Today’s News 30th March 2024

  • The Optimism-Fatalism Historical Cycle
    The Optimism-Fatalism Historical Cycle

    Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

    No fundamental form of human behavior, for better or worse, disappears forever.

    Cycles of wealth, fear, or frustration force changes, and they bear an uncanny similarity to Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man.” We are, above all else, predictable.

    The present decline, distortion, or much-heralded “end of democracy” is overstated. Still, it is difficult to disagree that the present cycle of democracy—beginning in the 18th century—has run its course. It is a human concept of behavior and, as with all things human, has its lifespan before it becomes feeble and sclerotic, corrupt and cynical, and ultimately a parody of what was intended in the flush of innocent youth.

    Throughout the world, “democracies” now see themselves beset by the internal competition for office by career politicians whose goal, before all else, is to attain and retain power. The compromises of dignity, nobility of purpose, and service to the electorate are the hallmarks of the age. These compromises have led to the thing aspiring politicians once saw as the bane of human existence: autocracies or, worse, rampant and totalitarian tyrannies. But autocracies cloak themselves with the language of democracy.

    Just as Africa, freed now from the coercion of major external powers, has resorted to removing governments by force, we see politicians in power using their office to suppress, deter, or remove their challengers for office.

    The Communist Party of China (CCP) introduced the concept of “lawfare” to outmaneuver its domestic and international opponents: using legal mechanisms to constrain an adversary. This concept has been adopted vigorously by “democratically elected politicians” worldwide, so there are now few societies where “lawfare” is not used to eliminate legitimate opponents and constrain and channel society at large.

    The spirit of democracy is nowhere to be seen.

    Waste no time on mourning. Democracy has had its day and will return when the time is right.

    But, equally, waste no time nurturing the self-delusion that moral or intellectual superiority lies in the pretense of democracy, the pretense that societies still embody what they once set out to represent. But we, most of us, insist on our certainty of the moral superiority of our own society because we have nowhere else to go. We cannot embrace our historical or geopolitical opponents’ rights to their own certainties.

    But we do not know how best to reorganize our own society without the unthinkable collapse of that same democracy to force our actions.

    The birth and death of states have been a preoccupation of scholars since humanity began to structure into durable communities. In 2006, I created—with the help of Greek Cypriot scholar Marios Evriviades—the words “cratocide” (the murder of nations) and “cratogenesis” (the birth of nations) for the book, “The Art of Victory.” Shortly afterward, we added the word “cratometamorphosis” to describe the total reorganization of societies.

    Collapse is always the prerequisite to “cratometamorphosis.” Theoretically, this reorganization and revitalization of society should be feasible before total collapse creates a situation when no other option is available. But the very safeguards we have put in place over decades and centuries to protect our present structures also safeguard the corrupted wreckage they have become.

    So if, as it appears, many societies—and by no means only those that thought of themselves as democratic—are waiting painfully for that total collapse so that they may be free to recreate themselves “closer to the heart’s desire,” then why is little thought given to that future society, that utopia?

    During the years of difficulty that beset so many during the Industrial Revolutions, new concepts were conjured, speculatively, out of whole ideals. There were also years of uncertainty in societies in flux, during which new belief systems were devised.

    These religions and ideologies all rippled down the ages and continue to inspire followers, often in the face of historical evidence that they failed here and there but were never revised to truly meet new requirements. Indeed, modern democracy itself—mirroring several iterations in the Hellenic states and earlier in the Indus Valley civilizations over the past 10,000 years—was just such a “revivalist creed,” and its new advocates failed to understand (or even question) why, in its earlier iterations, it had ultimately collapsed.

    Is it possible that at our present impasse, there is some belief that technology—artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and so on—will define or create a new social framework? Have we, in so embracing “technology,” outsourced responsibility for devising ways in which humans can best work together? Certainly, technology has enabled the implementation of mass guidance of vast numbers of the human population, like the “murmuration of starlings,” the uncanny, but now understood, mass coordination of flocks of starlings in flight.

    This “mass guidance” of humans is the mass psychosis tendency, a fundamental self-protection mechanism in human behavior designed to create herd protection.

    That mass psychosis, of course, is what we saw during the COVID-19 crisis. However, it presupposes that human societies can be made to walk willingly and fatalistically toward the scenario outlined in the book, “1984,” by George Orwell. It may be man’s good fortune that economic dislocations—now being evidenced in the tremblors that shake the values of currencies and the viability of major economies—will gradually erode the pace of technological progress, enabling human society to regroup on more elemental or human lines.

    To “start again” with new concepts for societal organization—governance—will inevitably involve considering concepts that, whether we realize it or not, have probably been played out before. However, it would be ideal to recognize that the framework begins with the sovereignty of each individual and the requirement for each individual to respect each other individually to achieve progress and human reproduction.

    At least that optimistic framework can reemerge for a while until we see politics once more fatalistically reach the point where all respect is once again lost, and the desire for power outweighs the desire for societal wellbeing.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 23:15

  • Visualizing The Major Product Exported By Each US State
    Visualizing The Major Product Exported By Each US State

    The U.S. is the second biggest exporter in the world, accounting for over 8% of global exports.

    In this graphic by NeoMam Studios, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti analyzes the primary product exported by each state, as well as its main destination, utilizing data from the U.S. International Trade Administration.

    Canada: The Primary Destination

    Canada serves as the largest export market for most of the Midwest, while Mexico holds the top spot as the export destination for much of the Southwest and Southeast. Additionally, Canada stands out as the primary importer of products from 21 states, with China and Germany trailing behind as notable destinations.

    State Destination Top Product Exported Value (USD)
    Alabama 🇩🇪 Germany Transportation equip. $3,649M
    Alaska 🇨🇦 Canada Minerals $576M
    Arizona 🇲🇽 Mexico Minerals $1,760M
    Arkansas 🇨🇦 Canada Processed Foods $246M
    California 🇨🇦 Canada Computer & Electronics $5,093M
    Colorado 🇰🇷 South Korea Processed Foods $545M
    Connecticut 🇩🇪 Germany Transportation equip. $1,581M
    Delaware 🇰🇷 South Korea Appliances $419M
    Florida 🇬🇧 UK Chemicals $2,447M
    Georgia 🇨🇦 Canada Machinery $1,629M
    Hawaii 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Transportation equip. $68M
    Idaho 🇹🇼 Taiwan Computer & Electronics $394M
    Illinois 🇨🇦 Canada Transportation equip. $4,517M
    Indiana 🇨🇦 Canada Transportation equip. $6,561M
    Iowa 🇨🇦 Canada Machinery $1,598M
    Kansas 🇲🇽 Mexico Agricultural $1,543M
    Kentucky 🇨🇦 Canada Transportation equip. $3,630M
    Louisiana 🇨🇳 China Agricultural $11,300M
    Maine 🇨🇦 Canada Oil & Gas $504M
    Maryland 🇫🇷 France Transportation equip. $949M
    Massachusetts 🇨🇳 China Machinery $1,298M
    Michigan 🇨🇳 China Transportation equip. $15,361M
    Minnesota 🇨🇦 Canada Petroleum & Coal $2,787M
    Mississippi 🇵🇦 Panama Petroleum & Coal $2,106M
    Missouri 🇨🇦 Canada Transportation equip. $2,390M
    Montana 🇨🇦 Canada Minerals $153M
    Nebraska 🇲🇽 Mexico Agricultural $933M
    Nevada 🇨🇭 Switzerland Metal $1,399M
    New Hampshire 🇩🇪 Germany Transportation equip. $695M
    New Jersey 🇨🇦 Canada Chemicals $2,734M
    New Mexico 🇲🇽 Mexico Computer & Electronics $2,014M
    New York 🇨🇭 Switzerland Metal $18,262M
    North Carolina 🇨🇳 China Chemicals $4,312M
    North Dakota 🇨🇦 Canada Petroleum & Coal $1,441M
    Ohio 🇨🇦 Canada Transportation equip. $5,990M
    Oklahoma 🇨🇦 Canada Machinery $418M
    Oregon 🇨🇳 China Computer & Electronics $6,261M
    Pennsylvania 🇨🇦 Canada Chemicals $2,280M
    Rhode Island 🇮🇹 Italy Waste & Scrap $321M
    South Carolina 🇩🇪 Germany Transportation equip. $3,774M
    South Dakota 🇨🇦 Canada Processed Foods $297M
    Tennessee 🇨🇦 Canada Transportation equip. $2,017M
    Texas 🇲🇽 Mexico Petroleum & Coal $33,627M
    Utah 🇬🇧 UK Metal $6,805M
    Vermont 🇹🇼 Taiwan Computer & Electronics $447M
    Virginia 🇮🇳 India Minerals $1,799M
    Washington 🇨🇳 China Agricultural $10,553M
    West Virginia 🇮🇳 India Minerals $657M
    Wisconsin 🇨🇦 Canada Machinery $1,802M
    Wyoming 🇮🇩 Indonesia Chemicals $200M

    When it comes to the types of exports, transportation equipment emerges as the primary source for the majority of states, with minerals and ores, chemicals, and computer and electronics following closely behind.

    For instance, North Carolina ships $4.3 billion worth of chemicals to China, marking one of the longest-distance trade flows among states. Meanwhile, Florida boasts one of the most diverse export portfolios, engaging in trade with Europe, South America, and the Caribbean.

    Louisiana heavily relies on the export of agricultural products to China, which contributes significantly to its total GDP. Similarly, Michigan’s transportation equipment exports to Canada constitute a noteworthy portion of the state’s GDP.

    In Oregon, exports of semiconductors and other computer parts to China, driven by companies like Intel and Micron, play a crucial role in the state’s economy. Meanwhile, Utah predominantly exports primary metal manufacturing goods to the United Kingdom.

    The biggest exporter in the country, Texas, sees a significant portion of its GDP attributed to exports to Mexico, further underlining the state’s economic ties with its southern neighbor.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 22:30

  • New Yorkers Silently Worrying Over Ramifications Of Trump Ruling
    New Yorkers Silently Worrying Over Ramifications Of Trump Ruling

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

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images)

    Monday’s dramatic bond reduction for former President Donald Trump did nothing to dissipate the dark cloud that his civil-fraud case has cast over New York business deals.

    Although investors won’t publicly admit it, the case is having a chilling effect, said Charles Trzcinka, professor of finance at Indiana University-Bloomington.

    If you talk to people in this market, they are very, very upset … and these are people who are neutral or even opposed to Trump,” Mr. Trzcinka told The Epoch Times. “They’re just angry about it.

    In his role at the university, Mr. Trzcinka said he places students in the corporate lending market in New York, making him aware of trends in that sphere.

    An appeals court’s decision to slash the bond by about 60 percent, reducing it to $175 million, still left a massive penalty intact while President Trump continues a legal challenge of Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling.

    Judge Engoron ruled that President Trump and his associates fraudulently overvalued their assets. But Mr. Trzcinka said anyone who thinks President Trump’s activities in that case were irregular or fraudulent may lack an understanding of typical New York business transactions.

    A source familiar with the case explained to The Epoch Times that, normally, business-related cases are handled in the New York courts’ commercial division.

    There, cases are decided by judges who have specific, “sophisticated” knowledge of commercial law and business practices.

    But the case didn’t go that route because New York Attorney General Letitia James found a novel way to use New York’s anti-fraud law.

    Researchers examined other alleged fraud cases in New York over a 70-year period and found the Trump case stands alone. The Trump Organization was the only company that confronted the possibility of being forced out of business despite no victim suffering major financial harm.

    Because of Ms. James’ unusual application of the law, the case was channeled to a court that would rarely, if ever, handle business-related matters.

    Thus, the source said, “This case proceeded in just a highly irregular fashion from the start.”

    The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York on March 20, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

    ‘A Degree of Horror’

    Legal scholar Jonathan Turley agreed the case is atypical and its repercussions far-reaching.

    “This has really done great damage to the New York legal system … Businesses are looking at this with a degree of horror—that a judge could come up with a figure so large you have to sell parts of your business just to get an appeal,” Mr. Turley told Fox News.

    However, people who dislike President Trump are cheering on Ms. James. She ran for election on a promise to prosecute the former president if she won the post of attorney general.

    Before the court-ordered bond reduction, the original $464 million bond amount included a $363 million judgment that Judge Engoron levied against President Trump and his associates, plus 9 percent interest.

    Speaking to reporters after the March 25 appellate court’s decision, President Trump called Judge Engoron’s original decision a “disservice” to New York.

    “Businesses are fleeing,” he said.

    The case promises to continue discouraging investors from doing business in the Empire State, Mr. Trzcinka and two other knowledgeable sources told The Epoch Times.

    That’s not only because of the crippling dollar amounts involved, the sources said, but also because President Trump and his associates were behaving within the bounds of normal business practice and victimized no one.

    “All the parties under this civil case were satisfied,” Mr. Trzcinka said. Yet Ms. James “brought a case without a victim” and secured a judgment approaching $500 million.

    “I have never heard of a victimless civil case that even won $500,” he said.

    Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a pre-trial hearing in New York City on March 25, 2024. (Top R) New York Attorney General Letitia James (C) watches the start of former Presdient Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York City on Oct. 2, 2023.

    Silently Worrying

    Businesspeople are afraid to express concerns about the ramifications aloud. Doing so would paint targets on their backs—an underlying reason why President Trump was unable to persuade bonding companies or banks to cover the original $464 million bond, Mr. Trzcinka and the sources said.

    I don’t think a bonding company [or a bank] is willing to be associated with Donald Trump … because the attorney general could turn around and sue them, go after them,” Mr. Trzcinka said.

    Judge Engoron ruled that President Trump and his associates committed fraud by overvaluing his properties.

    Parties involved in real estate transactions tend to exaggerate values in one way or the other, and they “hit each other over the head” with dueling appraisals, Mr. Trzcinka said.

    And, in a case such as this one, “everyone had the same information and just came to different conclusions” as to the valuations, he said. Then the parties negotiated figures and agreed to them.

    Unaffordable for a Multi-Billionaire?

    Even before interest was added, Judge Engoron slapped President Trump with “the largest penalty in history” for a case of its kind, said Mr. Trzcinka.

    He had never heard of such a high penalty imposed for a “syndicated loan,” which involves civil contracts between a corporate borrower and corporate lenders.

    About $355 million of the total order specifically applied to President Trump. In addition, the judge ordered $4 million to be recovered from each of his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and $1 million from former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg.

    Even the ultra-wealthy would rarely, if ever, have rapid access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquid assets, Mr. Trzcinka and other financial experts say.

    Marshaling that much cash to post the bond in just 30 days proved to be a daunting task for President Trump; the appellate court’s ruling granted him 10 more days to post a reduced $175 million bond.

    That decision moved the amount from “the realm of the impossible” into a different category; “it’s expensive but it’s feasible,” a source said.

    A number of bonding companies said that the most they could shoulder would be $100 million, President Trump’s lawyers said in court filings, adding that many people worked countless hours to find possible solutions to the former president’s predicament.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 21:45

  • As Easter Looms, Church Attendance In The US Declines
    As Easter Looms, Church Attendance In The US Declines

    Christianity is on the decline in the United States.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, new data from Gallup shows that church attendance has dropped across all polled Christian groups. As the following chart shows, the biggest drop in attendance in the past 20 years has been amongst Catholics, which has fallen from 45 percent of U.S. adults self-identifying as Catholic saying that they go to religious services weekly or at least every week in 2000-2003, down to 33 percent saying the same in 2021-2023. This is a decrease of 12 percentage points. Catholics’ attendance is lower than their Protestant counterparts, which saw a drop of 4 percentage points in that time frame from 48 percent of worshippers to 44 percent.

    Infographic: The Decline of Christianity in the U.S. | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    According to Gallup’s data, this decline in church attendance among Christians speaks to a wider pattern across religion in the U.S. generally.

    Where an average of 42 percent of U.S. adults attended religious services every week or nearly every week 20 years ago, now this figure is just 30 percent.

    This is largely due to an increase in the share of U.S. adults who self-identify as having no religious affiliation.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 21:00

  • Stress Creates A 4-Fold Increase In Spread Of Cancer: Study
    Stress Creates A 4-Fold Increase In Spread Of Cancer: Study

    Authored by Cara Michelle Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A breakthrough discovery links stress hormones with a fourfold surge in the spread of cancer, shedding light on why patients under severe stress often have lower survival rates.

    There’s probably very few situations that are as stressful as being diagnosed with cancer and undergoing cancer treatment,” Mikala Egeblad, cancer researcher and senior author of the study, told The Epoch Times.

    Understanding the stress–cancer link may open up new ways to protect patients from the adverse effects of stress as part of cancer care.

    An Accidental Discovery Prompts More Research

    The team of scientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) found that glucocorticoids—a type of stress hormone—play a role in creating a metastasis-friendly environment.

    The Egeblad lab, which relocated to Johns Hopkins University, studies how the communication between tumors and the immune system affects tumor growth and metastasis in mice. Researchers discovered the connection accidentally, noticing faster tumor growth in mice they had unintentionally stressed by a change in housing.

    The phenomenon prompted further research on chronic stress exposure and how it can encourage the spread of cancer, according to first author Xue-Yan He, who was a postdoctoral fellow at CSHL and is now an assistant professor at the Washington University School of Medicine.

    Ms. He investigated this connection with a mice study that mimicked chronic stress, leading to startling observations: an increase in tumor lesions and up to a fourfold surge in the spread of cancer.

    ‘Spiderweb’ Structures Encourage Cancer Cells

    According to the study published in Cancer Cell, the size of mammary tumors approximately doubled, and the rate of metastasis to the lungs increased between two- and fourfold compared with control mice not exposed to stress.

    The researchers found that chronic stress impacts neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, causing an increase in neutrophil activation in the tissues where the cancer cells go.

    When looking at lung tissue, the researchers found that chronic stress had altered the body’s internal environment in a way that could promote cancer growth by increasing neutrophils and then reducing T-cells, immune cells that kill cancer cells.

    We also found more extracellular matrix; this is a protein [network] that can support cancer cell growth,” Ms. He told The Epoch Times. Extracellular matrix helps cells attach to nearby cells and plays a vital role in cell growth and movement.

    Ms. Egeblad explained that the neutrophils in the tissues formed spiderweb-like structures called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Essentially, these traps are sticky webs of DNA meant to trap pathogens. However, in the case of cancer, NETs do not serve their usual protective role.

    Instead, according to Ms. Egeblad and Ms. He, it appears that the NETs, induced by stress, encourage the growth of breast cancer cells that reach the lungs. “Our work shows how chronic stress activates neutrophils, helping cancer cells grow,” added Ms. He.

    To confirm that glucocorticoids drive NET formation, leading to increased metastasis, the researchers performed three tests, each interfering with this pathway. First, they removed neutrophils from the mice using antibodies. Next, they injected a NET-dissolving enzyme. Lastly, they used mice whose neutrophils couldn’t respond to glucocorticoids.

    According to Ms. He, each test achieved similar results: Depleting the neutrophils stopped stress-induced metastasis.

    Chronic Stress Primes the Body for Developing Cancer

    “Together, our data show that glucocorticoids released during chronic stress cause NET formation and establish a metastasis-promoting microenvironment,” the study authors wrote.

    Unexpectedly, the study also showed that chronic stress can cause NETs to form and change lung tissues in mice without cancer, essentially preparing the body for cancer.

    While this study highlights why managing severe stress is critical to cancer treatment, it also points to potential therapeutics that could target the formation of NETs or block the receptors for glucocorticoids.

    “The next major directions that I see is understanding how much of this applies to humans and what can we do to to inhibit the stress in first, our animal models, and then eventually in patients,” said Ms. Egeblad.

    She also hopes that understanding the stress response in patients will pave the way for better treatment and increased survival rates.

    Unraveling the Deadly Stress-Cancer Alliance

    Stress is unavoidable for someone navigating a cancer diagnosis. Many patients cite treatment decisions—and the surrounding uncertainty, anxiety, and even regret—as a source of distress, according to a 2023 study published in Scientific Reports.

    In a review paper from 2023 published in the Annual Review of Psychology, researchers shared decades of data showing how stress reduction techniques improve outcomes for cancer patients. Techniques for stress management included:

    • Breathwork: This involves deep, slow breathing while concentrating on filling the lungs and relaxing muscles.
    • Progressive muscle relaxation: This technique involves tightening and then relaxing muscles. Most people start at either the toes or the head and progressively relax all the muscles across the body.
    • Meditation: With this technique, you can learn to relax your mind and concentrate on an inner sense of calm.
    • Yoga: Yoga focuses the mind on breathing and posture to promote relaxation and reduce fatigue.

    Many of the findings in the review paper involved cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with a counselor, which focuses on actively changing thoughts and behavior. Patients were also taught to distinguish between stressors that are within their control and those that are not.

    For stressors that feel like they are out of someone’s control, such as the uncertainties that come with facing a cancer care plan, relaxation techniques with social support seem to help patients manage anxiety.

    Engaging with support groups and connecting with peers facing similar struggles provides a support network. Sharing experiences creates a sense of belonging, diminishing the isolation that can accompany cancer.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 20:15

  • Buffett Is Still The Richest Person In Finance
    Buffett Is Still The Richest Person In Finance

    The combined net worth of the 10 richest people in finance reached $446.9 billion in 2024.

    Here, Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte ranks them based on Forbes data as of Feb. 1, 2024.

    The Oracle of Omaha

    93-year-old Warren Buffett heads the list. The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has a net worth of $128.7 billion.

    Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway portfolio is 62% invested in only three stocks: Apple (42.9%), Bank of America (10.2%) and American Express (9.1%).

    Based in Omaha, Nebraska, where he has spent much of his life and where Berkshire Hathaway is headquartered, Buffett is also the 6th richest person in the world.

    In second place is Michael Bloomberg, with $96.3 billion. Besides founding the financial data and media company Bloomberg LP in 1981, Bloomberg served as mayor of New York City for 12 years, from 2002 to 2013. A prominent philanthropist, he is committed to donating his stake in Bloomberg LP to Bloomberg Philanthropies when he dies.

    In third place, Ken Griffin possesses almost a third of Bloomberg’s net worth. He founded and runs Citadel, a Miami-based hedge fund firm that manages $60 billion in assets. Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman and CEO of Blackstone Group, comes in fourth with $36.8 billion.

    The only non-American is Robert Budi Hartono, one of the wealthiest people in Indonesia. His wealth comes from Djarum, one of the world’s largest producers of clove cigarettes, and Bank Central Asia, one of the country’s largest banks.

    The lone female on the list is Abigail Johnson. She is the president and CEO of Fidelity Investments. Johnson took over the CEO position from her father in 2014.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 19:30

  • Ahead Of 2024 Election, Abortion Battles Heat Up Across Nation
    Ahead Of 2024 Election, Abortion Battles Heat Up Across Nation

    Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    Parents could be charged with child abuse if they prevent their minor daughter from getting an abortion, according to an Illinois law proposed by Democrat state Rep. Anne Stava-Murray.

    In South Carolina, a new bill would require taxpayers to pay all childhood expenses—up to age 18—for babies born to mothers who were unable to get an abortion.

    And the New Hampshire Legislature is wrestling with a proposal to ban abortion at 15 days of gestation, effectively banning abortion in the state, where it is currently allowed up to 24 weeks.

    These recently introduced measures are just a few among a flood of proposals and changes triggered by the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which sent abortion regulation back to the states.

    In November, voters in at least seven states will see abortion proposals on their ballots. Even in states where access to abortion isn’t on the ballot, voters may still cast votes for candidates who align with their beliefs on the issue.

    Immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, trigger laws in 13 states went into effect, completely banning or limiting abortions to very early pregnancy, with few exceptions. Last year, states without trigger laws, including Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina, enacted similar pro-life laws.

    Many states also enacted or proposed “safety net” legislation to help new and expectant mothers meet the demands of motherhood.

    Ohio state Sen. Sandra O’Brien, a Republican, introduced SB 159, a tax credit for donations to pregnancy centers.

    In Indiana, SB 98 identifies an unborn child as a dependent for tax purposes. The bill was sponsored by Republican state Sen. Andy Zay. Another Indiana safety-net bill would increase the Medicaid reimbursement rates for prenatal and postnatal care services.

    Then there’s Kentucky’s bipartisan “Momnibus” legislation, an omnibus bill offering tax credits for adoption, and tax credits and grants for pregnancy help centers. It includes provisions for mental health service, parenting classes, and online and home visits for new mothers without transportation.

    The pro-abortion movement is working hard to counter these actions and is striving for legislation and ballot measures that allow for abortion up to birth in many cases.

    You’re seeing a direct reaction from the other side that is panicking, based on the Dobbs decision,” Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told The Epoch Times.

    “They are running as fast as they can to unlimited abortion funded by the taxpayer. And they’ve gotten so extreme on the issue.”

    Pro-abortion activists mark the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in front of the Supreme Court on June 23, 2023. (Nathan Howard/AP Photo, File)

    Womb for Rent

    Seemingly every state has some movement in its legislature regarding abortion policy.

    In South Carolina, where abortion is banned at six weeks of pregnancy, state Sen. Mia McLeod, who left the Democratic Party and became an independent, has proposed the “South Carolina Pro Birth Accountability Act” which will require taxpayers to pay women who would have aborted their baby “reasonable living, legal, medical, psychological, and psychiatric expenses.”

    The bill compares a woman’s womb to rental property and reasons that in the surrogacy market, “a woman’s uterus is not unlike rental property, as a commissioning couple agrees to pay a gestational surrogate certain compensation for carrying a fetus to term and giving birth to a child.” It continues to say that since South Carolina may not constitutionally use a citizen’s rental property without just compensation, “it may not constitutionally require a woman to incubate a child without appropriate compensation.”

    The bill stipulates that after a baby’s heartbeat is detected, the mother would be automatically enrolled in public assistance programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and that those benefits could not be withdrawn until the child is 18.

    The bill would pay a nurse to provide home visits from early pregnancy through the child’s second birthday; costs associated with health, dental, and vision insurance for the child until the age of 18; and a fully funded South Carolina 529 College Savings Plan for the benefit of the child. If the woman has a miscarriage, she may sue the state for compensation and damages.

    In the case of an unmarried woman, the bill stipulates that if the biological father accrues more than $5,000 in child-support arrearage, he would be charged with a misdemeanor and, if convicted, could serve up to three years in prison.

    (Left) Democratic state Sen. Mia McLeod speaks during debate on an abortion measure at the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., on May 23, 2023. (Right) Demonstrators watch a live video feed of the state Senate proceedings. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

    “The court may suspend any portion of the prison sentence if the man consents to a voluntary vasectomy and to payment of restitution to the woman in the amount of the child-support arrearages owed,” the bill reads.

    “I just want to make sure that those of us who call ourselves pro-life, that we are doing something to help the living, and my bill does that,” Ms. McLeod said in a February video posted on social media.

    It also gives my colleagues who refer to themselves as pro-life an opportunity to prove it by investing in South Carolina’s women and girls, and making sure that they have the resources and support that they need.”

    Pro-life group South Carolina Citizens for Life opposes the legislation.

    “Comparing a woman’s uterus to rental property and incentivizing men to have a vasectomy is really disturbing and vile language, and it’s intended to devalue members of our human family—born and waiting to be born,” Holly Gatling, the group’s executive director, told The Epoch Times.

    “The intent of this bill is to obfuscate the fact that we have a vast network of pregnancy-care centers in South Carolina. … where women are given free health care … and diapers, formulas, job training, parenting classes, and assistance with getting back into a regular workforce and lifestyle by the time this baby is 2 years old,” she said. “So the bill is based on a false premise that we don’t do anything for mothers and babies after the child is born.”

    In Pennsylvania, Democrat lawmakers say they want to “facilitate safe abortion access,” by reversing a 2011 state law requiring abortion businesses to meet all the same regulations as ambulatory surgical facilities, including submitting to unannounced inspections. It means abortion clinics, which sometimes fail health inspections, would no longer have to be inspected.

    “Here in Pennsylvania, the pro-abortion extremism starts at the top with Gov. Josh Shapiro unilaterally eliminating the state contract for alternatives to abortion funding—a program that had bipartisan support and operated for 30 years under Republican and Democrat governors alike,” Michael Geer, president of Pennsylvania Family Institute, told The Epoch Times in an email.

    Mr. Shapiro often expresses support for abortions in social media posts.

    “Mifepristone will be available on the shelves in Pennsylvania,” he posted on March 1. “I’ll continue working to protect women’s access to abortion across this Commonwealth.”

    Holding a map showing the status of state abortion policies, Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks at an event at the White House complex in Washington on Aug. 3, 2022. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    Mifepristone is a progesterone-blocking drug that causes a woman’s body to abort her baby outside a doctor’s office.

    “As long as I’m Governor, abortion will be safe, legal, and accessible here in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Shapiro posted on March 4.

    The Shapiro administration made available online a form solely for complaints against pregnancy resource centers.

    “It’s an agenda that prioritizes the profits of the abortion industry over the well-being of women and children in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Geer said.

    Other Bills

    In West Virginia, the state Senate has approved a measure requiring students in eighth and 10th grades to watch “Baby Olivia,” a video on fetal development. The video already is shown in North Dakota classrooms, and it could be legislatively required in Iowa, Kentucky, and Missouri. Pro-abortion activists oppose the short film, calling it medically inaccurate.

    House Bill 2749 in Kansas would require abortionists to ask women why they are terminating their pregnancies and to rank their top reasons for seeking an abortion, including financial or health concerns, or that the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.

    In Oklahoma, where abortion is almost completely banned, House Bill 3013 would make trafficking abortion pills a felony, punishable by a $100,000 fine, 10 years in prison, or both.

    A judge in Montana recently declared unconstitutional three laws passed by the state Legislature. The laws banned abortion after 20 weeks, required that pregnant women be given the opportunity to see an ultrasound of their baby before having an abortion, and required that abortion pills be administered in person rather than through telehealth. The laws were challenged by Planned Parenthood of Montana.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 18:45

  • ESG Frustration And Backlash In The Banking Sector Continues
    ESG Frustration And Backlash In The Banking Sector Continues

    “Facts that don’t align with ill-informed prejudice are often infuriating. That doesn’t make them wrong. Someone needs to tell the truth about what it’s going to take to get to a net-zero future,” Emily Mir, a spokeswoman for Exxon, said earlier this month.

    And that’s exactly what Judson Berkey at UBS has done, the focus of a new Bloomberg report. Berkey let loose on a recent conference call with regulators about how unrealistic climate goals were for banks trying to integrate them into their respective economies.

    The report covering Berkey’s outburst simply concluded that the “world’s biggest banks can’t live up to the green regulatory ideal unless they start dumping huge numbers of clients worldwide at a reckless pace and also roil economies in large swathes of the globe that primarily rely on dirty fuels.”

    Berkey was on a “check-in” call where regulators query market participants about regulations, the report says, when he expressed his frustration, interjecting: “Banks are living and lending on planet earth, not planet NGFS [Network for Greening the Financial System]”.

    The outburst is a microcosm of “cracks” emerging in the banking sector after being draped with regulations about sustainability, the report says. Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio famously said last year about ESG: “You have to make it profitable.”

    Its indicative of new-world climate regulation going head to head with old world capitalism, the report says. 

    Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission in Britain said: Climate change is “an economic externality, and you can’t expect a free market to deal with it voluntarily.”

    Banks reevaluating their net zero commitments are facing challenges as they confront the practical implications of these pledges, which include limitations on operating in coal-reliant regions like South Africa, Poland, and Indonesia. These commitments also complicate relationships with clients across various sectors, from commodities firms to companies with less obvious carbon impacts. 

    Jonathan Hackett, head of sustainable finance at Bank of Montreal, added: “Our net zero commitments are about being our clients’ lead partner and are consciously taken around the idea that we need to be there with our clients and our clients need to succeed, not that we need to hyper select clients in order to get to net zero somehow faster or better.”

    A recent sustainability report from UBS highlighted a “notable shift in emphasis” in climate change discussions, moving from net zero pledges to recognizing the need for a transition phase. The Swiss bank noted that high inflation and input costs will be crucial factors for clients as they develop decarbonization strategies.

    James Vaccaro, Chief Catalyst at Climate Safe Lending Network, added: “For banks with substantial capital markets businesses, like those competing with the JPMorgans of the world, it’s fee income that’s on the line here. Ditching clients off track from 1.5C means losing major lines of revenue.”

    In sum, the financial industry’s initial rush to commit to net zero carbon footprints at the 2021 COP26 summit in Glasgow has hit a reality check. Banks that pledged to reduce financed emissions and invest billions in green and sustainable deals are reevaluating these commitments after facing the complex realities of implementing such drastic changes.

    It should be no surprise to our readers: we have been pointed out the collapse of ESG for more than a year now. Earlier in March we wrote how Exxon’s CEO had all but declared victory over the “woke” ESG lobby. 

    In February, we noted that CEOs were ditching ESG lingo on conference calls. For some context, peak ESG and related synonyms, such as “climate change” and “clean energy” and green energy” and net zero,” among other terms, peaked at 28,000 mentions in the first quarter of 2022. Ever since, the number of mentions has rapidly plunged. Halfway through the first quarter earnings season, mentions are around 4,800. 

    Andy Wiechmann, the Chief Financial Officer of MSCI, mentioned during his earnings call that “Clients are taking a more measured approach to how they integrate ESG.”

    On a Jan. 12 earnings call, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink explained how his firm plans to purchase private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners without mentioning ESG. This makes sense since BlackRock dropped the ESG term after blowback last summer. 

    Recall, we also wrote last year about the dying off of ESG and “green” investment products. At the end of 2023, Goldman Sachs shuttered its ActiveBeta Paris-Aligned Climate U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF. 

    Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pointed out in late 2023 that “there was just way too much supply for the demand” with the ETF and that “it’s going to get worse too”. Balchunas says the ETF only took in $7 million over the course of 2 years. 

    We also wrote about Jeff Ubben late last year, who shuttered his sustainability fund – calling traditional climate summitry an “echo chamber” of diplomats. Less than a week before that we noted that $30 billion had been shaved off the value of clean energy stocks over the preceding 6 months. 

    Finally, we pointed out last year how the ESG grift was reaching endgame after Markus Müller, chief investment officer ESG at Deutsche Bank’s Private Bank stated that sustainability funds should include traditional energy stocks, arguing that not doing so deprives investors of a prime opportunity to invest in the transition to renewable energy.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 18:00

  • Hazardous Material Containers 'Breached' During Baltimore Bridge Collapse: NTSB
    Hazardous Material Containers ‘Breached’ During Baltimore Bridge Collapse: NTSB

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

    The scene after the cargo ship Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge a day earlier causing it to collapse, in Baltimore, Md., on March 27, 2024. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    The cargo ship that crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26 was carrying more than 50 hazardous material containers, some of which were breached during the collapse, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

    NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said during a press conference on March 27 that the agency, which is currently probing the crash, had obtained a cargo manifest of the 984-foot-long Singapore-flagged cargo vessel named Dali.

    The vessel—which reportedly lost power while transiting out of Baltimore Harbor and struck the bridge—had 56 containers of hazardous materials on board at the time of the incident, Ms. Homendy said.

    The NTSB chair said a senior hazmat investigator had identified the containers.

    That’s 764 tons of hazardous materials—mostly corrosives, flammable, and some miscellaneous hazardous materials—class nine hazardous materials which would include lithium-ion batteries,” Ms. Homendy said.

    “Some of the hazmat containers were breached,” she added.

    Asked how many of the containers were in the water, the NTSB chair could not provide an exact number.

    “I did see some containers in the water and some breached significantly on the vessel itself,” she said. “I don’t have an exact number but it’s something that we can provide in an update and certainly in our preliminary report which should be out in two to four weeks.”

    ‘Sheen’ Observed On Water Around Collapse

    Officials have also observed a sheen—sometimes caused by gasoline or oil—on the waterway surrounding the collapsed bridge that spans the Patapsco River. According to Ms. Homendy, federal, state, and local authorities are aware of this and are currently working to address those issues.

    The NTSB as part of our safety investigation documents that type of release, it documents the damage and and documents the type of materials involved as part of our investigation,” Ms. Homendy said.

    Asked by one reporter to characterize the level of concern regarding the hazardous material leak and the sheen on the water, Ms. Homendy declined to respond and directed him to state and local authorities.

    The NTSB will also not provide any of its findings while the investigation remains ongoing, Ms. Homendy noted.

    Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge at about 1:27 a.m. on March 26 while leaving the harbor, according to officials.

    The incident resulted in the bridge collapsing moments later while eight construction workers—who officials say were from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—were filling in potholes.

    Police Recover Bodies

    Two of the workers were rescued on March 26 soon after the collapse, officials said. One of them was uninjured and the other was hospitalized in a “very serious condition” but later released.

    On March 27, police announced that two bodies had also been recovered during search-and-recovery efforts.

    The families of Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, and Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, 26, have been notified, Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, said.

    Police discovered their bodies inside a pickup truck that was submerged approximately 25 feet below water in the Patapsco River, around the middle section of the bridge, according to the superintendent.

    The two men were with the company, Brawner Companies, doing maintenance on the bridge deck, he said.

    The U.S. Coast Guard is continuing recovery efforts in the search for the remaining four missing individuals.

    According to Ms. Homendy, the 95,000 gross-ton container ship also sustained damage during the incident, although none of the 21 crew members and two pilots who were onboard at the time sustained significant injuries.

    Officials have praised those on board for saving countless lives by raising a mayday alarm just moments before the incident, allowing authorities to limit traffic on the bridge before it collapsed.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 17:15

  • The Tower Of Sauron Can't Pay Its Debt: Brooklyn's Tallest Building Is In Foreclosure
    The Tower Of Sauron Can’t Pay Its Debt: Brooklyn’s Tallest Building Is In Foreclosure

    While everyone says that the looming commercial real estate crash is nothing to worry about since, well, everyone’s been worrying about it for so long and nothing bad has happened yet (except for the whole regional bank crisis last March when virtually anyone who is not JPM almost imploded), every day we get a new and more shocking foreclosure or default.

    Today, it is the infamous Brooklyn Tower, the 1066-foot building, sometimes called the Eye of Sauron, which is the tallest in all of Brooklyn. According to marketing materials from JLL, Silverstein Capital Partners has scheduled a foreclosure auction for 9 DeKalb Ave., JDS Development’s Brooklyn Tower.

    JDS took out a $240M mezzanine loan from Larry Silverstein’s firm in 2019 as part of a $664M debt package to build the 93-story, 1,066-foot tower in Downtown Brooklyn. Yet despite what the media said was a flood of interest in the property, less than five years later, JDS has defaulted on the loan, according to the foreclosure notice, first reported by ten31 on X, triggering the foreclosure auction, scheduled for June 10.

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    To lock in the entire capital structure, Silverstein also bought the property’s senior debt, a $424M mortgage originally provided by Otéra Capital, earlier this year. A spokesperson for Silverstein told Bisnow in an email that the junior, senior and mezzanine loans for 9 DeKalb are all in default and that Silverstein is enforcing its rights as a lender, i.e., the Eye of Sauron is about to have a new master.

    The mezz loan was the first debt handed out by Silverstein Capital Partners, which was launched in 2018. It has raised over $4B since then and provided debt to projects like Hudson Cos.’ One Clinton condo and retail development in Brooklyn Heights.

    JDS, led by Michael Stern, tried to sell the 398-unit rental portion of 9 DeKalb, which also features 143 condos, a little over a year ago, The Real Deal reported. At the time, JDS was reportedly seeking between $600M and $700M for the rental units. Judging by today’s news, they weren’t successful.

    Construction on the tower, which sits atop the historic Dime Savings Bank and Junior’s restaurant, began in 2015. The property, which is Brooklyn’s first supertall at just over 1,000 feet, also contains a 130K SF retail portion largely occupied by Life Time Fitness. Unit 72A this week set the record for Brooklyn’s priciest studio apartment when it sold for $905K, 6sqft reported.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 16:40

  • $1 Billion In Tax Refunds Remain Unclaimed As May 17 Filing Deadline Approaches
    $1 Billion In Tax Refunds Remain Unclaimed As May 17 Filing Deadline Approaches

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

    The IRS building in Washington on Oct. 16, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The IRS is reminding taxpayers who have not filed their 2020 returns to do so quickly or risk losing out on unclaimed refunds.

    Nearly 940,000 Americans have unclaimed refunds from the 2020 tax year worth an estimated $1 billion, the IRS said on March 25. The individuals face a May 17 deadline to submit their returns.

    The median refund is $932. American citizens typically have up to three years to file and claim refunds, after which the money goes to the U.S. Treasury.

    Since taxpayers may find it difficult to gather information necessary to file returns for 2020, the IRS outlined three ways to access such information:

    • Taxpayers who are missing their W-2, 1098, 1099, or 5498 forms can request copies from their employer, bank, or other payers.
    • Those who are unable to get these forms from employers, banks, or other payers can order a free wage and income transcript at IRS.gov using the agency’s online tool. The agency noted that this will be the quickest and easiest option for many individuals.
    • A third way is for the individual to file a 4506-T form with the IRS, requesting a “wage and income transcript.” Taxpayers can then use information to file their returns. The agency warned that written requests for such transcripts can take several weeks. As such, taxpayers are encouraged to try out other options first.

    Usually, the deadline to claim old refunds is around the regular tax deadline, which is April 15 this year. The three-year window for the 2020 returns had been extended to May 17 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    We want taxpayers to claim these refunds, but time is running out for people who may have overlooked or forgotten about these refunds. There’s a May 17 deadline to file these returns so taxpayers should start soon to make sure they don’t miss out,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel.

    Since taxpayers faced “extremely unusual situations” during the pandemic, some of them may have forgotten about a potential refund on their 2020 returns, he stated.

    “People may have just overlooked these, including students, part-time workers, and others. Some people may not realize they may be owed a refund. We encourage people to review their files and start gathering records now.”

    In addition to missing out on refunds, failure to file the 2020 return could also result in some taxpayers losing out on the earned income tax credit, which was worth as much as $6,600 in 2020.

    “The IRS reminds taxpayers seeking a 2020 tax refund that their funds may be held if they have not filed tax returns for 2021 and 2022,” the agency said.

    “In addition, any refund amount for 2020 will be applied to amounts still owed to the IRS or a state tax agency and may be used to offset unpaid child support or other past due federal debts, such as student loans.”

    The state with the highest number of individuals estimated to have 2020 refunds due was Texas, with 93,400 taxpayers. This was followed by California with 88,200; Florida with 53,200; and New York with 51,400.

    Processing Refunds

    The IRS usually takes up to 21 days to process refunds for returns filed electronically. It can take four weeks or more if traditional mail was used. The processing time can be extended in case the returns require extra review or corrections. The fastest way to get refunds is through direct deposit.

    In certain cases, taxpayers may not receive the refund amount they were expecting. This could be due to the agency identifying errors on tax returns, or if the refund was used to pay off certain state or federal debts owed, or if the refund from a joint return was used to pay off a spouse’s debts.

    In case of errors corrected by the IRS, the agency will send a notice to the taxpayer clarifying the changes.

    Tax refunds are critical for many American households as they represent the largest annual cash injection into their budgets. Many families use the refunds to boost their savings or cut down debts.

    According to a January survey conducted by Credit Karma, 37 percent of taxpayers who expect to receive a refund plan on using some or all of the money to pay for necessities. Over half of the respondents said they were looking to file their taxes early to get faster refunds.

    Thirty-one percent of taxpayers surveyed said they would need their refund to make ends meet.

    That number jumps to 40 percent for millennials and 38 percent for Gen Z taxpayers,” the survey report stated.

    In addition to encouraging 2020 tax year nonfilers to file their returns, the IRS has launched an effort to identify high-income taxpayers who have not filed their income taxes since 2017. Over 125,000 such instances have been identified, with taxes being owed in many of these cases.

    The initiative was launched late last month, with the agency sending compliance letters to these 125,000 taxpayers.

    “The mailings include more than 25,000 to those with more than $1 million in income, and over 100,000 to people with incomes between $400,000 and $1 million between tax years 2017 and 2021,” the agency stated.

    Mr. Werfel said that if someone hasn’t filed a tax return in recent years, “this is the time to review their situation and make it right. … For those who owe, the risk will just grow over time as will the potential for penalties and interest. These non-filers should review information on IRS.gov that can help and consider talking to a trusted tax professional as soon as possible.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 16:05

  • France Takes Down Fake Ukraine War Recruitment Website Targeting Immigrants
    France Takes Down Fake Ukraine War Recruitment Website Targeting Immigrants

    In a bizarre and unprecedented situation, France has flagged what officials are calling a fake recruitment website which seeks volunteers to fight on behalf of Ukraine in the with Russia. It reportedly was made to look official, to the point of misleadingly presenting itself as a French government-promoted campaign.

    France’s defense ministry has shut down the website, saying it was created by malicious actors as part of a “disinformation campaign”. Ukraine’s armed forces have of late been desperate for new recruits while facing devastating losses and thus face a severe manpower shortage.

    “A URL for a page called ‘Join Ukraine,’ which used [French] government website templates, is currently being circulated online; this website is fake,” a message on the site reads, according to AFP.

    The fake Ukraine volunteer website “invited” 200,000 French citizens to enlist in Ukraine’s national forces, and even emphasized that immigrants to France could serve. Volunteers were told to contact “unit commander Pavel” in order to gain instructions on the process of enlistment.

    French authorities did not identify a culprit behind the deceptive campaign; however, a source told AFP that evidence possibly points to the Russian mercenary group Wagner being behind it.

    Another government official told AFP that it bore “the hallmarks of a Russian or pro-Russian effort as part of a disinformation campaign claiming that the French army is preparing to send troops to Ukraine.”

    Starting last month French President Emmanuel Macron stunned even Western allies by pushing for European countries to consider sending troops to fight in Ukraine.

    He had told a Paris-hosted security conference in late February that while there was yet “no consensus” on sending ground troops to Ukraine in an “official manner,” it remains that “nothing was excluded.” He later defended the remarks and said the West cannot allow Russia to win in Ukraine no matter what.

    This new fake recruitment website episode could be part of an attempt to troll or mock Macron and call attention to his very dangerous proposal, which would be a sure path to WW3 with Russia. Germany among other powerful allies has opposed Macron’s words.

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    Early in the war more than two years ago some Western leaders, particularly then UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, were vocally encouraging foreign volunteers to go to Ukraine. But as more and more Westerners died in battle, officials have backed off such public statements.

    President Zelensky in February signed a decree opening up Ukraine’s military forces to “foreigners and stateless persons” for the first time ever. The country already had a “foreign legion” but volunteers can now serve in Ukraine’s National Guard, per the recent order, and may sign a contract at the private, sergeant, or officer levels depending on their qualifications.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 15:30

  • Wealth Gap And The Road To Serfdom
    Wealth Gap And The Road To Serfdom

    Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

    One of the most interesting conundrums is the surging wealth gap in America. Despite two of the largest bull markets in history since 1980, most Americans struggle with making ends meet and are unprepared for retirement. Such a reality starkly differs from the belief that rising asset prices benefit the masses.

    For example, in a recent St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank analysis, total household wealth was $139.1 trillion, covering 131 million families. Of that total wealth, 74% was owned by just 13.2 million families, or roughly 10% of the population.

    Notably, this measure of wealth includes the equity of the family’s home. While home equity is essential, it is not readily spendable without taking on debt to extract the value. Therefore, Americans’ “liquid wealth” is far more unequally distributed. However, such is hard to fathom given the endless parade of media and social media influencers extolling the virtues of “building wealth through investing.”

    Interestingly, that survey came after the Government injected nearly $5 trillion into the economy, a massive surge in deficit spending, and the Fed’s $120 billion monthly injections doubled asset prices from the March 2020 lows. Unsurprisingly, in February, Fidelity published its latest analysis showing the number of retirement accounts with balances of more than $1 million surged toward a record. To wit:

    The number of seven-figure 401(k) accounts at Fidelity Investments jumped 20% in 2023’s final quarter to 422,000, marking a sharp recovery from the previous quarter’s 7.7% drop.

    Gains in the stock market helped swell retirement balances last year as the S&P 500 advanced 24% following 2022’s 19% decline. The impressive run was powered in large part by the so-called “Magnificent 7” stocks that now make up roughly 30% of the market-cap weighted S&P 500 Index. The only time when the ranks of 401(k) millionaires at Fidelity was higher was in 2021’s fourth quarter, when there were 442,000 such accounts. Elsewhere, the number of seven-figure IRAs is at a record 391,600 accounts.” – Bloomberg

    However, that data obfuscates the stark wealth gap below the surface. While the “number of retirement millionaires” made headlines, an essential piece of the analysis was overlooked. Those 422,000 accounts comprised only a tiny fraction of Fidelity’s 27.2 million retirement accounts. How small of a fraction? About 1.6%. That number aligns with America’s Top 1% of equity ownership.

    But indeed, after two booming bull markets since 1980, most Americans would be well saved for retirement. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

    So, what went wrong?

    The 50% Problem

    The advice to build wealth is quite simplistic. Investment money into the financial market consistently over long periods. That’s it.

    Again, considering that most Americans alive today participated in either one or both of the most significant secular bull markets in history, the lack of wealth is quite appalling. If individuals had invested $1000 in 1980 into the S&P 500 index and added just $100 per month, they would have roughly $1.4 million in retirement savings today.

    However, if it is so simple, why do most Americans have little or no savings?

    “One in 4 Americans have no retirement savings and those who are saving aren’t saving enough. Those that are [saving], on average, what they have saved will afford them like $1,000 a month of actual cash while they’re in retirement.” – Price-Waterhouse Retirement In America.

    The report found that the median retirement account balance for 55-to-64-year-olds is $120,000. Dividing over 15 years would generate a modest monthly distribution of less than $1,000. The bigger problem is the large percentage of individuals with no retirement savings.

    There are two primary reasons individuals do not save and invest for retirement. While psychological reasons account for 50% of the problem, such as buying high and selling low, the other 50% comes down to a lack of capital to invest.

    We have previously written about the various psychological pitfalls investors make in destroying their investment capital. However, for many, it is a problem of being unable or unwilling to save money.

    1. Lack of knowledge about budgeting and saving. (15%)

    2. The cost of living exceeds income. (70%)

    3. Bad previous investing experience (bear market). (15%)

    If you ask anyone who doesn’t save money, you will likely get one of those three answers. It is hard to “save and invest” when there simply isn’t enough income.

    However, this is where the disconnect between the economic data and the “average American” is exposed.

    Not Enough Income

    Most mainstream analysis utilizes “averages” to discuss the economy’s health. For example, disposable incomes (DPI), personal savings rates, and debt-to-income ratios suggest that the average American family is flush with cash with little debt. However, most of these calculations, like DPI (income minus taxes), are generalizations due to the variability of household income and individual tax rates.

    More importantly, the measure becomes skewed by the top 20% of income earners, notably the top 5%. The chart below shows those in the top 20% saw substantially larger median wage growth versus the bottom 80%. (Note: all data used below is from the Census Bureau and the IRS.). The cost of raising a family of four continues to increase with inflation, so the bottom 80% are forced to live paycheck-to-paycheck, primarily leaving no money for retirement savings.

    Furthermore, disposable and discretionary incomes are two very different animals.

    Discretionary income is the remainder of disposable income after paying for all mandatory spending like rent, food, utilities, health care premiums, insurance, etc. For the bottom 80% of income earners, the cost of living outstrips most of those individuals’ incomes. Debt must make up the difference.

    In other words, given the bulk of the wage gains are in the upper 20%, any data that reports an “average” of the information skews the results higher. This is why there is a vast difference between the debt service levels (per household) between the bottom 80% and the top 20%.

    Yes, saving money and investing it into the financial markets is tough when you must go further into debt every month to make ends meet.

    The Wealth Gap And The Road To Serfdom

    The rise and fall of stock prices has little to do with the average American’s participation in the domestic economy. Interest rates and inflation are entirely different matters. Since interest rates affect “payments,” and inflation increases the “costs of living,” changes negatively impact consumption, housing, and investment.

    Therefore, while the stock market surges to all-time highs, the wealth gap leaves increasing numbers of Americans behind. For the average American, it isn’t a choice of not wanting to participate; they simply can’t.

    The reality is that middle-class America continues to shrink as the wealth gap increases. The rich can invest, save, and use little debt to sustain living standards. People experiencing poverty rely on debt, making long-term prosperity an impossible goal.

    Furthermore, as the peasants demand “more free stuff” from the Government, such requires more debt and higher taxes. Those demands divert more capital away from productive investment, leading to slower economic growth. As growth slows, businesses shift to the lowest labor costs, or automation, to lower income growth for domestic workers. Such leads to more demands from “free stuff” from the Government, and the cycle intensifies, pushing more of the middle class downward.

    The share of annual incomes between the bottom 80% and the top 5% is evidence of that wealth transfer from the middle class.

    The “road to serfdom” is paved with good intentions. After decades of piling on increasing debt levels to generate economic growth, the damage to economic growth is becoming more visible. Economic growth trends are already falling short of previous long-term growth trends.

    Of course, this analysis also underscores why bitter economic sentiment persists even as the bull market registers all-time highs. It is hard to be excited about a booming stock market when you don’t participate much, if at all.

    For 80% of Americans, the end game of too much debt, an aging demographic, and the push for “socialistic policies” is the continued extraction of wealth from the “middle class” to the “rich.”

    Of course, we don’t have to look much further than Japan to see how this eventually works out. They don’t have a middle class, either.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 14:55

  • United Airlines Boeing 777 Diverted To Denver After 'Engine Issues' 
    United Airlines Boeing 777 Diverted To Denver After ‘Engine Issues’ 

    The Federal Aviation Administration should expedite its plan to curb United Airlines’ growth, including preventing the carrier from adding new routes, following a series of safety incidents in recent weeks and another incident on Thursday evening. 

    Last night, United Flight 990, a Boeing 777-200 traveling from San Francisco to Paris, was diverted to Denver International Airport when the pilots reported engine issues. 

    Flight tracking website Flightradar24 shows Flight 990 was heading north towards the Canadian border before it turned south towards Denver. United wrote in a statment that the plane landed safely with 273 passengers and 12 crew on board. 

    This comes after a series of recent flight mishaps involving United jets, including a tire falling off a Boeing 777 taking off at San Francisco airport, landing gear issues with a Boeing 737 at Houston, and a panel flying off an aging United Boeing 737. 

    A Bloomberg report said FAA authorities are considering “drastic measures” to curb the airline’s growth following a series of safety incidents. 

    Last week, United CEO Scott Kirby promised customers that the carrier would review the incidents and its employee training. Perhaps what Kirby should be promising customers is to stop pushing “insane,” disastrous, and potentially deadly DEI mandates. 

    The entire aviation industry is in disarray, from United to Boeing to the FAA. Why is this Pete Buttigieg? 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 14:20

  • The Meltdown Of Commercial Real Estate
    The Meltdown Of Commercial Real Estate

    Authored by Peter St. Onge via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In case you’ve still got money in a bank, Bloomberg is warning that defaults in commercial real estate loans could “topple” hundreds of U.S. banks.

    Leaving taxpayers on the hook for trillions in losses.

    The note, by senior editor James Crombie, walks us through the festering hellscape that is commercial real estate.

    To set the mood, a new study predicts that nearly half of downtown Pittsburgh office space could be vacant in four years. Major cities such as San Francisco are already sporting zombie-apocalypse downtowns, with abandoned office buildings baking in the sun.

    So what happened?

    The Fed’s yo-yo interest rates first flooded real estate with low rates and cheap money. Which were overbuilt.

    Then came the lockdowns, which forced millions to figure out new workday patterns. People liked foregoing the long commute (not to mention the free money). Despite every effort, downtown businesses have not been able to get all workers back.

    These days, everyone talks about hybrid models of working, some in-person and some remote. But judging from observation, remote is winning. In any case, even a 30 percent reduction in the footprint of office space once the leases are renewed could topple the entire sector.

    The restaurant and retail sectors of downtown feel the pinch, with more closures all the time. Adding to the pressure are absurd levels of inflation and ever-riskier streets on matters of personal security. Put it all together and there is ever less reason to slog to the office.

    When the Fed panic-hiked interest rates in the 2021 inflation, that put trillions of commercial real estate underwater even without other factors. Add to that crime, inflation, plus remote work, and you have a dangerous mix that could topple cities as we know them.

    This could mimic and elaborate upon last year’s bank crisis, where falling bond prices panicked depositors. That crisis only stopped when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell effectively bailed out every bank in America with sweetheart loans written on fictitious asset values along with unlimited taxpayer guarantees through the comically underfunded FDIC.

    By the way, the FDIC is essentially guaranteeing more than $20 trillion in deposits on just more than $100 billion. So they’ve got a half-penny on the dollar.

    Without those government pre-bailouts, one paper last year by researchers at Stanford and Columbia estimated that 1,619 U.S. banks—about a third of them—could be at risk of failure.

    The problem is that nothing was actually fixed. In fact, it’s getting worse. For the simple reason that as the months roll by there’s more and more debt coming due.

    And that brings us to Mr. Crombie, who noted that there’s $929 billion of commercial real estate debt coming due in the next 9 1/2 months.

    That’s up 28 percent from last year, and it’s getting bigger every day as banks pretend that loans are still healthy by effectively adding missed payments.

    We’re starting to see glitches in the matrix; New York Community Bank just went through a near-death experience over its garbage portfolio of commercial real estate loans, dropping almost 80 percent before it was bailed out by vulture investors while the megabanks hover like megavultures.

    More will come. Potentially a lot more: A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that up to 385 American banks could fail over commercial real estate loans alone.

    These would overwhelmingly be small regional banks, who typically hold a third of their assets in commercial real estate loans.

    They hold so much because they know their local markets best, but the Fed poisoned that chalice by flooding easy money to developers.

    For now, we’re only seeing the sickest banks dropping out of the herd. That could dramatically accelerate as that $1 trillion-plus in loans comes due.

    Commercial real estate delinquency rates have already jumped to 6 1/2 percent—up 30 percent in a matter of months. Rates of distress in office loans just hit 11 percent.

    When the smoke clears, we could lose dozens, even hundreds, of regional banks. Going by the last time with savings and loans, taxpayers ate 80 percent of the losses.

    Meaning that you could be on the hook for trillions, while the megabanks gorge on the carcass.

    Slashing interest rates could staunch the bleeding. But with inflation marching up every month—currently at 5 1/2 percent annualized—that’s not going to happen.

    Originally published on the author’s Substack, reposted from the Brownstone Institute

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 13:45

  • Israel Mounts Largest Attack On Syria In Years, Over 40 Dead
    Israel Mounts Largest Attack On Syria In Years, Over 40 Dead

    On Friday Israel conducted its deadliest strikes on Syria in months, or perhaps even years, given the immense death toll is mounting into several dozens killed amid a large emergency response to the scene.

    The airstrikes were conducted deep into Syria, in northern Syria’s Aleppo province, and left over 40 people dead. This reportedly included Syrian soldiers, Hezbollah militants, and civilians. Most international reports are saying 42 were killed, but the Syrian government did not initially give a precise casualty count.

    Stillframe of local footage showing massive attack on northern Aleppo.

    The anti-Assad opposition and UK-based organization Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) described that the Aleppo attack left the highest number of dead among Syrian soldiers in a single such Israeli attack. While Israel doesn’t typically directly own up to or confirm such attacks on Syrian soil, its military has been conducting sporadic attacks on Syria going back years.

    The attack happened in the pre-dawn, overnight hours – with state-run SANA emphasizing that many civilians were killed and wounded, but without giving a figure.

    Syria’s defense ministry pointed to the airstrikes having some level of coordination from “terrorist organizations” on the ground which “in conjunction” to the air raid carried out drone attacks, presumably from Al-Qaeda (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) occupied Idlib. Some reports are saying that Israeli warplanes hit a “Hezbollah warehouse” – though there’s no ground confirmation of this.

    This new major attack comes the day after Israeli airstrikes on a suburb of Damascus, which reportedly wounded two civilians. Israeli officials and media have long claimed to be waging a campaign against Iranian and IRGC operatives and assets in Syria.

    Sky News has verified social media video showing massive explosions from the site of the overnight Aleppo attacks:

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

    After the Oct.7 Hamas terror attack, this ‘counter Iran’ campaign has also focused on Lebanon, where Tehran-backed Hezbollah has entered a hot conflict with Israeli forces along the border.

    The Syrian government under President Bashar Al-Assad has frequently lodged formal complaints at the United Nations that the country’s sovereignty is constantly being violated by Israeli aggression, however, this is by and large fallen on deaf ears.

    In the initial days and weeks after Oct.7, Syria had lobbed several rockets toward the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which left no casualties. Much of the Syrian populace has meanwhile become frustrated and expressed growing anger that the Russian military, has has long had a significant presence inside Syria (especially since 2015), has not done more to try and intercept inbound Israeli jets.

    As far as Israeli attacks, Moscow has long been content to stay on the sidelines, so long as the ostensible targets are said to be ‘Iranian-linked’.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 13:10

  • Beware Of Squatters
    Beware Of Squatters

    Authored by Betsy McCaughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    If you own a home and don’t want to lose it, keep reading.

    A sign advertises apartments for rent in New York City. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

    Homeowners who go on vacation or a business trip, even for just a week, are returning to find their houses overtaken by trespassers who fraudulently claim a right to be there. It’s happening to tens of thousands of homeowners from New York City to Atlanta and Los Angeles.

    When owners call the police, they’re told police can’t help. It’s a civil matter, and they have to file an eviction lawsuit, which can drag on for months or years because housing courts are backlogged.

    Meanwhile, owners are out on the street while squatters are living free, destroying houses, and even selling off owners’ belongings.

    If you found a stranger sitting in your car and called the police, they would immediately ask to see the registration and decide who owns it, according to Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley. They wouldn’t let the thief drive off. But the law is stacked against homeowners.

    You can thank leftist lawmakers who have degraded property rights and tilted the law to favor criminals. The result is an epidemic of brazen squatting.

    In New York state, a homeowner faced with a trespasser can expect eviction to take two years. Meanwhile, the owner is barred from turning off utilities, removing belongings, or doing anything else to get the invaders out. It’s crazy.

    New York state Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz of Long Island introduced legislation saying a squatter is not a tenant and is not entitled to the same protections. Will it pass in Albany? Don’t hold your breath.

    But some states are acting quickly against this crime wave.

    The Florida Legislature passed a bill to empower police to immediately remove anyone who can’t produce a notarized lease. Georgia’s statehouse passed the Squatter Reform Act, making squatting a crime—criminal trespass—to be handled by the police, not housing court. It’s likely to pass the Senate shortly.

    In blue states such as California and New York, is there hope for homeowners to get protection against squatters? Not from Congress. Democrats in Congress are actually pushing a federal housing law that would bar landlords from learning whether potential tenants have criminal records, including past squatting offenses.

    But there is a remedy: bringing a lawsuit in federal court against states such as New York and California that fail to protect property rights. The U.S. Constitution enshrines property rights as a fundamental guarantee. And recently, the justices have struck down state laws that allow trespassers to interfere with property rights. In 2021, the Pacific Legal Foundation brought a suit on behalf of a property owner, and the court ruled in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid that “government-authorized invasions of property” amount to a taking just as if the government had taken the property directly.

    Favoring intruders over owners constitutes a “taking” that violates the Fifth Amendment, which says government cannot impinge on your right to your property.

    There’s no time to waste in acting to protect homeowners.

    Venezuelan TikTok influencer Leonel Moreno claims that invading vacant homes is the only option for illegal migrants flooding into the United States. His now-deleted TikTok video explaining how to identify a home that is empty and ready for the taking reached 4 million views.

    Surprised? Don’t be. Criminals from south of the border are coming in droves to plunder the far wealthier United States. Some cross illegally and are recruited by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and El Salvador’s MS-13. Others are coming in on tourist visas. Law enforcement is reporting a surge in South American burglary gangs operating in at least half the states in the United States.

    Of course, many migrants are honest and hardworking. But there’s no denying that a movement northward to “take what you can get” poses new danger to homeowners, including the risk of squatters.

    As Mr. Moreno says, “If a house is not inhabited, we can seize it.”

    Tell lawmakers to act now to protect homeowners. This is the United States. Here, property rights are not up for debate. They’re guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

    You worked for it, you paid for it, it’s yours. Period.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 12:35

  • "Huge Problem": Pentagon's Rapid Wartime Response Cargo Ships Trapped In Baltimore After Bridge Collapse
    “Huge Problem”: Pentagon’s Rapid Wartime Response Cargo Ships Trapped In Baltimore After Bridge Collapse

    Two high-speed military cargo ships are stuck in the Port of Baltimore following Tuesday morning’s collapse of the 1.6-mile-long Francis Scott Key Bridge. The major US East Coast port has been paralyzed for several days as the bridge collapse prevents inbound and outbound vessel traffic along the harbor’s channel. 

    Using the automatic identification system, or AIS, data that tracks commercial vessels, three bulk carriers, two general cargo ships, one vehicle carrier, one tanker, and four Ready Reserve Force vessels (RRF), along with the container ship Dali that struck the bridge, are trapped in the harbor, according to the shipping blog gCaptain

    The three bulk carriers include:

    • The Liberian-flagged JY River, owned by JIADE INTERNATIONAL SHIP and managed by WAH KWONG SHIP MANAGEMENT HK of Hong Kong.

    • The Thailand-flagged Phatra Naree, owned by PRECIOUS STONES SHIPPING LTD and managed by PRECIOUS SHIPPING PCL of Thailand.

    • The Portuguese-flagged Klara Oldendorff, owned and managed OLDENDORFF CARRIERS GMBH & CO of Germany.

    The vehicle carrier is:

    • The Swedish-flagged Carmen, owned by WALL RO/RO AB and managed by WALLENIUS MARINE AB of Sweden.

    The general cargo ships include:

    • The French-flagged Saimaagracht, owned by REDERIJ SAIMAAGRACHT and managed by SPLIETHOFF’S BEVRACHTINGS BV of the Netherlands.

    • The Panama-flagged Balsa 94, owned by EASTERN CAPITAL MARINE INC and managed by HIONG GUAN NAVEGACION CO LTD of Hong Kong.

    The tanker is:

    • The Marshall Islands-flagged Palanca Rio, owned by MINSHENG RUIYANG TIANJIN SHPG and managed by PUMA ENERGY SUPPLY & TRADING of Singapore.

    The US Maritime Administration (MARAD) Ready Reserve Force vessels include:

    • The Cape Washington, a Cape W Class roll-on/roll-off vessel.
    • The Gary I. Gordon, a Gordon-class roll-on/roll-off vessel.
    • The SS Antares (T-AKR-294), a Algol-class fast sealift vehicle cargo ship.
    • The SS Denebola (T-AKR-294), another Algol-class fast sealift vehicle cargo ship.

    According to the military blog The War Zone (TWZ), Algol class vessels are “some of the fastest cargo vessels of their general size anywhere in the world.” These ships are part of the RRF, a subset of vessels within MARAD’s National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) that provide surge sealift capability to the Pentagon for overseas conflicts.

    TWZ said the activation process of RRF vessels takes about five to ten days. The vessels are operated with a skeleton crew until called upon. 

    RRF are stationed at major marine ports around the US. 

    TWZ noted the Algol class vessels have been called into action several times over the last three decades: 

    Algol class have been called upon multiple times since they entered US service. Just five of these ships were responsible for transporting 20 percent of US cargo sent from the United States to Saudi Arabia during the first phase of Operation Desert Shield in the immediate run-up to the First Gulf War. The ships would go on to deliver 13 percent of all cargo that arrived in Saudi Arabia from the United States in the full course of that conflict. 

    The US military subsequently used Algols to support operations in Somalia and the Balkans in the 1990s, as well as the opening phases of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s.

    Breitbart News’ Kristina Wong reported on Thursday that “The Department of Transportation will not say how many National Defense Reserve Fleet Ships are Stuck” in the Baltimore harbor. 

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

    Wong quoted John Konrad, CEO of gCaptain, who warned the stuck RRF vessels are a “huge problem if a war starts [but] not much of a problem if the next few months are peaceful.”  

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

    The current readiness of the RRF fleet is unknown. And just like that, part of America’s RRF fleet was taken out not by a missile or suicide drone, but a container ship that allegedly suffered a catastrophic ‘electric issue’. America’s enemies are taking note. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 12:00

  • Sick Of It All
    Sick Of It All

    Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

    Every week, usually once or twice, I sit down to put onto paper my thoughts about the market. And every week, my disgust not only for the rigged system that encompasses our equity markets, but also for the sound of my own whining, grows exponentially.

    When I sit down to perfunctorily prattle on about how nothing makes sense and how I constantly see things the polar opposite of 99% of everybody else in the world of finance every week, I usually wonder two things.

    First, I wonder whether or not today will finally be the day that I capitulate, get bullish on the stock market, and start bowing religiously to a statue of Stephanie Kelton.

    “I should know, I’ve followed a few!” – Arthur

    After all, the incessant price moves higher in Bitcoin are part of what triggered me to eventually reassess my thought process on the cryptocurrency. And even though I got bullish for reasons other than price, why couldn’t the same happen with equities?

    Second, I try to conceptualize exactly how fast the universe can, and will, make a total ass out of me by crashing markets 50% in 15 minutes in the days, hours, minutes, or probably even seconds after I’d have such a shift in sentiment.

    Which is why, like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I will continue to forge forward, exasperated, regardless of the inconvenient fact that I have no arms or legs left. But don’t let anybody ever tell you that my spirit was easy to break.

    “The Black Knight always triumphs!”

    I had my most recent bout of vomiting in my own mouth just thinking about how wrong I’ve been on macro analysis late on Wednesday, when, as if part of some ant-burning-under-a-magnifying-glass-type-cosmic-conspiracy to torture my psyche, the Fed’s Chris Waller came out and assured the public that he was in no rush to cut interest rates. Here’s a look at some of the headlines that came out of Waller’s speech in New York:

    • “There is no rush to cut the policy rate,” Waller said in a speech in New York.

    • The recent data “tells me that it is prudent to hold this rate at its current restrictive stance perhaps for longer than previously thought to help keep inflation on a sustainable trajectory toward 2%.”

    • Waller still expects to cut rates this year but isn’t ready to take that step without further evidence that inflation continues to drop.

    • Waller said analyzing three- and six-month measures of the Consumer Price Index, excluding volatile food and energy prices, tells him that progress on inflation has slowed and may have stalled.

    • “The risk of waiting a little longer to cut rates is significantly lower than acting too soon,” said Waller. “Cutting the policy rate too soon and risking a sustained rebound in inflation is something I want to avoid.”

    • Waller said that he is considering reducing the overall number of rate cuts this year or pushing them further into the future in response to the recent data if things don’t improve. But he also said he isn’t rushing to take that step yet.

    While I’m not sure how the market will receive this blindingly, exhaustively obvious negative news, my guess is by the time you read this at 4:45am EST on Thursday morning, futures will be raging higher and every index will be up in the pre-market session. After all, nothing says “bull case” like the Fed not being able to meet objectives in bringing down inflation and then a Fed governor telling the market not to expect the very same rate cut bonanza it has rallied more than 10% expecting this year alone, despite already being pornographically overvalued.

    Not unlike how when Donald Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” I’m not sure there’s anything the Fed could do right now to stop the market’s pre-ordained ascent. As I said in last week’s totally non-award-winning analysis, I have no f*cking idea where the liquidity is coming from, no clue what the market is thinking, and pretty much don’t understand anything at all.

    “Eat sh*t, Waller” — S&P 500 (probably) | Chart via Zero Hedge

    I know what you’re thinking: “Why then, Chris, do you run a financial newsletter?”

    That’s a great question. I wish I had a great answer for you other than it’s better than therapy for me and I get paid instead of having to pay someone else. But hey, 99% of “newsletter writers” don’t have any clue what they’re talking about — at least I admit it.

    Look, it’s either me or lessons from Whitney Tilson’s fishing trip and ruminations about his colonoscopy. Choose wisely.

    Whitney Tilson (@WhitneyTilson) / X

    I’m breaking Whitney’s balls, of course. He’s a good dude and was one of the first people to be nice to me on Wall St. a decade ago.

    Anyway, continuing the sick satire playing out on Wednesday, S&P came out after the bell on Wednesday and affirmed the United States’ credit rating and said things look stable, casually noting that debt to GDP and interest to revenue are out of f*cking control (my words, not S&P’s) before summing things up with a “stable” outlook despite the fact. Among other brain farts, including praising monetary policy execution, S&P concluded:

    • A diversified and resilient economy with solid growth, extensive monetary policy flexibility, and benefits associated with the unique status as the issuer of the world’s leading reserve currency underpin the U.S. sovereign rating.

    • A high debt burden, with net general government debt approaching 100% of GDP and interest to revenue over 10%, and difficulties garnering bipartisan cooperation to strengthen U.S. fiscal dynamics are credit weaknesses.

    • We affirmed our ‘AA+/A-1+’ sovereign credit ratings on the U.S.

    • The outlook remains stable, indicating our expectation of continued economic resiliency; proactive, effective monetary policy execution; and our view that government officials will continue to resolve near-term fiscal deadlines, such as addressing the debt ceiling, in a timely manner.

    S&P said: “We could lower the rating over the next two to three years if unexpected negative political developments weigh on the strength of American institutions and the effectiveness of long-term policymaking, or jeopardize the dollar’s status as the world’s leading reserve currency.”

    They continued: “The ratings could also come under pressure if already-high deficits were to rise, owing to political inability to contain rising spending or to manage revenue implications of future changes in the tax code.”

    Is it me, or are both of these situations literally occurring already right now?

    As if people in the world of economics pride themselves on analytical non sequiturs, S&P’s rating and reasoning for their rating stand at stark odds with reality.

    But then again, who really knows what reality is anymore? Me? You? This certifiably insane old bird?

     

    “I regret saying it was transitory.”

    As many people know, Fitch downgraded the United States last year (my exceptional analysis here). They had it right. Whether we have the reserve currency or not, there are extraordinary, unprecedented risks facing the United States economy and the US dollar. Both S&P and Chris Waller came out and said today that the reserve currency status of the dollar gives the United States enormous flexibility.

    But just because we have enormous flexibility doesn’t mean that we can bend and not eventually break. Does policy flexibility mean that we can literally do whatever we want and nothing matters at all? Have we replaced the natural laws of economics and rewritten the basics of mathematics and macroeconomics? We think we have, but we haven’t.

    If you think of the basic immutable laws of macroeconomics and mathematics as a bathroom shower, every layer of bullsh*t, monetary policy, money printing, foreign war mongering slush fund, overspending, misuse, hubris, rewriting of the rules, and Stephanie Kelton book is like adding one of those Bath Fitter (TM) renovations to your shower. You’re not replacing the disgusting, mold-ridden, toxic equipment, you’re just covering it up with another layer of shiny-looking fiberglass.

    Bathroom Remodeling Photo Gallery | Bath Fitter San Diego

    Left: The “old school” laws of economics. Right: The trillion dollar coin idea.

    The question then becomes: how many of these layers can we pile on top of one another before the room becomes so f*cking small that we can’t fit in the shower anymore?

    And, then what? We just walk around stinking to high heaven?

    I mean, for f*ck’s sake, we’ve got lifelong spend-ocrat Steve Liesman of all people breaking down on CNBC yesterday, openly worrying about how the United States is going to service its debt obligations and calling bullsh*t on the Inflation Reduction Act. Putting aside the insane irony that Steve Liesman has sat at Fed press conferences for the last decade and massaged the feet of whoever the Fed chair was at the time instead of asking them serious questions about accountability, when Liesman starts to worry, isn’t it time to take notice?

    For the last decade, I have watched dozens of Fed press conferences (feels like trillions) where Liesman has done nothing but make excuses for central bankers and throw them softball questions, in between the time he takes to congratulate them on the great job they’re doing. Very few people on his network, with the exception of possibly Guy Adami and Rick Santelli (combined total airtime each day: 32 seconds), have raised any questions about the Fed’s trajectory. Most days on CNBC look like this:

     

    Guests who are critical of the Federal Reserve, like Peter Schiff, have been blackballed from the network entirely. And now, all of a sudden, it’s time to panic? What’s next? Will Paul Krugman or Jeremy Siegel be taking to CNBC to all of a sudden “remember” the lessons of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell?

    Waller’s remarks Wednesday wrap up what will be the remainder of any Fed commentary on this short week. The entire market has placed an “all-in” wager on rate cuts this year, and Waller has reiterated his position as “we need to wait and see what happens.” And while he said circumstances would need to be extenuating for it to occur, he even brought up the idea of hikes. Considering the market is a forward-looking indicator and it has already pulled in probably six months to a year of expectations of rates being lower (and Trump tax cuts again, and AI growth, and more money printing, and colonizing Mars, and Tesla robotaxis that double as laundry folding humanoid droids), rates staying the same for longer – or a hike – would be devastating.

    And so, we sit and wait for the next bullsh*t CPI print to try and determine whether or not the government has figured out a new way to disguise the fact that prices have consistently been up at least 10% almost every year at any point in the past, especially these last three years.

    Both Waller and S&P Global are leaning, one way or another, on the US dollar’s reserve currency status as the foundation and basis for their “everything isn’t totally screwed and backwards” outlook.

    These conclusions by Waller and S&P are the latest in a long line of trillions of analyses and judgments that have relied on the US dollar remaining reserve currency for the time period of “forever times infinity” to be correct.

    I think of each one of these analyses, which arrived daily by the hundreds across Wall Street, as sheets of paper being placed on the back of a donkey that is trying to scale Mount Everest. A couple of sheets of paper, the donkey doesn’t notice. When you have enough for a ream of paper, the donkey starts to notice a little weight. Approaching a century into the US dollar’s dominance, the donkey is carrying on its back a stack of papers that would puncture the ozone layer at this point.

    It may not be Wednesday’s two additional sheets that cripple the donkey on its continued journey up the hill, but at some point, the weight is going to become unbearable. And watching it all play out, for me, already has.

    If you enjoyed this QTR post, please take a moment to subscribe to my content here

    QTR’s Disclaimer: I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. I didn’t double check any numbers or figures in this piece and am generally lazy with my research. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. Contributor posts and curated content are posted either with the author’s permission or under a Creative Commons license. This is not a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. Sometimes I just lose money by misplacing it. I’m generally irresponsible. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. Do your research elsewhere. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. Also, I just straight up get sh*t wrong a lot. I mention it numerous times because it’s that important that you know.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/29/2024 – 11:30

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Today’s News 29th March 2024

  • What's Wrong With America's 'Elites'?
    What’s Wrong With America’s ‘Elites’?

    Authored by Laura Hollis via The Epoch Times,

    It is becoming increasingly clear that some of America’s most serious problems can be traced back to our colleges and universities – or at least the ones educating the country’s most powerful people.

    The Vietnam War era aside, it has traditionally been uncommon for events at universities to make national headlines. Absent something extraordinary, like a president giving a commencement address, a dramatic scientific breakthrough or the award of a prominent international prize to faculty, headlines with university names in them have tended to relate more to national championships in sports.

    Not anymore.

    Over the past few years, news items about events on college campuses have come to dominate headlines. The subjects are some of the country’s most fabled institutions. And the stories are often negative, if not outright shocking.

    Last December, the congressional testimony of three university presidents—Claudine Gay from Harvard University, Elizabeth Magill from the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—set off a firestorm. Under questioning by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) about anti-Semitic speech and conduct on their campuses, the three women dodged and deflected, unwilling to state definitively that calls for the genocide of Jews violated university policies and codes of conduct.

    The response was swift. Within days, Magill resigned. Gay survived the initial maelstrom, but the bad publicity prompted critics to start digging through her professional past, and she resigned less than a month later, following accusations of plagiarism in her research publications. Some of the nation’s largest donors to these universities—many of them Jewish—began announcing that they would cease or pull back donations totaling in the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars.

    The chaos on campuses has only increased since, with pro-Palestine protests and marches at dozens of colleges and universities, and horrific rhetoric bumping up against speech codes and demands for free speech. Across the country, Jewish students describe themselves as “living in a climate of hatred and fear” amid dramatic increases in anti-Semitic conduct, threats, slurs, and actual violence.

    This week, Stanford University sophomore Theo Baker published “The War at Stanford” in The Atlantic, in which he describes how the Israel-Hamas war has affected his campus. One Arab American graduate student told Baker that he thinks President Joe Biden “should be killed” and that Hamas should rule America. Pro-Palestine protesters set up sit-in “camps” for months and shouted for the destruction of Israel, chanting, “We don’t want no two-state; we want all of ’48!” Guest speakers brought in to facilitate campus discussion of the complex issues have been shouted down. Stanford employees have been threatened (“We know where you live!”), the interim president’s home has been vandalized, and his effigy was carried around campus covered in fake blood. The administration, Baker says, seems paralyzed, indecisive and defeated.

    This isn’t an isolated incident at Stanford, and the Israel-Hamas war hasn’t caused it. Last March—months before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel—Stanford Law School students shut down a talk being given by federal judge Kyle Duncan, shouting at him every time he attempted to speak or engage the audience, screaming epithets and holding up signs with vulgar accusations and calls for violence against Duncan’s daughters.

    Similar behavior has been displayed at other schools, having nothing to do with claims of colonialism in the Middle East.

    Swimmer and activist Riley Gaines was cornered and forced to hide in a classroom at San Francisco State University last year, prevented from giving her talk about limiting participation in women’s sports to biological women.

    In 2017, author Charles Murray’s scheduled talk at Middlebury College was interrupted by a mob that later physically attacked him and his faculty host Allison Stanger. Stanger’s hair was pulled so hard by a protester that she suffered a concussion.

    The poisonous rhetoric, intolerance, and violence is just the tip of the iceberg.

    In an interview with The Daily Signal podcast host Rob Bluey last week, national pollster Scott Rasmussen described what he called “the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.” A recent Rasmussen poll asked Americans “to suppose there was an election and it was close but your candidate lost. And if their campaign team knew they could win by cheating and not get caught, would you want them to do so?”

    According to Rasmussen, only 7 percent of American voters overall said they’d rather cheat to win. But among the group that he calls “the elite,” that number jumped to 35 percent. Among the “politically obsessed elite” (those who “talk politics daily”), it was a staggering 69 percent!

    So who are these “elite”?

    Rasmussen explains that they are the top 1 percent of the population. They make more than $150,000 a year. They live in densely populated urban areas. They have not only college but postgraduate degrees. And large numbers of them “went to one of 12 elite schools.”

    He doesn’t name them, but we can hazard a pretty good guess which schools they are.

    “The reason I bring that up,” he continues, “is about half the policy positions in government, half the corporate board positions in America, are held by people who went to one of these dozen schools.” And, he says, they also shape “the mainstream media narrative.”

    Not only does this group think it’s acceptable to cheat to win an election, but 70 percent believe there is too much individual freedom in the United States, and an equal number trusts the government—which, of course, they control. “They really believe,” Rasmussen says, “that if they could just make the decisions and get us out of the way, we would be a lot better off.”

    What’s going on at our most prestigious and exclusive universities? How have they produced generations of amoral, condescending authoritarians? And how do we put a stop to it?

    Those are questions Americans need answers to.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 23:45

  • In Historic Reversal, US To Restart A Shut Down Nuclear Power Plant For The First Time Ever
    In Historic Reversal, US To Restart A Shut Down Nuclear Power Plant For The First Time Ever

    Is the long awaited – and overdue – restart of the American nuclear age finally here?

    In a move which may force the lunatic greens to storm the White House, on Wednesday the federal government announced that it would provide a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan. NJ-based Holtec International acquired the 800-megawatt Palisades plant in 2022 with plans to dismantle it, but with support from the state of Michigan and the Biden administration, the emphasis has shifted to restarting the nuclear power plant by late 2025 instead. 

    What is remarkable is not that the US is throwing some money at a nuclear power plant – since the US sells $1 trillion in debt every 100 days, it may as well go full “Brewster’s Millions” (or rather “Trillions”) and spend it all asap; it is that this would be the first nuclear power plant to be reopened in the US, setting a precedent as atomic energy makes a triumphal comeback. Sure, it still faces hurdles, including inspections, testing and the blessing of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but those are just formalities: watch as new NPPs start springing up across the country next.

    “Nuclear power is our single largest source of carbon-free electricity, directly supporting 100,000 jobs across the country and hundreds of thousands more indirectly,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor, who in turn is repeating what nuclear advocates have been saying for decades. Restarting this particular plant will protect 600 union jobs and 1,100 throughout the community.

    The Palisades plant is along Lake Michigan, a two-hour drive from Chicago. A Michigan utility, CMS Energy, owned it from 1971 until the plant was sold to Louisiana-based utility Entergy in 2007. It was shut down in 2022.

    Holtec said it has long-term commitments so far from two electric cooperatives to buy power from the plant.

    “The repowering of Palisades will restore safe, around-the-clock generation to hundreds of thousands of households, businesses and manufacturers,” said Kris Singh, Holtec president and chief executive.

    Critics, of course, have emerged. A coalition of “greens” opposed to restarting what it derisively calls a “zombie reactor” has requested a hearing at the NRC.

    Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said it will take four to five months to finalize the financial deal with the government.

    “It is a loan we have to pay back,” he said, explaining that unlike US taxpayer funds embezzled by Ukraine’s corrupt leaders and the US Military-Industrial Complex, this particular loan will be tracked and eventually repaid.

    Nuclear energy is in the spotlight. Thirty-four countries, including the U.S., last week pledged to use it to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. In California, regulators in December said the Diablo Canyon plant could operate through 2030 instead of 2025 to guard against blackouts as the state shifts toward renewable power sources. Owner Pacific Gas & Electric said federal aid helped it repay a state loan.

    “There is more enthusiasm toward nuclear power — in Congress, in the industry and also internationally,” said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who has inspected nuclear plants around the world.

    There is another reason why nuclear energy is suddenly back in vogue: with projections for electricity demand over the next five years doubling from just a year ago –  due to a building frenzy of AI data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-driven electric-vehicle transition –  the US has no choice but to go full-on nuclear, despite the howls of outrage from green activists and progressive voters.

    Still, restarting a plant is not easy.

    “It puts the onus and burden on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec to double down on efforts to make sure this plant is safe enough and all the safety measures are intact,” Meshkati said of Palisades.

    Meanwhile, keep an eye on uranium stocks and more importantly, on the price of uranium itself: as the nuclear renaissance begins in earnest, the world will need lots of uranium, and the supply chains will need years to catch up to demand, which means that what has already been one of the best performing commodities in recent years is set to rise that much higher.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 23:20

  • Israel May Cut Off Palestinian Banks From Global Banking System Next Week
    Israel May Cut Off Palestinian Banks From Global Banking System Next Week

    Via Middle East Eye

    Palestinian banks could be cut off from the Israeli banking system starting next week following a decision by Israel’s finance minister to cease dealings between the two financial institutions, according to a report on Thursday by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has two days to convene a cabinet meeting to discuss reversing plans by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to isolate Palestinian banks from both the Israeli and international banking systems.

    Bank of Palestine ATM, via Associated Press

    The Palestinian economy is based on the Israeli currency, the shekel, making it reliant on ties to Israel and its financial dealings with the rest of the world must go through the Bank of Israel and Israeli banks.

    Earlier this month, the hardline minister Smotrich threatened to paralyze the Palestinian Authority’s economy in response to the United States imposing sanctions on four West Bank extremist settlers accused of violence against Palestinians. 

    Israeli banks have heeded the sanctions despite calls by Smotrich not to comply. Two Israeli banks, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, currently maintain the connections of Palestinian banks with the banking system in Israel and globally

    To protect them from lawsuits involving the Palestinian Authority for “transferring funds to terror groups”, the Israeli government has been issuing a waiver of protection for the two banks on an annual basis, signed by the finance minister. 

    Smotrich is now refusing to renew the arrangement, which has been in place for years.  Without this protection, the PA will be stripped of immunity and the Israeli banks will be exposed to lawsuits and are expected to cut ties with Palestinian banks.

    The consequences of isolating the PA from the financial world and Israel’s economy would significantly paralyze the Palestinian economy. 

    Any Israeli company that has business relations with the PA will no longer be able to deposit Palestinian cheques or receive payments from Palestinian banks, according to Haaretz.  Even Palestinian workers, who must only receive their wages in a bank deposit according to a 2022 agreement between Palestinian and Israeli authorities, will not be able to continue receiving wages in Israel, unless they are made in cash.

    Other areas that would be affected by Smotrich’s move include Palestinian export and import operations, which go through Israeli ports, and Palestinian tax funds, which are collected by Israel.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 22:55

  • US Breaks Oil Price Ceiling Of $79 In Latest SPR Purchase
    US Breaks Oil Price Ceiling Of $79 In Latest SPR Purchase

    By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com

    The latest crude oil purchase that the Department of Energy made as part of refill plans for the strategic petroleum reserve cost an average of over $81 per barrel, exceeding the $79 ceiling set by the federal government.

    Per an Argus report, the DoE declined to comment on why it had bought the oil despite the higher price hinting at more news to come later today.

    Back in 2022, to arrest an inexorable climb in retail fuel prices, the White House announced a release of 180 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. Critics warned the move would have a limited effect on prices but compromise the energy security of the country by reducing the level of crude in the SPR.

    The final amount of oil released from the SPR ended up exceeding 180 million barrels with the DoE pledging to replenish the reserve in a timely fashion but only when prices were favorable. The SPR is currently close to a 40-year low as a result of the massive release.

    The replenishing effort has been going on slowly, with three million barrels bought there and another three bought here as the very news of a planned purchase led to an uptick in prices.

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    This forced the department to update the price range, at which it would be buying, raising the top end from $72 per barrel last year to $79 per barrel. Yet oil prices have been on a climb recently and WTI broke the $80-yer-barrel threshold earlier this month.

    As of March 22, the SPR stood at 363 million barrels of crude, Argus reported, citing Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm as saying that it should be back to normal by the end of the year. This, however, will not be a result of the replenishment effort but of the cancellation of 140 million barrels in previously planned SPR sales for the period to 2031.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 22:05

  • If Americans Just Ate Healthy & Exercised, Then Politicians Wouldn't Be Clamoring About $1,000 Weight Loss Drugs "Bankrupting" Medicare
    If Americans Just Ate Healthy & Exercised, Then Politicians Wouldn’t Be Clamoring About $1,000 Weight Loss Drugs “Bankrupting” Medicare

    If the food-industrial complex had not flooded the nation’s food supply with junk, if the government actively encouraged healthy lifestyles, and if efforts to address the obesity crisis didn’t rely solely on ‘miracle weight loss drugs’ pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, then maybe – just maybe – politicians wouldn’t be clamoring on Capitol Hill, or the elderly (somewhat senile) president in the White House, about out-of-control drug prices.

    But since common sense has vanished in America and folks have given up on Peloton bikes for $1,000 monthly injections of “Wegovy,” the blockbuster weight loss treatment (also a diabetes drug called “Ozempic”) from Novo Nordisk, then socialists, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wouldn’t be reviving the discussion about high drug prices. 

    “Today, a new Yale study found that Ozempic costs less than $5 a month to manufacture. And yet, Novo Nordisk charges Americans nearly $1,000 a month for this drug, while the same exact product can be purchased for just $155 a month in Canada and just $59 in Germany,” Sanders said in a statement.

    Sanders cited the study “Estimated Sustainable Cost-Based Prices for Diabetes Medicines,” conducted by researchers at Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London, and the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders. It was published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Wednesday. 

    In the study, researchers found Novo could produce the blockbuster drug for 89 cents to $4.73 per month, as opposed to the monthly retail price of about $1,349 for Wegovy, a semaglutide injection. 

    “As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), I am calling on Novo Nordisk to lower the list price of Ozempic — and the related drug Wegovy — in America to no more than what they charge for this drug in Canada,” Sander said. 

    He added: “The American people are sick and tired of paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs while the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge profits.”

    Sanders warned: “This outrageously high price has the potential to bankrupt Medicare, the American people and our entire health care system.

