouched. There are topics I will not touch for a host of reasons having to do with lack of interest, vast crowds already crowing about them excessively in the Propaganda-Industrial Complex, or hopes for a fatter pitch. I am not going to write about the Biden administration this year (at least not directly): their capacity to deliver profound content has overwhelmed me, and every pundit on the planet is already writing about those sock starchers. What I will say is that the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice and its shredding of the Constitution is the most treasonous chapter of American History. The whole lot—cabinet members, staffers, Garland, prosecutors, and the Big Guy himself—should be rounded up, tried, and, if convicted, hurled into the cells currently occupied by J6 political prisoners.

    An evil enemy will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.

    ~ Sun Tzu

    The RNC is pathetic, but the DNC appears Hell-bent on destroying the Nation; it looks premeditated. By stating that, don’t I risk losing half my audience? No. You’re it. If you haven’t already figured out that Joe is a child molesting, compulsive lying, womanizing rapist with late-stage dementia who sold us out to the Ukrainians and Chinese, I can’t help you. The evidence is out there for the curious. You must at least be wondering why the DNC shows no obligation to serve up a credible candidate for the Nation’s highest office. I am sure many will not agree with these views. Hold those lovely thoughts of yours.

    The trouble with Dave is he tends to sit on the fence.9

    Feargus OConnor-Greenwood, author of 180 Degrees: Unlearn The Lies You’ve Been Taught To Believe

    This may shock some, but I currently have little to say about Trump. I nervously voted for him in 2016 and wrote what I thought was a good analysis of the 2016 election and the implications of the sea change in the country.10 The 2020 election was less interesting to me, although I firmly believe the election was both slanted—biased by powerful forces trying to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse—as well as rigged by total fraud at the ballot boxes. Besides the evidence, I am confident that there was nothing both parties wouldn’t do to keep him out of power. I was agnostic about a rerun until I watched them—them as in both parties and all three-letter agencies—weaponize the Department of Justice against The Donald and anybody within his orbit to ensure nobody stays within his orbit.

    Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

    ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

    A friend, Peter Boghossian, noted that the solution to extreme left-wing politics is not extreme right-wing politics. The legendary Doug Murray says that revenge is a terrible emotion. I agree with both of these guys, but we are in a cold civil war that I fear could turn hot. As songwriter Bruce Cockburn lyrically noted, “If I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-a-bitch would pay.” I never want to see somebody hurt, but it is also never off my list. I now want to see Trump win. I want to see his detractors completely lose their minds.

    Tim Deace of the Tim Deace Show: Who is the alternative media host or platform you think needs more prominence in a post-Fox world?

    Jill Savage: I am going to go with an off-the-wall one in Dave Collum. He has a year-in-review document that he does. He is a professor at Cornell, but he is brilliant. Every podcast that he does is a must-listen.11

    I did not see that one coming. I am also leaving Covid and Fauci alone this year. I think he is a mass murderer, and the response to Covid he orchestrated was an abomination, but it is time to move on with selective forgiveness. If you acted in a way that appears cowardly to protect your job or well-being, I understand. I got jabbed to protect mine. (Just today, my urologist let loose on the vaccine and lockdown with the same angst about its risk and not having a choice.) I am, however, rooting for the civil courts to mete out justice to the authoritarians and institutions who could have attenuated the bad response. I am less optimistic that the real criminals will become Billy Holiday’s strange fruit hanging. Next time they try to take our freedoms like that—and there will be a next time—get ready to fertilize that Tree of Liberty. Not a gun fan? Well, a Louisville slugger or a sand wedge are multipurpose. How the doctors and scientists regain their credibility is unclear, but here is a good starting point: stop lying.

    Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read.

    ~ Salman Rushdie

    The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.

    ~ George Carlin

    I have always imposed a personal gag order for one topic: I have assiduously avoided debates about Israel and Palestine. Well, this was a good year to retake my vows of verbal chastity. I have some novel thoughts—some controversial ones—but you ain’t gonna read about them here. This, of course, will piss off both sides who believe they are fighting genocide, but you are gonna have to carry on without me. I have touched the topic in public three times.

    • I said to the students in my graduate class the following:

    As you know, the world changed rather markedly two days ago. I am confident that there are supporters of both sides of this issue in this class, and it is quite personal to some of you. I urge you to be kind to each other.

     

    Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

    ~ Plato

    Notice that I was so anodyne that I did not say what changed the World.

    • I commented once on Twitter the day after the attack:

    • I’ve suggested on podcasts that the conflict could go global. This situation is way more risky than Ukraine. I envision World War III as a global civil war—a global-scale Rwanda. I hope not. It is, at the very least, yet another profound inflammation to keep former friends fighting.

    We have a challenge around political diversity on the campus…I would love to see a way in which we would expand the breadth of voices that we hear in our community…the answer is more speech. Not indifferent speech, not less speech.

    ~ Michael Kotlikoff, Cornell Provost and friend

    Unfortunately, others at Cornell were more liberal with their free speech and got Cornell into a pickle. Professor Rickman made national headlines by saying he was “exhilarated” by the Hamas attack.12 Incoming! The University President, Martha Pollack, denounced him by declaring that these “do not represent Cornell’s values.” She noted that this was only the second time that she denounced the opinions of a faculty member. Any guesses who the target of the first one was? Yup. Me. I defended the police in 2020 when they knocked an old man over in Buffalo.13

    She was fundamentally wrong; the old guy was a scam artist looking for a fight, and he faked his injuries. The police acted appropriately. Her denunciations of both Rickman and me were wrong at a fundamental level for another reason: She cannot speak for Cornell or its values. She can speak for her values with the gravitas of the presidency backing her. She can discuss Cornell’s codes of conduct. But Cornell is an eclectic glob of characters with divergent values and conflicting ideas. Nobody can speak for Cornell’s values.

    Martha’s job got worse within the week when a Korean kid posted horrific anti-semitic shit across social media. Both reputational and dollar losses for Cornell that week were incalculable. Two months later three Presidents of other elite universities—Harvard, Penn, and MIT—got hammered in front of Congress.14 They were inexcusably unprepared for the questions, placing their jobs at risk by the blunder. They screwed the pooch badly, but, in the spirit of Rikki Schlott’s treatise, Canceling of the American Mind (see Books), I think canceling them is inappropriate.

    I suspect they entered those hallowed Halls of Congress arrogantly marinating in their superior intellects and self-worth, not realizing their opponents were armed with machetes not brains. I would, however, fire Harvard’s Claudine Gay for what she did to Roland Fryer15 under the guise of social justice and Law Professor Ronald S. Sullivan16 for defending Harvey Weinstein because apparently some are undeserving of good legal counsel. One could argue she should be fired and lose her PhD for multiple counts of alleged plagiarism.17,18

    Gay’s whole research agenda, her whole career, was based on my work… I don’t believe her record warranted tenure.19

    ~Professor Carol Swain, waiting for this moment to pounce

    UPenn lost its president within days, but whether she left in shame or disgust is unclear.20 Billionaire Harvard alums are sharpening their Schiffs for Claudine, but I betcha she will sneak out the backdoor soon.21 Elite universities may have collectively forfeited billions of donations. That is understandable but also unfair in my opinion. Universities have thousands of faculty and tens of thousands of students, many with batshit crazy ideas. Would you pull your support because you discovered there were some nutjobs in that crowd? I bleed Cornell Red. It is a great institution, and I continue to support it. By the way, nothing I just wrote should be construed as support for any national or ethnic group, but it probably will be.

    Major Themes of the 2023 Year in Review. Well, with all that taken off the table, what the hell are you gonna talk about? Cool your jets. I am returning to Ukraine for some cleanup of that narrative and will top off Climate Change because the Climate Grifters will be pillaging for decades. The usual discussions of broken markets, the Fed, inflation, and the economy are discussed to tee up my case for a Multi-Decade Bear Market. (This is my base case; it could get worse.) I peek at RFK, Jr. as the second most interesting candidate in many election cycles—Trump being the first—and the catastrophic collapse of Law and Order. Part I wraps with a look at the curious oddities underlying the Maui fires and use them as a springboard to examine directed-energy weapons. I pulled my books section forward out of fear that it will be omitted like last year’s because I ran out of gas.

    Part 2 of this YIR, presuming I can finish it, is where the really disturbing stuff rears its ugly head. After some credible concerns about Woke Culture (neo-Marxism) and transgenderism (more neo-Marxism), I intend to shoot into the darkest rabbit hole ever—the influence of pedophilia and geopolitics. This is not generic Epstein crap, but rather an attempt to understand how a million kids disappear from the face of the Earth each year and the untold dark tale of their fates.

    There is something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.

    ~ Buffalo Springfield

    Why has this year been such a personal battle? Well, the pedophilia theme sucked the soul out of me and continues to be a work in progress. A section on Healthcare touches upon personal challenges that imposed both time and emotional constraints on my creative juices.

    You gotta get right back under the horse.

    ~ Catherine the Great

    My Year

    You can skip this part, but it is my annual Dear Diary entry, and there is some generally useful content. After years of stellar teaching evaluations with particular enthusiasm focused on my entertaining campfire stories, I started having minor scuffles with the snowflakes. A half dozen years ago I gave a guest lecture for a colleague. While describing my proclivity for not accepting chemical dogma, I alluded to my tendency to not accept conventional wisdom outside academia too. One sentence piqued the students’ angst: “There is something odd about the Las Vegas shootings that is not right; I’m gonna figure that one out.” That’s all it took for five graduate students to converge on the Chair’s office with hurt feelings. I was spot on that one too; the Las Vegas shootings were totally whacked.1 My initial response was, “Fuck ‘em.” But the message is clear: political climate change is serious.

    It comes out of not loving your children. People who love their children don’t drill holes in your children’s life raft.

    ~ Eric Weinstein

    I went to a symposium on “Free Speech in the Classroom” organized by Cornell’s President. I was ready to pounce with a few questions. She was a no-show as were the hard scientists, leaving the room filled with professors in the squishier subjects. The takehome lesson for me was that everybody is afraid of the students. How could an LGBTQLMNOP Gender Studies professor possibly not be bulletproof? Well, while I am walking on egg shells teaching chemists-in-training (OK. stomping on them); the humanists are dancing on chards of glass in front of an army of activists-in-training looking for scalps. (Can I still say scalps? Apparently, because I just did.) Don’t be too quick to blame the colleges for this sad state of affairs, however. The freshman are Children of the Corn, some arriving pre-fucked up by indoctrination since daycare with parents who failed to adequately immunize them from bad ideas.

    If people can’t control their own emotions then they have to start to control other people’s behavior.

    ~ John Cleese

    This year I started the semester debilitated by a 1.5-inch bladder stone to be taken out by Dr. Luke Skywalker and his lightsaber that week. I told my class on Day One of the semester, “no chemistry today” and chatted with them while writhing in pain in a semi-fetal position sitting on a table. I discussed grading policy, study hints and habits, the profoud importance of digitally disconnecting long enough to get work done, and the philosophy of the course. To get ahead of the rumor mill, I also explained why my 2020 cancellation originating from two brawls with national labor unions (UAW and AFT) and the subsequent smear campaigns by the butt-hurt union organizers has made me Google toxic.

    I also assured them that I will likely say something that offends them but urged them to talk to me rather than some adult, because I am the only one who actually cares to have that conversation. Well, the call came in later that day: I was told to stay in my lane or risk a mass exodus from the class. After a fusillade of F-bombs—I used F-bombs like authors use a space bar—I prepared for the next lecture. At the end of the 2nd lecture, having made several dozen wisecracks and fully demonstrated my linguistic incontinence, I told the class about my scolding, that Larry Summers is correct about lacking a filter, and that, “if that is gonna offend you, I suggest you drop the course.” (That was the last response my reprimander was looking for.)

    Well, two lectures later the second gag order came in via the Department Chair. Comically, he could not even tell me the actual complaint, only that some nimrod in the university relayed a vague message. The following lecture I noted that it was getting comical and admitted I was wrong: “I misspoke: you should complain to the President because I am now gunning for a university record.” The semester was littered with standard harmless wisecracks and campfire stories and the occasional edgy statement with no complaints. I suspected that within a few lectures the students realized I was a harmless punk, not mean spirited at all, and care deeply about them. On 12/15/23 I got my teaching evaluations. Something in me snapped. It was audible. My wife tried to console me. It may be irreversible.

    If my dog bothers you, I can put you in the other room.

    ~ Source Unknown

    On a positive note, we got another Boston Terrier! They are wonderful.2,3 That makes three for us and another two with my son. They are soooo affectionate, especially when I am eating. This particular photo made the Big-Time when Brent Johnson slipped it into his talk at the New Orleans Investment Conference. The fat bastard in the front is known as “Fucking Charlie” from a podcast with Anthony Pompliano in which I had to keep pushing him off my lap with the phrase, “Fucking Charlie!” Even so, my crew’s fame would have a tough time keeping up with the legendary singing French Bulldog, Walter Geoffrey.4,5

    I just like Dave’s voice. Whatever he says is fine, too.

    ~ commenter with a nasal fetish

    Talks and Podcasts. I got to speak at Porter Stansberry’s tent revival, oddly now estranged from Stansberry Research, joining Meb Faber as the two outsiders. I presented my Multi-Decade-Bear-Market thesis outline below. It was my second year at Brien Lundin’s New Orleans Investment Conference. I repeated the Bear Market theme but got to hang with old friends and join Lyn Alden, Peter Boockvar, and Jimmy Iourio on a panel discussing the Boom-Bust cycle. The bearishness was palpable.

    I appeared on over 50 podcasts this year. I love chatting for hours with smart guys (especially Jake of Statefarm), and, if they want to record it, that’s fine too. Each one is special. The group ones with Tommy Carrigan, Jim Kunstler, and Tom Luongo have an interesting dynamic. Mike Farris is so affable. The podcasts with John Cullen (former Oracle code writer) on the Las Vegas shootings and Covid Narrative were highly produced and quite different as podcasts go. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but fact-checking articles soon appeared after years of dormancy.6,7 I begged Rudy Havenstein (@RudyHavenstein) for years to do a podcast pushing Grant Williams knowing Grant’s enthusiasm for the idea. He finally bit with Grant and Stephanie Pomboy, and it was great.8 His second was prompted by Rudy to join him in a threesome; we asked hodler Marty Bent to host it.9,10 Well, that opened the floodgates for Rudy. He’s brilliant.

    Dave is a cross between Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, the Outlaw Josey Wales and many, many great philosophers and religious leaders. He’s flawed like all of us but has a steady moral compass with a conviction which defends it.

    ~ comment in Cedric’s podcast

    Links to my 2023 podcasts:

    • Jesse Day (@jessebday) Commodity Culture.11

    • 2022 New Orleans Investment Conference panel discussion on conspiracy theories. (I chose state-sponsored mass shootings).12

    • 2023 New Orleans Investment Conference Conspiracy Theory Panel13 with Russell Gray (@REGuysRadio) and Chris Powell of Gold Antitrust Action Committee (GATA).

    I like listening to people interview Collum to see how long he can go without talking about kicking someone’s ass. Seriously, he does it every time.

    ~ Commenter on Moriarty’s podcast

    • Jonathan Kogan (@Kogz) of The Jonathan Kogan Show.14

    • Jonathan Kogan (@Kogz) of The Jonathan Kogan Show.15,16

    • Mike Farris (@CoffeeandaMike) of Coffee and a Mike.17

    • Mike Farris (@CoffeeandaMike) of Coffee and a Mike.18,19

    • Mike Farris (@CoffeeandaMike) of Coffee and a Mike.20

    • Mike Farris (@CoffeeandaMike) of Coffee and a Mike (11/23).21

    • Michael Gayed (@leadlagreport) of Lead-Lag Report (June).22,23,24

    • Jim Iuorio (@jimiuorio) and Bob Iaccino (@Bob_Iaccino) on Futures Edge.25

    • Keyvan Davani (@keyvandavani) of TheKeyvanDavaniConnection.26,27

    • 2023 New Orleans Investment Conference talk and Boom and Bust panel28 with Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact), Peter Boockvar (@pboockvar), and Jim Iuorio (@jimiuorio).

    • Cedric Youngelman (@CedYoungelman) of The Bitcoin Matrix (1st).29

    • Cedric Youngelman (@CedYoungelman) of The Bitcoin Matrix) (2nd).30

    • Chris Irons (@QTRResearch) of Quoth the Raven (late 12/22).31

    • Kai Hoffmann of Soar Financially.32

    • Andrew Stotz of My Worst Investment Ever (3/23).33,34

    • Andrew Stotz of My Worst Investment Ever (4/23).35

    Wife Tricks Husband Into Listening To Her By Starting Every Statement With ‘Welcome To My Podcast’

    ~ Babylon Bee

    • James Delingpole (@JMCDelingpole) podcast.36,37

    • Tommy Carrigan (@tommys_podcast) of Tommy’s Podcast with James Koutoulas (@jameskoutoulas).38

    • Tommy Carrigan (@tommys_podcast) with Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) and James Kunstler (@jhkunstler) (4/23).39

    • Tommy Carrigan (@tommys_podcast) with Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) and James Kunstler (@jhkunstler) (6/23).40

    • Tommy Carrigan (@tommys_podcast) with Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) and James Kunstler (@jhkunstler) (8/23).41

    • Tommy Carrigan (@tommys_podcast) with Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) and James Kunstler (@jhkunstler) (9/23).42

    • Tommy Carrigan (@tommys_podcast) with Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) and James Kunstler (@jhkunstler) (coming on 12/20).

    • Anthony Fatseas (@AnthonyFatseas) on WTFinance.43

    • Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) of Gold Goats ‘n Guns.44

    • Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) of Gold Goats ‘n Guns (11/23).45,46

    • John Cullen (@I_Am_JohnCullen) discussion of Las Vegas shootings (continuous stream).47

    • John Cullen (@I_Am_JohnCullen) discussion of Las Vegas shootings (full production).48

    • John Cullen (@I_Am_JohnCullen) discussion of the Covid Pandemic.49

    • Alison Morrow (@AlisonMorrowTV) with late arrival.50

    • James Kunstler (@jhkunstler) on KunstlerCast (1/23).51

    • Anthony Pompliano (@APompliano).52

    • Jay Martin (@JayMartin) of the Jay Martin Show.53

    • Jay Martin (@JayMartin) of the Jay Martin Show (9/23).54

    • Marty Bent (@MartyBent) on Tales from the Crypt (1/23).55

    • Marty Bent (@MartyBent) on Tales from the Crypt with Rudy Havenstein (@RudyHavenstein).56,57

    • Kevin Estopinal (@KevinEstopinal) podcast (2/23).58

    • Kevin Estopinal (@KevinEstopinal) podcast (6/23).59

    • Jason Burack (@JasonEBurack) on WallStForMainSt.60

    • Logan Moody (@realLoganMoody) The Contrarian.61

    • Mark Moss (@1MarkMoss) Podcast.62

    • Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv).63

    • WallStreetSilver (@WallStreetSilv).64

    • Tom Nelson (@TomANelson).65

    • Antonio Atanasov (@antonioatanasv) Resource Talks.66

    Cherish those that seek the truth but beware of those that find it.

    ~ Voltaire

    Healthcare

    Healthcare in the Collum-Cornell clan was fairly standard if graded on a tough curve set over the last 35 years. On December 5th, 2022 my wife fell and broke her neck. She had broken it a dozen years ago, and my mother cracked her neck and died in 1999, so this was getting routine. (As an ex-gymnast I knew six broken necks, including Mark Caso at UCLA who went on to become Leonardo the Ninja Turtle.1) Stay on the subject, Dave. Healing for the 12/5/22 break was proceeding well according to her neurosurgeon, but, after follow-up visits and several CT scans, he started talking nonsense about fusing it because of her unusual pain. Red flag: neurosurgeons operate on structural problems and neurological malfunctioning not pain. We got a second opinion ASAP and found out the most recent CT scan had been done of her head rather than her neck: seemed like a fuckup. Doc Two gets a CT on the neck, walks into the office, and asks the most loaded question: “Did you fall again?” Indeed, on December 8th—three days after the first break—she fell and broke it again. This was on C1—this one is often fatal—and it was not just a hairline crack. Did Doc One miss this niggling little detail and was covering his ass? She is not very comfortable, but there was nothing more to be done until a third (non-neurosurgeon) expressed concerns about the stability. We are now considering a fusion, which will cause total loss of mobility. She has almost none now.

    Urologist: You have to stop choking the chicken.

    Me: Why?

    Urologist: I am trying to examine you.

    I have now reached the “get off my lawn” age, and it is getting statistically challenging to respect my elders. (I thought getting old—adult-onset progeria—would take longer.) Running a distant second place to my wife, I had several issues too. The key YIR writing month of the year—December—was wiped out by a nasty flu-like ailment caught from the little Typhoid Harrys—the grandchildren—during Thanksgiving. But more serious troubles started much earlier.

    Revised Hospital Chart Has Patients Rate Pain On Scale From Zero To Watching ‘The View’

    ~ The Babylon Bee

    I had been pissing wads of bladder sand about every 4–6 weeks for several years. That stopped abruptly, which was either good news—not generating it anymore— or bad news because it had congealed into something bigger and unpassable. I reached the point of serious discomfort—bladder stones are spherical but jagged—and began doctor shopping with one criterion: will he see me. After two more months of painful urinations, each the volume of a shot glass, the medical system quit ghosting me and sent in Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to blow up what had become a 1.5-inch asteroid.

    Having now acquired experience with adult diapers, pissing what looked like egg-drop soup, and gulping down courses of antibiotics, I am symptom-free. My doc, however, said that I should get my prostate, which is now the size of an orange owing to mui macho loads of testosterone, pruned. They’re going in 2/1/24. Google reminds me it could have been worse and that bladder stones were likely the early demise of many an unhappy male in previous generations: This is not mine, but this guy suffered…

    I wondered if the sudden bladder problems2,3 and a steeply rising blood pressure (50 points in the last two years) might trace to the vaccine. What is undeniable is that (1) getting old sucks, and (2) something has gone very wrong with our healthcare system. My wife has had 60 surgeries. That is not an estimate but rather a precise count. I am intimately familiar with how the medical system works from the consumer’s end. I also know the other end of the healthcare system owing to collaborations and consultantships with nearly a dozen big-cap pharma companies, including 20 years at Pfizer and a stint on Merck’s long-range steering committee. I’m tellin’ ya, somethin’ has gone wrong.

    Bladder or prostate cancer was on my shortlist of concerns while being ghosted by the system. Imagine being told by your oncologist that you can meet with their physician’s assistant in two months. It is tempting to make appointments with all my docs pre-emptively—medical timeshares—and cancel them as they are not needed. Physicians have been demoted to purveyors of blood tests and scans, provided they can squeeze in a 10-minute cameo appearance on a Zoom call. The legendary Doctor Drew wonders about the invasion of AI into medicine.4 The new-fangled healthcare portals force you to interpret the test results in a process akin to self-checkout at Whole Foods. Your next colonoscopy may be a robotic gerbil fitted with a GoPro camera that you control with an app on your iPhone.

    Pig orgasms can last up to 90 minutes.

    (I needed a quote, but I am a damned Snapple Cap.) I have resorted to using Twitter for medical help, which requires care and caution, but with 100,000 followers you’d be surprised by the results. I also have serious advice for everybody: if you go on a new drug of any kind, search the name of the drug on Twitter. You will very quickly find out if it is a bad or good drug by the tenor of the chatter. My wife had a bad experience with Keppra: the whole story was right there.

    I finally succumbed to family pressure to get hearing aids. Somebody is going to have to explain to me how $20 worth of hardware can cost $7000. I asked the Woman in the White Lab Coat how I could stuff 10 iPhones in my ears or wrap 25 noise-dampening BOSE headphones around my head for the same price. The hearing-industrial complex smacks of a scam, but I must admit to hearing surreal things. Is that what rain sounds like? Is that what my blinker sounds like? Day one I was in the DMV, and I could hear every keystroke, every mouse click, every conversation. It was like a sci-fi movie.

    Compared to others, my experiences are little annoyances, but the Healthcare system is confronting the perfect storm.

    • Boomer healthcare will contribute massively to the GDP, leaving intellectually unwary economists oblivious to the fact that those trillions are not a product but rather the cost of maintaining a highly depreciating asset—Bastiate’s Broken Prostate Falacy.

    • The aging boomers were already pushing the system to its breaking point. The medical-industrial complex salivated at the prospect of escorting the boomers to the light in a slow, costly cruise ship, but provisions for growing the staff to handle the rising demand were overlooked.

    • As brilliantly delineated in These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner (see Books), private equity has been buying up hospitals, companies that manage emergency rooms, and health insurers. These corporate raiders strip-mine services to the bone, load the companies with huge debts, and pay themselves astronomical dividends and management fees. Thanks to horrific monetary policy creating mountains of dumb money, they then dump these shells of companies staffed with Doctors of Walmart on the open market for bloated prices, after which 47% of them are restructured through Chapter 7 or 11 bankruptcies. Jobs and pensions are lost, lives are destroyed, and communities are left without hospitals as formerly financially viable enterprises are ground to dust. What mystifies me is why these pirates of the high seas don’t get capped in their asses by angry consumers.

    • Covid knocked the healthcare system on its ass. The lockdown created a massive backlog of medical procedures while hospitals sat empty. The forced vaccinations elicited early retirements and firings of vaccine-hesitant workers—those unwilling to follow the policies of Dr. Mengele (Tony Fauci) and his bio-bimbo (Debbie Birks). You may notice they are now denying that they served up these policies. A physician’s assistant at the University of Rochester told me a mandated booster was canceled because they realized that the Rochester facility would lose another 25% of their staff.

    • Our erstwhile healthcare heroes—doctors and nurses—have noticed that inflation is a problem. They are now striking owing to 16-hour shifts and staffing shortages, which I am told does not help the staffing shortages.5

    It could get worse. Nationalized healthcare is when the government takes your dollars and pays for your healthcare albeit with profound inefficiencies and 100-fold markups6,7 that often accompany government programs. Centralized healthcare—a term coined in my 2021 writeup8—is when the government tells your doctor how to treat you.9 We saw it with the vaccines, testing protocols, and existing and new Covid treatments. Lobbyists will make a fortune as they ensure that their clients’ products are on the approved list. The list will be extensive because the completely captured and fraudulent FDA will now approve anything regardless of efficacy and its LD-50.10 The FDA is also tightening its control over inexpensive off-label and off-patent prescriptions—drugs that are technically not covered by FDA approval but known to work.11 Meanwhile, since you cannot advertise off-label prescriptions covered by patent protection, they are sanctioned and promoted widely using news reports of “promising treatments.” This year, for example, we witnessed the diabetes drugs marketed off-label through news reports proclaiming “great promise” at eliciting weight loss.12,13 One has already been pulled from the market. Recall that 75% of the media advertising dollars come from Pharma, so the media whores go heels up when summoned. What would Elon say? GFY.

    I am increasingly aware of the importance of nutrition and health. (Yeah. I know. What a genius.) I used to think only bliss ninnies worried about ingesting toxins, but I am starting to wonder. Recent studies show the Amish are not getting all the modern ailments that plague “the English”, including a striking lack of covid mortalities, diabetes, and autism.14 And at a scientific level, the growing awareness that the bugs comprising the human biome—those 100,000 retroviruses and gazillions of unicellular organisms in our gut and elsewhere—are not just freeloaders but rather function symbiotically to help us reach old age. Biome transplants—sterilization of the entire gut and inoculation with a new biome from a healthy donor—are leading to extraordinary discoveries about how the biome influences your general health. Biome transplants from fat bastards can turn you into a fat bastard. I have to read more on this and a related topic, epigenetics. Personalized healthcare, in which they treat you based on your genome and your genetics, also seems promising. Alas, companies like Blackstone are already digging into the potential massive grift.15

    Don’t get me wrong: I do not practice what I preach. I am a portly fuck with high blood pressure and a fondness for greasy food who is haunted by the pejorative, “muffin top.” There is a funny phenomenon, however, that I discovered by chance. Go to Google and search “identical twins smoking”. The smoking filters out the cute kids. The curious result is that you will see dozens of identical twins that remain identical deep into adulthood.16 You also discover that this was known.17

    Does that mean if I had an identical twin he would lean on the heavy side as well (after years of being fit as shit, I hasten to add)? If body weight is based on life choices, are these choices genetically determined?

    Oh well, I use intermittent fasting to touch the bag and start leading off like Barry Bonds. This prevents the walrus phase from becoming permanent. I have dropped 15 lbs since Thanksgiving. My goal is to clip my toenails without holding my breath. In the end, however, somebody will likely find me slumped over in a La-Z-Boy recliner having died of a heart attack with my cold dead fingers firmly gripping a half-eaten bag of Cheetos. If you look carefully, you will see a smile on my face.

    Investing

    Dave Collum is easily the best single investor I have come across.1

    –Bob Moriarty

    Well, that was nice. I live on Cayuga Lake in a house that is a lifestyle changer, but it is threefold more expensive than I needed, which forces me to call it a real estate play. I use Zillow to track it on my balance sheet. Cash in TIAA and other short-term bonds are returning about 3.5%. I also have 15% of my wealth in a fund that is not under my control (white privilege from my parents) and is an old-man 40–60 equity-bond split. It got beat up last year reaching for yield; it was OK this year. Some selected risk assets held during 2023 are below, many of which are relatively new and rather speculative. I also have some other tobacco and energy stocks that I have owned for years.

    • Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX):   –2%

    • Fidelity Natural Resources Fund (FNARX):   +5%

    • Fidelity Select Energy Portfolio (FSENX):   +0%

    • Goehring & Rozencwajg Resources (GRHIX): +12%

    • Impala Platinum (IMPUY): –45%

    • Jaguar Mining (JAGGF): –22%

    • Palm Valley Capital Fund (PVCMX):               +9%

    • Rio Tinto (RIO):               +5%

    • Sibanye Stillwater Limited (SBSW): –39%

    • Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV):               +4%

    • Central Fund of Canada               +3%

    • Gold             +13%

    • Silver               +4%

    • PRPH –45%

    • WDOFF +19%

    • EWZ +34%

    Some of those even surprised me how much they had blown up like a Ukrainian tank. Before you blow a snot bubble, however, and question the sanity of Bob Moriarty, bear in mind those highly speculative losers may evidence bad judgement but were also insignificant weightings; they were mere flesh wounds. The physical metals and their equivalents are so dominant that the net total return was +6% year-over-year. That ties inflation, but only if you buy those low-balled official inflation numbers. I believe, however, that how investors fare in the next “ordeal by water”—that trial used by overzealous Fed governors on witches—will separate the living from the dead.

    I am still interested in the platinum miners. PRPH is a speculative biotech play supported with wild enthusiasm by a friend with serious skin in the game. I am infatuated with Rio Tinto as a broadly based materials play. The EWZ is a Brazillian/BRICs bet inspired by Tavi Costa.

    It is equally beyond doubt, that every speculative mania which has run its course of folly and disaster in this country has derived its original impulse from cheap money.

    ~ The Economist, 1858

    I did well—spectacularly, actually—in the 30 years spanning 1980–2009. My huge mistake was that I was positive the orderly swan dive in ‘08–’09 was a head fake and that there was much more damage to be done; I expected another halving. When the markets hit the lows that were modestly below historical fair value—I talk about this more below—and I was nearly 80% liquid, I should have asked a simple question: how much exposure to equities should I have at the current valuations? Markets are like Father Guido Sarducci’s a-comin’ and a-goin’ planet: you know where you are but not where you are headed. My current positioning is probably my last big call in investing. I am still very liquid. My portfolio has been the polar opposite of the S&P on many days this year, which pleases me because I am trying to position against the S&P. Since I am predicting the markets will get interesting in a catastrophic sort of way as discussed in subsequent sections, it is not the time to re-pot myself.

    On one final note, I think you save for the future and invest to beat inflation. I take pride when my saving soars. I had some big expenses this year, including buying my wife a new car, repairing the old car to give to my son, installing an osprey nest in the lake right off my deck to make my wife as happy as possible, putting in some French drains, and contributing 5-digit sums from the Bank of Dad to each kid to make their lives a little easier. I still managed to save 25% of my gross annual salary this year. I am not living paycheck-to-paycheck, because I am paid well—academics at elite schools can be well-compensated provided they put up some good numbers—and I try to live a simple existence. Read the Millionaire Next Door; it’s about the psychology of saving.

    The Fed has never attempted a dive of this degree of difficulty.

    ~ Bill Fleckenstein

    Gold and the Precious Metals

    We’re at this point in time where we don’t have any road left to kick the can on our mismanagement of finances and monetary policy…the dollar will collapse under the weight of the deficit. I think gold is a good long-term hold, gold and other real assets with true value, such as land, gold and collectibles.1

    ~ Jeff Gundlach

    Gold started at $1830 jumped to a new all-time high of $2050 before getting monkey hammered to $1850. Short sellers who showed up in early December, however, got pegged when Powell spotted something that scared the hell out of him and announced rate cuts were coming. (Rumors of a failing Japanese bank are swirling as I type.) Gold is sitting at +12% ytd, but the price volatility could put this number out of date pronto. Silver hit a new decade high and shared the same playbook, albeit with a uninspired +11% year-to-date gain. The equities, despite good fundamentals on an absolute value (cash flow, strong balance sheets, low valuations) without invoking bullshit fictional reserve buried deep some God-forsaken regions of the world, managed a disappointing 2% despite gold’s rise. If you spot a tweet about me buying more gold equities, please send me some hate mail.

    Given that the dollar’s surge against most currencies, metal investors ought to be pleased that they have not gotten scalped. This is all pre-game noise, however. We will discover the metals’ mettle when we get dragged into the next serious economic and market downturn. I was confident that Powell was looking more like Paul Volcker than Arthur Burns, he did an abrupt 180 December. Although the metals might surge, that Powell’s skittishness foreshadows something lurking in the pipes of the banking system. I always worry that the metals may track the S&P down if liquidity tightens. I wouldn’t look for historical precedents: every downturn has unique idiosyncrasies. I am optimistic because there were quite a few days when the metals correlated inversely with the S&P. The following chart from Incrementum supports the case for metals outperforming the S&P during hard times.

    The following plot shows gold whoops equities after a yield curve inversion:

    Well, the yield curve inverted starting in mid-2022. The current inversion is both persistent and the steepest of all time. History also shows that risk assets’ luge ride to the downside begins in earnest when the curve un-inverts.

    Here are a few nuggets to ponder.

    • Zimbabwe issued a gold-backed currency, and the IMF got their underwear in a bunch. We’ll have none of that.2

    • Total global silver demand in 2022 came in at a record $1.242 billion ounces.3 This represented an 18% increase in silver demand over 2021.4 It is unclear how demand and supply aren’t the same numbers by definition.

    • It looks like Mexico is clamping down on existing mining operations by shortening their permits (rights) by decades, adding a 5% surcharge on profits, and restricting water use.5

    • In the first six months of 2023, China’s central bank bought an estimated 353 tons.6 China’s official gold reserves reached 5,029 tons by the end of June 2023. Some pundits are coming in with numbers 10 times that.

    Despite a multi-year horrific performance, I think Platinum may be the story to watch in the coming years. The physical metal has been dead money for years, hovering in a narrow band in the 900s. Even the gold bugs never talk about platinum. I am not a platinum expert although I have chatted with a couple. I suspect that the EV push has depleted demand for catalytic converters and investors’ interest in platinum. However, the EVs don’t look like a panacea to me. With the platinum miners located in South Africa (70% global production with rolling blackouts) and our relations with Russia a tad strained, platinum supplies could become very tight on top of an extant global shortage that is set to worsen soon (quarters not years) according to the World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC).7 I presume the WPIC is a public relations group to stir up interest.

    Meanwhile, the platinum miners (SBSW, IMPUY, and ANGPY) are priced like escorts in the San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. A disastrous mine problem at SBSW didn’t exactly help the sentiment or the price, forcing it to chop jobs and issue convertible shares.8 I spent a couple of days with a huge consumer of these shares who lives up near our cabin in the Adirondacks and am convinced that patience and the fat-assed 6–8% dividends (provided they hold up) pay you to be patient. Imagine what those shares would do if EVs lost their luster, hydrogen fuel cells became The New Thing, or platinum attained “meme” status after years of dormancy.

    For a US investor, it hasn’t worked for an awfully long time. For many investors, it hasn’t worked in their professional careers…investors have limted capacity to take pain and lack the energy to defend a concept that’s underperformed for decades.9

    ~ Cliff Asness (@CliffordAsness), founder of AQR Capital, talking about another asset class but…

    Broken Markets

    Now is a good time to buy or sell something that will generate me a fee or commission.

    ~ @RudyHavenstein, 2016

    You’ve gotta wonder what happened to that recession we were promised if Powell hiked rates to 3%. Was that just 14 days to flatten the curve or have markets done their endzone dance prematurely? Maybe this hysteresis is like March 2007, and that freight train is still just a low rumble off in the distance. The markets haven’t cracked, and the sell-side bookies wouldn’t know if the markets were about to star in Wall Street Chainsaw Massacre. Barron’s couldn’t even see it in December 2007, proclaiming “A Bullish Call: Wall Street’s seers forecast more gains for stocks next year.” Some of the uber-bears like Grantham, Hussman, and Felder assure us the end is nigh, possibly cutting well below the halfway mark (S&P sub-2000).

    When you get into a bear market, the bottom is not just back to normal. If you’ve been far above normal, then the bear market carries you far below normal.

    ~ Sir John Templeton in October 2001

    The QQQs are up >40% year to date, which I suspect does not reflect a 40% growth in their capacity to create wealth. These markets are a Tinder/Grinder dating app run by MarketsGPT. This does not matter to me because, although my biological clock is ticking, my investment time horizon still stretches out years if not decades. I believe you should marry an investment to withstand the ebbs and flows en route to sustainable winners. You dump the wretch when the prospects for sustainable gains become bleak. I’ve never understood taking profits just for the sake of retrieving your initial investment unless there is something more appealing to invest in. I divorced my equities in ’99 and married gold and cash. My bug compatriots urged me to sell with both hands after gold launched above $300. I didn’t because I was married to it.

    Technical Events. The geezers may have noticed that the language of Wall Street has mutated into nearly 100% technical lingo in which volatility, momentum, liquidity, sentiment, stock splits, support, resistance, Fibonacci numbers, various arbitrarily chosen moving averages, announced share buybacks, some Fed governor made a farting noise with his armpit, and, the dumbest of them all, cash on the sidelines are spewed by meatheads on CNBC. Interest rates are still quite low by historical standards and very low if they would stop lying about inflation. Tina—There is no alternative, an allusion to an equities-only portfolio strategy that seems to have drawn the affection of all the boys in town—appears to be on maternity leave with rates creeping to lordly 5%. She was quite the partier, but the slut’s absence hasn’t yet been noticed by equity markets.

    Investors can’t get enough of Japan[ese] firms’ stock splits, which make shares more affordable. And many of those firms are beating the benchmark Topix index.

    ~ Bloomberg, hyping stock splits, apparently after treatment with an MIB neuralyzer

    I will eventually attempt to peer way over the horizon. I’m obliged, however, as part of a Year in Review to hit a few admittedly random events to satisfy the ADHD crowd.

    • Steph Pomboy says Indiana University economists’ S&P earnings “fraud indicators” are at 50-year highs.1

    • BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is backing away from his “ESG” scam, blaming it on QAnon leader Ron DeSantis.2

    • Simon Hunt predicts the S&P will bounce off “support” at 3000 before crashing hard into a depression as interest rates soar into double digits.3

    • The yield curve became the most inverted in almost four decades. Astute market watchers note that the whiplash back to normal is when the projectile vomiting commences.

    All bull markets run out of money.4

    ~ Walter Deemer, 1972

    • Jesse Felder reminds us that market breadth—the percentage of stocks contributing to climbing the Wall of Worry—is the narrowest since 1990.5 “Excess liquidity” is a negative 11%. Tavi Costa notes that seeing tech stocks surging while the rest of he market declines has always foreshadowed major bear markets, such as seen in vicious countertrend rallies during the Dotcom Bust.”6

    • Tom McClellan has noted, “In the entire published history of monetary aggregates (since 1959), there has never been an M2 drop as big as what we are experiencing,” suggesting stocks are gonna suffer Death by Bongo.7

    • Precious few pay heed to John Hussman’s warnings that the tech stocks are elevated by “the highest [profit] margins in the history of margins.”

    The economic data have been just surreally good. Even optimists are just stunned. This is a Goldilocks economy.

    ~ Paul Krugman, former economist

    The world don’t need another asshole.

    ~ @icecube

    Superstocks

    I was glancing through yet another nauseating article about how stupid I was not to own the stocks that soared with the eagles. It reminds me of the now-classic Hindsight Capital spoof ad.8 Those in the markets during the tech boom will recall that, littered throughout the heaps of garbage with “.com” suffixes hanging off their asses, there were some really solid companies guaranteed to deliver high returns, including the likes of EMC, Enron, WCOM, Sun Microsystems, Tyco, and Global Crossing. Of course, a few years later those generals that survived were littering articles offering ten beaten-down tech stocks for under $10 that will make you fabulously rich over the next decade. Although nobody has a clue what the next ten 100-baggers will be, statistically speaking, some blind nuts will find these squirrels en route to being deified as the greatest investors of the era.

    Our industry is full of people who are famous for being right once in a row.

    ~ Howard Marks

    Jesse Felder has been bird-dogging the group called the Magnificent Seven. MSFT, AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, and AMZN are being bought at 65 times aggregate free cash flow, a five-fold expansion since 2012.9 For the mathematically impaired, that is greater than a fivefold expansion that is guaranteed to mean regress because valuation expansions preface valuation contractions. They are at the heart of the most violent market rallies, as short sellers who make the fundamental mistake of shorting “overvaluation” lose their shorts.10 The Mag 7 Index sure looks toppy—double toppy to be more precise—if you’ll forgive my technical jargon.

