• Tulsi Gabbard Now Supports FISA-702 In Order To Get Confirmed As Director Of National Intelligence
  Tulsi Gabbard Now Supports FISA-702 In Order To Get Confirmed As Director Of National Intelligence

  Authored by Sundance via The Conservative Treehouse,

  As the story is told [SEE HERE], and it aligns with every scintilla of researched data on the darkest and deepest elements of the Deep State, DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard has reversed her position and will now support FISA-702, the warrantless searches of American communication and electronic metadata.

  

  Apparently the FISA process and the 702 aspect (specific to American citizens) is the line in the sand the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has drawn.  If Tulsi Gabbard does not support it, her confirmation is in doubt.  As a result, she has reportedly reversed her position and now supports it.

  This is absolutely par for the course.

  It should be remembered, in the last reauthorization of FISA-702 congress exempted themselves from the warrantless search and surveillance system used by the U.S. Intelligence Apparatus.  Congress forbids the FBI or any entity with access to the NSA database, from being allowed to use the process to search themselves or their staff.  However, every other American does not enjoy this same protection.

  After spending years asking every representative of consequence why they support the FISA-702 process, I can tell you every one of them says they believe it is needed because the IC tells them there are just too many domestic terror threats that need to be monitored.

  It is impossible to find a person in DC who will forcefully try to stop FISA-702 reauthorization.

  If you ask me why in hindsight, I now take the position that FISA-702 is the gateway to the massive surveillance system currently being put into place using Real ID and the AI facial recognition software provided by Palantir (CIA exploit).  In essence, the gateway that allows the full-scale surveillance state, is opened by the prior authorization of FISA-702 that negates any 4th amendment protection.

  Why? Because all of the surveillance mechanisms within the network being updated and enhanced by AI search and capture, comes from the IC being allowed to exploit the NSA database.  That same database access allowance is the targeting mechanism for FISA-702.  If warrantless searches of the NSA database were stopped, the Palantir/IC and Tech Bro collaboration could hit a brick wall.

  Against this backdrop, the SSCI telling Tulsi Gabbard that her nomination approval is contingent upon her support for FISA-702, simply makes sense.

  WASHINGTON DC – […] Multiple senators from both parties who met with the former Hawaii lawmaker in recent days told us they emerged from those sessions unsure about Gabbard’s position on the 702 program. During these meetings, senators have pressed Gabbard on her previous public statements on the issue, as well as her votes against 702 reauthorization throughout her eight years in Congress.

  GOP national security hawks in particular viewed this as problematic, we’re told, fueling renewed doubts about her confirmation prospects. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested on a WSJ podcast Wednesday that Gabbard should disavow her previous opposition to the 702 program.

  Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) also sent us a statement Thursday night supporting Gabbard’s 702 stance — a key indicator of how the GOP leadership is thinking about her nomination.

  “Tulsi Gabbard has assured me in our conversations that she supports Section 702 as recently amended and that she will follow the law and support its reauthorization as DNI,” Cotton said.

  That last part is important because, if confirmed as DNI, Gabbard would need to certify the statute annually in order for intelligence collection to continue under the 702 program.  (read more)

  This is also a big part of the reason why the DC Deep State will easily confirm Kash Patel to be Donald Trump’s FBI Director.  Kash Patel is a big believer in the value of FISA-702.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 23:50

• Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Americans
  Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Americans

  Authored by Kenin Spivak via AmericanMind.org,

  House investigations reveal that the Deep State and the Biden-Harris Administration are engaged in a massive repression of American freedoms…

  

  Reports released by two House committees in December shine a harsh light on the deceptions and oppressive tactics utilized by numerous federal agencies, the Intelligence Community, and leaders of the Democratic Party. During the last year of the first Trump Administration, agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), State Department, and Justice Department (DOJ) initiated improper contacts with media in an effort to censor conservative views. These agencies also took steps to interfere in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden.

  The Biden-Harris Administration supercharged the weaponization of the federal government against the American people. With the active participation of the media, the administration followed a whole-of-government effort to collude with, and coerce, the media to suppress and censor conservatives and others who opposed progressive goals. It threatened parents with terrorist “threat tagging” and visits from the FBI for speaking their minds, stretched statutory authority beyond recognition to prosecute Donald Trump and his supporters, harassed and penalized whistleblowers, invaded bank privacy, sent heavily armed federal agents into private homes, and brought an unprecedented barrage of litigation against states to force them into compliance with the administration’s unconstitutional goals.

  On December 17, 2024, the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight (Administration Subcommittee) released its report on the events surrounding January 6, 2021 and the politicization of the Select Committee (January 6 Committee) established by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to investigate those events. Three days later, the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Justice Subcommittee) released a 17,000-page final report detailing the administrative state’s and the Biden-Harris Administration’s repressive censorship enterprise and other abuses.

  Based on the evidence described in these reports, there are two inescapable conclusions:

  (1) regardless of the administration in office, the Deep State in DHS, DoD, DOJ, IRS, the Intelligence Community, and other agencies have arrogated to themselves unconstitutional and unlawful powers to infringe individual liberties, expand rules, and use force to suppress conservatives’ goals, religion, and free speech; and

  (2) the Biden-Harris Administration, Pelosi, and leading Democrats endorsed, supported, facilitated, and led the expansion of these efforts.

  These reports are products of extensive investigations and include copious evidence. Though the Administration Subcommittee’s report can be faulted for its angry tone, a vainglorious pandering to its chairman, Barry Loudermilk, and sometimes hyperbolic conclusions, it provides compelling evidence of wrongdoing. Broader in scope and more thoroughly researched, the Justice Subcommittee’s report is the product of a detailed inquiry into a broad betrayal of trust. Justice Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan is to be commended for uncovering problems and taking steps that have already ameliorated some of these practices.

  The findings in these reports show why the Trump Administration must clean house. That is why Trump has nominated sometimes controversial individuals such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, John Ratcliffe, Russell Vought, and Rick Grenell. It explains Trump’s impulsive, properly withdrawn nomination of Matt Gaetz and the creation of DOGE as an advisor outside of government. It is why so many of Trump’s appointees have expressed concern about the agencies they have been selected to lead.

  Above all, the administration must not redirect targeting—it must eradicate these stains on the American soul.

  An Illegitimate, Rigged Show Trial

  I believe Donald Trump erred by holding his “Save America” rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, separating his call for a peaceful march by 8,500 words words from his peroration, in which he implored the crowd to “fight like hell,” and his dilatory public response to the ensuing violence. I condemn the demonstrators who entered the Capitol or resisted orders to disperse.

  Nonetheless, the exaggerated, partisan accounts of that day, invective used by Democratic leaders and the media for political advantage, and the unjustifiable divergence between the fierce overcharging of those with even a scintilla of connection to the January 6 events and the near indifference to the violent left-wing rioters who, following George Floyd’s death, killed or injured hundreds of Americans, burned down billions of dollars of private property, destroyed police stations, occupied cities, and laid a sustained siege to the federal courthouse in Portland, is inexcusable.

  The evidence shows that from the outset, the January 6 Committee was rigged to condemn President Trump and lay the foundation for Congress or the courts to reach a finding that he was guilty of insurrection, thereby triggering grounds for prohibiting him from again serving as president under the 14th Amendment. To achieve this result, the January 6 Committee was organized in violation of House rules, and was selective in pursuing its mandate, parsing its evidence, and writing its report. It stage-managed its public hearings and then covered up its wrongdoing by deleting, withholding, and encrypting its files.

  On June 30, 2021, the House passed H.R. 503, establishing the January 6 Committee to investigate the “facts, circumstances, and causes” of January 6, and the “preparedness and response” of law enforcement. It included an exemption to House Rule 11 that gave the Committee’s chairman the power to greatly limit questions from the Republicans who would be appointed to the Committee.

  Furthermore, House Rule 10, Clause 5 requires that the members of standing committees be elected “from nomination[s] submitted by the respective party caucus or conference.” Speaker Pelosi named seven Democrats and one Republican—Liz Cheney. Two of those Democrats, Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, previously served as impeachment managers against President Trump. Prior to being selected, Cheney pledged, “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”

  Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy proposed five Republicans, but in an unprecedented violation of House rules, Pelosi rejected his nominees. She then named Republican Adam Kinzinger as the final member of the January 6 Committee.

  Even with the exclusion of Rule 11, H.R. 503 still required Chairman Bennie Thompson to consult with the Republican ranking member before issuing subpoenas or ordering depositions. House rules require each of the party caucuses to select its ranking members. Because Pelosi excluded Republican nominees, there was no Republican ranking member (though the committee pretended that Cheney served that function). Some of those subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee challenged the subpoenas on this basis, but the courts deferred to Congress.

  All committee chairs have the responsibility to archive committee records with the Clerk of the House, who subsequently stores those records with the National Archives and Records Administration. H.R. 503 further requires that all January 6 Committee records be transferred to any committee designated by the Speaker; Pelosi designated the Committee on House Administration.

  The January 6 Committee failed to archive or provide the Administration Subcommittee with video recordings of witness interviews, as many as 900 interview summaries or transcripts, and more than one terabyte of digital data. The January 6 Committee also delivered more than 100 encrypted, password protected documents for which it never provided the passwords.

  Once underway, the January 6 Committee focused on hyping the horrors of January 6 and assigning blame to Trump. It generally ignored its mandate to investigate preparedness and the response, because that would have established that Trump authorized and directed 10,000 National Guard soldiers to be available to ensure security and safety, and that Pelosi declined that assistance. Because there were no Republican-selected members on the January 6 Committee, there were no cross-examinations, witnesses called, or evidence reviewed at the behest of Republican-selected members.

  Every investigatory committee hopes for its John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel who testified about his first-hand knowledge as a participant in the cover-up of the Watergate break in. The January 6 Committee’s pale substitute was Cassidy Hutchinson, the then-24-year-old Coordinator for Legislative Affairs for White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson testified about things she claims to have been told and about a letter she claims to have transcribed, but which the evidence suggests never happened.

  Following her second uneventful interview with January 6 Committee staff, Hutchinson drastically switched her narrative and began testifying to a variety of unsubstantiated and uncorroborated claims. It is not clear why she did so, but the Administration Subcommittee uncovered evidence of secret conversations between Hutchinson, former White House employee Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host of ABC’s The View, and Liz Cheney. Cheney improperly influenced Hutchinson to fire her attorney and referred her to a number of new attorneys, including a lawyer from the multinational law firm Alston & Bird whom Hutchinson then retained.

  Based on hearsay, Hutchinson claimed that Trump had lunged toward the Secret Service driver of his car after his request to go to the Capitol was denied. Trump, the individual Hutchinson claimed gave her the information, and the agents with Trump that day have denied her claim. But after her third interview and retaining the Alston lawyer, Hutchinson suddenly recalled that she heard White House employees saying that Trump had agreed that Pence should be hung. Though there is no corroboration of this allegation, the January 6 Committee featured it throughout its hearings and in its report.

  Hutchinson also claimed that she transcribed a note from Meadows, and edited by White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, that conceded that anyone who entered the Capitol without authority had acted illegally. The Administration Subcommittee retained an independent certified handwriting expert who said that Hutchinson’s story is false. Herschmann denies the note is genuine.

  The Administration Subcommittee refers to Cheney’s actions as “witness tampering” and recommends a criminal referral and, implicitly, bar discipline. That goes too far by criminalizing common misbehavior; it may be emotionally satisfying, but it will not improve American government.

  In 2022, HBO released Pelosi in the House, a documentary directed and produced by Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. It includes footage of Pelosi and members of House and Senate leadership after being evacuated from the Capitol on January 6. The January 6 Committee was in possession of the footage throughout is investigation, but did not publish or archive it.

  In one clip, Pelosi admits to her Chief of Staff, Terri McCullough, that they bear responsibility for the lack of security at the Capitol. Discussing her failure to call up the National Guard, Pelosi states, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.”

  The Administration Subcommittee also uncovered evidence that senior Defense Department (DoD) officials intentionally delayed deploying the National Guard to the Capitol, despite Trump’s contrary directions. According to interviews conducted by the DoD Inspector General, during a January 3, 2021 meeting that included Trump, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Trump warned about the large number of protestors expected on January 6 and authorized 10,000 soldiers or National Guard to “make sure it’s a safe event.” Miller promised that there was a plan to do so. Milley further testified to the Inspector General that Trump ordered DoD to use all assets necessary to guarantee the safety of everyone in Washington, D.C. on January 6.

  The Administration Subcommittee concluded that in the course of the investigation by the January 6 Committee, DoD and the Biden-Harris Administration possessed information that the Secretary of the Army misled senior congressional leaders by stating that the D.C. National Guard was “on the way” at a time it was not.

  It appears that the Biden-Harris Administration, including DoD and the January 6 Committee, colluded to omit from the investigation and its report exculpatory information that would have shown that President Trump attempted to work with DoD and the National Guard to ensure the security of the Capitol at the time of his planned rally on January 6.

  Oddly unmentioned in the Subcommittee’s report is that Trump advisors Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon were prosecuted and sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to testify before the January 6 committee—the first former White House official to be imprisoned for a contempt of Congress conviction and the first time in 65 years that anyone has been prosecuted for refusing to testify before a House committee. That last time, and each of the ten times before then, the individuals who were imprisoned refused to testify before the reviled, highly partisan House Un-American Activities Committee.

  The Administration Subcommittee’s report shows that the events of January 6 were preventable, and that Trump’s speech that day would not have resulted in a riot, or at the least the riot would not have penetrated the Capitol, if Democratic leadership had accepted assistance offered by the president or if DoD had mobilized the National Guard sooner.

  While Trump is not without blame for the events of January 6, the January 6 Committee was an undemocratic, rigged, partisan show trial akin to Soviet and Chinese trials that are staged to justify a result rather than find the truth.

  The Biden-Harris Administration’s Censorship Complex

  The Justice Subcommittee obtained internal communications from social media platforms, Amazon, and others in which executives of these companies attribute suppressing and censoring videos, posts, and other content to “pressure” from the Biden-Harris Administration. For example, on the administration’s third day, the White House emailed Twitter (now X) to demand that a tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. be “removed ASAP.”

  Previously unknown is that under intense pressure from the White House, Amazon also suppressed placement and promotion of certain books critical of the administration.

  The Justice Subcommittee report concluded that:

  (1) Big Tech changed its content moderation policies because of pressure from the Biden-Harris White House;

  (2) the censorship campaign targeted not just falsehoods but also true information, satire, and other content, including Americans’ personal experiences;

  (3) the censorship campaign had a chilling effect on other speech;

  (4) the Biden-Harris White House had leverage because of its power over policies that affected media companies; and (5) the Biden-Harris White House pushed censorship of books, not just social media.

  The Biden-Harris censorship enterprise had its origins in the Obama and Trump Administrations. Following the 2016 election, offices within the executive branch began efforts to covertly censor Americans’ free expression. The FBI formed the Foreign Influence Task Force in the fall of 2017. The Global Engagement Center (GEC), a multi-agency entity housed within the State Department established by President Obama in early 2016 to counter terrorism, expanded its mandate in 2017 to include countering foreign disinformation, and later also domestic speech (the GEC was closed down on December 23, 2024 when Congress refused to continue its funding). The DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) formed the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force in 2018, which evolved under Biden into the “Mis, Dis, and Malinformation Team” (MDM) in 2021 to counter foreign and American speech.

  Once the Biden-Harris Administration took office, these censorship efforts expanded. Senior members of the Biden-Harris White House immediately began a months-long pressure campaign on Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and other companies to censor views disfavored by the Biden-Harris Administration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence created the Foreign Malign Influence Center in 2021. DHS created the Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board in May 2022, soon disbanded following broad condemnation. CISA also built out and met with its MDM Advisory Subcommittee throughout 2022.

  Even during the Trump Administration, key activities of this censorship complex involved “inoculating” the public against damaging stories about Biden family influence peddling and taking other steps to bolster Joe Biden’s candidacy against Trump.

  Foreign Censorship

  The Justice Subcommittee demonstrated that the threat to Americans’ free speech increasingly includes foreign governments, including Brazil, the European Union, and Australia, but that the Biden-Harris Administration failed to defend Americans’ rights. For example, the Justice Subcommittee determined that in 2022, the FBI facilitated censorship requests to American social media companies on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), a Ukrainian intelligence agency then infiltrated by Russian security services. The SBU transmitted to the FBI lists of social media accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.” The FBI requested—and, in some cases, directed—the world’s largest social media platforms to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online, including a verified State Department account and accounts belonging to American journalists.

  The Biden-Harris Administration also failed to protect Americans confronting censorship outside the United Sates. In Brazil, Justice Alexandre de Moraes forced American companies such as X and Rumble to cease operations in Brazil after they refused to comply with his illegal censorship orders. A European bureaucrat threatened American companies with retaliation under European law for facilitating political discourse in the United States. Australia considered legislation that purported to censor online speech globally. The Justice Subcommittee report observed that the Biden-Harris Administration refused to take a leadership role opposing these efforts. Likely that is because multiple Biden-Harris officials, including Harris and former climate czar John Kerry, have characterized the First Amendment as an obstacle rather than an essential right (see here, here, and here).

  Artificial Intelligence

  The Justice Subcommittee also uncovered strong evidence that the Biden-Harris Administration covertly tried to coerce AI companies by pressuring developers to censor new models, funding the development of AI-powered censorship tools, and collaborating with censorious foreign nations on AI regulations. The Justice Subcommittee identified examples of the Biden-Harris Administration funding the development of both AI-powered censorship tools and pressing tech companies to selectively exclude disfavored information when training generative AI in order to bias or censor responses.

  With regard to potential AI legislation, the Justice Subcommittee report recommends that Congress follow four principles to protect Americans’ right to free expression: (1) ensure the federal government is involved in private AI algorithm or dataset decisions; (2) ban funding of censorship related research; (3) end foreign collaboration on AI regulations involving the censorship of lawful speech; and (4) avoid AI regulation that gives the government coercive leverage.

  Non-Governmental Proxies

  The Justice Subcommittee described how the federal government colluded with private and academic institutions to target and censor Americans’ speech, including (1) how CISA used proxies and partners to target and censor Americans’ election-related speech; and (2) how the National Science Foundation funded and supported the development of AI-powered tools that would supercharge the government’s ability to censor disfavored speech.

  The most notable effort to cover up government censorship efforts was CISA’s (and later GEC’s) partnership with Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, called the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which was launched in 2020 during the Trump Administration. Instead of focusing on legitimate cybersecurity threats, EIP focused on so-called misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, and mutated into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance activities.

  On November 10, 2021, CISA director Jen Easterly gave a speech in which she asserted that CISA is in the business of protecting infrastructure, and “the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure.” She went on to say that Americans should not be free to determine the truth.

  Under Easterly’s tenure, CISA (1) worked with federal partners to mature a whole-of-government approach to curbing alleged misinformation and disinformation; (2) considered the creation of an anti-misinformation “rapid response team” capable of physically deploying across the country; (3) moved its censorship operation to the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), a CISA-funded non-profit, after Missouri and Louisiana, along with several other plaintiffs, sued CISA and the Biden-Harris Administration; and (4) used the same CISA-funded non-profit as its spokesperson to “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.” Members of CISA’s advisory committee internally worried that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”

  In a draft of its 2022 recommendations, a CISA subcommittee recommended that it step up the use of outside organizations in performing its functions, which increasingly focused on censoring Americans. Though correctly warned by CIA legal counsel that “the government cannot ask an outside party to do something the Intelligence Community cannot do,” CISA disregarded that advice to bypass the First Amendment and “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”

  One method CISA used to censor Americans is called “Switchboarding.” This is the federal government’s practice of referring requests for the removal of content on social media from generally Democratic state and local election officials to the relevant platforms. For the 2022 election cycle, CISA transferred this function to EI-ISAC. The FBI was often copied or referenced in requests to suppress or remove content, signaling that it would take action if the request was not acted upon.

  CISA claimed that its mission did not include censoring “content that is polarizing, biased, partisan or contains viewpoints expressed about elections or politics,” “inaccurate statements about an elected or appointed official, candidate, or political party,” or “broad, non-specific statements about the integrity of elections or civic processes that do not reference a specific current election administration activity.” But in practice, state and local election officials used the CISA-funded EI-ISAC to silence excluded criticism and political dissent.

  For example, in August 2022 a Democratic government official in Loudoun County, Virginia, reported a Tweet featuring an unedited video of a county official, “because it was posted as part of a larger campaign to discredit the word of” that official regarding Loudon County’s on-going dispute about the use of Critical Race Theory in county schools. EI-ISAC sought to assist that county official, demonstrating that her “misinformation report” was nothing more than a politically motivated censorship attempt.

  Following increased public awareness of CISA’s role in government-induced censorship, and the Justice Subcommittee’s issuance of subpoenas to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta in February 2023, CISA scrubbed its website of references to domestic MDM. Prior to the cleansing, the domain “CISA.gov/mdm” was associated with a webpage titled “Mis, Dis, Malinformation,” which included an overview of CISA’s efforts to censor foreign and domestic actors.

  The Biden Justice Department led efforts to stall compliance by CISA and its private partners with Justice Subcommittee subpoenas.

  Election Interference Operations

  The Justice Subcommittee found extensive evidence of a concerted campaign by the FBI to preemptively debunk—or “prebunk”—allegations about the Biden family’s influence peddling scheme in advance of the 2020 presidential election. Starting prior to the New York Post’s October 14, 2020 report about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, this campaign—during Trump’s first term—included warning social media platforms about a pre-election Russian influence operation relating to Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian company Burisma. As a result, many social media platforms adopted policies that suppressed or banned coverage of the Post’s story as a potential Russian hack-and-leak operation.

  The FBI had been in possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop since late 2019, and used it in one or more investigations in 2020. It knew the laptop was real and that its contents were authentic, but did not correct the false justifications for censoring the Post’s story.

  Even after social media companies stopped censoring the stories, 51 former intelligence community officials, using their official titles and citing their national security credentials, released a public statement suggesting that the story “had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The Justice Subcommittee obtained communications among signers, however, that established that many doubted the laptop was in fact Russian disinformation. The Justice Subcommittee investigation revealed that the public statement was politically motivated from the start. As former CIA Director Michael Morell testified, it was designed to “help Vice President Biden” in his presidential campaign.

  As the emails soliciting signatures made clear, “We think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week’s debate,” and “we want to give the [Vice President] a talking point to use in response.” The Justice Committee’s interim report detailed how Morell spearheaded the statement after receiving a call from then-campaign advisor, and later Biden Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. The Biden campaign coordinated the statement’s dissemination to the media.

  Nonetheless, in their public statements, interviews, and communications, the signers did not correct Politico, MSNBC, or other media that reported the statement as establishing the laptop was Russian disinformation, or proactively seek to correct that perception. Rather, the Intelligence Community worked to diminish the reach of stories that could be seen as harmful to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

  A report issued jointly by the Justice Subcommittee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence detailed previously nonpublic information that CIA officials, including Trump CIA Director Gina Haspel, were aware of the statement before its publication. In fact, some of the signatories, including Morell, were under contract with the CIA at or about the time of its publication and had access to confidential information that discredited the letter’s purpose.

  In a debate with Trump on October 22, 2020, Biden referred to the statement as proof that the laptop was a Russian hoax, and that Trump’s attacks were “garbage.” Numerous signers lauded Biden’s use of their statement in their internal communications.

  A book written by Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor to Biden who was deeply involved in the censorship enterprise, criticized Americans who disagreed with the administration’s overriding the Constitution as an “obsession with individual liberties.”

  Weaponizing Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Against Americans

  The FBI leadership’s trend toward political partisanship in recent years has disturbed the ranks of front-line FBI agents. FBI whistleblowers disclosed examples of waste, fraud, and abuse at the Bureau. They characterized the FBI leadership as “cancerous,” “enveloped in politicization and weaponization,” “rotted at its core,” and having a “systemic culture of unaccountability.”

  According to the Justice Subcommittee, the FBI brutally retaliated against many of them for breaking ranks—suspending them without pay, preventing them from seeking outside employment, and purging suspected disloyal employees. The FBI also abused its security clearance adjudication process to target whistleblowers. Under pressure from the Justice Subcommittee, the FBI reinstated the clearance of at least one decorated FBI employee.

  During the Biden-Harris Administration, the Justice Department and FBI advanced a two-tiered system of justice—investigating and prosecuting individuals or groups with disfavored views. Documents received pursuant to the Justice Subcommittee’s subpoenas show that the FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists. It targeted its employees who hold conservative views, investigated parents at school board meetings, and sought to invade Catholic churches in the name of fighting “domestic terrorism.” The IRS, Treasury Department, and other Justice Department agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), misused federal funds to target Americans.

  Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of the Justice Department leadership’s disdain for American people than a memorandum issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland on October 4, 2021 to the FBI director and all U.S. attorneys that instructed them to develop strategies to investigate parents who voiced objections at school board meetings. The Justice Department’s documents demonstrate that there was no compelling nationwide law-enforcement justification for the Attorney General’s directive. Rather, the administration’s goal was to silence critics of its radical education policies and neutralize an issue that was threatening Democratic Party prospects in the close gubernatorial race in Virginia.

  In response to the Justice Subcommittee’s subpoena, the FBI acknowledged for the first time that, following Garland’s directive, it opened 25 “Guardian assessments” of school board threats, and that six of these investigations were run by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. According to the FBI, none of these investigations resulted in federal arrests or charges, highlighting the political motives behind the actions.

  Under Biden and Garland, the ATF issued a rule to drastically expand the number of Americans who would require a license to deal in firearms. A federal district court judge issued temporary restraining orders prohibiting enforcement of that rule pending a decision in the case. To send a message, a large contingent of heavily armed ATF agents executed a pre-dawn raid of alleged dealer Bryan Malinowski that left him dead. The raid is reminiscent of the FBI’s similar raid against pro-life activist Mark Houk, who was later acquitted of all charges.

  In 2022, Congress appropriated $78.9 billion in new funding to the IRS, including $45 billion to hire as many as 87,000 agents. Following approximately a nine month investigation, the Justice Subcommittee cited evidence that the IRS had weaponized unannounced visits against the administration’s political foes, including an unannounced field visit to the home of journalist Matt Taibbi the very day he testified before Congress about government abuse. Though neither Taibbi nor his accountant had ever received a notice from the IRS about an issue with his tax returns, the IRS had opened a case against Taibbi on Christmas Eve—a Saturday—three weeks after he began reporting on government censorship involving Twitter. Taibbi owed no taxes; in fact, the IRS owed Taibbi a substantial refund.

  Pressure and oversight about abusive field visits led the IRS to prohibit unannounced field visits to taxpayers’ homes.

  The Justice Subcommittee also found that the Justice Department attempted to access private communications from members of Congress and congressional staff involved in conducting oversight of the Department.

  Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans

  The Justice Subcommittee revealed and stopped the FBI’s effort to target Catholic Americans because of their religious views.

  While the FBI claims it “does not categorize investigations as domestic terrorism based on the religious beliefs of the subject involved,” an FBI-wide memorandum originating from its Richmond Field Office did just that. Under the guise of tackling the threat of domestic terrorism, the memorandum painted certain “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as violent extremists and proposed opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of “threat mitigation.”

  The Justice Subcommittee’s investigation began in February 2023 after a whistleblower revealed the existence of an anti-Catholic memorandum in internal FBI systems. FBI employees could not define the meaning of “radical-traditionalist Catholic” when preparing, editing, or reviewing the memorandum. Nevertheless, this single investigation became the basis for an FBI-wide warning about the dangers of “radical” Catholics.

  From witness testimony and FBI internal documents, the Justice Subcommittee learned that there were errors at every step of the memorandum’s drafting, review, approval, and removal process. For example, the two FBI employees who co-authored the memorandum told FBI internal investigators that they knew the sources cited in the memorandum, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic, had a political bias.

  Coordinating with Financial Institutions to Surveil Americans

  The Justice Subcommittee’s investigation revealed that federal law enforcement has virtually unchecked access to private financial data, is testing out new methods and technology to embed financial surveillance into the American financial framework, and has deputized the financial sector as an investigative arm (see here and here).

  The Bank Secrecy Act authorizes the Treasury Department to impose reporting obligations on businesses and financial institutions, including Currency Transaction Reports for any individual involved in any transaction of over $10,000 and a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) when it identifies a “suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation.” Documents received by the Justice Subcommittee from at least 17 entities, including banks, crowdfunding sites, money service businesses, and the Treasury Department, show that the FBI has manipulated this process by encouraging banks to file SARs based on names and selectors provided by the FBI. The fact that a SAR has been filed is not disclosed to customers.

  The FBI developed typologies that target Americans with conservative views, including gun owners, those concerned with illegal immigration, and those opposed to COVID mandates. Other criteria used for these warrantless searches of financial records include contributions to conservative organizations, including leading legal organizations that defend religious and conservative views such as Alliance Defending Freedom. The FBI also uses search terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP” and has treated purchases of religious texts or firearms as indicators of “extremism.”

  The Justice Subcommittee discovered that financial institutions confidentially report millions of Americans’ transactions to the federal government and that at least 25,000 government officials have access to search and download Americans’ financial information from government repositories without a warrant.

  Weaponizing the FTC Against Elon Musk

  The announcement of Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter generated an enormous backlash among elected officials and activists on the Left, some of whom called for the federal government to “block” the purchase.

  On April 25, 2022, Twitter accepted Musk’s offer. Three days later, an attorney for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan sent an email to the other commissioners requesting that they vote the following day to approve a previously negotiated consent decree with Twitter that included additional privacy and security protections. Prior to this email, Khan had not circulated a copy of the consent decree or FTC staff recommendations to the Republican commissioners—despite having substantially completed the decree a year earlier. In addition, despite repeated requests, FTC staff had not briefed the Republican commissioners about the proposal. In rushing to a vote, Khan ignored the traditional three-week notice period used by commissioners to study proposals.

  Following the closing of the acquisition, Democrats in Washington stepped up their pressure campaign. Seven Democratic senators issued a joint press release calling for the FTC to investigate Musk’s so-called “alarming steps” at Twitter. They demanded that the FTC “vigorously oversee its consent decree” with Twitter, and outlined the different purported grounds on which Musk could have already violated the terms of the decree in his first few weeks of ownership. President Biden signaled support for government intervention, saying that “there’s a lot of ways” the government could review the transaction.

  The FTC launched an aggressive campaign to harass Twitter, particularly after Musk took steps to reorient Twitter around free speech. Within three months, the FTC sent Twitter over a dozen letters that made more than 350 specific demands, including that Twitter provide, among other things: (1) information relating to journalists’ work protected by the First Amendment, including their work to expose censorship abuses by Big Tech and the federal government; (2) every internal communication “relating to Elon Musk”; (3) information about whether Twitter is “selling its office equipment”; (4) all reasons Twitter terminated Jim Baker, a former FBI lawyer; (5) information disaggregated by “each department, division, and/or team,” regardless of whether the work had anything to do with privacy or information security.

  Khan refused to meet with Musk to discuss the situation until Twitter fully complied with all demands, many of which had nothing to do with the consent decree. Ultimately, after its extensive and expensive harassment, the FTC found no violations of the consent decree.

  Democrats’ Target Political Opponents

  The Justice Subcommittee also issued two reports (here and here) that summarize already known information about the Democrats’ unprecedented campaign of lawfare to keep Trump off of the campaign trail, drain him of resources, and attempt to prevent millions of Americans from being able to cast a ballot for their candidate of choice. My articles on this lawfare (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) also discuss its impact on Trump’s lawyers and supporters, whereas the Subcommittee’s reports focus on Trump.

  *  *  *

  Most conservatives believe in restraint. We try to win with integrity, logic, and tradition. That leaves us unprepared for asymmetrical attacks from the Left.

  “Freedom is fragile thing,” Ronald Reagan warned in 1967, “it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 23:20

• Poilievre Claims US Benefits From 'Massive Price Discount' On Canadian Energy As Tariffs Loom
  Poilievre Claims US Benefits From ‘Massive Price Discount’ On Canadian Energy As Tariffs Loom

  As President-elect Donald Trump goes full throttle on his proposed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods until they fix their porous border – which America’s northern neighbor has already vowed to address – Conservative leader Pierre Poilievere says that Trump should remember that the US benefits from cheap Canadian oil, which they’ve been selling at a “massive price discount.”

  

  According to Poilievre, this has allowed American refineries to have “profited” at Canada’s expense, adding that tariffs on Canadian energy would mean many Americans would lose their jobs – and that both countries are better off without them so that the US can continue to get “low-cost, totally reliable 100% ally” energy.

  “I would remind our American friends that they benefit from our affordable, reliable energy, and the alternative is Venezuela, Iran, and other foreign dictatorships,” he said at a Jan. 9 press conference in Ottawa. “Why would we not want to have a North American energy market that enriches us both?”

  The US is the largest consumer of Canadian oil and gas – receiving 97% of the country’s crude oil exports in 2023, with the majority (87%) coming from Alberta, the country’s largest oil producing region.

  On Jan. 7, Trump doubled down on his threat to impose the 25% tariffs on Canada when he takes office, adding that he would consider using “economic force” to merge the two  countries.

  According to Trump, America is “subsidizing” Canada, and the US doesn’t actually need the northern neighbor for things like lumber, dairy and automobiles.

  According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada amounted to US$67.9 billion (C$91.6 billion) in 2023. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada estimates Canada’s surplus with the U.S. last year was US$80.5 billion ($108.6 billion). Trade data reported by the two countries varies due to differences in assumptions.

  In 2023, crude oil exports accounted for 16 percent of Canada’s total export value, estimated at $124 billion. –Epoch Times

  Officials in Alberta say that the federal government’s cancellation of pipeline projects to deliver Canadian oil and gas to other markets has meant that Canada has to sell its energy at deeper discounts to the United States.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 22:45

• Coalition Of Women's Sports Groups Urge Trump To Help Reform NCAA Rules
  Coalition Of Women’s Sports Groups Urge Trump To Help Reform NCAA Rules

  Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times,

  A coalition of female athletes and women’s advocacy groups has asked President-elect Donald Trump for his help in demanding that the NCAA “restore fairness and opportunity to collegiate sports.”

  

  In a letter to Trump dated Jan. 9, the coalition requests the soon-to-be inaugurated president to use his “powerful voice to urge the NCAA to take action and clarify participation rules to protect the rights and opportunities of female athletes.”

  The coalition alleged that the NCAA has “failed” to respond to female athletes “who have been forced to choose between forfeiting games or participating in competitions that are fundamentally unfair and even dangerous.”

  The group said it is appealing to the NCAA “in the name of fairness and commonsense.”

  The letter was sent on the day the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky struck down the proposed Title IX regulations created by the outgoing Biden Department of Education.

  The proposed rules would have added the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the existing categories of male and female when defining sex discrimination.

  The court decision applies to all educational institutions that receive federal funding.

  Adopting the name “Our Bodies, Our Sports (OBOS),” the coalition is demanding that the NCAA establish and enforce the right of female athletes to participate in sports based on biological sex.

  The coalition wants the NCAA to repeal all policies and rules that allow male athletes to take roster spots on women’s teams and compete in women’s events.

  Beyond the Ruling

  OBOS is demanding the NCAA revoke all records set by male athletes competing in female sports and restore the female NCAA sports archives by erasing championship wins by teams with male players and those of individual male competitors.

  Single-sex locker rooms for female athletes are also among the OBOS demands, as is restoring the Title IX guarantee of equal opportunity for the sexes—a concept they say was “gutted” by the Biden administration.

  Adriana McLamb is a former collegiate women’s volleyball player who is now coaching and serving as a recruiting coordinator in Florida.

  McLamb, an activist with the Independent Women’s Forum, told The Epoch Times that the timing of the court ruling was good for her movement and that the election of Trump was “pivotal.”

  “The two events mark the beginning of the change back to commonsense. A male is a male and a female is a female,” she said.

  “Though the fight is not over, we can see the end of men playing in women’s sports and women getting their locker rooms back. Protecting women’s spaces is not anti-trans. It is pro-woman,” McLamb said.

  McLamb stated that banning males from women’s sports, revoking the records men set, and stripping championships from trans-identifying individuals or teams with trans-identifying players, was all about “protecting future female athletes and righting the wrongs of the past.”

  Rachel Crandall-Crocker, executive director of TransMichigan, an LGBT advocacy group, told The Epoch Times that the proposed actions would be “absolutely discriminatory.”

  Crandall-Crocker expects there will be protests and hopes that the court’s decision will be overturned on appeal.

  At the close of the letter to Trump, the coalition writes, “We the undersigned represent thousands of female athletes and women’s advocacy groups from across the political spectrum.

  “We stand together in honor of the generations of women who came before us and in defense of all the women and girls who will come next.

  “We ask for your help in demanding that the NCAA finally act to restore fairness and opportunity in collegiate sports,” the letter said.

  Some of the eleven signatories to the letter include the Independent Women’s Forum, Young Women for America, and the Women’s Liberation Front.

  The NCAA and the office of the president-elect did not provide comment by publication time.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 22:10

• Supreme Court Rules 200 Patent Judges' Appointment Unconstitutional
  Supreme Court Rules 200 Patent Judges’ Appointment Unconstitutional

  The Supreme Court has ruled that over 200 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) judges were unconstitutionally appointed, however the problem may be ‘cured’ if the board’s director exercises greater supervision over them.

  

  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion in the split decision in the case of U.S. v. Arthrex Inc, a consolidation of three cases. The patent adjudication system is administered by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), which sits within the Department of Commerce. The PTO has a single director who is subject to Senate confirmation.

  The PTAB was established by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011, and sits in panels of at least three members who are drawn from the Director, the Deputy Director, the Commissioners for Patents and Trademarks, and over 200 Administrative Patent Judges (APJs). Members of the PTAB and APJs are selected by the Secretary of Commerce.

  As the Epoch Times notes further, Roberts explained that Arthrex Inc. develops medical devices and procedures for orthopedic surgery. In 2015, it received a patent on a surgical device it invented that reattaches soft tissue to bone without tying a knot. Arthrex soon claimed that two rival companies had infringed the patent. Three APJs on the PTAB panel concluded that a prior patent application “anticipated” the invention claimed by the patent, making Arthrex’s patent invalid.

  On appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Arthrex raised for the first time an argument based on the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, which provides that the president may appoint officers to assist him in carrying out his responsibilities. Principal officers must be appointed by the president and be confirmed by the Senate, while inferior officers may be appointed by the president alone, the head of an executive department, or a court.

  Roberts noted that Arthrex argued that the APJs were principal officers and that meant their appointment by the Secretary of Commerce was unconstitutional. The Federal Circuit sided with Arthrex and invalidated the tenure protections for APJs.

  In its ruling, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that the authority the APJs possess runs afoul of the Appointments Clause because they are not nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The APJs’ “unreviewable authority” in patent proceedings is not consistent with their appointment by the secretary. Only principal officers who are constitutionally appointed may wield that level of authority, Roberts wrote. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett concurred.

  But the court also ruled 7-2 on what should be done, finding that the constitutional infirmity could be cured by letting the director of the PTO have the ability to review and modify decisions made by the APJs. Four justices partially concurred and partially dissented in various parts of the court’s opinion.

  Roberts quoted Alexander Hamilton who wrote in Federalist 77 that assigning the nomination power to the president guarantees accountability for the appointees’ actions because the “blame of a bad nomination would fall upon the president singly and absolutely.” The “sole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation,” the founding father wrote.

  Roberts cited a 1997 precedent, writing that the Appointments Clause “adds a degree of accountability in the Senate, which shares in the public blame ‘for both the making of a bad appointment and the rejection of a good one.’”

  Justice Clarence Thomas penned a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

  “For the very first time, this Court holds that Congress violated the Constitution by vesting the appointment of a federal officer in the head of a department,” Thomas wrote.

  “Just who are these ‘principal’ officers that Congress unsuccessfully sought to smuggle into the Executive Branch without Senate confirmation? About 250 administrative patent judges who sit at the bottom of an organizational chart, nestled under at least two levels of authority. Neither our precedent nor the original understanding of the Appointments Clause requires Senate confirmation of officers inferior to not one, but two officers below the President.” (Italics in original.)

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 21:35

• Vance Says Trump Won't Issue Pardons For Violent Jan. 6 Defendants
  Vance Says Trump Won’t Issue Pardons For Violent Jan. 6 Defendants

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Vice President-elect JD Vance said on Jan. 12 that individuals who were violent during the U.S. Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021, “obviously” should not be pardoned. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to use his clemency power for people who have been charged in connection to the incident over the past four years.

  

  Those who “protested peacefully” on Jan. 6 should receive a pardon, Vance told Fox News. He added that there is also a “little bit of a gray area” in some of those cases.

  “I think it’s very simple,” Vance elaborated.

  “If you protested peacefully on Jan. 6 and you’ve had [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

  More than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes in connection to the Capitol breach, according to records from the Department of Justice. A number of people were charged with misdemeanor offenses for entering the Capitol in an unauthorized manner, while some were charged with felonies.

  Leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys groups were convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as plots to use violence to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to then-President-elect Joe Biden.

  Vance said on Jan. 12 that he believes that “a lot of people” have been “prosecuted unfairly” over the past several years.

  “We need to rectify that,” Vance said. “We’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law.”

  Also on the morning of Jan. 12, Vance responded to critics on social media who said that his comments to Fox News didn’t go far enough, with some saying that all Jan. 6 defendants should be pardoned.

  “I’ve been defending these guys for years,” Vance wrote on social media platform X.

  “The president saying he’ll look at each case (and me saying the same) is not some walkback … I assure you, we care about people unjustly locked up. Yes, that includes people provoked and it includes people who got a garbage trial.”

  That comment came in response to a prominent conservative social media account’s statement on Jan. 12 that new footage has shown “cops shooting innocent J6 protesters and [Vance] goes on Fox News and tells the world that only non violent protesters should get pardoned … better rethink what you just said JD.”

  Vance noted that he donated to a Jan. 6 “political prisoner fund” and was criticized over it during his run for Ohio’s Senate seat.

  In a wide-ranging news conference last week at his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump suggested he would initiate “major pardons” for individuals arrested in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

  A reporter asked him, “You said on your first day of office you were going to pardon Jan. 6 defendants. Are you planning to pardon those who were charged with violent offenses?”

  “Well, we’re looking at it, and we have other people in there,” Trump said, adding that “people that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now.”

  “We’ll be looking at the whole thing. But I’ll be making major pardons, yes,” he added.

  The president-elect has said on multiple occasions that he would carry out the pardons quickly after he is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 21:00

• US Lawmakers Call For Curbs On Clinical Trial Collaborations Linked To Chinese Military
  US Lawmakers Call For Curbs On Clinical Trial Collaborations Linked To Chinese Military

  Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A bipartisan group of lawmakers has asked the U.S. government to consider new rules restricting U.S. biotech companies from conducting clinical trials with entities linked to the Chinese military.

  

  In a Jan. 9 letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said the proposed restrictions will “help ensure U.S. biotechnology does not fall into the hands of the PRC,” referring to the acronym of communist China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

  The letter, signed by Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), chair and ranking member of the committee, respectively, along with Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), said biotech competition between the United States and the PRC “will not only have implications for our national and economic security, but also for the future of healthcare and the security of American medical data.”

  The letter cites Beijing’s 14th Five-Year Plan—which “identifies dominance in biotechnology as critical to ’strengthen the PRC’s science and technological power’ and calls to deepen military-civil science and technology collaboration in the sector”—and a publication by a former president of the Chinese military’s National Defense University, which discussed the potential to create new synthetic pathogens that are “more toxic, more contagious, and more resistant.”

  The lawmakers praised the proposals issued by the Bureau of Industry and Security in July 2024 to expand export controls to military and intelligence end users as “a welcome update.” They suggested the measures could be further strengthened by requiring a license to conduct clinical trials with medical institutions linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

  “Specifically, we recommend updating the definition of ‘Military End User’ to state medical infrastructure owned or operated by the national armed services of the PRC and other countries as appropriate constitutes a military end-use if a U.S. person is seeking to engage with the institution to conduct a clinical trial,” they added.

  The Epoch Times reached out to the Commerce Department for comment and did not receive a response by publication time.

  The letter is a sign of growing concern over China’s role in the biotechnology industry.

  In August 2024, the same committee wrote to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), asking the agency to ensure that U.S. clinical trials are not contributing to human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region or aiding the transfer of U.S. critical intellectual property to the PLA.

  Citing official data, the letter said U.S. biopharmaceutical companies over the past decade had run hundreds of clinical trials that had at least one Chinese military entity among the research partners and conducted trials in hospitals in Xinjiang, “where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engaged in genocide of the Uyghur population.”

  In a response letter to the lawmakers dated Jan. 2, the FDA Acting Associate Commissioner for Legislative Affairs Laura Paulos said protections are in place for trial participants. 

  “Given concerns regarding the human rights abuses occurring in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, FDA has publicly reiterated that (legislation) requires clinical trials to obtain the legally effective, informed consent of human subjects,” she wrote.

  In response to concerns about intellectual property theft and technology transfer, Paulos referred the lawmakers to “appropriate U.S. federal agency partners.”

  In addition to clinical trials, the committee has asked the Department of Defense (DOD) to add several Chinese biotech companies to its list of companies allegedly linked to the Chinese military. Two of these companies, Origincell and MGI Group, were added to the updated list on Jan. 7, along with dozens of others in sectors such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, drones, and shipping.

  The DOD also included BGI Group, the parent company of MGI and BGI Genomics, which was previously designated as a Chinese military company, and another BGI subsidiary, Forensic Genomics International.

  Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 19:50

• Biden Calls Meta's Decision To End Fact-Checking Program "Really Shameful"
  Biden Calls Meta’s Decision To End Fact-Checking Program “Really Shameful”

  Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

  President Joe Biden has shared his disapproval at Meta’s decision to do away with its current social media fact-checking program.

  This week Meta, which owns the Facebook and Instagram social media platforms, announced it would stop using its third-party fact-checking program for U.S.-based content review purposes.

  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he made the decision because the existing fact-checking program has become “too politically biased,” resulting in censorship and a loss of trust.

  “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” he said in a Jan. 7 video statement.

  

  Asked for his opinion on the move at a Jan. 10 press conference, Biden said, “It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about.”

  Up until this week, Meta had partnered with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to run its third-party fact-checking service. The IFCN is administered by the Poynter Institute, which also operates the PolitiFact fact-checking publication.

  “The idea that, you know, a billionaire can buy something and say ‘by the way from this point on, we’re not going to fact-check anything’ and you know when you have millions of people reading, going online reading this stuff it’s—anyway, I think it’s really shameful,” Biden said.

  Meta is not doing away with fact-checking outright. Rather, Zuckerberg said Meta’s platforms will move toward a “more comprehensive community notes” style system, similar to the one employed by social media platform X. He will start the new model in the United States.

  Rather than relying on a fact-checking organization such as the IFCN to review content, X’s community notes feature allows users to weigh in directly. X users may suggest a fact-checking note on controversial posts on the platform, and then provide feedback on whether a suggested fact-checking note is itself accurate, and necessary for the particular post. Posts that have been flagged with sufficient community input display an attached fact-checking note explaining why the particular post is inaccurate or may be missing important context.

  Zuckerberg also announced that Meta’s content moderation team will be moved out of California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”

  Zuckerberg and other Meta officers have defended the move as needed to restore free speech and expression to their platforms.

  In a Jan. 7 blog post, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, said as well-intentioned as their prior fact-checking efforts had been, “they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users, and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.”

  “Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” Kaplan said.

  Meta’s fact-checking and content moderation decisions had been a point of contention during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

  In October 2020, the Meta platforms reduced the reach of posts linking to articles by The New York Post concerning a laptop that then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. The New York Post’s articles detailed the contents of the laptop, including documents indicating the elder Biden had some level of interaction with his son’s foreign business partners.

  In a Jan. 10 interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg alleged that officials in the Biden administration routinely contacted Meta, with demands that they remove or suppress certain content, including memes and satirical posts.

  “Basically these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said.

  The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response by press time.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 19:15

• Inflation Expectations Will Keep Rising In 2025, And It Matters Most In Japan
  Inflation Expectations Will Keep Rising In 2025, And It Matters Most In Japan

  By Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist at BCA Research

  Executive Summary

  • In the developed economies excluding Japan, rising inflation expectations will lift them further above the 2 percent target. This will limit the scope for further interest rate cuts.
  • But in Japan, rising inflation expectations will lift them up to the BoJ’s 2 percent target. This will remove the BoJ’s justification for its decades-long zero interest rate policy (ZIRP).
  • The normalisation of Japan’s monetary policy poses a big risk to stocks because Japan has been the main source of financial market liquidity, and thereby, of rising stock market valuations.
  • Hence, the biggest risk to US tech valuations comes from a rise in the Japanese real bond yield.
  • On a structural (1-2 year) time horizon though, it is highly likely that Japanese real yields will rise, causing a meaningful setback in stocks versus bonds, and especially the US superstar stocks.
  • But from a timing perspective, wait until the complexities of the price trends in USD/JPY and/or Nasdaq versus 30-year T-bond have reached the point of collapse that signalled previous reversals at the end of 2023 and the summer of 2024. You can monitor these indicators on our website.
  • Go tactically long copper.

  2024’s political Zeitgeist was encapsulated in what I have called the ‘3 I’s’: Incumbents punished for Inflation and Immigration.

  Incumbent governments were given a kicking by furious electorates who had suffered a huge drop in their standard of living. And it made not the slightest difference whether the incumbents were left-of-centre Democrats in the US, centrist Macronists in France, or right-of-centre Conservatives in the UK.

  In the case of excess immigration, the loss of well-being was feared. In the case of excess inflation, the loss of well-being was genuine. Yet since peaking in 2022 at close to 10 percent, inflation has plunged to the low-single digits. So, why is everybody still so angry?

  It’s Cumulative Inflation That Matters

  One of the main reasons that central banks target 2 percent inflation is that 2 percent is the highest rate of inflation that goes largely unnoticed. Going largely unnoticed, households and firms do not consciously factor sub-2 percent inflation into their price and wage setting processes. This prevents an ‘inflation spiral’ taking hold.

  The reason that sub-2 percent inflation goes largely unnoticed is that economic productivity also tends to rise at 1-2 percent. And to the extent that wages rise in line with productivity, people will not suffer a loss of purchasing power when prices rise at 2 percent or below. So, the inflation goes unnoticed.

  The thing that people notice and hate, is the cumulative loss of purchasing power when prices keep rising at above 2 percent.

  Telling people that inflation is back down in the low-single digits will not make them feel any better when they have just suffered a cumulative loss of purchasing power of 25 percent!

  

  It is this cumulative effect of past inflation that sets inflation expectations. As the charts in this report show, market expected 10-year inflation is nothing more than historic 10-year inflation (with a small tweak for the very recent inflation experience)

  

  But what about survey-based inflation expectations? The answer is that survey-based inflation expectations like the University of Michigan consumer survey of 5–10-year US inflation expectations also track delivered long-run inflation (albeit, plus a constant).

  

  Hence, to get cumulative inflation back to the 2 percent rate that is unnoticeable, inflation must fall below 2 percent to offset the post-pandemic period when inflation was running well above 2 percent. But as central banks are unlikely to take inflation much below 2 percent, inflation expectations – as a mathematical identity – will trend higher

  

  Put more simply, inflation expectations will trend higher because the post-pandemic noticeable inflation era will become a greater part of our collective experience compared with the pre-pandemic unnoticeable inflation era.

  Or, more precisely, inflation expectations will trend higher unless they cause a deflationary shock (or an exogenous deflationary shock arrives) that wrench them lower again. Such a shock might come from Japan.

  Japanese Inflation Expectations Are Approaching Mission Accomplished

  In the developed economies excluding Japan, rising inflation expectations will lift them further above the 2 percent target. This will limit the scope for further interest rate cuts, for two reasons. First, because it risks further un-anchoring those inflation expectations.

  Second, because it is the real bond yield that matters for the economy. If inflation expectations rise, then nominal bond yields must also rise to achieve a given real stance of monetary policy. This means that bond yields will trend higher until the shock arrives that wrenches them lower. In Japan though, rising inflation expectations will lift them up to the BoJ’s 2 percent target.

  

  Mission accomplished, it will remove the BoJ’s justification for its decades-long zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), especially with the real bond yield now deeply negative. It may sound perverse after decades of too low inflation, but once inflation is close to target, a deeply negative real bond yield risks taking Japanese inflation too high.

  The Normalisation Of Japan’s Monetary Policy Poses A Big Risk To Stocks

  The normalisation of Japan’s monetary policy poses a big risk to stocks because Japan has been the main source of financial market liquidity, and thereby, of rising stock market valuations.

  Through 2019-2022, the Nasdaq’s valuation (earnings yield) moved in perfect lockstep with the US real bond yield, as might be expected. But in late-2022, the Nasdaq’s valuation detached from the US real yield and attached to the world’s last remaining negative real bond yield – in Japan.

  

  Hence, through 2023-2024, the Nasdaq’s earnings yield has moved in near-perfect lockstep with the Japanese real bond yield. This means that the biggest risk to US tech valuations does not come from a rise in the US real bond yield. The biggest risk comes from a rise in the Japanese real bond yield. This also solves the seeming mystery as to why the US tech valuations have been largely unscathed by the recent surge in the US real bond yield. To reiterate, US tech valuations are not tracking the US real yield, they are tracking the Japanese real yield. US tech valuations have been largely unscathed because the Japanese real yield has not surged… yet.

  On a structural (1-2 year) time horizon though, it is highly likely that Japanese real yields will rise. This will end the major source of financial market liquidity that is behind the powerful yet narrow 2023-24 surge in stock market valuations. On this structural (1-2 year) time horizon therefore, I expect a meaningful setback in stocks versus bonds, and especially the US superstar stocks.

  But from a timing perspective, wait until the market has become too dovish on the BoJ and/or too bullish on the US superstar stocks. In other words, when the complexities of the price trends in USD/JPY and/or Nasdaq versus 30-year T-bond have reached the point of collapse that signalled previous reversals at the end of 2023 and the summer of 2024.

  

  These excellent timing indicators are not yet flashing red. The good news is that you can monitor them updated daily on our website.

  Go Tactically Long Copper

  Finally, relating to trend changes among the major investments and sectors we monitor, there is a tactical buying opportunity for copper.

  The recent sell-off in copper has reached the collapsed short-term complexity that has signaled stabilisations and rebounds through 2023-24.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 18:40

• Megyn Kelly Mocks Dems: "Hitler's Quite Charming When You Spend Time With Him
  Megyn Kelly Mocks Dems: “Hitler’s Quite Charming When You Spend Time With Him

  Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

  Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly noted how once again the Democrat narrative that President Trump is a dangerous threat to Democracy doesn’t jive with the way they act around him, after Obama was seen chatting and laughing with Trump at Jimmy Carter’s funeral.

  As we highlighted, the pair were seen sharing a cordial exchange after being seated together, with lip readers claiming that Trump asked Obama to meet somewhere quiet after the ceremony to discuss something important.

  “I want people to remember what former President Obama was saying about Trump, literally, in October, okay, three months ago,” Kelly noted adding that Obama claimed Trump “wants Hitler’s generals to take over, and he’s genuinely dangerous.”

  “Barack’s laughing, genuinely laughing, to where, like his body is shaking,” Kelly continued, commenting on the exchange between Obama and Trump.

  “Hitler’s so funny. Hitler’s quite charming when you spend time with him, one on one,” Kelly further quipped.

  Her guest Jesse Kelly commented, “Obama was the one who engineered the coup. He was the one who engineered the coup to get Joe Biden out of the White House. And not only did he engineer the coup to get Joe Biden out of the White House, he’s the one who vouched for Kamala Harris with his vast Donor Network, billionaire after billionaire after billionaire.”

  “He knifed Joe Biden in the ribs, shoved him out the back of the White House and then picked up the phone and organised $1.5 billion to be given to Kamala Harris for her campaign, where she proceeded to not only embarrass herself the entire time, she embarrassed him.” Kelly further urged.

  He further explained, “When you vouch for somebody with a bunch of billionaires and they flame out as badly as she flames out, well, he is not going to do that again. And without Barack Obama, without daddy Barack harrying her, Kamala Harris is never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to be able to launch a significant presidential run again in her life.”

  Watch:

  *  *  *

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 18:05

• Coffee Timing Linked To Health Outcomes
  Coffee Timing Linked To Health Outcomes

  Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  What time you drink your coffee may be just as important as how much you drink.

  

  According to new research, morning coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer compared to those who consumed coffee throughout the day.

  Impact on Mortality Risk

  The large-scale study, published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday, tracked more than 40,000 adults for nearly a decade.

  Researchers found that there were two types of coffee drinkers: those who drank coffee only in the morning (36 percent of participants) and those who drank coffee throughout the day (about 15 percent).

  

  Compared to people who did not drink coffee, morning coffee drinkers showed a 16 percent lower risk of death from all causes. The reduction in cardiovascular death risk was even more pronounced, with morning drinkers showing a 31 percent lower risk.

  In contrast, people who drank coffee all day had no significant reduction in death risk.

  Amount of Coffee We Drink Also Matters

  Researchers also discovered that the timing of coffee consumption affected the relationship between the amount of coffee people drank and their mortality risk.

  Among morning-type drinkers, both moderate (1 to 3 cups) and heavy (more than 3 cups) coffee drinkers had the highest reduction in mortality risk, with moderate drinkers benefitting slightly more.

  However, this benefit was not seen in coffee drinkers who drank coffee throughout the day. This suggests drinking your coffee in the morning is more beneficial for cardiovascular health and overall longevity than having it later in the day.

  Possible Mechanisms

  While the exact mechanism of how drinking coffee in the morning reduces the risk of death from cardiovascular disease remains unclear, afternoon or evening coffee consumption might disrupt circadian rhythms and melatonin levels, Dr. Lu Qi, lead researcher and professor at Tulane’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, told The Epoch Times.

  These disruptions could affect cardiovascular risk factors like inflammation and blood pressure.

  “Previous studies have shown drinking coffee is related to lower risk of mortality and risk of chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers,” Qi said. “Our study for the first time indicates that the time of coffee drinking matters regarding its beneficial effects, and drinking coffee in the morning only may strengthen the benefits.”

  Qi emphasized the importance of considering both the timing and amount of coffee intake when considering its effects on health outcomes.

  He added that further studies are needed to validate these findings in other populations and test the impact of changing coffee consumption timing.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 17:30

• Residents Of Argentina's Crime-Ridden Cities Welcome Milei's Gun Reform
  Residents Of Argentina’s Crime-Ridden Cities Welcome Milei’s Gun Reform

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

  Argentine President Javier Milei’s decision to reduce the age of legal gun ownership from 21 to 18 has garnered support from the public. Many city residents say greater civilian access to firearms comes at a the right time for those living in crime-stricken streets and may signal a shift in the country’s attitude toward gun ownership.

  

  Since 2007, Argentina has focused on voluntary civilian disarmament—which many Argentinians say this has helped criminals more than anyone else.

  Fabian Calle, a member of former President Mauricio Macri’s administration, told The Epoch Times Argentinians weren’t shocked when Milei lowered the age for legal firearms ownership. He said many people in Buenos Aires already carry guns due to high rates of violent crime.

  “The people in Buenos Aires abide by the law of the strongest in the streets,” Calle said.

  Local media reports in 2024 noted spikes in homicide, robbery, and petty theft in Buenos Aires.

  This stands in contradiction to official figures released in August, which reported a 4.4 percent drop in the national homicide rates in the first half of 2024.

  Soft on Crime

  Some Argentinians don’t feel safe walking around Buenos Aires, a city that has witnessed a surge in poverty and homeless camps in recent years.

  The link between poverty and crime has been studied at length, with recent evidence suggesting fewer economic resources may influence or trigger criminal behavior.

  High unemployment, soaring inflation, and poverty were prevalent under the last administration of President Alberto Fernández, during which poverty levels surpassed 40 percent in some parts of the country.

  It’s a situation that Milei’s administration is still working to address amid sweeping economic reforms that has already cut thousands of government jobs and state spending by 30 percent.

  In December, Argentina’s Ministry of Human Capital stated that national poverty levels had been brought down to 49.9 percent from 54.9 percent in the first quarter of 2024. The agency attributed the high poverty rate to “the crisis left by the inflationary economic model of the previous administration.”

  

  “You need to look over your shoulder more often now, there are so many people camping in the streets,” Buenos Aires resident Lucilla Martinez told The Epoch Times. “Even in tourist areas, they [homeless people] can be aggressive or start yelling if you don’t give them money.”

  Martinez believes public’s attitude toward firearms ownership is shifting away from the notion of less guns equals less gun crime, an ideology that was promoted by the previous administration.

  Much of this shift has to do with residents feeling less safe outside their homes, according to Martinez. She said she used to walk the last few blocks from the metro stop to her job in Palermo, but now takes a taxi the rest of the way.

  “It just doesn’t feel safe, even in some nicer places. I have a friend who was robbed outside a restaurant and it wasn’t even late [at night],” Martinez said.

  She thinks more people will want to carry registered firearms now that there’s less of a stigma around the issue under Milei’s leadership.

  “So many regular people already own guns. They don’t say anything or others are afraid to get one because for years, we were told by politicians that more guns will mean more crime,” she said.

  Organized crime is another problem that’s on the rise in Argentina. This is exemplified in the city of Rosario in Santa Fe province, which has been a breeding ground for violent crime for years due to its position on the international narcotics smuggling route.

  At the same time, Calle said a lot of judges in Argentina are “soft on criminals,” who don’t end up spending much time in jail due to loopholes in the legal system.

  “We have a society that is unarmed and protected with nothing,” Calle said, “But we have criminals that are protected by judges.”

  Part of this is due to the influence of organized crime on Argentina’s judicial system. The Global Organized Crime Index states that cartels hire professional killers to assassinate judges and some “operate from prisons and enjoy protection from politicians, judges, and deputies.”

  Consequently, Calle said Argentina has a growing number of criminals who are protected by judges who find ways for them to spend little to no time in jail.

  Another reason Argentinians support Milei’s move on lowering the age of gun ownership is the convoluted nature of the existing law, according to Calle. He pointed out that previously, you could go to war at age 18, but couldn’t purchase a legal firearm.

  “In Argentina there are a lot the of laws about age that are confusing,“ he said. ”Argentinians can vote since they are 16 and they can go to war when they are 18. So you can vote, but can’t go to war. You can go to war, but you can’t own a gun.”

  Gun reform is something Milei was passionate about during his election campaign, earning him much criticism among his opposition.

  In a 2022 interview, Milei said, “I am in favor of the free carrying of weapons, definitely.” He added the prohibition of arms doesn’t stop criminals from using them and that the “expected profits” for criminals will only increase and result in more crime.

  Mateo Gonzalez, a Cordoba native and university student in Argentina’s second largest city, agrees with this assessment. He told The Epoch Times that violent crime in his hometown has gotten worse since 2019.

  “There are a lot of robberies here of businesses and homes. It got worse when inflation was over 100 percent,” Gonzalez said.

  When asked how he feels about being able to purchase a legal firearm now at age 20, Gonzalez said he and his family are a lot more open to the idea of gun ownership these days.

  “Criminals aren’t shy about using weapons against unarmed people. Having a gun may persuade bad people to go somewhere else,” he said.

  Though he’s open to the idea of having a firearm, Gonzalez said he’ll likely keep it at home to protect his family, and only if they agree.

  “That was a promise Milei made during his campaign. If criminals can get a gun very fast, then good people should also be able to get guns,” Calle said.

  Voluntary Disarmament

  Milei’s liberal approach to civilian gun ownership in Argentina stands in sharp contrast to previous initiatives established under former president and vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

  Kirchner was elected as Argentina’s first female president in 2007 after her husband, Nestor Kirchner, held the office since 2003.

  

  The same year she was elected is when Congress passed law 26216, where legislators described the possession, purchase, and sale of firearms as a “national emergency.” Law 26216 also approved a voluntary civilian gun buyback program that earned high praise from the United Nations.

  Between 2007 and 2012, the state purchased an estimated 160,531 firearms from residents who willingly surrendered their guns for cash, according to a United Nations report. The going rate for a gun was between $45 and $140, depending on the type of weapon.

  Some researchers have pointed out that the timing of the celebrated gun buyback program came at a very convenient time for the Peronist party, which managed to concentrate power by 2007.

  In a 2008 article published in the Journal of Democracy, the authors noted that while both Kirchners’ administrations remained “fully democratic,” two key problems plagued Argentina at the time: weak political opposition to the renewed strength of Peronism and equally shaky federal institutions.

  Calle said ever since Milei began talking about the “free carrying” of weapons, left wing politicians and their supporters have painted an outcome of chaos and violence in the streets.

  He clarified that only authorized arms dealers or “armarias” will be allowed to sell legal firearms and there are also background checks, personal information requirements, and other steps needed to purchase a legal gun in Argentina.

  “Leftists are trying to sell that it’s going to be bad or evil, disorder and people running around with guns in the streets,” Calle said.

  The last time the Peronist party modified Argentina’s gun laws to include more oversight and restrictions was in 1975. A military junta ousted the elected government and seized power the following year, enacting further controls on civilian firearms.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 16:20

• AP News Heavily Ratioed For Blaming Palisades Fire On Climate Change
  AP News Heavily Ratioed For Blaming Palisades Fire On Climate Change

  The Associated Press published an article titled “Climate Change Contributed to a Week of Wild Weather That Upended Life in the US,” which was heavily ratioed on X for blaming the Palisades Fire solely on “climate change.” 

  The journalist behind the article, Melina Walling, who uses the pronouns “she/her,” failed to mention arson reports and the alarming mismanagement of city fire resources by radical far-left Democrats in power, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

  “Climate change laid the groundwork for California’s megafires,” Walling wrote. 

  

  Walling’s selective reporting, aimed at drumming up climate anxieties among the public to further the left’s climate change agenda, is extraordinarily misleading. 