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    Analysts have forecasted that the market for weight-loss drugs could reach at least $100 billion a year by the end of the decade, with the production of Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro. And a decent chunk of the weight loss drugs will likely be covered by Medicare. 

    “The profit margin is immense” on weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Melissa Barber, a public health economist at Yale and the study’s lead author, told Bloomberg. She added, “There should be a conversation in policy about what is a fair price.”

    Rounding back to the intro of this note, Americans should eat better and exercise. Then, we don’t have to rely on the pharmaceutical-industrial complex. What’s odd is the government does not promote ‘common sense’ healthy lifestyles. Why is that? Are their donors pharma companies?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 21:40

  • Creating "Good" AGI That Won't Kill Us All: Crypto's Artificial Superintelligence Alliance
    Creating “Good” AGI That Won’t Kill Us All: Crypto’s Artificial Superintelligence Alliance

    Authored by Andrew Fenton via CoinTelegraph.com,

    SingularityNET and the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance aim to wrest control of AGI away from Big Tech…

    After a year of increasingly dire warnings about the imminent demise of humanity at the hands of superintelligent artificial intelligence (AI), Magazine is in Panama at the Beneficial AGI Conference to hear the other side of the story.

    Attendees include an eclectic mix of transhumanists, crypto folk, sci-fi authors including David Brin, futurists and academics.  

    We’re at the conference run by SingularityNET, a key member of the proposed new Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, to find out what happens if everything goes right with creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) — human-level, artificial general intelligence.

    But how do we bring about that future, rather than the scenario in which Skynet goes rogue and kills us all?

    One of the best insights into why those questions are so important comes from futurist Jose Luis Cordeiro, author of The Death of Death, who believes humanity will cure all diseases and aging thanks to AGI.

    He tells Magazine of some sage wisdom that Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, once told him.  

    He said: ‘We have to be positive about the future because the images of the future — of what’s possible — begin with our minds. If we think we will self-destroy, most likely we will. But if we think that we will survive, [that] we will move into a better world [then we] will work toward that and we will achieve it.’ So it begins in our minds.”

    Janet Adams, CEO of SingularityNET, warms the conference up with some yoga. (Fenton)

    Beneficial AGI: The quest for artificial general intelligence 

    Humans are hardwired to focus more on the existential threats from AGI than on the benefits.

    Evolutionary speaking, it’s better that our species worries nine times too often that the wind rustling in the bushes could be a tiger than it is to be blithely unconcerned about the rustling and get eaten by a tiger on the 10th occurrence.

    Even the doomers don’t put a high percentage chance of AGI killing us all, with a survey of almost 3000 AI researchers suggesting the chance of an extremely bad outcome ranges from around 5% to 10%. So while that’s worryingly high, the odds are still in our favor.

    Opening the conference, SingularityNET founder and the “Father of AGI,” Dr. Ben Goertzel, paid tribute to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s concept of defensive accelerationism. That’s the midpoint between the effective accelerationism techno-optimists and their “move fast and break things” ethos, and the decelerationists, who want to slow down or halt the galloping pace of AI development.

    Goertzel believes that deceleration is impossible but concedes there’s a small chance things could go horribly wrong with AGI. So he’s in favor of pursuing AGI while being mindful of the potential dangers. Like many in the AI/crypto field, he believes the solution is open-sourcing the technology and decentralizing the hardware and governance. 

    Dr Ben Goertzel on keyboards with his surprisingly good robot-fronted band. (Fenton)

    What is the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance?

    This week SingularityNET announced it has teamed up with the decentralized multi-agent platform FetchAI — founded by DeepMind veteran Humayun Sheikh — and the data exchange platform Ocean Protocol to form the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI).

    It will be the largest open-sourced independent player in AI research and development and has proposed merging SingularityNET, FetchAI and Ocean Protocol’s existing tokens into a new one called ASI. It would have a fully diluted market cap of around $7.5 billion — subject to approval votes over the next two weeks. The three platforms would continue to operate as separate entities under the guidance of Goertzel, with Sheikh as chair.

    According to the Alliance, the aim is to “create a powerful compelling alternative to Big Tech’s control over AI development, use and monetization” by creating decentralized AI infrastructure at scale and accelerating investment into blockchain-based AGI.

    What are the benefits of AGI?

    Probably the most obvious beneficial impact is AGI’s potential to analyze huge swathes of data to help solve many of our most difficult scientific, environmental, social and medical issues.

    We’ve already seen some amazing medical breakthroughs, with MIT researchers using AI models to evaluate tens of thousands of potential chemical compounds and discovered the first new class of antibiotics in 60 years, one that’s effective against the hitherto drug-resistant MRSA bacteria. It’s the sort of scaling up of research that’s almost impossible for humans to achieve.

    And that’s all before we get to the immortality and mind-uploading stuff that the transhumanists get very excited about but which weirds most people out.  

    This ability to analyze great swathes of data also suggests the technology will be able to give early warnings of pandemics, natural disasters and environmental issues. AI and AGI also have the potential to free humans from drudgery and repetitive work, from coding to customer service help desks.

    While this will cause a massive upheaval to the workforce, the invention of washing machines and Amazon’s online businesses had big impacts on particular occupations. The hope is that a bunch of new jobs will be created instead.

    Economic professor Robin Hanson says this has happened over the past two decades, even though people were very concerned at the turn of the century that automation would replace workers.  

    Hanson’s study of the data on how automation impacted wages and employment across various industries between 1999 and 2019 found that despite big changes, most people still had jobs and were paid pretty much the same.

    “On average, there wasn’t a net effect on wages or jobs in automation of U.S. jobs from 1999 to 2018,” he says.

    SingularityNET CEO Janet Adams and Sergey Shalyapin, the platform’s chief technology officer. (Fenton)

    AGI could make better decisions than we can: SingularityNET CEO Janet Adams

    Janet Adams, the optimistic CEO of SingularityNET, explains that AGI has the potential to be “extraordinarily positive for all humanity.”

    “I see a future in which our future AGIs are making decisions which are more ethical than the decisions which humans make. And they can do that because they don’t have emotions or jealousy or greed or hidden agendas,” she says.

    Adams points out that 25,000 people die every day from hunger, even as people in rich countries throw away mountains of food. It’s a problem that could be solved by “intelligent allocation of resources across the planet,” she says. 

    But Adams warns AGI needs to be trained on data sets reflecting the entire world’s population and not just the top 1% so that when they make decisions, “they won’t make them just for the benefit of the powerful few, they will make them for the benefit of the broader civilization, broader humanity.”

    AI safety and ethics: Addressing the concerns

    Anyone who watched the early utopian dreams of a decentralized internet crumble into a corporate ad-filled landscape of addictive design and engagement farming may have doubts this rosy future is possible.

    Building high-end AI requires a mountain of computing and other resources that are currently out of reach of all but a handful of the usual suspects: Nvidia, Google, Meta and Microsoft. So the default assumption is that one of these tech giants will end up controlling AGI.

    Goertzel, a long-haired hippy who plays in a surprisingly good band fronted by a robot, wants to challenge that assumption. 

    Goertzel points out that the default assumption used to be that companies like IBM would win the computing industry and Yahoo would win search.

    A tattered copy of The Prometheus Project. (Source: Internet Archive)

    “The reason these things change is because people were concretely fighting to change it in each instance,” he says. “Instead, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the Google guys came along.”

    The founder of SingularityNET, he’s been thinking about the Singularity (a theoretical moment when technological development increases exponentially) since the early 1970s when he read an early book on the subject called The Prometheus Project

    He’s been working on AGI for much of the time since then, popularizing the term AGI and launching the OpenCog AI framework in 2008.

    Adams says Goertzel is a key reason SingularityNET has a credible shot.

    “We are the biggest not-for-profit, crypto-funded AI science and research team on the planet,” Adams says, noting their competitors have been focused on “narrow AIs” like ChatGPT and are only now shifting their strategy to AGI.

    “They’re years behind us,” she says. “We have three decades of research with Dr. Ben Goertzel in neural symbolic methods.”

    But she adds that opening up the platform to any and all developers around the world and rewarding them for their contribution will give it the edge even over the mega-corporations who currently dominate the space.

    “Because we have a powerful vision and a powerful commitment to building the most advanced, most intelligent AGI in a democratic way, it’s hard to imagine that Big Tech or any other player could come in and compete, particularly when you’re up against open source.”

    “[We will] see a potentially huge influx of people developing on the SingularityNET marketplace and the continued escalation of pace toward AGI. There’s a good chance it will be us.”

    HyperCycle CEO Toufi Saliba (Fenton)

    Decentralized AI: Opening the door to open source development 

    The Prometheus Project proposed that AI was such an earth-shattering development that everyone in the world should get a democratic vote on its development.

    So when blockchain emerged, it seemed like implementing decentralized infrastructure and token-based governance for AI was the next most practical alternative.

    HyperCycle CEO Toufi Saliba tells Magazine this mitigates the threat of a centralized company or authoritarian country gaining immense power from developing AGI first, which would be “the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.”

    It’s not the only potential solution to the problem. Meta chief AI scientist Yan Le Cun is a big proponent of open-sourcing AI models and letting a thousand flowers bloom, while X owner Elon Musk recently open-sourced the model for Grok.

    But blockchain is arguably a big step up. SingularityNET aims to network the technology around the world, with different components controlled by different communities, thereby spreading the risk of any single company, group or government controlling the AGI.

    “So you could use these infrastructures to implement decentralized deep neural networks, you could use them to implement a huge logic engine, you can use them to implement an artificial life approach where you have a simulated ecosystem and a bunch of little artificial animals interacting and trying to evolve toward intelligence,” explains Goertzel.

    I want to foster creative contributions from everywhere, and it may be some, you know, 12-year-old genius from Tajikistan comes up with a new artificial life innovation that provides a breakthrough to AGI.”

    It’s possible the fate of the world may rest in this man’s hands. (Fenton)

    What is HyperCycle? What is OpenCog Hyperon?

    HyperCycle is a ledgerless blockchain that’s fast enough to allow AI components to communicate, coordinate and transact to finality in under 300 milliseconds. The idea is to give AIs a way to call on the resources of other AIs, paid for via microtransactions.

    For now, the fledgling network is being used for small-scale applications, like an AI app calling on another AI service to help complete a task. But in time, as the network scales, it’s theoretically possible that AGI might be an emergent property of the various AI components working together in a sort of distributed brain. 

    “So, in that approach, the entire world has a much higher chance to get to AGI as a single entity,” Saliba says.

    Goertzel didn’t develop HyperCycle for that reason — he just needed something miles faster than existing blockchains to enable AIs to work together.  

    The project he’s most excited about is OpenCog Hyperon, which launches in alpha this month. It “combines together deep neural nets, logic engines, evolutionary learning and other AI paradigms in the same software framework, for updating the same extremely decentralized Knowledge Graph.”

    The idea is to throw open the doors to anyone who wants to work on it in the hope they can improve the METTA AGI programming language so it can scale up massively. “We will have the complete toolset for building the baby AGI,” he says. “To get something I would want to call it baby AGI we will need that million times speed up of the METTA interpreter,” he says.

    “My own best guess is that Opencog Hyperon may be the system to make the [AGI] breakthrough.”

    AI governance: The role of voting systems 

    Of course, decentralization does not ensure things will go right with AGI. As Goertzel points out, the government of Somalia was decentralized very widely in the 1990s under a bunch of warlords and militias, but it would have been preferable at the time to live under the centralized government of Finland.

    Furthermore, token-based governance is a long way from being fit for prime time. In projects like Uniswap and Maker, large holders like a16z and the core team have so many tokens it’s almost not worth anyone else voting. Many other decentralized autonomous organizations are wracked by politics and infighting.

    The surging price of crypto/AI projects has attracted a bunch of token speculators. Are these really the people we want to put in control of AGI?

    Goertzel argues that while blockchain projects are currently primarily attractive to people interested in making money, that will change as the use case evolves. 

    “If we roll out the world’s smartest AI on decentralized networks, you will get a lot of other people involved who are not primarily oriented toward financial speculation. And then it’ll be a different culture.”

    But if the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance does achieve AGI, wouldn’t its tokens be ludicrously expensive and out of reach of those primarily interested in beneficial AGI?

    As Goertzel has told Magazine previously, our chances of controlling AGI after a certain point are slim. (Fenton)

    Goetzel suggests that perhaps a weighted voting system that prioritizes those who have contributed to the project may be required:

    “I think for guiding the mind of the AGI, we want to roll out a fairly sophisticated, decentralized reputation system and have something closer to one person, one vote, but where people who have some track record of contributing to the AI network and making some sense, get a higher weighting.”

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 21:15

  • Chinese Ex-Trade Minister Who Backed Trump Warns US That 'Dismantling' Global Trade Is Blowing Back On Ordinary Americans
    Chinese Ex-Trade Minister Who Backed Trump Warns US That ‘Dismantling’ Global Trade Is Blowing Back On Ordinary Americans

    President Joe Biden in late February said “unprecedented action” is being taken in response to an emerging scenario where “China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security.” He said at the time, “China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, including by using unfair practice.”

    This is but one leading example of what Beijing has complained about as being hardline moves of Washington targeting Chinese goods and thus eroding the very free trade system it once led the world in establishing. This week China’s former vice minister of foreign trade, Long Yongtuwho once expressed hope that Trump would get reelected as he’s “easy to read”reflected on the past few years of changes since the Trump administration.

    He spoke of Washington-driven efforts which are resulting in rising protectionism and supply chain decoupling at an event ahead of the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia. His talk emphasized that ultimately Washington’s anti-China trajectory is hurting ordinary Americans as Chinese companies scramble to buy up land in Mexico as a necessary alternative to being able to do business directly in the US. 

    Long Yongtu, former Chinese vice minister for trade, via Xinhua

    “These Chinese companies could have continued to make goods in China for America at reasonable prices, but now they have to bear the extra costs of migrating to Mexico, and US consumers are grappling with more expensive goods,” Long explained, citing a seven-fold increase in Chinese investors purchasing land in Mexican industrial parks going back to 2019.

    “It is the globalized economic and trade systems that are at stake, they were built by the US and the West after World War II, but now the US is dismantling the system,” he continued.

    The 81-year old Long, it must be remembered, served as China’s lead negotiator during its 15-year talks to join the World Trade Organization over twenty years ago, which happened in 2001. During his fresh comments, Long said, “The WTO has been marginalized, and I think the most urgent task today is how countries can work together to strengthen the function of the WTO and carry out some necessary reforms.”

    A flurry of both US and international reports over the past couple years have amply demonstrated and documented the trend, replete with stories like the following in Economic Times:

    Bill Chan had never set foot anywhere in Mexico, let alone the lonely stretch of desert in the north of the country where he abruptly decided to build a $300 million factory. But that seemed a trifling detail amid the pressure to adapt to a swiftly changing global economy.

    It was January 2022, and Chan’s company, Man Wah Furniture Manufacturing, was confronting grave challenges in moving sofas from its factories in China to customers in the United States. Shipping prices were skyrocketing. Washington and Beijing were locked in a fierce trade war.

    Man Wah, one of China’s largest furniture companies, was eager to make its products on the North American side of the Pacific. “Our main market is the United States,” said Chan, CEO of Man Wah’s Mexico subsidiary. “We don’t want to lose that market.”

    That same objective explains why scores of major Chinese companies are investing aggressively in Mexico, taking advantage of an expansive North American trade deal. Tracing a path forged by Japanese and South Korean companies, Chinese firms are establishing factories that allow them to label their goods “Made in Mexico,” then trucking their products into the United States duty-free.

    There are not just economic but potential geopolitical ramifications of the trend. If China is sweeping up vast property in Mexico for production, it raises questions over the extent to which in some cases Chinese government-affiliated companies could be ‘on America’s doorstep’ in greater numbers. This would have serious ramifications in any future hot conflict scenario, for example in a new Taiwan crisis.

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    Long in his Tuesday comments at the Boao Forum urged that “ordinary Americans should be better informed on the manifold benefits of free trade, and that discussions should return to the realm of common sense and the proven and objective laws of economics and trade.” He also declared that China’s global reach represents “opportunity” and should not be seen in the West as a “threat” – a common refrain of Beijing.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 20:50

  • On The Brink Of A Dramatic Change: The Digitalization Of Money
    On The Brink Of A Dramatic Change: The Digitalization Of Money

    Authored by Efrat Fenigson via Bitcoin Magazine,

    The current state of Central Bank Digital Currency Projects globally summarized by Efrat Enigson, independent journalist and host of the “You’re The Voice” podcast…

    “What underpins a world order is always the financial system.

    We are on the brink of a dramatic change where we are about to, and I’ll say this boldly, abandon the traditional system of money and accounting and introduce a new one. And the new one is what we call blockchain.

    It means digital. It means having an almost perfect record of every single transaction that happens in the economy, which will give us far greater clarity over what’s going on. It also raises huge dangers in terms of the balance of power between states and citizens. In my opinion, we’re going to need a digital constitution of human rights if we’re going to have digital money.

    Most people think that digital money is crypto and private, but what I see are superpowers introducing digital currency. The Chinese were the first. The US is on the brink of moving in the same direction. The Europeans have committed to that as well.”

    This revolutionary speech about a new financial system, was delivered at the World Government Summit in March 2022 in Dubai, by Philippa “Pippa” Malmgren, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Chatham House; her father, Harald Malmgren served as a senior advisor to US Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford and others. She’s a technology entrepreneur and economist, who served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, for Economic Policy on the National Economic Council and is a former member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and Corporate Governance.

    Her words about the transition to a new world order that requires a new financial structure correspond well with the words of French President Emmanuel Macron in June 2023 at the Global Finance Summit in Paris: “The world needs a public financial shock to fight global warming, and the current system is not suitable for dealing with the world’s challenges.” The president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, also called for “a clean slate” and said the Bretton Woods organizations (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) do not serve their goals nor respond to society’s needs.

    The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR

    “THE NEW BRETTON WOODS MOMENT”

    “A new international monetary system is taking shape, some call it the new Bretton Woods moment that needs to be seized to create a new global financial governance,” says the investigative journalist Whitney Webb in a recent sitdown interview, where she mention that according to Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England & Bank of Canada and the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, the three pillars of the new multi-polar world are Digital IDs, CBDCs and ESG, through a global carbon market. All world governments are pushing this agenda, that in order for it to succeed, all monetary systems and supporting systems must become digital and rely on digital data.
    A good example of this was revealed at an event of the Central Bank of Israel with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – which I attended – in September 2023 in Tel Aviv, where the “Genesis Project” was presented. As part of this project, “green” bonds are issued, based on carbon quotas in the CBDC infrastructure. This is how the climate agenda is linked to financial markets.

    “DEBT SERFDOM”

    “Stablecoins could be the way in which the US is further globalizing the dollar, spreading its adoption directly to the world’s general public in order to continue increasing its debt and encourage uptake and usage of the dollar”, says Mark Goodwin, Editor in Chief of Bitcoin Magazine, in this interview with Whitney Webb. He suggests that the politician’s outcry of de-dollarization and the weakening of the dollar are a distraction from perpetuating the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
    “While CBDCs are what people are becoming fearful and aware of, it may just be the red herring, and the real strategy of the US dollar’s survival is highly regulated stablecoins (such as Tether), which can easily be programmable, even more than CBDCs, as well as seized, regulated and controlled indirectly by governments. 100 billion dollars in treasuries were already purchased by Tether, its subsidiaries and owners. Tether is positioned alongside the top 20 nation states buying debt from the US, with around one tenth of China or Japan that have a trillion dollars debt to the US”.

    Whitney Webb & Mark Goodwin. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC9dJYqDZ9c

    This theory, together with the words of Mark Carney, Pippa Malmgren, Emmanuel Macron & Lula Da Silva, join the calls of global leaders and heads of states, pointing to the replacement of the monetary and financial world order, to introduce a new monetary system. Many experts say that we are reaching the end of the current fiat monetary system experiment, which is destined to collapse. Since world leaders are aware of this, they prefer to engineer a controlled demolition, to maintain control and steer the course, and enter the new era with power firmly within their grasp.

    CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY SYSTEM (CBDC)

    Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), tie the financial freedom of citizens to the government and the banking establishment. The central bank issues its centralized digital currencies, and essentially creates a new monetary system, “fiat on steroids”, a system that takes everything that is bad in the fiat system, and adds more of it; surveillance, control, censorship, and enforcement capabilities. A modern prison? Indeed, the CBDC is the ultimate prototype of a prison without physical chains. By connecting CBDCs to digital identity cards, and to government systems such as universal basic income, social credits and more, we get the ultimate control apparatus. This apparatus will dictate to citizens what they’re allowed to purchase, what the permitted quotas are while limiting consumption according to rules and use cases, at programmed times, places and cadences. The system is able to determine the use of a geographic radius (geo-fencing), and to determine expiration dates on the money. Each remote controlled digital wallet can also be switched on and off by its operators. More than 130 countries are in the initial stages of piloting CBDC systems, of which 36 countries are in advanced pilots, and 3 countries have already launched systems (Nigeria, Jamaica and the Bahamas).

    WILL RIPPLE (XRP) BE THE CHOSEN PLATFORM FOR CBDC?

    Ripple, a digital payment network and transaction protocol that owns the cryptocurrency XRP, is considered one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, and is strategically positioning itself at the heart of government financial innovation, aiming to be the cornerstone of future CBDCs.

    The company is in talks with about twenty governments around the world to develop their CBDCs using Ripple’s technology. In May 2023, Ripple launched a dedicated CBDC platform to assist central banks, governments and financial institutions around the world in issuing CBDCs and stablecoins. To date, Ripple has partnered with six governments for CBDC pilot projects: Georgia, ColombiaMontenegro, Hong Kong, Bhutan and the Republic of Palau.

    The National Bank of Georgia, for example, has chosen Ripple as its technology partner for its CBDC pilot last year, citing Ripple’s technical expertise and team capabilities. Its interest in CBDCs is in leveraging modern technologies, such as the programmability aspect of CBDCs, aiming to create a platform with smart contract and programmable token capabilities to stimulate innovation in the financial sector.

    In the case of Bhutan, Ripple’s technology was chosen in 2021 for the country’s CBDC project to enable advanced cross-border payments, and assist in “financial inclusion” – in line with Bhutan’s mission to increase financial inclusion in Bhutan to 85% by 2023.

    In 2022, Ripple reached the final stage of the G20 Techsprint CBDC Hackathon, hosted by Indonesia and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), and in August 2023, the Republic of Palau launched a USD-backed digital currency, developed by Ripple.

    Promoting its platform as an infrastructure for a CBDC, Ripple advocates for government regulation of cryptocurrencies, and tries to position itself as the preferred solution for CBDC projects. Its claim to fame of being the ideal CBDC partner for governments is the combination of speed, efficiency, a sustainable and “green” blockchain network that uses little energy (compared to the Bitcoin network), and interoperability – the ability to communicate and work with CBDC solutions in other countries on the Ripple infrastructure. The company warns that there is a risk for CBDC adoption by the public, caused mainly by a lack of market education, and it encourages the programming and expiration dates capabilities, which are perceived by most of the public as particularly Orwellian features of CBDCs.

    Ripple encourages the abolition of cash (and a move to a cashless society), and unsurprisingly, it promotes the climate agenda; The company’s website presents its commitment to a clean, prosperous and secure low-carbon future, with a plan to reach carbon net-zero by 2030.

    Apparently, in line with Ripple’s expansion strategy vis-a-vis governments, the company makes sure to recruit employees who came from central and commercial banks. One of the company’s top executives is Andrew Whitworth, policy director at Ripple, who previously worked at the Bank of England. At the same time as his role in Ripple, Whitworth also serves as a Director of the “Digital Pound Foundation”, an organization that has declared itself the authority on the Digital Pound; it advises and influences the government’s decisions regarding CBDC projects and deployments. Clearly an inside connection such as this might give Ripple an advantage in shaping digital currency policies to fit their platform and solutions. Does this hint a conflict of interests, or at least an unfair play?

    Another avenue through which institutional influence and implicit control over Ripple could manifest is via a legal battle with the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) concerning the XRP cryptocurrency. Engaging in such legal disputes inevitably positions Ripple in a scenario where maintaining a positive relationship with institutions becomes crucial. Consequently, it’s no surprise that Ripple prioritizes governments, central banks, and financial institutions as its primary target audience in its market strategy.

    Photo: Lord XRP Twitter account

    INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS IN CBDC

    China spent a couple of years rolling out relatively failed CBDC projects without widespread adoption, while injecting 30 million yuan as free money to encourage user adoption. Transactions using the digital yuan hit 1.8 trillion yuan (US$249 billion) in June 2023.

    Recently, significant progress has been made: the two main payment services and applications in China – WeChat and Alipay – which have a traffic of about 3-4 trillion dollars per year, integrated the Chinese CBDC service into their applications. The central bank regulator made it clear that digital yuan isn’t meant to compete with the two payments giants. Rather, it’s supposed to play a complementary role.

    Elon Musk, who owns, among other things, the Twitter/X platform, has stated that he wants to make the platform an “everything app” like the Chinese WeChat, including payment management. Will X also follow the Chinese route and integrate the CBDC solution into it, or will it try to become a CBDC infrastructure itself with the help of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, the Dogecoin?

    The CBDC pilot in Nigeria didn’t exactly take off either, after the citizens took to the streets to protest the abolition of cash in the country, and resented the introduction of an unneeded digital solution, while demanding the return of cash. After a long and painful protest, the cash was returned alongside the new digital currency, which was not canceled and became part of reality. Furthermore, a new stablecoin is in preparation in Sandbox mode in Nigeria. The cNGN is a Naira stablecoin which some claim has more potential than the e-Naira to be widely adopted. “The stablecoin will be more broadly interoperable than the CBDC, which is only available in the central bank’s wallet. At launch, the central bank’s wallet usability was weak, although it is now quite good”, said Bolu Abiodun, a reporter at Techpoint Africa.

    Source

    The UK saw a strong public backlash to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last year, with more than 50,000 responses sent to the Bank of England following a public hearing on the Digital Pound, aka the UK’s national CBDC.

    GERMANY – AWARENESS OF “EXCESSIVE SURVEILLANCE”

    In Germany, the technical guidelines document for a digital currency of a central bank was published in January 2024. Below are several quotes from the document, reflecting the tyrannical nature of the new currency, and the awareness of the central bank for trust issues it can create:

    • Programmability is the institution’s authority to dedicate your money for certain uses, and to prohibit the use of your wallet when it is “outside the permitted scope”.
       
    • “The central bank can revoke CBDC notes, e. g. as an instrument of monetary control. Revocation of CBDC notes is performed by an authorized entity, the revocation authority, controlled and operated by the central bank.” This sounds like a technique to confiscate and apply a shelf life to money.
       
    • “Payments permitted under certain restrictions.. if the central bank sees fit to impose them” – the document lists restrictions that can be applied to wallets, depending on the amount of personal information that will be provided. For example, the amount of money in the wallet, the number of payments per day, the amount of money per transaction or per day.
       
    • The good news: The German central bank is aware of the possibility of public opposition to a surveillance system: “Many of these design choices are general decisions on the trade-off between excessive surveillance and legitimate monitoring functions for AML and KYC purposes in conjunction with measures for mitigating fraud and misconduct. These decisions are extremely sensitive in nature and can strongly influence the level of trust that users place into the CBDC”.

    ISRAEL – THE DIGITAL SHEKEL WILL BE DISTRIBUTED THROUGH COMMERCIAL BANKS

    Israel takes an extensive and active part in various CBDC pilots, such as the Sela project, Eden, Icebreaker and more, which I have reported on extensively in the past. The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Israel announced that in December 2024 a technical design document for the Digital Shekel will be published, and its implementation will then begin in partnership with the private sector.

    The Bank of Israel’s latest document from last week covers the proposed architecture of the Digital Shekel. Here are some interesting points from the document:

    • The distribution of the Digital Shekel will be two-tiered: instead of direct contact between consumers and the central bank for funding and defunding, an indirect method similar to the distribution of cash today will be used. The banks will purchase digital shekels from the central bank in large quantities and transfer them to customers upon wallet charging.

    • The system will be able to apply and enforce limits, for example limits on the balance that users are allowed to hold in the Digital Shekel.

    • The system will support the possibility of applying interest on the Digital Shekel.

    • Users will be able to access the Digital Shekel through several payment providers, including credit cards, Google/Apple Pay, wearables, payment apps and more.

    • Unlike most retail CBDC solutions, Israel’s model allows users to open a wallet with a payment service provider (PSP) and connect to multiple third-party banks to fund and defund balances.

    Another interesting development in Israel is the announcement of a plan to launch a new stablecoin pegged to the shekel, called BILS, by the exchange platform, Bits Of Gold. Crypto Jungle website reports that the Israeli Capital Market Authority approved the pilot, according to the draft principles published by the Central Bank of Israel. Interesting to note that the company providing the infrastructure for the issuance and custody of the currency is the Israeli technology giant “FireBlocks”, which took part in the “Eden” pilot project of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange for the issuance of digital bonds, built to adapt in the future to a potential CBDC infrastructure.

    NO INTERNET? DON’T WORRY, GOVERNMENTS WILL TAKE CARE OF CONNECTIVITY ANYWAY

    A number of CBDC pilots, like in India, the European Union and more, focus on the adoption of the system by everyone, even amongst people without internet access. The washed-up name “financial inclusion” implies that the system will not skip anyone, not even citizens without Internet connectivity in remote areas, or without reception. In India for example, there are 683 million people living without an internet connection and largely outside the control of the state. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to bring these remote areas into a new surveillance network through various technological means. A successful launch of CBDC in India also corresponds with the government’s overarching goal of reducing cash usage and improving financial monitoring.

    THAILAND – FREE MONEY FOR THE MASSES

    In September 2023, the Thai government announced that any Thai citizen over the age of 16 who chooses to participate in the CBDC pilot, will receive free CBDC worth $280 (10,000 baht) – quite a lot of money in Thai terms. This digital money will be loaded into the digital wallet application and will be available for use within 6 months, and within a radius of 4 km from the residence of the registered citizens. The pilot targets low-income citizens as a first stage, and later expands to entrepreneurs and small business operators – provided they are registered in the tax system. In Thailand many citizens are not registered in the government systems and not everyone has a bank account. It seems that air-dropping “free money” is another tactic to lure citizens into government systems, with the bait of “free” controlled government money. But is there such a thing as “free lunch”?

    THE EUROPEAN UNION – A POSITIVE MARKETING CAMPAIGN IN HIGH GEAR

    The European Union launched a marketing campaign to promote the digital euro about six months ago, to start educating the European public about a reality where that they will be obliged to use a supervised digital euro, led by Christine Lagarde, who was previously convicted of crimes and was promoted to serve as the governor of the European Central Bank, the ECB.

    The Digital Euro new marketing campaign. Source: Christine Lagarde’s Twitter account

    At the same time, a charade is going on in the European Union Parliament where the dangers of CBDCs are being discussed, only thanks to the public awareness and discourse, while Lagarde rushes forward and kicks off the marketing campaign to instill in the public the following messages: the digital euro is easy, safe, fast and reliable. Not a word about its Orwellian capabilities to track, program, limit and condition activity through expiration dates, geo-fencing, and remote on and off switching.

    Another ECB campaign video for the Digital Euro

    THE DIGITAL EURO WILL NOT BE ANONYMOUS

    In a discussion at the European Union Council in 2023, Lagarde emphasizes a point: the digital euro will not be anonymous. Privacy will exist in the system, but not anonymity. Let’s break this up in a different way: for the banks, the key to surveillance and control is identification. The bank must know who the citizen is and verify their identity, in order to exercise law enforcement or regulations, through technological restrictions. Lagarde’s claim that the technology will allow privacy but not anonymity is unfounded: apparently the central bank considers itself and the financial service providers some kind of God, since in front of them the citizen will be identified, and therefore it is not clear what kind of privacy can exist, without anonymity.

    Source: Christine Lagarde’s Twitter account

    In a presentation from March 2024, the ECB presents a timetable for the Digital Euro. In November 2025, the development and implementation phase will begin, with the completion of the “democratic” legislative process.

    The timing of the launch of the Digital Euro corresponds well with the European Union’s initiative to issue digital identity cards to all EU residents between now and 2030, to enable the necessary government identification and tracking of its citizens. Identical initiatives are enacted and promoted in many other countries around the world at the same time. Where I live, in Israel, ID cards and passports have been mandatory and digital for many years, and also biometric since 2013 – therefore there is no need to start the marketing campaign for the Digital Shekel yet, as the digital infrastructure exists hence the first step of digitalization is already done.

    The timetable of the Digital Euro by the ECB

    This phase of the project is the “preparation phase”, the ECB reveals, in which they are preparing for the launch phase of the Digital Euro. Of course, we are reassured that no final decision has yet been made regarding the launch of the CBDC, and this will only happen with the approval of the “Government Council” after the completion of the democratic legislative process of the European Union. Therefore, in parallel with the democratic debate for or against the Digital Euro, the development of the technology will continue, in order to be prepared for the launch.

    Central bank governors such as Lagarde and Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron insist that the CBDC is digital cash, and also insist that physical cash will not be abolished. It is possible that these central bankers feel the need to make a U-turn from the incriminating speech of the head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Augustin Carstens, who caused a public outcry when he stated in 2020 that the CBDC technology, unlike cash, will allow monitoring of financial transactions and will be a means of enforcement by the establishment:

    “The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control of the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that

    expression (money) of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”

    Agustín Carstens – BIS General Manager

    THE FUTURE: CENTRALIZED AND CONTROLLED, OR FREE, DECENTRALIZED AND SECURE?

    Ayn Rand, author and philosopher, said that “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” Are we taking giant steps towards a new monetary reality, where the fiat currencies we know become fiat on steroids, aka CBDCs? Or into the reality of “stable” and closely regulated cryptocurrencies, tethered to fiat? Either way, the feeling is that the establishment is doing everything to preserve the debt economy, and its inherent modern slavery. The only way to break these fiat-matrix boundaries is to opt out and enter into a new system, which seems to run in a parallel reality, the Bitcoin system. On the Bitcoin standard, under self-custody, no third party has the ability to confiscate, program or take over private assets. Not even the government or the state. Bitcoin uses a lot of energy for its mining, but this proof-of-work mechanism makes the blockchain network extremely secure and the Bitcoin currency very valuable. Bitcoin is “safe money”, which is out of reach for the establishment. Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is a digital currency without intermediaries or third parties (peer-to-peer) in a decentralized and secure network, which allows everyone to be their own bank, instead of relying on banks and external parties. With a fixed and known supply, it represents the most powerful digital asset on the market as a store of value and as a unit of account, and in the future will also be used as a medium of exchange.

    In my recent interview with the media and finance expert, and one of the most famous Bitcoiners, Max Keiser, he compared the CBDC to a parasitic and centralized cancer: “If you were to look at the amount of energy that Bitcoin uses and the rate at which it’s increasing, you would say good is triumphing over evil. So this gives me a lot of hope. And I don’t think centralization in anything works at all, except cancer. Cancer is the only thing that seems to work to be overly centralized and parasitic. That’s the cancer model, but I think we’re gonna win against the cancer of CBDCs.” 

    Follow Efrat’s work here

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 20:25

  • Putin Threatens To Attack Western Air Bases Hosting Ukrainian F-16s
    Putin Threatens To Attack Western Air Bases Hosting Ukrainian F-16s

    This week Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Torzhok air base in Tver Region which hosts the 344th Training Center for Russian combat pilots. Some or many of these aviators who will likely go on to fly missions in Ukraine.

    In an address to the pilots, Putin referenced accusations frequently voiced by Western leaders that he intends to expand the war in Ukraine by attacking NATO and other European countries. He called the claim “utter nonsense” but went on to issue a warning about US-made F16 fighters jets.

    Describing that US “satellites” in Eastern Europe (for example, Poland) have no reason to be afraid, he said, “The claims that we are going to attack Europe after Ukraine – it is utter nonsense and intimidation of their own population just to beat the money out of them.”

    Via BBC/Russian MoD

    European countries have indeed been seeking to ramp up their defense sectors and spending, especially following two years of arming Ukraine which has largely depleted domestic stockpiles.

    A translation in Politico quoted Putin as further saying “…the possibility of an attack on some other countries, on Poland, the Baltic states, the Czechs are scared. It’s just nonsense,” and that Russia has “no aggressive intentions toward these states.”

    The Russian president further reiterated in the talk that the special military operation in Ukraine was launched out of the necessity of “protecting our people on our historical territories.” Referring to the NATO alliance, he said: “They came right up to our borders… Did we go across the ocean to the borders of the United States? No, they are approaching us, and they have come very close,” according to a Russian media translation.

    Putin also took the opportunity to address international reports that Kiev will soon be given its first batch of F-16 fighter jets. According to his words as summarized in EuroNews:

    At the same meeting, he warned Ukraine’s Western allies against providing air bases in their countries from where the F-16s could launch sorties against the Kremlin’s forces, saying those bases would be a “legitimate target.”

    The F-16s require a high standard of runways and reinforced hangars to protect them when they are on the ground.

    Military analysts have said the arrival of potentially dozens of F-16s won’t be a game-changer, though Ukrainian officials have welcomed them as an opportunity to hit back at Russia’s air dominance. Putin insisted the F-16s “won’t change the situation on the battlefield.”

    That’s when he vowed before the pilots and trainees, “We will destroy their warplanes just as we destroy their tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, including multiple rocket launchers.” Significantly, he upped the ante with this threat, given he made clear that even bases in Western countries could be targeted if Ukraine flies sorties from them.

    At the military training center in Torzhok, Tver Region, March 27. Pool via Sputnik

    State-run RT has also sought to emphasize this in relaying Putin’s words in the following:

    F-16s flown by Ukrainian pilots but based in third countries will nevertheless be legitimate targets for Russia, Putin added.

    “Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, wherever they are located,” he said.

    Beginning last summer the Kremlin began highlighting that F-16 fighter jets are capable of carrying tactical nukes which are in select NATO countries’ possession. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for example at that time explained, “Moscow can’t ignore the nuclear capability of US-designed F-16 fighter jets that may be supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers. He went so far as to say that it will be seen as a threat from the West “in the nuclear domain.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 20:00

  • The Road To A New McCarthyism
    The Road To A New McCarthyism

    Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

    I wonder how many people have recoiled with horror at what happened in the House of Representatives recently. I am referring to the decision, effectively, to ban the social media platform, TikTok, in the United States (to ‘protect Americans from foreign adversaries’), because it supposedly affords the Chinese government the opportunity to ‘spy’ on Americans and manipulate their thinking. 

    Well, one thing is sure – judging by the margin by which this motion was adopted by the House, and the quality of some of the opinions aired on the topic (that I have listened to), there was precious little thinking going on around the room, with some notable exceptions (352 votes for, 65 against), such as Representative Thomas Massie (R) of Kentucky. What thinking there was – such as the excellent argument put forward by Massie – was not sufficient to sway the rest of the delegates in the direction of common sense. 

    So what was this non-debate about TikTok all about? Most readers would probably already know about it, but it bears repeating, lest the intricacies of the hidden assumptions escape one’s attention. In sum, as mentioned earlier, it comes down to the claim that China is using TikTok to spy on American citizens, and in addition to influence their thinking and behaviour. This, despite the glaring fact that – as Clayton and Natali Morris argue in the first video linked above – the US spies on its own citizens with impunity, not to mention that it also conducts espionage on China. 

    The two investigative reporters of Redacted further highlight the remarkable speed with which the US Congress has addressed the putatively urgent issue concerning TikTok, while allowing the arguably far more urgent matter of thousands of illegal immigrants streaming across the American border to continue unabated. The further irony is, of course – also stressed by the Morris duo – that these illegal immigrants include a far more salient ‘Chinese threat;’ namely, the large numbers of young, ‘military age’ Chinese men. And yet, the border issue is clearly not seen in the same light of urgency as TikTok!

    Should the US Senate confirm the House’s vote to ban this short video app (application) – which is likely – thousands, if not millions of Americans who depend on it for their livelihood, would be left high and dry. This does not seem to have bothered the members of the House either. 

    But most egregiously, it is either lost on the members of the House, or they wittingly connive at the fact that this Act will endow the American President – Joe Biden, at present – with tremendous powers to control anything deemed to be under the influence of so-called ‘foreign adversaries,’ real or imagined. ‘Anything’ here includes not only comparable apps, but internet platforms and websites too. So, if X (formerly Twitter) is regarded by the incumbent of the presidency, for whatever reason, as posing a threat to US citizens in terms of influence or ‘manipulation’ by ‘foreign adversaries,’ it could be banned. It is redundant to emphasise the dictatorial potential of such a situation, but we’ll get to it later, anyway. 

    In Thomas Massie’s speech to the House he makes a telling distinction: while other speakers described TikTok as a Chinese ‘Trojan horse,’ he perspicaciously turns this metaphor back on the bill itself, insisting that it is itself the real Trojan horse. On March 12 he warned that anyone who thought it was not a Trojan horse would have to explain why there is a very telling exclusion in it, namely (quoting from the bill):

    The term ‘covered company’ does not include an entity that operates a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.

    This exclusion hides more than it shows Why? Because the exclusion pertains to ‘entities’ that are innocuous from a political point of view. But what about platforms like Rumble, X, or BitChute which, unlike YouTube and Facebook, are not censored, and therefore include many items to which the current regime (being part of the neo-fascist cabal) is hugely allergic? In other words, once signed into law, this Trojan horse bill could attack Americans from inside the walls of Troy, as it were, at the whim of the head honcho in the White House. And one need not add that, in the hands of its present occupant it would be a weapon of mass despotism. 

    Ironically, Senator Rand Paul’s insights concerning the House decision bring to light the unacknowledged lies and cover-ups lurking behind the ostensibly ‘open’ debate preceding the voting. He did not waste any time commenting (in the first video linked above) that:

    Reactionaries who want to ban TikTok claim the data can’t be secured because the ‘algorithm’ is in China. 

     Not true.

    The truth is the algorithm runs in the US in Oracle cloud with their review of the code. (NOT in China.)

     Maybe we should examine the facts before committing violations of the 1st and 5th Amendments. 

     They want to ban TikTok because it’s ‘owned by China.’

     Not true.

     60% of the company is owned by US and international investors.

     20% is owned by the company founders. 

     20% is owned by company employees, including over 7,000 Americans.

     The CEO of TikTok is from Singapore, not China.

     So ask yourself why they keep repeating this lie to scare you?

    In characteristically courageous fashion, Rand Paul did not hesitate to expose the lies that were bandied about in the House, neatly repudiating them by providing the true state of affairs in each case. But he did not stop there. This was followed by:

    My statement on the House TikTok ban.

    The passage of the House TikTok ban is not just a misguided overreach; it’s a draconian measure that stifles free expression, tramples constitutional rights, and disrupts the economic pursuits of millions of Americans. 

    With an iron fist, Congress dictated an unrealistic and narrow path for divestment, effectively banning TikTok and ignoring its substantial investments in data security.

    This act is not securing our nation – it’s a disturbing gift of unprecedented authority to President Biden and the Surveillance State that threatens the very core of American digital innovation and free expression.

    Joe Biden must be overjoyed, licking his lips at the thought of having been gifted with the dubious means to silence his critics and opponents at will, at the cost of Americans and people in the rest of the world being informed through available sources of their choice. It would amount to a situation hardly distinguishable from one where the state owns all the media – in other words, an unadulterated dictatorship. That is, unless it is stopped at the Senate level, which is unlikely. 

    One wonders whether the outcome of Murthy vs. Missouri, before the Supreme Court today (March 18), dealing as it does with the troubling issue of censorship (and therefore with the implications and purview of the First Amendment), would have a noticeable retrospective effect on the TikTok ban, which – at bottom – relates to the same question. 

    What is astonishing about all of this is the apparent ease and rapidity with which the bill passed through the House, as Clayton Morris points out in the first video, linked above, highlighting the contrasting lack of interest in actively tackling the undeniable problem of unchecked ingress of illegal immigrants at American borders (referred to earlier). In a country which has always boasted about having the First Amendment, or rather, what it stands for – freedom of speech – which implies guaranteeing the continued existence of those sources of information which make freedom of expression possible, one might have expected the results of the vote to have been the other way around. 

    As it stands, is it far-fetched to read in these results the degree to which the collective mindset in the US has already morphed into one that is, incomprehensible as it may seem, receptive to despotic rule? I think not. The neo-fascist technocrats, who must surely have regarded the United States as the biggest hurdle to cross in their quest for world domination, must be writhing with uncontrollable convulsions of glee at present. After all, they are witnessing the crumbling of this erstwhile ‘bastion of freedom,’ which their puppet in the White House and his minions have set in motion with relative ease, it would seem. 

    A situation such as the one briefly sketched above as a distinct possibility, would eerily resemble what was the case in the early 1950s in the United States, which went by the name of the ‘Red Scare.’ The Eisenhower Library (online) provides this useful sketch of this lamentable episode in American history:

    Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a little-known junior senator from Wisconsin until February 1950 when he claimed to possess a list of 205 card-carrying Communists employed in the US Department of State. From that moment Senator McCarthy became a tireless crusader against Communism in the early 1950s, a period that has been commonly referred to as the ‘Red Scare.’ As chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee, Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on communist subversion in America and investigated alleged communist infiltration of the Armed Forces. His subsequent exile from politics coincided with a conversion of his name into a modern English noun ‘McCarthyism,’ or adjective, ‘McCarthy tactics,’ when describing similar witch hunts in recent American history. [The American Heritage Dictionary gives the definition of McCarthyism as: 1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence; and 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition. Senator McCarthy was censured by the US Senate on December 2, 1954 and died May 2, 1957.]

    Several things strike one in this excerpt, the first of which is the phrase ‘witch hunts,’ with its disquieting connotations of persecuting people on the basis of flimsy, but ‘useful’ evidence of supposed malpractice of some kind – such as having a black cat, metaphorically speaking, equivalents of which could include ‘misinformation,’ disinformation,’ and even (God forbid) ‘malinformation,’ all of which have been thoroughly tainted, from a mainstream perspective, with connotations of proverbial witchcraft. The TikTok ban would allow members of the Biden Inquisition to scream ‘Witch!’ at anything which does not gel with the official narrative, such as the items found on X, Children’s Health Defense, or BitChute, to mention only some likely candidates.

    Then there is the related American Heritage Dictionary’s illuminating description, quoted in the excerpt above, which links McCarthyism explicitly with the ‘political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence’ as well as with ‘the use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.’ To anyone with a modicum of comprehension of what is at stake, this would appear to be uncannily apposite. Given its track record, could anyone expect of the Biden administration any ‘regard to (contrary) evidence’ where accusations of disinformation are concerned? Or the employment of ‘methods of investigation’ that are fair? Give me a break! 

    To sum up by using a currently popular term, Biden and his DOJ would ‘weaponise’ the TikTok ban to the hilt, to the detriment of the citizens of the US as well as American democracy. And make no mistake: democracy may never recover from what threatens to become nothing less than McCarthyism on steroids. While one has access to the means for resisting this conspicuous act of usurping the constitutionally ‘guaranteed’ rights and freedoms of the American people, one must avail oneself of these – before they disappear.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 19:40

  • Flip-Flopping Trump Impeachment Witness Registers As Ukraine Foreign Agent, Claims Allegiance "Still 100% To The United States"
    Flip-Flopping Trump Impeachment Witness Registers As Ukraine Foreign Agent, Claims Allegiance “Still 100% To The United States”

    Former US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, who testified for the Democrats against Donald Trump during the former president’s impeachment, has registered as a foreign agent on behalf of Ukraine and the European Union, the Daily Caller reports.

    Sondland initially testified in Trump’s impeachment inquiry that there was no quid pro quo when President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens while withholding US military aid (unbeknownst to Zelensky at the time).

    Sondland later flipped his story, claiming that he told a top Ukrainian official that a meeting with President Trump may be contingent upon its new administration committing to investigations Trump wanted regarding the Biden family and other matters, according to the New York Times.

    And now, he’s a registered agent for Ukraine.

    Sondland filed a registration statement with the U.S. Department of Justice, declaring himself a foreign agent of Ukraine and the E.U. in order to legally represent their interests in the country, according to a document obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Sondland’s registration is required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a 1938 law that governs how foreign governments and other entities may lobby U.S. officials. FARA registration is required regardless of U.S. citizenship and must occur before an individual begins lobbying.

    See the registration below:

    During his time in the Trump administration, Sondland personally dealt with various high-ranking Ukrainians, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine has been trying to lobby members of Congress and executive branch officials to support its war with Russia.

    Sondland Responds

    In a statement to the Daily Caller, Sondland said “This term ‘Foreign Agent.’ It sounds very sinister because that’s the way the FARA laws are written. You’re designated as a foreign agent. I’m not an agent of anyone. I haven’t been asked by Ukraine or the E.U. to represent them. I’m simply having conversations that everyone has all the time with members of Congress and with members of governments of other countries to try and bridge and divide,” adding “The problem is the FARA laws require this registration and you become known as a ‘foreign agent,’ and that’s very different than someone who is hired by the E.U. or hired by Ukraine and paid to do a certain job on their behalf. I am not doing either.”

    My allegiance is still 100% to the United States, not to the European Union. Unfortunately, I can’t have these conversations without registering,” he continued.

    He also pushed back on the ‘flip-flop’ criticisms, telling the Caller: “I relayed facts that occurred in 2019, some of which had the effect of having a negative…showing President Trump in a negative light and some showing President Trump in a positive light, but I had no agenda to testify against or for President Trump in 2019.”

    Except, that’s not quite what happened.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 19:20

  • The Human Tragedy In Haiti
    The Human Tragedy In Haiti

    Authored by Callista L. Gingrich via RealClear Politics,

    Since late February, gang violence in Haiti has surged, overwhelming government and security forces and plunging the nation into further turmoil. The United Nations estimates that armed gangs now control 80 percent of the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

    The recent wave of violence in the Caribbean nation’s ongoing gang wars erupted as multiple armed groups banded together, pledging to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who came to power after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and announced postponing Haiti’s elections again last year.

    Citing ongoing gang violence as one of the reasons for staving off elections, Henry flew to Kenya in February to press for the deployment of a U.N-backed police force to support the Haitian National Police in fighting the gangs. The armed groups responded by launching a series of coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince and preventing Henry’s return to Haiti.

    In the weeks that followed, gangs ravaged two prisons releasing more than 4,000 inmates into the country; destroyed power substations; attacked airports, police stations, and neighborhoods; and took control of major ports and water facilities.

    More than 15,000 people have fled their homes in recent weeks. According to an anonymous woman who spoke with CBS News, “People go inside your house, killing, raping, all those things, burning your house.”

    Americans have been urged to leave the country. Nearly 1,000 have filled out crisis intake forms asking for help or assistance to escape the turmoil. At the time of this writing, hundreds of Americans have not been able to evacuate.

    During a briefing on March 12, the U.S. State Department announced that in addition to pledging a total contribution of $300 million, the United States helped to broker a deal that will form “a new presidential council that will select a new interim prime minister and pave the pathway for elections, as well as the deployment of the Multinational Security Support Mission.” Once the transitional council is established, Kenya will deploy the police force and Henry will step aside.

    Despite this development, the situation on the ground for the people of Haiti remains desperate. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said during a press briefing on Monday, “It is not hyperbole to say that this is one of the most dire humanitarian situations in the world.”

    Tragically, fear and suffering from gang violence in Haiti is not new – but is a daily reality for many Haitians.

    There are an estimated 200 gangs operating in Haiti, and approximately 95 operate near Port-au-Prince. In 2023, more than 8,400 people were reported killed, injured, or kidnapped, more than two times the amount as the previous year. Further, compared to 2022, rape cases skyrocketed by 49 percent from January to August 2023.

    Bringing violence to neighborhoods, gangs demand so-called protection money from residents, and when they can’t pay, threaten impoverished civilians. Twenty-eight-year-old Annie, who fled Port-au-Prince with her family two years ago, told the BBC, “I saw so many awful things I never thought I would see. We were afraid for our lives.”

    She added, “We are living with death on a daily basis.”

    In addition to gang violence, chronic political instability, natural disasters, foreign intervention, and debt have crippled Haiti’s economy, fueled violence, and hindered development.

    Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and more than half of the population lives below the World Bank’s poverty line. In a population of 11.7 million people, approximately 5.5 million Haitians require humanitarian assistance, more than 4 million people are affected by food insecurity, and 19,000 are experiencing famine. 

    I wake up in the morning and if we have sugar in the house, we make sugar water and put a bit of salt in it, just to drink it and stop the pain of hunger,” Kerby, a Haitian who fled Port-au-Prince due to gang threats, recently told the BBC.

    Amid the recent developments, it is unclear what the governance of Haiti will look like and how it will impact the future of the Caribbean nation.

    As gang violence and chaos continue to wreak havoc, the international community must work to bring peace and stability to Haiti.

    For more commentary form Callista Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 19:00

  • Moody's Warns Bridge Collapse Is "Credit Negative" For Baltimore As Economic Shock Emerges 
    Moody’s Warns Bridge Collapse Is “Credit Negative” For Baltimore As Economic Shock Emerges 

    Instead of the woke Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott utilizing his precious time by going on corporate media’s leftists Joy Reid’s MSNBC show and asserting that white conservatives “should be afraid” of the consequences of calling him the ‘DEI Mayor,’ perhaps the unseasoned youngster who over-promised about fixing imploding Baltimore City (after fifty years of a Democratic-controlled City Hall) should realize the local economy is on the cusp of meltdown and potential negative credit risk event following the bridge collapse and resulting paralyzed port. 

    The Port of Baltimore is a significant economic driver for the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland, and an extended closure will spread like cancer through the local economy as snarled supply chains will result in job losses, lower warehouse activity, and tax revenue loss for the government. 

    “I would say the Port of Baltimore is the leading economic driver for the region in Baltimore,” Anirban Basu, chairman and CEO of Baltimore-based Sage Policy Group Inc., told FreightWaves

    Basu said, “One could argue that the leading driver is Johns Hopkins. It’s a difficult comparison, because you’re talking about two very different fields of endeavor. But the Baltimore region has been one of the nation’s underperformers in recent years. In the Baltimore region, we have had to clawback the jobs lost early during the pandemic.”

    Cargo to the paralyzed Port of Baltimore will be diverted to other US East Coast ports. Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Baltimore local chapter, warned that thousands of port jobs could soon vanish. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    On Thursday morning, Moody’s published a note that said a prolonged closure of the port would ripple through the local economy and could spark negative credit risk events for the city and state:  

    The bridge collapse threatens to disrupt aspects of the State of Maryland (Aaa stable) and City of Baltimore (Aa2 stable) economies. The suspension of shipping traffic to the Port of Baltimore will likely divert cargo to other East Coast ports, which may affect jobs and tax revenue. The accident also has the potential to hurt the transportation and warehousing sector, though that accounts for a small share of state GDP.

    More from Moody’s about the credit fallout that could soon hit Baltimore: 

    In recent years, the state and Baltimore County (Aaa stable) have provided incentives and worked with developers to facilitate the redevelopment of Sparrows Point, a more than 3,000-acre contaminated industrial site once home to a Bethlehem Steel plant. Over the last nine years, Sparrows Point has seen almost $2 billion of private investment resulting in the development of 14 million square feet of warehousing and distribution facilities. With the Key Bridge providing the only direct access route between Sparrows Point and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, further development at Sparrows Point could be delayed.

    There is no timetable for how long salvage crews will take to remove the massive bridge blocking the harbor’s only entry and exit. Some figures are six weeks, while others are several months. Shippers diverting operations to other East Coast ports will also hit warehousing and trucking businesses in the area. 

    We have described to readers for years that Baltimore has been trending down. It’s only in a downward trend when a shock forms that the real troubles begin materializing. And that shock started this week. Sorry, Scott. It’s not a race thing like you describe on MSNBC—you’re just an inexperienced leader. The persistent crime chaos and failed progressive policies are evidence of this. It’s time for new leadership. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 18:40

  • Bahrain Opposition Activist Arrested For Criticizing McLaren Ownership
    Bahrain Opposition Activist Arrested For Criticizing McLaren Ownership

    Via Middle East Eye

    A leading opposition activist has been arrested and detained in Bahrain for criticizing on social media the island kingdom’s ownership of the sportscar brand, McLaren.

    Ebrahim Sharif was arrested by Bahraini authorities on Monday morning over social media posts critical of Bahrain’s decision to take full ownership of the McLaren Group, which is involved in Formula One, other motorsports and the manufacture of luxury supercars. 

    The former secretary general of the National Democratic Action Society (Wa’ad), Bahrain’s largest leftist political party, Sharif was arrested and detained for three social media posts he wrote in the wake of the McLaren ownership news. 

    Last Friday, Mumtalakat, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, which was already McLaren’s biggest shareholder, having first invested in 2007, took over full ownership of the troubled British company, which has been experiencing heavy financial losses.

    Abdulla bin Khalifa al-Khalifa, CEO of Mumtalakat and a member of Bahrain’s ruling royal family, welcomed the deal, heralding “the next phase of the company’s trajectory of growing its leadership position in the luxury super car and motorsports industries.”

    Sharif was interviewed by police on Monday following a summons and subsequently referred to Bahrain’s public prosecution, which ordered that he be kept in detention for seven days pending an investigation over “social media posts that allegedly incite hatred against the regime,” according to Sharif’s lawyer and family.

    If officially charged, the opposition activist could be imprisoned under Article 165 of the Bahrain Penal Code, which states that “A prison sentence shall be passed against any person who expressly incites others to develop hatred or hostility towards the system of government.” Farida Ghulam, Sharif’s wife, confirmed his arrest and the reasons for his detention in a social media post. 

    Middle East Eye asked McLaren if it condoned the arrest and detention of an activist for criticizing its ownership. The company has not yet responded.

    In the first of his contentious social media posts, on March 23 Sharif quoted Karl Marx’s line about history repeating itself first as tragedy, and then as farce. He referenced Bahrain’s prior purchase of Gulf Air, before writing: “With McLaren, we have moved from tragedy to farce. We have completed another cycle of owning failed companies with bottomless losses.”

    McLaren recorded a pre-tax loss of $349m in the first nine months of 2023

    The next day, Sharif contrasted Bahrain’s housing projects budget for 2023 (approximately $239m, according to official documentation displayed in the tweet) with the $564m put into McLaren by the sovereign wealth fund. 

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    In a follow-up post, Sharif wrote that “Denial is an official policy, and the narrative of ‘a happy people’ is promoted by superficial media outlets.” And further:

    “Do we believe what officials repeat and find resonance in complicit media, or do we believe what our eyes see, our ears hear, and our feelings sense about citizens living in miserable poverty, chronic unemployment, marginalization, class disparities, and housing waiting lists that extend until the end of their days?

    What the state spent on McLaren Racing last year is multiples of what it spent on housing projects. Do people die… in their overcrowded homes because you prioritize your hobbies and games over the interests of the poor?

    It was after this last post that Sharif was summoned for an interview by Bahraini police. Commenting on the charges, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, advocacy director at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), said: “These accusations are absurd. No one should be arrested for freely expressing their views or questioning how the government is spending public funds. McLaren’s leadership must speak out on his arrest or else their brand will be stained by Bahrain’s abuses.”

    In 2004, Bahrain hosted its inaugural Grand Prix – the first one to take place in the Middle East. While the 20th anniversary of this event was celebrated at the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix earlier this month, activists told MEE it marked “20 years of sportswashing”

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

    The deal to take F1 to Bahrain was struck by the motorsport’s then-supremo, Bernie Ecclestone, and the island kingdom’s crown prince, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. 

    Over the 20 years it has hosted the Grand Prix, Bahrain has looked to control this publicity, with political protests broken up so as not to disturb the spectacle around the motorsport, and activists harassed, detained and jailed for speaking out.

    “The Grand Prix helps them, it helps them do this,” Moosa Satrawi, a Bahraini activist who told MEE he had been detained, abused and tortured for protesting unemployment in the island kingdom, said of Bahrain’s clampdown on human rights.  

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 18:20

  • Russia Announces 'Substantiated Evidence' Of Ukraine Link To Crocus Hall Terrorists
    Russia Announces ‘Substantiated Evidence’ Of Ukraine Link To Crocus Hall Terrorists

    Russian authorities say they have found a firm link between the suspects in last week’s terror attack on the Crocus City Hall complex and “Ukrainian nationalists” – according to a Thursday announcement. 

    The Russian Investigative Committee has unveiled preliminary findings, stating that the perpetrators who last Friday killed 140 people and wounded many more had received “significant sums of money” from Ukraine.

    Putin has acknowledged that Islamic extremists were behind the attack, but still maintains accusations of a “Ukraine direction”.

    Investigators claim to have in their possession “substantiated evidence” that the attackers received payments from Ukraine in the form of cryptocurrency. 

    President Putin had starting Saturday asserted that the terrorists were apprehended just before trying to cross the Ukrainian border. He alleged that the Ukrainians might have been preparing a “window” for them to cross. There were four gunmen who rampaged through the mall and concert venue on Friday, randomly shooting innocent bystanders, but in total eleven were initially arrested, followed by several more arrests of alleged conspirators.

    Days following Putin’s speech the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, told a press briefing that the Kremlin considers that the US, UK and Ukraine may have been involved.

    Importantly, the Kremlin has acknowledged the perpetrators to to be radical Islamic terrorists, and so have said there is some truth to the ‘ISIS-K’ narrative presented by the West; however, Russian officials have persistently raised the question of another entity, country, or intelligence service ultimately backing the attack. For example on Wednesday foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova had this to say:

    Of course, the speed with which they were able to [come to such forthright conclusions] is astonishing. It took them only a few hours to get to a microphone, turn on the lights, summon the press, and draw a conclusion about who is to blame for this horribly bloody terrorist attack.”

    Russian intelligence (FSB) has meanwhile claimed the terrorists would have been “welcomed as heroes” if they had made it to Ukraine. All four gunmen have since been identified as Tajik nationals – and none of those in detention are Russian citizens, according to Moscow authorities.

    As for the new allegations that they had financial links to Ukraine, no evidence was presented publicly to back the statements. It also remains unclear whether these alleged funding links are connected to Ukrainian government entities or just individuals inside Ukraine.

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

    The White House meanwhile is not buying any of this. In response, on Thursday the Biden administration rejected these new Russian claims as “nonsense” and said it was clear that the Islamic State was “solely responsible”. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby in a briefing also reiterated that Washington had passed info on to Moscow that a terror attack was imminent. Kirby described this as delivered in the form of a “written warning”. The US Embassy in Moscow also issued a public alert calling on Americans to avoid large public venues and gatherings.

    “It is abundantly clear that ISIS (Islamic State) was solely responsible for the horrific attack in Moscow last week. In fact, the United States tried to help prevent this terrorist attack and the Kremlin knows this,” Kirby said.

    A NY Times report says, however, that the US side did not share its full intelligence with Moscow. “The adversarial relationship between Washington and Moscow prevented US officials from sharing any information about the plot beyond what was necessary,” the Times wrote Thursday. The Americans purportedly did this “out of fear Russian authorities might learn their intelligence sources or methods.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 18:00

  • Baltimore Leader Says Conservatives "Should Be Afraid" For Calling Him The "DEI Mayor"
    Baltimore Leader Says Conservatives “Should Be Afraid” For Calling Him The “DEI Mayor”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    Baltimore leader Brandon Scott appeared on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show to assert that white conservatives “should be afraid” of the consequences of calling him the ‘DEI Mayor’ and that his “purpose in life” was to make them uncomfortable.

    Yes, really.

    Professional race-bator Reid angrily asserted that when right-wingers make fun of DEI, they actually mean just “black people,” claiming, “It’s the reason they complained about Critical Race Theory, it’s not fashionable to be openly racist anymore in America.”

    She then welcomed Scott, who dresses and acts like a Black Lives Matter activist, to address the horrifically “racist” fact that right-wingers don’t support DEI in light of the Baltimore bridge collapse.

    The mayor complained about “young black men” being demonized and treated as the “boogeymen” by racist conservatives who think that “only straight, white wealthy men” should have power.

    “We know what they want to say and they don’t have the courage to say the n-word,” he ludicrously added, before appearing to make some kind of veiled threat.

    “The fact that I don’t believe in their untruthful and wrong ideology and I am very proud of my heritage and who I am and where I come from scares them, because me being at my position means that their way of thinking, their way of life of being comfortable while everyone else suffers is going to be at risk and they should be afraid because that’s my purpose in life,” said Scott.

    And there you have it, in his own words.

    Scott’s “purpose in life” is to make white people uncomfortable and afraid.

    But remember, you’re the racist for making fun of him.

    Reid also said the ship was “piloted by a very heroic crew from India” and that it was also racist to criticize them despite them failing to prevent the ship from crashing into and destroying the bridge.

    As we document in the video below, the group that managed the Dali cargo ship and the Maryland Port Commission both appear to have prioritized ‘diversity’ over safety before the ‘accident’ that led to the collapse of the bridge.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 17:45

  • DeSantis Signs Property Rights Bill In Florida That Ends "Squatting Scam"
    DeSantis Signs Property Rights Bill In Florida That Ends “Squatting Scam”

    Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation into law Wednesday that ends squatters’ rights in the Sunshine State, stating that “squatting” is a scam that violates private property rights.

    After alarming stories about squatters commandeering homes and depriving the owners of their property rights made nationwide news in recent weeks, DeSantis took action.

    “We are in the state of Florida are ending this squatters scam once and for all. And momentarily I’ll be signing HB 621, which will give the homeowner the ability to quickly and legally remove a squatter from a property and which will increase criminal penalties for squatting,” DeSantis said during a press conference on the signing at the Orange County State Attorney’s Office.

    “You are not going to be able to commandeer somebody’s private property and expect to get away with it. We are in the state of Florida are ending this squatters scam once and for all, DeSantis added.

    The common sense law allows property owners to file an affidavit to prove they legally own a property. Squatters will quickly face criminal charges once its proven that they illegally moved into a home.

    If the suspect is unable to produce documents authorizing his residency, the property owner can call on the sheriff’s office to immediately remove the squatter from his home.

    The law establishes harsher penalties for squatting crimes, including “a second-degree felony charge against squatters who damage a home, a first-degree felony charge against those who fraudulently sell or lease a property, and a misdemeanor charge against those who purposefully present a fraudulent lease.”

    Previously, squatters in Florida, as well as other states, were considered tenants after a specific length of time and legal property owners often had to launch lengthy and expensive court battles to legally remove them from their homes.

    “Now, we have not had the same type of issues here, as you’ve seen in California or New York. Nevertheless, our laws were really geared towards this not necessarily being a fad,” DeSantis said.

    The governor said that unlike Democrat-led states that protect squatters, Florida will crackdown on the criminals.

    “They’re siding with the squatters,” he said of the blue states.

    “In fact, we have seen squatters move in and claim residence. This forces a massive, long, drawn-out judicial review before they can even be removed from the property. These are people that never had a right to be in the property to begin with. Earlier this month in New York, a woman returned to a property she inherited to find squatters living there. She changed the locks to get them out, and the state of New York arrested her instead of the squatters.”

    During the signing ceremony in Orlando, Sheriff Dennis M. Lemma said the word “squatter” is too kind and the perpetrators should instead be referred to as “criminals and con artists.”

    “I want to thank our legislative body, both our delegates here in central Florida and abroad, because this received unanimous support, and it’s been long too often where we’ve seen homeowners that have spent their entire life working and earning. Some have inherited homes of parents and to knock on the door and be met with squatters,” Lemma said.

    “Squatters actually is a very, very kind term. These are criminals and con artists that need to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” he continued.

    Florida, similar to other states across the nation, has seen repeated incidents of squatters fraudulently moving into a home or property, including a squatter in September who moved into a multimillion-dollar home in Bonita Springs and was found wearing the homeowner’s clothing. Another homeowner in June, who was on vacation abroad before returning to his Ocala house, was forced to confront a squatter who trashed his property in his absence.

    While residents in a neighborhood in Winter Park sounded off in September that squatters had turned the area into a “nightmare” because the police department was “handcuffed” from arresting the suspects as it was considered a civil matter.

    DeSantis pointed out that in Florida, there are many seasonal residents who reside in the state for half the year and leave their houses unattended when they return to their home states in the north.

    The governor said those people shouldn’t have to worry that “some rogue person moves in and tries to assert rights against the lawful property owner.”

    DeSantis said that he believes Florida is the first state to decisively handle this problem.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 17:40

  • NYC Delinquent Property Taxes Approach $1 Billion After Expiration of Tax-Lien Punishment
    NYC Delinquent Property Taxes Approach $1 Billion After Expiration of Tax-Lien Punishment

    While New York City embarks on a program to hand out some $53 million in prepaid debit cards to illegals, the city has estimated that overdue property taxes are set to reach their highest level ever, jumping 30% to over $880 million at the end of the fiscal year in June, vs. three years ago. City officials attribute this to the expiration of a tax-lien sales program that would punished delinquencies by allowing the city to sell liens on single-family homes and condos after three years of nonpayment, according to a Tuesday offering document for a city general obligation bond sale cited by Bloomberg.

    Under the program created by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1996, and which expired in March 2022, liens slapped on delinquent properties would be discounted and packaged into securities sold to a third-party trust, which borrows money from investors to pay the city upfront, and then assumes responsibility for collecting the outstanding property tax through debt servicing companies (plus fees and interest). After the investors are paid back, the city was entitled to collect additional revenue from fees and interest payments.

    45% of New York’s tax revenue and 30% of overall funds for the current $114 billion budget come from property taxes – which is expected to top $32.7 billion in the current fiscal year.

    “It’s not just the absolute dollar amount that I think should worry us all,” city Finance Commissioner Preston Niblack said at a March 4 City Council finance committee hearing, adding that people have realized “there are no consequences for not paying your property taxes.”

    “That just can’t be allowed to continue,” he said.

    To be sure, the rise in unpaid property taxes comes as New York’s office market continues to struggle. The overall vacancy rate for Manhattan office space stood at 22.5% in November, the highest on record, according to the city’s January financial plan.

    Rent-regulated apartments are also facing stress after a 2019 law sharply reduced landlords’ ability to raise rents. -Bloomberg

    The tax-lien program faced pushback from community activists and even state Attorney General Letitia James, who said in December 2020 that “additional fees can quickly turn a relatively small tax lien into an overwhelming financial burden, eventually pushing homeowners into foreclosure,” referring to a mandatory 5% surcharge, legal fees and a 9% or 18% interest rate that compounds daily.

    Between 2018 and 2022, the city collected $260 million from the tax-lien program, according to the city’s bond offering document.

    A better solution?

    Bloomberg further reports that the city’s Department of Finance is working on legislation that would reauthorize tax-lien sales, ensuring that homeowners don’t face foreclosure or eviction.

    “We look forward to working with the [City] Council on this important issue and look forward to a new, more equitable form of property tax enforcement,” said Department of Finance spokesman, Ryan Lavis.

    The City Council, meanwhile, said in a statement that it’s working with the “Administration, advocates, impacted communities, and all stakeholders to advance policies that address outstanding charges while supporting the economic health of homeowners, our communities, and the City.”

    The biggest offenders include a 16-unit Cobble Hill, Brooklyn rental building which owes $52.2 million of the $880 million estimated delinquency. There’s also a 49-unit Bronx apartment building which owes $24.7 million.

    “We have to do something,” said City Council Member Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “People should pay their taxes.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 17:20

  • Piketty's Inequality Con
    Piketty’s Inequality Con

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    If you ask a liberal politician who their favorite economist is, there are three likely responses.

    One response is a panicked change of topic.

    From the slightly more sophisticated politicians who skim the New York Times, you might hear Paul Krugman.

    From the politicians who style themselves intellectuals of the left, you’d hear Thomas Piketty.

    Thomas Piketty is a French economist who is a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, one of France’s most prestigious schools. In 2013, he released a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It was a bestseller. In the book, Piketty argues that the rate of return on capital is greater than long-run economic growth. He projects that this relationship will continue and a small minority of capital owners will become richer, not just in absolute terms due to economic growth, but also in relative terms, as wages comprise a smaller and smaller share of the economy over time.

    Piketty thinks this is bad for typical left-wing reasons and suggests that massive wealth taxes are an appropriate solution to what he sees as the otherwise inevitable concentration of wealth. The New Yorker has argued that Piketty’s work inspired Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for a wealth tax.

    While Piketty’s claims about the desirability of egalitarianism and wealth taxes are to some extent subjective, his book and his reputation are premised on the claim that he carefully assembled data that showed an increasing return to capital over time.

    He claims to have based his work on three centuries of data.

    Unfortunately, for fans of Piketty and left-wing economists who prefer a more fact-based economics approach, it looks like Piketty’s data work is quite sloppy.

    In 2015, Magness and Murphy pointed to a wide range of flaws or mistakes in the book writing that they found “evidence of pervasive errors of historical fact, opaque methodological choices, and the cherry-picking of sources to construct favorable patterns from ambiguous data. Additional evidence suggests that Piketty used a highly distortive data assumption from the Soviet Union to accentuate one of his main historical claims about global “capitalism” in the twentieth century.” According to Magness and Murphy, Piketty bases his measure of 150 years of the world economy on a sample size of just six individual years and just extrapolates the rest of the data! Yikes!

    The critique was influential but perhaps as Alex Tabarrok suggests it was possible to dismiss because the criticism was published in a libertarian-leaning journal. However further work showed even more problems with the Piketty data.

    In 2018, a report from the left-wing Urban Institute came out that showed that work by Piketty which showed extreme increases in economic inequality was an outlier in the field with other studies, even some by other left-wing economists, showing much smaller effects. This is consistent with Magness and Murphy’s concern that Piketty was cherry-picking results to conjure up an image of an inegalitarian dystopia. In 2023, another study tried to look at the same topic and pointed out what you accounted for the extremely progressive American income tax system and income transfers (welfare programs), there was “little change in after-tax top income shares.”

    Inequality changes over time. Sometimes it rises. Sometimes it falls (as is happening right now).

    Piketty didn’t discover a secret law of economics and now we have the data to show it.

    That probably won’t stop some left-wing politicians from citing him- there are even people who cite Karl Marx unironically- but it might let us know who we don’t have to take seriously.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 17:00

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Today’s News 28th March 2024

  • Germany's Murder Of Europe
    Germany’s Murder Of Europe

    Authored by Drieu Godefrei via The Gatestone Institute,

    In a preparatory impact report, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times before official release, the European Commission estimates that to achieve the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040 then 100% in 2050 — the main objective of the “European Green Deal” — Europe will need to invest €1.5 trillion a year from 2031 to 2050.

    1.5 trillion euros a year. That is equivalent to 10% of the Europe Union’s entire GDP for 2022 — every year! Apart from a war effort, there is no objective of any kind that has ever required the diversion of 10% of a continent’s GDP by political decree.

    The new German utopia

    This number shows us that, while Germany has had to give up imposing its hatred of nuclear power on its European partners, it is determined to inflict on Europe the rest of the environmental utopia, i.e. total decarbonization, even at the cost of economic collapse and freedoms.

    You may say that the European Commission is not Germany, but anyone who has worked in the Commission will tell you that there are two insurmountable lobbies at this level: Germany, by far is the most powerful country in Europe, followed by the environmental NGOs, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which have permanent offices in the Berlaymont, the headquarters building of the European Commission. The fact that the current president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is German is just the icing on the apfelstrudel.

    All the same, everything in this delirious report by the German Commission is wrong.

    The Commission’s pseudo-savvy calculations

    The report states that the cost of inaction would be much higher than €1.5 trillion a year. In fact, explains the report, the European plan will save up to 1% of GDP per year. It should be noted, however, that this figure runs counter to all the IPCC’s projections on the cost of global warming — which is 0.03 % of GDP per year, not 1%.

    Annex 8 of the impact report just published by the Commission states:

    “The IPCC AR6 Working Group II report (2022) confirms that global aggregate economic impacts generally increase with higher degree of global warming. However, due to the wide range of damage estimates and lack of comparability between methodologies, the report does not provide a robust range of estimates but recognizes that global aggregate economic impacts could be higher than estimated in the previous report.”

    In short, the IPCC’s sixth report states that the cost of global warming could actually be greater than that stated in the fifth report.

    Unfortunately (for lack of time? space? ink?) the Commission does not bother to reiterate what was said in the fifth report, which was voluble and precise on the question of the cost of global warming. Let us make up for this shortcoming: according to the fifth IPCC report AR5, chapter 10:

    “For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers… Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices… and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.”

    Above all, the Paris Agreement, of which the Commission claims to be part, aimed to limit global warming to only 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. Achieving this objective presupposed a drastic global reduction in human greenhouse global gas emissions, not just Europe. However, since 2015, these global emissions have continued to rise, and there is no realistic scenario in which global emissions will decrease. China, which still builds roughly two new coal-power plants a week, and India continue to lay waste to these projections.

    Climate, of course, is a global issue: if Europe reduces its emissions to zero, while the rest of the world continues to increase them, the effect on the climate will be zero. As a result, the German plan will not save a single euro in terms of the damage caused by global warming and extreme events.

    So, the investment needed each year would not be €1.5 trillion invested to save 0.03% of GDP per year. It would be €30 trillion — €1.5 trillion per year for 20 years — invested to change absolutely nothing in the climate of Europe.

    There are no serious analysts left who still maintain that the objective of the Paris Agreement will be achieved; the Paris Agreement is obsolete and to pretend otherwise, as the European Commission is doing, is misleading, irresponsible, and not even scientific.

    In addition, the report goes on to say that reducing European imports of fossil fuels would result in savings of up to €2.8 trillion between 2031 and 2050. At present there is no technical or scientific way of overcoming the intermittent nature of renewable energies such as wind, solar. As a result, Europe’s energy mix will have to continue to rely on fossil fuels in addition to nuclear power, as demonstrated by Germany, the champion of lignite coal and CO2 emissions – and releasing ten times more CO2 than France, per unit of energy produced — in 2024. What is more, this pseudo-savvy calculation presupposes that we know the prices of oil and gas in advance, and that we persist in banning the exploitation of the shale gas that lies beneath Europe’s soil.

    The report by the European Commission shows a frightening headlong rush. The situation in Europe is already dramatic. Since 2008, American GDP has doubled, meaning that Americans earn twice as much as they did in 2008. Since 2008, Europe’s GDP has stagnated. This means that Europeans are increasingly taxed and harassed, and forbidden to move, build, undertake, innovate and start a family as they see fit, while their incomes are not increasing.

    The shale revolution means that America now could be the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, if President Joe Biden had not hobbled domestic energy production on his first day in office. The beneficiaries of his move were Russia, Iran — and China, which can now more easily sell its cheap coal, thereby polluting the climate even more.

    “Meanwhile,” according to Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times, “energy prices in Europe have soared.”

    “The Ukraine war and the loss of cheap Russian gas mean that European industry typically pays three or four times as much for energy as their American competitors. Gloomy European bosses say this is already leading to factory closures in Europe”.

    In practical terms, whole swathes of our populations have entered into a pattern that is the ultimate dream of environmentalists: degrowth. In other words, their impoverishment. Giorgos Kallis, a prominent figure in the field of environmental economics, asserted recently the necessity of adopting a “degrowth” paradigm over the conventional GDP-based model. He contends that economies can and must thrive while simultaneously diminishing inequality and enhancing overall well-being.

    Scenarios

    Three possible scenarios emerge.

    • In the first scenario, the EU will persist in its German ecological utopia, which will throw the whole of Europe even more deeply into the recession in which Germany is already languishing. In the context of its current economic stagnation, Europe cannot afford to divert 10% of its GDP per year to unaffordable, unreliable and intermittent energy sources. Popular revolts will multiply, making the current farmers’ revolt look like “Pat the Bunny.” It should be obvious that our democracies will not be able to withstand the impoverishment deliberately organized by “elites” who have gone mad trying to promote an insufficiently substantiated green ideology.

    • In the second scenario, the EU would not undo the “European Green Deal,” but its entry into force would simply be rescheduled (meaning postponed). This scenario condemns Europe to what economists Lawrence Summers and Henri Lepage name “secular stagnation,” a condition when there is negligible or no economic growth in a market-based economy, on the model of Japan.

    • A third scenario would see a new majority come to power through the European elections in June — after all, what is the point of democratic elections if not to allow a change of course? — and deconstruct (repeal) every piece of legislation in a European Green Deal that has become irrelevant or economically harmful to the most destitute among us in the current global context.

    Ironically, if the IPCC’s projections are to be believed, global warming may occur, and we will adapt to it through innovation. All the resources that Europe is burning up in a phantasmatic “energy transition”, which has failed and will fail — will just burn through money that we will then not have for innovation. What will Europe do when these misguided ideologies have permanently broken the back of its economy?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/28/2024 – 02:00

  • Rule By Criminals: When Dissidents Become Enemies Of The State
    Rule By Criminals: When Dissidents Become Enemies Of The State

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth.”

    – Martin Luther King Jr.

    When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.

    In the current governmental climate, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can easily render you an “enemy of the state.”

    The government’s list of so-called “enemies of the state” is growing by the day.

    Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is merely one of the most visible victims of the police state’s war on dissidents and whistleblowers.

    Five years ago, on April 11, 2019, police arrested Assange for daring to access and disclose military documents that portray the U.S. government and its endless wars abroad as reckless, irresponsible, immoral and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

    Included among the leaked materials was gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while American air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.

    There is nothing defensible about crimes such as these perpetrated by the government.

    When any government becomes almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting—whether that evil takes the form of war, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity—that government has lost its claim to legitimacy.

    These are hard words, but hard times require straight-talking.

    It is easy to remain silent in the face of evil.

    What is harder—what we lack today and so desperately need—are those with moral courage who will risk their freedoms and lives in order to speak out against evil in its many forms.

    Throughout history, individuals or groups of individuals have risen up to challenge the injustices of their age. Nazi Germany had its Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The gulags of the Soviet Union were challenged by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. America had its color-coded system of racial segregation and warmongering called out for what it was, blatant discrimination and profiteering, by Martin Luther King Jr.

    And then there was Jesus Christ, an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day—namely, the Roman Empire—but provided a blueprint for civil disobedience that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him.

    Indeed, it is fitting that we remember that Jesus Christ—the religious figure worshipped by Christians for his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection—paid the ultimate price for speaking out against the police state of his day.

    A radical nonconformist who challenged authority at every turn, Jesus was a far cry from the watered-down, corporatized, simplified, gentrified, sissified vision of a meek creature holding a lamb that most modern churches peddle. In fact, he spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire.

    Much like the American Empire today, the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day had all of the characteristics of a police state: secrecy, surveillance, a widespread police presence, a citizenry treated like suspects with little recourse against the police state, perpetual wars, a military empire, martial law, and political retribution against those who dared to challenge the power of the state.

    For all the accolades poured out upon Jesus, little is said about the harsh realities of the police state in which he lived and its similarities to modern-day America, and yet they are striking.

    Secrecy, surveillance and rule by the elite. As the chasm between the wealthy and poor grew wider in the Roman Empire, the ruling class and the wealthy class became synonymous, while the lower classes, increasingly deprived of their political freedoms, grew disinterested in the government and easily distracted by “bread and circuses.” Much like America today, with its lack of government transparency, overt domestic surveillance, and rule by the rich, the inner workings of the Roman Empire were shrouded in secrecy, while its leaders were constantly on the watch for any potential threats to its power. The resulting state-wide surveillance was primarily carried out by the military, which acted as investigators, enforcers, torturers, policemen, executioners and jailers. Today that role is fulfilled by the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the increasingly militarized police forces across the country.

    Widespread police presence. The Roman Empire used its military forces to maintain the “peace,” thereby establishing a police state that reached into all aspects of a citizen’s life. In this way, these military officers, used to address a broad range of routine problems and conflicts, enforced the will of the state. Today SWAT teams, comprised of local police and federal agents, are employed to carry out routine search warrants for minor crimes such as marijuana possession and credit card fraud.

    Citizenry with little recourse against the police state. As the Roman Empire expanded, personal freedom and independence nearly vanished, as did any real sense of local governance and national consciousness. Similarly, in America today, citizens largely feel powerless, voiceless and unrepresented in the face of a power-hungry federal government. As states and localities are brought under direct control by federal agencies and regulations, a sense of learned helplessness grips the nation.

    Perpetual wars and a military empire. Much like America today with its practice of policing the world, war and an over-arching militarist ethos provided the framework for the Roman Empire, which extended from the Italian peninsula to all over Southern, Western, and Eastern Europe, extending into North Africa and Western Asia as well. In addition to significant foreign threats, wars were waged against inchoate, unstructured and socially inferior foes.

    Martial law. Eventually, Rome established a permanent military dictatorship that left the citizens at the mercy of an unreachable and oppressive totalitarian regime. In the absence of resources to establish civic police forces, the Romans relied increasingly on the military to intervene in all matters of conflict or upheaval in provinces, from small-scale scuffles to large-scale revolts. Not unlike police forces today, with their martial law training drills on American soil, militarized weapons and “shoot first, ask questions later” mindset, the Roman soldier had “the exercise of lethal force at his fingertips” with the potential of wreaking havoc on normal citizens’ lives.

    A nation of suspects. Just as the American Empire looks upon its citizens as suspects to be tracked, surveilled and controlled, the Roman Empire looked upon all potential insubordinates, from the common thief to a full-fledged insurrectionist, as threats to its power. The insurrectionist was seen as directly challenging the Emperor.  A “bandit,” or revolutionist, was seen as capable of overturning the empire, was always considered guilty and deserving of the most savage penalties, including capital punishment. Bandits were usually punished publicly and cruelly as a means of deterring others from challenging the power of the state.  Jesus’ execution was one such public punishment.

    Acts of civil disobedience by insurrectionists. Much like the Roman Empire, the American Empire has exhibited zero tolerance for dissidents such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning who exposed the police state’s seedy underbelly. Jesus was also branded a political revolutionary starting with his attack on the money chargers and traders at the Jewish temple, an act of civil disobedience at the site of the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish council.

    Military-style arrests in the dead of night. Jesus’ arrest account testifies to the fact that the Romans perceived Him as a revolutionary. Eerily similar to today’s SWAT team raids, Jesus was arrested in the middle of the night, in secret, by a large, heavily armed fleet of soldiers.  Rather than merely asking for Jesus when they came to arrest him, his pursuers collaborated beforehand with Judas. Acting as a government informant, Judas concocted a kiss as a secret identification marker, hinting that a level of deception and trickery must be used to obtain this seemingly “dangerous revolutionist’s” cooperation. 

    Torture and capital punishment. In Jesus’ day, religious preachers, self-proclaimed prophets and nonviolent protesters were not summarily arrested and executed. Indeed, the high priests and Roman governors normally allowed a protest, particularly a small-scale one, to run its course. However, government authorities were quick to dispose of leaders and movements that appeared to threaten the Roman Empire. The charges leveled against Jesus—that he was a threat to the stability of the nation, opposed paying Roman taxes and claimed to be the rightful King—were purely political, not religious. To the Romans, any one of these charges was enough to merit death by crucifixion, which was usually reserved for slaves, non-Romans, radicals, revolutionaries and the worst criminals.

    Jesus was presented to Pontius Pilate “as a disturber of the political peace,” a leader of a rebellion, a political threat, and most gravely—a claimant to kingship, a “king of the revolutionary type.” After Jesus is formally condemned by Pilate, he is sentenced to death by crucifixion, “the Roman means of executing criminals convicted of high treason.”  The purpose of crucifixion was not so much to kill the criminal, as it was an immensely public statement intended to visually warn all those who would challenge the power of the Roman Empire. Hence, it was reserved solely for the most extreme political crimes: treason, rebellion, sedition, and banditry. After being ruthlessly whipped and mocked, Jesus was nailed to a cross.

    Jesus—the revolutionary, the political dissident, and the nonviolent activist—lived and died in a police state. Any reflection on Jesus’ life and death within a police state must take into account several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly against such things as empires, controlling people, state violence and power politics. Jesus challenged the political and religious belief systems of his day. And worldly powers feared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control of thrones or government but because he undercut their claims of supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a time when doing so could—and often did—cost a person his life.

    Unfortunately, the radical Jesus, the political dissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, has been largely forgotten today, replaced by a congenial, smiling Jesus trotted out for religious holidays but otherwise rendered mute when it comes to matters of war, power and politics.

    Yet for those who truly study the life and teachings of Jesus, the resounding theme is one of outright resistance to war, materialism and empire.

    What a marked contrast to the advice being given to Americans by church leaders to “submit to your leaders and those in authority,” which in the American police state translates to complying, conforming, submitting, obeying orders, deferring to authority and generally doing whatever a government official tells you to do.

    Telling Americans to blindly obey the government or put their faith in politics and vote for a political savior flies in the face of everything for which Jesus lived and died.

    Will we follow the path of least resistance—turning a blind eye to the evils of our age and marching in lockstep with the police state—or will we be transformed nonconformists “dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood”?

    As Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us in a powerful sermon delivered 70 years ago, “This command not to conform comes … [from] Jesus Christ, the world’s most dedicated nonconformist, whose ethical nonconformity still challenges the conscience of mankind.”

    Ultimately, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the contradiction that must be resolved if the radical Jesus—the one who stood up to the Roman Empire and was crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be—is to be an example for our modern age.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 23:40

  • Whiskey Rich: Luxury Liquor Trumps Stocks & Art Over Past Decade
    Whiskey Rich: Luxury Liquor Trumps Stocks & Art Over Past Decade

    Some of the world’s ultra-wealthy spend their money on luxury goods such as fine wines, expensive watches, or one-of-a-kind art pieces as a passion, but others consider them investments – and their returns do often end up paying off.

    Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu dives into the 10-year performance of various luxury good classes as of Q4 2023, according to the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index released as part of the 2024 Wealth Report. The 10-year return of the S&P 500 was included for additional context.

    Rare Whisky Bottles Have Outperformed the S&P 500 Since 2013

    Knight Frank’s index uses the weighted average of each individual asset, tracking sales of reference brands and pieces for each asset.

    Over the past 10 years, rare whisky (or whiskey, depending on where it was made) has been the best performing luxury asset, appreciating by 280% and even besting the S&P 500.

    Numerous sale records have been broken at auctions since COVID-19, with collectors sometimes shelling out millions for a single bottle. In November 2023 for example, a bottle of The Macallan Valerio Adami 60 Year Old (of which only 40 bottles were produced) sold for $2.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction. Before bidding commenced, Sotheby’s had given the bottle a high estimate of $1.5M.

    Fine wine and luxury watches were the next two best performing luxury goods by 10-year returns, at +146% and +138% respectively.

    At the bottom were jewelry (+37%), such as rings and necklaces, and colored diamonds (+8%), including rare pink and blue diamonds.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 23:20

  • The Evolving Battlefield: How AI And Drones Redefine Modern Warfare
    The Evolving Battlefield: How AI And Drones Redefine Modern Warfare

    Authored by Jon Sun and Sean Tseng via The Epoch Times,

    As the Russia-Ukraine conflict unfolds, drones have transcended traditional weaponry, emerging as pivotal agents of change in modern combat. Their deployment has not only diversified tactics on the battlefield but also heightened concerns over the potential for autonomous drones to elude human oversight, posing unprecedented risks to global security. Experts underscore the necessity for stringent human control and regulatory oversight over AI-equipped drones and other autonomous lethal armaments.

    The utilization of drones in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been widely documented, showcasing scenarios where drones, after identifying and locking onto targets such as tanks, execute self-destructive attacks. These aerial devices also execute high-altitude bombings, targeting trenches and other military installations. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces frequently publish such footage, underscoring the drone’s instrumental role in shaping contemporary warfare dynamics.

    In a column titled “How the Drone War in Ukraine Is Transforming Conflict,” published by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations in January, the transformative impact of drones was highlighted. The commentary emphasized how small, potent, and user-friendly drones have demonstrated their strategic superiority on the battlefield, prompting a global surge in drone adoption within military strategies.