    Derivatives strategist Jitesh notes that the top 10 stocks are carrying 86% of the S&P return.11 The QQQ comprising 100 of the hottest tech stocks sporting a $20 trillion market cap has the Mag 7 representing 54% of the total market cap.12 The Mag 7 enjoyed a 72% gain in first half of 2023.13 Apple crossed the $3 trillion mark only four years after crossing the $1 trillion barrier, pumped by cash-burning share buybacks and unburdened by stagnant cell-phone sales,14 stagnant revenues, and the absence of an innovative new product since Jobs died. Apple’s ginormous cash hoard has now been largely zeroed out by over $100 billion in debt taken on to buy back shares.15

    The Nasdaq is brought to you by Nvidia: “We make the chips that drive our overvaluation.”

    Nvidia (NVDA) is the poster child of the New Era. I have seen cats chase laser pointers with less enthusiasm. I suspect NVDA and its CEO will be pictured on milk cartons when the next big whoosh lays waste to the indices. Some hang the Ponzi moniker on NVDA owing to massive valuations (50x revenues), shady dealings with Coreweave,16,17 and a CEO with bad press from past shenanigans.18 High Tech Strategist’s Fred Hickey says that tech companies are jumping on the AI bandwagon, prompting them to buy “loads of very expensive NVDA graphics chips and boards all while generalized tech hardware sales were collapsing.” Nvidia began talking about selling new shares to “eager investors”, which makes them the first trillion-dollar meme stock. Nvidia’s 50x revenue price tag dwarfs Sun Microsystem’s 10x revenues that preceded its >95% price collapse.

    There’s a huge disconnect between (soaring) stocks and end markets.

    ~ Fred Hickey (@htsfhickey), The High-Tech Strategist

    If you think Silicon Valley knows what it’s doing financially, you really have to rethink things.

    ~ Jim Chanos, Kynikos

    Non-Superstocks. Something about the super stocks clicked. Every boom has elite stocks doing the heavy lifting. While pondering the “super stocks” and how much they would burn as they reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, I realized I was missing a bigger point. There are 490 of the biggest companies in the World—Superschlocks—that produce goods and provide services that collectively do not provide investors with positive returns. I emphasize “collectively” because there are winners, but they are offset by the losers. 41% of the equities in the Russell 2000 are unprofitable.19 Goldman puts half of the equities as negative cash flows (losers):20 “Higher funding costs [viz higher interest rates] could force some of these companies to cut labor costs or even close.” In antiquity (the 20th century) IPOs were postponed until the company demonstrated profitability rather than these “dollar and a dream” scams. Now publicly traded companies can go womb-to-tomb without ever earning a profit.

    The huge outperformance in the stocks of the largest US firms will become further entrenched as they outspend on capex and buybacks, while smaller companies defensively build up cash levels. Big is beautiful. That’s been the resounding lesson from stock markets over the years. The biggest stocks have not only outperformed the rest, they have made their performance look like a rounding error.21

    ~ Simon White, Bloomberg macrostrategist and superstock enthusiast

    Much of this is not new. A recent study of 64,000 global equities in the 1990-2020 window found more than half underperform treasuries.22 “The top-performing 2.4% of firms account for all of the $US 75.7 trillion in net global stock market wealth creation from 1990 to December 2020.” (I contest the validity of the term “wealth creation” and would substitute “wealth aggregation.”) They note that “44.8% of the 17,776 U.S. stocks in the present sample outperformed Treasury bills.” This is not a good performance by the non-Superstocks. The authors went on to implicitly kiss the brass ring of indexing as the best way to ensure that you capture the high-sigma Superstocks. The WSJ chimed in by tracing the last 100 years of gains to the top 4% of equities.23 “Less than half of all stocks even generate positive returns over their publicly traded lifetimes, and only 4% of stocks created all the net gains in the U.S. market between 1926 and 2016.” Robert Gordon asserted that wealth creation began to stall in 1970 and flatlined by about 2005, which is important. The market generates revenues without profits (all hat no cattle). An expensive market generates little real profit, especially after fees and taxes.

    The lack of net collective profits for 96% of S&P should bug the shit out of you. If you owned 500 gas stations and 490 of them collectively generated no profit, you’d sell the dregs with both hands. The failure of the owners—the investors—to harvest profits from this vast block of companies is a variant of the Cantillon Effect. As the money flows through the grubby paws of the system, those at the end of the line get only a trickle. Inflation benefits the CEOs, C-suitors, lawyers, and others within the machine—the first recipients of the new money—while investors get pathetic dividends and transitory capital gains. I will return to this issue below.

    Net worth has tripled since 2000, but the increase mainly reflects valuation gains in real assets, especially real estate, rather than investment in productive assets that drive our economies.24

    ~ McKinsey & Company

    This pattern has repeated itself in the 10 biggest bubbles… Once prices fell by at least 35 percent, they were past the point of no return. The bubble typically bottomed out three years after and 70 percent down from the peak…the long fall in the 10 historic bubbles was interrupted by as many as four echo bubbles — surges of at least 20 percent.25

    ~ Ruchir Sharma, chair of Rockefeller International

    Real Estate. Let’s take a quick peek at real estate. Any Fed Governor worth their paycheck—there are none—will tell you real estate is critical to the Wealth Effect. The Wealth Effect is critical to the 70% consumer economy. A consumer economy is a Potemkin artifice in which we all get rich by consuming rather than producing. Of course, anybody who believes that is a nitwit.

    You get in this vicious circle, where higher interest rates cause higher funding costs, cause higher debt issuance, which cause further bond liquidation, which cause higher rates, which put us in an untenable fiscal position.

    ~ Paul Tudor Jones

    The housing market, the stock market, and the bond market, all overpriced at the same time. If the Fed knew what it was doing it would not allow bubbles of this magnitude to take place.

    ~ Jeremy Grantham

    I have been railing for years on how horrid single-family dwellings are for institutional investors. If you want to make money, build rectangular boxes with 500 rental units. Renting McMansions is unprofitable unless you can get capital essentially for free (check), buy the housing on a fire-sale discount (check), and ramp the hell out of the rents (check). According to the New York Times, there were no megabuck “permanent capital” investors in the single-family-rental market pre-2010, but there are now several dozen26 with “hundreds of thousands of single-family homes.” Contemporaneously, low capital costs ushered in a rebirth of Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour in the AirBNB space wherein amateur speculators pulled off the same trick on a more distributed scale.27 The one thing that could destroy these dreams of vast profits is if rates rose sharply (check). With payments on new mortgages almost tripling and school and property taxes rising, the average homeowner-in-training can only pay half the price for a house than two years ago. I do not care if the housing market hasn’t hit the windshield yet; it will. It must. It’s fourth-grade arithmetic.

    And for the pivot mongers thinking a Fed pivot will save them, history shows you will be bludgeoned after the pivot, so there is that. The real disaster is if Powell has grown a spine, is done kiting the markets, is no longer just a jaw boner, and is trying to show that he is Paul Volcker not Arthur Burns. Despite his recent display of spinelessness, I remain skeptical of his intentions and suspect I will be putting a “check” mark on that one too after Powell’s dirty sanchez.

    The market is acting like a 15-year-old right now and if you want 15-year-olds to behave, you know what you got to do.28

    ~ Lawrence Lindsey, Former NEC Director

    And if that were not bad enough, a quick gander at some TikTok videos showing student-debt-laden youngsters upselling Vente Lattes at Starbucks bitching about becoming the employed homeless. Such ingrates. Those college-educated baristas will not be buying those rapidly depreciating McMansions from the rapidly depreciating boomers. Moreover, they don’t want them. These young socialists-in-training are proud to be lean and green with small carbon footprints. The current metastably low inventory and lack of sales of residential real estate is not a tight market but rather a necrotic market in which potential buyers and sellers are failing to price discover in the marketplace. They will…eventually. Here is how existing home sales are holding up…

    The residential markets with relatively long-duration debt may be the minor league. I was on a panel with the smart and lovable Peter Boockvar, and he made a very important point: even if the Fed goes on hold today, the noose will rapidly tighten around corporate and US sovereign debt markets owing to the relatively short debt duration. Trillions of dollars of what are operationally balloon loans are beginning to blow up. The cities are also changing rapidly as quality of life is plummeting as Zoom calls, Smash ‘n’ Grab Loots, and the homeless proliferate. It is no small feat turning office space into condos, but who will be left to rent them? Many suspect that high-rise jingle mail cometh.

    Where We Are in the Big Cycle: On the Brink of a Period of Great Disorder.29

    ~ Ray Dalio

    I am not a big Ray Dalio disciple.

    ~ Stan Druckenmiller

    Multi-Decade Bull Market: 40 Years of Recency Bias

    Enough of this near-term malarkey. As noted, I am not interested in this year’s favorite war, detonating asset class, Fed policy change, yield curve inversion, trendline smackage, or disappearing market breadth beyond their entertainment value. I need to know if I will be OK in 2030 and still liquid in 2040 to fund my retirement with no fossil fuels, eating bugs, and still not flying in air cars. The financial asset markets are in desperate need of a correction. Let me rephrase that: those of us who doggedly resist buying bullshit assets at ridiculous prices are desperate for a correction. This is not a short-term view. A deep, protracted correction is a certainty, in my opinion.

    The spirit of the times is ‘Don’t worry about the markets crashing. They will come back up and set new highs.

    ~ Robert Shiller (@RobertJShiller)

    What is a Correction?

    A correction must…

    • substantially drive prices Earthward, and

    • inflict a serious beating on investors’ attitudes.

    By my reckoning, our last good ol’-fashioned correction ended in 1981. From 1967–81, capital gains on equities were down 75% inflation-adjusted. The real price change was bad, but the 14 years burned off the clock—a third of an investor’s lifetime in speculative assets—was oppressive. The markets had been ravaged. Equity desks were littered with half-finished games of solitaire. You could not give equities away in 1981. Investors had been ground to dust. Attitudes had been adjusted. What followed, however, were four decades that began as investors quietly shimmied their way up the greasy pole of risk and culminated 40 years later with their willingness to buy every sack of unprofitable garbage on every dip. It was the Era of the V-bounce. Investors learned one immutable lesson: never sell because stocks always go up in the long run. Four decades of recency bias left an entire generation in a trance.

    Extended bear markets are more likely to prevent investors from meeting their long-term wealth goals than short crashes.1

    ~ Cliff Asness (@CliffordAsness), AQR Capital Management

    40 Years of Recency Bias. The problem starts with the 1987 blip—call it a crash if you wish—that scared investors but was the blink of an eye. In two years, frightened investors were made whole by bold interventions from a free-market libertarian Fed Chair. The 1991 recession-equity dip combo platter was even shorter. The South American currency crisis—the Tequilla Crisis—was solved almost seamlessly by giving multi-national banks $50 billion because they lent too much money to banana republics. The swan dive owing to the Asian flu in 1998 took five months from peak through the Valley of Death to full recovery. The Tech Wreck of 2000 took 7 years to full recovery in nominal dollars but the drop was swift, the markets didn’t plumb historical fair value (see below), the recovery was monotonic (soothing), and the economy escaped unscathed. Investors were dazed but unphased, chanting “I am a long-term buy-and-hold investor! I’m in it for the long run!” with fist-pumping to boot (ironically after getting fisted).

    They keep getting these storms and call them perfect storms. I’m thinking these are regular storms and we have a shitty boat.2

    ~ Peter St. Onge (@profstonge), Heritage Foundation

    I can hear y’all squealing, “GTFO! Are you telling me 2008–09 wasn’t a correction?” Yes, I am telling you precisely that. The 2008–09 drop neither corrected the imbalances nor broke the speculative fever. Markets hurdled earthward but were stopped out by a $30 trillion central-bank bailout of multi-national banks, with Bernanke playing the role of Neville Chamberlain by appeasing the banks to assure “prosperity and peace in our time.” It’s not likely to work this time either. Equities had a one-night stand with historic fair value—a month or two—before lifting off yet again. We were assured yet again in the aftermath that it pays to just to hang on for dear life, and it did. Investors dusted themselves off and, yet again, began buying the dips. In the four-decade Era of the V-Bounce every dip was bought with relentless liquidity and monetary comb-overs, and every buyer was rewarded. For all of 2020 the entire global economy was prostrate in an induced coma—all consumption, zero wealth creation—yet the S&P closed the year up 13%. That is psychotic. Nothing can stop these markets. Stein’s Law was revised: what has gone up will go up forever…or at least for four decades.

    The Cubans, the Kevin O’Learys, the Scaramuccis, the Ackmans – the whole Silicon Valley Crew – these guys all need their clock cleaned in a major way, because they were just bull market, cheap-money players.

    ~ Marc Cohodes

    To understand how a forty-year secular bull market is just a phase, not a clear illustration that equities are always the place to be, let us first look at the tailwinds that were unique to the greatest equity run in US history.

    I don’t expect we see a new high in the market for a long time. We’ve had very bad policy mix and part of the stress this year has been very stimulative to fiscal policy, restrictive to monetary policy.

    ~ Leon Cooperman

    Tailwind 1: Soviet Union. The Russians had not collapsed but they were rotting from the head and sold vast natural resources to the West in desperation to obtain capital, resources that would fuel the boom for the next four decades.

    China became the world’s workshop, and the USA became the world’s financial bucket shop.

    ~ Jim Kunstler

    Tailwind 2: China. Deng Xiaoping began taking baby steps to take Mao’s 100-year-plan3 to level two by opening China to the West and fostering fledgling free-market principles. I recall the rumors that workers were being allowed to keep some of the products of their labor. When Deng flew to New York to his debutante ball at the United Nations in 1974 their foreign reserves were so flatlined they needed to pass the wok for the plane fare. Deng’s plan to join the 20th century desperately needed capital and all they had to sell was labor, which they did in great quantity and at slave wages for the next four decades. In the early 80s, they began sending hand-selected students to get their PhDs in the West. Cornell Chemistry received six of them. Many did not return, but the Chinese authorities knew that integrating with the West economically would be accelerated by academic and intellectual integration in the West. Sounds benign; it may not be. Over the next forty years, they vendor-financed our purchases of very cheap goods and services.

    Tailwind 3: Demographics. The boomers had begun entering the workforce in vast numbers, ready to trade in their bongs for calculators and communes for McMansions and meaningful lives. And for the first time ever, they brought their wives with them. As economists worth their paychecks know—a dozen at last count—a demographically young and growing workforce is a huge driver of economic growth.4 A quick gander at the labor force participation rate, however, shows that this was an extension of an uptrend starting two decades earlier and then rolled over quietly with the millenium.

    Tailwind 4: Long-term interest rates. If you’ve read Warren Buffett’s iconic 1999 Fortune article as many times as I have,5 you could not possibly miss the punchline: sustainable changes in interest rates are the only variable that matters. When rates are in a long-term uptrend, you get ravaged by your financial assets. When rates are in a long-term downtrend, financial assets party like it’s 1999. Long-term rates began a four-decade march from over 15% to essentially 0%. (The Eurowankers dropped acid and took them negative.) Following an initial drop, it was almost as though somebody programmed the four-decade downtrend into an algorithm. It was a lactating cow. The rates dropped on the heels of forty years of disinflation (juiced by progressively fabricated inflation numbers).

    Tailwind 5: Government spending. Any economist really worth their paycheck—a very rarified group—knows that government spending can be a panacea for many years especially if you get to print the currency your debt is denominated in. Eventually, however, this reserve currency privilege hits Triffin’s Dilemma, which, loosely translated, says that being the global reserve currency and the affiliated trade imbalance is an orgy that ends when the stimulus doesn’t raise a pulse. It is a suicide mission in the long term. Well, we have been blowing our wads. (I just realized my mother used to refer to “blowing your wad.” Eewe.) US Sovereign debt scaled to GDP—a natural inflation correction provided they don’t cheese those numbers too much—more than tripled (not including unimaginable unfunded liabilities).6 All forms of private and corporate debt rose like a Phoenix but are starting to look Icarus like.

    Tailwind 6: Domestic politics. Over the last four decades domestic politics have been remarkably tame. We went from violent anti-war and civil rights movements to Black Friday at Walmart. The race problems gave way to progress toward equal opportunity with women and blacks in every imaginable position of leadership.

    Tailwind 7: Geopolitics. Geopolitics were also quite tame with an asterisk. The peace dividend hailed as the benefits of beating the commies proved illusory as we found more boogie men to battle at great profit for some, but nobody seemed to care. If you were one of the 4.5 million who died since 911 as a direct or indirect consequence of the War Machine life was brief while survivors were left in living hells. However, there is a silver lining: the US’s ability to project military force anywhere in the world supported global trade networks.7

    Tailwind 8: Share buybacks. Peter Lynch ranted about the merits of share buybacks as evidence that the corporate insiders knew the company shares were underpriced. Well, that is a quaint idea whose time has long passed. When tax laws on executive income ushered in stock options as compensation, insiders recognized that dividends decreased the value of their options whereas share buybacks increased them. Buybacks also mopped up the excessive shares created by the stock options. Dividends to shareholders dropped to a record low of 1.5% while option holders won. Returning capital to investors was a ruse, in my opinion. I proffered an alternative benign thesis that maintaining fortress balance sheets returning 0% returns in the fixed income markets made no sense. Buying overpriced shares was a desperate reach for yield (if those shares were worth anything.) That mutated to, “Let’s borrow money at no cost to buy shares. What could go wrong?” Shareholders liked the capital gains and were untroubled by the gobs of debt in the low-rate environment. Others suggest that buybacks are a way to repatriate overseas profits,8 an argument that may have substance. That argument has been stretched to claim that “valuation metrics mean little.”9 I am unsympathetic to that triumph of imagination.

    There are ugly anecdotes about huge share buybacks preceding bankruptcy (Bed Bath and Beyond by example),10 burning huge piles of cash (Apple),11 and unprecedentedly low levels of capital expenditures to fund share buybacks. Flat inflation-adjusted wages for 40 years kept expenses low and the Fed at bay. As the market boomed, contributions to defined-benefit pension plans also dropped off precipitously because one need not save when the market does the heavy lifting for you.

    Wall Street is not really about investing. It’s about asset gathering…Indexes don’t just come about because they’re good investments, they come about because it’s an opportunity for a management company to gather assets.

    ~ Steve Bregman, Horizon Kinetics

    What if Adam Smith was here and we explained…indexation and stuff and how capital is allocated? He would say to us, “And what do you call this?” And we’d say, “We call it capitalism.” He’d burst out laughing because it’s the inverse of capitalism to say we give more capital to the companies with the largest market capitalization.

    ~ Russell Napier

    Tailwind 9: Indexing. Michael Green seems to get the most credit for underscoring the importance of the tsunami of dumb money flowing into index funds as a driver of the share price. The problem is that there is no price sensitivity whatsoever. There is no adult supervision, just millions of investors plowing money into the markets. (I once got Bogle to concede this weakness.) Moreover, the market cap-weighted allocations dropping the most money into the largest companies—the Magnificent Seven—while leaving little for the smallest companies poses a problem. It’s like you had a grocery list in which a rising price of cantaloupes and ribeye prompted you to buy more cantaloupes and ribeye. I am not sure exactly what will bring indexing out of favor, but something will. Good ideas cease to work once they are deemed to be good ideas.

    *Forgive the chart crime of starting the plot at a non-zero origin. It’s a rookie error.

    It would be dangerous to extrapolate the post-1990 outperformance of US equities, as it mainly reflects rising relative valuations.13

    ~ Cliff Asness

    Tailwind 10: Valuation expansion. In 1981 equities were left for dead, sitting at an unbelievable price-to-earnings ratio of 6. For the arithmetically challenged, that means half the market had a p/e ratio below 6. Stocks were scary, but that made them dirt cheap. Maybe if the other factors mauling the markets for the previous 14 years stayed in place they would have stayed cheap, but history shows the seeds of a legendary run had been sown.

    Nothing has been cleansed. The monetary excess is still in the system. Valuations are still sky-high. In fact, they got brutally more expensive.

    ~ Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader)

    Driven by these extraordinary tailwinds, we come to the last and most spectacular statistic of them all: equity valuations—not price but valuations—compounded at over 3% per annum for four decades. Let me say that again for the impaired:

    Equity valuations compounded 3% per annum for four decades.

    And for the really impaired:

    Once you control for this tripling of relative valuations [since 1990], the 4.6% return advantage falls to a statistically insignificant 1.2%… So, what does it mean that almost all the US’s victory came from repricing?14

    ~ Cliff Asness

    Case for a Multi-Decade Bear Market

    What happens when those tailwinds leading to 3% growth in valuations for four decades becomes a –3% headwind for the next four decades? Oh that wouldn’t happen, right? Don’t be silly. Of course it will happen. Everything is cyclical. Just ask Ray Dalio or anybody else with an eye for history. Low valuations give way to high valuations. It is now time for high valuations to give way to low valuations. It’s the great cycle of life.

    If you’re first out the door, that’s not called panicking.

    ~ John Tuld

    Let’s take stock of where we find ourselves in the Year of Our Lord 2023. Of course, the next 40 years will look nothing like the last 40 years. The last time back-to-back forty-year periods showed unremarkable change was in the Middle Ages. But we can try to imagine how markets may perform and why.

    The existing world order is changing rapidly in challenging ways and that people who are living on the assumption that things will work in the orderly ways that they have gotten used to will be shocked and hurt by these changes to come.1

    ~ Ray Dalio

    Headwind 1: Geopolitics. We have royally scorched this one. We completely squandered the peace dividend offered to us when the Soviet Union collapsed. The industrial-military complex simply could not resist the serious profits bombing the piss out of many countries, especially when they create the opportunities. We pissed away the privilege of having the reserve currency by weaponizing the dollar. When we turned the dollar and the banking system against Russia in a fight that was none of our business, we sent the World a clear message: you cannot trust the United States. If your banker said you would get your money back provided you don’t piss them off, you would get a new banker. The great resources of Russia had become so appealing to NATO (read: the US) that we could not resist trying to steal them via a costly war in Ukraine that we have undeniably lost contrary to (a) the media’s boisterous propaganda, followed by (b) their deafening silence. I update my views on Ukraine below. Commodities are fungible: if Russia sells them to our economic competitors, that leaves more for us from the other suppliers. Somehow, however, that seems like a losing strategy for us.

    The illegitimate freezing of some of the currency reserves of the Bank of Russia marks the end of the reliability of so-called first-class assets…Now everybody knows that financial reserves can simply be stolen.

    ~ Vladimir Putin

    New regimes to defy the weaponized dollar are being created as I type. The BRICs—the loose conglomeration of countries including Brazil, Russia, India, and China—now have almost two dozen countries trying to join that fraternity including OPEC nations. Those who cackle at a BRICs currency becoming a threat are missing the point: we are witnessing abrupt and massive shifts of global alliances to circumvent the US, the dollar, and the Western banking system. Our ties with OPEC were fraying at the edges before the most recent crisis in the Middle East popped up. Fareed Zakaria showed a special moment of clarity when he grasped this:2

    If the US dollar’s global supremacy erodes, America will face a reckoning like none before.

    ~ Fareed Zakaria

    China has its own issues, but they are an economic juggernaut that will patiently wait for their turn behind the wheel. We thought their emergence as an economic powerhouse would make them look like us. It seems that the reverse is happening. I don’t think they will take Taiwan, at least in the military sense. Why would they? We could take Canada too, but we won’t. Taiwan is a huge trading partner, and China is patiently on track to complete Mao’s Hundred-Year Plan.3 I cannot recall any of our leaders’ Hundred-Year Plans.

    China is no longer focusing on making basic parts (much the way post-war Japan did) but is moving to high-value-added products. India might pick up some slack as a low-cost producer, but it seems wishful to presume those goods and services will come cheap. Those who look to Africa for the next great untapped region need to bone up on Hernando de Soto’s analyses,4 which focus on why Africa is geographically (geologically) and politically ill-suited for development.

    The problem was not people but the law, which was discouraging and preventing people from being more productive.

    ~ Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

    Our exploits in the Middle East that extinguished an estimated $7 trillion and 4.5 million Middle Easterner lives are not good optics. (OK. Let’s call it mass murder or genocide if you insist.) Afghanistan ended with one of the great military embarassments, even if it was, according to my 2021 assertion,5 an intentionally botched third-trimester withdrawal of the troops. Ukraine will look even more absurd as we realize that 500,000 dead Ukrainians died for nothing.6

    Something very dramatic has changed in politics in America.

    ~ Matt Taibbi

    Headwind 2: Domestic Politics. I don’t believe it is hyperbolic to say we are witnessing a dramatic rise in neo-Marxism that finds its roots in the radical ‘60s. (See Chris Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything in Books below.) The future is dark as one ponders the push toward trans-genderism, social justice fundamentalism, climate extremism, social strife tied to the Israel-Palestine conflict that could turn violent, and collapsing trust in institutions and credential experts. Perhaps this is just a phase that will fade into distant memories a few years from now—let us hope—but one cannot rule out Fourth Turning-level upheavals.

    Headwind 3: Demographics. Peter Zeihan is an acquired taste and has serious neocon roots, but his numbers and discussions of global demographics are compelling. Recall that the Club of Rome was squealing about how a failure to achieve zero population growth (ZPG) of 2.2 children per household would cause the Earth to rotate off its axis. Well, we are currently at 1.6 babies per household and on the downslope. If demographics are important, the demographic reversal will have to ride on the back of a generation that is broke, green, less interested in having sex, and confused about their genders. Bear in mind that the 1% annualized growth of the population grew the economy and the numbers consuming that investment pie; investment gains and economic data should be corrected to per-capita. Few do this.

    We should be happier to have a job than to have our savings protected.

    ~ Christine Lagarde, October 2019

    Headwind 4: Interest Rates and Inflation. It is said that the fixed-income guys have all the brains. It is clear Krugman was at the end of the line, but how could he possibly think that excluding everything consumers need leads to a valid inflation metric? Many, like James Grant, tell us that credit cycles are long wavelengths and take years to convince the market participants that the worm has turned. It feels like the four-decade downturn in interest rates may have turned. Inflation may have dug in like a tic. De-dollarization, government spending, runaway debt payments, and the rapidly shifting global alliances could be foreshadowing decades of climbing the Rate Wall of Worry. Wealth disparities have given rise to long-overdue union activity and higher wages, which cuts into corporate profit margins and shows up as inflation at the Fed. Ironically, this will prompt the Fed to step on the economy. Meanwhile, consumers of US debt are dropping like BRICs. Those who flippantly allude to “debt monetization” and “financial repression” as some sort of panacea have never been on the receiving end of those. As interest rates rise, share buybacks will disappear. The urge to remove cash from their balance sheets earning credible returns will dissipate, and the madness of borrowing money to buy back shares will become extinct.

    Inflation is the worst thing an economy can have, and I think people underrate that. Every hegemony has been destroyed by inflation.7

    ~ Carl Icahn

    The world’s superpower central bank has made such a mess of affairs that it has to pick between two poisons: it capitulates on inflation; or it lets a banking crisis reach systemic proportions. It has chosen a banking crisis.

    ~ Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

    Summers and others see a ‘70s repeat with more inflationary storms to make landfall.

    Average folks on the street are not sanguine. I asked Jimmy Iourio what the inflation rate is given the cost of goods at his Italian restaurant. (It is pronounced I-talian.) His answer: 40% over two years.

    Here is a favorite question of mine in the form of a poll. After the waffling subsides, the answer is always double digits…

    Of course, there may be other sources of inflation besides the debt markets and Federal Reserve. The whiz kids at CNBC found the perfect scapegoat, the generation with no cash to spend…

    Then there are the scriptwriters for Biden’s Twitter feed who, to add some realism, make him appear to be completely demented…

    Headwind 5: Government spending. Does anybody see any mechanism that will stop the perverts inside the Beltway from spending money we don’t have on things we really don’t need? (Part 3 amplifies on that pervert allusion.) The total lack of leadership or even basic lack of morality inside the Beltway feels like end-of-empire shit to me. Maybe the long (often multi-decade) credit cycle hasn’t turned, but cranking out 10% per annum of sovereign debt is not going to be extinguished by 10% growth in GDP. Maybe Triffin was full of shit, but we are testing his hypothesis by spending like an end-of-empire hegemon. Our leadership is more Nero-Caligula than Julius-Augustus. The next and final stage of the US Empire—whether you read Neil Howe’s Fourth Turning or Ray Dalio’s Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail (see Books)—is the cathartic phase, which is code for violent and deadly.

    Headwind 6: Valuation Contraction. Nobody talks about market valuations except those trying to give you a toaster oven to open an account at their brokerage. Valuations are, however, a curiously useful metric. I track about two dozen last laid out in lurid detail in 2021.8 I won’t repeat that analysis in its entirety because nothing has changed. Here is the Reader’s Digest version in which I insert a couple of cute ideas while pretending not to recycle the rest.

    Financialization is profit growth without labor productivity growth.

    ~ Ben Hunt

    All valuation metrics share a common trait: they represent the price of assets (often equities) divided by something they should track. They are inherently inflation correcting, which means they should simply flop around a historic mean but, over enough time, remain unchanged. High valuations give way to low valuations which give way to high valuations, and this has gone on for millennia.

    Stupidity got us into this. Why can’t stupidity get us out?

    ~ Will Rogers

    All metrics pretty much lead to the same conclusion, which I illustrate with the Case Shiller PE. In the first graphic, we see the Case-Shiller p/e from 1880 to 1994:

    That flopping around the mean part is self-evident. Now that I have anchored your thinking with the bias of a historic fair value and illustrated regression to and through the mean, let’s tack on the last 3 decades in the following chart…

    Now do you see the problem? I also overtly placed the break at 1994 because of an observation made in my previous analysis that 1994 is the year all market valuations, while high, left orbit.9 If you find some new-fangled valuation metric that doesn’t go back to 1880, just find the valuation in 1994, assume it represents 50% above historic value, and compare it with today. As to why 1994 is some special moment is unclear. Maybe that year’s bond bailout never subsided. Mike Green says that 1994 coincides with the arrival of a tsunami of dumb money coming into the markets in the form of price-insensitive market indexing. The latter two decades of this wonderous four decades witnessed debt-fueled share buybacks. To complete the round trip back to the trough of 1981 represents an 88% correction. What is an 88% correction? It’s a 75% correction that then cuts in half. So much for everybody’s nest egg.

    The S&P 500 has soared nearly fivefold in one decade to multiples of earnings, sales, book value—take your pick—we have only seen twice in recent history….the equity market no longer seems to trade off the economic fundamentals…the market has rallied completely on the back of multiple expansion… The ratio of corporate debt-to-GDP is at all-time highs….An enormous volume of corporate debt has been issued exclusively for the purpose of buying and retiring shares. This includes both buybacks and acquisitions of other companies. And in classic mature-cycle fashion.

    ~ David Rosenberg

    Let’s look at two more valuation metrics for fun. The logic that the market value of the nation’s 500 largest companies should reflect the nation’s GDP seems almost immutable. See that trend line? Would you have drawn that line if I had clipped the plot at 1994? Those who draw it have a tough row to hoe (road to ‘ho) justifying why the uptrend is sustainable.

    Here is price to sales (which I infer is synonymous with price to revenue). Since it doesn’t go back to 1981 to assess the peak-to-trough potential pain just look at 1994 and assume that it is 50% over historical fair value. The claim that it is the “highest in 10 years” is also a little odd.

    Here is an entertaining one: the hours required to work to buy the S&P. This may be the question of a simpleton, but why has the S&P become so expensive to buy in terms of man-hours of labor if the digital world is so efficient? Note that the historic average looks like a market top in any other era except the last 30 years. Even so, a return to that optimistic target valuation would be a 75% correction.

    This Hussman valuation corrected for mean-regressing bloated profit margins (justified by others as the wonders of the efficiency noted above) is at the apex of the Pyramid of Doom.

    Here we sit with valuations in the nosebleed range of 120-150% above the historic mean. Investors are implicitly assuming that (a) valuations will not mean revert because regression to the mean is no longer a force of nature, or (b) they will be smart enough to get out at the top. Such assumptions are hallmarks of an unstable personality. On the off-chance I might be right, you might want to read up on gibbeting…10

    I intentionally use the phrase “run-of-the-mill” to describe potential market losses of –30%, –55%, and –60%, because none of these estimates can be considered ‘worst case scenarios.’11

    ~ John Hussman

    Lowered Expectations. Avid readers with good memories may notice I am about to go green by recycling a couple of graphics. I showed the first graphic depicting markets in the first forty years of the 20th century to a mucky muck at The Economist, and he had not appreciated how that nasty little two-decade boom-bust cycle only interrupted a trend in which investors clawed their way up the Wall of Worry at a 1.3% annualized capital gains over four decades. There were dividends—way more than today—but there were also taxes and fees. That was four decades that Northwestern’s Robert Gordon considers one of the most productive for inventions of labor saving devices.12 If you had invested throughout the Industrial Revolution your equities and bonds would have contributed to your aggregated personal wealth comparably despite Jeremy Siegel’s claims to the contrary.13,14

    I created the following idealized graphic (using ChemDraw!) to illustrate that if the GDP grows 2% annualized (blue curve) and over four decades equities rise approximately 150% above fair value (red curve). I serve up four scenarios to return to fair value: (a) drop straight down by 60%, which will create Bald Britney-levels of volatility but won’t correct anything as dip buyers armed with 40 years of recency bias will come in like a flash mob to create a V-bounce yet again, (b) drop 20% over 25 years, (c) tread water for 35 years, or (d) scratch out a 30% gain over 50 years (0.5% annualized). Pick your poison for the meanest of reversions and hope that we don’t correct below historical fair value because then the story darkens markedly.

    U.S. GDP grows about 2% per year on average

    ~ Howard Marks

    Are these curves even remotely realistic? In a word, yes. Here are more ChemDraw arrows superimposed on a graphic by Ron Greiss of the Chart Store showing the inflation-adjusted (reconstructed) S&P 500 beginning in 1870. I am relatively uninterested in how long it takes investors at a market peak to fight their way through the Valley of Death to finally break even, which is usually a decade or two. (Nikkei investors should be so lucky.) The key question is when did that previous market top get tested for the last time? How long must investors tread water to get from the peak to the safety of the final trough? Those are the blue arrows, and they are 40–75 years long. Is Investor Americanus emotionally and financially ready to withstand a 40–75 year ice age?

    And just to bring one last bit of joy to the story, I bring to you another Ron Greiss creation. Instead of using bullshit CPI numbers, Ron corrects for inflation using the M2 money supply.

    Seems like a pretty clean correction if you are a Friedmanite. The markets were dirt cheap in 1945 and again in 1981. But nagging questions should take your breath away: is it possible that 150 years of capital gains in the equity markets are 100% inflation and that the real investment returns are 100% traceable to dividends? Does it trouble you that dividends dropped from 6.5% to a century low of 1.5%?15 How will 1.5% hold up against fees and taxes?

    US equity investor circa 2064 AD unearthed by market archeologists centuries from now…

    The U.S. economy is obviously performing exceptionally well with continued solid job creation, inflation gradually moving down, robust consumer spending. I’m not anticipating a downturn in the economy.

    ~ Janet Yellen, June 2023

    You can never trust predictions about the future from people who deny the present.

    ~ Alex Epstein

    It may be time for Yellen to return to the Shire. The pain is not over when you squat over the secular bear trap, and it clamps you in the groin. Just wait until you hit the end of the chain. It will feel like a Tarantino finale: sketchy historical precedent but lots of blood and guts.

    Media

    The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.

    ~ William Colby, Former CIA Director

    The CIA is the world’s biggest sponsor of “journalism”.1

    ~ Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    The mass media is largely worthless now—stenographers to power. When the great journalists—Seymour Hersh, Matt Taibbi, and Glenn Greenwald—are publishing on Substack, it is time to refocus from the New York Times to Substack and other alternative media. Facebook, a former conduit of news stories, has been busted rigging the news in ways that would make the Rooskies cringe. Biden’s laptop? Nope. Can’t post that. Anti-vaccine stories. Nope. YouTube used to post videos made by you. If there is hot footage, searching will afford corporate news stories about the hot footage. I also used to find great interviews simply by going to YouTube’s home page: they had figured out my tastes. Now it appears to be competing with TikTok. Taibbi refers to all this as the “information cartel.”

    Facebook’s President of Global Affairs: Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man-made?

    Facebook’s vice president in charge of content policy: We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more. We shouldn’t have done it.2

    Censorship is not just about authoritarian control; it is also about taking out your competitor. It is a big industry.3 It is about rewriting history.4 I’ve written about the fundamental rights granted to the media by the Constitution and its fundamental role in a functioning democracy. I prattled on about the disintegration of the media standards, which I place first on the list of symptoms of a collapsing empire. (Number two is the weaponization of the Department of Justice.) I am unsure how the mainstream media retrieve their credibility any more than prostitutes can regain their virginity. The deed is done. I was probably living in a delusional world my whole life. They were probably never free of the gravitational pull of wealth and power, but it went wild when the internet appeared, and the scramble for dominance and control began.

    Disturbing Poll Reveals 26% Of Americans Still Trust The Media

    ~ The Babylon Bee Headline

    The Firing of Tucker Carlson. At one time I detested the bow-tied Tucker Carlson, but he found his voice, I became more tolerant of his idiosyncrasies, and maybe I have developed my own. Unlike his less thoughtful brethren at Fox, he reaches across the aisle to debate those holding the opposing view. I’ve wondered out loud, however, if he is what is called a “limited hangout” or “controlled opposition”, in which his role is to make those on the right perceive they have an advocate. Some have questioned possible Deep-State ties.5 Nevertheless, he was Fox’s biggest draw, and they slaughtered the sacred cash cow: why? The simple answer may be the correct one: profits are secondary to guiding the preferred narrative to its destination.

    This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, so it won’t.

    ~ Tucker Carlson, rephrasing Stein’s Law two days after being fired

    In the months preceding his departure, Tucker recklessly touched third rails with sensitive body parts. These incidents included:

    • He called out the CIA for whacking JFK6,7 and even took on MKUltra for putting a mind meld on Jack Ruby to whack Oswald.8 He claimed that a witness to the remaining Warren Report under lock-and-key confirmed the CIA’s role.9 Tucker called the botched Watergate break-in a psyop (psychological operation) designed to take down Nixon with the help of CIA asset Bob Woodward.10 Calling ex-CIA head Brennan “one of the most sinister and dishonest figures in American life” while tarring Pompeo with a similar brush.11 seemed like he was taunting the Deep State for Schumer’s “six ways from Sunday” response.

    • His open disdain for the Covid and vaccine narrative12,13,14 must have pissed off Pfizer, which has rained pain and retribution on those who challenge this kingpin of the biomedical crime syndicate.

    • Relentlessly bucking the Ukraine War narrative15,16 is pissing on the legs of the industrial-military and banking-military complexes simultaneously. Wailing on ESG is to undermine one of the bigger scams of Blackrock, who happen to be a 15% owner of Fox.17

    • Joining the 9/11 Truth Movement and questioning the collapse of Building 718 is most definitely not cooperating with Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to control access of all public media.19 (I am a full-blown Truther myself.20 The official 9/11 narrative fails at many levels.21,22,23)

    • Challenging the January 6th narrative undermines the efforts of both parties to block The Donald from re-entering the Halls of Power. That Speaker MacCarthy handed Tucker 14,000 hours24 (or is it 41,000 hours25?) of the January 6th tapes was handing Tucker a weapon to self-destruct. Tucker released only a few minutes, which proved enough to get the most legendary protester, QAnon Shaman, sprung from a four-year prison term. This, in turn, foreshadowed how the tapes would reveal the J6 trials to be treasonous by depriving victims of their Constitutional rights. Those videos remain largely inaccessible despite (or perhaps because of) their profound importance to fair trials for the accused. With gritted teeth, I hammered the weaponization of the DOJ following J6 in my 2020 YIR.26 Staffing the courts with defacto brownshirts is what rising authoritarian states do, which I return to in Part 3.

    • Days before getting fired, Tucker expressed disdain for the media. His biggest regret was supporting the Iraq War.27

    Tucker seemed to be on the cusp of blowing up the J6 stories with all those tapes and a soon-to-be-buried interview of the chief of the Capitol Police describing the role of Federal agents in the crowd whipping up trouble: “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that crowd was filled with federal agents”.28 That Tucker was bearing down on the J6 psyop may have had the authoritarians on edge. I will be returning to J6 in Part 3. As articulated by Glenn Greenwald, both parties needed Tucker’s career in journalism summarily executed.29 They tried a few lurid accusations of Tucker’s bad behavior in the workplace,30 but released audio tapes revealed a B+ potty mouth.

    Atrocities like, “I can never assess my appearance. I wait for my postmenopausal fans to weigh in on that” aren’t exactly a “grab the pussy” moment. Whistleblower Abby Grossberg claimed that employees were bullied and subjected to sexist comments, but her lawyer later confessed that she never met Tucker.31 CNN tried to undermine his credibility, but it came off as a compendium of their lies.32 The FBI and DOJ tried to reconstruct Federal agent Ray Epps’ story so he could sue Tucker,33 but Ray’s role as an embedded instigator at J6 got so embarrassing that the authorities had to fake indicting him on trivial charges.34 Ray will not be put in solitary confinement, tortured, go years without a trial, or get a ginormous jail sentence because Ray is a Fed. Attorneys General Merrick Garland denies this,35 but he is diabolical and morally bankrupt.

    Tucker has been nearly alone in smoking out the big issues of our time with a unique breadth, edge and consistency that neither Republican shills like Sean Hannity nor DNC conduits like Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow could hope to approach.36

    ~ David Stockman

    An ex-Army psyop expert suggested that Tucker needed to go to maintain an “uninformed semi-lobotomized quasi retarded population.”37 It’s catchy and simple but may miss the point that historically important events in the planning stages might have made gagging Tucker imperative.

