• The Censorship Industrial Complex Exposes The Kleptocracy's True Intentions
  The Censorship Industrial Complex Exposes The Kleptocracy’s True Intentions

  Authored by Mitch Nemeth via The Mises Institute,

  In the past decade, the growth of the Internet and social media has brought with it a dramatic uptick in populist sentiment.

  Legacy institutions have declared war against populism, referring to its claims as “misinformation” or “disinformation” and calling on the government or government-adjacent actors (herein referred to as “the censors”) to clamp down on such claims as they spread across the Internet like wildfire.

  The censors rarely decline these opportunities to silence criticism, justifying the censorship as a matter of “national security.”

  More than other Western nations, the United States champions freedom of speech.

  But it has frequently failed in its aspirations, beginning in 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Acts.

  There are countless examples since then of the US failing to adhere to its core value system, too many to recount in one brief article.

  

  The Internet Lets Claims Spread Like Wildfire

  Beginning with the Arab Spring in 2010, the extent to which social media could foster grassroots campaigns against perceived tyranny or injustice became increasingly apparent. Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst, has commented on such phenomena at length in his book, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millenium.

  The nation-state correctly perceives in revolutions a threat to its existing foundations and deploys various methods to crush dissent. Western nations do not typically deploy the military against the masses or declare martial law. The US has taken a different but directionally similar approach, whereby law enforcement and intelligence agencies form cozy partnerships with private actors, such as social media platforms, financial institutions, and other digital intermediaries.

  After the Great Recession, populist movements, like Occupy Wall Street on the Left and the Tea Party movement on the Right, garnered dramatic support across Western nations. As with most populist movements, a significant number of the activists embraced ideas branded as “conspiracy theories” by the established order. Rather than examining these allegations, the established order preferred to label the entire movement “crazy” or “conspiratorial.”

  Since the movements began, there has been a significant convergence of Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party thought leaders. It is no coincidence that, despite their different politial affiliations, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger often sound like Tucker Carlson, Dan Bongino, and Donald Trump when it comes to criticizing the government and legacy institutions.

  Each of these men has been personally targeted by the censorship industrial complex.

  The Twitter Files Expose the Censorship Racket

  On March 9, 2023, Michael Shellenberger delivered his testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which he titled “The Censorship Industrial Complex.” In sixty-eight pages, Michael Shellenberger outlines how “Americans taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship-industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite.” He also discusses how the Twitter Files documents “have revealed a large and growing network of government agencies, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations that are actively censoring Americans citizens, often without their knowledge.”

  In his testimony, Shellenberger aptly describes the censorship industrial complex as “a network of ideologically-aligned government, NGO, and academic institutions that discovered over the last few years the power of censorship to protect their own interests against the volatility and risks of the democratic process.” This contention strongly rebuts the ridiculous claim made by corporate media outlets that censorship is often necessary to “protect our democracy.” For legacy institutions, an apparent devotion to democracy is often little more than a cover for kleptocracy, something Fred Siegel touches on in The Revolt against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class.

  On August 7, 2023, Michael Shellenberger’s Substack exposed the censorship racket between Facebook executives and the White House. The authors note that “newly released internal emails show that Facebook executives felt pressure to comply with White House demands in order to resolve a European Union ban on the social media company’s ability to transfer the data of European users to its servers in the United States.” In the past few years, the European Union has taken a heavy-handed regulatory approach toward US-based social media platforms. These platforms relied on the US to advocate for them during the negotiation of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Without a clear, negotiated framework, these firms would feel significant financial pressure. As the authors of the Substack article note, “The series of events suggests a quid pro quo. Facebook would bow to White House requests for censorship in exchange for its help with the European Union.”

  In the past decade, the censorship industrial complex has gained considerable momentum and institutional support. Elite support for censorship is so entrenched that the Harvard Kennedy School published a commentary in September 2022 titled, “Mis- and disinformation studies are too big to fail.” While Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has dimmed opportunities for the censorship industrial complex, there is still much to be done.

  In February 2021, an article in Time described a “shadow campaign” that manipulated the 2020 election in the legacy institutions’ preferred direction.

  If activists are to dismantle the censorship industrial complex, they must do more than expose the machinery—they must win elections.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/24/2023 – 00:05

• Alzheimer's, Now A Leading Cause Of Death In US, Is Becoming More Prevalent
  Alzheimer’s, Now A Leading Cause Of Death In US, Is Becoming More Prevalent

  Alzheimer’s disease is now one of the leading causes of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  Alzheimer’s is a degenerative and incurable brain disease that predominantly affects older people.

  Early symptoms include memory loss and lapses in judgment, but at a later stage these can progress to problems with a wider range of functions too, such as balance, breathing and digestion.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, while heart disease, cancer and Covid-19 claimed by far the highest numbers of lives in 2021 (which was the latest available data), Alzheimer’s disease ranked in a high seventh place with 119,399 deaths that year, equating to 31 people per 100,000 population.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The rate of people dying of Alzheimer’s disease in the United States more than doubled between the years 2000 and 2019, according to the Alzheimer’s Association’s latest report.

  Where an average of 17.6 people per 100,000 died from the form of dementia at the turn of the millennium, the figure had climbed to 37 per 100,000 people nearly two decades later.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to the Alzheimer’s Association, this is likely the result of an aging population, since age is the predominant risk factor for Alzheimer’s dementia. However, they note, it could also reflect a rise in the number of formal diagnoses of the disease or even in the number of physicians who are reporting Alzheimer’s as a cause of death. 

  The charity’s analysts forecast that by 2025, the number of people aged 65+ with Alzheimer’s dementia in the U.S. could reach 7.2 million, and up to 13.8 million by 2060, if there were to be no medical breakthroughs in that time to prevent, slow or cure the disease.

  On that note, pharmaceutical companies have a number of drugs in development, targeting different symptoms, from inflammation to synaptic plasticity/neuroprotection pathways.

  According to AgingCare, neurological damage and muscle weakness can lead to patients finding it difficult to manage even simple movements such as swallowing food without assistance. This is the most common cause of death among Alzheimer’s patients, since it can result in the inhalation of food or liquids to the lungs, which in turn can lead to pneumonia, since it more difficult to fight off bacterial infections.

  The Alzheimer’s Association stresses the importance of seeing a doctor when someone develops Alzheimer’s symptoms. This is because an early diagnosis allows for treatment from earlier on, which may be able to lessen symptoms for a limited time as well as to make more time for people to plan for the future.

  God bless nana.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 23:30

• Robots From China Don't Strike
  Robots From China Don’t Strike

  Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

  The United Auto Workers (UAW) went on strike on Sept. 15. The strike affected the “big three” in Detroit—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, maker of the Jeep. The union wants to increase average labor costs from $65 per hour, including benefits, which is already above market rates. Nonunionized Tesla, for example, pays “just” $45 per hour in labor, considering the cost of benefits.

  

  The UAW’s demands would roughly double labor costs and, according to management, make the companies unviable. Where will the workers go when the automakers go bankrupt, further mechanize their assembly lines, or move yet more production to China?

  Many workers in these companies who aren’t on strike are already getting fired. Striking unions attempt to inflict maximum pain on their own companies with as little effort and expenditure as possible. The companies are forced to let go of misguided workers, who they can’t keep busy because other misguided workers on whom they depend are striking. All the strikers and fired UAW workers are getting paid from union funds that came from dues imposed on workers, whether they like it or not. They’re getting paid by the union to halt production.

  This ludicrous practice introduces massive inefficiencies into U.S. manufacturing, yet Americans over the decades have gotten used to the deadweight it attaches to the economy.

  The supply chain chaos of the latest strike is purposefully engineered by the UAW, which keeps management guessing which factory will close next. Downstream and upstream workers, including from hundreds of other companies, depend on a reliable supply chain and are made redundant by the UAW’s actions as soon as the factory can’t produce vehicles and supply them to paying customers.

  Shareholders in these companies have felt more pain than strikers in recent months, with shares of Stellantis falling by more than 7 percent and shares of Ford and GM falling by more than 20 percent. Compare that to rising inflation, which is less and hits the pocketbooks of both shareholders and workers.

  Yet union bosses want to grab even more value from shareholders in a manner that’s ultimately a small win and big loss for not only the workers and companies, respectively, but also for the entire economy. What a tiny percentage of U.S. unionized auto workers hope to gain in increased wages, shareholders lose in multiples, and Americans as a whole lose in our market’s competitiveness.

  Investors prefer to invest in countries where they aren’t compelled to share profits when times are good. That’s why investors risk their capital. With no significant upside, investors will keep their money in lower-profit but more reliable investments such as bonds, a preference that, if widespread, would impoverish not only the auto industry but all of the American industry. It’s an inefficient form of investing and removes the critical element to the economic growth of risk-takers as decision-makers with skin in the game.

  Shareholders aren’t all billionaires. In fact, 158 million Americans own shares in companies—about three-quarters of all adults. As should be clear from those numbers, most shareholders are regular folks, and those regular folks are getting fleeced by the union (full disclosure: This author is a regular guy who holds GM shares).

  The problem isn’t just with the unions. The problem is with our politicians, who can’t stand up to the unions, or they get voted out of office. That’s why both Republicans and Democrats avoid angering unions, and why they silently endure strikes that debilitate not only the affected companies but the entire economy.

  

  A general view of GMC Hummer EVs is pictured at General Motors’ Factory ZERO electric vehicle assembly plant in Detroit on Nov. 17, 2021. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

  The more liberal a country is toward strikers, the more illiberal its economy. Strikers have the power to shut down free markets of labor and capital, which is where they get their power to raise wages beyond what the market bears. That power of shutting down markets, like the power of monopolies, is inherently illiberal. It impinges on the freedom of labor and capital to operate in a manner that maximizes economic efficiency and growth.

  True liberals should support free markets, including labor markets, as do true conservatives. Yet both liberal and conservative politicians in the United States avoid criticizing unions. That’s a historical weakness in the American economy that too few are working to fix. It’s the historical weakness that leads our corporations to deindustrialize the United States in favor of nonunionized China and mechanize assembly lines with robots that can increasingly be bought in China.

  American unions are self-defeating because they lack principles beyond their driving cause, which is more money for themselves in the short term, without regard for long-term consequences and negative externalities. As one honest 20-year-old striker told The Washington Post, “I’m just here for the money.”

  Fortunately, only about 10 percent of American workers are unionized, which is low for OECD countries. U.S. unionization rates have fallen almost every year since the 1950s, when it reached a peak of 35 percent.

  Unfortunately, the concentration of wealth appears to be negatively correlated with unionization. Higher rates of unionization cause a more equal distribution of wealth in the United States, but at the cost of lower growth.

  A more equitable distribution of wealth leads to positives from an American values perspective, such as homeownership, a more vibrant small business sector, broader ownership of stocks and bonds, and more political stability. But there are better ways to achieve this than through damaging strikes, for example, through a combination of right-to-work laws and progressive taxation. The United States already has such taxation, so there’s no need for the supply chain dislocations that result from overly aggressive union leaders.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 22:55

• Chicago's Trillion-Dollar Financial Engine At Risk Of Leaving Over $800 Million Tax Proposal
  Chicago’s Trillion-Dollar Financial Engine At Risk Of Leaving Over $800 Million Tax Proposal

  As the winds whip through the canyons of Chicago’s skyscrapers, a storm is brewing between the city’s derivatives powerhouses like DRW, IMC, CME, and Cboe, and a new mayoral administration desperate to fill its half-a-billion-dollar budget chasm, Bloomberg reports.

  

  The city’s financial giants, traditionally known as the fulcrum of the global derivatives market, have been greasing the gears of global trade for decades in what’s now a $75 billion industry. Now, they find themselves in the crosshairs of an $800 million tax proposal from Mayor Brandon Johnson. The plan? levy every financial transaction. The response? Chicago’s financial elite are rattled – particularly as crime rates surge.

  Now, a quiet mobilization is underway. These giants of trade, who typically spend their days outfoxing each other in the markets, are now colluding to push back against what they see as punitive policies. This new front sees them sharing data to amplify their value proposition, making it crystal clear to policymakers the vast economic benefits they bring to Chicago.

  “We don’t want to leave… But we cannot be disadvantaged in the world’s most competitive markets,” said Ed Tilly, the CEO of Cboe Global Markets.

  

  Chicago’s political elite, meanwhile, are totally screwed. With projections showing a budget deficit of $538 million for next year and increasing costs driven by a cocktail of inflation and rising numbers of destitute asylum seekers, the city’s officials are scouring for revenue sources. And what better place to look than the gilded halls of the derivatives industry? Which can just… move.

  The finance industry has also been a boon for commercial real estste.

  While corporate downsizing since the pandemic has left parts of downtown hollowed out, 60% of the trading companies that have signed leases since 2020 have expanded their footprint in the city, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

  The Chicago firms that are sharing information in an informal group include Cboe, market makers Optiver Holding and IMC Trading, as well as DRW Holdings, best known for high-frequency trading. They want Johnson to know that the economic benefits could be at risk if rampant crime makes it too hard to recruit talent or a transaction levy puts the industry at a disadvantage to peers including Intercontinental Exchange Inc. in Atlanta and Nasdaq in New York.  -Bloomberg

  That said, Mayor Johnson has been hesitant to commit to the transaction tax, signaling an openness to discussions. Such a levy would have to get the nod from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who seems wary of the mass exodus it could precipitate. Chicago’s recent history is a testament to this, as finance titan Ken Griffin relocated his Citadel business to Miami last year, pointing at the city’s crime and fiscal woes.

  

  Johnson also has to try and live up to his campaign promises, such as not raising property taxes. These have left him with few tools in his fiscal toolbox. While talk of taxing the financial behemoths has gained traction among the public, the potential 800% spike in trading costs associated with the transaction tax has spooked the derivatives industry.

  According to Ralph M. Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, “Chicago can’t continue with its current revenue stream.“

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 22:20

• Defunct 'Disinformation Governance Board' Sought To Censor Opposing Views On Racial Justice, Afghan Withdrawal, & Other Political Subjects
  Defunct ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Sought To Censor Opposing Views On Racial Justice, Afghan Withdrawal, & Other Political Subjects

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  We previously discussed the defunct Disinformation Governance Board and its controversial head Nina Jankowicz. After the outcry over the program, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas finally relented and disbanded the board while insisting that it was never about censoring opposing views.

  Jankowicz has sued over the portrayal of her views.

  Now, Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) has exposed just how broad the scope of the censorship efforts were under the board in combatting “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (MDM).”

  This range of authority in what the agency called the “MDM space,” included targeting views on racial justice and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

  

  New documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests show that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argued that the agency could regulate speech related to “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine” as well as “irregular immigration.”

  Those subjects stretch across much of the “space” used for political speech in the last few years.

  Notably, within DHS, Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” I testified earlier on this effort.

  So DHS asserted the authority to target viewpoints on racial justice, Ukraine, and other political subjects, including views based on fact but viewed as misleading in context.

  What is also troubling is the continued effort to conceal these censorship activities. Homeland redacted much of this information on a now defunct board under FOIA Exemption 7(E), which protects “techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations.” That claim is itself chilling.

  After the demise of the board, National Public Radio ran an interview entitled “How DHS’s disinformation board fell victim to misinformation.”

  As the title suggests, NPR just repeated the view of Jankowicz despite the objections of many of us in the free speech community. Jankowicz insisted “we weren’t going to be doing anything related to policing speech. It was an internal coordinating mechanism to make sure that we were doing that work efficiently.” Yet, what were the criminal investigations, prosecutions, and enforcement efforts now being claimed as connected to this work?

  Recently, a court found that the Biden Administration’s censorship efforts constituted “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Those words by Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty are part of a 155-page opinion granting a temporary injunction, requested by Louisiana and Missouri, to prevent White House officials from meeting with tech companies about social media censorship.

  Yet, Democrats have gone all in on censorship, blacklisting, and even red-baiting efforts.  The July 4 decision came six months after I testified before Congress that the Biden administration used social media companies for “censorship by surrogate.” Despite furious attacks by congressional Democrats in that and later hearings, a court found that the evidence overwhelmingly shows systematic violation of the First Amendment by the Biden administration.

  Now we have a glimpse into the chilling scope of the Homeland Security’s efforts to target opposing viewpoints.  From racial justice to Covid to Ukraine, these subjects involve core political speech. Yet, the Biden Administration felt that it had the right to monitor and combat opposing views in these areas.

  In the first censorship hearing, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) criticized me for offering “legal opinions” without working at Twitter. I later noted that it was like saying a witness should not discuss the contents of the “Pentagon Papers” unless he or she worked at the Pentagon. Wasserman Schultz tried to portray the Twitter Files allegations as mere opinions; she cut me off when I tried to explain that the Twitter Files contents — like those of the Pentagon Papers — are “facts,” while the implication of those facts are opinions.

  Now there are additional facts showing the massive scope and effort targeting opposing viewpoints. Yet, Democratic members continue to oppose further investigation into these efforts. More importantly, the Biden Administration appears to be using every means to conceal the scope of its efforts. Why? The public should know the range of subjects and claimed authority of these government programs.

  This controversy goes to the very core of our constitutional values in protecting free speech. The effort to conceal these efforts and claims reflects the unease of the Biden Administration is telling the public what it has been doing secretly in its name.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 21:45

• Liberal, Conservative Dating Apps Explode In Popularity
  Liberal, Conservative Dating Apps Explode In Popularity

  After the better half of the last decade polarized the country to the extreme, politically oriented dating apps are on the rise.

  

  On the left, those with a penchant for turtleneck sweaters, hatred of orange presidents and a lottery of genders can check out Colorado-based TruuBlue, which matches social justice progressives.

  On the right, those who love long shoots at the range, not murdering unborn children, and woke-free zones can check out The Right Stuff.

  TruuBlue, launched by Boulder based tech entrepreneur Dennis Hefter, launched a preliminary enrollment period earlier this month with a $500,000 injection from private investors.

  “I don’t think you need to be a Democrat to be on TruuBlue, but you need to be a progressive,” the 61-year-old Hefter told the Washington Times, who added “We support all genders, sexualities and gender pronouns.”

  “I think we’re going to get a ton of progressive college kids,” Hefter continued. “They’ll come here because they’re fervent about their beliefs and don’t want to waste time dating people who don’t share their values.”

  Once TruuBlue hits 5,000 downloads, it will start matching users next month based on their political values and ranked preferences on six social justice causes: “climate change, gun control, abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigration laws and universal health care.”

  The Right Stuff – which landed a $1.5 million investment from Billionaire Peter Thiel, has marketed itself over the past year to God-fearing conservatives who value heterosexual marriage, family, and children.

  Launched in September 2022, The Right Stuff has had more than 150,000 downloads and is averaging 43,000 monthly active users, said John McEntee, the app’s co-founder and a former presidential aide to Donald Trump. He said 51% of active users are women. -Washington Times

  “Conservative daters are looking to date with intention,” said McEntee. “We have six couples [that we know of] getting married from the app, with the first wedding being this month.”

  The wait is finally over! pic.twitter.com/8POlHDRyYS

  — The Right Stuff (@daterightstuff) September 30, 2022

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

  On launch day in 2022, The Right Stuff had 7,000 app downloads, 6,000 the second day, and 33,000 in the first month.

  Though ideologically opposed, both Hefter and McEntee harbor a mutual sentiment. They believe the increasing political polarization in America can be a catalyst for niche dating apps’ success.

  But as online dating experiences an upsurge, thanks in part to pandemic lockdowns, some industry experts have questioned these new entrants. Amber Brooks of DatingNews.com, warns that while the notion of ideologically-aligned dating apps might be tempting, their practical utility often falls short, especially outside metropolitan areas. She highlights past ventures like BernieSingles and TrumpSingles, which dwindled over time.

  Brooks also noted that many apps, such as Tinder, Bumble and Match.com allow users to filter by politics and religion.

  That said, a February survey from American Perspectives found that political affiliation is the fourth-highest dating priority after children, smoking and religion.

  That finding builds on several earlier surveys:

  ⦁ The American Family Survey from BYU/Deseret News found that just 21% of marriages were politically mixed in 2020. Only 3.6% were between Democrats and Republicans, Wendy Wang reported in an analysis for the Institute of Family Studies.

  ⦁ The Pew Research Center reported in 2020 that 71% of single Democrats said they probably or definitely would not be in a serious relationship with a Trump voter.

  ⦁ Pew reported that the perceived importance of political affiliations in dating profiles rose from 40% of current or recent online daters in 2019 to 53% in 2022, led by a surge of 16 percentage points among Democrats.

  Which begs the question – when’s that national divorce?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 21:10

• A Time Capsule From The 1930s: What's Different Now
  A Time Capsule From The 1930s: What’s Different Now

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  If we compare health and endurance, well-being, security, general attitudes, family and community ties and values, we would conclude that it is we who are impoverished.

  We’re taking care of my 92-year old mother-in-law here at home. She has the usual aches and pains and infirmities of advanced age but her mind and memory are still sharp. Her memories of her childhood are like a time capsule from the 1930s.

  

  My mom-in-law has always lived in the same general community here in Hawaii. She’s never lived more than about 10 miles from the house where she was born (long since torn down) in 1931. Listening to her memories (and asking for more details) is to be transported back to the 1930s, an era of widespread poverty unrelated to the Great Depression. Many people were poor before the Depression. They were working hard but their incomes were low.

  Prior to the tourist boom initiated by statehood and affordable airfare, Hawaii’s economy was classically colonial: large plantations owned by a handful of wealthy families and/or corporations (known as The Big Five) employed thousands of laborers to raise and harvest sugar cane and pineapple. Pearl Harbor, Hickam air base and Schofield Barracks were large military bases on Oahu. Travel between islands was expensive (ferries) and each island was largely self-sufficient.

  Even taking a bus for the 12-mile ride to the island’s sole city was a rare luxury, an excursion that occurred a few times a year.

  Plantation workers were not yet unionized in the 1930s, and wages were around $20 a month for backbreaking field labor–work performed by both men and women. Typical of first and second-generation immigrant communities of the time, families were generally large. Six or seven children was common and nine or ten children per family was not uncommon. Many families lived in modest plantation-provided camps of two bedroom houses.

  Gardens were not a hobby, they were an essential source of food to feed a table of hungry kids and adults. Candy, snacks, sodas, etc. were treats rserved for special occasions and holidays. Kids usually went barefoot because shoes were outside the household’s limited budget.

  Staples were bought at the company store (or one of the few privately owned groceries) on credit and paid off when the plantation paid wages.

  Credit issued by banks was unknown. Neighborhoods (kumiai) might pool a few dollars from each family every year and offer the sum to the highest secret bidder or by lottery. Those households that scraped up enough to open a small business often worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week (or equivalent: 14 hours 6 days a week).

  Neighbors helped with births and deaths.

  Since no one could even dream of owning a car, transport was limited. Children and adults walked or biked miles to school or work. Many sole proprietors made a living delivering vegetables, meat and fish around the neighborhoods. (This distribution system is still present in rural France where my brother and sister-in-law lived for many years). Each vendor would arrive on a set day / time and housewives could gather to buy from the proprietor’s jitney or truck. Children could eye the few candies longingly, and if they were lucky, a few pennies would be given to them to buy a candy.

  Locally baked bread was delivered by boys. Milk was delivered by small local dairies.

  Nostalgia is a powerful force, but I don’t think we can dismiss the general happiness of my Mom-in-law’s childhood as airbrushed impoverishment. The poverty seems obvious to us now, but at the time it was normal life. Everyone was in the same general socio-economic class. The plantation manager lived in a mansion with servants, but those with wealth were few and far between. In other words, wealth and income inequality was extreme but the class structure was flat: the 99% had very similar incomes and opportunities–both were limited.