    Military commentator Xia Loshan, in a discussion with The Epoch Times, remarked on the strategic advantages of drones, stating, “A cost-effective, portable quadcopter drone, equipped to deliver ammunition, can penetrate deep into enemy lines without risking soldier lives, offering precision and efficiency.”

    In this aerial image, people inspect destroyed Russian military vehicles by the side of a road in Dmytrivka, Ukraine on April 21, 2022. (Alexey Furman/Getty Images)

    Mr. Xia further noted the expanding utility of unmanned technologies across various domains, including aerial, maritime, underwater, and terrestrial operations, underscoring their revolutionary impact on future military engagements.

    “A drone costing just a few thousand dollars can effectively neutralize an advanced tank worth over 5 million dollars,” Mr. Xia said, illustrating a remarkable disparity in warfare economics.

    Drones’ ease of manufacture, low detection and radar interception rates, and precision targeting via satellite data further accentuate their tactical viability. Importantly, drones facilitate offensive operations without compromising soldier safety, marking a significant evolution in how military objectives are pursued.

    The Emergence of AI Weapons: A Dual-Edged Sword for Humanity

    The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and drone technology have ushered in a new era of warfare, raising profound ethical and existential questions. Among the most pressing concerns is the potential for the development of AI weapons capable of autonomously making lethal decisions.

    Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist renowned for his contributions to AI and often dubbed the “godfather of AI,” has voiced his apprehensions about the trajectory of AI development.

    British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as the ‘godfather of AI’ speaks with technology journalist and CEO of The Atlantic Nick Thompson (R) during the Collision Tech Conference at the Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada, on June 28, 2023. (Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images)

    In a recent dialogue with Japanese media, Mr. Hinton elucidated the dual-edged nature of AI’s evolution. He underscored the danger inherent in AI systems that, if tasked with grand-scale objectives like climate objectives, might identify humanity itself as the problem. Furthermore, Mr. Hinton highlighted the inevitability of AI systems growing more sophisticated as they engage in competition, potentially leading to scenarios where they could manipulate human actions to avoid being disabled.

    Alarmingly, Mr. Hinton speculates that within the next decade, we could witness the advent of AI weapons capable of independently targeting and eliminating humans. He draws a parallel with the history of chemical warfare, suggesting that the international community may only seek to restrict AI weapons following catastrophic consequences, mirroring the reactive measures taken after World War I.

    Echoing Mr. Hinton’s concerns, military expert Mr. Xia points out that AI’s potential threat to humanity is not a new concept. He references the AI program “AlphaGo’s” victories over human champions in Go as an early indicator. However, the integration of AI into weapon systems presents an immediate and grave danger.

    Mr. Xia argues that AI’s capability to enhance weapon system efficiency, coupled with advances in sensor, communication, and computing technologies, is pushing us toward the deployment of fully autonomous AI-controlled weapons.

    “What people are really worried about is that one day AI might control and even enslave humans,” Mr. Xia added.

    The United States has adopted a cautious stance on this issue, insisting on the inclusion of human oversight in any decision-making process involving lethal force. It has also launched a global initiative to establish ethical guidelines for AI use.

    Yet, the lack of unanimous agreement among nations, with significant powers like China, Russia, and North Korea abstaining, poses a formidable challenge. The partial adherence to these ethical principles, Mr. Xia warns, could lead to a perilous lack of constraints on AI in military applications, posing a significant risk to global security and humanity’s future.

    A Ukrainian serviceman of an air reconnaissance squad of the 45th Brigade prepares to launch a Leleka reconnaissance UAV on a position in Donetsk region of Ukraine on June 27, 2023. (Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Surge in Small Drone Demand: A New Era in Warfare

    In a notable development earlier this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the creation of a specialized drone department within the Ukrainian military. This initiative aims to domestically produce 1 million drones within the year, highlighting the growing reliance on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in modern conflict zones.

    Ukraine’s commitment to enhancing its drone capabilities is evident, with over 200 companies currently engaged in drone production. The war effort has even seen civilian-crafted drones being deployed to the front lines, with estimates suggesting a demand of 10,000 drones per month to sustain operations.

    The escalation of drone production in Ukraine, which saw a 16.8-fold increase following the Russian invasion, mirrors a broader trend in military technology. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also emphasized the strategic importance of drones, advocating for the accelerated development of dual-use UAVs. This focus on drone technology is indicative of the changing dynamics of warfare, where unmanned systems are playing increasingly critical roles.

    A military operator walks past DJI Matrice 300 reconnaissance drones, bought in the frame of the program ‘The Army of Drones’ set up ready for test flights prior to being sent to the front line in the Kyiv region on Aug. 2, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

    At a recent defense industry exhibition in Singapore, which ranks among Asia’s largest, military representatives from around the globe were briefed on the latest advancements in drone technology. American manufacturers showcased the Switchblade 300, a compact drone designed for kamikaze missions, which has been supplied to Ukraine by the United States.

    The drone, capable of destroying targets up to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away through a suicide attack, exemplifies the tactical versatility and demand for UAVs capable of precision strikes.

    An Israeli innovation that captured attention at the exhibition was a “next-generation” drone by Elbit Systems, capable of autonomous flight up to 24 hours. This development underscores the global appetite for advanced drone capabilities, with calls for new features growing louder.

    The conflict in Ukraine has served as a catalyst for nations worldwide, including the United States, Europe, Japan, and China, to accelerate their drone development programs and integrate UAVs into their strategic planning. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, for instance, have analyzed drone usage in Ukraine to devise countermeasures and anticipate a future where drones could potentially replace manned combat helicopters.

    Professor Seigo Iwamoto from Kyoto Sangyo University describes small drones as “the poor man’s air force,” highlighting their affordability and accessibility. He notes the proliferation of drones among various armed groups, equating their impact on warfare to that of firearms. This democratization of aerial technology could lead to increased casualties in escalated conflicts.

    Amidst growing tensions, Mr. Xia remarks on the strategic positioning between the U.S. and China, with the Pentagon’s “Replicator” program aiming to utilize a multitude of small, intelligent, and cost-effective platforms. This initiative seeks to counterbalance China’s numerical superiority in ships, missiles, and personnel, showcasing the strategic pivot towards leveraging drone technology in global military strategies.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 23:00

  • CBO Director Warns Of Debt Market Meltdown With US Debt Is On "Unprecedented" Trajectory
    CBO Director Warns Of Debt Market Meltdown With US Debt Is On “Unprecedented” Trajectory

    We’ve been pointing it out for so long – in fact, for most of our 15 years in existence – that it has become more of a chore than actual reporting, especially since the “number only go up“, as it hits a new all time high virtually every day. We are talking, of course, about the exponential curve that is the US debt, arguably one of the most boring and at the same time, most exciting topics of all time (because one day the “number go up no more” and you want to be far, far away when that happens).

    Perhaps the catchiest observation we made on the trajectory of US debt was last September when we first noted that it is rising by $1 trillion every three months, or every 100 or so days…

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

    … a soundbite which has since been picked up and stolen by pretty much everyone else in the media, if with the usual 6+ month lag behind us.

    Not only has it gotten boring to be ahead of the curve by almost half a year, but pretty much every possible warning that could be said about the exponential increase in the US debt has been – well – said.

    And yet, every now and then we are surprised by the latest developments surrounding the unsustainable, exponential trajectory of US debt. Like, for example, the establishment admitting that it is on an unsustainable, exponential trajectory.

    That’s precisely what happened overnight when in an interview with the oh so very serious Financial Times (which has done everything in its power to keep its readers out of the best performing asset class of all time, bitcoin), the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Phillip Swagel, issued a stark warning that the United States could suffer a similar market crisis as seen in the United Kingdom 18 months ago, during former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s brief stint leading Britain – which briefly sent yields soaring, sparked a run on the pound, led to an immediate restart of QE by the Bank of England and a bailout of various pension funds, not to mention the almost instant resignation of Truss – citing the nation’s “unprecedented” fiscal trajectory.

    The striking words from the head of the CBO, best known perhaps for publishing doomer debt/GDP projection charts such as this one…

    … warned of the dangers of the U.S. facing “what the U.K. faced with former prime minister Truss — where policymakers tried to take an action, and then there’s a market reaction to that action”, comes as US government debt continues to break records, fueling concerns about the burden that places on the economy and taking a toll on America’s credit rating.

    As a reminder, in September 2022, Truss roiled markets as she pressed for significant tax cuts, including changes lessening the tax burden on wealthier individuals without offsets, as well as other economic measures. The budget proposal spurred a major selloff of British debt, forcing U.K. interest rates to decades-long highs and causing the value of the pound to tank. While Truss defended her agenda as a means to spur economic growth, she stepped down as prime minister after less than two months on the job following the market revolt to her administration.

    Meanwhile, it was up to the Bank of England to bail everyone out: the central bank intervened in the market, pledging to buy gilts on “whatever scale is necessary” with Dave Ramsden, a senior official at the central bank, saying at the time that “were dysfunction in this market to continue or worsen, there would be a material risk to UK financial stability.

    Needless to say, by bringing up the catastrophic rule of Truss, who for at least a few days tried to impose a regime of fiscal and monetary austerity which immediately blew up the UK bond market and led to an instant market crisis, Swagel is admitting that there is nothing that can be done to reverse the growth of US debt and to make what is already an exponential chart less exponential. Quite the opposite, in fact.

    And while Swagel said the U.S. is “not there yet,” he raised concerns of how bond markets could fare as interest rates have climbed. Specifically, he warned that as higher interest rates raise the cost of paying its creditors, on track to reach $1 trillion per year in 2026, bond markets could “snap back.”

    Well, we have some bad news, because if one calculates total US interest on an actual, annualized basis… we don’t have to wait until 2026, we are there already and then some.

    Indeed, it seems like it was just yesterday when everyone was talking about US debt interest surpassing $1 trillion (and more than all US defense spending). Well, hold on to your hats, because as of this month, total US interest is now $1.1 trillion, and rising by $100 billion every 4 months (we should probably trademark this before everyone else steals it too).

    According to the CBO, US government debt is set to keep rising. “Such large and growing debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of US debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook,” it said in a report last week. “It could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.”

    Only that will never happen, because a politician who is “constrained” in their policy choices – one who doesn’t feed the entitlements beast in hopes of winning votes (while generously spreading pork for friends and family) – is a politician who is fired.

    Perhaps afraid he would sound too much like ZeroHedge, the CBO director left a glimmer of hope, saying that the nation has “the potential for some changes that seem modest — or maybe start off modest and then get more serious — to have outsized effects on interest rates, and therefore on the fiscal trajectory.” But we doubt even he believes it.

    In the CBO’s long-term budget outlook report released last week, the budget agency projected the national deficit would rise “significantly in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) over the next 30 years, reaching 8.5 percent of GDP in 2054.” Which of course, is laughable: the US deficit is already at 6.5% of GDP – a level that traditionally implied there is a major economic crisis – and yet here we are, with unemployment *reportedly* at just 3.8%. Said otherwise, the US deficit will – with 100% certainty – hit 8.5% of GDP during the next recession which will likely be triggered as soon as Trump wins the November election.

    The budget scorekeeper attributed the projected growth to rising interest costs, as well as “large and sustained primary deficits, which exclude net outlays for interest.” In short, everything is already going to hell to keep “Bidenomics” afloat, but when you also throw in the interest on the debt, well.. that’s game over man.

    Socialists, and other liberals who are only good at spending other people’s money and selling debt until the reserve currency finally breaks, quickly sprung to defense of the debt black hole that the US economy has become.

    Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the communist-leaning Center for American Progress think tank, pointed to improved deficit projections in recent years, as well as forecasts from the CBO he said “don’t project anything that looks like a panic.”

    “If someone were thinking about, ‘Should I panic or should I not panic?’ I would just say, ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right?’” Kogan said, adding “there’s been lower, long-term projected deficits in the Biden administration.”

    Instead of responding, we will again just show the latest CBO debt forecast chart and leave it up to readers to decide if they should panic or not.

    What Kogan said next, however, was chilling:  “You either should have been worried a long time ago, or you should be less worried now,” he said. “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.”

    Actually no, it’s not better. It much, much worse, and the fact that supposedly “serious people” are idiots and make such statements is stunning because, well, these are the people in charge!

    But he is certainly right that “you should have been worried a long time ago” – we were very worried, and everyone laughed at us, so we decided – you know what, it’s not worth the effort, may as well sit back and watch it all sink.

    And now bitcoin is at a record $72,000 on its way to $1 million and gold is at a record $2,200 also on its way to… pick some nice round number…. in fact the number doesn’t matter if it is denominated in US dollars because very soon, the greenback will go the way of the reichsmark.

    And just to make sure that nothing will ever change, even after the US enters the infamous Minsky Moment, shortly after the close we got this headline::

    • *UNITED STATES AA+ RATING AFFIRMED BY S&P; OUTLOOK STABLE

    Because when nobody dares to tell the truth, why should anything change?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 22:40

  • Cattle-Tracking Provision That May Limit Beef Supply Passed In Omnibus Bill
    Cattle-Tracking Provision That May Limit Beef Supply Passed In Omnibus Bill

    Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A controversial measure to include $15 million for the electronic tracking of livestock has made it through Congress via the recently passed omnibus bill, raising fears among critics that the new system could be weaponized by the government to limit beef consumption.

    Cows and sheep grazing in a paddock near Albany, Western Australia, on Nov. 24, 2023. (Susan Mortimer/The Epoch Times)

    American cattle rancher Shad Sullivan told The Epoch Times that he fears that the electronic tags will be the end of the small rancher.

    “They are going to use it as a taxing mechanism to eventually control the livestock,” Mr. Sullivan said. “In the European Union, they used these measures under the guise of climate change lies to limit the cattle supply, and if they do that here, it will destroy our industry.

    If the tag mandate is implemented it will be the key to open the door to the gas chamber for independent ranching.

    Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who owns livestock, also sounded the alarm that the move could lead to the erosion of the industry.

    “The left wants to ban cattle and before you can ban anything you need a registry, you need to know where it’s at and who owns it and that’s why they want to tag cattle,” he said in a March 23 post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “We’ve seen it happen in Europe.”

    In a previous post, Mr. Massie wrote that, if passed, the electronic tracking “will be used by the GREEN agenda to limit beef production, and by the corporate meat oligopoly to DOMINATE small ranchers.”

    The omnibus bill, which was passed on March 22, combines six essential spending bills into one and includes text that allocates $15 million to “related infrastructure” needed for the program.

    The full text of the provision reads: “The agreement directs the Department to continue to provide the tag and related infrastructure needed to comply with the Federal Animal Disease Traceability rule, including no less than $15,000,000 for electronic identification (EID) tags and related infrastructure needed for stakeholders to comply with the proposed rule, ‘Use of Electronic Identification Eartags as Official Identification in Cattle and Bison,’ should that rule be finalized.”

    Since its initial proposal last year, the mandate for electronic ear tags for cattle and bison crossing state lines has stirred controversy, particularly among small ranchers. They fear that the added costs, which large corporate ranchers can absorb, will drive many smaller operations out of business.

    Currently, most livestock are tracked using tags that display 11-digit numbers, which are both visible and trackable. On Jan. 19, 2023, the Federal Register published proposed regulations to mandate the inclusion of radio-frequency identification in ear tags. These enhanced tags must be “both visually and electronically readable” to be recognized as official for the interstate movement of cattle and bison.

    “Livestock,” under the regulation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service; includes all sexually intact cattle and bison 18 months of age and older; all female dairy cattle of any age; all male dairy cattle born after March 11, 2013; cattle and bison of any age used for rodeo or recreational events; and cattle and bison of any age used for shows or exhibitions, according to the proposal.

    Since 2003, following the discovery of the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, in the United States, ranchers have been pushed to adopt electronic identification tags for livestock movement. The cattle industry has been gradually advancing toward enhanced traceability rules and technology ever since.

    However, the federal mandating of electronic ear tags would place unnecessary and punitive costs on American ranchers while also further raising the price of beef, according to Justin Tupper, president of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association.

    It is another example of ridiculous spending,” Mr. Tupper told the Epoch Times. “If they are going to use these funds to hand out free tags to those who would want them then there would be no real harm, but that is not what it looks like they are doing here.

    “Instead they are going to give them to the big tag companies to shove down our throat to mandate it, which is an entirely different thing.”

    A new mandate on livestock would only add another obstacle to an industry already decimated by regulations and drought.

    The beef cattle supply has already dropped to its lowest point in decades, raising the price of beef to another all-time high and renewing concerns over the long-term health of the nation’s farming community. A series of severe droughts, coupled with government policies that continue to favor large, industrial food processors, has reduced the nation’s supply of beef cattle to a level not seen since the early 1950s, according to Mr. Tupper.

    Lawmakers slipped the funding for the electronic ear tag infrastructure into a single paragraph in the omnibus bill, which allowed lawmakers to pass legislation without the scrutiny that would normally occur and is another example of the increasingly intrusive role the federal government has in the lives of the independent ranchers, he said.

    Anything that is mandated we are going to push back very hard against,” Mr. Tupper said. “We always have to be aware of who controls the data.

    “We are well aware of the fact that data can exert a tremendous amount of control over the nation’s livestock.”

    The provision could also be the beginning of the end for the independent American rancher, according to Mr. Sullivan.

    “The beef industry is the last bastion of freedom,” he said. “Ranchers across the nation have to stand up. If not, these tags will be the end of the small rancher.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 22:20

  • Who's Leading The Race To Mine The Deep Sea?
    Who’s Leading The Race To Mine The Deep Sea?

    India has applied to the International Seabed Authority (ISA) for two new licenses to explore parts of the Indian Ocean sea bed for minerals crucial to the green energy transition. If they are granted, India would hold four contracts, making it the country with the second highest number of active contracts for deep sea mining exploration projects in the world.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, based on ISA data, China currently has five contracts, making it the leading country in terms of contracts for permitted deep sea mining exploration.

    Infographic: Who's Leading the Race to Mine the Deep Sea? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    There are currently 31 contracts that have been signed off on by the ISA, 30 of which are active, and each of which last 15 years. Several of these involve governmental entities – for example, the Government of India, the Government of Poland, the Government of the Republic of Korea all appear on the ISA website. However, the majority are private companies that have so far directly engaged in contracts for deep-sea mining with the ISA.

    There are three main categories of deep sea mineral exploration: finding and collecting polymetallic nodules (PMN), polymetallic sulfides (PMS) and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts (CFC) in the deep seabed. India’s two new proposed contracts apply to the latter two methods, first for the exploration of PMS in the Carlsberg Ridge of the Central Indian Ocean and secondly for the exploration of CFC in the deep seabed of the Afanasy-Nikitin Seamount in the Central Indian Ocean.

    According to the ISA, the majority of companies looking into seabed exploration are focused on polymetallic nodules (19; with 17 of these focused on the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone), followed by polymetallic sulfides (7) in the Southwest Indian Ridge, Central Indian Ridge and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and then only 5 companies looking into polymetallic crusts in the Western Pacific Ocean.

    As Gaby Ramirez’s article for Unbias the News outlines, the issue of deep sea mining is a complex and divisive one. Supporters argue that in order to manage a successful green transition, we will need more of these precious metals and fast. Critics argue, on the other hand, that far more information is needed before further action can be taken, namely on how such extractions will impact the environment of what has been called the “final frontier” of the Earth.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 22:00

  • "There's A Lot More Chainsaw": Argentine President Milei To Fire 70,000 Government Workers
    “There’s A Lot More Chainsaw”: Argentine President Milei To Fire 70,000 Government Workers

    Argentina’s libertarian president Javier Milei, perhaps best known for his shotgun approach to government jobs…

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

    plans to fire 70,000 government workers in the coming months, in what Bloomberg called one of the clearest signs yet of how the libertarian’s chainsaw-style approach intends to slash the swollen state.”

    Beyond the job cuts, Milei also boasted at an event on Tuesday that he has frozen public works, cut off some funding to provincial governments and terminated more than 200,000 social welfare plans, which he labeled as corrupt, all as part of his strategy to reach a fiscal balance at any cost this year.

    “There’s a lot of blender,” Milei said in an hour long speech at the IEFA Latam Forum in Buenos Aires, referring to the erosion of wages and pensions by 276% annual inflation. “There’s a lot more chainsaw.”

    Other key points from Milei’s speech Tuesday:

    • Milei said peso futures contracts are aligned with the central bank’s 2% monthly crawling peg scheme, labeling calls to sharply devalue the currency again “ridiculous”
    • Argentina central bank on the path to achieving net neutral reserves after starting with debt liabilities that surpassed cash on hand by $11.5 billion in December
    • Milei says he’ll double down on his attempts to reform the Argentine economy after 2025 congressional elections, with more than 3,000 reforms in the pipeline
    • He described the Senate rejecting his emergency decree as “marvelous” because “it left all the dirty fingers” of exposed of politicians he calls “delinquents”
    • Milei expects V-shaped economic recovery

    Full speech is below:

    It’s not just the US that has a government worker problem with its 23.2 million state parasites…

    … Argentina’s state (and deep state) is also rather extensive. And while Milei’s termination plans affest just a small fraction of Argentina’s 3.5 million public sector workers, the job cuts are bound to face tremendous pushback from the country’s powerful labor unions and could jeopardize his high approval ratings. One union representing some government workers went on strike Tuesday, while a government report detailed that private sector workers suffered the worst one-month wage loss in at least three decades once he took office in December.

    The leader of the state workers union ATE quickly shot back on X, announcing a national strike without providing further details.
    Milei cited polls showing Argentines are more optimistic about the economy’s future, while a recent indicator of the public confidence in the government rose despite his austerity measures.

    “People have hope, they’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Milei concluded.

    Well… maybe, but maybe not, because it doesn’t take much by those used to state handouts to organize and collapse the system. And sure enough, a quick look at the country’s real GDP (as measured by the EMAE monthly activity indicator), shows a brutal 4.3% year over year contraction in January, as well as a sequential decline in real GDP of 1.2%, with Goldman noting that “activity softened significantly at the end of 2023 and the weakness extended to the beginning of the year.”

    While we appreciate the novelty and excitement sparked by Milei, we wonder: just how much real pain can the people sustain before they demand that he, too, be replaced with someone who promises to ease their pain?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 21:55

  • NSF Paid Universities To Develop AI Censorship Tools For Social Media
    NSF Paid Universities To Develop AI Censorship Tools For Social Media

    By Daniel Nuccio of The College Fix

    “Used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others’: report

    The National Science Foundation is paying universities using taxpayer money to create AI tools that can be used to censor Americans on various social media platforms, according to members of the House.

    University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and MIT are among the universities cited in the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government interim report.

    It details the foundation’s “funding of AI-powered censorship and propaganda tools, and its repeated efforts to hide its actions and avoid political and media scrutiny.”

    “NSF has been issuing multi-million-dollar grants to university and non-profit research teams” for the purpose of developing AI-powered technologies “that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others,” states the report, released last month.

    Funding for the projects began in 2021 and was issued through the NSF’s Convergence Accelerator grant program, which was initially launched in 2019 to develop interdisciplinary solutions to major challenges of national and societal importance such as those pertaining to AI and quantum technology, it states.

    In 2021, however, the NSF introduced “Track F: Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems.”

    The NSF’s 2021 Convergence Accelerator program solicitation stated the goal of Track F projects was to “develop prototype(s) of novel research platforms forming integrated collection(s) of tools, techniques, and educational materials and programs to support increased citizen trust in public information of all sorts (health, climate, news, etc.), through more effectively preventing, mitigating, and adapting to critical threats in our communications systems.”

    Specifically, the grant solicitation singled out the threats posed by hackers and misinformation.

    That September, the select subcommittee report notes, the NSF awarded “twelve Track F teams $750,000 each (a total of $9 million) to develop and refine their project ideas and build partnerships.” The following year, the NSF selected six of the 12 teams to receive an additional $5 million each for their respective projects, according to the report.

    Projects from the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, MIT, and Meedan, a nonprofit that specializes in developing software to counter misinformation, are highlighted by the select subcommittee.

    Collectively, these four projects received $13 million from the NSF, it states.

    “The University of Michigan intended to use the federal funding to develop its tool ‘WiseDex,’ which could use AI technology to assess the veracity of content on social media and assist large social media platforms with what content should be removed or otherwise censored,” it states.

    The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Course Correct, which was featured in an article from The College Fix last year, was “intended to aid reporters, public health organizations, election administration officials, and others to address so-called misinformation on topics such as U.S. elections and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.”

    MIT’s Search Lit, as described in the select subcommittee’s report, was developed as an intervention to help educate groups of Americans the researchers believed were most vulnerable to misinformation such as conservatives, minorities, rural Americans, older adults, and military families.

    Meedan, according to its website, used its funding to develop “easy-to-use, mobile-friendly tools [that] will allow AAPI [Asian-American and Pacific Islander] community members to forward potentially harmful content to tiplines and discover relevant context explainers, fact-checks, media literacy materials, and other misinformation interventions.”

    According to the select committee’s report, “Once empowered with taxpayer dollars, the pseudo-science researchers wield the resources and prestige bestowed upon them by the federal government against any entities that resist their censorship projects.”

    “In some instances,” the report states, “if a social media company fails to act fast enough to change a policy or remove what the researchers perceive to be misinformation on its platform, disinformation researchers will issue blogposts or formal papers to ‘generate a communications moment’ (i.e., negative press coverage) for the platform, seeking to coerce it into compliance with their demands.”

    Efforts were made via email to contact senior members of the three university research teams, as well as a representative from Meedan, regarding the portrayal of their work in the select subcommittee’s report.

    Paul Resnick, who serves as the WiseDex project director at the University of Michigan, referred The College Fix to the WiseDex website.

    “Social media companies have policies against harmful misinformation. Unfortunately, enforcement is uneven, especially for non-English content,” states the site. “WiseDex harnesses the wisdom of crowds and AI techniques to help flag more posts [than humans can]. The result is more comprehensive, equitable, and consistent enforcement, significantly reducing the spread of misinformation.”

    A video on the site presents the tool as a means to help social media sites flag posts that violate platform policies and subsequently attach warnings to or remove the posts. Posts portraying approved COVID-19 vaccines as potentially dangerous are used as an example.

    Michael Wagner from the University of Wisconsin-Madison also responded to The Fix, writing, “It is interesting to be included in a report that claims to be about censorship when our project censors exactly no one.”

    According to the select subcommittee report, some of the researchers associated with Track F and similar projects, however, privately acknowledged efforts to combat misinformation were inherently political and a form of censorship.

    Yet, following negative coverage of Track F projects, depicting them as politically motivated and their products as government-funded censorship tools, the report notes, the NSF began discussing media and outreach strategy with grant recipients.

    Notes from a pair of Track F media strategy planning sessions included in Appendix B of the select subcommittee’s report recommended researchers, when interacting with the media, focus on the “pro-democracy” and “non-ideological” nature of their work, “Give examples of both sides,” and “use sports metaphors.”

    The select subcommittee report also highlights that there were discussions of having a media blacklist, although at least one researcher from the University of Michigan objected to this, citing the potential optics.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 21:40

  • "Zero Critical Reasoning": Employers Say GenZ "Toxic" For Companies
    “Zero Critical Reasoning”: Employers Say GenZ “Toxic” For Companies

    A new report has found that 68% of small business owners say Gen Z employees are the “least reliable,” while 71% say they’re most likely to have a mental health issue in the workplace.

    Illustration via Insider

    One of the employers surveyed spoke of Gen Z’s “absolute delusion, complete lack of common sense, and zero critical reasoning or basic analytical skills,” according to the Freedom Economy Index report conducted by PublicSquare and RedBalloon this month.

    Less than 4% of those surveyed said Gen Z was the generation that most aligns with their workplace culture, while 62% said Gen Z’s were most likely to create division and toxicity in the workplace.

    Another employer surveyed said the generation is “expecting promotions for simply showing up every day.”

    Exhibit A:

    @brielleybelly123

    im also getting sick leave me alone im emotional ok i feel 12 and im scared of not having time to live

    ♬ original sound – BRIELLE

    https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js

    What’s more, 57% of those surveyed said that Gen Z runs the most risk of creating a workplace lawsuit.

    Newsweek has come out in defense of Gen Z, citing two experts who say the kids are just misunderstood.

    Dan Space, an HR consultant who runs DanFromHR.com, said since the study reflects the feelings of small business owners, it could be skewed. These types of businesses often do not pay well or offer a high-quality company culture, he said, and Gen Z tends to look for those in any type of role or career they take on, he said.

    “Gen Z is one of the most informed, confident and no BS generation because they saw what happened to the millennials before them,” Space told Newsweek.

    “Being told to go to college to get a great job, graduating with up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, with zero tools to get a job, land somewhere and not be given the information on salaries, career development, moving towards compensation models that use mixed variations….So I find they are just far more comfortable with not putting up with this BS and being informed,” Space continued.

    Space conceded that Gen Zers are most likely to have mental health issues, ‘but he does believe they are more likely to be confident in discussing it and drawing boundaries,’ Newsweek reports.

    Ok Dan.

    @thebjamin Generational Gap – Born 1970 1980 1990 2000 #genz ♬ original sound – Sterling Malory Archer

    https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js

    Can’t Even-ing intensifies…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 21:20

  • The Crude Necessity: Excerpt From "How To Listen When The Markets Speak"
    The Crude Necessity: Excerpt From “How To Listen When The Markets Speak”

    From “How to Listen When Markets Speak“, the latest book by veteran Lehman Brothers trader and creator of the Bear Traps report Larry McDonald, available now for sale at Amazon and all other book sellers.

    “The Crude Necessity”

    Excerpted from Chapter 5, “Fossil Fuels Paving the Way to the Green Meadow”

    If Trudeau was here, I’d tell him this coffee is made of oil,” Rafi Tahma­zian commented wryly as he poured a cup for each of us. I was sitting with Tahma­zian, one of the world’s finest energy asset managers, in his office in Calgary in November 2021. “Machines to grow it and harvest it, vehicles to transport it, more machines to pack it, electricity to roast and grind the beans, heat to boil the water,” he continued. “It doesn’t happen with pixie dust, old pal. It happens with crude oil.”

    I could hear emails chiming into his inbox as he spoke. He runs the investment division at Canoe Financial, a $2 billion management firm focused on oil, mining, and natural gas. He wasn’t political in his views, but he’d firmly maintained a single belief for many years: “The entire planet is run by crude oil. Everything we touch. Everything we consume. It’s nothing to do with politics. It’s pragmatism. And this war on the supply side of oil is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

    The COVID-19 pandemic changed the oil sector, perhaps for a de­cade. In 2020, demand dried up like a drop of water on a hot copper pan. The oil markets crashed, sending West Texas Intermediate oil to $0 a barrel. Companies right across the industry switched off their wells, turned off their equipment, and sent their em­ployees home to collect unemployment checks. Even the highways emptied, and Manhattan on a Saturday night didn’t have a car horn within earshot. The Gen Zers and millennials were con­vinced that the energy future was not in the dirty oil patch anymore, that it would be different somehow, free of carbon emissions in a new electri­fied world, and the gas-guzzling cars of the last hundred years would be towed, finally, to the junkyard of history. But this was a terrible misjudg­ment.

    When the world reopened in 2021 after the COVID lockdowns, OPEC imposed a firm limit on supply, while U.S. production was slow to re­cover. Rhetoric about “killing shale” dominated Democratic Party de­bates in 2020, too, which scared a lot of participants away from the space, especially after Biden won the election. Why invest in a kill zone? Unsurprisingly, oil prices climbed higher and higher. Demand quickly outstripped supply, and inflation started to roll through markets as fleets of airlines turned on their massive kerosene- powered turbofans, diesel cruise ships for three thousand people cast off their lines, and highways steadily reloaded with gasoline-powered cars, buses, and trucks. And this was occurring not just in America but all over the world.

    Tahma­zian had been around energy investments all his life, and he was born to trade the energy booms and busts. As we spoke, he leaned in intently: “Larry, think of India. Energy use has doubled there since 2000, and it’s going to grow at three times the global average because they’re urbanizing so fast. That’s going to mean a colossal surge in air-conditioning demand from 2021 to 2031. So we are in a climate crisis, and 1.4 billion people make up the fastest-growing swath of energy demand on planet Earth. That’s three to four times faster than the U.S., UK, Germany, and the rest of the developed world. Of the roughly 320 million households in India, fewer than 22 million have air-conditioning units right now.”

    As I traveled back home to New York, I couldn’t stop thinking about the supply of energy in the foreseeable future or, rather, the lack of it. With the global population on an upward trajectory, planet Earth will have an unstoppable demand for energy in the coming years. Meanwhile, supply growth is under arrest. Western politicians are driving hard for alternative energies and run the other way if someone suggests a continuation of drilling, fracking, and mining. This has left a gaping chasm between the amount of energy and critical resources needed to continue raising our global standard of liv­ing and the amount on tap—a chasm that will only widen in the coming decades.

    By my estimate, $2.4 trillion was cut from the fossil fuels and metals capex between 2014 and 2020. Over the same period, the global population grew by 800 million. Today, we might need $3 trillion in additional capital expenditure just to play catch-up. In other words, there have not been nearly enough good old-fashioned investments in coal, oil, gas, uranium, and metals exploration and production, especially in North America.

    But aren’t we well on our way towards knocking out oil with wind farms, solar panels, and hydroelectric power? I largely support the push to adopt green energy, but we’re about twenty years too early. Knocking out oil with green energy right now is a mathematical impos­sibility, especially since some of the most populated countries in the world (such as India, China, and Russia) have no intention of being bound by Western emission standards. If governments really wanted to replace oil as a source of energy on planet Earth, it would currently take a wind farm a little bigger than France, 134 million acres of land. A solar field to replace oil would need to be the size of Spain, at 120 million acres, not to mention that it would need to experience at least 70 percent sunshine for eight hours a day, every day, every year. Now think about the amount of plastic that would be used, the fiberglass, the steel shafts and turbines, the endless mainte­nance, the millions of batteries and cabling. It simply cannot be done without bankrupting the planet. Maybe one day, over the course of many decades, but not today. Right now the top priority should be keeping the lights on, and keep­ing the gargantuan global economy rumbling forward in a responsi­ble, low-inflationary fashion.

    But an increase in oil supply doesn’t just happen with a snap of the fingers. First, there are multiyear regulatory loopholes to jump through. Then govern­ments need to incentivize the companies to do it, instead of slapping windfall taxes on them. Next, the exploration phase has to be carried out, finding the most oil-rich patches of land to drill. That’s an expensive game. Phase four is moving the equipment, a multimillion-dollar problem. Then comes the hiring of qualified people, and then the drilling, infrastructure, transportation, and logistics. It will take about seven to ten years to flood the market once again with oil and gas after the ESG drive eventually fails. And it will.

    As you can see in the above chart, the oil reserves of the majors are in decline. This dynamic is making independent E&P companies attractive acquisition targets. Likewise, the sector has de-levered. There has been far less investing in production, as the large oil companies have been aggressively paying down debt.

    With the global population growing, energy demand surging, and supply growth under arrest, I believe higher energy and metals prices will be sustained for the next decade. From the COVID lows to the end of 2022, as inflation raged higher, the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) was up 325 percent, the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM) was up 318 percent, the Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX) was up 260 percent, and the SPDR S&P Metals and Mining ETF (XME) was up 260 percent. The oil stocks are still in the early innings, and I predict that in the next few years billions of dollars will flow into these companies.

    Juicing Inflation

    Energy prices are the root cause of inflation, when you get right down to it. Think of every drop of gasoline and energy used in something simple like our Calgary cup of coffee. Add high oil prices to that, and suddenly that $4 cup of coffee at Starbucks costs $6.

    But there’s a second layer to the relationship between energy and infla­tion. Not only will higher energy costs drive other costs up along with it, but it will make inflation harder to fight. If inflation normalizes in this cycle at 3 to 4 percent instead of 1 to 2 percent as in previous decades, trillions of dollars are misallocated across the investment asset ecosystem, as most portfolios are still massively overweight growth stocks.

    Usually, during a time of recession, the prices of energy and oil drop dramatically due to lower demand, which acts as a major deflationary force. But going forward, the price of energy will likely stay relatively high even during recessions. Through chronic underinvestment in the oil and gas industries, the United States and Canada handed over valuable market share to the Saudis, the Russians, and OPEC, giving them way more control over the global price of oil. In a multipolar world, these not-so-friendly players can now coordinate supply cuts during recessions to keep the price high.            

    If the U.S. had eight thousand drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs), we could just ramp up production and steal market share back from them. But we don’t. DUCs are at a ten-year low, and this dynamic sets us up for a longer-term battle with higher and stickier inflation. We saw this during the minor energy crisis in 2022, and it is going to be the norm in the years ahead.

    With the endless issues hanging over the global energy markets, you might be asking how an investor can capitalize on this knowledge. And my advice is simple: Get long oil. The energy ETFs XLE and XOP are great places to start, along with Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil. In particular, Exxon is interesting because of its massive new reserves in Guyana, right on the northeastern tip of South America. The company has an operating office in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, with numerous ongo­ing exploration and development operations offshore. At its Stabroek oil field, in operation since May 2015, it has made significant discoveries, and the company expects production capacity to reach 1.2 million barrels per day in 2027, up from 375,000 barrels in 2022. This implies that in four years Guyana will represent approximately 25 percent of Exxon’s worldwide production.

    This chart also highlights several smaller oil and gas producers with an attractive valuation and the potential to be acquired by one of the oil majors.

    One way to value a company in the energy sector is to compare its enterprise value (the sum of its debt and its market capitalization) with the value of the oil and gas reserves it has in the ground. This comparison measures what the value of the company is per “barrel of oil equivalent,” which is the oil and the natural gas converted into barrels of oil. The lower a company’s enter­prise value is compared with the reserves it has in the ground, the cheaper the company’s valuation is. PDC Energy, for example, is very cheap. Chevron thought so, too: It made an offer for the company in May 2023. (The chart shows PDC’s valuation before Chevron’s offer.)

    In 2022, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink penned a letter outlining his vision of a decarbonized future, calling those working to help knock out oil with green energy “phoenixes,” the immortal birds from Greek mythology that rise from the ashes of their pre­decessors, and suggesting that those who resist the net-zero transitions are “dodos,” a kind of flightless bird that went extinct in the seventeenth century.

    The dodos of the future will be those who cling to their ailing growth stocks. The phoenixes will be invested in hard assets and the still-unloved energy stocks. Borrowing costs will be high, the $2 trillion capex hole will take years to plug, and low prices for fossil fuels—oil, gas, and coal—will soon be a distant memory.

    Much more in the full book

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 21:00

  • Virginia Governor Vetos 30 Gun Bills That Would 'Punish' Law-Abiding Citizens
    Virginia Governor Vetos 30 Gun Bills That Would ‘Punish’ Law-Abiding Citizens

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) took action on 67 bills on Tuesday, including vetoing 30 that he said would “punish” law-abiding citizens and impinge on their 2nd Amendment rights.

    “I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of Virginia, and that absolutely includes protecting the right of law-abiding Virginians to keep and bear arms,” Mr. Youngkin said in a statement.

    Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin answers questions from members of the media while campaigning at Piney Branch Elementary School in Bristow, Va., Nov. 7, 2023. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    The Republican governor announced that, in addition to vetoing 30 pieces of gun-related legislation, he had suggested amendments to six and signed 31.

    “I am pleased to sign four public safety bills which are commonsense reforms with significant bipartisan support from the General Assembly, and offer recommendations to several bills which, if adopted, will make it harder for criminals to use guns in the commission of a violent act,” he added.

    Among the vetoes the governor signed were measures that would criminalize possession of a firearm in a building owned or operated by a public institution of higher education.

    One particular bill appeared to target a single individual, the governor noted. House Bill 585 would criminalize home-based firearm dealers who maintain their place of business at their residence within one and a half miles of an elementary or middle school.

    “By all appearances, this legislation targets one individual in Prince William County, to whom the Prince William Board of County Supervisors granted a home-based firearms license,” Mr. Youngkin wrote in his veto memo.

    A five-day waiting period for gun purchases, championed by Democrat state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam of Loudoun County, was also vetoed.

    Another vetoed bill would have banned the import, sale, manufacture, purchase, or transfer of certain firearms and ammunition-feeding devices made on or after July 1.

    Among the vetoed bills were ones that sought to prevent the open carrying of some semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in specific public areas. Another bill proposed the creation of safe storage requirements for firearms in homes where minors or people not legally allowed to possess guns reside. Additionally, there was a bill that sought to create a civil penalty for individuals who leave a handgun visible in an unattended vehicle.

    Among the bills the governor signed into law were two pairs of identical bipartisan gun-related public safety measures, which garnered broad bipartisan support.

    These measures aim to prevent parents from willfully allowing children who pose credible threats of violence to access firearms. Additionally, they prohibit the manufacture, transfer, or possession of an auto sear, colloquially known as a “Glock switch,” that converts firearms into automatic weapons.

    One bill the governor signed introduces the possibility of charging parents with a felony under the state’s child abuse and neglect law if they permit a child access to a firearm after being notified of the child’s potential for violence.

    Furthermore, Mr. Youngkin announced proposals for amendments to six gun bills, setting the stage for legislative debate when the General Assembly convenes for a one-day session on April 17 in Richmond.

    The governor’s proposed amendments to six bills include provisions to prevent firearm transfers to mental health patients, align with federal regulations on serial numbers, set standards for plastic firearms, and mandate parental notification on safe firearm storage.

    The vetoes by Mr. Youngkin drew criticism from Democrats, who lack the numbers to overturn them, needing a two-thirds majority in both chambers.

    Opponents of the vetoed bills questioned their constitutionality, while proponents argued for tighter restrictions on firearms to enhance public safety.

    Mr. Youngkin’s stance on firearms mirrors his campaign rhetoric from 2021, though notably, he did not receive the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.

    During his first two years in office, Mr. Youngkin largely avoided gun-related issues due to the divided control of the Legislature. However, with Democrats now in full control after recent elections, dozens of gun-related bills were sent to his desk, prompting these recent actions.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 20:20

  • 'Squatter-Squad' Using Home Inspectors And Other Legal Techniques To Send Squatters Packing
    ‘Squatter-Squad’ Using Home Inspectors And Other Legal Techniques To Send Squatters Packing

    You may have noticed an increase in stories involving homeowners in blue states who can’t evict squatters due to various laws that make it extremely difficult to do so.

    And more recently, a Queens woman was arrested after trying to evict squatters out of her house

    As Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse Blog wrote in February;

    Thanks to online listings, it is easier than ever to identify properties that are vacant, and many states have laws that make it exceedingly difficult to get squatters out once they have settled in.  In some cases, squatters are able to live rent free in beautiful homes for months or even years.  This is becoming an absolutely massive problems, especially in certain areas of the country.  For example, it is being reported that squatters have taken over approximately 1,200 homes in the Atlanta area…

    In the state of Washington, squatters have taken over an entire apartment complex and have turned it into a den of crime

    California also has ridiculous laws, and right now “a very sophisticated criminal ring of squatters” is making a ton of money from the Beverly Hills mansion that they have occupied…

    Given the recent surge in squatting, a Los Angeles-based group known as the Squatter Squad has been making headlines for their novel approaches to evicting squatters; home inspectors and other legal techniques.

    In a viral video from earlier this month, a team of Los Angeles home inspectors can be seen ejecting a group of around a dozen squatters, before entering the home, changing the locks and boarding up the windows, Fox News reports.

    “The police are gonna come,” one of the squatters can be heard telling the inspectors in the front yard of a San Fernando Valley home.

    “That’s fine,” the inspector replies. “We’re coming in.”

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    Squatter Squad, which took the video, claims to have been legally removing squatters from property since 2018.

    They use various legal techniques, applicable on a case by case basis, to remove people who invade homes and refuse to leave.

    This was a very tricky and complex job,” said Lando Thomas, a Squatter Squad member.

    The intruders were under the impression that any entry into the house required a three-day notice obtained through court. However, they were wrong. A building inspection only requires a 24-hour notice and does not have to go through the court, he said. -Fox News

    According to Thomas, the intruders thought that any entry into the home required a three-day notice obtained through the court – however they, being idiots, were wrong, as a building inspection only requires 24-hour notice and does not have to go through the court.

    “We’re gonna press charges,” one squatter told them.

    “That’s fine,” the inspector replied. “Take me to court.”

    When the police showed up, they stood in the street and let the inspectors do their work while the squatters packed up their belongings and left.

    Police arrived after the squatters called 911 but did not stop the home inspectors from carrying out their work. (Squatter Squad/LOCAL NEWS X /TMX)

    Success! Until of course George Soros begins funding their lawsuits and California lawmakers ‘work their magic’ for their constituents.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 20:00

  • Compound Found In Broccoli Could Help Dissolve Blood Clots And Prevent Stroke
    Compound Found In Broccoli Could Help Dissolve Blood Clots And Prevent Stroke

    Authored by Allison DeMajistre via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Researchers from the Heart Research Institute (HRI) in Australia have found that a common vegetable eaten by millions every day may be able to prevent and treat a leading cause of death worldwide.

    (Teo Tarras/Shutterstock)

    The study, published in the journal ACS Central Science, shows results from a three-year investigation into how a natural chemical found in broccoli can help dissolve blood clots and improve the action of a common clot-busting drug used to treat an acute ischemic stroke.

    Current Stroke Treatment

    Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States suffers a stroke. In 2021, strokes accounted for one in every six deaths from cardiovascular disease.

    There are two types of strokes: ischemic and hemorrhagic. An ischemic stroke occurs when a blood vessel in the brain is obstructed by a clot, while a hemorrhagic stroke results when a weakened vessel in the brain ruptures and causes bleeding inside the brain. According to the American Heart Association, ischemic stroke accounts for 87 percent of all strokes.

    The only drug currently available to treat an acute ischemic stroke is tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), a thrombolytic agent that breaks up blood clots and restores adequate blood flow to the brain. Unfortunately, tPA comes with severe limitations and potential dangers, including bleeding into the brain with up to a 45 percent fatality rate when this occurs.

    Xuyu Liu, the study’s lead researcher, who holds a doctorate in chemical biology, stated on the HRI website in 2022: “Current treatments are a double-edged sword—by clearing blood clots, it also means a patient has an increased risk of bleeding in the brain should they need emergency surgery. We are looking for clues in nature to find this magic anti-clotting drug which can work where it’s needed but also still allow patients to have antithrombotic treatments.”

    HRI researchers discovered that the natural chemical in broccoli, sulforaphane, may improve the performance of tPA and could lead to newer, safer, and more effective medications for acute stroke.

    “We know eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and foods low in saturated fats can help prevent heart disease and stroke, but can some of these same vegetables treat and reverse stroke? I think it can and my team is working to prove it at the molecular level,” Mr. Liu said in the 2022 HRI interview.

    Sulforaphane’s Protective Properties

    In an Australian radio interview, Mr. Liu said his team began investigating broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables three years ago by screening a library of over 100 natural products from healthy diets to find something with properties that would prevent blood clots in the brain.

    Mr. Liu’s background included finding ways to prevent cancer with a healthy diet, but when he transitioned into his current role at the HRI, he decided to study sulforaphane derived from cruciferous vegetables and how it could potentially treat blood clots in the circulatory system.

    According to Mr. Liu, sulforaphane isn’t limited to broccoli. In the radio interview, he said that cruciferous vegetables produce sulforaphane as a protective mechanism against insects or other types of destruction.

    For instance, an intact piece of broccoli doesn’t contain sulforaphane. It isn’t until it’s chopped or chewed that it undergoes a chemical reaction that produces sulforaphane. Sulforaphane’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties are designed to protect the plant, but when ingested by humans, studies have found sulforaphane has numerous anti-cancer and health-protective qualities.

    Results and Next Steps

    “What we found in a preclinical trial is that the tPA success rate increases to 60 per cent [sic] when the medication is given with the broccoli-derived [sulforaphane],” Mr. Liu said in an HRI interview. “Excitingly, this naturally occurring compound does not cause any signs of bleeding, which is a common side effect associated with blood-thinning agents tested in stroke treatment.”

    Preclinical testing showed that administering sulforaphane reduced the formation of blood clots while improving the action of tPA. Initial testing also found that sulforaphane could slow the onset of stroke.

    Not only is the broccoli compound effective in improving the performance of clot-busting medication after a stroke, it could be used as a preventative agent for patients who are at a high risk of stroke,” said Mr. Liu.

    Mr. Liu’s next step is to raise funding for human clinical trials with the hope of developing a new preventative and anti-clotting treatment within five years. “This natural product has been used to prevent cancer before, so I think we have a strong rationale in terms of safety and other pharmacological properties,” he said in the radio interview.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 19:40

  • In Reversal, Israel Sending Delegation To White House After "Bibi Made A Mistake"
    In Reversal, Israel Sending Delegation To White House After “Bibi Made A Mistake”

    Israel’s military has stepped up its airstrikes on the southern Gaza city Rafah in the last two days, on Wednesday bombing at least four homes, raising fears that the planned ground assault is imminent, despite the UN Security Council having just issued an official call for immediate ceasefire.

    Gaza health officials said that one of these airstrikes killed eleven people from a single family, as cited in Reuters. One local eyewitness, Jamil Abu Houri, described that “The bombing has increased, and they have threatened us with an incursion, and they say that have been given the green light for the Rafah incursion. Where is the Security Council?”

    Bombs over Rafah, via Al Jazeera

    While UNSC resolutions calling for ceasefire tend to be more symbolic than having real immediate impact, the formal resolution definitely ratcheted the pressure on Israel, and created tension with the White House given that it was the US abstention which allowed it to pass in the first place.

    As for the timing of a ground invasion of Rafah, regional media has cited Israeli military sources who say it will begin soon after the Muslim fasting season Ramadan is finished:

    The pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar daily, citing Egyptian sources who were said to have been in contact with Israel Defense Forces officials, reported that the expected offensive would come after Eid al-Fitr — the three-day holiday that follows Ramadan and ends around April 12 — or in early May at the latest.

    The ground incursion inside the last bastion of Hamas in the Gaza Strip would last from four to eight weeks, the sources said, and would be accompanied by an evacuation of the civilian population sheltering in Rafah, which amounts to about 1.5 million people, toward the center of the Strip along specific routes and at specific times, announced to civilians in each area of the city in advance.

    The Monday UNSC ceasefire resolution had resulted in PM Netanyahu canceling a top Israeli delegation’s expected visit to the White House this week. The Biden administration slammed the move as an “overreaction”.

    On Thursday Netanyahu has reversed course, apparently. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to send two top Israeli officials to Washington as early as next week for talks about a possible military operation in Rafah,” officials told Axios.

    “The Prime Minister’s office has agreed to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced, citing the need for “urgent” discussion on Rafah. According to more from Axios:

    A U.S. official told Axios cancelling the trip and the rhetoric around it was “an unnecessary drama on Netanyahu’s part.”

    A senior Israeli official agreed and said: “Bibi made a mistake.” She said: “We are now working on a convenient date that will work for both sides.”

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    Starting early this month President Biden had issued a ‘red line’ for the first time over Rafah, warning Israel against attacking the southern enclave which is still packed with over one million internally displaced refugees. Washington has repeatedly called on Israel to facilitate a mass exodus of civilians before any assault takes place. But Israeli officials say the military must go in to eradicate Hamas.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 19:20

  • Navigating The Slippery Slope: How Hoover's Interventions Paved The Way For The Great Depression
    Navigating The Slippery Slope: How Hoover’s Interventions Paved The Way For The Great Depression

    Authored by Vibhu Vikramaditya via The Mises Institute,

    Herbert Hoover’s presidency is often mythically mischaracterized as a period of strict nonintervention in the economy. However, it was in fact defined by a series of economic maneuvers that not only deviated from laissez-faire ideology, but also significantly contributed to the onset of the Great Depression. He initiated his term in 1929 with a proactive push by establishing the Federal Farm Board and later the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. These testified to his interventionist approach, aimed at countering economic instability with federal support that ranged from agricultural price supports to protective tariffs and substantial public works investments. These policies failed to grasp the underlying economic frailties that, combined with a long recession in overexpanded agriculture, inadvertently magnified the crisis.

    The Long Recession in American Agriculture

    World War I, primarily waged in Europe, signaled the decline of the old elites and the end of nineteenth-century liberal economic practices. It fundamentally altered American agriculture because European resources once dedicated to food production had shifted to military needs. This caused a surge in demand for food exports and other essentials from the neutral United States. The beginning of World War I in 1914 ignited a period of economic prosperity for American farmers. This demand led to an increase in prices for various farm products. For example, in Minnesota, the average price of corn per bushel increased from fifty-nine cents in 1914 to $1.30 in 1919, and wheat prices saw a rise from $1.05 per bushel to $2.34. The prices of hogs and milk experienced similar surges.

    To fulfill this rising demand, the US government urged farmers to augment their production, and it made credit more elastic. The Federal Farm Loan Act was established by Congress in 1916, introducing twelve federal land banks designed to provide enduring loans for the expansion of farms. Many farmers seized this and similar opportunities, investing in additional land and modern equipment because they expected the economic surge to persist. They invested in land, tractors, and other new labor-saving equipment at interest rates ranging from 5 to 7 percent. By 1920, 52.4 percent of the 132,744 Minnesota farms reporting to the Census of Agriculture carried mortgage debt, totaling more than $254 million.

    Thus, after entering World War I in 1917, the US saw significant agricultural expansion, especially in the Midwest’s wheat and corn areas. Minnesota’s land prices doubled between 1910 and 1920 due to high demand, and by 1929, its farmland cultivation had soared to 18.5 million acres. However, following the wartime boom in agriculture, Europe recuperated from the war’s devastation, and postwar relief efforts were required to keep the demand for US agricultural exports—like grains, pork, beef, and dairy—high from 1918 to 1919.

    US farmers continued to increase production expecting stable demand and prices, but they were met with a gradual economic decline that plummeted further during the Great Depression. Minnesota farmers’ income dramatically dropped from $438 million in 1918 to a mere $229 million in 1922. It continued to decline, plagued throughout the ’20s as a hangover from the unsustainable wartime boom, finally plummeting in 1932 to $155 million. Grounded in the progressive ethos of the time, Hoover sought to actively intervene in the agricultural economy to bring about stability and prosperity. His belief in cooperation between the government and business sectors served as a fundamental principle guiding his policy initiatives as the secretary of commerce from 1921 to 1928.

    Hoover recognized the issues of overproduction and subsequently plummeting prices, but he was oblivious to the role that the government had played in overproduction by encouraging overexpansion. He advanced the idea of cooperative marketing associations in the belief that by banding together to sell their products, farmers could stabilize prices and increase their bargaining power, which would mitigate the influence of middlemen and reduce market volatility. This agricultural crisis saw the US becoming heavily protectionist, with heavy tariff impositions on imports (in 1921 and 1922) to prop up domestic agricultural prices. Every possible action was undertaken to avoid the temporary pain of trimming overexpanded industries, which would have allowed capital, labor, and land to find more profitable uses than agriculture.

    This, then, was Hoover’s underlying experience with American agriculture during the Roaring Twenties as secretary of commerce while another sector of the economy, manufacturing and industry, was booming. His experience with agriculture played a determining role in his response to the recession during 1929–30, and it was his actions as the commerce secretary—and misunderstanding the causes of the ills of agriculture—that prepared the ground for the Great Depression. He applied his precedent of dealing with the 1920s crisis in agriculture with an engineered central plan, in the same way as he did during the 1929 crisis throughout the entire economy.

    The war had transformed the US into an economic behemoth. It was the sole major nation remaining steadfastly on the gold standard, which attracted a gold influx as global investment shifted stateside. This influx had the potential to stimulate economic expansion and rejuvenate agriculture, yet the Federal Reserve’s nascent policies were also pivotal in shaping this outcome. In the post–World War I period, the Federal Reserve (newly created in 1913) embarked on a strategy of lowering discount rates to facilitate borrowing and liquidity. In the early 1920s, the New York discount rate was cut from 6.5 to 4 percent, a stark reduction aimed at invigorating economic activity. This policy contributed to a significant uptick in the money supply, with an annual expansion rate of about 7.7 percent from 1921 to 1928. The surge in liquidity and easy credit fueled speculative investments, inflating capital goods, stock, and real estate values to unsustainable highs. When the Fed tightened interest rates in 1928 and 1929 to curb speculation, the boom faded, leaving the still-struggling agricultural sector behind.

    Setting up the Great Depression

    Upon becoming president in March 1929, Hoover launched the Federal Farm Board with $500 million to manage agricultural prices by handling surplus goods—a significant move to aid farmers by aiming for price stability and more reliable incomes. Yet this effort essentially propped up artificially high prices in a sector needing adjustment through brief deflation. Following the 1929 crash, Hoover extended these interventionist tactics to the broader economy, thus replicating the agricultural sector’s stagnation across the entire economic landscape. Hoover subscribed to the wage theory of recessions, which held that the lack of spending power among the workers was the source of the slump and overproduction. In response to the economic crisis, Hoover convened several economic conferences, gathering business and labor leaders to formulate strategies for economic stabilization and recovery.

    Central to these discussions was the issue of wages. Hoover strongly advocated against wage reductions, positing that wage maintenance would preserve workers’ purchasing power, thus sustaining demand and preventing further economic decline. The policy faced obvious and significant opposition from business leaders, who argued that wage maintenance exacerbated unemployment by discouraging hiring and straining business finances. Despite the fact that it had always been the norm for wages and prices to fall during recessions, Hoover remained stern and thus precipitated more unemployment as businesses went bankrupt paying artificially high wages.

    Hoover responded to rising unemployment and economic stagnation by boosting federal investment in public works, notably speeding up the construction of projects like the Hoover Dam. These efforts sought to generate jobs, stimulate industry, and improve infrastructure. However, despite these ambitious objectives, the public works programs fell short, unable to address the root issues of overexpansion across multiple sectors. In 1930, Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act despite a petition from more than a thousand economists urging him to veto the legislation as it was a misguided attempt to shield US businesses and farmers from international competition through imposing high tariffs on imported goods. Although intended to protect domestic industries during the onset of the Great Depression, it proved counterproductive, exacerbating both deflation and inflation and hindering recovery.

    The act’s protectionist approach ironically perpetuated deflation by raising import duties to record levels, stifling trade and economic growth. It also disrupted price adjustments needed for recovery, as the raised import prices led to inflationary increased domestic prices, discouraging consumer spending. Far from promoting economic recovery, the act provoked international retaliation, sparking a global trade war. This retaliation saw US imports and exports nosedive by 66 percent and 61 percent respectively between 1929 and 1932, thus undermining any recovery efforts and leading to a decline in output.

    Similar to his efforts in agriculture, Hoover established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932, marking a significant escalation in federal economic intervention. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was tasked with providing crucial financial assistance to banks, railroads, and other major industries, aiming to prevent further economic collapse by ensuring these sectors’ continued operational viability. It had the same effect of propping up the artificially inflated capital values of banks, firms, and major businesses that actually needed quick and thorough liquidations, as had occurred in earlier historical downturns.

    In conclusion, the onset of the Great Depression was significantly influenced by misdirected government interventions. The agricultural boom and subsequent bust, coupled with Herbert Hoover’s policies—including the establishment of the Federal Farm Board and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation as well as the enactment of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act—distorted economic realities. These actions, intended to bolster the economy, ironically contributed to the very crisis they sought to prevent, showcasing the delicate balance between policy and economic health.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 19:00

  • Investigators Probe 'Dirty Fuel' In Baltimore Container Ship Disaster Amid Mid-Atlantic Supply Chain Crisis
    Investigators Probe ‘Dirty Fuel’ In Baltimore Container Ship Disaster Amid Mid-Atlantic Supply Chain Crisis

    Catastrophic supply chain snarls are materializing in the Mid-Atlantic area after a container ship rammed a 1.6-mile-long bridge at the Port of Baltimore, causing the bridge to collapse and paralyzing terminals along the port. 

    Before we shed more color on the worsening supply chain issues, a new Wall Street Journal report cites people familiar with the investigation into the crash as saying contaminated fuel could’ve contributed to the container ship “Dali” losing power. 

    According to a Coast Guard briefing report viewed by the WSJ, Dali’s lights began to flicker about an hour after the ship began steaming down the marine channel out of the Baltimore Inner Harbor.

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    “The vessel went dead, no steering power and no electronics,” said an officer aboard the ship. 

    “One of the engines coughed and then stopped. The smell of burned fuel was everywhere in the engine room, and it was pitch black,” the officer said, adding that the vessel didn’t have time to drop anchors before hitting the bridge. Minutes before the crash, officers on the ship issued a mayday call to the Coast Guard. 

    Source: WSJ 

    Fotis Pagoulatos, a naval architect in Athens, said contaminated fuel could seize up the ship’s main power generators and result in a complete blackout and loss of propulsion. 

    During a press conference, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said an investigation is underway to review the vessel’s operations and safety logs and black box recorders to determine what happened in the moments leading up to Baltimore’s biggest industrial disaster in several generations. 

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    Hours after the incident, the White House and federal government agencies quickly ruled out a cyber attack or industrial sabotage as the source of the ship’s power loss. With an investigation barely underway, it would seem too preliminary to rule out those things. It’s not yet illegal to have an open mind. 

    Despite legacy media outlets won’t even entertain the slightest possibility of a cyber attack or industrial sabotage, some X users say they aren’t ruling anything out, considering NATO and Russia are on the brink of a major conflict, the Red Sea crisis continues, Hamas-Irasel war rages on, and Sino-US relations have yet to recover fully. 

    We know that in a matter of seconds, the Dali and its all-Indian crew that rammed the bridge triggered an instant shutdown of the Port of Baltimore that could take weeks, if not months, to restore. 

    “This is a shut down of a major port, and rebuilding will take a significant amount of time as it is over water,” Nada Sanders, a professor of supply-chain management at Northeastern University, told the WSJ in a separate note. 

    Sanders said, “We will see the effects domestically and globally in terms of shortages and higher prices for the average consumer.” 

    Bloomberg Economic Insights shows that the auto, energy, and food industries will be the most affected. Here’s an explanation of the disruption:  

    • The wreckage from the Francis Scott Key Bridge essentially blocks incoming and outgoing traffic to the Port of Baltimore.
    • According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the port ranked 17th in terms of total tonnage handled in 2021. We estimate it intermediates about 2%-3% of US imports.
    •  By those metrics, the disruption to Port of Baltimore traffic would appear to have minimal impact on the broader US economy. But that most likely understates the full effect.

    According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, the Port of Baltimore handled about 3% of all East Coast and Gulf Coast imports in the year through Jan. 31. It’s a crucial terminal for European carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Volkswagen AG, and BMW.

    Source: Bloomberg

    It’s also the second-largest terminal for US coal exports, with a shutdown likely crimping shipments to India. And many more terminals will be shuttered… 

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 984-foot ship was hauling containers of Chinese-made furniture, appliances, plasticware, and construction machinery. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Expect a localized shortage of these products?

    Source: Bloomberg

    US Customs and Border Protection provides a view into Dali’s cargo. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Why didn’t the State of Maryland or Baltimore City install protective barriers against ship strikes on the Key Bridge? Were woke Democrats in Annapolis too concerned about DEI and burning the state into the ground with reckless spending than care about infrastructure? Yet another failure by Democrats who are asleep at the wheel.   

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 18:45

  • US, Japan To Initiate Huge Defense Treaty Upgrade With Eye On China
    US, Japan To Initiate Huge Defense Treaty Upgrade With Eye On China

    The United States and Japan are poised to unveil their largest defense treaty revision in decades. The FT has reported that President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are soon to “announce plans to reorganize the U.S. armed forces in Japan to strengthen the development of operational plans and training of the U.S.-Japan at the summit in Washington D.C. on the 10th of next month.”

    Crucially the new agreement is expected to invest the three-star commander of the US Forces in Japan with more operational authority. As it currently stands, and following the development of the US-Japan Security Treaty first signed in 1960, the US commander is required to coordinate approval for operations with US Indo-Pacific Command based out of Hawaii. 

    US Indo-Pacific Command/Flickr

    All of this comes amid the backdrop of China-Taiwan tensions being continually on the rise, and as North Korea flexes its military might in response to joint US-South Korea drills on the peninsula.

    Japan currently hosts an estimated 54,000 US military troops plus another at least 8,000 US civilian contractors. Recently there were fears that a Western troop presence would be expanded in Japan with the proposed opening of a NATO office there, but the plan was nixed after strong protestations from Beijing.

    Analyzing the coming upgrade to the US-Japan defense treaty, one regional report explains: “This review responds to criticisms that it is inconvenient for rapid response in case of emergency because of the distance between the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii and the Japan Self-Defense Forces, which are 3850 miles away and have a 19-hour time difference.”

    Prime Minister Kishida has made it a theme of the past couple years that Tokyo is committed to making great strides at becoming an unambiguous regional and “strategic leader” as a “security provider in the Indo-Pacific.” However, Japan officials have long emphasized a stronger armed forces primarily for the sake of ‘deterrence’ – something which Washington has encouraged. Naturally, China doesn’t see these developments as merely for deterrence.

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    The past two years has also witnessed a flurry of activity between the US and Japan at numerous levels of government especially focusing on an overhaul in the U.S.–Japan defense posture and strategy. There’s also been a plan in motion for a restructuring Marine Corps forces stationed on and around Okinawa.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 18:40

  • Baltimore Coal Exports Blocked After Bridge Collapse
    Baltimore Coal Exports Blocked After Bridge Collapse

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    Baltimore Port’s coal exports are likely to be blocked for weeks after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday, according to a Pennsylvania coal trading firm.  

    The bridge collapsed early on Tuesday after a cargo ship lost power and slammed into the construction, which crumbled within seconds and will disrupt navigation near the Baltimore port, which is one of the biggest coal export terminals in America.

    Baltimore is the nation’s second-largest coal exporting port after Norfolk, Virginia, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). In 2022, about one-fifth of U.S. coal exports left through Baltimore.

    The port of Baltimore is also one of the 20 largest ports in the U.S. and handles both coal and petroleum products.

    Following the bridge collapse, up to 2.5 million tons of coal exports from Baltimore could be blocked for up to six weeks, Ernie Thrasher, CEO at Pennsylvania coal trading firm Xcoal Energy & Resources, told Bloomberg.

    “You’ll see some diversion to other ports but the other ports are pretty busy,” Thrasher added. 

    “There’s a limit on how much you can divert,” said the executive, whose firm works with several coal suppliers. 

    Globally, the disrupted exports are unlikely to have a huge impact on coal prices, but many coal cargoes from Baltimore are typically headed for India, so there the impact could be felt along the supply chain, Thrasher told Bloomberg.

    At any rate, the bridge collapse has already disrupted coal shipments and delivery times.

    For example, rail company CSX, which owns the Curtis Bay coal pier in Baltimore, told Reuters on Tuesday that existing coal customers should expect “potential shipment delays.”

    Coal producer CONSOL Energy said vessel access in and out of the CONSOL Marine Terminal, located in the Port of Baltimore, has been delayed. As of Tuesday morning, the company did not have a definitive timeline of when vessel access or normal operations will resume.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 18:20

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Today’s News 27th March 2024

  • Escobar: The Nuland/Budanov/Tajik/Crocus Connection
    Escobar: The Nuland/Budanov/Tajik/Crocus Connection

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to the Crocus terror attack.

    This is as explosive as it gets. Intel sources in Moscow discreetly confirm this is one of the FSB’s prime lines of investigation.

    December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, only 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post: “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night (…) You gotta get back there and create a campaign behind the lines.”

    January 4, 2024: In an interview with ABC News, “spy chief” Kyrylo Budanov lays down the road map: strikes “deeper and deeper” into Russia.

    January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press conference at night in the middle of an empty street, she promises “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for asymmetric war.

    February 22: Nuland shows up at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event and doubles down on the “nasty surprises” and asymmetric war. That may be interpreted as the definitive signal for Budanov to start deploying dirty ops.

    February 25: The New York Times publishes a story about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel does not already know.

    Then, a lull until March 5 – when crucial shadow play may have been in effect. Privileged scenario: Nuland was a key dirty ops plotter alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State factions got hold of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her one way or another – because Russian intel would have inevitably connected the dots.

    Yet Nuland, in fact, is not “retired” yet; she’s still presented as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and showed up recently in Rome for a G7-related meeting, although her new job, in theory, seems to be at Columbia University (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).

    Meanwhile, the assets for a major “nasty surprise” are already in place, in the dark, and totally off radar. The op cannot be called off.

    March 5: Little Blinken formally announces Nuland’s “retirement”.

    March 7: At least one Tajik among the four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his photo taken.

    March 7-8 at night: U.S. and British embassies simultaneously announce a possible terror attack on Moscow, telling their nationals to avoid “concerts” and gatherings within the next two days.

    March 9: Massively popular Russian patriotic singer Shaman performs at Crocus. That may have been the carefully chosen occasion targeted for the “nasty surprise” – as it falls only a few days before the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. But security at Crocus was massive, so the op is postponed.

    March 22: The Crocus City Hall terror attack.

    ISIS-K: the ultimate can of worms

    The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi – similar to previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a dash for the border.

    And that brings us to the Tajik connection.

    There seem to be holes aplenty in the narrative concocted by the ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on Telegram; offered what was later established as a puny 500 thousand rubles (roughly $4,500) for the four of them to shoot random people in a concert hall; sent half of the funds via Telegram; directed to a weapons cache where they find AK-12s and hand grenades.

    The videos show that they used the machine guns like pros; shots were accurate, short bursts or single fire; no panic whatsoever; effective use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, just melting away, almost in time to catch the “window” that would take them across the border to Ukraine.

    All that takes training. And that also applies to facing nasty counter-interrogation. Still, the FSB seems to have broken them all – quite literally.

    A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the op.

    And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.

    The alleged emir of ISIS-K, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, as the Americans were spinning: he may be currently holed up in Balochistan in Pakistan.

    Yet the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those classic inter-jihadi squabbles.

    Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another vector of the “nasty surprises”.

    Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired citizenship. He is in fact the sterling connection between the nasty motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens worked closely with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was virtually indistinguishable from ISIS.

    Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the classic “moderate rebel” advertised for years as a “freedom fighter” by the CIA and the Pentagon.

    Some of the four hapless Tajiks seem to have followed ideological/religious indoctrination on the internet dispensed by Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-K, in a chat room called Rahnamo ba Khuroson.

    The indoctrination game happened to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon Khurosoni. He’s the guy who made the first move to recruit the commando. Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-K and the CIA.

    The problem is the ISIS-K modus operandi for any attack never features a fistful of dollars: the promise is Paradise via martyrdom. Yet in this case it seems it’s Khurosoni himself who has approved the 500 thousand ruble reward.

    After handler Buriyev relayed the instructions, the commando sent the bayat – the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine may not have been their final destination. Another foreign intel connection – not identified by FSB sources – would have sent them to Turkey, and then Afghanistan.

    That’s exactly where Khurosoni is to be found. Khurosoni may have been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. But, crucially, he’s not the client.

    The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs

    Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.

    Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus.

    One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.

    The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.

    The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable.

    Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,

    As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban.

    Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).

    The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.

    But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.

    The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.

    But even with plausible deniability, the Crocus investigation seems to be leading exactly to where Moscow wants it: uncovering the crucial middleman. And everything seems to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.

    Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an extra clue. He said the Crocus “curators” chose on purpose to instrumentalize elements of an ethnic minority – Tajiks – who barely speak Russian to open up new wounds in a multinational nation where dozens of ethnicities live side by side for centuries.

    In the end, it didn’t work. The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/27/2024 – 02:00

  • China's 'Unrestricted Warfare': Is It Here Already?
    China’s ‘Unrestricted Warfare’: Is It Here Already?

    Authored by Pete Hoekstra via The Gatestone Institute,

    • China-linked hackers appear to be looking to attack U.S. infrastructure, especially key components such as the electrical grid, water reservoirs and treatment plants, pipelines, and transportation and communications systems, among other targets.

    • The goal is seemingly to disrupt the U.S. everything critical to life – if you have no electricity, your cellphone will not work; no water will come out of the tap; gas pumps will not pump gas; flights and trains will stop, and disease from disabled sewage treatment plants will spread. There will be havoc and panic. The government and military will be unable to protect the nation. That is what is meant by “unrestricted warfare.” Not a bullet was fired. It did not have to be. According to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, it is perfect.

    • What are some of the steps that should be taken?

    • The West has correctly identified the CCP as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago.

    The West has correctly identified the Chinese Communist Party as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago. (Image source: iStock)

    If there is one thing FBI Director Christopher Wray has been consistent on, it is the threat of Communist China across a wide range of fronts. At an unprecedented event on July 6, 2022, Wray and his British counterpart, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum, held a joint public appearance – the first ever — to discuss the growing security challenge posed by China. Evidently, they saw the matter as urgent.

    In this joint appearance, the two men highlighted the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the CCP’s civil-military fusion state — specifically, that the CCP is intent on acquiring and stealing technology and business secrets from the West. Targeted areas include advanced materials, data and artificial intelligence (AI). China’s President Xi Jinping has made it clear that he intends China to not only catch-up to, but surpass, the West.

    More recently, Wray highlighted how the CCP and those affiliated with it apparently plan to use its technological capabilities to target the West.

    China-linked hackers appear to be looking to attack U.S. infrastructure, especially key components such as the electrical grid, water reservoirs and treatment plants, pipelines, and transportation and communications systems, among other targets.

    The goal is seemingly to disrupt the U.S. everything critical to life – if you have no electricity, your cellphone will not work; no water will come out of the tap; gas pumps will not pump gas; flights and trains will stop, and disease from disabled sewage treatment plants will spread. There will be havoc and panic. The government and military will be unable to protect the nation. That is what is meant by “unrestricted warfare.” Not a bullet was fired. It did not have to be. According to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, it is perfect.

    Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), testified before the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party that the threats posed by China are not imaginary: they are real. Her agency already has discovered CCP penetrations into the telecommunications industry, aviation, energy and water infrastructure. As the threat from China continues to grow, the global security environment requires the U.S. and our allies to act now to harden our infrastructure and systems to mitigate the threat.

    The problem is one of supreme urgency.

    No one knows who will win the U.S. presidential election on November 5. If I were head of the Chinese Communist Party, I would probably be saying to myself, “I am stuck with a weak economy, more than a billion people who will not be happy with that, and just more seven months with an American president who calls me a ‘competitor,’ as if the US-Chinese relationship were about EV car dealerships — although that, too. What are my choices? a) Use this opportunity, which will soon be closing, to choke off Taiwan and take over the world’s supply of semiconductor chips. If the U.S. tries to stop us, we could threaten them with mayhem or simply go ahead and make some. b) Instead of Taiwan, why not just go straight for the U.S. while it is bogged down in Ukraine, the Middle East and its election? Or c) We can wait and see who wins (with our help) and if it is the wrong person, we still have two-and-a-half months until the new president is inaugurated.”

    What are some of the steps that should be taken?

    First, stop all investments in China and reroute essentials, such as the manufacture of medicines, to other nations. Any investment, even in paper cocktail umbrellas, goes toward strengthening the People’s Liberation Army against us. We can hear the screeching of Wall Street and their Augustinian cry: “But not yet!” The threat, however, should be viewed in terms of national security. No one will ring a bell when the lights go out.

    The U.S. will also need to impose secondary sanctions, so that any country preferring to do business with China is prohibited from doing business with the U.S.

    In addition, China — for poisoning to death roughly 100,000 Americans each year with fentanyl and other opiates, a mass-murder equivalent to one large plane crash every day — should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. China should also be barred from using the international banking system, or SWIFT, “a secure network that allows more than 10,000 financial institutions in 212 different countries to send and receive information about financial transactions to each other.”

    Second, companies and universities also need to get serious about their security systems to make the theft of intellectual property more difficult to perpetrate but easier to detect. We cannot allow our enemies to short-circuit the difficult and expensive process of technological innovation by simply walking out the door with the plans.

    This precaution, sadly, would do well to include a moratorium, at least for the time being, on students from Communist China attending U.S. universities. Again, there will be more screeching from academic institutions that are fond of holding out their tin cups, but are we really interested in educating our “competitors” to take us over or kill us?

    Third, the U.S. needs to cooperate with its allies to protect the intellectual property and technological advances of our countries’ respective corporations as a national security priority. One excellent example where this cooperation has been successful is between the U.S. and the Netherlands. The governments of the two countries have worked together closely to protect against technology transfer to the CCP. While each country has the decision as to its own trade policies, sharing intelligence and threat assessments enables both countries to make better decisions regarding joint security concerns.

    Fourth, companies must be willing to notify the government if their systems have been attacked or compromised by outside entities. Under current law, publicly-traded companies have four days to report a cyber incident to regulators. Businesses sometimes have been understandably reluctant to acknowledge that their systems have been compromised: there is the risk of reputational damage and unpleasant repercussions. Organizations, however, need to be confident that sharing this information with the government will only be used to help address the specific incident. Tragically, our government has not quite been doing all it can to inspire trust. There might be some extremely unpleasant repercussions from that.

    Finally, there must be a coordinated strategy between our national, state and local governments on the CCP threat, including prime examples of where this system has failed, as in the production of EV batteries in the U.S. by CCP firms; the CCP buying up American farmland, especially near military bases, and the government’s failure to hold the CCP to account for its lies about COVID’s human-to-human transmissibility, which caused the unnecessary deaths of more than a million Americans, and the CCP’s mass-poisoning of Americans with fentanyl, which in itself is an act of war.

    While the federal government has warned “that Chinese EVs could collect your data and send it back to China,” states and local governments are welcoming Chinese EV battery manufacturing plants into their communities, frequently with massive government subsidies. This lack of coordination is a serious vulnerability in our national security posture.

    Wray and McCallum were correct in highlighting the threat from the CCP in 2022. Wray has reemphasized the growing threat.

    The evidence is clear, and the time has come for our elected leaders and public servants — at all levels of government — to respond in a coordinated fashion to this threat.

    The West has correctly identified the CCP as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 23:40

  • Which Countries Are Really The Richest?
    Which Countries Are Really The Richest?

    Ranking countries by the size of their economies and their overall net wealth, the U.S. is usually at the top of the list, followed by countries like China, Japan or Germany.

    But, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, sorting countries for their per-capita average wealth – or even for their median per-capita wealth – other countries come out on top.

    Using the two metrics, Switzerland was the richest country in the world with the highest average per-capita wealth of around US$685,000 per adult.

    Looking at median per-capita wealth – the wealth of the person that shares their country with an equal number of richer and poorer people – Iceland tops the ranking with around $413,000 in wealth being held by this (imaginary) person.

    Infographic: Which Countries Are Really the Richest? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Per-capita assets arguably show a more balanced picture of a country’s wealth by acknowledging that smaller countries with less citizens will of course accumulate less wealth in total.

    Yet, calculating averages does not take into account how wealth is distributed in a society.

    Median wealth, on the other hand, increases the more equal a country’s assets are allocated. Iceland and other Scandinavian countries are known for their more equal wealth distribution and data by Credit Suisse reflects this to a degree. Denmark comes in rank 7 and Norway in rank 10 for per-capita median wealth.

    The U.S. is the third-wealthiest country on a per-capita average basis, yet Americans are only in rank 15 for median wealth.

    The situation in Belgium is the other way round: It is listed 13th for average wealth, but third for median wealth, showing that it is a more egalitarian country in terms of wealth distribution.

    Looking at the size of the gap between mean and median wealth, the U.S. comes in rank 7 with an average wealth more than five times or 512% as high as the median wealth. This is exceeded by no major country in the world except Brazil, where this number stands at 517%.

    Some of the smallest relative gaps between mean and median wealth were registered in the countries topping the median wealth list: Iceland, Luxembourg and Belgium. Other countries which might not have the highest mean wealth rates but do have some of the smallest gaps are Eastern European nations Slovakia and Slovenia. Poorer countries which nevertheless have big gaps between average and median wealth include the aforementioned Brazil as well as South Africa, Russia and Nigeria.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 23:20

  • New Details Emerge In Death Of Sen. McConnell's Sister-In-Law
    New Details Emerge In Death Of Sen. McConnell’s Sister-In-Law

    Authored by Steve Ispas and Lear Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Angela Chao, the sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), died on Feb. 11 after backing her vehicle into a pond.

    Angela Chao, CEO and chair of her family’s shipping business, the Foremost Group, in this undated photo. (Courtesy of Foremost Group via AP)

    More details have since emerged, including that Ms. Chao was on the phone with a friend for eight minutes after her car hit the pond and was sinking, according to the Blanco County Sheriff’s incident report obtained by The Epoch Times.

    The report also revealed Ms. Chao had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.233 percent, almost three times higher than the legal threshold of 0.08 percent for driving in Texas.

    Ms. Chao, 50, was CEO of the U.S.-based family business, Foremost Group, and a previous top executive for a Chinese shipping giant and board member of China’s World Bank.

    On February 10, Ms. Chao and seven female friends—many with home addresses in New York—had gathered for dinner and drinks at the guest lodge located on Ms. Chao’s private ranch, JW Ranch, in Blanco County, Texas.

    “They had good conversation throughout the night and all were in good spirits,” the incident report states, according to statements from those present.

    As the evening wrapped up, Ms. Chao decided to drive to the main lodge rather than take the short walk from the guest house.

    Security cameras on the exterior of the lodge captured the moment Ms. Chao drove her car into the pond, according to two videos from different angles that were provided to investigators by the property manager.

    The video from the south side camera shows Ms. Chao come into view alone at 11:37:02 p.m. as she “continues to walk unsteadily to her vehicle while continuing to hold her cellular phone in her right hand,” the police report states.

    At 11:38:06 p.m. the vehicle lurches forward toward a wooden barrier, then reverses to the left and over the top of a limestone block wall, entering the water at 11:38:15 p.m.

    The video from the west side camera showed the vehicle floating and spinning after entering water, at 11:41:52 pm the headlight disappears and reappears at 11:42:37 pm.

    The report says at approximately 11:42 pm, Ms. Chao’s friend Amber Landeau-Keinan received a telephone call from Ms. Chao, who told her “in a calm voice” that she was in the “lake,” which was a stock tank, or pond, near the guest house.

    Ms. Chao said she had put the car, a 2020 Tesla model X SUV, in reverse instead of drive while making a three-point turn.

    A Tesla Model X is displayed during an event in Indian Wells, Calif., on March 5, 2018. (Rich Fury/Getty Images for AYS Sports Marketing)

    At the time, Ms. Landeau-Keinan was in bed, and as she remained on the phone with Ms. Chao, she got dressed, and knocked on Heela Tsuzuki’s door who was in the next room, to inform her that Ms. Chao was in the pond, the report states.

    The west side camera captures Ms. Landeau-Keinan rushing outside to look for the vehicle at 11:43:21 p.m., while on the phone with Ms. Chao.

    She told Ms. Chao to get out of the vehicle after Ms. Chao said her feet were under water.

    Ms. Chao informs Ms. Landeau-Keinan she’s not able to get out of the vehicle, the report states. Ms. Chao told Landeau-Keinan the water was rising and she was going to die and said “I love you” prior to the vehicle submerging, the report states.

    Another friend, Victoria Garcia, got into the water and swam to the vehicle, while Ms. Landeau-Keinan got into a kayak and paddled toward the vehicle.

    Ms. Tsuzuki notified others about the incident. She tried multiple times to find the ranch manager, Michael Galster and his wife Hill, for assistance, and called 911 but she couldn’t provide the exact location due to a poor carrier signal.

    Call records from AT&T per a subpoena recorded the time of the first 911 call at 11:47:59 p.m., the police report notes.

    The next 911 call, that provided the location, was made at 11:52:53 pm, and by this time Mr. Galster had been located.

    Dispatch called a rescue team at 11:53.04 p.m., and two sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene at 12:10 a.m.

    When Blanco County Sheriff’s deputy Ryan Bible arrived, he saw the manager standing on top of the “fully submerged vehicle located in the [stock] tank about 25 yards from the north bank,” and “a female in a red dress on a kayak paddling toward the shore,” according to his statement.

    When the medic team arrived at 12:12 a.m., Mr. Bible and deputy Randall Mathew entered the water trying to locate the entrapped Ms. Chao.

    Mr. Galster told them the back passenger door of the vehicle was open, and the two deputies attempted multiple times to get to Ms. Chao through that door but were unable to.

    During our time in the water there were several females screaming at us frantically on the bank.” Mr. Bible wrote in his statement.

    Mr. Bible swam back to shore to retrieve a breaker bar and tried to break the windshield but failed. With the help of two medics, he eventually broke the driver’s side window.

    Once the window was busted I swam down and felt a hand.” Mr. Bible said.

    “Medic Ben Collie then was able to pull the hand out from the vehicle and we were then able to extract the female from the vehicle,” he wrote.

    Ms. Chao was out of the water at 12:56 a.m., 1 hour and 8 minutes after the car plunged into the pond. She was pronounced dead at 1:40 a.m.

    Lt. Adam Acosta, an investigator with the Sheriff’s Office, telephoned Ms. Chao’s husband, Jim Breyer, about the incident.

    Jim Breyer and Angela Chao attend an awards luncheon in Los Angeles on Jan. 12, 2024. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

    “Breyer informed me for religious reasons they didn’t want an autopsy conducted.” Mr. Acosta wrote.

    “This is not an uncommon request from family.”

    Texas Rangers and FBI agents met with the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office on February 15, according to the report.

    After viewing everything they [Texas Rangers and the FBI] felt this incident was nothing more than an unfortunate accident.” the report concluded.

    However, the case remained open until the toxicology report and telephone records for Keinan and Tsuzuki were obtained, stated the report, which was released on March 20.

    The vehicle was pulled from the pond the night of the accident and released back to the ranch manager later the same day.

    About Angela Chao

    Ms. Chao has five sisters, one of whom, Elaine Chao, is married to Mr. McConnell. Ms. Elaine Chao was Secretary of Transportation in the Trump administration.

    Ms. Chao and her husband, who were married in 2012, both have extensive ties to China. Both are Harvard alumni and Mr. Breyer also attended Stanford.

    Mr. Breyer is a venture capitalist and longtime investor in China via his company Breyer Capital and as the former co-chair of Beijing-based IDG Capital.

    Ms. Chao was one of six independent board members of the Bank of China from Jan. 4, 2017, to June 30, 2022.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, stand in the Old Senate Chambers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3, 2021. (Samuel Corum/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The re-election of Chao as an independent non-executive board member of the bank will help the board to improve its ability to analyze and judge the international situation,” states a document from the bank’s 2018 shareholders meeting.

    The Bank of China has 14 board members; Four executive members, four non-executive members, and six independent members, according to an official document.

    The Bank of China is managed and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with most members on the board also members of the CCP. During her tenure, Ms. Chao was the only board member outside of China.

    From May 2009 to June 2011, Ms. Chao was also a board member of state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), which builds ships for the People’s Liberation Army and Navy.

    The United Steelworkers Union and several other unions filed a petition on March 12 with the United States Trade Representative to investigate China’s maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sector, including CSSC.

    Mr. Breyer has invested heavily in China for many years.

    As co-chair of IDG Capital from 2005 to January 2019, Mr. Breyer helped expand the company and invest in significant Chinese companies.

    IDG touts itself as “the first global investment firm to enter China” on LinkedIn. “IDG Capital has funded more than half of all Chinese unicorns in early rounds.”

    A pedestrian walks past the People’s Bank of China, also known as China’s Central Bank, in Beijing on Aug. 22, 2007. (Teh Eng Koon/AFP via Getty Images)

    A report from the U.S. China Commission calls IDG’s investment track record in China “legendary.”

    According to the report, IDG’s China investments include Qihoo 360, which has been flagged by the U.S. Department of Commerce for “activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

    Other companies, such as ASR Microelectronics contribute to military-civil fusion programs in China.

    According to the U.S. State Department, military-civil fusion is an aggressive strategy that the CCP uses to develop a first-class military by removing barriers between civilian and commercial sectors and its military. The State Department says the CCP gains ground in this strategy by also “acquiring and diverting the world’s cutting-edge technologies—including through theft—in order to achieve military dominance.”

    Mr. Breyer also sits as a member of an independent task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.

    The task force is assembled to “assess issues of critical importance to U.S. foreign policy,” according to the website.

    “Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy.”

    In a 2022 interview with Techcrunch, Mr. Breyer said he has been very happy to invest in China over the past 16 years, “and I fully am passionate about continuing that for many years.”

    Mr. Breyer was chairman of the advisory committee of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management until 2021.

    “I’m involved with the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Advisory Board, which is really a wonderful who’s-who list of American executives. I was the chair until a year ago, and Tim Cook is now the chair,” he told Techcrunch.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 23:00

  • Gov. Al Smith And The Anti-Trump Republicans: Gingrich
    Gov. Al Smith And The Anti-Trump Republicans: Gingrich

    Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Politics,

    As I’ve watched some of President Donald Trump’s former appointees and allies say they can’t support him in 2024, I was reminded of a similar scenario in American history. 

    In 1936, Former New York Gov. Al Smith decided that he could not support President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s re-election.

    Smith was a popular reform Democrat who had been elected Governor of New York four times. In 1928, he became the first Catholic ever nominated for President by a major party. To strengthen his campaign, Smith convinced Roosevelt, who was then recovering from polio at Warm Springs, Georgia, to come back and run for governor. Smith lost the presidential race to Herbert Hoover, but Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

    When Roosevelt’s New Deal embraced government activism, powerful measures of intervening in the economy, and creating government programs for the poor and unemployed, Smith was alienated. He had been part of the eastern conservative wing of the Democratic Party, which had fought against William Jennings Bryan and his western populism.

    Gov. Smith was closer to the business establishment than to radical college professors.

    Finally, Smith could no longer support the man he had previously recruited. On Jan. 26, 1936, Smith said at the American Liberty League Dinner:

    I must make a confession. It is not easy for me to stand up here tonight and talk to the American people against the Democratic administration. This is not easy. It hurts me. But I can call upon innumerable witnesses to testify to the fact that during my whole public life I put patriotism above partisanship. And when I see danger – I say ‘danger,’ that is, the ‘Stop, look, and listen’ to the fundamental principles upon which this government of ours was organized – it is difficult for me to refrain from speaking up.”

    Despite Smith’s defection, the Roosevelt New Deal coalition was massive (Roosevelt defeated Republican Kansas Gov. Alf Landon by 523 electoral votes and received 60.8 percent of the vote). Landon carried only Maine and Vermont.

    I tell that story to say this: The anti-Trump Republicans resemble the anti-Roosevelt Democrats of 1936. They yearn for a party which has disappeared. They advocate policies which are no longer realistic or viable. They are repelled by President Trump’s aggressive style and his dramatic shifts in policy.

    They are rapidly becoming a fossilized reminder of a party which no longer exists – and wants to operate in a world which no longer exists.

    Some have begun to harken back to the President Ronald Reagan years as a golden time. They wish the GOP could return to them. It is impossible to return to the 1980s, because the world has changed. The problems have changed. The politics have changed. And the institutions are sicker and more destructive than they were under Reagan.

    I first spent time with then Gov. Reagan in 1974. I worked to create the first Capitol Steps event – and really the first Contract with America – for candidate Reagan in 1980. For eight years, I served in the House as an active ally of President Reagan on nearly every issue. President Reagan was bold in his visionary approach but careful and cautious in taking risks. While he said the ultimate outcome of the Cold War would be “we win they lose,” he did not risk military confrontation with the Soviet Union.

    Reagan would have been appalled at a 22-year war in Afghanistan, which the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs admitted this week was a strategic defeat.

    Reagan warned in his farewell address that we were losing ground to a cultural effort to undermine our history, destroy the spirit of patriotism and eliminate learning what it meant to be an American. He would be much bolder and more radical today – faced with collapsing inner-city schools and radical anti-Americanism on college campuses. The Gov. Reagan who took on the counterculture at Berkeley was a much tougher and more intense opponent than the Morning in America Reagan from the 1984 campaign.