    Along comes a $1.7 billion-dollar Alex-Jones-scale defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion (Smartmatic), the maker of the voting machines used to ensure that the 2020 election was the cleanest election in history…or something like that. The CEO of Dominion was ostensibly run by a Biden transition team member, but Dominion’s real owner traces through a series of shell companies to Beijing.39 (It was later reported by a Georgia district court that Dominion’s machines do indeed suck.40) In any previous era, Fox would have been in the Supreme Court squealing about Constitutional protections of the press, and the Dominion suit would have gone away. In this case, however, Fox settled out-of-court for $787 million without a whimper.41 The (in)famous Alan Dershowitz said the Dominion-Fox settlement made no sense and that he hadn’t seen anything like that in 60 years.42 Even a neophyte knew something was up noting the convenience of the lawsuit the day Tucker got fired.

    I wandered over to Yahoo Finance to find out what the huge win did to Dominion’s share price only to find that they had been taken private in 2018. Nice way to hide the details of the 2020 election behind a paywall. Dominion’s annual revenues were $17–18 million along with some redacted parts that always make me suspicious.43,44 The absurdity is that $787 million represents 45 times revenue, which means the settlement for damages was ten times the value of the company. That’s a lot of damages.

    To Democrats, “journalist” means “one who mindlessly and loyally endorses DNC talking points.”

    ~ Glenn Greenwald

    Here is my take: Fox needed a big headline to justify firing Tucker, and Dominion needed him gagged to pull off a 2024 election fraud. I suspect no money changed hands. The headline was the story.

    Of all the distortions and paranoia that Tucker Carlson promoted on his since-canceled Fox News program, one looms large: a conspiracy theory that an Arizona man working as a covert government agent incited the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol to sabotage and discredit former President Donald J. Trump and his political movement. What’s known about the man—a two-time Trump voter named Ray Epps—is that he took part in demonstrations in Washington that day and the night before.45

    ~ New York Times, lying their worthless asses off

    Tucker was soon marinating in new opportunities including a $25 million offer from One America News46 and $100 million five-year deal with Valuetainments.47 I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect that Fox kept Tucker on his $25 million annualized pay to retain a non-compete clause. But Tucker, not needing even more money, took his road show to Elon Musk’s Twitter for free and crushed it. By firing Tucker, Fox unleashed the Kraken. NBC host Tom Costello, whimpering like a little bitch lapdog, suggested that it was bad that nobody will be able to “police him” as he spread “misinformation, disinformation, all out lies” on Elon Musk’s Twitter.

    No Tom: that’s NBC’s job.48 Social media network Tribel banned Carlson claiming he is “a proven liar, racist, and insurrectionist who spreads Russian propaganda that threatens our democracy. Banning him is necessary to protect our users.”49 This was devastating news to the 100 people who post on Tribel. FOX sent Tucker a cease-and-desist order, but, in the absence of payment, his 80-million-click truth bombs on Twitter merely constitute free speech.50 Tucker fought the Balrog and won.

    AOC…demanded the Government ban Tucker from being allowed on TV. Dems like AOC are utter authoritarians who crave state censorship. Independent platforms are immune from that.

    ~ Glen Greenwald the day Carlson got the boot

    Nuggets. After diplomatic correspondent’ Michael Crowley published a fabrication-rich hit piece on Snowden that was called out by Glenn Greenwald, the New York Times quietly started editing the record without so much as an apology.51 Veterans say if you go back and read the primary articles in the media on important events of yore, you find that we rewrote history going forward.52,53 In the new era, the media writes their variant of history while the real variant is being made. Historians in the future will never figure out what actually happened.

    Here are a few random media nuggets that caught my eye and strengthened my support of free speech and unlimited vaccines for Big-Media journalists until we get a desirable effect:

    • Pfizer is said to have bribed CNN with $12 million annually to keep Anderson Cooper on the vaccine narrative, which is a two-year nightmare of journalistic fraud.54 The claim is that there is a direct pipeline of 80% of Cooper’s salary from Pfizer. Since 75% of mainstream media’s ad revenue comes from pharma,55 this is about the right number with or without the direct pipeline.

    • Don Lemon of CNN proclaimed that, “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry. A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”56 That is only true if your goal is to bang her lights out, Don. CNN realized they had squeezed everything they could out of that Lemon, demoting him to buck private.

    • It is sobering to watch this montage of Nicole Wallace getting hammered for relentless lying given that, on casual inspection, she has a credible aura provided you have the TV on mute.57

    • Project Veritas and its founder James O’Keefe are infamous for sending hot throbbing chicks into bars near offices of major companies and recording sex-starved mid-range executives dropping truth bombs in the hopes of making it to second base. It was shits and giggles for Veritas until they duped a Pfizer guy. I didn’t think it was that bad, but you do not mess with Pfizer. Project Veritas was forced to fire O’Keefe,58 which is like Tesla firing Elon Musk. Of course, there were rumors that he was cruel to his staff, had choked some chickens, and was a dickweed.59 Soon thereafter Veritas went through a Chapter 7 liquidation. You do not Pfuck with Pfizer.

    • Pfizer wasn’t done. When Russell Brand went on Bill Maher and “brought some facts” about the vaccine in an epic rant,60 he woke up to multiple accusations of sexual assault from decades ago and by anonymous accusers. Get the fuck out of here. Really? Anonymous? Rose McGowen, the heroine who founded the MeToo movement, came to Russell’s defense.61 He got deplatformed from anything and everything with a platform.62 Britain’s Parliament, admitting there was no evidence, tried to squeeze Rumble into booting Brand and were told to “fook off” by the CEO: “We regard it as deeply inappropriate and dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our platform or to earn a living from doing so [you sheep shaggin’ punk-ass bitches.]”63 Nobody believes Brand is guilty of anything nefarious beyond being a chronic drug user and lover of many women in his youth, which he admits with shocking pride. The message was still clear: don’t Pfuck with Pfizer.

    • Matt Taibbi testified to Congress about the Twitter files and the FBI’s role in censoring awkward political narratives and was referred to as a “so-called journalist” by a so-called Congresswoman from the Virgin Islands.64 At exactly that moment, an IRS agent showed up at his house to harass his wife.65 What an amazing coincidence. The Biden administration’s wanton disregard for the most fundamental principles laid out by our founding fathers is breathtaking. They should all be vaccinated 20–30 times: a GoFundMe campaign would raise the necessary funds.

    The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere. What we found in the [Twitter] Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise, and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role. It’s not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is, however, becoming technologically possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is what we’re looking at.66

    ~ Matt Taibbi, testifying to Congress about the Twitter Files

    • UK Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan plans to jail social media executives who fail to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred” content on their websites. What is harmful will be up to the government, but it will include transgenderism and calling your girlfriend “a leprechaun.”67

    • Several years ago baseball player Trevor Bauer was falsely accused by Lindsey Hill of sexually assaulting her. Texts surfaced of her saying she would set him up to get some of his money and showed her taking a selfie in the sack with Trevor sleeping, winking at the camera. Exoneration is little consolation.68 She should do years in prison. Years.

    Elon Musk and Twitter. As many must now know, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. With surprising support from the Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey, Elon released “The Twitter Files”, internal emails showing the geopolitical corruption within the rank and file. Twitter had become part of the machinery of the Deep State but with an 80-degree cant to the left. Faux libertarians can argue that, as a private company, Twitter had the right to do anything it wanted, but it had become both the town square and a monopoly. To boot a sitting president from the Town Square was the beginning of the end of an era.

    They knew the Russian collusion story was garbage69 but played along with Stalinist-style censorship of “bad actors”, which was anybody to the right of Stalin. Twitter seems more open with Elon at the helm, but his newly appointed CEO seems like a complete Deep State Dipshit. New boss same as the old boss.70 Twitter still steps on accounts that are out of favor. Dr. Drew Pinsky was very popular but then left the reservation by questioning narratives du jour like the vaccine. For a guy with 2.6 million followers it is unimaginable that his Tweets could get so few likes:

    Changes began almost immediately under Musk’s command. Renaming it “X” is not sticking at all. There were some good moves. He fired vast swaths of employees who were, at best, sucking up oxygen and bringing activist-left politics to the workplace. The blue checkmark formerly identifying prominent tweeters (as opposed to fakes) was turned into a pay-to-play checkmark for anybody who wants to fork up $8 per month. (This is getting like Dr. Seuss’s Sneeches and the Star-on/Star-off machine.) I miss the old checkmark but understand the push for revenue. I have a cash-cow idea for Elon: Offer a rainbow checkmark on Twitter and watch the left forking up big bucks to avoid being called a phobe. He added an annoying AI-driven reader-based fact check:

    If you are one of the poor souls who concluded that Tesla is a scam and tried to short it to your utter destruction, you may be correct and probably will never forgive him. Yet, Elon has become vocal in his support of ideas that those on the real political right might like, drawing the praise of Senator Rand Paul. Elon ate this guy’s lunch about hate speech71 and posted the classic “this is extremely dangerous to our democracy” montage.72 Elon takes 13-minute flights on his jet (basically across town) to piss off the climate change crowd. Not really: his time is that valuable (kinda like Climate Czar John Kerry.)

    This tees us up nicely to end this chapter by letting Elon speak for himself.

    Oh you mean the “Election Integrity” Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.73

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on some of his firings

    Almost sent me to the hospital….Public debate over efficacy should not be shut down… the cure cannot be potentially worse than the disease.

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on the vaccine

    If @AlexanderSoros is serious about freedom of speech, then we have common ground. But destroying public safety by electing DAs who won’t prosecute violent criminals needs to stop.

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Team Soros

    If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill. No limit. Please let us know… And we won’t just sue, it will be extremely loud and we will go after the boards of directors of the companies too.74

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on forced vaccination

    Didn’t the story come from Bellingcat, which literally specializes in psychological operations? I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but this is either the weirdest story ever or a very bad psyop!75

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on the assertion the Texas Mall Shooter was a neo-Nazi and echoing Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov’s 2016 view of Bellingcat.76

    Free speech used to be a left or liberal value, and yet we see from the quote ‘left’ a desire to actually censor, and that seems crazy. I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment.77

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on free speech

    My concern with Twitter was that it is somewhat of the digital town square, and it’s important that there be both the reality and perception of trust for a wide range of viewpoints.

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

    I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that results in the suppression of free speech. So, those are two of the aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are very dangerous, is that it’s often very anti-meritocratic, and you can’t question things. Even the questioning is bad. I was trying to figure out where it’s coming from. I think it’s actually been a long time brewing, in that it’s been going on for a while, and the amount of indoctrination that’s happening in schools and universities is, I think, far beyond what parents realize.78

    ~ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on cancel culture

    US Border Patrol just reported the highest number of recorded illegal immigrants in history at over 260,000 this month. The full number, including unrecorded, may be over half a million per month, which is the population of Wyoming.79

    ~ Elon Musk

    *  *  *

    Read Part 2 of Dave Collum’s Year in Review tomorrow.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 15:10

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 23

Today’s News 23rd December 2023

  • Israeli-Linked Tanker Struck By Drone Off India, Signaling Attacks Set To Widen
    Israeli-Linked Tanker Struck By Drone Off India, Signaling Attacks Set To Widen

    In a truly unprecedented scenario, an Israeli-linked tanker has come under attack not in the Red Sea, but as far away as off India’s coast. 

    Maritime security firm Ambrey has confirmed a Liberia-flagged chemical products tanker, which reportedly has Israeli ties, was struck by a drone some 200 nautical miles (370km) off the west coast Indian city of Veraval, according to BBC reporting.

    Via BBC

    While it’s not yet clear who was behind the Saturday attack, Israeli media is pointing the finger at Iran, per Times of Israel: “Israel believes the drone fired at a tanker off the coast of India a short while ago was launched directly from Iran, Channel 12 reports, although this remains unconfirmed.”

    The Indian navy is said to be en route to assist the damaged tanker, identified in the following: 

    It caused structural damage to the tanker – identified in Indian media as the crude oil-carrying MV Chem Pluto – and water was taken onboard.

    Ambrey said the event, which is the first of its kind so far away from the Red Sea, fell within an area the firm considered a “heightened threat area” for Iranian drones.

    While Yemen’s Houthis have never conducted an operation from such a great distance, certainly the Iranians have the capability, also considering Iran’s southern coast is closer to Indian waters.

    The tanker had reportedly been transiting from its origin port in Jubail, Saudi Arabia to India’s Manglore…

    All 20 of the crew members aboard the MV Chem Pluto are reported safe and uninjured, and a fire resulted from the drone strike but appears to have been successfully extinguished.

    An Indian Navy helicopter has filmed the damaged vessel as assist ships are responding, including from the Indian Coast Guard – this after the the United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) issued an initial emergency alert over the incident.

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

    Already international shipping transit has been forced to be drastically diverted away from Red Sea lanes, which translates to companies increasing spending for extra crews, fuel, supplies, port charges and other expenses – not to mention higher risk insurance premiums.

    Saturday’s attack off India could signal a widening of attacks on tankers in international waters, which threatens to inject more chaos for routing major container lines.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 14:35

  • The "Control System" Is Collapsing – 'The Great Taking' Looms As Globalism's Last Gasp
    The “Control System” Is Collapsing – ‘The Great Taking’ Looms As Globalism’s Last Gasp

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

    The Great Taking: The Latest “Anti-Mainstream” Conspiracy

    A new book has exploded on the alternative / conspiracy / fringe landscape over the past few weeks – I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. Zerohedge, Bombthrower Media, et al, we all occupy this space. Let’s call it, “anti-mainstream”.

    The book is called “The Great Taking” and there is now a YouTube video documentary of it here. You can’t actually find it on Amazon (deliberate choice by author, I presume); I bought my copy via Lulu, but you can download the PDF for free here.

    At the risk of oversimplifying it: The Great Taking puts forth a warning that a virtually unknown entity called “The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation” (DTCC) is effectively the “owner” of all the publicly traded companies in the world, and in fact all debt-based assets of any kind:

    “It is about the taking of collateral (all of it), the end game of the current globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This scheme is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass.

    Included are all financial assets and bank deposits, all stocks and bonds; and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment; land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will likewise be taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses which have been financed with debt.”

    Over the course of the book, the author describes a 50-year process by which ownership of shares in public companies, and all debt collateral has been “dematerialized”.

    In the olden days, you invested in a company – they gave you physical share certificates – and you were now part owner of the company. This is still how many value investors including me think of stock ownership.

    We’re not invested in all of these companies in The Bitcoin Capitalist Portfolio simply because we’re trying to time the oscillations in the price movements. We think of ourselves as partial owners of these businesses.

    Michael Saylor, Brian Armstrong, Mike Novogratz, Frank Holmes, Jamie Leverton et al, aren’t just celebrity CEOs in this space (Bitcoin)… they’re our partners. Granted, we’re the minority partners, silent ones, betting the jockeys and just along for the ride; but we don’t think of these positions as just stock charts and price gyrations – we think of them as businesses in which we are part owners.

    At least I do.

    According to The Great Taking, author David Rogers Webb, this is not true. We don’t own small pieces of these companies, we own claims on those pieces, because – over the course of decades, through the exigencies of ever-increasing trading volumes, combined with the machinations behind the scenes of diabolical manipulators – stock ownership has been supplanted by “security entitlements”.

    Webb posits that when the debt super-cycle culminates in its ultimate blow up; the trap will be sprung, and actual ownership over all these companies and assets will be subsumed by the clearing houses. An infinitesimal cadre of elites will effectively own everything, and the masses of the world will be reduced to serfdom.

    Which sounds familiar; it seems to be the common theme from The Great Taking to the WEF’s Great Reset (or Stakeholder Capitalism, or whatever they’re calling it these days).

    It’s the mother of all wealth transfers, one that makes the ongoing wealth transfer of inflation and the Cantillon Effect – or the sharp shock heists that occur during every crisis from the dot-com bust through the GFC to the Covid Panic (the last of which saw an overt war on small business as those deemed “non-essential” were shut down while the megacorps were propped up by the central banks) – seem tame.

    Here’s my thoughts on The Great Taking:

    Modernity could be described as humanity’s accelerating pace of technological advancement. Part of that advancement is the ever increasing level of intellectual abstraction.

    If you’ve been a member or following my writings long enough, you’ll have heard me talk about the W R Clement book, Quantum Jump; written in 1998, it ascribed the entire scientific revolution from the Enlightenment onwards, to the discovery of perspective (then called “God’s space”), in art:

    Brunelleschi and the re-discovery of Linear Perspective circa 1400’s

    That “quantum leap” began the process of rewiring all our brains for ever higher levels of intellectual abstraction. It enabled us to go from ownership of a coal mine, for example, being ascribed to whomever physically occupied the space – including militarily – to people, and even corporatized entities like pension funds or investment clubs, owning fractional pieces of that mine, from far off places, even other countries.

    Initially we did this using physical pieces of paper to represent that ownership. There is a scene in an Agatha Christie “Miss Marple” mystery, “The Moving Finger”, where a man of leisure (played by William D’Arcy) takes to convalesce in a small cottage in a country town, and he visits the local barrister to register his securities with him, reaching into the inside pocket of his sport jacket and handing him the physical share certificates.

    Today, he’d just handle everything from a smart phone he carries around in his jeans.

    That’s increasing abstraction.

    What The Great Taking is warning us about, is that this increasing level of abstraction comes with a price – that we’re no longer really fractional owners of these businesses, we’re owners of claims on these businesses.

    And he may be right.

    Webb is a former high level financier and an expert in the legislation and regulatory framework that governs the space. The book looks to be meticulously documented and the legalities well researched.

    This is no different, I might add, from our mantra: “Not your keys, not your coins”.

    In fact as I read through The Great Taking, I found myself marvelling at how closely everything Webb was describing resembled what happened during the crypto carnage of 2022-23, when hapless users who had deposited their crypto with exchanges found their assets rehypothecated, collaterized – even appropriated from under them.

    It drove home the lesson, hard.

    Holding shares of Amazon in your E*Trade account may, when the chips are down, be no different from keeping your stack of BTC on an exchange (please don’t).

    The businesses to survive an event like The Great Taking, may end up being privately held ones. The assets you keep may be the ones with no counter-party risk – sound familiar? It’s only a core tenet of the entire Bitcoin philosophy.

    It is possible that in the event of an even larger financial crisis than we’ve seen prior (and in case you haven’t noticed, each one is typically an order of magnitude larger than the previous), everybody holding publicly traded stocks on platforms gets rug-pulled – and some mysterious and shadowy entity winds up with all the marbles.

    Should that occur, I would expect it to signify the end of the global financial system as we know it, and not in a way wherein the society simply continues as a world of penniless serfs, subservient to about 0.001% of the elites.

    It would be more of a “last gasp of Globalism” than a final takeover of the world.

    Some closing thoughts from the book’s author seems to concur:

    I will make a startling assertion. This is not because the power to control is increasing. It is because this power is indeed collapsing. The “control system” has entered collapse.

    Their power has been based on deception. Their two great powers of deception, money and media, have been extremely energy-efficient means of control. But these powers are now in rampant collapse.

    This is why they have moved urgently to institute physical control measures. However, physical control is difficult, dangerous and energy-intensive. And so, they are risking all. They are risking being seen. Is this not a sign of desperation?

    This has also been my read on it from fairy early in the pandemic, and more so since – especially after the #FreedomConvoy. Official narrative aside, that event sounded the death knell for not only Covid Tyranny, but for WEF-inspired globalism itself.

    Within a year of that happening, all Covid emergency measures had ended worldwide, vaccination uptake rates went into secular decline, and the mainstream media entered into a full-on death spiral.

    Webb continues:

    “We have entered a time in which their nature is being recognized. Knowledge of their existence has become unavoidable. Their grasping will come to an end, because all of humanity cannot allow it to continue.

    Once it is recognized, humans will bond against a common existential threat.

    People from all walks of life will join in common cause. We have witnessed this already.”

    It follows a theme I’ve been developing for a few years now, one that I didn’t originally conceive but came across and feel is accurate:

    That theme is that the next, worldwide conflict (“World War III”, in essence) will not be a geo-political struggle of the US vs China, or West vs East, or NATO vs China/Russia: it will be populations against their own governments.

    When you think about it, it almost fits the historical definition of the Marxist “class struggle”, only we – hopefully – don’t get a Communist “utopia” at the end of it.

    In fact, I think that’s what everybody will be rebelling against: the imposition of a technocratic socialism that attempts to hoover up the property rights of the rest of humanity.

    Those attempting to capitalize on this, the elites and the technocrats, have only really had one superpower with which to build their position over time:

    “They promote the belief that they are all-powerful. They are not. 

    All they have had is the power to print money. 

    The rest, they have usurped from humanity.”

    Of course, Bitcoin is the kryptonite to this superpower, the one thing elites had which enabled them to rig the entire system in their favour is basically finished, and they know it.

    At the risk of going on too long about it here, but wanting to do the topic some justice, The Great Taking scenario isn’t incompatible with what we’ve been calling The Great Bifurcation since the onset of the pandemic, encapsulated by my glib, cynical quip:

    “In the future, there will only be one occupation: managing one’s wealth. And most people, are gonna be unemployed.”

    We see The Great Bifurcation happening all around us already: tent cities from Burnaby to Toronto, fentanyl zombies roving San Francisco, increasing masses behaving like savages; this isn’t because of race, politics, religion or even a far-reaching global conspiracy to impoverish humanity or depopulate the earth (although there are almost certainly cells of elites who would wish that) – it’s because we’re using debt for money, we can’t stop, and the level of intellectual abstraction that is required to operate, let alone thrive, within a hyper-financialized world, is leaving larger and larger chunks of the population behind.

    Anytown of the future.

    It’s Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” (tl;dr: the rate of technological change will accelerate and compound) released in 1971, combined with Clement’ “Quantum Jump” (intellectual abstraction will become increasingly more complex) from 1998, writ large.

    These two accelerating dynamics conspire to create a veritable “Breakaway society” where those who are positioned and have the cognitive ability to front run the technology live in the future, and the rest, who can’t, fall behind into the past.

    The main difference that I see is Webb’s Great Taking is a deliberate conspiracy driven by successive generations of insular elites, whereas my concept of The Great Bifurcation is, as I always say, more the result of perverse incentives and dynamics than outright conspiracy.

    The reality is probably elements of both.

    Having said all that, we should be clear in our motivations and strategies for what we are holding in our equities portfolios:

    We hold Bitcoin, in proper self-custody, so nobody can take it from us in the event of a catastrophic collapse of the financial system.

    We may hold some physical gold, silver, junk silver for the same reasons, and we may have property somewhere, farmland, anything that we can lay physical claim to – although we may find ourselves in a situation where we have to somehow enforce those claims.

    Stocks, ETFs, even Bitcoin stocks or weird crypto moonshots, we don’t hold these to survive the collapse of the system. We hold these to try and garner out-sized investment returns within the system so long as it continues to function.

    I don’t know about you, but I actually don’t want the financial system to collapse. I don’t want society to go off the rails, I am not an accelerationist.

    I’m not hoping for a hyper-inflationary flameout of the entire global economy. That would suck, and I’d prefer to be wrong about that.

    In other words, were The Great Taking scenario to play out and come true, it would be a permutation of a catastrophic collapse we’ve been positioning for anyway – and we never really considered our equities portfolio (at least we shouldn’t) as part of our toolkit for navigating the collapse of the financial system.

    One way or another, should the entire system collapse, I expect our stocks to be among the first casualties, via bail-ins, capital controls, forced conversions into government debt, recapitalizing zombie banks or after all those – if we’re unfortunate enough to have been wildly correct about our positions – “windfall taxes” taking much of what’s left. (I am not alone in thinking this; any of you who also read Mark Faber’s Gloom Boom Doom report know he expects to have upwards of 25% of his wealth confiscated by technocrats during some future, exigent crisis).

    That’s why I said in the November letter, on this cycle (or the next) we will have to individually make our exits from the equities based on our own financial goals. While we keep our Bitcoin stack forever and make plans for inter-generational succession – and we may do that with some of our stocks (I could see *** and *** being legacy, dynastic holdings) – for the most part we’re in these to strategically profit within the existing system and cash out to meet our financial objectives.

    Everybody knows I want my lake-house in the Muskokas, and you should know what it is that you want.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 14:00

  • Watch: CNN Caught Editing RFK Jr Speech To Mislead Viewers
    Watch: CNN Caught Editing RFK Jr Speech To Mislead Viewers

    When he appeared on CNN last week, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confronted with a video from one of his speeches — a video CNN clipped to convey a false impression that he had compared Covid restrictions to conditions in Nazi Germany. 

    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr calls out CNN’s Kasie Hunt and Jake Tapper for misleading characterizations of his January 2022 speech  

    The dishonest ambush came on Dec. 15 as Kennedy was interviewed by former MSNBC anchor Kasie Hunt. Hunt showed a video of Kennedy speaking at a January 2022 rally in Washington, which includes a passage in which he said…

    “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.

    Today, the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide.”  

    Hunt had framed the clip to suggest Kennedy was specifically comparing Covid mandates to Hitler’s Germany.

    As we’ll soon show, that was false.

    In the passage from which the above excerpt was drawn, Kennedy was broadly addressing the rise of technology that threatens to enable a “turnkey totalitarianism” that would wildly surpass the capabilities of Hitler’s Nazi regime.   

    To spice things up, Hunt next displayed a tweet from Kennedy’s own wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines, which came a few days after the speech. 

    At the time, Hines had been repeatedly nagged by NBC News reporter Ben Collins and others on social media asking if she stood by Kennedy’s remarks. She eventually folded and posted a tweet in which she threw her own husband under the bus, embracing the ridiculous, politically-correct notion — propped up by the likes of the Anti-Defamation League — that nobody’s allowed to compare anything to the Holocaust:

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    “Is she right?” Hunt asked Kennedy. “No, she’s not right,” replied Kennedy, noting that Hines felt compelled to issue the tweet because, at the time, CNN’s Jake Tapper had similarly distorted Kennedy’s remarks and used them to contrive a bogus controversy.  

    Kennedy asked Hunt to play the full clip of his remarks. Exasperatingly, Hunt asked the producers to play the same cropped passage again, prompting Kennedy to interject and reiterate that he wanted CNN viewers to see the full context. Hunt replied, “We do not have a longer version of the clip,” condescendingly concluding, “I do think that the clip that we have is very clear.” 

    “What you’re doing is misleading the public right now,” said Kennedy.  

    Here’s a nice breakdown that first shows CNN’s framing of RFK’s speech, and then the full passage that contained RFK Jr’s allusion to Nazi Germany — not as mirroring the then-current state of affairs in America, but as a contrast to a looming menace around the globe, as governments are poised to obtain powers over individuals never before available: 

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    …and here’s a transcript of the key passage from that January 23, 2022 speech: 

    What we’re seeing today is what I call turnkey totalitarianism. They are putting in place all of these technological mechanisms for control that we’ve never seen before. It’s been the ambition of every totalitarian state from the beginning of mankind, to control every aspect of behavior, of conduct, of thought, and to obliterate dissent. 

    None of them have been able to do it. They didn’t have the technological capacity. Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped. So, it was possible. Many died trying, but it was possible. Today, the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide. 

    Within five years, we’re going to see 415,000 low-orbit satellites. Bill Gates says his 65,000 satellites alone will be able to look at every square inch of the planet, 24 hours a day. They’re putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior. Digital currency, that will allow them to punish us from a distance and cut off our food supply.

    Vaccine passports…you have a series of rights. As flawed as our government is, you can still go out and go to a bar, you can go to a sporting event, you can get on a bus or an airplane and you can travel. You have certain freedoms, you can get educated, et cetera. The minute they hand you that vaccine passport, every right that you have is transformed into a privilege contingent upon your obedience to arbitrary government dictates. It will make you a slave. And what do we do about this? What do we do? We resist.” 

    When she told Kennedy that CNN didn’t have the full context available, Hunt promised, “I will make sure that we look at the further remarks as well.” However, there’s no indication of that promised follow-up. Indeed, in a CNN article summarizing Hunt’s interview, the network doubled down on the deception, flatly declaring that Kennedy “compared the Covid lockdowns to Nazi Germany, arguing that ‘even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland’.”  

    The mistreatment of Kennedy comes as he continues to hold substantial support among voters desperate for something other than a Biden or Trump re-run:

    • A new Quinnipiac University nationwide poll has Biden leading Trump by one point in a head-to-head contest, and by two in a three-way contest with Kennedy — with RFK Jr grabbing a substantial 22% share. 

    • A Monmouth University poll found a comparably balanced impact of Kennedy’s presence, but with Kennedy drawing a little more from Biden than Trump. 

    • In the Quinnipiac poll, Kennedy is the top choice of independents — 36% prefer Kennedy to 32% for Biden and 26% for Trump. 

    Of course, the rubber really meets the road in individual state races, and some are hoping Kennedy can throw a wrench in the Red-Blue duopoly that’s steering America to ruin.

    “With the right electoral college vote strategy, he could pick off one or more states, thereby throwing the election into the US House of Representatives for the first time since 1824,” writes David Stockman.  

    While Kennedy’s ultimate impact on the major party candidates is still uncertain and evolving, one thing is clear: CNN and the entire establishment badly want the Kennedy wild card out of the 2024 deck. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 13:25

  • 'Misery Index' Near Lowest Level Since Pre-COVID, But Are Americans Happy?
    ‘Misery Index’ Near Lowest Level Since Pre-COVID, But Are Americans Happy?

    Authored by Sam Bourgi via CreditNews.com,

    Americans should be in a better financial position heading into the holidays, according to a famous formula developed in the 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson.

    The sum of U.S. unemployment and inflation – known as the “misery index” – fell to 6.8% in November from 7.5% the previous month. That’s the lowest since the summer and fast approaching pre-Covid levels.

    The misery index is calculated by adding up the current unemployment rate (3.7%) and the inflation rate (3.1%). The formula provides a simple way to gauge whether the well-being of Americans is improving or not.

    Misery peaked in April 2020 when the index spiked to 15%, the highest since 1982. Conditions have improved since the early onset of Covid, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing.

    After falling back to 7.7% in January 2021, the index re-accelerated over the next two years as inflation surged. The misery index was 12.5% in June 2022—the same month that annual inflation hit 9.1%.

    The unemployment component of the index has been faring well since Covid emergency measures were lifted back in 2021. The unemployment rate has remained below 4% for nearly two years—even as the economy begins to slow.

    But economists warn that the misery index doesn’t offer a complete picture of how the average American is doing.

    You can tell just by asking them how they feel about the economy and personal finances.

    How do Americans really feel?

    Economist Greg Ip, who heads economic commentary at The Wall Street Journal, compared the misery index to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index—one of the most closely-watched consumer surveys.

    “Based on historic correlations, sentiment has been more depressed this year than you would expect given the level of economic misery,” Ip wrote, arguing that consumers are more pessimistic than the misery index would suggest.

    A deeper dive into the sentiment data reveals that Americans are still frustrated about inflation and the impact of high interest rates on their finances. And while the consumer sentiment index rose in December—breaking a four-month skid—some economists attributed it to a temporary holiday boost ahead of Christmas.

    “Consumer spirits are perking up for the holiday season which is a sign Christmas is still coming this year,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS, a New York-based financial research company.

    A separate sentiment survey from LSEG/Ipsos paints an even less enthusiastic picture of the average consumer.

    The December primary consumer sentiment index—which measures Americans’ attitudes toward jobs, investments, the economy, and personal finances—declined from November and was only up slightly compared to 12 months earlier.

    According to the survey, attitudes toward the current situation, investments, and jobs “showed significant declines this month.”

    The impact of cumulative inflation

    As Creditnews Research reported in a recent study, Americans aren’t celebrating the slowdown in inflation because they’re still reeling from the cumulative price increases of the past three years.

    While inflation has fallen to 3.1%, consumer prices have increased by a cumulative 19% since the start of 2020. Food prices are up a whopping 25% over that period.

    Americans spent the better part of two years—April 2021 to January 2023—seeing inflation grow faster than their paychecks. That trend reversed in February of this year.

    But even with stronger purchasing power this year, the vast majority of Americans (92%) said they reduced their spending in the six months through September, according to a Morning Consult survey for CNBC.

    A majority of respondents across all wage brackets said current economic conditions negatively impacted their finances.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 12:50

  • "It's Disgusting What They're Doing": Tucker Carlson Describes Visit With Julian Assange
    “It’s Disgusting What They’re Doing”: Tucker Carlson Describes Visit With Julian Assange

    As Julian Assange approaches his ‘final’ appeal against extradition to the United States, where he faces some 18 counts related to the release of vast troves of damning and embarrassing evidence against the US government, the 52-year-old WikiLeaks founder received a visit from Tucker Carlson to discuss his situation.

    Carlson describes Assange as “one of the greatest journalists of our age,” who has “spent his adult life bringing previously concealed facts to the public about what our leaders are doing.”

    Perhaps most notably, Assange published internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, revealing among other things that the Hillary Clinton campaign conspired to cheat against rival Bernie Sanders. These leaks, claimed by Democrats to be Russian hacks, were actually internal leaks, according to Carlson.

    What’s more, Carlson noted how a fabricated, media-amplified sexual assault charge in Sweden was used against Assange, who spent more than seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. And when he exposed the CIA’s spying apparatus, former CIA Director Mike Pompeo discussed kidnapping or assassinating him while not being charged with any crime in the US at the time.

    Watch below as Carlson lays out the Assange situation…

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    Subscribers to the Tucker Carlson Network (which of course, everyone should be) can watch the rest of the segment, in which Carlson describes sitting down with Assange for around an hour (no cameras allowed). He also discusses the situation with Assange’s wife, Stella.

    Highlights:

    • “We talked about why he is in prison, and my first question to him was: ‘what do you think this is actually about?’,” to which Assange replied that he “first became famous when WikiLeaks published documents and videos that the US government had kept secret from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were politically embarrassing to the Pentagon – but that wasn’t the red line. The red line was several years later, when WikiLeaks published information about surveillance by the CIA.“
    • “It’s a total outrage that they’re holding him, and he hasn’t even committed or been charged with a crime in this country.”
    • “The inmates are treated like animals. And he’s not an animal, he’s a journalist who has committed no crime. And so, anyone who’s in favor of that, anyone who supports his continued torture, is your enemy.”
    • “Assange looks like press photographs of him, maybe older, pale, he hasn’t been outside in 13 years…”

    As Paul Craig Roberts notes, the Assange situation “shows conclusively that Washington regards truth as its most dangerous enemy.”

    A country without a media cannot be free or have an accountable government.  Americans who think that they live in a free country are completely deluded. They are pathetic.

    We encourage you to jump over to Tucker’s site and watch the rest here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 12:15

  • The Rise Of Black Support For Trump
    The Rise Of Black Support For Trump

    Authore3d by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Fearing backlash, some black people feel they can only whisper, “I’m voting for Trump.”

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images)

    But others are becoming louder and prouder in voicing support for former President Donald Trump.

    Mark Fisher, co-founder of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) group in Rhode Island, made waves recently with his endorsement of the former president.

    “I knew I was going to pay a price for it,” Mr. Fisher told The Epoch Times, “but I felt like the benefit of doing it far outweighed the cost of me playing it safe.”

    Mr. Fisher said he felt obligated “to clear a path” for those who think the way he does.

    He and other pro-Trump black people are considered renegades.

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    That’s partly because President Trump’s foes have tried to brand him as a racist unworthy of votes from black Americans. But it’s also because he’s a Republican.

    For generations, black leaders and churches have encouraged black people to vote for Democrats, including President Joe Biden.

    But the tide seems to be turning. Opinion polls are showing that more black people are willing to break rank, as Mr. Fisher did.

    Since President Trump’s win in 2016, black support for him has more than tripled, now exceeding 20 percent in some surveys.

    Polling suggests that black people and other minorities who once spurned President Trump now appear willing to give his candidacy a fresh look—a trend that could help spell the difference between victory and defeat in the 2024 election.

    The Biden campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Three main factors appear to be spurring black people to pivot toward President Trump, according to Mr. Fisher and others who spoke to The Epoch Times: the economy, the criminal justice system, and the influence of other black people going public with their support.

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    Americans are continuing to feel the pinch of economic conditions under President Biden. Just about everyone, regardless of skin color, feels the weight of higher prices for groceries, gasoline, housing, and other essentials; for months, polls have been showing that a vast majority of citizens disapprove of the president’s economic policies, dubbed “Bidenomics.”

    People are also noticing the justice system’s seemingly unjust treatment of President Trump—a fate many black people have experienced.

    “They’re saying to themselves: ‘Now wait a minute; this looks very familiar,'” Mr. Fisher said. “Subconsciously, that’s a powerful thing.”

    Black people also lament that authorities are letting violent crime and illegal immigrants run amok, while they’re targeting President Trump and others for alleged nonviolent offenses.

    Having prominent black people, including musicians, revealing pro-Trump opinions, has emboldened others to do the same.

    Mr. Fisher said these endorsements made him feel he wasn’t alone; those trailblazers inspired him to come out of the shadows.

    “I saw other black people expressing themselves, displaying courage and independent thought, not being afraid of what other people think about them,” he said. “And I felt that my community needed me to do that too.”

    Protesters wearing “Blacks for Trump” T-shirts speak to the press outside the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. United States Courthouse in Miami, Fla., on June 13, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Strong Reactions

    Although Mr. Fisher said he “took a lot of heat” for endorsing President Trump, he also got “a lot of powerful, impactful, and profound messages from people all around the world,” along with interview requests from as far away as Japan.

    President Trump thanked Mr. Fisher with a surprise phone call and a dinner invitation. Some people excoriated the former president for doing so, considering Mr. Fisher’s history with BLM.

    President Trump and BLM have accused each other of sowing seeds of hatred and violence.

    “I feel like the white racists hate me and the black racists hate me,” Mr. Fisher said. “But what I’m doing is separating the wheat from the chaff. I’m creating a safe space for all those who want to be on the right side of history, who want to come together for the betterment of America and improvement of the people of America.

    “People are welcome to join in on that vision, or walk away from it. It’s that simple.”

    This fall, before Mr. Fisher revealed his support for President Trump, black rapper Waka Flocka Flame posted a profile picture of himself alongside President Trump on X, formerly Twitter. Separately, he posted: “TRUMP2024.”

    The photo attracted at least 13.5 million views. It also sparked controversy for the rapper, who had previously made derogatory remarks about the former president.

    Top Trump adviser Bruce LeVell told The Epoch Times that the musical artist had quietly begun shifting toward the former president some time ago; Mr. LeVell and Waka Flocka Flame met in 2022 and posed for a photo together.

    Rapper Waka Flocka Flame (L) and Bruce LeVell, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, pose for a photo in 2022. (Courtesy of Bruce LeVell)

    Being Informed

    Other black people, whether prominent or not, are starting to realize that Big Tech companies and government agencies worked together to suppress and twist information about President Trump, other political figures, and many hot-button issues in society, Mr. LeVell said.

    “This is, as I call it, ‘The Season of Exposure,’” he said. “And the great lies are being exposed.”

    A woman who goes by the name McKayla Rose on X agrees. Ms. Rose, 36, of Dallas, spoke to The Epoch Times on condition that her real name not be used because she wants to avoid repercussions.

    Ms. Rose said she initially “fell into the propaganda of Trump being bad.”

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    “I was like, ‘Man, if everybody hates Trump, he must be a bad guy,'” she said.

    But things started to change for her about four years ago. As a mother of two, Ms. Rose became increasingly concerned about issues affecting her children. So she started spending more time researching government policies and politics.

    Originally from Tampa, Ms. Rose grew up amid a mix of white people, Hispanics, and Asians. That real-life experience convinced her that “America is not a racist country,” countering leftists’ claims that it is.

    “I know the majority of people aren’t racist, and I had more faith that people wouldn’t vote for such a blatantly ‘racist’ person,” she said, referring to how mainstream media tended to portray President Trump.

    Ms. Rose started seeking unfiltered sources of information. She began following President Trump’s Twitter account and listening to his public speeches.

    People in the crowd cheer as former President Donald Trump arrives on stage during a rally campaigning in support of Republican candidates in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 9, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    She started to see a pattern. After watching one of President Trump’s speeches, Ms. Rose would see leftists and news media outlets “completely, like, twist his words,” she said.

    Ms. Rose said she thinks other black people have started to similarly inform themselves.

    “I think Trump has overcome a lot of what has happened to him, and I really believe a lot more people are with him now, more than ever, especially black folks,” she said.

    Still, black Trump supporters can expect to be ostracized, Ms. Rose said, as she has been.

    After revealing her pro-Trump stance, Ms. Rose said she lost many of her black friends; she has been called a “coon,” “an Uncle Tom,” and “the ‘N-word.'”

    But the opposition from white liberals is the worst, she said, because “they’re just so condescending.”

    She said they ask her: “How could you vote for someone that hates you? You know he hates your people, right?”

    And they tell her: “You’re so dumb; you don’t know any better.”

    “And I’ve basically had them telling me that, because I’m black, I’m obligated to be Democrat—and that I must hate myself because I’m black and I’m a Trump supporter,” Ms. Rose said.

    Attendees listen as President Donald Trump addresses young black conservative leaders from across the country as part of the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit in the White House in Washington on Oct. 26, 2018. (Chris Kleponis – Pool/Getty Images)

    Knowing they would face similar reactions for voicing support for President Trump, “a lot of black folks are still in hiding,” she said.

    “They stay silent because they want to get invited to the barbecue,” she said. “If you are black and you support Trump, you really kind of get disowned—not just in your own family but also in the black community.”

