• Escobar: A Matryoshka Of Psyops And Why General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere
  Escobar: A Matryoshka Of Psyops And Why General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  The main problem faced by Russia is not the Hegemon and NATO: it’s domestic…

  

  The secret of a perfect psyop is that no one really understands it.

  A perfect psyop accomplishes two tasks: it renders the enemy dazed and confused while achieving a set of very important goals.

  It goes without saying that sooner rather than later we should see the real goals emerging out of the strategic play in Russia I described as The Longest Day.

  The Longest Day may or may not have been a larger than life psyop.

  To clear the fog, let’s start with a roundup of the usual “winner” suspects.

  First one is undoubtedly Belarus. Due to the priceless mediation of Old Man Luka, Minsk is now gifted with the most experienced army in the world: the Wagner musicians, masters of conventional (Libya, Ukraine) and non-conventional (Syria, Central African Republic) war.

  That is already inflicting the Fear of Hell in NATO, which is suddenly facing in its eastern flank a super pro army, very well equipped, and de facto uncontrollable, and on top of it hosted by a nation now equipped with nuclear weapons.

  Simultaneously, Russia props up dissuasion on its western front. Like clockwork that is leading NATOstan to invest in ballooning military budgets (with funds it doesn’t have). That process happens to be a key plank of Russian strategy since at least March 2018.

  And as an extra bonus Russia creates a 24/7 threat to the whole of Kiev’s northern front.

  Not bad for a “mutiny”.

  The Dance of the Oligarchs

  Way more complex is Russia’s internal dynamics. Putin’s current and subsequent difficult decisions may entail loss of popularity coupled with loss of internal stability -depending on the manner Kremlin-defined strategic victories are presented to Russian public opinion.

  Whatever 24/7 NATOstan mainstream media spin may come up with, the Kremlin’s official explanation for June 24 boils down to a Prighozin demonstration: he was just trying to shake things up.

  It’s way more complicated than that. There were strategic gains, of course, and Prighozin seems to have followed a very risky script that in the end favors Moscow. But it’s still too early to tell.

  A key sub-plot is how the Dance of the Oligarchs will proceed.

  Independent Russian media was already expecting some – treasonous – players, including state functionaries, to buy their one-way ticket when the going got tough (or to say they were “ill”, or refuse to answer important calls). The Duma – fed by Bortnikov’s FSB – is already working on a hefty list.

  The Russian system – and Russian society as well – see people like these as supremely toxic: in fact much more dangerous than the demshiza (a term that mixes “democracy” and “schizophrenia”, applied to globalist neoliberals).

  On the military front, it gets even more complicated. Putin has charged Defense Minister Shoigu to compile the list of Generals to be promoted after The Longest Day. To put it mildly, for quite a few people, from many different persuasions, Shoigu has become a toxic element in Russian politics.

  Wagner – rebranded, and under new management – will continue to serve Russia’s interests via Minsk, including in Africa.

  Old Man Luka, wily as ever, has already firmly stated there won’t be any provocations against NATO via Wagner. Wagner recruiting bureaus will not be opened in Belarus. Belarussians may join Wagner directly. As it stands, most of Wagner fighters are still in Lugansk.

  For all practical purposes, from now on the Russian government won’t have anything to do, militarily and financially, with Wagner.

  Additionally, there are no heavy weapons to be confiscated. Already on Monday, June 26, Wagner had moved their heavy weapons to Belarus. What remains – and had not been moved during The Longest Day – was returned to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

  The Dance of the Generals

  A clear winner in the whole process is Russian public opinion: they made that graphically clear in Rostov. Everyone was supporting Putin, Russian soldiers, Wagner and Prighozin – at the same time. The overall objective was to improve the Russian army to win the war. It’s as straightforward as that.

  The purge inside the MoD will be tough. Under the pretext of repression or “rebellion”, operetta Generals” (as defined by Putin himself) that did not train their soldiers properly, did not organize the mobilization properly, or were incompetent in battle, will definitely be axed.

  The problem is that they’re all part of Gerasimov’s circle. To put it diplomatically, he needs to answer a lot of serious questions.

  And that’s what brings us to the “General Armageddon has been arrested” monster fake news gleefully parroted by the whole of the NATOstan info universe.

  General Surovikin did receive Prighozin in Rostov – but he was never an accomplice to the “rebellion”. Vice-Minister of Defense Yevkurov was also at the HQ in Rostov, and received Prighozin alongside Surovikin. Yevkurov may have played the role of strategically-placed observer.

  The Prighozin rebellion soap opera de facto started back in February – and nothing was done to stop it. Regardless whether one shares the official narrative – or not.

  What this implies is that the Russian state saw it coming. Does that make The Longest Day the Mother of All Maskirovskas?

  Once again: it’s complicated.

  Unlike the collective West, Russia does not practice or enforce cancel culture. Wagner was protected via martial law. Any insult against a “musician” fighting neo-nazi Banderistan would be met by as much as a 15-year jail term. Each Wagner fighter is officially a Hero of Russia – something Putin himself always stressed.

  On the maskirovka front, there’s no question the simmering tensions in Russian military circles before The Longest Day were manipulated, fog of war-style, to disorient the enemy. It worked like a charm. On the fateful June 24 itself, Surovikin was running a war, and not spending the day drinking brandy with Prighozin.

  The NATOstan axis is really clutching at straws. It took just a Surovikin-related rumor to send them into rapture – proving once again how deeply they fear General Armageddon.

  A key vector is how Surovikin is regarded by public opinion compared to the surviving “operetta Generals”.

  He built the now legendary three-layered defense which is already burying the “counter-offensive”. He introduced the wildly successful Shahed-136 Iranian drones in the battlefield. And he organized the meat grinder devastation in Bakhmut/Artemyovsk – which has already entered the military annals.

  Way back in the Autumn of 2022, it was General Armageddon who told Putin that Russian forces were not ready for a large-scale offensive.

  So whatever the 5th columnists fabricate, General Armadeggon is not going anywhere – except to win a war. And Russia is not “leaving” Africa. On the contrary: a rebranded Wagner is there to stay, and remains on speed dial in several latitudes.

  The trend, short term, seems to point to a – convoluted – draining of the Russian military swamp. The Longest Day seems to have galvanized Russians of all stripes into identifying who the real enemy is – and how to defeat it, whatever it takes.

  “Nothing happens by chance”

  Historian Andrei Fursov, reviving Roosevelt, observed that “in politics, nothing happens by chance. If it happens, you bet it was foreseen.”

  Well, maskirovska rides again.

  Yet the main problem faced by Russia is not the Hegemon and NATO: it’s domestic.

  Based on conversations with Russian analysts, and their impressions from very sharp people who lived in Russia, Ukraine and in the West, it would be possible to identify basically four main groups trying to impose their idea of Russia.

  1. The “Back to the USSR” gang. Includes, of course, some former KGB. Have some kind of support from the general population. A lot of educated specialists (old school pros, mostly pension age). This project suggests a revolution – a 1917 on steroids. But where is Lenin?

  2. The “Back to the Tsar” people. That would imply Russia as the “Third Rome” and a prominent role for the Orthodox Church. Hefty funds behind it. A big question mark is how much popular support, especially in “deep” Russia, they really have. This group has nothing to do with the Vatican – which is sold to The Great Reset.

  3. The Plunderers – as in robbing Russia blind in favor of the Hegemon. Congregates 5th columnists, and all manner of “totalitarian neoliberals” worshipping the “values” of the collective West. The remaining ones will soon get a knock on the door by the FSB. Their money is already blocked.

  4. The Eurasianists. This is the most feasible project – in close collaboration with China, and aiming towards a multipolar world. There’s no place for Russian oligarchs here. Yet the degree of collaboration with China is still highly debatable. The real burning question: how to really integrate, in practice, the Belt and Road Initiative with the Greater Eurasia Partnership?

  This is just a sketch – open for discussion. The first three projects may hardly work – for a series of complex reasons. And the fourth still has not gathered enough steam in Russia.

  What is certain is that all of them are fighting each other. May the current draining of the military swamp also serve to clear the political skies.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 23:30

• Economic Coercion: China's Leverage In Trade
  Economic Coercion: China’s Leverage In Trade

  China’s rise as a global economic superpower has brought with it an ability for the nation to utilize its economic dominance for geopolitical purposes.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu shows in this infographic, sponsored by The Hinrich Foundation, China’s dominant position in the solar photovoltaic (PV) supply chain has used as leverage against countries that are dependent on it for clean energy. 

  

  Dominance in the Solar Supply Chain

  Solar energy is playing a significant role in the green energy transition, and as this infographic shows, China’s dominance in the sector is clear.

  

  The solar PV supply chain starts with polysilicon, a key raw material needed to create wafers. China is home to seven of the top 10 producers of polysilicon, which includes companies like Tongwei Solar and Asia Silicon. 

  Where China is most dominant though, is in the manufacturing of wafers and cells. This is partly because it’s more economical to make these components close to wherever polysilicon is being produced. 

  The second-largest producer of cells and panels is the APAC region (ex-China), at 12% and 15% of total capacity. However, according to U.S. officials, much of this output is actually owned by Chinese firms attempting to evade U.S. tariffs. 

  While these companies would normally be subject to higher tariffs, the Biden administration has paused any tariff increases for the next two years. This can be interpreted as a sign of the country’s dependence on China for clean energy infrastructure, which could prove problematic given China’s history of economic coercion.

  Leveraging Trade for Geopolitical Purposes

  The second part of this infographic highlights past instances where China has used its commercial dominance for geopolitical purposes. 

  For example, in October 2010, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a jailed Chinese dissident. China began stalling Norwegian salmon imports in response, and Norway’s market share of salmon exports to China fell from 92% in 2010, to 29% in 2013, according to the Financial Times.

  China took similar actions towards Australia in April 2020 after the island nation called for a detailed probe into the origins of COVID-19. Import bans on Australian goods like beef, timber, and coal were announced in retaliation. These restrictions were eventually lifted in May 2023.

  Given the massive size of China’s economy, import bans such as these can heavily impact a trading partner’s industries.

  More recently, China announced in December 2022 that it would be looking into new export controls over solar panel technologies. Given China’s already tight grip over the solar PV industry, this move could expand the nation’s playbook when it comes to economic coercion.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 23:00

• "The Great Reset Is What Globalists Want… But The Great Reject Is What They'll Get"
  “The Great Reset Is What Globalists Want… But The Great Reject Is What They’ll Get”

  By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

  Economic analyst and financial writer David Morgan went against the majority of financial gurus and predicted at the end of 2022 that there was no way the Fed was going to cut interest rates. 

  

  He said on USAWatchdiog.com in December, “Cut Interest Rates & Dollar is Done, Toast, It’s Over.”  Fed Head Jay Powell said this past week the Fed was raising interest rates at least two more times to “fight inflation.”  This was a direct hit by Morgan.  Morgan sees a coming currency crisis and a war crisis.  Morgan explains,“Yes, we have both a currency crisis and a war crisis.  “

  “Let’s start with the currency crisis.  My favorite phrase for what is going on is ‘All fiat currency fails.’  We have never seen a time in all of recorded history that an unbacked currency does not go basically and effectively to zero.  When you say that ‘All fiat fails,’ there is a subgroup that says, yeah, but not the U.S. dollar. . . .I don’t know how many people have given me pushback on that statement from all over the world. . . . When I say fail, I don’t mean it goes to absolute zero.  What it means is a currency fails and a new system is implemented. . . . History is on my side…

  The precursor to this is what takes place.  Substitution.  What is substitution?  Crypto currency and gold and silver, of course. . . . and things like people going off grid. 

  All of these are indicators of how to mitigate the end of the U.S. dollar or the end of the currency crisis.  We have this all over the place. . . . Sooner or later, there will be a run for the exits.  Where are the exits?  Crypto currencies, gold and silver, barter clubs or the BRICS currency.”

  Morgan contends you just cannot run into an alternative to the U.S. dollar because there are going to be supply disruptions for everything.  You might not be able to get what you need no matter how much money you have.  So, be prepared in every way you can.

  Morgan also says,

  “The Great Reset is what the bankers want, but the Great Reject…will come from many who will not want to go down that way. 

  That’s what is going to be the most interesting because anyone who is awake, and there are more people waking up all the time, they will understand that you cannot go from one fiat phony currency, lie-based system into another one that is digital only.”

  On the war crisis, the dark powers running the world want war.  Why?  Morgan says,

  “It covers up all the things that are wrong, and it also takes them off the hook.  It was the war.  The war did it.  All wars are bankers’ wars, and they are on both sides.  They make money regardless…

  The main things are profit, but it also is mitigating their responsibilities.  They can get most people to think that it was the war that caused all this poverty, and, of course, the war will do that…

  They don’t have a real conflict with Ukraine and Russia.  They just need a way out, and it is the most profitable way out.  They are going to default on all this debt, and this is how they are going to do it.”

  There is much more in the 40-minute interview.

  Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One on One with David Morgan, founder of “The Morgan Report,” for 7.1.23.

  To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

  There is lots of free information that will be sent to you if you subscribe to TheMorganReport.com by email.  This is totally free, and you will get new analysis and content every week in your mailbox. 

  Ty
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 22:30

• Visualizing 'Real' US Home Price Growth Over The Last 50 Years
  Visualizing ‘Real’ US Home Price Growth Over The Last 50 Years

  U.S. home prices grew significantly in 2022, even as interest rates climbed higher.

  Yet, as Visual Capitalist’s Dorotrhy Neufeld details below, in inflation-adjusted terms, this growth rate was far lower. By Q4 2022, it fell to being flat year-on-year, making it the slowest real growth seen in a decade.

  The graphic below compares nominal and real residential property price growth over 50 years based on the latest data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

  

  Nominal vs. Real Home Price Growth

  In 2022, opposing forces of rising mortgage rates and a narrow supply of housing produced a moderate nominal growth rate of just over 7% as of Q4 2022. That said, real price growth dropped to 0% over the period.

  Here’s how that looks in context of the recent highs and lows of housing price growth:

  

  Recent Highs: During the pandemic, growth hit almost a 20% year-over-year rate by Q1 2022, which was record home price growth at the time. It was driven by ultra-low interest rates and remote work leading people to seek out more space.

  Recent Lows: In both real and nominal terms, home price growth sank to their lowest levels in 2008. The property market crashed after a wave of easing lending requirements. This flooded the market with an oversupply of houses as subprime homeowners couldn’t afford to make payments, leading prices to plummet.

  Factors Influencing Home Price Growth

  Today, a mix of factors are supporting nominal house prices.

  First, the housing supply remains low.

  Total existing inventory stood at 1 million in April, under half the four-decade average. As interest rates have increased, homeowners have been hesitant to sell and the number of mortgage applications has fallen. In turn, this is pushing prices higher.

  In fact, the majority of primary mortgages have interest rates locked in under 4%. As of July 1, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood much higher, at 7.02%.

  

  Along with this, new home sales are falling.

  After hitting a 15-year peak in 2021, sales sank almost 27% year-over-year in April. New home sales are often considered a leading indicator for the residential market.

  Wider Implications

  The U.S. residential market is valued at about $45 trillion, and has historically been highly sensitive to interest rates.

  While the rapid increase in interest rates haven’t yet had a major impact on housing prices, some cracks are beginning to show.

  On the other hand, if prices remain stubborn, it may contribute to inflationary pressures, leading the Federal Reserve to continue with rate increases, given the market’s sheer size and influence on the overall U.S. economy.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 22:00

• Hunter Biden's Former Business Partner Was Willing To Testify Before Grand Jury; Delaware US Attorney Didn't Answer His Calls
  Hunter Biden’s Former Business Partner Was Willing To Testify Before Grand Jury; Delaware US Attorney Didn’t Answer His Calls

  Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

  Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner who worked directly with Hunter and James Biden on a sketchy deal with a Chinese energy firm and who came forward as a whistleblower before the 2020 election, was never asked to testify to the Delaware grand jury investigating Hunter Biden, CBS News reported Thursday.

  Bobulinski was reportedly “open to testifying, and his attorney reached out to the office of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss,” but the prosecutor did not return their calls, two sources familiar with the discussions told CBS News’ Catherine Herridge.

  Weiss’ decision to ignore Bobulinski is the latest indication that prosecutors purposefully tanked the investigation to protect Hunter’s father, Joe Biden.

  

  Last week, whistleblower documents were released revealing that federal prosecutors repeatedly interfered on Hunter Biden’s behalf during the probe into the younger Biden’s business dealings. According to former IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley and an unnamed IRS agent, federal prosecutors blocked two search warrants and refused to press more extensive criminal charges.  The whistleblower also testified that when agents sought a search warrant for Hunter Biden’s storage locker, prosecutors tipped off Biden’s legal team so they could remove any incriminating evidence.

  Shapley also said he was stopped from pursuing investigative leads into “dad” or the “big guy.”

  Shapley, who is still a supervisory special agent with the IRS, says he was prevented from pursuing any leads that involved President Joe Biden, including the now-infamous 2017 email from James Gilliar, a business associate of Hunter Biden’s, which bore the subject line “Expectations” and outlined a “provisional agreement” for “equity” in a deal with a Chinese energy company.

  Two of Hunter Biden’s former business partners who received the message told CBS News that a line in the email — “10 held by H for the big guy?” — was shorthand for 10% held by Hunter Biden for his father.

  Shapley told CBS News that his efforts to look further into money trails that involved “dad” or “the big guy” were blocked by a senior prosecutor working for Weiss.

  “I would say that they limited certain investigative leads that could have potentially provided information on the president of the United States,” Shapley told CBS News.

  Shapley also alleges that in August 2020, an iCloud search warrant recovered the threatening  July 2017 WhatsApp “shake-down” message from Hunter Biden to Chinese businessman Henry Zhao about an outstanding payment.

  “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter Biden allegedly wrote. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

  According to Shapley, prosecutors “denied” the IRS investigators’ efforts to learn more about the message.

  On Sept 4, 2020, according to the IRS whistleblowers, the DOJ ordered a “cease and desist” on any overt investigation of Hunter Biden or Biden family influence peddling. They also claim that the FBI hid the 1023 form alleging foreign bribery from the IRS case attorneys overseeing the case.

  The FBI verified that Hunter Biden’s laptop was real in 2019, yet worked with social media platforms to censor reporting on it before the 2020 election.

  And now it has come to light that prosecutors didn’t even bother to have a the key witness testify before the grand jury.

  Bobulinski came forward in October of 2020, revealing during a conference press in Nashville, Tennessee two hours before the presidential debate that he had personally met with Joe Biden in May 2017, as part of discussions over the potential business deal with Chinese energy firm, CEFC.

  “In my approximately hour long meeting with Joe that night, we discussed Biden’s history, the Biden’s family business dealing plans with the Chinese, with which he was plainly familiar, at least at a high level,” Bobulinski said. Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that he had nothing to do with Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

  “I’ve heard Joe Biden say that he’s never discussed business with Hunter, that is FALSE,” Bobulinski alleged. “I have first-hand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden,” he added.

  The FBI had Bobulinski sit for an interview the next day, and made him turn over copies of his cell phones.

  In a statement, James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said prosecutors “prevented investigators from taking any steps to verify this evidence that could lead to President Biden.”

  “The fact that a key witness associated with the CEFC deal was not brought in to testify before the grand jury proves again that the Justice Department is engaged in a coverup,” said Comer, who vowed to “pursue a thorough investigation into the Department of Justice’s misconduct.”

  Attorney General Merrick Garland insisted on June 23 that Weiss had “complete authority to make all decisions on his own.”

  

  s the U.S. attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration, [he] would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to,” Garland said.

  Earlier this month, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to just two federal misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes, and was spared prison time.

  A federal judge still needs to sign off on “sweetheart” plea bargain prosecutors brokered with Hunter Biden’s legal team.

  U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika of the District of Delaware set a court date of July 26 for Biden to make his initial court appearance related to the plea deal

  Noreika, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump, will have the power to either approve or reject the plea agreement.

  credittrader
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 21:30

• India's Way To A More Peaceful Nation?
  India’s Way To A More Peaceful Nation?

  Over the years, India’s score on the Global Peace Index has fluctuated, reaching a low during the 2019-2020 Citizenship Act protests.

  However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, due to other countries struggling more, the nation’s rank in the report has still improved somewhat more gradually.

  In its latest release Wednesday, India ranked 126th – a “medium” score.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The last time the country scored in this category was 2018 – in the meantime, it was classified as “low”.

  The report does not take into account this year’s violence in Manipur, however, which will be reflected in next year’s release.

  Before the incidents, India’s score on the Global Peace Index had improved drastically, improving in the regions of “violent crime, neighboring countries relations and political instability”, according to the report.

  However, India was still only the 21st most peaceful country in Asia out of 26 surveyed, coming in right at the bottom of the “medium” category.

  The publication put the economic cost of violence in India at $1 trillion PPP dollars or 6 percent of GDP.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 21:00

• Israel Buys 25 More Lockheed F-35 Stealth Jets In $3 Billion Deal
  Israel Buys 25 More Lockheed F-35 Stealth Jets In $3 Billion Deal

  Via The Cradle,

  Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced the purchase of a third squadron of F-35 stealth fighter jets in a deal worth $3 billion, Reuters reported on Sunday. Israel will now boast 75 of the Lockheed Martin manufactured war planes in its arsenal.

  The defense ministry added further that the deal will be financed through the defense aid package Israel receives from the US.

  

  Israel was the first foreign recipient of the F-35, also known in the US as the Joint Strike Fighter and in Israel by its Hebrew name “Adir.” Israel first used the F-35 in combat when it bombed Syria in 2018.

  “The F-35 squadron has become an operational squadron,” Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin said at the time. “We are flying the F-35 all over the Middle East – we might be the first to attack with F-35 in the Middle East,” he said.

  Norkin presented images of the F-35 violating Lebanese airspace by flying over Beirut. The development and production costs of the F-35, paid primarily by the US military, have been estimated at near $1.5 trillion. It is considered the most expensive military weapons system in history.

  The F-35 is considered crucial in what Israeli planners call the “war between wars” against Iranian supported units of the Syrian military, as well as in the event that Israel would choose to eventually strike Iran’s nuclear program.

  Just before the F-35 deal was announced Sunday, Israeli warplanes again bombed Syrian sites. Syrian state media SANA reported that the “Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression from the direction northeast of Beirut, targeting some points in the vicinity of the city of Homs.”

  The bombing resulted in material damages, but no casualties. With this latest attack, Israel has bombed Syria 19 times since the start of 2023 and 13 times since the earthquake struck the country in February.

  Israel’s air force has regularly bombed Syria since the start of the US-led covert war on Damascus starting in 2011. At the time, Israeli officials insisted they were taking no part in the war, which was unleashed by Washington using extremist Salafist militias who attacked Syrian security forces and police under the cover of anti-government protests.

  However, Israeli officials acknowledged in 2013 they had hoped to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the war, while reports later emerged of the Israeli air force bombing Syrian army positions to assist the Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front during battles between the two sides.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 20:30

• White House Wants To Block Sunlight To Save Planet From 'Global Warming'
  White House Wants To Block Sunlight To Save Planet From ‘Global Warming’

  Despite the European Commission’s recent warning that large-scale interventions such as solar engineering to reverse ‘climate change’ could have “unintended consequences,” the White House published a new report Friday indicating that the Biden administration wants to manipulate planetary systems to block the sunlight to save the planet. 

  The congressionally mandated report released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy shows the Biden administration is very eager to explore “geoengineering” methods to block sunlight because they allege the planet is burning and there’s an imminent climate crisis that will destroy the world. 

  “A program of research into the scientific and societal implications of solar radiation modification (SRM) would enable better-informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits of SRM as a component of climate policy, alongside the foundational elements of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and adaptation,” the White House report said. 

  The report continued, “SRM offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years.” 

  In a statement, the White House said, “There are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.” 

  

  There is no official government policy that was attached to the report. The administration noted Congress ordered the report. 

  The report was released one day after the European Commission outlined the potential risks and “unintended consequences” of manipulating planetary systems to fight global warming. 

  The commission warned:

  In the context of accelerated global warming, deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems (referred to as “geoengineering”), such as solar radiation modification, is attracting more attention. However, the risks, impacts and unintended consequences that these technologies pose are poorly understood, and necessary rules, procedures and institutions have not been developed. 

  Some of these risks include:

  These technologies introduce new risks to people and ecosystems, while they could also increase power imbalances between nations, spark conflicts and raises a myriad of ethical, legal, governance and political issues. 

  Blocking the sun’s rays globally with artificial particles in the name of ‘climate change’ is gaining traction. However, there’s too much risk involved that could possibly harm biodiversity and agriculture on a global scale. The fact that this technology could alter global weather patterns and the Biden administration wants to explore it — is frightening. 

  … and Mr. Burns from the animated television series The Simpsons tried this.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 20:00

• The Affirmative Aftermath: Schools Now Insist That Race Had A Major Impact In Admissions
  The Affirmative Aftermath: Schools Now Insist That Race Had A Major Impact In Admissions

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  There is an interesting debate unfolding around the country in the aftermath of the Supreme Court barring the use of race in college admissions.

  For decades, colleges and universities have sought to downplay the weight given to race in court while insisting that it was one of a number of factors used in maintaining diversity. Now, however, schools are insisting that, without considering race, minority admissions will plummet.

  

  During the Supreme Court oral arguments over affirmative action, Harvard’s counsel Seth Waxman struggled with an argument that race consideration was needed to maintain current admissions for minorities. Yet, he also maintained that it was not a major factor and that the consideration of race with regard to Asian students produced only a “slight disparity” and “had no effect with respect to outcomes.”

  It was no easy argument. As in past cases, the Court was assured that it was just one of a number of “tips” that was not substantial in the decisions. Yet, after the Court barred the use of race criteria, schools are now arguing that it will make a massive difference and substantially reduce minority admissions.

  Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has ruled that race could not be a determinative or major factor in admissions. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court ruled against affirmative action. In his plurality decision, then-Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. stopped short of barring the use of race in admissions entirely. Instead, he cited Harvard University’s admissions policy as an example of how race can be one of a number of diversity elements.

  In the 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court upheld Michigan’s use of race but then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cautioned that the court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was 20 years ago.

  Since that time, universities have insisted that they only use race as one of many factors and that it does not carry the determinative weight rejected in Bakke. For decades, universities and colleges maintained this difficult line of downplaying the importance of race in admissions.

  However, even the limited use of racial classifications continued to divide the Court for decades. In 2017, Chief Justice John Roberts declared:

  “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

  In his decision last week, Roberts noted that minority students could still raise their own individual struggle with racial discrimination in essays, but that schools cannot employ threshold classifications to give an advantage or disadvantage because of race.

  Many of us support efforts to maintain diverse classes and see the value of such diversity in the education process. I have found economic diversity to be one of the most important elements to my classes. Students who come from lower income families often have a sharply different view on many of the issues that we discuss in our classes.

  Yet, it is the frank discussion of the racial criteria that is so interesting in the aftermath of the decision. Many now insist that racial criteria was determinative in a large number of applications.

  The latest was State University of New York (SUNY) system Chancellor John B. King, Jr. who gave a strikingly conflicted account on NPR that was not challenged in the interview.

  On Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” King stated that an admissions process based only on individual merit would result in “fewer black and Latino students on campuses.” Yet, at the same time, he insisted that use of individual merit alone would not impact white or Asian students.

  He told host Steve Inskeep:

  “Yeah. Again, I think they’re misrepresenting how the admissions process works. There are policies at Harvard, for example, where students are admitted because they are legacies, because they’re one of multiple generations in their family to go to Harvard. There are students who are admitted because they’re a tuba player. There are students who are admitted because they’re great lacrosse players. And so, there [are] a range of factors as universities try to build a diverse class.”

  King then emphasized “by removing the tool of race-conscious admissions, the evidence is it results in fewer black and Latino students on campuses.”

  Of course, a minority student who plays the tuba can still get that “tip” with other indications of individual merit separate from racial classifications. Minority students clearly have similar “tips” based on individual merit from achievements in tuba to tennis to trigonometry. If the factor was given no more weight than a tuba talent, one would think that the drop in admissions would not be as severe given a myriad of other qualifications or tips in applications.

  Soon after the decision, California Gov. Gavin Newsom objected to the ruling in saying that admitting students solely based on their individual merits, without considering race, would result in a massive drop in minority admissions.

  Likewise, over at The Nation, Elie Mystal insisted that, without factoring in race, minority admissions always drop: “In California, which ended its affirmative action policies over 25 years ago, the studies show that, without affirmative action, Black enrollment plummets, Latino enrollment plummets.” He insisted that this was a victory for “mediocre white people.”

  [Mystal later attacked Justice Thomas on MSNBC, describing Thomas as a “mutilated version of a black justice” who just did whatever his wife, who is white, tells him to do. Rather than accept that Thomas holds opposing constitutional views, Mystal insisted “he doesn’t want to see anything that Ms. Ginni tells him he shouldn’t be able to see.”]

  The difference between the arguments and the aftermath of the affirmative action decision is striking. What was presented as a relative modest “tip” based on race to the Court is now being presented as a huge factor in admissions. If left to individual merit, advocates and administrators now insist that that minority admissions will sharply decline and white/Asian admissions will rise.

  Nevertheless, King insists that such determinative use of race had no negative impact on white or Asian students while insisting that the number of admissions for white or Asian students will increase substantially when only individual merit is accessed.

  That was all to explain why people just do not understand “how the admissions process works.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 19:30

• Ahead Of Independence Day, These Are The Most-Searched-For Foods To BBQ In Each State
  Ahead Of Independence Day, These Are The Most-Searched-For Foods To BBQ In Each State

  You know it’s coming… The White House will most likely be bragging on July 4 or days before via Twitter that Americans are finally saving on cookouts as ‘Bidenomics‘ is a success. Anyone with a wallet who works hard for their money knows the White House is full of malarky. 

  Americans have been battered with two years of negative real wage growth, forcing them to deplete personal savings and rack up record credit card debt in a high-interest rate environment to survive the worst inflation storm in a generation. But don’t worry because none of that matters to White House officials — they’re in cheerleading mode about taking credit for everything good and none of the bad. 

  As Independence Day quickly approaches, Americans will still be paying near-record high prices for hamburger meat. The good news is that egg prices have collapsed, which could provide relief for deviled egg lovers. Food inflation likely has abated from last year’s levels but remains well over pre-Covid levels. 

  For those planning cookouts, USA Today has released the latest BBQ trends across all 50 states and the District of Columbia of the most searched foods. 

  Even though residents in sixteen states wanted veggies, the rest of the country preferred meat. 

  Here are the top ten searched BBQ foods:

  1. BBQ chicken

  2. BBQ ribs

  3. BBQ pork chops

  4. BBQ meatballs

  5. BBQ shrimp

  6. BBQ pulled pork

  7. BBQ brisket

  8. BBQ baked beans

  9. BBQ salmon

  10. BBQ meatloaf

  There were 16 states and Washington, DC, that saw higher search trends for grilling vegetables versus meat. 

  

  On a state-by-state basis, here’s the most searched “how to grill” food: 

  Alabama – Corn on the cob

  Alaska – Corn

  Arizona – Burgers

  Arkansas – Ribs

  California – Tri tip

  Colorado – Chicken breast

  Connecticut – Spare ribs

  Delaware – Salmon

  District of Columbia – Chicken breast

  Florida – Mahi mahi

  Georgia – Wings

  Hawaii – Ahi tuna

  Idaho – Steak

  Illinois – Pork chops

  Indiana – Corn in husk

  Iowa – Asparagus

  Kansas – Salmon

  Kentucky – Shrimp

  Louisiana – Steak

  Maine – Chicken

  Maryland – Eggplant

  Massachusetts – Swordfish

  Michigan – Asparagus

  Minnesota – Asparagus

  Mississippi – Ribs

  Missouri – Corn on the cob

  Montana – Asparagus

  Nebraska – Corn on the cob

  Nevada – Burgers

  New Hampshire – Asparagus

  New Jersey – London boil

  New Mexico – Chicken

  New York – Clams

  North Carolina – Filet mignon

  North Dakota – Asparagus

  Ohio – Chicken

  Oklahoma – Corn on the cob

  Oregon – Lamb chops

  Pennsylvania – Filet mignon

  Rhode Island – Salmon

  South Carolina – Pork chops

  South Dakota – Burgers

  Tennessee – Pork chops

  Texas – Ribs

  Utah – Chicken

  Vermont – Salmon

  Virginia – Portobello mushrooms

  Washington – Flank steak

  West Virginia – Asparagus

  Wisconsin – Brats

  Wyoming – Burgers

  The good news is Americans have yet to search for “how to grill” insects. As we’ve noted, there’s a push by international non-governmental agencies, such as WEF, as well as some governments, to reset the food supply chain to swap out meat diets for insects. Americans won’t stand for that nonsense. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 19:00

• Dalio: Why The World Is On The Brink Of Great Disorder
  Dalio: Why The World Is On The Brink Of Great Disorder

  Authored by Ray Dalio, op-ed via Time.com,

  I’m a global macro investor who has been betting on what’s going to happen for over 50 years. I’ve been through all sorts of events and cycles in all sorts of places over a long time which led me to study how these events and cycles work. In the process, I learned that I needed to study history to understand what’s going on and what’s likely to happen.

  

  Early in my career, I learned though a couple of painful mistakes that the biggest things that surprised me did so because they never happened in my lifetime but had happened many times in history. The first time that happened was on August 15, 1971 when I was clerking on the floor of the New York Stock exchange and the U.S. defaulted on its debt promise to allow people to turn in their paper dollars for gold. I thought that this was a big crisis that would send stock prices down but they went up a lot. I didn’t understand why because I’d never experienced a big currency devaluation before. When I looked back in history, I saw that the exact same thing happened on March 5, 1933 when Roosevelt defaulted on the U.S.’s promise to let people turn in their paper money for gold and stocks went up. That led me to study and learn why—which is that money could be created, and when it’s created, it goes down in value which makes things go up in price. That experience led me to study the rises and declines of markets, economies, and countries which I’ve done ever since. For example, my studying how the 1920s debt bubble turned into the 1929-33 financial collapse led me to anticipate and profit from the 2008 financial crisis. That’s how I learned that it’s critical to take a longer-term perspective and understand the mechanics behind why history rhymes.

  A few years ago, I saw three big things happening that hadn’t happened in my lifetime but had happened in the 1930-45 period. These were:

  1. The largest amounts of debt, the fastest rates of debt growth, and the greatest amounts of central bank printing of money and buying debt since 1930-45.

  2. The biggest gaps in wealth, income, values, and the greatest amounts of populism since the 1930-45 period.

  3. The greatest international great powers conflict, most importantly between the U.S. and China, since 1930-45.

  Seeing these three big things that never happened in these magnitudes in my lifetime led me to study the rises and declines of markets, economies, and countries over the last 500 years, as well as the rises and declines of China’s dynasties the last 2,100 years.

  That examination showed me that these three big forces—i.e. the debt/money one, the internal conflict one, and the external conflict one—transpired in big cycles that reinforced each other to make up what I call the Big Cycle. These cycles were driven by logical cause-effect relationships Most importantly, this study of the last 500 years of history taught me that:

  1. The previously described financial conditions repeatedly proved to be leading indicators of big financial crises that led to big shifts in the financial order.

  2. The previously described levels of political and social gaps repeatedly proved to be leading indicators of great conflicts within countries that led to big changes in domestic orders.

  3. The previously described great powers’ conflicts repeatedly proved to be leading indicators of international conflicts that led to big changes in the world order.

  Said differently, history shows that the painful seismic shifts part of the Big Cycle comes about when there is simultaneously 1) too much debt creation that leads to debt bubbles bursting and economic contractions which cause central banks to print a lot of money and buy debt, 2) big conflicts within countries due to big wealth and values conflicts made worse by the bad economic conditions, and 3) big international conflicts due to rising world powers challenging the existing world powers at a time of economic and internal political crises In doing this study, I also saw two other big forces that had big effects. They are:

  1. Acts of nature (droughts, floods, pandemics) including climate change.

  2. Learning leading to inventions of technologies that typically produced evolutionary advances in productivity and living standards —e.g., the First and Second Industrial Revolution, and computing/AI revolution.

  I call these the Five Big Forces. I saw how they affect each other and change in logical ways to produce the Big Cycle that produces big changes in the world order. I came to realize that if one understands and follows each of these forces and how they interact, one can understand most everything that’s changing the world order. That’s what I’m trying to do.

  I will give you a quick summary of what I learned from my study but if you want to lean more about how and why things change you can get that in my book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.

  Where We Are and What’s Likely Ahead

  1. The Financial/Economic Force

  In the U.S., we are now in middle part of what I call the short-term debt cycle and is also known as the business cycle. These short-term debt cycles have lasted 7 years on average, give or take about 3 years. There have been 12 1/2 of them since the new monetary world order started in 1945. So, we are now about half-way though the 13th of the cycles, at the point of the cycle when the central bank has tightened money to fight inflation that is just before the debt and economic contractions which will likely come over next 18 months.

  We are also in a late and dangerous part of the long-term debt cycle because the levels of debt assets and debt liabilities have become so high that it is difficult to give lender-creditors a high enough interest rate relative to inflation that is adequate to make them want to hold this debt as an asset without making interest rates so high that it unacceptably hurts the borrower-debtor. Because of unsustainable debt growth, we are likely approaching a major inflection point that will change the financial order. Said differently, it appears to me likely that we are approaching a debt/financial/economic restructuring that will lead to big changes to the financial order.

  More specifically. it appears likely to me that because of large deficits the U.S. Treasury will have to sell a lot of debt and it appears there will not be adequate demand for it. If that happens, it will lead to either much higher interest rates or the Fed printing a lot of money and buying bonds which will devalue money. For these reasons, the debt/financial conditions could worsen, perhaps very significantly, over the next 18 months.

  2. The Domestic Order Force

  In several countries, most importantly the U.S., we have seen a growing percentage of the population that are populist extremists (about 20-25 percent of the right are extreme and about 10-15 percent of the left are) and a shrinking of the percentage of the population that are bipartisan moderates. Though the bipartisan moderates still remain in the majority, they constitute a declining percentage of the population and they are far less willing to fight and win at all costs. In studying history, I saw this growing populism of both sides and increased conflict has repeatedly occurred when large gaps in wealth and values existed at the same time as bad economic conditions. At such times, significant percentages of the population chose populist political leaders who vowed to fight and win for them rather than compromise. In my book, I described the state the U.S. is now in as Stage 5 (“When There Are Bad Financial Conditions and Intense Conflict”) of the “internal order cycle,” which comes just before some sort of civil war and changes in the domestic order. That is what is now happening.

  Looking ahead, the next 18 months will be an increasingly intense big election period which will lead to much greater political conflict which is likely to sharper the divide between the left and the right. Thirty-three Senate seats, the presidency, and control of the House will be fought over by a number of populist candidates and there will likely be poor economic conditions, so the fights will be vicious and there will be a real test of rule-following and compromising, both of which are required to make democracies work. You can see the movement toward a win at all cost fight while the respect for the legal and political systems declines. You can see this dynamic playing out even now, in things like Donald Trump and his followers being at war with the justice system, or as he and his followers would say, the system’s war against him. Whichever perspective you have, it is clear that we are headed into a type of civil war over the next 18 months. To me the most important war is between the bipartisan moderates and the populist extremes, yet the bipartisan moderates are for the most part quietly staying out of this fight. The only thing the Democrats and Republicans can agree on, which most Americans also agree on, is being anti-China which brings me to my next big force.

  3. The International World Order Force

  The conflicts between the U.S. and China are likely to intensify as domestic political tensions will likely lead to increased aggressiveness toward China. That is because in the U.S. most everyone is anti-China and those running for office will want to out-China-bash each other in an election year. China and the US are already dangerously close to some form of war, whether an all-out economic one or, worse, a military one. There are also important elections in Taiwan next year, which is already a flash point in U.S.-China elections, and a U.S.-backed push for Taiwanese independence is something to keep a close eye on when weighing the potential for even more overt U.S.-China conflict. There are several issues—Taiwan, chips, dealing with Russia, sanctioning investments—that are being fought over, and both sides are preparing for war. I don’t mean to say that we are destined for war, but I do mean that the odds of some form of a major conflict are dangerously high.

  4. Acts of Nature

  Acts of nature are of course harder to predict accurately, but they appear to be getting worse and are likely to be more costly and damaging over the next five to ten years due to climate change. Also, the world is entering an El Niño phase of the climate cycle over the next year.

  5. Technology

  What can we expect from technology/human inventiveness? Like acts of nature, it is hard to know exactly, though there should be no doubt that generative AI and other technological advances have the potential to cause both massive productivity gains and massive destructions, depending on how they are used. The one thing that we can be sure of is that these changes will be greatly disruptive.

  Exactly how events will unfold is beyond my ability to say, but there is no doubt in my mind that those who assume that things will work in the orderly ways we have gotten used in the last few decades will be shocked and probably hurt by the changes to come.

  How well these changes are managed will make all the difference. If our leaders can rise above their tendencies to fight and instead focus on cooperating, we can certainly navigate these tricky times to create a better world for most people. Presumably, this outcome is best for everyone, so we should be strongly against civil disorder and war between nations, keeping it in the back of our mind so we strive for cooperative decision-making. For example, now that a debt ceiling agreement has passed, it would be great to see the Democrats and Republicans mutually agree on a bipartisan group of very skilled people to come up with a practical, long-term bipartisan plan. I wrote an article “Why and How Capitalism Needs to be Reformed?” years ago which is still relevant today in case you’re interested. Having said that, it is probably unrealistic to believe that we can materially change the course of events, so what is most important for most people is to visualize the worst. If you do that, you will be prepared for it and will probably be fine.

  In closing I should say that the most important thing I’ve learned in my 50 years of being a global macro investor is that I can be wrong. For that reason, while I suggest that you consider what I am sharing, I also suggest that you assess it and the circumstances for yourself.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 18:30

• "I Don't Think We'll Ever Get To The 2024 Election", Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret) Warns
  “I Don’t Think We’ll Ever Get To The 2024 Election”, Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret) Warns

  Retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor joined Patrick Bet-David on his PDB Podcast for a lengthy discussion of  Russia, Ukraine, the woke military, the Trump Tape, China, and much more.

  

  However, one section in particular caught our attention.

  Bet-David recently laid out how he thinks 2024 will play out in a long tweet:

  2024 strategy to have Newsom replace Biden:

  Step 1:  have Newsom go around defending Biden. Selling Biden’s record.

  Shows loyalty

  Step 2: have him constantly attack Desantis.

  Dems are convinced Trump will be forced to drop out

  Step 3: if Biden doesn’t step down, have mainstream media attack him

  It’s already happening. ABC, CBS & NBC all went after him starting this week.  

  Step 4: once Jill notices these endless attacks have a private meeting with Biden sharing strategy to save face if he steps down

  1. Multiple documentary showing him as modern day FDR.

  2. Massive Simon & Schuster book deal 💰

  3. Defend his legacy & be pardoned by Newsom if 💩 hits the fan

  Step 5:  choose one of few options to step down

  1. Due to health

  2. Jill and I prayed about it and we decided it’s time for us to go spend time with the grandkids.

  3. “We fixed everything Trump broke and now it’s time for someone else to do it”

  4. Edify Newsom as being loyal to Biden unlike Desantis not being loyal to Trump.

  Step 6:  In order to prevent Kamala from backstabbing, let her become the first female president for a split second when Biden steps down.

  Hilary will lose her mind but what’s new?  

  Step 7: Divide Desantis and Trump camp to make sure MAGA Doesn’t vote for Desantis

  Step 8: Newsom becomes 47 [48]

  And last but not least, it’s very likely that NONE of the above will happen, which is why it’s called a prediction.  

  Remember: ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVE.

  In response to this, Macgregor went dark, beginning by noting that “first of all I think it’s brilliant. And I think that if we were living in a linear world – in other words, when one event follows the next logically; you’re absolutely right.”

  “But,” Macgregor warns “I don’t think we’ll ever get to the 2024 election.”

  “I think things are going to implode in Washington before then.”

  From there it gets more ominous…

  Watch the full podcast below (fwd to 1:51:30 for the discussion above):

  Full transcript:

  I don’t think we’ll ever get to the 2024 election.

  I think things are going to implode in Washington before then.

  I think our economic Financial condition is fragile – it’s going to come home to roost in ugly ways.

  Now I will tell you I don’t know exactly how it will happen, but I think we’re going to end up in a situation where we find out the banks are closed for two or three weeks, and nobody can get into them.

  I think we’re going to run into something like that.

  I also think that the levels of violence and criminality in our cities is so high that it’s going to spill over into other places in society.

  People that normally think they can live remote from the problem are now beginning to be touched by the problem.

  Then I look at this thing in Ukraine.

  I think Ukraine is going to lose catastrophically – it’s going to be a complete collapse and that too is going to have an effect here at home because people are going to say, well, wait a minute everybody told us Ukraine was winning, everybody told us X Y and Z.

  I mean sort of the the Russian hoax on steroids.

  All of those things are going to come together or converge in some way that’s going to prevent us from reaching you know the status quo. Oh. another election… Oh, another set of campaigns… And so forth…

  Cloward and Piven would be proud!!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 18:00

• California Teachers' Union Threatens Local School Board With Legal Action Over Flag Policy
  California Teachers’ Union Threatens Local School Board With Legal Action Over Flag Policy

  Authored by Micaela Ricaforte via The Epoch Times,

  California’s statewide teachers’ union sent a letter June 27 to the Chino Valley Unified School board criticizing its recent decision to allow only government flags on school property—and threatening to take legal action against the board if the policy is not reversed.

  

  Chino Valley Unified School Board President Sonja Shaw speaks in support of a parental rights policy proposal at a press conference in Chino, Calif., on June 15, 2023. (California Family Council/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

  The board voted 4–1 June 15 to allow only the California and U.S. flags on school property.

  The California Teachers Association—with more than 300,000 members—in partnership with local union Associated Chino Teachers alleges in the letter the decision violates teachers’ right to free speech under the First Amendment as well as a state employment law.

  The union also said the district further violated state employment laws because it made a decision that affected the current status quo for teachers without giving the local union proper notice or a chance to negotiate terms.

  The letter asked the board to reverse its policy by July 3 or face legal action.

  “In the event that the board insists on interfering with the constitutional … rights of district employees, the [union] will pursue all available legal remedies for the district’s conduct, including, but not limited to, filing a suit in Superior Court and/or an unfair practice charge with [the Public Employee Relations Board],” the letter stated.

  School district Board President Sonja Shaw told The Epoch Times that administrators reached out to the local union to give them a chance to voice their concerns about the flag policy after it was first introduced on June 1.

  However, she said, administrators did not meet with the union until June 28, nearly two weeks after the board voted to approve the policy.

  Shaw further stated she considered the letter a “bullying tactic,” and was prepared for any legal action the unions might take.

  “They think they can bully us, threatening us with lawsuits,” Shaw said.

  “I’m not backing down.”

  She said she believed the teachers’ unions should be focused on student academic issues.

  “This has nothing to do with taking away freedom from a teacher. We all know at a workplace you have limitations and standards,” Shaw said.

  “[The upset over flags] is a weird push towards things that shouldn’t be their focus, especially when our kids are dealing with learning loss and mental health issues.”

  She added that most parents and residents she’d heard from supported the flag policy—and added that the letter was evidence that teachers’ unions were more concerned with pushing their own agendas than actually serving the community.

  At the board meeting, Shaw gestured to the American flag and said, “This is why we’re here. This flag unites us all … the United States stands for all of us. A teacher who has to display sexuality in their classroom is a problem for me as a parent and board member.”

  The meeting drew nearly 300 parents, teachers, and community members.

  

  A parent speaks at a Chino Valley Unified School Board meeting where board members voted to block the LGBT pride flag from being displayed in classrooms in Chino, Calif., on June 15, 2023. (Screenshot via YouTube/Chino Valley Unified School Dist Board Videos)

  Some who spoke during public comment thanked the board for taking the complicated issue on.

  “Just as Bibles, prayer, and the Ten Commandments have been taken out of classrooms, we need to hold fast to those standards of equality and not allow a flag that represents a minority of the district population to be displayed in our classrooms or on our campuses,” said one parent. “Many students here have religious beliefs that don’t align with what the Pride flag represents … We are all Americans here … and the stars and stripes represent every single student in the district.”

  Others said they were concerned that the policy would make LGBT students “unsafe.”

  “This policy is incredibly damaging to our community,” said one high school student during public comment.

  “Pride flags provide a symbol of hope and safety. It’s a reminder we are not alone in our struggles.”

  The issue comes after several local Orange County governing boards—including the Orange Unified School Board and the city of Huntington Beach—voted this year to allow only government flags to fly on official or district property.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 17:30

• USSC Chief Justice Roberts Slams 'Misleading' Liberal Justices Over 'Disturbing' Activist Opinions
  USSC Chief Justice Roberts Slams ‘Misleading’ Liberal Justices Over ‘Disturbing’ Activist Opinions

  Supreme Court Justice John Roberts took aim at his liberal colleagues last week, writing at the end of his majority opinion striking down Joe Biden’s student debt relief program; “It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary.”

  

  The Court ruled last week along ideological lines that the Biden administration’s program was unconstitutional based on the administration’s justification. The law cited allows the Secretary of Education to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs,” which the state of Missouri opposed.

  “Today, we have concluded that an instrumentality created by Missouri, governed by Missouri, and answerable to Missouri is indeed part of Missouri; that the words ‘waive or modify’ do not mean ‘completely rewrite’; and that our precedent—old and new—requires that Congress speak clearly before a department secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy,” said Roberts, adding “We have employed the traditional tools of judicial decision-making in doing so.”

  In his majority opinion, Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, slammed Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee – who claimed that the majority was “distorting standing doctrine to create a case fit for judicial resolution,” because Missouri did not suffer harm by the student loan program.

  “The statute, read as written, gives the Secretary broad authority to relieve a national emergency’s effect on borrowers’ ability to repay their student loans. The Secretary did no more than use that lawfully delegated authority. So the majority applies a rule specially crafted to kill significant regulatory action, by requiring Congress to delegate not just clearly but also micro-specifically,” wrote Kagan, adding “Congress in broadly authorizing loan relief, the Secretary and the President in using that authority to implement the forgiveness plan. The majority instead says that it is theirs to decide.”

  According to Roberts, “reasonable minds” may disagree with the majority, but that “It is important that the public not be misled either. Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country.”

  This isn’t the first time the liberal minority has taken aim at the conservative majority. As the Epoch Times notes;

  Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for instance, dissented from the ruling striking down racially discriminatory admissions policies at U.S. universities by claiming that the court was “subvert[ing]” the protection from the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.

  “Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent,” Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, wrote.

  The majority had ruled that policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina were unconstitutionally discriminatory. The schools themselves had admitted they discriminated against applicants who were not African American or Hispanic.

  In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, a George W. Bush appointee, said that American society has not been, and is not, colorblind but that the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment requires disregarding racial distinctions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 17:00

• Seymour Hersh On Prigozhin's Folly: The Russian 'Revolt' That Wasn't Strengthens Putin's Hand
  Seymour Hersh On Prigozhin’s Folly: The Russian ‘Revolt’ That Wasn’t Strengthens Putin’s Hand

  Authored by Seymour Hersh via Substack,

  The Biden administration had a glorious few days last weekend. The ongoing disaster in Ukraine slipped from the headlines to be replaced by the “revolt,” as a New York Times headline put it, of Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner Group. 

  

  The focus slipped from Ukraine’s failing counter-offensive to Prigozhin’s threat to Putin’s control. As one headline in the Times put it, “Revolt Raises Searing Question: Could Putin Lose Power?” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius posed this assessment: “Putin looked into the abyss Saturday—and blinked.”

  Secretary of State Antony Blinken—the administration’s go-to wartime flack, who weeks ago spoke proudly of his commitment not to seek a ceasefire in Ukraine—appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with his own version of reality: “Sixteen months ago, Russian forces were . . . thinking they would erase Ukraine from the map as an independent country,” Blinken said. “Now, over the weekend they’ve had to defend Moscow, Russia’s capital, against mercenaries of Putin’s own making. . . . It was a direct challenge to Putin’s authority. . . . It shows real cracks.” 

  Blinken, unchallenged by his interviewer, Margaret Brennan, as he knew he would not be—why else would he appear on the show?—went on to suggest that the defection of the crazed Wagner leader would be a boon for Ukraine’s forces, whose slaughter by Russian troops was ongoing as he spoke. “To the extent that it presents a real distraction for Putin, and for Russian authorities, that they have to look at—sort of mind their rear as they’re trying to deal with the counter offensive in Ukraine, I think that creates even greater openings for the Ukrainians to do well on the ground.” 

  At this point was Blinken speaking for Joe Biden? Are we to understand that this is what the man in charge believes?

  We now know that the chronically unstable Prigozhin’s revolt fizzled out within a day, as he fled to Belarus, with a no-prosecution guarantee, and his mercenary army was mingled into the Russian army. There was no march on Moscow, nor was there a significant threat to Putin’s rule.

  Pity the Washington columnists and national security correspondents who seem to rely heavily on official backgrounders with White House and State Department officials.

  Given the published results of such briefings, those officials seem unable to look at the reality of the past few weeks, or the total disaster that has befallen the Ukraine military’s counter-offensive.

  So, below is a look at what is really going that was provided to me by a knowledgeable source in the American intelligence community:

  “I thought I might clear some of the smoke. First and most importantly, Putin is now in a much stronger position. We realized as early as January of 2023 that a showdown between the generals, backed by Putin, and Prigo, backed by ultra-nationalist extremists, was inevitable. The age-old conflict between the ‘special’ war fighters and a large, slow, clumsy, unimaginative regular army. The army always wins because they own the peripheral assets that make victory, either offensive or defensive, possible. Most importantly, they control logistics. special forces see themselves as the premier offensive asset. When the overall strategy is offensive, big army tolerates their hubris and public chest thumping because SF are willing to take high risk and pay a high price. Successful offense requires a large expenditure of men and equipment. Successful defense, on the other hand, requires husbanding these assets.

  “Wagner members were the spearhead of the original Russian Ukraine offensive. They were the ‘little green men’. When the offensive grew into an all-out attack by the regular army, Wagner continued to assist but reluctantly had to take a back seat in the period of instability and readjustment that followed. Prigo, no shy violet, took the initiative to grow his forces and stabilize his sector.

  “The regular army welcomed the help. Prigo and Wagner, as is the wont of special forces, took the limelight and took the credit for stopping the hated Ukrainians. The press gobbled it up. Meanwhile, the big army and Putin slowly changed their strategy from offensive conquest of greater Ukraine to defense of what they already had. Prigo refused to accept the change and continued on the offensive against Bakhmut. Therein lies the rub. Rather than create a public crisis and court-martial the asshole [Prigozhin], Moscow simply withheld the resources and let Prigo use up his manpower and firepower reserves, dooming him to a stand-down. He is, after all, no matter how cunning financially, an ex-hot dog cart owner with no political or military accomplishments.

  “What we never heard is three months ago Wagner was cycled out of the Bakhmut front and sent to an abandoned barracks north of Rostov-on-Don [in southern Russia] for demobilization. The heavy equipment was mostly redistributed, and the force was reduced to about 8,000, 2,000 of which left for Rostov escorted by local police.

  “Putin fully backed the army who let Prigo make a fool of himself and now disappear into ignominy. All without raising a sweat militarily or causing Putin to face a political standoff with the fundamentalists, who were ardent Prigo admirers. Pretty shrewd.”

  There is an enormous gap between the way the professionals in the American intelligence community assess the situation and what the White House and the supine Washington press project to the public by uncritically reproducing the statements of Blinken and his hawkish cohorts.

  The current battlefield statistics that were shared with me suggest that the Biden administration’s overall foreign policy may be at risk in Ukraine. They also raise questions about the involvement of the NATO alliance, which has been providing the Ukrainian forces with training and weapons for the current lagging counter-offensive. I learned that in the first two weeks of the operation, the Ukraine military seized only 44 square miles of territory previously held by the Russian army, much of it open land. In contrast, Russia is now in control of 40,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory. I have been told that in the past ten days Ukrainian forces have not fought their way through the Russian defenses in any significant way. They have recovered only two more square miles of Russian-seized territory. At that pace, one informed official said, waggishly, it would take Zelensky’s military 117 years to rid the country. of Russian occupation.

  The Washington press in recent days seems to be slowly coming to grips with the enormity of the disaster, but there is no public evidence that President Biden and his senior aides in the White House and State Department aides understand the situation.

  Putin now has within his grasp total control, or close to it, of the four Ukrainian oblasts—Donetsk, Kherson, Lubansk, Zaporizhzhia—that he publicly annexed on September 30, 2022, seven months after he began the war. The next step, assuming there is no miracle on the battlefield, will be up to Putin. He could simply stop where he is, and see if the military reality will be accepted by the White House and whether a ceasefire will be sought, with formal end-of-war talks initiated. There will be a presidential election next April in Ukraine, and the Russian leader may stay put and wait for that—if it takes place. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said there will be no elections while the country is under martial law.

  Biden’s political problems, in terms of next year’s presidential election, are acute—and obvious. On June 20 the Washington Post published an article based on a Gallup poll under the headline “Biden Shouldn’t Be as Unpopular as Trump—but He Is.” The article accompanying the poll by Perry Bacon, Jr., said that Biden has “almost universal support within his own party, virtually none from the opposition party and terrible numbers among independents.” Biden, like previous Democratic presidents, Bacon wrote, struggles “to connect with younger and less engaged voters.” Bacon had nothing to say about Biden’s support for the Ukraine war because the poll apparently asked no questions about the administration’s foreign policy. 

  The looming disaster in Ukraine, and its political implications, should be a wake-up call for those Democratic members of Congress who support the president but disagree with his willingness to throw many billions of good money after bad in Ukraine in the hope of a miracle that will not arrive. Democratic support for the war is another example of the party’s growing disengagement from the working class. It’s their children who have been fighting the wars of the recent past and may be fighting in any future war. These voters have turned away in increasing numbers as the Democrats move closer to the intellectual and moneyed classes.

  If there is any doubt about the continuing seismic shift in current politics, I recommend a good dose of Thomas Frank, the acclaimed author of the 2004 best-seller What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, a book that explained why the voters of that state turned away from the Democratic party and voted against their economic interests. Frank did it again in 2016 in his book Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? In an afterword to the paperback edition he depicted how Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party repeated—make that amplified—the mistakes made in Kansas en route to losing a sure-thing election to Donald Trump.  

  It may be prudent for Joe Biden to talk straight about the war, and its various problems for America—and to explain why the estimated more than $150 billion that his administration has put up thus far turned out to be a very bad investment.

  Subscribe to Seymour Hersh’s Substack here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 16:30

• US Cities Replacing Fireworks With Drones, Citing Sustainability Concerns
  US Cities Replacing Fireworks With Drones, Citing Sustainability Concerns

  This year a number of US cities are replacing traditional Fourth of July fireworks with drone shows citing fire danger and air quality concerns. 

  In California, firework shows in La Jolla and Ocean Beach will be replaced with high-tech drone light shows, according to NBC 7 San Diego. 

  

  Salt Lake City, Utah, is trying an alternative way of celebrating Independence Day with its first-ever drone show. The city’s mayor, Erin Mendenhall, cited the drones will mitigate fire risk.

  “As temperatures rise and fire danger increases, we must be conscientious of both our air quality and the potential for wildfires,” Mayor Mendenhall wrote in a press release. 

  In neighboring Colorado, the City of Boulder has also decided to try drones this year instead of fireworks. 

  “The shift from traditional fireworks to drones was not an easy decision and based on a number of factors, including increased fire danger fueled by climate change,” the City of Boulder wrote on Facebook. 

  More and more metro areas are going with drone shows rather than fireworks due to sustainability reasons. 