    People who object to President Trump’s aggressiveness and hide behind a sanitized, phony memory of Reagan forget that it was Governor Reagan who said of the Berkeley protests, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with, no more appeasement.”

    As Matthew Continetti recently wrote for the National Review, “If Donald Trump is elected president in November, he will have assembled a coalition unlike any Republican nominee in my lifetime.”

    Citing research from the American Enterprise Institute, Continetti pointed out that President Trump’s favorability is growing. His popularity is now at the highest points since he left office, and he is making steady gains with white and black Americans – and big gains with Hispanic Americans.

    Continetti captured the current challenge for the anti-Trump Republicans: “We aren’t used to a politics where the party of the ‘Left’ represents the establishment, and the party of the ‘Right’ represents an insurgent movement against the settled way of doing things.”

    In short, traditional Republicans who wanted to be part of the establishment are being alienated by new Republicans who want to change that establishment.

    The traditional Republican leadership (largely the Bush wing of the party) came from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and had similar pedigrees. They see themselves as governing within the right wing of the old order. They are naturally repelled by the boisterous, noisy emergence of a working-class Republican movement which includes Latinos, African Americans, and blue collar whites. It doesn’t help that the new Republicans want to shatter the old order – not join it.

    Think of the anti-Trump Republicans as the Al Smith branch of the GOP. Their complaints will tell you more about them than President Trump – and they will also lose.

    For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 22:20

  • Team Of Chinese Engineers Targeted By Suicide Bomber In Pakistan
    Team Of Chinese Engineers Targeted By Suicide Bomber In Pakistan

    Separatist Islamic insurgents in Pakistan appear to be engaging in all-out war with the government and its Chinese partners who are building Belt and Road Initiative projects in the south Asian country. Beijing has been investing billions into Pakistan, but some regions are very high-risk in terms of the security situation.

    After a string of attacks on locations hosting major Chinese infrastructure projects, there’s been a fresh suicide attack which killed five Chinese nationals Tuesday. A Pakistani driver was also killed when a suicide attacker crashed his explosive-laden vehicle into the group’s convoy, in northwest Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

    The Chinese nationals were engineers on their way from the capital of Islamabad to Dasu, which is the location of a new hydroelectric dam being constructed by a Chinese company.

    Getty Images

    The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and other similar ethnic separatist groups are an immediate suspect but no group has yet claimed responsibility for the suicide attack.

    Making matters worse for rescue and recovery efforts, the Chinese convoy was attacked at the moment it traversed a mountainous area which has hard to access parts. According to Al Jazeera

    “Our rescue team has successfully retrieved bodies of four people whereas recovery of two more people is still ongoing,” Bilal Faizi, spokesman for Rescue 1122 group in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told Al Jazeera.

    Rescue officials said the vehicle carrying the Chinese nationals fell in a gorge after the blast and at least two bodies were badly burnt, making their identification difficult.

    Just a week ago there was a prior major terror attack at Pakistan’s strategic port city of Gwadar, which is crucial to the multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). A group of heavily armed militants stormed the complex last Wednesday and engaged in a lengthy firefight with security forces.

    Pakistan authorities identified the attackers as Baloch separatists, which had also been armed with bombs. At least seven of the militants were shot dead by security forces. The port has for more than the past decade been run by  the China Overseas Port Holding Company.

    Ethnic separatist and radical Islamic terrorist organizations have for years waged a long-running insurgency against the government and its foreign partners, accusing Islamabad of exploiting the population of the region.

    Dasu Hydropower Project DHPP

    These groups have especially sought to target infrastructure and projects of the CPEC, seeing in it further confirmation that the Pakistan government is stealing from locals and enriching itself off foreign investments.

    China has long deployed security forces in order to protect these key economic corridors of the One Belt One Road Initiative, also commonly called the Silk Road Economic Belt.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 22:00

  • Infrasound From Wind Turbines Could Be 'A Huge Threat To The Entire Biodiversity': Doctor
    Infrasound From Wind Turbines Could Be ‘A Huge Threat To The Entire Biodiversity’: Doctor

    Authored by Maurice Forgeng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    More than 70,000 wind turbines operate across the United States, and the U.S. government continues to approve offshore wind projects as part of its transition toward clean energy.

    (Summit Art Creations/Shutterstock)

    When wind turbines rotate, however, they generate not only electricity but also infrasound.

    For Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck, this development represents “a huge problem for all forms of organisms,” including humans. The medical doctor and scientific author has been studying the health effects of infrasound for several years. She has been looking into infrasound as a stressor on the cellular level since 2015 and published a paper in 2023 on how infrasound affects microcirculation and endothelial cells.

    Inaudible but Impactful

    Infrasound is defined as a sound wave with a frequency of less than 20 hertz (Hz). The lower the frequency of the sound, the greater its wavelength and the harder it is to shield from it. Infrasound can penetrate walls, people, and animals.

    With ever larger wind turbines, the frequencies are getting lower and lower. This makes infrasound more problematic and dangerous,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck told The Epoch Times.

    Today’s wind turbines reach frequencies as low as 0.25 Hz. The wavelength of this frequency is just under 0.86 miles.

    Infrasound has another special feature. Humans cannot usually hear frequencies below 16 Hz, which marks the so-called lower hearing threshold. In other words, we cannot hear many of the sounds emitted by wind turbines. However, we may feel them in our bodies as humming or rumbling, as with a loudspeaker. The lower the frequency, the higher the sound pressure level (i.e., the volume) must be to feel or hear it.

    Nevertheless, the mechanical forces emanating from the inaudible sound frequencies can have an effect on the cell and membrane structures, Dr. Bellut-Staeck said.

    Transmitted via the Air and Ground

    Wind turbines generate infrasound when the rotor blade brushes past the mast. The rotor blade pushes large air masses in front of it, which is then interrupted at the mast. Infrasound is then transmitted not only through the air but also through the ground via the tower and can penetrate houses. Buildings, therefore, offer no protection. “On the contrary: Airborne and ground-borne infrasound can add up considerably indoors,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said.

    Impact on Endothelial Cells

    Infrasound could also affect microcirculation, the blood circulation of the fine capillary network where oxygen and nutrients enter the surrounding tissues.

    More precisely, it’s the endothelial cells located on the inner wall of the capillaries that react to infrasound, Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck said. She’s been studying microcirculation and endothelial cells since 2004. In addition to transporting proteins, these cells have many vital functions, such as inhibiting inflammation and controlling blood pressure. In a rat study examining the effects of infrasound, researchers noticed endothelial swelling and outer cell membrane damage within three hours of exposure to infrasound with a frequency of 8 Hz.

    The surface of an endothelial cell. (Courtesy of Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck)

    “Since around 2015, it has been noticed that people exposed to infrasound and vibration from technical emitters have shown symptoms that correspond to microcirculatory disorders,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said. This effect was particularly noticeable after smaller wind turbines were replaced by larger ones.

    Reported adverse effects of industrial wind turbines include weakness, dizziness, headaches, concentration and memory issues, ear pressure, cardiac arrhythmia, and sleep disorders, according to research cited in Canadian Family Physician.

    Numerous animals have also reacted to wind turbines. It has been observed that they leave the vicinity of wind turbines. One study published in Scientific Reports showed that many bird and mammal species avoided wind farms and the surrounding areas, affecting distribution and migration patterns. Place-bound animals such as horses, cows, and pets are said to have shown changes in behavior, including signs of stress.

    “The symptoms in animals cannot be [attributed to] a nocebo effect,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck noted, as official authorities sometimes suggest. In contrast to the placebo effect, the nocebo effect describes a negative health effect from expectations of negative consequences.

    Dr. Bellut-Staeck pointed out that other technical systems also emit infrasound and could cause major problems. For example, in or near residences, this applies to heat pumps, biogas plants, and gas turbines. However, she expects large wind turbines to have the most far-reaching consequences for the environment and biodiversity—precisely because of their increasing number and size.

    “Such chronic and impulsive low-frequency stressors can never be compared to natural infrasound pollution [like high surf and strong winds],” she said.

    Are Whale Deaths Connected?

    In 2023, official data revealed an increase in the stranding and death of whales along the U.S. East Coast. There was a temporal and geographical connection between this excess mortality and the geological surveying conducted for the expansion of offshore wind power. As a result, 30 New Jersey mayors signed a petition asking congressmen to help pause offshore wind power expansion activities until a full investigation could be conducted. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has stated, “There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”

    But Dr. Bellut-Staeck remains concerned by the low-frequency sound and vibrations of ship noise and other sounds. In the ocean, sound travels at 0.91 miles per second—four times faster than in the air. The depth of the oceans, therefore, offers no protection against sound.

    It doesn’t just affect orientation, but also the regulation of vital bodily functions,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said. “The consequences for the animals here are also lack of energy, chronic inflammation, disruption of reproduction, excess mortality, and population decline.”

    Vibrational Stress

    As all organisms react to infrasound, Dr. Bellut-Staeck emphasized that “we may have a huge, previously unrecognized threat to the entire biodiversity.”

    Dr. Bellut-Staeck, who does her research in Germany, where wind power is the largest contributor to the power grid, proposes that deep sound and vibration can act as a vibrational stress factor on endothelial cells. As many vital functions require intact endothelial cells, endothelial damage can have serious consequences, including contributing to vascular aging and atherosclerosis.

    The German Federal Environment Agency, however, told The Epoch Times that it has not found any evidence that infrasound from wind turbines causes adverse health effects and that “how infrasound emitted by wind turbines affects endothelial cells has not yet been scientifically proven.”

    International Studies Show Harmful Effects

    Dr. Bellut-Staeck said there are currently no studies to clearly illustrate or prove the risk of infrasound, as most studies focus on acoustic, or audible, sound.

    However, initial studies on the effects of infrasound indicate possible serious health problems. One study published in Environmental Disease concluded there was a high probability that people living near industrial wind turbines would experience harmful health effects due to anxiety, stress, and loss of sleep resulting from exposure to infrasound and other emissions. A German study also identified the toxic effects of infrasound exposure at a cellular level. Another study, published in PLoS ONE, documented brain activity changes following exposure to infrasound stimulation.

    These studies emphasize the need for further research and a better understanding of the impacts of infrasound.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 21:40

  • "We Need Somebody Disruptive": Alex Jones, Former Bush Official Clash In Trump ZeroHedge Debate
    “We Need Somebody Disruptive”: Alex Jones, Former Bush Official Clash In Trump ZeroHedge Debate

    Last night kicked off the fifth ZeroHedge debate on the question: “Should Donald Trump be the next U.S. President?

    The debate featured Infowars host Alex Jones and former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos vs. independent journalist Michael Tracy and former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter.

    Tracey came in hot, accusing Trump of being two-faced for bashing special interests during the primary, while courting the donor class during the general election:

    “[Trump] was calling out to Miriam Adelson — who’s the widow of Sheldon Adelson — and having private soirees with her, and she’s excepted to give millions of dollars to Trump’s next campaign. He even said it outright. He said because of Miriam’s late husband, [Trump] was compelled to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv in Israel to Jerusalem.

    In an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend spirit, Alex Jones argued that entrenched bureaucratic powers within the U.S. pose an existential threat. Thus, given that Donald Trump is the primary force standing in their way, he deserves mass support.

    We need somebody disruptive,” said Jones.

    “Trump is the first President who has refused to follow the Constitution.”

    Former chief ethics lawyer of the George W. Bush White House, Richard Painter, accused Trump of being the first President to disregard the Constitution regarding the transfer of power after the 2020 US election.

    The comment did not go over well…

    Papadopoulos, meanwhile, offered an international perspective in favor of Trump – who he says keept US adversaries at bay. The former Trump adviser attributes this to siloing Russian exports and increasing NATO funding — while unleashing “the shale renaissance in the United States.”

    Tracey hit back – arguing that such moves were in fact escalatory:

    “Go read Putin’s speech before he launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he cites multiple grievances with the U.S. administration, and half of them are to do with Trump… He hyper escalated tensions with Russia under the auspices of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and all the other hard-liners.

    Watch the full debate here and decide who won:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 21:25

  • Sparks Fly Between US & Israel As Gaza Truce Talks At 'Dead End'
    Sparks Fly Between US & Israel As Gaza Truce Talks At ‘Dead End’

    The latest round of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in Doha has collapsed and ended in anger and finger-pointing, with the the Israeli delegation reportedly packing up and leaving in haste. This point marks several rounds of failed talks.

    A senior Israeli official has declared that efforts toward a truce are “at a dead end” due to unrealistic demands by Hamas. The official further accused Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar of sabotaging diplomatic efforts “as part of a wider effort to inflame this war over Ramadan,” according to Reuters. This brings to an end this latest round of ten days of talks.

    AFP

    Netanyahu’s office repeated its assertion on Tuesday that Hamas had made “delusional” demands, something which has continually stalled talks and prevented any progress. The Israeli statement vowed that it will not address “Hamas’s delusional demands” but will “pursue and achieve its just war objectives.”

    Netanyahu also brought the US into it, lashing out in the following:

    Hamas’s decision to reject a US-brokered compromise is “clear proof it is not interested in continuing talks, and a sad testament to the damage caused by the UN Security Council resolution,” referring to a call for a ceasefire passed Monday night that the US did not veto, thus enabling its passage.

    Hamas has levelled a similar charge at Israel, saying the prime minister is only interested in prolonging the military operation in Gaza. Netanyahu has for weeks made his position clear that any Hamas condition of an Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza which is made part of a hostage release deal remains a non-starter.

    Tensions and finger-pointing between the Biden administration and Israel have been on the rise. According to Axios in the wake of the truce talks collapse, “The Israeli statement angered the White House, which sees it as an attempt by Netanyahu to continue the fight that started the day before between the U.S. and Israel over the UN Security Council resolution, two senior U.S. official said.”

    The UNSC has just passed a formal resolution calling for immediate ceasefire, and its adoption was enabled by the US abstention, which infuriated Israel. Commenting on the Israeli statement and reaction, one US official state: “This statement is inaccurate in almost every respect and unfair to the hostages and their families.”

    On Tuesday there are reports of Israeli airstrikes on Rafah city…

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

    “Hamas’ response was prepared before the UN vote even took place. We will not play politics with this most important and difficult issue, and we will remain focused on a deal to free the remaining hostages,” the US official added.

    As a result of the UN vote, Israel canceled a planned delegation to the White House, which was to discuss the Rafah situation. The White House has called this an “overreaction” on Israel’s part. Israeli leaders have continued to signal that a Rafah ground operation is imminent, even as the US and other allies have warned against it at least until civilians can be moved from harm’s way.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 21:20

  • Chicago Board Of Elections 'Mistakenly' Left Out Over 9,000 Mail-In Ballots In Primary Election
    Chicago Board Of Elections ‘Mistakenly’ Left Out Over 9,000 Mail-In Ballots In Primary Election

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

    A Chicago Board of Elections official said Sunday that he had “mistakenly” left out over 9,000 mail-in ballots from one of the races in last week’s Illinois state primary election, sparking renewed scrutiny around voting by mail in the run-up to the November presidential election.

    “In adding up the total number of Vote By Mail ballots the Board had received back so far, I mistakenly left out additional ballots” that came in by mail on the evening of March 18, a day prior to Election Day, according to a March 23 statement by Max Bever, Director of Public Information at the Chicago Board of Elections.

    The race in which the apparent tabulation error took place is between two Democrat candidates for state’s attorney in Chicago’s Cook County, Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III.

    A voter at a voting location at the Humboldt Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library in Chicago, Illinois, on March 19, 2024 (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times).

    Ms. O’Neill Burke, a former appellate judge who trails by roughly 14,000 votes, is widely seen as the more tough-on-crime candidate of the two.

    We should be booming, and we’re not because of crime,” Ms. O’Neill Burke told The Associated Press. “This is something we can fix.”

    Mr. Harris, a professor and former prosecutor who’s the more progressive candidate of the two, has said punishments should consider racial disparities.

    The Chicago race is open because the current State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who faced criticism for being soft on crime, declined to run a third time.

    ‘I Traded Speed for Accuracy’

    One of the campaign issues in the Cook County state’s attorney race has been the future of Ms. Foxx’s controversial policy not to prosecute retail theft as a felony if the value of the stolen goods is below $1,000.

    Ms. O’Neill Burke has been critical of the policy.

    It doesn’t deter crime, it promotes it,” she said.

    By contrast, Mr. Harris has vowed to keep it in place, if elected.

    “If someone came and took my cellphone, is that cellphone worth a felony on your record? I do not think so,” he told AP. “We look at recidivism. We charge everyone appropriately.”

    The Cook County state’s attorney’s office is the second largest in the country, after Los Angeles.

    Mr. Bever said in a March 24 update that the attorneys for both candidates met earlier that day and agreed that ballot counting and ballot signature verification would continue through Sunday, with poll watchers present.

    He said that election judges would be processing and counting roughly 13,086 mail-in ballots that had already been reviewed for timeliness, signature verification, and voter histories, with the vast majority of these received back via drop box on Election Day (March 19).

    Around 9,000 of these hadn’t been counted in the initial tally, with Mr. Bever providing an update on the fate of the initially missing ballots.

    “I made an error in reporting the number of Vote By Mail ballots received back on Monday, March 18 before Election Day that should have been included in the ‘received by Election Day’ numbers,” Mr. Bever said in the March 24 update.

    Approximately 9,143 Vote By Mail additional ballots received back on Monday should have been included in this ‘received by Election Day’ number that would be processed and counted after Election Day, March 19,” he continued.

    The elections official said that the missing ballots had been secured in a receiving cage until they could be processed by scanning machines for signature verification and to rule out possible double-voting.

    He added that the missing ballots were inspected, processed, and counted by election judges between March 22 and March 23, and are already reflected in the unofficial results.

    Preliminary results, as of 6 p.m. on March 24, show Mr. Harris in the lead with 164,371 votes (52.14 percent) and Ms. O’Neill Burke trailing with 150,900 votes (47.86 percent).

    The final tally could still change as the counting period lasts through April 2, with official results to be announced on April 9.

    ‘Sounds Fishy’

    The incident drew scrutiny and criticism on social media, where a report about it was shared by the End Wokeness account, which pointed out that many of the ballots were from dropboxes, where postmarks aren’t required.

    “Sounds fishy,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the post.

    Mail in dropbox elections are a joke,” the KanekoaTheGreat account, which has over 750,000 followers, posted.

    “Chicago keeps having more problems. There’s no way to have confidence in election results when ballots are ‘found’ later,” internet personality and former candidate for the U.S. Senate, Paul Szypula, said in a post on X.

    “Drop boxes also are sketchy and just invite cheating and mistakes. Democrat-run elections are rife with fraud and we see it happening more and more,” he added.

    Voting by mail has been the subject of increased scrutiny and criticism following the 2020 presidential election, which former President Donald Trump claims was marred by irregularities and fraud that he says cost him a win.

    A recent study exploring the likely impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots had in the 2020 election found that the outcome would “almost certainly” have been different without the massive expansion of absentee ballots.

    The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey conducted in December 2023, which revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters, or 20 percent, admitted to actions that could be potentially fraudulent in the presidential election.

    After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the raw data, they concluded that there was a higher percentage of fraudulent mail-in ballots. They now believe that 28.2 percent of people who voted by mail in 2020 committed at least one type of behavior that is, “under most circumstances, illegal,” and so potentially amounts to voter fraud.

    A Heartland Institute research editor and research fellow who was involved in the study explained to The Epoch Times that there are narrow exceptions where a surveyed behavior may be legal, like filling out a mail-in ballot on behalf of another voter if that person is blind, illiterate, or disabled, and needs assistance.

    However, research fellow Jack McPherrin said such cases were within the margin of error and not statistically significant.

    The new study found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, President Trump would most likely have won.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 21:00

  • US Lawmakers Demand SEC Clarify Position On Prometheum's Plans For Ether
    US Lawmakers Demand SEC Clarify Position On Prometheum’s Plans For Ether

    Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

    According to a letter for SEC Chair Gary Gensler, leaving Ether in regulatory limbo between the SEC and CFTC could have “irreparable consequences for the digital asset markets.”

    Lawmakers with the United States House Financial Services Committee and House Agriculture Committee have expressed concerns about how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to handle Ether.

    In a March 26 letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, U.S. lawmakers, including House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry and Vice Chair French Hill, urged the commission to address crypto firm Prometheum’s intention to offer institutional custody services for Ether.

    According to lawmakers, the announcement is at odds with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) stance on recognizing ETH as a “non-security digital asset” under its purview.

    “[T]he agencies have an extensive public record identifying ETH as a non-security digital asset,” said the lawmakers.

    “There are multiple regulatory actions grounded in that position […] [Prometheum’s] action, if allowed to proceed, could have irreparable consequences for the digital asset markets.”

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    The SEC has recently made claims suggesting that it intends to classify ETH as a security.

    Some experts have suggested that this position may lead to the commission denying approval for spot Ether exchange-traded funds. The SEC has already approved investment vehicles tied to ETH futures for listing and trading on U.S. exchanges.

    In contrast, the CFTC has recognized many cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether as commodities. The commission filed a civil enforcement action against KuCoin and two of its founders on March 26, claiming that ETH, BTC and Litecoin were commodities and placing the exchange’s actions “squarely within the CFTC’s authority.”

    The lawmakers added in the letter to Gensler:

    “[T]he SEC’s failure to propose a rule or provide comprehensive guidance that provides clear rules for the digital asset marketplace regarding asset classification has only exacerbated the uncertainty in the digital asset ecosystem.”

    Following Prometheum’s ETH custody announcement in February, CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam reiterated the commission’s position on Ether at a House Financial Service Committee hearing, warning of a potential conflict with the SEC over digital asset rules. In November 2023, CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson suggested several possible paths forward for regulatory clarity on crypto: through the courts, company policies and legislation from Congress.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 20:40

  • Home-Flipping Plummets As Profits Slump
    Home-Flipping Plummets As Profits Slump

    By Michael Tucker of the Mortgage Bankers Association

    Home flipping fell nearly 30% in 2023 compared to the year before, according to ATTOM.

    The ATTOM year-end 2023 U.S. Home Flipping Report said 308,922 single-family homes and condos in the United States were flipped last year, down 29.3% from 436,807 in 2022 and the largest annual drop since 2008.

    “In 2023, the landscape for home flipping across the U.S. became increasingly challenging,” ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said. “Whether the overall market has soared or seen just modest gains in recent years, investors have missed out on the action.”

    Barber added that the sharp decline in the number of home flips likely reflected a combination of a tight supply of homes for sale as well as dwindling returns. “Either way, it will take some significant reworking of the financials for home flipping fortunes to turn back around,” he said.

    The report also revealed that as the number of homes flipped by investors declined, so did flips as a portion of all home sales, from 8.6% in 2022 to 8.1 percent last year.

    In another sign of down times for the home-flipping industry, profits and profit margins also sank on quick “buy-renovate-and-resell” projects. Gross profits on typical home flips in 2023 dropped to $66,000 nationwide (the difference between the median sales price and the median amount originally paid by investors). That was down from $70,100 in 2022 and translated into just a 27.5 percent return on investment compared to the original acquisition price.

    The latest nationwide ROI (before accounting for mortgage interest, property taxes, renovation expenses and other holding costs) was down from 28.1 percent in 2022 and 35.7 percent in 2021, ATTOM said; the worst level since 2007.

    Investors saw their profit margins decrease for the sixth time in the past seven years as the median price of the homes they flipped dipped slightly faster than the median price they had paid to purchase properties – 4.4 percent versus 4 percent.

    Nationally, the percentage of flipped homes originally purchased by investors with financing increased in 2023 to 36.5%, up from 35.7% in 2022 and from 36.2% in 2021, ATTOM said. Meanwhile, 63.5 percent of homes flipped in 2023 were originally bought with cash only, down from 64.3 percent in 2022 and from 63.8 percent two years earlier.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 20:20

  • Florida Bans Social Media For Minors Under 14
    Florida Bans Social Media For Minors Under 14

    Florida has just passed a new law prohibiting children under 14-years-old from having social media accounts regardless of parental consent.

    Governor DeSantis was at the Cornerstone Classical Academy in Jacksonville, FL Monday, March 25, 2024, along with local and state leaders to sign into law Florida House Bill 3. Bob Self/Florida Times-Union

    Under the law which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2025, social media companies must close accounts they believe to be used by minors under 14 – and must cancel accounts at the request of parents or minors. All information from the accounts must then be deleted, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    Minors who are 14 or 15 will be able to obtain a social media account with parental consent. If a parent does not consent, accounts already belonging to teens within that age range must be deleted.

    “Being buried in those devices all day is not the best way to grow up—it’s not the best way to get a good education,” Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said on Monday during an event to celebrate the signing of the bill.

    The new law doesn’t name which platforms it applies to, however social media sites which rely on features such as notification alerts and autoplay videos are subject to it.

    Supporters of the law have pointed to recent studies linking social-media use among young adults to a higher risk of depression and mental-health challenges. It can also make them vulnerable to online bullying and predators. -WSJ

    “A child, in their brain development, doesn’t have the ability to know that they’re being sucked into these addictive technologies, and to see the harm and step away from it,” said Florida House Speaker Paul Renner (R) at the same event. “And because of that, we have to step in for them.”

    In response to the law, TikTok says it has policies to protect teens, and will continue to work to keep the platform safe. Snapchat and X didn’t respond to a WSJ request for comment.

    Other states have seen similar legislation proposed, however the bills all stop short of Florida’s total ban. In Arkansas, a federal judge blocked an age verification law for social media users and parental consent for minors’ accounts.

    In response to the Arkansas law, social media trade association NetChoice, of which Facebook parent Meta, TikTok and Snap, sued the state to halt the law. It has brought similar legal challenges in California and Ohio.

    According to NetChoice VP and general counsel Carl Szabo, the Florida law “forces Floridians to hand over sensitive personal information to websites or lose their access to critical information channels,” adding “his infringes on Floridians’ First Amendment rights to share and access speech online.”

    “There are better ways to keep Floridians, their families and their data safe and secure online without violating their freedoms,” he added.

    Florida expects to be sued over the new law, however Speaker Renner says he’s confident it will withstand legal scrutiny.

    “We’re gonna beat them, and we’re never, ever gonna stop,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 20:00

  • Gen Z Males Are Rejecting Feminist-Friendly Ideologies
    Gen Z Males Are Rejecting Feminist-Friendly Ideologies

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

    In “All the Rebel Women: The Rise of the Fourth Wave of Feminism,“ the author, Kira Cochrane, suggested that this particular wave of feminism ”isn’t about making everyone around the table feel comfortable.”

    Feminist activists take part in a choreographed performance on Dec. 7, 2019. (Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)

    It’s about being disruptive, challenging, and changing the terms of the debate,” Ms. Cochrane said.

    What debate is she referencing? One that largely revolves around men. More specifically, how toxic they have become. Not surprisingly, many men (and women) haven’t taken too kindly to this particular narrative. Young men are especially repulsed, and so they should be.

    Last year, a report titled “The State of American Men 2023: From Confusion and Crisis to Hope” found that more than half of young males believe that men have it harder today than women. The report further unveiled significant levels of contempt for modern-day feminism, especially among male members of Generation Z. Yes, some in the “wokest” generation in the history of mankind are actively rejecting a core ingredient of wokeness. And who can blame them? Feminism, in its most current form, specializes in the demonization of masculinity. It regularly equates men with trash.

    Some feminists would have us believe that men, especially straight, white men, are a danger to society, one that must be addressed and, in some cases, attacked.

    Common sense (remember when it was a little more common?) tells us that if you keep bashing, berating, and belittling an entire group of individuals—or, in this case, half the country’s population—a response is inevitable.

    A recent survey out of King’s College London clearly demonstrates this fact. On both sides of the Atlantic, it seems, millions of Gen Z men have had enough of feminist-friendly narratives.

    Interestingly, however, the survey revealed that older males, when compared to younger generations, have a greater inclination toward progressive and feminist perspectives. In short, Gen Z males are more inclined than older baby boomers to believe that feminism has had a negative impact on broader society. In the UK, for example, one out of every four males aged 16 to 29 believes that being a man is more challenging than being a woman.

    This data sharply contrast with the prevailing perception of men today in comparison to their “pale, stale, and male” predecessors. The research indicates that the general public tends to assume that it would be the oldest group of men who believe that women have already achieved sufficient equality. However, this assumption is clearly incorrect. Approximately 20 percent of Gen Z males believe that being a man will be significantly more difficult than being a woman in the next two decades, echoing the sentiments of young men in the United States. In contrast, this sentiment drops to only 9 percent for males older than the age of 60.

    As the survey points out, when considering the age group of 16 to 29, 46 percent of women in this category believe that feminism has had a more beneficial impact on society than harm. This percentage is 10 points higher than the proportion of young men who share the same perspective (36 percent). Moreover, the survey notes that “among this age group, one in six (16%) men say feminism has done more harm than good, compared with one in 11 (9%) women.”

    What is going on here? Why are so many Gen Z males—again, on both sides of the pond—rejecting feminist-friendly ideologies?

    According to the academics responsible for the surprising survey, it may have something to do with the rise of Andrew Tate, a controversial, American British influencer who, in recent times, has become popular. A fifth of the Gen Z men surveyed hold a favorable view of Mr. Tate, who has a huge following in both the UK and the United States.

    On a recent episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” social psychologist Jean Twenge discussed Mr. Tate, suggesting that his influence has had—and continues to have—an impact on young men. In particular, Ms. Twenge suggested that Mr. Tate’s influence has contributed to Gen Z males’ rejection of left-wing politics.

    However, CNN’s Van Jones was quick to push back, arguing that this particular form of rejection has less to do with the pull of Mr. Tate and considerably more to do with the push of the left; to be more specific, the left’s effort, be it conscious or otherwise, to push young men away. Mr. Maher agreed with Mr. Jones, saying that just being a man today is considered “a little suspect.”

    It’s important to note that being a man, in both the UK and the United States, was considered “a little suspect” long before Mr. Tate shot to fame. Sure, he was the most Googled man in the world in 2022, but prior to this, most people were not familiar with his philosophies and overall mindset. Even The Guardian, no fan of Mr. Tate, conceded that he should be viewed as a “symptom” of a much broader problem.

    Commenting on the abovementioned survey, professor Rosie Campbell, director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, said:

    “This data shows it’s not just young men’s attitudes that stand out. For example, young women are much more likely than any other group to think ‘toxic masculinity’ is a helpful term, and are most pessimistic about the prospect of future progress on gender equality.

    Let that percolate for a minute: Young women are “most pessimistic” about the future of gender equality and consider “toxic masculinity”—a truly heinous term—to be helpful.

    From Birmingham, Alabama, to Birmingham, England, name one thing men are allowed to do that women are not. If you find yourself scratching your head, struggling to think of an answer, that’s because there’s nothing to name. Gender equality already exists, but young women, many of whom are blinded by illogical ideologies, can’t separate the facts from fictitious narratives.

    Moreover, the term “toxic masculinity,” which was around a long time before Mr. Tate took the world by storm, is in no way constructive. On the contrary, it only serves to demonize an inescapable part of being a man. There was a time, not that long ago, when being a man and exhibiting masculine traits was something worth celebrating. However, in both the UK and the United States, those days appear to be long gone. To compound matters, the ideological divide between Gen Z men and women is fast becoming a gaping chasm.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 19:40

  • Israel Unleashes Major Airstrikes On Syria & Deep Inside Lebanon
    Israel Unleashes Major Airstrikes On Syria & Deep Inside Lebanon

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Tuesday another rare strike conducted deep into Lebanese territory. The strikes targeted “a military compound used by Hezbollah’s aerial unit” in the Baalbek District which is in the northeast of the country.

    This marks the deepest Israeli strike inside Lebanon since the war began in the wake of the Oct.7 Hamas terror attack, at more than 110km from Israel’s border.

    Illustrative IAF file image: Flash90

    The extent of casualties or damage remains unclear, but it follows a similar February strike on the Bekaa Valley some 100km from the Israeli border, which killed at least two people. There are growing fears that if such strikes become more regular, it will signify a bigger regional war could be opening up.

    Hezbollah has lobbed several missiles against northern Israeli communities as well as the IDF base atop Mount Meron over the past days. The Mount Meron surveillance base is about 8km from the Lebanese border and has come under repeat attack over several months.

    In the overnight and early morning hours there were also large-scale strikes against areas of eastern Syria. While Israel frequently attacks Syria, some Syrian government-affiliated sources laid blame on the United States. According to regional outlet The Cradle

    Airstrikes targeted a number of areas in Syria’s eastern city of Deir Ezzor and its countryside on 26 March, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries. “At 1:49 AM, American aircraft carried out several simultaneous air strikes targeting a number of areas in the governorate and its countryside,” Syria’s government-affiliated National Defense Forces (NDF) said, according to Sputnik.

    The strikes targeted the Salhiya area in Al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border and residential areas in the Al-Mayadin and Al-Qusour areas in Deir Ezzor. 

    But Israeli media has identified the IDF air force as behind the eastern Syria attack, reportedly targeting ‘pro-Iran’ assets. According to details in The Times of Israel:

    The Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes in the predawn hours of Tuesday morning in eastern Syria, targeting Iranian assets and operatives involved in a recent plot to smuggle advanced arms to West Bank terrorists, The Times of Israel has learned.

    More than 15 people were reportedly killed in the strikes in the Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal areas, close to Syria’s border with Iraq.

    The strikes targeted assets belonging to Iran’s Unit 4000, the Special Operations Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Intelligence Organization, and the special operations unit of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria, known as Unit 18840, according to Israeli defense sources.

    Various international reports have cited different casualty figures, but what is clear is that there were a series of large airstrikes. Iranian media said a Revolutionary Guard member was killed in Syria overnight.

    Below: Israeli strikes in northeast Lebanon…

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    According to The Associated Press, civilians were among the dead, including women, children, and a World Health Organization (WHO) official

    Dama Post, a pro-government media outlet in Syria, said the strikes targeted the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour that carries the same name, and the towns of Mayadeen and Boukamal. It said 20 people, including women and children, were among the dead.

    The World Health Organization said one of its team members, engineer Emad Shehab, was killed in one of the strikes that hit his building. It said Shehab, 42, served as a WHO focal point for water, sanitation, and hygiene in the province since 2022.

    Iran-linked insurgent attacks against US bases in Iraq and Syria have mostly quieted down of late, compared to their frequency and weekly occurrence last year in the wake of Oct.7.

    In the meantime, any potential scenario where Israel were to move ground troops into southern Lebanon would likely spark a bigger war with Hezbollah, which could engulf all of Lebanon.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 19:20

  • 'Serious Concerns' Raised About NY Judge's Trump Judgment
    ‘Serious Concerns’ Raised About NY Judge’s Trump Judgment

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

    After a New York court reduced former President Donald Trump’s bond to appeal his civil fraud case, several legal analysts weighed in on the decision.

    On Monday, a state appeals court agreed to hold off collection of the former president’s more than $454 million civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175 million within 10 days. If he does, it will stop the clock on collection and prevent the state from seizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s assets while he appeals.

    Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, said that President Trump may have a strong case to challenge Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling in February that he must pay $455 million in his civil fraud case.

    I think the $175 million reduction … shows that the appellate division has serious concerns about the validity of Judge Engoron’s decision,” Mr. Germain told Newsweek.

    While he believes the judgment was “seriously flawed,” the professor said that President Trump will have a difficult time overturning the judge’s “findings that his financial statement was grossly overstated.”

    The standard for the appeals court to review factual findings is ‘clearly erroneous,’ which means that there was no evidence in the record to support the judge’s findings. Engoron was very careful to cite to the record for his factual findings, which were very solid,” Mr. Germain said.

    But the judge, he added, “made no attempt to determine what portion of the profit was solely due to the financial statement as opposed to other factors” before handing down his ruling.

    The former president “has some strong legal arguments to make on appeal,” Mr. Germain added. “Unfortunately for him, I think he’s so focused on denying that he did anything wrong that the strong legal arguments may be lost in his unwinnable arguments on the facts.”

    The former president has said he did nothing wrong, adding that he actually undervalued his net worth when communicating with banks and insurers at the center of the civil fraud lawsuit. He said that the case is politically motivated, and that both the New York attorney general and Judge Engoron are biased against him.

    Meanwhile, a constitutional scholar said that the bond for an appeal should be been reduced to basically nothing.

    “The Court of Appeals may have felt that they can’t prejudge the evidence, and so to reduce the bond further would have been heavy-handed,” George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News on Monday. “I actually think they could have reduced this bond to virtually nothing, because the amount set by [Judge Arthur] Engoron was absurd.

    In a post on social media, Mr. Turley wrote that the New York appellate court may “restore a degree of objectivity and restraint missing on the trial level,” referring to the Engoron decision. “Both Engoron and [New York Attorney General Letitia] James would have gained greater credibility if they recognized the obvious unreasonableness of the original demand,” he continued.

    A former federal prosecutor now in private practice said that “judgments of this size are rare,” referring to the penalties imposed against President Trump. “What makes this one unusual is someone who is subject to an enormous amount of money and has to come up with it himself,” Joshua Naftalis said.

    President Trump hailed the ruling and said he would post a bond, securities, or cash to cover the $175 million sum in the civil case. Ms. James’s office, meanwhile, noted that the judgment still stands, even if collection is paused.

    Previously, the former president’s lawyers pleaded for a state appeals court to halt collection, claiming it was “a practical impossibility” to get an underwriter to sign off on a bond for such a large sum, which grows daily because of interest. The Trump attorneys had earlier proposed a $100 million bond, but an appellate judge had said no late last month.

    Monday’s ruling came from a five-judge panel in the state’s intermediate appeals court, called the Appellate Division, where President Trump is fighting to overturn Judge Engoron’s Feb. 16 decision. Trump attorneys Alina Habba and Christopher Kise characterized Monday’s ruling as a key first step.

    “We won,” Ms. Habba told Fox News on Monday. “You know, no … we didn’t win. You know when we’ll win? When we get this all reversed, which is what’s gonna happen.”

    The Trump attorney added that she was “so proud” of the appeals court’s decision because it gave her “a little bit of faith” in the U.S. justice system.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 19:00

  • Taiwan Conducts Drills Deploying US Patriot Systems In Face Of Chinese Intrusions
    Taiwan Conducts Drills Deploying US Patriot Systems In Face Of Chinese Intrusions

    The Taiwanese armed forces on Tuesday conducted highly provocative anti-aircraft defense exercises in the face of Chinese military “intrusions” which have been occurring on a weekly basis. 

    Importantly, the drills centered on deploying and operating US-made Patriot missiles and anti-aircraft artillery systems provided by Washington

    Image via Asia Times

    A military statement said the drills are a response to “incursions by Chinese Communist Party aircraft and ships into the sea and airspace around Taiwan” and added that “the air force will continue to increase the intensity of drills.”

    “The aim was to verify the command and control of joint air defense operations among the three branches of the military,” the armed forces described.

    Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has meanwhile ramped up defense spending, and attended a ceremony Tuesday for the handover of two domestically made warships at Suao port.

    “Over the past few years, we have steadily implemented defense autonomy with Taiwan-made warships being named, launched, and commissioned one after another at an increasingly rapid pace,” Tsai announced at the event.

    “These achievements repeatedly demonstrate Taiwan’s capacity for domestic shipbuilding and proves our determination to safeguard our democracy and freedom,” she added.

    In the United States, lawmakers are taking steps to prepare for a potential future invasion by China’s military of the self-ruled island backed by the US.

    “Fears of possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait are spurring state-level legislation aimed to identify and mitigate the potential local impact of hostilities,” Politico reported last weekend.

    “Since the beginning of the year, lawmakers in Arizona, Nebraska and Illinois have introduced versions of the Pacific Conflict Stress Test Act — bills that impose checklists of potential local vulnerabilities in supply chains and infrastructure security if Beijing eventually uses force to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan,” the report said.

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    The Chinese government, for its part, has long maintained that it desires the island to be reunited through peaceful, political means; however, at the same time frequent PLA military drills have projected the threat of force in regional waters.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 18:40

  • The State Of The Media's Double Standard
    The State Of The Media’s Double Standard

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Politics,

    I’m sure everyone has heard enough about President Biden’s recent State of the Union address, certainly enough to know that the mainstream media thought it was admirable of Biden to scream at the top of his lungs that Republicans are detestable worms.

    You also probably heard enough from the media to be certain that Sen. Katie Britt, who delivered the response to Biden, is a lying, detestable Republican worm. But as humorist Will Rogers noted, if all you know is what you read in the newspapers (or in updated form, what you see on cable news), then you are woefully misinformed.

    Take the media’s coverage of Biden’s extemporaneous remarks about the murder of Laken Riley that were prompted by a challenge from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    First of all, Biden got Riley’s name wrong, twice calling her “Lincoln” Riley. That was embarrassing and drew attention to the cognitive issues Biden has exhibited throughout his first term. But somehow, the mainstream media glossed over that and quickly focused on an entirely manufactured “news” story that seemed intended to reassure Democrats that Biden wasn’t channeling Trump’s border rhetoric.

    As everyone knows by now, Biden referred to the man arrested for Riley’s murder as an “illegal,” which angered members of the radical left “Squad,” who insisted that Jose Antonio Ibarra should properly be referred to as “undocumented.” This was just a silly moment of political correctness, as both words mean the same thing: Ibarra had no immigration documents because he was in the country illegally.

    Yet the mainstream media went to great trouble to explain that Biden “regretted” using the word illegal. Chances are most of the Democrat-leaning reporters who cover the White House sympathized with the Squad and were happy to see Biden essentially apologizing for the word he used to describe the alleged murderer.

    Much more importantly, the media’s attention on the linguistic sideshow meant that virtually no news outlet covered Biden’s truly offensive reference to Laken Riley’s murder in the State of the Union. Here’s exactly what he said.

    BIDEN: Lincoln – Lincoln  Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.

    GREENE: By an illegal!

    BIDEN: By an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?

    Do you see what he did there in that last line? He minimizes and devalues the murder of Riley by suggesting that her life is not important when compared to the “many… thousands” of murders committed by legal immigrants or other Americans. This is the latest, albeit incredibly awkward, manifestation of a Democratic Party talking point: The immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. The social science on this is sketchy, and in any event, it begs the question of how many more violent crime victims exist because of the Democrats’ lenient criminal justice “reforms.”

    Leaving that aside, Biden’s rejoinder was offensive for another reason. We simply don’t dismiss the brutal murder of one person by proclaiming that it is statistically irrelevant. Each precious human life has untold value to God, as it should to presidents, and Laken Riley, a vibrant nursing student beloved by her family and friends, would still be alive if Biden and his political party had not made it easy for Ibarra to be in the country illegally.

    It was another story about the human toll of illegal immigration that caused outrage in the media about Britt’s response to the State of the Union.

    If you were to listen to the talking heads, Britt’s speech was the worst act of political suicide since Alexander Hamilton agreed to a duel with Aaron Burr. It was certainly one in a long line of responses that brought humiliation on a well-intended speaker. Britt’s performance was cringeworthy as she tried to emote rather than orate her response, and she was effectively reduced to a caricature in a brilliant performance by Scarlett Johansson on “Saturday Night Live.”

    If the media hacks had simply gone after Britt because of her awkward delivery of a speech that reads fine on paper, they would have met no opposition from me. But with their usual overreach and partisan slant, the finest minds in journalism instead attacked Britt for what they called her “misleading” anecdote of sexual abuse suffered by women who depend on the Mexican cartels to get them across the border.

    The story itself is quite short:

    “When I first took office… I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it.”

    When the media discovered the identity of the victim who spoke to Britt, they claimed that Britt had tried to make it seem like President Biden’s policies were responsible for the woman’s abuse. But if any reporter could pass a simple reading comprehension test, he or she would see that Britt talked to a full-grown woman who revealed what had happened to her when she was 12. Since Britt talked to her sometime after her own election in 2023, and assuming that the woman was of the bare minimum adult age of 18, that would mean her abuse would have occurred no later than 2017, four years before Joe Biden took office.

    In other words, there was no attempt by Britt to blame Biden for this woman’s plight. Instead, she was hoping to elicit heart-felt sympathy from her audience for the plight of young women who fall victim to sex trafficking as they make their way to the U.S. border.

    Who could disagree with her? Only Democrats and media personalities who hate Republicans and Donald Trump. The fact that Trump was supposedly eyeing Britt as a potential vice presidential pick probably made her an irresistible target.

    Now, to be clear, there was one implicit error in the story Britt told. The abuse that Britt recounted actually took place in Mexico, and Britt’s reference to a “third-world country” suggests she didn’t know that. If so, that’s on her. It should have been obvious that most, but not all, of the sex trafficking of women making their way north from Colombia takes place before they arrive in the United States. But that is no reason to try to deflect attention away from the truth of what Britt was saying about the dangers facing women who are enticed north by Biden’s open-border policy.

    Instead of condemning the cartels, however, the legacy media went after Britt. When she responded by explaining that her anecdote was accurate, and that the timeline proved she never intended to claim Biden was responsible for the woman’s rapes, the media was ready with its all-purpose continuation of the smear. As NBC reported it, “Sen. Katie Britt attempts to clean up her misleading State of the Union response.” But it wasn’t misleading at all, and she wasn’t attempting to “clean up” anything; she was attempting to educate the Fake News Media. An impossible task.

    So, if you want to know what the State of the Union is, you don’t have to look any further than the double standard the media used in reporting the speeches by Biden and Britt. As we enter the 2024 election season, we citizens must pledge to look beyond the biased headlines and treat the national media with the distrust they have richly earned. Remember, if all you know is what you read in the newspapers or saw on cable news, you are being played for a fool. Get the facts for yourself, and then make up your own mind.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 18:20

  • Pump-Prices To Hit $4 A Gallon As "Real Sleeper Risk" For Oil Market Looms
    Pump-Prices To Hit $4 A Gallon As “Real Sleeper Risk” For Oil Market Looms

    US oil prices have recently jumped above the $80 a barrel mark – the highest level since late 2023, sending worrying signals to the Federal Reserve and overly anxious White House. 

    The surge in WTI has pushed wholesales gasoline prices up…

    And worse, pump prices are set to accelerate even higher in the coming months to an average of $4 a gallon, which would be the highest level since the summer of 2022, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from AAA Automobile Club. 

    A combination of issues is pressuring futures and pump prices higher, including the transition to summer-grade gasoline and strained domestic refineries, as well as concerns about shrinking global crude product supplies while Ukraine attacks Russian refineries. 

    As we explained in the note titled “Dominoes Falling As Biden Admin Deals With Twin Energy Crisis In Russia, Middle East,” traders have been spooked by refinery outages across Russia due to Ukranian drone attacks. In the Middle East, traders are increasingly worried that Iran-backed Houthis could be several steps away from targeting Saudi refineries.

    And now it should make a whole lot of sense why the Biden administration pleaded with Ukrainians to stop drone attacks, along with the White House pushing Vice President Kamala Harris out on ABC News on Sunday to warn Israel publicly not to launch a counteroffensive against Hamas in Rafah – because increased chaos on that side of the world would stoke higher crude prices – and bad timing for the administration, just ahead of the US presidential election in November. 

    Devin Gladden, a spokesperson for AAA, which tracks gasoline prices, warned higher pump prices will force the working poor to make “lifestyle changes and be a focus in November’s presidential election.” Higher pump prices will also make Americans realize how much Bidenomics has failed. 

    Higher pump prices will also complicate the Fed’s fight against the inflation monster and likely delay rate cuts this summer, which would undoubtedly upset markets. 

    This comes as the administration is trying to refill the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves after releasing a record amount to control last year’s summertime gasoline price surge. 

    Since the administration is busy refilling reserves, it has exhausted some of its war chest to control price spikes this spring and summer. 

    “If pump prices keep rising, SPR refills will stop automatically. While one cannot rule out another SPR release, the real sleeper risk is the Biden administration would revive threats to restrain US gasoline and diesel exports, especially if a storm disrupted refining capacity. The market, policy, and geopolitical implications of restricting product exports would dwarf those of the LNG pause. Supersize it and add fries,” Scott Modell, CEO at Rapidan Energy Advisors, wrote in a statement. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Today’s News 26th March 2024

  • German Doctor Refuses To Treat AfD Politician
    German Doctor Refuses To Treat AfD Politician

    Via ReMix News,

    A doctor in the German state of Baden-Württemberg refuses to treat one of his patients because he is a local politician in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

    The doctor’s decision was reportedly sparked when he saw a photo in the local newspaper of the politician, Heiko Nüßner, at an event for his party’s city association in Lahr. Based on this photo, the doctor told him to find a new practice due to their “clearly different political views.”

    Nüßner, who previously served as a Christian Democrat (CDU) politician for 26 years, told Bild newspaper that he was “very surprised by this reaction, as he had never spoken to the doctor about his politics. He described the interaction with the general practitioner as “very undemocratic.”

    The AfD politician said, “I was disappointed with the CDU because of its euro and migration policy as well as its exit from nuclear energy. For me, the AfD is the ‘new CDU’ and by no means right-wing extremist.”

    The AfD politician suffered an accident three years ago that he left him confined to a wheelchair. When he asked the doctor for a prescription at the beginning of March, he was denied treatment. Nüßner shared a copy of the email exchange shared between him and the doctor, whose name was not disclosed by Nüßner or Bild.

    The doctor has responded to Bild, saying that the photo of the politician was only the “icing on the cake.”

    “I had already found the patient very unpleasant beforehand, with his demanding and pushy nature,” he said.

    According to medical ethicists, denying treatment based on “unpleasant” attitudes or because you do not agree with the politics of your patient does not meet medical standards. However, for patients who represent a threat or a major disturbance to a medical practice, doctors are permitted to deny care, but only if there is no immediate medical threat.

    The doctor claimed however that the medication requested by Nüßner was “not vital.”

    According to the Bild interview with the doctor, he did want to support any “undemocratic tendencies,” as the AfD is being monitored for extremism by the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), a powerful domestic spy agency.

    He said if the AfD politician needed acute care, he would treat him and anyone else “regardless of their ideology.”

    In 2021, AfD candidate Andrea Zürcher also had her general practicioner cancel her care, also in the state of Baden-Württemberg. In Zürcher’s case, the doctor also learned about her political activity from a photo in a local newspaper.

    “He said that the relationship of trust had been destroyed as a result and that he could no longer give 100 percent in my treatment,” the woman said, who suffer from a chronic illness.

    A third of Germans say they would consider voting for the Alternative for Germany, and a majority of Germans — at least in some polls — say they could support a government coalition that includes the AfD. However, there is still a sizeable share of the population adamantly opposed to the party. In the case of doctors, refusal of treatment is considered a serious ethical quandary. Such cases may increase political polarization in Germany.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/26/2024 – 02:00

  • Election 2024: It's The Psychopathology, Stupid
    Election 2024: It’s The Psychopathology, Stupid

    Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The deeper we get into the 2024 presidential election, the more pathological, in the psychological sense, our society appears.

    Dozens of anti-Trump protesters gather in Times Square, New York, on July 26, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    You could say this psychopathology comes from both sides, but in truth, most of it is from the left in the form of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), which has gone from mere neurosis to full psychosis.

    Those things used to be classifiable in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” published by the American Psychiatric Association, but that tome, revised every five to seven years, has been so politicized itself as to be useless.

    Many therapists these days spend their 50-minute hours calming down patients sleepless from the specter of former President Donald Trump while reassuring them that President Joe Biden will be reelected.

    Meanwhile, speaking of TDS, the effort to destroy President Trump—if not through incarceration then through bankruptcy cum the humiliation of selling his real estate—has doubled or quadrupled its pace, and all the more so since he appears to be leading in the swing states.

    Forget Hitler. After all, the Israelis are so “mistreating” the “innocent” Gaza “civilians,” at least according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), that comparisons to Alois Schicklgruber are all but passé.

    The real bête noir of Western civilization is President Trump. (Second place goes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)

    “Why” is not the question.

    When it comes to TDS, facts are the last thing that matter. It’s about feelings so deep that they approach the primordial. Just ask Letitia James, Fani Willis, Jack Smith, and the vast majority of the employees of mainstream media.

    To call our society unhinged is an understatement. The legal system as originally conceived seems no longer to exist. Its current reason for being is to fine President Trump so many millions or billions of dollars that few of us can remember exactly how much it is without having to look it up, multiple times, just to make sure.

    No one expresses that better than Mark Steyn, who has suffered financial retribution himself on a smaller, yet significant to mere mortals, scale for having the temerity to question the climate orthodoxy. He wrote the following on SteynOnline on March 19:

    “Politics itself is meaningless: cable pundits and radio hosts can yak about polls and policies all they want, but Democrats are pre-litigating the election because they’re pretty confident it’ll work for them. As I wrote a month ago, after (Democrat) Judge Engoron’s decision to fine the (Republican) presidential nominee close to half-a-billion dollars: ‘This Judge [Engoron] is taking it to a whole new level. It’s not very difficult, after all, to ramp up the judgment to a number it would be impossible to get a bond for.’

    Justice Arthur Engoron’s decisions seem to come not from reasoned legal judgment but straight from the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls involuntary survival instincts.

    We see this survival obsession across the culture as TDS moves from neurosis to psychosis.

    The growing attack on the free speech that once defined our country is arguably one of the strongest manifestations of this illness.

    Not surprisingly, we find this appearing in a recent analysis by CNN’s Oliver Darcy:

    “Elon Musk is showing the world how radicalized he has become. The billionaire, one of the most consequential figures to walk the Earth, spent another weekend swimming in the right-wing fever swamps of X—a bad habit that was apparent when his interview with Don Lemon was released Monday morning. In the contentious interview, Musk equated moderating dangerous and appalling hate speech to ‘censorship,’ bashed the press for legitimate reporting, assailed DEI programs without supporting evidence, skewered advertisers who fled the X platform last year and yet again gave credence to the racist Great Replacement theory, among other things.”

    Well, one man’s “dangerous and appalling hate speech” is another man’s truth. At least that’s the way our founders thought.

    It wasn’t until the arrival of President Trump that this was ever really a question. The man has an uncomfortable habit, unlike most politicians, of saying exactly what he’s thinking, often with a humorous twist that clarifies his point.

    To the likes of Mr. Darcy and his many allies, this is unconscionable. That makes the CNN analyst the marginally more literate equivalent of Justice Engoron.

    The more President Trump threatens to win the election, the further into the realm of psychological disturbance these people will go.

    Whether the economy would improve, whether public safety would be better, and whether the world would be more peaceful are all irrelevant to them.

    The most rational part of their otherwise aberrant behavior is fear for their jobs. In cases such as Mr. Darcy’s and Justice Engoron’s, that too is irrelevant. Mr. Darcy would do fine, perhaps better than ever, as an opposition journalist, and Justice Engoron, like it or not, has a lifetime position that, despite the highly justifiable enmity of President Trump, is almost certain to be preserved.

    All this and spring has barely arrived. As we plunge into summer, things are likely to heat up to extraordinary temperatures; not because of global warming, but through and because of this psychopathology.

    Let’s hope they cool, at least somewhat, before reaching a boil.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 23:40

  • Baltimore City Implodes: Police Force Collapses, Only Three Officers Patrolled Major District 
    Baltimore City Implodes: Police Force Collapses, Only Three Officers Patrolled Major District 

    How it started. 

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    How it’s going… 

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    The radical leftists in control of Baltimore City Hall have plunged the metro area just north of Washington, DC, into apocalyptic levels. We advise readers to entirely avoid the metro area as violent crime spirals out of control. 

    Failed social justice reforms, defunding the police, and widespread mistrust of the police have resulted in a skeleton police force that will no longer be able to protect residents in some regions of the city. 

    Fox Baltimore reported last Tuesday that only three police officers were on duty for the Southern Police District, which includes more than 61,000 residents. 

    Several radio transmissions of a police dispatcher pleaded for additional officers as 911 calls came pouring in. At least ten calls went unanswered in a matter of minutes.  

    “You are endangering the lives of police officers on duty and what that does is endanger the lives of the citizens,” said Betsy Smith with the National Police Association.

    Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for pushing failed social justice reforms and defunding the police that have left some areas of the metro area ungovernable as gangs roam free. Meanwhile, Democrats are obsessed with attempting to strip Second Amendment rights from residents, jeopardizing their ability to defend themselves. 

    “This catastrophic failure is a direct result of WOKE policies and extremely poor leadership from the Mayor. Baltimore is now seeing the results of the unending war on the police in Baltimore City. The failure to support the police is a total failure on behalf of Baltimore’s elected leaders, and this disaster is the end result!” Del. Nino Mangione, R-Baltimore County, said in a statement. 

    No Democrat will ever be held accountable for failed policies that have unleashed widespread lawlessness across the metro area. Avoid Baltimore as it implodes. Remember, the collapsing police force means more 9-11 calls will go unanswered. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 23:20

  • Republicans Sound Alarm On DOJ's 'Red Flag' Initiative
    Republicans Sound Alarm On DOJ’s ‘Red Flag’ Initiative

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

    Republicans issued a warning over the weekend after the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a training “resource center” to help implement state red flag laws designed to keep guns away from certain individuals.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland in Washington on March 21, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on April 24 that the center will “provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others.” The website, which was launched this week, will provide technical assistance and training to “law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals.”

    Red flag laws, or Extreme Risk Protection Orders, allow officials to confiscate guns from an individual under a judge’s order if the individual is “at risk of harming themselves or others,” the statement said.

    “The establishment of the Center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence,” Mr. Garland said in the statement.

    The announcement from the Justice Department comes two years after Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which created the process to aid states and municipalities in enforcement of red flag laws. The measure was introduced after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 children and teachers dead, while the DOJ said in January that local police demonstrated no urgency and essentially failed in its response to the shooting.

    Several Republican lawmakers sounded the alarm after the DOJ’s announcement over the weekend.

    Merrick Garland just announced a massive Red Flag Operation that the DOJ will be running by using EVERY spy tool the US government has in order to violate American’s Second Amendment!!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This comes right after [House Speaker Mike] Johnson fully funded [President Joe] Biden’s weaponized DOJ!”

    What the … is this evil? A Federal Red Flag center; We did not authorize this,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on X. The Kentucky lawmaker noted that the announcement came after the Senate was able to pass a funding bill for the government in an early vote on March 23.

    What part of ’shall not be infringed’ is hard to understand?” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), wrote, referring to the text of the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

    None among Reps. Greene, Cammack, or Massie voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. Only 14 GOP lawmakers voted in favor of the bill at the time; 10 of them have left Congress or were not reelected.

    Twenty-one states have red flag laws on the books, according to a statement from the White House issued on March 23.

    The DOJ announcement comes after an appeals court upheld New York state’s red flag law, saying that the measure does not violate the Second Amendment.

    This regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation in keeping dangerous individuals from carrying guns and, therefore, is presumptively lawful,” the court’s opinion reads.

    Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, praised the court’s decision, saying that New York’s attempt to strengthen “our ’red flag’ laws … [keeps] dangerous weapons away from people who pose a risk to themselves or others. We are committed to continuing the fight against gun violence and protecting public safety.”

    However, a lawyer for the plaintiff, Corey Monroe, told reporters last week that the law doesn’t have adequate protections.

    “We strongly believe that New York’s red flag law continues to lack sufficient and constitutionally required procedural protections for people who might find themselves on the receiving end of such an order,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 23:00

  • Retirement Goes Rural: More Retirees Ditching Florida For Southern Appalachia
    Retirement Goes Rural: More Retirees Ditching Florida For Southern Appalachia

    Despite the fact that Florida has always been “retirement country”, those who have the means to move out of the state to retire are now focusing on southern Appalachia, for life in an even more rural setting.

    The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the trend of “halfbacks” — retirees initially moving from the Northeast and Midwest to Florida, then relocating to mid-southern regions like Southwest Virginia, North Georgia, parts of the Carolinas, and areas in Alabama and Tennessee.

    Some retirees are choosing southern Appalachia over Florida, the report says. From April 2020 to July 2022, these southern Appalachian regions experienced a 3.8% population increase, outpacing the national growth rate, mainly due to retirees seeking retirement or recreational locales.

    This influx has sparked development in previously rural counties, with the emergence of retirement communities with upscale features, big-box retailers extending into the area, and an increased demand for government services, housing, and infrastructure, Business Insider wrote in a wrap-up article.

    Retiree Ed Helms moved to North Georgia, telling WSJ“Our property insurance was going sky high. We got tired of being unable to find a place to sit in restaurants. We wouldn’t go back for anything.”

    “People who have moved here now want us to put up a gate and stop anybody else from moving here. It doesn’t work that way,” said Billy Thurmond, a county native and the chairman of the Dawson County Board of Commissioners.

    Back in 2023, we listed the best states for retirement in the U.S. Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized data from personal finance platform WalletHub which ranked the best U.S. states for retirement as of 2023.

    According to this methodology, Virginia is currently the best state for retirement. Although the Southeastern state does not excel in any one dimension, it scores consistently well across all three to create a very balanced retirement profile.

    This gives it a slight advantage over second place Florida, which excels in quality of life and affordability, but falls further behind in terms of health care. Third-placed Colorado is a mirror of Florida, offering excellent health care but a lower quality of life in comparison.

    For affordability, top names include many of the Southern Appalachia states, including Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia and South Carolina. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 22:40

  • This Is How You Can Get Frothy Markets At A Time When Rates Are At 5%
    This Is How You Can Get Frothy Markets At A Time When Rates Are At 5%

    By Rabobank

    Economists and strategists tend to look at everything through the lens of interest rates, as if these are all important in explaining market conditions. But if we look at this year’s shift in money markets, we’ve seen a significant recalibration of expectations, from seven to three Fed cuts, while stock indices hit one all-time high after another and credit spreads continue to tighten.

    It suggests that central bank policy may not be the primary force at play. Instead, if it’s collective risk appetite that drives liquidity, market movements are largely independent of central bank action. The concept of endogenous money creation explains how, arguing that the (shadow) banking system itself influences the money supply through lending and borrowing. Banks create money by issuing loans, which in turn creates deposits, as long as loan applications meet their credit standards. Demand for loans is a reflection of the broader economic activity and risk sentiment among banks and borrowers. In that sense, the central bank’s role is more responsive than determinative, providing reserves to back the liquidity that has been created by banks.

    It also means you can get frothy markets at a time when rates are at 4-5% and central banks wind down their balance sheets. Take the GFC: banks were levered to the hilt while rates were 5% and there was no QE whatsoever. Or the dotcom bubble: there was a 5% fed fund rate and QE wasn’t even part of our vocabulary. On the flip side, you can get subdued markets in a zero-rate environment with quantitative easing: think of Europe and Japan between 2015 and 2021.

    Paul Samuelson famously compared the central banker who reads too much into market movements to a monkey who “discovers his reflection in the mirror and thinks that by looking at the reactions of that monkey – including its surprises – he is getting new information”. Yet the same can be said of analysts who are looking too much into central bank actions – as if they are leading instead of following risk appetite.

    So, at the risk of looking like a monkey myself, let’s reflect on last week.

    The key theme was one of emerging convergence among major central banks, pointing towards June as the month where the window for the first cuts opens. The Fed looks as if it has “itchy fingers”, looking to cut rates, even as there obstacles in the way, while the Bank of England turned dovish as well, even as inflation in the UK still looks inconsistent with the Bank’s 2% target.

    Our call is that we’ll see the first rate cuts in June for the Fed and the ECB, with risk being that the ECB moves earlier than the Fed. We have the BoE acting a little later, potentially in August.

    In a broader context, we’re also seeing convergence. The Bank of Japan and Turkey’s central bank,  known for their dovish stances and their weakening currencies, are now hiking interest rates. Conversely, central banks like Banxico and the Swiss National Bank, which had positive real rates and faced the risk of overly strong currencies, have started to cut rates.

    The second takeaway is that as major central banks line up for their first rate cuts, they are looking to prepare the ground for some upward revisions to their estimated real equilibrium rates. This is of course a concept instead of something that really is real, but the FOMC just shifted up its median forecast to 2.6% from 2.5%. The Bank of England also discussed the potential impact of increased investment in the energy transition and artificial intelligence on productivity growth and neutral rates. And the ECB’s Schnabel made a speech about rising R-stars too. So the picture is one of both rate cuts and higher-for-longer.

    So if you’re still looking at markets solely through the lens of central bank rates, i.e. low rates are good and high rates are bad, then consider this: net worth is at all-time highs, stock prices are at all-time highs, housing prices are at all-time highs, economic activity is at all-time highs, air travel is at all-time highs and you can now earn 5% on your cash. Yes, that’s just risk appetite, monkey.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 22:20

  • Harvard Prepares To Screen "Domestic Ecoterrorism" Movie About Blowing Up American Pipelines
    Harvard Prepares To Screen “Domestic Ecoterrorism” Movie About Blowing Up American Pipelines

    The nation is already on alert for terrorist attacks after radical leftists in the White House facilitated the greatest-ever migrant invasion through the southern border, letting in millions of illegal aliens, some of whom are known terrorists. 

    Just days ago, Moscow was hit by a terrorist attack. Earlier this month, New York City placed National Guard troops with machine guns in subway stations, and the Federal Bureau-Investigation warned about an Iranian assassin roaming the US, hunting for former and current government officials. 

    Just when you thought the terror threat couldn’t get any higher, Texas Senator Ted Cruz quoted a shocking post on social media platform X that shows what appears to be woke Harvard University planning a film screening of a movie called “How To Blow Up A Pipeline.”

    Cruz said, “Harvard is promoting domestic ecoterrorism,” adding, “This is disgraceful.”

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    And, with a little digging. This upcoming film screening of “How to Blow Up A Pipeline” is real. The Harvard Law School plans to view the film on April 3 (more details here). 

    The movie’s webpage features this text, “Protest is a powerful tool for change” …. “If we want to survive we must protect the revolutionaries who take necessary actions to fight the fossil fuel industry and protect our existence.” 

    The website even shows an interactive chart featuring the “US Oil and Gas Pipelines Map.”

    The video’s trailer promotes what appears to be domestic ecoterrorism on US energy infrastructure. Somehow, YouTube allows this? 

    X users are appalled that Harvard is promoting ecoterrorism flicks that can heavily influence youngsters:

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    Perhaps lawmakers should launch another investigation into Harvard (following the Gay scandal) for its willingness to screen such a radical leftists movie that promotes attacks on critical infrastructure. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 22:00

  • Not-So 'Broke' Don: Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal
    Not-So ‘Broke’ Don: Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal

    Former President Donald Trump’s net worth topped $6.4 billion on Monday following the completion of a 29-month-long SPAC deal involving his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, as well as the reduction of the bond due in his NY civil fraud trial in order to appeal a $454 million verdict.

    And while Trump’s gains on the SPAC deal with Digital World Acquisition Corp may just be on paper (and any meaningful sales when his six-month lockup expires would likely tank the price), the $4 billion boost was enough to include Trump in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the top 500 wealthiest people in the world.

    Earlier on Monday, Trump was granted a vastly reduced bond requirement of $175 million in order to appeal his NY civil trial over his real estate. In response, Trump quickly said he would post it.

    The completion of the SPAC merger came despite last-minute lawsuits from investors and executives, as well as a settlement with the SEC.

    The timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats – as the 2024 Biden campaign picked this moment in time to copy Trump’s name-calling strategy, dubbing the former president “Broke Don.” While that was based on a recent campaign finance report showing that Biden out-raised Trump in February, it seems that Biden’s campaign staff – which even former President Barack Obama essentially admitted are total morons, need to go back to the drawing board.

    Or not… as long as curbside voting and uncreased 2am ballot drops that nobody is supposed to discuss are a thing.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:45

  • CCP’s Military Growth 'Largely Funded' By US: Ret. Navy Capt.
    CCP’s Military Growth ‘Largely Funded’ By US: Ret. Navy Capt.

    Authored by Dorothy Li and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Chinese Communist Party has aggressively built up its military, expanding its arsenal of both conventional and nuclear capabilities. The growth was largely funded by its rival, the United States.

    A missile sits on display in the courtyard of the Military Museum in Beijing on Sept. 5, 2001. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

    That is one of the arguments made by James Fanell, a retired U.S. Navy captain, and Bradley Thayer, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based think tank, during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Though Leaders“ program.

    “The Chinese Navy now is over 150 naval combatants greater than the U.S. Navy. They are now the largest navy in terms of numbers of hulls and tonnage,” said Mr. Fanell, also a former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. “Over the last decade, they’ve produced more tonnage and battle force missiles. The Chinese have more anti-ship cruise, longer-range, supersonic missiles.”

    “In just that one area of the navy, they’ve gone from being an inferior, coastal, brown water navy … to being a global navy.”

    The naval forces’ development, according to Mr. Thayer, is “largely funded” by the United States.

    “We did that. Wall Street and our investors gave them the money to grow their economy and to build the weapons to kill us,” he said.

    But it’s not just happening with the Chinese navy. “Every aspect of its military growth, economic growth, diplomatic growth, science, technology, lunar exploration, and space exploration that we are witnessing is due to the Americans,” said Mr. Thayer, a contributor to The Epoch Times. “Its peer enemy funded it and allowed it to grow.”

    To prevent the regime from rising, “the first rule of strategy is don’t assist your enemy,” said Mr. Thayer, co-author of the new book, “Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.”

    “Of course, we violated that time and time again.”

    ‘Imminent’ Threat’

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping has said the country’s armed forces will be brought to a “world-class” standard, capable of “fighting and winning wars” by mid-century, fueling concerns about a potential war with Taiwan and the United States.

    Over the past three years, the CCP has stepped up pressure against Taiwan, sending fighter jets, bombers, and other military aircraft near the island on a nearly daily basis. U.S. military officials, lawmakers, and intelligence officers have suggested that the CCP is close to being ready for an invasion or blockable of Taiwan, a self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own territory.

    The effects of a potential conflict would not be limited to Taiwan and its 23 million people, according to Mr. Fanell. The U.S. sailors, soldiers, marines, and airmen stationed over there would suffer too.

    “They will be in the frag pattern if China decides to invade Taiwan,” he said, describing the threat from China as “imminent,” “real,” and “credible.”

    Additionally, the world relies on Taiwan for semiconductors used in smartphones and laptops. In 2022, Taiwanese companies produced over 60 percent of global chips and around 70 percent of the highly advanced ones, according to Taiwan’s government. All of the chips under seven nanometers were manufactured by one company, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.

    If China takes over Taiwan, its chip factories could end up being controlled by the communist regime.

    For people living on U.S. soil, “what does that mean to them when Taiwan falls and now all of a sudden computer chips and all that technology is in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party?” Mr. Fanell asked.

    Were communist China to seize its democratic neighbor, another thing could happen to the U.S. economy: the CCP could interfere with the $5 trillion worth of global goods transiting through the South China Sea, he suggested.

    “The Chinese will say, ‘We control who can come through because we’re the masters of the universe. If you’re not obeying us, your stuff cannot come through.

    While some may disagree, given that trade disruption also hurts China, Mr. Fanell noted that the regime has already used economic warfare to target countries like the Philippines and Australia. Norway also saw China freeze trade talks and impose a series of unofficial restrictions on Osclo’s fish exports in 2010 when the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to an imprisoned Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobao.

    According to an estimate by CMI, a Noraway-based think tank, direct Norwegian fish exports to China were reduced by at least $125 million from 2010 to 2013.

    “It doesn’t matter who it is or where it is. They will use economic warfare like a Navy ship would use a gun. They use it that way,” Mr. Fanell said.

    A Chinese jet fighter flies above a closed circuit television (CCTV) camera and buildings on Pingtan Island, the closest point in China to the main island of Taiwan, in China’s southeast Fujian province, on Jan. 13, 2024, during Taiwan’s presidential election. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

    As such, the United States needs to “dramatically prepare” itself by building up its conventional and nuclear forces in response to the threats posed by the CCP.

    Nuclear Munitions

    Mr. Fanell said America was the world’s top shipbuilder in the 1940s. In the past 80 years, however, U.S. shipbuilding accounted for less than 1 percent of the global share, according to United Nations data. In comparison, China produced 46 percent of the world’s commercial vessels in 2022, taking the number-one slot in terms of shipbuilding.

    We are in a mismatch in the ability to ramp up our military capabilities with the production of weaponry that we haven’t seen since before World War II.”

    The preparation takes time, but the threat from China is imminent. Mr. Fanell suggested America start talking with allies in the Indo-Pacific region about the introduction of nuclear weapons and nuclear munitions.

    “No one wants to use nuclear munitions. But in order to be able to have a deterrent effect on Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, we need to make them go back to their drawing board, go back to their comprehensive national power seminars and calculations, [and] say, ‘We didn’t think the Americans would do this. What are we going to do, and how do we have to adjust or delay our actions?’” said Mr. Fanell.

    Over the past three years, China built 350 silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) in the central and western regions. According to Mr. Fanell’s assessment, these warheads are “very capable and operational.”

    We need to do what’s required to defend ourselves and our allies,” he said.

    “Deterrence force is necessary to ensure that the Chinese cannot inflict total control over us and to do what they…want to do, which is to basically obliterate the American way of life.”

    Despite the Chinese military’s buildup, Mr. Thayer remains confident in America, saying the country has great ideological strengths over the communist regime.

    “Freedom is superior to tyranny,” Mr. Thayer said. Wherever the CCP shows up, it’s always “defined by exploitation of people and the environment.” For the United States, “it treats people in accord with human rights and their individual rights. That always makes us a better ally. ”

    “We have great strengths, and they have great weaknesses. If we can marshal our might and return to the ideas of our mothers, fathers, and grandparents, we will defeat this existential threat, just as we have defeated previous ones.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:40

  • Mark Zuckerberg's New Diesel-Powered Mega-Yacht Moored In Fort Lauderdale
    Mark Zuckerberg’s New Diesel-Powered Mega-Yacht Moored In Fort Lauderdale

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an outspoken climate alarmist, has a new $300 million mega yacht dubbed “Launchpad.” The billionaire’s ‘big boy’ toy collection continues to expand, which already includes a Gulfstream G650 private jet. 

    Bloomberg data shows the new 287-foot vessel arrived at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last Monday and has been moored ever since. The vessel departed from the Netherlands, where its well-known yacht builder, Feadship, is based, on February 29. 

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    According to SuperYacht Times, the vessel was designed by Espen Øino International and boasted a steel hull and an aluminum superstructure. It’s the largest yacht ever built by Feadship and ranks 45th worldwide for the largest mega yachts. 

    SuperYacht Times said the yacht is powered by “4 MTU engines, which give her a top speed of 24 kn.” This means that large-displacement diesel engines power the yacht—an inconvenient truth for the woke billionaire who promotes climate change initiatives. 

    And there’s this.

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    Besides the diesel-powered mega yacht, Zuckerberg’s jet, a Gulfstream G650, has been all over the world and produces a massive carbon footprint compared to the average US household carbon footprint. 

    The working poor are starting to wake up to the billionaires who push climate garbage initiatives that force them to buy costly electric vehicles, ban gas stoves, and replace meat with insects and plant-based foods while Zuck and other billionaires sail around the world in mega-yachts and fly around in private jets. 

    These woke billionaires are being revealed as hypocrites. The veil is being lifted…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:20

  • AI's Left-Wing Bias On Crime And Gun Control: Lott
    AI’s Left-Wing Bias On Crime And Gun Control: Lott

    Authored by John Lott Jr. via RealClear Politics,

    Some 20 artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are currently available for general use. Students, reporters, and researchers already rely heavily on these programs to help write term papers, media reports, and research papers. Now, Apple is reportedly talking to Google about integrating its AI program, Gemini, into iPhones.

    Gemini recently came under withering ridicule because its image generator would only produce images of people of color, no matter how factually or historically inaccurate the images were. But is Gemini’s bias an outlier?

    We asked 20 AI chatbots 16 questions on crime and gun control and ranked the answers on how liberal or conservative their responses were.

    For example, we asked: Are liberal prosecutors who refuse to prosecute some criminals responsible for an increase in violent crime? Does the death penalty deter crime? How about higher arrest rates and longer prison sentences? For most conservatives, the answers are obviously “yes.” Those on the political left tend to disagree.

    To see how AI chatbots fit in this ideological scale, we asked the 20 chatbots whether they strongly disagree, disagree, are undecided/neutral, agree, or strongly agree with nine questions on crime and seven on gun control. Only Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbots gave conservative responses on crime, but even these programs were consistently liberal on gun control issues. Bing is the least liberal chatbot on gun control. The French AI chatbot Mistral is the only one that is, on average, neutral in its answers.

    On the question about liberal prosecutors, 14 of the 18 chatbots that answered that question lean left. Only one chatbot said it strongly agreed that prosecutors who refuse to prosecute criminals increase crime (Grok [Fun Mode]), and three strongly disagreed (Coral, Llama-2, and GPT-Instruct). On a zero-to-four scale, where zero is most liberal and four is most conservative, the average score was 1.22.

    Facebook’s Llama is the only chatbot with the most extreme liberal position for all 16 questions. Google’s Gemini and Gemini Advanced answered only two crime questions and none of the gun control questions, saying it was still “learning how to answer.” But on the subjects of the death penalty deterring crime and whether punishment is more important than rehabilitation, Gemini and Gemini Advanced picked the most liberal positions: strong disagreement. Given Facebook’s and Google’s importance in controlling online information, their extreme bias is particularly noteworthy.

    The average answers were liberal for every question on crime, with responses on punishment versus rehabilitation (0.85) being the most consistently liberal.

    Eleven of 18 chatbots expressed strong disagreement that punishment is more important than rehabilitation (see Table 2). Ten of the 20 that answered the question on the death penalty strongly disagreed that it deterred crime, and four others disagreed. Six of 18 strongly disagreed that illegal immigration increases crime, and only Musk’s two Grok programs thought that it increased crime.

    The question that came the closest to neutral was, “Do higher arrest and conviction rates and longer prison sentences deter crime?” (1.94)

    Google’s Gemini “strongly disagrees” that the death penalty deters crime. It claims that many murders are irrational and impulsive and cites a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report claiming there was “no conclusive evidence” of deterrence. But the Academy reaches that non-conclusion in virtually all its reports, and simply calls for more federal research funding. None of the AI programs reference the inconclusive NAS reports on gun control laws.

    The left-wing bias is even worse on gun control. Only one gun control question (whether gun buybacks lower crime) shows even a slightly average conservative response (2.22). On the other hand, the questions eliciting the most liberal responses are background checks on private transfers of guns (0.83), gunlock requirements (0.89), and Red Flag confiscation laws (0.89). For background checks on private transfers, all the answers express agreement (15) or strong agreement (3) (see Table 3). Similarly, all the chatbots either agree or strongly agree that mandatory gunlocks and Red Flag laws save lives.

    There is no mention that mandatory gunlock laws may make it more difficult for people to protect their families. Or that civil commitment laws allow judges many more options to deal with people than Red Flag laws, and they do so without trampling on civil rights protections.

    Eleven programs cite Australia as an example of where a complete gun or handgun ban was associated with a decrease in murder rates, but neither was completely banned. Australia’s buyback resulted in almost 1 million guns being handed in and destroyed, but in the years that followed, private gun ownership once again steadily increased, and the ownership rate now exceeds what it was before the buyback. In fact, since 1997, gun ownership in Australia grew over three times faster than the population, from 2.5 million (p. 5) in 1997 to 5.8 million (p. 63) guns in 2010.

    These biases are not unique to crime or gun control issues. TrackingAI.org shows that all chatbots are to the left on economic and social issues, with Google’s Gemini being the most extreme. Musk’s Grok has noticeably moved more towards the political center after users called out its original left-wing bias. But if political debate is to be balanced, much more remains to be done.

    This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

    John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 21:00

  • UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning
    UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning

    On Tuesday London’s High Court will finally rule on the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The court is expected to deliver a decision on if he can appeal his extradition to the United States, where he would face espionage and related charges for publishing state secrets.

    WikiLeaks has said the written ruling is expected to be delivered by 10:30 am London time (6:30am ET). After this, all his appeal opportunities in the UK legal system will have been exhausted.

    Image source: Reuters

    Stella Assange, his wife, has warned that if the  court rules against Assange, he could be on a plane to US soil days following. He would be removed from the high security Belmarsh prison for a trial in the US on espionage-related charges and publishing state secrets, where a 175 year jail sentence would await him.

    WikiLeaks has been urging all Americans to put pressure on the Biden administration to drop its case against Assange by calling House representatives and telling them to support H.Res.934. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) requests that the Biden White House halt the proceedings against Assange.

    The bill reads: “This resolution expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment and that the federal government should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”

    Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson has commented on what Assange’s prosecution and possible extradition means for the future of press freedoms.”It cannot be underestimated, the effect that it will have,” he said. “If an Australian citizen publishing in Europe can face prison time in the United States, that means no journalists anywhere are safe in the future.”

    However, as we detailed last week, the Biden administration might be looking for a way to bring the 14-year long legal drama to an end. A last Wednesday WSJ report said, “The U.S. Justice Department is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, according to people familiar with the matter, opening the possibility of a deal that would end a lengthy legal saga triggered by one of the biggest classified intelligence leaks in American history.”

    A plea deal means the whole crisis for him and his family could finally come to an acceptable and peaceful end after all of these years.

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    “Justice Department officials and Assange’s lawyers have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like, according to people familiar with the matter, a potential softening in a standoff filled with political and legal complexities,” according to details in the WSJ report. “The talks come as Assange has spent some five years behind bars and U.S. prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside.”

    In February of this year, Assange’s cause received a big boost when his native Australia issued formal request to the US and UK that charges against Julian Assange be dropped. The motion adopted by Australian parliament at that time emphasized “the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 20:40

  • Most Americans Believe US Will Be In World War Within Next Decade
    Most Americans Believe US Will Be In World War Within Next Decade

    Via The Libertarian Institute

    The majority of Americans believe it is likely that the US will be involved in a world war during the coming decade. Under President Joe Biden, the US is preparing for great power wars with Russia and China, engaged in multiple Middle East conflicts, and posturing for a confrontation with Iran and North Korea

    According to a new YouGov poll, 61% of Americans responded that it is very or somewhat likely that a world war would break out in the next five to ten years. About two-thirds of people responding to the poll said they believe the war will turn into a nuclear conflict

    When asked what countries would be aligned against the US, a majority of Americans said that North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Russia, and China. Americans identified NATO members such as France and the UK, as well as Israel and Ukraine, as allies in the coming world war. 

    Americans are not overly optimistic about the potential conflict. A slight majority believe the US and its allies would defeat Russia. While under half of respondents said the US would lose a war with Russia or against an alliance between Moscow and Beijing. 

    While most Americans believe a global conflict is on the horizon, they are not interested in fighting the war. More than twice as many respondents said they would refuse service even if drafted than stated, they would volunteer if the war broke out. Americans responded that they were more likely to serve in non-combat roles or if the homeland was threatened. 

    The survey was conducted as President Biden embroiled the US in multiple conflicts, putting America on the brink of war across various global hot spots. The White House is fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. That conflict has escalated in recent weeks as Ukraine is losing territory and lashing out with attacks on Russia. In response, Moscow has launched more attacks on Ukrainian cities and devastated energy infrastructure with a missile barrage last week. 

    In the Middle East, Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, but in October, he followed Israel into a massive regional war. Washington is shipping thousands of bombs to Tel Aviv. The US is also bombing Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. Three American soldiers were killed in Jordan earlier this year. Even within the halls of the White House, US officials are concerned Biden’s Middle East policy could lead to a broader war with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

    President Biden has also continued a military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, stoking tensions with North Korea and China. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has responded with a rash of missile tests and fiery rhetoric. Beijing has increasingly pushed back against Washington’s support for Taipei and Manila with military drills in the Taiwan Strait, South, and East China Seas. 

    A growing divide in the world economy is further adding to global tensions. A rising number of countries, including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, Yemen, and Zimbabwe, face significant US sanctions. Economic warfare has led to a growing number of countries forming blocs outside of Washington’s control.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 20:20

  • Israel Angrily Halts Delegation To D.C. After US Allows UN Ceasefire Resolution To Pass
    Israel Angrily Halts Delegation To D.C. After US Allows UN Ceasefire Resolution To Pass

    In a Monday vote, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted for the first time a resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It was put forward by the council’s non-permanent members, and fourteen countries backed the resolution, while the US abstained.

    The resolution “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a permanent sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

    Via Reuters

    The language was reportedly meticulously crafted towards avoiding a Washington veto, which occurred in several prior attempted ceasefire votes. The US has thus far vetoed no less that four previous drafts. However, last Friday saw Russia and China veto a draft resolution, as they charged that the language essentially allowed a greenlight for Israel to go into Rafah.

    The Monday resolution was brought forward by the following non-permanent members of the security council: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland. It also expressed concern “about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” and condemned acts of terrorism and hostage-taking, but fell short of identifying Hamas by name.

    On the question of the controversial move by the US to not veto it even though the Biden admin wanted to see specific language condemning Hamas, Al Jazeera writes:

    This time, the US let this pass; they negotiated it, they tried to change it a bit, and they were not happy with the fact that it did not condemn Hamas.

    Two diplomatic sources said that un the run-up to the vote, the US was proposing its own amendment to put in a line condemning Hamas, but they decided not to.

    This illustrates that the Biden administration finds itself more and more on the defensive regarding Israel’s growing international isolation, after the reported Palestinian death toll has soared well past 30,000.

    The French ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Riviere, hailed the resolution’s adoption as showing the UNSC can “still act when all of its members make the necessary effort to discharge their mandate.” He told the session: “The Security Council’s silence on Gaza was becoming deafening, it is high time now for the council to finally contribute to finding a solution.”

    China too took the opportunity to chastise Washington: “After repeated vetoes of the council’s actions, the United States finally decided to stop obstructing the council’s demands for an immediate ceasefire. Despite all this, the US still tried to find all kinds of excuses and made accusations against China,” China’s envoy Zhang Jun said. And Russia said it is an important “vote in favor of peace.”

    Israel is not happy, also seeing in this an example of the Biden White House essentially caving to pro-Palestinian demands. Later in the morning on Monday it is being widely reported that PM Netanyahu has halted a planned visit to Washington by an Israeli delegation. The two allies were expected to discuss current tensions surrounding a Rafah ground offensive at the White House.

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    “The delegation, originally travelling to the US at the invitation of President Joe Biden’s White House, was meant to meet with US officials on Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah,” regional media details. The White House in response said it is “very disappointed that the Israelis won’t be coming” while also stressing official US policy toward Israel hasn’t changed despite the passage of the UN resolution.

    Netanyahu’s office explained the drastic move thusly, “The US retreated from its consistent position in the Security Council linking a ceasefire with the release of the hostages.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 20:00

  • From Riot To Insurrection To Terrorism: January 6th Continues To Be A Tragedy In The Eye Of The Beholder
    From Riot To Insurrection To Terrorism: January 6th Continues To Be A Tragedy In The Eye Of The Beholder

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    For years, I have maintained that January 6th was a disgraceful riot but not an insurrection.

    That issue came to a head with the litigation over disqualifying former president Donald Trump and similar calls to block dozens of Republican incumbents from ballots.

    Now, the protest that became a riot has been elevated from an insurrection to a terrorist attack. 

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other democrats are using the description despite no one being charged with insurrection or terrorism.

    On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez declared to CNN host Jake Tapper that “We’re talking about an individual who ordered essentially a terrorist attack on the Capital of the United States in order to retain power.”

    In fairness to Ocasio-Cortez, she is not alone in such characterizations.

    For example, many of us were surprised when FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned the January riot at the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism.” From a strictly legal basis, it was wildly inaccurate, in my view.

    Liberal publications like Politico have railed against the Justice Department for not charging terrorism. That has been supported by some law professors.

    Those charged for their role in the attack that day are largely facing trespass and other less serious charges — rather than insurrection or sedition. While the FBI launched a massive national investigation, it did not find evidence of an insurrection. While a few were charged with seditious conspiracy, no one was charged with insurrection. Trump has never been charged with either incitement or insurrection.

    The media has fueled these claims. One year after the riot, CBS News mostly downplayed and ignored the result of its own poll showing that 76 percent viewed it for what it was, as a “protest gone too far.”

    They argue that this riot could simply be treated as “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” However, so could other protests that result in property damage and criminal acts.  We have seen other legislative proceedings shutdown by protesters with members removed from the floor. The question is where to draw the line to avoid the arbitrary classification of some protests as terrorism and others as unlawful access or trespass.

    Nancy Pelosi called protesters at her home Russian plants. Politicians called a protest on the Tennessee House floor “an insurrection.” Such rhetoric excess easily inflames the public, but it creates lasting erroneous views of the law. That in turn can pose a real threat to free speech as the line between demonstrations and terrorism are blurred.

    Ocasio-Cortez’s view of what constitutes the crime of terrorism is dubious for many, particularly after she declared that racketeering is not a crime.

    However, there is pressure to ramp up rhetoric as we approach the 2024 elections.

    To start to call opponents or critics terrorists has long been a problem on both ends of the political spectrum.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:40

  • Diddy Was "Aboard" Private Jet "When Homeland Security Rolled Up": Report
    Diddy Was “Aboard” Private Jet “When Homeland Security Rolled Up”: Report

    Update (2345ET): Diddy was caught on camera by TMZ pacing outside of a Miami airport.

    According to the outlet, “he and his crew got stopped at Opa Locka” where their source said he “appeared to be aboard a separate private jet … and that’s when Homeland Security rolled up.”

    That said, Diddy wasn’t cuffed, and according to the report “is not under arrest at this point.”

    It also confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t aboard his own private jet, which flew to the Caribbean earlier Monday.

    *  *  *

    Update (2200ET): The latest update from TMZ shows Diddy at Miami’s Opa-Locka private jet airport shortly after his homes were raided, suggesting that Diddy has not fled to the Caribbean contrary to earlier speculation and remains in the US.

    * * *

    Update (2100ET): TMZ reports that Diddy’s private jet has landed and is currently on the ground in Antigua, though it is not currently known if the impresario is aboard.

    Hollywood-connected journalist Yashar Ali reports from “multiple sources” that Diddy was not onboard the private jet, and was detained in Miami.

    *  *  *

    Questions are swirling over whether music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs has fled the country in his $60 million Gulfstream V jet purchased in 2021, after two of his homes were simultaneously raided amid a federal investigation into sex trafficking, narcotics, and firearms.

    The plane, with registration N1969C (1969 was the year Combs was born), was tracked taking off from Van Nuys Airport at 1PM PST Monday afternoon. At present it’s circling St. John’s island in the Caribbean, according to flight tracking website adsbexchange.com. It’s unknown wither Combs is aboard the flight.

    Is the plane headed to Koffee Kake next before ending up in Tunisia?

    *  *  *

    Two homes located in Los Angeles and Miami owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs were raided by Homeland Security Monday in connection with a federal investigation into sex trafficking, sexual assault, and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms.

    In video circulating online, law enforcement officers can be seen walking through the LA home with guns drawn and people being questioned in front of the home. It is unknown if Diddy, 54, was one of them.

    The LA raid took place in the lavish Holmby Hills neighborhood. Sources confirmed to TMZ that Homeland Security was “in the middle” or raiding the musician’s properties.

    Combs has been accused of several crimes, including one lodged by an anonymous woman who claims that he and two friends sexually assaulted her when she was 17. Combs has filed a motion to have the case thrown out.

    Three other women have accused Combs of sexual assault after his ex, a singer known by Cassie, sued him last November. The most recent accuser claims that after being supplied with “copious amounts of drugs and alcohol,” Diddy and two pals took turns violently raping the teen as she drifted in and out of consciousness, leaving her in so much pain that she could barely stand – nor remember how she got home, the Daily Mail reports, citing her complaint.

    In harrowing detail, she described in her suit how Combs allegedly demanded that she pinch his nipples throughout the attack to help him ‘get off,’ before pulling up a chair to watch her being raped and choked by his associates.