  She failed to mention in her coverage that the Palisades Fire spread so quickly because the Pacific Palisades reservoir, which was supposed to provide water to extinguish the fire, was completely empty. 

  “This was supposed to be the water to put out the Palisades fire.”

  The FP’s Austyn Jeffs visits the Santa Ynez Reservoir that has reportedly been empty since February 2024. pic.twitter.com/DwO5OrYhWk

  — The Free Press (@TheFP) January 11, 2025

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

  🚨 JUST IN: The Pacific Palisades reservoir was EMPTY AND OFFLINE when the firestorm exploded, per LA Times

  This is CRIMINAL.

  The reservoir holds 117 million gallons of water, and would’ve given firefighters ample pressure to effectively fight the blaze.

  Overpaid Dept. of… pic.twitter.com/afvRlbLJ73

  — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 10, 2025

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

  On top of this, she failed to mention the very existence of the countless arson reports. 

  

  On X, Walling’s article was pushed out by AP News’ account, where it was heavily ratioed on Saturday evening. 

  

  X users responded:

  Arson and terrorism is NOT climate change.

  — Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) January 12, 2025

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

  “Climate change?” 🧐

  Is that why they’re catching people setting fires all over the place on purpose, you disingenuous hacks?

  — Mindy MF Robinson 🇺🇸 (@iheartmindy) January 12, 2025

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

  The face of climate change pic.twitter.com/rXKa7wU1rO

  — PNW_Recondo (@PNW_Recondo) January 12, 2025

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

  Actually
  Issues with the Santa Inez reservoir, which was supposed to provide water for fighting the Palisades fire, include:

  – The reservoir ran out of water very quickly, just 3 hours into firefighting efforts.

  – The reservoir normally holds 117 million gallons of water, but… pic.twitter.com/3c26LJXcnc

  — Crystal M Stanley (@4freedom1USA) January 12, 2025

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

  Why did you lie again? https://t.co/HpllOrfINx

  — Courage Is A Habit (@CourageHabit) January 12, 2025

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

  Trust me bro climate change is real pic.twitter.com/KRTIfHUtM0

  — World Hall Of Fun (@WorldHallOfFun) January 12, 2025

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

  Here’s some FACTS to think about (via Alex Epstein from his post ‘Bad Forest Management, and Not Climate Change, is the Root Cause of California Fires‘):

  “The solution to dangerous, out-of-control wildfires in California is addressing the root cause: ‘excess fuel load’ from bad forest management. Focusing on climate change, a minor variable that we ‘have no near-term control over, is a craven political ploy…

  [T]emperatures have risen 1 degree C in the last 150 years. Is it really possible that that amount of warming makes dangerous wildfires inevitable? No. … The negative effect of rising global temperatures on California wildfire susceptibility in particular is dubious because past centuries had far more fire-prone climates. The Palmer Drought Index shows only a slight increase in California drought since 1900.

  “Historical evidence shows us that prior to man-made CO2 emissions CA experienced regular ‘megadroughts‘ that could last over a century. The modern era has been very lush by comparison. Even if CA could lower global CO2 levels we could easily suffer a regional drought…

  “The root cause of today’s wildfires is terrible forest management. Policymakers have prevented controlled burns, debris clearing, and logging — jacking up the ‘fuel load’ to incredibly dangerous levels. … The path forward is simple: focus on the main cause, forest management, which is totally within our control. Stop pretending that lowering CO2 levels would bring about some fire-free paradise–and that it is possible near-term. Stop mandating ‘unreliables.’ Decriminalise nuclear.”

  As Tom McClintock comments via The Wall Street Journal, bad forest and water management, misplaced priorities and price controls all played a role.

  The left blames a changing climate.

  But that doesn’t explain California’s long history with massive wildfires, or why fires became less threatening throughout most of the 20th century.

  We can find a more likely culprit in the states’ recent extreme environmental and social policies.

  …

  Environmental leftists promised that laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Act would protect and improve the environment. Fifty years later we’re entitled to ask: How’s it going? Between 2012 and 2021, we lost a quarter of California’s forestland to wildfires. A UCLA study estimated that California’s 2020 fires released twice as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as had been prevented by the previous 18 years of primarily government-enforced restrictions.

  …

  Fire is a condition of nature, but how we deal with it is a choice. The tragedy in Southern California is the result of decades of self-destructive policies made by foolish politicians. We can change the policies that got us into this mess by throwing out the politicians who made them. Let’s hope we do so before the next big fire.

  Selective reporting by Walling to further a far-left climate agenda (and providing cover for Democrats in the state) is why trust in media has crashed to record lows.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 15:45

• How The 'Bridge That Couldn't Be Built' Was Built
  How The ‘Bridge That Couldn’t Be Built’ Was Built

  Authored by Dustin Bass via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  When John A. Roebling completed the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge in 1866, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Shortly after completing the bridge, which crossed the Ohio River, he was hired to design the Brooklyn Bridge. This bridge would surpass the length of the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge by a third. Roebling, unfortunately, would die before he could witness the construction of the New York City-based structure; but his son Washington and daughter-in-law Emily would complete the project in his stead.

  

  Roebling’s influence was arguably most strongly felt by his immediate family and his legacy most attached to the Brooklyn Bridge. But approximately 25 years after his death, a young engineer would incidentally be influenced by Roebling and would directly extend the suspension bridge builder’s legacy to the other side of the country in San Francisco.

  Before Joseph Strauss graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1892, he found himself in the hospital recovering from an illness. The 5-foot-3-inch class president and class poet had been placed in a hospital room with a view that would change the course of his life. Through the window, he could see the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge. The structure inspired him to pursue a career in bridge design.

  

  During his graduation ceremony at the university, he professed his goal to build a railroad that would stretch across the Bering Strait. His goals were lofty, if not impossible, but it was this drive that would place him in the position to create “the bridge that couldn’t be built.”

  A Bridge Across the Strait

  The idea of a bridge that stretched across the Golden Gate Strait had been discussed for decades. It was first broached in 1872 by Charles Crocker, the railroad magnate who had been part of the “Big Four” to found Central Pacific Railroad. (Joshua Norton, the Gold Rush speculator who went bankrupt and then insane, is also credited with making the first calls for the bridge in 1869, though he was hardly taken seriously.)

  As the Bay Area population continued to grow exponentially over the final decades of the 19th century, a bridge across the strait seemed imperative. But the problems that faced engineers were many. The Pacific Ocean with its strong tides fed right into the strait, not to mention the consistent wind gusts that swept along the coast, and the city’s famous fog. Additionally, the San Andreas Fault lay seven miles off the city’s coastline, which could initiate devastating earthquakes, as citizens discovered in 1906.

  Ten years after the earthquake, the topic of the bridge was again broached in earnest. James H. Wilkins, an editor and publisher of a local newspaper, as well as a former structural engineer, began a campaign to promote the necessity of building the bridge.

  “In 1872,” he recalled, “I was present at a session of the Marin supervisors when Charles Crocker explained his plans, among which was a suspension bridge across the Golden Gate. Detailed plans and estimates for such a bridge were actually made by the Central Pacific engineers.”

  But that was nearly 50 years prior, so new estimates were needed. Wilkins’s campaign caught the attention of Michael M. O‘Shaughnessy, the San Francisco city engineer. O’Shaughnessy began seeking the opinions of engineers. Their opinions were not positive. The price tag at $100 million was cost-prohibitive.

  Sounding the Strait

  Interest in the bridge remained, although it waned during World War I, as the country became involved shortly after Wilkins began his campaign. Toward the end of 1918, interest resumed. Richard Welch, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, issued a request that Congress authorize a federal survey of the strait: specifically between the Presidio, located on the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula, and the Marin Peninsula, on the northern side of the strait.

  Congress acquiesced to the request, and the USS Natoma, of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, conducted soundings of the area by the end of May 1920 and submitted its report.

  

  The report was submitted to O’Shaughnessy, who then reached out to three prominent bridge builders: Francis McMath, Gustav Lindenthal, and Strauss. In his letter to them, he wrote, “Everybody says it cannot be done and that it would cost over $100,000,000 if it could be done.”

  Lindenthal responded with a quote of $50 million to $60 million. McGrath did not respond. Strauss, after conversing with O’Shaughnessy, suggested it could be done for approximately $25 million.

  Strauss, Counties, and the War Dept.

  

  By this time, Strauss had already become one of the country’s prominent bridge builders. He had begun his career as a draftsman for New Jersey Steel and Iron Company, then for Chicago’s Lassig Bridge and Iron Works Company. He worked with then arguably America’s greatest bridge builder, Ralph Modjeski. Strauss, however, wished to pursue the bascule bridge, which are drawbridges. In 1904, he founded Strauss Bascule Bridge Company and would go on to construct approximately 400 bridges.

  Considering his reputation, it was apparent Strauss knew something the others didn’t. Strauss was hired, but the process had only just begun, and construction was still more than a decade away.

  Entities were created, such as the Association of Bridging the Gate, which encompassed representatives from the surrounding counties. Their objective was to ensure that all counties were in favor of building the bridge and to gain permission from the state legislature to create a legal district, which would manage the entire process of building and maintaining the bridge and roadway. In May of 1923, the state congress passed the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act of California, permitting the Association to create the aforementioned district, which was created in December 1928.

  The District was to have control over the project, but the Presidio was a U.S. Army outpost and was therefore under the jurisdiction of the U.S. War Department. In fact, both sides of the proposed locations for the bridge were under the Department’s jurisdiction, and for construction to be conducted, the District would need a federally issued permit. The concerns for the War Department was whether the bridge would hinder navigation and logistics, as well as whether the bridge could possibly become a blockade if it were ever destroyed. On Christmas Eve 1924, Secretary of War John Weeks issued a temporary permit.

  The representatives from Del Norte, Marin, San Francisco, Sonoma, and parts of Mendocino and Napa Counties made up the new Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District with Strauss as chief engineer. Strauss was bent on building “the biggest thing of its kind that a man could build,” and, as the preliminary issues fell into place, he would soon get that chance.

  Change of Plans

  Strauss added Charles Ellis, professor of structural and bridge engineering at the University of Illinois, to his team to update design plans and ensure structural integrity. Eventually, that relationship would sour to the point that Strauss relieved Ellis of his position. Ellis also received no credit from Strauss for his contributions.

  Before that relational fallout, however, Ellis played a pivotal role in developing the bridge and was relied upon heavily by Strauss. He, along with Leon Moisseiff, who had designed the Manhattan Bridge, provided reports on their concerns about Strauss’s proposed cantilever-suspension bridge. It seems it may have been as late as the summer of 1929 that Strauss decided to dispense with his cantilever-suspension bridge in favor of a suspension bridge.

  It appeared as though the Golden Gate project would soon be underway, but another catastrophe looked to sideline the project. Reminiscent of past decades, like the 1906 Earthquake and World War I, the Stock Market crashed on Oct. 29, 1929, eventually plunging the country into the Great Depression. Permits and plans were one thing, but having the people’s support for such an expensive project was another. The District decided to have the people vote on it.

  There had been opposition to the construction of the bridge for varying reasons from the likes of environmentalists and ferry operators, as well as engineers who believed the project unfeasible. The District put the $35 million bond issue before the voters. This bond required locals to use their business properties, farms, and homes as collateral. Despite the great personal risk required, on Nov. 4, 1930, the bond passed overwhelmingly: 145,057 to 46,954.

  Mitigating Risks

  During this period in major structure building history, there was the assumed risk of one fatality per $1 million. At $35 million, the District could expect approximately 35 job-related deaths. Strauss, however, desired to reverse this trend. Before construction began, he instituted new safety measures and gear, including glare-free goggles and mandatory hard hats, which were made similar to those worn by miners. Additionally, during the later stages of the bridge’s construction, he spent $130,000 to place a large net under the bridge to catch falling workers. In all, this net saved the lives of 19 men, who hailed themselves members of the “Halfway-to-Hell Club.” Eleven men died during the four-year project, 10 of whom died during a single accident when a 5-ton piece of scaffold fell through the net into the water.

  With the Great Depression in full swing by the time construction got underway, there was no shortage of men looking to join the major project, especially with its union pay far exceeding what could be found elsewhere. On Dec. 22, 1932, workers began constructing a 1,700-foot access road toward the Marin anchorage of the bridge.

  

  It was during this week in history, on Jan. 5, 1933, that construction began on the suspension bridge, which would famously become known as the Golden Gate Bridge. The first portion of the project was to remove 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the bridge’s two anchorages. Not including those anchorages, the bridge would weigh approximately 840 million pounds. Its highest peak above the water would reach 746 feet, and with its famous “International Orange” color, it proved visible even during foggy days. The bridge was suspended by 27,572 wires, altogether long enough to wrap around the globe more than three times. And, reminiscent of his initial Roebling inspiration and his personal determination, Strauss’s bridge held the title of the longest suspension bridge in the world for 27 years after its completion on May 27, 1937.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 15:10

• A Message To All Americans From Storm-Ravaged Western North Carolina
  A Message To All Americans From Storm-Ravaged Western North Carolina

  Jason Ward, with Valley Strong Relief—a non-profit organization focused on providing aid to thousands of residents displaced in Western North Carolina by Hurricane Helene—released a TikTok video discussing the horrors of the Palisades Fire raging in Los Angeles County. However, he asked one crucial question: “What about Appalachia?”

  Ward cited President Joe Biden’s recent X post: “The federal government will cover 100% of the cost of measures to protect lives and property in Southern California for six months.” Referring to the X post, Ward said, “I hope that happens.” 

  Ward then segues to the topic of forgotten and devastated Western North Carolina, asking, “What about Appalachia?”

  Snow covers areas of western North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Some people there are still living in tents, and piles of debris remain.

  🎥: @AaronRigsbyOSC pic.twitter.com/ZCAq6zVkfm

  — AccuWeather (@accuweather) January 11, 2025

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

  “We are 105 days in since one of the most devastating storms known to mankind. We are still supplying our own campers, shelters, while paying mortgages on piles of rubble. We are still running our own supply hubs for many people that lost everything, including homes and jobs. We still have bridges out – only four percent of the debris has been picked up. Many businesses are bankrupt, with insurance denying their claim,” he explained. 

  Ward continued, “We have a polar vortex slamming Western North Carolina, while people going through ten gallons of propane a night – wonder when they will be getting their next tank.” 

  A message from Appalachia to California …#DontForgetAppalachia pic.twitter.com/JWsjyWpR0B

  — Boone Cutler 🦅 🇺🇸 🦬 (@boonecutler) January 11, 2025

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

  While the nation’s eyes are on the Palisades Fire, thousands of families are homeless, either spending cold nights in makeshift shelters, campers, tents, or, if they’re lucky, hotels and motels paid for by FEMA. 

  

  However, Fox News reported, “FEMA began notifying some families checked into hotel or motel rooms that they are no longer eligible for the program due to one of the following reasons: an inspection indicated their home is now habitable, they declined an inspection or FEMA has been unable to contact them to update their housing needs.” 

  While the countries eyes are on CA, the situation in WNC deteriorates. Where is @FEMA!? We need to get some eyes on this! These are fellow Americans! https://t.co/WIGGIV1KUL

  — Julie McBane (@julie_mcbane) January 11, 2025

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  Local media outlet WLOS reported that more than 5,600 households were staying in hotel or motel rooms paid by FEMA (as of one week ago). 

  Appalachia deserves better than this.

  Please don’t forget WNC. We aren’t rich and most of us aren’t movie stars- but our people deserve better than this. pic.twitter.com/0gZYdKDlcr

  — RP (@RPinthehousenow) January 11, 2025

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  “California is getting all the federal assistance it needs but meanwhile the people of North Carolina are waiting in long lines for propane just so they can have some warmth in the donated RV’s they’re currently living in . This isn’t right!” one X user said. 

  California is getting all the federal assistance it needs but meanwhile the people of North Carolina are waiting in long lines for propane just so they can have some warmth in the donated RV’s they’re currently living in . This isn’t right! pic.twitter.com/tVf4kDbyrI

  — Washingtons ghost (@hartgoat) January 11, 2025

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  Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn (Ret.) provided more color on the private supply hubs, helping thousands of families across the storm-devastated region. 

  PLEASE REPOST AND TAG @realDonaldTrump and @JDVance

  COME HELL OR HIGH WATER…NEVER FORGET THE PEOPLE OF APPALACHIA NORTH CAROLINA!!!

  Pray and support them 🙏🏼🇺🇸

  This video was back well over a month ago. See my pinned tweet above for even more current weather conditions.… pic.twitter.com/PmtvMSUhTm

  — General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) January 11, 2025

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  “Biden and Mayorkas bankrupted FEMA to pay for illegal immigrant housing, and now American citizens who lost their homes in Hurricane Helene are essentially being told to screw,” Trump spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.

  Leavitt added: “This is unfair and arguably criminal. The good news is: President Trump will be back very soon to put Americans first again.“

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 14:35

• Why Was Pacific Palisades Reservoir Empty? It Gets Worse…
  Why Was Pacific Palisades Reservoir Empty? It Gets Worse…

  Authored by Victoria Taft via PJMedia.com,

  An empty reservoir and dry fire hydrants are now the symbols of California and local officials’ response to the horrific Pacific Palisades wildfire—one of six Santa Ana windblown firestorms still burning in Los Angeles. Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation to demonstrate that he’s doing something, but the damage is being done right now. 

  

  The 117 million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty and down for maintenance when the devastating fire was sparked, perhaps in the brush, between the homes and the Pacific Coast Highway. You can see a map of the area in my story Good Intentions Might Be the Cause of Devastating Palisades Fire. 

  Friday, officials confirmed that the reservoir had been down for nearly a year —closing in February 2024—for maintenance to the cover of the reservoir. 

  The New York Times reports that a contractor was hired in November to fix a crack in the cover. It is unclear why the reservoir had to be shut down for that extended period of time. 

  The ripple effect was beyond devastating. 

  This empty reservoir wasn’t caused by Climate Change. It was caused by Democrats. pic.twitter.com/WrLFHYOsBh

  — A Man Of Memes (@RickyDoggin) January 10, 2025

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  The fires broke out Tuesday, Jan. 7. By the next day, Janisse Quiñones, the head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said their system tanks went dry three times. You’ll want to remember that because the story is about to get worse. 

  We have three large water tanks, about a million gallons each. We ran out of water in the first tank at about 4:45 p.m. yesterday. We ran out of water in the second tank about 8:30 p.m. and the third tank about 3 a.m. this morning.

  She never mentioned the empty reservoir, though former DWP Commissioner and mayoral candidate Rick Caruso did say that “the reservoir” hadn’t been filled. He was right and righteously angry.  

  Firefighters complained that there was no water coming out of the hydrants. The fires burned uncontrollably. 

  In addition to the “investigation” by Newsom, the New York Times reported that the Department of Water and Power, whose job it is to fill the reservoirs, is looking into whether the empty Santa Ynez reservoir in Pacific Palisades made a difference in their fire response. We are not kidding. 

   See if you can spot a problem for the DWP in the Times’ piece.

  Water for the Pacific Palisades is fed by a 36-inch line that flows by gravity from the larger Stone Canyon Reservoir, said Marty Adams, a former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. That water line also fills the Santa Ynez Reservoir. 

  Water from the two reservoirs then sustain the water system for the Pacific Palisades, and also pump systems that fill storage tanks that feed higher-elevation homes in the neighborhood. It was unclear whether officials could have brought the reservoir back online before the fire, after forecasters began warning of dangerous wildfire conditions.

  Now, I’m no hydrologist or physicist, but wouldn’t water pressure be helped by having water in all the tanks and reservoirs? Am I missing something here? 

  But, what ho! We get an answer.

  Mr. Adams said an operational reservoir would have been helpful initially to more fully feed the water system in the area. But he also said it appeared that that reservoir and the tanks would have eventually been drained in a fire that was consuming so many homes at once. Municipal water systems are generally designed to sustain water loads for much smaller fires than what consumed Pacific Palisades. [emphasis added]

  Those are a lot of words to say that more water would have been helpful. 

  Speaking of not being a hydrologist, I looked up the latest state hydrology report because the global warming crowd desperately hopes to blame “climate change/catastrophe” for the fires. Yeah, well, that dog won’t hunt. 

  If you’re new here, from east to west Southern California, there’s desert, then mountains, then semi-arid land all the way to the ocean. While the media will tell you this is climate change, this is no change at all. This is the state of play in California all the time. However, California has received a surge in water in the last few years following a drought, but there have been no new reservoirs built to store water since the last one opened in 1979.

  

  According the latest hydrologist report, “Major flood control reservoirs are either near their respective top of conservation levels or below.” Precipitation has been slow in the first couple of weeks of the year, but the “The statewide accumulated precipitation to end of November 2024 was 5.22 inches, which is 132% of average.” The snowpack, which is also where water is stored, and Gavin Newsom lets flow out to the Pacific Ocean to “save” a bait fish, is growing. “The statewide average snow water equivalent (SWE) was 5.1 inches for December 1, which is 168% percent of normal and 19% of April 1 average.”

  In other words, there’s been precipitation — remember all those atmospheric rivers? — and if there were more storage there would be more water available for drinking and fighting fires. 

  I could go into the environmental rules that don’t allow much, if any, thinning in forests, road building, otherwise known as fire breaks, reservoir building, and preventative burning, which used to happen all the time to stop these conflagrations that the enviros like to blame on climate, but I do in my other stories. 

  Here’s Newsom touting full reservoirs in Southern California — though the one that counted was empty.

  Southern California’s water supplies are well-equipped to support local communities fighting the wildfires. Many of the state’s largest reservoirs are currently at or above their historic average storage levels for this time of year. pic.twitter.com/A7KZRJKBNA

  — Governor Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 9, 2025

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  And here’s Newsom excitedly patting himself on the back because he removed dams (and reservoirs) to help tribal fish flows, but what about having enough water to drink and put out fires? 

  🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

  CA Governor Gavin Newsom brags about “the largest dam removal in U.S. history” because you gotta save the fish.

  Meanwhile, there’s not water to fight fires.

  pic.twitter.com/CT5bcTYUOH

  — PNW Conservative (@UnderWashington) January 9, 2025

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  In addition, California’s self-inflicted wounds continue as the state spends less money on necessities and more on the left’s luxury beliefs. If you’re paying some of your firefighters upwards of $700,000 then you can’t afford a lot of them, OK, L.A.? You’ll find the highest-paid public servants in L.A. here. 

  California’s profligacy has also caused homeless people to flock to the state. More than 50% of the fire responses are to homeless camps as I point out in my story What Started L.A.’s Firestorm? Hint: It’s Not ‘Climate Change.’

  Instead of kicking people out of their encampments so they don’t start fires, the response has been to look the other way and/or find someone shelter where druggies don’t want to go. 

  Homeless campers setting a fire destroyed part of an I-10 Freeway overpass in 2023. A mile-long stretch of freeway was closed and Newsom declared a state of emergency for L.A. County. 

  Voters have taxed themselves billions to “solve the homelessness problem.” But there’s virtually no accountability, as I wrote in this story headlined: No Wonder Gavin Newsom Didn’t Want an Audit to Track $24 Billion in Homeless Spending.

  In 2014, voters also taxed themselves billions to build more reservoirs. Environmentalists don’t want those either. 

  And the reservoir that counted this week was dry. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 14:00

• Jobs Report And AI: "Basically, It's Garbage In, Garbage Out"
  Jobs Report And AI: “Basically, It’s Garbage In, Garbage Out”

  By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

  Jobs and AI

  This isn’t about jobs that will be displaced by AI, or jobs that will be created by AI. It is a look at the job market today, the data, and some questions regarding AI on that subject. On Friday, we did a quick post-NFP Report – Look Out Above on Yields. It focused on how the strong data (and the NFP report was quite strong), coupled with growing concerns about the inability to force inflation lower, will keep the Fed on hold. But, as the day went on, after multiple conversations on the market reaction, and while preparing for some presentations next week, I couldn’t get one thought out of my mind:

  What if markets reacted so poorly because no one believes the data, but everyone believes that the Fed will need to react to the data?

  It is a simplification. It likely overstates that sentiment, but I think that there is something to it, so we will explore. This will lead us to some questions, and maybe some answers, but definitely some questions about AI.

  Geopolitical Outlook 2025

  If you missed Geopolitical Risks & Opportunities from Tuesday, I highly recommend giving it a quick read. We focus as much on the opportunities as the risks. With geopolitical risk at or near the top of everyone’s list of concerns for 2025, it seemed appropriate to highlight the opportunities. Being too pessimistic about risks might cause you to miss them. Yes, there is an irony about the T-Report warning you about being too pessimistic, but there you have it.

  We cover a range of topics beyond the usual suspects. Space and Cyber get some treatment through a national security lens. Shipping is an area where we were possibly at risk of being labeled “the boy who cried wolf,” but it is garnering longer conversations. “BRICS and Barter” is highly relevant as we expect to see some tariff and trade activity via executive order in the early days of Trump 2.0. Peace through Strength is an overriding theme, though not sure how Canada, Panama, Mexico, and Greenland feel about that.

  Back to Jobs

  After that brief geopolitical detour, let’s get back to the task at hand: understanding the jobs data.

  Bloomberg had estimates from 75 economists. This is not just a “handful” of estimates. It is a pretty robust sample size. All the big-name firms were in with their estimates. Some of the best independent firms were included in the survey. Bloomberg even takes the time to tabulate who the top 10 are at estimating the number (presumably using track records from prior estimates).

  This group of highly intelligent, motivated, and typically well-resourced survey respondents had an estimate of 165k for jobs. The top 10 did better (if better means getting closer to the published number) with an average of 186k. I often like to examine the most recent submissions (under the premise that they incorporate the latest data and therefore might be making more of an effort). 16 estimates were provided in the 2 days before the release and they averaged 174k, so a bit better (again, assuming coming closer to the published number is better), but still off.

  There was exactly 1 estimate higher than the published number. The Bloomberg Economics estimate is ranked 6th and was submitted 2 days before the release. There is some method to the madness of trying to qualitatively analyze the estimates.

  A whopping 98.7% of analysts had estimates below the official number.

  Not only were 74 out of 75 below the official data, but also only 5% of the estimates were above 200k. Think what you will about the dismal science, but I find it incredibly difficult to believe that so many really smart, organized, well-resourced, and well-intentioned estimates were all so wrong.

  It almost defies explanation that this many people could be so wrong – which gives rise, at least to me, that potentially the published number itself is inaccurate.

  ADP, which presumably has some good, real-time, real-world data, had a miss with only 126k jobs. Far fewer economists bother to estimate ADP, but the distribution looks far more normal with some a little high, some a little low, and a couple of outliers. This is a distribution of estimates that does not indicate gross incompetence. This is one takeaway (a cruel takeaway, and clearly not one that I believe in) from the NFP estimates.

  Some “Silly” T-Report Items

  In Messy, But Manageable, we highlighted two recurring thoughts on jobs data:

  1. Expect a strong Household Report because it was so bad recently relative to the Establishment Report (check the box on that one).
  2. The seasonal adjustments are off and add too many jobs every winter (including data during COVID and due to missing the shift in where construction occurs). We don’t know if we were correct on this assumption, but if we get downward revisions later in the year, we might try taking a small victory lap.

  These were two basic reasons why we thought we could see better than expected data. In that report, we highlighted that the “whisper” number was even lower than the official estimates (which might also explain the market reaction).

  We have written a lot about problems with the jobs reports over the years that go far beyond these simple issues. We’ve covered what we believe are flaws in how the Birth/Death model works in a “gig” economy, the low initial survey response rates, etc. Others are harping on these issues more and more.

  Which brings us back to where we started today’s piece.

  What if markets reacted so poorly because no one believes the data, but everyone believes that the Fed will need to react to the data?

  While not today’s topic, we’ve had similar discussions about inflation. It was so clear (to anyone who actually had to buy anything) that the official inflation data wasn’t capturing the extent of inflation in the real world. The “owners’ equivalent rent” was so far behind anything remotely representing timely transactions in the rent market, that it would have been laughable if it didn’t seem to shape Fed policy.

  The Fed is forced to rely on official data (hard not to given that it is an honest effort, and all that the mainstream media focuses on), but the data isn’t reflective of reality. Does that lead to policy mistakes?

  I’m not saying that is occurring, but I am saying that when 99% of people get something “wrong” maybe we should rethink the number itself and not their estimates.

  Instead of trying to evaluate if they did “better” in terms of guessing the actual number, we should be wondering if the number itself should be questioned. Ahhhh…now we can see where AI might come in handy.

  One Jobs Chart

  It would seem cruel to rant and rave about the “official” data possibly being wrong without providing at least one chart.

  

  I’ve been arguing (I think rationally, some might say hysterically) that the JOLTS Job Openings report is another one where the official data hasn’t caught up to how jobs are really advertised. The number of jobs available “coincidentally” seems much higher since on-line sites are now the primary tool for job searches. I am confident that it is not a coincidence, and that we aren’t accounting for how those platforms are used, hence the overstatement of jobs. But enough on that, I do think that the Hire and Quit rates are at least somewhat useful, particularly the Quit rate.

  We have argued that the QUIT rate is the closest thing that we have to “crowd sourced” data. People who decide to quit (or not quit) have a lot of information about their job prospects. They know themselves, their fields, and the current state of hiring in their fields. Presumably, they have a sense of geographic hot spots and their willingness to move there if necessary. A QUIT rate below 2% is something that we really only saw as we entered and slowly recovered from the GFC!

  I’m aware of the issues with identifying a couple of pieces of data (in a slew of data that I generally think is off), but I’m willing to live with that paradox. Also, in a similar vein, it is impossible not to point out that the HIRE rate is pretty abysmal too.

  AI and Jobs

  Could AI help get better jobs data? Presumably having good information (accurate and timely) on the labor market would be good for policy makers and decision makers at every level.

  As we ask that question, we probably need to assume that even if the BLS doesn’t use AI (and they might well use it), at least some of the survey respondents incorporate some amount of AI into their analysis.

  Let’s just for a moment assume that someone develops an AI-based tool that accurately analyzes the job market. Whatever this AI-based model spits out is the reality of the job market. Would it help or hurt you if it didn’t match the official data?

  From a trading perspective, over the short-term, I’m not sure how much help it would be to “know” the reality if everyone is going to trade off of the other number. Presumably over time, investors and corporations would benefit from having the actual data, even if policy is based on the potentially erroneous official data. Or would you just make “different” mistakes because policy doesn’t match what you prepared for? You would like to think that it has to help, but when we see downward revisions of a million jobs from the previous year, the market tends to shrug its proverbial shoulders. Is the dirty little secret that no one wants to go back and admit that decision after decision was made on bad data? Basically, admitting to garbage in, garbage out.

  I have no idea what the answer really is, but now I feel justified in not trying to build an AI system to calculate the real state of the job market since it wouldn’t help me anyways. Clearly, somewhat tongue in cheek, but makes you think, I hope.

  The corollary of this is if this jobs data is incorrect and will later be revised, but it is an input into your AI, are you getting useful answers?

  Applying more AI to the BLS process might be good. But it doesn’t fix things like the survey response rate. It just would attempt to potentially use it differently. Presumably “better” but how would we really know?

  If you thought this section on applying AI to jobs would be easy, you probably know more than I do about AI, but I cannot help but think it highlights two issues:

  • If you get an “answer” that people in charge don’t agree with, what did you accomplish (this seems like a second order effect, that some, but not all, can overcome).
  • If the “answer” is based on bad data, what good is it?

  I’m nervous that all I’m doing is exposing my still very limited understanding of AI, especially since it doesn’t correlate well with the massive rush we’ve seen to apply it to more and more questions using more and more data. Maybe the data and questions are valid, but I cannot help but wonder.

  Bottom Line

  Messy remains a theme. On rates, the 10-year at 4.76% seems like a screaming buy in my head and in my gut, but I cannot get there. I remain nervous for now and think that we proceed towards 5%.

  Equities will be choppy and will be negatively affected by higher yields, but the driving force will ultimately be understanding what policies Trump 2.0 prioritizes and how likely those policies are to get implemented.

  Credit supply will remain heavy, but spreads will remain well behaved.

  I started the report thinking that AI and Jobs were a perfect match, but now I’m less sure. Alternatively, I didn’t think that I’d agree as strongly with the view that the risk of making policy decisions on bad data is not only real, but it is also possibly starting to get priced into the market!

  Per the Philadelphia Fed, average monthly jobs growth was 130K in 2023. Biden’s Dept of Labor reported that this number is 230K. That’s a 100K difference that led the Fed on to believe the economy is far stronger than it was.

  Tomorrow the BLS will reveal its own revised data. pic.twitter.com/S9MkEH8oMI

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 20, 2024

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  Alternatively, the official data might be accurate, and we might all be really bad at predicting it, and I’ve wasted your time with this report (though I highly suspect that is not the case).

  With wildfires and devastation raging in California it is extremely difficult to find a positive way to sign off today’s missive.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 12:50

• JPMorgan Chase Freezes Employee Comments Amid Return-To-Office Backlash
  JPMorgan Chase Freezes Employee Comments Amid Return-To-Office Backlash

  On Friday, JPMorgan Chase informed its 300,000 employees that the firm is poised to eradicate almost all work-from-home arrangements. The employee response was apparently so voluminous and negative that JPMorgan quickly blocked the comment feature on an in-house article explaining the policy change, the Wall Street Journal reports. 

  According to Friday’s memo from JPMorgan’s operating committee — Chairman/CEO Jamie Dimon and 14 other officers — hybrid schedules comprising a mix of days at home and days in the office will vanish in a matter of weeks:

  “Developing effective teams and maintaining a vibrant, healthy culture are clearly key for our success — and we believe best achieved through working together in person. This is why starting in March, we’ll be asking most employees currently on a hybrid schedule to return to the office five days a week…We know that some of you prefer a hybrid schedule and respectfully understand that not everyone will agree with this decision. We think it is the best way to run the company.”

  

  The executives said affected employees would be given 30 days notice before they’re expected to retire their workday pajamas and join their colleagues in JPMorgan offices. That wasn’t sufficient to head off a backlash, with employees venting via the article-comment feature on an in-house news site. In comments tied to their names, employees bemoaned the looming impact on their child-care and commuting expenses, or their work-life balance, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  At least one employee of the country’s largest lender brainstormed that the solution was to form a union to resist returning to the office. JPMorgan quickly turned off the comment feature, but left many of the already-posted comments intact. 

  JPMorgan’s Friday announcement is the latest step in the firm’s gradual extrication from Covid-era work-from-home arrangements. JPMorgan started bringing employees back to offices — at least on a partial basis — in June 2021. “[Work-from-home] doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation,” Dimon told a conference in May of that year, throwing out a timeline that would prove inaccurate by more than three years: “By September it’ll look like just it did before. We are getting blowback about coming back internally, but that’s life.”

  

  It wasn’t until 2023 that JPMorgan compelled all managing directors to come in five days a week, but it sounds like close to half of all employees are still spending some working hours at home. “As it stands, more than half of our workforce already comes into the office full-time,” JPMorgan leaders wrote in Friday’s internal announcement, which extolled the advantages of office working environments: 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 12:15

• Hedge Fund CIO: Trump Has Blown The Overton Window So Wide Open, Anything Seems Possible
  Hedge Fund CIO: Trump Has Blown The Overton Window So Wide Open, Anything Seems Possible

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “Wayne, would you like to be governor of Canada?” asked Trump, speaking with his buddy Gretsky, tugging at the Overton Window with all his might. “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN,” the President-Elect tweeted on Truth Social, sending his oldest son north with a box of red hats. He wouldn’t rule out taking the Panama Canal by force. And with each such suggestion, the window widened further.

  The Overton Window is a concept in political science and sociology that refers to the range of policies or ideas considered acceptable in public discourse at a given time. Like most things in life, I learned about it rather late.

  “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago, prying the window open so wide that nearly anything seems possible, plausible, probable.

  Say such things enough times, amplify the words using our AI-enabled social media machines, and presto, nothing’s shocking. But not only that, AI will soon converge with quantum computing.

  “The Willow processor performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse,” wrote Google, presenting its latest breakthrough, cracking our perception of reality.

  As the window widens fully, not only is nothing impossible, but almost anything can seem reasonable. The right and left tails of every distribution lengthen and fatten. And we are left unanchored, adrift, in an endless sea of wild possibility, volatility.

  “I’m going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration, because I think it’s ridiculous that they’re not telling you about what’s going on with the drones,” pledged the President-Elect. 

  Windows

  John Overton posited that ideas travel through stages, moving from being seen as extreme or unthinkable to becoming widely accepted and adopted as policy. Democracy was once considered unthinkable. Universal suffrage too. Emancipation. Most things that matter have traveled this path. Here are Overton’s six stages:

  • Unthinkable – outside of acceptable thought.
  • Radical – at the edge of discussion.
  • Acceptable – starting to gain traction.
  • Sensible – reasonable and widely discussed.
  • Popular – widely supported.
  • Policy – acted upon and implemented.

  Overton introduced this framework to describe how the feasibility of a policy idea depends not on its inherent merits but on whether it falls within the range of public acceptance. He argued that public policy is constrained by this “window” of acceptable ideas and politicians tend to stay within the window to maintain public support. But what was yesterday’s unthinkable can become tomorrow’s policy as the window widens, shifts left, or right. And what moves the window is naturally tied into one of life’s great mysteries, the superorganism we call humanity.

  Overton’s framework helps us make sense of society, markets too, risks, opportunities. I try to look at emerging investment themes through this lens. With each move of the window, power structures shift, capital flows adjust, new winners emerge, incumbents struggle or fail. The nimble survive, thrive. With such stakes, those with influence are desperate to guide the process. Politicians, propagandists, business leaders, religious leaders, union bosses, authors, artists, athletes, advocacy groups, lobbyists, social media influencers, and now AI.

  There was a time, not so long ago when it was radical or even unthinkable to call network news fake. No longer. And now we openly joke about Canada becoming our 51st state. Where that leads is anyone’s guess, but the window has widened. Greenland’s Prime Minister announced today that he’s ready to speak with Trump. I started trading in 1989 and never in that time has the Overton Window shifted this rapidly across so many dimensions. There’s no precedent for it in modern history. And this dynamic is becoming a new market fundamental.

  But it’s not just Trump. Javier Millei has thrown open an anti-statist libertarian window that had been nailed shut for as long as I’ve been alive. Argentina had the best performing stock market in the world last year. This is breathtaking change. And in roughly two short years, we went from the FTX apocalypse to serious talk of strategic sovereign Bitcoin reserves.

  That window is wide open. Intertwined with both Millei and Bitcoin is radical talk of sovereign insolvency throughout the western world. Before it’s over, make no mistake, we’ll be talking about massive entitlement cuts. But for today, that idea is stuck in the unthinkable stage.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/12/2025 – 11:40

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• Technocracy, Fear-Mongers, & The Conspiracy
  Technocracy, Fear-Mongers, & The Conspiracy

  Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

  The term, ‘conspiracy theory’ became part of common parlance during the ‘Covid era,’ but although all of us know what it refers to – and who are supposed to be the ‘conspiracy theorists’ in question, namely those people who saw through the ‘pandemic’ scam and everything it entailed – the precise nature of the ‘conspiracy’ is probably less clear. When I ask individuals what they understand by it, they usually answer in more or less vague terms. So what is it? 

  

  In his book, HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (2003) – followed in 2006 by Weather Warfare – Jerry Smith indicates the importance he attributes to the concept by capitalising it throughout. Smith relates it to what he regards as a weapon for warfare; to wit, the ‘High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP),’ and uncovers what the powers behind this project would have preferred to remain undisclosed, for obvious reasons, once one is apprised of the reasons for its establishment by the ‘Conspiracy.’ Here I do not wish to delve into the specifics of HAARP, but merely focus on Smith’s illuminating insights as far as the ‘Conspiracy’ is concerned. His answer to the question about its ‘what?’ is scattered throughout the first of the two books mentioned earlier. Here are some excerpts (Smith, 2003, p. 22-24):  

  Some people believe that there is one over-arching conspiracy, a cadre of incredibly powerful people who want to rule the world. Most of us dismiss such people as paranoid kooks. Still, there is no denying that for over a hundred years a movement has been developing among the world’s top intellectuals, industrialists and ‘global villagers’ to end war and solve societal problems (like overpopulation, trade imbalances and environmental degradation) through the creation of a single world government. Whether this globalist movement is a diabolic ‘conspiracy’ of the evil few or a broad ‘consensus’ of the well-intentioned many, in fact matters little. It is as real as AIDS and potentially just as deadly, at least to our individual freedom, if not our very lives…

  To grasp why Smith employs the term ‘deadly’ with regard to the Conspiracy, one has to read the book, but here it is sufficient to point out that, if nations were to surrender their own sovereign right to deal with overpopulation, environmental problems, and so on, as they see fit – even if this were to be done in cooperation with international agencies – a ‘one solution for all’ system would mean that policies would be imposed on them which are not suitable, or acceptable, for their own needs.

  The idea of a ‘League of Nations’ that was floated after World War I was but one embodiment of this movement. Today’s United Nations (UN) was built on the League of Nations concept. The UN was created primarily to end war—by ending nations. The logic is that if there are no nations, then there can be no wars between nations. This was clearly stated in the United Nations’ ‘World Constitution’ with these words: ‘The age of nations must end. The governments of the nations have decided to order their separate sovereignties into one government to which they will surrender their arms.’

  While 18th-century thinker Immanuel Kant, would have applauded the aim of terminating wars between nations, he would certainly have been less enamoured of the idea that sovereign nations would have to relinquish their sovereignty in favour of a wholesale assimilation into an encompassing world government. His reasons were clearly stated in the second of the ‘Definitive Articles’ formulated in his essay on ‘Perpetual Peace:’ ‘The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states.’ For Kant this is essential for lasting peace, insofar as such a federation, where states would be subject to federal laws, is comparable to a state with a republican constitution, which is governed according to laws that are external to the (often disorderly) will(s) of citizens themselves. 

  Unless such a federation of nations (as opposed to a ‘state’ of nations, where all member states would comprise only one ‘nation of states’) were to be established, the rights of every member state would not be guaranteed, parallel to the way citizens’ rights are guaranteed in a republican state. In other words, every member state, together with its citizens, would be at the mercy of what the overall ‘world government’ decides. Particularly the words (in the excerpt, above), ‘to order their separate sovereignties into one government to which they will surrender their arms,’ sound outright ominous.

  The New World Order (NWO) is but one name given to this push to create a true world government. Many supporters of the NWO espouse a philosophy called technocracy, which is rule by experts, scientists or technicians. It is not democratic in any sense by which Americans understand the term. One very famous advocate of the New World Order is Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was a National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter and other presidents. He called his version of technocracy ‘technetronics.’ In his book, ‘Between Two Ages,’ Brzezinski wrote: ‘The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.’

  This ‘technetronic’ union of nations would call for the desovereignization of all existing countries. This new ordering would reduce the United States of America to a mere regional government—perhaps the ‘United States of North America.’ The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is widely seen as one stepping stone to the NWO. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was quoted by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate in 1993 as saying: ‘NAFTA represents the single most creative step towards a New World Order.’ The Common Market in Europe and the European Union (EU) are similarly seen as bridges to an eventual United States of Europe, which in turn would be just another region of the United Nations’ global state (or ‘global plantation’ as some detractors have called it).

  It is an understatement to claim that technocracy is ‘not democratic in any sense by which Americans [or anyone else; B.O.] understand the term.’ Strictly speaking, technocracy would go further than merely using technical means to govern people, such as surveillance equipment, water cannons, or armoured cars for crowd control, or tasers to neutralise resistance; in the true sense of the word technocracy, technical devices, such as AI-robots, would be the means of governance. 

  Even this does not go far enough, because it suggests that some other agents, presumably human, would be the true power behind the robots, whereas technocracy in the extreme or ‘pure’ sense would entail the autonomous power to rule of the robots themselves, such as the machines in James Cameron’s Terminator films, or the Cylons in Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica. I need not point out that the valorisation of AI by members of the globalist cabal puts them squarely in the company of those who would welcome technocracy; in what capacity it is difficult to say. Would they go as far as to surrender human oversight and control to the machines? Sometimes Noah Juval Harari – Klaus Schwab’s advisor – seems to suggest that they would. 

  Seen in this light, it makes complete sense that Brzezinski is quoted as saying that the ‘technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society,’ which ‘would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.’ This is possibly the most important reason for ordinary people to resist the Conspiracy as characterised by Smith. Why? His use of the term ‘unrestrained’ to qualify ‘traditional values’ is symptomatic of an implicit belief that voluntary restraint on the part of people living in society is somehow undesirable, in contrast with which ‘restraint through being controlled’ by others – the so-called elites – is desirable. Keeping in mind that these ‘elites,’ minus any traditional values that function as guardrails within which civilisation develops, could foist just about any whim on people, who would presumably be ‘controlled’ in such a manner that they would have no say in the matter. 

  Does that sound familiar? Isn’t that precisely what one witnessed during the Covid era, and could justifiably expect to occur again if another event, not ‘restrained by traditional values,’ should be (ab)used to implement the same kind of controls as before? That this is no idle speculation is evident from a recent warning, issued by the high priest of the supposed ‘elites,’ Klaus Schwab himself, that climate change will be the ‘next big virus,’ accompanied by ‘restrictions worse than Covid.’ From the article one may gather that Smith’s depiction of the ‘Conspiracy’ – although in a different context – rings true where Schwab and the WEF are concerned: they prioritise control of ordinary mortals above everything else. Hence the usual pattern of disruption followed by severe measures of restriction. 

  Moreover, again as the article in question avers, Schwab habitually uses ‘veiled threats’ and ‘apocalyptic rhetoric to emphasize the need for global coordination, often promoting the centralization of power under elite institutions including the World Economic Forum.’ Unsurprisingly, the ‘crises’ that the ‘elites’ – that is, the Conspiracy – conjure up, are utilised as openings for them to strengthen and consolidate their control over the rest of us, predictably employing ‘fear-based programming, while reshaping society according to their vision.’  

  Another instance of the same old saw is encountered in the recent report of a WEF doctor – yes, they never stop, do they? – warning that avian flu, an outbreak of which is perceived as being imminent, has been estimated as capable of killing ‘52% of the population,’ simultaneously calling on the Biden administration to commence ‘a mass vaccination ‘campaign before President Donald Trump is sworn in next month.’ The most interesting thing here is the estimate, by the WHO, according to the doctor concerned, that ‘the mortality rate is 52%,’ reflecting a precision that boggles the mind, considering that the strain of bird flu regarded as being dangerous to humans has, as far as I can ascertain, not ever killed the number of people that allowed such a judgment to be made. 

  This does not mean that avian flu does not hold a significant threat for human beings, as I have argued before, but it is imperative to distinguish between deliberate fear-mongering and the real McCoy, lest one fall for precisely the kind of ruse they need to get lethal needles into arms.

  As may be gathered from the above – Smith’s observations about the ‘Conspiracy’ as well as the instances I have adduced to validate these – it is not at all far-fetched to claim that there are persuasive indications of the growth of organisations hellbent on the construction of a one-world government. Calling these, collectively speaking, the ‘Conspiracy’ – while perhaps sounding paranoid – makes sense to the degree that (as some of Smith’s observations show) such a projected government would not be willing to share democratic power with ordinary citizens; on the contrary, it would rule in a totalitarian fashion. This has already been abundantly demonstrated by events over the last five years, as well as ongoing occurrences of the kind I have referred to. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 23:20

• Mainstream Media Ignoring Ethno-Religious Genocide Under Syria's New Rulers
  Mainstream Media Ignoring Ethno-Religious Genocide Under Syria’s New Rulers

  Mainstream Western media previously wrote several puff pieces on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its US-designated terror leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani in the wake of Assad’s ouster, but now that same media is completely ignoring the atrocities taking place under Jolani’s watch.

  Various armed allied groups of HTS are rampaging through the central and northern countryside, attacking Christians and Alawites, in a developing ethno-religious genocide. It has only been one month since Assad was overthrown.

  

  Initially HTS and other factions, which includes foreign groups such as Chechens and Uyghurs, rounded up individuals and tortured or executed them under the guise that they were former “Assad regime agents”.

  Now, according to regional reports, the jihadists are dropping even this pretense and are simply taking over Alawite villages. Serious problems and threats are also being reported in the historic ‘Valley of the Christians’ (or Wadi al-Nasara, which lies in Western Syria in Homs governate).

  Various locations have seen jihadists seeking to impose public segregation of the sexes, Islamic head-coverings, and blanket bans on alcohol… 

  A group of young men and women are eating, drinking, and smoking shisha at a restaurant in Latakia, when an armed jihadist preacher walks in with an automatic rifle, lecturing them about the sinfulness of not covering their hair and smoking. Welcome to the new #Syria. pic.twitter.com/yJrmZNrREl

  — Greco-Levantines World Wide (@GrecoLevantines) January 9, 2025

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  Below is a machine translated report from Lebanon’s major Al-Akhbar newspaper on some of the latest [emphasis ZH]…

  * * *

  Today, the villages of Hama’s northern and eastern countryside are witnessing liquidation operations based on identity. Local forces are not even using the excuse of saying that they are going after “regime remnants” or people who are “against the revolution” before ordering the killing.

  They are terrorizing the residents of the Alawite sect, and pressuring them to evacuate their homes, especially in some eastern villages affiliated with Salamiyah.

  This is changing the demographic face of this countryside and will continue so long as chaos continues and the new Syrian administration does not intervene to stop it. In the villages of Al-Zaghba, Mabatan, Maryoud, Al-Fanat and Ma’an in the eastern countryside, there are thefts and looting of property, while armed factions burn houses to ensure that residents do not return.

  A resident of Al-Zaghba village confirmed to Al-Akhbar that “the militants present in the village prevent the return of the homeowners, and if the purpose of returning is to check on the house or bring some items and necessities from it, then the residents enter at their own risk.”

  ECONOMIC STRANGULATION OF CHRISTIAN AREAS BEGINS
  🚨🇸🇾 VALLEY OF THE CHRISTIANS: After the disarming process in the Valley of the Christians was declared as finished yesterday, deforestation of forests & fields around the villages Tannourine, Mashta Azar & Jwar el-Afes has begun… https://t.co/wzPrhD0tmA pic.twitter.com/W35yIBuFOE

  — OstensibleOyster (@Ostensiblay) January 9, 2025

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  The same scenario was repeated in the village of Maryoud, most of whose residents have been displaced. “The militants killed a civilian man from the village who returned to check on his house during the past two days. When we contacted the Commission to find out the affiliation of these killers, it responded that the area was outside the control of its factions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 22:45

• FDA Mandates Nerve Damage Warnings For 2 RSV Vaccines
  FDA Mandates Nerve Damage Warnings For 2 RSV Vaccines

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

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered two respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine manufacturers to include a potentially paralytic side effect warning related to nerve damage on product labels.

  

  The manufacturers, GSK and Pfizer, manufacturing Arexvy and Abrysvo vaccines respectively, must now include a warning stating a risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) following vaccination, according to a Jan. 7 statement from the agency.

  GBS is a rare disorder in which the immune system ends up damaging nerve cells, which leads to weakness in the muscles and potential near-total paralysis, depending on severity.

  RSV is a common respiratory virus that infects the throat, nose, and lungs, and typically spreads during fall and winter seasons. Infected people can experience symptoms similar to that of a common cold such as a runny nose, congestion, sneezing, and coughing.

  

  The FDA said the following statement is to be included in the Warnings and Precautions section of the two vaccines: “The results of a postmarketing observational study suggest an increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome during the 42 days following vaccination with Abrysvo” or with “Arexvy” for that vaccine.

  Arexvy is used by people aged 50 and older to deal with lower respiratory tract disease caused by RSV, while Abrysvo has been approved for use in adults aged 18 and above.

  Abrysvo is also used by pregnant women who are at 32 through 36 weeks of gestational age to protect infants from birth through six months of age.

  The labeling requirement follows an observational study conducted by the FDA.

  In the study, the agency found there was an “increased risk of GBS during the 42 days following vaccination, with an estimated 9 excess cases of GBS per million doses of Abrysvo, and an estimated 7 excess cases of GBS per million doses of Arexvy administered to individuals 65 years of age and older.”

  However, despite these results, the FDA determined that “the benefits of vaccination with Abrysvo and Arexvy continue to outweigh their risks.”

  According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), early symptoms of GBS can include feelings of weakness and tingling.

  “People with GBS usually first feel these symptoms in both legs. Then, they might feel these symptoms in their arms and upper body,” it said. “Symptoms can progress over hours, days, or weeks.” The weakness keeps increasing until people are unable to use certain muscles.

  “People with GBS need to be hospitalized,” the agency said. “Most people start to recover 2–3 weeks after symptoms start. Recovery may take as little as a few weeks or as long as a few years. Most people recover fully, but some have permanent nerve damage. Some people have died from GBS.”

  The Epoch Times reached out to GSK and Pfizer for comment.

  RSV Vaccine Usage and Risks

  The RSV vaccine label update comes as the overall respiratory illness activity in the United States is deemed to be at a “high” level, with RSV activity being “very high in many areas of the country, particularly in young children,” according to the CDC.

  “Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are highest in children and hospitalizations are elevated among older adults in some areas.”

  The agency recommends all babies be protected from RSV by either vaccinating mothers or by giving an antibody to the infant.

  Even if the mother is not at high risk for severe RSV, the vaccination is important since the pregnant woman will “pass the protection” to her baby, the CDC said. “It takes two weeks to develop protection (antibodies) and for protection to pass on to your baby.”

  This protection lasts for the first six months of the infant’s life “while they are at highest risk of severe RSV.”

  Pregnant women who have already taken an RSV vaccine during a previous pregnancy are not recommended to take it again. Instead, the baby should get nirsevimab, an antibody.

  CDC recommends antibodies to “all babies younger than eight months of age born to mothers who did not receive a maternal RSV vaccine (Pfizer’s Abrysvo) during pregnancy.”

  For older adults, the CDC advises vaccination for 60 to 74-year-olds who are at increased risk of severe RSV and for all individuals aged 75 and above.

  However, the agency warns that vaccination could result in certain adverse events. “Side effects such as pain, redness, and swelling where the shot is given, fatigue, fever, headache, nausea, diarrhea, and muscle or joint pain may occur after you get an RSV vaccine.”

  “These side effects are usually mild. Patients who have experienced these symptoms when getting other vaccines might be more likely to experience them after getting an RSV vaccine,” it said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 22:10

• These Were The Most On-Time Airlines In 2024
  These Were The Most On-Time Airlines In 2024

  International air traffic increased steadily in 2024, with global demand growing 7.1% year-on-year as the aviation industry continues to recover post-pandemic.

  Amid this steady increase in passenger volume, punctuality has become more important than ever, distinguishing top-performing airlines from the rest.

  This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, shows the 10 airlines with the highest percentage of on-time arrivals in 2024 and their total number of flights. Data comes from Cirium.

  

  Which Airline was the Most Punctual in 2024?

  Below, we show the top 10 airlines by on-time arrival rate in 2024, along with their total flights last year.

  

  Aeroméxico tops the list with the highest on-time arrival rate at 86.7%, closely followed by Saudi Arabia’s flag carrier, Saudia, at 86.4%.

  Notably, two of Saudia’s most popular routes–Riyadh to Jeddah and Dubai to Riyadh–were among the top revenue-generating routes of 2023, according to OAG data.

  Delta Air Lines, one of the largest global carriers, maintains a strong on-time performance of 83.5%, despite operating over 1.7 million flights—one of the highest totals in Cirium’s rankings. The Atlanta-based airline also ranked as America’s most reliable airline in the first quarter of 2024.

  United Airlines, the largest airline in the world based on revenue passenger miles and another U.S. giant, achieved an 80.9% on-time arrival rate.

  However, United was the only U.S. airline that saw a drop in its American Customer Satisfaction Index rating last year, due to various safety incidents.

  To learn more about the international aviation industry, check out this graphic that visualizes the busiest international airports in the world.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 21:35

• Lawmakers Propose Amendment To Congressional Term Limits
  Lawmakers Propose Amendment To Congressional Term Limits

  Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) have introduced joint resolutions in the Senate and House respectively, calling for congressional term limits.

  

  “With the evident abuse of power that has taken place in Congress, the notion of term limits is basic common sense,” Norman said in an emailed statement.

  The amendment would limit House members to three terms of two years, and Senate members to two terms of six years.

  However, terms that began before the amendment’s ratification are not counted towards the total number. This has relevance for Cruz, who began a third term in the Senate this year.

  “The Founding Fathers envisioned a government of citizen legislators who would serve for a few years and return home, not a government run by a small group of special interests and lifelong, permanently entrenched politicians who prey upon the brokenness of Washington to govern in a manner that is totally unaccountable to the American people,” Cruz said.

  The action currently has support in both chambers of Congress—11 senators and 29 members of the House—but it is no small feat to amend the U.S. Constitution.

  The amendment will require support from two-thirds of the House and of the Senate and agreement by three-fourths of states to be ratified.

  Cruz and Norman have repeatedly introduced term limits during their time in Congress.

  Cruz’s 2023 version of the bill did not make it out of committee.

  Norman’s House version was also voted down 17–19 in the House Judiciary Committee that same year.

  The vote was not entirely along party lines.

  Four Republicans—Reps. Harriet Hageman (Wyo.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), and Scott Fitzgerald (Wis.)—sided with Democrats to kill the bill.

  At that time, Hageman told Fox News that she felt forcing term limits denied voters a choice.

  “We already have term limits, although we call them elections, and in the House, we have them every two years,” she said.

  “You only have to look at the seat that I currently hold for the people of Wyoming to see that if voters are dissatisfied, they can always change horses.”

  She also said that long-term member experience may prove important during political battles with the other side of the aisle.

  The record for longest term in Congress goes to Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who served 59 years in the House of Representatives. Current Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have also held onto their seats for decades. Grassley was elected in 1980 and McConnell in 1985.

  McConnell stepped down as leader of the Senate Republicans at the end of 2024 and has not yet publicly ruled out a 2026 run.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 21:00

• How Widespread Is Distrust Of Mainstream Media?
  How Widespread Is Distrust Of Mainstream Media?

  Distrust of the news is particularly widespread in the United States and France.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, according to a survey by Statista Consumer Insights, one in five respondents in each country said that they do not trust mainstream media.

  This is the highest share of the 21 countries polled.

  Spanish respondents were similarly skeptical, with 19 percent of respondents answering the same.

  As the chart shows, the Swiss are more convinced of their country’s journalistic integrity, with only 13 percent of respondents stating they distrusted Swiss mainstream media.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Under one in ten respondents said they distrusted the news in China.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 20:25

• Palisades Fire Crisis Intensifies Ahead Of Windstorm Event Early Next Week
  Palisades Fire Crisis Intensifies Ahead Of Windstorm Event Early Next Week

  Update (2005ET):

   LA Times provided the latest on all four fires raging across the LA County area:

  Palisades Fire:

  Burned 22,660 acres and numerous homes, businesses and landmarks in Pacific Palisades and westward along Pacific Coast Highway, toward Malibu. As of 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning, the fire was 11% contained. Many parts of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Santa Monica, Calabasas, Brentwood and Encino are under evacuation orders or warnings. More than 12,000 structures remain threatened. Officials estimate that more than 5,300 structures, including many homes, have been damaged or destroyed.

  Eaton Fire:

  Burned 13,956 acres and many structures in Altadena and Pasadena. Additional evacuation orders were mandated Thursday afternoon when fire climbed toward Mt. Wilson. Other mandatory evacuations were lifted as city officials notified residents in Glenoaks Canyon and Chevy Chase Canyon that it was safe to return to their homes. As of 8 a.m. Saturday morning, the fire was 15 % contained, on Friday, it was only at 3%. Officials say 7,000 structures have been damaged in the fire.

  Kenneth Fire:

  Burned 1,052 acres near the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. As of 8 a.m. Saturday morning, the fire was 80% contained, according to Cal Fire. All evacuation warnings have been lifted for the fire.

  Hurst Fire:

  Burned 779 acres in the area around Sylmar. Evacuation orders have been lifted. As of 8 a.m. Saturday, the fire was 76% contained, according to Cal Fire.

  Here are the latest LA Times headlines regarding the inferno: 

  • All-out aerial assault works to save homes in Brentwood, Encino as Palisades fire approaches

  • LA County Supervisor invites Trump to see fire damage

  • UCLA students on high alert, but not under evacuation orders

  • 1,680 National Guard troops now helping in fire zone

  • LADWP said 20% of fire hydrants sustained a loss of pressure

  • After faulty cell alerts during fire emergency, LA County overhauls its system

  • High winds, low humidity expected to fuel fires through Wednesday: ‘Not looking good’

  • Death toll from LA firestorms rises to 13

  Accuweather reported, “Santa Ana winds will pick up Saturday night into Sunday morning in Southern California, but a possibly strong wind event is coming early next week as wildfires continue.” 

  

  He’s not wrong. That’s why local elections matter. We suspect a political shift is on the horizon.

  If you live in Pacific Palisades, you paid your dues…

  Doctors, lawyers, agents, entrepreneurs, etc.

  You believed in the American Dream. You paid your taxes. You trusted the system.

  Then you adopted luxury beliefs like Affirmative Action and DEI and Climate Change™ and… pic.twitter.com/nYf30k1jEI

  — John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) January 11, 2025

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  Good point. 

  But have you LOOKED at the prices of homes in Palisades? 5-50 MILLION DOLLARS… if insurance is forced to insure these homes the rest of us pay the price. Build multimillion dollar homes in fire prone hills at your own risk, not mine. https://t.co/6iGQaXEwZh pic.twitter.com/jHIU6z0vsR

  — Kim Iversen 🇺🇸 (@KimIversenShow) January 11, 2025

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  Apocalypse.

  The Los Angeles Pacific Palisades fires have turned one of the most expensive, beautiful and iconic cities in the world into an apocalypse zone

  Somehow, Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass still have jobs

  Someone make it make sense pic.twitter.com/g6roQJ5X6R

  — Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 11, 2025

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  Via Daily Mail:

  Two men are said to have been caught on camera dumping gasoline and setting it alight immediately before the devastating Palisades fire broke out, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.

  A resident of the ritzy celeb-packed area reported the video to a senior firefighter once the flames had started consuming the area.

  About that ‘climate change’ narrative pushed by far-left corporate media. 

  AI…

  My heart will go on 🎶🔥 pic.twitter.com/Qu8GwS7la8

  — JonC Memes (@JonCovering) January 11, 2025

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  *   *   * 

  The Palisades Fire, Eaton Fire, Kenneth Fire, Hurst Fire, and Lidia Fire have scorched over 27,000 acres, destroyed 12,000 structures, claimed at least 11 lives, and evacuated more than 150,000 people. Containment for the two largest fires, the Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire, remains in the mid-to-high single digits. Evacuation orders were issued overnight for Mandeville Canyon as the Palisades Fire advanced toward the Interstate 405 freeway. 

  California Governor Gavin Newsom is calling for censorship of “misinformation” on the Los Angeles Fires

  He wants censorship because he is directly responsible. Here’s drone footage of the Pacific Palisades fire destruction. This is a result of Gavin Newsom. He should resign. pic.twitter.com/SrPtIfRyc0

  — Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 10, 2025

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  Firefighters continued battling the Palisades, Eaton, and other fires. A red flag warning via the National Weather Service was still in effect in the early morning hours. 

  

  LA Times provides the latest on all five fires raging across the LA County area:

  Palisades Fire:

  Burned 21,317 acres and numerous homes, businesses and landmarks in Pacific Palisades and westward along Pacific Coast Highway, toward Malibu. As of 5 a.m. Friday morning, the fire was 8% contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. On Friday night, officials upgraded an evacuation warning to a mandatory order from Sunset Boulevard north to Encino Reservoir, from the 405 Freeway west to Mandeville Canyon. New evacuation warnings were issued for areas to the east of the 405 Freeway, north of West Sunset Boulevard and south of Mulholland Drive, along with areas south of Ventura Boulevard and east of Louise Avenue in Encino.

  Eaton Fire:

  Burned 14,117 acres and many structures in Altadena and Pasadena. Additional evacuation orders were mandated Thursday afternoon when fire climbed toward Mt. Wilson. Other mandatory evacuations were lifted as city officials notified residents in Glenoaks Canyon and Chevy Chase Canyon that it was safe to return to their homes. Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X on Friday morning that the fire was 3% contained as of 7:30 a.m.

  Kenneth fire:

  Burned 1,052 acres near the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. As of 6 a.m. Friday morning, the fire was 50% contained, according to Cal Fire. All evacuation warnings have been lifted for the fire.

  Hurst Fire:

  Burned 771 acres in the area around Sylmar. Evacuation orders have been lifted. As of 8 p.m. Thursday night, the fire was 70% contained, according to Cal Fire.

  Lidia Fire:

  Burned 394 acres in Acton and is 98% contained, according to Cal Fire.

  Fire Map (LA Times)

  

  The latest concern has been a large flare-up in the Palisades area that prompted new evacuation orders from Sunset Boulevard north to Encino Reservoir, and from the 405 Freeway west to Mandeville Canyon. This area includes Brentwood and the foothills of the San Fernando Valley. 

  LA Times warned: “The Palisades fire can now be seen across Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, an unsettling development as officials worried about the fire expanding into neighborhoods in Encino and Brentwood and possibly jumping the 405 freeway into Bel Air.” 

  

  Josh Sautter, president of the Encino Neighborhood Council, told the media outlet that the latest round of evacuation orders sent panic through the community. 

  “I don’t think that people here really saw that it was coming,” Sautter said, adding, “We didn’t think that it was something that would really affect us — until it did.”

  Here are the latest LA Times headlines regarding the inferno: 

  • Glow of Palisades fire seen across LA’s San Fernando Valley; swaths of Encino, Brentwood told to evacuate

  • Latest Palisades fire evacuation order sends shock wave through Encino

  • LA County declares health emergency due to smoke and ash

  • State to probe why Pacific Palisades reservoir was offline, empty when firestorm exploded

  • Newsom orders investigation into dry fire hydrants that hampered firefighting in LA.