  As for Americans having backyard BBQ parties, they’re not giving up their roman candles, mortars, firecrackers, and bottle rockets anytime soon. Americans spent $370 million on pyrotechnics from China in 2020. 

  

  Meanwhile… 

  

  … and then there’s this. 

  

  While metro areas are switching to drone shows, red-blooded Americans will never give up bottle rockets and mortars. They’re just too much damn fun until someone blows off a finger. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 16:00

• No, Joe, There Is No Such Thing As A "Fair Share" Of Taxes
  No, Joe, There Is No Such Thing As A “Fair Share” Of Taxes

  Authored by Brian Balfour via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  President Joe Biden recently trotted out the well-worn progressive complaint about the rich not paying their “fair share” of taxes.

  “It’s about time the super wealthy start paying their fair share,” Biden said on June 18 to a crowd in Pennsylvania.

  Claiming that billionaires “paid a lower rate than schoolteachers, than firefighters, probably anyone in this room,” Biden insisted the rich should “(J)ust pay your fair share, man.”

  

  Missing from such conversations is just what exactly one’s “fair share” of taxes is, and how that is determined to be fair. That’s because the notion of any objective measure of taxes as being a “fair share” is a complete illusion.

  Taxes are what citizens are compelled to pay in exchange for government services, like criminal justice, national defense, healthcare, education, and not to mention pork projects, war, and corporate welfare. Given this exchange of money for goods and services, one could plausibly compare the notion of a “fair share” of taxes to that of a “fair” or “just” price of commodities. 

  As Murray Rothbard points out in Power and Market: Government and the Economy, the notion of a “just price” was debated by ethicists and scholars for hundreds of years. Indeed, the history of this debate can be traced back to Aristotle, who described a “just exchange” as the trading of goods of like value while deeming as immoral the exploiting of arbitrage opportunities for profit. Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th Century, held a similar view, while allowing for profit from selling an item for more than you acquired it.

  The Spanish Scholastics of the 16th and 17th centuries introduced to the debate the concept of subjective value, suggesting that the just price was in accordance with the valuation of the prospective buyer, in contrast to any objective value inherent within the good itself. This notion of subjective value largely carried into the present day. Because no such quantitative, universal measure of a just price could be agreed upon, “the only possible objective criterion for the just price is the market price” voluntarily agreed to by buyer and seller, according to Rothbard.

  In other words, ethicists and economists for centuries grappled with the concept of a “fair price” for a good or service. Finally, a consensus was reached that the only fair price is one mutually and voluntarily agreed upon by seller and buyer.

  When it comes to taxes, however, voluntary agreement is removed.

  Government imposes its arbitrarily chosen tax rates by threat of force. Because mutual consent is removed from the transaction, there can be no such thing as a “fair share” of taxes.

  Tax rates are largely politically motivated and arbitrarily chosen, and stacked with exemptions and penalties to help incentivize behaviors favored by the politicians writing the voluminous tax code. Regardless of the rates, there is no “fairness” to be achieved.

  Some may argue that a “fair” tax share for various income groups should be proportional to the share of income earned for those groups. According to the Tax Foundation, however, the top one percent of income earners paid 42.3 percent of federal income taxes while earning 22 percent of the nation’s income.  The top ten percent earned 49.5 percent of total income while paying nearly 74 percent of all income taxes.

  The average effective income tax rate for the top ten percent was 20.3 percent, more than six times the 3.1 percent rate paid by the bottom 50 percent. 

  By this measure, many could argue that the rich are paying well above their “fair share,” which is why this measure is never mentioned when Biden and company are asked to specify what a “fair share” would be.

  Complicating the concept of a “fair share” of taxes further still, to the extent the discussion is on income taxes, is that one’s income in any given year may not neatly categorize someone as “rich” or not.

  A person’s income represents merely a snapshot in time. Of course, people move about income levels over the course of their lives. Today’s “low-income” individual may be a recent college graduate from an upper middle-class family merely working an entry-level job on her way to a lucrative career. 

  Conversely, this year’s “high-income” earner may be a small business owner who struggled for decades and finally had a successful year, but still remains deep in debt. This snapshot report in no way tells us anything about the financial well-being over the lifetimes of the people being judged as rich or not. In short, simple “income” statistics often provide a misleading snapshot of citizens’ financial well-being, and therefore of how taxes really affect them.

  It’s not quite so easy to look at a person’s W-2 in a given year and determine if he is “rich” and therefore must be compelled to pay a “fair share.” 

  Moreover, taxes are the lifeblood of the political class.

  The more taxes they extract from citizens, the greater power they hold over society and its scarce resources.

  More taxes means more political favors to be doled out, voting blocs to be rewarded, and patronage networks to pay off. 

  The discussion of the non-existent concept of a “fair share” of taxes should be dropped immediately and exposed for what it is: an arbitrary and artificial notion used to disguise political power grabs.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 15:30

• Zelensky Implores Military To "Show Results" Before NATO Summit Amid Waning Enthusiasm In West
  Zelensky Implores Military To “Show Results” Before NATO Summit Amid Waning Enthusiasm In West

  In a rare public sign of desperation, Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky is pleading for his military to “show results” ahead of the major NATO summit to be convened in Lithuania on July 11. This comes amid rumblings out of Washington that US arms to Kiev could slow or be cut if Ukrainian forces are incapable of advancing. 

  Over the weekend Zelensky spoke to several journalists and addressed the past several days of headlines out of the West which have suggested the counteroffensive could be failing. He explained that “torrential rains” had “slowed down some processes quite a bit” – but that the reality still is that “every kilometer” of liberated territory and gains “costs lives”.

  

  He urged more Western weapons while blaming that gains from last fall had been lost in part because of the late arrival of artillery. His top generals have also been complaining about lack of air superiority, while continuing to press for F-16 fighter jets.

  “We stopped because we couldn’t advance. Advancing meant losing people and we had no artillery,” he asserted in the press briefing. “We are very cautious in this aspect. Fast things are not always safe.”

  He then emphasized that he has a duty to his troops and to not take risks that are unnecessary: “If they tell me that two months will pass and thousands of people will die, or three months and fewer people will die, of course, I will choose the latter,” Zelensky said. “Between time and people, the most important thing is people.”

  Related to the pressing urgency of more and continued Western military support, Zelensky specifically called out Republicans in US Congress. Again this comes against the backdrop of Kiev’s concerns over waning enthusiasm for the war effort out of Washington and the West at a sensitive moment of NATO’s annual summit.

  He slammed the “dangerous messages coming from some Republicans” – but praised the Thursday visit of former Vice President Mike Pence. 

  “Mike Pence has visited us, and he supports Ukraine. First of all, as an American, and then as a Republican,” Zelensky said. “We have bipartisan support. However, there are different messages in their circles regarding support for Ukraine. There are messages coming from some Republicans, sometimes dangerous messages, that there may be less support.”

  He stressed that maintaining bipartisan support is “the most important thing for Ukraine” regardless of who wins the 2024 US presidential election. He also at one point said, “NATO without Ukraine is not NATO.” The UK has meanwhile remained the most outspoken advocate of Kiev’s entry into NATO, while Germany and the US have voiced caution and reluctance on the question of eventual full membership. 

  With the NATO summit now less than ten days away, the race is on for Ukraine’s forces to “show results”.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 15:00

• Musk's Tweet-Limiting Move Is To Prevent The Completion Of The "AI-Censorship-Death-Star"
  Musk’s Tweet-Limiting Move Is To Prevent The Completion Of The “AI-Censorship-Death-Star”

  Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this weekend, you will know that Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Saturday that the social media platform will limit how many tweets users can read due to “extreme” levels of system manipulation and data scraping.

  

  Musk said in a statement that Twitter has applied the following temporary limits on users, with new unverified accounts limited to reading just 600 posts per day.

  In yet another exercise in irony, this post achieved a record view count!

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 2, 2023

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

  Claiming the sudden change is being implemented to combat “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” Musk said the daily restrictions would eventually be raised to 8,000 posts for verified users, 800 for unverified accounts, and 400 for new unverified users.

  Immediately, the socials came alive with claims of ‘free speech’ suppression etc…

  Putting hard limits on reads is web 1.0 stuff.

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 1, 2023

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

  OMFG pic.twitter.com/KHlJvKsv0N

  — y0da_ (@totSamiy_yoda) July 1, 2023

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

  But the irony went to ’11’…

  If dying from irony were possible, it would’ve been be a massacre

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 2, 2023

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

  So they want ‘more’ twitter not less? But we thought it was a cesspool of nazi porn?

  

  Musk said at the time that hundreds of organizations or more were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively,” with a negative impact on user experience.

  However, there may be more to this than ‘user experience’ deterioration, or an effort by Musk force more monetization.

  Musk hinted at the ‘other’ reason in April, when he threatened to sue Microsoft, which has invested billions into OpenAI, after accusing the company of using Twitter data for training.

  “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” Musk wrote on Twitter on April 19.

  Which brings us to Mike Benz’s excellent discussion this morning of what may really be going on behind the scenes, that yet again – the world’s richest man could be the only one uncancellable enough to battle.

  Benz begins his trek with the statement: “AI censorship is where all of the magic happens.”

  He points out, the Twitter Files showed how The FBI might come in and get 22 tweets censored, but AI is how IEP (and other 3rd-party censorship groups) were able to get 22 million tweets censored.”

  

  Before 2016, Benz explains, you could not ‘control’ the internet; but since then, there has been an “AI Censorship Deathstar” under construction, which “relies on massive scraping of Twitter data to track trending narratives, to systemically surveil, to build intelligence dossiers, and to track and turn down – all at one – communities online.”

  Twitter is the best social network of all for this massive data scraping (and training) since all consumers of information are also creators.

  This explicitly makes scraping data there far more important for early narrative detection and countering ‘wrongthink’ via fact-checking, Google Ad suppression, political pressure (possibly enforcing hate speech laws like Michigan just passed), or mainstream media propaganda focus.

  Also, on the other side, while Musk appears to have got the ‘Trust & Safety’ censors/bannner/throttlers out of the loop, this massive data scrape allows any establishment-favored narratives to be amplified.

  And it appears to be working as ChatGPT admitted it was unable to access real-time tweets this morning…

  NEWS: It looks like ChatGPT’s web browser extension can no longer access Twitter’s data. https://t.co/jv0jgIQ9w3

  — T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) July 2, 2023

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

  Which apparently pleased Musk…

  Elon reacts to this news: https://t.co/tqab98Oice

  — T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) July 2, 2023

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

  So – is this just another money-making scheme for Twitter; or is Musk really the world’s last best hope for ‘freedom’ of speech.

  “You are going to see the censorship industry howl over this,” Benz concludes, and “whether Musk knows it or not, he has stepped on a rattlesnake.”

  While the censorship-industry will “in a wierd way, while the boot [of Musk’s tweet-read-limit] may be cutting off some amount of openness of Twitter, it may also represent in some way, the boot of freedom.”

  Watch the full Benz clip below:

  Wow. Musk has no idea the DARPA rattlesnake he just stepped on by this doing this…

  My take on @elonmusk’s new rate limit policy, from the lens of the censorship industry: https://t.co/AZ5SPIgHiz pic.twitter.com/Rw4KBZsT9O

  — Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) July 1, 2023

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

  Finally, one wonders did Musk’s move just nuke the AI-stock-boom’s 100x forward-revenue-multiple case?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/02/2023 – 14:00

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• Righting This Cacophony Of Wrongs
  Righting This Cacophony Of Wrongs

  Authored by Mike ‘Dr.Doom’ 𝙃𝙤₿𝙖𝙧𝙩 via BombThrower.com,

  I hope everyone has had the time to properly appreciate their first days of summer. If you did not, then I hope your efforts have gotten you closer to being capable of doing so soon.

  Today’s writing is inspired by my many conversations over the current state of our United States of America, and how far we have fallen from the Tree of Freedom that our Honored Fallen sacrificed their lives for. How Americans have lost sight of what truly matters, and how our uneducated & unfit masses continue to make decisions that enable their complacencies over doing what needs to be done in order to save the future of our country, for ourselves and for our children…

  

  Failure Teaches. Victory Confirms.

  Taking the path of immediate gratification, and especially selling-out the futures of our children, alongside the soul of our proud nation, is inextricably not American. Providing products of shite quality is inextricably not American. Choosing to do the easy thing over that which is more difficult, and that which is right, is inextricably not American. Sacrificing our own steadfastness, our own resilience, and going back on our promises and debts is not American.

  Simple vs Easy

  The steps required for correcting this egregious path are simple but they are not easy. This brings us to the first true step (Step 0.1) towards course-correction, of any kind. Conflation of something so basic as simple & easy is a problem that we as Americans must identify, acknowledge, and work to correct. A task can be simple; “do [x] in order to get [y] outcome,” but that does not mean that the task will be easy; “man doing [x] required so little effort to so I could get [y].”

  Ignorance of Failure

  Admitting that we have gone awry is the other 90% of Step 1, that we have made a series of mistakes and poor decisions is necessary. Because it is okay. It is okay to make mistakes, to be wrong. It is not okay to make mistakes, to be wrong, and not own-up to them. Not accepting that we have made wrong/bad decisions is extremely dangerous as there is no learning or growth that is allowed to occur when we choose to ignore our failures. Failure teaches. Victory confirms.

  The Average American is the one who holds the power in the coming years — as this is a situation that will take years to correct and get back on “the path.” I have a few simple suggestions for the everyday American to follow if you would like to be on the right side of history.

  First

  GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS

  America is not well. Between those already diagnosed with diabetes, and those that are prediabetic we are looking at 49% of the Us adult population being affected, alone. According to data from 2017 (which is 6 years old mind you) the US population was looking at an obesity rate of 42%. Keep in mind that this does not include the concoction of chronic metabolic syndromes and diseases that accompany obesity; heart disease, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative conditions, cancers, and so on.

  Americans need to get up off the couch and out of their desk chairs and push, pull, and breathe their way into individual fortitude. If the worst of the worst were to happen today, the amount of human life that would be lost simply due to intermittent access to power, let alone food, would be daunting and egregious. Through complacencies afforded the modern era we have become more fragile than ever in history. Yet we have access to the best technologies, methodologies, sciences, and access to more food and information than in any other prior empire in the history of our planet.

  

  As Americans it is our duty and our privilege to become the baddest motherf*ckers that we can become. We are in the Land of the Free. Where you can be free to be a fat, lazy, complacent pile of shit all you want. I don’t know about you… but me, I want to be the most fit, well-rounded, capable, educated, understanding individual that I can be because I am free to do so. Because when shit-hits-fan, which is a virtual certainty (on any scale), I want to be capable of providing the strength and clear-headedness to be capable of providing protection and support to those I care about. Being comfortable means f^ck-all when life deals you a powdered backhand and you are not capable of being an effective force in times of adversity or fear — regardless of whether you are a man or a woman.

  If you are not capable to react to the plethora of known knowns as far as potential negative outcomes, then you cannot even hope to be capable of handling those unknown unknowns. Of which are infinite. Fitness and sound health makes the individual far more capable of handling adversity, and during moments of historical shifts in the balance of power adversity is commonplace. Fill the gyms and run the trails, become the embodiment of strength that your neighbors, loved ones, and peers need.

  Second

  GET ack-tually EDUCATED

  

  America today has been taught to demonize coming incorrect, and pedestalize being correct. To the extent of where people are attributing their being correct as a part of their identity. This poses a slew of problems for a society as the search for what is true and what is right gets lost. As the discussion [inevitably] turns towards pushback, these individuals tend to fall into defensive mode. In these moments their identity comes into question as a relation to their correctness, like when Anthony Fauci made the claim that to question him was to question science. Science, as is every other aspect of knowing & understanding, is and should always be under question. We do not know everything. In fact, we actually know very little about quite literally everything that we observe in our reality to-date. Therefore an individual’s identity should never be tied to their tendency to be accurate or correct in matters of fact; when we know so little, we are all guaranteed to be wrong much more often than we are right.

  The American Education System has played a pivotal role in this degeneration of our countrymen’s and countrywomen’s capabilities to practice critical-thinking and original thought. Robert A. Burton, M.D., does a great job of crystalizing my point in his book On Being Certain in one very succinct sentence towards the end of Chapter 8 found on page 84;

  “Memorizing facts doesn’t require logic, cause-and-effect, or any significant ability to reason.”

  which is precisely what our entire “educative system” is structured around. Memorization. The antithesis to learning.

  American schools have failed, abysmally. There is no such thing as a template for learning. Every single soul will learn differently from another. Just like with nutrition and physiology; every single body is different, so why is it that we think that the mind could operate by any other rule? This is also what has contributed to the mislabeling of a large portion of the “mental disorders” today. In a recent essay I argued my position for believing that conditions such as ADD/ADHD, anxiety, and depression are, for the vast majority, not diseases but misidentified signals by the body & mind. Leading to responses to treat the symptoms rather than address the sources of the signal(s). Culminating in continued dysfunction that grows in severity the longer the dysfunction goes unanswered. The dysfunction of the education (indoctrination) system is contributing to the misinterpretation of these states of mind, while also leading to a misidentification of the solutions due to the erosion of logic, cause-and-effect analysis, and erosion of the ability to reason.

  So, American schools have not been teaching our children how to learn… what about what they have been memorizing?

  This is where things get fun and a little scary at the same time. The textbooks and curriculums pushed in front of us through our scholastic syllabi (and those of our children) are poised to be treasure-troves of truth… but are they, truly? Below I have provided 2 videos that I have been recommending to now thousands of individuals across the twitter spaces & podcasts I have been graciously invited to be a part of, and in private individual discussions over the past 3 years. The perspectives are daunting, that there could be so much to history that got brushed under the metaphorical rug, forgotten about, and then pretended like was never the case.

  I call on all of you to make it a point to watch these videos. Go in with a position that you (and I) do not know every individual thing that has transpired across history that was covered in our textbooks. And consider how then (as now) there were many multiples of developments and strategies all playing-out simultaneously. With little-to-no awareness that they were occurring. Events that have transpired over the past 36 months should serve as adequate testimony to this very reality.

  That’s It.

  Between just these two points, we can see dramatic changes in America’s populace for the better. These changes can begin to bare fruit in a mere handful of years… Consider how much smoother healthcare can become when the system is alleviated of the deadweight of a complacent and unhealthy populace. Consider how much more effective teaching and lecture can become when we have a populace that is critically thinking and capable of effectively challenging anything and everything with logical and rational bases. This is how we improve… EVERYTHING. You want better innovation, better ideas, better leaders, better policies, better technology? We need new, original ideas that can only come from strong & healthy children raised on logic and reason.

  A Bitcoin Discussion

  With this rebel’s education approach we have to talk about two aspects that are touched on in both videos. Keep in mind that both were produced very much independently of each other, yet share a common thread: private & central bankers have continually acted against the best interests of their constituents in order to maintain their grips on power. From breaking away from the rule of a queen over taxes to only end up copying the precisely same system once independence was achieved… to funding both sides of a world war… something has to change. That’s not even including the capability to print currency (not money, there’s a difference) on a whim or a desire. Providing a vertically-integrated system of power that provides influence beyond that of any single individual or organization when these systems are also based out of the jurisdiction that holds the position of Global Reserve Currency.

  This is a power dynamic that must be disrupted. In my opinion it does not need to be totally done away with as there will always be a percentage of the population that desires the services provided by banks. The point is to particularly disrupt the vertically integrated stack that these parties have developed. This is where bitcoin plays an important role, and where I am proud to shamelessly plug my efforts in working with a few passionate individuals to put together a call to separate money from the state. One can argue as much as they want that the state is separated from the process of money formation & banking, on paper, but when we are dealing with human incentives and human policy that is all at the whim of human influence via politics… all roads converge on the two becoming inextricably linked. Creating a true monster. One could say a “creature from Jekyll Island.”

  Going further, bitcoin provides an avenue of game theory (hat tip to John Nash) that provides an incentive mechanism that is far and beyond anything that is available thanks to any other technology to-date. With properly custodied bitcoin, the individual, organization, or country is afforded a strategy that has never been available in history, ‘til now. With bitcoin a party is capable of holding value that can ultimately avoid seizure even after death. Meaning that vaults can escape plunder, and something as ludicrous as a death tax becomes a distant memory. Resulting in an environment where, in order to accumulate economic/monetary value, one must provide product or service that is worthy of said value being directed towards their project. If the market does not deem the product to be worthy of their economic power, then there is no other way of accumulating it. Incentivizing cooperation, innovation, and efficiency… a polar opposite incentive mechanism than today where computers and textbooks make marginal improvements (if any) and selling of a “new” flashy product at the expense of the consumer.

  As society progresses, new approaches to old problems are behooved. Money & currency is a problem as old as time that has been iterated on to further improve the cooperation and cohabitation of the human species. To think that we are beyond this natural need is a hubris of the utmost.

  Personally, I Don’t Care…

  I don’t care whether you are interested in the bitcoin mission. Your money is your power and your responsibility. Everyone has the freedom and the right to do what they desire, or deem proper, for their accumulated wealth and purchasing power. But what I do care about is strong, healthy, and capable Americans and American children.

  At the very least… if you are a parent you are behooved to provide your child(ren) a proper role model. A strong mother and father that continually work to improve the condition of their family leaves a healthy mark on their offspring regardless of whether they believe their children are watching intently or not. Parents that continually seek improved understanding teaches multiple lessons to their little ones, paramountly that education never stops. Parents that deploy this kind of hustle (if we’re being fair, this isn’t even hustle this is simply staying an efficacious human), not only improve America’s future by rearing up strong & intelligent children but also make for a healthier, stronger, better informed voting populous. Our parents simply need to stop engaging in degenerative behaviors like binge-consuming the plethora of non-informative streaming services, and get back to education being the past-time. Like the days of olde of the cable era with such heavyweights as Animal Planet, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel — oh how I long for those days to return.

  Those of us that are not parents, we hold the very same responsibilities. As uncles & aunts, cousins, brothers & sisters, sons & daughters, and family friends; we hold powerful influence. We can act as a confirming force for what those hustler parents are doing is the proper thing. We can act as a challenge to those parents that choose not to better themselves, showing those children that there are better ways of getting the damn thing done. Children are not dumb.

  We all have power to influence; residing in the decisions we make on a daily basis and the lifestyles we choose to adopt. You don’t need to be an influencer with a 5 digit follower count in order to leave a strong, positive mark on those around you.

  You may feel stuck. Know that your improved future stands on the other side of your improved health & wellness, and your improved understanding of the world. Your own path out of your rut will become easier to see once you climb that first hill.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 23:30

• Who Is North Korea Trading With?
  Who Is North Korea Trading With?

  North Korea might be the hermit kingdom, but data from the UN Comtrade database reveals that goods worth a combined $1 billion were still traded in and out of the reclusive country in 2022.

  However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, this is much less than five years ago, however, posing serious challenges for North Korea and its citizens, which have been exposed to hunger, as recent reports have found.

  According to reports from Reuters, imports from China to North Korea have surged in April after also increasing in 2022 due to the end of a Covid-induced trade freeze. However, both imports and exports to the country have fallen sharply over the years – a trend that started even before the pandemic. Exports were down from US$2.8 billion in 2015 to only US$1.7 billion in 2017 and even further to just $192 million in 2022, with imports also falling significantly from US$3.5 billion worth of goods in 2015 to only $903 million in 2022.

  International pressure to stick to the sanctions against the country before the pandemic had isolated North Korea further, with China consolidating its role as the country’s only real trade partner.

  In 2015, Chinese imports made up was 85 percent of all North Korean imports – the share now stands at 99 percent as the pandemic era has sealed the country off against the world more than ever before.

  China is also the biggest player in North Korean exports with a share of almost 70 percent in them.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  A handful of European countries are also buying North Korean, however.

  Poland imported iron, steel and plastic products as well as pharmaceutical products, electrical and other machinery worth almost $10 million last year.

  Half of the Netherlands’ imports worth around $8 million in total consisted of nickel and nickel products, with some substantial amounts of polyethylene and airplane parts also imported.

  Both European countries have maintained diplomatic relations in some form with North Korea and their trade with the country can be classified as symbolic. However, it is a different type of import that has been labeled as problematic in Europe. The Dutch University of Leiden in 2019 identified clothing made in North Korea under exploitative labor conditions that had made its way to the Netherlands and other Western countries labeled as of Chinese origin. While Mozambique’s 2022 imports of North Korean transformers and other machinery were likely above board, the country was investigated in 2017 for its arms deals with the country that violated UN sanctions.

  At least seven countries in Africa were part of the investigation. Regular economic ties with North Korea, which are not the subject of sanctions, were increasing in African countries at the same time, according to the Voice of America.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 23:00

• Putin's Grip On Power
  Putin's Grip On Power

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

  It was earlier advised to “Be Very Skeptical Of US Intel Claiming That Surovikin May Have Helped Plan Prigozhin’s Coup”, and now two new developments lend even more credence to those suspicions.

  The “investigative project” of exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was designated by Russia as a foreign agent last year due to his operations being funded by Ukraine, shared “documents” with CNN purporting to show that over 30 senior military and intelligence officials are secretly VIP Wagner members.

  The outlet reported on these alleged findings around the same time that they published former Vice President Mike Pence’s answer to the question that one of their journalists asked him during his unannounced visit to Kiev regarding his opinion of whether or not President Putin has full command of his military. He claimed that this is an “open question” in light of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed coup attempt last weekend, thus suggesting that Russian leader is struggling to exert his authority.

  These two back-to-back news items were intended to leave their audience with the impression that the President Putin remains at risk of being overthrown by his armed forces, which is nothing but an artificially manufactured information warfare narrative designed to sow doubts about his leadership.

  

  It simultaneously attempts to influence him and his circle into carrying out large-scale purges that could adversely affect the special operation while also making the public think that he’s weak if he doesn’t.

  The New York Times earlier admitted that “American officials have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Surovikin, whom they view as more competent and more ruthless than other members of the command. His removal would undoubtedly benefit Ukraine, whose Western-backed troops are pushing a new counteroffensive that is meant to try to win back territory seized by Moscow.” It’s with this motivation in mind that the latest reports should be interpreted.

  No honest observer on either side of the debate really thinks that an exiled Ukrainian-funded oligarch and one of the US’ previously most powerful neoconservatives have President Putin’s best interests in mind when suggesting that he’s at risk of being overthrown if he doesn’t purge the Russian military. To the contrary, the only reason why these insincerely expressed concerns were publicly shared and then amplified by one of the world’s top Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets was for subversive purposes.

  What’s curious to note is that the MSM and their putative competitors in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) are each aggressively pushing weaponized conspiracy theories to their respective audiences in the aftermath of recent events. The first wants folks to think that last weekend’s regime change plot involved high-level military-intelligence collaborators who might soon give it a second shot out of desperation to preempt their supposedly impending purge if President Putin doesn’t remove them first.

  At the same time, top influencers in the second have suggested that President Putin colluded with Prigozhin to stage a so-called “false flag coup” to redeploy Wagner to Belarus and/or expose internal enemies, thus implying that he ordered that group’s chief to shoot down Russian pilots. It’s unclear whether those who propagate this totally ridiculous theory actually believe it, but this baseless innuendo is nevertheless anti-Russian to the core by hinting that its leader therefore committed treason too.

  The reality is that Western intelligence agencies masterfully manipulated Prigozhin’s rivalry with the Defense Ministry, the paranoia that this provoked, and his delusions of grandeur after Wagner led Russia to victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk to plant the seeds in his mind for carrying out a coup.

  He therefore functioned as the West’s most potentially destabilizing “useful idiot” in history who risked sparking a civil war that was only narrowly averted at the last minute as was explained here and here.

  While it’s possible that senior military-intelligence officials are VIP Wagner members, that can’t be known for sure until the FSB’s investigation concludes, which might even determine that there’s truth to this claim whether in whole or in part but that it isn’t evidence of a deeper and more serious plot. In any case, the speculation of those Ukrainian-backed and US figures like Khodorkovsky and Pence respectively should be seen as meddling since they don’t have innocent intentions in talking about this.

  They only want to manipulate the public’s perceptions of President Putin and the state of affairs in Russia, which their MSM allies like CNN are helping them do by maximally amplifying their messages. Likewise, those in the AMC who spew anti-Russian conspiracy theories about Prigozhin’s failed coup attempt such as suggesting that President Putin was in on it and thus colluded to have his own country’s pilots shot down by Wagner are also scheming to manipulate the public, albeit a different segment.

  Taken together, they represent complementary efforts of the same destabilization operation that’s actively underway in the aftermath of last weekend’s events, which aims to manipulate perceptions among the MSM’s and AMC’s audiences alike about what recently took place. These weaponized conspiracy theories are being deployed to discredit President Putin, his government, and the Russian security services in the minds of their targets, and those who launder them are these three’s enemies.

  *  *  *

  Support the Automatic Earth via Patreon.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 22:30

• How Big Is The Market For Crude Oil?
  How Big Is The Market For Crude Oil?

  While the global economy relies on many commodities, none come close to the massive scale of the crude oil market.

  Besides being the primary energy source for transportation, oil is a key raw material for numerous other industries like plastics, fertilizers, cosmetics, and medicine. As a result, the global physical oil market is astronomical in size and has a significant economic and geopolitical influence, with a few countries dominating global oil production.

  In the infographic below, Visual Capitalists’ Govind Bhutada and Sam Parker put crude oil’s market size into perspective by comparing it to the 10 largest metal markets combined. To calculate market sizes, we used the latest price multiplied by global production in 2022, based on data from TradingEconomics and the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

  

  Note: This analysis focuses on raw and physical materials, excluding derivative markets and alloy materials like steel.

  How Big Is the Oil Market?

  In 2022, the world produced an average of 80.75 million barrels of oil per day (including condensates). That puts annual crude oil production at around 29.5 billion barrels, with the market size exceeding $2 trillion at current prices.

  That figure dwarfs the combined size of the 10 largest metal markets:

  

  Based on prices as of June 7, 2023.

  The combined market size of the top 10 metal markets amounts to $967 billion, less than half that of the oil market. In fact, even if we added all the remaining smaller raw metal markets, the oil market would still be far bigger.

  This also reflects the massive scale of global oil consumption annually, with the resource having a ubiquitous presence in our daily lives.

  The Big Picture

  While the oil market towers over metal markets, it’s important to recognize that this doesn’t downplay the importance of these commodities.

  Metals form a critical building block of the global economy, playing a key role in infrastructure, energy technologies, and more. Meanwhile, precious metals like gold and silver serve as important stores of value.

  As the world shifts towards a more sustainable future and away from fossil fuels, it’ll be interesting to see how the markets for oil and other commodities evolve.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 22:00

• Neurologist’s Near-Death Experience Changes His Understanding Of Consciousness
  Neurologist’s Near-Death Experience Changes His Understanding Of Consciousness

  Authored by Maria Han via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Neuropathologist Dr. Peter Cummings was convinced everything about consciousness, including profound near-death experiences (NDEs), could be explained by science and was rooted in the brain—until he had an NDE of his own.

  

  Cummings was a career-oriented man who was doing well in his job as a doctor and as an assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine Dept of Anatomy and Neurobiology.

  “At the time [it] was really enjoyable to live for that kind of stuff in that world,” said Cummings in a video posted on the International Association for Near-Death Studies.

  A trip to Costa Rica for his wife’s 50th birthday changed his outlook completely. While there, he decided to go whitewater rafting with his wife and son.

  Cummings was always afraid of the water, though not sure why. He often practiced holding his breath because he felt that one day it would come in handy.

  “I used to get really bored in school and one of the things I would do is I would hold my breath. See how long I could hold my breath and then try to beat that record. And I always thought someday I’m going to need this,” recalled Cummings.

  “I always found excuses to not be in the water, because I just always felt like I was going to drown,” said Cummings.

  He came close that day in Costa Rica when the raft he and his family were in flipped. He bounced along in the water for a while, until he was pulled under by the current.

  “There was a point where I was drowning. And I knew it,” said Cummings.

  He was surprised at how calm he felt in the face of death.

  “I thought about the autopsies I’d done on people who had drowned. This is supposed to be a very peaceful way to die. And then I’m thinking well, ‘What the heck is taking so long?’”

  At the bottom of the river, Cummings experienced something neuroscience probably would have called a hallucination.

  “At that point, everything stopped and I was next to this huge boulder and all the bubbles had stopped. And I moved my hand through the bubbles and they all just sort of moved around my hand in this very weird way. And then there was this bright light,” he said.

  Then he felt “an incredible feeling of love.” He heard a voice speak to him.

  “I got really emotional not because it’s upsetting but because I’m in that moment of that beauty. And I knew my family was going to be okay. And the voice said “they don’t need you, they’re going to be fine,’” he recalled.

  Somehow, he also knew that his wife and son had already been pulled out of the water. They really were alright.

  Then his science brain entered the conversation.

  “You’re just hypoxic. Hold your breath. You have to beat your record. And at that point, the light just sort of vanished,” he said.

  Cummings was pulled out of the water and slowly he told himself to relax so that he could regain his breath. That night at their hotel, Cummings, who has always been vigilant of his heart rate, checked his Apple watch and found that while underwater, his heart had stopped.

  “I remember looking at my Apple watch because I’m kind of a health freak and I’m kind of obsessed with my heart rate. I looked at my Apple Watch and I had eight minutes of unrecorded heart rate in that time period,” said Cummings.

  Electronic devices are not 100 percent accurate and they record heartbeats at intervals, but Cummings believes that in those eight minutes, there was a period when he had no heartbeat.

  After the near-death experience, Cummings found that his intensive academic life was not what he wanted anymore.

  “I became very uncomfortable with my career pursuit. Those things weren’t important to me anymore. I say I’ve written a couple of very bad novels. And I couldn’t identify with that any of those things,” said Cummings.

  Sensing that he wasn’t suited for his life in Boston anymore, he and his family moved back to Maine, where he grew up.

  The experience turned Cummings into a more thoughtful doctor. As a pathologist, he spoke to many family members of the deceased.

  “The number one question I’ve always been asked is ‘Did they suffer?’ And as a physician, you always say ‘No, of course not.’ But I always felt like a liar. Because I don’t know,” said Cummings.

  And after his near-death experience, he knew what it was like to die.

  “I wish I could talk to those people again and say, look, this is beautiful. Even under these horrible circumstances, but horrible circumstance is a second. The process after that is incredible. And there’s nothing to worry about,” shared Cummings.

  In medicine, death is the end. But Cummings now felt that death was not something to avoid talking about.

  “We’ve made it so sterile and kept behind this curtain. That we don’t get a chance to really experience and celebrate the transformation that is happening,” he said.

  After the incident, Cummings shared that it not only changed his perspective on his job, it “really helped me come to grips with who I am as a husband and a father, a human place on the planet.”

  Cummings’ change after his near-death experience is not a solitary one.

  Dr. Bruce Greyson has done extensive research on near-death experiences (NDEs) and his observations told him that these experiences often change the person who changed them for the better.

  “Dr. Greyson has followed up on cases over the course of decades and found that in about 95 percent of the cases, it remains as though the NDE just happened,” Mr. Greyson told The Epoch Times in 2015.

  “In one case, a man was an alcoholic and he was abusive toward his wife. After an NDE, he became an all-around good Samaritan. He didn’t drink, he was good to his wife, he helped others. For example, he rushed to New Orleans to join efforts following Hurricane Katrina,” described Dr. Greyson.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 21:30

• Are UFO Sightings Taking Off Again?
  Are UFO Sightings Taking Off Again?

  Tomorrow, July 2, marks World UFO Day.

  UFO belief has long been considered a fringe phenomenon, but those who “want to believe” were given a boost in 2021 as U.S. intelligence services delivered an official report on “unidentified aerial phenomena” to Congress.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, it showed that of all 143 unexplained sightings between November 2004 and March 2021, only one UAP was later identified as a deflating balloon. In early 2023, another unclassified report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed 171 not yet identified flying objects out of 366 recorded between March 2021 and August 2022.

  Considering the renewed buzz around UFOs – or UAPs –  how have global UFO sightings been developing in recent years?

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  There is a National UFO Reporting Center in the United States which documents sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena all over the world and interestingly, sightings have been picking up again.

  While there were two dips in 2018 and 2021, there were once more around 5,000 alleged UFO sightings in 2022.

  This is still below peaks of 8,800 in 2014 and 7,400 in 2020 – when conspiracy beliefs were running high at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

  In 2022, 17 percent of Americans said they thought it was likely that Aliens will visit Earth, just below the global average of 18 percent – and below responses recorded in India, China and Latin America.

  As of May 2023, there have been close to 1,400 sightings, which could signaling a slower year for UFO reports.

  Yet, with late reports always a possibility and interest in unidentified flying objects renewed in the aftermath of February’s Chinese spy balloon sage, the jury on this year’s UFO/UAP frequency is still “out there”.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 21:00

• Essential Reading For The Dissident, The Disenfranchised, & The Disillusioned
  Essential Reading For The Dissident, The Disenfranchised, & The Disillusioned

  Authored by Richard Kelly via The Brownstone Institute,

  John Stapleton’s incredible new book Australia Breaks Apart has a surreal quality to it. He taps into the dissonance, the discord, and the disillusionment of those among us who were able, or who dared, to step outside the wall-to-wall propaganda and look at it in real time, or back at it later, in horror.

  

  Through the book’s central character, Old Alex (a retired journalist, coincidentally just like the author), wave after wave of recognition and acknowledgement of pain and anguish and confusion and foreboding wash over the reader, like a soothing balm for the still raw wounds inflicted by our political leaders. It’s just as well – in between the passages where we crawl inside Old Alex’s head, and hear and feel the visions and the dreams for a country so utterly changed, Stapleton catalogues in excruciating detail the things that were done to us.

  It’s confronting.

  Some of the things I knew about, many others I didn’t, thanks to the suffocating censorship of our complicit mainstream media. Still others I knew about, but had tried to forget.

  Reading it is like reading Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago – page after page of open-mouthed shock at the things humans can do to one another and the things that power can corrupt.

  It’s un-put-downable and un-pick-upable at the same time.

  It’s essential reading for the dissident, the disenfranchised, the disillusioned. We’re not alone, our eyes were not deceiving us, it was not all just a nightmare from which we will one day wake up. It actually happened. Its legacy will be a millstone Australia will carry for decades. This book won’t make up for the tragedies of lives and livelihoods shattered by wilfully stubborn governments and petty tyrants, but it will certainly help.

  Lots of the names and sources will be familiar to the covid dissident – among them McCullough, Malone, RFK, Jr, Naomi Wolf, Rebecca Weisser, Paul Collits, Avi Yemini…the roll call of those we’ve relied on to get an honest point of view.

  But helpful as it is for the victims and the protesters to have this book, those who need to read it the most will find it hard going.

  The laptop class, the ones who learned a new recipe for sourdough, or how to crochet, while truckies and cashiers from the indentured servant class waited on their every need – they are the ones who need to read this book.

  The ones who happily observed that the traffic was lighter and the carbon dioxide lower, while mourners grieved alone, banned from attending the funeral.

  Every single nurse who made a dance video. Every jab clinic manager tallying the day’s injectees and calculating the bonus incentive payment.

  What pangs of self-recognition will they find when they read of humans mistreating each other?

  If they don’t feel any then they could read the whole thing and not be any the wiser, or indeed could take whatever message they want to take from it. If they do feel the pangs of shame, it will take a heroic effort of acceptance and repentance to get through to the end.

  There will even be some, the scoffers who only consume a vegan ‘news’ diet from the ABC or the free-to-air presstitutes, who will find the cognitive dissonance simply too much to deal with and toss the book away in anger and disgust. Some of this group would literally never have heard of the Canadian Trucker protest or the Hancock WhatsApp messages scandal, such was the media silence.

  Let’s assume some of that group do read it. Where will they find themselves afterwards? My guess is that they will find themselves looking for a scapegoat, an excuse, ‘extenuating circumstances,’ to cover their shame. Alas, none will be found.

  Where will a bookstore put this book, among the shelves of thrillers, cookbooks, and travel guides?

  Psychology? Self-help? A good case can be made. It explains our distress, it pushes us on, gives us courage. The treatment of the Canberra protests, disgracefully ignored by the mainstream media, provides the cameos of mateship, love, openness, happiness, togetherness, and fearlessness that we so craved when imprisoned, and which our overlords sought to extinguish.

  Politics, History? For sure. It’s got a much better claim to be a document of record than any of our newspapers have of being a ‘paper of record.’ The author’s distaste for his former profession rises off nearly every page like bile rises in the throat. Likewise contempt for the political class, and the unelected petty tyrants masquerading as health bureaucrats.

  Religion? Fantasy? It sits comfortably alongside CS Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, whose villains thought they could create a new Man, a literally disembodied head, controlled by those at the top. Villains who commanded a private police force in service of a ‘scientific’ institution; who orchestrated the stories to appear in the press and coerced the journalists to write the lies and the propaganda.

  Villains who wrought destruction on an innocent English village and its residents. Stapleton’s book is likewise a tale of supreme political hubris and arrogance, enough arrogance to imagine that a riot squad can control an airborne virus. Lewis brought in the gods to resolve the finale; Stapleton, too, brings the supernatural out into the open, spirits portentously looming over the future of our once free land.

  If it were up to me, I know where it belongs, apart from on the New Releases and Best Sellers shelves.

  True Crime.

  Read it, before you are tempted to ‘move on.’

  Buy it, before they ban it.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 20:30

• Apple, Tesla, & Amazon Are The World's 'Most Innovative Companies' In 2023
  Apple, Tesla, & Amazon Are The World's 'Most Innovative Companies' In 2023

  Every year, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) releases their Most Innovative Companies ranking.

  Based on a survey of over 1,000 innovation executives polled in Dec. 2022 and Jan. 2023, BCG assessed a company’s performance on four dimensions:

  • Global mindshare: the number of votes received from all global innovation executives

  • Industry peer view: the number of votes received from executives in a company’s own industry

  • Industry disruption: the Diversity Index (Herfindahl-Hirschman) of votes across industries

  • Value creation: total shareholder return, including share buybacks, over the 3-year period from Jan. 2020 through Dec. 2022.

  Visual Capitalists Marcus Lu and Athul Alexander provide a more visual representation of these results in the graphic below.

  

  Data and Highlights

  The 2023 ranking can be found in the table below.

  For the fourth straight year, Apple is considered the most innovative company in the world. In fact, Apple has held this title every year since 2005 with the exception of 2019.

  Rank	Company	Industry	Change in Rank (+ or -)
  1	🇺🇸 Apple	Technology	–
  2	🇺🇸 Tesla	Transportation & energy	+3
  3	🇺🇸 Amazon	Technology	–
  4	🇺🇸 Alphabet	Technology	–
  5	🇺🇸 Microsoft	Technology	-3
  6	🇺🇸 Moderna	Healthcare	+1
  7	🇰🇷 Samsung	Technology	-1
  8	🇨🇳 Huawei	Technology	–
  9	🇨🇳 BYD Company	Transportation & energy	Returned
  10	🇩🇪 Siemens	Technology	+10
  11	🇺🇸 Pfizer	Healthcare	+7
  12	🇺🇸 Johnson & Johnson	Healthcare	+15
  13	🇺🇸 SpaceX	Transportation & energy	Returned
  14	🇺🇸 Nvidia	Technology	+1
  15	🇺🇸 ExxonMobil	Transportation & energy	Returned
  16	🇺🇸 Meta	Technology	-5
  17	🇺🇸 Nike	Consumer goods & services	-5
  18	🇺🇸 IBM	Technology	-8
  19	🇺🇸 3M	Consumer goods & services	+18
  20	🇮🇳 Tata Group	Transportation & energy	Returned
  21	🇨🇭 Roche	Healthcare	Returned
  22	🇺🇸 Oracle	Technology	-3
  23	🇩🇪 BioNTech	Healthcare	New
  24	🇬🇧 Shell	Transportation & energy	Returned
  25	🇫🇷 Schneider Electric	Transportation & energy	New
  26	🇺🇸 P&G	Consumer goods & services	+8
  27	🇨🇭 Nestlé	Consumer goods & services	+22
  28	🇺🇸 General Electric	Transportation & energy	+1
  29	🇨🇳 Xiaomi	Technology	+2
  30	🇺🇸 Honeywell	Transportation & energy	New
  31	🇯🇵 Sony	Technology	-22
  32	🇨🇳 Sinopec	Transportation & energy	New
  33	🇯🇵 Hitachi	Transportation & energy	+6
  34	🇺🇸 McDonald’s	Consumer goods & services	Returned
  35	🇺🇸 Merck	Healthcare	Returned
  36	🇨🇳 ByteDance	Technology	–
  37	🇩🇪 Bosch	Transportation & energy	-11
  38	🇺🇸 Dell	Technology	-24
  39	🇨🇭 Glencore	Transportation & energy	New
  40	🇺🇸 Stripe	Technology	New
  41	🇸🇦 Saudi Aramco	Transportation & energy	New
  42	🇺🇸 Coca-Cola	Consumer goods & services	-6
  43	🇩🇪 Mercedes-Benz Group	Transportation & energy	Returned
  44	🇨🇳 Alibaba	Technology	-22
  45	🇺🇸 Walmart	Consumer goods & services	-32
  46	🇨🇳 PetroChina	Transportation & energy	New
  47	🇯🇵 NTT	Telecommunications	New
  48	🇨🇳 Lenovo	Technology	-24
  49	🇩🇪 BMW	Transportation & energy	Returned
  50	🇬🇧 Unilever	Consumer goods & services	–

  BCG added additional context on several companies in its report, including Germany’s Bosch (37th). According to BCG, the engineering and technology company has a global R&D organization of 84,800 employees across 130 locations. Bosch has also maintained R&D spending (as a share of sales) at between 7.6% and 8.2% from 2018 through 2021.

  Another highlight was Samsung (7th), which spent over $17 billion (9% of annual sales) on R&D in 2021, making the South Korean conglomerate one of the world’s largest spenders on innovation. Samsung was also granted 6,300 U.S. patents in 2022, the most out of any company.

  As this ranking shows, innovative companies aren’t just tech companies. McDonald’s (34th) is considered by BCG as the “restaurant industry frontrunner in technology innovation and investment”.

  For example, McDonald’s recently acquired Apprente, a startup that develops voice-based technologies, and Dynamic Yield, a firm specializing in creating customizable online experiences. McDonald’s aims to leverage these technologies to improve ordering times and offer customers better choices.

  Companies by Nationality

  Now let’s examine the ranking through a different lens—nationality. The following chart compares the country breakdowns of the 2013 and 2023 rankings.

  

  The U.S. and China are the only two countries that have increased their share from 2013, pushing out firms from European countries like Germany, the UK, and Italy. We can also see significant declines in Japanese and South Korean representation.

  Given China’s economic growth, it’s likely that Chinese firms will continue to represent more of BCG’s ranking in the future. So far, the country’s strongest innovator is Huawei (8th), which has made the top 50 list every year since 2014, when it debuted at 50th place.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 20:00

• Government Agents Routinely Entering Private Land Without Warrants
  Government Agents Routinely Entering Private Land Without Warrants

  Authored by Brian McGlinchey via starkrealities.substack.com 

  For many people, a central attraction of owning and living on a multi-acre expanse of land is the opportunity for complete privacy — to include freedom from the prying eyes of government.

  While most Americans might understandably believe the Fourth Amendment’s protection against warrantless searches covers all their property, a little-known 1924 Supreme Court decision — Hester v United States — says otherwise. The case struck a major blow against privacy rights, and government agents of all stripes have been exploiting the ruling ever since.

  Those exploitations have grown increasingly brazen. Just ask Josh Highlander, whose home sits on a wooded, 30-acre spread east of Richmond, Virginia.

  In April, Highlander’s wife and 6-year-old son were playing basketball in their yard. When his wife went to retrieve a long rebound, she spotted a man in full camouflage walking among the trees. Alarmed, she and her son darted inside the house.

  

  When Highlander went outside, he couldn’t locate the man, but did discover that a game camera he’d placed in his food plot was gone. When he called police, he learned the man on his property was an agent of Virginia’s Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) — one of three who crossed another piece of private land to enter his property. Worse, the same trio had taken his camera, holding no warrant for that action either.

  These incidents took place on the first day of turkey season. Before coming to Highlander’s property, DWR agents had also entered two other properties, belonging to his brother and to his father, issuing a citation to his brother for illegally hunting “over bait.” However, the alleged “bait” was seed for his brother’s own food plot, consistent with DWR’s instructions for managing such a plot.

  DWR’s violation of Highlander’s liberties didn’t end that day. “For weeks, my son wouldn’t play outside in his own back yard because he was afraid of who might be in the woods,” says Highlander. “My camera was taken two months ago, and I’ve still never received a receipt, a warrant or a ticket.”

  

  This unsettling brand of government misconduct springs from the Supreme Court’s Hester decision.

  In that 1924 case arising from the alcohol prohibition, revenue agents saw a man, Hester, exit his father’s house and hand another man a bottle. When the two men became aware of the agents’ presence, they both ran, each dropping a bottle on the Hester property. With no warrant, agents entered the property, examined the bottles and found they contained moonshine whisky.

  Supreme Court opinions frequently span upwards of 70 pages or more. With Hester, however, the court took just two paragraphs to decimate the Fourth Amendment’s protection of landowners, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declaring “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.”

  And with that, he burdened his fellow citizens with the “open fields doctrine,” which allows warrantless searches and trespassing on land beyond the “curtilage,” a vague term referring to the outdoor area immediately surrounding a home.

  In 1984, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to undo the harm done by Hester, after a different kind of prohibition — against marijuana — had incentivized police to violate property and privacy rights.

  In Oliver v United States, Kentucky State Police, who suspected that marijuana was being grown on private property, strolled around a locked gate and a “No Trespassing” sign and found a marijuana field a mile from the house. The court observed that the field in question was “bounded on all sides by woods, fences, and embankments, [which] cannot be seen from any point of public access.”

  Despite that fact, rather than overturning Hester, the court reaffirmed the open fields doctrine in a 6-3 decision, declaring that, “because open fields are accessible to the public and the police in ways that a home, office, or commercial structure would not be, and because fences or ‘No Trespassing’ signs do not effectively bar the public from viewing open fields, the asserted expectation of privacy in open fields is not one that society recognizes as reasonable.”

  Note the casual recklessness of that reasoning. The Supreme Court essentially declared that, since some private land is viewable from beyond its boundary — from a road or maybe a plane or hot air balloon — all private land apart from the “curtilage” surrounding a home is fair game for government trespasses and searches.

  As technology advances, the open fields doctrine only grows more troubling: If Hester licenses government agents to wander your property at will, it follows that they can use drones or plant cameras to accomplish the same type of spying — with far greater ease and less manpower.

  

  Indeed, while Virginia’s warrantless DWR agents shockingly seized Highlander’s camera so they could retroactively monitor his actions (an act that even the expansive open fields doctrine doesn’t seem to authorize), elsewhere in Virginia and in the United States, government agents are already known to hide their own surveillance cameras on private land.

  The Institute for Justice (IJ) — a national civil liberties law firm that provides free-of-charge representation to victims of government overreach — has filed a suit against the Virginia DWR on Highlander’s behalf, as part of a broader, multi-state campaign against abuses perpetrated under the open-fields doctrine.

  Given the formidable federal obstacles presented by the Hester and Oliver precedents, IJ’s strategy in these cases centers on protections outlined in state constitutions rather than the US Constitution.

  “The US Supreme Court’s basis for the open fields doctrine has been that the Fourth Amendment lists ‘persons, houses, papers and effects,’ and none of those things are obviously the same as land,” says IJ attorney Joshua Windham in his firm’s video profile of the case.

  “State constitutions often have different texts…in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, the word ‘effects’ is replaced with the word ‘possessions,’ and we say that includes private land…In Virginia, there’s a textual provision that mentions ‘places’, and of course [Highlander’s] property is a place,” says Windham, who’s representing Highlander.

  In their suit filed in a county circuit court, IJ and Highlander are seeking a declaration that the warrantless search of Highlander’s property and seizure of his camera and its contents violated the Virginia constitution.

  

  “No person at all in this country should have limitless power, and it sure seems like they do,” says Highlander. “It just makes you feel vulnerable, it makes you feel anxious, it makes you feel like someone’s watching you on your own private property.”

  Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would be likewise aghast at the government conduct unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Hester and Oliver decisions. After all, colonists’ anger over British “Writs of Assistance” — which the Tenth Amendment Center’s Mike Maharrey describes as “a go-anywhere and do-anything permission slip for government agents” — was one major grievance that animated the American revolution.

  While the federal precedents stand firm — for now — Highlander says he’s determined to ensure his fellow Virginians are spared the same abuse he’s suffered: “What happened to my family was wrong and I’m fighting for our privacy and to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

  Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com 

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 19:30

• After Fostering Cesspool Of Crime, Gavin Newsom Finally Gets Serious About Fentanyl In San Francisco
  After Fostering Cesspool Of Crime, Gavin Newsom Finally Gets Serious About Fentanyl In San Francisco

  Before he was governor of California, Gavin Newsom (D) served as the Mayor of San Francisco between 2004 and 2011 – with none other than Kamala Harris (D) serving as his Attorney General. While one might encounter Bush Man or Escape Man during the journey to Ghirardelli Square back then, it was nothing like the San Francisco of today.

  

  Gavin and Kamala set in motion a legacy of poo-covered streets, rampant crime, and an explosion in homelessness and addiction that was further facilitated by Kamala’s successor, ‘Soros’ DA George Gascón (2011 – 2019). Gascón is currently ‘working his magic’ as Los Angeles District Attorney – having survived a recall attempt (in which observers weren’t allowed to view the counting of the votes), with results we’ve noted many times over the years. In fact, last month San Francisco was ranked the worst-run city in America.

  Now that we’re up to speed, and Newsom might be the Democrats’ secret weapon against Trump (or Ron DeSantis) in 2024 – and therefore in dire need of talking points, he’s finally doing something about the fentanyl crisis affecting San Francisco.

  On Thursday Newsom announced that the state will bolster its existing efforts to tackle the fentanyl crisis in the city, with a promise to double the number of California Highway Patrol officers dedicated to the issue in a joint task-force coordinated with the California National Guard that was first announced in May.

  

  “Today, I’m authorizing a 100% increase in personnel to bolster the impact of this proven operation, as well as authorizing targeted surges to crack down on crime in the city,” said Newsom in a press release. “Working alongside our local, state, and federal partners, we’re committed to cleaning up San Francisco’s streets.”

  As of today, the operation has seized over 8.1 kilograms of fentanyl, enough to kill more than 4 million people.

  “CHP’s recent results in San Francisco are nothing short of extraordinary — in just six weeks, the agency’s hardworking officers seized enough fentanyl to potentially kill the city nearly three times over, multiple firearms, and stolen goods,” said Newsom.

  The operation, designed to assist city patrol officers, includes a team of analysts dedicated to monitoring and tracking organized crime and providing advanced metrics to aid investigations, the Epoch Times reports.

  “Our residents, business owners, and visitors to our city deserve to feel safe, and we are making progress in disrupting the drug markets that are causing so much misery on our streets,” said Police chief Bill Scott, who welcomed the support of the state. “Working collaboratively with the CHP, we’ve seized an unprecedented amount of fentanyl and other deadly narcotics in recent weeks, and I look forward to building on our success.”

  

  As The Epoch Times notes further;

  San Francisco Fire Department spokespersons reported to the California Assembly’s newly formed Select Committee on Fentanyl, Opioid Addiction, and Overdose Prevention during its first gathering in May about having to respond to multiple overdose emergency calls every day, with an average of two deaths occurring on the streets every 24 hours.

  “I don’t even bring my family into the city anymore, and we used to love to come over and eat and shop, just enjoy the area,” Jesse Garcia—an electrician living in the East Bay and working in San Francisco—told The Epoch Times. “I don’t want my young kids seeing the people out here looking like zombies. It’s disgusting, and it’s not safe for families.”

  Faced with several dilemmas stemming from the public’s perceived lack of public safety in the city stemming from homelessness, open-air drug use, and high levels of theft—including retail stores fleeing the downtown area and record levels of office space vacancy impacting the economy—Mayor London Breed voiced her appreciation for the state’s help.

  “Over the last several weeks, we’ve welcomed the California Highway Patrol and National Guard working collaboratively alongside our local agencies to disrupt the drug trafficking and drug markets harming our neighborhoods,” Breed said in the joint press release. “To be successful in the long term, we need to sustain and expand this work at the local, state, and federal levels.”

  

  Federal courts have proven more effective than state and local ones in terms of convicting distributors and some dealers linked to the deaths of individuals, based on court filings this year, levying multi-year sentences on numerous occasions.

  Seemingly fed up with a lack of action from leaders, voters recalled Chesa Boudin—formerly the city’s progressive district attorney—in 2022 by a wide margin.

  Meanwhile, several district attorney’s offices throughout the state report feeling hampered by what they say are limited options for prosecuting those caught with less than one kilogram of the drug.

  Resistance in the Legislature to entertain proposals related to fentanyl sentencing enhancements is an issue that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken exception to, as multiple bipartisan efforts to bolster prosecutorial playbooks were denied earlier this year.

  One measure that is currently still being considered, Assembly Bill 701—a bipartisan bill introduced by Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez (D-Pomona) enhancing penalties for possession of at least one kilogram of fentanyl—passed the Senate Public Safety Committee June 27, but members reserved their right to oppose the legislation on the floor, as some said they believe increasing prison sentences will not improve the overdose epidemic.

  Complicating matters are the cheap and easy fentanyl manufacturing methods criminal organizations have mastered and the lethality of the substance, with 2 milligrams—only a few grains—potentially deadly, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, also known as the DEA.

  The drug is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.

  

  Nearly 29,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized in California in 2022, representing an amount that could kill most of the people on the planet—approximately 6.5 billion, based on DEA calculations.

  According to the most recent statistics from the California Department of Public Health, approximately 115 people die every week in the state as a result of the synthetic opioid.

  Investigators report that many victims are unknowingly poisoned, as the drug is odorless, tasteless, and is often found hidden in counterfeit pharmaceutical products and in street drugs.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 19:00

• US Releases Internal Review Of Botched, Disastrous Afghan Withdrawal 
  US Releases Internal Review Of Botched, Disastrous Afghan Withdrawal 

  Via The Cradle,

  The US State Department did not adequately prepare for the possibility of a swift collapse of the Afghan government as part of its planning for the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, an internal review has found. The US government announced it would complete its withdrawal by September 2021, expecting the US-backed Afghan government and security forces to remain in power and continue peace negotiations with the Taliban.

  However, as the US withdrawal progressed, the government quickly collapsed, and then-president Ashraf Ghani fled the country in August 2021 as the Taliban took control of the capital, Kabul. This led to a chaotic final evacuation of US and Afghan personnel from Kabul airport. The two-week evacuation was marred by the deaths of at least 175 people when NATO troops indiscriminately opened fire on crowds of civilians gathered outside the airport after an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up.

  

  Al-Jazeera notes that the State Department After Action Report (AAR) issued on June 30 said the decision by US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan after over 20 years of occupation had “serious consequences” for the viability of the US-backed Afghan government.

  “Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR team found that during both administrations, there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios,” the review said.

  The report specifically criticized the State Department for failing to set up a crisis-management task force soon enough to cooperate with the Pentagon in the case of an evacuation. “Establishing such a task force earlier would have brought key players together to address issues related to a possible [evacuation],” the report stated.

  Further, “Naming a 7th-floor principal … would have improved coordination across different lines of effort,” that report said, referring to the State Department’s top floor where Secretary of State Antony Blinken and senior diplomats have offices.

  The review also blamed the Trump White House for failing to address a backlog of applications for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which allows Afghans that might be in danger of retribution by the Taliban for working with foreign occupiers, to emigrate to the US.

  The review also repeated previous claims by the Biden White House that Trump did not adequately plan for the departure of US troops after it reached a deal with the Taliban to withdraw troops by May of 2021, a deadline Biden postponed. Biden and State Secretary Antony Blinken have faced harsh criticism due to the chaos that accompanied the withdrawal.