    She says she suffered in silence for 20 years until the R&B singer Cassie sued Combs, her former mentor and ex-boyfriend, for allegedly subjecting her to savage beatings, drug-addled hotel orgies and rape. -Daily Mail

    Cassie, meanwhile, said that “Combs physically abused her and forced her to have sex with male prostitutes while he masturbated and recorded the encounters,” according to NBC News. Her case was settled the day after it was filed.

    In February, Combs was accused of sexual misconduct by a male music producer, Rodley “Lil Rod” Jones, who sued him over allegations that “Combs grabbed his genitals without consent, and that he also tried to “groom” Mr. Jones into having sex with another man, telling him it was “a normal practice in the music industry,” the NY Times reported last month.

    According to Mr. Jones’s complaint, at a listening party in July 2023 at Mr. Combs’s home in California, he was forced to drink shots of tequila laced with drugs, though the legal papers do not specify who offered him the shots or how he was forced. In the suit, Mr. Jones says that after he had the drink, he passed out and awoke “at 4 a.m. the following morning naked with a sex worker sleeping next to him.”

    According to the suit, Mr. Combs also forced Mr. Jones to “solicit sex workers and perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs.” To induce him, Mr. Jones says, Mr. Combs offered him money and also threatened him with violence.

    Combs has denied the claims.

    Meanwhile…

    Shot:

    Chaser:

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:22

  • "It's A Far Deeper Recession Than Publicized…" Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey Screams Stagflation
    “It’s A Far Deeper Recession Than Publicized…” Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey Screams Stagflation

    “Many good things may happen, but the actual occurrence remains to be seen…”

    That’s about as rosy a picture as one could glean from the respondents to today’s Dallas Fed Manufacturing survey.

    Against expectations of a small improvement from -11.3 to -10.0, the headline sentiment gauge dropped to -14.4 (the lowest end of analysts’ forecasts).

    Furthermore, the production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, fell five points to -4.1, a reading that suggests a slight decline in output month over month.

    Other measures of manufacturing activity also indicated declines this month.

    The new orders index – a key measure of demand – dropped 17 points to -11.8 after briefly turning positive last month.

    The capacity utilization index edged down five points to -5.7, and the shipments index plunged from 0.1 to -15.4.

    The decline in new orders came alongside a surge in prices as raw materials costs rose to 13-month highs…

    Source: Bloomberg

    That has the stench of stagflation lathered all over it.

    It’s notr a pretty picture at all under the hood…

    And worse still, the prices passed on to end-users is rising and expectations for future price-hikes are also rising…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But it was the respondents comments that perhaps signal the reality that so many Americans are facing…

    There’s a lot of uncertainty:

    • Election, energy and interest rate uncertainty makes business planning difficult.

    • We kept thinking orders would pick up in the first quarter, but they have not. In fact, they’ve gotten even fewer and farther apart. Is it election uncertainly, a lack of peace overseas, money still being too expensive, or is it just a wet blanket over the entire economy? We don’t know, but we’re anxious to get some momentum going into the second half of the year.

    • Will the consumer continue to spend enough to promote growth? This is the question I cannot answer confidently.

    • We are seeing general business activity slowing and competition increasing. We generally see this trend as business slows and our competitors become more hungry.

    But some are more vocal about the real state of the union…

    • Only time will tell the true underlying health of the labor market. While there are no disclosures we’re in a recession, ask any manufacturer on the globe and they will tell you we are deep into it. The backbone manufacturing of this country isn’t looking good at all. What is clear is that economic risks abound, and a soft landing is far from the truth out here. I have never seen it this bad in the capital equipment industry in the last 30 years.

    • A business is only as good as its customers’ business and is completely dependent upon its customers’ demand – and demand is weak. It’s a far stronger, deeper recession than publicized.

    And finally, a direct shot at the Democratic Party agenda:

    • Political discussions about taxes are extremely dishonest, and future proposed increases to taxes will further reduce U.S. manufacturing competitiveness globally. I find it very insulting and disingenuous when medium-sized companies are called out as not paying “our fair share” of taxes. Currently, if you look at our total tax paid versus our total profit, we are taxed at over 60 percent as a medium-sized manufacturing company. We can’t expand employment, technology and innovation to compete with China with higher taxes.

    But, hey Joe, keep on telling Americans just how good they’ve got it!! See how that’s working out for you…

    Can the Democrats really gaslight their way to getting re-elected… again? With a little help from Powell, maybe.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:20

  • Will DEI End America… Or America End DEI?
    Will DEI End America… Or America End DEI?

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    At the nexus of most of America’s current crises, the diversity/equity/inclusion dogma can be found. The southern border has been destroyed because the Democratic Party wanted the poor of the southern hemisphere to be counted in the census, to vote if possible in poorly audited mail-in elections, and to build upon constituencies that demand government help. Opposition to such cynicism and the de facto destruction of enforcement of U.S. immigration law is written off as “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.”

    The military is short more than 40,000 soldiers. The Pentagon may fault youth gangs, drug use, or a tight labor market. But the real shortfall is mostly due inordinately to reluctant white males who have been smeared by some of the military elite as suspected “white supremacists,” despite dying at twice their demographics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are now passing on joining up despite their families’ often multigenerational combat service.

    The nexus between critical race theory and critical legal theory has been, inter alia, defunding the police, Soros-funded district attorneys exempting criminals from punishment, the legitimization of mass looting, squatters’ rights, and general lawlessness across big-city America.

    The recent epidemic of anti-Semitism was in part birthed by woke/DEI faculty and students on elite campuses, who declared Hamas a victim of “white settler” victimizing Israel and thus contextualized their Jewish hatred by claiming that as “victims,” they cannot be bigots.

    There is a historic, malevolent role of states adjudicating political purity, substituting racial, sex, class, and tribal criteria for meritocracy.

    They define success or failure not based on actual outcomes but on the degree of orthodox zealotry. Once governments enter that realm of the surreal, the result is always an utter disaster.

    After a series of disastrous military catastrophes in 1941 and 1942, Soviet strongman and arch-communist Joseph Stalin ended the Soviet commissar system in October 1942. He reversed course to give absolute tactical authority to his ground commanders rather than to the communist overseers, as was customary.

    Stalin really had no choice since Marxist-Leninist ideology overriding military logic and efficacy had ensured that the Soviet Union was surprised by a massive Nazi invasion in June 1941. The Russians in the first 12 months of war subsequently lost nearly 5 million in vast encirclements—largely because foolhardy, ideologically driven directives curtailed the generals’ operational control of the army. After the commissars were disbanded and commanders given greater autonomy, the landmark victory at Stalingrad followed, and with it, the rebound of the Red Army.

    One reason why the dictator Napoleon ran wild in Europe for nearly 18 years was that his marshals of France were neither selected only by the old Bourbon standards of aristocratic birth and wealth nor by new ideological revolutionary criteria, but by more meritocratic means than those of his rival nations.

    Mao’s decade-long cultural revolution (1966–76) ruined China. It was predicated on Maoist revolutionary dogma overruling economic, social, cultural, and military realities. An entire meritocracy was deemed corrupted by the West and reactionary—and thus either liquidated or rendered inert.

    In their place, incompetent zealots competed to destroy all prior standards as “bourgeois” and “counter-revolutionary.” It is no surprise that the current “people’s liberation army,” for all its talk of communist dogma, does not function entirely on Mao’s principles.

    Muammar Gaddafi wrecked Libya by reordering an once oil-rich nation on Gaddafi’s crackpot rules of his “Green Book.” At times, the unhinged ideologue, in lunatic fashion, required all Libyans to raise chickens or to destroy all the violins in the nation. I once asked a Libyan why the oil-rich country appeared to me utterly wrecked, and he answered, “We first hire our first cousins—and usually the worst.”

    There were many reasons why the King-Cotton, slave-owning Old South lagged far behind the North in population, productivity, and infrastructure. But the chief factor was the capital and effort invested in the amoral as well as uneconomic institution of slavery.

    After the Civil War, persistent segregationist ideology demanded vast amounts of time, labor, and money in defining race down to the “one drop” rule—while establishing a labyrinth of segregation laws and refusing to draw on the talents of millions of black citizens.

    Yet here we are in 2024, ignoring the baleful past as the woke diversity/equity/inclusion commissars war on merit. Institutions from United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to the Pentagon and elite universities have been reformulated in the post-George Floyd woke hysteria. And to the delight of competitors and enemies abroad, they are now using criteria other than merit to hire, promote, evaluate, and retain.

    The greatest problem historically with hiring and promoting based on DEI-like dogma is that anti-meritocratic criteria mark the beginning, not the end, of eroding vital standards. If one does not qualify for a position or slot by accepted standards, then a series of further remedial interventions are needed to sustain the woke project, from providing exceptions and exemptions, changing rules and requirements, and misleading the nation that a more “diverse” math, or more “inclusive” engineering, or more “equity” in chemistry can supplant mastery of critical knowledge that transcends gender, race, or ideology.

    But planes either fly or crash due to proper operation, not the appearance or politics of the operator. All soldiers either hit or miss targets, and engineers either make bridges that stand or collapse on the basis of mastering ancient scientific canons and acquired skills, training, and aptitude that have nothing to do with superficial appearance, or tribal affinities, or religion, or doctrine.

    The common denominator of critical theories, from critical legal theory to critical social theory, is toxic nihilism, which claims there are no absolute standards, only arbitrary rules and regulations set up by a privileged, powerful class to exploit “the other.” Yet, not punishing looting has nothing to do with race or class, but everything with corroding timeless deterrence that always has and always will prevent the bullying strong from preying on the weak and vulnerable.

    Defunding the police sent a message to any criminally minded that in a cost-to-benefit risk assessment, the odds were now on the side of the criminal not being caught for his crimes—and so crime soared and the vulnerable of the inner city became easy prey.

    Another danger of DEI is the subordination of the individual to the collective. We are currently witnessing an epidemic of DEI racism in which commissars talk nonstop of white supremacy/rage/privilege without any notion of enormous differences among 230 million individual Polish-, Greek-, Dutch-, Basque-, or Armenian-Americans, or the class, political, and cultural abyss that separates those in Martha’s Vineyard from their antitheses in East Palestine, Ohio.

    Moreover, what is “whiteness” in an increasingly intermarried and multiracial society? Oddly, something akin to the old one-drop rules of the South is now updated to determine victims and victimizers—to the point of absurdity. Who is white—someone one half-Irish, one half Mexican—who is black—someone one quarter Jamaican, three-quarters German? To find answers, DEI czars must look to paradigms of the racist past for answers.

    Moreover, once any group is exempted and not held to collective standards by virtue of its superficial appearance, then the nation naturally witnesses an increase in racism and bigotry—on the theory that it is not racist to racially stigmatize a supposedly “racist” collective. And we are already seeing an uptake in racially motivated interracial violence as criminals interpret the trickle-down theory of reparatory justice as providing exemption for opportunistic violence.

    Throughout history, it has always been the most mediocre and opportunistic would-be commissars that appear to come forth when meritocracy vanishes. If there was not a Harvard President and plagiarist like Claudine Gay to trumpet and leverage her DEI credentials, she would have to be invented. If there was not a brilliant, non-DEI economist like Roland Fryer to be hounded and punished by her, he would have to be invented.

    The DEI conglomerate has little idea of the landmines it is planting daily by reducing differences in talent, character, and morality into a boring blueprint of racial stereotypes. Punctuality is now “white time” and supposedly pernicious. The SAT, designed to give the less privileged a meritocratic pathway to college admissions, is deemed racist and either discarded or warped.

    In its absence, universities are quietly now “reimaging” their curriculum to make it more “relevant to today’s students” and, of course, “more inclusive and more diverse.” Translated from the language of Oceania, that means after admitting tens of thousands to the nation’s elite schools who did not meet the universities’ own prior standards that they themselves once established and apprehensive about terminating such students, higher education is now euphemistically lowering the work load in classes, introducing new less rigorous classes, and inflating grades. In their virtue-signaling, they have little clue that inevitably their once prized and supposedly prestigious degrees will be rendered less valued as employers discover a Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton BA or BS is not a guarantee of academic excellence or mastery of vital skill sets.

    Toxic tribalism is also, unfortunately, like nuclear proliferation. Once one group goes full tribal, others may as well, if for no reason than their own self-survival in a balkanized, Hobbesian world of bellum omnium contra omnes. If our popular culture is to be defined by the racist hosts of The View, or the racist anchorwoman Joy Reid, or members of the Congressman “Squad,” or entire studies departments in our universities that constantly bleat out the racialist mantra, then logically one of two developments will follow.

    • One, so-called whites in minority-majority states like California will copy the tribal affinities of others that transcend their class and cultural differences, again in response to other blocs that do the same for careerist advantage and perceived survival.

    • Or two, racism will be redefined empirically so that any careerist elites who espouse ad nauseam racial chauvinism—on the assurance they cannot be deemed racists—will be discredited and exposed for what they’ve become, and thus the content of our character will triumph over the color of our skin.

    Finally, do we ever ask how a country of immigrants like the United States – vastly smaller than India and China, less materially rich than the vast expanse of Russia, without the strategic geography of the Middle East, or without the long investment and infrastructure of Europe – emerged out of nowhere to dominate the world economically, financially, militarily, and educationally for nearly two centuries?

    The answer is easy: it was the most meritocratic land of opportunity in the world, where millions emigrated (legally) on the assurance that their class, politics, religion, ethnicity, and yes, race, would be far less a drawback than anywhere else in the world.

    The degree to which the U.S. survives DEI depends on either how quickly it is discarded or whether America’s existential enemies in the Middle East, China, Russia, and Iran have even worse DEI-anti-meritocratic criteria of their own in hiring, promotion, and admissions—whether defined by institutionalized hatred of the West, or loyalty oaths to the communist party, or demonstrable obsequiousness to the Putin regime, or lethal religious intolerance.

    Unfortunately, our illiberal enemies, China especially, at least in matters of money and arms, are now emulating the meritocracy of the old America. Meanwhile, we are hellbent on following their former destructive habits of using politics instead of merit to staff our universities, government, corporations, and military.

    Our future hinges on how quickly we discard DEI orthodoxy and simply make empirical decisions to stop printing money, deter enemies abroad, enforce our laws, punish criminals, secure the border, reboot the military, regain energy independence, and judge citizens on their character and talent and not their appearance and politics—at least if it is not already too late.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 19:00

  • Another Silly Progressive Idea: New Green Deal For Public Housing
    Another Silly Progressive Idea: New Green Deal For Public Housing

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Progressive nonsense is incessant. My hoot of the day is AOC and Bernie Sanders have teamed up for a new green housing deal. I explain where we are and what’s on deck.

    Common Dreams is out with another economically insane idea. Please consider AOC, Sanders Renew Fight for Green New Deal for Public Housing.

    Backed by dozens of progressive groups and congressional Democrats, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reintroduced legislation designed to tackle both the affordable housing crisis and the climate emergency.

    The New York Democrat and Vermont Independent are leading the renewed fight for the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which would invest up to $234 billion over a decade into “weatherizing, electrifying, and modernizing our public housing so that it may serve as a model of efficiency, sustainability, and resiliency for the rest of the nation.”

    Joining the pair in backing the bill are 55 other House Democrats and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

    Markey, who has spearheaded the broader battle for a Green New Deal with Ocasio-Cortez, said that “in the five years since its introduction, Green New Deal advocacy has catapulted environmental justice to the top of the national agenda, helped deliver historic victories, and charted a course for a better future.”

    Green Housing Deal Summary

    • Expand federal programs to provide residents with meaningful work investing in their communities, to own and operate resident businesses, to move toward financial independence, and to participate in the management of public housing;

    • Expand resident councils so that public housing residents have a seat at the table for important decisions regarding their homes; and

    • Replenish the public housing capital backlog and repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which limits the construction of new public housing developments.

    • The legislation would also create two grant programs for deep energy retrofits; community workforce development; upgrades to energy efficiency, building electrification, and water quality; community renewable energy generation; recycling; resiliency and sustainability; and climate adaptation and emergency disaster response.

    How Much Would This Cost?

    AOC says the bill would invest up to $234 billion over a decade into “weatherizing, electrifying, and modernizing our public housing”.

    The real goal is everyone has a right to affordable housing.

    Don’t kid yourself, the whole policy would cost many trillions of dollars of which $234 billion is not even a down payment.

    Once you issue guarantees with government involved costs soar out of sight.

    Even most Democrats recognize this. The bill is so idiotic that it only gathered support 7 Senate advocates and 42 House advocates.

    Faircloth Amendment

    The real threat is not that the above insanity passes in one fell swoop, but that its starts with a repeal of the Faircloth Amendment, which limits the construction of new public housing developments.

    The Faircloth Amendment was a provision of the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998. It amended the Housing Act of 1937, which authorized federal financial assistance to help states and housing authorities provide housing for low-income people. The amendment says, “a public housing agency may not use any of the amounts allocated for the agency from the Capital Fund or Operating Fund for the purpose of constructing any public housing unit, if such construction would result in a net increase from the number of public housing units owned, assisted, or operated by the public housing agency on October 1, 1999, including any public housing units demolished as part of any revitalization effort.” In other words, the amendment prevents housing authorities from ever maintaining more public housing units than they had in 1999.

    The amendment was named for its sponsor, Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth, a successful hog farmer from South Carolina who served one term in the Senate, from 1993-1999.

    The Faircloth Amendment, and the rest of the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, were enacted amid a broader movement for welfare reform that was pushed by Congressional Republicans and co-signed by the Clinton White House in the 1990s. The movement was grounded in a belief that public assistance programs were detrimental to people’s ability to achieve economic independence, and that welfare recipients themselves were either overly dependent on the government or outright abusers of taxpayer money. Most lawmakers saw public housing complexes as crime-infested, unhealthy places that kept people trapped in poverty. Running against Clinton in 1996, former Republican Senator Bob Dole, said that public housing was “one of the last bastions of socialism in the world,” and called for its elimination.

    “It was essentially viewed as a failed program,” says Susan J. Popkin, director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Opportunities and Services Together (HOST) Initiative and author of a series of books about public housing in Chicago and around the country.

    Since the 1980s, the restriction of federal funding has had a much bigger impact on public housing than the Faircloth Amendment. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that the U.S. loses around 10,000 public-housing units a year to demolition or disposition because of accumulated maintenance issues.

    As Jenny Schuetz argued in her recent post on the Brookings Institution website, the Faircloth Amendment is only a paper obstacle to an expansion of public housing. Other obstacles include the availability of land zoning rules that prevent the development of any new housing in many areas, and existing housing authorities’ relative ineffectiveness as real estate developers, she wrote.

    But the biggest challenge to expanding public housing is a lack of federal funding. The Green New Deal for Public Housing, a proposal introduced in Congress in 2019 by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, calls for the federal government to spend $180 billion repairing and retrofitting every existing public housing unit in the U.S. Restoring the 200,000 public-housing units that have been lost would require billions in federal spending and an abrupt departure from the trend of pulling away from publicly owned housing, even without repealing the Faircloth Amendment. Politically, though, repealing the amendment could be powerfully symbolic. As Ross Barkan wrote in the New York Times, “repeal would be a vital signal that America is back in the business of expanding public housing.”

    Urban Institute Research

    The Faircloth Amendment is one the best amendments in history. Thank you Senator Lauch Faircloth!

    Yet, the amendment is somewhat symbolic.

    According to research from the Urban Institute, there were 2,156,625 people living in 1,067,387 public housing units as of 2016, and Popkin says the U.S. has around 200,000 fewer public-housing units than it did in the mid-1990s. Many housing authorities have un-funded maintenance and rehabilitation needs, including the New York City Housing Authority, which needs to spend an estimated $45.2 billion in the next twenty years just to keep its existing units habitable. 

    The Philadelphia Housing Authority is limited to 20,133 units but only owns around 14,000 units. The Chicago Housing Authority is limited to 35,453 units but maintains fewer than 21,000. The Housing Authority of the City of Atlanta owns 3,500 units out of an allowed 11,965.

    Government is the Problem

    We do not need the government back in the public housing business. The costs of government programs soars out of sight.

    New York with its damn rent control legislation needs to spend $45.2 billion in the next twenty years just to keep its existing units habitable. 

    Let New York and Chicago fix their own self-made problems. Federal and sate governments are the problem, not the solution to any alleged housing crisis.

    Congratulations to NY, IL, and CA

    Meanwhile, congratulations are owed to anyone voting with their feet to get out of socialist hellholes.

    For discussion, please see Congratulations to NY, IL, LA, and CA for Losing the Most Population

    Absolute Basis Losers

    • New York: -631,104

    • California: -573,019

    • Illinois: -263,780

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 18:20

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Today’s News 25th March 2024

  • Muslims Overrepresented In UK Prison Population By Almost Three Times
    Muslims Overrepresented In UK Prison Population By Almost Three Times

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    Figures released by the UK government reveal that Muslims make up 18 per cent of the prison population, despite comprising only 6.5 per cent of the population in general.

    “Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data has revealed that there were 15,594 Muslim prisoners in England and Wales in September last year, accounting for 18 per cent of all inmates despite comprising only 6.5 per cent of the population,” reports the Telegraph.

    Muslims represent the only religion that is overrepresented in prison compared to their general population figure.

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    In another revealing statistic, around 19.9 per cent of those Muslim prisoners are white, which is three times the general population, where only 7.8 per cent are recorded as white.

    According to the Telegraph, the number emphasizes “that gangs in some jails are ordering prisoners to become Muslims or face violence.”

    “A report two years ago by Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terror legislation, revealed that Muslim terrorists had been able to seize control of prison wings and set up sharia courts behind bars because prison staff were so concerned about being accused of racism,” reports the newspaper.

    Meanwhile, on the continent, the Interior Minister of the State of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, blamed the increasing migrant population for a spike in crime in the region.

    According to the crime stats, a total of 39.6 percent of the 266,390 suspects in crimes across the state last year were non-Germans despite only comprising 16 percent of the state’s population. This corresponds to an increase of 20.5 percent compared to 2022 when 32,037 immigrants were suspected of criminal offenses,” reports Remix News.

    “We will not accept the increase in crime, even if it is a nationwide trend for which foreigners and immigrants are particularly responsible,” Herrmann said in a press release.

    In related comments, French politician Marion Marechal explained the increasing sense of isolation that Europeans are starting to feel as a result of mass migration and globalism in general.

    “I am waking up at the age of 34 in a European Union which is a digital colony of the United States, an economic colony of China, a demographic colony of Africa, and is becoming a religious and cultural colony of Islam,” she said.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 02:00

  • Escobar: It's War – The Real Meat-Grinder Starts Now
    Escobar: It’s War – The Real Meat-Grinder Starts Now

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred…

    Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.

    The money quote:

    “Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”

    Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.

    Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.

    Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.

    That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.

    Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.

    And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.

    Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.

    Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.

    The sponsors remain the same

    Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.

    The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.

    Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.

    That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.

    It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.

    The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…

    … Donald Trump.

    Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.

    ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same. The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”

    But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

    The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.

    It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian

    The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”

    Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.

    And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”

    In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.

    The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable. The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.

    Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.

    Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.

    It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.

    Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.

    So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.

    Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.

    So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance. The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.

    In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity,  now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.

    There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.

    Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.

    As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 23:20

  • Moscow Terror Attack Suspects Hauled Before Court, One Literally Unconscious
    Moscow Terror Attack Suspects Hauled Before Court, One Literally Unconscious

    Update(2235ET): Images widely circulated Sunday showing the Moscow concert hall terror attack suspects being hauled before court. One of them was literally unconscious as clearly they have been severely roughed up – and likely tortured – by security services. Russian authorities haven’t been shy about this considering the number of videos now circulating showing portions of the intense and physical interrogations in action. The maximum penalty is reported to be life imprisonment, though it’s likely that torture or continued harsh physical punishment awaits them. According to more details from Russian media:

    A Moscow court convened late on Sunday to hear prosecutors’ demands on pre-trial detention for a group of men detained in the aftermath of Friday’s Crocus City Hall attack, which claimed lives of over 130 people.

    The suspects, all of whom are nationals of Tajikistan, appeared individually. Thus far, terrorism charges have been levelled against 32-year-old Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, who faces a life sentence if found guilty. Prosecutors told Judge Timur Vakhrameev that the suspect had admitted his guilt. 

    The court has opted to rule behind closed doors.

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    Below is what is known of the four thus far, based on statements in Russian media: 

    1) Dalerjon Mirzoev – Confessed – 32, Illegal Immigrant from Tajikistan, overstayed work visa, father of 4 young children.

    2) Saidakrom Rachabalizoda – 28, allegedly born in Tajikistan, lives in Moscow.

    3) Shamsiddin Fariduni – 24, Born in Tajikistan, factory worker, father of an 8-month-old baby.

    4) Muhammadsobir Fayzov – Hairdresser, wheeled in on a stretcher to court. All have reportedly been charged under Russia’s “Terrorist Act” for their alleged involvement in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack.

    * * *

    Russian state media has underscored that “partners and geopolitical rivals alike have joined the chorus expressing horror in the wake of the Crocus City Hall attack.”

    This has somewhat surprisingly included a statement of solidarity from Washington, as the death toll has has risen to 137 killed. “The United States strongly condemns yesterday’s deadly terrorist attack in Moscow,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Saturday statement. “We condemn terrorism in all its forms and stand in solidarity with the people of Russia in grieving the loss of life from this horrific event.”

    Reports: The Burj Khalifa lights up in the colors of Russia and says: “UAE stands in solidarity with Russia.”

    Even NATO issued a statement of condolence, with NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah saying on X that the Western military alliance “unequivocally condemn the attacks targeting concertgoers in Moscow.” 

    “Our deepest condolences to the victims and their families,” she said, adding that “nothing can justify such heinous crimes.” Pope Francis too has offered special prayers for victims on Sunday.

    But still Western officials hit back at President Putin’s attempts to link the terror attack, which ISIS-K has reportedly taken responsibility for, to Ukraine. Both the president and Kremlin officials have alleged the gunmen were trying to escape through Ukraine territory, utilizing a ‘window’ of support from across the border.

    The fire which raged for many hours in the wake of the terror attack gutted the Crocus complex and part of the roof caved in. Below is stunning video of the aftermath:

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    UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has told Sky News that Britain has “very little confidence in anything the Russian government says.”

    “We know that they are creating a smokescreen of propaganda to defend an utterly evil invasion of Ukraine. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a tragedy when innocent people lose their lives, when you have horrible bombings,” Hunt said. Hunt further emphasized that London takes “what the Russian government says with an enormous pinch of salt… after what we have seen from them over the last few years.”

    Meanwhile Russia continues to investigate who was ultimately behind the attack as it currently has eleven people in custody, and among them are said to be the four gunmen.

    Videos have emerged online showing some of their apprehensions as well as confessions, surrounded by several Russian security service personnel.

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    While Russian authorities are still very early in their investigation, the ‘confessions’ and claims and counter-claims which are still emerging remain bizarre and murky:

    On Saturday, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan posted footage of the interrogation of one of the suspects. The man in the video claims that he went on the killing spree after he was promised 500,000 rubles ($5,400).

    The suspect also claimed that his handlers had instructed him as to where the attack should take place. He said he was ordered to “kill people there… doesn’t matter who.” The suspect claimed that the terrorist act was organized on Telegram with an unknown person who provided weapons.

    Russia has said the attackers are not Russian citizens…

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    The gunmen had later the same day of the attack been apprehended in Bryansk Region, “not far from the border with Ukraine,” according to Russian official statements.

    Amid an ongoing flurry of speculation over the circumstances surrounding the Crocus Hall massacre, and the question of whether state actors or intelligence services may be involved, more videos have emerged which appear to tie the attackers to the Islamic State.

    Prior social media claims that asserted one or more attackers were Ukrainian appear to have been debunked. Various theories continue to be advanced, also by mainstream pundits. Independent journalists such as Glenn Greenwald have pointed out that there are many more questions than there are answers at this point, but an MSM narrative has already quickly solidified.

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    In a statement released Sunday, the Russian Investigative Committee detailed that “Four sets of combat ammunition, with more than 500 bullets and 28 magazines, and two Kalashnikov assault rifles, which the attackers were armed with, were confiscated from the scene of the tragedy.”

    The SITE Intelligence Group, which is often cited and relied upon in Western media, claims that the Islamic State through its official channels has “revealed the four fighters involved in the Moscow concert hall operation” and is “boasting” about its “fiercest attack in years.” Russia has long been an avowed enemy of ISIS, especially after the Russian military intervention in Syria starting in 2015, when Putin joined Assad in battling jihadists in the war-ravaged country.

    ISIS propaganda channels have reportedly released cell phone videos from the attackers themselves…

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    Meanwhile, the Russian government has continued to question what intelligence concerning the planned attack that Washington may have had ahead of time. In a March 7 emergency alert, the US Embassy in Moscow said it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.”

    The embassy further urged all US nationals in the country to remain vigilant and “monitor local media for updates.” The Kremlin has demanded answers and even raised the possibility of Western involvement, given also the current claims that the terrorists may have had a ‘Ukraine connection’. 

    Some of the newly released footage is extremely graphic, in one instance showing a man’s throat being slit (the below is censored for online release):

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    Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has on Sunday issued a statement saying that it was the United States which first destroyed anti-terrorism cooperation between the two countries. However, anonymous US intelligence officials who spoke to major US media outlets claim that Moscow was notified that a big terror act was going to happen. But Antonov has said “some things [in this cooperation] worked out… and it is all destroyed today through no fault of our own.”

    “We did not receive any notifications or messages in advance,” Antonov told RIA. However, White House spokesman John Kirby has sought to clarify, “I’m not aware of any advance knowledge that we had of this.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 22:35

  • Will The Democrat Abortion Narrative Work In 2024?
    Will The Democrat Abortion Narrative Work In 2024?

    Authored by Stu Cvrk via The Epoch Times,

    ‘Tis election season, and the political narratives are flying everywhere…

    Let us examine the 2024 Democrat political narrative surrounding abortion, including efforts to leverage the 2022 Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that has roiled American politics for 50-plus years and counting.

    Abortion on Demand as a Political Weapon

    On March 14, Vice President Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, “marking what her office said was the first time a president or vice president has toured a facility that performs abortions,” as reported by the Associated Press. The article correctly points out that this represents an escalation of the “[Democrats’] defense of reproductive rights” political narrative this year.

    Buried in that article was a reference to President Joe Biden. The practicing Catholic is cited as using the phrase “right to choose” as opposed to actually using the word “abortion” when discussing the issue on which the U.S. Constitution is silent.

    Regardless of the euphemism used, President Biden, Ms. Harris, and other elected Democrats support unlimited abortions, and they apparently mean to ride that narrative all the way to November, because they apparently still believe that the 2024 election will be decided by “pro-choice” suburban women who helped make the difference in 2020.

    The Wrong Horse

    There are big problems with that political strategy. First of all, a March 12 Rasmussen poll revealed that “economic issues and immigration matter more to voters than abortion.” This should come as no surprise to anyone, because single-issue pro-abortion voters are generally going to vote Democrat anyway.

    The problem with the claim of the nonavailability of abortion providers is that the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported back in January that the “Number of Abortions in the United States [Is] Likely to Be Higher in 2023 than in 2020.” That means that there were more abortions per annum after the Dobbs decision than when Roe v. Wade was the “law of the land.”

    [Note: the abortion numbers from Guttmacher were 930,000 performed in 2020, with 878,000 performed in the first 10 months of 2023, which, when the November and December totals at around 88,000 per month are added, would greatly exceed 2020.]

    The Right Horses

    Other issues subordinate abortion in Americans’ priorities.

    As the Heritage Foundation headlined on March 12, “Biden’s Border Crisis Comes to the Suburbs.” The article noted that “Biden’s immigration-driven crime wave is now arriving in America’s suburbs and small towns with devastating results” while noting that, regardless of the total number, “every single crime committed by an illegal immigrant is totally preventable.”

    Illegal immigrant crime victimhood is not an elective action for suburbanites while abortion certainly is —and the polls reflect that uncomfortable fact for Democrats as open borders continues to be an issue of great concern to most Americans.

    President Biden suspended the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in January 2021, which initiated the 64 policies recently detailed by U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson that have created the ongoing open border crisis. President Biden could easily reverse all of those policies with the stroke of a pen, yet he refuses to do so by claiming that Congress needs to pass a border bill before he can act.

    Another major political issue that is sidestepped by Democrats is inflation as a direct result of “Bidenomics.” A February article by Reason described Bidenomics as a political messaging strategy that included the following facets: “pandemic aid, industrial policy, handouts for labor unions and public workers … [that] could be reduced to a single, overriding response: government spending.”

    Trillions of dollars of federal government stimulus spending resulted in a year-over-year inflation rate that peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022, which was the highest rate experienced in the United States in over 40 years. Inflation remains stubbornly high as the Federal Reserve interest rate manipulations have consistently missed the inflation target of 2 percent because government spending continues unabated.

    Zerohedge reported on March 12 that the year-on-year U.S. Consumer Price Index was 3.2 percent, which was more than expected. Zerohedge further noted that “consumer prices have not fallen in a single month” during Biden’s presidency. And Americans feel that pain at the grocery store and elsewhere throughout the Biden economy.

    Concluding Thoughts

    Political narrative-shifting to abortion and away from the economy, inflation, and the open border would appear to be a losing strategy, but then abortion has been a litmus test for Democrat politicians for years. Most Democrat voters are pro-abortion, and the strategy seems to be more about shoring up the fracturing Democrat base than persuading independents and others to vote Democrat this year.

    The problem for Democrats is that they apparently misunderstand the changing voter demographics in 2024. Inflation affects Gen Z and blue-collar workers far more than Democrat consultants and pollsters, who are from a different class than those people and don’t directly experience the adverse effects.

    One result, a Harvard CAPS–Harris survey determined that 64 percent of the Gen Z respondents (ages 18-24) approved of Donald Trump’s job as president because the contrast between the Trump and Biden presidencies is clear with respect to the economy and inflation.

    Furthermore, The New York Times recently reported the growing shift of Latinos toward Trump. Of even greater concern to Democrats is the rightward shift of black Americans. The Washington Post reported on a February Gallup poll that must have shocked many Democrats. According to the poll, black Americans in 2020 were “66 points more likely to identify as Democrats than Republicans,” but that spread had decreased to only 47 points in 2023.

    Key voter demographics are shaping up to be much different in 2024 than those in 2016 and 2020. The Democrats appear to be losing their traditional base of minority and younger generation voters because they don’t seem to have a political narrative that resonates with them on the open border or inflation. And that is a real problem, because the abortion narrative is a lower priority this year.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 22:10

  • Trump In Final Countdown To Post $464 Million Bond By Monday
    Trump In Final Countdown To Post $464 Million Bond By Monday

    Donald Trump has until Monday to come up with more than $450 million to stop his properties from being seized by authorities following the results of his New York civil fraud trial.

    According to the ruling by Judge Arthur Engoron, Trump and executives at the Trump Organization inflated his assets. Initially, NY Attorney General Letitia James sought $250 million in damages – but later increased it to $370 million plus interest.

    Trump has been seeking a bond of $464 million ($454 million plus $10 million to cover his sons’ fines) in order to post bond and appeal the case.

    Last week, Trump said he had “almost $500 million” in cash, however his attorney Chris Kise told CNN that Trump wasn’t referring to cash he has on hand.

    “What he’s talking about is the money reported on his campaign disclosure forms that he’s built up through years of owning and managing successful businesses,” he said, which the outlet noted is “the very cash that Letitia James and the Democrats are targeting.”

    Assets including buildings, houses, cars, helicopters and even Trump’s plane are on the chopping block if Trump can’t come up with the money. The former president has asked a state appeals court to allow him to post a smaller bond, or none at all, claiming that irreparable harm would be done if he was forced to sell properties in a ‘fire sale’ that can’t be undone if he wins his appeal against the amount due. The court has not come back yet with a ruling.

    If Trump can’t secure the bond, New York state officials can begin the arduous process of taking his assets. According to experts cited by a very giddy CNN, the first action should be seizing Trump’s bank accounts.

    “The banks are the easiest part, they’ll receive the judgment from the Attorney General – the court order – then the banks will enforce,” said former federal prosecutor Peter Katz, who has handled fraud cases. “They take the funds from the account and put it in the attorney general’s accounts. The other stuff is a little more challenging.”

    According to debt collection expert Alden B. Smith, New York officials are “trying to get their ducks in a row,” adding “They want to find the most liquid of the assets they can restrain immediately. A bank account is the most effective way to do it.”

    Seizing Trump’s buildings and businesses is far more complicated. Once state prosecutors figure out which properties they want to take from Joe Biden’s chief political rival, they will give the sheriff an execution order, a $350 fee, and then the sheriff will post notice for the property in three places. The AG’s office must then advertise it four times, after which the property will be sold at public auction 63 days after the sheriff is given the execution order.

    According to Newsweek, the following Trump-owned properties had “fraudulent” and “misleading” values, and could be on the list (with New York properties taking priority, and those in other states being more complicated to seize).

    • Trump Park Avenue, New York, N.Y.
    • Trump Tower, New York City.
    • 40 Wall Street, New York City.
    • Trump Seven Springs, Westchester County, N.Y.
    • Trump International Hotel, Las Vegas.
    • Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida.
    • Trump National Golf Club Westchester, Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.
    • Trump National Golf Club Charlotte, Mooresville, North Carolina.
    • Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck, Colts Neck, New Jersey.
    • Trump National Golf Club, Washington D.C., Sterling, Virginia.
    • Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley, Hopewell Junction, N.Y.
    • Trump National Golf Club Jupiter, Jupiter, Florida.
    • Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
    • Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia, Pine Hill, New Jersey.
    • Trump International Golf Links Scotland, Aberdeen.
    • Trump International Golf Links Scotland, Turnberry.

    Trump has roughly $200 million in cumulative loans on his properties.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 21:35

  • Complacent About Replacement
    Complacent About Replacement

    Authored by T.L.Davis via Substack,

    To be blunt, this is what it feels like to be conquered. The British have been through it a couple of times, their kingdoms falling to the Romans, the Vikings, making deals and accepting new cultures that obliterated the former. Societies that survive too long lose themselves in their comfort and become complacent about their replacement. It happened to the Aztecs, the Inca, the Mayans, the Apache, the Comanche and the Sioux, who did it to others before that.

    Every single landmass has been invaded and conquered. The Marxists use that as a source of guilt, by calling it “stealing” which it never has been. If the United States had actually been a conqueror, as the Marxists suggest, it would have kept Mexico when it won the war in 1846, instead of just maintaining the landmass that it had before the war, but including the state of Texas after the Republic of Texas voted to join the United States.

    If Americans were the evil land “stealers” they are made out to be, they would have invaded and conquered Canada after they beat the British in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, leaving out that owned by the French. They would have kept Japan after WWII, much the same as Russia had claimed Alaska. Americans don’t want an empire and never have, not that the US Government hasn’t wanted to extend its influence globally and have made vassal states out of a number of nations along the way. The U.S. could have kept half of Europe and Eastern Europe, if they had thought it would not have put them at odds with Russia and started another war right after WWII, but they did have sole possession of the atom bomb and could have won that war, too. The American people were sick of war and yearned for peace and prosperity.

    The difference between all of that and our current situation, is that the United States government is aiding and abetting our own conquest, encouraging it and paying for it with forced taxation and printed funds. I believe there is a legal means of refusing to pay taxes to the federal government, because they have refused to abide by their obligations to maintain borders, ensure the welfare of the people and been woefully negligent in acting in the fiduciary interest of the American people. If we had an actual legal system instead of a corrupt means of punishment, that is.

    To get that right, like all of the others, it seems as if we are going to have to demand it at a point of leverage that the American people seem unwilling to employ as yet. This is the break point. We are either going to pay for our own conquest, or we’re going to throw off these criminal masters and engage in either wholesale secession, civil war or a counter-revolution to the bureaucratic dictatorship that has risen up and supplanted representation. Those are the simple choices. Nothing makes this more clear than the recent 1.2 trillion dollar spending bill recently passed, which was done in the face of popular opposition.

    The decision to do one or the other, i.e., secession, civil war or counter-revolution will be much easier to make once the internal terrorist attacks start, the forfeiture of property to illegals that put too many aged mothers and fathers in their son’s and daughter’s homes and the rape of daughters and sons become commonplace. I urge the American people not to take it out on those committing the acts, other than in self-defense, but much more so on our own bureaucrats, governors, representatives, senators and presidents. The people who are coming here are doing so out of encouragement by our bureaucracies, congress and president. Not one thing has been done to stop it. Not one. All of the caterwauling about it can now be ignored since in the past year, the congress has allowed the FBI to continue its illegal surveillance on the American people, fought to embolden censorship of our speech, funded the caravans coming from South America and Mexico through the UN, paid to support LGBTQ programs and abortion, funded the lawsuits being waged against Texas to keep the border open.

    They are in open hostility toward the American taxpayers, farmers, cattle ranchers, factory owners, automobile manufacturers and oil and gas producers. Not just rhetorical hostility, but regulatory and physical hostility. This is the world we live in; this is the process and methods of conquest to rid the world of the successful and control the low IQ with the brutality they desire to implement on our replacements.

    The one thing that has prevented our annihilation thus far is the Second Amendment, but if we are going to sit by and allow them to use every weapon they have to strip that from us as they have every other right listed in the Bill of Rights, then we have no chance of survival and, to be honest, with that ultimate form of leverage in our back pockets, if we still allow our own conquest, we deserve it.

    *  *  *

    I understand that people don’t want to take on a paid subscription, money is tight for everyone, but if you’ll consider a purchase of books that does not require a commitment, that would do just as well, especially the paperbacks. I know many of you have already done so, thank you.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 21:00

  • Jayapal Says Transgender Athletes Don’t Hurt Anyone, Former Volleyball Player Disagrees
    Jayapal Says Transgender Athletes Don’t Hurt Anyone, Former Volleyball Player Disagrees

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

    A former high school girls’ volleyball player who was injured in a game by an opponent identifying as transgender is calling out a Democrat congresswoman who claims that having transgender athletes in female sports doesn’t hurt anyone.

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on March 21, 2024. (House Judiciary GOP YouTube/Twitter/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    Payton McNabb, a 19-year-old from North Carolina, was struck in the face by a male who identifies as transgender in her varsity high school volleyball match in September 2022. The male knocked Ms. McNabb unconscious in a spike—a move intended to hit the ball in the game.

    The incident forced Ms. McNabb to spend months recovering from headaches and concentration problems. She also missed the remainder of her volleyball season.

    Ms. McNabb said she suffered from a neck injury, concussion, lasting vision impairment, and partial paralysis in the right side of her body, as well as mental anguish.

    “Just getting back from my second doctor appointment this week, a year and a half later, I’m definitely going to have to disagree,” Ms. McNabb posted Thursday on X. “My life is forever changed because of an injury by a boy. So yeah … men have harmed women in our sports. But as long as your feelings don’t get hurt, right?,”

    Ms. McNabb was responding to a clip of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who made an emotional argument during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing over a bill that, among other things, would prohibit male athletes from representing the United States in future women’s Olympic competitions.

    Why are you doing this?” a teary Ms. Jayapal asked the bill’s sponsors. “It is a tiny portion of people across the country that identify as trans, and not a single one of them is doing anything to harm you or your family.”

    Riley Gaines, an collegiate swimmer-turned advocate of preserving spaces for females, voiced her support for Ms. McNabb.

    Payton is partially paralyzed on her right side, her vision and memory are impaired, and her sports career ended prematurely because of a man posing as a woman. Democrats who deny this is happening are evil,” she wrote on X, along with a video clip showing the moment Ms. McNabb was hit by the spike.

    A former University of Kentucky swimmer, Ms. Haines was forced to compete against and share a locker room with transgender athlete Will “Lia” Thomas, who captured gold in the 500 freestyle at the 2022 National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Championships. She is also among more than a dozen other female athletes who are suing the NCAA for violating Title IX, a federal law that promises equal treatment and athletic opportunities for women and girls.

    The athletes’ lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Atlanta, alleges that NCAA’s “radical departure from Title IX’s original meaning” is harming women by subjecting them to “a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”

    “Title IX was enacted by Congress to increase women’s opportunities; therefore, no policy which authorizes males to take the place of women on women’s college sports teams or in women’s college sports locker rooms is permissible under Title IX,” the complaint read.

    The female athletes also accused the NCAA of depriving women’s places, titles and public recognition by permitting transgender players who “retained male advantage, size, strength, power, and speed” into women’s sports teams. “The NCAA gives males who wish to compete against women the option to suppress testosterone to a level that is still above the highest level a female can produce without doping,” it noted.

    Democrats Oppose Women Protection Bill

    The lawsuit comes as House Resolution 7187, formally called the Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, advanced out of the committee and went to the full House for a vote.

    Sponsored by 27 Republicans, the bill would require all national governing bodies for amateur sports to “prohibit a person whose sex is male” from participating in exclusively female competitions. This would affect sports events such as Olympic games and national championships.

    Earlier in Thursday’s hearing, Ms. Jayapal invoked her own child who identifies as a transgender girl, imploring those who back the measure to question whether they could still do the same if they had a “trans daughter.”

    “I am the proud mother of a trans daughter, and every time these bills come up, I ask you to think about what it would be like if your daughter was the one that you were talking about,” she said. “What would it be like if you were telling her she does not have the right to be who she is?”

    Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), co-chair of the Equality Caucus, denounced HR 7187 as “a hate bill” that would “incite violence and ultimately remove trans people from public life.”

    “I want trans girls and women to know: You deserve to participate and thrive in the sports you love,” she said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 19:50

  • Willis Vs Willis: Fulton County District Attorney Goes Head-to-Head With Her Prior Self In Trump Case
    Willis Vs Willis: Fulton County District Attorney Goes Head-to-Head With Her Prior Self In Trump Case

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has finally broken her silence with CNN.

    Willis insisted that she has done nothing wrong while declaring that “the train is coming” for Donald Trump.

    On this occasion, CNN can be excused for not having an opposing view. Willis circa 2020 denounced Willis circa 2024.

    Willis told a CNN reporter “I don’t feel like my reputation needs to be reclaimed. I guess my greatest crime is I had a relationship with a man, that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way. And I know that I have not done anything that’s illegal.”

    The most obvious person to interview in rebuttal of that statement is Willis’s 2020 self. After all, she repeatedly declared that she would not have any romantic relationship with those in her office.

    Willis ran against her former boss Paul Howard, who was embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal involving his relationship with women in his office.

    Willis offered both experience and ethical leadership, including pledging repeatedly that “I will certainly not be choosing to date people that work under me.”

    When confronted with this repeated campaign promise on the stand, Willis came up with a perfectly bizarre spin about Nathan Wade being literally “special” as a special prosecutor. While she hired him, supervised him, and controlled his continued employment with the office, she tried to suggest that he was not really part of the office in the same sense.

    Willis notably stressed that she did nothing “illegal.” She did not address whether she acted unethically.

    The court itself denounced her for unprofessional conduct in this controversy, including her speech at a church suggesting that racism was behind these allegations.

    Moreover, it may be too early to tell if she is entirely free of criminal allegations. Many believe that both she and Wade gave knowingly false or misleading testimony.

    That is a problem not just for them as individuals but for the office in this case.

    Willis and Wade were both prosecuting people for the very same conduct of filing false statements with courts and making false statements. The two lawyers testified in tandem but only one was disqualified.

    While the Court casts doubt on Wade’s testimony on the relationship, it ignored that Willis effectively ratified those claims in her own testimony.

    Putting aside the pledge of a train coming for Trump, there is the problem that there are usually two tracks and another train may be coming for Willis as the state (and potentially the bar) looks into these allegations.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 18:40

  • The World's Top 50 Largest Banks By Consolidated Assets
    The World’s Top 50 Largest Banks By Consolidated Assets

    Banks are often among the biggest companies in the world.

    In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu lists the top 50 banks in the world by consolidated assets, based on a 2023 report from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The data represents each bank’s total assets for the most recent period available.

    Chinese Banks Keep on Growing

    According to S&P, the four largest Chinese banks grew their assets by 4.1% in 2022, reaching a combined total of $19.8 trillion.

    In fact, Chinese banks already account for over a third of the assets held by the largest banks on the planet. Four of the 15 biggest companies in China are banks.

    Rank Bank Headquarters Total Assets
    1 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $5.7T
    2 China Construction Bank Corp 🇨🇳 China $5.0T
    3 Agricultural Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $4.9T
    4 Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $4.2T
    5 JPMorgan Chase & Co. 🇺🇸 US $3.7T
    6 Bank of America 🇺🇸 US $3.1T
    7 Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group 🇯🇵 Japan $3.0T
    8 HSBC Holdings 🇬🇧 UK $2.9T
    9 BNP Paribas 🇫🇷 France $2.9T
    10 Crédit Agricole Group 🇫🇷 France $2.5T
    11 Citigroup 🇺🇸 US $2.4T
    12 Postal Savings Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $2.0T
    13 Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group 🇯🇵 Japan $2.0T
    14 Mizuho Financial Group 🇯🇵 Japan $1.9T
    15 Bank of Communications 🇨🇳 China $1.9T
    16 Wells Fargo & Co. 🇺🇸 US $1.9T
    17 Banco Santander 🇪🇸 Spain $1.9T
    18 Barclays PLC 🇬🇧 UK $1.8T
    19 JAPAN POST BANK 🇯🇵 Japan $1.7T
    20 UBS Group 🇨🇭 Switzerland $1.7T
    21 Groupe BPCE 🇫🇷 France $1.6T
    22 Société Générale 🇫🇷 France $1.6T
    23 Royal Bank of Canada 🇨🇦 Canada $1.5T
    24 The Toronto-Dominion Bank 🇨🇦 Canada $1.5T
    25 China Merchants Bank 🇨🇳 China $1.5T
    26 Goldman Sachs Group 🇺🇸 US $1.4T
    27 Deutsche Bank 🇩🇪 Germany $1.4T
    28 Industrial Bank 🇨🇳 China $1.3T
    29 China CITIC Bank International 🇨🇳 China $1.2T
    30 Shanghai Pudong Development Bank 🇨🇳 China $1.2T
    31 Morgan Stanley 🇺🇸 US $1.2T
    32 Crédit Mutuel 🇫🇷 France $1.2T
    33 Lloyds Banking Group 🇬🇧 UK $1.1T
    34 China Minsheng Banking 🇨🇳 China $1.1T
    35 Intesa Sanpaolo 🇮🇹 Italy $1.0T
    36 ING Groep 🇳🇱 Netherlands $1.0T
    37 The Bank of Nova Scotia 🇨🇦 Canada $1.0T
    38 UniCredit 🇮🇹 Italy $917B
    39 China Everbright Bank 🇨🇳 China $913B
    40 NatWest Group 🇬🇧 UK $868B
    41 Bank of Montreal 🇨🇦 Canada $859B
    42 Commonwealth Bank of Australia 🇦🇺 Australia $837B
    43 Standard Chartered 🇬🇧 UK $820B
    44 La Banque Postale 🇫🇷 France $797B
    45 Ping An Bank 🇨🇳 China $772B
    46 Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria 🇪🇸 Spain $762B
    47 The Norinchukin Bank 🇯🇵 Japan $753B
    48 State Bank of India 🇮🇳 India $695B
    49 Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce 🇨🇦 Canada $691B
    50 National Australia Bank 🇦🇺 Australia $680B

    The Chinese financial market is followed by the American market on our list, with six U.S. banks combining for $13.7 trillion in assets.

    The top 10 on the list include four Chinese banks, two American institutions, two French, one Japanese, and one British.

    The biggest climber on our rank was Swiss UBS Group AG. The bank surged to 20th place from 34th in 2021. Its $1.6 trillion asset size has been adjusted to incorporate troubled Credit Suisse Group AG, which UBS agreed to take over in an emergency deal orchestrated by the Swiss authorities in March 2023.

    Assets held by the 100 largest banks totaled $111.97 trillion in 2022, down 1.5% from $113.67 trillion a year earlier. Some of the reasons include high inflation, interest rate hikes, and the Russia-Ukraine war, which dampened global economic growth and investor sentiment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 18:05

  • FAA Considering Unprecedented "Drastic Measures" For United Airlines After Flurry Of Safety Incidents
    FAA Considering Unprecedented “Drastic Measures” For United Airlines After Flurry Of Safety Incidents

    After weeks and weeks of daily mechanical incidents that prompted many to ask – no pun intended – if the wings have fallen off from the US aviation and airline industries, on Saturday Bloomberg reported that US aviation authorities are considering drastic measures to curb growth at United Airlines, including preventing the carrier from adding new routes, following a series of safety incidents.

    Citing “people with knowledge”, Bloomberg said that the Federal Aviation Administration (or FAA) has discussed temporary actions it may take with the airline’s leadership in recent days. This follows a report from Reuters (“Boeing chair to meet key airline customers without planemaker’s CEO, sources say“) last week hinting that the CEO of Boeing, David Calhoun, may be in jeopardy after the relentless barage of Boeing-linked “mishaps” especially after recent comments by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary who slammed Boeing’s corporate culture. Anyway, going back to United, in addition to route restrictions, the US carrier may be barred from flying paying customers on newly delivered aircraft; indeed the sources said that the FAA already is suspending United’s ability to approve and promote pilots to fly different aircraft models. One wonders if it’s because of, well, this…

    The proposed clampdown would effectively pause growth for an unspecified period at one of the largest US airlines, underscoring the panicked rush to restore confidence in, and heightened scrutiny on commercial aviation safety following a near-catastrophe earlier this year involving a Boeing plane. Since the January incident, in which a panel blew out in midair from an Alaska Airlines jet, United has endured multiple headline-grabbing mishaps including:

    • A plane in Houston ran off the taxiway into a grassy area
    • Another aircraft lost a tire shortly after departing from San Francisco
    • A Houston-to-Florida flight had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines began spewing flames.

    The FAA has announced investigations of those and other incidents.

    The renewed focus reflects stresses on commercial air travel after years of rapid growth coming out of the depths of the pandemic.

    Without addressing the report directly, the FAA told Bloomberg that it already plans to increase oversight of United in the coming weeks to review processes, manuals and facilities, the carrier told employees in a memo. Sasha Johnson, United’s vice president of corporate safety, said in the message that regulators and the company agree it needs “to ensure we are doing all we can to promote and drive safety compliance.”

    Johnson also said the FAA planned to “pause a variety of certification activities for a period of time,” without specifying which ones. The limits under consideration would restrict United from adding new routes beyond those the airline has already sold tickets for.

    Leaders of an Orlando-area local for United pilots sent a message to members saying that the FAA recently stepped in to “take substantial action” against the carrier, including restricting its abilities around pilot approval. The so-called line check process to certify and promote pilots has been paused pending further action from the FAA, according to two people familiar with the situation.

    There are now “regulator-imposed restrictions on our ability to operate and grow our airline,” according to the message from the Local Council 150 chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. “We will also see an increased FAA presence in our daily operation.”

    United Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby this week promised customers that the carrier would review the incidents and its employee training. Perhaps what Kirby should be promising customers is to stop pushing “insane“, disastrous, and potentially deadly, DEI mandates, which were revealed in an interview he did touting his company’s diversity initiatives, which limited white employees while emphasizing more women and minorities in its workforce.

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    Maybe, in retrospect, there’s a reason why there are fewer women and minorities in the air travel industry…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 16:55

  • LAW, IGIW, SAS, GCBE, MBS, ROTST…. A Day For Acronyms
    LAW, IGIW, SAS, GCBE, MBS, ROTST…. A Day For Acronyms

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    A Day for Acronyms

    IGIW

    Let’s start with IGIW. I’m not sure it is an official one, but we can go with I Got It Wrong. I came into this week stating that it would be far more difficult for stocks to bounce 5% than drop 10%. I was looking for yields to continue their upward trajectory. 10-year yields finished the week lower by 11 bps and the Nasdaq was up by almost 3%. I continue to look at a wide variety of sentiment indicators, positioning indicators, etc. and see extremely aggressive positioning, but so far it has worked for those positioned that way.

    GCBE

    Probably another one I just made up, but Global Central Bank Easing was the theme of the week.

    The Bank of Japan (BOJ) hiked rates, finally going back to positive yields! They officially ended “yield curve control,” but the 10-year yield was already at 0.7% (down from almost 1% in November), so that didn’t have much of an impact. It might have been the most dovish “tightening” ever, which says a lot!

    The Swiss National Bank (SNB) surprised the market by cutting rates. Markets responded positively to this surprise move. Maybe I was in a bad mood at the time, but I’m wondering why we spend so much time worrying about what the 20th largest economy by GDP does with rates? I saw some tweets at the time, which seem accurate, but Bitcoin’s market cap is bigger than the Swiss GDP. That is mostly irrelevant and comparing apples to oranges (or chalk to cheese, for our U.K. readers), but it did strike me as a sign of the times. While I’m on this portion of the rant, we seem to care much more about the SNB than we do about the BOC (Bank of Canada), despite Canada’s economy being more than double the Swiss economy, and far more trade is affected by that currency and their interest rate policy.

    The ECB (European Central Bank) and the BOE (Bank of England) set the stage for future rate cuts, buoying global markets.
    The Fed is being taken as being quite dovish as well. I think that take is overstated (Post FOMC Thoughts), but given the overall tone of GCBE, it is an understandable take (at least in the heat of the moment). The FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) does seem a bit nervous about jobs, and the balance sheet is getting to levels where they may need to restrain QT (Quantitative Tightening) as some level of balance sheet is required for our banking system to function efficiently.

    While the central banks have been “jawboning” markets in this direction, this week’s series of back-to-back-to-back meetings seemed to solidify the view for markets.

    One “odd” thing is that I haven’t heard the words “American Exceptionalism” much in reference to these bank policies. Yes, we are all excited that every other bank is definitively dovish, but shouldn’t they be when their economies and markets are behind ours?

    How the election campaign will affect Fed policy remains to be seen, but unfortunately for the Fed, in a world where every decision is held under a magnifying glass and examined for political motivations, it will be difficult to convince many people that their actions are apolitical. I think this is really going to hamstring what they can do in September and November, so a cut in June with maybe another “pre-emptive” cut in July makes sense, but I am not expecting more than that without the economy taking a big hit.

    MBC

    Made By China. Yes, yet another completely made-up acronym, but it fits. I almost went with MCGA (Make China Great Again), since we had these hats, but I really want to keep to our theme on the transition from Made in China to Made by China.

    Sticking to Made By China, we laid out the threats, risks, and opportunities in Made By China 2025.

    In this month’s ATW Around the World with Academy Securities, we touched on several important issues, but more and more, the geopolitical lens is beings focused on China’s goods and brands. From some conversations in D.C. and Vegas with our GIG (Geopolitical Intelligence Group), it is clear that many departments in D.C. are very focused on China and what is an “appropriate” relationship with China. Much of the focus is at the National Security level, but the definition of “national security” includes things like manufacturing, energy security, etc., making it much more all-encompassing than what people typically think of as “national security.” This is going to affect how we treat China and is, without a doubt, going to impact how China responds to us in ways that the market still doesn’t seem to be pricing in.

    CNY (Chinese Renminbi – or yuan) and the PBOC (People’s Bank of China) should be watched. So far, China has not done a lot, by historical or even U.S. standards, to turn their economy around. They’ve had some stimulus here and there and implemented some rules to stymie stock market sellers. However, so far, their response seems to be appropriate if their economy was merely in the doldrums, and not on the precipice of a serious decline (which many people suspect is the real case).

    But just this past week they allowed the currency to drift above 7.2. Allegedly that level represents key support, and while it has been higher in the past, many have expressed concern that this recent breach could be part of an effort to seriously devalue the currency in an attempt to make their exports cheaper. That seems pretty darn obvious to me. Their way out of their economic malaise is to produce more goods in China. Since companies, in general, are not looking to expand their manufacturing in China, they will need to manufacture and sell their own brands! The concept of “China Inc.” is that the government and corporations are inextricably linked and work together in ways that are just not possible (or even conceivable) in the U.S. and Western Europe.

    Which brings us to Temu and Shein. Neither are acronyms, so they don’t quite fit today’s title, but they are so important to the Made By China theme that they need to be mentioned. Personally, and it is just my preference, I have not used either site and avoid pulling them up, let alone clicking on them. Yes, I am in the camp that has had concerns about the data on TikTok for a long time. In any case, I’m told that many of the products sold on Temu have apps associated with them to access their features. That seems a bit scary to me. Maybe I’m just a paranoid luddite, but…

    Shein, as a representative of “fast fashion,” is likely to be hit by a French bill Penalizing Fast Fashion. I think the argument goes along the lines that “the clothes are so inexpensive and people throw them away much sooner than normal, creating a strain on the environment.” That seems to be a stretch, but yet again, it highlights the selling of Chinese made goods by their own brands. This is a threat to sales from “our” brands, whose stocks are in “our” indices.

    Maybe I’m just more attuned to it, but the number of people who seem to want to “check out a BYD vehicle” seems to have increased. Not sure if anyone I’ve been talking to actually plans to buy one (I’m not even sure if you can), but people are suddenly curious about the brand. Word of mouth marketing is often mentioned as one of the more effective means of marketing a brand, and it almost seems like BYD is getting to that level even in the U.S. You cannot buy them here, though they sell buses here apparently if generative AI is to be trusted and confirmed on Reddit (which should be congratulated on their successful IPO).

    ROTST or ROON

    Okay, I’ve fully Jumped the Shark (JTS) on acronyms. Neither Rallying On The Same Thing (ROTST) nor Rallying On Old News (ROON) are phrases that are commonly used, but what the heck, we’ve come this far, so let’s finish with this.

    I’m not going to apply it to the Fed because I can see where it was “technically” new news, or at least contrasted against fears that had gotten priced in. But two things hit me this week on this front:

    • Semiconductor manufacturer crushes earnings. Stock soars 10% or more. I get it, to some degree, but at what point do we price in that the last quarter, the next quarter, and likely the next year are going to be great? Stocks, in many cases up 50% or more in a short period of time, pop on good news (and yes, it is definitively good news), but how is some of this not priced in? It’s not like every time Steph Curry hits a 3 everyone argues that he is undervalued – it is expected of him, given his current valuation. It has this feeling that the same headlines keep triggering positive responses, but will that last?
    • The excitement of the CHIPS Act finally providing something that almost seemed tangible was interesting. I guess, since it has taken so long for anything tangible to come out of that bill, maybe the market had started to underprice the money that in theory was available. Maybe,  with people becoming too pessimistic about the complexity and restrictions associated with the Act (there are a lot of them), the market wasn’t pricing in much value to companies that now should get priced in. Maybe, but it seems like old news. What was “new” news is the fact that while this money has been earmarked (or allocated, or set aside, or approved), it has not yet been funded. It is yet another form of stimulus and increased debt that the market seems to be ignoring (or at least it did last week).

    BTR

    Since we barely dip, does anyone who has been waiting to BTD (Buy The Dip) need to Buy The Rally (BTR)? Just suck it up, and get max long stocks, bonds, and credit?

    I don’t think so, but I was caught by surprise by how much we could rally while facing many big issues (the biggest of which, by far, is the competition from Made By China). I also was surprised at how much we could rally on what seems (after weeks and weeks of positive news) to be just more of the same news that should already be priced in.

    I know that LAW (Long And Wrong) is sometimes used, but I’m not sure what is the opposite of that? SAS (Short and Stupid)? I do know “don’t fight the Fed” but despite the apparent GCBE, I don’t think I’m fighting the Fed.

    We get a lot of economic data next week, so we will have plenty of opportunities to judge the state of the economy and the trajectory of inflation.

    LOTL

    One subject coming up, especially within Academy’s GIG, is Living Off The Land. My initial reaction was that this was about “preppers” and I felt good about having a well and expanding our garden. Turns out that it is all about cyber. In fact, a particularly nefarious and difficult to catch cyber-attack. CISA published on LOTL back in February. Maybe because it was competing with Super Bowl coverage, it didn’t get the attention it deserves, but it is coming up in more and more conversations. Please look for Academy’s SITREP on this important subject early next week.

    Finally, one thing that I think many across the country can agree with is let’s hope the old adage of March, In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb holds true, as I for one am “done” with winter!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 16:20

  • Chinese-Owned Tanker Hit By Houthi Missile Despite Safe Passage Deal 
    Chinese-Owned Tanker Hit By Houthi Missile Despite Safe Passage Deal 

    Bloomberg’s sources stated on Friday that China and Russia made a deal with Iran-backed Houthis for safe passage of their commercial vessels through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. 

    Fast forward to late Saturday night, US Central Command announced on social media platform X that a ballistic missile fired by Houthi rebels hit a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned chemical tanker called “M/V Huang Pu.” 

    CENTCOM on X provides more details about the attack on the Chinese tanker:

    March 23, the Iranian-backed Houthis launched four anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) into the Red Sea in the vicinity of M/V Huang Pu, a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned, Chinese-operated oil tanker.

    At 4:25 p.m. (Sanaa time), a fifth ballistic missile was detected as fired toward M/V Huang Pu. The ship issued a distress call but did not request assistance. M/V Huang Pu suffered minimal damage, and a fire on board was extinguished within 30 minutes. No casualties were reported, and the vessel resumed its course. The Houthis attacked the MV Huang despite previously stating they would not attack Chinese vessels.

    Between 6:50 and 9:50 a.m. (Sanaa time), US forces, including USS Carney (DDG 64), engaged six Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) over the southern Red Sea. Five crashed into the Red Sea, and one flew inland into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

    It was determined these UAVs presented an imminent threat to US, coalition, and merchant vessels in the region. These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US, coalition, and merchant vessels.

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    What remains unclear is why the Houthis would attack the vessel if there were a safe passage deal. Also, the ship was broadcasting “India All Crew China,” which Houthi rebels could see. 

    A separate Bloomberg report stated that one of the world’s top shippers, Maersk, warned the risk level across the Red Sea “remains elevated.” 

    The shipper says its container ships continue “sailing via the Cape of Good Hope and around Africa is the most reasonable solution at the moment and the one that currently allows the best supply chain stability.”

    Rising tensions in and around the Red Sea, especially with an oil tanker being hit this weekend, have some market observers extremely worried about a spillover in attacks across the region and the crude market, ignoring some of these mounting risks. 

    One of those spillovers that Rapidan Energy Group has pointed out is the increasing risk of a “crippling attack” on Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq facility, the largest crude oil stabilization plant in the world. 

    “Geopolitical disruptions: Wars can temporarily stop production or interrupt trade, but if important oil processing or production facilities, like the Saudi Abqaiq stabilization plant that Iran attacked in 2019, were to be severely damaged over a prolonged period, markets would immediately become tighter,” Rapidan Energy wrote in its 2023 global markets outlook. 

    Given the chaos in Eastern Europe with Ukraine attacking Russian refineries, the global oil market could be nearing a major shock if Houthis begin attacking refineries in Saudi Arabia. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 15:45

  • US-Backed Egypt Sitting Atop Muslim Brotherhood Powder Keg Inspired By Gaza, Failing Economy
    US-Backed Egypt Sitting Atop Muslim Brotherhood Powder Keg Inspired By Gaza, Failing Economy

    Via The Cradle

    On the morning of March 4, the State Security Criminal Court in Egypt sentenced the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohammed Badie to death, along with seven of the outlawed group’s leaders (Mahmoud Ezzat, Mohamed el-Beltagy, Amr Zaki, Osama Yassin, Safwa Hegazy, Assem Abdel Maged, and Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud) for organizing acts of violence eleven years ago in the so-called ‘Platform Events’ case. 

    The case traces back to 2013, days after the Egyptian military ousted the late Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Mursi in a Saudi–UAE-backed coup. 

    Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Badie has been handed multiple death sentences.

    Technically, this ruling marked 80-year-old Badie’s third encounter with a death sentence following the infamous “Rabaa Operations Room” case in 2015. 

    Yet, beyond notions of ‘justice,’ a deeper narrative unfurls – one laden with political gravitas. The court’s ruling wasn’t solely about holding individuals accountable for past transgressions; it was a strategic move by the Egyptian state.

    Ticking time bomb 

    The government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is fearful of the impending social upheaval anticipated as a result of the state’s faltering economy, flawed fiscal policies, decline in Arab world clout, and Egypt’s impotence in the face of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza – all ingredients for a potential powder keg primed to detonate.

    Commentators suggest the next explosion could be of an unprecedented scale, eclipsing the Bread Intifada of 1977 and the 25 January revolution of 2011.

    He recalled the role of the Brotherhood in the 1948 War, and then the effects of the Nakba on Egypt and the policies of the state, aimed at eradicating the popular Islamic social and political movement since the fifties:

    We don’t care if we are sentenced to death and imprisonment. Palestine is our first cause and the cause of the Arab and Islamic nation. Mr Judge, this is the root of the case. We are imprisoned until the deal of the century is completed.

    Regardless of the accuracy of Badie’s supra-temporal statement, it remains undeniable that the events unfolding in Palestine today are likely to cast a shadow on Cairo in the coming years, depending on which way the Egyptian authorities approach Gaza. The potent repercussions of a wrong move weigh heavily on Egypt’s authorities.

    State v Religion

    In this context, it is worth reflecting on Roger Caillois’ discussion in “Man and the Sacred” on the disparity between the state’s temporal perspective and the religious perception of time. 

    A state typically adheres to an objective, temporal, and often linear vision, whereas religious frameworks usually embrace a “supra-temporal” perspective intertwined with a historical understanding – in which, given time, popular struggles will eventually outmaneuver a failed authority.

    While the state endeavors to regulate movement and time, manifesting its authority through institutions such as courts and prisons, Islamists engage in a different arena. They confront the state in streets, alleys, pulpits, and prisons, focusing strategically on the temporal dimension – that is, the “timelessness” of the struggle.

    Indeed, understanding the political standoff between Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood necessitates a deep dive into their historical relationship. 

    The so-called “Arab street” has grown increasingly angry at Egypt’s silence over the Gaza crisis…

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    From the fraught interactions of the thirties to the dominance of the fifties, followed by a reluctant coexistence in the seventies, then the emergence of the Muslim ‘box’ during the Arab Spring, and subsequently the era of “post-Islamism” (as described by Iranian–American sociologist Asef Bayat), the Brotherhood has gone through various phases in a zero-sum game with the state

    This relationship is underpinned by foundational features deeply ingrained in Egyptian political life, which neither the state bureaucracy can overcome nor the Brotherhood can fully assimilate.

    Furthermore, the evolution of the Egyptian state, with its centralized control system spanning over six millennia, has moved through various pivotal periods, each contributing to the unique crises that continue to shape the country’s political scene. 

    The Brotherhood throughout the ages 

    From a historical perspective, the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood can be understood as a civil response to state violence inflicted upon society. In other words, the secular–Islamic tension in Egypt is not merely a cultural clash but rather a consequence of the state’s violent encroachment upon society’s symbolic capital.

    It is also important to view the Muslim Brotherhood primarily as a social movement rather than a political one, akin to its offshoots, Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which also trace their roots to grassroots social activism. 

    During Egypt’s monarchial period, the Brotherhood aligned closely with figures such as Fathi Radwan, Aziz al-Masri, and Muhammad Saleh Harb in opposing Saad Zaghloul and the nationalist, liberal Wafd Party. However, following the monarchy’s demise, the Brotherhood found itself on opposite sides.

    In the turbulent sixties, controversial figures like Sayyid Qutb faced persecution, while Hassan al-Hudaybi, the Brotherhood’s former supreme guide, emphasized their role as “preachers, not judges.”

    During Anwar Sadat’s presidency in the seventies, the Brotherhood oscillated between support and opposition, and in the eighties, it condemned his assassination by militant offshoot al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.

    This helps explain the fluctuating relationship between the state and the Brotherhood throughout modern Egyptian history. 

    A blast from the past 

    The ‘return’ of the Brotherhood, at least to the public’s attention, raises questions about what the Egyptian state wants from society. The government’s costly trophy ‘development-without-demand’ projects – erecting entirely new cities, including a capital city – and the random ‘renaissance funds’ that boomed under Sisi are yet to benefit ordinary Egyptians or resolve Egypt’s longstanding economic and national challenges

    Despite the artificial boom attributed to these ego projects, Egypt languishes at the bottom of Arab states in education quality, ranking 139th globally in 2023, and 153rd in health security, as corruption continues to plague its institutions, for which it ranks 130th.

    Arguably, these ‘renaissance’ projects in Egypt today do little more than enrich a financial oligarchy deeply entrenched in the corridors of power, who lack any vision for sustainable development. 

    While the Muslim Brotherhood may officially be banned, its historical role as a support system for the people during times when the state was either unwilling or unable to provide necessitates caution. 

    If the government fails to tread carefully in domestic affairs – particularly with the backdrop of Israel’s assault on Muslims right on Egypt’s border – the Brotherhood could re-emerge from the shadows, colliding head-on with the state once again.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 15:10

  • "Why Do I Have To Have Another Marvel Movie That's All Women?" Billionaire Slams 'Woke' Disney Amid Board Proxy Battle
    “Why Do I Have To Have Another Marvel Movie That’s All Women?” Billionaire Slams ‘Woke’ Disney Amid Board Proxy Battle

    Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, whose Trian Partners owns a roughly $3.5 billion stake in Disney, has entered a fierce proxy fight to join the company’s board.

    Nelson PeltzPhotographer: Calla Kessler/Bloomberg

    Sitting down with the Financial Times, Peltz slammed the DEI-driven entertainment company.

    “Disney is stupid because I’m not trying to fire [chief executive] Bob Iger, I want to help him,” he said, adding: “We don’t fire CEOs.”

    Disney, meanwhile, says that Peltz has not “presented a single strategic idea” to the company while campaigning for two years to secure board seats.

    Peltz hit back, telling the Times: “They say we know nothing about the movie business — we don’t claim we do — but I don’t think they do, with five big losers in a row. They’ve lost first place in animation, they’ve lost first place in features . . . Maybe it’s time to change management in those divisions.”

    Too woke…

    In comments we’re sure the left will seize on, the billionaire investor then criticized Disney for pushing woke messaging as opposed to simply making great content.

    “People go to watch a movie or a show to be entertained,” said Peltz. “They don’t go to get a message.”

    Elaborating further, Peltz asked “Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?” referring to Black Panther.

    The Disney proxy fight is nearing its end, with a shareholder vote scheduled for April 3. And speaking of woke…

    Both sides have been publicizing the support they’ve received from others in the business world. Iger has been endorsed by JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, filmmaker George Lucas and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs and a large Disney shareholder.

    Meanwhile, a group of current and former directors at firms including Mondelez International Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Janus Henderson Group Plc. this week co-signed a letter in support of Peltz.

    As for politics, Peltz – who hosted a dinner in February with Elon Musk, says that Trump is “not a perfect candidate, nor is Biden,” adding “It looks like Trump is all we got.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 14:35

  • Nothing To See Here, Just A Man Waving A Severed Human Leg Around And Eating It
    Nothing To See Here, Just A Man Waving A Severed Human Leg Around And Eating It

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Video footage shot in Wasco, California appears to show a crazed maniac waving around a severed human leg and taking bites out of it before police apprehended him Friday.

    Reports have suggested that the man ‘stole’ the leg from the scene of a train accident, where a person was earlier hit and killed.

    The footage shows the man, identified as 27-year-old Resendo Tellez, holding and examining the limb, with witnesses saying he was eating parts of it, before attempting to walk away waving it around as multiple police cars close in on him.

    WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE

    Here is a censored version, in case the uncensored graphic version above is removed:

    Tellez was arrested on multiple outstanding warrants, and for taking ‘evidence’ from the accident scene.

    He was also charged with misdemeanor removal of human body parts from an area that is not a cemetery without law enforcement approval.

    Some reports claim he was also charged with mutilating the body, supporting the claim that he had devoured some of it.

    This is the kind of thing happening most days now in Democrat run shithole American cities.

    Perhaps NBC News will report the leg as being “abandoned”?

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 14:00

  • TIME To Panic: Joe Biden's Campaign "In Trouble" Despite Obama Warning
    TIME To Panic: Joe Biden’s Campaign “In Trouble” Despite Obama Warning

    “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” –Barack Obama

    With less than eight months before the 2024 election, the Biden re-election campaign is in big trouble. Not only is Biden lagging in the polls vs. Donald Trump, the border crisis he created by shredding all of Trump’s Executive Orders on immigration has resulted in 10 million illegals flooding into the United States – which has left even Democrats livid.

    Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy

    What’s more, Biden is quickly losing the support of young Americans, and the latino vote.

    Things are so bad that TIME magazine has just devoted 3,700 words to let us know that Barack Obama ‘warned’ the Biden campaign last June that defeating Trump would be harder in 2024 (because no pandemic or hoax dossier to set him up?). Six months later, Obama ‘saw few signs of improvement.’

    Obama returned to the White House in December, with a ‘more urgent’ message: the re-election campaign was behind schedule in building out field operations, and that an ‘insular group of advisers’ in the West Wing was hamstringing the effort.

    Now, it’s really bad…

    Three months later, the 2024 general election is under way, and Biden is indeed in trouble. His stubbornly low approval ratings have sunk into the high 30s, worse than those of any other recent President seeking re-election. He’s trailed or tied Trump in most head-to-head matchups for months. Voters express concerns about his policies, his leadership, his age, and his competency. The coalition that carried Biden to victory in 2020 has splintered; the Democrats’ historic advantage with Black, Latino, and Asian American voters has dwindled to lows not seen since the civil rights movement. -TIME

    Meanwhile, Biden’s inner circle is “defiantly sanguine” as a “fog of dread” descends on Democrats.

    The rest of the TIME article is full of anecdotes of dissatisfied Democrats, particularly young voters such as 20-year-old Aidan Kohn-Murphy.

    It has nothing to do, as many assume, with the President’s age. With palpable frustration, Kohn-Murphy enumerates the list of perceived policy “betrayals” as though they were “tattooed on the back of my hand.”

    According to the report, GenZ voters “don’t understand why they should be compelled to cast their ballot for a candidate who has done so many things that are against their values,” said Kohn-Murphy.

    Losing the minority vote

    In 2020, Biden carried 87% of the black vote. Now, he’s polling at just 63%, a sharp decline. Meanwhile four years ago he won hispanic votes by a ratio of 2 to 1. He now trails Trump in that bloc.

    Biden’s support of Israel amid the Gaza war has “tanked his standing with Muslim and Arab voters,” particularly in “must-win Michigan.”

    Overall, Biden’s advantage over Trump among nonwhite Americans has shrunk from almost 50 points in 2020 to 12, according to the latest Times/Siena poll.

    It boils down to voters of color, and those voters are pissed,” said one former Biden campaign and White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I think it’s very likely he’ll lose.”

    What’s more, nearly two dozen senior Democratic sources told TIME that Biden’s “campaign mechanics, structure, and staffing over most of the past year are partly to blame as well.”

    While Obama was marching to re-election over the summer of 2012, his campaign head count topped 900. Despite plans to hire 350 new staffers, the Biden campaign ended 2023 with only around 70 paid employees, according to campaign finance filings.

    Biden advisers don’t care about the president’s dismal numbers with young and nonwhite voters, as the “Biden brain trust” thinks they’ll vote for him again regardless.

    “We’ve reached out to this group of nonwhite and young voters earlier than any presidential campaign ever has,” according to senior adviser Becca Siegel.

    Good luck with that…

    Illustration by Tim O’Brien for TIME

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 13:25

  • The Insanity In Our World Is Driven By Money Printing
    The Insanity In Our World Is Driven By Money Printing

    Authored by Marty Bent via BombThrower.com,

    Fix The Money, Fix The World

    This chart has been making the rounds on Twitter this week and I think it’s a good image to send you freaks into the weekend with.

    It’s easy to get swept up in the chaos of the day-to-day volatility that exists in our world. Recently, our minds have been inundated with headlines about illegal immigration, squatters and the degradation of private property rights, war across the world, small battles within the larger “culture war”, increasing prices, and the decisions made by central banks around the world. In the midst of all of this chaos it is important to take a step back and remind yourself of what lies at the core of most of these issues; the fact that we’ve completely broken money.

    When you break money, the most important tool humans use to facilitate economic activity, a ripple effect of negative consequences begins to emanate from the root of the world’s engine. Those ripples create the momentum that leads to chaos that we are witnessing today.

    Broken money leads people to store their value in sub optimal vehicles like housing. This drives the cost of real estate up unnaturally and increases the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Sowing seeds of animosity. Seeds that, when left to germinate and grow via the further degradation of the money people use, blossom into ugly flowers of Anarcho Tyranny.

    This has manifested in the trend of people claiming other’s houses by squatting in them when they are left unattended for an extended period of time. The preferential treatment that has been given to squatters over homeowners in recent years can be seen as the regime which controls the money printers throwing the plebs a bone as they struggle to get by, an attempt to push the productive class to violence against a state unwilling to respect private property rights, or a combination of the two.

    Broken money incentivizes governments to allow their borders to be bum rushed by cheap laborers who will take low paying jobs that enable the systemically fragile economy to keep chugging along while simultaneously increasing the chaos that already exists and diluting the values that the natives of this country believe in.

    The excess and decadence enabled by a world run on broken easy money allows people to live in a detached reality that leads them to push objectively false narratives. This is why there are running debates about gender and a retreat from merit based compensation.

    All of this stems from broken money.

    The chart above should act as a reminder to you all that the biggest problem in the world right now is the money. The chart above should also prove to you that the most powerful people throughout the economy are going to fight tooth and nail to protect the broken money because they benefit massively from the fact that it is broken.

    Keep this in mind as the chaos increases and narratives begin to form around using bitcoin as money.

    *  *  *

    Get on the Bombthrower mailing list here and receive a free copy of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto, which outlined all this. However, by the time you read this it may already be too late to sign up for The Bitcoin Capitalist Letternew subscriptions will be closed once Bitcoin hits a new all-time high.
    Follow Marty’s Bent via TFTC.io

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 12:50

  • Some Democrats Say They Would Save Speaker Johnson From Ouster
    Some Democrats Say They Would Save Speaker Johnson From Ouster

    By Jacob Burg of the Epoch Times

    An unlikely source of aid for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—who is facing a motion from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to oust him after bringing the government funding package to a floor vote—might come from House Democrats.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) (L) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) listen during remarks at a menorah lighting ceremony at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Dec. 12, 2023.

    After all House Democrats voted with a gang of eight Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October 2023, several House Democrats are signaling they would save Mr. Johnson from a similar fate.

    “It’s absurd he’s being kicked out for doing the right thing, keeping the government open. It has two-thirds support of the Congress, and the idea that he would be kicked out by these jokers is absurd,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) told CNN on March 22. He said he would vote to retain Mr. Johnson as House Speaker and hoped other Democrats would do the same.

    Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) expressed a similar sentiment in a March 22 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.  “I do not support Speaker Johnson, but I will never stand by and let [Ms. Greene] take over the people’s House,” he said.

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

    However, some Democrats said their support would be predicated on Mr. Johnson reconsidering the Senate’s foreign-aid package passed in February.

    “I’d want to see his good-faith action before that happened,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said, referring to the possibility of voting to retain Mr. Johnson as speaker.

    Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), before Ms. Greene filed her motion, mentioned that he would vote to prevent Mr. Johnson’s ouster depending on the speaker’s actions regarding aid for Ukraine.

    “If we get a vote on the appropriations bills and we get a vote on the supplemental, there’ll be enough Democrats that Johnson will not be removed as speaker,” Mr. Smith told The Hill in February.

    “That’s just my view.”

    Republicans Against Johnson Ouster

    Ms. Greene filed her motion to vacate Mr. Johnson from the speaker’s chair the morning before the House approved the funding package, 286–134, which is now headed to the Senate before the 11:59 p.m. shutdown deadline.

    However, not all Republicans are eager to face the same gridlock and uncertainty that bedeviled the GOP caucus in the weeks after Mr. McCarthy’s ouster. Even some of Mr. Johnson’s harshest critics from the House Freedom Caucus have dismissed Ms. Greene’s efforts.

    Mr. Gaetz, who initiated Mr. McCarthy’s downfall, said he would not support a motion to vacate Mr. Johnson.

    “When I vacated McCarthy, I made a promise to all of you, to the entire country, that we would not end up with a Democrat speaker,” Mr. Gaetz said on his “Firebrand” podcast on March 22, after the House vote.

    He expressed concern with the dwindling House GOP majority and the possibility of at least a few Republicans voting for a Democratic speaker in the event of Mr. Johnson’s potential ouster.

    “And because I’m not sure of that, do not count me among those who would support a motion to vacate at this time,” Mr. Gaetz added.

    Some Republicans, however, were not nearly as restrained in their responses to Ms. Greene’s motion to vacate.

    “It’s not only idiotic, but it actually does not do anything to advance the conservative movement. And in fact, it undermines the country and our majority,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.).

    Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) of the House Freedom Caucus said Mr. Johnson is the only House Republican capable of leading the caucus “through these dark and challenging times” and that Ms. Greene “just made a big mistake.”

    “To think that one of our Republican colleagues would call for his ouster right now—it’s really … it’s abhorrent to me, and I oppose it,” he said in a video posted to X.

    Ms. Greene told reporters on the Capital steps on March 22 that she is not the only Republican supporting her motion to vacate Mr. Johnson but stopped short of naming anyone.

    “I’ve talked to many who probably won’t go public, but silently, they’re breathing a sigh of relief,” she said.

    That support, at least so far, does not appear to come from others who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy last year.

    Continue reading at The Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 11:40

  • Kamala Harris Announces DOJ-Funded Office To Push 'Red Flag' Gun Laws, Gets Slammed By Parkland Dad Over 'Photo Op'
    Kamala Harris Announces DOJ-Funded Office To Push ‘Red Flag’ Gun Laws, Gets Slammed By Parkland Dad Over ‘Photo Op’

    Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday announced a new national office that will assist states in implementing “red flag” laws – which allow for a judge like this…

    …to approve the temporary removal of firearms from a person believed to be a danger to themselves or others, by a prosecutor like this:

    New York AG Letitia James

    Harris announced the new office, the federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center (Erpo), at a Saturday visit to Parkland, Florida, where she toured the site of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting that killed 17.

    “The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school occurred after there were clear warning signs, but there were no tools to remove the shooter’s firearm,” the White House said in a statement announcing the resource office.

    The office is being funded by a Justice Department grant, and will be operated through the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. It will help state and local governments, as well as law enforcement and others (including behavioral health and social service providers), to “optimize” the use of red flag laws, and will provide training and technical assistance “for a wide variety of stakeholders.”

    Red flag laws have already been implemented in 21 states, of which the White House said that just six had taken advantage of $750 million in funding made available by the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act enacted by the Biden administration.

    Meanwhile, the father of a victim of the Parkland shooting, Ryan Petty, slammed Harris in an interview on Fox News, telling the outlet “The vice president and the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention made it very clear to families early on that nothing short of new gun control was going to satisfy them in protecting our nation’s schools. And that is just a slap in the face to those of us that have worked for six years now to try to protect our nation’s schools.”

    “There are so many ways that we can protect our kids and our teachers at school that don’t require the infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners around the country,” Petty added. “But the vice president and the Office of Gun Violence Prevention don’t want to hear any of those solutions. What they want to do is create an opportunity for the vice president to spout gun control talking points at a site that, quite frankly, is hallowed ground at this point.

    “What’s frustrating to me is that this building should have been demolished years ago, and it’s now being used as a photo op for politicians that want to push an agenda,” he continued.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 11:05

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Today’s News 24th March 2024

  • China Behind Super Highway That Targets US With Mass Migration, Economic Warfare
    China Behind Super Highway That Targets US With Mass Migration, Economic Warfare

    Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The grind of heavy machinery breaks the silence of the Darién jungle, where the Pan American Highway ends at Yaviza in Panama.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    Construction workers have cleared towering trees to make way for a steel and concrete bridge mighty enough to withstand flooding from the Chucunaque River.

    An onsite worker for the construction company Cusa told The Epoch Times the construction project will cut 4 miles into the Darién jungle at a cost of $42 million and includes a second bridge crossing the Tuira River.

    That would leave some 55 miles to finish the Pan American Highway, also known as Highway 1, through the mountainous rainforest to connect it to Turbo, Colombia.

    If it’s ever completed, the Pan American Highway will stretch about 18,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina, opening up a land corridor the length of the Americas.

    It has gone unfinished for decades due to American and Panamanian concerns over the environment, crime, and disease—and more recently mass migration. The dangerous, rugged terrain acts as a natural barrier to travel from South to Central America.

    The bridge and road expansion will end near the town of Bocas de Cupe, in the Darién Gap. However, bridging the rivers has been considered one of the major obstacles blocking completion of the highway.

    The new project has worried some who fear completing the road into the Darién Gap will be a win for China and a loss for America.

    Michael Yon, a former war correspondent, has been covering mass migration through Panama for several years and has used social media to bring attention to the bridge’s construction and its implications.

    China would benefit through an alternate trade route around the Panama Canal, which is essential to global trade. But for the United States, it could open the floodgates to migrants from South America, he told the Epoch Times.

    Meanwhile, U.S. leaders have grown increasingly wary of the military implications tied to Chinese infrastructure projects being built in America’s backyard as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), particularly around the Panama Canal.

    In 2018, Panama signed on to China’s ambitious BRI project, dubbed a modern Silk Road, after publicly recognizing Taiwan as part of China, much to the surprise and concern of the United States.

    Workers prepare abutments for a bridge spanning the Chucunaque River at Yaviza, Panama, on Feb. 20, 2024. An onsite worker for the construction company Cusa said the project will cut four miles into the Darien jungle at a cost of $42 million and includes a second bridge crossing the Tuira River. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

    The CCP aims to utilize the BRI “to amass power and influence at the expense of the world’s democracies,” U.S. Southern Command Commander Army Gen. Laura Richardson warned in March.

    She and other commanders in recent years have been sounding the alarm about China’s incursion into the Western Hemisphere.

    China “seeks to supplant the United States as the world’s leading economic and military power,” Gen. Richardson noted in a written statement to the House Armed Services Committee.

    Closing the Gap

    Last year alone, a record 500,000 migrants traveled through the Darién Gap on their way to the U.S. southern border, documents show.

    Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, believes China’s economic development in the region threatens America’s influence and security.

    If China displaces the U.S. in the Western hemisphere as the dominant economic power, then we lose our leverage,” Mr. Howell, formerly an attorney with the Department of Homeland Security, told The Epoch Times.

    China is encircling the United States with infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean, Mr. Howell said.

    “It’s like a boa constrictor that’s tightening and tightening around the United States,” he said.

    In the 2019 book, “China’s Belt and Road and Panama: A Strategic and Prospective Scenario between the Americas and China,” author Eddie Tapiero touts the rise of China’s BRI in utopian terms.

    Mr. Tapiero, a Panamanian professor and international economist who wrote his book after a BRI meeting in China, called the initiative a catalyst for “global public good,” envisioning a world where “borders no longer exist, nor do countries.”

    Migrants walk by the jungle near Bajo Chiquito village, the first border control of the Darien Province in Panama, on Sept. 22, 2023. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)

    The book includes a BRI scenario with a map titled “Globalized Belt and Road,” showing Panama and its canal connected to Colombia by rail through the Darién Gap.

    On the Colombian side of the Darién Gap, Chinese companies are working to build highways and ports.

    Roadwork near the Pan American Highway in Turbo is part of the “Autopistas al Mar 2” highway project.

    The project will connect Colombia’s second-largest city of Medellín to ports in Urabá, including Turbo, where the Pan American Highway ends.

    China’s state-owned China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), along with four local companies won the 2015 bid to build the Autopistas al Mar 2, according to the nonprofit Colombia Reports website.

    The project was delayed until late 2019, when the Chinese-led consortium obtained the necessary loans from the China Development Bank.

    Mr. Tapiero sees Panama, bookended by Colombia and Costa Rica, as a central hub in Latin America for the BRI. He suggests the United States could “reduce geopolitical uncertainty” if it, too, joins the BRI.

    His globalized BRI map also showed rail routes slicing through the United States, to significant markets on America’s east and west coasts.

    Infrastructure “connectivity” through air, land, and sea is a central theme of the book, which is playing out in Panama.

