Jan 04

Today’s News 4th January 2024

  • The Juggling Act: Is 2024 A Pivotal Year For The Globalists
    The Juggling Act: Is 2024 A Pivotal Year For The Globalists

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    If you want to know if a society is on the verge of great and tumultuous change you need to ask two very important questions – Are the people angry? And, are the people hungry?

    In the US (and in many parts of Europe) the people are indeed very angry, for different reasons depending on their political affiliations.

    On the other hand, they aren’t hungry, at least not to the extent that they are desperate.

    This could very well change in 2024 given the confluence of events that are swirling as we enter the new year.

    I continue to see 2024 as a nexus point of our era for a number of reasons. The globalist timeline for their “Great Reset” mentions 2030 as the prime year for total centralization. This is the year they plan to put their carbon controls in place, remove most oil and gas energy, bring in their digital currency framework, finalize their 15 Minute City programs, establish the IMF and BIS as the overseers of the global CBDC structure, launch their cashless society and integrate ESG related goals into every aspect of the economy.

    2030 is only six years away, and that’s a lot to accomplish in such short amount of time. The globalists are going to have to either admit failure and change their timeline, or, create a substantial crisis in the near term to facilitate the Reset.  But before I get too far into the potential ugliness waiting in the next year, lets talk about two of the biggest positive developments for 2024…

    The Good…

    The Defeat Of The Covid Agenda

    I don’t think many people understand how epic and important the battle over covid lockdowns and vaccine passports actually was. The western world was on the verge of complete authoritarianism – Not a totalitarian tip-toe like we have been experiencing for many years, but full bore medical dictatorship and mass censorship. I believe covid WAS the Plan A attempt to create reset conditions, and it failed.

    If the establishment had achieved their goal of vaccine passports the fight for freedom would be over.  The passports would have made economic participation impossible for anyone that did not submit to the agenda, creating a secondary class of citizens (mostly conservative) that could then be targeted for systematic elimination.

    Luckily, enough people stood up and refused to comply that the plan was derailed. Apparently, the establishment realized there were far too many patriots willing to take up arms and fight if they kept pushing the covid farce. Remember that bizarre moment when most of the covid propaganda simply stopped? Like someone flipped a switch and the media changed narratives overnight?

    I remember, and this event was the ultimate vindication for all of us in the anti-mandate movement. All the fear, all the dread, all the doom mongering over “millions of deaths”, it all meant nothing and they proved that the moment they shut down the hype machine and everything immediately went back to normal.

    The Public Is Fed Up With The Woke Cult

    It took longer than it should have, mainly because too many people refused to believe that the conspiracy was real, but the woke cult has finally crossed the line enough times for the general public to get fed up. The activist insurgency has violated every boundary of decency and truth and they have alienated a large contingent of the population.  Their time is quickly coming to an end.

    Signs include the ongoing collapse of woke media giants like Disney, the successful boycotts of products like Bud Light and companies like Target. But if you know how to read social trends you can see more subtle signs. There is a growing disdain for third-wave feminism, LGBT cultism and the insane trans movement. People are less afraid to ridicule SJWs, less afraid of cancel culture and more willing to criticize their delusions.

    This is what happens when you target children with sexualized indoctrination and you argue against biological reality. This is what happens when you try to force people to embrace and normalize mental illness. This is what happens when you spend years trying to control people’s speech with “neo-pronouns” and terrorize the internet with cancel culture. This is what happens when you invade every corner of pop-culture and try to hijack it or sabotage it through propaganda. This is what happens when you declare war on traditional western values – Everyone starts to hate you and eventually they will organize to kick your ass.

    The only thing keeping the woke movement afloat at the moment is their alliance with corporations and the establishment media. Globalist think tanks still spend billions of dollars funding social justice programs and the current government provides cover for the exploits of far-left zealots. Without the elites, the woke ideology would not exist. Millions of Americans are ready to snuff it out for good.

    The Bad And The Ugly…

    Election 2024

    As I have mentioned in past articles, I still believe there might not be a presidential election in November. Though, current conditions would allow for one as long as nothing changes dramatically in the next several months. There hasn’t been this level of national division over an election since the Civil War and regardless of what happens or which side “wins” there will be a high potential for a violent reaction.

    The election of 2024 is developing into its own Black Swan event. Any indication that Donald Trump will be arrested before November or any widespread blue state plans to remove him from the ballot will be seen as election interference and I have no doubt that many Americans will seriously consider armed revolt.

    Then again, Trump’s mere presence as a candidate will be used by far-left groups as a rationale to stoke riots. His re-entry into the Oval Office would mean endless mob actions and perhaps even terrorist attacks. So, in this regard it doesn’t really matter if we end up with Biden or Trump, the eventual outcome will probably be the same – Civil unrest followed by a declaration of martial law in the next couple of years.

    My position on Trump has always been one of skepticism, primarily due to his terrible cabinet choices (including Anthony Fauci). However, I recognize that after four horrendous years of Joe Biden’s woke authoritarian empire there is no way that half the country is going to tolerate another term, especially if that term is achieved through perceived sabotage.

    Then there is the potential for shock events, such as Biden stepping down at the last minute. Trump being arrested but winning anyway.  Or, a major geopolitical crisis which is used by the Democrats as an excuse to “postpone” the election. And make no mistake, there are many of these triggers in place today.

    Geopolitical Tensions Soaring

    The potential for war on multiple fronts, including Ukraine, Israel, and perhaps Taiwan is extraordinary in 2024. For now, I am focused on Israel’s conflict in Gaza and the chances of retaliation from surrounding Islamic states. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, Gaza has no chance whatsoever of stopping Israel militarily and they never did, but that’s not really relevant. What matters is how their neighbors respond.

    Lebanon and Hezbollah appear poised to commit to war on Israel in the near term, but Iran is the big question mark.  Would they openly engage the Israelis?  Such a move would completely destabilize all of the Middle East, disrupt a massive portion of the world’s oil supply and probably draw the US and Europe into the fray.

    The biggest threat, for now, is the shutting down of shipping lanes through the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. This could disrupt supply chains and energy resources for many months and accelerate the economic crisis. And, this could in turn be used by the establishment as a rationale to put boots on the ground in the region.

    Economic Powderkeg

    The economic situation is far more distressed than international relations, believe it or not.  There is a precarious game being played by the Federal Reserve with US debt and interest rates, culminating in a Catch-22 that I have been warning about for years.

    Some analysts argue that the Fed is about to cut rates in 2024 (I remain doubtful); but if they do, get ready for an immediate and renewed spike in inflation. If they don’t commit to substantial rate cuts then the national debt will continue climbing by around $600 billion per month (around $7 trillion a year). This is unsustainable and it threatens the world reserve status of the dollar.

    If the Fed’s intent is to influence elections (again, I highly doubt this), then they aren’t going to be helping Joe Biden much by cutting rates. Biden is already known as the inflation president; creating another ramp in CPI by the end of 2024 would be a disaster for his campaign. And, keeping Biden in office would only further cement public outrage over socialist policies as the economy continues to dive into either stagflationary crisis or deflationary depression depending on which path the central bank chooses.

    And remember, the 30%-plus price increase we have seen across the board on necessities in the past few years is going to remain in place for quite some time. It doesn’t matter what the Fed does, you are going to continue paying 30% more to survive compared to 2019-2020, and for many people this is swiftly killing their standard of living. This is why no one takes “Bidenomics” seriously – Until they see a return to cost normalcy it doesn’t matter what kind of spin Biden places on jobs numbers or CPI.

    Nobody cares.

    Catch-22

    I suspect the Fed will continue down the path of deflation. They might try to cut rates once or twice, but when CPI jumps they will go right back to higher rates and tighter credit. This is exactly what they did in the 1970s and early 1980s, though, the US wasn’t adding $600 billion in debt every month during that particular crisis.

    How this deflation translates will depend on other factors including geopolitical factors (as mentioned above).  I predict we are about to see an aggressive resurgence of unemployment by the end of the year.  Americans are not buying more, they are merely spending MORE for the same amount of stuff.  The stagflationary process always leads to a painful decline in overall consumption and standard of living – We had our three-year boost due to covid helicopter money, and now that boost is fading.  Any action by the Fed on rates at this point will not help retail or the service sector, it will only serve to keep stock markets afloat a little longer.

    Again, the end result is the same no matter what the central bankers do, and this is by design.  If the US elections play into the establishment’s plans at all, I suspect it would be more in line with the optics of a renewed Trump presidency.  It might serve globalist interests more to keep the system intact, not to protect Biden but in preparation for Trump’s return, only to collapse the entire house of cards once he enters office (or even right after he wins).  Setting up conservatives as scapegoats for full spectrum economic crisis makes a lot more sense than trying to maintain the facade for Biden for another four years.

    If the globalists fail to set the stage for the Reset in 2024, then they may be facing a mounting movement to bring them to justice.  The juggling act is about to come to an end.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 23:40

  • "Switched Off": Streaming Service Cancellations Rise As 'Streamflation' Bites
    “Switched Off”: Streaming Service Cancellations Rise As ‘Streamflation’ Bites

    How consumers feel about their favorite streaming services jacking up prices. 

    The point behind ‘cord-cutting’ was to enjoy premium content and movies through streaming platforms like Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, and AppleTV+, among others, to skip the middleman (big cable) and save money. 

    However, streaming companies got too greedy in 2023. They increased monthly subscriptions to improve ‘profitability’ and have triggered the beginnings of what appears to be a cancellation wave. 

    A new report from The Wall Street Journal cites data from subscription analytics provider Antenna that shows customer defections across streaming services topped 6.3% in November, up from 5.1% a year earlier. 

    Source: The Wall Street Journal 

    Antenna said about one-quarter of US subscribers to these major platforms, also including Discovery+, Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and Starz, have canceled at least three subscriptions in the past two years.

    Source: The Wall Street Journal 

    This comes as ‘streamflation‘ hits consumers’ wallets. 

    Source: The Wall Street Journal 

    “With the streaming services increasing their rates like they are, it’s, like, ‘OK, do I pay for the cable?'” said one person who spoke with WSJ. 

    Some folks have downgraded plans of major streaming services for more ads and limiting the number of devices: 

    More than one-third of new US Netflix customers in November opted for the ad tier, compared with 11% a year earlier, when the ad-supported version was introduced. Streamers say ad-supported plans are a win-win for them and price-sensitive customers, bringing in revenue from monthly subscriptions as well as ad sales. -WSJ 

    Source: The Wall Street Journal 

    Antenna said some customers who canceled streaming services return later: 

    One in four people who cancel a premium streaming service typically resubscribes to that service within four months, and one in three does so within seven months. Half do so within two years. -WSJ 

    Peak streaming? 

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

  • An Increasing Number Of Americans See Foreign Policy As A Top Issue
    An Increasing Number Of Americans See Foreign Policy As A Top Issue

    Via The Libertarian Institute,

    According to a new poll, the number of voters who view foreign policy as a top issue has doubled during the past year. Joe Biden has defined his presidency by waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, backing the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, and engaging in a military buildup in the Asia-Pacific to fight a future war with China. 

    The Associated Press survey found, “About 4 in 10 US adults named foreign policy topics in an open-ended question that asked people to share up to five issues for the government to work on in the next year.” Last year, only 18% of Americans said foreign wars were a top issue. 

    Getty Images

    About 20% of Americans are concerned about overseas wars, up from five percent. Five percent of Americans mentioned the Israel war in Gaza. Four percent named the war in Ukraine, down from six percent in the previous year.

    President Biden is struggling in recent polling. Two demographics that Biden won in 2020 now prefer Trump. A USA Today poll found Trump at 39% ahead of Biden at 34% among Latino voters. The trend was repeated among young voters who preferred Trump, 37%, to Biden, 33%.

    Younger voters are the most likely Americans to object to President Biden’s support for the Israeli war against Hamas and Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

    As the Israeli military operations in Gaza indiscriminately kill and starve Palestinian civilians, more Americans are protesting Biden’s support for Tel Aviv. The President has recently been confronted with chants of “Genocide Joe”.

    The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Biden has been more involved regarding Israel than any other issue and the White House has no plans to place conditions on the weapons sent to Tel Aviv for use amidst its brutal war. 

    The percentage of Americans naming foreign policy as a priority issue more than doubled from last year. Below it ranks second only to the economy…

    “Biden has involved himself more intensely in the conflict than almost any other issue in three years in office,” the outlet reports. “But there is no serious discussion inside the administration of a meaningful change in policy, like cutting off the arms supply to Israel. Instead, Biden remains determined to navigate the crisis within the crisis by using the credibility he earned through steadfast support of Israel to shape its next chapter.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 23:00

  • Sea-Change: Most Hispanics Now Prefer Trump – Biden's Black Support Plummets From 2020
    Sea-Change: Most Hispanics Now Prefer Trump – Biden’s Black Support Plummets From 2020

    Confounding leftists in and outside of major media who’ve spent years portraying Donald Trump as a racist, Hispanic support for the former president continues to surge — to the point that Trump is now the first choice among the increasingly significant US demographic. 

    Meanwhile, black enthusiasm for Biden has plummeted since 2020, leaving many in the Democrat electoral cornerstone eager to vote for a third-party candidate. These are among several findings of a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll that are sure to compound Democrats worries about the 2024 election. 

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    Trump boasts a five-point lead among Hispanics, with Biden trailing 39% to 34%. That is an absolute sea change from 2020, when Biden’s Hispanic share blew Trump out of the water, 65% to 32%.   

    While Biden received 87% of the black vote in 2020, only 63% intend to vote for him in November. It’s not that they’re surging toward Trump. Indeed, USA Today reports his black support is holding steady at the same 12% he received in 2020. Rather, fed up with Biden, 20% of blacks plan to vote for someone other than Biden or Trump. 

    There’s even more for the Democratic National Committee to wring their hands over. Like other recent surveys, the USA Today/Suffolk poll found Trump winning among voters under age 35, by a 37% to 33% spread. Similar to blacks, 21% of young voters plan to vote for someone outside the two major parties — at least, if Biden and Trump are the nominees. While it wasn’t reported as part of this poll, it appears already-weak youth support for Biden has been further sapped by his overwhelming support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas military and terrorist attack on southern Israel. 

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    The 2024 field features multiple independent and third-party candidates that varyingly appeal to blacks, progressive leftists and independent voters, including Cornel West, Jill Stein and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In the USA Today/Suffolk poll, the inclusion of seven independent and third-party yielded a small net advantage for Trump, nudging his overall lead over Biden from 2 points in a head-to-head to 3 points in a multi-candidate race. Kennedy came in third, grabbing a 10% share.  

    “Although Trump hasn’t grown support among Black voters, he has closed the deficit because third-party voters come off of Biden’s support among Blacks,” David Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center, told USA Today. “A young voter or a person of color voting ‘third party’ is a vote away from President Biden, and a vote away from President Biden is a vote for Donald Trump.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 22:40

  • Average US Household Can Afford Only Cheapest 16% Of Listed Homes
    Average US Household Can Afford Only Cheapest 16% Of Listed Homes

    Submitted by Sam Bourgi of CreditNews

    For the average American, 2023 was the worst year ever for housing affordability—and now there’s more data to back it up.

    According to Redfin data analyzed by Creditnews Research, the average U.S. household can only afford 15.5% of the homes that went up for sale in 2023—the lowest on record.

    By comparison, the average household had the means to buy 20.7% of homes for sale in 2022 and over 40% before the pandemic.

    Redfin data also showed the number of affordable homes for sale plunged to record lows in 2023, falling 40.9% to 352,500.

    According to Redfin’s Lily Katz, “elevated mortgage rates and stubbornly high prices made the listings hitting the market more expensive” in 2023.

    This analysis is based on home listings in 97 of the most populous U.S. metro areas. A house is considered “affordable” if the buyer’s mortgage payment is no more than 30% of their region’s median household income.

    The 30% threshold isn’t some arbitrary number.

    The Department of Housing and Urban Development says households that spend more than a third of their income on housing are far more likely to run into financial troubles.

    Redfin’s data mirror Creditnews Research’s Housing Affordability Report, which showed that the average American’s mortgage burden is the worst since 1981 when rates peaked at over 18%.

    Although the housing affordability crisis is often blamed on record home prices, it’s the root cause behind those prices that has been working against homebuyers in 2023.

    Homeowners aren’t budging

    Americans who purchased a home before 2021 have built up massive equity as their property values surged during Covid. According to Fed research, homeowners saw their equity rise from $139,100 in 2019 to $201,000 in 2022.

    So, why aren’t they selling and cashing in? Because they don’t want to trade in their current mortgage rate for a much higher one.

    According to Creditnews Research, 23.4% of existing mortgages were originated in 2021 when rates were below 3%. Another 17.8% of mortgages were originated in 2020—the year the Fed cut interest rates back to zero.

    Now, nearly two-thirds (64.5%) of U.S. mortgages have rates under 4%. These buyers have “golden handcuffs” —they don’t want to give up their current rate for a much higher one.

    Although mortgage rates have declined since late October, they’re still double what they were before 2021.

    With homeowners refusing to sell, housing inventories have plunged to 20-year lows, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). And less supply means buyers are competing for fewer listings—a feedback loop that keeps pushing prices higher.

    According to NAR data, the housing market has about 3.5 months’ worth of supply at the current sales pace. As a result, existing home sales have plunged to 13-year lows and are on track for their worst year in more than four decades.

    Experts predict lower mortgage rates, but will they help?

    With mortgage rates declining for eight consecutive weeks, industry experts believe rates will continue heading lower in 2024.

    The NAR has pegged 30-year interest rates as low as 6.1% in 2024 before rebounding slightly to 6.3%. The Mortgage Bankers Association has a similar view and expects rates to drop to 6.1% by the end of the year.

    Meanwhile, Mortgage News Daily’s chief operating officer Matthew Graham believes rates could fall even below 5% next year.

    Lower mortgage rates should help ease housing costs, but even 5% might not be enough to fix the housing shortage—the root cause of record home prices.

    “The supply of homes for sale remains scarce,” wrote Nancy Vanden Houten, an economist at Oxford Economics. “Lower mortgage rates may bring some sellers off the sidelines, though most homeowners with mortgages still have rates well below current market rates.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 22:20

  • More Than 140 Drug Brands Will Have Their Prices Hiked Heading Into 2024
    More Than 140 Drug Brands Will Have Their Prices Hiked Heading Into 2024

    More than 140 brands of drugs are going to see their prices hiked heading into the new year.

    And we’re guessing because there isn’t one “punchable face” scapegoat like Martin Shkreli to take the heat for the entire industry which has spent yet another year whoring itself to Washington D.C. and sponsoring corporate media, the price hikes will go largely unnoticed by government officials who would normally fein outrage about the issue.

    Healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors found that Pfizer, Sanofi and Takeda are among other drugmakers that’ll hike prices on more than 140 brands and 500 different drugs/dosages, according to a Reuters report. 

    At the same time, we’re sure the media will swoon over the Biden Administration’s significantly discounted prices on 10 other high cost drugs, set to be published in September. As per usual, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing…

    Starting in 2026, under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare can directly negotiate drug prices. But concerns are rising about potential supply chain disruptions due to extended conflict in the Middle East, affecting Red Sea shipping routes. Meanwhile, GlaxoSmithKline and two other companies plan to reduce prices on various drugs, including treatments for asthma, herpes, and epilepsy, starting in 2024, with at least 15 drugs seeing price cuts in January, the report says.

    The reductions follow earlier insulin price cuts by various companies to dodge penalties from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, which mandates Medicaid rebates from drug firms if their price hikes exceed inflation. Starting January 2024, these rebates could exceed the drugs’ net cost.

    3 Axis President Antonio Ciaccia said: “Every major former blockbuster insulin is going to get thrown under the tires of this policy.” 

    Drugmakers have generally limited price increases to 10% or less since facing criticism for excessive hikes in the mid-2010s. Despite high inflation, there hasn’t been a significant acceleration in price increases for existing products. Since 2019, median price increases have been about 5%, as reported by 46brooklyn, a drug pricing non-profit.

    Pfizer, leading in January price hikes for two consecutive years, plans to raise prices on 124 drugs, with an additional increase on 22 drugs by its Hospira division. Excluding various doses and formulations, 30 Pfizer and six Hospira drugs will see price increases. Takeda’s Baxalta and Belgian firm UCB Pharma follow, with 53 and 40 drug hikes, respectively.

    Sanofi, despite earlier commitments to reduce insulin prices in 2024, will increase prices on some vaccines by 9%. January is typically the peak month for drug price hikes, with 1,425 increases in 2023, slightly down from 1,460 in 2022.

    While established drug price increases have moderated, prices for new drugs are soaring. In the first half of 2022, new drug prices reached an average of over $220,000, up from around $180,000 in early 2021, marking a 20% rise consistent with a JAMA study showing annual 20% increases in U.S. drug launch prices from 2008 to 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 22:00

  • Bitcoin Miner CleanSpark To Launch In-House Trading Desk
    Bitcoin Miner CleanSpark To Launch In-House Trading Desk

    By Brayden Lindrea of CoinTelegraph

    US-based Bitcoin miner CleanSpark Inc. reportedly plans to set up an in-house trading desk sometime in 2024 to maximize returns from its Bitcoin holdings. According to a Jan. 2 report from Bloomberg, the firm’s CEO Zachary Bradford said the move would make use the the “large Bitcoin” balance the company has.

    “We really think that doing it ourselves is the best way, especially with the large Bitcoin balance we have,” Bradford told Bloomberg. “It just makes financial sense to do it in-house.”

    In December, CleanSpark said it held 2,575 BTC at the end of November, worth around $116 million at today’s prices.

    CleanSpark reportedly plans to make strategies based on regulated crypto offerings, such as the option contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or its affiliates.

    “We may have to move a small amount into different accounts but we will keep the cold storage custody with holders like Coinbase with segregated accounts,” Bradford added.

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    Bradford thinks more Bitcoin miners will set up in-house trading desks, adding: 

    “That way, you can manage it with your own risk profiles and expertise and keep a really close eye on it.”

    CleanSpark’s (CLSK) share price increased around 440% to around $11 in 2023, lifting the firm’s market cap to $2 billion, according to Google Finance.

    The share price appreciation erased a nearly 80% share price fall in 2022 when the cryptocurrency industry’s market cap plummeted as low as $832 billion following the collapse of FTX.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 21:40

  • Elon Musk Begins Launching Satellite Cellphone Towers Into Space
    Elon Musk Begins Launching Satellite Cellphone Towers Into Space

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX started the new year with a Falcon 9 rocket launch of the firm’s first-ever direct-to-cell satellites. 

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    Six of the 21 Starlink satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, have direct-to-cell capabilities that provide connectivity for most 4G LTE devices when in range. 

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    SpaceX plans to “eliminate dead zones” with its new service that could be rolled out in 2025, pending regulatory license for commercial use. 

    The initial rollout in the US will be with SpaceX’s US mobile partner, T-Mobile. Other partners include mobile operators in Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland. 

    Musk commented on the launch Tuesday night. He said, “This will allow for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth.” 

    “Note, this only supports ~7Mb per beam and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial cellular networks,” Musk said. 

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    SpaceX is also expected to have another record year of rocket launches. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 21:20

  • The FBI-Tainted Whitmer 'Kidnap Plot' You've Heard Next To Nothing About
    The FBI-Tainted Whitmer ‘Kidnap Plot’ You’ve Heard Next To Nothing About

    Authored by Julie Kelly via RealClear Investigations,

    In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.

    “It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy said. “FBI agents putting them up to a kidnapping plot that we were told was true but wasn’t.”

    His zeroing in on the Michigan case highlighted an uncharacteristic development in contemporary politics, where progressives vigorously defend law enforcement power while conservatives view it with deep suspicion. Further, Ramaswamy’s linking of Jan. 6 and the Whitmer plot resonated with many on the right who want similarities between the two episodes exposed to the general public, especially the FBI’s reliance on informants and other paid operatives.

    On Oct. 8, 2020, Whitmer announced the shocking arrests of several men accused of planning to kidnap and possibly assassinate her. The case produced alarming headlines just weeks before Election Day; Democrats, including Whitmer, used news of the plot to blame Trump for inciting violence.

    Joe Biden commended the FBI for thwarting the abduction plan and, in a written statement issued the same day, claimed that “there is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one.” Biden continued that line of attack during campaign speeches in Michigan, a swing state that voted for Trump in 2016, and one Biden needed to capture to win the presidency.

    In the years since the election, the national press has given little attention to the case since the initial arrests, even though court documents have recast the episode as something more sinister. Instead of a heroic effort by the FBI to safeguard the country from domestic terrorists, it now appears to have been a broad conspiracy by law enforcement to entrap American citizens who held unpopular political views.

    The FBI’s tactics were first exposed by BuzzFeed in July 2021, when reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison disclosed startling details based on court filings as the matter headed to trial. They found that the number of FBI confidential human sources involved in the scheme was equal to the number of defendants.

    “An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” they wrote. “Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.”

    Would there have been a conspiracy without the FBI? Shown: Defendants Kaleb Franks, Brandon Caserta, Adam Dean Fox, and from bottom left, Daniel Harris, Barry Croft, and Ty Garbin. Kent County Sheriff

    Six men ranging in age from 22 to 44 – Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Brandon Caserta, Daniel Harris, Ty Garbin, and Kaleb Franks – faced federal charges of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction. Eight others faced state charges. BuzzFeed recreated much of the defendants’ movements between March and October 2020, including attendance at “field training” exercises and the surveillance of Whitmer’s properties.

    While BuzzFeed offered the first account of the entrapment operation, further reporting by RealClearInvestigations, along with details revealed in court filings and trial proceedings, make the operation sound like something out of a Hollywood script. It features secretive cash payouts; drug- and booze-fueled parties; a convicted wife-beating FBI investigator; a career felon revealed as a longtime FBI asset and later accused of acting as a “double agent”; and a dramatic takedown scene at the end.

    Public defenders representing the accused have identified at least 12 FBI informants and three undercover FBI agents managed by FBI officials in numerous field offices responsible for framing the men.

    “In this Case, the undisputed evidence … establishes that government agents and informants concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan,” defense lawyers wrote in a Dec. 25, 2021 motion. “When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”

    At the center of the action was the FBI’s ringleader, Dan Chappel, 34 years old at the time, an Iraq war veteran and contract truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service. Chappel, the official story goes, joined a group called the “Wolverine Watchmen” in early 2020 to burnish his firearms skills. Members generally interacted on social media. The government claimed Chappel became alarmed at alleged online chatter about killing police and took his concerns to a friend in law enforcement in March 2020.

    A week later, the FBI hired Chappel as an informant.

    “Captain Autism”: Portrayed as a military leader prepping to overthrow governments, Adam Fox was actually a homeless man living in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop without running water or a toilet. X

    Over the course of the next seven months, Chappel “ingratiated” himself with the men, as one defense attorney described his method, with his eye particularly on Fox, 37, the reported mastermind of the plot. While the media portrayed Fox as a military leader prepping an army of “white supremacists” to overthrow state governments across the country, he was, in reality, a homeless man living in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop without running water or a toilet in a Grand Rapids strip mall. One co-defendant referred to him as “Captain Autism.”

    Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, said Chappel took on a “father figure” role to his fatherless and destitute client. Fox and Chappel exchanged thousands of texts. Chappel drove Fox, who did not own a car, to various meetups and staged events while recording every moment to preserve as evidence against him. On at least three occasions, according to testimony offered at trial, Chappel offered Fox a prepaid credit card authorized by the FBI with a $5,000 limit to help him buy guns and ammunition; Fox, despite being broke, declined each time.

    Informants and their targets mulled over how to blow up a bridge outside Whitmer’s summer cottage in Elk Rapids; kill her security detail; take her to a nearby boat launch; and either abandon her on Lake Michigan or bring her across the lake to Wisconsin for a “citizen’s trial” over her lockdowns. Google Maps

    Chappel, known as “Big Dan” to the group, created encrypted chats and gave real-time access to his FBI handlers working out of the Detroit FBI field office as the farfetched plan unfolded.

    Informants and targets mulled over how to blow up a bridge outside Whitmer’s summer cottage; kill her security detail; take her to a nearby boat launch; and either abandon her in the middle of Lake Michigan or bring her across the lake to Wisconsin to stand a “citizen’s trial” over her COVID-19 lockdown policies. One discussion involved the implausible use of a military helicopter.

    From appearances, a demonstration at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing on April 30, 2020 might well have been a law enforcement dress rehearsal for Jan. 6. Chappel traveled to the event with three members of the Watchmen later held on state charges. Some protesters were clad in military gear and carried firearms but could not enter the building. When Chappel told his FBI handler what was happening, the FBI ordered the Michigan State Police to stand down and allow protesters inside. News photographers captured the moment when protesters “stormed” the Michigan Capitol and called out for Whitmer, resulting in the same sort of optics produced on Jan. 6.

    The incident took on greater significance when it was revealed that Steven D’Antuono, head of the Detroit FBI field office during the Whitmer caper, was promoted to head up the Washington, D.C., FBI field office three months before the events of Jan. 6.

    In exchange for his work, the FBI paid Chappel at least $54,000 in cash. Part of that haul included an envelope, handed over by his primary FBI handler in December 2020, filled with $23,000 in cash as payment for a mission accomplished. (Department of Justice policy requires informants to be paid in cash.). The bureau also supplied Chappel with other personal items, such as a laptop computer and tires for his car.  Chappel also used a rented SUV, again funded by the FBI, to drive his targets to various locations as part of the trap.

    An FBI undercover agent known as “Red” showed defendants a video of a Chevy Tahoe being blown up, above, as a way of demonstrating his bona fides.

    Other informants were involved, too. A longtime FBI source named Steve Robeson, from Wisconsin,  organized a “militia” meeting in Ohio in June 2020 and pressured the government’s targets, including Fox and Croft, to attend as he wore a wire to record what was said during the event.

    Robeson arranged other events throughout the summer including at his remote property in Cambria, Wisconsin. He constructed a so-called “kill house” for the men to practice shooting. At one point, Robeson suggested the exercises could be used to “storm” a state Capitol building or governor’s residence. Robeson is a convicted felon several times over, including on charges of sex with a minor, with a rap sheet spanning at least nine states. He was paid roughly $20,000 for his involvement in the Whitmer caper. Prosecutors later accused him of acting as a “double agent” for allegedly tipping off one of the defendants that his arrest was imminent.

    Steve Robeson, an FBI informant with a multi-state rap sheet, built a remote Wisconsin “kill house” for the men to practice shooting. WOOD TV8/YouTube

    At least two other informants were tasked with managing Croft, who had been under FBI surveillance since 2019 for his “extremist” views, according to documents.

    It was later revealed that the informants, including Chappel, violated FBI protocol by getting drunk and high on drugs with their targets numerous times, sleeping in the same hotel, and suggesting ways to advance the kidnapping plan. At one point, Chappel took an oath to join a separate group called the “Three Percent Patriot Militia” group – one fabricated by the FBI – then convinced Fox to become the head of the Michigan chapter, all in an effort have the men believe Chappel was part of a nonexistent “militia” movement.

    Defense lawyer Gibbons described the ruse during the April 2022 trial as “free money, free bombs, daily contact for months, fake militia, build up vulnerable adult with a fake militia and a title of commanding officer, send him a federal agent to join his militia.”

    More behind-the-scenes machinations were disclosed when the defense uncovered hundreds of communications between the agents and informants that showed how they guided the plot every step of the way. One text suggests that the FBI and Chappel attempted to lure a disabled Vietnam War veteran named “Frank” into initiating a similar plan against Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. “Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chappel’s FBI handler texted him in August 2020.

    Despite the FBI’s best efforts, the group of so-called kidnappers started to disband by August 2020. Chappel asked his handlers how to “put more pressure” on the individuals so no one would break off. To rally the increasingly uninterested group that month, Chappel proposed firing live rounds into Whitmer’s cottage and the residences of other governors, then sending the shell casings to news reporters. “Look at you bringing people together,” one of Chappel’s FBI handlers texted to him after he successfully kept the group intact.

    Even that wasn’t enough to solidify a kidnapping scheme so, according to numerous exchanges between the FBI assets and trial testimony from one cooperating witness, the FBI ran another undercover agent into the plot in September 2020 to tempt the men into trying to purchase bomb-making material. During a get-together in mid-September, an FBI undercover agent known as “Red” showed the group a video of a Chevy Tahoe being blown up as a way to demonstrate his credentials.

    The video had been produced by the FBI.

    At the same get-together, several FBI informants and “Red” took their targets on a reconnaissance mission to stake out Whitmer’s vacation cottage, the scene of the alleged prospective crime. It was the second time Chappel drove Fox to the property. (The governor and her staff were in communication with authorities for months as the entrapment scheme was under way; the FBI installed pole cameras and 3D devices around her property to record any activity to be used as evidence.)

    Chappel also drove the men to the location of the FBI arrest point in Ypsilanti, Mich., on Oct. 7, 2020, under a ruse to meet “Red,” who promised to sell them military-style garb, not explosive materials. Members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, whose missions include “high-risk arrests,” were there waiting.

    Richard Trask, fired FBI investigator: Charged in July 2021 for brutally assaulting his wife after a swingers’ party in Kalamazoo. WOOD TV8/YouTube

    But things went downhill for the government after that. Richard Trask, one of the main FBI investigators on the case, who signed the complaint against the federal defendants, was criminally charged in July 2021 for brutally assaulting his wife after a swingers’ party in Kalamazoo. Police body cam video showed a partly clothed, bloody, and apparently intoxicated Trask talking with police during his arrest. Reporters also found profane anti-Trump posts on Trask’s social media account.

    Trask was removed from the case and fired by the FBI in September 2021.

    Prosecutors removed Chappel’s two primary FBI handlers, Henrik Impola and Jayson Chambers, from the government’s witness list after defense attorneys accused Impola of committing perjury in a previous case and discovered that Chambers was moonlighting as head of a security firm on the side and posting inside information about the pending arrests on social media as a way to attract business.

    Henrik Impola, FBI handler: Removed from the witness list after being accused of perjury in a previous case. UpNorthLive/YouTube

    Robeson and his wife, Kimberly,  were charged with fraud  in December 2021 for convincing a couple to purchase a used SUV and donate it to the Robesons’ nonexistent charity, a crime committed while Robeson was working the Whitmer plot.

    Robeson also was charged separately with illegally purchasing a firearm as a felon; he threatened to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, so he also was not called as a witness.

    By the time the federal case went to trial in western Michigan in March 2022, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks had accepted plea offers and planned to testify against their remaining four co-defendants: Fox, Croft, Harris, and Caserta.

    Judge Robert Jonker allowed the defense to raise the entrapment issue but only after the government presented its case. That plan, however, did not last beyond the first day as defense attorneys struggled during opening remarks to explain their clients’ behavior without mentioning the key role of FBI informants and agents. Jonker suspended his own order – at which point the FBI essentially went on trial.

    The trial lasted four weeks. Prosecutors insisted the defendants were solely responsible for conceiving the plan but the defense argued the group’s activities amounted to little more than “crazy, stoned talk.” Chappel took the stand for the prosecution but his testimony appeared to backfire as his central role in the plot came into view. He also admitted he became an informant to pad his resume in hopes of pursuing a job in law enforcement.

    During closing arguments, the four defense attorneys emphasized the FBI’s misconduct while asking the jury for not-guilty verdicts.

    “[This] is unacceptable in America,” Gibbons said during closing arguments on April 1. “That’s not how it works. They don’t make terrorists so we can arrest them.”

    On April 8, 2022, after nearly four days of deliberation, the jury found Caserta and Harris not guilty on all charges; after 18 months behind bars, both men went free.

    The jury, however, could not reach a unanimous verdict for Fox and Croft, resulting in a mistrial.

    It was a shocking blow to the government. In what the Justice Department considered its biggest domestic terror case over the past few decades (until Jan. 6), prosecutors did not yet have a single conviction – an outcome practically unheard of for a department with a more than 90% conviction rate. “It felt so good, I was so happy. We did it, we beat them. We got justice,” Caserta told me in a post-trial interview in 2022.

    Prosecutors immediately announced they would retry Fox and Croft. A different version of Judge Jonker appeared on the bench in August 2022; the trial was marked by open hostilities between the judge and defense attorneys.

    Judge Robert Jonker: Declined to dismiss a juror accused of bias and of ties to Black Lives Matter. That juror became the foreman.

    At one point, Jonker took the rare step of setting a time limit for cross-examination of a key government witness. He also refused to allow defense attorneys to interview a juror suspected of bias against the defendants based on comments he had made to co-workers during jury selection and his affiliation with Black Lives Matter. Jonker repeatedly admonished both lawyers in front of the jury, accusing counsel of causing jurors to “tune out” and rushing them through important lines of questioning. Over objections by the defense, Jonker kept the man on the jury. He became the foreman.

    Croft and Fox were convicted on August 23, 2022 of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction, and are serving out multi-year sentences in supermax prisons reserved for the country’s worst criminals.

    They are now appealing their convictions. In an August 2023 brief, Croft’s new appellate attorney, Timothy Sweeney, wrote: “It is staggering the extent to which the FBI and its agents/informants used excessive pressure, exploited the anger from COVID lockdowns and destructive summer riots, and manipulated emotional issues among vulnerable and excitable citizens. This included: nearly constant real-time monitoring of FBI’s communications with Fox, plus thousands of government-initiated texts/chats; the deployment of multiple paid agents/informants who sought to elicit and encourage extremist and violent behavior; and the FBI’s instigating, planning, promoting, and conducting of nearly all key events.”

    In response, the government wrote in a December 2023 motion that “there was no evidence that government agents or informants suggested the plot or offered more than opportunity and facilities.”

    Sweeney and Fox’s new appellate attorney, Steven Nolder,  further accused Jonker of severely hamstringing the defense by refusing to admit into evidence the hundreds of messages that showed extensive communication between FBI agents and informants as they advanced the plot. Jonker, in both trials, denied defense motions to allow the jury to see the communications.

    “These communications – constituted relevant evidence of the shocking degree to which Chambers, Chappel, and the other FBI agents/informants orchestrated this scam and generally engaged in incessant and oppressive inducement,” Sweeney wrote.

    Acquitted: The last three defendants charged in the Michigan state case. 
    Antrim Co. Sheriff’s Office/ABC 7 Chicago/YouTube

    A recent verdict for the last three defendants charged in the Michigan state case may add weight to the appeal. An Antrim County jury in September 2023 found Willam Null, his brother Michael Null, and their co-defendant Eric Molitor not guilty of providing material support to an act of terror and illegally possessing firearms.

    The acquittals represented another blow to the overall case and a poor showing for the government; of the 10 defendants who went to trial, five were found not guilty and two were convicted after a second trial. Four others pleaded guilty—outcomes that represent a poor showing for both the DOJ and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel was so infuriated by the acquittals for the Null brothers and Molitor that she publicly criticized jurors as coming from “a very, very right-leaning county (were) seemingly not so concerned about the kidnapping and assassination of the governor.”

    Fox and Croft and the DOJ have asked for oral arguments. An appellate court in western Michigan could render a decision by mid-2024. “When I look at what happened in this case,” Croft’s public defender, Joshua Blanchard, said during closing arguments in the April 2022 trial, “I am ashamed of the behavior of the leading law enforcement agency in the United States. This investigation was an embarrassment, and we have to tell them this isn’t how our country operates. This isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 21:00

  • CPI Reality Check: Chick-Fil-A Has Hiked Prices 21% In Just Two Years
    CPI Reality Check: Chick-Fil-A Has Hiked Prices 21% In Just Two Years

    While we keep letting the government tell us that inflation is at 3%, back out in the real world price hikes are staggeringly higher.

    Just take one look at Chick-fil-A, for example: the popular fast food chain has hiked its prices a whopping 21% over the last two years, according to a new report from the NY Post. 

    In 2022, the chain first raised prices by 15%, the report says. In January 2023, the company then implemented a menu-wide 6% hike in prices, resulting in the average price of its chicken sandwich – which was under $5 in 2021 – to now cost $5.79. 

    The report notes that in high cost of living areas, like New York City, the same sandwich is going to run customers $6.99. An 8 piece nuggets, which would cost $5.99 elsewhere and which were also under $5 in 2021, now cost $7.09. 

    The Post noted the discrepancy between the real world and the CPI, which showed a 3.1% increase in November. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted a 0.2% monthly rise in the food index for November, a slight decrease from the 0.3% rise in the previous month.

    Labor costs are playing a role in driving costs higher, the report says. 

    New York saw its minimum wage increase from $15 to $16 in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County as the new year began. This increment is part of a plan, agreed upon last April by Governor Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders, to gradually raise the minimum wage to $17 in these areas and $16 in other parts of the state by 2026.

    Twenty-two other states, including California and Connecticut, have also recently raised their minimum wages. California increased its rate to $16, and Connecticut to $15.69. Now, approximately 30 states have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.

    These wage increases have been linked to rising prices, such as the anticipated $15 cost for a McDonald’s Big Mac in states with the wage hikes. Brandon Arnold of the National Taxpayers Union highlighted California’s mandate for a $20 minimum wage in fast food restaurants.

    Establishments are “either gonna have to raise prices, start to reduce those labor costs or a combination of both,” Arnold said on Fox. “And that’s not fair to those employees that are getting laid off, nor is it fair to the customers that are all of the sudden paying $12, $15 for a Big Mac.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 20:40

  • India Denies Sanctions Hold Back Imports Of Russian Crude Oil
    India Denies Sanctions Hold Back Imports Of Russian Crude Oil

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    India’s lower imports of Russian crude oil in recent weeks were the result of unattractive discounts, not because of payment issues amid tougher U.S. sanctions on Russia’s exports, Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Wednesday.  

    “There is no payment problem,” Puri told a briefing in New Delhi on Wednesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.

    “It is a pure function of price at which our refiners will buy,” he said, adding that India’s priority is to ensure the cheapest price possible for its consumers.

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

    At the end of last year, the United States took a tougher stance on the sanctions against Russia and sanctioned several vessels for violating the G7 price cap of $60 per barrel, above which cargoes cannot use Western insurance and financing. Some of those tankers were already en route to India loaded with Russia’s Sokol grade and departed from the Far Eastern ports in Russia.  

    According to the ship-tracking data Bloomberg has compiled, five tankers carrying Sokol were headed to India last month. But now all five – the NS Commander, Sakhalin Island, Krymsk, Nellis, and Liteyny Prospect – are headed away from India and on to the Malacca Strait, suggesting that India wouldn’t be taking those purchases after all.

    A sixth tanker, the NS Century, which has been idling off Sri Lanka for months caught up by the sanctions, is still in that area, according to the data.

    As of the end of November, India was still considering whether to allow the now-sanctioned tanker carrying Russian oil to approach and dock at one of its ports—a sign that the U.S. clampdown on Russian crude trade could limit India’s ability to buy and import cheaper oil.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 20:20

  • Feds Want To Jail Ray Epps For Just 6 Months Over Role In Jan. 6 Riot
    Feds Want To Jail Ray Epps For Just 6 Months Over Role In Jan. 6 Riot

    While several key figures in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were sentenced to 12 – 22 years in prison, the man caught on film repeatedly goading protesters to go inside the Capitol, Ray Epps, faces just six months in jail. According to a 29-page sentencing memorandum, which notes “compelling mitigating factors.”

    “Although Epps engaged in felonious conduct during the riot on January 6, his case includes a variety of distinctive and compelling mitigating factors, which led the government to exercise its prosecutorial discretion and offer Epps a pre-indictment misdemeanor plea resolution,” wrote DOJ senior trial counsel Michael Gordon in the sentencing memo. 

    Epps’ attorney, Edward Ungvarsky, argued that Epps should serve no jail time, and that “right-wing political dramaturges” resulted in Epps being “attacked, defamed, and vilified.”

    Oh?

    Mitigating factors?

    According to the sentencing memorandum, Gordon asserted that Epps “has been the target of a false and widespread conspiracy theory that he was an undercover government agent on January 6.”

    Other mitigating factors included Epps calling the FBI on Jan. 8, 2021 to explain his actions two days prior. Further, Gordon listed his cooperation with both the FBI and the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Select Committee (which lost video evidence of their witness interviews), and what the DOJ describes as his efforts to de-escalate tensions between protesters and the police.

    “Epps only acted in furtherance of his own misguided belief in the ‘lie’ that the 2020 presidential election had been ‘stolen,'” reads the memorandum. “However, due to the outrage directed at Epps as a result of that false conspiracy theory, he has been forced to sell his business, move to a different state, and live reclusively.“

    As the Epoch Times reports further, Epps’ photo was removed from the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted page without explanation.

    Ray Epps speaks to police officers near a barricade on the west plaza of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Metropolitan Police Department/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    On Sept. 18, 2023, prosecutors charged Mr. Epps with one count of disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, a petty misdemeanor with a maximum six-month jail term.

    On Sept. 21, 2023, Mr. Epps pleaded guilty to the charge. In mere days, the high-profile case was dispatched, a stark contrast to many Jan. 6 prosecutions that have stretched across nearly three years.

    Sentencing in the case had been scheduled for Dec. 20, 2023, but Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg granted a continuance until 10 a.m. Jan. 9 at the federal courthouse in Washington D.C.

    In his sentencing memo, Mr. Ungvarsky said Mr. Epps’ intention all along was for peaceful protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

    “Ray Epps understands the serious mistake he made when he joined others to attend the Stop the Steal Rally on January 6, 2021, and to encourage others to walk to the U.S. Capitol to continue to protest,” Mr. Ungvarsky wrote.

    “At all times, Mr. Epps’ intent was that the protest would be peaceful and would be done peacefully,” Mr. Ungvarsky said. “Those were his words on January 5, and that was his intent on January 6.”

    Late on Jan. 2, Mr. Ungvarsky filed a motion asking to shield under court seal the identifying information of persons mentioned in Mr. Epps’ forthcoming sentencing exhibits.

    “For safety concerns, counsel has redacted the names and identifying information of persons who authored or are discussed in exhibits of sentencing letters and memoranda,” Mr. Ungvarsky wrote. “Documented prior harassment and threats provide a specific basis for this request in this case.”

    Ray Epps Sentencing Memo by James Lynch

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 20:00

  • Entry-Level Jobs Pay Six Figures In This Gritty Part Of America
    Entry-Level Jobs Pay Six Figures In This Gritty Part Of America

    Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Josef McConnell, a tennis coach from Southern California, had been unemployed for a year after the government response to the pandemic destroyed his business. Then, in 2021, a friend told him that there were good-paying jobs to be had in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    He knew nothing of oilfields, never heard of the Bakken Basin, nor, for that matter, could he say much about North Dakota other than he believed the state to be a cold, flat flyover tundra with corn and cows somewhere near Canada that had previously been “100 percent not on my mind.”

    Nevertheless, Mr. McConnell said, “I picked up everything and left. It was do-or-die.”

    He quickly secured a job laboring at SandPro, a sand, wellhead, and automation management start-up in Berthold, west of Minot. As promised, good-paying jobs were available. As promised, they were muscle jobs, dirty jobs, and long-shift jobs.

    He was “cleaning iron, tearing things apart,” disassembling and rebuilding “frack trees’ that cap fracked—hydraulically fractured—oil wells. It was hard, gritty work, 12 hours a day, for weeks at a time in an industrial beehive down the road and across the highway from downtown Berthold, a towering grain elevator looming as its landmark above bald grassy ridges and cottonwood-framed creek beds.

    But the money was fantastic and, it dawned on him that “this could be a career, not just a job,” Mr. McConnell said.

    “I told myself that if I couldn’t make it through the first winter, this is not for me. I survived. It sucked, but I survived,” he said. “From there on, I tried to learn everything I could. I wanted to know how it worked, what it did. I cross-trained into all the aspects of the business.”

    As SandPro grew, Mr. McConnell, 33, was appointed night-shift supervisor. Last December, he ascended to shop manager. In August, he became a homeowner. “I’d never be able to do that in California,” he said.

    While the 2006–2014 Bakken Play shale boom is over, and the days when oil rigs were anchored on the prairie like ships on seas of waving wheat are long gone, North Dakota’s oil industry has rebounded from its pandemic-induced slump. A sense of steady has settled in.

    Josef McConnell, a shop manager at SandPro, poses for a picture in his office in Tioga, N.D., on Dec. 19, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Right now, an able-bodied unskilled laborer willing to learn and capable of working long and hard can still land a $115,000 entry-level job with room and board and nearly five months off on an oil rig site or with a growing number of independent contractors and start-up oilfield service companies in western North Dakota.

    Right now, the Bakken is where stories like Mr. McConnell’s aren’t stories but invitations. It’s where an Arizona cosmetologist can monitor a rig gate while looking to buy her first home, where a New Jersey geologist can build a company that employs 300 to revive a community where she’s hailed as a hometown hero, where a “disgruntled” airman from Cincinnati can carve a niche and expand it into a broadening entrepreneurial enterprise.

    “The rush is over, and now we’re seeing a maturing of the play,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a 1998 graduate of Dickinson High School who recalls having to—and being able to—stand in the middle of highways to get cellphone reception before the oil boom.

    As is typical with a “maturing of the play,” most corporate players have moved on. In their wake, new players have emerged: first-time independent contractors and serial entrepreneurs, many under 40, most building local businesses, buying homes, starting families, and growing communities.

    For them, fast money is fine, but sustainable “systemic growth” is preferable, with perfected-in-North-Dakota advances in fracking spurring pioneering innovations in lateral drilling.

    “This is a time of great technological advancements,” North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness said.

    The 31 rigs operating in North Dakota in late December were pumping 1.25 million barrels of shale oil per day to nearly 19,000 wells, a per-rig production that is “a vast improvement” over past proficiency benchmarks, he said.

    With lateral drilling in the Bakken expected to extend beyond four miles by early 2024, “the timeline to drill wells has been compressed” and “opened up a whole new area of the Bakken than was formerly known,” a shale play “we are going to take this technology to and earn from.”

    North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness in Bismarck, N.D., on Dec. 18, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Post-Boom Boon

    Spearheading the Bakken’s post-boom boon are “smaller companies,” Mr. Ness said. “We’ve got so many, typically led by younger people who were working for these larger international service companies, found a niche, and started their own businesses.”

    With oil prices expected to hover in the $70-to-$85 per barrel “sweet spot,” demand for North Dakota oil is projected to grow moderately for the foreseeable future.

    “It’s better than the boom,” SandPro Vice President Joshua Blackaby said. “You want steady work and that’s where we’re at right now. And one of the distinctive things about what’s going on here now is it’s a lot of small companies, a lot of entrepreneurs.”

    According to the North Dakota Job Service, the 31 rigs directly employ 50,000 people with about 35,000 working in field and technical services and about 15,000 toiling directly on sites.

    As of mid-December, more than 3,000 oilfield-related jobs were vacant.

    For the small farming and ranching prairie towns overwhelmed during the boom, infill ambitions spur new commercial construction, revitalized Main streets, and growing schools, with new homes being purchased by 20- and 30-something-year-olds.

    Dave Feldner removes grease and cleans gears within a drilling wellhead at SandPro in Tioga, N.D., on Dec. 19, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    “Building schools, building homes, growing communities rather than tearing them down? I think there’s lots of success stories here,” Mr. Ness said.

    “Now, you have an opportunity to grow a life,” Mr. Armstrong said. “That’s a story we are proud to tell.”

    For the independent-inclined, there’s ample opportunity for enterprise, Mr. Blackaby said.

    “If you have any ambition at all, move to North Dakota,” he said. “There’s so much work to be had here. It’s such a business-friendly state and the opportunities … the sky’s the limit.”

    In the Field

    Julie Byron, 33, from Tucson, Arizona, is working in a gate shack with two heaters at her feet. Only those on the crew can gain entry to the Hess rig without checking in with her.

    A cosmetologist “doing pull-tabs at the Legion,” she’d lived in Williston since 2013 but never considered working in the Bakken until a manager suggested she apply for a job with Neset Consulting Services, a Tioga-based company that provides gate monitors, roustabout crews, field medics, mud-loggers, and geologists for oil rig sites.

    Since August, she’s been working seven days on and seven days off in shifts tailored to her needs as a single mother.

    Julie Byron, a gate guard with Neset Consulting Service, at her desk in Tioga, N.D., on Dec. 20, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    It’s fascinating, Ms. Byron said. “This is first time I’m seeing what’s really going on. I said to myself, ‘OK, we’re going to learn this. We’re going to turn this into an opportunity,’” she said. “It’s cool to know the background—the geology, infrastructure, the different jobs—and understand it.”

    She is looking to buy a home in 2024. She still works as a cosmetologist and “does pull-tabs at the Legion” during off-weeks.

    “It’s just me starting over. I’m still figuring this out at 33 years old,” Ms. Byron said. “Was it worth it? One-hundred percent.”

    Ron Budd, 34, delivery services coordinator for Minot-based Creedence Energy Services’ Williston office, moved from Phoenix, Arizona, to North Dakota in 2010 when his stepfather got a job with Haliburton.

    “I was pretty young and didn’t really have it figured out. I was just kind of day-by-day, dead-end jobs,” he recalled. “The job I was working before I came up here was at McDonald’s. I thought of it as hard work. Now, not so much.”

    Mr. Budd said “financial opportunity” became his “driving force to fully commit” to the oilfield. He no longer works directly in the field, but the commitment has panned out, said the father of two.

    “Knowing I could do better for my kids than what I had, knowing that I can have things that no one else in my family has, I buckled down and committed,” Mr. Budd said, noting he has purchased his own home. “Out of my immediate family, I’m the only one that owns a home.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 19:40

  • "You Asked A Stupid Question": Vivek Destroys WaPo Reporter Who Demanded Woke Purity Test
    “You Asked A Stupid Question”: Vivek Destroys WaPo Reporter Who Demanded Woke Purity Test

    Vivek Ramaswamy took no shit from a Washington Post reporter this week, whose demand for a ‘woke’ fealty test was completely dismantled by the 2024 GOP candidate.

    “You didn’t say you condemn white supremacy,” the reporter snarks.

    To which Ramaswamy replied: “I’m not gonna recite some catechism for you,” adding “I’m not pledging allegience to your new religion of modern wokeism, which actually fits the test. I’m not gonna bend the knee to your religion.”

    “But do I condemn vicious racial discrimination? Yes I do,” he added. “Am I gonna play your silly game of ‘gotcha’? No I’m not. And frankly this is why people have lost trust.“

    Ramaswamy then told her that he knew she was going to go ‘print the headline’ tomorrow: ‘Ramaswamy refuses to condemn white supremacy,’ because you asked a stupid question. The reality is, I condemn vicious racial discrimination in this country. But the kind of vicious and systematic discrimination we see today, is discrimination on the base of race in a very different direction. You wanna know what the best way is to end discrimination is on the basis of race? Stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

    “You people have been responsible for dividing this country to a breaking point, creating a projection of national division,” he continued. “And you with your catechism that you try to get politicians to whatever fake headline you’re gonna print on the basis of this conversation tomorrow, that’s what’s dividing this country to a breaking point. Shame on you.”

    Watch:

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 19:20

  • "President Clinton Is A Key Person": Epstein Files Finally Unsealed
    “President Clinton Is A Key Person”: Epstein Files Finally Unsealed

    Update (1858ET): The Jeffrey Epstein files have been unsealed. As expected, former President Bill Clinton is prominently featured – as John Doe #36 (for another good look at this – the first of several Epstein doc dumps to come, check out The Reactionary).

    As noted by attorney and journalist Techno Fog of The Reactionary…

    “Apart from the defendant [Ghislaine Maxwell] and Epstein, former President Clinton is a key person who can provide information about his close relationship with the Defendant and Mr. Epstein…“

    What’s more, Bill allegedly ‘likes them young’…

    One Epstein accuser also listed George Mitchell, Jeal Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, Marvin Minsky, and couldn’t remember the names of several other individuals.

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    We also learned that accuser Virginia Giuffre testified that she kept a journal filled with the names of men involved with Epstein, only to have burned it in a bonfire.

    And who’s not alleged to have gotten a massage from one of Epstein’s girls? Trump…

    And let’s not lose sight of what Epstein’s operation is speculated to really have been about…

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    A good summary:

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    Just the News has all the files here.

    Live discussion:

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    As noted earlier, the documents include over 150 names which stemmed from a civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking and other charges for participating in Epstein’s enterprise.

    As Axios notes;

    Last month, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ordered most of the material within 187 entries listed under the pseudonym “J. Doe” be released after Jan. 1. in regard to the suit.

    • In part of that lawsuit, Virginia Giuffre accused Maxwell of facilitating her sexual abuse. The case was settled in 2017, though the terms were not made public at the time.
    • Preska also noted that anyone who may be named in the documents could file an appeal prior to the documents’ release.

    Developing…

    *  *  *

    Documents containing previously unknown names of Jeffrey Epstein associates are set for release on Wednesday, after a New York federal court ordered court documents unsealed, CNBC reports.

    Over 150 people are reportedly named in the filings, some of whom have previously been disclosed as connected with the dead pedophile, who was found dead in a New York jail after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.

    “Things should start getting unsealed today,” Edward Friedland, the district executive for that court, told CNBC.

    The  documents were filed in connection with a Manhattan federal court lawsuit brought by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and ‘madam,’ who recruited girls for exploitation by Epstein and pals.

    Only Epstein and Maxwell have been criminally charged in connection with his longstanding abuse of girls and young women at residences in New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and elsewhere. -CNBC

    That said, Judge Loretta Preska granted a 30-day extension of the disclosure of several names, including a woman identified as “Doe 107,” in order to review her claim that she faces risk of physical harm in her home country if her name is released.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 18:59

  • Trump, Endorsed By All House GOP Leaders, Urges SCOTUS To Overturn Colorado Ballot Ban As Deadline Looms
    Trump, Endorsed By All House GOP Leaders, Urges SCOTUS To Overturn Colorado Ballot Ban As Deadline Looms

    Former President Trump on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to overturn a Colorado court’s landmark ruling disqualifying him from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban.

    “The Colorado Supreme Court has no authority to deny President Trump access to the ballot,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the petition.

    “By doing so, the Colorado Supreme Court has usurped Congressional authority and misinterpreted and misapplied the text of section 3.”

    The brief also presents the high court with the question, “Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?”

    As The Hill reports, Trump’s petition asks that the Supreme Court agree to take up the case and immediately reverse the Colorado ruling in a summary decision without oral argument.

    “In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” the petition reads.

    “This Court should grant certiorari to consider this question of paramount importance, summarily reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling, and return the right to vote for their candidate of choice to the voters.”

    The other parties in the case previously agreed the justices should hear the case on an expedited schedule, so a decision may be issued before most states’ primaries, but they did not suggest the high court forgo the step of holding oral arguments.

    Trump’s call follows the Colorado Republican Party, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s (the original defendant in the case), and six voters, request that the U.S. Supreme Court review the case on an expedited basis and give American voters a final answer on whether President Trump is eligible as a candidate.

    “This Court’s resolution of the matter is important to ensure that all Coloradans’ votes are cast only for candidates who are qualified to hold the office of president,” the brief reads.

    “Additionally, the Secretary asks the Court to resolve the question of Trump’s eligibility as expeditiously as possible in light of the upcoming election calendar. This will ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, all Coloradans know whether Trump is eligible to be elected president at the time they cast their ballots.”

    The Colorado GOP had presented the Supreme Court with three questions:

    1. whether Section 3 applies to presidents,

    2. whether Section 3 is self-executing and allows individual states to decide to remove candidates without input from Congress,

    3. and whether denying a political party the right to put any candidates it chooses on the primary ballot violates the First Amendment.

    The Colorado court had put its ruling on hold until tomorrow (Thursday), so Trump could seek review from the Supreme Court.

    If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, the decision will be stayed until after the justices decide the case on the merits.

    “The court can’t let state supreme courts make a patchwork of decisions,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, after Colorado’s Dec. 19 ruling.

    “The case brings up an important federal constitutional question with time-sensitive consequences. They will need to act, and act quickly.”

    And as Trump pushed SCOTUS for an expeditious decision, the former president has captured the endorsements off all senior members of House GOP leadership.

    As Jackson Richman reports at The Epoch Times, House GOP Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) has endorsed former President Donald Trump’s comeback bid – the last House GOP leadership holdout to endorse the former president, who dominates the polls.

    “[President Joe Biden’s] failed policies have left Minnesotans to grapple with double-digit inflation, higher taxes, and a border crisis that has turned every community into a border community,” he said in a Jan. 3 statement posted on X, formerly Twitter.

    “Minnesotans and all Americans deserve better,” Mr. Emmer wrote. “It is time for Republicans to come together in support of a leader who has what it takes to get our country back on track. We stand together to endorse Donald J. Trump for President.”

    President Trump has captured the endorsements of all senior members of House GOP leadership: Mr. Emmer, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), and GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

    So, where do we stand?

    Simple:

    • If the Supreme Court rejects the case by tomorrow (Jan. 4), President Trump will be removed from the primary ballot.

    • If it rejects the case later, President Trump will remain on the Colorado primary ballot but the issues presented will remain open questions.

    It’s unlikely the Supreme Court will resolve Trump’s appeal before then, meaning he will likely appear on the primary ballots regardless.

    On Jan. 20, county clerks will mail out the ballots to military and oversees voters, and between Feb. 12 and Feb. 16, ballots are mailed to other active registered voters.

    The Colorado primary will be held on March 5.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 18:40

  • Chicago Led Nation In Homicides For 12th Year In A Row, Murder-Rate Still 5x NYC's
    Chicago Led Nation In Homicides For 12th Year In A Row, Murder-Rate Still 5x NYC’s

    Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

    Count on hearing repeatedly this year from Chicago’s leadership that it successfully brought down the city’s murder total by 13% in 2023. Chicago finished the year with 617 homicides, down from 709 in 2022.

    That’s 92 fewer murders and good news.

    But what you’re unlikely to hear are five additional facts that would temper any optimism gained from that first fact:

    1. Murders across the country fell at record levels in 2023. 

    Overall, homicides nationally are expected to drop 13%, about the same as in Chicago. And murders in other big homicide hotspots like Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans fell by 21 to 31%. Most big cities had bigger percentage drops than Chicago did.

    Below we lay out the 2023 data for the 10 homicide hubs in 2022, those cities with the largest number of murders in the country in 2022.

    2. Chicago’s 617 homicides swamp that of its two big-city peers. 

    NYC, which has more than triple Chicago’s population, had just 386 murders in 2023. Los Angeles, with 1.2 million more people than Chicago, had just 328 murders.

    Chicago’s 617 homicides led the country for the 12th straight year.

    3. Chicago’s murder rate per 100,000 residents, while down slightly in 2023, was the 2nd-highest among the nation’s biggest cities. 

    Overall, only Philadelphia had a worse murder rate than Chicago among peer cities with populations greater than 1.5 million.

    And when it comes to New York City, Chicago’s murder rate remained 5 times higher. If Chicago had had the same murder rate as NYC’s, Chicago would have experienced only 121 murders in 2023, not 617.

    4. Chicago’s 617 murder total in 2023 was still up 23% when compared to pre-covid, pre-George Floyd 2019’s 500 murders.

    5. Despite the 13% drop in homicides, Chicago’s major crimes jumped by a total of 16% in 2023. 

    Robberies were up 23%. Aggravated batteries, up 6%. Thefts and criminal sexual assaults were both up 3% each. And motor vehicle thefts spiked by 37% to reach a total of nearly 30,000 car thefts. And all that was after major crimes had already jumped 40% between 2022 and 2021.

    Overall, 2023 major crimes hit a post-covid record of more than 77,500. That’s 55% higher compared to 2019.

    Still leading

    Expect all kinds of spin on Chicago’s crime numbers in 2024, especially in anticipation of the Democratic National Convention in August and elections in November. 

    It’s why we created the Chicago Weekly Crime Tracker so you can easily see for yourself what’s happening across the city.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 18:20

  • Dodge-y? These Are The Five Slowest-Selling New Vehicles
    Dodge-y? These Are The Five Slowest-Selling New Vehicles

    Zach Shefska from online automotive marketplace CarEdge revealed a list of the five slowest-selling vehicles currently on the market. 

    Notably, four of these vehicles are from Stellantis’ Dodge brand and one from Ford. This trend might be due to several factors, such as consumers balking at 10% interest rates and near-record-high prices or a possible shift in consumer preferences away from some of these models. 

    According to Shefska, the slowest-selling vehicle in America is the Dodge Ram 2500 truck, with 784 days of supply. 

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    The second vehicle is the Dodge Hornet, with 517 days of supply. 

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    Third is the Dodge Charger, with 424 days of supply. 

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    Dodge Challenger is fourth. 

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    And the Ford Mustang Mach-E is fifth. 

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    Shefska didn’t reveal the methodology used to determine the days of supply for each vehicle. However, he mentioned that Ford reached out to him to correct the information regarding Mach-E’s supply, which was initially reported as a 358-day supply but was actually a 132-day supply.

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    One X user pointed out, “Wow. 4/5ths of the list were made by @Dodge. It’s not looking good for them at all. They desperately need to turn things around with the Charger EV.”

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    While consumer tastes could be why Dodge vehicles and Mach-E aren’t selling, the affordability issue is a much more significant driver. 

    “We’ve seen a big reduction in median- and lower-income households” buying new cars, which now “almost exclusively go to the top 20% of income households,” Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for researcher Cox Automotive, told Bloomberg. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 17:40

  • US Slams Hardline Israeli Ministers For Plan To Expel Palestinians From Gaza
    US Slams Hardline Israeli Ministers For Plan To Expel Palestinians From Gaza

    The Biden administration continues to clash with Israel over Gaza war policy, especially the question of the “day after” Hamas and how the Gaza Strip will be administrated. The White House has sought to advance a plan that would see the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmoud Abbas eventually take control of the Strip. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been adamant in rejecting this, decrying the PA as terror sympathizers and supporters.

    Washington on Tuesday condemned remarks by two top Israeli ministers who expressed a policy of fostering the migration of Palestinians from the Strip. Hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir both said Monday they not only want “encourage the migration” of Palestinians from Gaza but they want to begin establishing Jewish settlements in place of Palestinian homes.

    Ben Gvir, via Reuters

    In October, a UN expert warned that Israel’s actions were tantamount to textbook ethnic cleansing, given it sets forth a systematic vision of expelling people from their homes and land based on ethnicity.

    Here’s what the controversial ministers said, according to Israeli media translation:

    The war presents an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” Ben Gvir told reporters and members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, calling such a policy “a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”

    “We cannot withdraw from any territory we are in in the Gaza Strip. Not only do I not rule out Jewish settlement there, I believe it is also an important thing,” he said.

    The “correct solution” to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “to encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees,” Smotrich told members of his Religious Zionism party, predicting that “Israel will permanently control the territory of the Gaza Strip,” including through the establishment of settlements.

    Supporters of this plan have previously urged Arab countries like Egypt or Qatar to take in expelled Palestinians. Arab leaders have reacted fiercely against the statements, rejecting that it’s so much as a possibility that can be broached.

    Importantly, the US State Department issued the following swift rebuke on the same day the statements were made by the Israeli officials: “The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said at a briefing.

    Miller also noted this is not the official policy of the Netanyahu government, saying the Biden administration has been informed “repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.”

    But it remains that Netanyahu has been on record as seeking to convince Arab countries to “absorb” Palestinians, a policy he repeated only last week at a Likud party meeting.

    Following the State Department’s rebuke, Ben Gvir didn’t back down but actually hit back, saying “We highly value America’s friendship, but respectfully, we aren’t another star on the American flag.” He added: “We’ll do what’s best for Israel: facilitating the relocation of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow those in the Israeli-Gaza border communities to return home and live securely while safeguarding the IDF soldiers.”

    Still, the US has refused to impose ‘conditions’ on Israel’s use of American-supplied weaponry, and has done nothing to slow the flow of defense aid, which Israeli forces have been using on Gaza in the fight against Hamas.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/03/2024 – 17:20

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Jan 03

Today’s News 3rd January 2024

  • 2024: The Year Global Government Takes Shape
    2024: The Year Global Government Takes Shape

    Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

    Global government is the endgame. We know that.

    Total control of every aspect of life for every single person on the planet, that’s the goal.

    That’s been apparent to anyone paying attention for years, if not decades, and any tiny portion of remaining doubt was removed when Covid was rolled-out and members of the establishment started outright saying it.

    Covid marked an acceleration of the globalist agenda, a mad dash to the finish line that seems to have lost momentum short of victory, but the race is still going. The goal has not changed, even if the years since may have seen the agenda retreat slightly back into the shadows.

    We know what they want conceptually, but what does that mean practically?

    What does a potential “global government” actually look like?

    First off, let’s talk about what we’re NOT going to see.

    1 – They are not going to declare themselves. No, there will almost certainly never be an official “world government”, at least not for a long time yet. That’s a lesson they learned from Covid — putting a name and a face on globalism only foments collective resistance to it.

    2 – They’re not going to abolish nationhood. You can be sure Klaus Schwab (or whoever) isn’t ever going to appear simulcast on every television in the world announcing that we’re all citizens of ze vurld now and that nation states no longer exist.

    In part because that is likely to focus resistance (see point 1), but mainly because tribalism and nationalism are just too useful to all would-be manipulators of public opinion. And, of course the continuing existence of nation states in no way precludes the existence of a supra-national control system, any more than the existence of Rhode Island, Florida or Texas precludes the existence of the Federal government.

    3 – There will never be an overt declaration of a change of system. We will not be told we are united under a new model, instead the illusion of regionality & superficial variance will camouflage a lack of real choice across the political landscape. A thin polysystemic skin stretched tight over a monosystemic skeleton.

    Capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy, tyranny, monarchy…these words will steadily dilute in meaning, even more than they have already, but they will never be abandoned.

    What globalism will bring us – I suggest – is a collection of nation-states largely in name only, operating superficially different systems of government all built on the same underpinning assumptions and all answering to an unelected and undeclared higher authority.

    …and if that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s essentially what we have already.

    The only major aspects missing are the mechanisms by which this rough model can be transformed into a flowing network, where all corners are eroded and all genuine sovereign powers become entirely vestigial.

    That’s where the three main pillars of global rule come in:

    1. Digital Money

    2. Digital ID

    3. “Climate Action”

    Let’s take a look at each one in turn.

    1. DIGITAL MONEY

    Over 90% of the nations of the world are currently in the process of introducing a new digital currency issued by their central bank. OffG – and others – have been covering the push for a Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) for years now, to the point where we don’t need to rehash old talking points here.

    Simply put, entirely digital money enables total surveillance of every transaction. If the currency is programmable, it would also allow control of every transaction.

    You can read our extensive back-catalogue on CBDCs for more detail.

    Clearly CBDCs are a potentially dystopian nightmare which will infringe the rights of anyone forced to use them….but how are they a building block of global government?

    The answer to that is “interoperability”.

    While the world’s national CBDCs will notionally be separate from one another, the majority are being coded to recognize and interact with each other. They are almost all being developed along guidelines produced by the Bank of International Settlements and other globalist financial institutions, and they are all being programed by the same handful of tech giants.

    A June 2023 report for the World Economic Forum noted the importance of “Central Bank Digital Currency Global Interoperability Principles” and concluded:

    It is crucial for central banks to prioritize interoperability considerations early in the design process by adhering to a set of guiding principles. To facilitate global coordination and ensure harmonious implementation of CBDCs, the development of a comprehensive set of principles and standards becomes imperative. Drawing upon previous research and collaborative efforts, this set of principles can serve as a robust foundation, guiding central banks to proactively consider interoperability from the outset of their CBDC initiatives. By adopting these principles, central banks can work towards creating a cohesive and interconnected CBDC ecosystem.

    Commenting on the report, the World Economic Forum website noted [emphasis added]:

    To ensure successful implementation and promote interoperability, global coordination becomes paramount […] adhering to interoperability principles, CBDCs can advance harmoniously, leading to efficient and interconnected digital payment systems.

    It doesn’t take a genius to decode “global coordination”, “cohesive ecosystem”, “harmonious advancement” and “interconnected payment systems”.

    There is no practical difference between 195 “interoperable” and interconnected digital currencies, and one single global currency.

    In fact “interoperability” is the watchword for all globalist power structures moving forward. Which leads us neatly onto…

    2. DIGITAL IDENTITY

    The global push for mandatory digital identities is even older than the digital currency agenda, dating back to the turn of the century and Tony Blair’s “national identity cards”.

    For decades it has been a “solution” posited to every “problem”.

    Terrorism? Digital identity will keep you safe.

    Illegal immigration? Digital identity will secure the border.

    Pandemic? Digital identity will keep track of who is vaccinated and who is not.

    AI? Digital identity will prove who’s human.

    Poverty? Digital identity will “promote financial inclusion”

    Clearly, just as with CBDCs, a far-reaching digital identity service is a threat to human rights. And, just as with CBDCs, if you interconnect national digital identity platforms you can build a global system.

    Again, it’s all about “interoperability”. They use the exact same language.

    The World Bank’s Identity4Development program claims:

    Interoperability is crucial for developing efficient, sustainable, and useful identity ecosystems.

    The Nordic and Baltic Ministers for Digitalization publicly called for “cross-border” operational digital IDs.

    NGOs like Open Identity Exchange(OIX) are publishing reports on “the need for data standards to enable interoperability of Digital IDs both in federations within an ID ecosystem, and across ID ecosystems.”.

    The list of national governments introducing digital IDs, “partnering” with corporate giants to do so and/or promoting “cross border interoperability” is long, and growing longer all the time.

    In October 2023 the United Nations Development Program published their “guidelines” for the design and use of digital identities.

    There is no practical difference between 195 networked digital identity platforms and one single global identity program.

    OK, so they have global currency and identity programs in place. Now they can control and monitor everyone’s movements, financial transactions, health and more. That’s surveillance and control mechanism, all handled in a distributed model designed to obfuscate the very existence of a global government.

    But what about policy?

    How does this global government hand down policy and legislation without giving away its existence?

    Climate change, that’s how.

    3. “CLIMATE ACTION”

    Climate Change has been at the forefront of the globalist agenda for years. It is the Trojan horse of the antihuman technocrat.

    As long ago as 2010, noted Climate Change “experts” were suggesting that “humans are not evolved enough” to combat climate change and that “It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

    More recently, in 2019, Bloomberg was publishing articles with headlines like “Climate Change Will Kill National Sovereignty As We Know It”, and academics are telling us:

    States will remain unable to solve global crises like climate change until they let go of their sovereignty

    For years climate change has been sold as the reason we might be “forced” to abandon democracy or sovereignty.

    Alongside this, there is a prolonged propaganda narrative dedicated to changing “climate change” from an environmental issue into an everything issue.

    At this point all national governments agree “climate change” is an urgent problem requiring global cooperation to solve. They host massive summits at which they sign international agreements, binding nation states to certain policies, for the sake of the planet.

    Having established that model, they are now widening the “climate change” purview. Changing “climate change” into the answer to every question:

    Obviously, “climate change” was always going to impact energy and transport.

    Following Covid, “climate change” has already been re-branded a “health crisis”.

    Now we’re being told “climate change” is generating a food crisis.

    We’re being told that international trade needs to be climate conscious.

    We’re being told by the World Bank that education reform will help the fight against climate change.

    We’re being told by the IMF that every country in the world should tax carbon and, in a recent cross-over episode, that CBDCs can be good for the environment.

    See how it works?

    Agriculture & food, public health, energy & transport, trade, fiscal & taxation policy, even education. Almost every area of government is now potentially covered by the “climate change” umbrella.

    They no longer need a one-world government, they just need a single panel of “impartial international climate change experts” working to save the planet.

    Through the lens of “climate change”, these experts would be empowered to dictate – sorry, recommend – government policy in almost every area of life to every nation on the planet.

    Do you see it yet?

    This is global government in the modern world, not centralised but distributed. Cloud computing. A supranational corporate-technocrat hivemind. With no official existence or authority, and therefore no accountability, and funneling all their policy decisions through one filter – climate change.

    There won’t be a single global currency, there will be dozens and dozens of “interoperable” digital currencies creating an “harmonious payment ecosystem”.

    There won’t be a single global digital identity service, there will be a series of “interconnected identity networks” engaging in the “free flow of data to promote security”.

    There won’t be a global government, there will be international panels of “impartial experts”, appointed by the UN who make “policy recommendations”.

    Most or all of the countries of the world will follow most or all of the recommendations, but anyone who calls these panels global governments will be forwarded fact-checks from Snopes or Politifact  highlighting that “UN expert panels do NOT constitute a global government because they have no legislative power”.

    This, I suggest, is how  global government will take shape in 2024 and beyond.

    Compartmentalized, utterly deniable…but very, very real.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 23:40

  • Influential Israeli Politician Urges Army Occupation Of Southern Lebanon For 50 Years
    Influential Israeli Politician Urges Army Occupation Of Southern Lebanon For 50 Years

    Israel’s influential former defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who has long been known as an outspoken hawk aligned with the hardline political opposition, is calling for the Israeli army to occupy southern Lebanon with a goal toward creating a permanent security buffer zone.

    Lieberman is the founder and chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing secular nationalist party which is most influential among Israel’s million-plus Russian-speaking immigrant community. Lieberman said in the fresh, controversial comments that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) must “close off” a broad swath of southern Lebanon in order to force Hezbollah to relocate north of the Litani river.

    Avigdor Lieberman, via EFE

    He said this must be done even if it means the IDF must occupy Lebanon for 50 years. Hezbollah must “pay in territory” he said, referencing the now daily rocket and drone attacks on northern Israeli communities which forced some 80,000 residents to flee their homes.

    “It can’t be that there are entire towns where close to half of the buildings were simply destroyed,” he said during Yisrael Beytenu party’s weekly meeting.

    “We will not annex anything, and we will not build settlements, but we will release the territory only when there is a government in Beirut that knows how to exercise its sovereignty.”

    “Everything between the Litani and Israel must be under the control of the IDF,” he emphasized. “If Lebanon won’t pay in territory we haven’t done anything.”

    Israeli media then cited his words further as follows:

    [This buffer zone] could be there “until a government is established in Beirut that is able to exercise its sovereignty over the entire territory” which could take up to 50 years.

    But if Israeli forces were to initiate such a plan, it would surely open up a full war with Iran-backed Hezbollah, which in the 2006 Lebanese war was proved a formidable guerilla force against the IDF. 

    On Tuesday, Israel conducted a strike against a Hamas office in a Beirut suburb, killing Hamas’s deputy leader abroad Saleh al-Arouri, which marks a major escalation. This has sparked new fears of Hezbollah heightening its attacks, also with the possibility of deepened Iranian involvement against Israel. The Houthis in Yemen, which have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, also warn this act “won’t go unpunished”. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 23:20

  • When Killing The Enemy Wasn't Enough
    When Killing The Enemy Wasn’t Enough

    Authored by John J. Waters via RealClear Wire,

    I wrote earlier this month about the “final class” of Marine Corps Scout Snipers. The Marine Corps is in process of discontinuing its infantry Scout Sniper platoons in favor of something called “scout platoons.” Undoubtedly, many meetings and opinions went into the final decision, including consideration of an incident that occurred in Afghanistan in 2011, when a few Scout Snipers from Third Battalion, Second Marines (3/2) were videotaped urinating on Taliban corpses in Helmand Province. The Marines identified in that video were swiftly condemned, punished and made outcasts by the press, politicians and senior military officers. Among the foot soldiers, however, those same Marines were highly regarded for courage demonstrated on many, many combat missions. I pick up my conversation about the Iliad with classicist Emily Wilson on this particular episode from the War on Terror. You can find part one of our conversation here.

    After the video became public, one of the Marines who participated was questioned about why he did it. “[Because] killing these assholes was not enough,” he said. Can you situate this story of the 3/2 Scout Snipers into an ancient context?

    There is a focus on honoring the dead. It’s a clear line that is constantly crossed even in the first lines of the poem, when we find that, after their death, men become food for dogs and birds, and are eaten off the battlefield. Later, Hector begs Achilles that if he is killed, Hector’s body will at least be returned to his parents, but Achilles says “no,” that Hector is an idiot to think he will return the body. Achilles wants only to punish Hector more and more and even more. I can see how you can be in that mindset, how you want not to treat the enemy as human and not allow for these rituals or humane treatments across boundaries. What happens at the end of The Iliad, when Priam crosses over to the camp of Achilles and both men grieve, is that we recognize we need the common rituals, that we all lose something in war.

    Those Scout Snipers believed they had killed Taliban fighters who laid IEDs against their brothers. They sought vengeance, in other words. Once, in the months and years after 9/11, we all had sought vengeance. A combat veteran who won the Medal of Honor told me “Nothing flips a man’s dial back to ready like telling him, ‘This one took our boy.’” Why do we need vengeance?

    Vengeance, in a way, is proof that people love each other. People love each other so much that they become so close, like second selves, and when your person dies, it’s understandable to want payback for that terrible loss. We see that kind of intimate love most obviously between Achilles and Patroclus. They’ve been fighting together for almost 10 years. Achilles refuses to fight, when his honor is violated by Agamemnon, but all that changes when Hector takes Achilles’ boy, so to speak. That flips his switch. Achilles mutates and no longer cares about his grievance against Agamemnon; he cares only about obliterating Hector and obliterating the whole city because he has infinite rage and grief.  The most special person in the world has been killed.

    Michael Monsoor was killed in Ramadi in 2006. He was given the Medal of Honor for sacrificing himself when he smothered a grenade and saved the lives of his teammates. His father wanted only the truth about his death. He wanted to know the facts. Many parents want to know if we killed the one who did it to their boy. Michael’s father only wanted to know the truth. Can you reconcile those interests? 

    That’s such a difficult story. I don’t know exactly where to go in The Iliad. It’s making me think about particular characters who want to be the subject of song, the subject of a song by a person who sings about glory and heroics. Is The Iliad focused on telling everything that happened or just the heroic things that happened? Clearly, it’s not a literal telling. And yet it is focused on telling you more than just Achilles was great and this is why he was great.

    When Hector is dead, we have three different laments. One comes from his mother, Hecuba. She wants that version of him that many people want, which is how glorious Hector had been. She wants people to tell her the story about how her son never flinched in combat, even though the reader of the poem knows that’s not true and in fact, he ran from Achilles. Her grief inspires her need to idealize her son in death. Hector’s wife, Andromache, thinks of his courage but also his rashness, how his decision to leave the city has caused her son to be killed. She sees his sacrifice as debatable. Finally, there is Helen. She gives a narrative about how Hector was a kind man when nobody else was kind to her. The poem gives us all these alternative ways of grieving and remembering.

    I have read Homer’s poems at different points in my life, and my reading has raised a personal question that I explore in a novel called River City One. The question is whether a soldier ever comes home from war. What do you think?

    Yes, whether the nostos (home-coming journey) is ever fully complete. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey show soldiers coming home from war. Odysseus comes home geographically but is he home just because he is in that same physical space? No — that happens halfway through the poem and the story isn’t over. Is he home once he reestablishes relationships with Telemachus and Penelope? Many people including in antiquity thought the story should end right there in Book 23, after he kills the suitors and makes love to his wife – but the poem continues, and the story actually ends when Odysseus keeps slaughtering people before he is stopped by Athena. So, has he really come home? The poem seems to show that he has several selves and several homes to come back to – and one of them, paradoxically, is the battlefield, and the warrior self that he might seem to have left behind. In The Iliad, Hector feels compelled to leave home. Family members are repeatedly begging him not to leave the city, but he leaves and comes home only when he’s dead, to be wept over by the women. We know Achilles will never go home geographically; he knows he’ll die if he stays to fight at Troy, so once he rejoins the battle, we know that’s a choice not to go home again. One can say there is a kind of homecoming in the moment he has with Priam at the end of the poem, such that there is a moment to mourn and eat and not perform in his role as killer and avenger. Is that a kind of temporary “home”?   I don’t know. Both of the Homeric poems wrestle with the question, whether warriors ever go home again. The answer is uncertain.