  Blinken was recently subpoenaed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) to release classified cables from July 2021, in which staffers from the US embassy in Kabul warned that the defeat of the US-trained Afghan army was “imminent.”

  Reporter asks Biden to react to today’s report that his admin botched the Afghanistan withdrawal:

  “Remember what I said? I said al-Qaeda wouldn’t be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban. What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right.” pic.twitter.com/JfwhYv3Sy5

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 30, 2023

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

  However, despite the broad condemnation of the troops’ withdrawal, less attention was paid to the collapse of the Afghan economy. The NATO-funded Atlantic Council think tank noted that “the Afghan economy began spiraling shortly after the Taliban takeover” due to US actions, including imposing “sanctions, the freezing of central bank assets, and removal of foreign aid.”

  The US and a coalition of its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of the so-called War on Terror, in which the neoconservative-led Bush Administration sought to invade seven countries in West Asia within five years.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 18:30

• The Closest & Biggest Asteroid Flybys Of 2023
  The Closest & Biggest Asteroid Flybys Of 2023

  On today’s World Asteroid Day, fascination is mixing with fear when considering the latest and upcoming asteroid flybys.According to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, a number of asteroids have already passed by a little too close for comfort this year.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, the colossal 2005 YY128, which flew by the Earth on February 16, had a maximum possible diameter of more than 1,000 meters (0.6 miles).

  Because of its size, 2005 YY128 was already discovered in 2005 – as denoted in its name.

  In recent years, scientists have been discovering more and more so-called Near Earth Asteroids, including many smaller ones.

  Despite their comparatively smaller size, these asteroids could still cause considerable damage if they collided with Earth.

  2023 DZ2 (nicknamed “Dizzy”), passed by Earth on March 25, and came so close that it could be seen with a telescope and even binoculars.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 18:00

• Biden: A Bumbling Grifter Personifying A Failing State
  Biden: A Bumbling Grifter Personifying A Failing State

  Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

  The Long, Hot Summer

  “Vladimir Putin is clearly losing the War in Iraq.” 

  – Joe Biden, US President

  Russian Revolution Two kicked off the long, hot summer freak show of 2023. Unlike Russian Revolution One (1917), which lasted over seventy years, RR2 clocked out in under twenty-four hours. It didn’t propel Russia into a political paroxysm as perhaps expected by crisis engineers in Langley, VA, and Washington’s Foggy Bottom. Rather, it energized the resolve of arch-nemesis Vlad Putin, solidified his support among the Russian populace (who turned out singing patriotic hymns along the Neva River when the revolt was quashed), and sunsetted the increasingly rogue Wagner private paramilitary company in its Ukraine duties, now to be taken over by regular Russian Federation army units.

  According to commentator Andrei Martyanov – see yesterday’s colloquy on Tommy Carrigan’s Podcast – Wagner had already gone off the rails in Ukraine, inciting the costly Bakhmut operation on its own to fluff its reputation while preparing for the mutiny executed and aborted on June 24.

  The fate of Wagner’s business manager, Evgeny Prigozhin, remains murky now while he cools his heels in Belarus — a trial, perhaps, at some later date when Ukraine itself stops being a geopolitical psychodrama. He has been publicly branded a “traitor.”

  It was perhaps the hope of America’s feckless Neocon war-dogs that Russia would fall into chaos. This has all along been the hope and expectation of our country’s official stated policy. And it turns out to be ever more at odds with the reality of the situation. Mr. Putin aims to conclude this tragic US-provoked misadventure as swiftly as possible now. This ain’t no Mud Club; this ain’t no foolin’ around. It looks more like the last days of disco in Kiev. The question for the people there is: just how much of Ukraine do you want to be left with intact when this thing is over? Go ahead… choose.

  Despite its master-slave relationship with America, Euroland may not be so avid for World War Three as the “Joe Biden” regime seems to be. The Wagner coup fiasco marks the true crackup of NATO as the Ukraine project fizzles. Surely Europeans with some functioning brain cells must be asking: “what was the point of all this killing and waste?” The clear-eyed may suspect that the point was to get Europe to commit suicide, because that is the obvious result. No more natgas for you, Europe, meaning farewell to major industry and a comfortable standard of living. A lot less wheat and corn coming out of Ukraine to Euroland nations, too. When food costs too much, or is just plain scarce, governments fall. Wait for it.

  Do you suppose that “Joe Biden” & Company can keep up this charade of a proxy war with Russia much longer? $150-billion pounded down the Kiev rat-hole, purchasing yet another foreign relations humiliation. Never has an American president been heaped with such an ignominious foundering and dishonor. He can only pretend to run for reelection as he wrecks the country.

  The DNC poohbahs, cross-eyed in transports of Woke-ism, must know that this bumbling grifter personifies a failing state.

  

  The White House press pool reporters are even flinging harsh questions at him these days as he desperately searches for doors to escape through.

  The tally in the Biden family bribery operation stands above $30-million now, with government whistleblowers pouring out of the agencies like termites from a burning house. Most of them have not testified in Congress yet, or in any other venue, nor have the various DOJ and FBI officials associated with the broad-based cover-up of these blatant crimes. Do you doubt anymore that Attorney General Merrick Garland perjured himself testifying that the Delaware US attorney David Weiss was not interfered with in the Hunter Biden tax and gun violation case?

  The mounting evidence of foreign influence-peddling is hard and vivid now, viz., the Whatsapp text out this week of Hunter, “sitting here with my father,” extorting Chinese business associate Henry Zhao to fullfill his commitment or “regret not following my direction.” Hmmmmm. Explain that. Or the email archive carefully saved by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who was prudent enough to back up his story with docs apt to prove DOJ malfeasance.

  It’s unfortunate that America suffered three fake presidential impeachments in recent decades – Bill Clinton’s over a sexual impropriety, which is hardly a high crime, and the two utter charades involving Donald Trump – because now our nation is faced with serious presidential crimes explicitly laid out in Article II Section Four of the Constitution: bribery.

  “Joe Biden” will be impeached if he doesn’t bail altogether, and he might not do that because then he loses the power to pardon the other Biden family members involved. The impeachment of Merrick Garland for debauching and dishonoring the Justice Department logically would be the warm-up act for the impeachment of the president. They’ve both got to go and they both could save our country a lot of trouble by just stepping down.

  Then we can see about Kamala Harris.

  *  *  *

  Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 17:00

• 'Godfather Of AI' Speaks Out: AI Capable Of Reason, May Seek Control
  'Godfather Of AI' Speaks Out: AI Capable Of Reason, May Seek Control

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

  A leading mind in the development of artificial intelligence is warning that AI has developed a rudimentary capacity to reason and may seek to overthrow humanity.

  

  AI systems may develop the desire to seize control from humans as a way of accomplishing other preprogrammed goals, said Geoffrey Hinton, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto.

  “I think we have to take the possibility seriously that if they get smarter than us, which seems quite likely, and they have goals of their own, which seems quite likely, they may well develop the goal of taking control,” Hinton said during a June 28 talk at the Collision tech conference in Toronto, Canada.

  “If they do that, we’re in trouble.”

  Hinton has been dubbed one of the “godfathers of AI” for his work in neural networks. He recently spent a decade helping to develop AI systems for Google but left the company last month, saying he needed to be able to warn people of the risks posed by AI.

  While Hinton does not believe that AI will innately crave power, he said that it could nevertheless seek to seize it from humans as a logical step to better allow itself to achieve its goals.

  “At a very general level, if you’ve got something that’s a lot smarter than you, that’s very good at manipulating people, at a very general level, are you confident that people stay in charge?” Hinton said.

  “I think they’ll derive [the motive to seize control] as a way of achieving other goals.”

  AI Now Capable of Reason

  Hinton previously doubted that an AI superintelligence that could match humans would emerge within the next 30 to 50 years. He now believes it could come in less than 20.

  In part, he said, that is because AI systems that use large language models are beginning to show the capacity to reason, and he is not sure how they are doing it.

  “It’s the big language models that are getting close, and I don’t really understand why they can do it, but they can do little bits of reasoning.

  “They still can’t match us, but they’re getting close.”

  Hinton described an AI system that had been given a puzzle in which it had to plan how to paint several rooms of a house. It was given three colors to choose from, with one color that faded to another over time, and asked to paint a certain number of rooms in a particular color within a set time frame. Rather than merely opting to paint the rooms the desired color, the AI determined not to paint any that it knew would fade to the desired color anyway, electing to save resources though it had not been programmed to do so.

  “That’s thinking,” Hinton said.

  To that end, Hinton said that there was no reason to suspect that AI wouldn’t reach and exceed human intelligence in the coming years.

  “We’re just a big neural net, and there’s no reason why an artificial neural net shouldn’t be able to do everything we can do,” Hinton said.

  “We’re entering a period of huge uncertainty. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 16:30

• How Old Are The World's Nuclear Reactors?
  How Old Are The World's Nuclear Reactors?

  Since the advent of nuclear electricity in the 1950s, nuclear reactors have played an essential role in meeting our rising energy needs.

  Nuclear reactors are designed to operate for decades and are typically licensed for 20 to 40 years, and they can last even longer with license renewals.

  So, just how old is the world’s current nuclear reactor fleet?

  As Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada and Sabrina Lam show in the bubble chart below, the age distribution of the 422 reactors operating worldwide as of March 2023 is quite considerable, based on data from the Power Reactor Information System (PRIS).

  

  The Age Distribution of the Global Reactor Fleet

  Nuclear power saw a building boom in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s as countries expanded their energy portfolios and sought to capitalize on the advancements in nuclear technology.

  As a result, the majority of the world’s nuclear reactors began operating during this period.

  

  Of the total of 422 reactors, 262 reactors have been in operation for 31 to 50 years. In other words, about 62% of all current nuclear reactors were connected to the grid between 1973 and 1992.

  Growth in nuclear power slowed down by the turn of the 21st century, with decreasing public support and increasing concern over nuclear safety. As a result, only a small number of reactors fall into the 11 to 20 year age group.

  But over the last decade, some countries have renewed their interest in nuclear energy, while others like China have continued to expand their reactor fleets. Some 67 reactors are between zero and 10 years old, accounting for 18% of global nuclear electrical capacity.

  The oldest operating reactors (five of them) are 54 years old and entered commercial service in 1969. Two of these are located in the United States, two in India, and one in Switzerland.

  How Long Can Nuclear Reactors Last?

  Although specific lifespans can vary, nuclear reactors are typically designed to last for 20 to 40 years.

  However, reactors can operate beyond their initially licensed periods with lifetime extensions. Extending reactor lives requires rigorous assessments, safety evaluations, and refurbishments.

  Some countries have granted license renewals for aging reactors. Notably, 88 of the 92 reactors in the U.S. have received approvals to operate for up to 60 years, and some have applied for additional 20-year extensions to operate for up to 80 years.

  With safety concerns addressed, reactors with lifetime extensions can offer various advantages. Without the high capital investments needed to build new reactors, they can produce carbon-free electricity at low and competitive costs, which is especially important as the global power sector looks to decarbonize.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 16:00

• Raytheon Calls In Retirees To Help Produce Stinger Missiles
  Raytheon Calls In Retirees To Help Produce Stinger Missiles

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Raytheon has called in retired engineers to help produce Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that the US has been providing Ukraine, Defense One reported on Thursday.

  Stingers are shoulder-fired missiles that were out of production for 20 years until the US started sending them to Ukraine when Russia first invaded last year, a policy led by a former Raytheon board member, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

  

  According to the Pentagon, the US has provided Ukraine with over 1,700 Stinger missile systems to date.

  “Stinger’s been out of production for 20 years, and all of a sudden in the first 48 hours [of the war], it’s the star of the show and everybody wants more,” Wes Kremer, the president of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, said last week.

  Raytheon needs to produce the Stingers using blueprints drawn up during the Carter administration, as using more advanced production methods would require redesigning the weapon.

  “We were bringing back retired employees that are in their 70s … to teach our new employees how to actually build a Stinger,” Kremer said. “We’re pulling test equipment out of warehouses and blowing the spider webs off of them.”

  The US Army placed an order for Stingers in May 2022 to replace ones sent to Ukraine, but the Pentagon said they won’t be delivered until 2026. Kremer said it would take at least 30 months for the first missiles to be completed due to the time it will take to restart production.

  In March 2022, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes explained how the war in Ukraine would be a boon for the weapons maker.

  

  “Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business over the next coming years,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 15:30

• Study Finds Xanax, Valium Associated With Brain Injury, Suicide
  Study Finds Xanax, Valium Associated With Brain Injury, Suicide

  About 30 million Americans are taking benzodiazepines like Xanax, Valium, and Klonopin- about 12.5% of the adult population. Doctors and psychiatrists have prescribed these drugs for decades to treat anxiety. But a new study reveals “benzodiazepine usage and discontinuing usage” can create “nervous system injury and negative life effects.” 

  Researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus said as patients enter the discontinuation phase of Xanax, Valium, and Klonopin, they face significant withdrawal symptoms.

  

  “Despite the fact that benzodiazepines have been widely prescribed for decades, this survey presents significant new evidence that a subset of patients experiences long-term neurological complications,” said Alexis Ritvo, M.D, M.P.H., an assistant professor in psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and medical director of the nonprofit Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices. She said the medical community must reevaluate how it prescribes benzodiazepines. 

  The study was a collaborative effort between CU Anschutz, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and several drug advocacy that specializes in raising awareness of benzodiazepine harms. 

  “Patients have been reporting long-term effects from benzodiazepines for over 60 years. I am one of those patients. Even though I took my medication as prescribed, I still experience symptoms on a daily basis at four years off benzodiazepines. Our survey and the new term BIND (benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction) give a voice to the patient experience and point to the need for further investigations,” said Christy Huff, MD, one of the paper’s coauthors and a cardiologist and director of Benzodiazepine Information Coalition. 

  About 76.6% of the respondents had long-lasting symptoms after discounting the use of benzodiazepines. Almost half of the respondents had these ten symptoms for more than a year: 

  1. low energy
  2. difficulty focusing
  3.  memory loss
  4. anxiety
  5. insomnia
  6. sensitivity to light and sounds
  7. digestive problems
  8. symptoms triggered by food and drink
  9. muscle weakness
  10.  body pain

  The most alarming part of the study was the symptoms listed above were new and distinct and weren’t experienced before respondents used Xanax, Valium, and Klonopin. Many respondents reported damaged relationships, job loss, and increased medical costs. Also, 54.4% of the respondents reported suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide. 

  But don’t worry because doctors and the government tell us benzodiazepines are safe, just like they said OxyContin wasn’t addictive in the 1990s. 

   

   

   

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 15:00

• IRS Sends Special Notice To Taxpayers In Eight States
  IRS Sends Special Notice To Taxpayers In Eight States

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

  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has sent out a special mailing to taxpayers in disaster-affected areas, letting them know they have more time to pay their taxes.

  

  The IRS said in a statement Thursday that the special mailing was being sent out to California and seven other states as a follow-up clarification after an earlier message wrongly told them they had 21 days to pay.

  “Although the initial notice indicated a payment deadline of 21 days, taxpayers in these disaster-declared regions actually have until a later date this year to make their payments within the designated timeframe,” the agency stated.

  Taxpayers with balances due who live in parts of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee that fell under disaster declarations received a CP14 notice from the IRS in late May and June.

  Many of the CP14 notices incorrectly said the affected taxpayers had three weeks to pay outstanding balances.

  “We know our initial mailing caused confusion for taxpayers and tax professionals, and we worked quickly to send a follow-up reminder to help reassure people,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement.

  “This mailing reflects how we’re trying to be more taxpayer-focused given the additional resources that we’ve been given under the Inflation Reduction Act.”

  The new mailing, called CP14CL, will be sent out within the next several weeks, the agency said.

  The earlier CP14 notices also included a special insert that features the correct payment deadline, which was extended under special tax relief to taxpayers in federally declared disaster zones.

  The IRS has also updated these inserts, which will accompany upcoming CP14 balances-due notices so as to make it clear that the letter does not apply to people covered by disaster declarations.

  Disaster-Related Deadline Extensions

  Earlier this year, taxpayers in federally declared disaster regions—like ones hit by deadly winter storms—were granted tax relief by the IRS in the form of an extension on their deadlines to file their tax returns and pay amounts due.

  

  The IRS issued notices granting such relief to taxpayers affected by severe weather in parts of Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, New York, and Tennessee. The deadline extensions varied across different disaster areas, with relevant parts of Florida, for example, getting an extension until Aug. 15, while Tennessee storm victims had theirs extended until July 31.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 14:30

• Democrat Rep. Has Psychotic Meltdown – Calls Supreme Court "Illegitimate White Patriarchy"
  Democrat Rep. Has Psychotic Meltdown – Calls Supreme Court "Illegitimate White Patriarchy"

  The separation of the political left from any sort of reasonable governance has been obvious for years now.  To put it simply, they see the government as their personal weapon for deconstructing the country so they can rebuild society the way they want.  They believe this is their right – The right of the collective to socially engineer   

  The notion that elements of the government might serve the interests of conservatives and independents is an unthinkable heresy.  And, whenever they don’t get exactly what they want from the government (which is rare) they immediately act as if they have been betrayed; that an “insurrection” is afoot to enslave them.  

  This attitude seems to overlook the fact that every major institution in the US has been catering to the far-left for decades.  Even when GOP Republicans have taken a majority in the House, the Senate or put their man in the Oval Office, the general legislative trend has always taken a progressive direction, to the point that America has become increasingly more socialist in its functions.  It’s also the reason why America has become economically and socially unstable.   

  In truth, leftists have been getting what they want from governments and the corporate world for so long they have become utterly entitled, like spoiled children.

  That’s the kind of sad energy we now see on display among Democrats in the face of multiple Supreme Court losses, including the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the blocking of Biden’s student loan relief program and the end of affirmative action on college campuses.  All these court decisions really amount to is a reversal of entitlements that never should have existed in the first place.  Leftists see such entitlements as “civil rights,” never mind that they exist as a means to take the rights of others.

  Democrat Representative Jaamal Bowman echos this ideology, combining it with a tired and psychotic rant about “white patriarchy” being the core function of the Supreme Court.

  Rep Jaamal Bowman has a meltdown on tiktok over Supreme Court rulings.

  Says Supreme Court is “illegitimate” and they’re only there to serve “white supremacy” and “white patriarchy” and “they don’t want black people to be educated” pic.twitter.com/f755B0F9Yg

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 30, 2023

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

  The message?  It’s complicated because it’s unhinged, but at bottom the far-left wants to fundamentally change the very fabric of the government so that it always acts in their favor regardless of who else is trampled in the process.  Let’s try to break down Bowman’s claims…

  Playing the racism card is the Democrat go-to tactic for a reason.  The primary purpose is to incite civil unrest as a tool for control – “Give us what we want or the cities will burn.”  The secondary purpose is to declare ownership of minorities.  The propaganda acts as if all minorities are a monolith that serves the aims of the political left.  The idea that minorities might also be conservative is ignored.    

  Affirmative action has always been a racist policy; it allows institutions to actively discriminate based on skin color and ethnicity.  Interestingly, white people are not the most affected by affirmative action on college campuses; Asian people are the most discriminated against, with double standards in testing and academic excellence designed to keep them out of the classrooms.  According to research from Princeton University, students who identify as Asian must score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites and 450 points higher than Blacks to have the same chance of admission to private colleges.

  The notion of a constitutional convention has already been cited by other Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom as a means to dismantle the 2nd Amendment, but Bowman seems to be suggesting a convention to completely upend the Supreme Court and the very foundations of the law.  Keep in mind that Democrats have avidly defended the court structure when it works in their favor, but since the court is finally operating on a more constitutional framework they argue it is now corrupt and white supremacist.

  Student loan debt relief is nothing more than a way for Dems to buy votes – “Put us in office and we will eliminate the debts you accrued getting that degree that was probably useless.”  Of course, taxpaying Americans would have to cover the bill for debt forgiveness on college loans, not the Democratic Party.  It’s rather brilliant when you think about it – Democrats use your money to buy votes to keep themselves in office so they can continue to erode your constitutional rights.  You pay for your own oppression.

  People should have to pay for their own debts.  Taxpayers should not have to pay their debts for them. It teaches a terrible lesson to the next generation that if they make mistakes the government will make sure they don’t have to learn from those mistakes.

  Finally, it’s not surprising that Bowman attacks expanded gun rights in his diatribe on affirmative action, given that the political left cannot maintain power unless the public is eventually disarmed.  Leftists believe in majority rule, as long as they are the majority.  If they are the minority, they riot.  If they are the majority, they demand government suppress their political opponents.  In either case, gun rights stand as a major obstacle to them.  

  It was only a couple years ago that establishment elites and Democrats were pushing for permanent covid mandates, jail time for those who spread information contrary to the government narrative and economic discrimination for anyone who refused to take the vaccines.  The political left took the mask off completely and showed who they really are.  They cannot be trusted to rewrite or rebuild core government structures. 

  Their hatred of the Supreme Court is not based on any legitimate grievances, it’s based on how they view power.  The court is a center of power that does not always act according to the dictates of social justice Marxism.  They see the court as just another “platform” that needs to be co-opted.    

  Many conservatives and moderates also have concerns about how the Supreme Court makes decisions, but one cannot deny the constitutional logic behind their recent rulings.  It’s a shift that should have happened a long time ago, though it is happening in an era in which leftists see ideological deviation as treason.  They will use every trick at their disposal to undermine the law and create double standards to their benefit.  Bowman essentially admits that this is the plan. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 07/01/2023 – 14:00

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• A State Of Martial Law: America Is A Military Dictatorship Disguised As A Democracy
  A State Of Martial Law: America Is A Military Dictatorship Disguised As A Democracy

  Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

  – Thomas Jefferson

  The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms.

  

  Case in point: America’s founders did not want a military government ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

  Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

  Most Americans seem relatively untroubled by this state of martial law.

  Incredibly, when President Biden bragged about how the average citizen doesn’t stand a chance against the government’s massive arsenal of militarized firepower, it barely caused a ripple.

  As Biden remarked at a fundraising event in California, “I love these guys who say the Second Amendment is—you know, the tree of liberty is water with the blood of patriots. Well, if [you] want to do that, you want to work against the government, you need an F-16.  You need something else than just an AR-15.”

  The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there is no place in our nation today for the kind of revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical government.

  For that matter, the government has declared an all-out war on any resistance whatsoever by the citizenry to its mandates, power grabs and abuses.

  By this standard, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

  This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning.

  For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

  A 2008 Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report goes on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

  Subsequent reports by the Department of Homeland Security to identify, monitor and label right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) have manifested into full-fledged pre-crime surveillance programs. Almost a decade later, after locking down the nation and spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

  Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that is colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

  The events of recent years have all been part of a master plan to shut us up and preemptively shut us down: by making peaceful revolution impossible and violent revolution inevitable.

  The powers-that-be want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law.

  This is how it begins.

  As John Lennon warned, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”

  Already, discontent is growing.

  According to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, 7 out of 10 Americans believe that American democracy is “imperiled.”

  Americans are worried about the state of their country, afraid of an increasingly violent and oppressive federal government, and tired of being treated like suspects and criminals.

  What we’ll see more of before long is a growing dissatisfaction with the government and its heavy-handed tactics by people who are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.”

  This is what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent.

  Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

  We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

  When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

  Brace yourselves.

  There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

  Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

  Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

  And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

  The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

  The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, yet that is no real recourse at all.

  Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, what is unfolding before us is not a revolution. This is an anti-revolution.

  We are at our most vulnerable right now.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 23:40

• These Industries Are Most 'At Risk' For AI Automation
  These Industries Are Most ‘At Risk’ For AI Automation

  Since the release of tools like ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to permeate industries worldwide, transforming the way we work and live.

  To gain insight into this rapidly evolving landscape, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Sabrina Lam – using data from MSCI – has ranked U.S. industries by their estimated share of employment that could be exposed to AI-driven automation.

  

  Data and Highlights

  This analysis comes from a March 2023 report published by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research. 

  The authors estimated automation exposure for over 900 U.S. jobs using the O*NET occupational database, which provides details on the types of tasks each occupation conducts. Exposure estimates were then weighted by the employment share of each occupation, and aggregated to the industry level.

  Industry	Estimated Share of U.S. Employment Exposed to AI (%)
  Office and administrative support	46%
  Legal	44%
  Architecture and engineering	37%
  Life, physical, and social science	36%
  Business and financial operations	35%
  Community and social service	33%
  Management	32%
  Sales and related	31%
  Computer and Mathematical	29%
  Farming, fishing, and forestry	28%
  Protective service	28%
  Healthcare practitioners and technical	28%
  Educational instruction and library	27%
  Healthcare support	26%
  Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media	26%
  All industries average	25%
  Personal care and service	19%
  Food preparation and serving related	12%
  Transportation and material moving	11%
  Production	9%
  Construction and extraction	6%
  Installation, maintenance, and repair	4%
  Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance	1%

  According to these findings, “office and administrative support” will likely be the most affected by AI-driven automation at 46%. This transformation could largely impact common tasks such as data entry, scheduling meetings, and document management.

  The second highest industry, “legal”, trails close behind at 44%. AI is expected to automate legal processes like contract analysis, and could even be used to anticipate court case outcomes.

  As expected, industries that won’t be heavily impacted are those that rely heavily on manual labor, like “construction and extraction.” 

  Benchmarking the Automated Future

  AI is still a very new and developing technology. How it will impact labor productivity in the future depends on its capability (how fast it improves) and adoption (how quickly people and businesses begin using it). 

  Adoption rates are unlikely to be the same around the world, as survey results have shown that some countries are more optimistic towards AI than others.

  Under the most aggressive scenario, Goldman Sachs believes that AI automation could impact up to 300 million jobs globally and potentially result in a 7% increase in annual GDP (equal to about $7 trillion). 

  Given AI’s massive potential for disruption, it’s more important than ever for investors to stay ahead. That’s why MSCI has created the MSCI ACWI IMI Robotics & AI Index, which benchmarks an investable universe of companies associated with the adoption of AI, robotics, and automation.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 23:20

• Ivanka Trump Dropped As Co-Defendant In $250 Million Lawsuit
  Ivanka Trump Dropped As Co-Defendant In $250 Million Lawsuit

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

  A New York appeals court has dismissed all claims against former President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump in a civil lawsuit brought by Attorney General Letitia James.

  

  The New York Appellate Division’s First Department ruled unanimously this week to dismiss claims against Ivanka Trump because they were filed too late and she was no longer part of the Trump Organization during the relevant period.

  “The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely,” the judges wrote in the decision.

  While the judges denied the former president’s motion to dismiss the case, they agreed to limit the time frame of some of the claims against the other defendants, barring some claims before 2016 and others before 2014.

  The Trumps have denied any wrongdoing while the former president has accused James of engaging in a politically-motivated prosecution.

  

  ‘Witch Hunt,’ Claims Trump

  James’ civil lawsuit, filed in September 2022, seeks at least $250 million in damages from Trump, his adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization and others. It also seeks to block the Trumps from operating businesses in the state of New York.

  The suit accuses Trump of lying about asset values in order to secure better terms for loans and insurance

  It alleges that, for about a decade between 2011 and 2021, Trump fraudulently manipulated asset valuations, including his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his Trump Tower penthouse in Manhattan, and his own net worth.

  James wants the Trump Organization to be barred from doing business in New York, from engaging in real estate acquisitions in the state for five years, and for Trump and his children to be barred from serving as high-level executives at any New York company.

  Trump, who is the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, has called James’ lawsuit a politically-motivated “witch hunt” meant to thwart his bid for the White House.

  A spokesperson for the New York Attorney General’s office said in a statement to media outlets following Tuesday’s appellate court ruling that there’s enough evidence for the case to proceed against the other defendants.

  “There is a mountain of evidence that shows Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for significant economic gain,” a spokeswoman for James said.

  “This decision allows us to hold him accountable for that fraud, and we intend to do so,” the spokesperson added.

  Christopher Kise, a lawyer for the former president and most of the other defendants, said the ruling was “the first step” toward ending the lawsuit.

  “The correct application of the law will now limit appropriately the previously unlimited reach of the attorney general,” he said.

  “We remain confident that once all the real facts are known, there will be no doubt President Trump has built an extraordinarily successful business empire.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 23:00

• Florida Issues Statewide Emergency Malaria Alert
  Florida Issues Statewide Emergency Malaria Alert

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

  The Florida Department of Health issued a statewide alert after four people in Sarasota contracted malaria in locally transmitted cases, coming a day after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a similar notice for Florida and Texas.

  

  “All individuals have been treated and have recovered. Malaria is transmitted through infected mosquitoes,” Florida’s Department of Health stated in a release issued June 27.

  The agency stated that ground and airborne spraying that targets mosquitos will be carried out around Sarasota, which is near Tampa, to mitigate transmission.

  “Effective treatment is readily available through hospitals and other health care providers,” the department stated. “Individuals in this area with symptoms of fever, chills, sweats, nausea/vomiting, and headache should seek immediate medical attention.”

  It also advised the public to control the breeding of mosquitoes by eliminating any standing water, which is where mosquitoes lay their eggs.

  

  “Drain water from garbage cans, house gutters, buckets, pool covers, coolers, toys, flowerpots, or any other containers where sprinkler or rainwater has collected,” the alert said.

  Locals should also take precautions while outdoors by using bug spray, avoiding infested areas, and wearing long sleeves and pants if possible.

  Malaria is caused by a parasite, Plasmodium vivax, that spreads via mosquito bites, with the largest number of deaths occurring in tropical places such as sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria can be transmitted only by infected mosquitoes, not other people.

  Symptoms include chills, fever, tiredness, headache, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, and nausea, and anemia and jaundice may also occur. If left untreated, infected individuals could develop more serious complications and die.

  According to the World Malaria Report, released by the U.N. World Health Organization, there were about 247 million cases of malaria in 2021, while the estimated death toll for that year was 619,000. The WHO African Region had the highest share, accounting for about 95 percent of cases and 96 percent of deaths, it said.

  Malaria was mostly eliminated in the United States in 1951 after officials sprayed the pesticide DDT and drained swamps in rural areas. DDT was ultimately banned in 1972 in the United States but is still used in African countries.

  CDC Issues Notice for 2 States

  Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that the cases in Florida and one in Texas mark the first local spread of malaria in the United States in about 20 years.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 22:40

• The Sad State Of American Journalism
  The Sad State Of American Journalism

  Authored by Patrick Maines via RealClear Wire,

  We may never know for sure why FOX News sidelined Tucker Carlson, their most popular anchor, but the reason this matter takes on greater importance is because of the growing realization that the U.S. media beyond FOX no longer practice journalism worth the name.

  

  Of course, it’s been widely known for a while now that propaganda and misinformation are the lifeblood of an outfit like CNN. But the truly horrifying thing is that it’s not just CNN. It’s virtually all of the MSM. Readers of RealClearPolitics, the NY Post, Wall Street Journal, and a handful of other mostly online outlets are aware of the cascading evidence of massive corruption by President Biden and his family, aided and abetted by the FBI and the Justice Department.

  But if you get your news from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, the Washington Post, or the New York Times, you have quite possibly not been aware of it. The worst aspect of this isn’t just the occasional betrayal of the country and every virtue in journalism. The worst is that these and other legacy media have been acting as a kind of journalistic cabal from 2016 until the present moment.

  The list of truthful stories they have ignored or dismissed is as long as one’s arm. It includes the evidence that “Russiagate” was a fraud; that Hunter Biden’s laptop was, in fact, his and was deeply incriminating; that Joe Biden interjected himself in the affairs of the Ukrainian company, Burisma, to protect Hunter’s relationship with and astounding compensation from that company; that using his dad’s name, Hunter coerced millions of dollars out of a Chinese company (Harvest Fund Management) and then shared some of that booty with other Biden family members; and that in all of these things, the media actively sought to protect Joe Biden and to keep the American people in the dark.

  One could add to this list the MSM’s lack of curiosity about the origin of COVID and the Wuhan Lab, and the ongoing scandal of the storming of our southern border.

  If even one or two of the national news media had seriously delved into these matters – an ABC or CBS, a Times or Post – one could still have some degree of confidence in the independence and integrity of the media. But when none of them have done so, we are confronted with the chilling realization that the legacy media, for reasons only they and their therapists know, have become an existential threat to our country. Simply put, you cannot have a functioning democratic system when the citizens are kept in the dark and misled by our national news organizations.

  As things stand now, a large number (a majority, according to a Gallup poll released in October of last year) of Americans have little or no confidence in the media. How could they? If the MSM ignore or misinform their readers and viewers about the most important issues of the day, how can people know how to act, vote, or think? Put another way, if the media don’t report something, did it happen?

  Judging by multiple reports to date, events are going to force an answer to that question in the very near future. Thanks to pieces from online news and opinion outlets, and to FOX, there will be no avoiding the claims now being made about Joe and Hunter Biden, and about Merrick Garland and the Justice Department. And if, in the debate and resolution of these matters, everything the media has said and not said is proven wrongheaded and worse, where then the Fourth Estate?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 22:20

• US Arming Taiwan With Volcano Mine-Laying Systems After Biden Called Xi A Dictator
  US Arming Taiwan With Volcano Mine-Laying Systems After Biden Called Xi A Dictator

  Taiwan has finalized a new defense deal with the US worth $146 million to acquire Volcano Vehicle-Launched Scatterable Mine Systems, seen as crucial for defense of the self-ruled island in the event of a Chinese military invasion. This comes the same week the State Department announced approval for $440 million more in ammo and logistics deals for Taiwan.

  The pending Volcano mine-laying systems deal had first been previewed by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in December 2022. It additionally included M977A4 trucks, M87A1 anti-tank mines, as well as M88 and M89 training munitions.

  

  Announcement of the finalized deal is sure to provoke China, at a moment Beijing-Washington relations have hit a recent low point, amid continued fallout over the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ shootdown in February and Biden’s recently calling Xi Jinping a “dictator”. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in follow-up days ago said he backed Biden’s assessment. 

  Taiwan’s army first proposed acquisition of the US mine-laying system in 2018, as it needed to capability for rapid deployment of anti-tank mines over a large area, in the scenario of an amphibious landing assault. 

  Among the capabilities of the Volcano system include: 

  • each vehicle contains 960 anti-tank/anti-personnel mines
  • is capable of laying a minefield 1,100 meters long
  • …and can scatter mines 120 meters wide within four to 12 minutes

  A review of the system’s further specs and capabilities from a US defense industry website details the following: 

  Ground Volcano is designed to emplace large minefields in depth and tactical minefields oriented on enemy forces in support of maneuver operations and friendly AT fire. The system consists of the M139 Dispenser used for dispensing pre-packaged mine canisters, the dispensing control unit (DCU) and mounting hardware, and is designed to be mounted on either ground or aerial vehicles using the same components except for the mounting hardware, which varies between fitment.

  Volcano is designed to be fitted to and removed from vehicles with a minimum of time and labour. The dispensing system is also designed for ease of use, to operated by personnel with a minimum of training. The ordnance used by the system is based upon a modified GATOR mine. Both live and inert (training) ordnance is available; live canisters are painted green while inert canisters are painted blue.

  China has meanwhile continued its warnings aimed at Taipei and the US, on Friday sending 24 Chinese PLA jets and five naval vessels near Taiwan, in what has at this point become a weekly and almost daily exercise.

  Last weekend, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said that eight Chinese warplanes came close to Taiwan’s contiguous zone, which extends 24 nautical miles off the island’s coast–which was a true rarity and is being widely interpreted as a more severe threat, compared to the somewhat routine breaches of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 22:00

• The Power To Define Is The Power To Rule
  The Power To Define Is The Power To Rule

  Authored by Pete McGinnis via RealClear Wire,

  The federal legislative process is messy, slow, and littered with stumbling blocks – exactly as the Founders intended. Compromise and half-loaves are built into the system. The public can learn what legislation is up for vote, and members can slow down the process as they represent their constituents and work on their policy priorities. The sluggish pace frustrates activist government whether on the left and the right, so the executive branch finds workarounds: agencies promulgate regulations, the president issues executive orders, and so on.

  

  Yet sometimes, in order to get what it wants, the government just changes how things are defined. The simple manipulation of language or the meaning of a word can often remove obstacles and give federal agencies what they couldn’t get through legislation.

  For example, the National Academy of Sciences has proposed a new definition of poverty. Ostensibly, it wants to do this because “An accurate measure of poverty is necessary to fully understand how the economy is performing across all segments of the population and to assess the effects of government policies on communities and families.”

  That’s reasonable. What’s not reasonable is the new definition’s practical impact: making millions more people eligible for welfare benefits. The U.S. could get a massive backdoor extension of the welfare state – at least $124 billion over 10 years, by one estimate – because NAS arbitrarily wants a new definition.

  With Congress closely divided, this kind of spending could be nearly impossible to pass. But if the Census Bureau adopts NAS’s proposed new definition, the administration doesn’t need Congress.

  And NAS’s proposal is not arbitrary. Twelve of the 13 authors of the paper proposing the change “have contributed to Democratic causes or worked for Democratic administrations.” So, inside of government, shielded from oversight and public awareness, partisans want to implement a partisan scheme – and they can do it by changing a few works or numbers.

  It’s a common tactic. In the first two quarters of 2022, the United States experienced negative economic growth. That had long been one of the definitions of an economy in recession. Not anymore: with midterm elections looming, the Biden administration refused to acknowledge the recession. “When you’re creating almost 400,000 jobs a month, that is not a recession, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

  But job creation has not been a measure of what constitutes a recession – at least, not until it became convenient for the White House. Yellen was adamant. “This is not an economy that’s in a recession. A recession is broad-based weakness in the economy. We’re not seeing that now,” she said.

  Truth may be the first casualty of war, but it’s no safer during a pandemic. This became apparent in September 2021, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) quietly redefined the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” on its website. As the Miami Herald explained:

  Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.”

  The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”

  Why did the CDC make these changes? Because the COVID-19 “vaccines” weren’t vaccines at all. Whatever their benefits, the shots developed and distributed in response to the pandemic did not “stimulate a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Yet they were hyped as vaccines. When it became apparent that the shots weren’t doing the job of vaccines, the government decided to change the definition of what a vaccine is.

  A CDC spokesperson’s attempt to explain it was singularly ineffectual: “Slight changes in wording over time … haven’t impacted the overall definition.” Except in this case. As the Herald explained, the spokesperson then went after a strawman:

  The previous definitions could have been “interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered,” the spokesperson said.

  Nobody ever thought that vaccines were 100 percent effective, and even if they did, the responsible course would have been to call the COVID-19 drugs what they were and explain the difference to the public. Instead, government called them vaccines at a time when the public was desperate for the sort of reassurance the word “vaccine” had always carried.

  In each of these cases, smart government insiders are using semantic sleight of hand to achieve their objectives or to justify them after the fact. “Control the language, control the masses” is a cliché, but only truths become clichés. Representative democracy is supposed to guarantee the people a voice in governance and ensure transparency in government’s workings. Unelected bureaucrats altering definitions to suit their needs betrays both goals.

  Pete McGinnis is director of communications at the Functional Government Initiative.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 21:40

• These Are The Largest Asteroid Craters On Earth
  These Are The Largest Asteroid Craters On Earth

  June 30 marks Asteroid Day, a day dedicated by the United Nations to raising awareness around the risks of asteroid impacts.

  The following chart, via Staista’s Anna Fleck, uses estimates from the Asteroid Foundation’s Asteroid Day portal to provide a round up of eight of the largest known asteroid impact craters on Earth.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  First on the list – and the largest – is the Vredefort Crater, located not far from Johannesburg in South Africa. The crater was formed an estimated two billion years ago and today has an estimated diameter of some 300km.

  Next up, is the Chicxulub Crater, located in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The Chicxulub impactor, as the asteroid that created it was known, is presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. The asteroid itself is thought to have been approximately 10 km in diameter and today its impact crater is approximately 180 km across.

  The Popigai Crater in northern Siberia, Russia was created some 35 million years ago and today has a diameter of approximately 100 km. According to Asteroid Day, the area is now rich in diamond reserves thanks to the region having been heavy in carbon, which turned into the precious stone under the heat and pressure of the impact.

  Three major impact craters in North America also make it onto the list: two in Canada (the Sudbury Basin in Ontario and the Manicouagan Crater in Québec) as well as one in the United States (Chesapeake Bay in Virginia). The latter is considered one of the best-preserved “wet-target” or marine impact craters worldwide.

  To get a sense of scale, according to the Asteroid Day platform, many of these asteroid impact craters are so immense that they are only noticeable when using satellite imagery.

  

  Different sources rank global craters with other metrics, for instance depending on the size of the impact crater when it was created rather than today, when it might have changed size due to erosion.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 21:20

• Beijing And Shanghai Record Largest Decline In Existing Home Prices
  Beijing And Shanghai Record Largest Decline In Existing Home Prices

  Authored by Mary Hong via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  China released its May national housing price data on June 15. Beijing and Shanghai had the largest fall in second-hand home prices among 70 large and medium-sized cities.

  The price of second-hand homes in Shanghai fell by 0.8 percent compared with the previous month, the largest drop among cities surveyed, and Beijing fell by 0.6 percent.

  

  Experts believe the fall in prices in the two megacities is a sign of a bad economy.

  U.S.-based economist Davy J. Wong explained that the majority of Chinese investors have been limited to real estate because of limited investment channels under the current ruling regime.

  He said that Chinese people in general believed real estate provides a better cushion against inflation and depreciation.

  In China, local governments and developers who set the new housing market price have the real estate market fairly monopolized; “but the second-hand market is fairly free for maneuver, and thus reflects the true market in China,” he said.

  

  In a 2019 report of the People’s Bank, 74.2 percent of tangible assets of urban households were housing, in a nationwide survey of 30,000 urban households; whereas real estate accounted for only around 30 percent of total household wealth in the United States, said the Chinese media report.

  The weak economy has forced everyone to cut down their consumption, Wong analyzed. The three-year zero-COVID policy has ruined people’s confidence in the future. He believed many more people choose to sell their properties to ease financial stress, “It’s a risk management,” he said.

  Wong said the falling second-hand housing prices in Beijing and Shanghai suggested the supply is too large for the transaction volume to keep up.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 21:00

• 40% Of Californians Are Considering Moving To Another State Due To Cost Of Living
  40% Of Californians Are Considering Moving To Another State Due To Cost Of Living

  Just when you though the exodus from California to places like Florida and Texas may have slowed….you can guess again.

  That’s because a recent poll called the California Community Poll, administered at the beginning of June, showed that roughly 43% of residents in California think the state is heading in the wrong direction. 

  28% have mixed feelings about the direction and 28% think it is going in the right direction, a summary from Just the News/The Center Square reported this week. The survey interviewed 1,354 people. 

  56% of respondents were “totally dissatisfied” with the state’s cost of healthcare and another 56% said they were dissatisfied with the cost of homes in the state. More than 50% of residents also were dissatisfied with safety in their local communities, the report says.

  

  Californians also seem to be unhappy with the state’s economy, with 68% of those polled saying they were “totally dissatisfied” and a stunning 81% of respondents saying that the cost of everyday expenses was unsatisfactory. 

  61% of those polled also said the cost of living is the key reason that they are considering leaving the state, with about 40% of respondents saying they are considering moving to another state, even with 68% of respondents saying California is “part of how they identify themselves”. 

  Also focused on the economy, 46% of residents surveyed said they can’t pay for an unexpected expense and don’t have the ability to save. 

  The report was quick to note that, despite the stunning response from the more than 1,300 people surveyed, many residents were “by and large” still happy to live in the state because it “brings people together around new ideas and vibrant communities.”

  So, we’ll see you in Texas and Florida then, right?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 20:40

• New York City Now Sheltering More Illegal Immigrants Than Homeless Citizens: Deputy Mayor
  New York City Now Sheltering More Illegal Immigrants Than Homeless Citizens: Deputy Mayor

  Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  New York City is now providing more shelter to non-citizens than to its own homeless resident population, according to the latest assessment from a city official.

  

  At a Wednesday press conference, New York City Deputy Mayor For Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said the city is currently sheltering more than 100,000 people, the majority of whom are illegal immigrants and other non-citizens who are seeking to stay in the United States for the long-term.

  “With over 50,000 asylum seekers currently in our care at this point, we now have more people seeking U.S. asylum than longtime unhoused New Yorkers in our shelter system,” New York City Williams-Isom said.

  Many of the non-citizens being sheltered in the city are people who illegally crossed the U.S. southern border but made asylum claims or otherwise requested legal status in the U.S. and are now awaiting a ruling in their immigration cases.

  Since last year, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been busing illegal immigrants away from his border state to other areas of the country; particularly Democratic districts like New York City that have designated themselves as immigration “sanctuary cities.” New York City has been one of the main receiving points for tens of thousands of these illegal immigrants and many have stayed in the city since their arrival.

  Williams-Isom called the ratio of illegal immigrants to resident homeless people in the city’s shelter system “sobering.” She said New York City has taken in 81,200 illegal immigrants and asylum seekers since the Spring of 2022, including “2,500 new asylum seekers” in the past week.

  “You see from today’s numbers that we have reached a tipping point,” she said. “We now have more asylum seekers in our care than longtime New Yorkers from when we first came in and who are in our existing [New York City Department of Homeless Services] system.

  NYC Mayor’s Shelter Strategy

  Williams-Isom said New York City has opened 176 new shelter sites, including 12 humanitarian relief sites since last spring, but indicated the city has virtually exhausted its capacity to shelter people.

  “We will continue to do our part. I might say we’re doing more than our part,” she said on Thursday. “But this is a national humanitarian crisis and we need sustained and profound support from the federal government in the form of financial aid and in the form of a national coordination.”

  Following a 1984 court decision known as the “Callahan consent decree,” New York City has had to provide shelter for virtually all homeless people who apply. Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams requested that a court suspend this “Right to Shelter” rule. New York City is also one of many locations throughout the U.S. that consider themselves “sanctuary cities,” meaning they do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities that might arrest or deport illegal immigrants.

  Abbott has said his busing strategy has shone a spotlight on the hypocrisy of sanctuary cities that balk at the prospect of having to actually take, and share responsibility for, illegal immigrants.

  In May, Adams began trying to relocate some illegal immigrants from New York City to neighboring areas of New York, with a commitment to cover the costs of their shelter, food, counseling, and other services for up to four months. Many of these neighboring communities have rejected the relocation efforts, even issuing emergency declarations to block Adams’ administration from busing illegal immigrants to their communities.

  Earlier this month, the Adams administration filed a lawsuit against 30 New York counties, seeking a court order overriding any emergency orders blocking his efforts to move illegal immigrants to those neighboring communities.

  Adams has also called on President Joe Biden’s administration to provide New York City with more federal funding for its shelter system. In a May 21 interview with CBS News, host Margaret Brennan noted the federal government has pledged about $30 million in assistance to deal with the influx, but Adams insisted his city’s shelter expenses would far exceed that level of federal support.

  “We’re projected to spend close to $4.3 billion, if not more. This estimate was based on a number of migrants coming to the city, and those numbers have clearly increased,” Adams said. “When you look at the price tag, $30 million comes nowhere near what this city is paying for a national problem.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 20:20

• A Coup Within The World's Largest Nuclear Power? Sounds Good To The Biden Admin
  A Coup Within The World’s Largest Nuclear Power? Sounds Good To The Biden Admin

  Submiited by Liam Cosgrove,

  

  Whether or not what transpired over the weekend was a legitimate coup attempt or strategic theater by Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, it was understood by the western press and US government to be an attempted coup. This article will operate under that assumption to scrutinize the first-order thinking displayed by many hawkish pundits and Biden officials.

  There were reports that Prigozhin occupied — in under 24 hours — Rostov-on-Don on Saturday. This city is the headquarters for Russia’s Southern Military District. Just 60 miles from the border of this district is the Engels-2 airbase, home to several long-range nuclear bombers. Considering the proximity between these nukes and Russia’s most notorious mercenary, this should have been a wake-up call to the Biden administration.

  Still, at Monday’s State Department briefing, the administration seemed unphased if not a little pleased by the coup:

  A supposed “coup” in the world’s largest nuclear power resolved peacefully.

  While State Dept seemed to welcome Prigozhin’s revolt, it refused to engage questions from The Grayzone’s @cosgrove_iv on the dangers of Russia’s nuclear arsenal falling into the Wagner leader’s hands. pic.twitter.com/6t3RreCrAe

  — The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) June 27, 2023

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  The reaction came just one week after President Biden warned a group of California donors that the threat of Putin using a nuclear bomb is “real.” Prigozhin’s main gripes with Russia’s top military brass is that they haven’t been aggressive enough in their fight, saying earlier this year that his mercenary group would not be taking any more prisoners of war and would instead “kill everyone on the battlefield.”

  This man could have commandeered part of the Russian nuclear arsenal over the weekend… and that’s a good thing?

  While State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller withheld his excitement, other “experts” were not so coy. Stanford professor and former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul celebrated the chaos over the weekend, saying it proved that the West should get even more aggressively involved in the war:

  Instead of doubling down with more force to crush the mutiny, Putin accepted humiliation instead. He was the rat trapped in the corner that so many Putinologists have told us to fear. But he didn’t lash out & go crazy. He negotiated & with a traitor. 4/

  — Michael McFaul (@McFaul) June 25, 2023

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

  This really sums up the neocon mindset. After miraculously averting what could have been an existential crisis (civil war in a country with 6,0000 nuclear warheads) and with minimal bloodshed, McFaul’s instinctual emotional response is not gratitude and relief but greed and self-assurance, which he immediately uses to further his interventionist dogma. Like someone with a gambling addiction, he thinks: Great, I didn’t lose on that hand. Surely I can win a couple more while I’m hot.

  Here was the analysis of ”no comment” Paul Massaro from the The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe:

  russia is weaker than ever

  — Paul Massaro (@apmassaro3) June 24, 2023

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

  This reaction may take the cake. It’s Peter Ziehan — the guy whose appeal is his ability to discuss geopolitics with the factual rigor and vocal inflections of a gossiping housewife — calling the coup “delicious”:

  I cannot not sum up the establishment’s reaction to the weekend’s events any better than venture capitalist David Sacks, whose long-form tweet from Saturday evening I’ll include in full below:

  What’s better: negotiated peace or nuclear chaos?

  It looks like the crisis in Russia is abating after many premature predictions, dunks, and celebrations. We’ve come to expect such behavior from mids like Kinzinger, but the participation of so many more serious American policy makers and influencers shows the extent to which they have lost perspective.

  They expressed glee over the possibility of a coup in the world’s largest nuclear weapons state by a warlord whose main gripe is that Russia has not prosecuted the war vigorously enough, who advocates full mobilization and total war, and is more likely to countenance nuclear use.

  I can understand why Ukrainian nationalists — who are desperate to win the war in light of a counteroffensive that even CNN admitted yesterday is thus-far failing — would be willing to roll the dice and root for chaos and civil war in Russia. But for American leaders to do so shows that they have lost any conception of a distinct American national interest.

  What the last 24 hours have underscored is that wars are not just incredibly destructive but also incredibly unpredictable. I continue to maintain that it was in the best interest of the United States to avoid this by supporting the Istanbul deal. It would have cost us nothing except an agreement not to add Ukraine to NATO. In fact, this would not have been a cost but a benefit, saving ourselves from the insanity of committing American boys & girls to fight Russia one day on Ukraine’s behalf.

  Now the war seems likely to enter an even more desperate stage for both Russia and Ukraine. Is this what we want? History proves that things can always get worse. ISIS was worse than Saddam, Lenin was worse than the Tsar, and Prigozhin could have been worse than Putin. Do we want to keep rolling the dice? Or do we want to figure out how to bring the killing to an end?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 20:00

• We Are All Chinese Now
  We Are All Chinese Now

  By Russell Clark, author of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets substack

  When I managed money, I never worried too much about politics or politicians. I didn’t even bother with central bankers much either (can you imagine!). They would always promise inflation – but were never able to deliver it. There was one big exception to this, which was China.

  

  Whatever the Chinese government said it was going to do, it generally did. But even then, I thought ultimately Chinese policymakers would eventually succumb to free market forces, particularly in terms of the exchange rate – but here I was wrong. A closed capital account, and control of the banking system has made Chinese Yuan exchange rate a policy choice as well. For equity investors, the clearest example of Chinese policy affecting assets is China deciding that “big tech” had too much power and needed to have its wings clipped. The difference in performance gets starker every day.

  

  What I originally thought was that Chinese changes in policy would act as an example for the rest of the world. That China would lead a worldwide swing against pro-capital policies to pro-labour policies. We have seen that to a degree – and certainly I think inflation and interest rates are going to go higher. My favourite trade, Long GLD and Short TLT still appeals to me.

  

  But what I am seeing in currency markets suggest government policy is having a greater effect on assets markets everywhere. Ever since Nixon left the gold standard, generally the world has been moving to free floating exchange rates, determined by market forces. And this force was by and large irresistible – where nations like Mexico, Argentina, Thailand, Korea, Malaysia all eventually forced to free floating exchange rates – and ultimately devalued. Japan had the opposite problem where it spent years trying to devalue, but could not. That has changed in recent years. One traditional very safe trade in currency world was to short the Mexican Peso vs the US dollar. It had a fairly consistent trend of moving sideways for a number of years, and then devaluing to a new lower level, and never recapturing its old value. True to form, Mexico devalued during Covid, but has been appreciating ever since. From a low of 25 Peso to the US dollar during Covid, it now at 17 Peso to the dollar. The Peso has strengthened against the US dollar in an era of US dollar strength. It has also achieved this in a period of relative commodity weakness, which historically has been bad for the Peso.

  

  The corollary to the unexpected strength of the Peso, and been the sustained weakness in the Yen. This was for many years, the antithesis of the Peso. Bouts of yen strength, that then proved difficult to reverse, but moving ever stronger versus the US dollar. Last two years, the Yen has weakened significantly.

  

  On a pure macro view, with Japan and commodity importer, and Mexico a commodity exporter, I would have expected the Yen to strengthen against the Peso, given the weakness in oil prices. I would have been wrong.

  

  A better way to analyse the Mexican peso and the Yen would have been politically. The President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) is definitely a president on the left – favouring labour over capital. In my view, pro-labour governments push for rising wages, and rising interest rates to preserve the buying power of the exchange rate. Bank of Mexico interest rate policy is about as far away as you can get from the QE addicted Western World.

  

  But interest rate policy is not the only factor here. Tariffs on Chinese goods means that a “strong peso” policy can be followed without the risk of factories being relocated to Asia. That is China-US conflict is allowing “left wing” policy makers to adopt pro-labour policies. You are also see many manufacturers are investing into Mexico as an insurance policy on a US-China conflict. Japan does not have this benefit, making the Yen/Peso divergence easier to understand. When we add in the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the negative effect that has on Europe, we can also understand the huge strength of the Peso versus the Norwegian Kroner. Every macro indicator would suggest to own Norwegian Kroner over Mexican Peso (NIIP, Foreign Reserves, CPI etc) – but that would be the wrong trade this year.

  

  Just like China, investors need to pick political winners, not just in equities, but in currency markets too.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 19:40

• Pornhub Blocks Virginia-Based IP Addresses Ahead Of New Age Law 
  Pornhub Blocks Virginia-Based IP Addresses Ahead Of New Age Law 

  Virginia is the latest state to adopt an age-verification law, known as SB 1515 and proposed by Republican state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr., for the internet’s biggest adult websites, including Pornhub. Even before the law went into effect on Saturday, Pornhub blocked users in the state. 

  Users with Virginia-based IP addresses are no longer able to browse the world’s most trafficked porn site. According to The Virginian-Pilot, users are greeted with this message: 

  “As you may know, your elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website.

  “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

  The statement continues and says the new law doesn’t properly enforce the age verification requirement. Pornhub offered a solution to protect children: “Identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification.”

  “As we’ve seen in other states, [requiring ID] just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place,” the statement reads, adding, “To protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content.”

  Here’s the current landing page for PornHub if you live in Virginia.

  Proud of the work we’ve done at @approject to help make this happen. This is a no-brainer to protect kids. Let’s get this done in all 50 states! pic.twitter.com/RUXFAoNBGw

  — Jon Schweppe (@JonSchweppe) June 30, 2023

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  “Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Virginia,” wrote Pornhub. 

  … and this is certainly not going to be well received by Virginian users. Blocking access to Pornhub might result in enough angry phone calls and emails to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office. 

  However, a spokeswoman for the governor told media outlet WRIC that they stand behind the new law: 

  “The governor remains committed to protecting Virginia’s children from dangerous material on the internet.” 

  According to Free Speech Coalition, a non-profit adult industry trade association, its ‘Age Verification Bill Tracker‘ shows Louisiana had the first age requirements for adult websites that went into effect in January. Since then, a tidal wave of bills and enforcements has swept across the country. 

  

  The tracker shows Utah’s age requirement law went into effect on May 5, Mississippi and Virginia on July 1, Arkansas on July 31, Arizoinz (if passed) on August 1, Texas on September 1, and Montana on January 1, 2024. 

  

  “It’s not a matter of if these laws will be ruled unconstitutional but when,” Free Speech Coalition’s spokesperson Mike Stabile told WRIC. He noted:

  “Adult content–even material harmful to minors– is First Amendment-protected speech and the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that restrictions on its production and consumption face the highest legal bar: strict scrutiny.”

  Pornhub is gambling on its users, exerting enough political pressure on Youngkin’s administration to overturn the law. If unsuccessful, the company might see market share in the state dwindle to other sites.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 19:20

• California's Reparations Task Force Demands Action, Presents 1,100-Page Final Report To Governor, Legislature
  California’s Reparations Task Force Demands Action, Presents 1,100-Page Final Report To Governor, Legislature

  Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

  After two years of internal discussions, public hearings, and collaboration with stakeholders, California’s reparations task force presented its final report of recommendations to the Legislature June 29.

  

  (L-R) State Sen. Steven Bradford, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, task force member Lisa Holder, and Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer hold up a final report of the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans during a hearing in Sacramento on June 29, 2023. The report heads to lawmakers who will be responsible for turning policy recommendations into legislation. Reparations will not happen until lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom agree. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)

  The 1,100-page, 4-inch document discusses policy recommendations for the Legislature to consider, and while no specific dollar amounts are proposed, formulas for calculating harms and repairs are included as guidance for lawmakers.

  The report lists five time frames to be considered for reparations dating from 1850 to the present for various harms, including unjust property takings, devaluation of black businesses, housing discrimination, mass incarceration and over-policing, and health-related issues.

  “Our descendants will be able to consult this great document and see the evidence that this state has committed crimes against black folks,” said Amos Brown, vice chair of the committee and a member of the board of directors for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), during the meeting.

  “It’s time they paid their crime bill.”

  

  Reverend Amos Brown, the vice-chair of the reparations task force, president of the San Francisco Chapter of the NAACP, and longtime pastor of the Third Baptist Church sits for a portrait inside the sanctuary of the church, in San Francisco on June 27, 2023. (Philip Pacheco/AFP via Getty Images)

  Established with the passing of Assembly Bill 3121 in May 2021, the task force is composed of nine members, with five appointed by the governor, two by the President pro-Tempore of the Senate, and two by the Speaker of the Assembly. The panel was tasked with studying the impacts of slavery and providing recommendations for reparations to the governor and legislative branches for review.

  Payments recommended by the task force are estimated at up to $1.2 million per eligible individual, and some economists calculated the cost to the state at approximately $800 billion if the recommendations are enacted as proposed.

  Gov. Gavin Newsom has remained quiet on the topic of cash payment, saying that “reparations are about more than money” in a recent interview with Fox News, and he stressed repeatedly in a May budget press conference that prudence is required by the state during times of economic uncertainty.

  Some on the panel are anticipating pushback from the governor and legislators regarding such concerns.