  Employment was stable, community ties and values were strong without anyone even noticing, and everyone had enough to eat (though not as much as they might have wanted, of course).

  This secure plantation structure of work and community was still firmly in place in 1969-1970 when I lived on the pineapple plantation of Lanai (and picked pineapple with my high school classmates in the summer), and so I was fortunate to experience it first-hand. My Lanai classmates speak fondly and with a sense of loss when they recall their youth. Life was secure and protected, and with unionization of the workforce, the wages sufficient enough for frugal households to save enough to send their children to college off-island.

  I can personally attest that fond memories of 1970s plantation life are not distorted by nostalgia. These memories are accurate recollections of a far more secure, safe and nourishing place and time.

  Compared to today, the typical 1930s diet was locally grown / raised and therefore rich in micro-nutrients. Grains such as rice and flour came from afar, but other than canned fish and similar goods, food was local and fresh. Little if any was wasted.

  People typically worked physically demanding jobs that burned a lot of calories.

  There are many people 90+ years of age in our neighborhood. My Mom-in-law’s brother–like many of the men in this age bracket, he was a World War II veteran of the famed 442nd unit–died last year at 96, despite smoking a half-pack of cigarettes daily until the end. A neighbor/friend just passed away at 99 (he was also a 442nd veteran). Our neighbor (cared for by her daughter and son-in-law, just like us) just turned 100. These people are generally healthy and active until the end of their lives.

  If we look for causal factors in their advanced age and generally good health, we cannot ignore the high-quality, near-zero-processed foods diets of their youth and their strong foundations in community ties and values.

  If we compare the financial and material wealth most enjoy today with the limited income and assets of the pre-war era, we would conclude they lived in extreme poverty and their lives must have been wretched as a consequence.

  But if we compare health and endurance, well-being, security, general attitudes, family and community ties and values, we would conclude that it is we who are impoverished and it was their lives that were rich in these essentials of human life.

  The world has changed since the 1930s, of course. Materially, our wealth and options of what to do with our lives are off the charts compared to the 1930s. But if we look at health, security, well-being, community ties, social cohesion and civic virtue, our era seems insecure, disordered and deranging.

  The irony is that those who have grown weary of our divisive, rage-inducing socio-economic system yearn for all that’s been lost in the rise to material wealth and opportunities to spend that wealth. Those who grasp the emptiness of spectacle and material wealth and who have the means to do so are seeking the few enclaves that still have a few shreds of community and social cohesion left.

  These enclaves then get listed on “best small towns in America” or “best places in the world to retire” and the resulting influx of wealthy outsiders destroys the last remaining shreds of what everyone came for.

  I recently harvested some of our homegrown green tomatoes, and my Mom-in-law gave me a handwritten recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes from her collection. The first ingredient was “two tablespoons of bacon drippings.” Um, okay, if we were all working 10-hour days hauling 80-pound loads of sugar cane on our backs, no problem, but we’re a household of three seniors, 69, 70 and 92. I think we’ll substitute two teaspoons of olive oil for the bacon drippings…

  *  *  *

  My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

  Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 20:35

• American Dream Megamall Sees Losses Quadruple To $245 Million
  American Dream Megamall Sees Losses Quadruple To $245 Million

  Well if you consider the “American dream” nowadays to be spending money you don’t have while racking up debt, the American Dream megamall outside of New York City (in NJ) might be aptly named after all. 

  The massive shopping destination inside of the Meadowlands saw its losses quadruple last year, according to the New York Post, sending the facility a stunning $245 million into the red.

  The facility is having trouble attracting tenants and is watching customer foot traffic slow, according to the report. Its expenses and debt, as we have documented here on Zero Hedge over the last 2 years, have been burdensome. 

  The megamall had probably the worst “grand opening” timeline in history, welcoming customers for the first time just five months before the Covid pandemic locked down consumers and ensured the failure of many businesses who couldn’t adapt.

  

  Beyond pandemic-induced closures and building setbacks, the shopping complex has been hit by a series of unexpected incidents, like the collapse of a decorative helicopter model into a pool full of kids last February. Then, in December, an Air National Guard member tragically died in a snowboarding mishap at Big Snow American Dream.

  A preliminary financial report indicates that the mall’s operating costs soared to a staggering $428 million in 2022, nearly double the previous year’s $232 million, the Post noted in its writeup. 

  Separate from operating costs, the mall also incurred $350.3 million in non-operational expenditures, such as debt interest and restructuring fees, according to documents submitted to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA database. Financial liabilities, including debt repayments, reached $189 million in 2022.

  We have previously written about the American Dream mall, writing back in February 2022 that the megamall had just $820 in its reserve account after making a massive $9.3 million interest payment.

  That should have been the first sign things weren’t going as planned…

  We noted in summer of 2021 that the mall was drowning in debt. We wrote that the mall saw its opening delayed more than once and suffered from the extremely unfortunate timing of the pandemic. 

  Owners the Ghermezian family were having trouble preventing the mall from “hemorrhaging cash”, according to Bloomberg at the time, who also noted that the family had already hired advisors to help restructure the project’s $3 billion in debt.

  

  Lenders for the project, including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Soros Fund Management, stood to face losses on about $1.7 billion in construction loans, we noted last summer. The project was carrying about $1.1 billion in municipal debt at the time.

  Neil Shapiro, a New York real estate attorney, said of the project last year: “It’s been like watching a train wreck that goes on forever. There aren’t a lot of projects that lose at least $3 billion that we’re still talking about as projects.”

  The financial difficulties plaguing the mall serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-leveraging that we believe we are going to see over and over again as the Fed maintains its tight grip on the gears of the economy, via its “higher for longer” stance. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 20:00

• Air Force General Defends Memo That Predicted War With China By 2025
  Air Force General Defends Memo That Predicted War With China By 2025

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The four-star general in charge of the US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command has defended a memo he sent to his officers earlier this year where he predicted the US would be at war with China in 2025.

  “My assessment is that war is not inevitable, but the readiness I’m driving with that timeline is absolutely essential to deterrence and absolutely essential to the decisive victory,” Gen. Mike Minihan said last week when asked about his prediction, according to Defense One.

  

  “There needs to be tension on readiness, more than just ‘be ready tonight.’ You need to have readiness that drives urgency. The urgency and the action are paramount,” he added.

  Minihan noted that the memo, dated February 1, included the words: “I hope I am wrong.” But the memo to his officers ordered them to be prepared for a fight with China, and while the Pentagon distanced itself from Minihan’s timeline, the US is openly preparing for a direct war with China by building up its forces in the Asia Pacific and increasing military support for Taiwan.

  Minihan’s prediction is that the war would be sparked over a Chinese move on Taiwan:

  “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. [Chinese President Xi Jinping] secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025,” the memo reads.

  The memo included several orders for Air Mobility Command personnel, including getting their personal affairs in order.

  “All AMC personnel will consider their personal affairs and whether a visit should be scheduled with their servicing base legal office to ensure they are legally ready and prepared,” Minihan wrote.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 19:25

• "Privacy Disasters On Wheels": AOC Blasts NYC Mayor Adams' New Robo-Subway Crime-Fighting Cop
  “Privacy Disasters On Wheels”: AOC Blasts NYC Mayor Adams’ New Robo-Subway Crime-Fighting Cop

  On Friday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a Knightscope K5 Security Robot that will be deployed in the crime-ridden Times Square Subway Station.

  “$9 an hour… $9 an hour. I know you wanted to write how we’re wasting money, but I’m sorry I’m taking your thunder away. We’re leasing at $9 an hour,” Adams said at the robot’s big reveal press conference. 

  

  Somehow, the mayor and fellow Democrats believe this robot will deter criminals who have only been emboldened by failed social justice policies over the years. 

  From afar, the fully autonomous security robot looks like a giant trash can on wheels. It’s armed with cameras and will record video but not audio.

  

  The robot comes as the mayor has slashed budgets citywide by 5% amid worsening financial conditions in the metro area, fueled by outflows of residents and businesses and a migrant crisis sparked by the Biden administration’s disastrous open southern border policies. 

  “This is below minimum wage,” Adams said, adding, “No bathroom breaks, no meal breaks.”

  However, not everyone was thrilled about the robot, and there seems to be some in-fighting among Democrats in the metro area. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) posted on X, “NYC schools got defunded to pay for these privacy disasters on wheels.” 

  NYC schools got defunded to pay for these privacy disasters on wheels https://t.co/jioP61xBbU

  — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 22, 2023

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

  If the answer by Democrats is to deploy robots to fight crime after they pushed failed social justice reform, then this party is in real trouble.

  

  They have no credible solutions to reverse the tidal wave of crime they help spark, and voters will soon catch on to this at the ballot box. 
   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 18:50

• California Democrats Could Guarantee Trump 2024 Win
  California Democrats Could Guarantee Trump 2024 Win

  Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

  This is so funny. California Democrats are hatching a plot to keep former President Donald Trump off the state’s ballot next year.

  But it could backfire and guarantee he wins.

  

  Politico headlined, “California Dems consider unique approach to getting Trump off ballot: California lawmakers are urging AG Bonta to expedite court action against former president.”

  The story:

  “Nine California lawmakers wrote a letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta over the weekend, arguing that Trump isn’t eligible to be on the ballot for inciting an insurrection when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

  “The move, which comes amid several lawsuits to keep Trump off state ballots across the country, is unique because Bonta could use his standing as California’s top law enforcement officer to expedite a state court ruling on the matter. Should the effort succeed, California could be the first state to bump Trump off its ballot, even if the ruling is ultimately overturned.”

  This is being debated around the country based on the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, which reads (please excuse a couple of medium-length quotes for context):

  “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

  Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021 supposedly made him the leader of an “insurrection.”

  The best argument against that was advanced by former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey in the Wall Street Journal:

  “The use of the term ‘officer of the United States’ in other constitutional provisions shows that it refers only to appointed officials, not to elected ones. In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that ‘unless a person in the service of the government … holds his place by virtue of an appointment … he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.’ Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): ‘The people do not vote for the “Officers of the United States.”’”

  

  The California State Capitol building in Sacramento, Calif., on April 18, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  What if They Can Disqualify Trump?

  Now, here’s where it gets interesting.

  Hypothetically, what if Mr. Mukasey’s argument doesn’t hold up in the courts?

  Then California and other states’ attorneys general and governors, or lawsuits by political groups, could throw Mr. Trump off the ballot.

  Especially critical would be the swing states with Democratic governors: Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. Or Fulton County (Atlanta) District Attorney Fani Willis, already prosecuting Trump for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election, could do it.

  But then, Republicans could do it in their swing states, throwing President Joe Biden off the ballot.

  They could say his alleged bribes from Communist China disqualify him under the 14th amendment’s Section 3 wording for having “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

  Republicans governors invoking that clause could include Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Joe Lombardo of Nevada, and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.

  It would be what in military parlance is called Mutual Assured Destruction.

  If that happened, neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Biden would reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency in the Electoral College.

  Then what?

  

  This combination of pictures created on October 22, 2020 shows President Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. (Brendan Smialowski and Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

  Contingent Elections

  Then we would have the fourth of what’s called a Contingent Election, although the phrase itself isn’t in the Constitution.

  It means the matter is decided by the House of Representatives (or the Senate for vice presidents).

  There have been three so far:

  1. Thomas Jefferson beat Aaron Burr in 1800;

  2. John Quincy Adams beat Andrew Jackson in 1825.

  3. And in 1837 the vice presidential election was given to Richard Mentor Johnson over Francis Granger.

  Under a Contingent Election in the House, all 435 members don’t get to vote. Rather, each state delegation gets one vote—50 votes total.

  On Sept. 18 Canadian political writer Stephen Marche wrote an article for the left-wing Guardian titled, “Here’s the scary way Trump could win without the electoral or popular vote: In a ‘contingent election,’ he could lose the popular vote, electoral college and all his legal cases and still end up the legal US president.”

  He calculated:

  “State delegations in the House would favor Republicans as a matter of course. In the struggle for congressional delegates, Republicans would have 19 safe House delegations and the Democrats would have 14, as it stands, with more states leaning Republican than Democrat.”

  Ha ha.

  So California, by knocking Mr. Trump off the ballot, could guarantee he becomes president.

  Again, none of this is likely to happen.

  If any state tries to keep him off the ballot, the courts almost certainly would put him back on, possibly reasoning along the lines Mr. Mukasey detailed.

  There’s one thing this whole escapade teaches us: A large number of California’s politicians hold in contempt the Constitution, democracy, and the people of the state they claim to represent.

  In this train-wreck of a state, with housing, homelessness, drug addiction, schooling, budget, and countless other problems festering—don’t they have anything better to do?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 18:15

• Republicans Embrace Ballot Harvesting for 2024, Some Foresee Legal Battles
  Republicans Embrace Ballot Harvesting for 2024, Some Foresee Legal Battles

  Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  After years of condemning ballot harvesting and early voting, Republicans are switching course for 2024 and embracing both policies wholeheartedly. The results, experts say, can bear good and bad consequences. Some foresee legal challenges.

  “Ballot harvesting” is a practice where third-party individuals or organizations collect completed mail-in ballots and deliver them to election officials on a voter’s behalf.

  

  Hans von Spakovsky—Election Law Reform Initiative Manager and Senior Fellow at The Heritage—prefers to call the practice “Ballot Trafficking.”

  “You play by the rules that are in place wherever you are but that doesn’t mean that you allow the status quo to stay that way,” Mr. von Spakovsky told The Epoch Times.

  He also suggested that the GOP’s decision to play the ballot harvesting game should not stop voters from trying to convince their state legislators “to change the rules to get rid of ballot trafficking and allowing third-party strangers to go pick up a voter’s ballot because the risks in allowing that are too great.”

  

  “I don’t see anything wrong with taking advantage of the rule if that’s the rule in place but you should try to continue to change it,” he said.

  Since 1988, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database has documented over 200 cases of proven fraudulent use of absentee ballots. The largest number of confirmed mail-in ballot fraud cases, 36, occurred in 2022.

  Ultimately, Mr. von Spakovsky isn’t convinced that having both sides harvesting ballots will give either party an advantage.

  “If one party takes advantage of the rules like that and the other doesn’t then it might give that party a step up,” he said. “But if both parties are taking advantage, I’m not quite sure how it would benefit one party or the other.”

  Chasing Ballots

  By joining the ballot harvesting game in 2024, Sharon Demers sees the potential for both bad and good outcomes.

  For the bad, she fears that, just as Republicans have spent years investigating and suing over alleged cases of voter fraud by Democrat operatives, Democrats will do the same. This, she warns, will cause the ever-lengthening election cycle to be followed by an equally protracted litigation season.

  For the good, she believes it will help lead to victories that were lost simply because they didn’t keep up with Democrats.

  Ms. Demers, a Republican state committeewoman for Flagler County, noted that ballot harvesting is banned in the Sunshine State.

  

  “You can knock on someone’s door and encourage them to return their vote-by-mail ballot but they can’t collect those ballots in Florida and deliver them to the Supervisor of Elections or a drop box,” Ms. Demers explained.

  “But if another state allows them to do this, we should do it. If it’s legal,” she said. “But if it’s not legal Republicans shouldn’t do it.“

  She also advised that Florida is open to what is called “chasing ballots.”

  Democrats are already chasing ballots, too.

  According to NGP VAN, “the leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns,” “ballot chasing” is a campaign to encourage voters to take advantage of their state’s early voting schedule in order to “bank votes early” during an election cycle. Organizers can use voter rolls to locate electors who live near early voting locations. By way of phone banks, canvassing, or other outreach programs, organizers can encourage them to get out and cast their ballots.

  As Ms. Demers noted, Democrats are known for their well-organized efforts of deploying organizers to pick people up in buses and vans to physically drive them to the polls.

  “Those are things Republicans have been lazy about in some areas of the country, not getting out the vote and driving the vote, especially with the young people,” she said, noting how younger voters get most of their information from social media.

  “They aren’t involved in politics and that’s a group Republicans in general have ignored,” she said.

  ‘We Don’t Have a Choice’

  As founder of the America First P.A.C.T., Corey Gibson hopes to energize the youth the GOP has ignored.

  “We have two choices,” he told The Epoch Times. “Either we participate or we allow Democrats to thrive and win elections because they are ballot harvesting and we’re not.”

  As Mr. Gibson told The Epoch Times in June, he has already assembled an “army of social media influencers.”

  “We’re the first national ballot harvesting project,” he said.

  While also concerned that the GOP’s new ballot harvesting endeavor could become “a legal vortex of doom,” he said “the only thing we can do as conservatives is to pursue this in the most honest and transparent way possible so it’s hard to look at our efforts and find shady business that makes it indefensible.

  “The only other choice is to allow Democrats to take advantage of this tool and not participate out of stubbornness.”

  However, just as Mr. von Spakovsky suggested, Mr. Gibson said, “We want to ballot harvest until we can make it illegal to ballot harvest.”

  “The goal of conservatives is to have free and fair elections. Full stop. Period,” he explained, saying conservatives “would rather lose an election fairly than to win by cheating.”

  “It’s time for us to figure out if we want to win elections fairly or sit back and lose just because we’re too stubborn and keep saying we don’t believe in ballot harvesting,” he said.

  Mr. Gibson’s greatest wish right now is that “the party structure would allow for a more unified, strategic approach on anything,” because right now, “it’s a hodge-podge of disagreeing tribes.”

  “For this to truly be effective,” he said the GOP must have “good strategic leadership to initiate these programs.”

  ‘That’s something Democrats do well that we don’t,” he said.

  ‘It Will Be Very Messy’

  Richard Frederick is the State Chair for RETHINK! GOP, an organization dedicated to “empowering voters through ballot harvesting, early voting programs and education.”

  For the past six or seven months he’s been on the phone with voters from California to Nevada who are confused by the GOP’s sudden switch to advocating practices they’ve condemned for years.

  For years we had top people in the GOP screaming that ‘this was illegal, you shouldn’t be doing it, and the Democrats are doing things that are fraudulent,'” Mr. Frederick told The Epoch Times. “Now they’re flipping and saying you have to vote early, you have to ballot harvest. So it’s been very confusing to their voters.”

  Curiously though, he also says most of the voters he speaks with never understood why the GOP was so opposed to those practices in the first place.

  “They never saw it as illegal. You had Trump, DeSantis, McDaniel, and other public figures saying it’s illegal, and it wasn’t illegal,” he said. “Here in Nevada, we lost a ton of seats because of that. The Party shot themselves in the foot and the Democrats sat back and loved every minute of it because they knew they didn’t have to worry about Republicans ballot harvesting.”

  Mr. Frederick then recalled how the GOP’s opposition to early voting also cost Republicans in Nevada because the day before election day in 2020, they got “about a foot of snow.”

  “Most people didn’t go out and vote. So all of those Democrats who mailed in their votes had the jump on everybody,” he said.

  He also believes the GOP will likely face endless lawsuits after “election season” simply because they aren’t experienced with ballot harvesting.

  While organizations like RETHINK! GOP, Turning Point USA, and American Majority “are moving forward with this on their own,” he doesn’t believe the GOP as an entity “will actuality do the things that need to be done simply because they don’t know how.”

  “What will follow will be messy. It will be very messy, and it will drag on,” he predicted. “While we were complaining that it took 45 days to get results in some states after the 2020 election, I think this time around it’s going to be even longer.

  By the Numbers

  The National Conference of State Legislators shows that 31 states authorize someone other than the voter to return a ballot for them.

  Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and West Virginia have essentially banned ballot harvesting in their states by limiting the number of ballots an individual may deliver on a voter’s behalf. Florida and Louisiana only allow a family member to deliver a ballot on a voter’s behalf. Oklahoma “prohibits ballot harvesting entirely.

  Six months ahead of the November 2020 election, a Gallop poll showed that 64 percent of Americans favored the idea of mail-in ballots. Stark differences, however, were seen among voters according to their political affiliation. While 83 percent of Democrats expressed support for mail-in ballots only 40 percent of Republicans expressed the same sentiment. Among independents, 68 showed support.

  Polling conducted by the Honest Elections Project in July and provided exclusively to The Federalist showed that 76 percent of voters surveyed believe “voting in person is better than voting by mail.” A majority, 73 percent, also “reject automatically sending ballots without a voter’s request,” and 74 percent said ballot harvesting “should be illegal.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 17:05

• Murdered Ecuadorian Cartel Boss Buried With "Hundreds" Of Pistols, Shotguns And Rifles
  Murdered Ecuadorian Cartel Boss Buried With “Hundreds” Of Pistols, Shotguns And Rifles

  Here’s a story straight out of a “trigger warning” scenario for Vice President Kamala Harris’ new federal office of gun violence prevention: a murdered Ecuadorian cartel boss known as “El Fatal” has been buried with hundreds of guns in his coffin this past week, the NY Post reported. 

  Surrounded by hundreds of pistols, shotguns and rifles, the 39 year old was the leader of  “Los Fatales”. He was getting a car wash last week when he was “suddenly ambushed by gunmen” and killed, along with his 20 year old daughter who was with him.

  The murder was blamed on rival gang, the report says. 

  After the murder, the cartel leader, Julian Sevillano’s family refused to let the local police take the body. The family took the remains and planned a “massive funeral” for the next day, the report says. 

  

  At the funeral, photos were taken of Sevillano in an open casket that people rushed to fill with weapons so that the boss could be “armed to the teeth in the afterlife and could defend himself.”

  The rival gang responsible for his death had tracked his movements ahead of time, the report says. “It seems that they had followed his movements, Julián always came to wash the car in the morning, his enemies took advantage of that,” one local resident told the news. 

  The murder may have been to “settle scores” for previous crimes committed by Sevillano.

  Who knew cartel rivalries extended to the afterlife?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 16:30

• Lies, Damn Lies, And The Sierra Club
  Lies, Damn Lies, And The Sierra Club

  Authored by Tucker Davis via RealClear Wire,

  Recently, the Sierra Club has been spreading a blatantly false narrative that the rolling blackouts experienced during Winter Storm Elliott in Kentucky on December 23 were the result of the failure of coal-fired generating units to meet demand. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  

  In reality, it was the region’s remaining coal-fired power generation fleet that ramped up to meet the demand during the deep freeze that engulfed the region in December.

  Yes, Kentucky-based combined utilities, LG&E and KU, were forced to institute rolling blackouts from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on the evening of December 23. But it wasn’t due to the failure of our coal-fired generation capacity. In fact, during these rolling blackouts, their combined coal units — totaling 5,100 MW of capacity — operated at a collective capacity factor of 90% and provided more than 70% of the energy required to keep our electric grid from complete failure. Had it not been for our coal plants, it is likely the entire grid would have collapsed at the very time when it was needed the most to provide the heat on which Kentucky lives were depending.

  This is exactly why the Kentucky Coal Association opposes the closure of any more of our remaining coal generation units, as has been requested by LG&E and KU. Electric reliability is such a critical issue; it should not be sacrificed for political considerations.

  If the 1,500 MW of coal units the companies have requested approval to retire had not been available during the critical time on December 23 undoubtedly the power outage would have been much worse, and lives would have been lost. Is this what we want? Is this what Kentucky wants? Is this what Americans want?

  Are you willing to gamble the lives of your loved ones on the Ponzi scheme that is renewable energy? Are you willing to accept the empty, proven false promises of the “Big Green Money Machine?”