    Neither Biden nor Trump?

    Marv Neal, a 52-year-old black man who hosts a weekly radio show on Boston’s “Urban Heat” radio station, 98.1 FM, agreed that black people are reluctant to admit they dislike President Joe Biden or his policies—and therefore might consider casting a ballot for President Trump.

    But Mr. Neal told The Epoch Times that he and others have been disenchanted with both major parties’ candidates.

    This impression fits with findings of a new survey. A GenForward survey reported on Dec. 12 that about 20 percent to 25 percent of most minorities would have voted for “someone other than” President Trump or President Biden if the election had been held last month.

    Mr. Neal, a registered Democrat, said, “Just because you’re a Democrat doesn’t mean you’re going to get my vote.”

    He hasn’t always felt that way.

    “I was raised Democrat and it was just like, everything was Democrat … you got to vote Democrat, Democrat, Democrat, Democrat,” he said.

    But Mr. Neal said another black broadcaster at the same radio station, Larry Higginbottom, changed his perspective.

    “Like Larry says: ‘Vote your interest or whoever speaks to your interest. It doesn’t matter if they’re Democrat or Republican.'”

    Voters cast their ballots at a polling location inside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Arlington, Va., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

    Thus far, President Biden’s policies seem to lack benefits for “average, everyday citizens,” Mr. Neal said.

    Homeless shelters in Boston are “at capacity,” and legal residents can’t get the help they need because money is being spent to help immigrants and foreign nations, he said. Hotel rooms are being used to house immigrants, so the rates for any unused rooms have gone up for everyone else, he said.

    Mr. Neal said he initially disliked President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. “I was like: ‘Why you have to act like that, man? Why can’t you just help these people?'”

    But he said that now he sees that those border security policies benefited U.S. citizens.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 11:40

  • Pentagon's Operation Prosperity Guardian "Falls Apart" As Spain, Italy, France Reject Request   
    Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian “Falls Apart” As Spain, Italy, France Reject Request   

    Australia is the latest country to reject a request from the United States to send warships to the Red Sea under the command of the Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect commercial vessels along the critical maritime trade route from Iran-backed Houthi. 

    Defense Minister Richard Marles told Sky News that Australia’s military would not send a “ship or a plane” to the Red Sea but would triple the number of troops for the US-led maritime force. 

    “We need to be really clear around our strategic focus and our strategic focus is our region,” Marles said.

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    The Pentagon’s formation of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a new task force to protect shipping from Houthi drone and missile attacks in the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea, requires increased warship patrols by the US and allies. This will create a security umbrella over commercial vessels to defend from attacks. 

    Reuters said about twenty countries have signed up for the Pentagon’s new operation. However, several countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, and France, have rejected the Pentagon’s request to participate in the operation. 

    Spain’s Defence Ministry said it would only participate in NATO-led missions or European-coordinated operations – not ones commanded by the Pentagon: 

    “We will not participate unilaterally in the Red Sea operation.” 

    Italy’s Defence Ministry voiced similar concerns, indicating it would send naval frigate Virginio Fasan to the Red Sea but only respond to requests by Italian shipowners. 

    “Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea has practically Collapsed as France, Spain, and Italy have all announced their Withdrawal from the US Command Structure for the Operation, with the Three Nations stating they will only conduct further Maritime Operations under the Command of NATO and/or the European Union and not the United States,” X account OSINTdefender wrote. 

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    Another X user wrote: 

    “France, Spain, and Italy aren’t withdrawing because they don’t want to escalate the conflict. On the contrary, they’re withdrawing because they don’t believe the operation coordinated by Biden regime will protect their vessels. This is the result of a weak ‘President’ / lack of leadership.” 

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    The number of warships around the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait has increased this week. 

    We reminded readers of Zoltan Poszar’s prediction of central-bank-analogized ‘military protection’ and said it’s soon to become a reality… and just like that, it has:

    Protection is a conceptual counterpart to par. When you decide to take money out of a sight deposit, you expect the same amount back that you put in (par).

    When you sail foreign cargo from port A to port B, you expect to unload the same amount of cargo that you onloaded.

    Banks can deliver par on deposits most of the time. When not, central banks step in to help.

    Commodity traders can deliver foreign cargo from port A to port B most of the time, but when not, the state intervenes again: not the monetary arm, but the military arm of the state.

    What central banks are to the protection of par promises, the military branch is to the protection of shipments: foreign cargo needs to sail on sea routes and through choke points like the Strait of Hormuz, and “par” in this context

    As of Saturday morning, the number of container ships in the Red Sea with destinations to Asia, Europe, and the US is less than five. 

    This once-busy waterway that connects to the Suez Canal has seen a plunge in container ship activity this week. 

    Remember, this critical waterway is responsible for 10-12% of the world’s maritime freight. Vessels are now being diverted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 1-2 weeks in travel time. Plus, container rates are soaring. 

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    The fact that seven major shipping companies, including Taiwanese container shipping line Evergreen and Belgian tanker owner Euronav, have halted sails through the Red Sea shows their lack of confidence in the US protecting the critical waterway. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 11:05

  • 3 Out Of 5 Illegal Alien Households Are Supported By Taxpayer-Funded Welfare
    3 Out Of 5 Illegal Alien Households Are Supported By Taxpayer-Funded Welfare

    Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

    A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals that almost 60% of all illegal aliens households in the United States are benefiting from at least one form of taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.

    Breitbart reports that the study, written by CIS’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, found that illegal aliens households, as well as legal immigrants, use “significantly more” welfare than actual American citizens. Of illegal aliens currently occupying land in the U.S., 59% are on welfare that is funded by legal American citizens; 52% of legal immigrants are also using welfare. Meanwhile, less than 40% of American citizens use welfare.

    Photo: EL PASO, TEXAS – SEPTEMBER 21: In an aerial view, migrants are seen grouped together while waiting to be processed on the Ciudad Juarez side of the border on September 21, 2023 in El Paso, Texas. A recent surge of migrant crossings has occurred along the Southwestern region of the United States border. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    Among the most common forms of welfare for illegals are food stamps, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

    “This is primarily because the American welfare system is designed in large part to help low-income families with children, which describes a large share of immigrants,” the study explains.

    “Compared to households headed by the United States-born, immigrant-headed households have especially high use of food programs (36 percent vs. 25 percent for the U.S.-born), Medicaid (37 percent vs. 25 percent for the U.S.-born), and the Earned Income Tax Credit (16 percent vs. 12 percent for the U.S.-born),” CIS continues.

    The problem of illegals increasingly stealing welfare programs meant for American citizens will only get worse as the illegal population continues to surge to destabilizing levels. Now, after three years of Joe Biden’s open-borders policy, there are at least 49.5 million foreign-born individuals living in the United States, which is by far the largest amount ever recorded in American history. Under Biden, that total increased by about 4.5 million. If the trends remain the same, then the foreign-born population will surpass 70 million by the year 2060.

    While on the campaign trail in 2020, Biden and all other Democratic candidates pledged during the primary debates that they would support giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens, alongside other forms of welfare.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 10:30

  • Christmas Comes Early For 1 In 5 American Families
    Christmas Comes Early For 1 In 5 American Families

    Christmas traditions vary greatly across the world.

    While some countries hold the main celebration on Christmas Eve, others wait until Christmas Day to get festive and, most importantly at least to kids, to open presents.

    In the United States, most families unwrap their gifts on Christmas Day, with the majority not waiting until breakfast to get cracking or unpacking.

    But, as Felix Richter reports, according to data from Statista Consumer Insights, Santa comes early to 1 in 5 families, however, as 18 percent of respondents said they mainly open presents on Christmas Eve in their household.

    Infographic: Christmas Comes Early for 1 in 5 American Families | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Additionally, according to Statista Consumer Insights, a Christmas tree in the house tops the list of holiday must-haves this year, with 55 percent of Americans considering it essential to a proper celebration.

    Infographic: American Christmas Essentials | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Some proper holiday tunes (there’s more than “Last Christmas”) and Christmas movies, think “Home Alone”, “Love Actually” and (to some) “Die Hard”, are other key ingredients to the holiday season with 50 percent of Americans calling both essential traditions.

    When asked about what they are looking forward to most thinking about the holiday season, Americans show that community and family still beat the commercial aspects of the holidays. 70 percent of the respondents look forward to spending time with friends and family, making it the top answer by far. Interestingly Americans also prefer giving presents over receiving them, showing that not all is lost for Christmas romantics.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 09:55

  • It Was Meant To Be A Campaign Winner. Has 'Bidenomics' Become A Liability?
    It Was Meant To Be A Campaign Winner. Has ‘Bidenomics’ Become A Liability?

    Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    President Joe Biden, who has typically refrained from discussing the stock market, finally broached the subject in mid-December, celebrating a record high for the Dow Jones. It was an apparent attempt to appeal to voters who are still pessimistic about inflation and the economy.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    The president recently trolled former President Donald Trump in a campaign video posted on social media; mocking his predecessor’s 2020 warning of a stock market crash if Mr. Biden were elected.

    “Good one, Donald,” President Biden wrote in a Dec. 15 post on X, formerly Twitter.

    During the 2020 presidential campaign, President Trump said, “If Biden wins, you’re going to have a stock market collapse the likes of which you’ve never had.”

    The recent rally shows three major U.S. indexes notching gains for seven consecutive weeks thanks to the Federal Reserve’s “dovish” stance. Since Oct. 27, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 surged by 15 percent, and the Nasdaq jumped by 17 percent.

    On Dec. 13, the central bank concluded its final policy meeting of the year, signaling that its anti-inflation campaign is making progress and that monetary policy tightening has likely come to an end.

    The Fed’s policymakers are now predicting three rate cuts in 2024, more than previously projected, offering a ray of hope to investors who have been gloomy for the past two years.

    President Biden, who’s running for reelection, has struggled to win over Americans with his economic agenda, which he calls “Bidenomics.” The 46th president may now want to capitalize on the recent stock market gains with the hope of making his economic message appealing to voters.

    According to a new CBS News poll, Americans perceive the current economic challenges as the most severe they’ve faced in generations, surpassing the 2008–09 financial crisis and even the inflation rates and gas shortages experienced in the 1970s.

    Despite positive job reports and discussions of a “soft landing” in the economy, people still focus on their personal experiences rather than broader economic data. An overwhelming number of respondents say their incomes aren’t keeping up with the rising cost of living.

    According to a recent poll by Bankrate, 59 percent of Americans believe the United States is in a recession, with many referring to it as a “silent recession.”

    Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City on Oct. 30, 2023.  (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    ‘Wealth Effect’

    Individual struggles have a tremendous influence on people’s perceptions, exposing the disconnect between macroeconomic facts and personal financial conditions, according to Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a public policy think tank.

    “Within the economy, there’s reality and there’s perception, and perception always trumps reality,” he told The Epoch Times.

    The main reason Americans are still struggling, according to Mr. Matthews, is that Bidenomics has erased the so-called wealth effect.

    The wealth effect is a behavioral economic theory that suggests people feel more financially secure and confident about their wealth when the values of their homes or investment portfolios rise. When consumers feel wealthy, they tend to spend more, which benefits the economy as a whole.

    Economic factors such as the stock market, inflation, home values, and consumer confidence contribute to the wealth effect.

    For example, when Americans witness their retirement savings plateau or decline, it has a significant influence on their sense of financial well-being. This is especially important given that the majority of Americans are investors in the stock market.

    According to a Gallup survey, 61 percent of Americans own stock, whether through direct investments or a retirement savings account such as a 401(k).

    Mr. Matthews, in a recent op-ed in The Hill, stated that Americans of all income levels experienced the wealth effect during the Trump years. Bidenomics, on the other hand, has brought the wealth effect to a standstill, which is one of the main reasons President Biden’s polling numbers are so poor, he said.

    President Joe Biden walks onto the stage before speaking about Bidenomics at CS Wind in Pueblo, Colo., on Nov. 29, 2023. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

    The Dow Jones index was slightly below 20,000 when Donald Trump took office in January 2017. It reached above 30,000 when he left office, a roughly 50 percent increase in four years. That was despite a huge drop in spring 2020 due to the government shutdowns over the COVID-19 pandemic.

    During President Biden’s first year in office, the Dow rose to 36,000, a roughly 20 percent increase. While there have been some ups and downs since then, the Dow has largely moved sideways over the past two years, essentially remaining stagnant inside a tight range and producing mediocre returns. This has put yet another negative light on Bidenomics.

    To combat excessive inflation, the Fed began hiking interest rates in March 2022. As a result, Treasury yields have begun to look more attractive compared to stocks. This is one of the reasons investors have started to pull out of the stock market.

    Even though economic data is improving and the stock market has risen in recent weeks, President Biden may face additional economic challenges in 2024.

    “As always, the economy will play a big part in next year’s election and could constitute a major headwind for the Biden campaign,” Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Epoch Times.

    “While so far economic growth has held up well and inflation has been coming down, there is a high risk that we will experience an economic recession before the election.”

    Mr. Lachman said that the economy has yet to witness the full effects of the Fed’s monetary policy tightening.

    Inflation Erodes Wealth

    Inflation has played a larger role than the stock market in erasing the wealth effect.

    Americans haven’t witnessed inflation of this magnitude since the early 1980s. The real value of household wealth has been declining over the past two years, at the fastest rate in more than four decades, according to the Financial Times.

    Price increases reduce the purchasing power of consumers, devalue people’s wages and savings, and increase the cost of living. As a result, people feel poorer and cut back on their consumption and spending.

    Lower-income households with already tight budgets have felt the effects of inflation the most.

    Although the annual inflation rate has significantly dropped from its peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022 to 3.1 percent in November 2023, it’s important to note that prices remain elevated when compared to the time President Biden took office.

    Overall, prices have surged by more than 17 percent since January 2021—nearly 20 percent for food, more than 43 percent for gasoline, and 18 percent for housing, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 09:20

  • In The Wake Of ESG's Ongoing Death, The Texas-Focused ETFs Have Arrived
    In The Wake Of ESG’s Ongoing Death, The Texas-Focused ETFs Have Arrived

    No sooner have we witnessed the death of ESG investing, including the shuttering of several ESG and “green” themed ETFs, than we bear witness to the launch of two “Texas-Based” ETFs.

    Coming online this past week was the Texas Capital Texas Oil Index ETF and the Texas Capital Texas Small Cap Equity Index ETF, being brought to market by the Texas Capital Funds Trust. 

    The SEC prospectus for the Texas Capital Texas Oil Index ETF says it “seeks to provide investment results that, before fees and expenses, correspond generally to the total return performance of the Alerian Texas Weighted Oil and Gas Index”.

    The Texas Capital Texas Small Cap Equity Index ETF “seeks to provide investment results that, before fees and expenses, correspond generally to the total return performance of the Texas Capital Texas Small Cap Equity Index”, the prospectus says.

    “The Adviser believes that companies headquartered in Texas, including small-capitalization companies, enjoy certain economic, regulatory, taxation, workforce and other benefits relative to companies headquartered in other states,” it reads.

    “In the Adviser’s view, the strong business environment in the State of Texas is demonstrated by, among other things, its infrastructure spending and resources, relatively low cost of conducting business, export data, and third-party rankings and recognitions.”

    “In addition, the Texas economy is large and diverse,” it says. “The Texas economy, if considered on a standalone basis, would represent the 9th largest economy globally, and, in the Adviser’s view, offers the best business environment in the United States.”

    “The Texas economy enjoys a relatively younger workforce and has enjoyed relatively faster growth, compared to the rest of the country. The Adviser believes that the Fund offers a cost-effective opportunity to invest directly in small-capitalization companies that benefit from the economic environment in Texas.”

    And as Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas noted this week, it isn’t just Texas-based ETFs coming online. Coal ETFs are also starting to have a resurrection:

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

    Recall, we have written about the dying off of ESG and “green” investment products over the last few months. Most recently, this month, Goldman Sachs shuttered its ActiveBeta Paris-Aligned Climate U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF. 

    The ETF is shutting down, per a Goldman Sachs press release which says that “the Fund’s Board of Trustees, at the recommendation of GSAM, has approved a plan of liquidation for the Fund”. 

    “The Fund will begin the process of liquidating portfolio assets and unwinding its affairs in an orderly fashion over time,” the release says. 

    Balchunas pointed out earlier this month that “there was just way too much supply for the demand” with the ETF and that “it’s going to get worse too”. Balchunas says the ETF only took in $7 million over the course of 2 years. 

    We also wrote just days ago about Jeff Ubben – who is shuttering his sustainability fund – calling traditional climate summitry an “echo chamber” of diplomats. 

    Less than a week before that we noted that $30 billion has been shaved off the value of clean energy stocks over the last 6 months. 

    We also pointed out weeks ago how the ESG grift was reaching endgame after Markus Müller, chief investment officer ESG at Deutsche Bank’s Private Bank stated that sustainability funds should include traditional energy stocks, arguing that not doing so deprives investors of a prime opportunity to invest in the transition to renewable energy.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 08:45

  • Britain’s Net Zero Disaster And The Wind Power Scam
    Britain’s Net Zero Disaster And The Wind Power Scam

    Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClear Wire,

    “This is not about complicated issues of cryptocurrency,” assistant U.S. attorney Nicolas Roos declared in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial, after accusing the defendant of building FTX on a “pyramid of deceit.” Much the same can be said about the foundations of Britain’s net zero experiment. Energy is complicated, and electricity is essential to modern society and our quality of life, but as with FTX, the underlying story is straightforward: wind power and net zero are built on a pyramid of deceit.

    Net zero was sold to Parliament and the British people on claims that wind-power costs were low and falling. This was untrue: wind-power costs are high and have been rising. In the net zero version of “crypto will make you rich,” official analyses produced by the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility rely on the falsehood that wind power is cheap, that net zero would have minimal costs, and that it could boost productivity and economic growth. None of these has any basis in reality.

    The push for net zero began in 2019, when the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee produced a report urging the government to adopt the policy. Part of the justification was historic climate guilt. In the words of committee chair Lord Deben, Britain had been “one of the largest historical contributors to climate change.” But the key economic justification for raising Britain’s decarbonization from 80% to 100% by 2050 – i.e., net zero – was “rapid cost reductions during mass deployment for key technologies,” notably in offshore wind. These illusory cost reductions, the committee claimed, “have made tighter emission reduction targets achievable at the same costs as previous looser targets.” It was green snake oil.

    During the subsequent 88-minute debate in the House of Commons to write net zero into law, the clean-energy minister, Chris Skidmore, also asserted that net zero’s cost would be the same as the previous 80% target, which Parliament had approved in 2008. Challenged by a Labour MP on the absence of a regulatory-impact assessment, Skidmore misled Parliament, saying that there had been no regulatory-impact assessment in respect of raising the initial 60 percent target to 80 percent.

    The regulatory-impact assessment that Skidmore says doesn’t exist gave a range of £324 billion to £404 billion when the target was raised to 80% – an estimate that excluded transitional costs – and cautioned that costs could exceed this range. Unlike today’s political pronouncements, the assessment was honest about the consequences of Britain acting if the rest of the world did not. “The economic case for the UK continuing to act alone where global action cannot be achieved would be weak,” it warned.

    The Climate Change Act was passed to show Britain’s climate leadership and inspire the rest of the world to follow its example. How did that work out? In the 11 years that transpired from passing the Act to legislating net zero in 2019, Britain’s fossil fuel emissions fell by 180 million metric tons – a 33% reduction. Over the same period, the rest of the world’s emissions increased by 5,177 million metric tons – a rise of 16%. Put another way, 11 years of British emissions reduction were wiped out in around 140 days by increased emissions from the rest of the world.

    Someone who claims that he’s a leader but who has no followers is typically regarded as a fool. It’s different with climate. Politicians parade their green virtue – Skidmore is to quit the House of Commons, and he teaches net zero studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School – while voters get mugged with higher energy bills. Analysis of Britain’s Big Six energy companies’ regulatory filings reveals that fuel-input costs for gas and coal-fired power stations were flat from 2009 to 2020. Still, the average price per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity paid by households rose 67%, driven by high environmental levies to subsidize renewable-energy investors. Yet supposedly the cost of renewable energy has plummeted.

    During Prime Minister’s Questions earlier this year, Rishi Sunak claimed the cost of offshore wind had fallen from £140 per megawatt hour (MWh) to £40 per MWh, numbers assiduously propagated by the wind lobby and the Climate Change Committee. His claim is flat-out false. The prime minister has been suckered by falling per MWh price bids made by wind investors in successive allocation-round bids for offshore wind subsidies.

    The explanation for this is to be found not in falling costs but in a flawed bidding process that rewards opportunistic bidding by wind investors. The government was giving away valuable options that commit the government to honor the prices paid for winning bids but commit investors to nothing. Because investors don’t pay anything for these options, the only way they can get them is by cutting the price they offer – but are not obliged to take – for their electricity unless they choose to exercise their options much later in the process.

    Falling prices in successive allocation rounds are thus an artefact of moral hazard hardwired into the allocation mechanism; they reveal nothing about the trend in the costs of offshore wind. Analysis of audited financial data of wind farm companies undertaken by a handful of independent researchers comprehensively debunks the falling wind costs claim. The unavoidable move to deeper waters offset any cost reductions and operating costs per MWh of electricity for new offshore wind projects; the prices for the move are around double those assumed in the subsidy bids.

    Preeminent among these researchers is Gordon Hughes, a former economics professor at Edinburgh University and adviser to the World Bank on power plant economics. Hughes’s analysis shows that by the twelfth year of operation, rising per MWh operating costs of deep-water wind turbines exceed their government-guaranteed prices, squeezing out their capacity to repay their capital and financing costs.

    The intermittency and variability of wind and solar led the government to create a capacity market to pay for standby generation. In any economic appraisal of renewables, the costs of running the capacity market should be allocated to wind and solar as their intermittency and variability create the need for it. Electricity procured from the capacity market is not cheap. In 2020, German-owned Uniper’s thermal power stations obtained an average price of £224 per MWh, around four times the typical wholesale price.

    Confirmation that offshore wind has huge, likely insuperable, cost and operating difficulties came in June, when Siemens Energy issued a shock profits warning and saw its shares plunge by 37 percent, in part because of higher-than-anticipated turbine failure rates. According to Hughes, the implication is that future wind operating costs will be higher, and output significantly lower, shortening the turbines’ economic lives. His conclusion is crushing:

    The whole justification for the falling costs of wind generation rested on the assumption that much bigger wind turbines would produce more output at lower capex cost per megawatt, without the large costs of generational change. Now we have confirmation that such optimism is entirely unjustified . . .  It follows that current energy policies in the UK, Europe and the United States are based on foundations of sand – naïve optimism reinforced by enthusiastic lobbying divorced from engineering reality.

    The British government has been conned into placing a massive bet on offshore wind and is forcing electricity consumers to spend billions of pounds on a dead-end technology.

    The falling cost of wind deception contaminates official assessments of the macroeconomic consequences of net zero. The Office for Budget Responsibility claims that the cost of low-carbon generation has fallen so fast that it is now cheaper than fossil fuel generation. Similarly, the Treasury erroneously took falling prices in wind subsidy allocation rounds as indicating falling wind costs. Both see the economy riddled with multiple layers of market failures, while not recognizing the real danger of government policy being captured by vested interests, as, indeed, it has been. Taken to its logical conclusion, theirs is an argument for switching to central planning and a command-and-control economy.

    The Treasury argues that “other things being equal,” the added investment required by renewable energy “will translate into additional GDP growth.” Other things, of course, are not equal. As recent history shows, there’s a world of difference between investors and politicians making capital-allocation decisions. The centrally planned economies of the former communist bloc squandered colossal amounts of capital, immiserating their populations. Few now believe that investment in those economies boosted growth.

    We don’t need to hypothesize. Government data disprove the Treasury’s contention and demonstrate that increasing deployment of renewable capacity reduces the productivity of Britain’s grid. In 2009, 87.3 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity, comprising only 5.1 percent of wind and solar, generated 376.8 terrawatt hours (TWh) of electricity. In 2020, 100.9 GW of generating capacity, with wind and solar accounting for 37.6 percent of capacity, produced 312.3 TWh of electricity. Thanks to renewables, 13.6 GW (15.6 percent) more generating capacity produced 64.5 TWh (17.1 percent) less electricity.

    Those numbers are damning for renewables and demonstrate why they make electricity more expensive and people poorer. Before mass deployment of renewables, 1 MW of capacity in 2009 produced 4,312 MWh of electricity. In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent. It’s as clear as can be: investment in renewables shrinks the economy’s productive potential. This is confirmed by the International Energy Agency’s net zero modelling. Its net zero pathway sees the global energy sector in 2030 employing nearly 25 million more people, using $16.5 trillion more capital and taking an additional land area the combined size of California and Texas for wind and solar farms and the combined size of Mexico and France for bioenergy – all to produce 7 percent less energy.

    Britain’s energy-policy disaster has lessons for America. The physics and economics of wind power are not magically transformed when they cross the Atlantic. Whenever a politician or wind lobbyist touts wind as low-cost or says net zero will boost growth, they become accessories to the wind power scam. The data lead ineluctably to a decisive conclusion: net zero is anti-growth. It is a formula for prolonged economic stagnation. Anyone who wants the truth about renewables should look at Britain and the sorry state of its economy. For the last decade and a half, it has been going through its worst period of growth since 1780.

    Unlike in business and finance, there are no criminal or civil penalties for those who promote policies based on fraud and misrepresentation. Rather, net zero is similar to communism. Like net zero, communism was based on a lie: that it would outproduce capitalism. But it failed to produce, and belief in communism evaporated. When the collapse came, it was sudden and rapid. The truth could not be hidden. A similar fate awaits net zero.

    Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of  The Folly of Climate Leadership: Net Zero and Britain’s Disastrous Energy Policies.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 08:10

  • SBF's Lawyer Says FTX Co-Founder Was 'Worst' Witness Ever
    SBF’s Lawyer Says FTX Co-Founder Was ‘Worst’ Witness Ever

    Stanford Law professor David Mills, who led Sam Bankman Fried’s criminal defense trial, says the FTX co-founder went off the rails when he took the stand.

    Bankman-Fried departs court in New York.Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg

    “He may be at the very top of the list as the worst person I’ve ever seen do a cross examination,” said Mills, a close friend of Bankman-Fried’s parents.

    The 76-year-old Mills says that while the verdict was inevitable, SBF refused to adopt a key strategy in the face of his co-founders throwing him under the bus on the witness stand, Bloomberg reports.

    “I thought it was almost impossible to win a case when three or four founders are all saying you did it,” said Mills. “Even if they’re all lying through their teeth, it’s really, really hard to win a case like that.”

    “I’m not going to get myself emotionally involved on a very deep personal level in a case like this again,” Mills says. “I’m just not going to do it.”Photographer: Christopher Lee/Bloomberg

    Mills says that if he had his way, SBF would have admitted to everything the witnesses and prosecution said, and then focused on convincing the jury that it was all part of a good-faith effort to save FTX.

    “That’s not how Sam remembers things, to put it kindly,” said Mills. “I thought there was a really good story there. But he can’t tell the story that all these people are lying. You got five people who say one thing, one person says another thing. Well, you’ve got no shot—zero.”

    Instead of admitting to his mistakes, SBF became combative, quibbling over prosecutors’ phrasings, while claiming not to remember damning statements he made. The now-jailed SBF came off as evasive, while his cross examination devolved into death by a thousand cuts, as prosecutors dragged his nose in his own words.

    Mills eventually had enough, and was notably missing from the courtroom when the jury delivered its verdict.

    Meanwhile, he says he won’t have anything to do with any appeal by the FTX co-founder, and worries about his relationship with SBF’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried.

    “I’m concerned, when you believe in your child’s complete innocence, that you need to blame someone,” he said. “and I am a likely candidate.”

    Bankman and Fried, meanwhile, said in a statement: “We love David Mills. He has been a fantastic lawyer for us. He has also been an amazingly steadfast friend and will be grateful to him for being with us in a dark time, forever.”

    Bankman-Fried’s parents arrive at a New York courthouse on Oct. 5.Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg

    Mills isn’t so sure.

    “My sadness for them is extreme, and I don’t know that our friendship will survive this.“

    So sad. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that SBF was convicted of fraud, and dug his own grave. In February, he will face five additional charges at a second trial, including bank fraud and bribery.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 07:35

  • Luongo: No One Has Really Grokked How Big The Suez/Houthi Gambit Is
    Luongo: No One Has Really Grokked How Big The Suez/Houthi Gambit Is

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    We’ve had a lot of foreshadowing of the Suez Canal being a major hotspot for conflict over the past couple of years. Think back to the Evergreen beaching itself in the canal in 2021. Everyone is just now waking up to the idea that global shipping is at risk here.

    This Twitter thread (by a self-professed moron who, IMO, seems to have a good grasp on things) is representative of the level of analysis being put forth by people still in love with the US Navy’s ability to force project around the world. He’s just waking up to the importance of this situation but he hasn’t picked up on the nuance of it from the other side of the battlefield.

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

    In order to set the stage properly I’m going to have to go back in time. So, let’s start with October 7th and the attack on Israel by Hamas. In the October issue of the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Newsletter I laid out why I thought everyone had an incentive to allow and/or instigate that event.

    The October Setup

    So, here’s the backdrop for Davos and the US/UK:

    Now, if you are a cornered old money globalist oligarch with your finger on the pulse of these events…

    Then, you are seeing:

    1. The project in Ukraine hanging by a thread as European and American support wanes at every level just below the unelected leadership.

    2. The ECB failing to hold the line on rising bond yields to stave off a banking crisis.

    3. US Yield Curve blowing out on the long end, giving Yellen no good options for funding the current budget deficit or for rolling over existing debt, much of which is due in 2024.

    4. German state elections deeply embarrass the ruling coalition in Hesse and Bavaria as well as the CDU/CSU who lost significant votes to Alternative for Germany (AfD) in CSU stronghold Bavaria.

    5. Polish elections forcing the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) out of power despite tough words about Ukrainian refugees and shaking Germany down for WWII reparations.

    6. The BRICS adding five nations which give them control over major trade routes into and out of Europe, including, but not limited to, the Suez Canal.

    7. The US geopolitical position in the Middle East degrading as Saudi Arabia sides with Russia and Iran on every issue.

    8. Iran becoming an integral partner in the burgeoning Asian integration on trade and policy.

    Would you not conclude that time had run out, and upsetting the game board in some major way was your best, if not only, move?

    Now, from the other side we have the following circumstances:

    If this [revealing the depravity of Neocon hatred of Arabs] was Iran’s intended goal, then mission accomplished.

    It also implies that they are ready and willing to open up the entire can of worms across the Middle East in order to bring the Arab tribes together to further their regional ambitions. And there won’t be a T.E. Lawrence coming to bring them back into the British fold this time.

    Because Israel’s response here will likely preclude any of them being able to stand aside and let Israel just wipe out the civilians in Gaza, even if secretly they despise Hamas as much as the Israelis do.

    So, if you’re Iran and you see:

    1. Weak US leadership in Biden and a vacant speaker

    2. Support for Ukraine failing rapidly.

    3. The Arab oil states standing firm with Russia athwart US/EU sanctions.

    4. China investing in Syria’s reconstruction.

    5. Turkey openly attacking US-backed Kurdish SDF forces over Syrian oil fields.

    6. A cynical landgrab by Azerbaijan to break up the International North-South transport corridor in Armenia

    7. Russia returning to the European gas market via Turkey

    8. Increased influence regionally having re-opened diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

    Wouldn’t you do something to upset the status quo and force a choice on the US but also the rest of the Arab world?

    The initial US response was to quickly move in with massive naval force to signal our support of Israel and also to ‘warn Iran.’ Martin Armstrong immediately brought up the point of this being a trap for the US. The thread linked above has the current disposition of US naval forces deployed around the Arabian peninsula.

    The Thucydides Trap is one where a dominant power is provoked into a response against a rising power over an issue that it has to respond to to prove it still has that supremacy but they cannot win. This is exactly what the rising power wants the dominant power to do.

    The BRICS’ adding six pivotal countries in August, as I said then, was the point of this year’s Summit, not the introduction of some gold-backed BRICS coin.

    This is what Armstrong brought up, the possibility of Russia/Iran/China springing a Thucydides Trap on the US over Israel.

    Why the Yemen War is a War in Name Only

    So, how does the Houthi attacks on global shipping fit into this?

    The same way that “Iranian Militias” have stepped up their attacks on US forces stationed in Syria and Iraq. The goal is to push the US out of the Middle East and redraw the map potentially undoing both the Balfour Declaration and the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement.

    Israel has a choice, the Balfour Declaration is still negotiable, depending on their actions going forward.

    Skyes-Picot, however, is not. The Arabs and the Persians are tired of the conflicts the West flares up over old British-drawn borders.

    Everyone makes the mistake of thinking that the US backs Israel because of “The Jews.” Once that shibboleth is invoked all rational discussion is shut down. It’s done so to keep us from looking at the far more important thing at stake. That is literally the bullshit cover story for British strategic analysis of the world map from the perspective of a “former” maritime empire.

    And, sadly, as I’ve been arguing for years, jews are the ones who will suffer the backlash.

    The British (and old continental Europe) understand completely that globalism is dependent on global shipping. On its face, shipping is far more efficient and less vulnerable to sabotage ultimately than multi-thousand-mile-long pipelines.

    If you blow up or hijack a ship, you lose a ship. You blow up a $55 billion pipeline and that changes the map entirely.

    That was the lesson of the Nordstream bombings, to remind everyone of how fragile physical infrastructure is.

    So, to protect global shipping, which traditionally is controlled by the major European shipping companies and the City of London Insurance industry, attacks on physical infrastructure like pipelines, railways, refineries, etc. makes perfect sense. Blow up ports (Beirut) controlled by your enemy, and you force the world to go through the ports you control.

    What I’m suggesting now is that Iran/China/Russia are going after the idea that shipping isn’t as vulnerable as physical infrastructure. In fact, the US “empire” is a naval one just like the British one was. They are modeled on the same structure and worldview. The US is the inheritor of the British maritime empire.

    This is another reason why the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia was so important. not just to end the Saudi war on Yemen, but to turn the Houthis from a thorn in the side of the Saudi oil business into an asset as they pivot from supporting the old US/British empire to the rising Chinese/Russian/Iranian-led one.

    Don’t you find it strange that Putin never really struck back after the US/UK blew up Nordstream? All talk of it being led by anyone other than the Neocon crazies in the National Security Council and GCHQ is just misdirection.

    Putin is patient. He understood symbolically what Nordstream represented. Pipeline diplomacy is Russia’s best chance at avoiding protracted war for the next century.

    Stitch the world together with gas and oil, stabilize borders, rebuild Russia, introduce a new kind of peace. It’s a kind of peace not dependent on maritime prowess, which is the British model, and well it should be since England is an island in the north Atlantic.

    It’s a land-based one with control over the geographic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian peninsula facilitating opening up new markets and ending old European colonial control over Africa, Asia and even South America.

    And now Putin’s taking his opportunity to strike at the heart of the maritime prowess of globalism itself by allowing Iran to activate the Houthis to attack commercial shipping around the Gulf of Aden.

    Target: Egypt

    Now, let’s look at the real target of the Hamas attack on Israel. Who has been at the center of all of the major challenges to the globalist plan in 2023?

    Egypt.

    It is Egypt that the Russians and Chinese were encouraging to default on their IMF debt, offering to write down their debt to Egypt if the IMF did the same. Alex Krainer and I have talked about this ad nauseum.

    It was Israel’s offer to forgive Egypt’s IMF debt if they would take all the Palestinian refugees from Gaza that really gave the game away. It was a real offer for once, not just returning stolen property which is the typical Davos-style offer.

    To reiterate, the purpose of the BRICS Summit in August was their taking ‘control’ over all the waterway surrounding the Arabian peninsula, i.e. the most globally important shipping lanes to old Europe and what’s left of the British Empire.

    The Suez Canal.

    Egypt was the prize folks. And since the moment it was announced that Egypt would be joining the BRICS, the focus has been on trying to stop it from happening by destabilizing the country. So, let’s start a brutal ground war over an attack that Israeli leadership knew was coming in order to create a refugee crisis into Egypt. Let’s step up pressure on the el-Sisi government and try for a color revolution again after the election.

    Here’s the War Street Journal headline, after el-Sisi wins re-election with nearly 90%.

    “Egypt’s Sisi Faces Stiff Challenges in Third Term as President”

    It was a surprise to me they didn’t even publicly challenge the result and try for another color revolution. Maybe we finally get to see just how limited the funds are now that Powell’s got rates at 5.5%, but I’m just being churlish.

    The WSJ article is a roadmap to Egypt’s future with respect to its relations with the West. We will try to economically pressure el-Sisi into submission. It won’t work because Egypt has powerful friends… that whole rising powers thing again.

    So, the way I see this in terms of move-countermove is the following”

    1. BRICS bring Egypt into the fold knowing that it opens up alternate funding options for the country outside of the IMF loan sharks.

    2. The Hamas attack is allowed to go forward with everyone thinking it’s to their advantage to do so.

    3. Israel/US/UK think they can pressure Egypt into submission

    4. Russia/Iran/China think they can up the pressure on the US to leave the region.

    5. Hamas was a sacrificial pawn in this game, by both sides… Iran and the UK.

    6. Netanyahu acts completely to type by launching a brutal land grab with talk everywhere about the oil fields, the new trade corridor from India to Israel into Europe, which are direct threats on the Suez.

    7. The US moves in multiple carrier groups to ‘protect vital shipping operations.’

    8. Iran clearly is provoking the US by then activating the Houthis to attack commercial ships. Piracy coming out of the Horn of Africa increases. Everyone still thinks they have cards to play.

    9. Davos wants the US in a position where it cannot maintain Pax Americana. The UK is desperate to maintain this…. this is the fundamental tension between the Neocons and old Europe.

    10. Davos is happy to cut a deal with China and Russia over keeping trade routes open so they announce quickly that all the major European shipping companies pull out of using the Suez Canal.

    11. But notice who the Houthis are threatening… Only the ships of the West, harassing the US Navy, hitting MAERSK liners, denying all ships bound for Israel.

    So, is the Suez now unsafe in general because of the lawlessness of the region or is it just unsafe for the West? If China’s cargo ships are allowed to go through and Russia’s oil tankers as well, then we have our answer.

    Because to me this whole thing reeks of a setup. Think about how quickly the Davos shipping companies announced their leaving the Suez behind. The obvious point is to deny Egypt the Suez transport fees. The other is that the Houthis are mining the Red Sea.

    But, it also possible despite all the posturing, the US refused to fall into the trap of trying to defend them with the US Navy? I don’t think this is a likely scenario. The costs to the US are simply too great here if they don’t swat the Houthis.

    The Hobson’s Choice for the US is if the navy intervenes that keeps Pax Americana in place for a little while longer but that let’s pressure off Egypt, because the minute we do then the Houthis will stop playing games. Egypt stabilizes, the Suez is reinforced and the squeeze is over.

    If the US doesn’t intervene then Pax Americana on the high seas is dead and the pressure on global shipping will increase. Egypt will have to be more directly supported economically by Russia and China. el-Sisi will have no other choice.

    But this also secures, in the long run, the pivot point for both China’s Belt and Road as well as Russia’s International North South Transport Corridor.

    And who is the crossroads for both of these? Iran.

    Lastly, the cost to Europe will be enormous as the extra travel time around Africa will only make goods coming out of Europe that much more expensive.

    The Real Oil Angle…

    So, now let’s talk about the effects on what this is really all about: oil demand.

    We’ve been subject to unbelievable gaslighting about marginal demand for oil through futures market manipulation, SPR releases, and sanctions policy. OPEC+ keeps cutting production to maintain the price the Saudis need to balance their budget, roughly $80 per barrel. That level also keeps inflation pressures in the US high, and European competitiveness low, forcing the ECB to defend the euro to keep domestic energy costs down, which they’ve done for nearly two years now.

    Adding length to the average trip for container ships won’t just send day-rates for bulk shipping containers higher, it will also use up more #6 bunker fuel, which is what these ships run on. #6 bunker fuel for the layman is just cleaned up crude oil.

    In an email to a private discussion group I’m in, the following back-of-the-envelope calculation on global oil demand was made…

    The average number of suez canal transits per day is 56 (let’s say 1/2 divert).  The extra deviation around Africa is about 10 to 12 days (use 10).  Fuel consumption per day is from 150 to 350 (call it 250).  There is about 7.5 bbls per ton of bunker fuel.  SO, 28 ships * 10 days * 250 mt * 7.5 bbls/mt = 525,000 bbls per day of extra consumption if 1/2 the ships that normally use the suez deviate.

    500,000 bbls/day is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, it’s immense in marginal demand terms. It undermines the entire Israeli gambit to pressure Egypt.

    And this is why OPEC+ (or BROPEC+) is not screaming about the attacks on shipping. The QED for this entire analysis is the following headline from Reuters:

    “Saudi Arabia urges US restraint as Houthis attack ships in Red Sea”

    Doesn’t anyone wonder why the Saudis are so quiet on this? This is piracy on their doorstep. The Houthis are supposed to be their enemies, since they’ve been fighting a war against them for years.

    But this gambit by the BRICS is clearly in their best interest and tells you all you need to know about who MbS and the rest of the royal family now back in all things geopolitical. Iranian-backed terrorists are openly harassing shipping around the Arabian peninsula and the Saudis “urge restraint?”

    The US announces a 10-nation coalition against Yemen and the Saudis and UAE (Both BRICS members now) say no?

    I don’t see how the US avoids the Thucydides Trap here. While I don’t think for a moment the US Navy can’t deal with the Houthis I also don’t think anyone is prepared for them sinking any US ships either.