  “Don’t come telling us that you don’t have the money,” said Brown, the vice chair.

  “From where I come from in Mississippi, they had what you call a layaway plan. And if you can’t pay it because of deficits, deficits don’t last always.”

  The state is currently facing a $32 billion budget deficit, which its Legislative Analyst’s Office has said could grow significantly in the event of a recession—which economists suggest is likely to occur later this year.

  

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces the May budget revision in Sacramento on May 12, 2023. Newsom said the state’s budget deficit has grown to nearly $32 billion, about $10 billion more than predicted in January when the governor offered his first budget proposal. (Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

  With a $311 billion spending package set for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the recommended reparation payments represent more than two and a half times the state’s annual budget.

  Support for the task force at other public hearings and today’s—with elated members of the audience erupting into boisterous applause and impromptu singing on occasion—has been broad and virtually unanimous, but a recent poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonprofit research institution based in San Francisco, suggests that sentiment across the state is divided, with only 43 percent saying they approve of the task force recommendations such as reparations.

  Legislators will now be tasked with reviewing the information, and if deemed applicable, to create a package of bills to address the recommendations.

  “The final report is not the end of the work. It’s really just the beginning,” Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) told the audience.

  “It is now up to the Legislature, which I’m part of, and the governor, to implement it.”

  Observing that critics of the proposals note that California was never a slave state and should therefore not be subject to reparations payments, the senator said that other aspects of history need to be considered.

  “It was not a slave state in name only. Not in practice, not in deeds,” Bradford said.

  “The first governor of this state-owned slaves and was proud of it. We had a fugitive slave law that returned slaves,” after they fled from other states.

  

  People listen to the California reparations task force, a nine-member committee studying restitution proposals for African Americans, at a meeting at Lesser Hall in Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, Calif., on May 6, 2023. (Sophie Austin/AP Photo)

  Talking directly to critics that say they should not have to pay for acts committed centuries ago, he questioned their perspective.

  “If you can inherit generational wealth, you can inherit generational debt,” Bradford said.

  “And this is a debt that is owed.”

  Fellow lawmaker and task force member Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) echoed his colleague’s commitment to seeing the recommendations transformed into legislative action.

  “Next year we will move with legislative and budget ideas to make it happen,” he said in his final remarks on the report.

  Don Tamaki, a task force member and attorney, recognized the thousands of hours of commitment from the Department of Justice and staff that assisted in producing the voluminous document.

  “The amount of research and writing that went into this is breathtaking,” he said during the hearing. “This is going to resonate nationally.”

  

  A Reparations Task Force meeting is held online in California on Sept. 23, 2021. (Screenshot via California Reparations Task Force)

  Speakers repeatedly thanked California Secretary of State Shirley Weber—who authored the bill in 2020 that led to the task force’s creation when she was an Assemblywoman—for her vision, and Vice Chair Brown personally presented her with a copy of the report.

  “There’s tremendous wealth in this,” she told the crowd upon receiving her copy of the final report.

  “I am so pleased with the document because it answers every question.”

  Weber’s daughter, Assemblywoman Akilah Weber (D-San Diego)—now occupying her mother’s former seat—spoke about the honor she felt at representing the people in attendance, while making one of many comments throughout the day about the encyclopedic size of the report.

  “It is long because the harms are long,” she told the crowd at the hearing.

  “But this report is phenomenal.”

  While an electronic version is available online, one committee member suggested sending a hard copy of the recommendations to all lawmakers, saying its physical presence is impactful.

  “I suggest we buy a copy for every member of the Legislature,” said Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles).

  “California needs to feel that weight. It weighs a pound of flesh. It weighs 400 years.”

  The state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta was on hand to receive his copy of the final report, and he assured the task force and audience that his staff will continue to work toward achieving the goals outlined in the recommendations.

  “Reparations are warranted, they are necessary, and they are needed,” he said. “Reparations are our way forward. Solutions must be thoughtful, meaningful, and enduring.”

  Recognizing the unprecedented nature of the proposals, Bonta said he hoped that the work of the task force will lead to a nationwide discussion.

  “California doing what we so often do,” he told the audience.

  “Being first, being bold, being courageous, and bringing solutions to complicated problems.”

  

  The California state capitol building in Sacramento on March 11, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  Members of the state’s legislative Black Caucus spoke about their intention to work together with fellow lawmakers to craft bills that can successfully navigate the Legislature.

  “We can and must act on these recommendations,” Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) said during the hearing.

  “The future of our nation depends on us.”

  With some pointing to the price tag as an obstacle to progress for reparations payments, proponents say that with one-half of one percent set aside from the annual budget, it could make fiscal sense, though critics have questioned the mathematical possibility of such a plan.

  “Let’s be clear and honest. The cost of reparations will be high, but make no mistake, the harms that are done are just as high,” said Bradford, the task force member and senator. “No one asks how we pay for high-speed rail, which many in the Legislature say is a train to nowhere.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 19:00

• Shellenberger: "Escape The Woke Matrix"
  Shellenberger: “Escape The Woke Matrix”

  Michael Shellenberger gave a must-watch keynote address to the students and faculty of the University of Austin this week, titled “Escape The Woke Matrix.”

  

  In it, he argues that Western civilization is being rapidly taken over by a psychopathological religion, and that we must resist it by exposing it for what it is, and re-grounding our institutions in love of humanity, civilization, and freedom.

  Shellenberger’s work covers a wide range of topics, but a common theme is the distortion of history and censorship benefiting the powerful.

  In this emotional address, Shellenberger discusses the negative effects of censorship, rewriting history, and the power dynamics it serves.

  He highlights disparities between the real-world and the one we are delivered by authorities and ‘experts – pointing out the decline in deaths from natural disasters and the fact that police killings in the US, including those of African-Americans, have declined over the years – among others, emphasizing the need for seeking out accurate information.

  Shellenberger criticizes the selective disinformation campaigns and censorship surrounding topics like COVID-19, vaccines, and the Hunter Biden laptop; and argues that society is moving towards a new moral order centered around race, victimhood, and identity politics, creating a culture of entitlement and grandiosity.

  Finally, Shellenberger points out the presence of narcissistic and psychopathic behavior in positions of power, calling for courage in confronting these cluster B personality types and emphasizes personal responsibility, optimism, and the need to fight for positive change while avoiding toxic ideologies.

  As Shellenberger writes at his Public Substack:

  “You can hear the emotion in my voice. The global crackdown on free speech has left me feeling angry and afraid. Despite my emotional state, or perhaps because of it, the students gave me a standing ovation at the end.”

  …

  “It’s not enough to condemn, we must also seek to understand, and explain. We are going toe-to-toe with an opponent that would put us in prison for wrongthink. We must stand up to their bullying, and break their hyponotic trance over the population. That is how we will escape from the woke matrix.”

  Watch the full address here…

  Subscribers to Michael’s Substack can read the full report here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 18:40

• Hundreds Of 'A-List' Actors Threatening To Join Hollywood Writers On Strike
  Hundreds Of ‘A-List’ Actors Threatening To Join Hollywood Writers On Strike

  Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A group of 300 A-list Hollywood celebrities—including Ben Stiller, “Hunger Games” Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson, Kevin Bacon, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus—is threatening to take industrial action if their demands on key issues are not met.

  

  They include better protection against artificial intelligence (AI) celebrity cloning, a “seismic realignment” in minimum pay, an increase in media residuals, and better health and pension terms.

  The celebrities submitted a letter on June 28 to the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) stating their claims. 

  “As regards [to] artificial intelligence, we do not believe that SAG-AFTRA members can afford to make halfway gains in anticipation that more will be coming in three years, and we think it is absolutely vital that this negotiation protects not just our likenesses, but makes sure we are well compensated when any of our work is used to train AI,” the actors wrote.

  The letter, which was provided to The Epoch Times by a union member, comes just days before the June 30 deadline for SAG-AFTRA to negotiate a new contract for the actors with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

  It also comes amid the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike against the alliance. Like the actors, the guild has also cited concerns about the infringement of artificial intelligence on the industry and consequently their pay. 

  SAG-AFTRA—including its executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, and president Fran Drescher, famous for her role on the 1980’s sitcom “The Nanny”—did not respond to inquiries about the strikes from The Epoch Times.

  

  Days before the actors submitted their letter to them, Crabtree-Ireland and Drescher released a video in which they assure actors that they were being properly represented in contract renewal talks.

  “We’re not providing you with a lot of detailed reports tonight, because … it’s very confidential what’s going on in there,” said Drescher. “But I just want to assure you that we are having extremely productive negotiations that are laser-focused on all the crucial issues that you told us were most important to you.

  “And we are standing strong and we are going to achieve a seminal deal.”

  Crabtree-Ireland said he remained optimistic that the union negotiating team “will be able to bring the studios, networks, and streamers along to make a fair deal that respects union members and their “contribution to this industry.” 

  In their letters, the actors said they felt otherwise. 

  “A strike brings incredible hardships to so many, and no one wants it,” read the letter addressed to the union leadership and negotiating committee. “But we are prepared to strike if it comes to that. And we are concerned by the idea that SAG-AFTRA members may be ready to make sacrifices that leadership is not.”

  Other well-known celebrities threatening to strike include Brendan Fraser, Maya Hawke, Lesley Ann Warren, Marisa Tomei,  Rosie O’Donnell, Neil Patrick Harris, Tea Leoni, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Minnie Driver, Tim Daly, Debra Messing, Eva Longoria, Quinta Brunson, Dave Franco, Noah Wyle, and J. Smith Cameron.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 18:20

• Russian Oil Exports From Western Ports To Tumble 18% In July
  Russian Oil Exports From Western Ports To Tumble 18% In July

  Is the flood of Russian oil finally tapering?

  Following several months of record-busting flows, Eikon data showed on Wednesday that Russia’s seaborne oil exports from the ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Novorossiisk will fall to 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) in July from 2.3 million bpd in June as domestic refineries increase runs, and – perhaps – as Russia finally decides to comply with its self-imposed output cut.

  On a daily basis oil loadings from Russia’s western sea outlets are set to decline 18% in July compared to June, Reuters calculations showed. Russia’s oil exports are curbed by higher oil processing by domestic refineries along with frozen oil production under OPEC+ agreement and additional cuts pledged by Russia.

  Lower loadings expected in July have already supported Urals oil differentials in ports of India – the main buyer of the grade.

  Urals and Kazakhstan’s transit oil (KEBCO) loadings from Baltic ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga were set at 5.6 million tonnes, down from 6.5 million tonnes planned for June.

  Urals, KEBCO and Siberian Light oil loadings from Black Sea’s Novorossiisk were planned at 2.4 million tonnes in July, down from 2.9 million tonnes in June.

  Russian refineries cut runs during spring months allowing state exports to reach a 4-year record in May. After works ended in June exports started to slide.

  The sharp drop in exports comes after Russian crude oil flows to international markets have largely continued to grow unabated, with no substantive sign of the output cuts that the Kremlin insists the country is making. Four-week total average seaborne shipments, which smooth out some of the volatility in weekly numbers, edged higher in the period to June 4, rising to 3.73 million barrels a day from a revised 3.68 million in the period to May 28, according to Bloomberg.

  

  At the start of the month, flows to international markets were more than 1.4 million barrels a day higher than they were at the end of last year — more than can be accounted for by the diversion of pipeline flows or lower refinery runs. Shipments have also risen since February, the baseline month for the pledged production cut.

  Following the recent OPEC+ decision to cut output, Moscow’s OPEC partners have sought clarity and transparency from Russia on the country’s crude production. They noted that Moscow has made a commitment to accept reassessment of February’s production level by OPEC’s secondary sources. The assessment by those seven companies currently stands at 9.83 million barrels a day.

  However, there has been precious little evidence that the 500,000 barrels a day of Russian export cuts have been made. Moscow has cited the diversion of crude previously piped to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba pipeline as a reason for robust shipments; but that switch happened in January and February, before the output cut was due to come into effect. Flows of Russian crude through the pipeline, now limited to deliveries to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, have been stable at about 240,000 barrels a day since February.

  And while Russian refineries cut their crude processing in the first part of May, runs recovered in the final week of the month, rising by about 180,000 barrels a day from the previous seven days. Despite the dip in refinery runs there is no sign of a corresponding drop in overseas shipments of refined products.

  Meanwhile, Russia’s revenues from oil are still being hit hard, despite robust overseas flows. May’s budget proceeds from oil taxes plunged 31% from a year ago to 426 billion rubles ($5.2 billion), according to Bloomberg calculations, largely the result of a sharply lower oil price.

  Ironically, to boost oil-related revenues, Russia may have no choice but to sharply reduce its output if only to spook speculators and spark a short squeeze which lasts longer than the one in April. Then again, the moment Russia resumes exporting at full blast, the price will drop again until such time as Beijing finally admits that it needs to launch a massive fiscal stimulus which reboots the country’s economy. And with youth unemployment already at a record 20%, and potentially jeopardizing the one thing that Beijing cares about the most – social stability – that day isn’t too far away.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 18:00

• Gold Vs. Bitcoin Vs. CBDCs
  Gold Vs. Bitcoin Vs. CBDCs

  Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

  International Man: For over 2,500 years, gold has been mankind’s most enduring money.

  However, with the emergence of Bitcoin there is a new hard money option.

  How do you see the two as governments worldwide continue to engage in rampant currency debasement and are rolling out central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)?

  

  Nick Giambruno: First, I am all for free-market competition in money.

  I say let the best money win.

  Having a handle on the basics is crucial to understand what is happening here.

  Money is a good, just like any other in an economy. And it isn’t a complex notion to grasp.

  It doesn’t require you to understand convoluted math formulas and complicated theories—as the gatekeepers in academia, media, and government mislead many folks into believing.

  Understanding money is intuitive and straightforward.

  Money is simply something useful for storing and exchanging value. That’s it.

  The way I see it, three primary monetary goods are competing against each other today: Bitcoin, gold, and fiat currency.

  Fiat currency is currently the dominant form of money in the world.

  But that status is fleeting as central banks are debasing their currencies at breathtaking speed.

  CBDCs are a desperate, last-ditch effort to keep the fiat currency scam going—a Hail Mary.

  To escape the collapsing fiat system and CBDC enslavement, many millions—soon billions—of people are turning to monetary alternatives like gold and Bitcoin.

  Fiat currency is a fraud of historic proportions that causes incomprehensible damage. So I am rooting for both gold and Bitcoin in this three-way war for monetary supremacy.

  International Man: Can you explain Bitcoin’s monetary qualities?

  Nick Giambruno: Bitcoin shares many of gold’s monetary characteristics. They’re both durable, divisible, consistent, convenient, scarce, and most importantly, “hard assets.”

  “Hardness” does not mean something that is necessarily tangible or physically hard, like metal. It means “hard to produce.” By contrast, “easy money” is easy to produce.

  The best way to think of hardness is “resistance to debasement,” which helps make it a good store of value—an essential function of money.

  The most important characteristic of a good money is that it is credibly “hard to produce.”

  All other monetary characteristics are meaningless if the money is easy for someone to produce.

  Like gold, Bitcoin does not have counterparty risk.

  In other words, Bitcoin and gold are the only primarily monetary assets that aren’t simultaneously someone else’s liabilities.

  Gold has established itself as money over thousands of years. Bitcoin is a new and emerging money.

  Bitcoin is like hard money with a call option based on its further monetization, which is an excellent bet.

  A lot more can be said on this topic, but this sums up the essential points.

  International Man: What about CBDCs?

  Nick Giambruno: Despite all the hype, CBDCs are nothing but the same fiat currency swindle on steroids.

  It’s doubtful CBDCs can save otherwise fundamentally unsound currencies—as I believe all fiat currencies are.

  If the current fiat system is not viable, then CBDCs are even less viable as they enable the government to engage in even more currency debasement.

  Would a CBDC have saved the Zimbabwe dollar, the Venezuelan bolivar, the Argentine peso, the Lebanese lira, or the Nigerian naira?

  I don’t think so. And a CBDC won’t save the US dollar or the euro from their fates either.

  There are a lot of bad things that come with CBDCs. But there’s a silver lining…

  CBDCs are going to introduce and familiarize people with using digital currencies. It’s then only then a matter of time before they discover Bitcoin.

  CBDCs and Bitcoin share some characteristics.

  For example, they are both digital and facilitate fast payments from a mobile phone. But that is where the similarities end.

  The reality is that CBDCs and Bitcoin are entirely different in the most fundamental ways.

  You need the government’s permission and blessing to use a CBDC, whereas Bitcoin is permissionless.

  Governments can (and will) create as many CBDC currency units as they want. With Bitcoin, there can never be more than 21 million, and there is nothing anyone can do to inflate the supply more than the predetermined amount in the protocol.

  CBDCs are centralized. Bitcoin is decentralized.

  Governments can censor transactions and freeze, sanction, and confiscate CBDC units whenever they want. Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. No country’s sanctions or laws can affect the protocol.

  There is no privacy with CBDCs. However, with Bitcoin, if you take specific steps, it is possible to maintain reasonable privacy.

  CBDCs are government money that are easy to produce and give politicians a terrifying amount of control over people’s lives. On the other hand, Bitcoin is non-state hard money that helps liberate individuals from government control.

  In short, CBDCs are a pathetic attempt to compete with Bitcoin.

  CBDCs make an inferior form of money even worse, but at the same time, they are an excellent Trojan Horse for Bitcoin.

  It doesn’t take much imagination to see that once governments inevitably inflate their CBDC units, censor transactions, freeze people’s accounts, and confiscate funds, it will push people to look for better digital alternatives, first and foremost Bitcoin.

  That’s how, contrary to conventional wisdom, CBDCs could be an enormous catalyst for Bitcoin adoption.

  International Man: Couldn’t governments simply ban Bitcoin?

  Nick Giambruno: Bitcoin threatens a major source of the government’s power—the power to create fake money out of thin air and force everyone to use it. There’s no question they’ll try to protect this racket from Bitcoin. The question is whether they’ll be successful.

  Remember, the powerful Chinese government has banned Bitcoin numerous times with little to no long-term effects as adoption grows.

  That’s because it’s entirely impractical for governments to ban Bitcoin. They’re no match for the economic incentives that attract millions—soon billions—of people, and increasingly, corporations, and even nation states to a harder and superior form of money.

  Further, all aspects of Bitcoin are genuinely decentralized and robust. The best that governments can do is play an endless game of global whack-a-mole.

  Governments in Argentina and Venezuela have laws restricting their citizens from accessing US dollars. However, these laws have little effect on their citizens’ desire and ability to use them. These actions just create a thriving black market, or, more accurately termed, a free market.

  Similarly, governments have tried to ban cannabis for decades, which hasn’t worked out very well for them.

  Bitcoin would be infinitely more challenging for governments to ban than US dollars or a plant.

  I would like to see governments try to ban Bitcoin because they’ll fall flat on their faces.

  It’s doubtful any government will be more successful in banning it than the Chinese government was.

  A failed attempt to ban Bitcoin will reinforce its value proposition as a superior form of money nobody controls.

  International Man: Where do you see the Bitcoin price going?

  Nick Giambruno: What we have with Bitcoin is an entirely new asset that millions worldwide are adopting as money because of its superior monetary properties, namely its total resistance to debasement.

  The monetization of the new monetary good is genuinely unlike anything anyone alive has ever seen.

  It took gold centuries to achieve monetization. Bitcoin has a good chance of undergoing monetization in a much shorter period.

  The market cap for Bitcoin today is around $600 billion.

  The market cap for all the mined gold in the world, which took thousands of years to accumulate, is about $12.7 trillion.

  That means Bitcoin has a market cap roughly equal to 5% of gold’s and is already well on its way to monetization.

  Assuming gold stays flat and Bitcoin goes up 20x, it would have a market cap roughly equal to gold. At that point, a single Bitcoin would be worth over $620,000. I think that’s a real possibility in the next ten years, though it could happen much sooner.

  If that sounds outrageous, consider this…

  Ten years ago, the Bitcoin price was around $100. Today, it’s roughly 310x that.

  Bitcoin has made numerous breathtaking moves to the upside in the past. I think it can do it again, especially as corporations, institutional investors, and even nation states start buying Bitcoin for the first time. Of course, it’s important to remember that past performance does not indicate future results for any investment.

  Here’s the bottom line.

  Few people are aware of what is really happening with Bitcoin.

  And even fewer know how to prepare.

  That’s why I’ve just released an urgent PDF report revealing three ways you can do that.

  Check it out as soon as possible because it could soon be too late to take action. Click here to get it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 17:40

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• Germany's Ruling SPD Party Ready To Talk WWII Reparations With Poland
  Germany’s Ruling SPD Party Ready To Talk WWII Reparations With Poland

  Authored by Olivier Bault via Remix News,

  Germany’s ruling Social Democrats (SPD) are ready to “solve” the issue of war reparations with Poland, according to Arkadiusz Mularczyk, the Polish deputy foreign affairs minister in charge of the issue of war reparations, who spoke to Remix News’ Olivier Bault during a meeting in Warsaw yesterday.

  

  Mularczyk was informed that in the Olaf Scholz-led coalition government, the SPD at least “understands the problem and wants to solve it in some way in a formula of dialogue with Poland.”

  Scholz himself belongs to the SPD, and the German party’s agreement that the issue needs to be addressed could mark a major turning point in the ongoing reparations saga. Poland made headlines in 2022 when it estimated Germany owed Poland up to €1.5 trillion due to material and humanitarian losses during the Second World War; however, Germany has dismissed the claims in the past.

  During the interview with Mularczyk, which we will soon publish in full regarding the “Report on the Losses Sustained by Poland as a Result of German Aggression and Occupation During the Second World War” and the accompanying demands from Germany for financial compensation estimated at 6.6 trillion zlotys, which equates to €1.4-1.5 trillion euros, Mularczyk said:

  “There was a series of meetings with German MPs, in Warsaw, with MPs of the Polish-German friendship group, but also in Berlin, with a number of German parliamentarians. The largest was a meeting at the German Council on Foreign Relations, DGAP, where there was a group of at least a dozen parliamentarians. Recently, I sent a letter to all members of the Bundestag and Bundesrat on this issue, and you will be the first to know that I’ve just received a thank you from the Coordinator of German-Polish Intersocietal and Cross-Border Cooperation at the Federal Foreign Office in the coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Dietmar Nietan, writing on behalf of the SPD, that they understand the problem and want to solve it in some way in a formula of dialogue with Poland and also with me.”

  Although it is unclear how far the dialogue will go, Germany has stated in the past that the matter of reparations to Poland is “settled.” However, Poland has pressed the issue, using a variety of diplomatic and political means to force Germany to address Poland’s catastrophic losses during the Second World War.

  After Germany signaled it would not pay reparations, Mularczyk stated in 2022:

  “Now, Germany has a choice: Either it sits down with Poland at the negotiating table, or we will raise the issue in all international forums — in the UN, in the Council of Europe and in the European Union.”

  In December 2022, Mularczyk stated that he had appealed to the secretary general of the Council of Europe for assistance with Poland’s reparations claim for damages incurred by Germany during the Second World War.  At that time, Mularczyk stated that Germany had so far refused to engage in a discussion about compensation.

  In the past, Germany has pointed to the 1953 agreement with Poland’s then communist rulers, who relinquished all reparation demands due to pressure from the Soviet Union, which wanted to free East Germany from liabilities.

  However, Poland contends that the agreement is invalid because Poland never received fair compensation and because it was made under duress. Additionally, says Mularczyk, there is no official document or bilateral agreement confirming the Polish communist government’s decision to relinquish all reparation demands, nor was such a decision published in the official bulletin of the Polish People’s Republic at that time.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/30/2023 – 02:00

• Escobar: What Happens In Russia After 'The Longest Day'?
  Escobar: What Happens In Russia After ‘The Longest Day’?

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

  Following Wagner’s ‘rebellion’ – which was nothing more than a blatant coup attempt, and a PR stunt demonstrated by Prighozin’s top-notch theatrics – NATO and the Collective West’s excitement over the possibility of Russia descending into chaos and civil war were quickly turned into utter disappointment.

  

  The first draft of the extraordinary events that took place in Russia on The Longest Day – Saturday, June 24 – leads us to a whole new can of worms.    

  The Global Majority badly wants to know what happens next. Let’s examine the key pieces in the chessboard.

  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is cutting to the chase: he has reminded everyone that the Hegemon’s modus operandi is to back coup attempts whenever it can benefit. This dovetails with the fact that the FSB is actively investigating whether and how Western intel was involved in The Longest Day.

  President Putin could not have been more unequivocal: 

  “They [the West and Ukraine] wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, so that soldiers and civilians would die, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would break apart and choke on bloody civil strife (…) They rubbed their hands, dreaming of getting revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counter-offensive, but they miscalculated.” 

  Cue to the collective West – from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on down – frantically trying to distance itself even as the CIA leaked, via its trademark mouthpiece, the Washington Post, that they knew about “the rebellion.” 

  The agenda was painfully obvious: Kiev losing on all fronts would be ritually buried by wall-to-wall coverage of the fake Russian “civil war.”

  There’s no smoking gun – yet. But the FSB is following several leads to demonstrate how the “the rebellion” was set up by CIA/NATO. The spectacular failure makes the upcoming NATO July 11 summit in Vilnius even more incandescent. 

  The Chinese, much like Lavrov, also cut to the chase: the Global Times asserted that the idea of “Wagner’s revolt weakening Putin’s authority is wishful thinking of the West,” with the Kremlin’s “strong capacity of deterrence” further increasing its authority. That’s exactly the reading of the Russian street.  

  The Chinese reached their conclusion after a crucial visit by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Rudenko, who promptly flew to Beijing on Sunday, June 25. This is how the iron-clad strategic partnership works in practice.  

  “The rebellion” as a P.R. stunt

  Arguably the best explanation so far of the nuts and bolts of The Longest Day has been offered by Rostislav Ischenko.

  The Global Majority will rejoice that Prighozin’s theatrics, in the end, left the collective West dazed, confused, and shattered: wasn’t the whole thing supposed to unleash total chaos inside Russian society and the army? 

  Even as the fake, lightning-quick “mutiny” was in progress, Russia continued to pound Kiev’s forces – which, by the way, were spinning that the main phase of the “counter-offensive” was being launched exactly on June 24 at night. That was, predictably, yet another bluff.    

  Back to the Russian street. “The rebellion” – inbuilt in a very convoluted plot – in the end was widely interpreted as just another military demonstration (by master of ceremonies Prighozin, not by the overwhelming majority of Wagner soldiers). “The rebellion” turned out to be a Western P.R. stunt, a series of (ultimately faded) pictures for global consumption.  

  But now things are bound to get way more serious. 

  Lavrov, once again, pointed to the role being played by the ever-self-aggrandized Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron, right up there with the United States: “Macron clearly saw in the developments an opportunity to realize the threat of Ukraine dealing Russia a strategic blow, a mantra NATO leaders have been holding onto.”

  So just like Kiev and the collective Western media, Lavrov added, Macron remains part of a single “machine” working against Moscow. That ties up with Putin, who stated of Macron’s Sunday intervention that “the entire Western military, economic and information machine has been set in motion against us.” 

  And that’s a fact. 

  Betting on a “long-term economic blockade”

  Another fact adds to the more ominous clouds on the horizon.  

  While no one was paying attention, a mini-Congress of national security officials took place in Copenhagen exactly on the fateful 24 and 25 of June.

  They were arguably discussing “peace in Ukraine.” The chairman was none other than US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.  

  Present at the meeting were Brazil, Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, Denmark, India, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, Japan, Ukraine – and the proverbial Eurocrat of the non-sovereign EU. 

  Note the G7 majority, side by side with three BRICS and two aspiring BRICS+ members.

  “Peace in Ukraine” means, in this context, the so-called 10-point “Zelensky peace plan,” which implies a total Russian strategic defeat – complete with the restoration of Ukraine within the borders of 1991 and payment of colossal “reparations” by Moscow.

  No wonder China was not part of it. Yet three BRICS – call them the weakest nodes – were there. BRICS and BRICS+ prospective members compose the six “swing states” which will be relentlessly courted and/or submitted to hardcore Hybrid Wars by the Hegemon to “behave” when it comes to Ukraine: Brazil, India, South Africa, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.  

  Then there’s the 11th EU sanctions package, which is taking the economic war against Russia to a whole new level, as attested by Acting Permanent Representative to the EU, Kirill Logvinov.

  Logvinov explained how “Brussels intends to drag as many countries as possible into this war (…) There is a clear shift from a failed blitzkrieg, which was said to be aimed at causing irreparable damage to Russia, to a multi-move game with the goal of establishing a kind of long-term economic blockade against our country.”

  That’s undiluted Hybrid War territory – and the key targets are the six “swing states.” 

  Logvinov remarked how “the EU always prefers to use blackmail and coercion. Since the EU remains the biggest economic partner for many countries, as well as a source of investment and a financial donor, Brussels clearly has enough leverage to exert pressure. So, the EU’s fight against the bypassing of sanctions is expected to be lengthy and uncompromising.”

  So welcome to extraterritorial sanctions, EU-style, blacklisting companies from third countries “suspected” of re-exporting banned goods to Russia or engaged in oil trade without taking the so-called Russian oil price cap into account.

  Fun in the Belarussian sun 

  Among so many cheap thrills, what will be the next role of the main actor in The Longest Day (and even before)? And does it matter? 

  Chinese scholars are fond of reminding us that during China’s periods of turmoil – for instance, at the end of the Han and Tang dynasties – the reason was always warlords not following orders from the Emperor.  

  The Ottoman Empire’s Janissaries – their Wagner at the time – were meant to protect the Sultan and fight his wars. They ended up deciding who could be Sultan – as much as Roman Empire legionaries ended up deciding who would be Emperor. 

  Chinese advice is always prescient: Beware of how you use your soldiers. Make sure they believe in what they’re fighting for. Otherwise, they’ll turn around to bite you.

  And that leads us to Prighozin once again changing his story (he’s a specialist on the matter).  

  He’s now saying that June 23-24 was just a mere “demonstration” to express his discontent. The main objective was to prove the superiority of Wagner over the Russian Army. 

  Well, everybody knew about that: Wagner soldiers have been in combat day in, day out for over 10 years now in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine.

  And that’s why he could boast that “Wagner advanced for 700 km without meeting any resistance. If Russia had asked them to be in charge of the war from the beginning, that would have been over by the night of February 24, 2022.”

  Prighozin is also alluding to a deal with Belarus – laying extra fog of war around a possible transfer of Wagner under Belarus jurisdiction. NATO is already terrified in advance. Expect more ballooning military budgets – to be imposed at the Vilnius summit next month. 

  Camps to accommodate at least 8,000 Wagner fighters are already being built in Belarus, in the Mogilev region – according to “Vyorstka” (“Layout”). 

  The real story behind it is that Belarus, for quite a while, has been expecting a possible attack from rabid Poland.

  In parallel, as much as sending NATO into extra freakout mode, Moscow could be contemplating the opening of a new front between Lviv and Kiev.  

  Wagner in Belarus makes total sense. The Belarussian Army is not exactly strong. Wagner secures Russia’s western front. That will raise major hell on NATO – even figuratively, and force them to spend even more astronomical sums. And Wagner can merrily use airports in Belarus to pursue its – rebranded – activities in West Asia and Africa.  

  Everything that happened since The Longest Day is part of a new dramatic plot twist in a running series – way more gripping than whatever Netflix could offer. 

  Yet what the majority of Russian public opinion really seems to expect is not another farcical Ride of the Valkyrie. They expect a serious draining of the Soviet-style bureaucratic swamp, and a real commitment to get this “almost war” to its logical conclusion as quickly as possible.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 23:40

• Fentanyl Responsible For 80% Of Overdose Deaths Under 24 In US
  Fentanyl Responsible For 80% Of Overdose Deaths Under 24 In US

  Of the 296 million users of illegal drugs worldwide in 2021, 60 million were taking opioids like morphine, codeine or heroin.

  As Statista’s Florian Zandt reports, according to the latest United Nations World Drug Report, only cannabis usage is more prevalent albeit, of course, not really resulting in overdose deaths.

  As he shows in the chart below, based on CDC data, synthetic opioids like fentanyl have become associated with the majority of overdose mortality.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Out of the more than 106,000 registered cases of deaths by overdose in 2021, a little over 70,000 or two thirds were directly related to synthetic opioids, the most prevalent of which is fentanyl. The drug is said to be 50 times more potent than heroin and is easy and cheap to manufacture since it’s not tied to a crop base like more traditional opioids like heroin.

  The picture gets even more dire in the teenage and young adult age bracket. Here, 80 percent of the 7,426 overdose deaths can be ascribed to synthetic opioids, with the connected cases increasing almost sixfold between 2015 and 2021.

  

  Globally, usage of opioids has been relatively stable since 2019, with reported users even going down from 62 million in the year before the coronavirus pandemic. The global prevalence percentage stood at 1.2 for 2021, with only three regions clocking in significantly higher at percentages of 3.3 (North America), 3.2 (Near and Middle East/South-West Asia) and 2.4 (Oceania).

  The further development of usage numbers might be impacted by whether the Taliban government in Afghanistan fully enforces its drug ban enacted in 2021. According to a special UN report, opium poppy farmers generated $1.4 billion in sales in 2022 with the current crop being largely exempt from the ban and the handling of future harvests uncertain. Experts now fear that drug users might turn to more readily available synthetic opioids if the supply from the Asian country dries up. Around 80 percent of global opiate users are supplied by products manufactured from the Afghan opium poppy.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 23:20

• BRICS On The March
  BRICS On The March

  Via GEFIRA,

  More and more countries have aspired to belong to BRICS since 2009, but none from the West.

  

  The BRICS countries represent 40% of the world population and 25% of the global GDP.

  Thanks to BRICS, China can impose its vision of international cooperation and Russia can show that it will not be isolated on the stage of global players.

  The group is a thorn in the side of the Americans all the more so that a dozen other developing countries (marked in orange on the map below) want to join the current five countries of the alliance (red).

  

  Source: Silkroadbriefing

  What America certainly doesn’t like is the fact that French President Macron communicated the other day his interest in attending meetings of the alliance. France in BRICS would be a trigger for profound changes in the geopolitical landscape. We bet that Turkey can also join soon, which, like the case of France, will weaken the importance of the UN as a purely Anglo-Saxon project and that of NATO. Indeed, the BRICS countries are against the UN’s attempts to link the issues of climate with the issues of security, and France in BRICS can return to the de Gaullean concepts of foreign policy outside NATO. 

  A challenge to cohesion in BRICS is the large disparity in countries’ capacities (in favor of China) and the members’ focus on cooperation with the PRC, which results in a smaller number of relationships among the other partners. However, the main factor that has weakened the BRICS in recent years is the deterioration of relations between the largest member states, China and India, since 2017. Border and trade disputes culminated in the clashes on the Ladakh border in June 2020, which almost led to the cancellation of the BRICS summit in the same year and prompted India to deepen cooperation with the United States and the EU.

  Now, the West’s involvement in the war in Ukraine is reviving anti-Western sentiments, not only in the BRICS countries.

  Indeed, it is clear to more and more countries that the war was provoked by NATO’s excessive expansion.

  The BRICS politicians also want to fight inflation whose cause they perceive not in the Russian attack but in the Western sanctions.

  Whether you are pro-Western, pro-Russian, or in favor of the New Silk Road, it is better for all of us to live in a multi-polar world rather than to have all the strings pulled on the Potomac.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 23:00

• "Try Again": Sens Hawley, Braun Demand Biden Admin Turn Over More COVID Origins Info After Evasive Response
  “Try Again”: Sens Hawley, Braun Demand Biden Admin Turn Over More COVID Origins Info After Evasive Response

  Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Mark Braun (R-Ind.) are demanding that President Joe Biden’s administration provide more details about the origins of COVID-19 after releasing a 10-page report describing potential links between the origins of the virus and work at a Chinese virology laboratory in 2019.

  

  In March, Congress passed, and Biden signed a law known as the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 that required the Biden administration to release “any and all information” relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China, and the origin of COVID-19. The law set a June 18 deadline to declassify and “make available to the public as much information as possible.”

  Hawley and Braun sent a reminder letter to Biden on June 14, but his administration still missed the June 18 deadline to declassify and publicly release the COVID-19 origins documents. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) instead published a 10-page document (pdf) five days late on the evening of June 23.

  The 10-page document included a one-page coversheet, a one-page table of contents, and a three-page appendix of terms used throughout the report. The five remaining pages of the report stated that the WIV worked “with several viruses, including coronaviruses, but no known viruses that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.”

  The report also described how several WIV researchers fell ill in the fall of 2019 and said these researchers possessed some symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and some symptoms considered “not consistent” with COVID-19.

  “The COVID-19 Origin Act calls for a full declassification, not Cliffs Notes to cover for [Dr. Anthony Fauci] and protect China,” Braun wrote in a Monday press statement.

  “The report released today by the DNI is totally insufficient. The bill Senator Hawley and I passed was to ‘declassify *any and all* information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19’ including several specific requests related to researchers’ names and their activities at the Wuhan lab. Our bill was passed unanimously by a Democrat Senate and a Republican House and signed by President Biden.

  “This 9 page DNI report is 5 pages of titles and dictionary definitions, with only 4 pages of actual information, most of which is vague or already reported. The report contains no actual documents. The American people deserve the facts, not more half truths and politics,” Braun added.

  

  ‘Failed to Comply’

  Braun and Hawley reiterated their disappointment in a letter to Avril Haines, who is Biden’s director of national intelligence.

  “[The COVID-19 Origins Act] required the Director of National Intelligence to ‘declassify any and all information’ relating to links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19,” the senators wrote in a letter they first shared with Fox News.

  “You failed to comply with both requirements. The deadline was June 18, 2023. Well past the statutory deadline, your office published a declassified report after business hours on June 23.”

  Braun and Hawley concluded that ODNI “obviously” has more information about the origins of COVID-19 and the WIV than the five-page summary would suggest. They also accused the Biden administration of showing deference toward China.

  “You—and the rest of the Administration—appear to be refusing to provide information about China’s role in and responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic in order to avoid upsetting Beijing,” they wrote.

  “We invite you to try again,” the senators added. “Within 7 business days, provide to Congress documentation that fully complies with the letter of the law to disclose ‘any and all information’ related to the origins of COVID-19 and a lab leak with minimal redactions.”

  NTD News reached out to ODNI and the Biden White House for comment about Braun and Hawley’s letter, but neither office responded by the time this article was published.

  Growing GOP Backlash to ODNI Report

  House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and House Coronavirus Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) called the June 23 ODNI report “a promising step toward full transparency.”

  Following the release of the report, Turner and Wenstrup also concluded that “the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have some serious explaining to do” regarding the research that had occurred at the WIV.

  Other Republicans were less impressed by the ODNI’s efforts.

  “This Friday night ‘news’ dump of a mere 10-page summary is a slap in the face of Americans who deserve full transparency about what information the government possesses regarding the origins of COVID-19,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.).

  Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the ODNI should have released details on the WIV researchers who fell ill in the Autumn of 2019. In fact, the COVID-19 Origin Act asks for the names of WIV researchers who fell ill in 2019, their symptoms, and their specific involvement in coronavirus-related work at the WIV.

  “This DNI release does none of that and, in many ways, obscures more than it illuminates,” Gallagher said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 22:20

• $100 Billion "Profound Economic Shift" Has Reshaped Southern US
  $100 Billion “Profound Economic Shift” Has Reshaped Southern US

  Thanks to a flood of transplants during the pandemic, six southern states have been growing at breakneck speed – as approximately $100 billion in new income in 2020 and 2021 have begun to reshape the southern US.

  

  To wit, Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee are now contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast – which bled out about $60 billion during the same period, according to Bloomberg, citing government figures going back to thew 1990s.

  “The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting,” write Bloomberg‘s Michael Sasso and Alexandre Tanzi.

  Since early 2020, the Southeast has accounted for more than 2/3 of all job growth in the US, nearly doubling its pre-pandemic share, and making it home to 10 of the 15 fastest-growing large cities in America.

  

  And as regular readers already know, corporations have also been flocking to the southern US, which (for now) enjoys a lower cost of living and a higher quality of life.

  

  For example, Dun & Broadstreet, founded 182 years ago and up until recently headquartered in Short Hills, New Jersey, moved to Jacksonville, Florida in 2021 – in order to take advantage of a $100 million package of cash and tax incentives. D&B CFO Bryan Hipsher told Bloomberg that the company would have gladly stayed in the New York area, but the Florida offer was too good to refuse.

  “You feel very wanted, right?” Hipsher told the outlet. “You feel very welcomed, clearly.”

  The average employee here has an annual salary of $77,000, 25% above the national level, and well outstripping most local salaries. Still, many roles pay roughly 15% below the average at the former New Jersey headquarters.

  Jacksonville grew so fast that it surpassed San Jose in population last year. Good schools, including University of Florida an hour and a half away, help provide a high-quality employee base, Hipsher said. Today the firm is still busy hiring — it’s a little less than halfway to its goal of 500 workers. -Bloomberg

  Meanwhile, the Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville branch is growing along with the city – with a new oncology building under construction, and the addition of 2,400 employees to bring the total in the area to 9,000 – part of the 2.2 million people who have migrated to Florida and across the Southeast over the past two years.

  “You could throw a dart anywhere at a map of the South and hit somewhere booming,” said Mark Vitner, a retired longtime economist for Wells Fargo who now heads his own economic consultancy, Piedmont Crescent Capital, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

  JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says the company now has more employees in Texas than New York state, telling Bloomberg TV “it shouldn’t have been that way.”

  

  As far as the South Atlantic coast is concerned – including Charleston, SC, signs of explosive growth continue.

  According to 47-year-old Beth Woods, who moved from Mount Olive NJ to the Charleston suburb of Mount Pleasant during the pandemic, life is much better now.

  “You could get your hair done, your nails done, you could basically live your life. And it has lower property taxes here, too,” she said.

  59-year-old Rosemary Taibi concurred. She had her husband dropped their property taxes by $14,000 per year moving from Randolph, New Jersey.

  “It’s a big difference,” she said.

  The move has big political impacts as well.

  For now, more people translate into more congressional seats and more political power on the national scene. Over the past five decades, 12 states in the Southeast including Texas collectively added 33 more congressional seats, roughly the same number that the Northeast and Midwest each lost over the same period.

  And Southerners now chair 11 of the 21 most important committees in the US House, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Government.

  At the 2022 midterm elections, Republican governors handily defeated nationally known Democratic opponents in Florida, Georgia and Texas, a blow to Democrats hoping that a more diverse mix of people moving south would turn the region purple, if not blue. That may still happen over the long term because shifting politics in states as big as Florida and Texas can take 10 or 20 years, said James Gimpel, government professor at the University of Maryland. -Bloomberg

  According to Gimpel, it’s no surprise that so many top GOP candidates are based in the South – including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.

  

  Steven Hertzberg, a tech entrepreneur from Sonoma County, California, is in heaven in St. Johns County, Florida.

  “Just drive around the neighborhoods here. It feels like you’re in Disneyland,” he said. “You see teenagers winging around in golf carts, electric scooters.”

  Let’s see how long this lasts…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 22:00

• Mearsheimer Warns Of 'The Darkness Ahead': Where The Ukraine War Is Headed
  Mearsheimer Warns Of ‘The Darkness Ahead’: Where The Ukraine War Is Headed

  Via John Mearsheimer’s Substack,

  This paper examines the likely trajectory of the Ukraine war moving forward.

  

  I will address two main questions.

  • First, is a meaningful peace agreement possible?

  My answer is no. We are now in a war where both sides – Ukraine and the West on one side and Russia on the other – see each other as an existential threat that must be defeated. Given maximalist objectives all around, it is almost impossible to reach a workable peace treaty. Moreover, the two sides have irreconcilable differences regarding territory and Ukraine’s relationship with the West. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict that could easily turn back into a hot war. The worst possible outcome is a nuclear war, which is unlikely but cannot be ruled out.  

  • Second, which side is likely to win the war?

  Russia will ultimately win the war, although it will not decisively defeat Ukraine. In other words, it is not going to conquer all of Ukraine, which is necessary to achieve three of Moscow’s goals: overthrowing the regime, demilitarizing the country, and severing Kyiv’s security ties with the West. But it will end up annexing a large swath of Ukrainian territory, while turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. In other words, Russia will win an ugly victory.

  Before I directly address these issues, three preliminary points are in order. For starters, I am attempting to predict the future, which is not easy to do, given that we live in an uncertain world. Thus, I am not arguing that I have the truth; in fact, some of my claims may be proved wrong. Furthermore, I am not saying what I would like to see happen. I am not rooting for one side or the other. I am simply telling you what I think will happen as the war moves forward. Finally, I am not justifying Russian behavior or the actions of any of the states involved in the conflict. I am just explaining their actions.

  Now, let me turn to substance.

  Where We Are Today

  To understand where the Ukraine war is headed, it is necessary to first assess the present situation. It is important to know how the three main actors – Russia, Ukraine, and the West – think about their threat environment and conceive their goals. When we talk about the West, however, we are talking mainly about the United States, since its European allies take their marching orders from Washington when it comes to Ukraine. It is also essential to understand the present situation on the battlefield. Let me start with Russia’s threat environment and its goals.

  Russia’s Threat Environment

  It has been clear since April 2008 that Russian leaders across the board view the West’s efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO and make it a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders as an existential threat. Indeed, President Putin and his lieutenants repeatedly made this point in the months before the Russian invasion, when it was becoming clear to them that Ukraine was almost a de facto member of NATO.

  Since the war began on 24 February 2022, the West has added another layer to that existential threat by adopting a new set of goals that Russian leaders cannot help but view as extremely threatening. I will say more about Western goals below but suffice it to say here that the West is determined to defeat Russia and knock it out of the ranks of the great powers, if not cause regime change or even trigger Russia to break apart like the Soviet Union did in 1991.

  In a major address Putin delivered this past February (2023), he stressed that the West is a mortal threat to Russia. “During the years that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union,” he said, “the West never stopped trying to set the post-Soviet states on fire and, most importantly, finish off Russia as the largest surviving portion of the historical reaches of our state. They encouraged international terrorists to assault us, provoked regional conflicts along the perimeter of our borders, ignored our interests and tried to contain and suppress our economy.” He further emphasized that, “The Western elite make no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, ‘Russia’s strategic defeat.’ What does this mean to us? This means they plan to finish us once and for all.” Putin went on to say: “this represents an existential threat to our country.”

  Russian leaders also see the regime in Kyiv as a threat to Russia, not just because it is closely allied with the West, but also because they see it as the offspring of the fascist Ukrainian forces that fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in World War II.

  Russia’s Goals

  Russia must win this war, given that it believes that it is facing a threat to its survival. But what does victory look like? The ideal outcome before the war began in February 2022 was to turn Ukraine into a neutral state and settle the civil war in the Donbass that pitted the Ukrainian government against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who wanted greater autonomy if not independence for their region. It appears that those goals were still realistic during the first month of the war and were in fact the basis of the negotiations in Istanbul between Kyiv and Moscow in March 2022.

  If the Russians had achieved those goals back then, the present war would either have been prevented or ended quickly.

  But a deal that satisfies Russia’s goals is no longer in the cards. Ukraine and NATO are joined at the hip for the foreseeable future, and neither is willing to accept Ukrainian neutrality. Furthermore, the regime in Kyiv is anathema to Russian leaders, who want it gone. They not only talk about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, but also “demilitarizing” it, two goals that would presumably call for conquering all of Ukraine, compelling its military forces to surrender, and installing a friendly regime in Kyiv.

  A decisive victory of that sort is not likely to happen for a variety of reasons. The Russian army is not large enough for such a  task, which would probably require at least two million men.

  Indeed, the existing Russian army is having difficulty conquering all the Donbass. Moreover, the West would go to enormous lengths to prevent Russia from overrunning all of Ukraine. Finally, the Russians would end up occupying huge amounts of territory that is heavily populated with ethnic Ukrainians who loathe the Russians and would fiercely resist the occupation. Trying to conquer all of Ukraine and bend it to Moscow’s will, would surely end in disaster.

  Rhetoric about de-Nazifying and demilitarizing Ukraine aside, Russia’s concrete goals involve conquering and annexing a large portion of Ukrainian territory, while simultaneously turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. As such, Ukraine’s ability to wage war against Russia would be greatly reduced and it would be unlikely to qualify for membership in either the EU or NATO. Moreover, a broken Ukraine, would be especially vulnerable to Russian interference in its domestic politics. In short, Ukraine would not be a Western bastion on Russia’s border.

  What would that dysfunctional rump state look like? Moscow has officially annexed Crimea and four other Ukrainian oblasts – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe – which together represent about 23 percent of Ukraine’s total territory before the crisis broke out in February 2014. Russian leaders have emphasized that they have no intention of surrendering that territory, some of which Russia does not yet control. In fact, there is reason to think Russia will annex additional Ukrainian territory if it has the military capability to do so at a reasonable cost. It is difficult, however, to say how much additional Ukrainian territory Moscow will seek to annex, as Putin himself makes clear.

  Russian thinking is likely to be influenced by three calculations. Moscow has a powerful incentive to conquer and permanently annex Ukrainian territory that is heavily populated with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. It will want to protect them from the Ukrainian government – which has become hostile to all things Russian – and make sure there is no civil war anywhere in Ukraine like the one that took place in the Donbass between February 2014 and February 2022. At the same time, Russia will want to avoid controlling territory largely populated by hostile ethnic Ukrainians, which places significant limits on further Russian expansion. Finally, turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state will require Moscow to take substantial amounts of Ukrainian territory so it is well-positioned to do significant damage to its economy. Controlling all of Ukraine’s coastline along the Black Sea, for example, would give Moscow significant economic leverage over Kyiv.

  Those three calculations suggest that Russia is likely to attempt to annex the four oblasts – Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Odessa – that are immediately to the west of the four oblasts it has already annexed – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe. If that were to happen, Russia would control approximately 43 percent of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory.

  Dmitri Trenin, a leading Russian strategist estimates that Russian leaders would seek to take even more Ukrainian territory – pushing westward in northern Ukraine to the Dnieper River and taking the part of Kyiv that sits on the east bank of that river. He writes that “A logical next step” after taking all of Ukraine from Kharkiv to Odessa “would be to expand Russian control to all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, including the part of Kyiv that lies on the that river’s eastern bank. If that were to happen, the Ukrainian state would shrink to include only the central and western regions of the country.”

  The West’s Threat Environment

  It might seem hard to believe now, but before the Ukraine crisis broke out in February 2014, Western leaders did not view Russia as a security threat. NATO leaders, for example, were talking with Russia’s president about “a new stage of cooperation towards a true strategic partnership” at the alliance’s 2010 Summit in Lisbon.

  Unsurprisingly, NATO expansion before 2014 was not justified in terms of containing a dangerous Russia. In fact, it was Russian weakness that allowed the West to shove the first two tranches of NATO expansion in 1999 and 2004 down Moscow’s throat and then allowed the George W. Bush administration to think in 2008 that Russia could be forced to accept Georgia and Ukraine joining the alliance. But that assumption proved wrong and when the Ukraine crisis broke out in 2014, the West suddenly began portraying Russia as a dangerous foe that had to be contained if not weakened.

  Since the war started in February 2022, the West’s perception of Russia has steadily escalated to the point where Moscow now appears to be seen as an existential threat. The United States and its NATO allies are deeply involved in Ukraine’s war against Russia. Indeed, they are doing everything but pulling the triggers and pushing the buttons.

  Moreover, they have made clear their unequivocal commitment to winning the war and maintaining Ukraine’s sovereignty. Thus, losing the war would have hugely negative consequences for Washington and for NATO. America’s reputation for competence and reliability would be badly damaged, which would affect how its allies as well as its adversaries – especially China – deal with the United States. Furthermore, virtually every European country in NATO believes that the alliance is an irreplaceable security umbrella. Thus, the possibility that NATO might be badly damaged – maybe even wrecked – if Russia wins in Ukraine is cause for profound concern among its members.

  In addition, Western leaders frequently portray the Ukraine war as an integral part of a larger global struggle between autocracy and democracy that is Manichean at its core. On top of that, the future of the sacrosanct rules-based international order is said to depend on prevailing against Russia. As King Charles said this past March (2023), “The security of Europe as well as our democratic values are under threat.”

  Similarly, a resolution introduced in the U.S. Congress in April declares: “United States interests, European security, and the cause of international peace depend on … Ukrainian victory.”

  A recent article in The Washington Post, captures how the West treats Russia as an existential threat: “Leaders of the more than 50 other countries backing Ukraine have couched their support as part of an apocalyptic battle for the future of democracy and the international rule of law against autocracy and aggression that the West cannot afford to lose.”

  The West’s Goals

  As should be clear, the West is staunchly committed to defeating Russia. President Biden has repeatedly said that the United States is in this war to win. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.” It must end in “strategic failure.” Washington, he emphasizes, will stay in the fight “for as long as it takes.”

  Specifically, the aim is to defeat Russia’s army in Ukraine – erasing its territorial gains – and cripple its economy with lethal sanctions. If successful, Russia would be knocked out of the ranks of the great powers, weakening it to the point where it could not threaten to invade Ukraine again.

  Western leaders have additional goals, which include regime change in Moscow, putting Putin on trial as a war criminal, and possibly breaking up Russia into smaller states.

  At the same time, the West remains committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO, although there is disagreement within the alliance about when and how that will happen.

  Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary general told a news conference in Kyiv in April (2023) that “NATO’s position remains unchanged and that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance.” At the same time, he emphasized that “The first step toward any membership of Ukraine to NATO is to ensure that Ukraine prevails, and that is why the U.S. and its partners have provided unprecedented support for Ukraine.”

  Given these goals, it is clear why Russia views the West as an existential threat.

  Ukraine’s Threat Environment and Goals

  There is no doubt that Ukraine faces an existential threat, given that Russia is bent on dismembering it and making sure that the surviving rump state is not only economically weak, but is neither a de facto nor a de jure member of NATO. There is also no question that Kyiv shares the West’s goal of defeating and seriously weakening Russia, so that it can regain its lost territory and keep it under Ukrainian control forever. As President Zelensky recently told President Xi Jinping, “There can be no peace that is based on territorial compromises.”

  Ukrainian leaders naturally remain steadfastly committed to joining the EU and NATO and making Ukraine an integral part of the West.

  In sum, the three key actors in the Ukraine war all believe they face an existential threat, which means each of them thinks it must win the war or else suffer terrible consequences.

  The Battlefield Today

  Turning to events on the battlefield, the war has evolved into war of attrition where each side is principally concerned with bleeding the other side white, causing it to surrender. Of course, both sides are also concerned with capturing territory, but that goal is of secondary importance to wearing down the other side.

  The Ukrainian military had the upper hand in the latter half of 2022, which allowed it to take back territory from Russia in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions. But Russia responded to those defeats by mobilizing 300,000 additional troops, reorganizing it army, shortening its front lines, and learning from its mistakes.

  The locus of the fighting in 2023 has been in eastern Ukraine, mainly in the Donetsk and Zaporozhe regions. The Russians have had the upper hand this year, mainly because they have a substantial advantage in artillery, which is the most important weapon in attrition warfare.

  Moscow’s advantage was evident in the battle for Bakhmut, which ended when the Russians captured that city in late May (2023). Although it took Russian forces ten months to take control of Bakhmut they inflicted huge casualties on Ukrainian forces with their artillery.

  Shortly thereafter on 4 June, Ukraine launched its long-awaited counter-offensive at different locations in the Donetsk and Zaporozhe regions. The aim is to penetrate Russia’s front lines of defense, deliver a staggering blow to Russian forces, and take back a substantial amount of Ukrainian territory that is now under Russian control. In essence, the aim is to duplicate Ukraine’s successes in Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022.

  Ukraine’s army has made little progress so far in achieving those goals and instead is bogged down in deadly attrition battles with Russian forces. In 2022, Ukraine was successful in the Kharkiv and Kherson campaigns because its army was  fighting against outnumbered and overextended Russian forces. That is not the case today: Ukraine is attacking into the face of well-prepared lines of Russian defense. But even if Ukrainian forces break through those defensive lines, Russian troops will quickly stabilize the front and the attrition battles will continue.

  The Ukrainians are at a disadvantage in these encounters because the Russians have a significant firepower advantage.

  Where We Are Headed

  Let me switch gears and move away from the present and talk about the future, starting with how events on the battlefield are likely to play out moving forward. As noted, I believe Russia will win the war, which means it will end up conquering and annexing substantial Ukrainian territory, leaving Ukraine as a dysfunctional rump state. If I am correct, this will be a grievous defeat for Ukraine and the West.

  There is a silver lining in this outcome, however: a Russian victory markedly reduces the threat of nuclear war, as nuclear escalation is most likely to occur if Ukrainian forces are winning victories on the battlefield and threatening to take back all or most of the territories Kyiv has lost to Moscow. Russian leaders would surely think seriously about using nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. Of course, if I am wrong about where the war is headed and the Ukrainian military gains the upper hand and begins pushing Russian forces eastward, the likelihood of nuclear use would increase significantly, which is not to say it would be a certainty.

  What is the basis of my claim that the Russians are likely to win the war?

  The Ukraine war, as emphasized, is a war of attrition in which capturing and holding territory is of secondary importance. The aim in attrition warfare is to wear down the other side’s forces to the point where it either quits the fight or is so weakened that it can no longer defend contested territory.

  Who wins an attrition war is largely a function of three factors: the balance of resolve between the two sides; the population balance between them; and the casualty-exchange ratio. The Russians have a decisive advantage in population size and a marked advantage in the casualty-exchange ratio; the two sides are evenly matched in terms of resolve.

  Consider the balance of resolve. As noted, both Russia and Ukraine believe they are facing an existential threat, and naturally, both sides are fully committed to winning the war. Thus, it is hard to see any meaningful difference in their resolve. Regarding population size, Russia had approximately a 3.5:1 advantage before the war began in February 2022. Since then, the ratio has shifted noticeably in Russia’s favor. About eight million Ukrainians have fled the country, subtracting from Ukraine’s population. Roughly three million of those emigrants have gone to Russia, adding to its population. In addition, there are probably about four million other Ukrainian citizens living in the territories that Russia now controls, further shifting the population imbalance in Russia’s favor. Putting those numbers together gives Russia approximately a 5:1 advantage in population size.

  Finally, there is the casualty-exchange ratio, which has been a controversial issue since the war started in February 2022. The conventional wisdom in Ukraine and the West is that the casualty levels on both sides are either roughly equal or that the Russians have suffered greater casualties than the Ukrainians. The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, goes so far as to argue that the Russian lost 7.5 soldiers for every one Ukrainian soldier in the battle for Bakhmut.

  These claims are wrong. Ukrainian forces have surely suffered much greater casualties than their Russian opponents for one reason: Russia has much more artillery than Ukraine.

  In attrition warfare, artillery is the most important weapon on the battlefield. In the U.S. Army, artillery is widely known as the “king of battle,” because it is principally responsible for killing and wounding the soldiers doing the fighting.

  Thus, the balance of artillery matters enormously in a war of attrition. By almost every account, the Russians have somewhere between a 5:1 and a 10:1 advantage in artillery, which puts the Ukrainian army at a significant disadvantage on the battlefield.

  Ceteris paribus, one would expect the casualty-exchange ratio to approximate the balance of artillery. Ergo, a casualty-exchange ratio on the order of 2:1 in Russia’s favor is a conservative estimate.

  One possible challenge to my analysis is to argue that Russia is the aggressor in this war, and the offender invariably suffers much higher casualty levels than the defender, especially if the attacking forces are engaged in broad frontal assaults, which is often said to be the Russian military’s modus operandi.

  After all, the offender is out in the open and on the move, while the defender is mainly fighting from fixed positions that provide substantial cover. This logic underpins the famous 3:1 rule of thumb, which says that an attacking force needs at least three times as many soldiers as the defender to win a battle.