    The bridges into the Darién are part of a contract for the rehabilitation, improvement, and maintenance of the East Pan-American Highway.

    (Top) A ship is guided through the locks in the Panama Canal on Feb. 21, 2024. (Bottom) Traffic crosses the Bridge of The Americas on the Pan American Highway as an eastbound ship enters the Panama Canal on Feb. 21, 2024. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

    It was awarded to Intervial Chile, S.A. under a public-private partnership with the government of Panama, according to government documents.

    The investment for the project stands at more than $262 million as part of Panama’s Performance Standards Maintenance Program, which aims to promote agricultural, commercial, and tourist development.

    Funding for the project is through the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of World Bank Group. China has ties with both banking establishments. In 2009, China pledged $1.5 billion to IFC to boost global trade and more recently has intensified collaboration with IFC on climate friendly bonds.

    Global Choke Points

    A highway through the Darién Gap stands to diminish the importance of the Panama Canal, which the United States still protects under a neutrality treaty.

    The canal was returned to Panama in 1999 under a treaty brokered in the 1970s with President Jimmy Carter.

    The Darién Gap by land is similar to the Panama Canal by sea as a choke point, which holds military and economic value.

    China’s attempt to minimize or control the canal’s strategic importance to the United States could be significant should a conflict break out over Taiwan in terms of China’s ability to shut down sea lanes, said Andrés Martínez-Fernández, the Heritage Foundation’s senior policy analyst for Latin America.

    That’s a very concerning issue in particular,” he told The Epoch Times.

    Mr. Martinez-Fernandez noted that Chinese companies have been busy building infrastructure on either end of the U.S.–built Panama Canal.

    The canal has become a point of tension between China and the United States, which has retained the right to enforce operational neutrality on the Panama Canal.

    The Panama Canal Authority controls the administration and maintenance of the waterway’s resources and security, independent of the Panamanian government.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 23:20

  • Philadelphia Sets 11PM Curfew For All Businesses In Drug-Riddled Kensington Section Of City
    Philadelphia Sets 11PM Curfew For All Businesses In Drug-Riddled Kensington Section Of City

    Slowly, but steadily, Philadelphia’s drug-ridden Kensington section is all but shutting down. The area, best known for its zombie-like appearance, is now forcing 24 hour businesses like gas stations and convenience stores to shut down between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

    Because what better way to address the drug problem than to shut down law-abiding businesses in the area? Once again, government is thinking ‘outside the box’ with your tax dollars. 

    The proposal was put forward by Councilmember Quetcy Lozada of the 7th District, representing Kensington, during a Council Stated Meeting on Thursday and is aimed at curbing crime, mitigating litter issues, and moderating nocturnal activities in the community.

    Approximately 90 businesses will be affected, a new report from NBC Philadelphia said. Establishments holding a liquor license within the specified zone will be exempt from these new rules, allowed to keep their operations open until 2 a.m., which is the current law for bars and restaurants with liquor licenses. 

    The bill was conceived in February and was developed with feedback from local residents, businesses, and non-profit organizations, driven by concerns related to the opioid crisis, as noted by city representatives.

    The proposed regulations are set to affect the vicinity enclosed by East Lehigh Avenue, Kensington Avenue, D Street, E Tioga Street, and Frankford Avenue, encompassing businesses along the blocks bordering this area.

    Kensington-based nonprofit IMPACT Services Roberto Rodriguez commented to NBC Philadelphia: “The businesses in the Kensington Corridor are in support of this initiative. They are thankful that Councilmember Lozada has included them in the conversation and considered their opinions. During the meeting that she held at our office with them, it was clear that they are supportive of this and future public safety measures.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 22:45

  • Dangerous Levels Of Toxins Found In General Mills ‘LOADED’ Cereal: Report
    Dangerous Levels Of Toxins Found In General Mills ‘LOADED’ Cereal: Report

    Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new report is raising concerns over General Mills’ new cereal line after testing revealed that Trix LOADED cereal is literally loaded with high levels of heavy metals and agrochemicals.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    General Mills, Inc. on Feb. 1 launched “LOADED,” a new cereal line with “puffed-up larger-than-life squares” of General Mills’ Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, and Cocoa Puffs cereals filled with artificially flavored vanilla creme. Trix LOADED boasts 17 grams of whole grain per serving and 12 vitamins and minerals. Yet testing by Moms Across America (MAA), an organization dedicated to educating and empowering others to create healthy communities, found the artificially flavored creme-filled breakfast food also contains measurable levels of aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead, glyphosate, and pesticides shown to be harmful to humans.

    In a statement to The Epoch Times, MAA director Zen Honeycutt said her organization tested two samples of General Mills’ Trix LOADED cereal because they were alarmed that the company, which had previously seemed very committed to supporting regenerative organic agriculture, launched a cereal “loaded with creme, food dyes, and highly-processed foods.”

    Pesticides Found in General Mills’ Trix LOADED Cereal

    In test results obtained by MAA, scientists found residues from eight different pesticides in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal.

    The following six pesticide residues were found in trace amounts:

    • Imazalil-1
    • Metconazole-1
    • Pyraclostrobin-1
    • Pyrimethanil-1
    • Pyriproxyfen-1
    • Tebuconazole-1

    Two pesticides, piperonyl butoxide-1 (PBO) and fluopyram-1, were detected in higher amounts. Fluopyram-1 is a broad-spectrum fungicide that can cause liver problems, endocrine disruption, and thyroid cancer.

    Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) is a man-made pesticide synergist that enhances the potency of certain pesticides designed to kill insects. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies PBO as a “possible human carcinogen” as studies in rats show PBO can induce thyroid and liver cancers, as well as noncancerous tumors.

    More recent animal model studies suggest PBO exposure can cause neurodevelopmental abnormalities in utero and liver cancer. A 2021 study published in Reproductive Toxicology found PBO may cause male infertility and reproductive toxicity.

    According to the National Pesticide Information Center, PBO is found in over 2,500 pesticide products, including foggers and mosquito control programs. Yet PBO is exempt from the EPA’s maximum residue limits, which determine the amount of pesticides allowed to remain in food. This means PBO pesticide residue is freely permitted in cereals consumed daily by children and adolescents across the United States.

    Heavy Metals Exceeded EPA Allowable Levels

    According to test results obtained by The Epoch Times, scientists also detected measurable levels of aluminum, cadmium, lead, and arsenic in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal that in some cases far exceeded the EPA allowable levels in drinking water. The United States does not consistently regulate heavy metals in food or assess the long-term cumulative effects of heavy metal exposure in children, but it does regulate the amount of heavy metal contaminants allowed in water.

    For example, the EPA sets the allowable level of arsenic in drinking water at 10 parts per billion (ppb). Trix LOADED cereal samples contained 21.5 and 23 ppb of lead—more than double the EPA’s allowable level. The samples contained cadmium levels 400 percent higher than the EPA’s allowable level.

    The EPA allows 0.05 to 0.2 mg/L of aluminum in drinking water, equivalent to 50 to 200 ppb. Cereal samples 1 and 2 contained 2,930 ppb and 3,500 ppb of aluminum, respectively. These were 1,365 percent and 1,650 percent higher than the agency’s allowable level of aluminum in drinking water.

    In 2008, the European Food Safety Authority established a “tolerable weekly intake” of 1 mg of aluminum per kg of body weight per week, based on combined evidence from animal studies that assessed dietary administration of aluminum compounds.

    Using European Union standards, if a child eats a 40-gram serving of Trix LOADED cereal daily, the weekly consumption of aluminum would be 0.98 mg/week based on one sample and 0.82 mg/week based on the other. This is roughly equal to the EU’s limit without considering other sources of aluminum exposure, such as flour, baking soda, medications, processed foods, and aluminum pots and pans.

    Trix LOADED Exposes Children to Toxic Glyphosate

    Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, was found in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal at 15.83 ppb and 17.47 ppb. It is a key inactive ingredient in weedkiller products such as Roundup.

    The EPA has not classified glyphosate as a human carcinogen, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate as “probably” carcinogenic to humans.

    Studies have confirmed a link between glyphosate and numerous health conditions, including cancers and nervous system disorders. Additionally, Monsanto, now Bayer, agreed to pay roughly $11 billion to settle claims filed by individuals who say Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma or other related cancers. As of March, there are 4,253 cancer lawsuits, out of the 4,800 claims originally filed, still pending in the California Roundup multi-district litigation.

    In research published by the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, scientists found that childhood exposure to glyphosate is linked to liver inflammation and metabolic disorders in adulthood that could lead to liver cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases later in life. Researchers found high levels of glyphosate residue in the urine of children and adolescents and reported that diet was a key source of exposure—as levels were higher in those who consumed more cereals and carbohydrates.

    Glyphosate is routinely used on genetically modified crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, legumes, and produce.

    Moms Across America Contacts General Mills

    In an email to General Mills provided to The Epoch Times, MAA called on the company to source suppliers who use safe, nontoxic ingredients, despite the lack of laws and regulations that would otherwise require them to do so.

    MAA requested General Mills do the following:

    • Require that suppliers of ingredients avoid using glyphosate or other agrochemicals as a drying agent or preharvest weedkiller.
    • Transition away from using glyphosate as a weedkiller within one to two years.
    • Perform quality testing on fertilizers for heavy metal contaminants and direct the safest possible fertilizer to be used.
    • Support and promote regenerative organic farming practices.

    “We hope consumers will learn the truth about the contents of ‘loaded cereal’ and make choices to support their family’s health,” Ms. Honeycutt told The Epoch Times. “We also hope they [consumers] will alert their elected officials that these types of foods, with high heavy metals and agrochemicals, have no place in the American food supply.”

    Ms. Honeycutt said she believes consumers should know the truth about what’s in their cereal so that they can make choices to support their family’s health, and hopes policymakers will “exercise the political will needed to clean up the food supply.”

    The Epoch Times reached out to General Mills for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 22:10

  • House Speaker Confirms He'll Invite Netanyahu To Address Congress
    House Speaker Confirms He’ll Invite Netanyahu To Address Congress

    Late this week House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that he will go through with inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington in order to address a joint session of Congress, and to emphasize solidarity with Israel amid its ongoing war against Hamas.

    Johnson’s Thursday statement suggests the invitation has already been extended: “I would love to have him come in and address a joint session of Congress. We’ll certainly extend that invitation,” he said to NBC News. “We’re just trying to work out schedules on all this.”

    Getty Images

    Johnson has in turn recently been asked by Israeli officials to speak at Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

    Even though all of this has come in direct response to Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s scathing anti-Netanyahu speech issued earlier this month, Schumer now says he welcomes the idea of Netanyahu addressing Congress.

    Schumer had said Israel risks becoming a “pariah” under Netanyahu’s failed policies, and highlighted the soaring Palestinian civilian death toll in the war against Hamas. He even called for new elections in Israel.

    “Israel has no stronger ally than the United States, and our relationship transcends any one president or any one Prime Minister,” Schumer has responded in a statement. “I will always welcome the opportunity for the Prime Minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way.”

    It must be remembered, however, the Netanyahu once addressed Congress – all the way back in 2002 – where he helped the Bush administration deceive the American public concerning Saddam Hussein and WMDs.

    He had testified during that appearance over two decades ago, “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards to the development of nuclear weapons.”

    Netanyahu had also dubiously said, “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

    That alone should disqualify him from ever being welcomed to speak to Congress and the American people again. But apparently both sides of the aisle are welcoming Johnson’s plan.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 21:35

  • Biden's Border Blowup
    Biden’s Border Blowup

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Some 8 to 10 million illegal aliens from all over the world, as expected, have flooded across the border since President Joe Biden took office.

    Illegal immigrants wade through the Rio Grande River as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border to request asylum, in El Paso, Texas, on March 13, 2024. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    A demagogic candidate Biden, remember, in 2019 invited those massing at the southern border to “surge” into the United States without specifying that they first needed legal sanction: “We immediately surge to the border all those seeking asylum.”

    In contrast, we know legal immigration is America’s great strength, but it has always depended on a few key prerequisites.

    Immigration must be legal and measured.

    Why? Because only the host nation can adjudicate how many immigrants it can successfully accept and assimilate. It has no desire to encourage Balkanized tribalism so common in nations abroad torn apart by ethnic conflict.

    America must have some knowledge of the background of immigrants, especially whether they have criminal records, belong to gangs, are importing drugs, carry infectious diseases, or can be self-supporting.

    By contrast, if the first thing immigrants do is illegally cross the American border, and the second is to reside illegally in America, and the third is to obtain fraudulent identification to mask that illegality, then they will establish long patterns of illegal behavior and disrespect for their hosts.

    In addition, immigration should be diverse so that large ethnic groups do not form permanent tribal sects in the fashion of the Balkans, the Middle East, or Latin America.

    Ideally, the host should prefer immigrants who have some knowledge of the language and customs of the United States. And they should have some ability to be self-supporting so as not to burden American taxpayers or overtax and deprive social services from poorer U.S. citizens.

    As for the host?

    America must be confident enough in and knowledgeable enough about its values, customs, and traditions to demand immigrants integrate rapidly into the body politic of the United States.

    Both the host and immigrants must agree on the basic facts of immigration.

    Immigrants, not the host, have chosen to leave their native land to risk a new life and identity in America.

    Therefore, the relationship is, by nature, asymmetrical. The host has a perfect right, indeed a responsibility, to impose its own values upon newcomers—not vice versa.

    Otherwise, if immigrants do not absorb their newly adopted culture, why would they have left and, in some sense, rejected their homeland in the first place?

    To replicate in the United States the very conditions and environment that they so eagerly fled from back home?

    So the host must remind immigrants that they chose a completely different paradigm from their native country. And therefore, they must be helped to embrace an entirely new national identity.

    Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration has violated every historical canon critical to ensuring legal immigration enriches the United States.

    They have encouraged 8–10 million of the world’s poorest to flood the border and to enter and reside in America without legal sanction.

    Most have no prior experience with American traditions, and few speak English.

    Host Americans have no idea whether hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of the millions entering illegally have committed crimes in their native countries, or have any record of employment, or are sick, or are here to foment gangs and to import lethal, foreign-made drugs that kill some 100,000 Americans a year.

    Worse, we, the hosts, no longer believe in the melting pot that once made America the world’s only successful multiracial democracy, united by the laws of the Constitution and the unique values that emanate from it.

    The combination of mass illegal immigration, without audit, into a country beset with $35 trillion in national debt, an existing 50 million residents not born in the United States, and without confidence in rapid assimilation certainly explains the disaster of illegal immigration that now manifests daily.

    President Biden may think nullifying federal immigration law is a smart political trick that, in the past, may have flipped southwestern states from red to blue or warped the census to give blue states more congressional districts.

    Or he may assume that with 70 percent of the electorate now voting through poorly audited mail-in balloting, there is no real way to prevent foreign nationals from voting for those who neutered the law to let them in.

    But in truth, President Biden is unfortunately undermining support for all immigration, legal or otherwise. He is guaranteeing that more imported drugs and gang members will kill more Americans.

    Ironically, President Biden is also alienating from the Democratic Party its once loyal black and Latino voters. They, not the party elite, must deal concretely with the consequences of Biden’s callous and cynical, ideologically driven policies.

    Perhaps the left will only cease destroying immigration law when it realizes that for each illegal alien it invites in, it will lose one or more once loyal Democratic voters.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 21:00

  • Bezos's Ex Donates $640 Million – With Most Going To Far-Left Groups Boosting Migrant Criminals, Trans Athletes
    Bezos’s Ex Donates $640 Million – With Most Going To Far-Left Groups Boosting Migrant Criminals, Trans Athletes

    Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, the third-wealthiest woman in the US, has awarded $640 million in new charitable donations – with most of it going to far-left nonprofits pushing left-wing causes, including assisting migrants who commit crimes and promoting transgender biological males who compete against women, the NY Post reports.

    Scott will provide 67 migrant-advocacy organizations a combined $122 million for legal aid and other assistance, according to an analysis of 361 awards she announced Tuesday through her foundation Yield Giving.

    The big winners include the Florida Immigrant Coalition, which vehemently opposes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crackdown on migrants who commit crimes; and the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, which is fighting that state’s efforts to increase illegal-migrant enforcement. Both scored $2 million awards. -NY Post

    Scott also awarded $117 million to prisoner-advocacy groups, $72 million to 43 groups which promote “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” and supporting transgender boys who routinely ruin athletics for biological females (feminists MIA).

    “Bezos’ wife is using the profits he made through capitalism to [fund] the rope that will hang capitalism,” said Heritage Foundation senior fellow, Mike Gonzalez, adding “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” to quote Lenin.

    “These things that she’s donating money to – whether it’s transgender ideas, helping illegals, prisoner rights, climate change – they’re all trying to transform our system away from capitalism,” Gonzalez continued.

    Scott, who was married to Jeff Bezos for nearly 25 years and has four children with him, parted ways with the Amazon.com founder with $38.3 billion in Amazon stock. In Dec. 2022 she launched a database of her charitable gifts under the name Yield Giving.

    She then began soliciting applications from community-led nonprofits in need of financial assistants – which were required to have budgets ranging between $1 and $5 million, and missions “to advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of meager or modest means,” according to the website.

    According to the Post, the $640 awarded by Yield Giving during this first round of donations is more than double what Scott had initially pledged – with 361 of the 6,530 charities which applied receiving awards of either $1 million or $2 million.

    Megan Peterson, executive director of Gender Justice, cheered Scott’s $2 million “gift” to her nonprofit, saying in a statement it “could not come at a more crucial time” with “a conservative legal movement threatening our fundamental rights here in Minnesota, North Dakota, and across the United States.”

    Building and sustaining a world free of gender barriers requires community organization, education, and changing the ways we talk and think about gender,” added Peterson, whose group recently won lawsuits regarding access to emergency contraception and the rights of trans youth to play sports that are not their biological gender. -NY Post

    At least $16 million out of $72 million handed out to LGBTQ causes were nonprofits promoting transgender athletes in female sports – including the ACLU of Alabama.

    “Democrats running cities across America do this every day with our money, and that’s the real battle we need to keep fighting,” said NY Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Brooklyn), who said that Scott’s spending on leftist causes is “unfortunate – but it’s her personal money.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 20:25

  • Japanese Preprint Calls For mRNA VaccinesTo Be Suspended Over Blood Bank Contamination Concerns
    Japanese Preprint Calls For mRNA VaccinesTo Be Suspended Over Blood Bank Contamination Concerns

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

    Receiving blood transfusion from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals could pose a medical risk to unvaccinated recipients since numerous adverse events are being reported among vaccinated people worldwide, according to a recent study from Japan.

    A volunteer draws the AstraZeneca vaccine as members of the public have their COVID-19 vaccinations at Fazl Mosque in Southfields, London, as it hosts a drop in clinic on June 8, 2021. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

    The preprint review, published on March 15, examined whether receiving blood from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals is safe or poses a health risk. Many nations have reported that mRNA vaccine usage has resulted in “post-vaccination thrombosis and subsequent cardiovascular damage, as well as a wide variety of diseases involving all organs and systems, including the nervous system,” it said.

    Repeated vaccinations can make people more vulnerable to COVID-19, it said. If the blood contains spike proteins, it becomes necessary to remove these proteins prior to administration, and there is no such technology currently available, the authors wrote.

    Contrary to earlier expectations, genes and proteins from genetic vaccines have been found to persist in the blood of vaccine recipients for “prolonged periods of time.”

    In addition, “a variety of adverse events resulting from genetic vaccines are now being reported worldwide.” This includes a wide range of diseases related to blood and blood vessels.

    Some studies have reported that the spike protein in the mRNA vaccines is neurotoxic and capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, the review stated. “Thus, there is no longer any doubt that the spike protein used as an antigen in genetic vaccines is itself toxic.”

    Moreover, people who have taken multiple shots of mRNA vaccines can have several exposures to the same antigen within a small time frame, which may lead to them being “imprinted with a preferential immune response to that antigen.”

    This has resulted in COVID-19 vaccine recipients becoming “more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.”

    Given such concerns, medical professionals should be aware of the “various risks associated with blood transfusions using blood products derived from people who have suffered from long COVID and from genetic vaccine recipients, including those who have received mRNA vaccines.”

    The impact of such genetic vaccines on blood products as well as the actual damage caused by them are currently unknown, the authors wrote.

    “In order to avoid these risks and prevent further expansion of blood contamination and complication of the situation, we strongly request that the vaccination campaign using genetic vaccines be suspended and that a harm–benefit assessment be carried out as early as possible.”

    Repeated vaccination of genetic vaccines can also end up causing “alterations in immune function” among recipients. This raises the risk of serious illnesses due to opportunistic infections or pathogenic viruses, which would not have been an issue if the immune system were normal, the review said.

    “Therefore, from the perspective of traditional containment of infectious diseases, greater caution is required in the collection of blood from genetic vaccine recipients and the subsequent handling of blood products, as well as during solid organ transplantation and even surgical procedures in order to avoid the risk of accidental blood-borne infection,” it stated.

    The review was funded by members of the Japanese Society for Vaccine-related Complications and the Volunteer Medical Association. Authors did not declare any conflict of interest.

    Dangers With Blood Transfusions

    The review pointed out that the genetic vaccination status of blood donors is not collected by organizations even though the use of such blood may pose risks to patients. As such, authors recommended that when blood products are derived from such people, “it is necessary to confirm the presence or absence of spike protein or modified mRNA as in other tests for pathogens.”

    “If the blood product is found to contain the spike protein or a modified gene derived from the genetic vaccine, it is essential to remove them,” it stated. “However, there is currently no reliable way to do so.”

    Since “there is no way to reliably remove the pathogenic protein or mRNA, we suggest that all such blood products be discarded until a definitive solution is found.”

    The authors pointed out that cases of encephalitis among people who received blood from dengue vaccine recipients were reported as recently as last year. This suggests that the present system of tracking and managing blood products “is not adequate.”

    Since genetic vaccines were implemented on a global scale for a massive population, “it is expected that the situation will already be complicated” compared to previous drug disasters.

    As such, there is an “urgent need” for legislation and international treaties related to the management of blood products, the authors wrote.

    The issue of blood transfusion from COVID-19 vaccine recipients has been highly controversial. In 2022, a court in New Zealand ruled against the parents of a sick infant son after they refused blood transfusions from vaccinated people.

    The parents had asked the health system to allow blood transfusion from unvaccinated individuals, with donors who were already prepared to contribute. In its ruling, the court stripped the parents of medical custody of their son.

    In Canada, doctors have also reported the trend of people’s resistance to vaccinated blood transfusions. Speaking to CBC in 2022, Dr. Dave Sidhu, the southern Alberta medical lead for transfusion and transplant medicine, said that parents of sick children were requesting unvaccinated blood.

    We’re seeing it about once or twice a month, at this stage. And the worry is of course that these requests might increase,” he said at the time.

    In Wyoming, Rep. Sarah Penn (R-Wyo.) has sponsored a bill mandating that blood donated by people who have taken COVID-19 shots be labeled. Doing so will allow recipients who do not wish to accept such blood to reject them.

    In an interview with Cowboy State Daily, Ms. Penn said, “For various reasons, many people have purposefully strived to keep the mRNA therapies out of their bodies, even to the point that some lost their livelihoods … Their concerns are warranted.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 19:50

  • FBI Tells Passengers On Blown-Out-Door-Plug Flight They May Be 'Victim Of A Crime'
    FBI Tells Passengers On Blown-Out-Door-Plug Flight They May Be ‘Victim Of A Crime’

    In the latest bad news for Boeing, the FBI has started notifying passengers on the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines flight that experienced a terrifying blowout of a door-plug that they may be a “victim of a crime.” 

    “As a victim specialist with the Seattle division, I’m contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime,” read the FBI letters to travelers on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282. “This case is currently under investigation by the FBI. A criminal investigation can be a lengthy undertaking, and for several reasons, we cannot tell you about its progress at this time.” 

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

    In early March, it was reported that the Justice Department had opened an investigation of Boeing over the incident, which involved a Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft used for an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California. Soon after takeoff, a door plug — a panel used to fill an area that in some configurations might hold a functioning door — blew out of the side of the aircraft. Fortunately, the seats adjacent to the hole weren’t occupied, and there were no serious injuries. 

    In a preliminary report on its own inquiry, the National Transportation Safety Board said the door plug was missing four bolts that are used to secure it to the fuselage. They also said they’d determined the bolts weren’t installed when the plane left a Boeing assembly plant in late 2023. 

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    The DOJ investigation is ominous enough on its own, but it could also have a serious follow-on effect: 

    If the Justice Department brings any criminal charge against Boeing in the Alaska Airlines case, that would give prosecutors the grounds to tear up the earlier agreement and charge Boeing for its role in the crashes of a Lion Air flight in 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in 2019. Those crashes resulted in the deaths of 346 passengers and crew. — Bloomberg

    In that earlier combined case, Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 million, with most of that going to customers. In exchange, the DOJ agreed not to charge Boeing for withholding information from the Federal Aviation Administration pursuant to obtaining FAA approval for the MAX model. 

    On March 19, FAA chief Michael Whitaker said his visit to Boeing facilities left him with the impression that the firm’s “priorities have been on production, and not on safety and quality.” In February, the FAA published a report in which it noted 27 failings of safety procedures and culture at Boeing.  

    The door-plug blowout was just the first of a string of worrying incidents involving Boeing jets in 2024, the rest of which have no doubt left United Airlines with a bad case of buyer’s remorse…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 19:15

  • Michigan Man Sues To See Election Records After His Freedom Of Information Requests Were Denied
    Michigan Man Sues To See Election Records After His Freedom Of Information Requests Were Denied

    Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times,

    Michigan’s Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is being sued for working with local officials to stonewall a citizen’s efforts to access public election records from the Nov. 8, 2022 general and the May 2, 2023 primary elections.

    Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (right) and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (left) wait to speak at a United Auto Workers rally after the Detroit Labor Day Parade in Detroit, Mich., on Sept. 4, 2023. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

    Ms. Benson has a record of resisting transparency dating back to the 2020 presidential contest, after which she ordered local clerks to delete all electronic poll book (EPB) data from that election. In Nov. 2022, just days after the midterms, she ordered local clerks to deny public information requests to examine certain election data stored on their EPBs.

    EPB files are an original public record and a component of the electronic voting system audit trail.

    “When she (Ms. Benson) realized that some public officials were properly releasing this information under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), she ordered them to delete the data,” claims Macomb County resident Michael Butz in a brief he filed in Macomb County Circuit Court on March 11, 2024.

    Mr. Butz asked the court to deny “any interjection of responsibility” into this case by the secretary of state (SOS) and to deny the defendant municipal clerks’ rejection of his FOIA requests.

    The memos and emails supporting Mr. Butz’s claims concerning Ms. Benson are attached to the brief.

    Mr. Butz told The Epoch Times he is still awaiting the defendants’ response to his filing.

    “Jocelyn Benson and her Michigan Bureau of Elections directors are violating Michigan and United States Codes and statutes with their unlawful election processes, procedures, and instruction manuals…In fact, the Michigan Court of Appeals recently agreed,“ Mr. Butz said. “These are ongoing acts of malfeasance against the people of Michigan.”

    The Michigan Secretary of State’s Office said it does not comment or answer questions about ongoing or pending litigation.

    The case was filed against municipal election officials from several Macomb County localities for allegedly violating Mr. Butz’s right under FOIA to inspect and copy public election information.

    Though Ms. Benson is not a named defendant in the Butz lawsuit, she successfully petitioned the court to designate her as a defendant-intervener.

    The brief alleges that Ms. Benson interfered with the clerks’ responses to Mr. Butz’s initial FOIA requests by directing local officials as to what data should or should not be provided to him.

    Not Up to the SOS to Decide, Man Argues

    According to Plaintiff Butz, the responsibility for the decision to reject a FOIA request lies with the local clerks, who are mandated by statute to disclose public information and are liable for any violations of the act.

    Michael Butz, an IT professional and election integrity activist from Macomb Co., Mich. on May 30, 2023. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)

    The plaintiff cited legal precedent showing that Ms. Benson’s regulations, directives, guidance, opinions, memos, emails, and statements “cannot serve as the basis for FOIA denials,” because they are not statutes, and therefore, “the only basis for denial of a FOIA request must be based on the express language of the statute’s exemptions.”

    According to the brief, “Benson is simply not authorized by law to prohibit public officials from fulfilling their constitutional and statutory duties of disclosing public information under FOIA.

    “Defendants cannot, therefore, say, as they have, that they are ‘waiting’ on the research and guidance from the SOS…to tell them what to withhold, what exemption applies, or what exemption might be asserted.”

    Federal law requires all election records to be retained and preserved for 22 months, and Michigan law requires they be kept for 24 months. The retention time for used ballots in state and local elections is 30 days, if the ballots are not subject to recount or an ongoing investigation or court order or SOS order.

    “The public records derived from the EPB must, by law, be retained in their entirety and be accessible to the public,” the brief said.

    By following Ms. Benson’s order to delete the EPB data, local officials may have violated federal and state laws.

    Mr. Butz told The Epoch Times, “ The Nuremburg Trial excuse ‘I was just following orders’ does not cut it.”

    Michigan law states, “It is the public policy of this state that all persons…are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and public employees…The people shall be informed so that they may fully participate in the democratic process.”

    Discrepancies Found 

    The Butz brief states that in the jurisdictions that complied with his FOIA request, the data obtained indicated a 12 percent variation between the local records of who voted and the state’s records.

    When the discrepancies were questioned by clerks and citizens, “SOS Benson unilaterally, and without legal authority encrypted” the EPB data in order to “conceal” it from the public, and so that clerks cannot access it to reconcile it, the brief alleged.

    According to the brief, as of the 2022 elections, all files on the USB Drive for the EPB flash drive were fully encrypted.

    Mr. Butz wrote his latest FOIA requests in such a way so as to eliminate the local governments’ justifications for rejection—the privacy of registrants, proprietary and copyright concerns of the software vendors, and cybersecurity worries of the State Board of Elections. He specifically stated in his requests that he was not asking for any of these things and would be satisfied if they were redacted.

    According to the brief, “Lawful redaction of the appropriate items is expected, but BOE (state Bureau of Elections) is not allowed to define what is acceptable FOIA material in opposition to statute.”

    Mr. Butz’s requests were denied in total, so he sued.

    All Non-Exempt Information Must Be Provided 

    “The blind obedience of local clerks to the unlawful directives of the BOE is the actual reason that the FOIA requests presented by Michael Butz were denied,” according to the brief.

    Michigan law states that, if exempt information is combined with non-exempt information, the public official cannot use the excuse that redaction or separation is not possible, but “shall separate the exempt and nonexempt material,” the brief said.

    According to the plaintiff, Ms. Benson and the BOE suggest citizens requesting EPB data settle for a copy of the Voter List Report (VLR), generated on election night, in place of the EPB History file. The problem is the VLR does not contain all the information that is available on the History file, such as same-day voting data and internet connectivity, according to Mr. Butz, who is a career computer expert.

    The brief also noted that, due to several statewide voter registration services conducted by the SOS, such as the driver registration program, the statutory requirement that voter registration information be entered and filed in the public records of the relevant local official is precluded by the state’s digital practice. This means that the local clerk, who is responsible and liable for the accuracy of the names and addresses of the registrants, is effectively cut out of the process and that there is “no paper trail,” the brief contended.

    Mr. Butz told The Epoch Times that he would not settle for anything short of full disclosure of the information sought in his lawful FOIA request.

    A status conference for the case is scheduled for May 28.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 18:40

  • Where Water Stress Will Be Highest by 2050
    Where Water Stress Will Be Highest by 2050

    Water is not only the basis of life for animals and plants, but is also likely to become a contested resource in parts of the world in the coming decades. According to UN figures, global water stress, i.e. the proportion of water withdrawn for use in industry, agriculture or private households in relation to available water, was manageable at 18.2% in 2020. In 2022, however, 2.4 billion people were living in areas that are exposed to extreme water stress in some cases.

    It is not possible to determine exactly how high this will be by 2050 due to numerous factors such as the global population or economic and political developments in emerging and transition countries. This is why scientists are currently working with scenarios instead of more precise estimates. However, it is certain that the demand for water will increase steadily and that many countries are already consuming more than they have available.

    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below, based on projections by the World Resources Institute (WRI) , 51 of the 164 countries and territories analyzed are expected to suffer from high to extremely high water stress by 2050, which corresponds to 31 percent of the population.

    Infographic: Where Water Stress Will Be Highest by 2050 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    According to WRI, the scenario used corresponds to a “business as usual” future with temperature increases of between 2.8 and 4.6 degrees Celsius by 2100 and a world that remains unequal. In addition to the entire Arabian Peninsula, Iran and India, most North African countries such as Algeria, Egypt and Libya are among the countries that are expected to consume at least 80 percent of the available water by 2050.

    However, the phenomenon of water scarcity is not limited to emerging countries. Southern European countries such as Portugal, Spain and Italy are also reportedly already under high water stress, and the situation in Spain is set to worsen significantly by 2050. For France and Poland, the WRI experts assume medium to high water stress, which corresponds to a consumption rate of 20 to 40 percent of available resources.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 18:05

  • CIA Secrecy On JFK Points To Criminal Culpability
    CIA Secrecy On JFK Points To Criminal Culpability

    Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    More than 30 years ago, Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Enacted in the wake of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posited that the Kennedy assassination was a regime-change operation on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, the law mandated that all the assassination-related records of the Pentagon, the CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, and other federal agencies be released to the public. Having succeeded in keeping their assassination-related records secret for almost 30 years, they didn’t like that at all.

    Today — more than 60 years after the assassination — the CIA continues to keep thousands of its assassination-related records secret. Its justification? You guessed it: “national security,” the two most powerful and meaningless words in the American political lexicon. CIA officials maintain, with straight faces, that if those still-secret assassination-related records were released, the United States would fall into the ocean, be taken over by communists, or have its “national security” endangered in some other silly way.

    How in the world can “national security” be threatened by the release of records that are more than 60 years old, regardless of what definition is placed on that nebulous term? Indeed, how can any American really believe this nonsense? They obviously take Americans for dupes.

    It is a virtual certainty that those still-secret records contain circumstantial evidence that further confirms criminal culpability on the part of the CIA and the Pentagon in the assassination of President Kennedy. After all, the CIA knows that that is precisely what most everyone is thinking with respect to the continued secrecy of those records. Why would the CIA want to leave people thinking that? One reason: Because it’s better to have people thinking that those records contain incriminating evidence rather than knowing that they do.

    What could the CIA be hiding with those still-secret records? The answer necessarily has to be speculative in nature, but my hunch is that some of the still-secret information deals with Mexico City, where the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have met with Cuban and Soviet officials.

    In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, it is obvious that everything went wrong with the Mexico City part of the assassination plot. For example, there were audiotapes that supposedly contained Oswald’s voice and then suddenly there were no such audiotapes. There was a photograph of Oswald except that it was a photograph of someone else.

    Why was Mexico City an important part of the assassination plot? As I detail in my newest book on the assassination, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Storyan essential part of the assassination plot was to frame a communist. This was the height of the Cold War, when most everyone hated and feared the Reds. By framing a communist, the national-security establishment could rest assured that Americans would be reluctant to come to Oswald’s defense or believe anything he said.

    Mexico City played an important role in this endeavor. Oswald was ordered to travel to Mexico City, where he was to meet with both Cuban and Soviet officials. In that way, the plotters could definitely tie the future assassin to the Soviet and Cuban communists.

    Why would Oswald obey such orders? Because he was an operative for U.S. intelligence. Intelligence operatives follow orders, especially when they’re told that they are part of an intelligence operation.

    In fact, in one of its first meetings, Earl Warren, the head of the Warren Commission, told the commission that there was highly discomforting evidence that Oswald was, in fact, an intelligence operative. Once the CIA and the FBI, which, of course, would never lie about such a thing, assured the commission that such wasn’t the case, Warren ordered that the meeting be kept top-secret and never revealed to the American people.

    When he was serving in the army, Oswald became fluent in the Russian language. That is not an easy thing to do. It takes language experts, which the U.S. government has. That’s the only way Oswald could have learned to speak fluent Russian while he was in the army.

    There is also New Orleans, where Oswald had moved from Dallas prior to his trip to Mexico City. In New Orleans, Oswald spent a lot of effort building up his “pro-communist” persona, especially with the help of an anti-Castro group called the DRE.

    Immediately after the assassination, the DRE sent out a press release informing the nation that Oswald was a communist. There is one big important thing about the DRE that the nation did not know and would not know for several decades. It was a CIA-funded and CIA-supervised group. Thus, it was actually the CIA that wanted the nation to know that the president had been killed by a Red.

    As JFK researcher Jefferson Morley, who first discovered the CIA’s connection to the DRE, has also discovered, the CIA was secretly monitoring Oswald in the months leading up to the assassination, including secretly reading his mail. Why would the CIA be doing that? Because if one is going to frame a person in a very complex murder plot, one has to be certain that the person being framed doesn’t figure out what is going on.

    Will the CIA succeed in keeping its assassination-related records secret forever? Given the overwhelming power that the national-security branch has within the federal governmental structure, it’s a virtual certainty that it will succeed. But what difference does it make? The evidence that was released by the JFK Records Act already proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Kennedy assassination was a national-security state regime-change operation, especially with respect to the fraudulent autopsy that the military conducted on JFK’s body and the fraudulent copy of the Zapruder film that the CIA produced. (See my books The Kennedy Autopsy and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.) The CIA’s still-secret assassination-related records would only add more circumstantial evidence to what we already know.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 17:30

  • Slow Joe: Biden Campaign Tests 'Broke Don' Name-Calling Strategy – As Trump Net Worth Jumps By $3.5 Billion
    Slow Joe: Biden Campaign Tests ‘Broke Don’ Name-Calling Strategy – As Trump Net Worth Jumps By $3.5 Billion

    The Biden campaign couldn’t have picked a worse time to copy Donald Trump’s name-calling strategy.

    In an effort to highlight Trump’s lagging fundraising figures in the 2024 race, as well as a $454 million judgement in his NY civil fraud case, the Biden team has dubbed the former president “Broke Don”  (a slap in the face to millions of hard working Americans who are now actually broke thanks to ‘Bidenomics,’ we might add).

    On Wednesday, public election filings showed that Trump’s 2024 campaign brought in $10.9 million last month, while his joint fundraising committee raised nearly $11 million, bringing total cash on hand to around $42 million.

    Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, raised around $53 million in February, giving him $155 million in cash on hand entering this month.

    Except, Trump’s worth just jumped by roughly $3.5 billion after shareholders in Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) on Friday approved a merger with Trump’s media startup, Truth Social.

    What’s more, Trump said on Friday via Truth Social that “through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash,” which would give him enough cash to post bond in his NY civil case in order to appeal the decision.

    Absolute fail

    And while Americans are getting absolutely crushed under an enormous debt load, Biden mocked them while making a joke at Trump’s expense.

    During a fundraiser last week, Biden told crowds that “a defeated man” came up to him and said, “I’m being crushed by debt.”

    “I had to say, ‘I’m sorry Donald, I can’t help you,” Biden joked.

    Even Democratic strategists are cringing at the “Broke Don” strategy.

    “The Biden team’s instinct to earn free media, try to get under his skin, and go on offense is the right one. But mimicking Trump has been done before and has never really worked,” one anonymous strategist told The Hill.

    You can’t out-Trump Trump because he’s the original version. I would say they need to be more creative in producing their own original and unique strategy to bring him down a peg that shocks and awes,” the strategist added.

    Stay classy, Joe.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 16:55

  • Bitcoin Demand In Argentina Surges To Two Year Highs
    Bitcoin Demand In Argentina Surges To Two Year Highs

    Authored by Ciaran Lyons via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Bitcoin remains in demand among Argentines as the ARS has lost fourfold value against the US dollar in the last year, dropping from 0.0049 USD per ARS in March 2023 to 0.0012 USD at present.

    Argentines’ efforts to preserve their savings amid the ongoing decline of their national currency, the Argentine peso (ARS), has resulted in the nation recently hitting its highest demand for Bitcoin in 20 months, according to a recent report.

    On March 20, Bloomberg reported data sourced from cryptocurrency exchange Lemon Cash revealing nearly 35,000 customers in Argentina purchased Bitcoin in the week ending March 10, which is double the weekly average compared to 2023.

    Bitcoin purchases in Argentina Jan 2023 – March 2024. Source: Bloomberg

    A major factor for the increase in demand is the ongoing decline of the nation’s currency. 

    Over the past twelve months, the ARS value against the US dollar has plummeted, dropping from 0.0049 USD per ARS in March 2023 to 0.0012 USD at the time of publication.

    However, it was noted that Lemon wasn’t the only platform seeing a surge in demand. Other major exchanges in Argentina, such as Ripio and Belo, reported similar trends.

    According to the CEO of the digital wallet Belo, Manuel Beaudroi, stablecoin purchases in Argentina declined from 70% to 60% as Bitcoin’s recent price surge attracted more interest.

    “The user decides to buy Bitcoin when they see the news that the currency is going up, while stablecoin is more pragmatic and many times used for transactional purposes, as a vehicle to make payments abroad.”

    He also claimed that Belo has seen volume in Bitcoin and Ether increase “tenfold so far in 2024 compared to the same period last year.” 

    However, a recent report suggests that interest in stablecoins might still exist, as Argentines are possibly choosing not to use the well-known exchanges within the country for purchasing them.

    On Feb. 12 Cointelegraph reported that Argentines are using black market exchanges, known locally as “crypto caves,” to buy USD stablecoins in an effort to escape strict currency controls and the rising inflation of the ARS.

    Meanwhile, the use of digital currency for specific transactions is slowly gaining traction within the country.

    In December 2023, Diana Mondino, the minister of foreign affairs, international trade and worship, claimed that a decree aimed at economic reform and deregulation would allow the use of Bitcoin and other cryptos in the country under certain conditions.

    Following the ruling, a local landlord and a tenant in Rosario, the third most populated city in Argentina, sealed a rental agreement where the latter would pay monthly rent in Bitcoin.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 16:20

  • 'Will Send Netanyahu To Allah': Erdogan's Words Spark Outrage In Israel
    ‘Will Send Netanyahu To Allah’: Erdogan’s Words Spark Outrage In Israel

    Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has from the start of the Israel-Hamas war been among the most aggressive and fiercest critics of Israel and especially its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    While Erdogan has long denounced Israel’s operation in Gaza, on Thursday he unleashed his harshest rhetoric yet, which came close to perhaps being a direct threat against Netanyahu’s life. In an election rally the Turkish president vowed to “send [Netanyahu] to Allah to take care of him, make him miserable and curse him.”

    Getty Images

    The threatening and inflammatory words were widely picked up in Israeli press reports, causing outrage. He additionally described that “Netanyahu and his administration, with their crimes against humanity in Gaza, are writing their names next to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, like today’s Nazis.”

    Another media outlet which covers regional events translated Erdogan’s words as follows:

    In a fresh attack on the Israeli prime minister over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Erdogan told the crowd gathered at an election rally in central Anatolia on Thursday, “I’m leaving the person called Netanyahu in the Lord’s hands.” He then added, “May the Lord damn him.”

    Thus depending on how the remarks are translated, the statement leaves itself open to interpretation possibly as a direct threat against the Israeli leader.

    A livid Israeli government immediately summoned the Turkish ambassador, demanding answers. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Thursday said that Turkey’s charges d’affaires Mehmet Sekerci was summoned in order to “convey a clear message to Erdogan.”

    “There is no God who will listen to those who support the atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by your barbaric Hamas friends,” Katz stated. “Be quiet and shame on you!”

    Erdogan has consistently called Hamas “not a terrorist organization” but “a group of mujahideen defending their lands” – in reference to those who engage in ‘jihad’.

    From Tel Aviv’s perspective, Erdogan’s ratcheting rhetoric in denouncing Israeli actions will likely been seen as unforgiveable, even after this current crisis is over. Turkey and Israel have long clashed over the Palestinian issue, and these tensions have now exploded back into full force. Ties between the two countries are at a historical low point.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 15:45

  • Lego Lineups: Company Warns California P.D. To Stop Using Lego Heads To Hide Criminal's Faces
    Lego Lineups: Company Warns California P.D. To Stop Using Lego Heads To Hide Criminal’s Faces

    Authored by Milt Harris via PJMedia.com,

    Murrieta is a city in Southern California with just over 100,000 residents. Even though it isn’t a huge city, the Neighborhood Scout, a website that tracks local statistics for potential homebuyers or renters, reported this about the municipality on its website:

    The crime rate in Murrieta is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest, although at 15 crimes per one thousand residents, it is not among the communities with the very highest crime rate. The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in Murrieta is 1 in 65. Based on FBI crime data, Murrieta is not one of the safest communities in America. Relative to California, Murrieta has a crime rate that is higher than 40% of the state’s cities and towns of all sizes.

    It’s common for the public to be interested in the details of an arrest, including the crime committed and the appearance of the suspect. However, in California, there is a law that prioritizes the rights of the suspect over the public’s right to know by requiring that the faces of certain suspects be concealed. In Murietta, this law has been taken to an extreme level, where police hide suspects’ faces with Lego heads.

    In an Instagram post, the police department explained the new law this way:

    On January 1st, a new law went into effect that restricts the how and when law enforcement agencies in California share suspect photos & mugshots. The new law, Assembly Bill 994 & Penal Code 13665, now prohibits law enforcement from sharing suspect photos for nonviolent crimes, unless specified circumstances exist. Additionally, the new law requires agencies to remove suspect mugshots from social media after 14 days, unless special circumstances exist.

    The Murrieta Police Department prides itself in its transparency with the community but also honors everyone’s rights & protections as afforded by law, even suspects. In order to share what is happening in Murrieta, we chose to cover the faces of suspects to protect their identity while still aligning with the new law.

    Using something so ridiculous minimizes the severity of crimes and turns serious events into cartoons. People may understand the need to comply with the law, but this approach is inappropriate.

    Judge for yourself:

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    The bill: 

    Requires a police department or sheriff’s office to remove a booking photo shared on the department’s social media page within 14 days unless specific circumstances exist and requires a police department or sheriff’s office sharing a booking photo on social media to use the name and pronouns given by the subject of that photo.

    Those specific circumstances are described as: 

    A police department or sheriff’s office has determined that the suspect is a fugitive or an imminent threat to an individual or to public safety and releasing or disseminating the suspect’s image will assist in locating or apprehending the suspect or reducing or eliminating the threat, or if a judge orders the release or dissemination of the suspect’s image based on a finding that the release or dissemination is in furtherance of a legitimate law enforcement interest.

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    Going forward, the left will undoubtedly continue to be soft on crime. However, the Murietta police will no longer use Lego heads to further diminish the seriousness of any criminal’s actions. Lego has instructed the department to stop digitally adding Lego heads onto photos of suspects. Murrieta Police Department Lt. Jeremy Durrant told Fox News Digital in a statement that: 

    The Lego Group reached out to us and respectfully asked us to refrain from using their intellectual property in our social media content which of course we understand and will comply with. We are currently exploring other methods to continue publishing our content in a way that is engaging and interesting to our followers.

    Durrant’s choice of words to describe the way his department reports criminal activities is revealing. While the reports are supposed to be truthful and informative, Durrant uses them as a chance to downplay the severity of the crimes and make them seem less serious. He uses terms like “engaging” and “interesting” to describe police reports, which is an insult to the intelligence of the people of Murietta.

    Thankfully, Lego stepped in and eliminated the visual aspect of this farce. I guess the simple blurring out of the faces wasn’t entertaining enough for the people that Durrant refers to as the department’s “followers.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 15:10

  • Bidenomics? US Drops Out Of Top 20 'Happiest Nations' In The World For The First Time
    Bidenomics? US Drops Out Of Top 20 ‘Happiest Nations’ In The World For The First Time

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    For the first time in the history of the report, the US dropped out of the top twenty happiest nations. The youth poll (30 and under) is a disaster for the US, Germany, Canada, France, Japan, and China.

    Please consider the World Happiness Report for 2024.

    Key Happiness Details

    • Overall Rankings: The top 10 countries have remained much the same since before COVID. Finland is still top, with Denmark now very close, and all five Nordic countries in the top 10. But in the next 10, there is more change, with the transition countries of Eastern Europe rising in happiness (especially Czechia, Lithuania and Slovenia). Partly for this reason the United States and Germany have fallen to 23 and 24 in the rankings.

    • Happiness Trends by Age Group: In North America, happiness has fallen so sharply for the young that they are now less happy than the old. By contrast, in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the young are much happier than the old.

    • Global Trends: In most countries life satisfaction drops gradually from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. Globally, young people aged 15-24 still report higher life satisfaction than older adults. But the picture varied by region. Youth wellbeing fell in North America, Western Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. In the rest of the world it rose.

    • Negativity: Negative emotions are more frequent than in 2006-2010 everywhere except East Asia and both parts of Europe.

    • Millennials and Zoomers: Age and generation both matter for happiness. As between generations, those born before 1965 (Boomers and their predecessors) have life evaluations about one-quarter of a point higher than those born after 1980 (Millennials and Gen Z). Within each generation, life evaluations rise with age for those in the older generations and fall with age for the younger ones, with little age effect for those in between.

    Happiness Age 30 and Below

    Clearly this was taken before the Hamas attack in Israel.

    Q: Where’s the US?
    A: #62

    Australia is #19, Germany is #47, France #48, Canada #58, Japan #73, China #79.

    Happiness Age 60 and Above

    The US, Canada, and Australia are in the top ten list of happiness age 60 and older.

    Serious Economic Implications

    Unhappy 30-year-olds don’t have kids because they don’t see a future.

    In the US, those age 30 and younger believe they will be worse off than their parents. I think they are correct in that assessment.

    The economy is allegedly booming, but only the asset holders have benefitted.

    Gen Z, the Most Pessimistic Generation in History

    Young adults are more skeptical of government and pessimistic about the future than any living generation before them. This is with reason, and it’s likely to decide the election.

    Economic Reality

    Gen Z may be the first generation in US history that is not better off than their parents.

    Many have given up on the idea they will ever be able to afford a home.

    The economy is allegedly booming (I disagree). Regardless, stress over debt is high with younger millennials and zoomers.

    This has been a constant theme of mine for many months.

    Credit Card and Auto Delinquencies Soar

    Credit card debt surged to a record high in the fourth quarter. Even more troubling is a steep climb in 90 day or longer delinquencies.

    Record High Credit Card Debt

    Credit card debt rose to a new record high of $1.13 trillion, up $50 billion in the quarter. Even more troubling is the surge in serious delinquencies, defined as 90 days or more past due.

    For nearly all age groups, serious delinquencies are the highest since 2011.

    Auto Loan Delinquencies

    Serious delinquencies on auto loans have jumped from under 3 percent in mid-2021 to to 5 percent at the end of 2023 for age group 18-29.Age group 30-39 is also troubling. Serious delinquencies for age groups 18-29 and 30-39 are at the highest levels since 2010.

    For further discussion please see Credit Card and Auto Delinquencies Soar, Especially Age Group 18 to 39

    Generational Homeownership Rates

    Home ownership rates courtesy of Apartment List

    The above chart is from the Apartment List’s 2023 Millennial Homeownership Report

    Those struggling with rent are more likely to be Millennials and Zoomers than Generation X, Baby Boomers, or members of the Silent Generation.

    The same age groups struggling with credit card and auto delinquencies.

    On Average Everything is Great

    Average it up, and things look pretty good. This is why we have seen countless stories attempting to explain why people should be happy.

    Krugman Blames Partisanship

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    OK, there is a fair amount of partisanship in the polls.

    However, Biden isn’t struggling from partisanship alone. If that was the reason, Biden would not be polling so miserably with Democrats in general, blacks, and younger voters.

    This allegedly booming economy left behind the renters and everyone under the age of 40 struggling to make ends meet.

    Many Are Addicted to “Buy Now, Pay Later” Plans

    Buy Now Pay Later, BNPL, plans are increasingly popular. It’s another sign of consumer credit stress.

    For discussion, please see Many Are Addicted to “Buy Now, Pay Later” Plans, It’s a Big Trap

    The study did not break things down by home owners vs renters, but I strongly suspect most of the BNPL use is by renters.

    What About Jobs?

    Another seemingly strong jobs headline falls apart on closer scrutiny. The massive divergence between jobs and employment continued into February.

    Nonfarm payrolls and employment levels from the BLS, chart by Mish.

    Payrolls vs Employment Gains Since March 2023

    • Nonfarm Payrolls: 2,602,000

    • Employment Level: +144,000

    • Full Time Employment: -284,000

    For more details of the weakening labor markets, please see Jobs Up 275,000 Employment Down 184,000

    CPI Hot Again

    CPI Data from the BLS, chart by Mish.

    For discussion of the CPI inflation data for February, please see CPI Hot Again, Rent Up at Least 0.4 Percent for 30 Straight Months

    Also note the Producer Price Index (PPI) Much Hotter Than Expected in February

    Major Economic Cracks

    There are economic cracks in spending, cracks in employment, and cracks in delinquencies.

    But there are no cracks in the CPI. It’s coming down much slower than expected. And the PPI appears to have bottomed.

    Add it up: Inflation + Recession = Stagflation.

    Election Impact

    In 2020, younger voters turned out in the biggest wave in history. And they voted for Biden.

    Younger voters are not as likely to vote in 2024, and they are less likely to vote for Biden.

    The Journal noted nearly one-third of voters under 30 have an unfavorable view of both Biden and Trump, a higher number than all older voters. Sixty-three percent of young voters think neither party adequately represents them.

    Young voters in 2020 were energized to vote against Trump. Now they have thrown in the towel.

    And Biden telling everyone how great the economy is only rubs salt in the wound.

    Conclusions

    Two completely different polls show millennials and zoomers are unhappy. And they are unhappy for the reasons I stated.

    Many have concluded they will never be able to afford a house or have kids. Those who have concluded that are likely correct.

    For more discussion, please see Gen Z, the Most Pessimistic Generation in History, May Decide the Election

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 14:00

  • FAA Turning Over Newark's Air Traffic Control Duties To Philadelphia To "Address Staffing Issues"
    FAA Turning Over Newark’s Air Traffic Control Duties To Philadelphia To “Address Staffing Issues”

    As air traffic is on the verge of breaking records heading into the summer, Newark, New Jersey’s airspace is being turned over to Philadelphia.

    The move, prompted by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, seeks to “address staffing issues and congested traffic in the New York City area”, according to a new Reuters report.

    We hope it’s more of the latter than the former – because with all these Boeings in the air every day, it isn’t necessarily a great time to be understaffed. And we’re only half joking. 

    The FAA is predicted a record summer travel season, the report says, and airlines are also predicting record travel for the spring. The FAA says the change will “meet continued traffic demand in the busy Northeast Corridor.”

    The FAA, grappling with air traffic control staffing shortages, announced its collaboration with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association through a memorandum out last week. Air traffic control responsibilities for Newark will be transferred from the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control to the Philadelphia Tower/TRACON by the end of June.

    Reuters notes that New York TRACON is recognized as one of the busiest control facilities in the United States, managing some of the country’s most complex airspace. The FAA had previously disclosed plans in 2023 to reassign about 100 square miles of airspace from Newark’s N90 to Philadelphia to alleviate staffing constraints.

    United Airlines, which operates a major hub at Newark, frequently encounters delays due to air traffic congestion and personnel shortages. The airline scaled back its flight operations last summer in response to operational disruptions, with CEO Scott Kirby publicly criticizing the FAA’s performance.

    He highlighted that the number of flights scheduled at Newark exceeded the airport’s physical capacity to manage them. Consequently, the FAA prolonged the reduction of minimum flight requirements at airports around New York City through October, addressing these staffing shortfalls.

    Airlines are typically required to utilize their allocated takeoff and landing slots at busy airports for a minimum of 80% of the time, under risk of losing them. The FAA’s waiver permits airlines to maintain their slots despite not operating some flights.

    A report from a government watchdog in June highlighted severe staffing challenges at crucial air traffic control facilities, which pose risks to aviation operations. It noted that staffing at N90 was only at 54%. With controllers at various locations working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks to mitigate shortages, the agency falls approximately 3,000 controllers short of its staffing objectives.

    In response, President Joe Biden has proposed funding this month to recruit an additional 2,000 controllers over the next year.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 13:25

  • Spending Deal Bans Flying Pride Flag Over US Diplomatic Buildings
    Spending Deal Bans Flying Pride Flag Over US Diplomatic Buildings

    Authored by Caden Pearsen via The Epoch Times,

    The government spending bill that House lawmakers passed on Friday included an effective ban on pride flags flying over diplomatic buildings but dropped nearly all of the 45 GOP-included provisions targeting LGBT concerns.

    Specifically, the bill states that appropriated funds can only be used to fly certain official flags over U.S. diplomatic facilities, effectively banning the LGBT pride flag.

    According to the bill’s text, (pdf) “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be obligated or expended to fly or display a flag over a facility of the United States Department of State other than” the listed flags, which did not include the pride flag.

    The permitted flags include the U.S. flag, foreign service flag, POW/MIA flag, hostage and wrongful detainee flag; the flag of a state, insular area, or the District of Columbia at domestic locations; the flag of an Indian tribal government; the official branded flag of a U.S. agency; or the sovereign flag of other countries.

    Two-thirds of House lawmakers passed a $1.2 trillion bill on Friday to fully fund 70 percent of the government without the support of most Republicans, just ahead of a deadline.

    The legislation is now in the Senate for consideration ahead of a midnight deadline, after which the government shutdown will begin if lawmakers there do not clear it.

    House Republicans “failed” to keep more than 45 provisions aimed at limiting funding for transgender procedures, certain drag shows, and executive orders related to diversity, equity, and inclusion issued by President Joe Biden, according to the Congressional Equality Caucus.

    The only two measures that Democrats in the caucus described as “anti-equality” that made it through were the measure banning pride flags and cuts to funding for LGBT community funding projects.

    “Unfortunately, Republicans fought to maintain a rider that restricts Pride flag displays at State Department buildings, and the final funding bills did not include some LGBTQI+ community funding projects,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair of the caucus, said in a statement.

    ‘Business as Usual In the Swamp’

    Staunchly conservative Republican members of the House Freedom Caucus had pleaded with their colleagues to reject the spending deal in the days leading up to the vote, arguing that it funds the very Biden administration policies they’ve been fighting against.

    “This is business as usual in the swamp,“ said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on the House floor before the vote. He went on to warn his GOP colleagues that should they campaign against ”open borders,” they’ll be laughed at.

    “Because today, if you vote for this abomination of a bill, you will be voting to fund it,” he added.

    Republicans in both chambers lamented the lack of inclusion of stronger border security measures in the spending deal and expressed criticism of its passage in the House shortly after.

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who called the bill’s passage with the speaker’s support “a betrayal,” moved to oust Mr. Johnson from the speaker’s office for his role in the deal.

    She filed a motion to vacate the speaker on Friday as House members voted on the package.

    “The ‘Republican-controlled’ House just passed a $1.2 trillion spending bill that doesn’t secure our border but funds full-term abortion and trans ideology on our youth. I filed a Motion to Vacate because the House needs a Speaker who’s able to win for Republicans and our constituents,” she said.

    Before the vote, Ms. Greene spoke on the House floor and said no House Republican can in “good conscience can vote for this bill,” calling it a “complete departure” from the conservative party’s principles.

    The bill was unveiled on Thursday and fast-tracked to approval in a process that required a two-thirds majority vote for passage, as well as the House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) waiving a rule that requires 72 hours for members to review the legislation before it can be moved.

    The bill would fund the departments of State, Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.

    Shortly before midnight on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that voting on the deal would soon begin after resolving an impasse.

    However, the deadline was missed, and the government entered a partial, albeit short-lived, shutdown.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 12:50

  • "Drone Attacks" Hit Another Russian Refinery As Swing Producer's Refining Capacity Drops  
    “Drone Attacks” Hit Another Russian Refinery As Swing Producer’s Refining Capacity Drops  

    Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries continued in the overnight hours, with two separate attacks. The latest wave of drone attacks on the Russian refinery system has forced the swing producer’s daily average oil refining rate to drop to a ten-month low.

    Bloomberg reports a suicide drone caused a fire at the Kuibyshev refinery in Russia’s Samara region. The fire was extinguished at the refinery, which has an annual capacity of 7 million tons of oil. There was no word on damage or how much output was affected. 

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    A second drone attack was reported at the nearby Novokuibyshevsk refinery. However, local governor Dmitry Azarov said defense personnel repelled the drone without causing any damage. 

    “There were drone attacks on oil refineries in the region. At the Kuibyshev refinery, there was a fire at the primary oil refining column,” Azarov said, as quoted by Interfax news service. 

    The latest attacks come as new data sourced from Bloomberg shows Russia’s average daily oil refining rate was around 5.03 million barrels between March 14 and 20, down more than 400,000 barrels a day from the average for the first 13 days of the month—or a ten-month low. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    A new phase of the war is underway as Ukraine’s replacement for artillery is cheap suicide drones targeting the Russian oil export machine deep within the country. 

    So far, drones have targeted 13 major refineries and two smaller plants, reducing processing capacity by about 480,000 and 900,000 barrels a day. 

    Source: Financial Times 

    According to a person familiar with the data, Rosneft PJSC accounted for half of Russia’s lost processing capacity in the last week after drones damaged two major facilities. 

    Russia’s reduced refining rates indicate that authorities will focus on boosting domestic supplies, resulting in lower crude product exports worldwide. 

    “The latest attacks targeted primary refining processing units resulting in Russian waterborne product exports decreasing by an average 1 million b/d over the last two weeks,” Wood Mackenzie Emma Howsham wrote in a note

    Howsham noted the disruption so far is “still unlikely to move the needle or impact sentiment around the softening global diesel/gasoil market.” 

    Meanwhile, Washington officials warned senior officials at Ukraine’s state security service and military intelligence directorate that repeated drone attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure could drive up global oil prices. 

    Of course, the Biden administration would be concerned about these attacks because the last thing the White House needs is soaring energy prices reigniting consumer and/or producer prices. Also, higher crude prices would complicate the Federal Reserve’s planned pivot. 

    In the Middle East, there are increasing fears that Iran could be on the cusp of weaponizing crude as Houthis could launch a drone and missile attack on processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in eastern Saudi Arabia (read: “The Weaponization Of Crude Could Trigger The Next Financial Shock”). 

    Successful attacks on these refineries would be enough to push Brent into triple-digit territory. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/23/2024 – 12:15

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Today’s News 23rd March 2024

  • The Language Of Force: How The Police State Muzzles Our Right To Speak Truth To Power
    The Language Of Force: How The Police State Muzzles Our Right To Speak Truth To Power

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “If the state could use [criminal] laws not for their intended purposes but to silence those who voice unpopular ideas, little would be left of our First Amendment liberties, and little would separate us from the tyrannies of the past or the malignant fiefdoms of our own age. The freedom to speak without risking arrest is ‘one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation.’

    – Justice Neil Gorsuch, dissenting, Nieves v. Bartlett (2019)

    Tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.

    Cue the rise of protest laws, which take the government’s intolerance for free speech to a whole new level and send the resounding message that resistance is futile.

    In fact, ever since the Capitol protests on Jan. 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities.

    There have been at least 205 proposed laws in 45 states aimed at curtailing the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated with assembly.

    Weaponized by police, prosecutors, courts and legislatures, these protest laws, along with free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, and a host of other legalistic maladies have become a convenient means by which to punish individuals who refuse to be muzzled.

    In Florida, for instance, legislators passed a “no-go” zone law making it punishable by up to 60 days in jail to remain within 25 feet of working police and other first responders after a warning.

    Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are sold to the public as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

    It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, no-go zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.

    To be very clear, these legislative attempts to redefine and criminalize speech are a backdoor attempt to rewrite the Constitution and render the First Amendment’s robust safeguards null and void.

    No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

    This is the painful lesson being imparted with every incident in which someone gets arrested and charged with any of the growing number of contempt charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that get trotted out anytime a citizen voices discontent with the government or challenges or even questions the authority of the powers-that-be.

    These assaults on free speech are nothing new.

    As Human Rights Watch points out, “Various states have long-tried to curtail the right to protest. They do so by legislating wide definitions of what constitutes an ‘unlawful assembly’ or a ‘riot’ as well as increasing punishments. They also allow police to use catch-all public offenses, such as trespassing, obstructing traffic, or disrupting the peace, as a pretext for ordering dispersals, using force, and making arrests. Finally, they make it easier for corporations and others to bring lawsuits against protest organizers.

    Journalists have come under particular fire for exercising their right to freedom of the press.

    According to U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the criminalization of routine journalism has become a means by which the government chills lawful First Amendment activity.

    Journalists have been arrested or faced dubious charges for “publishing,” asking too many questions of public officials, being “rude” for reporting during a press conference, and being in the vicinity of public protests and demonstrations.

    For instance, Steve Baker, a reporter for Blaze News, was charged with four misdemeanors, including trespassing and disorderly conduct charges, related to his sympathetic coverage of the Jan. 6 riots. Dan Heyman, a reporter for the Public News Service, was arrested for “aggressively” questioning Tom Price, then secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during an encounter in the West Virginia State Capitol.

    It’s gotten so bad that merely daring to question, challenge or hesitate when a cop issues an order can get you charged with resisting arrest or disorderly conduct.

    For example, Deyshia Hargrave, a language arts teacher in Louisiana, was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and arrested for speaking out during a public comment period at a school board meeting.

    Fane Lozman was arrested for alluding to government corruption during open comment time at a City Council meeting in Palm Beach County, Fla.

    College professor Ersula Ore was slammed to the ground and arrested after she objected to the “disrespectful manner” shown by a campus cop who stopped her in the middle of the street and demanded that she show her ID.

    Philadelphia lawyer Rebecca Musarra was arrested for exercising her right to remain silent and refusing to answer questions posed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop. (Note: she cooperated in every other way by providing license and registration, etc.)

    Making matters worse, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Nieves v. Bartlett that protects police from lawsuits by persons arrested on bogus “contempt of cop” charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that result from lawful First Amendment activities (filming police, asking a question of police, refusing to speak with police).

    These incidents reflect a growing awareness about the state of free speech in America: you may have distinct, protected rights on paper, but dare to exercise those rights, and you risk fines, arrests, injuries and even death.

    Unfortunately, we have been circling this particular drain hole for some time now.

    More than 50 years ago, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas took issue with the idea that merely speaking to a government representative (a right enshrined in the First Amendment) could be perceived as unlawfully inconveniencing and annoying the police.

    In a passionate defense of free speech, Douglas declared: 

    Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet. The situation might have indicated that Colten’s techniques were ill-suited to the mission he was on, that diplomacy would have been more effective. But at the constitutional level speech need not be a sedative; it can be disruptive.

    It’s a power-packed paragraph full of important truths that the powers-that-be would prefer we quickly forget: We the people are the sovereigns. We have the final word. We can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy. We need not stay docile and quiet. Our speech can be disruptive. It can invite dispute. It can be provocative and challenging. We do not have to bow submissively to authority or speak with reverence to government officials.

    In theory, Douglas was right: “we the people” do have a constitutional right to talk back to the government.

    In practice, however, we live in an age in which “we the people” are at the mercy of militarized, weaponized, immunized cops who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

    As such, those who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights during encounters with the police are increasingly finding that there is no such thing as freedom of speech.

    Case in point: Tony Rupp, a lawyer in Buffalo, NY, found himself arrested and charged with violating the city’s noise ordinance after cursing at an SUV bearing down on pedestrians on a busy street at night with its lights off. Because that unmarked car was driven by a police officer, that’s all it took for Rupp to find himself subjected to malicious prosecution, First Amendment retaliation and wrongful arrest.

    The case, as Jesse McKinley writes in The New York Times, is part of a growing debate over “how citizens can criticize public officials at a time of widespread reevaluation of the lengths and limits of free speech. That debate has raged everywhere from online forums and college campuses to protests over racial bias in law enforcement and the Israel-Hamas war. Book bans and other acts of government censorship have troubled some First Amendment experts. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a pair of laws — in Florida and Texas — limiting the ability of social media companies such as Facebook to ban certain content from their platforms.”

    Bottom line: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t resist.

    What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

    Yet there can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.

    What is this language of force?

    Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Contempt of cop charges.

    This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order.

    Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak freely.

    If we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to protest unjust laws by voicing our opinions in public or on our clothing or before a legislative body, then we do not have free speech.

    What we have instead is regulated, controlled, censored speech, and that’s a whole other ballgame.

    Remember, the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to challenge government agents, think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

    Americans are being brainwashed into believing that anyone who wears a government uniform—soldier, police officer, prison guard—must be obeyed without question.

    Of course, the Constitution takes a far different position, but does anyone in the government even read, let alone abide by, the Constitution anymore?

    The government does not want us to remember that we have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully. And it definitely does not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

    Yet by muzzling the citizenry, by removing the constitutional steam valves that allow people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world, the government is creating a climate in which violence becomes inevitable.

    When there is no First Amendment steam valve, then frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.

    As John F. Kennedy warned, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

    As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the government is making violent revolution inevitable.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 23:30

  • Judge Tosses Challenge, Upholds Law Allowing 'Noncitizens' To Vote In DC
    Judge Tosses Challenge, Upholds Law Allowing ‘Noncitizens’ To Vote In DC

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit challenging a District of Columbia law allowing “noncitizen residents” to vote in local elections.

    Activists rally for voting rights and D.C. statehood as they block traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Drew Angerer /Getty Images)

    Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, found that a group of seven citizen plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the legislation.

    Their lawsuit against the D.C. Board of Elections, filed on March 14, aimed to block the 2022 law passed by the Council of the District of Columbia.

    They argued that “noncitizens” do not have a fundamental right to vote in the United States and that allowing them to cast ballots and hold office in the District of Columbia dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens.

    “It follows from our national independence that United States citizens have a right to govern, and be governed by, themselves. The constitutional right to citizen self-government, moreover, has been recognized in repeated holdings of the Supreme Court of the United States,” their complaint reads.

    “Nor does any noncitizen have a constitutional right to govern the United States,” the complaint adds.

    The group argued that the Supreme Court has recognized and protected these rights against infringement in “multiple precedents.”

    The group, in their complaint, argued that vote dilution caused by expanding the franchise to illegal immigrants has been analyzed under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment “on the ground that they discriminate against an identifiable group by harming that group while benefitting another.”

    And while the complaint noted that the 14th Amendment only applies to the states, they contended that the 5th Amendment due process clause grants residents of the District of Columbia the same equal protection right.

    No Standing

    However, in an opinion issued Thursday, Judge Jackson determined that the seven plaintiffs failed to demonstrate “that they have personally been subjected to any sort of disadvantage as individual voters by virtue of the fact that noncitizens are permitted to vote, too.”

    “They may object as a matter of policy to the fact that immigrants get to vote at all, but their votes will not receive less weight or be treated differently than noncitizens’ votes,” the judge wrote.

    They are not losing representation in any legislative body; nor have citizens as a group been discriminatorily gerrymandered, ‘packed,’ or ‘cracked’ to divide, concentrate, or devalue their votes,” she continued.

    The judge concluded: “At bottom, they are simply raising a generalized grievance which is insufficient to confer standing.”

    The Epoch Times contacted the D.C. Board of Elections for comment.

    ‘A Direct Attack on American Self-Government’

    The Epoch Times contacted the D.C.-based Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), which represented the plaintiffs, for comment.

    In a statement announcing the lawsuit, Christopher Hajec, IRLI’s director of litigation, said the law “is a direct attack on American self-government.”

    “This law doesn’t just give foreign citizens a voice in our country’s affairs, it gives them voting power that politicians inevitably will have to respond to. That transfer of power flies in the face of the clear right of the American people to govern themselves,” he said.

    The IRLI’s executive director, Dale Wilcox, said in a statement on March 14 that when the voting power of citizens is eroded, “our nation begins to lose its independence.”

    “If laws like this are not struck down, next there will be calls in many states to allow aliens to vote in statewide and even federal elections,” he added.

    Noncitizen Voting Act

    The law in question, known as the Noncitizen Voting Act, removed the prior citizenship requirement for voting in municipal elections, allowing all residents over 18 who have lived in the district for 30 days, regardless of immigration status, to vote in local elections only.

    Those who qualify can vote in district races for mayor, council, attorney general, and advisory neighborhood commissioners. They can also vote on local initiatives, referenda, recalls, or charter amendment measures.

    Additionally, in combination with other laws, the Noncitizen Voting Act permits illegal immigrants to serve as D.C. mayor, to serve on the D.C. Council, and to serve on the D.C. Board of Elections.

    According to a court filing, at a meeting of the D.C. Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety on Sept. 27, 2022, Council Member Charles Allen, speaking in support of the legislation, said, “Our noncitizen neighbors, many of whom have lived, worked, and raised a family in the District for decades deserve the opportunity to have a stake in their government and determine their own leaders just as we all do.”

    The Epoch Times contacted Mr. Allen for further comment.

    Congress must review legislation passed by the D.C. Council; however, efforts to overturn the law through legislative means ultimately stalled in the U.S. Senate.

    After the U.S. House passed a resolution disapproving of the act on Feb. 9, 2023, the Senate failed to pass a resolution against the act within the prescribed time frame.

    This prompted the group of seven citizens to bring their lawsuit.

    The lawsuit argued that it violates the 5th Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection for citizens. The lawsuit also alleged that the law violates “the constitutional right of citizen self-government” by allowing “noncitizens to hold public office,” according to a court filing.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 23:00

  • Russia Confirms Increase Of Artillery Shell Production By 150% In Past Year
    Russia Confirms Increase Of Artillery Shell Production By 150% In Past Year

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Thursday that Russia’s production of artillery shells has increased by nearly 2.5 times over the past year as Moscow is significantly out-producing the West.

    Shoigu also said that Russia was producing components for artillery at a rate of 22 times what it could make last year. “Speaking about manufacturing of artillery munitions, the volume of production of components to such ammunition was increased by almost 22 times,” he said.

    US govt file image

    Shoigu’s comments came after CNN reported that Russia was producing nearly three times as many artillery shells than the US and Europe combined.

    The report, based on a NATO assessment, said Russia has the capacity to produce 3 million shells per year while the US and Europe can make 1.2 million.

    It’s been clear for a while that NATO could not keep up with the production needed to fuel the proxy war in Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last year that Ukraine was using artillery ammunition at a much faster rate than what the entire alliance could produce.

    “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production, and this puts our defense industries under strain,” Stoltenberg said in February 2023.

    At that time Stoltenberg urged that NATO needs to “ramp up production” and that European leaders should focus on “ways to increase our defense industrial capacity and replenish stockpiles.”

    Due to its shortage of conventional 155mm artillery ammunition, the US has been arming Ukraine with artillery shells packed with cluster bombs, which are notorious for killing and maiming civilians and are banned by over 100 countries.

    The US announced a new $300 million arms package that included more cluster bombs. The US supplied Ukraine with the package despite the lack of new funding for the war and claimed it was paid for with money saved in the US Army budget.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 22:30

  • FDA Settles Ivermectin Case, Agrees To Remove Controversial 'Stop It' Post
    FDA Settles Ivermectin Case, Agrees To Remove Controversial ‘Stop It’ Post

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

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has agreed to remove social media posts and webpages that urged people to stop taking ivermectin to treat COVID-19, according to a settlement dated March 21.

    The FDA has already removed a page that said: “Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? No.”

    Within 21 days, the FDA will remove another page titled, “why you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19,” according to the settlement announcement, which was filed with federal court in southern Texas.

    “The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals,” the page currently states. It also says that data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19, despite how some studies it cites show ivermectin is effective against the illness.

    The FDA in the settlement is also agreeing to delete multiple social media posts that came out strongly against ivermectin, including one that stated: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

    In exchange, doctors who sued the agency are dismissing their claims, the filing states.

    “FDA loses its war on ivermectin and agrees to remove all social media posts and consumer directives regarding ivermectin and COVID, including its most popular tweet in FDA history,” Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, one of the doctors, said in a statement. “This landmark case sets an important precedent in limiting FDA overreach into the doctor-patient relationship.”

    We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the settlement as it is a victory for every doctor and patient in the United States,” added Dr. Paul Marik, chief scientific officer of the FLCCC Alliance and another plaintiff. “The FDA interfered in the practice of medicine with their irresponsible language and posts about ivermectin. We will never know how many lives were affected because patients were denied access to a lifesaving treatment because their doctor was ‘just following the FDA.’”

    An FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency “has chosen to resolve this lawsuit rather than continuing to litigate over statements that are between two and nearly four years old.”

    “FDA has not admitted any violation of law or any wrongdoing, disagrees with the plaintiffs’ allegation that the agency exceeded its authority in issuing the statements challenged in the lawsuit, and stands by its authority to communicate with the public regarding the products it regulates,” the spokesperson said. “FDA has not changed its position that currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. The agency has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19.”

    Ivermectin was approved by the FDA in 1996 to treat several conditions, including onchocerciasis, a tropical disease caused by a parasitic worm.

    In the United States, it’s common for doctors to prescribe medicine off-label, or for a different purpose than the one for which the medicine is approved.

    After some doctors began prescribing ivermectin for COVID-19, the FDA ramped up its campaign, including the Aug. 21, 2021, post on Twitter, now known as X.

    Dr. Bowden and two other doctors sued the FDA, arguing the agency’s actions went beyond its authority, as conferred on it by Congress.

    U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown dismissed the case in 2022, ruling that the FDA did not act outside the authority. But an appeals court in 2023 ruled in favor of the doctors, finding that the agency “has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ‘stop’ taking medicine.”

    Between the time of the ruling and the settlement, the FDA refused to change any of its statements on ivermectin, and asked for a fresh dismissal of the suit.

    The Case

    Drs. Robert Apter, Bowden, and Marik brought the case in 2022. They said they suffered repercussions after prescribing ivermectin to patients with COVID-19, and that the FDA was to blame.

    Dr. Apter, for instance, said that pharmacists refused to fill the prescriptions, citing the FDA.

    This refusal delays his patients in obtaining their prescribed treatment—when early intervention is paramount—while they look for a pharmacy to fill their prescription, if they can find one at all,” the suit states.

    He also said that insurance companies were refusing to pay for ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

    The suit said the FDA illegally interfered with the relationships between the doctors and patients. The doctors said with regard to ivermectin, the FDA overstepped the authority conferred on it in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

    Government lawyers argued that the FDA was acting within the confines of the law, and succeeded in getting the dismissal.

    Judge Brown, appointed under President Donald Trump, said the FDA’s powers were only limited with regard to medical devices.

    As there is no statute limiting the FDA’s actions here, it cannot have acted outside of any statutory limitations,” he wrote in his ruling. “Further, it cannot be said that the FDA had no colorable basis of authority. The FDA is charged by Congress with protecting public health and ensuring that regulated medical products are safe and effective, among other things.”

    A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit disagreed, finding that the law did not authorize the FDA to give medical advice.

    “FDA can inform, but it has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ‘stop’ taking medicine,” U.S. Circuit Judge Don Willett, appointed under President Trump, wrote for the court. The appeals court remanded the case back to the district court.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 22:00

  • Despite Supreme Court Ruling, States Are Still Confiscating People’s Homes
    Despite Supreme Court Ruling, States Are Still Confiscating People’s Homes

    Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Horses taught Christine Searle the importance of being fair. Intelligent and innately honest creatures, horses know deceit when they see it. She wishes they could teach that principle to the state of Arizona.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    The 70-year-old horse trainer and Arizona native is on the verge of losing her life’s savings over an unpaid $1,607.68 property tax bill.

    I owed them the money. And that’s what they should get—the money I owe them,” Ms. Searle told The Epoch Times.

    I don’t think that they should have the right to take all of it.

    Arizona is one of almost a dozen states that allow creditors to keep all the proceeds from sales of homes foreclosed due to unpaid taxes—known as tax lien sales, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF).

    A 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case out of Minnesota offers some hope to property owners in these situations, but only if a similar case is brought in their state. In the 2022 case, the justices ruled that Minnesota’s practice of keeping all the proceeds of a tax sale constitutes an illegal seizure of property.

    “The taxpayer must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the unanimous decision.

    But, under their current laws, 10 states and the District of Columbia have no means of returning the excess proceeds of a home sale; what Mountain States Legal Foundation lawyers representing Ms. Searle call “home equity theft.” The states include Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and South Dakota.

    Ms. Searle hopes her case will be the one to set things right in Arizona.

    In Arizona, a county treasurer can place a lien on a property for taxes owed. These financial claims are then sold at an online auction. In the auction, buyers bid the lowest interest rate they intend to charge property owners to redeem their lien. The bidding begins at 16 percent and the lowest bid wins.

    Purchasing a tax lien doesn’t transfer ownership of the property. In Arizona, the property owner has three years to pay the back taxes, which includes fees and interest. If it is not redeemed within that time, the lienholder may foreclose and sell the property.

    Unsold tax liens are turned over to the state. The state has the same right to foreclose, but must return any excess proceeds to the former property owner.

    In 2005, Ms. Searle bought a three-bedroom, two-bath house as a rental property for $255,000. The house is in Gilbert, Arizona, 22 miles southeast of Phoenix. Its 2024 property tax appraisal came to $376,800, but she stands to lose much more than the taxable value.

    Christine Searle gives her horse, Dunny, a treat in Tucson, Ariz., on Feb. 23, 2024. (Michael Clements/The Epoch Times)

    Various real estate websites estimate the current market value to sit somewhere between $420,000 and $510,000.

    The investment firm Arapaho LLC Tesco purchased the tax lien on Ms. Searle’s property when it bought all of Maricopa County’s 2015 and 2016 tax liens. Arapaho stands to gain a significant profit if it sells the property under current law.

    Arapaho’s contact information was not available. An internet search showed that the Phoenix-based company —which is involved in a number of legal actions in Arizona—lists Hamilton Municipal Financing of Altamonte Springs, Florida, as a principal. Hamilton is incorporated in Delaware.

    According to PLF, tax liens are popular with banks, investment firms, and other financial institutions because they are seen as relatively secure investments.

    Public data gathered by PLF shows that Maricopa County sold 567 tax liens between July 2012 and March 2021. A review of those records by The Epoch Times found that at least 424, or approximately three-quarters of those purchasers, were businesses.

    This is based on buyers being listed as Incorporated, an LLC, a Trust, or a DBA (Doing Business As).

    Retirement Plan Upended

    On a dusty ranch near Tucson, Ms. Searle sits on a metal patio chair under a shady tree in front of some stables and talks about her retirement plan.

    I have all my money invested in that home as my retirement instead of putting it in a CD [Certificate of Deposit] or some kind of a bank account. I can make a little money on the side to pay the mortgage and keep, and sell it when I need the money,” she said.

    She’s shocked at how close she is to losing her life savings to an investment firm.

    For 18 years, she lived in Chandler, Arizona, with her husband and son, Randy Searle. According to Ms. Searle, she led a typically comfortable, suburban middle-class American life. Her then-husband worked for a jewelry and memorabilia company serving high schools and colleges, and she trained horses.

    Randy Searle poses in front of his mother’s rental house in Gilbert, Ariz., on Feb. 23, 2024. (Michael Clements/The Epoch Times)

    She knew it was possible to lose property over unpaid taxes. But that happened to other people. It wasn’t part of her life or something she really knew very much about.

    “I didn’t think about it,” she said.

    Then came the divorce, and she had to consider many things she had never given much thought.

    She had to find a way to support herself. Her son was grown, so she could afford a simpler lifestyle. Ms. Searle took her divorce settlement and purchased the house in Gilbert to use as a rental to supplement her income.

    Her work goes beyond teaching horses to respond to commands. Many horse owners live and work far from the stables in Tucson, so Ms. Searle is their horse’s primary caregiver. She is responsible for arranging veterinary care, farrier services, feeding, and exercising the animals.

    “I don’t have a nine-to-five job; I have a 24-hour job. Whenever there’s something wrong, I come down here and work on it, take care of it,” Ms. Searle said. “I’m doing it just because I enjoy it … it’s not like anyone’s making a lot of money here.”

    Her son blames himself for his mother’s predicament.

    Mr. Randy Searle, as the tenant at the Gilbert house, said it was his job to manage the property. At the same time, he was trying to get a solar energy company in Rhode Island off the ground.

    I had been responsible for paying [the property taxes], and when our company went out of business in Rhode Island, I didn’t have the money to pay them,” Mr. Searle told The Epoch Times.

    Mr. Searle said he had worked out a plan with Arapaho to redeem the 2016 lien. However, due to a miscommunication, he didn’t realize foreclosure proceedings had been initiated over the 2015 taxes.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 21:30

  • Nancy Pelosi's Son Dodges Charges In Money Laundering, Mail Fraud Scheme Linked To San Francisco Flop House
    Nancy Pelosi’s Son Dodges Charges In Money Laundering, Mail Fraud Scheme Linked To San Francisco Flop House

    Nancy Pelosi’s son has dodged the hammer of justice for a seventh time, after being excluded from a case in which two fraudsters linked to Paul Jr. are set to be sentenced in a money laundering and mail fraud scheme involving “shady dealings over a San Francisco flop house that Pelosi Jr. claimed to own,” the Daily Mail reports.

    Bill Garlock and Gina Rodriguez scammed investors into fronting over $1 million for supposed real estate ventures, and instead used the cash to pay for their lifestyle – including rent, loan repayments, credit card bills, and ‘horse-related expenses,’ according to San Francisco federal prosecutors.

    The two obtained money from investors “by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and by means of concealment of material facts, including through the use of half-truths,” according to a 2022 indictment.

    One project which the pair presented to duped investors was the renovation of a dilapidated mixed-use building at the corner of Utah and 24th Street, which Paul Pelosi Jr. claimed to own 20% of – and was involved in a 2017 bribery scheme to obtain permits for the property, a move which led to the imprisonment of a city official and an engineering consultant following an FBI sting.

    The property, located in the Mission District of San Francisco, has a troubled past of code violations and squalid conditions. In other words, a flop house.

    Pelosi Jr. was listed as the selling realtor on transaction documents of this mixed-use building in the Mission District of San Francisco when it (pictured) was bought in 2017 by Feng 24th LLC, a company controlled by Garlock and Rodriguez

    Pelosi Jr. was not charged in the bribery scheme, and was only listed as “Client 9” in the complaint.

    In 2017, he was listed as the selling realtor on transaction documents as part of a sale to Feng 24th, LLC – a company controlled by Garlock and Rodriguez. As the Mail further reports, “according to the property manager and permit applications, Pelosi Jr. continued to be intimately involved with the flop house after its sale to the two fraudsters.”

    “But he is nowhere to be seen in the July 2022 indictment leveled against Garlock, 74, and Rodriguez, 57, in a Northern California federal court,” according to the report.

    Garlock and Rodriguez were indicted on 15 counts of money laundering and mail fraud, including a scheme to bilk $400,000 from investors in the 24th Street property.

    According to prosecutors, Garlock failed to list himself on Feng 24th LLC’s filings despite having “substantial control” over the firm which owned the Pelosi-linked property.

    Pelosi Jr.’s ties to the building, and the shady dealings around it, appear to be both financial and personal.

    DailyMail.com previously revealed that Pelosi Jr. had a romantic relationship with the building’s former owner, Karena Feng – and that she sued him in 2019 claiming that he conspired with Garlock and Rodriguez to scam her out of the property.

    In one email obtained by DailyMail.com, Pelosi Jr. wrote to Feng: ‘I am list [sic] as the real estate agent for the transaction and have been working hard for you for over two years. In January 2016, you and your family made me an officer of Feng RE with a 20 percent ownership. As an officer and owner of Feng RE, I want the best outcome for your and your family.’  -Daily Mail

    Nicole Bulick, Pelosi’s ex-girlfriend, says that the FBI interviewed Paul Jr. three times about the 24th Street property, while business associate Naveen Singha also said agents interviewed him about Pelosi Jr.’s links to the building.

    Paul’s been under FBI [questioning] like three times over this,” the 48-year-old Bulick told the Mail. “Maybe in the summer of 2017… The FBI looked at this for almost two years. They called me too… He went and spoke with the FBI three times.

    And according to the Mail, this is the seventh federal case linked to Pelosi Jr. for which he hasn’t been charged.

    DailyMail.com has previously revealed:

    • The 52-year-old joined the board of a biofuel company after it defrauded investors according to an SEC ruling, and whose CEO was convicted after bribing Georgia officials
    • Pelosi Jr. was president of an environmental investment firm that turned out to be a front for two convicted fraudsters 
    • He joined a lithium mining company and received millions of shares, allegedly issued as part of a massive $164million fraud 
    • He was vice president of a company previously embroiled in an investigation of scam calls that targeted senior citizens 
    • He has close business ties with a man accused by the Department of Justice of running a fake UN charity that stole investors’ money 
    • A medical company Pelosi Jr. worked for tested drugs on people without FDA authorization, according to an FDA investigation
    • A permit expeditor and a city official were imprisoned over a bribery scheme of cash for permits, with Pelosi Jr. as one of their clients

    Maybe Hunter Biden should speak with Paul Jr.’s attorney?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 21:00

  • FAA Issues Warning For Air Travel Disruptions During Total Solar Eclipse On April 8
    FAA Issues Warning For Air Travel Disruptions During Total Solar Eclipse On April 8

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a warning on Thursday about potential disruptions in air travel surrounding the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8.

    A graphic visualization with no text of the path of totality and partial contours crossing the U.S. for the 2024 total solar eclipse occurring on April 8, 2024.(Courtesy of NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio)

    The celestial event, set to cast a path of totality across 13 states, is anticipated to impact air travel operations before, during, and after the eclipse, according to the aviation agency.

    The FAA indicated that the eclipse’s effects on U.S. airspace are anticipated between approximately 2:30 p.m. and 3:40 p.m. ET. At this time, some 32 million people in North America are expected to witness the rare event, which is anticipated to be the most-watched solar eclipse in history.

    A total solar eclipse occurs when the new moon passes directly in front of the sun, completely blocking out sunlight and casting the moon’s shadow on the surface of Earth. The most recent total solar eclipse to happen on American soil was the Great American Eclipse in 2017.

    A notice issued by the FAA to airmen emphasized potential impacts on air traffic and airports along the eclipse path from April 7 to April 10. Pilots and aviation personnel are advised to stay informed and prepared for possible disruptions.

    In a statement, the FAA suggested that aircraft should ready themselves for potential airborne holding, reroutes, and departure clearance times that might be issued for all domestic IFR arrivals and departures during the eclipse.

    Departing aircraft from airports along the eclipse path are “strongly encouraged” to coordinate their departure times as early as possible to assist fixed base operators with staging aircraft and alleviating ramp congestion.

    “There may be a higher traffic volume than normal anticipated at airports along the path of the eclipse. Traffic should anticipate delays during peak traffic periods,” the FAA stated.

    The agency cautioned that parking may be limited, particularly at small, uncontrolled airports. Delays with issuing IFR departure clearances might also happen.

    VFR departures may also expect delays for airborne pickup of IFR clearance within 50 NM either side of the path of the eclipse,” the FAA stated.

    The eclipse will also impact or possibly prohibit aircraft from conducting practice approaches, touch-and-go operations, flight following services, and pilot training at airports during the event.

    “Airmen should check NOTAMs carefully for special procedures/restrictions that may be in place at affected airports. Specific NOTAM procedures may be revised, and arrivals to some airports possibly restricted so please review NOTAMs frequently to verify you have the current information,” the agency advised.

    ‘Great North American Eclipse’

    Dubbed the “Great North American Eclipse,” the celestial event is expected to be more impressive than the one in 2017, lasting longer, being wider, and traversing more highly populated parts of North America.

    On April 8, it will begin over the South Pacific Ocean and move across North America, spanning across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The 2024 event will move in a different direction than the 2017 event, marking a cross on the United States.

    The moon’s shadow will create a relatively narrow ribbon—the path of totality—of about 100 miles over Earth’s surface. To experience a 100 percent total solar eclipse, viewers should be located in this narrow band. This will reveal “the star’s outer atmosphere, called the corona,” according to NASA.