  Coal-fired power generation is a proven technology. For generations, it has met the demands of the growing economic powerhouse that was America, with no problems and without calls for rolling blackouts. Through any weather, the coal trains rolled, each train delivering 10,000 tons of reliable, affordable coal to power plants across the country.

  The reality is simple and easy to see… only when the green lobby and their friends in Washington began their relentless assault on coal generation — closing thousands of MW of coal-fired power plants and replacing them with solar and wind generation — did these problems begin, and they get worse with each passing day.

  Apparently, the Sierra Club lives in some weird Orwellian world where up is down and left is right, where “reality” is whatever they decide it to be. Fortunately, most people don’t live in that world. We live in a world bounded by objective reality — a world where people need reliable energy, not fairy dust and pixie sprinkles. And we don’t appreciate blatant lies.

  However, one thing this did accomplish — it laid bare the contempt for the average American that the Sierra Club holds. It clearly shows they believe they can pull the wool over the eyes of American families.

  Everyday, thousands of folks working in the mining industry roll up their sleeves and work hard to benefit all of Kentucky – yes, even those who wish to destroy their businesses. Even the members of the Sierra Club, the industry’s most ardent opposition, benefit greatly from reliable and affordable electricity. Those folks will never acknowledge the many communities that are given good wages, stability, and economic growth all from coal. Energy policy is not just about vague hopes and dreams of a “green future”, its real lives and real jobs. 

  So, once again this past winter, coal kept the lights on for the people of Kentucky. Coal will keep us safe and warm whether we see the worst snow storms on record, or a mild flurry. And remember, the coal units set to retire provided one-third of the coal generation that kept our power grid from complete and total failure.

  Tucker Davis is President of the Kentucky Coal Association. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 15:55

• Tinder Is Now Offering $6000 Per Year "VIP" Subscription
  Tinder Is Now Offering $6000 Per Year “VIP” Subscription

  Dating app Tinder has a successful history of making a business of cashing in off of lonely people, charging users for advanced features and premium types of messaging over the years. This week, it was reported that the company is going to try and kick that business into hyperdrive. 

  The app, which – like other dating apps – has seen its fair share of bots, escorts and spam, is now trying the novel approach of offering a $500 per month option called “Tinder Select”. A subscription would amount to $6,000 per year.

  The new service is going to include features like “exclusive search and matching,” according to Bloomberg. The company said the option is being offered to “less than 1% of Tinder users who are among the app’s most active”, though we’re sure this “exclusive” waitlist will eventually expand to any desperate incel who has an extra $500 per month to pony up. 

  “VIP” search, matching and conversation are several of the named services that Select will offer, with the company providing little details on the specific services. 

  Tinder Chief Product Officer Mark Van Ryswyk told Bloomberg: “We know that there is a subset of highly engaged and active users who prioritize more effective and efficient ways to find connections…and so we engaged in extensive tests and feedback with this audience over the past several months to develop a completely new offering.”

  Match Group President Gary Swidler said earlier this month he thinks the offering will attract “a relatively tiny amount of new payers” but that it’ll make a big impact on the company’s top line.

  

  We’re sure from a UX and development standpoint, the cost outlay for Match will be negligible, based on the “VIP” services they are going to offer that almost all other dating apps (including Tinder Regular) offer. 

   “We expect Tinder payer trends to improve as focus shifts from price optimizations to product & engagement. We believe the best (& perhaps only) way to turn the tide in online dating sentiment is for Tinder payers to stabilize & ultimately return to growth,” JP Morgan analysts wrote last week. 

  While the firm has witnessed a slide in subscriber counts for the past three consecutive quarters, it has successfully increased its average revenue per user year-over-year, recording its most significant leap in two years, according to Bloomberg data. In its second-quarter financials revealed in August, the company surpassed revenue forecasts and elevated its projections for the next quarter, largely due to the better-than-expected performance and growth of Tinder.

  Despite these milestones, the company’s stock performance has remained stagnant this year, contrasting with a 13% uptick in the S&P 500 Index during the same timeframe.

  With rates at 5%, we can’t help but wonder how long even millionaires and billionaires say “enough” and start to think about what an extra $500 a month could get them. Hell, if they are lonely, $6000 per year is enough to pay for a trip around the world to actually meet new people…or maybe two really great nights at a Vegas strip club. Then, at least, you’re actually interacting with another human in person…

  But we digress…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 15:20

• Gov. Newsom Attacks Federal Judge As Child-Killing, Extremist, Right-Wing Zealot Owned By The NRA
  Gov. Newsom Attacks Federal Judge As Child-Killing, Extremist, Right-Wing Zealot Owned By The NRA

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  It seems that we continue to struggle with a chief executive who goes on social media to personally attack judges who have ruled against his laws or policies. No, it is not Donald Trump. This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) went on Twitter/X to denounce U.S. Judge Roger T. Benitez as “an extremist, right-wing zealot with no regard to [sic] human life.”

  Four years ago, I wrote how Democrats were becoming more Trump-like in their attacks on judges and hyperbolic rhetoric. There is no better example than Gavin Newsom.

  

  Many of us criticized Trump for his attacks on judges, including Judge Gonzalo Curiel over his hispanic heritage.

  Trump would often savage judges for being Democrats or liberals when there were good-faith legal disagreements over his policies.

  Newsom seems increasingly to be morphing into the man that he once denounced for such “toxic” rhetoric.

  Benitez earned the ire of Newsom by ruling yesterday that California’s limit on high-capacity magazines violates the Second Amendment. He previously ruled against the ban in a partial stay in 2019.

  There are good-faith arguments that these bans contradict Supreme Court cases on the scope and meaning of the Second Amendment. It is certainly an open question but gun-rights advocates are challenging these laws as without constitutional or historical foundation. In New York State Rifle &Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S.Ct. 2111 (2022), the Supreme Court held that

  [W]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, . . . the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.’

  As a lower court judge, Benitez is required to follow that precedent and, while some may see room for a contrary ruling, he wrote a lengthy opinion in Duncan v. Bonta (below) on why the California law fails under this precedent:

  There is no American tradition of limiting ammunition capacity and the 10-round limit has no historical pedigree and it is arbitrary and capricious. It is extreme. Our federal government and most states impose no limits and in the states where limits are imposed, there is no consensus. Delaware landed on a 17-round magazine limit. Illinois and Vermont picked limits of 15 rounds for handguns and 10 rounds for a rifles. Colorado went with a 15-round limit for handguns and rifles, and a 28-inch tube limit for shotguns. New York tried its luck at a 7-round limit; that did not work out. New Jersey started with a 15-round limit and then reduced the limit to 10-rounds. The fact that there are so many different numerical limits demonstrates the arbitrary nature of magazine capacity limits.

  Rather than attack the basis for the opinion, Newsom followed the common practice today in commentary and Congress in attacking those who hold opposing views. He posted on Twitter/X:

  BREAKING: California’s high-capacity magazine ban was just STRUCK DOWN by Judge Benitez, an extremist, right-wing zealot with no regard to human life.

  Wake up, America.

  Our gun safety laws will continue to be thrown out by NRA-owned federal judges until we pass a Constitutional Amendment to protect our kids and end the gun violence epidemic in America.

  So, rather than offer an opposing view on the historical foundations and constitutional justification for the law, Newsom called the judge a child-killing, extremist, right-wing zealot owned by the NRA.

  That is not at all “toxic.”

  Such trash talking is now the norm in American politics as members of Congress regularly attack journalists, whistleblowers, and others personally rather than address their underlying views. I have testified over 100 times in Congress over decades and I have never seen the degree of ad hominem attacks on witnesses by members. It is meant to not only appeal to the most extreme elements in our political system, but to chill other witnesses who may be considering testimony that a party opposes.

  The attacks on judges by our political leaders are particularly chilling. I denounced it in Trump and it is no less “toxic” by Newsom. Yet, while the media universally condemned Trump in these attacks, reporters have been largely quiet or neutral in reporting the attacks by Newsom.

  As for Newsom, he knows that, in the age of rage, the most rageful reigns supreme.

  Here is the opinion: duncan-v-bonta-order

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 14:45

• Ukraine Says Sevastopol HQ Strike Left Dozens Of Casualties "Including Senior Leadership"
  Ukraine Says Sevastopol HQ Strike Left Dozens Of Casualties “Including Senior Leadership”

  Sky News has reported that Ukraine used UK-made Storm Shadow missiles to strike and destroy Russia’s Black Sea Fleet naval headquarters in Sevastopol on Friday. 

  Russia conceded that one missile scored a direct hit, and videos and images confirm significant damage, but also claimed a further five were shot down by anti-air defenses. However, Ukrainian sources have said multiple missiles struck the HQ, with unverified social media images circulating which suggest at least two or multiple hit the building.

  

  Britain and France began supplying the long-range Storm Shadows starting last spring and summer. President Biden this week belatedly approved that a limited supply of MGM-140 ATACMS missiles, with a range of up to 190 miles, will also be given to Ukraine. 

  Russia in the aftermath of the Sevastopol HQ strike said that one military service member was missing, but has remained tight-lipped on details or other potential casualties. 

  What’s clear is that it was a very large attack, given later in the day Friday and into Saturday more and more images emerged showing the significant extent of the devastation, after fires were extinguished by a huge emergency response. 

  Western analysts and pro-Kiev sources have pointed to images which appear to show more than one Storm Shadow missiles hitting Russia’s Black Sea Fleet HQ…

  The strike on the Russian occupiers’ Black Sea Fleet HQ in #Sevastopol that killed Admiral #Sokolov appears to have consisted of at least two bullseye hits. The building was already burning significantly as the second missile struck: pic.twitter.com/8xeu3lTf4x

  — Jessica Berlin (@berlin_bridge) September 22, 2023

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  Another discrepancy between the emerging Russian and Ukrainian narratives concerns casualties and whether top brass was impacted. 

  On Saturday Ukraine’s government announced that the strike left dozens of dead and wounded, among them “senior leadership.” 

  Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces owned up to it, revealing that the operation was dubbed “Crap Trap” and involved intelligence which placed senior commanders in the building at the time of the strikes. The Telegram statement said officers were taken out, “including the senior leadership of the fleet.” But the statement didn’t name names. 

  Online sources are circulating claims like the following in the attack aftermath:

  Sounds like a signature strike that would require five eyes national assets to pull off successfully.

  Guess it was just a lucky shot tho. https://t.co/7mbXCLMv0J

  — Jack Murphy (@JackMurphyRGR) September 22, 2023

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

  The full Ukrainian military statement said the following: 

  “The daring and painstaking work of the Special Operations Forces enabled them to hit the Black Sea Fleet headquarters ‘on time and with precision’ while the Russian Navy’s senior staff was meeting in the temporarily occupied city of Sevastopol.”

  “The data was transmitted to the Air Force for strike. The details of the attack will be revealed once it is possible. The result is dozens of dead and wounded occupiers, including the senior leadership of the fleet.”

  Clearly, Kiev is claiming to have pulled off not only the daring strikes inside Crimea but an extensive intelligence operation as well, given it says it had knowledge of timing of when senior leadership would be gathered inside the headquarters.

  Slowed down and zoomed-in footage of the Ukrainian Storm Shadow/SCALP ALCM slamming into (and through) the roof of the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters. pic.twitter.com/c8mas1OzAg

  — OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 22, 2023

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

  According to a separate statement which comes from Ukrainian intelligence: 

  Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, told Voice of America that at least nine people were killed and 16 injured as a result of Kyiv’s attack on the Black Sea Fleet on Friday.

  He claimed that Alexander Romanchuk, a Russian general commanding forces along the key southeastern front line, was “in a very serious condition” following the attack.

  However, this has remained unverified by either the Russian side or independent reporting or observers. Al Jazeera has cited a correspondent in Moscow who describes that “both sides have remained tight-lipped about their own casualties” while “downplaying their numbers and significance and playing up the numbers and significance on the other side.”

  

  Specifically on the Friday Sevastopol attack, the same journalist said, “Russia confirmed that a service member was killed in the attack, initially we had heard that six people were injured from media reports in the area.”

  Meanwhile there were overnight reports saying that Russia unleashed more major airstrike on Ukraine, in retaliation for the Black Sea Fleet HQ attack.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 14:10

• Striking Autoworkers Will Only Harm Their Own Livelihoods
  Striking Autoworkers Will Only Harm Their Own Livelihoods

  Authored by Connor O’Keefe via The Mises Institute,

  On Friday, September 15, 12,700 members of the United Auto Workers union (UAW) walked off the job at plants owned by the “Big Three” automakers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (which owns Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram). The walkout marked the beginning of a series of long-expected targeted strikes aiming to give the UAW leverage as it renegotiates contracts with the three companies. [ZH: And Friday September 22, the situation escalated.]

  The strike is grounded in frustrations over worker compensation.

  Union members and their supporters point to high profits and CEO pay at the Big Three and compare them to stagnant wages and rising costs of living among autoworkers. They feel like they’re being ripped off.

  

  And they’re right. Like the rest of the working class, autoworkers are being ripped off. Decades of interventionism have built an economic system that harms workers while helping the corporate and political classes. The first reason for this is monetary policy. Ever since President Richard Nixon abolished the gold standard in the early 1970s, a handful of bureaucrats at the Federal Reserve have been charged with determining the value of our currency. And those bureaucrats have decided that the dollar should lose value every year. They aim for a decline of 2 percent annually, but the rate has been higher in recent years.

  Dollar devaluation is a political choice. And it hurts workers. In an unhampered market, money becomes more valuable as societies grow wealthier. Goods become better and more affordable. And money saved grows in value.

  Under our current inflationist fiat regime, the opposite happens. Savings shrink in value by design. The result is spelled out by Saifedean Ammous in his book The Fiat Standard:

  The culture of conspicuous mass consumption that pervades our planet today cannot be understood except through the distorted incentives fiat creates around consumption. With the money constantly losing its value, deferring consumption and saving will likely have a negative expected value. Finding the right investments is difficult, requires active management and supervision, and entails risk. The path of least resistance, the path permeating the entire culture of fiat society, is to consume all your income, living paycheck to paycheck.

  We can see, then, how monetary policy leads to mass consumption, low savings, and hyperfinancialization—all at the same time. In fact, one of the most notable examples of the financialization of the economy since the 1970s has been the growth of the Big Three automakers’ financial arms—GM Financial, Ford Credit, and Stellantis Financial Services.

  In fact, as Ryan McMaken highlights: “By the early 2000s, a majority of GM’s profits were coming from its financial operations and not from automobile production.”

  In other words, the automakers have profited from the very same government policies that devalue their workers’ paychecks and savings.

  But monetary policy is only one part of the story. Governments at all levels restrict the supply of housing by limiting building. That makes housing less affordable. The federal government also bids up demand for healthcare services while restricting the supply of doctors and hospitals, and it shields drug manufacturers from competition. That makes healthcare much more expensive. Meanwhile, Washington’s agricultural policy aims to prop up crop prices, which impacts the price of many foods. All this artificially drives up the cost of living.

  That’s bad enough for autoworkers, but the Biden administration is also trying to force a transition to electric vehicles (EVs). For autoworkers building engines, transmissions, and exhaust systems, that’s a threat to their jobs. And because the ramp-up of EV production is driven by politics rather than consumer demand, the transition is set to hurt all workers who rely on cars.

  Considering all that, it is obvious why autoworkers are frustrated with their financial situation. But unfortunately, their justified anger has been hijacked by another source of their problems, the UAW.

  Support for labor unions rests on an economic myth from the mid-eighteenth century.

  In short, it’s the idea that companies make profits by not paying workers the full value of their labor. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk dismantled this socialist exploitation theory 139 years ago when he introduced time into the analysis. Companies pay workers in the present for labor services that may lead to saleable goods in the future. Because of the universal trait of time preference, the certainty of money now is often more appealing than the possibility of more money later, which is why so many people choose to sell their labor services on the job market.

  Böhm-Bawerk’s insights are easy to see in auto manufacturing, where workers are paid up front to help build cars that will be sold later. Still, the flawed idea that profits signify wage theft caught on, and in 1935, autoworkers founded the UAW. The present strikes speak to the persistence of this myth.

  Labor unions often appeal to worker solidarity, but in truth, they epitomize the exact opposite. Because as Murray Rothbard has shown, they can only raise wages for some workers by lowering the wages or eliminating the jobs of other workers. At the Big Three automakers, this can be seen in the heavy use of temporary and part-time workers, who are placed on a lower pay tier—the elimination of which is ironically a core demand of the UAW strike. But this situation is just what’s visible. All those who are blocked entirely from the jobs that would be available to them if not for the union remain unseen.

  America’s autoworkers are right to be angry about their economic situation. But the restrictionist labor demands of the UAW are a distraction that will, at most, help some autoworkers at the expense of others. The real solution lies in ending union practices that unnecessarily pit workers against each other, ending the policies that force companies to produce things consumers don’t even want, ending the multitude of government programs and political privileges that artificially raise the cost of living, and ending the monetary system that destroys the value of workers’ paychecks and savings while propping up the financial class. Abolish all that, and the benefits will extend far beyond the auto industry.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 13:35

• Watch: National Guard Rolls Into Eagle Pass, Texas As Biden's Border Crisis Spirals Out-Of-Control
  Watch: National Guard Rolls Into Eagle Pass, Texas As Biden’s Border Crisis Spirals Out-Of-Control

  Townhall reporter Julio Rosas says the National Guard has sealed parts of the Eagle Pass, Texas, border with Mexico to prevent a further invasion of thousands of illegals crossing into the US. 

  🚨: The National Guard is preventing illegal immigrants from entering Eagle Pass. pic.twitter.com/tAVe9KyAQd

  — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 23, 2023

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

  Rosas said, “At a different spot along the Rio Grande, illegal immigrants are finding a way through the C-wire despite the National Guard being there.”

  At a different spot along the Rio Grande, illegal immigrants are finding a way through the C-wire despite the National Guard being there. pic.twitter.com/qaapFMS9qQ

  — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 23, 2023

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

  “After the group passed through, Guardsmen placed more C-wire in the gap illegal immigrants used to enter Eagle Pass,” he said. 

  After the group passed through, Guardsmen placed more C-wire in the gap illegal immigrants used to enter Eagle Pass. pic.twitter.com/bP8HDAotQl

  — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 23, 2023

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  Eagle Pass has been the epicenter of the border invasion this past week. 

  Thousands of migrants continue to flood into Eagle Pass, Texas, after the Biden administration was filmed removing razor wire intended to deter illegal crossings.

  The mayor of Eagle Pass has declared a state of emergency and is “pleading for help.”pic.twitter.com/hlnZI10djO

  — KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) September 21, 2023

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

  On Wednesday, Fox News reporter Bill Melugin posted alarming footage of the migrant invasion on X. 

  It’s a total free for all in Eagle Pass right now. Mass illegal crossing taking place for over an hour and a half. Almost 2 years to the day we saw 15,000+ Haitians under the bridge in Del Rio, we now have thousands of predominantly Venezuelans gathering under Eagle Pass bridge. pic.twitter.com/VkfUQnexGZ

  — Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) September 20, 2023

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

  Elon Musk then felt compelled to ask: “Strange that there is almost no legacy media coverage of this.”

  Strange that there is almost no legacy media coverage of this.

  About 2 million people – from every country on Earth – are entering through the US southern border every year.

  The number is rising rapidly, yet no preventive action is taken by the current administration. https://t.co/EF7HTS1ktT

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 20, 2023

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  Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared an “invasion,” blaming President Biden’s disastrous open border policies. 

  I officially declared an invasion at our border because of Biden’s policies.

  We deployed the Texas National Guard, DPS & local law enforcement.

  We are building a border wall, razor wire & marine barriers.

  We are also repelling migrants.

  More: https://t.co/dEivr1lL2n pic.twitter.com/hzCl6ouTVJ

  — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 20, 2023

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  On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre failed to answer Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy’s question:

   “So, what do you call it here at the White House when 10,000 people illegally cross the border in a single day?”

  Doocy: “What do you call it when 10,000 illegals cross the border in a single day.”

  Jean-Pierre: “What do you call it when republicans…”

  Doocy: You’re not answering

  Jean-Pierre: “We’re moving on”
  pic.twitter.com/rvKDTDLUt9

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 21, 2023

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  The Border Patrol Union then blasted the ‘radical’ Biden administration:

  “From Sept 1st through 20th the Biden Admin ordered the release of more than 100,000 illegal border crashers-enough to double the population of cities like Yuma, AZ. Think about what Biden is doing to this country with his out-of-control border policies. How many millions more?” 

  From Sept 1st through 20th the Biden Admin ordered the release of more than 100,000 illegal border crashers-enough to double the population of cities like Yuma, AZ.

  Think about what Biden is doing to this country with his out-of-control border policies. How many millions more?

  — Border Patrol Union – NBPC (@BPUnion) September 21, 2023

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

  Then, an alleged video of Border Patrol agents breaking rank surfaced on X. 

  Border Patrol Agents ARE BREAKING RANKS!! They Are Questioning Why Isn’t Leadership UPHOLDING THE CONSTITUTION ‼️
  ‌
  Border Patrol Chief “We stay focused we continue to do the job and the mission that we signed up for. We all signed up for it, we all raised our hand.”
  ‌
  BRAVE… pic.twitter.com/yLmzFqwKMg

  — Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) September 21, 2023

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

  The majority of Americans did not vote for open borders. A small fringe minority of financial and political elites are abusing their power over the majority, and folks are getting fed up. 

  JUST IN: Fox News stops at bar in Bozeman, Montana.

  Shocked to find out that out every single one of the patrons is voting for 47..

  HAS AMERICA FINALLY HAD ENOUGH? pic.twitter.com/BIBxfERe9e

  — Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) September 22, 2023

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

  Biden inherited a border under control and enforced disastrous policies that have only led to “unprecedented illegal entry, human trafficking, and deadly fentanyl killing more than 100,000 Americans a year,” Judiciary Committee Senior Member Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-48) wrote in a statement on Friday. 

  With over 500,000+ known encounters EACH QUARTER! Which is the equivalent of the entire population of Tucson, AZ! This is our best case scenario as far as murderers and rapists goes… #BorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/mr79oqysky

  — Unbiased Crime Report (@UnbiasedCrime) September 19, 2023

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

  Issa warned: “Make no mistake: the next chapter of the Biden border disaster is here. It needs to be brought to a close, and Congress must act.”

  “No nation in history has survived once its borders were destroyed, its citizenship was rendered no different from mere residence, and its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.”
  —Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) pic.twitter.com/dfSr52ZgqM

  — Larry Elder (@larryelder) September 23, 2023

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

  … and just in time for the next presidential election cycle as these immigrants flood major metro areas. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/23/2023 – 13:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Governments Start Calling For Price Controls, Rationing & CBDCs Come Next
  Governments Start Calling For Price Controls, Rationing & CBDCs Come Next

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  Last month in the middle of the surreal “Bidenomics” hype I published an article titled ‘Nothing Is Over: Inflation Is About To Come Back With A Vengeance.’  I outlined the misconceptions surrounding CPI and how it is not an accurate model for the effects of inflation.  I also noted that the index had been manipulated downwards by Joe Biden as he flooded the market with oil from the strategic reserves.  Because so many elements of the CPI are connected to energy, Biden had created an artificial drop in CPI using this strategy.

  I argued that as the strategic reserves ran out and Biden lost his leverage, CPI would rise again and prices on a number of necessities would climb.  This is happening now, with the biggest jump in CPI in 14 months and gas prices clawing back towards all-time highs.