    The smart move is resolving this without it getting to that point, i.e. engaging in real negotiations. With these idiots in the White House?

    Checkmate Putin.

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you want to avoid Traps

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/23/2023 – 07:00

  • Is It Time To Rethink American Support For Israel?
    Is It Time To Rethink American Support For Israel?

    Authored by Joe Buccino via RealClear Wire,

    In the eleventh week of its war with Hamas, Israel, undeterred by U.S. admonitions, continues to demolish an already-shattered Gaza. As senior American officials come in and out of Tel Aviv to meet with Netanyahu’s government, a glaring question looms unanswered: How much influence does America gain from its ardent, often unquestioning support for Israel? With more than $300 billion in military aid since World War II, the U.S. commitment to Israel is not just a matter of foreign policy, but a reflection of our national values and strategic interests. As Israel renders Gaza a dystopian hellscape in the face of international outrage, it is crucial to scrutinize this flow of funds, not only in dollars but in terms of international standing and moral authority.

    Since its 1948 foundation, the U.S. has given Israel far more in military aid than any other nation. Uncritical U.S. support for Israel began with America’s 33rd president, Harry Truman publicly recognizing the state 11 minutes after its creation and continued through the successive 13 American presidencies. For most of the intervening 75 years, a country smaller than Massachusetts and roughly one-fifth the size of Kentucky has been the top recipient of financial American military assistance.

    The U.S.-Israel partnership is rooted in several geopolitical and domestic considerations, among them the identification with a democracy – though recently Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition threatens notation. Dwight Eisenhower, replacing Truman in the White House in 1953, saw the Jewish State as a nation that largely shares American social values in a part of the world that primarily does not. Ike clung tight to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and the halls of American power followed.

    Lyndon Johnson, ascending to the role of America’s 36th president following JFK’s assassination in 1963, held perhaps the strongest emotional attachment to Israel of any American president. A deep-rooted historical and religious conviction in the rights of the Jewish people to establish a state in their ancestral territories animated LBJ. Israel served as a central plank in Nixon’s foreign policy when he assumed office in 1969. Nixon’s National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger established Israel as an anchor of American power in the Middle East, an ally with a cutting-edge military force in the world’s most volatile region.

    The majority of U.S. support is provided through military equipment grants, and from 1950 to 2020, the United States sourced the overwhelming majority of all IDF equipment. The Pentagon and State Department grant Israel access to the world’s most sophisticated military technology, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Israel is the only Middle Eastern state to purchase the fifth-generation fighter jet. Israel has a fleet of 50 F-35s, purchased with U.S. assistance, with 25 more on the way.

    Another factor in America’s tie with Israel – a critically important one among D.C. decision-makers – is the decades-long outsized influence of pro-Israel lobby groups. Such groups funnel far more funds to congressional candidates than any other group – more than six times that of the gun rights lobby.

    For decades, American presidents have declared our tie to Israel “unshakeable,” D.C.’s commitment to the Jewish state “ironclad,” and American support to Israel as long-term. Israel has served as the beneficiary of all this unwavering assistance: without U.S. weapons, Arab nations would have long ago carved Israel up.

    The flow of money continued without ebb In the face of significant settlement expansion in the West Bank. The American spigot continued to pour billions in the face of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul bill that limited the power of Israel’s High Court and plunged the country into division and chaos. Unblinking American support for Israel is clear. What’s less clear is how all this support advances American interests.

    Such significant support over such a lengthy period would presumably have offered the D.C. the ability to influence Israel. That does not seem to be the case. President Biden criticized Israel over its indiscriminate bombing that has thus far flattened large swaths of Gaza. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan publicly called on the IDF to shift to a more precise, targeted phase of fighting. Israel has thus far resisted this pressure, continuing with the aerial bombardments versus intelligence-driven ground assaults. As the international community laments the devastation in Gaza, the war threatens to damage American standing in the world.

    Netanyahu also refuses to accept a role for any Palestinian body in the governance or security of Gaza after Hamas, insisting instead that Israel will exert control over the enclave. This places Israel at odds with the Biden administration which wants Palestinians to govern Gazans. The White House hopes a Palestinian-led arrangement will eventually lead to an improvement in political and economic conditions. Israel refuses. Despite these stark contrasts, U.S. administration officials publicly downplay any rift with the Netanyahu government on this or any other issue.

    In the months ahead, America’s hug of Israel will likely harm U.S. standing in the Arab world. The gruesome images of wounded Gazan children destroyed hospitals, and broken wasteland will grow etched in the psyche of the region. Meanwhile, Netanyahu will likely continue leading administration officials around by the nose.

    After the protests in American streets die down and college campuses move on, the Arab streets will remember. The long-term harm to American interests in the region is unknowable. One casualty may be the efforts, begun under the Trump administration and beginning to show great promise just this past September, to build a regional security architecture of Sunni Arab militaries that will allow the Pentagon to shift assets to the Indo-Pacific, the priority region for American national security resourcing.

    The United States’ longstanding and unquestioning support for Israel, exemplified through extensive military aid and political backing, demands a thorough reevaluation. While this partnership has historical and geopolitical roots, the adjudication of the war in Gaza raises questions about the alignment of American interests and values with the actions and policies of the Israeli government. The imperviousness of Israel to U.S. influence risks America’s standing in the international community, particularly in the Middle East. The time has come for the United States to demand more accountability and alignment with its principles in exchange for its support, redefining a relationship that is respectful of Israel’s sovereignty and mindful of the broader implications for U.S. foreign policy and international reputation.

    Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as U.S. Central Command communications director from 2021 until September 2023. He deployed to combat in the Middle East five times in his career. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense or any other organization.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/22/2023 – 23:30

  • Trump Calls Biden An 'Insurrectionist' After Colorado Ballot Ban
    Trump Calls Biden An ‘Insurrectionist’ After Colorado Ballot Ban

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

    Former President Donald Trump on Thursday denied being an “insurrectionist” while labeling President Joe Biden as one, while citing as proof factors like the “open” border and accusing the president of “destroying” America with radical anti-fossil fuel policies.

    “I’m not an insurrectionist (‘PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY’), Crooked Joe Biden is,” President Trump said in a post on Truth Social, with the words “peacefully & patriotically” in reference to a fragment of his Jan. 6 speech in which he told members of the crowd to head to the Capitol building “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

    Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower the day after FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach home, in New York on Aug. 9, 2022. (David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Reuters)

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the former president’s claim.

    President Trump’s remarks came two days after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled to bar him from the state’s presidential primary ballot on the basis of a section of the 14th Amendment that blocks anyone from running for office who engaged in an “insurrection.”

    The former president called the Colorado court’s ruling a politically motivated decision and a “shame for our country,” while his attorneys vowed to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    President Biden declined to comment on the Colorado Supreme Court decision but told reporters there was “no question” that the former president was an insurrectionist.

    “Is Trump an insurrectionist, sir?” one reporter called out, prompting President Biden to walk closer to the cameras, asking the reporter to repeat the question.

    “I think that’s certainly self-evident, you saw it all,” President Biden answered.

    “Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision,” he added. “But he certainly supported insurrection, no question about it, none, zero. And he seems to be doubling down on everything.”

    ‘Insurrectionist’ Tit-for-Tat

    President Trump accused President Biden of being an “insurrectionist” once again on Thursday, this time laying out a more extensive rationale.

    “Crooked Joe Biden is the Insurrectionist because he let millions of unknown people come recklessly and unchecked through our insane ‘Open’ Border, let a war begin in the Middle East and Ukraine, Weaponized our DOJ & FBI, SURRENDERED in Afghanistan when we could have left with dignity and strength—the most embarrassing event in the history of our Country, and is destroying America with the GREEN NEW SCAM!!!” the former president said in a post on Truth Social.

    The former president has repeatedly criticized President Biden for his lax border policies, which he says are responsible for an illegal immigration crisis of historic proportions. President Trump has also accused the president of pulling strings to get the Justice Department to launch various investigations and charges against him to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign—claims President Biden has denied.

    President Trump has also repeatedly criticized the incumbent for his anti-fossil fuel policies that he says are undermining America’s energy independence and national security. He, by contrast, has vowed to reverse President Biden’s policies if elected and “drill, drill, drill.”

    The former president also railed against the various “fake political indictments” against him, claiming that the White House is behind every case that the Justice Department has brought against him and that he’s fighting.

    “Crooked Joe Biden is a threat to democracy,” President Trump said in another post, while accusing him of election interference.

    The Ruling

    The Colorado Supreme Court’s Dec. 19 ruling centered on a section of the 14th Amendment that bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.

    Specifically, it’s based on an interpretation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which is known as the disqualification clause, which states that no person shall hold office if they have “previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States” and engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution.

    The left-leaning group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued the Colorado secretary of state to block President Trump from appearing on the ballot, arguing that “officer of the United States” would surely cover the highest office in the federal government, and so the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause should apply.

    However, Colorado 2nd District Court Judge Sarah Wallace said in a 100-plus page ruling that there was “scant evidence” that was the case, noting that the authors of the 14th Amendment specifically listed offices, with the presidency not among them.

    Judge Wallace did, however, find that President Trump engaged in an “insurrection,” and, on appeal, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. president is a public “officer,” and so the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause does apply.

    The unprecedented ruling makes Colorado the first and only state to disqualify President Trump from appearing on a state primary ballot. It also makes President Trump the first candidate in U.S. history to be declared ineligible to run for the White House.

    Jan. 6 Backdrop

    President Trump held a rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, in which he made statements encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol, where Congress was in the process of certifying the results of the presidential election.

    While President Trump called for the day’s events to be peaceful, a group of people breached the Capitol, leading to a violent confrontation with law enforcement.

    The events of that day have been the subject of widespread scrutiny and debate, with President Trump’s political opponents accusing him of inciting an “insurrection.”

    The “insurrection” allegations underpin several legal efforts by President Trump’s opponents to block him from being listed on ballots in the 2024 presidential race on 14th Amendment grounds, seeking to portray him as the instigator of the Jan. 6 incident.

    These cases basically argued that the former president took part in an “insurrection” by giving an impassioned speech on Jan. 6 before the Capitol breach occurred.

    Even though President Trump said in his Jan. 6 speech that protesters should “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” his critics have seized on a portion of his remarks where he said “we fight like hell” and “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” as a call for violence.

    The former president has, on numerous occasions, denied calling for violent protests while insisting he meant his remarks about fighting like hell metaphorically.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/22/2023 – 23:00

  • Federal Judge Blocks California's Concealed Carry Restrictions Banning Firearms In Most Public Places
    Federal Judge Blocks California’s Concealed Carry Restrictions Banning Firearms In Most Public Places

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

    A controversial California law that would ban licensed gun holders from carrying their firearms in multiple locations across the state was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on Dec. 20, meaning the legislation will not go into full effect as planned next year.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference in Sacramento on Feb. 1, 2023, announcing a new law to establish stricter standards for concealed carry weapon permit holders to carry a firearm in public. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Senate Bill 2 was part of a string of new gun restrictions introduced in California this year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in June of 2022 that found a New York law requiring a license to carry a concealed weapon in public was unconstitutional and that carrying a pistol in public was a constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

    Under California’s legislation, private citizens who hold concealed carry weapons permits would be prohibited from carrying concealed guns in 26 locations, including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks, medical facilities, and any other privately owned commercial establishments that are open to the public.

    The ban would apply regardless of whether the person has a permit to carry a concealed weapon or not, although the measure includes exceptions for privately owned businesses that “clearly and conspicuously” put up signs at the entrance of the building or on the premises indicating that license holders are permitted to carry firearms on the property.

    Senate Bill 2 was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September and was set to take effect on Jan. 1, despite opposition from gun rights advocates and groups, including the California Rifle and Pistol Association, who filed a lawsuit against California state, county, and local law enforcement agencies and officials earlier this month.

    In their lawsuit, the groups argued the measure violates both the U.S. Constitution and state law.

    ‘Repugnant to the 2nd Amendment’

    In his decision to block the law Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney sided with the plaintiffs, writing that the law went too far and would “unconstitutionally deprive” concealed carry permit holders “of their constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.”

    Gun instructor Mike Stilwell demonstrates a revolver as he teaches a packed class to obtain the Utah concealed gun carry permit, at Range Master of Utah, on Jan. 9, 2016 in Springville, Utah. (George Frey/Getty Images)

    Furthermore, the California law “is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court,” Judge Carney, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote.

    “For many years, the right to bear arms, and so necessarily the right to self-defense, was relegated to second-class status,” the judge wrote. “But the United States Supreme Court made clear in its landmark decisions District of Columbia v. Heller, McDonald v. City of Chicago, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Incorporated v. Bruen that relegation could no longer be permitted—individuals must be able to effectuate their right to self-defense by, if they so choose, responsibly bearing arms.”

    “SB2 turns nearly every public place in California into a ‘sensitive place,’ effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public,” he added.

    The judge further stated the preliminary injunction was warranted because plaintiffs suing the state would suffer “irreparable harm” without it.

    He also noted the measure did not make complete sense, given that it focused predominantly on law-abiding gun owners.

    “Although the government may have some valid safety concerns, legislation regulating [concealed carry] permitholders—the most responsible of law-abiding citizens seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights—seems an odd and misguided place to focus to address those safety concerns,” Judge Carney wrote.

    Gun owners with concealed carry weapons permits “have been through a vigorous vetting and training process following their application to carry a concealed handgun,” he wrote. “The challenged SB2 provisions unconstitutionally deprive this group of their constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.”

    Newsom Condemns Ruling

    In a statement to multiple media outlets on Wednesday, Mr. Newsom said Judge Carney’s ruling “outrageously calls California’s data-backed gun safety efforts ‘repugnant.'”

    “What is repugnant is this ruling, which greenlights the proliferation of guns in our hospitals, libraries, and children’s playgrounds — spaces, which should be safe for all,” he said.

    The Democrat added that he “will keep fighting” for gun restrictions because “the lives of our kids depend on it.”

    Elsewhere, Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, praised Judge Carney’s ruling on Wednesday.

    “California progressive politicians refuse to accept the Supreme Court’s mandate from the Bruen case and are trying every creative ploy they can imagine to get around it,” he said. “The Court saw through the State’s gambit.”

    Mr. Michel added that Senate Bill 2 would have meant gun permit holders “wouldn’t be able to drive across town without passing through a prohibited area and breaking the law” and that the latest decision makes Californians safer.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/22/2023 – 22:30

  • 96% Of Saudis Oppose Ties With Israel, Hamas Grows In Popularity: Poll
    96% Of Saudis Oppose Ties With Israel, Hamas Grows In Popularity: Poll

    Via Middle East Eye

    A new poll has found that 96 percent of Saudi nationals believe that Arab countries should cut ties with Israel in response to the war in Gaza, and that the popularity of Hamas has grown significantly amid Israel’s devastating military offensive on the embattled territory.

    The result of the poll, conducted by the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Affairs, a pro-Israel think tank based in Washington, shows the difficulties the United States faces as it pushes for Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel. Prior to the war in Gaza, the US was actively working towards achieving an agreement that would see Israel and Saudi Arabia normalize relations.

    Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, via AFP

    Such a deal would build upon existing normalization agreements such as those between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates which were brokered under the Trump administration.

    During an interview with Fox News that aired in September, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stated that the two countries were getting closer to such an agreement “every day”.

    Since then, however, Riyadh has put a pause on talks of normalisation and has publicised its diplomatic outreach as one that seeks “to stop the ongoing escalation”.

    While the kingdom has a monarchial system, public opinion plays a factor in the decision-making of Arab leaders, according to analysts.

    Friday’s survey also found that 40 percent of Saudis expressed positive attitudes toward Hamas, compared with just 10 percent according to a poll carried out months before the war began.

    The poll further found that the majority of respondents in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt held favourable views towards Hamas. The poll’s findings highlight large-scale outrage in the Arab world over Israel’s military assault on Gaza, which came in response to the 7 October attack on southern Israel.

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

    That attack saw 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals killed, and around 240 people taken captive by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. Israel responded by imposing a full siege on the already blockaded enclave. It then launched a devastating aerial bombing campaign followed by a ground invasion that has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children.

    As a result, mass protests have erupted across the Arab world in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. In addition to the demonstrations in the streets, citizens across the Middle East are boycotting Israeli-linked businesses.

    The survey further found that 87 percent of Saudis believe “Israel is so weak and internally divided that it can be defeated some day”.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/22/2023 – 22:00

  • Cargo Owners Consider Airfreight Alternative To Red Sea Shipping Delays
    Cargo Owners Consider Airfreight Alternative To Red Sea Shipping Delays

    By Eric Kullisch of FreightWaves

    Global businesses, uncertain how long the shipping crisis in the Red Sea will last and with a looming shortage of vessels for the export rush before China’s New Year celebration, are scrambling to shift some ocean cargo to airlines, according to logistics specialists.

    The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun operates in the Red Sea near a commercial vessel on May 1, 2023.

    Major container lines have rerouted vessels around the Horn of Africa or docked them in safe locations to avoid the threat of drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The Houthis say they are targeting vessels with links to Israel in support of Palestinians under siege in the Gaza Strip. Thirty percent of container volumes transit the Red Sea and Suez Canal shortcut between Europe and Asia.

    The strikes on commercial shipping come as drought conditions force the Panama Canal, another trade chokepoint, to limit transits because of insufficient water to operate massive locks. Some vessel operators recently shifted services to the Suez route to avoid Panama transit delays and now are in a double bind.

    With no end in sight to the Gaza war and tensions rising, air cargo providers could see a surge in business following a prolonged market downturn that only lifted in recent months behind rising e-commerce exports from China for the holidays.

    “The e-commerce wave just broke and rates began crashing down this week. We expect the Red Sea shipping crisis will reverse this,” Marc Schlossberg, executive vice president at Unique Logistics International, told FreightWaves. “We are already seeing an impact on airfreight across multiple regions, industries, and supply chains. Some retailers are already flipping cargo bound for the U.S. East Coast from ocean to air from the Indian subcontinent as there are no good options that do not add two weeks. We have other customers assessing their needs to the U.K. and Europe from Asia.”

    Shipping experts say diversion around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds seven to 14 days’ sailing time to Europe and five to seven days to the U.S. East Coast, has unleashed a chain reaction that includes knocking vessels off scheduled arrivals, vessel bunching in ports, terminal congestion and difficulty repositioning containers around the world. Transits could be longer in some cases because the tip of Africa often has rough seas and storms.

    Vessels returning to reload with factory goods in Asia will now arrive a couple of weeks late for the seasonal pickup before Chinese New Year, which will result in a shortfall of shipping capacity, said Lars Jensen, CEO of consultancy Vespucci Maritime, on a Wednesday webinar presented by freight forwarder Flexport.

    Chinese New Year falls on Feb. 10, but factories will begin to slow production in mid-January before completely shutting down for the holiday and then slowly ramping up again — a lull that can last more than a month. Businesses pull forward their shipping requirements each year, which leads to a rush at Chinese ports, transportation delays and increased shipping rates.

    About 540 vessels are assigned to Suez services, with 136 currently being diverted around Africa and 42 that have paused their journey, according to a Flexport analysis. 

    Chicago-based Seko Logistics has had some inquiries about converting ocean shipments to air leading up to the Chinese holiday, “but this could very well extend and expand into 2024,” said Chief Commercial Officer Brian Bourke in an email.

    About 97% of total containerized trade by weight moves by sea, so even a slight shift in the mix could have a huge impact on airfreight volumes.

    Importers and exporters will likely transition their most critical goods to air carriers to make sure enough arrive on time for production or sales needs, especially since many flights from Asia to Europe are still quite full, Niall van de Wuow, chief airfreight officer at market intelligence firm Xeneta, said on a company webinar.

    Widebody freighters could soon be in greater demand if the supply chain disruption in the Red Sea is protracted

    “I had a call with a global appliance company with sites around the world. Airfreight is cheaper than lines down. We expect to see an airfreight surge for manufacturing as automotive, electronics and other supply chains assess their inventory needs in the next few days,” said Schlossberg.

    “We have customers searching for solutions from Egypt where the ports have been shut down and from Jordan where customers are not comfortable with the cross-border option. And ocean routing via Israel and Aqaba is no longer viable,” he added.

    Companies spent the better part of a year bringing down excess pandemic inventories to normal levels and may not have sufficient safety stock if the Red Sea bottleneck continues to disrupt shipping, said Trine Nielsen, Flexport’s head of ocean for Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She encouraged shippers to plan for extra lead times and rate increases, and to book shipments early.

    “Most of our fashion apparel retail customers had a strong holiday season. Inventories are in relatively good shape so a disruption like this will drive significant airfreight demand,” echoed Schlossberg.

    There is less urgency to make mode-conversion decisions because the industry is past the Christmas shopping rush, but that will quickly change without a resolution of the Middle East conflict, according to logistics managers.

    The airfreight market could get heated by mid-January as importers place new orders with Asia suppliers, especially since many airlines reduced freighter schedules in anticipation of a lull in transport demand, said Christos Spyrou, founder and CEO of wholesale network Neutral Air Partner.

    He predicted an increase in charter flights to meet demand, especially for time-critical and valuable goods, as well as more use of sea-air services via Dubai to Europe. Flexport, which helps companies place orders with overseas manufacturers and then manages shipment delivery, has also fielded inquiries about deferred airfreight and sea-air options through Dubai and Doha, Qatar, said Zeid Houssami, global head of airfreight, in an email. 

    The hybrid services are less expensive than airfreight but faster than ocean.

    Air capacity on the trans-Pacific might get tighter after Chinese New Year if ocean carriers divert vessels to Asia-eastbound lanes to provide more reliability, Houssami observed.

    Open-ended risk to ocean shipping

    The Suez route attracts a high proportion of the world’s largest vessels. Peter Sand, Xeneta’s chief data analyst, said shipping lines need 50 more ultralarge container ships on the eastbound corridor. Ship broker Clarksons estimates that 19% of global shipping capacity will be diverted from the Suez route. 

    Carriers have idle capacity at the moment, but not all vessels are suitable or can easily be restarted. 

    In addition to dealing with heightened supply chain uncertainty, shippers will face higher transportation costs because of the diversion of shipping away from the Red Sea.

    For starters, adding ships to move the same amount of containers means spending for extra crews, fuel, supplies, port charges and other expenses. If smaller ships are deployed they will have higher unit costs per nautical mile.

    Carriers will save $400,000 to $700,000 in Suez Canal tolls, but the 3,000 extra nautical miles to go around Africa to Europe will add $1 million in fuel costs per vessel, which will be passed on to customers, Sand explained. 

    Liner companies ZIM, Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk are now charging a war risk surcharge of  between $20 and $100 per container and ZIM is charging more for the longer route around Africa.

    Shipping line CMA CGM this week declared force majeure and implemented surcharges of up to $1,550 per container unit, depending on the origin and destination. Invoking a force majeure clause tells customers the carrier may not be able to fulfill contractual obligations due to circumstances beyond its control. 

    The formation of a multinational task force, led by the U.S., to protect commercial shipping is unlikely to alleviate the risk of attacks, prolonging the disruptive effects on supply chains, maritime experts say.

    Partner nations have previously escorted convoys to defend vessels against hijacking by Somali pirates, but air attacks present another level of danger for commercial operators. Participating navies may not have the right kind of anti-missile technology and no system is foolproof.

    Vespucci Maritime’s Jensen said small drones may not seem like a major threat to massive container ships but noted the danger from an explosion is fire that could quickly spread.

    “Are you going to risk life and limb of your seafarers and a billion dollars worth of cargo on the ship in the hope that they will shoot down all of those missiles? … Unless there is also a solution whereby the attacks themselves from land stop, or at least are eliminated drastically, I have a hard time seeing the carriers resume sending supersized post Panamax vessels through that region,” he said.

    The biggest shipping problem will be in the Mediterranean Sea because carriers that used to call on ports such as Genoa in Italy, on their way to major gateways in Northern Europe, will bypass the smaller destinations, said Jensen.

    Shippers should also brace for Med-bound containers to get stuck for up to a week in unfamiliar transshipment ports such as Tangiers in Morocco or Algeciras in Spain, where carriers will offload them to avoid lengthy detours from the main route.

    Jensen also warned that some consumer goods may swing back to the Panama Canal, pricing out Chilean and Peruvian agriculture growers who are less able to pay the reservation fees for priority access. 

    Shippers that bring products to the East Coast through the Suez Canal also have the option of using the trans-Pacific route and then moving inland by rail or truck. 

    Jensen said the combination of strong Chinese New Year demand and the effective decrease in global container capacity because of the extra ships necessary to sustain diversion around Africa could lead ocean rates to triple. Interviewed on CNBC on Friday, Jensen predicted the average global rate would double to about $3,000.

    Ocean rates are already spiraling upward. The rate for a forty-foot equivalent unit reached $1,875 between Asia and the Mediterranean on Dec. 14, according to the Xeneta platform – a 25% increase from the previous week. But shippers are being quoted more than $6,500 for high priority shipments on Mediterranean Shipping Company’s Diamond Tier service. And MSC implemented peak season surcharges of $2,000 for Asia-Mediterranean cargo.

    And, Jensen noted, a new European emissions trading scheme for maritime that is scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1 will be much for expensive as carriers have to pay carbon tax on emissions for going all the way around Africa.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/22/2023 – 21:30

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Dec 22

Today’s News 22nd December 2023

  • Escobar: Yemen Ready To Stare Down A New Imperial Coalition
    Escobar: Yemen Ready To Stare Down A New Imperial Coalition

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    No one ever lost money betting on the ability of the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder to construct a “coalition of the willing” whenever faced with a geopolitical quandary.

    In every case, duly covered by the reigning “rules-based international order”, “willing” applies to vassals seduced by carrots or sticks to follow to the letter the Empire’s whims.

    Cue to the latest chapter: Coalition Genocide Prosperity, whose official – heroic – denomination, a trademark of the Pentagon’s P.R. wizards, is “Operation Prosperity Guardian”, allegedly engaged in “ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.”

    Translation: this is Washington all but declaring war on Yemen’s Ansarullah. An extra US destroyer has already been dispatched to the Red Sea.

    Ansarullah sticks to its guns and is by no means intimidated. The Houthi military have already stressed that any attack on Yemeni assets or Ansarullah missile launch sites would color the entire Red Sea literally Red.

    The Houthi military not only reaffirmed it has “weapons to sink your aircraft carriers and destroyers” but made a stunning call to both Sunnis and Shi’ites in Bahrain to revolt and overthrow their King, Hamad al-Khalifa.

    As of Monday, even before the start of the operation, the Eisenhower aircraft carrier was around 280 km off the closest Ansarullah controlled latitudes. Houthis have Zoheir and Khalij-e-Fars anti-ship ballistic missiles with a range of 300 to 500 km.

    Ansarullah Supreme Political Council member Muhammad al-Bukhaiti felt compelled to re-stress the obvious: “Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our operations in the Red Sea will not stop unless the massacre in Gaza stops. We will not give up the responsibility of defending the Moustazafeen (oppressed ones) of the Earth.”

    The world better get ready: “Aircraft carrier sunk” may become the new 9/11.

    Shipping in the Red Sea Remains Open

    Weapons peddler Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, in his current revolving door position as head of the Pentagon, is visiting West Asia – mostly Israel, Qatar and Bahrain – to promote this new “international initiative” for patrolling the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb strait (which links the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea) and the Gulf of Aden.

    As al-Bukhaiti remarked, Ansarullah’s strategy is to target any ship navigating the Red Sea linked to Israeli companies or supplying Israel – something that for the Yemenis demonstrates their complicity with the Gaza genocide. That will only stop when the genocide stops.

    With a single move – a de facto maritime blockade – Ansarullah proved that the King is Naked: Yemen has done more in practice to defend the Palestinian cause than most of the key regional players put together. Incidentally, they were all ordered by Netanyahu in public to shut up. And they did.

    It’s quite instructive to once again follow the money. Israel has been hit very hard. The port of Eilat is virtually closed, and its income fell by 80%.

    For instance, Taiwanese shipping giant Yang-Ming Marine Transport Corporation originally planned to re-route its Israel-bound cargo to the port of Ashdod. Then it cut off any shipments to any Israeli destination.

    It’s no wonder Yoram Sebba, President of the Israel Chamber of Shipping, revealed himself to be puzzled by Ansarullah’s “complex” tactics and “unrevealed” criteria that have imposed “total uncertainty”. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have also been caught in the Yemeni net.

    It’s crucial to keep in perspective that Ansarullah only blocks ships that are going to Israel. The bulk of maritime shipping in the Red Sea remains wide open.

    So shipping giant Maersk’s decision not to use the Red Sea, alongside other global shipping behemoths, may be pushing the envelope too fast – as in nearly begging for a US-led patrol to be in effect.

    Enter CTF 153

    So far, on one side we have Yemen virtually ruling the Red Sea. On the other side, we find UAE-Saudi-Jordan tandem, in the form of an – alternative – cargo land corridor set up from the port of Jebel Ali in the Persian Gulf across Saudi Arabia to Jordan and then Israel.

    The corridor uses logistical tech from Trucknet: that’s truck-based overland connectivity in practice, reducing transport time from 14 days via the Red Sea to a maximum of 4 days on the road, 300 trucks a day, everyday.

    Jordan of course is in, operating the trans-shipment from the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

    The overarching framework for all this is the One Israel  plan, enthusiastically promoted by Netanyahu, whose key aim is a link with the Arabian peninsula and most of all the NEOM tech metropolis to be built theoretically up to 2039 in the northwestern Tabuk province in Saudi Arabia, north of the Red Sea, east of Egypt across the Gulf of Aqaba, and south of Jordan.

    NEOM is MbS’s project to modernize the country, which is incidentally bound to feature Israel-operated AI cities.

    This is what Riyadh is really betting on, much more than developing closer relations with Iran under the framework of BRICS+. Or to care about the future of Palestine.

    On the planned naval blockade of Yemen though, the Saudis were way more circumspect. Even as Tel Aviv directly asked the White House to do something, anything, Riyadh “advised” Washington to exercise some restraint.

    Yet as few things matter most for the Straussian neocon psychos who currently direct US policy than to protect the trade interests in the Red Sea of its aircraft-carrier in West Asia, the decision to set up a “coalition” was all but inevitable.

    Enter the latest – actually fourth – incarnation of the Combined Maritime Force (CMF): a multinational coalition from 39 nations established in 2002 and led by the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

    The task force already exists: it’s CTF 153, focusing on “international maritime security and capacity building efforts in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden”. That’s the basis for Coalition Genocide Prosperity.

    Members of CTF 153 include, apart from the usual suspects US, UK, France and Canada, Europeans such as Norway, Italy, Netherlands and Spain, superpower Seychelles and Bahrain (the Fifth Fleet element).

    Saudi Arabia and UAE, crucially, are not members. They know, after a seven-year war, when they were part of another “coalition” (the US was sort of “leading from behind”) what it means to fight Ansarullah.

    All Aboard the Northern Sea Route

    If the Red Sea situation turns really red, it will instantly shatter the Riyadh-Sanaa ceasefire. The White House and the US Deep State simply do not want a peace deal. They want Saudi Arabia at war with Yemen.

    The Red Sea turned red will also send the global energy crisis into a tailspin. After all at least four million barrels of oil and 12% of total global seaborne-trade to the West transits the Bab al-Mandeb every single day.

    So once again we have graphic confirmation that the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder only calls for ceasefires when it’s losing badly: see the Ukraine case.

    Yet no ceasefire in Gaza – supported by the overwhelming majority if UN member-states – runs the risk of metastasizing into an expansion of the war in West Asia.

    That may fit into the clumsy imperial rationale of setting West Asia on fire to disturb China’s commercial BRI drive and the entry of Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE into the expanded BRICS next month. Simultaneously, and in tune with the absence of real strategic planning in Washington, that does not take into consideration an array of appalling, unintended consequences.

    So according to imperial optics, the only path ahead is further militarization – from the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. That fits exactly into the framework of the War of Economic Corridors.

    An axiom should be set in stone: Washington would rather bet on a possible, deep global recession than simply allowing a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The recession may well turbo-charge a widespread economic collapse of the collective West, and an even more rapid rise of multipolarity.

    To offer much needed relief of so much insanity: almost casually, President Putin recently remarked that the Northern Sea Route is now becoming a more efficient maritime trade corridor than the Suez Canal.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 23:40

  • Visualizing The Global Coffee Trade
    Visualizing The Global Coffee Trade

    From drip coffees to decadent lattes, every cup of coffee begins its journey from the humble coffee bean. A massive global coffee trade moves these beans from farms in one country to cafes in another.

    In this piece, Airi Ryu uses data from Chatham House’s resourcetrade.earth to track the global trade of unroasted and non-decaffeinated coffee beans in 2019, highlighting the world’s top coffee exporters and importers.

    The Biggest Exporters in the Global Coffee Trade

    Close to 84% of the world’s coffee bean exports come from just 10 countries.

    All these countries are found in the “Bean Belt” between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn where coffee grows best. These top coffee-producing nations include Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia.

    Here are the top coffee exporting nations in 2019:

    The South American nations of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru export nearly 42% of the global coffee beans. Brazil exported over 2.2 million tonnes in 2019 alone, more than a quarter of the global coffee trade.

    Across the Pacific, Vietnam and Indonesia together exported 23.4% of the world’s coffee beans in 2019. Other major exporters include the Central American nations of Honduras and Guatemala, which combined for 8.7% of global coffee bean exports, and the African nations Uganda and Ethiopia with 6.7% combined.

    Biggest Coffee Bean Importers, By Country

    On the other side of the global coffee trade are nations with high demand for coffee dominating import shares. Many of these importing nations also re-export coffee beans to other parts of the world under their own local brands.

    Here are the top coffee importing nations in 2019:

    The U.S. is the largest importer of coffee beans in the world, bringing in 1.5 million tonnes of unroasted coffee beans in 2019, equivalent to 19.3% of all exports that year. While Brazil and Colombia are its biggest sources of coffee, beans imported from Asia and Central America also thrive thanks to a strong specialty coffee culture.

    Europe is also a massive destination for coffee bean exports. Germany led the way with 14.2% of global coffee imports, while Italy accounted for 8.3%.

    A brewing coffee culture in Japan has made the country a major player in the global coffee trade. In 2019, Japan was the fourth-largest coffee bean importer in the world and far and away the leading importer in Asia.

    As the desire for coffee continues to permeate throughout the world, and as climate change puts a strain on coffee production (and vice versa), the flows of coffee beans are sure to change in the coming decades.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 23:20

  • 2023: Goodbye To All That
    2023: Goodbye To All That

    Authored by Clive Hale via ‘The View From The Bridge’,

    “There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.”

    Forecasts create the mirage that the future is knowable – Peter Bernstein

    Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said, “the central bank isn’t really discussing cutting interest rates right now.” Are they, or aren’t they? Who knows? (Ed)

    “Banks don’t go out of business taking risk, they go out of business levering the things that they’re told aren’t risky.” David Dredge on Grant Williams podcast https://www.grant-williams.com/podcast/dave-dredge-2/

    Tell me more about the disinflation…

    “The problem is that by forcing prices into unnatural places for too long the manipulators interfere with this thing we call reality.” Chris Martenson

    In our line of work, there is a common saying: the market can stay irrational longer than one can stay solvent.

    Lately, it appears we should revise the ending of that saying to include “or sane.”

    Having priced in nearly double the number of rate cuts given by the Fed’s forward guidance for 2024 (-140 bps vs. -75 bps), the market has declared the inflation problem solved and the glidepath to a goldilocks economy all but certain. Stuck in yesteryear’s paradigm of inflation, rates, and earnings multiple revaluation, risk assets have melted up in a crazed frenzy. John Authers – Bloomberg

    “Many of those numbers are not really true – look at inflation. If there is anybody who believes that inflation is what they publish, you know, you cannot be serious. Of course, inflation is another number. My inflation is probably 10% of my basket of goods and services I consume, and so it is for many other people, so I think the numbers are made up, you know.

    The shelter part of the CPI is a problem, and it is exaggerated on the downside, and recently they exchanged what was it health care insurance premiums for healthcare insurance profits of those companies – I mean, it’s ridiculous. So I think inflation is in fact higher, and that would mean that a higher and higher percentage of the US consumer is struggling, is struggling more than what the statistics tell us, and credit card delinquencies are probably pointing in that direction.” 

    – Felix Zulauf on Grant Williams podcast https://www.grant-williams.com/podcast/felix-zulauf-2023/

    John Williams agrees with Felix’s 10% inflation rate. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series, shown below, reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.

    “The percentage of companies with strong/healthy Altman Z-scores (which combine account profitability, leverage, liquidity, solvency, activity ratios, etc. to measure bankruptcy risk) has dropped below 10% for first time on record” John Authers – Bloomberg

    On the FEDeral Reserve: We have to get away from this PhD standard, the improvisation of our monetary masters who, having earned a doctorate in economics, they think they know things they cannot possibly know.

    From a former BoE governor Mervyn King –

    ” If you look at the computer models, which not just the bank of England, but other central banks use, whatever you do to monetary policy, inflation always comes back to 2%. Why does it do that? Because the model says it has to, it’s built in, it’s an assumption.”

    Got gold?

    It may seem quaint, but there was a time pre-1971 when you could divide the monetary aggregates (there are several) by the amount of gold held by the US Treasury and you would derive the reference price of $35/oz.

    And in 1980 when gold soared to $800/oz the dollar was 100% backed by the gold the US held.

    What is shocking is the amount of paper money created since that time frame.

    If one were to do the same calculation today (monetary aggregates/gold ounces held by the US Treasury) it would take a gold price of $80,000/oz to balance the equation.

    A far cry from today’s $1,950/oz.

    Mark Twain was right “One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.” – Thomas Sowell

    Think about this one… “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” – Richard Feynman

    If your system of government relies upon the sagacity and ethics of the leaders who run it to keep you safe and free, you are engaging in utopian thinking and you’re going to get the tyranny you deserve. 

    Oh dear…😯

    “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking

    And finally, a thought to carry into 2024 and beyond

    Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

    * * *

    Thanks for reading The View from the Bridge – by Clive Hale! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support his work.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 23:00

  • Nikki Haley Tries To Tie Putin To Israel Attackers, Says Gazans Should Be Resettled In 'Pro-Hamas Countries'
    Nikki Haley Tries To Tie Putin To Israel Attackers, Says Gazans Should Be Resettled In ‘Pro-Hamas Countries’

    Two ultra controversial and somewhat bizarre statements from Nikki Haley this week on the Israel-Hamas war… first, the Republican presidential candidate lashed out at what she called the “pro-Hamas” countries of Iran, Qatar, and Turkey in a fresh ABC News interview. 

    She said these countries, given their well-known ‘support’ to the terror group, should take in all Palestinians fleeing the war in Gaza. During the discussion Haley was asked where the war refugees in Gaza should go. She responded: “They should be going to the Rafah gate and [have] Egypt take them.” That’s when she added the controversial statement, “But I’ve always said that what you should have is that they should go to pro-Hamas countries — Qatar, Iran, Turkey… send them there… Those are pro-Hamas countries.” Watch:

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

    “Why won’t Egypt take them? Because they don’t trust which ones are terrorists and which ones aren’t? It’s a sad state of affairs, but the reality of that evil is very clear in Arab countries too. Arab countries have very much always been cautious and know the threats that Iran can place,” she posed further.

    “They don’t want those terrorist proxies coming after them…”. And more from her commentary:

    “Why isn’t everybody talking to Egypt? Why aren’t they talking to Turkey? Why aren’t they talking to Qatar? Why aren’t they talking to Iran? Why aren’t they doing something to help the Palestinians? Why is it that you come back to Israel and the US? It’s always the case.”

    “If [the October 7 attack] had happened to America, do you not think that we would have hit back?” asks Haley, who is trying to pull off an improbable primary win over GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.

    Even before the crisis which kicked off with the Oct.7 Hamas attacks, Haley has long been a staunch supporter of Israel and has advocated for keeping up maximal US defense and foreign aid. Israel remains the biggest recipient, at over $3 billion annually. In this case, the Netanyahu government would likely agree with her, given it’s been trying to press Egypt to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and place then in tent cities in the Sinai desert.

    Second, she also had some interesting (ahem) things to say about an alleged Putin-Hamas connection at a recent campaign rally…

    “Hamas invaded Israel on October 7th, October 7th is Putin’s birthday,” Haley told a crowd of supporters.

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

    As for her identifying ‘Hamas-supporting’ regional countries, while Qatar and Iran’s financial support has long been well known, Turkey has of late been the most vociferous in denouncing and attacking the Israeli government for the massive amounts of civilian casualties in Gaza due to its air and ground campaign. 

    President Erdogan is vowing to get Israeli leaders hauled before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Geneva, though Turkey itself is not a signatory to ICC founding documents. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 22:40

  • WorldCoin Halts Iris-Scanning In India, Brazil, & France
    WorldCoin Halts Iris-Scanning In India, Brazil, & France

    Authored by David Attlee via CoinTelegraph,com,

    Amid its ongoing streak of expansions and collaborations, Worldcoin has reportedly rolled back one of its core functions in three markets…

    Worldcoin has shut off its offline orb verification function for users in three markets: India, Brazil, and France, a report by Moneycontrol on Dec. 21 says. 

    A five-pound chromatic helmet that scans individuals’ eyeballs to verify their identities, the Orb was conceived by Worldcoin as a tool for onboarding the inhabitants of those regions where traditional ID is not always available.

    The company stimulated the offline onboarding process by offering rewards in USDC for local Orb operators.

    Starting in November, Worldcoin began paying the rewards in its native token, WLD.