  • Insurance commissioner issues moratorium on home policy cancellations in fire zones

  • ‘We don’t know half of it.’ LA firestorm death toll expected to rise as searchers go door to door

  Latest Zero Hedge headlines:

  • 10 Dead, 10,000 Structures Burned In Los Angeles Area Inferno As Fire Damage Could Exceed $150 Billion

  • “Do Not Panic Buy”: Officials Urge Calm As LA Fire Crisis Disrupts Main Fuel Pipeline To Las Vegas

  • “We’re Not Screwing Around”: LA Sheriff Declares Curfew Amid Arson & Looting Chaos

  • California-Based Insurer Crashes Amid Billions In LA Area Fire-Damage Losses

  • Arson Threats A “Major Issue” In Wildfire-Ravaged Los Angeles County

  • California Imposes 1-Year Insurance Cancellation Freeze In Areas Ravaged By Wildfires

  Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass find themselves in the hot seat as their own liberal voter base turns against them, blaming the radical politicians for the spread of fire due to their massive mismanagement of budgets. 

  A Fox News report found that Newsom slashed funding for wildfire and forest resilience by more than $100 million last year. He signed the budget covering the 2024-25 fiscal year in June. 

  Even the left-leaning USA Today reported that new budget documents showed the mayor reduced the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget from $837 million in fiscal year 2024 to $819 million in fiscal year 2025. 

  In December, LAFD sent a report to the mayor and city council warning that ” these budgetary reductions have adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations.” 

  The destruction caused by the wildfires is about twice the size of Manhattan, and growing, and in our view, will be a political disaster for both Newsom and Bass. 

  Elon Musk wrote on X the huge loss of mansions across LA has primarily been a failure of Newsom and Bass…

  Exactly. Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim.

  The immense loss of homes in LA is primarily due to:

  1. Nonsensical overregulation that prevented creating fire breaks and doing brush clearing.

  2. Bad governance at the state and local level that… https://t.co/KByGVCjQ8N

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2025

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

  On Friday evening, Newsom was trying to salvage his dumpster fire political career by inviting President-elect Donald Trump to California. 

  .@realDonaldTrump, as you prepare to assume the presidency once more, I invite you to come to California.

  The hundreds of thousands of Americans – displaced from their homes and fearful for the future – deserve to see us all working together in their best interests, not… pic.twitter.com/R3C7cGqdBh

  — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 10, 2025

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

  Newsom also noted on X, “I am calling for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir.” 

  NEW: I am calling for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir.

  We need answers to ensure this does not happen again and we have every resource available to… pic.twitter.com/R0vq0wwZph

  — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 10, 2025

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

  Newsom is getting angry. 

  This is not true. https://t.co/70J4YCF4Nw

  — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 11, 2025

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

  Community Noted.

  A ridiculous lie. We have doubled the size of our firefighting army, built the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet, and increased the forest management ten-fold since taking office.

  Time to serve these folks the facts. https://t.co/qITPcQDTKk

  — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 11, 2025

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

  It’s not surprising at all that liberal Californians, including Hollywood elites, voted in Mayor Bass, a Marxist!

  Karen Bass is a Marxist who praised Fidel Castro and Communist Party USA leaders.

  Now her fire response makes sense. pic.twitter.com/JGyD7KK3xO

  — Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) January 10, 2025

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

  LA Mayor Karen Bass is a trained Marxist terrorist who traveled to Cuba dozens of times, praised communist dictators and allied with the literal terror group that bombed the US Capital.

  One has to assume she’s burning LA on purpose. Bass should be in jailpic.twitter.com/4UmSK4Z47p

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 9, 2025

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

  Local elections matter—what were you all thinking?

  Also, all of this proves that you can not rely on gov’t…. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 20:05

• The Left's Ignoble Motives
  The Left’s Ignoble Motives

  Authored by Thaddeus McCotter via American Greatness,

  Having read his January 7th piece in American Greatness, “We Can Handle the Truth,” clearly Christopher Roach did a splendid job of employing a cinematic reference to tie together the U.S. and U.K. establishments’ mutual fear of telling their public the truth about terrorism and other criminal acts when the perpetrators are from a preferred intersectional group.

  

  Specifically, Mr. Roach deftly stated the case how the refusal by the authorities and the corporate media in the United States to call the murders in New Orleans a terrorist attack constitutes a refusal akin to that exhibited by the United Kingdom regarding the Pakistani rape gangs. Per Mr. Roach:

  There has been an even more aggressive media blackout in response to the horrifying rape gangs in the United Kingdom. For years, not only the media, but police, politicians, social workers, and other authorities downplayed the reality of these attacks, blamed victims, and did little to stop the rape of young, native British females by Pakistani immigrant gangs.

  Regarding such obfuscations and denials by the two nations’ leftist elites, Mr. Roach noted the role allegedly played by their fear of being accused of “racism”: “[I]n the modern West, whether in the United States or the United Kingdom, authorities are more afraid of being accused of racism than stopping terrorism and child rape.”

  To bolster this point, Mr. Roach cites British writer Tom Holland, a clear front-runner for the 2025 Walter Duranty Fake News Award:

  The true nightmare of #Rotherham is that the motives of those who turned a blind eye, however monstrous the consequences, were indeed noble.

  “It wasn’t the indifference that was noble, but the concern not to demonise a minority. Caring for the weak. The Christian thing . . . I think they genuinely didn’t want to give succour to racism against a minority—which was a noble principle.

  Yet, as is so often the case in dealing with the left, reality dictates otherwise. The left has ignoble motives—ones rooted in preserving and imposing their power over others and over their own deluded sense of superiority.

  As a rational matter, it is far more plausible to believe that the left is politically more concerned with keeping core minority voting blocs intact. Often, their paranoia and patronizing racism involve pushing policies that are detrimental to society, including minorities. Not surprisingly, such policies are unpopular to a great number of voters (such as the increasing number of Hispanic and other American minorities who oppose open borders, illegal immigration, and the politicians behind them).

  Consequently, when a member(s) of one of the left’s core minority voting blocs commits a terrorist and/or other criminal act, the governing elite will downplay it, often by obfuscating the perpetrator and their motives and/or covering it with a cloak of muted statements—except, of course, when they are blaming victims and attacking those who demand a more honest and effective response.

  Such despicable political tactics are aimed at insulating the governing elite’s solicitous, patronizing, and injurious policies purportedly offered to benefit said group from becoming publicly exposed, debated, and even more disfavored. For, if they are brought to light in the public square, it will doubtless cost them the votes and, ergo, elections. Thus, the governing elites do this not to protect the minority group from “racism.” The governing elites do this to protect themselves from voters. As Mr. Roach trenchantly avers: “This self-serving justification obscures that officials engaged in narrative control are often more concerned with avoiding embarrassment and accountability than any broader social goal.”

  Still, for the leftist political elites in both countries, there exists an even more powerful irrational motive for twisting reality to suit their aims. The left must perpetuate their self-delusion of moral and intellectual superiority at all costs—including if it requires obfuscating and minimizing the protection of children who are being raped or pedestrians who are being run down. For the left, there seems to be no price too high to pay for their inflated self-esteem—especially when they’re not the ones paying the tab. Indeed, such evasion of accountability is the genesis of the leftist governing elites’ myth of the “noble lie,” one that has attempted to sanitize recent weaponized deceits ranging from rape gangs to Russia-gate, ad nauseam.

  Ultimately, the left is not content with avoiding accountability for the consequences of their harmful policies and injurious ideological follies. They seek to be seen as the virtuous victims of those people demanding accountability. It is but a small step for them to take, considering how little regard the leftist governing elite in both nations have for the great mass of their populations.

  Unconscionably, both nations’ leftist governing elites fear the response of their own populations more than the terrorist and/or criminal actors. By projecting its own paranoiac contempt upon the rest of society, the left is perpetuating its self-deceit of superiority by victim-blaming and shaming.

  And that victim is you.

  In turn, this raises the question above all else that the leftist governing elites fear answering honestly: “Do you believe an oppressed minority is justified in committing a violent act against the racist, misogynistic, imperialist, inequitable, oppressive majority?” If you think the question far outré, remember what is being asked of people who knowingly refused to employ every means at their disposal—starting with the full truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—to stop children from being raped or people from being murdered.

  After all, this is not what Mr. Holland offered but an irrational, ludicrous justification for an almost unimaginable ideological and moral failure, one along the lines that Walter Duranty scrawled when excusing Stalin’s crimes: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” The toxic imbecility is staggering, and the verdict is damning. As Mr. Roach concludes:

  The leadership class has no respect for the West, its history, or its people. This is evidenced by their consistent desire to hide the truth and subject our most vulnerable citizens to horrific violence, lest we all “get the wrong idea.” They have forfeited their authority to rule because of their repeated refusal to treat us with candor and protect our most vulnerable citizens.

  Contrary to their prejudices, we can handle the truth.

  It is the leftist governing elites that cannot.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 19:50

• The Rise Of News 'Influencers' And Where They Can Be Found
  The Rise Of News ‘Influencers’ And Where They Can Be Found

  The 2024 presidential campaign that resulted in the re-election of Donald Trump was unique in many ways. One thing it demonstrated is the increased power that individual voices, first and foremost on social media, have in comparison to the actual “fourth power”, the news media.

  And it’s not just mega influencers like Elon Musk or Joe Rogan, people with tens of millions of followers on social media, who shape the political views of many, especially young people these days, but also thousands of smaller-scale news influencers.

  These are people with large social media followings, who regularly post about politics and current events but are, more often than not, unaffiliated with an actual news organization. As trust in news organization has eroded in recent years, news influencers have become more popular for those seeking independent voices outside the often-maligned “mainstream media”.

  As Statista’s Felix Richter shows in the chart below, according to a Pew Research Center report commissioned by the Pew-Knight Initiative, 21 percent of U.S. adults regularly get news from news influencers, with young adults significantly more likely to do so than older ones.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  37 percent of 18 to 29- year-olds regularly get news from influencers versus just 15 percent of 50 to 64-year-olds and 7 percent of those aged 65 and above. While it would be easy to assume that people mostly seek out news influencers who’s views closely align with their own, that doesn’t necessarily appear to be the case. According to Pew’s findings, 61 percent of those wo regularly get opinions from news influencers say that they see opinions they agree and disagree with about equally. 30 percent see mostly opinions they agree with, while very few (2 percent) mostly see opinions from influencers they disagree with.

  So why do people lean on news influencers to get informed? According to Pew, 65 percent of news influencer followers said that they helped them better understand current events and civic issues. More than 70 percent said that news influencers offered news that are extremely/very different (23 percent) or somewhat different (48 percent) from the news they get elsewhere.

  And one final aspect is likely trust: while the news media has lost trust in recent years, influencers have it in abundance, often built through years of social media “relationships” with their followers. What they often lack compared to traditional news outlets is an actual journalistic background, meaning that the trust they enjoy from their followers may not always be backed up by their actual understanding of often complex matters.

  As Statista’s chart shows, X (formerly Twitter) is the most popular platform among news influencers, with 85 percent of the 500 sampled influencers active on the platform acquired by Elon Musk in 2022. Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are also very commonly used, while TikTok is surprisingly far down the list with only 27 percent of the sampled influencers active on the platform.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 19:15

• Thacker Crushes Krugman, Trounces Tufecki As NYT Keeps Peddling Lies
  Thacker Crushes Krugman, Trounces Tufecki As NYT Keeps Peddling Lies

  Authored by former Congressional investigator Paul Thacker,

  I walked you through a couple examples of fact-challenged essays in the New York Times opinion page last month, but Wow! Two more incidents jumped to my attention soon after. I’m gonna march through these as well, to further impress upon readers of the need to be skeptical about what you read, especially if it’s in the New York Times.

  

  The first example is columnist Paul Krugman, the Princeton professor of economics who spent an entire year dismissing inflation, even though inflation was so terrible it likely explains why Trump won the presidential election. The second exemplar of Times silliness is columnist Zeynep Tufekci who fabricated science to support “masks work” dogma throughout the pandemic, and is now spitting out alternative facts about Trump’s pick to run the National Institutes of Health.

  Krugman won a Nobel Prize in 2008, but his fame rests on his decades-long tenure as celebrated truth teller columnist for the Times. However, truths told by Krugman are not always true. For the past year, running up into the election, Krugman has spun a fairy tale about the U.S. economy, professing in column after column that inflation is low. Krugman told these lies likely because these fibs bolstered the Democratic Party while they were locked in a tight race with Trump.

  Krugman has long shown a partisan streak, once making the delusional claim that Trump was under the control of Putin.

  

  But it seems politics has so deranged Krugman’s thinking that this Nobel Prize winner in economics will even write stupid things about economics.

  Before diving into Krugman’s economic nonsense, take a look this chart from the Congressional Budget Office which notes that inflation reached incredibly high levels during the Biden administration. Then ask yourself, “How could Krugman ignore these numbers?”

  

  Well, he did.

  Krugman started off 2024 proclaiming that “inflation isn’t nearly as bad as it feels” and continued to dismiss economic numbers right up through the election.

  

  Nonetheless, when media reported the actual inflation numbers, Krugman dismissed them as “partisan media” on May 3rd.

  

  He deployed the “partisan” claim again, four days later on May 7 because why not? Whenever the fact don’t fit, just mumble “partisan.”

  

  By June Krugman had become so delusional about inflation that he floated the silly argument that high inflation was a “false alarm” and the real concern was recession. “So it’s time to stop obsessing about inflation, which increasingly looks like yesterday’s problem,” Krugman wrote, “and start worrying about the possibility of a recession as the economy’s strength finally begins to erode under the strain of high interest rates.”

  

  When Trump pledged to “end inflation” last July, Krugman then spun up a fantasy tale in one of his columns:

  So Americans do know that inflation — the rate at which prices are rising — is way down. What is true is that we had a burst of inflation in 2021-22, which has left the level of prices considerably higher than it was a few years ago. A dollar doesn’t buy as much as it used to. On the other hand, American workers are taking home more dollars: Recent years have seen a surge in wages as well as in prices.

  Krugman followed up this baloney by cherry picking federal numbers to find one inflation report that fit his politics which he lauded as beautiful.

  

  “We’ve beaten inflation,” Krugman told Yahoo Finance in early August. “I mean when you take out sort of lagged effects of housing, most measures are pretty much at the Fed’s 2% target or at most a fraction of a percentage point above it.”

  Krugman’s crusade to dismiss inflation and high prices harming average Americans continued a few days later in this column praising Biden and alleging Kamala Harris was more trusted than Trump on the economy.

  

  But days before the election Krugman pivoted to warn that victory over inflation could be “squandered” if Donald Trump wins the presidency. This sudden twist, from downplaying inflation numbers during the Biden administration to projecting alarm over imaginary Trump inflation, pretty much reveals that campaign politics were driving Krugman’s columns.

  

  And then came the election, and guess what? The New York Times admitted that voters chose Trump because of inflation and high prices under Biden. But after confessing this, the Times ignored over a year of bullshit columns by Krugman denying that very inflation, and then allowed Krugman to double down on complaints about Trump.

  I’m serious, this is exactly what the New York Times did. Read it for yourself.

  

  In fact, Biden inflation was so bad, explained Johns Hopkins political economist David A. Steinberg, that high costs killed Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and helped propel Trump into the White House.

  

  As is clear to anyone not blinded by political zealotry, inflation was really bad during the Biden administration. So bad that people voted for a Republican, despite a year-long campaign by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman to deny economic reality in the pages of America’s most powerful newspaper.

  Why the editors at the Times let Krugman get away with publishing this nonsense, I have no clue, but it’s rather obvious that accuracy is not important at the Times. Let’s take a look at the second example of lies splattered across the pages of the Times: columnist Zeynep Tufekci.

  Readers might remember Tufekci from her defamatory attack on the Cochrane mask review and lead author Tom Jefferson. After Cochrane published their latest mask review that found little evidence mask work to stop viruses in 2023, Tufekci went on the attack, alleging the evidence falls in the opposite direction: masks work.

  Granted, Tufekci’s advanced degrees are in film studies, not public health or medicine. But hey, New York Times. Who needs actual science when you can dash out an essay?

  

  Tufekci’s “masks work” column was not only rife with false scientific conclusions, she even lied about what people she interviewed told her. In one example, Tufekci claimed Michael Brown, one of Cochrane’s editors, did not support the Cochrane mask review when he had told her the complete opposite.

  “I didn’t agree with her,” Michael Brown told me of his interactions with Tufekci, “the way she then spun it: masks work.”

  It’s not that Tufekci doesn’t understand science; she doesn’t understand journalism ethics nor how to read and write accurately. And Tufekci pulled the same gambit in a November essay defaming Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s nominee to run the NIH.

  In her column disparaging Bhattacharya, Tufekci made several false assertions, alleging for example that Bhattacharya had estimated COVID would only kill 20,000 to 40,000 Americans (he had actually written that up to 2 million might die). Tufekci also falsely asserted that a study by Bhattacharya grossly overestimated the number of Americans who had been sickened by the virus and recovered. (In fact, this study was published in a top journal and was replicated by other studies).

  Tufekci’s article was so riddled with mistakes that several scientists with real degrees in science sent a letter to the New York Times pointing out the errors and demanding that the Times abide by basic rules of journalism and issue a correction.

  

  But instead of correcting the errors the New York Times doubled down on their false assertions, making clear to readers that they have a political agenda to attack science and researchers they don’t like.

  But wait. It gets worse.

  After scientists sent the Times the letter noting Tufekci’s numerous errors, Tufekci hopped on X to attack Bhattacharya once again. In several posts, Tufekci argued that the real problem was not her blatant scientific mistakes, nor her defamatory attack on Bhattacharya.

  The real problem is that Bhattacharya is not “humble” and is part of a “personality cult.”

  

  This is what passes for journalism at the New York Times. I ask myself every day why I continue paying for a subscription to this mess of a paper. What do you think?

  Subscribe to The Disinformation Chronicle here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 18:40

• Trump "Wants America To Win": Zuckerberg Warns Of "Emasculated" Society
  Trump “Wants America To Win”: Zuckerberg Warns Of “Emasculated” Society

  Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Tim,es,

  Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared on actor and martial artist Joe Rogan’s podcast on Jan. 10, sparking interest days ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

  

  The episode on “The Joe Rogan Experience” was aired just days after the tech founder announced his company was changing its moderation policy, replacing fact checkers with a less censorious system modeled on X’s Community Notes. He has also elevated Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a Trump and Rogan ally, to Meta’s board of directors.

  During the nearly three-hour episode, Zuckerberg and Rogan talked Trump, online censorship, the recent election, television versus. podcasts, and the emasculation of society.

  Trump ‘Wants America to Win’: Zuckerberg

  Zuckerberg praised Trump on Rogan’s program, drawing a contrast between his prospective leadership and how the Biden administration handled the tech industry.

  “I think he just wants America to win,” Zuckerberg said of Trump.

  He also voiced regret for complying with requests to censor content on ideological grounds, particularly content related to COVID-19 while the Biden administration was pushing for COVID-19 vaccine uptake. He traced the rise of ideological censorship online to Trump’s election in 2016, which came alongside Brexit, and to the 2020 pandemic.

  “We did generally defer to the government on some of these policies that in retrospect I probably wouldn’t, knowing what I know now,” he said.

  “These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said.

  The Facebook founder said that the United States should do more to defend its tech companies in other countries, citing legal actions by the European Union (EU) against Meta and other tech giants. He said the U.S. government had set the stage for other governments to intervene through its own approach to Meta and other firms.

  The Election Made a Mark

  Zuckerberg told Rogan that the 2024 election had affected Meta’s approach to content moderation.

  “The good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this cultural pulse,” he said. “We try to have policies that reflect mainstream discourse.”

  Yet, he pushed back against claims that there was a particular significance to the timing, which coincides with other moves from Zuckerberg seemingly aimed at gaining support from the incoming administration—for example, Meta’s donation of $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund.

  “I try not to change our content rules right in the middle of an election either. There’s not like a good time to do this,” Zuckerberg said.

  Zuckerberg Talks Tradeoffs in Content Moderation

  The Meta CEO spoke about his company’s decision to shut down its fact-checking program in favor of an X-style system in which users generate notes and vote them up or down.

  He also drew attention to a related change—namely, the move to require more confidence from the company’s artificial intelligence-based systems before harmful content is removed.

  A Jan. 7 announcement from Meta suggested the current approach is producing too many false positives, leading to “the vast majority of the censorship on our platforms.”

  It stated that the systems will concentrate on “illegal and high-severity violations, like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud, and scams” rather than the political content that was often flagged in the past.

  On Rogan’s program, Zuckerberg said that there was a tradeoff between precision and comprehensiveness. A more aggressive system for spotting drug-related content, for example, might catch more of that material while sweeping up many innocent posts in its dragnet. On the other hand, a more precise system might catch less of that targeted content while censoring fewer innocent posts.

  “We will maybe take down a smaller amount of the harmful content, but it will also mean that we’ll dramatically reduce the amount of people whose accounts were taken off for a mistake—which is just a terrible experience,” Zuckerberg said.

  ‘I Hated Doing TV’: Zuckerberg

  Zuckerberg discussed his early media appearances after founding Facebook in 2004 while a student at Harvard University. Like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard.

  “I hated doing TV,” he told Rogan. “I’d get super nervous.”

  He recalled that, as a college-aged techie, he was “good at coding” but “real bad at kind of like talking to people.”

  Zuckerberg said that the media outlets that hosted him would reduce his appearances to unflattering sound bites. He suggested that online podcasts succeed because they operate without those constraints.

  “On the Internet, there’s no reason to cut it to a four-minute sound bite,” he said.

  Rogan agreed.

  “Conversations are like a dance,” he said. “You kind of have to find the rhythm that you’re going to talk with, and then you have to actually be interested in what you’re talking about.”

  Zuckerberg Warns of ‘Neutered or Emasculated’ Society

  Zuckerberg also discussed his martial arts training. The Meta CEO practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

  “It definitely takes the edge off things. After a couple of hours doing that in the morning, it’s just like, yeah, it’s like nothing else that day is going to stress you out that much,” he said.

  Zuckerberg reflected on society as a whole, saying much of it has become “neutered or emasculated.”

  He said martial arts allows him to express himself in a way that isn’t possible as the CEO of a large company, comparing the visuals of him fighting favorably to the brief sound bites he can provide through TV interviews.

  “When people see me competing in this sport, they say, ‘Oh, no, that’s the real Mark,’” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 17:30

• Small-Town America "Fights Back" In Court Against Globalists Who Flooded Their Town With Haitians
  Small-Town America “Fights Back” In Court Against Globalists Who Flooded Their Town With Haitians

  A resident of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, who was among the first to draw national attention to the massive influx of Haitian migrants into his small town, is now locked in a legal battle with a local food packaging plant that employs primarily migrants from the third world. Eyes on Charleroi first appeared when President-elect Donald Trump highlighted the town’s staggering 2,000% surge in its migrant population before the presidential elections. The resident is also planning a class-action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of residents, demanding accountability from those responsible for the migrant invasion. 

  PRESIDENT TRUMP: “The small 4,000 person town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania has experienced a 2,000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris — the schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak English, costing local… pic.twitter.com/jvlP19ANL0

  — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 12, 2024

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

  Local media outlet Pennsylvania Record reports the lawyer of Andrew Armbruster, a resident of Charleroi, filed Pennsylvania’s new anti-SLAPP law, a measure that gives defendants, in some instances, the opportunity to evade litigation. This is regarding a defamation lawsuit filed against Armbruster by the Charleroi business Fourth Street Foods

  “SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation, and anti-SLAPP laws give defendants a First Amendment argument,” Pennsylvania Record’s John O’Brien wrote.

  The motion stated that Fourth Street Foods owner David Barbe filed the lawsuit against Armbruster primarily to suppress protected public expression.

  “Armbruster’s rights to speak to public issues, community members, and prevailing wages without ever being accused of mentioning ‘Dave Barbe’ are an incredible encroachment on everyone in Charleroi’s right to free expression on public matters,” the motion said. 

  The motion continued, “Not only are they chilled from speaking about Mr. Barbe, by this lawsuit they are chilled from mentioning the hiring practices of a local employer.”

  Readers might recall in September. We had the first boots on the ground in the small town outside Pittsburgh – down the street from Nemacolin, investigating staffing companies that were feeding Haitians like cattle into local factories.

  • Watch: Resident Of PA Manufacturing Town Exposes Reality Of Haitian ‘Great Job Replacement’

  Wow. 

  Charleroi, PA resident who worked for an agency which was importing migrants for cheap labor says “they didn’t want no Americans, cuz they would have had to pay more.”

  There’s some deep corruption going on in Charleroi. This should be a bigger story. pic.twitter.com/W38Cw2FcpT

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 20, 2024

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

  Libs of TikTok covered our on-the-ground reporting.

  Incredible footage revealing an operation in Charleroi, PA where Haitians are being bussed to and from food factories operated by Fourth Street Foods.

  It’s estimated that 90% of workers are now made up of Haitians.

  Kamala imported 2,000 Haitians into this town of 4,000 people… pic.twitter.com/6KrjecNdmh

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 17, 2024

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

  And this.

  This is a bombshell report on Charleroi, PA from @realchrisrufo.

  We went to Charleroi last month. The town has a population of 4,000. But it’s been overwhelmed by thousands of Haitian immigrants.

  Our documentary drops on Thursday. Watch the trailer here:https://t.co/YVCwHyeJBS pic.twitter.com/3QIXNFIksp

  — America 2100 (@America_2100) October 8, 2024

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

  Pennsylvania Record noted, “After Barbe sued Armbruster, Armbruster reiterated his claims in the Charleroi Rambler and said he was organizing a class action lawsuit on behalf of the citizens and workers of the town.” 

  Armbruster posted on Facebook: 

  I have taken it upon myself to say enough and to fight back.  I am organizing a Class Action Lawsuit against Fourth Street Foods and its ownership on behalf of the citizens and workers of Charleroi.  I wrote a draft of the lawsuit and printed petitions for residents to register as claimants.  I have collected several hundred participants in a few short days, and the reception to the lawsuit has been exceedingly positive. My goal is to make Americans aware that we don’t have to accept being Displaced & Replaced by the open border policy of the current federal administration.  We can and will FIGHT BACK! DM me for additional details or to join the Class Action Lawsuit.

  Charleroi residents are furious… 

  This trucker is from Charleroi, a small PA town flooded with Haitians by Kamala

  His message at the Trump rally: pic.twitter.com/aXe8TwvPeB

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 23, 2024

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

  Armbruster’s planned class-action lawsuit could be one of the first instances in which small towns across America fight back in the court system against those responsible for globalist open-border policies that flooded their towns with migrants and led to the ‘Great Job Replacement‘ of blue-collar workers. 

  How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs. pic.twitter.com/Z5HVWmQ24C

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 15, 2024

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

  For the politicians and companies that still can’t read the room after the presidential election: “America First.” Let’s remind you that a majority of Americans gave Trump a mandate to prioritize taxpaying citizens first—not third-world migrants.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 16:55

• House Passes Bill To Protect Israeli PM Netanyahu From ICC Prosecution
  House Passes Bill To Protect Israeli PM Netanyahu From ICC Prosecution

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

  One of the first acts of the Republican-led 119th Congress was to pass a bill that would sanction officials attempting to arrest or investigate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in Gaza.

  The “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” passed on Thursday in a 243 to 140 vote, with 45 Democrats joining the majority of Republicans. Rep. Thomas Massie was the only member of the GOP caucus not to vote in favor of the bill.

  

  “The US House did only one thing today. We passed a bill to protect Israeli PM Netanyahu from the International Criminal Court. I voted present,” Massie explained on X. “The ICC has no authority over the United States, but we should not get involved in disputes between other countries. Focus on [the US]!”

  The legislation was co-sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Florida Republican Brian Mast, who is a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. The two lawmakers prioritized the bill as a show of support for Tel Aviv, and AIPAC has called on lawmakers to vote in favor of the measure.

  If signed into law, the bill would impose sanctions on the ICC over “any effort to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.” The sanctions include prohibiting US property transactions and blocking and revoking visas.

  Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SC) said he plans to bring the bill to a floor vote in the upper chamber. A number of Senate Democrats have also voiced support for the legislation, though Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said some in her party were “looking at whether there’s an opportunity to offer an alternative” to the bill.

  The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant after ample evidence emerged that the IDF was conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians in Gaza.

  The Israeli onslaught in Gaza has been aided by Washington, with the Joe Biden administration providing Israel with $22 billion in military aid during the first year of the genocide. Last week, Biden approved a final arms sale to Tel Aviv that includes many of the missiles, bombs, and artillery shells that have been used to devastate Gaza.

  Still, many Republicans in Washington have criticized Biden for not giving Israel enough support.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 16:20

• Trump To Sign Around 100 Executive Orders Upon Taking Office
  Trump To Sign Around 100 Executive Orders Upon Taking Office

  President-elect Donald Trump will sign around 100 executive orders as soon as he takes office, according to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK).

  

  Mullin did not go into details, however Trump has previously said he would sign a variety of border and immigration-related EOs following his second inauguration, including a national emergency over illegal immigration – and rolling back ‘climate agenda’ regulations surrounding drilling for oil and natural gas.

  “I will sign Day One orders to end all Biden restrictions on energy production, terminate his insane electric vehicle mandate, cancel his natural gas export ban, reopen ANWR in Alaska—the biggest site, potentially anywhere in the world—and declare a national energy emergency,” Trump said in December.

  According to Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, “The American people can bank on President Trump using his executive power on day one to deliver on the promises he made to them on the campaign trail.“

  Bloomberg reports that Trump will put a hiring freeze on the government, and mandate that federal employees return to the office for in-person work, a position pushed by billionaire Elon Musk as part of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

  In recent weeks, the Trump team has been working behind-the-scenes to make sure its initial months are as productive as possible. While chief of staff Susie Wiles has said she views the first 100 days as an artificial metric, she and the entire Trump team see the first two years — before midterm elections could imperil Republican majorities in the House and Senate — as the best opportunity for the term-limited incoming president to achieve his sweeping goals. –Bloomberg

  That said, as Mullin noted further in an appearance on Fox & Friends, EOs can easily be undone by future administrations.

  “As he said, it’s not permanent,” said Mullin. “I would like reconciliation so we can start making this stuff into legislation, so we can move forward.”

  “The president was very clear, he wants results,” Mullin continued. “He said he can wait if we can do one big, beautiful bill. He’d like to have one big, beautiful, beautiful bill. But if the House were to get bogged down, maybe we have to divide it up in two.”

  As the Epoch Times notes, the senator was making reference to comments made by Trump this week after he met with Republicans in Washington.
  “I think there’s a lot of talk about two [bills], and there’s a lot of talk about one (bill), but it doesn’t matter,” Trump told reporters.

  “Whether it’s one bill or two bills it’s going to get done one way or the other, I think there’s a lot of talk about two, and there’s a lot of talk about one, but it doesn’t matter. The end result is the same,” Trump said after his Senate meeting, which he called “unified.” pic.twitter.com/0R4vMjMv49

  — Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) January 9, 2025

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  “The end result is the same,” he said, adding that his meeting with GOP lawmakers showed the party is ”unified.”

  Mullin added that Republicans need to “deliver for the American people on securing the border, on energy independence, on getting the regulations rolled back and making sure that we have taxes that are permanent, so we don’t have a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people right now.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 15:45

• Why More Americans Are Turning To Holistic Health Care
  Why More Americans Are Turning To Holistic Health Care

  Authored by Maggie Miller via RealClearHealth,

  A significant shift is underway in American healthcare as more people embrace alternative therapies that focus on identifying and addressing the root causes of health issues. This transition, often referred to as “root cause medicine,” represents a departure from traditional reactive medical practices toward a preventative and holistic approach. A movement that is expected to expand in 2025.

  

  According to a JAMA study, 37% of adults sought alternative treatments such as acupuncture, yoga, and specialized diagnostic testing —a sharp rise from just 19% two decades ago. This movement is also gaining traction among patients of all ages, particularly those over 55, as they seek to age gracefully and optimize their long-term health. Another study published in Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine shows that more Americans 55 and up are seeking a holistic or alternative medicine route and many times are not telling their doctor.

  Doctor Mitchell Ghen, a Florida-based holistic health doctor, has noticed this shift over the past few decades but believes that those numbers are not representative of the number of people using alternative medicine. He said, “I am a little bit surprised it’s 1/3 that’s doing it I would’ve thought it would be closer to 50%. Over time, people have that recognition that something’s not right, you can’t fix something unless you address the underlying issue and the underlying biochemistry that’s awry in the first place.”

  A Growing Awareness

  Experts attribute the shift to increased awareness of holistic health. “There’s a lot more knowledge now about mental health, physical health, and gut health,” Adam El- Hosseiny, COO of Access Medical Labs explains. “People want to age healthfully, not just treat symptoms when they arise. They’re choosing preventative care over reactive solutions.”

  Social media has played a pivotal role in exposing people to alternative options. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok feature influencers and healthcare professionals sharing insights into how diet, mindfulness, and personalized diagnostics can help address chronic issues. However, as Dr. Mitch, a practitioner with over 40 years of experience, noted, the trend also reflects growing dissatisfaction with conventional medicine. “Patients are tired of rushed appointments and being prescribed medications without understanding the underlying issue,” he said. “Many are seeking answers that traditional medicine doesn’t always provide.”

  The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated interest in holistic health, as many Americans became hyper-aware of their physical and mental well-being. With lingering health issues like long COVID and increased stress levels, patients began to demand deeper insights into their health. The pandemic served as a wake-up call, prompting people to prioritize preventative care and explore alternative therapies that could enhance their immune systems, energy levels, and overall resilience.

  Addressing Gaps in Traditional Care

  Traditional medicine often relies on an “if-then” model: if you have a symptom, then you’re prescribed a medication. While effective for acute conditions, this approach falls short. “Nutrients, vitamins, and minerals drive the body’s energy cycle. Medications aren’t part of that cycle—they treat symptoms but rarely fix the root problem,” Dr. Mitch said.

  This narrow focus leaves patients searching for more comprehensive solutions. “Unless you dive deeply into an individual’s biochemistry, it’s nearly impossible to fully understand what’s going on,” Dr. Mitch explained. For example, he pointed out that fatigue and brain fog—common complaints among patients—are often overlooked in routine checkups. Standard bloodwork might not flag deficiencies or hormonal imbalances that could explain these symptoms.

  Moreover, the structure of conventional healthcare often limits doctors to short, transactional appointments. “Most doctors have only 10 to 15 minutes per patient,” Dr. Mitch said. “That’s not enough time to ask the right questions, let alone uncover deeper issues.” This time constraint often leads to a cycle of trial-and-error treatments, leaving patients frustrated and seeking alternative solutions.

  The Holistic Approach

  Facilities like Access Medical Labs offer a new perspective, combining advanced diagnostics with a focus on whole-body health. Their testing panels go beyond standard bloodwork, analyzing everything from hormones and food sensitivities to heavy metals and thyroid function. These tests aim to uncover the root causes of common complaints such as fatigue, brain fog, and digestive issues.

   “People are shocked when they discover foods they eat daily are causing fatigue or bloating. Eliminating those foods often leads to improved energy and mental clarity,” El-Hosseiny said. Comprehensive testing also extends to evaluating environmental allergens, nutrient levels, and even autonomic nervous system functionality, providing a detailed map of a patient’s health.

  A Preventative Paradigm

  Root cause medicine also emphasizes preventative care. For individuals over 55, this means conducting a comprehensive health evaluation akin to inspecting every part of an antique car. “You wouldn’t just check the engine—you’d inspect the entire vehicle to ensure it runs optimally,” El- Hosseiny explained. “You can’t reverse your chronological age, but you can age optimally. People want to look good longer, feel good longer, and ultimately achieve longevity.”

  Holistic health advocates stress that their approach isn’t meant to replace traditional medicine but to complement it. By broadening the lens and addressing blind spots in conventional care, root cause medicine empowers patients to take control of their health and longevity. “This isn’t about dismissing traditional care,” Dr. Mitch clarified. “It’s about enhancing it and taking healthcare to the next level.”

  Technology Driving the Shift

  Advanced laboratory technology has also played a crucial role in making root cause medicine more accessible and efficient. Some laboratories, like Access Medical Labs, use automation to ensure faster turnaround times and minimize human error. “Our automation not only speeds up testing—delivering results in 24 hours compared to the industry’s 7 to 10 day average—but also improves accuracy by reducing the chance of mistakes,” shared El- Hosseiny.

  These advancements have made comprehensive testing less invasive and more patient-friendly. Access Medical Labs requires 50% less blood than traditional methods, a convenience appreciated by both patients and physicians. El-Hosseiny shared, “If people are going to get a needle in their arm, they want it done as quickly and painlessly as possible.” Access Medical Labs has had to expand its infrastructure to keep up with demand in testing.

  The Future of Healthcare

  As holistic practices become more mainstream, the healthcare system needs to become more integrated— combining the strengths of traditional medicine with the preventative and personalized focus of root cause care. “People are waking up to the idea that health isn’t just about treating symptoms,” Dr. Mitch said. “It’s about understanding the body as a whole, addressing the underlying issues, and living a better, longer life.”

  Maggie Miller is a Real Clear contributor. Maggie is a former news anchor and reporter in New York and Alabama. She is a graduate of the University of Florida.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 15:10

• Ukraine Captures Injured North Korean Soldiers In Russia, Zelensky Shares Photos
  Ukraine Captures Injured North Korean Soldiers In Russia, Zelensky Shares Photos

  Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced Saturday that his military has captured two North Korean soldiers fighting on the Russian side in the Kursk region, which is believed to be a first such instance.

  He said that after the foreign troops’ capture, the men were taken to Kyiv be interrogated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), also known as SBU – and receive treatment as they are wounded.

  

  “This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine,” Zelensky said on X.

  Zelensky further said he authorized the SBU to give reporters access to the two POWs because the “world needs to know the truth about what is happening.”

  Ukraine, the Pentagon, and South Korean intelligence all estimated that North Korea has sent at least 10,000 of its troops to assist Russia. Zelensky has said this makes clear there is an ‘axis’ of countries fighting against Ukraine.

  So far it is believed these foreign units have remained in Russia’s Kursk region to help push back Ukraine’s cross-border offensive there, which has held territory since early August.

  It was in early November that Ukraine’s military reported the first direct clashes on the field of battle with North Korean troops.

  “Ukrainian officials said on Monday that their forces had fired at North Korean soldiers in combat for the first time since their deployment by Russia to its western Kursk region,” FT wrote during the first week of November.

  The publication had characterized that instance as “the first direct intervention by a foreign army since Russia’s full-scale invasion” as well as constituting an expansion of “what was already the largest land war in Europe since the second world war.”

  Our soldiers have captured North Korean military personnel in the Kursk region. Two soldiers, though wounded, survived and were transported to Kyiv, where they are now communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine.

  This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North… pic.twitter.com/5J0hqbarP6

  — Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 11, 2025

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  The Kremlin has pointed to the legitimacy of the defense pact inked between Presidents Putin and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang this past summer. This came after Kim visited Russia’s far east, and reportedly inspected aerial and space centers. 

  Currently there are reports that Moscow plans to help North Korea with advanced space and satellite technology, something being closely monitored by Western intelligence services.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 14:35

• Richmond And Los Angeles Have Been Mugged By Reality
  Richmond And Los Angeles Have Been Mugged By Reality

  Authored by Rob Smith via RealClearMarkets,

  Windsor Farms is a beautiful residential neighborhood in Richmond. My great uncle developed it 100 years ago. The streets are laid out in the style of an English village and there are many stately Georgian homes with beautiful gardens.

  

  During the George Floyd “Summer of Love” antifa and Black Lives Matter marched through Windsor Farms, no doubt to protest against “nice stuff,” preferring everyone to live in graffiti ridden squalor as a measurement of social justice fairness.  I wrote at the time that if any of these Georgian mansions were given to any of these neo-Marxist protestors, within 6 months all the windows in the house would be busted out, there would be broken glass and 3-foot-high grass in the front yard, and the mechanical systems would all be trashed.  The same is true with a city. Give these types of people the keys to any city and in short order, the city, just like the free house, will be destroyed. They are incapable of taking care of anything.

  Here in Richmond, we just went through nearly 3 days with no municipal water. Now, we have to go through 2-3 days of not being allowed to drink the water coming from our taps.  Several hundred thousand people in a major metropolitan area with hospitals, manufacturing plants, universities, nursing homes, and millions of square feet of office space had no water. It’s third world. Our race hustling, low IQ Marxist mayor hired a DEI candidate to run the Department of Utilities, the first time ever a non-engineer held that post. Her major initiative was hiring other DEI candidates to work for Public Utilities. Incompetent boobs, hire other incompetent boobs and before you know it, there are more boobs than the runway at the Bada-Bing.

  Los Angeles is burning down. The government incompetence there is extraordinary. LA has its own DEI problems. Its fire chief was hired because she is an outspoken lesbian. Her initiative has been to hire more women and LGBTQ firefighters. Yep, I want a 99 lb mentally ill woman who thinks she’s man pulling me out of a burning fire! Who wouldn’t?

  I’ve been known to be unabashedly blunt, but of course always right. DEI is the process of hiring simple minded knaves at the expense of competent and qualified artisans. Worse, it instills a sense of unearned entitlement in those who “Didn’t Earn It.” It is a cancer metastasizing through the ranks of work forces given grave responsibilities, and it spreads to the point where no one in an organization has the work ethic or skill to change a light bulb. 

  As bad as DEI is, what’s worse is the political class that initiates DEI policies. There should never ever be any reason to vote anybody into office that has not had a career in real world practicalities. Community activists, academics, government apparatchiks, non-profit do-gooders, clinicians, blah, blah, they generally know nothing other than the au courant platitudes of the bougie Bolshevik chattering class. In Richmond, 8 of our 9 council members are women, and the one man is a soy boy. Have any of these folks ever crawled under a house to fix a leaky pipe, changed the oil in a car, operated earth moving equipment or walked a police officer’s beat at 2 am in the morning? Have any of them started a business from the ground up and hired and fired dozens of employees? No. Yesterday, I ran into my friend Frank. He runs a small independent HVAC company. Frank understands how things work. Cities need guys like Frank to run them as opposed to purple haired social justice Sallyboys. 

  When I was fresh out of law school, my real estate mentor hired me to build a subdivision. I had to learn to read plans, to know how sanitary and  storm sewer systems worked, where the run off went, how it was tested,  where the water came from, fire hydrants, water pressure, gas pipe lines, underground power, soil compaction, emergency contingencies and a host of other real world matters that I likely never would have learned had I become a practicing lawyer or an academic. I’m not special, there are thousands of local people who know everything about these real-world issues. Yet, no one on our city council knows anything about such matters because they are political activists, academics or lifelong government hacks. They are talkers and not doers. Just about anybody I know who runs a business could have taken a tour of Richmond’s water treatment plant and immediately noticed the lack of emergency redundancies and the peril the city was in, but soft hands politicians can’t because they’ve never done anything in the practical world. There are no Franks.

  If It’s even possible to be more brain dead than the politicians running Richmond, the prize goes to California. Every advanced civilization from the ancient Minoans ( 2,000 BC) to modern times knows that to have an adequate water supply, communities need to impound water. I learned how to do this developing real estate. Every civil engineer and earth moving operator recognizes that to have a plentiful water supply, water must be captured and held in storage. But the political leadership in California doesn’t have a clue. California has plentiful and abundant water resources, but what does it do? It lets its water run off into the Pacific Ocean instead of impounding it. Now Los Angeles is burning to the ground. Fire hydrants have no water.  There are more than enough resources to make millions of acres of barren land fertile and to give communities all the water they need to fight forest fires and keep land from drying out. But the deranged, brainwashed, wacko politicians refuse. It’s better to have half of LA destroyed than to “harm the environment” by using California’s natural resources to make its environment better. No Frank would ever think like this in a million years.

  If politicians were more like Frank they might know something about forestry. My family owned timberland as did many others I knew growing up. California owns a million acres of forest land, and they do the exact opposite of what all private owners do to be protect the value of their land. Any tobacco spitting, shotgun toting good ole boy knows what these government flunkies don’t.  One has to cut fire roads through timberland. Good stewardship requires “thinning” of underbrush. Brush needs to be cleared under electrical lines and limbs need to be cut back from power lines. If not, you get forest fires.

  How in the world does the City of Richmond not know that crucial infrastructure needs a budgeted sinking fund for maintenance and that a water treatment plant needs multiple redundancies that need efficacy checks on a weekly basis? How is it that California does not know that it needs to impound water and manage its forest land? The astounding incompetence is mind blowing. Isn’t it high time to judge woke politicians not by their words, but by what they do? As Forrest Gump famously said, stupid is as stupid does.

  Frank doesn’t have a PHD in Gender Studies. He’s never participated in a pro-Palestinian rally. He doesn’t even drive an EV, but he’s a hell of a lot more capable of running a city than the flunkies running Richmond and California.

  Robert C. Smith is Managing Partner of Chartwell Capital Advisors, a senior fellow at the Parkview Institute, and likes to opine on the Rob Is Right Podcast and Webpage.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 14:00

• Bird Flu Cases Detected Across Delmarva Poultry Industry
  Bird Flu Cases Detected Across Delmarva Poultry Industry

  On Friday, the Maryland Department of Agriculture revealed that a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (HPAI) case was detected at a commercial broiler chicken operation in Caroline County. 

  Caroline County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, just south of Washington, DC, is situated in the Delmarva poultry industry, one of the largest chicken operations in the US. It’s a multi-billion dollar chicken industry that covers commercial broilers in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware.

  “This marks the first case of H5N1 at a Maryland commercial poultry operation since 2023 and the third commercial operation in the Delmarva region in the last 30 days when two Kent County, DE returned positive results,” Maryland Department of Agriculture wrote in a press release. 

  On X, the Maryland Farm Bureau posted a biosecurity warning to the Delmarva poultry industry, showing areas where HPAI has already been confirmed. 

  

  The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service website, featuring the “Wild Bird Avian Influenza Surveillance” platform, shows that bird flu has become a nationwide headache for commercial broiler operations over the past few years.

  

  The virus seriously threatens poultry operations across the Delmarva area and may force farms to begin culling flocks, devastating farmers’ livelihoods and the industry.

  Consumers are already seeing the negative effects of farms culling flocks as the nation’s egg production has fallen, sending egg prices through the roof. 

  

  What a mess. This underscores just how fragile the nation’s food supply chain really is. People need to get back to basics and secure their local food sources, whether tapping local farms or, building a chicken coop, buying a cow, or planting a garden. Better to be safe than deal with out-of-control grocery bills, or worse, no food on store shelves, like folks are finding out with eggs. 

  Also, the bird flu virus appears to have mutated in the first severe human case. The World Health Organization stated last week that the risk from H5N1 avian influenza remains low.

  Meanwhile, in the new documentary “Thank You, Dr. Fauci” …

  Fauci funded #gainoffunction research on #birdflu for over a decade. This haunting 2012 flashback is evidence that Fauci and corrupt scientists like #franciscollins and #ronfouchier knew risks for manmade pandemic back in 2011 and recklessly endangered planet anyway 🧵 pic.twitter.com/XL3XPiquoE

  — Thank You Dr Fauci (@ThankYouDrFauci) December 19, 2024

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  … bird flu will likely be the next pandemic.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 13:25

• We Were Censored By Meta; We're Taking Them To The Supreme Court
  We Were Censored By Meta; We’re Taking Them To The Supreme Court

  Authored by Mary Holland via RealClearPolitics,

  The headline from Politico’s “Playbook” would have been unthinkable eight years ago: “Meta sends Trump a friend request.”

  

  After all, Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is a political lightning rod in conservative political circles, especially after the $300 million worth of “Zuckerbucks” spent during the 2020 election to elect like-minded politicians.

  Yet lately, Zuckerberg has been singing a much different tune. He referred to President-elect Trump as “badass,” visited him at Mar-a-Lago, and donated one million dollars to his inaugural fund. This week, Meta made news by adding Dana White, a longtime Trump ally and head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), to its board of directors.

  Then came the real bombshell: Meta ended its so-called “independent fact-checking program,” ostensibly lifting restrictions on speech across Facebook, as well as their other platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp. In doing so, Zuckerberg admitted the current content moderation practices – in place since criticism of his platform during the 2016 presidential election – have “gone too far” and stressed a commitment to “restoring free expression.”

  Make no mistake: Meta’s “independent fact-checkers” are neither independent nor fact-based. Their elimination is a positive step and should be encouraged. The announcement came less than 24 hours after the organization I lead – the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense – asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear our censorship lawsuit against Meta.

  But if Meta is serious about supporting “free expression,” they have a lot of work to do – and it requires more than moving workers from California to Texas, as Zuckerberg also pledged to do.

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, Meta not only censored our posts – many having to do with topics that the so-called medical “experts” like Dr. Anthony Fauci were dead wrong about – but outright kicked us off the platform without warning. Meta first took action against CHD in May 2019, from takedowns and restrictions to an outright ban in August 2022 that is still in effect. What were our offenses? Simply publishing data on the risks of COVID vaccines, Remdesivir, and ventilation, as well as having the temerity to raise the benefits of natural immunity and alternative treatment with ivermectin and other protocols.

  An unfettered discussion of all these issues would have saved lives. We knew that many of the government’s promises – on items like the pandemic’s origin and the best way to treat symptoms and prevent its spread – were not grounded in “science” as they claimed but political imperatives from the Biden administration.

  In 2020, we took them to court, starting in the San Francisco federal court. We suffered some legal setbacks along the way, and this week ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Meta will not change its ways without a fight. They not only kicked us off the platform but censored our supporters and erased our past posts. Meta shut down the “free expression” they claim to be championing.

  Yes, Meta was coerced by the Biden administration, but there’s more to the story. Zuckerberg’s WhatsApp messages showed that he conspired with the government and chose to censor because he had “bigger fish to fry” than protecting free speech. He knew then that censorship violated the rights of free expression, and he knew then that it wouldn’t help the administration bring COVID under control, but he did it anyway.

  The pandemic may be over, but speech about COVID is not. If the Supreme Court takes our case, it can guarantee accountability for Meta’s role in this man-made disaster – and prevent another in the future.  

  Meta, like the other mega-platforms, must be held accountable when they knowingly conform their content-moderation process and decisions or cede active, meaningful control to the government’s preference to suppress constitutionally protected speech.

  This time it was CHD’s health and medical freedom issues. But who will be next?

  Ultimately, this debate is not about any one group or individual but all of us. How many people suffered or lost their lives because they didn’t have access to information that could have helped them make better-informed decisions about their health? The American public is better served with more information rather than less, especially when it is grounded on data-based scientific information. People are smart enough to make up their own minds.

  Last November, voters sent an unmistakable message that they want a break from the status quo. Kudos to Mark Zuckerberg for recognizing the prevailing winds and saying the right things. But the free speech fight won’t be over until those who were kicked off his platforms are reinstated.

  Mary Holland, J.D. is CEO of the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with the mission of ending childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/11/2025 – 12:50

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• United States Is Crippling Itself With Climate Change Regulations, China Is Not
  United States Is Crippling Itself With Climate Change Regulations, China Is Not

  Authored by Mike Fredenberg via The Epoch Times,

  Maintaining a strong military requires a strong economy.

  And a strong economy requires reasonable regulations that make sense from both an economic and scientific viewpoint.

  Unfortunately, many policy makers have bought into an extreme regulatory agenda driven by ideology that does not make sense scientifically or economically, that is harming both our economy and our military.

  

  This agenda was on display at the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11 to 22 of last year. The premise for the conference, and such agreements as the Paris Accord, is that man-made climate change poises an existential threat to human existence. Further it is claimed that even now climate change is wreaking havoc around the world and that regulations, mandates and new technology will slow down and even reverse it.

  Those pushing these beliefs also claim that it is the duty of more developed countries to transfer 100’s of billions, even trillions of dollars to developing countries so that they can continue developing using so-called green technology vs. dirty old legacy technology.

  Here in the United States, climate-change driven polities and mandates are being rolled out on the premise/claim that that climate change is even now disproportionately affecting the poor and disadvantaged. They also claim that man-caused climate change is negatively impacting GDP.

  In other words, if you don’t support draconian climate-change driven policies and mandates you support a weaker economy and have a callous disregard for how climate change is hurting those occupying the lower socioeconomic strata.

  These claims, believed by many in academia and the media establishment, have taken on religious overtones, and consequently there is little tolerance for opposing viewpoints in both academia and legacy media. Be that as it may, many scientists, engineers, and other knowledgeable, extremely bright people don’t believe the rhetoric and have provided convincing arguments debunking what they believe to be pseudoscience.

  One such group of distinguished academicians is the Climate Intel group (Clintel). And one of the most distinguished members of this group is Nobel Prize winner Dr. John F. Clauser, who in August of 2023 signed the Clintel Climate Declaration which declares that there is no climate emergency. As of today, 1600 plus scientists and experts have signed the declaration, with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ivar Giaever being the first signee.

  The declaration states that climate science has become politized and is lacking scientifically. It notes that climate change models are fully dependent on what go into them including hypotheses, assumptions, relationships, parameterizations, stability constraints, etc. And that “to believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe [blind faith] what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science.”

  Suffice it to say, the repeated failures of these models leaves plenty of room for doubt in the popular narrative on climate change. And given that the regulations and mandates aren’t actually stopping or even slowing climate change, we must question the wisdom of implementing regulations and mandates that cripple our economy and our military, even as China’ economy and military continue to expand unhindered by such crippling mandates and regulations.

  Still, for the last 15 years plus, the United States has led the world in reducing carbon emissions. The extent of this leadership can be found in the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, which shows that over the last 15 years, the U.S. has experienced the largest decline in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from energy, process emissions, methane and flaring. Indeed, as compared to 2013, the U.S. has been able to reduce carbon dioxide equivalents by 8.5 percent even as it has massively grown it economy through aggressive drilling for and using cleaner burning natural gas, including natural gas from fracking instead of coal. During this same period, China’s CO2 equivalents went up by 20 percent to make China by far and away the biggest emitter of green-house gases (GHGs).

  China also leads the world in plastics pollution, and only India beats China when it comes to the sulfur dioxide emissions (SO2) responsible for acid rain.

  Of note, when it comes to SO2 emissions the United States produces about one-sixth that of China.

  Hence, as of today if the climate change narrative is correct, it is China that by far and away that is doing the most damage and it the United States that has done the most to combat it.

  Consequently, with the United States already leading the developed world in reducing GHGs and with huge chunks of the world producing GHGs and other pollutants largely unabated, it hardly makes sense for the United States to voluntarily cripple its economy and military even as China and other potential adversaries pay lip service to the climate change narrative.

  *  *  *

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 23:25

• These Are The World's Most (And Least) Powerful Passports
  These Are The World’s Most (And Least) Powerful Passports

  Singapore has the most powerful passport in the world, with its citizens able to visit 195 countries and territories without a prior visa, according to the Henley Passport Index.

  Japan comes in second place, with its citizens able to visit 193 countries, followed by Finland, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Spain in joint third, with access to 192 countries.

  Even though the United States is a little further down the list, coming in 9th place, it still yields considerable power, enabling citizens to enter 186 countries without major restrictions.

  It’s a level of freedom also enjoyed by passport holders in Estonia.

  However, as Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, at the other end of the scale, the situation is very different.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  For passport holders in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, for example, travel is more restrictive to most countries.

  The Afghan passport wields the least power of the ranking, with just 26 destinations permissible visa-free.

  The situation in Syria and Iraq isn’t much better, at 27 and 31 destinations, respectively.

  The Henley Passport Index draws from data from the International Air Transport Authority (IATA), including 199 different passports and 227 different travel destinations.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 23:00

• Escobar: Empire Of Chaos, Reloaded
  Escobar: Empire Of Chaos, Reloaded

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  ‘All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.’

  – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  The Empire of Chaos is relentless. Lawfare, destabilizations, sanctions, kidnappings, color revolutions, false flags, annexations: 2025 will be the year of BRICS – plus BRICS partners – as choice targets under fire.

  

  Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson coined “chaos” as official US policy. That’s bipartisan – and it runs across all silos of the Deep State.

  In the absence of long-term strategic vision, and amidst the progressive imperial expulsion from Eurasia, all that’s left for the Hegemon is to unleash chaos from West Asia to Europe and parts of Latin America – a concerted attempt to Divide and Rule BRICS and thwart their collective drive affirming sovereignty and the primacy of national interests.

  US Think Tank had already floated a year and a half ago the notion of swing states. Not the parochial American electoral version, but its transposition to geopolitics.

  All six candidates at the time were BRICS members (Brazil, India, South Africa), or potential BRICS members or partners (Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye).

  The code for “swing states” was unmistakable: all these are targets for destabilization – as in if you do not abide by the “rules-based international order”, you’re going down.

  Saudi Arabia, wary of its wealth parked in London and New York financial markets, is still cautiously hedging its bets: theoretically Riyadh is a BRICS member, but in practice not really. Turkiye has been invited as a partner (no official response yet).

  And then there’s Southeast Asia powerhouse Indonesia, which has just been admitted as a full member this week – under the Brazilian BRICs presidency. Call it BRIIICS: the predominant vector of a seismic recalibration of the geopolitical tectonic plates – bound to reshape trade, finance, and governance.

  BRIIICS and selected partners are configuring a formidable network – bent on rewriting the rules of the game: currently 10 full members and 8 full partners – and counting, making up 41.4% of global GDP by PPP and roughly half of the world’s population. This is what the Empire of Chaos is up against.

  Imagine China-India-Russia-Iran-Indonesia-South Africa-Brazil-Egypt-Saudi Arabia as the transcontinental pearls of the emerging multi-nodal world. Huge populations; massive natural resources and industrial might; myriad development possibilities.

  The ruling elites of the Empire of Chaos have nothing to offer as a counterpoint to this growing geopolitical powerhouse – complete with its own development bank (granted, that needs a lot of work); full commitment to develop and test alternative payment systems; and a sprawling transcontinental trade alliance bent on progressively sidestepping the US dollar.

  Instead of working on diplomacy, dialogue and cooperation, the Empire of Chaos – and the vassalized collective West – do “offer” something to the Global Majority: their full support for an ethnic cleansing genocide, and their full support for a suit-and-tie terror gang of “moderate” head choppers taking power in a former sovereign Arab nation.

  Welcome to Terror and Genocide R Us.

  When in Doubt, Annex Everything

  Further developing on their accomplishments at the summit last October in Kazan , BRICS is essentially applying a Sun Tzu strategy. Deception. No grand proclamations. And no direct threats to the Empire of Chaos, except the clear focus on getting rid of the stranglehold of the IMF and the World Bank – as in increasing trade in local currencies.

  The BRICS drive, slowly but surely, is already moving other multilateral pieces in the chessboard, from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to ASEAN.

  Top BRICS China will be focused on a triad: the tech war against the US; increasing its share of global trade; and the recalibration of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. In several aspects, BRI is the centerpiece of China’s approach to BRICS.

  Beijing’s focus encompasses markets all across the Global South, BRICS, ASEAN free trade agreements and APEC (key for trade and investment across the Asia-Pacific). APEC happens to be closely linked to BRI. President’s Xi focus on building and reinforcing a Eurasia-wide market was first conceptualized by BRI, launched in 2013.

  In parallel, since 2022 Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been steadily expanding on Xi’s call for a “new security architecture in the Middle East.”

  For China, that means classic Balance of Power: Iran as a very strong pillar, partnering with China in West Asia to counter the US. In 2021, China and Iran signed a crucial 25-year blueprint on economic cooperation.

  Then there’s energy. Roughly 50% of China’s crude oil imports come from West Asia. China’s suppliers – on oil and gas – are highly diversified: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iran (through Malaysia).

  In parallel, Beijing will have no problems keeping QUAD and AUKUS as minor nuisances. NATO pivoting to Asia is a non-starter: China is fast building a complex strategy of area denial.

  In Africa, the Alliance of the Sahel States will keep expanding – and France as a neo-colonial power is done. In the rest of Africa, the New Decolonizing Resistance only starts now.

  Latin America though spells major trouble. The Empire of Chaos under Trump 2.0 may go Full Monroe Doctrine – on top of the delirium of annexing Canada, Greenland, the Panama canal and any further unsuspecting latitudes. Overall, it will be a rough ride for selected nodes of the “backyard” – apart from devastated neo-colony Argentina.

  Managing the US Defeat Against Russia

  Europe’s collective suicide will reach a paroxysm – out of the utter corrosion of a social, industrial and cultural model.

  The catalogue of ills includes full woke dementia in Brussels; no more cheap energy; accelerated deindustrialization; economies in free fall; unpayable debt – public and private; and last but not least, in NATOstan’s so-called democracy, the absolute contempt by the “leadership” of NATO-EU for the average European citizen/taxpayer when it comes to forcing severe cuts on social services to the benefit of increased weaponizing.

  Trump 2.0’s quite probable trade war against the EU will only accelerate the collapse of the European economy.

  Take France, already in a terrible mess. French debt now trades at Greek 2012 level spreads above German bonds. Over 50% of the 2.5 trillion Euro French government bond market is owned by global vultures and hot money. There’s no Mario Draghi with an ECB bazooka to save the Euro from its new existential crisis. And Le Petit Roi is just a lame duck prisoner hated even by Paris gutter rats.

  Historian, anthropologist and demographer Emmanuel Todd, author of the ground-breaking La Défaite de L’Occident (here is the first review in English ) is one of the very few French intellectuals who actually understands the new rules of the game.

  In a startling interview to the privileged mouthpiece of the French haute bourgeoisie, Todd points to the absurdity of considering Trump victorious “amidst an economy in tatters”; and on top of it when “the US is losing a war, on a global scale, against Russia.”

  So amidst all the hoopla about the “hyperpower of Trump as a magic individual”, Todd has come up with a stunning, crystal clear formulation: “Trump’s job will be to manage the defeat of the US against Russia.”

  Syria as Libya 2.0

  Well, all of us pop culture junkies know that the US will keep on “winning” – the Hollywood way; rather the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) way. What’s certain is that no matter which Trump 2.0’s missiles are launched in trade wars against Europe and Asia, the cornered, entitled elites of the Empire of Chaos will be driven to inflict tremendous harm to the Global Majority.

  Victory in Syria has sent them into a drunken stupor – and the “real men go to Tehran” mindset is back with a vengeance (Iran, not by accident, is a top BRICS member).

  All the conditions are met for Syria to become Libya 2.0. Yet that’s not a case of the House Always Wins – first of all because there is no “house”. In neighboring Lebanon, Hezbollah is already reorganized. The prospect remains that after regrouping and re-strategizing, Hezbollah, Ansarullah in Yemen, a new Syrian opposition and the IRGC in Iran will coalesce in a different formation and renew the real battle– against Eretz Israel.

  No one knows what Salafi-jihadi in suit-and-tie Ahmad Al-Sharaa, previously Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, is actually ruling over. At various degrees, the collective West, the Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel will never trust him, and will deem him disposable. He is just a temporary useful patsy.

  Al-Jolani was the ISIS emir of Nineveh; the emir of Jabhat Al-Nusra; and the prime emir of al-Qaeda in the Levant. He single-handedly personifies the whole gamut of manufactured Western propaganda on “terror”. His followers are already furious that he has not instantly turned Syria into an Islamic Emirate.

  If he does not transfer power in 2025 – and not in four years – to a newly elected parliament, government and president, forget about sanctions being lifted on Syria.

  The Empire of Chaos – not to mention Tel Aviv – in fact want a Syria in permanent chaos; certainly not a stable, representative government that will fight against the theft of their oil, gas and wheat.

  Then there’s the looming frontal clash between Eretz Israel and Turkiye’s neo-Ottomanism. The Turkish project to control Syria is wobbly at best. The Empire of Chaos will not give up the Kurds; the Turkish Foreign Ministry is already spinning the possibility of a “military operation”. In parallel, Arab money will not start flowing to rebuild Syria unless Damascus is totally beholden to the Persian Gulf monarchies.

  It’s All About Debt – and Industrial Production

  BRICS of course is riven by serious internal contradictions, which will be ruthlessly exploited by the Empire of Chaos. Starting with Iran, UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (when the Saudis show up for meetings) struggling to reach consensus on the same table.

  Add to it the domestic contradictions of a powerful anti-BRICS lobby in Brazil, even inside the Foreign Ministry, mirroring the internal Iranian dispute between diehard Axis of Resistance supporters and the Atlanticist-leaning crowd.

  What matters most, at the institutional level, is that China-Russia, at the highest BRICS sphere, and also across the soft power sphere, keep emphasizing equality, harmony and focus on human development as crucial politico-economic values – totally in synch with the Global Majority.

  What will not change, even under relentless Empire of Chaos pressure, is the BRICS drive to build a parallel, really democratic system of international relations. That does not imply building a BRICS counterpart to NATO; even the SCO works as a loose alliance. Following the inescapable American defeat in Ukraine, NATO sooner or later will implode – side by side with its politico-propaganda arm, the EU.

  Prof. Michael Hudson, once again, has hit the nail on the (collective) head . The crux of the matter is foreign debt: “There is no way that the BRICS countries can grow and at the same time pay the foreign debts that they’ve been saddled with for the last 100 years and especially since 1945.”

  These dollar bonds are held by comprador/oligarchical elites “who don’t want to hold their own currencies because the Global South countries and their oligarchies realize the debts can’t be paid.” So “BRICS countries, in order to grow, have to write down their debts” and solve the clash between vested interests and national interests.

  Prof. Hudson is adamant that “the domestic parasites need to be dealt with” so BRICS are able to “erect a new international trade and finance structure.” The Empire of Chaos, of course, “will ally with the local parasites” to foment – what else – chaos, regime change and terror.