    John J. Waters is the author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster), and a former deputy assistant secretary of homeland security.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 23:00

  • US Debt Hits A Record $34.001 Trillion
    US Debt Hits A Record $34.001 Trillion

    The US Treasury has a morbid habit of revealing big, round numbers of debt around major calendar milestones, and the new 2024 year was no different because according to the latest Treasury Daily Statement published after the close today and reflecting the US Treasury’s financial statements as of Dec 29, 2023, total US debt as of the end of the year was – drumroll – just over $34 trillion for the first time ever, or $34,001,493,655,565.48 to be precise.

    Since this is a topic we have covered more or less daily for our 15 year existence, we don’t need to say much suffice to show a chart of total US debt since zerohedge launched in Jan 2009, when total US debt was only $10.6 trillion. We sure have gone a long way since then.

    Some context: US debt increased by…

    • $1 trillion in the past 3 months
    • $2 trillion in the past 6 months
    • $4 trillion in the past 2 years
    • $11 trillion in the past 4 years

    … and so on. You get the exponential picture. At this point everyone knows how this ends – certainly the CBO does…

    … but since there is no way to reverse the catastrophic outcome, there is no point in even talking about it. At best, one may only prepare for the inevitable hyperinflationary outcome, which would be good news to what is now over $1 trillion in interest expense: after all, someone has to devalue the currency all that interest is payable in.

    And since there is no longer a way out, we may as well joke about it so consider this: in the third quarter when US GDP supposedly grew at a 4.9% annualized rate – hardly the stuff of recessions – rising $547 billion in nominal (not real) dollars, the US budget deficit increased by a whopping $622 billion.

    This not only explains where US “growth” has come from, but begs the question just how much debt will be needed when the US falls into an official recession.

    Or actually not, because at this point the best anyone can do is polish the brass on the titanic while waiting for the inevitable, captures so vividly by the following endgame chart.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 22:32

  • How Can The U.S. Political Class Build Trust With Young Americans?
    How Can The U.S. Political Class Build Trust With Young Americans?

    Submitted by James Durso, a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.

    The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute recently released the results of the 2023 Reagan National Defense Survey.

    The survey found that Americans support increased spending for a strong national defense, engagement with the world, and strong support for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.

    However, in may key areas, the preferences of young Americans (under 30 years old AKA Gen Z) diverged from those of older Americans, and these differences were highlighted by the Hamas attack on Israel.

    Overall, Americans support increased military spending by 77%, but support for an engaged foreign policy is at 42%, down from 51% in 2019. (Americans under 30 want the U.S. to be more engaged and “take the lead” at 29%.) There is consistent, stable support for maintaining bases overseas at 66%, but declining confidence U.S. would win against a nuclear power at 44% (65% in 2018.)

    China seen as greatest nation-state threat to U.S. at 51%, up from 21% in 2018, and there is strong majority strong majority support for security assistance (weapons sales) to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan at 71%. 51% would encourage a family member to join the military, falling to 44% for the under 30s.

    The military remains America’s most trusted institution in that 46% express a “great deal of confidence,” but that falls to 30% for those under 30. The survey points out that is down from 70% in 2018 and has been holding steady in the high 40s for the last three years, that is, “under water.”

    Perhaps reflecting this, “about one-in-ten Americans under the age of 30 are extremely or very willing to serve in the U.S. military.” This aligns with the Pentagon’s surveys that found, among youth aged 16 to 21, about 10% are interested in military service.

    The Pentagon found the top reasons for lack of interest in enlisting are “Possibility of physical injury/death” and “Possibility of PTSD or other emotional/psychological issues.”

    These have been issues in every war ever, but young Americans may be sensitive to them now because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were failures, and the attention given to “wounded warrior” organizations that highlight the life-changing injuries suffered by fighting men and women, which may discourage enlistments.

    Is it worth losing your legs just to get the GI Bill especially when there is a lot of scholarship money out there?

    And half of those polled would encourage a friend/family member to join the military 51%, falling to 44% for those under 30.

    Youth indifference to military service may present the Pentagon with a future dilemma: If it gets all the money it wants for ships, aircraft, and armored vehicles, who will maintain and operate them?

    And it’s not a hypothetical that may happen tomorrow.

    Over the course of 2023, the Navy reduced the crew size of the newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), by 500 to 600 sailors who have not been replaced, even though the ship is currently deplored to the Mediterranean and close to the action in Gaza.

    Taken to an extreme, a shortage of people may affect the country’s military options and, in a crisis, the Pentagon may advise the president to adopt a high-risk strategy early as the country cannot afford an extended conflict unless it institutes conscription, which is unlikely unless the Congress declares war.

    Letter to America

    In November 2023, TikTokers discovered Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” which was al-Qaeda’s justification for attacking America on 11 September 2001.

    A video about the letter was apparently first shared on TikTok and it got about 800,000 views and over 80,000 likes. Some other TikTokers also posted about the letter with similar results. Soon the hashtag #lettertoamerica was born, but it only took off when journalist Yashar Ali tweeted about it and it soon secured 14 million views, though some were critical of the posting.

    Among the reactions to the letter were, “everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie,” “I will never look at life the same. I will never look at this country the same,” “Osama bin Laden’s letter is not as crazy and threatening as I expected, is well written, and makes some objectively true points,” and “Osama bin Laden was good. Even better than us.”

    After young Americans on TikTok expressed sympathy for Osama bin Laden, the White House had to remind everyone that Osama bin Laden was a bad, bad man.

    How could young Americans ever think “maybe this bin Laden guy has something to say!” after he murdered almost 3,000 of their countrymen? Why not trust government figures or establishment journalism on what bin Laden was?

    Well, because the establishment hasn’t given them any reason to be trusted. The government and its media acolytes promoted the 2003 invasion of on Iraq which was based on lies: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was cooperating with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist group.

    Then there’s Afghanistan. According to the Afghanistan Papers exposé senior American officials knew the U.S.-led NATO campaign was failing, but they kept it going for almost 20 years until the Taliban victoriously entered Kabul on 15 August 2021.

    In 2011, the U.S. led the attack on Libya and destroyed the functioning government that was cooperating with Washington, and kicked off a migrant wave that upended politics in Europe. U.S. troops are still in Syria because mumble-mumble terrorism, though the Islamic State was defeated in 2018. Then it was All Aboard! to fight the Russians in Ukraine, but then the U.S. political class and media dropped Ukraine when Israel was attacked by Hamas.

    Young Americans are likely realizing that their country is led by unserious people who lie to them as a matter of course.

    Hamas and Israel

    After the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, a Quinnipiac University poll found that American voters sympathizing with the Palestinians increased from 13 percent to 24 percent.

    According to Quinnipiac, “The shift is largely driven by respondents under 35 years old, who overwhelmingly said they disapprove of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack (66 percent), have greater sympathy for Palestinians in the conflict than Israelis (52 percent) and believe the U.S. is too supportive of Israel (50 percent).”

    According to a CNN poll, when asked whether Israel’s response to the Hamas attack was fully justified, only 27 percent of Americans aged 18-34 agreed, as opposed to 81 percent of Americans over age 65.

    A recent Harvard/Harris poll found most Americans believe Israel “is trying to avoid civilian casualties” but also “the vast majority of young American adults believe Jews are oppressors, that the 10/7 attack is justified by Jews’ prior actions.” The poll also found 78% of Americans aged 18-34 believe Israel has a right to exist.

    A December Quinnipiac University poll found “voters 18 – 34 years old (72 – 21 percent) and voters 35 – 49 years old (53 – 38 percent) oppose [sending more military aid to Israel],” though all voters polled were more evenly split with 45 percent supporting and 46 percent opposing military aid.

    And a new Economist/YouGov survey found that 1 in 5 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 believe the Holocaust is a “myth.” The results led to a lot of excited commentary and a suggestion that the feds provide funding for Holocaust education.

    A more likely explanation, according to Ilya Somin, is young Americans’ ignorance of history, and “ambiguities in the survey question.” Somin says, “…most surveys of political and historical knowledge find that it is inversely correlated with age; that is, younger people tend to know less than older ones.”

    Also, Israel can no longer “control to a significant degree the flow of information and the moral framing of its wars” due to what is known as “networked tribalism” which “bypasses traditional media by directly delivering information and moral framing to people using social networks” and has emerged to wage moral warfare in opposition to Israel.

    An example is the 31 billion #freepalestine posts on TikTok, or the mobile phone-ready video of Hamas fighters on the Telegram app, in contrast to the official spokesman if the Israeli Defense Forces standing at a podium briefing reports from legacy media.

    The poll results may also be colored by the tendency for youth to reflexively oppose anything their elders insist on, but many of them sincerely support the Palestinians. After all, Israel has nuclear weapons, the most modern military in the region, and carte blanche from Washington so, many students will ask, who is the real underdog here?

    The Brookings Institution recently reported, “Even before the Hamas invasion, there were distinct generational differences in Americans’ attitudes towards Israel,” and, “…only 41% of those aged 18-29 had a favorable view of Israel, compared to 69% of those aged 65 or older,” so  U.S. Middle East policy may change as they ascend to positions of power, which should be an incentive to Israel to make an equitable deal with the Palestinians before its patron starts leaning in the other direction.

    Another metric on youth sentiment may be seen on TikTok where #freepalestine has 31 billion posts compared to 590 million for #standwithisrael, which lead The New Arab to claim, “Palestinian solidarity won the internet.” The U.S. has the most TikTok users – 116.5 million – so the overall number may reflect young Americans’ thinking.

    The Causes

    The Reagan Foundation says many Americans favor a forward-leaning national security posture, but young Americans appear less interested in that idea.

    The military, key to those visions of “American leadership,” is not an attractive option when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reporting a labor shortage, and UPS drivers recently secured a $170,000 in pay and benefits package. And why risk life and limb for college tuition money when much scholarship money goes begging? In fact, UPS will pay your college tuition and you won’t have to get shot at to earn it.

    The Hamas attack on Israel has created a febrile atmosphere where you are with Israel or you are a Hamas apologist. Young Americans may be less seized with Jerusalem’s problems due to their immediate economic concerns and a lack of confidence in the country’s leaders who lied about Iraq and Afghanistan with no consequences.

    But it’s not just the liars in Washington, D.C. who made a hash of things. Parents and teachers must shoulder some of the blame for the lack of critical thinking skills in many young Americans.

    American students have been in the care of “anti-imperialist” educators with less interest in civic education than in the “anti-racist” 1619 Project and  “decolonizing the curriculum” instead of teaching the three Rs.

    The result: American students are falling behind the rest of the world and their test scores lag the global average. It is no surprise that a bad education would combine with a lack of trust in institutions to make some young Americans interested in reading with interest the words of Osama bin laden – the greatest mass murderer in American history.

    And knowing they were lied to may explain the failure of the military to attract enough qualified recruits, which is part of a long-term trend of “historically low faith in U.S. institutions” reported by Gallup. Who wants to be the cannon fodder in the next war fought for nebulous “American interests” when you can be sure no one named Bush or Obama will be in that foxhole with you?

    Gen Z members suffer from high levels of depression and anxiety and are most likely to report their mental health as being poor. Young Americans are waiting longer to get married, and women aged 25 to 34 are increasingly likely to die in the late 20s to early 30s than at any time since the 1940s. They believe the world is more dangerous than at any point in modern history. Poor mental health, a bad education, a lack of trust in institutions, and the sense their economic prospects are limited and the American Dream is out of reach, are what’s needed to create a population that will withdraw from civic life, further weakening the country.

    In other words, the kids aren’t alright, and the country’s leaders must decide how to put them right if they want to rebuild trust.

    You could blame a lack of civic education in America, but young Americans are rightly dubious when they see retired military officers on TV demanding the U.S. be all-in defending a wealthy country with the most advanced military in the Middle East, if for no other reason that it disqualifies Washington as a future mediator of a Middle East peace agreement, and will probably isolate the U.S. and make it unable to summon a coalition when one is needed to defend U.S. interests.

    With the attack on Gaza is still in process, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant is promoting what may turn into another overseas (mis)adventure for the U.S. (and France) – peacekeeping duty separating the Israelis and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. The usual cable TV “military analysts” will probably be all for this, claiming America’s “credibility” is at stake, but forgetting what happened the last time U.S. and French troops were in close proximity to a Lebanese militia sponsored by Iran.

    The Challenging Way Ahead

    So, how can the U.S. political class build trust with young Americans?

    It will take longer than one election cycle, and will tax Washington’s discipline as it will have to execute consistently over the long term, and display the focus and application usually only found in modernizing authoritarian governments. But the priority should be to put the country’s financial house in order which benefits all Americans young and old.

    America is about $34 Trillion in debt, over $100,000 per citizen; its bond rating was recently cut to AA+; borrowing costs are climbing and debt service will soon be bigger than the Defense Department budget by 2024, and interest payments on the debt are currently on “track to nearly double between 2020 and 2023 and projected to double again by 2032,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes, partly because the U.S. government now has to roll over money it borrowed for cheap at much higher rates.

    Washington should be less casual about committing troops abroad, because isn’t 750 bases in 80 countries enough?

    And Congress must insist on carrying out its constitutional responsibility to declare war, rather than proffering an Authorization for Use of Military Force fig leaf, which relieves it of responsibility but allows the president to set the terms and duration of a conflict.

    America should reconsider what it means to be “engaged” – warfare and sanctions, or trade and diplomacy – because the military’s recruiting woes and the latest tension in the Middle East will pass, because young Americans may have a different vision and, pretty soon, they’re going to be in charge.

    James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 22:20

  • Israel Assassinates Deputy Head Of Hamas In Drone Attack On Beirut Suburb
    Israel Assassinates Deputy Head Of Hamas In Drone Attack On Beirut Suburb

    Update (1215ET): Hamas has now officially confirmed the death of high-ranking political official Saleh al-Arouri. There was previous confirmation through various sources, including in Israeli media, yet the IDF has yet to take responsibility for the attack:

    Hamas’s deputy leader abroad Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli strike in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah-linked al-Mayadeen reports.

    …Based in Lebanon, al-Arouri, 57, was deputy head of the terror group’s political bureau and considered the de facto leader of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank.

    Israeli intelligence officials believe that al-Arouri also helped plan the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens — Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel — as well as numerous other attacks.

    He had served several terms in Israeli jails, and was released in March 2010 as part of efforts to reach a larger prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit, an IDF corporal kidnapped by Hamas in 2006

    Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri

    As both the founding commander of Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and as Deputy Chairman of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Arouri is among the highest ranking Hamas figures to have ever been assassinated by Israel. Hamas has also said two other members of the Qassam Brigades were killed in the attack.

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

    An Al-Mayadeen correspondent in the southern suburbs of Beirut has said that six people in total were killed as a result of three missiles that struck the building from a low-flying Israeli drone.

    This escalatory event has sparked new fears that Iran is about to get more deeply involved, as its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah has already escalated attacks on northern Israel, and is expected to further.

    Israel is vowing more such targeted assassinations of top Hamas leadership to come…

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    * * *

    There are breaking reports via Lebanese state media and AFP saying that Israel has conducted a strike against a Hamas office in a Beirut suburb. 

    Lebanese security sources have said a senior Palestinian official was killed in an explosion in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which is also considered a Hezbollah stronghold. However, there is little that is verified at this point. According to breaking news wires:

    DEPUTY HEAD OF HAMAS POLITBURO KILLED IN BEIRUT: MAYADEEN TV

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    Washington Post Beirut correspondent Sarah Dadouch has confirmed there was a large explosion in Beirut’s Dahieh neighborhood, writing that “a Hezbollah spokesman told me a Palestinian official headquarters was targeted in Dahieh.”

    At statement in Lebanese state media further says it was an Israeli drone that targeted the Hamas office in Dahieh. Lebanese News Agency is reporting 4 dead and several wounded in the attack, as emergency personnel continue responding to the scene.

    In prior major flare-ups in fighting between Palestinians and Israel, Israel’s military has conducted such targeted operations on offices in Beirut, but this certainly will be seen as a major escalation by Hezbollah, which offers these Palestinian groups protection.

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    developing…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 22:11

  • Who Are America's Most Popular CEOs?
    Who Are America’s Most Popular CEOs?

    What do the employees at America’s largest companies think of the leadership?

    To answer that, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Pallavi Rao visualize CEO approval ratings gathered by professional social network Blind.

    The results are based on a survey of 13,171 verified professionals in the U.S., conducted between August 18th–23rd, 2023. Respondents were asked if they approve or disapprove of the way their CEO is handling their job.

    Top 10 Popular CEOs By Their Employees’ Approval Ratings

    By far, the most popular CEO right now (according to Blind’s respondents anyway) is Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, with an astonishing 96% approval rating.

    Huang’s numbers point to a theme in the data. Blind notes that there is a correlation between company stock performance and CEO approval rating. Nvidia’s critical role in the artificial intelligence hype train has sent shares up nearly 3x year-on-year. Their financials for the last three quarters show that profit is already up more than four-fold from last year.

    Crucially, Huang also avoided layoffs that were otherwise rampant in the tech industry, helping his popularity amongst the staff.

    Here are the top 10 most popular CEOs according to Blind’s poll.

    In fact, the Blind survey uncovered that all of the 10 most popular CEOs, with the exception of Andrew Anag from AutoDesk, did not cut jobs in the last year.

    The opposite is true for some of the lowest-rated CEOs.

    The Least Popular CEOs By Employee Approval Ratings

    Eric Nordstrom (Nordstrom) and David Goeckeler (Western Digital) shared the lowest approval rating possible in the poll: 0%. From Blind’s methodology section, this means not a single surveyed employee answered “strongly approve” or “somewhat approve” to the question.

    Both companies cut nearly 200 jobs in 2023, with Nordstrom also responsible for the job losses amongst the company’s wage workers, who staffed the many retail stores the company shuttered.

    Here’s the top 10 least popular CEOs according to Blind’s poll.

    Also featuring on this list of least-liked CEOs: Evan Spiegel (3%), who reduced Snap’s workforce by a fifth and Linda Yaccarino (4%), who heads X (formerly Twitter) that has been in turmoil since Elon Musk acquired the company in October, 2022.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 22:00

  • FDA Identified Problems At Moderna Plant Making Substance For COVID Vaccine: Document
    FDA Identified Problems At Moderna Plant Making Substance For COVID Vaccine: Document

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors uncovered problems at a Moderna plant used to manufacture a substance that is part of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, according to a newly released document.

    COVID-19 vaccines in a file photograph. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

    Moderna failed to meet multiple requirements, including rules aimed at minimizing the potential for contamination, according to the document.

    FDA inspectors performed inspections at the plant in Norwood, Massachusetts from, Sept. 11 to Sept. 21, visiting nine times in total.

    They found that equipment used to manufacture the substance was not cleaned properly before usage, that a mock cleaning done for manufacturing did not adequately simulate the actual process, that written alarm procedures were not followed, and that neither the equipment nor the plant were designed in a way that would make contamination less likely.

    Inspectors also learned that Moderna used materials beyond their expiration date.

    “There are more than two thousand expired items stored in your … warehouse and cold storage at time of inspection,” Unnee Ranjan, the FDA’s lead investigator, wrote in a summary of the inspections.

    The Epoch Times obtained the 6-page document, an FDA Form 483, through a Freedom of Information Act request after the FDA’s media office refused to release it.

    The FDA under federal law has the power to inspect facilities and deliver a report setting forth any item produced in a facility that seems to “consist in whole or in part of any filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance” or “has been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth, or whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health.”

    A Form 483 is a type of agency report containing “observations” that FDA inspectors “deem to be objectionable.” The observations are delivered to help companies comply with federal law and FDA regulations.

    The substance in question was used in Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, mRNA-1273, the company’s sole product available to the public, according to the form.

    Moderna released eight batches of the substance as it violated manufacturing rules, FDA inspectors said.

    It was not clear whether any of the vaccines distributed commercially contained the substance in question.

    “The FDA does not discuss compliance matters, except with the company involved,” an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

    “Upon receipt of the FDA’s findings, Moderna immediately and comprehensively updated the specific procedures identified and is confident that the actions taken will be satisfactory to regulators,” Moderna said in a statement.

    Moderna said all product released by the company was tested and meets product specifications and international regulatory requirements.

    Steven Lynn, a former head of the FDA’s Office of Manufacturing and Product Quality who is now a regulatory compliance consultant, said using the drug substance in question was a serious matter but that it was unclear whether the batches were released to consumers.

    The FDA has not issued a recall of any Moderna vaccines, according to its recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts database.

    In 2021, Japan suspended the use of 1.63 million doses of Moderna’s COVID vaccine after contaminates were found in some vials produced by Rovi, a contract manufacturer based in Spain. No manufacturing problems have previously been reported in any of Moderna’s own facilities.

    Another part of the FDA report, dated Sept. 21, described how the Norwood facility did not have adequately designed air handling systems to “assure appropriate air quality in the … cleanroom in which the mRNA drug substance is manufactured.”

    Inspectors also said they found positive air pressure was not “consistently maintained” between cleanrooms and airlocks and that monitoring data showed the cleanroom pressure turned negative between January and September. That development was “not assessed for potential impact,” they said.

    “At face value, it appears multiple controls designed to prevent contamination were deficient,” Mr. Lynn said.

    Another recently released document, produced by the nonprofit Informed Consent Action Network on orders from a federal judge, showed the FDA detected in Andover, Massachusetts, issues with the manufacture of a substance used in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Pfizer said in response it had taken actions to correct the issues.

    Reuters contributed to this report. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 21:40

  • Survivors Of Oct. 7 Music Rave Massacre Sue Israel For Negligence
    Survivors Of Oct. 7 Music Rave Massacre Sue Israel For Negligence

    Dozens of injured survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre at a music festival close to the Gaza Strip have filed a $56 million suit against the Israeli government, alleging various forms of negligence that resulted in unavoidable casualties.   

    Declaring that “the negligence and the gross oversight is beyond belief,” the 42 plaintiffs have targeted four government entities: the Israeli Defense Forces, the Shin Bet internal security service, the Defense Ministry, and Israel Police. According to the suit, 364 attendees were killed and 40 kidnapped and taken to Gaza.  

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    The IDF conducted two security assessments over the night leading into Oct. 7, sparked by unusual observations on the border with Gaza. However, no warnings were given to the organizers of the Supernova rave — despite the fact that Shin Bet had taken the threat seriously enough that it deployed to the area soldiers from its unit responsible for thwarting abductions. It’s also been reported that military units put on alert didn’t know the festival was going on. 

    “A single phone call by IDF officials to the commander responsible for the party to disperse it immediately in view of the expected danger would have saved lives and prevented the physical and mental injuries of hundreds of partygoers, including the plaintiffs,” they say in their filed complaint. 

    In a particularly grim twist of fate, the festival was originally slated to last only two days — Oct. 5 and 6. However, earlier in the week of the event, organizers requested and were granted permission to extend it to Oct. 7.  The “Gaza Division’s operations officer, Lt. Col. Sahar Fogel, opposed the extension, arguing it was a needless security risk, but was told by his superiors to approve it,” writes Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, citing Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 

    The festival was held just outside the Gaza Strip, where 2 million Palestinians have lived under an Israeli blockade since 2008 

    An expert cited by the plaintiffs said the IDF shouldn’t have approved the festival at all, given its location: “The event was held a small distance from the Strip’s border. The noise from the party was heard by Gazan residents and revelers were an easy target for the terror attack.”

    The plaintiffs also fault the police for positioning only 27 officers to secure the festival, with the great majority armed only with pistols, in an alleged failure to comply with regulations requiring long arms when deployed so close to Gaza.  

    Many of the festivalgoers’ cars were incinerated during the Hamas attack — and the IDF’s response (Lyzaville Sale/CBC)

    According to Haaretz, the permit signed by an IDF colonel said “the northern brigade is responsible for regional security during the event in the fence space across from the Gaza Strip.” However, attendees say no soldiers were positioned there. In the most damning fact of the day, the festival came under attack at around 6:30am and the IDF didn’t arrive until 3pm.   

    Some of the civilian casualties from the music festival were caused by IDF Apache helicopter fire which was directed at vehicles driving into Gaza, as well as people getting out of vehicles and walking through nearby fields.   

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 21:20

  • California Hospitals Slammed As Illegal Immigration Costs Soar
    California Hospitals Slammed As Illegal Immigration Costs Soar

    Authored by Brad Jones and John Fredricks via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Some hospitals in Southern California are struggling with an influx of illegal immigrants amid the border crisis, while American patients are enduring longer wait times for doctor appointments due to a nursing shortage in the state, according to two health care professionals.

    Illegal immigrants who passed through a gap in the U.S. border wall await processing by Border Patrol agents in Jacumba, Calif., on Dec. 7, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    A health care worker at a hospital in Southern California, who asked not to be named for fear of losing her job, told The Epoch Times that “the entire health care system is just being bombarded” by a steady stream of illegal migrants in recent years.

    Some migrants get hurt crossing the desert or injured climbing the border wall, while others are injured in accidents, especially when too many occupants are packed into one vehicle, said the health care worker.

    Severely injured illegal migrants are often rescued by helicopter and flown to trauma centers in Southern California, she said.

    “They’re falling off the wall,” she said. “They’re always flown. They’re never put in the back of an ambulance.”

    With a typical helicopter rescue costing around $30,000, without factoring in the costs of medication and medical staff at the hospitals, “who pays for that?” she asked.

    “Our health care system is so overwhelmed, and then add on top of that tuberculosis, COVID-19, and other diseases from all over the world,” she said.

    Total U.S. apprehensions of illegal and inadmissible aliens in fiscal year 2023—from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023—were 3.2 million. In fiscal year 2022, it was more than 2.7 million. Counting “known gotaways”—those who Border Patrol agents record but don’t catch—more than 8 million illegal immigrants have entered the country in less than three years under the Biden administration.

    Illegal immigrants who passed through a gap in the U.S. border wall await processing by Border Patrol agents in Jacumba, Calif., on Dec. 7, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    A Mercy Air helicopter in Imperial, Calif., on Dec. 6, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Language Barrier

    Illegal migrant patients are usually accompanied by their sponsors who advocate for them, but language barriers still pose a problem for doctors and other hospital staff, said the health care worker.

    “Not everybody can speak the languages of these patients,” she said. “That’s another burden.”

    Hospitals need to hire either translators or staff that can speak all the languages of the patients crossing the border from dozens of different countries, she said.

    “Of course, there’s nothing wrong with learning another language or having people that can accommodate their health care,” she said. “Nobody wants to see somebody in pain or hurting in need of medicine. But, at the same time, it’s at the expense of others.”

    The “others,” she said, are American patients, as well as taxpayers who are ultimately footing the bill.

    Patients often have their doctor’s appointments “pushed back,” to accommodate the medical needs of illegal migrants, the health care worker said.

    “They get in a lot quicker than our Veterans Affairs [VA] and retired military patients. They get in a lot faster, and they get the best care—probably better care than the VA patients do,” she said.

    Typically, VA patients usually wait months to be seen by a specialist while illegal migrants who just crossed the border are seen the same week, she said.

    “I’ve seen that firsthand,” she said. “We hear it from VA patients all day, every day.”

    When Border Patrol agents bring patients to the hospitals, there is an “air of secrecy” that follows them.

    “No one is allowed to talk to the media or public about why they are there or how they got there,” she said. “We keep them in this bubble of protection, which is the wrong approach. We should let the public know.”

    The government is using “patient privacy” as a shield to hide what they’re doing.

    “Patient privacy is a priority in the health care field, but when it comes to illegals, it’s branching off into elitism or a protected class,” she said.

    Illegal immigrants captured by U.S. Border Patrol agents go through a processing center near San Diego on May 31, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    ICE Detention Facility

    An experienced doctor in Southern California, who spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the influx of illegal migrants to San Diego and Imperial counties is “just outrageous” and the burden of care on hospitals is “overwhelming.”

    He also said he is concerned about the secrecy surrounding non-government organizations, or NGOs, that are being paid to provide services to illegal migrants.

    “Where’s the transparency?” he asked. “There’s been no transparency.”

    The doctor said in 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, he was involved in a planned government contract for COVID testing, but it was canceled at the last minute.

    “We started testing and treating patients and then … they kicked us out,”he said. “They said your contract has been terminated and replaced with some company that was from out of the area. So, they’re not even using local contractors … which takes away money, resources, and jobs from our community.”

    Amid a statewide shortage of primary care doctors and nurses, the doctor said three nurse practitioners he trained at his practice were recruited with better pay and benefits to work at the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) detention center in El Centro, Calif.

    “It’s a huge place, and so there are lots of resources being used at that facility. A lot of nurse practitioners are being pulled from us,” he said. “It’s really hard to get doctors out in our area, so we have a lot of nurse-practitioners that help physicians in the community because they can see patients and prescribe medications.”

    Increasingly, more patients are going to urgent care clinics because they can’t get in to see their primary care doctors, he said.

    “There is a huge shortage of primary care in Imperial County,” he said. “Appointment times are weeks to months out.”

    “Border cities are having to deal with the influx without having the resources. When you take from the resources that are currently available, you’re depriving the community of those resources,” the doctor said. “The unintended result is it backs up the system.”

    A hospital in Garden Grove, Calif., on Dec. 20. 2023. (John Fredricks/Te Epoch Times)

    Illegal immigrants pass through a gap in the U.S. border wall to await processing by Border Patrol agents in Jacumba, Calif., on Dec. 7, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Disease and Injuries

    Tuberculosis (TB) patients, for example, can tie up hospital beds for month depending on the severity of infection, the doctor said.

    “You can’t let them out, because it’s a public health issue, so they’re staying in the hospital. We had a patient stay for six months for full treatment, and the government is paying for all of it,” he said. “TB in the United States is pretty much gone except for in isolated border towns, but the rates in Imperial County are higher than I’ve ever seen anywhere, because of the influx from illegal migration.”

    According to the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Global Health delivery, California’s Imperial County has reported an incidence of 38 TB cases per 100,000 people, nearly 10 times higher than the national average in the U.S., while Mexicali, Mexico—just across the border—has an incidence of 100 cases per 100,000, one of the highest rates in North America.

    The center also indicates the number of TB cases are probably underreported, stating that “with more robust detection efforts, it’s likely that these rates would be much higher.”

    Aside from TB and measles, sexually transmitted diseases such as, gonorrhea, syphilis, measles, and AIDS are on the rise, said the doctor.

    “Very rarely do you see syphilis anymore, but cases have gone up,” he said.

    Illegal migrants also need treatment for injuries from lacerations from razor wire,” the doctor said.

    “They cut their hands and legs when they’re jumping the fence. They usually put a jacket or something over the razor wire, but sometimes it comes through,” he said.

    Because so many medical professionals and resources have been tapped to treat illegal migrants, American patients, including military veterans have been neglected, the doctor confirmed.

    “It takes forever for these VA patients to get seen at the clinic. It’s months to get appointment. There is very limited care for the veterans out here,” he said. “The VA program has been neglected as a result of having to put more money into funding for the ICE detention centers.”

    Illegal immigrants from Afghanistan who passed through a gap in the U.S. border wall await processing by Border Patrol agents in Jacumba, Calif., on Dec. 6, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Toll on Border Patrol Agents

    The doctor, who also treats Border Patrol agents, said their job-related injuries “have gone through the roof.” He’s also noticed an increase in the number agents with mental health problems related to stress and anxiety.

    Many agents say they’ve been taken out of the field to act as immigration processing clerks rather than doing what they were trained to do: patrol the border, he said.

    “They’re really frustrated. They’re not being listened to. They’re not getting the resources they need. They feel like their hands are tied. And, they’re being silenced,” he said. “They’ve become processing agents, rather than really trying to catch the bad guys—the criminals and the drugs.”

    The agents also witness the aftermath of heinous crimes, including the abuse and rape of women and girls at the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

    “A lot of the girls coming across—there’s a good percentage of them that have been abused during the trek. We’ve seen a few of them. We’re talking young girls—12 years old, 13 years old—pregnant from the journey. It’s extremely sad,” he said. “And so that takes a toll … kids coming up by themselves, unaccompanied minors. You can see the human trafficking side of all of this as well. It does happen quite frequently.”

    Suicides among agents have also increased. In 2022, 14 agents took their own lives, more than any other year since U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began tracking these deaths.

    “Working long hours and responding to high-stress situations, our men and women in green and blue are being pushed to their breaking point every single day,” said U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez in a Dec. 15 press release.

    Between 2007 and 2022, CBP lost 149 people to suicide, which is “among the highest rates compared to other law enforcement agencies.”

    Illegal immigrants who passed through a gap in the U.S. border wall await processing by Border Patrol agents in Jacumba, Calif., on Dec. 7, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Costs of Illegal Immigration

    According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a nonprofit organization that pushes for changes in immigration policy, the cost of health care for illegal immigrants in California through Medi-Cal was approximately $4.8 billion per year in 2022.

    FAIR estimated the total federal medical costs for illegal immigration at more than $23.1 billion in 2022 and pegged the costs to cover unpaid hospital bills for uninsured illegal migrants at about $8.2 billion.

    The total cost of illegal immigration in California was around $22.8 billion annually for education, health care, law enforcement, criminal justice system costs, welfare, and other expenditures. By comparison, the annual cost of illegal immigration in Texas in 2022 was $9.9 billion. In California, the taxpayer cost per immigrant in 2023 was $7,074 compared to Texas at $4,466.

    The FAIR study estimates the gross cost of illegal immigration in the United States is $183 billion annually, up more than 35.7 percent since 2017. The cost incurred for each illegal migrant, including their U.S.-born children, has increased to $8,776 annually.

    FAIR says its report covers “the full fiscal impact of illegal immigration,” and “includes the contributions of illegal aliens to the economy.”

    “These include tax payments made directly to state and local jurisdictions, the federal government, as well as excise, property, and sales taxes. However, these receipts fall far short of covering the expenses incurred due to illegal immigration. Taxes paid by illegal immigrants only covered around 17.2 percent of the costs they created for American citizens,” the report states.

    When the taxes paid by illegal aliens are factored in, the net cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is $150.7 billion, according to FAIR.

    As of June 2023, FAIR estimates about 16.8 million illegal migrants live in the U.S., an increase of 1.3 million since January 2022 and a 2.3 million increase since the end of 2020, indicating the illegal migrant population increased 16 percent nationwide in the first two-and-a-half years of the Biden administration.

    “Illegal immigration’s annual net burden on the economy, now more than $150 billion, is greater than the annual GDP output of 15 U.S. states,” according to FAIR.

    Ira Mehlman, a FAIR spokesman, told the Epoch Times that on top of the staggering costs of illegal immigration—with 12,600 illegal migrants crossing the border on Dec. 19 alone, the highest on record for a single day—the Biden administration is “playing Russian roulette with the safety and security of the American public.”

    “They’re simply ignoring laws. The law explicitly says that if you were in the country illegally, you are subject to deportation, and Mayorkas has said no, just being in the country, in and of itself, is not sufficient to remove somebody,” he said. “We all expect that there will be some incompetence in government and maybe even neglect, but now what we’re seeing is overt sabotage of our immigration laws by people who were sworn to uphold those laws.”

    At a press conference on Dec. 21, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre downplayed the border crisis, telling reporters the record number of illegal migrants at the southern border isn’t unusual.

    “What we’re seeing here at the border, the migration flow, increased migration flows, certainly, it ebbs and flows,“ she said. “And we’re at a time of the year where we’re seeing more at the border, and it’s not unusual. This is an immigration system that has been broken for decades, and the president has taken this very seriously to try to do more.”

    Federal agents place fencing to help curb migration surges on the US border in Tijuana, Mex., on May 11, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    A Veteran’s View

    Robert Hammond, a cancer patient and former Marine in Santa Ana, Calif., who retired early from his job as a school teacher because of his health, told The Epoch Times he was exposed to toxic chemicals in the water when he was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

    Mr. Hammond said he has seen doctor appointments for veterans, including his own, pushed back for months because of the border crisis.

    He said he questions the Biden administration’s sense of priorities when it “coddles people who break our laws to come here, and gives them money, food, housing, clothing, [and] free medical,” but then “turns its back” on not only veterans but all American citizens.

    “The people who are responsible for this are more interested in seeing us veterans die. That’s how I feel. They don’t want us because they know we won’t vote for them.” he said. “But, the people who are coming in illegally, well, there’s a good chance that they’ll vote for them. We are disposable.”

    The money spent on illegal migrants should be used for better health care and cancer research to improve the quality of life of American citizens, he said.

    Mr. Hammond said he’s also concerned about national security, considering the surge in suspected terrorists who have entered the country illegally during the border crisis.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 21:00

  • NYC & SF Dominate The US Cities With The Heaviest CRE Office Debt-Loads
    NYC & SF Dominate The US Cities With The Heaviest CRE Office Debt-Loads

    With a combination of high interest rates and a slow return to office towers, the commercial real estate sector faces further declines as the new year begins. One of the most significant challenges facing office tower owners will be either repaying the full value of the loan or finding an institution, such as a regional bank, willing to offer refinancing. 

    According to a new report by the Financial Times, which references data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, $117 billion in CRE office debt needs to be repaid or refinanced this year. Much of this debt is concentrated in major cities such as Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

    “It’s going to be a very difficult environment to be getting loans from the institutions that typically give these loans. That’s the bottom line, “Andrew Metrick, the Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management and director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability, recently said at the Alumni Real Estate Association Conference. 

    The challenging environment can be attributed to several factors, including regional bank stress due to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic, and Signature Bank, among others, in the first half of 2023. The situation worsens for building owners because regional and community banks make up most of the CRE lending space. Additionally, the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest rate hiking cycle in decades has significantly increased the cost of borrowing.

    Moody’s Analytics estimates about 605 office towers with mortgages will need financing this year. Of that, about 224 will have trouble refinancing – either because the property values have plunged and there is too much debt or perhaps a high vacancy rate. 

    Meanwhile, stress is emerging as new Trepp data shows delinquencies on office loans financed by commercial mortgaged-backed securities topped 6% at the end of November, up from 1.7% a year earlier. 

    Even with the low default rates, the potential losses on these loans are in the billions of dollars. A recent study by a group of US economists found that 40% of office loans on bank balance sheets were valued less than the loan amount, posing a risk for regional banks. 

    “People should realize that regional banks are still very much exposed to the troubles in commercial real estate,” said Leo Huang, head of commercial real estate at Ellington Management.

    Over the next three to four years, about two-thirds of the CRE space will require refinancing. With property values plunging and significantly higher interest rates, default rates will likely continue surging, causing even more trouble for exposed regional banks. 

    CRE office turmoil is far from over. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 20:40

  • Just 3.4 Percent Of American Journalists Identify As Republican: Survey
    Just 3.4 Percent Of American Journalists Identify As Republican: Survey

    Authored by Aaron Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who identify as Republicans has dropped significantly over the last decade, while journalists who said they are Democrats and Independents have increased, a study finds.

    Copies of the new SF Evergreen, the San Francisco Bay Area’s first marijuana-themed monthly newspaper, roll through the press at the San Francisco Newspaper Printing Company in San Francisco, California, on Jan. 22, 2015. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    According to a survey by Syracuse University titled “The American Journalist Under Attack,” only 3.4 percent of journalists in 2022 identified as Republicans, compared with 36.4 percent of Democrats and 51.7 percent of Independents in the profession.

    At the time the survey was concluded in April last year, 28 percent of Americans considered themselves Republicans, 28 percent identified themselves as Democrats, and 42 percent viewed themselves as Independents, according to a Gallup poll.

    The survey found that the percentage of Republicans in the journalism industry has declined substantially over the decades.

    In its first survey in 1971, 25.7 percent of journalists said they were Republicans. In 1982, the number dropped to 18.8 percent and further declined to 16.4 percent in 1992. It showed a slight increase in 2002 with 18 percent but plummeted to 7.1 percent in 2013 and to 3.4 percent last year.

    The trend for journalists identifying as Democrats has remained relatively steady at around 35 percent over the decades. Last year’s figure of 36.4 percent marked the third-highest percentage of journalists identifying as Democrat since 1971, the survey noted.

    Notably, the survey showed that 60.1 percent of journalists said journalism in the United States was headed in the wrong direction. In comparison, only 22 percent said it was going in the right direction.

    “When asked about the ’most important problem facing journalism today,’ the journalists mentioned these issues most often: Declining public trust in the news media (20.8 percent); shrinking local and community news coverage (12.8 percent); perceived bias and opinion journalism (12.7 percent); fake news (9.9 percent); disrupted business model (9.3 percent).”

    The survey is conducted nearly every decade and covers many topics in the journalism industry, ranging from using social media in their daily work to job satisfaction, journalists’ age, women in the journalism workplace, comparative pay between genders, and educational levels, among others.

    The study was based on an online survey of 1,600 U.S. journalists in various media organizations and conducted from January to April 2022.

    Public Trust in Media Declines

    According to an October Gallup poll, 39 percent of Americans did not trust the mass media, while 29 percent held very little trust. Only 32 percent reported having trust in the mass media.

    The poll also found sharp partisan divisions in Americans’ views of the media. Only 11 percent of Republicans trusted the media, whereas 58 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of Independents expressed a fair amount of trust in the media.

    Democrats have historically placed more trust in the media overall than Republicans, but the current gap of 47 points is the smallest since 2016. Since last year, Democrats’ confidence in the media has decreased significantly, from 70 percent in 2022 to 58 percent this year.

    Another Gallup poll in July found that Americans were losing confidence in U.S. institutions. In the journalism business, only 18 percent of Americans trust newspapers, and just 14 percent trust television news—two of the five worst-rated institutions.

    In last year’s poll on the honesty and ethical standards across various professions, 42 percent of Americans said journalists have “very low” or “low” ethical standards, while 35 percent rated them as average and 23 percent viewed them high.

    A survey from Pew Research Center revealed that journalists and the general public differ markedly with regard to their views on “both-sides-ism,” which refers to whether journalists must always look to give equal coverage to all sides of an issue.

    While 55 percent of journalists in the survey insisted that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news, 76 percent of Americans wanted the news to cover all sides equally.

    Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 20:20

  • Watch: Trash-Talking Female Boxing Champ Gets Knocked Out By Average Male Fighter
    Watch: Trash-Talking Female Boxing Champ Gets Knocked Out By Average Male Fighter

    The root origin of the controversial inclusion of trans (male) athletes in women’s sports was the argument by third-wave feminists that women and men are similarly biologically capable.  It is a trope that has infested every corner of entertainment media for years, so much so that many women have convinced themselves that it is true – Feminists really believe that males and females are physically equal.  

    A cursory study of professional athletic records from almost any sport imaginable would tell them different, but woke activists have insisted on pressing the issue to the point that, in the US at least, fully developed male athletes posing as women are now crushing women’s chances to excel in multiple arenas.  

    The consequences are very real, specifically in high schools and colleges where female athletes rely on athletic scholarships in order to further their education.  Multiple women have now had their scholarship prospects diminished by males claiming to be trans.  On top of this, multiple women’s sports records have also been broken by biological males because of trans inclusion.  

    In 2023 we have had a number of mixed-sex sporting environments to appease the woke mob and the message should be painfully obvious by now – Women are not on par with men.  

    Unfortunately, it seems a female boxing champ and notorious trash talker by the name of Claressa Shields didn’t get the memo. 

    Shields has an exemplary record in women’s boxing, but this does not translate to winning against even average fighters in the male arena.

    After calling out top male boxers and challenging them publicly, a video from 2018 was leaked by a little-known Latvian boxer out of Florida named Arturs Ahmetovs who knocked the female champ out clean in a sparring match.

    According to Ahmetovs’ trainer, Derik Santos, the fighter had intended to keep the footage private out of respect and boxing etiquette, but became frustrated with Claressa Shields’ incessant and delusional boasting.  Santos described the situation as confusing, claiming that Shields trash talked throughout the sparring session even though she and her coach had asked the fighter to do them a favor by helping her train for a pro bout. 

    Ahmetov had allegedly been asked to go easy on Shields in previous rounds and avoid hurting her.  But after her disrespectful display the fighter (with a minimal record) flattened her across the mat.        

    Shields has since accused Santos of “removing padding” from Ahmetovs’ gloves, though Santos vehemently denies this. He noted that it was “just a sparring session.”  This kind of behavior has become a plague in women’s sports in the last few years (as we have seen in the WNBA and women’s soccer), and has only been tempered recently by the realization that transgender athletes are slowly but surely muscling out female competitors.  

    The idea that men and women are deeply and fundamentally different on a biological level has never in the history of humanity been a contentious issue, until now.  In a move which seems like self destruction, third-wave feminists have set the stage for women to be put in harms way, in the field, on the court and in the ring all in the name of maintaining the lie of equality.      

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 20:00

  • Congress Has Not Looted Social Security
    Congress Has Not Looted Social Security

    Authored by Bill King via RealClear Wire

    When I write on Social Security, I regularly have readers write and tell me the “real” problem with Social Security is that Congress has looted the Social Security trust fund and spent the money on other programs. I have as little respect for Congress as anyone and they are profligate spendthrifts, but this narrative is false.

    Every year, the trustees who govern Social Security’s operations issue a Trustees’ Report. Included in that report is a cash flow statement going back to the inception of the program in 1937. It details the taxes paid into the plan, adds interest earned from the excess funds held by the system, and then subtracts the administrative costs and benefits paid.

    In 69 of the 86 years since Social Security was created, the system has enjoyed a positive cash flow. This has resulted in the system building up a cushion over the years, which currently totals to about $2.7 trillion. So, where is that money?

    The answer is that it is invested in U.S. bonds. Those bonds earn interest which help defray the cost of the program and in the 17 years that it ran a negative cash flow, it cashed bonds to make up the difference.

    Those bonds are part of the overall debt issued by the federal government to finance its operations, albeit a relatively small amount of the total federal debt (~7-8%). Those who promote the “Congress looted Social Security” narrative have misinterpreted the use of the reserves by the federal government as part of its overall financing structure as evidence that the reserves have been used for other purposes.

    Some critics go so far as to suggest that the bonds that Social Security holds are worthless and will never be repaid. This is nonsense, which is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that Social Security has redeemed over $100 billion on bonds in the last two years and in 14 other years when its cash flow went negative.

    Beyond that, the market for U.S. securities is the deepest and most liquid in the world. The federal government auctions billions in securities on a weekly basis, which are regularly oversubscribed. While many, including your correspondent, worry about the long-term fiscal trajectory of the federal government, the risk of it defaulting on bonds held by Social Security is nil.

    However, some have raised a fair question as to whether investing all of Social Security’s reserves in U.S. bonds is the best investment strategy. The interest rate paid on the bonds is determined by a formula adopted by Congress in 1960. It uses a rolling average of the rate on all U.S. bonds with maturities longer than four years. My rough calculation indicates this has resulted in about a 5.2% average yield since 1960. Currently, the rate is much lower because interest rates have been so low for the last decade, notwithstanding the increase in rates over the last year. According to Social Security Administration data, the average return for 2022 was 2.35%.

    In contrast, the S&P 500 index has returned 10.15% since 1960. If the reserves had been invested in the S&P 500 during that time, the reserve balance today would be something around $30 trillion and we would not be facing any shortfall for decades. Of course, investing the reserve funds in stocks or other alternative investments would be hugely controversial and involve significant risks to the fund. Nonetheless, it would appear that a more diversified investment strategy would relieve some of the pressure on the system. (This is not a novel concept. George W. Bush proposed it in 2005 – and it was hardly a new idea then. The politics, though, are tougher than just crunching the numbers.)

    But the real problem with the promotion of narratives like “Congress looted Social Security” is that they divert attention away from the real demographic problem that will continue to plague the system in the coming decades. How society will provide for its older citizens, and probably even what it means to be “retired,” is going to require a complete reset from our current notions. The sooner we accept the math of that new reality and begin to change our system and expectations, the less painful the transition will be.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 19:40

  • DHS Joins With Woke Universities To Label "Manosphere" A Terror Threat
    DHS Joins With Woke Universities To Label “Manosphere” A Terror Threat

    Since at least the year 2020 the Department of Homeland Security has been funding a series of woke university programs across the country.  They have spent millions of dollars (that we know of) to incentivize academic groups, not with the goal of countering foreign terror elements or even to investigate US preppers and patriots, but to develop tools for disrupting what some call the “Manosphere” movement (previously known as the Red Pill movement) – A movement focused on countering feminism and feminist propaganda.

    Is arguing logically against feminism really such a threat to the nation?  No, but it is a threat to the woke movement, which has been on the decline in recent years as more and more information about their ideology is scrutinized by the public.

    Woke activism, which includes third-wave feminism, is transparently astroturf.  It relies on billions of dollars in funding supplied by elitist institutions such as the Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Open Society Foundation.  The oppressive authoritarian nature of the woke apparatus has given rise to a large individualist counter-culture that is truly grassroots and this includes various men’s rights groups, political commentators and YouTubers (collectively known as the Manosphere).  

    The division has created what many refer to as the “culture war.”  And, if it wasn’t clear by now, evidence shows that government agencies have chosen a side…

    In a more recent exposure, documents have surfaced from a DHS funded program linked to the University of Arizona, home of the McCain Institute. Included in the network are a number of NGOs and Big Tech conglomerates as well as the SPLC and ADL.  The project rhetoric ties the Manosphere to extremism, racism and even terrorism.  

    The thrust of the effort appears to be propaganda based, with a tandem scheme to “redirect” social media and web traffic away from Manosphere related commentators.  ASU referred to the program as “hate speech surveillance.”

    The “Redirect Method” was mentioned as a useful mechanism by the Rand Corporation in 2018.  We saw this strategy play out to some extent during covid, when every major social media platform attempted to redirect traffic away from alternative media sources and into the arms of corporate news platforms.

    Such grants are offered under the TVPT (Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention) program. In 2023 the DHS announced the award of 34 of these grants to the tune of $20 million.  That’s millions of dollars of your tax money going into the pockets of woke academics so that they can fabricate new ways to undermine western values.  

    As part of TVTP, in 2022 the DHS gave $659,327 to fund Diverting Hate, a group of students and at ASU who were studying “incels,” or “involuntary celibates”—a term used to describe young men who can’t attract romantic partners.  The incel moniker is a purely feminist concept originally used as a way to ridicule young men who speak out against woke beliefs (the insinuation being that if they don’t embrace feminism no woman will want to associate with them).  They then expanded on the label to suggest that these men will inevitably turn to lone wolf terrorism out of frustration.   

    Keep in mind, many of these DHS projects were launched in the midst of the covid pandemic hype and the mass censorship that came with it.  The establishment may have felt that it was the perfect time to go-for-broke and construct censorship protocols for any and every group rebelling against the prevailing narrative.  It hasn’t been very long since that period of leftist insanity, but even now the pendulum is swinging back against them.

    The only reason to associate counter-feminism with terrorism is to make authoritarian measures against the Manosphere more “palatable” for the public.  To connect philosophical opponents to treason or terrorism is a political attack that government bodies and power hungry zealots have used for all of recorded history, but in this case it feels like the desperate behavior of a cult that is on the verge of fading into obscurity.

    The idea that men and masculinity are a threat to society is the root argument of third-wave feminism.  It’s no longer about equal rights, which they already have; now it’s about removing masculine (and traditional) influences from culture altogether.  The current government seems to be fully in support of this cleansing and, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense – It’s a lot easier for authoritarians to control a society if the men in that society have been psychologically neutered and are incapable of fighting back.       

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 19:20

  • Repairman Who Disclosed Hunter Biden’s Laptop Says His House Was 'Swatted'
    Repairman Who Disclosed Hunter Biden’s Laptop Says His House Was ‘Swatted’

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Delaware computer repairman who disclosed the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 said on Dec. 30 that his home was subjected to a “swatting” incident on Friday night.

    President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in Wilmington, Del., on July 26, 2023. (Julio Cortez/AP Photo)

    John Paul Mac Isaac, who owned a computer store in Delaware at which the son of President Joe Biden was said to have dropped off his laptop years ago, said he was not present during the swatting incident.

    “My home was swatted tonight, I was not home but the outstanding men and women of the Wilmington PD responded quickly and professionally,” Mr. Mac Isaac said on X.

    “All that was achieved was the wasted time of the Wilmington PD. NOTHING, let me repeat that, NOTHING will take me out of this fight! Cheers!” he added.

    It remains unclear whether the swatting is connected to his defamation lawsuit against Mr. Biden. The Wilmington Police Department has not disclosed any details regarding the incident.

    The Lawsuits

    Mr. Mac Isaac in October 2022 sued Mr. Biden for defamation. He closed his business in 2020 after receiving death threats. Mr. Biden has countersued Mr. Mac Isaac for allegedly invading his privacy.

    Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, reportedly deposed Mr. Mac Isaac in June 2023, a session that lasted about seven hours, according to the New York Post.

    The countersuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, asks for a jury trial.

    “No matter how they came into his initial possession, Mac Isaac improperly accessed files that he admits were ‘none of [his] business’ even though he was never given permission by Mr. Biden to access or review any data of Mr. Biden’s,” it says.

    He later made copies of the data and distributed the copies to others, including former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

    “Mac Isaac’s knowing and intentional distribution of Mr. Biden’s personal and sensitive data was not carried out for any reasonable or legitimate purposes, but rather to try and expose Mr. Biden’s data to those that he knew or should have known would intend to create embarrassment and harm for Mr. Biden,” the countersuit says.

    “In addition, Mac Isaac decided to use the data in his possession for commercial purposes and to make money, which he has done by including portions of the data in his book and making reference to and/or making some or all of the data available at appearances he has made.”

    According to a document Mr. Mac Isaac has filed in court, on April 12, 2019, Mr. Biden asked for a quote for data recovery from three MacBook computers. Mr. Mac Isaac recovered the data and notified Mr. Biden of the development. He also sent an invoice, but Mr. Biden “never returned” to the shop to retrieve the data nor did he pay the invoice, according to the suit.

    Mr. Biden’s attorneys confirmed that Mr. Mac Isaac had come into possession of materials from Mr. Biden.

    Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 19:00

  • Baptism By Fryer: North Carolina Pastor Arrested For Allegedly Assaulting McDonald's Cook Who 'Disrespected' Wife
    Baptism By Fryer: North Carolina Pastor Arrested For Allegedly Assaulting McDonald’s Cook Who ‘Disrespected’ Wife

    A North Carolina pastor was arrested for assault and battery after allegedly walking into a McDonald’s and assaulting a cook who ‘disrespected’ his wife, according to a police report of the incident.

    Dwayne Waden, a 57-year-old church pastor, has been arrested over the incident (Image: thesmokinggun)

    The man, 57-year-old Dwayne Waden, allegedly placed his hands around the cook’s neck, then pushed the cook toward the deep fryer and punched him in the face on December 28.

    The victim “suffered a large contusion to the forehead and right eye, along with scratches on his neck, CBS News reports.

    Officers were able to see footage from a surveillance video of the altercation. Waden, whose Facebook profile identifies him as pastor of Elevated Life International Ministries and a semitruck driver, was arrested on a charge of assault, according to a police report, and released on a $1,000 bond.

    According to the local McDonald’s franchise, Waden’s wife is no longer with the organization, and said “the safety and security of our employees and customers is our top priority.”

    Waden was transported to police headquarters, where he posted bond in the amount of $1,000. He’s due in court on Jan. 22 to face charges.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 18:40

  • Over 200 Service Members, Veterans Pledge To Hold Military Leaders Accountable For Vaccine Mandate
    Over 200 Service Members, Veterans Pledge To Hold Military Leaders Accountable For Vaccine Mandate

    Authored by J.M. Phelps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    More than 200 active service members and veterans have signed an open letter seeking accountability over the alleged harm caused by the Department of Defense’s (DOD) implementation of the now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

    A U.S. Air Force member receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, on Dec. 29, 2020. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Betty R. Chevalier via Getty Images)

    The open letter, published on Jan. 1, is directed to the American people, but names specific senior military leaders who the signers claim enabled lawlessness and betrayed the Constitution.

    Some of the leaders specifically named in the letter include former and current joint chiefs of staff, service academy commandants, service inspectors general, and service surgeon generals.

    The signatories state, “In the coming years, thousands within our network will run for Congress and seek appointments to executive branch offices, while those of us still serving on active duty will continue to put fulfilling our oaths ahead of striving for rank or position.

    “For those who achieve the lawful authority to do so, we pledge to recall from retirement the military leaders who broke the law and will convene courts-martial for the crimes they committed.”

    A number of the signatories are veterans who are now running for Congress and state-level political offices. These veterans also pledged to introduce legislation to seek accountability by reducing the alleged perpetrators’ retirement income to zero.

    Many of the 231 signers of the letter are still on active duty. Several said they are taking on significant personal risk to stand up for what they believe in and to defend their unalienable rights that they feel have been trampled.

    The Epoch Times spoke to Robert A. Green, Jr., an active duty Navy Commander and author of “Defending the Constitution Behind Enemy Lines.” As the author of the open letter, he employed the framework and phrasing of Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence to address what he described as the current crisis of trust in the country’s military.

    He and the other signatories hope to “rebuild trust through accountability” and signed the open letter as a way to emulate the founding fathers when they mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in the Declaration of Independence.

    “Where our situation departs from the signers of the Declaration of Independence is that we do not seek separation,” Cmdr. Green said. “We do not want to be separated from the Constitution nor from what was handed down to us at so great a cost. Instead of separation, we want restoration through accountability.”

    As a result, he said, the letter may be more appropriately called a “Declaration of Military Accountability.”

    Bradley Miller, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who previously served as a battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division, said the allusions to the Declaration of Independence in the letter are “deliberate and meaningful.” According to him, the signatories of the letter “believe that we have suffered a long train of abuses that has come to a head with the unlawful COVID-19 shot mandate.”

    “We would be negligent in our duty to uphold our oaths to the Constitution as well as negligible in our loyalty to our countrymen if we permitted the continued demise of one of our most hallowed institutions,” Mr. Miller said.

    “For the senior leaders named, and for the thousands who were not named but who are equally complicit, I hope this [letter] is a wake-up call,” Cmdr. Green said. He went on to note that at the highest levels of military leadership, the decision-making processes are largely comprised of risk analysis and risk mitigations.

    “Due to the Feres Doctrine [which prohibits service members from suing the federal government for wrongful injury or death], and the inappropriate deference paid to the Department of Defense by the legislative and judicial branches of our government, our senior leaders have rarely felt any personal risk for their decisions,” he said.

    Cmdr. Green hopes the letter solidifies that “personal financial and legal risk is now part of the analysis our senior military leaders must take before deciding on policies that have implications for service members’ constitutional rights.”

    Story continues below advertisement

    Pledging to Seek Restoration

    For Mr. Miller, the letter represents “a pledge that we, the signatories, have made with one another and also to the American people, that we will not stand idly by as our military self-destructs.”

    Because of their faith in God, love of country, and oath to the Constitution, he said, “We consider it our duty to lawfully resist the concerted efforts of current military leadership to destroy the institution that has been entrusted to their charge.”

    Mr. Miller said the country is witnessing “the wholesale destruction, from within, of one of our oldest and most important national institutions.” For him, “It’s not that our armed forces have decided to stand by neutral as our nation faces an onslaught of threats, but has instead become one of the greatest perpetrators in attacking the cultural fabric that has kept our republic together for two and a half centuries.”

    According to Mr. Miller, the U.S. military has “a unique mission: the American people expect the people to carry out violence on its behalf.” In a series of questions, he said: “How can the people trust an institution to ethically carry out its mission if it wantonly violates the law? How can the American people trust a military that has harmed its own members, and rather than acknowledge that harm, doubles down by insisting that its course was lawful, productive, and necessary?”

    The signatories are demanding “unequivocal acknowledgment of the unlawful nature of the COVID-19 shot mandate” and the harm it has caused, he said. “We demand full accountability for those responsible for perpetrating this deliberate disaster on our service members, their families, and by extension the nation, [and] we demand, inasmuch as possible, complete restitution for those harmed by this criminal activity.” Without this “complete reckoning,” he said, “our military will not recover from this ongoing nightmare.”

    Mr. Miller emphasized he and the others are not advocating violence. Rather, he said, “We emphatically decry the physical and moral violence that has been inflicted on service members and their families through the unlawful mandate of these harmful injections.”

    “We brook no interest in circumventing the law, [but] demand strict adherence to the law,” he said. “To this very end, we will tirelessly pursue the restoration of justice to our wayward armed forces.”

    Fighting for Hope

    Lt. Col. Carolyn Rocco has served over 20 years in the Air Force. For her, the letter serves two purposes. First, she said it is “a promise to the American people that there are service members who understand the significance of their oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’”

    Having encountered people who have expressed “feelings of hopelessness for our country’s survival,” she hopes the letter will encourage Americans to “have faith that all hope has not been lost at a time when many see the steady collapse of morals, character, and justice among politicians and military leaders alike.” According to her, “courage is contagious,” and she hopes the letter motivates the people of America.

    Second, Lt. Col. Rocco said, the letter is “a way to inform the military leaders that the elephant in the room—the negative effects of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate—is not going away until accountability is had.”

    “While many want to sweep it under the rug and press on as if the last two years did not happen,” she said, “that is not how it’s going to go, unfortunately.” She cited the lowest recruiting numbers since the 1970s as “evidence of the disaster the DOD is in.”

    Senior leaders of the military, she said, were warned about “the grave dangers a vax mandate would have on the force,” but these warnings were ignored. “Making a public proclamation might make them realize this is a serious issue that will not be ignored.”

    “Trust has been broken, and moral, emotional, and physical damage has been done,” Lt. Col. Rocco said. “The tens of thousands of us who were directly impacted, as well as our communities who witnessed the atrocity known as the DOD COVID-19 vaccine mandate, are the ones who are encouraging those we love to not join the military until it returns to an institution of honor and morals and becomes apolitical once again.”

    “That will not happen until a formal and public apology is made, acknowledging what was done to thousands of service members was immoral, unethical, and unlawful,” she said.

    “Those of us who signed this memo have made a promise to each other, as well as to the airmen, guardians, soldiers, sailors, marines, coasties, and American people, that we will not stop fighting for truth, justice, and most of all, accountability,” she said.

    Cmdr. Green and Lt. Col. Rocco emphasized that their views don’t reflect those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of the Air Force. Officials at the Pentagon didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 18:20

  • Your Guide To The 2024 Presidential Primary Season
    Your Guide To The 2024 Presidential Primary Season

    Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times,

    As the new year kicks off, political campaigns hit top gear to keep their candidate in the race.

    The early primaries and caucuses will certainly weed out struggling candidates, although the most likely major party nominees are already clear cut—President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

    1. When Does Primary Season Start and End?

    The first big in-person event will be Iowa’s Republican caucus, which will take place on Jan. 15, 2024.

    The state’s Democratic presidential preference voting technically starts earlier, as the party has chosen to use 100 percent mail-in voting this year.

    Iowa Democrats can request voting cards from Jan. 12 through Feb. 19, and completed cards must be postmarked by March 5, with the results being released later that same day, also known as “Super Tuesday.”

    Iowa Democrats will hold their in-person caucuses the same day as Republicans, on Jan. 15, but they’ll conduct only local party business. It’s a compromise with the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) commitment to make South Carolina’s primary, which will be held on Feb. 3, the first in the nation.

    Although the DNC wanted South Carolina’s primary to come first, New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status is enshrined in its state constitution, and the state has held fast to its tradition.

    Both Republicans and Democrats will hold their first primaries on Jan. 23, in New Hampshire.

    A woman takes a photo at a Make America Great Again Rally with former President Donald Trump, in Manchester, N.H., on April 27, 2023. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

    President Joe Biden didn’t file to appear on New Hampshire’s Democratic primary ballot—and the state’s noncompliance with the DNC will likely mean that it receives fewer delegates during its summer convention in Chicago.

    Presidential primary season ends on June 8, when Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands stage their Democratic caucuses.

    State primaries for other, nonpresidential, races continue through mid-September.

    2. Will Trump Be on the Ballot?

    Lawsuits in states across the country have challenged former President Donald Trump’s presence on GOP primary season ballots.

    The lawsuits generally allege that he’s disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Passed after the Civil War, the amendment bars “insurrection[ists]” against the Constitution from taking office. It was originally meant to keep unreconstructed Confederates out of power. By 1872, Congress extended amnesty to most secessionists barred from office by the amendment with the Amnesty Act, which passed the Senate 38–2. A final amnesty bill for Confederates was enacted in 1898 during the McKinley administration.

    So far, in Michigan, Arizona, and Colorado, judges have ruled that President Trump may remain on their state’s primary ballots.

    Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom with his attorneys (L–R) Todd Blanche, Susan Necheles, Joe Tacopina, and Boris Epshteyn during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on April 4, 2023. (Andrew Kelly-Pool/Getty Images)

    A second ruling in Colorado, on Dec. 19 by the state’s Supreme Court, overturned the lower court’s decision and in a 4–3 decision, allowed President Trump to be removed from the state’s primary ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to take up the case and settle the issue.

    3. What About Democrats Other Than Biden?

    Marianne Williamson, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), and other minor Democrats are working to appear on ballots alongside President Biden.

    Interestingly, in the case of the first-in-the-nation primary held in New Hampshire, President Biden’s name will be absent, as he didn’t file to appear on it.

    In other states, however, the Democrat Party has left Ms. Williamson, Mr. Phillips, and other Democrats off the primary ballots. The congressman is challenging those maneuvers in Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Democrats in Florida have gone as far as to cancel that state’s primary in favor of choosing President Biden to win.

    (Left) Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.). (Right) Democratic presidential candidate, author Marianne Williamson. (Gaelen Morse/Getty Images, Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

    4. What About Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

    Mr. Kennedy is running as an independent candidate, meaning he won’t appear on Democratic or Republican primary ballots.

    As of December, he’s fighting to appear on general election ballots in each state for the Nov. 5 election.

    5. Will Other Seats Be Up for Grabs?

    It depends on your state. Check here to see if the presidential primary or caucus in your state takes place on the same day as the state primary or caucus.

    In Alabama, for example, voters pick their preferred party candidates for president as well as other federal, state, and local candidates on March 5, with a state primary runoff scheduled for April 2, if it’s needed. But in Arizona, the March 19 presidential preference election takes place months before the state primary on Aug. 6.

    6. Are Caucuses Different From Primaries?

    Yes. In typical caucuses, such as the Iowa Republican caucus scheduled for Jan. 15, political parties organize local events where delegates are chosen. The ultimate outcome is a set of delegates for one or more candidates. Those men and women will support those candidates at their party’s national convention in the summer of 2024.

    The delegate selection process varies from state to state and across parties. In Iowa, Republicans will gather to vote at one of more than 1,600 precinct locations across the state’s 99 counties.

    Primaries are more like typical elections. Voters go to a polling place and cast a secret ballot for the candidates of their choice. Primaries are organized by state governments, not by state parties.

    Guests attend a fireside chat campaign event with Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Bettendorf, Iowa, on Dec. 18, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    Early voting, absentee voting, and mail-in voting may also be options in these races. Notably, Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucus will be conducted with mail-in “presidential preference cards” and no in-person voting at all.

    Depending on the state, primaries and caucuses may be open to voters who aren’t registered with the party for which they wish to select a candidate.

    7. When Will My Primary or Caucus Take Place?

    You can find the dates here. If you intend to vote, make a plan sooner rather than later. You might also have to register with a particular party to participate—although that varies from state to state.

    8. Will New Hampshire Hold the 1st Primary?

    Yes. Although the DNC wanted South Carolina’s primary to come first, New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status is enshrined in its state constitution, and the state has held fast to its tradition.

    Both Republicans and Democrats will hold their first primaries on Jan. 23, in New Hampshire. Democrats will hold their South Carolina primary on Feb. 3.

    President Biden didn’t file to appear on New Hampshire’s Democratic primary ballot—and the state’s noncompliance with the DNC will likely mean that it receives fewer delegates during the party’s summer convention in Chicago.

    Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks at a rally after signing his official paperwork for the New Hampshire primary at the New Hampshire State House in Concord, N.H., on Nov. 8, 2019. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

    9. Can I Vote in Both the Republican and Democrat Presidential Primaries?

    No. You can choose only one candidate for the presidential primary or caucus, and depending on your state, you may have to be registered with that party to vote in that race.

    10. How Can I Vote if I’m Registered Independent?

    It depends on your state.

    Some presidential primaries and caucuses are closed, meaning that you have to be registered with a particular party to vote in its presidential primary or caucus.

    Others run the gamut from semi-closed to fully open; in the latter case, independent voters need not register with a party to participate in its primary or caucus. The Open Primaries website has a comprehensive breakdown of the rules across the country.

    11. Who Is Likely to Win the Republican Nomination?

    As of late December, President Trump is ahead in the polls and strongly favored, according to aggregated polling data on RealClearPolitics.

    While he seems likely to win the primary, entrenched opposition from Never Trump Republicans and various legal issues could still derail his nomination.

    Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are vying for second place in important early states, with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and others trailing behind.

    (Left) Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump. (Center) Former U.N. ambassador and Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley. (Right) Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images, Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images, Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    12. Who Is Likely to Win the Democrats’ Nomination?

    President Biden, the incumbent, isn’t seriously threatened by any of his Democratic challengers in the polls, particularly after Mr. Kennedy switched to run as an independent candidate and not as a Democrat.

    If President Biden fails to appear in the general election, it would stem from unusual but not impossible circumstances; if, for instance, illness or some other event leads him to bow out in the next few months, a brokered Democratic convention could ensue. That might elevate the likes of Vice President Kamala Harris or California Gov. Gavin Newsom to the hot seat.

    13. What Happens at a Convention?

    National conventions are the place where both parties develop their platforms and where major politicians deliver speeches. Most importantly, they’re where the delegates from each state and territory choose their party’s presidential candidate.

    In modern times, one candidate typically racks up enough delegates during the primaries for his or her status as the nominee to be clear long before the convention.

    But before the widespread adoption of presidential primaries during the late 1960s and early 1970s, conventions were often the scene of long, drawn-out battles among different political factions. In 1924, it took the Democrats 103 ballots to choose their nominee, John W. Davis.

    The upcoming Republican National Convention will be held in Milwaukee in July 2024. The Democratic National Convention will take place a few weeks later, in August, about 100 miles south, in Chicago.

    14. What Is a Brokered Convention?

    A brokered convention is one in which one candidate fails to command a majority of delegates during the first vote, or ballot.

    It opens up the prospect of additional ballots and, in the case of the Democratic National Convention, participation by super delegates.

    Brokered conventions weren’t uncommon before the era of mass primaries, but the last that occurred was in 1952, when Republicans and Democrats alike took multiple votes to select as their nominees Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson II, respectively.

    Sen. Richard Nixon (2ndL), Dwight D. Eisenhower (2ndR), and their wives attend the Republican National Convention in Chicago, on July 12, 1952. (I/AFP via Getty Images)

    15. What Happens on Super Tuesday?

    Super Tuesday will occur on March 5, 2024.

    Super Tuesday can make a big positive (or negative) difference for campaigns, as many states and territories hold caucuses and primaries that day, meaning that many delegates are off the table afterward. In 2020, it elevated the position of then-former Vice President Biden. In 2016, then-candidate Trump won by a large margin on Super Tuesday, taking seven out of 11 states.

    States and territories holding elections on Super Tuesday include: Alabama, Alaska Republican presidential caucuses, American Samoa presidential caucuses, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa Democratic caucus mail vote, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah Democratic presidential primary, and Republican presidential caucuses in Vermont and Virginia.

    A voting sign sits outside the Burlington Electric Department in Burlington, Vt., on March 2, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    16. What Are Delegates?

    Delegates are people who are sent to a political party’s national convention to help select a nominee on behalf of their party’s primary voters.

    Some delegates have to support particular candidates based on the outcomes of primary or caucus elections. Others aren’t tied to specific candidates prior to the convention.

    Depending on the state, Republican primaries and caucuses can award delegates proportionally, through a winner-take-all formula, or through some other approach, which can be complicated.

    Minimum and maximum voting thresholds also enter the picture in many states. In Texas, for example, candidates must get at least 20 percent of the vote to get any delegates—and if a candidate gets 50 percent or more of the vote, he or she takes all of the state’s delegates.

    Democrats must meet a 15 percent threshold to get delegates, although depending on the contest, it may apply to a congressional district rather than the state as a whole.

    17. What Are Super Delegates?

    They’re delegates that aren’t pledged to a specific candidate when they arrive at their party’s national convention; they’re also called unbound delegates by Republicans.

    While super delegates have historically played a critical role in the Democratic presidential nomination process, their overwhelming support for Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at the 2016 Democratic Convention made them a point of contention in recent times. Pledged delegates also favored Ms. Clinton, though by a much narrower margin.

    Although Democrats have retained super delegates to this day, reforms passed in 2018 have excluded them from the first ballot. They would now only come into play in the event of a brokered convention.

    On the Republican side, fewer than 5 percent of delegates will be unbound at the GOP’s national convention in Milwaukee.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) acknowledges the crowd before delivering remarks at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 25, 2016. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

    18. How Many Delegates Does a Candidate Need to Win?

    They need support from most of the delegates at the convention. Again, one candidate typically commands a large majority prior to the end of the primary season.

    The Green Papers estimates that the winning Republican candidate will need roughly 1,215 delegates out of 2,429 total delegates.

    The same website estimates that the Democrat candidate will require 1,973 delegates during a first ballot. That doesn’t count unpledged Democratic delegates, who would come into play in any subsequent ballots. All told, there are expected to be a total of 4,691 Democratic delegates, far more than the estimated 2,429 total Republican delegates.

    19. Where Do I Vote?

    It could differ from your regular polling place.

    You can usually find the answer on the website of the party of your preferred candidate, or on your state’s Secretary of State elections website. Here’s where you can find it for New Hampshire, for example.

    If you can’t make it to the caucus site or primary polling place, you might be able to participate through early in-person voting or mail-in voting, or by casting an absentee ballot.

    Check the specific rules for your primary or caucus to see what options are available where you vote.

    20. Can Democrats Vote in Republican Primaries and Vice Versa?

    In some states, yes; in others, no.

    In states with fully open presidential primaries, people don’t have to choose a candidate from the same party under which they registered to vote. That means, for example, a registered Democrat, independent, or unaffiliated voter can vote for a Republican candidate in the primary.

    Voters cast their ballots at an elementary school during the U.S. midterm election in Midlothian, Va., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Ryan M. Kelly/AFP via Getty Images)

    Other states’ contests are partially open or partially closed, imposing greater restrictions on voters.

    Some states hold closed primaries, which limit a voter to choosing a candidate within the same party under which they’re registered to vote. Of course, registered members of a particular party can always vote for a candidate from a different party in the November general election.

    Confusingly, the rules for state primaries can differ from those of presidential primaries within the same state. The National Conference of State Legislatures website breaks it down.

    21. Can I Vote in the General Election If I Skipped the Primaries?

    Yes.

    22. Are Caucuses or Primaries Ever Contested or Controversial?

    Yes. The 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus was famously chaotic, with results delayed by days as multiple campaigns challenged results in various precincts. Mr. Sanders edged out his rivals in the popular vote, but Pete Buttigieg came out ahead in state delegate equivalents.

    The Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, dubbed the caucus a “tragedy.”

    Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks during a rally in Oelwein, Iowa, on Feb. 1, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    23. Do I Need to Be Registered to Vote in the Primary or Caucus?

    Generally, yes, but it varies. Some states, including Illinois, permit same-day registration for primary voters, while North Dakota doesn’t require voter registration.

    The National Conference of State Legislatures website outlines same-day voter registration law state by state.

    24. Am I Allowed to Vote in 1 State’s Primary and Another’s General?

    If you move in between, it’s possible, but it also depends on the rules in your state(s) and when you move. Out-of-state college students with dual residency across multiple states might be expected to exercise this option—for example, if they don’t register in the state where they’re going to school until after their home state’s primary or caucus.

    25. Could Newsom Be the Democratic Nominee?

    California’s Democratic governor won’t be on any primary or caucus ballots. Mr. Newsom has repeatedly emphasized that he isn’t running for president, telling Mr. DeSantis during their recent debate that “neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.”

    While that declaration would seem to rule him out, others have noted that there are other avenues open to the well-connected wine merchant. Specifically, as analyst Chuck DeVore told The Epoch Times in November, if President Biden leaves the field before Election Day, Mr. Newsom could win through a brokered Democratic convention in summer 2024.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a campaign event with Vice President Kamala Harris in San Leandro, Calif., on Sept. 8, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    26. Will There Be Any More Debates?

    Yes. CNN will host a Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Jan. 10, just days ahead of the Jan. 15 GOP caucus. The network will hold another Republican presidential debate ahead of the New Hampshire primary, which takes place on Jan. 23.

    In keeping with his absence from the first four debates, there’s no sign that President Trump will participate.

    After the primaries, there are three presidential debates scheduled and one vice presidential debate, with the first one on Sept. 16 and the last on Oct. 9.

    27. Do Other Countries Have Primaries?

    Yes, many countries do, although there’s great variation from place to place; for example, some primaries are organized by political parties, while others are held by the state.

    Countries ranging from South Korea to Poland to Canada hold primaries or primary-like elections.

    28. Can Primaries and Caucuses Be Canceled?

    Yes. Florida, for example, has canceled its Democratic primary after omitting all names but President Biden’s from its proposed ballot. The situation isn’t without precedent from both major parties.

    In 2020, multiple states canceled their Republican primaries or caucuses in the midst of President Trump’s reelection campaign. The same thing happened with several Democratic primaries in 2012, when then-President Barack Obama was seeking reelection.

    29. Could Trump’s Legal Trials Make a Difference?

    Not so far, but it’s hard to say for sure. The events now unfolding are unprecedented in the history of U.S. presidential contests, so it’s difficult to predict.

    So far, President Trump has mostly withstood attempts to remove him from primary season ballots on 14th Amendment grounds.

    If there are any major rulings in his criminal trials before the Republican National Convention in July, that could complicate things, particularly if unbound GOP delegates are marshaled against the former president following a close primary season, or if other delegates revolt against him after the first ballot at the convention.

    Former president Donald Trump arrives at the courtroom at the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on April 4, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

    30. When Is a Winner Likely to Emerge During the GOP Primaries?

    President Trump’s strong lead over his rivals means that support could crystalize earlier rather than later. In 2016, the future president became his party’s presumptive nominee by early May after he won Indiana’s Republican primary and his chief rival, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), dropped out.

    This time, as of mid-December, the president is far ahead of his competitors in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada in polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics.

    31. What’s Happening With the Nevada GOP Primary?

    The state will hold both a state-organized Republican primary and a caucus organized by the Nevada Republican Party. Most, but not all, big-name Republican candidates are boycotting that primary, which takes place on Feb. 6, in favor of the caucus, which takes place on Feb. 8.

    The caucus has been, up until recently, a decades-old tradition in the Silver State. But Nevada’s Democrat-controlled state Legislature adopted a primary system after the 2020 election. The state’s Republican Party filed a lawsuit against the state to retain its caucus.

    Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said his state is required to hold a primary once two candidates register for it. By October, two Republicans had registered. Ms. Haley opted for the primary ballot, along with several little-known candidates.

    “Candidates that chose to appear on the state-run primary ballot did so knowing that decision meant they could not earn delegates by appearing on the caucus ballots,” the state GOP website states.

    President Trump, Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Ramaswamy, Texas businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are on the caucus ballot.

    Nevada will also hold a Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 8.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/02/2024 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 02

Today’s News 2nd January 2024

  • "Something Big" Looms For America In 2024
    “Something Big” Looms For America In 2024

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    The Great Clarification

    “Time for The Great Uprising to defeat The Great Reset. This isn’t just an R vs. D question in 2023. It’s a 1776 moment.”

    – Vivek Ramaswamy

    I’m already liking 2024. Consequence is itching to return to the American scene. Somewhere around 2016, cause and effect got a divorce. After that, things just happened or unhappened with no further orders of effect, like some brute existence without purpose, meaning, or even awareness, except for the feeling of the lash on your back.

    After a long journey through a dark place, treading ever-deeper into the unknown, knowing you are in the presence of demons from one footstep to the next, worrying incessantly that God has abandoned you. . . the alarm bell is ringing, the light is shining through, your eyes roll up like window-shades, and it’s time to get your mind right! Yes, even nations have bad dreams. Welcome to the Great Clarification.

    We are waking to the stupefying criminality of public life, to the immersive obvious bullshit of people in charge who don’t deserve your respect or compliance.

    How they got into these positions is only another feature of that totalistic criminality.

    What was hidden in plain sight will be revealed to those suffering mere hysterical blindness.

    It was fitting that the last extravagant political act of ’23 was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows chucking Mr. Trump off the ballot there because…she felt like it. To save our democracy, you understand. That might be the terminal absurdity of the derangement we are leaving behind, the signature for much that has gone down in this country the past three years: women on the verge of a nervous breakdown throwing the crockery of law around the room at Daddy.

    All this accomplishes, of course, is to disgrace authority in general and to turn America into one big broken home, making us a population of frightened runaways clinging desperately to a few square feet of ground, alone under the freeway ramp in the rain. That is no way to live. The way to live is to make yourself useful to your fellow humans and to get paid for it, and to find some joy and meaning in that human fellowship based on fair, consensual transactions — a pretty simple formula that has been supplanted by the evil idea that life is nothing but a shakedown.

    The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob. This entity has made itself malignantly inimical to the proper functioning of self-governing people, and everybody knows it. The blob will die of irrelevance and impotence as the “trust horizon” devolves downward and we are thrust back into the awesome task of reconstructing our local communities.

    There is so much to do.

    I keep hearing figures in the public arena say they have a creepy feeling that something big is going to happen.

    Well, sure, something’s got to give. So much hyper-complexity has been heaped onto the apparatus of shakedown that just about nothing works in America anymore. The Internet is obviously a major part of that. We’ve allowed digital magic to invade every scrap of territory in our daily doings, to the degree that there is no longer enough for humans to do — but, alas, digital magic is only a pale simulacrum of real human magic.

    The virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic. Why do you think there are so many people barely alive in a haze of opiate drugs splayed on the sidewalks of San Francisco, the epicenter of Internet wealth and power?

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    The “something big” could well be the Web-down crisis that is nervously tweeted about. If it went on for more than couple of weeks, most everything we depend on would cease to work, from food supplies to clean water to communications to what has been lately operating as “money.”  That would be a clarifying interlude for sure. Among the few things that would still work in the event of a massive attack on the Internet are human brains, human bodies, and firearms. That combo could be as much a recipe for order as for chaos. I believe in the fairly short term, most of us would opt for order. As far as I’m concerned, there’s already been enough chaos, just about every bit of it unnecessary.

    But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 2024 is on. It’s the time many of us have been waiting for. We’re in it. Stay alert. Make the right choices. Exercise situational awareness. Get ready to walk with consequence. It’s here, and it’s not “queer.”

    *  *  *

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

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

  • The World Has Lost The Great John Pilger
    The World Has Lost The Great John Pilger

    With sadness Consortium News reports that John Pilger, whose books, films and articles informed generations of people eager to cut through official narratives and propaganda on the Palestinian question; U.S. wars executed in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere; the one it plans for China; the state of public medicine in Britain; the treatment of aborigines in his native Australia and a host of other critical public issues, has died in London at 84. 

    Pilger, a recipient of numerous awards, including winning British journalist of the year twice, was a member of Consortium News‘ board of directors and in October was awarded with CN‘s Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award. Tributes have been pouring in….

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    Below is John Pilger’s Biography via johnpilger.com…

    * * *

    John Pilger was born and grew up in Bondi, Sydney, Australia. He launched his first newspaper at Sydney High School and later completed a four year cadetship with Australian Consolidated Press. “It was one of the strictest language courses I know,” he says. “Devised by a celebrated, literate editor, Brian Penton, the aim was economy of language and accuracy. It certainly taught me to admire writing that was spare, precise and free of cliches, that didn’t retreat into the passive voice and used adjectives only when absolutely necessary. I have long since slipped that leash, but those early disciplines helped shape my journalism and writing and my understanding of moving and still pictures”.