  But there are problems with this line of argument when it is applied to the Ukraine war.

  First, it is not just the Russians who have initiated offensive campaigns over the course of the war.

  Indeed, the Ukrainians launched two major offensives last year that led to widely heralded victories: the Kharkiv offensive in September 2022 and the Kherson offensive between August and November 2022. Although the Ukrainians made substantial territorial gains in both campaigns, Russian artillery inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking forces. The Ukrainians just began another major offensive on 4 June against Russian forces that are more numerous and far better prepared than those the Ukrainians fought against in Kharkiv and Kherson.

  Second, the distinction between offenders and defenders in a major battle is usually not black and white. When one army attacks another army, the defender invariably launches counterattacks. In other words, the defender transitions to the offense and the offender transitions to the defense. Over the course of a protracted battle, each side is likely to end up doing much attacking and counterattacking as well as defending fixed positions. This back and forth explains why the casualty-exchange ratios in US Civil War battles and WWI battles are often roughly equal, not favorable to the army that started out on the defensive. In fact, the army that strikes the first blow occasionally suffers less casualties than the target army.

  In short, defense usually involves a lot of offense.

  It is clear from Ukrainian and Western news accounts that Ukrainian forces frequently launch counterattacks against Russian forces. Consider this account in The Washington Post of the fighting earlier this year in Bakhmut: “‘There is this fluid motion going on.’ said a Ukrainian first lieutenant … Russian attacks along the front allow their forces to advance a few hundred meters before being pushed back hours later. ‘It’s hard to distinguish exactly where the front line is because it moves like Jell-O,’ he said.”

  Given Russia’s massive artillery advantage, it seems reasonable to assume that the casualty-exchange ratio in these Ukrainian counterattacks favors the Russians – probably in a lopsided way.

  Third, the Russians are not employing – at least not often – large-scale frontal assaults that aim to rapidly move forward and capture territory, but which would expose the attacking forces to withering fire from Ukrainian defenders. As General Sergey Surovikin explained in October 2022, when he was commanding the Russian forces in Ukraine, “We have a different strategy… We spare each soldier and are persistently grinding down the advancing enemy.”

  In effect, Russian troops have adopted clever tactics that reduce their casualty levels.

  Their favored tactic is to launch probing attacks against fixed Ukrainian positions with small infantry units, which causes Ukrainian forces to attack them with mortars and artillery.

  That response allows the Russians to determine where the Ukrainian defenders and their artillery are located. The Russians then use their great advantage in artillery to pound their adversaries. Afterwards, packets of Russian infantry move forward again; and when they meet serious Ukrainian resistance, they repeat the process. These tactics help explain why Russia is making slow progress in capturing Ukrainian held territory.

  One might think the West can go a long way toward evening out the casualty-exchange ratio by supplying Ukraine with many more artillery tubes and shells, thus eliminating Russia’s significant advantage with this critically important weapon. That is not going to happen anytime soon, however, simply because neither the United States nor its allies have the industrial capacity necessary to mass produce artillery tubes and shells for Ukraine. Nor can they rapidly build that capacity.

  The best the West can do – at least for the next year or so – is maintain the existing imbalance of artillery between Russia and Ukraine, but even that will be a difficult task.

  Ukraine can do little to help remedy the problem, because its ability to manufacture weapons is limited. It is almost completely dependent on the West, not only for artillery, but for every type of major weapons system. Russia, on the other hand, had a formidable capability to manufacture weaponry going into the war, which has been ramped up since the fighting started. Putin recently said: “Our defense industry is gaining momentum every day. We have increased military production by 2.7 times during the last year. Our production of the most critical weapons has gone up ten times and keeps increasing. Plants are working in two or three shifts, and some are busy around the clock.”

  In short, given the sad state of Ukraine’s industrial base, it is in no position to wage a war of attrition by itself. It can only do so with Western backing. But even then, it is doomed to lose.

  There has been a recent development that further increases Russia’s firepower advantage over Ukraine. For the first year of the war, Russian airpower had little influence on what happened in the ground war, mainly because Ukraine’s air defenses were effective enough to keep Russian aircraft far away from most battlefields. But the Russians have seriously weakened Ukraine’s air defenses, which now allows the Russian air force to strike Ukrainian ground forces on or directly behind the front lines.

  In addition, Russia has developed the capability to equip its huge arsenal of 500 kg iron bombs with guidance kits that make them especially lethal.

  In sum, the casualty-exchange ratio will continue to favor the Russians for the foreseeable future, which matters enormously in a war of attrition. In addition, Russia is much better positioned to wage attrition warfare because its population is far larger than Ukraine’s. Kyiv’s only hope for winning the war is for Moscow’s resolve to collapse, but that is unlikely given that Russian leaders view the West as an existential danger.

  Prospects for A Negotiated Peace Agreement

  There is a growing chorus of voices around the world calling for all sides in the Ukrainian war to embrace diplomacy and negotiate a lasting peace agreement. This is not going to happen, however. There are too many formidable obstacles to ending the war anytime soon, much less fashioning a deal that produces a durable peace. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict, where both sides continue looking for opportunities to weaken the other side and where there is an ever-present danger of renewed fighting.

  At the most general level, peace is not possible because each side views the other as a mortal threat that must be defeated on the battlefield. There is hardly any room for compromise with the other side in these circumstances. There are also two specific points of dispute between the warring parties that are unsolvable. One involves territory while the other concerns Ukrainian neutrality.

  Almost all Ukrainians are deeply committed to getting back all their lost territory – including Crimea.

  Who can blame them? But Russia has officially annexed Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe, and is firmly committed to keeping that territory. In fact, there is reason to think Moscow will annex more Ukrainian territory if it can.

  The other Gordian knot concerns Ukraine’s relationship with the West. For understandable reasons, Ukraine wants a security guarantee once the war ends, which only the West can provide. That means either de facto or de jure membership in NATO, since no other countries can protect Ukraine. Virtually all Russian leaders, however, demand a neutral Ukraine, which means no military ties with the West and thus no security umbrella for Kyiv. There is no way to square this circle.

  There are two other obstacles to peace: nationalism, which has now morphed into hypernationalism, and the complete lack of trust on the Russian side.

  Nationalism has been a powerful force in Ukraine for well over a century, and antagonism toward Russia has long been one of its core elements. The outbreak of the present conflict on 22 February 2014 fueled that hostility, prompting the Ukrainian parliament to pass a bill the following day that restricted the use of Russian and other minority languages, a move that helped precipitate the civil war in the Donbass.

  Russia’s annexation of Crimea shortly thereafter made a bad situation worse. Contrary to the conventional wisdom in the West, Putin understood that Ukraine was a separate nation from Russia and that the conflict between the ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers living in the Donbass and the Ukrainian government was all about “the national question.”

  The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which directly pits the two countries against each other in a protracted and bloody war has turned that nationalism into hypernationalism on both sides. Contempt and hatred of “the other” suffuses Russian and Ukrainian society, which creates powerful incentives to eliminate that threat – with violence if necessary. Examples abound. A prominent Kyiv weekly maintains that famous Russian authors like Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Boris Pasternak are “killers, looters, ignoramuses.”

  Russian culture, says a prominent Ukrainian writer, represents “barbarism, murder, and destruction …. Such is the fate of the culture of the enemy.”

  Predictably, the Ukrainian government is engaged in “de-Russification” or “decolonization,” which involves purging libraries of books by Russian authors, renaming streets that have names with links to Russia, pulling down statues of figures like Catherine the Great, banning Russian music produced after 1991, breaking ties between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, and minimizing use of the Russian language. Perhaps Ukraine’s attitude toward Russia is best summed up by Zelensky’s terse comment: “We will not forgive. We will not forget.”

  Turning to the Russian side of the hill, Anatol Lieven reports that “every day on Russian TV you can see hate-filled ethnic insults directed at Ukrainians.”

  Unsurprisingly, the Russians are working to Russify and erase Ukrainian culture in the areas that Moscow has annexed. These measures include issuing Russian passports, changing the curricula in schools, replacing the Ukrainian hryvnia with the Russian ruble, targeting libraries and museums, and renaming towns and cities.

  Bakhmut, for example, is now Artemovsk and the Ukrainian language is no longer taught in schools in the Donetsk region.

  Apparently, the Russians too will neither forgive nor forget.

  The rise of hypernationalism is predictable in wartime, not only because governments rely heavily on nationalism to motivate their people to back their country to the hilt, but also because the death and destruction that come with war – especially protracted wars – pushes each side to dehumanize and hate the other. In the Ukraine case, the bitter conflict over national identity adds fuel to the fire.

  Hypernationalism naturally makes it harder for each side to cooperate with the other and gives Russia reason to seize territory that is filled with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. Presumably, many of them would prefer living under Russian control, given the animosity of the Ukrainian government toward all things Russian. In the process of annexing these lands, the Russians are likely to expel large numbers of ethnic Ukrainians, mainly because of fear that they will rebel against Russian rule if they remain. These developments will further fuel hatred between Russians and Ukrainians, making compromise over territory practically impossible.

  There is a final reason why a lasting peace agreement is not doable. Russian leaders do not trust either Ukraine or the West to negotiate in good faith, which is not to imply that Ukrainian and Western leaders trust their Russian counterparts. Lack of trust is evident on all sides, but it is especially acute on Moscow’s part because of a recent set of revelations.

  The source of the problem is what happened in the negotiations over the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, which was a framework for shutting down the conflict in the Donbass. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel played the central role is designing that framework, although they consulted extensively with both Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Those four individuals were also the key players in the subsequent negotiations. There is little doubt that Putin was committed to making Minsk work. But Hollande, Merkel, and Poroshenko – as well as Zelensky – have all made it clear that they were not interested in implementing Minsk, but instead saw it as an opportunity to buy time for Ukraine to build up its military so that it could deal with the insurrection in the Donbass. As Merkel told Die Zeit, it was “an attempt to give Ukraine time … to become stronger.”

  Similarly, Poroshenko said, “Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war — to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”

  Shortly after Merkel’s Die Zeit interview in December 2022, Putin told a press conference: “I thought the other participants of this agreement were at least honest, but no, it turns out they were also lying to us and only wanted to pump Ukraine with weapons and get it prepared for a military conflict.” He went on to say that getting bamboozled by the West had caused him to pass up an opportunity to solve the Ukraine problem in more favorable circumstances for Russia: “Apparently, we got our bearings too late, to be honest. Maybe we should have started all this [the military operation] earlier, but we just hoped that we would be able to solve it within the framework of the Minsk agreements.” He then made it clear that the West’s duplicity would complicate future negotiations: “Trust is already almost at zero, but after such statements, how can we possibly negotiate? About what? Can we make any agreements with anybody and where are the guarantees?”

  In sum, there is hardly any chance the Ukraine war will end with a meaningful peace settlement. The war is instead likely to drag on for at least another year and eventually turn into a frozen conflict that might turn back into a shooting war.

  Consequences

  The absence of a viable peace agreement will have a variety of terrible consequences. Relations between Russia and the West, for example, are likely to remain profoundly hostile and dangerous for the foreseeable future. Each side will continue demonizing the other while working hard to maximize the amount of pain and trouble it causes its rival. This situation will certainly prevail if the fighting continues; but even if the war turns into a frozen conflict, the level of hostility between the two sides is unlikely to change much.

  Moscow will seek to exploit existing fissures between European countries, while also working to weaken the trans-Atlantic relationship as well as key European institutions like the EU and NATO. Given the damage the war has done to Europe’s economy and continues to do, given the growing disenchantment in Europe with the prospect of a never-ending war in Ukraine, and given the differences between Europe and the United States regarding trade with China, Russian leaders should find fertile ground for causing trouble in the West.

  This meddling will naturally reinforce Russophobia in Europe and the United States, making a bad situation worse.

  The West, for its part, will maintain sanctions on Moscow and keep economic intercourse between the two sides to a minimum, all for the purpose of harming Russia’s economy. Moreover, it will surely work with Ukraine to help generate insurgencies in the territories Russia took from Ukraine. At the same time, the United States and its allies will continue pursuing a hard-nosed containment policy toward Russia, which many believe will be enhanced by Finland and Sweden joining NATO and the deployment of significant NATO forces in eastern Europe.

  Of course, the West will remain committed to bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, even if that is unlikely to happen. Finally, U.S. and European elites are sure to retain their enthusiasm for fostering regime change in Moscow and putting Putin on trial for Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

  Not only will relations between Russia and the West remain poisonous moving forward, but they will also be dangerous, as there will be the ever-present possibility of nuclear escalation or a great-power war between Russia and the United States.

  The Destruction of Ukraine

  Ukraine was in severe economic and demographic trouble before the war began last year.

  The devastation inflicted on Ukraine since the Russian invasion is horrific. Surveying events during the war’s first year, the World Bank declares that the invasion “has dealt an unimaginable toll on the people of Ukraine and the country’s economy, with activity contracting by a staggering 29.2 percent in 2022.” Unsurprisingly, Kyiv needs massive injections of foreign aid just to keep the government running, not to mention fighting the war. Furthermore, the World Bank estimates that damages exceed $135 billion and that roughly $411 billion will be needed to rebuild Ukraine. Poverty, it reports, “increased from 5.5 percent in 2021 to 24.1 percent in 2022, pushing 7.1 million more people into poverty and retracting 15 years of progress.”

  Cities have been destroyed, roughly 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and about 7 million are internally displaced. The United Nations has confirmed 8,490 civilian deaths, although it believes that the actual number is “considerably higher.”

  And surely Ukraine has suffered well over 100,000 battlefield casualties.

  Ukraine’s future looks bleak in the extreme. The war shows no signs of ending anytime soon, which means more destruction of infrastructure and housing, more destruction of towns and cities, more civilian and military deaths, and more damage to the economy. And not only is Ukraine likely to lose even more territory to Russia, but according to the European Commission, “the war has set Ukraine on a path of irreversible demographic decline.”

  To make matters worse, the Russians will work overtime to keep rump Ukraine economically weak and politically unstable. The ongoing conflict is also likely to fuel corruption, which has long been an acute problem, and further strengthen extremist groups in Ukraine. It is hard to imagine Kyiv ever meeting the criteria necessary for joining either the EU or NATO.

  US Policy toward China

  The Ukraine war is hindering the U.S. effort to contain China, which is of paramount importance for American security since China is a peer competitor while Russia is not.

  Indeed, balance-of-power logic says that the United States should be allied with Russia against China and pivoting full force to East Asia. Instead, the war in Ukraine has pushed Beijing and Moscow close together, while providing China with a powerful incentive to make sure that Russia is not defeated and the United States remains tied down in Europe, impeding its efforts to pivot to East Asia.

  Conclusion

  It should be apparent by now that the Ukraine war is an enormous disaster that is unlikely to end anytime soon and when it does, the result will not be a lasting peace. A few words are in order about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation.

  The conventional wisdom about the war’s origins is that Putin launched an unprovoked attack on 24 February 2022, which was motivated by his grand plan to create a greater Russia. Ukraine, it is said, was the first country he intended to conquer and annex, but not the last. As I have said on numerous occasions, there is no evidence to support this line of argument, and indeed there is considerable evidence that directly contradicts it.

  While there is no question Russia invaded Ukraine, the ultimate cause of the war was the West’s decision – and here we are talking mainly about the United States – to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. The key element in that strategy was bringing Ukraine into NATO, a move that not only Putin, but the entire Russian foreign policy establishment, saw as an existential threat that had to be eliminated.

  It is often forgotten that numerous American and European policymakers and strategists opposed NATO expansion from the start because they understood that the Russians would see it as a threat, and that the policy would eventually lead to disaster. The list of opponents includes George Kennan, both President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Perry, and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, Paul Nitze, Robert Gates, Robert McNamara, Richard Pipes, and Jack Matlock, just to name a few.

  At the NATO summit in Bucharest In April 2008, both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed President George W. Bush’s plan to bring Ukraine into the alliance. Merkel later said that her opposition was based on her belief that Putin would interpret it as a “declaration of war.”

  Of course, the opponents of NATO expansion were correct, but they lost the fight and NATO marched eastward, which eventually provoked the Russians to launch a preventive war. Had the United States and its allies not moved to bring Ukraine into NATO in April 2008, or had they been willing to accommodate Moscow’s security concerns after the Ukraine crisis broke out in February 2014, there probably would be no war in Ukraine today and its borders would look like they did when it gained its independence in 1991. The West made a colossal blunder, which it and many others are not done paying for.

  *  *  *

  This paper was written to serve as the basis for public talks I have given or will give on the Ukraine conflict.

  Subsribe to John’s must-read substack here

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 21:40

• Demographic Change Accelerates In The US
  Demographic Change Accelerates In The US

  According to a recent release by the 2020 Census, demographic change has accelerated in the United States in the past 10 years. Especially the group of those aged 65 years and older has grown more quickly, the data shows.

  While in the year 2010, 12.8 percent of Americans were 65 years or older, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes that had jumped up by 4 percentage points to 16.8 percent as of 2020.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  In previous decades, the relative size of the age group had remained more stable.

  At the same time, the share of Americans under the age of 25 took a bigger dip than usual, decreasing by 2.8 percentage points to 31.5 percent of the population. Previously, changes in the cohort size had stayed below 1 percentage point per decade.

  Major changes to age groups are not unprecedented in the U.S. as numbers from the 1990 Census (compared to the 1980 Census) show. Between the two installments of the count, the last big cohorts of the Baby Boomer generation, which were born around the year 1960, aged out of the under-25 demographic, resulting in a major drop of of young people in the country by more than 5 percentage points. At the same time, the number of those 65 years or older increased. This was due to the larger pre-war age groups born before 1925 having hit their retirement age by 1990. However, the increase was smaller at 1.3 percentage points, even then showcasing the immense demographic power of the Baby Boomers that is now again being felt.

  United States is only at the beginning of its journey towards demographic change.

  The world’s most prominent aging society, Japan, already counted a 28.5 percent share of residents who were 65 or older in 2020, while Italy, Greece, Germany and Finland were looking at more than 22 percent each for this metric.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 21:20

• National Geographic Magazine Lays Off Remaining Staff Writers: Report
  National Geographic Magazine Lays Off Remaining Staff Writers: Report

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

  Disney-owned National Geographic magazine has laid off the last of its staff writers and replaced them with freelancers, according to reports, making it the latest media outlet to slash jobs amid an uncertain economic environment.

  Following job cuts earlier this year, just 19 members of the editorial department had remained at the publication, according to The Washington Post. The remaining staff members were reportedly notified of the upcoming terminations back in April.

  The latest layoffs are the second within months as parent company Disney looks to cut costs. Back in September, the award-winning Washington-based magazine also reportedly laid off six top editors who specialized in an array of popular topics such as travel, science, and the environment.

  A spokesperson for the publication confirmed the latest departures in a statement to TheWrap but stopped short of stating exactly how many staffers were let go.

  “National Geographic will continue to publish a monthly magazine that is dedicated to exceptional multi-platform storytelling with cultural impact,” the spokesperson said.

  “Staffing changes will not change our ability to do this work, but rather give us more flexibility to tell different stories and meet our audiences where they are across our many platforms. Any insinuation that the recent changes will negatively impact the magazine, or the quality of our storytelling, is simply incorrect,” they continued.

  Multiple writers also confirmed their departure from the publication on Twitter, including Senior writer Craig Welch, who tweeted that National Geographic is “laying off all of its staff writers.”

  

  Gilbert M. Grosvenor managed National Geographic magazine that offered windows to the world from explorations of space to ocean depths. (Ralf Liebhold/Shutterstock)

  Staffers Confirm Departures

  Welch confirmed he is among those to depart.

  “I’ve been so lucky. I got to work with incredible journalists and tell important, global stories. It’s been an honor,” he wrote.

  Elsewhere, former writer Nina Strochlic tweeted that it had been an “epic run,” adding that she and her colleagues had been “unbelievably lucky to be the last-ever class of staff writers.”

  Douglas Main, a senior writer and editor at the publication, also took to Twitter to share about his departure from the publication.

  “National Geographic is laying off its staff writers, including me. It’s been a wonderful five years—an honor and a joy. Very proud of the work that my colleagues and I have done here,” he wrote, adding “We were informed about this a while ago.”

  Going forward, assignments will be contracted by freelancers or pieced together by the remaining editors, The Washington Post reports. The latest job cuts also eliminated the magazine’s small audio department, the publication said.

  Additionally, National Geographic will no longer be sold on newsstands throughout the United States starting next year as part of further cost-cutting measures, according to the Washington Post.

  The Epoch Times has contacted National Geographic for further comment.

  National Geographic had just under 1.8 million subscribers at the end of 2022, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

  

  The CNN center is seen in downtown Atlanta, Ga., on Oct. 16, 2021. (Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images)

  More Media Layoffs

  The magazine is predominantly owned by Disney, which acquired a majority stake in the publication in 2019 as part of a $71 billion deal to purchase 21st Century Fox assets.

  Back in November, the publication’s new editor-in-chief Nathan Lump told Axios that the company had no plans to slash its monthly print magazine publishing schedule but would be investing more in social media— sharing more short-form videos across platforms like TikTok and Instagram—in an effort to modernize.

  “We feel good about our monthly cadence,” Lump said at the time. “Our incredible social reach is largely based on our strength on Instagram, which is based on our strength in photography, which is great,” he said.

  “But obviously, we know that video is driving a lot of engagement in social, and that’s where a lot of growth is in terms of engagement and users and social platforms. And so we need to put a lot more emphasis there,” Lump added.

  The latest job cuts at the award-winning magazine come amid a string of layoffs in the media industry.

  In November, CNN launched a second round of layoffs, and a month later in December, Buzzfeed said that it planned to cut 15 percent of its workforce. Most recently, Buzzfeed revealed it is shutting down its news division entirely as part of those cost-cutting efforts.

  The VICE Media Group (VMG) has also laid off more than 100 employees and canceled its flagship “Vice News Tonight” program. In May, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

  A string of other publications, including Bloomberg, Gannett, Insider Inc., NPR, The Hollywood Reporter, The Washington Post, and Fox, have also announced job cuts in an effort to save costs as digital advertising revenue has plummeted and operating costs have surged.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 21:00

• The State Of Global Peace
  The State Of Global Peace

  The 2023 edition of the Global Peace Index released by The Institute for Economics and Peace has found that global peacefulness has declined for the 13th time in the last 15 years.

  It ranks peace levels using 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators across 163 independent states and territories, covering 99.7 percent of the world’s population. This time around, peace has deteriorated in 79 countries while the situation has improved in 84.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, Iceland was once again the top-ranked country for peace in 2023, a position it has held since 2008. It is joined at the top of the index by New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, Austria and Singapore. By contrast, the United States only managed to land in spot 131. Afghanistan was at the very bottom of the index, preceded by Yemen and Syria.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Kazakhstan, Oman and Cote d’Ivore gained the most ranks this year compared to 2022. Kazakhstan had been on the most deteriorated list last year after violent unrest, but gained back its losses. Eswatini, on the other hand, appeared among the biggest losers for the second year in a row among violence that is accompanying anti-monarchy protests. While not among the biggest risers, India appeared in the “medium” category after having previously been listed as “low”.

  The current conflict in Ukraine had the country fall 17 spots into rank 153 in 2022 and further into rank 157 in 2023.

  As Ukraine had been ranked poorly for years due to the conflict in Eastern Ukraine that preceeded the Russian invasion, other countries deteriorated more on the index.

  The nations losing the most ranks in 2023 were Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea and Sri Lanka.

  The latter country lost its status as one of 2022’s fast climbers as an successful security and anti-terrorism agenda was followed by economic decline, violent protests and the ouster of the government last July.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 20:40

• To Unions, Organizing Time Is Fine When It's On The Taxpayers' Dime
  To Unions, Organizing Time Is Fine When It’s On The Taxpayers’ Dime

  Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClear Wire,

  Randi Weingarten, the powerful president of the American Federation of Teachers, hasn’t been a working teacher in more than a quarter of a century. 

  

  Of the six years she spent teaching social studies, half of them appear to have been as a substitute. Yet despite the long absence from her short tenure in the classroom, the union leader described herself during a recent congressional hearing as being on leave from Brooklyn’s Clara Barton High School. 

  Through her decades of union activism, Weingarten has clocked service time as a public school teacher, enabling her to accrue an educators’ pension on top of the more than $500,000 in annual salary and benefits she earns as a labor executive, according to records obtained by the Freedom Foundation. She would receive about $230,000 total over her first 15 years of retirement, according to the public sector union watchdog’s analysis. 

  Weingarten has called that analysis “completely wrong,” without explaining why. She did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ request, via the American Federation of Teachers’ press office, to clarify where the Freedom Foundation erred. 

  Weingarten’s work arrangement is not uncommon among public sector employees, thanks to a little-scrutinized feature often found in collective bargaining agreements: so-called “official time” or “release time” provisions. Such clauses enable employees to engage in union-related activities full- or part-time during their working hours, while sometimes continuing to earn salary and/or accrue benefits. 

  The practice is also common in the private sector, where many companies pay employees doing union business, according to Peter A. List, editor of LaborUnionNews.com. 

  But critics argue release time for public employees is different for two main reasons. First, it is taxpayers, rather than shareholders, who are picking up the cost. Second, because unions don’t have to pay many representatives, this frees up money for political activities which some taxpayers do not support. 

  Across the federal government, official time diverts more than $100 million in public funds toward union work annually. Combining the cost of release time at the state and local levels, one estimate puts the total bill for public sector union activities as high as $1 billion.

  Proponents of these arrangements say they provide bang for the taxpayers’ buck. 

  The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest public sector union, argues that by fostering labor-management collaboration, official time “reduces employee turnover, improves customer service, [and] prevents costly litigation,” contributing to “[g]ains in quality, productivity, and efficiency –year after year, in department after department.” 

  In congressional testimony, Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution, said that by “establishing vehicles for communications, grievance-airing, and conflict resolution, this paid time … aid[s] in agency operations.” 

  Critics contend these provisions create a costly and potentially unconstitutional publicly funded benefit for unions – without providing any labor “peace dividend.” James Sherk, a labor expert in the Trump administration who helped lead its efforts to curtail federal official time, told RCI that the practice creates an “enormous taxpayer subsidy to government unions,” forcing the public to “pick up a large share of the unions’ basic operating expenses,” while “freeing up resources for them to spend on politics and lobbying.” 

  Sherk disputes the idea that official time makes for more harmonious government, claiming that on the contrary “it encourages unions to drag out negotiations and file frivolous grievances because they don’t have to pay for it.”  

  A Trump administrative executive order taking aim at official time noted that “many agencies and collective bargaining representatives spend years renegotiating CBAs [collective bargaining agreements].” 

  Federal Costs of Official Time 

  Until 1962, federal workers were forbidden to join unions, for fear any strike would threaten essential services and national security. In the years since President John F. Kennedy issued executive order 10988 permitting them to unionize, the public sector would come to be disproportionately organized relative to the private sector. 

  In 1978 Congress granted federal employees performing representational functions official time, enabling them to engage in non-internal union activities like collective bargaining negotiations or dispute resolution processes, while earning their salaries, provided the time so dedicated is “reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest.” 

  Federal workers spent 2.6 million hours on union activities while “on the clock” at a cost of $135 million in taxpayer-funded salary and benefits in fiscal year 2019, the last year for which such data is available. This represented a slight decrease from historical figures, typically totaling three million hours in official time, at a cost of well over $150 million annually. 

  The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which reported these figures, directs agencies to classify official time in four buckets covering time used to: collectively bargain; bargain during the life of a collective bargaining agreement; process grievances and appeals, and; engage in other representational functions. The federal human resources agency found that more than three-quarters of the union-devoted time federal agencies recorded in 2019 covered activities other than negotiating or dispute resolution, falling into this fourth bucket officially dubbed “general labor-management relations” work. 

  Such work might include meeting with management on employment conditions, lobbying Congress, or participating in formal meetings and investigative interviews. 

  The Office of Personnel Management noted in its fiscal year 2019 official time report that it “had no means of confirming” that the data it received from agencies “was a full and accurate representation of official time actually utilized.” Republican lawmakers and appointees have expressed skepticism about the practice, fearing it may be abused, and suggesting that at minimum the lack of detail and transparency about official time usage makes it hard to conduct oversight that would reveal any such issues. 

  House Democrats claim the bulk of official time stems from meetings called for by agency management, and for which “agency management is the primary beneficiary.” 

  A congressional survey of 24 agencies covering 840,174 employees represented by unions found that more than 12,500 such employees used official time in some capacity during fiscal year 2017. Just under 1,000 of these employees spent at least half of their working hours as union representatives. Hundreds, many of whom earned salaries of more than $100,000 per year, were on 100% official time – solely doing union work – ranging from a social worker and pharmacist at the Department of Veterans Affairs to air traffic controllers at the Department of Transportation. Republicans said such employees were “being paid for work they were not hired to do without doing the work they were hired to do.” 

  Local Costs Harder to Deduce 

  Generally, state and local employees like their federal counterparts may also take “release time” to execute union-related work.  

  Unlike at the federal level however, there is not necessarily an Office of Personnel Management collecting and reporting related data. Labor experts say that measuring the full extent of release time across the states is difficult, in part because doing so would require obtaining data not just from state governments, but from more than 36,000 jurisdictions nationwide ranging from cities to school districts, each with specific policies regarding unions and release time. 

  Compiling relevant figures often requires soliciting records from authorities by bargaining unit, a tedious and time-consuming process providing no guarantee of success given not all jurisdictions diligently track release time metrics. Freedom Foundation’s Maxford Nelson, author of the report on Randi Weingarten’s teacher’s pension, said it took him “the better part of a year, mostly waiting on FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests,” just to piece together the story about the single prominent union leader. 

  Weingarten’s union leave arrangement – whereby she accrued time towards her pension but was not receiving salary – is itself the product of a specific collective bargaining agreement. Teachers on leave in other locales may do so subject to different conditions, and for different benefits. Despite these nuances, analyses conducted in recent years do provide an indication as to the prevalence of the practice and the associated costs in at least some locales. 

  A 2017 study of the 77 largest municipalities in the U.S., covering 231 collective bargaining agreements of police, firefighter, and other public employee unions, found that 72% of such unions receive some kind of release time – usually paid for by the city or through cost-sharing arrangements. 

  States and think tanks have performed analyses that provide an incomplete but still telling picture of the nature and extent of these arrangements. For example: 

  • New Jersey’s Commission of Investigation found that over a six-year period from 2006-2011, taxpayers shelled out $30 million in salaries and medical benefits to public sector employees on leave. During a single-year period, 88 government employees operated on full-time union leave, at a cost of over $7 million to the state. The report shows several public employees on long-term union leave who, like Weingarten, nevertheless were set to receive substantial state pensions. 

  • The free market-oriented Yankee Institute found that in 2015, Connecticut employees spent 121,000 hours on union time, at a cost of $4 million to taxpayers. 

  • The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute found that, based on record requests covering fiscal years 2014-2016, three Florida municipalities – Miami-Dade County, the City of Tampa, and City of Jacksonville – totaled annual release time over 100,000 hours, at a cost of $3.5 million to taxpayers. None of the authorities recorded the activity engaged in by those public employees – many of whom spent 100% of their work hours performing union business.  

  • The think tank argues this lack of transparency is troubling because of its findings for example in Missouri that government unions have used release time to lobby public officials for legislation including that antithetical to “employee free choice,” and in Texas that employees spent release time attending barbeques and other recreational events.  

  A 2020 study by the Goldwater Institute which queried agencies in all 50 states found that union officials on release time “routinely engage in partisan electioneering through union endorsements, fundraising, and get-out-the-vote efforts,” as well as “lobby[ing] … on issues that often put them at odds with the governments paying their salaries.” Like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, it too noted that some have been found using release time for recreational purposes, including going on vacation. 

  Jonathan Riches, the Goldwater Institute’s national litigation director, concluded that “there are few arrangements where taxpayer resources, or the resources of nonunion employees, are so clearly outside the control of the public, or so clearly earmarked for purely private activities.” 

  RCI asked both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, two of the largest and most powerful unions nationally, whether there should be transparency for taxpayers regarding public employees’ release time usage, by cost and activity. Neither union responded. 

  Nor did the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, an AFL-CIO affiliate representing more than 1.6 million active and retiree members – the largest and fastest growing public service employees union in the country. 

  The issue of official or release time has taken on a partisan hue as these and most other public sector unions overwhelmingly contribute at the federal level to Democrat causes. In the 2020 election cycle alone, public sector unions contributed $93 million to federal candidates, parties, and outside groups, according to OpenSecrets. More than 97% of those funds went to Democrats or liberal organizations. 

  Stiff Resistance to GOP Opposition 

  Efforts to combat taxpayer-funded union work have enjoyed limited success. President Trump issued an executive order in May 2018 intended to cut official time spending by nearly two-thirds. That order drew the hackles of organized labor, one of several orders that the American Federation for Government Employees said “aimed to kill our union and harm our members.” 

  President Biden rescinded Trump’s official time-limiting executive order on the third day of his presidency. At least one related legislative proposal during the Trump years floundered. 

  On the state level, GOP strongholds including Florida, Montana, Ohio, and Utah all considered bills to limit release time this year. Those bills, however, either did not become law, or the relevant release time provisions did not make it through the legislative process, suggesting the power unions have even in red states.  

  Nelson told RCI that “conservative lawmakers on the whole tend to have less experience and expertise related to labor unions, which can mean that government union reforms face a longer road to passage.” He added that “attempts to limit or regulate release time are fairly new,” suggesting it is common for it to take several legislation sessions for such novel policies to advance. 

  Arizona is an exception. In 2022, its legislature passed into law Senate Bill 1166, barring public employers from spending public funds on union activities, defined as those “advocating for the election or defeat of any political candidate” or “lobbying … to influence the passage or defeat of federal or state legislation, local ordinances or any ballot measure.”  

  The first-of-its-kind legislation was modeled on a bill drafted by the libertarian Goldwater Institute. 

  While several states reassess official time agreements, the Phoenix-based think tank and other conservative legal groups have in recent years been seeking to overturn the practice in the courts.  

  The Goldwater Institute has brought cases in Arizona, New Jersey, and Texas under state constitutional “gift clauses” or “anti-aid clauses,” which prohibit the use of public funds to advance private interests – like those of unions. The landmark Janus 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which ruled it a First Amendment violation for public sector unions to mandate that non-union members pay union fees, has further fueled such litigation, under the theory that if non-union members are forced to fund the release time of their unionized colleagues – as the Goldwater Institute argues occurs in Phoenix, Arizona – this too would constitute a First Amendment violation. 

  Several courts have struck down release time practices as unconstitutional or unlawful, only for decisions to be reversed at the state supreme court level. 

  The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative public interest litigator, sued Milwaukee Public Schools in 2021. It alleged that Milwaukee’s release policy violated various aspects of Wisconsin’s constitution in allowing public funds to be used for a private entity’s private purposes – including union political activities. Milwaukee would amend its release policy to ensure that permissible activities include solely those that are “politically and ideologically ‘view-point neutral.’” 

  Despite public sector unions, and particularly teachers’ unions like Weingarten’s American Federation for Teachers, facing mounting scrutiny for their role in school closures and broader left-wing political activism, the practice of release time has garnered little attention. 

  Lucas Vebber of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty told RCI that when his group brought the Milwaukee case, “I was surprised as to how few people were aware of this policy and just how little was known about it. There seemed to be very little oversight or records available on it. It seemed to be flying under the radar.” 

  Thom Reilly, a professor at Arizona State University and co-author of the 2017 study showing the prevalence of release time practices in America’s major cities, surmises that the opacity is by design. “I think many governments intentionally don’t want to track it because then it would be highlighting a cost that they perhaps don’t want to discuss in public,” Reilly has said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 20:20

• Watch: Police Body Cam Footage Shows Takedown Of Texas Mall Shooter
  Watch: Police Body Cam Footage Shows Takedown Of Texas Mall Shooter

  In May, former security guard and mass shooter Mauricio Garcia shot and killed eight people when he opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets, about 25 miles north of Dallas.  However, he is perhaps best known for being labeled a “Hispanic white supremacist” by the mainstream media due to his apparent interest in fascism (a historically left-wing ideology) and the media’s obsession with trying to link every act of gun violence to conservatives.  The shooting launched a national propaganda campaign asserting that minority shooters are a symptom of white supremacy.    

  Whether you believe this or not, the fact remains that it took a good guy with a gun (a police officer on the scene) to stop the man in his tracks.  The officer’s body cam footage has now been released, showing the moments leading up to Mauricio Garcia’s death.

  NEW — Texas police have released body camera footage of the officer who neutralized the mass shooter at the Allen Outlet Mall without waiting for backup. He goes from telling little kids to wear their seatbelts to running toward the sound of gunshots.https://t.co/op63KPh5X0

  — KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) June 28, 2023

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  In light of events like the Allen Mall shooting it’s fair to ask – If Democrats want to disarm the American public and also defund the police, who will be left to stop mass murderers like Mauricio Garcia?        

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 20:00

• The US Government And The Bidens Are… Wait! Look! UFOs! Aliens!
  The US Government And The Bidens Are… Wait! Look! UFOs! Aliens!

  Authored by Marie Hawthorne via The Organic Prepper blog,

  I watched a lot of X-Files as a teenager.  My best friend had a big crush on David Duchovny, and we would watch episode after episode with Mulder and Scully investigating mysterious situations, usually involving aliens.

  But we knew it was silly. Nobody really believed in aliens, right?  It was just crazy people in the desert that thought UFOs were real.  Or people giving fuzzy photos to the National Enquirer.  Nobody respectable talked about aliens.

  How times have changed. 

  On May 1, a Las Vegas family called the police to say that an alien spacecraft landed in their yard and eight-foot-tall creatures emerged that were definitely not human.  Local police found the family credible enough to install cameras this past week in case the aliens came back.

  Just this week, a New York man provided footage of an alien encounter in his backyard. 

  These reports with supposedly alien footage have gotten a lot of publicity.

  Individuals have been reporting unusual phenomena for years, but they were always dismissed as rubes, or drunks, or conspiracy theorists.  But perhaps the people involved in these more recent sightings have been taken more seriously because of the recent change in tone we’ve seen from not only legacy media outlets like the New York Times but also respected government agencies like NASA. 

  Sightings are no longer the realm of the “crazy.”

  In 2017, the New York Times reported that the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was supposed to have ended in 2012.  However, after receiving bizarre footage taken by Naval pilots of unidentifiable objects maneuvering in ways they had never seen before, the Navy admitted that the program investigating these kinds of incidents was still operating.

  Over the past six years, stories have been slowly dribbling out about various unexplained phenomena.  “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” or UAP, is the preferred term now, rather than UFO.  In late 2019 and early 2020, a series of strange drone sightings occurred across Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming.  One of my children and I personally witnessed a bizarre string containing hundreds of lights, not airplanes, moving across the sky.  I knew other people who had witnessed these, as well.  These sightings were extensive and never satisfactorily explained.

  Suddenly, it’s official.

  While sightings such as these remain mysterious, the government has slowly been taking more interest.  On May 17, 2022, the House Intelligence C3 Subcommittee hosted a hearing on UAP, the first in fifty years, some of which were open to the public and posted on YouTube.  

  In June 2022, NASA announced that they were commissioning a study team to investigate UAPs, and it’s filled with renowned scientists.  The team is headed by astrophysicist David Spergel, former department chair for astrophysics at Princeton.  They began a study on October 24, 2022 investigating the best ways to collect and then analyze data regarding UAPs, and expect to publish their study sometime this July.

  The Department of Defense has been taking a closer look, too.  In August 2020, the Under Secretary of Defense authorized the creation of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force. The DoD formed this Task Force to improve understanding of UAPs, particularly any that could affect national security.

  Some of this seems pretty reasonable.  We should probably know what our commercial airplanes and satellites are likely to encounter as they travel through the sky.

  But wait a second…

  However, some people think there might be more to this than pure research.  One member of the UAP Task Force, David Grusch, began providing classified information to the Department of Defense Inspector General in 2021.  He claimed that information regarding UAPs was being illegally withheld from Congress, who were unaware of where funding was going, and the level of technology that had been hidden.  These leaks were reported in The Debrief on June 5.

  David Grusch is no quack.  He was a decorated combat officer in Afghanistan who moved through various government agencies before becoming the co-lead for UAP analysis.  Likewise, the initial reporters at The Debrief, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, have worked extensively for legacy media outlets.  The Debrief is not Weekly World News.

  And yet, some of what Grusch reported on in his News Nation interview sounded totally bizarre.  He described the UAP being denied access to military programs that had recovered technical vehicles of “non-human origin” from crash sites.  Grusch hasn’t provided photographs or documents backing up his claims, but a variety of people from the government, military, and legacy media seem to think he’s totally legitimate.

  What’s really going on here?

  So, what’s going on?  Is the federal government about to finally reveal what they’ve been hiding since the 1940s about different crash landing sites?

  I suspect not.  I watched a few of Grusch’s interviews, and he did not strike me as particularly honest.  Admittedly my opinion doesn’t mean much.  But professional psychiatrist, body-language expert, and YouTuber Dr. G posted an interesting analysis of Grusch’s behavior during his interview here that quantified much of the distrust I sensed in watching Grusch’s interviews.  Grusch may be telling the truth, and Dr. G never accuses him of lying, but he does say that Grusch exhibits many signs of extreme stress throughout the interview.

  I don’t want to say that Grusch is an outright liar. But he’s not the only whistleblower.  Love him or hate him, time has proven Edward Snowden’s claims about mass government surveillance correct.  And he has had thoughts on UAPs, as well.  After digging through government files for years, Snowden is convinced that there is no real proof that the U.S. government has been covering up evidence of UAPs.  

  Of course, I have no hard evidence either way, but I suspect that these news releases are an attempt to distract the general public.  

  

  Distract from what, you might ask?

  There’s a whole list of things.

  Daisy just wrote an article about the very real structural problems in our economy that most people seem to want to ignore. 

  Similarly, most people are aware that undocumented migrants have been entering the U.S. at record levels.  But did you know that our southern border is so porous that migrants now are not simply Mexicans traveling a few hundred miles north; they consist of people pouring in from all over the world? 

  Who destroyed Nordstream, creating one of the world’s biggest environmental catastrophes and seriously damaging the European economy?  Sy Hersh says the Americans did it. The American legacy media blames the Ukrainians. At the end of the day, establishment figures just want this question to go away.  

  Did you know we’re about to hand over huge powers to the World Health Organization?  If this new pandemic treaty gets passed in 2024, and it looks like it will, WHO bureaucrats will be able to declare lockdowns anywhere they want.  Oh, and they’ll be taking 5% of our healthcare budget, too.

  The efforts being made to put former President Trump behind bars have reached banana republic-levels of ridiculousness, particularly when contrasted with the Clintons’ various indiscretions or the Biden family crime syndicate.  This situation gets harder to stomach the more you think about it.  Mainstream media’s solution?  Don’t think about it!  Look, aliens!

  And we just found out that the Chinese are in advanced negotiations with the Cuban government, getting ready to build a military training facility 100 miles from Florida.  Nothing’s finalized yet, but I can’t pretend it doesn’t make me a little nervous.

  And of course, there’s Hunter Biden’s sweetheart-no-jail-time-deal for not paying taxes on $8.3 million in income and federal gun charges. As well, did you know that articles of impeachment were filed against President Biden? (Of course it’s being played off as a far-right conspiracy.)

  There are probably things out there but…

  I absolutely believe that there are objects in the atmosphere, space, or in the deep ocean that we don’t really understand.  But do I think the U.S. is about to reveal a bunch of 80-year-old secrets?  Color me skeptical.  I think it’s far more likely that this is part of the “circus” in the “bread and circuses” phase in the cultural evolution of the American public.

  But I could be wrong!

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 19:40

• Russian Oil Exports Deliver A $1 Billion Per Month Windfall To "Mystery" Middlemen
  Russian Oil Exports Deliver A $1 Billion Per Month Windfall To “Mystery” Middlemen

  One year ago, conventional wisdom was that Western nations would throttle Russian oil exports to starve Putin’s war machine, depriving the Kremlin of much needed cash, tipping the scales of global oil markets into a state of demand imbalance, and sending the price of crude high in the triple digit stratosphere.

  It ended up being just the opposite, and despite the pompous rhetoric and countless “sanctions”, Western government did everything in their power to enable Putin to export as much oil as possible to willing buyers such as India and China. A few days ago, none other than Goldman Sachs explained how the virtue signaling rhetoric of western “democracies” which spent much of 2022 vowing they would cripple Russian oil exports was nothing but one big lie, and meanwhile behind the scenes oil-starved western nations were doing everything in their power to prevent Russian oil from exiting the market, an outcome which they knew would send inflation soaring even more, to wit:

  [Russian] production rebounded sharply by June 2022 as alternative vessels were quickly sourced from the global ‘dark’ and ‘grey’ fleet, that were not reliant on Western financial and logistical services. Eventually, the G7’s price caps on oil permitted any vessel to facilitate Russian oil flows if the cargo was priced below the caps. The key point is that the 2022 disruption was ultimately political in nature, and Western governments had the ability to take actions to reduce disruptions, which they did.

  Goldman explaining how Western governments made sure Russian oil kept flowing (and funding the Ukraine war) pic.twitter.com/J74h5thqzt

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 26, 2023

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  But while the end of the 2022 “political” disruption meant that Putin would gladly receive tens of billions in US Dollars in exchange for Russian oil every month, he was not the only beneficiary: it turns out the “dark” and “gray” fleet referenced by Goldman above – mostly various Greek tanker and shipowners – has also greatly rewarded.

  As Bloomberg writes, while Russia’s main crude grade is still selling well below international benchmarks as a result of the G7-imposed price cap which is a tacit blessing for China and India to buy as much Russian oil as they want, and at a lower price than all other oil purchases around the world, a huge amount of money for delivering it continues to go into the hands of mystery middlemen.

  The country’s flagship Urals grade averaged about $52 a barrel so far this month at the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, according to data from Argus Media, a discount of about $20 compared to Dated Brent (a discount which was as wide as $40 at the start of the year). The G-7 only allows firms to provide key services such as insurance and tankers for Russian oil exports if the barrels cost $60 or less.

  However, what Bloomberg noticed is that the gap between the export price and the import price in India stood at about $12 a barrel so far in June. The size of that spread matters because, multiplied by export volumes, it implies about about $900 million a month is going into the hands of a web of the abovementioned “dark” and “gray” intermediary firms — traders, shipbrokers and tanker owners — whose affiliations are unclear and who are willing to anger the US state department while transporting millions of Russian barrels of oil. The gap has nevertheless whittled down, having averaged $13 in May and $15 in April.  

  

  Even so, Urals is still trading at hefty discounts to international prices. Large amounts of oil trades relative to Dated Brent, a physical price benchmark anchored in the North Sea. Urals averaged about $23 less than the marker so far this month, about the same as in May, but a slightly smaller discount than in April, according to Argus data.

  

  The mystery “commission” delta means that more than half of this Urals to Brent spread is going to enterprising middlemen and “gray” oil merchants who facilitate the sale of Russian oil to India and China.

  The European Union banned seaborne imports of Russian crude back in December, the same time as the price cap was introduced. The prohibition forced Russian barrels to discount to compete for buyers in Asia; however it has done nothing to actually halt Russian oil exports, and not only is “Russia Set to Overtake Saudi Arabia in Battle for China’s Oil Market“, but Russian oil continues to flood global markets. In the process, those “mystery middlemen” are becoming extremely rich at the expense of ordinary European citizens who are being crushed by runaway inflation and who could be buying oil at a much lower price if only Russian crude was allowed to enter every market instead of just India and China, but thanks to their clueless politicians, Putin is keeping energy inflation in the two largest Asian nations subdued while Christine Lagarde continues to hike rates into what is now officially a technical European recession.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 19:20

• Arizona County Elections Director Quits, Accusing Officials Of Politicization
  Arizona County Elections Director Quits, Accusing Officials Of Politicization

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  An Arizona county elections director resigned from her position on Tuesday after accusing officials of politicizing elections and creating a harmful work environment.

  

  The Pinal County government announced the resignation of Elections Director Geraldine Roll, who stepped into the position to oversee the recount process after the 2022 midterm election.

  In a scathing email sent on Tuesday, Roll announced her resignation, expressing her dissatisfaction with County Manager Leo Lew and the toxic work environment she claimed to experience.

  “With no regrets, I quit,” Roll wrote, highlighting her decision as a result of losing respect for her superiors and their failure to support her during times of attack and criticism.

  “When you no longer respect those you work for, it is time to leave. I have watched as you idly stood by when I was attacked,” Roll wrote in the email obtained by AZCentral. “I cannot work for an individual who does not support me. The environment fostered by your team and the Board of Supervisors is toxic.”

  Roll emphasized her belief that the Elections Department “should not be politicized.” She further accused the county manager and the Board of Supervisors of prioritizing “irrational, extremist political party views and rhetoric” over “impartiality, common sense, and dedicated work.”

  “It is a far reach to see how you will deliver clean elections when you bend to a faction of the Republican party,” Roll wrote in the email. “Clearly, politics are the value this administration desires in a place where politics have no place: elections administration.”

  Throughout her career, Roll claimed she had never faced the level of ridicule, disrespect, intimidation, and “attacks on my reputation and ethics” she had endured in recent months, since starting her role less than a year ago.

  County Manager Responds

  Roll’s resignation comes amid ongoing scrutiny and partisan tension surrounding election administration in several counties across Arizona.

  Roll signed her email, “Really, not respectfully.” In further comments to Pincal Central, she claimed she did nothing wrong and clarified that she didn’t resign, she quit. “I think there’s a very big difference,” she said.

  After news of her resignation, Lew, the county manager, issued a statement thanking Roll for her service.

  “I want to thank Geri for her service during very challenging times and for the improvements that she identified and began to implement in the Elections Department,” he said in a statement. “Although I disagree with her assessment, she has been an impactful public servant, and I wish her the best and know that she will continue to do great things in her career.”

  Roll, who had been a part of Pinal County since 2013 and previously served as a deputy county attorney, had not yet overseen any elections in her role after being appointed as the elections director in Pinal County in late 2022.

  During her tenure as a deputy county attorney, she provided legal counsel and guidance to various departments within the county, including the Recorder’s Office and Elections Department. Additionally, Roll had also worked in the Public Fiduciary Office.

  Elections Scrutiny

  Roll took over as Pinal County’s elections director, replacing Virginia Ross, who was transferred to the role in August after a problematic primary election. The primary saw ballot errors and ballot shortages in two dozen polling sites, resulting in the firing of the former director.

  Officials in Pinal County said there was a shortage of ballots at more than 20 voting sites during the primary election in August 2022, which left some voters without the ability to cast votes. County officials attributed the problem to an “unprecedented demand for in-person ballots.” The county’s election agency suggested that people use an “express vote device” instead.

  Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer and Jeffrey McClure, chair of the Board of Supervisors, issued a joint statement to FOX10 saying it was a “major screw-up,” but McClure claimed he has “not seen evidence of a nefarious act.” Instead, he attributed it to “mistakes made on a grand scale.”

  The incident drew the scrutiny of major Republican organizations, the Republican National Committee (RNC), and its chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel.

  McDaniel said at the time that the RNC and Republican Party of Arizona’s poll observer program had documented and reported several “failures” by Pinal County’s elections administrator. This included “63,000 mail-in ballots delivered to the wrong voters and multiple Republican-heavy precinct locations running out of ballots.”

  “This is a comprehensive failure that disenfranchises Arizonans and exemplifies why Republican-led efforts for transparency at the ballot box are so important. Pinal County Elections Director David Frisk should resign immediately,” McDaniel said.

  However, during a general election recount, more errors were discovered under Ross’s oversight, but she had already left the position after receiving a bonus for a seemingly smooth election.

  Roll, who previously worked as a deputy county attorney in Maricopa and Graham counties, and as an assistant attorney general for Arizona, became the county’s elections director.

  Every member of the Board of Supervisors in Pinal County, including County Attorney Kent Volkmer, who was also included in Roll’s email, belongs to the Republican Party.

  Roll was a registered Republican until recently. In a phone interview with PinalCentral, Roll expressed her changed sentiments toward her Republican colleagues, saying, “I can’t be associated with these people.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 19:00

• Where Central Banks Have Issued Digital Currencies
  Where Central Banks Have Issued Digital Currencies

  Central bank digital currencies are controlled by governments like traditional currencies are and therefore represent the polar opposite of the idea of decentralized, self-sovereign bitcoins.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, several small nations and – since October 2021, Nigeria – have launched central bank digital currencies, and several more populous countries are getting ready to jump aboard a different crypto hype train.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The European Union today is proposing a legal framework for its planned launch of the digital euro. According to the Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker by Atlantic Council, concrete plans to launch a CBDC were also recorded in Canada, Brazil and the United States, among others.

  Countries which are already in a CBDC pilot phase include Russia, Thailand, India, South Korea, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, according to the source. It is unclear, however, which of these programs could see a proper launch next.

  CBDCs were introduced even earlier than in Nigeria in Caribbean countries, for example in the Bahamas and nations and territories that share the currency of the Eastern Caribbean dollar. The Sand Dollar of the Bahamas was the first central bank digital currency of the world upon its launch in 2019 and cleared the way for a rapid adoption around the region’s small nations.

  The Chinese digital Yuan pilot made headlines in April 2019, but the project has not moved on since. Like Nigeria, China has a solid digital and mobile payment infrastructure. Large parts of the two countries’ populations leapfrogged card payments and went straight from cash to digital payment options, which became hugely popular – may they be app or text-based. In developing countries, central banks also consider the potential of digital currencies reaching the unbanked.

  Another reason for some governments to champion official digital currencies is the collection of data.

  Ubiquitous digital payments and tight government surveillance have led to a plethora of payment data already available to Chinese administrators. This knowledge on how people spend money will only grow with the implementation of the digital Yuan, even though the country’s central bank has said it will limit traceability and create what it calls “controllable anonymity.”

  These aspects of digital currencies are viewed negatively by Europeans, who according to a survey by the European Central Bank are concerned about payment privacy in regards to the digital euro.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 18:40

• Trump And Attorney-Client Privilege
  Trump And Attorney-Client Privilege

  Authored by Eric Felten via RealClear Wire,

  Curious complications come up when the attorney-client privilege is breached. When Donald Trump was arraigned in Florida on federal charges, a condition of the former president’s bail was that he not discuss the case with anyone who might be a witness. But did that mean Trump couldn’t speak with Evan Corcoran? One of Trump’s lawyers, Corcoran has already testified before the federal grand jury in Florida about his interactions with his client. The testimony was not, it appears, to his client’s benefit. A charge of obstruction was brought against Trump based on the allegation that he misled Corcoran, leading the lawyer, in turn, to make false claims to the federal government. Corcoran “memorialized” the instructions the former president gave him. That is, he took notes – notes the attorney eventually turned over to the special counsel seeking an indictment.

  

  “One of the key witnesses that we know is still the president’s lawyer,” argued one of Trump’s attorneys, Todd Blanche. He told the federal judge that “a special condition that President Trump cannot communicate with his lawyer, obviously doesn’t work, respectfully, your honor.”

  It wasn’t the first time Donald Trump has found he couldn’t rely on the attorney-client privilege, or on other expectations of confidentiality in his communications with lawyers. Michael Cohen, it will be remembered, was Trump’s long-time personal lawyer. He had a central role in the Stormy Daniels affair, which led the FBI to search not only Cohen’s office but also the hotel suite where he lived. The documents seized were in the thousands, if not more. Trump turned to Twitter to declare, “Attorney-client privilege is dead!”

  Trump may not be wrong if he thinks the Department of Justice, and Democrats more broadly, have demonstrated a willingness – an eagerness – to put the screws to lawyers representing him. It’s not just Evan Corcoran who looks likely to be called as a witness against him, but also Christina Bobb, who found herself under Justice Department scrutiny within months of joining the Trump legal team last year. Like Corcoran, Bobb was required to testify before a grand jury. Trump White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin were compelled to give evidence to a grand jury not once but twice, despite Trump asserting both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege.

  Corcoran reportedly did assert the attorney-client privilege in an effort not to testify regarding his client and the disposition of boxes storing documents from Trump’s presidency, but federal judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of the government, which argued Trump had forfeited the protection of the privilege by using his lawyer to break the law, in what is known as the “crime-fraud” exception to the privilege.

  The crime-fraud exception holds that a “lawyer may not counsel or assist the client in conduct the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent.” Even so, that exception is limited, according to the American Bar Association. It does not, for example, “require the lawyer to reveal the client’s misconduct” other than in certain circumstances.

  The narrowness of those circumstances is a measure of the protection the privilege has traditionally been afforded, a protection needed for lawyers to do their job at all.

  “A fundamental principle in the client-lawyer relationship is that, in the absence of the client’s informed consent, the lawyer must not reveal information relating to the representation … The client is thereby encouraged to seek legal assistance and to communicate fully and frankly with the lawyer even as to embarrassing or legally damaging subject matter.” The ABA maintains that a “lawyer needs this information to represent the client effectively and, if necessary, to advise the client to refrain from wrongful conduct.”

  Consider the trials and travails of Paul Manafort. Back when Robert Mueller was a special counsel trying to prove members of the Trump team were playing footsie with foreign governments and government officials, Judge Beryl Howell (again) allowed Mueller to force testimony by Manafort’s former attorney. One might say that’s what happens when you forget to report to the IRS millions in foreign payments stashed in foreign bank accounts and fail to register as the agent of a foreign principal when FARA requires it. At least that’s what happens if you are a foreign lobbyist who hitches your star to Donald Trump. It has been observed that the consequences of these behaviors seem to be remarkably different if one is named Hunter Biden.

  What does it mean for defendants who are not celebrities that the crime-fraud exception has been invoked successfully by the government in a case as high-profile as the prosecution of a former president? Are the exceptions to the attorney-client privilege likely to be invoked more often, as prosecutors enjoy the advantage that comes from riffling through a defendant’s legal documents and communications? Or will the government be less aggressive in cases that don’t involve Donald Trump?

  Lisa G. Lerman is professor of law emerita at the Catholic University of America and author of “The Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law.” She says the federal court’s seizure of Trump’s lawyer’s notes isn’t out of the ordinary as a matter of law, but is notable for being clear-cut, and not a muddy judgment call. “The decision about Evan Corcoran’s notes may be the most vivid example I’ve ever seen of a client endeavoring to pressure a lawyer to help him to unlawfully withhold documents and to lie to the investigators,” said Lerman. “It is a textbook case that illustrates a proper application of the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege,” she told Real Clear Politics.

  One experienced Washington litigator interviewed by Real Clear Politics, but who asked not to be quoted by name, is far less sanguine. He says it is all too common for prosecutors to try to get their hands on lawyer-client communications as it is. He worries the eagerness to pursue Trump is leading to the erosion of one of the most fundamental norms in Anglo-American law. “The protection of communications between lawyers and their clients is the foundation of our legal system,” he said, adding he was “shocked” by how thoroughly the privilege has been breached in the Trump case.

  “It’s possible that judges have become more willing to consider whether communications fall within the exceptions,” says William H. Simon, professor of law emeritus at Columbia Law School. He told RealClearPolitics that there may not be any change going on in how the exceptions to the privilege are enforced, but the fight over lawyer confidentiality may simply be more visible because of the very public nature of Trump’s conflict with prosecutors, or because of what Simon calls “the flagrancy of his contempt for law.”

  Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law, scoffs at the notion courts are setting a bad precedent in denying the former president the right to confidentiality in his conversations with his lawyers. “Application of the exception to Trump’s communications with his lawyers will not in the slightest affect the privilege,” Gillers told RealClearPolitics. “It is no different from application of the exception to communications of hundreds of other defendants with their lawyers over the decades, with no dilution of the protection of the privilege where there is no crime or fraud.”