    According to Moneycontrol, Worldcoin “silently discontinued” the orb verification process in India “3-4 months ago,” despite the crowds gathering in queues for Orb operators in some parts of the country. However, Tools for Humanity, the foundation overseeing Worldcoin, explained that from the start, the Orb was a “limited-time access” initiative in India, France, and Brazil.

    Cointelegraph has contacted Worldcoin for further details but hasn’t yet received a response.

    The onboarding process, which involves gathering private data such as the iris scan, has led Worldcoin into numerous public controversies.

    Critics have repeatedly suggested that the project, launched by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, is ethically questionable and contains the makings of a “dystopian nightmare.”

    Regulators have been skeptical as well. German financial authorities launched a probe into Worldcoin in 2022, while the United Kingdom’s data regulatory body also threatened investigations in the days after the project’s launch. Kenya has outright banned Worldcoin’s activity in the country.

    In August, security platform CertiK reported a vulnerability in the vetting processes for Orb operators that could have allowed an attacker to bypass the verification process and operate an Orb without being interviewed or having a proper ID.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 22:20

  • Gun Owners Of America's 2023 Victories Against Anti-Gunners
    Gun Owners Of America’s 2023 Victories Against Anti-Gunners

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    This year has been full of fights over the Second Amendment. In 2023, the anti-gun billionaires, with their allies in the White House and Congress, have waged a non-stop battle on your right to own a firearm. Whether in the Legislature or the court system, Gun Owners of America has fought back.  

    Thanks to your support, Gun Owners of America proudly reports that we secured some huge wins this year.  

    So, let’s recap the highlights of 2023 as we get ready for the battles ahead in 2024. 

    First, GOA and our members secured a major win, being instrumental in passing Rep Andrew Clyde’s H.J.Res. 44, which told ATF their pistol brace rule did not have the support of Congress. 

    The passing of H.J. Res. 44 signals to the ATF and the courts that their pistol brace rule is not constitutional. In addition, our lawsuit, GOA & Texas v. ATF, halted the rule nationwide.  

    In recent news, GOA members absolutely flooded the Federal Register with over 85 THOUSAND comments on ATF’s new universal registration check rule. This massive rush of comments completely smashed our previous record by more than 20 thousand.  

    These comments could severely affect ATF’s proposed rule. But when it does become law, GOA stands ready to fight ATF in the courts, using our members’ comments as evidence of harm. 

    But it hasn’t been all fights against the ATF; Gun Owners of America has also kept Congress in line. 

    One of the most significant victories this year was removing the Permanent Reauthorization of the Undetectable Firearms Act from the National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the bill that funds the military.  

    This Undetectable Firearms Act is now scheduled to expire on February 2nd, and we’re now preparing to fight to end the law for good. 

    We also defeated attempts to package an Assault Weapons Ban, Universal Background Checks, and a Separate 3D printing ban into other pieces of legislation. Thanks to our friends in Congress like Senator Mike Lee, Senator Ted Budd, and Senator John Barrasso, we were able to block anti-gun Senators from putting these laws into “must-pass” bills.  

    The VA’s fiduciary rule, which GOA has fought for years, stripped veterans of their 2A rights simply for getting a financial advisor. This law is in dire straits, thanks to Chairman Mike Bost and Senator John Kennedy! 

    Meanwhile, in the courts, we won a massive victory in Oregon, where we were granted a permanent injunction against Oregon Ballot Measure 114. This unconstitutional measure passed by a slim margin of about 1% and imposed fingerprinting, firearm registration, and magazine bans. 

    In addition, our New York case, Antonyuk v. Hochul, won a partial—yet significant—victory! 

    Earlier in December, a federal circuit court confirmed a federal injunction against some portions of New York’s unconstitutional concealed carry law. 

    This law would severely restrict where gun owners can carry firearms in public and allow the government to monitor concealed carry permit applicants’ social media history. 

    If New York’s law is allowed to stand, other anti-gun cities and states will quickly follow New York’s lead by making nearly all public places off-limits to concealed carry. 

    It’s vital that we win a complete victory in this case. 

    That’s why GOA will be appealing the ruling straight to the US Supreme Court! 

    We’ve also been suing and winning against the ATF’s new Zero Tolerance policy, which we leaked earlier this year. We’re fighting against a rogue ATF that aims to put your local gun dealer out of business for minor innocuous paperwork errors, an obvious backdoor gun control move by the Biden Administration.  

    Thank you for a great 2023. Here’s to us in 2024 continuing the fight for the Second Amendment!  

    *  *  * 

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 21:40

  • What's Your US Income Percentile?
    What’s Your US Income Percentile?

    Where do you fall on the distribution of income in the United States?

    The nice people over at Political Calculations blog can help you answer this question using the data that the U.S. Census Bureau has collected on the total money income earned by individual Americans as well as for the families and households into which Americans gather themselves!

    If you’re a visual person, we’ll first present the U.S. income distribution information in three charts presenting the cumulative distribution of income for U.S. individuals, U.S. households, and U.S. families.

    To use these charts, first find the income that applies for you on the horizontal axis, then move directly upward to the curve that defines the cumulative distribution of income. Once you’ve found your place on S-shaped curve in each chart, look directly to the vertical scale on the left hand side of the chart to determine your approximate U.S. income percentile ranking. Each of the charts will be displayed for five seconds and will cycle back to the beginning after running through each of the charts. The charts will also indicate the median and average income earned by each category.

    Now, let’s find out more precisely where you really fit into the 2022 distribution of income! To find out where you, your family or your household ranks among each of these categories, just enter your personal income, your family’s income, which includes the incomes of your spouse and other family members who live with you, and also the combined income of just the people who live within the walls of the same household that you do, into the following tool. We’ll do some quick math and provide a more better estimate of the percentage of all American individuals, families and households that you outrank given the incomes you enter than you can get from scanning the charts. We’ll also break down the numbers for your Individual income to tell you how you compare to your fellow male and female Americans.

    Click on the calculator image below to access a working version of our tool.

     

    Our tool should be able to place most people within half a percentile of their actual income percentile. A percentile of zero indicates that you are at the very bottom end of the U.S. income spectrum, while a percentile ranking of 100 indicates that you are effectively at the very top end. A percentile rank of 50.0 puts you at the median, where 50% of the U.S. population would have a higher income and 50% has a lower income.

    For our readers who live outside of the United States, you can still get in on the action if you convert your income from your local currency into U.S. dollars first!

    If you want a more precise estimate of your income percentile ranking within the U.S., please check out Don’t Quit Your Day Job’s Income Percentile Calculator. DQYDJ uses a more refined version of the U.S. Census Bureau’s income data to estimate the distribution of total money income within the United States, which means that compared to our tool, which will put you in the right seating section of the ballpark, PK’s tool can put you in the right row of that seating section.

    Finally, if you’re looking for the income data for 2023, please note that the U.S. Census Bureau will report the data it collects for this year sometime in September 2024. The data for 2023 won’t even be collected until March 2024, when Americans will be preparing their income tax returns for the 2023 tax year and have all the records needed to do that. The Census Bureau’s statisticians will then take the next six months to analyze all the income data they collect before reporting their results.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 21:20

  • Bills Filed In Oklahoma & Missouri Would Eliminate Capital Gains Tax On The Sale Of Gold & Silver
    Bills Filed In Oklahoma & Missouri Would Eliminate Capital Gains Tax On The Sale Of Gold & Silver

    Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

    Bills filed in the Oklahoma and Missouri legislatures for the 2024 legislative session would eliminate state capital gains taxes on the sale of gold and silver. The legislation would also take other steps to treat gold and silver as money instead of as commodities.

    In Missouri, Rep Doug Richey filed HB1867 on Dec. 11. Rep. Bill Hardwick filed HB1955 on Dec. 15. The bills are companions to SB735 filed in the Senate by Sen. William Eigel earlier this month.

    In Oklahoma, Sen. Shane Jett filed SB1507 and Sen. Nathan Dahm is running SB1508.

    The enactment of any of these bills would eliminate state capital gains taxes on the sale and exchange of gold and silver bullion.

    Both of these states are already among the 42 that do not levy sales taxes on gold and silver bullion.

    Exempting the sale of gold and silver bullion from taxes lowers the investment cost of precious metals. It also takes a step toward treating gold and silver as money instead of commodities. Taxes on precious metal bullion erect barriers to using gold and silver as money by raising transaction costs.

    Imagine if you asked a grocery clerk to break a $5 bill and he charged you a 35-cent tax. Silly, right? After all, you were only exchanging one form of money for another. But that’s essentially what a sales tax on gold and silver bullion does. By eliminating this tax on the exchange of gold and silver, Missouri and Oklahoma would treat specie as money instead of a commodity. This represents a small step toward reestablishing gold and silver as legal tender and breaking down the Fed’s monopoly on money.

    “We ought not to tax money – and that’s a good idea. It makes no sense to tax money,” former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul said during testimony in support of an Arizona bill that repealed capital gains taxes on gold and silver in that state. “Paper is not money, it’s fraud,” he continued.

    The impact of enacting this legislation will go beyond mere tax policy. During an event after his Senate committee testimony, Paul pointed out that it’s really about the size and scope of government.

    “If you’re for less government, you want sound money. The people who want big government, they don’t want sound money. They want to deceive you and commit fraud. They want to print the money. They want a monopoly. They want to get you conditioned, as our schools have conditioned us, to the point where deficits don’t matter.”

    GOLD AND SILVER AS LEGAL TENDER

    Under provisions in the Missouri bill, gold and silver in physical or electronic form would be accepted as legal tender and would be receivable in payment of all debts contracted for in the state of Missouri. The state would be required to accept gold and silver for the payment of public debts. Private debts could be settled in gold and silver at the parties’ discretion.

    Practically speaking, this would allow Missourians to use gold or silver coins as money rather than just as mere investment vehicles. In effect, it would put gold and silver on the same footing as Federal Reserve notes.

    Oklahoma took a similar step in 2014. Utah and Arkansas also consider gold and silver legal tender.

    The proposed Missouri law also includes provisions authorizing the state to invest in gold or silver “greater than or equal to one percent of all state funds” and to expressly bar any state agency, department, or political subdivision from seizing gold or silver bullion.

    BACKGROUND

    The United States Constitution states in Article I, Section 10, “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Currently, all debts and taxes in the US are either paid with Federal Reserve Notes (dollars) which were authorized as legal tender by Congress, or with coins issued by the US Treasury — very few of which have gold or silver in them.

    The Federal Reserve destroys this constitutional monetary system by creating a monopoly based on its fiat currency. Without the backing of gold or silver, the central bank can easily create money out of thin air. This not only devalues your purchasing power over time; it also allows the federal government to borrow and spend far beyond what would be possible in a sound money system. Without the Fed, the US government wouldn’t be able to maintain all of its unconstitutional wars and programs. The Federal Reserve is the engine that drives the most powerful government in the history of the world.

    Tax repeals knock down one of the tax barriers that hinder the use of gold and silver as money, and could also begin the process of abolishing the Federal Reserve’s fiat money system by attacking it from the bottom up – pulling the rug out from under it by working to make its functions irrelevant at the state and local levels, and setting the stage to undermine the Federal Reserve monopoly by introducing competition into the monetary system.

    In a paper presented at the Mises Institute, Constitutional tender expert Professor William Greene said when people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve Notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

    “Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a “reverse Gresham’s Law” effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes). As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state – as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money – and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions.”

    Once things get to that point, Federal Reserve notes would become largely unwanted and irrelevant for ordinary people.

    These bills make up part of a broader movement at the state level to support sound money.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 21:00

  • The Ultimate Way To Cut Out Sugar
    The Ultimate Way To Cut Out Sugar

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

    You may have thought of cutting back on or even quitting sugar. But how exactly should you go about it, and, more importantly, how can you achieve the greater goal of overcoming excessive cravings for sweetness?

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    From 2005 to 2009, at least 74 percent of packaged or processed foods contained added sugars. Even if you don’t have the habit of eating sweets, you may unintentionally consume sugar in excess. For instance, added sugars have dozens of names, so you might not even know you are eating them despite reading ingredient labels.

    Nevertheless, quitting sugar is not an impossible mission. Many people face challenges not because they cannot quit but because they don’t know how or they set overly ambitious goals.

    You can break it down into steps: First reduce sugar, then quit altogether, and eventually overcome sugar cravings.

    The benefits of this approach are no different from quitting sugar directly. Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist specializing in reversing Type 2 diabetes and intermittent fasting, likened it to swimming. Some prefer easing into the water to adapt to the temperature, while others dive right in. Both approaches can achieve the same ultimate goal.

    “Just like we advise people with any addiction,” Jessica Russo, a clinical psychologist in Philadelphia with a doctorate in psychology, told The Epoch Times, “every day, just [cut] your sugar down a little bit.”

    “The process of quitting sugar is about retraining the palate,” said Lorenzo Cohen, professor and director of the integrative medicine program at MD Anderson Cancer Center, during an interview with The Epoch Times. Once people apply this, they will gradually discover that even items with very little sugar taste quite sweet, and unexpected changes will occur in the body.

    The Epoch Times interviewed over a dozen experts and reviewed scientific studies to compile the most effective methods for quitting sugar.

    Step 1: Reduce Sugar Intake

    Avoid High-Sugar Foods

    Reading labels is often the first habit many people adopt when quitting sugar or embarking on a diet. When reading labels, there are two key aspects to focus on: the ingredient list and the sugar content per 100 grams or serving.

     

    “There’s more than 60 names for sugar,” Amy Gonzalez, a registered dietitian, told The Epoch Times.

    These include barley malt, dextrose, sucrose, and rice syrup.

    Sugar has over 60 names that could appear on food labels. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Ms. Gonzalez stated that among these added sugars, those with high fructose content, such as high-fructose corn syrup and agave nectar, are more detrimental to the body. These may harm the liver and lead to insulin resistance.

    “The food industry puts all these forms of sugar in our food and lists their chemical names on the package,” Laura Schmidt, professor of health policy at the University of California–San Francisco, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times. “This is confusing for people.”

    Ms. Schmidt shared a simple way to identify sugar: Look for chemical names ending in “ose,” such as “lactose” (sugar in milk). They likely indicate sugar.

    Another trick: “If a product has more than a few ingredients, and some are unfamiliar sounding, then just don’t eat it,” she added.

    Even in foods that do not taste sweet, like crackers or salad dressings, you might still find sugar listed in the ingredients.

    One tablespoon of Heinz Tomato Ketchup (17 grams) contains 4 grams of added sugar. A Big Mac from McDonald’s has 7 grams of added sugar. In a large Big Mac combo meal (with a large Coca-Cola and a large serving of fries), the total added sugar content reaches 84 grams. Even potato chips and other other savory snacks may contain sugar.

    If the added sugar exceeds 20 percent, it is classified as a product with high added sugar product. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), if the added sugar in each serving of food is below 5 percent of the Daily Value (DV)—50 grams per day based on a 2,000-calorie diet—it is considered a product with low added sugar. If it exceeds 20 percent, it is regarded as a high-added sugar product.

    As per the UK National Health Service (NHS), foods with less than 5 grams of sugar per 100 grams are categorized as low-sugar, those with sugar content ranging from 5 grams to 22.5 grams are classified as medium-sugar, and those exceeding 22.5 grams fall into the high-sugar category.

    Dr. Becky Gillaspy, a chiropractic doctor and author of “Zero Sugar / One Month,” suggests a simpler approach: Avoid purchasing foods where sugar ranks among the top three ingredients on the food label (ingredients are typically listed in descending order of weight). Compared to using specific numerical criteria, this screening method is quicker and more convenient, effectively filtering out items with high added-sugar content, she said.

    However, Ms. Gonzalez also emphasized the importance of learning all the names of sugar and reading the ingredient list from start to finish. This is crucial because, unfortunately, many food manufacturers use several different forms of sweeteners, which will move them further down the list.

    Swap in Natural Sweeteners or Natural Sugars

    Consuming sugar is, fundamentally, a pursuit of flavor. So why not satisfy that craving with natural sweetness, such as sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit? You can add them to your coffee and tea or use them in cooking.

    Unlike refined sugar, stevia and monk fruit have a glycemic index (GI) of nearly zero. Many studies indicate their ability to stabilize blood sugar and even suggest potential benefits in managing diabetes. Additionally, stevia offers other benefits, such as reducing blood pressure and blood lipids, and possesses anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Monk fruit has also been found to be beneficial against conditions such as COVID-19 and cancer.

    Satisfy cravings with natural sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit. (dedek/Shutterstock, Hajai Photo/Shutterstock)

    It is worth noting, however, that animal studies suggest eating stevia long-term may potentially have adverse effects on the liver and kidneys or alter the gut microbiome. These findings are contentious, as other research indicates stevia may benefit patients with chronic kidney disease and ameliorate liver and kidney damage. Researchers have suggested the effects of stevia may depend on how much you eat and what it is eaten with.

    The sweetness of pure stevia and monk fruit is several hundred times that of regular sugar. The powdered forms commonly found in supermarkets are typically blended with base ingredients. For example, you might find a composition of 1 percent steviol glycosides mixed with 99 percent erythritol. This means that the usage and quantities of these products are similar to regular sugar. Nevertheless, reading the usage instructions on the packaging is advisable so you understand serving sizes. The same applies to liquid stevia and monk fruit products, where the recommended amounts may vary. For some, one drop might be equivalent to the sweetness of a teaspoon of sugar, while others may require 10 drops or a few milliliters.

    Artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin, are commonly used as sugar substitutes in processed food and drinks labeled zero-sugar. However, numerous studies have found that these sweeteners can lead to metabolic syndromes, harm gut health, and may even be potentially carcinogenic.

    Natural sugars are another excellent alternative. Honey, for example, while often equated with sugar, can actually help stabilize blood sugar when consumed in moderation. Moreover, honey has been used for thousands of years for its medicinal properties, particularly its antibacterial and antiviral effects. Certain types of honey, like Manuka, have a higher level of antibacterial properties compared to others. Collected from maple trees, maple syrup has a unique taste that captivates many and contains a rich array of nutrients. Coconut sugar is both anti-inflammatory and antioxidative, contributing to heart health.

    A common practice is to use ½ to ⅔ cup of honey or ¾ cup of maple syrup to replace 1 cup (240 milliliters) of sugar.

    Other ingredients also naturally carry a sweet taste. For example, Ms. Russo mentioned that licorice root has a natural sweetness and offers health benefits when used to make tea. Additionally, naturally sweet ingredients such as red dates and dried goji berries can be used to brew tea or soup that is both sweet and fragrant.

    During interviews, many experts supported the idea of cooking at home as the safest and best way to avoid excess sugar. Choose natural, sugar-free ingredients like unsweetened yogurt and plain oats, and then sweeten with an appropriate amount of relatively natural sweeteners.

    Replace Desserts With Fruits

    Those with strong cravings for desserts and snacks can replace such treats with fresh fruits, said Dr. Luc Tappy, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physiology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in an email to The Epoch Times. The choice of fruits is generally not restricted.

    Fruits come in abundant varieties, from common ones like blueberries and bananas to more exotic options like durian and mangosteen. Even the same type of fruit will come in different varieties in some tropical and temperate regions. The many kinds of desserts that can be made from these fruits are just as diverse. As you explore options, you will find that using these fruits can yield unexpectedly delightful flavors while satisfying your sweet tooth.

    “The good things in fruit are far more important than the fruit sugar … in fruit,” Ellen Kampman, a nutritional epidemiologist and chair in nutrition and disease at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, told The Epoch Times. “So I’m not afraid that people might overeat [them].”

    However, Dr. Tappy pointed out the importance of being mindful of portion sizes. Initially, when reducing sugar intake, consuming up to three servings of fresh fruits per day is recommended, which can later be reduced to two servings. A comprehensive study published in 2021 suggests that consuming two servings of fruits per day is ideal and healthy. One serving typically corresponds to one medium-sized piece of fruit or approximately 80 grams.

    Dr. Fung warned that the fruits we consume today are generally much sweeter than 50 years ago, indicating increased sugar content. Individuals, especially those with blood sugar problems or a strong sugar addiction, should opt for low-GI fruits and avoid high-sugar fruits like grapes and bananas; the intense sweetness of such fruits may also trigger sugar cravings.

    Cooking methods also impact fruit sugar content. Dried fruits shrink during the sun-drying or dehydration process. While eating one apple might fill you up, eating apple chips might lead you to easily eat two or three dehydrated apples without even realizing it. When consuming dried fruit, we must calculate based on the original size of the fruit. Fruit juice also concentrates sugars from multiple fruits while filtering out the dietary fiber. In an 8-ounce cup of orange juice, you are essentially getting the sugar and calories equivalent to three oranges.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 20:20

  • Too Late For US Naval Deterrence In Red Sea After Biden Misled World On Houthi Attacks
    Too Late For US Naval Deterrence In Red Sea After Biden Misled World On Houthi Attacks

    It has become clear there’s a full-blown Houthi war on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Weeks ago, we featured commentary that cited US defense officials who were frustrated that the Pentagon was being held back from responding forcefully against Houthis positions in Yemen by the Biden White House.

    President Biden stood accused of “downplaying” the threat, as statements in Politico have underscored, “Some current and former military officials were frustrated by the administration’s initial response to the Houthis’ Sunday attacks on the ships.” This as some top military brass pushed for a more forceful response, lest the Iranian proxies grow more emboldened.

    But more emboldened is precisely what has happened, as container ships are coming under drone and missile attack on a daily basis at this point, triggering delays and rising prices on goods as major liners avoid Red Sea transit altogether.

    USS Carney destroyer, via US Navy

    Fast-forward to this week, now nearing the end of December and The Wall Street Journal has run an alarming but apt headline this which spells out U.S. Naval Deterrence Is Going, Going, Maybe Even Gone.

    Increasingly, Biden’s desire to make nice with the Iranians in order to keep global energy prices down ahead of the 2024 election is translating to a posture of ‘looking the other way’—and some analysts worry it’s too late to reestablish deterrence. 

    The Commander-in-Chief hasn’t so much as ordered a military response when American warships in waters off Yemen themselves come under direct attack. Again, this is what has deeply frustrated Pentagon leaders, who feel handcuffed. In its fresh commentary, WSJ points to the reality and immediate consequences of the US Navy coming under attack, but failing to respond or decisively hit back: 

    Recently the news broke that the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney had fended off several missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea. While Biden administration officials tried to frame the battle, for a battle it surely was, as the Carney’s defending nearby merchant ships, it seems clear that Iranian-supplied Houthis were targeting the Carney directly as well as the commercial ships it was accompanying.

    This was only one of several recent assaults on American naval assets in the region. They have happened despite the presence of the Ford carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean and the Eisenhower strike group in the Gulf of Aden—a conventional level of naval deterrence that should have reduced aggressive activities by U.S. enemies. Instead, Iran attacked American ships and allies.

    But still, if the last 20+ years of the so-called global war on terror has taught Washington anything, it is that it’s hard to deter a hardened and determined ragtag army of insurgents with things like giant naval assets sitting off a coast which are designed to fight bigger, conventional wars.

    Ships burn as White House dithers…

    The WSJ along with beltway think tanks worry this shows US naval power to be in decline. We should add that this is perhaps but one symptomatic indicator that US Empire itself is in decline and in retreat amid foreign policy failure after failure. Writes WSJ further:

    These events show that American naval deterrence is failing, and a recent report from the Sagamore Institute concludes that it could soon evaporate.

    The report, “Measuring and Modeling Naval Presence,” models the effect of various ships and combinations of ships across a mix of maritime regions. The model pitted an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the U.S. Navy’s current utility platform of choice, against a People’s Liberation Army Navy Luyang III destroyer in several locations ranging from the high seas to the waters approaching the Taiwan Strait. It suggested that the deterrent value of American Navy ships operating in close proximity to a determined adversary has recently declined.

    As expected, the report ends with a call to further bloat Pentagon budgets, saying “The Navy’s budget, size and force architecture all need urgent attention from Congress if the U.S. is to preserve its ability to deter its enemies. Failure to do so imperils global trade as well as America’s place in the world and the safety of its people.”

    The below headline also just about summarizes the situation perfectly well…

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    But, we should add, there’s many other factors too. For starters, Washington has chosen to rush headlong into foreign quagmire after foreign quagmire.

    From bases in Iraq to Syria, to naval battle groups in the Mediterranean and Mideast waters, this adventurism overseas has ultimately given the Iranians and their allies easy targets as US troops and assets are ‘sitting ducks’ – placed conveniently close to hostile forces. In the case of Syria, the US is engaging in massive oil, gas, and wheat theft – as an outgrowth of its last decade of regime change efforts against Assad in Damascus.

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

    Simultaneously, the US has essentially given Israel a blank check to execute its war in Gaza, and consistently refuses international efforts at reaching lasting, permanent ceasefire. Washington is left with no exit and no ultimately strategy, yet all the while wants to see oil prices kept down, and trade routes open. As is usual in the region, the US wants its proverbial cake and to eat it too.

    * * *

    And as a reminder of the prescient Rabobank commentary we just featured…

    Concerningly, Marine Tracker data suggests that the launch of Operation Prosperity Guardian has not been sufficient to prevent freight companies from diverting their largest container ships away from the coast of Yemen. The loss of prestige for the global hegemon will not have gone unnoticed by America’s adversaries, who will be emboldened by any signs of weakness.

    Adding to the concern has been the lukewarm response of major allies invited to join Operation Prosperity Guardian. Canada committed no ships and opted instead to only send a clutch of staff officers while Australia (an AUKUS ally who fought with the United States in Iraq, Vietnam and Korea) also refused US requests to send a warship to the Red Sea.

    The Australian Government claims the refusal was due to a preference to focus on interests in the Asia-Pacific region, but local media has suggested that it is actually because none of Australia’s 7 frigates and 3 air-warfare destroyers are appropriately equipped to deter attacks from cheap Houthi (Iranian) drones for any length of time. If this really is the case, it is an astonishing gap in capability that highlights the extent to which conventional fleets face disruption from small, cheap and agile adversaries. That doesn’t bode well for the security of supply chains elsewhere.

    Of course, the situation in the Red Sea has created winners as well as losers. The winners again appear to be Russia and China.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 20:00

  • The End Of Social Democracy
    The End Of Social Democracy

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    A friend reminded me of a piece I wrote in 2017 that predicted the end of social democracy. This was three years before lockdowns, and it strikes me even now as a correct prediction. It is now under stress as never before. In fact, it seems doomed. But what comes after is still in question.

    The settled system of social democracy emerged all over the Western world in the 20th century. We got rid of monarchical power (late 19th century), imposed direct rule via voting in large parts of the industrialized world (post-Great War), built up welfare states (1930s), and then assigned a managerial technocratic class to manage the bureaucracies, public finance, and global economics (post-WW2).

    The eventual result was not liberalism from ages past or despotism traditionally understood but a combination of systems that the elites hoped would be stable, pleasing to the electorate, consistent with continued economic growth, and yield positive outcomes for health and population welfare overall.

    The classic statement summing up this view in book form came in 1960: “The End of Ideology” by Daniel Bell.

    A self-described “socialist in economics, liberal in politics, and conservative in culture,” he said that all wild-eyed visions of politics had come to an end. They would all be replaced by a system of rule by experts that everyone will love forever.

    To be sure, the ultimate end-of-ideology system is freedom itself. Genuine liberalism (which probably shouldn’t be classified as an ideology at all) doesn’t require universal agreement on some system of public administration. It tolerates vast differences of opinion on religion, culture, behavioral norms, traditions, and personal ethics. It permits every form of speech, writing, association, and movement. Commerce, producing and trading toward living better lives, becomes the lifeblood. It only asks that people—including the state—not violate basic human rights.

    But that is not the end of ideology that Bell and his generation tried to manufacture. What they wanted was what is today called the managerial state. Objective and scientific experts would be given power and authority to build and oversee large-scale state projects. These projects would touch on every area of life. They would build a cradle-to-grave welfare state, a regulatory apparatus to make all products and services perfect, labor law to create the perfect balance of capital and labor, huge infrastructure programs to inspire the public (highways! space! dams!), fine-tune macroeconomic life with Keynesian witchdoctors in charge, a foreign-policy regime that knew no limits of its power, and a central bank as the lender of last resort.

    What Bell and that generation proposed wasn’t really the end of ideology. It was an invasive state, administered by elite bureaucrats, blessed by intellectuals, and given the cover of agreement by the universal right of the vote. Surely nothing can truly be oppressive if it takes place within the framework of democracy.

    The whole thing turned out to be a pipe dream. Only a few years after the book appeared, ideology came roaring back with a vengeance, mostly in reaction to the ossification of public life, the draft for the Vietnam War, and the gradual diminution of economic prospects of the middle class.

    The student movement rose up, and gained momentum in response to the violent attempts to suppress it. Technology gave rise to new forms of freedom that were inconsistent with the static and officious structure of public administration. Political consensus fell apart, and the presidency itself—supposed to be sacrosanct in the postwar period—was dealt a mighty blow with the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Government no longer held the high ground.

    All that seemed to hold the old post-war social-democratic consensus together was the Cold War itself. Surely we should put aside our differences so long as our country faces an existential threat of Soviet communism. And that perception put off the unleashing of mass discontent until later. In a shocking and completely unexpected turn, the Cold War ended in 1989, and thus began a new attempt to impose a post-ideological age, if only to preserve what the elites had worked so hard to build.

    This attempt also had its book-form definitive statement: “The End of History” by Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama wrote, “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

    It was Bell 2.0 and it didn’t last long either. Over the last 40 years, every institution of social democracy has been discredited, on both the Right and the Left, even as the middle class began to face a grim economic reality: progress in one generation was no longer a reliable part of the American dream. The last time a government program really seemed to work well was the moon landing. After that, government gradually just became a symbol of the worst unbearable and unworkable burden, especially following lockdowns and the discrediting of science itself.

    I ended my 2017 piece with this sentence: “Heavily ideological protest movements began to spring up in all corners of American public life: the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Bernie, Trump, and whatever comes next.”

    Well, that was only 6 years ago, and look how history has moved into a fast-forward trajectory. Now we know what was next. We had grim and alarming COVID lockdowns that did nothing to control a virus but did serve as a mass reminder of who is in charge: the state and its allies.

    In fact, that might have been the point all along, a grand effort to impose shock and awe and settle the question once and for all. Democracy, we have learned, does not mean that the people get to elect their leaders. It means that we are assigned public figures for which we can vote, provided these individuals have no plans to disrupt the established ways of the ruling class.

    At the same time, we are are still living with the deep contradictions of the social-democratic system, which I named in 2017:

    1. Financial unsustainability. Many forms of redistribution only worked because they leveraged the present against the future. The problem with that model is that the future eventually arrives. Think of Social Security. It worked so long as the few in older groups could pillage the numerous in younger groups. Eventually the demographics flipped so that the many were on the receiving end and the few were on the paying end. Now young people know that they will be paying their whole lives for what will amount to a terrible return on investment. It was the same with Medicare, Medicaid, and other forms of fake “insurance” instituted by government. The welfare state generally took a bad turn, becoming a way of life rather than a temporary help. Subsidy programs like housing and student loans create unsustainable bubbles that burst and cause fear and panic.

    2. Terminal inefficiency. All forms of government intervention presume a frozen world without change, and work to glue down institutions in a certain mode of operation. Public schools today operate largely as they did in the 1950s, and then suddenly they were shut down completely, as if to say: we don’t need them anyway. Antitrust regulations deal with industrial organization from years ago even as the market is moving forward; by the time the government announces its opinion, it hardly matters anymore. And you can make the same criticism of a huge number of programs: labor law, communications regulations, drug approvals and medical regulations, and so on. The costs grow and grow, while the service and results are ever worse. And that inefficiency was on display in spades during lockdowns: perhaps $10 trillion taken from taxpayers and given to elites with no discernible advantages for society.

    3. Moral unconscionability. The bailouts after the 2008 financial crisis, followed by the much-worse lockdown payments, were indefensible to average people of all parties. How can you justify using all the powers of the federal government to feed trillions overall to well-connected elites who were the very perpetrators of the crisis? Capitalism is supposed to be about profits and losses, not private profits and socialized losses. The sheer injustice of it boggles the mind, but this only scratches the surface. How can you pillage average Americans of 40 percent of their income while blowing the money on programs that are either terminally inefficient, financially unsustainable, or just plain wrong? How can a government expect to administer a comprehensive spying program that violates any expectation of privacy on the part of citizens? Then there is the problem of wars lasting decades and leaving only destruction and guerilla armies in their wake.

    What actually creates the tipping point in which social democracy morphs into something else? What displaces one failed paradigm with another? The answer lies with an even deeper problem with social democracy. You can discern it from this comment by F.A. Hayek in 1939. “Government by agreement is only possible provided that we do not require the government to act in fields other than those in which we can obtain true agreement.”

    All public institutions that are politically stable—even if they are inefficient, offer low quality, or skirt the demands of basic morality—must at the minimum presume certain levels of homogeneity of opinion (at least) in the subject population; that is to say, they presume a certain minimum level of public agreement to elicit consent. You might be able to cobble this together in small countries with homogeneous populations, but it becomes far less viable in large countries with diverse populations.

    Opinion diversity and big government create politically unstable institutions because majority populations begin to conflict with minority populations over the proper functions of government. Under this system, some group is always feeling used. Some group is always feeling put upon and exploited by the other. And this creates huge and growing tensions in the top two ideals of social democracy: government control and broadly available public services. Mass immigration intensifies this problem to the breaking point.

    Hayek warned us in 1944: when agreement breaks down in the face of unviable public services and a discredited ruling class, strongmen come to the rescue. That truly seems where we are headed, whether the further centralization of power is from the left or the right.

    It’s an exhausting cycle, one that we can avoid by a simple return to constitutional government.

    The solution to avoid complete political chaos, economic collapse, and social anomie seems apparent but do we have the strength and ability to embrace it?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 19:40

  • Car Ownership Costs In America Are Skyrocketing
    Car Ownership Costs In America Are Skyrocketing

    Thinking of buying a vehicle soon? Rising car ownership costs might cause you to think again.

    Owning a truck or car has become far more expensive than in the past, even as recently as three years ago.

    In the following graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Pallavi Rao show, using data from the New York Times, how inflation has impacted various aspects of vehicle ownership, based on the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

    Used Car Prices Are Still Elevated in 2023

    Unsurprisingly, the biggest increases are logged in the price of new and used vehicles, up 22% and 40% respectively.

    Pandemic supply chain disruptions led to bottlenecks on vehicle deliveries, dramatically pushing up used vehicle prices in turn.

    However, car ownership costs only continue to increase after the vehicle is acquired. Insurance costs are now nearly 30% higher compared to 2020, along with maintenance and repair. If a part has to be replaced, that’s another 20% price increase. Even parking and tolls are up 12%.

    And of course, for most vehicle owners we also have to consider the price of gas, which has grown nearly three-fold since 2020.

    Finally, financing costs, which have risen steeply in conjunction with rapid rate hikes over the last year, are weighing on America’s trillion dollar credit bill. Auto loans are the second-highest monthly payment for U.S. households after mortgages.

    Put together, the AAA estimates the annual cost of owning a new car in 2023 has reached $12,182, up 14% from last year.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 19:20

  • Israeli Firm Pitches Beachfront Real Estate In Leveled Gaza
    Israeli Firm Pitches Beachfront Real Estate In Leveled Gaza

    Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

    Palestinians and their supporters this week condemned a proposal by an Israeli real estate developer specializing in the construction of illegal settlements to build beachfront homes for Jewish colonists over the bombed-out ruins of Gaza.

    “A house on the beach is not a dream,” reads an advertisement published by Harey Zahav—an Israeli company notorious for building settlements in the illegally occupied West Bank—that drew international attention following last week’s Practical Preparation for Gaza Settlement Conference in Tel Aviv.

    The ad depicts an artist’s rendering of luxury homes superimposed over an actual photograph of a Gaza neighborhood destroyed by Israeli attacks—which have killed nearly 20,000 people while displacing over 85% of the embattled strip’s 2.3 million people since early October.

    While the Israeli government funds settler organizations, Harey Zahav’s proposal is not believed to be state-supported. However, critics noted that Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel has drafted a plan to forcibly expel Gazans into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and that a separate proposal by the right-wing think tank Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy declared that “there is currently a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip.”

    Such plans have been compared with the Nakba ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs—by deadly violence and forced displacement—from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

    “An Israeli real estate firm is already cashing in on genocide, churning out blueprints to build Israeli homes in Gaza on land leveled by bombs,” activist Sarah Wilkinson said Tuesday on social media.

    Harey Zahav’s proposal comes amid statements by Israeli political and military leaders that critics say incite or advocate genocide of Palestinians. Evem prior to the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, numerous Israeli officials called for the recolonization of a Gaza Strip from which some or all of the Palestinian residents—around two-thirds of them the descendants of Nakba refugees—have been removed.

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    While Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, the besieged enclave is still considered occupied under international law.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 19:00

  • Biden's Border Crisis Triggers Chaos Across America's $28.5 Billion Food Export Market
    Biden’s Border Crisis Triggers Chaos Across America’s $28.5 Billion Food Export Market

    The number of global supply chains being disrupted, whether the drought-stricken Panama Canal or the conflict-torn Red Sea, continues to rise. 

    This week, news of the Biden administration’s southern border crisis continuing to spiral out of control comes as no surprise. However, what’s alarming is the closure of international rail border crossings in Texas that could disrupt food trade between the US and Mexico. 

    Bloomberg reports more than 40 US food companies and associations have penned a letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, requesting the federal government to immediately reopen the El Paso and Eagle Pass international rail crossings. 

    Both rail crossings were closed earlier this week by the US Customs and Border Protection because of President Biden’s disastrous open southern border crisis, which led to tens of thousands of migrants, if not more, using freight trains to traverse Mexico north to the US. 

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

    “The crossing closures are causing exports to be lost,” the coalition said in the letter obtained by Bloomberg. 

    The letter, signed by the National Grain and Feed Association and the National Corn Growers Association, said the $28.5 billion market for US agricultural exports could be severely disrupted if a prolonged shutdown of the border is seen. 

    They said a logjam has formed on rail networks in at least six states due to the border crossing shutdowns. 

    “We have also heard of customers in Mexico telling US suppliers they will begin to look to other countries if the US cannot provide a resilient and reliable supply chain,” the letter said.

    The letter warned: “Each day the crossings are closed we estimate almost 1 million bushels of grain exports are potentially lost along with export potential for many other agricultural products.” 

    Radical progressives in the White House who have championed open southern borders through Biden’s first term are now sparking what appears to be the beginnings of supply chain chaos that is only hurting American farmers. 

    None of this would be happening if Democrats in the White House enforced ‘common sense’ law and order on the southern border. But it has become quite apparent that open borders, flooding blue cities with millions of illegals, is what Democrats wanted right before the incoming presidential election cycle (read: here). 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 18:40

  • Growing Number Of GOP Candidates Pledge To Disavow COVID-19 Vaccine And Big Pharma
    Growing Number Of GOP Candidates Pledge To Disavow COVID-19 Vaccine And Big Pharma

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

    COVID-19 and concerns over the influence of pharmaceutical companies on elected officials continue to be a hot-button issue for candidates vying for political office as a movement that began earlier this month on social media garners increasing support.

    Pfizer and Moderna bivalent COVID-19 vaccines are readied for use at a clinic in Richmond, Va., in a Nov. 17, 2022, file image. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)

    Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a practitioner in Texas and founder of Coalition of Health Freedom, has used her platform on X, to call on candidates in races across the country to make clear their position on whether the COVID-19 vaccine should be pulled off the market and to publicly pledge that they will not accept campaign donations from pharmaceutical interests.

    “Want to help? It’s primary season. Let’s replace the politicians who aren’t protecting their constituents,” Dr. Bowden said in a Dec. 17 post on X. “Ask your representatives … publicly whether they stand with 17,000+ doctors to support pulling the Covid shots off the market.”

    Story continues below advertisement

    The movement appears to be gathering momentum. In total, Dr. Bowden says 26 candidates and elected officials from 11 states have publicly signed on, stating that the shots must be pulled from the market.

    David Lowe, a combat veteran and current stay-at-home dad who is running in the Texas Republican Primary for State Representative of District 91, told The Epoch Times that he was compelled to make the pledge out of principle.

    “It is pretty clear that the numbers and the data behind the vaccine were not accurate and as a result we are looking at what is probably one of the greatest blunders in modern medical history,” said Mr. Lowe. “We started enforcing injections on people without having accurate information and it ended up costing lives.”

    “This whole episode has been a dark blotch on our country and there needs to be change and that starts with our elected representatives,” added Mr. Lowe.

    John Perez, who is running in the GOP primary for the House District 133 seat in Texas, cited the outsized influence pharmaceutical companies have had on the political system.

    “I pledge right here and right now that I have not and will not accept donations or in-kind contributions from Big Pharma PACs or Big Pharma companies,” Mr. Perez wrote in a Dec 17 post on X, responding to Dr. Bowden’s challenge. “It comes down to individual choice and freedom – not the bottom line of big drug companies enabled by egregious government overreach.”

    A poll conducted on Dr. Bowden’s social media account of her nearly 300k followers cited more than 94 percent of respondents answering that they would be “more likely” to support a candidate who did not accept money from pharmaceutical companies.

    While the poll would presumably be skewed towards more right-leaning vaccine skeptics, it could prove relevant in a GOP primary in which political forecasters are predicting a number of tight races.

    Candidates in New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Florida have also joined the movement with more expected as the message continues to spread across social media, according to Dr. Bowden, who says she began the call to action to expose politicians’ true interests.

    “If you look at the data on the uptake of the latest COVID shot, it’s clear that most politicians are no longer getting this shot and are no longer giving them to their kids,” said Dr. Bowden.

    “It is quite hypocritical; if it isn’t safe enough for their kids or themselves, how is it safer for their constituents?”