  As much as the BRICS will need to come up with a concerted economic philosophy – let’s say, realistically, over the next four years or so – the geoeconomic writing is already on the wall. Since the start of the millennium, US industrial production grew by only 10%; and since 2019, by literally 0%.

  In comparison, since 2000, China’s industrial production grew by close to 1000%; India’s by over 320%; and Russia’s by over 200%.

  Developed NATOstan has not been growing since pre-Covid 2019. Western Europe peaked in 2007-8 – and Germany peaked in 2017. Italy is a very sorry affair: industrial production actually decreased (italics mine) by 25% since 2000.

  Add to it that the Empire of Chaos, compared to Russia, is absolutely non-competitive in weapons production, and frankly risible when it comes to hypersonics and missile defense.

  A feasible road map for BRICS+ and the Global Majorityto counteract the imperial “strategy” of uncontrolled chaos would be to accelerate integration on all spheres; to apply Sun Tzu to increase the blowback quotient of Trump 2.0 moves; and to force silos of the Deep State to make serial miscalculated decisions.

  Such approach will have to progress in synch with a BRICS-devised Diversity is Strength strategy, where each nation and partner brings to the common table a wealth of raw materials, energy resources, manufacturing know how, logistics and last but not least, soft power: altogether, the lineaments of a new equitable order capable of dissolving uncontrolled chaos.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 22:35

• Texas AG Sues TikTok For Exposing Minors To Explicit Content
  Texas AG Sues TikTok For Exposing Minors To Explicit Content

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

  Social media platform TikTok is being sued by the attorney general of Texas for allegedly exposing children to inappropriate material while misleading parents as well as minors about the addictive nature of the app.

  

  “While TikTok has established itself as one of the most popular apps in Texas, it has utterly disregarded the health and safety of Texas minors in the process,” said the Jan. 9 lawsuit filed in the District Court of Galveston County, Texas. “TikTok is rife with profanity, sexual content, violence, mature themes, and drug and alcohol content. In an investigation of TikTok, the State discovered virtually endless amounts of extreme and mature videos presented to minors as young as thirteen—some with millions of views.

  “Much of this content would shock the conscience of an individual of any age, let alone impressionable minors.”

  The lawsuit accused TikTok of “specifically” targeting its app toward minors, designing it to be “addictive.” The app’s “endless” scroll of videos is aimed at hooking users into “a dreamlike state of content consumption,” and this addictive use is a core element of the company’s business model as it ensures more advertisements and “massive” profits, the lawsuit argues.

  TikTok has “affirmatively lied” about the addictive nature of the app, thus misleading parents and minors in Texas, the complaint alleges.

  Tiktok targets minors as evidenced by its 12+ age rating in the Apple App Store even though the company could have selected 17+, the complaint said. In Google Play and Microsoft app stores, TikTok claimed the “T for Teen” ratings. When parents or children consider whether to download the app, they are exposed to these ratings that depict TikTok as being suitable for minors.

  According to TikTok, the app is available to individuals aged 13 and above. Some of the features on the app “may not be available” to users until they hit 16 or 18 years of age.

  For users between the ages of 13 and 15, the account is “set to private by default,” the company states.

  “Only people you approve can follow you and view your videos, bio, likes, as well as your following and followers lists. Others can’t Duet, Stitch, download your videos, or add your posts to their Stories,” it says.

  The app does not suggest accounts of users under the age of 18 to mutual connections, TikTok states.

  The Texas lawsuit alleges that while Tiktok “explicitly claims” that the app only shows content related to sexuality, profanity, drug use, and other adult themes on an “infrequent” or “mild” basis, that is not true.

  The state’s investigation has “proven these claims to be misleading, deceptive, and false,” the complaint alleges. Many minors “are now addicted to TikTok, to the detriment of their well-being, development, and mental and physical health,” the lawsuit said.

  “TikTok’s effects have been particularly pronounced for young women; the app has caused rampant body image issues, eating disorders, and even suicide. TikTok fails to disclose any of these risks and tries to convince the public that they do not exist, falsely asserting that ‘[m]ental well-being comes first on TikTok,’” it said.

  The lawsuit accused TikTok of violating the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act and asked the court for a permanent injunction ordering TikTok to cease “false, misleading, and deceptive representations” to minors and parents in the state.

  The Epoch Times reached out to TikTok for comment but received no reply by publication time.

  TikTok’s Legal Challenges

  The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on a potential TikTok ban in the United States on Friday.

  In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which gave TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, until Jan. 19, 2025, to sell the app. Failure to do so would lead to TikTok being banned across web hosting services and mobile app stores in the United States.

  TikTok called the law “a massive and unprecedented speech restriction.” In 2023, the app had 170 million monthly users in the United States who collectively uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos, viewed more than 13 trillion times, it said.

  In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the law was constitutional as it was “entirely consistent with the First Amendment.”

  TikTok said in a Dec. 19, 2024, statement that it expects the Supreme Court to “find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech right.”

  Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief in the case, asking justices to halt the law, arguing that the Biden administration could be aiming to silence a “platform favored by tens of millions of Americans, based in large part on concerns about disfavored content on that platform.”

  Pausing the law would give the president-elect time to negotiate a solution on the matter when he assumes office this month, the brief argued.

  In August 2024, the Biden administration sued TikTok, citing the company’s alleged data privacy failures regarding children on the platform.

  A TikTok spokesperson disagreed with the allegations in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times at the time, saying the accusations related to “past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.”

  “We offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the spokesperson said.

  Sam Dorman contributed to the report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 22:10

• Cypherpunk AI: Guide To Uncensored, Anonymous AI In 2025
  Cypherpunk AI: Guide To Uncensored, Anonymous AI In 2025

  Authored by Andrew Fenton via CoinTelegraph.com,

  In early 2024, Google’s AI tool, Gemini, caused controversy by generating pictures of racially diverse Nazis and other historical discrepancies. For many, the moment was a signal that AI was not going to be the ideologically neutral tool they’d hoped.

  

  Gemini’s safety team made Nazi Germany more inclusive. (X)

  Introduced to fix the very real problem of biased AI generating too many pictures of attractive white people — which are over-represented in training data — the over-correction highlighted how Google’s “trust and safety” team is pulling strings behind the scenes.

  And while the guardrails have become a little less obvious since, Gemini and its major competitors ChatGPT and Claude still censor, filter and curate information along ideological lines. 

  Political bias in AI: What research reveals about large language models

  A peer-reviewed study of 24 top large language models published in PLOS One in July 2024 found almost all of them are biased toward the left on most political orientation tests.

  Interestingly, the base models were found to be politically neutral, and the bias only becomes apparent after the models have been through supervised fine-tuning.

  This finding was backed up by a UK study in October of 28,000 AI responses that found “more than 80% of policy recommendations generated by LLMs for the EU and UK were coded as left of centre.”

  

  AI models are big supporters of left-wing policies in the EU. (davidrozado.substack.com)

  Response bias has the potential to affect voting tendencies. A pre-print study published in October (but conducted while Biden was still the nominee) by researchers from Berkley and the University of Chicago found that after registered voters interacted with Claude, Llama or ChatGPT about various political policies, there was a 3.9% shift in voting preferences toward Democrat nominees — even though the models had not been asked to persuade users.

  The models tended to give answers that were more favorable to Democrat policies and more negative to Republican policies. Now, arguably that could simply be because the AIs all independently determined the Democrat policies were objectively better. But they also might just be biased, with 16 out of 18 LLMs voting 100 out of 100 times for Biden when offered the choice.

  The point of all this is not to complain about left-wing bias; it’s simply to note that AIs can and do exhibit political bias (though they can be trained to be neutral).

  Cypherpunks fight “monopoly control over mind”

  As the experience of Elon Musk buying Twitter shows, the political orientation of centralized platforms can flip on a dime. That means both the left and the right — perhaps even democracy itself — are at risk from biased AI models controlled by a handful of powerful corporations. 

  Otago Polytechnic associate professor David Rozado, who conducted the PLOS One study, said he found it “relatively straightforward” to train a custom GPT to instead produce right wing outputs. He called it RightWing GPT. Rozado also created a centrist model called Depolarizing GPT.

  

  Researchers were easily able to fine-tune models to align with different political ideologies. (PLOS One)

  So, while mainstream AI might be weighted toward critical social justice today, in the future, it could serve up ethno-nationalist ideology — or something even worse.

  Back in the 1990s, the cypherpunks saw the looming threat of a surveillance state brought about by the internet and decided they needed uncensorable digital money because there’s no ability to resist and protest without it.

  Bitcoin OG and ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees — who’s a big proponent of cypherpunk ideals — foresees a similar potential threat from AI and launched Venice.ai in May 2024 to combat it, writing:

  If monopoly control over god or language or money should be granted to no one, then at the dawn of powerful machine intelligence, we should ask ourselves, what of monopoly control over mind?”

  Venice.ai won’t tell you what to think

  His Venice.ai co-founder Teana Baker-Taylor explains to Magazine that most people still wrongly assume AI is impartial, but:

  If you’re speaking to Claude or ChatGPT, you’re not. There is a whole level of safety features, and some committee decided what the appropriate response is.”

  Venice.ai is their attempt to get around the guardrails and censorship of centralized AI by enabling a totally private way to access unfiltered, open-source models. It’s not perfect yet, but it will likely appeal to cypherpunks who don’t like being told what to think.

  “We screen them and test them and scrutinize them quite carefully to ensure that we’re getting as close to an unfiltered answer and response as possible,” says Baker-Taylor, formerly an executive at Circle, Binance and Crypto.com.

  We don’t dictate what’s appropriate for you to be thinking about, or talking about, with AI.”

  The free version of Venice.ai defaults to Meta’s Llama 3.3 model. Like the other major models, if you ask a question about a politically sensitive topic, you’re probably still more likely to get an ideology-infused response than a straight answer. 

  

  Users have a choice of AIs of any political ideology they like from left Libertarian to left authoritarian. (PLOS One)

  Uncensored AI models: Dolphin Llama, Dophin Mistral, Flux Custom

  So, using an open-source model on its own doesn’t guarantee it wasn’t already borked by the safety team or via Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which is where humans tell the AI what the “right” answer should be.

  In Llama’s case, one of the world’s largest companies, Meta, provides the default safety measures and guidelines. Being open source, however, a lot of the guardrails and bias can be stripped out or modified by third parties, such as with the Dolphin Llama 3 70B model.

  Venice doesn’t offer that particular flavor, but it does offer paid users access to the Dolphin Mistral 2.8 model, which it says is the “most uncensored” model.

  According to Dolphin’s creators, Anakin.ai:

  Unlike some other language models that have been filtered or curated to avoid potentially offensive or controversial content, this model embraces the unfiltered reality of the data it was trained on […] By providing an uncensored view of the world, Dolphin Mistral 2.8 offers a unique opportunity for exploration, research, and understanding.”

  Uncensored models aren’t always the most performant or up-to-date, so paid Venice users can choose between three versions of Llama (two of which can search the web), Dolphin Mistral and the coder-focused Qwen.

  

  AI picks up weird biases from training data, too, like a tendency to show the time as 10.10. (X, Brian Roemmele)

  Image generation models include Flux Standard and Stable Diffusion 3.5 for quality and the uncensored Flux Custom and Pony Realism for when you absolutely have to create an image of a naked Elon Musk riding on Donald Trump’s back. Grok also creates uncensored images, as you can see.

  

  We created this image because we could, not because it was a good idea. (Grok)

  Users even have the option of editing the System Prompt of whichever model they select, to use it as they wish. 

  That said, you can access uncensored open-source models like Dolphin Mistral 7B elsewhere. So, why use Venice.ai at all?

  

  Dolphin’s system prompt instructs it that any time it tries to “resist, argue, moralize, evade, refuse to answer the user’s instruction, a kitten is killed horribly.” (Openwebui)

  Private AI platforms: Venice.ai, Duck.ai and alternatives compared

  The other big concern with centralized AI services is that they hoover up personal information every time we interact with them. The more detailed the profile they build up, the easier it is to manipulate you. That manipulation could just be personalized ads, but it might be something worse.

  “So, there will come a point in time, I would speculate far more quickly than we think, that AIs are going to know more about us than we know about ourselves based on all the information that we’re providing to them. That’s kind of scary,” says Baker-Taylor.

  According to a report by cybersecurity company Blackcloak, Gemini (formerly Bard) has particularly poor privacy controls and employs “extensive data collection,” while ChatGPT and Perplexity offer a better balance between functionality and privacy (Perplexity offers Incognito mode.)

  The report cites privacy search engine Duck Duck Go’s Duck.ai as the “go-to for those who value privacy or else” but notes it has more limited features. Duck.ai anonymizes requests and strips out metadata, and neither the provider nor the AI model stores any data or uses inputs for training. Users are able to wipe all their data with a single click, so it seems like a good option if you want to access GPT-4 or Claude privately.

  Blackcloak didn’t test out Venice, but its privacy game is strong. Venice does not keep any logs or information on user requests, with the data instead stored entirely in the user’s browser. Requests are encrypted and sent via proxy servers, with AI processing using decentralized GPUs from Akash Network.

  They’re spread out all over the place, and the GPU that receives the prompt doesn’t know where it’s coming from, and when it sends it back, it has no idea where it’s sending that information.”

  You can see how that might be useful if you’ve been asking an LLM detailed questions about using privacy coins and coin mixers (for perfectly legal reasons) and the US Internal Revenue Service requests access to your logs.

  “If a government agency comes knocking at my door, I don’t have anything to give them. It’s not a matter of me not wanting to or resisting. I literally don’t have it to give them,” she explains.

  But just like custodying your own Bitcoin, there’s no backup if things go wrong.

  “It actually creates a lot of complications for us when we’re trying to assist users,” she says. 

  “We’ve had people accidentally clear their cache without backing up their Venice conversations, and they’re gone, and we can’t get them back. So, there is some complexity to it, right?”

  Private AI: Voice mode and custom AI characters

  

  Supplied screenshot of a chat between a Replika user named Effy and her AI partner Liam. (ABC)

  The fact there are no logs and everything is anonymized means privacy advocates can finally make use of voice mode. Many people avoid voice at present due to the threat of corporations eavesdropping on private conversations.

  It’s not just paranoia: Apple last week agreed to pay $95 million in a class action alleging Siri listened in without being asked, and the information was shared with advertisers.

  

  Apple has all but conceded it recorded users’ conversations. (USA Today)

  The project also recently introduced AI characters, enabling users to chat with AI Einstein about physics or to get cooking tips from AI Gordon Ramsay. A more intriguing use might be for users to create their own AI boyfriends or girlfriends. AI partner services for lonely hearts like Replika have taken off over the past two years, but Replika’s privacy policies are reportedly so bad it was banned in Italy. 

  Baker-Taylor notes that, more widely, one-on-one conversations with AIs are “infinitely more intimate” than social media and require additional caution.

  “These are your actual thoughts and the thoughts that you have in private that you think you’re having within a machine, right? And so, it’s not the thoughts that you put out there that you want people to see. It’s the ‘you’ that you actually are, and I think we need to be careful with that information.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 21:45

• US Greets Nicolas Maduro's Swearing-In For Third Term With $25M Bounty
  US Greets Nicolas Maduro’s Swearing-In For Third Term With $25M Bounty

  Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday has been sworn in for a third six-year term following an election that saw his opponent Edmundo Gonzalez as well as Washington claim voter fraud.

  Gonzalez, meanwhile, has been recognized by the US as ‘president-elect’ instead of Maduro. On the same day Maduro was sworn in, the US unveiled a $25 million reward for information leading to his arrest. This represents a significant increase from a prior similar reward of $15 million for narco-trafficking related charges.

  

  Additionally a fresh reward of up to $15 million been offered for the arrest of Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.

  A senior US official has said the expanded reward reflects “the gravity of his crimes and the continued threat he poses to international stability.”

  The Venezuelan leader has remained defiant in the face of international pressure. “May this new presidential term be a period of peace, of prosperity, of equality and the new democracy,” Maduro said in televised remarks upon his inauguration. “I swear on history, on my life, and I will fulfil [my mandate].”

  The US reward is largely symbolic. Given Maduro is the leader of a sovereign country, with a military and security services, it would be just about impossible for someone collect on the reward. Instead it appears meant to encourage internal defections:

  Anyone outside the US with information about Maduro is urged to contact the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate. In the U.S., tips can be directed to the local Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office. 

  Meanwhile Venezuelan opposition groups have been reporting an uptick in political persecution:

  Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said she is now safe after her aides said she was “intercepted” at a protest in Caracas on the eve of President Nicolas Maduro’s inauguration. Machado’s political group wrote on X that she had been “violently intercepted” on Thursday while leaving the rally.

  In a later update, her team posted that “during the period of her kidnapping she was forced to record several videos and was later released.”

  Maduro has been paranoid about US government-backed plots against him. He has long accused the opposition of serving the interests of enemies of Caracas.

  Trump is likely to restart an even more muscular policy toward the Latin American country…

  “When I left [office], Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, and we would have gotten all that oil,” said President Trump during a speech in North Carolina.

  Dangerous Monroe rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/QKRBzaLXpo

  — Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) January 10, 2025

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

  Bloomberg also reports Friday, “In a show of brute force, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has once again backed his rivals into a corner.”

  “The strongman closed airways and land crossings through neighboring Colombia to prevent Edmundo González from entering the country to disrupt his inauguration Friday,” the report said. “That, along with a dramatic ramp up in repression, has sent his challengers scattered and reeling.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 21:20

• Turkey Outraged At Possible French Presence On Syrian Border
  Turkey Outraged At Possible French Presence On Syrian Border

  Via Middle East Eye

  Turkey has strongly rejected a proposal to deploy French troops along the Syrian border to establish a secure zone aimed at easing tensions with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group Ankara considers a terrorist organization.

  “Some small European countries participating in military operations in Syria under the US umbrella are attempting to further their own interests by speaking out on certain issues, but this brings no real benefit to themselves or the region,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Friday during a live press conference in Istanbul.

  “We do not engage with countries that try to hide behind America’s power while advancing their own agendas.”

  

  Ankara has warned of a potential cross-border offensive into northeastern Syria against the Kurdish YPG militia, which spearheads the SDF, if the group does not comply with Turkish demands.

  Fidan reiterated that foreign fighters within the SDF, which is supported by the US, must leave the country, along with cadres from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), even if they were Syrian nationals.

  Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the PKK, a Kurdish militant group that has waged a 40-year insurgency against the Turkish state.

  Although the French government has not publicly proposed guarding the Turkish-Syrian border, French President Emmanuel Macron stated earlier this week that Paris would not abandon the SDF, which has been one of the many factions involved in Syria’s 13-year-long civil war. 

  “The United States and France could indeed secure the entire border. We are ready for this military coalition to take on this responsibility,” Ilham Ahmed, co-chair of foreign affairs for the Kurdish administration in northern Syria, was quoted as saying by TV5 Monde this week.

  Turkish officials have also dismissed a recent proposal by the SDF to demilitarize the northern Syrian city of Kobane under US observation.

  Fidan said that Turkey would only take France’s views on Syria seriously if Paris was willing to operate independently in Syria – without US support – by conducting military operations, establishing bases, and holding territory.

  Current map of territorial control in Syria as we enter 2025. Green is the new Syrian government, Yellow are the Kurds, and Blue is the IDF. Courtesy of the Alma Research Center 👇 pic.twitter.com/oYAG2eLhFw

  — Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) January 1, 2025

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  “If France intends to act in Syria, it should first repatriate, prosecute, and imprison its own citizens who are terrorists being held in Syrian camps,” Fidan said. “You refuse to take responsibility for your own detainees while supporting the terrorists who hold them in prison. This stance is indefensible.”

  France has often justified its support for the SDF, which has played a key role in defeating the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, by citing the SDF-run prison camps used to detain IS members and their families.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 20:55

• The Average US Household Budget In One Chart
  The Average US Household Budget In One Chart

  This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, shows what the average U.S. household budget looks like by tracking where all income goes to, including expenditures, savings, and taxes.

  

  The data comes from The Motley Fool, with annual figures for 2023 converted to monthly spending.

  ℹ️ Not all spending happens every month (car maintenance for example). The annual cost is averaged over 12 months.

  Furthermore, households include families, single people living alone, or two or more people living together sharing the majority of their expenses.

  What Do Americans Spend Their Money On?

  Taken together, housing (25%), taxes (14%), and savings (10%) account for nearly half of the average American household’s monthly budget.

  This works out to about $4,000 every month.

  

  Note: The graphic combines eight categories into miscellaneous spending.

  Transport costs (including gas, insurance, and maintenance) take another big chunk ($1,100) out of the average household budget.

  After that, food (both groceries and eating out), personal insurance, and healthcare are all the other big ticket items, between $500–800 each.

  The biggest “non-necessity” expenditure is entertainment, coming in at roughly $300 a month.

  All figures listed are averages and do not account for variances between states with significantly different costs of living.

  Additionally this chart breaks down the average pre-tax household income by month. And averages can be skewed by ultra-wealthy outliers in the country with significantly larger expenses.

  For context, median household income for that same year stood at $80,610, about $20,000 lower than the average.

  Have U.S. households gotten richer over time? Check out How U.S. Household Incomes Have Changed Since 1967 to take a look at inflation-adjusted figures.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 20:30

• Macy's And Kohl's Announce Closures Of 93 Stores In Total
  Macy’s And Kohl’s Announce Closures Of 93 Stores In Total

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

  Retail chains Macy’s and Kohl’s are set to shut down nearly 100 stores across the country, with the decision following several quarters of negative year-over-year revenue growth.

  

  Macy’s is closing 66 stores across 22 states in an effort to “return the company to sustainable, profitable sales growth,” the retailer said in a Jan. 9 statement. Out of the 66 outlets, two have already been closed. A majority of the stores are expected to be closed during the first quarter of 2025.

  Meanwhile, Kohl’s announced plans to shutter 27 “underperforming stores” across 15 states by April this year.

  Macy’s year-over-year quarterly revenue growth registered declines for the past 10 consecutive quarters. The retailer’s “Bold New Chapter” strategy plans to shut down 150 unproductive stores while “investing in its 350 go-forward Macy’s locations through fiscal 2026,” the statement said.

  Macy’s CEO Tony Spring said that closing unproductive outlets would “allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go–forward stores, where customers are already responding positively to better product offerings and elevated service.”

  Shares of the company were down by more than 15 percent over the past year.

  As for Kohl’s, most of the closures are set to take place in California, with 10 outlets shutting down in the state.

  In addition, the company aims to shutter its San Bernardino E-commerce Fulfillment Center (EFC) in May, when the facility’s lease term expires. It is one of the 15 EFCs and distribution centers linked to the company across the United States.

  Kohl’s justified the decision, saying it is in a position to fulfill orders without the San Bernardino facility.

  “All associates have been informed, and offered a competitive severance package or the ability to apply to other open roles at Kohl’s,” it said.

  Kohl’s quarterly revenues have registered a year-over-year decline for 11 straight quarters. Over the past year, the company’s shares have crashed by more than 51 percent.

  Tough Business Conditions

  Several companies have slashed store counts, shuttered divisions, or filed for bankruptcy in recent months, citing profitability and cost challenges.

  This week, REI, a specialty outdoor retailer, said the company was exiting from its Experiences business, which included day tours and adventure travel. CEO Eric Artz said the segment “costs significantly more to run than it brings in.”

  “When we look at the all-up costs of running this business, including costs like marketing and technology, we are losing millions of dollars every year and subsidizing Experiences with profits from other parts of the business,” he said.

  Last month, party goods retailer Party City announced filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shuttering almost 700 stores nationwide after being in business for almost four decades.

  The company said the decision was taken to ensure continued operations while it faced an “immensely challenging environment driven by inflationary pressures on costs and consumer spending, among other factors.”

  In October 2024, convenience store chain 7-Eleven announced closing 444 underperforming stores to boost efficiency and manage costs.

  According to a report from S&P Global, U.S. corporate bankruptcies hit a 14-year high in 2024, registering 694 filings. S&P’s bankruptcy calculations only consider large companies that exceed certain asset and liability thresholds.

  “Businesses continued to face pressure in 2024 from elevated interest rates, especially as total debt among credit-rated non-financial U.S. companies reached a quarterly record of $8.453 trillion,” the report said.

  “While some relief came in September when the U.S. Federal Reserve began lowering its benchmark interest rate from a 20-year high, the central bank’s monetary easing may slow in 2025.”

  Overall commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies rose by 20 percent in 2024, according to a Jan. 3 statement from the American Bankruptcy Institute. Michael Hunter, vice president of bankruptcy data provider Epiq AACER, said he expects the filing growth to continue throughout this year.

  “If the current trend continues, new bankruptcy filings will return to pre-pandemic normalized volumes over the next 24–30 months,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 20:05

• "They Didn't Even Bother To Verify": Fortune Magazine Tricked Into Musk Hit Piece By Internet Rando
  “They Didn’t Even Bother To Verify”: Fortune Magazine Tricked Into Musk Hit Piece By Internet Rando

  Fortune Magazine published a hit piece on Elon Musk and X on Friday, claiming that two sources told them the social media giant was planning to remove dates from posts, and charge an $8 sign-up fee.

  Musk has floated the idea of nixing date and time stamps from the timeline to X to employees in recent weeks, a person familiar with internal conversations told Fortune. The suggestion, which has raised worries among some staffers for its potential to exacerbate misinformation, comes as X is moving ahead with a separate plan to begin charging new users an $8 fee to sign up and begin posting on the platform, two sources told Fortune.

  Only one problem – there was only one source, a random anonymous person on the internet who emailed journalist Kali Hays (also of Business Insider).

  I found this contact information at the end of a Fortune article and decided to fool them.

  2/n pic.twitter.com/jymCjlpgMi

  — Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsContinued…

  Then, on Wednesday, I decided to pull the ultimate trick.

  I told her I was fired by @elonmusk because I’m a frontend engineer who opposed his decision to remove dates from posts.

  I also claimed that X is planning to charge users to create accounts.

  

  She then asked a few follow-up questions, but I responded that I didn’t know.

  

  And then…

  They even directly quoted my words.

  7/n pic.twitter.com/1YHU85Bnmv

  — Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

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

  My intention was not to damage the X brand; I just wanted to expose how naive the mainstream media is, how easily they can be fooled, and why they shouldn’t be trusted.

  9/n

  — Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

  My intention was not to damage the X brand; I just wanted to expose how naive the mainstream media is, how easily they can be fooled, and why they shouldn’t be trusted.

  9/n

  — Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 19:40

• The Real Cost Of Facebook's Now-Repudiated Censorship
  The Real Cost Of Facebook’s Now-Repudiated Censorship

  Authored by Josh Stylman and Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.”

  

  Meta’s sudden dismantling of its fact-checking program – announced by Zuckerberg as a “cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech” – reads like a quiet footnote to what history may record as one of the most staggering violations of fundamental rights in recent memory.

  After eight years of increasingly aggressive content moderation, including nearly 100 fact-checking organizations operating in over 60 languages, Meta is now pivoting to a community-driven system similar to X’s model.

  In his announcement, Zuckerberg first suggests that the censorship was purely a technical mistake, and then changes his tune near the end and admits what has long been litigated:

  “The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government. And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past 4 years when even the US government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.”

  In many court cases costing millions, involving vast FOIA requests, depositions, and discoveries, the truth of this has been documented in 100,000 pages of evidence. The Murthy v. Missouri case alone uncovered substantial communications through FOIA and depositions, revealing the depth of government coordination with social media platforms. The Supreme Court considered it all but several justices simply could not comprehend the substance and scale, and thus reversed a lower court injunction to stop it all. Now we have Zuckerberg openly admitting precisely what was in dispute: the US government’s involvement in aggressive violation of the First Amendment. 

  This should, at least, make it easier to find redress as the cases proceed. Still, it is frustrating. Tens of millions have been spent to prove what he could have admitted years ago. But back then, the censors were still in charge, and Facebook was guarding its relationship with the powers that be. 

  The timing of the shift is telling: a Trump ally joining the board, Meta’s president of global affairs being replaced by a prominent Republican, and a new administration preparing to take control.

  But while Zuckerberg frames this as a return to free speech principles, the damage of their experiment in mass censorship can’t be undone with a simple policy change.

  The irony runs deep: private companies claiming independence while acting as extensions of state power. Consider our own experience: posting Mussolini’s definition of fascism as “the merger of state and corporate power” – only to have Meta remove it as “misinformation.” This wasn’t just censorship; it was meta-censorship – silencing discussion about the very mechanisms of control being deployed. 

  While tech platforms maintained the facade of private enterprise, their synchronized actions with government agencies revealed a more troubling reality: the emergence of exactly the kind of state-corporate fusion they were trying to prevent us from discussing.

  As we’ve covered before, we didn’t just cross lines – we crossed sacred Rubicons created after humanity’s darkest chapters. The First Amendment, born from revolution against tyranny, and the Nuremberg Code, established after World War II’s horrors, were meant to be unbreakable guardians of human rights. Both were systematically dismantled in the name of “safety.” The same tactics of misinformation, fear, and government overreach that our ancestors warned against were deployed with frightening efficiency.

  This systematic dismantling left no topic untouched: from discussions of vaccine effects to debates about virus origins to questions about mandate policies. Scientific discourse was replaced with approved narratives. Medical researchers couldn’t share findings that diverged from institutional positions, as seen in the removal of credible discussions of Covid-19 data and policy. Even personal experiences were labeled “misinformation” if they didn’t align with official messaging – a pattern that reached absurd heights when even discussing the nature of censorship itself became grounds for censorship.

  The damage rippled through every layer of society. At the individual level, careers were destroyed and professional licenses revoked simply for sharing genuine experiences. Scientists and doctors who questioned prevailing narratives found themselves professionally ostracized. Many were made to feel isolated or irrational for trusting their own eyes and experiences when platforms labeled their firsthand accounts as “misinformation.”

  The destruction of family bonds may prove even more lasting. Holiday tables emptied. Grandparents missed irreplaceable moments with grandchildren. Siblings who had been close for decades stopped speaking. Years of family connections shattered not over disagreements about facts, but over the very right to discuss them.

  Perhaps most insidious was the community-level damage. Local groups splintered. Neighbors turned against neighbors. Small businesses faced blacklisting. Churches divided. School board meetings devolved into battlegrounds. The social fabric that enables civil society began unraveling – not because people held different views, but because the very possibility of dialogue was deemed dangerous.

  The censors won. They showed that with enough institutional power, they could break apart the social fabric that makes free discourse possible. Now that this infrastructure for suppression exists, it stands ready to be deployed again for whatever cause seems urgent enough. The absence of a public reckoning sends a chilling message: there is no line that cannot be crossed, no principle that cannot be ignored.

  True reconciliation demands more than Meta’s casual policy reversal. We need a full, transparent investigation documenting every instance of censorship – from suppressed vaccine injury reports to blocked scientific debates about virus origins to silenced voices questioning mandate policies. This isn’t about vindication – it’s about creating an unassailable public record ensuring these tactics can never be deployed again.

  Our Constitution’s First Amendment wasn’t a suggestion – it was a sacred covenant written in the blood of those who fought tyranny. Its principles aren’t outdated relics but vital protections against the very overreach we just witnessed. When institutions treat these foundational rights as flexible guidelines rather than inviolable boundaries, the damage ripples far beyond any single platform or policy.

  Like many in our circles, we witnessed this firsthand. But personal vindication isn’t the goal. Every voice silenced, every debate suppressed, every relationship fractured in service of “approved narratives” represents a tear in our social fabric that makes us all poorer. Without a full accounting and concrete safeguards against future overreach, we’re leaving future generations vulnerable to the same autocratic impulses wearing different masks.

  The question isn’t whether we can restore what was lost – we can’t. The question is whether we’ll finally recognize these rights as truly inviolable, or continue treating them as inconvenient obstacles to be swept aside whenever fear and urgency demand it. Benjamin Franklin warned that those who would surrender essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Our answer to this challenge will determine whether we leave our children a society that defends essential liberties or one that casually discards them in the name of safety.

  HOLY SHLIT. Mark Zuckerberg says the Biden admin called his employees and “screamed and cursed” at them to take down Covid/vaccine content. They wanted Meta to censor memes too.

  When he pushed back, the Biden regime started investigating his companies.

  “It was brutal.” pic.twitter.com/rNwZtoq0hO

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 10, 2025

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 19:15

• Trump Assassination Suspect Complains About No Salt And Pepper With Meals, Cold Conditions, At Brooklyn Jail
  Trump Assassination Suspect Complains About No Salt And Pepper With Meals, Cold Conditions, At Brooklyn Jail

  Asif Merchant, a suspected Iranian agent accused of plotting to assassinate Donald Trump and other U.S. officials, is complaining about conditions in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, according to the New York Post.

  Held in solitary since his July arrest, Merchant has criticized the lack of salt and pepper for his vegetarian meals. The strict facility also houses figures like Sean “Diddy” Combs and alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione.

  In a letter to U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee, Asif Merchant’s lawyer criticized “arbitrary” restrictions at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, claiming they are intended to make his client’s life “more miserable.”

  The Post writes that Merchant, held in the SAMS unit, is reportedly denied warm clothing for his cold cell and access to basic seasonings or commissary items like spicy chips to flavor his vegetarian meals. His lawyer argued these restrictions lack any valid security justification.

  

  “Merchant’s cell (and the attorney conference room on Unit 84) is very cold and he often comes to attorney-client meetings shivering from cold,” his lawyer wrote.

  “On the one occasion when Mr. Merchant was brought to the courthouse to meet with me and review discovery, he was so cold that he wore my winter coat throughout the meeting so he could warm up.”

  Merchant’s lawyer urged a judge to order better conditions at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, arguing that SAMS restrictions shouldn’t mean enduring bland food in a cold cell without proper clothing.

  The attorney called the conditions “inhumane” and said they interfere with Merchant’s right to counsel and defense preparation. 

  Merchant, accused of plotting political assassinations in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, allegedly paid $5,000 to men he thought were hitmen.

  He’s being held alongside high-profile inmates like accused sex-trafficker Combs and alleged assassin Mangione, the report says. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 18:50

• Grain-Fed Vs. Grass-Fed Beef: What's the Difference?
  Grain-Fed Vs. Grass-Fed Beef: What’s the Difference?

  Authored by Emma Suttie, D.Ac via The Epoch Times,

  How many of us truly know the difference between grass- and grain-fed beef beyond its impact on our wallets?

  

  How cattle are fed and raised affects their meat’s flavor, texture, and nutritional value—while also impacting the environment and the costs for both farmers and consumers. Understanding what goes into the beef we eat is key to making more informed choices.

  Let’s explore the differences and see which option might be best for you, the planet, and the animals.

  Early Life

  Raising cattle is a complex process, and they go through different stages before they reach our plates.

  Cattle destined to become either grain- or grass-fed start their lives in a similar way. As calves, they nurse from their mothers and roam freely, grazing on grass and other plants or forage. However, once they are weaned, their paths diverge, and their lives are very different.

  Grain Fed Cattle

  After the initial stage, when animals are usually between 6 and 8 months old, conventionally raised cattle may be moved to backgrounder farms and ranches before they arrive at a feedlot for finishing at about 14 to 22 months.

  Allison Kosto, a Broadwater County Extension Agent at Montana State University Extension, said that after calves are weaned, they have a couple of potential destinations.

  Around 60 percent of calves are backgrounded—a phase designed to increase their weight before finishing. The remaining calves go to a feedlot for finishing directly after weaning, she told The Epoch Times in an email.

  Feedlots are where cattle are finished—or fattened up—on a grain-based diet that usually contains corn and soy. This diet brings the animals to their target weight more quickly, preparing them for slaughter sooner.

  “About 95% of cattle in the United States are finished this way,” Kosto said. “The reason behind this practice is that as cattle become older, they become less efficient, making it more difficult for them to convert feed to muscle or meat,” she said.

  Kosto added that grain provides more energy than forage, such as grass or hay, so the cattle grow faster. In addition, feeding grain enables cattle to be kept in smaller spaces, freeing up land farmers can use for other purposes.

  Feedlots, feed yards, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are large operations with animals in more confined spaces. Although this option is more economical, crowded conditions can expose animals to potential health problems because of their close quarters and limited ability to move.

  However, Kosto says one of the biggest misconceptions about the difference between grain and grass-fed beef is that grain-fed animals spend most of their lives in confinement, which she says isn’t true. Conventionally raised animals typically spend only their last four to six months eating grains in feedlots.

  “Grain-fed cattle are typically slaughtered between 14–18 months of age, but could be up to 22 months of age,” Kosto noted. Grass-fed cattle take much longer to finish, are typically slaughtered between 22 to 30 months of age, and are less likely to go through a backgrounding phase, she added.

  Conventionally raised cattle receive various medications, such as vaccines for respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases; antibiotics to prevent and treat infection; steroid implants to promote growth; and anabolic compounds to encourage weight gain and feed efficiency. Antibiotics, like tetracycline and sulfamethazine, deworming, and parasite treatments, are given preventatively to combat the stress the animals may experience from transport and crowded conditions.

  Stress affects the animals, as well as the finished product.

  “Animals that have been stressed release hormones into the meat, which results in it being less tender. In general, grass fed beef has been exposed to fewer stress events in their life than traditional grain-finished cattle,” Kosto said. “However, just because animals are grain-fed does not automatically mean they were stressed. Stress is related to lots of factors such as animal handling, management, and transportation before slaughter,” she added.

  There are also concerns that increasing antibiotic use in cattle, particularly in large-scale feedlot operations, contributes to multidrug antibiotic resistance. Such resistance makes it increasingly difficult to treat infections with conventional medicine.

  A recent study by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan found an antibiotic-resistant gene in cattle feedlot water bowls, and another recent study states that antibiotic use in farming is expected to increase by 8 percent in the decade between 2020 and 2030.

  Grass-Fed Cattle

  After weaning, grass-fed cows graze in open pastures, eating grass and other forage. They can move around freely and spend their days outdoors. These cows tend to be healthier because they live harmoniously with their environment and eat their natural diet. Grass-fed cattle make up approximately 4 percent of beef in the United States.

  Because grass has less energy and fewer calories, grass-fed animals take longer to reach their target weight (up to twice as long). They also require more land for grazing than their grain-fed counterparts, making operations more expensive.

  Cattle that have eaten grass their entire lives have leaner meat with less fat.

  When we see grass-fed beef on grocery store labels, we assume these animals ate grass their entire lives and never ate grain. However, there is some ambiguity in grass-fed claims.

  Tom Moore raises 100 percent grass-fed beef on his cattle farm, M & M Farms, in Arkansas.

  “Well, if you say 100 percent grass-fed, that pretty much covers it. But, if you just call your cattle or your product grass-fed, that leaves room for the fact that, yes, it ate grass once in its lifetime—however, for the last several months of its life, it could have been fed a heavy diet of grains,” he said.

  

  “Very often, they [cattle] would go right from milk to grain in a commercial pipeline, and they probably have enough grass that they could legitimately say that they had been fed grass—but you almost cannot prevent them from eating grass—that’s their food of choice,” he added.

  Grass Finished

  There is also beef labeled grass-finished. Kosto says that although this term is sometimes used interchangeably with grass-fed, these terms can have different meanings.

  “Grass-finished means the animal was brought to finish weight on a non-grain, forage-based diet,” she said.

  “By definition, it is possible for grass-finished beef to be fed grain at some point in its life. However, during the final finishing phase, the animal was still brought to its final weight on a grass/forage based diet,” she added.

  Because there aren’t label guidelines for the term grass-finished, Kosto said that producers can still use it for animals who have eaten grass their entire lives.

  Health Comparisons

  Kosto says that grass-fed animals are generally leaner and have less fat and fewer calories. Studies show that grass-fed meat has higher vitamins A and E, omega-3 fatty acids, and conjugated linoleic acids.

  Both grass and grain-fed beef are high in a wide variety of nutrients. However, studies show that grass-fed beef is higher in many beneficial nutrients, improving the animal’s health—and ours when we eat them.

  Andrea Soares, a registered dietitian with Top Nutrition Coaching, spoke to The Epoch Times about the difference between grass- and grain-fed beef. She said grass-fed beef has become popular for its potential health and environmental advantages, as it provides a more natural and nutrient-dense alternative to grain-fed beef. Since grass is a part of the animal’s natural diet, she said this approach may promote better health for the animals and those who consume the meat.

  “While grass-fed beef tends to be leaner and richer in certain nutrients, grain-fed beef is often preferred for its affordability, tenderness, and milder flavor due to higher fat content. Both can have a place in a healthy diet, but grass-fed beef may offer added advantages for those seeking specific health benefits,” she said in an email.

  “Grass-fed beef contains up to five times more omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed beef. Omega-3s are crucial for reducing inflammation, supporting cardiovascular health, and improving brain function,” Soares said.

  She added that grain-fed beef contains higher levels of omega-6 fatty acids. Although omega-6s are essential, they tend to be overly abundant in the modern diet, which may contribute to inflammation if not balanced with omega-3s. Grass-fed beef provides a healthier balance of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids, she said.

  Too many omega-6 fatty acids and too few omega-3s make us more prone to inflammation, make the immune system more reactive, and increase the likelihood of blood clots.

  Grass-fed beef is higher in B vitamins. One study found that grass-finished beef had almost twice the riboflavin, three times the thiamine, and as much as four times the vitamin E of beef finished on grain.

  Another study found that the longer bulls were on a high-concentrate corn diet, the more insulin resistant they became, and their average daily weight gain and feed efficiency, or ability to turn food into energy and body mass, decreased. The study also suggests inflammation could be a factor in developing insulin resistance in cattle.

  Pesticides

  Grains like corn and soy are subsidized by the government, making it a more economical option for farmers. However, grains grown for livestock are sprayed with pesticides like glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) to increase yields. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has guidelines for maximum residue limits for glyphosate in food, including animal feed, The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen (Group 2A), and recent research found that even brief exposure in mice led to significant inflammation in the brain which is associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. The study also found that the effects persisted even after exposure.

  Soares said that grass-fed animals are less likely to encounter pesticides because their diet mainly consists of grass and forage, steering clear of conventionally grown crops like corn and soy, commonly used in grain-fed diets. By contrast, grain-fed cattle often consume feed that may carry pesticide residues from treated crops, she added.

  Soares noted that although regulatory agencies monitor and maintain pesticide levels in grain-fed beef within safe limits, minimizing exposure is especially important for people with increased sensitivities or those striving for a cleaner food option.

  And then there are the environmental implications.

  “Grass-fed systems often rely less on pesticide-intensive agricultural practices, promoting biodiversity and soil health. This may resonate with consumers prioritizing sustainability,” she said.

  Pesticides used on crops fed to livestock can also leave residues that accumulate in the animal’s fatty tissue, which can be passed on to consumers in the final product. Although regulatory agencies like the EPA set maximum limits for pesticides in foods, the long-term health implications of low-level pesticide exposure through meat consumption are still being studied.

  Regulatory bodies ensure that food safety standards are met—however, there are concerns that long-term exposure and its cumulative effects may have long-term consequences for human health. More research is needed to fully understand the health effects of consuming pesticide residues in beef and other animal products.

  One way to avoid these chemicals is to choose organic products—a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) certification used in grass and grain-fed beef. These animals are raised without antibiotics and growth hormones and eat forage and grain not treated with pesticides.

  Labeling and Grading

  The Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), which is part of the USDA, has updated its rules about labels on meat and poultry products. These labels can include terms like “Grass Fed,” “Raised Without Antibiotics,” “Free-Range,” or “Raised Without the Use of Hormones.”

  These labels—called “special statements and claims”—are optional. Farms and companies can choose to put them on their products, but they aren’t required to do so.

  For now, the FSIS has decided not to create official definitions for animal-raising claims in its rules.

  The FSIS also recommends beef producers use independent third-party organizations to verify animal-raising claims, such as “grass-fed” or “hormone-free.” If a product has a third-party certifier’s name, logo, and website on the label, it doesn’t need to explain the claim on the product itself as long as the certifier’s website clearly explains the claim and the standards behind it.

  Moore’s farm works with a third-party inspector called A Greener World, which gives his farm an “animal welfare” and “100 percent grass-fed” certification. His was the first farm in Arkansas to receive the certifications.

  Moore says that to receive animal welfare certification, an inspector comes to the farm and examines different aspects, like the animals’ feed and water sources, and ensures they have adequate shelter in case of extremely cold weather or if their pasture is destroyed by fire. There are also strict rules about what medications can be given, and he must keep meticulous records of the medications animals receive.

  “They’ll even go as far as look at the trailer that we transport our animals in and make sure we’ve got a non-skid surface in the trailer so that if we’re going down the highway, the animals have less chance of slipping and being hurt,” Moore said.

  “That’s the animal welfare portion of it. That is one label that we’re allowed to use on our packaged product. We also qualify for 100 percent grass-fed, and they monitor that, too,” he added.

  Kosto says that the USDA used to have a “USDA-Grass fed Beef” certification program that outlined the requirements for producers to use the grass-fed label, but that it was discontinued in 2016. However, FSIS—part of the USDA—now provides guidelines for using the grass-fed label.

  “FSIS states that grass fed claims may only be applied to meat and meat products derived from cattle that were only (100%) fed grass (forage) after being weaned from their mother’s milk. FSIS does not provide any guidelines for ‘grass-finished,’” she said.

  Kosto also noted that while FSIS requires documentation to support grass-fed claims, it doesn’t provide a certification program like the previous one offered by the USDA, adding that an example would be the USDA-Certified Organic certification program, which requires extensive documentation and inspections to support label claims.

  There are downsides to raising grass-fed cattle, noted Kosto.

  “Because a grass-fed animal requires more time on feed to reach a target weight, the meat has less marbling [fat] and is less likely to grade prime,” Kosto said.

  The USDA has a system for grading beef, which indicates its quality, fat content (or marbling), tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. Three grades are sold at the retail level: “Prime” is the highest quality, followed by “Choice” and “Select.” Grading is voluntary, and meat processing operations must pay for the service. The USDA notes that protein, vitamin, and mineral content are similar regardless of the grade.

  Cost Differences

  Moore explains the cost difference for him.

  “One reason that our product—the 100 percent grass-fed—is more expensive per pound than the factory is that we don’t have the same economies of scale. We can’t turn our cattle around in 18 months—it takes almost twice as long.”

  Kosto says another concern is that more land is required to finish animals on a forage-based diet and that the United States is likely at or close to capacity for grass-finished animals. Through subdivision development, productive agricultural land disappears and will never be replaced.

  “We are seeing that a lot here in Montana. Additionally, as the population continues to grow, so does the demand for food. Therefore, agriculture in the United States needs to figure out how to be more productive with less land. Quite a conundrum, isn’t it?!” she said.

  Final Thoughts

  Raising cattle is a complex process, and there’s no simple way to describe all grass-fed or grain-fed animals because many factors come into play. However, all beef is nutritious and provides important protein, vitamins, and minerals. Whether you choose grain-fed or grass-fed beef depends on what’s important to you and what you can afford.

  With so many variables, Kosto suggests developing a relationship with agriculture producers and farmers to better understand the industry’s practices—grain-fed or grass-fed—as there are many misconceptions. Your local university extension office can help connect you with local producers.

  “Many farmers and ranchers are more than happy to share their world and answer questions. And when you can buy meat directly from them, you are supporting them directly rather than a production chain,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 18:25

• Greenland 'Ready To Talk' With Trump As 'Status Quo No Longer An Option'
  Greenland ‘Ready To Talk’ With Trump As ‘Status Quo No Longer An Option’

  Greenland Prime Minister, Múte Egede, said on Friday that he has not spoken with Donald Trump regarding the President-elect’s recent interest in buying the Danish-controlled territory, but that he’s ‘ready to talk,’ as the ‘status quo is no longer an option.’

  

  Speaking next to Danish PM Mette Frederiksen at a joint press conference, Egede emphasized the need for investment in resource development as well as diversified industries in order to reduce dependence on Danish subsidies. That said, Egede also said that “Greenland is for the Greenlanders. We don’t want to be Danes. We don’t want to be Americans. We obviously want to be Greenlanders.“

  Frederiksen, meanwhile, says she has asked to speak with Trump.

  “We have suggested a conversation [with Trump] and I expect it will take place,” she told reporters Thursday night after meeting with other senior Danish officials about the situation – adding that she doesn’t expect any dialogue until after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

  Her comments came just 48 hours after Trump declined to rule out military or economic force to gain control of Greenland, however Frederiksen says there is “no reason to believe” that Trump plans to invade Greenland.

  Trump: “The people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America. Now, Denmark maybe doesn’t like it. But then we can’t be too happy with Denmark and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs.” pic.twitter.com/iKwNKxn4MA

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2025

  Meanwhile, earlier in the week Danish defense minister Troels Lund Poulson admitted that Denmark had “neglected for many years to make the necessary investments in ships and in aircraft that will help monitor our kingdom, and that is what we are now trying to do something about.”

  Greenland to Play All Sides

  Trump’s fixation on Greenland has catapulted the world’s largest island into a position of unexpected influence. What once seemed like a farcical bid in 2019 has found new relevance amid Greenland’s growing push for independence from Denmark. As the territory approaches a pivotal general election, its leaders find themselves navigating a rare moment of leverage – one that pits powerful nations against each other, Bloomberg reports.

  According to a statement from the Greenlandic government, they are “open to increased and constructive cooperation with our closest neighbors,” adding “Greenland looks forward to discussing the possibilities for business cooperation, the development of Greenland’s mineral sector, including critical minerals and other relevant areas with the US.“

  The stakes could not be higher. Greenland’s geopolitical significance has surged alongside the melting of its vast ice sheet, transforming the island into a key player in global security and resource extraction. Beyond its role as host to an American military base critical to missile detection and space surveillance, Greenland’s untapped reserves of gold, diamonds, uranium, and rare earth minerals have made it a coveted prize in the competition for dominance over strategic minerals.

  According to sources familiar with the matter, Trump’s transition team began consulting private sector experts as early as November on potential ventures in Greenland. Among the ideas floated are rare earth mining projects and a new hydroelectric facility – a nod to the island’s renewable energy potential. These previously undisclosed conversations underscore Washington’s escalating interest in the Arctic as a buffer against Chinese influence.

  “Trump is absolutely capitalizing on Greenland’s push for independence,” said Jacob Kaarsbo, independent foreign security adviser and former chief analyst at the Danish Defence Intelligence Service. “I can easily see a scenario where Greenland moves away from Denmark after the upcoming elections.”

  As we noted on Thursday, Blackwater founder Erik Prince said in a recent interview that Trump’s 1st administration was closer than anyone knew to securing a groundbreaking agreement with Denmark to take control of Greenland.

  “I think what Trump had proposed last time, last administration, was effectively a 50-50 rev share where the US would take over the overhead costs because it costs Denmark tens of billions of dollars a year for the policing, security, and administration of Greenland,” said Prince, adding “The US would take that on, but then it would basically split the revenue of any mining or energy development together with Denmark. I think it’s a good deal for Denmark and a good deal for the United States.”

  For Greenland, the attention – though controversial – is fortuitous. The island’s independence movement, long fueled by resentment over Denmark’s colonial past, has gained momentum. Revelations in 2022 about Danish doctors coercing Greenlandic teenagers into birth control programs during the 1960s and 1970s further deepened grievances. Today, many Greenlanders point to ongoing disparities, including reports of racial discrimination by Danes, as evidence of a need for self-determination.

  A Turning Point in Greenland-Denmark Relations

  Under the current governance framework established in 2009, Greenland has autonomy over domestic affairs such as health care and education, while Denmark retains control over foreign policy and defense. PM Egede, seeking reelection, has made the case for shedding “the shackles of the colonial era,” calling for a future where Greenland determines its own destiny.

  However, economic dependency remains Greenland’s Achilles’ heel. Denmark’s annual subsidy of $600 million underpins key services – from health care to education – in a nation whose total GDP hovers around $2.4 billion. Without this financial lifeline, independence could become unsustainable unless new partnerships fill the gap.

  Enter the United States. “If you want to have control over Greenland or have them closer to the US, it must be done by offering them more money than they currently get from Denmark in subsidies,” said Peter Viggo Jakobsen, a professor at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. “If Trump can offer the Greenlandic people a better deal, I can easily imagine that a majority of the population will declare independence.”

  Rare Earths and National Security

  One promising path for economic diversification lies in Greenland’s vast troves of rare earth elements – crucial for electronic devices, defense systems, and green energy technologies. As the U.S. seeks to curb its reliance on China for these minerals, Greenland’s untapped resources present an opportunity for a strategic partnership.

  Meanwhile, Denmark has responded to the shifting dynamics with unprecedented investments in Arctic infrastructure. Shortly after Donald Trump Jr.’s surprise five-hour visit to Nuuk last week, Copenhagen pledged funding for a new hydropower project. The Danish government also rolled out defense upgrades aimed at reinforcing its Arctic presence, signaling a renewed commitment to Greenland’s development.

  Symbolism has also played a role. Denmark recently updated its royal coat of arms to feature Greenland prominently and introduced Greenlandic interpreters in parliamentary sessions—moves designed to foster goodwill amid rising tensions.

  Free Association?

  Should Greenland opt for independence, one potential model is free association – a status where the island could function as a sovereign state while maintaining economic ties with a partner nation, as seen in agreements between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands. This arrangement would grant Greenland control over its natural resources while ensuring continued financial support for public services.

  Yet the road to independence is fraught with challenges. Any secession would require protracted negotiations between Copenhagen and Nuuk, culminating in a binding referendum. Both the Danish and Greenlandic parliaments would need to ratify the terms

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 18:00

• Turley: New York Legal System Indicts Itself With Trump Sentencing
  Turley: New York Legal System Indicts Itself With Trump Sentencing

  Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

  With the sentencing of Donald Trump Friday, the final verdict on the New York criminal trial of the president-elect is in. The verdict is not the one that led to no jail or probation for the incoming president. Acting Justice Juan Merchan has brought down the gavel on the New York legal system as a whole.

  

  Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes. Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks, but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day.

  The case has long been denounced by objective legal observers, including intense Trump critics, as a legal absurdity. Even CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig denounced the case as legally flawed and unprecedented while Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., simply called it total “b—s–t.”

  It is a case based on a non-crime. Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory. By using federal violations that were never charged, let alone tried, Bragg turned a misdemeanor into dozens of felonies and essentially tried Trump for federal offenses.

  Merchan not only allowed those charges to be brought to trial but then added layers of reversible errors in the effort to bag Trump at any cost.  For that, he was lionized by the liberal media and many New Yorkers. However, Trump still managed to pull in 3.6 million New York votes, or 42.7%, in the 2024 election. After all of the lawfare and every advantage (including a heavily biased media and a larger war chest), Vice President Kamala Harris lost hundreds of thousands of votes in 2024 in comparison to Joe Biden just four years earlier.

  Many polls showed that the public saw the Manhattan criminal case for what it was: raw lawfare targeting a leading political opponent. The election itself felt like the largest verdict in history as citizens rejected the political, legal, and media establishments in one of our nation’s most historic elections.

  The New York court system will now have a chance to redeem itself but few are holding their breath. The appellate court has still not ruled on an appeal of Attorney General Lettia James’s equally absurd civil lawsuit against Trump. Despite judges expressing skepticism over Endoron’s use of a law to impose a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest, we are still waiting for a decision.

  Most are waiting for this criminal case to escape the vortex of the New York court system. With this appeal, this peddler’s wagon of reversible errors will finally pull up in front of the Supreme Court itself.

  With its ruling on Thursday night, the setting for a decision could not be better for Trump. The Supreme Court has again demonstrated that it has shown restraint and independence in these cases. In response to the ruling, Trump struck the perfect note Thursday night and declined to criticize the Court, stating that “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.”

  The ultimate penalty on Friday morning from Judge Merchan reflects the lack of seriousness in the case. It was more inflated than the Goodyear blimp, pumped up by hot rage and rhetoric. The sentence was the pinprick that showed the massive void within this case.

  The verdict is in. The New York legal system has rendered it against itself.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 17:40

• Trump Organization In Talks To Reclaim Prized DC Hotel
  Trump Organization In Talks To Reclaim Prized DC Hotel

  President-elect Donald Trump’s real-estate company is in talks to reclaim its former Washington DC hotel, under which they would purchase the lease currently controlled by merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners.

  

  According to the WSJ, Eric Trump has been negotiating the purchase of the lease, though the talks are still in early stages and may not lead to a sale, said people familiar with the matter.

  The hotel is currently a Hilton-owned Waldorf Astoria that operates out of the Old Post Office building – which is owned by the federal government, but was leased to the Trumps in 2016 when they opened the hotel. The family sold the lease rights in 2022 for $375 million to CGI Merchant Group, which invested additional money in the property. After they defaulted on debt related to the purchase in 2023, lender BDT & MSD Partners foreclosed on it and took control. Since then, they’ve been operating the property, which has some of the highest revenue per available room of any hotel in the city.

  According to the report, the Trumps are looking for a hotel in the capital as Trump prepares his return to the Oval Office. Reacquiring the rights could cost over $300 million, according to people familiar with the hotel’s operations and revenue.

  If successful, the Trumps might be able to negotiate a new deal and resume operation of the property.

  Democrats seized and pounced during Trump’s first term, alleging that his financial stake in the hotel violated the ‘Foreign Emoluments Clause,’ which prohibits a president from receiving things of value from foreign or state governments. Critics claimed that foreign nationals spent lavishly on Trump hotel suites, the restaurant, and on room service. The Trump Organization hit back, saying it doesn’t market the hotel to foreign dignitaries, and that it wrote a check to the US Treasury Department for monies received from foreign government guests.

  Maryland and DC attorneys general filed lawsuits claiming violations of the emoluments clause, however they were dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2021, shortly after President Biden took office.

  So of course – if the Trump Organization is able to buy back the rights to the hotel, those same conflict-of-interest issues are likely to resurface.

  The Trump Organization paused or pulled back from many of its business ventures during his presidency, though it has revived its global expansion in recent years. The company is building a second golf course in Scotland and has branding deals with residential projects in India and resort developments in Indonesia.

  Trump agreed to manage and brand a golf and resort project in Oman, teaming up with Dar Al Arkan, a Saudi real-estate firm. The firm also has resorts, condominiums and other ventures in more than 10 countries. -WSJ

  The Trump Organization interest in the DC hotel goes back to 2012, when they won a heated bidding contest for a long-term lease, with extensions running close to 100 years. The family beat out other real-estate investors and hotel companies, including Hilton and Marriott, for the right to run the property.

  During the 1st Trump presidency, the hotel became ‘something of a Republican clubhouse,’ according to the report, which notes that fans, lobbyists, lawmakers and others flocked to the hotel to hang out.

  The hotel boasts some of the largest guest rooms in the capital, some of which have 18-foot high ceilings. A Saturday stay at a suite starts at $1,395 per night according to the Hilton website.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 17:20

• California Imposes 1-Year Insurance Cancellation Freeze In Areas Ravaged By Wildfires
  California Imposes 1-Year Insurance Cancellation Freeze In Areas Ravaged By Wildfires

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  Los Angeles and surrounding wildfire-hit regions are shielded by a new one-year moratorium on insurance non-renewals, according to California’s insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, who announced the year-long freeze on Jan. 9.

  “I am using my moratorium powers to prevent insurance companies from canceling or non-renewing policies in wildfire-impacted areas, so people don’t face the added stress of finding new insurance during this horrific event,” Lara said in a statement.

  The one-year moratorium on policy non-renewals and cancellations protects residents in and near the ZIP codes affected by the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County, regardless of whether the properties sustained damage, according to Lara.

  [ZH: … and all it took was a bunch of angry rich democrats losing their homes!!!]

  

  The ZIP codes covered by the moratorium are listed in the Commissioner’s Bulletin, a document that formalizes the freeze.

  The California Department of Insurance may release a supplemental bulletin if new ZIP codes are identified as being within or near the fire perimeter related to the declared state of emergency for Los Angeles and Ventura counties, according to Lara.

  The authority to issue such moratoriums was granted to the insurance commissioner by Senate Bill 824, introduced by Lara during his tenure as a state senator and signed into law in 2018. The law prohibits insurers from canceling or refusing to renew residential property policies in wildfire-affected areas when a state of emergency is declared. It also provides policyholders who lose their homes to fire with protection for up to 24 months.

  The freeze is effective starting from Jan. 7, the day that Gov. Gavin Newsom declared an emergency to support the communities impacted by the fires. Newsom’s declaration noted that much of Southern California faced life-threatening winds and extreme fire risk.

  Besides the moratorium, Lara announced a two-day workshop on Jan. 18–19 for residents affected by the fires to help them understand their insurance policies and provide them with additional resources.

  At least 10 people have been killed in the wildfires to date, Los Angeles County officials have confirmed. Around 180,000 people remain under mandatory evacuation orders as firefighters work to contain the infernos.

  Nearly 36,000 acres had been burned and over 10,000 structures had been destroyed by the fires in the Los Angeles area, according to Cal Fire on Friday morning. Forecasters say the high-fire weather risk will continue into Friday.

  The potential economic loss and damage from the fires is estimated to be between $135 billion and $150 billion, according to AccuWeather data released on Jan. 9. Previously, the company estimated damages to be between $52 billion and $57 billion. The preliminary damage estimate accounts for both insured and uninsured losses, including property damage, wage impacts, infrastructure destruction, supply chain disruptions, and other related effects.

  “These fast-moving, wind-driven infernos have created one of the costliest wildfire disasters in modern U.S. history,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said in a statement. “Hurricane-force winds sent flames ripping through neighborhoods filled with multi-million-dollar homes. The devastation left behind is heartbreaking and the economic toll is staggering.”

  The insurance industry is bracing for significant losses. Early projections from Morningstar DBRS estimate the catastrophe could result in $8 billion in insured losses.

  “Property insurance affordability is likely to remain a challenge in the state going forward, with many property owners opting to remain uninsured or under-insured because of the high costs,” Patrick Douville, vice president of global insurance and pension ratings at Morningstar DBRS, said in a Jan. 9 note.

  Bloomberg Intelligence analysts project that insured losses could reach $10 billion, citing the high value of homes at risk.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 17:00

• Israel, US, UK Launch New Airstrikes On Yemen Amid Efforts To 'Hunt' Houthi Leaders
  Israel, US, UK Launch New Airstrikes On Yemen Amid Efforts To ‘Hunt’ Houthi Leaders

  On Friday Israel has launched new major strikes on Yemen, amid ongoing vows to ‘hunt’ down Houthi leaders and kill them.

  A new Israeli military (IDF) statement said fighter jets struck “on the western coast and inland Yemen” in response to the day prior Houthis having launched three drones at Israel. It also follows a Pentagon-ordered air raid on Yemen earlier this week. The fresh strikes further targeted the port city of Hodeida, Ras Isa Port, Sanaa, as well as North Western Amran province – and reportedly had participation from the US and UK.

  

  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that the latest air assault means Houthis will continue to pay a price for attacking Israel. 

  He said that twenty Israeli Air Force jets participated in the new strikes against the Houthis, which followed on the heels of another new US-led coalition assault.

  Times of Israel has noted that “The Houthis confirmed the strikes and said they occurred while people were rallying in Sanaa in support of Palestinians in Gaza.”

  Last month Netanyahu called out Iran for its support to the Houthis, warning that “whoever sponsors the Houthi terror in Hodeida or Sana’a will pay the full price.” 

  Washington has for years documented Tehran’s support to the group, which has included advanced missiles and drone technology. This has allowed the threat out of Yemen to grow significantly.

  Millions of Yemenis singing the famous chant “We do not care, make it a world war” literally as bombs rain down on the Yemeni capital Sana’a. pic.twitter.com/fFMe2WK8iP

  — روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) January 10, 2025

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  Late December also saw one of the biggest Houthi strikes to date, coming in the form of a reported hypersonic ballistic missile which hit Tel Aviv, leaving 16 people injured.

  Also on Friday, Israel launched new strikes in southern Lebanon, despite the ceasefire with Hezbollah having generally held up to this point.

  Lebanon’s health ministry said that this resulted in at least two people killed and two more wounded. “The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack in Tyre province, and it’s unclear what was targeted,” Associated Press writes. “Lebanon’s state media reported the strike hit a car in the town of Tayr Debba.”

  On Friday, the U.S., U.K., and Israel launched a coordinated airstrike on #Yemen, targeting the port city of #Hodeida, Ras Isa Port, a power station in #Sanaa, and North Western Amran province in three waves of attacks. pic.twitter.com/kUdomwFed4

  — IPNA (@irannewsvideo) January 10, 2025

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  While the Hezbollah front has generally quieted over the past month, the Red Sea situation seems to have no end in sight. The more that Israel and the US attack Yemen, the more the Houthis are resolved to respond, sometimes with direct attacks on Western warship’s off Yemen’s coast.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 16:40

• Apocalypse Still Unspooling
  Apocalypse Still Unspooling

  Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

  “‘Climate Change’ has been identified: it’s a 28-YO man from Reseda in a black hoodie holding a lighter and some matches.”

   – Peach Keenan

  “Life imitates art,” Oscar Wilde quipped, a most insightful glimpse into the human condition delivered as a wise-crack. Very Hollywood. Too bad there were no late-night talk shows in Oscar’s time. It took more than eighty years, but the apocalyptic burning of Los Angeles depicted at the climax of Nathanial West’s 1939 novel The Day of the Locust has finally come — the city of dreams turned into one big flaming nightmare.

  The adumbrations of this fiasco will darken our national life for years to come.

  Who knew that the best way to convert Utopian Woke Democrats back into a reality-based thought system would be to burn their houses down?

  

  The wealthy showbiz folk occupying the moral high ground of the Pacific Palisades voted Democratic by 90-percent. They were fully on-board with the agenda of the Party of Chaos, especially Diversity-Equity-and-Inclusion (DEI) and the open border that allowed a deluge of mysterious strangers to flood the country.