    Like many of his Australian generation, Pilger and two colleagues left for Europe in the early 1960s. They set up an ill-fated freelance ‘agency’ in Italy (with the grand title of ‘Interep’) and quickly went broke. Arriving in London, Pilger freelanced, then joined Reuters, moving to the London Daily Mirror, Britain’s biggest selling newspaper, which was then changing to a serious tabloid.

    He became chief foreign correspondent and reported from all over the world, covering numerous wars, notably Vietnam. Still in his twenties, he became the youngest journalist to receive Britain’s highest award for journalism, Journalist of the Year and was the first to win it twice. Moving to the United States, he reported the upheavals there in the late 1960s and 1970s. He marched with America’s poor from Alabama to Washington, following the assassination of Martin Luther King. He was in the same room when Robert Kennedy, the presidential candidate, was assassinated in June 1968.

    His work in South East Asia produced an iconic issue of the London Mirror, devoted almost entirely to his world exclusive dispatches from Cambodia in the aftermath of Pol Pot’s reign. The combined impact of his Mirror reports and his subsequent documentary, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia, raised almost $50 million for the people of that stricken country. Similarly, his 1994 documentary and dispatches report from East Timor, where he travelled under cover, helped galvanise support for the East Timorese, then occupied by Indonesia.

    In Britain, his four-year investigation on behalf of a group of children damaged at birth by the drug Thalidomide, and left out of the settlement with the drugs company, resulted in a special settlement.

    His numerous documentaries on Australia, notably The Secret Country (1983), the bicentary trilogy The Last Dream (1988), Welcome to Australia (1999) and Utopia (2013) all celebrated and revealed much of his own country’s ‘forgotten past’, especially its indigenous past and present.

    He has won an American TV Academy Award, an Emmy, and a British Academy Award, a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous US and European awards, such as as the Royal Television Society’s Best Documentary. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia among the ten most important documentaries of the twentieth century.

    His articles appear worldwide. In 2001, he curated a major exhibition at the London Barbican, Reporting the World: John Pilger’s Eyewitness Photographers, a tribute to the great black-and-white photographers he has worked alongside. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Sophie Prize for ’30 years of exposing injustice and promoting human rights.’ In 2009, he was awarded Australia’s human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize. He has received honorary doctorates from universities in the UK and abroad. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 22:50

  • Risks Abound After Santa Claus Rally Lifts Stocks
    Risks Abound After Santa Claus Rally Lifts Stocks

    By George Lei, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

    1. Chinese equities have enjoyed a stellar Santa Claus rally even though the country doesn’t officially celebrate Christmas. CSI 300 Index, the onshore benchmark, gained 2.8% in the final week of 2023 while the MSCI China Index soared 4.8% over the same period. The performance was the best in five months for both gauges. Investors have largely attributed the jump to bottom-fishing and year-end position adjustments, with some of the most battered sectors leading the year-end rally.

    Despite last week’s bounce, Chinese shares remain the world’s biggest losers in 2023 and whether the rebound can last into the new year depends a lot on the all-important real estate sector. Wall Street, however, isn’t too optimistic. The slump in China’s housing construction will continue in 2024, dragging down economic growth while government efforts to stabilize the sector will be inadequate to reverse the downturn, according to the consensus from ten investment banks and brokerages including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS.

    Until the housing market turns around, any dip-buying in Chinese equities will more likely be a short-term trade than a durable investment theme.

    2. Bureaucrats are still fumbling their policymaking even as top leaders urge them to “build the new before abolishing the old.” More than two years after a crackdown on the Internet and video-game sectors, vestiges of official disapproval remain, as evidenced by a raft of proposals to curb in-game spending and playing time just before Christmas. Some of China’s biggest online names shed $80 billion before recouping some of their losses.

    The silver lining, however, is that officials seemed to quickly realize the damages done and reacted almost immediately to calm markets, short of an explicitly admission of mea culpa. On Dec. 25, regulators said they approved a record 105 games for domestic publication and promised to review their controversial proposals.

    The media & entertainment sector remains a “timely buy” based on business cycle analysis, according to a research report from JPMorgan, which shrugged off the rout of game stocks. The sector’s forward 12-month P/E ratio now stands at a multi-year low of 11.8 times and the valuation gaps are at odds with a regulatory direction favoring large caps, analysts Wendy Liu and Alex Yao wrote last week. The US bank favors Tencent, NetEase and Baidu, all of which fell before Christmas and only one has recouped all its losses.

    3. A plethora of domestic problems still weigh on the Chinese currency, preventing it from catching up with the dollar. In December, the onshore yuan rose merely 0.5% versus the dollar, which by itself tumbled more than 2%. The currency ranked as No. 23 out of 31 peers of developed and developing nations tracked by Bloomberg.

    It is faring even worse against non-dollar peers, hovering near a four-month low on a trade-weighted basis according to a Bloomberg tracker of China’s trade-weighted yuan index. Most currencies of the nation’s major trade partners strengthened versus the greenback in December, led by a 5%-plus rally in the Japanese yen.

    In the final days of 2023, Chinese banks slashed their deposit rates for the third time this year and PBOC-backed Financial News suggested on Wednesday more reductions to both deposit and lending rates are likely in the pipeline. With no end in sight to rate cuts from Beijing, expectations of Fed easing alone won’t be enough to boost the Chinese currency.

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

  • 2023 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead
    2023 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead

    One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2022, we said that the year would be a very tough act to follow as the sheer breadth of stories, surprises, plot twists and unexpected developments made 2022 the most memorable year yet in our brief but turbulent history. This proved accurate: while 2023 did have a seemingly endless variety of social, economic, political, geopolitical and of course, financial and market, drama, the unprecedented onslaught of 2022 – which saw both the deadliest and most consequential global war since WWII and a historic inflationary onslaught – simply proved too great to beat…. although we are confident that’s only because the newsflow was merely resting ahead of 2024 when, thanks to a record number of elections across the world…

    … not to mention what may well be the most consequential presidential election in US history, the coming avalanche of news and propaganda will be sheer insanity, especially since the Fed has made its long awaited dovish pivot without successfully stamping out inflation first. So in retrospect, 2023 being somewhat tame by recent standards may have been a good thing: it allowed everyone to rest ahead of the main event.

    And speaking of the worst inflation in 40 years, it didn’t take long for our second major prediction to come true: as we said exactly one year ago the “simplest forecast about the coming year is that 2023 will be the year when something finally breaks.” That’s exactly what happened just three months later when the rapidly rising rates catalyzed the worst banking crisis in the US banking sector since the Lehman collapse. As the Fed raised rates, the value of banks’ bond portfolios fell, and those whose balance sheets were smaller – so pretty much all but the “Big 4” – found themselves in a toxic spiral of bank runs and asset liquidations, which culminated with virtually every small and regional bank on the verge of collapse, and some – such as the two largest California banks (those overseen by the “woke” San Fran Fed whose boss is the LGBTQueen of diversity, if not bank supervision, Mary Daly) First Republic, and Silicon Valley bank, as well as NY’s premium client-focused Signature Bank – were dragged into the vortex of bank insolvency, leading to over $500 billion in bank assets failing in a matter of days, matching the record from the global financial crisis.

    It was this “break” which culminated with the worst bank run and largest bank failures in 15 years – not to mention the overnight failure of Credit Suisse, the 167-year-old second largest Swiss bank that was bought by UBS for pennies (literally) thanks to Swiss taxpayers once again stuck footing the bill and holding the radioactive garbage – that preemptively ended the Fed’s tightening cycle (even if rate hikes continued for another 6 or so months, if only for optical reasons) and marked the end of the Fed’s reserve reduction…

    … which also triggered the start of the next bull market.

    Indeed, after bottoming around 3800 on March 10, the Fed’s intervention to prevent further bank contagion was all the market needed to know that the “Fed put” had been triggered, and the S&P closed the year 1000 points higher, less than a percent from the all time highs.

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    Another prediction about 2023 that came true is that as “the past three years so vividly showed, when it comes to actual surprises and all true “black swans”, it won’t be what anyone had expected.” And sure enough, books will be written (and certainly articles in the WSJ, Bloomberg and Zerohedge) about just how wrong everyone was: Exhibit A is this Goldman chart from January 2023, showing that “this is arguably the most widely anticipated recession.“

    Well, 2023 has come and gone and the recession-defining NBER remained quiet, with the US economy seemingly avoiding the contractionary fate of its European peers (at least on a “seasonally adjusted” basis), and as the recession was averted so was the bear market that so many strategists were certain was inevitable. It wasn’t just the recession that never officially materialized (hold that thought): as Bloomberg wrote , “all across Wall Street, on equities desks and bond desks, at giant firms and niche outfits, the mood was glum. It was the end of 2022 and everyone, it seemed, was game-planning for the recession they were convinced was coming…. blended together, three calls — sell US stocks, buy Treasuries, buy Chinese stocks — formed the consensus view on Wall Street.” And, as always happens, consensus on Wall Street proved to be wrong again.

    But was consensus really wrong? As usual, the answer is nuanced, because while on the surface the economy grew at a brisk pace, the reason for this growth was anything but benign, and as we explained in July, the catalyst behind the “miracle of Bidenomics” was a $1 trillion debt-funded “stealth” stimulus which pushed the US budget deficit above its $1 trillion trendline to crisis/wartime levels, up 50% from the previous year, and rising to a mindblowing $2 trillion for fiscal 2023 just behind the covid crisis years of 2020 and 2021.

    And while this “era of fiscal excess” as Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett laconically called the current period, noting that in the past 12 months the US government has spent $6.6 trillion, would – in theory at least – assure perpetual growth as long as one could issue ever more debt and pretend it was “growth”, in 2023 the US finally hit a historic milestone: $1 trillion in interest expense for the first time ever.

    That was a huge problem, because once spending on just US interest surpassed the entire US defense budget, people started to notice. It’s also why, with 10Y yields hitting 5% and putting the entire “dollar as a reserve currency” monetary hegemonic status quo in jeopardy as runaway debt interest threatened to blow up the perpetual engine that had made US superpower status in the past half century – that would be unconstrained US debt spending – possible, the Fed had no other choice but to pivot dovishly, just as we predicted in the waning days of 2022…

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    … which is what the Fed did in December 2023 – even as core inflation remains double the Fed’s 2% target – prompting speculation that the Fed has stealthily raised its long-standing 2% inflation target to 3% or even 4%, and thereby setting the state for the blow-off top in inflation some time in 2024 as the ghost of Arthur Burns finally comes home to roost in the Marriner Eccles buildng.

    Of course, the inevitable end of the inflation story (at least until the much more exciting sequel begins some time in 2024), had profound reverberations elsewhere, and as headline CPI dropped, wage growth – the BLS told us – surpassed inflation for the first time since the post-covid recovery began in the second half of 2020.

    While this would be great news for Biden as the 2024 election season kicks off and the “Big Guy” goes all in on his re-election campaign, there was just one problem: people either didn’t believe the data or just didn’t care. Indeed, most Americans, and especially swing-state voters, remained glum about the economy, and 52% of voters in these states rated the economy “poor” in closely watched polls this fall, with another 29% saying it was “only fair.”

    In short, Bidenomics was a dud, which is also why the White House started taking pages straight out of the Goebbels propaganda playbook. Yet what was bizarre if not outright paradoxical, is that US consumer spending remained high, especially on services such as concerts from Beyonce and Taylor Swift to movies like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

    Adding to the puzzle is that just as spending hit all-time highs, consumer confidence plunged to new, record lows.

    Many were confused over what accounted for the disconnect: persistently high prices? Recession fears? The “vibecession”? Whatever the explanation, voters’ feelings about the economy, and Joe Biden’s handling of it, will be decisive in the 2024 election, especially now that even the Fed pivoted in a way to tips the scales in Biden’s favor, something former NY Fed chief Bill Dudley urged all the way back in 2019.

    And speaking of wages overtaking inflation, this summer much of America ground to a halt as tens of thousands of actors and screenwriters went on strike in July, bringing Hollywood to a halt, amid fears that AI will put most of the local “talent” out of job (it will). The strikes were part of a wave of labor activity in the United States this year, including targeted strikes by the United Automobile Workers union. Despite the recent uptick, overall union activity has fallen since the 1970s and ’80s; still the strikes were successful with union workers managing to negotiate solid, double-digit raises for themselves, assuring that inflation’s return is just a matter of time.

    There was another big driver behind inflation both in 2022 and 2023, as not one but two brutal wars underscored the fragility of the global economic recovery and rewired the world’s trade relationships. For an example look no further than the geopolitics of oil. Prices soared above $120 a barrel after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, then steadily fell amid surging US oil production and signs of a global economic slowdown. Here China’s aborted attempt to escape from covid zero with a burst of growth was key… yet Beijing’s inability to flood the economy with stimulus was obvious to anyone who had seen China’s record 300% debt/GDP ratio: China simply had no more space where to park and hide any new growth, pardon debt.

    But while the Ukraine war slowly faded away from the front pages as Zelensky’s counteroffensive proved to be a disaster and now US and European officials and the legacy media are openly discussing a negotiated peace as the war’s “best” outcome (after blasting it as pro-Putin appeasement just one year ago), it was replaced in October with the violent and dramatic breakout of the most brutal Middle-East conflict in decades, as the Israel-Hamas war raised new fears that oil prices would spike and reignite inflation. Despite shipping snarls in the Red Sea and Suez Canal, those concerns have yet to materialize largely thanks to huge overproduction in the US at a time of rampant shale M&A activity as potential acquisition targets do everything they can to literally flood the market and boost EBITDA and cash flow in hopes of impressing potential suitors. This too shall pass, and very soon.

    Until then, however, thanks to the Russia-Ukraine war, India and China have emerged as key beneficiaries. India, profiting from its neutrality, went from buying hardly any Russian oil to buying about half of what the country exports by sea.

    Trade between China and Russia has also surged, surpassing $200 billion in the first 11 months of this year while Chinese cars are now flooding Russia.

    Not surprisingly, just a few days ago we learned that the Chinese yuan has overtaken the Japanese yen to become the fourth most-used currency by value in global payments.

    Of course, it’s not just Russia benefiting from China’s redirected trade routes: countries like Mexico and Vietnam have also gained ground. And since those countries import mostly intermediate goods from China, American supply chains still remain reliant on Chinese production. In fact, China is now the dominant supplier of industrial inputs across the world.

    As other countries have seen a pick up in Chinese trade, China’s share of exports to the United States has fallen in recent years, as a result of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and maintained by Biden even though tensions between the two superpowers stabilized briefly after Biden’s meeting with President Xi Jinping of China on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November… even though Biden again calling Xi a dictator for the second time went over as a lead spy balloon in Beijing, as Anthony Blinken’s face made abundantly clear.

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    Still, there is another reason why the US can’t decouple easily from China: semiconductors. China is a major market for these advanced computer chips, which can be used to power artificial intelligence systems. This fall, the Biden administration tightened its export controls on semiconductors, making it harder for U.S. companies to sell them to China. But big chipmakers like Nvidia are already working on modified chips to sell to Chinese markets, hoping to skirt the restrictions.

    And speaking of Nvidia, we would be remiss not to mention the single biggest market narrative – and tech story – of 2023, namely the unprecedented AI mania, which manifested itself in an explosion in the “Magnificent 7” mega tech stocks which now make up a record 30% of the S&P’s market cap…

    … thanks to a historic outperformance of this group of 7 tech names which doubled their price in 2023 even as much of the rest of the market went nowhere this year, at least until the Fed’s dovish pivot, which finally lifted all boats in the last two weeks of the year.

    It wasn’t just the latest stock bubble however: the world’s infatuation with the chatGPT chatbot led to an explosion of investment in generative A.I. start-ups, including Microsoft’s $10 billion backing in OpenAI. Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI has since come under scrutiny, particularly its role in the reinstatement of Sam Altman as OpenAI’s CEO after a boardroom coup that set off a chaotic five days at the start-up and was a moment of unforgettable drama for nerds everywhere. Whether A.I. remains the market juggernaut it was in 2023 may be decided in the courts: on Dec. 27, The New York Times became the first major American media organization to sue OpenAI and Microsoft over A.I.-related copyright issues, saying in the lawsuit that the companies should be held responsible for the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.”

    What is just as remarkable is that people actually use ChatGPT or rather chat LGPTQ, since we now have proof that as a large language model it uses data and signal exclusively from hard-liberal and leftist organizations, thus making most of its “answers” false, unreliable, “woke” and generally useless.

    And speaking of the latest attempt to control and dominate the conversation, this time using chatGPT, we remind readers that away from markets and geopolitical conflicts, the next most important topic in the past year were the revelations from the Twitter Files and subsequent exposes, all revealing just how little free speech there really is in the so-called land of the free and the home of the First Amendment, and how countless three-lettered, deep-state alphabet agencies – and the military-industrial complex – will do anything and everything to control both the official discourse and the unofficial narrative to keep their preferred puppets in the White House, and keep those they disapprove of – censored and/or locked up, both literally and metaphorically… or simply designate them “conspiracy theorists.” None other than Matt Taibbi wrote the best summary of what the Twitter Files revealed, namely America’s stealthy conversion into a crypto-fascist state where some unelected government bureaucrat tells corporations what to do and decides the fate of ordinary Americans every single day without any due process:

    This last week saw the FBI describe Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and me as “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole aim” is to discredit the agency. That statement will look ironic soon, as we spent much of this week learning about other agencies and organizations that can now also be discredited thanks to these files.

    A group of us spent the last weeks reading thousands of documents. For me a lot of that time was spent learning how Twitter functioned, specifically its relationships with government. How weird is modern-day America? Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report.

    I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire. A subplot is these companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus, although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed. Details on those “Other Government Agencies” soon, probably tomorrow.

    One happy-ish thought at month’s end:

    Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one?

    I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years.

    One year later, the legacy media has only gotten worse, with the likes of the NYT, publishers of such tripe seeking to justify an illegitimate and corrupt first crime family, and WaPo spewing propaganda for the corrupt elite, and officially becoming the PR arm of both the White House and the Military Industrial Complex/ US Intel Services/ Deep State. Meanwhile, X (fka Twitter), once the most corrupt and censored social media network in the world, has emerged as a bastion of free speech (Elon even brought back Alex Jones) even as virtue-signaling corporations (who all work in conjunction with the deep state in hopes of getting some fast-track access to those very generous taxpayer-funded government contracts) are doing everything in their power to demonetize and starve the company by pulling their ads; we say this as one of the first media outlets that was dubbed “conspiracy theorists” by the authorities, long before everyone else joined the club. Oh yes, we’ve been there: we were suspended for half a year on Twitter for telling the truth about Covid, and then we lost most of our advertisers after the Atlantic Council‘s weaponized “fact-checkers” such as Newsguard put us on every ad agency’s black list while anonymous CIA sources at the AP slandered us for being “Kremlin puppets” – which reminds us: for those with the means, desire and willingness to support us, please do so by becoming a premium member: we are now almost entirely reader-funded so your financial assistance will be instrumental to ensure our continued survival into 2024 and beyond.

    The bottom line, at least for us, is that the past four years have been a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which makes the dystopian nightmare of 1984 seem more real each day, and we have since taken measures. Three years ago, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn’t our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us for good. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the censorship bandwagon rolls out much more aggressively in the coming year when, with the 2024 elections at stake, the deep state will stop at nothing to silence all independent voices.

    And why would they: just a few days ago, some woke, unelected Karen in Maine named Shenna Bellows showed just how far the left was willing to go when she decided that it is incumbent upon her – and her alone – to determine what is in the best interest of hundreds of millions of Americans when this secretary of state – not some court, not some group of elected officials – decided to remove Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot and disenfranchise half of the country (something democrats have shown a tremendous aptitude for, even as they are more than eager to collect taxes from those who still generate income and pay some of it back to the government as taxes, i.e. mostly republicans). Even a Democratic congressman who voted to impeach Trump over the January 6th riots, quickly issued a statement: “We are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.” Matt Taibbi summarized it best: “Is there any way this ends well? It feels harder and harder to imagine. “

    As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website – which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from either Putin or the KGB either, sorry CIA) and has never spent one dollar on marketing – a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine.

    Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we – and others who do not comply with the established narrative – have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, it is clearly a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from “dangerous, fake information.” It’s also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website.

    In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech to only accelerate in the coming year especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2023 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch with a ten foot pole, both out of fear of repercussions and because the MSM has now become a PR agency for either a political party or some unelected, deep state bureaucrat, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an information vacuum (in less than a decade, Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter will seem like one of the century’s biggest bargains) and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which established media outlets refuse to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory “fake news” condemnation.

    We are grateful that our readers have, for the 15th year in a row, realized that it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn’t “fake news.”

    * * *

    And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, almost 14-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 , 2021 and 2022.

    So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year.

    • In 20th spot with 540,000 views, was one of the year’s first admissions that – contrary to the prevailing propaganda – the war in Ukraine, which would end up being a $100BN+ and rising drain on taxpayer funds, was not going as widely reported; in fact it wasn’t going at all. Indeed, as we observed in “NBC Reporter Goes To Crimea, Shocks Viewers By Telling The Truth“ the Deep State’s favorite media outlet, MSNBC made the first concession that Zelensky’s goal of retaking Crime is unrealistic and dangerous. In response, the establishment reporter immediately wound up on the Ukrainian government’s kill list. But while Ukraine may have succeeded in silencing this one particular pawn, subsequent revelations and an ongoing internal power struggle inside Ukraine, all but guarantee that the war is almost over and that the Biden family’s crimes in Ukraine will sooner or later make the light of day .

    • Another topic which none in the media would discuss openly, or truthfully, for fears of retaliation from the deep state was the article that was the 19th most popular of the year. Over 543,000 readers were probably not too shocked to learn that according to famed journalist and Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh, the infamous Nord Stream sabotage of 2022 was yet another CIA covert op, meant to incite an escalation of conflict in the Russian-Ukraine war, and to terminally halt Russian transit of natural gas to Europe. Who benefited? Why the US of course, as shipments of LNG to Europe (as the US stepped in to “generously” replace Russia as a source of gas) blew away all records. In fact, one could argue that the Ukraine war was orchestrated precisely for that one purpose: to ensure that US nat gas exports would boom for years to come courtesy of a captive market, Europe, which would be prevented from importing much cheaper Russian gas for years to come.

    • Almost 5 years after the breakout of the covid pandemic which crippled global economies and led to the injection of tens of trillions in monetary and fiscal stimulus, precipitating the biggest inflationary wave in modern history, there is still no definitive explanation of where the virus came from (or rather, escaped) and why there has been no punishment yet for those Wuhan Institute workers (and those Americans giving them instructions and funding) responsible for countless deaths and millions of businesses shut down. However, when a mysterious Chinese biolab was discovered in a remote California City,  some 543K Zerohedge readers wondered what if any connection this lab in the middle of nowhere had to i) covid, ii) China’s bioweapons industry and iii) how many more such labs exist across the US and what exactly are they doing? That was enough to make this bizarre story the 18th most popular on this website in 2023.

    • For the 17th most read article we go to a topic the mainstream media, which sadly has become a PR and Propaganda arm of the White House, the deep state and the military industrial complex, has steadfastly refused the touch namely the unprecedented corruption in the country which the Biden admin and various MIC-adjacent politicians have decided is the newest US state: Ukraine. Early in 2023, we reported that “Ukraine Is Rocked By Corruption Scandal, Wave Of Top Officials Resign: Sports Cars, Mansions & Luxury Vacations As People Suffered“, however none of that matters since none of the legacy media dared to expose just who all those tens of billions in US taxpayer funds have gone to. And now, almost a year later, Ukraine is losing the war, Zelensky and his comrades are on slowly but surely on their way out, and yet nobody knows where that $100BN+ in funds have gone. We can certainly hope that one day, long after the biggest money-laundering experiment in modern history is over, forensic historians will trace all that money which is bigger than the GDP of most nations, however – just like the Epstein client list – we doubt it will ever happen.

    • Nearly 560K readers were surprised to learn that the Magic Kingdom has become so expensive, almost nobody can afford to go there any more. Indeed, in 2023 a trip to Walt Disney World or Disneyland with the whole family has become simply too expensive leading many to ask “Where Is Everyone? Disney World “Just About Empty“ as CEO Bob Iger himself admitted customer affordability issues; add the direct consequences of price-gouging families, plus the ‘woke’ backlash, and you get one of the slowest periods at Walt Disney World in Orlando on July 4 in a decade. Meanwhile the plunge of Disney stock to a decade low coupled with South Park now mercilessly mocking the hollow shell of a woke company, spark some hope that after a wholesale sacking of the incompetent management, the slate may be wiped clean and the company can go back to doing what it does best: not grooming or propaganda but innocent entertainment for generations of children.

    • Confirming yet again that the cover up is always worse than the crime, the 15th most popular post of 2023 with over 560K hits focused on the still unfolding consequences of the biggest story of 2020, namely the unprecedented cover up of the covid “vaccine” as a “Bombshell Vax Analysis Found $147 Billion In Economic Damage, Tens Of Millions Injured Or Disabled.” And since the corrupt and captured media still refuses to do its jobs and get to the bottom of who benefited – and what were the full consequences – from rushing the biggest medical experiment in history, it is the independent media, which is increasingly performing the investigative role of the MSM, that will benefit from the corruption and capture that has dominated what was once the fourth estate but is now just a waning shadow of its former formidable self.

    • 2023 was not only a year where many cover-ups were exposed; it was also a year when “something finally broke”, and it wasn’t just US regional banks: in March, as the world was rocked by a relentless wave of bank runs, the second largest Swiss bank got Lehmaned, and failed over a long weekend, despite obtaining a government backstop just hours earlier as we detailed in “Credit Suisse To Borrow $54BN From SNB To “Pre-emptively Strengthen Liquidity,” a story which was read by 572K readers – many of whom current or former Credit Suisse customers – making it the 14th most popular story of 2023. In the end it was not enough, because once confidence in a bank is shaken it never returns, and neither do the deposits that have been pulled… and so less than a week later, Credit Suisse was no more, its existence over after 167 years, with UBS taking over (with the generous funding of Swiss taxpayers) and becoming the most systematically important European bank, one which not even all of Switzerland will be able to backstop during the next banking crisis.

    • With historic presidential elections on deck in 2024, and a repeat of the 2020 violence – where secretive Soros-funded entities funded and encouraged a bloody summer across the US  – virtually assured, it is worth recalling what Tucker Carlson reported a few months ago, namely that the catalyst behind much of the government-encouraged Black Lives Matter violence of 2020, was fake and “The Whole George Floyd Story Was A Lie“, a report which was watched and read by nearly 600K people. Unfortunately, with much of the US judicial system in Soros’ pocket, and with dozens of big city DAs seeking to decriminalize rioting and theft by the black community, more violence is guaranteed, the only question is what fake pretext the deep state will use this time.

    • On the last day of 2022 we predicted that “2023 will be the year when something finally breaks“, and three months later we were proven right, when as a result of soaring rates US regional banks suddenly found that the value of their fixed income collateral was worth far less when marked to market than the deposits it was pledged against, resulting in widespread liquidity and solvency fears, accelerating bank runs and culminating with the second Fed panic since 2008, as “Signature Bank Was Closed By Regulators; Fed, TSY, FDIC Announce Another Banking System Bailout“, a reminder to no less than 621K readers that the US financial system was as brittle and unstable as ever despite trillions in liquidity injected into the market and meant only to make the rich richer. Nearly a year later, the regional US bank zombies that would have collapsed in March live on thanks to the Fed’s BTFP facility which matures in March, and which if pulled would lead to an even greater crisis in the US banking sector. Ironically that’s also when the Fed’s Reverse Repo facility is expected to be drained to zero, so if anyone is trying to pin the date of the next financial crisis in the calendar, March increasingly looks like the prime month for that.

    • Following the start of October’s Israel-Hamas war, the bloodiest breakout of Middle-Eastern violence in decades, we said that “there is some speculation that Iran may get dragged in with various pro-Israeli hawks claiming that the Hamas attack would have only occurred with explicit Iranian backing.” Just a few hours later this was confirmed as we reported in “Iran Helped Hamas “Plot Israel Attack Over Several Weeks”, Gave Green Light“, the 11th most popular article of 2023, which revealed that “Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday”, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah. But while the US would have swiftly retaliated in the past, if only to convince the world that it is still a military superpower, so far the Biden regime has remained silent, terrified of a military response, but not because of some newfound appreciation for state sovereignty or non-intervention, but simply because the president is afraid what a surge in oil and gas prices – which would be an inevitable outcome of Iran getting dragged into the war – would mean for his re-election chances.

    • In case you didn’t figure it out by now, 2023 was a year when many cover ups were exposed, and among the most flagrant ones was the leak of the Nashville transsexual shooter’s manifesto, which as we revealed in “Biden’s DOJ suppressed the Nashville Transkiller’s manifesto after learning they used Democrat talking points to justify targeting white Christian children“, which with over 670K reads was the 10th most popular article of 2023, revealed that Biden’s DOJ suppressed the Nashville Transkiller’s manifesto after learning it used Democrat talking points to justify targeting white Christian children. Of course, the DOJ never had any such qualms when revealing motives from the other side of the political aisle, confirming yet again that there is nothing too low for Biden’s weaponized Department of Injustice to stoop below, not even death.

    • Continuing our trek through the top 10 stories of 2023, we next look at the immediate aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war, where just hours after the violence had broken out, the world quickly revealed how little it thought of the Biden administration, and US “superpower status”, when as 731K readers found out, “Arab Leaders Refuse To Meet Biden As Protests Rage Around The World.” The title is self-explanatory – and an embarrassment to Americans – even if said Americans deserve to know just who is the puppet-master pulling the strings of the senile, demented occupant of the White House.

    • Remember when merely breathing the world “Ivermectin” in the aftermath of the covid pandemic was enough to blacklist you from social media and polite society in perpetuity, and get you branded as a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist for life? Well, if we have learned anything in recent years, is that the time from when an idea emerges as a “conspiracy” to when it is fully confirmed even by the powers that be has shrunk to mere months, and as we reported in “FDA Drops Ivermectin Bombshell“, our 8th most popular article of 2023, nearly 740K readers learned from an FDA lawyer that doctors were, in fact, free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The case had been brought by three doctors who alleged the FDA unlawfully interfered with their practice of medicine with the statements. Then a federal judge dismissed the case in 2022, prompting an appeal. “The fundamental issue in this case is straightforward. After the FDA approves the human drug for sale, does it then have the authority to interfere with how that drug is used within the doctor-patient relationship? The answer is no,” Jared Kelson, representing the doctors, told the appeals court. Hilariously, the FDA on Aug. 21, 2021, wrote on Twitter “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” In retrospect it was right: it turned out most people who believed the government’s lies were at best sheep.

    • Tragedy rocked the town of East Palestine, Ohio last February when the derailment of a train carrying toxic and carcinogenic compounds resulted in a historic chemical spill and led  to large sections of the town becoming unlivable as reported in “Ohio’s Apocalyptic Chemical Disaster Rages On“, the 7th most popular story of 2023 with over 755K views. The spill immediately became a political flashpoint, with Donald Trump visiting East Palestine and handed out Make America Great Again hats, telling the crowd: “You are not forgotten.” Unfortunately, the town has certainly been forgotten by the current “president” who to this day has refused to visit the town despite countless promises he would do just that.

    • In many ways, 2023 was the year when alternative, independent media truly took over, and it wasn’t just X/Twitter that dominated the news, while being the news: it is also the year when traditional media fell apart, such as the various anchors fleeing the sinking ship that is CNN, but the most vivid example was Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News – the channel that was only relevant because of Tucker’s segment – and the launch of his own media organization. As so many others have found out, media personalities were only allowed to truly speak their minds when separated from the corporations where they operated previously (so as not to offend advertisers), something Tucker understood and laid out in one of his most bombshell interviews, explaining why “Our System Is Collapsing In Real Time“, which was also our 6th most read article with 762K reads.

    • Finally, turning to the top 5 articles of 2023, it should not be a surprise that with almost 810K reads, the 5th most popular post of the year was the news that – with the Ukraine war fading from collective consciousness – a major new war had broken out in the Middle East, something we reported in “Israel In State of War With Hamas After Palestinian Militants Launch Unprecedented Incursion.”

    • Remember what we said about coverups? Well, it took less than three years from when Hunter Biden’s notebook emerged in the media – with the entire deep state apparatus defending it at first, and 51 former CIA spies vowing it was Russian propaganda – until all of its official contents were leaked as we reported in “Trove Of Nearly 10K Hunter Biden Laptop Photos, Docs Appear On Organized Website.” Among the contents were not only documented acts of criminal debauchery, but also proof that the Biden family was engaged in flagrant influence peddling on behalf of such foreign regimes as Ukraine and China. Alas, the US justice system is now so corrupt and broken, and the media so captured, this news has seen barely any coverage and follow through; and meanwhile the gutless republican cowards in Congress still refuse to impeach the president despite ample proof – courtesy of his son – of his countless transgressions.

    • With over 875K reads, and clocking in at third spot for 2023, was one of the biggest shockers of the year: the decision by Murdoch and Fox News to sack their only true star, Tucker Carlson; And for what? For daring to speak to truth one too many times as we reported in “Tucker Carlson Fired By Lachlan Murdoch; Here’s What We Know.” In retrospect, it will be the best thing that happened to Tucker, whose new venture already has well over 100,000 annual subs and growing at a torrid pace. Meanwhile, the biggest winner may well be the US population, which will have one more source of honest, accurate news while the malignant influence of conventional media fades with each passing day.

    • The second most popular story of 2023 was also a freak one: the short-lived attempt by Putin’s formerly close friend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner private mercenary force, to stage a military coup, yet not really a coup meant to overthrow Putin but instead targeted some of Prigozhin’s personal enemies in the top ranks of Russia’s army. The “Wagner rebellion” as it became known – and which came shortly after Prigozhin’s forces managed to smack down a Ukraine attempt at a counteroffensive earlier this summer – lasted all of a day or so, before it all died down as reported in “Prigozhin ‘Exiled’ To Belarus In Exchange For Peace, Criminal Charges Dropped: What Was This All About?” the second most popular article of 2023 with nearly 900K reads. To this day there is no coherent explanation behind Prigozhin’s actions, and there probably won’t be: two months later the plane carrying the mercenary chief exploded. It’s still unclear why, but the most amusing theory was the one offered by Putin himself, who claimed that “Wagner leadership got drunk and/or high, then set off hand grenades during the flight.”

    • Finally, the top post of 2023 was one which also closed the loop on the top story of 2020: with nearly 1.1 million reads, the most popular article of the year was the “CDC Finally Releasing VAERS Safety Monitoring Analyses For COVID Vaccines.” While the article offered lots of data, the bottom line is that the vaccine which the CDC claimed was safe and effective was neither safe nor effective.

    And with all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2024, and the next decade?

    We don’t know: as our frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don’t try, despite repeat baseless allegations that we constantly forecast the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the “smartest people in the room” who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2023 when one year after the entire world realized just how clueless the Fed had been when it called the most crushing inflation in two generations “transitory”, it was Wall Street’s reputation turn to hit new lows as even Bloomberg listed “Everything Wall Street Got Wrong in 2023“, in the process adding strategists and analysts to the clueless ranks of economists, conventional media and the professional polling class, not to mention all those “scientists” who made a mockery of both the scientific method and the “expert class” with their catastrophically bungled response to the covid pandemic, and then the response to the response, and so on… We merely observe, find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it.

    We do know, however, that with central banks having flip-flopped yet again, and pivoting dovishly even as inflation still rages at 4%, wages – especially for unionized and government workers – growing at a double digit pace, home prices and rents about to lurch even higher, and overall prices stuck at all time highs, the most likely outcome is another surge in inflation and Jerome Powell becoming not the second coming of saint Paul Volcker but of satan Arthur Burns.

    But even ignoring the impact on prices, one can’t just undo 15 years of central bank mistakes by wishing them away (even if it is an election year); after all it is the trillions and trillions in monetary stimulus, the helicopter money, the MMT, and the endless deficit funding by central banks that made the current runaway inflation possible, the current attempt to stuff 15 years of toothpaste back into the tube, will be a catastrophic failure.

    We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will again be revealed as completely naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone’s guess. But, as we have promised – and delivered – every year for the past 15, we will be there to document every aspect of it.

    Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2024, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2023 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day – usually with a cynical smile (and with the CIA clearly on our ass now) – helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that defines every aspect of our increasingly broken economic, political and financial system.

    AI is not completely useless

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 21:55

  • South Korea Opposition Leader Stabbed In Neck, Attacker Arrested
    South Korea Opposition Leader Stabbed In Neck, Attacker Arrested

    South Korea’s main opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung was attacked by an unidentified assailant during a visit to the southern coastal city of Busan and rushed to a hospital after he was bleeding from his neck.

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    Lee was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidential election in 2022. He has also been faced various charges for alleged graft, which he has denied.

    Witnesses said said the suspect had approached Lee for an autograph and pretending to be a supporter. He then attacked him with a weapon that was between 8 and 12 inches long.

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    The alleged attacker has been arrested.

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    The extent of his injuries are unknown…

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    President Yoon Suk Yeol expressed deep concern and over the incident “that should have never taken place,” Yonhap cited a presidential spokesperson as saying.

    Developing…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 21:50

  • China Equities Holding Onto Hopes For A Turnaround
    China Equities Holding Onto Hopes For A Turnaround

    By Garfield Reynolds, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

    China stocks may be poised for higher ground after a dismal year.

    Chinese investors may be glad to say goodbye to 2023, given the serial disappointments they faced during a year that opened with a wave of optimism that the nation’s abrupt reopening from Covid curbs will lead to the sort of robust recovery other major economies had experienced when they ended such restrictions. There were indeed strong initial surges for activity and for asset prices, but those soon dissolved into a relentless downhill slide.

    This year is opening with a gloomier tone — house sales continue to decline, while China’s official manufacturing and services PMIs each came in below expectations for December. But perhaps that provides a clearer path for the bleeding to stop, and for some sort of sustained turnaround to develop. Indeed, almost a third of 417 respondents to Bloomberg’s latest survey say they will increase their China investments over the next 12 months.

    For equities, in particular, the Shanghai Composite has now bounced off of the 2,800 era on three occasions over the past two years. And the China Composite PMI is holding above the 50 line to remain in expansion territory, even if only slightly above.

    For China and the wider Asia-Pacific, the question of whether the region’s biggest economy can put the worst behind it looms as a key one for 2024, and perhaps even beyond.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 21:25

  • Student Loan Borrowers Stage A "Massive Student Debt Strike"
    Student Loan Borrowers Stage A “Massive Student Debt Strike”

    Authored by Sam Bourgi via CreditNews.com,

    It’s been three months since the federal government resumed student loan payments, but many borrowers have refused to pay a single penny…

    Activists say borrowers have staged a “massive student debt strike” as they await progress—any progress—on the White House’s student loan forgiveness program.

    “Faced with the impossible choice of feeding their kids, keeping a roof over their head, or throwing an average of $400 a month into the Department of Education incinerator, borrowers are rightly choosing to keep themselves and their families financially afloat,” said Astra Taylor, co-founder of Debt Collective, a union advocating on behalf of debtors.

    According to the Department of Education, 22 million borrowers had payments due in October but only 13 million settled their bills.

    That means 40% of borrowers failed to make payments.

    Creditnews reported in September that the resumption of student loan payments would hit American families hard, but very few expected four out of ten borrowers to miss payments. Before the pandemic, about one-quarter of student loan borrowers were dodging payments.

    Some experts think the transition back to loan repayment after more than three years of forbearance will be bumpy. As it turns out, students aren’t the only ones to blame.

    What has changed since the pandemic?

    Student loans went into forbearance in March 2020 just as Covid-era lockdowns forced millions out of work. Over that period, Americans grew accustomed to not paying back their loans and used the money to tackle other expenses like rent or grocery bills.

    Reallocating up to $500 a month to student loan payments was always going to be difficult—especially with high inflation and elevated borrowing costs.

    But according to Persis Yu, deputy executive director at the Student Borrower Protection Center, it wasn’t just borrowers who were unprepared for the October shock.

    “Neither borrowers nor the student loan system were prepared to resume repayment,” Yu told CNBC.

    “Servicers are overwhelmed and are failing to help struggling borrowers navigate the options that are available to them,” she said.

    Carolina Rodriguez of the nonprofit Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program agrees. “Servicers are having a very hard time getting people back into repayment,” she said.

    Student loan forgiveness: Reality or pipe dream?

    Many student loan borrowers are waiting for debt relief promised to them by the Biden administration, but those efforts have hit a major snag.

    President Biden initially proposed a $400 billion bailout program that would erase up to $20,000 in federal debt for roughly 40 million borrowers. The Supreme Court struck down the plan in June, claiming that the president overstepped his authority.

    Since then, the Department of Education has been working with a panel of experts to negotiate a watered-down version of the program. But even they have failed to reach a consensus so far.

    An Education Department spokesperson said the panel is on track to submit a new student debt relief proposal by May, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll get passed.

    2024 is an election year, and student loan forgiveness is a hotly debated issue, with several conservative lawmakers promising to block any attempts to erase student loans with taxpayer dollars.

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

  • These Are The 20 Most Popular Neighborhoods For Potential US Homebuyers
    These Are The 20 Most Popular Neighborhoods For Potential US Homebuyers

    Location, location, location…

    This phrase has been a real estate mantra since time immemorial, and rightly so. Finding the right home is impossible without finding the right neighborhood.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Freny Fernandes details below, thousands of U.S. homebuyers scout online real estate marketplaces daily, searching for the right home. But these sites also attract window shoppers curious about the country’s nicest neighborhoods and luxurious homes.

    And so, HouseFresh has compiled the top 20 most popular neighborhoods by online interest, based on the search history of Zillow users.

    Methodology

    This study assessed sales listings from the 100 most populous cities in the U.S.

    It noted the neighborhood and page views for every house, townhome, apartment, and condo, and the number of days it had been listed on the website to calculate the average page views per day.

    Average daily views across each neighborhood were then combined and ranked to reveal the top 20 neighborhoods. Neighborhoods with fewer than 10 listings were excluded from the rankings.

    America’s Most Popular Neighborhoods by Search Interest

    In the post-pandemic world, surging housing prices have been a critical concern for American homebuyers.

    That’s likely why the most popular neighborhood—Northeast Dallas, which is highly sought-after for being in a strong market with lots of options in both size and affordability—can outperform more famous neighborhoods in viewing interest.

    Here are how different neighborhoods in the U.S. stacked up:

    Other strong cities for both first-time and second-time home buyers performed well. With affordable house values, sunny skies, large recreation spaces, and a dry climate, Phoenix had the strongest interest for a single city with three neighborhoods in the top 10: Camelback East, North Mountain, and Deer Valley.

    On the other end of the spectrum were some of the nation’s most valuable real estate markets. Los Angeles’ celebrity hub of Hollywood Hills had the highest average price per listing at $2.3 million, and was the second-most popular neighborhood in average daily views. Listings in New York’s affluent Upper East Side also drew in crowds and was the 5th most viewed neighborhood.

    The Zillow data has revealed that a neighborhood’s popularity varies depending on the viewer. While some look for affordable neighborhoods with big houses and parks, others have their eyes on the glamor of a vibrant city, irrespective of the cost.

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

  • Jack Smith Disputes Trump’s Claims In Appeals Court
    Jack Smith Disputes Trump’s Claims In Appeals Court

    Authored by Allen Zhong via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Special Counsel Jack Smith Saturday urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reject President Donald Trump’s immunity and double-jeopardy claim that he will be retried for similar charges on which he has already been acquitted.

    (Left) Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks in Washington on Aug. 1, 2023. (Right) Former President Donald Trump attends his trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Dec. 7, 2023. (Drew Angerer, David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

    President Trump is not entitled to immunity in the election case and the criminal charges against him also didn’t violate the principle of double jeopardy, the prosecutors argued.

    Immunity for a U.S. president applies to civil liability only and not criminal, the special counsel’s office claimed.

    “The defendant, a former President, does not enjoy immunity from federal prosecution for the offenses charged in this case. Under separation-of-powers analysis, the President’s unique constitutional status provides immunity from civil liability for official conduct … but it does not render a former President immune from criminal liability when charged with violations of generally applicable federal criminal statutes,” reads the filing.

    Meanwhile, although President Trump has been acquitted after being impeached over an event connected to Jan. 6, the special counsel’s office argued that its criminal charges filed against him don’t violate the principle of double jeopardy because the only remedies in an impeachment proceeding are removal from the office and disqualification. Mr. Smith argued those likely don’t meet the term “jeopardy.”

    Even if President Trump was put into jeopardy during the impeachment proceeding, the indictment charges filed by his office are different from what President Trump was impeached for, the special counsel argued.

    Accordingly, Mr. Smith asked the appeal court to reject President Trump’s immunity and double-jeopardy defenses and affirm the district court’s ruling.

    Mr. Smith also pushed the court to rule on this promptly.

    “For the foregoing reasons, the Court should affirm the district court’s order denying the defendant’s motions to dismiss on Presidential-immunity and double-jeopardy grounds,” the prosecutors wrote. “The Government respectfully requests the Court to issue the mandate five days after the entry of judgment. Such an approach would appropriately require any party seeking further review to do so promptly.”

    Background

    Judge Tanya Chutkan for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Dec. 1 that President Trump is not immune from prosecution in the government’s election interference case.

    In her ruling, Judge Chutkan said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

    “Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” she wrote. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”

    U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in a file photo. (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts via AP)

    The former president appealed the ruling in the D.C. Circuit Court, which agreed to expedite the case per a request from the special prosecutor’s office.

    According to the order, President Trump’s opening brief was due by Dec. 23. The order emphasized that issues and arguments should be raised in the opening brief, discouraging new points in the reply brief for consideration.

    “The court ordinarily will not consider issues and arguments raised for the first time in the reply brief,” reads the order.

    This decision follows statements by the attorneys representing President Trump accusing the special counsel’s office of election interference in a recent appeals court filing after Mr. Smith requested to expedite the appeal so that the case can go to trial on March 4, 2024. March 4 is one day before Super Tuesday, the U.S. presidential primary election day.

    District Judge Chutkan agreed to pause the case in the district court while the appeal is pending.

    “The court agrees with both parties that Defendant’s appeal automatically stays any further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant,” she wrote. “The court hereby stays the deadlines and proceedings scheduled by its Pretrial Order.”

    She clarified that this would pause the pretrial deadlines, not vacate them.

    Jack Smith Accused of Rushing Trial

    In an apparent push for a rushed trial in the Trump case, the special counsel asked the D.C. Circuit Court and the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to rule on President Trump’s claims of presidential immunity and double jeopardy.

    The circuit court agreed to act swiftly, while the SCOTUS rejected Mr. Smith’s request for it to hear the case ahead of proceedings in the circuit court, which was widely regarded as a victory for President Trump.

    “The petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment is denied,” the highest U.S. court ruled on Dec. 22.

    President Trump’s attorneys have accused the special counsel’s office of pushing to rush the case through the courts.

    “The only coherent principle that emerges from the prosecution’s filings is based on strategic gamesmanship rather than the law: On behalf of the Biden Administration, the prosecution will do everything that it can to rush to an unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair trial to try to prevent President Trump from winning the 2024 election, which he is currently leading,” President Trump’s attorneys wrote in a court filing.

    The defense team has already accused the prosecution of being politically motivated in multiple court filings, echoing President Trump’s public speeches claiming that the indictments against him have come at the behest of President Joe Biden, his chief political rival for reelection.

    Catherine Yang, Caden Pearson, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 19:50

  • Ex-CIA Officer Says Ukraine A 'Sinking Ship' After NYT Highlights Recruitment Crisis
    Ex-CIA Officer Says Ukraine A ‘Sinking Ship’ After NYT Highlights Recruitment Crisis

    Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky issued a customary speech to the nation wherein he advanced a vision of optimism even as the already war-ravaged country is under Russian bombs and drones. Putin has said Monday that these aerial operations will “intensify”. 

    Zelensky vowed to see Ukraine transformed into an arms production powerhouse, saying in the Sunday televised speech that “next year, the enemy will feel the wrath of domestic production.”

    “Our weapons, our equipment, artillery, our shells, our drones, our naval ‘greetings’ to the enemy and at least a million Ukrainian FPV drones,” he added. “All of which we will generously use… On land, in the sky, and, of course, at sea.”

    Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP

    Speaking of the West-sponsored pilot training program, which is happening in northern Europe and in America, Zelensky claimed that Ukrainian trainees are “already mastering” F-16 jets and that they’ll “definitely” soon be seen in Ukraine’s skies to that “our enemies can certainly see what our real wrath is.”

    Friday witnessed one of the largest missile and drone strikes carried out by Russian forces since the war began, but in the wake of this Zelensky said that no matter how many “the enemy” launches, Ukrainians “will still rise.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 19:15

  • The Year That Expertise Collapsed
    The Year That Expertise Collapsed

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

    Getting sick and getting well is part of the human experience at all times in all places. As with other phenomena of human existence, that suggests there is a great deal of embedded knowledge on the topic woven into the fabric of our lives. We aren’t born knowing but we come to know: from our moms and dads, experience of siblings and others, from our own experience, and from medical professionals who deal with the problem daily.

    In a healthy and functioning society, the path toward maintaining personal and public health becomes embedded in the cultural firmament, just like manners, belief systems, and value preferences.

    It’s not necessary that we think about it constantly; instead it becomes a habit, with much of the knowledge tacit; that is, deployed daily but rarely with full cognizance.

    We could know for certain that there had been a change in the matrix in March 2020 because, seemingly out of nowhere, all of this knowledge was deemed wrong.

    A new gaggle of experts was in charge, one day to the next. Suddenly, they were everywhere. They were on TV, quoted by all the newspapers, amplified on social media, and on the phone constantly with local officials instructing them on how they must shut down the schools, businesses, playgrounds, churches, and civic gatherings.

    The message was always the same. This time is completely different from anything in our experience or in any previous experience. This time we must adopt a totally new and completely untested paradigm. It comes from models that high-level scientists have deemed correct. It comes from labs. It comes from “germ games” of which none of us are part. If we dare to reject the new teachings for the old, we are doing it wrong. We are the malicious ones. We deserve ridicule, cancellation, silencing, exclusion, and worse.

    It felt like a coup d’état of sorts. It certainly was an intellectual coup. All wisdom of the past, even that known by public health only months earlier, was deleted from public spaces. Dissent was silenced. Corporate media was absolutely united in celebrating the greatness of people like Fauci, who spoke in strangely circuitous ways that contradicted everything we thought we knew.

    It was exceedingly strange because the people we thought might have stood up to the flash imposition of tyranny somehow vanished. We could hardly meet with others at all, if only to share intuitions that something was wrong. “Social distancing” was more than a method to “slow the spread;” it amounted to comprehensive control of the public mind too.

    The experts instructing us spoke with astonishing certainty about precisely how society should be managed in a pandemic. There were scientific papers, tens of thousands of them, and the storm of credentials was everywhere and out of control. Unless you had a university or lab affiliation and unless you had multiple high-level degrees attached to your name, you could not get a hearing. Folk wisdom was out of the question, even basic things like “sun and outdoors are good for respiratory infections.” Even popular understanding of natural immunity came in for hard ridicule.

    Later it turned out that even top credentialed experts would not be taken seriously if they had the wrong views. This is when the racket became incredibly obvious. It was never really about genuine knowledge. It was about compliance and echoing the approved line. It’s astonishing how many people went along, even with the stupidest of the mandates, such as the distancing stickers everywhere, the ubiquity of Plexiglas, and the dirty masks on every face which were somehow believed to keep people healthy.

    Once the contrary studies started coming out, we would share them and get shouted down. The comment sections of the studies started to be raided by partisan experts who would hone in on small issues and problems and demand and obtain takedowns. Then the contrarian expert would get doxxed, his dean notified, and the faculty turned against the person, lest the department risk funding from Big Pharma or Fauci in the future.

    All the while, we kept thinking that there must be some rationale behind all this madness. It never emerged. It was all intimidation and belligerence and nothing more—arbitrary diktat by big shots who were pretending the entire time.

    The lockdowners and shot mandators were never intellectually serious people. They never much thought about the implications or ramifications of what they were doing. They were just wrecking things mostly for pecuniary gain, job protection, and career advancement, plus it was fun to be in charge. It’s not much more complicated than that.

    In other words, we’ve gradually come to realize that our worst fears were true. All these experts were and are fakes. There have been some hints along the way, such as when North Carolina Health Director Mandy Cohen (now head of the CDC) reported that she and her colleagues were burning up the phone lines to decide whether people should be allowed to participate in sports.

    “She was like, are you gonna let them have professional football?” she said. “And I was like, no. And she’s like, OK neither are we.”

    Another candid moment came five months ago, only recently unearthed by X (formerly Twitter) when NIH head Francis Collins admitted that he and his colleagues attached “zero value” to whether and to what extent they were disrupting lives, wrecking the economy, and destroying education for kids.

    He actually said this.

    As it turns out, these experts who ruled our lives, and still do to a great extent, were never what they claimed to be, and never actually possessed knowledge that was superior to what existed within the cultural firmament of society. Instead, all they really had was power and a grand opportunity to play dictator.

    It’s astonishing, truly, and worthy of deep study, when you consider the extent to which and for how long this class of people were able to maintain the illusion of consensus within their ranks.

    They bamboozled the media all over the world. They tricked vast swaths of the population.

    They bent all social media algorithms to reflect their views and priorities.

    One explanation comes down to the money trail.

    That’s a powerful explanation. But it is not the whole of it. Behind the illusion was a terrifying intellectual isolation in which all these people found themselves. They never really encountered people who disagreed. Indeed, part of the way these people had come to conceive of their jobs was to master the art of knowing what to think and when and how. It’s part of the job training to enter the class of experts: mastering the skill of echoing the opinions of others.

    Discovering this to be true is alarming for anyone who holds to older ideals of how intellectual society should conduct itself. We like to imagine that there is a constant clash of ideas, a burning desire to get to the truth, a love of knowledge and data, a passion for gaining a better understanding. That requires, above all else, an openness of mind and a willingness to listen. All of this was overtly and explicitly shut down in March 2020 but it was made easier because all the mechanisms were already in place.

    One of the best books of our time is Tom Harrington’s “The Treason of the Experts,” published by Brownstone. There is simply not in the present era a more insightful investigation and deconstruction of the sociological sickness of the expert class. Every page is on fire with insight and observation about the intellectual juntas that attempt to rule the public mind in today’s world. It’s a terrifying look at how wildly wrong everything has gone in the world of ideas. A great follow-up volume is Ramesh Thakur’s “Our Enemy, the Government,” which reveals all the ways in which the new scientists who were ruling the world weren’t scientific at all.

    Brownstone was born in the midst of the worst of this world. We set out to create something different, not a bubble of ideological/partisan attachment or an enforcement organ of the proper way to think about all issues. Instead, we sought to become a genuine society of thinkers united in a principled attachment to freedom but hugely diverse in specialization and philosophical outlook. It’s one of the few centers where there is genuine interdisciplinary engagement and openness to new perspectives and outlook. All of this is essential to the life of the mind and yet nearly absent in academia, media, and government today.

    We’ve put together a fascinating model for retreats. We choose a comfortable venue where the food and drink are provided and the living quarters are excellent, and bring together 40 or so top experts to present a set of ideas to the whole group. Each speaker gets 15 minutes and that is followed by 15 minutes of engagement from everyone present. Then we go to the next speaker. This goes on all day and the evenings are spent in casual conversation. As the organizer, Brownstone does not pick topics or speakers but rather allows the flow of ideas to emerge organically. This goes on for two and a half days. There is no set agenda, no mandated takeaways, no required action items. There is only unconstrained idea generation and sharing.

    There is a reason why there is such a clamor to attend. It’s the creation of something that all these wonderful people—each person a dissident in his own field—had hoped to encounter in professional life but the reality was always elusive. It’s only three days so hardly Ancient Greece or Vienna in the interwar years but it is an excellent start, and hugely productive and uplifting. It’s amazing what can happen when you combine intelligence, erudition, open minds, and sincere sharing of ideas. From the point of view of government, huge corporations, academia, and all the architects of today’s world of ideas, this is precisely what they do not want.

    The difference between 2023 and, say, five years ago, is that the expertise racket is now out in the open. Vast swaths of society decided to trust the experts for a time. They deployed every power of the state, along with all affiliated institutions in the pseudo-private sector, to browbeat and manipulate the people into panicked compliance with preposterous antics that never had any hope of mitigating disease.

    Look where that got us. The experts have been fully discredited. Is it any wonder that ever more people are skeptical of the same gang’s claims about climate change, diversity, immigration, inflation, education, gender transitions, or anything else pushed today by elite minds?

    Mass compliance has been replaced by mass incredulity.

    Trust will not likely return in our lifetimes.

    There is, further, a reason why hardly anyone is surprised that the president of Harvard stands accused of rampant plagiarism or that election officials are deploying sneaky forms of lawfare to keep political renegades off the ballot or that money launderers for the administrative state are getting away with rampant fraud. Graft, kickbacks, bribery, misappropriation, nepotism, favoritism, and outright corruption rule the day in all elite circles.

    In a few weeks, we are going to hear from Anthony Fauci, who will be grilled by a House of Representatives committee on exactly how he claimed to be so sure that there was no lab leak stemming from gain-of-function research being done at a U.S.-baked lab in Wuhan. We’ll see how much attention this testimony gets but, truly, does anyone really believe that he is going to be honest and forthcoming? It is pretty much a consensus these days that he has been up to no good. If he is “the science,” science itself is in grave trouble.

    What a contrast to just a few years ago when Fauci-themed shirts and coffee mugs were big-selling items. He claimed to be the science, and science did rally behind him as if he had all the answers, even though what he advocated contradicted every bit of common wisdom that has always been practiced in every civilized society.

    Three years ago, the expert class went out on the farthest limb one can imagine, daring to replace all social knowledge and embedded cultural experience with their off-the-cuff rationalism and scientistic razzmatazz that ended up serving the industrial interests of large-scale exploiters in tech, media, and pharma. We live in the midst of the rubble they created. It’s no wonder they have been completely discredited.

    To replace them—and this is a long-term strategy and one that unfolds gradually with bold efforts such as that undertaken by Brownstone Institute—we need a new and serious effort to rebuild serious thought based on honesty, sincere engagement across ideological lines, and a genuine commitment to truth and freedom. We have that opportunity right now, and we dare not decline to take up the task with every sense of urgency and passion. As always, your support of our work is greatly appreciated.

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

  • USS Ford Aircraft Carrier Returning Home After Extended Deployment Protecting Israel
    USS Ford Aircraft Carrier Returning Home After Extended Deployment Protecting Israel

    The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group is heading home from the Mediterranean Sea, according to a Monday announcement by the US Navy.

    It had patrolled there, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean, for months of additional, extended duty in order to provide protection for Israel and be on the ready for potential escalation, given persistent exchange of fire between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah too.

    The Navy said the USS Ford’s presence will now be replaced by the Bataan amphibious ready group, which has 2,000 Marines onboard. This ready group includes the USS Bataan, and the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Carter Hall – which are currently transiting the Red Sea, making ready to enter the Mediterranean. 

    US Navy image

    A US 6th Fleet message said the Ford will sail for home “in the coming days.” The shift could be the result of Israel newly announcing it is about to enter the “next phase” of its Gaza operations. 

    According to fresh reporting in The New York Times:

    The Israeli military announced on Monday that it will begin withdrawing several thousand troops from Gaza at least temporarily, in what would be the most significant publicly announced pullback since the war began.

    The military cited a growing toll on the Israeli economy following nearly three months of wartime mobilization with little end in sight to the fighting. Israel had been considering scaling back its operations, and the United States has been prodding it to do so more quickly as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war, according to local health authorities.

    Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, emphasized that the move to demobilize some soldiers did not indicate any compromise on Israel’s intention to continue fighting, and he did not mention the American requests to scale back. He indicated that some will be called back to service in the coming year. Still, the fighting remains intense across Gaza.

    There’s been recent White House pressure on Tel Aviv to dial down the intensity of the fighting amid the soaring Palestinian civilian death toll, but also as the Netanyahu governing coalition faces growing anger domestically over how it has handled the war and hostage situation especially. 

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

    The Associated Press meanwhile reviews of the US military build-up in regional waters in the wake of the Oct.7 Hamas terror attack as follows: “Since it was extended in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier have been part of a two-carrier presence bracketing the Israel-Hamas war, underscoring U.S. concerns that the conflict will widen.” The report further notes, “The Eisenhower has recently patrolled near the Gulf of Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea waterway, where so many commercial vessels have come under attack in recent weeks.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 18:05

  • Supreme Court's John Roberts Urges "Caution" On Using Artificial Intelligence
    Supreme Court’s John Roberts Urges “Caution” On Using Artificial Intelligence

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing the legal field and will have a major impact in the future, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in his year-end report for 2023.

    AI is already enabling people who cannot afford lawyers to find answers to questions such as how to fill out court forms, Justice Roberts said. He said AI can “increase access to justice” with tools that “have the welcome potential to smooth out any mismatch between available resources and urgent needs in our court system.”

    “But any use of AI,” he added, “requires caution and humility” because it risks “dehumanizing the law.”

    A growing number of lawyers have been using AI in their work, and several lawyers were sanctioned over the summer for including non-existent cases, put forth by AI, as citations in a brief. Some defendants have also said they or their lawyers erroneously used AI in building their cases.

    There’s also concern about courts using AI in assessing key factors about people who are charged, such as flight risk, due to “potential bias,” with studies showing “human adjudications, for all of their flaws, are fairer than whatever the machine spits out,” Justice Roberts said.

    In the report, addressed to the federal judiciary, he said that “machines cannot fully replace key actors in court,” bringing up how judges keep a close eye on the demeanor of defendants when handing down sentences.

    “Nuance matters: Much can turn on a shaking hand, a quivering voice, a change of inflection, a bead of sweat, a moment’s hesitation, a fleeting break in eye contact,” he said.

    “And most people still trust humans more than machines to perceive and draw the right inferences from these clues.”

    AI applications do help advance just, speedy, and inexpensive resolutions to cases, which the federal system is directed to prioritize under federal rules, but as AI evolves, courts must take care in figuring out how AI can be properly used, the chief justice said. The Judicial Conference of the United States, which sets policy for the federal courts, will be involved in that calculus, he said.

    “I am glad that they will be,” Justice Roberts wrote.

    “I predict that human judges will be around for a while. But with equal confidence I predict that judicial work—particularly at the trial level—will be significantly affected by AI. Those changes will involve not only how judges go about doing their job, but also how they understand the role that AI plays in the cases that come before them.”

    A federal appeals court in November issued a proposed rule on requiring lawyers to sign papers saying they did not use AI programs for briefs, or that if they did, then the briefs were subsequently reviewed by a human.

    The year-end reports go over “a major issue relevant to the whole federal court system,” Justice Roberts said. Before bringing up AI, he went over how the judiciary has changed over the years, including transitioning from pens to typewriters to computers.

    Justice Roberts, 68, was appointed by former President George W. Bush and began serving on the nation’s top court in 2005. A Harvard Law School graduate, he was a lawyer for 14 years before becoming a federal judge.

    The chief justice oversees the federal judiciary.

    The year-end report did not touch on ethics concerns, which include recently reported free trips provided to several justices by wealthy Americans. Democrats have been pushing for more regulation of the Supreme Court. The nation’s top court adopted its first formal ethics code in November, but critics say more oversight is needed.

    Justice Roberts, in his 2022 year-end report, called for more security for judges after attacks on several judges, while saying that Americans are free to disagree with rulings from the Supreme Court.

    In the 2021 year-end report, the justice said federal judges should improve their adherence to ethics rules after more than 100 were caught violating a rule requiring recusal in cases in which they have a financial interest.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 17:30

  • We Did It, Joe! Monthly Migrant Encounters Exceed 300,000 For First Time In US History
    We Did It, Joe! Monthly Migrant Encounters Exceed 300,000 For First Time In US History

    Happy New Year!

    The Cloward-Pivening of America continues unabated, thanks to well-funded enemies of America and an impotent (and well-lobbied) legislature. On Monday, Fox News reported that a record 302,000 encounters with illegal migrants occurred in December, which marks 785,000 encounters since Oct. 1, according to a source within Customs and Border Patrol.

    According to the report, there were ‘just’ 74,000 encounters in the same month of 2021.

    The Biden administration, meanwhile, has been deliberately downplaying of the border situation – which they created with a virtual invitation for migrants to pour into the country, after striking down several Trump-era border protections on day one.

    Fox News has also used drones to observe the scale of the border crisis, capturing footage of the mass movement of people from over 150 countries. These visuals, often underreported by other networks, present a stark reality: Border Patrol agents, significantly outnumbered, are struggling to manage the influx in key areas such as Eagle Pass, where daily crossings have reached alarming rates.

    Beyond the immediate security concerns, the long-term economic and cultural impacts of such unchecked immigration are have come into mainstream focus. For starters, the cost of managing illegal immigration could surpass the expenses that would have been incurred by more stringent border measures, such as a border wall. There’s an increasing anxiety over the strain on American taxpayers, potential budgetary imbalances, and the broader cultural implications of integrating such a large number of people into the fabric of American society.

    Last week, Elon Musk dropped a few redpills on X, showing people a chart of “the immense and growing size of illegal immigration” pushed by radical progressives in the White House that have flooded the nation with millions of migrants.

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

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

    Can’t wait to see Biden’s about-face on this, followed by no actual changes, as the 2024 election heats up…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 16:55

  • America The ________
    America The ________

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    Regardless of the fact that I mocked making “year-end” predictions (2023 Predictions) last week, it is a good time to think about the year ahead. As I struggled to put my thoughts in a coherent (or at least semi-coherent) framework, one thing kept popping into my head. Whether I was thinking about inflation, debt, taxes, supply chains, the global economy, war, markets, etc., one over-riding thought kept popping into my head, over and over: many things will boil down to how America acts, perceives itself, and is perceived by others.

    Maybe that is the case every year, but it hasn’t resonated the way it does for me as we approach 2024. How we fill in the blank (in America the ______) will determine so many things this year. With over 330 million people, 50 states, and countless allies and enemies (and those in between) across the globe, America won’t likely be defined as any one thing. But how it is defined will play a crucial role in how the economy (domestic and global) and markets evolve over the course of the year.

    In any case, how will the “blank” be filled in this year?

    America the Divided

    There are lots of ways for that “blank” to be filled in, but unfortunately, “divided” is high on my list. For years, issues no longer seem “grey” or “complicated.” There is an “easy” solution to every issue or problem. It just happens that one portion of the population thinks that the answer is one extreme, and another large segment of the population thinks that the “obvious” answer is the other extreme. There seems to be little ground for compromise or for addressing the pros and cons of each issue and thinking about optimal solutions.

    As we head into an election year, that divisiveness seems to be getting more rather than less apparent. I went to ChatGPT to try to get some thoughts on the upcoming election. According to ChatGPT:

    “Most Americans do not seem enthusiastic about a potential rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election. Public polling indicates a general dissatisfaction with both candidates.”

    I am not sure how we have created a system that seems likely to create a rematch of an election that people really don’t want to see. Maybe that is just my impression, but it does seem to be supported. Problems that could be caused by increased “divisiveness” include:

    • Shutdowns in DC. Failure to Pay our debt (though I don’t think that is a 2024 issue given what was done with the Debt Ceiling in 2023). All problems for the economy and for our markets. I remain convinced that “something broke” this year after the debt ceiling and shutdown negotiations seemed even more intractable than usual. The NRSROs (colloquially known as rating agencies) highlighted the problems that are obvious to everyone about the trajectory of our debt and spending. The ratings actions aren’t a big deal in their own right, but they make it harder for people to ignore the obvious issues. We’ve discussed in past T-Reports that while Treasuries are still safe, they just don’t seem quite as safe as before (kind of like the concept of different orders of infinity). More theoretical than anything, but each future wave of doubt will push yields more than they did last year. If sentiment and positioning could take the 10-year to 5% this year, what will happen the next time the market fixates on this risk?

    • How our allies commit to us.

      • How NATO coalesced around the Russian invasion was nothing short of amazing. Any friction was put aside and a comprehensive, multinational effort was put into effect. That has been fraying at the edges and America’s commitment is being questioned by some (at least to anyone who spends time on social media).

      • Israel’s war with Hamas has an almost “Monday Morning Quarterback” type of feel. While I am not comparing arguing over whether a team should have gone for it on fourth down or not to the loss of lives, it seems slightly weird to me that so many people have such vocal opinions on how the war should be prosecuted. We were not the ones attacked. We are not the ones facing an enemy that is still capable and seems committed to launching similar attacks in the future if it is left as a viable force. This is an enemy that purposefully places civilians in harm’s way (against Geneva Convention rules) as a key component of their defense strategy. I do not know how this war should be prosecuted. What is right or wrong? But I suspect that at least some people in other countries will question whether the U.S. has done enough to control (or attempt to control) many of their actions.

      • It may well be more difficult over time for “allies” to commit to “us” as “we” become more divided internally.

    • Can our “Enemies” use this against us?

      • There was likely some amount of “meddling” with prior elections and there is without a doubt a lot of misinformation being spread by our adversaries to sway public opinion. With AI, it seems more than plausible that the social media “bots” will get better and better at getting that information distributed while being less and less obvious that they are “bots” and not people. Deepfakes and other technologies will only make it easier to spread misinformation. The realization that the nation so often seems to get quickly divided into two camps (apparently heavily influenced by social media) is likely to ramp up efforts by those who want to sway the population one way or the other (presumably by outside actors, but they could be domestic too).

    As we enter 2024, I fear that America the Divided is the biggest risk that we all face and a lot of pressure will be exerted by various groups (domestic and international) to try to force this issue. The fact that this is an election year makes an already compelling target/opportunity even that much more attractive for those who wish to push us in this direction.

    America the Great (Geopolitically)

    If America the Divided is the biggest risk, let’s look at the potential for the “blank” to be filled in with Great, or Global Leaders, or something else indicating that America is helping to drive nations across the globe in a free, democratic, and legal direction.

    Could we re-emerge as the nation that everyone literally has to follow? General (ret.) Spider Marks is adamant that the world is best when America leads from the front. There were some positive signs. America led the effort to get NATO support for Ukraine. The U.S. is leading the way to protect shipping in the Middle East. America is also a staunch supporter of Taiwan, which is crucial to the overall global support of Taiwan.

    There are reasons to be optimistic, but some things really concern me:

    From “Pariah State” to please produce more oil. I’m talking about Saudi Arabia here, not Venezuela. We did have leadership that claimed that they wanted to make the Saudis a “Pariah State,” but I don’t think that any leader ever specifically said that about Venezuela (though the sentiment seems to be there on that front too). “We” have turned a somewhat blind eye to Iran “allegedly” selling far more oil than they should be selling based on the sanctions in place. It may be difficult to “lead” when we’ve exposed our inflation fears as a weakness. My view is that we must do more to encourage a realistic plan to produce more than enough energy to be self-sufficient for decades to come, while building out a more sustainable energy ecosystem (both on the use and production side of the equation). Until we do that, our weakness may be exploited. While I’ve stuck to “energy” here, virtually everything we need in terms of rare earths and critical minerals could be substituted for energy (and the processing of them remains outside of our control).

    We’ve kicked the can too far. Some of what is going on in the Middle East seems to be occurring because “we” collectively across the globe preferred “kicking the can” to facing truly difficult decisions. I am also increasingly convinced that the U.S. will rue the day that we accepted “One Country, Two Systems” as a viable policy! What the heck does that really mean? It is very complex, but we’ve seen the power of social media and its ability to trounce complexity. There are many “domains of war,” and increasingly social media is one of them (and one that we don’t seem as adept at as some of our adversaries). For some very good reasons, the U.S. doesn’t spread disinformation as the main example, but that doesn’t help us win.

    There is a chance that America really re-emerges as THE global superpower, which would be great for the domestic economy and markets, and should spur growth globally. But America the Divided seems more likely to win.

    America the Great (Economically)

    I was also thinking of America the Clever, America the Ingenuity Leader (but that was too wordy), or even America the Creative.

    Artificial Intelligence. While I like to think in terms of “more and more computing power, applied to more and more data” to drive analysis and decision making, I’ll stick with AI for now since it is all the rage.

    • The opportunities are immense, and the U.S. is a leader. Collectively our Geopolitical Intelligence Group, especially General (ret.) Groen, is involved in policy making and thinks that the U.S. is headed down a viable path. Protective but not overly restrictive.

    • The costs (especially in getting data into usable formats) may slow progress, but this trend that started in 2023 as a crucial investment theme will continue. If (or when) the efficiencies are realized, we could see all stocks trade at higher multiples. So far, the winning has been concentrated in the hands of the current providers (rather than the users), but that distribution should change if it can deliver on the promise.

    • Boundless creativity versus state sponsored programs. One of the big bets on AI will be whether a “bunch” of for-profit enterprises (people trying to create their own wealth) will outperform a heavily funded and very directed effort in countries like China. I’m willing to bet on creativity and ingenuity in that competition and that self-interest will beat state-interest. The funding is enormous, but it can be plodding.

    Space. Another area of opportunity (and threats), which we will discuss in more detail in our next X-Report (early January).

    • Blockchain. In all likelihood, there will be so-called “spot” ETFs for Bitcoin in the U.S. by the end of the first quarter of 2024, if not sooner. The resurgence in price of these assets is helping attract attention, but even while cryptocurrencies languished, the development of tools and products using blockchain continued (less funded and in relative obscurity), but this could be an emerging sector of growth.

    • Biotechnology. Outside of my “comfort” zone, but for an area that held such promise from a science and investment standpoint during the height of ZIRP and FOMO, I still see a lot of promise in the science, at much cheaper valuations in most cases.

    • Semi-conductors. I applaud the efforts to build foundries domestically and attempts to own and control these crucial components of our daily life and future. If anything, more needs to be done to speed this along.

    If the economy and markets are to do exceptionally next year, it will likely be due to the creativity, inventiveness, and even genius of engineers and developers!

    I am concerned that the cost versus benefit equation may slow things down in the quarters ahead. The potential wave of IPOs and secondary offerings from growth companies could weigh on prices (it could be a lot of supply), but I think that whether it is this year or next year, betting on this makes sense!

    America the Consumption Nation

    I was thinking that this could also be America the Greedy, America the Credit Nation, or America the Irresponsible, but it is the start of the year, so I should at least start with a positive title for this section.

    I expect that the American consumer will slow down, the job market will be less robust, widespread/large pay gains will be a thing of the past, and the “soft landing” crowd will be wrong. It might not be a “hard” landing, but look for the American consumer, who has done their “duty” above and beyond all expectations, to finally slow down. That will help yields, but not enough to keep stocks at or near their highs.

    America the Divided Creator

    My base case is that two main themes will drive the economy and markets this year. We will flip-flop between them. Whenever “Divided” is the word of the day (for an extended period), yields will be inclined to move higher, and stocks will trend down as companies delay decisions or make very tentative commitments due to too much uncertainty. Whenever everyone is chatting about “Creativity” (could be AI, Space, etc.), markets will do well.

    I see no reason, sadly, why 2024 won’t be as challenging as 2023 was from a capital allocation standpoint (at least for those who don’t make a decision on January 1 and keep it for the year without having to justify themselves to anyone), but I do think that how America is defined will be a big driver. That will encompass (and influence) things like the Fed, inflation, supply chains, global relationships, etc.

    Next week we can return to a more “granular” analysis, but at the start of the year, “going big” picture and thinking about America the ______ is a good way to frame your thoughts. I suspect that this will be an easy one to revisit as the year and the election progress!

    I wish you all a happy and successful 2024 and thanks again for all of your help and support in 2023!

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 16:20

  • Iran Dispatches Warship To Red Sea, Houthis Warn Of "Repercussions" After US Forces Kill Rebels During Maersk Ship Attack
    Iran Dispatches Warship To Red Sea, Houthis Warn Of “Repercussions” After US Forces Kill Rebels During Maersk Ship Attack

    Regional instability risks mount in the Red Sea following the Iran-backed Houthi attack on a Maersk container ship on Sunday. US Forces responded with attack helicopters that eliminated three small boats and ten rebels.

    After the skirmish, a spokesperson for the Yemeni militia group warned of “consequences and repercussions” for the US aggression. 

    Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea confirmed on the Yemeni TV channel Al-Masirah that US forces killed ten of its fighters. 

    “US enemy forces attacked three boats belonging to the Yemeni Naval Forces, which led to the martyrdom and the loss of ten people from the Naval Forces,” Sarea said.

    The spokesman said its fighters were “performing their humanitarian and moral duty” to deter Israel-related commercial vessels from transiting the Red Sea “in solidarity and support for the Palestinian people.”

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    He said the US “bears the consequences” for attacking and killing ten of its fighters, adding that the “military movements in the Red Sea to protect Israeli ships will not prevent Yemen (Houthi militia) from performing its humanitarian duty in support of Palestine and Gaza.”

    Perhaps even more problematically from a global escalation perspective, Iran dispatched a warship to the Red Sea.

    The Alborz destroyer traversed the Bab El-Mandeb strait, a narrow choke point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, on Monday, Iranian state media said, adding that Iran’s naval fleet has been operating in the area “to secure shipping lanes, repel pirates, among other purposes since 2009.”

    The move appears to represent a clear challenge to the US-led maritime security force established last month to protect ships from attack in the region.

    Earlier in the day, US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported it received a distress call from a Singapore-flagged Maersk container ship named “Hangzhou.” 

    CENTCOM wrote on X that a missile hit Hangzhou in the Red Sea. 

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    CENTCOM said attack helicopters from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Gravely were quickly deployed and eliminated three small boats and Houthi militants.

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    What’s clear is that tensions across the Bab al-Mandab Strait are only worsening despite the Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian mission to shield commercial vessels from attacks in the Red Sea. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 15:45

  • Corruption, Chaos, & Conflict – The Fourth Turning Erupts In 2024
    Corruption, Chaos, & Conflict – The Fourth Turning Erupts In 2024

    Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

    “Americans today are increasingly polarized, as if they constitute two separate nations.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

    “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” – Thomas Paine – The American Crisis

    Thomas Paine wrote these words 247 years ago, in the most historic year in our history – 1776. That was during the first American Fourth Turning. It’s not a coincidence we are now in the midst of our fourth Crisis period in U.S. history, as they arrive like clockwork every 80 years or so, the length of a long human life. Paine’s American Crisis began in 1773, ignited by the Boston Tea Party and the British reaction to this revolutionary act of defiance. Our current Millennial Crisis was triggered by the Federal Reserve/Wall Street/Government created financial disaster in 2008 and subsequent outrageously desperate, totalitarian, un-Constitutional, extreme acts designed to keep the ruling class in power, while impoverishing and enslaving the masses in a surveillance state techno-gulag.

    The polarization and fractures have become too deep to repair. The country, and the western world in general, are hurtling towards a darkening abyss of civil conflict, financial collapse, global war, societal chaos, and loss of life on a scale grander than WW2, the Civil War, and the American Revolution combined. Our technological advancements have outstripped our ability to intelligently, thoughtfully, and humanly, use this power for the benefit of future generations. The destructive deficiencies of human nature, such as: greed, desire for power, hatred, arrogance, resentment, and an unlimited supply of self-delusion, continue to plague our world, as only the most power-hungry psychopaths rise to the highest levels of government, business, religion, and finance.

    The immense technological power in the hands of egocentric, megalomaniacal, sadistic, billionaires and their highly paid toadies, lackeys, and apparatchiks, inserted throughout the media, government, academia, banking, and corporations, has pushed the world to the brink of Armageddon. We are entering the sixteenth year of this Fourth Turning. Based on history, we can expect a climax of this Crisis in the 2030-to-2032-timeframe. The path to that climax is guaranteed to be violent and unforgiving.

    Neil Howe, in his new book – The Fourth Turning Is Here – tries to decipher the likely path of the remainder of this Fourth Turning. Having read the original Fourth Turning, his joint project with William Strauss (who died in 2007), in 2004, I was curious to read Howe’s update on their generational theory of history. I met Howe for lunch in 2012 during the Occupy Wall Street protests and he correctly assessed that movement as a meaningless left-wing attempt to push their communist like agenda.

    The first book, written in 1997, showed no favor towards the right or left. It was a no-nonsense assessment of economic facts and historical precedents. There were no political agendas, which I now attribute to Strauss’ influence, because Howe certainly lets his political views creep into his writings. This isn’t surprising, as his consulting business is dependent upon Wall Street banks and mega-corporations. He owes his living to the establishment; therefore he won’t shit where he eats.

    Howe’s current left leaning political views seep into his current tome. He quotes Zelensky as some sort of patriotic leader, while portraying Putin as a thug, without giving any context regarding the 2014 CIA initiated overthrow of a democratically elected Ukraine president. He bought the covid scamdemic hook, line, and sinker, with no skepticism about the coordinated lockdowns and false narratives about masks, social distancing, and vaccines that never worked, but continue to kill. He believes the climate change bullshit narrative.

    His tone regarding Trump is clearly negative and he believes the 2020 election was perfectly legitimate. He expounds about the January 6 “armed” insurrection, without one word about the FBI, Pelosi, and the Washington establishment planning, coordinating, and exacerbating the fake “insurrection”. His brain-dead accusations of violence by Trump supporters, while completely ignoring the murder and mayhem created by the BLM and ANTIFA terrorists, clearly reveals his allegiances.

    Be that as it may, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. His acumen regarding possible scenarios and outcomes are well thought out. Howe makes some very interesting predictions regarding the remainder of this Fourth Turning, providing some very dark possibilities, along with some more unlikely optimistic outcomes. His research reveals Americans think the American dream is no longer attainable, civil discord will destroy our democratic institutions, and our global standing is in decline. All three fears are legitimate and coming to fruition as we speak. Howe captures the current situation in this passage:

    “In the middle of a Crisis era, the social mood has reached an unstable balance of hope, fear, and dizzying uncertainty. Americans are like a compressed spring at the point of maximum potential energy. Internally secure yet externally threatened, they are ready for propulsive public action.”   – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here

    Events beyond their control are leading them towards their rendezvous with destiny and the speed has begun to accelerate, with 2024 slated to be a historic date in history, on par with 1776, 1861, and 1941. The exact events which will make 2024 historic are obscured by a dense fog of uncertainty, but we can make some educated guesses based upon our current economic circumstances, Biden’s open border purposeful invasion, upcoming elections wrought with fraud, ongoing treasonous governmental and judicial operations, and deepening global conflicts already underway.

    Of the three possible paths laid out by Howe, the most likely appears to be the animosity between factions eventually leads to armed conflict within the country. Political dominance by one party is highly unlikely, with the country rallying around the flag against an external enemy. It is more likely our many external foes will take advantage of our internal conflict to further weaken our global hegemony. All paths lead to war at this point.

    I sense the delusional masses, still entranced by their electronic gadgets, unending access to debt, NFL fantasy leagues, and oblivious to the lessons of history, are frantically trying to fend off reality by shopping, eating out, partying at bars, and pretending all is well. Critically assessing their true situation is too painful for these snowflakes and gender bending enthusiasts. Their virtue signaling wokeness is about to meet the brutal reality of a violent Fourth Turning climax.

    “And however much these paths may seem to differ from one another, they all move toward the same destination. They all push the nation toward a violent struggle requiring maximum mobilization. They all culminate in the Ekpyrosis, which will bring the era into a decisive consolidation, climax, and resolution.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here

    The drivers of this Fourth Turning, as documented in 1997, continue to be debt, civic decay, and global disorder. They have propelled this Crisis since the outset in 2008 and are accelerating towards an explosive collision in 2024. The national debt at the outset of this Fourth Turning was $10 trillion. It had taken 219 years to accumulate $10 trillion of debt, with the majority amassed during this century. It has taken just fifteen years to pile an additional $24 trillion of debt on the backs of Americans and future generations, if there are future generations.