    “Thousands have died from the COVID shot and no one is doing anything about it,” said Dr. Bowden.

    A child receives a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Fairfax County Government Center in Annandale, Va., on Nov. 4, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    The past two years have seen the COVID-19 vaccines become mired in controversy. The original COVID-19 vaccines were taken by more than 80 percent of Americans after officials pledged that the shots would be effective in both preventing contraction and stopping the spread of the virus.

    However, once it was revealed that the shots didn’t work as promised, interest in the subsequent booster shots decreased dramatically.

    Vaccines could also be attributed to widespread reports of negative health outcomes believed to have been caused by the shots. COVID-19 vaccines have been named the primary suspect in over 1.5 million adverse event reports, according to the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database. The numbers could be even higher. An FDA-funded study out of Harvard found that VAERS cases represent fewer than 1 percent of vaccine adverse events that actually occur.

    Mr. Lowe says that while GOP voters have a diverse set of concerns, including crime, the border, and inflation, just because COVID-19 is off the front pages of the newspapers doesn’t mean it is out of mind for the constituents he is hoping to serve in his district.

    “Conservatives and everyday votes have a growing concern about the vaccines and the influence of pharmaceutical companies on our political process,” said Mr. Lowe.

    “We need to acknowledge that there is an issue and that it is something that is going to affect our country for years to come,” he said.

    “A lot of people on the other side of this want to move on, but if we don’t take action the next time we have a so-called pandemic what is going to stop us from committing the same errors all over again? Every person running for political office needs to take the pledge.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 18:20

  • Congratulations To Everyone From Illinois Who Left
    Congratulations To Everyone From Illinois Who Left

    By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

    For the 10th consecutive year, Illinois lost population. Only West Virginia was worse.

    Illinois Population Drops 10 Consecutive Years

    The Illinois Policy Institute reports 10th Consecutive Year of Population Decline.

    Surveys of those who have left the state – where taxes are not a response option – showed the major reasons Illinoisans have chosen to leave the state have been for better housing and employment opportunities, both of which have been made worse by poor public policy in Illinois.

    High taxes were the No. 1 reason why Illinoisans considered leaving the state. Polling from NPR Illinois and the University of Illinois found 61% of Illinoisans thought about moving out of state in 2019, and the No. 1 reason was taxes. The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute found 47% of Illinoisans wanted to leave the state, and “taxes are the single biggest reason people want to leave” with 27% of respondents citing taxes as the motive for departing in 2016. More recent polling conducted by Echelon Insights in 2023 substantiated those sentiments.

    A 10th year of residents leaving Illinois should be a wake-up call to the state’s leaders, who refuse to adopt policies that would make it easier for residents to stay in Illinois. Reforms that would ease Illinoisans’ tax burden or reduce arduous business regulations are needed to make the state more affordable and stop the departures.

    Expecting Change is Madness

    Anyone who thinks Illinois will change is delusional. The only escape from Illinois madness is by leaving Illinois. Just don’t go to states equally bad if not worse, especially California, but also New York and New Jersey.

    Flashback 2019: Escape Illinois – Get The Hell Out Now, We Are

    On October 5, 2019 I wrote Escape Illinois – Get The Hell Out Now, We Are. In July of 2020 we left.

    I noted then that It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois. The reason it took three weeks is that’s how long it took to get a one-way U-Haul.

    “Everyone is leaving. No one is coming,” a U-Haul agent told us.

    To those who have escaped, congratulations.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 17:40

  • Fat Leonard, Who Filmed Orgies Involving Senior Navy Admirals, Extradited To The US By Venezuela
    Fat Leonard, Who Filmed Orgies Involving Senior Navy Admirals, Extradited To The US By Venezuela

    As part of a prisoner exchange in which Joe Biden granted clemency to a prominent moneyman for President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela released 10 detained Americans as well as the man at the center of historic Navy bribery scandal: Fat Leonard, a military contractor known for organizing and filming orgies involving senior U.S. Navy admirals, is on his way back to San Diego to face sentencing for corruption over a year after he fled to Venezuela. It’s one of the U.S.’s worst ever national security breaches.

    Fat Leonard”, mastermind of biggest ever US military bribery scheme, back in US custody – National & International News

    The White House confirmed the deal had taken place after days of mounting speculation amid fears that a fragile agreement could break down or change at any moment.

    As the WSJ notes, the completed trade marked a breakthrough in the Biden administration’s rapprochement efforts with Caracas, which has become a key source of marginal oil for Biden in the critical 2024 election year, as well as one of the biggest hostage deals the US has carried out with a hostile foreign government.

    Leonard Francis, a Malaysian businessman given his nickname for his 6-foot-2, 350-pound frame, had fled the U.S. last year just weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced for his role in an extensive corruption scheme.

    Fat Leonard and his private army on his private warship.

    The “Fat Leonard” scandal cost the U.S. tens of millions of dollars and the resulting federal investigation gutted the Navy’s leadership ranks in the Asia-Pacific region. Francis had pleaded guilty in 2015 to bribing dozens of Naval officers with lavish dinners, orgies and cash, and cooperated with prosecutors for several years, to mixed results.

    Fat Leonard, who according to some “effectively controlled the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet“, had spent millions of dollars bribing officers of the Seventh Fleet and in exchange those officers made sure the U.S. Navy’s most powerful ships sailed into ports controlled by Francis’ company. When the ships docked, Fat Leonard overcharged for basic services such as fuel, food and sewage.

    U.S. federal agents arrested Fat Leonard and Navy officers implicated in his scam, and the Justice Department spent years digging through a treasure trove of emails, receipts and phone records. On March 14, 2017, the department handed down an indictment that charged eight more Navy officers — including Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless — with taking part in the conspiracy.

    The 79-page indictment was an “incredible document”. The word prostitutes appears 28 times and the charges include a detailed account of Fat Leonard’s bribes. The Malaysian kingpin ran “a rotating carousel of prostitutes,” threw wild sex parties and even hosted an orgy that involved memorabilia of famed U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, according to the indictment.

    According to the indictment, “Francis hosted and paid for a lavish party and the services of prostitutes in the MacArthur Suite of the Manila Hotel, attended by [some of the Cool Kids], among others. During the party, historical memorabilia related to Gen. Douglas MacArthur were used by the participants in sexual acts.”

    That room in the Manila Hotel was the room MacArthur used to command operations in the Pacific Theater during World War II. It’s got his desk, his chair and various artifacts that once belonged the famed general. Yes, including one of his famous corncob pipes. These Navy officers allegedly fucked prostitutes all over that room and brought MacArthur’s former possessions into the mix.

    That’s not all. In late May 2008, Fat Leonard booked the Presidential Suite at the Makati Shangri-La in Manila.

    “In this venue,” the indictment stated. “Francis hosted a raging multi-day party, with a rotating carousel of prostitute in attendance, during which the conspirators drank all of the Dom Perignon available at the Shangri-La. Room and alcohol charges born by Francis exceeded $50,000”

    Yes, the party got so crazy, that the Lion King’s Harem drank every single bottle of Dom Perignon in the entire hotel. A few days later, one of the participants emailed Fat Leonard to tell him, “I finally detoxed myself from Manila. That was a crazy couple of days. It’s been awhile since I’ve done 36 hours of straight drinking!!!”

    In a podcast published in 2021, Francis claimed he kept secretly recorded videotapes of sex between Navy officers and sex workers he’d paid for. “I’m not making porn,” Francis said on the podcast. “It’s always great to see people when they’re drunk, what they’re capable of doing.”

    A marquee trial of Navy officers allegedly corrupted by Francis initially resulted in felony convictions last year, but prosecutors ultimately downgraded the charges to misdemeanors in part over Francis’ actions that had undermined the case. Francis ultimately escaped from house arrest in San Diego in 2016, and was stopped in Venezuela a few weeks later while he was en route to Russia.

    * * *

    Senior administration officials described the swap as 10 Americans and a fugitive from justice in exchange for one prisoner in US custody. The deal underscores a willingness by US officials to make uncomfortable trade-offs for the freedom of American citizens held abroad.

    The Biden administration swapped one priority national-security case for another, in allowing someone accused of illegally moving hundreds of millions of dollars for the Venezuelan regime to walk free in exchange for a fugitive Malaysian businessman who had corrupted the U.S. Navy in the Pacific.

    “Reuniting wrongfully detained Americans with their loved ones has been a priority for my Administration since day one. As is the return to the United States of fugitives from justice,” Biden said in a statement.

    The decision to release Alex Saab, who had been facing trial for money laundering in Miami federal court, senior U.S. administration officials said, constituted a difficult compromise that they also said could help coax Maduro into restoring democracy in the troubled South American nation. “It’s a solid foundation for us to build upon,” one U.S. official said.

    Saab, a Colombian-born businessman and financier for Maduro, had been in U.S. custody since October 2021. The U.S. had previously undertaken a 16-month battle to get him extradited from the West African island nation of Cape Verde.

    Critics of the Biden administration’s push to secure such deals contend that they play into the hands of authoritarian leaders and encourage rogue states to take more hostages. The Justice Department has often been opposed to prisoner-exchange deals by the U.S. that appear to cut against its efforts, though the White House ultimately makes any call on such deals.

    Wednesday’s deal included the release of six Americans deemed by the State Department to be wrongfully detained in Venezuela, a designation reflecting that the U.S. considers them to have been held at least in part because of their American passports, as well as four other U.S. citizens for whom Washington had not reached that conclusion.

    U.S. officials said the released Americans included Joseph Cristella, Eyvin Hernandez, Jerrel Kenemore, and Savoi Wright, all of whom were considered by the State Department to have been wrongfully detained in Venezuela. The officials didn’t name the others in the group, citing privacy concerns. Among the Americans known to be detained in Venezuela are former Green Berets Luke Denman and Airan Berry, who have been serving 20-year prison sentences in Caracas for joining a ragtag group of Venezuelan dissidents in a botched 2020 invasion that aimed to topple Maduro.

    In addition to Wednesday’s prisoner exchange, the U.S. said it negotiated other concessions from Venezuela. They included the release of 20 Venezuelan political prisoners and the lifting of arrest warrants recently issued by Maduro against aides of Maria Corina Machado, the opposition’s likely candidate in presidential elections that are supposed to be held in 2024.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 17:20

  • Thousands Of Doctors Take Legal Action Against Transgender Mandate
    Thousands Of Doctors Take Legal Action Against Transgender Mandate

    Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A group of 3,000 doctors and medical professionals is suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over a mandate that broadens the term “sex” in federal civil rights statutes to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    The group argues that the rule, among other things, forces physicians who see Medicaid patients or receive federal funding to provide “gender-affirming” care to children who want to transition to the opposite sex. This includes prescribing hormone treatments and puberty blockers and performing surgery such as removing girls’ breasts.

    The doctors challenging the rule say it will force them to provide that kind of treatment, even if they think it’s medically wrong for the patient or if it goes against their religious beliefs. That makes it unconstitutional, they say.

    As such, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit on behalf of the American College of Pediatricians, an adolescent care obstetrics and gynecology doctor, and Catholic Medical Associates.

    The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 26, 2021, asks the court to block HHS from penalizing doctors for refusing to provide gender-altering treatments to children for any reason.

    The case initially was dismissed by a lower court when the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion claiming that it would honor doctors’ constitutional right to refuse such treatments.

    However, ADF attorney Chris Schandevel said his clients worry that a dismissed case could mean DOJ officials could reverse the department’s stance at any time. So he’s seeking an injunction to specifically prevent HHS or any other federal agency from disciplining doctors who refuse to give children such treatments for any reason.

    The 6th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati heard oral arguments on the case on Dec. 6. The appellate court has jurisdiction over federal appeals from cases originating in Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee, and Ohio.

    The court’s decision could take up to three months. If denied, plaintiffs could seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court.

    A person wearing rainbow socks stands on a stairway during a drag show at a brewery in Louisville, Ky., on June 4, 2021. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

    By Order of the President

    The HHS mandate in May 2021 followed an executive order issued four months earlier by President Joe Biden. The order expanded the interpretation of “sex” beyond a person’s biology, to include a person’s declared “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.”

    “Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love,” President Biden’s order states. “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.

    “Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes. People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination. All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.”

    Federal agencies indicated that this interpretation would extend into discrimination clauses in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). And that could require doctors to provide treatment to children and adults who identify as transgender and want to undergo a “transition” to a new gender identity, Mr. Schandevel said.

    The mandate could apply to any health care providers who receive federal money, such as those accepting patients on Medicaid or with ACA health insurance coverage, also known as Obamacare.

    President Joe Biden signs executive orders on health care as with Vice President Kamala Harris looks on, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Jan. 28, 2021. (Mandal Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    This “gender-affirming” care would extend to pediatric services and potentially bring about disciplinary action for physicians refusing for any reason to provide that care to children, Mr. Schandevel said.

    The DOJ filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on July 19, 2022, claiming that the HHS hasn’t mandated that health care providers “perform all kinds of gender transition services, even providers who have religious objections” and that the lawsuit begins on a “false premise” by suggesting that such a mandate exists.

    HHS attorneys assert in the motion that their interpretation of President Biden’s executive order means “sex discrimination extends to gender-identity discrimination.”

    But, they write, this doesn’t indicate that doctors opposed to providing gender-altering treatments “fall within the scope of unlawful gender-identity discrimination, and HHS has consistently affirmed that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other religious defenses may be raised, on a case-by-case basis, to a charge of discrimination.”

    But for Mr. Schandevel and the doctors he represents, that’s not enough.

    “Outside of the courtroom, in their public statements, the administration has given every indication that they plan to enforce this gender-identity mandate as broadly as possible,” he said.

    “They have given every indication that they plan to come after doctors, like our doctors, that we’re representing in this case.”

    Mr. Schandevel cites a notice dated March 2, 2022, from the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that invites patients and parents to file complaints with the OCR if they feel they have been denied “gender-affirming” care.

    “As a law enforcement agency, OCR is investigating and, where appropriate, enforcing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act cases involving discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in accordance with all applicable law,” the notice reads.

    The Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington on July 22, 2019. (Alastair Pike/AFP via Getty Images)

    “This means that if people believe they have been discriminated against in a health program or activity that receives financial assistance from HHS, they can file a complaint.”

    Mr. Schandevel said that doctors who ADF represents shouldn’t have to just take the DOJ at its word and just hope that it won’t violate the doctors’ rights.

    “We should be able to get a court to say that their rights are protected,” He said.

    “Our doctors have every reason to fear that if they say no, that they’re not going to [perform a sex-change operation] that the federal government is going to try to take away their federal funding based on that conscientious practice of medicine.”

    Concerned Pediatricians

    Pediatricians represented by Mr. Schandevel are wary of “gender-affirming” care for children for reasons beyond personal convictions, he said.

    Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatrician and pediatric endocrinologist with five decades of experience, said he read “the broad medical literature across the spectrum on the subject” and came to a decision that he can live with his code of medical ethics.

    Dr. Van Meter contended that the research used to validate pediatric gender-altering treatments is often “cherry-picked”—researchers make conclusions that don’t support the data collected.

    Proponents of helping children try to alter their gender identity argue that access to such childhood procedures lowers the rate of suicide among minors who identify as transgender.

    They often cite a 2020 study, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, that purportedly establishes that link.

    A child walks on Waikiki beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Sept. 6, 2001. (Mike Nelson/AFP via Getty Images)

    A 2019 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry studied the same phenomenon—the alleged lowered risks of suicide for children receiving “gender-affirming” care.

    In that study’s conclusions, researchers argued that children receiving gender-altering procedures have much higher levels of anxiety and mood disorders before treatment than other children. They wrote that these procedures, such as hormone blockers or surgery, lowered the need for anxiety and mood care once the child received treatment affirming a new gender.

    However, that study drew ire from other researchers, who sent letters to the journal’s editors challenging the statistical methodology employed in the study.

    “Upon request, the authors reanalyzed the data,” according to a correction published by the American Journal of Psychiatry on Aug. 1, 2020. “The results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”

    Dr. Van Meter said he believes that “the scientific validity of what they’re basing their treatment protocol on is based on so little valid science that it must cease and desist immediately.”

    The Swedish Approach

    Dr. Van Meter also pointed to recent changes to the official position of the governments of Sweden and Norway on the issue.

    Sweden, which has had broad tolerance for the LGBT community, recently reversed its previous official position on “gender-affirming” care for minors through its National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW), saying “the risks outweigh the benefits at this point.”

    “Uncertain science and newly acquired knowledge means that the National Board of Health and Welfare now recommends restraint when it comes to hormone treatment,” a translation of the NBHW announcement reads.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 17:00

  • Banks' Usage Of The Fed's Bailout Facility Soars To New Record High
    Banks’ Usage Of The Fed’s Bailout Facility Soars To New Record High

    For the second week in a row, money-market funds saw outflows, down $16.1BN this week,

    Source: Bloomberg

    Once again, institutional funds were responsible for all the outflows (-$26BN) while retail funds continued their streak on inflows (+$10BN) that is unbroken since April…

    Source: Bloomberg

    In a breakdown for the week to Dec. 20, government funds – which invest primarily in securities like Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and agency debt – saw assets fall to $4.79 trillion, a $24 billion decline. 

    Prime funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, meanwhile, saw assets rise to $955 billion, a $7.66 billion increase.

    “This is a turning point and you do start to see money move out of money markets, into riskier assets, into term rates to lock in higher rates,” Jeffrey Rosenberg, a portfolio manager at BlackRock Financial Management said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

    “As cash rates start to come down, you’re penalized in 2024 for holding cash because the rates and the prospect of the rates is to go lower.”

    So, is this divergence starting to narrow?

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, the exodus from The Fed’s reverse repo facility has stalled in recent days

    Source: Bloomberg

    Following the prior week’s unexpected $2.2BN rise, The Fed’s balance sheet resumed its shrinkage, down $15.5BN last week to a new cycle low…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Usage of The Fed’s BTFP bank bailout facility soared again last week, jumping $7.5BN to $131BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But Regional Bank shares still don’t care…

    Source: Bloomberg

    While this is, at first glance, a worry – bans are borrowing more to fill their balance sheet loss holes – there is another possibility.

    An arbitrage for banks is growing more attractive thanks to traders who are betting the Fed will aggressively cut interest rates in 2024.

    The rate on the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program – which allows banks and credit unions to borrow funds for up to one year, pledging US Treasuries and agency debt as collateral valued at par – is the one-year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points.

    That figure is currently 4.88%, down from 5.17% on Dec. 13.

    For institutions that have an account at the Fed, they can borrow from the BTFP at 4.88% and park that at the central bank to earn 5.40% – the interest on reserve balances.

    The 52bp spread matches the widest level since the Fed introduced the facility to support a struggling banking system after the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York.

    Finally, equity market caps continue to soar after recoupling with bank reserves at The Fed (though the stalling in the drawdown of the RRP has slowed the expansion this week)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Zooming in, it’s clear what drove the meltup, and something just changed…

    Of course, with The Fed’s massive pivot yesterday, sending yields plummeting, regional bank balance sheets may be rescued… for now. Until the next wave of inflation hits…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/21/2023 – 16:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 21

Today’s News 21st December 2023

  • What Donald Trump's Ukraine Strategy Could Look Like
    What Donald Trump’s Ukraine Strategy Could Look Like

    Authored by Lt. General (ret.) Keith Kellogg and Dan Negrea via The National Interest,

    Far from abandoning Ukraine, a second Trump administration would lift restrictions on Ukrainian military aid in order to force a peace settlement…

    Donald Trump has vowed that in a second presidential term, he would end the war in Ukraine “in twenty-four hours.” Mainstream analysts have dismissed the president’s statements as hyperbole, but there is a strong possibility that Trump will be back in the Oval Office in just over a year’s time. Foreign policy experts, therefore, should take the former President’s statements seriously and assess how a Trump administration might deal with the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.

    Let us start by recognizing that Biden’s Ukraine strategy leaves much room for improvement. His weaknesses encouraged Putin to launch the invasion in the first place. Biden’s own Supreme Allied Commander in Europe assessed that Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan led to Putin’s decision to re-attack Ukraine. Biden’s feeble attempts at “integrated deterrence,” threatening sanctions and aid to Ukraine, failed in their intended purpose of deterring Putin’s aggression. 

    Putin invaded Ukraine under both Obama and Biden, but he did not attack while Trump was president. Trump has stated that the Russia-Ukraine war would “never have happened” under his watch.

    Following Putin’s invasion, Biden pursued an overly cautious wartime strategy. Instead of clearly defining a goal of victory, Biden vowed to help Ukraine “as long as it takes.” But this only raises the question: as long as it takes to do what? Biden should have provided Ukraine with the weapons it needed to win quickly, but instead, he was afraid of potential Russian “escalation” and provided a cautious IV-drip of arms. Biden opposed providing many major weapons systems, like tanks, aircraft, and long-range artillery before changing his mind. The result is that Ukraine has had enough weapons to fight but not enough to win.

    Biden’s revealed wartime strategy was to spend billions of dollars only to produce a bloody and inconclusive stalemate.

    In contrast, based exclusively on his public statements, one can divine a very different Trump doctrine for Ukraine. He has argued that he would use his personal relationship with Zelenskyy and Putin to negotiate a settlement to the conflict “in one day.” The one-day timeframe may be overly ambitious as neither Putin nor Zelenskyy has expressed an interest in a negotiated settlement. Both sides appear to believe that they can still prevail on the battlefield.

    But Trump’s proposed approach could change that calculation. Trump said, “I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give him a lot. We’re going to give [Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to.”

    Trump’s past actions make that threat credible. While in office, Trump showed that he was willing to push boundaries, lifting Obama-era restrictions on the rules of engagement in the fight against ISIS and killing Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. If Putin refuses to negotiate, Trump might very well remove the Biden-eras constraints on arms transfers and give Ukraine the weapons it needs to win, including long-range weapons to strike within Crimea and Russia. If faced with the prospect of a costly military defeat, Putin may very well prefer negotiations. 

    To bring Kyiv to the table, Trump said, “I would tell Zelenskyy, ‘no more.’ You got to make a deal.” Ukraine can only sustain the war effort due to large-scale Western support, and the prospect of losing aid would be a strong inducement to negotiation.

    A ceasefire along the current lines and subsequent negotiations would preserve a sovereign, democratic Ukraine anchored in the West and capable of defending itself. Kyiv would maintain its internationally-recognized claims to sovereignty over all of Ukraine. A halt to hostilities would also facilitate the provision of reliable security guarantees, including possible NATO and EU membership, to deter Russia from resuming the conflict. While less satisfying than (what increasingly appears to be an unachievable) total military victory, this outcome would represent a strategic defeat for Russia and a strengthening of American national security and the Western alliance.

    Some Republicans argue that the Ukraine conflict is a European matter of no consequence to the United States. Strategically, as his public comments reinforce, Trump disagrees. He sees ending the war as a major foreign policy issue—one that he plans to accomplish on day one.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 23:40

  • China Is Keeping The Lights On The Christmas Tree This Year
    China Is Keeping The Lights On The Christmas Tree This Year

    While Santa’s factories are rumored to be hidden in the mountains of Lapland (or at the North Pole, depending on who you ask), someone else is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to Christmas decorations.

    As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, according to data extracted from the UN Comtrade database, China accounts for 66 percent of global exports of Christmas tree lighting sets and 90 percent of exports of other Christmas decorations excluding candles and natural trees.

    As the following chart nicely illustrates, no other country comes even close to China’s role in putting the holiday spirit in our homes.

    Infographic: Who Puts the Lights on the Tree? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    With a total export value of $11.1 billion in 2022, China’s Christmas industry dwarfs those of second and third ranked Cambodia and the Netherlands.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 23:20

  • Straw Poll Shows Young Trump Voters Want Carlson Or Vivek As VP
    Straw Poll Shows Young Trump Voters Want Carlson Or Vivek As VP

    Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

    Young Republican voters overwhelmingly want Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2024, and they only disagree on whether he should choose Tucker Carlson or Vivek Ramaswamy as his running mate, according to a straw poll of participants who attended Turning Point Action’s annual AmericaFest.

    Obtained exclusively by RealClearPolitics, the results provide a snapshot of the youth vote just weeks before the Iowa caucuses. The online poll was conducted by Turning Point Action Dec. 17-18 and surveyed 1,113 attendees at the TPUSA conference in Phoenix, Ariz.

    The results show Trump as the clear favorite with 82.6% of respondents choosing the former president as their first choice. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finished second with 7.6%, while Vivek Ramaswamy followed closely in third with 5.8%. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has garnered national media attention and a recent bump in momentum, finished fifth.

    Barely more than 1%, or 12 voters, at the Trump-friendly event said they preferred Haley compared to the 2.5% who remained “undecided.”

    The topline results are not surprising given that the founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, remains an ardent ally of the former president and previously served as the CEO of Students for Trump. But the survey sheds light on a question currently dominating Trump world.

    When asked whom Trump should choose as his vice president if he wins the nomination, 35%, a plurality, settled on former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. Another 25.7%, meanwhile, preferred Ramaswamy. Both men made headlines with their remarks at the conference.

    Ramaswamy responded from the main stage to criticism from CNN host Van Jones, who called him a demagogue earlier this month. “Just shut the f–k up,” the businessman-turned-politician said to applause. For his part, Carlson downplayed the idea of entering politics himself.

    “It’s like the weather,” the pundit replied when asked about joining the ticket with Trump. “I can’t control it,” Carlson said after floating Ramaswamy instead for VP. “I don’t think I’d be that great at that.”

    On the eve of the primary, the results reflect the policy appetites of the right-leaning youth. Attendees ranked border security and “deporting Biden-era illegal immigrants” as their top priority ahead of “election integrity” and “defunding the deep state,” which ranked second and third. Meanwhile, ending diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from the government, which has been a calling card of the DeSantis campaign, ranked as their lowest priority.

    Mirroring a larger shift on the right, the survey also shows a youth vote increasingly skeptical of foreign aid to Ukraine but largely supportive of Israel’s war with Hamas. A clear majority, 55.4%, backed giving lethal aid to Tel Aviv, less than 1% supported sending the same to Kyiv, and 39.4% responded that the United States shouldn’t provide such supplies to either Israel or Ukraine.

    Congress generally earns poor approval ratings, but the young Republicans seemed to like newly minted House Speaker Mike Johnson, with 57% either somewhat or strongly approving of his job performance. They were somewhat split, meanwhile, on whether the House should have expelled former New York Rep. George Santos, who made numerous false representations about himself during the previous election.

    While 32% approved of the Santos expulsion, 47% disapproved of the history-making move which had only occurred five times previously.

    The same week that the House approved an impeachment inquiry of President Biden, 49.6% said that they supported removing him from office. Another 24.3% reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas should be impeached, while 15.2% wanted Attorney General Merrick Garland gone.

    As both parties court the youth vote, the survey found that young Republicans in the Turning Point orbit are unsatisfied with RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. An overwhelming 87% said that she should step down, and 56% reported that her departure would make them “more likely” to donate to the party. Charlie Kirk supported Harmeet Dhillon in her unsuccessful challenge of McDaniel earlier this year.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 23:00

  • What A Load Of Rubbish: The Global State Of Waste Management
    What A Load Of Rubbish: The Global State Of Waste Management

    The safe management of household and commercial solid waste is not yet widespread in many nations in Asia and Africa.

    The latter continent receives the worst marks, with 15 countries rated at no more than 10 out of 100 points on the Yale Environmental Performance Index waste management subranking.

    Infographic: The Global State of Waste Management | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Four Asian nations score equally poorly – Myanmar, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. South Asian nations as well as Cambodia, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and Laos only rank a little bit higher, however.

    The World Bank assumes that waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia will grow fastest until 2050 due to the regions’ high populations that are still in the process of gaining access to modern consumer markets. While exhibiting slower growth, East Asia-Pacific is already the region generating the most waste today and will remain in this position in the future. Both developments point to increased challenges for safe waste management in the years to come.

    According to Yale, solid waste produces 5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally while also being a source of contamination and pollution of soil, water, air and food through leaching, burning and vermin when managed poorly. As it is often reaching oceans, plastic waste can be a serious threat to a wide array of marine life. The report concludes that waste management has not kept pace with growing waste generation in countries of all income levels.

    The most poorly rated nations in the Americas are Haiti and Venezuela, while in Europe, Albania and Montenegro are the least successful at waste management. Developed Asian countries Singapore and South Korea meanwhile are among the top 10 best-rated nations together with Scandinavian and German-speaking nations as well as Luxembourg and the Czech Republic. Australia comes in rank 12 while the United Kingdom is ranked 26th and the United States 46th.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 22:40

  • Jack Smith Requests Written Jury Questionnaire In Trump Classified Documents Case
    Jack Smith Requests Written Jury Questionnaire In Trump Classified Documents Case

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    On Tuesday, federal prosecutors asked the Florida judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial to approve a written jury questionnaire ahead of an in-person selection process, given the high profile of the case.

    Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment against former President Donald Trump, in Washington on June 9, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    In a Dec. 19 motion to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, special prosecutor Jack Smith’s office said, “Because the pre-trial publicity surrounding this case is substantial, the Government recommends a thorough jury selection process, including a written questionnaire completed by potential jurors before in-person voir dire.”

    The jury questionnaire would form part of a comprehensive jury selection process that prosecutors seek to expedite the selection process by identifying uncontested strikes for cause and hardship before in-person voir dire, a process in which potential jurors are screened to determine their impartiality.

    Citing the high profile of the case, Mr. Smith’s office also argues that using a jury questionnaire in addition to in-person voir dire will safeguard President Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair and efficient jury selection process. The motion suggests that a questionnaire will streamline the process by allowing the parties and the court to conduct informed individual questioning of a narrowed pool of potential jurors.

    “A written questionnaire, used as part of a comprehensive voir dire process, is a potent tool to sift out potential jury bias in cases where there has been substantial media attention,” Mr. Smith’s office said in the filing.

    The motion, noting the 10-week lead time needed in other cases, seeks a Feb. 2, 2024, deadline for the parties to submit a proposed jury questionnaire to Judge Cannon and highlight any disagreement points.

    Prosecutors push for this date, noting that there might not be enough time to undertake this process before the May 20, 2024 trial date should they wait to start the process after the March 1, 2024, scheduling conference.

    However, Judge Cannon cast doubt on the May 20 trial date in a prior order in November, which pushed back key pre-trial deadlines. The order also noted that the trial’s start date would be “considered at a scheduling conference” in March.

    In their filing on Tuesday, prosecutors said that accomplishing the juror questionnaire “requires enough time beforehand to allow for meaningful conferral among the parties and for the Court to consider and resolve disputes.” Furthermore, “Time may also be required to print questionnaires and conduct other processing,” the motion added.

    As an alternative to mailing the questionnaires, Mr. Smith’s office suggested that potential jurors could be summoned to the courthouse, acknowledging that this process would also require a lead time for the court to prepare ahead of the May trial date.

    Trump Legal Team Opposes Motion

    President Trump’s legal team opposes the motion on the grounds that “the relief sought is premature and would not be an economical use of the parties’ time before the court has ruled on discovery demands or other motions,” according to the filing by Mr. Smith’s office.

    In June, the former president was indicted on federal charges in Florida of improperly storing sensitive documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to a sweeping felony indictment.

    President Trump entered a plea of not guilty in the case. He has consistently asserted that the case is part of an effort by Democrats to undermine his political prospects, given the significant lead he maintains in presidential primary polls.

    The former president also faces charges by Mr. Smith’s office in Washington related to his post-election efforts to challenge the process and results of the 2020 election. He faces similar state charges in Georgia.

    He also faces civil fraud charges in New York related to business records toward the end of the 2016 campaign. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges brought by a Democratic attorney general whom he has accused of bias against him.

    President Trump has similarly accused the judge presiding over the New York civil case, Arthur Engoron, and his chief law clerk of political bias against him. Judge Engoron has already ruled that the defendants are liable, and the trial is meant to determine penalties and resolve other legal issues in the lawsuit.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 22:20

  • The '1%' Are Responsible For 15% Of Global Emissions
    The ‘1%’ Are Responsible For 15% Of Global Emissions

    From a historical perspective, the current demand for natural resources has surged to unprecedented levels and continues to escalate—for both essential needs like food, clothing, water, housing, infrastructure, and non-essential consumption in everyday life.

    This surge has been accompanied by annual increases in CO₂ emissions. Consumption, however, differs radically depending on income.

    In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcu Lu and Bruno Venditti show global CO₂ emissions, broken down by income group. This data comes from the Emissions Inequality Calculator, created by the Stockholm Environment Institute.

    Wealthier Families Contribute More to CO₂ Emissions

    In 2019, the world’s richest 1% (with an average income of $310K) were responsible for 15% of global CO₂ emissions.

    The annual emissions of the 1% in 2019 canceled out the carbon savings of 1 million onshore wind turbines. In contrast, the bottom 50% (with an average income of $2,000) were responsible for only 8% of CO₂ emissions.

    Here is the breakdown of emissions by income group in 2019, with average income in 2011 purchasing power parity USD:

    The reason for such disparity lies in consumption. For example, fashion is one of the most demanded industries in the world’s high-income countries. According to the UN, the fashion industry produces between 2% to 8% of global carbon emissions.

    Another major contributor is the transport sector, which is more prevalent in developed countries. Greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector alone have more than doubled since 1970, with around 80% of this increase coming from road vehicles.

    Higher-income families also spend more on food, contributing to CO₂ emissions. The production, transportation, and handling of food generates significant CO₂ emissions. In addition, when food ends up in landfills, it also generates methane.

    According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, each year, U.S. food loss and waste embodies 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent GHG emissions (excluding landfill emissions)—equal to the annual CO₂ emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 22:00

  • The Untold Stories About Smallpox Vaccines
    The Untold Stories About Smallpox Vaccines

    Authored by Yuhong Dong via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In the rich tapestry of medical science, vaccines stand out as monumental achievements lauded for their role in controlling, and sometimes eradicating, some of humanity’s deadliest diseases. Yet, the story of vaccines is not just a straightforward account of scientific triumph. It is a complex narrative, woven with evolving methodologies, diverse perspectives, and debates over efficacy and safety.

    The story of vaccines—particularly the smallpox vaccine—is more than a chapter in medical history; it’s a reflection of the human journey, marked by groundbreaking discoveries, societal impacts, and ongoing learning. Smallpox, once a formidable scourge, was the first disease to be eradicated through vaccination. However, the path to this success was not linear. It was punctuated with challenges and controversies.

    In this series, “Revisiting the Historical Vaccines,” we will explore the multifaceted history of vaccines, examine historical data, and seek a nuanced understanding of vaccine efficacy and safety.

    This journey begins with the smallpox vaccine—a starting point that opened doors to modern immunization but also raised questions that resonate to this day.

    Our critical evaluation is to offer a well-rounded perspective, grounded in scientific data and enriched by historical context. Join us as we delve into the past to understand the present and shape our thoughts for the future of public health and medical science.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock, Getty Images)

    In general, smallpox vaccines can be roughly differentiated into three stages. The first stage began with the invention of the vaccine by Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796. The second stage involved the different versions of smallpox vaccines propagated and used by people during the 18th and 19th centuries. Finally, the third stage includes modern smallpox vaccines used in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

    The Most Fearful Disease in History

    The story of vaccines begins with a narrative of groundbreaking triumphs in public health. One of the earliest successes was the development of the smallpox vaccine by Dr. Edward Jenner (1749 to 1823) in the late 18th century, a pivotal moment that demonstrated the potential of the vaccine.

    Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was once one of the world’s most feared diseases. Characterized by fever, malaise, telltale pustules on the skin, disfiguring scars, and blindness in many survivors, it has a storied history that intersects with the evolution of human civilization.

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), smallpox has two forms: variola minor, with a 1 percent mortality rate, and the more severe variola major, with a 30 percent mortality rate. About 65 to 80 percent of survivors bear deep, pitted facial scars called “pockmarks.”

    (Left) A transparent viral membrane derived from its host cell covers the virus particle. The inside core (red) contains DNA genetic material. The surface of the virus is covered with surface tubules which help the virus attach to a host cell. (Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock) (Right) Smallpox riots in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1894). (stock illustration/Getty Image)

    Edward Jenner’s 1796 Invention

    The smallpox vaccine was introduced by Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796. The story of this first vaccine started with a belief among milkmaids that cowpox infection could prevent smallpox.

    Inspired by this belief, Dr. Jenner experimented on an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps. Dr. Jenner used material from a dairymaid’s cowpox lesions and scratched it onto James. When James didn’t develop smallpox after exposure, Dr. Jenner concluded that the cowpox vaccination was effective.

    The process above shows the steps taken by Dr. Edward Jenner to create the smallpox vaccine, beginning with inoculating James Phipps with cowpox, a virus similar to smallpox, to create immunity. (Illustration by The Epoch Times)

    This process was later termed “vaccination,” derived from the Latin word “vaca,” for cow, and “vaccinia,” for cowpox. Dr. Jenner’s 1798 paper claimed lifelong immunity from smallpox through this method.

    This single-person study evolved into the modern narrative being told in our textbooks for hundreds of years that “inspired by milkmaids, Dr. Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine consisting of the so-called cowpox virus, conferring cross-protection against smallpox.”

    Furthermore, lesser-known details in this story spread for more than 200 years. There are at least two points that are not true about this narrative. 

    The first one, unfortunately, is that the story of the milkmaid was a lie invented by John Baron, Dr. Jenner’s friend and first biographer. In his book, “The Life of Edward Jenner MD,” Mr. Baron states that Dr. Jenner himself never claimed to have discovered the value of cowpox, nor did he ever say, despite a huge volume of correspondence, how he first came across the idea. The myths of the milkmaids are just that, myths.

    The second point is that the virus contained in Dr. Jenner’s original smallpox vaccine is supposed to be a type of cowpox virus. However, is this true? The answer is relatively obscure. Rather than the cowpox virus, evidence supports that Dr. Jenner might have used the vaccinia or the horsepox virus, which stands as the biggest mystery in Jenner’s vaccine story. 

    Different Viruses, Different Diseases

    Smallpox results from the variola virus, a DNA virus belonging to the Orthopoxvirus genus. This virus only infects humans. Unique to humans, who are its only known reservoir, it spreads primarily through inhaling respiratory droplets or through direct contact with infected material on mucous membranes. Importantly, it is not transmitted from cows.

    Cowpox is caused by the cowpox virus affecting only milking cows. The cowpox virus mainly resides in wild mammals like cattle and cats without causing obvious symptoms. In humans, the infection is usually mild and self-limiting, characterized by fever, aches, and a red blister that evolves into a pus-filled lesion.

    Moreover, the horsepox virus further complicated the story, as Dr. Jenner had also used lymph from horsepox lesions to prepare the smallpox vaccine in 1813 and 1817. Horsepox causes pustular lesions in horses and horse handlers.

    The cowpox virus, horsepox virus, and smallpox virus are all different viruses. Even so, Dr. Jenner used various sources, including cows and horses, to create vaccine substances. This practice led to the development of multiple vaccine concoctions, often used without a full understanding of their composition.

    (Left) Portrait of Edward Jenner, British physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines by creating the smallpox vaccine, the world’s first-ever vaccine. (mikroman6/Getty Images) (Right) Old engraved illustration of the first vaccination by Dr. Edward Jenner. (mikroman6/Getty Images)

    A 2018 paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases by Clarissa Damaso carefully revisited the complex and obscure history of smallpox vaccines and concluded that the virus strains used by Dr. Jenner remain a mystery (i.e., cowpox, horsepox, or vaccinia viruses).

    In 1823 when Dr. Jenner died, there were already three distinct types of smallpox vaccines: cowpox, described as “pure lymph from the calf,” horse grease, described as “the true and genuine life-preserving fluid,” and horse grease variants.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 21:40

  • The Days Of Using Dating Apps For Free Are Long Gone
    The Days Of Using Dating Apps For Free Are Long Gone

    The good ole’ days of using dating apps for free appear to be long gone.

    Now, such apps are “borderline unusable” without paying up for features, according to a new report by CNBC, which says that users are paying hundreds of dollars a month to use to services. 

    “When you’re serious about looking for a relationship, you’re going to put your money where your mouth is,” 38 year old Channing Muller told CNBC. She had signed up for paid versions of sites like Hinge and The League. 

    Nikita Sherbina, a software company owner in Phoenix, told CNBC she was spending about $250 monthly on Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder for two years, often cutting back on other expenses like groceries.

    A Pew Research Center study indicates that 35% of Americans who have used dating websites or apps have at some point paid for these services, the report says. Morgan Stanley research earlier this year showed that the average subscriber spends about $19 monthly on dating apps.

    Some of the prices for apps like The League can run far higher. CNBC wrote that The League offers a VIP membership priced at $999 per week or $2,499 monthly. This premium option gives members the ability to connect with potential matches in various cities, access new profiles before others, and use a specialized concierge service designed to enhance their dating success.

    In September, Tinder introduced a high-tier subscription at $499 per month for its most active users, while Hinge has also launched a membership plan costing $600 a month, the report noted. 

    Blaine Anderson, a men’s dating coach in Austin, Texas, told CNBC: “The days of venture capital-subsidized swiping are over. [Companies] want to monetize the services they provide to eager singles.”

    “There’s a group of users who are eager to use our premium features,” added  AJ Balance, Grindr chief product officer. 

    However, the apps have seen some slowdown in usage. “The apps are pulling from the same dating pool, and so [users] are seeing the same people, matching with the same people and not finding anyone new,” Kathryn Coduto, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies internet behavior told CNBC. “This leads to a feeling of frustration and the question of like, ‘What’s the point?’”

    She noted that the idea of paying for love isn’t that ‘new’, either. “People have paid for things like personal ads, speed-dating experiences, dating and relationship coaches and matchmakers,” she said. 