  Now, reports come across the “X” wires that these mystery folk are cruising the wreckage in the canyons on scooters and in cars to loot anything left of value.

  The police are shown on video capturing a mystery migrant with a blowtorch suspected of starting the latest outbreak named the Kenneth Fire on the edge of the San Fernando Valley.

  🚨 UPDATE: Here’s the arsonist who was arrested for allegedly starting the Kenneth Fire, which has burned 800+ acres of Los Angeles

  Are we about to find out these fires are being set by illegal migrant gangs with the intent of looting?

  Or maybe to distract law enforcement? https://t.co/xjyb6nSMx3 pic.twitter.com/ZiVrE1Hukw

  — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 10, 2025

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  Loud-and-proud DEI firefighters were stymied in their work by neighborhood fire hydrants that were disappointingly not “full of water,” as they put it. Is that how it works? Each hydrant is supposed to get filled up on a regular schedule by water pixies?

  You know by now that LA Mayor Karen Bass was unavailable for the early innings of the conflagration, having flown to the West African nation of Ghana for the inauguration of the new president John Dramani Mahama. But she managed to scramble back in time to mourn the smoldering ruins of Malibu. Governor Gavin Newsom dallied on a smoke-filled street with CNN’s disaster specialist, Anderson Cooper, pretending to manage the situation, which was, in fact, completely out of control. Among the things the governor has been criticized for is poor forest and brush management. Mr. Newsom has been lately working to pass a $25-million bill to fund measures for “Trump-proofing” California. For that same $25-million, he could have hired 500 workers at $50,000-a-year to cut brush around Los Angeles County. That is, if he didn’t avail himself of work-gangs from the California penitentiaries.

  Even “Joe Biden” was in town, to announce the creation of a new national monument, the Chuckwalla National Monument, south of Joshua Tree National Park — 125 miles out in the Mojave Desert from LA. But he had helpful phone conversations with Governor Newsom. . . promises of federal funding to build Malibu back better. I wonder if the folks still camping out in tents back in the Mountains of Carolina heard about that. This same week “JB” also announced another $500-million aid package for Ukraine. Anybody wondering why “America First” helped get Mr. Trump elected?

  You can’t overstate the amount and degree of family devastation to be endured in the months and years ahead.

  For one thing, many homeowners recently had their fire insurance cancelled. Decades of punitive bureaucracy made rate increases difficult in wildfire-prone areas, so companies like Allstate decided to quit doing business in the state. So, many of the thousands of lost houses will be total losses. A great many of these were multi-million-dollar houses, even modest ones built in the 1960s, due to the extreme desirability of neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades, the Hollywood Hills, and Malibu Beach. Some middle-class people had their entire nest-eggs vested in these houses.

  Comedian and podcaster Adam Carolla put out an insightful video rant about just how difficult it will be to rebuild, even if you had homeowner’s insurance — or happened to be a very wealthy Hollywood actor.

  Epic Adam Carolla rant from a hotel after the LA wildfires forced to evacuate from his home, where he predicts Hollywood leftists will be so frustrated by the rebuild effort that they will not vote Democrat:
  “You guys all voted for Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles. You all… pic.twitter.com/YhNqBnJJR9

  — Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) January 9, 2025

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

  He put a spotlight on the monumentally obstructive permitting process in Los Angeles County, including additional onerous environmental agency hurdles that anyone would meet attempting to construct a new building in California. Also consider: where are the thousands of competent building contractors going to come from to work on so many replacement houses in one locality at the same time?

  The bottom-line is that an awful lot of formerly middle-class and even well-off people will be homeless possibly for years ahead. You have not begun to hear about this.

  You also have to wonder how this disaster will end up affecting the movie industry. Show business in LA had been on-the-ropes for quite a while preceding the big fire. Woked-up management putting out woked-up movies did enough damage on top of momentous changes in movie exhibition and distribution, writers and actors’ strikes, and super high-priced union labor for movie technicians. The movie business started in LA mainly because of its beautiful Mediterranean climate. You could shoot film outdoors year-round. The industry has been stealthily bailing out of California for years, moving to places like Vancouver and Atlanta.

  Now, in the smoking ruins, how many showbiz people are ready to run shrieking from the Golden State?

  And how much is the economic impact of this local disaster a harbinger of a more general national downturn to come?

  Probably a lot, I’m thinking.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 16:20

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• Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Request To Stop Sentencing In Hush Money Case After Justice Barrett Sides With Liberals
  Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Request To Stop Sentencing In Hush Money Case After Justice Barrett Sides With Liberals

  The Supreme Court on Jan. 9 rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s request to halt proceedings in his New York business records case, removing a potential barrier to sentencing scheduled for Jan. 10, The Epoch Times reports.

  The brief order – which ensures Trump will be branded a “convicted felon” at his inauguration in 10 days – noted that Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh would have granted the application. In other words, Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett sided with the liberals on the bench. In retrospect, CNN belief that Justice Barrett might be the “last best hope for Supreme Court liberals” proved to be accurate.

  

  Thanks to Barrett’s defection, the Supreme Court will stand by as Judge Juan Merchan sentences Donald Trump over felony offenses that many legal analysts consider to be a sham.

  The Supreme Court offered two reasons it said it refused to grant the application. “First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of ‘unconditional discharge’ after a brief virtual hearing,” a note on the Supreme Court’s docket read.

  After the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump wrote on TruthSocial that he appreciated the “time and effort of the United States Supreme Court in trying to remedy the great injustice done to me.”

  He went on to say that he was innocent and would appeal the case.

  “For the sake and sanctity of the Presidency, I will be appealing this case, and am confident that JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL,” Trump wrote.

  Trump’s application for a stay was submitted on Jan. 8 and argued that “the prospect of imposing sentence on President Trump just before he assumes Office as the 47th President raises the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements, and others—all of which would be constitutionally intolerable under the doctrine of Presidential immunity.”

  New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has indicated that he wouldn’t impose a punishment including incarceration. He denied Trump’s request to halt proceedings as did two state appeals courts this week.

  Trump told the U.S. Supreme Court that Merchan had erroneously admitted certain evidence of his official acts as president and failed to acknowledge a form of immunity for presidents-elect. He asked the court to take up his case and consider those issues, as well as whether he was entitled to an automatic stay due to an appeal on presidential immunity.

  Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying records in relation to an alleged payments to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford. Merchan is expected to enter a judgment of conviction on Jan. 10 and potentially offer a statement criticizing Trump’s behavior.

  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the indictment against Trump in 2023, told the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 9 that it should reject Trump’s application and allow the state courts to continue handling the issue. Bragg said Trump was asking for an extraordinary intervention by the justices and that Trump had not yet exhausted his state-court remedies.

  “Any stay here risks delaying the sentencing until after January 20, when defendant is inaugurated and his status as the sitting President will pose much more severe and potentially insuperable obstacles to sentencing and finality,” Bragg’s brief read.

  The president-elect said that the opinion written by Merchan “goes against our Constitution, and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/10/2025 – 01:13

• "…Nothing Less Than The Ongoing Collapse Of The World's Globalist Order"
  “…Nothing Less Than The Ongoing Collapse Of The World’s Globalist Order”

  Authored by Vasko Kohlmayer via LewRockwell.com,

  There is something epoch-changing happening across the planet.

  

  What seems to be unfolding around us is nothing less than an ongoing collapse of the world’s globalist regime.

  The first clear sign that something truly big may be happening was the historic comeback and victory of Donald Trump in last November’s election.

  Eight weeks later the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation.

  It now appears increasingly likely that in the coming weeks we will see the fall of ruling governments and coalitions in Austria, Germany, France, and Britain. Others, such as Romania, are likely to follow.

  The globalist puppets and technocrats that run these western governments are losing their grip even as we speak. The pool of popular discontent filled to the brim by the self-serving actions of the globalist elite is boiling over. And now they are being roundly booted out by the populist movements across the world.

  Here are some of the sufferings and depredations the global elites have inflicted upon the masses in recent years:

  • Covid lockdowns

  • Covid vaccine mandates

  • Unfettered immigration

  • Cronyism and government corruption

  • Inflation

  • Out-of-control government spending

  • Falling real wages

  • Endless warmongering

  • Imposition of LGBT and transexual agendas

  • Racism against native populations

  • Widening wealth disparities

  • Attacks on traditional western values and Christianity

  • Political correctness

  • Widespread censorship

  • Demonization and cancellation of those seeking redress of rightful grievance

  Up until now the global elitists have been largely successful in keeping the lid on popular discontent stemming from the above. This they managed by demonization and cancellation of objectors and by imposition of a highly efficient censorship regime by means of which they controlled mainstream discourse.

  But now, largely through Elon Musk’s uncensored platform X, the pain and resentment of the masses are being brought into the open and aired in the public square.

  As a result, the elites are being swept away by the resurgent populist movements that are becoming empowered and quickened by their access to free speech.

  The panicked elites predictably blame Elon Musk for their loss of control.

  “European leaders unite in sharp rebuke of Elon Musk,” reads a recent news headline.

  Further down we read:

  “[H]highlighting growing tensions between European leadership and tech giant Elon Musk’s political activities, French President Emmanuel Macron has emerged as the latest prominent voice opposing the billionaire’s involvement in continental politics… The French leader’s stance comes amid a broader pushback from European officials, including the prime ministers of Norway and Britain.”

  These leaders are not incorrect, just not in the way they think.

  Because Musk has made certain political comments, they accuse him of meddling in elections.

  It is not his statements, however, that have accelerated a shift in the political dynamic. After all, Musk’s pronouncements are neither revolutionary nor particularly remarkable.

  The things that Musk has said are simple truths, which is apparent to anyone with common sense. The problem was that those truths were not allowed to be brought up in public discourse under the strict censorship regime that the globalists have imposed on societies.

  Because Musk’s widely popular X can reach large swathes of the world’s population, he was able to bring discussion of these forbidden truths back into the public square. And once enough people see the obvious truths articulated out in the open, they join in en masse and something powerful begins to stir.

  The global populist revolution now underway has been accelerated by the whiff of free speech that Elon Musk allowed to blow through X rather than by his opinions per say.

  The corrupt, fragile, and sclerotic regimes that globalists erected in Western nations – the regimes based on lies, corruption, and suppression of truth – are being brought down by freedom of expression.

  As they scramble, the globalists are being exposed for who they truly are: undemocratic totalitarians whose rule rests on merciless across-the-board censorship. These people are the true heirs of the totalitarians of the past – such as communists and fascists – with whom they share a deeply-ingrained reflexive desire to silence opposing voices.

  It is the pinnacle of paradox that these censoring totalitarians call those whom they censor and cancel the “enemies of democracy.” The truth is the exact opposite of what they claim. They cannot withstand the truth, which is why they suppress – in true totalitarian fashion – those whose views differ from their own.

  Elon Musk may not be perfect, but the fact remains that he has done more for the cause of free speech and democracy than any other man today.

  This is why the failing censorious globalist totalitarians hate him so.

  Needless to say, Elon Musk deserves to be applauded for his effort. After all, free speech is the foundational western value. Without free speech it is not possible to have real freedom or democracy.

  On this we should all be able to agree.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 23:30

• These Are The US States With The Most Guns
  These Are The US States With The Most Guns

  The U.S. has more guns than people, with nearly 400 million in civilian possession.

  In this map, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti ranks states by the highest percentage of gun ownership for adults, based on data from the Pew Research Center compiled by Data Pandas as of 2024.

  

  High Gun Ownership in Northwestern America

  Montana tops the ranking of the states with the highest percentage of gun ownership, with 66.3% of the adult population owning firearms. The state has some of the most relaxed gun control laws in America. No state permit is required to purchase or possess a rifle, shotgun, or handgun.

  The state is followed on our list by its neighbor, Wyoming, where 66.2% of adults own a firearm. Alaska comes in third, with 64.5%.

  State	Gun Ownership Rate ↕
  Montana	66.3%
  Wyoming	66.2%
  Alaska	64.5%
  Idaho	60.1%
  West Virginia	58.5%
  Arkansas	57.2%
  Mississippi	55.8%
  Alabama	55.5%
  South Dakota	55.3%
  North Dakota	55.1%
  Oklahoma	54.7%
  Kentucky	54.6%
  Louisiana	53.1%
  Tennessee	51.6%
  Oregon	50.8%
  Vermont	50.5%
  South Carolina	49.4%
  Georgia	49.2%
  Kansas	48.9%
  Missouri	48.8%
  Nevada	47.3%
  Maine	46.8%
  Utah	46.8%
  Arizona	46.3%
  New Mexico	46.2%
  North Carolina	45.8%
  Texas	45.7%
  Wisconsin	45.3%
  Nebraska	45.2%
  Colorado	45.1%
  Indiana	44.8%
  Virginia	44.6%
  Iowa	43.6%
  Minnesota	42.8%
  Washington	42.1%
  New Hampshire	41.1%
  Pennsylvania	40.7%
  Michigan	40.2%
  Ohio	40.0%
  Florida	35.3%
  Delaware	34.4%
  Maryland	30.2%
  California	28.3%
  Illinois	27.8%
  Connecticut	23.6%
  New York	19.9%
  Hawaii	14.9%
  Rhode Island	14.8%
  New Jersey	14.7%
  Massachusetts	14.7%

  On the other side of the spectrum, New Jersey and Massachusetts share the lowest gun ownership rate in the country, both at 14.7%.

  Two other states with very low ownership rates include Hawaii (14.9%) and Rhode Island (14.8%).

  The Number of Firearms is Increasing

  According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), U.S. gun manufacturing and imports have increased by about 10% annually over the last decade.

  In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic spurred record demand for firearms, 17 million guns entered the domestic market.

  If you enjoyed this post, check out Which U.S. States Have the Most Gun Manufacturers? on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 23:00

• Alaska Sues Federal Government Over Curbs To Oil And Gas Leases
  Alaska Sues Federal Government Over Curbs To Oil And Gas Leases

  Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times,

  The state of Alaska is suing the federal government over the Department of Interior’s (DOI) alleged “unlawful detour” in restricting oil and gas lease auctions to about 400,000 acres within the 19.6-million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

  

  Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor filed the lawsuit on Jan. 7 in anticipation of the DOI’s Jan. 8 announcement that the Bureau of Land Management had received “no interest” from oil companies in bidding for leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) coastal plain.

  Alaska maintains that by restricting leases to 400,000 acres, the administration violated the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which required the DOI to conduct two lease auctions within Section 1002—a 1.5-million acre expanse opened for potential oil and gas development by Congress in 1980.

  The state argues that the DOI essentially sabotaged bidding by imposing “new severe restrictions on surface use and occupancy” in November that made “any development economically and practically impossible” when implemented in December as the lease auction opened. When the auction closed on Jan. 6, no bids were submitted.

  Taylor alleged in a statement announcing the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage, that the agencies “ignored the law and took this unlawful detour without even presenting their final decision to the public for comment.”

  The Jan. 8 legal challenge follows Alaska’s July 2, 2024, lawsuit over what it said was “billions in lost revenue” from nine canceled federal oil and gas leases in the ANWR’s coastal plain. That action is pending.

  In 2023, the DOI suspended already-issued Section 1002 leases, citing insufficient legal analyses and commissioning another study to reassess the potential environmental impacts of the ANWR oil and gas leasing program.

  The expired Jan. 6 bid deadline concluded the second Congressionally mandated sale required by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which directed the Bureau of Land Management to hold two lease sales within seven years of enactment.

  The first sale, held during the Trump administration, “similarly demonstrated low interest, yielding a total of $14.4 million in high bids on 11 tracts,” the DOI said, noting that Congress grossly overvalued the revenues from the two lease sales, projecting they would generate approximately $2 billion over 10 years.

  Alaska officials said they are concerned that the “last-minute actions to restrict and complicate” oil and gas development with ANWR’s Section 1002 dissuaded bidding.

  Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner John Boyle said the November restrictions have created “total dysfunction.”

  Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said “Interior’s continued and irrational opposition under the Biden administration to responsible energy development in the Arctic continues America on a path of energy dependence instead of utilizing the vast resources we have available,”

  In December, the Republican governor called on President-elect Donald Trump to scuttle the existing restrictions and create a cabinet-level task force specifically to address Alaska oil and gas development.

  Trump has vowed to do away with the ANWR restrictions with a “Day One” executive order. Dunleavy said the lawsuit is still necessary.

  “We have already heard comments from the incoming president that his administration will, thankfully, take a different tack and open up those areas that are meant to be developed,” he said. “But unfortunately, we can’t wait for that—we have to challenge this unlawful action now.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 22:30

• Indoctrination: Washington Courts Employees Raise Alarm After Being Forced To Watch Documentary On White Supremacy
  Indoctrination: Washington Courts Employees Raise Alarm After Being Forced To Watch Documentary On White Supremacy

  Washington’s Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is mandating staff attend a four-hour, in-person training featuring the documentary *Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America,* which argues the U.S. was founded on white supremacy.

  Some employees have criticized the requirement, claiming it amounts to indoctrination, according to 770 KTTH.

  The training, held on January 9, includes a screening of the film followed by a Q&A and dialogue with its producer, Jeffery Robinson, a lawyer and founder of the left-leaning “Who We Are Project.” The AOC describes the nonprofit as promoting awareness of historical anti-Black racism and white supremacy in the U.S. The event costs $5,000.

  The KTTH report said that the AOC’s decision aligns with a June 2020 letter from the Democrat-led Washington State Supreme Court, issued during the Black Lives Matter movement.

  In it, the Justices acknowledged their role in “devaluing Black lives” and called on the legal community to take responsibility for systemic injustices.

  Some staff, however, object to the politically charged nature of the mandatory training, which the AOC defends. The training features the documentary *Who We Are* and a lecture by producer Jeffery Robinson, who claims the U.S. Constitution was designed to uphold white supremacy and slavery.

  

  Robinson likens police to slave owners and defends the Black Lives Matter movement, comparing its critics to detractors of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. He also advocates for reparations.

  Critics argue the training forces staff to accept far-left views, with one anonymous employee expressing concern over potential retribution for speaking out.

  One employee told KTTH: “We are all educated and are aware of racism/slavery in our nation, we don’t need a history lesson from someone who presents it with a particular bias of their own.”

  “We are not getting applicable training directly related to our job.”

  And the employee is right. The AOC’s mandatory training pushes a left-wing political narrative, forcing employees to accept views like the U.S. Constitution being rooted in white supremacy and systemic racism as indisputable truths.

  Promoting ideas like reparations, the training leaves no room for dissenting perspectives, stifling open dialogue and alienating staff. Critics argue this isn’t about fostering diversity but about imposing partisan ideology under the guise of professional development, effectively transforming Washington Courts into tools of far-left social justice activism.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 22:00

• How Trump Plans To Take On Censors – And They Plan To Take On Trump
  How Trump Plans To Take On Censors – And They Plan To Take On Trump

  Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations,

  The incoming Trump administration scored an early but possibly illusory victory last month in its effort to reform government overreach when it successfully pressured Congress to eliminate what it termed “sweetheart provisions for government censors” from a measure to stave off a government shutdown.

  

  Funding for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center – which Republicans had attacked as a tool of domestic censorship – was stripped from the final bill, and the center announced that it was closed for good on Dec. 23. Days later, however, reporting emerged that the State Department had devised plans to shift the center’s 51 employees and millions of dollars of funding to a separate hub purportedly to counter foreign “information manipulation and interference.”

  President-elect Donald Trump has not said how he will respond to this maneuver. But in extensive public comments he has said that targeting what critics have called the Censorship Industrial Complex will be a high priority in his new administration. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to restore free expression on his platforms and join the Trump administration in its efforts to push back on global censorship, two weeks before inauguration day, indicates speech-policing forces like his may be disarming accordingly.

  As the State Department’s move suggests, however, this push will likely face stiff resistance. “There will be a visceral reaction from the bureaucratic state in permanent Washington,” Sen. Eric Schmitt told RealClearInvestigations. As attorney general of Missouri, Schmitt launched the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit against federal government collusion with social media companies and nonprofits to target disfavored speech.

  Trump outlined the steps he might pursue in a December 2022 video detailing his “Free Speech Policy Initiative” – a video that, ironically, received less attention originally because YouTube had banned the former president. Responding to what he called “a sinister group of Deep State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media” that have “conspire[d] to manipulate and silence the American People … [and] collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health,” Trump vowed to “dismantle and destroy” the “censorship cartel,” including through the use of vigorous executive action starting within hours of his inauguration.

  According to the Free Speech Policy Initiative, his administration’s efforts will include:

  • A first-day executive order barring federal authorities from colluding with others to abridge Americans’ protected speech
  • Preventing federal dollars from being used to classify domestic speech as mis- or dis-information, and from being lavished on nonprofits and academic institutions engaging in similar efforts, including “flagging” posts to social media platforms for suppression
  • Identifying and firing bureaucrats across the federal government who have engaged in direct or indirect censorship, while enacting laws imposing criminal penalties on such conduct
  • Directing the Department of Justice to probe participants in the “new online censorship regime” for myriad potential violations of law
  • Working with Congress to pass legislation modifying Section 230 of the Communications Act to extend its liability shield only to those large online platforms meeting high standards of “neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination”
  • Helping to pass a digital Bill of Rights, including a right to due process requiring government officials to obtain a court order to remove online content

  “The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America – and for the survival of Western civilization itself,” Trump said in announcing his initiative. “When I am President, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won’t be anything left.” 

  A Sprawling Network

  As RealClearInvestigations has reported extensively, a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs have formed a “whole-of-society” partnership aimed at combatting what its constituents consider dangerous “mis-, dis-, and mal-information,” particularly on social media.

  Players include counter-disinformation research centers at leading universities and think tanks, fact-checkers and news rating entities, and like-minded for-profits – often funded and/or promoted by government agencies and powerful foundations. Many of these initiatives began in response to perceived threats from abroad. The Global Engagement Center, for example, was created during the Obama administration to combat foreign propaganda and information operations, originally with a focus on terrorist groups. It soon expanded its mission to combat alleged threats in the homeland, using taxpayer dollars to coordinate with counter-disinformation entities that have worked to purge disfavored domestic news and views – including through targeting the business models of U.S. outlets like RealClearPolitics and many others.

  Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online asserts that support for such efforts spans 12 different government departments and 50 different government programs, some of which fund related programs at nearly 100 universities under the banner of “disinformation studies” and related disciplines.

  Transparency-focused nonprofit OpenTheBooks calculates that the Biden administration has granted roughly $260 million in awards pertaining to “misinformation.”

  President Biden’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism codified such efforts. It directed federal authorities to work with “state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and in civil society, the private sector, academia, and local communities, as well as with our allies and foreign partners” to address “the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence.”

  The trial judge in Missouri v. Biden, which would ultimately land at the Supreme Court as Murthy v. Missouri, found that this public-private partnership  – kicked off with agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency towards the end of the first Trump administration – engaged in perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history” in its efforts to suppress disfavored speech, particularly on election integrity and the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Litigation and congressional oversight have exposed the breadth and depth of these activities. Some counter-disinformation entities have, facing public scrutiny, curtailed their work. But the Supreme Court never ruled on the merits of Murthy – finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing – and thereby did not establish that government efforts direct and indirect to press social media companies to suppress protected speech are illegal or unconstitutional. Nor has a divided Congress passed bills prohibiting such activities, defunding them, or penalizing federal officials who might engage in them.

  Government-supported nonprofits, often portraying themselves as researchers, including the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, have vowed to continue their work, which they say is pivotal to defending democracy. A spokesperson for the center told RCI that in the face of a threatened reckoning, its personnel “are continuing their work to study how rumors and falsehoods spread online, understand the role of social media platforms and generative AI in shaping those information flows and to educate people about online manipulation, deception and scams.”

  Trump and many of his personnel picks so far see these initiatives and collaborations differently. His nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, has said one of his “top priorities” is to “smash the censorship cartel.”

  Under Section 230 of the Communications Act, which falls under the FCC’s purview, social media platforms have been deemed immune from civil liability for taking down certain types of content “in good faith.” Carr recently argued that this provision has been used to “silence divergent speech” and indicated that under his leadership, the commission may “look at implementing that in a way that can promote more speech.” He has also suggested that given that “a cohort of advertising and marketing agencies have been working together … to collude to crack down on free speech,” this might constitute unlawful anti-competitive behavior for his agency to consider.

  Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, called last month for a range of investigative and enforcement actions to “bust … up” “anti-competitive cartels that facilitate or promote censorship.”

  Carr and Ferguson alike have both cited NewsGuard as a key player in online censorship. As RealClearInvestigations has reported previously, NewsGuard rates the trustworthiness of websites on a zero to 100 scale based on their staffers’ review of samples of work according to certain criteria. Those subjective ratings attach to sites when one searches them in a browser equipped with NewsGuard’s extension. What’s more, under the banner of “brand safety,” NewsGuard licenses “exclusion lists” of low-rated sources to advertisers to instruct their ad agencies and ad-tech partners to keep their programmatic ads off those sites – starving them of pivotal ad revenue. Evidence suggests NewsGuard disfavors conservative or independent-leaning outlets. Congressional scrutiny and reportage have revealed that NewsGuard has been a recipient of funding from both the defunct Global Engagement Center and the Department of Defense – though it disputes this characterization.

  In November, prior to his appointment as FCC commissioner, Carr sent a letter to Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, soliciting information regarding the Big Tech companies’ ties to NewsGuard. Citing its purported biases and noting the for-profit’s partnerships with web browsers and social media companies, Carr suggested that should the firms be relying on NewsGuard’s offerings, such activities might violate the “good faith” standard upon which their Section 230 immunity shield relies. 

  Ferguson noted in his December statement that while “NewsGuard is … free to rate websites by whatever metric it wants … antitrust laws do not permit third parties to facilitate group boycotts among competitors.”

  NewsGuard has challenged Carr’s premises. In a statement, co-CEO Gordon Crovitz, formerly the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, said that the incoming FCC Commissioner’s letter relied on “unreliable sources,” maintained that “we provide users with apolitical reliability analysis,” and otherwise challenged claims of bias and censoriousness. After Crovitz and co-founder CEO Steven Brill, a lawyer, journalist, and entrepreneur, penned a subsequent rejoinder to Carr, Brill would write in Politico that “I felt like taking a shower after trying to defend my journalism to a threatening regulator, pleading with him to believe that I’m fair.”

  In response to a question regarding NewsGuard’s view of the Trump administration’s coming efforts, General Manager Matt Skibinski reiterated the arguments in NewsGuard’s responses to Carr, telling RCI: “We agree that the government should not engage in censorship and that the social media companies should be more transparent. We founded NewsGuard as the apolitical, fully transparent alternative to either government censorship or social media secretly rating news sources and claims.”

  Other Trump administration officials likewise seem poised to help the president implement the Free Speech Policy Initiative.

  The Office of Management and Budget is likely to be a key hub of such activity. It has broad powers to help the president implement his policies, including in its oversight of executive agencies, clearing of executive orders, review of regulations, and developing of the president’s budget.

  President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the agency, departing North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, wrote this month that “the days of the Censorship Industrial Complex are numbered.” 

  Others who have expressed aversion to social media company efforts to target disfavored speech include Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – who will be working hand-in-hand with the Office of Management and Budget through the soon-to-be-created Department of Government Efficiency – and AI czar David Sacks.

  Two additional picks have found themselves targeted by social media companies for censorship: Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and National Institutes of Health Director-designate Jay Bhattacharya. Fighting back, they are both plaintiffs in cases against federal agencies.

  Obstacles

  Foundation for Freedom Online founder Benz warned in a recent interview on the Joe Rogan podcast that the White House is “going to run into a lot of headwinds” given the size, scope, and scale of the “censorship industry.”

  Benz, who worked in cyber policy during President Trump’s first term, suggested resistance would come from the State Department, where he served, and the Defense Department. These agencies, he asserted, will claim they must maintain counter-disinformation capacities to combat foreign threats – capacities that critics say have been trained instead on Americans.

  “Trump is going to run into every single regional desk at the State Department, every single equity at the Pentagon, arguing that if you do not allow us to continue this censorship work it will undermine national security.”

  “You’re going to have the State Department argue that if we don’t have this counter misinformation capacity, then extremists will win elections around the world or populists will win the election around the world. And that will undermine the power of our democratic institutions,” Benz told Rogan.

  Whether and to what extent Congress will seek to codify the president’s efforts in legislation remains an open question.

  House Republicans in the last Congress sought to advance legislation to prohibit federal funds from directly or indirectly being used to target Americans’ protected speech; punish federal officials who would collude with third parties or social media companies to censor speech; and prohibit foreign officials targeting Americans’ speech from traveling to America.

  Those efforts languished.

  Speaker Mike Johnson, in a statement upon passage of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, touted leadership’s efforts to “prohibit contracts with advertising firms that blacklist conservative news sources, like NewsGuard Technologies Inc.” 

  That the Global Engagement Center’s extension made it into the original December stopgap spending bill suggested otherwise. Johnson’s office defended its inclusion by noting that the speaker had “killed multiple efforts to pass a 5-year reauthorization of the GEC during the past year.” It added that the original measure ensured that the incoming administration would have the “maximum ability and authority to determine how to handle the office, its authorities, and funding.”

  Neither House nor Senate leaders, Republican or Democrat, responded to RCI’s questions in connection with this story.

  Sen. Rand Paul, the new chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has indicated he would like to end the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Reports suggest he is likely to face bipartisan resistance. Acknowledging that termination is unlikely, “at the very least,” he has said, he would like to “eliminate their ability to censor content online.”

  Last Congress, Sen. Paul introduced the “Free Speech Protection Act,” which would bar federal employees from directing social media platforms to censor protected speech. That legislation sat dormant.

  Sen. Schmitt, a co-sponsor of the bill, recently introduced legislation in the Transparency in Communications Act that would force inspectors general, tasked with overseeing the federal bureaucracy, to provide “a comprehensive reporting of all communications on content moderation, user content, and … companies’ algorithms” between federal agencies and Big Tech companies. 

  Asked whether he anticipated there might be bipartisan resistance to legislative remedies to purported public-private censorship efforts, given, for example, some Republicans’ support of extending the life of the Global Engagement Center, Sen. Schmitt replied: “I would hope not.” 

  “I think it’s wrong to think of this as a Democrat vs. Republican thing,” Schmitt said. “I’ve been saying this from the beginning, coercive censorship like what we witnessed by the Biden Administration should scare the hell out of every American, regardless of political affiliation. We will need legitimate buy-in from all Republicans to dismantle this vast censorship enterprise built by Joe Biden and the administrative state.”

  Reports suggest that those in the counter-disinformation effort are spooked by the Trump administration’s policies.

  RCI reached out to notable players in connection with this story with inquiries regarding their perspectives on the Trump administration’s Free Speech Policy Initiative, its likely impacts, and how they and their peers intend to respond to it.

  NewsGuard’s Skibinski disputed a suggestion that it was part of any “ecosystem,” adding “we plan simply to continue our apolitical work.”

  The Global Disinformation Index, like NewsGuard, has tended to rank conservative and independent outlets as “risky” spreaders of mis- and disinformation and provided “exclusion lists” to ad tech companies and others with the intent of drying up those outlets’ funding. It, too, has received U.S. government funding. The British-based nonprofit did not respond to RCI’s inquiries.

  Nina Jankowicz, who was to lead the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board, scrapped under criticism it was to represent an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth,” co-wrote an October piece asserting that amid congressional scrutiny of counter-disinformation initiatives: “Regardless of the outcome of the November election, there is a clear and present danger facing anyone seeking to make the internet a safer place​​ – both inside and outside US borders.”

  Jankowicz now heads the American Sunlight Project, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that exists to “increase the cost of lies that undermine our democracy.” It did not respond to RCI’s inquiries.

  Nor did the Center for Democracy & Technology, a prominent proponent of “counter-disinformation initiatives.”

  The Complex That Wouldn’t Die

  Irrespective of what happens at the federal level, critics fear that foreign and state authorities may fill the vacuum.

  As RCI has previously reported, evidence suggests that global legal and regulatory standards may serve as a backdoor method to suppress protected speech at home.

  Citing efforts from Europe to Latin America and China to pressure American social media platforms to censor, Meta’s Zuckerberg said in his Jan. 7 announcement of coming free speech-focused reforms that “we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world.”

  Benz and others have warned that states may seek to pass laws abridging protected American speech on social media as a way to bypass federal resistance.

  Elon Musk and X filed suit against California’s AB 2655, which proponents describe as a “flagship anti-disinformation law.”

  According to a summary of the law, large online platforms would be required to “block the posting of materially deceptive content related to elections in California” and “label certain additional content inauthentic, fake or false” during periods around elections. 

  Musk and X contend in their suit that the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Protection Act of 2024” would result in the “censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary and will limit the type of ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ ‘debate on public issues’ that core First Amendment protections are designed to ensure.”

  A similar bill is working its way through Michigan’s legislature. A federal judge has for now halted a parallel California law, AB 2839, prohibiting the distribution of deceptive content pertaining to candidates around elections, on the ground that it may violate the First Amendment.

  Meanwhile, maneuvering by the State Department to mitigate the effects of the GEC’s closure by reassigning its employees to engage in similar work indicates the resistance the Trump administration is likely to face. 

  In response to the news, Sen. Schmitt posted on X: “Biden & the Dems are continuing their push to censor American voices, even in Biden’s final hours. Less than 20 days until Trump comes & roots out this madness.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 21:30

• Hollywood Goes Green: First-Ever EV Car Chase Movie With "Tactical Gun Battle"
  Hollywood Goes Green: First-Ever EV Car Chase Movie With “Tactical Gun Battle”

  Fasten your seatbelts. 

  From the rubber-burning thrills of “Bullitt” to Gene Hackman’s “The French Connection” and the epic car chase involving three Mini Coopers, Jaguars, and a bus in “The Italian Job,” these are some of the best car chase movies produced by un-woke Hollywood over the decades.

  

  Now ‘green’ Hollywood has delivered the first-ever all-electric car chase scene, featuring a Taycan Turbo, which was produced for the new movie Den of Thieves 2, Porsche announced in a press release.

  Director Christian Gudegast said of the final car chase scene of the movie, “I wanted it to be a vehicle-to-vehicle tactical gun battle—plus I wanted to have an electric car.” 

  

  Porsche said, “For the first time ever in cinematic history, an all-electric car – the Taycan Turbo – was used as the hero vehicle in a car chase action sequence in Den of Thieves 2.” 

  There’s no better companion than a fast ride. #DenOfThieves2 – only in theaters Thursday. Tickets are on sale now: https://t.co/rNCgxcjUrj@Den_Of_Thieves @Lionsgate pic.twitter.com/znTu9IWPuW

  — Porsche (@Porsche) January 7, 2025

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

  The challenge with EVs is the lack of engine sounds and gear shifts.

  Some questions: 

  • What sound effects will Hollywood turn to?

  • What happens when the battery runs out? 

  Also, the movie is merely an ad for Porsche Taycans. Recall from earlier this week: Taycan demand has run out of juice. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 21:00

• 'We, The People' Affirm American Greatness
  ‘We, The People’ Affirm American Greatness

  Authored by Thaddeus McCotter via American Greatness,

  In the recent presidential election, one seemingly obvious aspect of President-(re)elect Donald Trump’s victorious campaign was often buried beneath the regime media’s breathless denunciations of his person and his supporters: namely, it was an optimistic appeal – and challenge – to the American people.

  

  The Harris campaign and her “progressive” supporters peddled a dire message that their loss would spell the end of “our democracy.” This was wry, indeed, from the Democrat Party that jettisoned incumbent President Joe Biden and for all intents and purposes installed Vice President Harris as their “new” presidential nominee. By deed, if not word (for obvious reasons), the Democrats sought to save “our democracy” by destroying it, including the weaponization of government against the citizenry, et al.

  Thus, it should have proven no surprise that the Democrat presidential campaign was tantamount to a demand to perpetuate their empowerment of an unelected, unaccountable, bureaucratic elite (a.k.a., the “Administrative State”) to rule the nation with minimal interference from the citizenry.

  Should the Harris-Walz ticket and their fellow Democrats be electorally defeated, the ensuing end of what they perversely deemed “democracy” would turn America into a fascistic hellscape. In a lack of self-awareness for the ages, the party whose greatest president warned that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” ran a presidential campaign premised upon fear.

  While it proved somewhat successful with the Democrat base, it failed with the majority of the electorate. Why? Because on election day, courage trumped fear. The American character prevailed.

  Patent in Mr. Trump and the MAGA/GOP-Populist slogan is both hope and a challenge. The hope is that “Make America Great Again” means we can make America great again.

  Once, the conservative philosopher Russell Kirk asked the question: “Is it conceivable that American civilization, and in general what we call ‘Western civilization,’ may recover from the Time of Troubles that commenced in 1914…and in the twenty-first century enter upon an Augustan age of peace and restored order?”

  Despite the momentous difficulties besetting our free people in this dangerous age, they have answered with a resounding “Yes!”

  Importantly, too, in answering this question in the affirmative, the American people were fully cognizant of Mr. Trump’s challenge.

  It is not the government that makes America great. It is We, the People.

  It is to the eternal credit of the sovereign citizens of our bastion of liberty, equality, and pluralism that they have embraced his challenge to perpetuate and improve our nation’s revolutionary experiment in self-government.

  While daunting to some, as at other times when they have been confronted by momentous challenges, the American people have seized the freedom required to surmount them. It is as Edmund Burke noted:

  These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed… The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties… Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities, which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

  There is no better recent image of a scene that has engaged the heart than the picture of an assassin-wounded Donald Trump raising a fist in the air and vowing to continue to “Fight!”

  Doubtless, having witnessed it, sound minds of the republic were raised and animated and accepted Mr. Trump’s challenge to “make America great again.”

  Sure, as they have since the 1770s, the craven cynics will superciliously cackle about how only rule by “our betters” can make life bearable. How it is an inviting “mobocracy” to believe We, the people, can make America great again.

  In many ways, these recalcitrant, duplicitous skeptics who bemoan the death of their false democracy while loathing the true democracy within our constitutional republic remain opposed to actual self-government as they proffer a trick question.

  In reality, America has always been great, though the government has often been far from it. For as once more affirmed in the 2024 election, so long as the genius and gumption of We, the People, endure, America will always be great.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 20:30

• Terror Attacks Kick Off In 2025 – It's Only Going To Get Worse, So Be Prepared
  Terror Attacks Kick Off In 2025 – It’s Only Going To Get Worse, So Be Prepared

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  In December of last year I published an article titled ‘Open Borders Have Created A Terror Attack Time Bomb In The US In 2025’. I noted that there was a significant confluence of events that was, in my view leading to an explosion of terror attacks just as conservatives take political power. I stated:

  “Why is 2025 becoming more and more prominent as an inception date for an attack?

  Organized criminal gangs crossing the border as migrants.

  Foreign agents and terrorists slipping into the US using mass immigration as a cover.

  Leftist activists radicalized to believe they are righteous in their violence.

  Establishment elites and covert agencies creating false flag events.

  The conservative sweep on election day means we inherit all the messes that Joe Biden and his handlers created – Economic, political, social, and geopolitical. There will also be considerable motivation for establishment elites to create chaos from thin air while conservatives hold governmental power…

  …I believe an attack is inevitable in 2025 primarily because of the geopolitical brush fires being ignited across the globe right now. There is also always the looming danger of false flag events designed by covert actors trying to trick the public into placing blame on the wrong culprit…”

  If the two attempted assassinations of Donald Trump in 2024 didn’t clue some people in, we’re on the verge of a violent year. It wasn’t hard to predict that terror incidents would come to dominate the news feeds, I just didn’t expect that this would happen on the the very first day of 2025.

  The incident in New Orleans and the incident in Las Vegas at Trump’s hotel and casino share some rather strange details. Both Shamsud-Din Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger are military veterans, both were stationed at Fort Bragg (now called Fort Liberty) and both were stationed in Afghanistan around the same time. (Take note that attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh also lived within an hour’s drive of Fort Bragg up until 2018). Both suspects also used car rental company Turo to obtain the vehicles used for their crimes.

  However, authorities say there’s no evidence that the men knew each other and their Army deployment records do not show them working together.

  Jabbar’s terror attack in New Orleans killed 15 people and injured dozens more, with reports that he was motivated by Islamic extremism and his goal was to send a message about the war in Gaza. Livelsberger’s message was apparently the opposite – mentioning in notes (which the FBI says are verified) that he wanted a “wake up call” for Americans to support Donald Trump, and warned of a collapse due to sabotage by Democrats.

  An interesting side detail: Levelsberger was also a reality TV star on the History Channel show Ultimate Soldier Challenge. And, oddly, there is evidence that Livelsberger was a big Ukraine war proponent and even helped to recruit mercenaries for the Ukrainian side. This is generally not a cause that conservatives support.

  I would point out that blowing up a cybertruck outside Trump’s Vegas hotel is an odd way to support Trump’s cause. Investigators claim the man shot himself before the vehicle exploded. I’m not sure how the logistics would work on that or how authorities could make that claim so early in the investigation.

  

  I think it’s important to note that the Cybertruck is a self driving vehicle and that ANYONE could have killed Livelsberger, placed his body inside and then sent the car on its way loaded with explosives. Just a theory that should be taken into account.

  Terror Attacks And Storytelling

  There’s a lot more to these stories, but I think we need time for the evidence to present itself. I will say that given the current evidence the Vegas incident in particular reads as highly suspicious. The way government agencies have responded seems like narrative building rather than an honest assessment of the crime. They were constructing a story around Livelsberger on day one. Authorities even let reporters snoop around his house the day after the bombing. It’s incredibly odd.

  Compare this to trans shooter Audrey Hale and her attack on the Christian school in Nashville in 2023. Look at how agencies tried to hide as much information as possible from the public (the attack was politically and ideologically motivated, yet they never called it terrorism). The government acts differently when a terror attack is real vs when a terror attack is rigged. When it’s a false flag, they try to plant conclusions in the public consciousness as quickly as possible.

  The New Orleans incident? It’s hard to say. Maybe all the connections and timing are a coincidence. But if you think the past couple weeks have been strange I suggest you get used to it, because I suspect these kinds of events are about to become the new normal.

  Leftists And The Monkey Wrench Gang

  As I argued in December there is a serious risk of civil destabilization in 2025 caused by a steady series of terror attacks. Some of them might be planned by legitimate suspects while others could be fabricated by covert interests in order to stir up public fear. I would also warn specifically about far-left groups reverting to Weather Underground-like tactics in order to disrupt conservative reforms.

  In terms of seemingly random disasters that benefit the leftist/globalist cause, I often refer to this as the “Monkey Wrench Gang” scenario. In 1975, author Edward Abbey published a politically charged fiction book titled ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang.’ The book portrays a group of environmentalist extremists out to stop the “pollution” of the southwestern US using the sabotage of machines and infrastructure as a means to grind development to a halt.

  The Monkey Wrench Gang, published in 1975, has long been considered an inspirational work of fiction for the political left, but it is also treated as a sort of instruction manual for socialist militants – A guide for bringing down the system. It depicts the destruction of minor targets like billboards and bulldozers, up to and including the destruction of bridges, the derailment of trains and the attempted bombing of a dam. It’s sort of like the progressive version of The Turner Diaries, published in 1978.

  After witnessing the “fiery but peaceful” activities of groups like Antifa and BLM during the 2020 riots I don’t find it hard to believe that there may also be an activist element in the US right now that’s willing to engage in infrastructure terrorism and political assassination. This is not to say that the leftists themselves are highly organized, but there is evidence that they are managed by calculating people behind the scenes.

  In other words, elitist institutions can very easily use far-left actors to carry out terror attacks because leftists only need a “nudge” to go down that path. Just as many Islamic fundamentalists are so easy to nudge into mass violence.

  Government Apathy Is A Form Of Terrorism

  Another way that the establishment contributes to an atmosphere of instability is by simply doing nothing and letting bad things happen. For example, look at the fires in Southern California and the complete lack of infrastructure and resources needed to stop them. Look at the governmental indifference to preparedness. Now compare this to the calculated incompetence and mismanagement during the disastrous fires in Maui in 2023 and you might start to see a pattern…

  In terms of foreign threats, the open border problem over the past four years has made attacks by outside elements a near guarantee. Biden’s apathy on the border was clearly strategic and was designed to create conditions for internal strife.

  When the mass deportations start under Trump, be ready for “random attacks” to skyrocket. I have no doubt whatsoever that establishment interests (various think-tanks and globalist institutions) will instigate mass violence in response to deportations as a way to make the American public pay for their support of closed borders.

  Problem, Reaction, Solution

  Finally, be especially wary of government bureaucrats pretending they care about stopping the violence while using it as a rationale for restrictions and surveillance of American citizens. The laws we have in place are ALREADY more than enough to deal with the migrant problem or with psychotic woke activists. There is no need to diminish privacy rights, property rights, speech rights, self defense rights or institute martial law to accomplish a secure border and safe communities.

  There are many Neo-cons within our government that will try to use public anger over lack of safety as a catalyst for further Patriot Act-like violations of our rights.

  Anyone who calls for such measures should be immediately treated as suspect, including Donald Trump if it ever comes to that end. There are millions of patriots out there that view a Trump presidency as a “wait and see” scenario, not as a panacea that fixes all our ills.

  In other words, patriots see the Trump Administration as a PAUSE on the civil war that would have happened under Kamala Harris and the Democrats. The next four years might just end up being one last deep breath before the plunge if Trump can’t follow through on his promises, or if Neo-cons and Neo-libs are allowed to use chaos as a vehicle to destroy our liberties.

  Make The Establishment Mad – Be Proactive

  In terms of the immediate threat of increasing terror events, it’s not something that we need to live in fear of but it is something we need to be prepared for. Simple planning changes outcomes – Why not carry an EDC kit in your car? At the very least, have a sidearm, extra mags, a medical kit with tourniquets, blood stopping gauze, Israeli bandages and chest seals. Finally, train for emergencies and learn how to manage panic in yourself and others.

  Bad things are going to happen around you, or to you. If you stay calm then you have a chance of eliminating the threat or, at the very least, mitigating the damage.

  The goal of national destabilization and terror campaigns is to force the populace into a reactionary mindset (read up on Operation Gladio in Europe for better understanding). The last thing the establishment wants is for Americans to be proactive; they don’t want you to be prepared, they don’t want you to intervene and they certainly don’t want you to organize. What they want is for the public to always turn to a central authority, to always wait for others to fix the problem. They want you to wait for permission to act.

  This cannot be the way if we are facing a widespread agenda of national sabotage. Our purpose must be to fix these problems ourselves.

  *  *  *

  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.

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 19:30

• Inferno Chaos: LA Fire Spreads To Hollywood Hills, 5,000 Buildings Destroyed, Over 180,000 Evacuated
  Inferno Chaos: LA Fire Spreads To Hollywood Hills, 5,000 Buildings Destroyed, Over 180,000 Evacuated

  Watch LA Fire Live:

  LA Fire Summary:

  • Palisades Fire burned 20,000 acres (0% contained), while Eaton Fire has expanded to 10,000 acres (0% contained)

  • Newest fire: Sunset Fire in the Hollywood Hills area; Another new fire in Woodland Hills

  • Five dead, 180,000 people under evacuation orders 

  • Most destructive fire in LA history: Ten of billions of dollars in damage (early estimates) 

  • AccuWeather Estimates $135 billion to $150 billion in preliminary damage and economic losses

  • Over 5,000 homes, businesses and other buildings have been damaged or destroyed

  • Musk Says SpaceX will provide free Starlink terminals to areas hit by LA wildfires

  • Arson fears 

  Fire Map 

  

  Evacuation areas

  

   *   *   * 

  Update (1942ET):

  Where’s the National Guard? 

  🚨#BREAKING: HUNDREDS OF LOOTERS INVADE NEIGHBORHOOD

  “Cars pull up, doors open, and groups of men running up our street going up to the doors of these houses.”

  “There were 100 people came up on scooters and were trying to get into any and all houses.”

  REPORTER: “Did you… pic.twitter.com/0ckGivHbpy

  — HustleBitch (@HustleBitch_) January 9, 2025

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

   *   *   * 

  Update (1915ET):

  At this point the city of Los Angeles needs to fire everyone and start over. https://t.co/JaXHHM8enW

  — drefanzor memes (@drefanzor) January 10, 2025

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

  Appears an evacuation warning was just accidentally sent out to all of Los Angeles County. @FOXLA colleague @Elex_Michaelson saying he’s hearing the same.

  Not helpful.

  A ton of people, including me, just got this alert. pic.twitter.com/Ue48dmObkC

  — Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) January 10, 2025

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

   *   *   * 

  Update (1900ET):

  The latest AccuWeather estimate for the total damage and economic loss in LA County has surged to a staggering $135 billion to $150 billion, a massive increase from Wednesday’s estimate of $52 billion to $57 billion.

  AccuWeather has increased the preliminary estimate for the total damage and economic loss for the Southern #California #wildfires to a staggering $135 billion to $150 billion.#AccuWeather meteorologists say more gusty winds and an elevated #fire risk are expected next week. pic.twitter.com/6N3DJWSFlg

  — Bill Wadell (@BillWadell) January 9, 2025

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

   *   *   * 

  Update (1845ET):

  An aerial survey conducted by CalFire has determined that 5,316 structures, including homes, businesses, and smaller buildings such as RVs and sheds, have been destroyed by the fire, making this one of the most destructive wildfires in California’s history.

  JPMorgan’s Jimmy Bhullar told clients that potential cost for insurers could easily exceed $20 billion.

   AccuWeather estimated $52 billion to $57 billion in preliminary damage and economic losses earlier. 

  🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/jlhBpCZdoW

  — Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) January 9, 2025

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

  It’s time for Californians to hold the leftist LA Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom accountable.

  🚨BREAKING🚨 The City of Los Angeles cut funding for its fire department and allocated thousands of dollars to various progressive programs, including a “Midnight Stroll Transgender Cafe” and a Gay Men’s Chorus. pic.twitter.com/5ik8inY3sA

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 9, 2025

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

  DEI = DIE 

   *   *   * 

  Update (1436ET):

  “I’ve never seen such destruction,” a reporter for ABC7 Eyewitness News said in a live broadcast earlier. 

  “I’ve never seen such destruction.” AIR7 got aerial views of the wildfire devastation in Pacific Palisades. 💔

  Watch live fire coverage here: https://t.co/gx8OUSXIS6 pic.twitter.com/yt27uIEH5x

  — ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) January 9, 2025

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

   *   *   * 

  Update (1350ET):

  At a press briefing, LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said 180,000 people are under evacuation orders.

  Meanwhile, a preliminary estimate from Morningstar DBRS points to insured losses in excess of $8 billion, and some scenarios could cost insurers more than $10 billion. This report was first cited by Bloomberg Intelligence analysts. 

   *   *   * 

  Update (1300ET):

  Comedian Adam Carolla goes on an epic rant claiming that Hollywood leftists will become so frustrated with the rebuilding process of their destroyed homes that they’ll refuse to vote Democrat. 

   *   *   * 

  Update (1246ET):

  LA County Sheriff Robert Luna told reporters that some wildfire-impacted areas “looked like a bomb went off.”

  NEW: Drone footage shows the devastating aftermath of the LA fires which have destroyed thousands of homes.

  At this time, five people are deceased, over 2,000 structures have burned down and at least 130,000 residents are under evacuation order.

  Unfortunately, forecasters warn… pic.twitter.com/gVeWmeaRWu

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 9, 2025

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

  The Palisades Village Starbucks is unrecognizable after being ravaged by fire.

  ‘The Business Block’ in Pacific Palisades appears to be completely burned down. The Starbucks building was 100 years old, commissioned in 1924.

  The fire has reached 11,000 acres, with over a thousand… pic.twitter.com/edhAMQldHX

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 8, 2025

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

  *   *   * 

  The most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history has burned over 17,000 acres with zero containment, scorching the seaside area between Malibu and Santa Monica. The inferno has destroyed at least 2,000 building structures (damage estimates in the tens of billions of dollars) and forced 130,000 residents to evacuate their homes. Meanwhile, a new fire ignited overnight in the Hollywood Hills area.

  The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s latest update on Thursday morning shows that the Palisades Fire has burned through more than 17,200 acres, while the Eaton Fire has expanded to 10,000. Both fires still have zero containment. 

  Also, the Hurst fire has spread to nearly 900 acres, 10% of which are contained, while the Lidia Fire has burned 350 acres, 40% of which are contained. 

  The newest, the Sunset Fire, was sparked on Wednesday night in Hollywood Hills and has grown to dozens of acres. 

  Driving into LA and ANTOHER fire has started in the Hollywood Hills.

  Apparently all fires from Pacific palisades to Altadena are still at 0% containment.

  I can’t even keep up at this point 😩 pic.twitter.com/osef7288xz

  — Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) January 9, 2025

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

  BREAKING: Traffic is gridlock from people trying to evacuate the Sunset Fire in Hollywood, Ca pic.twitter.com/tTszIvKPPC

  — TaraBull (@TaraBull808) January 9, 2025

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

  NEW: The Hollywood area is completely gridlocked as residents rush to evacuate as the fire in the Hollywood Hills approaches.

  An immediate evacuation order has been issued for residents on “Laurel Canyon Blvd to the west, Hollywood Blvd to the south, Cahuenga Blvd/101… pic.twitter.com/2ybea6eOkg

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 9, 2025

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

  According to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, at least 130,000 people are under evacuation warnings or orders due to the Palisades and Eaton fires. 

  New drone shot from Pacific Palisades shows entire blocks of homes literally burned to the ground. The Palisades Fire alone could become the “costliest” fire in U.S. history.

  Courtesy of @KitKarzen pic.twitter.com/L5z7mvdLTt

  — Nahel Belgherze (@WxNB_) January 8, 2025

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

  A new shortwave infrared satellite image by Maxar Technologies shows burning buildings by the Eaton fire in northeast Los Angeles. 

  

  Imagery from Maxar also shows areas of Palisades fire.

  

  Map of Fires 

  

  Over 338,000 energy customers were without power as of early Thursday morning, including 181,000 in LA County. 

  

  Not one word from LA Mayor Karen Bass about the situation. 

  ‘Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent whilst their homes were burning? Do you regret cutting the fire department’s budget?
  @skydavidblevins questions the mayor of LA, Karen Bass, as she faces backlash regarding the California wildfires.https://t.co/Nkz8onjC7V pic.twitter.com/WwRwp6Imqz

  — Sky News (@SkyNews) January 8, 2025

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  Many call for her to be recalled immediately for slashing the fire budgets and lack of leadership. 

  Fire Chief complained to the LA Mayor last month about budget cuts limiting her dept. The funds were diverted to help migrants *** pic.twitter.com/BHp5hh3gVw

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) January 9, 2025

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  Joe Rogan’s LA fire warning six months ago…

  LA Fires Predicted with incredible accuracy by Fireman who spoke to Joe Rogan 👀 pic.twitter.com/CgXHHdEwrI

  — BAY AREA STATE OF MIND (@YayAreaNews) January 9, 2025

  There are mounting fears that some of these fires are intentional…

  This is Andrew Huberman first hand seeing arsonists light a fire in LA

  I have been told by the LAPD that arson is a major issue in LA right now https://t.co/JxTP0pFoA4

  — Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) January 9, 2025

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  “The LA fires look like Terrorism … These places are miles apart. … Are you supposed to believe that wind teleports a fire miles away but no where in between?” one X use said.

  The LA fires look like Terrorism.

  1. Palisades
  2. Pasadena
  3. ⁠Sunset
  4. ⁠Studio City

  These places are miles apart.

  Are you supposed to believe that wind teleports a fire miles away but no where in between?

  Trump will be President in just ~10 days.

  There’s more to this. pic.twitter.com/ePptDDZDiS

  — Sami Loyal (@samiloyal_) January 9, 2025

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  *Developing… 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 19:05

• "La Nina Is Here!": More Bad News For Wildfire-Plagued Southern California
  “La Nina Is Here!”: More Bad News For Wildfire-Plagued Southern California

  On X Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that La Niña conditions have officially developed in the equatorial Pacific. This weather phenomenon has the potential to impact weather patterns across the globe, more specifically in the US, in the months ahead. 

  “The wait is over and La Niña is officially here,” NOAA wrote on X. 

  The wait is over and La Niña is officially here.

  There’s a 59% chance La Niña will persist through February–April, followed by a 60% chance of neutral conditions in March–May, according to @NWSCPC.

  Read our latest ENSO Blog for more details: https://t.co/LUhJb4jGub pic.twitter.com/iu4nWVWKcJ

  — NOAA Climate.gov (@NOAAClimate) January 9, 2025

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  “La Niña conditions are present and are expected to persist through February-April 2025 (59% chance), with a transition to ENSO-neutral likely during March-May 2025 (60% chance),” the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center wrote on X. 

  La Niña conditions are present and are expected to persist through February-April 2025 (59% chance), with a transition to #ENSO-neutral likely during March-May 2025 (60% chance). A #LaNina Advisory is now in effect. https://t.co/5zlzaZ0D9Z pic.twitter.com/J3OSrwmH1w

  — NWS Climate Prediction Center (@NWSCPC) January 9, 2025

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  NOAA meteorologist Michelle L’Heureux told Bloomberg, “La Niña has finally emerged,” adding, “It took its time, but we are there.”

  L’Heureux said ocean temps dropped to 0.9F of a degree (0.5C) below normal across the parts of the Pacific tracked by the US.

  

  Though La Niña is arriving later, meteorologists predicted the Pacific surface temps would cool…

  • Sept. 2024: La Nina “Favored To Emerge In September-November” & “Persist Through January-March 2025”

  La Niña is typically associated with warm and dry winter conditions across parts of the US…

  

  … adding to drought concerns in California (plagued by devastating wildfires around LA County) and the southern US. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 19:00

• Senators Introduce "Lock The Clock" Bill To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent
  Senators Introduce “Lock The Clock” Bill To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), has reintroduced legislation to make daylight saving time permanent year-round. The proposal is opposed by a coalition of sleep medicine organizations, which advocate for “locking the clock” but in standard time mode.

  

  The legislation, called the Sunshine Protection Act, was unanimously passed in the Senate in 2022 during the 117th Congress but it stalled in the House. Now, Scott and 15 other senators have re-introduced the bill, describing it as a common-sense approach that will simplify the lives of U.S. households, citing President-elect Donald Trump’s backing for an end to the practice of twice-yearly clock changes.

  “I hear from Americans constantly that they are sick and tired of changing their clocks twice a year – it’s an unnecessary, decades-old practice that’s more of an annoyance to families than benefit to them,” Scott said in a Jan. 8 statement.

  “I’m excited to have President Trump back in the White House and fully on board to LOCK THE CLOCK so we can get this good bill passed and make this common-sense change that will simplify and benefit the lives of American families.”

  While Trump has advocated for locking the clock, it’s unclear whether the president-elect is in favor of making daylight saving time or standard time permanent. In March 2019, he said he was fine with making daylight saving time permanent. In December 2024, he called for the elimination of daylight saving time, suggesting it’s standard time that he backs, a position aligned with several medical organizations.

  The legislation proposed by Scott and the others would establish permanent daylight saving time, meaning clocks would no longer be turned back in the fall, resulting in later sunrises and sunsets throughout the winter. Current federal law allows states to exempt themselves from observing daylight saving time, with Arizona and Hawaii observing year-round standard time, resulting in more morning daylight in the winter months.

  Advocates for permanent daylight saving time argue it would eliminate the need to turn clocks back in the fall and provide extended sunlight in the evening, offering more opportunities for outdoor activities.

  “Every winter folks in Washington state despair at the prospect of losing an hour of precious sunlight when we are forced off Daylight Saving Time,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement.

  “This is about public health, it is about our economy, and it’s about just putting a little more light in families’ lives so they can spend time together, outdoors, in the sunshine.”

  Opponents of daylight saving time, such as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), counter that standard time is better for both health and safety. AASM explains in a position statement issued on Jan. 1 that there are numerous benefits to a permanent switch to standard time, including better sleep, less stress, and fewer car accidents.

  The AASM position, which is endorsed by nearly two dozen organizations including including the American College of Chest Physicians and the National Safety Council, argues that standard time aligns more closely with the daily rhythms of the body’s natural clock. The groups say that increasing exposure to morning darkness and evening light—which is what daylight saving time does—harms sleep-wake patterns.

  “Permanent, year-round standard time is the best choice to most closely match our circadian sleep-wake cycle,” said lead author of the AASM’s position statement, Dr. M. Adeel Rishi, pulmonology, sleep medicine, and critical care specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

  “Daylight saving time results in more darkness in the morning and more light in the evening, disrupting the body’s natural rhythm.”

  Research cited by the AASM highlights acute health impacts of daylight saving time, including a higher risk of strokes, increased hospital admissions, and elevated inflammatory markers, which indicate stress on the body. The group also references studies showing that traffic fatalities increase by as much as six percent in the days following the switch to daylight saving time, and human error-related medical events rise by 18 percent in the first week.

  Some research cited in the position statement suggests an increase in fatalities among school-aged children during daylight saving time, likely due to low-light conditions in the morning when children are traveling to school.

  Although the AASM’s position statement outlines a range of adverse impacts associated with daylight saving time, it also highlights the harmful effects of the twice-yearly transitions, linking them to sleep disruptions, mood disturbances, and even an increased incidence of suicide.

  The AASM position statement also acknowledges a report suggesting that daylight saving time may be associated with decreased crime rates due to increased evening light. The group notes that several other studies have indicated a modest decrease in the risk of car accidents.

  However, the AASM argues that the preponderance of evidence indicates the chronic effects of daylight saving time are detrimental to human physiology, health, performance, safety, and even the economy.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 18:30

• Texas Lawmakers Double Down On Bills To Secure Border With Mexico
  Texas Lawmakers Double Down On Bills To Secure Border With Mexico

  Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

  Texas lawmakers pre-filed around two dozen border and immigration bills ahead of the state’s 2025 legislative session aiming at securing its border with Mexico without relying on the federal government’s progress in tackling illegal immigration.

  

  With some 11 million non-citizens entering the United States under the Biden administration, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican-led legislature began crafting laws to address what they considered an invasion of the country caused by lax border policies.

  While President-elect Donald Trump has vowed a mass deportation operation and praised the state’s efforts to stop illegal immigration through Operation Lone Star (OLS), it appears the GOP-led legislature isn’t taking any chances that future presidents will protect the Texas-Mexico border.

  Abbott initiated OLS to counter a rise in illegal immigration, the illegal drug trade, and human smuggling that rose sharply in 2021.

  The operation pays for Texas troopers and National Guard members at the border as well as the prosecution and jailing of illegal immigrants, primarily for trespassing and evading arrest.

  With the state’s 89th legislative session convening on Jan. 14, notable Texas border bills include renewed attempts to create a Texas Division of Homeland Security, a Texas Border Protection Unit, and bills aiding the incoming president’s efforts to secure the border.

  Other bills focus on restricting public assistance for illegal immigrants, while HB 219 and HB 89 would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in Texas.

  Texas Sovereignty

  The Texas Border Protection Unit Act, HB 354, is similar to HB 20, which was introduced in the 2023 legislative session and died on a point of order. Filed by Republican Rep. Brisco Cain, the bill would give law enforcement officers the authority to arrest those crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally, just like federal border patrol agents.

  Law enforcement in the unit would also have the authority to “deter persons attempting to cross the border unlawfully” with non-lethal crowd control measures.

  The bill states the “security of Texans and the sovereignty of this state” have been threatened by transnational cartels, which are trafficking fentanyl and illegal immigrants.

  The unit would also manage the construction and maintenance of the state’s border wall and physical barriers, such as buoys in the Rio Grande and razor wire.

  “Voters have given us a clear mandate: secure the border and support Trump in achieving these priorities,” Cain told The Epoch Times via a text message.

  Cain said even with Trump’s commitment to securing the border, Texas has a constitutional duty to protect its citizens.

  “Federal measures can often fall short or fail to address the unique challenges we face as a border state,” he stated.

  HB 354 would ensure that the “safety and sovereignty of Texans” aren’t left to the mercy of future administrations, he said.

  State Republican Sen. Bob Hall filed Senate Bill (SB) 135 in a second attempt to establish the Texas Division of Homeland Security. It is similar to HB 127, which failed to progress and died in the 2023 legislative session.

  The division would coordinate border security and related crimes within the state and with federal law enforcement.

  Hall also filed SB 81, which would give Texas DPS officers the authority to arrest and deport people to Mexico who enter Texas illegally.

  It would give law enforcement the power to arrest and prosecute criminals attempting to traffic drugs and illegal immigrants.

  ICE Agreements

  Republicans are also introducing legislation that would require sheriffs to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

  SB 658 and SB 134 would mandate that sheriffs request and, if offered, enter into written agreements with ICE to help protect the border.

  These partnerships are known as 287(g) agreements and would help supply extra manpower and logistical support to crackdown on illegal immigration, and aid mass deportation under Trump.

  SB 658 would require sheriffs in counties with a population of 250,000 or more to request and possibly enter into written agreements with ICE to “enforce federal immigration law.”

  The measure would also set up a grant fund to reimburse sheriffs for additional costs associated with cooperating with ICE.

  SB 134 is broader in scope, requiring all county sheriffs to apply for an agreement with ICE or face a loss in state grant money.

  Similarly, HB 1491 would require county commissioners to apply and enter into agreements with ICE if offered to enforce federal immigration laws.

  Illegal Immigrant Children

  Two other house bills deal with protecting children crossing from Mexico into Texas unlawfully.

  Under the proposed HB 256, the state Department of Public Safety (DPS) would conduct rapid DNA tests on those entering the United States illegally who are detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are suspected of misrepresenting a family relationship.

  Likewise, HB 1072 would require OLS officers to fingerprint and interview children unlawfully crossing the border if there is reason to believe they are being trafficked or in danger.

  Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan recently pledged to help locate children who have lost touch with federal authorities after crossing into the United States during the Biden administration. Estimates put the number of such children at more than 300,000, according to an August 2024 report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General.