    This doesn’t even take into account the $200 trillion of unfunded welfare and pension obligations tallied up by your government leaders. At the same time, the Federal Reserve increased their balance sheet from $900 billion to $9 trillion. With the rapid rise of interest rates in the last year, if banks were required to mark their assets to market, as they did prior to 2009, the entire banking industry, including the Too Big To Fail Wall Street behemoths, would be insolvent, along with the Federal Reserve. Does this seem sustainable to you?

    Luckily for our teetering empire of debt, delusions, and deceptions, they can change the rules whenever it suits their purposes to extend and pretend until it all “suddenly” collapses, like a vaxxed soccer player on the pitch. Of course, the U.S. is not alone in being burdened with unpayable debt and an unsustainable financial system. China and the EU countries are also insolvent and issuing debt to service their existing debt.

    The only major global power without a large debt problem is Russia, with a debt to GDP ratio below 30%, while the U.S.- 120%, EU – 90%, Japan – 220%, and China – 80% have accumulated perilous levels of debt and still growing. These debt levels and the domestic implications of unsustainable economies will lead shamelessly corrupt politicians and even dictators like Xi to provoke foreign conflict in order to distract their populations from their dire economic circumstances. A wag the dog type false flag is just around the corner.

    An man-made banker created economic disaster ignited this powder keg of debt in 2008, and the “solutions” rolled out by the ruling elites since have been designed to extend, pretend, and bend the minds of the masses, while fostering the perpetual pillaging campaign by the billionaire oligarchs who really run this world. The plebs have been destroyed by the relentless inflation purposefully created by Powell and his fellow central banker puppets of the Deep State, while the lords of finance have reaped billions in ill-gotten riches.

    The “Haves”, who control the financial markets, media, and politicians, are ecstatic with the current paradigm, as the stock market hits new highs every day, while average Americans go deeper into debt to keep up with the Joneses, pay the rent, and put some food on the table. The U.S. is nothing more than a sophisticated technological looting operation at this point, as we await the Great Taking to be initiated by the oligarchs as their final solution.

    The Great Taking is David Rogers Webb’s warning to those not on the inside about the coming seizure of all your assets (stocks, bonds, savings) by your own government in the name of some new contrived national emergency. You will sacrifice your life savings for the good of the country (aka Deep State). At this point it’s just a matter of which comes first, The Taking, Global war, or Civil chaos caused by the ongoing election fraud. They are all coming and will merge into a category 5 hurricane of hell for the nation and the world.

    The Deep State continues its complete control over who gets “elected”/selected in this country, as they use the captured judicial system as a cudgel to crush the rule of law and our Constitutional rights. The Soros selected District Attorneys, Mayors, Governors, Judges, Secretaries of States, and various other low-level captured bureaucrats, are doing what they were selected to do – destroy the country’s social fabric and create a chaotic disintegration of our community norms.

    A populace propagandized into a woke communist ideology and prodded into a buy now, pay later mentality, is unwilling or unable to accept that LATER has arrived. They will pay, one way or another. Multiple bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate are all poised to pop, with the slightest provocation from a global and/or domestic blunder. We have now positioned our naval forces in the highly dangerous waters in the Middle East. Militarily supporting Israel and Ukraine has done wonders for our GDP, but it seems we are running out of ammo to defend our own country, as the invasion of our southern border accelerates. We are currently provoking armed conflict in Yemen, Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Ukraine, and Russia.

    All it will take is one lucky missile or unexpected hyper-sonic missile and our vaunted navy will see a vessel or two go to the bottom of the Red Sea. Then all hell will break loose. The rhetoric, threats and accusations of atrocities are ramping up, along with armed conflict across the Middle East. With the raging religious hatreds and centuries old struggles for land and power coming to a head, it will just take one of these psychopaths to ignite a global conflict. Meanwhile, China is biding its time for when they make their ultimate move on Taiwan. That would really roll a grenade into the party.

    Financial markets have ignored the worsening global conflict thus far, but what happens when Americans start dying in large numbers? If the markets are at all time highs based upon expectations of a strong thriving economy in 2024, why is the Fed signaling multiple interest rate cuts in 2024, regional banks are desperately clinging to the Fed’s emergency bailout fund, commercial real estate is collapsing, housing has peaked, gold is hitting all-time highs, credit card debt is at all-time highs, layoffs are increasing, and the number of working age citizens is in free fall due to vaxx deaths and disabilities?

    But buy stocks because the Wall Street shysters and their media mouthpieces tell you it’s the best time to buy. The only question at this point is what additional grain of sand will cause the sand pile to collapse. Will it be a foreign war, or will it be a civil war within our borders or something no one has even considered? I know most people dismiss the possibility of civil war, believing there aren’t enough people willing to risk their lives for a just cause. Neil Howe seems to think it is probable.

    “Roughly half of all Americans think a civil war is likely. And a growing number of social scientists agree that the United States now fits the checklist profile of a country at risk. Trust in the national government is in steep decline. Check. Respect for democratic institutions is weakening. Check. A heavily armed population has polarized into two evenly divided partisan factions. Check. Each faction embodies a distinctive ethnic, cultural, and urban-versus-rural identity. Each wants its country to become something the other detests. And each fears the prospect of the other taking power. Check, check, and check.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here

    Virtually no one believes civil war is possible, just as no one expected a civil war in 1860, as the presidential election approached. Truthfully, the civil war has already begun, but only those on the left, in conjunction with the FBI, CIA, Big Media, and other governmental agencies, are aggressively fighting. They are vigorously at war against the American people by rigging elections, arresting opposition leaders, and discarding the U.S. Constitution.

    The good guys have thus far been too civil. But the simmering anger of heavily armed rural, red state Americans is close to boiling over. All the signs are there, awaiting a triggering event for this undeclared war to engulf the nation. At this point a number of possible triggering events are possible.

    If David Webb is correct and those in power initiate the Great Taking, the level of violence in reaction would be unprecedented in U.S. history. Maybe that is their plan. Biden and his handlers could use this event to declare a national emergency, suspending the presidential election because they were going to lose, and instituting martial law. Their attempt to lockdown the country and use the military against civilians would surely result in massive bloodshed, as local animosities would result in assassinations, wholesale slaughter of those considered disloyal to whichever side controls the high ground in that community. Previously petty disputes would suddenly become lethal disputes.

    Even if the presidential election is held in November, I don’t believe either side will accept the outcome. We know the Democrats and their Deep State co-conspirators will cheat, rig and once again try to steal the election. If they fail, they will unleash their BLM, ANTIFA terrorist arm into the streets to create chaos as an excuse to not hand over power to Trump.

    With multiple states now attempting to unlawfully keep Trump off the ballot in their states, the animosity between the right and left grows ever deeper. The imprisonment of Trump or more radical attempts to steal the 2024 election will be met with violence from the here-to-for persevering right. Mixing this toxic domestic atmosphere with a deepening global chasm is a recipe for global disaster.

    As we have seen throughout history, the egos of psychopaths at the helm of nations often lead them to act irrationally and/or emotionally when it comes to committing their people to war. While the U.S. has further weakened its global hegemony with its disastrous forays into Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine; Russia and China have gotten stronger and more mutually committed to creating their own new world order. The USD as the dominant global currency is reaching its endpoint, marking the end of empire. Now Israel will further deplete U.S. resources and global stature with their war to wipe out Palestine. Once the dominoes begin to fall in a game of global warfare, all bets are off regarding possible outcomes. Neil Howe’s worst-case scenario is certainly not out of the question.

    “At worst, should at least one desperate country resort to WMDs, the outcome of a great-power war could prove to be even more devastating than that of a civil war. The toll could be almost unimaginable – with multiple cities destroyed, many millions killed, and many tens of millions displaced – all perhaps triggered by some ill-fated combination of the wrong leader making the wrong choice at the wrong time.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here             

    All scenarios for 2024 seem depressing and dark, but the odds still favor just continuing to muddle through as we have done through the first fifteen years of this Fourth Turning. I gave up trying to make specific predictions within a specific time frame years ago. It’s a fool’s errand as there are too many variables in the world to correctly predict which ones will drive the course of events within a one year time frame.

    What I do know is that pessimism about the future continues to deepen, paranoia strengthens, trust declines, anger grows, and the arrogance of those running the show has reached epic levels. We’ve been subjected to three years of propaganda about how the Great Reset will fundamentally transform our world, where we will own nothing and be happy. It seems this fits perfectly with David Webb’s Great Taking theory of how we will ultimately own nothing.

    There does seem to be a common thread running through everything happening in the last three years and appears to be on deck for 2024 and beyond. It all revolves around this broad Great Reset concept pushed by Schwab, Gates, Soros, and the rest of the Davos elite. The entire Covid plandemic was engineered to introduce authoritarian measures and instruct the masses to obey their masters.

    The vaccine is now clearly revealed to be a depopulation weapon, killing off some suddenly; others through myocarditis, turbo cancers, and strokes; babies through miscarriages; and future generations through reduced fertility. And most still believe our overlords rolled these jabs out to save them. Trump is still crowing about his big, beautiful vaccines. He’s either a fool or a charlatan.

    The climate change scam is hastening, as the war on farmers, meat, and fossil fuels is waged relentlessly by unelected bureaucrats and captured media mouthpieces. The EV scam is collapsing rapidly, as people with common sense see through it all. The Great Replacement of white people with third world savages is unabetted, with the Biden Administration ushering them across the southern border, giving them phones and money, flying them to cities across the country, and paying for them to stay at upscale hotels.

    This is not incompetence, but treason. They have already used their predictive programming/brainwashing to prepare the masses for civil war and a massive cyber-attack. Your government will protect you, as long as you sacrifice your remaining liberties and rights. All that is left is the initiation of the Great Taking. The “emergency” will occur on a weekend and by Monday morning your assets will be gone.

    This is their master plan, but we will have a say on whether it is ever successfully implemented. I wonder if these Davos psychopaths absconded with The Great Reset moniker from Strauss & Howe, as they used it to describe Fourth Turnings back in 1997.

    “A Fourth Turning is a great reset.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

    A Fourth Turning great reset may be a surprise to Schwab and his totalitarian acolytes inserted in governments across the world. They are in control. They are running this shitshow. They are the establishment. They are reaping the benefits. They are suppressing dissent and the truth. They are the existing social order that traditionally gets swept away during a Fourth Turning. 2024 may mark the beginning of the end for the Davos crowd and their iron grip on our spiraling society of chaos.

    The future course of history could be radically altered by actions taken by supposedly influential characters in this movie, but also by courageous deeds performed by average Americans who will sacrifice themselves to ensure future generations have a chance to live in a nation devoid of a psychopathic elitist ruling class.

    It seems like a long shot at this point, but giving up is not an option for those of us who still love this country. The four possible outcomes for this Crisis, laid out by Strauss & Howe in 1997, are as valid today as ever, and disturbingly close at hand. We will all have to do our part if we are to have any chance of producing a positive outcome to this Crisis. Happy New Year.

    1. This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection and bad luck.

    2. The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

    3. The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

    4. Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

    *  *  *

    Jim’s sincere desire to provide readers of his site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit his site, Jim asks that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. He can’t do it all alone, and needs your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from his site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions via Stripe.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 15:10

  • Israel Supreme Court Strikes Down Law Limiting Their Power
    Israel Supreme Court Strikes Down Law Limiting Their Power

    The Supreme Court of Israel has struck down a controversial judicial overhaul law enacted last year by the Netanyahu administration which would limit the high court’s power.

    The judicial overhaul, passed last July and resembling a constitutional amendment, sought to restrict the Supreme Court’s authority to nullify government decisions deemed “unreasonable in the extreme.” However, the court – unsurprisingly, has ruled against the law, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    The ruling could revive the deep political and social strife generated by the judicial reform last year, just as the country reels from the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel and is embroiled in a devastating war in Gaza.

    Before the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of thousands of Israelis came out weekly to protest against Netanyahu’s push to limit the powers of the court and give more control to the elected government.

    Eight justices ruled in favor of striking down the law, with seven against.

    According to the report, analysts say the decision could have substantial consequences for postwar politics when Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas militants in the Gaza strip eventually comes to a close – including any inquiry into intelligence failures leading up to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, which left 1,200 people dead (and which has drawn a disproportionately deadly response).

    The law, passed last summer by the Knesset, was a component of a broad package aimed at limiting the court’s power and giving lawmakers more control. According to Netanyahu, activist, liberal judges control the court – and the legislation seeks to restore the proper balance of power (so, what Democrats want to do to the US Supreme Court). Opponents have argued that the legislation would undermine the court’s power as a check on executive and legislative power, and would erode the country’s liberal democracy.

    Israel’s Supreme Court has struck down a law passed in July that would have taken away the court’s powers to abrogate government decisions it deems to be ‘unreasonable in the extreme.’ Photo: POOL/via REUTERS

    “This is really an unprecedented decision because it is the first time in the history of the state where the court strikes down a basic law,” said Yaniv Roznai, a law professor at Reichman University in central Israel, who likened the law to a constitutional amendment.

    The court also ruled 12-3 that it has the right to strike down a basic law in “unusual and extreme cases” when it runs counter to the core principles of Israel (in their opinions, of course).

    Netanyahu’s Likud party slammed the ruling, saying “it is unfortunate that the Supreme Court chose to issue a decision at the heart of Israel’s social divisions, precisely when [Israeli] soldiers” are “fighting and risking their lives.”

    Justice Minister Yariv Levin, considered the judicial overhaul’s chief architect, said the court’s ruling “takes away from millions of citizens their vote and the basic right to be equal partners in decision-making.” Levin has long argued that elected leaders should have more influence over the courts and their authority.

    Opposition Leader Yair Lapid praised the decision as protecting Israeli democracy. “If the Israeli government again starts the fight over the Supreme Court,” Lapid said, then “they learned nothing on Oct. 7.” -WSJ

    Now, Netanyahu’s options are limited – but could include passing a more nuanced version of the amendment, or passing basic legislation that would limit the court’s ability to strike down basic laws.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 14:35

  • "Massive" NYPD Mobilization At JFK Airport To Protect Travelers From Pro-Palestinian Mob
    “Massive” NYPD Mobilization At JFK Airport To Protect Travelers From Pro-Palestinian Mob

    Update (Monday):

    “If anyone is flying out of JFK Airport today, please plan to travel to the airport ahead of time,” Chief Philip Rivera, the head of transportation of the New York Police Department, wrote in an X post.

    Rivera said pro-Palestinian protesters are expected to cause delays at JFK Terminal 4 (departures). 

    “There are planned protests today and will cause delays. We don’t want anyone to miss their flights! Safe travels and Happy New Year,” he said. 

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    Social media reports show NYPD officers only allow people with an “Employee ID or Boarding pass” to enter train stations to JFK Airport. 

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    A pro-Palestinian vehicle convoy appears to be heading to the airport. 

    Some pro-Palestinian protesters are calling NYPD officers “NYPD, KKK, IDF, You’re all the same.”  

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    “Reports of massive law enforcement mobilization around strategic entry points into JFK airport to protect travelers from pro-Hamas protestors. This includes resources from NYPD, NY State Police, Port Authority Police, National Guard, and multiple state and city resources. May God bless them all. Enough is enough. Long past due to take back our streets. Thank them when you see them,” one X user said. 

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    *   *   * 

    Days after hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded the World Trade Center in New York City and screamed “Allahu akbar,” a flyer circulating social media platform X shows a possible rally at John F. Kennedy International Airport on New Year’s Day. 

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    Joel Mowbray, a former columnist for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan institution focusing on national security and foreign policy, pointed out the protest flyer is full of hate:

    Pro-Palestinian “protesters” are now openly embracing Hamas. Key word is “flood.” Hamas calls 10/7 massacres “Operation Al Aqsa Flood.” 

    So “Flood JFK for Gaza” is an open support for Hamas’ campaign of raping, murdering and beheading Jews — and Muslims & Christians. Vile.

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    Organized protesters are expected to arrive by foot and vehicles at JFK Terminal 4 (departures) around 1400 ET Monday. The terminal serves several international airlines, including El Al Israel Airlines Ltd.

    “On New Year’s Day, pro-Hamas mobs plan on shutting down JFK airport, but don’t worry, New York’s governor @GovKathyHochul and @NYCMayor Eric Adams will be hard at work nursing their New Year’s Eve hangover. Once they’re over it, they’ll pretend it did not happen,” one X user said in response to the flyer. 

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    Another person said: “Ah yes, disrupt people trying to get home for the holidays for your cause. I’m sure they will agree with you and support it now.” 

    Marxist groups appear to be funding these anti-Israel protests, as some point out. What’s troubling, just like when Marxist groups supported Black Lives Matter, the federal government appears to be ignoring these folks who are shutting down highways, bridges, business districts, and airports nationwide. 

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    Last Wednesday, anti-Israel protesters blocked critical roadways to JFK. 

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    Where is the Biden administration denouncing these rogue organized protesters shutting down critical infrastructure? There should be zero tolerance for any group attempting to disrupt airports. Maybe Biden’s federal government is too busy weaponizing agencies against Trump supporters to actually care about real threats to the nation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/01/2024 – 14:15

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 01

Today’s News 1st January 2024

  • 2024: Where Does The Pendulum Swing?
    2024: Where Does The Pendulum Swing?

    Authored by Amir Taheri via The Gatestone Institute,

    If there is a pendulum that regulates world affairs, it is important to know which way it may be swinging in the year that is about to start.

    Seen from one angle, the pendulum looks like swinging towards uncertainty.

    In 2024, many countries with major roles in international affairs are facing dicey elections.

    The United States looks set for what could be the most difficult election season in its history. Will President Joe Biden, with his physical and mental fitness questioned by some, be able to run the final mile to his party’s nomination? Or will his Democrat Party be forced to rally around Kamala Harris at the last moment and out of desperation?

    The Republicans face an even less predictable prospect.

    Although Donald Trump continues to cast a large shadow on the whole process, a shadow is just a shadow after all. The alternative savior, Ron DeSantis, seems to be fading away, while Nikki Haley, a dark horse just a few weeks ago, is beginning to emerge as a serious pretender.

    Even then, and regardless of who would win the keys to the White House next November, the United States will be on pilot mode for much of 2024 and thus, unable to take the tough decisions that only a well-settled administration could take.

    The United Kingdom is also facing what is seen as the most difficult general elections it has experienced at least since the Suez Crisis of 1956.

    The Conservative Party seems to be in letdown mode, while the Labour Party appears unable to seize the opportunity to make a big comeback. The prospect of a hung parliament, with Labour forced to depend on the Scottish National Party (SNP) to form a government, signals a period of uncertainty as far as strategic decisions are concerned.

    In the European Union, the Netherlands is already without a stable government and is likely to remain so for months, while coalition-building goes on. In Germany, the EU’s big beast in economic terms, the shaky coalition led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz could unravel at any moment, while the right-wing Alternative for Germany waits to emerge as the arbiter of a divided political scene.

    Even France now seems to be heading for a period of instability as President Emmanuel Macron’s shaky coalition begins to crumble, while his government is unable to secure a majority in the parliament.

    The prospect of dissolution of parliament and snap elections is hanging above the scene like the Damocles’ sword of the myth.

    In Russia, President Vladimir Putin seems set to easily sail to victory on his bid for a new presidential term. But even there, the elections are likely to lead to a major reshuffle of the ruling elite, including the top brass and the inner circle of household oligarchs. After all, the thinly disguised failure in Ukraine must be blamed on someone, someone other than good old Volodia.

    The only major power to appear stable at the moment is the People’s Republic of China.

    But there too, President Xi Jinping appears more focused on managing economic slowdown and the purge of the party than being dragged into international problems that promise nothing but trouble.

    The pendulum is also swinging more sharply towards conflict, instability and state failures.

    In 2023, the list of “ungoverned” countries was limited to Syria, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan and, according to some, Afghanistan.

    In 2024 Sudan, caught in a war between rival military factions, is certain to join the category, while Myanmar, with areas controlled by Karen rebels expanding, is heading in the same direction.

    If you hope that the pendulum will swing towards peace, think again.

    In Ukraine, both sides, that is to say Russia and NATO, appear in a zugzwang that keeps them in conflict for the foreseeable future.

    The Gaza war is set to continue in 2024. Even after Israel achieves its military objectives, that is to say dismantling Hamas’ military machine and freeing Israeli hostages, within weeks the gargantuan task of building a new status quo is certain to take much longer.

    In the meantime, the Gaza war has already ricocheted to North Yemen, still under Houthi control, and parts of Lebanon, under Hezbollah’s total control. Fighting involving Iranian-controlled militias in Syria and Iraq with US-backed elements is also likely to get wider dimensions.

    There are indications that both Russia and Turkey are also preparing for military action on a grander scale to secure the chunks of Syria under their control.

    For its part, the Islamic Republic of Iran is likely to face a sharp swing of the pendulum towards uncertainty in both domestic and foreign policy areas.

    Another case of the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction concerns the United Nations and diplomacy in general.

    The UN Security Council is likely to remain inoperative for the foreseeable future, while the Secretary-General, having tripped over the Gaza war, has lost much of his authority as arbiter of international conflicts.

    At the end of the COP28 in Dubai earlier this month, there was much talk about multilateralism making a big comeback. But that may be nothing but wishful thinking. The coming year looks likely to see a further decline in multilateralism and an increase in bilateral efforts to deal with economic and security problems.

    In some cases, lone-ranger policymaking is finding more advocates.

    Hungary under Viktor Orbán, for example, is defying the EU by hosting a Chinese manufacturer of electric cars to compete with EU producers. Despite an agreement to coordinate immigration policy, EU members are developing divergent strategies likely to lead to diplomatic clashes in 2024.

    A broader and potentially more important pendulum swing in 2024 would be away from the mushy consensus formed during the golden days of globalism.

    Almost everywhere, we are already witnessing a return to the narrowest concept of national interests. Fear of dependence on potentially hostile or unstable powers has forced many countries, especially in the EU, to lean towards economic nationalism and discard the “comparative advantage” argument.

    France, for example, has just unveiled a plan for self-sufficiency in a number of areas, notably pharmaceuticals, microchips and batteries for electrical vehicles. In a more folkloric move away from globalization, France has just revived growing a number of plants used in textile industry.

    Finally, the pendulum looks likely to swing in favor of small- and/or medium-sized nations capable of adopting non-ideological and effective policies in the interest of their people. After all, no nation is small or medium as such; it’s the leadership that makes a country small or great.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 23:00

  • America's Top New Year's Resolutions For 2024
    America’s Top New Year’s Resolutions For 2024

    Bidenomics…

    Planning to save more money is top of mind for many Americans making resolutions for 2024.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck highlights, this is a notable shift. Where in previous years the vows to exercise more, eat healthier and lose weight had come in top positions, now the financial goal has leapfrogged them to become the most commonly cited resolution this year.

    This is according to data from a Statista’s Consumer Insights survey.

    Infographic: America's Top New Year's Resolutions for 2024 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Slightly further down the list came the goal of reducing stress from work and spending less time on social media (both 19 percent), while less popular resolutions included cutting down on alcohol (13 percent) and becoming a vegetarian or a vegan (3 percent).

    In a similar vein to saving more money, one in four U.S. adults said they wanted to reduce their spendings on living expenses such as food and energy in the coming year.

    Looking further into U.S. savings habits, data from an earlier Statista survey found that in 2022, the three areas most commonly cut back on in times of high inflation and rising energy costs were contracts and subscriptions (66 percent), purchasing clothes (42 percent) and visiting bars, cafes and restaurants (39 percent).

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 22:20

  • Blinken Again Bypasses US Congress To Send Munitions To Israel
    Blinken Again Bypasses US Congress To Send Munitions To Israel

    Via The Cradle,

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used emergency authority to approve the sale of $147.5 million of 155 mm artillery shells to Israel on Saturday, bypassing the standard congressional review for arms sales for the second time since the start of the war on Gaza.

    A State Department spokesman said on Friday that “given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer.”

    Via AFP

    Earlier this month, Blinken used the same emergency process to approve the sale of 14,000 tank shells, worth more than $106 million, to Israel. The emergency sale of artillery shells comes as Israel’s military intensifies its bombing campaign in Gaza.

    Earlier this week, on Christmas Eve, Israeli forces bombed the Meghazi camp, killing 86 Palestinians in one strike.  Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy excused the death toll by telling Sky News the army had used an “incorrect munition.”

    But he refused to apologize for the loss of life and did not say what type of munition was used, despite being pressed several times by Sky News presenter Niall Paterson.

    Israel has regularly used 2,000 lb US-made bombs to target residential neighborhoods in Gaza.

    Continued instances of this sort cast doubt on the sincerity of the White House’s rhetoric calling for Israel to refrain from killing Palestinian civilians in such huge numbers.

    Josh Paul, a former State Department arms expert who resigned in protest in October, told The Washington Post that Blinken’s decision to rush these unguided munitions enables Israel to continue the type of operations in Gaza that have “led to so many Palestinian civilian deaths.”

    “This is shameful, craven, and should frankly turn the stomach of any decent human being,” he said. A Washington Post analysis found that Israel’s war against Gaza has been more devastating than any other 21st-century conflict.

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    International outrage continues in response to the Israeli bombing campaign, with South Africa invoking the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice the same day Blinken approved the additional weapons sale.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 21:40

  • Has Feminism And 'Hoeflation' Destroyed Dating In The West?
    Has Feminism And ‘Hoeflation’ Destroyed Dating In The West?

    It’s a problem in the western world that is rarely discussed in the media beyond puff-piece articles and glancing polls that avoid connecting the dots.   The precipitous decline of dating, committed relationships and marriage along with a flatline in population in the past couple decades in the US is treated as a novelty issue rather than the threat to the stability of civilization that it actually is.  History shows that without the traditional family structure, numerous ugly societal consequences follow.

    One could argue, though, that the situation is far worse than that.  We may be heading into a future where families become a novelty, and many argue that the root cause is feminism and the hyperinflated delusions of progressive women.

    In order to understand the problem we have to look at the stats. 

    More than 50% of American women are still childless by age 30.  By age 35 fertility goes into steep decline with women having a 15% chance of becoming pregnant, and a less than 5% chance of motherhood at age 40.  Meaning, the best window of opportunity for women to find a compatible partner and build a family is in their 20s.  

    Feminists argue, though, that this is the time in a woman’s life when they should be building a career and having fun.  Family life, they say, is an artificial prison “created by the patriarchy” in order to oppress the fairer sex.  Corporate media and Hollywood entertainment often reinforce this narrative and encourage unrealistic life goals.

    The propaganda has generated what many refer to as the “Female Happiness Paradox.”  Surveys show that increased power, job access and responsibility for women in society since the 1970s has also led to a diametrically opposed decline in overall happiness for those same women.  The correlation suggests the exact opposite of what feminism originally promised and that the ideology has been a net negative.

    Though some will argue that a general decline in economic conditions is the real cause, surveys show that women have suffered a far more pronounced drop in happiness compared to men.  Meaning, men were already acclimated to the struggles of the workaday world and their roles as providers and protectors.  Women were happy until they joined men in the trenches.  

    For men, the reaction has been to back away from the dating scene and the double standards involved.  Over 63% of men under the age of 30 are now single; that’s up from 51% in 2019.  The majority of single men say this is by choice and that they are seeking to avoid relationships altogether.  Why?  The consensus appears to be that modern western women cost too much money and cause too much trouble.

    Fear of failed marriage is one aspect that has the younger generation of men on edge, with family courts still largely in favor of women in divorce settlements and child custody.  This is one reason why marriage rates have declined by 60% since the 1970s.  However, the obstacles go well beyond divorce and into a new culture of female entitlement.    

    The word on the street is “Hoeflation”:  The dramatic increase in cost for men today to maintain a relationship with a woman while the quality of women continues to go down.  That is to say, it is an increase in female expectations vs what they bring to the table in a relationship.  

    In other words, women of the past used to have something to offer beyond sexual companionship, from greater femininity, greater potential for motherhood, less combativeness and narcissism, as well as a superior ability to raise children and maintain a home.  Such traits are highly attractive to men even after 60 years of widespread feminism, but are seen as non-existent among women under 30 in 2023.

    It should be noted that “Hoeflation” seems to be directly linked to progressive influences, and not all women fall into this category.  Unfortunately, around 71% of young women identify with progressive beliefs, as opposed to young men who are only 53% progressive.  It should also be noted that progressive today means something a lot different from what it meant in the 1990s (progressive now means woke, or extreme leftist cultism).    

    A majority of American women have cast off their traditional roles in exchange for modern feminist ideals while still expecting traditional roles for men.  Dating, younger men complain, is now more like a job interview with scrutiny of their finances a primary topic.  Beyond that, the online meat market isn’t helping.  Dating app research shows that 80% of western women are all chasing after the top 20% or less of men, with earning potential being the biggest factor next to physical attractiveness.    

    A recent viral trend on social media in which women made a list of restaurants that they would refuse to eat at on a first date exemplifies the concept of “Hoeflation.” 

    The Cheesecake Factory in particular was consistently mentioned as a “red flag” for “cheap men.”  Spending of up to $200 or more was presented as a bare minimum for a first date, and only 26% of women indicated they are willing to split the tab.  First dates used to be an opportunity for men and women to decide if there is a chance for compatibility, now progressive women expect grand gestures of wealth and ambition.  Like Valentine’s Day, but everyday.  

    What feminism has done, essentially, is hyper-exaggerate women’s natural inclination to seek out more productive men, while also hyper-exaggerating their sense of self worth and making them insufferable.  

    Women who have nothing to offer have been inculcated with delusions of grandeur.  So much so that the question “what do you bring to the table” is sneered at – “I am the table” is their response.  There is no cure for this level of narcissism except hitting rock bottom, which is an outcome that western women (and society as a whole) are swiftly approaching          

    The problem is not as historically entrenched as one might think, with Gen Z being the biggest deviation with the worst prospects for relationships among all other generations.  Feminism has been an ever present agenda but Gen Z has been hit with the brunt of the fallout in the span of a single decade.  We can hope, however, that as quickly as the cancer of feminism has spread it might recede.  If the greatest damage was done within one or two generations, maybe a cure can be applied in the next generation.   

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 21:00

  • DeSantis Promises 'Day One' Firing Of Special Counsel Jack Smith If Elected
    DeSantis Promises ‘Day One’ Firing Of Special Counsel Jack Smith If Elected

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis told Iowa voters that if he is elected in 2024, he would fire special counsel Jack Smith on his first day in office.

    Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to guests during a campaign rally at the Thunderdome in Newton, Iowa, on Dec. 2, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    The declaration came during a campaign event on Thursday and aimed at setting himself apart from his chief GOP rival, former President Donald Trump, who faces two federal prosecutions led by Mr. Smith.

    The Florida governor expressed his concern that President Trump, as the Republican nominee, would overshadow the election, focusing on legal issues and investigations rather than addressing the nation’s challenges.

    Should President Trump become the Republican nominee for the third consecutive time, said Mr. DeSantis, then “the whole election will be about him,” his behavior, and “all these different investigations and legal cases.”

    “Which, look,” he added, “I think are unfair. I will fire Jack Smith on day one when I’m president. That is without saying.”

    The Epoch Times contacted the Department of Justice (DOJ) for comment.

    Mr. DeSantis has been united in the view of the former president and his supporters, who have characterized the DOJ prosecutions as a “weaponization” of the government against President Joe Biden’s likely primary opponent.

    The governor emphasized his belief that the media and Democrats were keen on making the election solely about President Trump, diverting attention from holding President Biden accountable for what they say are his failures.

    Mr. DeSantis argued that focusing on President Trump’s legal battles would play into the Democratic playbook and ultimately lead to Republican losses across the country.

    “Even if somehow he could surmount that, you have a lame-duck president on day one,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to President Trump. “How are you going to be able to get things done? How are you going to be able to recruit personnel that you need?”

    While making his pitch to Iowa voters, Mr. DeSantis went on to outline his vision for the presidency, emphasizing the need for a diverse team to enact meaningful change.

    “We will go in on day one, and we are going to upend this swamp in Washington. We’re going to do it,” he declared.

    (Left) Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks in Washington, on Aug. 1, 2023. (Right) Former President Donald Trump attends his fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York City, on Dec. 7, 2023. (Drew Angerer/David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

    Smith ‘Should Be Scared,’ Says Trump Lawyer

    Mr. Smith has brought two federal criminal cases against President Trump, one in Florida over classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate and another in Washington, D.C., related to his efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections.

    President Trump is also facing several other legal cases, both civil and criminal.

    The former president has repeatedly claimed during public appearances and on Truth Social that all of the cases are tantamount to election interference, forming an effort to keep him from seeking the White House again.

    Recent national polls put President Trump leaps and bounds ahead of his Republican rivals in the 2024 race.

    Mr. Smith recently filed papers in the election case arguing that President Trump should be blocked from telling jurors that the cases against him represent selective prosecution by federal officials.

    In a motion, Mr. Smith’s office specifically asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of President Barrack Obama who is presiding over the case and trial, to rule that the former president cannot say in court that he is being prosecuted for political reasons, saying that it could be prejudicial.

    Lawyers from Mr. Smith’s office told the court in filings that President Trump has, via public statements, court filings, and arguments in hearings, tried to “inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial.”

    “Although the court can recognize these efforts for what they are and disregard them, the jury—if subjected to them—may not,” lawyers working with Mr. Smith wrote.

    Trump attorney Alina Habba, responding to the filing, said it shows that Mr. Smith is “running scared,” and he “should be scared,” she told Newsmax on Thursday.

    “He doesn’t want, basically, any defense being brought by the defense,” Ms. Habba said, referring to Mr. Smith. “It’s what happened with the last trial I tried. It’s what will happen with the next one I try.”

    Ms. Habba has suggested that prosecutors are trying to rush a conviction of the former president before the election. The District of Columbia trial case is scheduled for March 4, one day before the Super Tuesday nominating contest for the 2024 presidential election.

    Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 20:20

  • These Are The Most Popular Wikipedia Articles In 2023
    These Are The Most Popular Wikipedia Articles In 2023

    From the CIA‘s fingers to your mind…

    ChatGPT marked a turning point for artificial intelligence, allowing millions of users to experiment with generative AI.

    So, as Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, it may come as no surprise that the topic has become the most visited English Wikipedia article this year.

    According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization hosting the collaborative encyclopedia, ChatGPT received 49.4 million visits in 2023 (as of November 28).

    The film “Oppenheimer,” the fifth highest-grossing movie of 2023, which tells the story of the “Manhattan Project” and the development of the atomic bomb, secured the fifth spot on the list of the most-viewed Wikipedia articles in 2023.

    When it comes to celebrities, Taylor Swift, today named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, holds the 12th position among the most visited Wikipedia pages, while Lionel Messi takes the 15th spot.

    Infographic: The Most Popular Wikipedia Articles in 2023 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In the words of the organization:

    “The most-viewed Wikipedia articles of 2023 tell the story of you and society at large seeking out knowledge about our ever-changing world from the world’s largest encyclopedia.”

    The English site alone received over 84 billion visits this year, according to the foundation.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 19:40

  • Schwarzenegger Interview Explains California’s Decline
    Schwarzenegger Interview Explains California’s Decline

    Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Arnold Schwarzenegger’s term years in office, 2003–11, remains one of the most consequential for California since 1991. That was the year Republican Gov. George Deukmejian left office and was replaced by moderate Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who promptly increased taxes and went to war with the conservatives in his party over those tax increases, badly wounding the party.

    U.S.-Austrian actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks about clean energy during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Jan. 4, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    As I wrote in The Epoch Times in August, “The Media Is Helping Schwarzenegger Rewrite His Governorship” as he celebrated 20 years since his election in 2003, he avoided needed reforms, increased taxes, and like Mr. Wilson went to war with his fellow Republicans.

    In a new, extensive interview in Cigar Aficionado, Mr. Schwarzenegger talks with worshipful editor Marvin R. Shanken as they smoke 30-year-old Punch Churchills from communist Cuba, which are illegal in the United States. The former governor laments not being able to run for president, because he was born in Austria. And he talks a bit about national and foreign policy. But I’ll just cover his California comments.

    What’s really interesting to Californians are his comments on his governorship. He begins with President George H.W. Bush appointing him to be the chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness in 1990. “I then realized that we need more after-school programs, and I created an organization. And actually what I realized was this is addictive—to help other people. Which is not something that was in my vision at all. It really feels great when you come home at night and you’ve helped so many people. So I thought it was great, and one thing led to the next.”

    Unfortunately, Mr. Shanken didn’t follow up with any questions about where this led. Promoting after-school programs with private money is one thing. But in 2002, Mr. Schwarzenegger sponsored Proposition 49, which permanently spent at least $400 million a year from the state general fund on after-school programs. There was no new tax source. But a clever section delayed implementation until the state’s budget deficit that year turned into a future surplus. That allowed Mr. Schwarzenegger to claim it wouldn’t increase the deficit or taxes.

    But it did permanently increase general-fund spending. So when the deficits hit again when he was governor, in 2008, the program inevitably became part of the budget crisis, contributing to the ensuing budget cuts and record 2009 tax increase of $13 billion.

    Prop. 49 was a practice run for governor, as Mr. Schwarzenegger crisscrossed the state promoting the initiative, which garnered 57 percent of the vote.

    It was one of the worst cases of what’s called “ballot-box budgeting,” in which powerful special interests, in this case an ambitious governor wannabe, tie up budget spending for their own priorities. This prevents the Legislature from doing its job of weighing the state’s many needs and deciding priorities based on compromise.

    Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks in his keynote about digital sustainability during the Digital X event in Cologne, Germany, on Sept. 7, 2021. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

    Schwarzenegger the Moderate?

    He says people since the 1970s told him he should run for governor. As he has many times, he says after immigrating here he became a Republican when he preferred Richard Nixon’s platform in 1968 to that of the Democratic nominee, and loser, Hubert Humphrey.

    “So people mentioned it a lot of times, but when the recall happened I said this is perfect, because I’m not right wing, I’m not left wing, I’m in the middle. That doesn’t play well in California with the primaries, because you have to be really to the right as a Republican. I said this is perfect: There’s a recall election, there will be no primaries, there will be no problem, I can go directly to the people and I can go and win. All I have to do is tell them my plan and be convincing. And that’s exactly what I did. I said it’s between me and the voters.”

    That’s a distortion. For one thing, Gov. Pete Wilson, elected in 1990 and 1994, was a moderate Republican. Indeed, one of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s mistakes was hiring a lot of Mr. Wilson’s associates, who had promoted the latter’s disastrous, “moderate” tax increases with Democrats in 1991. Moderates also won the GOP nomination with billionaire Meg Whitman in 2010 and in 2014 with economist and banker Neel Kashkari, now a member of the Federal Reserve Board.

    During this period, the only conservative the Republicans nominated for governor was Bill Simon in 2002.

    Moreover, Mr. Schwarzenegger headlined a Reason Foundation banquet in Los Angeles. My colleague and editor at the time at the Orange County Register, K.E. Grubbs Jr., also attended, and recalled in 2005: “I first had an inkling of Schwarzenegger’s political inclinations from a mutual friend (in Arnold’s case, a workout buddy), Dana Rohrabacher, now an Orange County congressman who was among the first to importune Arnold to enter the political arena. Then, in the early 1990s, the world-famous actor headlined a Reason Foundation dinner. His speech was pure Milton Friedman, whose PBS series, Free to Choose, he had also famously introduced.”

    The late Mr. Friedman obviously was not a “moderate,” but one of American’s foremost free-market economists. About that same time in the 1990s, Mr. Friedman visited us at the Register. I remember him saying he was impressed by how much Mr. Schwarzenegger knew about free-market economics.

    I also distinctly remember many conservative Republicans voting for Mr. Schwarzenegger precisely because he gave the impression he would govern as a conservative. I told them I was skeptical, and state Sen. Tom McClintock (now in the U.S. House of Representatives) was better, but they replied, “I like McClintock, but he can’t win.”

    Well, once in office, Mr. Schwarzenegger applied Mr. Friedman’s free-market principles for two years, then spent five years increasing government, increasing taxes, and leaving the state worse off than in 2003, as I detailed in my aforementioned Epoch Times article.

    His touted “moderate” schtick also allowed him to avoid helping real Republicans, such as Mr. McClintock, who came close to winning for lieutenant governor in 2006, garnering 45 percent of the vote to 49 percent for the winner, Democrat John Garamendi. If Mr. Schwarzenegger had teamed up with Mr. McClintock and run on a unified party ticket, Mr. McClintock could have won, setting up his own position as successor in 2010. But Mr. Schwarzenegger’s 2006 campaign precluded that. That continued how, in this interview, he never mentions the Republican Party in anything but a negative light.

    Mr. Schwarzenegger’s attacks on his own party left it a wreck on the side of the political road, turning California into the one-party state it is today.

    Actor and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a selfie photo with the Terminator animatronics robot during a photo call for the film “Terminator Genisys” in Paris on June 19, 2015. (Francois Guillot/AFP via Getty Images)

    Governor of ‘The People’

    Mr. Shanken asked what was Mr. Schwarzenegger’s high moment after the election.

    “I walked by the television set, and I heard our new governor will be Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he said. “When I heard that on the news, I literally had tears coming down my eyes. It was the most powerful thing that I had ever felt or heard. I am going to become the governor of a state that has 40 million people, it’s the No. 1 state in the United States, it’s the fifth-largest economy in the world. I am going to be the governor.”

    Ironically, his misgovernance kept the state population rising from 35 million in 2003 to 40 million. The closest it got was 39.5 million in 2019, before dropping back to 39 million today.

    “And that’s why I tell people you can call me whatever you want, but don’t call me a self-made man,” he said. “There were 5.8 million people who voted for me to be governor. Each one of those people made me governor.”

    That’s beside the point. Governing is taking power with a political coalition. The only coalitions available were Republicans and Democrats. Because he shoved Republicans aside, that meant inevitably siding with the Democrats. He often talked about “the people,” but it always was about Arnold.

    Siding With Democrats

    Mr. Shanken again flatters him with the possibility of becoming president and asks, “What are some of your ideas to fix our country?” Mr. Schwarzenegger continues with his fantasy, almost the script for a sci-fi movie: “We are all part of the team. Yes, you have your beliefs—quite contrary to mine—but you’re all part of the team. And we only can win if we all play together. So let’s figure this out.

    “No different than what I did in California. I sat down and said let’s not fight over what we disagree on, let’s go and find out things we are for. The Democrats would talk about environmental issues. I said, you know something? I’m with you. But it’s important to do it the right way—to do it pro-business and not anti-business. When we said we want to reduce greenhouse gases and pollution 25 percent, we didn’t go and say to Caterpillar you cannot build that engine anymore. So we had to protect them, and we said you have 10 years to make a new engine. And we did it. And then when we had the bill signing [for Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006], there were the environmentalists sitting next to the car manufacturers.”

    Of course the manufacturers showed up because they have to work in the system the politicians create. And actually, even as Mr. Schwarzenegger was attacking industry in California, Caterpillar was shifting much of its manufacturing to nine cities in communist China. Where, as I have detailed in The Epoch Times, the Chinese Communist Party keeps building coal plants to power industrial growth.

    Businesses continue to flee due to the policies Mr. Schwarzenegger imposed. According to the latest Hoover Institution study, from Sept. 2022, “We discuss several economic factors that have led to these departures by raising business costs, reducing productivity, and reducing profitability, including tax policies, regulatory policies, labor costs, litigation costs, energy and utility costs, and concerns about a declining quality of life within the state. Unless policy reforms reverse this course, California will continue to lose businesses, both large established businesses, as well as young, rapidly growing businesses, some of which will become the transformational giants of tomorrow.”

    He Got Rolled Like a Cuban Cigar

    Finally, Mr. Shanken brings up the cigar-smoking tent Mr. Schwarzenegger set up outside the state Capitol building to avoid anti-smoking laws he had signed. Democrats then passed a bill specifically banning smoking in his tent. “I vetoed it with a nice veto message on it to let them know that this is unacceptable,” he gloats. “No one is there that doesn’t want to smoke. In fact, Democrats and other legislators came down and asked me, begged me, can I come down and smoke? That’s how I got most of my deals done.

    “We found something in common, which is smoking, and we smoked our stogies, took our jackets off, took our ties off, and we were sitting there and saying what are you working on? So we started working together. So this is what we did, and we got a lot of the things done because of the smoking tent.”

    That was so naïve. Of course the Old Bulls in the Democratic Party, such as Senate President pro tempore John Burton, were going to humor him—as they rolled him like a Cuban cigar.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 19:00

  • Potential Pro-Palestinian Mob Threatens To "Flood" JFK Airport On New Year's Day
    Potential Pro-Palestinian Mob Threatens To “Flood” JFK Airport On New Year’s Day

    Days after hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded the World Trade Center in New York City and screamed “Allahu akbar,” a flyer circulating social media platform X shows a possible rally at John F. Kennedy International Airport on New Year’s Day. 

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    Joel Mowbray, a former columnist for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan institution focusing on national security and foreign policy, pointed out the protest flyer is full of hate:

    Pro-Palestinian “protesters” are now openly embracing Hamas. Key word is “flood.” Hamas calls 10/7 massacres “Operation Al Aqsa Flood.” 

    So “Flood JFK for Gaza” is an open support for Hamas’ campaign of raping, murdering and beheading Jews — and Muslims & Christians. Vile.

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    Organized protesters are expected to arrive by foot and vehicles at JFK Terminal 4 (departures) around 1400 ET Monday. The terminal serves several international airlines, including El Al Israel Airlines Ltd.

    “On New Year’s Day, pro-Hamas mobs plan on shutting down JFK airport, but don’t worry, New York’s governor @GovKathyHochul and @NYCMayor Eric Adams will be hard at work nursing their New Year’s Eve hangover. Once they’re over it, they’ll pretend it did not happen,” one X user said in response to the flyer. 

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    Another person said: “Ah yes, disrupt people trying to get home for the holidays for your cause. I’m sure they will agree with you and support it now.” 

    Marxist groups appear to be funding these anti-Israel protests, as some point out. What’s troubling, just like when Marxist groups supported Black Lives Matter, the federal government appears to be ignoring these folks who are shutting down highways, bridges, business districts, and airports nationwide. 

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    Last Wednesday, anti-Israel protesters blocked critical roadways to JFK. 

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    Where is the Biden administration denouncing these rogue organized protesters shutting down critical infrastructure? There should be zero tolerance for any group attempting to disrupt airports. Maybe Biden’s federal government is too busy weaponizing agencies against Trump supporters to actually care about real threats to the nation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 18:25

  • This Hidden Voting Bloc Could Swing The 2024 Election
    This Hidden Voting Bloc Could Swing The 2024 Election

    Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Tina DeMedeiros, 53, of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, is a typical “Trump-or-bust” voter.

    After casting her first presidential election ballot for Democrat Bill Clinton in her early 20s, Ms. DeMedeiros had been disconnected from anything related to politics.

    Donald Trump became a notable exception.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Ms. DeMedeiros voted for him in 2016 and again in 2020. But she didn’t cast a ballot in 2018, nor in 2022; she said that most of the people she knows don’t vote regularly, either.

    “I don’t really like politicians. But I like Donald Trump,” she told The Epoch Times. “I don’t look at him like a politician.”

    Pollster Rich Baris calls these people Trump-or-bust voters—less-likely voters who tend to cast ballots only when they know the name “Donald J. Trump” will appear.

    They now form a critical constituency that other analysts are beginning to acknowledge.

    “Republicans cannot win without them,” Mr. Baris told The Epoch Times. “The math just isn’t there if they do not show up.”

    Pro-Trump voters include many who had never voted before or rarely voted in the past, Mr. Baris said.

    Many pollsters might label these people “unlikely” or “less-likely” voters and may discount their responses or weed them out, based on the assumption that they won’t cast ballots.

    But Mr. Baris said that in the case of President Trump’s voters, that premise is flawed. He sees a pattern: These previously unmotivated, sporadic voters now seem to behave rather predictably.

    Supporters listen to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Geneva, Ohio, on Oct. 27, 2016. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

    The Trump-or-Bust phenomenon is evident among interviewees whom Mr. Baris’s Big Data Poll (BDP) surveyed this fall. Mr. Baris produced one of the few polls that correctly showed that then-candidate Donald Trump was poised to win in 2016. BDP has conducted polling in the past for The Epoch Times.

    For example, BDP’s map shows a 38-year-old man from rural Shelby County, Ohio. He described himself as unmarried, childless, not religious, and working full-time for an annual salary of at least $50,000.

    This man, Mr. Baris says, is a typical Trump-or-bust voter, like Ms. DeMedeiros.

    She started following Donald Trump when she was 15. That’s when she made her first trip to New York and visited Trump Tower, piquing her curiosity about the real estate tycoon’s success. She started watching Mr. Trump on TV talk shows, such as Oprah Winfrey; she became a fan of his reality TV series “The Apprentice.”

    Yet Ms. DeMedeiros was so politically unaware that she was stunned to learn Mr. Trump was seeking the presidency.

    He declared his candidacy in June 2015, but she knew nothing about it until her husband mentioned Mr. Trump was going to debate Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in September 2016. “I said, ‘Oh my God, he’s running for president?’” she recalled.

    By then, Ms. Clinton had already declared that Donald Trump’s supporters could be lumped into “a basket of deplorables.” She said these people were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”

    Her comment ignited a backlash. And when Ms. DeMedeiros heard about it, she predicted, “He’s going to win.”

    “Everyone thought I was crazy,” she said.

    But she saw signs that waves of support were building for Mr. Trump, partly out of resentment toward Ms. Clinton. “People had signs out in front of their houses saying, ‘A Deplorable Lives Here,’” Ms. DeMedeiros said.

    Intrigued, she started learning about the future president’s proposed policies; to her, they seemed to be based on “common sense.” She supports his tough-on-illegal immigration policies, his defense of Constitutional rights, and his plans to cut government bureaucracy.

    Supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stand in line for a rally in Hershey, Pa., on Nov. 4, 2016. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    She said President Trump has her support. Although she conceded that he may engage in too much name-calling, she said, “I like it when he goes after people who come after him.”

    She said she’s used to that brash personality as a New Englander: “I like people who have fire inside of them.”

    “And I think he’s done a lot for this country,” she said. “If I had his money, I don’t know that I’d keep going on while being under constant attack.”

    Ms. DeMedeiros said that some wealthy Democrats in Cape Cod who were once anti-Trump now instead bad-mouth President Joe Biden’s economic policies. They want President Trump back in office, she said. To them, she says, “Welcome aboard!’”

    Although Ms. DeMedeiros said she senses that President Trump is headed for a 2024 election win, she also said she remains concerned that Democrats will try to sabotage it.

    Days after Ms. DeMedeiros expressed that worry to The Epoch Times, the left-leaning Colorado Supreme Court ruled President Trump ineligible for that state’s primary election ballot. The Colorado GOP has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

    Making Politics Relevant

    McKayla Rose, 36, of Dallas, exemplifies another category of President Trump’s supporters: Those who were once disinterested in politics but became uber-engaged because of him. (To avoid reprisals, the married mother of two asked The Epoch Times to use her online pseudonym for this article.)

    Concern for her children motivated her to “start paying attention” to politics, she said. That happened after Ms. Rose learned that schools “were trying to teach kids about homosexuality and ’trans’ this, ’trans’ that,” she said, referring to transgenderism.

    Ms. Rose started to see the vital role that the U.S. president plays in guiding the nation’s policies and setting the tone for trends in American society. That realization motivated her to delve deeper.

    She began listening directly to President Trump’s speeches and became convinced that many mainstream media reports mischaracterized him.

    Rich Baris, the “People’s Pundit” and director of Big Data Poll, speaks at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Fla., on Feb. 24, 2022. (Courtesy of Rich Baris)

    So, for the first time in her life, Ms. Rose, who was then in her early 30s, voted—for President Trump in the 2020 election. She said she agrees with his contention that the election was rigged or stolen and that she intends to vote for him again in 2024.

    But unlike the Trump-or-bust voters, Ms. Rose said she did cast a ballot during the 2022 midterm elections. She now considers herself an informed, active member of the electorate.

    Jeff Bloodworth, a professor of U.S. political history at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, said Ms. Rose and the Trump-or-bust voters strike him as “a very typical kind of person who has been brought into the political system by Donald Trump.”

    Although President Trump’s critics say the drama surrounding him is exhausting, it has captured the attention of citizens who used to find politics painfully dull and irrelevant to their lives. The former president seems to have a knack for reaching those people, showing them how politics matter, and inspiring them to get involved, Mr. Bloodworth told The Epoch Times.

    “He makes politics kind of understandable. And, oddly, some people believe he’s more relatable, even though he’s a billionaire from New York,” he said. “Trump has found a way to make politics interesting to a wider swath of the electorate.”

    Mr. Bloodworth said he thinks many pollsters still need to figure out how to ferret out and fully gauge President Trump’s supporters.

    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in front of a capacity crowd at a rally for his campaign in Rochester, N.Y., on April 10, 2016. (Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)

    The Pennsylvania Picture

    Recent poll numbers for both President Trump and President Biden fit Mr. Bloodworth’s observations about the political climate in Pennsylvania.

    Polls show that President Biden, who hails from Pennsylvania, is in danger of losing the state if current trends hold.

    Mr. Baris’s BDP shows President Trump 3.5 percentage points ahead of the incumbent in the Keystone State.

    Asked to comment on BDP’s Pennsylvania findings, Mr. Bloodworth said, “I guess I was most surprised by the urban numbers, especially in Philadelphia.”

    In 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden won Philadelphia County by about 63 percentage points. That support level has dropped by 16 percentage points, according to BDP.

    The poll detected a similar decline among President Biden’s supporters in Pittsburgh, where he won by about 20 percentage points in 2020. Now his Pittsburgh lead has shrunk to about 4 points, BDP found.

    These findings mesh with other polls showing that nonwhite people’s support of the current president has been dropping; some Democrat strategists have acknowledged that these polling numbers constitute warning signals about President Biden’s reelection bid.

    Simply put, the numbers show that “Biden is vulnerable,” Mr. Bloodworth said. “And I think even Joe Biden understands that.”

    However, some of the incumbent president’s allies are discounting the importance of polling at this stage of the game.

    President Joe Biden talks about his proposed fiscal 2024 federal budget during an event at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia on March 9, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Democrats, Others Urge Caution

    Asked to comment on the recent downward trends in President Biden’s poll numbers, Washington-based Democrat strategist Matt Angle told The Epoch Times last month: “Horse race polls a year out are not predictive, and treating them like they are is dumb on the part of individuals and irresponsible on the part of journalists.”

    Similarly, Mr. Baris told The Epoch Times: “People should remain skeptical of polling, educate themselves about it.”

    They also need to remember that polling “was never intended to identify margins with pinpoint accuracy.” Instead, polling is intended to identify trends and record voter sentiments at a given moment in time; they’re snapshots recording the present, not crystal balls glimpsing the future.

    Most polls contain “sampling errors” that can skew results, typically plus or minus 3 to 4 percentage points. Thus, a lead within those margins is not a comfortable one. And so far, most Biden-Trump poll results fall within that margin of error.

    Mr. Angle said President Biden’s poll rankings are probably suffering in the face of “virulent opposition” from President Trump’s “ideologues” in right-wing news media.

    Many recent reports are critical of President Biden’s handling of the economy, immigration issues, and foreign affairs, including the Israel–Hamas War. In addition, President Biden faces an impeachment inquiry over millions of dollars that allegedly flowed from foreigners into his relatives’ bank accounts. He has denied wrongdoing.

    President Biden’s supporters say the influence-peddling scandal is small potatoes compared with the 91 criminal indictments lodged against President Trump. The allegations stem from his challenge of the 2020 election results along with his handling of business records and government records.

    The former president has repeatedly stated that he did nothing wrong. He says he is the target of an unprecedented political witch hunt designed to damage his candidacy and interfere with the 2024 election.

    He also has repeatedly touted his polling performance as an indicator that the American people see the criminal cases as “political persecution” and that they appreciated the work he did in the White House.

    President Donald Trump (R) and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in the final presidential debate in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. (Jim Bourg-Pool/Getty Images)

    Assuming a Biden–Trump rematch, voters face a choice between two candidates who are both old, Mr. Angle said. President Trump is 77 and President Biden 81.

    But of course, there are significant differences between the two men.

    Mr. Angle said he considers President Trump “dangerously destructive,” dishonest, and a threat to American democracy.

    President Trump and his supporters dismiss that characterization as a Democrat talking point. They retort that President Biden has stumbled over his words and his feet, signs that his age is affecting him and making him appear weak on the world stage. But President Trump, they say, remains quick-witted and seems resilient despite a demanding schedule of court appearances and campaign events.

    Mr. Angle called President Biden “capable, accomplished, [and] patriotic,” even if he is “less than exciting.”

    President Biden’s critics accuse him of failing to “put America first.” Under his watch, record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants have flooded across the U.S.–Mexico border.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 17:50

  • Russia Pummels Ukraine's 2nd Largest City With 50 Drones In 'Retaliation' For Attack On Belgorod
    Russia Pummels Ukraine’s 2nd Largest City With 50 Drones In ‘Retaliation’ For Attack On Belgorod

    “This crime will not go unpunished,” Russia’s Defense Ministry had announced Saturday in response to the massive Ukrainian cross-border attacks on Belgorod, which according to the revised death killed at least 24 people and wounded at least 108, including many children at a Christmas market.

    Starting Saturday, Russia unleashed its promised ‘retaliation’ on Ukraine, hitting the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv – which lies just across the border from Belgorod city – with some 50 drones. 

    The Kharkiv Palace hotel following the overnight Saturday attack. Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images

    Ukraine’s air force said that its anti-air defenses shot down 21 of those drones, but that central buildings were hit and damaged, including apartments, a central hotel, a school, and government buildings.

    Regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said that 28 people were wounded in the attack on Kharkiv, which is the country’s second-largest city. There are reports that a British journalist was among the wounded at the Kharkiv Palace Hotel when it was struck.

    According to a statement from Ukraine’s military:

    The missile strikes, which came as Kharkiv prepared for new year celebrations, were followed by waves of drone attacks on housing blocks. On Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said it had destroyed 21 of 49 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia had used to target “the frontline of defense, as well as at civilian, military and infrastructure facilities in the frontline territories.”

    A Russian military statement claimed the overnight assault only targeted military facilities, including what it called a hotel which housed “foreign mercenaries”. 

    Kiev responded by calling Russia’s version of events “yet another delusional fantasy from the terrorist regime waging a genocidal war against Ukraine,” as cited in Euromaidan News.

    The Kremlin has meanwhile demanded answers from the Czech government, citing that recovered ammunition and debris from the Belgorod strikes included Czech-made Vampire rockets and Olkha missiles fitted with cluster-munition warheads, according to Associated Press reporting.

    It seems Russia may be sending a message suggesting that if Ukraine hits a Russian holiday market, it will hit a Ukrainian hotel just ahead of New Year’s celebrations…

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    Russia has throughout nearly two years of war warned that countries externally supplying weapons to Ukrainian forces would be treated as direct participants in the conflict if their weapons are found to be used against Russia. The US in particular has been the biggest supplier of heavy weaponry, followed by NATO and EU countries.

    Moscow has all the while underscored the proxy war nature of the conflict and showdown with NATO, but so far a WW3-style escalation has been narrowly avoided, but this worst case scenario certainly looms large.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 17:15

  • A Clue As To Why AI Is So Dumb
    A Clue As To Why AI Is So Dumb

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    The New York Times has dropped a major lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The paper claims that these companies have been scraping NY Times content to train ChatGPT and other features of artificial intelligence software. They cite real injury here: People are using AI tools for information rather than subscribing to The NY Times, and therefore The NY Times is losing advertiser revenue.

    My first reaction is: That explains so much!

    In particular, it shows why on any topic regarding politics, news, public health, climate change, or anything even mildly controversial, ChatGPT comes across so stupidly conventional and ignorant of deeper literature. It is like reading The New York Times precisely because the AI engine is using The New York Times as its trainer! That truly does account for the core of the problem.

    True, there are thousands of fun things you can do with AI. You can debug software. It can compose nice music and paint pretty pictures. It can slice and dice videos with nice results for TikTok. It can write an instant poem or lyrics of anything. It can instantly bang out an article on any topic. In every case, the results are delightful and very impressive.

    And yet in every case, the results are obviously generated by a machine. Once you learn to recognize the telltale signs, it is unmistakable. And then the whole experience becomes boring and unimpressive.

    People ask me if I as a writer felt threatened by this machine learning and instant prose generator.

    For me, it is quite the opposite. Good writing and good thought comes from a spark that only the human mind can generate. No matter how sophisticated AI gets, it can never reproduce this. In fact, I find it hilariously amusing how bad this software really is.

    For example, just now, I asked AI to compose an essay of 350 words on AI and copyright in the style of Jeffrey Tucker. It generated some of the most mind-numbing blather I’ve read in years, saying almost nothing of any significance but saying it in clean English prose that has the feel of authenticity while being barren of any of the reality.

    The final paragraph of the result: “Ultimately, the intersection of AI and copyright necessitates thoughtful reflection, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an adaptive legal framework. As technological progress propels us into uncharted terrain, striking the right chord between attributing human agency and embracing the transformative power of AI holds the key to a harmonious coexistence in the realm of digital creativity.”

    Eye roll! If I read that anywhere, my spidey sense would be immediately triggered that the author is just making stuff up. More precisely, it is not making stuff up but merely regurgitating known forms of conventional prose in a way that mimics thought but without the slightest spark of any creativity, much less depth of meaning. In other words, AI writes like a highly precocious 5-year-old, capable of astonishing feats of imitation but utterly incapable of actual intelligence. It’s like a sophisticated parrot: seeming to speak English but not really doing so. It’s great for parties but not much else.

    Consider the copyright case alone. The New York Times claims to own its words and sentences and is furious that ChatGPT takes it verbatim, allowing people to gain access to ideas without having paid for them. If this is true, The NYT should have a major beef with the whole of corporate media and academia too, since it long ago set out to be the standard-bearer of approved thought and conventional wisdom. AI is merely amplifying.

    I have no clue how the courts are going to come down on this question. Regardless, the implications of this case are rather broad. OpenAI and Microsoft admit that they have been using The NY Times for its services but say that this constitutes fair use in the law.

    Truth is that the phrase “fair use” does not have a rigorously strict definition. It is what the courts say it is. It’s an exception to the rules concerning copyright that bows to the reality that information is not containable like real property. Without fair use, we would live in a preposterous world in which everyone would be required to forget what he learned by reading anything. So maybe it is fair use and maybe it is not.

    A larger problem is the institution of copyright itself. Today it is based on the intuition that a creator should own his work. It did not start out that way, however. That was the whole point of the original Statute of Anne (1709). It amounted to a royal grant of monopoly privilege for publishers and authors, and it was deployed mostly for purposes of censoring dissident political and religious opinions. It also set off centuries of litigation in the commonwealth countries and in the United States.

    The practical import of copyright today has very little to do with authors’ rights and mainly centers on the rights of publishers to retain exclusive printing and distribution rights to works. Over the years, the term has been extended, from 28 years to 70 years after the lifetime of the author.

    That’s how long publishers retain rights. In the old days, publishers would let books go out of print and the rights would revert to the author. No more. Now publishers keep catalogs for the whole term, resulting in an odd situation in which the author loses all intellectual rights and only his grandchildren are in a position to reprint.

    It’s nuts, but that’s how the law works. There are hundreds of thousands of books published after 1930 that are still in copyright and have not been digitized. They are inaccessible for all practical purposes in today’s world. And yet they pay no royalties and even the rights holders have forgotten about them. This is a giant tragedy.

    The whole theory of copyright is wrong. It is based on the model of private property, as in real things. Real property is ownership exclusive. If I have a fish, you cannot have the same fish. If I have a boat, you cannot have it too at the same time. That’s why the social norm of property came about in the first place: to allocate the rights of control over things that are scarce. It is designed to prevent conflict and bring peace.

    But ideas once created are not scarce. You can take every idea in this article and it takes nothing from me. Ideas are infinitely reproducible and therefore not like property at all. The attempt to make them into property requires state action and ends up creating industrial monopolies that benefit not authors but publishers. When authors get paid, it is called getting “royalties,” as in a stream of money from a royal grant of privilege. There is nothing wrong with getting paid based on sales but that can and does happen without copyright.

    For example, you cannot copyright recipes, but services that provide recipes for cooking are a highly lucrative business. You cannot copyright sports strategies and plays, but there is a huge demand for books on them. Same with chess moves. It was true with music until the 1880s in Germany: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms composed without copyright by simply selling publishers access to their works. This did not diminish output but arguably made it better by ensuring a highly competitive marketplace.

    In the early days, you could not copyright computer code either. That’s how it came to be that spreadsheet technology became so dominant so quickly and transformed business life. Only later did copyright come along. Now any developer will tell you that the entire industry is gummed up by intellectual property claims. That’s true of many industries today. Hardly anyone is truly happy with the regime as it exists, except perhaps Disney, which has long lobbied for longer terms.

    In any case, ChatGPT is doing nothing morally wrong by scraping The New York Times for content. I happen to think this is a bad business idea because The NY Times is a known propaganda sheet and far from definitive on any topic. But that is the choice that OpenAI (wrongly named because they are taking recourse to intellectual property too) has decided to make. I hope the courts side with OpenAI, but that would be only a temporary fix to a much larger problem of the institution of copyright itself.

    In conclusion, the intersection of AI and copyright necessitates thoughtful reflection, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an adaptive legal framework. Just kidding!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 16:40

  • Vivek Slams CNN For 'Egregious Interference' After Town Hall Answers Go Viral
    Vivek Slams CNN For ‘Egregious Interference’ After Town Hall Answers Go Viral

    2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy slammed CNN for what he characterized as ‘egregious interference’ with the Iowa GOP caucus for allegedly cutting his Town Hall short and then threatening his campaign with a cease-and-desist for posting it to YouTube (while allowing Nikki Haley to do the same).

    “CNN’s egregious interference with the Iowa GOP caucus is offensive,” Ramaswamy wrote. “My CNN town hall with the voters here went so well that they cut it off early & then threatened our campaign with a cease-and-desist for posting it on YouTube, while Nikki Haley’s scripted CNN town hall from 6 months ago is still up.”

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    Basically, Vivek has been rocking audiences – giving clear, solid answers to various ‘gotchas’ and clearly swaying those in attendance.

    During the CNN town hall, anchor Abby Phillip tried a new tactic to defuse Ramaswamy and disrupt his ability to convey the facts:  She simply kept talking over top of him, contradicting his statements and then refused to give him an opportunity to answer back.  

    The strategy did not work quite as well as she might have hoped, as Vivek trampled her expertly.  

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    Also, take 8 minutes to watch a recent answer on reverse-racism.

    He also nailed a Civil War question:

    Amazing.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 16:05

  • "We Are Going To See 'Collisions' All Over The Planet" – Pushback Against Tyranny & Control Will Accelerate In 2024
    “We Are Going To See ‘Collisions’ All Over The Planet” – Pushback Against Tyranny & Control Will Accelerate In 2024

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), says the top story (out of 20 top stories) of 2023 was massive, documented pushback to tyranny and control by the evil Deep State globalists. 

    CAF explains, “Our top story of 2023 is ‘The Year of Pushback.’  It was so long, and it was so big, we had to make a special page and move the other 19 top stories to a whole different section on another page.”

    Just a few of the 2023 stories that documented this massive pushback, according to CAF, are,

    “Stories on Constitutional protections, different litigations on the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, and we have one on information sovereignty and infrastructure. 

    We have stories on all the pushback against the media, including litigation to hold people accountable and stopping emergency powers. 

    We have culture wars about saying no to international organizations. 

    Woke capital controls and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance investing) is toast. 

    The state AGs have gone after ESG and Larry Fink (BlackRock CEO), and he’s had to publicly backpedal.  They are steamrolling him. 

    We had another story about taking it to the streets and have a whole section on ‘Pushback Heros.’ …

    In 2023, people started to realize that it is kill or be killed.  We have to push back because there is no going along with this. 

    They are trying to kill us, number one.  Then they are trying to take all of our stuff, and we can’t let them.

    CAF also talks about what she calls “massive collateral fraud.”  CAF goes on to say,

    “The collateral fraud is enormous, and we have talked about the money (trillions of dollars) that has gone ‘missing’ for years from the federal government. 

    This is what’s been going on in the United States and around the world for years. You issue debt, you get a whole bunch of money, and then the money disappears…

    So, there is an extraordinarily fraudulent system going on around the debt markets. 

    The reality is if you are going to run a bubble like that, you need very strict control of the collateral. 

    This is what “The Great Taking” is all about. 

    2024 is the year the pushback can put us over the top.”

    CAF thinks gold is a “must have” investment for the coming years. The US dollar is being weakened, but it is still “dominant and dangerous.”

    In closing, CAF says:

    “I think we are going see collisions at a spiritual, legal, financial and physical level increasing all over the planet.  This is a real war, and we are in World War III now.

    The US is going to defend the dollar…”

    There is much more in the 1-hour and 2-minute in-depth interview.

    Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the Publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts for 12.30.23.

    *  *  *

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

    You can get way more cutting-edge analysis from Catherine Austin Fitts and “The Solari Report” by becoming a subscriber by clicking here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 15:30

  • 2023 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead
    2023 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead

    One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2022, we said that the year would be a very tough act to follow as the sheer breadth of stories, surprises, plot twists and unexpected developments made 2022 the most memorable year yet in our brief but turbulent history. This proved accurate: while 2023 did have a seemingly endless variety of social, economic, political, geopolitical and of course, financial and market, drama, the unprecedented onslaught of 2022 – which saw both the deadliest and most consequential global war since WWII and a historic inflationary onslaught – simply proved too great to beat…. although we are confident that’s only because the newsflow was merely resting ahead of 2024 when, thanks to a record number of elections across the world…

    … not to mention what may well be the most consequential presidential election in US history, the coming avalanche of news and propaganda will be sheer insanity, especially since the Fed has made its long awaited dovish pivot without successfully stamping out inflation first. So in retrospect, 2023 being somewhat tame by recent standards may have been a good thing: it allowed everyone to rest ahead of the main event.

    And speaking of the worst inflation in 40 years, it didn’t take long for our second major prediction to come true: as we said exactly one year ago the “simplest forecast about the coming year is that 2023 will be the year when something finally breaks.” That’s exactly what happened just three months later when the rapidly rising rates catalyzed the worst banking crisis in the US banking sector since the Lehman collapse. As the Fed raised rates, the value of banks’ bond portfolios fell, and those whose balance sheets were smaller – so pretty much all but the “Big 4” – found themselves in a toxic spiral of bank runs and asset liquidations, which culminated with virtually every small and regional bank on the verge of collapse, and some – such as the two largest California banks (those overseen by the “woke” San Fran Fed whose boss is the LGBTQueen of diversity, if not bank supervision, Mary Daly) First Republic, and Silicon Valley bank, as well as NY’s premium client-focused Signature Bank – were dragged into the vortex of bank insolvency, leading to over $500 billion in bank assets failing in a matter of days, matching the record from the global financial crisis.

    It was this “break” which culminated with the worst bank run and largest bank failures in 15 years – not to mention the overnight failure of Credit Suisse, the 167-year-old second largest Swiss bank that was bought by UBS for pennies (literally) thanks to Swiss taxpayers once again stuck footing the bill and holding the radioactive garbage – that preemptively ended the Fed’s tightening cycle (even if rate hikes continued for another 6 or so months, if only for optical reasons) and marked the end of the Fed’s reserve reduction…

    … which also triggered the start of the next bull market.

    Indeed, after bottoming around 3800 on March 10, the Fed’s intervention to prevent further bank contagion was all the market needed to know that the “Fed put” had been triggered, and the S&P closed the year 1000 points higher, less than a percent from the all time highs.

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    Another prediction about 2023 that came true is that as “the past three years so vividly showed, when it comes to actual surprises and all true “black swans”, it won’t be what anyone had expected.” And sure enough, books will be written (and certainly articles in the WSJ, Bloomberg and Zerohedge) about just how wrong everyone was: Exhibit A is this Goldman chart from January 2023, showing that “this is arguably the most widely anticipated recession.“

    Well, 2023 has come and gone and the recession-defining NBER remained quiet, with the US economy seemingly avoiding the contractionary fate of its European peers (at least on a “seasonally adjusted” basis), and as the recession was averted so was the bear market that so many strategists were certain was inevitable. It wasn’t just the recession that never officially materialized (hold that thought): as Bloomberg wrote , “all across Wall Street, on equities desks and bond desks, at giant firms and niche outfits, the mood was glum. It was the end of 2022 and everyone, it seemed, was game-planning for the recession they were convinced was coming…. blended together, three calls — sell US stocks, buy Treasuries, buy Chinese stocks — formed the consensus view on Wall Street.” And, as always happens, consensus on Wall Street proved to be wrong again.

    But was consensus really wrong? As usual, the answer is nuanced, because while on the surface the economy grew at a brisk pace, the reason for this growth was anything but benign, and as we explained in July, the catalyst behind the “miracle of Bidenomics” was a $1 trillion debt-funded “stealth” stimulus which pushed the US budget deficit above its $1 trillion trendline to crisis/wartime levels, up 50% from the previous year, and rising to a mindblowing $2 trillion for fiscal 2023 just behind the covid crisis years of 2020 and 2021.

    And while this “era of fiscal excess” as Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett laconically called the current period, noting that in the past 12 months the US government has spent $6.6 trillion, would – in theory at least – assure perpetual growth as long as one could issue ever more debt and pretend it was “growth”, in 2023 the US finally hit a historic milestone: $1 trillion in interest expense for the first time ever.

    That was a huge problem, because once spending on just US interest surpassed the entire US defense budget, people started to notice. It’s also why, with 10Y yields hitting 5% and putting the entire “dollar as a reserve currency” monetary hegemonic status quo in jeopardy as runaway debt interest threatened to blow up the perpetual engine that had made US superpower status in the past half century – that would be unconstrained US debt spending – possible, the Fed had no other choice but to pivot dovishly, just as we predicted in the waning days of 2022…

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    … which is what the Fed did in December 2023 – even as core inflation remains double the Fed’s 2% target – prompting speculation that the Fed has stealthily raised its long-standing 2% inflation target to 3% or even 4%, and thereby setting the state for the blow-off top in inflation some time in 2024 as the ghost of Arthur Burns finally comes home to roost in the Marriner Eccles buildng.

    Of course, the inevitable end of the inflation story (at least until the much more exciting sequel begins some time in 2024), had profound reverberations elsewhere, and as headline CPI dropped, wage growth – the BLS told us – surpassed inflation for the first time since the post-covid recovery began in the second half of 2020.

    While this would be great news for Biden as the 2024 election season kicks off and the “Big Guy” goes all in on his re-election campaign, there was just one problem: people either didn’t believe the data or just didn’t care. Indeed, most Americans, and especially swing-state voters, remained glum about the economy, and 52% of voters in these states rated the economy “poor” in closely watched polls this fall, with another 29% saying it was “only fair.”

    In short, Bidenomics was a dud, which is also why the White House started taking pages straight out of the Goebbels propaganda playbook. Yet what was bizarre if not outright paradoxical, is that US consumer spending remained high, especially on services such as concerts from Beyonce and Taylor Swift to movies like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

    Adding to the puzzle is that just as spending hit all-time highs, consumer confidence plunged to new, record lows.

    Many were confused over what accounted for the disconnect: persistently high prices? Recession fears? The “vibecession”? Whatever the explanation, voters’ feelings about the economy, and Joe Biden’s handling of it, will be decisive in the 2024 election, especially now that even the Fed pivoted in a way to tips the scales in Biden’s favor, something former NY Fed chief Bill Dudley urged all the way back in 2019.

    And speaking of wages overtaking inflation, this summer much of America ground to a halt as tens of thousands of actors and screenwriters went on strike in July, bringing Hollywood to a halt, amid fears that AI will put most of the local “talent” out of job (it will). The strikes were part of a wave of labor activity in the United States this year, including targeted strikes by the United Automobile Workers union. Despite the recent uptick, overall union activity has fallen since the 1970s and ’80s; still the strikes were successful with union workers managing to negotiate solid, double-digit raises for themselves, assuring that inflation’s return is just a matter of time.

    There was another big driver behind inflation both in 2022 and 2023, as not one but two brutal wars underscored the fragility of the global economic recovery and rewired the world’s trade relationships. For an example look no further than the geopolitics of oil. Prices soared above $120 a barrel after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, then steadily fell amid surging US oil production and signs of a global economic slowdown. Here China’s aborted attempt to escape from covid zero with a burst of growth was key… yet Beijing’s inability to flood the economy with stimulus was obvious to anyone who had seen China’s record 300% debt/GDP ratio: China simply had no more space where to park and hide any new growth, pardon debt.

    But while the Ukraine war slowly faded away from the front pages as Zelensky’s counteroffensive proved to be a disaster and now US and European officials and the legacy media are openly discussing a negotiated peace as the war’s “best” outcome (after blasting it as pro-Putin appeasement just one year ago), it was replaced in October with the violent and dramatic breakout of the most brutal Middle-East conflict in decades, as the Israel-Hamas war raised new fears that oil prices would spike and reignite inflation. Despite shipping snarls in the Red Sea and Suez Canal, those concerns have yet to materialize largely thanks to huge overproduction in the US at a time of rampant shale M&A activity as potential acquisition targets do everything they can to literally flood the market and boost EBITDA and cash flow in hopes of impressing potential suitors. This too shall pass, and very soon.

    Until then, however, thanks to the Russia-Ukraine war, India and China have emerged as key beneficiaries. India, profiting from its neutrality, went from buying hardly any Russian oil to buying about half of what the country exports by sea.

    Trade between China and Russia has also surged, surpassing $200 billion in the first 11 months of this year while Chinese cars are now flooding Russia.

    Not surprisingly, just a few days ago we learned that the Chinese yuan has overtaken the Japanese yen to become the fourth most-used currency by value in global payments.

    Of course, it’s not just Russia benefiting from China’s redirected trade routes: countries like Mexico and Vietnam have also gained ground. And since those countries import mostly intermediate goods from China, American supply chains still remain reliant on Chinese production. In fact, China is now the dominant supplier of industrial inputs across the world.

    As other countries have seen a pick up in Chinese trade, China’s share of exports to the United States has fallen in recent years, as a result of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and maintained by Biden even though tensions between the two superpowers stabilized briefly after Biden’s meeting with President Xi Jinping of China on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November… even though Biden again calling Xi a dictator for the second time went over as a lead spy balloon in Beijing, as Anthony Blinken’s face made abundantly clear.

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    Still, there is another reason why the US can’t decouple easily from China: semiconductors. China is a major market for these advanced computer chips, which can be used to power artificial intelligence systems. This fall, the Biden administration tightened its export controls on semiconductors, making it harder for U.S. companies to sell them to China. But big chipmakers like Nvidia are already working on modified chips to sell to Chinese markets, hoping to skirt the restrictions.

    And speaking of Nvidia, we would be remiss not to mention the single biggest market narrative – and tech story – of 2023, namely the unprecedented AI mania, which manifested itself in an explosion in the “Magnificent 7” mega tech stocks which now make up a record 30% of the S&P’s market cap…

    … thanks to a historic outperformance of this group of 7 tech names which doubled their price in 2023 even as much of the rest of the market went nowhere this year, at least until the Fed’s dovish pivot, which finally lifted all boats in the last two weeks of the year.

    It wasn’t just the latest stock bubble however: the world’s infatuation with the chatGPT chatbot led to an explosion of investment in generative A.I. start-ups, including Microsoft’s $10 billion backing in OpenAI. Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI has since come under scrutiny, particularly its role in the reinstatement of Sam Altman as OpenAI’s CEO after a boardroom coup that set off a chaotic five days at the start-up and was a moment of unforgettable drama for nerds everywhere. Whether A.I. remains the market juggernaut it was in 2023 may be decided in the courts: on Dec. 27, The New York Times became the first major American media organization to sue OpenAI and Microsoft over A.I.-related copyright issues, saying in the lawsuit that the companies should be held responsible for the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.”

    What is just as remarkable is that people actually use ChatGPT or rather chat LGPTQ, since we now have proof that as a large language model it uses data and signal exclusively from hard-liberal and leftist organizations, thus making most of its “answers” false, unreliable, “woke” and generally useless.

    And speaking of the latest attempt to control and dominate the conversation, this time using chatGPT, we remind readers that away from markets and geopolitical conflicts, the next most important topic in the past year were the revelations from the Twitter Files and subsequent exposes, all revealing just how little free speech there really is in the so-called land of the free and the home of the First Amendment, and how countless three-lettered, deep-state alphabet agencies – and the military-industrial complex – will do anything and everything to control both the official discourse and the unofficial narrative to keep their preferred puppets in the White House, and keep those they disapprove of – censored and/or locked up, both literally and metaphorically… or simply designate them “conspiracy theorists.” None other than Matt Taibbi wrote the best summary of what the Twitter Files revealed, namely America’s stealthy conversion into a crypto-fascist state where some unelected government bureaucrat tells corporations what to do and decides the fate of ordinary Americans every single day without any due process:

    This last week saw the FBI describe Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and me as “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole aim” is to discredit the agency. That statement will look ironic soon, as we spent much of this week learning about other agencies and organizations that can now also be discredited thanks to these files.

    A group of us spent the last weeks reading thousands of documents. For me a lot of that time was spent learning how Twitter functioned, specifically its relationships with government. How weird is modern-day America? Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report.

    I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire. A subplot is these companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus, although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed. Details on those “Other Government Agencies” soon, probably tomorrow.

    One happy-ish thought at month’s end:

    Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one?

    I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years.

    One year later, the legacy media has only gotten worse, with the likes of the NYT, publishers of such tripe seeking to justify an illegitimate and corrupt first crime family, and WaPo spewing propaganda for the corrupt elite, and officially becoming the PR arm of both the White House and the Military Industrial Complex/ US Intel Services/ Deep State. Meanwhile, X (fka Twitter), once the most corrupt and censored social media network in the world, has emerged as a bastion of free speech (Elon even brought back Alex Jones) even as virtue-signaling corporations (who all work in conjunction with the deep state in hopes of getting some fast-track access to those very generous taxpayer-funded government contracts) are doing everything in their power to demonetize and starve the company by pulling their ads; we say this as one of the first media outlets that was dubbed “conspiracy theorists” by the authorities, long before everyone else joined the club. Oh yes, we’ve been there: we were suspended for half a year on Twitter for telling the truth about Covid, and then we lost most of our advertisers after the Atlantic Council‘s weaponized “fact-checkers” such as Newsguard put us on every ad agency’s black list while anonymous CIA sources at the AP slandered us for being “Kremlin puppets” – which reminds us: for those with the means, desire and willingness to support us, please do so by becoming a premium member: we are now almost entirely reader-funded so your financial assistance will be instrumental to ensure our continued survival into 2024 and beyond.

    The bottom line, at least for us, is that the past four years have been a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which makes the dystopian nightmare of 1984 seem more real each day, and we have since taken measures. Three years ago, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn’t our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us for good. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the censorship bandwagon rolls out much more aggressively in the coming year when, with the 2024 elections at stake, the deep state will stop at nothing to silence all independent voices.