  

  Inflation is not going away anytime soon, but the bigger issue at hand is who benefits most from inflation and rising prices? The answer might be obvious to some but many people are oblivious to the root cause of inflationary dysfunction and often see it as a consequence of random economic chaos rather than a product of clever engineering. The truth is, banking oligarchs and political authorities revel in the inflationary tidal wave because it is a perfect opportunity to institute far reaching socialist controls over resources.

  In most cases central bankers are the primary culprits behind the creation of an inflationary event, and the word “creation” best applies because it is nearly impossible for overt inflation to occur without them. While money supply is not the only factor when dealing with inflation (sorry purists, but there are indeed other causes), it is the most important. More money chasing less resources triggers supply-side instability and prices go up. Central banks have a number of excuses as to why they “need” to conjure up more dollars or pesos or pounds or marks, but there is no doubt that they know what the ultimate end result will be.

  It’s happened too many times for them not to know…

  These inflation events trigger a predictable set of dominoes in society as well as in economy and finance. Price spikes, diminished savings, rising poverty, rising crime, and rising interest rates – This is then followed in most cases by failed rate hikes, more inflation, then more hikes, diminishing foreign investment in debt, foreign currency dumps (causing more inflation), plunging consumer spending and job losses.

  This same pattern has been witnessed from 1920s Weimar Germany to 1970s America to 1990s Yugoslavia to 2000s Argentina and Venezuela and beyond. But what happens next? In each case the trend leads first to price controls on producers and distributors, which ultimately fail. Then comes government rationing and the complete takeover of necessities including the food supply.

  Think it can’t happen in the US? It already has. In 1971 Richard Nixon issued Executive Order 11615, (under the Economic Stabilization Act which was established in 1970); the order demanded a 90 day freeze on wages and prices in order to counter inflation. It was an exceedingly rare action outside of a world war and conveniently took place during the election cycle. Keep in mind, the real inflationary crisis had not happened yet, but the price controls gave markets a short term boost and gave Nixon an election win.

  In 1973, controls returned during the Arab Oil Embargo. They failed and resulted in long term gas price inflation. Gerald Ford then called for American businesses to institute price controls under his “Whip Inflation Now” campaign; it was the subject of ridicule and was even made fun of by a young Joe Biden (who now falsely claims to have solved his own inflation problem with his useless Inflation Reduction Act).

  Finally, Jimmy Carter introduced price and wage “guidelines” (controls) which rewarded businesses that raised prices below a set percentage. Any businesses that raised prices above the percentage and made a pre-tax profit above the previous two years would be penalized. In no case could a firm increase its dollar profit by more than 6.5 percent unless the excess was attributable to increased unit sales volume. This plan, of course, also failed to stop inflation.

  Ultimately, the Fed had to jack rates up to around 20% in 1980-1981 to stop exponential inflation, which led to considerable business losses and high unemployment.

  The problem is simple, price controls lead to lost profit incentive which leads to less production. Less production leads to less supply and less supply leads to rising prices. This is on top of the root cancer that is fiat money creation. Politicians will rarely if ever address the actual cause of an inflationary crisis:  The government and the central banks. Instead, they try to blame free markets, “greedy” businesses and profit taking in times of distress.

  Sadly, the pattern is repeating again today as it is now becoming clear to the public that central bank interest rate hikes are not having a significant effect and the public is still paying between 25%-50% more on the majority of goods they purchase compared to three years ago. As inflation grinds forward, multiple leftist governments are now openly discussing price controls.

  Recently, Canada’s Justin Trudeau ordered top grocery chains in the country to cut prices while admonishing them for making higher profits, insinuating that they are the cause of inflation.  In Canada, profit margins among grocers are actually flat due to rising costs. If one looks only at raw profits without taking into account inflation in producer costs as well as transportation, distribution and wages, then it might look like these companies are pulling in the cash. There is zero evidence to support this claim.

  What Trudeau is doing is pretending to be stupid while engaging in a very clever strategy of scapegoating. It’s the government and the central bankers that are the foundational cause of inflation, but by blaming individual business sectors he sets the stage for government enforced price controls. When these fail and create a crisis in supply he will then introduce rationing, and once the government has conditioned the public to accept rationing the elites then control the entire population’s access to food and necessities.

  Some people may say “Well that’s Canada, what about the US?” The same agenda is in progress in America, but is being pursued at a city and state level. For example, the socialist Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, just announced a plan for the city (using state and federal tax funds) to build government run grocery stores in “food deserts.” These are places where a combination of inflation and shoplifting has forced grocers to leave certain areas of the city.

  The Chicago program would include price control measures and there’s ample opportunity for these institutions to use rationing in the future. Similar projects are also being considered in other cities across the country. In other words, leftist cities are scaring away businesses while planning to replace “essential services” with government run operations.

  I wrote about the inevitability of government rationing after price controls last year in my article ‘The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing.’  Rationing generally comes when price controls fail. It’s been a long time since the US has faced these kinds of conditions but we are likely to in the near future. This time around, I believe that if the establishment is given rationing power they will never let go again.

  Rationing could also be used to lure the public into accepting Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).  Government run food centers can easily restrict purchases of goods to a limited list of items, and also demand payment using specific methods (like digital currencies).  In a short period of time, cash would be removed because retailers, pressured by government, will refuse to accept it.

  It’s hard to say what the future will bring in terms of politics, given that the next presidential campaign is looking like a complete circus. Historically speaking, though, both Democrat and Republican presidents have tried price controls in the past. Public pressure must be applied (at the state level at minimum) to stop this from happening. As convenient as it might seem to blame producers and distributors, the real threat is coming from governments and banks. We cannot let the people who caused the crisis also benefit from it by giving them even more power.

  * * *

  If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 23:40

• F-35 Stealth Fighter Only Mission Capable About Half The Time, Government Report Finds
  F-35 Stealth Fighter Only Mission Capable About Half The Time, Government Report Finds

  Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

  A new government report has found that U.S. F-35 fighter jets are only ready for a mission about half of the time, with the remaining time spent awaiting maintenance.

  

  On Thursday, the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report (pdf) which concluded that the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, was only mission capable about 50 percent of the time for the A and B variants and 57 percent for the C variant of the fighter. These mission capability rates, the GAO report states, are “far below program goals” of 90 percent for the F-35A variant and 85 for the B and C variants.

  The F-35—which is operated by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as a host of U.S. allies—is one of the most advanced systems in Western arsenals. The 5th Generation fighter jet is made with an array of special radar-absorbent materials and other “stealth” features. The multirole fighter jet boasts capabilities for a range of different mission types, and the F-35B variant operated by the Marine Corps has unique short take-off and vertical landing capabilities.

  The F-35 is also one of the most expensive systems in Western arsenals. The U.S. Department of Defense has estimated the F-35 program will cost the department about $1.7 trillion over its life cycle. A majority of this estimated lifetime cost, $1.3 trillion, is expected to go toward maintenance. The GAO said it conducted this latest sustainment study of the F-35 in part because of this high program cost.

  Contributing to this low mission capability rate, the GAO report concluded the F-35 program is heavily reliant on contractors for maintenance work and the DOD has been slow to take over the program’s responsibilities.

  The GAO report said the DOD is still working to determine the right balance of government and outside contractor roles to sustain the F-35 program going forward. The DOD also lacks both the technical data and training to support its desired program sustainment model.

  While the GAO report identifies challenges with the F-35 program, it also describes an opportunity to overhaul the program to both bring down costs and improve the maintenance process that drags on it.

  “The military services must take over management of F35 sustainment by October 2027 and have an opportunity to make adjustments—specifically to the contractor-managed elements,” the report states. “Reassessing its approach could help DOD address its maintenance challenges and reduce costs.”

  Repairs Department on Secretive Spare Parts List

  The new GAO report derived its conclusions about the F-35 program over the course of visits to two military F-35 depots and three military installations that host F-35 squadrons. A recurring problem for military aircraft maintainers at these depots and installations have limited information about the spare parts needed to keep their aircraft running.

  The list of parts for the F-35 program is maintained in a database that is proprietary to the program’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Corporation. With all this proprietary information, the military has to outsource much of its maintenance to Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors.

  Not having ready access to part numbers hinders the repair of the aircraft because it delays the ordering and receipt of needed parts,” the GAO report states. “Maintainers at one installation we visited told us that they would not need contractors on the flight line if they simply had access to part numbers. However, since access to part numbers is an issue that can affect readiness of the aircraft, units and squadrons need contractors on a daily basis.”

  As of March 2023, the F-35 program had a backlog of over 10,000 F-35 parts in need of repair.

  In a press statement to NTD News, Lockheed Martin spokesperson Jacqueline Lorenzetti said the corporation provides “all data required under its F-35 government contracts and is committed to providing data required for the Department of Defense to sustain the aircraft under applicable sustainment contracts.”

  Ms. Lorenzetti said the U.S. government has unlimited access to all Operation, Maintenance, Installation, and Training (OMIT) data for the aircraft. She also said 90 percent of parts in the F-35 program are performing better than expected and the average time that parts remain on F-35 aircraft before failure is more than twice that of a typical 4th Generation fighter jet.

  The GAO report provided a list of recommendations, advising the military to assess whether they or private contractors will take primary responsibility for various components of the F-35 program, as well as what resources and proprietary information the Department of the Air Force and Department of the Navy will require for these revised responsibilities.

  Ms. Lorenzetti said Lockheed Martin is partnering with the government to increase repair capacity for the F-35 fleet.

  “We stand ready to partner with the government as plans are created for the future of F-35 sustainment ensuring mission readiness and enabling deterrence,” Ms. Lorenzetti said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 23:20

• Xi, Assad Launch China-Syria Strategic Partnership Based On Belt & Road Initiative
  Xi, Assad Launch China-Syria Strategic Partnership Based On Belt & Road Initiative

  Via The Cradle,

  Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on Friday announced the launch of the China-Syria strategic partnership during a meeting in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

  “Today, we will jointly announce the establishment of the China-Syria strategic partnership, which will become an important milestone in the history of bilateral relations,” Xi told Assad.

  

  “Faced with an international situation full of instability and uncertainty, China is willing to continue to work together with Syria, firmly support each other, promote friendly cooperation, and jointly defend international fairness and justice,” he added.

  For his part, Assad expressed his “happiness” at being invited to China, a country he says “stands with the just causes of the peoples … which form the basis of Chinese policy in international forums and which are based on the independence of countries, respect for the will of the people, and rejection of terrorism.”

  It seems China is willing to send a message to the West, given the enthusiastic red carpet reception of Assad to the airport on Thursday, complete with military parade and welcome ceremonies…

  مشاهد الاستقبال الرسمي لوصول الرئيس #بشار_الأسد والسيدة الأولى #أسماء_الأسد إلى مطار خانجو الدولي. pic.twitter.com/4hPQ9MKdtF

  — Syrian Presidency (@Presidency_Sy) September 21, 2023

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

  “This visit is important in its timing and circumstances, as a multipolar world is being formed that will restore balance and stability to the world,” Assad continued.

  “It is the duty of all of us to seize this moment for the sake of a bright and promising future, and I hope that our meeting today will establish broad and long-term strategic cooperation in various fields,” the Syrian leader, who is under US sanctions said.

  The two presidents also oversaw the signing of three cooperation agreements in the fields of economic cooperation and development, as well as a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) “on the common context of a cooperation plan within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).”

  President Assad in China today. pic.twitter.com/v6x2IxY806

  — SAM 🇸🇾 (@SAMSyria0) September 22, 2023

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

  Assad arrived in China on Thursday, leading a high-level political and diplomatic delegation in his first official visit to the Asian giant in nearly 20 years. Following his arrival, the Chinese foreign ministry said his visit would take China-Syria ties to a “new level.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 23:00

• Minnesota Murder Suspect Accidentally Freed From Jail 2 Days After Arrest
  Minnesota Murder Suspect Accidentally Freed From Jail 2 Days After Arrest

  Today in “your tax dollars at work” news, a suspect charged with murder in Minnesota has been released from jail due to a “clerical error”, just two days after he was arrested.

  28 year old Kevin Mason was recently arrested in Indiana on a murder warrant after a two year manhunt. Then, he was promptly mistakenly released from jail, NBC News wrote this week. 

  Now, authorities are on the hunt for him in Indiana again. They have kept his accidental release quiet for six days, supposedly to gain a “tactical advantage” over him, the article says. 

  Colonel James Martin with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office described his arrest warrants: “One being for homicide, one being for a parole violation, and the other being for a firearms possession.”

  Mason was charged with second degree murder “in connection with a shooting in June 2021 in the parking lot of the Shiloh Temple in Minneapolis that killed Dontevius Ahmad Catchings,” the report says. 

  

  Martin said this week: “On Sept. 12 one of our inmate records clerks thought she was correcting different bookings for Mr. Mason. She removed two of the holds leaving one additional hold for Mr. Mason. The next day on Sept. 13, Ramsey County, out of Minnesota, lifted the last and final hold that we had booked on for Mr. Mason.”

  “Our clerk that was reviewing it sees three Minnesota holds, didn’t realize what she was doing obviously. It’s a critical error, critical mistake. They’re identified very specifically by the originating agency that did it. They have a specific ID number, they’re all different and the case numbers are all different,” Martin added.

  Ramsey County lifted their hold on Mason as a result of the error, freeing him.

  Martin said: “This was an error. This should have not happened. Mason should not have been release from out custody. This was discovered shortly after he was released.”

  Since then, authorities have been engaged in an “around the clock” manhunt. They suspect he is in Indianapolis and that people are actively helping him evade arrest.

  “I also want to assure the public we will not rest until he’s captured,” Martin concluded.

  Well, that makes us feel better…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 22:40

• Cancers Appearing In Ways Never Before Seen After COVID Vaccinations: Dr. Harvey Risch
  Cancers Appearing In Ways Never Before Seen After COVID Vaccinations: Dr. Harvey Risch

  Authored by  Efthymis Oraiopoulos and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  There is evidence that cancers are occurring in excess after people receive COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Harvey Risch.

  

  Dr. Risch is professor emeritus of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His research has focused extensively on the causes of cancer as well as prevention and early diagnosis.

  In an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Dr. Risch said patients must now wait months, not weeks, to get an appointment at an oncology clinic in New York.

  here is difficulty in observing whether a vaccine can cause cancer, because cancer usually takes time to develop, Dr. Risch said. It can take anywhere from two years to 30 years, depending on the different types of cancer, from leukemia to colon cancer.

  “What clinicians have been seeing,” said Dr. Risch, “is very strange things: For example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer, who don’t have family histories of the disease—that’s basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works—and other long-latency cancers that they’re seeing in very young people.”

  He said this is not how cancer normally develops.

  “There has to be some initiating stimulus to why this happens,” he said.

  Fighting Cancer

  Dr. Risch said that in his opinion, cancer is something a healthy human body can fight and disable, as the non-normal cancerous cells are gobbled up when detected in a body with a functional immune system. If the immune system is compromised, however, it cannot cope with the task of neutralizing cancerous cells, and cancerous cells are left to multiply and grow, leading to symptoms of cancer.

  “That’s the mechanism I think is most likely here,” Dr. Risch said. “We know that the COVID vaccines have done various degrees of damage to the immune system in a fraction of people who have taken them.”

  That damage could translate to getting COVID more often, getting other infectious diseases, or getting cancer.

  Another example Dr. Risch gave was breast cancer, which normally, if there is a remanifestation after surgical removal, the remanifestation occurs after two decades. However, vaccinated women are now seen to remanifest breast cancers in much shorter periods of time.

  “Those are the initial signals that we’ve been seeing, and because these cancers have been occurring to people who were too young to get them, basically, compared to the normal way it works, they’ve been designated as turbo cancers,” Dr. Risch said.

  “Some of these cancers are so aggressive that between the time that they’re first seen and when they come back for treatment after a few weeks, they’ve grown dramatically compared to what oncologists would have expected for the way cancer normally progresses,” he added.

  “Be attuned to your body,” Dr. Risch recommended, for noticing any new signals the body might give.

  Adverse Events After Vaccination

  Dr. Risch also talked about the aspect of official medical agencies not recognizing someone as being vaccinated inside the first two weeks of vaccination. This happens, he said, because the medical agencies say that the effects of the vaccine need two weeks to start manifesting. Adverse effects occurring a few days after vaccinations were officially counted as health conditions manifesting in unvaccinated people, he said.

  However, serious adverse events after receiving the vaccine have occurred within the first four days, Dr. Risch said. He said three-quarters of adverse effects are being recorded as happening to unvaccinated people.

  The decision makers who were in charge during the pandemic “threw out the principles of public health six days into the pandemic and did the opposite of everything that we knew should be done for respiratory viruses,” he said.

  One example was the denial of effective early treatment and unnecessary vaccinations, which show a “colossal failure of public health through this period,” he said.

  Dr. Risch said that a lot of people are now less likely to be “propagandized” regarding COVID, and that news reports about a new variant that is going to take over the world in the next month are “propaganda to sell the next batch of vaccines coming out in a few weeks.”

  “People are fed up with this and it’s going to be a lot more pushback,” he said.

  Risks to Society

  Dr. Risch said that while the individual risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccine is relatively low, once that risk manifests itself at a greater scale, when millions of people have received the vaccine, the result is that hundreds of thousands of people are left with injuries and serious adverse events that are often worse than the virus itself.

  Dr. Risch’s opinion is that nobody should get vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, as the new variants are mild and not life threatening. He has heard of a few hospitalizations that lasted for some days, but as most people had COVID in the past, they have some immunity to these new variants as well.

  “There is no reason for people to be vaccinated now, to any degree,” he said.

  He said COVID has become an illness similar to the flu in its degree of severity, and that propaganda to scare people is being pushed by the government on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to sell more vaccines.

  “We live in social contact with each other and therefore spread low-level infections. This is part of human life that we take for granted and we try to treat it the best we can,” he said. “That’s how we should be managing this.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 22:20

• Can You Spot The Difference? 
  Can You Spot The Difference? 

  McDonald’s advertising efforts portray its promotion of family values in Japan, whereas, in the West, it subverts society with ‘woke’ propaganda. 

  X account End Wokeness first pointed out McDonald’s advertisements in a post titled “McDonald’s Japan vs McDonald’s USA. Try and spot the difference” on Thursday. The cholesterol-laden fast-food chain appears to embrace sanity in Japan while promoting woke insanity in the US. 

  McDonald’s Japan vs McDonald’s USA. Try and spot the difference. pic.twitter.com/yUD1pTIa5K

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 22, 2023

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

  Let’s begin with the Japanese ad. McDonald’s understands Japan doesn’t tolerate mental illness and instead embraces family traditions. After all, Japan is in the middle of a demographic winter. 

  特別じゃない、しあわせな時間。 pic.twitter.com/P7Og6hbMsx

  — マクドナルド (@McDonaldsJapan) September 20, 2023

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

  In the West, McDonald’s has seized the opportunity to boost its Diversity and Inclusive Index score to the moon by out-woking all other burger joints with this ridiculous ad, “Black trans women have a very simple message: stop killing us.” This is DEI at work and a small minority imposing their ideals and beliefs on the vast majority. Very few in the majority want to hear about what this morbidly obese black trans woman says while chowing down on a cholesterol-laden burger. 

  “Black trans women have a very simple message: stop killing us” – @imarajoneshttps://t.co/KLsZbLzH7i pic.twitter.com/F7IGLPlAK4

  — McDonald’s (@McDonalds) June 29, 2020

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

  Hundreds of X users reacted to End Wokeness’ post, with many expressing disbelief at the stark contrast in advertising between countries. 

  My take:https://t.co/DuO1VEXwCj

  — Jonathan Wong (@WGthink) September 22, 2023

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  I won’t be eating McDonald’s anymore.

  — Freddy (@FreddyDEFI) September 22, 2023

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  Good to see some places in the world aren’t taken over by this ideology

  — Rob Coates 🇺🇸 (@LuckyHippie926) September 22, 2023

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

  pic.twitter.com/Sd2ryjnRJX

  — Stephen Lloyd (@apparentlysteve) September 22, 2023

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  We must point out the black trans ad debuted in 2020, and since then, McDonald’s has scrubbed its website of the now-controversial acronym ESG, which represents environmental, social, and corporate governance principles. 

  If consumers don’t like McDonald’s woke propaganda, maybe it’s time to ditch the pink slime for healthier options, such as buying food from local farms and small businesses. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 22:00

• Who Could Have Seen This Coming? All Over America, Blue Cities Are Facing A Severe Shortage Of Police Officers
  Who Could Have Seen This Coming? All Over America, Blue Cities Are Facing A Severe Shortage Of Police Officers

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

  It turns out that we really do need the police after all.  Do you remember a few years ago when blue cities all over the nation wanted to defund the police?  Needless to say, that didn’t work out too well.  Wherever police budgets were slashed, crime rates shot up.  Today, we are in the midst of a massive crime wave that is sweeping the country.  In fact, it has gotten so bad that even many our most liberal politicians are desperate to restore law and order.  But that won’t be so easy, because after everything that has transpired blue cities are discovering that they are having a really difficult time finding enough warm bodies to serve in their crime-ridden communities.

  

  Just look at what is happening in Minneapolis.  Since the death of George Floyd, the number of officers serving in the MPD has fallen by about 35 percent…

  The Minneapolis Police Department is experiencing historically low staffing shortages, with ranks down approximately 35% since the death of George Floyd in 2020.

  According to a June report from the Department of Justice, the MPD had 892 sworn officers in 2018, but that number has since dropped to just 585. An officer told the DOJ that the police department’s morale “is at an all-time low.”

  Once upon a time, Minneapolis was one of the most beautiful cities in the country.

  But now it is a crime-infested hellhole, and at this point the city “has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population” in the entire nation…

  Some days, the department has only four officers working a given precinct, the outlet reported. The MPD is often so understaffed that it does not have anyone available to work the station’s front desk.

  Minneapolis has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population, with 1.4 officers per 1,000 residents, while the national average is 2.4.

  Similar things could be said about San Francisco.

  The “City by the Bay” is one of the epicenters of our rapidly growing national drug crisis, and they are having such a hard time finding police officers that they have decided to start recruiting in Texas…

  San Francisco is trying to recruit cops from Texas as it faces a shortage of officers, after businessman Marc Benioff slammed the city’s homeless and drug problems.

  The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is visiting four Texas university campuses throughout the month as part of a new recruitment drive.

  Candidates from outside of the state of California will take a written test, a physical ability test and an interview to see if they make they cut.

  Yes, things have really gotten this bad.

  Blue cities are having such difficulty hiring police officers that they must try to recruit them from red states.

  This month, the SFPD will be making recruiting trips to four different Texas universities…

  • Texas Southern University in Houston;

  • Sam Houston State University in Huntsville;

  • Prairie View A&M University; and

  • Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.

  If you always dreamed of serving as a police officer in a lawless city with hordes of drug addicts, this is your chance.

  In Prince George’s County just outside of Washington D.C., authorities have decided to search for hundreds of new recruits in Puerto Rico because the shortage of police officers has become so severe…

  Officer shortages are so dire in the Washington, D.C., area that one county police department is planning to send officials to Puerto Rico in an attempt to bring back hundreds of new recruits, the department announced Monday.

  Law enforcement officials in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, which borders D.C., told the city’s Fox affiliate that they plan to travel to the Caribbean island “soon” in an attempt to hire the roughly 350 officers they need to achieve a full staff. In addition to the tropical recruitment trip, the county’s police department is targeting Hispanic communities at parades and other events across the country and running ads in Spanish.

  At least they are still trying.

  Other communities seem to have given up completely.