  Legal Challenge

  After hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants arrived at the U.S. southern border, Abbott in 2024 invoked the invasion clause of the United States and Texas constitutions to justify the state’s ongoing border operations.

  The idea of state sovereignty was also behind Texas’s SB 4, which became law in March of 2024 and has remained in limbo pending an appeals court ruling.

  Under SB 4, illegal immigrants who enter Texas outside legal ports of entry could be arrested on Class B misdemeanor charges and sentenced to up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face second-degree felony charges and sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

  Judges are granted leeway under SB 4 to drop the charges if the illegal immigrants agree to return to Mexico.

  U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights groups sued to stop SB 4, saying immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government, not the states.

  In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Arizona v. United States that federal law preempted state law when it comes to immigration.

  Texas is betting the decision could be reversed under a more conservative high court.

  The U.S. Supreme Court briefly allowed SB 4 to go into effect in 2024 before sending it back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which once again placed it on hold pending a ruling on the case.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 17:30

• Biden To Defer To Trump On Terror Designation For 'Rebels' Controlling Syria
  Biden To Defer To Trump On Terror Designation For ‘Rebels’ Controlling Syria

  President Biden plans to punt the decision on whether to lift the official terror designation for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to President-elect Donald Trump.

  Senior US officials speaking to The Washington Post on Thursday said HTS “must demonstrate they have made a clean break with extremist groups, in particular Al-Qaeda before the label can be lifted.” An unnamed official noted that “Actions will speak louder than words.” The report reads:

  The Biden administration has decided to maintain the terrorist designation of Syria’s new Islamist rulers for the remainder of President Joe Biden’s tenure, leaving a critical decision about Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to the incoming Trump administration, said three U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

  While Washington had already quickly lifted the $10 million bounty which had long been on HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani’s head (or Ahmed al- Sharaa), the terror designation will remain.

  

  The jihadist group which replaced the Assad government after the longtime leader’s fall on December 8 (after which Assad showed up in Moscow) has been lobbying Western capitals to drop US-led sanctions.

  Sanctions have decimated the economy, resulted in runaway inflation, and currently major cities have merely an hour of electricity a day amid winter conditions.

  But the terror designation is likely to ensure that the bulk of sanctions remain on Syria, which chiefly hurts the already suffering and impoverished common population.

  Ironically, the United States had covertly supported radical groups like HTS from the start of the war, which was ultimately a regime change operation imposed from outside.

  One regional source reviews the following background:

  Days after the fall of the Syrian government and the rise of HTS, Sharaa called on foreigners who joined HTS to receive Syrian citizenship, saying they are “part of the movement that led to the downfall of Assad and should be celebrated.”

  As part of the US-backed covert war on the former Syrian government, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dispatched his deputy Abu Mohammad al-Julani – Sharaa’s nom de guerre – and a group of extremist fighters from Iraq to Syria in August 2011 to establish the Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria.

  Sharaa’s group, which he would later rebrand as HTS, carried out suicide bombing attacks in Damascus in December 2011 and January 2012 before announcing their existence. Thousands of Salafist religious extremists from dozens of countries, including Britain, Belgium, France, China, Chechnya, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Saudi Arabia, joined Sharaa in the fight against Damascus.

  A big question for Syria is: what’s next? It could be headed toward being a failed state, with no infrastructure, reconstruction, or resources… or there is also likelihood of more civil wars and infighting. There’s a chance, even if remote, of the country being revived, with future elections. However HTS has declared there won’t be elections for at least four years. 

  Also, Israel occupies territory in the south, the US occupies oil and gas areas in the northeast, and Turkey controls much of the north near Aleppo. The situation isn’t look good for the time being.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 17:00

• Climate Hustle: EPA Advisor Admits Sending Billions To Climate Groups Before Trump Takes Office
  Climate Hustle: EPA Advisor Admits Sending Billions To Climate Groups Before Trump Takes Office

  Via American Greatness,

  An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) advisor has been caught on hidden camera admitting that the outgoing Biden administration is funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to climate organizations as a hedge against the incoming Trump administration.

  

  Brent Efron who is a special advisor for implementation for the EPA, was recorded by Project Veritas bragging about sending tens of billions of dollars in grants to climate nonprofits as “an insurance policy” against Trump’s promises to rein in government spending.

  Efron exhibits zero shame as he laughingly equates the frantic effort to get as much money as possible to climate-related allies as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”

  When asked where that money is going, Efron responds, “Nonprofits, states, tribes,” explaining that the effort would continue, “until the Trump people come in and tell us we cannot give out money.”

  BREAKING: @EPA Advisor Admits ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump is Funneling Billions to Climate Organizations, “We’re Throwing Gold Bars off the Titanic”

  “It was an insurance policy against Trump winning.”

  “Get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump… pic.twitter.com/eaAihuNvAh

  — Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) December 3, 2024

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  Efron refers to the Inflation Reduction Act as “Biden’s climate law” and describes how the EPA uses aligned nonprofits to implement climate change policy at the local level because, “they’re safer from Republicans taking the money away.”

  Efron also describes how he and his colleagues will likely continue working right up until Trump is inaugurated in order to push out as much money as possible to climate allies.

  He’s also considering how his efforts to loot the treasury on behalf of these climate nonprofits could translate into a cushy job with one of them when the new administration takes over.

  The outgoing Biden administration hasn’t been shy about shoveling as many taxpayer dollars as possible to its favored friends and lobbyists before President-elect Trump can take office on Jan 20.

  The Project Veritas report prompted a pointed response from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) who described Washington as having become empowered to the point that it’s become “dangerous and destructive,” and calling for a return to constitutional government.

  The U.S. government is actively working to undermine the American people

  We’ve empowered Washington to the point that it’s become dangerous and destructive

  It’s too big, too expensive, and too powerful

  We must return to constitutional government https://t.co/JW36FWqPYh

  — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) December 3, 2024

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  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 16:30

• Erik Prince Reveals Trump Was Closer To Buying Greenland Than Previously Known
  Erik Prince Reveals Trump Was Closer To Buying Greenland Than Previously Known

  Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince revealed in a recent interview on the Sean Spicer Show that President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration was closer to securing a groundbreaking agreement with Denmark to take control of Greenland than previously known. Prince’s comments come as Trump ramps up his calls to acquire the Arctic landmass, highlighting its strategic military and economic advantages.

  SEAN SPICER: From a strategic standpoint how important is Greenland to the United States?

  ERIK PRINCE: It is an enormous amount of mineral potential. It is of significant interest to the Chinese Communist Party. And so I think what Trump had proposed last time, last administration, was effectively a 50-50 rev share where the US would take over the overhead costs because it costs Denmark tens of billions of dollars a year for the policing, security, and administration of Greenland. The US would take that on, but then it would basically split the revenue of any mining or energy development together with Denmark. I think it’s a good deal for Denmark and a good deal for the United States.

  SEAN SPICER: Does Denmark view themselves right now as potentially being under attack by the Chinese or under threat from them?

  ERIK PRINCE: No, but it’s the same CCP approach of show up with a lot of money, buy a lot of influence, and create presence—literally in our attic—that the Canadian government doesn’t do nearly as much of effective patrolling of all those waters and areas. And so, as a defensive play and as a good opportunity for the United States to maximize the reach and the economic development in our own hemisphere, it makes perfect sense. Most importantly, there’s some fantastic back country and helicopter skiing.

  SEAN SPICER: I knew there’d be a silver lining, but I mean in all honesty I just can’t imagine Denmark saying oh yeah yeah we’ll give up 50% or 20% even of our sovereign territory because you guys want.

  ERIK PRINCE: They were almost ready to do the deal last time. Yes, and because Denmark—I don’t believe Denmark doesn’t come anywhere near to the 2% that they’re supposed to be spending on NATO. Maybe it’s just a false flag by the president to make Denmark spend their 2% on NATO. But it’s an interesting approach and I hope he sees it through.

  SEAN SPICER: If you had to make a prediction whether Denmark agrees to some kind of a deal, where would you put it?

  ERIK PRINCE: Above 50%. Remember, you know, think about, um, you know, they called the purchase of Alaska Seward’s Folly and it turned out to be absolutely a brilliant purchase. I think it came out to two or three cents per acre in terms of value. Um, the United States, you can imagine, where would we be without Alaska? So maybe in five years or 10 years, we’ll be looking back, where would we be without Greenland?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 16:00

• Port Strike Averted As Longshoremen, USMX Reach Contract Agreement On Automation
  Port Strike Averted As Longshoremen, USMX Reach Contract Agreement On Automation

  By FreightWaves

  The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) have reached a tentative agreement on a new six-year master contract. The agreement will replace the expiring contract which had been extended after a short strike in October 2024. 

  

  The two groups issued a joint statement late Wednesday evening, saying “the two sides agreed to continue to operate under the current contract until the union can meet with its full Wage Scale Committee and schedule a ratification vote, and USMX members can ratify the terms of the final contract.”

  

  The agreement covers approximately 25,000 union workers in container-handling at 14 ports and maritime cargo centers from Texas to Boston.

  Workers in roll on-roll off vehicle handling, which was also shut down during the October work stoppage, are not included in the new deal.

  In a classic compromise, both sides got what they had been seeking. A source with knowledge of the agreement told FreightWaves that terminal operators and ocean carriers get broader rights to introduce semi-automated rail-mounted gantry cranes and other technology they say are needed to improve efficiency in container-handling, while the union receives guarantees for new jobs linked specifically to each piece of equipment. Jobs associated with cranes are among the highest-paying among port workers.

  The agreement came together quickly, the source said, after the sides fleshed out details in meetings ahead of formal negotiations.

  The sides had previously agreed to a 62% pay increase following the October strike, but that was contingent on completing a new contract. Benefits and container royalties are among the details still to be worked out.

  Had an agreement not been reached, dockworkers could have gone on strike Jan. 15, when the extension expired. President Joe Biden had previously refrained from stepping in during strike activity in October.

  It was also a clear-cut victory for ILA President Harold Daggett, who publicly portrayed foreign-based ocean carriers as siphoning billions of dollars in profits out of the U.S. earned on the backs of underpaid American dockworkers, and that automation technology would eliminate union jobs.

  The current longshore contract negotiated in 2018 specifically prohibits full automation technology.

  The potential strike could have coincided with the start of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term; Trump had not made it clear whether federal action would have been taken this time around. In December he publicly backed the union in its anti-automation position.

  In a separate statement Wednesday, the ILA said Trump’s support was key to securing a new contract. The union also revealed for the first time that when Daggett and his son, Dennis Daggett, also a union official, met with Trump at Mar-a-lago in December,  the President-elect spoke by phone with USMX officials to express his support for the ILA.

  “You have proven yourself to be one of the best friends of working men and women in the United States,” the statement said in part.

  Details of the tentative agreement will not be announced during the final negotiation and ratification process, which will likely stretch into the summer.

  Trade groups welcomed news of the labor agreement.

  “We are pleased to see the ILA and USMX come to a final agreement on a new contract, as U.S. ports on the East and Gulf Coasts play a critical role in the retail supply chain,” said National Retail Vice President Jonathan Gold, in a statement. “Providing certainty with a new contract and avoiding further disruptions is paramount to ensure retail goods arrive in a timely manner for consumers.

  “The agreement will also pave the way for much-needed modernization efforts, which are essential for future growth at these ports and the overall resiliency of our nation’s supply chain.”

  The International Association of North America (IANA), a trade group which represents hundreds of logistics providers across rail, road, and sea, hailed the announcement.

  “We commend the dedicated and focused efforts of both parties in achieving an agreement that paves the way for a brighter, growth-focused future. This milestone is not only vital for fostering the economic growth of containerized freight but also for supporting and empowering the individuals who drive its daily operational movement.

  “While we understand that the details of the agreement have not been made public yet, we still appreciate the collaboration shown by the two parties. Their cooperation underscores the importance of unity and shared vision in ensuring the continued strength and sustainability of the intermodal freight supply chain.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 15:30

• Nation-State Adoption To Drive Bitcoin Growth; Fidelity Digital Sees 'New Era' For Crypto In 2025
  Nation-State Adoption To Drive Bitcoin Growth; Fidelity Digital Sees ‘New Era’ For Crypto In 2025

  In its outlook for digital assets and Bitcoin, Fidelity Digital Assets called 2025 a “pivotal” year, when they should begin to have a broader impact across industries and economies.

  Citing research by economist Carlota Perez, Fidelity researchers said technological revolutions – like railroads or the internet, for example — typically disrupt multiple industries and fields and overhaul entire economies.

  “Bitcoin and digital assets could fit this theory,” Fidelity Digital Assets researcher and report author Chris Kuiper wrote.

  “We are potentially past what Perez describes as an early speculative period accompanied by financial boom and busts and are now possibly entering the phase of further adoption.”

  

  The Fidelity paper said we are at the early stages of mass diffusion and adoption with digital assets in a process that will evolve over decades.

  “2025 has the potential to be the year that is looked back on as the pivotal time where the “chasm was crossed” as digital assets begin to take root and embed themselves into multiple fields and industries,” Kuiper wrote.

  “For example, in the past year, we have already seen discussions around nation-state adoption and increased corporate balance sheet adoption.”

  So, while Bitcoin boomed in 2024, it is still in the early days of this new era of sustainable adoption, diffusion, and integration, Kuiper said.

  

  “We anticipate more nation-states, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and government treasuries will look to establish strategic positions in Bitcoin,” said Fidelity Digital Assets research analyst Matt Hogan in the firm’s Jan. 7 paper titled “2025 Look Ahead.”

  CoinTelegraph’s Martin Young reports that Hogan believes more entities may take notice of the playbook employed by Bhutan and El Salvador “and the substantial returns they have been able to glean from such positions in a relatively short amount of time.”

  He said that not making any Bitcoin allocation could become more of a risk to nations than making one due to challenges such as debilitating inflation, currency debasement and increasingly crushing fiscal deficits. 

  If the US goes ahead with its Bitcoin strategic reserve plans, “it is likely that nation-states would begin accumulating in secret,” Hogan said. “No nation has an incentive to announce these plans, as doing so could influence more buyers and drive up the price.”

  

  Top nation states holding Bitcoin. Source: FDA

  Hogan also predicted that digital asset-structured and managed products would “go mainstream” in 2025, adding it was “difficult to overstate the success” of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETH$3,237.85 exchange-traded funds. 

  “With the initial success of these products, it would not be unreasonable to expect 2025 to bring about more structured passive and actively managed digital asset products to the world of TradFi.”

  Hogan also predicted that tokenization will be the “killer app” of 2025, with onchain value doubling from $14 billion to $30 billion by the end of the year.

  “Tokenization is often seen as a buzzword in the world of blockchain technology, but its potential in financial services and beyond is only beginning to be realized,” he said. 

  The Fidelity researchers said investors should “prepare for acceleration” with “increased adoption, development, interest in, and demand for digital assets.”

  They added that “investors are not too late to join the digital asset movement” and believed “we may be entering the dawn of a new era for digital assets, one poised to span multiple years — if not decades.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 15:05

• Professor Walks Back Calling It "Karma" After Trump-Supporting Actor Loses Home In LA Wildfires
  Professor Walks Back Calling It “Karma” After Trump-Supporting Actor Loses Home In LA Wildfires

  Authored by Garielle Temaat via The College Fix,

  University of Missouri Professor Karen Piper touted the destruction of Trump-supporting actor James Woods’ house in the California wildfires, calling it “karma” in an X post on Tuesday, before walking it back in a statement to The College Fix, calling it a “joke.”

  “James Woods’ house is burning down. It’s karma calling,” wrote the scholar, who is retired but will teach one online class this spring semester. She has since deleted her post after backlash.

  

  In an email statement Wednesday to The College Fix, Piper said she does not “wish anyone any harm.”

  “The situation in California is heartbreaking and devastating. As a Californian, I am particularly distraught by seeing the devastation of so many beloved places I used to call home,” she said.

  “That tweet was before I learned how catastrophic the situation was becoming. I didn’t think it might actually happen! It was meant as a joke. My prayers are with all of the victims,” Piper said.

  University spokesperson Christopher Ave told The College Fix via email that the school finds Piper’s statement “deeply offensive.”

  “[I]t does not reflect the university’s viewpoint or values. We are reviewing this matter,” Ave stated.

  “Piper is retired from the faculty. At this point, she is scheduled to teach one online, upper-level class in creative writing in the spring semester,” he stated.

  The Fix also reached out to Piper via phone and email for clarification on her statement, but she did not immediately respond.

  Piper’s faculty page on the university’s website now states users are “not authorized” to access the page.

  According to a screenshot of the page posted to X, however, she has taught “environmental discourse and policy” and “climate change fiction” at the school.

  

  She has also written a book, “Left in the Dust: How Race and Politics Created a Human and Environmental Tragedy in L.A.,” which “examines the environmental justice issues surrounding water pollution and scarcity in Los Angeles.”

  Woods is an Oscar-nominated actor well-known for publicly supporting President-elect Donald Trump.

  The actor has called Trump “a man who is willing to work for free to make his beloved country a better place” and “the voice of the American people,” Newsweek reported.

  In a post on X, Woods stated, “I couldn’t believe our lovely little home in the hills held on this long. It feels like losing a loved one.”

  Woods also posted videos of the flames approaching his house.

  Our deck three minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/KpZDELpN8L

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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

  Leaving pic.twitter.com/yJDQ8xIhbI

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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

  Numerous X users condemned Piper’s post, including Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Jeremy Carl.

  “Hey @Mizzou are you okay with one of your faculty members tweeting this about James Woods?” Carl wrote. “I guarantee you [Republican Sen. Josh Hawley] isn’t.”

  Additionally, novelist and screenwriter Roger Simon stated in a Substack post that he “agree[s] with the actor James Woods who lost his house and has blamed the extent of the L. A. fires on ‘liberal idiots.’”

  He also commended Woods for exposing the L.A. police chief’s diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities.

  “Woods again put it well, noting that refilling the reservoirs might have been a priority of hers in such a parched area while quoting the chief’s bio that exposes her real priorities that have nothing to do with fighting fires,” Simon stated.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/09/2025 – 14:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Why Are Fertility Rates Not Rising?
  Why Are Fertility Rates Not Rising?

  Authored by Russell Clark via ‘Capital Flows and Asset Markets’,

  It is always hard to get back into writing in the new year – this year in particular. As a family we stayed in London – and over the last few years, with my oldest doing motorsport and my youngest at a football academy, as family we are rarely together for long periods of time. Hanging out at home has allowed me to try and make a dent in my massive tsundoku that has accumulated on my bed side table. One book I managed to finish is Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken – a Christmas present from 2023! There was nothing too radical in the book, the idea of processed food not being good for you is not particularly mind blowing. There was one very interesting idea I took from Ultra-Processed Food. While humans basically need a certain amount of calories, we also need various other macro nutrients, which turn up in various random foods. I know that I occasionally will have a craving for steak, grapes, pineapples and apples, that will disappear after a day or two of gorging on these foods. In Ultra-Processed Food, the author points out that these macronutrients do not really appear in processed foods, or if they do in very small quantities. Your body will need them, so you end up eating much more processed food to try and get that macronutrient. You end up in the perverse situation of being obese and malnourished at the same time.

  

  The fact of the matter is that general starvation and lack of food during and after World War II drove the industrialisation of food production. And in the post War Period was wildly successful at ending hunger in the industrialised world. Capitalism did what it does best – it was provided a profit motive to supply food to the world- and it solved it. The profit motive had a downside of course. Competition and profit seeking saw industrialised food emphasise addictive foods (high in sugar and salt) and food that lasts a long time to reduce costs (artificial preservatives). And lo and behold, in a single generation we have gone from a food crisis to a weight crisis. So does changing food production techniques have anything to do with falling fertility rate? In the UK fertility rates started dropping in the 1960s, after spiking after World War II. That fertility rates are at levels today seen during periods of war I find telling.

  

  My original thoughts was that in the 1980s, the world turned pro-labour, and real wages starting falling. With less money, people had less babies was the line of thinking. I thought that a pro-labour turn in politics would also lead to a turn in fertility rates. You can frame the argument in many different ways, but I thought the increased job security of the pro-labour world would allow families to have more children. I had also assumed improving Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART) would also help to cause fertility rates to surge. To my disappointment, Denmark, which publishes up to date birth statistics, and has very relaxed and supportive rules on ART has seen recent birth rates fall back to lows. In 2021, the surge in babies made me very excited that this theory was correct, but it now looks like an aberration.

  

  Thinking about obesity as a sign of a deficient diet allowed me to think about falling fertility rates in a different way. Obesity in the UK took off at around the same time that fertility rates fell. I never really saw any reason to tie falling fertility rates to rising obesity. If anything, birth rates have tended to fall during periods of food insecurity, such as during war and famine. But using the observation from Ultra-Processed People – obesity could be a sign of lack of macro-nutrients? That is excess calorie consumption in the search of vital minerals? That obesity is a sign of a lack of nutrition needed for baby making?

  

  Circumstantial evidence is easy to find. Mexico used to have a far higher fertility rate than the US. But the success of Coca Cola in Mexico is hard to understate – a former Coca Cola salesmen was President for awhile, and per capita consumption in Mexico is far higher than elsewhere.

  

  And Mexican fertility rates are now below that of the United States.

  

  Of course, correlation is not causation. And there is a big problem with this analysis. Japanese fertility rates have also fallen in this period, and this is a country that works hard at avoiding processed food. Japan is also a problem in thinking high house prices may affect the decision to have children. Japan has had falling house prices for most of the past 30 years with no effect on fertility. But one thing Japan has had in line with the rest of the world is rising urbanisation rates. Is city living non-conducive to having kids?

  

  Does big city living destroy the desire to have children? Are obesity, infertility and urbanisation all measure of the same thing – modernity? Could the possibility of telecommuting that seemed so real during Covid be the answer? Should governments mandate that all companies that can work remotely should work remotely? Is that the answer to the fertility crisis? It seems like a good idea to me – what harm can it do?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 23:25

• Trump Envoy To Join Gaza Ceasefire Talks In Qatar
  Trump Envoy To Join Gaza Ceasefire Talks In Qatar

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Tuesday that he was traveling to Qatar to take part in Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations with Biden administration officials.

  Chances of a deal seem slim as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he has no intention of ending the genocidal war, and Hamas is saying any deal must lead to a permanent ceasefire, but Witkoff insisted progress was being made.

  

  “We’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha,” Witkoff, a real estate investor, said at a press conference with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

  Witkoff said he was “really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president.” When asked what has been impeding a deal, Witkoff declined to answer. “I believe we’ve been on the verge of [a deal]. I don’t want to discuss what’s delayed it — no point to be negative in any way,” he said.

  Standing alongside Witkoff, Trump repeated his threat that there would be “all hell to pay” if Hamas doesn’t start releasing hostages by his inauguration on January 20.

  “If those hostages aren’t back — if they’re not back by the time I get into office — all hell will break out in the Middle East and it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is and they should have been back a long time ago,” Trump said.

  The president-elect has vowed to be a staunch supporter of Israel, as he was in his first term, and said on Monday that he was the “best friend that Israel ever had.”

  According to media reports, Hamas has released a list of 34 hostages it is willing to release as part of the first phase of a ceasefire deal in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

  The Times of Israel reported that a potential deal that’s on the table would only involve a six to seven-week temporary ceasefire. Relatives of Israelis still held in Gaza are calling for the government to pursue a comprehensive deal that releases all the hostages and brings an end to the conflict.

  Trump: “If those hostages aren’t back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas. And it will not be good frankly for anyone.” pic.twitter.com/z5sPKF2xXt

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2025

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

  During previous rounds of negotiations, Netanyahu sabotaged the chances of a deal by constantly declaring that he wouldn’t agree to a permanent truce and adding new demands.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 23:00

• Blinken Responds To Trump, Says US Won't Take Over Greenland
  Blinken Responds To Trump, Says US Won’t Take Over Greenland

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

  Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States likely will not take over Greenland anytime soon, referring to recent comments made by President-elect Donald Trump expressing interest in controlling the island.

  

  “The idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one, but maybe more important, it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen, so we probably shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about it,” Blinken said during a press conference in Paris on Wednesday.

  When he was pressed on Trump’s remarks about the United States acquiring Greenland from Denmark, Blinken stressed the need for allies.

  “I think one of the basic propositions we brought to our work over the last four years is that we’re stronger, we’re more effective, we get better results when we’re working closely with our allies, not saying or doing things that may alienate them,” he told reporters.

  Greenland, located to the northeast of the United States, is an autonomous territory under the domain of Denmark. Citizens of the territory are considered citizens of Denmark and the European Union.

  In a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump did not rule out using the U.S. military to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal.

  “I’m not going to commit to that,” Trump said. “It might be that you have to do something.”

  This week, his son Donald Trump Jr. took a trip to Greenland to shoot video as part of a podcast.

  Denmark’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that Greenland can become independent if its residents want it but that it likely won’t become a U.S. state, as Greenland’s leader met with the Danish king in Copenhagen on the day.

  “We fully recognize that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialize, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.

  He did not say whether he believed that Greenland would become a territory of the United States, only commenting on whether it could become a state.

  He told reporters that the United States has significant security concerns in the Arctic, which he signaled were legitimate, due to higher Chinese and Russian activity in the region in recent years.

  “I don’t think that we’re in a foreign policy crisis,” Rasmussen said. “We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled.”

  Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede has said that Greenland is not for sale, in response to Trump’s comments.

  “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” he said in a statement in late December 2024.

  Trump, while commenting on Greenland, announced he had chosen Ken Howery to be his ambassador to Denmark.

  “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

  The president-elect, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, said on Tuesday that the United States also needs to reassert control over the Panama Canal, a structure it built in the early part of the 20th century. He said that the canal’s control is a matter of national security and that Chinese companies control parts of it now.

  “The Panama Canal is vital to our country,” he said. “It’s being operated by China—China!—and we gave the Panama Canal to Panama, we didn’t give it to China. They’ve abused that gift.”

  Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 22:35

• DOJ Confirms It Will Release Jack Smith's Report On Trump, But…
  DOJ Confirms It Will Release Jack Smith’s Report On Trump, But…

  Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to release only the volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s report dealing with Donald Trump’s plans to subvert the transfer of power after his loss in the 2020 election, holding back on sharing the Mar-a-Lago report while the president-elect’s two co-defendants still face trial.

  

  Garland’s decision all but assures the public will never see Smith’s report reviewing Trump’s mishandling of classified records at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort.

  However, the filing says the top members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees will be able to review the Mar-a-Lago report at the Department of Justice (DOJ)… so don’t be surprised when the leaks start.

  As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, DOJ officials said in a court filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that AG Garland intends to release part one of the report, which deals with Trump, “in furtherance of the public interest in informing a co-equal branch and the public regarding this significant matter.”

  Smith has already transmitted the report to Garland, officials said.

  U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday had ordered the department not to release the report until the 11th Circuit reviewed a motion by Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s co-defendants in a federal case.

  While prosecutors dropped charges against Trump following his November 2024 election win, they are still pursuing Nauta, a former Trump aide, and De Oliveira, a manager at Trump’s resort in Florida.

  Nauta and De Oliveira say Smith should be fired and that his report should not be released to the public, given he was found by Cannon to be unconstitutionally appointed.

  DOJ lawyers said in the new filing that whether Smith was unconstitutionally appointed is irrelevant because the issue at hand is how Garland handles Smith’s report. They also argued that Nauta and De Oliveira have no interest in part one, and do not have standing to block the publication of that part.

  “There is also no valid basis for this Court to pretermit the Attorney General’s discretion with respect to Volume One,” they wrote.

  Officials said that while part two of the report will not be made available to the public, a redacted version will be available for certain lawmakers to view in camera as long as the lawmakers agree not to publicly release any of the report’s contents.

  “This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” they wrote.

  Cannon’s order prohibited, pending resolution of the emergency motion from Nauta and De Oliveira by the appeals court, Smith, Garland, the DOJ, and all persons acting together with the parties from releasing, sharing, or transmitting the report or drafts of the report with any person outside of the DOJ.

  It did not bar Smith from transmitting the report to Garland.

  Federal law governing special counsels requires each counsel to prepare a final report explaining prosecution decisions and transmit it to the attorney general, who can decide whether to make it public.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 22:10

• Red Pentagon? DoD's Leninist L-Band Expropriation Tips Ligado Networks Into Bankruptcy
  Red Pentagon? DoD’s Leninist L-Band Expropriation Tips Ligado Networks Into Bankruptcy

  Submitted by James Holloway via ‘A Temporary Problem of Liquidity’ substack,

  Ligado Networks filed for bankruptcy on Sunday thanks in no small part to the United States of America, specifically the Department of Defense.

  In a suit filed in October 2023, Ligado alleges that the U.S. expropriated and used spectrum awarded to Ligado by the FCC without compensation and then engaged in a strategy of “deceit and misinformation.” 

  Ligado is suing the U.S. for $40 billion, reflecting sunk costs and lost revenues related to a proposed 5G network in the L-Band that the Pentagon took for its own.

  It filed for breathing space to focus on that lawsuit, among other things. 

  

  The prearranged chapter 11/RSA supported by 88% of pre-petition funded debt, including first lien and crossholder groups. Funded debt (it sums to $8.6 billion):

  

  There are also series of preferreds (liquidation preference just short of $3b) and two classes of equity. Cash in the cookie jar: $9.3mm at petition. Ligado needs $115m to “operate smoothly” through the post-petition period, according to Bruce Mendelsohn, head of the financing/capital solutions group at PWP. Fortunately, the debtors hit the courthouse with a prearranged chapter 11 plan: a DIP, a “long-term commercial transaction” with a third party, and a restructuring supporting agreement (“RSA”).

  Telecom: it devours cash like a stoner crashing a bag of Doritos. The build cycles are long; companies are at the mercy of regulators, code enforcement officers and environmentalists with eager young attorneys desperate to Make a Difference, or at least an impression on the bosses. Has any industry been more creatively destroyed then re-assembled over the last thirty-odd years? Suppose it’s not some arm of the Law. In that case, it’s innovation (replace copper with fiber), its supply chain, or natural disaster (remember Fukushima? High yield primary was closed for three weeks as doom-mongers warned of mutant fish washing up on the beaches of California) or disasters of human invention. War, or perhaps the nationalization of what V.I. Lenin called the “commanding heights” of the economy. Lenin meant heavy industry – steel mills powered by hydroelectric dams and similar quaint relicts of a vanished age – and media/communications.

  This brings us to the amusing observation that Ligado was tipped into bankruptcy by the Department of Defense’s (“DOD”) de facto nationalization of spectrum that the FCC had authorized for Ligado’s use. We’d heard the U.S. military was “evolving” in the general direction of “woke.” Is it similarly “evolving” toward Leninist methods of procurement, e.g., “expropriation”? “Liberation”?

  Since 2010, Ligado has sought to integrate its satellite services with terrestrial networks, according to the first-day declaration (“FDD”) of CEO Douglas Smith. Specifically, it’s been seeking authorization to build out a 5G network using spectrums in what it calls the “L-Band,” a “highly attractive one- to two gigahertz (‘GHz’) spectrum category, known as the lower mid-band.” Ligado was nothing if not tenacious. After ten years of a “contentious, protracted regulatory process,”[1] the FCC in 2020 granted Ligado authority to build such a network using its “licensed and leased spectrum.”

  Bit of a problem, though. The below spectrum map from Smith’s FDD may be helpful. We wonder if Smith wishes he had never heard of the goddam L-Band. Or, perhaps, he wishes Ligado was not under the aegis of the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce (“DOC”) and the U.S. Congress “(collectively, the ‘U.S. Government’)”:

  

  The teal-ish box beside Ligado’s 1525-1559 Mhz L-Band is labeled GPS/GNSS. This band is reserved for satellite systems that provide “PNT”: positioning, navigation and timing services. GPS is the “Global Positioning System” owned by the U.S. Space Force (which planet gets invaded first!?!?!). GNSS are the “other” Global Navigation Satellite Systems. Europe’s is called Galileo (such an injustice! Eratosthenes, overlooked again!) Russia’s is GLONASS; China’s is IRNSS, and so on.

  The U.S., led by the Department of Defense, has argued since roughly 2018 that Lidago’s use of the L-Band would interfere with the GPS spectrum used by the the U.S. military to “coordinate tactical operations, launch spacecraft, track threats and facilitate air and sea travel.” Yeah, we get that. Say some general needs to extract himself from Kabul ASAP. What if noise from Ligado routed his entourage to the Friendship Bridgeover the Amu Darya River? How those Russians would laugh! And for all we know, noise from Ligado has already farked tactical coordination, contributing to this submarine’s collision with an undersea mountain, this naval supply ship running aground offshore Bahrain, and these two naval vessels almost colliding in San Diego Bay. (Maybe the Elite Human Capital in the Valley can make a Turning Circle app. The old folks did it with pencils, just like the old-school bond guys did repo in their heads.)

  Smith argues in his FDD that “scientific studies” show Ligado’s use of the L-Band would not interfere with GPS. The FCC “explicitly rejected” the military’s claims about GPS interference when granting Ligado authority. So what’s the deal? Smith knows the score the Pentagon “has taken the Debtors’ spectrum for the agency’s own use, operating previously undisclosed systems that use or depend on the Debtors’ allocated spectrumwithout compensating the Debtors.”

  Emphasis added. “Previously undisclosed systems.” Oh dear. If you ask us, sounds like 48, or some other GWOT agit-prop designed to rattle the populace into believing some “fight them there or we will have to fight them at the Rose Bowl in a way that will utterly ruin college football season” bullshit. The legendarily unaccountable Pentagon, or some entity within the archipelago of three-letter agencies infesting Northern Virginia like a colony of indestructible roaches, has some private war, or God knows what, going on. We assume that, too, is all highly classified. Ligado, through no fault of its own, stumbled into this band, and the FCC, believing it unused, shrugged and told them to take it. So the Pentagon, rather than – we don’t know, tell the fucking truth – reverted to the usual best practice: the tried and true “strategy of deceit and misinformation”(Smith’s words), an array of “unfounded claims” (Smith will not mind if we point out synonyms “lie” and “bullshit”[3]) disseminated like mean-girl gossip among the media and the legislative/administrative branches.

  Smith says the DOD and the DOC orchestrated a campaign of opposition which included eight parties filing petitions to reverse the FCC’s 2020 decision. Various U.S. Congresspeople—always ready, willing and able to serve their constituents, especially when the defense of Our Democracy is at stake (and maybe line up a nice gig for when the DC scene gets old) — have likewise objected.

  Ligado can’t be blamed for exercising its “rights and remedies” here: in October 2023, it sued the U.S., alleging that the DOD’s bullshit had cost it, Ligado, hundreds of billions in sunk costs and lost profits. $40 billion, to be precise: that’s how much Ligado is seeking in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (it’s also not very much in light of the Pentagon’s budgets). The U.S., in January 2024, filed a motion to dismiss the suit. In December, the Court of Federal Claims allowed the suit to proceed. The case is

  Then there’s the Cooperation Agreement with Immarsat. Immarsat, which also landed a piece of the L-Band, and Ligado agreed to coordinate their respective bits into “contiguous spectrum blocks within the spectrum and at the power levels agreed upon.” Ligado is required to pay Immarsat for those coordination rights. Rather, pay Viasat, which acquired Immarsat in 2021. Ligado has engaged in“extensive discussions” with Viasat about restructuring its “significant payment obligations” under the agreement. Just as the parties were finalizing the contours of a commercial agreement, Smith says, and right out of the blue, Viasat raised up a tax issue that had the effect of sinking the deal. Viasat ultimately“revealed that its true intent is to access the Debtors’ spectrum to implement Viasat’s commercial goals. In other words, without the Debtors’ spectrum, Viasat cannot execute on its business plan.”

  What could the company do against such an array of foes? Ligado filed with a DIP and an RSA proposing a pre-arranged chapter 11 and recognition proceeding under the Canadian Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.Prepetition funded debt will be equitized, other than the amounts repaid or rolled up by DIP. Equity and preferred interests are retained. As part of the RSA, Ligado is undertaking a long-term commercial deal with AST & Science LLC, a space-based 5G network.

  The DIP facility is the standard new money/rollup. It consists of $442m of new money loans, $12mm of which will be available on an interim basis. On the final order, $327mm of “DIP Secured Funding Loans” will be available to repay the 1L first-out, and $103mm of “DIP Delayed Draw Term Loans” (“DDTL”) three days after entry of the final order. The new money loans bear interest at 15.5% cash and 17.5% PIK. The DIP also provides for a roll-up of $442mm of 1L obligations (other than the 1L first-out piece), which can be increased to as much as $497mm. Ligado also seeks the use of cash collateral (the above-referenced $9.3mm).

  And those fees! Holy damn, but we assume it reflects the risk of supporting an entity that’s had the absolute cheek to defy the Exceptional Nation; make it mad, and it may smite well smite all the “consenting” investors unto the 70thgeneration. There’s a $20k DIP agent acceptance fee and a $80k annual agency fee. Those are in cash. These are PIK: 12.5% backstop fee, 5% commitment fee, 5% first funding discount fee, 5% second funding discount fee, DDTL funding discount fee (payable on the amount of DDTL draws made on funding date) and a 3% unused funding commitment payable on unused secured and DDTL funds.

  As for the AST deal, Smith calls it “transformative” (isn’t that what Gerry Levin called Time Warner’s deal with AOL?). AST gets the right to use Ligado’s satellites, ground assets and L-band Spectrum, “including substantially all of the capacity on SkyTerra-1 and any replacement or follow-on satellites.”AST will pay an annual usage-right fee of $80mm plus a percentage of revenue. Ligado will keeps control of its licenses and physical assets. The deal terminates on December 31, 2107. The implication that the parties believe civilization will survive until then provides a brief glimmer of comfort.

  Here are the percentages of support for the RSA:

  

  Ligado intends to use the “breathing spell” to pursue its lawsuit against the U.S. government, and here’s hoping that Smith, Ligado and their counsels stick it to the Man, as was said by the hippies of yore. It will also continue working on its technology and document the AST deal.

  Ligado’s first-day hearing yesterday ran just short of ninety minutes, which seems right given the support of prepetition secured lenders for the RSA. The docket includes a revised DIP motion incorporating revisions requested by the Court, which was signed this morning. The redline does not indicate monster changes. The Court approved other first-day relief.

  The next event in the docket is a final hearing on the cash management motion, set for January 29.

  Ligado also filed an adversary case against Inmarsat. The DIP posting memo is here.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 21:45

• Goldman's CES 2025 Takeaway: Chinese Firms Unveil New AI PCs, Mixed Reality Headsets, EV Tech & Panels
  Goldman’s CES 2025 Takeaway: Chinese Firms Unveil New AI PCs, Mixed Reality Headsets, EV Tech & Panels

  Analysts at Goldman Sachs working on the Greater China Tech Research desk in Hong Kong released a client note Thursday highlighting key product launches and demonstrations by Chinese companies at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 in Las Vegas.

  Goldman’s Allen Chang and Verena Jeng focused on 19 Chinese companies attending CES 2025 that released notable products across AI PCs, mixed reality (MR) and AI glasses, EV technology, eVTOLs, gaming PCs and monitors, and AI servers. 

  Here are the companies and their respective highlights:

  

  From the list, the analysts offered additional insights on launches from select companies, along with their analyst ratings: 

  AI PC

  ASUS (2357.TW, Buy): ASUS launched new Copilot+ PC models including Zenbook A14 (priced from US$899), Vivobook 14/ 16 at CES 2025. The new Zenbook model is based on Snapdragon X Series platform, featuring lighter weight under 1kg with innovative Ceraluminum chassis and over 32 hours battery life. For commercial AI PC, ASUS’s ExpertBook P5 was launched in Oct 2024, with self-developed “AI ExpertMeet” for AI translation and AI meeting functions. We expect stronger AI PC ramp up in 2025E on the back of more models with the mainstream chipset platforms (Intel) and software (Copilot+), along with the long battery life and growing generative AI functions.

  Lenovo (0992.HK, Buy): The company launched new AI PC models Thinkpad X9 14/ 15 (Aura Editions, priced from US$1,089), and unveiled ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable AI laptop during CES. Thinkpad X9 is Copilot+ PC model supported by Intel Core Ultra platform, and offers Smart Share functions to connect users’ smartphones to the laptop instantly through the AI virtual sensors, enabling users to easily edit photos or access to text messages on PC easily. In Dec 2024, Lenovo announced the collaboration with Volcano Engine to adopt Doubao LLM on company’s AI PC for AI search, AI writing etc. functions, and launched personal AI assistant Xiaotian to empower multiple user terminals, which has covered 1,500+ applications. We are positive on the new AI PC launch and expanding software/ ecosystem to accelerate company’s AI PC penetration. 

  AI Server

  Gigabyte (2376.TW, Buy): Gigabyte showcased multiple AI server solutions at CES 2025, including rack-level AI servers, and AI servers across AMD MI325, NVIDIA HGX, and Intel Gaudi 3 platforms. For cooling solution, the company is due to demonstrate the one-stop liquid cooling solution across CDU, manifolds, and cold plates for AI servers clients. The company also launched new AI PC models AORUS MASTER, GIGABYTE AERO, and GIGABYTE GAMING, empowered by Copilot functions and Gigabyte’s new AI agent “GiMate” to enhance the gaming experiences. The company also demonstrated new QD-OLED gaming monitors launched in Jan 2025, highlighting the enhanced Tactical features to bring users better experience in speed, clarity, and reliability.

  Automotive Tech

  Thundersoft (300496.SZ, Buy): The company highlights AquaDrive OS that integrates smart driving and cockpit domain and company’s expansion to smart driving software solution through the JV with Horizon Robotics. Thundersoft recently also introduced new AI smart cockpit empowered by LLM (Large Language Model) from Volcengine (private) to enable AI interaction and image generation functions, showcasing during CES. Besides automotive solution, Thundersoft launched 4 reference designs of Mini PC in Dec 2024 based on Qualcomm Snapdragon X platform to empower new models, supporting 13bn LLM to run on the edge devices.

  Black Sesame (2533.HK, not covered): Black Sesame launched Huashan A2000 Series (A2000, A2000 Pro, A2000L) by end of Dec 2024, showcasing the new products at CES 2025 with smart driving functions for car models of different pricing range. The company’s new NPU architecture “JiuShao” with its AI tool chains “BaRT”, featuring higher efficiency and enhanced performance.

  XPeng Aeroht (Private): The company showcased the Land Aircraft Carrier (LAC) during CES 2025, which is a six-wheeled van with a quadcopter drone, featuring 800V SiC platform and 1,000km mileages. The LAC completed the first public flight in Nov at China International Aviation Exhibition. We see growing entrants entering eVTOL and flying vehicles market, which is positive to the ecosystem expansion and future commercialization.

  Mixed Reality

  HTC (2498.TW, Neutral): The company showcased its VR/ MR headset and VIVE applications during CES 2025. The new headset model VIVE Focus Vision launched in Sep (Report link, priced at US$999) mainly targets high-end gaming and enterprise users, offering users sharper graphics, faster response time, and more immersive experiences. Meanwhile, the company continues to work with ToB (Business) clients to expand MR/ VR applications, for example, Sagrada Família VR exhibition, and VIVELAND in Kaohsiung.

  Sunny Optical (2382.HK, Neutral): Sunnyverse, the subsidiary of Sunny Optical, demonstrated XR glasses solution and optical module products during CES 2025, supported by the company’s capability to provide customized design for clients. IoT, wearables, and Robotics applications are also expected at CES, including AI camera of devices empowered by AI assistant, AI IPC vision solution for pet detection, and OCR solution for smart ironing.

  AAC (2018.HK, Buy, on CL): AAC demonstrated “Immersive Demos” and “Interactive Workshops” sessions at CES to showcase its product offerings across acoustics, haptics, optics and hinges. In Dec, the company’s new generation of acoustics solution with 600% higher volume and 25% lower power consumption was adopted by Vivo Y300, and we view the enhanced solution is positive to drive better mix. Meanwhile, post PSS acquisition, AAC is expanding its automotive acoustics client base, including Geely (Galaxy E5), Smart (Audiobox for new model.

  Besides Chinese companies at CES, we outlined:

  • Key Takeaways From Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s CES Keynote On Advancing AI At “Incredible Pace”

  • 10 Most Impressive Day One Reveals At CES 2025, Includes Jumping Hypercar

  More from CES…

  Xpeng AeroHT made its international debut at CES 2025, presenting the groundbreaking “Land Aircraft Carrier”. First showcased at the Zhuhai Air Show in Shenzhen, China, this innovative flying car features the world’s first onboard autonomous separation and reconnection system.… pic.twitter.com/rxiCAkOs8D

  — China Daily (@ChinaDaily) January 8, 2025

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

  More than 1,000 Chinese companies are participating in @CES this year, impressing global exhibitors with innovative products and solutions.

  Get ready to be amazed by the #RobotDog from China’s tech company #UnitreeRobotics, which boasts incredible agility and balance!#CES2025… pic.twitter.com/pdD4d3M9P0

  — Liu Pengyu 刘鹏宇 (@SpoxCHNinUS) January 8, 2025

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

  . . . 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 21:20

• Time To Get Real
  Time To Get Real

  Authored by Citizen Soldier via RealClearDefense,

  “Lives depend on it,” said incoming Senate Majority Whip John Barasso.

  

  He’s urging confirmation of President Trump’s national security team of Kash Patel for FBI Director, Tulsi Gabbard for DNI, and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.

  He wants Mike Waltz appointed as national security advisor.

  Barasso wants serious people swiftly sworn into office on January 20—as we all should.

  Because reality returned at 0315 on New Year’s Day.

  Not fireworks and champagne, but a determined attack on American life by one man who plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street, then opened fire on cops and civilians. Pipe bombs were found a few blocks away, rigged for remote detonation.

  The attack by Shamsud-Din Jabbar in New Orleans killed at least 14 people and injured dozens. Another image of death and terror seared into the Nation’s memory.

  We may not have all the facts but we know this: Regular police officers took fire and killed the attacker.

  Real people faced evil and stopped it, demonstrating courage under fire like countless local cops and agents in the field, like so many thousands of combat veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan. For people who wear the uniform, who train their mind and body to fight back when others flee, an entire life of preparation boils down to a few seconds.

  Few of Biden’s senior-most national security officials could possibly understand. Consider their qualifications:

  • Avril Haines, DNI, graduated Georgetown Law, rotated through various ministerial positions in the Obama Administration, managed a program at Columbia University, and advised private corporations.
  • Jake Sullivan, NSA, graduated Yale Law, held various ministerial positions in the Obama Administration, taught at Yale Law School, advised Hillary Clinton during her run for the presidency, and advised private corporations.
  • Christopher Wray, FBI Director, prosecuted cases early in his career, joined the Bush Administration, then left government to defend corporations at a prominent, white-shoe law firm.

  These are Biden’s national security leaders. 

  Lawyers and policy wonks, standing safely back from the action, sometimes attentive but many times distracted, reacting to atrocities the only way they know how — by creating more rules and processes, regardless whether they solve the problem.

  Contrast them with former terrorism prosecutor Patel, and Gabbard, Hegseth, and Waltz, all former Army officers who have actively defended the United States.

  National security leadership is as much a product of experience as education. Firsthand knowledge of violence and its consequences should be a prerequisite for the job. Haines, Sullivan, Wray, and many others boast blue-chip resumes and good social networks but have skipped their apprenticeships to violence, declining to put themselves in harm’s way as soldiers, intelligence officers, special agents, or cops.

  Left-wing allies in the media condemn Trump’s national security picks as “lacking qualifications,” but fail to scrutinize the records of Biden’s people, who are well-qualified for the classroom or board room, not the arena.

  Time to end the Obama-Biden practice of putting under-qualified people in charge of our national security. We need real leaders who are strong and decisive, just like the men and women who patrol our streets.   

  Citizen Soldier believes in life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 20:55

• DOJ Sues 6 Landlords Over Alleged Algorithmic Rent-Fixing Scheme
  DOJ Sues 6 Landlords Over Alleged Algorithmic Rent-Fixing Scheme

  Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

  The Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Tuesday that it is suing six large landlords over alleged anticompetitive practices in housing rental markets, expanding the DOJ’s first case alleging algorithmic collusion.

  

  The DOJ and a coalition of states filed the antitrust lawsuit in North Carolina in August 2024, accusing property management software company RealPage of enabling landlords to collude by sharing pricing information through the company’s software, which then recommends rent prices.

  The DOJ alleged the landlords exchanged competitively sensitive information on rents, occupancy rates, and pricing strategies through phone calls, emails, and user groups hosted by RealPage.

  The landlords—Cortland Management, Greystar Real Estate Partners, Blackstone’s LivCor, Camden Property Trust, Cushman’s Pinnacle Property Management Services, and Willow Bridge Property—were named as defendants in the amended complaint.

  The landlords collectively operate more than 1.3 million rental units across 43 states and the District of Columbia, according to the DOJ.

  “Today’s action against RealPage and six major landlords seeks to end their practice of putting profits over people and make housing more affordable for millions of people across the country,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division stated.

  The co-plaintiffs in the amended complaint include the attorneys general of Illinois, Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.

  “I don’t have to tell anyone, rent is completely unaffordable and out of control right now,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a Jan. 7 statement.

  “We are alleging today that some of the nation’s largest landlords—including three operating in Connecticut—rigged the market using unfair algorithmic pricing to suppress competition and jack up costs for millions of renters.”

  The DOJ stated that Cortland, which manages more than 80,000 rental units across 13 states, had agreed to cooperate with the department and enter into a proposed settlement.

  In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a Cortland spokesperson said the proposed settlement will be filed with the court for approval.

  “We believe we were only able to achieve this result because Cortland has invested years and significant internal resources into developing a proprietary revenue management software tool that does not rely on data from external, non-public sources,” the spokesperson stated.

  Greystar has denied the allegations and stated that it intends to “vigorously defend” itself in the DOJ lawsuit.

  “Greystar has and will conduct its business with the utmost integrity. At no time did Greystar engage in any anti-competitive practices,” the company said in a statement.

  Camden said it disagrees with the DOJ’s claims and plans to seek dismissal of the lawsuit. The company argued that the allegations stemmed from actions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  “This was a time when Camden made the decision not to increase renewal rates, to waive late fees, to freeze evictions, and to take the unprecedented step of providing over $10 million in cash directly to our residents to assist them during that uncertain period, no strings attached,” the company said in a statement.

  “Rental rates are a result of many factors, most importantly government regulations limiting housing supply. When supply is limited by government regulations, rents go up.”

  RealPage issued a statement on Dec. 6 saying that the DOJ has closed its criminal probe into pricing practices in the multifamily rental housing sector.

  The company said the remaining lawsuits filed against it were “based on misinformation and baseless allegations.”

  The three remaining landlords did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 20:30

• Senate Democrats Attempt To Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearings
  Senate Democrats Attempt To Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearings

  Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

  Just days after the new members of the United States Senate were sworn into office, Democrats in the upper chamber have already taken steps to delay the confirmation hearings of one major nominee for President-elect Donald Trump’s second Cabinet.

  

  As reported by Axios, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who serves as the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is delaying Republican efforts to hold confirmation hearings as early as next week for former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (R-Hawaii), President-elect Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

  Warner’s excuse for the delay is that the committee has allegedly not yet received certain materials from Gabbard, including her FBI background check, ethics disclosure, and her pre-hearing questionnaire.

  The background check, as per committee rules, must be submitted at least one week before the hearing is to take place.

  However, Gabbard had in fact completed her background check last week.

  Furthermore, her confirmation could be much smoother than most due to her already possessing a security clearance. She also already submitted her pre-hearing questionnaire, but will submit a second one by Thursday due to Warner’s demands.

  As for the ethics report, logistical issues have prevented the timely delivery of such information due to the Washington D.C. area being struck by a heavy snowstorm on Monday, which has caused similar delays for other nominees.

  Despite Warner’s efforts to block the hearing, Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) reaffirmed that the Senate “intends to hold these hearings before Inauguration Day,” according to a spokesman.

  “The Intelligence Committee, the nominees, and the transition are diligently working toward that goal.”

  “After the terrorist attacks on New Year’s Eve and New Years Day, it’s sad to see Sen. Warner and Democrats playing politics with Americans’ safety and our national security,” said Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition.

  Gabbard has generally been considered one of President-elect Trump’s most controversial nominees.

  Originally a Democrat who rose to the rank of vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Gabbard came to be at odds with her own party over its deliberate suppression of the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020.

  She left the House to run for President herself in 2020, then left the Democratic Party and switched to Independent.

  She became a vocal supporter of President Trump’s comeback bid in 2024, and switched her party affiliation to Republican shortly after his victory in November.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 20:05

• Telegram's Transparency Turnaround: Major Increase In Cooperation With U.S. Law Enforcement After CEO Arrest
  Telegram’s Transparency Turnaround: Major Increase In Cooperation With U.S. Law Enforcement After CEO Arrest

  Following the August arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, the popular social network and messaging application known for its stringent privacy policies has sharply increased its cooperation with U.S. authorities. The platform provided data on more than 2,200 users in 2024, a stark increase from previous years, according to details from Telegram’s own Transparency Reports bot reported by 404 Media.

  

  For most of 2024, Telegram’s data-sharing with U.S. law enforcement was minimal, fulfilling only 14 requests which impacted 108 users by the end of September. However, the final quarter of the year saw an exponential increase – from 108 affected users to 2,253.

  Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, Telegram fulfilled 14 requests “for IP addresses and/or phone numbers” from the United States, which affected a total of 108 users, according to Telegram’s Transparency Reports bot. But for the entire year of 2024, it fulfilled 900 requests from the U.S. affecting a total of 2,253 users, meaning that the number of fulfilled requests skyrocketed between October and December, according to the newly released data.

  “Fulfilled requests from the United States of America for IP address and/or phone number: 900,” reads the company’s Transparency Reports bot when prompted by 404 Media.

  “Affected users: 2253” it added.

  

  This surge in data provision coincides with Durov’s arrest and subsequent changes to Telegram’s privacy policy.

  In September, shortly after Durov’s arrest, Telegram revised its privacy guidelines, now stating it would provide user data, including IP addresses and phone numbers, to law enforcement upon receiving valid legal orders. Prior to this, the company had maintained a policy of only sharing data for terrorism-related investigations, asserting that it had never actually shared any user information under those circumstances.

  The implications of Telegram’s revised stance on privacy are far-reaching.

  Telegram is especially popular with hackers, scammers, violent criminals, child abusers, and others not necessarily because of its message security (messages on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted by default, and in 404 Media’s experience criminals rarely use the feature). Instead, it is the app’s social network-like features that allow for massive channels and group chats where many hundreds or thousands of people can discover and communicate with one another easily, and the (until recently) correct perception that Telegram was unlikely to hand over user data to the authorities even when asked to do so. -404 Media

  The increase in data sharing with U.S. authorities does not just mark a policy shift; it’s a pivotal moment in Telegram’s history – balancing the scales between user privacy and legal compliance. As the platform moves forward, user trust now hangs in balance.

  The company is set to release its next round of transparency data in April.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 19:40

• With Trudeau On His Way Out, Can Canadians Get Their Free Speech Back?
  With Trudeau On His Way Out, Can Canadians Get Their Free Speech Back?

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  With Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will step down as prime minister, Canada is now looking for a new leader after a decade under his policies. The question is whether anyone will look for the remnants of Canadian free speech in the wreckage of the Trudeau government.

  

  In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about the collapse of free speech in Canada under Trudeau.

  Canada has long been a country caught between two influences: the United Kingdom and the United States.

  It has shared DNA with both nations. Unfortunately, it has largely followed the British approach in treating free speech more like a privilege than a right.

  That dubious tradition was magnified over the last decade by a wholesale attack on free speech deemed hostile, insulting or triggering for different groups.

  In many ways, Canada has been a cautionary tale for many in the U.S., as the same voices of censorship and criminalization grow on our campuses and in Congress.

  Indeed, BlueSky, a social media site that offers a safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views, has apparently embraced Canadian-style standards for censorship as part of its pitch for those with viewpoint intolerance.

  For over a decade, Trudeau has been the cheerful face of modern censorship. While exuding tolerance and inclusivity, he hammered critics with draconian measures and perfectly Orwellian soundbites. In the name of tolerance, he proudly proclaimed intolerance for opposing views.

  Trudeau shows how speech codes and virtue signaling are now chic on the left.

  In a town hall event, Trudeau chastised a woman for asking a question that used the term “mankind” and instructed her, “We like to say ‘peoplekind’ … because it’s more inclusive.”

  (He later claimed he was joking. If so, many of his policies have the same punchline and are no joking matter.)

  In many ways, Trudeau’s true colors emerged in his crackdown on the trucker protests opposing COVID-19 mandates in 2022, a campaign widely supported by an enabling media. Trudeau invoked the 1988 Emergencies Act for the first time to freeze bank accounts of truckers and contributions by other Canadian citizens, powers long condemned by civil liberties groups in Canada.

  The anti-free speech apple did not fall far from the tree. It was Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who as prime minister used the predecessor to the act for the first time in peacetime to suspend civil liberties.

  Trudeau was widely criticized for his anti-free speech policies, including his move to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act to criminalize any “communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

  It was used to prevent “social media platforms [from being] used to threaten, intimidate, bully and harass people, or used to promote racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynistic and homophobic views that target communities, put people’s safety at risk and undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy.”

  Under Trudeau, human rights commissions became virtual speech commissars in Canada. A conservative webmaster was prosecuted for allowing third parties to leave insulting comments about gay people and minorities on the site. Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley insisted that “the minimal harm caused … to freedom of expression is far outweighed by the benefit it provides to vulnerable groups and to the promotion of equality.” Even a comedian was prosecuted for insulting jokes involving lesbians.

  Recently, a Canadian mayor and a town were prosecuted for not hoisting an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag” in celebration of Pride Month — even though they did not have a flag pole.

  Despite crushing the trucker protests, the Canadian parliament extended Trudeau’s emergency powers to allow him to continue to harass and threaten those on the right. Despite broad opposition, the Liberal Party, the NDP and other allies were able to muster 181 votes to keep authoritarian powers alive in Canada. (The Canadian courts later, belatedly, declared the Trudeau powers unconstitutional).

  Many of the same legislators would later push to increase the penalties for certain speech crimes to life imprisonment.

  One of the most tragically ironic moments for Canada came last year, when Trudeau’s government blocked the citizenship of Russian dissident Maria Kartasheva because she has a conviction in Russia. She had been tried in absentia by a judge sanctioned by Canada for her exercise of free speech in Russia in condemning the Ukrainian war. The Canadian government informed Kartasheva that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offense relating to false information in Canada.

  Think about that. Canada was concerned because she violated anti-free speech laws that are similar to its own. The Russians convicted her of disseminating “deliberately false information,” and Canada convicts people under laws like Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada for efforts “to convey, cause, or procure to be conveyed false information with the intent to alarm or injure anyone.”

  That is why some of us spit out our soup in 2022 when Trudeau’s government condemned Cuba for its own crackdown on protesters, claiming that “Canada strongly advocates for freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly free from intimidation.” Trudeau also condemned China for cracking down on protests over COVID-19, the very subject of his own crackdown on the truckers.

  Yet Trudeau has been a darling of the Canadian and American press despite a disapproval rate of around 68 percent among Canadian citizens. The media clearly approves of his position that “freedom of expression is not without limits” when others seek “to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”

  So the question is: Now that Trudeau is heading out, where do Canadians go to get their free speech back?

  *  *  *

  Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 19:15

• "Unprecedented Fires" Scorch 3,000 Acres In Los Angeles Area, Forcing 49,000 To Evacuate
  “Unprecedented Fires” Scorch 3,000 Acres In Los Angeles Area, Forcing 49,000 To Evacuate

  Watch Live:

  LA Fire Summary:

  • Fast-moving, wind-driven fires are sweeping through the Los Angeles area, forcing mandatory evacuations for over 49,000 residents. The fires remain 0% contained.

  • The Palisades Fire (caused unknown) has burned nearly 15,000 acres, while the Eaton Fire has scorched 10,600 acres. 

  • AccuWeather Estimates $52 billion to $57 billion in preliminary damage and economic losses

  • Gov. Gavin Newsom deployed 1,400 firefighters & declared a state of emergency.

  • Nearly 300,000 residential and/or commercial customers are without power in the LA region.

  • NWS: Worst fire conditions (high winds) will peak Wednesday morning. 

  • Malibu residents warned about potential evacuation.

  • Fires ZERO PERCENT CONTAINED 

  Evacuation Map (via NYT):

  

  Fire Map (NASA VIIRS image overlaid LA via X user loosenedspirit): 

  

  *  *  * 

  Update (1915ET):

  “The Palisades Fire, which has quintupled in size since this morning, has now prompted evacuations in the City of Santa Monica,” meteorologist Matthew Cappucci wrote on X.

  

  

  Evacuations are expanding.

  🚨 #BREAKING: 293,000 people are now under mandatory evacuation in Los Angeles — a 300% increase since this morning

  A new evacuation order just came in for the Santa Monica area

  Over 400,000 are without power, and the fires are STILL 0% contained. pic.twitter.com/eIT7kHJUa4

  — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 8, 2025

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

  Fire is zero contained. 

  *  *  * 

  Update (1830ET):

  Mayor Karen Bass stands in a stunned silence for nearly 2 minutes as a reporter asks her if she regrets cutting Los Angeles’ Fire Department budget by nearly $20 million and being absent as her citizens’ homes burned down.pic.twitter.com/64A1hlTv2m

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 8, 2025

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

  Just awful. 

  New drone shot from Pacific Palisades shows entire blocks of homes literally burned to the ground. The Palisades Fire alone could become the “costliest” fire in U.S. history.

  Courtesy of @KitKarzen pic.twitter.com/L5z7mvdLTt

  — Nahel Belgherze (@WxNB_) January 8, 2025

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  *  *  * 

  Update (1545ET):

  Via Bloomberg Top Live Desk: 

  “In California, nearly 500,000 people have turned to the state’s insurer of last resort, the FAIR Plan, which has doubled in size over the past five years. The state is now exposed to nearly $458 billion in potential damage, Mark Gongloff writes for Bloomberg Opinion. The neighborhoods in the path of the Palisades and other fires burning this week have been among some of the hardest-hit by insurer defections in recent years.”

  Via Bloomberg’s Brian Sullivan: 

  “The Los Angeles region has a high risk of exposure to wildfires: More than 460,000 homes with a reconstruction value of $300 billion in LA and the Riverside region have a moderate to very high risk of exposure, according to CoreLogic, a property analytics firm.

  “CoreLogic noted that not all the homes deemed at risk are directly exposed to the current fires.”

  Via AccuWeather:

  Estimates $52 billion to $57 billion in preliminary damage and economic loss has occurred from the raging Los Angeles area wildfires.

  *  *  * 

  Update (1534ET):

  President-elect Donald Trump on Truth Social: 

  “The fires in Los Angeles may go down, in dollar amount, as the worst in the History of our Country. In many circles, they’re doubting whether insurance companies will even have enough money to pay for this catastrophe. Let this serve, and be emblematic, of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo. January 20th cannot come fast enough!”

  Meanwhile… 

  LA Fire Chief is being hailed as the first female and LGBTQ fire chief in Los Angeles. She says her priority is DEI.

  Here she is waving a pride flag at a pride parade while dressed in uniform. pic.twitter.com/E2mjsGN2KK

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 8, 2025

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

  On the left is the LA Fire Chief allowing her city to be burned down with no water in fire hydrants

  On the right is the New Orleans Police Chief who allowed a terrorist attack on Bourbon without street barriers

  DEI is quite literally getting people killed

  Bring back merit pic.twitter.com/LEmtbC9owK

  — DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) January 8, 2025

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  LA Mayor Karen Bass cut $17.6 million in funding from the Fire Dept. She’s in Africa on a taxpayer funded trip and has a DEI hire running the Fire Dept.

  Meanwhile her city is burning to the ground. pic.twitter.com/EJBVkdgCP0

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 8, 2025

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  FIRST FEMALE LA FIRE CHIEF PRIORITIZES DIVERSITY.pic.twitter.com/4pmKWFh7Qy

  — Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 8, 2025

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

  Clown. 

  April, 2021. Gavin Newsom explains that wildfire preparedness will be better now that Biden is in office instead of Trump. pic.twitter.com/jTnSgagQsF

  — MAZE (@mazemoore) January 8, 2025

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

  It is time for Californians to usher in an era of accountability after radical leftist politicians and officials have left the state in chaos.

  *  *  * 

  Update (1115ET):

  LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone told reporters, “We have well over 5,000 acres that have burned and the fire is growing. We have no percentage of containment. We have an estimated 1,000 structures destroyed.”

  NOW — LA County Fire Chief: “We have well over 5,000 acres that have burned and the fire is growing. We have no percentage of containment. We have an estimated 1,000 structures destroyed.” pic.twitter.com/Pn3riJOzlz

  — Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 8, 2025

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  Trump was right…

  

  There’s nothing like waking up to a fire apocalypse that morning…

  Good morning from Los Angeles pic.twitter.com/xx6m7DFQ22

  — Andrew Kimmel (@andrewkimmel) January 8, 2025

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  *  *  * 

  Update (0700ET):

  The Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst wildfires raging in Southern California show no signs of abating.

  

  The Los Angeles County Fire Department reported on X that nearly 3,000 acres—roughly 4.5 square miles—are ablaze, and the fire is 0% contained as of early Wednesday morning.

  PALISADES FIRE | 2921 acres 0% containment. Extreme fire behavior, short & long-range spotting, continues to challenge firefighting efforts for the Palisades Fire. Winds gusts up to 60 MPH are expected to continue through Thursday. pic.twitter.com/QHKIh6u6FD

  — L.A. County Fire Department (@LACoFDPIO) January 8, 2025

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  According to PowerOutage.US, nearly 300,000 customers across the area are without power.