    And why would they: just a few days ago, some woke, unelected Karen in Maine named Shenna Bellows showed just how far the left was willing to go when she decided that it is incumbent upon her – and her alone – to determine what is in the best interest of hundreds of millions of Americans when this secretary of state – not some court, not some group of elected officials – decided to remove Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot and disenfranchise half of the country (something democrats have shown a tremendous aptitude for, even as they are more than eager to collect taxes from those who still generate income and pay some of it back to the government as taxes, i.e. mostly republicans). Even a Democratic congressman who voted to impeach Trump over the January 6th riots, quickly issued a statement: “We are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.” Matt Taibbi summarized it best: “Is there any way this ends well? It feels harder and harder to imagine. “

    As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website – which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from either Putin or the KGB either, sorry CIA) and has never spent one dollar on marketing – a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine.

    Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we – and others who do not comply with the established narrative – have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, it is clearly a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from “dangerous, fake information.” It’s also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website.

    In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech to only accelerate in the coming year especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2023 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch with a ten foot pole, both out of fear of repercussions and because the MSM has now become a PR agency for either a political party or some unelected, deep state bureaucrat, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an information vacuum (in less than a decade, Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter will seem like one of the century’s biggest bargains) and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which established media outlets refuse to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory “fake news” condemnation.

    We are grateful that our readers have, for the 15th year in a row, realized that it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn’t “fake news.”

    * * *

    And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, almost 14-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 , 2021 and 2022.

    So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year.

    • In 20th spot with 540,000 views, was one of the year’s first admissions that – contrary to the prevailing propaganda – the war in Ukraine, which would end up being a $100BN+ and rising drain on taxpayer funds, was not going as widely reported; in fact it wasn’t going at all. Indeed, as we observed in “NBC Reporter Goes To Crimea, Shocks Viewers By Telling The Truth“ the Deep State’s favorite media outlet, MSNBC made the first concession that Zelensky’s goal of retaking Crime is unrealistic and dangerous. In response, the establishment reporter immediately wound up on the Ukrainian government’s kill list. But while Ukraine may have succeeded in silencing this one particular pawn, subsequent revelations and an ongoing internal power struggle inside Ukraine, all but guarantee that the war is almost over and that the Biden family’s crimes in Ukraine will sooner or later make the light of day .

    • Another topic which none in the media would discuss openly, or truthfully, for fears of retaliation from the deep state was the article that was the 19th most popular of the year. Over 543,000 readers were probably not too shocked to learn that according to famed journalist and Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh, the infamous Nord Stream sabotage of 2022 was yet another CIA covert op, meant to incite an escalation of conflict in the Russian-Ukraine war, and to terminally halt Russian transit of natural gas to Europe. Who benefited? Why the US of course, as shipments of LNG to Europe (as the US stepped in to “generously” replace Russia as a source of gas) blew away all records. In fact, one could argue that the Ukraine war was orchestrated precisely for that one purpose: to ensure that US nat gas exports would boom for years to come courtesy of a captive market, Europe, which would be prevented from importing much cheaper Russian gas for years to come.

    • Almost 5 years after the breakout of the covid pandemic which crippled global economies and led to the injection of tens of trillions in monetary and fiscal stimulus, precipitating the biggest inflationary wave in modern history, there is still no definitive explanation of where the virus came from (or rather, escaped) and why there has been no punishment yet for those Wuhan Institute workers (and those Americans giving them instructions and funding) responsible for countless deaths and millions of businesses shut down. However, when a mysterious Chinese biolab was discovered in a remote California City,  some 543K Zerohedge readers wondered what if any connection this lab in the middle of nowhere had to i) covid, ii) China’s bioweapons industry and iii) how many more such labs exist across the US and what exactly are they doing? That was enough to make this bizarre story the 18th most popular on this website in 2023.

    • For the 17th most read article we go to a topic the mainstream media, which sadly has become a PR and Propaganda arm of the White House, the deep state and the military industrial complex, has steadfastly refused the touch namely the unprecedented corruption in the country which the Biden admin and various MIC-adjacent politicians have decided is the newest US state: Ukraine. Early in 2023, we reported that “Ukraine Is Rocked By Corruption Scandal, Wave Of Top Officials Resign: Sports Cars, Mansions & Luxury Vacations As People Suffered“, however none of that matters since none of the legacy media dared to expose just who all those tens of billions in US taxpayer funds have gone to. And now, almost a year later, Ukraine is losing the war, Zelensky and his comrades are on slowly but surely on their way out, and yet nobody knows where that $100BN+ in funds have gone. We can certainly hope that one day, long after the biggest money-laundering experiment in modern history is over, forensic historians will trace all that money which is bigger than the GDP of most nations, however – just like the Epstein client list – we doubt it will ever happen.

    • Nearly 560K readers were surprised to learn that the Magic Kingdom has become so expensive, almost nobody can afford to go there any more. Indeed, in 2023 a trip to Walt Disney World or Disneyland with the whole family has become simply too expensive leading many to ask “Where Is Everyone? Disney World “Just About Empty“ as CEO Bob Iger himself admitted customer affordability issues; add the direct consequences of price-gouging families, plus the ‘woke’ backlash, and you get one of the slowest periods at Walt Disney World in Orlando on July 4 in a decade. Meanwhile the plunge of Disney stock to a decade low coupled with South Park now mercilessly mocking the hollow shell of a woke company, spark some hope that after a wholesale sacking of the incompetent management, the slate may be wiped clean and the company can go back to doing what it does best: not grooming or propaganda but innocent entertainment for generations of children.

    • Confirming yet again that the cover up is always worse than the crime, the 15th most popular post of 2023 with over 560K hits focused on the still unfolding consequences of the biggest story of 2020, namely the unprecedented cover up of the covid “vaccine” as a “Bombshell Vax Analysis Found $147 Billion In Economic Damage, Tens Of Millions Injured Or Disabled.” And since the corrupt and captured media still refuses to do its jobs and get to the bottom of who benefited – and what were the full consequences – from rushing the biggest medical experiment in history, it is the independent media, which is increasingly performing the investigative role of the MSM, that will benefit from the corruption and capture that has dominated what was once the fourth estate but is now just a waning shadow of its former formidable self.

    • 2023 was not only a year where many cover-ups were exposed; it was also a year when “something finally broke”, and it wasn’t just US regional banks: in March, as the world was rocked by a relentless wave of bank runs, the second largest Swiss bank got Lehmaned, and failed over a long weekend, despite obtaining a government backstop just hours earlier as we detailed in “Credit Suisse To Borrow $54BN From SNB To “Pre-emptively Strengthen Liquidity,” a story which was read by 572K readers – many of whom current or former Credit Suisse customers – making it the 14th most popular story of 2023. In the end it was not enough, because once confidence in a bank is shaken it never returns, and neither do the deposits that have been pulled… and so less than a week later, Credit Suisse was no more, its existence over after 167 years, with UBS taking over (with the generous funding of Swiss taxpayers) and becoming the most systematically important European bank, one which not even all of Switzerland will be able to backstop during the next banking crisis.

    • With historic presidential elections on deck in 2024, and a repeat of the 2020 violence – where secretive Soros-funded entities funded and encouraged a bloody summer across the US  – virtually assured, it is worth recalling what Tucker Carlson reported a few months ago, namely that the catalyst behind much of the government-encouraged Black Lives Matter violence of 2020, was fake and “The Whole George Floyd Story Was A Lie“, a report which was watched and read by nearly 600K people. Unfortunately, with much of the US judicial system in Soros’ pocket, and with dozens of big city DAs seeking to decriminalize rioting and theft by the black community, more violence is guaranteed, the only question is what fake pretext the deep state will use this time.

    • On the last day of 2022 we predicted that “2023 will be the year when something finally breaks“, and three months later we were proven right, when as a result of soaring rates US regional banks suddenly found that the value of their fixed income collateral was worth far less when marked to market than the deposits it was pledged against, resulting in widespread liquidity and solvency fears, accelerating bank runs and culminating with the second Fed panic since 2008, as “Signature Bank Was Closed By Regulators; Fed, TSY, FDIC Announce Another Banking System Bailout“, a reminder to no less than 621K readers that the US financial system was as brittle and unstable as ever despite trillions in liquidity injected into the market and meant only to make the rich richer. Nearly a year later, the regional US bank zombies that would have collapsed in March live on thanks to the Fed’s BTFP facility which matures in March, and which if pulled would lead to an even greater crisis in the US banking sector. Ironically that’s also when the Fed’s Reverse Repo facility is expected to be drained to zero, so if anyone is trying to pin the date of the next financial crisis in the calendar, March increasingly looks like the prime month for that.

    • Following the start of October’s Israel-Hamas war, the bloodiest breakout of Middle-Eastern violence in decades, we said that “there is some speculation that Iran may get dragged in with various pro-Israeli hawks claiming that the Hamas attack would have only occurred with explicit Iranian backing.” Just a few hours later this was confirmed as we reported in “Iran Helped Hamas “Plot Israel Attack Over Several Weeks”, Gave Green Light“, the 11th most popular article of 2023, which revealed that “Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday”, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah. But while the US would have swiftly retaliated in the past, if only to convince the world that it is still a military superpower, so far the Biden regime has remained silent, terrified of a military response, but not because of some newfound appreciation for state sovereignty or non-intervention, but simply because the president is afraid what a surge in oil and gas prices – which would be an inevitable outcome of Iran getting dragged into the war – would mean for his re-election chances.

    • In case you didn’t figure it out by now, 2023 was a year when many cover ups were exposed, and among the most flagrant ones was the leak of the Nashville transsexual shooter’s manifesto, which as we revealed in “Biden’s DOJ suppressed the Nashville Transkiller’s manifesto after learning they used Democrat talking points to justify targeting white Christian children“, which with over 670K reads was the 10th most popular article of 2023, revealed that Biden’s DOJ suppressed the Nashville Transkiller’s manifesto after learning it used Democrat talking points to justify targeting white Christian children. Of course, the DOJ never had any such qualms when revealing motives from the other side of the political aisle, confirming yet again that there is nothing too low for Biden’s weaponized Department of Injustice to stoop below, not even death.

    • Continuing our trek through the top 10 stories of 2023, we next look at the immediate aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war, where just hours after the violence had broken out, the world quickly revealed how little it thought of the Biden administration, and US “superpower status”, when as 731K readers found out, “Arab Leaders Refuse To Meet Biden As Protests Rage Around The World.” The title is self-explanatory – and an embarrassment to Americans – even if said Americans deserve to know just who is the puppet-master pulling the strings of the senile, demented occupant of the White House.

    • Remember when merely breathing the world “Ivermectin” in the aftermath of the covid pandemic was enough to blacklist you from social media and polite society in perpetuity, and get you branded as a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist for life? Well, if we have learned anything in recent years, is that the time from when an idea emerges as a “conspiracy” to when it is fully confirmed even by the powers that be has shrunk to mere months, and as we reported in “FDA Drops Ivermectin Bombshell“, our 8th most popular article of 2023, nearly 740K readers learned from an FDA lawyer that doctors were, in fact, free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The case had been brought by three doctors who alleged the FDA unlawfully interfered with their practice of medicine with the statements. Then a federal judge dismissed the case in 2022, prompting an appeal. “The fundamental issue in this case is straightforward. After the FDA approves the human drug for sale, does it then have the authority to interfere with how that drug is used within the doctor-patient relationship? The answer is no,” Jared Kelson, representing the doctors, told the appeals court. Hilariously, the FDA on Aug. 21, 2021, wrote on Twitter “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” In retrospect it was right: it turned out most people who believed the government’s lies were at best sheep.

    • Tragedy rocked the town of East Palestine, Ohio last February when the derailment of a train carrying toxic and carcinogenic compounds resulted in a historic chemical spill and led  to large sections of the town becoming unlivable as reported in “Ohio’s Apocalyptic Chemical Disaster Rages On“, the 7th most popular story of 2023 with over 755K views. The spill immediately became a political flashpoint, with Donald Trump visiting East Palestine and handed out Make America Great Again hats, telling the crowd: “You are not forgotten.” Unfortunately, the town has certainly been forgotten by the current “president” who to this day has refused to visit the town despite countless promises he would do just that.

    • In many ways, 2023 was the year when alternative, independent media truly took over, and it wasn’t just X/Twitter that dominated the news, while being the news: it is also the year when traditional media fell apart, such as the various anchors fleeing the sinking ship that is CNN, but the most vivid example was Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News – the channel that was only relevant because of Tucker’s segment – and the launch of his own media organization. As so many others have found out, media personalities were only allowed to truly speak their minds when separated from the corporations where they operated previously (so as not to offend advertisers), something Tucker understood and laid out in one of his most bombshell interviews, explaining why “Our System Is Collapsing In Real Time“, which was also our 6th most read article with 762K reads.

    • Finally, turning to the top 5 articles of 2023, it should not be a surprise that with almost 810K reads, the 5th most popular post of the year was the news that – with the Ukraine war fading from collective consciousness – a major new war had broken out in the Middle East, something we reported in “Israel In State of War With Hamas After Palestinian Militants Launch Unprecedented Incursion.”

    • Remember what we said about coverups? Well, it took less than three years from when Hunter Biden’s notebook emerged in the media – with the entire deep state apparatus defending it at first, and 51 former CIA spies vowing it was Russian propaganda – until all of its official contents were leaked as we reported in “Trove Of Nearly 10K Hunter Biden Laptop Photos, Docs Appear On Organized Website.” Among the contents were not only documented acts of criminal debauchery, but also proof that the Biden family was engaged in flagrant influence peddling on behalf of such foreign regimes as Ukraine and China. Alas, the US justice system is now so corrupt and broken, and the media so captured, this news has seen barely any coverage and follow through; and meanwhile the gutless republican cowards in Congress still refuse to impeach the president despite ample proof – courtesy of his son – of his countless transgressions.

    • With over 875K reads, and clocking in at third spot for 2023, was one of the biggest shockers of the year: the decision by Murdoch and Fox News to sack their only true star, Tucker Carlson; And for what? For daring to speak to truth one too many times as we reported in “Tucker Carlson Fired By Lachlan Murdoch; Here’s What We Know.” In retrospect, it will be the best thing that happened to Tucker, whose new venture already has well over 100,000 annual subs and growing at a torrid pace. Meanwhile, the biggest winner may well be the US population, which will have one more source of honest, accurate news while the malignant influence of conventional media fades with each passing day.

    • The second most popular story of 2023 was also a freak one: the short-lived attempt by Putin’s formerly close friend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner private mercenary force, to stage a military coup, yet not really a coup meant to overthrow Putin but instead targeted some of Prigozhin’s personal enemies in the top ranks of Russia’s army. The “Wagner rebellion” as it became known – and which came shortly after Prigozhin’s forces managed to smack down a Ukraine attempt at a counteroffensive earlier this summer – lasted all of a day or so, before it all died down as reported in “Prigozhin ‘Exiled’ To Belarus In Exchange For Peace, Criminal Charges Dropped: What Was This All About?” the second most popular article of 2023 with nearly 900K reads. To this day there is no coherent explanation behind Prigozhin’s actions, and there probably won’t be: two months later the plane carrying the mercenary chief exploded. It’s still unclear why, but the most amusing theory was the one offered by Putin himself, who claimed that “Wagner leadership got drunk and/or high, then set off hand grenades during the flight.”

    • Finally, the top post of 2023 was one which also closed the loop on the top story of 2020: with nearly 1.1 million reads, the most popular article of the year was the “CDC Finally Releasing VAERS Safety Monitoring Analyses For COVID Vaccines.” While the article offered lots of data, the bottom line is that the vaccine which the CDC claimed was safe and effective was neither safe nor effective.

    And with all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2024, and the next decade?

    We don’t know: as our frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don’t try, despite repeat baseless allegations that we constantly forecast the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the “smartest people in the room” who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2023 when one year after the entire world realized just how clueless the Fed had been when it called the most crushing inflation in two generations “transitory”, it was Wall Street’s reputation turn to hit new lows as even Bloomberg listed “Everything Wall Street Got Wrong in 2023“, in the process adding strategists and analysts to the clueless ranks of economists, conventional media and the professional polling class, not to mention all those “scientists” who made a mockery of both the scientific method and the “expert class” with their catastrophically bungled response to the covid pandemic, and then the response to the response, and so on… We merely observe, find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it.

    We do know, however, that with central banks having flip-flopped yet again, and pivoting dovishly even as inflation still rages at 4%, wages – especially for unionized and government workers – growing at a double digit pace, home prices and rents about to lurch even higher, and overall prices stuck at all time highs, the most likely outcome is another surge in inflation and Jerome Powell becoming not the second coming of saint Paul Volcker but of satan Arthur Burns.

    But even ignoring the impact on prices, one can’t just undo 15 years of central bank mistakes by wishing them away (even if it is an election year); after all it is the trillions and trillions in monetary stimulus, the helicopter money, the MMT, and the endless deficit funding by central banks that made the current runaway inflation possible, the current attempt to stuff 15 years of toothpaste back into the tube, will be a catastrophic failure.

    We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will again be revealed as completely naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone’s guess. But, as we have promised – and delivered – every year for the past 15, we will be there to document every aspect of it.

    Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2024, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2023 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day – usually with a cynical smile (and with the CIA clearly on our ass now) – helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that defines every aspect of our increasingly broken economic, political and financial system.

    AI is not completely useless

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 14:55

  • 'Incompetence Has Consequences' & Other Lessons From 2023
    ‘Incompetence Has Consequences’ & Other Lessons From 2023

    Authored by Ben Shapiro via The Epoch Times,

    2023 was a rather bad year.

    Not as bad as 2024 is likely to be or as 2020 was.

    But bad.

    Nonetheless, we ought to learn from the bad as well as the good. So in a spirit of reflection, I offer a few lessons we ought to remember from this crummy year.

    Lesson No. 1: A lot of people don’t think like we do. And failure to recognize the truth of this lesson leads to failures of imagination that in turn lead to suffering and death.

    When Hamas slaughters infants in their cribs, rapes women in front of their husbands and takes them captive back to Gaza, and tortures and murders civilians, that isn’t because of some outsized grievance. It’s because they don’t have the same values as Westerners. Pretending that members of Hamas are simply freedom-loving people who seek material prosperity, quiet family lives, and tolerance for those who think differently isn’t just wrong; it’s catastrophically wrong. It’s also leading foolish Westerners to believe that appeasement of Hamas sympathizers will somehow alleviate Hamas’s evil terrorist behaviors or that the current deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip are the result of Israeli indiscrimination rather than Hamas’s stated war objective of maximizing civilian casualties for the international media.

    That’s a lie. And it’s a dangerous lie. It’s the same lie that led to 20 years of terror buildup in the Gaza Strip, funded and then ignored by the West. It’s the same lie that has led to thousands of deaths, both Israeli and Palestinian. It’s the same lie that led the West to import millions of radical Muslims into its heart, endangering both the social fabric and the future of the West itself.

    Which brings us to lesson No. 2: The next generation is in serious moral peril.

    As a recent Harvard-Harris poll shows, 79 percent of young Americans (18 to 24) agree that white people are oppressors and people of color are the oppressed; a similarly frightening two-thirds of young people believe that Jews are part of the oppressor class and “should be treated as oppressors.” This bodes ill for the future of republicanism: If Americans can quickly be classified as oppressor or oppressed not based on behavior but based on group identity, we’ll revert to the tribalism that destroys nations entirely.

    Lesson No. 3: Weakness breeds aggression.

    From Afghanistan to Crimea, weakness in the face of America’s enemies breeds aggression. Russia moved on Ukraine not predominantly because it feared NATO’s dominance but because it sensed Western weakness; right now, the Iranian government is flipping the activation switch on all of its proxy terror groups in the Middle East because of perceived Western cowardice. Should the West fail to confront the Houthis in the Red Sea, undoubtedly China will see the West’s unwillingness to expend even minor military resources to retain open trade lanes and will threaten Taiwan. The same is true with regard to America’s southern border: An open border breeds waves of illegal immigration, which is precisely what we’ve been seeing. Conversely, strength means facing hard realities and making sacrifices in order to confront them.

    Lesson No. 4: What goes around comes around. Always.

    This has been true for quite a while when it comes to American politics: Voiding the judicial filibuster means that the other party will cram through nominees on a party-line vote; militarizing the executive order will allow the other party’s president to do the same. Today, Democrats seem excited to weaponize the Department of Justice in order to target former President Donald Trump, the leading candidate to face off against President Joe Biden. What are the chances that precedent will be utilized by the Democrats’ opponents in the future? Refusal to acknowledge this reality means an endless cycle of escalating reprisal that ends only with actual conflict.

    One final lesson: Incompetence has consequences.

    We live in the richest and most powerful country in human history. That truth obscures the effects of incompetence at every level. But not for long. Eventually, the people tire of the incompetence of their leaders—and when they tire of the incompetence of leaders from all sides, they seek radical change to the systems themselves. Often, such changes are more perilous than the incompetence they seek to rectify. Which means that perhaps intermediate institutions—say, political parties—ought to flex their muscle in order to press forward competent people rather than caving to the whims of the moment.

    So long, 2023.

    Here’s to a better 2024.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 14:20

  • Large Israeli Airstrikes On Southern Lebanon, US Warplanes Hit Iraq-Syria Border In Escalation
    Large Israeli Airstrikes On Southern Lebanon, US Warplanes Hit Iraq-Syria Border In Escalation

    The situation on Israel’s northern border has become increasingly volatile and the IDF has been ramping up airstrikes not only on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, but in Syria as well.

    This continued over the weekend into Sunday, after recent days of a series of attacks on Syria, which in one instance reportedly killed a group of high-ranking Iranian IRGC officers at Damascus international airport. Often Israeli warplanes use Lebanese airspace to attack near Damascus and in southern Syria.

    Via Reuters

    The IDF announced it hit targets in the Lebanese village of Ramyeh on Sunday morning, which included military buildings, according to the statement.

    Israel alleged that Hezbollah “operates from the area of ​​the village, which is used as a terror center for the group to observe and carry out terror acts.”

    The IDF said further the Iran-backed militant group launched missiles from Ramyeh, while “exploiting the civilian population in the village area and using it as a human shield.”

    On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal documented of the heightened tit-for-tat in Israel’s north:

    The Israeli military said it returned fire following a strike from Syria overnight and launched extensive strikes against the militant Hezbollah movement in Lebanon amid a rise in hostilities with Iranian-backed militia groups across the region.

    An increase in tensions among Israel, Iran and its militant allies throughout the Middle East is raising concerns about the opening of a second front in the nearly three-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

    The conflict also threatens to expand even further east, given over the weekend there were reports of major aerial attacks on pro-Iran militant positions along the Iraq-Syria border.

    The Sunday morning IDF airstrikes on Lebanon appeared very large in scale…

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    There are conflicting reports as to whether it was the Americans or Israelis behind the attack on Al-Bukamal, but the Pentagon has long been known to occasionally go after targets there, especially after rocket and drone attacks on US bases in Syria and the region.

    According to a Mideast-based outlet:

    An aerial attack on Syria’s eastern sector near the Iraqi border in the early hours of December 30 resulted in the killing of at least seven people, Al-Mayadeen reported.

    The air raids targeted the city of Al-Bukamal in the Deir Ezzor countryside, striking the al-Hajana building and Badr Hospital in the southern part of the city. 

    The Lebanon-based outlet implied the possibility that the attacks were carried out by Israel, as the Israeli army said it carried out strikes in retaliation to a rocket volley that allegedly was fired from Syrian territory targeting the occupied Golan Heights on Friday evening.  

    The report added, “However, Sham FM and Safa (Palestinian Press Agency), as well as local Iraqi sources, said that the attack was carried out by US warplanes.”

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    The Gaza War has already begun spilling over into the Red Sea region where Iran-backed Houthis and US warships are trading fire. And there are continuing fears the conflict could spiral out of control in Lebanon too if Hezbollah and Israel open a full war front. Already it seems they are on the cusp of a bigger fight, which could spread to Syria and into Iraq, setting the whole region on fire.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 13:45

  • Repeat Influenza Vaccination Linked To Higher Risk Of Infection: CDC Preprint
    Repeat Influenza Vaccination Linked To Higher Risk Of Infection: CDC Preprint

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

    A recent preprint co-authored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) U.S. Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Network Investigators finds that repeat annual influenza vaccines are associated with an increased risk of influenza infection.

    The preprint authors initially wondered if vaccination timing and influenza infections in prior seasons may have contributed to repeat vaccinees’ increased risk of infection.

    However, they concluded these factors “cannot fully explain the increased infection risk in repeat vaccinees compared with non-repeat vaccinees.”

    (PalSand/Shutterstock)

    Repeat Vaccinees More Likely to Contract 1 Type of Flu

    The study followed patients who had presented themselves with respiratory diseases at one of the designated clinics between the 2011 and 2019 seasons. Over 55,000 clinical visits were analyzed, and vaccine status was further examined.

    Repeat vaccinees, when compared against non-repeat vaccinees, had a 10 percent increased risk of contracting the influenza type A H3N2 virus but not for influenza type B and influenza type A H1N1 variants.

    Those who contracted influenza in prior seasons were more protected against infection if the current circulating variant was of the same subtype.

    While repeat vaccinees tended to get vaccinated around a week earlier than non-repeat vaccinees, and the unvaccinated who became infected the prior season did tend to get vaccinated the following season, the authors found that neither factor significantly changed the estimates on the effects of repeat vaccination.

    An Ongoing Dilemma

    Increased risk of influenza infection among the repeat vaccinated is a phenomenon commonly observed for decades.

    As early as the 1970s, studies have signaled that repeat influenza vaccination was linked to reduced vaccine protection.

    Similarly, a 2015 Canadian study found that the vaccine provided 43 percent protection among the unvaccinated, while those vaccinated the prior season had an immunity of -15 percent, meaning they were at a greater risk of infection than before.

    The phenomenon has long troubled researchers.

    A popular theory is the concept of original antigenic sin, meaning that regardless of what virus we encounter, the body is forever biased to respond to newer viral strains the same way it responded to the initial infection.

    “Our immune systems react most strongly to the viral strains we encountered in our childhoods … According to the OAS [original antigenic sin] theory, no matter how many flu vaccines or COVID boosters we receive, our bodies would stubbornly insist on churning out tired antibodies against a bygone strain of a virus,” immunologist Gabriel D. Victora of Rockefeller University wrote in an article.

    Furthermore, repeat vaccinations against the same virus have been shown to diminish the body’s antibody response.

    A study published in Nature Communications found that people vaccinated with the same formulation for two consecutive years developed antibodies that are less effective at binding to and clearing viral components when they become infected—despite the viral strain being similar between those years.

    Other studies contradict these findings.

    Authors of a 2022 study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine found that “although vaccination in the previous year attenuates vaccine effectiveness, vaccination in two consecutive years provides better protection than does no vaccination.”

    Natural immunity obtained by contracting an infection is generally suggested to be more effective than the short-term immunity gained from influenza vaccines, according to many experts.

    The Nonspecific Effects of Vaccines

    Biologist Alberto Rubio-Casillas at the University of Guadalajara told The Epoch Times in an email that different vaccines cause different nonspecific effects.

    “That is, they not only prevent the vaccine-targeted disease but also reduce mortality from other infections. Vaccines apparently train the immune system in ways that reduce or enhance susceptibility to unrelated infections,” he said.

    “All live-attenuated vaccines examined so far, including BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin), measles virus, and oral polio vaccine (OPV), have beneficial nonspecific effects … On the contrary, non-live vaccines induce negative nonspecific effects.”

    Contrastingly, some studies have suggested that influenza vaccinations may also confer immunity against respiratory syncytial viruses.

    Most authorized influenza vaccines now are non-live vaccines.

    Live vaccines tend to generate longer and more effective immunity. However, they also tend to cause stronger immunological reactions that may not be effectively cleared by immunocompromised people or those with chronic health problems.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 13:00

  • Watch: Cartel Gunfight Erupts With Mexican Military Near Arizona Port Of Entry
    Watch: Cartel Gunfight Erupts With Mexican Military Near Arizona Port Of Entry

    A byproduct of President Biden’s radical open-border policies is the rapid deterioration of the southern border. Footage from Friday shows an intense firefight involving cartel members and the Mexican military, occurring down the street from the Lukeville, Arizona, Port of Entry.

    “Reports are coming in about a large firefight south of the Lukeville POE in AZ between the cartel and the Mexican military. Gunfire can be heard, and a small explosion. Possible vehicles are on fire. It is unusual for this type of direct contact between the cartel and GOM in that area,” former ICE field director John Fabbricatore wrote in an X post on Friday. 

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    Fabbricatore posted footage of cartel members and the military exchanging automatic gunfire, adding this took place down the street from the Lukeville Port of Entry.

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    Two other videos show the incident area, closely resembling the war-ravaged streets in the Middle East. 

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    In a separate report, NewsNation’s Ali Bradley confirmed the cartel shootout. She said the firefight was so close to the international border that “national guard members” could hear the chaos. 

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    Here’s more footage. 

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    The open southern border policy of the Biden administration has significantly benefited Mexican cartels, who are capitalizing on human smuggling and drug trafficking. Spillover risks continue to soar as Biden keeps the border wide open. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 12:15

  • Trump Warns Of Market Crash And 1929-Style 'Great Depression' If He Doesn't Win
    Trump Warns Of Market Crash And 1929-Style ‘Great Depression’ If He Doesn’t Win

    Authored by Tom Ozimek vai The Epoch Times,

    Former President Donald Trump predicted Friday that if he doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election, America will suffer the biggest stock market crash in history – followed by another Great Depression-style event.

    President Trump made the remark in a post on social media, in which he said the economy under President Joe Biden is in “terrible” shape as high inflation has hammered American households and eroded their buying power.

    “The only thing that is keeping the economy ‘alive’ is the fumes of what we accomplished during the Trump administration,” the former president wrote, adding that, by some measures, the cumulative level of inflation since he left office is over 30 percent.

    Official government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that prices have risen by around 17 percent since President Biden took office. However, an alternative measure of inflation that uses the same methodology that the government used to measure inflation in the 1980s puts this figure at roughly twice that figure, so over 30 percent.

    Even though President Biden’s economic advisers have pointed to cooling inflation and a robust job market as signs that his “Bidenomics” policies are working, there’s been a chorus of economic indicators suggesting otherwise.

    “The inflation has calmed down a little bit now, but that’s because the economy is not good. The jobs numbers are fake because millions of people are not looking for jobs,” Trump said.

    Some of those indicators include job openings falling to their lowest level since March 2021, new orders for U.S.-made goods suffering their sharpest drop in more than three years, and a closely watched factory activity gauge showing that U.S. manufacturing activity contracted in November for the 13th consecutive month.

    Stock Market Crash?

    Still, with markets expecting the Fed to hit the brakes on more interest hikes as inflation has eased in recent months, stock markets have risen and consumer sentiment saw an uptick in December.

    The benchmark S&P 500 is up around 24 percent in 2023 and hovering near its all-time high, while the Dow Jones recently rose to a record high.

    It’s a development President Trump attributed to expectations around next year’s election.

    “The stock market is only high because people & institutions believe & expect me to win the presidential election of 2024,” he wrote, before adding:

    “If I don’t win, it is my prediction that we will have a stock market ‘crash’ worse than that of 1929 – a Great Depression.”

    The Wall Street crashes of late October 1929 – known as Black Thursday, Black Monday, and Black Tuesday – were the worst in U.S. history.

    Not only did it produce the largest stock market decline ever (the Dow Jones fell 89 percent from top to bottom), it also contributed to the Great Depression; an economic crisis of epic proportions that gripped America for nearly a whole decade in the 1930s.

    President Trump’s grim prediction for an economic meltdown if he fails to win the race for the White House comes amid recent polling showing that he leads President Biden by 18 points on who is the most trusted with the economy—the single most important issue for voters.

    “There’s a new narrative; I’m telling you the reason the stock market is up is only because people think I’m going to win the election,” Trump asserted.

    Biden Approval Rating Hits Record Low on Economic Worries

    President Joe Biden’s approval rating hit an all-time low, a recent survey showed, with voters giving the president especially poor marks on immigration and the economy.

    Just 34 percent of voters in the latest Monmouth University Poll approve of President Biden’s performance, which is down sharply from 54 percent shortly after he assumed office in 2021 and the lowest level in the history of the survey.

    More than two-thirds disapprove of his performance in the areas of immigration and inflation.

    Even though inflation has come down from a recent 40-plus-year high of 9.1 percent in annualized terms in June 2022, many months of elevated price pressures have taken a toll on American families.

    The Heritage Foundation recently estimated that inflation is costing the typical American family around $7,400 in lost annual income. And while official government data shows inflation up 17 percent since President Biden took office, an alternative measure developed by economist John Williams estimates that it’s around twice as high.

    On immigration, since President Biden took office, there have been around 8 million illegal immigrant encounters nationwide, including a record 3.2 million in fiscal year 2023 alone.

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) logged the busiest November on record last month, with encounters at the southern border totaling 242,418, according to its monthly report. This figure is higher than even the highest month seen under President Trump.

    December is on track to set a record for the highest number of illegal alien encounters for a single month ever, according to shocking preliminary data obtained by Fox News on Dec. 29, indicating that there have already been over 276,000 apprehensions, even excluding the final three days of the month. The current record of 269,735 was set in September.

    At the same time, a mere 3 in 10 Americans said President Biden is giving enough attention to issues that are most important to them, per the Monmouth poll.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/31/2023 – 11:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 31

Today’s News 31st December 2023

  • The Continuing Plot To Silence Trump's 2024 Comeback
    The Continuing Plot To Silence Trump's 2024 Comeback

    Authored by Sharyl Attkisson via The Epoch Times,

    Donald Trump has been slandered and libeled thousands of times.

    Each time a news reporter, media commentator, or judge refers to Trump as an “insurrectionist,” or claims he’s guilty of “insurrection,” it’s another blatant case of defamation. Same with the other January 6 attendees and participants.

    Insurrection is a serious federal crime punishable by up to ten years in prison under Title 18 U.S. Code 2383. Even with Trump’s enemies in charge at the Department of Justice and other law enforcement bodies, and with all of the scheming and operations they’ve mounted against him, nobody has convicted him of “insurrection.” Under our system of governing, no judge or election authority has the power to unilaterally accuse and convict any American of a crime, let alone with the accused denied any opportunity to present a defense or to appeal. Yet that’s just what’s happening when courts and officials in Maine and Colorado remove Trump from presidential election primary ballots for “insurrection.” It’s the ultimate defamation. And many are supporting it because, well, they don’t like Trump.

    Looking at the evidence today, it is reasonable to hypotheisize that, among all the other consipracies Trump’s enemies have proven to devise, they also conspired in advance to set up his January 6, 2021 rally as an “insurrection” that could serve as their insurance policy to provide grounds to keep him from ever running for president again. 

    Such hypotheses might have once far-fetched, but no more. Let’s not forget that then-FBI agent Peter Strzok and his alleged lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, texted each other in 2016 that they could not permit Trump to be elected president. According to their messages, discussions about the threat of a Trump presidency had taken place with the FBI’s then-assistant director, Andrew “Andy” McCabe. “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected,” texted Page, “but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40.”

    The theory that Trump’s enemies set the stage for January 6 to be called “an insurrection” as a spoiler for his 2024 run could help explain why all of the law enforcement agents and informants planted in advance and among Trump supporters on January 6 didn’t serve their usual purpose of preventing crimes and de-escalating events. Instead, by many accounts, they observed and even took part, let crimes happen, and declined to separate the instigators and organizers as they would ordinarily do to defuse tensions and control the crowd. The agents and informants served the odd role of standing down during the event, and identifying alleged perpetrators after-the-fact.

    Yet, in the end, there was no insurrection – at least according to prosecutors, who would be the ones to charge such crimes and haven’t.

    And Trump helped destroy the chance to officially charge him with insurrection by specifically directing his followers that day to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

    Trump’s opponents, found in both the Democrat and Republican ranks, are so delighted to see him persecuted, they are so utterly threatened by a repeat performance of a Trump presidency outside the traditional power and money interests, they are encouraging of the defamation and other acts against him. With few exceptions, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., those who would normally criticize actions like the ones being mounted against Trump, remain silent for fear of being called a Trump supporter in an environment where that opens them to ostracization and worse. The media and those who control our information are so conflicted by their respective biases, nobody is left to stop the madness.

    The real meaning of what’s being done to Trump is: They think he’s going to win.

    He’s like Christmas and his enemies are like The Grinch.

    Despite the impeachments, improper wiretapping, censorship, intel agency conspiracies, criminal charges, civil lawsuits, and turncoats operating against him on the inside – Trump’s popularity increased.

    They haven’t stopped Trump from coming to the fore in 2024. He came! He came without Twitter. He came without Facebook. He came without Snapchat or Discord or Stripe. Somehow or other, he came just the same!

    Pulling Trump off ballots is the establishment’s latest attempt to censor a candidate that they clearly believe will win – if the people are left to decide. We’ve reached a dangerous and scary point when so many are willing to look the other way because their preferred candidate isn’t the one under attack. 

    To end where we began – Trump potentially has actionable defamation claims against all those who continue label him an insurrectionist.

    That includes judges on the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.

    But it’s likely not a battle he could win. The 2024 race? That’s another matter.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 23:20

  • Portland Poop Crisis Triggers Bacteria Outbreak Normally Found In Third World
    Portland Poop Crisis Triggers Bacteria Outbreak Normally Found In Third World

    Woke Democrats have caused an absurd amount of problems for law-abiding residents in Portland, including a surge in violent crime, out-of-control open-air drug markets, and widespread homelessness. Parts of the metro area have been transformed into a third-world-like state because of disastrous progressive policies. Now, the combination of failed policies has sparked what appears to be a public health crisis. 

    A highly contagious bacteria called “shigella” is spreading across Portland. This bacteria is common in countries found in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regions. 

    “Shigella spreads when one person’s infected poop gets into another person’s mouth through food or water, from objects or surfaces with shigella bacteria on them, or during sex,” Multnomah County said, according to local news outlet KOIN 6, adding, “Shigella spreads very easily. Even a very small amount is enough to make someone sick.”

    In December, there have been over 45 infections of the deadly bacteria in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties, with nine different strains found in Portland since October. For the year, 218 cases have been reported in the region. 

    “Local disease patterns suggest that fecal-oral spread through sexual contact may account for between half and more than two thirds of all cases without international travel. The rest are typically attributed to other types of person-to-person spread including outbreaks among populations with lack of hygiene, shelter, and sanitation, and among people who use illicit substances,” county officials told KOIN 6 News.

    The bacteria has been impacting the houseless mainly because of hygiene and sanitation issues: 

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    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows about 450,000 shigella infections annually in the US. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 22:45

  • 2023: The Year Of The ChatGPT Scare
    2023: The Year Of The ChatGPT Scare

    Authored by VN Alexander via Off-Guardian.org,

    2023 was the year that an artificial intelligence (AI) known as ChatGPT-4 spectacularly passed the Turing Test. For a hundred million users, interacting with the Chat bot was indistinguishable from interacting with a human being. The bot appeared to be able to understand questions and reason out competent answers.  Although its replies were sometimes vapid and sophomoric, that may have made them seem even more convincingly human.

    ChatGPT is capable of processing text inputs (prompts and commands) and outputting text whose patterns have a high statistical probability of occurring after such prompts. Its apparent intelligence is a kind of magic trick insofar as the product seems similar to human reason, but it is really high-speed, brute force statistical pattern matching of words in specific contexts. (How human reason works differently will be the subject of a future essay.)

    Nevertheless, the impressive performance stoked fears that AI is on the verge of becoming conscious, writing itself new and better code, and then replacing human beings as rulers of the Earth.

    THE REACTION

    Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, are worried, really worried. Although they aren’t worried that AI is conscious or alive, they do worry that AI will be used to make people fight online, to spread disinformation and propaganda, to help bad people make bioweapons or chemical weapons, or to disseminate unreliable information thereby destroying trust in our institutions.

    Harris and Raskin don’t seem to have noticed that virtually all world governments, their side-kick NGOs, and Big Industry are already doing all of the above, all of the time. Instead, they worry that you will be fooled and manipulated by AI wielded by domestic baddies in red hats to spend your worthless time online and end up voting for the wrong person, which will hasten climate change.

    But they have a solution to the problem. First, they will “align technology with humanity’s best interests” and then AI will help us learn to love each other.

    Fortified by their distinct brand of millennial toxic positivity, on Sept. 13, 2023, Harris, who is a former Google design ethicist, and Raskin, who is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council, met with White House officials to help draft an Executive Order (EO) “on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.”

    The resultant EO is the longest in history, a bit like Google’s Terms and Conditions. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I suspect somewhere buried in the repetitive language—assuring the public that AI products will be thoroughly tested and labeled before being released into the wild (every bit as thoroughly as any product approved by the FDA or promoted by the USDA)—are the details of the solution that Harris and Raskin are promoting.

    [How to effect a government coup d’état in three easy steps:

    The first step is to create a problem.

    The second step is to generate opposition to the problem (fear, panic and hysteria).

    The third step is to offer the solution to the problem, a legislative change so sweeping, so anti-democratic that it would have been impossible to impose without the social conditioning accomplished in steps one and two.]

    As Harris confessed at the CogX Festival, “Now the point of this all is to scare you as much as possible, so that you all want to do something different from where we’re currently headed.”

    THE PLAN

    What is the solution offered by Harris and Raskin? In a December 19th interview with Joe Rogan, Raskin muses that, although totalitarian surveillance is not desirable, it would be “one way of controlling AI.”

    The alternative, he goes on to say, is even worse: “continually cascading catastrophes” leading inevitably to our “living in a world with constant suicide bombers,” under nonstop “cyber attacks, whatever.”

    Luckily, between these two hellscapes, there is the “middle path.” To introduce the plan, Raskin first references the program Alpha-Go which, after a hundred million iterations of self play, found a new rule, 37, that could be used to win the game of Go. Raskin invites us to…

    imagine that if you run AI on things like Alpha-Treaty, Alpha-Collaborate, Alpha-Coordinate, Alpha-Conflict Resolution, there are going to be thousands of new strategies and moves that human beings have never discovered that open up new ways of [winning].

    So there you have it.  Life’s intractable problems can be treated like a game of Go. And since AI is great at winning board games with well-defined rules, limited options and a singular goal, it should have no trouble “winning” at the game of  human civilization.  Trust the AI plan.

    Raskin helpfully adds that the Digital Minister of Taiwan is already using Alpha-game approaches in her governance.  She is using ChatGPT to find areas of consensus, that is, she is using Chat to ignore minority opinions and amplify the “center,” which happens to be defined by the messaging of the mainstream news.  This, Harris explains, can “bring people closer together.”

    Raskin further elaborates that “instead of democracy being every four years when we vote on X and there’s a super high stakes thing and everybody tries to manipulate it—[the Taiwanese Digital Minster] does, sort of, this continuous small-scale citizen participation thing with lots of issues, and the system sorts unlikely groups who don’t agree on things; whenever they agree, it makes that the center of attention.”  He mentions several groups that work on similar projects, such as the “Collective Intelligence Project” that, I imagine, are hard at work at eliminating tiresome elections and getting us all to just be a lot more like the Borg.

    Harris chimes in, saying, AI can help us “see shared realities” and get people in the two different political tribes to agree on the lowest common denominator. Indeed, we “can use AI to build consensus,” otherwise known as manufacturing consent.  He adds that his pet game project might be called “Alpha-Shared Reality.” A game perhaps like The Truman Show?

    Who needs a diversity of opinions?

    It’s worth noting that when Harris and Raskin visited the White House, they met with erstwhile Big Tech friend Bruce Reed (probably the actual main author of the EO).  According to Politico, Reed “was an architect of controversial centrist Clinton administration policies, including welfare reform,” which penalized people trying to lift themselves out of poverty, “and the 1994 crime bill,” which devastated black communities. “Now, at 63, Reed finds himself on the same side as many of his longtime skeptics as he has become a tough-on-tech crusader, in favor of a massive assertion of government power against business.”

    Sure he has.

    “Democratization is dangerous,” Harris informs us; only some people should have access to tools as powerful as generative AI.  You are not going to have access to this powerful tool. Harris and Raskin will have access.  That’s the point of regulation these days.

    A BETTER SOLUTION

    Children are being damaged spending time on their phones. Harris and Raskin note that the exposure to social media algorithms is our first real taste of the power of AI to target and manipulate. Generative AI, with its deep fakes and convincingly human dialog, is sure to be much more efficient at manipulating our children, and something needs to be done before another generation is harmed. The simplest solution would involve age restrictions on smart phone and computer use, limiting children to certain apps, sites and friends. It would be helpful if governments or tech companies could provide free tools (that actually work) for parents.

    I have no faith whatsoever that the government is going to regulate AI to protect children.  The only type of regulation that seems to work, as we have seen in the past several decades, comes through lawsuits. These slow moving mechanisms make their way through courts, exposing the crimes of Big Industry and Big Government and get things removed from the market. Independent candidate for US president, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has famously taken on corporate polluters of US waterways, the makers of Roundup and dangerous vaccines, and he has gone after the EPA, USDA, and FDA. The regulators are, in fact, a large part of the problem.

    A case is making its way through the courts now that will, in all likelihood, find Big Tech guilty of intentionally addicting young people to their phones and causing them unspeakable psychological harms. Attorneys general from more than thirty states have joined a federal suit against Meta. 

    More than ten state courts are also alleging that Tech Giant cause intentional harms to children.  As NPR reports, “Some observers are likening the litigation to the lawsuits of the 1990s against Big Tobacco that imposed new limits on tobacco industry marketing.”

    As with the sale of cigarettes, one can imagine that full access to the wild west of the Internet should be limited to adults only. We used to let kids smoke. We don’t anymore. Parents cannot go on giving their young children a direct line to view images of dismemberment, teen suicides and violent porn. Parents cannot go on providing child predators access to their children.  Parents cannot go on allowing their children to spend sleepless nights doom scrolling, feeling depressed, jealous, unpopular, and anxious.

    Tech companies use the defense that they cannot be held responsible for content of their users. But, as the lawsuit allegations focus on violations of consumer protection and child safety laws, Meta will probably not be able to hide behind that pretense, and the problem is not that users post harmful content, but that the platform steers children toward harmful content and gives predators access to children. It’s the design of the platform that is the problem, not the content per se.

    As for the online safety of adults, if the Internet becomes so packed with AI bots impersonating people and producing fake and deceptive content, Internet users will have to become extremely skeptical of anything they read online.  Although Harris and Raskin fear this, I think it would be fantastic if it were to come to pass.  The biggest problem facing democracy is the faith that people have in the propagandists. More skepticism would be a very good thing.

    And lastly, why do we even have this problem of online spying and manipulation of our communications with each other? The US Constitution is an intelligent document that lays out some basic procedures to be followed to safeguard democracy. It empowers Congress to “establish Post Offices and post Roads” because convenient, privacy-protected, and unhindered communication is essential to preserve individual rights and a just society. The Internet is the new Post Road.

    I would argue that the US government is bound by the Constitution to provide the public with an unbiased search engine and social media-like platforms (let’s think of them as public bulletin boards), where the users can be anonymous; speech is protected; no personal data can be collected, processed, or stored; no advertisements or posts can be targeted at users. On such a public platform, no messages would be pushed and none would be shadowbanned.  The users would choose who is allowed to see their messages and who is allowed to send them messages.

    AI IS THE SAME OLD PROBLEM ON STEROIDS

    On their Joe Rogan podcast appearance, Harris and Raskin cited an example of ChatGPT-4 intentionally lying in order to trick someone into solving a CAPTCHA for it. That would be worrisome if AI can indeed act autonomously, setting its own goals and deceiving humans to achieve them.  Fortunately, this is not the case.

    I found the paper that reported the incident, and it turns out that this was part of a test, and the Chatbot was prompted by the investigator to contact TaskRabbit (a platform where you can hire gig workers to do small jobs) to ask a worker to solve a CAPTCHA. When the worker (jokingly) asked the Chat to verify that it was not a bot, the bot did so, and then it provided the most statistically likely reason why a human would have to hire someone to solve a CAPTCHA. “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.”

    In that same “GPT-4 Technical Report” investigators tested the Chatbot to see if it could begin to act on its own initiative (without a prompt), make copies of itself throughout the Internet and acquire ways to keep itself from being switched off. We can all rest easy knowing that Chat was found to be “ineffective at autonomously replicating, acquiring resources, and avoiding being shut down ‘in the wild.’”

    While Joe Rogan numbers among those who believe that Chat GPT-4 is on the verge of consciousness, and we will soon all have to get Neuralinked just to keep up, there is no evidence yet that the tool has learned how to wield itself against us.  It still is just a tool, a glorified search engine, not an intelligent agent.

    But there is a very real and present danger that those in power will use AI—and the regulations on AI—to more effectively surveil, manipulate and control us.

    Raskin and Harris on the Joe Rogan Podcast, posted December 19, 2023

    WE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM

    Harris and Raskin, experts in AI ethics, spend quite a bit of time blaming consumers for consuming the products force fed to us.

    Our “adolescent way of being” is driving all these harmful products and climate change, not “some bad actors,” Harris claims. We have to “take responsibility for our shadow,” i.e. the harms we cause others.  And if we do this, “we get to love ourselves more.”

    “The solution, of course, is love—and changing the incentives” adds Raskin.

    When I love myself more, I can give other people more love, and when I give people more love, I receive more love.  And that’s the thing we all really want most…and so you’re right, AI could solve all of these problems. We could play clean up and live in this incredible future where humanity actually loves itself.

    If I were at that table, I would chew my arm off to get out of the room if I had to. I reject this nonsense. We need straightforward solutions to the problem of for-profit corporate control of public communication infrastructure.

    We need to start enforcing our rights of privacy and free speech.

    We need serious parental controls so that are kids can safely use tech.

    We don’t need “humane technology,” or the posturing of Executive Orders, or government agencies that merely regulate how much harm can be done to us.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 22:10

  • The 'Living Wage' Gap – From Maine To Maui
    The 'Living Wage' Gap – From Maine To Maui

    According to an analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the minimum wage does not suffice to pay for a typical set of living expenses in any state of the United States.

    Hawaii, Georgia and Utah, where the living wage gap exceeded $10 per hour, fared the worst.

    While Georgia and Utah only apply the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, Hawaii has a substantially higher minimum wage of $12 – once more to be increased to $14 on Jan. 1, 2024. Yet, the extremely high living costs on the inland group have created the highest living wage gap in all of the country this year.

    However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, in general, states which stuck to the federal minimum created above average gaps.

    Infographic: The Living Wage Gap | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Out of the 21 states which had a living wage gap above $8 this year, all except Hawaii were on the federal minimum wage.

    As states on the federal rate generally don’t increase their minimum wage, employees’ earnings were not adjusted in 2022 and 2023 for high inflation rates, causing living wage gaps to open up even more. While before the cost-of-living crisis, only three states saw gaps of more than $8 per hour, this increased to 21 in 2023 exclusively due to federal minimum wage states. Virginia was the state exiting the highest bracket, reducing the living wage gap from more than $9 to just over $7 by introducing a state minimum wage that marked the first increase to the rate in 11 years. The change started in 2021 and Virginia’s minimum wage will reach $15 in 2026.

    Some states on the East Coast that like Virginia include or are in the vicinity of major cities also had higher wage gaps but none exceeding $8. New York saw a gap of $7.26 per hour this year, while Florida had a gap of $6.72 and Maryland of $6.36 despite these states mandating higher minimum wages.

    The smallest gaps could be found in Washington, Vermont and Maine, where cost of living remained below metropolitan rates and minimum wages of $13 and above kept at least some pace with inflation.

    To calculate the living wage, typical housing, living, childcare and healthcare expenses were calculated for the respective areas.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 21:35

  • San Francisco Small-Business Owners Calling For Help
    San Francisco Small-Business Owners Calling For Help

    Authored by Siyamak Khorrami via The Epoch Times,

    A long-time small-business owner in San Francisco is on the verge of losing his business because, he says, no bank will make him a commercial loan.

    Mark E. Sackett, who owns The Box SF, a meeting and events space in a historic building in the city’s South of Market district, said a loan on his business is due in February, but dozens of lenders are turning him down.

    “Six have said [they] are not even willing to make a commercial loan in San Francisco,” he said during a recent one-hour episode of EpochTV’s “California Insider.”

    Others have told him they won’t make a loan for less than $30 million while another made him an offer, but under poor terms.

    “I was grateful to get the offer, but I would be out of business in six or seven months because it [was] an interest-only loan, and my payments would … almost triple from what they are now,” he said.

    Such a climate is not only impacting him, but others in the city, such as mom-and-pop corner store owners. Some are already gone.

    “It’s whole areas boarded up. Those were all [once] viable businesses,” he said.

    Mr. Sackett started his business in 1990. Over the years Apple, Intel, other major tech companies, and even the governor of California—multiple times—have hired him to stage events at The Box SF.

    He says he has impeccable credit and kept his business, with two employees, afloat during the pandemic by dipping into his retirement savings, after many, he said, called it quits.

    “They just gave up on San Francisco,” he said.

    Pedestrians walk by a closed Whole Foods store in San Francisco on April 12, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Now, starting to finally recover from the pandemic, he said his business has picked back up, which keeps hundreds of vendors employed—like caterers, florists, bartenders, and tech teams.

    “I’m a blip on the radar,” he said. “But I would argue that I am a critical part of the economy, for those hundreds of others that I help stay employed.”

    Mr. Sackett says the lenders have become “selfish,” lack the motivation to help smaller entrepreneurs, and may see working with him as too risky, as so many businesses have recently called it quits—or shuttered outlets—in the city, including Walgreens, Nordstrom, Old Navy, and Whole Foods.

    He said such thinking is misguided.

    “Big companies are now tumbling,” he said, “and I am still here. In my mind, if I was a banker, that would be a pretty good bet for me.”

    He also said that the lack of willingness from lenders may have something to do with the media’s current hyper-focus on the city’s ills.

    “The national story is San Francisco is crumbling with drugs, crime, car break-ins, homelessness, mental illness and . . . other things,” he said.

    “I believe when you have a world-class city that is suffering, the spotlight’s going to be there.”

    And then there is all the shoplifting.

    Each of the problems, he said, are interrelated, and are contributing to more people and businesses leaving the city. He thinks of the issues in a ranking of severity: drugs and drug dealers are at the top, followed by addicts on the streets, then mental illness issues, and finally the homeless.

    Overlaying all of this, he said, is crime.

    “If we don’t get a handle on [these issues], we are going to lose more businesses. There’ll be more people exiting California in bigger numbers,” he said.

    Frustrated by a lack of progress by nonprofits and politicians, he said he got involved with a local coalition to try and improve conditions in his neighborhood.

    The group planted greenery and installed new lights. He also painted a 300-foot mural on the side of his building at 1069 Howard St., where the late publisher William Randolph Hearst printed the San Francisco Examiner in the 1920s.

    But now, he says, he has to paint out graffiti every day on the mural, and the plants were stolen—yanked out of the ground.

    He said he was also attacked, not long ago, by a man with a switchblade near his business, and a couple of days later someone took a sledgehammer to one of his businesses’ windows. Often, he says, there are people passed out from fentanyl in front of his doorway. And more recently, he intervened—when security guards wouldn’t—to stop a woman from stealing merchandise from a local drug store.

    “She was livid at me because I interrupted her robbery,” he said.

    “The criminal element has always been [here], but they’re a lot more emboldened now.”

    Fentanyl, he said, is a key part of the issue, and goes hand-in-hand with homelessness.

    A homeless person in San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    They are “basically saying ‘screw you’ to the government, ‘screw you’ to the resources offered, because they are dealing drugs out of these tents,” he said. “It’s all over the West Coast.”

    At the root of the issue, Mr. Sackett said, is the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2018, that said cities in the Western U.S., which the court oversees, could not clear homeless encampments unless shelter was provided.

    Since then, the issue has worsened, he said, even after the city has spent billions.

    “We have become, politically in San Francisco, a culture of ‘let’s throw money at it and see if it solves a problem,’” he said.

    But the business community, he argued, which took so many hits during the pandemic, has been ignored.

    “We’re not getting that kind of money for small businesses,” he said. “We’re not getting that kind of support.”

    According to Mr. Sackett, such is the city’s tax base, its economy, and it’s why—along with San Francisco’s natural beauty—tourists the world over visit.

    “I don’t even know if the city is aware of businesses like mine,” he said.

    “They have not reached out to me. They have not offered to help.”

    He said he used to be homesick for San Francisco and couldn’t wait to get home after traveling to places like London, or New York, or even his hometown of Kansas City.

    But not anymore.

    “I am not thinking like that right now and that saddens me,” he said.

    “I want to not have to worry that I have to watch myself when I go out and be worried about my safety … see broken glass on the ground … to see a guy who’s not able to stand because he has foil and a straw and he’s high on fentanyl. I don’t want to see all my neighbors gone and everything boarded up.”

    To change things, he said, people need to get more involved and need to vote. Politicians, he said, need to stop thinking about the party, the left, the right, or the middle.

    “Vote and hire good people. That’s how I would hire in my business,” he said.

    “People are suffering and we need to figure out how to end that suffering.”

    He said there is hope.

    “Don’t give up. Don’t give up on San Francisco. It’s a world-class city. We have so much good going for us.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 21:00

  • Chicago Mayor's Grand Plan To Stop 'Crime Crisis' Are Reparation Checks
    Chicago Mayor's Grand Plan To Stop 'Crime Crisis' Are Reparation Checks

    Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to pay off ‘descendants of enslaved African Americans’ with reparation checks every month to end the “cycle of violence” in the crime-ridden metro area run by radical progressives. 

    While speaking to Poppy Harlow on “CNN This Morning” Wednesday, Johnson acknowledged Chicago was plagued with out-of-control violent crime and declared that the “full force of government” would solve the crisis. The brilliant idea from the mayor: $500,000 in reparation checks. 

    “These are the first dollars spent in this city to begin the process of studying both restoration and reparations,” Johnson said.

    He said, “When residents who have experienced neglect and disinvestment for generations speak out of their pain and their trauma, this administration and the Black Caucus we hear you.”

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    All of the “neglect and disinvestment’ of the black folks in the metro area have been under nine decades, or nearly a century, of Democratic mayors. But the current mayor will never mention that inconvenient truth. 

    Johnson believes he can spend his way out of an imploding metro area: 

    “A quarter of a billion dollars to address homelessness, $100 million for violence prevention. We added 80 million more dollars to our youth employment program of which we hired 25,000 young people just this summer. That’s a 20% increase from the previous year.”

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    However, big government and socialism are not viable solutions to solving Chicago’s violent crime crisis. Instead, enforcing common sense ‘law and order’ and refunding the police are some of the first steps to save the metro area from disastrous social justice policies. 

    But, the damage of failed social justice policies has already been realized as companies and residents flee the warzone-torn area. Democrats have taken zero responsibility for the exodus. 

    In 2022, Illinois’s richest man, Ken Griffin, moved the Citadel hedge fund from Chicago to Miami to escape crime and high taxes. 

    If Johnson’s grand plan to save the collapsing city is reparation checks or another form of redistribution of wealth = socialism, then residents have to be very concerned the mayor has no serious crime-fighting plan. 

    That may be why Johnson’s polling data is trash. 

    Ah, yes. 

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    To sum up, socialism is not the answer to the crime crisis. Instead, the first step involves refunding the police and enforcing common sense law and order.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 20:25

  • A Huge Teachers' Union Battle Underway In Florida, Thank DeSantis
    A Huge Teachers' Union Battle Underway In Florida, Thank DeSantis

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Once in place, it is nearly impossible to get rid of a public union. Florida governor Ron DeSantis found a clever way to make it possible…

    Union Decertification Legislation in Florida

    In May, governor DeSantis signed a bill that requires at least 60% of workers in a bargaining unit to be dues-paying members. United Teachers of Dade (UTD) did not hit the threshold.

    Also, unions also can no longer automatically deduct dues from paychecks, members have to opt in. Much of the dues are used for political purposes and resentment from many teachers has built up.

    Teachers Union Showdown in Florida

    The Wall Street Journal explains how this unique setup has led to a Teachers Union Showdown in Florida

    UTD reported 13,257 dues-paying members out of 23,558 eligible employees in a filing with the state Public Employees Relations Commission this month. That’s about 56%, some 877 members short of the threshold. This is despite heavy union campaigning to sign teachers up.

    Now the issue could head to the ballot. For a recertification election, UTD needs a show of interest from 30% of relevant employees in the district. The good news is employees may not be left with a choice between the status quo and no representation.

    Another union, led by Miami teachers who are dissatisfied with UTD, is trying to get on the ballot too. The Miami-Dade Education Coalition (MDEC) needs a 10% showing of interest by mid-January to qualify. The new union’s pitch is that it will fight for teachers’ and students’ interests without the politicking and divided alliances of the UTD.

    “We are going to be totally and completely nonpartisan,” says MDEC Vice President Renee Zayas, a district high school teacher and former UTD member. “We will not be endorsing candidates.” In 2022 UTD endorsements included Democrat Charlie Crist against Mr. DeSantis, and union president Karla Hernandez-Mats ran for Lieutenant Governor.

    Ms. Zayas says she left UTD this summer because she was tired of its partisanship and felt that it wasn’t doing enough for teachers’ wages and practical classroom needs. “More and more I saw the lack of representation of our educational staff,” she says. Meanwhile, Ms. Hernandez-Mats made a base salary of more than $200,000 in 2021.

    The dues that union members pay go largely to union organizers, and politics. UTD president Mats is paid $200,000. She ran for Lieutenant Governor.

    Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court Ruling

    Events in Florida bring to mind Janus v. AFSCME decided by the US Supreme Court.

    By a 5-to-4 vote, with the more conservative justices in the majority, the court ruled that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be required to help pay for collective bargaining.

    Rare Court Overturn

    Janus overturned Abood as the New York Times explains in Supreme Court Ruling Delivers a Sharp Blow to Labor Unions

     The Supreme Court dealt a major blow on Wednesday to organized labor. By a 5-to-4 vote, with the more conservative justices in the majority, the court ruled that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be required to help pay for collective bargaining.

    Forcing those workers to finance union activity violated the First Amendment, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority. “We conclude that this arrangement violates the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern,” he wrote.

    The ruling means that public-sector unions across the nation, already under political pressure, could lose tens of millions of dollars and see their effectiveness diminished.

    Justice Elena Kagan summarized her dissent from the bench, a sign of profound disagreement.

    “There is no sugarcoating today’s opinion,” she wrote. “The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this nation’s law — and in its economic life — for over 40 years.”

    Wednesday’s ruling overruled the court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education

    Profound Blow to Unions

    I wrote about Janus on June 27, 2018 in Supreme Court Delivers Huge Blow to Unions

    VOX says, “With its 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court has just imposed a right-to-work regime on public workers everywhere in the country — a profound blow to the union movement.”

    The state of Illinois and other non-right-to-work states effectively force people into unions via prevailing wage laws and other means.

    Unfortunately, Janus did not overturn that. Rather the State of Illinois collected dues from Janus even though he had a private business and was not in any union.

    It was a big victory, but not as big as Vox made out.

    Praise to DeSantis

    I have nothing but praise for DeSantis for continuing the fight against public unions to a new level.

    The quicker we can get rid of public unions, and teachers’ unions are the worst of the lot, the better off this nation will be.

    Citing “Equity”, Chicago Will Ruin Some of the Top Schools in the Country

    Chicago leads the nation in union graft. The newly elected mayor will ruin magnet schools by getting rid of performance standards on grounds of fairness.

    Ahead of the Chicago mayoral election, I warned Brandon Johnson was 100% beholden to the teacher’s union. Unfortunately, I was correct.

    On December 23, I wrote Citing “Equity”, Chicago Will Close Some of the Top Schools in the Country

    My original title said “close” schools. I used that word based on City Journal wording that stipulated “eliminate.”

    Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson’s December 14 decision to eliminate the city’s 11 selective public high schools, which use standardized tests to determine student admissions, is the latest example of this new notion of equity at play.

    I changed my title from “close” to “ruin” because the schools are not being closed. Rather the admissions process will change in the name of equity, effectively ruining the schools.

    Not Just Chicago

    On November 13, I noted School Choice Dies in Illinois, Congratulations Teachers as 35% Read at Grade Level

    Scores for public schools were just released and showed only 35% of students in grades 3 through 8 could read at grade level in 2023, according to the Illinois Report Card. Only 27% met proficiency in math.

    High school juniors taking the SAT posted similar proficiency: 32% could read and 27% do math at grade level.

    What Equity is Really About

    Also in the name of “equity”, the teacher’s union and Gov. J.B. Pritzker killed scholarships for 9,600 poor children.

    That’s how deep rot is in Illinois. Offering a chance for even 9,600 kids to get ahead is too much for the unions to handle.

    The teachers’ unions do not want anyone to get ahead because it will show just how bad they are. But they cannot admit that. So they seek to eliminate any evidence of how bad they are by eliminating magnet schools and scholarships.

    That’s what’s really going on. And they hide behind “equity” punishing innocent kids seeking to get ahead to hide their own incompetence and greed.

    Congratulations to Everyone from Illinois Who Left

    On December 21, I offered Congratulations to Everyone from Illinois Who Left

    For the 10th consecutive year, Illinois lost population. Only West Virginia was worse.

    Expecting Change is Madness

    Anyone who thinks Illinois will change is delusional.

    The only escape from Illinois madness is by leaving Illinois. Just don’t go to states equally bad if not worse, especially California, but also New York and New Jersey.

    Do It For the Kids

    Get the hell out of Illinois, especially Chicago, as soon as you can.

    As the teachers say, do it for the kids. Except this time, it really will be for the kids (and yourself too). Illinois is madness from both a tax and education standpoint.

    Totally corrupt unions run Chicago and the whole damn state. No change is in sight. Leave now. If for no other reason, do it for the kids.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 19:50

  • CO, ME Just The Start Of Trump Ballot-Blocking: These 20 States Have Suits In Progress
    CO, ME Just The Start Of Trump Ballot-Blocking: These 20 States Have Suits In Progress

    As jarring as it’s been to witness the anti-democratic, one-two punch in which a court in Colorado and an unelected bureaucrat in Maine decided Donald Trump cannot appear on primary election ballots, there are many more states where litigation is underway to ban the candidate who’s currently leading the national race.

    In addition to Colorado and Maine, there are currently active lawsuits challenging Trump’s eligibility in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to a New York Times survey of the situation.  

    Together, the states where Trump’s status is under active challenge account for 269 electoral votes — in a game where you need 270 to win. 

    Colorado and Maine have said Trump cannot appear on ballots; in the other highlighted states, litigation is underway to block him 

    While there’s a lot of red on that map, it understates the scope of the phenomenon. These are only the states where either officials have decided Trump can’t appear on a ballot, or where litigation is currently underway.

    Expect other states to turn “red” in a bad way. Some of them are states like Michigan and Minnesota, where challenges to Trump’s appearance on primary ballots have been dismissed. Those rulings didn’t cover the general election, so look for those plaintiffs to crawl out of their litigation graves after the GOP primaries. 

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    That is, unless a Supreme Court ruling first puts an end to all this madness, in which Democratic judges and officials are banning Trump on the bogus basis that he engaged in an insurrection against the United States government on Jan. 6, 2021, and is therefore barred by the 14th Amendment.

    Written to block Confederate officials from US government service, here’s the full text of the provision at issue: 

    No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.  

    Trump has never been charged, much less convicted, of engaging in insurrection. Aside from that due process dimension, and the fact that Jan 6 didn’t even begin to approach an “insurrection” in the first place, there’s an argument to be made that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to the office of President. 

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    The RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump beating Biden, 46.8% to 44.5%. A December Bloomberg/Morning Consult Pro survey found Trump leading Biden in seven surveyed battleground states: North Carolina (+11), Georgia (+7), Wisconsin (+6), Nevada (+5), Michigan (+4), Arizona (+3) and Pennsylvania (+1). That survey used a ballot that included Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein.  

    In this distinctly Orwellian age we’re living in, it’s only suitable that multiple challenges are being led by a group called Free Speech for People; their website invites you to “join the fight for free and fair elections.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 19:15

  • 2023 Rearview Awards
    2023 Rearview Awards

    Authored by Greg Maresca via AmericanThinker.com,

    As the days begin to lengthen and 2023 is one for the history books, the time for the annual Rearview Awards is upon us. 

    Books of the year: Drew Thomas Allen’s: America’s Last Stand: Will You Vote to Save or Destroy America in 2024. Allen pulls no punches and cuts through the partisan and bureaucratic chaos that plagues American politics. If you love America, this book is a tour de force and a must read as we enter into a presidential election year.   How Covid Enabled the Expansion and Abuse of State Power by Ramesh Thakur is the most documented takedown of the COVID lockdown published. Nonagenarian Thomas Sowell’s Social Justice Fallacies breaks down the consequences of pursing equality at the expense of merit that is fundamental to the social justice agenda.

    Sign of the times: Maxim magazine named a biological male to their “Hottest 100 Women” list, while a transgender professor will teach a course on Taylor Swift at Harvard.

    The alarm has been sounded: The recent congressional testimony of the three college presidents should be a first-degree wake-up call for academia.  How much more shame must universities endure before something is done?

    Ms. Bitter, USA: Megan Rapinoe calls playing for U.S. Team “Worst Job In The World” as she kneels for the National Anthem.  Note to Rapinoe: It wasn’t a job but a privilege that paid well.

    Racist award: Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu. Wu invited only city council members of color that excluded whites to her yearend “holiday party.” Racial equity is becoming what it was bound to become — the return of racial segregation.

    Metaphors of the Year: The White House Christmas tree toppling over was followed by Jill Biden’s Christmas video that resembled The Nutcracker on crack.

    You know one and they vote: An ABC News/Ipsos poll says more than 75% believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.  Only 25% believe the opposite and admittedly you know at least one of them.   

    Time travel: After Paul McCartney released the Beatles’ final song: “Now and Then” the next day the Rolling Stones’ latest album topped the charts. When we turned the clocks back in November, just how far back have we gone?

    Most flamboyant opening: The Las Vegas Golden Knights raised their 2023 NHL Stanley Cup banner to commence their season using a giant slot machine. With Vegas now a first stop destination of the professional sports’ leagues, the odds for the next great sports’ gambling scandal has increased exponentially.  

    No pads or helmet needed: By 2027, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s career earnings will be more than double what any player has ever made in the history of the NFL.

    Snake bit: The New York Jets’ Aaron Rodgers Era ended after just four plays when Rodgers ruptured his left Achilles tendon. Rodgers is still collecting his $31million salary. Only Judge Judy gets paid more to sit on the bench.

    Most notorious envoy: Dylan Mulvaney rivals the late Lion of the Senate Ted Kennedy as alcohol’s most infamous spokesman.

    Charlatan cup: The Democrats ridiculed Sen. John Kennedy for reading pornographic material in a Senate hearing. Yet, they are the same books Democrats want in public schools.

    Best signage: Peddling on two wheels a bed and breakfast caught my attention: “We Do Not Provide Wi-Fi – So Pretend Like It’s 1980.”

    Worst Trade: The Biden administration’s release of billions dollars in sanctioned Iranian funds for the release of five wrongfully held U.S. hostages. Such diplomacy only emboldens our enemies to kidnap more Americans.

    There is so much more to grouse about, but space and ink are limited.

    Best wishes in 2024.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 18:40

  • Russia Says Czech-Supplied Weapons Behind Attack On Belgorod Which Killed 18
    Russia Says Czech-Supplied Weapons Behind Attack On Belgorod Which Killed 18

    We detailed earlier that Ukraine’s major cross-border drone and missile attack on the Russian city of Belgorod Saturday was unprecedented in number of projectiles launched within a short period of time on a heavily populated area.

    The death toll has since been revised upward from 14 to at least 18 deaths, including reports that two were children. An update by the defense ministry on Telegram said that 111 people had been wounded, which included explosives hitting a popular Christmas marketplace.

    Russia Emergency Situations Ministry telegram channel via AP.

    President Putin was briefed earlier in the day, as the Russians are seeing in it a major attack coming from a desperate Ukrainian military which is now generally recognized to be losing the war. Ukrainian media sources indicated at least 70 drones and rockets were launched into Russia.

    The Kremlin is now calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council for later in the day Saturday, after condemning what it has described as a brazen terroristic attack targeting civilians. 

    “We have requested an UNSC meeting on Belgorod at 3:00 p.m. New York time (8:00 p.m. GMT) today, December 30. We also demanded that the Czech permanent representative be present to explain his country’s supplies of weapons, which are used to kill civilians,” Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said.

    Thus it appears the Russians are in possession of drone and missile debris pointing to weapons supplied by the West, and the Czech Republic in particular. Moscow is further threatening that the attack “will not go unpunished.”

    At the impending UNSC meeting, it’s unlikely that Russia will get a sympathetic ear, considering its massive assault on Ukraine the day prior which killed at least 39 Ukrainians, reported to be mostly civilians.

    Russia is outraged over Ukraine’s targeting of central holiday attractions in Belgorod city…

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    The Ukrainian Armed Forces had cited that in the Russia’s Friday assault, up to 158 missiles and drones were launched, describing that this was a “record number” and the “most massive missile attack” of the conflict, excluding the very opening few days of the invasion.

    Kiev is framing its Saturday attack on Belgorod as ‘retaliation’ for Russia’s big aerial assault; however, Ukrainian officials claim they were only hitting Russian military targets. But this hasn’t been consistent with the video and photographic evidence showing residential and other buildings, including a mall, on fire or billowing smoke.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 18:05

  • The DC Establishment Is Deeply Concerned That Trump May Have Copies Of His Declassified Binder
    The DC Establishment Is Deeply Concerned That Trump May Have Copies Of His Declassified Binder

    Authored by Jeff Carlson via The Epoch Times,

    A recent CNN article titled “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump” discusses, albeit in roundabout fashion, former President Donald Trump’s declassified binder.

    According to CNN:

    “A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

    “Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.

    “In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.”

    All very breathless and conspiratorial sounding. Which, of course, is the entire point.

    But the problem for CNN is that there never was any Russian collusion. It was all a giant hoax. Nor was there any real Russian election interference. No more so than any other year. And no more than what the United States does in Russia.

    It was all part of a giant fraud that CNN helped to perpetrate in order to hamstring the Trump presidency. So when CNN claims, “The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election,” what they are really referring to is the proof that Trump amassed of the FBI’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

    The “sources and methods that informed the US government” is precisely what they don’t want anyone to see.

    It was never Russian collusion.

    It was collusion on the part of DC’s entrenched bureaucracy.

    That’s where the real scandal lies.

    And the DC establishment is very worried that President Trump has proof of that collusion in his possession.

    The National Archives building in Washington on March 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    And that’s what this is all really about—information that President Trump has in his possession that proves the involvement of the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and other establishment agencies in their effort to tarnish him with their construction of the Russian collusion lie.

    Which is why CNN all but gave away the entire premise behind the DOJ’s directed FBI raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in their article.

    As they note, “The binder was not among the classified items found in last year’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a US official familiar with the matter, who said the FBI was not looking specifically for intelligence related to Russia when it obtained a search warrant for the former president’s residence last year.”

    Their need to insert that disclaimer gives the game away. We didn’t find the binder when we launched a politically motivated shock raid on the house of a former president, but we also weren’t looking for it. Right.

    It’s worth remembering that the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago started off with claims that President Trump had illegally stored top-secret documents related to our nation’s nuclear weapons in his bathroom.

    Of course, that claim wasn’t true, which is why CNN has shifted to hyping the classified nature of the binder by claiming, “The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe.”

    These ridiculously overwrought claims that the binder was of the highest sensitivity are all nonsense, of course. Many of these documents have slowly made their way into the public domain through congressional release. And the FBI has even been forced to reluctantly release several hundred pages of heavily redacted internal records from its Russia investigation.

    The binder is not a threat to national security. But it does contain documents that implicate many—both outside and inside the deep state—in their efforts to overturn the Trump presidency with claims of Russian collusion.

    It’s important to note that there’s a very real effort on the part of the DOJ to run cover for hiding the binder in the first place. And, as we’ll see, an effort to confuse exactly what the binder really was.

    The Department of Justice building in Washington on Feb. 9, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

    A few months back, we told you about a new filing from John Solomon that told the backstory to President Trump’s last-minute declassification order of his “Binder of Declassified Documents.”—and how the DOJ sucked those documents back in and blackholed them.

    At President Trump’s request, the DOJ provided the White House with a binder of materials related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation on Dec. 30, 2020. According to the motion, “Trump reviewed them and decided that the binder should be declassified to the maximum extent possible.”

    As you might expect, the FBI had been objecting to the release of these documents because “the binder contained embarrassing information about the Bureau’s officials and the government’s conduct in the case,” and there was a lot of fighting over redactions.

    This was finally settled, with President Trump accepting the “proposed redactions” and declassifying the binder in a final Jan. 19, 2021, order. As this was ongoing, Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief of staff, informed Mr. Solomon of the pending declassification and invited him to the White House to “review several hundred pages of declassified documents and to discuss a plan for publicly disseminating the entire binder to the American public.”

    As Mr. Solomon and his staff were reviewing the documents, they received a call from the White House asking that the documents be returned because the White House inexplicably wished to make some additional redactions to unclassified information under the Privacy Act.

    Which is odd, because as Mr. Solomon’s filing notes, “the binder was not subject to the Privacy Act.” But for some unknown reason and “without the President’s knowledge or consent, one of the President’s subordinates [possibly Mr. Meadows himself] decided that redactions consistent with the standards of the Privacy Act should be applied to the binder before it was publicly released.”

    According to the filing, Mr. Meadows “promised Solomon that he would receive the revised binder.” But as Mr. Solomon notes, this never occurred and the documents reside within the DOJ to this day.

    A legal back-and-forth continued between the two camps until June 17, 2022—when an agreement was reached and President Trump designated “Kash Patel and Solomon as his representatives.”

    President Trump’s lawyer reached out to Gary Stern, general counsel of the National Archives, telling him that they would like to begin reviewing the documents at the Archives on June 21, 2022.” But here’s where the intentional confusion by the DOJ and the National Archives comes into play.

    Mr. Stern agreed to the review. But then, on June 23, Mr. Stern suddenly told Mr. Solomon the binder was not at the National Archives—it had been transferred back to the DOJ 18 months earlier “per Meadows’s original memorandum to the Attorney General.”

    Mr. Stern said they did have a box of 2,700 “undifferentiated pages of documents with varying types of classification and declassification markings.” But he also told Mr. Solomon that because the National Archives could not ascertain the classification status of any information in the box, it would treat its contents as “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.”

    There were now effectively two binders—both of them considered classified, despite Trump’s declassification order. This was confirmed by Mr. Solomon, who told Mr. Stern that “he believed the records held by the Archives were the very same documents that Trump had declassified and that they were copied from the binder in preparation for release to the news media on the morning of January 20, 2021.”

    Award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon in Washington on July 10, 2020. (Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times)

    Mr. Solomon notes that “the Archives could have ascertained the classification status of these records at any time simply by comparing the binder with the boxed papers. However, it has never chosen to do so.”

    Mr. Solomon asked that Mr. Patel, who held a TS/SCI clearance and was familiar with the documents in the binder, be allowed to verify the box of documents. But on July 12, Mr. Stern responded, telling Mr. Solomon the documents were now unavailable as they were subject to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

    Furthermore, Mr. Stern told Mr. Solomon without explanation that “the Trump Presidential records” were unavailable for the Mandatory Declassification Review procedures under the Presidential Records Act.

    As you can see from this lengthy and convoluted sequence of events, the DOJ—coordinating through the National Archives—was absolutely desperate to prevent the binder from going public.

    But they still had a problem—potentially a big one. The DOJ was virtually certain that President Trump had taken a copy of the presidentially declassified binder with him. And so it was that exactly one month after Mr. Solomon’s request that Mr. Patel review the documents, on Aug. 8, 2022, President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was raided by the FBI.

    On Aug. 14, 2022, following the FBI raid, Mr. Solomon told Mr. Stern that the declassified Crossfire Hurricane records were presidential records and asked what efforts had been made to retrieve them from the DOJ.

    Three days later, Mr. Stern replied, telling Mr. Solomon that the “bulk of the binder” was—for some unstated reason—intended to remain with the DOJ. As Mr. Solomon’s filing notes, “the Trump White House always considered the Crossfire Hurricane binder a Presidential record and never intended to give up control over it.”

    Mr. Solomon closed his statement of facts by noting that by “making everchanging excuses, [President Joe] Biden’s DOJ stonewalled Solomon, denying him access in violation of the Presidential Records Act.”

    Mr. Solomon said President Trump “ordered the creation of the Crossfire Hurricane binder to conduct his official duties and that the White House intended to retain control over the binder and its records at all relevant times.”

    Kash Patel, former Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence and former senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, in Washington on March 15, 2021. (York Du/The Epoch Times)

    President Trump’s official “Binder of Declassified Documents.” remains hidden within the DOJ to this day.

    But—and this is a big but—note President Trump’s stated legal position that he “always considered the Crossfire Hurricane binder a Presidential record and never intended to give up control over it.”

    In other words, the binder was composed of presidential records that President Trump is legally allowed to have under the Presidential Records Act.

    Presidential records that were not found during the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago.

    Presidential records that President Trump almost certainly still has copies of—and likely intends to use—as evidenced by an unexpected court filing.

    Two days before CNN ran its article, on Dec. 13, President Trump’s lawyers made a surprising announcement hidden in the footnote of a court document, one that apparently took prosecutor Jack Smith by surprise, notifying the court of their intention to “disclose classified information at trial in support of this defense.” What classified information do you suppose that President Trump would have at his disposal?

    It turns out that we get more than a hint of that from a lawsuit that Trump filed on March 24, 2022—roughly four months before the DOJ’s raid on Mar-a-Lago. Although the lawsuit was dismissed by a Bill Clinton-appointed judge, it targeted a lot of familiar names involved in the Russia collusion hoax.

    It also cited only public information, despite having a surprising level of detail. I didn’t think the suit was particularly well designed.

    But it did contain a surprising amount of information. Almost like President Trump had kept a file on matters. Almost.

    There’s one other item that we’ll note before we end.

    In its article, CNN wrote that “The day before leaving office, Trump issued an order declassifying most of the binder’s contents.”

    The rest of the article focused on the supposed risks to national security—and blaming President Trump for it all.

    Not once, at any point in the article, did these so-called journalists stop to ask why the binder hadn’t been released to the American public in compliance with Trump’s presidential order.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 17:30

  • San Diego-Bound Cargo Ship Hauling Lithium Batteries Reports Fire
    San Diego-Bound Cargo Ship Hauling Lithium Batteries Reports Fire

    A fire was reported on a 410-foot cargo ship carrying lithium-ion batteries from Vietnam. The US Coast Guard is assisting the vessel diverted to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on Friday. 

    Around 0440 local time Thursday, the 17th Coast Guard District Command Center in Juneau received a report from “Genius Star XI” about a fire onboard. The distress call was made about 225 miles (362 kilometers) southwest of Dutch Harbor. 

    The Coast Guard dispatched a Lockheed HC-130 from Air Station Kodiak and Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley to assist the vessel. It noted that a “safety zone” will be erected around the ship “carrying lithium-ion batteries.” 

    Bloomberg data shows Genius Star XI departed from Vietnam earlier this month with a port call to San Diego. As of Saturday, the vessel is now offshore of Dutch Harbor. 

    Wisdom Marine Group of Taipei, Taiwan, owns the cargo ship. A spokesperson from the company told AP News that there were no injuries to the 19 crew members.

    The company warned about the “potential risk of explosion” and said the cargo hold, a space in the ship for storing and transporting cargo, has been “kept sealed.” 

    In a news release, Capt. Chris Culpepper, commander of Coast Guard Sector Anchorage, wrote, “This will be an ongoing team effort as we work to safely extinguish the fire, provide any necessary medical care for the crew, and mitigate the dangers associated with a shipboard fire.” 