  In Seattle, citizens are being instructed to “give up their car keys” and to give criminals “whatever they’re looking for” when they inevitably encounter violent thugs…

  The best thing to do if you are ever confronted by criminals while in Seattle is to simply give them “whatever they’re looking for,” according to King County Sheriff David Robinson.

  Instead of trying to fight criminals when they attempt to, say, steal your car, Robinson suggests that residents and visitors of Seattle “give up their car keys” and avoid provoking these robbers and thieves.

  “Give the criminals what they want,” Robinson told Seattleites about how to live in their city, which is currently facing the highest violent crime rate in 15 years.

  I have been to downtown Seattle, and I don’t plan on going back any time soon.

  Of course these days you can literally be robbed anywhere.

  On Sunday, a wealthy man in Connecticut was actually carjacked inside his own garage…

  A Connecticut man pulled his Aston Martin convertible into his garage Sunday and encountered two masked men who attacked him and stole the vehicle in a brazen broad daylight carjacking captured on home security video.

  “Get out, get out,” a masked man can be heard telling the victim as he sits in his own Bayberry Lane garage in an exchange captured by a Ring camera in the corner of the room.

  A second man opens the passenger door and then rifles around inside another luxury car parked to the side.

  Driving an expensive vehicle can be fun.

  But in our current social environment, it makes you a target.

  It appears that those two criminals followed that man home.

  Sadly, this sort of crime is rapidly rising all over the nation.

  So from this point forward, make sure that nobody is following you when you are headed back to where you live.

  If you do suspect that you are being followed, pull into a gas station, but don’t get out.

  Circle around and watch to see if the vehicle that was potentially tailing you follows suit.  If you are still being followed at that point, call the police and head toward the nearest police station.  Only really stupid criminals will follow you there.

  I wish that we did not have to constantly be on guard like this, but it is imperative to understand that our society has been fundamentally transformed.

  Lawlessness reigns in major cities all over the United States, and I fully expect violent crime to get even worse during the years ahead of us.

  *  *  *

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 21:40

• Where Gas Is Cheapest & Most Expensive In The US
  Where Gas Is Cheapest & Most Expensive In The US

  The price of gasoline in the United States is climbing once more as production hit a summer low while major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia cut their output.

  As of September 21, the AAA gas pices overview put the price of a gallon of regular at $3.87 in the U.S. on average – the highest ever for this time of year.

  That price is still way below the new all-time high recorded on June 14, 2022 ($5.02), however.

  However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, gas prices also vary widely across the United States.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  State-specific costs for transportation and distribution can drive up prices, like in the case of Alaska and Hawaii. State taxes also vary greatly, for example explaining the high price of gasoline in California.

  But states that usually offer cheap gas are also feeling the price crunch right now. According to AAA, the gallon now costs upwards of $3.50 in all but nine states.

  Only in parts of the Southern United States and Texas, the gallon is still priced below that. Among those shelling out most for gas at the moment are residents of Washington, Nevada and California.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 21:20

• Pennsylvania Rolls Out Automatic Voter Registration
  Pennsylvania Rolls Out Automatic Voter Registration

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

  When getting a driver’s license or official state identification card in Pennsylvania, anyone eligible to vote will now be automatically registered.

  

  Gov. Josh Shapiro announced on Sept. 19 that Pennsylvania has implemented automatic voter registration (AVR) at Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) driver and photo license centers, starting on the day of the announcement.

  With this move, Pennsylvania joins 23 states with AVR. They are Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia, plus the District of Columbia.

  Pennsylvania residents seeking new or renewed driver’s licenses and ID cards will be automatically taken through the voter registration application process, if they are eligible to vote, unless they opt out of doing so.

  It is a change from voters opting into the voter registration process. Previously, employees at license centers asked people if they would like to register to vote.

  The change also adds voter registration instructions in five more languages, for a total of 31 languages, a statement from Mr. Shapiro’s office said.

  “Pennsylvania is the birthplace of our democracy, and as Governor, I’m committed to ensuring free and fair elections that allow every eligible voter to make their voice heard,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement.

  “Automatic voter registration is a commonsense step to ensure election security and save Pennsylvanians time and tax dollars. Residents of our Commonwealth already provide proof of identity, residency, age, and citizenship at the DMV—all the information required to register to vote—so it makes good sense to streamline that process with voter registration.”

  Longtime Voter Registration Site

  Since the 1993 passage of the National Voter Registration Act, which includes the motor voter law, Pennsylvanians have been able to apply to register to vote during these visits at PennDOT centers.

  “Registering eligible Commonwealth residents to vote during their visits to driver and photo license centers is a commonsense action,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in the statement. “The voter is already in a state government facility with their identification documentation in hand, and they will have their picture taken and sign their name electronically. Having all of that happen at the same time means the verification process is extremely secure and makes the registration process more efficient.”

  According to the statement from the governor’s office, “Multiple studies—including a 2019 Brennan Center for Justice study and a 2021 study by the Public Policy Institute of California—have also found that automatic voter registration in other states has produced marked increases in the number of eligible voters added to the voter rolls and has produced appreciable increases in voter turnout.”

  As of December 2022, roughly 8.7 million Pennsylvanians were registered to vote. According to U.S. Census estimates, more than 10.3 million Commonwealth residents are eligible to register, the statement said.

  To be eligible to register to vote, applicants must 1) be a U.S. citizen for at least 30 days before the next election; 2) be a resident of Pennsylvania and their election district for at least 30 days before the next election; and 3) be at least 18 years old on the date of the next election.

  The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) lists some pros and cons to AVR on its website.

  One positive is that automatic registration can help with voter registration list maintenance because the process updates existing registrations with current addresses. Precise voter rolls facilitate election accuracy and reduce the use of provisional ballots, which are used when there is a discrepancy in a voter’s registration status.

  “Some supporters also say automatic voter registration leads to higher voter turnout, although evidence supporting this claim is mixed,” the NCSL website says, then goes on to mention disadvantages of AVR.

  “Opponents of automatic voter registration may say that the government should not tell citizens they must register to vote, particularly in states that provide the ‘opt-out’ choice by mail, after the fact. Furthermore, they question whether opt-out forms that are sent and received through the mail are sufficient to ensure an individual can decline to register.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 21:00

• NY Man Arrested With $1.6 Million In Fentanyl Fails To Show For Court After Being Granted Non-Cash Bail
  NY Man Arrested With $1.6 Million In Fentanyl Fails To Show For Court After Being Granted Non-Cash Bail

  If we told you that a man accused of carrying $1.6 million in fentanyl in Pittsburgh didn’t show up for his court date after being released on non-cash bail earlier this month, would you be surprised?

  Us neither.

  But that was precisely the case in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where 27 year old Carlos Pichardo Cepeda failed the appear for court. The New Yorker “is accused of carrying hundreds of thousands of fentanyl doses at a Pittsburgh bus station,” according to Triblive.com.

  Pichardo Cepeda was previously handed a nonmonetary bond by a district judge and released after his arrest. This past Tuesday was his second court date that he missed, the report says. Republicans are blaming the cashless bail while Democrats are placing blame on the DA’s office dragging its feet in prosecuting the case. 

  Pichardo Cepeda was arrested August 31 at the Greyhound Terminal in Downtown Pittsburgh. He had 9 kilograms, or about 450,000 doses, of fentanyl on him with a street value of $1.6 billion.

  His criminal history included seven prior arrests, two misdemeanor convictions and pending cases in New York for grand larceny and sexual assault.

  

  Two district judges involved in his case, Xander Orenstein and Gene Ricciardi, stand on opposite ends of the political aisle, the report says. Orenstein granted him a nonmonetary bond but imposed electronic monitoring. 

  But such monitors can only be ordered by a Common Pleas Court judge. The arrested are usually held in jail until such cases can be transferred. That’s where Judge Ricciardi came in, according to the report:

  In the Pichardo Cepeda case, Orenstein believed the suspect would be held in jail until a decision about electronic monitoring was made, Asturi said.

  Orenstein set the nonmonetary bail on Sept. 1. The next day, Allegheny County Jail staff approached District Judge Gene Ricciardi, who was presiding that day, for clarification of the bail condition, according to Asturi.

  Asturi said Ricciardi then contacted Orenstein and received permission to review the electronic monitoring condition. Ricciardi then removed the electronic monitoring condition because district judges can’t impose it, and Pichardo Cepeda was released.

  Ricciardi did not read the criminal complaint and did not know the facts of the case at the time of release, Asturi said.

  Joe Asturi, a spokesman for the court system, offered the following perfunctory take: “Court administration is reviewing procedures to provide safeguards to prevent another such occurrence.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 20:40

• FBI Informant Created One Of Largest Nazi Groups In American History
  FBI Informant Created One Of Largest Nazi Groups In American History

  Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

  An FBI informant cofounded one of the largest and oldest neo-Nazi organizations in U.S. history: the National Socialist Movement, a group connected to numerous crimes and violent events, including the deadly 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, according to previously unpublicized records reviewed by Headline USA.

  The documents—a trove of FBI memos, affidavits and court records that this publication has dubbed the “Fed Files”—further indicate that the NSM allegedly had informants in prominent positions throughout much of its nearly 50-year history.

  Once known as the “Hollywood Nazis” for its flamboyant demonstrations and crude propaganda, the NSM has also been accused of being co-opted by the FBI in a lawsuit filed by a former member who is now in prison.

  Multiple current and former NSM members denied any affiliation with the FBI or law enforcement.

  

  The FBI declined to comment for this story.

  NSM’s Founding

  The NSM was founded in 1974 by Cliff Herrington and Robert Brannen, both of whom were chief lieutenants of prominent American fascist George Lincoln Rockwell—the founder of the original American Nazi Party in 1959.

  By 1976, there was growing suspicion in the Nazi movement that Brannen was working with the FBI.

  In fact, the NSM’s own publication, the National Socialist, released an article in April 1976, denying accusations from a rival group—the National Socialist White Peoples Party, or NSWPP—that Brannen was an informant. The National Socialist article called the accusations a “reckless and irresponsible smear attack on Comrade Brennan.”

  But the NSWPP was right about Brannen.

  

  Commenting on that National Socialist article several months later, a May 1976 FBI memo warned that Brannen’s cover might have been blown.

  The redacted memo doesn’t show the informant’s name, but it clearly identifies Brannen by referencing the National Socialist article and the accusations floating around him at the time.

  “Informant’s photograph and description appeared in the February 1976, NSWPP publication and he was named an FBI informant,” the FBI memo said.

  “Informant’s group, the NSM, has publicized a rebuttal, and the Cincinnati Office is taking special precaution to ensure this informant can be operated successfully without jeopardizing his personal safety,” the memo said.

  Despite the accusations against Brannen, he continued to lead the NSM undaunted for almost another decade until he suffered several strokes in 1983.

  The other cofounder of NSM, Cliff Herrington, denied that his former colleague was ever a federal informant.

  “I knew Robert F. Brannen personally. He wasn’t on the take,” Herrington said in an email to this publication.

  As an aside, Herrington also confirmed reports that his wife, Andrea Herrington aka Maxine Dietrich, founded a Satanic cult called the Joy of Satan Ministries. The discovery of Herrington’s Satanic leanings is a reason cited by White for why he left the NSM in the mid-2000s.

  “Yes! I am married to HP Andrea Herrington nee Dietrich!! Many ivy league critiques have said she was worthy of Master Degrees! Oh, ps SHE & Her Lieutenants are completely right!” Herrington said in a typo-ridden email, which he signed, “Herrington Heil Hitler!”

  Herrington led the NSM from the time of Brannen’s major stroke in 1983 until 1994, when he appointed Jeff Schoep to succeed him.

  The Jeff Schoep Era

  Schoep, who led the NSM from 1994 until shortly after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, has also been accused of being an FBI informant.

  Unlike Brannen, the allegation against Schoep isn’t clearly corroborated by FBI memos. And the accusation comes from a controversial source: former NSM member Bill White, who is now serving time in prison for multiple felony convictions.

  White accused Schoep of being an informant in an 2017 FOIA lawsuit he filed against the FBI from prison, as well as a 2020 court declaration in which he unsuccessfully sought compassionate release. White attached the FBI memo about Brannen to this same court declaration.

  In his FOIA lawsuit, White sought records about the NSM, Schoep and a slew of other players he alleged were part of an FBI right-wing entrapment operation.

  According to White, the FBI took control of the NSM as early as 2004, and likely much earlier. White said in his FOIA lawsuit that the FBI and ATF “would use the National Socialist Movement to hold phony ‘white supremacist’ rallies.”

  “The FBI-JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] would also arrange for violent counterdemonstrations against these rallies through informants in groups such as Anti-Racist Action … The ATF was also using the NSM in a similar fashion,” White said in his FOIA lawsuit.

  “Neither party was disclosing that the rallies were fraudulent,” White added. “Instead, the federal government was using the rallies to make it appear as if there was a ‘domestic terrorist threat’ when no such threat existed.”

  As for Schoep, White said he believes the former NSM leader was an FBI informant because, among other reasons, Schoep would “frequently lie” when they worked directly together in 2005 to 2006.

  “Schoep frequently asked me to go various places to perform tasks that only advantaged the FBI-JTTF operation, either by adding legitimacy to their front groups or to get me away from situations,” White said.

  “It is virtually impossible for Schoep not to know that he is acting primarily in the interests of the FBI-JTTF operation, and not in his own interests, if he were a sincere advocate for National Socialism,” White added in his lawsuit, which was ultimately dismissed by a judge for procedural reasons.

  In an October 2020 sworn declaration to the court in a separate matter, White provided more details on why he thinks Schoep worked with the feds.

  The convicted Nazi cited a heavily redacted FBI memo he obtained via FOIA. The memo said that the FBI interviewed an NSM associate who was in Chicago when law enforcement arrested Matthew Hale—a white nationalist in prison for allegedly soliciting an undercover FBI informant to murder U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow.

  “[Schoep’s] presence in Chicago with Matt Hale at Hale’s arrest make it clear that [the FBI memo is referring to] Schoep,” White said in his sworn declaration, also claiming: “I know from prior releases that Minneapolis Field Division Squad 4 handled Jeff Schoep.”

  When presented with White’s records, Schoep admitted to being detained briefly and talking to law enforcement upon Hale’s arrest, but he denied talking to the FBI about Hale or any other topic. He said he spoke to U.S. Marshals when Hale was arrested and he was detained, offering no info.

  “I was detained for a couple hours at the most and was being questioned. If the FBI was there, I don’t recall them identifying themselves, I just remember being told it was US Marshals,” he told Headline USA.

  “They asked why I was in Chicago with Matt, I said he was a friend, and I was there to support him … It was like 20 years ago I don’t remember every stupid question they asked, but I know I didn’t offer them anything more than who I was and why I was there,” he added.

  “All my dealing with law enforcement pressure over the years ended in the same manner: very little or nothing to say.”

  Schoep, who was reportedly given probation for a felony burglary charge in 1998, also said his home was raided by law enforcement twice—once by federal law enforcement—which he said is further evidence that he was never an informant.

  Additionally, Schoep noted that White was an avowed communist before he joined the NSM.

  “I took a lot of sh*t from longtime members of the NSM for even allowing Bill to join the group,” he said of White.

  “I believed everyone deserved a chance and even with his past history as a communist; I believed he changed his views,” he added. “… Big mistake on my part.”

  To Schoep’s point, White hasn’t offered clear-cut proof that Schoep was an FBI informant.

  White’s accusations were contested by the Justice Department, and a district court ultimately dismissed his application for compassionate release (his accusations against Schoep were one small part of a 97-page court declaration he submitted in support of his release). White’s FOIA lawsuit implicating Schoep was also unsuccessful.

  Headline USA has published a separate story about White’s background, explaining why this publication thinks his allegations are worth reporting.

  In any event, Schoep now openly collaborates with the FBI and other law enforcers since disavowing his Nazi lifestyle in the wake of Charlottesville—an apparent change of heart that has drawn much scrutiny in liberal media.

  “Honored to speak twice at Midwest Police Expo for Illinois #PoliceChiefs Association and FBI,” Schoep tweeted on Aug. 21.

  “Thx #FBI for the commemorative coin. Its [sic] ironic, how life has changed. In the past I avoided LE like the plague, today we are on the same side in service to #humanity.”

  Honored to speak twice at Midwest Police Expo for Illinois #PoliceChiefs Association and FBI. Thx #FBI for the commemorative coin. Its ironic, how life has changed. In the past I avoided LE like the plague, today we are on the same side in service to #humanity. #CVE #Police #DVE pic.twitter.com/rNopQD8kAG

  — Jeff Schoep (@SchoepJeff) August 21, 2023

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

  Schoep has also openly consorted with former FBI informant Jesse Morton, who was an al-Qaeda recruiter in the post-9/11 era until he was arrested in 2011.

  Schoep and Morton both participated in a panel about countering violent extremism sponsored by the DHS-funded nonprofit organization Parallel Networks in November 2021, about a month before Morton was found dead in a Florida hotel room.

  Despite openly working with law enforcement now, Schoep still bristles at the suggestion that he was an informant in the Nazi movement.

  “Outright accusing me of being an informant: Wow,” he said in an email to this publication. “If I was still in the movement, you might have gotten a visit for that accusation—and not a visit from law enforcement.”

  Other Feds in the NSM

  Assuming that Schoep wasn’t, in fact, an FBI informant, the NSM was nevertheless infiltrated by feds during his leadership tenure.

  For example, court proceedings revealed in 2007 that the leader of NSM’s Florida chapter, David Gletty, was an informant.

  Gletty had organized a NSM Nazi rally in Orlando in 2006. So when he was outed as an informant over a year later, it sparked an uproar in the local black community.

  “That revelation came Wednesday in an unrelated federal court hearing and has prompted outrage from black leaders, some of whom demanded an investigation into whether the February 2006 march was, itself, an event staged by law-enforcement agencies,” the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time.

  Gletty later published a memoir titled Undercover Nazi, in which he disclosed that three ATF agents also attended the Orlando rally.

  Prison inmate White, who was also attended the Orlando rally, said in his 2020 declaration that he now believes the majority of Nazi demonstrators were informants.

  “I estimate that about three of the twenty to twenty-five persons who participated were not federal agents: myself, Laura Sennett, aka Isis, and an undercover reporter for a local paper,” White said.

  In 2012, another prominent member of the NSM revealed himself as a federal informant. The informant, Brian Holland, had been the NSM’s candidate for U.S. President in 2008.

  Holland told his story on the popular radio show Coast to Coast AM, telling host George Knapp about how he infiltrated the white-supremacy movement in 1999.

  Holland explained that his job entailed going to neo-Nazi gatherings and reporting on their activities to the FBI. According to Holland, at times he was making up to $8,000 a month.

  According to Holland, he was terminated by the FBI without warning and told by the bureau, “Now you don’t exist.”

  “With the shake of a bureaucratic hand, the third highest-ranking neo-Nazi in the country was put to pasture after 11 years of risking my life,” he said.

  NSM is currently commanded by Burt Colucci, who told Headline USA that he, too, was asked to be an informant.

  Colucci said he turned down the FBI’s offer.

  “The FBI likes to play games no matter what side of this you’re on. They actually came to me and told me they could ‘supplement my income,’ offering me—they didn’t specify what exactly they meant or or how much, but they said they’d supplement my income,” he said.

  “I told them I don’t want anything to do with them and to talk to my lawyers, so they did—they talked to my Arizona lawyer at the time,” he said, adding, “I would have personally told them to f*ck off and keep their money, but my lawyer’s like, ‘Let me tell them. I’ll say it a little bit nicer for you.’”

  But Colluci, who deleted Schoep’s NSM email accounts after taking control of the group, said he isn’t concerned whether his former leader was an informant.

  “All of these people are long gone, whether informants at the time or not,” he said.

  Meanwhile, a jury ruled in November 2021 that the NSM owes $1 million for its actions at Charlottesville in 2017, while Schoep owes $500,000.

  Schoep has an appeal pending in that case.

  Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 20:20

• The Great Debt Fiasco: How Washington's 'Reckless And Opportunistic' Pandemic Splurge Jeopardized America's Future
  The Great Debt Fiasco: How Washington’s ‘Reckless And Opportunistic’ Pandemic Splurge Jeopardized America’s Future

  As the US blows past $33 trillion in national debt for the first time – and adds roughly $1 billion in new debt every hour, a comprehensive new report from the Heritage Foundation reveals that the US government has tacked on $7.5 trillion in new debt over past two years alone, drawing a stark image of America’s economic prospects.

  

  The report sheds light on a series of colossal spending packages rolled out between March 2020 and December 2022, amounting to an astronomical $7.464 trillion in debt, or a staggering $57,400 per household.

  The Heritage Foundation splits the ordeal into three components: the nature of federal spending, the Federal Reserve’s role in this fiasco, and the impending ramifications of this debt accumulation. The conclusions drawn are far from comforting. Much of the pandemic-era expenditure was not only unwarranted but actively detrimental, leaving the country grappling with an inflation surge, labor shortages, and broken supply chains, Fox News reports.

  “The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed unprecedented federal fiscal and monetary actions that wasted trillions of dollars,” said the Heritage experts.

  Indeed, most of this drunken spending was done in the name of a virus that kills less than 1% of those it infects (mostly the elderly and the obese), and employed extreme lockdown measures which were no more effective than countries that refused to do the same.

  The authors say that the US Congress failed to couple any justifiable pandemic spending with measure to reduce future deficits.

  “A looming fiscal crisis has shifted from a long-term concern to a current event. Congress must return to responsible governance for America to avoid further economic calamity,” the report concludes.

  “When there’s a supply shock, when the economy tumbles off a cliff, all the government can do is make the recovery longer and slower by trying to give you a sugar pill on the front end,” said Co-author Richard Stern, Director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation. “That’s what happened here. We are now suffering worse four years later because the government did things in the moment to make it look a little better.”

  Breaking it down, $2.22 trillion was spent by the Trump administration’s March 2020 COVID response and a December 2020 stimulus package. The rest was spent by the Biden administration via the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and other various packages.

  

  According to Heritage President Kevin Roberts, the report’s findings “explain how we got here and provide recommendations for extinguishing the fire so that we can change course and reduce the severe economic pain facing everyday Americans across the country.”

  “Inflation doesn’t just happen; it is a direct result of overbearing, clumsy, dysfunctional government policies,” said Roberts. “While everyday Americans suffer under the hidden tax of Biden’s crippling inflation – at the gas pump and checkout counters, in utility bills, rents, and car payments – Congress and the President have an unending appetite for more spending, regulation, and subsidies.”

  Yikes

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2023

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

  The report also notes that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is “a complete misnomer” that has only done the exact opposite.

  “This reckless and politically opportunistic spending spree has left the U.S. with a weakened economy, an inflation crisis, and a looming debt crisis. The volume and nature of the spending spree helped to create skyrocketing inflation and interest rates and created a labor shortage, reducing real household incomes and leaving store shelves bare and supply chains broken.”

  

  What does this mean for the future?

  According to the authors, “The amount of damage caused by the federal spending spree is immense, and the size and scope of the long-term fiscal problem can be overwhelming,” reads the report’s final paragraph. “Policymakers must address this reality in a sober fashion, neither pretending that easy fixes exist nor ignoring the problem altogether. This will require controlling spending, returning to meaningful budgeting, and fixing problems at the Federal Reserve.“

  “There is a genuine opportunity for leadership if elected officials have the courage and foresight to do the right thing, both for America’s near-term battle against inflation and its long term economic prospects.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 20:00

• Can Trump Thread The Needle On Abortion?
  Can Trump Thread The Needle On Abortion?