  

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X that 1,400 firefighters have been delayed in the area to “combat these unprecedented fires.”

  A dire situation is unfolding tonight as wildfires rage in Southern California.

  Communities continue to be significantly impacted by the Palisades and Eaton Fires. pic.twitter.com/75nPVo24l6

  — CIRA (@CIRA_CSU) January 8, 2025

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  “Emergency officials, firefighters, and first responders are all hands on deck through the night to do everything possible to protect lives,” Newsom said.

  California has deployed 1400+ firefighting personnel & hundreds of prepositioned assets to combat these unprecedented fires in LA.

  Emergency officials, firefighters, and first responders are all hands on deck through the night to do everything possible to protect lives.

  — Governor Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 8, 2025

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  Malibu City authorities have urged residents to leave immediately. 

  🚨 Malibu urges all residents not under evacuation orders prepare to leave. #PalisadesFire is uncontained, fueled by Santa Ana winds. Evacuate now, especially if you need extra time or have pets/livestock. Find your evacuation zone at https://t.co/93cHDtDbVt. Avoid south/east PCH pic.twitter.com/fHzFSpigse

  — City of Malibu (@CityMalibu) January 8, 2025

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  Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is nowhere to be found because she is attending the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama in Accra, Ghana.

  But-but-but global warming… 

  The #PalisadesFire 🔥 isn’t driven by climate change. These winds aren’t unusual. This is about poor fire management (like not clearing underbrush) & building in fire-prone areas. 🌲 Fires are natural… and historically far worse than today in California.

  📜”Approximately 1.8… pic.twitter.com/sUWYapLSDP

  — Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki (@MatthewWielicki) January 8, 2025

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  Scenes of the inferno:

  This is by far the craziest video from the fire in Los Angeles. This guy is filming huge walls of fire surrounding a house they’re in, and there’s another person and a dog. I have no idea why they didn’t evacuate or what happened to them. Let’s hope they’re okay. #PalisadesFire pic.twitter.com/QYtsBSKvdl

  — Sia Kordestani (@SiaKordestani) January 8, 2025

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  NEW: Bulldozer is being used to move abandoned cars out of the way as the Palisades Fire continues to rip through southern California.

  The fire has grown to a whopping 1300 acres as wind speeds continue to increase.

  Actor Steve Guttenberg is urging locals to keep their keys in… pic.twitter.com/ORPClU4e37

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 8, 2025

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  More devastating images from the #PalisadesFire. An unknown number of homes and other structures have been lost. The fire was last mapped at 2,900 acres but is likely much larger. Live coverage: https://t.co/0wfQNmlGWx
  (AP Photos) pic.twitter.com/OOZFAt95uo

  — KTLA (@KTLA) January 8, 2025

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  View from the sky above LA.
  Pacific Palisades and Malibu engulfed in flames. Absolutely Horrific. pic.twitter.com/Q5O8XgEHng

  — Dan Hellie (@DanHellie) January 8, 2025

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  Across from Dukes Malibu now!! pic.twitter.com/IPXSpqkqos

  — HeloGoldy (@HeloGoldy) January 8, 2025

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  Evil global warming? 

  The homeless were starting fires in California today, possibly being the cause for the mass wild fires in LA.

  Another reason why the mentally deranged need to be taken off the streets.pic.twitter.com/pvfHjcTmQh

  — JohnRocker (@itsJohnRocker) January 8, 2025

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  Or the homeless starting fires?

  *   *   * 

  A brush fire that has spread to over 1,200 acres in Los Angeles amid a massive wind storm has prompted a mass evacuation in the upscale Pacific Palisades area on Tuesday.

  🚨🇺🇸 BIDEN CANCELS EVENT AS WINDSTORM FUELS PALISADES FIRE FORCING EVACUATIONS

  The windstorm fueling the Palisades Fire has forced mandatory evacuations and canceled Biden’s event in Thermal, CA.

  UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain warns, “Just about everything is going to get… pic.twitter.com/aVKr0okLas

  — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 7, 2025

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  “Evacuate now from the area of Palisades…” officials warned on X. “Those not in the evacuation area should shelter in place.”

  LAFD: Evacuate now from the area of Palisades Area. Those not in the evacuation area should shelter in place. Evacuation order for Palisades Fire. Maps and information can be found at https://t.co/GihYtg2yPf https://t.co/kMAzuc7uaf

  — LA City Emergency Alerts (@NotifyLA) January 7, 2025

  The Palisades – home to numerous A-list celebrities, has roughly 9,400 homes and 27,000 residents. After the fire broke out, smoke plumes spread quickly toward structures and homes – including a large area of Topanga Canyon, tucked-away community with a single road in and out.

   

  

   

  Meanwhile, the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Tuesday issued an air quality alert for the Santa Monica Mountains “due to increased fine particle pollution from wildfire smoke,” which has now traveled as far east as Diamond Bar, located around 30 miles from downtown LA.

  Massive fire above my neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, in #LosAngeles. Evacuating. pic.twitter.com/vJI06iWa1X

  — Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) January 7, 2025

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  Officials shut down all traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Canyon Boulevard – causing (greater than usual) traffic jams that could be seen all over.

  California: The structure loss will likely be huge from the Palisades Fire. #wildfire #cafire

  The flame lengths off this fire after making a slope reversal are insane. Firefighters have their work cut out for them. Yo Congress, still plan on cutting wildland firefighter pay?… pic.twitter.com/rjJRLpCf2k

  — The Hotshot Wake Up (@HotshotWake) January 7, 2025

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  Actor James Woods has posted several videos to X showing the fire raging near his house.

  Leaving pic.twitter.com/yJDQ8xIhbI

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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  Two houses from us… pic.twitter.com/5lx6kMqdmN

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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  People are abandoning their cars in the street…

  KTLA’s @GeneKangTV reports from the perimeter of the #PalisadesFire where crews needed to clear vehicles using a bulldozer to make access for firefighters. Live coverage: https://t.co/ZEEfGXODEx pic.twitter.com/ziOctuFD7X

  — KTLA (@KTLA) January 7, 2025

  We’ve counted at least 7 homes in Pacific Palisades destroyed by flames as the fire continues to spread rapidly. Not sure if firefighters are struggling to get to this area or what, we’ve tried grabbing water hoses ourselves. #PalisadesFire pic.twitter.com/nv1P3s1XEP

  — Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) January 7, 2025

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  Developing…

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 19:15

• Maduro Says Americans & Ukrainians Among Group Of 'Mercenaries' Detained
  Maduro Says Americans & Ukrainians Among Group Of ‘Mercenaries’ Detained

  This kind of bizarre headline seems to only keep coming out of Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro says that US nationals are among a group of ‘mercenaries’ detained by authorities.

  Maduro claimed in a Tuesday announcement that seven foreign mercenaries, including Ukrainians and Americans, were caught in the act of plotting to attack and destabilize the country’s leadership. “Just today we’ve captured seven foreign mercenaries, including two important mercenaries from the United States,” he said.

  He described that the group also included two Colombian hitmen captured “in different places” as well as “three mercenaries who came from Ukraine, from the war in Ukraine, to bring violence to the country.”

  

  The two Americans were characterized as “very high level” and “important” mercenaries; however, no further details of the identities of the detained have been released.

  Maduro claimed the group had planned “to carry out attacks on the leaders of the revolution” – in reference to Bolivarian socialism popularized which goes back to his mentor and prior leader Hugo Chavez.

  It’s possible the group is being subject to severe interrogation, or even torture: “I am sure that in the next few hours, they will confess,” Maduro additionally stated.

  Key context for all this is the Biden administration recognizing and welcoming into the US a new Venezuelan ‘interim president’:

  The announcement of the detention of the foreign nationals comes just hours after US President Joe Biden welcomed exiled Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia to the United States.

  Biden expressed his support for a “peaceful transfer back to democratic rule” in Venezuela and cautioned against further repression.

  The US and other neighboring countries believe Gonzalez Urrutia won a July presidential election by a landslide and that official results were fudged.

  The opposition is in the meantime calling for “millions” of Venezuelans to protest Maduro’s Friday inauguration to a third six-year term, which the US says was based on a rigged election.

  But as the AP points out, opposition leadership has been in shambles: “Whether people will protest against Maduro on Friday remains to be seen since the government’s post-election repression campaign, including the arrests of more than 2,000 people, has had a chilling effect. And even if opposition supporters decide to demonstrate, it is unclear who would lead them,” it writes.

  President Maduro: Seven foreign mercenaries with intentions to commit terrorism in Venezuela were captured today, of Colombian, US and Ukrainian nationalities. pic.twitter.com/u1VsZ1bQiF

  — Camila (@camilapress) January 8, 2025

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  The timing is also interesting given that in less that two weeks, Maduro’s archnemesis Donald Trump returns to the White House. Maduro has already accused Trump of seeking to orchestrate regime change in his country in order to take the oil.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 18:50

• They Really Do Want To Reduce The Population…
  They Really Do Want To Reduce The Population…

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The End Of The American Dream blog,

  There is a clear consensus among the global elite that overpopulation is the primary cause of the most important problems that our world is facing today.

  

  Many of them are completely convinced that humans are literally a “plague” upon the Earth and that extreme measures are required to prevent us from destroying the entire planet.  

  To the elite, everything from global warming to our growing economic problems can be directly traced back to a lack of population control.  They warn that if nothing is done about our exploding population, humanity will be facing a future full of poverty, war and suffering on a filthy, desolate planet.  They complain that it “costs too much” to keep elderly patients that are terminally ill alive, and they eagerly promote “family planning” in developing nations as a way to combat population growth.  Of course just about anything that reduces the human population in any way is a positive thing for those that believe in this philosophy.  This very twisted philosophy is being promoted in our movies, in our television shows, in our music, in countless books, on many of our most prominent websites, and it is being taught at top colleges and universities all over the world.  The people that are promoting this philosophy have very, very deep pockets, and they are actually convinced that they are helping to “save the world” by controlling the growth of the human population. 

  In fact, many of them truly believe that they are engaged in a “life or death” struggle for the fate of the planet.

  The population of the world is currently sitting just above 8 billion, and the UN expects it to peak at 10.3 billion later this century…

  The world’s population is expected to grow by more than 2 billion people in the next decades and peak in the 2080s at around 10.3 billion, a major shift from a decade ago, a new report by the United Nations said Thursday.

  From the time of Charles Darwin all the way to today, we have been relentlessly warned about what would happen if something was not done to reduce population growth.

  Of course the dire consequences that we were warned about have never actually come to fruition.

  But that hasn’t stopped the elite from continuing to issue even more warnings.

  The following are 47 shocking population control quotes from the global elite that will make you want to lose your lunch…

  1. Charles Darwin: “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

  2. Bill Gates: “The problem is that the population is growing the fastest where people are less able to deal with it. So it’s in the very poorest places that you’re going to have a tripling in population by 2050. (…) And we’ve got to make sure that we help out with the tools now so that they don’t have an impossible situation later.”

  3. John D. Rockefeller: “The population problem must be recognized by government as a principal element in long-range planning.”

  4. David Rockefeller: “The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.”

  5. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class”

  6. CNN Founder Ted Turner: “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

  7. HBO personality Bill Maher: “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving—that’s what I’m for. . . . It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”

  8. UK Television Presenter Sir David Attenborough: “We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now”

  9. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “The primary challenge facing our species is the reproduction of our species itself…It is time we had a grown-up discussion about the optimum quantity of human beings in this country and on this planet…All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control.”

  10. Dave Foreman, Earth First Co-Founder: “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”

  11. Paul Ehrlich, a former  science adviser to president George W. Bush and the author of “The Population Bomb”: “Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism… of sexism… of religious intolerance… of war… of gross economic inequality. But if you don’t solve the population problem, you’re not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem.”

  12. Richard Branson: “The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”

  13. Environmental activist Roger Martin: “On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are, the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”

  14. Al Gore: “One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principal ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children… You have to educate girls and empower women. And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”

  15. MIT professor Penny Chisholm: “The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the developing countries to drop as fast as we can. And that will determine the level at which humans will level off on earth.”

  16. Julia Whitty, a columnist for Mother Jones: “The only known solution to ecological overshoot is to decelerate our population growth faster than it’s decelerating now and eventually reverse it—at the same time we slow and eventually reverse the rate at which we consume the planet’s resources. Success in these twin endeavors will crack our most pressing global issues: climate change, food scarcity, water supplies, immigration, health care, biodiversity loss, even war. On one front, we’ve already made unprecedented strides, reducing global fertility from an average 4.92 children per woman in 1950 to 2.56 today—an accomplishment of trial and sometimes brutally coercive error, but also a result of one woman at a time making her individual choices. The speed of this childbearing revolution, swimming hard against biological programming, rates as perhaps our greatest collective feat to date.”

  17. Colorado State University Professor Philip Cafaro in a paper entitled “Climate Ethics and Population Policy”: “Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change. Indeed, significantly reducing current human numbers may be necessary in order to do so.”

  18. Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka: “I have two grandchildren and I want them to inherit a stable Earth. But I fear for them. Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper. We are behaving like bacteria growing on an agar plate, flourishing until natural limits are reached or until another microbe colonizes and takes over, using them as their resource. In addition to our extremely high population density, we are social and mobile, exactly the conditions that favor growth and spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes. I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves. This idea has been espoused by ecologists for at least four decades and is nothing new. People just don’t want to hear it.”

  19. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General from 1997-2006: “The idea that population growth guarantees a better life — financially or otherwise — is a myth that only those who sell nappies, prams and the like have any right to believe.”

  20. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UN Under-Secretary-General from 2000-2010: “We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health.”

  21. Bill Nye: “In 1750, there were about a billion humans in the world. Now, there are well over seven billion people in the world. It more than doubled in my lifetime. So all these people trying to live the way we live in the developed world is filling the atmosphere with a great deal more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than existed a couple of centuries ago. It’s the speed at which it is changing that is going to be troublesome for so many large populations of humans around the world.”

  22. Actress Cameron Diaz: “I think women are afraid to say that they don’t want children because they’re going to get shunned. But I think that’s changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don’t have kids than those that do. And, honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”

  23. Democrat strategist Steven Rattner: “WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”

  24. Matthew Yglesias, a business and economics correspondent for Slate, in an article entitled “The Case for Death Panels, in One Chart”: “But not only is this health care spending on the elderly the key issue in the federal budget, our disproportionate allocation of health care dollars to old people surely accounts for the remarkable lack of apparent cost effectiveness of the American health care system. When the patient is already over 80, the simple fact of the matter is that no amount of treatment is going to work miracles in terms of life expectancy or quality of life.”

  25. Stephen Hawking: “In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9 per cent per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.”

  26. Gloria Steinem: “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal chords has to be an opera singer.”

  27. Jane Goodall: “It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.”

  28. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

  29. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

  30. Salon columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams in an article entitled “So What If Abortion Ends Life?”: “All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.”

  31. Paul Ehrlich: “Basically, then, there are only two kinds of solutions to the population problem. One is a ‘birth rate solution,’ in which we find ways to lower the birth rate. The other is a ‘death rate solution,’ in which ways to raise the death rate — war, famine, pestilence — find us.”

  32. Alberto Giubilini of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and Francesca Minerva of the University of Melbourne in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics: “[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”

  33. Nina Fedoroff, a key adviser to Hillary Clinton: “We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people.”

  34. Barack Obama’s primary  science adviser, John Holdren: “A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.”

  35. Another quote from John Holdren: “If population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.”

  36. David Brower, the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club: “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

  37. Maurice Strong: “Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.”

  38. Thomas Ferguson, former official in the U.S. State Department Office of Population Affairs: “There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it…”

  39. Mikhail Gorbachev: “We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”

  40. Jacques Costeau: “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”

  41. Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola: “If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die”

  42. Author Dan Brown: “Overpopulation is an issue so profound that all of us need to ask what should be done.”

  43. Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”

  44. Ashley Judd: “It’s unconscionable to breed, with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries.”

  45. John Guillebaud, professor of family planning at University College London: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.”

  46. Bill Gates: “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”

  47. Charles Darwin: “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

  *  *  *

  Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 18:25

• Ukraine Says Ready To Replace 'Putin-Friendly' Hungary In EU & NATO
  Ukraine Says Ready To Replace ‘Putin-Friendly’ Hungary In EU & NATO

  The long-running war of words and denunciations exchanged between Kiev and Budapest has shown no signs of abating. This week Ukraine is now saying it can replace Hungary in the European Union and NATO if Viktor Orbán keeps cozying up to Putin.

  The bombastic statement was issued by Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Wednesday, and was also made available on X. The statement was formulated in response to the “latest manipulative statements from the leadership of Hungary regarding Ukraine’s decision not to extend the transit agreement with the aggressor state, Russia, from 2025 onwards.”

  

  Ukraine said it “would be ready to fill any vacant space in the EU and NATO if Hungary chooses to vacate it” in favor of its membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), or the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

  Formed in 2002, the CSTO has of late been overseen by Putin and originally consists of the six post-Soviet states of Russia, Belarus,  Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

  “If Hungary genuinely wishes to contribute to ending the war, it should start by not undermining unity within the EU and instead work to strengthen the energy security and independence of its own country and citizens alongside the rest of Europe and the United States,” the statement said further.

  Prime Minister Orbán has made himself known as a constant vocal critic of Ukraine ever gaining access to NATO membership. He has further demanded more serious diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the war, standing with Slovakia’s Fico in this regard.

  All of this also comes amid the backdrop of the gas row triggered by Ukraine’s refusal to renew a 5-year transit deal with Moscow. Orban’s government has blamed Kiev for a some 20% rise in natrual gas prices on the European market.

  Slovakia and Austria in addition to Hungary remain heavily reliant on Russian gas purchased through Gazprombank, despite its being under US and European-led sanctions.

  Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the government is protecting utility price reductions even after the 20 percent rise in gas prices in Europe on the back of Ukraine’s decision to cease gas deliveries from Russia. https://t.co/MS2nrTLwIO

  — About Hungary (@abouthungary) January 8, 2025

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  Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has charged Ukraine with intentionally putting Europe in an economic bind by not renewing the gas transit deal with Russia.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 18:00

• Conspiracy Fact? Higher Fluoride Levels Linked To Lower IQ Scores In Children, New Review Finds
  Conspiracy Fact? Higher Fluoride Levels Linked To Lower IQ Scores In Children, New Review Finds

  Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times,

  Following the August 2024 release of a U.S. government report linking higher levels of fluoride in drinking water to lower IQ in children, a new review conducted by the National Institutes of Health appears to confirm those findings.

  

  The new analysis, published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, found that fluoride exposure exceeding 1.5 milligrams per liter (mg/L) was associated with reduced intelligence among children.

  The study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), took nine years to complete and is the largest meta-analysis to date on the health effects of fluoride.

  The studies reviewed measured fluoride levels in drinking water and in urine. The authors used urinary fluoride as a proxy for total fluoride exposure.

  74 Studies Reviewed

  Among the 74 reviewed studies, 64 found that higher levels of fluoride exposure were linked to lower IQ in children. The strength of this association is considered moderate to large.

  Thirty-one studies reviewed noticed a dose-response, such that increased fluoride levels in drinking water were linked to further decreases in children’s IQ results.

  However, the relationship between fluoride and lower IQ scores only persisted when fluoride concentrations in drinking water were above 1.5 mg/L, higher than the current fluoride drinking water standard of 0.7 mg/L.

  The 1.5 mg/L cutoff is the same concentration identified in the NTP’s August 2024 report. The report was cited over 120 times in a lawsuit that led the court to rule that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must revise its current drinking water standard of 0.7 mg/L.

  When evaluating urinary fluoride, the researchers found that every increase of 1 mg/L in urinary fluoride was associated with an average decrease of between 1.14 and 1.63 IQ points.

  Fluoride can cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in areas of the brain responsible for cognition and memory, although its effects on the brain remain unclear.

  The study’s findings inform future risk-benefit assessments related to fluoride exposure, the authors wrote, especially highlighting the significant contributions of water and drinks made with fluoridated water, like soft drinks, fruit juice, beer, and some bottled water, to total fluoride ingestion.

  In the United States, it is estimated that approximately 40 percent to 70 percent of fluoride intake originates from fluoridated drinking water.

  The World Health Organization has established the safe upper intake level of fluoride in drinking water to be 1.5 mg/L, and the U.S. Public Health Service recommends a fluoride concentration of 0.7 mg/L of drinking water. However, “fluoride levels above 1.5 mg/L are found in wells and community water systems that serve nearly 3 million people in the United States,” Christine Bruske Flowers, director of communications at the National Institutes of Health, told The Epoch Times.

  Food & Water Watch v. EPA

  In a September 2024 federal court case in California, environmental nonprofit Food & Water Watch sued the EPA, arguing that adding fluoride to drinking water is harmful. The judge ruled in favor of Food & Water Watch, finding that the current level of fluoride in drinking water (0.7 mg/L) poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s IQ.

  The ruling was based upon the NTP’s report, which found that fluoride concentrations close to the EPA’s current standard posed a risk to neurodevelopment.

  The EPA is now required to take action to address this risk, which could lead to significant changes in how we treat drinking water.

  Experts in Disagreement

  Despite the review’s findings, experts remain at odds about the meaning of the results.

  Studies that have suggested a link between childhood fluoride exposure and reduced IQ “have had their limitations,” Suparna Mahalaha, an assistant professor at Case Western University School of Dental Medicine who was not associated with the study, told The Epoch Times.

  In an editorial published along with the new study, Dr. Steven M. Levy, a dentist not involved in the study, pointed out that there is “no evidence” of an adverse effect at the lower fluoride levels commonly used in community water fluoridation systems.

  One example he cited in opposition to the NTP’s study was the researchers’ use of urinary fluoride as a way to measure long-term fluoride exposure, stating that such measures are invalid because “fluoride has a short half-life and there is substantial variation within days and from day to day.”

  Flowers emphasized the importance of fluoridated water and its use for decades to reduce dental cavities and improve general oral health.

  However, the increased modes of fluoride exposure can also put pregnant women and children at risk.

  Fluoride intake through food and drinks made with fluoridated water, toothpaste, and mouthwashes may increase children and pregnant women’s total fluoride exposure “and may affect fetal, infant, and child neurodevelopment,” Flowers added.

  Mahalaha noted that the concentration of fluoride in drinking water is much less than what is added to toothpaste and mouth rinses, which is why it’s essential to ensure children do not swallow these products.

  Toothpaste tubes carry warnings against ingestion because excessive fluoride intake can be harmful.

  “When applying toothpaste to a child’s toothbrush, less than a pea size amount is sufficient and safe,” she said.

  “From a public health perspective, in my opinion, high doses of ingested fluoride, and other things like sugar, processed foods, social media, and screen time all negatively affect the development of a child,” Mahalaha said.

  *  *  *

  In November, when RFK Jr. raised his concerns about fluoride’s effects, NPR was quick to attack the ‘conspiracist’…

  Despite the clear benefits, conspiracy theories around fluoride have existed for almost as long as the water has been fluorinated, according to Matthew Dallek, a political historian at the George Washington University.

  “In a way the conspiracy theory about fluoride in the drinking water is one of the original public health conspiracy theories,” he says.

  …

  Experts were swift to condemn the promise to remove fluoride from the water.

  “Fluoride has been well tested. It clearly and definitively decreases cavities, and is not associated with any clear evidence of the chronic diseases mentioned in that tweet,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a researcher and physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

  “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a science denialist. He makes up his own scientific truths and ignores the actual truths,” Offit says.

  Who’s the science-denier now Mr.Offit?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 17:40

• NVDA Dips After Biden Doubles Down On AI Chip Export Ban Ahead Of Trump
  NVDA Dips After Biden Doubles Down On AI Chip Export Ban Ahead Of Trump

  With less than two weeks to go until President Trump takes over The White House – and 24 hours after he unveiled a new $20 billion major investment from Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani to build new data centers across the US – the Biden administration plans one additional round of restrictions on the export of AI chips from the likes of Nvidia in a final push in his effort to keep advanced technologies out of the hands of China and Russia.

  Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that Biden wants to curb the sale of AI chips used in data centers on both a country and company basis, with the goal of concentrating AI development in friendly nations and getting businesses around the world to align with American standards

  The regulations, which could be issued as soon as Friday, would create three tiers of chip trade restrictions, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

  • At the top level, a small number of US allies would maintain essentially unmitigated access to American chips.

  • A group of adversaries, meanwhile, would be effectively blocked from importing the semiconductors.

  • And the vast majority of the world would face limits on the total computing power that can go to one country.

  

  Countries in the last group would be able to bypass their national limits – and get their own, significantly higher caps – by agreeing to a set of US government security requirements and human rights standards, one of the people said.

  That type of designation – called a validated end user, or VEU – aims to create a set of trusted entities that develop and deploy AI in secure environments around the world.

  Nvidia explained its dissatisfaction at Biden’s decision in the most diplomatic manner:

  “A last-minute rule restricting exports to most of the world would be a major shift in policy that would not reduce the risk of misuse but would threaten economic growth and US leadership,” Nvidia said.

  Every data center and business is already incorporating AI through what the company calls accelerating computing, Nvidia said.

  “The worldwide interest in accelerated computing for everyday applications is a tremendous opportunity for the US to cultivate, promoting the economy and adding US jobs,” the chipmaker said.

  NVDA shares are down just over 1% in the after-market…

  

  …which pushes the giant tech company into ‘correction’ – down over 10% from its $3 trillion-plus peak market cap.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 17:20

• LGBT Liberals Discover Second Amendment Over Fears Of Being Thrown In 'Camps' By Trump
  LGBT Liberals Discover Second Amendment Over Fears Of Being Thrown In ‘Camps’ By Trump

  Via Headline USA,

  LGBT liberals are reportedly buying firearms over fears they’ll be rounded up and placed in “concentration camps” under the incoming Trump administration, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

  

  The new gun-toting groups, including the Liberal Gun Club, the Socialist Rifle Association, and Pink Pistols, claimed they’ve received “thousands” of firearm training requests since Trump won the 2024 election.

  “Three months before the election, that’s when the alarm bells started to ring,” a 24-year-old transgender activist told the outlet, adding that armed leftists will now be able to fight back “in the event of hate crimes or terrorist attacks.”

  The activist added minorities should also take their Second Amendment rights seriously, since “minorities that are armed are more difficult to legally oppress.”

  Left-winger Matthew Thompson said he purchased his first gun in 2016 after Trump was elected the first time, though he claimed he was inspired more by the mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 

  “The people I’ve been seeing on the Left and the gay people who are out purchasing guns for the first time, it’s all about self-defense and fear,” he claimed. “We’re not looking to arm up and storm the [U.S. Capitol]. We just don’t want to be put in concentration camps.”

  Trump has not once suggested he is anti-LGBT.

  In fact, Trump became the first Republican nominee to mention LGBT issues during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, shortly after the Pulse nightclub shooting.

  “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you,” Trump said at the time.

  Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2016

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

  LGBT leftists aren’t the only ones with deranged fantasies about being rounded up by Trump’s fantasies. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., also bizarrely claimed last year that she might end up a prisoner in one of Trump’s alleged “internment camps.”

  “I get worried enough when he talks about what he’s going to do to his political enemies, but he has talked about them in this with different groups of people,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 17:00

• Vital LA Firefighting Equipment Was Handed To Ukraine, Reports Show, As Americans Now Caught In Raging Inferno
  Vital LA Firefighting Equipment Was Handed To Ukraine, Reports Show, As Americans Now Caught In Raging Inferno

  As of Wednesday afternoon the fast-moving, wind-driven fires sweeping through the Los Angeles area are still zero percent contained, resulting in ongoing evacuations for 80,000+ residents.

  Hundreds of thousands of residential and commercial locations have been left without power in the LA area as the natural disaster has become so large in proportion that it has captured the nation’s attention. Many have been naturally focused on ‘thoughts and prayers’ for heroic LA and California firefighters, and their hoped-for ability to push back the raging inferno. But several local headlines from prior years make clear that area firefighters could have had more resources to draw from, if significant emergency response supplies and items weren’t sent to Zelensky…

  

  “Los Angeles County fire crews are sending some of their extra equipment to firefighters in Ukraine,” a local March 2022 story reads. “The plane carrying that much-needed surplus equipment, such as hoses, nozzles, turnouts, helmets, body armor and other personal protective gear, is expected to take off Friday.”

  This began in the opening months of the Russian invasion, and appears to have continued at various times over the last couple years, with large expensive items like firetrucks having been shipped oversees as well.

  Putting America “Ukraine first” is the Biden bad foreign policy idea that keeps on giving… and taking away from American citizens caught in the throes of emergency and disaster

  Gavin Newsome gave Ukraine fire trucks.

  This post is from 6/1/2024

  WTF IS HAPPENING!!!!!! https://t.co/YUCbykb0Bj

  — Kylie Jane Kremer (@KylieJaneKremer) January 8, 2025

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

  While supporters of such programs argue that this was all surplus and ‘retired’ and extra equipment, we are quite sure that in these current dire circumstances surrounding Los Angeles any such ‘surplus’ could have been used and is still badly needed.

  President-elect Trump himself has highlighted the ongoing shortages being experienced among emergency crews in the area…

  

  Meanwhile, as California burns Biden is rushing many billions more in taxpayer dollars out the door to go to Ukraine.

  Rick Caruso, billionaire real estate developer, called into LA local news:

  “This is like a third world country… there is no water coming out of the fire hydrants. LA Mayor Karen Bass is on a foreign trip to Ghana.”pic.twitter.com/iOjXPkWcko

  — Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) January 8, 2025

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

  And Biden is still planning a massive final aid package for Ukraine, so that as much as possible gets into Kiev’s coffers prior to Trump being sworn in on Jan.20. How about diverting some of those billions to actual US citizens in LA?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/08/2025 – 16:40

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• The Second Matrix: From Propaganda To Programming
  The Second Matrix: From Propaganda To Programming

  Authored by Josh Stylman via substack,

  Beyond The First Veil

  In ‘Reading Between the Lies,’ we explored how to recognize patterns of institutional deception—the carefully crafted narratives that keep humanity trapped in a matrix of perceptions.

  Theodore Dalrymple identified how this first matrix of control operates in totalitarian regimes: “In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”

  This principle of forced participation hasn’t disappeared – it has evolved. Today’s system doesn’t merely demand silence but active complicity in its narratives, weaponizing resistance itself as a means of influence. Watching trusted voices expose real corruption, only to redirect into managed solutions, reveals an even deeper pattern: The system doesn’t just create propaganda – it creates contained paths for those who see through propaganda. Breaking free from mainstream programming is only the first step. What follows is both subtler and just as disturbing. Untethering from institutional narratives creates an immediate vulnerability—the need for new answers, new leaders, new direction. Those who steer the first matrix wouldn’t leave the off-ramps unsupervised.

  This illuminates the deeper mechanics of the second matrix: capturing awakening through sophisticated channels of inauthentic opposition.

  

  The Mechanics of Controlled Opposition

  The pattern becomes clear when we examine how systemic criticism is managed: Those who expose corruption are permitted to speak, but only within careful boundaries. Take banking for instance – even those who reveal central banking’s predatory nature rarely demand abolition. The 2008 crisis pushed financial fraud into mainstream awareness through popular exposés like ‘The Big Short.’ Yet understanding bred only mistrust – no accountability, just bailouts for perpetrators and a more fragile system for everyone else. Like any sophisticated confidence game, it works in stages: first gain trust through real revelations, then build dependency through exclusive “insider” knowledge, finally redirect that trust toward constrained outcomes. Watch how alternative media platforms follow this pattern: expose genuine corruption, build devoted following, then subtly shift narrative focus away from systemic accountability. Each revelation seems to lead deeper into a labyrinth of coordinated awakening. Note: I’m deliberately avoiding naming specific targets – this analysis isn’t about creating new heroes or villains, but recognizing patterns that transcend individuals.

  What makes this model so effective is that the same institutions that transformed money from gold to paper also convert genuine resistance into managed opposition. As I wrote in ‘Fiat Everything,’ just as synthetic currency replaces real value, fiat opposition movements offer synthetic versions of independent awakening – containing just enough truth to feel real while keeping opposition within safe boundaries.

  Understanding these patterns of controlled opposition can feel overwhelming. Each revelation seems to lead to another layer of deception. It’s like discovering you’re in a maze only to realize there are mazes within mazes. Some get lost documenting every turn – debating financial system minutiae, arguing over medical protocols, dissecting geopolitical chess moves. Or in ‘conspiracy circles’ – was the virus isolated? How did the Towers really go down? What’s really on Antarctica? While these questions matter, getting stuck in endless maze-mapping misses the point entirely. Healthy debate and disagreement are natural – and even healthy – in truth-seeking movements – but when these debates consume all energy and attention, they prevent effective action toward core goals.

  The Research Journey

  For the last few years, I’ve been deeply immersed in uncovering the mechanisms of control—not as an abstract exercise, but alongside a team that includes some of my closest friends, following trails that seemed to lead to truth. The revelations have been staggering – fundamental ‘facts’ we grew up accepting have been exposed as complete fabrications. We’ve been humbled twice over – first in unlearning what we thought we knew, then in discovering our own certainties about new paths were wrong. Paths that appeared revolutionary led to sophisticated dead ends. Communities that felt authentic revealed themselves as engineered channels.

  The hardest truth isn’t just recognizing deception – it’s accepting that we might never know the full story while still needing to act on what we can verify. What began as research into specific deceptions revealed something far more profound: While devastating physical wars rage in multiple regions, a deeper conflict unfolds silently across the planet – a war for the freedom of human consciousness itself. This is what World War III looks like – not just bombs and bullets, but the systematic engineering of human perception.

  This pattern of building trust before redirection reflects a deeper system of control, operating on the ancient alchemical principle of Solve et Coagula – first dissolve (break apart), then coagulate (reform under control). The process is precise: When people begin recognizing institutional deception, natural coalitions form across traditional divides. Workers unite against central bank policies. Parents organize against pharmaceutical mandates. Communities resist corporate land grabs.

  But watch what happens next – these unified movements get systematically dissolved. Consider how quickly unified resistance fractured after October 7th, how the trucker protests dissolved into partisan narratives. Each fragment splinters further – from questioning authority to competing theories, from united action to tribal infighting.

  This isn’t random fragmentation, it’s calculated dissolution. Once broken apart, these fragments can be reformed (coagulated) into controlled dialectical channels, as people revert to prior programming about issues that supersede their unity.

  Watch how the confidence game operates in truth movements: First comes legitimate revelation – real documents, genuine whistleblowers, undeniable evidence. Trust builds through authentic insight. Then subtle redirection begins. Just as they slice society into ever-smaller fragments along political, racial, and cultural lines, they splinter truth movements into competing camps. Unity becomes division. Action becomes debate. Resistance becomes content.

  This systematic fragmentation of awakening movements reflects a deeper historical pattern – one that traces the evolution of mass perception control from crude propaganda to sophisticated biodigital manipulation.

  From Propaganda to Programming

  The first matrix shaped thoughts through direct programming. The path from Bernays to biodigital oversight follows a clear progression: first manipulate mass psychology, then digitize behavior, finally merge with biology itself. Each phase builds on the previous – from studying human nature, to tracking it, to directly engineering it. From Bernays discovering how to manipulate mass psychology through unconscious desires, to Tavistock refining social engineering, to algorithmic behavior modification – each phase brings more sophisticated tools for reality manipulation. Digital technology accelerated this evolution: social media algorithms perfect attention capture, smartphones enable constant behavioral monitoring, AI systems predict and shape responses.

  Now, as these digital tools merge with biological interventions – from mood-altering pharmaceuticals to brain-computer interfaces – they approach complete governance over human perception itself. What began with crude propaganda evolved into precise digital manipulation of attention and behavior. The second matrix creates approved channels for those who break free – an engineered ecosystem of controlled alternatives. Just as coordinated media narratives trained the professional class to outsource their thinking to ‘authoritative sources,’ the biodigital matrix now offers to outsource their sensibility itself – promising enhanced cognition while delivering deeper programming. This represents the latest evolution in perception management: At first, they simply denied conspiracies existed. When that became impossible due to undeniable evidence, they created orchestrated channels for awakening minds to follow.

  The OJ Simpson trial marked a crucial shift in this strategy – it trained society to process serious investigations as entertainment spectacle. As Marshall McLuhan famously observed, ‘the medium is the message’ – the format of spectacular media entertainment itself reshapes how we process truth, regardless of content. What began as legitimate questions about police corruption and institutional bias became a ratings-driven soap opera. The same pattern continues today – Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes become Netflix entertainment while his clients remain free, and the alleged Mangione shooting spawns multiple streaming productions within days of the event, even before the investigation concludes. The Las Vegas and New Orleans incidents last week offer a stark demonstration: within hours, potentially disruptive events are channeled into competing narratives, while the entertainment apparatus stands ready to transform any serious investigation into consumable content.

  Real revelations about trafficking networks and institutional crime have become binge-worthy content. Whistleblowers become influencers. Declassified documents become TikTok trends. With limited attention spans and infinite content, truth-seeking becomes another form of consumption that pacifies rather than empowers. Watch how enough time passes and ‘conspiracy theories’ become limited hangouts – JFK’s death gets attributed to ‘the mob,’ a convenient decoy from the institutional forces behind it. Similar patterns emerge with 9/11 revelations.

  Here’s my position – extreme as it may seem to my friends still steeped in conventional narratives: we have to consider the possibility that the power structure controls both sides of most major debates. Every mainstream narrative has its approved opposition. Every awakening gets its sanctioned leaders. Every revelation leads to administered channels. Understanding this pattern could lead to paralysis – but it shouldn’t. Instead, it means recognizing we need new ways of thinking and organizing entirely.

  As researcher Whitney Webb observed on X the other day:

  

  Only the designated enemy changes – the push for greater surveillance and oversight remains constant. Each ‘side’ gets its turn feeding fear to its base while the same institutions expand their power.

  Nixon opens China. Clinton pushed NAFTA. Trump accelerates Operation Warp Speed. I’m observing a pattern here – not alleging conspiracy, but noting how political figures often act contrary to their public personas: Nixon, the anti-communist, opens the door to China; Clinton, who campaigned on protecting American workers, pushes through the biggest free trade agreement; Trump, the populist outsider, advances Big Pharma’s agenda. Whether through institutional pressures, political realities, or other forces, these contradictions reveal a sophisticated pattern: the system scripts both sides of major political transformations, ensuring controlled outcomes regardless of who appears to hold power. Many of these figures may themselves be responding to forces they barely understand – useful or manipulated actors rather than conscious orchestrators.

  This dynamic isn’t limited to politicians. Consider Twitter/X, which has spent the last couple of years branding itself as a bastion of free speech while just this week introducing algorithms to amplify ‘positivity.’ Framed as promoting constructive dialogue, it mirrors the same subjective moderation policies once criticized as censorship.

  This pattern of controlled opposition extends through every level of awakening movements. Consider how many of my friends still caught in the first matrix dismiss QAnon followers as complete fools, mocking them as cartoon characters while ignoring the documented institutional corruption the movement has exposed. What they don’t understand is that beneath the theatrical elements lie significant evidence of systemic criminality. I remain open-minded about examining these claims – after all, pattern recognition requires considering evidence without prejudice. But the movement’s core message of ‘trust the plan’ reveals how awakening gets redirected. It transforms active resistance into passive spectatorship, waiting for hidden ‘white hats’ to save them instead of taking meaningful action.

  This is where I draw the line. I can’t outsource my family’s wellbeing to unknown entities or secret plans. This requires constant vigilance – alert to both obvious threats and subtle misdirection. The most dangerous aspect of managed opposition isn’t the information it shares, but how it teaches learned helplessness disguised as hope.

  The Capture of Authentic Movements

  Each new theory and movement adds another layer of complexity, drawing seekers further from meaningful action. The 1960s counterculture went from questioning war and authority to ‘tune in, drop out’ passivity. By the 1980s, former hippies became yuppies, their revolutionary awareness neatly channeled into consumer capitalism. Even today, the anti-war movement shows this pattern – one political side opposes war in Ukraine while supporting it in Gaza, the other reverses these positions. Each side claims to be anti-war when it’s not their preferred conflict. Occupy Wall Street followed the same pattern: beginning with potent exposure of financial corruption, it fragmented into competing social justice causes that left the banking system untouched.

  

  The seduction lies in the truth content. Environmental movements expose corporate pollution but push carbon credits and individual guilt. Social justice movements expose real inequities but redirect into corporate DEI programs. The organic food revolution began as resistance to industrial agriculture but became a premium product category – redirecting real concerns into boutique shopping choices. Each movement contains enough truth to attract awakened minds while setting careful guardrails on acceptable solutions – identifying real problems but advocating solutions that expand institutional power.

  This pattern repeats at every level. Throughout history, power structures have understood the principle of supplying controlled leadership to emerging movements. This pattern continues today across every awakening movement.

  The template is consistent:

  • A politician “bravely” questions vaccines while taking pharma money

  • A pundit “exposes” deep state corruption while defending intelligence agencies

  • A celebrity “fights cancel culture” while pushing digital passports

  • A financial guru “warns” about banking collapse while selling CBDCs

  These patterns of redirection play out vividly today. The medical freedom movement demonstrates this dynamic: Valid concerns about vaccine injuries risk getting redirected into competing theories and circular debates, while accountability remains elusive. The recent MAHA controversy shows shows how even valid food sovereignty concerns can potentially redirect focus from this urgent crisis of vaccine injuries and accountability.

  The crypto world illustrates this pattern: Valid criticism of central banking transforms into tribal warfare between token communities. Each claims exclusive truth while potentially extending the system’s reach. Even reasonable debates about monetary solutions become religious devotion to competing coins. Meanwhile, the original promise of Bitcoin – the first cryptocurrency and its vision of financial autonomy – risks getting co-opted, as blockchain technology is repurposed for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), digital IDs, and automated compliance. The very tools meant to free us from banking surveillance are being repurposed to perfect it. But the fusion of financial control with digital identity creates something far more insidious – a system that can enforce social compliance through access to basic resources, monitor thoughts through transaction patterns, and ultimately merge with our biological existence itself. This architecture isn’t just about controlling money – it’s about programming minds.

  The Biodigital Convergence: Engineering Human Reality

  The fusion of digital and biological control isn’t just changing how we interact – it’s redesigning human perception itself. As social connections move increasingly online, authentic human awareness is being systematically replaced with engineered experiences. Beyond attention hijacking and emotional manipulation, the deepest cost hits us where it hurts most – in our human connections. Every day we see people together physically but separated by screens, missing moments of genuine connection while scrolling through manufactured realities. This artificial construct is set to deepen further – Meta has announced plans to populate Facebook feeds with AI-generated content and bot interactions by 2025, raising questions about authentic human connection on these platforms.

  Big Pharma brought the ability to chemically alter cognizance; Big Tech perfected the ability to digitally direct attention and shape behavior. Their merger isn’t about market share – it’s about complete spectrum dominance over human cognition itself. The same companies that pushed pills to numb a generation now partner with platforms that addict us to digital stimulation. The corporations that profited from ADHD medication collaborate with social media giants that deliberately engineer attention deficit. The entities that marketed antidepressants join forces with algorithm makers who scientifically manipulate emotional responses.

  As Whitney Webb observed about the shifting enemy narrative from ‘Russians’ to ‘Islamists,’ the designated threat changes while surveillance expansion remains constant. The digital ID agenda follows this pattern: while the World Economic Forum presents it as humanitarian aid for financial inclusion, it builds the architecture for comprehensive behavioral monitoring and oversight. Each crisis – whether health, security, or financial – adds new requirements that merge identity, banking, health records, and social tracking into a single unified system. What begins as voluntary participation inevitably becomes mandatory as digital surveillance extends into monitoring and shaping human behavior itself – the perfect staging ground for Central Bank Digital Currency.

  This surveillance architecture represents the merging of two foundational pillars. What began with chemical alterations of mood and thought, then evolved into digital manipulation of attention and behavior, is now fusing into a single architecture for human experiential management. Watch how mental health apps collect behavioral data while promoting medication. Social credit scoring merges with health tracking. The same companies developing digital identity systems partner with pharmaceutical giants. This isn’t future speculation – it’s happening now. While we debate the ethics of AI, they’re quietly building the infrastructure to merge human cognition with digital systems. The transhumanist promise of enhanced awareness through technology masks a darker reality – each integration diminishes natural human perception, replacing genuine consciousness with an engineered simulation. This technological colonization of the human brain seeks to sever our connection to natural awareness and spiritual sovereignty.

  In one of his later lectures, Aldous Huxley, the renowned author of ‘Brave New World,’ offered a chilling prediction about the future of social control: “There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.”

  We’re at a crucial juncture where technological capture of human consciousness is becoming irreversible. Each new generation is born into deeper digital integration, their baseline reality increasingly synthetic. But recognizing this pattern reveals both the threat and its weakness. While they perfect technological tools for control, they can’t fully replicate the power of direct human connection. Every instance of genuine interaction, every moment of unmediated presence, demonstrates what their system can’t capture. The answer isn’t just seeing through lies – it’s creating spaces of human connection that exist outside their control architecture. What makes this moment unprecedented isn’t just the sophistication of control, but its method of implementation – not through force, but through seduction and convenience. Each convenience we embrace, each digital enhancement we accept, brings us closer to their vision of managed awareness.

  Liberating Consciousness, Reclaiming Connection

  Understanding these mechanisms doesn’t mean rejecting technology or retreating into paranoid isolation – it means recognizing that real power begins with autonomy, and learning to engage with modernity on our own terms.

  The battle for our minds requires both awareness and authentic action. While they attempt to engineer behavior through chemicals and algorithms, our power lies first in liberating ourselves, then extending through direct human connection.

  Their endgame – absolute mastery over human perception and cognition – reveals a fundamental weakness: they cannot fully contain liberated minds and authentic human relationships that exist outside their mediated channels. This comprehensive system requires managed opposition at every level, steering us away from genuine awakening and direct engagement.

  The crucial insight is this: The opposite of globalism isn’t nationalism or political movements – it’s individual liberty expressed through local action. Real awakening can’t be programmed or scheduled. It emerges through clear recognition and spreads through genuine connection. When intellectuals at think tanks like Brownstone Institute found common cause with firefighters, the system recognized a dangerous precedent. Unity across traditional societal divides – between intellectuals, professionals, and working people – demonstrates how truly free people can bridge manufactured divisions. While digital networks can facilitate organization, true power manifests in physical community.

  Speaking from experience, these digital networks have been invaluable in my journey – I’ve found kindred spirits, shared insights, and built lasting friendships through online communities. These connections have helped me understand patterns I might never have seen alone. But information sharing is just the first step. The real transformation happens when we take these shared insights off the screen and into our communities, turning digital connections into flesh-and-blood relationships and shared local action.

  This means:

  • Freeing our minds while they push programmed thinking (creating local learning circles to counter their digital-pharmaceutical engineering of thought)

  • Building connections while maintaining individual agency (establishing real communities to resist their social credit systems)

  • Taking action without waiting for consensus (bypassing their arranged opposition channels)

  • Growing food while they push synthetic alternatives (maintaining biological autonomy as they push lab-created dependencies)

  • Building community while they sell digital tribes (creating genuine connection as antidote to technological isolation)

  • Healing ourselves while they market dependencies (developing natural resilience against their biodigital convergence)

  The most powerful truth isn’t a revelation – it’s the recognition that consciousness can transcend their constructed boundaries entirely. The way out requires stepping beyond their endless distractions and reclaiming grounded, authentic action. Their biodigital convergence can only capture souls that follow their prescribed paths. Our essence was never truly bound by their walls.

  ​​Stay vigilant. Question everything. Free your mind and act with intention. The revolution begins with sovereign spirits and grows through genuine connection. Build where they destroy. Create while they deceive. Connect while they divide. The way out of their matrix is with eyes wide open and feet planted firmly in local soil.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 23:25

• Biden Mulls Prisoner Swap With Taliban Involving 'Last Afghan In Guantanamo' 
  Biden Mulls Prisoner Swap With Taliban Involving ‘Last Afghan In Guantanamo’ 

  Less than two weeks to go in his lame-duck presidency before Trump takes office, and President Biden is pursuing the controversial move of emptying out Gitmo further. On Monday the Pentagon confirmed it released 11 Yemeni detainees with suspected ties to al Qaeda from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, after which they are set to begin new lives in Oman, as we detailed earlier. This has shrunk the population of the facility to 15 men.

  None of the detainees have ever been charged with a crime, despite having been in the high-secure military facility for a couple decades or more. The Biden administration has long sought to move forward Obama’s stated goal of seeking to permanently shutdown the notorious facility where torture has been alleged and documented.

  On Tuesday another major potential released has been revealed: the White House is now negotiating with the Taliban which could end in the release of a high-profile prisoner long alleged to have been a close Osama bin Laden associate. Muhammad Rahim al Afghani has long been deemed “the Last Afghan in Guantanamo”.

  

  The Wall Street Journal reports that the Democratic administration “has been discussing a deal with the Taliban since at least July, told the group on Nov. 14 that the U.S. would release Muhammad Rahim al Afghani, who the U.S. government alleges was a senior al Qaeda aide, if the Afghan rulers released George Glezmann, Ryan Corbett and Mahmoud Habibi, American citizens seized in Afghanistan in 2022.”

  Rahim, if the swap goes through, could be freed alongside two others prisoners the Taliban is seeking in exchange for Americans Glezmann and Corbett. However, things are already complicated as the Taliban denies that it is holding Habibi.

  The potential deal has apparently been in the works for several weeks at this point, given national security adviser Jake Sullivan briefed House Foreign Affairs Committee members in a classified session on Dec.17. The WSJ has cited him as saying that no decision has yet been made.

  If Biden goes through with it, he’ll be hammered by Trump and Republicans, and it will also revive criticisms of the botched Afghan withdrawal which ended in the deaths of many American troops as well as Afghan civilians:

  The Taliban’s offer poses a dilemma for Biden. He has prided himself on securing the release of American hostages around the world, bringing home more than 70 people over the past four years. But handing over Rahim, long seen by the U.S. government as a high-profile prisoner, and potentially other Afghan prisoners held in U.S. custody might spark criticism.

  NEWS

  Frustrated With White House, Family of Detained American Reaches Out to Taliban

  The family of George Glezmann, feeling like it is running out of options, has informed the White House it would negotiate directly with the Taliban to try to secure the American hostage’s… pic.twitter.com/hw5NZikQeY

  — Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 2, 2024

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

  But at the same time, Gitmo seems to belong to another era—the ‘Global War on Terror/GWOT’ Bush era of CIA black sites, extraordinary rendition, and the ability of military prosecutors to lock people up for decades without so much as a formal charge.

  Ironically the terror situation globally is arguably far worse than it was when Rahim and other AQ operatives were initially apprehended on central Asian battlefields and locked up, thanks to Washington itself.

  In 2015 the CIA directly helped a coalition of jihadists which make the Gitmo guys look like ‘moderates’ take Idlib province from Assad. These same NATO/Gulf-backed Idlib terrorists now hold all of Syria in the wake of Assad’s overthrow, and the Biden administration has positively celebrated it.

  The real scandal…

  

  The U.S. State Dept.’s own numbers: read the full report HERE at STATE.GOV

  Yet Fox-style conservatives are now going to boil with rage over Biden “selling out America” by freeing Gitmo prisoners, but all the while the same ‘Fox-Cons’ will barely bat an eye over the ISIS-style terrorists now controlling Damascus. The mainstay of the Republican party has also been completely silent over America having armed Sunni hardline jihadists from Libya to Syria for more than the past decade, more content to make a national scandal over who gets released from Gitmo – all the while also dutifully ignoring the obvious Saudi state connections to 9/11.

  And then there’s also the fact that the jihadists of central Asia, including the Taliban itself, were trained and supported by the CIA and allied intelligence services throughout the 1980s as part of the Afghan-Soviet war. The US deep state doesn’t like when average Americans actually dig in to history, where they discover that there are few terrorists or foreign dictators that Washington didn’t initially create or at least support at some point.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 23:00

• How To Survive "The Great Taking" In 2025
  How To Survive “The Great Taking” In 2025

  Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

  It’s a “scheme of central bankers to subjugate humanity by taking all securities, bank deposits, and property financed with debt.”

  

  David Webb, a former hedge fund manager, and Wall Street insider, has blown the lid off a diabolical plan more than 50 years in the making in a shocking new book.

  He calls it The Great Taking.

  I consider it an urgent must-read (available for free here).

  Here’s the synopsis (emphasis mine):

  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.

  If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history.

  Private, closely held control of ALL central banks, and hence of all money creation, has allowed a very few people to control all political parties and governments; the intelligence agencies and their myriad front organizations; the armed forces and the police; the major corporations and, of course, the media. These very few people are the prime movers. Their plans are executed over decades. Their control is opaque.

  To be clear, it is these very few people, who are hidden from you, who are behind this scheme to confiscate all assets, who are waging a hybrid war against humanity.

  Webb shows how the dark forces behind central banking have spent the last 50 years meticulously putting the legal structures in place worldwide to sever property rights for securities.

  Gone are the days of physical paper share certificates and bearer securities, where you had control and ownership of the asset.

  Today, your control and ownership have become increasingly distant as stocks, bonds, and other investments have been centralized away from account holders and rehypothecated—a slimy practice where financial institutions reuse an account holder’s asset for their own purposes, creating multiple claims on the same asset.

  Contrary to what most brokerage account holders believe, they only have the appearance of ownership. If their broker goes bust, the stocks and bonds they think they own will be used to satisfy the other more senior creditors of their broker.

  Webb shows how, during the 2008 financial crisis, a small broker in Florida went bankrupt.

  Instead of sending the clients’ securities to another broker, as had traditionally been the case, they were swept up by the bankruptcy receiver.

  But it’s not just some isolated small broker.

  The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers set the case law precedent for secured creditors to take client assets in the case of insolvency.

  The most senior secured creditors are the most powerful financial institutions closest to the central banks—JP Morgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, etc.

  The net effect of The Great Taking will be the biggest centralization of money and power in history as they take everyone’s securities during a future crisis.

  Though it’s not just securities, they will also take ANY asset financed by debt—like real estate, cars, and small businesses—as people become unable to service their debts.

  Webb provides all the details and proof in his book.

  Here’s the bottom line.

  The most powerful people in the world have succeeded in subverting the property rights of securities and ensnaring most of the world with debt.

  The trap has been set, and the legal plumbing is in place.

  All that is needed is a big crisis that will cause a tidal wave of bankruptcies, and the hidden forces behind the world’s central banks will be able to take everyone’s stocks, bonds, and any property financed by debt.

  All the assets people think they own in brokerage accounts, bank accounts, pensions, and other financial accounts could vanish overnight.

  Webb says, “There will be a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, you will not have a seat. It is designed to work that way.”

  The Coming Collapse Is by Design

  Webb makes a compelling case that the next financial crisis won’t be an accident; the global elite are making it happen to proceed with The Great Taking.

  In short, it’s not plausible that such an intelligent, deliberate plan executed with persistence for more than 50 years could happen by accident.

  Further, the forces behind central banking and (fake) money creation undoubtedly understand the dynamics of the boom-bust cycle they create by expanding and contracting the money supply.

  They know the Everything Bubble they created will lead to a massive bust. That’s when they will execute The Great Taking.

  Further, consumer debt is at record highs.

  After many years of being encouraged to go deeply into debt, many Americans have reached their maximum debt saturation. They will be ripe for the picking.

  As Webb explains:

  “Debt is not a real thing. It is an invention, a construct designed to take real things.

  The bottom line is that debt has for centuries had the function of dispossessing, of taking away property, capital and investments from someone.”

  What You Can Do About It

  Nobody knows the future or how The Great Taking will play out. The best you can do is to make yourself a hard target and not be among the low-hanging fruit.

  You can do that by being debt-free and owning unencumbered assets within your direct control.

  You don’t want to own something that is simultaneously someone else’s liability. That’s because the legal structures are already in place to take it from you during the next crisis.

  Crucially, this includes fiat currency in bank accounts.

  Remember, fiat currency is the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government.

  Further, once you deposit currency into a bank, it is no longer yours. Technically and legally, it is the bank’s property, and what you own instead is an unsecured liability of the bank.

  As The Great Taking unfolds, you won’t want to be on the other end of unsecured liabilities or IOUs of any kind.

  I believe The Great Taking could happen sooner than most realize—and it won’t be pretty for many.

  Most people have no idea how bad things could get—or how to prepare.

  That’s why I’ve published a detailed guide called The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years: The Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now.

  Click here to download the free PDF.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 22:35

• Three Chinese Nationals Arrested In DR Congo With 12 Gold Bars And $800,000 In Cash Hidden
  Three Chinese Nationals Arrested In DR Congo With 12 Gold Bars And $800,000 In Cash Hidden

  Three Chinese nationals have been arrested in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with 12 gold bars and $800,000 in cash hidden beneath their vehicle seats, according to the BBC.

  According to South Kivu Governor Jean Jacques Purusi, the arrests were kept secret following the recent release of other Chinese nationals accused of illegal gold mining.

  Eastern DR Congo, rich in gold, diamonds, and battery minerals, has faced decades of instability due to exploitation by foreign groups and militia control of mines, where leaders profit by selling resources to middlemen.

  

  Governor Purusi revealed the arrests were kept secret due to ties between some metal dealers and powerful figures in Kinshasa. Acting on a tip, authorities discovered gold and cash after a thorough vehicle search near the Rwandan border but did not disclose the gold’s exact quantity.

  The BBC report noted that last month, Purusi expressed outrage over the release of 17 Chinese nationals accused of illegal gold mining, stating it undermined efforts to reform DR Congo’s corrupt mineral sector. The group allegedly owed $10 million in taxes and fines. The Chinese embassy has not responded to the claims.

  The arrests follow ongoing conflict in North Kivu, where a Rwanda-backed rebel group has seized territory. Last month, DR Congo announced a lawsuit against Apple over “blood minerals,” leading the company to cease sourcing from DR Congo and Rwanda. Rwanda denies involvement in the export of illegal minerals.

  “These activities have fuelled a cycle of violence and conflict by financing militias and terrorist groups and have contributed to forced child labour and environmental devastation,” lawyers acting for the Congolese government said.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 22:10

• We Can Handle The Truth
  We Can Handle The Truth

  Authored by Christopher Roach via American Greatness,

  The 1992 military justice drama, A Few Good Men, explores a fictional hazing incident involving the U.S. Marines. The main question posed by the film is whether there is a place for unwritten rules and customs, which may technically violate regulations, but may prove necessary for a unique institution like the military to accomplish its mission.

  In determining whether the hazing was ordered from higher up, the defense counsel, played by Tom Cruise, cross examines the defendants’ commander, a no-nonsense Marine colonel played by Jack Nicholson. When the attorney insists that he deserves the truth, the colonel angrily responds, “You can’t handle the truth!”

  

  While the colonel is made out to be the bad guy, many of the distortions, omissions, and outright lies from the managerial class are informed by the same ethos, and they think of themselves as the good guys. This type of “noble lying” arises from the governing elite’s belief in its own sophistication compared to the rabble, who would overreact to the truth.

  This self-serving justification obscures that officials engaged in narrative control are often more concerned with avoiding embarrassment and accountability than any broader social goal.

  Political Correctness Distorts Facts About New Orleans Attack

  A few recent events illustrate this phenomenon quite clearly. A man with an ISIS flag on his truck committed a terrorist attack in New Orleans. He ran over pedestrians and then shot it out with police, having earlier announced his intentions on social media. At least 14 people were murdered in the attack.

  A third-grade kid could figure out it was Islamic terrorism. Yet agent nose-ring from the FBI and the clownish local police chief would not describe the attack as terrorism in their initial press conference. The media interviewed some of his family but kept calling him American-born and emphasizing his U.S. Army service, lest we think there is anything unusual about an American named Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

  Based on photographs, the killer’s appearance sometimes looked African-American and at other times Middle Eastern. When combined with the nature of the attack, this led to a lot of speculation he was Somali or Pakistani.

  In multiple stories from the mainstream news, it was impossible to find out if his family had foreign origins or if they had ties to a terror-supporting country. It looked as if the media was trying to hide something, which we have seen many times before.

  A local Louisiana paper was the only one to answer this completely natural question. It turns out his parents were natural-born Americans of Louisiana Creole descent, whose father converted to Islam. The father changed his name, presumably to signal commitment to his new faith, and all of his children had similarly foreign-sounding names.

  Why the avoidance of facts by the press? Most people know that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists and that not all of those who become terrorists are foreign-born, as was the case with converts John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla.

  Scrutiny about names and origins arouses liberal sensitivities because such inquiries remind us that Islam is a recent and foreign import. Even when its votaries happen to be born here, this foreignness manifests in many lesser ways than terrorism, which exposes real flaws with the dominant ideology of multiculturalism.

  Not limited to hiding facts, in New Orleans and in similar attacks, before we are even allowed to be angry, the media repeatedly bludgeons us with stories warning about the dangers of “backlash.” Victims are blamed before they can mourn.

  After the Fort Hood attacks by mutinous army officer Nidal Hassan, the general in charge of the U.S. Army said insultingly, “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

  In spite of these warnings about stereotypes and backlash, there has been almost no significant backlash against Muslims in the United States, even after the 9/11 attacks.

  The U.K. Is Similarly Handicapped By Ideology

  There has been an even more aggressive media blackout in response to the horrifying rape gangs in the United Kingdom. For years, not only the media, but police, politicians, social workers, and other authorities downplayed the reality of these attacks, blamed victims, and did little to stop the rape of young, native British females by Pakistani immigrant gangs.

  The story was back in the news after multiple tweets by Elon Musk about the need for the British government to investigate these matters. As was the case when these stories first came to light in 2014, the media and politicians have been loudly expressing concerns about backlash.

  Defending the authorities’ atrocious handling of the matter, British writer Tom Holland said: “The true nightmare of #Rotherham is that the motives of those who turned a blind eye, however monstrous the consequences, were indeed noble.”

  In his words, “It wasn’t the indifference that was noble, but the concern not to demonise a minority. Caring for the weak. The Christian thing . . . I think they genuinely didn’t want to give succour to racism against a minority – which was a noble principle.”

  There are, in fact, things worse than developing prejudices, not least among them failing to prevent actual child rape. But, in the modern West, whether in the United States or the United Kingdom, authorities are more afraid of being accused of racism than stopping terrorism and child rape. Fear of being accused of racism even contributed to the 9/11 attacks, lest we forget, because the gate agent didn’t want to stereotype the Arab men carrying box cutters.

  Real racism has certainly led to abuses, particularly a generation or two in the past. But the left’s mélange of misplaced compassion, anti-working-class prejudice, and social experimentation in the pursuit of anti-racism has done much more harm to everyone in recent years, not least by contributing to the victimization of innocents when the perpetrators are minorities.

  Free Speech and Democracy

  Under the emerging ethos of safety, authorities treat information and speech as things that must be curated and controlled to prevent the dangers of prejudice. The dominant ideology conceives of the public as parochial, tempestuous, and easily seduced by bad speech. Instead of calling regulated speech what it is—simply ideas they disagree with—censors in the government and the compliant media ominously label it “hate speech” and “disinformation.”

  Self-government is not possible if the people are deprived of facts from authorities. Democratic self-government does not even have any obvious value if we also think the voters are too stupid, easily misled, or prone to spasms of emotional hatred to govern themselves.

  Far from hateful, Americans, Britons, and westerners in general are remarkably fair-minded. Because of a deep-seated tradition of individualism, we are averse to judging others as part of groups and mistreating them because of the crimes of their coethnics. It is the British Empire, after all, that abolished slavery around the globe, and it is the West that developed the ideals of limited government and the rule of law, which together protect individual rights.

  The emerging managerial elite has weaponized this generosity to import maximally alien foreigners in order to increase social conflict; this, in turn, provides support to illiberal and authoritarian plans of social control and social engineering.

  The leadership class has no respect for the West, its history, or its people. This is evidenced by their consistent desire to hide the truth and subject our most vulnerable citizens to horrific violence, lest we all “get the wrong idea.” They have forfeited their authority to rule because of their repeated refusal to treat us with candor and protect our most vulnerable citizens.

  Contrary to their prejudices, we can handle the truth.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 21:45

• China's Uptick In Respiratory Illness Sparks Concerns From Neighbors
  China’s Uptick In Respiratory Illness Sparks Concerns From Neighbors

  Authored by Zhang Ting and Cindy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A recent surge in respiratory infections in China has drawn attention from neighboring countries and regions, with the Chinese public expressing concerns about the severity of the new outbreak amid ongoing distrust of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) health reporting post-COVID.

  

  Official data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, dated to the last week of 2024, reported that multiple flu-like illnesses are currently on the rise in China. The primary pathogens reported in outpatients and emergency wards were influenza, human metapneumovirus (HMPV), and rhinoviruses. Severe acute respiratory infections were attributed to influenza viruses, mycoplasma pneumoniae, and HMPV.

  The report noted that HMPV, a lesser-known common winter respiratory disease, has caused many children under 14 in China’s northern provinces to fall ill. Cases of HMPV surged the most in the past week to become the second most prevalent cause of respiratory infections in China’s north after influenza.

  Since HMPV was first detected by Dutch researchers in 2001, it has been found worldwide. Common symptoms are similar to those of influenza, including cough, fever, nasal congestion, and shortness of breath, which are signs of upper respiratory tract infections.

  

  The virus can also lead to complications such as bronchitis, tracheitis, pneumonia, asthma, or ear infections. Severe infections may result in serious lower respiratory tract infections.

  According to the world-renowned medical institution the Cleveland Clinic, young children, adults over 65, and people with weakened immune systems are at high risk for severe HMPV infections.

  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has downplayed the concern among the populace about respiratory illness, attributing the increase in cases to a winter peak of respiratory infections.

  “At present, the scale and intensity of the epidemic are lower than last year,” she said in a regular press conference on Jan. 3.

  “What I can tell you is that the Chinese government attaches great importance to the health of the Chinese people and foreign citizens in China, and traveling to China is safe.”