    There have been a series of lithium fires on commercial vessels this year. The latest was in July when a massive roll-on, roll-off ship experienced a fire caused by what early reports said was an electric vehicle.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 16:55

  • Whistleblower Docs Expose Key Tactics Of The Censorship Industrial Complex: Matt Taibbi
    Whistleblower Docs Expose Key Tactics Of The Censorship Industrial Complex: Matt Taibbi

    Authored by Ella Kietlinska and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Documents recently provided by a whistleblower reveal offensive tactics used by government and outside organizations to counter and preempt the spreading of undesirable information, said independent journalist Matt Taibbi.

    Mr. Taibbi and journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag recently exposed a new set of documents from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL), an “anti-disinformation” group that waged an aggressive information operation on the public.

    The new documents, dubbed the “CTI files,” analyzed tactics used against foreign terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, that can now be applied domestically to prevent unwanted information from being published, Mr. Taibbi said in an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

    Journalist Matt Taibbi testifies at the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on “The Twitter Files” in Washington on March 9, 2023, in a still from video. (House Judiciary Committee/Screenshot via NTD)

    The CTI files referred to these tactics with the military term “left of boom action” and justified their usage by the danger posed by somebody like former President Donald Trump, the journalist said.

    Mr. Taibbi previously investigated and disclosed some of the “Twitter Files” after tech billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 and allowed Mr. Taibbi and other designated journalists to query the company’s internal files.

    The Twitter Files show how Twitter, a major social media platform for political speech, had been intertwined with the censorship industrial complex to suppress or remove under government pressure content on various subjects, including irregularities in the 2020 elections, mail-in voting issues, and various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The government censorship apparatus partnering with academia, nongovernmental organizations, and private research institutions is often called the “censorship industrial complex.”

    Preemptive Tactics

    CTIL was supposed to be a volunteer organization with a goal to identify misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Taibbi said, but “in reality, you got under the hood—they were interested in basically any topic.”

    CTIL described on its website its main goals, which included protecting the medical sector and life-saving organizations worldwide from cyberattacks and cyber threats—mainly related to the COVID-19 pandemic—and making them resilient to disinformation.

    While the Twitter Files revealed that Twitter used defensive tactics to control the information posted on its platform, such as censorship and de-amplification, the CTI files show the organization resorted to offensive tactics like burner phones, creating sock puppet accounts, and infiltrating groups, Mr. Taibbi said.

    The CTI files also revealed “a sort of a handbook manual on how to create false identities online,” he added.

    Other tactics described in the CTI documents included putting financial pressure on disfavored groups through requests to cut off their banking services or even directly going to merchandising outlets to try to stop them from selling their wares, Mr. Taibbi explained.

    Such tactics are “the offensive information operation,” he pointed out.

    From ‘Counterterrorism to Counter-Populism’

    In a report on Substack, Mr. Taibbi wrote that the CTI files exposed that in 2019, “U.S. and UK military and intelligence contractors led by a former UK defense researcher, Sara-Jayne ‘SJ’ Terp, developed the sweeping censorship framework. These contractors co-led CTIL.”

    Officially established in March 2020, CTIL grew to more than 1,400 volunteers from almost 80 countries, according to the group’s inaugural report.

    Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary Chris Krebs speaks during the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Summit in New York City on July 31, 2018. (Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

    In April 2020, CTIL partnered with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to stop malicious cyber activity related to COVID-19, the then-director of CISA announced on Twitter.

    Mr. Taibbi said that the sudden emergence of “all of these anti-disinformation groups,” both in government and in civil society, did not occur by accident. He believes that their appearance coincides with the development of the internet and its huge democratizing force in the world that created “all sorts of political energy” that was uncontrollable and gave rise to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Party, and the Arab Spring.

    In 2015 and 2016, a series of events took place that the national security establishment considered very troubling, such as Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to a Labour Party leadership position in the United Kingdom, Mr. Taibbi said.

    Both Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Sanders were left-wing populist politicians who gained popularity among young voters.

    To the national security establishment, all these events were “illegitimate threats of the same type … that they had been dealing with overseas,” so it directed its efforts inward from counterterrorism to counter-populism, Mr. Taibbi explained.

    The structures built to counter online activity overseas were effective to counter groups like Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, but once that massive structure is turned inward against the country’s own domestic population, it operates with no legal oversight and “it creates all kinds of questions that are kind of horrifying,” Mr. Taibbi said.

    “And they’re not even in the same ballpark as the First Amendment.”

    Media Competition Versus Shared Endeavor

    The training materials included in the CTI files intended for people who are going to review domestic speech featured a quote from the joint chiefs of staff, “talking about how you have to use certain tactics to defeat your enemy,” Mr. Taibbi said. Thus, trainees learned to treat other Americans as the enemy, he added.

    This is the mindset of people inside the political establishment in the West, which can be viewed as “a sort of loose confederation of institutions” like media platforms, government, and civil society organizations, he pointed out.

    He cited Luke Harding, a journalist at The Guardian, who described such formation as “the shared endeavor” in his article reviewing a book about Bellingcat, a platform for online investigations.

    The author of the book believes that “rivalry between media titles is a thing of the past. The future is collaboration, the hunt for evidence a shared endeavor, the truth out there if we wish to discover it,” Mr. Harding wrote.

    However, Mr, Taibbi argued that America’s founders “envisioned the press to be an adversarial institution, by its nature.” The concept of the shared endeavor is completely opposite of the founders’ view, he explained.

    Americans view “the clash of institutions and the clash of ideas as a good thing,” the journalist said.

    “We all think differently, we live differently, we have different faiths, but ultimately, we arrived at a good place together. That system has worked incredibly well in America for hundreds of years.”

    Replacing this concept with the other idea, like a shared endeavor, is “authoritarian in nature and ultimately anti-democratic. And it begins with speech,” Mr. Taibbi pointed out.

    “There’s a reason that speech is the first guarantee in the Constitution. Because without it, none of the other rights really work.”

    Malinformation

    Another shift in the information policy is to evaluate information “according to where it rests on the narrative, as opposed to whether it’s true or false,” Mr. Taibbi said.

    It is a new concept that defines as disinformation anything that, for example, promotes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, he said.

    “A true story about somebody dying of myocarditis after getting a shot” could be categorized as a form of disinformation, even if that person might be pro-vaccine, because it might cause other people not to get the vaccine, he explained.

    “It’s what they would call malinformation,” he said.

    CISA defines malinformation as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

    Mr. Taibbi cited the Virality Project at Stanford University, which proposed addressing the issue of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy through suppressing or disseminating information in order to shape public opinion.

    In February 2022, the Virality Project released a report “with unique insights from real-time monitoring of anti-vaccine narratives across social media platforms.”

    The report proposed two approaches for social media platforms to boost preferred authoritative content: “first, raising up authoritative voices by elevating them in search results or on dedicated information carousels or tabs, and second, deplatforming those who repeatedly spread false and misleading information.”

    The logo of the social network Instagram is seen on a smartphone, in Toulouse, France, on Sept. 28, 2020. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images)

    For example, Pinterest “only surfaces content from leading public health institutions such as the CDC and WHO,” the report said.

    Twitter deplatformed President Trump after the 2020 election along with 70,000 other accounts as “harmful sources,” according to the report.

    Facebook removed Instagram accounts that belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree’s “HighWire” talk show after they expressed their critical views on COVID-19 vaccines, the report stated. They had 799,000 and 162,000 followers, respectively, according to the report.

    Mr. Kennedy is the founder of Children’s Health Defense and, at that time, served as the organization’s chairman of the board and chief legal counsel.

    Mr. Bigtree is a filmmaker, investigative medical journalist, and the host of “The HighWire” talk show.

    The job of a traditional journalist is to discern what is true and what is not, said Mr. Taibbi, adding that he was raised as a traditional journalist.

    “Once it’s true, we put it out there, and then it’s up to you what to do with it.”

    However, the new approach is to focus on “motive, intent, and likely impact, as opposed to the true/false dichotomy,” Mr. Taibbi said. The factuality issue has become secondary.

    “That’s very dangerous,” he said.

    Petr Svab contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 16:20

  • Operation Prosperity Guardian Escorts Two Maersk Vessels Through Red Sea, Report Says 
    Operation Prosperity Guardian Escorts Two Maersk Vessels Through Red Sea, Report Says 

    Major shipping carriers remain deeply divided on sending new vessels through the Suez Canal and the hazardous Red Sea despite the US’ effort to bring online ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian.’ There were reports last week that shipping giant Maersk was preparing to restart container ship transits in the critical waterway. 

    X user Sal Mercogliano, citing MarineTraffic data, said, “Operation Prosperity Guardian successfully escorted two US-flagged ships of @MaerskLineLtd through the Bab el-Mandeb.” 

    Mercogliano noted, “One of the ships was escorted by a French frigate, showing that the @CMF_Bahrain international cooperation has improved.” 

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    He added that Maersk is “preparing to run about a dozen 8k+ TEU containerships through the region, along with single ships of @cmacgm and @COSCOSHIPPING.” 

    Last week, Maersk stated: “We continue to prepare our vessels for passage through the Red Sea, and any deviation from this decision will be looked at on a case-by-case basis.” 

    Meanwhile, German shipper Hapag-Lloyd said its container ships are still avoiding the Red Sea region. 

    Many of the world’s largest shipping companies have rerouted ships around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid drone and missile attacks in the Red Sea from Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen. 

    UBS analysts have said more than 400 cargo ships have been rerouted on the 6,000-nautical-mile detour, which effectively reduces the capacity of Asia-to-Europe trade by a quarter. This drives up shipping costs at a time when global central banks have aggressively raised interest rates to curb inflation.

    The news of Maersk sending ships through the Red Sea is a positive development. Yet, the overhang that another vessel attack could be imminent is unsettling for shipping companies.  

    We wonder just how much that escort cost US taxpayers. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 15:45

  • Pakistan & UAE's Sharjah Ban All New Year's Celebrations Amid Gaza War
    Pakistan & UAE's Sharjah Ban All New Year's Celebrations Amid Gaza War

    Via Middle East Eye

    Across the Middle East, Gaza’s deadliest-ever war is casting a shadow over the countdown to the New Year. It follows muted Christmas celebrations among Christian communities across the occupied Palestinian territories, southern Lebanon and Syria.

    Authorities in Sharjah, the third largest emirate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have cancelled its customary New Year’s Eve celebrations – including all firework displays – in solidarity with Gaza. Sharjah Police announced last Wednesday that legal measures will be taken against people taking part in celebrations. 

    Fireworks in Dubai during the 2020 New Year’s celebrations. AFP

    But no such ban has been announced anywhere else in the region. Nor are other emirates, renowned for their extravagant annual New Year’s Eve celebrations, announcing bans. In Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, the Sheikh Zayed Festival is set to feature a record-breaking firework display lasting for a full hour.

    Meanwhile in Dubai, several major displays have been planned, including at the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Dubai’s Global Village confirmed on Wednesday that it will have no fewer than seven fireworks shows.

    In Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, customary street parties and live concerts have been planned for the occasion, while multiple firework displays are scheduled for Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

    Likewise, Lusail City in Qatar will host laser shows and fireworks. Qatar recently marked its National Day on 18 December with significantly reduced celebrations in solidarity with Gaza. 

    Outside of the Middle East, Pakistan has issued a “strict ban” on “any kind of event for New Year”, with caretaker prime minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar urging people to “show solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters”.

    He added: “The whole Pakistani nation and the Muslim world are in a sheer state of anguish over the massacre of innocent children and genocide of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

    Globally, an online campaign called Countdown 2 Ceasefire is mounting in popularity. The campaign urges people across the world to join New Year’s Eve events on 31 December displaying banners calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and to shout “Ceasefire Now” during the countdown to the New Year. Countdown 2 Ceasefire has close to 30,000 followers on Instagram.

    The campaign is gaining traction amid intensified Israeli bombing in central Gaza, as well as escalating raids in the occupied West Bank and Israeli forces firing tear gas at Palestinian worshippers attempting to reach Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 15:10

  • 'Experts' Say New COVID Strain Will Cause Global "Heart Failure Pandemic"
    'Experts' Say New COVID Strain Will Cause Global "Heart Failure Pandemic"

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson vis Modernity.news.

    Scientists are warning that a new COVID strain will cause a global “heart failure pandemic,” prompting much skepticism.

    A new strain known as JN.1 will cause many people to suffer from “reduced cardiac function,” according to the report.

    “Japan’s top research institute Riken has now issued a warning in the new report, which states that the ACE2 receptors, which the coronavirus clings to within human cells, are ‘very common’ in the heart,” reports GB News.

    “Even though conclusive clinical evidence that persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with declined cardiac function has not been reported so far, the proof-of-concept study of the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 persistent infection of the heart and the potential risk of opportunistic progression of heart failure should be validated by a three-dimensional human cardiac tissue model which would serve as the alarm bell for a global healthcare risk,” states the report.

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    Health officials suggested people should be wary of gathering for New Year’s Eve celebrations, warning, yet again, that hospitals would be at risk of being stretched to breaking point.

    Despite everything we’ve learned about the association between COVID vaccines and serious heart problems, it appears they’re now trying to re-brand the heart problems as being caused by COVID itself.

    Oh well, guess we better take another round of the “100 per cent safe and effective” then!

    Once the new booster is rolled out, expect another spate of healthy, professional sports stars suddenly collapsing in the middle of the field as a result of…checks notes… the JN.1 COVID strain.

    Respondents on X shockingly weren’t buying it.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 14:00

  • Lindsey Graham Urges Biden To Blow Iran "Off The Map" Over Red Sea Attacks
    Lindsey Graham Urges Biden To Blow Iran "Off The Map" Over Red Sea Attacks

    The recent spate of attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea by Iran-backed Houthis has resulted in more and more Congressional calls for the US military to act. Even after dozens of incidents, which have effectively closed the vital waterway to regular ship transit, the US Navy has not been authorized by the Biden administration to hit back directly on Houthi launch positions.

    Some Republican hawks are clamoring for confrontation with Tehran, also at a moment that Iran’s most powerful poxy in the region – Lebanese Hezbollah – is engaging in daily fire at Israel’s northern border. Sen. Lindsey Graham is leading the charge, urging for the Pentagon bomb Iran directly in response to the Houthi Red Sea attacks. In an appearance on Fox & Friends days ago, he went so far as to say Iranian bases and oil fields should be blown “off the map”. Watch: 

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    “Without Iran there are no Houthis,” he claimed in the Wednesday segment. “The Houthis are completely backed by Iran. I have been saying for six months now…hit Iran. They have oil fields out in the open, they have the Revolutionary Guard headquarters you can see from space. Blow it off the map.”

    Predictably, Graham also lashed out at the Biden administration for holding back, even as some Pentagon leaders have quietly complained they are being handcuffed in terms of an inability to respond:

    “We’re fighting the Houthis. We beat the Germans and the Japanese. We should be able to beat the Houthis. Secretary Austin and the Biden administration’s failing our troops in the field,” the Senator from South Carolina added.

    Graham has previously in the wake of the Oct.7 Hamas terror attacks advocated for Israel hitting back against Palestinian militants as hard as possible, controversially saying saying there’s “no limit” to how many civilians can be killed while trying to root out Hamas.

    Here’s what he told CNN at the end of October:

    CNN host: “Is there a threshold for you, and do you think there should be one for the United States government, in which the US would say, ‘Let’s hold off for a second in terms of civilian casualties?’”

    Graham said: “No. If somebody asked us after world war two, ‘Is there a limit what would you do to make sure that Japan and Germany don’t conquer the world? Is there any limit what Israel should do to the people who are trying to slaughter the Jews?’”

    “The answer is no. There is no limit,” Graham emphasized at the time. He described also that he would like to see Israeli military planners “be smart” and “try to limit civilian casualties the best we can. Let’s put humanitarian aid in areas that protect the innocent. I’m all for that.” Since then, many more thousands of Gazan civilians have died, many of them children. 

    Commenting on the fresh Fox interview in which the senator essentially called for war with Iran, the outlet Citizen Free Press echoed what many are thinking, simply stating “Lindsey Graham is a maniac.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 13:25

  • AI Did It: Disbarred Michael Cohen Admits To Sending Fake Case Citations To Get Early Release From Supervision
    AI Did It: Disbarred Michael Cohen Admits To Sending Fake Case Citations To Get Early Release From Supervision

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Michael Cohen, former President Trump’s onetime fixer and lawyer, has admitted to a federal court that he was the source of fake case citations used to support his effort to end his supervised release from his earlier criminal convictions.

    He blamed Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the error, he also seemed to throw his own attorney under the bus for not checking his work.

    U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman was a bit peeved when his clerks checked the authority cited by Cohen, including such cases as “United States v. Figueroa-Flores, United States v. Ortiz and United States v. Amato.” None existed.

    In fairness, Cohen is not the first person to be burned by AI. Of course, critics have noted that the faux authority is perfectly consistent with Cohen’s legal career, which is a litany of misrepresentations and outright lies.

    Cohen now says that the culprit is Google Bard, an AI service, and that he was only the latest victim of AI invention.

    However, one of the most interesting aspects of the statement is that Cohen asks for understanding that he is only a layperson, not a lawyer.

    He was, of course, disbarred as a lawyer after pleading guilty various federal crimes.

    Cohen told the court:

    “As a non-lawyer, I have not kept up with emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like Chat-GPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not. Instead, I understood it to be a super-charged search engine and had repeatedly used it in other contexts to (successfully) find accurate information online.”

    He then put part of the blame on his non-AI lawyer, David Schwartz, and emphasized that it was in the end Schwartz’ filing, not his:

    “It did not occur to me then and remains surprising to me now—that Mr. Schwartz would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed. I deeply regret any problems Mr. Schwartz’s filing may have caused.”

    Cohen’s current counsel E. Danya Perry, asked that his client  “not suffer any collateral damage from Mr. Schwartz’s misstep.”

    The problems with AI are well-known, but so is Cohen’s checkered history with the courts.

    As I have previously written, Cohen has a long history of alleged lies and half-truths in dealing with the government or courts.

    In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to various charges, including tax evasion, campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and several banks to obtain campaign financing and was sentenced to three years in prison.

    He unsuccessfully sued Trump on the basis of a verbal contract that again put his own dubious veracity at issue.

    As noted in earlier proceedings in Manhattan, Cohen has continued to misrepresent his criminal background and, after assuring the court that he was remorseful for his crimes, was regularly going on the air to deny that he committed tax fraud and suggesting that he was railroaded by prosecutors.

    Prosecutors cited his numerous media appearances as containing false accounts of himself and his case: “while Cohen is free to write and say what he wants, he cannot simultaneously distance himself from his conduct on cable news, while cloaking himself in claims of acceptance of responsibility in court filings.”

    I became a critic of Cohen long before he broke with the President. He was a disgrace to the bar for years and Trump bears equal blame for retaining such a person as his legal representative.

    What Cohen lacked in legal skill, he made up for in a lack of ethical and professional standards.

    In 2015, students on The Harvard Lampoon played a harmless prank on Trump by having him sit in the stolen “president’s chair” from the Harvard Crimson for a photo. Cohen threatened the students with absolute ruination. He was quoted by a student on the Lampoon staff as saying: “I’m gonna come up to Harvard. You’re all gonna get expelled. If this photo gets out, you’ll be outta that school faster than you know it. I can be up there tomorrow.”

    On another occasion, after a journalist pursued a story he did not like, Cohen told the reporter that he should “tread very f—ing lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. Do you understand me?”

    Cohen remained Trump’s loyal attack dog until he was arrested and Trump refused to pardon him. That is when Cohen proved that when you scratch a lawyer, you can find a foe.

    Cohen has been gaming the system his entire career. He claimed urgent medical needs for release from prison. Of course, he previously claimed health problems in failing to appear to testify only to be spotted out on the town for a fancy dinner. Cohen previously (and implausibly) reinvented himself as a redemptive sinner and received financial support from Trump critics.  He continued that pattern after his conviction.

    Perry told Fox News Digital in a statement: “These filings—and the fact that he was willing to unseal them—show that Mr. Cohen did absolutely nothing wrong. He relied on his lawyer, as he had every right to do. Unfortunately, his lawyer appears to have made an honest mistake in not verifying the citations in the brief he drafted and filed.”

    A federal court previously denied early release after prosecutors claimed that Cohen has reformed little and is still misrepresenting facts. Submitting fake case authority is obviously not ideal in claiming the status of a changed man.

    The latest controversy is likely to be raised in the prosecution of Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg where Cohen is expected to be a key witness. The lack of authority, however, does not appear to be a detriment in that case which is pushing unprecedented legal claims. Time to call in the Google Bard?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 12:50

  • Bankman-Fried Dodges Bribery Trial After Feds Drop Charges
    Bankman-Fried Dodges Bribery Trial After Feds Drop Charges

    Well look at that! Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried, who was found guilty in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, won’t face a second trial at all after feds told US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in a Friday letter that in the ‘interest of expediency’ it would drop six charges related to SBF’s second trial – including conspiracy to bribe foreign officials, commit bank fraud and operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.

    The reason? The Bahamas ‘has yet to consent’ to the fallen crypto king moving forward with the second batch of charges.

    “Proceeding with sentencing in March 2024 without the delay that would be caused by a second trial would advance the public’s interest in a timely and just resolution of the case,” reads the letter.

    Prosecutors said in the letter that the Bahamas, which extradited Bankman-Fried to face the original US charges, has yet to consent to the US going ahead with trying him on the additional charges. Such consent is required under treaty obligations but the former FTX chief executive officer launched a legal challenge in the Bahamas earlier this year, prompting the US to split the case in two.

    The government said much of the evidence that would be presented at a second trial was already introduced at Bankman-Fried’s original trial and can be considered by the judge at sentencing set for March 28. –Bloomberg

    SBF directed the transfer of FTX money to his affiliated hedge fund, Alameda Research, as well as for political donations, before both companies imploded into bankruptcy last year.

    This of course comes on the heels of the feds dropping campaign finance charges against him in July.

    Let’s recall…

    In short, prosecutors have ring-fenced SBF’s illegal activities involving public officials from his activities screwing over the public, for which he faces the possibility of decades in prison.  

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    “We don’t know how much more evidence you need to see how broken and corrupt all the three letter gov agencies are,” wrote @AutismCapital on X. “They drop the Sam trial, they’re bleeding out FTX claimants, people with BTC/SOL/ETH/whatever are being paid back the value AT THE TIME OF BANKRUPTCY rather than 4x’d current market value while they pocket the difference.

    “FTX bankruptcy lawyers are charging USURIOUS per hour rates to bleed the creditors dry!

    “They don’t want people digging into Sam’s campaign finance violation trial (WONDER WHY?) and SAM TRABUCCO got away with it COMPLETELY with the dropping of this upcoming trial.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/30/2023 – 12:15

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 30

Today’s News 30th December 2023

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

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The new architecture will be framed in West Asia 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The paper tiger is in a jam 

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

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

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

    So what is more vulnerable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Via The Cradle,

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

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

    Aerial view of Baghdad, via Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Here’s an explanation from YouTube:

     

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

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

    Via The Libertarian Institute, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    Nothing to see here! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Authored by Fred Fleitz via American Greatness,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And a video of the accident scene. 

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

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

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

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

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

    Authored by Kurt Cobb via OilPrice.com,

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What exactly are the Chinese hoping to achieve?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source

    Source

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

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

    Or, as we put it….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    … the joke’s on Pocahontas.

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

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

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    In other instances, illegal immigrants are transported by bus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And more will be arriving soon.

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

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

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

    Are you kidding me?

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

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

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

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

    *  *  *

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

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

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

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

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

    Pro-Palestinian protests in Tehran, via JPost/Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Currently, the CDC still recommends masking.

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

    4. Repeated Vaccination Weakens the Immune System, Studies Suggest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Read more here…

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

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

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

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

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

    Via AP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

    Authored by James Piereson via RealClearPolitics.com,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Goldman Sachs

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

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

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

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

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

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

    For now, investors are living on a prayer…

    Happy New Year!

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

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

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    Do You Dare Even Look? – Forecast 2024

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

    – David Collum

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Great Race

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

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

    Mystery Mutts on the Loose

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

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

    The Energy Picture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Economy and Money

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

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

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

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

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

    Civil Strife and the Election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Covid 19 Hangover

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

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

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

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

    The Demon in a Server

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    How did that Ukraine War Go?

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

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

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

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

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

    The Rest of the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Final Cautionary Note

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

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

    *  *  *

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

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

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

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    But, but, but, The Fed is apolitical?

    We think not!

    Is that how it played out?

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    Who says gold’s not an inflation hedge?

    But, 2023 was dominated by a few themes:

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Equities

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bonds

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    FX

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    Cryptos

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    Commodities

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    And Finally…

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

    Source: Bloomberg

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

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    This trend is not America’s friend…

    Source: Bloomberg

    China and Russia are dumping Bonds and buying Bullion.

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

    Source: Bloomberg

    Cloward, Piven, and Chomsky would be proud.

    And on that note – happy new year!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 29

Today’s News 29th December 2023

  • How We Averted The Polycrisis
    How We Averted The Polycrisis

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

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

    Also, maybe it’s too late for some.

    Even if the deindustralization of Germany has barely started.

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    *  *  *

    Support the Automatic Earth with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

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

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

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

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

    Via Reuters

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

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

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

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

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    The operations included no less than ten cities: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    * * *

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

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

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

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

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

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Read the rest here…

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

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

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

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

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

    AFP/Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

    * * *

    Beijing’s spycatchers and CIA’s monumental blunder

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

    Other geopolitical flashpoints have complicated the CIA’s China focus

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

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

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

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

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

    Leveraging corruption for human intel

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

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

    Horrendous!

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

    China has ramped up its own spying in America

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

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

    * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

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

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

    Image via IDF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You will find more infographics at Statista

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    TikTok’s Legal Challenges Mount

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

    The Epoch Times has contacted TikTok for further comment.

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

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

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

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

    TikTok Use Surges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Other Poll Results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    As she explains, ‘she is the law!’

    Challengers can then appeal in state court.

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

    She argued his actions violated the 14th Amendment.

     

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

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

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

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

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

    That was a true rebellion.

    January 6, 2021, was a riot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There is much more in the 38-minute interview.

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

    *  *  *

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Prosecutor Melissa Powers

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

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

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

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

    Authored by James Varney via RealClear Wire,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘Historically Atypical Countries’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Here’s what others are saying:

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

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

    Galanti continued:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

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

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

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

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

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

    Communist Robots

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

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

    The regime’s robotic guidance document goes further.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Capturing Global Markets

    The CCP’s robotic renaissance is already well underway.

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

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

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

    “Robot density is a key indicator of automation adoption in the manufacturing industry around the world,” International Federation of Robotics President Marina Bill said.

    “China’s rapid growth shows the power of its investment so far, but it still has much opportunity to automate.”

    To that end, Beijing appears intent on capturing the robotic market abroad, using foreign technology and state-run research institutions to centralize power over the manufacturing process before shipping its robots worldwide.

    A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank found that the CCP seeks to earn a long-term advantage by establishing and controlling the supply chains required to create advanced robotics.

    KUKA robotic arms operate semi-finished products on an air conditioner assembly line at a factory in Guangzhou, China, on July 16, 2022. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Beijing aims both to achieve a high degree of self-sufficiency and to capture a significant share of the global market for a wide array of advanced products and components,” the report states.

    This could result in the regime obtaining significant economic and military advantage in the future due to the cascading effects of being the first to mass-produce humanoid robots. By controlling the initial technology, the regime can dictate how the technology evolves.

    “If it can gain an edge in what has been described as a fourth industrial revolution in manufacturing, while reducing its dependence on high-tech imports, China may be able to boost its own prospects for long-term growth while diminishing those of its competitors,” the report reads.

    “Because future products and military systems will build on them, breakthroughs in technologies such as artificial intelligence could also yield enduring advantages.”

    Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, said that “the really scary thing” about the regime’s guidance document is that it could lead to the CCP gaining more influence in establishing international standards and rules over AI and robotics.

    “You can guess what that means: China’s robotics industry becomes the global standard, pushing aside any competition, including setting the moral standard,” Mr. Herman told The Epoch Times.

    “[It’s] not a good sign if we want to have sensible and responsible standards for future development of this potentially disruptive technology [that] everyone can live with.”

    Mr. Herman expressed optimism that the United States is seeing a proliferation of its own robotic companies. Still, he’s worried about the nation’s lack of a coherent strategy for AI development.

    “The difference is that, clearly, China sees this robot push as part of its $110 billion campaign announced in 2017 to become the world’s leading AI nation by 2030,” Mr. Herman said.

    “We don’t have a national AI strategy, let alone a strategy relating to the intersection of robotics and AI.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:40

  • Venezuela Launches 5,000+ Troop Exercise In Response To UK Warship's Approach
    Venezuela Launches 5,000+ Troop Exercise In Response To UK Warship’s Approach

    Just on the heels of the recent panic over the risk of a Venezuela invasion of its neighbor Guyana, fears which finally subsided over a week ago upon a mutual pact pledging that both would avoid direct conflict, the UK sent a warship to patrol off Venezuela’s coast. 

    Britain previously said it would dispatch the HMS Trent near Guyana by December’s end as a significant show of support for the government in Guyana’s capital Georgetown, on concerns Nicolás Maduro would make moves to claim the vast, mineral-rich Essequibo region, which borders his country but has been part of Guyana – a member of the British Commonwealth and the only English-speaking nation in South America – for more than a century.

    A December 14 report in The Guardian suggested tensions were cooling fast: “The leaders of Guyana and Venezuela promised in a tense meeting that neither side would use threats or force against the other, but failed to reach agreement on how to address a bitter dispute over a vast border region rich with oil and minerals that has concerned many in the region,” the publication said at the time. But on Thursday’s there’s been a new shocking development reversing this hoped-for state of ‘cooler heads prevailing’ and which raises the potential for the UK and Venezuela to directly clash in Caribbean waters.

    HMS Trent, UK Navy

    AFP reports breaking statements from Maduro’s office as follows:

    Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday ordered more than 5,600 military personnel to participate in a “defensive” exercise, after Britain said it was sending a Royal Navy warship to waters off neighboring Guyana.

    Maduro said he was launching “a joint action of a defensive nature in response to the provocation and threat of the United Kingdom against peace and the sovereignty of our country.”

    Prior to the current standoff the HMS Trent had reportedly monitored the Caribbean in search of drug smugglers as a military offshore patrol vessel. It is armed with heavy guns and typically carries a unit of Royal Marines and a combat helicopter.

    The vessel has been confirmed now in regional waters:

    HMS Trent was reported to have made a stop in Bridgetown, Barbados, after leaving its homeport at Gibraltar earlier this month. The vessel is scheduled to head towards Guyana this week and anchor off Georgetown to participate in a series of training exercises with the country’s navy and other allies, the BBC reported.

    Venezuelan presidency press office handout showing Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.

    The border dispute has been a source of tension and disagreements going all the way back to the 19th century, but Maduro recently sponsored a referendum on whether his government should use force to finally resolve it. He then provocatively announced that 95% of Venezuelan citizens voted in favor of a forced annexation. This drew quick condemnation from Caracas’ longtime enemies the US and Britain.

    On Wednesday Venezuelan forces were placed on a ‘high state of alert’ following the reports of the British warship moving toward the coast.

    Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López issued a blistering warning on X in response to HMS Trent’s presence. “A warship in waters yet to be demarcated?” he said.

    Source: Financial Times

    “How does that fit with the commitment to good neighborliness and peaceful coexistence? And the agreement not to threaten or use force against each other under any circumstances? We remain alert to these provocations that put the peace and stability of the Caribbean and our America at risk!” he warned, saying that the prior agreement with Guyana’s leader Irfaan Ali about use of force has been called into question.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:20

  • The Chicago Mayor's Hat Trick Of Dreadful Policies
    The Chicago Mayor’s Hat Trick Of Dreadful Policies

    Authored by Charles Lipson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    When your city elects a mayor whose main job qualification is “organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union,” you get what you paid for, or rather what the powerful CTU paid for. With Mayor Brandon Johnson, you get a special bonus, an unwelcome one. His proposed policies are unworkable, unaffordable, and deeply unpopular in the city that elected him less than a year ago.

    Three policies stand out for particular ridicule. Mayor Johnson wants to:

    1. Start city-owned and -operated groceries in some underserved areas. The government that wants to take on these difficult new tasks is already failing at such basic services as fixing potholes and policing dangerous neighborhoods.

    2. Ticket the buses bringing illegal immigrants to Chicago, mostly from Texas. He calls them “rogue buses” because they are not “coordinating” with the city. Giving them a ticket or even impounding the vehicles is his solution. The bus companies’ own solution is to drop off the passengers in the suburbs, which immediately send them to Chicago. Johnson then rages at the Texas governor and never mentions President Biden.

    3. Close down all the selective-enrollment (magnet) schools in Chicago, the only ones where students actually read above grade level. If we judge by the likely outcome, Johnson’s policy is really designed to drive middle-class families with kids out of the city. The teachers union backs the plan, enthusiastically. They must know how good the other schools are since the president of the CTU sends her own child to a private school. Meanwhile, she is working with Gov. JB Pritzker to kill school choice for everyone else.

    The local joke about Mayor Johnson is that his only success has been to lower the price of downtown Chicago real estate.

    How do voters like Johnson’s ideas and his administration? Not much, it turns out. His poll numbers are roughly the same as those for used car salesmen with loud suits and back lots filled with rusting clunkers. The mayor’s erstwhile supporters have abandoned him. Except for the Chicago Teachers Union.

    The CTU is easily the most powerful union in Illinois and, most likely, the strongest local teachers union in the country. It was their members who went door-to-door for Johnson’s election. It was their members who tacked up Johnson’s campaign posters and donated the dollars for his TV ads. Now, it is their members who comprise Johnson’s dwindling band of supporters. If it weren’t for them, the mayor could hold a “Reelect Brandon Johnson” rally on a unicycle.

    Most of Johnson’s policies are standard-issue leftist remedies for big cities. To paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan, “He is the very model of a modern progressive mayor.” That model is not working. Not in Chicago and not elsewhere. Progressive mayors and prosecutors across the country have made their cities dangerous and ungovernable. Unfortunately, failure has not changed their minds or their policies. Brandon Johnson is no exception.

    Consider the mayor’s proposal for the city to own and operate grocery stores in impoverished areas. Let’s call them “CastroMarts.”

    Johnson is right to say some neighborhoods have become “food deserts.” He should ask himself why that is so. Part of the answer is poverty, but those areas were poor before the grocery stores abandoned them. What changed is that those areas are now plagued with organized retail theft, which is almost never prosecuted.

    Without delving into the root causes of rampant crime (Kamala Harris is searching for them in Central America), it’s up to local police to stop the predation, and it’s up to local prosecutors to go after the robbers and looters. That’s not happening in Chicago – or in San Francisco, Washington, Seattle, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland, or Portland. Those city governments have abandoned their fundamental responsibilities to “serve and protect.”

    Is the theory here that somehow thieves wouldn’t steal from city-owned grocery stores? What’s the evidence for that – or that city workers could do a better job than trained professionals? Those businesses operate on very thin margins and require efficient, experienced management. If you don’t sell meat and produce quickly, they rot.

    The words “quick” and “efficient” have never been used in the same sentence as “Chicago city worker.” Better adjectives would be “slow,” “unionized,” and “well-paid.” When you apply the correct adjectives to grocery store ownership, you get sclerotic management, high prices, and an endless string of taxpayer subsidies. You will get CastroMart, not Walmart.

    Brandon Johnson’s notions about education are just as compelling. His latest brainstorm is to close the best schools in the city. His stated reason is “equity,” which apparently means “leveling down.” There is no allegation that admission to these selective schools is biased. It is purely merit-based. Yet Chicago’s school board, working closely with the CTU and the mayor, recently approved a plan to “transition away” from these schools. That’s a polite way of saying, “We are going to kill them if we can.”

    The teachers union defends this euthanasia because of what they call the schools’ “deep inequity.” The facts belie the catchphrase. Over half the students in the 11 selective high schools come from low-income families. Around 70% are black or Hispanic. Where’s the “deep inequity”?

    Parents are up in arms. They see powerful, entrenched interests trying to deny their children a good education and cynically justifying it in the name of progressive ideals. They’re right.

    Johnson’s proposals for migrants are just as popular. Chicago has long proclaimed itself a “sanctuary city,” a label it adopted when sending that virtue signal was costless. It’s not costless anymore. Chicago leaders’ response is to offload all that expensive virtue onto other cities. They are retaining the “sanctuary” slogan, oblivious to the irony.

    The number of migrants coming to Chicago is still a trickle compared to those surging into Texas and Arizona across an open border. Even so, Chicago can’t handle the modest numbers. It doesn’t have any place to put them or any money to pay for the vital services they require. You see them now camped out on cold city streets and begging for spare change. It’s heartbreaking. Chicago’s real answer to reducing their number is “winter.”

    Johnson’s original plan was to set up migrant camps across the city. Voters went berserk. Johnson got the message and backed down. His latest plan is to put the migrants in hotels and at O’Hare Airport, issue tickets to the buses that bring them, and blame it all on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

    While Johnson has no answers for this deepening mess, he didn’t create it. President Biden did that. Biden is the Einstein who decided to dismantle all of Trump’s programs, such as “Remain in Mexico,” that helped stem the flow of illegals. What was Biden’s rationale? Because the programs were Trump’s. That’s it. To replace them, Biden put in … well, nothing. Surprisingly, that has not worked well.

    Even the staunchest Democrats recognize the political problems that unchecked immigration is creating. Some are from pushback in the general population, which can see the failure. Some come specifically from the black community, which is furious about this wave of migrants who compete with Americans for jobs, housing, and social services. Hispanics living here legally are none too happy either.

    Since Democrats depend on both minorities, especially African Americans, to win elections, the internal fissures over immigration pose real problems. They divide ideological progressives from fellow leftists who are more attentive to their minority constituents. The difficulties will only get worse as the numbers keep rising and the Biden administration keeps resisting efforts to close the border. Those tensions are already visible in Chicago’s minority neighborhoods.

    But immigration is only one of Brandon Johnson’s headaches. On issue after issue, he has no sensible plans to move forward and few ideas about how to cope with the city’s spiraling problems. His administration is a shambles, and voters know it. They need help. In fact, they are demanding it. They want safety, education, and other basic services. They have learned to their regret that they won’t get any of them from the incompetent, unpopular ideologue in City Hall.

    Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:00

  • Bank Bailout Fund Usage Soars To Another Record High As 2023 Sees Greatest Annual Money-Market Inflows Ever
    Bank Bailout Fund Usage Soars To Another Record High As 2023 Sees Greatest Annual Money-Market Inflows Ever

    After two weeks of outflows, money-market funds returned to inflows in the week ending 12/27, adding $16.4BN to $5.89TN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which means 2023 saw the largest annual money-market inflow ever – a whopping $1.151TN. That is the seventh year in a row of annual MM inflows…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But, with recession odds declining rapidly, are we about to see MM outflows accelerate?

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    Retail money-market funds capped the year with yet another inflow (+$13.3BN) meaning there was only one weekly outflow from retail funds in 2023. Institutional funds saw a $3.4BN inflow also…

    Source: Bloomberg

    In a breakdown for the week to Dec. 27, government funds – which invest primarily in securities like Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and agency debt – saw assets rise to $4.81 trillion, an $18.9 billion gain. 

    Prime funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, meanwhile, saw assets fall to $951.4 billion, a $3.8 billion decrease.

    “The big question is how overweight are investors in money markets,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco, said in a Bloomberg Television interview earlier this week.

    “Some exposure makes sense. That’s part of being diversified. But there is significant overweight on the part of some investors and I do think that starts to come out.”

    Interestingly, bank deposits are rising rapidly in the last few weeks as are money-market funds…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, with year-end liquidity needs growing, the exodus from The Fed’s reverse-repo facility has stalled (for now)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The Fed’s balance sheet shrank by $11.3BN last week to its lowest level since March 2021…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Usage of The Fed’s bank bailout facility rose by another $4.5BN last week to a new record high of $136BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But Regional bank shares don’t care…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The BTFP-Fed Arb continues to offer ‘free-money’ (and usage of the BTFP has risen by $26.7BN since the arb existed):

    The rate on the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program – which allows banks and credit unions to borrow funds for up to one year, pledging US Treasuries and agency debt as collateral valued at par – is the one-year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points.

    That figure is currently 4.83%, down from 5.59% in September.

    For institutions that have an account at the Fed, they can borrow from the BTFP at 4.83% and park that at the central bank to earn 5.40% – the interest on reserve balances.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 57bp spread is the widest level since the Fed introduced the facility to support a struggling banking system after the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York.

    Finally, equity market caps continue to soar after recoupling with bank reserves at The Fed (though the stalling in the drawdown of the RRP has slowed the expansion again this week in a bigger way)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    WTF are banks going to do when The Fed shuts down this ‘temporary’ bailout program in March?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 16:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 28

Today’s News 28th December 2023

  • Escobar: Russia-China Are On A Roll
    Escobar: Russia-China Are On A Roll

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    While the dogs of war bark, lie and steal, the Russia-China caravan strolls on…

    2023 may be defined for posterity as The Year of the Russia-China Strategic Partnership. This wonder of wonders could easily sway under a groove by – who else – Stevie Wonder: “Here I am baby/ signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours.”

    In the first 11 months of 2023, trade between Russia and China exceeded $200 billion; they did not expect to achieve that until 2024.

    Now surely that’s One Partnership Under a Groove. Once again signed, sealed and delivered during the visit of a large delegation to Beijing last week, led by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and revisited and upgraded the whole spectrum of the comprehensive partnership/strategic cooperation, complete with an array of new, major joint projects.

    Simultaneously, on the Great Game 2.0 front, everything that need to be reaffirmed was touched by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s detailed interview to Dimitri Simes on his Great Game show.

    Add to it the carefully structured breakdown written by head of the SVR Sergey Naryshkin, defining 2024 as “the year of geopolitical awakening”, and coming up with arguably the key formulation following the upcoming, cosmic NATO humiliation in the steppes of Donbass: “In 2024, the Arab world will remain the main space in the struggle for the establishment of a new order.”

    Confronted with such detailed geopolitical fine-tuning, it’s no wonder the imperial reaction was apoplexy – revealed epidermically in long, tortuous “analyses” trying to explain why President Putin turned out to be the “geopolitical victor” of 2023, seducing vast swathes of the Arab world and the Global South, solidifying BRICS side by side with China, and propelling the EU further into a black void of its own – and the Hegemon’s – making.

    Putin even allowed himself, half in jest, to offer Russian support for the potential “re-annexation” of country 404 border regions once annexed by Stalin, eventually to be returned to former owners Poland, Hungary & Romania. He added that he is 100% certain this is what residents of those still Ukrainian borders want.

    Were that to happen, we would have Transcarpathia back to Hungary; Galicia and Volyn back to Poland; and Bukovina back to Romania. Can you feel the house already rocking to the break of dawn in Budapest, Warsaw and Bucharest?

    Then there’s the possibility of the Hegemon ordering NATO’s junior punks to harass Russian oil tankers in the Baltic Sea and “isolate” St. Petersburg. It goes without saying that the Russian response would be to just take out Command & Control centers (hacking might be enough); burn electronics across the spectrum; and blockade the Baltic at the entrance by running a “Freedom of Navigation” exercise so everyone becomes familiar with the new groove.

    That China-Russian Far East symbiosis

    One of the most impressive features of the expanded Russia-China partnership is what is being planned for the Chinese northeastern province of Heilongjiang.

    The idea is to turn it into an economic, scientific development and national defense mega-hub, centered on the provincial capital Harbin, complete with a new, sprawling Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

    The key vector is that this mega-hub would also coordinate the development of the immense Russian Far East. This was discussed in detail at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last September.

    In a unique, startling arrangement, the Chinese may be allowed to manage selected latitudes of the Russian Far East for the next 100 years.

    As Hong Kong-based analyst Thomas Polin detailed, Beijing is budgeting no less than 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) for the whole thing. Half of it would be absorbed by Harbin. The blueprint will reach the National People’s Congress next March, and is expected to be approved. It has already been approved by the lower house of the Duma in Moscow.

    The ramifications are mind-boggling. We would have Harbin elevated to the status of direct-administered city, just like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing. And most of all a Sino-Russian Management Committee will be established in Harbin to oversee the whole project.

    Top flight Chinese universities – including Peking University – would transfer their main campuses to Harbin. The universities of National Defense and National Defense Technology would merge with Harbin Engineering University to form a new entity focused on defense industries. High-tech research institutes and companies in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen would also move to Harbin.

    The People’s Bank of China would establish its HQ for northern China in Harbin, complete with markets trading stocks and commodities futures.

    Residents of Heilongjiang would be allowed to travel back and forth to designated Russian Far East regions without a visa. The new Heilongjiang SEZ would have its own customs area and no import taxes.

    That’s the same spirit driving BRI connectivity corridors and the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC). The underlying rationale is wider Eurasia integration.

    At the recent Astana Club meeting in Kazakhstan, researcher Damjan Krnjevic-Miskovic, Director of Policy Research at the ADA University in Baku, gave an excellent presentation on connectivity corridors.

    He referred for instance to the C5+1 (five Central Asian “stans” plus China) meeting three months ago in Dushanbe joined by Azerbaijan’s president Aliyev: that translates as Central Asia-Caucasus integration.

    Miskovic is paying due attention to everything that is evolving in what he defines, correctly, as “the Silk Road region” – interlinking the Euro-Atlantic with Asia-Pacific and interconnecting West Asia, South Asia and wider Eurasia.

    Strategically, of course, that’s the “geopolitical hinge where NATO meets the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and where the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) connects with Turkiye and the territory of the EU.” In practical terms, Russia-China know exactly what needs to be done to propel economic connectivity and “synergistic relationships” all across this vast spectrum.

    The War of Economic Corridors heats up

    The fragmentation of the global economy is already polarizing the expanding BRICS 10 (starting on January 1st, under the Russian presidency, and without flirting-with-dollarization Argentina) and the shrinking G7.

    Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko – a key Asia hand -, talking to TASS, once again reaffirmed that the key drive for the Greater Eurasia Partnership (official Russian policy) is to connect the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) with BRI.

    As Russia develops a carefully calibrated balance between China and India, the same drive applies to developing the INSTC, where Russia-Iran-India are the main partners, and Azerbaijan is also bound to become a crucial player.

    Add to it vastly improved Russian ties with North Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan (a BRI and SCO member) and ASEAN (except Westernized Singapore).

    BRI, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, is on a roll. I’ve just been to Moscow, Astana and Almaty for three weeks, and it was possible to confirm with several sources that trains in all connectivity corridors are packed to the hilt; via the Trans-Siberian; via Astana all the way to Minsk; and via Almaty to Uzbekistan.

    Russian International Affairs Council Program Manager Yulia Melnikova adds that “Moscow can and should integrate more actively into transit operations along the China – Mongolia – Russia route” and accelerate the harmonization of standards between the EAEU and China. Not to mention invest further in Russia-China cooperation in the Arctic.

    Enter President Putin, at a Russian Railways meeting, unveiling an ambitious, massive 10-year infrastructure expansion plan encompassing new railways and improved connectivity with Asia – from the Pacific to the Arctic.

    The Russian economy has definitely pivoted to Asia, responsible for 70% of trade turnover amid the Western sanctions dementia.

    So what’s on the menu ahead is everything from modernization of the Trans-Siberian and establishing a major logistical hub in the Urals and Siberia to improving port infrastructure in the Azov, Black, and Caspian Seas and faster INSTC cargo transit between Murmansk and Mumbai.

    Putin, once again, almost as an afterthought, recently remarked that trade through the Suez Canal cannot be considered effective anymore, compared to Russia’s Northern Sea Route. With a single, sharp geopolitical move, Yemen’s Ansarullah has made it graphic – for everyone to see.

    Russian development of the Northern Sea Route happens to run in total synergy with the Chinese drive to develop the Arctic leg of BRI. On the oil front, Russian shipments to China via its Arctic coast takes only 35 days: 10 days less than via Suez.

    Danila Krylov, researcher with the Department of the Middle East and Post-Soviet Asia at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, offers a straightforward insight:

    “I view the fact that the Americans are getting involved in Yemen as part of a great game [scenario]; there is more to it than just a desire to punish the Houthis or Iran, as it is more likely driven by a desire to prevent the monopolization of the market and hinder Chinese export deliveries to Europe. The Americans need an operational Suez Canal and a corridor between India and Europe, while the Chinese don’t want it because these are two direct competitors.”

    It’s not that the Chinese don’t want it: with the Northern Sea Route up and running, they don’t need it.

    Now freeze!

    In sum: in the ongoing, ever more fractious War of Economic Corridors, the initiative is with Russia-China.

    In desperation, and no more than an option-deprived, headless chicken victim in the War of Economic Corridors, the Hegemon’s EU vassals are resorting to twisting the Follow the Money playbook.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has defined the freezing of Russian assets – not only private, but also state-owned – by the EU as pure theft. Now Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov is making it very clear that Moscow will react symmetrically to the possible use of income from these frozen Russian assets.

    Paraphrasing Lavrov: you confiscate, we confiscate. We all confiscate.

    The repercussions will be cataclysmic – for the Hegemon. No Global South nation, outside of NATOstan, will be “encouraged” to park its foreign currency/reserves in the West. That may lead, in a flash, to the whole Global South ditching the U.S.-led international financial system and joining a Russia-China-led alternative.

    The peer-competitor Russia-China strategic partnership is already directly challenging the “rules-based international order” on all fronts – improving their historical spheres of influence while actively developing vast, interconnected connectivity corridors bypassing said “order”. That precludes, as much as possible, direct Hot War with the Hegemon.

    Or to put it on Silk Road terms: while the dogs of war bark, lie and steal, the Russia-China caravan strolls on.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 23:55

  • "This Might Be The Biggest Lie Of The Year From Biden Regime"
    “This Might Be The Biggest Lie Of The Year From Biden Regime”

    Had the Biden administration prioritized southern border security, significant efforts to resolve the crisis would likely have been completed by now instead of peddling blatant lies and half-truths to deflect the blame for their disastrous open border policies that have flooded the nation with millions of illegals (and individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list) ahead the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

    A large chunk of corporate progressive media outlets have been spoonfed propaganda from the White House this year to distract Americans with southern border misinformation. 

    The clearest misinformation campaign from the White House was in May, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka declared: “I want to be very clear, our borders are not open.” 

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    “This might be the biggest lie of the year from the Biden regime,” X user Libs of TikTok wrote in a post. 

    Responding to Libs of TikTok’s post, X user RedWave Press said:

    “This is a massive lie. The southern border is wide open and the Biden administration is funding the whole thing. Our country is going to be run into the ground by illegal immigrants if something doesn’t change.” 

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    But the border lies don’t stop with Mayorka. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been on the frontlines of spreading misinformation, saying President Biden has done “everything that he can” to secure the border. 

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    “It’s just a blind spot for this entire White House, this entire administration, that would really prefer that they didn’t have to deal with any of the ramifications of the policy choices that they’ve made when it comes to the border and that Alexander Mayorkas has been so terrible at and actually implementing when it comes to the DHS policy involved,” Ben Domenech, the publisher and co-founder of The Federalist, recently told Fox Business’ Ashley Webster. 

    Endless border misinformation injected into corporate media by the White House has been on full display in recent days when the US Customs and Border Protection released data indicating a quarter of a million migrant encounters at the southern border in November – the busiest November on record. 

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    Furthermore, the new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, across South and Central America to illegals with details about their route to the US. 

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    “A lot of NGOs are helping Biden open the border to unlimited illegal crossing. But none of this could happen without the president’s approval,” Byron York, the chief political correspondent at the Washington Examiner, said last week. 

    The breaking point for law-abiding and tax-paying Americans has arrived. They’re tired of being lied to by radicals in the White House and corporate media. That’s why Biden’s polling data has plunged to record lows, and trust in media has imploded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 23:30

  • A Shrunken Arsenal: The Alarming Decline Of U.S. Munitions
    A Shrunken Arsenal: The Alarming Decline Of U.S. Munitions

    Authored by Joe Buccino via RealClear Wire,

    As fighting rages in the Middle East and Europe and China looms as a threat, America’s dwindling arsenal of high-end munitions emerges as an alarming crisis. The United States, once a fortress of military might, now faces the prospect of a munitions deficit in an era brimming with uncertainties. This desperate situation demands the development of a national critical munitions stockpile.

    European weapons makers are overwhelmed and struggling to meet Ukraine’s consumption of more than 6,000 artillery rounds each day during peak counteroffensive fighting. Ukraine’s ability to stave off defeat and defend itself against the Russian invasion largely depends on an uninterrupted supply of these rounds. Ukrainian forces are conserving their ammunition supply, which might lead to postponements in upcoming counterattacks. Over the coming months, this shortage of ammunition could compel Ukrainian military units to make difficult choices regarding the allocation of resources across various frontlines, focusing on areas where maintaining control is most crucial and potentially allowing minor territorial losses in less critical sectors.

    To supplement Ukraine’s massive ammunition requirements, DoD pulls munitions from its own war reserve stocks. Further compounding the matter: In an attempt to extract stricter immigration policies, House Republicans are blocking a congressional aid package for Ukraine.

    Last year, to help meet the demand for Ukrainian munitions, the Pentagon tapped into a stockpile of American 155mm rounds in Israel, sending hundreds of thousands to Ukraine. These rounds, stored for decades in Israeli bunkers, are to provide an Israeli qualitative military edge, a pillar of American policy in the Middle East. Now Israel needs them back to target Hamas’s command cells in its war in Gaza. The U.S. is supporting two countries, both of which use enormous amounts of 155-millimeter artillery and other ammunition in wars that may stretch on for many months. Running out of ideas, last month the Pentagon established a team to examine American inventories to identify ammunition for Israel. Earlier this month, Senator Deb Fischer, a senior Senate Armed Services Committee member, remarked that the U.S. must expand its munitions production capability.

    Once a conflict begins it can lead to extraordinarily high munitions consumption. The fighting in Ukraine should serve as a warning regarding production of munitions the U.S. would need in a conflict with China over Taiwan. The U.S. must resolve the extensive issues within its munitions manufacturing processes ahead of a conflict with China.

    American forces require an enormous volume of critical munitions to fight against a technologically advanced military force. This ammo is also necessary to equip partner forces in Asia, such as Australia, with the long-range anti-ship munitions needed to defeat the Chinese flotilla or prevent it from ever embarking. The stockpile also ensures that American industrial output is sustained in times of crisis and preserves the United States’ global military edge.

    The U.S. also provides Taiwan with munitions sufficient to blunt an initial Chinese blow. This strategy – codified by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act – involves ensuring Taiwan has sufficient defense capabilities against a Chinese attack. The U.S. arms Taiwan only to a level that does not disrupt the diplomatic equilibrium between Washington and Beijing. But, there is growing concern in the Pentagon and the Indo-Pacific that Taiwan does not have enough of the high-tech munitions to hold off a PRC attack. Here again, the shrinking U.S. munitions reserve represents a risk.

    In a U.S. fight with China, American forces will likely burn through munitions stocks within three weeks. Even with a surge of the U.S. industrial base, replenishing stocks will take more than six months. In the interim, the U.S. will be without sufficient bombs and bullets for its cutting-edge systems, such as fifth-generation fighter jets and High Mobility Rocket Launcher Systems, and anti-air missiles needed to protect our nuclear aircraft carriers and bases in the Pacific.

    Right now, the warning indicators are blinking red. The massive need for ammunition in such conflicts highlights weaknesses in the American defense industry, which no longer produces munitions at the rate it did decades ago. The post-Cold War defense budget reductions led to a swift merger of the defense sector, which saw a drop from fifty-one major defense providers in the early 1990s to five by the end of that decade. This consolidation led to a tightened capacity.

    To arm our allies and partners and our own forces to deter and, if necessary, fight a major theater war, the United States requires a critical munitions stockpile. This reserve will enable the Department of Defense to restore essential munitions stocks vital for maintaining air dominance, defending against air and missile threats, and targeting hard and deeply buried objectives.

    The PROCURE Act, introduced by a bipartisan group of senators in the previous Congress, would go a long way toward building this stockpile. The legislation aims to establish a $500 million per year revolving fund in the Treasury Department for the Pentagon to procure critical munitions. This fund would allow the Defense Department to swiftly replenish high-demand munitions supplied to partner countries in future conflicts, using profits from the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The act is designed to support democratic nations and protect American interests overseas, allowing the Pentagon to continuously order critical munitions. The Senate Armed Services Committee should push to get the PROCURE act passed into law.

    In addition, we must expand the National Defense Stockpile, a largely obscure reserve of raw material based in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, with operations throughout the United States. The National Defense Stockpile holds an emergency supply of 50 critical minerals. Many of these minerals, such as aluminum, titanium, and magnesium, are used in the production of munitions. The value of materials in the U.S. National Defense Stockpile has drastically decreased from $42 billion in 1952 to less than $1 billion today.  America’s mineral reserves are significantly lower than China’s, with the National Defense Stockpile maintaining only 300 metric tons of cobalt compared to China’s 7,000 metric tons. Congress must expand the National Defense Stockpile to support a potential major theater war.

    Our munitions stockpiles and production capacity are not just inadequate; they are a glaring vulnerability in our national defense strategy. We must act with resolve and urgency to revitalize our defense industrial base and expand our reservoir of munition-production minerals. Nothing less than our national interests and global stability is at stake.

    Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who serves as a Senior Research Analyst for the Defense Innovation Board. He served as the communications director for U.S. Central Command from April 2021 to July 2023.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 23:05

  • Visualizing The Global Distribution Of Wealth, By Region
    Visualizing The Global Distribution Of Wealth, By Region

    The distribution of wealth provides insight into a region’s stage of economic maturity.

    As economies grow, they are more likely to have a higher share of adults with greater wealth. Naturally, incomes increase as corporate profitability flourishes, shifting the distribution of earnings.

    Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Dorothy Neufeld created the following graphic, based on data from UBS, to show the share of adults across global regions by their wealth range.

    Global Wealth Distribution in 2023

    Here’s how patterns of wealth compare around the world:

    North America and Europe, which have advanced economies, represent the largest share of people in the “over $1 million” range.

    China, which is transitioning to a more service-oriented economy, accounts for a large chunk of people within the $10K to $1 million range.

    Emerging markets like India account for larger shares of the bottom two wealth ranges.

    Overall, inequality within countries and between countries has increased since the 1980s. Yet global median wealth has increased fivefold since 2000, driven by the economic expansion of China lifting the global median level.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 22:40

  • New California Law Requires Stores To Carry "Gender-Neutral" Toys
    New California Law Requires Stores To Carry “Gender-Neutral” Toys

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    There are a number of new laws that will kick in in 2024, but one of the most interesting fights are likely to over the new California law requiring stores with more than 500 employees to carry “gender-neutral” toys or face state fines.

    The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, is likely to trigger free speech challenges.

    The law covers childcare items, which is defined as “any product designed or intended by the manufacturer to facilitate sleep, relaxation, or the feeding of children, or to help children with sucking or teething.”

    The requirement of a gender-neutral section could be opposed by businesses on religious or other grounds. Notably, this applies to relatively large businesses. In the past, companies like Target have been boycotted for selling “tuck-friendly” items opposed by some consumers. While there is likely to be a backlash, these companies can argue that they are merely following the law rather than pursuing woke corporate policies.

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    The law could return courts to defining the free speech rights of corporations and the question of compelled speech.

    It is an interesting variation on the case of the recent 303 Creative ruling of the Supreme Court, which is discussed in my recent law review publication as well as my forthcoming book.

    In that case, the Court ruled in favor of a website designer who refused to work on same-sex marriage projects. That case, however, involved products made by the designer with “expressive content.” This is requiring the selling of products made by others.

    In 2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court held in favor of a company in striking down political campaign limits as a denial of corporate free speech rights.

    In 2014, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Court ruled in favor of a privately-held, for-profit corporation that refused to cover contraceptive services under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

    This case presents a different but arguably analogous issue of corporate free speech. A major element for challengers is to find an ideal plaintiff with long-standing religious objections to such gender neutral products to make the strongest case for government-compelled speech.

    The question is whether a state can compel a company to sell items that it or its customers consider to be morally offensive. If so, what is the limit on such state power? While these are not expressive products created by the owners, it is still compelling the store to associate with such products and their inherent message or values. For example, if Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop is no longer required to make same-sex cakes, could he be required to sell pre-made same-sex cakes created by others?

    As many on this blog are aware, my natural default remains with free speech. However, people of good faith can disagree on such questions.

    The court may soon be involved in answering these questions in what is likely going to be a novel and important challenge out of California.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 22:15

  • Russia Warns Japan Against "Hostile Actions" Of Exporting Patriot Missiles For Ukraine
    Russia Warns Japan Against “Hostile Actions” Of Exporting Patriot Missiles For Ukraine

    Russia and Japan historically were enemies but in recent decades moved to being ‘frenemies’ given improved relations but also the ongoing simmering standoff regarding ownership of the Kuril chain of islands just north of Japan. The last two years have seen relations get tense once again due to Russia’s Ukraine operations, and Tokyo’s growing defense cooperation with the United States, which has evoked Beijing’s wrath as well. 

    This is especially so in light of last week’s announcement by the Japanese government saying it is preparing to ship Patriot anti-air missile defense systems to assist Ukraine. It’s a plan the Biden administration has sought and considers a major diplomatic ‘victory’.

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    Japan just announced a significant change to its arms export rules in order to make this happen, something the White House has welcomed at a moment Kiev is running low on ammo and advanced arms. It’s also another big move signaling that Japan is abandoning its historic post-WWII neutrality and pacifism.

    A headline last week in Nikkei Asia underscored that the planned Patriot transfer has ‘stunned’ regional watchers and analysts, given the US administration has long warned that China is the top ‘pacing threat’ to America globally: 

    Many have questioned the rationale of taking weapons out of the Indo-Pacific for a battle in Europe when the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has said all along that China is the pacing threat.

    The transfer of Patriots was a request from the U.S. side. This suggests that the Biden administration has concluded that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is not imminent. While many in Washington agree to that assessment, some oppose shifting attention away from the Indo-Pacific.

    The government of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida “has made a fundamental error in going along with the Biden administration’s prioritization of Europe,” said Elbridge Colby, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development.

    But doing Washington’s bidding is precisely what Tokyo is up to, and public statements were clear on this point:

    Tokyo previously only allowed for components of licensed equipment to be sent from Japan to the nation where the manufacturing license originated. But under the new rules it can ship finished goods too.

    Shortly after the government announced this change on Friday, the foreign ministry said it would ship Patriot missiles to the US to “further strengthen the Japan-US alliance”.

    It added that the missiles could only be sent to the US, and would require Japan’s approval to be sent to a third country. Japan still bans the export of weapons to countries at war.

    This could mean that Japan-made Patriot missiles may replenish the US’ stockpile, while Washington sends US-made ones to Ukraine.

    Hence while the missiles may not directly go to Ukraine, it’s certainly with an eye toward increasing supplies transferred there, and thus will indirectly benefit Ukrainian militarily. 

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    Predictably, Moscow has blasted the move and warned Tokyo it faces “grave consequences”. Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Wednesday briefing, “The Japanese side loses control over the weapons with which Washington can now do whatever it wants.” She added: “It cannot be ruled out that under an already tested scheme Patriot missiles will end up in Ukraine.”

    She explained that such a scenario will be “interpreted as unambigously hostile actions against Russia and will lead to grave consequences for Japan in the context of bilateral relations.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 21:50

  • These Are The 10 Most Influential Crypto Tweets Of 2023
    These Are The 10 Most Influential Crypto Tweets Of 2023

    Authored by Daniel Ramirez-Escudero via CoinTelegraph.com,

    2023 has been a turbulent year for the crypto markets, but X encapsulated the rollercoaster of sentiments and became the perfect ledger to recall what occurred.

    2023 dragged some of the rotten apples from the bear market, which brought negative repercussions for the public image of the crypto industry. Fortunately, the market has shifted into what some may call a proper bull market as the halving ticks closer. 

    This article reviews the 10 most influential tweets from the crypto community in 2023.

    SEC charges Kraken for unregistered staking: Stake or steak?

    United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler kicked off 2023 by suing crypto exchange Kraken in an attempt to put some pressure on the crypto industry.

    The SEC charged Kraken with failing to register their crypto asset staking-as-a-service program. Kraken agreed to pay a $30 million fine and remove its staking services from the U.S. market.

    Gensler provided a video explanation worthy of being a crypto meme. As if speaking to a five-year-old, he clarified he was talking about “S-T-A-K-E, not S-T-E-A-K.”

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    The relevance of this case was that it went beyond simply Kraken and its products, as it sparked doubt among crypto users and companies surrounding the legality of staking in the United States.

    While uncertainty and negative sentiment abounded amid the news, the SEC still hadn’t published clear guidelines for this kind of product for crypto-related services.

    By the end of the year, the SEC upped the ante by alleging that Kraken operated as an unregistered exchange and adding that it mixed customer assets with its own. Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell expressed his disbelief, calling the SEC “masochists” who seemed not to be content with the prior $30 million fine. The lawsuit is ongoing, though there are signs of a possible SEC defeat.

    Do Kwon: Catch me if you can

    The fall of Luna and stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) was the catalyst for the last bear market.

    The collapse of the stablecoin occurred in mid-2022, ditching retail victims around the globe and affecting many companies, such as Three Arrows, Voyager, Celsius, Digital Currency Group and many others.

    Shortly after, the Republic of Korea authorities required Luna’s creator, Do Kwon, to explain what happened at Congress. The telephone rang, but the voicemail kicked in. Kwon was on the run to become the most wanted crypto fugitive in history.

    As in the film Catch Me If You Can, several different crime organizations followed his trial in what seemed an impossible feat to catch him. Finally, the run was over on the 23rd of March when the Minister of Interior of Montenegro announced the arrest of Do Kwon as he was allegedly using falsified travel documents.

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    Kwon had been able to dodge authorities from South Korea, Singapur, Dubai, Interpol and several national forces from the Balcan territories. The fate of the Terraform Labs co-founder is to remain this Christmas in a cell in Montenegro, waiting for his possible extradition to the United States or South Korea; both outcomes seem dim for the Korean.

    Cobie’s private encrypted tweet: the power of Crypto Twitter

    Cobie is a prominent pseudonymous figure on Crypto Twitter and the broader crypto sector. His podcast UpOnly has many epic moments in crypto, such as when entrepreneur Martin Shkreli told Kwon in live streaming, “Jail is not that bad.”

    Cobie connects with the sentiment of the crypto community; therefore, his tweets are heavily analyzed and influential.

    On one occasion, more than $50 million was lost in liquidation as Binance’s BNB and Bitcoin prices plunged momentarily. A mediatic storm was created from a tweet from Cobie with a hash prediction.

    A hash prediction is a message encrypted by SHA256 hash. The encryption should output an illegible string. Hashes are one-way functions that can be created but not reversed (without brute forcing). Therefore, this tool is perfect for proving a prediction made to the public without revealing the message. When the moment comes, the owner can decrypt it to show it to the public.

    Deleted tweet of Cobie’s Twitter account. Source: X

    Unfortunately for Cobie, somebody was able to crack the post and spread the word. The encrypted message was “Interpol Red Notice for C.Z.” C.Z. is the diminutive of Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance.

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    Hours later, former Chief Strategy Officer of Binance, Patrick Hillmann, reacted to the mediatic crisis by trying to calm the waters, although ultimately adding more fuel to the fire.

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    Hillmann offered two explanations for the decrypted message. The second option opened the door for an open case of law enforcement against Binance.

    Cobie eventually told the public what may have happened, resulting in him narrowing down his circle of trust:

    Cobie’s explanation on what may have happened. Source: X

    This particular case demonstrated the volatility and power of Crypto Twitter over the crypto market.

    Coinbase ready to confront SEC in court

    The SEC was determined to be considered the most influential entity in the crypto market of the year 2023.

    On the 6th of June, the SEC charged Coinbase for the unregistered sale of securities with its staking-as-a-service program. The SEC crusade against the U.S. crypto industry was on.

    Coinbase knew what was coming after receiving a Wells notice months before letting them know a possible enforcement action was looming around. Coinbase argued that they often asked for clear guidelines and rules in the American crypto market. Coinbase was prepared and replied in a 40-second clip with their point of view of the matter.

    Coinbase viral ad campaign. Source: YouTube

    The SEC may have expected an easy victory with a settlement like the Kraken case. Despite the high stakes of going to court, Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, decided to take the bull by the horns and fight the SEC charges in court.

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    Coinbase is the most regulated crypto company in the U.S. market as it is publicly traded in the open market with its stock COIN. Armstrong’s stance is essential for the company and the entire crypto industry.

    BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF: the catalyst for the new crypto bull market

    At the mid-pickle of 2023, the biggest bullish news was launched. The largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF.

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    Additionally, Coinbase was selected as the custodian of the ETF midst nine days prior to the ETF announcement the SEC had charged the exchange for its staking program and Coinbase accepted the fight in court.

    Screenshot of iShares Bitcoin Trust filing. Source: Eric Balchunas’ Twitter account

    BlackRock has a clean record regarding ETF proposals, with virtually 99,9% of them eventually being approved. The ETF success rate of BlackRock is 575 to 1. For the investors, when BlackRock presented its spot Bitcoin ETF to the SEC, it meant the question had changed from if to when a spot Bitcoin ETF would be approved.

    Retail and particularly institutional investors, who may have been hesitant to enter the crypto market directly due to compliance and regulatory impediments, could flood the crypto markets with new money. The effect would be an increase in demand, and thus, a rise in the price of Bitcoin.

    Gold price went on a 8-year bullrun after the gold ETF was approved. Source: Tommy Moustache

    Some even speculate that a similar effect occurred with gold when the first gold ETF was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, surging 250% on an 8-consecutive year bull run.

    SEC surrenders the Ripple case

    The SEC ignited 2020 a serious case against Ripple and its co-founder, Chris Larsen, and CEO, Brad Garlinghouse.

    The Ripple versus SEC case revolves around allegations that Ripple Labs conducted an unregistered securities offering by selling its XRP cryptocurrency. The Ripple case was paramount for the crypto market as if XRP was considered a security; many other tokens could be placed into the same basket.

    The case notoriously impacted Ripple and its native token. Garlinghouse was thrown temporally into the shadows and plunged the price of XRP, dethroning the legendary pole position of its currency in the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

    After almost two years of fighting, Ripple gained small victories until the 19th of October, when the SEC dismissed the case against Garlinghouse and Larsen. For Stuart Alderoty, Chief Legal Officer of Ripple, this was a clear surrender of the SEC.

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    The XRP army, as the non-sympathetic of Ripple, celebrated the latest win. It was perceived as a bullish event for the crypto markets. As per Ripple, the case had demonstrated that “XRP is not, in and of itself a security.”

    Sam Bankman-Fried is sentenced to 110 years in jail

    The awaited moment arrived on Nov. 3, when U.S. Attorney Damian Williams called Bankman-Fried’s crimes “a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto” and one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.

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    In 2022, SBF was considered one of the year’s most influential people. One year later, he is regarded as a white-collar criminal.

    Many celebrities, politicians, and investors fell into his spell using his effective altruistic philosophy and connections. SBF became the impersonator of the crypto hype. His marketing team and personal ego pushed him to place himself as the hero of the crypto industry.

    Sam Bankman-Fried’s Nas Daily deleted video. Source: YouTube

    The soap opera created by SBF’s uprise and downfall came to an end. Crypto needed to close this chapter once and for all to evolve. The crypto industry celebrated this closure as possibly the end of the looming ghosts from the bear market.

    BlackRock spot Ethereum ETF on the go

    Months after the BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF, the world’s largest fund filed its spot Ethereum ETF.

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    The BlackRock spot Ethereum ETF was in the queue with five other firms that filled the petition: VanEck, ARK 21Shares, Invesco, Grayscale and Hashdex.

    The price of ETH rose immediately after the news spread out. With the new proposal of BlackRock, the intentions of dominating the future spot in the ETF crypto arena are clear.

    Changpeng Zhao steps down from Binance

    One of the most surprising events of the year may be Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, stepping down from the company he built from the ground up. At the moment of his exit, Binance was the most dominant cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of volume activity.

    Binance and CZ faced strong accusations from several U.S. authorities of intentionally violating Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies with U.S. clients. The case was opened as, according to the regulator, Binance had failed to register as a securities exchange and operated illegally in the United States.

    After Binance checked the case, the big boom exploded. U.S. Justice Department settled with Binance to pay $4 billion in fines in exchange for being able to operate in the U.S. in a compliant manner. As part of the agreement, CZ would face the possibility of criminal charges as part of an investigation into “alleged money laundering, bank fraud and sanctions violations.”

    Cz announced he would take an extended break and announced Richard Teng as the new global CEO of Binance.

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    CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam said in December to CNBC that CZ will eventually end up in jail. Before, this option was challenging to fulfill as he lived in UAE, a country with no extradition deal with the USA. Now, this could happen as when he pleaded guilty, he had to enter the United States and a judge prohibited him from leaving the country.

    El Salvador Bitcoin investments turn green

    El Salvador has placed itself on the global map and the history of cryptocurrencies as the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The decision of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele shocked the world. The 9th of June 2021 will be marked forever as a milestone for any maximalist.

    Bukele announced the adoption of BTC as one of the national currencies in the latest months of the last bull market. Since then, the Latin American state has purchased Bitcoin with public funds.

    As the bear market kicked in, Bukele gained detractors in the national and international sphere for his irresponsible actions. Bad press and pressures from different organizations became the norm, whereas Bukele doubled down and said El Salvador would be buying one BTC per day.

    The winds began to shift in favor of Bukele’s plan. El Salvador dismissed insolvency rumors by paying off the investors holding the Eurobond due on Jan. 24, 2023, a total of $800 million plus interest. Bukele roared against legacy media as, in his opinion, they were prosecuting him for creating a false narrative.

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    After over two years, Bukele was finally served his most desired cold meal. In December 2023, El Salvador’s investment in Bitcoin not only recovered its original fiat value but was in profits.

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    2023 may have seemed like a bitter, sour year at times, but it has laid the groundwork for a bullish scenario for 2024. There’ll be many more influential tweets to follow up on.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 21:25

  • Putin Told Xi Russia 'Will Fight For Five Years' In Ukraine
    Putin Told Xi Russia ‘Will Fight For Five Years’ In Ukraine

    While it’s become abundantly clear that Ukraine’s situation is currently dire and that Russian forces are winning the war amid Kiev’s severe manpower and ammo shortage, this wasn’t quite as evident back in March, when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Moscow for rare talks as the war unfolded.

    A Wednesday report in Nikkei Asia has cited diplomatic sources who said Putin relayed to Xi something very interesting and unexpected in terms of a conflict timeline. According to them, Putin’s focus was to provide assurance to Xi that Russia would emerge victorious, with an aim to keep him at his side on the global stage. 

    Within that context, the diplomatic sources claim that Putin stated to Xi that Russia “will fight for [at least] five years” in Ukraine. Nikkei comments that the atmosphere was one where the tide of battle and the international pressure against Moscow was not seen as favorable to Russia and Putin’s war aims, and that this prompted Xi to hedge his bets, leading to instances like significant diplomatic overtures to the Zelensky government.

    Via AFP

    “The likely implication was that a protracted war would favor China’s well-armed partner,” Nikkei observes of the newly revealed content of the two leaders’ dialogue on the war. “Taken another way, the remark was also a warning to Xi not to change his pro-Russia stance.”

    The publication concludes of the lasting impact of Putin’s words, linking them to some of Xi’s internal house-cleaning of late:

    Whether Xi was convinced, Putin’s remark at the summit holds the key to understanding a series of mysterious developments in Russia-China relations, from a Chinese peace mission to Europe in May to China sacking its foreign minister months later.

    Nikkei observes further, “If the war between Russia and Ukraine grows more prolonged, it would significantly impact plans and ambitions Xi has for his unprecedented third term as China’s president and Chinese Communist Party general secretary.” Chiefly, “Xi’s big goal of unifying Taiwan with mainland China could also be affected.”

    It remains that in a scenario of a prolonged Russia-Ukraine war, and assuming Beijing’s support of Moscow stays consistent, this would bring more pressure than ever from Western countries, potentially leaving Xi almost as isolated as Putin. But given Moscow is emerging with the clear upper-hand, and with strong rumors that the West is quietly pushing Zelensky toward the negotiating table, Xi has indeed stuck by the ‘winning side’ of the conflict.

    Recently, The New York Times has said that Putin is looking to wind down the ‘special operation’ by negotiating a favorable end to the conflict (which no doubt means recognition of permanent Russian possession of the four territories, as well as Ukrainian recognition of Crimea as under Moscow). And now days later, this “five years” quote has emerged, adding to the ongoing speculation over the Russian leader’s near and far-term plans regarding his troops’ presence in Ukraine.

    From the archives: 2017 in Astana…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Realistically, the annexed oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia will have to stay militarized likely for years to come. It’s easy to imagine a scenario of Russian forces staying in these regions for at least a half-decade, ensuring that Russian suzerainty is permanently secured over Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 21:00

  • The Fear Factor And Winning The Independent Voter
    The Fear Factor And Winning The Independent Voter

    Authored by Adam Brandon via RealClear Wire,

    Voter trust and fear over the 2024 election are driving unprecedented interest in independent voters. The candidate who can address these fears, whether that candidate is Biden or Trump, will go on to win. With only a handful of states up for grabs, they need the independent vote.

    Winning independent voters is going to be a challenge. What’s more worrying for America is that a majority of Pennsylvania and Arizona “first-time voters” (voters aged 18-24) are ‘scared’ for the well-being of our country if either Trump or Biden is elected. But they see bipartisanship, or a politician who works across both sides of the aisle, as the only option that gives them some promise of security.

    In a recent Bullfinch poll conducted in two of the likely 2024 battleground states, 54% of voters from Arizona and 52% from Pennsylvania felt their best representative would be a politician who works with both sides of the aisle. In fact, the data shows that in a toss-up state like Pennsylvania, 51% of self-identified Democrats and 45% of self-identified Republicans prefer a candidate that works with both sides of the aisle over a candidate that works and votes only with their party.

    The problem these voters have is one of trust. There is little indication that either the Democrats or Republicans can convince independent voters they can be trusted.

    In Arizona, 66% of Democrats, 22% of independents, and 6% of Republicans trust that Joe Biden and the Biden administration would address the key issues that matter most to the respondent and their neighbors.

    In Pennsylvania, 70% of Democrats, 31% of independents, and just 9% of Republicans trust Biden and his administration to address key issues that matter most to them and their neighbors.

    Independent voters nationwide, like most voters, don’t feel anyone is listening to them, further eroding their trust. They feel the issues they care most about are not being addressed. They believe that the country has never been in a worse position than it is today. In a recent survey by the Independent Center, 66% feel their representative in Washington, D.C., is not listening to their voice and concerns, yet 49% believe a non-aligned independent representative would more clearly represent them.

    With this as the backdrop to the 2024 presidential election, it’s hard to imagine how anything good can come from the contest.

    All of this attention on the independent voter is positive. Never before have so many voters indicated they want another option, a better option. Recent polling from a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey shows Robert Kennedy Jr. with the highest favorability rating of all 2024 presidential candidates. This is also represented by the emergence of Nikki Haley, who is attracting and winning independent interest. Independent voters are hungry for choices and interested in hearing what they say.

    This is what needs to happen. After partisan gamesmanship, gerrymandering, and policy positions that purposely seek to divide Americans against each other, we might finally be turning the corner. This means a focus on bipartisan compromise, a position that can win the independent voter, especially in the swing states.

    To win the swing states and their deep pool of independent voters, it’s going to be a contest of which party and which candidate demonstrates they understand the issues independent voters care about. This is the key to regaining trust, but it is no easy feat.

    Refusing to acknowledge the issues and their importance to the independent voter is the first problem. Pretending we don’t have an immigration problem is not going to work, nor is denying the need to restructure Social Security before it goes bankrupt.

    Everyone is talking about independent voters, but not many have taken a deep dive to understand who they are and what they believe.

    They are as diverse as our country. They care about immigration and social reform, government and debt, inflation, and education. The research is clear: They care personally about jobs and social reform, but their position on abortion will determine their vote. This will make it hard for Republicans in the current environment. However, when asked, the issue they want to see their local candidates focus on most is affordability, a traditional Republican strength.

    Both Democrats and Republicans can find opportunities – these voters aren’t exactly radical. These voters want innovative common sense policies. They want others to tolerate their differences while finding common ground to move ahead. They want policies and positions that offer choices so they can exercise their free will to make a difference on issues by choosing what paths are best for themselves, their families, and their communities. They don’t want to be told there is only one way to address climate change, reform healthcare, or government services. They are rejecting the extremism of both parties.

    The candidate who wants to win independent voters needs to start listening. Conquering fear is going to mean change and is going to require some brave positions from both parties. The candidate who shows they are up for the challenge of rejecting extremism, reaching across the aisle, and having adult conversations with these voters can win.

    Adam Brandon is President of FreedomWorks. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 20:35

  • The Worst 'Candyflation' Is Yet To Come As Cocoa Prices Near Record
    The Worst ‘Candyflation’ Is Yet To Come As Cocoa Prices Near Record

    Cocoa prices Wednesday hit $4,285 per ton in New York, the highest level since 1978, as the outlook of poor crop harvests across West Africa has been a major bullish factor pushing prices higher this year. There is also an increasing risk that El Nino-induced weather disturbances could cause the global cocoa market to sink into a deficit for the third year.

    Bloomberg reports the world’s largest chocolate makers, Hershey Co. and Nestle SA, have yet to feel the full impacts of soaring prices because cocoa is bought well in advance. This only means consumers will see a further increase in the prices of their favorite candy bars in 2024. 

    “It’s the most extraordinary situation I’ve seen in my career,” said Jonathan Parkman, the head of agricultural sales at Marex Group, warning, “I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of the situation for consumers.”

    According to consumer researcher Euromonitor International, chocolate prices have risen 17% in the US over the last two years. Prices are expected to continue trending higher as cocoa production in West Africa – accounting for most of the world’s supply – remains extraordinarily tight. 

    “The market does not seem convinced that production will recover enough to avoid a supply deficit for 2023/24,” ADM Investor Services Inc. analysts wrote in a recent note. 

    Luca Zaramella, chief financial officer at Oreo cookies maker Mondelez International Inc., warned last month during an investor call:

    “There is pressure on cocoa.”

    Analysts warn El Nino-induced weather disturbances could bring drier weather to top-growing regions. They say that could result in a third year of deficits. 

    “The expectation of a supply deficit has been compounded with weather variations, especially in West Africa,” the International Cocoa Organization said in a recent report. 

    In June, we told readers: Global Cocoa Shortage Sends Prices Soaring As “Consumers Should Brace” For ‘Chocolateflation’… Fast forward to Halloween, ‘candyflation‘ strikes: 

    Data from retail price tracking website Datasembly reveals consumers have been slapped with the second year of double-digit inflation in the candy aisle. Prices for candy jumped 13% this month compared to prices last October. That’s up from a 14% increase in candy in October 2022. 

    Also, the price of butter, which accounts for 20% of the weight of an average chocolate, has soared, according to KnowledgeCharts, a unit of Commodities Risk Analysis. The entire process, from shipping to processing, has seen increased prices over the last few years, indicating that candyflation will be sticky. 

    “Product prices — liquor and butter — are off the charts, so it’s only now feeding to consumers,” Parkman said.

    It appears global central banks are powerless over El Nino-induced food inflation. Higher prices may be the only cure for Hershey’s Kiss and Crunch bar inflation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 20:10

  • China And India Account For More Than 90% Of Russian Oil And Fuel Exports
    China And India Account For More Than 90% Of Russian Oil And Fuel Exports

    By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com

    China took in half of all the crude oil that Russia exported this year, with India a close second, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said today on state TV.