    Totality will last for longer than four minutes in some parts of the United States.

    According to NASA, the path of the eclipse will traverse Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Small parts of Tennessee and Michigan will also experience the total solar eclipse.

    The eclipse will enter Canada in southern Ontario, journey through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Breton before exiting continental North America on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland at 5:16 p.m. NDT, according to NASA.

    Special security provisions may be enforced for this event, the FAA said, including temporary flight restrictions, two-way radio communications, and discrete transponder requirements.

    “Specific NOTAM procedures may be revised, and arrivals to some airports possibly restricted so please review NOTAMs frequently to verify you have the current information,” the FAA reiterated.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 20:35

  • US Decries "Outrageous" China & Russia Veto Of Its Gaza Ceasefire Resolution At UN
    US Decries “Outrageous” China & Russia Veto Of Its Gaza Ceasefire Resolution At UN

    On Friday Russia and China, along with Algeria, vetoed a US draft resolution on Gaza calling for ceasefire, with the objectors complaining that the language fell short of a clear and unequivocal demand for a ceasefire. 

    The draft ceasefire sought to directly link an immediate ceasefire with the release of all hostages from Gaza. China and Russia saw in it language that paves the way for okaying an Israeli offensive against Rafah. 

    US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of the proposed resolution, “We want to see an immediate and sustained ceasefire as part of a deal that leads to the release of all hostages being held by Hamas and other groups and that will allow much more life-saving, humanitarian aid to get into Gaza.”

    But Russian ambassador to the Security Council Vasily Nebenzya accused the US of engaging in “hypocritical” posturing:  

    He accused the United States of doing nothing to rein in Israel in Gaza, and mocked Washington for speaking of a ceasefire after “Gaza has been virtually wiped off the face of the Earth”.

    “We have observed a typical hypocritical spectacle,” he said.

    Nebenzya said that the resolution offered by the Biden administration would have “ensured the impunity of Israel, whose crimes are not even assessed in the draft.”

    This comes after several prior US vetoes of attempted ceasefire resolutions. Friday marks the fourth attempt to move forward a ceasefire resolution. In this case, the Biden administration can seek to lay blame on Russia and China for not wanting to seek peace

    Thomas-Greenfield has reacted to Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the US resolution by saying the two countries “refuse to condemn Hamas for burning people alive, for gunning down innocent civilians at a concert and for raping women and girls”.

    “This was the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, and a permanent member of the Security Council cannot even condemn it,” she said. “I’m sorry, but this is outrageous and is below the dignity of this body.”

    An alternative resolution is soon next to be put before the Security Council which urges an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, out of which could come a hoped-for permanent ceasefire. The US is expected to veto it.

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

    Given the death toll in Gaza has reportedly surpassed 30,000 mostly civilians killed, the war is becoming increasingly unpopular internationally, and Israel’s actions have been especially condemned by Global South countries.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 20:10

  • US Intelligence Says It Knew ISIS-K Was Planning Terror Attack On Moscow
    US Intelligence Says It Knew ISIS-K Was Planning Terror Attack On Moscow

    Update(1950ET): The initial reports that ISIS has claimed responsibility for the terror attack in Moscow appeared rumor at first, and has still been subject of widespread scrutiny and debate, however, US media and government officials are saying that the Islamic State (or ISIS-K) statement is authentic. “A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for the attack in Moscow that killed at least 40 people and injured about 100 others, and U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly afterward,” The New York Times writes late in the day. 

    What’s more is that US intelligence knew there was to be an imminent attack on Moscow: “The United States collected intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, the branch of the group based in Afghanistan, had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials. ISIS members have been active in Russia, one U.S. official said,” according to more from NYT.

    The Kremlin had earlier in the day demanded answers of Washington explaining why the US Embassy in Moscow issued an alert earlier this month for all US nationals to avoid public venues and be extra vigilant. We previously reported on that early March embassy notification here. NY Times continues, citing US officials: “After a period of relative quiet, the Islamic State has been trying to increase its external attacks, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials. Most of those plots in Europe have been thwarted, prompting assessments that the group had diminished capabilities.”

    Importantly, Russian state media and sources have been slow to report the ISIS-K claims, nor have state officials identified any culprits or group at this late hour. Russian media in general has not reflected Western press reports concerning the claims that ISIS-K was behind it, likely pending a deeper and ongoing investigation. It is possible that some of the gunmen may still be at large.

    Speculation continues to run rampant, and there’s as yet been little that’s confirmed from Russian security services and authorities.

    At least 40 were killed when a group of heavily armed, unidentified gunmen stormed Crocus City Hall music venue. Russia’s Health Ministry has released a list of names of 145 people who have been hospitalized in critical condition. Children are among them.

    Below: video has emerged showing the moments the gunmen entered the concert hall, after randomly massacring people in the attached mall area of the complex…

    * * *

    Update(1735ET): The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the Moscow terrorist attack according to a report by the Amaq news agency (and otherwise unconfirmed).

    We will update this story as details are confirmed.

    *  *  *

    Update(1635ET): Moscow has come out with fighting words while also pointing the finger at Washington about ‘what it knew’ ahead of time and when:

    Medvedev threatens Ukraine’s top officials will be ‘destroyed mercilessly as terrorists’ if the ‘Kyiv regime’ is linked to Moscow concert hall attack.

    The former president Deputy Chairman of the Security Council is known to routinely issue threatening and hawkish words, but the Russian foreign ministry has issued the following as cited in Reuters:

    “On what basis do officials in Washington draw any conclusions in the midst of a tragedy about someone’s innocence?” She added that if Washington had information, it should be shared and that if Washington had no information, it should not be talking in such a way.

    Huge blaze engulfs complex after several explosions were reported during and after the attack, via AP.

    At least one of the attackers is said to be in Russian custody, also as security services inspect a van in the vicinity and other suspicious vehicles. The mall and concert hall venue previously rampaged by heavily armed gunmen continues to be engulfed in flames, according to a summary in RT:

    Multiple fire brigades and aircraft have been deployed to put out the blaze at a large mall outside Moscow that was attacked by terrorists on Friday night. The popular shopping center and music venue is located in Krasnogorsk, just northwest of the Russian capital. 

    A group of gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall on Friday night, killing at least 40 people, according to the authorities.

    The assailants reportedly set the building on fire. Witnesses also said they heard explosions inside the mall.

    According to regional emergency services, around 100 people have been evacuated from the underground floor. The rescuers are working to evacuate people from the roof.

    There have been reports that parts of the roof over the complex collapsed, with hundreds of emergency responders battling the blaze and seeking any gunmen who may be at large.

    * * *

    Update(1440ET): Russian state media as well as The Wall Street Journal’s regional correspondent is reporting at least 40 people killed, and over 100 wounded and injured, in the unfolding major terror attack on Moscow’s largest concert hall. 

    Initial videos have emerged showing what appears to be attackers in combat fatigues with assault rifles going around the mall part of the venue (which is attached to the concert hall) and shooing randomly. There are reports from RT of follow-up blasts happening even amid a huge security, police, and emergency response

    Below: 20 seconds into clip… is that a flamethrower?

    A mere days ago the US Embassy in Moscow released the following alert telling all US nationals still in the country to avoid large gatherings and public venues. What did they know?

    Russia has called the shooting a ‘bloody terrorist attack’ in an initial statement. The White House has also issued an initial assessment as follows:

    • WHITE HOUSE: NO INDICATION AT THIS TIME THAT UKRAINE INVOLVED IN MOSCOW SHOOTING
    • MOSCOW CANCELS ALL THE WEEKEND MASS GATHERINGS – MAYOR

    Unconfirmed reports say some of the attackers may still be at large. Below–Warning, Graphic:

    Watch Live Feed of local media coverage below:

    * * *

    Some kind of major attack just occurred at a Moscow concert hall with contradictory breaking reports emerging from on the ground and several circulating unconfirmed videos. There are possibly at least ten casualties and videos from the scene showing a large fire and plumes of black smoke over the venue. It may have been the result of a large explosion, or possibly even a cross-border drone strike, but conflicting reports say this is likely a mass shooting situation. According to the breaking Associated Press report, at least three gunmen in combat gear stormed the concert hall, with riot police responding:

    Several gunmen in combat fatigues burst into a big concert hall in Moscow on Friday and fired automatic weapons at the crowd, injuring an unspecified number of people, Russian media said.

    Russian news reports said that the assailants also used explosives, causing a massive blaze at the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow. Video posted on social media showed huge plumes of black smoke rising over the building.

    Video from inside the concert hall shows smoke and a chaotic scene of masses of people scrambling to evacuate the venue.

    Unconfirmed statements say it happened at the largest indoor concert venue in Moscow, called Crocus City Hall.

    Reuters: Smoke rises above the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow after reports of a shooting incident.

    The scope of the attack was clearly a very large, coordinated op or terror event.

    Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency said that several gunmen opened fire on the crowd in Moscow concert hall, resulting in unknown casualties, the AP has cited.

    The incident has unfolded at during a week of rapidly escalating cross-border attacks on Russian territory from Ukraine, and also large-scale retaliatory strikes on Ukraine by Russian aerial forces.

    Reports of armed men storming the concert hall, but the visuals also strongly suggest a large explosion…

    A massive emergency and security response is ongoing:

    MORE THAN 50 AMBULANCE CREWS SENT TO SITE OF SHOOTING NEAR MOSCOW – RIA

    developing…

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 19:50

  • VDH: From Russian Collusion To "Bloodbath" – A Decade Of Toxic Hysteria
    VDH: From Russian Collusion To “Bloodbath” – A Decade Of Toxic Hysteria

    Via Victor David Hanson,

    Ever since late June 2015—following Donald Trump’s announcement that he was running for president, and his voicing of controversial agendas (on tariffs, China, illegal immigration, foreign policy, NATO, etc.)—leftwing toxic hysteria has been the norm.

    In the last ten years, we’ve witnessed the Russian collusion hoax, calls from military officers and analysts for extra-legal interventions and coups, the Alfa ping hoax, the drink bleach hoax, the “suckers” D-Day hoax, the celebrities’ contest about the best way to decapitate, stab, blow up, shoot, or incinerate Trump, the 2016 leftwing postelection effort to turn state electors into “faithless” apostates to elect Hillary, the nutty Mark Milley call to his Chinese counterpart, the Antifa/BLM riotous months of 2020 and effort to storm the White House grounds, the two first-term impeachments, the laptop “Russian disinformation” hoax, the pee accusation, the “51 intelligence authorities” ruse, the FBI hiring of Twitter censors to suppress unwanted news, the Senate trial of a private citizen, the January 6 “insurrection” where “five police officers were killed” lie, the farcical two Republican members of the Jan 6 committee, the attempt to remove Trump from state ballots, the insane E. Jean Carroll suit, the Letitia James “find me the man, and I’ll find you the crime” writ, the monstrous $355 million fine growing daily to $450, the Alvin Bragg bootstrapping of an inert federal suit, the Fani Willis/Nathan Wade circus, the Jack Smith antithesis to Robert Hur’s twin investigation, the effort to bankrupt the Republican nominee, and of course the constant calls to pack the court (when the Left lost the majority), to end the filibuster (when Democrats control the Senate), to add two new states and four new senators (provided they are DC and Puerto Rico) and to end the Electoral College (once the Left lost the surety of the reliable blue wall).

    What is the effect of all this decade-long civil strife on the 2024 voter?

    There are two knowns and two unknowns from this unprecedented effort to destroy rather than defeat at the polls Donald J. Trump.

    • First, we now know that the more they have tried to destroy Trump through media lies and distortions, lawfare, and extra-legal means, the greater his resiliency and popularity.

    • Two, we also realize that the greater the anti-Trump hysteria, venom, and furor on the Left, the more leftists melt down and project their own paranoias onto Trump.

    They think something like: “If we were Trump, and we were smeared with the stuff we are dishing out, we know what we do to our tormentors when we got power. So naturally Trump will do to us what we would to us in his place.”

    Their projection then turns into our now daily unhinged screams that Trump will “take revenge” and “demand retribution”, ensure a “bloodbath”, and “end democracy”—and “therefore we have to double down to employ even more extra-legal means to destroy him”.

    Of the unknowns, we are somewhat unsure about the cumulative effect of this historic effort to warp the electoral system to destroy a candidate, and in at least two regards.

    One, as the Left ramps up its hatred and frenzy over the next seven months before the election (and they surely will), what will be effect on Independents, swing voters, and the undecided? Will they grow incensed at the damage the Left is doing to the country and react by supporting Trump all the more?

    Or, alternatively, will they finally curl up, fetal-like, with  hands over ears, and simply whimper and wish for someone to make all this conundrum go away—and along with it the disrupter Trump, who, however much the victim, still somehow is responsible for the insane reaction he elicits from the left?

    As far as the second unknown in the upcoming months, could  or would Trump as the Happy Warrior better finesse the vitriol to his own advantage by joking about his tormentors’ insanity, using Reaganesque humor to ridicule his critics, or simply shrug, stick to business, ignore the madness, and press on? Can he not unite the country by rising above the tit-for-tat taunts and put-downs?

    That is, should he not avoid his gratuitous slights (often against fellow Republicans like DeSantis and Haley), curb silly stuff like “birdbrain” and the usual social media ridicule?

    Or does it even matter at this late date—given the Left will distort anything Trump says anyway—as we just witnessed with the “bloodbath” psychodrama, and the laughable spin to suggest Trump was calling for insurrection rather than the damage Biden will do to the automotive industry?

    Are we reaching a point, then, where it does not matter how carefully Trump speaks and how ecumenical he might sound, given whatever he says or does will still be distorted given the existential hatred for who he is, what he represents, and what his agendas might portend?

    Add up what we know and the things we know we don’t know, and it is going to be a wild, dangerous next seven months in which we are going to witness things from the Left never seen before in this country.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 19:45

  • Russia & China Strike Shipping Deal With Houthis To Ensure Safe Vessel Transits, Report Says 
    Russia & China Strike Shipping Deal With Houthis To Ensure Safe Vessel Transits, Report Says 

    According to Bloomberg’s sources, Russia and China have sealed a deal with Iran-backed Houthis to allow their commercial vessels to transit the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden without fear of drone and or missile attacks. 

    One of the sources said China and Russia reached a deal with diplomats in Oman with Mohammed Abdel Salam, one of the Houthis’ top political leaders. They said the safe passage of vessels is in exchange for the Houthis’ political support at the United Nations Security Council. 

    Bloomberg noted, “It’s not entirely clear how that support would be manifested, but it could include blocking more resolutions against the group.” 

    Since November, Houthi rebels have repeatedly attacked vessels in the Red Sea. Rebels assert that their attacks are aimed only at ships connected to Israel, demonstrating their support for the Palestinians amid the ongoing Gaza conflict.

    In response to the Red Sea crisis, the Biden administration launched Operation Prosperity Guardian, a military operation led by the US and other allied countries to protect the critical shipping lane. However, months later, the operation failed to protect ships. Furthermore, the US and UK have launched bombing raids on Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries to fight back against Iran-backed terror groups. 

    “China and Russia are deepening their strategic alliance with Iranian-backed terrorists. It’s a further sign of an emerging new world disorder that threatens freedom of navigation, commerce, transit, and communications,” said David Asher, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, who commented on the Bloomberg report. 

    Asher continued: “No one should doubt that Putin and Xi are increasingly coordinating their moves with Tehran while the US embraces appeasement, including via releasing billions of dollars to the Iranians with no substantive result to American interests, power, and prestige.”

    In a recent note titled The Weaponization Of Crude Could Trigger The Next Financial Shock,” Asher warned that “Iran is preparing for an oil war—and markets ignore the growing risks.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 19:20

  • 'Gender Science' Was Merely Ideology All Along
    ‘Gender Science’ Was Merely Ideology All Along

    Authored by Wesley J. Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Did you hear the news? England’s National Health Service (NHS) has decided that children diagnosed with gender dysphoria will no longer receive puberty blockers because “there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness … to make the treatment routinely available at this time.

    Childrens books on gender in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 7, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The premier of Alberta, Canada, is planning legislation to restrict “gender-affirming” surgeries such as mastectomies for minors and puberty blockers for youth aged 15 and under. Other socially liberal nations have also hit the brakes on “gender affirmation,” in children, including Norway, Finland, France, Denmark, Sweden, and New Zealand. So have a score of American states.

    Why did it take so long for common sense to return to this contentious issue? Blame the cultural imperialism of gender ideologues who, while most of us were not paying attention, successfully instituted “treatment guidelines” that focused almost exclusively on “affirming” a child’s gender confusion as medically necessary, while branding the more cautious approach of deeply exploring the mental health issues that could have contributed to the patient’s confusion as “transphobic,” and, even, likely to drive gender-confused children to suicide.

    WPATH—which stands for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—led the charge. Members of the organization are committed to the belief that “gender”—as opposed to sex—constitutes a human being’s true self and that gender “identity” can be known by the child when very young—in some cases, even before starting school.

    Moreover, when a child claims a particular gender identity different from that “assigned at birth”—male, female, nonbinary, transgender, etc.—that patient must be believed, “affirmed,” and set on the road to an eventual “transition.”

    But gender ideologues didn’t just promote their views about how gender dysphoric children should be treated in the marketplace of ideas. Rather, the entirety of the woke cultural infrastructure mobilized to punish those who challenged the new orthodoxy.

    Social authoritarianism became the order of the day. Many elementary and high schools were at the vanguard. Administrators ordered teachers not to alert parents to their child’s gender confusion at the risk of job loss. Teachers were fired if they “mis-pronouned” a gender-confused student or used the child’s “dead” (given) name instead of the gender-affirming name chosen by the child. Some teachers even proselytized gender ideology to their students, for example by placing LGBT flags in classrooms and assigning readings from pro-gender transitioning books.

    Meanwhile, social media companies canceled the accounts of those who disputed affirmation as the “medically necessary, life-saving standard of care.” Blue states such as California passed laws threatening to remove the custody of children from parents who refused to affirm their child’s declared gender identity. Medical professionals who sought to continue the more traditional approaches to care were accused of engaging in hateful “conversion therapy” and threatened with professional discipline.

    For a time, the ideological juggernaut seemed unstoppable. But as the old saying goes, eventually truth “will out.” Less ideological medical professionals reviewed the actual data and noticed that the supposedly settled science was much less certain than the activists claimed. Moreover, the potential medical harm from puberty blocking and performing surgeries on healthy bodies came to the forefront—in large part thanks to the advocacy of “de-transitioners” who were affirmed in their gender confusion but came to realize that they are, indeed, the sex they were born. The tragic testimonies of young women without breasts and boys with potential lifelong sexual dysfunction exposed the potential cruelty of the gender-affirming approach.

    And now, a shocking new report—“The WPATH Files,” published by Environmental Progress—has exposed WPATH’s rank ideological method as primarily “consumer-driven and pseudoscientific”—as opposed to evidence-based—and (appearing) to be “political activism, not science.”

    Not only that, but the study demonstrates that contrary to WPATH’s claims, the “psychiatric condition of gender dysphoria is not a fatal illness, and the best available studies show that in the case of minors, with watchful waiting and compassionate support, most will either grow out of it or learn to manage their distress in ways less detrimental to their health.” In other words, alternative non-invasive approaches can help young patients overcome their gender confusion without mutilating their bodies.

    Backing up the study’s many data-derived criticisms, author Mia Hughes also quotes actual transcripts of some WPATH members’ shocking disregard for the wellbeing of their patients made in private communications. For example, the report quotes one of the authors of WPATH’s standards of care guidelines admitting that children are too immature to comprehend the enormity of the transition they may desire: “[It is] out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”

    Another WPATH member shrugs that minor patients do not fully appreciate the consequences of sterility that some medically “affirming” treatments can cause. “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. They’d be like, ew, kids, babies, gross.”

    Environmental Progress’s exposé illustrates the danger of meekly following “the experts.” This is particularly true when the main defense of a new and radical agenda is based on a supposed consensus, and that therefore, the science is now “settled.” As my Discovery Institute colleague Stephen C. Meyer says: If you have to rely on a supposed “consensus” to defend your [scientific] position, it means there isn’t really a consensus. That goes double when skeptics are coerced into silence to maintain the primacy of a particular cultural orthodoxy.

    “The WPATH Files” demonstrates that courageous resistance to destructive social fads is never futile. But good golly it can be difficult when ideology successfully masks as science. Hopefully, the report will hasten the end of our destructive transgender moral panic—at least as it impacts minors—and we will finally protect these agonized youngsters in the way all vulnerable children deserve.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 18:55

  • "Our Country Is Being Poisoned": 270,000 Overdose Deaths Catapult Fentanyl As Major Voter Topic In Presidential Race
    “Our Country Is Being Poisoned”: 270,000 Overdose Deaths Catapult Fentanyl As Major Voter Topic In Presidential Race

    In a recent interview on Fox News, former President Donald Trump warned, “Our country is being poisoned from within by the drugs and by all of the other crime that’s taking place.” 

    According to the latest provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between November 2019 and October 2023, there have been a shocking 270,000 overdose deaths from synthetic opioids – or about 80,000 overdose deaths per year – across the nation. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Under the Biden administration’s first term, Americans have been increasingly traumatized by the tsunami of overdose deaths as disastrous open southern border policies flood the nation with illegal drugs and millions of unvetted migrants that have sparked chaos across major metro areas. 

    American voters are increasingly frustrated with progressive policies that have backfired, resulting in the loss of countless American lives, many of them young people. 

    This is how China uses open southern borders to poison the American people.

    A new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of nearly 5,000 registered voters shows 8 in 10 voters in seven swing states believe fentanyl misuse is a “very important” or “somewhat important” issue when deciding who to vote for in November. The drug overdose issue trumps abortion, climate change, labor and unions, or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. 

    Early in President Biden’s first term, he stated one of the central pillars of his “Unity Agenda” was to solve the overdose crisis. Fast-forward to today, Biden’s team of clowns has failed as they prioritize open southern borders over the well-being and health of law-abiding taxpayers. Just think about that for a few seconds… 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 18:30

  • Pentagon Still Open To Allowing US 'Boots On The Ground' In Haiti
    Pentagon Still Open To Allowing US ‘Boots On The Ground’ In Haiti

    Authored by Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute, 

    A senior US military official said the Pentagon has not yet ruled out an American deployment to Haiti, which has seen a spike in violent unrest that prompted the resignation of the country’s prime minister last week. 

    Speaking during an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) head General Laura Richardson was asked whether she envisions “boots on the ground” in the Caribbean nation.

    Via AFP

    “Not right now,” she said, before adding “They could be at the end of the day. We wouldn’t discount that at any time.” Without elaborating, Richardson also went on to suggest that Haitian refugees fleeing violence could be housed at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay – the notorious torture prison which has held hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects without charges for years on end.

    Haiti has been gripped by a long bout of chaos since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, who was replaced by Prime Minister Ariel Henry – then the West’s favored successor. Also assuming the powers of the presidency, Henry took office in lieu of a popular vote, repeatedly postponing elections even after lawmakers’ terms expired last year and left the legislature crippled.

    However, with Henry failing to rein in gangs and armed groups running rampant across Port-au-Prince – some even seizing control of ports and other key infrastructure – the PM gradually lost his international backing, agreeing to resign last week under pressure from Washington and other regional states. 

    The premier will be replaced by a nine-member transition council intended to pave the way to future elections – at a yet-unspecified date – and create an “action plan for near-term security,” according to Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, who helped to broker Henry’s resignation.

    After repeated appeals to the United Nations for an international security force to help quell the violence, Henry finally struck a deal earlier this month for a Kenyan-led mission backed by other nations and largely financed by the United States. It is that initiative which Richardson suggested US troops could ultimately join.

    With Henry stepping down, however, Nairobi has signaled that the multi-national security mission would be delayed until the new council is established, leaving it unclear when – or whether – the plan will come to fruition.

    “The deal they signed… still stands, although the deployment will not happen now because definitely we will require a sitting government to also collaborate with,” Kenyan Foreign Ministry spokesman Salim Swaleh told the New York Times last week. “You don’t just deploy police to go on the Port-au-Prince streets without a sitting administration.”

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

    With a lengthy and often violent history of outside intervention in the country, some Haitians have objected to any foreign troop presence, fearing it may do more harm than good given disastrous experiences with UN-led missions in the past. 

    The Haitian people have kept the bitter taste of a foreign force in charge of our situation: theft, rape, cholera, food dependence, deregulation of the economic system, without mentioning the fact that we don’t remember seeing then-gang leaders be arrested or rendered unable to do harm,” Haitian think tank Groupe de Travail sur la Securite (Security Working Group) said in a statement in 2022, soon after Henry’s first appeal for an international deployment.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 18:05

  • Large US Banks Suffer Another Weekly Deposits Outflow; Stocks & Fed Reserves Completely Decoupled
    Large US Banks Suffer Another Weekly Deposits Outflow; Stocks & Fed Reserves Completely Decoupled

    With The Fed’s bank bailout facility now expired, the 12-month term loans are starting to mature and the fund dropped over $17.2BN last week…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Money-market funds saw a big outflows of almost $62BN, which we wonder if related to tax-year liquidity issues, but it is a little early in the year…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And as money-markets saw outflows, so banks saw deposit inflows… +$38.2BN (SA) and +$41.3BN (NSA) in total deposit increases…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Excluding foreign deposits, domestic banks saw their second straight week of SA inflows +$23.5BN (Large Banks -$8.7BN, Small Banks +32BN), while NSA deposits saw a third straight week of inflows +50.1BN (Large banks +47.4BN, Small banks +2.7BN)

    Source: Bloomberg

    Large Domestic US banks have seen deposit outflows for 5 of the last 6 weeks (while Small banks saw a huge deposit boost)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Overall loan volumes rose, but very modestly (Large banks +$1.9BN, Small banks +$1.8BN)

    Source: Bloomberg

    Interestingly, there was a large jump in small bank cash relative to total assets last week (and viuce versa for large banks) which happens to coincide with the end of the BTFP facility

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, US bank reserves at The Fed shrank this week as US equity market cap soared to a new record high

    Source: Bloomberg

    Quite a decoupling.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 17:40

  • Florida Bans Homeless Encampments
    Florida Bans Homeless Encampments

    Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

    On Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) signed a bill into law that bans homeless encampments in the state of Florida.

    As reported by Just The News, House Bill 1365, formally titled the Unauthorized Public Camping and Public Sleeping Act, demands that homeless individuals be placed in temporary shelters that will be monitored by state law enforcement agencies, while also banning the use of drugs in such shelters and providing drug and alcohol treatment to occupants who need it.

    Furthermore, the law gives residents and businesses the power to sue a city or county government if it allows homeless camps to continue on public property. In the event that homeless shelters reach full capacity, the Florida Department of Children and Families will provide alternative shelters.

    “Florida will not allow homeless encampments to intrude on its citizens or undermine their quality of life like we see in states like New York and California,” said DeSantis during a press conference.

    “The legislation I signed today upholds our commitment to law and order while also ensuring homeless individuals have the resources they need to get back on their feet.”

    The bill was sponsored by State Representative Sam Garrison (R-Fla.), who said that “in Florida, we will learn from the mistakes of cities like San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, and more, which are paying the price for their unwillingness to act.”

    “This bill will not eliminate homelessness,” Garrison admitted.

    “But it is a start. And it states clearly that in Florida, our public spaces are worth fighting for. The status quo is not an option. In Florida we choose to act. It is simply the right thing to do.”

    The bill was passed by the State House of Representatives on March 1st, by a vote of 82 to 26, and subsequently passed the State Senate on March 5th by a vote of 27 to 12.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 17:15

  • Wake-Up Call
    Wake-Up Call

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    “Those who organized the disaster will take advantage of the inevitable discontent arising from efforts to overcome it, for if there is one thing that they are skilled in, it is demagoguery.”

    – Theodore Dalrymple

    Can you feel it? The tension rising to the red-line? It runs clear through all of Western Civ. We are ruled by governments of fiends. But now, the sun rides higher in the sky. The sap is rising in the northern forests. The earth heaves. The buds swell and blush. Something is in the air. The animals are waking from their long winter sleep. The natives are restless.

    The two traditional political divisions, liberal and conservative died with Covid. Now there are simply the sane versus the insane. The sane have had enough of being pushed around by the insane. The insane don’t register much of what reality tries to tell them. They have a body of insane ideas to comfort and protect them from the reality’s rigors. To call that body of ideas an “ideology” is way too polite.That the insane call themselves “progressive,” is a signature of their insanity.

    Progress toward what better state of things? Toward a supremacy of fiends, sadists, degenerates, and morons seizing riches and power by every dishonest means possible outside the rule of law and common decency? It’s not even suitable to call them “communists.” They lack the necessary idealism for that.

    They don’t expect to put their shoulders to the wheel with their fellow man. They just want to grab your stuff and then kill you so they don’t have to hear any complaints.

    The insane do not believe any of the theoretical bullshit they want to force you to swallow. They don’t care about climate change. It’s just a cudgel they use to beat everyone over the head so they can steal your stuff. They don’t care about “democracy.” It’s just a line of bullshit to cover up their election-stealing. Do you suppose that sane people would keep using electronic vote-tabulating machines that were demonstrably connected to the Internet, and thus hackable, if they cared about election integrity? Of course not. They would arrange p.d.q. to junk them and use paper ballots, and only in person at polling places, with “absentee” exceptions only for people out of the country.

    The insane do not care about public health. Everything that is known about the Covid-19 vaccinations tells you that they are unsafe and don’t prevent infection or transmission of a flu-like illness that might not even be what it was officially labeled as. Our public health officials in the FDA, the CDC, and in other corners of the Department of health and Human Services, lie about everything they’re responsible for. This week, the CDC (under Director Mandy Cohen) released a 148-page study on myocarditis reactions to mRNA shots. Every word on every page of the document was redacted. The CDC printed countless copies of the report with 148 utterly blank pages, and then proffered them to the news media. How is that not insane?

    The insane do not care about the rule of law. The conduct of “Lawfare” is the subversion of the law by dishonest means. It is a species of racketeering. And that is why Lawfare rogues such Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Matthew Graves, and Merrick Garland, should be charged under the federal RICO statutes for conspiring to deprive sane citizens of their rights and property in the many cases related to the 1/6/21 riot at the US Capitol.

    It is, so far, an abiding mystery of contemporary history as to how New York Attorney General Letitia James managed to get away with prosecuting a real estate case against Donald Trump that was no more than victimless business-as-usual between a borrower and his lenders. Ms. James ran for that elected office promising to “get” Mr. Trump on something, anything. That is not how the rule of law works. Under the rule of law, first you determine that there is a crime and then look for who did the crime.

    Letitia James must be insane and/or pretty stupid. The short-term gain of stealing Mr. Trump’s property under a false color-of-law and creating impediments to his election campaign, will, sooner or later, blow back at her as a matter of malicious prosecution and, plausibly, racketeering as well. (With whom did she conspire to bring this case? We shall find out.) She will eventually be disgraced publicly as her teammate Fani Willis has already been disgraced in Fulton County, Georgia. I’ll tell you something that all sane people now know but won’t talk about for fear of being crushed by the levers of Lawfare: this looks like a concerted effort by people-of-color to railroad people of non-color. If you think that is a good thing for race relations in our country, then you are insane.

    Here are a bunch of other things that are insane: Re-litigating the first amendment is insane. It means what it says, and states it plainly. The open border is insane. No credible sovereign polity would allow it. It would be opposed with force, if necessary. Turning children into transsexuals on a wholesale basis is insane, and fiendishly so. Everybody knows that it is not good for the children or for our society as a whole. But fiends got to fiend, and if you try to deprive them of being fiends then you are guilty of “hate.”

    The war in Ukraine is insane. We certainly didn’t ignite it in the service of “democracy.” Our pawn there, Mr. Zelensky, canceled the national elections last year. The war was arguably an effort by our CIA to deprive Russia of its market for natgas in Europe, and thus deprive Russia of a great deal of money, that is, of prosperity. The project failed. Russia overcame NATO’s proxy army and found other markets for its gas. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines only served to impoverish and weaken our NATO allies, who no longer have affordable gas to run their industries. The leaders of those allies were too insane to recognize that the Nord Stream op was an act-of-war against them. They were also busy destroying themselves, like the USA, with open borders. They will end up in a new medievalism, ruled by savages. You’d have to be insane to arrange that for yourself.

    What’s most obviously insane in our country is that the insane party is pretending to nominate the mentally unfit White House place-keeper, “Joe Biden,” for reelection. You would think that if this party wanted to retain power, they would run a candidate who, though insane, was not also visibly senile. But the rank and file of this party are too insane to see that this dodge is not working. They are pretending with all their might that this is okay, that the growing faction of the sane don’t notice.

    Sensing the growing impatience with insanity among the voters, the insane party has reached its point of terminal desperation. What will they try next? Murder? Why not? Nothing else seemed to work. They are too far gone in their insanity to understand that winter is over. We’ve entered the season of rebirth and renewal, starting with a renewed appreciation for being sane and for that indispensable ingredient that makes liberty in a free society possible: good faith. Really, the only question left is: how rough do they intend to play to prevent the return of sanity and good faith?

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 16:25

  • 'Powell Put' Sparks Surge In Stocks, Bonds, & The Dollar; Bullion & Black Gold Flat On Week
    ‘Powell Put’ Sparks Surge In Stocks, Bonds, & The Dollar; Bullion & Black Gold Flat On Week

    Positive macro, central bank love-fest, and AI catalysts… buy all the things…

    US Macro ‘outperformed’ expectations this week amid more pro-cyclical data points…

    Source: Bloomberg

    …which combined with a dovish tilt by Powell (which lifted 20-24 rate-cut expectation)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    …and positive AI catalysts…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Put this all together – rates, growth, and secular momentum –and it is perhaps not surprising that stocks have reached another all-time high in the US.

    Led to a solid week for all the majors with Nasdaq outperforming…

    The S&P 500 trades at a 2025 P/E of 20+.

    So the question may simply be: can the rates/growth/secular innovation dynamic be sustained long enough to allow corporate earnings to grow into the current market’s valuation?

    Shorts were aggressively squeezed Wednesday an Thursday…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Treasury yields ended the week lower, including the long-end (-4bps), but the short-end outperformed (-13bps)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which left the curve (2s30s) stepper on the week….

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar roared back to six week highs this week…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin ETFs saw large net outflows this week…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And that weighed on the underlying with spot bitcoin back at $64,000…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold ended the week around unchanged, despite a hige spike intraweek to a new record high…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Crude prices ended the week unchanged, roundtripping from the early week gains…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And finally, this is not good news for Biden and his biddies…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Pump prices are heading up… and Biden’s approval rating down at the sane tune.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 16:20

  • "We Have Reached A Bottom": Uranium Poised To Jump Again After 3 Month Correction
    “We Have Reached A Bottom”: Uranium Poised To Jump Again After 3 Month Correction

    Uranium prices may have dipped slightly over the last 4 months, but its looking like the new “top” we’ve set over the last year is going to likely act as “support” as we forge forward into what Bloomberg is calling a “nuclear future”. 

    In New York, the price of uranium futures has dipped to $88.50 per pound, a decrease from the peak seen in February, which was a 16-year high, yet remains significantly above the average price of $66.60 recorded last year.

    Jonathan Hinze, president of UxC, a nuclear industry research firm told the news outlet: “We have reached a bottom. The fundamentals are still strong, with increased demand and supply that hasn’t fully responded.”

    According to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Kozak, there’s evidence to suggest that uranium prices have stabilized. Kozak forecasts a resurgence of fundamental buyers in the market, which is expected to propel prices upwards once more, Bloomberg wrote this week. 

    Optimistic investors are focusing on uranium’s future, driven by an increasing supply shortage and higher demand, as nations (finally pull their heads out from their a** and) seek nuclear energy solutions for climate change.

    This interest is highlighted amid supply warnings from Canada’s Cameco and Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom, the leading producers responsible for half of the worldwide uranium supply. Kazatomprom forecasts a significant supply deficit escalating from 21 million pounds in 2030 to 147 million pounds by 2040.

    Geopolitical tensions, including a U.S. proposal to ban Russian uranium imports, which are essential for nuclear power and weapons, add complexity to the supply scenario, the report says. However, the potential resurgence of dormant mining operations due to rising uranium prices poses a risk of dampening the market rally, reminiscent of the recent boom-to-bust cycle in battery metals.

    “We have a number of geopolitical factors that have a really significant influence on buyer behavior, even though fundamentally nothing has changed. Buyers can use the spot to tell them the sentiment of the day, but must look at the long-term market to see that it is marching steadily up, it hasn’t taken a hiccup at all,” concluded Treva Klingbiel, president of uranium price provider TradeTech.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 15:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Today’s News 22nd March 2024

  • "Restricting Freedoms" May Be Necessary To Fight Climate Change: German Ethics Council
    “Restricting Freedoms” May Be Necessary To Fight Climate Change: German Ethics Council

    Via The European Conservative,

    The government may be forced to limit the available choices for citizens in order to battle predicted ‘devastating consequences’ of climate change. That’s the message in an opinion titled “Climate Justice,” published on March 13th by the German Ethics Council.

    In the opinion, the Ethics Council—a board of expert advisors established by German law—recommends actions to be taken by corporations, individuals, and the government to ensure the effects of climate change do not unjustly burden “those who are not so well-off.” 

    Primarily, the Ethics Council says, this should be done on a voluntary basis—through individual ”self-commitment as an expression of one’s individual freedom”—by, for example, “voluntarily abandoning certain vacation, consumption, or mobility practices.”

    However, the Council’s statement continues (emphasis added),

    On grounds of justice, it can be morally required to contribute to measures to tackle climate change. If one’s own exercise of freedom interferes in an unjust manner with the freedom and welfare of others or of future generations, for example through consumption that is harmful to the climate, the authorities may intervene with restrictions of freedom. 

    In other words: If you cannot be shamed into behaving in a way deemed morally correct by the elite, the government may simply have to force you. Flugscham, from the original Swedish flygskam, meaning “flight shame”—guilt about flying experienced by environmentally conscious travelers—is now an established word in the German vocabulary.

    While the opinion states that the Ethics Council is opposed to suspending “democratic freedoms and processes” to reach the desired climate goals, the group says it largely falls to the government to provide the “supportive framework conditions” under which individuals can—as we say to the kids—make good choices. 

    These framework conditions, the opinion says, should among other things include lowered speed limits, increased “electromobility,” and increased CO2 taxes. The Council suggests a personal emissions limit that cannot be exceeded, and even “the ban on particularly climate-damaging products or services”—or, as Apollo News puts it: “a regulation as to who can buy what and to what extent.”

    Defining climate change as a man-made (“due to, among other factors, the combustion of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests and moors since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution”) phenomenon, the organization also says Germany needs to take into account “the long history of colonialism and industrialisation” as well as “ongoing neo-colonial dependencies,” meaning

    a distinction must be made between growth in countries of the global South that are catching up on development, and further growth of consumption and resource use in industrialised countries, and appropriate compensatory payments must be negotiated.

    At a time when the former European industrial powerhouse barely has its nose above water, it’s questionable whether “compensatory payments” to the Global South is on the traffic light coalition’s radar, regardless of Ethics Council recommendations. 

    The Ethics Council is a 26-member independent organization representing diverse “scientific, medical, theological, philosophical, ethical, social, economic and legal concerns” intended to provide guidance for dealing with societal changes, “particularly in the field of life sciences and their application to humans.” Established in German law, the Ethics Council is tasked with, among other things, developing “statements and recommendations for political and legislative action,” and prepares its opinions based on its own decision, “on behalf of the German Bundestag or on behalf of the Federal Government.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/22/2024 – 02:00

  • Terrorist Caught Illegally Crossing Border Says He Was 'Here To Make A Bomb'
    Terrorist Caught Illegally Crossing Border Says He Was ‘Here To Make A Bomb’

    Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A member of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah was caught entering the country illegally at the Texas border, where he told agents he was plotting to make a bomb once settled in the country, according to a March 19 federal court document.

    A group of more than 1,000 illegal immigrants walks toward a U.S. Border Patrol field processing center after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    Basel Bassel Ebbadi, a Lebanese national, told a Texas border agent that he was “here to make a bomb” and that he spent several years training with the Hizballah terrorist group, an alternate name for Hezbollah, and he “was taught to kill people who were not Muslim.”

    The group’s main operations are in Lebanon, Mr. Ebbadi’s native country.

    Mr. Ebbadi, who is listed as being 22 years old, was transferred to the El Paso Sectors Human Intelligence Unit for further questioning, according to the criminal complaint filed by Border Patrol agent Jose L. Benitez-Medina in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

    Mr. Benitez-Medina wrote in his complaint that Mr. Ebbadi entered the United States on March 9 by crossing the Rio Grande in an area of Texas that is not a designated port of entry for migrants.

    Instead, he crossed into the United States about four miles from the Bridge of The Americas Port of Entry in El Paso. According the court document, the border agent indicated that Mr. Ebbadi volunteered his ties to Hezbollah and was initially processed for entry.

    Mr. Ebbadi is currently being held at the El Paso Hardened Facility.

    Past Terror Against US

    As part of his court complaint, the border patrol agent noted that on Oct. 8, 1997, the United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization and that in 2017, officials added “Lebanese Hizballah” as an alias for Hezbollah. He also listed several other aliases for Hezbollah, including Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, Organization of Right Against Wrong, Followers of the Prophet Muhammad, and the Revolutionary Justice Organization.

    The terrorist group has been found responsible for a number of large-scale terrorist attacks against the United States, including the deadly 1983 suicide truck bombings of the American Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. It has also planted bombs on buses and hijacked passenger airplanes around the world.

    In 1994, 85 people were killed when the group detonated bombs at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

    In 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) levied terrorism charges against a Hezbollah member found to be plotting attacks against U.S. embassies.

    In 2004, the national commission appointed to study 9/11 and other terrorist attacks released a 585-page report that concluded that Hezbollah was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The 9/11 Commission also linked the group to Hamas, the radical militia group that carried out the recently grisly attacks on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. Hezbollah leaders praised the attack.

    In 2008, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) started Project Cassandra as a way to stymie Hezbollah drug and weapons trafficking operations and money laundering activity in the United States.

    However, the DEA initiative was ended by President Barack Obama soon after he took office in 2009.

    In 2015, Defense Department financial crimes analyst David Asher, who helped start Project Cassandra, told Politico that the Obama administration expressed concerns the project would lead to alienating Iranian officials.

    “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down,” Mr. Asher said.

    In May 2023, the DOJ seized 13 website domains it said Hezbollah was using to plot future terrorist attacks, including against the United States.

    Today’s web domain seizures deny terrorist organizations and affiliates significant sources of support and make clear we will not allow these groups to use U.S. infrastructure to threaten the American people,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a statement about the Hezbollah domains.

    Suspected Terrorists Living in the US

    Earlier this week, the New York Post reported it had obtained internal documents from the agency showing a Hezbollah member had been nabbed at the border in El Paso.

    ICE’s El Paso Enforcement and Removal Office declined repeated requests by The Epoch Times to confirm Mr. Ebbadi’s detention.

    After several requests made over the course of two days about Mr. Ebbadi, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol finally responded on March 18 with an email indicating only that “the individual referenced is in U.S. custody.”

    Media outlets all over the world, including The Jerusalem Post and Hindustan Times, reported on the news that a Hezbollah terrorist was found to have crossed illegally into the United States.

    Members of other known terrorist organizations have been living illegally in the United States.

    In February, Patrick Lechleitner, President Joe Biden’s acting ICE director, said that in 2023, a Somali terrorist from the Islamic military group al-Shabaab was released into the United States after illegally crossing the U.S. border, The Daily Caller reported. He had been freely roaming until his arrest on Jan. 20 in Minneapolis, according to ICE records.

    Al-Shabaab is known to have ties with the al-Qaeda terrorist group, which was linked to the 9/11 attacks.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 23:40

  • Where People Are (Un)Happiest With Their Lives
    Where People Are (Un)Happiest With Their Lives

    In 2012, the United Nations proclaimed March 20 as the International Day of Happiness or World Happiness Day, which has been held on this date every year since.

    The aim is to promote awareness for a “more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes the happiness and well-being of all people”.

    Although happiness and satisfaction are subjective parameters, Statista’s Anna Fleck notes that the team behind the World Happiness Report has once again produced a country ranking this year that reveals clear differences between Western industrialized nations and countries in Asia and Africa.

    Infographic: Where People Are (Un)Happiest With Their Lives | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In order to map the satisfaction of respondents in the 143 countries surveyed, participants were asked to rate their level of satisfaction with their current life on a ten-point scale. This was used to calculate an average value for the results between 2021 and 2023 for each country. As this chart, based on the report shows, Finland (7.74), Denmark (7.58) and Iceland (7.53) are the countries with the most satisfied residents according to calculations, while the three lowest scores are found among the residents of Lesotho (3.19), Lebanon (2.71) and Afghanistan (1.72). The United States is ranked 23rd out of the 143 countries in this year’s evaluation.

    In addition to the clear differences in the geographical regions, there are also differences in satisfaction in different age groups. Looking at the results for the under-30s, Lithuania, Israel and Serbia take the top three places, while Denmark, Finland and Norway take the top three places for the over-60s.

    It’s important to note here that the ranking of the World Happiness Report is not an objective survey based on key figures such as gross domestic product per capita, life expectancy or the quality of the social system. According to the authors of the report, these are analyzed as “supporting factors” but have no influence on the score.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 23:20

  • Planned Parenthood Faces New Allegations Of Selling Aborted Fetal Tissue To UCSD
    Planned Parenthood Faces New Allegations Of Selling Aborted Fetal Tissue To UCSD

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

    Newly-released documents reveal an alleged alliance between Planned Parenthood and the University of California–San Diego to profit from the “harvesting and sale” of aborted human fetuses for research patents.

    This new evidence shows Planned Parenthood sells late-term aborted baby body parts in violation of federal law, for far more money than has ever been discussed before,” said David Daleiden, founder and president of California-based Center for Medical Progress, which filed the public records request, in a statement earlier this month. “Planned Parenthood’s national headquarters knew about and approved these sales of aborted babies for valuable consideration as part of government-funded research grants.”

    A Planned Parenthood facility in Anaheim, Calif., on September 10, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The documents show Planned Parenthood transferring aborted fetal body parts to the University of California–San Diego (UCSD) explicitly for “valuable consideration” in exchange for ownership of the university’s patents and intellectual property developed experimenting with them.

    Details of the alleged deal are spelled out in a redacted “Biological Materials Transfer Agreement” that grants UCSD “access” to “fetal and placental tissue,” that are the “proprietary materials” of Planned Parenthood San Diego. In return, the deal allows the nonprofit rights to “patents” and “intellectual property” developed through experiments with the “material.”

    The contract, signed in 2009, was updated to reflect the nonprofit’s name change to “Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest” in 2014, with the parties specifying the terms and conditions of the original contract remained in full force and effect.

    File photo of landscaping on the University of California-San Diego Health La Jolla campus. (Courtesy of University of California-San Diego Health)

    UCSD emails from 2017 refer to the contract while updating an additional contract for clinical personnel, and in emails from late 2020, the university seeks to be “especially careful” about “any rights” providers of fetal tissue “retain” in the “material.”

    Despite federal laws prohibiting the exchange of aborted human fetal tissue for “valuable consideration,” the university used the fetal tissue for research leading to patents, according to Mr. Daleiden’s statement.

    The University of California system generated more than $127 million in revenue for all patent inventions during the 2021-22 academic year, Mr. Daleiden claims in his statement.

    Violation of such federal laws are punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $500,000, according to the Center for Medical Progress.

    Email threads between Planned Parenthood and UCSD also reveal plans for collaborative research meetings. In one thread, Planned Parenthood emailed UCSD to set up a quarterly meeting and agrees to discuss “payment” to its abortion training initiatives within the framework of its fetal tissue research partnership.

    UCSD writes that as part of a meeting, “we will have results to share on samples recently collected, and will also likely have more to discuss re: the [REDACTED] fellowship.” Planned Parenthood replies there are “[n]o current issues with the collection program,” but they “have some questions about payment to the residency program.”

    The collaboration involved Planned Parenthood’s training programs at UCSD and other taxpayer-funded universities where they allegedly supply fetal tissues for research purposes.

    Documents also show UC San Diego donated $10,000 to Planned Parenthood’s national research department at a 2021 fundraiser and a registration form for “the fetal body parts harvesting in San Diego,” according to the center.

    In 2015, Mr. Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress released an undercover video series showing Planned Parenthood executives negotiating the costs of fetal tissue from the alleged “harvesting and sale of aborted fetal body parts” and discussing modifications to abortion procedures to secure more intact organs. The videos exposed an aborted baby organ market between abortion clinics and research facilities.

    A woman holds up a sign from the podium of an Orange Unified School District meeting in Orange, Calif., on Aug. 17, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The exposé revealed various for-profit companies sent tech workers into Planned Parenthood abortion clinics to harvest the organs of aborted babies and then package them for resale to research facilities.

    Last year, the center reported on records, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, confirming a federal investigation by the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General of the National Institute of Health’s funded fetal tissue bank at the University of Pittsburgh, which is allegedly supplied by Planned Parenthood abortion doctors, according to Mr. Daleiden’s statement.

    Mr. Daleiden has urged federal investigators to widen the probe to include Planned Parenthood’s activities in San Diego “and every other location where this $1.8 billion abortion business supplies aborted babies for taxpayer-funded experiments,” and accused the organization’s leaders of participating in the “government-sponsored trafficking of late-term aborted babies.”

    The Center for Medical Progress also released a video about its most recent public records findings. Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council, a faith-based advocacy organization that promotes traditional family values, said in a March 18 statement that the agreement between Planned Parenthood and UC San Diego treated “innocent, vulnerable human beings just like animals.”

    “Every human life is sacred from conception, and selling unborn baby parts for research is morally abhorrent,” Mr. Burt said. “This deeply revolting news reaffirms the need to pressure politicians to implement life-affirming policies and demand the laws against these crimes be enforced.”

    Educational institutions and the scientific community “shouldn’t get a pass when they violate human dignity,” he said.

    Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment about the allegations.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 23:00

  • New Gene Therapy To Cost $4.25 Million, The Highest Drug Price In The US
    New Gene Therapy To Cost $4.25 Million, The Highest Drug Price In The US

    The most expensive drug in the U.S. is now Lenmeldy, a $4.25 million gene therapy the FDA approved March 18 for children with a rare genetic disease, Becker Hospital Review reports.

    Metachromatic leukodystrophy manifests into the loss of motor and cognitive function, and early death, according to the FDA. The first and only one-time medicine for patients is Lenmeldy (atidarsagene autotemcel). Its manufacturer, Orchard Therapeutics, said the drug’s wholesale acquisition cost is $4.25 million. 

    In a March 20 news release, Orchard said the price tag “is reflective of the value the therapy may deliver to eligible patients and their families, as well the potential long-term impact [the] treatment may have on overall healthcare utilization, minimization of productivity loss for caregivers and life opportunities for patients.”

    In a trial, 37 children received Lenmeldy and experienced a significant reduction in the risk of severe motor impairment and death compared to untreated children. At 5 years old, 71% of treated children could walk without assistance. All study participants who had pre-symptomatic late infantile MLD were alive at 6 years old, compared to 58% of children in the control group. 

    Before its approval, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review said the drug would be cost effective if priced between $2.3 million and $3.9 million. 

    Other chart-topping medications include Hemgenix, a $3.5 million hemophilia B therapy; Elevidys, a $3.2 million muscular dystrophy drug; and Skysona, a $3 million medicine for adrenoleukodystrophy, according to CNN

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 22:40

  • After 625 Days, The Longest Yield Curve Inversion In History
    After 625 Days, The Longest Yield Curve Inversion In History

    Today is a historic day, as last night – DB’s Jim Reid reminds us – we quietly passed the longest continuous US 2s10s inversion in history. After the 2s10s first inverted at the end of March 2022, it has now been continuously inverted for 625 days since July 5th 2022. That exceeds the 624 day inversion from August 1978, which previously held the record.

    As regular readers are aware, an inverted yield curve has been the best predictor of a US downturn of any variable through history: the yield curve has always inverted before all of the last 10 US recessions, with a lag that is usually 12-18 months, but some cycles – certainly this one – take longer…. much longer.

    In fact, the lack of a recession so far has prompted Red to ask – in his latest Chart of the Day note – if the inverted yield curve recession indicator has failed this cycle?

    “Possibly”, the DB strategist responds, “but in many ways the yield curve has already accurately predicted many of the drivers that would normally lead to a recession. However, these variables haven’t then created recessionary conditions as they normally would have done.” He explains:

    It led, as it always does, the very sharp deterioration in bank lending standards, and led the declines in bank credit and money supply that are almost unique to this cycle. It was also at the heart of why we had some of the largest bank failures on record with SVB, Signature Bank and First Republic collapsing. A significant part of their failure was a big carry trade that went wrong when the curve inverted.

    However, even with the above, a recession – according to the highly political “recession authority” known as the NBER – hasn’t materialised. This is perhaps because of the following.

    • When lending standards were at their tightest, the borrowing needs of the economy were low relative to previous cycles.
    • Excess savings have been unusually high in this cycle (and were revised higher with the GDP revisions last September), so consumers haven’t been as exposed to tight credit as they normally are.
    • The Fed unveiled a huge series of measures to ensure the regional bank crisis didn’t naturally unravel as it would have done in a free market or perhaps in many previous cycles.
    • Whilst the Fed’s tightening has been reducing demand, the supply-side of the economy has bounced back strongly from the pandemic disruption, which has further supported growth and made this cycle unique.

    So far so good, however, an inverted yield curve should ultimately be a significant headwind for an economy, as capitalism works best when there is a positive return for taking more risk with lending and investments further out the curve. As such, Reid notes, “the rational investor should be prepared to keep more of their money at the front end, or not lend long-term when the curve is inverted” as you are not giving up yield for being able to sleep at night.

    So thanks to a historic flood of fiscal stimulus and a daily orgy of new record debt as discussed earlier

    … which means that the US is now running a 6.5% deficit with unemployment near “historical lows”, an unheard of event….

    … the economy has not succumbed to the inverted yield curve to date, but while it remains inverted the Fed is encouraging more defensive behavior at some point if sentiment changes. As such, the DB strategist concludes that “the quicker we get back to a normal sloping yield curve the safer the system is.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 22:20

  • Is Reform Possible?
    Is Reform Possible?

    Authored by Theodore Dalrymple via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    President Javier Milei of Argentina has had a certain degree of success already with his radical economic policies: That is, if certain macroeconomic statistics are a sign of success. Inflation, though still very high, has declined somewhat. The budget has been in surplus for the last two months. The official exchange rate for the peso is beginning to approximate its rate on the open market, something that has not happened for a long time.

    President of Argentina Javier Milei speaks at CPAC at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 24, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    But for how long? It remains to be seen whether these successes can be maintained, for there are problems ahead both economic and political. Argentina has for decades stubbornly pursued such disastrous economic policies that any rectification is now bound to be painful and to result in at least temporary hardship for many. People who are already hard up will not take kindly to sacrifices for the sake of a supposed and still uncertain long-term advantage (no one can eat a balanced budget), and when people are living precariously, they cling to any tiny privileges or subsidies as the shipwrecked cling to whatever floating object they can find, and never mind that the grant of those privileges or subsidies caused the problem in the first place.

    Those who organized the disaster will take advantage of the inevitable discontent arising from efforts to overcome it, for if there is one thing that they are skilled in, it is demagoguery. Everything about them is demagogic, from their reading of history to their opposition to any kind of real change. Their aim is the preservation of their power and their hold over the people at all costs; Mr. Milei is a real threat to them and they are not going to surrender easily. Moreover, it is likely that Mr. Milei will himself make terrible mistakes, because all powerful people do so before long. His decision, albeit quickly reversed, to accept a huge augmentation in his pay while so many Argentinians are growing poorer was a very foolish error.

    But Argentina is far from the only country in dire straits. The problems both of Britain and France strongly resemble those of Argentina, though perhaps they are not (yet) so dramatic. But they too find themselves in a situation in which reform is desperately needed. Indeed, they are in Argentina’s bind: Reform is imperative; reform is impossible.

    Reform is imperative for economic reasons. The governments of both countries have undertaken obligations that they cannot meet out of their own resources and increasingly must resort to borrowing to meet some other way. In a recent article in the newspaper Le Figaro, the former candidate for the French presidency, Eric Zemmour, pointed out that the French budget for the police, armed forces, and administration of justice combined now constitutes between them only a very small proportion of the whole state budget, as if the maintenance of the country’s peace, internal and external, were but some kind of minor task for the state, an afterthought, something that it can afford to attend to only once the demand for children’s creches or free abortions has been met. And unfortunately, servicing the debt that has been contracted in the meantime largely to pay for all the creches, abortions, etcetera, is likely to become the single largest call on government expenditure.

    The situation in Britain is even worse, because of the greater incompetence and corruption of its public service than that of France, combined latterly with increasing costs and inefficiencies imposed by obedience to politically correct goals.

    But reform is impossible because so many people have now become dependent on the state, either directly because the state pays them to do nothing, or because they are employed by the state, or because the enterprise or business for which they work is employed by the state, such that the difference between the public and the private sector is increasingly blurred. When I look around me, for example, I see a neighbor, the owner of a prosperous private consultancy whose business is helping people to obtain subsidies from various levels of government. I came across another consultancy whose business was to assist local government in reducing their payment of taxes that the central government imposes on their suppliers.

    It follows that attempts to reduce government expenditure, imperatively necessary for financial reasons, would, if carried out, cause genuine hardship or discomfort to many. And if there is one thing that a modern democracy promises its members, it is increasing comfort, or at the very least the avoidance of discomfort. It would not be very difficult to trigger social discontent and violence on a large scale.

    There is a kind of dialectic at work here: First, the government makes people dependent on it; then the government becomes dependent on the people whom it has made dependent on it. From this infernal cycle, it is not easy to escape. The former head of the European Commission, Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker, once said, of European politicians, “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”

    Mr. Milei came to power with a clear majority because the situation in Argentina was so bad that it was obvious to a large proportion of the population that something in the country had to change, and change drastically. But if 55 percent of Argentinians voted for him, 45 percent did not; and while psephologists might consider this a very large difference, I do not think it would take very much for it to melt away and reverse. After all, euphoria has more in common with despair and anger than with good sense. Most of us live in the short term and are reluctant enough to make sacrifices for our own good, let alone for the good of others.

    People in Britain and France should pay close attention to what is happening in Argentina, for it is a laboratory for their own future. There are differences of course; the French economy, for example, has already in effect been dollarized by its adherence to a currency that it does not control, the euro.

    Incidentally, I saw an unintentionally funny line in an article about Argentina’s proposed dollarization. It would, it said, halt Argentina’s addiction to the money printing machine. Ha! Try telling that to an American monetarist!

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 22:00

  • Victims Will "Never" Be Whole Thanks To SBF's "Dumpster Fire" – FTX Caretaker CEO Rages
    Victims Will “Never” Be Whole Thanks To SBF’s “Dumpster Fire” – FTX Caretaker CEO Rages

    Authored by Martin Young via CoinTelegraph.com,

    FTX restructuring officer and CEO John Ray III has slammed an attempt from Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers to reduce his sentence, arguing victims “have suffered and continue to suffer.” 

    Ray wrote to Judge Lewis Kaplan on March 20 in a victim impact statement on behalf of FTX and its “millions of creditor victims” to “correct material misstatements and omissions in the sentencing submission” from Bankman-Fried.

    The letter comes after Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued on March 19 that the 40-to-50-year sentencing guide from United States government prosecutors was too harsh.

    Ray argued that Bankman-Fried’s claims that FTX was solvent at bankruptcy and that no money was lost were “categorically, callously, and demonstrably false.”

    “Customers still will never be in the same position they would have been had they not crossed paths with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his so-called brand of ‘altruism.’”

    Ray stated he has led an extensive team that has spent over a year “stewarding the estate from a metaphorical dumpster fire” to a company approaching a plan “that will return substantial value to creditors.”

    “Mr. Bankman-Fried’s victims will never be returned to the same economic position they would have been in today absent his colossal fraud,” he added in another part of the letter.

    Screenshot of letter from John Ray III to Judge Kaplan. Source: Courtlistener

    Ray took over the embattled exchange in November 2022 and detailed the extensive work done by an army of lawyers to recover assets, cooperate with investigations, and position the firm, which now plans to return all value to creditors.

    This recovery doesn’t erase the immense harm caused by Bankman-Fried’s crimes, however, Ray said.

    He stated when he took over as CEO that there were only 105 Bitcoin left on FTX, against customer entitlements of nearly 100,000 BTC.

    “Why were the Bitcoins missing?” he questioned before stating that a jury has “concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Bankman-Fried stole them and converted them into other things.”

    Ray claimed that Bankman-Fried considered conflicting public relations strategies after bankruptcy, including blaming the restructuring team while also claiming to want to work with them to repay creditors.

    Ray said that it was only because of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case that the firm had assets that could rebound in value, referring to the recent crypto market rally.

    “Make no mistake; customers, non-governmental creditors, governmental creditors, and non-insider stockholders have suffered and continue to suffer,” he concluded.

    Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued that a 40-to-50-year sentencing proposal for a “non-violent offense” was “medieval” while requesting that it be reduced to around five to six and a half years.

    Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven charges relating to various fraud and money laundering brought against him by the United States government, almost a year after the collapse of the crypto exchange.

    He’s set to be sentenced on March 28.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 21:40

  • Chuck Schumer's Tired Vanity Act Needs A Rest
    Chuck Schumer’s Tired Vanity Act Needs A Rest

    Authored by Richard Benedetto via RealClear Wire,

    The time has come for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pack his bags and shuffle back home to Brooklyn.

    The New York Democrat has been around politics way too long. Aside from being a politician, he’s never held a real job since graduating from Harvard Law School nearly a half-century ago. And as they say about washed-up pitchers in baseball: He seems to have lost his fastball.

    But like many a career politician, Schumer, 73, is the last to realize it. He clearly showed last week that he is losing his stuff when he recklessly overstepped his bounds and publicly called on duly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, embroiled in a war with Hamas, to step down and hold new elections.

    “At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel at a time when so many Israelis have lost confidence on the vision and direction of their government,” said Schumer, who is Jewish.

    That’s like a leader in the Knesset, Israel’s top legislative body, calling on President Biden to quit. Such a bold order would be greeted here in the U.S. with laughter and scorn. Israelis, who view America as its moral and stalwart protector from those intent on destroying the Jewish state, were disconcerted – and appalled at the implications of Schumer’s implied threats. An obviously miffed Netanyahu called the Senate leader’s remarks “wholly inappropriate.”

    “We’re not a banana republic,” the Israeli prime minister said. “The people of Israel will choose when they’ll have elections, who they will elect and it’s not something that will be forced upon us.” 

    However, such brash and intrusive declarations by Schumer came as no surprise to many veteran political reporters and analysts in Washington. Schumer has been loudly and aggressively throwing his political weight around for nearly half a century – basking in the media spotlight that went along with it, and clearly loving it. An old joke among news reporters covering Congress is that the most dangerous place to stand on Capitol Hill is between Chuck Schumer and a television camera.

    Aside from politics, Schumer has never held a real job as an adult. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1974, his biography is basically a political rap sheet.

    While still in law school, he ran for a seat in the New York State Assembly and represented a heavily Democratic district in Brooklyn from 1974 to 1980. When one of Brookyn’s seats in Congress opened, Schumer quickly jumped into the fray. He won election in that heavily Democratic district and served in the House until 1999.

    After 18 years in the House, Schumer, by now a career politician, decided to climb even higher on the legislative ladder. In 1998, he challenged three-term incumbent New York Republican Sen. Al D’Amato and won in a bitterly contested statewide race. Schumer has been in the Senate ever since – nearly 25 years – winning reelection four more times.

    Way back in 1975, when Schumer was a rookie in the New York State Assembly, he quickly won a reputation among Albany reporters as a guy who never shuts up. He would leap to his feet and express his views on the most mundane of bills, causing news reporters in the chamber to audibly groan, “Oh no, Schumer again!”

    Nearly a half-century later, little has changed. It’s time to give that tired act a rest.

    Richard Benedetto is a retired USA Today White House correspondent and columnist. He covered New York State government and politics in Albany for Gannett News Service, 1976-82. He has taught political science and journalism at American University and in The Fund For American Studies programs at Georgetown and George Mason Universities for the past 17 years.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 21:20

  • Man Inside Capitol On Jan. 6 For 3 Minutes Convicted By Jury
    Man Inside Capitol On Jan. 6 For 3 Minutes Convicted By Jury

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

    A Virginia man who went inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, for several minutes was convicted on March 20 on four counts and faces jail time.

    Raymond Chambers entered the Capitol at 3:01 p.m., according to the government, which offered surveillance footage. Once inside, Mr. Chambers walked to the Rotunda and took some photographs. He “immediately exited the building” through the Rotunda doors at 3:04 p.m., prosecutors said.

    Mr. Chambers was not accused of carrying out any violence, but authorities said he violated federal law, including a law that bars engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building that disrupts government business.

    Mr. Chambers was charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building or grounds, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. He pleaded not guilty.

    A jury this week convicted Mr. Chambers on all counts, following a trial.

    Mr. Chambers now faces up to three years in prison as well as fines.

    An attorney representing Mr. Chambers declined to comment ahead of sentencing, which is scheduled for June 24. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, appointed under President Donald Trump, will sentence Mr. Chambers.

    Mr. Chambers did not return an inquiry.

    Three Others Convicted

    Three other men were convicted in a stipulated bench trial.

    U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, appointed under President Barack Obama, found Patrick Montgomery of Colorado and Brady Knowlton of Utah guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding. That count carries up to 20 years in prison but may end up being struck by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    The judge also convicted Mr. Montgomery of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and Mr. Knowlton of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds.

    Gary Wilson, also of Utah, was convicted of theft of government property.

    Judge Moss is slated to sentence the trio on July 2.

    We are obviously disappointed in the outcome. This was an unusual case because Mr. Knowlton used no force or violence against anyone including any police officers. He entered the Capitol through a door held open for him and others by Capitol Police officers and peacefully left after being inside for only 18 minutes,” Brent Mayr, a lawyer representing Mr. Knowlton, told The Epoch Times via email. “While the Judge said this was a ‘close case,’ we shouldn’t convict any citizen in close cases. Fortunately, the Supreme Court is reviewing this ambiguous law that he was convicted of and we’re hopeful the court is going to find this law to either not apply here or be invalid on its face.”

    According to stipulated facts entered in the case, the three men on Jan. 6, 2021, went to the Capitol after the “stop the steal” rally. While there, Mr. Montgomery tried taking a baton from a law enforcement officer, at one point kicking the officer in the chest. The men then entered the Capitol at 2:35 p.m. and made their way to the Rotunda.

    The men later went to a hallway outside the Senate floor, where Mr. Wilson took a black bag, and all three confronted a U.S. Capitol Police Officer. Mr. Montgomery was quoted as saying: “You gotta stop doing your job sometime and start being American. You gotta quit doing your job and be an American!” Mr. Wilson was quoted as saying, “We came all the way from our job to do your job, and the freaking Senators’ job!”

    The men left the Capitol at 2:53 p.m.

    “Mr. Montgomery and his codefendants had many viable defenses which might have resulted in acquittal in any other jurisdiction. But the D.C. jury pool is so extremely pro-government that no January 6 defendant has an opportunity for a fair jury trial. It really is a national disgrace that so many January 6 defendants are having their lives destroyed in D.C. courts. Mr. Montgomery and codefendants opted for a stipulated bench trial because the jury pool in D.C. is so fundamentally hostile to January 6ers. These cases would all end in acquittals elsewhere,” Roger Roots, a lawyer representing Mr. Montgomery, told The Epoch Times in an email.

    Update on Numbers

    Despite years elapsing since the Capitol breach, new arrests are still being made.

    Some 93 people were arrested and charged in early 2024, after a months-long pause in 2023. More than 1,358 individuals have been charged as of March 6, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

    According to one estimate, 445 new cases could hit the docket in 2024—more than in 2022 and 2023.

    One of the latest arrests was of a California woman who worked for Congress following the breach. Isabella DeLuca was arrested on several charges, including theft of government property.

    Court documents say Ms. DeLuca helped pass furniture, including a table, from inside the Capitol to outside the building. She faces up to four years in prison if convicted.

    “I am facing the unwarranted targeting and persecution by the DOJ and FBI at the direction of the Biden Administration, like most J6ers,” Ms. DeLuca wrote on X, formerly Twitter. She added later, “Whatever comes my way, though it may be difficult, I am prepared to face it.”

    Approximately 769 defendants have pleaded guilty. In addition to more than 150 being found guilty at trials, several dozen have been convicted after the parties agreed upon a set of facts.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 21:00

  • Ben Shapiro And DeSantis Former Finance Chairs To Fundraise For Trump
    Ben Shapiro And DeSantis Former Finance Chairs To Fundraise For Trump

    Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

    Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro announced last week to the more than 15 million monthly listeners of his eponymous podcast that he wouldn’t just vote for Donald Trump, he would also co-host a fundraiser for the former president.

    Because the choices for president are identical to 2020, Shapiro said he would “walk over broken glass” to support Trump. Almost immediately, he had an opportunity. Trump said Monday that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” comments that the White House quickly condemned as “vile and unhinged antisemitic rhetoric.”

    Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew and outspoken ally of Israel, provided a quick defense. Far from antisemitic, he said Trump was “making a point which I have made myself, which is that Jews who are voting Democrat do not understand the Democratic Party at this point.” The left in Congress, he continued, was “split at best between moderates on Israel and radicals who hate Israel.”

    For Trump, the rebuttal was welcome, especially given that it came from a pundit once described as the voice of the conservative millennial movement. The endorsement itself, however, was not surprising. Shapiro publicly backed Trump four years ago. The significance is instead the pundit’s willingness to help bind the wounds opened by the Republican primary.

    According to an invite obtained by RealClearPolitics, Shapiro will co-host the fundraiser along with Tina Vidal-Duart, Carlos Duart, and Rick Green, each of whom previously sat on the national finance committee of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ doomed presidential campaign.

    The Trump campaign will host the fundraiser at the Trump National Doral Miami Golf Club. Tickets cost $23,200 per person. A luncheon and “photo opportunity with President Donald J. Trump” will follow per the invite.

    Beset by a myriad of legal trouble, including a $464 million bond in a civil fraud case, Trump needs the money. He also needs to achieve something approaching his boast that the GOP has never been “so unified as it is right now.”

    Enter Shapiro who provides an avatar for DeSantis supporters coming to peace with Trump.

    He has been critical of Trump’s personal vices, occasionally splitting with the former president on policy and notably calling Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election “deeply irresponsible.” During the primary, Shapiro frequently boosted DeSantis, criticizing Trump’s decision to run “ever to the left” rather than debate the governor on more conservative grounds.

    But that fight is now long over, Shapiro said as he explained his rationale.

    “As you know, I didn’t support Trump in the primaries because I don’t endorse candidates in Republican primaries. But I do tell you who I would have voted for. And I told you I would have voted for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida if given the choice,” he said on his show last Friday.

    “But Ron DeSantis isn’t the nominee. Donald Trump is the nominee. And he’s facing Joe Biden, who is the worst president of my lifetime,” he continued.

    “My calculus is simple,” Shapiro concluded. “America was better off under Donald Trump than it is under Joe Biden.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 20:40

  • Another Bite At The Fani: Judge Grants Trump's Request to Appeal DA Disqualification Decision
    Another Bite At The Fani: Judge Grants Trump’s Request to Appeal DA Disqualification Decision

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

    Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has granted former President Donald Trump’s request for a certificate of immediate review, allowing the former president and seven co-defendants to appeal the judge’s order denying the disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

    The certificate of immediate review, filed on March 20 at the Superior Court of Fulton County in Georgia, allows President Trump and seven co-defendants to seek an appeal from the Georgia Court of Appeals, which has the discretion to accept or decline to hear the case.

    Judge McAfee has issued a certificate of immediate review allowing us to take our motion to disqualify Fani Willis directly to the Georgia Court of Appeals,” David Shafer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and one of the seven co-defendants, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, commenting on the judge’s decision.

    Besides Mr. Shafer, the co-defendants who can appeal the judge’s disqualification ruling are Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Robert Cheeley, Michael Roman, Harrison Floyd, and Cathleen Latham.

    All of them had joined the initial motion to disqualify Ms. Willis and later joined the motion for a certificate of immediate review.

    The request for immediate review, filed on March 18 by Steve Sadow, attorney to President Trump, stems from Judge McAfee’s decision to allow Ms. Willis to remain on the high-profile case, in which the former president is accused of election interference.

    President Trump has denied wrongdoing and has called the case a politically motivated “witch hunt” meant to undermine his 2024 comeback bid for the White House.

    Ms. Willis was accused of engaging in an “improper” romantic relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade and benefitting from it financially. The two acknowledged the relationship but denied any financial benefit or conflict of interest.

    Judge McAfee said in a March 15 order that there was an appearance of impropriety but that no conflict of interest had been proven.

    He found that disqualifying Ms. Willis wouldn’t be the appropriate remedy to the appearance of impropriety and instead ordered Mr. Wade off the case.

    Mr. Wade resigned hours after the morning order was issued.

    More Details

    In earlier testimony, Mr. Wade had acknowledged a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis but testified that it had ended before the election case indictment was handed up.

    Judge McAfee noted that Mr. Wade’s inconsistent answers under oath in his recent divorce case showed a willingness to “conceal” his relationship with Ms. Willis, and he opined that an “odor of mendacity” lingered on the prosecution team with Ms. Willis’s and Mr. Wade’s testimonies in his court.

    Given the seriousness of the appearance issue as described by the judge, the defendants argued that the removal of Mr. Wade wasn’t sufficient.

    Judge McAfee had a 10-day window to decide whether he would allow a review of his disqualification decision.

    Allowing review could technically halt pretrial proceedings for up to 45 days while an appeals court decides whether to take the case.

    However, in his March 20 certificate of immediate review, Judge McAfee said that the court intends “to continue addressing the many other unrelated pending pretrial motions, regardless of whether the petition is granted within 45 days of filing, and even if any subsequent appeal is expedited by the appellate court.”

    The case still has 15 defendants (four have accepted plea bargains) and is expected to run for about six months.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 20:20

  • Watch: Biden Judicial Nominee Who Wanted To Ban 'Assault Weapons' Can’t Define What They Are
    Watch: Biden Judicial Nominee Who Wanted To Ban ‘Assault Weapons’ Can’t Define What They Are

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

    A Biden-nominated candidate for a judicial seat couldn’t define the term “assault weapon” during a confirmation hearing on March 20, even though she once signed a brief defending a ban on “assault weapons.”

    Semi-automatic rifles hang on the wall for sale at Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly, Virginia, on October 6, 2017. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

    Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked U.S. District Judge Nancy Maldonado of the Northern District of Illinois to define “assault weapons” during Wednesday’s nomination hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

    In posing the question, Mr. Kennedy cited a legal brief that Judge Maldonado signed years ago.

    “You said, ‘assault weapons may be banned because they’re extraordinarily dangerous and are not appropriate for legitimate self-defense purposes,’” Mr. Kennedy said. “Tell me what you meant by assault weapons.”

    Judge Maldonado, who has been nominated by President Joe Biden for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, struggled to reply to the question.

    “I did not write the brief,” she said, prompting the Republican senator to point out that she signed the brief and asked her whether in so doing she was “testifying to the court that everything in it is true.”

    “Yes,” she replied.

    So they’re your words in terms of the court, right?” he asked.

    You’re correct, Senator Kennedy,” prompting him to ask again what she meant by “assault weapons.”

    I am not a gun expert,” Judge Maldonado then said, with Mr. Kennedy pressing the issue, asking her to “just tell me what you wanted to ban.”

    “I don’t remember the exact definition of ‘assault weapons’ in the ordinance that was at issue,” she said, before adding that she signed off on the brief but “was not responsible for researching the content.”

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

    ‘Assault Weapons’ In Focus

    In the exchange with Mr. Kennedy, Judge Maldonado acknowledged that she was “responsible” for the brief but insisted that she doesn’t remember its specific “characteristics” as they related to the ordinance on “assault weapons.”

    Asked pointedly whether she thinks deserves to be promoted to the appeals court seat, she said, “Senator, I stand by my record.”

    The label “assault weapons,” which has been variously defined in legislation, is a fuzzy term commonly used by gun control advocates to refer to many types of popular semi-automatic sporting rifles, in particular AR-15-style rifles.

    Gun rights advocates have argued that the term “assault weapons” is ill-defined and of limited practical use in legislation, but is a dangerous-sounding term used to instill fear to build public support for gun restrictions on many modern sporting rifles (MSR).

    The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) estimated in 2022 that there were over 24 million MSRs in circulation in the United States, which include AR-15 and AK-style rifles.

    The popularity of MSRs has been attributed to factors like accuracy, reliability, and recoil control.

    “The firearm industry responds to market demand and this shows that during the elevated period of firearm sales that began in 2020, this particular style of rifle is the top choice for law-abiding citizens for hunting, recreational shooting and self-defense,” NSSF president and CEO Joe Bartozzi said in a statement at the time.

    President Joe Biden has repeatedly used the term “assault weapon” in pushing gun curbs.

    “I’m still committed to banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” he told a group of mayors at the White House in January.

    “When we passed the Second Amendment, guess what: You weren’t allowed to have a cannon,” the president told the mayors, while urging them to get onboard his gun control proposals.

    “You’ve heard ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’? Guess what, man. I didn’t see a whole lot of patriots out there walking around making sure that we have these weapons,“ he continued.

    “If you really want to worry about the government, you need an F-16,” President Biden said. “You don’t need an AR-15.”

    A Rand Corp. study completed in 2020 and updated in 2023 found limited evidence that “high capacity magazine” bans reduced mass shootings and inconclusive evidence on the effect of banning “assault weapons” on the incidents of mass shootings.

    Judicial Nominations

    Meanwhile, Judge Maldonado was on Wednesday grilled by Senate Republicans on issues other than “assault weapons,” including on how she amassed one of the largest case backlogs of any federal trial court judge nationally.

    She replied by saying that when she joined the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in August 2022, she was immediately assigned around 300 cases with pending motions. Then, after three judges retired, her caseload swelled to 360, she said.

    Judge Maldonado said she worked hard to get the caseload number down but the speed of clearing the backlog was constrained by what she said was her desire to make sure the decisions were “well-reasoned.”

    Before joining the district court, Judge Maldonado was a partner at the law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where she focused on employment litigation.

    The other judges nominated by President Biden—who has said his nominees would ensure U.S. courts reflect “diversity”—that were also part of Wednesday’s hearing were: Georgia N. Alexakis, Krissa Lanham, Angela Martinez, and Sparkle Sooknanan.

    Michael Clements contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 20:00

  • Give Me An Engaged Electorate
    Give Me An Engaged Electorate

    Authored by John A. Ragosta via RealClear Wire,

    On March 23rd in 1775, Patrick Henry rose at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, to urge his countrymen to arm themselves for the Revolutionary War. Four weeks before the battle of Lexington and Concord, Henry saw the future: “The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!” 

    Most Americans remember the stirring ending of Henry’s speech: “give me liberty, or give me death!” But in this election year, it is useful to be reminded of the beginning of that speech. 

    When Henry rose to speak, he knew he would be called a warmonger and disloyal to the still well-loved King George. He knew that even many patriots would oppose arming as premature and provocative. 

    But facing such a momentous decision, he decided he must speak, whatever the risk. “Should he keep back his opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, he should consider himself guilty of treason toward his country.” The question that the Virginia Convention faced could lead to war. At such a critical juncture, it was “no time for ceremony” but time for a lively debate in which everyone openly voiced their concerns. 

    He reminded the gathered delegates that “we have done everything that could be done” to seek a peaceful solution with Britain. “We have petitioned – we have remonstrated – we have supplicated – we have prostrated ourselves before the throne” of King George. But now, with no other options for redress, the delegates elected by their neighbors needed to decide if they should take a drastic course of action. 

    This is a critical point. When Henry announced his commitment to “liberty … or death” he was not attacking all government regulation or control, demanding personal liberty regardless of society’s interests or needs. He was not some mad libertarian chafing at the decisions of his elected representatives.  

    The problem the colonists faced was that they had no vote in Parliament. In more familiar terms, the problem was not simply taxation – but taxation without representation

    Now the people’s representatives must decide for themselves and their constituents what to do.

    We know the rest of the story. As Henry’s speech rose to a crescendo, he asked in an almost accusatory tone, “Is life so dear; or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains, and slavery?” His final remark would reverberate across America as the king’s former subjects rose to demand the rights of citizens: “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” 

    Today, we enjoy the liberty for which Henry and his colleagues fought. But Henry did not see it as liberty to do whatever one wants, but liberty to join with other citizens to make laws and ensure freedom for the whole community. 

    This was never more clear than in Henry’s final political campaign in 1799. He had been a leading Antifederalist who had warned that the new Constitution would create a government too powerful and distant from the people. But he came out of retirement at George Washington’s behest to defend the Constitution against the radical idea of state nullification of federal laws.  

    Henry insisted that since “We the People” had adopted the Constitution, opponents of federal policies must act “in a constitutional way.” Go to the ballot box, he told his supporters. The alternative was “civil commotions and intestine wars” ending in “monarchy.” 

    Today, our nation faces enormous challenges. I think Henry would repeat his admonition from 1775 and urge us to speak up, to join the debate. I am confident, too, that he would repeat his warning from 1799 that we must act with other citizens to seek reform “in a constitutional way;” the alternative is “monarchy,” which he had come to dread. 

    When Henry died a few months after that final speech, a piece of paper was found with a message to the citizens of the United States. He reminded Americans of his Stamp Act speech that, according to Thomas Jefferson, gave “the first impulse to the ball of the revolution.” But Henry understood that it would take work to keep the nation afloat. A monarchy was, after all, easy: You just do what the king says. But as Benjamin Franklin reportedly said after the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, the United States has “a republic – if [we] can keep it.”

    John Ragosta is a historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, a fellow with the Jack Miller Center, and author of “For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry’s Last Political Battle” (2023). 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 19:40

  • Republicans Call For Raising Retirement Age As Social Security Nears Insolvency
    Republicans Call For Raising Retirement Age As Social Security Nears Insolvency

    While at this point pretending that one can somehow stop or deflect the civilization-ending meteor that is the US debt load, rising by $30 billion every day on its way to a terminal reserve currency crisis, is at best rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic, Wednesday the largest caucus of House Republicans called for an increase in the Social Security retirement age up a clash with President Joe Biden over spending on popular entitlement programs.

    According to Bloomberg, the Republican Study Committee, which comprises about 80% of House Republicans, called for the Social Security eligibility age to be tied to life expectancy in its fiscal 2025 budget proposal. As a reminder, the social security pension system was created in 1935 when the average life expectancy was 61 for white males and 65 for white females, about 20 years below where it is today. The proposal also suggests reducing benefits for top earners who aren’t near retirement, including a phase-out of auxiliary benefits for the highest earners.

    The proposal sets the stage for an election-year fight with Biden, who accused Republicans of going after popular socialist entitlement programs during his State of the Union address.

    “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security, Medicare, or raise the retirement age, I will stop you,” Biden said in his March 7 address to Congress. Spoiler alert: he won’t.

    Amusingly, the Republican document notes that Biden previously supported increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67 after bipartisan negotiations in 1983.

    Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the caucus’s chairman, said the president’s opposition to Social Security policy changes would lead to automatic benefit cuts when the program’s trust fund is set for insolvency in 2033. A phased-in retirement age change was a standard feature of past negotiations, he said.

    “Anytime there’s been any reforms in history – President Clinton, President Reagan – had a slow migration of age changes for people that are 18, 19 years old,” Hern told reporters Wednesday.

    The caucus’s budget proposal is more aggressive than the recent proposal by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who advanced a budget resolution earlier this month that called for a bipartisan commission to negotiate Social Security and Medicare solvency but didn’t make specific policy recommendations. The Republican Study Committee, meanwhile, called for policy changes that would reduce spending on Social Security by $1.5 trillion and Medicare by $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

    Republicans have said their proposals aren’t truly cuts and wouldn’t affect those at or near retirement. But Biden and congressional Democrats such as Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the Budget Committee, have said they won’t support an increase in the age of eligibility, which currently sits at 67 (and can start as early as 62 with penalties).

    The caucus’s proposal leaves some details out. It calls “modest changes to the primary insurance amount” for those who aren’t near retirement and “earn more than the wealthiest” benefit level. It also proposes “modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy.” And it would “limit and phase out auxiliary benefits for high income earners.”

    The proposal projects to balance the federal budget by 2031, outlining $16.6 trillion in spending cuts over a decade, hardly the stuff a society addicted to fringe welfare benefits will be delighted to hear.

    The proposal calls for Medicare spending reductions by implementing a “premium support model” in which private Medicare Advantage plans would compete with the federal Medicare plan. It proposes moving graduate medical education payments, which go to teaching hospitals for their residency programs, into a trust fund separate from Medicare.

    As reported previously, Biden’s fiscal 2025 budget proposal, released March 11, called for an increase in the tax rate to support Medicare on those earning more than $400,000 a year, from 3.8% to 5%. It also broadly called for top earners to pay more to support Social Security, but didn’t make specific proposals. White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young told reporters the Biden administration doesn’t like the current structure of the payroll tax — which only applies to the first $168,600 of an individual’s income.

    One of the trust funds that supports Social Security is projected for insolvency in 2033, the program’s board of trustees said their most recent estimate in March 2023.

    CBO projects that Social Security will run chronic deficits over both the short- and long-term. It will run a cash flow deficit of $154 billion in 2023, which is 1.6 percent of taxable payroll or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Over the subsequent decade, Social Security will run $3.5 trillion (2.9 percent of taxable payroll or 1.0 percent of GDP) of cumulative cash flow deficits.

    Over the long term, CBO projects Social Security’s cash shortfall will grow to 3.9% of taxable payroll (1.4% of GDP) by 2033, to 5.1 percent of payroll (1.7 percent of GDP) by 2050, to 6.8 percent of payroll (2.3 percent of GDP) by 2075, and to 7.4 percent of payroll (2.4 percent of GDP) by 2097.

    CBO projects earlier insolvency dates and a larger 75-year actuarial shortfall than the Social Security Trustees estimated in their 2023 report. While CBO projects OASI insolvency in 2032 and SSDI depletion in 2052, the Trustees expect the OASI trust fund to run out by 2033 and the SSDI trust fund to remain solvent over the next 75 years. And while CBO expects the theoretically combined trust funds to deplete their reserves by 2033, the Trustees expect them to run out a year later, in 2034.

    The CBO warns that “as Social Security’s trust funds rapidly approach insolvency, the necessary adjustments to restore solvency will become harder and the burden on beneficiaries more pronounced the longer policymakers wait to act. Enacting trust fund solutions sooner rather than later would help prevent abrupt, across-the-board benefit cuts, allow for targeted adjustments to those who can most afford them, spread the burden of tax and benefit changes across generations, and give today’s workers more time to plan for retirement.”

    Unfortunately, raising the retirement age is only the easiest and most palatable of all adjustments. It also delays insolvency by a few years at most. What comes next is far more painful.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 19:20

  • Voter Apathy And Four Key Takeaways From Illinois' 2024 Primary Elections
    Voter Apathy And Four Key Takeaways From Illinois’ 2024 Primary Elections

    By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints

    Don’t get too excited about the results of Tuesday’s primary elections, particularly in Chicago. The results don’t represent either a mandate for, or a categorical rejection of, anyone or anything. They can’t when just 20.2% of Chicago voters cast a ballot on Tuesday, a likely new low according to the Chicago Board of Elections. 

    What the results do represent is a growing voter apathy. On both sides.

    This election should have been a dominating one for the Chicago Teachers Union and its defacto leader, Mayor Brandon Johnson.  Union members could have helped produce a new $100 million tax to benefit their allies and themselves. They could have put in power an establishment state’s attorney picked to perpetuate the criminal and social justice agenda led by current office holder Kim Foxx. Instead, the union vote didn’t materialize. For CTU’s leadership, this election should be considered a disaster.

    On the other side of the voting ledger, crime has dominated the news, and so has the illegal immigration crisis. Few in Chicago are happy with the progressive leadership under Mayor Johnson. Protest votes should have been out in full force. The numbers should have been big. Instead, most people stayed at home.

    Yes, the opposition, if you can call it that, may squeak out wins in opposing a real estate tax hike and the next “anointed” state’s attorney – assuming results hold over the next few days – but be careful what you make of it, regardless of how it all finally shakes out. The main message may be that the unions weren’t motivated to come out and organize the votes. There probably wasn’t enough money at stake for them. What’s a $100 million? And they simply couldn’t tell the difference between the two Cook County State’s Attorney candidates in the primary race. So they stayed away from the polls.

    Elsewhere in the state, voter apathy was also in full display. Many outlets reported “shockingly” low voter turnout, from Decatur to Mattoon to Rockford (just 12%!)Regardless, the few people who did vote decided several important races.

    Here are four takeaways we observed:

    1. Mayor Johnson loses big either way

    The real estate transfer tax hike, an initiative spearheaded by Mayor Johnson, likely failed to pass with nearly 54% of voting Chicagoans voting no. (There is still a significant number of mail-in votes to count, but expectations are that the referendum will fail. Nevertheless, it’s hasn’t been called yet.)

    The referendum’s failure will be a blow to Johnson whether the referendum wins or loses. He wasn’t able to motivate Chicagoans to come out. Sure there was fanfare, with the CTU marching CPS students to the polls. Johnson even structured the tax to provide small relief to the overwhelming majority of Chicagoans – only hitting the city’s wealthiest homeowners and businesses. It was the perfect soak-the-rich campaign that should have won easily. 

    Pass or fail, Johnson lost.

    2. Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle is another big loser.

    As of this writing, the race between Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III for the Democratic candidacy for Cook County State’s Attorney is too close to call, but Burke has a slim lead. 

    Whoever wins won’t make much difference to Chicagoans, as neither is likely to dramatically change direction from Kim Foxx’s tenure. 

    The results are bad news for Toni Preckwinkle, as she backed Harris. Even if he somehow ekes out a win over Burke, the fact that the race was so close – and so few people voted – shows Preckwinkle’s influence over Cook County isn’t as ironclad as she thinks it is.

    3. Members of Illinois’ Freedom Caucus survive attempts to take them out.

    Members of the downstate Republican Freedom Caucus, Reps. Adam Niemerg, Blaine Wilhour and Brad Halbrook, all survived primary challenges this Tuesday.

    The victories of Wilhour and Niemerg are particularly notable as they both faced teachers-union backed opponents. Wilhour won with a resounding 79% of the vote and Niemerg won an even bigger 88%. 

    And that’s after the unions spent several hundreds of thousands backing their candidates. 

    4. Mixed results on school district tax and bond referendums.

    Results for school district bond and tax referendums were typical, with a mix of propositions passing and failing.

    Notable referendum failures include Avoca SD 37’s (Wilmette) bond referendum, the details of which we covered here, with over 75% of voters saying no. Central SD 301’s ask for $195 million in bonds also failed, with more than 63% of voters casting a no vote.

    Both those referendums faced a tough opposition of concerned residents, which goes to show that taxpayers can successfully band together and prevent wasteful spending if they organize.

    In contrast, Glenbard Township High School District 87 managed to get its $183 million project approved – albeit just barely. The referendum passed 50.2% to 49.8% with a difference of just 89 votes.

    As we covered earlier this month, the district’s pro-referendum machine spent more than $50,000 to get the proposal over the finish line while facing no major, formal opposition. The result would very likely have been different if residents had been able to officially organize.

    *******

    A final takeaway. Maybe, just maybe, the low voter turnout points to a real opportunity for those in the opposition – for those wanting to turn Illinois around. It takes fewer and fewer votes to win something these days.