  But when it comes to clients other than Trump, legal professionals are far more zealous in arguing the importance of the privileges that come with their position.

  Last year, Congress considered new limits on lawyer-client confidentiality. Lawmakers nearly passed legislation, the Enablers Act, that would have required attorneys to alert regulators and prosecutors of any fishy financial transactions by their clients. Lawyers would have been treated like bankers, required to do due diligence about their clients and report any “suspicious activities.” The legal profession went into overdrive, pushing back against what it saw as a threat to the privilege that distinguishes lawyers from other professionals, the privilege of confidentiality that makes attorneys more like priests than mere businessmen.

  “The attorney-client privilege and the lawyer’s ethical duty of confidentiality are bedrock legal principles that have been developed and enforced by the courts and that lawyers are required to follow,” the ABA emphasized in a letter to senators. “Both principles enable clients to communicate with their lawyers in confidence, which is essential to preserving clients’ fundamental right to the effective assistance of counsel.”

  As for the Supreme Court, it has not set these boundaries definitively. In a unanimous 1933 decision, the justices noted in passing that the “privilege takes flight if the relation is abused.” The court added, “A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told.”

  Yet that case, Clark v. United States, did not involve attorney-client privilege at all. It was about juror misconduct; Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who wrote the opinion, was merely using attorney-client privilege as an analogy.

  More recently, the court had shored up the principle. In Upjohn v. U.S., the court noted, “The attorney-client privilege is the oldest of the privileges for confidential communications known to the common law.” Its purpose? To “encourage full and frank communication between attorneys and their clients, and thereby promote broader public interests in the observance of law and administration of justice.” The high court ruled that the attorney-client “privilege recognizes that sound legal advice or advocacy serves public ends and that such advice or advocacy depends upon the lawyer’s being fully informed by the client.”

  If the trials of Trump do lead to the erosion of the attorney-client privilege, we will see yet another important legal norm damaged, not, perhaps by Trump himself, but by those determined to see him punished and ruined. Which leaves the question: If the protections traditionally afforded defendants are weakened, will the blame be Trump’s or his pursuers?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 18:20

• Hunger Risk Hotspots Around The World
  Hunger Risk Hotspots Around The World

  The UN’s latest Hunger Hotspots report highlights the countries where substantial parts of the population are experiencing severe food insecurity and where this is at risk of deteriorating further.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the report sees the biggest problems or the risk of their development – defined as food catastrophe or the lack of food after all coping strategies have been exhausted – in Africa’s Sahel Zone (Burkina Faso, Mali) as well as in Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Haiti and Afghanistan.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  A cluster of factors, which for most countries consist of a combination of economic shocks, conflict and insecurity as well as displacement and natural catastrophes, was identified by the UN as the cause of severe food insecurity.

  Food emergency and the risk thereof was found in other parts of Africa – namely in Ethiopia, Kenya, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – as well as in Syria, Pakistan and Myanmar.

  It is defined as the stage of food insecurity in which households are using up their last resources, like selling belongings, to cope with gaps in their food supply. Other countries with acute food security issues that are deteriorating can be found in Central America.

  On top of them, the UN has place a handful of countries on a monitoring list, mostly because of a lack of data.

  These countries include several more in Africa, Venezuela and Colombia (where Venezuelan out-migration is causing issues) and also North Korea. In the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the latter country has once more limited the movement of any people or goods across its borders to a minimum, also restricting the flow of information about the condition of its population.

  There have been reports, however, about acute lack of food and starvation deaths in the country, most recently by ways of a BBC report secretly gathering interviews in North Korea.

  After a devastating famine which is suspected to have killed around 3 million in the 1990s, the country had opened its borders to food and other shipments, which created the possibility of informal trade and smuggling in the tightly controlled regime and allowed people to satisfy their needs on the black market to a higher degree. With the border once again controlled very tightly, North Koreans have been reported to lack food as well as the income to buy it as avenues to gain money outside of official channels have been largely exhausted. Radio Free Asia reported based on accounts of North Korean officials that violence against police attempting to extract bribes was increasing in the country as citizens are fighting tooth and nail for scare resources.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 18:00

• Inevitable Suppression Awaits The RFK Jr. Movement
  Inevitable Suppression Awaits The RFK Jr. Movement

  Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

  On the surface, there seem to be plenty of reasons as to why the Right should support, directly or tacitly, the quixotic bid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President of the United States.

  The hopelessness of his campaign might be the biggest one.

  

  The Enemy of My Enemy?

  Many conservative commentators suggest that RFK Jr. is worth supporting because he represents a more “conservative” brand of Democrat than any presidential candidate since Jim Webb in 2016.

  And indeed, on a handful of cultural touchstone issues, the son of the late senator and would-be president of the same name does seem to agree with the Right: Most prominently, he has been critical of efforts to mandate COVID-19 vaccines. He also has spoken out against the rise of transgenderism. And he has engaged with such free-thinkers of the Internet as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, which in turn have led to him getting censored by Big Tech, an achievement often limited exclusively to conservatives.

  Furthermore, his status as the latest standard-bearer of the outsider Democratic candidate waging a one-man war against the party machine also will naturally draw a lot of conservative sympathy, if not support, due to the Right’s universal opposition to Joe Biden. The previous symbol of this resistance to the Democrat Party elite was Bernie Sanders, who also had the race for the nomination rigged against him not once, but twice.

  But, ironically, the aging socialist senator from Vermont was probably more ideologically aligned with President Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden – or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for that matter. Sanders, for his many flaws, was nearly in complete agreement with Trump when it came to trade and tariffs, as both were opposed to such free trade deals as NAFTA and TPP. They shared a similar outlook on foreign policy, in favor of non-interventionism. And, once upon a time, Sanders was just as critical of open borders and mass immigration as Trump was.

  Kennedy, by contrast, harbors views that are just as dangerous as Sanders’, if not even more so. He once advocated for passing a law that would “punish” anyone who doesn’t accept the pseudo-scientific belief that is global warming. He tows the party line on many other issues too, including his pro-choice stance when it comes to the ongoing abortion battle.

  And, for a man who claims to be in complete opposition to the Deep State, JFK’s nephew once eagerly parroted all of the same DNC talking points when it came to the “Russian collusion” conspiracy theory against Trump, thus propping up one of the biggest Deep State lies of all time.

  RFK’s Pyrrhic Victories

  If conservatives shouldn’t support RFK Jr. based on his politics or ideology, then perhaps they’d be better off supporting the idea of his campaign rather than what he actually stands for: Giving Biden a political black eye ahead of the 2024 general election.

  In principle, Kennedy represents a rare formidable challenge to a sitting president. As far as politics go, it’s practically a law of physics that an incumbent president who faces a serious primary challenger goes on to lose re-election. Just ask George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. The most recent of these, when the great Pat Buchanan challenged Bush Sr. in 1992, saw Buchanan take 23% of the GOP primary vote; despite not even winning a single primary, his strong showing revealed cracks in the elder Bush’s armor, and he went on to lose the general election to Bill Clinton.

  Kennedy is, for the time being, on track to not only win several primaries, but to win the very first two contests. In a blatant effort to pander to black voters by moving states with greater black populations, like South Carolina and Georgia, to the front of the DNC’s 2024 primary calendar, the overwhelmingly White states of Iowa and New Hampshire, the historic first-in-the-nation caucuses and primaries, respectively, have effectively been told by Biden and the national Democratic Party to shove it.

  Unfortunately for the Democrats, all four states at the heart of the intra-party feud – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Georgia – are completely controlled by Republicans, from the legislatures to the governors. Naturally, none of them appear ready to formally change their respective primary dates to align with the DNC’s wishes, thus meaning that Iowa and New Hampshire will still go first, with South Carolina and Georgia set further back where they belong.

  In a stunning display of arrogance, Biden and his team have declared that, if their demands for the primary calendar are not met, his campaign will deliberately stay off of the ballots in Iowa and New Hampshire in a show of “solidarity” with the DNC, effectively conceding these races to Kennedy. But, as Axios notes, the party apparatus has a plan in place for this too: In the event that Kennedy takes the first two contests by default, the DNC will simply reduce the total number of delegates awarded to the winner of these states.

  Pulling Back the Curtain

  What this means is that, in the end, the party machine apparently doesn’t even care if Biden is embarrassed on the national stage by losing the first two primary contests, a feat that has never been achieved by a sitting president in modern history. If he does indeed lose these states, the party will essentially just change the rules to ensure that they don’t even mean that much in the grand scheme of things.

  And this goes back to the biggest similarity between RFK Jr. and Bernie Sanders: Not an ideological one, but a tactical one. Like Sanders, Kennedy appears on track to have the Democratic primaries completely rigged against him from the top down; a rather ironic twist of fate for a member of the Kennedy family, which has previously rigged elections in its favor.

  First the DNC stole the nomination from Sanders in 2016, courtesy of the almighty “superdelegates.” Then in 2020, as Sanders won the popular vote in all of the first three contests and appeared to be on an inevitable march to the nomination at last, the party leadership employed an even more overt method for stopping him: Forcing other candidates to strategically withdraw, while others strategically remained in the race.

  Two of the candidates who had performed well in Iowa and New Hampshire – Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, considered more “moderate” candidates who spoiled Biden in the primaries – suddenly dropped out within 24 hours of each other and endorsed Biden. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren – a hardcore progressive who was widely seen as siphoning more votes from Sanders than anyone else – remained stubbornly in the race.

  This was no coincidence, and the subsequent results made that clear. After losing three of the four early contests, Biden had a “miraculous” turnaround in the Democrats’ Super Tuesday contests. Of the 14 states that voted on March 3rd, Biden won 10 to Sanders’ 4. However, four of the states that Biden won – Maine, Massachusetts (Warren’s home state), Minnesota (Klobuchar’s home state), and the crucial delegate-heavy stronghold of Texas – were won by single-digit margins. Had these gone to Sanders, he would have emerged victorious on that day, with 8 wins to Biden’s 6, and perhaps the race for the nomination would have unfolded much differently.

  From rigging superdelegates to strategically-timed candidate withdrawals, it appeared as if the Democrats had reached their peak in terms of how far they were willing to go to rig their own elections, let alone the general election as they did in 2020. But Kennedy’s campaign proves that they are far from done when it comes to constantly interfering in their own contests, even if it’s for the purpose of stopping a man who, by all accounts, is not going to beat the incumbent president.

  The Naked Emperor’s Coronation

  Therein lies the single most valuable contribution of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the political discourse ahead of the 2024 election. It is not his stance on vaccines, nor his censorship by Big Tech, or any of the other actual issues: It will be his inevitable suppression by the Democratic Party.

  For the third time in a row, one of the two biggest parties in the United States will blatantly rig its presidential primaries in favor of its preferred candidate. It was one thing to do so in order to stop a candidate who had a serious shot at becoming the nominee like Sanders; it’s something else entirely to go after someone who is almost guaranteed to become an also-ran (his likely early victories notwithstanding.)

  With the mainstream media fully aligned with the Democratic Party, it’s all too easy for the party to get away with rigging elections against its political rivals, as it did with Donald Trump in 2020. But for many of their own voters, it will be a much tougher sell to explain away yet another example of rigging the election against one of their own candidates.

  As some have acutely pointed out, Kennedy represents a long-gone ideal for many older Democratic voters; this perception is almost certainly because of his name, but that’s not the point. A Democratic Party effort to suppress and ultimately eliminate a member of the most famous political family in modern American history will undoubtedly not sit well with many in the party’s base. These disaffected RFK Democrats may not necessarily turn around and vote for Donald Trump as a result, but they are certainly more likely to sit out the general election altogether, which is still a net loss for the party.

  Most simply, Kennedy’s greatest accomplishment will be to unintentionally expose just what a sham the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating process has become. For all the flaws of the Republican Party, at least they still let the voters decide the nominee.

  Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy will most likely not restore Camelot. But he could expose another corrupt kingdom in the process.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Sweden Allows New Quran-Burning Demonstration Ahead Of NATO Summit
  Sweden Allows New Quran-Burning Demonstration Ahead Of NATO Summit

  Via The Cradle,

  The Swedish government gave approval to organizers of a Quran-burning demonstration outside of a mosque in Stockholm on June 28.

  The decision is expected to draw the ire of Turkey and hinder the Nordic country’s potential NATO membership, as has happened previously.

  

  NATO officials are looking to admit Stockholm into the US-led alliance during the Vilnius Summit in Lithuania next month. Officials have previously clarified that not resolving Sweden’s admission by July would send a dangerous and humiliating message to the security alliance’s enemies.

  Ever since Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and Finland have sought to join NATO as a defense mechanism in the event that the war in Ukraine was to hypothetically expand into Europe.

  Acquiring membership would require a unanimous vote from NATO’s members, but Turkiye and Hungary have voted against the Nordic country’s application.

  Ankara has accused Helsinki and Stockholm of harboring members and supporters of the PKK and its Syrian offshoot, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey deems as terror organizations.

  At the end of March, Turkey granted Finland eligibility to join NATO. Sweden’s admission is still pending.

  Despite high expectations for Stockholm in relation to the upcoming summit in July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently shot down the prospects of Sweden joining NATO over Stockholm’s failure to uphold several of Ankara’s requirements for joining the security alliance, such as recently permitted supporters of the PKK to demonstrate on the streets of its capital.

  Turkey has previously condemned the Swedish authorities for allowing a far-right anti-immigrant group to burn several Qurans outside of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm earlier this year, which resulted in Ankara stalling its decision to permit the country into NATO. 

  Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson described the act of burning the Quran as “extremely serious” and an attempt to sabotage the nation’s NATO application. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 02:00

• Top US Officials Have "First-Hand Knowledge" Of Secret UFO Program: Rubio
  Top US Officials Have “First-Hand Knowledge” Of Secret UFO Program: Rubio

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

  Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has claimed that multiple senior government officials—including Pentagon employees with “high clearances”—are aware of a secret UFO craft crash retrieval program being run by the United States.

  

  The Republican lawmaker made the claims in an interview with NewsNation on June 26, shortly after Air Force veteran and former intelligence officer David Grusch alleged that the Pentagon had discovered dead alien bodies from spacecraft that had crashed.

  “There are people that have come forward to share information with our committee over the last couple of years … I want to be very protective of these people,” said Rubio, who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

  “A lot of these people came to us even before protections were in the law for whistleblowers to come forward,” Rubio said, adding that many of those claimed to have “first-hand knowledge” of the alleged extraterrestrial retrieval program.

  The Florida Republican alleged that some of the whistleblowers who have stepped forward with similar claims to Grusch are public figures with “high clearances” and “high positions within our government.”

  “We’re trying to gather as much of that information as we can … Some of these people still work in the government. And frankly, a lot of them are very fearful of their jobs, fearful [of] their clearances, fearful of their career, and some, frankly, are fearful of harm coming to them,” Rubio said.

  Rubio’s comments come amid an ongoing investigation—led by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.)—into the alleged the secret military UFO program. The committee is expected to hold a hearing on the matter soon.

  

  Government Recovering Remains of ‘Nonhuman Origin’

  That probe was launched shortly after Grusch made his claims regarding alleged extraterrestrial discoveries earlier this month in an interview with NewsNation.

  Grusch previously worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office and was a member of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force from 2019 to 2021.

  In the interview, the senior official claimed to have provided Congress and the Intelligence Community inspector general with classified information about secret UAP programs which he said proves that the government has been recovering partial and intact remains of aircraft of nonhuman origin, as well as their occupants, for decades.

  “These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed,” Grusch said. “Well, naturally, when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots, and, believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it’s true.”

  Grusch stated that he believed it was “totally nuts” after first learning of the alleged program but claimed that over the years, many current and former senior officers had provided him with evidence of the program, including documents.

  

  Pentagon Denies UFO Program Claims

  Despite his claims, Grusch has not yet been able to present any solid evidence.

  At the time, the Pentagon denied Grusch’s claims, with the Defense Department stating that officials had “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

  Asked whether he believes Grusch’s and others’ claims to be genuine, Rubio told NewsNation that he doesn’t find them to be “not credible or credible” because they are simply “beyond the realm of what any of us have ever dealt with.”

  “What I think we owe is just a mature, you know, understanding, listening and trying to put all these pieces together and just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions,” Rubio said.

  The Republican’s comments come after the Senate Intelligence Committee advanced a bill that would pause funding for any government activities involving “unidentified anomalous phenomena” that have not been “formally, officially, explicitly, and specifically described, explained, and justified to the appropriate committees of Congress” or congressional leadership.

  The legislation also states that funding will not be given for such government activities when they involve recovering “unidentified anomalous phenomena craft or pieces and components of such craft.”

  Additionally, the bill instructs individuals currently or formerly under contract with the federal government with knowledge of such activities to disclose all relevant information to Congress and notes that they will not be subject to a criminal or civil action for doing so.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/29/2023 – 00:00

• "Balance-Sheet Recession" Guru Warns Japanification Is Coming To China
  “Balance-Sheet Recession” Guru Warns Japanification Is Coming To China

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

  Richard Koo has become an unexpected celebrity in China these days. All of a sudden, the work of the economist who coined the phrase “balance-sheet recession” to describe the root cause of Japan’s lost decade is highly relevant to what’s happening in China.

  What the Nomura Research Institute economist sees isn’t encouraging: It may take Chinese companies and households many years to cut down debt and restore financial health in a “very painful process.”

  The concept of a balance-sheet recession, which Koo came up with in the 1990s, is simple. After asset markets turn from boom to bust, households and companies need to save to pay down debt. When they do it at the same time, no one spends, which sucks the oxygen out of the economy. In response, the government should step in as the borrower and spender of last resort.

  This week, Koo offered his diagnosis on China. In a speech that went viral on social media, he made a few comparisons between China and Japan’s situation three decades ago. He concluded that the fate of Japanification is highly likely. (The transcript of his speech hasn’t been independently verified, but the view is consistent with his recent interview on CNBC.)

  Richard Koo has been one of my favorite macro thinkers. I have always believed that his thoery on balance sheet recession will prove to be extremely relevant for China one day. Yesterday he gave an extraordinary speech on China’s Japanification risk, below are the main takeaways:

  — Shanghai Macro Strategist (@ShanghaiMacro) June 28, 2023

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

  He noted that both countries experienced a similar housing boom. Once the bubble bursts, the balance-sheet recession starts. The good news, in his view, is that policymakers in Beijing were aware of the issue early on, which makes it likely they will respond to it more quickly than Japan did.

  

  The bad news is that China faces a bigger challenge than Japan did three decades ago. For starters, China’s economy is more reliant on the construction industry. At 26% of GDP, the size of the sectors are comparable in both countries. But the strength of other Japanese industries, such as auto and tech, softened the blow. Unfortunately, China doesn’t have similar industries that could fill in the void left by the housing slump.

  What’s particularly puzzling to Koo is that China’s deleveraging seemed to have started well before the housing bust in 2020. Corporations have stopped borrowing at times since 2015, suggesting something else has sapped the animal spirits of the private sector. (The timing coincided with the government’s supply-side reform that targeted eradicating overproduction capacities in various industries.)

  

  Also, China is facing greater geopolitical risks. While Japan also had economic frictions with the US in the 1990s, the conflict was limited to the trade sector. In China’s case, a full-blown decoupling with the West would mean the nation could only export to poorer economies that make up just 27% of global GDP, which would hold down its growth.

  What makes it even trickier is that China’s population started to shrink at the same time that the housing industry went from boom to bust. In Japan, the population started to decline nearly two decades after the bubble burst. Throw in regulatory uncertainties and lack of subsidies during the pandemic, and Beijing has a bigger problem on its hands.

  What should Beijing do? Don’t waste time on monetary policies, or structural reforms. Instead, focus all energy on fiscal stimulus to keep the economy going, Koo advised. Meanwhile, complete all the unfinished housing projects “at any cost” to avoid a collapse.

  To end the speech, he said: “I hope Chinese policymakers understand and respond to these challenges, because this might be the last chance for China to reach the living standards of the First World.”

  Coming from the man who arguably understands the subject more than anyone else, this is quite a warning to policymakers in Beijing.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 23:40

• Another Middle-Class Spending Barometer Flashes Red: Rolex Prices Near Two-Year Low
  Another Middle-Class Spending Barometer Flashes Red: Rolex Prices Near Two-Year Low

  On Tuesday, President Biden declared the US economy is “strong” and expects no recession. However, in contrast to his forecast, one barometer of middle-class spending habits is flashing red. 

  The Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks prices for the 50 most-traded watches by value on the secondary market, continues falling from record highs reached in April 2022. Prices are below July 2021 levels, approaching the lowest point in two years. 

  

  “Demand for pricey timepieces from the top Swiss brands has cooled amid slowing economies, higher interest rates, and the crash in cryptocurrencies,” according to Bloomberg. 

  

  Watch buying activity can be used as a barometer of middle-income spending habits. If consumers have more money, they will increase purchases of discretionary items like wristwatches. We have also pointed out that diamond prices have plunged. 

  

  We also noted in late May that LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton warned about a slowdown in US growth. At the time, we asked: Did The Luxury Bubble Just Burst?

  So contrary to the president’s claims about a strong economy, mid-tier consumers are dialing back spending on luxury goods. 

  Goldman’s Rich Privorosky recently pointed out, “Something is not quite adding up on the consumer” and asked, “Have we just run out of excess savings and are we returning to replenishing savings?”

  So putting all this together, consumers continue to shun secondary watch markets, pull back on diamond spending, and reduce Gucci handbag purchases. This comes as many consumers have racked up high amounts of credit card debt while paying some of the highest interest rates in decades, depleted savings, and endured two years of negative real wage growth due to the inflation storm. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 23:20

• Trump Plan To Bypass Congress And Starve 'The Deep State'
  Trump Plan To Bypass Congress And Starve ‘The Deep State’

  Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

  Sources close to former President Trump say he has a plan for keeping Congress from ever again forcing him into “disgraceful” and “ridiculous” spending situations. If he returns to the White House, Trump will seek to resurrect authority that Congress stripped from the presidency almost a half century ago. 

  

  What President Nixon squandered, his campaign promises, Trump will restore, namely the impoundment power. “A lot of you,” the former president told a New Hampshire crowd Thursday, “don’t know what that is.” Indeed, few now remember it. 

  Impoundment, if restored, would allow a president, in theory, to simply refuse to spend appropriations by Congress. More than just an avenue to cut spending, Trump sees that kind of authority as key to starving, and thus crushing, the so-called “deep state.” 

  But such a move would fundamentally alter the balance of power, and any effort to restore the long-forgotten authority virtually guarantees a protracted legal battle over who exactly controls the power of the purse. Trump welcomes that fight. Some budget experts believe he won’t get anywhere.

  Regardless, advisors close to the former president tell RealClearPolitics they are drawing up plans to challenge the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act in court, and if that fails, to lean on the legislature to repeal it. The latter would require passing a law to surrender power, something lawmakers are loath to do. 

  Congress already went to war with another president who had expansive views of his own authority. And Congress won. 

  Inflation in the 1970s, the Nixon White House complained, was the result of a profligate “Credit Card Congress.” The California Republican warned Capitol Hill not to spend in excess of $250 billion. When his warning was ignored, Nixon simply refused to spend the appropriated money. A rebuke from the Supreme Court followed when the president impounded funding for environmental projects. But weakened by Watergate, Nixon eventually signed legislation effectively surrendering a power that had been exercised from the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson to Lyndon B. Johnson. 

  Russ Vought, Trump’s last director of the Office of Management and Budget, calls the concession of impoundment power “the original sin” that ensured “the executive branch no longer plays a meaningful role” in the appropriations process. Vought told RCP in an interview that the power of the purse has become “caricature,” where rather than “setting ceilings,” Congress now sets “spending floors.” 

  Hence, Trump’s “unhappy” signature on multiple multi trillion-dollar spending bills. 

  Trump promised he would “never sign another bill like this again” before putting his signature on a “crazy” $1.3 trillion spending bill in 2018. Two years later, he signed another omnibus bill, this one worth $1.4 trillion, that he called “disgraceful.” Both times, Trump justified voting for the bloated bills conservatives loathed by pointing to increased military spending. 

  Restoring impoundment authority, thus giving presidents an option to curb spending beyond just the veto, current Trump campaign and former Trump administration officials tell RCP that was part of the plan for a second term that never came. 

  The former president said he believes the 1974 law that gutted impoundment is unconstitutional, and if returned to the White House, would govern accordingly. 

  “Yes, there’s the effort to have it overturned in courts. Yes, there is the legislative effort, but when you think that a law is unconstitutional,” Vought told RCP, the administration ought to look “to do the bare minimum of what the courts have required,” and “to push the envelope.” 

  Trump did something like this, exercising what Vought called “impoundment-like authorities,” when he froze nearly $400 million in foreign aid to Ukraine, even though the funds were congressionally appropriated. The Government Accountability Office later said that in doing so, Trump violated the law. He was impeached by the House over a phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky concerning the money. 

  Trump’s OMB disputed the GAO ruling at the time, saying the administration was simply its apportionment authority to spend the money according to the most efficient timetable. 

  “The reason why there wasn’t an impoundment was because we did not have the authority just to pocket the money and not spend it,” Vought recalled, saying that if a new paradigm was in place, the administration “potentially would have had the ability to go further and pocket the money.” 

  Trump believes impoundment would be “a crucial tool” in his fight with the administrative state. “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State, Drain the Swamp, and starve the Warmongers,” he said in campaign video first obtained and reported by Semafor. “We can simply choke off the money.”

  His campaign pointed RCP to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security, an entity that House Republicans allege has been involved in censorship of Americans, as a prime example of where dollars could be impounded. 

  But even some conservatives have their doubts. Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that when it comes to cutting spending appropriated money after the fact, there “is a limited amount of wiggle room.” 

  “The idea that a president is going to achieve any sort of significant savings or reduction in the size of the administrative state by exercising impoundment authorities is patently ludicrous,” Kosar told RCP. 

  The policy wonk agrees that the reform Nixon signed into law, mandating a complex and cumbersome budgeting process, seldom works. But without repealing and replacing that law, he said,  “a president flat out refusing to spend money that was clearly appropriated for a particular purpose, saying he just doesn’t want to do it, pretty much would be grounds for impeachment.”

  Linda Bilmes, an assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration, agrees that the current budget process “has become so dysfunctional that it is very ripe for reforms.”

  Now a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she points to the partisan gridlock and numerous government shutdowns that are a feature of the current process. “The number of shutdowns in the entirety of U.S. history before 1974,” Bilmes said in an interview with RCP, “was zero.”

  Congress has been kicking around ideas for some time on how to reform the way they spend taxpayer money. Lawmakers consistently fail to pass individual appropriation bills, opting instead to approve spending all at once with a single bill, usually at the end of year and the last minute.

  Even if the process is reformed, however, Bilmes said that “the basic premise of the law, which is that the Constitution provides Congress with the ultimate authority, is very unlikely to change.”

  She added that although she disagrees with the idea that reducing the national debt requires gutting the Impoundment Act, there is a recent precedent for taming runaway spending. Bilmes pointed  RCP to the agreements hammered out between Bill Clinton and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s. That is possible again. In theory.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 23:00

• From Sea To Shining Sea: How Does Shipping Work?
  From Sea To Shining Sea: How Does Shipping Work?

  Earth’s surface is covered by 71% water, connecting every corner of the world, so it’s no surprise that 80% of global trade is carried by ship. But how does it all work?

  This is part one of Visual Capitalist’s The Shipping Industry: Plotting a Course for the Future, a two-part series for their sponsor Seaspan Corporation about the current state and future of global maritime trade.

  

  

  

  A Bird’s Eye View of Shipping

  The shipping industry provides low-cost transportation options for a wide variety of goods and products, from raw materials to finished consumer products. Briefly, the process goes something like this:

  1. Order received at overseas factory

  2. Order placed in 20-foot container and transported to port

  3. Cargo loaded onto a ship

  4. Cargo crosses the ocean

  5. Cargo arrives at destination

  6. Cargo is offloaded

  7. Cargo clears customs and makes its way to the customer

  In 2022, nearly 11 billion tons of goods took a similar journey, according to data collected by the United Nations in their annual Review of Maritime Transport.

  Now that we have some idea of how the process works, let’s take a closer look at some of the pieces that keep world trade flowing, starting with the global shipping fleet.

  From Tanker to Titan

  The first thing to know about the fleet is that it’s big. In 2022, it numbered 102,899 ships over 100 gross tons, including tankers, bulk transports, and containerships. And it’s growing, and not just in sheer numbers. 

  Containerships in particular have been steadily growing in size since a converted WWII T2 tanker made history in 1956 by strapping 58 containers to its deck, as ship owners chased greater economies of scale. Today’s containerships can carry upwards of 20,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). 

  Too Many Ships, Not Enough Cargo?

  Ship-breaking on the other hand, the process of disassembling ships for parts and raw materials, has stalled. 

  

  Over 2021 and the first three quarters of 2022, the number of containership breakdowns plummeted. With more newbuilds on the way and the World Trade Organization revising global trade growth projections downwards, there might not be enough containers to go around.

  Port Volumes Are Up, but So Is Performance

  And that could be good news for shipping prices, which hit record highs during the supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

  At the beginning of 2022, the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, which tracks ocean freight charges on a collection of routes, hit a record 5109.6, nearly five times the pre-pandemic average. 

  Prices have since returned to Earth, as ports worked to clear their backlogs. Ports processed 857 million TEUs in 2021, up 7% year-over-year. The latest Container Port Performance Index, which tracks total hours per ship call, showed that 172 ports improved their scores in 2022.

  It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, however, especially for North American ports. The bottom three ports on the Index were Long Beach, CA; Vancouver, BC; and Savannah, GA.

  All I Ask Is a Tall Ship and a Star to Steer Her By

  A lot has changed since 1902, when John Masefield wrote that oft-quoted line to describe the call of the sea. For example, the center of global trade has shifted eastward to Asia, where 9 of the 10 busiest container ports are located.

  Seaspan, a worldwide leader in independent management and ownership, is getting ready for the next era of shipping by adding 58 new state-of-the-art vessels over this year and next.

  Stay tuned for the next installment of this series, The Shipping Industry: Plotting a Course for the Future, where we look at how shipping companies like Seaspan are preparing for a low-carbon future.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 22:40

• 5 Revelations From New Report On Jeffrey Epstein’s Death
  5 Revelations From New Report On Jeffrey Epstein’s Death

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A new watchdog report detailed an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s death.

  

  Here are five takeaways.

  Epstein’s Phone Call

  Epstein was found dead in his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on Aug. 10, 2019. The day before, he was allowed to make an unrecorded, unmonitored call, which went against Bureau of Prisons policy.

  Records reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, the watchdog that conducted the probe, show that Epstein dialed a local 646 number after claiming he was going to call his mother.

  Epstein’s mother died in 2004.

  The manager of the unit in which Epstein was being held let Epstein make the call.  The manager told investigations that he dialed a number Epstein provided. A male answered. The manager then gave the phone to Epstein, who was quoted as saying: “Hey, how are you doing? How’s everything?”

  Epstein spoke with the person for about 20 minutes.

  Investigators identified the person on the other end. They sought an interview with the person, who was not identified in the report, but the person declined. A lawyer representing the person said that the person was in Belarus during the call. If true, the call was connected through a local number.

  According to the lawyer, Epstein discussed how the media had been reporting on him. The call also went over “personal things such as books, music, and hygiene while incarcerated,” according to the report.

  “According to the representations by Individual 1’s counsel, Epstein told Individual 1, ‘They are trying to keep me safe,’ and that his case would take a little longer than he originally thought,” the report stated. “He told Individual 1 he loved her, to be strong, and that he would not be able to call her again for another month.”

  Not Monitored

  The manager said he left after handing the phone to Epstein because his shift was over. The manager acknowledged he should have placed the phone on speaker and monitored the call, especially after a male answered, contradicting Epstein’s claim of calling his mother.

  The manager said three individuals were nearby, the officer in charge of the unit for the evening, another officer, Tova Noel, and a senior officer specialist.

  The evening officer said that he was present when the call was made but that he did not overhear the conversation. The officer said that during the call, officers were distracted by unspecified actions by another inmate. Noel said she did not monitor the call. The specialist said he did not witness the call.

  A fourth officer identified by Noel as being around at the time told investigators he did not recall Epstein being in the area or making a call that evening.

  The manager told investigators that he allowed Epstein to make an unmonitored call because he thought Epstein had been unable to obtain documentation to use the normal phone system.

  That was false, investigators found. Epstein had obtained the documentation.

  The Bureau of Prisons northeast regional director said that Epstein making the unmonitored call was concerning because “we don’t know what happened on that phone call.” The call “could have potentially led to” Epstein’s death, “but we will never know,” the director said.

  Prosecutions Declined

  Misconduct by officers, including forging records, led to the death, investigators said.

  Noel and Michael Thomas, for instance, falsified records to show they’d been making required rounds when they actually did not check on Epstein after 10:40 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2019.

  Noel and Thomas entered a deferred prosecution agreement after admitting to falsifying records.

  U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres dismissed the charges in January at the request of prosecutors.

  The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which brought the case, declined to prosecute other employees despite investigators finding they falsified records, the inspector general’s office said.

  Those records included documents on inmate counts and inmate checks on the day before and the day of Epstein’s death, the report stated.

  The attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

  

  

  Moment Epstein Was Discovered

  Officers finally began checking on inmates as they delivered them breakfast around 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2019. That’s when they discovered Epstein.

  Thomas knocked on Epstein’s door but there was no response, prompting Thomas to open it, Noel told investigators. Thomas said that Epstein had an orange string around his neck that was tied to a portion of the bunkbed, leaving him suspended. He ripped the string from the bed and lowered him to the ground before starting to perform CPR.

  “Breathe, Epstein, breathe,” Thomas was quoted as saying by Noel. He was also quoted as saying, “We’re going to be in so much trouble.”

  Noel said she did not enter the cell and that Epstein looked blue, was shirtless, and did not have anything on or around his neck.

  After a lieutenant responded to the area, Noel said, Thomas told her, “we [messed] up.”

  The lieutenant told investigators that after arriving, Noel said that “we didn’t do rounds at 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.” while Thomas said “we didn’t do the rounds. We messed up.” A technician who helped deliver food in the aftermath of the death told investigators that inmates said: “You weren’t making rounds. You killed him.”

  Suicide Determination

  The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner determined, following an autopsy, that Epstein killed himself by hanging.

  Pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, after observing the autopsy, said that the evidence was more indicative of homicide. Epstein had tried killing himself about two weeks prior, according to his cellmate, and Epstein was briefly placed on suicide watch.

  The medical examiner told the Office of the Inspector General that Epstein’s injuries were consistent with suicide by hanging and that there were no wounds that one would expect if Epstein had been defending himself against another person.

  “Epstein did not have marks on his hands, broken fingernails or debris under them, contusions to his knuckles that would have evidenced a fight, or, other than an abrasion on his arm likely due to convulsing from hanging, bruising on his body,” the report stated, citing the examiner.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 22:20

• Trump Would Bar 'Child Sexual Mutilation In All 50 States'
  Trump Would Bar ‘Child Sexual Mutilation In All 50 States’

  Former President Donald Trump told an audience at a Faith and Freedom Coalition event on Saturday that he would sign a law barring transgender surgeries for children.

  

  “Something else I find hard to believe that I have to even say,” said Trump. “It’s so ridiculous. It’s so horrible and so ridiculous. I will keep men out of women’s sports.”

  “And I will sign a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states. Prohibited,” he continued, adding: “And on day one I will reinstate the Trump ban on transgenders in the military. Because a warrior should be focused on crushing American enemies, on being strong, on having the image of being strong.”

  “They have to be powerful. They have to be strong, especially when you see what’s happening in the world today, not catering to radical gender ideology.”

  “I will sign a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states. And on day one I will re-instate the Trump ban on transgenders in the military.”
  — President Trump

  Watch👇the entire speech: https://t.co/m7dgSE7fnT pic.twitter.com/UpVYAvZ0HG

  — Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) June 25, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsTrump also slammed critical race theory, and vowed to cut federal funding to any school which promotes it, or any ‘inappropriate political, sexual or racial content.’

  “Can you believe this? Can you imagine saying this 10 or 15 years ago? I will fight for parents’ rights,” Trump told the crowd, adding “I will fight for the direct election of school principals by the parents, the parents of the school. If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should be able to fire them immediately and select someone who will.”

  Likewise, Trump vowed that he “will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or mask mandate from kindergarten to college.”

  More via The Epoch Times;

  During his 2016 campaign, Trump rarely focused on social issues and instead targeted illegal immigration, taxes, manufacturing, and growing the economy. On the other hand, his chief rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who is polling about 30 points behind Trump—has often focused on social issues as governor of Florida, including signing a bill earlier this year that would prohibit teachers to instruct or discuss sexual orientation or gender issues with small children.

  About a dozen Republican-led states have passed laws or rules that bar transgender medical procedures and drugs for minors, and around a dozen other states are considering other measures. Around 20 states have also banned biological males claiming to be transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

  Earlier this year, Trump said at a National Rifle Association (NRA) event that he would use the federal government to investigate transgender medical procedures and drugs, while accusing top U.S. officials of “pushing the transgender cult” on younger Americans, while “persecuting Christians” and “demonizing patriots.”

  Also at the Faith and Freedom event, Trump stated that he is “proud to be the most pro-life president in American history,” adding, “I took historic action to protect the unborn.”

  “As your President, I will continue to stand proudly for pro-life policies just as I did for four strong years … we cannot be afraid to take on the Democrat extremists, we can’t be afraid. We have to be strong and powerful,” he remarked. “That’s why when I’m reelected, I will continue to fight against the demented late-term abortionists in the Democrat Party who believe in unlimited abortion on demand and even executing babies after birth.”

  At that same conference, Trump touched on the Department of Justice’s charges that were brought against him for allegedly mishandling classified documents. He pleaded not guilty to those counts earlier this month.

  “Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, Communists, and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of courage,” he told supporters, referring to the case.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 22:00

• Dr. Peter Hotez's Funding Linked To Controversial Chinese Military Scientists At Wuhan Lab
  Dr. Peter Hotez’s Funding Linked To Controversial Chinese Military Scientists At Wuhan Lab

  Authored by Kanekoa The Great via Kanekoa News (emphasis ours),

  

  In a groundbreaking revelation, it has come to light that Dr. Peter Hotez, an esteemed vaccine researcher, has been entangled in a web of funding, collaboration, and research with Chinese military scientists potentially involved in the development of COVID-19. The intricate tale weaves together key Chinese military virologists and culminates in the smoking gun evidence surrounding COVID-19’s notorious furin cleavage site.

  At the center of this narrative lies Dr. Hotez, a distinguished professor at Baylor College of Medicine, who secured a substantial research grant (R01AI098775) from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) led by Dr. Anthony Fauci. This grant, amounting to over $1 million per year, supports Dr. Hotez’s project titled “RBD Recombinant Protein-Based SARS Vaccine for Biodefense,” with Dr. Shibo Jiang listed as a Principal Investigator.

  Dr. Shibo Jiang, a professor at Fudan University, boasts an impressive academic background. After completing his Master’s degree from the People’s Liberation Army’s Guangzhou First Military Medical University (广州第一军医大学) and his Medical Doctor degree from Xi’an Fourth Military Medical University (西安第四军医大学微), he pursued postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University in New York from 1987 to 1990.

  

  

  Subsequently, he held various positions at the New York Blood Center’s Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute until 2010, including Head of the Viral Immunology Laboratory. Since then, he has served as a professor at Fudan University’s Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology in Shanghai, China.

  During his time in the United States, Dr. Shibo Jiang also acted as a visiting professor at several prestigious People’s Liberation Army (PLA) universities, including the First and Fourth Military Medical University, the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), and Southern Medical University (formerly known as the First Military Medical University). Despite his collaboration with the Chinese military, he received research grants totaling over $20 million from NIAID under Dr. Fauci’s leadership between 1997 and 2016.

  Professor Jiang, a member of China’s renowned Thousand Talents Plan, actively collaborated with PLA scientists on numerous scientific papers supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the First Military Medical University, and the AMMS. However, concerns have been raised regarding the nature of these collaborations, as a 2020 FBI report indicates that such talent recruitment plans “usually involve undisclosed and illegal transfers of information, technology, or intellectual property detrimental to U.S. institutions.”

  

  Together with Dr. Zhou Yusen, a distinguished PLA virologist and fellow AMMS alumnus, Professor Jiang co-invented multiple U.S. patents and published numerous scientific papers on SARS and MERS coronaviruses, often with the support of NIAID funds. Dr. Yusen, the former director of the PLA’s AMMS Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity at the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, filed the world’s first patent application for a COVID-19 vaccine in China on February 24, 2020, just a month after the country acknowledged human-to-human transmission.

  Why do five publications funded by Dr. Peter Hotez’s R01AI098775 grant list Dr. Zhou Yusen as a co-author?

  “Dr. Peter Hotez was deeply enmeshed with Chinese military scientists at the Wuhan lab. Read this article. Just… wow.”

  –@RobertKennedyJr https://t.co/z1oR9EyOgh pic.twitter.com/aA3cIdrsCU

  — KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) June 27, 2023

  This discovery raises suspicions that the Chinese military may have been working on a vaccine even before officially notifying the World Health Organization about the outbreak.

  

  

  

   

  

  Interestingly, concerns surrounding the origins of the COVID-19 virus intensify when examining the furin cleavage site. Dr. Richard Ebright, a respected molecular biologist, and laboratory director, highlights the unique nature of the furin cleavage, stating that:

  “SARS-CoV-2 is the only member of the SARS-related betacoronavirus group that contains a furin cleavage site. The SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site exhibits unusual codon usage, and the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site is located at a position that previously has been used to engineer coronaviruses having enhanced infectivity.”

  Further compounding the intrigue, Dr. David Baltimore, a renowned US virologist and co-discoverer of reverse transcriptase, expresses his belief that the furin cleavage indicates a laboratory origin for the virus, stating, “When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus.”

  With an esteemed career, a Nobel Prize, and extensive scientific expertise, Dr. Baltimore’s observations carry significant weight. Of additional concern is Professor Jiang’s expertise in inserting furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.

  

  

  Moreover, Professor Jiang and Dr. Lanying Du, another prominent Chinese virologist funded by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Hotez’s R01AI098775 grant, have collaborated on various scientific papers with the PLA’s AMMS and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The untimely death of Dr. Yusen, who fell from the roof of the Wuhan Institute of Virology within three months of filing the patent, further fuels suspicions surrounding the origins of COVID-19.

  Dr. Du, the widow of Dr. Yusen, published at the PLA’s AMMS before migrating to the United States, where she joined Professor Jiang at the New York Blood Center’s Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute. Remarkably, a U.S. Senate report reveals that the data referenced in Dr. Yusen’s patent could not have been generated as quickly as claimed, suggesting that he and his team may have started developing a COVID vaccine as early as November 2019.

  Furthermore, at least five publications funded by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Hotez’s grant list Dr. Zhou Yusen, a People’s Liberation Army officer central to the COVID-19 origin controversy at the Wuhan lab, as a co-author. These findings raise concerns about the connections between Dr. Fauci, Dr. Hotez, Dr. Jiang, Dr. Du, Dr. Yusen, and the Chinese military scientists potentially involved in the origin of COVID-19.

  

  

  

  

  Additionally, both Professor Jiang and Dr. Du have published scientific research for the AMMS, which was added to the U.S. government’s Foreign Entity Blacklist in 2021 due to its use of “biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end uses.” Dr. Hotez’s involvement in this complex situation becomes evident when examining his subcontracted funding for these scientists connected to the People’s Liberation Army and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, particularly in the field of artificially inserting furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.

  During a February 2021 interview, Dr. Hotez discussed their collaboration, stating, “About ten years ago, we got approached by a group at the New York Blood Center led by Shibo Jiang and Lanying Du that had a pretty good idea for coronavirus vaccines.

  

  Notably, in 2013, Professor Jiang and Dr. Du, along with their Chinese military colleagues, demonstrated the artificial insertion of a furin cleavage site similar to the one found in the COVID-19 virus. This study was funded by the Chinese government and a private Chinese biotech company, while Professor Jiang and Dr. Lanying also received funding from Dr. Fauci and Dr. Hotez.

  A study published by Dr. Shibo Jiang, Dr. Lanying Du, Dr. Shi Zhengli, and Dr. Ralph Baric, an American scientist considered a pioneer in gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, demonstrated the introduction of a human protease cleavage site into the spike protein of coronaviruses, enabling cross-species transmission to humans. Notably, this aligns precisely with the furin cleavage site found in the S1/S2 junction of SARS-CoV-2.

  While Dr. Hotez criticizes congressional hearings on the origins of COVID-19, stating that they are “inviting fringe elements to testify and promote outlandish conspiracy theories,” even warning that investigation will “undermine the fabric of science in America,” it is crucial to examine the mounting connections between Dr. Hotez, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Jiang, Dr. Du, and Dr. Yusen with Chinese military scientists, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the suspicious furin cleavage site. This evidence demands a thorough investigation to uncover the truth about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, a truth that holds profound implications for people worldwide.

  

  .

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 21:40

• Bud Light To Permanently Lose Nearly 25% Of Its Business: Analysts
  Bud Light To Permanently Lose Nearly 25% Of Its Business: Analysts

  After self-destructing in the name of signaling virtue, Bud Light is looking at a permanent loss of nearly 25% of its business, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Mitch Collett in a recent Barron‘s article.

  “We believe recent underperformance implies a permanent reduction in ABI’s U.S. business,” writes Collett, referring to Anheuser-Busch InBev, the parent company of Bud Light. “Our proprietary survey data suggests these headwinds are likely to fade even if we do not expect the U.S. business ever to fully recover from its current challenges.”

  Data gathered by Deutsche Bank suggests that 24% of Bud Light consumers no longer purchase the brand, while another 18% are buying less of it.

  “Taken together, our survey data shows that Bud Light as a brand faces significant challenges—particularly with older consumers. However, we believe the forward-looking data sets imply that the challenges will at least partially fade,” wrote Collett, who actually upgraded shares of AB InBev to “buy” from “hold,” with a new price target of $65.92, up from $64.83.

  That said, another analyst, Evercore’s Robert Ottenstein, said Bud Light will “permanently lose” between 15 and 20% of its volume, after which “declines will resume at about the average rate of the prior 10 years.”

  “Budweiser will also see a similar pattern, with consumers lost in 2022 not coming back,” he continued in a note highlighted by Yahoo Finance in which quotes Collett as saying Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch are “at the end of the tunnel” of the controversy.

  In May, HSBC downgraded the stock to “hold” over its “Bud Light crisis,” adding that there may be “deeper problems” at the company.

  “Is ABI’s leadership getting the brand culture transformation right? It’s mixed,” he said. “At Ambev, we think the answer is ‘yes’; in the U.S., we think it’s ‘no.’ The way this Bud Light crisis came about a month ago, management’s response to it and the loss of unprecedented volume and brand relevance raises many questions.”

  

  More via the Epoch Times;

  Since its ill-fated promotional exercise in early April with Mulvaney, a transgender TikTok influencer, Bud Light has seen its weekly sales decline. Recent data from Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen IQ show that for the week ending on June 10, Bud Light’s year-over-year sales have declined by 26.8 percent, representing the worst week so far.

  And for the month of May, Constellation Brands-owned Modelo Especial was the No. 1-selling brand in the United States, outpacing Bud Light, which fell to No. 2, industry data show.

  Bump Williams, chief of the eponymous consulting company, told the New York Post on June 21: “This was a tough week for Bud Light and other beer brands” that are owned by Anheuser-Busch, including Budweiser. Sales of Budweiser were down by 10 percent, Natural Light was down by 2.3 percent, and Michelob Ultra was down by 2.4 percent.

  Anheuser-Busch’s CEO, Michel Doukeris, told investors last month that he believes that online “misinformation” was the primary reason for the sales numbers, and he asserted that it was just “one can” that was produced with Mulvaney’s face on it and appeared to deny that there was a partnership. However, Mulvaney posted on social media that there was a partnership.

  The can drew the ire of multiple celebrities and conservative influencers on Twitter. Some suggested that consumers boycott the brand in a bid to send a message to corporations who may be pursuing a “woke” leftist agenda.

  An executive with Anheuser-Busch recently spoke out about the boycott as he got an award during the Cannes Lions International Festival in southern France.

  “It’s tough to see the controversial and divisive debates that have been happening in the U.S. in the last couple of weeks involving lots of brands and companies, including and especially Bud Light,” Anheuser-Busch’s global chief marketing officer, Marcel Marcondes, told the Cannes Lions International Festival, according to an Ad Age report. “It’s tough exactly because what we do is all about bringing people together.”

  Marketing Pivot

  With summer officially starting last week, Bud Light pivoted and launched a new promotional campaign. But that, too, was derided on social media, with some demanding that the company apologize for its promotional efforts with Mulvaney.

  Responding to the latest ad, podcast host Liz Wheeler wrote on Twitter that the company was trying to whitewash the past two months of controversy.

  “None of this is funny until & unless you apologize for using Dylan Mulvaney—a man pretending to be a woman—as your spokesperson. It’s insulting that you think an ad about summer will make us forget our principles. The boycott continues,” she wrote in a post.

  Anheuser-Busch didn’t respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment by press time.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 21:20

• America's First State Trans Representative Arrested For Child Pornography
  America’s First State Trans Representative Arrested For Child Pornography

  Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times,

  New Hampshire police arrested transgender state representative Stacie-Marie Laughton for distributing child sex abuse images.

  

  A mug shot of Stacie-Marie Laughton, a transgender-identifying man. (Courtesy of Nausha, New Hampshire’s police department)

  Laughton, a Democrat, was America’s first transgender state representative. Born male, he went through sex change procedures to resemble a woman.

  This incident isn’t Laughton’s first brush with the law. Police arrested Laughton on Nov. 12, accusing him of violating a court order prohibiting him from posting on social media about another individual. According to court documents, prosecutors also seek to impose a suspended sentence of up to nine months he was given last year.

  In that case, police accused Laughton of texting 911 “for no emergency or police related matter” a dozen times between May and July 2021. Prosecutors dropped nine of the 12 charges. On the others, courts ordered him to perform community service, participate in a peer support program and remain on good behavior.

  

  A transgender flag sits on the grass outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on May 22, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

  In 2012, Laughton, a New Hampshire state-level representative, was the first openly transgender person elected to a state legislature.

  But he never took his seat, resigning after a prior felony conviction raised questions about his legal ability to serve.

  New Hampshire politicians can only run for office after “final discharge” from prison. When Republicans noted that Laughton was still outside prison only on condition of good behavior, he resigned.

  In 2020, Laughton ran for office as a state representative and won. He won again in 2022.

  But at the time of his most recent arrest, Laughton wasn’t in office in his third Hillsborough district. He resigned in December 2022 after facing stalking charges.

  The Epoch Times reached out to Laughton for comment but received none by publication time.

  On the Nausha, New Hampshire, police records website, the press release describing his arrest wasn’t available and displayed an error message.

  An officer told The Epoch Times that the website had been hacked and had problems displaying criminal charges.

  The police supplied records that referred to Laughton with female pronouns as they charged him with four counts of child pornography distribution.

  “On Tuesday, June 20, 2023, Officers responded to a local facility for a juvenile matter. They spoke with reporting parties that indicated Laughton distributed sexually explicit images of children,” the police report reads.

  Daycare Worker Arrested

  The police also sent The Epoch Times a press release on the arrest of 38-year-old Lindsay Groves on child pornography charges.

  “Due to the nature of the investigation members of the Homeland Security Investigations were notified,” the police press release reads.

  Groves is a Hudson, New Hampshire, resident.

  According to a press release by the Massachusetts Attorney General, authorities arrested Groves for taking sexually explicit pictures of children at Creative Minds, a daycare in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts.

  Groves, a daycare employee, sent these pictures to “an individual with whom she was previously in an intimate relationship,” according to the press release. However, the press release never names this individual.

  

  A mug shot of Lindsay Groves. (Courtesy of Nausha, New Hampshire’s police department)

  “Due to Groves’s case now being investigated federally, I cannot comment on the connection between the two cases,” Sergeant John Cinelli of the Nashua Police Department told The Epoch Times.

  However, New Hampshire city of Nashua police public information officer Sgt. John Cinelli told The Union Leader that Laughton’s arrest stemmed from the same investigation that led to Grove’s arrest.

  In office, Laughton sponsored and cosponsored a range of bills that included legalizing marijuana, decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms, and prohibiting anti-union activities by employers.

  Along with Democrats Rep. David Cote and Rep. Fred Davis, Laughton won office in 2022 in his three-seat district with 26.4 percent of the vote.

  Voters also chose Laughton in the 2012 state election and 2020 state election.

  “Democrats in the State House will always work to protect a women’s (sic) right to an abortion, push to adopt domestic renewable energy so we can lower energy costs and fight to keep public money in public schools so every student in New Hampshire has the opportunity succeed,” Laughton’s House Democrats campaign page reads.

  From Prison to Preaching

  Recently, Laughton was ordained as a minister, according to his YouTube page.

  GetOrdained.org shows Laughton affiliated with Buddhism, Methodism, New Age, Oneness Pentecostalism, Pentecostalism, Protestantism, Rastafarianism, Spiritualism, Tibetan Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, and Universal Life Church.

  It’s not clear what Laughton’s position on child transgenderism is. On his Facebook page, he links to a video from Caitlyn Jenner, a man who says he is a woman.

  In the video, Jenner condemns the “radical rainbow mafia.”

  “Government’s basically trying to take over our children,” Jenner said. “This is an issue between the parents, God, and their doctor.”

  

  Caitlyn Jenner arrives at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party on Sunday, in West Hollywood, Calif., on March 27, 2022. (Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP)

  Experts and activists have voiced concern over men who enjoy dressing as women receiving access to children.

  Jon Uhler, a therapist who treats sex offenders, said that in his experience if a man feels comfortable performing sexual dance in a skimpy women’s outfit for children, he’s likely extremely sexually deviant and “poses a significant risk to women and children.”

  Some transgender-identifying men experience autogynephilia, a feeling of sexual arousal by thinking of themselves as female.

  According to government surveys, nearly 3 percent of men experience this feeling, and increasing numbers of these men identify as transgender.

  “Autogynephilia exemplifies an unusual paraphilic category called ‘erotic target identity inversions’, in which men desire to impersonate or turn their bodies into facsimiles of the persons or things to which they are sexually attracted.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 21:00

• CNN's Tapper Warns Of RFK Jr's "Dangerous Misinformation", Rebukes NewsNation For 'Platforming' Live Townhall Meeting
  CNN’s Tapper Warns Of RFK Jr’s “Dangerous Misinformation”, Rebukes NewsNation For ‘Platforming’ Live Townhall Meeting

  Democratic challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face voters tonight during a live town hall on NewsNation at 9pmET on affiliated broadcast television stations (due to be replay open on that site later in the evening).

  

  Having flexed his muscles during the week, now is his turn to flex his policy mind – something he has been doing on various podcasts (mostly more right-leaning since the establishment left has done their best to discredit Kennedy at every stop).

  

  He will take questions in front of a live audience comprised of voters in partnership with the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. Voters in the key states of South Carolina and New Hampshire can also question the candidate.

  Kennedy’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination has garnered support from as many as 20% of Democrats, but Republicans viewed him more favorably at 40%, according to recent reports.

  Polling this month from Quinnipiac University found that among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, 70% support Biden, 17% support Kennedy, and 8% support Marianne Williamson.

  “This is a moment where RFK Jr., who first got a lot of attention for having a famous name, and then got a lot of attention for some pretty wild positions that he has taken on a number of issues – including vaccines, including the war in Ukraine, including the CIA – and he’s generated a lot of buzz. This is the moment where he is going to face, what I would submit, is probably the toughest test of his candidacy so far, which is answering real voter’s real, practical questions about his candidacy and doing it in front of a national television audience,” NewsNation Political Editor Chris Stirewalt told KOIN 6 News.

  As Peter Barry Chowka notes, Kennedy has been attacked and largely shunned by the mainstream media but in at least a half dozen live interviews on FOX News, including the one with Tucker Carlson, he has expressed a message that suggests he could potentially draw support from across the political spectrum.

  Kennedy, who declared his candidacy in April, is one of two Democrats (the other is self-help author Marianne Williamson) to challenge President Joe Biden for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

  His comments, including describing the aim of his campaign as “end[ing] the corrupt merger of state and corporate power,” might resonate with a variety of constituencies.

  Why is RFK Jr on NewsNation and not on a left-leaning mainstream media outlet?

  Simple – here’s ‘fake-dossier-peddling’ Jake Tapper explaining that Kennedy should not have a platform its because of his “dangerous ideas”.

  Here’s one colleague’s (unedited) take (that we thought worth sharing) on Tapper’s (and likely all of mainstream media’s) attitude and self-immolation:

  “If RFK’s ideas are dangerous a real journalist would be able to draw attention to what RFK has wrong.  Jake Tapper just admitted he isn’t a journalist, and CNN does NOT disseminate objective information.

  The real threat to democracy is Jake Tapper failing to do his basic job. Tappers job isn’t to preemptively draw conclusions about presidential candidates.

  I don’t give a fuck what Tapper thinks, his job is objective arbitrator. If he wants to work on behalf of the “re-elect” Biden campaign he should have to declare that and we can stop pretending CNN does “news”.“

  As AmericanThinker’s Thomas Lifson noted:

  I think NewsNation is very smart to feature RFK, Jr. as it tries to establish itself as a full-fledged rival to CNNMSNBCFOXNEWSMAX.

  RFK, Jr. already has a fan base that will want to tune in and see him, and I suspect most have never watched NewsNation.

  They may like what they see and come back now that they have searched for and found it on their cable/satellite/streaming feed.

  NewsNation is trying to establish itself in the middle of the political spectrum, accessible to both sides. Featuring RFK, Jr. is a good way to highlight that orientation.

  Kennedy is also catching up to Newsom in the betting markets…

  

  Where Kennedy stands on key issues…

  (via NewsNationNow.com)

  Vaccines

  Kennedy pushes back against critics that say he has anti-vaccine views.

  During a June 23 town hall hosted by WMUR-TV, Kennedy said if he were president, he would mandate pre-licensing safety trials for vaccines and “allow parents to make of their minds about whether they want to use vaccines for their children.”

  “What I’ve said is I’m pro-science and pro-safety and we ought to subject vaccines…to at least the kind of rigorous placebo-controlled trials that are mandated for every other medicine,” Kennedy told WMUR.

  Vaccines are tested extensively by manufacturers before the FDA issues a license.

  A vaccine being developed for distribution in the United States goes through two separate research phases before an initial three phases of clinical trials, according to the Food And Drug Administration. Those trials test the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. By the time it reaches the third phase of initial clinical trials, the vaccine is generally given to thousands of people, and researchers compare those who received the vaccine against those who received a placebo.

  In some cases, the FDA requires additional post-market studies or clinical trials for continued research.

  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says immunization is the best protection against certain illnesses. Annually, tens of thousands of people get sick from diseased that could be prevented by vaccines.

  Foreign Policy

  Kennedy has made peace a priority when it comes to foreign policy, promising to “end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know what’s happening.”

  He’s specifically vowed to end the war in Ukraine. His plan to stop the fighting includes offering to withdraw U.S. troops and missiles from Russia’s borders and convince Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

  “UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions,” Kennedy said on his campaign website. “We will put an end to this war.”

  Border

  Kennedy visited the nation’s southern border earlier this month, calling it a “dystopian nightmare.”

  The presidential candidate described seeing hundreds of people cross the border – a seemingly “hopeless” situation he said was “created by the federal government, that local people are being forced to hold the bag on.”

  “It’s extraordinary,” Kennedy told NewsNation. “It’s kind of the best part of America and the worst part at the same time.”