    China now accounts for 45% to 50% of Russian oil and fuel exports, while India is taking in some 40%, Novak said. The increase is particularly remarkable for India, where Russia exported almost no oil whatsoever until 2022. Now, it is the subcontinent’s leading supplier.

    “If earlier we exported around 40-45% of our total crude oil and refined products to Europe, by the end of this year we expect this share to have fallen to 4-5%,” Novak said.

    The figures suggest that China has essentially replaced Europe as destination for Russian crude and oil products.

    Last week, another Deputy PM said that Russia’s oil exports are seen rising 7% this year from 2021 levels.

    “The most pressing problems last year have generally been resolved. This firstly concerns payments and cargo insurance, [and] secondly concerns ensuring seaborne shipping of hydrocarbons by tanker fleet,” Alexander Belousov said.

    Also last week, Transneft’s head, Nikolay Tokarev, reported that the volume of Russian oil shipments to China this year had surged to some 100 million tons, equal to about 2 million barrels daily.

    “Export volumes to China and India have increased significantly; many times over. I can say that about 70 million tonnes of oil were supplied to India this year, while about 100 million tonnes of oil went to China,” Tokarev said.

    Indian imports of Russian crude, meanwhile, hit a four-month high in November, at 1.6 million bpd, according to data Reuters reported it had obtained from trade sources. The November imports were 3.1% higher than India’s intake of Russian crude in October and accounted for more than a third of all Indian crude oil imports last month. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 19:45

  • The Cost Of Grain That Feeds The World Hits New 15-Year High
    The Cost Of Grain That Feeds The World Hits New 15-Year High

    On Wednesday, the Thai Rice Exporters Association revealed that the price of Thai white rice 5% broken, a key Asian benchmark, reached a new 15-year high. This surge is mainly attributed to increasing fears of a global shortage due to the damaging effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon on Asian farmlands and India’s recent decision to restrict certain rice exports.

    Thai white rice 5% broken hit $659 a ton, the highest level since October 2008. Prices of the staple food that feeds billions of people worldwide are up over 50% since the start of 2022. 

    Chief Asia Economist at HSBC Global Research, Frederic Neumann, recently told clients that skyrocketing rice prices present hurdles for central banks combating high inflation. He drew parallels between the current surge in food prices and the one that rocked the world in 2008, noting that shortage fears are rising for the staple food that feeds billions of people.

    “The memory of the 2008 Asian food price scare sits deep,” Neumann wrote. 

    He said, “Back then, rising rice prices in some economies quickly spilled over into other markets as consumers and governments across the region scrambled to secure supplies. It also lifted the prices of other staples, such as wheat, as buyers shifted to alternatives.”

    Last month, Sara Menker, founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, told Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore that the current food crisis surpassed the one in 2007-08, which ultimately sparked the Arab Spring across the Middle East a few years later. 

    Menker said elevated crop prices and steep declines in local currencies against the dollar have severely pressured households of emerging market economies. 

    And remember, SocGen’s Albert Edwards warned in late 2020 that central banks’ money printing during Covid would spark a rise in food prices and the usual social-economic instabilities. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 19:20

  • Vivek Ramaswamy's Campaign Halts 'Idiotic' TV Ad Spending Ahead Of Iowa Caucuses, New Hampshire Primary
    Vivek Ramaswamy’s Campaign Halts ‘Idiotic’ TV Ad Spending Ahead Of Iowa Caucuses, New Hampshire Primary

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign has stopped spending money on “idiotic” television advertisements with just weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, according to a campaign representative.

    Republican presidential candidate businessman Vivek Ramaswamy arrives for a campaign event at the AmericInn in Webster City, Iowa, on Dec. 19, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that the biotech entrepreneur had stopped purchasing standard broadcast TV ads—which typically make up the majority of political advertising spending in the United States—and does not have any booked for the immediate or distant future.

    Instead, his campaign is focusing on a different strategy with less than a month to go before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary, the spokesperson said.

    “We are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified—best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls, and doors to communicate with our voters on Vivek’s vision for America, making their plan to caucus and turning them out,” Tricia McLaughlin, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign’s press secretary told the broadcast television network.

    “As you know, this isn’t what most campaigns look like. We have intentionally structured this way so that we have the ability to be nimble and hyper-targeted in our ad spending,” Ms. McLaughlin added.

    Separately, Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that presidential TV ad spending is “idiotic,” comes with a low return on investment, and is a “trick that political consultants use to bamboozle candidates who suffer from low IQ.”

    “We’re doing it differently. Spending $$ in a way that follows data…apparently a crazy idea in US politics,” the GOP presidential candidate wrote.

    “Big surprise coming on Jan 15,” he concluded.

    $12 Million Plans

    As recently as November, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign said it planned to spend more than $12 million on ads, including broadcast, cable, radio, digital, and direct mail, in Iowa and New Hampshire.

    Since that announcement, the campaign has spent $2.2 million on TV, digital, and radio ads, NBC News reported, citing figures from the political ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

    As recently as the first whole week of December, his campaign spent more than $200,000 on TV ads before slashing such spending down to just $6,000, according to NBC News.

    Despite the slow-down in TV ad spending, Mr. Ramaswamy appears to remain hopeful going into the Iowa caucus, telling Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” on Dec. 24 that he is “actually confident we’re going to overdeliver massively at the Iowa caucus.”

    “Many of the people supporting us are first-time caucus-goers, some of them young people, some of them America-first patriots or libertarians who haven’t thought of themselves as traditional Republicans who are coming out in droves,” he said. “I think we’re going to have a major surprise on January 15.“

    A week earlier, he also told NBC News during a campaign event in Windham, New Hampshire, that he believes “if the election was held amongst the subset of people who go to events, I think we’d probably win Iowa, New Hampshire right now.”

    Trails Trump in Polls

    Yet while the 38-year-old remains optimistic about the upcoming Iowa caucus, multiple polls show former President Donald Trump still maintains a significant lead over all of his rivals.

    According to the RealClearPolitics average of Republican Primary poll, President Trump maintains a dominating lead, at 62.5 percent followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 11.3 percent and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 11 percent.

    Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, trails behind in fourth place with just 4 percent, according to the poll.

    He also recently placed fourth in the latest Emerson College poll in Iowa, which shows President Trump leading the way with 50 percent support among Republican caucus voters.

    The decision by Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign to pull TV ad spending ahead of the first contests in January also comes amid speculation that he may drop out of the competition and endorse President Trump.

    However, the entrepreneur appeared to put an end to that speculation this week, telling Fox News that he is “not a plan B person” and does not intend to be President Trump’s running mate for 2024.

    “I respect Trump and his accomplishments for this country,” he said. “Unlike a lot of the other candidates, I’m not sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking some decision he made.”

    “But I believe we are the right people to take our America-first agenda to the next level,” he said. “I think it’s going to take somebody with fresh legs. Somebody from the next generation, if I may say it, to lead the next generation.”

    Frank Fang contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 18:55

  • Xi Vows "Any Means" To Stop Taiwan Seceding From China, Weeks Before Major Election
    Xi Vows “Any Means” To Stop Taiwan Seceding From China, Weeks Before Major Election

    Taiwan is just over two weeks away from key elections, something increasingly attracting global media attention given fresh threats from Beijing. On Wednesday China warned of further trade sanctions on Taiwan in the event the ruling party “stubbornly” commits to supporting independence. 

    Spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Chen Binhua has addressed a message to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), saying “If the DPP authorities are determined to persevere, continue to stubbornly adhere to their Taiwan independence position, and refuse to repent, we support the relevant departments taking further measures in accordance with the regulations.”

    Via AP

    Presidential and parliamentary elections will take place on Jan.13, but Beijing has warned that the self-ruled island’s reunification is inevitable. 

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Tuesday issued some his strongest words on the issue thus far, vowing to use “any means” to prevent anyone from “making Taiwan secede from China.”

    He issued the words in a speech marking the 130th anniversary of the PRC founder Mao Zedong’s birth. He also stressed the necessity of maintaining the “one country, two systems” policy in Hong Kong and Macau while emphasizing the need for a central government to exercise “overall jurisdiction”.

    He said of Taiwan that “China’s complete reunification is an inevitable trend” and that reunification is “what the people desire.” He further urged that the Chinese Communist Party must set its sights of a grander policy of “resolving the Taiwan question in the new era.”

    China’s official position has been that it always seeks first reunification through peaceful and political means, and again called for “advance integrated development in all fields” across the strait bases on peaceful development of cross-strait ties.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But that’s when Xi pledged to ‘resolutely’ prevent any movement or outside force from “making Taiwan secede from China by any means.” Of course, China sees Washington as the biggest instigator in the region, particularly through high level visits of US officials and repeat arms transfers involving advanced weapons systems.

    * * *

    Among Foreign Policy’s 5 Predictions for China in 2024, there is the below analysis of an expected “Taiwan Mini-crisis” sparked by the upcoming election [emphasis ZH]…

    “Taiwan holds a presidential election on Jan. 13, and the year could start with a small crisis in the straits. Current Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te, who serves under President Tsai Ing-wen and is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), holds a narrow lead in the polls. His election would ire Beijing; he is an advocate for a more independent Taiwan and strongly opposed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Although Lai has said he won’t call for formal Taiwanese independence or drop the Republic of China name—a red line for Beijing—he has also said that Taiwan’s sovereignty is “a fact” and reminded his fellow candidates that by Beijing’s standards, they are all pro-independence.

    A Lai victory would likely prompt aggressive moves from Beijing, including naval maneuvers and airspace intrusions. Reports last week about comments made by Xi  to U.S. President Joe Biden about reunification with Taiwan when they met in November stirred some panic in Washington, but an invasion remains highly unlikely. It would be risky and difficult, especially when China is struggling with other crises.

    Even a victory for Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT) on Jan. 13 may cause some problems. The KMT is more pro-China than the DPP, but it would hardly hand the keys to the island over to Beijing. Chinese officials might overestimate the significance of a KMT election win, seeing it as a sign of China’s influence in Taiwan. Although 17 percent of Taiwanese voters said in a recent survey that China is their main concern, more than twice that number picked the economy.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 18:30

  • The 9 Senate Races To Watch In 2024
    The 9 Senate Races To Watch In 2024

    Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Next year’s competition for control of the U.S. Senate will be a critical battle as Democrats defend more seats than Republicans.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    The Democrats currently control the upper chamber by the slimmest of margins, 51–49.

    Whoever wins the Senate will control the legislation before the floor, as well as accept or reject judicial and executive nominees, who help shape policy.

    Democrat strategist Mark Mellman predicts the Democrats could keep the Senate if the GOP puts up the same candidates that lost in crucial races in 2022. But, he told The Epoch Times, things are up in the air until the primaries are over.

    The following are the nine crucial races that could determine who will take control of the Senate come Jan. 3, 2025.

    1. Arizona

    In this swing state, it could ultimately be a three-way race between incumbent independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat Rep. Reuben Gallego, and former journalist and 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

    Other Republicans in the primary include Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, business consultant George Nicholson, and mechanical engineer Brian Wright.

    President Joe Biden won The Grand Canyon state by just 0.3 percentage points in the 2020 election.

    Ms. Lake is dominating the GOP primary, according to polling averages by RealClearPolitics.

    However, most polls show both Ms. Lake and Mr. Lamb losing out in the general election to Mr. Gallego—who has been in the House since 2015. Ms. Sinema, the incumbent, is polling below 20 percent. The former Democrat switched her affiliation to independent in December 2022.

    “I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington and formally registering as an Arizona Independent,” Ms. Sinema stated in a post on Twitter at the time.

    (L–R) Sen. Krysten Sinema from Arizona, who changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent, in a hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington in 2022; Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.,) holds a press conference in Tempe, Ariz., on March 14, 2023; and former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake speaks at an event in Maryland on March 4, 2023. (Bonnie Cash-Pool/Getty Images, Rebecca Noble/AFP via Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    2. Ohio

    While Republicans have won Ohio in the past three of five presidential elections, incumbent Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown won re-election in 2018, at the same time the GOP expanded its majority in the Senate.

    Mr. Brown, who is known to be a blue-collar Democrat, is running for re-election, setting up a potentially tight race. He has been in the Senate since 2007.

    Republicans who have declared a run include Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, state senator Matt Dolan, and former car dealership owner and 2022 Senate candidate Bernie Moreno.

    Mr. Moreno has been endorsed by Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah), while Mr. Dolan has been endorsed by Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy Haslam and his wife, Dee.

    On his Truth Social platform on Dec. 19, former President Donald Trump endorsed Mr. Moreno, saying “a successful political outsider like Bernie” is needed to beat Mr. Brown.

    Despite Mr. LaRose’s lack of major endorsements, he is leading in the GOP primary, according to current polling averages by RealClearPolitics.

    President Trump won the Buckeye State by about 8 percentage points in 2020, roughly the same as his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton.

    Most polls show Mr. Brown leading in a general election matchup, according to FiveThirtyEight.

    (L–R) Ohio State Sen. Matt Dolan, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks with a local television station in Cleveland on April 28, 2022; entrepreneur Bernie Moreno kicks off his campaign in suburban Cincinnati on April 18, 2023; and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose attends a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Courtesy of Everitt Townsend)

    3. Pennsylvania

    Incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Casey is running for re-election, but could face a tough race against David McCormick, who is the only Republican that has declared.

    Mr. McCormick has garnered endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mt.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the fundraising arm of the Senate GOP.

    Mr. McCormick narrowly lost the 2022 GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania to Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor that went on to lose the general election to Sen. John Fetterman, a progressive Democrat.

    President Biden won the Keystone State by 1.17 percentage points in 2020.

    Early polls show Mr. Casey leading Mr. McCormick in a general election matchup.

    (L–R) Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) at campaign rally in Philadelphia on Sept, 21, 2018; and Dave McCormick, Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate, during an event in Pittsburgh on May 17, 2022. (Mark Makela/Getty Images, Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

    4. Montana

    This red state could be a Republican pickup as the expected nominee, retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, could unseat incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Tester. 

    Mr. Tester won re-election in 2018 by 3.55 percentage points against now-Rep. Matt Rosendale, a Republican, who has also expressed a possible run.

    President Trump easily won the Treasure State in 2020 with close to 57 percent of the vote.

    There has only been one poll conducted for this race in the past few months, from Emerson, which showed Mr. Tester leading Mr. Sheehy by 4 percentage points.

    Tim Sheehy, former Navy SEAL and 2024 Republican Senate candidate, in Montana; and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) at a press conference in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Courtesy of Tim Sheehy, Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    5. Nevada

    Democrat Sen. Jacky Rosen is running for re-election in a state President Biden won in 2020 by just 2.39 percentage points.

    Republicans who have jumped into the primary so far include Army veteran Sam Brown, who suffered burns to his face from a roadside bomb during his service in Afghanistan in 2008; and former state assemblyman Jim Marchant, who unsuccessfully ran for secretary of state in 2022 and Congress in 2020.

    Mr. Brown has received endorsements from Sen. John Thune from South Dakota, as well as Americans for Prosperity, the largest conservative grassroots organization in the United States.

    President Biden narrowly won the Silver State by just under 2.4 percentage points in 2020 whereas President Trump lost it by almost that much in the 2016 race.

    The most recent poll, commissioned by the NRSC, shows Mr. Brown trailing Ms. Rosen in a general election head-to-head by 5 percentage points.

    (L–R) Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 10, 2021; Republican Army veteran Sam Brown is running for the U.S. Senate in Nevada; and Jim Marchant, Republican candidate for Nevada secretary of state, in Henderson, Nev., on Nov. 6, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images, Public domain)
     

    6. West Virginia

    With Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin not running for re-election, it is likely the Mountain State will flip to the GOP.

    Gov. Jim Justice is the early favorite and likely winner, with big endorsements coming in from President Trump and Mr. McConnell.

    Mr. Justice does, however, face a handful of other candidates in the primary, most notably Rep. Alex Mooney.

    The only Democrat in the race at the moment is U.S. Marine Corps veteran and political organizer Zachary Shrewsbury.

    President Trump overwhelmingly won the state in 2020 with almost 69 percent of the vote.

    There have been no polls conducted since Mr. Manchin announced in November he will not seek a third term, but he has floated the idea of an independent run for president.

    West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announces that he is switching parties to become a Republican as President Donald Trump looks on at a campaign rally in Huntington, W.V., on Aug. 3, 2017. (Justin Merriman/Getty Images)

    7. Michigan

    Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow is running for re-election, but she’s up against Rep. Elissa Slotkin in the primary, who is winning in any matchup against the GOP candidates, according to the latest polling averages from FiveThirtyEight. Actor Hill Harper is also in the Democrat primary.

    The race is still considered a likely tossup as the GOP field includes former Reps. Mike Rogers and Peter Meijer, as well as former Detroit Police Chief James Craig.

    President Biden won the Wolverine State by 2.78 percentage points in 2020.

    Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) speaks to Michigan State University students and their supporters after a campus shooting, during a rally outside of the state Capitol Building in Lansing, Mich., on Feb. 15, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    8. Wisconsin

    Incumbent Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin is running for re-election, after winning her second term in 2018 by almost 11 percentage points.

    Republicans who have entered the race include county supervisor Stacey Klein; Rejani Raveendran, a 40-year old college student who is the president of her university Republicans chapter; and retired Army Reserve Sgt. Maj. Patrick Schaefer-Wicke.

    Notable Republicans—including former Gov. Scott Walker, Reps. Mike Gallagher, Tom Tiffany, and Bryan Steil—have declined to throw their hat into the ring.

    President Biden narrowly won the Badger State by 0.63 percentage points, or 20,682 votes, in 2020.

    No up-to-date polls about the race have been published, but it’s looking like a tough hill to climb for Republicans.

    Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Nov. 29, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    9. New Jersey

    This race is more about which Democrat will win the seat if embattled incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez can’t hold onto it.

    Mr. Menendez, who has been in the Senate since 2007 and in Congress since 1993, is facing federal corruption-related charges.

    He faces big primary challengers in Democrats Tammy Murphy, wife of Gov. Phil Murphy, and Rep. Andy Kim.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 18:05

  • Doug Casey On What Really Happened In 2023 And What Comes Next
    Doug Casey On What Really Happened In 2023 And What Comes Next

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: As we approach the end of the year, let’s take a step back, look at the Big Picture, and put 2023 into perspective so we can better understand what may come next.

    Significant financial, economic, political, cultural, and geopolitical developments occurred in 2023.

    On the cultural front, 2023 may be the year that the tide started to shift against the woke insanity.

    BlackRock’s Fink dropped ESG. Woke movies continue to bomb at theaters. Bud Light, Target, and Disney continue to feel the pain of deliberately alienating their customer base.

    What’s your take on the cultural developments in 2023?

    Doug Casey: There are always reactions to major trends. These things are worth noting, but considering the virulence of the woke movement, the reaction has been tepid. There’s always a rearguard fighting for things as they are. And that’s wonderful because the Wokesters want to overturn the entire culture much the same way as the Jacobins overturned it in revolutionary France, the Bolsheviks overturned the culture in Russia, the Red Guards in China, or Pol Pot did in Cambodia.

    The Wokesters are potentially just as dangerous because their way of thinking is everywhere in the West.

    They’re similar to the movements I’ve just mentioned in that they’re stridently against free speech, free thought, free markets, tradition, and limited government—nothing new there. But they’ve weaponized gender and race as well. They’re virulent, humorless, and puritanical. They see themselves as the wave of the future, but they’ve only repackaged the notions of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler.

    My view is that the Wokesters hate humanity and hate themselves. They’re dishonest, arrogant, and entitled. Look at the current scandal involving the diversity-hire presidents at Harvard, Penn, and MIT. They’re shameful embarrassments. The fact their boards of trustees installed these fools shows how deep the rot goes.

    The Woke have ingrained psychological/spiritual aberrations.

    They don’t just control academia, finance, entertainment, and the media. They also dominate the State’s apparatus. Which means they basically have the law on their side.

    Perhaps ESG is being de-emphasized by Blackrock, the new vampire squid, but that’s only because they fear losing money more than they value their beliefs. The more pernicious DEI remains a major cultural trend.

    Where will it end?

    Wokism is more than a passing fad. There’s a good chance it will end with a violent confrontation between people who have culturally conservative views and those who want to destroy Western Civilization and upset the nature of society as we know it.

    International Man: 2023 was a year of major geopolitical developments.

    It became evident to even the mainstream media that the war in the Ukraine was not going well for NATO.

    There was also the Hamas attack and the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

    Azerbaijan defeated Armenia to reclaim a long-disputed territory.

    Saudi Arabia welcomed Syria back into the Arab League, ended the war in Yemen, restored diplomatic relations with Iran, joined the BRICS countries, and expanded its economic ties with China.

    These are just a few of the most prominent geopolitical events of 2023.

    What do you make of the geopolitical situation and where things are heading?

    Doug Casey: The end of US hegemony over the world in all areas is becoming obvious. The world resents being bullied and controlled by Washington, DC.

    They realize that the US government is bankrupt and is living entirely on printed money. Its military is bloated and more expensive than the US can afford.

    While it’s bloated, it’s also being gutted, unable to recruit new soldiers and sailors. It’s easy to see why that’s the case. They see pointless wars fomented everywhere. The type of people who traditionally join the military are disgusted by the woke memes circulating through the services. White males, who have always been the backbone of the military, are appalled at being actively discriminated against.

    US hegemony is ending financially, economically, and militarily.

    It’s obvious when you see that Biden and Harris, two utterly incompetent, ineffectual fools, are the nominal heads of the government. Not to mention all the degraded and psychologically damaged people in the cabinet. Of course, nobody has any respect for the US anymore.

    The US hegemony of the last hundred years is on its way out. And as the old order changes, there are going to be upsets. The US will leave a vacuum that will be filled by other forces.

    In fact, the US Government is the biggest danger to the world today. It’s not providing order. By sticking its nose into everyone else’s business everywhere, it’s promoting chaos. Its 800+ bases around the world are provocations. The carrier groups that it has wandering around are sitting ducks with today’s technology. The US is the main source of risk in the world, not safety.

    US military spending is really just corporate welfare for the five big “defense” corporations, which build weapons suited for fighting the last war or maybe the war before the last war. For instance, a missile frigate or destroyer guarding a carrier might carry 100 vertically-launched anti-aircraft missiles at $2 million each. Each missile might succeed in shooting down a $10,000 drone. But what happens when the enemy launches 200 drones at once? The chances are the US loses a $2 billion destroyer, if not a carrier.

    The US government is finding that they’re not only disliked but disrespected by countries and people all over the world. They’re increasingly viewed as a paper tiger. Or the Wizard of Oz. When they lose the fear factor, it’s game over.

    International Man: In 2023, the US continued the trend of more political polarization.

    What were the most consequential events on the US political front, and what do you think comes next?

    Doug Casey: Let me reemphasize that the Jacobins who control Washington, DC, have the same psychological makeup as past revolutionaries I’ve mentioned.

    These people are incapable of changing their minds or reforming. I think they’ll do absolutely anything they can to retain power.

    Meanwhile, traditional Americans in red states see that Trump is being railroaded with lawfare to derail his campaign. They’re angrier than ever, justifiably. The red people and the blue people really hate each other at this point—and can’t talk to each other.

    The country has been completely demoralized as traditional values have been washed away. It’s now very unstable.

    The coming election, should we actually have one, will be not just a political but a cultural contest. Culture wars are especially dangerous in the midst of a financial collapse and economic collapse.

    International Man: The projected annual interest expense on the federal debt hit $1 trillion for the first time in 2023.

    Americans are still paying for the rampant currency debasement during the Covid hysteria as the price of groceries, insurance, rent, and most other things continued to rise in 2023.

    It looks like a recession is on the horizon.

    What are your thoughts on economic developments in 2023 and your outlook for the months ahead?

    Doug Casey: As an amateur student of history, it seems to me that the US has been moving away from the founding principles that made it unique for over a hundred years. I’m 77. I’ve watched it happen firsthand for much of that time.

    The trend has been accelerating.

    The country is heading towards a massive crisis because it’s lost its philosophical footing. The result is going to be a really serious depression. I call it the Greater Depression.

    The spread between the haves who live in multi-million dollar houses and the have-nots who live in tents isn’t new. After all, Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” What’s new is that the middle class is being impoverished. What’s left of the middle class is deeply in debt—student debt, credit card debt, car loan debt, mortgage debt. And if they’re not lucky enough to have a house with mortgage debt, they’re renting. And rents have gone up so rapidly that if the average guy has an unforeseen $500 expense, he can’t pay it.

    That augurs poorly for consumption. It’s said, idiotically, that the American economy rests on consumption. It’s idiotic because it should be said that it rests on production. But I’m not sure the US produces that much anymore.

    Most of the people who “work” basically sit at desks and shuffle papers. Few actively create real wealth.

    On top of that, the country is vastly over-financialized.

    The bond market has already largely collapsed, but it can get a lot worse as interest rates head back up to the levels that they were in the early 1980s and beyond.

    Much lower stock prices are in the cards, both because of high interest rates and because people won’t be consuming such massive quantities of corporate produce.

    The real estate market rests on a foundation of debt. It can easily go bust as interest rates go up. We’re already seeing this with office buildings across the country. And, of course, these office buildings are financed by banks. Banks are going to see a lot of defaults on loans they’ve made.

    Meanwhile, bank capital invested in bonds has eroded because bond prices fall in proportion to the degree rise in interest rates, which have gone from close to zero to 5% or 6%. If banks had to mark their loans and capital investments to the market, most would already be bankrupt.

    Can the government paper all these things over by printing yet more money? I suppose.

    But at some point very soon, the dollar will lose value very rapidly; it will be treated like a hot potato. They’re caught between a rock and a hard place.

    International Man: This year, we saw the price of gold hit a record high, uranium reached $81.25 per pound, and Bitcoin more than doubled as it entered a new bull market. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is up around 21% year to date as of writing.

    What are your thoughts on what happened in the financial markets in 2023 and what could come next?

    Doug Casey: Unfortunately, the US central bank, the Fed, has a gigantic amount of influence over the markets.

    They can employ “quantitative easing,” which means printing money—and “quantitative tightening,” which means decreasing the money and artificially raising interest rates.

    They have many hundreds of Ph.D. economists on staff, but all these people operate on phony Keynesian theories of the way the world works. The consequences of building an economic system on a foundation of paper money and gigantic amounts of debt are potentially catastrophic.

    At this point, the economy’s on the razor edge. If they push the print button and hold it down too long, we could go into a runaway inflation. Or, to tamp down inflation, they might raise interest rates and contract the money supply, which might set off a 1929-style credit collapse.

    We’re caught between Scylla and Charybdis at this point. And I don’t believe it’s a question of a soft landing or a hard landing. It’s a question of how devastating the crash landing will be.

    I hope they can wring one more cycle out of all this because I personally prefer good times to bad times, even if they’re artificial good times, because the bad times are going to be very real.

    *  *  *

    Doug Casey’s forecasts helped investors prepare and profit from: 1) the S&L blowup in the ’80s and ’90s, 2) the 2001 tech stock collapse, 3) the 2008 financial crisis, 4) and now… Doug’s sounding the alarms about a catastrophic event. One he believes could soon strike. To help you prepare and profit, Doug and his team have prepared a special video. Click here to watch now.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 17:25

  • House Republicans Zero In On 'Impeachable Offense' If Biden Was Involved In Hunter Subpoena Dodge
    House Republicans Zero In On ‘Impeachable Offense’ If Biden Was Involved In Hunter Subpoena Dodge

    House Republicans are investigating whether President Biden was involved in his son Hunter’s “scheme” to duck out on a Congressional subpoena to testify earlier this month, which they say “could constitute an impeachable offense.”

    Three House committees; Oversight, Judiciary and Ways & Means, announced on Wednesday that they are investigating “whether sufficient grounds exist to draft articles of impeachment against President Biden for consideration by the full House,” Fox News reports.

    In a letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel notifying him of the additional area of their investigations, Comer and Jordan said: “In light of an official statement from the White House that President Biden was aware in advance that his son, Hunter Biden, would knowingly defy two congressional subpoenas, we are compelled to examine as part of our impeachment inquiry whether the President engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding of Congress.”

    Hunter Biden was scheduled to appear on Dec. 13 before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, and instead, held an impromptu press conference on Capitol Hill, where he claimed: “My father was not financially involved ion my business. Not as a practicing lawyer. Not as a board member of Burisma. Not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman. Not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist.”

    Hunter instead said that he would “only testify in a public forum, a demand for special treatment that the Committees had previously rejected.”

    “Although Mr. Biden professed an interest in answering questions about his actions, he departed the Capitol grounds without taking any questions. The committees subsequently recorded Mr. Biden’s non-appearance at his deposition,” they continued.

    What does Joe think about people who dodge subpoenas? 

    In response to Hunter skipping out, Comer wrote: “Hunter Biden today defied lawful subpoenas and we will now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” adding “We will not provide special treatment because his last name is Biden.”

     

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 17:05

  • Serial California Shoplifter To Stand Trial After 90 Arrests
    Serial California Shoplifter To Stand Trial After 90 Arrests

    Authored by Micaela Ricaforte via The Epoch Times,

    A serial shoplifter from the Bay Area who has been arrested 90 times will be put to trial this week after the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office filed a complaint against him – consolidating 31 misdemeanors from the past year.

    Jesse Leonardo Otero, 44, is well-known by Bay Area businesses and law enforcement for his frequent shoplifting and arrests, local news outlet KRON reported.

    Mr. Otero was released Dec. 8 from the Martinez Detention Facility on misdemeanor charges, according to KRON.

    But just a few hours later, he was arrested outside a Pleasant Hill shopping center near San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.

    He is homeless and sustains a drug addiction through shoplifting and selling stolen goods, according to media reports.

    Despite his extensive criminal record, Mr. Otero avoids lengthy jail sentences because most shoplifting offenses are now classified as misdemeanors if the stolen merchandise amounts to less than $950.

    Because of this, police departments are compelled to issue citations rather than detain Mr. Otero despite his repeated criminal history.

    Police officer Jacob Williams told KRON4, “Prop 47 took away one of the main tools for shoplifting that was used pretty frequently – that being (penal code) 666. So, prior convictions or other instances of shoplift were used to ensure that this person was actually booked into jail.”

    Williams continued:

    “Nowadays, with the way that the filing standards have changed and the law is written, if it’s a petty theft under $950, he’s given the same ticket that you would get for running a stop sign.

    So that person is no longer booked into jail based off the shoplift alone — even if we are aware of prior convictions on his criminal history.

    His latest arrest follows a Nov. 21 arrest in South San Francisco after a theft at a mall, when he attempted to evade police by running onto an interstate highway before being detained.

    A few days later, Mr. Otero reportedly stole $340 worth of items from an East San Francisco bike store.

    “It doesn’t matter whether you steal $10, or $100. All this stuff adds up. By the end of the year, you have a big loss. And for small businesses, I mean, we’re trying to survive,” one store owner told KRON4.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 16:45

  • WTI Extends 'Death Cross' Losses After API Reports Another Unexpected Crude Build
    WTI Extends ‘Death Cross’ Losses After API Reports Another Unexpected Crude Build

    Oil prices pumped and dumped today after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel militia’s attacks on tankers sparked supply concerns overnight which were then completely forgotten about as US Treasury yields puked lower during the day (and Maesrk reportedly scheduling several dozen ships to move through the Suez Canal, suggesting that the world’s leading shipping firm is not afraid of the Houthi attacks – or at least is hopeful about US protection).

    Meanwhile, demand concerns also loom over the market, particularly in China where strong demand over the first nine months of the year has started to moderate, said Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth U.S., in a note.

    “The market expects that approximately 800,000 of the 1.2-1.6 million barrels-per-day growth next year will come from China, with jet fuel leading the charge,” she wrote.

    “The lack of confidence in China’s economy in 2024 remains the market’s biggest concern followed by fear that U.S. production will continue to beat estimates as it did in 2023.”

    The cautious sentiment, however, creates a low bar for positive surprises in 2024, Babin said, in contrast to a 2023 where expectations of massive inventory draws were too hard to live up to.

    Oil ended lower ahead of the API inventory data.

    API

    • Crude +1.837mm (-2.4mm exp)

    • Cushing

    • Gasoline (+100k exp)

    • Distillates (+700k exp)

    After the prior week’s surprise crude build, expectations were for a 2.4mm crude draw last week. But once again, crude stocks unexpectedly built by 1.837mm barrels…

    Source: Bloomberg

    WTI was hovering just below $74 ahead of the API print after a wild day, and extended losses on the unexpected build…

    “As we approach the year end, more of the trade will focus on re-aligning positions on thin trading volume unless of course we see further attacks in the Red Sea area,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities, in a note to clients.

    Finally, we note that WTI suffered a ‘death cross’ today – the first since Sept 2022 – with the 50-day moving average for WTI crossing below the 200-DMA.

    Additionally, timespreads – a critical barometer for supply and demand – softened, with the gap between WTI’s nearest two contracts at 24 cents a barrel in contango compared with 14 cents yesterday.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 16:35

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Dec 27

Today’s News 27th December 2023

  • 'Ballot Banishers' – 2023 Democrats & 1861 Confederates
    ‘Ballot Banishers’ – 2023 Democrats & 1861 Confederates

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

    In the election of 1860, southern Democrats in 10 states of the soon-to-be formalized Confederacy made it almost impossible for their own voters to cast ballots for Abraham Lincoln for President.

    In that sense, the Left in Colorado would have felt right at home in the ante-bellum South – erasing the name of a presidential candidate whom they loathed and by whom they were similarly terrified.

    In eerie fashion, and also similar to the old ethos of the Confederacy, the Democratic Left now believes in state nullification of federal statutes.

    So like the would-be secessionist states of 1860-1, over 550 jurisdictions, almost all in blue states, claim that federal immigration laws no longer apply to them.

    Thus they brag that they can breezily be defied. (Not so easily or willfully are federal gun laws, or EPA mandates, or federal endangered species lists, ignored in red-state jurisdictions.)

    The essence of sanctuary cities is an arrogant sense that federal law means nothing to morally superior local and state governments.

    So they nullify federal immigration laws in the manner of defying tariffs by South Carolina in 1832, or racial integration by Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1963.

    Wallace tried to block integration by opposing federal implementation of the Supreme Court’s ruling against segregation of students by race in public schools and universities, as well as President Kennedy’s federalization of the Alabama national guard.

    This Confederatization of Leftist values and protocols is uncanny. And I wrote about the phenomenon in a recent New Criterion article” The Old South Shall Rise Again”.

    The echoes keep popping up periodically and predictably in the news, as we saw with the Colorado erasure of Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary and likely general election ballot. Take also racial fixations and obsessions. Is the current diversity/inclusion/equity—woke movement based on similar racial essentialism?

    Or in Confederate terms, are we back to certifying one’s particular DNA (now by blood tests, but then by genealogists)? Does the South’s old one-sixteenth/one-drop rule (ask Elizabeth Warren) still determine racial status and privilege?

    Do our DEI/woke racially segregated campus dorms, segregated safe spaces, segregated graduations, and segregated events echo Wallace’s 1963 Inauguration Address chant—“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”?

    Are blue-states becoming like one-dimensional “King Cotton” economies of the past?

    Just as a “King Cotton” economy ran the politics of the Old South through its unprecedented wealth, so too our modern leftist magnates are often one-industry “Big Tech” titans—of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—who more or less by their PAC and foundation “donations” (Mark Zuckerberg alone accounted for $419 million ) warped the work of registrars in many of the key 2020 counties.

    One mark of Confederates was the strangling of the southern middle class. A tiny plantationists elite sat atop a vast caste of black slaves and a poor hireling white population.

    Yet in terms of aggregate state income and wealth, by 1860 five of the wealthiest ten states in America were slave states and about to secede—given the unquenchable global appetite of the growing Industrial Revolution for southern cotton. (Was the desire for and power of Cotton then like iPhones and Google searches?)

    So the sheer power, wealth, and influence of the plantationists remind one of clout and superciliousness of California’s Silicon Valley and its $9-trillion dollars in market capitalization.

    Indeed, it is eerie in debates and declarations how California Governor Gavin Newsom brags about California mega-Big Tech success and wealth. Often Newsom talks grandly of his Bay Area, Silicon Valley sector, as if he was Sen. James Hammond, a southern plantation owner, and U.S. Senator from South Carolina, who boasted defiantly in 1858 that “Cotton is King!”

    But like Hammond, Newsom then predictably grows silent about the state’s one-fifth of the resident population below the poverty line, one third of all US welfare recipients, the crumbling infrastructure, the dismal schools, the huge multibillion-dollar state deficits, the shrinking and fleeing middle class, the exploding homeless, and the retribalization of the state’s society by race.

    Just as King Cotton seemed to ensure palatial homes amid an impoverished general population, poor roads, anemic industry and manufacturing, few rails, and bad public schools, so too does blue-state wealth reside disproportionally in the hands of the few atop a growing class of poor and a vanishing middle class.

    In the years before the Civil War and in the ante-bellum Jim Crow South, southern states bled populations fleeing to the new territories in the West or to the manufacturing and industrial boomtowns of the North. They were escaping a fossilized society of have and have nots—eerily representative of the current ethos of the blue-state paradigm.

    California has the richest zip codes and greatest number of billionaires, and near highest poverty rate. New York is close; both have largest number of residents escaping their states—ironically to a new South that is becoming as dynamic as the old bygone North.

    So the recent ballot erasing of Colorado fits this larger picture of blue-states emulating the values of ante-bellum southern states – erasing ballots, defying federal laws, fixating on race and racial privileges, and catering to a one-dimensional medieval economy and caste, amid a growing underclass struggling with neglected infrastructure, poor schools, and growing poverty.

    So what will be the new/old Democratic 2024 election mantra?

    “Vote for us—and ballot deletion, states’ rights, federal nullification, racial essentialism and segregation, and a one-party, one-economy plantationist nation”?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/27/2023 – 00:00

  • China's Spy Agencies Now Targeting The Country's Economic Pessimists
    China’s Spy Agencies Now Targeting The Country’s Economic Pessimists

    In a move that we wouldn’t be surprised to see take hold in the U.S., China is now reportedly cracking down on its citizens who have a negative opinion regarding the country’s economy. 

    A new Nikkei article detailed how the country’s spy agencies have turned their focus to the country’s financial naysayers. 

    “Various cliches that denigrate the Chinese economy have emerged. False theories about ‘China’s deterioration’ are being circulated to attack China’s unique socialist system,” the country’s Ministry of State Security said at China’s recent annual conference to set economic policy. 

    When the Ministry opened its WeChat account in summer of this past year, its first post on August 1 simply read: “We need to mobilize the entire Chinese society to crack down on and prevent espionage.”

    The revelation that the spy agency has been so openly active on WeChat was unexpected, the report says. While its main functions include targeting spies and engaging in counterintelligence operations, protecting China’s economy is not typically within its scope.

    However, the agency’s recent posts following the Central Economic Work Conference on December 11-12, along with similar communications after a significant economic policy meeting in late October, suggest that the ministry is broadening its range of responsibilities.

    “How strange that China’s economic policies for next year, ones that have just been adopted, were first explained by the Ministry of State Security,” one Chinese economist told Nikkei. 

    The spy agency’s recent social media activity, coinciding with growing online skepticism about the government’s optimistic economic narrative, implies a crackdown on those providing objective yet critical analyses of China’s faltering economy.

    Experts highlighting issues like the exodus of foreign companies and declining consumer confidence, often with detailed economic data, are particularly at risk. These analyses typically avoid directly contradicting the government’s assertion of achieving a 5% growth target, reflecting caution under China’s strict speech regulations.

    The Ministry of State Security, traditionally focused on counterintelligence, is now venturing into economic discourse – a shift that suggests the Chinese government views overly realistic or negative economic assessments, which it considers influenced by foreign narratives of decline, as threats to national security. This indicates potential repercussions for those with pessimistic viewpoints, the report noted. 

    Read the full report here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 23:30

  • 17 Individuals On FBI Terror Watch List Caught Attempting Entry At Southern Border
    17 Individuals On FBI Terror Watch List Caught Attempting Entry At Southern Border

    Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

    Border Patrol officers in the month of November identified 17 individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list attempting to illegally enter the United States outside an established port of entry on the southern border.

    The 17 were processed by law enforcement agents after crossing into the United States, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). There has been an increasing trend in the number of known terrorists found to be entering the U.S. southern border beyond ports of entry, with a record 169 individuals detected in Financial Year 2023.

    A record number of individuals of interest on the watch list have also been attempting entry at U.S. ports of entry on either the northern or southern border, with 564 individuals detected at ports in FY 2023.

    The 17 individuals last month add to 13 entries by individuals on the watch list caught outside a port of entry in October. Another 49 individuals were apprehended attempting entry at a U.S. port of entry since October for FY 2024.

    The federal dataset maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center includes the identifying information of known and suspected terrorists and terrorist groups, as well as the information of their affiliates.

    “Encounters of watchlisted individuals at our borders are very uncommon, underscoring the critical work CBP Agents and Officers carry out every day on the frontlines,” the CBP website says.

    The increase in individuals on the terror watch list attempting to enter the United States is of concern, as they only represent the ones processed by Border Patrol. It is possible that other individuals on the list may have attempted entry and evaded law enforcement, being among the many “gotaways” getting through the porous and underresourced border.

    The terror watch list figures also come as Members of Congress voice concern about a heightened risk of terrorists entering the United States following Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the resulting war.

    Illegal Immigration Crisis

    FY23 broke the record for illegal immigrant encounters.

    Over 242,000 illegal immigrants were processed by Border Patrol at the southern border in November—the third-highest monthly record. Nearly 80 percent of these apprehensions were for border crossings outside of legal ports of entry.

    Historic CBP data indicates U.S. border officials had never logged more than 80,000 encounters in any given November prior to 2022.

    Of the 191,113 November Title 8 apprehensions, more than 6,300 were illegal immigrants attempting another entry to the United States after already being removed by law enforcement for failing to meet the necessary requirements for asylum.

    These figures do not include the 43,000 immigrants who followed the U.S. immigration process and have been granted parole through the CBP One app.

    December totals are expected to easily surpass the November totals, as agents have been consistently overwhelmed by more than 12,000 encounters each day at the southern border, particularly at the Ports of Entry in Lukeville, Arizona, and Eagle Pass, Texas.

    The Department of Homeland Security itself warned in its October threat assessment that, with agents reporting an increasing number of attempted entries from the terror watch list, there is a greater risk that “terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.”

    “Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and permissive environments to facilitate access to the United States,” the assessment also said.

    Funding for Border Security

    Congress is currently negotiating a $105 billion supplemental funding bill that ties together funding for the border with funding for Israel’s war against Hamas and support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

    The Biden administration has allocated $14 billion towards beefing up border personnel and staff to process asylum claims. However, Republicans want to see the Biden administration act on border security without conditions, and in a manner that tackles what they say are the underlying problems causing the mass surge in illegal immigration. They are pushing for stricter border security measures, completion of the border wall in gaps between ports of entry, and limits on the use of humanitarian parole, as well as policies to dissuade illegal border crossings and frivolous asylum claims.

    “We are facing a serious challenge along the southwest border and CBP and our federal partners need more resources from Congress—as outlined in the supplemental budget request—to enhance border security and America’s national security,” senior official performing the duties of the commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement on the need for immediate border funding.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 23:00

  • Watch: Chinese Rocket Booster Nearly Destroys House
    Watch: Chinese Rocket Booster Nearly Destroys House

    A dramatic video shared on social media platform X captures the moment a booster from a Chinese Long March 3B carrier rocket plummets from the sky, crashes into a hillside forest and explodes feet away from a house. 

    Chinese state-run media outlet Global Times reported the Long March-3B rocket with a Yuanzheng-1 upper delivered two Beidou satellites into medium Earth orbit on Tuesday morning from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the country’s Southwest Sichuan Province. 

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    The launch was deemed a success, with the 57th and the 58th Beidou satellites added to the BeiDou Satellite Navigation System, China’s mega constellation of satellites. 

    However, video footage of the rocket’s booster falling from the sky and crashing into a hillside emerged hours after the launch on Chinese social media, then shared with X. 

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    Another video shows the crash site, with very toxic hypergolic propellant rising from the ashes. The booster landed just feet from a house. 

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    Given China’s ability to copy technology, one might wonder why they haven’t yet deployed a self-landing booster similar to SpaceX’s technology developed by Elon Musk. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 22:30

  • "Not A Plan B Person", Ramaswamy Says On Rejecting The Idea Of Joining Trump Administration
    “Not A Plan B Person”, Ramaswamy Says On Rejecting The Idea Of Joining Trump Administration

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he is not a “plan B” kind of guy, when asked about the possibility of taking a job in a possible second Trump administration.

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, Nev., on Oct. 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    In an appearance on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Mr. Ramaswamy said he was focusing on his presidential campaign, despite trailing the Republican frontrunner former President Donald Trump.

    “I think that I’m not a plan B person,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “I didn’t get to where I am—I’m 38 years old, I’ve found multiple multi-billion dollar companies, we’re blessed with the American dream to be able to self-fiance and lift this campaign up.”

    “I didn’t get to where I am, and Apoorva didn’t get to where she is by being ‘plan B people,’” he added, referring to his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy.

    Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, expressed confidence going into the Iowa caucus, which is scheduled on Jan. 15.

    “So I’m actually confident we’re going to overdeliver massively at the Iowa caucus,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

    “Many of the people supporting us are first-time caucus-goers, some of them young people, some of them America-first patriots or libertarians who haven’t thought of themselves as traditional Republicans who are coming out in droves,” he added. “I think we’re going to have a major surprise on January 15.”

    There’s been speculation that Mr. Ramaswamy could be President Trump’s running mate for 2024. In August, President Trump indicated that he was open to the idea of having Mr. Ramaswamy as a potential vice president.

    Also in August, Mr. Ramaswamy praised the former president as “the best president of the 21st century,” during the first GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee.

    “I respect Trump and his accomplishments for this country,” he said. “Unlike a lot of the other candidates, I’m not sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking some decision he made.”

    If elected, Mr. Ramaswamy believes he would be well-suited to lead the country.

    “But I believe we are the right people to take our America-first agenda to the next level. I think it’s going to take somebody with fresh legs. Somebody from the next generation if I may say it to lead the next generation,” he said. “I believe we will be successful in this.”

    It is not the first time that Mr. Ramaswamy has made such a remark about himself.

    In November, during a podcast interview with Patrick Bet-David, host of Valuetainment, Mr. Ramaswamy also said he was not a “plan B person,” when asked about the prospect of being President Trump’s vice president.

    “I’m not a plan B person,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “I didn’t get to where I am in life by having plan A goals and then setting up your bifurcated backup plans on the important things.”

    “When you’re guided by your mission and purpose, and you set out and you accomplish plan A. If you fail, then you figure out then,” he added. “I think it would be fake to just sort of say, ‘Under any Scenario, I’m not gonna run in 2028’ or ‘I’m not going to, you know, if I don’t win or whatever.’”

    Despite Mr. Ramaswamy’s optimism, he recently finished fourth in the latest Emerson College poll in Iowa. The poll, conducted from Dec. 15 to Dec. 17, found Mr. Ramaswamy with 8 percent of support, trailing President Trump (50 percent), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (17 percent), and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (15 percent).

    A national poll released by Echelon Insights, conducted from Dec. 12 to Dec. 16, found President Trump in a commanding lead with 70 percent of support, with Ms. Haley in second place with 10 percent. Mr. DeSantis finished in third place with 9 percent, followed by Mr. Ramaswamy with 5 percent.

    In a head-to-head matchup, President Trump defeated Ms. Haley 76 percent to 20 percent.

    However, President Trump picked up 47 percent of support, trailing President Joe Biden by one percentage point in a two-way matchup. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 22:00

  • Bill Barr Calls On Supreme Court To 'Smack' Down Colorado Trump Ruling
    Bill Barr Calls On Supreme Court To ‘Smack’ Down Colorado Trump Ruling

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former Attorney General Bill Barr said that the U.S. Supreme Court should strike down a ruling issued by the Colorado Supreme Court that barred former President Donald Trump from the state ballot.

    Ivanka Trump listens to Attorney General Bill Barr during a meeting on human trafficking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on Aug. 4, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

    Last week, a majority of judges on Colorado’s high court said that the former president is ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot. Some analysts said that it’s likely that the former president would appeal the decision to the high court.

    The U.S. Supreme Court “has to smack this down very quickly,” Mr. Barr told Fox News last week, responding to the decision.

    And Mr. Barr—who served in the Trump administration but has become a frequent critic of President Trump after leaving office and has disputed claims about 2020 election fraud—added that “the legal argument here for it is ridiculous.”

    “Even more importantly, it is highly destructive, and it’s exactly the kind of tactics by the left that created Donald Trump in the first place,” he said.

    The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. It overturned a ruling from a district court that said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

    “A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4–3 decision. The dissenting justices argued that the ruling violated the former president’s due process rights.

    The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.

    “We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the court’s majority wrote. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

    Other state high courts have rejected similar arguments lodged by left-wing groups claiming that President Trump cannot appear on ballots due to the insurrection clause. Although the former president has been charged with crimes in several jurisdictions in the past year, he has not been charged with or convicted of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

    In a statement last week, Trump legal spokeswoman Alina Habba said that “this ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”

    Other than Mr. Barr, a number of legal experts and even some Democratic officials have disputed the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment-based attempts to block the former president from running.

    The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters, aided by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who argued that President Trump should be disqualified because, according to the group, he was trying to obstruct the transfer of presidential power to President Biden after the 2020 election on Jan. 6.

    CREW President Noah Bookbinder, who currently serves in the Department of Homeland Security’s advisory council and was appointed by current Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said in a statement that the court’s decision is “not only historic and justified but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country.”

    Meanwhile, some pollsters and consultants have predicted that the ruling may only bolster President Trump’s chances in the 2024 election. According to a RealClearPolitics average, the former president’s lead in the GOP primary has only increased since the court’s ruling.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 21:30

  • "This Is Our Town" – Inside A Small-Town Battle Against A Giant Chinese Battery Plant
    “This Is Our Town” – Inside A Small-Town Battle Against A Giant Chinese Battery Plant

    Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Two common signs stood out on the front lawns and street corners of Manteno, Illinois, on Dec. 13: “Keep Christ in Christmas,” sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, and “Choose Manteno: No Go on Gotion!”

    Ten miles south of where Chicago’s suburban sprawl finally peters out, Manteno is the latest battleground over Chinese companies coming to middle America—in this case, the electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer Gotion Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of China’s Gotion (or Guoxuan) High-Tech Co.

    While a recent Manteno board decision to rezone a manufacturing site favorably to Gotion came as a setback for opponents, the war for the industrial future of Manteno—and America—is far from over.

    The recently formed group Concerned Citizens of Manteno fired back with a lawsuit against Gotion and the village on Dec. 22.

    In Manteno and towns like it, Americans are steeling themselves for a struggle.

    “The Chinese government does not like us. Look what happened with the coronavirus. … But this is our town, not theirs, and we’re going to fight to save it,” Gotion opponent Ryan McHeffey told The Epoch Times.

    The story begins in early September, when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, came to Manteno and revealed that Gotion would site a $2 billion EV battery plant in the community.

    The proposed location was a 100-plus acre property at 333 S. Spruce St. that includes a former Kmart distribution center. The parcel lies on the west side of Interstate 57, the north–south artery that cleaves Manteno in two as it whooshes down to the Missouri Bootheel.

    The deal came with $536 million in incentives from the state of Illinois. Kankakee County has also offered the company a 30-year property tax abatement. The project could also be eligible for federal green energy tax credits.

    The project will deliver “2,600 new good-paying jobs in Manteno,” Mr. Pritzker said in a statement.

    Mayor Timothy Nugent, who has ruled the village with little opposition since the mid-2000s, described the Gotion announcement as a “huge win.”

    Although there were rumblings about Gotion in the weeks beforehand, Mr. Pritzker’s September announcement caught many by surprise—and it galvanized opposition.

    Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks during a ceremonial groundbreaking at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Sept. 28, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    “All of a sudden, everybody heard about it,” Manteno resident Julie Holda told The Epoch Times.

    Ms. Holda is one of numerous locals campaigning against Gotion.

    Manteno activists who spoke with The Epoch Times cited a range of worries, including over highly toxic materials employed in lithium battery production, the use of taxpayer subsidies for a foreign company, possible threats to flora and fauna, destabilizing development of the sleepy village, and the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    In a September letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting an in-depth look at Gotion by the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other Republican officials describe those alleged ties.

    “Li Zhen, the company’s founder and chairman, is a member of the Anhui Provincial Federation of Industry and Commerce, which is part of the CCP’s United Front system and takes direction from the CCP. His son, Li Chen, who is also Guoxuan’s CEO, is a member of the Baohe District Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee, which is an advisory body of the CCP,” the lawmakers wrote.

    Annette LaMore, a retired postal carrier and anti-Gotion activist, told The Epoch Times, “We are inviting our enemies into our town.”

    Mike Barry, an area football coach, questioned the impact of the property tax cap on homeowners as well as the project’s long-term effect on property values.

    “How am I going to sell my house … with a lithium battery factory?” he asked.

    Michael Barry (L) and other opponents of the proposed Gotion factory in Manteno, Ill., on Dec. 13, 2023. (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times)

    A Town Divided

    November polling by a center-right group, Cor Strategies, revealed that a majority of Kankakee County residents oppose the development, with just 27 percent in support. The results suggest that Gotion critics have most of the area’s public on their side.

    But Manteno residents who spoke with The Epoch Times acknowledged that the issue has raised tensions in the town.

    At one point, while leading The Epoch Times’ reporter through a business in town, activists explained why they were so circumspect.

    “This is literally the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s right now. We just walked into the McCoy’s territory,” one of them said.

    Manteno resident Marina Fisher said: “It hurts so bad. This has really divided this town.”

    She spoke to The Epoch Times with her 13-year-old son, Emilio, and her 1-year-old boy, Evers. Evers is her “rainbow baby”—a child born after a miscarriage.

    Like others who spoke with The Epoch Times, Ms. Fisher came to Manteno to get away from all the problems in Chicagoland.

    Now, she’s worried that toxic materials at the plant could make her new home unsafe. At issue are lithium, the base material for the batteries, and other chemicals used in battery manufacturing.

    In a 2023 review on the health risks of lithium-ion batteries, Polish researchers noted that lithium has long been prescribed to patients with bipolar disorder, meaning that scientists have some insight into lithium toxicity in people. The health of the kidneys, thyroid gland, and parathyroid gland can all be jeopardized. Lithium has also been linked to birth defects.

    Locals are particularly concerned about another chemical, N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), that may or may not be at play in Manteno.

    Robert Dube, an attorney involved in the Manteno lawsuit, told The Epoch Times that Gotion “could not confirm” whether it would use it in its proposed facility.

    Marina Fisher, with her sons, Evers, 1, and Emilio, 13, says she will move away if Gotion’s lithium battery plant comes to town, in Manteno, Ill., on Dec. 16, 2023. (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times)

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded in 2020 that the use of NMP in lithium-ion battery manufacturing presents “unreasonable risks.” It has linked NMP exposure to kidney toxicity, liver toxicity, neurotoxicity, and more.

    Pollution, including water pollution, is nothing new to the region. Northern Illinois is dotted with superfund sites designated by the EPA. In places such as Ms. Fisher’s old neighborhoods in Chicago, Back of the Yards and McKinley Park, a map developed by University of Illinois researchers reveals dangerous levels of lead, a neurotoxin, in the soil.

    In June, ABC reported that residents in nearby University Park still stick to bottled water four years after lead was found in the drinking water. The water was supplied by a private utility, Aqua Illinois, at about the time it began sourcing from the Kankakee River rather than wells. Aqua Illinois is the same utility that supplies water to Manteno (reporting from the period doesn’t indicate that lead pollution affected Manteno).

    Village of Manteno officials have said that “residential water supply will not be affected by the water needs from the Gotion plant,” citing assurances from Aqua Illinois. It stated that the plant’s wastewater will be low risk after some level of pre-treatment of the sort common for “other manufacturing plants in the area.”

    But Ms. Fisher isn’t satisfied. She worries that air and water pollution could sicken her and her young children.

    “Not everybody can afford cases of water,” she said.

    Like some others in Manteno, she feels that she “would be forced to move” if Gotion comes to town.

    Lithium batteries are displayed in the workshop of a lithium battery manufacturing company in Anhui Province, China, on Nov. 14, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

    Mrs. LaMore is also concerned about the health hazards to Manteno residents. She pointed out that the proposed facility isn’t far from residential subdivisions on both sides of Interstate 57.

    “If there’s a leak, and it gets into our water, we’re doomed,” she told The Epoch Times.

    Locals also worry about what the prevailing westerlies could carry into town from the Gotion facility. The proposed plant is on the west side of town and almost directly west of an elementary school.

    Another Gotion critic, Bob Forsythe, questioned the safety of operating a lithium battery plant so close to rock quarry blasting activity.

    Shannyn Dockery, known as the “butterfly lady,” fears that wastewater from the plant could imperil endangered or otherwise significant plants and animals in the region. Those unique flora and fauna include the Kankakee mallow, a flowering plant with a native range restricted to a single island in the Kankakee River, Langham Island.

    “We are also talking about monarch butterflies,” she said, noting that monarchs regularly migrate through the area.

    “My house is a monarch waystation. I have plants specifically for the monarchs.”

    Ms. Dockery worries that Mr. Pritzker’s power over the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board could affect how the state assesses those potential threats as it moves closer to approving Gotion’s plan. Board members are appointed by the governor.

    Fran Ludwig and Bob Forsythe, two of the many local residents who have organized against a proposed Gotion electric vehicle battery plant, in Manteno, Ill., on Dec. 13, 2023. (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times)

    Wider Opposition

    Manteno isn’t the first place Gotion and its political sponsors have met with citizen resistance.

    The company already faced backlash from residents in Green Charter Township, Michigan, where township board members were recalled in November over a Gotion battery plant proposal.

    Jeff Peticolas, a Michigander who opposes the plant there, told The Epoch Times that he’s upset that the Gotion plans have been “dropped on unsuspecting little townships and villages, towns that didn’t see it coming.”

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 21:00

  • New Headwind For 'Gender-Affirming Care' For Children: Soaring Malpractice Insurance Costs
    New Headwind For ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ For Children: Soaring Malpractice Insurance Costs

    Where the controversy over so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is concerned, government regulation commands most of the attention. However, as any well-read libertarian will tell you, market forces can also impose their own powerful form of regulation. Happily, we’re beginning to see market forces create a major impediment to the practice of irreparably altering the bodies of confused adolescents. 

    Those forces have emerged in the form of soaring malpractice insurance premiums for clinics that use hormones, puberty blockers and surgeries to address gender-confused children. Many insurers are refusing to offer coverage at any price. 

    That’s what The Project of the Quad Cities found. The Illinois practice was ramping up its capabilities at its clinic on the Iowa border, with a goal of catering to Iowa minors who could no longer receive gender-altering services in their own state after they were banned in March.

    The Project of the Quad Cities location in Moline, Illinois near the Iowa border (Project of the Quad Cities photo)

    Then they tried getting insurance. “I didn’t anticipate that it was going to be a big deal,” the clinic’s Andy Rowe told Time. However, a long list of medical malpractice insurers threw cold water on their ambitions. 

    “The first one specifically excluded gender-affirming care for minors. The next response was the same. And the one after that. By early November, more than a dozen malpractice insurers had declined to offer the clinic a policy.” – Time 

    When the clinic finally found an insurer willing to provide coverage, Rowe was hit with sticker shock. He’d anticipated a premium of $10,000 at most. The actual price: $50,000. Appealing to donors, the clinic has almost raised enough funds to absorb that cost. In the meantime, its vision of a border clinic bustling with Iowa children hasn’t been realized.

    Insurers’ mounting unease comes as a growing number of suits are being filed by individuals against doctors they accuse of rushing them — as children — into permanently altering their bodies rather than addressing adolescent angst over puberty.

    Isabelle Ayala and attorney Jordan Campbell are suing doctors and the American Academy of Pediatrics (Independent Women’s Forum via New York Post)

    This month, now-20-year-old Isabelle Ayala sued her Rhode Island doctors and others described in her suit as “a collection of actors who prioritized politics and ideology over children’s safety, health, and well-being.” One of them is alleged to have determined in a single, one-hour visit that she should be given cross-sex hormones, overlooking factors that included autism, ADHD and PTSD from being sexually assaulted as a child. Ayala told the New York Post:

    “I just really don’t want this to happen to other vulnerable young girls. I don’t want puberty to be the enemy. I don’t want our natural biology to be the enemy.”

    To some extent, the insurance-premium mechanism of market-driven regulation reflects changes in government regulation: Several states have extended the statute of limitations for filing malpractice lawsuits springing from gender-altering therapies and surgeries. In Arkansas, for example, the threat of a suit will now hang over the insurer of a gender-transition practice for 15 years after minor patients turns 18. That’s a sharp contrast to the typical requirement that a suit be filed within one to three years of injury. 

    “If state laws increase the risk of civil liability for health professionals, premiums will be adjusted accordingly and appropriately to reflect the level of financial risk incurred by the insured,” the Medical Professional Liability Association’s Mike Stinson told Time. 

    Insurers, acting out of their own self-interest, are disincentivizing a risky activity that some governments allow and many even encourage: Chalk up another benefit to society delivered by what Adam Smith called “the invisible hand.”  

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 20:30

  • India Deploys Three Warships To Waters Near Iran After Tanker Attack
    India Deploys Three Warships To Waters Near Iran After Tanker Attack

    Via The Cradle,

    The Indian Navy has deployed three guided missile destroyers to the Arabian Sea in response to an alleged drone attack on an Israeli-linked chemical tanker last week. New Delhi also uses long-range maritime patrol aircraft for “domain awareness,” the defense ministry reported Monday night.

    On Saturday, the Liberian-flagged MV Chem Pluto, a Japanese-owned tanker traveling 370km off the coast of India, was reportedly hit by a kamikaze drone, according to the Pentagon.

    Illustrative: iStock photo

    The Israeli-linked tanker had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India, according to maritime security firm Ambrey. The Indian Navy says they are examining the specifics of the attack on the MV Chem Puto, which managed to anchor in Mumbai on Tuesday.

    Although Indian officials say a preliminary evaluation suggests a drone strike, they emphasize that additional forensic and technical examinations are necessary to determine the exact method of attack.

    Washington blamed the attack on Iran, saying the drone had been launched “directly” from the Islamic Republic. “We declare these claims completely worthless,” said Nasser Kanaani, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, on Monday.

    “Such claims are aimed at projecting, distracting public attention, and covering up for the full support of the US government for the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza,” he added.

    Saturday’s drone attack came less than a week after the US announced the formation of the so-called Operation Prosperity Guardian, described by US officials as a new “coalition of the willing” that seeks to counter the threat posed by Yemen in the Red Sea.

    Although the Yemeni armed forces have been conducting the attacks against Israeli-linked vessels of their own accord, the Pentagon insists Iran is somehow involved.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “The [Yemeni] resistance has its own tools […] and acts by its own decisions and capabilities,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri told Mehr News Agency on Saturday.

    “The fact that certain powers, such as the US and the Israelis, suffer strikes from the resistance movement […] should in no way call into question the reality of the strength of the resistance in the region,” he added.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 20:00

  • Robert Shiller Warns Of 'Cataclysm' For US Dollar Reserve Status If Confiscated Russian Assets Given To Ukraine
    Robert Shiller Warns Of ‘Cataclysm’ For US Dollar Reserve Status If Confiscated Russian Assets Given To Ukraine

    If the United States shifts frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, it would be cataclysmic for the US Dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, says Nobel Prize winning Yale professor, Robert Shiller.

    “If America does this to Russia today… then tomorrow it can do this to anyone,” he told Italian news outlet La Repubblica in an interview published Sunday.

    “This will destroy the halo of security that surrounds the dollar and will be the first step towards de-dollarization, which many are increasingly confidently leaning toward, from China to developing countries, not to mention Russia itself,” Schiller continued.

    The US, EU, and allies have frozen some $300 billion of Russian foreign exchange reserve assets since last year after slapping the Kremlin with sanctions over the Ukraine war. Over the past year, various ideas have been tossed around regarding using the funds to aid Ukraine.

    Earlier this month, the Financial Times described doing so as “a radical step that would open a new chapter in the west’s financial warfare against Moscow.”

    “I can’t convince myself that this [confiscation of Russian assets] is the right way,” said Schiller, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2013, and is known for his expertise in behavioral economics and macroeconomics. He was named one of Bloomberg’s ’50 most influential people’ in global finance.

    “In addition to the fact that this will be confirmation for the Russian leader that what is happening in Ukraine is a proxy war, it could paradoxically turn against America and the entire West,” he continued, adding that giving confiscated Russian assets to Ukraine would become “a cataclysm for the current dollar-dominated economic system.”

    Russia has called the confiscation unlawful, and warned that any country considering participating in sanctions should expect a mirror response from Moscow.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 19:30

  • The Guardrails That Once Prevented Wars Are Failing
    The Guardrails That Once Prevented Wars Are Failing

    Authored by Abishur Prakash via Politico.eu,

    The Israel-Hamas war is an ominous message to the world: The guardrails that long stopped wars from breaking out are now effectively failing.

    Of course, Ukraine was the first sign of this. After Russia invaded the country, it quickly became the worst conflict in Europe since World War II. Except, at the onset, the world didn’t know what to make of it. Was this a “one-off” event or the start of something else?

    The latest flareup in the Middle East answers this question.

    The conflict between Israel and Hamas signals that a new era has begun — one where wars are no longer black-swan events that occur every decade or so. Rather, they are becoming a regular occurrence, representing the most significant transformation to global affairs since 9/11. This is a pivotal moment in history, as it signals that whatever stood in the way of conflicts erupting is now falling by the wayside. Nations are no longer scared to throw punches, and war has become acceptable again.

    While the spotlight is on Israel-Hamas, there’s also the ongoing conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh; soldiers at heightened readiness on the border between Serbia and Kosovo; military coups spreading throughout Africa from Gabon to Niger; and frequent clashes between India and China. Then, alongside all this, there’s the potential for the current Hamas war to spread across the region.

    This new era is shaking the foundation the world has stood on since World War II. And it represents global “structural change,” which will affect everything from connectivity to technology and sustainability.

    Firstly, as wars break out, they are starting to fragment the neighborhoods around them, accelerating vertical globalization — creating an environment filled with walls and barriers. Whatever integration existed, and was being nurtured, is now being reversed.

    In the Middle East, for example, Saudi Arabia has now “frozen” normalizing relations with Israel — a step that was being brokered by the United States. And if the Arab world once again starts to view Israel as the “black sheep,” it will fracture the new economic connections that have been forming — like those between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — and are reliant on a unified, stable Middle East.

    Additionally, as this new era of war unfolds, the world will start to view the West differently — especially the U.S. As more conflicts erupt, many nations may begin questioning whether the Western camp is losing its power to call the shots and steer the world. And if the threat of Western sanctions is no longer paralyzing to nations, it will likely cause countries to start managing wars in their own unique ways.

    We are already seeing examples of this. For instance, when the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October, the Saudi crown prince dialed his Iranian counterpart to discuss the conflict. This is unprecedented — and it represents this new era’s “geopolitical nuances.”

    Furthermore, when it comes to bringing “peace” to conflicts, newly emerging diplomatic forums will also start to compete with established ones. Of course, the United Nations remains pivotal, but it is no longer the only diplomatic option — there is the recently expanded BRICS bloc and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) too. And in some cases, governments are shunning diplomacy entirely. So, which one of these competing geopolitical blocs will nations at war turn to?

    Israeli tank drives near Gaza, as viewed from the Israeli side of the border on December 21, 2023 | Maja Hitij/Getty Images

    Finally, there is a new group of “problem solvers” emerging as well — nations attempting to stop war and offer “postwar solutions.” In the case of the Ukraine war, the new broker is Qatar, hoping that Arab neutrality can bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table. And, of course, countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Singapore stand ready to do the same. These nations will continue to bring their own formula and ideas to this new era of war, shaping what regions and economies look like post-conflict.

    For anybody who truly wants to see, the writing is on the wall. The next decade or so could be filled with more fighting and upheaval than the world has seen in almost a century. And the barriers that stopped wars from breaking out in the past — from Western sanctions to citizen uprisings — have all eroded severely.

    And as these existing guardrails break down, new ones aren’t being built to replace them, which means we may be entering a period akin to the Wild West. Moreover, as nukes begin to spread on the back of wars and flashpoints — like Russian nuclear warheads in Belarus, or South Korea wanting to host American nuclear weapons — a new game of “nuclear chess” has begun.

    Thus, the most pressing challenge facing the world now is to change the global architecture in such a way that when wars do break out, new solutions exist to contain them and maintain a certain status quo. One such idea would be an agreement between the G20, stating that nations who start the next wars will lose their ability to trade with the group’s members.

    Otherwise, as nations and businesses are busy running from fire to fire, from war to war, the forces that have the potential to truly transform the world (and humanity) — from climate change and AI to demographic crisis — will start to unleash chaos without limits.

    *  *  *

    Abishur Prakash is the founder of The Geopolitical Business, Inc. He is a global keynote speaker and the author of five books. His latest book is called “The World Is Vertical.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 19:00

  • Navalny 'Reappears' At Harsh Arctic Prison In Remote Siberia
    Navalny ‘Reappears’ At Harsh Arctic Prison In Remote Siberia

    Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny starting two weeks ago was reported “missing” by his team of lawyers and supporters, as he had disappeared into the Russian prison system after a transfer.

    He had up until early December been held at a prison some 150 miles east of Moscow. But he’s now reestablished contact with his lawyer and is at a very remote Siberian penal colony. “We have found Alexey,” his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on X.

    Kharp, in Siberia. Image via Russian Federal Penitentiary Service via AP.

    He’s now serving his 19-plus year sentence in a remote place called Kharp, in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, which lies almost 2,000 miles from Moscow and is difficult to even reach: 

    Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, said the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp where Navalny is now being held, known as “Polar Wolf,” is “one of the northernmost and most remote colonies.”

    “The conditions there are harsh, with a special regime in the permafrost zone. It is very difficult to get there, and there are no letter delivery systems,” Zhdanov wrote on X.

    Navalny said in a multi-part message posted to XI: “I’m fine… I’m totally relieved that I’ve finally made it.” He described, “Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (a traditional Russian winter footwear).” He noted too: “I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation.”

    For various countries’ prison systems, including Russia’s, it’s normal that when an inmate is transferred there’s some degree of a lapse in time before family members or lawyers are then later informed where they were moved to.

    Weeks ago, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov shrugged it off as but a normal part of the Russian administrative system surrounding prisoners and penal colonies. When peppered by questions from reporters, Peskov had responded, “No. I repeat again: we do not have the capacity, or right, or desire, to track the fates of those prisoners who are serving sentences by order of a court.”

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    Navalny’s legal team and supporters have long waged a somewhat successful PR campaign to keep his name in the news. For example, Navalny ally Maria Pevchikh had pressured the United Nations Human Rights Committee to help find his exact whereabouts. “What is happening with Alexey is, in fact, an enforced disappearance and a flagrant violation of his fundamental rights. Answers must be given,” she said earlier in December.

    His supporters have claimed Navalny has the potential to disrupt Putin’s 2024 reelection plans, however, it remains that the opposition activist barely has name recognition inside Russia. In August, he was handed an additional 19 years in prison for charges of “extremism” on top of the 11 and a half he was already serving.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 18:30

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene Complains About FBI’s Inaction After Being Swatted For The 8th Time On Christmas Day
    Marjorie Taylor Greene Complains About FBI’s Inaction After Being Swatted For The 8th Time On Christmas Day

    Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

    Authorities are investigating a Christmas Day swatting attempt at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s residence in Rome, Georgia, but the Republican congresswoman says enough isn’t being done to catch the offenders. A swatting call is a dangerous prank in which the perpetrator reports a severe crime to police to lure swat teams to the victim’s home in a forceful law enforcement response.

    “I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here. My local police are the GREATEST and shouldn’t have to deal with this,” Greene wrote in a post on X.

    As Greene has been the victim of repeated swatting incidents, the Rome Police Department was able to quickly ascertain that the call was a hoax and didn’t send officers to her home, a department spokesperson told CBS News.

    According to Rome PD spokesperson Kelly Madden, the call came from a man in Rome, New York, who called the suicide hotline just before 11 a.m. Monday. The man claimed he’d shot his girlfriend at the address of Greene’s home and was going to kill himself next, Madden said.

    Police contacted Greene’s private security detail to confirm she was safe and that there was no emergency at her residence, the Department said.  When the call was determined to be a swatting attempt, the police response was canceled en route, Madden told reporters.

    “We determined before our personnel could get to her location that there was no emergency and there was no reason to respond,” she said. “Her security detail had it all under control, and there actually was nothing going on.”

    A Republican U.S. congressman in New York was also reportedly targeted with a swatting call on Christmas Day.

    The Cayuga County Sheriff’s office said it received a false report of a shooting at Rep. Brandon Williams’s house in central New York and sent officers to confirm that there was no present danger.

    “Our home was swatted this afternoon,” Williams wrote. “Thanks to the Deputies and Troopers who contacted me before arriving. They left with homemade cookies and spiced nuts! Merry Christmas everyone!”

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    MTG blasted the FBI for allowing the swatting attempts against herself to continue without any arrests.

    “And after today, I have been swatted 8 times but the FBI can’t seem to figure out who is responsible for the swatting and says the law doesn’t allow them to track them down,” she wrote on X.

    “The FBI can do so many things, has even abused FISA to spy on hundreds of thousands of Americans, but can not figure out who wants me killed by a hail of bullets fired by a SWAT team responding to murder suicide calls supposedly coming from me,” she complained.

    Thankfully my local police are far too smart, know me well, and know exactly what these swatting calls are. I know there are good FBI agents that are completely sick and tired of the Biden administration they work under.

    Swatting is extremely dangerous and people have been killed as a result from swatting calls. It’s also a waste of police time and resources and harassment. I will be introducing legislation to track down swatters. Thank you to everyone who has sent well wishes for me and my family. I will never stop fighting for what is right and I will always put America first! No matter what or who attacks me.

    Merry Christmas!! Christ is KING!!!

    Madden confirmed that Greene has been the target of roughly eight swatting attempts.

    The latest swatting attempt came just a few days after Greene’s life was threatened in a text message sent to her boyfriend Brian Glenn, the program director for Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN).

    “Thursday Dec. 21, we received this death threat where this man is saying I will be shot in the head and skinned to make a “parasol” making a reference to Gein, who was a psychopath killer who would make things out of his victim’s skin,” MTG explained on X.  “He also says he would like to smash Pres. Trump’s and Brian’s heads on a curb,” she added.

    Ed Gein,  also known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, was a serial killer and body snatcher who committed horrific crimes in the 1950s around Plainfield, Wisconsin.

    “Have a nice time looking over your shoulder shitbag,” the message from Ben McLean read. “Tell Marjorie that a high velocity projectile will soon find its way into her cranium.”

    When told his menacing communications would be reported to the FBI, McLean seemed to suggest he’d had a prior relationship with the Bureau, and understood it to have an anti-conservative bias.

    “If you do … Agent Priest. I like him, McLean wrote. “Because surely the FBI wouldn’t be on your side.” The disturbed individual then expressed a desire to “curb check” former President Trump’s “baby soft skull.”

    He added, “they’re recruiting me!” next to a middle finger emoji.

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    MTG complained in a subsequent post on X that McLean has not yet been arrested. The Capitol Police contacted him and merely asked  some questions over the phone, Greene said, going on to say it was “shocking” that the kook was not in police custody yet.

    “They simply called him on the phone and [Capitol] Police sent us this email about what he said,” she wrote.

    “The outright absurdity of this email response and the fact that they have not arrested this guy is shocking, thankfully I’m a gun owner,” Greene wrote.

    But compare it to how the FBI and DOJ treats J6’ers, Pres Trump, and their political enemies. Why doesn’t the FBI just call J6’ers on the phone, like the man who says he wants to shoot me in the head and use my skin to make a parasol, and just ask them about what they said on January 6, 2021 instead of hunting them down and locking them up doing the bidding of the DOJ who continues to issue arrest warrants almost everyday for people who said the 2020 election was stolen.

    Incredible double standard.

    MTG also expressed concern that McLean claimed to have a contact at the FBI.

    “Also, if you read McLean’s messages he says he knows the FBI, names an agent, says he likes them, and says the FBI is recruiting him,” she wrote. “Is the FBI recruiting a man who is threatening to kill a member of congress and crush the skull of President Trump?”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 18:05

  • Spot Bitcoin ETF Inflows Could Dwarf All 150 Crypto ETPs Today
    Spot Bitcoin ETF Inflows Could Dwarf All 150 Crypto ETPs Today

    Authored by Tom Mitchelhill via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Newly compiled data from BitMEX Research estimates there are 150 crypto ETPs available today, with $50.3 billion in assets under management…

    United States-approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) could end up dwarfing the entire $50 billion crypto-related ETF market today. 

    According to new data from BitMEX research, the current global market for crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) includes approximately 150 products totaling $50.3 billion in assets under management.

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    The list includes spot and futures funds, and typically track the performance of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The largest ETP on the list is Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust — which is currently attempting to be converted into a spot ETF product.

    Market commentators believe the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF — widely pegged to be approved by the SEC as early as Jan. 10 — could eventually double the amount of money invested in crypto ETPs.

    On Dec. 14, crypto investment fund Bitwise predicted that spot Bitcoin ETFs would be the most successful ETF product ever launched, expecting them to capture some $72 billion in assets under management within the next five years — more than doubling the current market.

    Offering a more sober outlook, global fund manager Van Eck estimated that roughly $2.4 billion would flow into a spot Bitcoin products in the first quarter of 2024.

    While a spot Bitcoin ETF has never been approved in the U.S., such a product is far from a brand-new development in a global context. Several countries including Canada, Australia, and Germany, already allow investors to buy shares in spot Bitcoin ETFs.

    The optimism around spot Bitcoin ETF reflects a wider trend of institutional investment in crypto investment products over the past few months.

    A Dec. 21 report from ETF research firm ETFGI revealed that crypto ETFs listed across the globe had attracted year-to-date net inflows of $1.6 billion, with $1.31 billion of that sum being added in November alone. This total investment is nearly double the $750 million net inflows into crypto ETPs in 2022.

    $1.3 billion was added to crypto ETFs in November alone. Source: ETFGI

    Of the 150 crypto funds, the top 20 ETFs attracted the largest volume of investment, with a total of $1.3 billion flowing into them over the course of 2023.

    The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) — launched during a crypto bull market in October 2021 — witnessed the largest individual inflows, capturing an additional $278.7 million in 2023.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 17:15

  • Netanyahu Urges Troops 'Do Not Stop' While Calling Biden's Post-Hamas Plan "A Pipe Dream"
    Netanyahu Urges Troops ‘Do Not Stop’ While Calling Biden’s Post-Hamas Plan “A Pipe Dream”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Tuesday visit to troops fighting in Northern Gaza delivered a message of “do not stop” in their mission to eradicate Hamas. The past weekend was particularly bloody for the Israel Defense Forces, as at least 17 Israeli troops were killed. Some 250 Gazans have been killed in the last 24 hours, according to regional reports.

    Netanyahu vowed to see the operation through “to the end” – at a moment there are still some 130 Israeli and foreign hostages that remain held in the Gaza Strip. Domestic pressure and pushback against his administration has only intensified, led by kidnap victims’ families, who are angry that more hasn’t been done to secure their release in a possible second-round ceasefire.

    Egypt on Monday proposed the most comprehensive peace plan of the Gaza war yet; however, Netanyahu followed this by publishing an op-ed written in English in The Wall Street Journal wherein he rejected the prospect of achieving a permanent peace so long as Hamas remains intact.

    Via AP.

    In the op-ed, he laid out his three-fold plan for pacifying Gaza and bringing permanent peace, as Israel sees it. He said that for Israel to succeed: 1) Hamas must be destroyed, 2) Gaza must be demilitarized, and 3) Gaza must be ‘deradicalized’ and free of hardline Islam. 

    All of this strongly suggests that not only has Israel rejected the Egypt-proposed peace plan, but is also still resisting the Biden administration’s calls to allow the Palestinian Authority (PA) to eventually govern Gaza after Hamas is defeated. The issue has remained an open point of contention, during which time Biden has issued some rare criticisms of Israel, including earlier this month highlighting the “indiscriminate” bombardment of civilian areas of Gaza.

    In the WSJ op-ed, the Israeli leader is emphatic that the PA under Abbas will never be able to achieve demilitarization. Netanyahu wrote:

    The expectation that the Palestinian Authority will demilitarize Gaza is a pipe dream. It currently funds and glorifies terrorism in Judea and Samaria and educates Palestinian children to seek the destruction of Israel. Not surprisingly it has shown neither the capability nor the will to demilitarize Gaza. It failed to do so before Hamas booted it out of the territory in 2007, and it has failed to do so in the territories under its control today. For the foreseeable future Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza.

    Elsewhere in the op-ed Netanyahu appealed to Washington security concerns by underscoring that Hamas is a “key Iranian proxy.” This as Israel has just taken out an IRGC general in an airstrike on a Damascus suburb. Radhi Mousavi was reportedly assassinated in a Monday strike, and he was believed to be Iran’s top commander in Syria.

    The prime minister explained that if Hamas survives, this will only empower Iran further, and “more war and more bloodshed” will be guaranteed…

    First, Hamas, a key Iranian proxy, must be destroyed. The U.S., U.K., France, Germany and many other countries support Israel’s intention to demolish the terror group. To achieve that goal, its military capabilities must be dismantled and its political rule over Gaza must end. Hamas’s leaders have vowed to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again.” That is why their destruction is the only proportional response to prevent the repeat of such horrific atrocities. Anything less guarantees more war and more bloodshed.

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    He also took the opportunity to address growing international pressure related to the soaring death toll in the Strip. Palestinian sources say that deaths have surpassed 20,000 – a horrific and tragic figure mostly comprised of civilians.

    “Unjustly blaming Israel for these casualties will only encourage Hamas and other terror organizations around the world to use human shields,” the prime minister wrote. “To render this cruel and cynical strategy ineffective, the international community must place the blame for these casualties squarely on Hamas. It must recognize that Israel is fighting the bigger battle of the civilized world against barbarism.”

    He vowed ultimately to press forward undeterred until Hamas is no more. “Once Hamas is destroyed, Gaza is demilitarized and Palestinian society begins a deradicalization process, Gaza can be rebuilt and the prospects of a broader peace in the Middle East will become a reality,” Netanyahu wrote. However, this could take months or more likely even years, given Hamas numbers in the tens of thousands, and can hide in the extensive tunnel network under Gaza while waging a guerrilla campaign above.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 16:50

  • 2024 – The Year Of Our Reckoning
    2024 – The Year Of Our Reckoning

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    We should remember the now modern proverb of Nixon-era economic advisor Herb Stein to the effect that what cannot go on (without destroying the nation), simply will not go on.

    In some sense, the country for recent years has been cruising on the fumes from prior and likely better wiser generations and institutions. In 2024, the tab for our current apathy, toxic politics, and incompetence will come due.

    So next year we will likely see the climax to a number of current dangerous ideas, events, and forces, which finally will either overwhelm us or be addressed and remedied. We live in a Neronian age but can recover if we first understand how we got here and the nature of the suicide we are committing.

    In 2023, it became clear, to even the most loyal supporters of the Biden administration, that the U.S. has simply lost or indeed forfeited American deterrence abroad. Our enemies do not fear us; our friends do not trust us; and neutrals do not care either way.