    That means their revenue can take a hit, just like other companies, as the economy slows. Match Group during a recent earnings call, for example, acknowledged economic challenges like student loan payments and credit card delinquencies as potential threats to its revenue. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 21:20

  • Biden Vetoes Repeal Of 'Woke' Lending Rule
    Biden Vetoes Repeal Of ‘Woke’ Lending Rule

    Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) small business lending rule will remain in effect after President Joe Biden vetoed a joint resolution of disapproval that would have repealed the measure.

    President Joe Biden speaks on his economic policies at the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce in Milwaukee on Dec. 20, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    The rule in question requires lenders to annually collect and report to the CFPB certain credit application data from the small business owners they lend to, including personal demographics such as race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The rule, which took effect in August, also enables the creation of a publicly accessible database of small business credit applications.

    Republicans have criticized the rule as a move to make the lending process more “woke.”

    But in issuing his Dec. 19 veto, President Biden defended the rule, holding that it would increase transparency in small business lending and allow lenders and organizations to better meet the needs of small businesses.

    “This Republican-led resolution would hinder the government’s ability to conduct oversight of abusive and predatory lenders, make it harder for 33 million small businesses across the country to assess lending opportunities and access capital, and make it more difficult for lenders and community groups to address the most acute gaps in capital access for minority- and women-owned businesses,” he wrote.

    “By hampering efforts to promote transparency and accountability in small business lending, Republicans are siding with big banks and corporations over the needs of small business owners. Small businesses are the engines of our economy, and my administration will not support policies that hurt their ability to thrive and grow.”

    ‘None of Their Business’

    Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) led the charge to repeal the rule as the joint resolution’s sponsor, slamming the new demographic reporting requirements as intrusive on the Senate floor.

    “The bank has to ask the small businessperson if that person is a lesbian. The bank has to ask the small businessperson if that person is gay,” he noted on Oct. 18, rattling off examples.

    “It is none of their business—none of their business—what a private American does with another private, adult American in the privacy of their bedroom.”

    The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has also expressed concern that the lending rule would impose a substantial burden on both small banks and small businesses to collect and report the required information.

    According to a recent NFIB survey, 67 percent of the organization’s members use a small or regional financial institution for their credit needs and 17 percent use a medium-sized institution.

    “Small banks and credit unions, like all small businesses, don’t have as many employees dedicated to compliance and paperwork as large banks do,” the organization noted in an Oct. 18 letter to members of the U.S. Senate. “The rule will disproportionately affect small banks and has the potential to affect the access to credit of their small business customers.”

    A veto override would require two-thirds majority votes in both chambers, an unlikely outcome given that Mr. Kennedy’s resolution passed both the House and Senate with slim majorities.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 21:00

  • Where Americans Shop For The Holidays
    Where Americans Shop For The Holidays

    After a year of high prices, high interest rates and high economic uncertainty, American consumers would have been excused for cutting back on their spending this holiday season.

    However, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, that doesn’t seem to be the case,  as both forecasts and preliminary estimates point towards new spending records this year.

    The National Retail Federation expects consumers in the U.S. to spend an average of $885 on core holiday items including gifts, decorations, food and other holiday-related purchases this year, up 5 percent from last year’s holiday budgets and just above the five-year average in expected spending.

    When it comes to where Americans will be splashing their holiday cash, 58 percent of people said they’d shop online while 49 percent plan to go to a department store. 48 percent are planning to shop at a discount store while 44 percent are going to make holiday purchases at a grocery store.

    Infographic: Where Americans Shop for the Holidays | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    So while it seems that many Americans like to avoid the crowds and do most of their holiday shopping online, physical stores still have role to play during the year’s busiest shopping season.

    In terms of getting into the Christmas spirit, shopping for gifts at a nicely-decorated store while the store radio plays some holiday classics beats hunting for bargains online every time.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 20:40

  • Here's Why Tearing Down Satanic Statues Is Perfectly Acceptable In Our "Constitutional Society"
    Here’s Why Tearing Down Satanic Statues Is Perfectly Acceptable In Our “Constitutional Society”

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    In recent articles I’ve been discussing the ways in which the political left exploits the principles of a society as a shield to destroy that society. In other words, if a nation has a certain historic regard for freedom, they will try to destroy that nation while under the protection of those freedoms. If you point out what they’re doing and try to stop them, they then argue that you are “violating your own principles,” the same principles which they are trying to tear down.

    It’s a form of psychological warfare designed to create a Catch-22:

    • If the target population sits back and does nothing in the face of the cultural onslaught, their heritage and their beliefs are systematically dismantled.

    • If people take action to disrupt the saboteurs, they are accused of being hypocrites who don’t actually value the freedoms they claim to value.

    However, this little mind game relies on a certain false relationship. It requires that the population under attack continues to see the saboteurs as integral members of that society with the same freedoms and the same protections. They are Americans just like us, and therefore we have to treat them merely as citizens in disagreement even though they would like nothing better than to see our culture burn.

    Globalists and woke leftists often openly boast about their agenda to deconstruct western society and replace it with their own ideological cult. They are not simply in disagreement, they have declared war.

    They’ve been treating conservatives and patriots as the enemy for quite some time, while we continue to treat them as fellow citizens. They tried to erase all of our freedoms permanently during the covid panic (which they perpetuated through false information). They tried to create a government apparatus working with social media corporations for mass censorship. They tried to create punishments for people who spoke against the establishment narrative. They supported vaccine mandates that would have enslaved Americans for years to come. They almost got what they wanted, too.

    They then twisted the events of the Jan 6th protests and declared war on us again. They fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowds, got a violent response, and then acted as if the reaction was an “insurrection.”

    They have targeted our children with political and sexual indoctrination in an effort to groom them into willing servants to the woke cause. They have saturated our media from commercials to movies with an endless stream of DEI propaganda, all while claiming WE are “terrorists” because we refuse to spend our money on woke products.

    When someone is actively at war with you they are no longer a part of your community or tribe.  They can’t claim to be Americans while also planning to undermine everything that makes America what it is. When someone is working tirelessly to destroy the constitutional principles you hold dear, they don’t get to use those same freedoms as a buffer against retaliation.

    An enemy in war is meant to be defeated; their “rights” are secondary to this goal.

    Again, this is not a political disagreement. This is not a friendly debate among countrymen with the best of intentions. This is not a cultural speed bump on the way to mutual benefit. This division is irreparable. It cannot be salvaged. This is about survival. THIS IS WAR.

    This is why I smiled when I read the story of Michael Cassidy, a former US Navy fighter pilot who destroyed a satanic statue of Baphomet on display at the Iowa State Capitol Building.

    The political left is in an uproar on social media, and as expected they argue that this incident is proof that conservatives are “authoritarians” hellbent on dictatorship. They say the statue has a constitutional right to be there if any other religious symbols are allowed to be there – But does this really matter to the situation?

    My personal feelings about organized religion are complicated, but I still recognize the replacement tactics being used by the political left to undermine the west; they have been clearly targeting Christianity for many years. The satanic statue in Iowa may or may not represent satanism and evil to the people who paid to have it placed in the capitol, but it does represent their ongoing effort to wear down American foundations using any tool they can find.

    Here are the reasons why what Cassidy did is absolutely acceptable under our current political conditions, even in the face of constitutional questions…

    1) Do we really even live in a “constitutional society” anymore?  Or does the 1st Amendment only apply when it’s convenient to leftists?  As mentioned above, the political left and their allies have been working overtime to destroy freedom of speech through collusion between governments, corporate media and Big Tech.  Mass censorship was the norm during covid and leftists defended it vigorously. These people are in no position to use the 1st Amendment as a tent pole for their ideological games. Sorry, but that ship has sailed; they have lost the privilege of wrapping themselves in the flag.

    2) The political left has been aggressively attempting to demolish historic monuments and statues of Founding Fathers in an effort to erase our connections to the past.  In 2021 they even removed a nearly 200-year-old statue of Thomas Jefferson from the New York City Hall building on the grounds that it was a “symbol of racism.” What goes around comes around.  They tear down our statues, now we tear down their statues.

    3) Michael Cassidy is not a government representative, just as most of us are not government representatives. Leftists seem to operate under the false assumption that constitutional rules are meant to restrict public behavior. They are not. They are meant to restrict the government.

    The Iowa state government didn’t tear that satanic statue down (unlike the New York City government that removed Thomas Jefferson). Rather, it was just a man, a regular citizen.

    This is not a 1st Amendment issue because Michael Cassidy is not bound by the 1st Amendment in this situation. He might be guilty of vandalism under the law, just like thousands of woke activists across the country are guilty of vandalism for destroying monuments and government buildings, but that is all.  This is not a legal battle, this is war.

    4) Most conservatives are not even arguing the matter on 1st Amendment grounds. Instead, they argue the matter on moral grounds. Is it right to allow satanic symbols to stand in our institutions of law and institutions of heritage? Symbols that represent moral relativism, narcissism, chaos and psychopathy? Is it right to look the other way while a subversive activist movement works to demolish everything we hold dear?

    5) Does every belief system or ideology deserve a place of “equality” within our society? Every death cult? Every terrorist or criminal philosophy? Are they ALL entitled to statues and monuments on public property? Or, is there a line? Should there be statues of Hitler, Stalin and Mao in the halls of Congress? Should there be a Pol Pot bust on the floor of the Senate? Should Charles Manson get his face on Mount Rushmore because of the 1st Amendment?  There is such a thing as standards, but leftists think that when it comes to their ideological goals, there are no standards.

    Never before in the history of the US has there been a time when a statue of Baphomet in a state government building would have been treated as acceptable, even under constitutional law. Suddenly, in the past decade we’re supposed to treat these destructive symbols as equal to other religions and give them places of reverence on public grounds? I think not.

    6) Satanists like to play games with legal categorization when it suits them. When they want to argue for their presence in public schools they say they are NOT a religion and are merely a philosophical club. When they want 1st Amendment protections they claim they are a religion.  If these groups are going to refuse to identify what they are in finality, then they should be restricted from access to public institutions until they make up their minds and the courts can establish a fair precedence.

    7) We have to ask ourselves what really defines freedom? Does freedom mean being able to do whatever you want whenever you want without being subject to scrutiny or skepticism? Does freedom extend to hedonism at the expense of morality, truth, responsibility and order? Because this is what the political left is demanding and it’s leading to the self immolation of civilization.

    I think we have allowed them to indulge themselves for far too long, to the point that they have become arrogant and presume themselves untouchable. They laugh at us because we play by a certain set of rules by which they see no reason to abide. We engage in a battle of ideas and facts while they go scorched Earth, rigging the fight using central government and corporate power to their advantage.

    Maybe we stop playing by these rules? Maybe every time they try to tear down our statues and symbols, we tear down their symbols until there’s nothing left of them? Maybe we remove the enemy that has declared war on us, and then continue on with life as we did before?  Would the populace really miss the antics of woke activists, or would they applaud if these people were shipped off to an island somewhere?

    If they hate the cultural roots of this country so much then they can always leave. They choose not to, and instead scheme to upend everything we used to stand for. So no, I shed no tears for the progressives or the satanists (almost the same thing at this point) or the globalists when their mocking statues are cut in half. After years of trespasses they are finally facing some blowback. As the leftists like to say, freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequences.

    *  *  *

    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, 12/20/2023 – 20:20

  • Yes, Talking Heads, We ARE Paying Attention
    Yes, Talking Heads, We ARE Paying Attention

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Wire,

    For the last year, ever since Donald Trump announced his run for a second non-consecutive term as president, the political pundits have told each other that “no one is paying attention.”

    They did that for one reason only – because Trump has been consistently ahead in the polls, and the pundits didn’t want to believe that voters might actually send Trump back to the White House. If voters were taking his candidacy seriously, the theory goes, Trump would lose in a landslide.

    Remember, the overwhelming majority of the elites who provide the commentary and analysis of politics are either far-left propagandists or proponents of the “governing coalition” theory that sees compromise as the mechanism by which things get done, which presupposes that getting things done is by definition better than fighting for things you believe in.

    These elites think they know more than you do, and since they believe Trump is an autocrat, a dictator, an evil self-obsessed criminal – take your pick – then they have to believe you aren’t paying attention because despite all their negative commentary, you the voters still want Trump back as president.

    Most worrisome to them, it seems you want Trump more today than you did on Nov. 15, 2022, when he announced his re-election bid. Just look at the Republican primary polls recorded at RealClearPolitics. In the Harvard-Harris poll conducted on Nov. 16-17, 2022, Trump had a 46%-28% lead over Gov. Ron DeSantis, his nearest competitor. In a couple of polls in the following three months, DeSantis came within a point or two of Trump, but that was his high-water mark. As soon as the Democratic establishment launched their first indictment against Trump in March 2023, the former president strengthened his lead over DeSantis to 50%-24% in the Harvard-Harris poll of March 22-23. Since then, with each succeeding indictment, Trump has risen higher and higher. In the last Harvard-Harris poll in November 2023, Trump led DeSantis by 58 points. Virtually every poll in the last three months has Trump ahead by 40 to 50 points.

    All along, the talking heads on MSNBC and CNN persisted in claiming that Trump is beating DeSantis and Nikki Haley because voters aren’t yet paying attention. But this isn’t the 1980s any more. We have something called the Internet, with 24/7 news coverage and social media trying to convince the world that all conservatives like Trump are hatemongers. It’s impossible for anyone who is interested in politics not to have been paying attention.

    In other words, anyone who hasn’t been paying attention up until now will never pay attention. And by the way, the Iowa caucuses are now less than 30 days away. The whole argument has fallen apart.

    What the talking heads don’t want to admit is that voters have been paying attention for months, and they are sending a message to the elites that they will make up their own minds, thank you very much. And that goes for blacks, Hispanics, and young voters, too – not just MAGA Republicans. Polls show Trump gaining support in all those demographics, and either tied with President Biden or ahead of him nationally.

    What must terrify them even more is the latest report from Morning Consult and Bloomberg that in the key battleground states that will determine the winner in 2024, Trump has a commanding lead of 5 points overall and as much as 9 points in North Carolina.

    So what are voters paying attention to? As the polls show, they have been paying attention to the persecution of Donald Trump by his political opponents, and they don’t like it. They are paying attention to the variety of third-party candidates who have said they will run in 2024, and when those candidates are included in polls, Trump’s lead in battleground states increases from 5 points to 7. They are paying attention to the blossoming debt crisis that Congress and Biden have shown no interest in addressing. They are paying attention to the border, where millions of military-age males have been arriving from Africa, the Middle East, and across the world, some on the terrorism watch list. They are paying attention to the unaffordability of housing, whether rental or purchased, and they are paying attention to their own growing credit card balances and their shriveled savings accounts. They are paying attention to those Ivy League college presidents who think threats of genocide are only a problem if they are carried out.

    Sorry, Democrats. Sorry, Joe Biden. Sorry, congressional dead weights of both parties. Sorry, elites and talking heads. We have been paying attention, and we are coming for you. You can’t hide behind your fake narrative any longer. The truth has set us free.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 19:40

  • San Fran Office Market Has Not Bottomed 
    San Fran Office Market Has Not Bottomed 

    The Federal Reserve’s pivot from aggressive monetary tightening to the possibility of (pre-emptice) rate-cuts has spurred talk about whether 2024 will be a ‘no landing’ or ‘soft landing’ scenario (avoiding a recession). Optimists have been pointing to the rates market that shows nearly six cuts priced in by the end of the next year. However, it is hard not to consider the fact that by anticipating these cuts, the market could be signaling more economic stress to come than The Fed expects (with its growth and employment forecasts).

    For severely strained building owners across the US, these hopes of interest rate cuts, which would lower the borrowing costs, could not come soon enough as there is still no sign of a bottom in this distressed market.

    Take, for instance, the San Francisco office market, where a new report from local newspaper SFGate, citing CBRE data, shows office vacancy in the crime-ridden metro area hit new highs in the fourth quarter of 2023. The vacancy rate topped 35.9%, a jump from last quarter’s 34%. CBRE said this is another 1.4 million square feet of occupancy loss (equating to an entire Salesforce Tower). 

    CBRE said 6.7 million square feet of office space flooded the market in San Fran this year – the second-worst year since 2020. This was primarily due to large sublease spaces being emptied. 

    Despite the flood of office space, asking rents have fallen too slowly to attract demand. In the last quarter, there was only a slight decline of 2.5% in asking rents. 

    Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, told the paper San Fran’s CRE market has yet to bottom and expects vacancy rates to rise through the first half of 2024. 

    Yasukochi noted, “The office market should stabilize and begin recovery as economic conditions improve and interest rates decline during the second half of 2024.” 

    Recent office tower sales in the downtown area have been absolutely disastrous:

    In early November, the tower at 201 Spear St. sold for $60 million, or about half of its 2013 value, sources confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

    According to the Real Deal, the 14-story tower at 115 Sansome St. recently sold for $35 million, significantly less than its $83 million value in 2016. 

    Another Real Deal report from last month said the 13-story tower in the North Financial District, located on 550 California Street, sold for 60% off. 

    Market-clearing prices have been established in the metro area due to a combination of remote work, and an imploding metro area plagued with lawlessness, due mainly to failed social justice policies pushed by radical Democrats.  

    A recent Bloomberg survey of professional traders might be correct about what’s coming down the pipe:

    • Two-thirds of the 919 respondents believe the office tower market needs to crash before a rebound can be seen.

    • About half believe tower prices will trough in the second half of next year. 

    That much-needed, though extremely painful, cleansing of the over-abundance (and over-pricing) of office space in America may now be delayed – can-kicked – as despite a handful of Fed members in recent days trying to walk back the market’s high rate cut expectations, they just hit a new high of 158bps (more than 6 rate cuts).

    What would prompt such a massive and sudden reversal by The Fed – a serious, sudden recession? And that won’t be good for CRE.

    CRE turmoil is expected to worsen in the first half of 2024 despite this hope that interest rate cuts will save the day.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 19:20

  • There Were At Least 19 Campus Hate-Crime Hoaxes In 2023
    There Were At Least 19 Campus Hate-Crime Hoaxes In 2023

    Authored by Matt Lamb via The College Fix,

    Fake racist fans, racist graffiti written by Hispanic students… just a normal year

    There were at least 19 hate crime hoaxes in 2023 that either occurred on a high school or college campus or are otherwise linked to higher education, according to an analysis by The College Fix. The tally marks an increase from last year, during which there were at least 14.

    A hate crime hoax is anything considered criminal or at least an act of misconduct. A hoax can be confirmed, such as when Hispanic gangs were found guilty of spray-painting “white power” graffiti at an Idaho high school or when black Sacramento high schoolers were found to be behind circulating a dollar bill with a “racist anti-Black caricature” on it.

    It can also include a phantom attacker, like when a Muslim University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student claimed she was attacked with a knife by an Israel supporter.

    Other investigations are closed or hit a dead end without further explanation or the alleged victim went silent. This is what happened when University of Cincinnati Professor Antar Tichavakunda did not respond to multiple law enforcement requests for further information on a racist letter he allegedly received.

    It can also be a hoax when there is no path forward for the investigation to end but there’s also no clear evidence indicating the act was an intentional hate crime.

    Reporting there were only 19 actually is generous, since one hoax involved the claim, bolstered by academics, that residence schools in Canada had mass graves with at least 215 Indigenous children buried in them. Well, not really graves, but a radar picked up something that was maybe, possibly, sort of bodies.

    We’re still waiting, because “no remains” were found despite excavating 14 sites at a Catholic church in Manitoba in August where radar allegedly picked up “anomalies” as well. The College Fix previously raised concerns about the veracity of claims of “mass graves.”

    University of Montreal Professor Jacques Rouillard, a skeptic of the mass graves theory, provided a good quote we can borrow when talking about some of these hoaxes: “I don’t like to use the word hoax because it’s too strong but there are also too many falsehoods circulating about this issue with no evidence.”

    “Falsehoods” around campus hate still include allegedly racist sports fans, this time at Pennsylvania State University and Guilford College in North Carolina.

    A white conservative professor was also falsely accused of harassing a black student at the University of Dallas.

    Sometimes acts that may appear to be hateful are committed by white people – but not with a racist intent.

    A white military veteran with mental health issues avoided jail time after hanging a noose on a statue of the Greek poet Homer at the University of Virginia. The hate crime turned out to not be one, though campus police chief Timothy Longo said it “certainly” was a hate crime in September 2022.

    Sometimes black Democrat students are charged with crimes, but pro-lifers get the criticism. This is what happened after police charged Harvard University student Naod Nega, a black Democrat, with beating up someone while using a “homophobic slur,” according to The Harvard Crimson.

    But campus LGBT leaders blamed a pro-life event for creating the environment for the attack. “Someone just got attacked — so we don’t need to ask questions of, ‘What does letting homophobic thought on campus lead to?’ This is what it leads to,” one LGBT leader said. “It leads to people getting punched and called slurs on our campus.”

    Actually, it was reportedly drugs and likely underlying mental health issues that led to Nega allegedly beating someone up, but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.

    Understandably, it has been a tough year for the LGBT community in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard police quietly closed an investigation into anti-LGBT emails allegedly sent to some affiliates of the Ivy League university. The emails, mirroring language used by race hoaxer Jussie Smollett, said “Cambridge is MAGA Country.” “MAGA” is President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan — “Make America Great Again.”

    Police ignored questions from The College Fix about the possibility of a hate crime hoax, given the similar language used by Smollett and the sender.

    Perhaps the emails were sent to make a point about how free speech can be harmful to LGBT people. That was the argument employed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Undergraduate Association President David Spicer. He hung up posters and chalked sidewalks with what he deemed to be anti-LGBT sayings to make a point about how free speech could be offensive. Spicer himself is LGBT and faced criticism for his stunt.

    That’s just how LGBT people do it in New England. LGBT students at the University of Connecticut left “homophobic language” on the dorm room door of a “non-binary” student as well.

    Other universities remain quiet on investigations, like when American University refused to divulge the race of the suspect who wrote “Black people suck” on a whiteboard, or when black Eastern Washington University students reported finding “F*** *** [n word] after their dance class.

    The State University of New York Cortland sung different tunes about racism. It originally declared n-word and swastika graffiti “actions of bias, racism or hate,” but when asked by The Fix for comment a spokesperson said the school would not “speculate about the person’s motive for doing this.”

    Meanwhile, a Penn State student, who is white, vandalized a Black Lives Matter flag at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania … but he did not know what the flag was. He had just been drinking too much with his friends. The university meanwhile declined to release more information on the students, and the local Selinsgrove police department said they have nothing they can add.

    Similarly, a homeless “middle-aged Black male” reportedly vandalized the Black Student Union house at Florida State University.

    Honorable mentions

    Some cases do not fit clearly into one category.

    Florida State University Professor Eric Stewart lost his job this year after failing to follow proper data procedures and after questions were raised about the accuracy of his findings. He writes about race and crime. One retracted paper claimed high levels of support among white people for lynching. In total, his questioned papers totaled over 3,000 citations by other scholars.

    So, let’s say there were actually 3,019 hate crime hoaxes this year.

    A special mention also goes to the movie about Michigan State University football head coach Duffy Daugherty. It allegedly portrays a black player as a partier and hard drinker who spoke in broken English, and also falsely portrays his white teammates as racists.

    One final story explains why people might perpetrate race hoaxes — it pays.

    That is what University of Virginia race hoaxer Zyahna Bryant found out after getting an endorsement deal from Dove to be a “fat liberation” advocate. Bryant’s past history of accusing a fellow student of joking about running over Black Lives Matters activists did not stop her from scoring this big deal.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 19:00

  • Self-Checkout Kiosks At 4,500 Walmarts Now Offer 'Buy Now, Pay Later' Loans For Basic Items
    Self-Checkout Kiosks At 4,500 Walmarts Now Offer ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Loans For Basic Items

    “Buy now, pay later” (BNPL) loans surged in popularity during Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late November. As Christmas is less than a week away, Walmart shoppers have been greeted with a new BNPL payment at the checkout line. The increased use of BNPL is incredibly problematic for consumers with insurmountable credit card debt and depleted savings. 

    Affirm Holdings announced Tuesday that its BNPL service has been expanded to self-checkout kiosks at 4,500 Walmart stores nationwide. Customers can purchase electronics, apparel, toys, and many more items (except groceries) by spreading payments out from three months to 24 months. 

    “Recent Affirm research revealed that more than half of Americans (54%) are looking for retailers to offer a buy now, pay later option at checkout. Moreover, we’ve found that 76% of consumers would either delay or not make a purchase without Affirm,” said Pat Suh, Affirm’s SVP of Revenue.

    Suh continued, “Expanding our partnership with Walmart and bringing Affirm’s transparent monthly pay-over-time options to their self-checkout kiosks in the US will help even more consumers increase their purchasing power during the holiday shopping season and beyond.” 

    A number of government agencies and even the central bank of central banks (Bank for International Settlements) have warned about the BNPL craze. 

    Last month, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) – the powerful federal banking regulator – sounded the alarm over increased usage of BNPL. 

    OCC warned about the overuse and poor understanding of the BNPL payment structure that could lead to disastrous outcomes for consumers if payments are missed. 

    A report published earlier this month by the Bank for International Settlements said BNPL is mainly being used by young adults, particularly those with low education and maxed-out credit cards.

    Other major retailers might follow Walmart’s lead. It’s never a good sign when retailers expand the purchasing power of broke consumers. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 18:40

  • Pennsylvania Abruptly Cuts Short Contract With Voter Registration Firm
    Pennsylvania Abruptly Cuts Short Contract With Voter Registration Firm

    Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The State of Pennsylvania terminated its contract earlier this month with a firm tasked with modernizing its voter registration system, citing the contractor’s inability to adequately address issues with the system.

    Commonwealth Avenue is part of the Pennsylvania Capitol complex in Harrisburg, with offices for state workers. (Beth Brelje/The Epoch Times)

    The state had contracted KNOWiNK, an election software company, to replace the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system, which manages the voter registration information of more than 8 million Pennsylvania voters. The SURE system stores the data of every legitimate, eligible voter, but there were problems with the system, according to an election official.

    The Pennsylvania State Department terminated the contract on Dec. 4, stating in a letter sent to members of the Pennsylvania County Board of Elections that KNOWiNK would not adequately address “identified deficiencies” in the new SUREVote system meant to replace the current software.

    Jonathan Marks, Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary for elections and commissions, sent the letter.

    Questions about the progress of improving the SURE system have routinely come up in Senate hearings and in the halls of the state capitol. The letter verified the work was behind schedule. It described how over the course of nine months the State Department worked with KNOWiNK, trying to correct the course of the project, “including procuring expert mediation and project management services, bringing on the expertise of a chief modernization officer, and collaborating with our vendor to address Pennsylvania’s contractual project standards,” the letter reads.

    “This administration has made the successful completion and implementation of the SUREVote System a priority … Unfortunately, the Department has concluded that the vendor will not meet … timelines and contractual standards,” the letter states.

    The State Department said it would find another vendor to do the work. It will take time to write and approve a new request for proposals, vet, and hire a new vendor.

    In his letter, Mr. Marks stressed several times that the decision to end the contract would not affect the 2024 election.

    But former State Rep. Frank Ryan is questioning the move. A longtime certified public accountant, Mr. Ryan left his seat in the Pennsylvania House last year specifically to work on election security, believing he could have a bigger effect on public policy outside the legislature than from within.

    “If I were chair of an audit committee, I’d ask, is there an incentive on the part of the Democratic Party to kill the changes to the SURE System until they get to the next presidential election? Because [President Joe] Biden is behind in the polls with [former President] Donald Trump in 2024. I can’t make that allegation because we don’t have enough data, but it would be a hypothesis that I would want to run down.”

    The push to overhaul the SURE System came after a scathing report released in December 2019 by Pennsylvania’s then-Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, who identified internal control weaknesses in the SURE System related to input and maintenance of voter records. The audit revealed examples of potential inaccuracies, which the report said should be sent to counties to be investigated.

    The report states that the State Department refused to cooperate during its investigation and that it denied auditors access to critical documents or excessively redacted documents, leaving the Auditor General’s Office unable to fully achieve three of the eight objectives it had been assigned.

    The auditor, according to the report, was unable to assess the accuracy of the records maintained in the system, was unable to review security protocols of the system, and was unable to review the external controls and methodology for external audits.

    The 2019 audit also identified potential needed areas of improvement related to computer security, information technology, general controls, and interference controls that it felt it could not mention in a publicly available report.

    The audit found issues that it specifically excluded from the report “because of the sensitive nature of this information due to the security concerns over the commonwealth’s critical elections infrastructure. These conditions and our recommendations have been included in a separate, confidential communication, to [State Department] management,” the 2019 report reads.

    The report made 50 recommendations to strengthen State Department policies, including addressing duplicate voter records and records of potentially deceased voters on the voter rolls.

    Because of everything revealed in the report, the auditor general was “unable to establish with any degree of reasonable assurance that the SURE System is secure and that Pennsylvania voter registration records are complete, accurate, and in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and related guidelines.”

    This SURE System has been in continuous use since the report and is slated for use in again in 2024.

    “At the beginning of this administration, several months ago, we decided to utilize our tested, accurate and safe legacy system for the upcoming 2024 election,” Mr. Marks’s Dec. 4 letter reads.

    $3 Million Spent

    The contract to build the SUREVote system to replace the SURE System had an unconventional beginning. The state signed a nearly $10 million contract with South Dakota-based software company BPro. The 603-page contract signed on Dec. 28, 2020, was to be valid through December 2024. But 42 days later, BPro announced publicly that it had been purchased by KNOWiNK. The Department of State filed an emergency procurement on Feb. 2, 2021, requesting $3 million more for KNOWiNK to fulfill the BPro contract.

    “BPro did not let the Dept. of State know about the acquisition until mid-December, after the agency contract was going through the signature process,” the request, signed by Mr. Marks, reads. “Since BPro is implementing a new system for our Elections Bureau, it is highly time sensitive. It is the desire of the Department to have the deliverables started ASAP, and we would like to create the Emergency Purchase Order with KNOWiNK to pay for deliverables and monthly expenses until the new Agency Contract is in place.”

    The request for additional money was denied.

    Pennsylvania has made payments totaling more than $3.6 million to BPro and KNOWiNK since Feb. 2021, payment records from the Pennsylvania Treasury show.

    KNOWiNK did not respond to a request for comment.

    The company offers states and counties a selection of election-related software, including TotalVote, described on the KNOWiNK website as a centralized voter registration and election management system that securely captures all election information.

    It also provides ePulse, which monitors polling places on Election Day, tracking voter wait times and turnout. Another product KNOWiNK offers is Poll Pad, a set of tablets that replace the poll books voters sign at polling places.

    “Poll Pad has replaced the outdated and inefficient paper model that is often the cause of long lines at the polls and inefficient election record keeping,” the KNOWiNK website reads.

    The company is working in 36 states and Washington, D.C.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 18:20

  • 36 Million Customers Affected In Massive Comcast Data Breach
    36 Million Customers Affected In Massive Comcast Data Breach

    Your holiday present from Comcast has arrived, in the form of a massive data breach that has compromised the personal information of nearly 36 million customers. Comcast released a statement on Monday this week stating that a “recent data security incident” occurred involving Citrix software.

    “On October 10, 2023, Citrix announced a vulnerability in software used by Xfinity and thousands of other companies worldwide,” Comcast wrote.

    “Citrix issued additional mitigation guidance on October 23, 2023. Xfinity promptly patched and mitigated the Citrix vulnerability within its systems. However, during a routine cybersecurity exercise on October 25, Xfinity discovered suspicious activity and subsequently determined that between October 16 and October 19, 2023, there was unauthorized access to its internal systems that was concluded to be a result of this vulnerability.”

    “Xfinity notified federal law enforcement and initiated an investigation into the nature and scope of the incident. On November 16, Xfinity determined that information was likely acquired,” the release said.

    “After additional review of the affected systems and data, Xfinity concluded on December 6, 2023, that the customer information in scope included usernames and hashed passwords; for some customers, other information may also have been included, such as names, contact information, last four digits of social security numbers, dates of birth and/or secret questions and answers.”

    So, everything?

    Conveniently not included in the release but disclosed in follow up reporting by PhillyBurbs.com was the fact that over 35.8 million customers were affected by the breach, according to a report with Maine’s Attorney General. 

    Comcast has said it is requiring all of its customers to reset their passwords and that it is encouraging its users to use 2FA in the future. 

    “Xfinity advises customers not to re-use passwords across multiple accounts, the company is recommending that customers change passwords for other accounts for which they use the same username and password or security question,” the release said.

    Just in case you didn’t have anything to do heading into the holidays…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 18:00

  • 'Margin Calls & Massive Put-Buying' – Stocks & Bond Yields Puke As Goldilocks Dies
    ‘Margin Calls & Massive Put-Buying’ – Stocks & Bond Yields Puke As Goldilocks Dies

    Existing home sales beat (bouncing modestly off record lows), consumer confidence jumped (as inflation expectations declined and labor market conditions worsened), but earnings reports from FedEx and General Mills threw some cold water on the ‘resilient’ consumer, cyclical rebound narrative.

    And it’s the commentary from Corporate America that has us wondering:

    Did the Goldilocks narrative just die?

    • March rate-cut odds soared

    • Rate-cut expectations for next year surged

    • Stocks puked

    • Bond yields plunged across the curve

    • 30Y yields broke below 4.00% – the first close below 4.00% since July

    That smells a lot like a ‘recession’ trade to us as it’s not the Fed’s post-Powell jawboning to walk-back the market’s dovishness (because rates shifted dovishly).

    Fed’s Harker was a little more dovish than the recent walkback-of-Powell’s comments by various Fed speakers, but still pushed off any imminent rate-cuts:

    “It’s important that we start to move rates down,” Harker said Wednesday in a local radio interview.

    “We don’t have to do it too fast, and we’re not going to do it right away.”

    Rate-cut expectations for March surged to new cycle highs this morning…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And expectations for rate-cuts next year re-accelerated dovishly, shrugging off all the FedSpeak of the last week, trying to walk-back what Powell did…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The Dow ended its streak of losses at 9 days, as the S&P suffered its biggest decline since October…

    Starting around 1430ET – margin-call time…

    …the biggest sell-program since July smashed stocks lower…(and that was followed quickly by a large buy program)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    For context, this size of selling pressure is unusual…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Did the L/S funds finally get tapped on the shoulder…

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

    Or was this why we puked?

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

    ‘Most Shorted’ stocks were clubbed like a baby seal, with the biggest daily drop since February…

    Source: Bloomberg

    MAG7 stocks puked…

    Source: Bloomberg

    As 0-DTE traders dumped calls aggressively in MAG7 stocks…

    Source: SpotGamma

    But there was a major 0-DTE S&P Put buyer (4755 Strike) that seemed that prompted the overall market to drop into negative gamma and sent the S&P spiralling below its Put Wall…

    Source: SpotGamma

    Goldman’s trading desk offered some color on the sudden drop:

    Looking at S&P E-Mini’s, most volume started printing after 2:30pm, even prior to the break of 4800 and the pickup in volume was real.

    The average run rate over the 45 minutes following the initial move was ~5x greater than earlier in the cash session.

    There were a few headlines floating around as potential reason for the selloff, most notably: *GRAHAM: WILL DRAFT PRE-TAIWAN INVASION SANCTIONS AGAINST CHINA.

    There was also a large put trade bought electronically (SPX 20Dec 4755) that was said to cause a short gamma hedging selloff.

    Ultimately, market volumes are light and it does not take much to get this market moving… especially considering that SPX flirted with ATHs today. 

    It turns out VVIX was right to be worried…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Treasuries were aggressively bid across the curve with the short-end outperforming today (30Y -6bps, 2Y -9bps). Since the FOMC, yields are down 33-38bps…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Despite the ugly 20Y auction, 30Y Yields tumbled back to test 4.00%…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar rebounded, erasing most of yesterday’s losses…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin rallied back above $44,000…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But Ethereum continues to underperform…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold drifted lower…

    Oil prices ended lower after WTI topped $75 intraday…

    Finally, bear in mind that VIX was not buying the last big squeeze higher in stocks…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And all that ‘cyclical’ love is a little decoupled from bonds view of the world…

    Reality check time?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 17:55

  • Understanding Anti-Capitalist Fallacies
    Understanding Anti-Capitalist Fallacies

    Authored by Roberto Ledezma via The Mises Institute,

    Capitalism, defined as a form of social organization in which there are means of production such as private property and wage labor, is not the moral principle upon which liberalism is based.

    The reason for this is that there are nonliberal scenarios that capitalism, as a moral principle, allows for – for example: slavery, sexism, racism, and various forms of violence.

    However, semantic compatibility does not imply a causal relationship between such variables.

    In this brief text, I will explain why certain anticapitalist arguments have fallacious inferences, showing the semantic relationships between different concepts that constitute the political economy and other similar disciplines.

    Fallacious Inferences and False Statements

    Sound arguments are those that contain only true statements and valid inferences. On the other hand, fallacious arguments are those that, regardless of the truth value of their statements, have invalid inferences. An example of such a scenario is as follows:

    Premise 1: All married people are not single.

    Premise 2: No single person is married.

    Conclusion: Socialism is a form of social organization.

    In this example, all the statements are analytical and, therefore, true. However, the conclusion is an invalid inference since its meaning is not contained in the meaning of the premises. Although both its premises and its conclusion are true statements, it is not a sound argument as it contains an invalid inference.

    The definitions previously used do not indicate the impossibility of valid arguments about causal relationships. Valid arguments about causal relationships can exist if their premises indicate the existence of a certain causal relationship and if their conclusions are inferences whose meaning is contained within the meaning of their premises. An example of this would be:

    Premise 1: All types of A are a necessary cause of B.

    Premise 2: X is a type of A.

    Conclusion: X is a necessary cause of B.

    Therefore, it is indeed possible for valid arguments to exist concerning causal relationships. Some arguments with invalid inferences can become valid when one or more premises are added to them. As will be demonstrated in the following sections, many fallacious arguments exhibit structures in which conclusions are erroneously regarded as necessary or sufficient causes, even if their premises and conclusions are contradictory.

    Some Fallacious Arguments against Capitalism

    As explained in the previous section, fallacious arguments can contain true premises or conclusions.

    The use of certain technical terms or complex mathematical operations does not mean that a certain argument is sound or, at the very least, valid.

    Here are some examples of fallacious arguments:

    • From its inception, capitalism was riddled with racism, sexism, and slavery. Therefore, as long as there is capitalism, racism, sexism, and slavery will always exist.

    • The socially necessary labor time required for the production of a particular commodity determines its exchange value. Capitalists appropriate a portion of the value created by their workers. Therefore, capitalists are stealing from their workers.

    • There are poor countries that are capitalist. Therefore, free markets do not serve to alleviate poverty.

    Is Capitalism a Form of Theft?

    As mentioned at the outset, the definition of capitalism used here is compatible with slavery and violence. However, this does not mean that it is the only possible scenario. Semantically, there can be situations in which different individuals, in the absence of coercion and violence, enter into agreements for specific services at predetermined prices within defined timeframes.

    Only if such an agreement is breached would the employer be stealing from the employee through such an employment relationship. An example of this scenario would be if there is a labor contract between individual A and individual B that establishes the payment of $200 per day for the provision of a specific service for five hours. Then, individual A does not provide that amount of money to individual B because he wants individual A to work another two hours despite individual A fulfilling all the agreed conditions. Otherwise, given the definitions used here, if the agreed-upon conditions of such a labor relationship are not violated, it is fallacious to infer that the employer is stealing from the worker.

    If a state imposes limits on the contractual freedom of the individuals it governs, noncompliance with such limits does not mean that the employer is stealing from the employee. If a set of labor regulations is imposed, such as a minimum wage for hourly wage labor or mandatory severance pay, and such regulations are not part of the labor agreement, the noncompliance with these regulations does not mean employer theft from the employee.

    Furthermore, even if it is assumed that the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor time for its production, the existence of profits in a business activity does not mean that the employer is stealing from their employees. In a labor relationship where the agreement was to pay the employee thirty dollars and the employer pays the employee that amount, the profit margin does not determine whether such a social interaction was theft or not. Even in the absence of risk and opportunity costs, the accrual of profits would not constitute theft by the employer from the employees.

    Free Market Capitalism and Business Freedom

    Capitalism and free markets are two different concepts. There can be a region where, in the absence of state coercion or violence, only cooperatives exist. On the other hand, there can be a region where only capitalist enterprises exist, and due to the presence of certain interventionist economic policies, it may not be possible to buy or sell certain goods/services, set certain prices, or establish penalties for noncompliance with commercial contract terms.

    Furthermore, a free market does not necessarily mean business freedom. This is because the free market refers to the absence of state restrictions on the exchange of property rights over monetary and nonmonetary assets, whereas business freedom refers to the absence of state restrictions on production, consumption, or property exchange activities carried out by a business. Therefore, a broader category than business freedom would be economic freedom, which encompasses not only businesses but also other types of individual behavior—for example, the freedom to cultivate a specific plant, regardless of whether it is for personal consumption or commercial purposes. In the presence of economic freedom, there are no price controls, monopolies through state coercion, or import quotas.

    Lastly, the fact that country A has undergone a greater economic liberalization process than country B does not mean that country A possesses greater economic freedom. A country may eliminate more price controls than another during a specific period of time and still have a greater number of price controls, not to mention the existence of other interventionist economic policies.

    Capitalism and Social Problems

    Even if capitalism were to result in poverty, violence, sexism, racism, and environmental problems, this does not mean that this mode of social organization is the sole cause of such phenomena. Moreover, the fact that a certain form of capitalism generates certain outcomes does not imply that all semantically possible forms of capitalism will have the same consequences.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/20/2023 – 17:40

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