  During WMUR’s town hall, Kennedy said he’s “not a big fan of Trump” or his border wall. After speaking with officers patrolling the border, however, he said physical barriers are necessary in some areas with high-density populations and advocated doing more to keep migrants and U.S. citizens safe from cartels.  

  Economy

  Kennedy has said he will enact policies that favor “small and medium businesses” and break up “too-big-to-fail” banks and monopolies.

  “When crisis strikes, bail out the homeowners, debtors, and small business owners instead,” Kennedy said on his campaign site.

  He also believes healthcare is a key economic issue, and has vowed to make existing services available to all, including “alternative and holistic therapies that have been marginalized in a pharma-dominated system.”

  One wonders just how long MSM can continue ignoring RFK Jr?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 20:40

• Agendas Run Rampant Over Science In The Biden Administration
  Agendas Run Rampant Over Science In The Biden Administration

  Authored by Michael Chamberlain via RealClear Wire,

  “Disinformation and misinformation is the bona fide enemy of public health,” Dr. Anthony Fauci stated in a recent interview. But he also said, “We should embrace differences in opinion.”  

  

  What if misinformation is coming from the public health officials themselves? And lately, government has not seemed to embrace differences in opinion, preferring instead to smother contrary opinions. The resulting erosion of trust in the officials in charge – less than half of Americans trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on COVID – could be more damaging than any “misinformation” found on social media. 

  Far too often in recent years, when science gets in the way of the government’s agenda, science is disregarded, ignored, or undermined. The CDC, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) have appeared to make policy decisions and public representations inconsistent with science — including their own science.  

  Science is undermined when scientists and the institutions that apply science do not follow the findings of unbiased studies. And science is undermined when those institutions do not make a good faith effort to collect data and let the data dictate a conclusion. When “science” gets tunnel vision for a result, it ceases to be science. 

  The Biden administration came into office promising to restore science as the driver of policy. Led by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the administration adopted strict scientific integrity standards at federal agencies. So far, though, the results don’t comport with the rhetoric. 

  After documenting a number of alleged violations of these standards, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) filed a scientific integrity complaint with OSTP. The complaint was based on our tracking of numerous instances of the government either ignoring scientific findings, manipulating data, or misrepresenting data to make the science conform to policy objectives.  

  Each example is eye-opening. In one case, the CDC claimed that vaccinations offer higher protection from Covid-19 than a previous infection. This talking point, however, was based on data cherry-picked from a single state within a fifty-state study. So, the CDC’s talking points were possibly taken from an outlier, not the entire dataset. Worse, the cited study did not even make a comparison between those with immunity solely from vaccination and those with immunity from prior infection, as the CDC’s public statements claimed. Yet high-ranking officials at the CDC and other components of the Department of Health and Human Services touted these misrepresentations unequivocally.  

  It’s not just misrepresentations to the public. Actual policy decisions undermined science. In August 2022, the CDC endorsed COVID-19 vaccinations for children aged six months to four years, saying that a “lower risk of symptomatic Covid-19 was observed with vaccination compared to placebo.” But it also noted that severe adverse events were “more common in vaccine recipients.” To make matters worse, the claim that vaccinated children were at lower risk of showing symptoms was based upon bad science. “You can inject [children] with it or squirt it in their face, and you’ll get the same benefit,” one high-level CDC official declared. So, the CDC made this recommendation without proof of its efficacy, while acknowledging that the children were at heightened risk of severe adverse events.

  The prioritization of policy agendas over science is not isolated to the pandemic. Protect the Public’s Trust’s research indicates that the FDA appears to have breached its obligation to uphold scientific integrity in its decision-making about vaping. We believe that the FDA knowingly disseminated scientifically unfounded statements about vaping products that were contrary to the FDA’s own research. Also ignoring its own research, and without proper scientific justification, the FDA overruled its own scientists’ recommendations to authorize menthol vapes.  

  The Biden administration often decries “misinformation” about anything contradicting its own narratives, but it appears to be one of the worst purveyors of misinformation. Citizens can’t trust a government that misrepresents the results of studies, or prevents the collection of, or even intentionally hides, data. The American public should expect that its science-based institutions and most prominent spokesmen follow the science and use the scientific method in reaching policy decisions. Unless these institutions and their leadership change course, public trust will continue to plummet.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 20:20

• $200 Billion In SBA Covid Relief Money Went To Fraudsters, Inspector General Reports
  $200 Billion In SBA Covid Relief Money Went To Fraudsters, Inspector General Reports

  The multifaceted toll of government mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic grows ever larger.

  Last week brought another grim report on learning loss among children victimized by needless school shutdowns. On Tuesday, we learned that fraudsters scooped up more than $200 billion in Small Business Administration (SBA) Covid-19 relief money, according to a report from the SBA’s Office of Inspector General. 

  

  That represents a whopping 17% of the $1.2 trillion dished out by the SBA via Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The knowledge of major fraud in the SBA programs isn’t new, but the latest estimate of the damage is well higher than previous estimates.  

  One passage in the OIG report strikes a strong “I told you so” tone, with the SBA taken to task for ignoring the OIG’s warnings: 

  “Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports issued very early on warned of the importance of a strong internal control environment to mitigate fraud risk… 

  [However,] the agency weakened or removed the controls necessary to prevent fraudsters from easily gaining access to these programs and provide assurance that only eligible entities received funds.”

  The report offers examples of various types of fraud. One “sprawling conspiracy” centered on claims submitted for 1,300 fake businesses; its masterminds stole $140 million and the OIG said the estimate could rise to $625 million. 

  In another episode, a female US Army Chief Warrant Officer at Fort Stewart, Georgia teamed up with several other crooks to “scam the system 150 times over, securing $3 million for herself and those involved in the conspiracy,” the reports says.

  The OIG says its investigations have thus far contributed to 803 arrests, 529 convictions and the recovery of $30 billion, with tens of thousands of leads still being worked. 

  

  The SBA accused its own watchdog of wildly overestimating the fraud, saying its own math suggests about $36 billion on fraud. Looking far more focused on defense than accountability, the agency also endeavored to claim that 86% of its fraud estimate took place while Trump was still in office. 

  The SBA OIG attributed $136 billion of the fraud to the EIDL program, which provided long-term, fixed-rate, low-interest loans to small businesses. Another $64 billion in fraud hit the PPP, which dished out loans to small businesses, individuals and nonprofits that were “affected” by the pandemic.  

  “About 1.6 million EIDL loans worth $114 billion are either past due, delinquent or in liquidation as of May, according to the report. More than 69,000 of these loans worth $3.2 billion have been written off. And more than 500,000 PPP loans have defaulted” — CNBC

  The SBA was just one of many government patsies hit with major fraud during the Covid-19 welfare orgy. In September, the Department of Labor OIG said some $45.6 billion in unemployment insurance was devoured by thieves whose handiwork included using the Social Security numbers of 205,766 dead people. 

  The Department of Agriculture was hit by one of the largest single scams, with more than 40 people linked to a Minnesota non-profit called Feeding Our Future charged with plundering $250 million from a program meant to feed needy children during the pandemic by operating upwards of 250 fake meal-assistance locations. 

  We all pay the price of the government’s Covid-relief incompetence, as the hundreds of billions of stolen money was created by the Federal Reserve, sapping everyone’s purchasing power and imposing what is ultimately a stealth tax with no maximum rate. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 20:00

• Tucker Carlson Dares To Ask "Why Exactly Are We At War With Russia?"
  Tucker Carlson Dares To Ask “Why Exactly Are We At War With Russia?”

  “Why exactly are we at war with Russia?”

  

  Those are the verboten words that Tucker Carlson to utter at the start of Episode 7 Of his Tucker on Twitter series where he highlights the irony that the so-called ‘war for democracy’ is actually enabling dictatorship and tyranny.

  With nuclear extinction a possibility and 1000s of lives and billions of dollars already wasted, “what’s the point” he asks, “are we really doing this so that the Biden family can repay its debts to the oligarchs that financed their beachhouse.”

  “Thankfully” the former Fox News star explains, “we have an answer.”

  “The war against Putin and for Ukraine is in fact a war for democracy.”

  Sounds familiar?

  “Democracy must prevail” exclaims Nancy Pelosi as Carlson offers bipartisan examples of warmongers pushing for ‘democracy’ and all the military-industrial complex enrichment that comes with it.

  Carlson further mocks the rhetoric surrounding the war as a fight for democracy, highlighting the irony of supporting Ukrainian President Zelensky, who suspended democracy in his own country.

  “we are currently fighting a war for democracy on behalf of a leader who just casually announced he’s happy to end democracy and our democracy and supporting leaders have no problem with that“

  

  In fact, the Biden administration continual support for Ukraine despite Zelensky’s disregard for democracy, implies that their motives are questionable.

  He argues that during wartime, politicians become powerful and can justify any action, including silencing political opponents, leading to a potential erosion of democracy.

  Carlson suggests that those in Washington, including Republicans, support Biden’s stance on Ukraine because ending the war would threaten their power.

  He concludes by speculating on the future of Joe Biden, pointing out his age-related decline and potential implications for the Democratic Party, suggesting that Gavin Newsom may be a potential successor.

  Watch the full episode below:

  Ep. 7 Irony Alert: the war for democracy enables dictatorship. pic.twitter.com/tk7aOZ4H6n

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 28, 2023

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

  Full transcript below:

  Hey it’s Tucker Carlson, you may have found yourself wondering recently as the world slides closer to nuclear Annihilation than any time in human history why exactly are we at war with Russia.

  It seems like there’s a pretty significant downside to this particular foreign policy decision, starting with economic collapse and ending potentially with Extinction so is there a good reason we’re doing it so many innocent young people have been killed so many hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted some of them from the U.S treasury so what’s the point are we really doing this so the Biden family can repay its debts to the oligarchs who finance their beach house in Rehoboth.

  We’re doing it so our government can continue to lie about its illicit bio labs in Eastern Europe so that flabby losers like Toria Newland and Tony Blinken can feel like they’re doing something important with their sad empty lives.

  Really honestly there’s got to be a better reason for waging this the most pointless war of all.

  What is it.

  Well thankfully we have an answer: the war against Russia ladies and gentlemen the war against Putin and for Ukraine is in fact a war for democracy.

  Watch and recall the motive the president has said many times “we’re focused on what we can do to support Ukraine’s effort to fight for their democracy”.

  “Democracy must prevail. The Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy and in doing so for ours as well.”

  “Assisting and helping Ukraine win this fight for democracy and freedom and of course Ukrainian president zielinski understand that what’s at stake in Ukraine is bigger than just his Nation it is literally a battle for freedom and democracy themselves.”

  “They are showing the world what an existential fight for democracy looks like.”

  “President Zelenky and the Ukrainians have changed the course of history for the better and we unequivocally are with the Ukrainian people in their fight to remain a sovereign democracy.“

  Unequivocally with the Ukrainian people to remain in democracy it’s a bipartisan view democracy must Prevail.

  You just heard noted democracy expert Nancy Pelosi say the daughter of the mobbed up mayor of Baltimore as Pelosi puts it the Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy and for ours as well that’s right for ours as well without Ukrainian democracy in other words we can have no democracy here if the ukrainians aren’t free.

  Neither are we we must make sure they can vote in Kiev so we can continue to vote in Kansas City.

  It’s really that simple and yet tonight we regret to tell you that we have a problem it looks like they’re not going to be able to vote in Kiev anymore and no for once it’s not Putin’s fault.

  Democracy in Ukraine seems to be suspended by the world’s foremost democracy Advocate himself Field Marshal zielinski.

  Watch:

  “If we win” he says “we’ll let people vote otherwise no you vote” and we feel like it because ultimately we’re completely in charge and make all the rules.

  Your job is to obey or be punished.

  That’s our version of self-government.

  Self means me – I’m the government now.

  That’s not just any autocrat that’s our chief Ally in the war for democracy.

  This is the guy who just announced he’s like did you cancel next year’s elections.

  So you’ve got to wonder what the Biden Administration thinks of this – we can’t possibly continue to support zielinski, that guy, after he said that can we because in a clip less than 30 seconds long he just blew up our entire rationale for supporting his side in the war.

  So we can’t support him.

  Oh of course we can and we will.

  Here’s Joe Biden from yesterday reaffirming America’s unequivocal support for Ukraine no matter what happened in Russia “we the United States should continue to support Ukraine’s defense and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity”.

  So to recap we are currently fighting a war for democracy on behalf of a leader who just casually announced he’s happy to end democracy and our democracy and supporting leaders have no problem with that in fact they’re strongly for it.

  Shocked?

  You shouldn’t be.

  Of course they’re for it. You should have seen this coming.

  Wars for democracy always cancel democracy in the process – that’s why our leaders love them and they all do it – even The Virtuous leaders Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, the British government under Winston Churchill through an entire opposition party into prison and let them rot for the duration – in some cases with their families.

  So in a war for democracy you can do anything.

  Imagine what a man might do who has fewer principles.

  If that man say ran Ukraine he might seize churches arrest priests ban all criticism of himself disappear his political opponents and that’s happening.

  Just last month zelinski threw a man called Gonzalo Lira into prison indefinitely for the crime of daring to write about the Ukrainian government in unflattering ways.

  Now what’s interesting what separates this from other such cases is that lira is an American citizen, so Joe Biden who was quite a bit of SWAT as they say in Ukraine could have freed Gonzalo Lira within hours, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to – he didn’t say a word about it – he remains in prison tonight.

  So that makes you wonder what’s the real motive here when normal people see War they see death and destruction, sadness and suffering; but that’s not what demagogues see – they understand it differently they know that War means power mostly for them.

  During wartime everything they do can be justified – war is the gravest of all emergencies – imagine the coveted lockdowns times a thousand plus drones.

  Once War breaks out politicians become Gods with the power of life and death. So in a peaceful democracy you have to debate your political opponents in public and that’s tiresome but in a war for democracy you can just throw them in jail or have them executed. You can see that many in Washington are looking forward to that moment and that may be why they so fervently support Joe Biden – even many Republicans – against a potential opponent – the only opponent who opposes the war in Ukraine.

  If you were to end the war their power would evaporate.

  Last week a whistleblower produced WhatsApp messages from Hunter Biden proving that at the very least his father knew about his influence peddling businesses abroad and probably participated in them “I’m sitting here with my father” Hunter Biden wrote to his Chinese Partners demanding money as much as anything reported about the bidens over the last several years this was The Smoking Gun.

  There it is right there in the message that would have been enough to a normal president it would have been more than enough to keep a normal president from running for office again but had virtually no effect on Joe Biden.

  Most media Outlets ignored it completely or tried to spin Biden’s relationship with his son as some kind of moral Victory “the real meaning of the hunter Biden Saga as I see it” wrote Nick Kristoff of the New York Times “isn’t about presidential corruption but is about how widespread addiction is and about how a determined parent with unconditional love can sometimes reel a child back.”

  He actually wrote that and if you doubt it you should know that view was common.Here’s the take from ABC “the hunter Biden story, the Scandal, the this, that, it’s also the story of a Father’s Love and Joe Biden has never and will never give up on his son Hunter and will never treat him lesser than and so he is a father first take it or leave it.“

  So whistleblower produces a text message showing that Joe Biden was in the room with his son when his son was selling influence to an enemy power the Chinese government and ABC’s take on it Joe Biden is a father first take it or leave it.

  What accounts for a response like that?

  Well that’s the way you talk when you’ve got nothing to fear from an upcoming presidential election – you don’t even bother to think of an excuse for your candidate because you don’t need to. Your country has electronic voting machines – Joe Biden got 81 million votes in 2020 and you’re pretty sure he can do it again.

  In fact you know he can you’re not worried but actually they should be a little worried

  The people who control Joe Biden – Susan Rice and the rest – know they can continue to run our government, writing the press releases, formulating the policies, and they can do it effectively forever, as long as Joe Biden gets dressed in the morning, and of course that’s their strong preference.

  These are fervent opponents of change but the one thing these people cannot control is aging.

  Joe Biden is old he’s 80 now he will be 85 at the end of the next term.

  People imagine that old age is a long predictable progression from Acuity to permanent unconsciousness but often that’s not at all how it actually works.

  When old people start to slide they tend to Slide fast.

  Joe Biden has begun that descent.

  Here he was yesterday and here’s what she wrote to me and I quote you can imagine my joy she called them right away and the next day they sent someone out to survey her yard as Beth wrote this is the best thing that’s happened in Rural America since the rural electrification act for electricity to farms in the 30s and 40s end of quote.”

  End of quote you weren’t supposed to hear that – Joe Biden read the stage directions out loud –  that’s like eating the garnish that comes with your entree you’re supposed to know not to do that.

  Joe Biden no longer does in a year or two he will be gone completely and there will be no hiding it at that point the Democratic party will face a secession problem.

  If Joe Biden is re-elected next year and then forced to leave office during his term due to disability or death that means Kamala Harris will become president of the United States and nobody wants that not even her husband.

  In real life nobody likes Kamala Harris.

  That’s not an attack on her in fact it’s possible to feel pity for someone who’s so universally reviled. It is instead an observation of unchanging physical reality like gravity or photosynthesis nobody wants Kamala Harris to be president no one will benefit if she becomes president so logic suggests there’s going to be a change.

  It’s going to have to be somebody else and whoever that person is is going to have to enter the race soon before the election after Biden drops out.

  Who could that person be? We don’t know obviously this is all just guessing but we do know whoever that is we’ll have to have two essential criteria he’ll have to be as shallow ruthless and transactional as Joe Biden is and he’ll need to have flattery skills that are so polished and advanced they’d be considered Superior even in the Saudi Royal Court and there’s only one man in modern America who fits that description Gavin Newsom the governor of California and perhaps not coincidentally Joe Biden’s new closest friend.

  “I am here Mr President” Newsom told Biden at an event that they did together last week. “I am here as a proud American as a proud Californian mesmerized by not just your faith and your Devotion to this country and the world we’re trying to build but by your results by your action by your passion by Your Capacity to deliver.”

  I get mesmerized by you Joe Biden – imagine saying that as a compliment you couldn’t do it.

  Few human beings could do it but Gavin Newsom had no problem at all those words rolled right off his Fork tongue. He never stopped smiling so if you’re looking for the leader of the coup there he is right there she’s in Kennedy’s motorcade.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 19:55

• Why AirBnB Owners Are About To Be Forced Property Sellers
  Why AirBnB Owners Are About To Be Forced Property Sellers

  Authored by Nick Gerli via Reventure Consulting,

  Many Airbnb owners will soon be forced to sell their properties, resulting in a housing bust that could be on par with the 2008 Subprime Crisis in some cities.

  

  These Airbnb owners are getting ready to sell because of “Airbnb bust”, a downturn in the short-term rental market that started in the second half of 2022, with Airbnb operators in some cities facing a 50% decline in revenue. These declining revenues are the result of a slowdown in post-pandemic travel demand to go along with a massive increase in Airbnb supply, trends which are now causing many Airbnb operators to lose money on their rental.

  I believe these losses will cause a wave of distressed selling from Airbnb operators in 2023 and 2024, particularly in cities where:

  1) revenue has crashed the most, and

  2) Airbnb supply increased the most

  If you’re a homebuyer or real estate investor it’s important to understand the exposure your city and neighborhood has to the Airbnb crash, particularly the timing and depth of the downturn. Because when it all shakes out, I believe that there will be some great buying opportunities for homebuyers and investors across the real estate spectrum.

  So, without further ado, let’s dive into the data.

  (Note that when I refer to “Airbnb” in this article, I am referring to the broader short-term rental market, which includes listings found on Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, and other travel sites.)

  65% more Airbnbs than Homes for Sale in 2023

  But before getting into the city-specific data, it’s important to understand the broader national trends. Most notably, that the number of Airbnb rentals in America has skyrocketed from less than 200,000 seven years ago to nearly 1 million in 2023 according to data from AllTheRooms.

  At the same time, the number of homes Listed For Sale has plummeted, dropping from roughly 1.2 million prior to the pandemic to less than 600,000 today according to data from Realtor.com. The result is that there are currently 65% more homes listed for rent on Airbnb than listed For Sale.

  

  The rise in Airbnb rentals was caused by 1) investors buying up houses to rent out short-term and 2) existing homeowners deciding to list their houses on Airbnb instead of selling them. A double whammy, one-two punch that has sucked inventory out of the US Housing Market.

  50% Crash in Airbnb Revenue reported in some Cities

  But there are now signs that this trend of increased Airbnb listings might be coming to an end as the market reaches saturation in 2023, with Airbnb’s CEO warning of a “booking slowdown”. At the same time, vacation rental management companies reported a 13% drop in revenue per property in the first quarter of 2023.

  Clearly, something is up, with the deluge of Airbnb supply over the last several years now intersecting with a recessionary slowdown in travel demand. A cocktail which is leading to a collapse in revenue for Airbnb operators across America.

  The collapse is most notable in the Southwest and Mountain West areas of the country, where Airbnb revenue per listing is down 40-50% YoY. With owners in cities such as Austin, Phoenix, Denver, and San Antonio taking the hardest hit according to data from AllTheRooms.

  

  But the declines weren’t isolated to these areas. Of the 182 counties in America with the most short-term rental listings, revenues were down in 179 of them (98%), with the average county experiencing a 29% decline in revenue per listing comparing the three-month period from March to May 2023 to the previous year.

  Phoenix is ground zero for Airbnb Bust

  The epicenter of Airbnb bust is undoubtedly Phoenix, AZ, a market that is now plagued with a huge glut of short-term rental supply, with the number of Airbnb rentals in Maricopa County increasing by 500% over the last seven years.

  Much of that listing growth has come in the last 15 months, as a downturn in the Phoenix housing market pushed many owners to list their properties on Airbnb instead of selling them. The result was that Airbnb supply increased from 10,000 in early 2022 to nearly 18,000 today.

  

  At the same time, For Sale listings on the Phoenix housing market have plummeted, dropping from an average of 14,000 prior to the pandemic to 7,800 in May 2023.

  This has caused the short-term rental Supply Ratio in Phoenix, a metric calculated by dividing Airbnb listings in by homes For Sale. The resulting ratio in Phoenix is 2.3x, which indicates there are 2.3 listings on Airbnb for every 1 house listed for sale.

  

  The historical Supply Ratio in Maricopa County is much lower at 1.0x, reinforcing the notion that the area’s Airbnb market is oversupplied while its For Sale market is undersupplied. A situation that will likely correct itself in coming years as struggling Airbnb owners elect to sell their properties.

  In some cities, this correction could be on par with the Subprime Crisis in terms of how much inventory hits the market. Particularly in an area like Sevierville, a vacation destination in East Tennessee, where the number of Airbnbs currently outnumbers the homes For Sale by 10 to 1!

  

  How does this 10:1 Airbnb Supply Ratio in Sevierville play out in the coming months and years as the Recession worsens and travel demand drops further? No one knows for sure. But a scenario where For Sale inventory doubles or triples in a short period of time is entirely possible.

  The Airbnb selloff will happen in urban Neighborhoods. And Vacation Destinations.

  The oncoming Airbnb bust in America will be primarily felt in two types of locations:

  1) dense, urban areas that have the most Airbnb inventory in big cities, and

  2) vacation destinations.

  You can get a sense of this urban-area exposure in big cities by looking at the Airbnb heatmap below from AllTheRooms, which shows that Phoenix Airbnbs cluster in four main pockets: 1) Downtown Phoenix, 2) Scottsdale, 3) Paradise Valley, and 4) Tempe.

  

  These four areas account for roughly 65% of the short-term rental inventory in Maricopa County, and thus will be the most negatively impacted from an Airbnb owner selloff. Meanwhile, outlying suburban and rural neighborhoods will be less impacted since they have a much lower share of Airbnb inventory.

  You can get an even better sense of this by looking at the short-term rental Supply Ratio across a metro like Austin, TX, another area that’s been hard-hit by Airbnb bust. In Travis County, which is the main urban county in Austin, there are nearly 9,200 rentals on Airbnb compared to 4,000 listings For Sale, good for a hefty 2.3x supply ratio.

  

  But in Williamson County, the suburban area to the north of Austin, the situation is flipped and there are more homes listed for sale. With the implication being that the Airbnb bust is going to hit the urban Travis County much harder than suburban Williamson County.

  However, the more rural one goes, especially to vacation destinations, the more Airbnbs begin to pop-up once again. Nearby Fredericksburg, TX, located about two hours west of Austin, has a Supply Ratio of 6.3x, indicating that there are over 6 Airbnb Listings for every one house for sale. Highlighting the potential for big price declines as Airbnb bust worsens.

  

  Expect to see more For Rent signs as well

  Of course – an Airbnb owner that runs into financial distress might not have to sell. Instead, they could decide to rent out their property long-term, a trend that I suspect is already happening given the flood of rental inventory that has hit the market over the last year.

  For instance, in a metro like Nashville, TN, a fairly big Airbnb market, the number of vacant apartment rentals has recently skyrocketed, nearly doubling over the last 15 months all the way up to an 8.0% vacancy rate. This surge in apartment vacancies is similarly echoed in Airbnb-heavy metros like Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Tampa.

  

  Meanwhile, the number of vacant houses for rent has also skyrocketed in the same period, increasing from 43,000 houses available across America’s 54 largest counties in March 2022 to nearly 80,000 today (meaning that the number of vacant houses for rent has nearly doubled in the last year).

  

  But what if this surge in rental inventory worsens in coming months as more Airbnb operators try out the long-term rental market? Well, it could provide a shock that many institutional landlords are not expecting.

  In a place like Maricopa County in Phoenix, roughly 59% of the Airbnb supply is comprised of houses according to AllTheRooms. That compares to 13% condos, 9% apartments, and 20% of guesthouses/other.

  

  Indicating that biggest surge in rental inventory from Airbnb bust in Phoenix would likely come in the form of houses hitting the market for rent in neighborhoods like Downtown, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, and Tempe. Such a big surge in rental inventory in such a concentrated area has the potential to cause a massive drop in rents.

  Cities where Airbnbs are Performing Better

  It’s also important to remember that real estate is local, and that not every city or neighborhood is getting hit by Airbnb bust. In fact, some parts of America are experiencing increased Airbnb demand over the last year even as the broader market tanks.

  One of these areas is Washington DC, where gross Airbnb revenues are still up 1.6% YoY, while revenue per listing is only down -6%. The reason that DC is holding up better is because there has been a return to big cities over the last year since the pandemic ended, increasing demand for short-term stays. Moreover, Washington DC never got hit with the same surge in Airbnb supply as other cities, with its number of operating Airbnbs today about 15% lower than in 2019.

  Another area to watch is Milwaukee, WI. Gross market revenues are up 5.2% YoY while revenue per listing is only down -15% (much better than the -50% in an area like Phoenix). Milwaukee’s main draw is a lack of Airbnb supply competition, with the market being the rare case where the number of homes for sale is higher than the Airbnb listings.

  Of course, Airbnb investors in 2023 needs to be very careful, because I suspect we are just at the start of Airbnb bust. Over the next year we will likely see more layoffs and a higher unemployment rate in America, which will weigh further on travel demand and profits.

  Airbnb bust creates opportunity for Homebuyers and Investors

  Finally, I’d like to conclude with some perspective. I believe that Airbnb bust is a positive trend that will help to rebalance the real estate market and provide fresh opportunity to a new batch of homebuyers and investors in 2023 and 2024.

  Once the current level of Airbnb supply starts to drop, that should correlate with an increase in both For Sale and For Rent inventory that pushes home prices and rents down further. Enabling homebuyers and long-term real estate investors who have been waiting on the sidelines to re-enter the market.

  At the same time, once the Airbnb supply drops enough, it will stabilize the short-term rental market and eventually cause revenues to start going back up. Which will inevitably create fresh opportunity for aspiring Airbnb investors, particularly in hard-hit markets.

  The depth and timing of the downturn, and the resulting opportunity created by the downturn, really depends on the city you’re in as well as your specific neigborhood. Is your area oversupplied in terms of Airbnbs? If so, by how much? Are revenues dropping? Those are worthwhile questions for homebuyers and investors to figure out the answers to in 2023.

  Data in this Post / YouTube Video

  The data in this post came from two principal sources:

  1) Data on Airbnb revenues and supply comes from AllTheRooms, a short-term rental data tracking service.

  2) Data on For Sale Inventory comes from Realtor.com. This data can also be found on Reventure App.

  Also stay tuned for a YouTube video on this topic coming later today. You won’t want to miss it.

  -Nick

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 19:40

• French Fighter Jet Intercepts 'Polish Barry Seal' As Pilot Dumps Cocaine
  French Fighter Jet Intercepts ‘Polish Barry Seal’ As Pilot Dumps Cocaine

  On Saturday, a French fighter jet intercepted a small aircraft in southeast France. As the jet neared, the pilot began dumping bags of suspected cocaine from the plane, according to Agence France-Presse. 

  The single-seater tourist plane flew in the remote Ardèche region when the pilot breached highly restricted airspace around a nuclear power plant. AFP said the French Air Force dispatched a Dassault Rafale to intercept the small aircraft that was “judged to be maneuvering suspiciously.” 

  

  A military spokesperson said the fighter pilot “witnessed very erratic behavior in the cockpit (of the tourist plane), real agitation.” Over a few minutes, what happened next is like a scene from Tom Cruise’s film “American Made” when the actor portrayed cocaine smuggler Barry Seal. 

  The fighter pilot said the man opened the plane door and tossed out packages. Investigators found 15 packages on the ground containing about 66 pounds (or 30kg) of ‘white power.’  

  

  AFP said investigators are analyzing the white powder, and we’re sure the suspected trafficker, a Polish national with a past drugs offense, wasn’t dangerously flying around with baby powder…

  Separately, the latest global cocaine trends were released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on Monday. They found a “prolonged surge in both supply and demand of cocaine, which is now being felt across the globe and is likely to spur the development of new markets beyond the traditional confines.” 

  That may be why French authorities seized a record 156.7 tons of drugs last year. As for the ‘Polish’ version of Barry Seal… We can only imagine.

  Here’s a clip from American Made.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 19:20

• The Left And Their Union Masters
  The Left And Their Union Masters

  Authored by Aaron White via RealClear Wire,

  If political rhetoric was subject to the same rigid labeling standards American manufacturers are expected to meet, liberals would have to call themselves something else.

  

  The term was undoubtedly test-marketed to evoke the image of someone more broadminded and generally more tolerant of others’ points of view.

  Does that describe any leftist you know?

  When liberals claim to prize diversity above virtually any other commodity, they’re referring only to differences in things that don’t matter and, by their own admission, human beings are born to be. Things like race, gender and sexual orientation.

  Opinions and actions, on the other hand, are fair game for the most soul-crushing forms of discrimination.

  If that sounds like an exaggeration, you haven’t ventured onto a college campus or spent time on social media platforms, whose sole purpose is to quash viewpoints with which those in power disagree.

  Less obvious to the naked eye, unfortunately, is perhaps the single-largest funding source for this toxic ideology — organized labor in general and government employee unions in particular.

  Because the whole idea of collective bargaining is based on excusing a relative handful of union members from the forces of supply and demand with which unorganized workers must contend, it only follows that union leaders would be suspicious, at best, of America’s market-driven economy. But at least those representing workers in the private sector understand their demands must be tempered by the employer’s need to earn profits.

  Government employee unions, however, recognize no such constraints.

  Members of groups like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and teachers’ unions like the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are paid by tax dollars funneled through public employees’ paychecks. Consequently, leaders of their unions have a vested interest in growing the size and scope of government, regardless of how that impacts the rest of us.

  Unlike their peers in the real world, government union leaders know they aren’t dependent on the goodwill of millions of consumers, so they generally don’t care about whether their membership agrees with their stances. And if they don’t agree, they rely on bullying strategies to stop them from leaving and the overall size of government growing. So they focus on working with greedy politicians who can raise the taxes needed to advance a liberal agenda that has nothing whatsoever to do with workers’ pay or working conditions.

  For example:

  • At the height of the COVID pandemic, leaders of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) demanded the defunding of law enforcement and universal Medicare in return for returning to the classroom;
  • The NEA used its 2020-21 annual conference to debate a pair of resolutions expressing the group’s public support for Palestinian statehood and condemn Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians;
  • AFT President Randi Weingarten has used her union to wage a massive assault on the Second Amendment — including outright weapon confiscation — saying the U.S. must follow “what other great democracies” have done to ban guns;
  • Under President Mary Kay Henry, the SEIU in 2022 partnered with the Green New Deal Network for a series of protests to present a united front on climate legislation as they urged Congress to pass President Biden’s bloated “Build Back Better” proposal before the midterms; and,
  • Declaring that “racial, social and economic equality are top priorities for AFSCME,” the union in 2018 adopted Resolution 51, calling for, among many things, “bias training, which helps identify built-in prejudices.”

  The Left has long accused conservative political candidates and causes of being funded by huge, faceless corporate interests — a notion thoroughly invalidated, incidentally, via such companies Anheuser-Busch, Target and Disney, whose recent missteps had nothing to do with profits and everything to do with the far-Left ideologies of their leaders.

  But even if it were true that Wall Street uniformly skewed right while unions backed the Left, there’s an important distinction: However much the Kochs or the Waltons have spent on conservative legislation, at least it’s their money. Unions, meanwhile, confiscate billions of dues dollars every year from the paychecks of millions of government employees who think it’s being spent on representation and use it to underwrite a radical, leftist ideology perhaps half their members don’t even share. 

  In theory, this should no longer be the case. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Janus v. AFSCME, affirmed that union membership and dues and/or agency fees could no longer be made mandatory, as they had been for public employees in nearly half the country for generations. But unions responded by adopting a laundry list of strategies intended to blunt the court’s unambiguous intent — everything from suppressing information about the ruling to filing lawsuits against members seeking to opt out of union affiliation and even forging workers’ names on membership documents.

  Since Janus, government employee unions have lost nearly 800,000 members, taking with them billions in dues revenue that can never again be used to fund a machine that suppresses the rights of its own members in order to advance policies that rob the rest of us our God-given freedoms.

  But they’re still kicking.

  The struggle to expose labor’s unsavory role in the process is being waged battle by battle, but the war isn’t yet won.

  Aaron Withe is the CEO of the Freedom Foundation, a national public policy watchdog focusing on government employee unions. His first book, “Freedom is the Foundation,” was released this month.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 19:00

• There Were At Least 13 Campus Hate-Crime Hoaxes This School Year
  There Were At Least 13 Campus Hate-Crime Hoaxes This School Year

  Authored by Matt Lamb via The College Fix,

  The 2022-23 school year saw 13 hate crime hoaxes and six questionable claims, according to a College Fix analysis.

   

  

   

  Sports competitions continue to oddly be a source for race hoaxes, despite the omnipresence of phones that can capture alleged racial slurs.

  Pennsylvania State University fans found themselves falsely accused of using racial slurs against Rutgers University’s men’s basketball team. “Further investigation into reported fan behavior at the Penn State versus Rutgers basketball game on [Feb. 26] has found that no apparent racial slurs were used by Penn State fans,” the university announced.

  By now, it should be clear that claims of racial slurs at sports games are likely not true.

  The hoax that attracted the most attention of them all began in August, when Duke University volleyball player Rachel Richardson claimed that someone at a game against Brigham Young University kept yelling the n-word at her. This is actually two hate crime hoaxes, because her godmother also claimed that someone yelled the word every single time the black volleyball player went to serve.

  The hoax led the University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach to cancel a game against BYU, even after the hoax had been debunked. The University of Pacific canceled its game against BYU after the debunked hoax as well.

  August was a busy time for hate crime hoaxes, as that is when a black female in a “head scarf” named Zaynab Bintabdul-Hadijakien was charged for an attack on the Black Cultural Center. UVA officials would not identify the suspect, and even a police report redacted her race, but The Fix dug around and found out she is a black female.

  Even when a black Democrat at Harvard University stood accused of yelling a “homophobic slur” at a peer, LGBT students on campus blamed the pro-life club. This did not appear to be part of a rhetorical exercise, like when the president of MIT’s student government perpetrated two campus hate-crime hoaxes, hanging posters and chalking slurs against LGBTQ people, Latinos and other “marginalized communities,” to protest free speech.

  He was not the only LGBT person who left slurs for others in his tribe. For example, a “non-binary” University of Connecticut student found “homophobic language” on a dorm room door – but the culprits were other LGBTQ students.

  Other race hoaxes this school year include: the juvenile allegedly behind the bomb threats against historically black colleges and universities, a black man who trashed the University of Florida’s Institute for Black Culture sign, and the claim that white students surrounded a black female student at Sam Houston State University and poured water on her.

  The university told The Fix in September 2022 that police were “unable to verify” the claim.

  Race hoaxes are trickling down to the high school level as well, including the “White Power” graffiti left by Hispanic gangs at an Idaho high school and the two black students who circulated a “racist anti-Black caricature”at a high school in Sacramento, a common place for hate crime hoaxes.

  Not confirmed, but seems questionable

  The school year also saw questionable claims of hate crimes which were never confirmed or disproven.

  Most recently, The Fix reported that Eastern Washington University police closed an investigation into the n-word written on a mirror in a dance studio on campus. The Black Student Union reported finding the word after class.

  LGBT individuals at Harvard University claimed they received an email, echoing the language used by hoax perpetrator Jussie Smollett, that Cambridge was “MAGA Country.” Subsequent reporting by The Fix noted that the university quietly closed the investigation without telling anyone.

  Similarly, American University would not divulge the race of the suspect who wrote “Black people suck.”

  Black students at Grinnell College in Iowa claimed there had been “14 vehicles” vandalized, though students never reported it to the local police department. Campus safety was informed, however.

  However, sometimes hate crimes, or at least hateful acts between two races or religions, do occur.

  A black individual and two white friends wrote a racial slur on a black student’s dorm, although the police never charged anyone with a hate crime. Alston Willis was charged with harassment while the other individuals were given a warning for trespassing.

  In a more serious crime, three black teens were charged with misdemeanor battery charges for assaulting a Chinese University of Wisconsin Madison student.

  Finally, law enforcement closed an investigation into a racist letter allegedly sent to a University of Cincinnati Professor Antar Tichavakunda after he refused to answer questions from the police.

  The scholar claimed he received a letter which advocated for America to be “ethnically cleansed” and claimed black people shouldn’t be in school because “schools are for human beings not black afterbirth.”

  Special mention

  While not exactly a campus hate crime in the sense that it was perpetrated by a student or professor or occurred at a school, special mention goes to the academics who rushed to blame a deadly attack on an LGBT club on the “right-wing” — however, the suspect, who recently pled guilty to five murder charges identifies as “non-binary.”

  “I have no doubt in the coming days we will learn that the motive of the 22 year old young person who turned to violence was influenced by hateful rhetoric online and within right-wing media,” University at Buffalo Professor Ben Fabian commented soon after the shooting in a message to his peers.

  That claim, like so many other hate crime allegations, has been debunked.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• VW Curbs EV Production As EU Demand Falters Amid Gloomier Economic Picture
  VW Curbs EV Production As EU Demand Falters Amid Gloomier Economic Picture

  German newspaper Nordwest-Zeitung reports Volkswagen has temporarily reduced the production of electric vehicles at one of its plants.

  Volkswagen’s Emden plant in Lower Saxony has reduced production of the electric ID.4 compact SUV and ID.7 sedan for the next two weeks because of weakening sales. 

  

  Industry blog Autocar reported Manfred Wulff, head of the works council for the Emden plant, told German Press Agency in an earlier article published by the North West newspaper that while EV production was being reduced, production of combustion-engine models, including the Volkswagen Passat, are unaffected. 

  Wulff said 300 of the current 1,500 temporary workers employed at the plant would not have their contracts renewed in August. And he noted EV demand is 30% below planned production figures. 

  “We are experiencing strong customer reluctance in the electric vehicle sector,” he told the North West.

  Wulff noted that the ID 7 saloon, planned to start production in July, would be delayed to “later this year.” 

  North West interviewed the minister of economic affairs for Lower Saxony, Olaf Lies, who said, “Registration numbers of electric vehicles continue to be high, but what concerns us is the current dip in demand – not only at Volkswagen but across all manufacturers.” 

  The timing of this news comes as the eurozone economy was in a technical recession in the first three months of 2023.

  

  The contraction was due to a downward revised second estimate from Germany’s statistics office showing that the eurozone’s largest economy was in recession in early 2023. 

  

  A downturn in the euro area economy is weighing on demand for large ticket items, like fancy EVs. Many on the continent have been dealing with the highest energy and food inflation in a generation as living standards plunge. 

  Stifel analyst Daniel Schwarz commented on the news. He said, “Reducing the number of temps and canceling a shift signals that VW is not expecting this to improve in the short term.” 

  Could we be witnessing the beginning innings of EV demand cracking?  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 02:45

• AfD's Success Is A Warning Sign To Europe's Mainstream Parties
  AfD’s Success Is A Warning Sign To Europe’s Mainstream Parties

  Authored by László Szőcs via Remix News,

  AfD’s recent successes are a warning to politicians that Europe is not being led as people want it to be…

  

  All politics is local politics — this time, the lessons of this established axiom in America are being learned in Germany. On Sunday, the most right-wing party in the German parliament, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), achieved its first electoral breakthrough in 10 years: Its victory in the Sonneberg district of Thuringia marked the first time it has become part of a local executive.

  The significance of this should neither be overestimated nor underestimated. The AfD continues to be seen as a pariah in the German political system. It’s a party with which neither the center-right CDU/CSU alliance nor the parties to its left are willing to form a coalition, neither at the federal nor state level. At the same time, according to newspaper reports on Monday, the AfD’s breakthrough has caused serious unease and fear among Jewish and Turkish organizations in Germany. Some are claiming a general crisis of democracy.

  Although the AfD is often described simply as anti-immigration, it is much more than that. Thuringia has the fifth-lowest proportion of immigrants of the 16 federal states, just a few percent, which is in line with the overall picture in east Germany, even if the proportion has risen sharply in recent years. And Thuringia is not a backward, underdeveloped region either. Sonneberg on the Bavarian border, for example, is part of the European metropolitan region of Nuremberg. When my photographer colleague and I were there on a reporting trip ahead of the 2021 Bundestag elections, traveling from Gera to Erfurt and Mühlhausen, we encountered many signs of discontent with the Merkel era in a province where the greats of German culture — Bach, Schiller, Herder, Goethe — all made their mark.

  “Today, Germany is unfortunately far from being a democracy. In a democracy, other voices, including conservative ones, should be heard,” said Günter Oßwald, who, contrary to the stereotype, is not a marginalized, beer-swilling, unemployed man on a housing estate, but someone who employs 150 people in his car parts business in Mühlhausen.

  Angela Merkel was — at least on paper — a conservative head of government. However, the supposedly center-right CDU/CSU coalition, the leading opposition force in Germany, has not yet overcome Merkel’s turn to the left and is unable to capture a large enough share of the right-wing electorate. The AfD is polling at 19 percent of the vote nationwide, overtaking the leading government party, the Social Democrats, and is in second place behind the Christian Union parties.

  The forthcoming east German state elections could also confirm that dissatisfaction with the mainstream is making the AfD the most popular party in the eastern federal states — the former communist GDR. There is no communist nostalgia in this. As Timothy Garton Ash, who has been traveling in Germany, wrote 30 years ago, the Americanization of the GDR was more visibly successful than the Sovietization of GDR society. The far left in the east has an obvious upper limit, despite the fact that post-communists have manifested themselves in Bodo Ramelow, who is the prime minister of Thuringia.

  Although it is only one district in Thuringia, the AfD’s victory in Germany is the latest warning sign for the European mainstream — which despises ordinary citizens — ahead of next year’s EU elections.

  In Austria, the like-minded Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) is the most popular, while in France the National Rally is gaining strength. Sunday saw a conservative election victory in Greece, and in July, the ball is set to continue in Spain. Citizens in more and more places are openly fed up with the way Europe is being run today.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/28/2023 – 02:00

• Escobar On Russia's Coup-Gate: Putin Wins… On All Counts
  Escobar On Russia’s Coup-Gate: Putin Wins… On All Counts

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  When the lightning of History strikes, better cut to the chase in our first draft…

  

  Here we go.

  After the extraordinary events in Russia during The Longest Day, President Putin wins on all counts.

  Among other feats, he has made an absolute, inter-galactic ass of the whole collective West MSM – all over again.

  He rallied virtually every Russian to end the Special Military Operation (SMO) – or “almost war” (according to some business circles) quicker.

  He – and the FSB – amassed a formidable list of traitors and 5th and 6th columnists, which will be properly dealt with.

  And he now enjoys unlimited freedom to deploy de facto Counter-Terrorist Operation (CTO) martial law powers.

  As much as Putin helped perennial Lukashenko in August 2020, preventing regime change in Belarus, good ol’ Luka prevented Russia from sliding into civil war in June 2023.

  A complex wide-ranging counter-terror op is now in effect in Moscow and beyond, while assorted Western sub-zoology specimens are stunned, dazed and confused: wasn’t that supposed to be Putin meeting his Czar Nicholas II moment?

  A first glance at the chessboard tells us that all the pieces seem to be falling in their right places.

  • Prighozin gets a golden parachute in Belarus.

  • Shoigu may be about to be sacked, perhaps even Gerasimov (yes, there are deeply dysfunctional layers inside the Ministry of Defense).

  • The Wagner musicians will be incorporated as a regular Army Corps.

  • They may keep doing business in Africa: demand is huge.

  So what really happened after The Longest Day?

  Hefty CIA funds may have changed hands. But in the end the “coup” could turn out to be the Greatest Russian Trolling of the West Ever.

  The Mother of All Maskirovkas

  Once again, facts on the ground prove Putin is the undisputed champion of Russia. After keeping a strategic silence for a few hours, his intervention gathered full support from the civilian population, the FSB, the Chechens, the Army, the Communists, everyone.

  The exact terms of the deal between Luka and Prighozin, with help from the governor of the Tula region, Alexey Dyumin, are still unclear.

  Prighozin said he was satisfied with the terms. Peskov confirmed on the record that a criminal case against Prigozhin would be dropped. A key Prighozin demand was the twin resignation of Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of Staff Gerasimov. That may – or may not – happen in the immediate future.

  And that brings us to the still fascinating possibility this was the Mother of All Maskirovkas. Prigozhin sets up all this circus just to get a meeting in Moscow with Shoigu and Gerasimov.

  Talk about an overkill just to go out on a date.

  The Mother of All Maskirovkas scenario also implies a move worthy of 5D chess.

  On Saturday, Wagner was 200 km away from Moscow.

  Yet on Sunday, Wagner was 100 km away from Kiev.

  Next level Sun Tzu Art of War, anyone?

  Between sovereignty and betrayal

  Alexander Dugin correctly points out how this was also an exercise in Sovereignty: “Only Sovereign Lukashenko, together with Sovereign Putin himself, confronted [Prighozin]…It turned out that many can frame the President and the people, acting in the shadows and apparently on his behalf, but saving the Fatherland in a critical situation is not their specialty.”

  The corollary is that Russia needs “a sovereign elite, otherwise everything will repeat itself.”

  As for the dazed and confused collective West, especially the NATO-Kiev junta, with everyone instantly rebranding Wagner from “terrorists” to “freedom fighters”, getting bogged down in their own swamp is the art they excel in.

  Mainstream media spun that the proverbial “Western officials” were “taken by surprise” by the mutiny. That depends on the amount of funds that changed hands, and in which direction, during the preparation.

  The SMO, now CTO keeps rolling along. The Russian Army continues to fight, undisturbed. The “counter-offensive” remains teetering over the edge of a cliff, ready to kiss the black void.

  Putin winning on all counts implies the whole civilian population – and the military – engaged into preserving him and the Russian institutions, as well as perfecting them. There’s absolutely no nation anywhere across the collective West where we find this level of citizen support.

  Russian politics is a special animal. It works at the highest level and also at grassroots level – unlike in the West, where the norm is deep hatred between the elites and the people.

  Of course it should always be stressed it’s the less patriotic Russian oligarchs who run away every time something approaching The Longest Day takes place.

  For a few hours, the West was betting heavily on the dismemberment of Russia. Not now. And not in the foreseeable future.

  The succession is already being prepared, by Team Putin and selected patriotic oligarchs. Among the contenders, there’s a secret name that will stun everyone when it pops up. He’s still invisible in terms of public opinion, and works in the shadows. His name should remain secret for the time being.

  As it stands, what matters is that Russia as whole emerged even stronger out of The Longest Day. The man and woman in the street showed himself and herself, once again, as a true patriot, ready to defend the Motherland whatever it takes.

  There was no confrontation between those who are pro-Russian institutions and those who are pro-Wagner. People actually support both. People regarded Wagner like the “polite green men” who helped to peacefully retake Crimea in 2014. Facing them, there was not a single policeman or military.

  So Putin is stronger than ever. But everyone should always keep this in mind: the one thing he can’t forgive is betrayal.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 23:45

• Tucker Carlson Dares To Ask "Why Exactly Are We At War With Russia?"
  Tucker Carlson Dares To Ask “Why Exactly Are We At War With Russia?”

  “Why exactly are we at war with Russia?”

  

  Those are the verboten words that Tucker Carlson to utter at the start of Episode 7 Of his Tucker on Twitter series where he highlights the irony that the so-called ‘war for democracy’ is actually enabling dictatorship and tyranny.

  With nuclear extinction a possibility and 1000s of lives and billions of dollars already wasted, “what’s the point” he asks, “are we really doing this so that the Biden family can repay its debts to the oligarchs that financed their beachhouse.”

  “Thankfully” the former Fox News star explains, “we have an answer.”

  “The war against Putin and for Ukraine is in fact a war for democracy.”

  Sounds familiar?

  “Democracy must prevail” exclaims Nancy Pelosi as Carlson offers bipartisan examples of warmongers pushing for ‘democracy’ and all the military-industrial complex enrichment that comes with it.

  Carlson further mocks the rhetoric surrounding the war as a fight for democracy, highlighting the irony of supporting Ukrainian President Zelensky, who suspended democracy in his own country.

  “we are currently fighting a war for democracy on behalf of a leader who just casually announced he’s happy to end democracy and our democracy and supporting leaders have no problem with that“

  

  In fact, the Biden administration continual support for Ukraine despite Zelensky’s disregard for democracy, implies that their motives are questionable.

  He argues that during wartime, politicians become powerful and can justify any action, including silencing political opponents, leading to a potential erosion of democracy.

  Carlson suggests that those in Washington, including Republicans, support Biden’s stance on Ukraine because ending the war would threaten their power.

  He concludes by speculating on the future of Joe Biden, pointing out his age-related decline and potential implications for the Democratic Party, suggesting that Gavin Newsom may be a potential successor.

  Watch the full episode below:

  Ep. 7 Irony Alert: the war for democracy enables dictatorship. pic.twitter.com/tk7aOZ4H6n

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 28, 2023

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

  Full transcript below:

  Hey it’s Tucker Carlson, you may have found yourself wondering recently as the world slides closer to nuclear Annihilation than any time in human history why exactly are we at war with Russia.

  It seems like there’s a pretty significant downside to this particular foreign policy decision, starting with economic collapse and ending potentially with Extinction so is there a good reason we’re doing it so many innocent young people have been killed so many hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted some of them from the U.S treasury so what’s the point are we really doing this so the Biden family can repay its debts to the oligarchs who finance their beach house in Rehoboth.

  We’re doing it so our government can continue to lie about its illicit bio labs in Eastern Europe so that flabby losers like Toria Newland and Tony Blinken can feel like they’re doing something important with their sad empty lives.

  Really honestly there’s got to be a better reason for waging this the most pointless war of all.

  What is it.

  Well thankfully we have an answer: the war against Russia ladies and gentlemen the war against Putin and for Ukraine is in fact a war for democracy.

  Watch and recall the motive the president has said many times “we’re focused on what we can do to support Ukraine’s effort to fight for their democracy”.

  “Democracy must prevail. The Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy and in doing so for ours as well.”

  “Assisting and helping Ukraine win this fight for democracy and freedom and of course Ukrainian president zielinski understand that what’s at stake in Ukraine is bigger than just his Nation it is literally a battle for freedom and democracy themselves.”

  “They are showing the world what an existential fight for democracy looks like.”

  “President Zelenky and the Ukrainians have changed the course of history for the better and we unequivocally are with the Ukrainian people in their fight to remain a sovereign democracy.“

  Unequivocally with the Ukrainian people to remain in democracy it’s a bipartisan view democracy must Prevail.

  You just heard noted democracy expert Nancy Pelosi say the daughter of the mobbed up mayor of Baltimore as Pelosi puts it the Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy and for ours as well that’s right for ours as well without Ukrainian democracy in other words we can have no democracy here if the ukrainians aren’t free.

  Neither are we we must make sure they can vote in Kiev so we can continue to vote in Kansas City.

  It’s really that simple and yet tonight we regret to tell you that we have a problem it looks like they’re not going to be able to vote in Kiev anymore and no for once it’s not Putin’s fault.

  Democracy in Ukraine seems to be suspended by the world’s foremost democracy Advocate himself Field Marshal zielinski.

  Watch:

  “If we win” he says “we’ll let people vote otherwise no you vote” and we feel like it because ultimately we’re completely in charge and make all the rules.

  Your job is to obey or be punished.

  That’s our version of self-government.

  Self means me – I’m the government now.

  That’s not just any autocrat that’s our chief Ally in the war for democracy.

  This is the guy who just announced he’s like did you cancel next year’s elections.

  So you’ve got to wonder what the Biden Administration thinks of this – we can’t possibly continue to support zielinski, that guy, after he said that can we because in a clip less than 30 seconds long he just blew up our entire rationale for supporting his side in the war.

  So we can’t support him.

  Oh of course we can and we will.

  Here’s Joe Biden from yesterday reaffirming America’s unequivocal support for Ukraine no matter what happened in Russia “we the United States should continue to support Ukraine’s defense and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity”.

  So to recap we are currently fighting a war for democracy on behalf of a leader who just casually announced he’s happy to end democracy and our democracy and supporting leaders have no problem with that in fact they’re strongly for it.

  Shocked?

  You shouldn’t be.

  Of course they’re for it. You should have seen this coming.

  Wars for democracy always cancel democracy in the process – that’s why our leaders love them and they all do it – even The Virtuous leaders Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, the British government under Winston Churchill through an entire opposition party into prison and let them rot for the duration – in some cases with their families.

  So in a war for democracy you can do anything.

  Imagine what a man might do who has fewer principles.

  If that man say ran Ukraine he might seize churches arrest priests ban all criticism of himself disappear his political opponents and that’s happening.

  Just last month zelinski threw a man called Gonzalo Lira into prison indefinitely for the crime of daring to write about the Ukrainian government in unflattering ways.

  Now what’s interesting what separates this from other such cases is that lira is an American citizen, so Joe Biden who was quite a bit of SWAT as they say in Ukraine could have freed Gonzalo Lira within hours, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to – he didn’t say a word about it – he remains in prison tonight.

  So that makes you wonder what’s the real motive here when normal people see War they see death and destruction, sadness and suffering; but that’s not what demagogues see – they understand it differently they know that War means power mostly for them.

  During wartime everything they do can be justified – war is the gravest of all emergencies – imagine the coveted lockdowns times a thousand plus drones.

  Once War breaks out politicians become Gods with the power of life and death. So in a peaceful democracy you have to debate your political opponents in public and that’s tiresome but in a war for democracy you can just throw them in jail or have them executed. You can see that many in Washington are looking forward to that moment and that may be why they so fervently support Joe Biden – even many Republicans – against a potential opponent – the only opponent who opposes the war in Ukraine.

  If you were to end the war their power would evaporate.

  Last week a whistleblower produced WhatsApp messages from Hunter Biden proving that at the very least his father knew about his influence peddling businesses abroad and probably participated in them “I’m sitting here with my father” Hunter Biden wrote to his Chinese Partners demanding money as much as anything reported about the bidens over the last several years this was The Smoking Gun.

  There it is right there in the message that would have been enough to a normal president it would have been more than enough to keep a normal president from running for office again but had virtually no effect on Joe Biden.

  Most media Outlets ignored it completely or tried to spin Biden’s relationship with his son as some kind of moral Victory “the real meaning of the hunter Biden Saga as I see it” wrote Nick Kristoff of the New York Times “isn’t about presidential corruption but is about how widespread addiction is and about how a determined parent with unconditional love can sometimes reel a child back.”

  He actually wrote that and if you doubt it you should know that view was common.Here’s the take from ABC “the hunter Biden story, the Scandal, the this, that, it’s also the story of a Father’s Love and Joe Biden has never and will never give up on his son Hunter and will never treat him lesser than and so he is a father first take it or leave it.“

  So whistleblower produces a text message showing that Joe Biden was in the room with his son when his son was selling influence to an enemy power the Chinese government and ABC’s take on it Joe Biden is a father first take it or leave it.

  What accounts for a response like that?

  Well that’s the way you talk when you’ve got nothing to fear from an upcoming presidential election – you don’t even bother to think of an excuse for your candidate because you don’t need to. Your country has electronic voting machines – Joe Biden got 81 million votes in 2020 and you’re pretty sure he can do it again.

  In fact you know he can you’re not worried but actually they should be a little worried

  The people who control Joe Biden – Susan Rice and the rest – know they can continue to run our government, writing the press releases, formulating the policies, and they can do it effectively forever, as long as Joe Biden gets dressed in the morning, and of course that’s their strong preference.

  These are fervent opponents of change but the one thing these people cannot control is aging.

  Joe Biden is old he’s 80 now he will be 85 at the end of the next term.

  People imagine that old age is a long predictable progression from Acuity to permanent unconsciousness but often that’s not at all how it actually works.

  When old people start to slide they tend to Slide fast.

  Joe Biden has begun that descent.

  Here he was yesterday and here’s what she wrote to me and I quote you can imagine my joy she called them right away and the next day they sent someone out to survey her yard as Beth wrote this is the best thing that’s happened in Rural America since the rural electrification act for electricity to farms in the 30s and 40s end of quote.”

  End of quote you weren’t supposed to hear that – Joe Biden read the stage directions out loud –  that’s like eating the garnish that comes with your entree you’re supposed to know not to do that.

  Joe Biden no longer does in a year or two he will be gone completely and there will be no hiding it at that point the Democratic party will face a secession problem.

  If Joe Biden is re-elected next year and then forced to leave office during his term due to disability or death that means Kamala Harris will become president of the United States and nobody wants that not even her husband.

  In real life nobody likes Kamala Harris.

  That’s not an attack on her in fact it’s possible to feel pity for someone who’s so universally reviled. It is instead an observation of unchanging physical reality like gravity or photosynthesis nobody wants Kamala Harris to be president no one will benefit if she becomes president so logic suggests there’s going to be a change.

  It’s going to have to be somebody else and whoever that person is is going to have to enter the race soon before the election after Biden drops out.

  Who could that person be? We don’t know obviously this is all just guessing but we do know whoever that is we’ll have to have two essential criteria he’ll have to be as shallow ruthless and transactional as Joe Biden is and he’ll need to have flattery skills that are so polished and advanced they’d be considered Superior even in the Saudi Royal Court and there’s only one man in modern America who fits that description Gavin Newsom the governor of California and perhaps not coincidentally Joe Biden’s new closest friend.

  “I am here Mr President” Newsom told Biden at an event that they did together last week. “I am here as a proud American as a proud Californian mesmerized by not just your faith and your Devotion to this country and the world we’re trying to build but by your results by your action by your passion by Your Capacity to deliver.”

  I get mesmerized by you Joe Biden – imagine saying that as a compliment you couldn’t do it.

  Few human beings could do it but Gavin Newsom had no problem at all those words rolled right off his Fork tongue. He never stopped smiling so if you’re looking for the leader of the coup there he is right there she’s in Kennedy’s motorcade.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 23:38

• Nvidia Slides As Biden Prepares New AI Chip Export Curbs To China
  Nvidia Slides As Biden Prepares New AI Chip Export Curbs To China

  One month ago, Wall Street lost its mind when Nvidia reported guidance that blew away consensus: in the aftermath of ChatGPT, it seemed as if the entire world suddenly wanted the company’s flagship A100 chip, helping send NVDA stock higher by almost 50% in days, pushing the company into the vaunted “cuatro comas” club.