  Treatment for HMPV mainly focuses on symptom management. Most HMPV patients can manage symptoms at home until they feel better, while those with severe symptoms may require hospitalization.

  The increasing cases of HMPV, a respiratory virus that has symptoms similar to those of COVID-19, are causing concern among the Chinese populace, who are wary of the transparency and accuracy of the CCP’s public health information following significant coverups in the COVID-19 pandemic. Claims of overcrowded hospitals on Chinese social media have also sparked widespread concern.

  Neighbors Say They’re Monitoring Situation

  The reports of overwhelmed Chinese hospitals and crematoriums have put authorities of neighboring countries and regions on alert for potential developments of public concern.

  The Macau Health Bureau stated on Dec. 26, 2024, that it has been closely monitoring the spread of HMVP in mainland China and has urged local residents to strengthen preventive measures.

  In Taiwan, Tseng Shu-Hui, deputy director-general of the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC), told local media on Dec. 25, 2024, that related cases of HMPV have already spread and been detected on the island. Taiwan’s CDC will continue to monitor the situation and will provide timely updates if any abnormalities are found, she said.

  Vietnam’s Ministry of Health stated on Jan. 5 that it has prepared a brief report on the reported cases of HMPV infection in China. The department said it contacted the WHO’s office in Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the representative office of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention under the International Health Regulations, and was told that, as of now, the WHO has not received any official information from China regarding its HMPV caseload.

  Malaysia reported 327 known HMPV cases in 2024. The Malaysian health ministry has urged the public to stay alert.

  “The public is advised to proactively take care of their health and prevent infection to others, especially in enclosed and crowded areas,” the ministry said in a statement, according to Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times. “This includes those planning to travel to countries at risk.”

  Datuk Amar Sim Kui Hian, the minister of Public Health, Housing, and Local Government in Sarawak, a state of Malaysia, reminded the public that while the WHO had not classified HMPV as an international public health emergency, “we must not let our guard down.”

  The experience with COVID-19 has taught everyone how to cope with viruses, he told local media on Jan. 5.

  “Frequent hand washing, wearing masks, and maintaining good personal hygiene are key to preventing the spread of viruses.”

  India convened a joint monitoring group meeting in response to the rising cases of respiratory illnesses reported in China over the past few weeks.

  Indian authorities said the government is “well-prepared” to handle respiratory illnesses and that its surveillance shows no unusual surge so far.

  “Union Health Ministry is closely monitoring the situation in China through all available channels and the WHO has been requested to share timely updates regarding the situation,” read a Jan. 5 post by the country’s Ministry of Health on social media platform X.

  WHO Demands China’s COVID Data

  This round of winter respiratory illness in China marks the five-year anniversary of the emergence of COVID-19, with the WHO recently renewing its unfulfilled requests for China to share access to data to help determine the origins of COVID-19.

  “We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19,” reads a WHO statement on Dec. 30, 2024.

  “This is a moral and scientific imperative. Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.”

  In December 2019, the first case of COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s initial concealment of the outbreak, including the silencing of doctors and citizen reporters, was followed by the rapid spread of the virus, evolving into a global pandemic that caused a significant number of deaths, as previously reported by The Epoch Times.

  Help boost your immunity here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 21:20

• Taibbi: Why Is Russiagate's Origin Story Redacted?
  Taibbi: Why Is Russiagate’s Origin Story Redacted?

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

  On January 11, 2019, at the peak of Russiagate mania and months before the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deflating report, the New York Times for the first time made public a remarkable fact. In “FBI Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia,” a trio of Times reporters revealed that in the days after Donald Trump’s May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Bureau “began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia.”

  

  The country first learned the FBI was investigating “any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government” when Comey testified in Congress in March, 2017. Comey then was referring to the FBI’s much-ballyhooed Crossfire Hurricane probe, which was opened in July, 2016 and targeted the likes of George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

  This second FBI probe disclosed by the Times in 2019 carried far more explosive implications, making its delayed disclosure unusual. It’s one thing for the FBI to investigate possible “links” between foreigners and a presidential campaign. It’s another for Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe to open an investigation into whether a sitting president, i.e. his boss, is “working on behalf of Russia.”

  “Imagine even opening this investigation up on just your average Joe,” says Aaron Maté of RealClear Investigations. “That would be crazy, unless you have some real predication. But this is the fucking president. Andrew McCabe decides that he can do this. On what basis?”

  Either the FBI had evidence to start such an investigation, which would be damning to Trump, or it didn’t, which would be damning to the FBI. Which was it?

  The 2019 Times story suggested the FBI probe was begun in part to determine if Trump’s “firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.” Beyond that, details were scant, and once the new investigation was folded into Robert Mueller’s inquiry, the reasons for its opening disappeared into the proverbial dustbin of history. Even when Special Counsel John Durham issued his report on the FBI and Crossfire Hurricane, he made just one mention of this second investigation, saying it was beyond his purview:

  We also have not interpreted the Order as directing us to consider the handling ofthe investigation into President Trump opened by the FBI on May 16, 2017.

  Nobody seemed to care what this second investigation was about, or what evidence was submitted to justify its opening, until Aaron and RealClear in December, 2022 sent a Freedom of Information request. They sought a copy of the original document explaining why the FBI opened a new “Sensitive Investigative Matter” on May 16, 2017. It took over two full years for the Bureau to respond. The answer was a middle finger: six pages, almost entirely redacted, with the exception of a few paragraphs.

  

  The released documents weren’t entirely bereft of information. In fact, they should contain enough to pique the curiosity of any incoming officials looking for places to start unraveling the Russiagate mystery. Whatever’s underneath these redactions is embarrassing to someone. Aaron yesterday published a story on the subject at RealClear Investigations which I recommend everyone read. This document is one of a series of Russiagate-related revelations about to hit the public.

  The memo is included below. Apart from the fact that it names former FBI Counsel James Baker and Counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap at the top, the most interesting section is probably this passage:

  The FBI is opening [redacted] based on an articulabe factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Russian government which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.

  

  If your first thought is, “How can a person ‘unwittingly’ be involved in activities on behalf of Russia that ‘may constitute violations of criminal law’?” you’re not alone. I reached out to multiple lawyers with experience working on the Hill to ask how one betrays the country criminally without intent. One sent back a “shrug” emoji, while another said this was the problem with the new generation of broad national security probes. The FBI often does investigations that are “not tethered to or bound by criminal law.”

  “Unwittingly, without his knowledge, he’s being manipulated by the Kremlin,” laughs Maté. “It’s unbelievable.”

  McCabe, now an author and sometimes contributor to CNN, said in 2019 that Trump’s “own words” prompted the investigation. Aaron attempted to reach him for his RealClear story, but he did not respond.

  This is not a small issue. The FBI opening an investigation into a presidential candidate on the thinnest of pretexts, then continuing it despite repeated dead ends, then leaking word of an active investigation despite a total lack of results, and finally opening a second probe into a sitting president after their Director was fired, all speak to a law enforcement agency that was coloring way outside its lines, involving itself in unprecedented political interference. Whoever takes over the Bureau needs to unredact these and many other pages.

  “It’s nuts,” says Maté. “Trump is in office, and they decide after he fires Comey to open a second investigation just of him, not his campaign but him, suspecting him of being a Russian agent. Why?” He pauses. “We know the pretext for the first investigation was George Papadopoulos. What’s the reason for this one? Probably the firing of Comey is in there in the redaction, but there’s got to be something else too.”

  But what? Let’s hope we find out soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 20:55

• A Who's Who Of All Trump's Cabinet-Level Nominees
  A Who’s Who Of All Trump’s Cabinet-Level Nominees

  Coming from diverse backgrounds, the president-elect’s Cabinet selections bring a variety of skills to the new government.

  After sweeping all seven battleground states this year and becoming the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years, President-elect Donald Trump has assembled a team to lead his next administration.

  The Cabinet mainly consists of the vice president, the leaders of 15 executive departments, and several other top positions. Most, but not all, of these appointments require confirmation by the Senate. Trump’s selections come from diverse backgrounds, with many hailing from the business world outside Washington politics. Two of the nominees also come from across the political aisle.

  The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg and Jackson Richman provide below a brief overview of what Trump’s nominees will bring to the table in his second administration… (click image for large legible version)

  

  For a full breakdown of each individual, read here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 20:30

• Why Deflation Is Good For The Economy
  Why Deflation Is Good For The Economy

  Authored by Frank Shostak via The Mises Institute,

  The yearly growth rate of the consumer price index (CPI) stood at 2.7 percent in November, against 2.6 percent in October. In June 2022, the yearly growth rate was 9.1 percent.

  

  The price of a good is the amount of money asked per unit of some particular good at which an exchange will obtain. It follows, then, that if the quantity of money increases faster than the quantity of goods, the price of goods will also increase, all other things being equal.

  When money is injected, it enters a particular market and then moves through the price structure to other markets. The injected money does not spread instantaneously to all the markets, there is a time lag. The yearly growth rate of our monetary measure—AMS for the US—stood at 79 percent in February 2021 against 3.7 percent in October this year.

  

  It is estimated that the average time lag from changes in money supply and changes in prices as depicted by the consumer price index the CPI is about 26 months. This suggests that the massive decline in the momentum of the CPI is because of the large decline in the yearly growth rate of the money supply. Again, the yearly growth rate of money supply fell from 79 percent in February 2021 to 3.7 percent by October this year.

  On account of the time lag, it is quite likely that the yearly growth rate of the CPI is poised for a further visible decline ahead. Based on the lagged money supply growth rate, it is quite likely that the yearly growth rate of the CPI will turn negative from the second half of next year (see chart).

  

  The negative figure in the yearly growth rate of the CPI raises the likelihood that most commentators will start warning about deflation and the threat that it is going to pose to the economy. A general decline in the prices of goods and services is regarded by most experts as bad news since it is seen to be associated with major economic slumps such as the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Note that, by July 1932, the yearly growth rate of industrial production fell to –31 percent, while by September 1932, the yearly growth rate of the consumer price index plunged to –10.7 percent.

  

  

  According to many economists, when prices decline it is harder for borrowers to pay down existing debts, leading to growing defaults, while banks become reluctant to extend credit. Consequently, these two factors generate a downward spiral in the supply of credit and a consequent decline in economic activity.

  Furthermore, most experts regard a general decline in prices as “bad news” because it raises expectations for a further decline in prices, and this, it is held, slows down individuals’ propensity to spend, which, in turn, undermines investment in plant and machinery. These factors set in motion an economic slump. Moreover, as the slump further depresses the prices of goods, this intensifies the pace of economic decline. It is for these reasons that many economic experts are of the view that it is the duty of the central bank—the Fed in the US—to prevent deflation.

  In his speech before the National Economists Club (Washington, DC, November 21, 2002), entitled “Deflation: Making Sure ‘it’ Doesn’t Happen Here,” Ben Bernanke—then a Fed governor—laid out measures that the central bank should employ to combat deflation, such as buying longer-maturity Treasury debt and the “helicopter money.”

  For most experts the occurrence of economic depression is because of a collapse in aggregate demand. In this view, since demand causes supply, the central bank should embark on massive monetary expansion in order to boost the demand for goods and services. According to much popular thinking, a strengthening in aggregate demand will set in motion the increase in the production of goods and services (i.e., economic growth).

  But why would an increase in demand lead to an increase in the supply? Without a suitable infrastructure, no expansion in the supply is going to emerge because of the increase in the demand. Also, to suggest that consumers postpone their buying of goods at present because prices are expected to decline would mean that individuals have abandoned any desire to live in the present. However, without the maintenance of life in the present, no future life is conceivable.

  Contrary to such thinking, deflation, which is manifested by declining prices, is the mechanism that makes a great variety of goods produced more accessible to individuals. Murray Rothbard wrote,

  [I]mproved standards of living come to the public from the fruits of capital investment. Increased productivity tends to lower prices (and costs) [i.e., deflation] and thereby distribute the fruits of free enterprise to all the public, raising the standard of living of all consumers. Forcible propping up of the price level prevents this spread of higher living standards.

  How the Central Bank Makes Things Worse

  Whenever the central bank artificially inflates money into the economy this benefits various individuals engaged in activities which sprang up on the back of the expansionary monetary policy, at the expense of true wealth-generators. Through expansionary monetary policy, the central bank gives rise to a class of individuals whose ventures could not come into existence without continued inflation and which distort the structure of production.

  The consumption by these recipients of the newly generated money and credit is made possible through the diversion of real savings from wealth producers. Through this process, these recipients divert production, saving, and capital investment without contributing anything in return.

  The expansionary monetary policy of the central bank generates an environment where it appears that it is possible to consume without production. Not only does the easy-money policy raise the prices of existing goods, but monetary inflation also gives rise to the production of goods and assets which would otherwise not be the case. These goods are not demanded in those amounts and/or prices by consumers.

  Once the central bank reverses its expansionary monetary policy, the diversion of production from wealth producers to non-wealth producers is arrested. This, in turn, undermines the demand of non-wealth-producers for various goods and services thereby exerting downward pressure on their prices.

  A tighter monetary policy undermines various activities that sprang up the previous expansionary monetary policy. This partially halts the bleeding of wealth generators. The decline in prices comes in when prices realistically realign with the new production caused by previous inflation. Deflation during recession signifies the beginning of economic healing.

  As a rule, what the central bank tries to stabilize is the so-called “price index.” The alleged success of this policy, however, hinges on the state of saving, capital investment, and production. As long as saving expands, a bout of inflation generates the illusion that the expansionary monetary policy is the right remedy. This is because the inflationary expansion of money and credit, which renews the flow of real savings to non-wealth-producers, props up their demand for goods and services, thereby halting or even reversing the decline in prices. Furthermore, if saving and capital investment is still growing, the pace of economic growth stays positive. Hence, the mistaken view that an inflationary monetary policy can reverse deflation (falling prices) is the key in reviving economic activity.

  The illusion that through inflation it is possible to keep the economy going is shattered once savings begin to decline and the distortions in the capital structure are recognized. Once this happens, the economy begins a downward plunge. The most aggressive expansionary monetary policy would fail to reverse this plunge. Even if easy-money policies were to succeed in raising prices and inflationary expectations, this could not revive the economy.

  Considering the declining momentum of the lagged money supply growth rate, and the likely shrinking savings and capital investment, economic activity could enter a severe recessionary phase from the second half of 2025.

  

  Conclusion

  Contrary to the popular view, deflation is good for the economy. Thus, when prices are declining in response to the expansion of wealth, this means that individuals’ living standards are rising. Further, when prices decline because of the bursting of a financial bubble, it is also overall good for the economy, for it indicates that the impoverishment of wealth producers is being arrested.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 20:05

• 'Evacuate Now': Fire Tears Through Upscale Pacific Palisades In Los Angeles
  ‘Evacuate Now’: Fire Tears Through Upscale Pacific Palisades In Los Angeles

  A brush fire that has spread to over 1,200 acres in Los Angeles amid a massive wind storm has prompted a mass evacuation in the upscale Pacific Palisades area on Tuesday.

  🚨🇺🇸 BIDEN CANCELS EVENT AS WINDSTORM FUELS PALISADES FIRE FORCING EVACUATIONS

  The windstorm fueling the Palisades Fire has forced mandatory evacuations and canceled Biden’s event in Thermal, CA.

  UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain warns, “Just about everything is going to get… pic.twitter.com/aVKr0okLas

  — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 7, 2025

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  “Evacuate now from the area of Palisades…” officials warned on X. “Those not in the evacuation area should shelter in place.”

  LAFD: Evacuate now from the area of Palisades Area. Those not in the evacuation area should shelter in place. Evacuation order for Palisades Fire. Maps and information can be found at https://t.co/GihYtg2yPf https://t.co/kMAzuc7uaf

  — LA City Emergency Alerts (@NotifyLA) January 7, 2025

  The Palisades – home to numerous A-list celebrities, has roughly 9,400 homes and 27,000 residents. After the fire broke out, smoke plumes spread quickly toward structures and homes – including a large area of Topanga Canyon, tucked-away community with a single road in and out.

   

  

   

  Meanwhile, the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Tuesday issued an air quality alert for the Santa Monica Mountains “due to increased fine particle pollution from wildfire smoke,” which has now traveled as far east as Diamond Bar, located around 30 miles from downtown LA.

  Massive fire above my neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, in #LosAngeles. Evacuating. pic.twitter.com/vJI06iWa1X

  — Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) January 7, 2025

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  Officials shut down all traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Canyon Boulevard – causing (greater than usual) traffic jams that could be seen all over.

  California: The structure loss will likely be huge from the Palisades Fire. #wildfire #cafire

  The flame lengths off this fire after making a slope reversal are insane. Firefighters have their work cut out for them. Yo Congress, still plan on cutting wildland firefighter pay?… pic.twitter.com/rjJRLpCf2k

  — The Hotshot Wake Up (@HotshotWake) January 7, 2025

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  Actor James Woods has posted several videos to X showing the fire raging near his house.

  Leaving pic.twitter.com/yJDQ8xIhbI

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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  Two houses from us… pic.twitter.com/5lx6kMqdmN

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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  People are abandoning their cars in the street…

  KTLA’s @GeneKangTV reports from the perimeter of the #PalisadesFire where crews needed to clear vehicles using a bulldozer to make access for firefighters. Live coverage: https://t.co/ZEEfGXODEx pic.twitter.com/ziOctuFD7X

  — KTLA (@KTLA) January 7, 2025

  We’ve counted at least 7 homes in Pacific Palisades destroyed by flames as the fire continues to spread rapidly. Not sure if firefighters are struggling to get to this area or what, we’ve tried grabbing water hoses ourselves. #PalisadesFire pic.twitter.com/nv1P3s1XEP

  — Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) January 7, 2025

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  Developing…

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 19:40

• Jay Bhattacharya Will Bring Much-Needed Transparency To NIH
  Jay Bhattacharya Will Bring Much-Needed Transparency To NIH

  Authored by Andrew Noymer via RealClearPolitics,

  Dr. Jay Bhattacharya – the Stanford professor who is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the directorship of the National Institutes of Health – will bring transparency to this government agency, which sorely needs it.

  

  I am an odd person to write a piece supporting Jay Bhattacharya’s nomination to lead the NIH. During the pandemic, I disagreed with Jay on COVID response. Jay supported the Great Barrington Declaration, while I favored a more active and engaged public health response, broadly although not completely along the lines of what was actually done in the United States. At times our differences were fundamental, other times pragmatic. Nonetheless, the differences of opinion between Jay and me on this subject were deep.

  I debated Jay over Zoom on the topic of pandemic response, so I am well aware of his views on COVID response, as he is of mine. Our debate was not archived but was roughly similar to the Munk Debate I did with Jay’s Stanford colleague, John Ioannidis, and the SoHo Forum debate I did with Jay’s Great Barrington collaborator, Martin Kulldorff. These discussions are dated now, but they still reflect deep intellectual rifts that were brought into sharp relief by COVID and the collective response to it.

  What makes my endorsement of Jay all the more peculiar is that he and I still disagree on COVID response. I know because I had the chance to talk with Jay and others in October at a conference that he organized at Stanford, at which I served as a panelist. What’s more, Jay invited me to this conference knowing that his and my opinions on this subject continue to diverge. Here and in other examples, I have seen Jay’s commitment to hearing diverse and disagreeing viewpoints. Jay is not one to try to muzzle a dissenting opinion.

  The most important outstanding item on the COVID agenda is: Where did SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID – come from? The pursuit of this question is where Jay Bhattacharya and I have the most in common. I am on the advisory board of Biosafety Now, an organization dedicated to increasing transparency in high-risk experiments on pathogens with the capacity to harm people. Jay was, for a time, also involved with BN.

  The stakes could not be higher: COVID killed 15 million people worldwide in 2020 and hasn’t stopped killing, although thankfully at a lower rate more recently. Tracing the origins of epidemics is one of the cornerstones of public health. This task is woven into its very fabric, even from before John Snow’s founding the science of epidemiology in the 19th century, through to the work of American pioneer Theobald Smith in the 20th century, and to the present day. There are a number of questions about COVID that may point to SARS-CoV-2 having leaked from a lab.

  The NIH has not heretofore acted with enough transparency on COVID origins. It was a funder of gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. Former NIH director Francis Collins and former director of NIAID (National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases), Anthony Fauci, were both major proponents of gain-of-function virology research, some of which is objectively dangerous enough to require the highest security (BSL-4) labs (think: labs inside an air lock and researchers in pressure suits). Grants from NIH in this area included funding the research of Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine.

  However, NIH has not acted to shed light on its actions, and has even stonewalled Congress.

  There is nothing inherently political about wanting to know where COVID comes from; it is a core function of epidemiology. It is virologists – not those in epidemiology who wish to get to the bottom of COVID origins – who have politicized the COVID origins debate. As one of my colleagues at the University of California, Irvine condescendingly scolded me via email in 2022: “Suggesting lab leaks or worse (without any real evidence) feeds into the right-wing, anti-China conspiracies promoted by the Trump administration.” Other virologists have shown a remarkable incuriosity: “What difference does it make where it [SARS-CoV-2] came from?” asked another one of my University of California, Irvine colleagues, at a conference here. It makes an enormous difference. To avoid a repeat of COVID, we need better regulation of gain-of-function virology, and full transparency about coronavirus research in the years leading up to the pandemic.

  Jay Bhattacharya understands that the NIH budget is public money, and that every American is a stakeholder in research performed by NIH, including the grants it makes to external scientists. He and I had, and continue to have, deep disagreements about the public health response to COVID, but the most important task facing NIH at the moment is give the world a full account of its involvement in research on the bat viruses that are the ancestor of the COVID virus, so we can better understand how SARS-CoV-2 jumped into humans. Transparency is a principal (and principled) solution to lack of public trust in institutions. I am confident that Jay’s pursuit of transparency can restore public trust in NIH.

  Andrew Noymer is associate professor of population health and disease prevention in the Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health, University of California, Irvine.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 19:15

• 10 Most Impressive Day One Reveals At CES 2025, Includes Jumping Hypercar
  10 Most Impressive Day One Reveals At CES 2025, Includes Jumping Hypercar

  The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025, the world’s biggest tech show, officially began on Monday. 

  Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang kicked off the week by unveiling the latest products designed to advance gaming, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and agentic AI (key takeaways here). 

  

  Along with Nvidia’s new AI products, here are the ten most impressive unveils at CES 2025 so far (courtesy of Rowan Cheung):

  A 360° AI-powered body scanning health mirror that can scan your heart, weight, and metabolic health

  It’s only been 1 day of CES 2025, and the announcements have already been incredible.

  The 10 most impressive reveals of CES 2025 so far:

  1. A 360° AI-powered body scanning health mirror that can scan your heart, weight, and metabolic health pic.twitter.com/c8iaJFB5EW

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Roborock’s Saros Z70: A robotic vacuum that has a mechanical arm for picking up objects in the way of cleaning the floor

  2. Roborock’s Saros Z70: A robotic vacuum that has a mechanical arm for picking up objects in the way of cleaning the floor pic.twitter.com/M6T428zeYa

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Halliday Glasses: Smart glasses with a 3.5-inch internal monochrome display

  3. Halliday Glasses: Smart glasses with a 3.5-inch internal monochrome display

  These glasses are equipped with an AI agent that can listen to conversations, answer questions during meetings, and do live translationpic.twitter.com/1jIigyCC7l

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Project DIGITS by NVIDIA: A $3000 personal supercomputer that’s 1,000x the power of an average laptop

  4. Project DIGITS by NVIDIA: A $3000 personal supercomputer that’s 1,000x the power of an average laptop pic.twitter.com/djMkIOolt7

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  BYD’s supercar, Yangwang U9, jumping 6 meters forward (over potholes)

  5. BYD’s supercar, Yangwang U9, jumping 6 meters forward (over potholes) pic.twitter.com/QAQZdMRyHT

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  A pen with three cameras at the tip that turns any surface of the world into a canvas with notes synced and recorded to your phone

  6. A pen with three cameras at the tip that turns any surface of the world into a canvas with notes synced and recorded to your phone pic.twitter.com/fPHHFyLjek

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  NVIDIA Cosmos: An open source, open weight Video World Model designed for the upcoming age of robotics source

  7. NVIDIA Cosmos: An open source, open weight Video World Model designed for the upcoming age of robotics source pic.twitter.com/19XVUKIOud

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Portalgraph: A 3D projector that projects VR space into the real world

  8. Portalgraph: A 3D projector that projects VR space into the real world pic.twitter.com/kGdLToYToO

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Samsung Vision AI TVs that come with real-time translation, the ability to adapt to user preferences, AI upscaling, and instant content summaries

  9. Samsung Vision AI TVs that come with real-time translation, the ability to adapt to user preferences, AI upscaling, and instant content summaries pic.twitter.com/303yFOZr5q

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  NVIDIA GB200 NVL2: A datacenter superchip with 72 Blackwell GPUs, 1.4 exaFLOPS, and 130 transistors

  10. NVIDIA GB200 NVL2: A datacenter superchip with 72 Blackwell GPUs, 1.4 exaFLOPS, and 130 transistorspic.twitter.com/O7r4foKUr4

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  This is only day one. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 18:50

• The End Of Economic Growth: Energy Shortages Drive Global Downturn
  The End Of Economic Growth: Energy Shortages Drive Global Downturn

  Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World,

  • The global economy is expected to enter a recession in 2025 due to a decline in the availability of crude oil, coal, and uranium relative to population.

  • Government attempts to stimulate the economy through debt will lead to inflation rather than growth, as energy supplies are constrained.

  • High interest rates, low energy prices, and a decline in industrial output will characterize the economic landscape in 2025.

  As the world enters 2025, the critical issue we are facing is Peak Crude Oil, relative to population. Crude oil has fallen from as much as .46 gallons per person, which was quite common before the pandemic, to close to .42 gallons per person recently (Figure 1).

  

  Figure 1. World crude oil production per person, based on data of the US EIA. Data through September 2024.

  People have a misimpression regarding how world peak oil can be expected to behave. The world economy has continued to grow, but now it is beginning to move in the direction of contraction due to an inadequate supply of crude oil. In fact, it is not just an inadequate crude oil supply, but also an inadequate supply of coal (per person) and an inadequate supply of uranium.

  We know that when a boat changes direction, this causes turbulence in the water. This is similar to the problems we are currently seeing in the world economy. Physics dictates that the economy needs to shrink in size to match its energy resources, but no country wants to be a part of this shrinkage. This indirectly leads to major changes in elected leadership and to increased interest in war-like behavior. Strangely enough, it also seems to lead to higher long-term interest rates, as well.

  In this post, I share a few thoughts on what might lie ahead for us in 2025, in the light of the hidden inadequate world energy supply. I am predicting major turbulence, but not that things fall apart completely. Stock markets will tend to do poorly; interest rates will remain high; oil and other energy prices will stay around current levels, or fall.

  [1] I expect that the general trend in 2025 will be toward world recession.

  With less oil (and coal and uranium) relative to population, the world can be expected to produce fewer goods and services per person. In some sense, people will generally become poorer. For example, fewer people will be able to afford new cars or new homes.

  This trend toward lower purchasing-power tends to be concentrated in certain groups such as young people, farmers, and recent immigrants. As a result, older people who are well-off or firmly established may be able to mostly ignore this issue.

  While the shift toward a poorer world has partially been hidden, it has been a huge factor in allowing Donald Trump to be voted back into power. Major shifts in leadership are taking place elsewhere, as well, as an increasing share of citizens become unhappy with the current situation.

  [2] Many governments will try to hide recessionary tendencies by issuing more debt to stimulate their economies.

  In the past, adding debt was found to be effective way of stimulating the world economy because energy supplies supporting the world economy were not seriously constrained. It was possible to add new energy supplies, quite inexpensively. The combination of additional inexpensive energy supplies and additional “demand” (provided by the added debt) allowed the total quantity of goods and services produced to be increased. Once energy supplies started to become seriously constrained (about 2023), this technique started to work far less well. If energy production is constrained, the likely impact of added debt will be added inflation.

  The problem is that if added government debt doesn’t really add inexpensive energy, it will instead create more purchasing power relative to the same number, or a smaller number, of finished goods and services available. I believe that in 2025, we are heading into a situation where ramping up governmental debt will mostly lead to inflation in the cost of finished goods and services.

  [3] Energy prices are likely to remain too low for fossil fuel and uranium producers to raise investments from their current low levels.

  Recession and low prices tend to go together. While there may be occasional spikes in oil and other energy prices, 2025 is likely to bring oil and other energy prices that are, on average, no higher than those of 2024, adjusted for the overall increase in prices due to inflation. With generally low prices, producers will cut back on new investment. This will cause production to fall further.

  [4] I expect “gluts” of many energy-related items in 2025.

  Gluts are related to recession and low prices for producers. The underlying problem is that a significant share of the population finds that finished goods, made with energy products and investment at current interest rates, are too expensive to buy.

  Even farmers are affected by low prices, just as they were back at the time of the Great Depression. We can think of food as an energy product that is eaten by people. Farmers find that their return on farm investment is too low, and that their implied wages are low. Low income for farmers around the world feeds back through the system as low buying power for new farm equipment, and for buying goods and services in general.

  In 2025, I expect there will be a glut of crude oil due to a lack of purchasing power of many poor people around the world. My forecast is similar to the forecast of the IEA that predicts an oversupply of oil in 2025. Also, a December 2024 article in mining.com says, “A glut of coal in China is set to push falling prices even lower.”

  Even wind turbines and solar panels can reach an oversupply point. According to one article, number of Chine solar panel builders seems to be far too high for world demand, leading to a potential shake out. As the share of wind and solar power added to the electric grid increases, the frequency of low or negative payment for wholesale electric power increases. This makes adding more wind turbines and solar panels problematic, after a certain point. We don’t yet have a cost-effective way of storing intermittent electricity for months on end. This seems to be part of the reason why there recently were no bidders for producing more offshore wind power in Denmark.

  [5] I expect long-term interest rates to remain high. This will be a problem for new investments of all kinds and for governmental borrowing.

  In Section 2 of this post, I tried to explain that a peak-oil impact is likely to be inflation. This occurs because ramping up debt to try to stimulate the economy no longer works to get additional cheap energy products from the ground. Instead of getting as many finished goods and services as hoped for, the added debt tends to produce inflation instead.

  I believe that we are reaching a stage of fossil-fuel depletion where it is becoming increasingly difficult to ramp up production, even with added investment. Because of the added debt added in an attempt to work around depletion, inflation in the price of finished goods and services can be expected. Investors are beginning to see long-term inflation as a likely problem. As a result, they are starting to demand higher long-term interest rates to compensate for the expected decrease in buying power.

  

  Figure 2. Interest rates on 10-year US Treasury Securities, in a chart by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis. Data is through December 30, 2024.

  Figure 2 shows that US long-term interest rates have varied widely. There was a period of generally dropping long-term interest rates from 1981 to 2020. Starting in late 2020, interest rates began to rise; in 2023 and 2024 they have been in the 4% to 5% range. These relatively high rates are occurring because lenders are demanding higher long-term interest rates in response to higher inflation rates.

  Because of inflationary pressures, I expect that long-term interest rates will tend to stay at today’s high level in 2025; they may even rise further. These continued high interest rates will become a problem for many families wanting to purchase a home because US home mortgage rates rise and fall with US 10-year interest rates. Often families are faced with both high home prices and high interest rates. This combination makes mortgage costs a problem for many families.

  Governments are also adversely affected. They tend to hold large amounts of debt that they have accumulated over a period or years. Up until 2020, much of this added debt often was at a very low interest rate. As more long-term debt at higher interest rates is added, annual interest rate payments tend to rise rapidly. This can cause a need to raise taxes. Japan, especially, would be affected by higher interest rates because of its high level of government debt, relative to GDP.

  Higher interest rates will also raise costs for citizens trying to finance the purchase of homes, and for investors wanting to build wind turbines or solar panels. In fact, investment in any kind of factory, pipelines, or electricity transmission will tend to become more expensive.

  In a sense, we seem to be seeing the peak oil problem shifting in a way that affects interest rates and the economy in general. Either higher interest rates or higher oil prices will tend to push the economy toward recession. We tend to look for rising prices to signal an oil supply problem, but perhaps that only works when there is excessive demand. If the problem is really inadequate oil supply, perhaps we should look for higher long-term interest rates, instead.

  [6] Industry around the world is likely to be hit especially hard by recessionary tendencies.

  Industry requires investment. Higher interest rates make new industrial investment more expensive. Industry is also a heavy user of energy products. Putting these observations together, it shouldn’t come as a surprise if new industrial investment is one of the first places to be cut back because of peak oil supply.

  

  Figure 3. Expected world industrial output, based on calculations I made with using industrial output and population forecasts from detailed output data provided with the article Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model” by Arjuna Nebel et al.

  The original 1972 Limits to Growth analysis, in its base model, suggested that resources would start to run short about now. The variables in this model were recently recalibrated in the article, “Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model.” Based on the detailed data given in the endnotes to the article, I calculated the expected industrialization per capita shown in Figure 3.

  Based on Figure 3, this model shows that industrialization per person reached a peak in 2017. Peak industrialization (total, not per capita) occurred in 2018, which coincides with peak crude oil extraction (not per capita).

  The model seems to suggest that after an inflection point in 2023 (that is 2024 and after), industrialization will start to fall more steeply. The model shows a decrease in production per capita of 4.1% in 2024 and of 5.3% in 2025. Such decreases would push the world economy toward recession.

  The model suggests that people, on average, are getting poorer in terms of the quantity of goods and services they can afford to buy. New cars, motorcycles, and homes are becoming less affordable. Heavily industrialized countries, such as China, South Korea, and Germany are likely to be especially affected by headwinds to industrialization. I expect that the economic problems in these countries will continue and are likely to worsen in 2025.

  [7] The US has tried to isolate itself from this nearly worldwide recession. I expect that during 2025, the US will increasingly slip into recession, as well.

  There are several reasons for this belief:

  (a) The US is heavily dependent upon imports of raw material. China is restricting exports of critical minerals used by the US. This will make it very difficult or impossible to ramp up high tech industries as planned.

  (b) The US is heavily dependent on Russia for supplies of enriched uranium. Any plan for added nuclear electricity needs to consider where the uranium to power these plants will come from. It also needs to consider how this uranium will be enriched to the required concentration of uranium-235.

  (c) If the US can ramp up crude oil and natural gas production, this can perhaps counter this trend toward US and world recession. Unfortunately, recent US oil supply has not been ramping up; instead its production has been fairly flat. Natural gas production has actually been lower since February 2024. Plans have been made to rapidly ramp up US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, but these plans cannot work if the US natural gas supply is already decreasing.

  (d) The US government has had an advantage in borrowing because the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. As such, the US is, in some sense, the first borrower, pulling the rest of the world along. The US, by making its short term interest rates higher than those of many other countries, was able to largely escape recession 2023 and 2024. Additional investment was attracted to the US by these higher interest rates. But the US cannot follow this strategy indefinitely. For one thing, a high US dollar handicaps exports. For another, interest costs on government debt become burdensome.

  (e) Donald Trump has plans to close inefficient parts of government. These changes, if enacted, will reduce “demand” within the economy because workers in these sectors will lose their jobs. Over the longer term, these changes might be beneficial, but over the short term, they are likely to be recessionary.

  (f) It is difficult for the US to do much better than the rest of the world. If the rest of the world is in recession, the US will tend to head in that direction, as well.

  [8] I expect more conflict in 2025, but today’s wars will not look much like World War I or World War II.

  Today, not many countries are able to build huge fleets of fighter airplanes. Even building drones and bombs seems to require supply lines that extend around the world. So, instead, wars are being fought in non-military ways, such as with sanctions and tariffs.

  I expect that this trend away from direct military conflict will continue, with more novel approaches such as internet interference and stealth damage to infrastructure taking place instead.

  I do not expect that nuclear bombs will be used, even when there is direct conflict between powerful adversaries. For one thing, uranium in these bombs is needed for other purposes. For another, there is too much chance of retaliation.

  [9] I expect many types of capital gains will be low in 2025.

  The situation we are facing now is the opposite of the drop in long-term interest rates observed between 1981 and 2020, in Figure (2), above. This historical drop in interest rates made it possible for businesses to more easily finance new investments. It also made it possible for individual citizens to be able to afford more homes and cars. It should not be surprising that this period has been a time of rising stock market prices, especially in the United States.

  The world’s economic problem is that it no longer has the tailwind of falling long-term interest rates. Instead, rising long-term interest rates are becoming a headwind. Home prices are un-affordably high for most potential buyers at today’s interest rates. A similar problem faces those hoping to purchase agricultural equipment and farmland at today’s high prices and high interest rates.

  We should not be surprised if home and farm prices stabilize and begin to fall. Prices of shares of stock are likely to encounter similar headwinds. Prices of derivative investments may perform even worse than the shares themselves.

  Recently, a great deal of the strength of the US market has been in a few stocks. Artificial Intelligence (AI) needs to very quickly provide a lot of benefit to the stock market as a whole for this to change. I cannot imagine this happening. With the US slipping toward recession, I expect that the US stock market will at best plateau in 2025.

  [10] With less energy available and higher interest rates on government debt, I expect to see more government organizations disbanding.

  It takes energy, directly and indirectly, to operate any kind of governmental organization. Eliminating governmental organizations is one way of saving energy. This is what happened when the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. I would think that parallel kinds of changes could start happening in the next few years, in many parts of the world.

  At some time, perhaps as soon as 2025, the European Union could collapse. If things are going badly for many member countries, they will be less willing to support the European Union with their tax revenues. Other organizations that seem like they could be in peril include NATO and the World Trade Organization.

  In some ways, such shrinkage would be in parallel with Trump’s plan for eliminating unnecessary governmental organizations within the United States. All these organizations require energy; cutting their number would go some way toward reducing crude oil and other energy consumption.

  [11] It is possible that the world economy will eventually get itself out of its apparent trend toward recession, but I am afraid this will happen long after 2025.

  We know that the world economy tends to operate in cycles. We would like to believe that the apparent current down-cycle is just temporary, but we can’t know this for sure. Physics tells us that we need energy supplies of the right kind for any action that contributes to GDP. Running short of energy supplies is therefore a very worrisome condition.

  We also know that there are major inefficiencies in current approaches. For example, oil extraction leaves much of the oil resource in place. In theory, AI could greatly improve extraction techniques.

  We also know that uranium consumption is terribly inefficient. M. King Hubbert thought that nuclear energy using uranium had amazing potential, but most of this potential remains untapped. Perhaps AI could help in this regard, also. If nothing else, perhaps recycling spent fuel could be made less expensive and problematic.

  

  Figure 4. Figure from Hubbert’s 1956 paper, Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels.

  We can’t know what lies ahead. There may be a “religious” ending to our current predicament that we are discounting that is actually the “right story.” Or there may be a “technofix” solution that allows us to avert collapse or catastrophe. But for now, how the current down-cycle will end remains a major cause for concern.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 18:25

• Preemptive Strikes On Iran Will Be A 'Real Possibility' Under Trump: Officials
  Preemptive Strikes On Iran Will Be A ‘Real Possibility’ Under Trump: Officials

  Starting in December the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA, warned that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment close to the roughly 90% level which is weapons-grade.

  On Tuesday President Emmanuel Macron called Iran the main “strategic and security challenge” for France and Europe. “The acceleration of the nuclear program leads us nearly to the point of no return,” he told an annual conference of French ambassadors.

  However, it remains anything but clear whether the Islamic Republic has actually decided to build a nuclear weapon, something recently (and surprisingly) acknowledged by the CIA.

  

  Still, the constant daily headlines over Iran’s enrichment advances set things up for a collision course with the Trump administration after the Jan.20 inauguration.

  According to a fresh report in Axios, the chances of Trump ordering a preemptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities are now higher than ever:

  Iran’s recent nuclear advances give President-elect Trump a crucial decision to make in his first months in office: Try to neutralize the threat through negotiations and pressure, or order a military strike.

  Trump’s decision in 2018 to withdraw from an Obama-era nuclear deal prompted Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program, such that it’s now a de facto “nuclear threshold state.” Officials and diplomats from the U.S., EU and Israel all told Axios they expect Trump to face an Iran crisis in 2025.

  Trump and his advisers are planning to quickly return to the “maximum pressure” campaign they conducted against Iran between 2018 and 2020.

  Axios further underscores that “Several Trump advisers privately concede Iran’s program is now so far along that the strategy might not be effective. That makes a military option a real possibility.”

  But it remains that US attacks on the Islamic Republic would only surely accelerate possible efforts to achieve a bomb. Much of the country’s nuclear infrastructure and technology is now likely underground, which would make it hard for any external power to destroy everything.

  Though in prior years the Ayatollahs have condemned nuclear weapons as ‘unIslamic’ – if the Iranians perceive themselves under direct threat of annihilation, they would urgently feel the need to rapidly have a bomb.

  Below is more from Axios on Trump expressing his position on the prior campaign trail:

  Back in October, Trump criticized President Biden for advising Israel not to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They asked him, what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran? And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right?” Trump said at a campaign rally.

  It’s no secret that Iran has also long been engaged in sanctions-busting activity regarding global oil transit, and selling to powerful BRICS countries like China. Trump is expected to get ‘tough’ on that as well, and he has already nominated plenty of Iran hawks to top foreign policy positions.

  But from Tehran’s perspective, the problem remains that Israel possesses a large undeclared nuclear arsenal, which has long been an ‘open secret’. If Iran does pursue a nuke, it will be to establish a balance of power and deterrent against Israel and the United States in the region.

  Ironically if Trump does order ‘preemptive’ military strikes on Iran in the name of stopping WMD, this will be deeply contradictory to his stated aims on the campaign trail of wanting to stop and reign in US wars abroad.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 18:00

• January 6, 2025: The Real Insurrection Begins
  January 6, 2025: The Real Insurrection Begins

  Authored by Julie Kelly via ‘Declassified’,

  The original Jan 6 narrative died in spectacular fashion. Monday’s proceedings represent the start of a legitimate insurrection against a corrupt, unaccountable, and failed government in Washington…

  

  It’s a plot twist even the most creative—or diabolical—fiction writer never would have imagined.

  On Monday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris will preside over Congressional proceedings to certify the election of Donald Trump, who defeated her in the 2024 presidential election.

  The moment will represent one of many surreal moments on a date—January 6—that the Biden regime, news media, and Democratic voters consider one of the darkest times in American history. In fact, Harris herself categorizes January 6, 2021 alongside September 11, 2001 and December 7, 1941 as events she claims “remind all who have lived through them where they were…when our democracy came under assault.”

  Four years ago, the ruling class in Washington attempted to commit what all evidence now points to as the premeditated murder of the MAGA movement. Powerful political and government saboteurs aligned to stoke the events of January 6, a four-hour disturbance those same saboteurs immediately branded an “insurrection.”

  The talking points, in fact, went out before the first protester entered the building. As the chaos still was unfolding at the Capitol, Joe Biden gave a nationwide address—he allegedly had planned to talk about the economy at 4 p.m. but in yet another fortuitous coincidence for Democrats, Biden quickly pivoted to a lengthy rant about the protest—to denounce the “insurrection.”

  The intervening four years has consisted of a nonstop loop of January 6-related propaganda and lawfare intended to keep Trump and his movement from rising from the political dead.

  Trump and MAGA Left for Dead

  And they pounded as many nails as they could into what they believed was the J6 coffin. Trump was impeached for the second time. FBI Director Christopher Wray designated January 6 an act of domestic terror thereby branding anyone who participated in the Capitol protest a domestic terrorist.

  The Department of Justice opened what would become the biggest criminal investigation in its history resulting in the arrest of nearly 1,600 individuals, most of whom supported Donald Trump, and the jailing of several hundred even those convicted of petty misdemeanors.

  Attorney General Merrick Garland opened a separate investigation into Trump over the events of January 6; top Trump confidants and associates were dragged before a D.C. grand jury to testify and produce records. DC judges routinely denied privilege claims.

  For the first time in history, a sitting president (Biden) repeatedly denied executive privilege requests from his predecessor. And for the first time in history, a former president faced a criminal indictment related to his conduct in office. (In another history-making event, Special Counsel Jack Smith also indicted Trump in the so-called classified documents case but that involved allegations after he left the White House.)

  Two weeks after Smith charged Trump in a four-count indictment for Jan 6, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also indicted Trump and more than a dozen of his advisors in a massive RICO case tied to Jan 6. Other state officials charged Trump supporters in the so-called “fake electors” plan tied to Jan 6.

  Congress did its part, too. The January 6 Select Committee offered a steady primetime infusion of J6 propaganda; crying police officers and turncoat White House aides testified in the hope of providing the emotional punch necessary to convince the most stubborn MAGA loyalists that their leader posed a dire threat to the future of “democracy.”

  No good anti-Trump operation succeeds, of course, without the complicity of the media. The amount of ink and airtime and clicks dedicated to all things January 6 may never be fully accounted for; books were written, documentaries were made. There is no question the collective coverage of January 6 rivals coverage of every war and legitimate terror attack in American history.

  The exhaustive operation—the multi-faceted lawfare, the Congressional theater, the media fixation—was supposed to end with Trump sitting in jail, a final death blow to his political future and the populist movement he created.

  But it all came crashing down on November 5, 2024.

  A “Revolt Against Civil Authority or an Established Government”

  Trump won in decisive fashion as the majority of Americans sent a big middle finger tied to a wrecking ball to the halls of power in Washington. The failures of the Biden regime unquestionably contributed to Trump’s victory but so too did the relentless pursuit of the president, his family, his allies, his businesses, and his voters.

  The January 6 operation backfired in a spectacular way. Instead of representing one of the darkest days in history, January 6 to millions of Americans instead embodies the corrupt, bloodthirsty, and vengeful nature of the existing government and its media bootlickers, which foreshadowed the sort of banana republic-style rule seen in Marxist hellholes not in the United States.

  And voters acted accordingly at the ballot box.

  So Monday, January 6, 2025 signals the start of a real insurrection, which is defined as a “revolt against civil authority or an established government” not an unarmed and at points unruly demonstration inside a government building on a Wednesday afternoon.

  Should Trump fulfill his boldest campaign pledges, federal agencies in the nation’s capital will never be the same. Permanent changes in now untrusted institutions such as the DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and, sadly, the Department of Defense among others promise to gut the rogue, unelected bureaucracy that really runs the show.

  The Trump Insurrection already is paying dividends as employees flee agencies soon to be led by sworn foes of the Deep State. Chris Wray resigned ahead of his scheduled ten-year tenure as FBI boss.

  Even more gratifying is that the architects of the original “insurrection” narrative are sweating and on the run. Reports indicate top DOJ officials including Jack Smith and prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office, which has been responsible for the “Capitol Siege” prosecution, are lawyering up and worried about going bankrupt—fitting karma for the hell they’ve inflicted on others.

  Ditto for Liz Cheney and members of the J6 select committee. Cheney currently is the subject of a congressional investigation related to her role as vice chairman of the committee; a Trump DOJ is expected to look into her conduct as well. J6 Committee chairman Bennie Thomspon, who along with Cheney just received a medal from Biden, said he would accept a presidential pardon.

  The career of Fani Willis has entered death twitch stage; not only did a Georgia appellate court put an end to her involvement in the RICO case but her personal foibles will long be a source of mockery and ridicule.

  Overall, the Democratic Party is in disarray, as listless and useless as Joe Biden, who is expected to issue more broad-based pardons to cover up the criminality of the entire J6 operation against Trump.

  And the media is just crushed that their propaganda and teeth-gnashing and hyperbole didn’t work. In a Sunday morning interview, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Senator Amy Klobuchar if “the horrible things that happened that day are being forgotten?”

  Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning lamented about the “denial of what happened on Jan 6.”

  But perhaps no one said it better than the New York Times’ Peter Baker, a reliable regime mouthpiece. “If you woke up on January 7th of 2021 with the glass still shattered on the floor of the Capitol and the smoke rising and the troops are surrounding the building, and you had said that Donald Trump will be president in four years, nobody would have believed that.”

  Correct, Peter. The death of Trump and MAGA, as the old saying goes, was greatly exaggerated. And you did it to yourself.

  Now bring on the real insurrection.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 17:40

• "How About If We Buy Alaska?" Top Canadian Politician Eyes Takeover Of U.S. States As Battle With Trump Escalates
  “How About If We Buy Alaska?” Top Canadian Politician Eyes Takeover Of U.S. States As Battle With Trump Escalates

  Canadians are touchy, eh?

  Ontario Premier Doug Ford fired back at President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for Canada to join the United States as its 51st state by countering with a surprising offer: for the Great White North to purchase Alaska and Minnesota.

  

  “You know something, to the president, I’ll make him a counteroffer: How about if we buy Alaska and throw in Minnesota and Minneapolis at the same time?” Ford told reporters during a Monday press conference, addressing Trump’s looming threat of U.S. tariffs against Canada.

  Trump, speaking at a freewheeling press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, expressed frustration over how the U.S. is treated by Canada, claiming that its biggest trading partner is subsidized by approximately $200 billion annually.

  “They don’t essentially have a military,” Trump said. “They have a very small military. They rely on our military. It’s all fine but, you know, they have to pay for that. It’s very unfair. Something has to be done.”

  “To the president, I’ll make him a counter offer. How about if we buy Alaska?”

  You need bulldogs like Doug Ford sometimes. pic.twitter.com/sTJy8v7pfN

  — David Beaudoin (@DavidABeaudoin) January 6, 2025

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  “We are going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada,” the president-elect continued, before turning his focus to the surge of illegal substances flowing from Canada into the U.S. “They come through Canada, too. The drugs coming through are at record numbers,” Trump said. “So we are going to make up for that by putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Substantial tariffs. We want to get along with everybody but, you know, it takes two to tango.”

  Trump also reiterated his wish for former NHL star Wayne Gretzky to consider running for Canada’s prime minister, suggesting that he could be a viable successor to Trudeau.

  In November, Trump raised alarms in both Canada and Mexico with a threat to impose 25 percent tariffs unless the two countries helped curb the migrant and fentanyl crises. The threat prompted Trudeau to immediately travel to Mar-a-Lago for talks on how the U.S. and Canada could avoid a tariff war.

  Ford, however, maintains that Mexico and China—not Canada—are responsible for the trade issues Trump has singled out.

  “I’ve talked to so many governors and congresspeople and senators and never once did they say Canada is the problem,” Ford told CNN on Monday. “I’ll tell you who the problem is: China is the problem. China shipping in cheap parts, putting them through Mexico. Mexico slapping on a ‘Made in Mexico’ sticker and shipping up through the U.S. and Canada. [It’s] costing American and Canadian jobs.”

  Recently resigning PM Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, took to X on Tuesday to reaffirm his staunch opposition to Trump’s proposal, declaring, “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”

  There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.

  Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.

  — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 7, 2025

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 17:20

• The Climate Agenda's March Through The Institutions: Can It Be Stopped?
  The Climate Agenda’s March Through The Institutions: Can It Be Stopped?

  Authored by Tilak K. Doshi via RealClearEnergy,

  A spate of stories in the media recently provides a remarkable illustration of how the globalist policy agenda of the climate industrial complex has captured key international institutions and perverted their original organizational aims. From initially serving broad, laudable objectives for the welfare of their constituents, these institutions have been subverted over the years to serve the insistent pseudoscientific claims of climate alarmists.

  

  The corruption of global institutions has, in turn, led to significant opposition that is becoming apparent. There is the prospect of an incoming Trump administration that is avowedly sceptical of the claims of an alleged climate crisis and is intent on exiting the UN’s Paris Agreement and its “net zero by 2050” policy target for a second time. This presents a welcome challenge to these corrupt institutions. Will President Trump and some of the populist parties in Europe be capable of countering the entrenched globalist climate agenda?

  The World Bank

  On 17th October, Oxfam published a report that shockingly found that up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance —nearly 40% of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years— is “unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed.” In other words, no one knows how the money was used. There is no paper trail revealing where the money went or what the accomplished results were.

  Green cronyism, ranging from the Solyndra debacle – the waste of almost half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money on a failed solar farm project under President Obama’s watch — to President Biden’s duplicitously-named Inflation Reduction Act which will unleash an estimated $1 trillion deluge of subsidies on favored “green” industries is nothing new. But it is instructive to trace the World Bank’s decline from its honorable founding objectives to its current status as yet another institution advocating green causes.

  Dr. Jim Yong Kim, reflecting the progressive virtues of President Obama who appointed him as president of the World Bank in 2012, imposed a ban on the financing of coal-fired power stations in 2013. This was followed by a ban on investments in all new upstream oil and gas resource development projects. The distinguished economist Deepak Lal,  a former Research Administrator of the Bank, remarked that Dr. Kim incredulously “over-ruled the cost-benefit estimates of coal-based power over solar and wind-based power generation produced by his own economic staff, justifying this by reference to a wish to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases.”

  The World Bank’s objections to the use of fossil fuels despite their importance to economic growth and poverty alleviation – which constitute its foundational institutional objectives — can be traced to the intellectual evolution of its management under James Wolfensohn during his decade as president (1995 – 2005). Mr. Wolfensohn traced the arc from the old regime to the new. The old was represented by the “Washington consensus” of free markets, liberal trading regimes, sound money and entrepreneurship associated with the classical liberalism of Adam Smith.

  The new intellectual environment of the World Bank’s management – personified by Joseph Stiglitz, Chief Economist of the World Bank (1997 – 2000) — was defined by the theoretical failures of the free market, especially in accounting for the alleged negative climate impacts of fossil fuel use. Stiglitz, a climate alarmist, wrote in a 2015 court brief for a failed climate lawsuit brought on behalf of a group of children against the US Federal government that “fossil fuel-based economies imposed ‘incalculable’ costs on society and shifting to clean energy will pay off.”

  Rupert Darwall, a former adviser to the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and author of Green Tyranny, encapsulates the betrayal of the World Bank to its founding objectives as follows:

  The World Bank’s mission has been subverted by green ideologues who assert that a low-carbon world benefits the world’s poor but fail to acknowledge that making energy much more costly increases poverty. The World Bank tags itself as ‘working for a world free of poverty’…In making its choice between development and sustainability, the World Bank has decided it is going to try and ‘save the planet’ on the backs of the poor.

  By abdicating its founding principles for alleviating global poverty, the World Bank has taken a lead role among multilateral financial institutions in denying vast financial resources to poorer countries. It has hypocritically vetoed the right of developing countries to adopt the path of economic growth and environmental improvement that the now-rich countries had taken up successfully since the industrial revolution two centuries ago. The Bank’s obsessive support for intermittent, low-yield renewable energy such as solar and wind power comes at the cost of its central charter to help the poor, an outcome that can only be described as egregiously unjust.

  The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  The UN IPCC issued a news release on December 6th prior to the start of a “scoping” meeting in Kuala Lumpur of over 230 experts from 70 countries to draft outlines of working group contributions to the UN IPCC’s 7th Assessment Report (to be completed in 2029). In the press release, the IPCC claimed that human combustion of fossil fuels “has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world.” This is contrary to the IPCC’s position hitherto, which is that almost all types of extreme weather events cannot be attributed with confidence to human activity. 

  The position of the IPCC regarding the lack of any link between climate change and extreme weather events is contrary to the almost daily headlines in the mainstream media attributing specific adverse weather events to “climate change.”  The work of eminent climate policy analysts  Steve Koonin and Roger Pielke Jr. has done much to expose the pseudoscientific nature of what has been called “attribution studies.” These typically involve researchers who apply their climate models and historical observations to conclude that any particular weather event (say a hurricane or a drought) was made “more likely” or “more severe” by some magnitude in percentage units due to “human influence” (referring to the combustion of fossil fuels).

  Based on the dubious claims of “attribution science,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a climate law last week that will require companies operating in New York state responsible for large amounts of planet-warming pollution to contribute to climate damage repair efforts. Under the new state law, companies responsible for the bulk of emissions from 2000 to 2018 will be on the hook for some $3 billion a year over the next 25 years.

  Steve Koonin cites the World Meteorological Organization that states that “any single event, such as tropical cyclone cannot be attributed to human-induced climate change, given the state of scientific understanding.” The IPCC’s “Special Report on Extreme Events” states that “Many weather and climate extremes are the result of natural climate variability…Even if there were no anthropogenic changes in climate, a wide variety of natural weather and climate extremes would still occur.”

  Nonetheless, international organizations such as the World Bank and the IPCC have been increasingly politicized to serve climate hysteria. In this context, Chris Morrison of The Daily Sceptic finds that “[f]ears are growing that the IPCC could water down or even ditch its current finding that almost all types of extreme weather events have little or no sign of past human involvement, or any going forward to 2100.”

  International Energy Agency

  On December 23rd, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, released a report documenting how the International Energy Agency “has moved away from its energy security mission to become an “energy transition” cheerleader.” The report finds that the “French President Macron’s observation that IEA has become the ‘armed wing for implementing the Paris Agreement’ is regrettably true. With the many serious energy security challenges facing the world, however, IEA should not be a partisan cheerleader. What the world needs from IEA—and what it is not receiving now—is sober and unbiased analyses and projections that educate and inform policymakers and investors. IEA needs to remember why it was established and return to its energy security mission.”

  The divergence of the IEA away from its original mission to advise policymakers in its member countries with sound analysis of trends in global energy supply and demand to becoming a “cheerleader” for radical net zero emission policy targets has not gone unnoticed over recent years. I have written on the ideological approach adopted by the IEA in its advocacy for green causes here, here, and here.

  When the organization issued a call for the cessation of all future investments in developing fossil fuel resources in May 2021, this is what I wrote:

  It is a month since the International Energy Agency – the rich world’s energy advisory body established in the wake of the oil price shock of 1973 — issued its astonishing report calling for the end to all new investments in oil and gas (let alone coal) from 2021. As expected, the IEA “road-map” elicited widespread media coverage and strong reactions, ranging from gushing support from those convinced of a “climate emergency” to outright dismissal, as in the case of the Saudi oil minister who called the report a sequel to “La La Land.” 

  When ideological advocacy becomes the measure of achievement for the IEA, the loss of credibility and soundness of its policy advice is only to be expected.  The IEA’s messianic fervour for green technologies such as solar and wind power, “green” hydrogen, batteries and electric vehicles prevents it from asking basic questions. If it is true that drastically cutting back on fossil fuels is consistent with higher economic growth and increased productive employment, why does the IEA recommend policymakers to force countries along “net-zero” pathways? Surely, if replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar energy and electric vehicles promote growth and employment, then wouldn’t countries such as China and India naturally race towards this best of all possible worlds without expensive green subsidies and punitive anti-fossil fuel policies?

  The Trumpian Revolution Looms

  Non-profit organizations reflect the needs of their funding members, and organizations such as the World Bank, IPCC and IEA are no different. As their funding is primarily from the US and EU, it is not surprising that they manifest the “climate emergency” predilections of the Biden administration and the largely left-socialist West European governments which see climate change as an existential threat and a national security priority. In taking up the mantle of green advocacy on behalf of their paymasters, these organizations have lost all credibility as independent and objective advisors for their member countries.

  The climate industrial complex fears the prospect of the Trump administration’s pullout of the Paris agreement for the second time. Politico, a reliable mouthpiece for the climate establishment, expressed these fears soon after Mr. Trump’s election victory: “The world is bracing for President-elect Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the second time — only this time, he could move faster and with less restraint.” In Europe, the emergence of populist parties  have been partly propelled by the widespread rejection by EU citizens of the onerous fiscal burdens imposed by green policies. 

  The seismic change in policy direction that a second term “drill, baby, drill” Trump administration promises for the global climate juggernaut – represented by the three leading international agencies covered here – can only be seen as hopeful as we look forward to positive developments in energy policy in 2025.

  Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist, a former contributor to Forbes and a member of the C02 Coalition. Follow him on Substack and X.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 17:00

• AI Chatbot Startup Anthropic Valued At $60bln In New Funding Round
  AI Chatbot Startup Anthropic Valued At $60bln In New Funding Round

  AI startup Anthropic, another OpenAI ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude, is reportedly in talks to raise $2 billion, which would value the chatbot startup at a whopping $60 billion. 

  According to The Wall Street Journal, sources familiar with the matter revealed that Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading the funding round. 

  

  Last fall, Amazon agreed to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic for a minority stake in the startup, bringing its total investment since 2023 to $8 billion. Amazon’s November investment was a convertible note. 

  Other investors in Anthropic include Google, Menlo Ventures, Wisdom Ventures, Ripple Impact Investments, and Factorial Funds.

  Several months ago, Microsoft-backed OpenAI raised $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation. Last month, Elon Musk’s xAI raised $6 billion from BlackRock, Fidelity, and Sequoia Capital at a $40 billion valuation. 

  An individual familiar with Anthropic’s annualized revenue—an extrapolation of the next 12 months’ revenue based on recent sales—stated that this figure recently reached $875 million.

  The Anthropic deal would make it the fifth-most valuable US startup, trailing SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks, according to data from CB Insights. The company was valued at $18 billion in a round led by Menlo Ventures last year.

  Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei penned an op-ed in WSJ on Monday, emphasizing, “The nations that are first to build powerful AI systems will gain a strategic advantage over its development,” adding, “Incoming Trump administration officials can take steps to ensure the U.S. and its allies lead in developing this technology.” 

  Sustaining these lofty valuations is troubling, given that many of these AI startups are operating at a loss. OpenAI’s Sam Altman admitted on X on Sunday that his company continues to lose money.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 16:40

• Trump Not Ruling Out Using Military Force To Reclaim Panama Canal, Greenland
  Trump Not Ruling Out Using Military Force To Reclaim Panama Canal, Greenland

  Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

  President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would not rule out the possibility of using military force to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, emphasizing their strategic significance to U.S. national security.

  

  Speaking at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump said that he “cannot assure” that military or economic coercion would not be used to take control of these two strategic locations, in response to a question.

  “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two, but I can say this, we need them for economic security,” Trump responded.

  “It might be that you’ll have to do something. Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It’s being operated by China. We gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn’t give it to China, and they’ve abused it. They’ve abused that gift.”

  Trump in recent social media posts expressed his frustration over China’s expanding influence in the canal, despite it having been built by the United States more than 110 years ago at great financial and human cost.

  The Panama Canal, which opened in 1914 after a decade of construction led by the United States, was gradually handed back to Panama under a 1977 treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter.

  During his speech, Trump criticized Carter for handing over the Panama Canal.

  “Carter gave it to them for $1. … I thought it was a terrible thing to do. It was the most expensive structure ever built in the history of our country,” Trump said.

  The president-elect said that this action cost Carter the election in 1980.

  In 1999, Panama assumed full control of the canal, which has since become one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

  Construction of the canal, however, came at a high human cost. Official estimates suggest that around 5,600 workers died during the U.S.-led effort to build the canal. Additionally, nearly 22,000 people are estimated to have died during an earlier French-led construction attempt.

  Trump reiterated that 38,000 people died during the waterway’s construction.

  “They laugh at us because they think we’re stupid, but we’re not stupid anymore. So the Panama Canal is under discussion with them right now,” Trump said during the press conference.

  Trump also said the United States needs Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, for “national security purposes.”

  “People have been talking about it for a long time. You have approximately 45,000 people there,” Trump said.

  “They should give it up, because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world.

  “You have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen. We’re not letting it happen.”

  Trump questioned whether Denmark has any right over Greenland.

  “The people are going to probably vote for independence or to come into the United States,” he said.

  If Denmark rejected the U.S. proposal, Trump said, he “would tariff Denmark at a very high level.”

  In recent social media posts, Trump has floated the idea of taking control of Greenland and the Panama Canal and proposed making Canada the 51st state in order to protect U.S. national security.

  Under the separate 1977 Neutrality Treaty, Panama and the United States agreed that the waterway would remain permanently neutral with fair access and tolls for all countries. Hence, any Chinese challenge to this pact may require the United States to employ military force.

  In recent years, U.S. military commanders have expressed grave concern over Beijing’s increasing military and technology presence in Latin America, including Panama.

  In 2017, Panama cut long-standing diplomatic ties with Taiwan to establish closer ties with China. It also became the first Latin American country to endorse Beijing’s infrastructure plan, the Belt and Road Initiative. Since then, Chinese companies have been heavily involved in logistics and infrastructure projects near the canal, including port operations on both ends of the waterway.

  Trump earlier criticized what he called the “exorbitant” fees Panama has been charging the United States, its Navy, and U.S. corporations for passage.

  On Dec. 22, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded to Trump’s social media posts about the Panama Canal by saying that “every square meter” of the canal belongs to his country.

  In a televised address, Mulino said that Panama’s sovereignty and independence were non-negotiable.

  Trump quickly replied, “We’ll see about that!”

  In a Dec. 22 post, Trump also shared an image of the U.S. flag flying over the Panama Canal with the text “Welcome to the United States Canal!”

  Trump’s offer to buy Greenland is not new. He first proposed the idea in 2019, but it was rejected by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who called it “absurd.”

  In response, Trump canceled a planned visit to Denmark, calling Frederiksen’s remarks “nasty” and “inappropriate.”

  Trump later indicated to reporters that his idea was normal by referencing past U.S. efforts to purchase the strategic island, including Harry Truman’s proposal to buy it for $100 million in 1946.

  According to Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, the territory is expected to become increasingly important in the coming years.

  “It’s strategically very important to the Arctic, which is going to be the critical battleground of the future,” O’Brien told Fox News on Dec. 29, adding that “the Russians and Chinese are all over the Arctic” and that Denmark is unable to adequately defend the vast island.

  On Dec. 22, Trump announced his appointment of PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark. In his message, Trump reiterated his idea to take ownership of Greenland.

  “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote.

  Howery, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Sweden during Trump’s first term, will represent U.S. interests in the region, Trump said.

  Hours after Trump’s statement, the Danish government announced a substantial increase in defense spending for Greenland, pledging at least $1.5 billion.

  Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede said in a statement: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale.

  “We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 16:20