  Authored by Jack Bevan via RealClearPolitics.com,

  In the first of five newly scheduled visits to the Hawkeye State, Donald Trump arrived in northeast Iowa with a warning.

  “In order to win in 2024, Republicans must learn how to properly talk about abortion,” he told an audience of some 2,000 potential voters, packed into a ballroom here.

  “This issue cost us unnecessarily but dearly in the midterms. It cost us dearly, really, and unnecessarily.”

  Amid his customary MAGA slogans and jokes at the expense of Ron DeSantis, the moment stood in stark relief as a rare attempt at clear-eyed, political sobriety on Trump’s part. It’s also the latest in a week-long saga in which Trump, the self-described “most pro-life president in history,” has sought to loudly position himself as the GOP’s resident moderate on abortion. It began with a bang on Sunday, when the former president denounced the idea of a six-week “fetal heartbeat” ban on abortion as a “terrible mistake,” and pledged to negotiate a compromise with Democrats on the issue.

  Ever since the 2022 Dobbs decision that vacated Roe v. Wade, abortion has emerged as a highly salient issue that cuts in Democrats’ favor. This summer, it emerged as a flashpoint dividing the Republicans’ crowded presidential primary field – and nowhere is this more true than in Iowa. Participants in the state’s first-in-the-nation GOP caucus are more likely to identify as pro-life than anything else, and victory in the state is nigh impossible without the support of evangelical Christians, a majority of whom enthusiastically support Iowa’s six-week abortion ban.

  Trump’s campaign knows all this, but his concern appears to be with electability in swing states during the general election – which is the kind of luxury available only to a candidate leading the primary field by 40 points in the polls.

  

  On stage, Trump recalled the GOP’s recent losses in Michigan and Pennsylvania: “Good candidates” who ultimately “got clobbered” because they failed to read the room on abortion.

  Trump may see something in the tea leaves for 2024, as well. At the GOP debate in Milwaukee last month, eight of Trump’s most prominent challengers all took the opportunity to identify as some shade of “pro-life.” But in the weeks since, the only challenger to have moved the needle against him has been Nikki Haley – the lone woman on stage, who drew a sharp contrast with the pack when she offered a nuanced take on the issue, and rebuked the idea that a Republican president could pass any kind of federal abortion ban.

  “No Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president could ban all those state laws,” she said in Milwaukee.

  “Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue, when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes.”

  Notably, a September 7 poll by Fox found Haley to have a better hypothetical matchup against Joe Biden than any other GOP candidate, Trump included. But others in the race insist the path forward is to the right of Trump’s current post. At a Saturday town hall with Iowa evangelicals in Des Moines, his former sidekick called for a nationwide 15-week ban, in a direct response to Haley.

  “It’s an idea whose time has come,” Pence said.

  “Why would we leave unborn babies in California and Illinois and New York to the devices of liberal state legislatures and liberal governors? We need to stand for the unborn, all across America.”

  And for Ron DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban identical to Iowa’s in Florida last March, it might be just what his struggling campaign needed. The campaign took to Iowa’s radio waves the morning after Trump’s “horrible mistake” clip went viral, ready to position himself as the more authentic pro-life candidate.

  “I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow pro-life if you’re criticizing states for enacting protections for babies that have heartbeats,” DeSantis said in an interview with Radio Iowa on Monday.

  “I think if [Trump’s] going into this saying he’s going to make the Democrats happy with respect to right to life, I think all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”

  On its surface, it would seem like an easy inroad for the Florida governor. But it may not be so simple. When RealClearPolitics spoke to Emerson College’s Spencer Kimball, he pointed to a counterintuitive finding in their post-debate Iowa poll. Trump was found to have roughly equivalent support among Republicans both against and in favor of a complete federal abortion ban (51% and 52%, respectively).

  “There’s this idea that the abortion issue is really driving, or that it’ll curtail Trump somehow, but I don’t see that. He’s getting it from both directions,” Kimball said.

  “The issues just don’t line up perfectly, where if you go with one thing, everyone will fall in line.”

  Kimball also felt that Trump’s anxieties about another pro-choice “clobbering” may be justified, based on recent electoral losses for the GOP, like the Michigan governorship. Democrat Gretchen Whitmer managed to overperform last November, in part thanks to messaging that leaned heavily into anxiety around “reproductive rights.”

  “You had, in my opinion, a clear example of somebody ‘staunch pro-life’ and somebody ‘staunch pro-choice’,” Kimball said of the race.

  “We thought it would be somewhat competitive. It was not, and it really speaks to how motivating abortion can be as an issue.”

  Is the pro-life right forever doomed to moderation, then? Not necessarily. In a statement to RCP, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the advocacy group SBA Pro-Life America, provided an alternate telling of 2022’s Red Wave That Wasn’t.

  Republican governors who exceeded expectations that year – Georgia’s Brian Kemp, Texas’ Greg Abbott, and, yes, Florida’s Ron DeSantis – were all unabashedly pro-life in their campaigns.

  “Life is a winning issue for those that speak clearly and confidently,” Dannenfelser explained.

  “Republicans need to stand firm in serving mothers and protecting the most innocent among us. And when they do, they see great success. Governors who boldly spoke on pro-life won by double-digit margins in the midterms against pro-abortion candidates.”

  Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at the Catholic Association, amplified this point, saying that successful candidates in 2022 were not only pro-life, but were able to “clearly define their opponent’s unpopular no-limits extremism” as well.

  “Pro-choice extremists are playing dangerous rhetorical games with voters and using deceptive language in their ballot initiative efforts, and so it’s more important than ever that pro-life politicians clarify their positions and clearly define those of their opponents,” McGuire said.

  It’s here that both sides of the GOP’s schism of the week seem to agree. In Dubuque on Wednesday, Trump stressed to the audience that a lasting pro-life victory would come through regaining leverage and reframing the issue around the extremes of the left.

  “Pro-Lifers aren’t the radicals. They’re the radicals!” Trump said Wednesday. Should horror stories of practices like “post-birth” abortion become more widely known, Trump argued, it would become clear that “nobody wants that, not even Democrats.”

  And in the short term? Trump is hoping Iowans remember that he’s still the guy who overturned Roe v. Wade. Challengers looking to attack him on this issue must tip-toe around the fact that his Supreme Court appointments are the only reason this debate is possible in the first place.

  “The same people attacking us now are those who have been failing you for decades,” Trump said in Dubuque, referring to the hardline pro-lifers within the party.

  “Unlike them, I don’t just talk, I get the job done. I got this job done.”

  Trump’s rivals, of course, are hoping he’ll never have the chance to be proven right in the general election. At least one group seems to believe Trump’s gambit will pay off, though: Democrats reportedly scrambled the metaphorical jets following Trump’s interview on Sunday, anxious that they won’t be able to draw an effective contrast with Trump on what was previously seen as a “sensitive issue.”

  Republicans like DeSantis, though, may finally have the contrast they were looking for. Although Trump isn’t expected to attend next week’s GOP debate in Simi Valley, Calif., we can expect the contrast will be on full display when he and DeSantis attend California’s GOP convention, two days later.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 19:40

• Happy Little Money Tree? Bob Ross 'Rookie Card' Painting Goes On Sale For Nearly $10 Million
  Happy Little Money Tree? Bob Ross ‘Rookie Card’ Painting Goes On Sale For Nearly $10 Million

  The very first painting from famed painter and television host Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting program has gone on sale for nearly $10 million.

  That’s the price a Minneapolis gallery is asking for “A Walk in the Woods,” the first of more than 400 paintings created by Ross during his show’s 11-year run.

  

  “It is season one, episode one of what you would call the rookie card for Bob Ross,” said gallery owner Ryan Nelson of Modern Artifact.

  On that first episode, Ross stressed that painting doesn’t need to be pretentious.

  “We have avoided painting for so long because I think all of our lives we’ve been told that you have to go to school half your life, maybe even have to be blessed by Michelangelo at birth, to ever be able to paint a picture,” said Ross in 1983. “And here, we want to show you that that’s not true. That you can paint a picture.”

  

  Ross, who served in the Air Force for 20 years before hosting his show, died in 1995 due to complications from lymphoma.

  “What this piece represents is the people’s artist,” said Nelson. “This isn’t an institution that’s telling you that Bob Ross is great. It’s not some high-brow gallery telling you that Bob Ross is great. This is the masses, the population in the world that are saying that Bob Ross is great.”

  The first season of “The Joy of Painting” was filmed in Falls Creek, Virginia, and the painting from Ross’ first show was sold months later to raise funds for the local PBS station. A volunteer at the station bought the painting for an undisclosed price and hung it in her home for 39 years until getting in touch with Nelson, who has bought and sold more than 100 of Ross’ works.

  Nelson bought the painting last year and then gave it a “not for sale” price of $9.85 million, said publicist Megan Hoffman. -Fox5

  Watch Ross paint “A Walk in the Woods”:

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 19:20

• The Rise Of Hux-Well
  The Rise Of Hux-Well

  Authored by Jeff Einstein via ‘The Quality Of Life Resistance Movement’ Substack,

  

  Noam Chomsky stopped just one rung shy of perfection with his illuminating book, Manufacturing Consent, about how commercial media work as extensions of government and corporate power to manufacture the consent of the masses. Likewise, Matt Taibbi’s title, Hate, Inc. is a near-perfect indictment of cable and digital news profit models that manufacture and prioritize enmity to the exclusion of the truth and the common good.

  Both works fall just one rung shy of perfection, however, not because they aren’t impressive examples of applied critical thought and insight, but because neither consent nor hate are the primary products of commercial media. Rather, they are toxic byproducts of a commercial mass media whose primary product is addiction…

  

  “The effect of mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.” — Christopher Lasch

  In the early 21st century, we turned the corner from a society in which addiction was the exception to the rule to a society in which addiction became the rule. By 2004, still some years before social media, the smartphone, and streaming media secured their reputations as history’s most perfect narcotics, the average American — according to the Ball State University Middletown Media Studies report (the first large-scale observational study of American media consumption habits) — was already consuming more than eleven hours of media each and every day.

  Concurrently, TV Everywhere, the commercial imperative behind the trillion-dollar campaigns for high-speed bandwidth and streaming HDTV, was ordained as the latest media industry mantra — part of an all-hands-on-deck digital blitzkrieg to normalize late-stage addiction.

  Since then, hundreds of studies, articles, books, and documentaries have confirmed what anyone with a smartphone, social media account or a teenager already knows or suspects: we are a nation of media addicts — by design. We are, per Stanford addiction researcher Dr. Anna Lembke, a Dopamine Nation. The scientific, theological, and lay juries are in: smartphones, streaming HDTV, and social media are now — by far — the primary narcotics of choice in what I call the Great Age of Addiction.

  “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” — Carl Jung

  What Carl Jung failed to mention at the time was the practical reason why all addictions are bad: because all addictions — regardless of the narcotics — are manifestations of behavioral excess. As such, they all steal our time and money and freedom — none more ruthlessly or efficiently than our default meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital.

  Needless to say, we didn’t just suddenly wake up one morning to discover that we had become a society of media addicts overnight. We became a society of media addicts the same way we became a society of institutions too big to fail. What happened to us (and what we allowed to happen), happened gradually over decades. Like too big to fail, it happened not as an unintended consequence of a failure to plan, or the unfortunate fallout from a lousy plan. Like too big to fail, state-sponsored default addiction is the plan.

  “The model of ownership, in a society built round mass consumption, is addiction.”
  — Christopher Lasch

  In the Great Age of Addiction, the meta-message we hear most is always the same binge-worthy call to action: “Eat all you want,” our digital overlords tell us over and over again. “We’ll make more.” Everything else, like the manufacture of consent and hate, follows…

  Of course, commercial mass media’s essential job in a culture of mass consumption is to promote and protect the narrow interests of the ruling elite, who now control virtually all of institutional America, including the corporate media, the technomedia cartel (with the current exception of Twitter), finance, the entertainment industry, academia and public education, all major surveillance and law enforcement agencies, all other major government agencies, and all major NGOs. Institutional dissenters are few and far between in the Great Age of Addiction.

  The manufacture of default addiction in the 21st century is a compliance mechanism borrowed straight from the pages of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World — the story of a dystopian society controlled by state-sponsored addiction to soma, sex, and endless entertainment…

  “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it.” — Aldous Huxley

  Our own descent into the grips of state-sponsored default addiction was much accelerated in the early 21st century by the algorithmic tools of digital scale — behavioral targeting, Big Data, and AI — deployed en masse against foreign and domestic populations for the past generation by massive institutions in a classically fascist union of private and government interests.

  “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini

  Predictably, addiction is now a cradle-to-grave relationship for the children of the 21st century, an endless parade of state-sanctioned psychotropics, sexualization, and numerous other substance and behavioral addictions — not least our meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital. Our lives as addicts begin these days in early childhood, usually well before we can read — by design. Understandable, therefore, that the most compelling and intimate relationships in our lives as mass consumers of mass commercial media and just about everything else are the relationships we cultivate with our own narcotics — the same relationships designed to breed compliance, complacency, and consent.

  

  In recent years we have witnessed the addition of yet another dystopian vision to the American cultural stew. Unlike the Huxleyan model, this one is concerned far less with the bemused manufacture of addicted consent, already fait accompli in the Great Age of Addiction, and far more with the iron-fist mechanics of totalitarian enforcement.

  After all, even societies like ours, societies whose citizens have been duly converted into passive addicts in order to manufacture compliance and consent on behalf of a ruling elite — must deal with outliers and the occasional rise of populist movements. What is the ruling elite to do with those who refuse or fail to comply?

  What, American elites have asked us in recent years, are we to do with the tens of millions of Donald Trump voters, the populist MAGA movement, January 6th rioters, and angry parents who suddenly show up uninvited to school board meetings? What, ask blue-state governors, blue-city mayors, and the W.H.O. are we to do with anti-vax monsters who refuse to comply with covid lockdown, vaccine, and mask mandates? What, the Canadian oligarchs ask, are we to do with all these Nazi rogue truckers? What, ask the movers and shakers of civil society as they step off their private jets in Davos, are we to do with those who deny the science of climate change? What, ask the academicians and public school policy makers are we to do with those who deny gender-affirming care? What, ask the politicians, are we to do with those who deny election results? What, ask the global elite, are we to do with the anti-war Putin sympathizers who threaten the Liberal World Order, refuse to support the battle for democracy and freedom, and casually imperil so many Ukrainian lives?

  What happens when the Huxleyan model of manufactured consent and compliance via state-sanctioned addiction fails to keep them all in check? To properly manage these and future populist miscreants, the ruling elite have borrowed from the 20th century’s other great literary dystopia: George Orwell’s 1984. In it, Orwell describes a society ruled and controlled not by state-sponsored default addiction, but by 24/7 surveillance, linguistic thought control, the wholesale manufacture of abject hatred, and jackboot-enforced fear — all state-sponsored and manufactured.

  In Orwell’s classic dystopian vision, state-sanctioned violence is converted from something we fear into something we cheer. Each and every morning members of the Outer Party of Oceania are required by the elite Inner Party to participate in the daily Two Minutes Hate — 120 seconds of publicly expressed mob contempt and disgust for fabricated public enemy and terrorist, Emmanuel Goldstein…

  In retrospect, the fictional execration of the Two Minutes Hate seems almost quaint when compared to the real thing today, an endless torrent of 1984-inspired venom and vitriol spewed on cable news and social media. More ominously, however, in the past few years the primary focus of our institutionally inspired animus has been turned inward, from foreign to domestic enemies of the state.

  Nowadays, the new-and-improved Two Minutes Hate runs 24/7 nonstop, and the fabled Emmanuel Goldstein has been replaced by Donald Trump, his legions of deplorables, and the white-supremacist, transphobic, anti-vax MAGA insurrectionists of January 6th — the day that almost lived in infamy.

  To keep today’s unwashed and under-educated working class in line, the ruling elite call upon the mostly white, mostly college educated, and mostly affluent institutional shock troops and street thugs of Wokeism, last deployed en masse in the summer of 2020 to burn down poor black neighborhoods in the name of anti-racism…

  

  State-sponsored corporate shock troops promote arson and looting in poor black neighborhoods in the name of woke anti-racism.

  Everything about Wokeism is derivative of 1984, beginning with the perversely dangerous assertion that speech is violence: the epitome of 21st-century DoubleSpeak…

  

  War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Truth, Speech is Violence: the Orwellian mantras of Wokeism…

  Further homage to Orwell is everywhere manifest in official Woke vernacular, informed and enhanced at any given moment by an ever-expanding style guide of pandering pronouns and euphemisms designed to confer quasi-scientific status and legitimacy on toxic social contagions like climate change, anti-racism, and critical gender theory — bastard stepchildren of a thoroughly corrupt and kleptocratic academia that sits like a tin crown atop an equally corrupt and kleptocratic public school system. In the end, it seems, social justice or climate justice or racial justice or trans justice or any other form of justice that requires a modifier is nothing more than good old-fashioned mob justice at digital scale.

  With almost total control of institutional America — including academia and public education, the technomedia and corporate media giants, corporate finance, the Fortune 100, the DHS, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, all major NGOs, global think tanks, and the entire surveillance-state apparatus — the Woke machine’s eagerness to jettison civil liberties and resort to political violence whenever it wants is testimony to complete and unmitigated institutional power in the near-total absence of accountability.

  Institutionally, America is now a one-party town with the power and will to lavish DEFCON 1 levels of hatred and fear upon half the population of the country with casual disregard. We should be so lucky to confine their hate to only two minutes a day.

  Unfortunately, all one-party towns breed intolerance and corruption. As a study in illiberal intolerance that would humble both Big Brother and Mustapha Mond in equal measure, the Wokeists are the ruling elite’s Praetorian Guard in a global class war against poor and middle class people of all colors worldwide. Against you, your family, and your community.

  So there you have it: the compliance mechanism of state-sponsored default addiction borrowed from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World on the one hand paired with the enforcement mechanism of 24/7 surveillance, linguistic thought control, and institutional terror borrowed from George Orwell’s 1984 on the other. Both at digital scale. They come together now as Huxwell — a global 21st-century adaptation of 20th-century totalitarianism.

  

  Huxwell — equal doses of both dystopian visions, equal measures of drug-induced compliance and Stasi-style enforcement — with a little Mary Shelley tossed in for good measure…

  Huxwell, however, ain’t your father’s totalitarianism. Three primary factors distinguish 21st-century Huxwellian totalitarianism from its 20th-century counterparts:

  1. Digital scale
     Back in the 20th century, Western totalitarianism was confined to specific nations and cultures. Today, however, it engulfs entire continents like North America, Europe, and Australia. Driven by global institutions of immense digital scale and reach, the totalitarian hegemony of Huxwell follows in the imperial footsteps of Western consumer culture: powered over the past two generations by trillions of microchips and thousands of server farms. And unlike Nazi Germany, Huxwell cannot be crushed by external forces because the forces large enough to crush it are all in league with it.

  2. Rise of the Bureaucrat
     Today’s Western totalitarians, at least those emerging now in Western democracies, are less akin to the larger-than-life fascists of the 20th century —like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao — and more like your Uncle Joe and Aunt Jacinda. Today’s Western totalitarians are career politicians and unelected apparatchiks: dull, nondescript, and wholly unremarkable except in the power they wield and their unquestioning loyalty to the state. The Huxwellian totalitarians of today personify what Hanna Arendt described as the banality of evil.

  3. The Great Age of Addiction
     Back in the 20th century addiction was still the exception to the rule. In the 21st-century rise of Huxwell, addiction is the rule.

  Huxwell: the confluence of state-sponsored default addiction and the institutional tyranny of runaway digital scale. Huxwell: the go-to Chief Compliance Officer and Enforcer-in-Chief — all rolled up into one totalitarian mega-state. Huxwell: a monster designed to crush populist political resistance while the ruling elite ransack the joint. Huxwell, the Great Reset come to life…

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to ‘The Quality Of Life Resistance Movement’ Substack,here

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 19:00

• Sen. Murphy Slams Biden Plan To Commit 'American Blood' To Saudi Arabia
  Sen. Murphy Slams Biden Plan To Commit ‘American Blood’ To Saudi Arabia

  Among the few influential Congress members to push back against Saudi Arabia and Washington’s decades-long close partnership has been Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. 

  This week it was widely reported that as part of US efforts to achieve Saudi-Israel normalization, the White House could strike a new defense pact with Riyadh, which would require American military intervention if Saudi Arabia were to ever come under direct attack. 

  “Under such an agreement, the United States and Saudi Arabia would generally pledge to provide military support if the other country is attacked in the region or on Saudi territory,” the NY Times reported earlier this week.

  

  The report said, based on a US official, that such an agreement would resemble current military pacts with Japan and South Korea.

  Sen. Murphy on the heels of this reporting is warning that the US shouldn’t commit “American blood” to Saudi Arabia. 

  He posed in a Wednesday CNN interview when discussing US-Saudi relations, “Is this the kind of stable regime that we should commit American blood to defending?”

  According to a description of the CNN segment in Responsible Statecraft: 

  Appearing on CNN, Murphy said that he supported the idea of the Biden administration brokering a deal in the Middle East, saying it would be “good for the United States if there is peace between the Gulf and in particular between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” but questioned the price that Washington is willing to pay to accomplish that objective.

  Murphy ticked off a list of human rights abuses that Saudi Arabia has been linked to, specifically the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the recent reported killing of hundreds of migrants crossing over the country’s border with Yemen. Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s leadership, Saudi Arabia also launched the war on Yemen, which continues to be one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in the world today. In 2018, Murphy was one of the lead co-sponsors of a War Powers resolution that would have ended the United States’ involvement in that war.

  And addressing the reports that the Biden administration is pursuing a defense pact with the kingdom, Murphy continued, “I would be very wary of committing the United States, through a treaty, to the defense of Saudi Arabia.”

  

  Various polls continue to show the American public has soured on the historic US-Saudi partnership, which has been based largely on oil and weapons, especially after recent revelations of Riyadh’s involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 18:40

• Will "Poor Man's Cocaine" Fuel The Next US Drug Crisis?
  Will “Poor Man’s Cocaine” Fuel The Next US Drug Crisis?

  Authored by Jim Crotty via UnDark.org,

  The cheap and highly addictive stimulant Captagon shows signs of following in the opioid fentanyl’s footsteps…

  

  THE OPIOID CRISIS continues to rage across the U.S., but there are some positive, if modest, signs that it may be slowing. Overdose deaths due to opioids are flattening in many places and dropping in others, awareness of the dangers of opioid abuse continues to increase, and more than $50 billion in opioid settlement funds are finally making their way to state and local governments after years of delay. There is still much work to be done, but all public health emergencies eventually subside. Then what?

  First, it’s important to realize that synthetic opioids like fentanyl will never fully disappear from the drug supply.

  They are too potent, too addictive, and perhaps most importantly, too lucrative. Opioids, like Covid-19, are here to stay, consistently circulating in the community but at more manageable levels.

  More alarming is what may take its place. Since 2010, overdoses involving both stimulants and fentanyl have increased 50-fold. Experts suggest this dramatic rise in polysubstance use represents a “fourth wave” in the opioid crisis, but what if it is really the start of a new wave of an emerging stimulant crisis?

  Substance abuse tends to move in cycles. Periods with high rates of depressant drug use (like opioids) are almost always followed by ones with high rates of stimulant drug use (like methamphetamine and cocaine), and vice versa. The heroin crisis of the 1960s and 1970s was followed by the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, which gave way to the current opioid epidemic. As the think tank scholar Charles Fain Lehman quipped, “As with fashion, so with drugs — whatever the last generation did, the next generation tends to abhor.” The difference now is the primacy of synthetic drugs — that is, illicit substances created in a lab that are designed to mimic the effects of naturally occurring drugs.