  And maybe they did… but maybe not. Maybe instead of a scramble by everyone to become the Apple of AI, something which only a small handful of cash-rich companies can even hope of achieving due to the vast capex sums required, all that happened was a rush by Chinese companies to rush and front-load orders before the chip export ban hammer falls, something we discussed most recently two weeks ago.

  Same happened with semiconductors and double/triple ordering during peak covid, and the cycle is even more offset now with AI orders (NVDA) ahead of potential chip wars with China. https://t.co/LJwLEVEl5h

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 11, 2023

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

  To be sure, it wouldn’t be the first time that Chines firms were double and triple ordering precious chips (it happened all throughout the post-Covid supply chain crunch) and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Nvidia was caught in the middle of the US-China chip war. Recall, it was just last August that NVDA stock tumbled (amazing to think it was “only” $150 back then) to get ahead of US chip export crackdowns, after the US has implemented new license requirements for Nvidia’s A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuits – Nvidia’s highest-performance products for servers – in sales to China and Russia. Nvidia said last September the restrictions would cost it $400 million in that quarter.

  But while the market quickly forgot that one of Nvidia’s largest revenue streams could be shut off at any time, and resumed bidding up the stock following the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 as the world lost its collective mind in the historic AI frenzy, the reality is that nothing had actually changed.

  And early Tuesday evening the world got a reminder of just how little things had changed, when the WSJ reported that Washington could soon close loopholes in the sale to China of powerful chips used to train AI models, potentially denting sales to the world’s largest semiconductor market.

  The Commerce Department could move as soon as early next month to stop the shipments of chips made by Nvidia and other chip makers to customers in China and other countries of concern without first obtaining a license, the people said.

  The action would be part of final rules codifying and expanding the export control measures announced in October, some of the people said.

  The move would further crimp China’s ability to build out AI capabilities after restrictions last year that cut off the most advanced AI chips made by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. Nvidia responded to that move by making a version of its AI chips for the Chinese market called the A800 that fell below performance thresholds outlined by the Commerce Department. That chip replaced the A100, which is widely used in data centers to do AI computations.

  But the new restrictions being contemplated by the Commerce Department would ban the sale of even A800 chips without a license, according to the WSJ sources.

  The news sent Nvidia stock sliding more than 3% in after-hours trading in New York. Why? Because as we said last August, Nvidia gets about a fifth of its revenue from China, and any trade intervention by the US – which at this stage in the new cold war is just a matter of time – would cripple Nvidia’s value proposition.

  While Nvidia led declines in shares of US chipmakers after hours, rival AMD also fell about 3%. The two lead the market for chips vital to the development of generative AI models such as ChatGPT.

  

  In response to last summer’s regulations, Nvidia designed less-capable chips that fall under thresholds that require a license from the Commerce Department before export to China or other countries of concern. But Biden is now weighing action as soon as next month to expand the curbs to include those lower-powered semiconductors, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.

  Such a move underscores the Biden administration’s determination to contain China’s technological rise and could stoke tensions between the two countries. The US is increasingly concerned about Beijing’s technological ambitions, including around the use of AI in military and scientific advances that could tilt the geopolitical balance.

  Nvidia, which with a market cap just over $1 trillion has become the world’s most valuable chipmaker with a more than 80% share of the market for data center accelerator chips, and has been operating under rules that required approval for shipments to China of its A100 and new H100 parts. It was able to partially alleviate the impact on its finances by selling a modified version of the A100 that’s slower at accessing data, and therefore didn’t trigger the restriction.

  But now Biden’s minions are going after those chips as well in hopes of delaying China in the global AI race, and the question is with the market having priced in virtually unlimited growth for the chip company, what will the threat of losing as much as 20% of its total revenue (and growth) mean to NVDA stock.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 23:05

• CJ Hopkins 'Horrified' To Find "The Same Totalitarian Program Is Being Rolled Out" Everywhere Around The World
  CJ Hopkins ‘Horrified’ To Find “The Same Totalitarian Program Is Being Rolled Out” Everywhere Around The World

  Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  Fear and Loathing in the City of Westminster

  Our descent into City Airport was like the drop-ship scene in the movie Aliens. The BA CityFlyer Embraer 190, a narrow-body twin-engine airliner, rolled over into a 40-degree bank and started bucking like a mechanical bull. Simulated “chimes” began chiming frantically. Flight attendants bolted for their seats. The German businessman in the seat beside me, obviously a nervous flyer, immediately adopted the “brace” position. I gripped his shoulder reassuringly and shouted into his ear like a drunken redneck, “WE’RE ON AN EXPRESS ELEVATOR TO HELL! GOING DOWN!”

  And so began my latest trip to London. This time, I wasn’t there to talk to “the Left” or to hunt down endoparasitoid xenomorphs. I was there on Serious Conspiracy Theorist Business, which I explained to the chirpy MI6 operative posing as a “survey taker” that followed me out of Border Control asking questions about my “nation of residence” and my “experience with the passport scanners,” and so on. She was wearing one of those rubber “Mission Impossible” masks that made her look like a middle-aged British woman. I waited for an opportunity, head faked, juked right, and lost her in the crowd. As I entered the “Arrivals” lobby, I turned and shouted in her general direction, “NOT MY FIRST RODEO, MR. PHELPS!”

  I don’t know what was up with all the shouting. I’ve been experimenting with different types of medication for this sinus condition I’ve had for months. My Sinus Specialist diagnosed me with “long” or possibly “permanent Covid,” or some yet-to-be-named debilitating syndrome caused by some other bio-weapon that produces cold-and-flu-like symptoms and has a survival rate of 99.8 percent. So, maybe it was bad reaction to my meds. Whatever it was, I was feeling jumpy.

  And the climate-change apocalypse didn’t help. Emerging from the Tube in Westminster was like walking into an enormous open-air sauna. Bodies were lying all around on the sidewalks. AFP photographers in hazmat suits were taking pictures of the carnage. Herds of corpulent American tourists staggered through the streets in semi-fugue states sweating profusely and thumbing their phones like an invasion of alien albino hippos trying to call up to their UAPs and arrange for immediate emergency extraction. I pushed and shoved and elbowed my way down Tothill Street to my pod hotel, checked in, and proceeded to get hopelessly lost in the maze of identical Kubrickian hallways that eventually led me to my luxury pod, and cleaned myself up for the night’s festivities.

  What was I doing back in London in the middle of a heat wave? Well … OK, I’m allowed to tell you about it now. As you are probably aware, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Russell Brand were doing this public event last Thursday …

  

  … but that’s not what I was really there for.

  Not that the Thursday event wasn’t fun. It was. Despite the rather pricey tickets, there was a good size house and spirits were high. Russell Brand was in top form, pouring out torrents of intellectual free-association like an English Neal Cassady and nailing the punchlines of all the jokes. Michael was also firing on all cylinders. He worked the house like a seasoned politician, whipping the crowd into a veritable frenzy of anti-totalitarian fervor. Stella Assange took the stage at one point and briefed us on the official crucifixion of her husband, which, sadly, now looks like a fait accompli. Matt, who had just made it to London that morning, and so was jet-lagged and delieriously sleep-deprived, dispensed with the speech he had rewritten on the plane, and just winged it, and somehow pulled it off … because that, as they say, is show biz.

  Here’s the money part of Matt’s speech, which he paraphrased in London (emphasis mine):

  “What Michael and I were looking at was something new, an Internet-age approach to political control that uses brute digital force to alter reality itself. We certainly saw plenty of examples of censorship and de-platforming and government collaboration in those efforts. However, it’s clear that the idea behind the sweeping system of digital surveillance combined with thousands or even millions of subtle rewards and punishments built into the online experience, is to condition people to censor themselves.“

  Early the next morning, Michael, Matt, and a secret cabal of international journalists, editors, organizers, political satirists, academics, and other Very Serious People whose names I am not at liberty to mention gathered in an undisclosed location and spent the better part of the day sharing harmful misinformation and strategizing about how to defeat (or marginally disrupt) the network of governments, Intelligence agencies, global corporations, NGOs, and so-called disinformation experts known as the Censorship Industrial Complex. There were delegates from the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and other nominally sovereign countries.

  This heretofore clandestine meeting was conducted in what appeared to be a WWII-era air-raid shelter that had been converted into a private BDSM club under military-level OPSEC protocols (i.e., the meeting was conducted according to the protocols, not the architectural conversion). I’m not entirely sure why that was. We weren’t doing anything even remotely illegal. However, given that I’m under criminal investigation here in Germany for tweeting the cover art of my book, and the IRS’s sudden interest in Matt, and Kit Klarenberg’s recent experience in Luton, perhaps the abundance of caution was warranted. The last thing we needed was the UK Thoughtpolice goose-stepping in like Basil Fawlty and dragging everyone off to Room 101.

  Anyway, that’s what I was actually there for. I had never met most of the people in attendance, except online on the double-encrypted Russian-backed dark-web conspiracy-theorist channels where we hatch our right-wing-extremist plots to defend people’s rights to freedom-of-speech and engage in other harmful anti-Democracy behaviors. I’m still not sure who I actually met in London, as we were all wearing identical Mickey-Mouse masks and speaking through portable voice modifiers. (In any secret meeting like this, you have to assume you’ve been infiltrated!)

  

  After the obligatory arguing about the agenda, we settled in and shared our country reports, which, unsurprisingly, were all variations on a theme. I won’t go into all the details. Michael Shellenberger’s non-profit has been tracking those developments. Matt Taibbi and Racket News are reporting it. Other alternative media outlets are reporting it. Millions of people all around the world are talking about it, writing about it, and arguing with each other about it. Your Twitter feed is probably full of it. Alex Gutentag just published a huge article about it.

  So, what is it, exactly, that is going on?

  The thing that was horrifying about listening to my colleagues reporting on the state of things in their countries — or, rather, the thing that should be horrifying but is becoming a mundane fact of life — is that more or less the same totalitarian program is being rolled out in countries throughout the world.

  • The censorship.

  • The official propaganda.

  • The criminalization of dissent.

  • The pathologization of dissent.

  • The manipulation of our perception of reality.

  • The coordinated transformation of the world into a smiley-faced neo-Orwellian police state in which politics no longer matters because society has been divided into two basic classes, i.e., “the normals,” who are prepared to mindlessly follow orders and parrot whatever official propaganda they are fed, and “the deviants,” or “extremists,” who are not.

  Seriously, all satire aside, think about the implications of that.

  As you sit there in whichever nominally sovereign country you’re sitting there reading this in, ask yourself, “how and why is this happening?” Then ask yourself, “why is it happening now?”

  If you do not have answers to those questions, it might behoove you to attempt to come up with some. That is basically what I’ve been trying to do — in a satirical and sometimes not so satirical manner — in these Consent Factory essays for the last seven years. I’m not going to summarize it all again here. I’ve done that, repeatedly, in my essays and books. I did it the last time I visited London to give a talk at the Real Left Conference.

  I did it again at this gathering in London. It did not go over all that well.

  The thing is, most of us are so laser-focused on the trees that we cannot see the forest. But our adversaries see the forest. They see the forest like fucking eagles. They own the fucking forest and everything in it. While we hop like squirrels from tree to tree, distracted from distraction by distraction, from limited hangout by limited hangout, they are building a big fucking fence around it and deploying the Forest-Ranger Sturmabteilung.

  I’m reminded of that infamous Karl Rove quote. He was referring to the USA, of course, but it was GloboCap (i.e., the Corporatocracy) that he was really speaking for whether he knew it or not …

  “That’s not the way the world really works anymore … we’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” [The New York Times Magazine]

  If we do not want to end up “studying that reality,” the global, pathologized-totalitarian reality that is being subtly and not so subtly implemented simultaneously in countries throughout the world, at some point we had better come up with some actual answers to those questions above.

  The supranational, globally-hegemonic, post-ideological system of power that runs our world — whatever you need to call it — has answers to those questions. It has a story. It is a story about a beneficent global empire governed by authoritative scientific experts who are trying to save the world from Whatever and protect everyone from “disinformation” and “harmful” speech, ideas, and so on. Like every good story, it has an antagonist. Us. We are the official enemy. Right, Left, libertarian, anarchist, Islamic fundamentalist, Christian fundamentalist … it does not make one iota of difference. There is only the Empire, and those who oppose it. The Empire does not give a shit why. It is conducting a global “Clear-and-Hold” operation, wiping out internal resistance and establishing ideological uniformity. It could not care less what you think you believe in. All it wants is mindless obedience and rote repetition of its propaganda. That’s how totalitarianism works.

  And there I go with my story again. If anyone has a different story that makes sense of the last seven years — and arguably the last 30 years — honestly, I would love to hear it. My story fills me with fear and loathing, but the only other coherent story I’m hearing at the moment is the Empire’s story, and I think we all know how that one ends.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 22:45

• Midtown Gets Paywall: Feds Approve NYC Congestion Toll
  Midtown Gets Paywall: Feds Approve NYC Congestion Toll

  The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration approved the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s congestion tax scheme to charge drivers entering New York City’s midtown Manhattan. The tax is the first of its kind in the nation, expected to fleece hardworking Americans between $9 and $23 per day to drive through the district, reported Bloomberg. 

  “Congestion pricing will reduce traffic in our crowded downtown, improve air quality and provide critical resources to the MTA,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul. 

  Hochul said, “I am proud of the thorough environmental assessment process we conducted, including responding to thousands of comments from community members from across the region.”

  She added: “With the green light from the federal government, we look forward to moving ahead with the implementation of this program.” 

  The MTA operates NYC’s subways, buses, and rail lines. It’ll be responsible for implementing the tax scheme as soon as April 2024. Bloomberg said motorists driving south of 60th Street would be able to use an E-ZPass. 

  The new tax aims to fleece motorists and raise $1 billion of new annual revenue for the MTA. NYC officials want to reduce the number of daily vehicles entering the district by up to 20%.

  

  Meanwhile, in a joint statement from Rep. Josh Gottheimer, Sen. Bob Menendez, and Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.—all Democrats, they said, “This is nothing more than a cash grab to fund the MTA.” 

  The new tax will put a paywall around the elite financial district and bar lower-income motorists from entering because of the cost of entry. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 22:25

• Actor Jim Caviezel Says Movie Exposing Child Sex Trafficking Is 'Huge Weapon Against Evil'
  Actor Jim Caviezel Says Movie Exposing Child Sex Trafficking Is ‘Huge Weapon Against Evil’

  Via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Jim Caviezel, a Christian actor of “The Passion of the Christ” fame, said he wants his upcoming thriller “Sound of Freedom” to shed light on the reality of child sex trafficking in the United States and warn parents of what he called a “pedophile agenda” that has been pushed for decades.

  

  The film stars Caviezel as Tim Ballard, a Homeland Security agent who, after rescuing a young boy from traffickers, learns that the boy’s sister is still captive. He quits his job and puts his life at risk as he embarks on a mission deep into the jungle of Colombia to save the girl.

  In an interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Caviezel and the real Tim Ballard said what the film depicts, as dark and disturbing as it may be, is based on real events and people.

  

  “I will say, it is a true story, absolutely,” Caviezel told host Jan Jekielek. “Every character is real. Every bad guy is real.”

  “At the end of the film … it showed all the good guys, the bad guys, the kids, and it said where they are today,” said Ballard. “We know where they are. Those are real kids, every one of them. Some of them work for us. Some of them have actually rescued people from human trafficking as young adults.”

  In 2013, Ballard left his government job to found Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), a non-profit organization working with law enforcement around the world to rescue children from exploitation and help survivors recover. They have been operating in places where instability and conflict make women and children more vulnerable to trafficking, including countries like Ecuador, Mexico, and Ukraine.

  Tragically, according to OUR, the kidnapping and sexual exploitation of children in those countries is being fueled and propelled by a growing U.S. customer base.

  “The big numbers: $150 billion a year are made off the backs of men, women, and children as slaves,” Ballard said, noting that some 27 million people around the world live in slavery, with 6 million of those being children.

  “It’s estimated that 2 million of those [children] are specifically designated for the commercial sex trade,” the former federal agent continued. “The United States is number three for destination countries for human trafficking, number one the consumption of child rape videos, and we are now approaching number one in production of child exploitation material.”

  ‘A Huge Weapon Against the Evil’

  In 2019, Ballard testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, arguing that an expanded, strengthened U.S.–Mexico border barrier provides an “effective tool” in combating those trying to smuggle children into the country for the purposes of selling them for sex. He now believes that the countries’ poor border enforcement might be part of a broader agenda catering to this lucrative market.

  “Why are there over 85,000 unaccompanied minors showing up in the last two years at the southern border and are delivered to sponsors with no background check, no DNA testing?” he said. “Thousands of these kids … showing up alone with a name: ‘Call this number, please, and take me to my sponsor.’ They call the number and they show up.”

  “The fake news media outlets are also propelling this agenda that don’t call them pedophiles. They want to call it minor attracted persons, or MAP,” he added. “Sexualizing kids, giving kids right to consent, pushing God out of education—all the platforms the organized pedophile groups have been peddling, the woke left is now implementing them.”

  For parents and concerned Americans, Caviezel said his film will help them better understand the reality and what they need to do to protect their loved ones.

  “The film is very powerful because it shows you how routinely [child sex trafficking] occurs,” he told Jekielek. “But it also helps you. It weaponizes you to know what the warning signs are. A mother and a father have to guard their children and protect them. And by sticking your head in the sand is not protecting your children.”

  “When you walk out of there, you won’t get up just like you did on ‘The Passion of the Christ’ or on ‘Schindler’s List,’” the actor added. “And the difference between ‘Schindler’s List’ and this film, is that ‘Schindler’s List’ was 50 years too late. We’re doing this right now during the time. And this is a huge weapon against the evil.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 22:05

• 16.5 Million Americans Risk Stroke From Too Much Exercise
  16.5 Million Americans Risk Stroke From Too Much Exercise

  While things such as daylight savings time, skipping breakfast, skyrocketing energy bills and making the bed ‘too vigorously’ have been floated as causes for heart attack and strokes (and totally nothing else), you can now add ‘exercising too hard’ to the list.

  

  According to a new study in the Physics of Fluid, researchers concluded that an elevated heart rate can cause strokes in people with blocked carotid arteries, which occurs through a process of stenosis – where the carotid arteries located on both sides of the neck become clogged with fat an cholesterol, forming a plaque that narrows the artery.

  The NY Post reports that stenosis can be difficult to catch early, and is dangerous because it limits blood flow to the brain, which can result in a stroke.

  And according to the Cleveland Clinic, some 16.5 million (5%) of Americans have carotid artery stenosis.

  Contributing factors to stenosis include smoking, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, high blood pressure or cholesterol, or diabetes.

  Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur used a computational model to simulate blood flow in carotid arteries at three stages of stenosis: without blockage, with a mild 30% blockage and with a moderate 50% blockage.

  They compared the effect of an exercise-induced heart rate at 140 beats per minute, which can be achieved by a brisk walk for some obese people, and resting heart rates of 67 and 100 bpm.

  Healthy patients and those with only slightly blocked arteries appeared to have exercise be beneficial for maintaining healthy blood flow.

  However, the results for those with moderate to severe blockage were concerning. –NY Post

  According to author Somnathj Roy, “Intense exercise shows adverse effects on patients with moderate or higher stenosis levels,” adding “It substantially increases the shear stress at the stenosis zone, which may cause the stenosis to rupture. This ruptured plaque may then flow to the brain and its blood supply, causing ischemic stroke.”

  Stroke, which is 80% preventable, is the #5 cause of death in the United States, according to the American Stroke Association.

  “While stressful exercises may be beneficial for improving the cardiac performance of healthy individuals, the same may bring in extremely adverse consequences at elevated heart rates on account of extensive physical activities for patients having extensive arterial blockages, if not performed in supervision of specialized experts,” according to the report.

  Travis
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 21:45

• Shellenberger Exposes Secret Government Effort To Regulate Your Mind
  Shellenberger Exposes Secret Government Effort To Regulate Your Mind

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Public Substack,

  Congress must defund and dismantle the corrupt Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and fire its director, Jen Easterly

  

  One of the big questions that those of us involved in exposing the secret U.S. government censorship effort have been asking ourselves over the last few months is: did the people involved know that they were breaking the law?

  That question appears to have been answered with a resounding yes by the House Judiciary Committee. Yesterday it released its report, “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded with Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans,” on government censorship.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” wrote a former assistant general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in an email to a colleague, “before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”

  The “we” in that sentence refers to the network of government agencies and nongovernmental organizations that we and others have dubbed the Censorship Industrial Complex.

  That Complex includes the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

  Its leader, Kate Starbird, responded to the former CIA official, Susan Spaulding, by saying, “Yes. I agree. We have a couple of pretty obvious vulnerabilities.”

  But one day later, Starbird dismissed the notion that she and her colleagues were doing anything wrong.

  The real problem was, she explained, that “current public discourse (in part a result of information operations) seems to accept malinformation as ‘speech’ and within democratic norms” and that CISA may face “bad faith criticism” for its censorship.

  What is “malinformation”?

  It’s accurate information that might lead people to come to the wrong conclusions — or do things that Starbird, Spaulding, and their allies didn’t want them to do, like not getting vaccinated against Covid-19.

  In truth, America’s taxpayer-funded censors view themselves not only as the good guys but as superheroes.

  One of the leaders of the Censorship Industrial Complex, Jen Easterly, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the U.S. government’s Department of Homeland Security, has as her Twitter photo a cartoon image of herself as a superhero complete with a cape.

  

  The harsh reality is that Easterly, Starbird, and Spaulding have more in common with China’s censors than they do with America’s founders.

  …

  Those tactics appear to have been lifted whole cloth from George Orwell’s censors in “1984.” Totalitarianism begins, after all, with the corruption of language.

  …

  [Congress] should demand that Easterly be fired and CISA defunded and dismantled. If CISA is engaged in any worthwhile non-censorship activities, they should be moved to an agency staffed by people who don’t think it’s their business to regulate our “cognitive infrastructure” and imagine themselves to be superheroes.

  Subscribers can read Michael’s full note here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 21:25

• Record Number Of Americans Forecasted To Travel July 4th Weekend
  Record Number Of Americans Forecasted To Travel July 4th Weekend

  A record number of Americans are expected to hit the roadways this July 4th weekend. Despite elevated inflation straining households, there’s still a lot of pent-up travel demand after the pandemic years. Even with surging travel demand, fuel consumption is unlikely to exceed pre-Covid levels due to more efficient vehicles and the proliferation of EVs. 

  “We’ve never projected travel numbers this high for Independence Day weekend,” Paula Twidale, Senior Vice President of AAA Travel, wrote in a new report released Monday. 

  Twidale said, “What this tells us is that despite inventory being limited and some prices 50% higher, consumers are not cutting back on travel this summer. Many of them heeded our advice and booked early, another sign of strong travel demand.”

  AAA projects more than 43 million motorists will drive at least 50 miles from their homes between June 30 and Tuesday, July 4. That’s a 2.4% increase versus 2022 and 4% compared to 2019. If travel by buses, trains, cruise ships, and planes is added, then a record 50.7 million Americans are expected to travel. 

  

  Bloomberg pointed out that while record travel is expected for the holiday weekend, “widespread adoption of more efficient vehicles means fuel demand nonetheless remains muted — and might never get back to pre-pandemic rates.” Data from the Environmental Protection Agency shows the average car is more fuel efficient, getting about 33.3 miles per gallon. Also, the increasing number of EVs decreases fuel product demand at retail pumps. 

  Americans are still traveling and spending money despite negative real wage growth for the past two years, along with soaring credit card balances and the highest interest rates in a generation. 

  The next test for the consumer will be if they still can splurge on travel on late summer Labor Day weekend. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 21:05

• Software Engineer, Fiancee Sentenced To Prison For Developing Application To Break China’s Internet Censorship
  Software Engineer, Fiancee Sentenced To Prison For Developing Application To Break China’s Internet Censorship

  Authored by Freda Wu and Sophia Lam via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Two people, who were detained by Shanghai State Security Police in October 2021 for developing software that circumvents the Great Firewall, received six- and five-year prison sentences on June 12, 2023.

  

  He Binggang and his fiancée Zhang Yibo, along with several others, were arrested on Oct. 9, 2021, for developing and maintaining software that helps people living in China access overseas internet platforms, according to the Falun Dafa Infocenter.

  The Chinese regime set up Great Firewall (GFW), or Golden Shield Project, in 1998, which is managed by the regime’s Ministry of Public Security to monitor and censor what can and cannot be seen in China through an online network.

  He and Zhang are Falun Gong adherents, a spiritual practice that has been persecuted inside China since 1999 and has been the subject of intense political propaganda.

  Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual improvement practice based on principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, with five slow-moving, gentle exercises that have significant physical benefits. The practice has been very popular in China, with an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners in the country before the Chinese communist regime began to persecute the belief and its followers in July 1999.

  He and Zhang had developed software called oGate that allows Chinese people to freely access websites and information available outside of China but which are blocked by the GFW and otherwise unavailable inside China.

  Persecuted for Belief: Reports

  He and Zhang have been subjected to long-term persecution by the Chinese regime for their belief in Falun Gong.

  According to Minghui.org, the police denied He’s lawyer from visiting him at Shanghai’s Changning District Detention Center. On March 10, 2022, his lawyer was allowed to talk to him on the phone at the detention center, but without seeing him in person.

  He’s physical condition is very poor because of repeated torture by the Chinese regime.

  “His neck issue and partial paralysis, which resulted from torture during [the] previous detention, worsened. He has now completely lost the ability to walk and has become bedridden. He has trouble falling asleep at night and suffers from constant dizziness, headache, and incontinence,” Minghui reported in June 2023.

  He, 46, has been imprisoned two times previously.

  He is a gifted software engineer, according to Minghui.org, a platform that tracks the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

  When he was 15 years old he created “Computerized Audible Aids for the Blind.” The invention won the Silver Award of the Sixth National Invention Award and the “Sixth Shanghai Yilida Youth Invention Award.”

  He obtained a certificate in computer application software engineering as a senior programmer when he was only 16.

  In 1994, He was admitted into Fudan University, and four years later he entered the graduate program.

  In 2000, he was detained by police and later given a six-year sentence at Shanghai Tilanqiao Prison.

  Fudan University expelled him.

  In 2007, He was released and he began his own technological company. But in 2010, he was detained again for his spiritual practice.

  According to a June report on Minghui.org, He was tortured when he was imprisoned for the second time, and the beatings caused him to become paralyzed due to severe spinal injuries. He was sentenced to five years in prison in April 2011 despite having been paralyzed.

  Zhang was a business manager for a foreign company. The Xuhui Court sentenced her to one and a half years in prison in 2009 for her spiritual practice, according to Minghui.org.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 20:45

• US Honeybees Suffer Second Deadliest Season On Record
  US Honeybees Suffer Second Deadliest Season On Record

  Figures published today reveal beekeepers in the U.S. lost an estimated 48% of their honey bee colonies in 2022-23.

  As Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports, according to an annual survey that tracks the state of managed hives, this is the second highest death rate on record after 2020-21’s 51%.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Honey bees are crucial to our food supply, pollinating over 100 different crop types.

  As reported by Bee Informed, a national collaboration of leading research labs and universities in agricultural science, the most prominent cause of colony death reported by commercial beekeepers over the year was “varroa destructor” – a parasitic mite that attacks and feeds on honey bees.

  In the summer, ‘Queen issues’ were the second most common reason cited, followed by ‘adverse weather’.

  According to the publication, “although the total number of honey bee colonies in the country has remained relatively stable over the last 20 years (~2.6 million colonies according to the USDA NASS Honey Reports), loss rates remain high”.

  This puts beekeepers under “substantial pressure” to create new colonies each year.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 20:25

• The Real Casualties Of Russia's 'Civil War': The Beltway Expert Class
  The Real Casualties Of Russia’s ‘Civil War’: The Beltway Expert Class

  Authored by Max Blumenthal & Wyatt Reed Via The GrayZone,

  For just over 12 hours, everyone from former U.S. ambassador to Russia and noted Hitler apologist Michael McFaul to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to neocon pundit Anne Applebaum exploded with seemingly libidinal excitement about a supposed “civil war” that was certain to feature “Russians…killing Russians,” along with “lots of casualties” and Putin “probably hiding somewhere.”

  It was as though the Soviet Union was collapsing all over again, and Prigozhin, a character named on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list whom the U.S. government has sanctioned for leading what it described as a “transnational criminal organization,” was suddenly a white knight storming into Moscow to liberate Russia from “the Putin regime” on the back of a tank. Move over, Juan Guaido.

  

  Expecting a bloodbath and seismic political upheaval, corporate networks like CNN had budgeted wall-to-wall coverage of the coup that wasn’t, filling cable news green rooms with rent-a-generals, K Street think tankers, and war-hungry former diplomatic corps hacks.

  On Saturday afternoon, however, news broke across the U.S. that Prigozhin had struck a deal with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to end his protest and go into exile. Thus ended a largely bloodless affair that ultimately saw fewer documented deaths than the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot.

  Though the supposed revolt in Russia burned out faster than a Leopard tank on the way to Zaporizhzhia, we now know that a number of serious casualties were incurred inside the D.C. Beltway. The Grayzone obtained an exclusive look at the massacre some of America’s top Russia experts carried out against their own credibility.

  McFaul McFails, Again

  Ever since he was unceremoniously ejected from Moscow for apparently attempting to organize a color revolution in 2012, Ambassador Michael McFaul has waged a personal jihad against the country’s government. His hatred of the Russian leadership grew so impassioned that he once declared that Putin was morally inferior to Adolf Hitler, embracing a fringe view associated with Holocaust deniers that asserts the Nazi dictator “didn’t kill German-speaking people.”

  When the events of Friday kicked off, McFaul could hardly contain himself. The disgraced diplomat immediately took to Twitter to insist without a shred of evidence to claim that Putin “has ordered his army and others to destroy Wagner & Prigozhin.”

  “So there’s going to be a big fight,” he promised.

  As for the Russian President, McFaul confidently declared: “I am sure that he is no longer in Moscow.” Just after noon on Saturday, he seemed to believe the Russian president’s demise was imminent. “Rats are jumping” from Putin’s ship, he effused, referring to oligarch Arkady Rotenberg taking a flight to Azerbaijan. “This is now a civil war,” the self-styled expert confidently declared.

  The fight is now on. This is now a civil war. https://t.co/FfQ0nakI1Z

  — Michael McFaul (@McFaul) June 24, 2023

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

  But around 1:30 PM on Saturday the unwelcome news had made its way to Washington: Putin and Prigozhin had reached an agreement. There was to be no civil war in Russia, after all.

  McFaul was suddenly forced to reckon with the reality that his predictions of a coup were premature, and that virtually everything he had said hours before was completely wrong. “Can anyone remember a mutiny or coup attempt that lasted 24 hours and no one really fought or was killed?,” pondered the retired diplomat, seemingly coming to grips with the obvious. 

  Then, like an alcoholic in denial after yet another blackout, McFaul whimpered, “I was wrong about this. Eager to learn why.”

  Anne Applebaum’s ‘Civil War’ 

  This May, anti-Russian pseudo-scholar and former Iraq war cheerleader Anne Applebaum predicted a decisive Ukrainian counter-offensive that would storm through Russian defenses and not only “liberate” Crimea, but encourage regime change from Moscow to Venezuela. 

  In an article co-authored by former Israeli prison guard and The Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, and illustrated by the Davos frontman, Bono, (with apparent help from an Etch-a-Sketch), Applebaum openly fantasized about a madman taking control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

  “Even the worst successor imaginable,” she wrote, “even the bloodiest general or most rabid propagandist, will immediately be preferable to Putin, because he will be weaker than Putin. He will quickly become the focus of an intense power struggle.”

  By Friday, Applebaum seemed to believe her fever dreams were coming true. And it was then that she breathlessly announced, “Russia is sliding into what can only be described as a civil war. ” 

  “…what can only be described as a civil war,” according to Anne Applebaum, who also declared as a member of WaPo’s editorial board that Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMD was “irrefutable” https://t.co/Vk2lr96MKw

  — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 24, 2023

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

  “If you are surprised, maybe you shouldn’t be,” she lectured readers, just hours before the bloodless “coup” came to a conclusion. 

  Applebaum’s husband is the former foreign minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, who infamously tweeted his gratitude to the U.S. government for destroying the Nord Stream pipeline. While Sikorski deleted his tweet, Applebaum’s thoroughly discredited “civil war” article remains on the website of the Atlantic.

  On Sunday, Applebaum and McFaul were rewarded for their badly botched analysis with an appearance on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki, which is hosted by the Biden White House’s former press secretary.

  Zelensky: Putin Is ‘Very Afraid’

  “The man from the Kremlin is obviously very afraid and probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proclaimed on Saturday. According to fact checkers, Zelensky did not issue this bold statement from inside a bunker or in front of a green screen. 

  U.S. Intelligence Claims ‘Surprise’

  On Sunday, CNN reported that U.S. intelligence analysts were taken by surprise by “the swiftness of the deal that was struck on Saturday.”

  What’s more, they believed that Prigozhin’s march toward Moscow “would encounter much more resistance” than it did.

  “I do know that we assessed it was going to be a great deal more violent and bloody,” an unnamed U.S. official reportedly told the outlet.

  But D.C.’s disappointment with the lack of carnage on Moscow streets did not end there.

  Kurt Volker Declares ‘The End’ for Putin

  Kurt Volker is a former U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations who also operated as a de facto Raytheon lobbyist while serving as the executive director of the John McCain Institute. Volker also functioned as a liaison for U.S. and Ukrainian business interests while presiding over the founding of American University Kyiv.

  During a Saturday CNN appearance, Volker declared that the brief moment of disorder in Russia marked “the end for Putin” and “the beginning of the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine.” 

  Christo Grozev: Bellingcat’s Neocon-Stradumus

  Christo Grozev is the Russia director of the U.S. and U.K. government-funded website Bellingcat. This April, Grozev celebrated a terrorist attack that saw a Russian war blogger assassinated and a cafe full of civilians blown up in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

  With chaos seemingly intensifying inside the Russian Federation again, Grozev suddenly transformed from a glorified OSINT blogger into a geopolitical soothsayer with a unique ability to divine the fate of the Kremlin. 

  “Prigozhin says he’s got 25k strong army and he’s going to take power and deal with the ‘traitors’ at the top before returning to the front line,” the Bellingcat commentator claimed on Twitter. “Am old enough to remember how Russia ‘pundits’ said I was talking nonsense predicting a Prigozhin coup attempt this year.”

  Having not been born literally yesterday, we at The Grayzone are thankfully old enough to remember when Prigozhin’s “coup attempt” failed to materialize and ended quickly with negotiations.

  Our memory is so long, in fact, that we recall when the war prophet Grozev stated that Russia had expended 70 percent of its precision missile stocks back in April 2022. Since then, Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian targets have only increased.

  Ian Bremmer: Peter Hotez of International Relations

  As president of the Eurasia Group risk analysis firm, political scientist Ian Bremmer has leveraged his supposed expertise into a lucrative business.

  Bremmer recently weighed in in defense of the absurdly double-talking pediatrician and pundit Peter Hotez, defending his decision not to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Covid-related issues on the grounds that Hotez was a credentialed expert, and RFK Jr. was not.

  wagner territorial gains in russia dramatically faster than in ukraine.

  — ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) June 24, 2023

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

  “It would be like me debating elon [Musk] on electric vehicles. Or him debating me on international relations,” Bremmer argued, asserting his own superior credentials. “There’s no value added.”

  During the events of Friday, Bremmer joined the rest of the Beltway expert class in predicting imminent doom for Putin. “wagner territorial gains in russia dramatically faster than in ukraine,” Bremmer wrote in a viral post seen by more than 1 million Twitter users.

  Moments later, he joked that “ukraine has run out of popcorn,” implying that Kiev was eagerly preparing for Russia’s collapse. 

  Following the announcement of Wagner’s stand-down on Saturday, an apparently disappointed Bremmer insisted “there’s no environment where [Putin and Prigozhin] hug it out.”

  Top Biden Officials’ Travel Plans Interrupted

  Among the most overlooked victims of the brief march on Moscow were high-ranking U.S. officials’ weekend plans.

  On Saturday, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that a planned visit to Jordan and Israel by Gen. Mark Milley, the top military officer in the U.S., had been canceled “due to the situation in Russia.”

  Biden administration National Security Council director and possible human scarecrow Jake Sullivan was forced to cancel a trip as well. Sullivan had reportedly been slated to attend a conference on Ukraine in Denmark until Prigozhin decided to make a trip of his own toward Rostov-on-Don.

  Stephen King: Lost in Fantasy

  Horror author-turned-liberal Russiagate conspiracist Stephen King, who once praised Ukrainian Nazi collaborator and Holocaust perpetrator Stepan Bandera in a phone call with a prankster he believed to be Volodymyr Zelensky, was clearly titillated by Friday’s events.

  Putin sowed the wind.
  Now he must reap the whirlwind.
  Slava Ukraini!

  — Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 24, 2023

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

  When Prigozhin’s forces briefly took over the city of Rostov-on-Don, King once again proved unable to contain his overactive imagination. “Putin sowed the wind. Now he must reap the whirlwind. Slava Ukraini!” he exclaimed.  

  Noted Online Stalker Idrees Ahmad Predicts ‘The Death of Aaron Mate’s Career’

  Idress Ahmad once existed on the margins of the U.K.’s antiwar movement, publishing a book attacking the Iraq war-era neocon cabal, suggesting Senators Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold voted for Iran sanctions because they are Jewish, and openly questioning the West’s narrative of a genocide in Darfur.

  After running into financial trouble and escaping deportation to his native Pakistan “against the odds” thanks to a Home Office decision that remains unexplained, Ahmad transformed into the very thing he once condemned. 

  Having re-emerged as a rabid supporter of the West’s dirty war on Syria, Ahmad busied himself by stalking The Grayzone, even phoning its editor, Max Blumenthal, to threaten him against publishing a factual investigation of the Syrian White Helmets in 2016. 

  While Ahmad’s recent work at the spook-infested Newlines think tank has failed to generate much interest, even among his fellow regime change cheerleaders, we noticed his prophecy on Saturday that Prigozhin’s “coup” would lead to the collapse of The Grayzone, the international committee of the Democratic Socialists of America, and “the death of Aaron Mate’s career.”

  At the time of publication, we are still triggering Ahmad’s rage-a-holic personality while his own media career has gone about as far as Prigozhin’s march toward Moscow.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 20:05

• Watch: The Evolution Of The Most Popular Desktop Operating Systems Since 2003
  Watch: The Evolution Of The Most Popular Desktop Operating Systems Since 2003

  Mobile phones might be the most common way of getting online today, but the digital and internet era started for most people with the humble desktop computer.

  And, as Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao details below, over the past 20 years, a long list of operating systems (OS) have been used to run the most popular desktop computers.

  Sjoerd Tilmans has created an animated chart showing the rise and fall in market share of popular desktop operating systems over the period of May 2003 to June 2022, using data from W3Schools and GS Stat Counter.

  Microsoft’s Monopoly on the Most Popular Desktop OS

  The story of the desktop OS market is a story of Microsoft’s explosive growth and market dominance.

  In the 1980s, the fledgling company signed a partnership with personal computer behemoth IBM. Microsoft would supply IBM with an operating system for its computers, MS-DOS, and receive a royalty for every computer sold.

  Those royalties boosted Microsoft’s coffers. And its release of Windows—a more visual interface than DOS—helped them grab hold of the PC market. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw different versions of Windows capture the market:

  • Windows 95:
    The now famous toolbar and Start menu made their debut here. The version also would launch Internet Explorer, once the world’s most popular browser.

  • Windows 98:
    An upgrade to ‘95 which supported more hardware like USBs and connecting more than one monitor.

  • Windows XP:
    XP quickly became a fan-favorite because of its stability, and a hit with both commercial and personal computer clients. Windows XP gained market share steadily upon release in 2001, quickly becoming the most popular desktop OS with a peak of 76% market share in 2007.

  

   

  Microsoft doubled down on their next releases from the end of the 2000s to 2020, with some misses (Windows Vista) and some hits (Windows 10). Here’s a look at the most popular ones:

   

  • Windows 7:
    Released as the successor to the poorly received Windows Vista, it kept the same visual style (“Aero”) but greatly improved performance and stability from Vista’s benchmarks. In 2011, Windows 7 passed XP to become the most popular desktop OS.

  • Windows 8 and 8.1:
    Created for tablet-desktop integration, just as Microsoft released the companion Surface tablet. The beloved Start menu was replaced (an unpopular decision) and tile-based visual style introduced. However the dramatic differences between the desktop and tablet versions made for a steep learning curve, with the 8.1 release reintroducing the Start button.

  • Windows 10:
    The follow-up to Windows 8 kept the the tile-based appearance but focused on a desktop-oriented interface with quality of life updates. By 2018, Windows 10 had become the most popular desktop OS, eventually peaking at 61% market share at the start of 2022.

  

   

  The most recent version of Windows released, Windows 11, had updated graphics styling, widget integration, and introduced Microsoft’s latest internet browser Microsoft Edge. But it received a mixed response and slow uptake compared to Windows 10, gaining a market share of 8.3% by June 2022.

   

  Microsoft Vs. Other Desktop OS Contenders

  As of February 2023, Microsoft had a comfortable lead in the desktop OS market, holding nearly 72% of the market.

  

  In a distant second is Apple’s macOS. The most profitable company in the world might make most of their money from smartphones, but Apple has still managed to carve out a small but sturdy segment of the desktop operating OS market. It reached its peak of 19% in April 2020.

  The other tech giant in the desktop OS game is Alphabet, whose ChromeOS is unique for using an internet browser (Google Chrome browser) as its primary interface. Generally packaged as a simpler and cheaper device option—it was primarily released with inexpensive laptops called “Chromebooks”. More recently, Alphabet announced a version that can be installed on existing computer hardware in 2022.

  Compared to the commercially released OS above, Linux is completely free to download and use, and is the largest open-source software project in the world. Although the OS is only used in about 3% of desktop computers, it was also the basis of Android and ChromeOS, and is the most-used OS on devices with embedded software—routers, smart home devices, cars, and even a few spacecraft (The SpaceX Falcon 9, for example).

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 19:45

• Judge In Trump Documents Case Denies Special Counsel Jack Smith's Request To Seal Witness List
  Judge In Trump Documents Case Denies Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Request To Seal Witness List

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A federal judge on June 26 denied special counsel Jack Smith’s request to file a confidential list of 84 witnesses in the classified documents case involving former President Donald Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta.

  

  Smith’s motion, filed on June 23, sought to keep the list of witnesses a secret from Trump and forbid him from communicating directly with them about the case.

  U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, said in her order that prosecutors failed to explain why it was necessary to keep the names under seal or why redacting or partially sealing the document would be inadequate.

  According to Cannon’s order, Trump’s attorneys took “no position” on Smith’s motion but reserved the right to object to aspects of it, such as implementation. Cannon also said that “numerous news organizations” opposed Smith’s motion in court filings citing the First Amendment and related legal principles.

  “Upon review of the foregoing materials, the Government’s Motion is denied without prejudice, and the Motion to Intervene and accompanying Motions to Appear Pro Hac Vice are denied as moot,” Cannon wrote in her ruling.

  “The Government’s Motion does not explain why filing the list with the Court is necessary; it does not offer a particularized basis to justify sealing the list from public view; it does not explain why partial sealing, redaction, or means other than sealing are unavailable or unsatisfactory; and it does not specify the duration of any proposed seal.”

  In Smith’s June 23 motion, he said the government provided Trump’s legal team with the list of witnesses they wished to remain under seal. The court had previously instructed Trump at his June 13 arraignment, at which he pleaded not guilty, not to engage in any communication with Nauta or the witnesses involved in the case.

  Security Clearances

  Trump was indicted on 37 counts related to sensitive and classified documents retained beyond his term in office. The documents were seized during an FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August 2022.

  Smith presented evidence during the June 13 proceeding indicating that Trump violated federal law by allegedly retaining the documents, sharing them with individuals who were not authorized to access such information, and obstructing the investigation by directing Nauta to relocate boxes at Mar-a-Lago instead of surrendering all the materials to the authorities.

  Trump has maintained his innocence. In various remarks to the media and to his supporters, Trump has labeled the prosecution and raid as the “weaponization” of the Department of Justice under his chief 2024 presidential rival, incumbent President Joe Biden.

  Last week, Cannon initially set the trial date for Aug. 14, which is about seven weeks away. Smith filed a separate motion requesting to delay the start date by four months, pushing it to December.

  He stressed that proceeding with the trial on the originally scheduled date would not allow enough time for adequate preparation, which would negatively affect both the defense and the government’s interests.

  The case involves classified information, so Trump’s lawyers need to seek and receive final security clearances to access a few classified documents, which can take up to 60 days. The process for his lawyers to receive interim security clearances was already underway.

  Smith filed a separate motion on June 23 requesting a classified information security officer under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). The motion clarified that CIPA has implications for the trial proceedings, as it introduces additional time requirements specific to cases involving classified information.

  Under CIPA, parties can request a pretrial conference to discuss any possible issues related to the prosecution of the case concerning classified information. Cannon set a July 14 hearing to discuss how classified materials will be handled in the case in a separate order on June 26.

  The appointment of a classified information security officer also was granted.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 19:25

• Coders, Learn To Build
  Coders, Learn To Build

  Back in late January, when prevailing consensus was that the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes would crush US residential housing, we showed readers a little known market indicator which signaled that the housing market was in far better shape than conventional wisdom suggested, and asked whether the housing market has bottomed.

  Has The Housing Market Bottomed? The Surprising Result From A Little-Known Market Indicator https://t.co/0Om3HalcSI

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 30, 2023

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  Since then, despite mortgage rates rising to 7%, back to the highest level of the 21st century, housing stocks have continued to push higher, and the homebuilder ETF (XTB) is up 20%, and just shy of its all time high. In other words, at least as far as the market is concerned, the answer whether housing has bottomed has been a resounding yes.

  

  But how is that possible? Isn’t the US consumer crushed? Aren’t credit standards so tight that virtually nobody can get a mortgage? Haven’t 7% mortgages made housing the most unaffordable in history?

  While the answer to all those questions is a resounding yes, there is something else that matters much more, and is a far bigger driver of housing supply/demand equilibrium levels, i.e., prices.

  We are talking, of course, about housing inventory… or the lack thereof.

  Consider: according to the latest report RedFin, in May there were fewer homes for sale than any other month on record! Specifically, the number of homes for sale in the U.S. fell 7.1% year over year to 1.4 million on a seasonally adjusted basis in May. That’s the lowest level in Redfin’s records, which date back to 2012, and the first annual decline since April 2022.

  

  By comparison, there were 2.2 million homes for sale in May 2019, before the pandemic rocked the U.S. housing market, meaning housing supply was 38.6% below pre-pandemic levels this May.

  America’s housing stock is dwindling because there are very few people selling homes. A key reason cited for the lack of supply is that nobody who has a mortgage in the 3-4% ballpark, wants to cash out and take out a new mortgage that is up to 4% higher, wiping out any capital gains from the sale transaction. Some more math:

  Nearly every homeowner with a mortgage has an interest rate below 6%, meaning many are opting to stay put because selling and buying a new home would mean taking on a higher monthly mortgage payment. The average 30-year-fixed mortgage rate in May was 6.43%, up from 5.23% a year earlier and a record low of 2.65% in 2021.

  Whatever the reason for the lack of sales, new listings of homes for sale declined 25.2% year over year in May to the third lowest level on record on a seasonally adjusted basis, as homeowners were handcuffed by high mortgage rates.

  As the pool of homes for sale shrinks, homebuyers in many markets are grappling with competition, which is preventing home prices from plunging despite a freeze in buyer demand brought on by elevated mortgage rates. Effectively, there is a standoff where sellers don’t fell compelled to sell, and buyers can’t afford to pay prices demanded by sellers, which has resulted in a deep freeze of the housing market where bids and asks for the same house are sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars apart.

  Meanwhile, the median U.S. home sale price was $419,103 in May. That’s down just 3.1% from a year earlier, when prices hit a record high of $432,311. While home prices fell in May, they posted a smaller decline than they did in April, when prices dropped 4.2% from a year earlier—the largest decrease on record with the exception of January 2012.

  

  Another remarkable consequence of the plunge in inventory is that the typical home that sells is no longer selling at a discount. According to RedFin, the average sale-to-list-price ratio, which measures how close homes are selling to their final asking prices, was 100% in May, meaning the typical home that sold was purchased at its list price. That’s down from 103.1% a year earlier, but is the highest level of any May on record prior to the pandemic and follows nine straight months of sub-100% sale-to-list-price ratio

  

  Still, as Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather says, “it’s too early to say that price declines have bottomed out. Prices may have room to fall because mortgage rates could still rise. The Federal Reserve just signaled that it is likely to continue raising interest rates this year. That could further hamper homebuyer demand and cause home prices to fall in the near term, though the drops would be minimal. We’re unlikely to see double-digit price declines like we did during the 2008 housing crisis.”

  There is another reason why prices may drop: there has been a flood of new home construction. As the next chart shows, the number of houses under construction at this moment are just shy of their all time high, and well above both starts and completions.

  

  Which has a profound consequences for the US labor market: thanks to the frenzied in process construction of single family houses, employment in the construction sector is effectively the highest it has been since 2007, and rapidly approaching an all time high.

  Which brings us to the punchline.

  Remember when a few years ago the derogatory punchline lobbed at all those (reporters) who had been recently let go was to “learn to code.”  Fast forward a few years, and coder jobs have gone stone colder as a result of not only the surge in rates which has forced tech companies to become profitable (which most of them can’t so they have had to lay off hundreds of thousands of highly paid workers), but the coming AI/ChatGPT shock which will lead to even more layoffs. In any case, as the following chart from the Indeed hiring platform (which tracks job openings much more accurately than the politically-mandated mess that is JOLTs) shows, hiring for softwarre development jobs has plunged and is now near the March 2020 trough even as hiring of construction workers fires on all cylinders. Some more details:

  Indeed hiring tabs open jobs by US sector relative to pre-covid Feb 2020 baseline: purple is Software Development (-16.1% from pre-pandemic) and blue is Construction (+49.2% from pre-pandemic). As Goldman notes, this is “clearly a reflection of the continued shortage of blue collar labor while the job cuts in big tech have had an impact on software employment.”

  

  The bank concludes that this is “a good reminder that this labor market can not be painted with a broad brush while the secular forces of demographics, immigration and the wake of covid has left lasting labor shortages in pockets of the economy.”

  Which is true. What is also true, is that the worker class that until not too long ago was certain it was immune from the vagaries of the economic cycle, and acted accordingly refusing to show up to the office and instead of actually working, spent the day at home in various yoga positions or drinking some supposedly healthy green crap while getting their 10th covid booster shot, the “coders” are suddenly in zero demand, while the “hot” job sector is now construction. To all those programmers, who are about to get steamrolled by the double whammy of being made obsolete by a chatGPT algos, we have three words of advice: “learn to build.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 19:05

• Corporatism Has Replaced Liberalism
  Corporatism Has Replaced Liberalism

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism. The new word we are hearing these days is the right word: corporatism…

  

  That refers to the merger of industry and state into a unit with the purpose of achieving some grand visionary end, the liberty of individuals be damned. The word itself predates its successor, which is fascism.

  But the “F” word has become totally incomprehensible and useless through misuse so there is clarity to be gained by discussing the older term.

  Consider, as an obvious example, Big Pharma. It funds the regulators. It maintains a revolving door between corporate management and regulatory control. Government often funds drug development and rubber-stamps the results. Government further grants and enforces the patents.

  Vaccines are indemnified from liability for harms. When consumers balk at shots, government imposes mandates, as we have seen. Further, pharma pays up to 75% of the advertising on evening television, which obviously buys both favorable coverage and silence on the downsides.

  This is the very essence of corporatism. But it is not only this industry. It ever more affects tech, media, defense, labor, food, environment, public health and everything else. The big players have merged into a monolith, squeezing out the life of market dynamism.

  The topic of corporatism is rarely discussed in any detail. People would rather keep the discussion on abstract ideals that are not really operational in reality. It’s these ideal types that split right and left; meanwhile the really existing threats sail under the radar.

  And that is strange because corporatism is much more of a living reality. It variously swept through most societies in the world in the 20th century, and vexes us today as never before.

  But corporatism has a long ideological history that actually stretches back two centuries. It began as a fundamental attack on what was then known as liberalism.

  Liberalism began centuries earlier with the end of the religious wars in Europe and the realization that permitting religious freedom was overall good for everyone.

  It lessens violence in society and still retains the opportunity for the vigorous practice of faith. This insight gradually unfolded in ways that pertained to speech, travel and commerce generally.

  By the early 19th century, following the American Revolution, the idea of liberalism swept Europe. The idea was that the state could do no better for society than to let it develop organically and without a purpose-driven end state, a centralized authority that seeks to achieve a specific goal or purpose, often seen as a greater good or common end that justifies the restriction of individual liberties.

  In the liberal view, in contrast, liberty for all became the sole end state.

  Standing against traditional liberalism was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), the German philosopher who explained the loss of territory at the end of the Napoleonic Wars as merely a temporary setback in the German nation’s historical destiny.

  In his vision of politics, the nation as a whole needs a destiny that is consistent with his postulated laws of history. This holistic view was inclusive of church, industry, family and individuals: Everyone must march in the same direction.

  The whole reaches its pinnacle in the institution of the state, he wrote in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, which “is the actuality of the ethical idea, “the rationality of the ethical whole,” the “divine idea as it exists on Earth” and a “work of art in which the freedom of the individual is actualized and reconciled with the freedom of the whole.”

  If all of that sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, welcome to the mind of Hegel, who was trained in theology foremost and somehow came to dominate German political philosophy for a very long time.

  His followers split into left- and right-wing versions of his statism, culminating in Marx and arguably Hitler, who agree that the state is the center of life while only arguing about what it should do.

  Corporatism was a manifestation of the “right-wing” version of Hegelianism, which is to say that it did not go so far as to say that religion, property and family should be abolished, as Marxism later suggested. Rather each of these institutions should serve the state, which represents the whole.

  The economic element of corporatism gained steam with the work of Friedrich List (1789–1846) who worked as an administrative professor at the University of Tübingen but was expelled and went to America where he became involved in the establishment of railroads and championed an economic “National System” or industrial mercantilism.

  Believing that he was following up with the work of Alexander Hamilton, List advocated national self-sufficiency or autarky as the proper managerial trade for trade. In this, he stood against the entire liberal tradition that had long rallied around the work of Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.

  Such is a brief look at the intellectual roots and development of corporatist thinking, complete with its most noxious ideological elements. The focus on a purpose-driven nationalism in each case comes through dividing and conquering the nation, usually by a “great man,” and allowing the “experts” to run roughshod over the desires of the common people for peace and prosperity.

  The corporatist model was deployed in most countries during the Great War, which was the largest experiment in central planning in cooperation with munitions manufacturers and other large corporations.

  It was deployed in combination with conscription, censorship, monetary inflation and a large-scale killing machine. It inspired an entire generation of intellectuals and public managers.

  The U.S. New Deal, with its price controls and industrial cartels, was largely managed by people such as Rexford Tugwell (1891–1979) who was inspired to rally around corporatism by his experience in this war. The same pattern repeated in the Second World War.

  This brief history only takes us only to the middle of the 20th century. Today corporatism takes a different form. Rather than national, it is global in scope.

  In addition to government and large corporations, today’s corporatism includes powerful nongovernment organizations, nonprofits and huge foundations built by huge fortunes. It is as much private as it is public. But it is no less divisive, ruthless and hegemonic than it was in the past.

  It has also shaved off most of its egregious (and embarrassing) teachings, leaving in place only the ideals of world governments working directly with the largest corporations in media and tech to forge a single vision for humanity on the march, such as spelled out daily by the World Economic Forum. With that come censorship and restrictions on commercial and individual liberty.

  That is only the beginning of the problems.

  Corporatism abolishes the competitive dynamic of competitive capitalism and replaces it with cartels run by oligarchs.

  It reduces growth and prosperity. It is invariably corrupt. It promises efficiency but yields only graft.

  It expands the gaps between rich and poor and creates and entrenches deep fissures between the rulers and ruled. It dispenses with localism, religious particularism, rights of families and aesthetic traditionalism. It also ends in violence.

  Corporatism is anything but radical. The word is a perfect descriptive of the most successful form of statism of the 20th century.

  In the 21st century, it has been given new life and an ambition that is global in scope.

  But as regards the highest American ideals and enlightenment values of freedom for all, it really does represent the opposite.

  It is also the single most vexing problem we face today, far more of a going concern than old archetypes of socialism and capitalism. Also in the American context, corporatism can come in forms that masquerade as both left and right.

  But make no mistake: The real target is always liberty traditionally understood.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 18:45

• US Treasury Sanctions Wagner's 'Gold & Weapons Dealing' Operations In Africa
  US Treasury Sanctions Wagner’s ‘Gold & Weapons Dealing’ Operations In Africa

  The US Treasury Department on Tuesday has announced new anti-Wagner sanctions in a belated attempt to cut off the group’s weapons funding, at a moment the Russian government has essentially pardoned the mercenary outfit for treasonous actions. It remains unclear what role Wagner will play inside Russia, if any, as its founder Yevegny Prigozhin sets up shop in neighboring Belarus after President Lukashenko mediated a deal on his behalf.

  The fresh sanctions, announced Tuesday, target four companies accused of “gold dealing” on Wagner’s behalf as well as an individual Washington says made “weapons deals” tied to Wagner.

  Companies in Russia, the UAE, and Central African Republic “have engaged in illicit gold dealings to fund the Wagner Group to sustain and expand its armed forces, including in Ukraine and Africa,” according to the Treasury statement. Wagner in Africa is essentially a foreign policy arm of the Kremlin, which might explain why Moscow sees the group as somewhat indispensable.

  

  Africa has lately been known as a place with the largest Wagner mercenary presence outside of the Ukraine conflict, which has deeply alarmed Washington and West. The US and its allies have long hoped to thwart and dismantle Wagner’s presence there, and deal-making with multiple African governments. 

  Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement, “The Wagner Group funds its brutal operations in part by exploiting natural resources in countries like the Central African Republic and Mali.”

  “The United States will continue to target the Wagner Group’s revenue streams to degrade its expansion and violence in Africa, Ukraine, and anywhere else.”

  And the individual listed, identified as Andrey Nikolayevich Ivanov (Ivanov), is a Russian executive of Wagner Group who “worked closely with Prigozhin’s entity Africa Politology and senior Malian government officials on weapons deals, mining concerns, and other Wagner Group activities in Mali,” the Treasury statement alleged.

  The Treasury announcement further says action is being taken against a gold mine directly owned by Prigozhin:

  Diamville SAU (Diamville) is a gold and diamond purchasing company based in the CAR and controlled by Prigozhin. Diamville is one of several Prigozhin-connected entities that is intimately involved in the CAR mining sector. In 2022, Diamville participated in a gold selling scheme that entailed converting CAR-origin gold into U.S. dollars. Following the imposition of U.S. sanctions on several Russian financial institutions, participants in the scheme planned to move the proceeds by transferring cash by hand. Additionally, Diamville shipped diamonds mined in the CAR to buyers in the UAE and in Europe.

  The Treasury statement identifies Mali as a major base of Wagner’s illicit activities in Africa.

  

  Going back years, the Malian government has contracted with Wagner to assist its national armed forces in rooting out al-Qaeda affiliated groups which are active there. Wagner has recently come under allegations of massacring civilians in the context of its large firefights with Islamist insurgents.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 06/27/2023 – 18:25