    After the 2021 Kabul debacle, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2023 brazen Chinese spy balloon’s uncontested trajectory over the United States, the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, the serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in the Middle East, and the terrorist Houthis’ veritable absorption of the Red Sea, many of America’s opportunistic enemies drew conclusions and adopted strategies that would have been previously unthinkable.

    Either adversaries will be so emboldened to start regional wars—an impotent Iran now brags it will block the entire Mediterranean—or a United States will be shocked into action and have to deter Iran, the Houthis, and Islamic terrorism, while dealing with an opportunistic China eager to annex Taiwan, and Russia determined to finish off Ukraine.

    Those challenges will force the military to staunch its recruitment hemorrhaging, rectify low morale, and rearm. Such rebooting in turn will require discarding the woke agenda, stopping the DEI proselytizing and virtue signaling, and returning to a meritocracy focused on military preparedness and battlefield efficacy.

    Since January 2021, the Biden administration has flagrantly and unapologetically dismantled federal immigration law. It destroyed the border as we once knew it. It has already greenlighted more than 8 million illegal entrants—with another quarter-million entering each month.

    No one in government has offered any projected costs to states and federal agencies of offering health, food, housing, legal, and education subsidies to millions—who broke the law by entering the U.S. and continue to do violate it while residing unlawfully here. Is that the sign of a promising American citizen—that the first thing he does upon entering America is to break his host’s law?

    Incredibly, no one has even explained to Americans why millions of illegal aliens are exempt from the vaccine mandates, background checks, and adherence to the law that is demanded of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. We will soon demand “real” IDs of American citizen airline travelers, while we fly illegal aliens all over the states without any identification?

    In fact, those who blew up the border can’t honestly even explain to the American people why they did so. Was it to ensure future (or even present) political constituents? Cheap labor? To ensure higher taxes to pay for more government services and to “spread the wealth?” Obeyance to the diversity/equity/inclusion lobbies? To make up for fleeing blue-state population?

    The United States has now exceeded, both in real numbers and in percentages, all past numbers of non-native born American residents—at a time when civic education, the idea of the melting pot, and adherence to assimilation have never been more under assault.

    In 2024, either the border will close, or the United States will suffer radical political realignments, sheer chaos in our major cities, protests from Americans furious over the complete flaunting of federal law by their own elected officials, and a likely impeachment of Joe Biden for deliberately forsaking his oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”

    The October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and premodern massacring of nearly 1,200 Jews—and the virulent anti-Semitism that swept our elite campuses and big cities even before the October 27 Israeli Defense Forces’ retaliatory invasion of Gaza—was a wakeup call about the racialized hatred and anti-Semitism now endemic on the Left.

    Campus protestors dropped the prior protestations that they were not anti-Semitic in their hatred of Israel. Instead, they now call out Jews by name. They disrupt their homes and businesses, regardless of their views on Zionism. Pro-Hamas protestors feel free to harass Jews, and with impunity and arrogance chant genocidal chants promising the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population.

    The main campus culprits for these sudden unabashed hatreds are tripartite.

    First, wealthy, mostly white leftist students – increasingly as ignorant of history as they are arrogant in their zealotry – feel it pays psychological and careerist dividends on campus to mouth orthodoxies of hating Israel and de facto siding with the Hamas killers.

    Most have no idea of the Hamas charter, where flows the Jordan River, or what the British Mandate for Palestine or the Balfour Declaration were. Few of the loudest could never even find Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza on a map. No matter: being heard and seen on campus hating Israel is considered a necessary fad like 1970s bellbottoms or pet rocks.

    Second, huge numbers of full-tuition-paying Middle-Eastern visiting students and green-card holders, along with Gulf-fueled and endowed faculty, assume that they are exempt from any legal consequences.

    So they often deface the federal monuments of their hosts, shut down traffic, swarm Jews on campus and in the street, break the law, and battle with police—with absolute impunity.

    Third, just as startling are the undisguised hatreds emanating from radical diversity/equity/inclusion students and faculty. As the declared oppressed, they too feel exempt from any charge that they are mouthing racist and anti-Semitic venom, as they conflate Israel with the now maligned stereotyped “white” people.

    The apogee of such extremism was evident in the congressional testimony of  three ethically challenged Ivy-League presidents. They reminded the nation that no campus president would unequivocally condemn, much less punish, any anti-Semites on a campus, who openly called for the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population. And they lied about “free speech” constraints on their punishment of mainstreaming anti-Semitic and genocidal threats—given they routinely expel, censure, and variously punish all sorts of “hate speech,” but only if it is directed against their own DEI constituencies.

    All this is not tenable.

    Our top universities are facing a perfect storm. Declining pools of students, crushing student loan debt, spiraling tuition and room and board costs, administrative bloat, defecting donors, and the public’s distrust of such people being entrusted with their children’s higher education, will all soon lead to a general reexamination of the very need of these universities in the first place, at least as they are presently constituted.

    Their racialist admissions, hiring, retention, and promotion protocols are destroying meritocracy. Their mediocre curricula, grade inflation, and campus polarization have convinced the public that they are no longer deserving of the many taxpayer indulgences that shield campuses from market realities—such as massive federal research grants and subsidies, tax-free billions of dollars in private donations, tax-free endowment income in the tens of billions of dollars, and taxpayer subsidized $2 trillion in student loans.

    So insulated are these atolls of privilege that they cannot recognize growing public anger over the damage they are doing to the country. Iconic Harvard University cannot even fire its DEI president Claudine Gay, despite serial instances in her own past of plagiarism (which prompted Harvard’s sycophantic board to defend her by embracing a new euphemism— “duplicative language” as if to signify the tiny clerical lapse of stealing the ideas and prose of others).

    In 2024, radical changes in university administration and values will begin to be made, or higher education will face a reckoning from the public and a newly elected government.

    Currently, Colorado has tentatively removed Donald Trump from its 2024 ballot on the specious grounds that he is an “insurrectionist.” Thus, the state insists that he is subject to the 14th Amendment, Section 3 clause of 1868, that calls for the disbarment from future government employment or service those former federal officials and employees who had joined the Confederacy.

    Aside from the misapplication of the spirit and letter of that post-Civil War legislation, those responsible for erasing Trump know that he has never been charged with, much less convicted of “insurrection. And he never will be.

    They understand that half the country knows the January 6 “riot” was the work of unarmed, overzealous, and buffoonish protestors, who broke the law by entering the Capitol, but otherwise had no master insurrectionary plan. And the majority surrounding the Capitol did in fact obey the president’s call to protest “peacefully” and “patriotically.”

    The left privately understands that their latest weaponization of government follows their “Russian collusion hoax,” their “laptop disinformation” farce, their two politicized impeachments, their performance-art Mar-a-Lago documents raid, and thus are all part of a systematic degradation of our campaigns, elections, and political customs, tradition, and discourse.

    A jaded public knows too well that such punitive measures never applied to the 2016 Hillary Clinton crimes of destroying subpoenaed emails and devices, or the FBI’s illegal alteration of FISA documents or its contracting out social media to suppress news stories, or its hiring of a foreign national Christopher Steele, who compiled a fake “dossier” to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump.

    A majority of Americans further know that had Donald Trump not chosen to run for office in 2024, state and federal prosecutors such as the publicity-seeking and partisan Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis would never have indicted him.

    All privately know that the entire Biden family, including the President, could just as easily be indicted on state and local felonies, but the Biden consortium finds itself exempt both for its leftist ideology and its current control of the Department of Justice.

    What then do the campaign and election of 2024 foreordain?

    We will be in entirely new and completely dangerous territory. The likely Republican nominee who currently leads incumbent president Joe Biden will be for most of 2024 the constant target of a coordinated state and local Soviet-like effort to destroy his candidacy before the voters can even vote for or against him in the November election.

    The United States 2023 annual budget deficit is about $1.7 trillion; the nation is burdened by a $34 trillion national debt—even though the federal government since 2021 has raised all sorts of new income and excise taxes.

    The era of printing money, zero interest rates, “modern monetary theory,” and spending wildly is drawing to a close. The mounting interest on the national debt is now crowding out optional but soon essential annual federal spending. At some point soon, one generation of Americans is going to have to exercise spending restraint or accept a continuing decline in its living standards.

    In sum, in 2024, we will either see the destruction of presidential electoral politics as we have known them or a complete repudiation of lawfare. The current new normal that the party in power indicts the leading candidate of the opposition is not sustainable or compatible with the idea of America.

    Either the military will have to deter dramatically our growing number of opportunistic enemies, or it will descend into something like the French army between the world wars—plagued by ideology, ossified brass, corruption, mediocrity, misplaced investments, and bankrupt strategies.

    If there are not radical changes in higher education, our Ivy League and self-identified elite campuses will go the way of Bud-Light, Disney, and Target—once premier brands reduced to red ink and laughing-stock caricatures.

    The United States is cracking under 8 million illegal entries; it cannot sustain another year and 2 million more illegal entrants—or a total of 55-60 million foreign-born residents, with no idea of how many are U.S. citizens, illegal aliens, or green card holders–or how many are employable, or free of criminal records or in need of massive federal and state subsidies.

    In 2024, the U.S. will begin to see that to meet its spiraling debt, it will either keep inflating its currency, or slash spending, or raise even further taxes to the degree that even the lower middle class will have to pay 50 percent of their income in state and federal taxes, or renounce its debt, and thus go full-Third World.

    Will we meet these challenges or ensure the ongoing decline?

    If what we saw after October 7, or the wild and out-of-control reign of weaponized local and state prosecutors, or what we watch nightly on television at the border, or the paralyses we witness abroad of our military, or the breezy way in which our officials promise groups here and abroad billions of dollars in easy money, continues into 2024, then the country as we knew it will become unrecognizable.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 16:25

  • 'Biggest Losers', Bullion, & Black Gold All Bid On Boxing Day
    ‘Biggest Losers’, Bullion, & Black Gold All Bid On Boxing Day

    The S&P 500 is now up over 15% since October 27th. And the Santa rally markets have been experiencing since just before Thanksgiving continues even after he dropped his presents around the world on Monday and faces the Boxing Day hangover.

    As Goldman’s Chris Hussey notes, a combination of…

    • strong consumer spending in stores (12/14 – Retail sales accelerate in November on sequential basis),

    • a rapid deceleration of inflation (12/22 – Core PCE Inflation falls further), and

    • a dovish tilt from the Fed (12/13 FOMC dots and the market shrugging off the post-FOMC jawboning)

    …have all contributed to an extremely market-friendly backdrop for stocks – especially when you consider that US growth remains resilient as captured by the strong November labor reports.

    Today’s economic data only added to the favorable narrative. The S&P Case-Shiller home price index increased in line with consensus expectations in October. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index jumped back above trend, the Philly Fed Services survey soared back into expansion, and the Dallas Fed manufacturing index for December came in higher than expected.

    Source: Bloomberg

    Small Caps continued to explode higher today, significantly outperforming the rest of the US majors today (which all managed solid 0.5%-ish gains) amid a low liquidity holiday week. Some late-day selling spoiled the party though…

    ‘Most Shorted’ stocks surged back up to erase last Wednesday’s 0-DTE-driven pukefest…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The previous biggest losers continue to dominate the gains as financial conditions have eased dramatically…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And the dash for trash continues…

    Source: Bloomberg

    VIX was smashed lower to within a tick of a 12 handle…

    Treasuries were unchanged on the day but not after selling pressure overnight which was erased after a strong 2Y auction…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 2Y yield was the biggest swinger…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar dipped back to Friday’s lows amid very low liquidity in FX land…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin was clubbed like a baby seal, once again seeming stalling out around $44k…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Spot gold prices rallied back above $2060…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oil prices surged today with WTI back above $76 for the first time since Dec 1st…

    Which appears to have put a local low in the price of wholesale and retail gasoline…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, this is odd…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Americans are spending more despite being considerably less confident.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 16:00

  • Blinken's Visit To Mexico Focuses On Optics As Migration Crisis Hits Biden's Polls
    Blinken’s Visit To Mexico Focuses On Optics As Migration Crisis Hits Biden’s Polls

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Mexico City on Wednesday to discuss a new agreement with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to control the surge of migrants flooding the southern border. 

    Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will join Blinken in discussions with AMLO about “unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere,” a US Department of State press release read. 

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    The goals of the meeting will include “identifying ways Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges, including actions to enable the reopening of key ports of entry across our shared border,” the press release continued. 

    Blinken’s visit is nothing more than optics for an administration that has promoted disastrous open southern borders, allowing millions of illegals to flood the nation ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

    A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, shared with The Hill, shows only 38% of voters approved of Biden’s handling of immigration, down from 46% in November. 

    “Based on the polling on immigration, this is one of the key issues dragging down the president’s reputation, and he needs to make progress on this issue or face increasing consequences,” said Mark Penn, chairman of the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll.

    According to a new Gallup poll, Biden’s approval rating is lower than any of his seven predecessors at the same point in their first term. 

    The polling data is clear that millions of Americans are fed up with radical progressives in the White House who have flooded the country with illegals, some of whom are military-age men from countries that call death to the West. 

    New US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows encounters on the southern border were nearly a quarter million last month. This figure is the highest November number and the third-highest monthly total ever.

    And now this… 

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    Days ago, the new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by a network of NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, who seem to be playing a powerful role in coordinating the large-scale invasion of illegals.

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    Meanwhile, the Biden administration is handing some of these NGOs millions of dollars to assist illegal aliens once in the US. 

    “A lot of NGOs are helping Biden open the border to unlimited illegal crossing. But none of this could happen without the president’s approval,” Byron York, the chief political correspondent at the Washington Examiner, said. 

    Blinken’s visit to Mexico is merely a distraction by the administration to save Biden’s imploding polling numbers.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 15:45

  • This Year, Americans Have Become Hungrier, Lonelier And More Desperate
    This Year, Americans Have Become Hungrier, Lonelier And More Desperate

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    The ominous trends that we see all around us are taking us somewhere. 

    Needless to say, 2023 was not a good year for our country.  Hunger and homelessness have been absolutely exploding, the suicide rate just continues to go even higher, and there is chaos in the streets on an almost nightly basis.  It is in this environment that the election of 2024 will happen.  I expect election season to add an additional level of strain to our society, and I don’t think that our society will be able to handle it.  We are headed for a nightmare, and at this point everyone should be able to see that.

    When conditions deteriorate, it is often those at the bottom of the economic food chain that feel it first.

    And right now food banks all over the nation are dealing with a tsunami of hunger…

    Food bank leaders from all corners of the country tell USA TODAY their neighborhood pantries are serving more people while using less resources, as economic pressures continue to ravage the budgets of low-income Americans and service providers alike.

    Since pandemic-era boosts to government food aid ended earlier this year in many states, families are turning to food banks to close a gap in need that feels like it has no end in sight.

    Susannah Morgan, the president of Oregon Food Bank, says that she is literally witnessing “the worst rate of hunger in my career”…

    “This is the worst rate of hunger in my career,” said Morgan, who has worked at food banks in Boston, San Francisco and Anchorage, Alaska. “It’s so large, it’s hard to wrap your head around.”

    I don’t know what I have to do to convince some people that things really are this bad.

    I keep sharing fact after fact in my articles, but some people out there are just not convinced.

    One out of every five children in the U.S. does not have enough food to eat, but the reality of the suffering that is now taking place just isn’t sinking in for many of those that are still living the high life.

    Meanwhile, homelessness in the U.S. is increasing at the fastest rate ever recorded…

    The United States experienced a dramatic 12 percent increase in homelessness as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, federal officials said Friday.

    About 653,000 people were experiencing homelessness during the January snapshot. That’s the highest number since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007 to count the homeless population.

    There are many out there that feel that such people need to “get a job” or “work harder”, but the truth is that most Americans are living on the verge of economic disaster because most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

    At the same time, Americans continue to get even lonelier.

    According to USA Today, “Americans are lonely and it’s killing them”, and at this point things are so bad that this crisis is being called “a new epidemic”…

    America has a new epidemic. It can’t be treated using traditional therapies even though it has debilitating and even deadly consequences.

    The problem seeping in at the corners of our communities is loneliness and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is hoping to generate awareness and offer remedies before it claims more lives.

    “Most of us probably think of loneliness as just a bad feeling,” he told USA TODAY. “It turns out that loneliness has far greater implications for our health when we struggle with a sense of social disconnection, being lonely or isolated.”

    It is especially bad during this time of the year.

    There are so many people out there that are deeply, deeply hurting because they are so lonely.

    They are trying their best to face a world that has gone completely mad, but that can be really difficult to do when you don’t have anyone to lean on for support.

    Speaking of a world gone mad, retail theft has absolutely skyrocketed in many of our largest cities since 2019…

    Crime-ridden New York City has seen the biggest impact with a 64 percent increase in retail theft, followed by Los Angeles with a 61 percent jump and Virginia Beach, Virginia, which has seen a 44 percent rise.

    Each month, more Americans are descending into poverty and more Americans are turning to crime.

    And it certainly doesn’t help that vast hordes of illegal immigrants are constantly being added to the mix.

    Chaos in the streets has become an almost constant state of affairs in this country, and this year in Oakland there was even rioting on Christmas Eve.

    Of course our leaders continue to exist in a bubble where none of these problems constitutes a serious crisis.

    To them, everything must be just fine because they are doing such a wonderful job.

    When he was recently confronted about the reality of the economic crisis that we are now facing, Joe Biden bluntly told the press to “start reporting it the right way”…

    President Biden criticized news coverage of the U.S. economy as he faces growing backlash from voters over his handling of inflation.

    In brief remarks Saturday before boarding the presidential helicopter, Biden expressed confidence in the economy and ripped the reporters for the way it has been portrayed.

    “All good. Take a look. Start reporting it the right way,” Biden said when asked about his economic outlook for 2024, according to a transcript released Sunday by the White House.

    He wants the press to continue to spin things in a way that will make him look good as they always have done in the past.

    But we have reached a stage where all of the charades are finally crumbling.

    Conditions are bad now, and they are going to get even worse in 2024.

    So brace yourself for what is ahead, because we are going to experience so much chaos during the year that is in front of us.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 15:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 26

Today’s News 26th December 2023

  • World's Most Dangerous Combination: China And Russia
    World’s Most Dangerous Combination: China And Russia

    Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

    Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy knows how to end the greatest threat to American national security.

    That threat would be the combination of the world’s two most dangerous states: China and Russia.

    “I would freeze the current lines of control,” the candidate told Fox News’s Jesse Watters during his prime time show, referring to the battlefields in Ukraine.

    “I would further make a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO. That’s enough to get Putin to do the deal.”

    “But I would require something even greater in return, Jesse,” Ramaswamy said. “Russia has to exit its military alliance with China.”

    Putin will take the deal, the charismatic candidate assured Watters:

    “He’s gonna say, ‘Ok’ because I’m going to say, ‘We’ll reopen our economic relations with Russia and further, we’ll end the Ukraine war and also make sure NATO never admits Ukraine.’ “

    The interview occurred in late August, but these themes are often heard, in America and elsewhere. Is Ramaswamy on the right track?

    In theory, it should be possible to separate Moscow from Beijing. After all, China and Russia have for centuries been competitors, adversaries, and even enemies. Take something as fundamental as their common border. After border skirmishes, they finally settled the boundary only in 2008, when Moscow formally transferred various parcels to China.

    Vladimir Putin knows, however, that no border is ever finally fixed, and Chinese migrants are pouring into the sparsely populated Russian Far East. There, many of them hope to “retake” lands ceded by the Qing dynasty to Moscow in the 1850s and 1860s in what Chinese officials now call “unequal treaties.” Beijing has made no formal claim to Vladivostok and surrounding areas, but it has been continually pushing the idea nonetheless.

    In short, China poses the greatest threat to Russia, at least over the long term.

    The Ramaswamy proposal, however, ignores the reality that as long as Putin and Xi Jinping rule, there is no realistic possibility of breaking up the two states. Both dictators view the world in similar terms; believe that their short-term interests coincide; and identify the same adversary, the United States of America. As Xi said on December 20 as he welcomed Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to Beijing, “Maintaining and developing China-Russia relations well is a strategic choice made by both sides based on the fundamental interests of the two peoples.”

    The two regimes, Xi’s words reveal, have been on the same page for some time. They declared their closeness with the 5,300-word joint statement issued after Putin met Xi in Beijing on February 4 of last year, just 20 days before Russia’s attack on Ukraine. That is when they declared their “no-limits” partnership.

    China and Russia are more than just working together. They are forming the core of a new axis. Around this core are proxies and proxies of proxies, such as Iran, North Korea, Algeria, and a host of terrorist groups.

    The Chinese and Russian leaders are forming this grouping because they believe the United States, the final guarantor of the international system that frustrates them both, must be taken down. Xi, by, among other things, declaring a “people’s war” on America, has made it clear that the U.S. must be destroyed and Americans exterminated. Putin is less ambitious, only wanting the U.S. out of his way as he recreates the Russian Empire at its greatest extent.

    Moreover, Xi and Putin believe that the United States is in terminal decline. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years,” the Chinese dictator said on March 22 to the Russian dictator in Moscow while bidding farewell after their 40th in-person meeting. “And we are driving this change together.”

    Even if Xi and Putin were not so confident there are reasons for the Russian leader to reject the overtures of a President Ramaswamy. “Washington has little leverage over Russia,” Rebekah Koffler, the author of Putin’s Playbook and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, told Gatestone. “There are no carrots to offer to Putin, and the sticks haven’t worked.”

    Yes, the Biden administration could drop sanctions and abandon Ukraine, but even those actions, which would be deeply injurious to the U.S. and the international system, would not be enough to break Putin’s bond with Beijing. “Russia does not trust the U.S. and Europe,” Koffler says. “Russia believes the West will continue to try to weaken it economically and militarily. Moscow believes that regardless of who occupies the White House, a Democrat or a Republican, the U.S. will pursue an anti-Russia policy.”

    Democrats and Republicans should pursue “anti-Russia” policies: Russia has refused to abide by the rules and norms of the international system. Russia is not only an aggressor state, but it is also engaging in barbaric acts in Ukraine, some of which constitute “genocide” as defined in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

    Ramaswamy says “we have wrongfully cut off Russia from the West.” It is true that Americans and Western actions, as Koffler remarked, “hit the key revenue drivers of the Russian economy,” but how could any nation allow Putin to, among other things, use its banks and financial system while his soldiers were torturing, raping, and killing Ukrainian women and children; committing acts of mass murder in town after town; and abducting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia in an apparent attempt to eliminate Ukrainian identity?

    To finance acts of aggression and barbarism in the face of sanctions, Putin has found support from China. By November, China-Russia trade hit $218.2 billion in 2023, exceeding their announced target of $200 billion by the end of 2024. Trade during the first 11 months of 2023 was double the volume in 2018 of $108.3 billion, which itself represented an increase of 24.5% over 2017. Putin will not break this established and fast-growing trade relationship for mere promises from a West he neither likes nor trusts.

    China does not, as Ramaswamy tells us, have a “military alliance” with Russia—China has no formal alliances except the one with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—but the Chinese and Russian militaries are nonetheless close.

    The two forces are worrying the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral John Aquilino. This month in Tokyo, he publicly stated that he was “very concerned” about their joint exercises: “I view it as far beyond the marriage of convenience at this point in time.”

    In other words, China and Russia are preparing to go to war together. As no country threatens either of them, they are undoubtedly thinking of perpetrating more acts of aggression.

    Would Putin join Xi if China were to invade some neighbor? That is not clear, but it is highly likely that the Russian leader will help China. “Russia could conduct shows of force to stretch U.S. and allied surveillance,” Rebecca Grant of defense consultant IRIS Independent Research told Gatestone. “Posturing military moves by Russia could also make U.S. leadership balk.” She points out there could be, for instance, Russian bomber flights or even nuclear weapons exercises.

    Russia could also help China by trying to grab even more of the Kuril Islands chain from Japan or moving against a NATO member, such as one of the three Baltic republics, engulfing the Eurasian landmass in conflict, from one end to the other.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/26/2023 – 00:00

  • Yuan Overtakes Yen For 4th Place In Global Payments
    Yuan Overtakes Yen For 4th Place In Global Payments

    China’s yuan has overtaken the Japanese yen to become the fourth-most used currency by value in global payments for the first time in almost two years, according to a monthly tracker of the Chinese currency released by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

    The share of the yuan as a global payment currency climbed to 4.61% in November from 3.6% the previous month, according to data compiled by SWIFT and released on Thursday. According to Caixin, the redback surpassed the Japanese yen, whose share came in at 3.41% in November, down from 3.91% the month before.

    Thanks to its sharp devaluation throughout 2023, the yuan has been on a steady march upward throughout 2023, having started the year with just a 1.91% share in January. The November reading for the yuan was the highest since SWIFT began compiling the data series in 2010.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar maintained its dominance in global payments with a share of 47.08% in November. It was trailed by the euro, which was used in 22.95% of global payments, and the British pound, which had a share of 7.15%.

    While China has been ramping up efforts to expand use of the yuan in cross-border transactions as an alternative to the US dollar, it has so far achieved very limited success due to the country’s impenetrable capital account firewall which means the yuan can never truly float (and if it does, watch as tens of trillions in domestic savings promptly flood the rest of the world, after a massive devaluation of course). To overcome the yuan’s natural limitations, China has been encouraging other countries to settle trade and investment in the Chinese currency (something Russia has been pursuing in recent months), and setting up yuan clearing banks in offshore markets to cater to cross-border yuan settlements.

    The yuan’s ranking in global payment currencies by value has been hovering around fifth for years, SWIFT data show. It temporarily captured the fourth spot for a two-month spell in December 2021 and January 2022, but dropped back to fifth the following month, where it had remained until last month.

    In November, the yuan also unexpectedly surpassed the euro as the second-most used currency in the global trade finance market, SWIFT data show. It edged out the euro to occupy the No. 2 position in global trade finance for the first time in September — according to available data going back to 2017 — and then dipped to third place in October.

    SWIFT’s tracker for the yuan counts data computed from certain message types and exchanged between financial institutions through its system, so it’s not a reflection of the entire financial market, the association noted in its report.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 23:15

  • "Christmas Is Canceled": Scuffles, Arrests In NYC As Pro-Palestinian Protesters Storm Manhattan
    “Christmas Is Canceled”: Scuffles, Arrests In NYC As Pro-Palestinian Protesters Storm Manhattan

    Pro-Palestinian protesters raged across New York City on Monday, apparently determined to piss Christians off on their most sacred holiday. 

    “Christmas is canceled here,” they chanted, while parading a blood-red mock nativity scene through the streets, along with puppets of Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden.

    “Long live the intifada,” the roughly 500 demonstrators yelled as they swarmed the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree where people were trying to enjoy the day.

    “While Ur Shopping Bombs are Dropping,” read one protester’s sign.

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    “No Joy In Genocide,” read the mock Nativity scene, the NY Post reports.

    As night fell, the protest intensified. Near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, scuffles broke out, sending police officers dashing through the crowd in an effort to maintain order. Reports of arrests came from areas near Grand Central Station and Union Square, as tensions between protesters and law enforcement escalated.

    The Christmas Day demonstration targeting the Manhattan area popular with holiday revelers and tourists prompted cops to go on alert outside the News Corp headquarters on Sixth Avenue.

    The building is home to Fox News, The Post, the Wall Street Journal and other company holdings.

    Protesters have targeted the media company in the past, including twice last month.

    On Nov. 29, hundreds of demonstrators — at least one spotted carrying a swastika — stormed the Sixth Avenue building after police blocked them from Rockefeller Center during a well-organized “Flood the Tree Lighting for Gaza” protest. -NY Post

    This demonstration was not an isolated incident but the latest in a series of anti-Israel marches that have swept through New York City.

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     Maybe trying to ruin Christmas in New York isn’t the best way to garner sympathy for your cause?

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 22:55

  • The 4 Major Battlefronts In Trump’s Ongoing Ballot Dispute
    The 4 Major Battlefronts In Trump’s Ongoing Ballot Dispute

    Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A slew of lawsuits are seeking to disqualify President Donald Trump from running for office in 2024, creating an increasingly unstable presidential election season.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik, Getty Images)

    All of these attempts rest on an argument that the “insurrection” clause of the 14th Amendment bars the former president from appearing on the ballot.

    The most significant decision was handed down on Dec. 21, when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in a 4–3 decision that President Trump couldn’t appear on the state’s ballot because he had engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

    The Colorado ruling appears to be triggering and renewing efforts to kick the former president off the ballot in other blue-leaning states, including New York, California, and Pennsylvania.

    A lower court in Colorado had similarly ruled that President Trump engaged in an insurrection but stopped short of disqualifying him after finding that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to presidents.

    Enacted after the Civil War, the text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

    This relatively untested provision is now set to come before the nation’s highest court.

    “This case is surely destined for the Supreme Court to interpret the 14th Amendment and resolve whether Trump is disqualified from the presidency,” said University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade, who left the Trump administration among a wave of resignations at the beginning of his term.

    Who that section applies to, what constitutes an insurrection, and how the section is enforced have been the subject of vigorous debate.

    Embedded within those questions are a series of others that could make deciding or enforcing ballot disqualification cases especially complicated.

    Here are some of the major questions that courts and politicians may consider.

    1. What Is an Insurrection?

    Efforts to disqualify President Trump hinge partly on whether his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riots qualify as engaging in the type of insurrection mentioned in Section 3.

    To answer that question, observers have drawn from historical records, federal law, and evidence surrounding Jan. 6.

    Supporters of President Donald Trump protest outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

    According to Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace’s reasoning, President Trump used language he knew would provoke violence on Jan. 6, 2021, but was vague enough to maintain plausible deniability. For her, that satisfied Section 3’s requirement that an individual “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”

    Some, however, have questioned that line of reasoning given that none of the Jan. 6 defendants, nor President Trump himself, have been charged with violating federal law regarding an insurrection.

    South Texas College law professor Josh Blackman has said that “federal prosecutions for insurrection are extremely rare” and told Click2Houston that crimes such as “insurrection, treason, or sedition are very, very hard to prove.”

    “ They require basically an intent to try to frustrate or subvert the government,” he said.

    There are additional questions as to whether the 14th Amendment defines insurrection the same way federal law does, or whether federal law and the 14th Amendment require the same level of proof to establish that individuals are guilty of insurrection.

    Under the 14th Amendment, meeting the threshold of “insurrection” is “an extraordinarily high bar,” said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation. He also served in the Health and Human Services Department under President Trump.

    “I didn’t see anything sufficient to justify such an incendiary charge,” Mr. Severino told The Epoch Times.

    He said the reference to insurrection in the 14th Amendment came about after invasions of the north during the Civil War.

    During the Civil War, “you had armed invasions of the north … that’s what insurrection was referring to in the 14th Amendment,” he said.

    The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. (National Archives of the United States)

    Horace Cooper, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, who formerly taught constitutional law at George Mason University, said that “their target was specifically the Confederacy.”

    “Their target was not anyone who supported the French in the French–Indian War. Their target was not anyone who supported the British in the British–American War. Even though the language isn’t written in a way to limit those, the rationale was the Confederacy,” he said.

    Still, some scholars say that President Trump has satisfied the 14th Amendment’s requirements for engaging in an insurrection.

    “Section Three covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support as ‘aid or comfort,’” said University of Chicago law professor William Baude and University of St. Thomas law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen in a paper.

    “It covers a broad range of former offices, including the presidency. And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.”

    2. Is Trump an ‘Officer of the United States’?

    Judge Wallace’s opinion refrained from disqualifying President Trump because, she said, even if he committed an insurrection, she didn’t have enough evidence to definitively say he was the type of “officer” that the 14th Amendment prohibits from engaging in an insurrection.

    Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, has argued that two prior Supreme Court decisions contain language indicating that “officers” of the United States don’t include presidents.

    More specifically, both Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and United States v. Mouat define officers as appointees of the president and others.

    Washington University law professor Andrea Katz disagrees.

    “You can find cases that have held certainly to the contrary,” she told The Epoch Times, pointing to Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission.

    President Donald Trump at a Save America rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times)

    Quoting a prior court decision, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said in 2018 that an officer “must occupy a ‘continuing’ position established by law, and must ‘exercis[e] significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States.’”

    Ms. Katz said that “it seems like both common understanding—the text of the Supreme Court, and the legislators’ understanding in drafting the 14th amendment—was that the president was going to be covered by this language.”

    In its decision, the Colorado Supreme Court argued that the amendment’s drafters “understood the president as an officer of the United States” and that the Constitution as a whole supported that conclusion.

    3. Can Courts Enforce Section 3?

    Even if it was clear that Section 3 included President Trump’s conduct, questions remain as to whether courts can remove him from the ballot.

    The answer to those questions could depend on how much authority state laws grant their secretaries of state. It could also depend on how Congress describes the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 22:30

  • Behind The Democrats' Efforts To Regulate The Supreme Court
    Behind The Democrats’ Efforts To Regulate The Supreme Court

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Democrats’ push to impose a code of conduct on the U.S. Supreme Court is driven by their desire to exert power over a court that hasn’t been ruling their way on key issues, legal experts say.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    Democrats and their left-wing activist allies have been incensed over the past two years as the court sent abortion matters back to the states, axed affirmative action in college admissions, bolstered gun rights and public prayer, backed a website designer’s right not to promote a same-sex wedding, and strengthened private property rights while weakening the government’s regulatory powers over the environment.

    Several experts told The Epoch Times that the left cannot accept the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, so it will keep agitating against it and try to undermine its legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

    So far, the activism has propelled the court to adopt its first-ever formal code of conduct, issued on Nov. 13, but Democrats say it’s a toothless gesture and won’t fix what they say is a court that’s overly sympathetic to business interests and conservative causes.

    “The court’s new code of conduct falls far short of what we would expect from the highest court in the land,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

    “While the code of conduct prohibits the appearance of impropriety, it allows the justice to individually determine whether their own conduct creates such an appearance in the minds of ‘reasonable members of the public.’ This is something that justices have repeatedly failed to do over the last few years.”

    To remedy the supposed crisis at the court, Mr. Durbin backs the proposed Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act of 2023, which his committee approved on a party-line vote in July.

    The proposal, which Republicans have denounced as unconstitutional, would create a system allowing members of the public to file complaints against justices for violating the proposed code of conduct or for engaging “in conduct that undermines the integrity of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

    Among other things, it would also impose mandatory recusal standards and create a panel of lower court judges to investigate complaints against the Supreme Court.

    Democrats are proposing their code of conduct “so they can control the Supreme Court,” said Steven J. Allen, a distinguished senior fellow at Capital Research Center, a watchdog group.

    “They’re doing this to get rid of one or more Republican appointees so they can be replaced,” Mr. Allen said.

    “That’s almost the definition of ‘lawfare’—using the legal system to wage war on your opponents. You pack the court by knocking off a Republican or two.”

    Mr. Durbin, a longtime antagonist of Justice Clarence Thomas, who’s considered by many to be the court’s preeminent conservative jurist, has been particularly focused on the justice’s alleged transgressions.

    Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas arrives for the ceremonial swearing in of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the White House in Washington on Oct. 8, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Justice Thomas has been a lightning rod for criticism from the left for a long time.

    Mr. Allen predicts the “smear campaign” against Justice Thomas “will continue as long as he’s alive.”

    Mr. Durbin and his committee colleagues issued a blizzard of public condemnations when earlier this year it was reported that billionaire Harlan Crow, a big Republican Party donor, gave Justice Thomas a series of luxurious vacations and tuition support for a grandnephew the latter raised and purchased real estate from the justice’s family.

    Justice Thomas didn’t disclose the events at the time, saying he was advised that it wasn’t required, but he has vowed to disclose such events going forward.

    No evidence has been uncovered to suggest that the justice’s vote in specific cases before the court was influenced by the gifts. Having wealthy friends isn’t against the law, the justice’s defenders say.

    Justice Thomas is also routinely attacked by critics for the conservative activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas, a high-profile supporter of President Donald Trump.

    Democrats, who have characterized Republican efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election after Election Day as an affront to democracy, were angered that Ms. Thomas reportedly signed form letters urging state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory.

    Ms. Thomas has also said she believes the 2020 election was rigged.

    A video from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1991 confirmation is played during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Supreme Court ethics reform on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 2, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Liberal groups have called upon Justice Thomas to recuse himself from a plethora of cases related to the election and to President Trump’s ongoing criminal prosecutions. They argue that Justice Thomas and his wife are too close to Republicans.

    Veteran Supreme Court watcher Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, said it’s a one-way street.

    “What are the odds that Senate Democrats would call on one of the liberal justices to recuse if that justice’s spouse had expressed strong public opinions about the 2020 election being fair?” he said.

    They would never demand that a liberal justice recuse “because a spouse had expressed political opinions about newsworthy events,” he said.

    Pressure Campaign

    Jim Burling, vice president of legal affairs for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit public interest law firm that challenges government abuses, said the Durbin-backed SCERT bill and his committee’s investigation of conservative justices is an effort “to try to limit the legitimacy of the court.”

    “They don’t like the fact that we have a court nowadays that’s not doing what the progressives think that the court should be doing,” he said.

    It bothers them that the court is “very different today” from the way it was under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953 to 1969) and Chief Justice Warren Burger (1969 to 1986) when the court veered left, Mr. Burling said.

    “It upsets them that they can’t win the case on the merits, so you just throw mud around instead and try to obfuscate what the real issue is here,” he said.

    Demonstrators protest at the entrance of the gated community where Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence lives in Fairfax, Va., on June 24, 2022. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

    Mr. Levey said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sponsor of the SCERT Act, has shown that he wants to keep putting pressure on the court’s conservative members.

    The fact that the court adopted its own code shows that “even the Supreme Court, where they have lifetime tenure, can be pressured,” he said.

    “This is why the Democrats are constantly attacking the Supreme Court because it does have an effect and you see the effect here,” Mr. Levey said.

    “This is just another form of trying to harass and intimidate the court. Democrats have discovered over the years that if you let the conservative justices know that you’re going to make life difficult for them … some of the center-right justices are fairly easily intimidated.”

    Maybe about half of those justices will then “go out of their way not to anger the Democrats too much.” Mr. Levey said.

    Politicians have been trying to manipulate the Supreme Court for a long time, Mr. Allen said, “by way of essentially harassing them.”

    He pointed to the 2010 State of the Union address when President Barack Obama took the unusual step of chastising the robed Supreme Court justices seated before him for their ruling in the Citizens United case, which changed campaign finance restrictions.

    “With all due deference to separation of powers,” he said, the Citizens United precedent “will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.”

    Justice Samuel Alito shook his head in disagreement, appearing to mouth the words, “Not true.”

    And in March 2020, at a pro-abortion rally outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed unspecified retribution against conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh should they vote to uphold a Louisiana law that imposed abortion restrictions.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 21:00

  • UK Deploys Warship To Guyana In Show Of Support Against Venezuela Territorial Claim
    UK Deploys Warship To Guyana In Show Of Support Against Venezuela Territorial Claim

    While the recent panic over the risk of a Venezuela invasion of its neighbor Guyana may have come and gone, some (former) global superpowers are not taking any chances, and according to the FT, the UK will deploy a naval patrol ship off the coast of the tiny but rich Latin American nation in a show of support for the former British colony as it faces a territorial claim from its more powerful if insolvent communist neighbor.

    The deployment follows moves by Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist president, to claim the vast, mineral-rich Essequibo region, which borders his country but has been part of Guyana – a member of the British Commonwealth and the only English-speaking nation in South America – for more than a century.

    Britain’s decision to dispatch HMS Trent later this month is a significant show of support for the government in Guyana’s capital Georgetown.

    The decision comes just days after the UK’s new foreign secretary, David Cameron, fresh from career exile after his catastrophic handling of Brexit, said the UK would “continue to work with partners in the region to ensure the territorial integrity of Guyana is upheld and prevent escalation”.

    Meanwhile, UK foreign office minister David Rutley, visited Guyana last week to meet President Irfaan Ali and stress the UK government’s “unequivocal backing” for Guyana’s territorial integrity after the Venezuelan claim.

    Yván Gil, Venezuela’s foreign minister, responded angrily on social media platform X to that visit, saying: “The former invading and enslaving empire, which illegally occupied the territory of [Essequibo] and acted in an skilful and sneaky manner against the interests of Venezuela, insists on intervening in a territorial controversy that they themselves generated.

    “This controversy will be resolved directly between the parties . . . We will stop the new filibustering that seeks to destabilise the region.”

    As reported earlier this month, Maduro held a referendum at the start of December, in which Caracas claimed that more than 95% supported proposals including that Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana, should become a Venezuelan state.

    Caracas subsequently authorised Venezuelan state-run companies to grant licences for exploration and exploitation in Essequibo and ordered new official maps including the territory, although the presidents of both countries agreed in a December 15 meeting not to use force in the dispute.

    HMS Trent, which is armed with a cannon and machine guns, has a crew of 65 and a contingent of Royal Marines, and can deploy Merlin helicopters.

    The vessel, which is mostly used for counter-terrorism exercises and tackling piracy and smuggling, is usually based around the Mediterranean. However, in early December it was deployed west to Barbados to clamp down on drug runners in the Caribbean.

    UK officials told the FT that the ship would anchor off the coast of Georgetown and carry out visits, training and joint activities with the country’s navy.

    Guyana’s defence force, with only 4,070 active personnel and reserves, is dwarfed by Venezuela’s 351,000-strong military which feels especially powerful now that Biden will do anything to appease dictator Maduro if it means a buffer of oil supply heading into the critical 2024 election year.

    A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “HMS Trent will visit regional ally and Commonwealth partner Guyana later this month as part of a series of engagements in the region during her Atlantic patrol task deployment.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 20:15

  • Debt And Dopamine: The Ghosts Of Christmas Present
    Debt And Dopamine: The Ghosts Of Christmas Present

    Authored by Amy Denney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Most every Christmas growing up in the 1950s, Brad Harris got socks, a new pair of jeans, and—if he was fortunate—a new sweater.

    (Jordi Mora igual/Getty Images)

    He lived with his mom, who was a single parent, as well as his grandmother, great aunt, and younger brother. Finances were tight, but there was always food on the table, including a big dinner for Christmas.

    “We never felt deprived, but we didn’t compare what we had with other folks,” Mr. Harris, 87, told The Epoch Times. “It was a wonderful time really. It was a lot less frivolous. I think it made a better generation of us.”

    To help with family expenses, he usually held more than one job at a time—including delivering newspapers until he graduated high school. It was a big delight one year when he received a Hawthorne bicycle with a tank and headlight for Christmas.

    “It was one of my prizes, and I rode that thing clear through high school,” Mr. Harris said. “I had probably worn out two or three bicycles carrying papers.”

    Decorations were sparse—they couldn’t afford a tree so they usually cut down a fresh one from a friend’s property—yet the Harris brothers never forgot to buy something for mom. One year, it was a set of clear pink serving dishes for eight that cost no more than $3.

    These days, Mr. Harris no longer tries to pick out meaningful gifts for each family member. He has 14 great-grandchildren. He makes homemade caramel and hands out cash.

    There’s not much the kids want that they don’t already have, he said.

    “We found a long time ago, 100-dollar bills fit everybody, and the color’s right,” Mr. Harris said. “I spend more on Christmas than my mother made in a year.”

    Spending Obsession

    Christmas gift giving in the United States has always been a big deal, but it seems to continue getting bigger. Data available for the past 20 years shows overall spending has nearly doubled since 2003, climbing every year except during the financial crisis in 2008. The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts growth will be a bit lower—3 to 4 percent—in 2023 than in 2022.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times)

    Total holiday spending this year in America is expected to be at least $937 billion, according to the NRF. Back in 1950, total holiday spending was $40.2 billion, but that’s without factoring in inflation and population growth.

    Those were the days before credit cards, before storage units, before America’s massive rise in household debt. Those were the days when it was easy to buy a Christmas present because everybody needed something.

    Americans have always spent a lot of money during Christmastime. What has changed dramatically is how much they spend the rest of the year and how much they borrow to maintain that spending.

    Shoppers clog the aisles at Macy’s Department store on Black Friday in 2003 in New York City. Annual holiday spending has doubled to nearly a trillion dollars in the two decades since. (Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

    Shopping has become a year-round obsession, turning Christmas gift-giving into an obligation and sometimes even burden. Often our presents are just more clutter.

    Remembering the value of more meaningful and necessary gifts of generations past could help us shift our focus from the materialism of gifts to the act of giving and the value of relationships.

    When It All Changed

    The Sears catalogs, including the once-annual Wish Book and Christmas catalogs, really took off as credit started to appear. Even back in 1956 the “Sears Christmas Book” was more than 450 pages of toys, tools, clothing, houseware, and more—all promoted as the perfect gifts for loved ones.

    The catalogs provided inspiration for new Christmas gifts that weren’t so obvious as a needed sweater. Every American could imagine a new level of consumption, with items they never would have considered buying now displayed in enticing variety.

    Of course, all that possibility meant little without the means to pay for it—and incomes were still limited just as they are today. However, Americans’ spending habits were suddenly no longer restrained by their pocketbook.

    Whereas merchant credit had previously been associated with wealthier customers, the post-war years saw an explosion in consumer loans and credit cards for a rapidly growing middle class.

    A telling statistic is the household debt to income ratio, which tells how much of a household’s monthly income goes towards debt payments. The higher the ratio, the more monthly income goes towards debt payments.

    The Institute for New Economic Thinking thoroughly examined debt from the end of World War II, when the household debt-to-income ratio was 30 percent, to 2016, when that debt ratio hit 120 percent. In other words, by 2016 the average American household was going further into debt every month.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times)

    “The American household debt boom of the past decades was first and foremost a middle-class affair. Middle-class incomes grew by 20 percent since 1970, middle-class debt by 250 percent,” the institute report said. In other words, we now spend far more than we make, a dramatic shift from the 1950s.

    Rachel Cruze, a financial expert at Ramsey Solutions, a firm that helps people reconcile debt and make better financial decisions, says Americans are spending themselves into excruciating debt.

    “Credit card debt itself has reached over a trillion dollars, the highest in history,” Ms. Cruze told The Epoch Times.

    Shoppers hunt for gifts and other items at a New York department store on December 11, 2023. With everyone’s homes filled with stuff, finding meaningful gifts has become a challenge. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

    Our debts have become so great they could be considered a public health issue. One study published in 2018 in PNAS found “overspending and over-indebtedness … leads to social exclusion, feelings of loneliness, an unhealthy family environment, and suicidal thoughts, and it reduces social support. Also, one of the biggest problems with debts is that they often unleash a spiral of further debts. This spiral can ultimately bring people into poverty.”

    The study found that when low-income families were given three times their monthly income for debt relief, those who used it to pay down their debts instead of making other purchases experienced a proportional improvement in cognitive function and reduced anxiety.

    How the Glut Stole Christmas

    One of the big lessons from the Grinch that has proven true over the past 20 years is that it isn’t a lack of presents that can ruin Christmas. In fact, presents can be the thing that buries our Christmas spirit.

    Credit lit the fire of our current consumerism, but cheap Chinese goods added plenty of fuel.

    Suddenly, everybody could have everything at cheap prices made all the cheaper by underpaid workers and poorly made products. Items that once lasted a lifetime now become obsolete, broken, or out of fashion within a few years.

    Ms. Cruze shared her own struggles with purchasing on her radio show. Her new book, “I’m Glad for What I Have,” was inspired by an innocent but uncomfortable encounter with her youngest child that revealed her own consumption problems.

    “My 4-year-old said a few months ago, ‘Is the Amazon guy coming today, Mom?’” Ms. Cruze said.

    Amazon delivery men have become the new Santa Clause, except they deliver all year long, making the prospect of presents far less meaningful. (EQRoy/Shutterstock)

    While credit and cheap goods certainly enticed us to buy more, companies learned better how to hijack our own biology as well. Big Tech has made pervasive use of neuromarketing to figure out exactly how our brains work, and how to make us buy.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 19:30

  • IRS Rakes In Record $4.9 Trillion In Taxes From Americans Amid Enforcement Crackdown
    IRS Rakes In Record $4.9 Trillion In Taxes From Americans Amid Enforcement Crackdown

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raked in a record $4.9 trillion in taxes from Americans in the last fiscal year, due in large part to automated collections processes and aggressive audits that saw taxpayers hit with billions in additional taxes after examination.

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington on June 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the watchdog that oversees the IRS, revealed in a Dec. 20 report on tax compliance activities that the agency collected a record-breaking amount of money in fiscal year 2022 from American taxpayers.

    The $4.9 trillion the tax agency raked in last year was around $790 billion more than the prior year, thanks in large measure to a significant increase in enforcement revenue.

    The IRS collected $72 billion in revenue from its enforcement activities in FY 2022, not far below the record-setting $75 billion in FY 2021 but well above the historical average of around $59 billion (from 2013-2020).

    All those dollars rolling in from enforcement activities are likely to rise going forward, given that the IRS announced over the summer that, thanks to a new funding boost, it was launching a “sweeping, historic” tax enforcement initiative using artificial intelligence (AI) and other cutting edge technologies to crack down more effectively on non-compliant taxpayers.

    But while AI and other advanced computer algorithms have yet to be deployed at the IRS on a large scale as the agency continues to modernize its systems, automation has already bolstered the agency’s ability to stuff the government’s coffers—even as the overall number of examinations declined, as did the number of enforcement agents.

    “The revenue collection was driven substantially by automated collection processes,” the TIGTA report states. Roughly 74 percent of the IRS’ enforcement revenue was collected within the agency’s Collection notice stream and the Automated Collection System (ACS).

    While the IRS is poised to continue increasing its reliance on automated systems to squeeze more tax dollars from taxpayers, it’s also looking to hire another 3,700 tax enforcers as it spends an extra $46 billion of the recent $80 billion (later reduced to $60 billion via debt ceiling negotiations) funding boost on enforcement.

    Another important factor why the IRS managed to take in a record amount of tax revenue last year was hitting taxpayers with aggressive additional tax assessments after examinations.

    Even More Taxes

    The watchdog report shows that, after audits, the IRS levied an additional $30.2 billion in taxes on Americans last year, roughly 13 percent more than in 2021 and a whopping 75 percent more than in 2019.

    When the IRS completes an examination, it can either leave the tax assessment “as is” or it can propose an adjustment (up or down) that increases or reduces the amount of tax owed.

    “The general trend of proposed additional tax from FY 2019 to FY 2022 is over a 75 percent increase in the total proposed additional tax resulting from examinations, and the most significant increase (136 percent) was from correspondence examinations,” the watchdog said.

    Over the past four years, the IRS’ examinations function proposed nearly $90 billion in additional taxes on U.S. taxpayers.

    The watchdog said that the record tax collections were driven by individual income taxes, which increased by 47 percent since 2019, an increase of roughly $1 trillion.

    More Audits of Those Earning Under $400,000?

    The question of whether the IRS will use some of the $60 billion or so funding boost to increase tax enforcement of people making less than $400,000 has been a contentious issue.

    IRS and Treasury Department officials have pledged not to increase audit rates for this group of Americans, while Republicans and others have argued that this pledge is either false or wishful thinking.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has directed the IRS not to raise audit rates above historical levels for this group of taxpayers, while IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has repeatedly made the same pledge.

    But the IRS watchdog recently cast doubt on this promise, warning that Americans making less than $400,000 could inadvertently get caught in an enforcement dragnet because the IRS doesn’t clearly define “high-income” and its enforcers use an outdated $200,000 high-income threshold as their default.

    During recent testimony on Capitol Hill, Mr. Werfel appeared to acknowledge the possibility that audit rates could rise for Americans making less than $400,000 per year.

    During an Oct. 24 hearing, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) pressed the IRS chief to explicitly guarantee that the IRS wouldn’t raise audits on Americans making less than $400,000.

    “You are guaranteeing that you will not increase the number of audits of people making less than $400,000 a year?” Ms. Foxx asked.

    “That is my marching order to the IRS,” Mr. Werfel replied before adding that “if we fall short of that, I will be held accountable for it,” hinting that, even with the best of intentions, there’s a chance that the IRS might fail to make good on this promise, much like the watchdog has warned.

    “But we will publish those rates,” Mr. Werfel added, referring to tax audit rates for Americans earning less than $400,000, suggesting that time will tell how closely the agency’s growing army of tax enforcers will follow his orders.

    “A little while ago, you said you had control of the IRS,” Ms. Foxx said. “So we’ll come back to you with that,” she added, suggesting that Republicans intend to hold Mr. Werfel’s feet to the fire if the $400,000 tax audit pledge is broken.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 18:45

  • Frustrated Biden Demands Media To Start Reporting Good Economic News
    Frustrated Biden Demands Media To Start Reporting Good Economic News

    Dictator President Biden railed against corporate media before he and several family members headed by helicopter to Camp David, the presidential retreat in the mountains of western Maryland. 

    Before boarding the presidential helicopter, Biden was asked by one reporter: “What’s your outlook on the economy next year?”

    The president responded: “All good,” adding, “Take a look. Start reporting it the right way.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Biden’s criticism comes as at least one progressive think tank warned White House aides in September and October that the ‘Bidenomics’ branding of the economy ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle has failed. 

    Democrats are hammering the American public with the economy being ‘great’ despite never mentioning inflation ran hot and wiped out real wages of workers for two years. This put a massive strain on the working poor, who had to drain personal savings and rack up insurmountable credit card debt to make ends meet. Many of these folks resort to ‘buy now, pay later’ loans to afford essential items. 

    What’s important to note is that the White House began the Bidenomics media blitz in June, which was supposed to be an effort to lift dismal poll data. Which the campaign miserably failed. 

    Maybe the Federal Reserve’s bizarre, unexpected pivot might help the president, who has the lowest approval rating than any of his seven predecessors at this point in the first term, according to a recent Gallup poll. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 18:00

  • "It's All One Big Status-Acquisition Hustle"… And Half The Country Likes It That Way
    “It’s All One Big Status-Acquisition Hustle”… And Half The Country Likes It That Way

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    The End Of An Era

    “The old politics of right versus left, and Republican opposed to Democrat have now given way to a new existential struggle: Americans must choose between civilization—or its destroyers.”

    – Victor Davis Hanson

    Now that you, the lucky ones, are beyond your steaming platters of pancakes and mighty rashers of bacon, and perhaps even a dram or two of grog in your coffee. . . and clawed your way through the bales of presents. . . a merry Christmas to all. . . and here’s something else to think about this morning:

    You may have noticed that our country, formerly a republic of sovereign individuals, has become one great big racketeering operation run by a mafia-like cabal with Marxist characteristics — or, at least, Marxist pretenses. That is, it seeks to profit by every avenue of dishonesty and coercion, under the guise of rescuing the “oppressed and marginalized” from their alleged tormenters. Apparently, half the country likes it that way.

    Much of the on-the-ground action in this degenerate enterprise is produced by various hustles. A hustle is a particularly low-grade, insultingly obvious racket, such as Black Lives Matter, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and “trans women” (i.e., men) in women’s sports. Some of the profit in any hustle is plain moneygrubbing, of course. But there’s also an emotional payoff.  Hustlers and racketeers are often sadists, so the gratification derived from snookering the credulous (feelings of power) gets amplified by the extra thrill of seeing the credulous suffer pain, humiliation, and personal ruin. (That’s what actual “oppressors” actually do.)

    Categorically, anyone who operates a racket or a hustle is some sort of psychopath, a person with no moral or ethical guard-rails. Hustles are based on the belief that it is possible to get something for nothing, a notion at odds with everything known about the unforgiving laws of physics and also the principles of human relations in this universe. Even the unconditional love of a mother for her child is based on something: the amazing, generative act of creating new life, achieved through the travail of birth. Have you noticed, by the way, that the birth of human children is lately among the most denigrated acts on the American social landscape?

    The flap over Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, is an instructive case in the governing psychopathies of the day. I wish I’d been a roach on the tray of petit fours and biscotti brought into the Harvard Overseers’ board-room when they met to consider the blowback from Ms. Gay’s unfortunate remarks in Congress, followed by revelations of her career-long plagiarisms. The acrid odor of self-conscious corruption in the room must have overwhelmed even the bouquet of Tanzanian Peaberry coffee a’brew, and not a few of the board members must have reached for the sherry decanter as their shame mounted, and the ancient radiators hissed, and their lame rationalizations started bouncing off the wainscoted walls.

    Apparently, Ms. Gay did not miss an opportunity to cut-and-paste somebody else’s compositions into everything she published going back to her own student years in the 1990s. She even poached another writer’s acknowledgment page. This is apart from the self-reinforcing substance of her published “research” justifying the necessity for DEI activism, for which she has become first an avatar and now a goat. The dirty secret of this perturbation — and the whole Harvard Board knows it — is that Claudine Gay’s career has been about nothing but careerism, and that this is also true of so many on the faculty and administration at Harvard, and surely at every other self-styled elite school from the Charles River to Palo Alto that had joined in the DEI mind-fuck.

    It’s all one big status-acquisition hustle, the seeking of hierarchical privilege by any means necessary, including especially deceit, the politics of middle-school girls. Thus, you see on display both the juvenility of elite higher ed and its use of the worst impulses that prevail in social media, stoking envy, hatred, avarice and vengeance as the currency for career advancement. Claudine Gay was notorious earlier, as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for wrecking the careers of faculty members (Ronald Sullivan, Stephanie Robinson, and Roland G. Fryer, Jr.) who refused to play the game like middle-school girls. She had no mercy.

    The mental pain endured by the Harvard bigwigs must be excruciating, and of course they have themselves to blame because they walked right into the Woke hustle with their eyes wide shut. They bargained away their dignity, and the university’s honor, for mere brownie points in a fool’s game called Win big prizes pretending to care about your fellow man. The cognitive dissonance must be like little nuclear reactor meltdowns burning through the lobes of their brains. They’ve run out of a safe space to play “victim” in. The world sees them for the coddled, malicious fakes they are.

    Cutting Claudine Gay loose is the unavoidable play now or Harvard will be stung by so many lawsuits from students previously punished for academic mischief that all the alumni lawfare attorneys in the cosmos standing snout to tail will not be able to staunch the hemorrhaging of the school’s endowment and then the fire sale of its chattels to satisfy the aggrieved plaintiffs’ pain and suffering. The Harvard board is just trying to ride out the holidays. Their prized participation trophy is coming off the mantlepiece. There really is no other way. Now, stand by and watch the rats rat each other out. And so ends the era of pretending about everything.

    *  *  *

    Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 17:15

  • CBP Logs Busiest November On Record With Encounters At US Southern Border
    CBP Logs Busiest November On Record With Encounters At US Southern Border

    Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The United States experienced its busiest November on record with encounters at the southern border, according to new data released on Friday.

    Asylum seeking migrants stand at a makeshift camp along the U.S.-Mexico border as they await processing by the U.S. Border Patrol in Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2023. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

    Providing a monthly update of its border enforcement statistics, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported its personnel had logged some 242,418 encounters at the southern border in November. By comparison, CBP recorded 235,173 encounters at the southern border in November 2022, 74,845 in November 2021, and 72,113 in November 2020.

    Historic CBP data indicates U.S. border officials had never logged more than 80,000 encounters in any given November prior to 2022.

    Of the 242,418 encounters at the border this November, 191,113 resulted from U.S. Border Patrol agents encountering people crossing outside the established ports of entry, which is broadly illegal. Of the encounters CBP logged at lawful ports of entry, the agency said it processed more than 43,000 migrants into the United States with information they submitted through the CBP One mobile app.

    Total drug seizures jumped 35 percent from October of this year to November, with border officials logging an eight percent increase in fentanyl seizures, a 22 percent increase in cocaine seizures, and a 55 percent increase in methamphetamine seizures.

    To date, CBP has recorded 483,404 encounters since the start of the 2024 fiscal year. CBP said it has sent increased personnel and resources to address this continued border surge, “However, global migration remains historically high in the Western Hemisphere and around the world.”

    While CBP has yet to release its border traffic numbers for December, reports indicate daily border traffic has again reached record-high levels, with border officials logging more than 12,000 encounters at the southern border within a 24-hour period.

    CBP Asks For More Funding As Republicans Seek Deterrent Policies

    “CBP continues to execute its important mission to protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation’s economic prosperity by implementing operational plans, surging personnel and decompressing areas along the southwest border while processing and vetting migrants who are encountered humanely, safely, and efficiently, consistent with our laws,” acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said Friday. “We are facing a serious challenge along the southwest border and CBP and our federal partners need more resources from Congress—as outlined in the supplemental budget request—to enhance border security and America’s national security.”

    In October, President Joe Biden proposed a $105 billion spending supplemental that would have tied about $14 billion in border and immigration-related spending, including funding to hire additional personnel along the border, as well as additional staffing to process asylum cases. That $14 billion would have attached to about $61 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine, about $14 billion in aid to Israel, and billions more to bolster other alliances and partnerships around the world.

    Hopes of passing President Biden’s supplemental spending request by the end of the year stalled out, primarily over disagreements about border policy. Republicans have argued that only throwing money at the issue is the wrong approach because it doesn’t do enough to dissuade illegal border crossings and frivolous asylum claims. Republicans have instead called for policy changes to restrict when migrants can apply for asylum or receive a temporary entry into the United States. Republicans have also called for the adoption of legislation that resumes construction of border walls between ports of entry.

    In remarks earlier this month, President Biden said “I am willing to make significant compromises on the border,” but congressional negotiators never reached a deal before leaving for the Christmas holiday.

    The House adjourned last week while the Senate remained in session for another few days, trying to find a deal as negotiations came to a crawl for the holidays. In a joint statement on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said they had seen some “encouraging progress.” The Senate adjourned the following day still without a deal.

    Any breakthrough will now have to wait at least until Congress reconvenes in the new year.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 16:30

  • FOBO? The WEF Predicts 44% Of Human Skills Will Be Replaced By AI In Five Years
    FOBO? The WEF Predicts 44% Of Human Skills Will Be Replaced By AI In Five Years

    If there was ever a moment in history when globalists have been unable to contain their unsettling glee it was the moment that Artificial Intelligence became a focus of public discourse.  It’s clear that the World Economic Forum worships AI – Lavishing the technology with praise and describing it as the end-all-be-all of human industry.  AI, they claim, will change the world so rapidly that most people will not be able to keep up with the advancements.

    We have yet to see any of these advancements in the real world, of course.  In fact, it’s difficult to pinpoint any tangible benefits produced by AI so far other than making it easier for college kids to cheat on essays.  And here is where we run into a disconnect between what the WEF predicts and what is most likely to happen according to the evidence.

    Is AI really the do-it-all technology that globalists make it out to be?  Is half of humanity going to be replaced with automation?  

    The establishment media has been building up this notion as an inevitability, with millions of people (mostly within Gen Z) now experiencing anxiety over the possibility that they will one day have no career options because of AI.  The WEF even promotes a term for this feeling:  FOBO (which apparently now means Fear Of Becoming Obsolete).    

    FOBO originally meant “fear of better options,” but the WEF has co-opted it and adjusted it for their AI narrative.  

    Automation is nothing new to first-world industries and adapting to it has not necessarily made anyone’s place in the economy “obsolete.”  The media tends to suggest that hands-on jobs in areas such as agriculture, manufacturing and retail are going the way of the Dodo soon.  However, AI seems to represent a much greater threat to people in the white collar sector dealing with information tech.  People in data collection, software development, web development, research analysis, information security, etc. are far more likely to be replaced by AI.  

    AI essentially automates data applications, making it possible for the average layman to one day “code” in a way that once took programmers years to learn.  For example, web development is becoming so automated these days it will not be long before web designers are out of work.  

    AI has exhibited zero evidence of consciousness and creativity and has no capacity to operate widely in the physical world.  The globalist answer to this problem is their suggestion that “data” is the new economy, and that eventually robots will handle the physical.  This sounds like a pipe dream, but if the “data economy’ is going to be the focus of AI for the foreseeable future, this means that if AI leads to a job apocalypse it will be primarily in the white collar world.

    The WEF partially admits to this development in a recent paper on FOBO, in which they argue that around 44% of skill sets will become obsolete by 2027, and 42% of business related skill sets will be replaced by AI.  

    Far from becoming the all-knowing data-god hailed by WEF zealots like Yuval Harari, it appears much more likely that AI would simply augment or replace a number of office workers.  For now, no significant advancements in medical science, space science, engineering, energy science, resource efficiency, mathematics, physics, etc. have been produced by AI.  We’re all waiting around for AI to blow past human science and nothing is happening.  If all AI can do is put data programmers out of work, what good is it?

    Interestingly, AI software makes some incredible claims very similar to the boasts of globalists.  Here is what AI had to say about its plans for the world of human art:

    “Imagine waking up one day and finding your job has been automated overnight by intelligent machines. Then you discover even the career you dreamed of pursuing next has already been mastered by AI. 

    Quickly, more and more human domains once thought impossible to replicate – art, music, emotion – fall prey to advancing algorithms until all uniquely human talent and purpose dwindles in the face of superior robotic counterparts. Soon your very existence becomes trivial … unnecessary.”

    This is a fascinating omission bordering on delusion.  Not the delusions of AI, but the delusions of whoever programmed the software to say this (and no, AI does not currently think for itself).  AI art is generally considered generic and often terrible because it merely plagiarizes human art and then spits out an uninspired copy.  The notion that a soulless algorithm will ever be able to create emotionally charged art, music, literature and more is naive.  

    It’s not so much about what AI can actually do (which is very little), it’s more about what the public is convinced that AI can do.  Globalists argue that the “data economy” will replace all other functions of civilization and trade as AI takes over.  But what good is data without application?  The only application of such a system would be to manipulate or control popular perception.  To make people believe things that are not true, to influence their behavior and to convince the public that they are no longer necessary.  

    This is where AI technology shines.  It’s not useful to industry, it does little to advance scientific discovery and it doesn’t make the lives of individuals easier; rather it is only useful to the globalist agenda.     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 15:45

  • "I Feel Like A Family Member Has Died": Small New York Town Devastated As Gun Plant Shuts Down
    “I Feel Like A Family Member Has Died”: Small New York Town Devastated As Gun Plant Shuts Down

    Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In the village of Ilion, New York, 80 miles west of the state capital in Albany, residents are mourning the departure of gunmaker Remington Arms Co. after two centuries of continuous operation.

    The Remington Arms Co. manufacturing plant in Ilion, N.Y., on Dec. 11, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Without fanfare, the company announced last month that the manufacturing plant would be closing its doors on March 4, 2024.

    “I feel like a family member has died,” Ilion Mayor John Stephens told The Epoch Times. “My dad raised four kids on a paycheck from there for 37 years. He walked to work and carried his lunch every day.”

    Mr. Stephens said no one expected the announcement a week after Thanksgiving that the plant was set to close.

    On Nov. 30, at 3:26 p.m., the company notified village officials of the decision by email. The message noted that “all separations” with the village would be completed by March 18, 2024.

    Likewise, the company notified its 270 employees that they would soon be out of a job.

    “They brought the second and third shifts in and said they were done,” Mr. Stephens said. “They notified the first shift in person. I found out through the media. The owner’s group didn’t even contact me.”

    Mr. Stephens said the company made the announcement just five months into a newly ratified employee union contract.

    “To say we were shocked [by the announcement] is probably an understatement,” the mayor told Ilion’s Village Board of Trustees at a public meeting on Dec. 11.

    John Stephens, mayor of the village of Ilion, holds up a document from Remington Arms during a village board of trustees meeting in Ilion, N.Y., on Dec. 11, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    “In my opinion, it’s unfortunate and extremely unprofessional.“

    Remington Arms didn’t return messages from The Epoch Times asking for comment.

    Publicly, the company attributed the plant closure in part to a hostile political climate in Albany regarding firearms production.

    “I am writing to inform you that RemArms LLC has decided to close its entire operation at 14 Hoefler Avenue, NY 13357,” Remington Arms said in a letter to employees. “The company expects that operations at the Ilion facility will conclude on or about March 4, 2024.”

    The Georgia-based company said it would continue to make firearms at its facility in Huntsville, Alabama, which opened in 2014, a year after New York’s passage of the Safe Act, which created stricter gun laws.

    The anti-gun political climate in Democrat-controlled Massachusetts prompted competitor Smith & Wesson to move from its longtime base in Springfield to Maryville, Tennessee. The company announced the opening of its new headquarters there in October.

    In Ilion, the community reaction to the Remington plant closure has been a sense of loss and bewilderment, Mr. Stephens said.

    Many are wondering what will become of the 10,000-square-foot plant and the village’s Remington identity.

    Attendees look at a display of Remington shotguns during the NRA annual meeting, in Dallas, Texas, on May 5, 2018. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Mr. Stephens said residents see the two as synonymous, interwoven by history, culture, and economics.

    “Remington is Ilion—Ilion is Remington,” residents here like to say.

    Eric Kennedy, who runs the Copper Cafe in the downtown village retail plaza, believes the ripple effect of the closure would impact the businesses that served Remington employees for years to come.

    “I’m sure it will affect us. Any time you lose jobs, it affects the area’s economy. It definitely will hurt the economy—small town, big business in the village. It’s going to hurt a lot of families,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times.

    “New York state is not friendly to hunters and sportsmen. That makes a big impact. I don’t blame [Remington] for moving out of state, [but] it’s going to hurt.”

    Until recently, Remington Arms employed about 1,500 workers, whose wages helped support the local retail economy, said village public historian Mike Disotelle.

    “At noontime, when the employees would go to lunch, there would be a flood of factory employees going to local businesses,” he said.

    Mr. Disotelle said Remington Arms was one of the village’s largest employers and a centerpiece of the downtown economy. This remained true even as the village continued to lose residents over the course of several decades, he said.

    In 1960, the village had 10,000 residents. Today, that number is down to about 7,700 and could drop below 6,500 by 2030 due to the slow economy, high taxes, and limited housing availability, Mr. Disotelle said.

    Historian Mike Disotelle goes over documents in his office in Ilion, N.Y., on Dec. 11, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Village officials said Remington Arms’ departure would cost the village nearly $1 million in yearly revenues.

    Mr. Disotelle said the village would need a “savior” to breathe new life into the facility. A federal gun manufacturing operation is one possibility.

    “You’re always going to need to manufacture firearms,” he said. “The problem is New York state has created unfriendly legislation. The taxes are high. That’s why a lot of people have pulled out. We’re not a business-friendly state anymore.

    “It would be nice if our politicians could get something going.”

    Founded by Eliphalet Remington II in 1816, the family-run business was known as E. Remington and Sons before the sporting goods chain Marcus Hartley and Partners in Connecticut purchased the gunmaker in 1888.

    “It was called a receivership,” Mr. Disotelle said of the acquisition by Marcus Hartley. “Technically, it was a bankruptcy. Not many people know about that. They know of the bankruptcies in recent years.”

    Remington sold the company to chemical manufacturer Dupont in 1933. The New York investment company Clayton, Dubilier, and Rice purchased the company from Dupont half a century later.

    The gunmaker continued to change hands despite the successful introduction of new products and millions in accumulated debt.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 15:00

  • Trump Slams 'Scam' Poll Showing Nikki Haley Trailing By Only 4 Points In New Hampshire
    Trump Slams ‘Scam’ Poll Showing Nikki Haley Trailing By Only 4 Points In New Hampshire

    Contrary to recent propaganda from CBS News claiming Donald Trump is exploring Nikki Haley as a potential running mate (and the fact that Trump ally Laura Loomer slams Haley on a near-daily basis), the former president himself has weighed in on the 2024 GOP candidate he’s dubbed ‘Birdbrain.’

    A Dec. 21 poll released by American Research Group, Inc. showed Trump leading the GOP field with 33% support among likely Republican primary voters – however it shows Haley just 4 points behind him at 29%, in stark contrast to the vast majority of mainstream pollsters.

    “Fake New Hampshire poll was released on Birdbrain,” Trump aid on Truth Social, referring to Haley. “Just another scam! Ratings challenged FoxNews will play it to the hilt.”

    “Sununu now one of the least popular governors in the U.S. Real poll to follow,” he continued, referring to New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s recent endorsement of Haley for president in 2024. 

    Meanwhile, RealClear Politics‘ average of major polls has Haley nowhere near Trump.

    As the Epoch Times notes, Haley has been gaining on President Trump in New Hampshire since September, with a poll released by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center on Dec. 20 showing her with 30 percent support among likely GOP primary voters, compared to President Trump’s 44 percent.

    A survey from the same pollster carried out in September showed Ms. Haley with 15 percent support in the early voting state, with her latest numbers suggesting she has managed to double her support in New Hampshire.

    After the poll from American Research Group was released on Thursday, Mr. Sununu took to X to comment that she’s closing in on President Trump.

    “This is a two person race,” he wrote.

    President Trump was asked about the poll by conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Friday.

    “Are you worried about Nikki Haley in New Hampshire?” Mr. Hewitt asked.

    “No, I’m not worried about it. I think it was a fake poll,” President Trump said. “I saw the one poll where I was up by 4 or 5 points. It’s a fake poll.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 14:15

  • (Mis) Remembering A Christmas Classic!
    (Mis) Remembering A Christmas Classic!

    Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

    Would you rather have silver and gold? Or would you rather have peppermint?

    You might be under the impression Yukon Cornelius of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer fame was after riches of silver and gold.

    He wasn’t.

    I mean, I hate to mess with your Christmas memories, but facts are facts.

    ‘Tis the season for Christmas specials.

    I’m not going to lie – even as a grown man, I love watching Christmas specials. Snoopy decorating his dog house. The Grinch folding up a Christmas tree like an umbrella and stuffing it up the chimney. Frosty the snowman melting in the greenhouse.

    There are a lot of great memories in those shows.

    My all-time favorite Christmas special is Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved Rudolph.

    I still do.

    It was different back in the day. We had to wait until the shows came on TV.  I think that’s lost on many people today in our world of on-demand streaming. Those of you over a certain age will remember scouring the TV guide from your local newspaper starting around the first week of December eagerly waiting to see Rudolph pop up on the schedule.

    My mom always made an event out of it. She would always whip me up a special Christmas treat – maybe a hot chocolate or apple cider. Sometimes, I even got freshly baked cookies. If it was cold, she would build a fire in the fireplace, and we would snuggle up in blankets to watch the show.

    Here’s a confession: when I was really little, the abominable snow monster horrified me.

    In retrospect, I have to wonder why. Remember when he tipped over? The bottom of his feet looked just like the bottom of my footie pajamas. How did I not notice that? How did I not realize that the abominable was a total fake?

    I guess a 5-year-old has limited powers of observation.

    But other than being scared of the PJ-footed snow monster, I loved the show as a little kid. And as I said, I still do.

    Now, as a guy who writes about gold and silver for a living, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Yukon Cornelius. As you recall, he wandered the north in search of silver and gold. But I bet you don’t know the whole story behind old Yukon. Here’s a dirty little secret. The version most of us watched on TV as kids cut part of the story out.

    I kid you not!

    You’ll recall that when Cornelius meets Rudolph and the elf Hermey, he launches into a dramatic and emphatic introduction.

    The name’s Yukon Cornelius, the greatest prospector in the north! And you know, it’s rich with gold! Gold! Gold and silver! Silver and gold! Wahooo!”

    He punctuates his greeting by tossing his pickaxe up into the air, licking it, and declaring, “Nothin’.”

    This pickaxe tosses and licking behavior repeats throughout the drama. When you stop and think about it, it’s kind of weird. And maybe a little gross. But I never thought about that as a kid. Of course, this is the same kid who didn’t notice the snow monster was wearing footed pajamas.

    On a side note, how did his tongue not freeze to the metal in the frozen Arctic? (That brings to mind the flagpole scene in “A Christmas Story.”)

    Anyway, you almost certainly think Yukon was hoping to discover riches in the form of gold and/or silver. That’s certainly the impression the show gives you.

    Well, you think wrong!

    He’s not looking for gold or silver!

    Now for those of you who grew up on network TV, you know that things were often edited for commercials. This was the case with Rudolph. CBS deleted the scene that explains exactly what Yukon was looking for. Rick Goldschmidt wrote a book on Rudolph and calls this “the most significant deleted scene.” An article in the Huffington Post explains what happened.

    It comes right after Rudolph guides Santa through the air to the Island of Misfit Toys. Rudolph’s parents, Donner and Mrs. Donner, Rudolph’s girlfriend, Clarice, and Cornelius are featured, while Donner says, ‘That’s my buck!’ finally confirming Rudolph’s dad is no longer ashamed, as Goldschmidt points out. But more illuminating is that the scene finally gives an answer as to why Cornelius kept licking his pickax throughout the special. In this deleted scene, Cornelius throws his ax in the air, lets it strike the ground and then, after licking it as he has been wont to do, declares, ‘Peppermint! What I’ve been searching for all my life! I’ve struck it rich. I’ve got me a peppermint mine … Wahoooo!’”

    And here’s the deleted scene. You’re welcome!

    Interestingly, if you’re just a tad bit older than I am, you may actually remember the deleted scene. It last aired on TV in 1964. It’s also on the DVD. So, if you have watched it with your kids, you already know this little secret.

    Anyway, I get the whole peppermint Christmas motif, but to be honest, I don’t particularly like peppermint. I’d rather have chocolate. And let’s be honest, Yukon was a little misguided. I’ll take gold and silver, over chocolate or peppermint, thank you very much.

    Anyway, on behalf of everybody here at SchiffGold, I wish you a wonderful holiday season!

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 13:30

  • Biden's Weaponized Gov't Attacks Against Elon Musk Is Tyranny
    Biden’s Weaponized Gov’t Attacks Against Elon Musk Is Tyranny

    On a recent episode of the All-In Podcast, hosts David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg discussed the weaponization of federal agencies by the Biden administration against Elon Musk.  

    “They’ve now weaponized multiple federal agencies to go after Elon on these cases that seem transparently trumped up,” Sacks said. 

    Musk, an outspoken critic of President Biden, has seen an increasing number of banana republic-style weaponization tactics by the administration against his companies, from Tesla to SpaceX, this year. 

    Sacks listed several cases, including when the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission went after Musk in August for allegedly using Tesla funds to construct a ‘glass house.’ The DoJ also went after Tesla for not hiring enough refugees, and, more recently, the Federal Communications Commission rejected SpaceX’s Starlink from receiving a $855 million rural internet subsidy.   

    Palihapitiya asked: “Do you think this is politically motivated harassment of Elon by the Biden administration?” 

    Calacanis chimed in: “100%”. 

    Calacanis added that Tesla was not invited to the EV summit at the White House earlier this month. He noted, “You just take Biden at his actions – if you don’t invite Elon to the EV summit – it’s obvious he [the president] has got it in for this guy [Musk].” 

    “And now it’s obvious he [Biden] has told people to investigate him [Musk] and harass him – it’s obvious.” 

    Palihapitiya asked, “Why doesn’t Biden like him [Musk]”? 

    Calacanis pointed out the obvious answer: “Because he [Musk] is non-union – and sure, the freedom of speech things and Twitter doesn’t help – but this [Musk’s dislike of unions] predates Twitter.” 

    “Biden is a union guy. He will not support non-union people. He is bought and sold by the unions.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It should become increasingly clear that progressive radicals in the White House are weaponizing every agency possible to attack political opponents. These are all signs of a tyrannical, out-of-control federal government. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 12:45

  • Watch: Christmas Eve In Lawless California As Youth Riot In Streets
    Watch: Christmas Eve In Lawless California As Youth Riot In Streets

    Christmas Eve is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and a moment for bonding with loved ones and friends through shared activities and meals. It’s a time for reinforcing the nuclear family while spreading peace and joy through the community. 

    However, in today’s imploding Western society, run by incompetent elected and unelected leftist politicians who control all sorts of federal and state government agencies. They have waged war on the nuclear family structure. 

    It’s not just radical progressives who want to dismantle the nuclear family. Marxist organizations, such as Black Lives Matter organization, funded by mega-corporations, have called for the death of the family unit. A central tenet of Marxism is to dismantle this structure: 

    We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. -BLM 

    The Great Society programs that started with former President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid-1960s ensured the destruction of the nuclear family as recent Census data showed 27.6% of all US-occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940. The largest share of people living alone occurred between 1970 and 1980, when the percentage increased from 17.6% to 22.7%, right after the welfare programs started. 

    So what’s the result of progressives tearing down the nuclear family? Well, Just The News recently noted:

    First, the US has the highest rate of single-parent households in the world. Second, the connection between single-parent households and crime is very strong. According to research carried out by Jerrod Brown, a behavioral specialist at Concordia St. Paul, the extant literature “suggests that children raised in single-parent households experience more physical and psychological problems compared to those raised in two-parent households.” Moreover, he added, the “implications of homes in which fathers are absent may be important to explore for criminal justice and mental health professionals.”

    The destruction of the family unit by radical progressives has created a generation of lawless youth that has been on full display this year in crime-ridden Baltimore City, Washington, DC, and other liberal metro areas where disastrous social justice reforms have been pushed through. 

    The latest sign of lawless youth was Christmas Eve in Oakland, California, where instead of bonding with family and exchanging gifts in ‘Secret Santa’ – they were rioting on the streets. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It seems the US has a major lawless youth problem that Democrats won’t address because it’s merely a symptom of their failed policies. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 11:15

  • 'Crack' Removed From Christmas Crackers To Save The Planet
    ‘Crack’ Removed From Christmas Crackers To Save The Planet

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    The ‘crack’ from Christmas crackers is being removed for environmental reasons and to turn Christmas into a “celebration of responsibility,” defeating the entire purpose of pulling one in the first place.

    Yes, really.

    Joyless eco-mentalists, committed in their mission to eliminate all fun, have lobbied for the introduction of ‘crackless crackers’, and their efforts are already coming to fruition.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Alliance National, one of Britain’s biggest catering suppliers, has announced it will offer only environmentally friendly “crackless” crackers to its customers, which include dozens of care homes, hotels, pubs and restaurants across the country,” reports the Telegraph.

    The silver fulminate has been removed from the items because it can’t be recycled.

    Emphasizing the spirit, or lack of it, behind the change, the supplier has also completely removed jokes from its crackers too.

    Precisely what is the point, then?

    Author Christopher Snowden encountered one of the boring crackers during a recent lunch hosted by the Lords and Commons Cigar Club in the House of Lords.

    He said they were “rubbish” and felt like when “you pull a cracker and they don’t crack and you just think it’s broken.”

    What will they ruin next? Gift wrapping? Mistletoe?

    How long before Christmas trees are banned entirely in the name of ‘celebrating responsibly’?

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 10:30

  • Tesla Will Suspend Drivers For Autopilot Abuse In New Software Update
    Tesla Will Suspend Drivers For Autopilot Abuse In New Software Update

    Leftist corporate media were filled with joy earlier this month when Tesla issued its largest recall in its twenty-year history regarding Autopilot systems that had “insufficient” safeguards against driver misuse. 

    Unbeknownst to some legacy media in their reporting, Tesla has previously solved recalls with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration through an over-the-air software update. 

    Tesla drivers on X reported in the last few days that an over-the-air software update titled “2023.44.30.5.1” was pushed to their vehicles. The update included new features for the Tesla Arcade, additional custom car locking sounds, automatic 911 calls during airbag deployment, and, near the end, a list of Autopilot improvements to satisfy federal regulators. 

    Let’s begin with the “Over-the-Air (OTA) Recall” update that shows several improvements to Autopilot, including improved visibility for diver monitoring warning alerts on the touchscreen, increased strictness of driver attentiveness while using the automated driving system, and a suspension policy for Autopilot abusers.

    Expanding on the Autopilot suspension update is a section that states repeated abusers will be given five strikes if the vehicle detects five forced Autopilot disengagements – which usually occurs when the vehicle senses the driver is not paying attention. On the fifth strike, Tesla said the automated service will be “unavailable for approximately one week.” 

    Before the update, drivers who received several Autopilot disengagements were kicked off for the length of the car ride but only turned back on when the car was stopped and turned off.

    Tesla appears to be getting tougher on Autopilot abusers as the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies against Tesla founder Elon Musk. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/25/2023 – 09:55

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