  Today, anyone with a few thousand dollars and internet access can find instructions to build their own little drug empire. Look no further than “Breaking Bad,” the hit television series in which a high school chemistry teacher starts cooking high-quality methamphetamine out of an RV to help provide for his family. “Breaking Bad” is of course a work of fiction, but in the age of synthetic drugs, the plotline is not that far-fetched.

  Back in the real world, methamphetamine has already become a significant threat. From 2015 to 2019, overdose deaths attributed to methamphetamine nearly tripled, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a staggering increase driven primarily by its combination with fentanyl. And yet, even with methamphetamine’s use on the rise, it still trails America’s favorite illicit stimulant drug — cocaine — by a significant margin. In the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than twice as many adults aged 18 or older reported using cocaine over methamphetamine in their lifetime.

  Cocaine holds a special place in American pop culture. Long considered a party drug, cocaine has often been associated with celebrities, lawyers, and so-called finance bros, and its sale and use has been romanticized in music, TV, and cinema. The sad reality is that for the year preceding April 2023, more than 27,000 Americans died while using cocaine, according to provisional statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is indeed a hell of a drug.

  But its days may be numbered.

  The vast majority of cocaine is currently produced in three countries in the world — Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia — primarily due to a favorable climate and a cultural affinity for the coca plant from which cocaine is derived. But what if, instead of being produced in the jungles of South America, cocaine — or something like it — could be manufactured anywhere?

  This is not a new idea. In the last decade alone, illicit drug chemists have synthesized more than 1,200 new psychoactive substances, or NPS, also known as designer drugs or research chemicals, in search of a better high. So far, none of these lab-made drugs have threatened to unseat cocaine, but with advances in artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and biotechnology, it is only a matter of time until some enterprising chemist strikes white gold.

  Officials in Europe recently sounded the alarm about counterfeit Captagon, an amphetamine-like drug that produces many of the same physiological effects as cocaine. Often referred to as “poor man’s cocaine,” Captagon is already wildly popular in the Middle East where it sells for as little as $3 per pill and fuels the Gulf states’ party scene.

  Captagon is the trade name for fenethylline, a chemical compound related to natural neurotransmitters like dopamine and epinephrine. It was first developed in the 1960s to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, narcolepsy, and depression, but was later banned worldwide due to its high potential for abuse. Although still referred to as Captagon, virtually all the pills seized today are counterfeit and comprised of a hodge-podge of dangerous substances, including fenethylline, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and even caffeine.

  In this way, Captagon is a lot like the counterfeit oxycodone pills flooding the U.S. drug market: They are advertised as one drug but contain another. And because they come in pill form, they are more approachable to the average drug consumer, who tend to associate pills with legitimate prescription medications.

  While most drug overdose deaths are currently attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine carry significant risks of their own. Stimulants place extreme strain on the body’s regulatory and cardiovascular system and increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death. And unlike opioids, there is no miracle overdose reversal drug like naloxone — which was recently made available over the counter in the U.S. — or medication-assisted treatments for stimulant use disorders.

  Interestingly, late last year the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration did not increase the annual production quotas for several amphetamine-based prescription medications, including Adderall and Ritalin, although drugmakers had raised concerns about ongoing shortages. The agency’s response was due partly to concerns that aggressive marketing of these drugs could spark the next crisis. Recent studies suggest the use of ADHD medication by young adults does not necessarily lead to the use of illicit drugs in the future, but if shortages persist, will users turn to the black market as they did with prescription opioids?

  The illicit drug trade is surprisingly regional, and preferences come and go. Just because a substance is popular in one region of the world doesn’t mean it will inevitably become popular in another. But Captagon displays all the hallmarks of the next big thing for the American public. Like fentanyl, it has a natural user base, is cheap and easy to make, and is highly addictive. It also avoids bizarre side effects (such as a notorious case of face-eating and other unusual behaviors) sometimes encountered with NPS.

  It is difficult to predict what form the next drug crisis may take, but I believe one thing is certain: There will be another crisis. Early indications and warnings will be essential to identify the next threat and protect health and safety. Public health and law enforcement organizations must improve data collection and monitoring of emerging drug threats through intelligence collection, wastewater analysis, and forensic testing. They must also enhance information sharing and collaboration across the prevention, supply reduction, and treatment continuum. And the U.S. and its partners must act now to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past — before it’s too late.

  *  *  *

  Jim Crotty is the former Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and a member of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime’s network of experts. He is currently a Supervisory Criminal Research Specialist with the DC Metropolitan Police Department and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 18:20

• Democratic Mayor Of Dallas: "American Cities Need Republicans… & I'm Becoming One"
  Democratic Mayor Of Dallas: “American Cities Need Republicans… & I’m Becoming One”

  While the Democratic Mayor of Dallas says the city has thrived, Eric Johnson writes in a very frank WSJ op-ed that, elsewhere, Democratic policies have exacerbated crime and homelessness.

  “The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism.

  Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP.”

  As we have written in detail previously, cities governed by Democrat mayors have seen the largest increases in homicide rates over the past year as well as registered the highest homicide rate per capita in Q1 out of 45 cities, according to a new report.

  Homicide rates in 45 of the most populated American cities rose by approximately 10 percent on average between Q1, 2021 and Q1, 2023, and continue to rise, according to an April 26 report by WalletHub. Blue cities were found to have a higher increase in homicide rates compared to red cities. The report designated a city as red or blue based on the mayor’s political affiliation.

  The top five cities that saw the greatest increase in per capita homicide are Richmond, Virginia; Memphis, Tennessee; Durham, North Carolina; Garland, Texas; and Washington, D.C.

  Except for Garland, where Mayor Scott LeMay is a Republican, the remaining four cities have mayors who are affiliated with the Democratic Party.

  The highest homicide rate per capita in the first quarter of 2023 was in Memphis at 14.19 per 100,000 residents. New Orleans, Louisiana, came in second at 12.76, followed by Baltimore, Maryland, with 10.47, St. Louis, Missouri, with 9.91, and Detroit, Michigan, with 8.52.

  Excluding St. Louis, the other four cities have mayors affiliated with the Democratic Party. The mayor of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones, was a former Democrat member of the Missouri House of Representatives.

  “In other words,” the Dallas Mayor adds:

  “American cities need Republicans – and Republicans need American cities.”

  And that’s exactly what he does – changing his party affiliation to ‘Republican’, ready to leave office in 2027 as a Republican.

  

  He is able to lift the ‘mask’ and see the problem that troubles so many of America’s cities.

  “Unfortunately, many of our cities are in disarray… Most of these local leaders are proud Democrats who view cities as laboratories for liberalism rather than as havens for opportunity and free enterprise.”

  Again, he nails it, daring to suggest the unmentionables that we have previously reported, Gregg W. Etter, a professor at the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Missouri, blamed the tendency of politicians to seek “simplistic, one-size-fits-all solutions to complex problems” as a reason behind the spike in homicides across the nation.

  Politicians offer such solutions to gain favor with political interest groups during elections, he pointed out. For instance, when faced with the issue of police using force in isolated instances, such politicians might support defunding the police rather than dealing with problematic officers.

  This ends up resulting in a less-effective police force, higher response times, lower morale among officers, and an “increasing unwillingness” to engage in proactive policing, he said.

  “This has left many police forces in a strictly reactive mode, only responding to crimes that have already occurred. In addition, no-cash bail rulings have put many dangerous criminals back onto the streets even though they are arrested several times for violent crimes,” Etter said.

  “In cities where these two things are happening, the crime rate has spiked. You have less police officers and more dangerous criminals at large.”

  “Too often, local tax dollars are spent on policies that exacerbate homelessness, coddle criminals and make it harder for ordinary people to make a living,” writes Johnson.

  “And too many local Democrats insist on virtue signaling – proposing half-baked government programs that aim to solve every single societal ill  – and on finding new ways to thumb their noses at Republicans at the state or federal level. Enough. This makes for good headlines, but not for safer, stronger, more vibrant cities.”

  He concludes, with a strong suggestion at the ballot box

  “…the overwhelming majority of Americans who call our cities home deserve to have real choices—not “progressive” echo chambers—at city hall.”

  We can only imagine the anger raging among the leftists as this one man steps up and unleashes the terrible truth about liberal-run urbania. You’re not supposed to say any of that in your out-loud voice.

  Is it time for change?

  Read the full letter here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 18:00

• Alternate Trump Electors Push Back Against State Racketeering Charges In Federal Court
  Alternate Trump Electors Push Back Against State Racketeering Charges In Federal Court

  Authored by Matthew Vadum and Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Three alternate presidential electors who argue their efforts to support former President Donald Trump in Georgia in the 2020 election were shielded by federal law, urged a federal judge on Sept. 20 not to return state racketeering charges against them to state court.

  

  The federal removal hearing before Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia is apparently the first test in federal court of alternate electors’ argument that they are immune to state prosecution because they were acting as federal officers. The judge was appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama.

  The evidentiary hearing in Atlanta lasted a little under three hours.

  On Sept. 8, Judge Jones rejected the motion of former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to remove the state election interference case against him to federal court. The judge ruled that he lacked jurisdiction to hear the case and found that Mr. Meadows’s “political activities,” such as “working with or working for the Trump campaign,” went beyond “the outer limits of the Office of the White House Chief of Staff.”

  Mr. Meadows has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to review the judge’s decision. His lawyers argued in a brief filed on Sept. 18 that he “is entitled to removal under [the federal officer removal statute] because he has met the threshold for removal, which is low[.]”

  President Trump, Mr. Meadows, the three alternate electors, and 14 other co-defendants were indicted (pdf) by a state grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, on Aug. 14 over the former chief executive’s challenge to the election in Georgia.

  All the defendants in the case are accused of violating the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act from Nov. 4, 2020, which is the day after the presidential election, to Sept. 15, 2022, for their allegedly illegal efforts to challenge the presidential election results in Georgia, a state that President Joe Biden ultimately won—albeit narrowly.

  The three alternate electors—David Shafer, Shawn Still, and Cathleen Latham—are all charged with violating the Georgia RICO statute, impersonating a public officer, and criminal attempt to commit filing false documents.

  Mr. Shafer is a former Georgia state senator and former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. He chaired the group of electors that met on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast their votes for President Trump.

  Mr. Still is currently a Georgia state senator and used to be finance chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. He was elected in 2022 but was not in office when the electors met in December 2020. He served as secretary of the group of electors.

  As the state constitution requires, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) appointed a three-member panel to recommend whether Mr. Still should remain in office despite being indicted. The panel did not recommend the senator’s suspension, the governor’s office said on Sept. 15.

  Ms. Latham used to chair the Coffee County Republicans.

  In addition, Mr. Shafer and Mr. Still are each charged with two counts of forgery in the first degree; Ms. Latham is charged with one count of forgery in the first degree.

  Mr. Shafer is also charged with three counts of false statements and writings; Mr. Still, two counts; and Ms. Latham, one count.

  Ms. Latham is also charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit computer theft, one count of conspiracy to commit computer trespass, one count of conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy, and one count of conspiracy to defraud the state.

  At the Sept. 20 removal hearing, the presidential electors’ attorneys told Judge Jones that the case should be heard in federal court because electors are, like congressmen, federal officers whose official conduct may not be challenged in state court.

  Before the results of any presidential election are certain, both parties appoint electors who are expected to vote for their party’s standard-bearer based on the popular vote in the state. Both sets of electors are federal officers who are entitled to protection under federal law when they are doing their duty, the lawyers argued.

  The attorneys likened what happened in the 2020 election in Georgia to what transpired when Republican Richard Nixon challenged the 1960 presidential vote in Hawaii. Eventually, Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly prevailed after recounts, winning the state’s three electoral votes and becoming president.

  But before Congress finalized the state results, Hawaii sent competing slates of Republican and Democrat electors to Congress for official certification. Presiding over the congressional count, then-Vice President Nixon considered both electoral slates but then ruled that the Democrat slate should be accepted and the Republican slate should be rejected.

  The 1960 Hawaii Republican electors were not charged with a crime, so the 2020 Georgia Republican electors should also not have been charged with a crime, the lawyers implied.

  The 2020 Georgia Republican electors were acting in good faith and were not impersonating electors, they said.

  Before the so-called safe harbor date of Dec. 8, 2020, the state handles certification of the electors, but after the safe harbor date, Congress has jurisdiction over the election, the lawyers said.

  Mr. Shafer’s attorney, Craig Gillen of the Savannah law firm of Gillen, Withers, and Lake, said the Trump electors did nothing wrong.

  “What bothers me is that these three electors have been labeled by the state and implicitly by the media as fake,” he said.

  “By federal law, these people were not fake, sham, or impersonators.”

  “Both sets of electors were contingent,” he said, adding that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 contemplates states sending multiple slates of electors to Congress for the official counting of the electoral votes.

  But after the safe harbor date, “the power is no longer with the state of Georgia—it’s gone back to Congress,” he said.

  “You either like Donald Trump or you hate Donald Trump,” and this fact prejudices some people against those in the former president’s orbit, Mr. Gillen added.

  Prosecutor Anna Green Cross pushed back, saying the state was “not the least bit interested in the political affiliation of those who committed criminal acts.”

  The suggestion that the state is politically motivated in this case is “borderline offensive,” she said.

  Moreover, there were attempts to keep the alternate elector meeting “completely under wraps,” Ms. Cross said.

  “These private actors did not transform themselves into public electors by a criminal act,” she said.

  Mr. Still’s lawyer, Tom Bever of the Atlanta law firm of Smith, Gambrell, and Russell, suggested the charges were absurd.

  The electors were charged with casting a ballot, impersonating electors, and forgery of their own signatures, Mr. Bever said.

  “There is no question that each of these people became an elector and was appointed an elector in a completely proper manner,” the attorney said.

  Mr. Bever said the Trump electors’ meeting was not held in a clandestine manner.

  “Literally, the whole world was watching,” he said.

  The meeting was attended by attorneys and the media, he said, adding it was “hardly your normal setting of a racketeering act.”

  The electors “never dreamed they had done anything wrong,” Mr. Bever said.

  Judge Jones concluded the hearing without deciding on the removal motions. It is unclear when he will rule.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 17:40

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• Jeffrey Sachs: NATO Expansion & Ukraine's Destruction
  Jeffrey Sachs: NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction

  Authored by Jeffrey D. Sachs

  During the disastrous Vietnam War, it was said that the US government treated the public like a mushroom farm: keeping it in the dark and feeding it with manure. The heroic Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers documenting the unrelenting U.S. government lying about the war in order to protect politicians who would be embarrassed by the truth. A half-century later, during the Ukraine War, the manure is piled even higher.

  According to the U.S. government and the ever-obsequious New York Times, the Ukraine war was “unprovoked,” the Times’ favorite adjective to describe the war. Putin, allegedly mistaking himself for Peter the Great, invaded Ukraine to recreate the Russian Empire. Yet last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg committed a Washington gaffe, meaning that he accidently blurted out the truth.

  

  In testimony to the European Union Parliament, Stoltenberg made clear that it was America’s relentless push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine that was the real cause of the war and why it continues today. Here are Stoltenberg’s revealing words:

  “The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.

  The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second-class membership. We rejected that.

  So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.”

  To repeat, he [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

  When Prof. John Mearsheimer, I, and others have said the same, we’ve been attacked as Putin apologists. The same critics also choose to hide or flatly ignore the dire warnings against NATO enlargement to Ukraine long articulated by many of America’s leading diplomats, including the great scholar-statesman George Kennan, and the former US Ambassadors to Russia Jack Matlock and William Burns.

  Burns, now CIA Director, was US Ambassador to Russia in 2008, and author of a memo entitled “Nyet means Nyet.” In that memo, Burns explained to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the entire Russian political class, not just Putin, was dead-set against NATO enlargement. We know about the memo only because it was leaked. Otherwise, we’d be in the dark about it.

  Reminder of the famous US🇺🇸 promise of NATO ‘not one inch to the east’ by James Baker to 🇷🇺Gorbachev in 1990. It was so tough to keep a promise for 9 whole years that the US then just had to splurge: 3 central Europeans into NATO in 1999 & another 7, incl Baltics, in 2004. pic.twitter.com/Hw6xPvdQUe

  — Tony Norfield (@StubbornFacts) September 18, 2023

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

  Why does Russia oppose NATO enlargement? For the simple reason that Russia does not accept the U.S. military on its 2,300 km border with Ukraine in the Black Sea region. Russia does not appreciate the U.S. placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania after the U.S. unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

  Russia also does not welcome the fact that the U.S. engaged in no fewer than 70 regime change operations during the Cold War (1947-1989), and countless more since, including in Serbia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Nor does Russia like the fact that many leading U.S. politicians actively advocate the destruction of Russia under the banner of “Decolonizing Russia.” That would be like Russia calling for the removal of Texas, California, Hawaii, the conquered Indian lands, and much else, from the United States.

  Even Zelensky’s team knew that the quest for NATO enlargement meant imminent war with Russia. Oleksiy Arestovych, former Advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine under Zelensky, declared that “with a 99.9% probability, our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”

  Arestovych claimed that even without NATO enlargement, Russia would eventually try to take Ukraine, just many years later. Yet history belies that. Russia respected Finland’s and Austria’s neutrality for decades, with no dire threats, much less invasions. Moreover, from Ukraine’s independence in 1991 until the U.S.-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, Russia didn’t show any interest in taking Ukrainian territory. It was only when the U.S. installed a staunchly anti-Russian, pro-NATO regime in February 2014 that Russia took back Crimea, concerned that its Black Sea naval base in Crimea (since 1783) would fall into NATO’s hands.

  Even then, Russia didn’t demand other territory from Ukraine, only fulfillment of the U.N.-backed Minsk II Agreement, which called for autonomy of the ethnic-Russian Donbas, not a Russian claim on the territory. Yet instead of diplomacy, the U.S. armed, trained, and helped to organize a huge Ukrainian army to make NATO enlargement a fait accompli.

  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, confirms that Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansionism.
  – Also, Stoltenberg recognises that NATO could have prevented the war by ending its expansion and abiding by the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. pic.twitter.com/H8HObh7LEP

  — Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) September 17, 2023

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  Putin made one last attempt at diplomacy at the end of 2021, tabling a draft U.S.-NATO Security Agreement to forestall war. The core of the draft agreement was an end of NATO enlargement and removal of U.S. missiles near Russia. Russia’s security concerns were valid and the basis for negotiations. Yet Biden flatly rejected negotiations out of a combination of arrogance, hawkishness, and profound miscalculation. NATO maintained its position that NATO would not negotiate with Russia regarding NATO enlargement, that in effect, NATO enlargement was none of Russia’s business.

  The continuing U.S. obsession with NATO enlargement is profoundly irresponsible and hypocritical. The U.S. would object—by means of war, if needed—to being encircled by Russian or Chinese military bases in the Western Hemisphere, a point the U.S. has made since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Yet the U.S. is blind and deaf to the legitimate security concerns of other countries.

  So, yes, Putin went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to Russia’s border. Ukraine is being destroyed by U.S. arrogance, proving again Henry Kissinger’s adage that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, while to be its friend is fatal. The Ukraine War will end when the U.S. acknowledges a simple truth: NATO enlargement to Ukraine means perpetual war and Ukraine’s destruction. Ukraine’s neutrality could have avoided the war, and remains the key to peace. The deeper truth is that European security depends on collective security as called for by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), not one-sided NATO demands.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/22/2023 – 02:00

• The Valorization Of The Tyrants
  The Valorization Of The Tyrants

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

  This is surely one of the strangest twists in official narratives in perhaps hundreds of years. The bad guys have been christened as the good guys, and the good guys have been purged, deplatformed, canceled, and demonized.

  It’s a turn of events none of us could have imagined back in 2020. It cries out for an explanation. I truly fear knowing the answer as to why.

  Just consider the fate of former New Zealand Prime Jacinda Ardern.

  

  She locked down her country, trampling all rights of the people under the guise of controlling the spread of a virus. You could not go to church. You could not be unmasked. You could not leave the country and return. No one could travel there without official permission.

  As bad as the United States and Europe were during this period, New Zealand was worse, and it was backed up by speech controls. Anyone protesting the policies was risking everything. And when the vaccine came along, Ardern outright said it: the people who get it will have rights but those who do not will not. It was a new biomedical caste system.

  Eventually, the country did open. Now speakers decrying the whole period are attracting audiences in the thousands, and Ardern is widely unpopular. Her successor who continues to defend all this despotism is under a cloud and also deeply unpopular. The tables have completely turned. Of course the virus came anyway, as it must, so the junta that did this has turned their attention to climate change, the defense of censorship, and the escalation of the Russia/Ukraine war.

  Five years ago, anyone would have supposed that a leader that acted this way would live in shame. I certainly assumed so. My supposition is that Ardern had made horrific misjudgments and would be widely decried as a confused tyrant. She would live out her days in disrepute, surely.

  The opposite has happened. She is now the subject of celebratory biographies. She is lauded by mainstream media. She addressed the United Nations last year in a speech that was an open call for a new global censorship regime. True, the fact-checkers disagree with this interpretation. Instead she was merely calling out “the weaponization of free speech societies and platforms by misinformation agents.”

  Oh.

  In any case, in my imagination, I could not have dreamed up a specimen of error and tyranny more deserving of devaluing than Jacinda Ardern. Everything she did during the COVID era flies in the face of values that the West has held for almost a thousand years since the Magna Carta.

  But I was wrong. Completely. I underestimated just how broken the world is. Instead of being disgraced, she is enjoying not one but two fellowships at Harvard University where she enjoys massive prestige and adoration by faculty, staff, and students. To me, this seems like the Twilight Zone—an ending to the story that I could not have imagined. Are we supposed to be against segregation, house arrest, forced medical treatments, locking people in nations, and censorship? I thought at least we would agree on that much. Apparently not. Apparently, it is the opposite. Everything that I believed was deprecated is exalted and all the public virtues I believed we extolled are now denounced.

  It’s not just Ardern. The whole tiny but global junta that imposed all these policies seemed to be enjoying a glorious send-off by the entire establishment, even though they have been 100 percent wrong about everything. Fauci’s successor is Fauci II, and same with Walensky’s successor at the CDC. And the media propagandists who for three years lied to the public about lockdowns, masks, school closures, and shots are now writing books that are calling people like me the bad guys!

  I almost cannot imagine that this has happened and I cannot fathom why.

  As another example, the New York Times op-ed page has carried an amazing and very long article by Yoel Roth, the former chief censor of Twitter 1.0 before he was summarily fired by Elon Musk. The Times let him tell his tale of woe on how oppressed and beaten down he is merely for enforcing trust and safety. He was only doing his job to stop online lies!

  The Twitter Files revealed that the company was obeying government priorities and blocking and throttling content that took issue with COVID policies, questions surrounding election integrity, and vaccine effectiveness. Roth, in cooperation with federal agencies, set himself up as the arbiter of truth and arguably distorted information flows based on his personal bias.

  Like Ardern, I might have expected that he would retire from public life and deploy his considerable communication for a small company somewhere. But I was wrong again. Instead he holds a coveted position at the University of Pennsylvania and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

  For that matter, Anthony Fauci himself is enjoying a comfy sinecure at Georgetown University.