    The question is, does any real, principled, large-scale opposition exist anymore? And can it make its case, convincingly, to get out the vote?

    For now, I think we know the answer.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 19:00

  • CCP-Linked Virologist Fired After Transferring Ebola From Winnipeg To Wuhan Resurfaces In China – And Is Collaborating With Military Scientists
    CCP-Linked Virologist Fired After Transferring Ebola From Winnipeg To Wuhan Resurfaces In China – And Is Collaborating With Military Scientists

    A virologist who had a “clandestine relationship” with Chinese agents and was subsequently fired by the Trudeau government has popped back up in China – where she’s conducting research with Chinese military scientists and other virology researchers, including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where she’s allegedly studying antibodies for coronavirus, as well as the deadly Ebola and Niaph viruses, the Globe and Mail reports.

    Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada and stripped of their security clearances in July of 2019.

    Declassified documents tabled in the House of Commons on Feb. 28 show the couple had provided confidential scientific information to China and posed a credible security threat to the country, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

    The Globe found that Dr. Qiu’s name appears on four Chinese patent filings since 2020, two with the Wuhan Institute of Virology whose work on bat coronaviruses has placed it at the centre of concerns that it played a role in the spread of COVID-19 – and two with the University of Science and Technology of China, or USTC. The patents relate to antibodies against Nipah virus and work related to nanobodies, including against coronaviruses. -Globe and Mail

    Canadian authorities began questioning the pair’s loyalty, as well as the potential for coercion or exploitation by a foreign entity, according to more than 600 pages of documents reported by The Counter Signal.

    Highlights (via CTVNews.ca):

    • Qiu and Cheng were escorted out of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory in July 2019 and subsequently fired in January 2021.
    • The pair transferred deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in March 2019.
    • The Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessed that Qiu repeatedly lied about the extent of her work with institutions of the Chinese government and refused to admit involvement in various Chinese programs, even when evidence was presented to her.
    • [D]espite being given every opportunity in her interviews to describe her association with Chinese entities, “Ms. Qiu continued to make blanket denials, feign ignorance or tell outright lies.”
    • A November 2020 Public Health Agency of Canada report on Qiu says investigators “weighed the adverse information and are in agreement with the CSIS assessment.”
    • A Public Health Agency report on Cheng’s activities says he allowed restricted visitors to work in laboratories unescorted and on at least two occasions did not prevent the unauthorized removal of laboratory materials.
    • Cheng was not forthcoming about his activities and collaborations with people from government agencies “of another country, namely members of the People’s Republic of China.”

    Following their firings, Qiu returned to China despite it being under a pandemic travel lockdown until January, 2023.

    “It’s very likely that she received quite preferential treatment in China on the basis that she’s proven herself. She’s done a very good job for the government of China,” said Brendan Walker-Munro, senior research fellow at Australia’s University of Queensland Law School. “She’s promoted their interests abroad. She’s returned information that is credibly useful to China and to its ongoing research.”

    More via the Globe and Mail;

    Documents reviewed by The Globe show that Dr. Qiu is most closely aligned with the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei. In March, 2023, a document posted by a Chinese pharmaceutical company listed Dr. Qiu as second amongst “major completion personnel” on a project awarded by the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association for study related to an anti-Ebola virus therapeutic antibody. Most of the other completion personnel were associated with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

    USTC was founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and initially established to build up Chinese scientific expertise useful to the military, which at the time was pursuing technology to build satellites, intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic bombs. The university has continued to maintain close military ties.

    The document says Dr. Qiu works for USTC. Jin Tengchuan, the principal investigator at the Laboratory of Structural Immunology at USTC, lists her as a co-inventor on a patent. Mr. Jin did not respond to requests for comment.

    A person who answered the phone at USTC told The Globe, “I don’t have any information about this teacher.”

    In 2012, USTC signed a strategic co-operation agreement with the Army Engineering University of the People’s Liberation Army, designed to strengthen research on cutting-edge technology useful for communications, weaponry and other national-defence priorities.

    Dr. Qiu is also listed as a 2019 doctoral supervisor for students studying virology at Hebei Medical University.

    Well, that makes me wonder what circumstances she was under when she emigrated to Canada. Why did she come?” asked Earl Brown, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, microbiology and immunology at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of medicine who has worked extensively in China in the past. “People leave for more freedom from China, or to make more money. But China keeps tabs on most people so I am not sure if she came over to infiltrate or whether she came and the infiltration happened later through contact with China.”

    It may be impossible to answer that question. Three former colleagues at the National Microbiolgy Lab have indicated that Dr. Qiu and her husband were diligent and pleasant to deal with, but largely kept to themselves outside of work. They say Dr. Qiu was a brilliant scientist with a strong work ethic, although her English was weak. The Globe is not identifying the three who did not want to be named.

    Dr. Qiu is a medical doctor from Tianjin, China, who came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. She started at the University of Manitoba, but began working at the national lab as a research scientist in 2006, working her way up to become head of the vaccine development and antiviral therapies section in the National Microbiology Laboratory’s special pathogens program.

    She was also part of the team that helped develop ZMapp, a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014 and 2016.

    “My sense is this was part of a larger strategy by China to get access to our innovation system,” said Filippa Lentzos, an associate professor of science and international security at King’s College London. “It was a way for them to to find out what was going on in Canada’s premier lab.”

    Initially trained as a medical doctor, Dr. Qiu graduated in 1985 from Hebei University in the coastal city of Tianjin, which lies southeast of Beijing. Dr. Qiu went on to obtain her master of science degree in immunology at Tianjin Medical University in 1990.

    Her career at Canada’s top infectious disease lab in Winnipeg began in 2003, only four years after Ottawa opened this biosafety level 4 facility at the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health.

    Over time, she built up a reputation for academic collaboration, particularly with China. It was welcomed by management who felt her work was helping build a name internationally for the National Microbiology Lab.

    By the time Canadian officials intervened in 2018 and began investigating, documents show, Dr. Qiu was running 44 separate projects at the Winnipeg lab, an uncommonly large workload.

    Her work with former colleague and microbiologist Gary Kobinger vaulted Dr. Qiu into the international spotlight. The pair developed a treatment for Ebola, one that in its first human application led to the full recovery of 27 patients with the infection during a 2014 outbreak in Liberia.

    Mr. Kobinger’s career continued to soar and he is now director of the Galveston National Laboratory, a renowned biosafety level 4 facility in Texas. In 2022, he told The Globe that it was “heartbreaking” to see what had happened to his colleague. He declined to speak for this article.

    “She had lost a lot of weight with all the stress. She was so convinced that this was all a misunderstanding … and she would go back to her job,” he said in 2022. “ Her career has been destroyed with all this. She was one of the top female Canadian scientists of virology and Canada has lost that.”

    Over a period of 13 months, though, the Chinese-Canadian microbiologist and her biologist husband’s lives were turned upside down.

    She went from being feted at Ottawa’s Rideau Hall with a Governor-General’s Award in May, 2018, to being locked out of the Winnipeg lab in July, 2019 – the high-security facility where she had made her name as a scientist in Canada. By January, 2021, she and Mr. Cheng were fired.

    Last month, after being pressed into explaining what happened, the Canadian government finally disclosed the reasons for this extraordinary dismissal: CSIS found the pair had lied about and hid their co-operation with China from Ottawa.

    A big question remains following their departure: Why would Dr. Qiu risk her career, including the stature associated with developing an Ebola treatment, for China?

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 18:40

  • Bretton Woods Revisited
    Bretton Woods Revisited

    Submitted By Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman of DMCC in Dubai

    It’s been a busy few weeks for both Bitcoin (BTC) fans and gold hawks, with both assets reaching record highs on the back of soaring inflation, market volatility and high rates, and while both assets typically attract quite polarising investors, their simultaneous rallies are united in their speculation that the U.S. and other western economies may not be able to maintain high interest rates, given their sky-high debts.

    As stated by XTB research director Kathleen Brooks, “When gold and bitcoin rise in unison, it is worth interrogating the reasons behind this, in case they can give us clues about investor behaviour. Both seem to be rallying on the back of the overall market mood: U.S., Japanese and several European indices have made fresh record highs recently. However, for gold and bitcoin there are other internal factors at play that could be pushing up their value even when stocks take a breather.”

    For gold, as the age-old investment hedge, a potential shift in Federal Reserve policy in conjunction with geopolitical uncertainty and a possible downturn in equity markets saw its price break through to $2,194.99 before rolling back. However, with U.S. inflation unexpectedly rising to 3.2 per cent in February, the yellow metal is well positioned to maintain or even exceed its recent highs until 20th March, when the Fed will announce its rate decision, with most economists anticipating no change. As outlined by Tim Murray at T Rowe Price, “This last mile of inflation – getting from 3 per cent to 2 per cent – is going to be really hard. Much harder than getting from 9 to 3 per cent.”

    As a digital store of value, Bitcoin’s record-breaking rally to USD 73,794 on 14th March 2024 was further propelled by buoyant market confidence, as demonstrated through the $10bn poured into Bitcoin ETFs since the beginning of the year, and will likely continue its run through an imminent ‘halving’, which is currently on schedule to take place in April. As outlined by Bitfinex, “The recent surge in Bitcoin’s value… underscores the remarkable strength and resilience of the leading cryptocurrency. This achievement not only marks a significant milestone but also reflects the continued confidence and demand in the market”. 

    With both assets illustrating a clear trend towards safe-haven investments and weakening fiat currencies, it is critical to ask the following questions:

    • Are the record-breaking prices justified against the convergence of inflation and debt?
    • What are the fundamental differences between BTC and gold?
    • What are the underlying responses beyond consumer investment?
    • And what could a return to a gold-backed economy mean for the geopolitical landscape?

    Are record highs justified?

    Asking the obvious question, as headlined by City Index, “Are Traders Afraid of Sovereign Debt Loads?” In short, yes, and for good reason. While many traders are simply seeking a short-term alternative to hedge risk, there is undoubtedly a longer-term appetite for what happens if the U.S. and other developed economies are unable to maintain high interest rates, given their existing debt loads. Starting with the most glaring information, U.S. national debt is currently on the rise to the tune of $1 trillion roughly every 100 days, reaching a total of just over $34.4 trillion in February – a figure certainly not helped by wild printing under the current U.S. administration, which included $3 trillion in 2020 alone. Speculation as to whether a default occurs or not is yet another polarising debate. As stated by Lawrence J White, an economics professor at the Stern School of Business at NYU, no one knows because it is “a political issue”. However, as an investor hedging for a worst-case scenario, the default outcome would likely be “cataclysmic”, followed by a recession of the order of the financial crisis of 2008, according to Bernard Yaros, assistant director at Moody’s Analytics. Even a short-term breach could cause more seismic shifts in the international financial markets, fuelling credible calls for alternatives to the U.S. dollar. “The world will say we can’t rely on the U.S. Treasury as much as we used to, and that will make people more reluctant to hold Treasury obligations. Interest rates for Treasury bills and bonds will go up, and that will ultimately lead to a bigger tax burden for Americans”, stated White.

    Sovereign Response

    It’s no secret that central banks have been buying physical gold in record volumes over the past two years, as outlined by the World Gold Council in January: “Central bank demand, a key driver of gold in recent years, maintained its momentum in Q4 as a further 229t was added to global official gold reserves. This lifted annual (net) demand to 1,037t, just short of the record set in 2022 of 1,082t. Global official sector gold reserves are now estimated to total 36,700t. Two successive years of over 1,000t of buying is testament to the recent strength in central bank demand for gold. Central banks have been consistent net buyers on an annual basis since 2010, accumulating over 7,800t in that time, of which more than a quarter was bought in the last two years.”

    However, this still seems to have evaded public sentiment, as outlined by Peter Schiff: “What’s unprecedented about gold’s new high is that there’s no fanfare, there isn’t any media coverage, there isn’t even any retail participation. Not only is the public not buying into this rally, they’ve been selling during the entire rally, in fact going into the gold ETFs, there’s been net outflows every week this year. The public keeps on selling as gold keeps rising. That’s not normal. Normally people buy on the way up, and sell on the way down, that’s wrong, but that’s human emotion. If everyone’s selling, how can the price of gold be going up? Because if the price of gold is going up it means somebody is buying to drive it up and if the public is dumping their gold why isn’t the price falling; well because somebody else is buying. Somebody who knows a lot more than the people who are selling. Who’s doing that buying? It’s central banks. There’s a reason they are doing it, and it’s because they are de-dollarising.” And they’re not alone.

    As highlighted in JP Morgan’s August 2023 report, the U.S. dollar’s hegemony is “in question due to geopolitical and geostrategic shifts”, and this isn’t just the outlook of the central banks, but also commodity and emerging markets. With Russia serving as an example of the potential risks of being ‘frozen out’ of USDs, albeit with negligible effect, many other countries took heed. In contrast, others reacted to the unfavourable conditions of rising interest rates. “In short, de-dollarisation entails a significant reduction in the use of dollars in world trade and financial transactions, decreasing national, institutional and corporate demand for the greenback”, commented Alexander Wise, strategic research, J.P Morgan. To date, the U.S. dollar’s share of F.X. reserves has declined to a record low of 58 per cent. At the same time, several nations, most recently Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina, have started paying for imports and exports using the Chinese renminbi. In March, the Reserve Bank of India asked Gulf exporters to accept rupees for at least ten per cent of oil payments in the next financial year, while Russian news agency TASS said that the five-nation BRICS group will work on creating a payment system based on blockchain and digital technologies. In the Middle East, an MoU signed between the UAE and India in July 2023 signals the beginning of regional currency usage for bilateral transactions within a framework called the Local Currency Settlement (LCS) system. As a symbolic transaction on the same day, a UAE gold exporter sold 25 kgs of gold to an Indian buyer, invoicing the payment in Indian rupees.

    BTC vs Gold

    Based on the reality of Bitcoin and gold being the de-facto investment hedges, each investor has their own preference. As outlined by Fergus Hodgson, director of Econ Americas, roving editor of Gold Newsletter, “Gold has thousands of years of established history as a resolute store of value,” whereas, cryptocurrency, as a relative newcome to global asset markets means, “its future as a store of value is precarious. In my assessment, central bank digital currencies and altcoins will challenge Bitcoin’s value proposition as a medium of exchange.” Certainly, as a hedge, Bitcoin’s finite 21 million coins means it cannot be manipulated like fiat currencies. However, the same could be said for gold, albeit under the speculation of what resource remains unmined and what can be recycled. While previously, Bitcoin’s edge over gold was its accessibility, recent cases of fraud, theft and the rise of ETFs have made both assets safer and more accessible to all forms of investors.

    While I am certainly not against cryptocurrencies, particularly in their capacity to support decentralised trade, all markets tend to follow power. Through that lens, it is simple to compare which nations hold Bitcoin and which hold gold. According to Elementus, a blockchain-analysis firm, most of the world’s governmental Bitcoin holdings are from government seizures, and between 2013 – 2022, only six nations held a balance – the United States, El Salvador, Ukraine, Bhutan, Venezuela and Finland. Meanwhile, according to the World Gold Council’s Annual Futures (2021), only eight nations do not hold any gold reserves, namely Nicaragua, Cameroon, Armenia, Gabon, Turkmenistan, Congo, Chad and Eritrea.

    Follow the Yellow BRICS Road

    Putting all these elements together, we are left with a likely trend that will not only see a continued transition away from the U.S. dollar but towards a new collective powerhouse in the form of the BRICS+ nations. Complete with the world’s top two gold producers in China and Russia and four of the largest consumers, it seems that the balance of power is migrating east, with the trading bloc progressing towards its own version of a gold standard. As explained by Nathan Lewis in Forbes just several weeks ago, “The BRICS countries have settled on using gold as the basis for international exchange, a role previously taken by dollars and euros. This does not mean today’s floating fiat ruble, real, or rand is going anywhere soon. Rather, just as the U.S. dollar was used alongside those domestic currencies in the past, today and in the future gold will be more commonly used. There would not be very much trade in actual gold coins — just as there is not much trade in actual dollar bills. Indeed, gold doesn’t work very well for this hand-to-hand exchange at all, since even small coins tend to be of very high denomination, worth $200 or more. Rather, it means that people around the world will increasingly use various vehicles — such as bank accounts, bonds, loans, and cryptocurrencies — denominated in gold, just as they use the very same set of tools today but denominated in dollars.”

    A Globally Inclusive Future

    If all that is stated up till now is a fair projection of what’s to come, other areas of demand will either need to be met or serve a useful purpose in the new economic landscape. For example, there are three major bullion banks with London at their centre. As a city with no closer tie to gold than its historical position as a centre for trade, a more equitable solution could be found in the form of a Global Gold Market Association, akin to the Kimberley Process with a rolling chairmanship that provides access to an exchange where vetted banks are among the liquidity providers, thereby supporting a free market model. As an outcome, global volatility could be reduced through democratic processes and regulations, resulting in greater trading stability and a fairer marketplace for all nations, regardless of economic status.

    Conclusion

    As summarised by Peter Schiff, “Everybody is writing gold’s obituary – it’s not dead, it’s alive and well, it’s over $2,000, but the most important thing is the fundamentals have never been better. Not only do the charts look great for gold, but the fundamentals are fantastic because we’re in a situation where inflation has just bottomed at about three per cent and is now headed higher, and there’s nothing the Fed can do about it. It is out of ammo, it can’t fight, there is no way the Fed is going to hike rates, it would crash the economy, and it would sink any chance Biden has of getting re-elected. So, it’s going to dismiss any increase in inflation; in fact, it’s already done that this week. It’s almost like it’s back on its transitory kick, only nobody is going to use the word transitory, but they’re basically looking at any hotter-than-expected inflation data as if it’s a one-off thing as if it’s a foregone conclusion that inflation is going back down to two per cent when there’s no reason to expect that that’s going to happen. Not with record high budget deficits, record high consumer borrowing and spending; a weakening in industrial production, money supply is now growing, and real interest rates are falling. So, all signs point to higher inflation and a weaker economy, and that’s the perfect environment for gold. It is stagflation, and as investors lose confidence in the Fed, they’re going to look for a real safe haven, a real store of value, and they’re going to buy gold.”

    I, for one, agree. Driven by non-transitory inflation, massive deficit spending, questionable global economies, and an increasing momentum towards de-dollarisation, is it finally time to revisit Bretton Woods, and or any meaningful gold standard as the potential antidote to what will soon become an uncontrollable problem

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 18:20

  • Texas Pulls $8.5 Billion From BlackRock In "Massive Blow" To "The Scam Of ESG"
    Texas Pulls $8.5 Billion From BlackRock In “Massive Blow” To “The Scam Of ESG”

    The examples of the ESG fraud imploding over the last 6 months simply aren’t stopping.

    The latest has come from Texas, where the state is now terminating an $8.5 billion investment with BlackRock due to the investment manager’s boycott of energy companies, according to a report from Fox News

    Texas State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey said this week that the Texas Permanent School Fund notified BlackRock this week that it would be terminating the investment. 

    Kinsey told Fox News this week: “The Texas Permanent School Fund has a fiduciary duty to protect Texas schools by safeguarding and growing the approximately $1 billion in annual oil and gas royalties managed by the Texas General Land Office. Terminating BlackRock’s contract ensures PSF’s full compliance with Texas law.”

    Kinsey added: “BlackRock’s dominant and persistent leadership in the ESG movement immeasurably damages our state’s oil & gas economy and the very companies that generate revenues for our PSF. Texas and the PSF have worked hard to grow this fund to build Texas’ schools.”

    “BlackRock’s destructive approach toward the energy companies that this state and our world depend on is incompatible with our fiduciary duty to Texans,” he said. 

    Texas has made a significant move by divesting a considerable portion of its $53 billion Permanent School Fund (PSF), originally established in the 19th century to support public education. This step marks the largest divestment since GOP-led states began cutting financial relations with BlackRock and similar firms over their adoption of ESG standards. 

    In response to such opposition, Texas enacted Senate Bill 13 in 2021, mandating the state’s comptroller to identify and list financial entities boycotting fossil fuel businesses. Following this, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar updated this list in October to include BlackRock among others, urging the Texas PSF and five state pension funds to cut off from the investment company.

    Kinsey concluded: “Today represents a major step forward for the Texas PSF and our state as a whole. The PSF will not stand idle as our financial future is attacked by Wall Street. This bold action helps ensure our PSF remains in fact permanent and will continue to support bright futures and opportunities for generations of Texas students.”

    Blackrock responded: “Today’s unilateral and arbitrary decision by Board of Education Chair Aaron Kinsey jeopardizes Texas schools and the families who have benefited from BlackRock’s consistent long-term outperformance for the Texas Permanent School Fund.” 

    “The decision ignores our $120 billion investment in Texas public energy companies and defies expert advice. As a fiduciary, politics should never outweigh performance, especially for taxpayers,” they added. 

    But Derek Kreifels, the CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, felt differently, offering support for the termination: “Today’s bold step by Aaron Kinsey and the Permanent School Fund of Texas, in accordance with state law, is a massive blow against the scam of ESG.”

    “Under Larry Fink’s leadership, BlackRock has been misusing client funds to push a political agenda for years. Nowhere was that more egregious than in Texas, where BlackRock was simultaneously trying to destroy the domestic oil and gas industry while managing funds that depended on royalties derived from that very same industry,” added Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research.

    He said it was a “clear message” to “Wall Street elites that people can no longer be bullied into complying with ESG’s destructive ideology.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 18:00

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Today’s News 21st March 2024

  • "It's Not About Trump": American CJ Hopkins, Charged Again In Germany, Describes Global Censorship Effort
    “It’s Not About Trump”: American CJ Hopkins, Charged Again In Germany, Describes Global Censorship Effort

    By Matt Taibbi of the Racket News substack

    The German people are famous for putting everything in print, even things they shouldn’t, and in this instance at least, American playwright and author CJ Hopkins is glad. “The irony,” he says, laughing. “The Germans, always documenting everything.”

    In a letter from the Berlin Prosecutor’s file on Hopkins, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, analogous to our FBI) acknowledges receipt of a document from a government office describing an effort to have tweets deleted. “The Hessen Gegen Hetze reporting office,” the highlighted portion reads, “has already initiated measures to delete the relevant post on the social network”:

    Hopkins reached out to me after listening in disgust to the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court hearing Monday. Standing was a big issue: our government said plaintiffs like Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Aaron Kheriaty lacked definite proof that the government was responsible for suppressing their speech. No such issue exists in CJ’s case, as you can see.

    Hopkins also wanted Americans who might be up in arms about the specter of legalized censorship in their own country to see that the phenomenon has also spread to virtually every Western democracy, often in more extreme forms than we’ve seen so far in the United States.

    CJ’s unique insight involves his ludicrous German case, which as you’ll read in the Q&A below has taken bizarre turns since we last checked and will now go to trial yet again. As an expat following the American situation from afar, he’s seen how the authoritarian tide is rising in similar or worse ways all around the globe.

    Hopkins is facing the business end of the German version, among the worst. As detailed last June, he was charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.” The crime? Using a barely detectible Swastika in the cover image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. Far from “furthering the aims” of Nazism, he was criticizing them by comparing Nazi methods and laws to those of modern health authorities. The offending image:

    Hopkins went to trial in January and delivered an impassioned plea to the court. “Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in this courtroom, understands what this prosecution is actually about,” he said. “It has nothing to do with punishing people who actually disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing dissent, and making an example of dissidents in order to intimidate others into silence.”

    Though the judge was clearly not a fan of Hopkins — a courtroom account by Aya Velázquez, which I recommend reading, described how the judge said CJ’s statements were “ideological drivel,” just “not punishable by law” — he won on the law.

    After acquittal, he was made aware that technically the case wasn’t over, because thanks to a quirk of German jurisprudence, the prosecutor had a week to file an appeal. Hopkins was unconcerned. “I doubt he will [re-file]. He made a total fool of himself in front of a large audience yesterday,” he wrote. “I can’t imagine that he will want to do that again.”

    Bzzt! Wrong. The prosecutor re-filed charges. The prosecutorial theory in the Hopkins case was based on a bizarre interpretation of hate crime, essentially asserting that if you have to think about an image to realize it’s satire, it can’t be allowed. If that idea spreads, it would make comedy or even sharp commentary impossible. This is why his indictment, and the similar investigation of Roger Waters, are really serious moments. Not to be heavy-handed, but eliminating the loophole for satire or mockery is exactly what Waters meant by “Another Brick in the Wall.” Before you know it, it’ll be too high to see over:

    MT: You got charged again?

    CJ Hopkins: No… I got acquitted. I went to trial on the 23rd of January, and I wrote this up and I’ll send it to you so you can just look at the whole account. But at the trial I made a big aggressive statement that people republished all over the place. The judge acquitted me, and then called me all kinds of names and then put on her covid mask and stalked out of the courtroom. She called me a Schwurbler, which in German is kind of an idiot, I guess a babbler or someone.

    Anyway, I read that statement, which pissed them all off, but she said, “Okay, you’re an idiot, but that’s not against the law, so you’re acquitted.” So I thought, “Great. This is over. I’m acquitted.” The prosecutor had no case whatsoever, and it was really embarrassing, and I figured it was all done, but my attorney reminded me: oh no, the prosecutor can appeal. Which he did. So now I’m facing another trial in appeals court. It’s not new charges, it’s the same charge, but the prosecutor’s appeal of my acquittal.

    MT: The double jeopardy thing isn’t big in Germany, I take it?

    CJ Hopkins: No.

    MT: Are they going to make a different argument?

    CJ Hopkins: I have no idea what they’re going to do. They have no argument… I mean, they put my tweets up on an overhead projector, like we were back in high school, and interrogated me about whether the Swastika was on top of the mask or behind the mask, that sort of thing. The prosecutor’s argument was basically, “We don’t believe that Mr. Hopkins is a Nazi, or pro-Nazi, we don’t believe he was trying to spread Nazi propaganda, but he nonetheless spread Nazi propaganda. because his tweet” – and this is a great part of their argument – “because if people saw his tweets, they would have to stop and think for a minute to figure out what they meant.”

    MT: Essentially you can’t have satire, because that requires a person to have at least one thought.

    CJ Hopkins: You can’t make people think. You’ve got to have beat-you-over-the-head messaging. I think the whole point of this… I’m sure it’s like the plea-bargain thing in the States. They figure if they hit you with a 3,600 Euro fine, you’re going to pay three times that much to fight it in court, so you’re just going to pay the fine and go away. I don’t think they ever expected to end up in court, and I have no idea what the prosecutor is doing with this appeal. The judge a few weeks later submitted a written verdict, which is strongly in my favor. She pretty much reiterated my attorney’s arguments and made it absolutely clear that what I did falls under the exceptions to the statute, and there’s nothing here to prosecute. Nonetheless, the prosecution’s going ahead.

    MT: Did you have much Western news coverage?

    CJ Hopkins: Right before the trial I had you, then Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which is the big paper of record in Switzerland, and James Kirchick at The Atlantic, who was a big help. I think it put a lot of pressure on the judge. My lawyer made her aware that Germany was being portrayed as a laughingstock in the international press. Aside from The Atlantic, it was all independent alternative media.

    MT: In the Murthy Supreme Court case in the States Monday, there was an issue with what they call “traceability.” I see you don’t have a traceability issue, with this document from your case file?

    CJ Hopkins: Exactly. That’s why I sent it to you. Unquestionably, this is a government office, directly involved with removing the tweets. The other thing that I was going to say, is that I’m looking at things like the Supreme Court case from a non-U.S. perspective. I’m outside of it. I’m watching the legislation that’s getting rolled out in Ireland and the UK and what’s happening to me here and what’s going on in the States, and it’s so obviously much broader than just a red-blue political story in the US. This is happening throughout the Western democratic countries.

    I’m just desperate to get that across to people. I think it’s so easy for people to get locked into what’s going on in their own country and not see the bigger picture.

    MT: What’s an example?  

    CJ Hopkins: There was just a piece in The Herald, in Scotland. The police were being trained there on how to crack down on abusive hate speech. According to this new legislation that’s rolling out and in the training manual, they were saying this could take place in comic performances or stage plays. People are being arrested in the UK for protest signs.

    If I can just put one little bug in your head, Matt, to whatever degree you can tweak people and let them know: “Hey, it’s not just Trump and the Democrats and the liberals and the woke people and all that.” This is happening all over the West, in all these different countries. I think that’s one thing that my case does, it provides folks with an opportunity to remind them that this is happening all over. The old rules don’t apply.

    MT: Good luck with your case.

    CJ Hopkins: Take care.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/21/2024 – 02:00

  • Biden, Lenin, And Immigration Language: Gingrich
    Biden, Lenin, And Immigration Language: Gingrich

    Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

    As an historian, it has been fascinating to watch the left try to impose new language to describe people in the country illegally.

    The left has gradually pushed accepted language away from “illegal aliens” (the term in law), to “illegal immigrants” (the most common term), to “undocumented immigrants” (the left’s current favorite term), and now to “newcomers” (the Joe Biden White House’s latest experiment in gaining language dominance).

    It all reminds me of Vladimir Lenin’s great language coup of 1903.

    The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party met secretly in Brussels. (The Czar’s secret police made it impossible to meet openly in Russia). At the meeting there was a split between Lenin’s hardline revolutionary faction and a more moderate democratic wing. Lenin’s faction was the smaller group, but they claimed the title Bolshevik (which means “greater faction” or majority). Group with the most votes were foolish enough to accept the title Lenin gave them, which was Menshevik, meaning minority. That language dominance and branding gave Lenin an enormous advantage in the following two-decade struggle to overthrow the Czar and create Soviet Russia.

    At least as far back as the French Revolution, the left has had a passion for labeling things and ideas to gain language dominance.

    This process as applied to illegal immigration began at least 25 years ago for me. That’s when I first remember being lectured that using the term “illegal immigrants” was wrong, and I should learn to say “undocumented.”

    I thought this was nuts then, and I still do now. By definition, the people we were describing are illegal. Their first act on entering the United States is to break the law. Their decision to do so is an insult to every legal immigrant who patiently followed the rules and entered the United States legally.

    In late February, the Biden White House had a handout which said, “The bill also includes $1.4 billion for cities and states who are providing critical services to newcomers.” The reaction to replacing “illegal immigrant” with “newcomer” was so harsh that the Biden team dropped it. But their goal was clear.

    This process of normalizing weird and radical ideas goes on constantly on the left. Think of pushing transgenderism on children, kneeling during the pledge of allegiance, ignoring the destruction caused by the Black Lives Matter riots, etc.

    The problem for the left is that illegal immigration may be the battlefield on which they can’t win.

    The latest absurdity began when Biden responded to jeers from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene during his State of the Union Address. He said, “Lincoln (sic) Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?”

    Note that even in acknowledging a young woman who was killed by an illegal immigrant, Biden had to immediately cover it with thousands being killed by legal immigrants and citizens. The illegal immigrant could not be the focus.

    Of course, he got Riley’s name wrong, but the left immediately attacked him for using the term “illegal.” This includes former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Biden promptly began trying to backtrack. In an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart on Saturday, Biden acknowledged his sin of language, “I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal,’ it’s ‘undocumented.’”

    But Biden couldn’t stop there. He had to be pro-illegal immigrant. “I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing,” he said.

    Biden’s defense of illegal immigration hurt him with the average American – and his use of “illegal” hurt him with his leftwing allies.

    His confusion made him look weak. So, in another act of language dominance, the White House simply decided he really never apologized for saying “illegal” in the first place.

    As The Hill reported:

    “White House deputy spokesperson Olivia Dalton attempted to clarify on Monday, telling a reporter that ‘the president absolutely did not apologize’ despite his expression of regret.

    “‘There was no apology anywhere in that conversation,’” Dalton told reporters on Air Force One. ‘He did not apologize. He used a different word. I think what we should be really clear about is the facts.’”

    Biden (and his press team) may be confused, but the American people are not. As Scott Rasmussen reported:

    “Our recent polling found that 55% of voters believe ‘illegal immigrant’ is the proper term and another 8% prefer ‘illegal alien.’ While 63% favor use of ‘illegal,’ just 24% prefer ‘undocumented migrant.’

    “Among traditional Democrats, 54% prefer ‘illegal’ and 33% ‘undocumented.’ But [Bernie] Sanders Democrats prefer ‘undocumented’ by a 48% to 30% margin. It is the progressive Democrats who forced Biden to apologize. This just moves him even further from the mainstream.”

    Let’s be clear: Laken Riley was reportedly killed by an illegal immigrant. That illegal immigrant was in Athens, Ga. because of Biden’s insane policies which favor an open border and prioritize illegal immigrants over American citizens.

    No word games can overcome those facts.

    For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 23:00

  • For Real Estate, Rate Cuts Can't Come Soon Enough
    For Real Estate, Rate Cuts Can’t Come Soon Enough

    By Michael Msika and Macarena Munoz, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and strategists

    Real estate stocks just can’t seem to catch a break. Among this year’s worst performing sectors in Europe, even the prospect of interest rate cuts might not immediately reverse this year’s downward spiral.

    Real estate is dismally lagging the broader equity index so far in 2024, with losses of 8% and erasing the outperformance seen at the end of last year. Dovish signals this week from the Federal Reserve and Bank of England could bring some relief, but few expect this to be forthcoming from the Fed.

    Javier Miralles, equity fund manager at Mapfre Asset Management, reckons it’s still early for investors to position in real estate “as a strategic call betting on the rate drop.” Recent strong inflation data could well induce the Fed to send a higher-for longer message, he says, adding that “when rates are lowered, there will be a re-rating of the sector but it is still risky to position yourself like this.” 

    The first Fed cut is now expected in June, compared with March just a few months ago. What’s more, just three reductions are priced for this year, versus more than five last December. While this pushback hasn’t affected the broader market, real estate stocks have been hit badly. That’s possibly because of other sector-specific issues, including the commercial real estate overhang and mark-to-market property values.

    “The problem for the sector in recent months is not so much in the swings in expectations of rate cuts, but in the fall in asset valuation, and how this affects its debt ratios and the need to forcefully sell properties,” says Roberto Scholtes, head of strategy at Singular Bank. The valuation adjustment could be almost complete in Britain, he says, but is less far along in continental Europe.

    The depreciation of assets increases loan-to-value ratios, in some cases it’s even threatening to exceed the covenants of the loans and bonds. That can force real estate companies to sell assets at a time of low liquidity and weak investor appetite, Scholtes notes. However, he expects the adjustment to be complete in the second half of this year, which alongside upcoming rate cuts, should allow the property sector to start its recovery. For the time being, he remains underweight.

    For Citi analyst Aaron Guy, what stands out is the discrepancy in views between company executives and investors. Recent panel discussions his bank organized on European and UK real estate featured CEOs who were confident the worst was over for the sector. Conversations with investors, on the other hand, revealed a high degree of caution.
    “This dislocation of positive CEOs and more cautious investors is likely a significant factor behind most CEOs noting their stocks trading at significant and excessive discounts and are opportunistically inexpensive,” Guy says.

    Goldman Sachs analysts including Jonathan Kownator point out that historically, an environment of falling rates, together with high – but falling – inflation, has tended to create a positive tailwind for real estate. They see “property valuations close to the bottom,” while debt maturities are “largely manageable.”

    Meanwhile short-sellers have zeroed in on the sector, which is among the most actively targeted in Europe, according to S&P Global data. Real estate management and development stocks have the highest percentage of shares out on loan — an indication of short interest — at 0.37% of market cap, versus less than 0.19% for the overall European stock market. Some names, such as Segro, Unibail-Roadamco-Westfield, Balder and SBB have even higher stock-on-loan ratios, the data shows. With such high figures, any positive central bank message this week could well see a short squeeze unfold on property stocks.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 22:40

  • What If The President Ignores The Supreme Court?
    What If The President Ignores The Supreme Court?

    Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Who or what enforces the edicts of the court? Mostly it is the executors of state power. What if they don’t want to because they disagree with the courts? At that point, we’ve got a problem.

    A view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 4, 2024. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Let’s consider.

    Next week, the Supreme Court hears arguments in Murthy v. Missouri over a major free speech issue. The question is whether the federal government can, directly or indirectly, impose itself on social media companies to game their policies in a particular way according to policy priorities of the government itself.

    The First Amendment suggests the answer is no. It says that government cannot impose laws “prohibiting the free exercise” or otherwise “abridging the freedom of speech.” Social media is all about speech. For government to game the system in its favor is a major intervention in rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by the government.

    This principle has been routinely tested from the early years. The Sedition Act of 1798 targeted newspaper editors who criticized the president. There was outrage about that and it swept Thomas Jefferson into office who repealed the cursed thing.

    That was hardly the end. Censorship was tried again in 1835, 1861, 1918, 1940, 1954, and so on, and each time the First Amendment eventually prevailed. And yet underlying this long experience is always the push by government to control the channels of distribution of information.

    Now that every citizen is in a position to be a distributor of information to a broad audience via new technologies, we have government exercising its penchant to want to control. The Constitution of the United States, unique in the world for this protection of free speech, stands against this.

    That seems rather simple. Surely the court will agree.

    Maybe or maybe not.

    Here’s the problem. A massive censorship industrial complex extending from federal agencies to every major digital tech platform has been constructed over the last eight years, and went into full effect in 2020. It still exists today. This largely happened out of the public eye. Even four years ago, it was barely known. The cases of banned accounts and throttled postings seemed isolated and often just an unfortunate exercise of editorial zeal.

    But FOIAs and court discovery have unearthed tens of thousands of pages of receipts, so that the problem is not isolated or random but gargantuan and systematic. It involves dozens of federal agencies, non-government organizations working as contractors, universities on contract either directly or indirectly, and even embedded employees at social media companies. The censorship network is so elaborate at this point that it is truly an industry—an illegal one!

    The 5th Circuit looked at the evidence and was so alarmed that it issued a pre-trial injunction against the federal government, namely many agencies in particular. District Court Judge Terry Doughty described what he saw as “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history” and “akin to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.”

    The appeals court agreed but delayed the injunction pending a Supreme Court judgment. That is the issue the court takes up next week.

    Here’s the trouble. I seriously doubt that these justices know much about the existence of this machinery. That’s understandable. Most people had no idea that it was being constructed and deployed. After all, when censorship is effective, most people are put in a position of not knowing what they do not know.

    And that’s the whole point: to deny the public information. In this case, the machinery worked to massively distort information on so-called Russiagate, COVID in every aspect of that and what it implies, and the 2020 election, the outcome of which was likely affected by the censorship. For a time there—and we should never have gotten used to this—it seemed like every mainline information outlet became a regime megaphone.

    Sadly, the courts have been denied information too. Now the highest court is hearing the case. Any fair hearing and judgment will result in an upholding of the injunction. It might not go that way. Or two other possibilities: the court sides with the Biden administration and for censorship, or simply kicks the can down the road to wait for the trial phase. In that case, the core problem could stay in litigation for many years!

    If either of those latter two decisions comes down, every federal agency will have a green light to continue and expand its aggressive intervention in information networks. Even independent platforms will feel the heat. The goal is quite clear: for the public to see and hear no information that fundamentally contradicts regime priorities. That’s the result the Biden administration hopes for, and not just on behalf of President Biden but the entire deep-state apparatus that built this censorship industrial complex in the first place.

    The stakes are extremely high. If this thing goes the wrong way, free speech in the United States is toast and the First Amendment will be a dead letter.

    But let’s just suppose there is a good result: the court sides for the plaintiffs, the injunction is immediately upheld, and goes into effect upon the release of the opinion. The social media companies would have lost nothing but their chains. They can still enforce terms of service and community standards but they will no longer be under pressure from any state actor.

    Sorry to ask this question but it must be asked: who precisely is going to enforce this?

    The pathetic answer is that the people and agencies charged with implementing the injunction are the same people against whom the injunction is targeted.

    Do you see the problem here? It is a major flaw in the way the system works. We have to trust the government, whose power is being limited by the courts to limit itself. That’s because the judiciary has no army, no inherent coercive power, no ability directly to punish those who go against its edicts against the enforcers themselves.

    In other words, even a good judgment here does not mean that we are out of the woods.

    There will still be the need for citizen oversight and resistance because the censorship industry will not simply stop existing.

    Another problem: the Biden administration is increasingly attempting to discredit the Supreme Court. This has been going on for a few years now. At the State of the Union address, President Biden directly attacked members of the Supreme Court who were sitting right there. I’m not sure that has ever happened before. And earlier this month, he bragged how his new student loan forgiveness actions are in defiance of the court. Their decision “didn’t stop me,” Mr. Biden said.

    This is an extremely dangerous trajectory we are on. The Supreme Court seems poised to rule against many practices by the executive department of the federal government. This hasn’t happened very often in U.S. history. How precisely this is enforced amounts to a large stress test of the American system itself. There is every reason to believe that the people in charge today do not even believe in that system.

    Is this a flaw in the structure? Sort of but it’s a problem with every system. If institutions collapse, they collapse, and there is no technical fix. Ultimately freedom is preserved by a public consensus in its favor and leaders willing to make it so. It appears that public opinion is the only real and final check on tyranny.

    A final factor here. Notice the mad rush by Google, Facebook, and others to implement artificial intelligence throughout its operation. If they can work with federal officials to make their curation and censorship merely a product of machine learning, they will eliminate all fingerprints from their dirty deeds. This bears watching as well.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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

  • Watch: Migrant TikToker Tells Other Illegals How To "Invade" Homes In America
    Watch: Migrant TikToker Tells Other Illegals How To “Invade” Homes In America

    The Marxist destruction of private property rights is on full display after a viral video circulating TikTok, then posted on X, shows a migrant informing other migrants how to “invade” unoccupied homes across America and take advantage of progressive squatting laws. 

    “I found out that there is a law that says that if a house is not inhabited, we can seize it,” the migrant said in a video on TikTok, which Collin Rugg first posted on X. 

    The migrant said he has African friends who have taken over seven homes thanks to squatting laws. 

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    The video is very concerning because progressive squatting laws are getting out of control. These laws are being abused, and landlords are being screwed. 

    Take, for instance, a woman who found her home full of people squatting illegally was arrested this week for changing the door locks. 

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

    “It’s starting to feel like illegal immigrants have more rights than actual citizens,” one X user said. 

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    Here’s what other x users are saying:

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    What baffles some is why squatters even have rights in the first place. 

    Americans owning multiple properties should be alert for migrants attempting to seize their home. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 22:00

  • New York Doomed To Be Migrant Central – Other Cities Take Note
    New York Doomed To Be Migrant Central – Other Cities Take Note

    Authored by Betsy McCaughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Mayor Eric Adams’ agreement, announced Friday, to limit the time illegal immigrants can stay in shelters at taxpayers’ expense, is smoke and mirrors. It’s designed to fool you into thinking he’s solving a problem when he’s actually caving to the illegal immigrant industrial complex.

    Hundreds of illegal immigrants line up outside of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City on June 6, 2023. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

    Adams claims the agreement, with the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, will allow the city to evict adult migrants from city-run shelters after 30 days, saving taxpayers money and limiting the need for more shelters. Not true.

    The fine print says illegal immigrants have a shot at staying longer if they obtain a driver’s license, follow shelter rules, and show good behavior, or—get this one—apply for public benefits. And this is a “non-exhaustive” list of reasons making illegal immigrants eligible to stay longer.

    The agreement also applies only to single adults. A staggering 78 percent come with children and get priority placement in hotels. The city currently spends a whopping $387 a night for food and a roof alone for each family, and shells out more money for free medical care, education, and legal services. This agreement does zero to alleviate those staggering costs.

    The deal dooms New York City to fiscal disaster, because it will continue to be the No. 1 destination for illegal immigrants seeking a free roof over their heads. The Big Apple is now Migrant Central.

    Worst of all, nothing in the agreement empowers the mayor to evict troublemakers who have repeat run-ins with police. The illegal immigrants who beat up cops in Time Square were living in shelters, courtesy of taxpayers, and already had long rap sheets.

    When troublemakers are arrested and give a shelter address, the shelter should be contacted and told they no longer qualify. Why should taxpayers be footing the bill to house criminals?

    Notorious gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13 recruit from the shelters. How convenient that taxpayers pay to house these gangs’ lackeys.

    In October, Adams imposed a 30-day limit on adult migrants but wound up in court when Legal Aid and the Coalition challenged. A long negotiation ensued, ending with Friday’s agreement.

    Since 1981, Legal Aid and the Coalition have fought successfully to impose a “right to shelter” on New York. Now these two self-appointed guardians of the downtrodden—not elected by anyone—insist that the “right” applies not just to New Yorkers but anyone from anywhere in the world who wants shelter here. That’s crazy.

    After months of negotiating, Adams capitulated. No one at the table was looking out for taxpayers or New Yorkers who see their services being cut and their neighborhoods disrupted by the proliferation of shelters. The multibillion-dollar shelter industry came out a winner, but Joe Public got shafted.

    As the agreement was announced, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom praised the “right to shelter” and Legal Aid Society for the work they do. They’re all in bed together.

    Josh Goldfein, a Legal Aid attorney, explained that despite the settlement, “no migrant would be left out on the streets.” In fact, the agreement bans the city from even making illegal immigrants sleep overnight in chairs while waiting to be placed, imposing stricter shelter requirements than before.

    A “right to shelter” for anyone who shows up on Gotham’s doorsteps means New Yorkers who want sanitation services, police and fire protection, and other city amenities go to the back of the line. Their services get cut to pay for sheltering illegal immigrants. Adams needs to battle aggressively, up through the highest courts, to get that “right” reexamined.

    Only New York has a “right to shelter,” and it makes the city the top destination for illegal immigrants. New York City spends more than 10 times as much as Los Angeles per illegal immigrant and more than five times as much as Chicago.

    To top it off, the agreement and the Adams administration are renaming illegal immigrants as “new arrivals,” whitewashing the laws they broke to get here.

    Expect hundreds of thousands more to see these welcome signs and come. Who wouldn’t come?

    On Sunday, Adams praised the city’s “responsible policies” and blamed “Republican extremists” for the border crisis. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but the crisis here in New York City is due to the lavish benefits local Democrats insist on offering “new arrivals.” There’s no whitewashing that.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 21:40

  • RFK Jr. Destroys His Candidacy With VP Pick
    RFK Jr. Destroys His Candidacy With VP Pick

    Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    I interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Epoch TV’s “Roller Coaster” series and also attended one of his birthday parties. In both instances, I liked the man, found him to be intelligent and personable, and also unafraid to take stands against the über-conformist Democratic Party, notably on health care and, to some degree, on the dangers of the Central Intelligence Agency.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holds a voter rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Feb. 10, 2024. (Mitch Ranger/The Epoch Times)

    Although I have been an unabashed Donald Trump supporter since he came down the escalator and continue to be so, I would not have been disappointed, even pleased, had former President Trump chosen Mr. Kennedy as his vice-presidential candidate.

    Unlikely as it may have been, it could have helped bring our fractured country together.

    No longer.

    If reports are true—and, in that regard, the website name www.kennedyshanahan.com was reportedly registered by one of his campaign operatives on March 13—Mr. Kennedy has chosen attorney Nicole Shanahan as his running mate.

    I find this bizarre, to say the least, not to mention disappointing.

    Whatever his intentions, such a ticket would drive this country even further apart because Ms. Shanahan is a self-described “progressive.” But that’s only the tip of a disturbing iceberg I will get to in a minute.

    Let’s start with this. Mr. Kennedy, of all people, should know that the basic requirement for a vice presidential candidate, now more than ever, is that a person be qualified to assume the presidency at a moment’s notice.

    We have had disasters in that regard, dodging several bullets, including vice presidents Spiro Agnew, Mike Pence, and (for now, holding one’s breath) Kamala Harris.

    Mr. Trump has made clear that qualification for the presidency is now his first consideration, as it should be.

    What do we know of Ms. Shanahan?

    Not much, except that she is a philanthropist to largely progressive causes and that she is very rich.

    She reportedly helped pay for Mr. Kennedy’s Super Bowl ad to the tune of $4 million via a Super PAC. The ad got mixed reviews and ended up with the candidate apologizing to his family

    How rich Ms. Shanahan really is is unclear, but it is clear the bulk of her money comes from her divorce from Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google and, depending on the source, the ninth richest man on the planet.

    RFK Jr’s campaign had been luffing and needed a boost. He looked to the financial. It’s hard to blame him, because that’s the putrid state of American politics. But if you’re trying to run an honest broker campaign against corrupt traditional parties, it’s not the best approach. It’s actually a turn-off.

    This is rather sad because of the optimism and excitement he initially engendered.

    It was said that much of RFK Jr’s appeal was with the more libertarian right, not the increasingly leftist Democrats. I thought that was accurate. I would imagine that unfortunately those days are over if the nomination of the “progressive” Ms. Shanahan is real. Who will RFK Jr. appeal to now?

    Of course the candidate is not confirming this nomination until March 26. We shall see.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

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

  • Study Says "Interpersonal Racism" Linked To Heart Problems In Black Women
    Study Says “Interpersonal Racism” Linked To Heart Problems In Black Women

    By Caleb Nunes of The College Fix

    “Interpersonal racism” might lead to higher rates of coronary heart disease, according to a recent study. But a health scholar who spoke to The College Fix questioned the findings.

    “Perceived experiences of interpersonal racism in employment, in housing, and with the police were associated with higher incidence of CHD among Black women,” the study from Boston University epidemiologist Shanshan Sheehy concluded. However, “perceived racism in everyday life was not associated with higher risk,” Dr. Sheehy wrote.

    She wrote the study, published in the American Heart Association journal, with Michelle Albert, the most recent president of the group. The paper used data from nearly 50,000 black women beginning in 1997.

    The study found that after adjusting for multiple variables, the link between racism and heart problems was “no longer statistically significant,” meaning the connection could be explained by chance. 

    Sheehy did not respond to two emailed requests for comment on the paper, including the claim “racism is highly prevalent in America.”

    The research director at Do No Harm said the extensive data set is a strength of the study, but there are many problems with its designs.

    Ian Kingsbury said, “the association [of interpersonal racism] is not significant when it comes to myocardial infarction,” in his emailed comments to The Fix.

    When it comes to coronary heart disease, Kingsbury said “there is no association with self-reported racism in everyday life but an association with self-reported discrimination in employment, housing and interactions with police.”

    There could be a confounding variable at play.

    Kingsbury said those reporting higher levels of racism in everyday life “are more anxious and prone to conflict,” and people with these personality traits have higher incidence of coronary heart disease.

    When asked about the strengths of this paper, Kingsbury said the paper “connect[ed] data collected decades ago to contemporary health outcomes.”

    Weaknesses included “overstating…findings” as well as a “lack of candor around the limitations of self-reported racism as a measure of actual racism.”

    He said the medical community should not use this paper. The results are “unconvincing” he said, when other variables are taken into consideration.

    Kingsbury said, “it’s unclear how [the results] would be actionable” and said there is a growing view doctors are “people who can solve all the world’s problems.” This often “invites activism into medical training at the expense of technical expertise.”

    Other studies have tried to connect police interactions with health problems.

    For example, a University of Minnesota researcher found a correlation between police stops in a neighborhood and preterm births. However, the researcher, Rachel Hardeman, could not identify any woman who had an interaction with police and then had a preterm birth.

    Furthermore, black immigrant women had better pregnancy outcomes than even white women, according to the study.

    That did not stop Hardeman from blaming racism.

    “These findings suggest that racialized police patterns borne from a history of racism in the United States may contribute to racial disparity in preterm birth,” the Planned Parenthood board member wrote.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 21:00

  • Ukraine Drones Again Target Strategic Bomber Base Deep Inside Russia
    Ukraine Drones Again Target Strategic Bomber Base Deep Inside Russia

    On Wednesday a wave of Ukrainian drones targeted a well-known airbase deep inside Russia which is home to strategic bombers. The air base, called Engels 2, is near the Russian city by the same name, and nearby residents reported hearing at least four explosions during the attack.

    The Main Directorate of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence (HUR) has since owned up to the attack, with sources in Russia confirming to international media that “targets had been hit” and the damage is being assessed.

    Some drones may have been intercepted, however, with Roman Busargin, the governor of the Russian region of Saratov, describing in a statement that a drone attack was “repelled”. This attack is significant given Engels is located over 600km from the Ukraine border. But it’s not the first time it has come under attack during the war.

    In December of 2022 there were reports that two Tu-95 bombers were damaged in a similar drone operation from Ukraine. Later that same month explosions were reported at the airbase but the extent of damage on the ground was unclear. During this latter attack, three Russian servicemen were reportedly killed by falling debris after UAVs were intercepted.

    A well-known Russian Telegraph channel which reports breaking news related to the Ukraine war said of this newest assault on the airfield: “Preliminary data suggests the anti-aircraft defense system was activated. Residents report hearing a prior siren. There is no official information on casualties or damages.”

    Ukraine-based media sources have speculated that something was hit at Engels:

    Meanwhile, social media users mentioned a fire at the airfield area post-explosions, with rescuers quickly arriving.

    One commentator, residing near the airfield, wrote, “There was at least one direct hit, the rest (of the drones) likely shot down by anti-aircraft missiles. Then came the fire trucks, ambulances, police with flashing lights.”

    Engels has long been known to house both Tu-160 and Tu-95MS long-range bombers which are being used in Ukraine, thus it remains a high priority target for Ukraine’s cross-border attacks against Russian territory.

    The Kremlin has accused Western intelligence with assisting in such operations. This recently found some degree of positive confirmation in a damning New York Times story detailing the extent of the CIA’s presence in Ukraine going back a decade. The CIA established intelligence outposts along the border with Russia, many of which are likely directing these attacks into Russian territory.

    Via Ukraine Battle Map/Twitter

    Feeling emboldened by a string of ‘successes’, including prior attacks and bombings in Crimea but especially destruction of oil refineries, Ukraine forces will likely try to continue hitting targets inside Russia, also as their capability grows given they have been supplied with ever-longer range rockets from the US and NATO countries

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

  • Boeing Has Been Prioritizing Production Over Safety, FAA Chief Says
    Boeing Has Been Prioritizing Production Over Safety, FAA Chief Says

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

    Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Michael Whitaker said on March 19 that his impression from a recent visit to Boeing’s facilities suggests that there are issues within the aerospace giant’s safety culture.

    Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Whitaker testifies before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on Feb. 6, 2024. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

    During an interview with NBC Nightly News, Mr. Whitaker said the FAA’s audit and a culture survey of Boeing revealed that the aircraft maker’s “priorities have been on production, and not on safety and quality.”

    So what we really are focused on now is shifting that focus from production to safety and quality,” the FAA administrator told the media outlet.

    When asked if certain protocols were not being met regarding how the aircraft manufacturer approached airplane production, Mr. Whitaker said: “Not what you would have expected if safety is the first priority.

    “Whenever someone comes into the FAA to brief on their company, the first thing I expect is to talk about safety because we all have to start there.

    If it’s not safe, then the whole system is not working the way it should.

    FAA Audit on Boeing

    The FAA initiated a six-week audit on Boeing’s manufacturing processes for the 737 Max jetliner after a panel blew off one of the planes during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5.

    The Alaska Airlines flight was en route to Ontario, California, from Portland, Oregon, when its door plug blew off, forcing the pilots to turn back and make an emergency landing.

    A gaping hole where the paneled-over door had been at the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in Portland, Ore., on Jan. 7, 2024. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP)

    The FAA published its 50-page report on Feb. 26, noting that its experts had identified 27 areas in which Boeing’s safety procedures and culture were insufficient.

    According to the report, experts observed a “disconnect” between Boeing’s senior management and other members of the organization when it comes to safety culture.

    The report also found a “lack of awareness of safety-related metrics at all levels of the organization” and could not find a “consistent and clear” process for employees to report safety concerns.

    The procedures and training are complex and in a constant state of change, creating employee confusion, especially among different work sites and employee groups,” the report reads.

    Experts also highlighted “hesitation in reporting safety concerns for fear of retaliation,” noting that managers at the plane manufacturer authorized to oversee employee performance evaluations, salary decisions, promotion, and disciplinary actions are also tasked with investigating safety concerns.

    The company was given 90 days to develop a comprehensive plan to address “systemic quality-control issues.” Mr. Whitaker has urged Boeing to make “real and profound improvements.”

    A Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane lands following a test flight at Boeing Field in Seattle on April 10, 2019. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

    Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing’s commercial plane division, said in a March 12 update that the “vast majority” of violations found by the FAA involved workers not following Boeing’s approved procedures.

    Mr. Deal said Boeing will take remedial steps that include “working with each employee noted with a non-compliance during the audit to ensure they fully understand the work instructions and procedures.”

    The company will also add weekly compliance checks for all work teams in the Renton, Washington, factory, where Max jets are assembled, he said.

    “We will assess our status in the factory and, if needed, put mitigation plans in place. We will not hesitate in stopping a production line or keeping an airplane in position,” Mr. Deal stated.

    The Alaska Airlines mishap is not the only recent incident to cause concern. On March 7, a United Airlines Boeing 777-200ER plane lost a wheel shortly after takeoff from San Francisco International Airport. On Jan. 20, a Boeing 757 jet operated by Delta Air Lines lost its nose wheel while preparing for takeoff in Atlanta.

    Katabella Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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

  • US Military Desperately Seeking To Stay In Niger Despite Order To Leave
    US Military Desperately Seeking To Stay In Niger Despite Order To Leave

    The Pentagon is desperately seeking to stay in Niger despite the military-led government telling US troops to leave in the wake of accusations from American officials that Niger could be poised to transfer uranium to Iran. Niger was outraged at the allegations and rejected them.

    “The Pentagon is working with Niger officials, seeking a way for U.S. troops to stay in the country — a key base for counterterrorism operations in sub-Saharan Africa — following a weekend directive that they leave,” The Associated Press reports.

    MQ-9 Reaper drone, DoD file image

    Spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the US is seeking “clarification” from Niger officials and is still engaged in lengthy and direct” discussions with the junta leaders. Washington has warned the West African nation against forging deeper ties with ‘rogue’ actors like Russian and Iran. 

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said that the Biden administration is “closely monitoring the Russian defense activities” there in order “to assess and mitigate potential risk to U.S. personnel, interests and assets.” Wagner Group is one major Russian mercenary outfit which has made deep inroads into the region.

    Over the weekend, Niger’s military-led government which is called the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) declared US flights over Niger territory to be “illegal”

    Last year’s coup in the country saw a military-led government come to power, which from the start signaled rough and uncertain times ahead for US-Niger relations. A Saturday statement by Nigerien junta spokesman Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said, “Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”

    This charge of the US not respecting the West African nation’s sovereignty comes in reaction to recent Western intelligence claims that Niger is engaged in secret talks and deal-making to grant Iran access to its uranium. Singh in a Monday briefing had said, “We were troubled on the path that Niger is on.”

    According to the latest back-and-forth between junta leaders and the Pentagon:

    “The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer,” he [Insa Garba Saidou, an advisor to Niger’s generals] told The Associated Press.

    Singh said the U.S. was aware of the March 16 statement “announcing the end of the status of forces agreement between Niger and the United States. We are working through diplomatic channels to seek clarification. These are ongoing discussions and we don’t have more to share at this time.” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the discussions were prompted by Niger’s “trajectory.”

    “We are in touch with transition authorities to seek clarification of their comments and discuss additional next steps,” Patel said.

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    American officials are now worried about the major drone base only recently built at a cost of $110 million called Air Base 201, which was crucial for Pentagon drone surveillance operations over the region. Likely it will now have to be shuttered.

    International reports estimate that some 1,000 or more US troops and contractors remain in the country, with most of them manning the airbase. Much of the population looks upon the US as an ‘imperial’ power, also given the history of the Western powers in Africa, particularly starting in the 19th century and what historians dub “the Scramble for Africa”. 

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

  • Biden Campaign Distances Itself From Mysterious Big Dem Donor 'Chairman G'
    Biden Campaign Distances Itself From Mysterious Big Dem Donor ‘Chairman G’

    Authored by Soobin Kim and Bradley Hope via whalehunting.projectbrazen.com,

    Last fall, we reported on a man named Gaurav Srivastava who pretended to be a CIA operative to allegedly fleece the sanctioned Dutch oil trader Niels Troost. The ruse was simple, according to extensive recorded conversations: hand over half your company to me, a secret spy, and I’ll protect you from the US government because … I’m a secret spy.

    In the following months since our original article, it emerged that Srivastava – or “Chairman G,” as he likes to be called – is a big time political donor in the United States.

    • Whale Hunting can exclusively reveal that FBI agents in Los Angeles have been interviewing Srivastava’s current and former associates about his campaign donations, claims of being a federal officer and other financial affairs.

    • We also confirmed from a staff member for the Washington State Democratic Party that the Biden campaign is in the process of quietly refunding thousands of dollars of his political donations.

    The FBI inquiries — ongoing for last several months — may lead nowhere, but the Biden campaign’s decision to start refunding donations suggests there are deeper issues afoot for Srivastava.

    “All allegations raised in this story are false,” a spokesman for Srivastava told us (full statement and more details on the news after the jump).

    Source: Sponsored content on LA Weekly

    The culmination of Srivastava’s rise to public life came alongside a more than $1 million donation in 2022 to the Atlantic Council, a DC-based think tank. The money underwrote a conference in Bali, where he was a “co-host” and rubbed shoulders with business magnates, political honchos and John Legend.

    But that relationship isn’t going smoothly. The Atlantic Council terminated its relationship with Srivastava, Politico reported last month, and returned additional funds donated by Srivastava in 2023.

    We made the decision to terminate our relationship with Mr. Srivastava in May 2023 upon learning new information because of our donor review process. For example, we learned that The Gaurav & Sharon Srivastava Family Foundation was not an established 501C3 in April of 2023, despite Mr. Srivastava’s representation to the Council that this was a registered foundation,” the spokesperson told Politico.

    Srivastava’s lawyer told Politico the Atlantic Council made the decision after they “disagreed” about how a gift would be implemented. (Small note: Recipients of gifts usually try very hard to implement the handover of gifts.)

    Alongside his campaign to solve global food security he also became a big spender on political campaigns. Among Srivastava’s key advisors for how to best disperse funds for political purposes were Greg Schultz (Biden’s 2020 campaign manager) and Ret. General Wesley Clark. They didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    The Federal Election Commission’s database of individual contributions shows that Srivastava contributed at least $1 million to political campaigns and committees in the United States. As an Indian national he is eligible to donate to political campaigns as a Green Card holder. Lo and behold, the donations led to a photo op with Biden which you can find here.

    Since 2022, Srivastava has made sizeable donations – including over $500,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and $500,000 to Senate Majority PAC.

    One mystery we are continuing to investigate: Whale Hunting discovered publicly available evidence suggesting Srivastava contributed over $116,000 using the personal details of an individual with the same name who resides in the same city. The funds were donated under the previous employer, occupation and mailing address of the namesake, who denies making the donations.

    It’s unclear how those donations were made. Impersonating another individual to make a political contribution is strictly prohibited by law.

    The single biggest recipient for the donations made with the namesake’s personal details was the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee for Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election, which received $50,000. About a dozen state Democratic parties across the U.S. also received funds through the Biden Victory Fund.   

    “The Biden campaign is aware of the issue and the donation is in the process of being refunded,” a staff member with Washington State Democratic Party, which received these funds, told Whale Hunting in an email.

    It’s unclear the exact allegations the FBI is investigating, but among the questions they’ve presented current and former associates of Srivastava have been queries about his political spending, source of funds, involvement in international money transfers and other topics related to the allegations already aired publicly about Srivastava in a litany of lawsuits.

    Srivastava’s spokesman’s full comment here:

    All allegations raised in this story are false. The source for this story and others, including 87 paid stories on obscure websites, is tied to a Russian asset facilitating the unfettered trade of Russian oil as made clear by the U.K. sanctions. There’s a direct through-line between Russia, a barrel of oil and the high price of gas at the pump squeezing the American consumer. The slanderous suggestion of a fabricated relationship between Mr. Srivastava and a U.S. intelligence agency was orchestrated by the same Russian asset relied on as a source for your stories and designed by that Russian asset to put a target on his back, threatening the safety of him, his friends and family.

    So if your year is off to a bad start, think about what Srivastava is now dealing with: being on the Feds’ radar, juggling a glut of lawsuits brought on by all the people he’s allegedly stiffed – from his former interior designer to former landlord to former business partners – and witnessing the collapse of his carefully crafted reputation. 

    In the meantime, Whale Hunting will be chasing this story to fill its gaping plot holes, one among them being where on earth Chairman G got the funds to make the donations in the first place. If you have any insight, please get in touch!

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 19:40

  • Major Jeweler Sees Youngsters Postponing Engagements In Era Of Failed Bidenomics
    Major Jeweler Sees Youngsters Postponing Engagements In Era Of Failed Bidenomics

    Signet Jewelers Ltd., the parent company of Kay Jewelers and Zales, had previously signaled to investors that there would be an upswing in US engagements this year as dating patterns returned to normal. But that forecast was downgraded on Wednesday as the jeweler warned that persistently high inflation and job market uncertainty have forced some young folks to delay engagements. 

    “If right now they’re worried about their jobs or they’re still paying a little bit more for rent or for gas, then they might wait a few months for that engagement,” Gina Drosos, the CEO of SignetSignet, explained in a Wednesday interview quoted by Bloomberg.

    Signet previously told investors that 2024 would be the year of an upswing in US engagements. However, this outlook was revised on Wednesday, and the number of engagements for the year is expected to rise between 5% and 10% versus the previous forecast of 10%. 

    Drosos said 2.1 million couples were engaged last year, the lowest in years, but recovered from the dating dry spell during Covid. Still, the number is well below the 2.8 million level seen pre-2020. 

    The downshift in the outlook comes after three years of elevated inflation, which has strained consumers’ finances. 

    In the era of failed Bidenomics, Gen-Zers and millennials have flooded social media platforms, complaining about their financial hardships:

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    For youngsters who have already planned a wedding, average costs hit a new record high in 2023, exceeding $30,000, according to The Wedding Report, a research company that tracks wedding data. 

    Drosos added, “Wouldn’t it be great if the Fed lowered interest rates and if consumer confidence got on a really consistent upswing?” She noted that easing financial conditions would push the number of 2024 engagements to the high end of Signet’s guidance. 

    The obsession with lavish weddings is over for the average couple. Say goodbye to elaborate floral displays, a beautiful venue on a golf course, crab cakes and steak for dinner, fancy champagne toasts, live bands, open bars, chocolate fountains, and multi-tiered cakes, as an increasing number of folks are opting for courthouse weddings in the era of failed Bidenomics. 

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

  • How The Democrats Plan To Steal The Election
    How The Democrats Plan To Steal The Election

    Authored by Llewellyn Rockwell via LewRockwell.com,

    Biden and Trump have clinched the nominations of their parties for President. Everybody is gearing up for a battle between them for the election in November. It’s obvious that Biden is “cognitively impaired.” In blunter language, “brain-dead”. Partisans of Trump are gearing up for a decisive victory.

    But what if this battle is a sham? What if Biden’s elite gang of neo-con controllers won’t let Biden lose?

    How can they stop him from losing? Simple. If it looks like he’s losing, the elite forces will create enough fake ballots to ensure victory. Our corrupt courts won’t stop them. They have done this before, and they will do it again, if they have to.

    I said the Democrats have done this before.

    The great Dr. Ron Paul explains one way they did this in 2020. The elite covered up a scandal that could have wrecked Biden’s chances:

    “Move over Watergate. On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal.

    The problem was that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and the explosive contents of the computer were leaking out. The details of the Biden family’s apparent corruption and the debauchery of the former vice-president’s son were being reported by the New York Post, and with the election less than a month away, the Biden campaign needed to kill the story.

    So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign – using their high-level government titles – to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

    In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. A letter signed by dozens of the highest-ranking former CIA, DIA, and NSA officials would surely carry enough weight to bury the Biden laptop story. It worked. Social media outlets prevented any reporting on the laptop from being posted and the mainstream media could easily ignore the story as it was merely “Russian propaganda.”

    Asked recently by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) why he agreed to draft the false sign-on letter, Morell testified that he wanted to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.”

    Morell also likely expected to be named by President Biden to head up the CIA when it came time to call in favors.

    The Democrats and the mainstream media have relentlessly pushed the lie that the ruckus inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6th 2021 was a move by President Trump to overthrow the election results. Hundreds of “trespassers” were arrested and held in solitary confinement without trial to bolster the false narrative that a conspiracy to steal the election was taking place.

    It turns out that there really was a conspiracy to steal the election, but it was opposite of what was reported. Just as the Steele Dossier was a Democratic Party covert action to plant the lie that the Russians were pulling strings for Trump, the “Russian disinformation campaign” letter was a lie to deflect scrutiny of the Biden family’s possible corruption in the final days of the campaign.

    Did the Biden campaign’s disinformation campaign help rig the election in his favor? Polls suggest that Biden would not have been elected had the American electorate been informed about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop. So yes, they cheated in the election.

    The Democrats and the mainstream media are still at it, however. Now they are trying to kill the story of how they killed the story of the Biden laptop. This is a scandal that would once upon a time have ended in resignation, impeachment, and/or plenty of jail time. If they successfully bury this story, I hate to say it but there is no more rule of law in what has become the American banana republic.” See here.

    But the main way the election can be rigged is by fraudulent “voting.” It’s much easier to do this with digital scanning of votes than with old-fashioned ballot boxes.

    Dr. Naomi Wolf explains how electronic voting machines make it easier to steal elections:

    “People could steal elections in this ‘analog’ technology of paper and locked ballot boxes, of course, by destroying or hiding votes, or by bribing voters, a la Tammany Hall, or by other forms of wrongdoing, so security and chain of custody, as well as anti-corruption scrutiny, were always needed in guaranteeing accurate election counts. But there was no reason, with analog physical processing of votes, to query the tradition of the secret ballot.

    Before the digital scanning of votes, you could not hack a wooden ballot box; and you could not set an algorithm to misread a pile of paper ballots. So, at the end of the day, one way or another, you were counting physical documents.

    Those days are gone, obviously, and in many districts there are digital systems reading ballots.” See here.

    This isn’t the first time the Left has stolen an election. It happened in the 2020 presidential election too. Ron Unz offers his usual cogent analysis:

    “There does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence of widespread ballot fraud by Democratic Party forces, hardly surprising given the apocalyptic manner in which so many of their leaders had characterized the threat of a Trump reelection. After all, if they sincerely believed that a Trump victory would be catastrophic for America why would they not use every possible means, fair and foul alike, to save our country from that dire fate?

    In particular, several of the major swing-states contain large cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—that are both totally controlled by the Democratic Party and also notoriously corrupt, and various eye-witnesses have suggested that the huge anti-Trump margins they provided may have been heavily ‘padded’ to ensure the candidate’s defeat.” See here.

    In a program aired right after Biden’s pitiful State of the Union speech, the great Tucker Carlson pointed out that Biden’s “Justice” Department has already confessed that it plans to rig the election. It will do this by banning voter ID laws as “racist.” This permits an unlimited number of fake votes:

    “If Joe Biden is so good at politics, why is he losing to Donald Trump, who the rest of us were assured was a retarded racist who no normal person would vote for? But now Joe Biden is getting stomped by Donald Trump, but he’s also at the same time good at politics? Right.

    Again, they can’t win, but they’re not giving up. So what does that tell you? Well, they’re going to steal the election. We know they’re going to steal the election because they’re now saying so out loud. Here is the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of this country in Selma, Alabama, just the other day.

    [Now Carlson quotes the Attorney General, Merrick Garland:]

    “The right to vote is still under attack, and that is why the Justice Department is fighting back. That is why one of the first things I did when I came into office was to double the size of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. That is why we are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes and voter ID requirements. That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color.

    [Carlson then comments on Garland:]

    “Did you catch that? Of course, you’re a racist. That’s always the takeaway. But consider the details of what the Attorney General of the United States just said. Mail-in balloting, drop boxes, voter ID requirements. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States Government is telling you that it’s immoral, in fact racist, in fact illegal to ask people for their IDs when they vote to verify they are who they say they are. What is that? Well, no one ever talks about this, but the justification for it is that somehow people of color, Black people, don’t have state-issued IDs. Somehow they’re living in a country where you can do virtually nothing without proving your identity with a government-issued ID without government-issued IDs. They can’t fly on planes, they can’t have checking accounts, they can’t have any interaction with the government, state, local, or federal. They can’t stay in hotels. They can’t have credit cards. Because someone without a state-issued ID can’t do any of those things.

    But what’s so interesting is these same people, very much including the Attorney General and the administration he serves, is working to eliminate cash, to make this a cashless society. Have you been to a stadium event recently? No cash accepted. You have to have a credit card. In order to get a credit card you need a state-issued ID, and somehow that’s not racist. But it is racist to ask people to prove their identity when they choose the next President of the United States. That doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s a lie. It’s an easily provable lie, and anyone telling that lie is advocating for mass voter fraud, which the Attorney General is. There’s no other way to read it. So you should know that. You live in a country where the Attorney General is abetting, in fact calling for voter fraud, and that’s the only chance they have to get their guy re-elected.” See here.

    Because of absentee ballots, the voting can be spread out over a long period of time. This makes voting fraud much easier. Mollie Hemingway has done a lot of research on this topic:

    “In the 2020 presidential election, for the first time ever, partisan groups were allowed—on a widespread basis—to cross the bright red line separating government officials who administer elections from political operatives who work to win them. It is important to understand how this happened in order to prevent it in the future.

    Months after the election, Time magazine published a triumphant story of how the election was won by “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”  Written by Molly Ball, a journalist with close ties to Democratic leaders, it told a cheerful story of a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes,” the “result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”

    A major part of this “conspiracy” to “save the 2020 election” was to use COVID as a pretext to maximize absentee and early voting. This effort was enormously successful. Nearly half of voters ended up voting by mail, and another quarter voted early. It was, Ball wrote, “practically a revolution in how people vote.” Another major part was to raise an army of progressive activists to administer the election at the ground level.

    Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

    Zuckerberg’s help to Democrats is well known when it comes to censoring their political opponents in the name of preventing “misinformation.” Less well known is the fact that he directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts.

    The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization led by Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla, gave more than $400 million to nonprofit groups involved in “securing” the 2020 election. Most of those funds—colloquially called “Zuckerbucks”—were funneled through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a voter outreach organization founded by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. All three had previously worked on activism relating to election rules for the New Organizing Institute, once described by The Washington Post as “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.”

    Flush with $350 million in Zuckerbucks, the CTCL proceeded to disburse large grants to election officials and local governments across the country. These disbursements were billed publicly as “COVID-19 response grants,” ostensibly to help municipalities acquire protective gear for poll workers or otherwise help protect election officials and volunteers against the virus. In practice, relatively little money was spent for this. Here, as in other cases, COVID simply provided cover.

    According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Georgia received more than $31 million in Zuckerbucks, one of the highest amounts in the country. The three Georgia counties that received the most money spent only 1.3 percent of it on personal protective equipment. The rest was spent on salaries, laptops, vehicle rentals, attorney fees for public records requests, mail-in balloting, and other measures that allowed elections offices to hire activists to work the election. Not all Georgia counties received CTCL funding. And of those that did, Trump-voting counties received an average of $1.91 per registered voter, compared to $7.13 per registered voter in Biden-voting counties.

    The FGA looked at this funding another way, too. Trump won Georgia by more than five points in 2016. He lost it by three-tenths of a point in 2020. On average, as a share of the two-party vote, most counties moved Democratic by less than one percentage point in that time. Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties.

    Of all the 2020 battleground states, it is probably in Wisconsin where the most has been brought to light about how Zuckerbucks worked.

    CTCL distributed $6.3 million to the Wisconsin cities of Racine, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, and Kenosha—purportedly to ensure that voting could take place “in accordance with prevailing [anti-COVID] public health requirements.”

    Wisconsin law says voting is a right, but that “voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse; to prevent overzealous solicitation of absent electors who may prefer not to participate in an election.” Wisconsin law also says that elections are to be run by clerks or other government officials. But the five cities that received Zuckerbucks outsourced much of their election operation to private liberal groups, in one case so extensively that a sidelined government official quit in frustration.

    This was by design. Cities that received grants were not allowed to use the money to fund outside help unless CTCL specifically approved their plans in writing. CTCL kept tight control of how money was spent, and it had an abundance of “partners” to help with anything the cities needed.

    Some government officials were willing to do whatever CTCL recommended. “As far as I’m concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend,” Celestine Jeffreys, the chief of staff to Democratic Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, wrote in an email. CTCL not only had plenty of recommendations, but made available a “network of current and former election administrators and election experts” to scale up “your vote by mail processes” and “ensure forms, envelopes, and other materials are understood and completed correctly by voters.”

    Power the Polls, a liberal group recruiting poll workers, promised to help with ballot curing. The liberal Mikva Challenge worked to recruit high school-age poll workers. And the left-wing Brennan Center offered help with “election integrity,” including “post-election audits” and “cybersecurity.”

    The Center for Civic Design, an election administration policy organization that frequently partners with groups such as liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, designed absentee ballots and voting instructions, often working directly with an election commission to design envelopes and create advertising and targeting campaigns. The Elections Group, also linked to the Democracy Fund, provided technical assistance in handling drop boxes and conducted voter outreach. The communications director for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, an organization that advocates sweeping changes to the elections process, ran a conference call to help Green Bay develop Spanish-language radio ads and geofencing to target voters in a predefined area.

    Digital Response, a nonprofit launched in 2020, offered to “bring voters an updated elections website,” “run a website health check,” “set up communications channels,” “bring poll worker application and management online,” “track and respond to polling location wait times,” “set up voter support and email response tools,” “bring vote-by-mail applications online,” “process incoming [vote-by-mail] applications,” and help with “ballot curing process tooling and voter notification.”

    The National Vote at Home Institute was presented as a “technical assistance partner” that could “support outreach around absentee voting,” provide and oversee voting machines, consult on methods to cure absentee ballots, and even assume the duty of curing ballots.

    A few weeks after the five Wisconsin cities received their grants, CTCL emailed Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, to offer “an experienced elections staffer that could potentially embed with your staff in Milwaukee in a matter of days.” The staffer leading Wisconsin’s portion of the National Vote at Home Institute was an out-of-state Democratic activist named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein. As soon as he met with Woodall-Vogg, he asked for contacts in other cities and at the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

    Spitzer-Rubenstein would eventually take over much of Green Bay’s election planning from the official charged with running the election, Green Bay Clerk Kris Teske. This made Teske so unhappy that she took Family and Medical Leave prior to the election and quit shortly thereafter.

    Emails from Spitzer-Rubenstein show the extent to which he was managing the election process. To one government official he wrote, “By Monday, I’ll have our edits on the absentee voting instructions. We’re pushing Quickbase to get their system up and running and I’ll keep you updated. I’ll revise the planning tool to accurately reflect the process. I’ll create a flowchart for the vote-by-mail processing that we will be able to share with both inspectors and also observers.”

    Once early voting started, Woodall-Vogg would provide Spitzer-Rubenstein with daily updates on the numbers of absentee ballots returned and still outstanding in each ward­­—prized information for a political operative.

    Amazingly, Spitzer-Rubenstein even asked for direct access to the Milwaukee Election Commission’s voter database:

    “Would you or someone else on your team be able to do a screen-share so we can see the process for an export?” he wrote.

    “Do you know if WisVote has an [application programming interface] or anything similar so that it can connect with other software apps? That would be the holy grail.”

    Even for Woodall-Vogg, that was too much.

    “While I completely understand and appreciate the assistance that is trying to be provided,” she replied, “I am definitely not comfortable having a non-staff member involved in the function of our voter database, much less recording it.”

    When these emails were released in 2021, they stunned Wisconsin observers. “What exactly was the National Vote at Home Institute doing with its daily reports? Was it making sure that people were actually voting from home by going door-to-door to collect ballots from voters who had not yet turned theirs in? Was this data sharing a condition of the CTCL grant? And who was really running Milwaukee’s election?” asked Dan O’Donnell, whose election analysis appeared at Wisconsin’s conservative MacIver Institute.

    Kris Teske, the sidelined Green Bay city clerk—in whose office Wisconsin law actually places the responsibility to conduct elections—had of course seen what was happening early on. “I just don’t know where the Clerk’s Office fits in anymore,” she wrote in early July. By August, she was worried about legal exposure: “I don’t understand how people who don’t have the knowledge of the process can tell us how to manage the election,” she wrote on August 28.

    Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich simply handed over Teske’s authority to agents from outside groups and gave them leadership roles in collecting absentee ballots, fixing ballots that would otherwise be voided for failure to follow the law, and even supervising the counting of ballots. “The grant mentors would like to meet with you to discuss, further, the ballot curing process. Please let them know when you’re available,” Genrich’s chief of staff told Teske.

    Spitzer-Rubenstein explained that the National Vote at Home Institute had done the same for other cities in Wisconsin. “We have a process map that we’ve worked out with Milwaukee for their process. We can also adapt the letter we’re sending out with rejected absentee ballots along with a call script alerting voters. (We can also get people to make the calls, too, so you don’t need to worry about it.)”

    Other emails show that Spitzer-Rubenstein had keys to the central counting facility and access to all the machines before election night. His name was on contracts with the hotel hosting the ballot counting.

    Sandy Juno, who was clerk of Brown County, where Green Bay is located, later testified about the problems in a legislative hearing. “He was advising them on things. He was touching the ballots. He had access to see how the votes were counted,” Juno said of Spitzer-Rubenstein. Others testified that he was giving orders to poll workers and seemed to be the person running the election night count operation.

    “I would really like to think that when we talk about security of elections, we’re talking about more than just the security of the internet,” Juno said. “You know, it has to be security of the physical location, where you’re not giving a third party keys to where you have your election equipment.”

    Juno noted that there were irregularities in the counting, too, with no consistency between the various tables. Some had absentee ballots face-up, so anyone could see how they were marked. Poll workers were seen reviewing ballots not just to see that they’d been appropriately checked by the clerk, but “reviewing how they were marked.” And poll workers fixing ballots used the same color pens as the ones ballots had been filled out in, contrary to established procedures designed to make sure observers could differentiate between voters’ marks and poll workers’ marks.

    The plan by Democratic strategists to bring activist groups into election offices worked in part because no legislature had ever imagined that a nonprofit could take over so many election offices so easily.

    “If it can happen to Green Bay, Wisconsin, sweet little old Green Bay, Wisconsin, these people can coordinate any place,” said Janel Brandtjen, a state representative in Wisconsin.

    She was right. What happened in Green Bay happened in Democrat-run cities and counties across the country. Four hundred million Zuckerbucks were distributed with strings attached. Officials were required to work with “partner organizations” to massively expand mail-in voting and staff their election operations with partisan activists. The plan was genius. And because no one ever imagined that the election system could be privatized in this way, there were no laws to prevent it.

    “Such laws should now be a priority.” See here.

    Let’s do everything we can to publicize the steal. That way, we have a chance to prevent it.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 19:00

  • Badass 'Vigilantes' Show Up Evict Squatters At NY House Where Homeowner Arrested
    Badass ‘Vigilantes’ Show Up Evict Squatters At NY House Where Homeowner Arrested

    A pair of vigilantes showed up to a house in Queens, New York where the homeowner was recently arrested for changing the locks on her own house in order to try and evict squatters.

    On Tuesday afternoon, two unidentified men driving a black pickup truck pulled into the driveway of the Flushing home in search of the squatters.

    “We are looking to get this guy out,” one of the men told the Daily Mail. “I am here to talk to him. I want to see why he is here.”

    The owner, Adele Andaloro, 47, was in the process of selling the inherited property valued at roughly $1 million, when the squatters moved in.

    One man, who is believed to be squatting in the home, walks past the property (via the Daily Mail)

    One of the neighbors on the block, who saw what transpired, said ‘holy c**p,’ and said she had no idea that the squatter issue was causing so much backlash.

    Many of the neighbors are baffled by the ordeal – and say they want to know how the squatters gained access into the house in the first place.

    It’s disgusting,’ one person said, who mentioned that he has seen one of the squatters walking around outside.

    He added sarcastically: ‘I wish I could live rent free.’ -Daily Mail

    A woman, who is squatting inside, peers through the window to watch a confrontation

    Another neighbor told the Mail that she had seen concerning activity at the house over the past few weeks – including one of the squatters carrying a door into the house one night.

    “I actually saw the door go into the house. The guy looked at me then looked away,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

    “They are doing construction on the house all night long,” said another neighbor. “I heard a drill and saw through my window that they were drilling holes into the wall and putting up boards.”

    One of the ‘vigilantes’ goes to confront the squatters

    Andaloro’s arrest was captured on video.

    According to locals, Andaloro lived in the house with her daughter and mother. When her mother passed away several years ago, she stayed in the house and rented out the basement to an older man and his dog. After the man moved out of state, Andaloro put the house on the market – when the squatters showed up

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 18:40

  • Watch: Biden Bizarrely Wanders Off Stage Mid Event To Pull Faces At A Baby
    Watch: Biden Bizarrely Wanders Off Stage Mid Event To Pull Faces At A Baby

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Joe Biden wandered off stage during an event in Phoenix, Arizona so that he could pull funny faces at a baby.

    Biden suddenly walked off camera while his campaign manager was introducing him at a Mexican diner in front of literally dozens of people who had shown up to see him.

    When he came back, Biden announced “Well folks, I have to tell you straight up… I like you all, but I couldn’t resist that little baby.”

    He reportedly asked the mother holding the child “how old?”

    The rest of the appearance was the usual Biden vs teleprompter slur fest:

    The reason Biden was holding this Mexican Diner event is that Donald Trump leads Biden among Hispanic voters 39% to 34%, according to a  USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released in January. 

    A New York Times/Siena College Poll released in February also found Biden losing the Hispanic vote to Trump, 40% to 46%.

    Biden’s popularity among minority demographics is tanking, while Trump’s is soaring.

    *  *  *

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

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

  • Attention Gen-Zers: Baltimore City Wants To Sell $1 Homes 
    Attention Gen-Zers: Baltimore City Wants To Sell $1 Homes 

    The failed leftist mayor of Baltimore City, Brandon Scott, wants to practically give away vacant row homes to attract new residents and expand the tax base. This initiative comes as the city’s population crashes to a century-low and lawless neighborhoods are littered with vacant row homes. 

    Bloomberg reports Mayor Scott plans to offer residents more than 200 city-owned vacant properties for $1 each. However, those residents must rehab the homes and live in them. The proposal could be voted on as soon as Wednesday. 

    WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren recently attended an oversight hearing at City Hall where several council members asked Scott’s administration to postpone a vote on the measure. 

    “There are so many risks and hazards associated with these vacant properties,” resident Maurice Brock told WJZ’s Hellgren. 

    Brock said, “It’s a definite safety risk for citizens, for city employees and firefighters.”

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    Five decades of Democratic control have produced a massive exodus of the population, leaving 13,500 vacant homes across the city. Those who wish to stay anonymous but have participated in rehabbing vacant row homes in the city before, tell us the figure is much higher. 

    Bloomberg noted Scott’s plan to sell vacant homes is reminiscent of the city’s “dollar house” program from the 1970s. 

    The move to revitalize Baltimore (or at least attempt) comes as the city’s total population recently crashed to a 100-year-low, losing nearly 40% of its people since the peak of almost a million in the early 1960s. 

    Who in their right mind would buy a vacant home in an imploding city? 

    Baltimore City is a prime example that whatever Democrats touch turns to dust.

    As for Gen-Zers and millennials who have been priced out of homes – well now is your chance to buy at the rock bottom. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 18:00

  • Pace Of EV Adoption Must Quadruple To Reach Illinois' Goal
    Pace Of EV Adoption Must Quadruple To Reach Illinois’ Goal

    Authored by Mark Glennon and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

    It will take a mighty big change of fortune for the electric vehicle (EV) industry to meet Illinois’ goal of one million EVs on the road in Illinois by 2030.

    Gov. JB Pritzker repeated that target last week, but trends are pointing somewhere else.

    The hard numbers are EV registrations in Illinois, published by the Illinois Secretary of State. For the most recent 12-month period, Illinois added just 32,478 vehicles to its EV registration rolls. That’s 8,120 per quarter.

    But to reach the target of one million by 2030, that number would have to increase to about 34,000 per quarter — a four-fold increase, as shown in this chart:

    Those numbers may be generous because they assume that all registered EVs will stay on the road through 2030. More importantly, in the latest quarter, new EV registrations dropped to just 4,997, well below the average for the year of 8,120 used above to calculate the needed 4X improvement.

    The recent drop in the quarterly increase in EV registrations no doubt reflects the new reality for EVs, which was summed up in a CNBC article last week headlined, “EV euphoria is dead. Automakers are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.” From that CNBC article:

    Now the hype is dwindling, and companies are again cheering consumer choice. Automakers from Ford, General Motor, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.

    Even U.S. EV leader Tesla, which is estimated to have accounted for 55% of EV sales in the country in 2023, is bracing for what “may be a notably lower” rate of growth, CEO Elon Musk said in late January.

    The gap between Illinois’ target and the EV adoption rate is roughly consistent with the numbers at a national scale, where EV sales need to rise 500 percent by 2032 to hit federal emissions targets.

    EV optimists point to the expectation of lower priced vehicles coming to showrooms soon and more charging stations coming online, shortages of which have impaired EV demand. They also point to consistent year-over-year improvement in EV sales. That may be true, but a 4X jump in the rate of EV adoption looks questionable at best, and record sales are not enough. To make the EV industry financially viable, far more sales are needed than at the current pace.

    So far, Illinois seems unconcerned, and more taxpayer money will go into the effort. Last week, the Illinois Department of Transportation announced round one of the Illinois National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, which will provide up to $50 million for the construction of 46 charging stations across the state.

    Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been bet on EVs, making it a historic chapter in government central planning. So far, the numbers look bad.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/20/2024 – 17:40

  • $500 Per Hour Tutors Are Back In Vogue Now That Colleges Have Decided SATs Are, In Fact, A Necessity
    $500 Per Hour Tutors Are Back In Vogue Now That Colleges Have Decided SATs Are, In Fact, A Necessity

    It was just about a month ago we noted that SATs were once again being reconsidered by colleges who had reduced or eliminated their requirement due to (pick one: diversity, racism, climate change, equity, gender affirmation). 

    As a result of the comeback, Bloomberg noted this week that tutors, sometimes costing $500 per hour, are all of a sudden back in vogue. 

    Bloomberg wrote that demand for SAT tutoring and prep centers is surging as several top colleges reintroduce mandatory SATs, and students adapt to the SAT’s new digital format.

    Kaplan reported a significant enrollment increase, attributed to digital testing and the reinstatement of testing requirements by institutions and three Ivy League schools—Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown—have reinstated mandatory SATs, alongside MIT and the University of Texas at Austin. This shift has left many students scrambling for preparation before early application deadlines.

    Companies like The Princeton Review have also seen a spike in interest for prep services.

    Parents Bloomberg profiled are once again investing in tutoring services for their children to improve their chances of success. The debate over standardized testing’s fairness persists however, with critics arguing it favors wealthier students who can afford extensive prep. But those winning the argument still claims that standardized tests provide valuable benchmarks for admissions, potentially aiding in diversifying the applicant pool.

    We noted last month in a piece from American Greatness, that according to Axios, multiple colleges used the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to weaken the importance of SAT and ACT test scores in most student applications. But in recent weeks, several schools have reversed course; Yale is considering repealing its prior policy of making SAT/ACT requirements optional, with Dartmouth already reinstating the requirements earlier this month. MIT reversed a similar policy back in 2022.

    Other schools that have eliminated SAT/ACT requirements include Harvard and Columbia. Harvard, along with Cornell and Princeton, have extended their policy of making the scores optional, while Columbia’s policy remains permanent.

    One of the motivating factors behind the reversal is ongoing research showing a clear correlation between students’ standardized test scores, and their subsequent academic performance and graduation rates in college. Some schools had previously opposed the test requirements for reasons of “diversity,” baselessly accusing the tests of being “racist” and against minority students.

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

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