  This is not just about how high-end academia has become a haven for woke politics, censorship, and wildly pro-statist thinking across the board. That battle seems to have been won by the bad guys perhaps two decades ago. The problem is much larger. It has to do with the entire academic, corporate, political, and deep-state establishment that was heavily involved in imposing a despotic turn for the entire globe.

  They are right now in the business of protecting their own, trolling the rest of us by granting awards and honors to the absolute worst offenders of core Western values. It’s like the world has been turned upside down. As grim as I believed the lockdowns that began in March 2020 were, and as much as I expected some terrible economic and cultural fallout from that period, I never would have imagined that the lockdowners and mandaters would be riding high at 42 months of this.

  And at the very same time, the purges of the people who were right all along are continuing at a furious pace. Every day, we observe sneaky attacks on the greatest champions of basic liberties on which I thought everyone agreed back in 2019. Every unflattering bit of personal information on the resistors is fair game, amplified by the media, and then realized in the form of demonetizations by Big Tech, the courts, and the professional circuit generally.

  The battle lines are very clear and only one side stands for the rights and liberties for which humanity worked for a millennium. The other side stands for controls, impositions, divisions, surveillance, censorship, degrowth, and corporate cartelizations. Can someone explain to me why we are supposed to think that the bad guys are now the good guys? In short, how can we account for the valorization of tyrants?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 23:40

• Seattle Reverses Course, Makes Public Drug Use Arrestable Crime
  Seattle Reverses Course, Makes Public Drug Use Arrestable Crime

  The Seattle City Council on Tuesday ruled that public drug use will soon be illegal in the city.

  

  Imagine that!

  According to KIRO7, public drug use can now end in arrest – though there remains a large effort to funnel drug users into treatment programs.

  CB 120645 adds the crimes of using a controlled substance in public space and knowing possession of a controlled substance to the statute’s list of crimes. The move follows a Sept. 12 proposed ordinance passed by the Seattle City Council’s Public Safety and Human Services Committee by a vote of 4-1.

  Residents were sharply divided over the plan.

  “There is no budget to support this and there is no plan, no care, compassion or commitment to do anything other than imprison our most vulnerable citizens,” said one woman during the public comment section during a committee meeting.

  

  Others were for it.

  “Restoring a safe and welcoming environment downtown will bring back residents, workers and visitors, increase the momentum needed to get downtown on a sustained path to recovery,” said one man.

  

   

  The dissenting councilmember, Teresa Mosqueda, said the ordinance lacked attention to diversion efforts.

  “I want people to get access to public health services just as much as the people who testified in support of this legislation say they want. But that is not what this legislation does. And without the funding that is purported to come with this bill, we have no assurances that there will be alternative structures and programs and diversion strategies to prevent people from going to jail. We do not have to pass this legislation,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 23:20

• US Wants Saudi Defense Pact Modeled After South Korea, Japan Deals
  US Wants Saudi Defense Pact Modeled After South Korea, Japan Deals

  Via The Cradle,

  US and Saudi officials are advancing talks for a “mutual defense treaty” that would resemble broad agreements Washington maintains with Japan and South Korea, according to officials who spoke with the New York Times.

  “Under such an agreement, the United States and Saudi Arabia would generally pledge to provide military support if the other country is attacked in the region or on Saudi territory,” the NYT report reads.

  

  The security pact is part of a so-called “megadeal” that would be sealed between Washington and Riyadh in exchange for the kingdom normalizing ties with Israel.

  “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) … regards a mutual defense agreement with the United States as the most important element in his talks with the Biden administration about Israel,” the NYT cites US officials as saying.

  The NYT report was published the same day US President Joe Biden extolled the benefits of normalization with Israel during his speech at the UN General Assembly (UNGA).

  “Israel’s greater normalization and economic connection with its neighbors delivering positive and practical impacts even as we continue to work tirelessly for just and lasting peace, for Israelis and Palestinians, two states for two peoples,” Biden said.

  His talk of a two-state solution echoed comments from Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan on Monday when he stressed that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is an “independent Palestine.”

  “The solution to the Palestinian issue must be based on the two-state solution and the establishment of the Palestinian state in accordance with international resolutions. We seek to bring the conversation about the two-state solution back to the forefront,” the kingdom’s top diplomat told reporters on the sidelines of the 78th UNGA session in New York City.

  Last week, Saudi media reported that the kingdom had allegedly ended talks of normalizing ties with Israel over inflammatory comments from Jewish-supremacist ministers within the Israeli government who vehemently oppose making concessions to the Palestinians. One day later, however, US and Israeli officials called the report “false.”

  If approved by two-thirds of the US Congress,  the security pact would be a reversal from a 2021 move by the US to remove Patriot missile batteries from the kingdom as it prepared to incite an armed conflict with Russia and China.

  Nonetheless, according to a White House letter sent to Congress in June, the US has about 2,700 troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. These troops have recently been conducting expanded counter-drone drills with the Saudi military.

  “Over the last 16 months, we worked very closely with our Saudi counterparts to develop their counter-UAS [-drone] tactics, techniques, and procedures … Our objective for this exercise was to shoot down [drones], dawn till dusk,” Colonel Robert McVey, the US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) director of the Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center, told Al-Monitor on Tuesday.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 23:00

• America's First 'Shroom Clinic' Opens In Oregon
  America’s First ‘Shroom Clinic’ Opens In Oregon

  America’s first licensed health clinic to sell ‘magic mushrooms’ opened in June in Oregon and has been swamped with surging demand. The waitlist for the clinic exceeds 3,000 people, some of whom are searching for ways to treat depression and PTSD. 

  No prescription or referral is needed for Epic Healing Eugene, but customers must be over 21 to receive psilocybin services. 

  AP News said some customers complained the ‘mind-bending’ experience is too costly: 

  “A client can wind up paying over $2,000, which helps cover service center expenses, a facilitator and lab-tested psilocybin. Annual licenses for service centers and growers cost $10,000, with a half-price discount for veterans.” 

  Even though The Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association opposed legalizing psilocybin in 2020, voters thought otherwise and also decriminalized the possession of hard drugs. 

  Epic Healing Eugene’s owner Cathy Jonas told AP that providing legal access to mushrooms is a ‘dream come true’: 

  “The plant medicines have communicated to me that I’m supposed to be doing this thing.”

  

  State regulators decided that 50-milligram doses would be allowed. Jonas said she offers 35 milligrams of pure psilocybin or about 6 grams of dried mushrooms. 

  

  Each customer must consume the shrooms in the vicinity of Epic Healing Eugene and must remain on the property until the drug wears off. So forget about tripping in the forest with friends. 

  One of Jonas’ customers described being in a “kind of infinite-dimension fractal that just kept turning and twisting” after consuming 35 milligrams of shrooms. 

  “It was kind of mesmerizing to watch, but it got so intense,” said the client, who didn’t want to be identified to protect his privacy.

  The client continued, “I started to have this experience of dying and being reborn. And then I would kind of see large portions of my life going by in a very rapid way.”

  Several studies have revealed psilocybin is a possible treatment for psychiatric disorders. 

  

  Roland Griffiths, a professor who studies the neuropsychopharmacology of consciousness at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, received approval in 2000 to carry out the first experiments on psilocybin since the 1960s. He found in a survey of early study participants that more than half regarded it as one of the most meaningful experiences of their life.

  “The mystical experience itself does seem to be really important for therapeutic effects, but we published survey data to suggest it’s not actually the mystical experience itself, but the personal insights you can encounter or gain during that mystical experience that actually lead to therapeutic change,” Barrett said, adding, “The idea here is that mystical experience can create the opportunity for personal insights.”

  Since then, other more recent studies have shown promise in using psilocybin-assisted therapy to treat psychiatric disorders like depression. Some have been used to identify their usefulness in smoking cessation (alongside talk therapy). They have also shown some usefulness in alleviating anxiety in people with terminal cancer.

  Another study, one published last week, found that the psychedelic drug MDMA can reduce symptoms of PTSD:

   “It’s the first innovation in PTSD treatment in more than two decades. And it’s significant because I think it will also open up other innovation,” said Amy Emerson, CEO of MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, the research sponsor.

  Before the Food and Drug Administration can prescribe MDMA, the Drug Enforcement Administration would need to change its classification from Schedule 1 to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

  Psilocybin is still illegal federally, but several states are considering adopting Oregon’s decriminalizing approach to drugs. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 22:40

• A Comprehensive Timeline Of COVID-19 Vaccines And Myocarditis
  A Comprehensive Timeline Of COVID-19 Vaccines And Myocarditis

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

  

  2020

  Sept. 22, 2020: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies myocarditis as an adverse event of special interest, or a potential side effect.

  Oct. 30, 2020: U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies myocarditis as an adverse event of special interest.

  December 2020: One case of pericarditis reported to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-managed by the CDC and FDA.

  Dec. 11, 2020: FDA authorizes the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Americans 16 and older.

  Dec. 13, 2020: CDC launches V-safe, a new vaccine safety monitoring system, without including myocarditis as an option in the adverse events list.

  Dec. 18, 2020: FDA authorizes the U.S. government-backed Moderna vaccine for Americans 18 and older.

  2021

  2021: Myocarditis cases spike in the U.S. military.

  January 2021: 28 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS.

  January 2021: First U.S. military member experiences postvaccination myocarditis, according to a study published months later.

  January 2021: First cases of postvaccination myocarditis recorded in Israel.

  January 2021: VAERS report processing is delayed due to unexpected spike in reports.

  February 2021: 64 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including two deaths.

  Feb. 1, 2021: Israeli teenager is hospitalized with myocarditis after Pfizer vaccination, doctors say.

  Feb. 18, 2021: Safety signal for myocarditis triggered in VAERS using CDC-endorsed method called Proportional Reporting Ratio.

  Feb. 19, 2021: Safety signal for myocarditis triggered in VAERS using another method called Fisher’s Exact Test.

  Feb. 24–25, 2021: CDC meets with its advisers but does not discuss COVID-19 vaccines.

  Feb. 27, 2021: FDA authorizes Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.

  Feb. 28, 2021: Israeli officials privately alert CDC to “a large number of reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people, following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine.”

  Feb. 28, 2021: 57 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis within seven days of vaccination in Pfizer’s database in document given to the FDA in April 2021 and not revealed to the public until November 2021.

  March 2021: 54 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS.

  March 1, 2021: CDC officials disclose (pdf) that two postvaccination cases were identified in the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), another CDC-run system.

  March 2, 2021: CDC recommends Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine for adults.

  March 3, 2021: Israeli authorities meet with hospital officials to discuss postvaccination heart problems.

  March 4, 2021: Israeli officials confirm they’re investigating postvaccination pericarditis.

  March 5, 2021: FDA holds meeting with its advisers. Myocarditis is not discussed.

  March 6, 2021: Rutgers University becomes first major US school to announce COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

  March 8, 2021: Australian health officials contact CDC about U.S. myocarditis cases.

  March 9, 2021: U.S. internal memorandum says Israel received around 40 reports of postvaccination myocarditis. U.S. officials say some postvaccination cases were reported in the United States and acknowledge issues with passive surveillance such as underreporting. “Thus, FDA has not made a final determination regarding the causality between myopericarditis and the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” the memo stated.

  March 20, 2021: First postvaccination myocarditis case report is published in the literature.

  March 20, 2021: Pfizer contract with South Africa (pdf) says that “there may be adverse effects of the vaccine that are not currently known.”

  March 31, 2021: Second postvaccination myocarditis case report published.

  March 31, 2021: First death from postvaccination myocarditis reported in Israel. The deceased was a 22-year-old previously healthy woman.

  April 2021: 158 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS.

  April 2021: CDC holds multiple public meetings with no discussion of myocarditis.

  April 1, 2021: Israel has received 84 reports of postvaccination myocarditis or pericarditis, news outlet reports.

  April 2, 2021: U.S. military officials, CDC meet on postvaccination myocarditis cases.

  April 5, 2021: Israeli officials brief the CDC on postvaccination myocarditis cases.

  April 5, 2021: Canada reports first case of postvaccination pericarditis.

  April 7, 2021: U.S. government call covers myocarditis cases recorded in military members after vaccination.

  April 10, 2021: CDC-funded Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment program reviewed postvaccination myocarditis cases, email shows.

  April 12, 2021: U.S. military officials brief CDC on postvaccination myocarditis cases.

  April 12, 2021: Canada reports first case of postvaccination myocarditis.

  April 13, 2021: U.S. military has submitted manuscripts on myocarditis cases to two journals, CDC official says.

  April 13, 2021: CDC, FDA advise pause in administration of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine due to six cases of blood clotting.

  April 15, 2021: Two otherwise healthy adults hospitalized with chest pain and diagnosed with myocarditis after Moderna vaccination, CDC adviser tells agency.

  April 17, 2021: CDC official tells adviser there have been reports of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination “but we aren’t observing any clear indication of a safety signal.”

  April 20, 2021: Three cases of myocarditis after second Pfizer dose in Idaho, official tells CDC.

  April 23, 2021: United States lifts recommended pause on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.

  April 23, 2021: Israeli Ministry of Health report on postvaccination myocarditis identifies two deaths, Israeli media report. The second deceased was a previously healthy 35-year-old man. Among men aged 18 to 30, there is a one in 20,000 probability of developing myocarditis, the report found. “It seems that these events can be a signal of a possible connection to the vaccine,” the committee said. The findings were sent to the FDA.

  April 26, 2021: U.S. military officials are tracking 14 cases of myocarditis following messenger RNA vaccination, Military.com reports.

  April 26, 2021: CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says CDC “aware of” cases in the military. She says “we have not seen any reports of those” and that “we have not seen a signal” in CDC databases.

  April 27, 2021: CDC officials privately acknowledge that processing of VAERS reports is “taking longer than usual.”

  April 27, 2021: CDC officials say 24 cases of myocarditis were identified in VSD.

  April 27, 2021: U.S. military official warns that pausing administration of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines “will have an adverse impact on US/CA vaccination rates.”

  April 28, 2021: France detects safety signal for postvaccination myocarditis.

  April 28, 2021: CDC director receives notes from discussion with military on myocarditis cases.

  April 29, 2021: First cases of pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination reported in the literature.

  April 30, 2021: FDA receives Pfizer report noting myocarditis cases in Pfizer’s database.

  May 2021: 487 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including four deaths.

  May 2021: CDC forms a team to review medical records for reported cases of postvaccination myocarditis.

  May 5, 2021: CDC meets with advisers but doesn’t discuss COVID-19 vaccines.

  May 7, 2021: European Medicines Agency announces it has asked Pfizer for information on myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination.

  May 10, 2021: FDA authorizes Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15. It does not mention myocarditis.

  May 12, 2021: Myocarditis is not discussed during meeting on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC official, gives a presentation on blood clotting after Johnson & Johnson vaccination.

  May 12, 2021: Dr. Walensky recommends Pfizer’s vaccine for virtually all children aged 12 to 15, based on advice from advisers.

  May 13, 2021: CDC officials told to direct questions on potential myocarditis cases to two top vaccine safety officials, Drs. John Su and Shimabukuro.

  May 13, 2021: Same officials discuss analyzing VAERS data for myocarditis using the Proportional Reporting Ratio in heavily redacted emails. The agency says the analysis didn’t actually start until 2022.

  May 13, 2021: CDC adviser says “multiple people texting and email[ing] me with concerns” about myocarditis.

  May 13, 2021: Children’s National in Washington registers two suspected cases.

  May 14, 2021: Dr. Shimabukuro seeks “experts in myocarditis.”

  May 16, 2021: CDC official says in email, “we are hearing quite a lot about this now, and I don’t have a clear understanding of what is and has been being done.”

  May 17, 2021: CDC workgroup says there are “relatively few” reports of myocarditis after vaccination and that rates “have not differed from expected baseline rates.”

  May 17, 2021: Dr. Shimabukuro speaks with American Academy of Pediatrics officials to “centralize our coordination” with outside groups.

  May 17, 2021: Dr. Su says health care providers “aren’t reporting these cases to VAERS.”

  May 17, 2021: Dr. Su says the “myocarditis thing” is “exploding.”

  May 18, 2021: States across the U.S. publicly report cases of myocarditis following COVID-19 vaccination.

  May 18, 2021: First case report of an American person with postvaccination myocarditis published.

  May 19, 2021: CDC tells state officials it has been “closely monitoring” myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination and that cases “can be serious.”

  May 20, 2021:  Three more cases of postvaccination myocarditis at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, official tells CDC.

  May 20, 2021: CDC officials hold meeting with doctors from pediatric hospitals on myocarditis cases. Slides from the meeting were provided to The Epoch Times fully redacted.

  May 23, 2021: The American Heart Association says the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination for everyone eligible “enormously outweigh the rare, possible risk of heart-related complications, including inflammation of the heart muscle.”

  May 24, 2021: CDC workgroup acknowledges for the first time that the number of reports of postvaccination myocarditis to VAERS was higher than expected in those 16 to 24.

  May 24, 2021: French Society of Cardiology calls for vaccinating heart failure patients without acknowledging possible vaccine-myocarditis connection.

  May 24, 2021: Massachusetts official asks CDC for “messaging” on postvaccination myocarditis.

  May 25, 2021: Dr. Paul Offit, an FDA adviser, says about myocarditis and COVID-19 vaccines, “there’s every reason to think this isn’t a problem.”

  May 26, 2021: The New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority says there’s a safety signal for myocarditis and COVID-19 vaccines.

  May 28, 2021: CDC says to keep vaccinating everyone eligible, or virtually all Americans 12 and older.

  May 28, 2021: Case series of young, previously healthy males hospitalized with postvaccination myocarditis discloses hospitalizations happened as early as Jan. 30, 2021.

  May 28, 2021: CDC says it is focusing on reported cases among those 30 and under.

  May 28, 2021: Nine postvaccination myocarditis cases from one state not reported to VAERS, according to CDC.

  May 30, 2021: Brighton Collaboration issues case definition for myocarditis.

  June 2021: 752 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including five deaths.

  June 2021: Some experts start calling on U.S. authorities to pause COVID-19 vaccination of young, healthy people.

  June 2, 2021: Israel says “there is some probability for a possible link between the second vaccine dose and the onset of myocarditis among young men aged 16 to 30” after researchers find incidence of one in 3,000 to one in 6,000 men aged 16 to 24.

  June 4, 2021: U.S. researchers report seven cases in healthy young males following Pfizer vaccination.

  June 10, 2021: 99 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis detected in FDA’s Biologics Effectiveness and Safety Initiative database, and 1,260 cases reported in Medicare claims data, FDA official says (pdf).

  June 10, 2021: CDC working to rapidly follow up on reports of myocarditis following vaccination among people aged 30 and under, CDC official says (pdf). Most cases are in young adults after a second dose.

  June 10, 2021: “There’s a lack of alternative explanations” apart from vaccination given the consistency across postvaccination cases, Dr. Cody Meissner, an FDA adviser, says.

  June 10, 2021: “I think the myocarditis is something that needs to be looked at closely because we’re likely seeing the tip of the iceberg,” says Dr. Michael Kurilla of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, another FDA adviser. June 10, 2021: Pfizer spokesperson tells news outlets that “the benefit-risk profile of our vaccine remains positive.”

  June 11, 2021: European Medicines Agency announces investigation into reports of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination.

  June 23, 2021: CDC’s safety committee says evidence now suggests a “likely association” of mRNA vaccination and myocarditis.

  June 23, 2021: Number of myocarditis cases recorded in VSD rise to 75. Based on VAERS reports, CDC says number of events higher than expected after dose two in males aged 12 to 49 and females aged 12 to 29. Among children 12 to 17, 188 cases were reported within 21 days of vaccination through June 11. CDC advisers say data suggest vaccines cause myocarditis.

  June 23, 2021: CDC estimates (pdf) Pfizer’s vaccine will cause up to 69 myocarditis cases per million second doses but will prevent 215 hospitalizations and two deaths in males aged 12 to 17.

  June 25, 2021: FDA adds warnings about “the suggested increased risks” of myocarditis and pericarditis to labels for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

  June 28, 2021: The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs says privately it detected more myocarditis cases than expected.

  June 29, 2021: Military researchers report 22 previously healthy members suffered myocarditis after receiving a messenger RNA vaccine. “The presentation pattern and clinical course suggest an association with an inflammatory response to vaccination,” they say. The cases are among hundreds reported in the literature this month.

  June 29, 2021: CDC officials say of reported cases that “the striking clinical similarities in the presentations of these patients, their recent vaccination with an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, and the lack of any alternative etiologies for acute myocarditis suggest an association with immunization.”

  June 30, 2021: Canada adds myocarditis and pericarditis risk information to labels of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

  July 2021: 364 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including seven deaths.

  July 3, 2021: 13 young males with postvaccination myocarditis treated at a single hospital in Washington state between April 1, 2021, and June 21, 2021, researchers report.

  July 6, 2021: CDC estimates for every million doses of vaccination, dozens of cases of myocarditis can be expected, including 56 to 69 cases among 12- to 17-year-olds. The expected benefits outweigh the risks, though, according to the agency.

  July 9, 2021: European Medicines Agency recommends listing myocarditis and pericarditis as side effects for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines after identifying 221 cases after mRNA vaccination. Five of the patients died.

  July 10, 2021: South Korean researchers report a 22-year-old man was killed by vaccine-induced myocarditis, the first such death reported in the literature.

  July 22, 2021: CDC says it confirmed 282 postvaccination myocarditis cases in people aged 18 to 29.

  July 28, 2021: Pfizer tells FDA of “important identified risk” of myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination and discloses 17 deaths among the cases reported.

  July 30, 2021: Data mining does not show a signal for myocarditis among adolescents 12 to 17, CDC and FDA say.

  July 31, 2021: Australian experts recommend people be informed about possibility of myocarditis and pericarditis following vaccination.

  August 2021: 311 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including seven deaths.

  Aug. 4, 2021: UK delays recommending second dose for 16- and 17-year-olds.

  Aug. 10, 2021: 15 children hospitalized at Boston Children’s Hospital with postvaccination myocarditis between May 1 and July 15, 2021, researchers say.

  Aug. 13, 2021: Canada identifies a safety signal for postvaccination myocarditis.

  Aug. 17, 2021: Death of 27-year-old man following myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination reported by U.S. researchers. Family declined an autopsy. No non-vaccination causes identified.

  Aug. 18, 2021: U.S. researchers report death of 42-year-old man with myocarditis following Moderna vaccination. No other causes identified.

  Aug. 18, 2021: Dr. Walensky and other U.S. government officials call for COVID-19 vaccine boosters to be cleared due to waning effectiveness.

  Aug. 19, 2021: Two deaths from myocarditis following Pfizer vaccination, Pfizer reports to the EMA.

  Aug. 19, 2021: Dr. Walensky notified of UK preference for Pfizer over Moderna for adolescents.

  Aug. 23, 2021: FDA approves Pfizer’s vaccine for people 16 and older. Approval theoretically has a higher bar than authorization. The agency says that analyses of reported events “will not be sufficient to assess known serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis.”

  Aug. 24, 2021: South Korean authorities determine a young man died from myocarditis after Pfizer vaccination.

  Aug. 30, 2021: One myocarditis case and one pericarditis case occurred among vaccinated trial participants, Pfizer reveals.

  Aug. 30, 2021: Of 742 reports in VAERS that met the CDC case definition of myocarditis or myopericarditis after vaccination, 701 patients required hospitalization and 18 are still hospitalized, CDC official reports (pdf). Twenty-three percent of patients whose cases were detailed in VAERS reports were not known to have recovered at the time of the report.

  Aug. 30, 2021: Highest rate of reported myopericarditis cases within seven days of a shot was 71.5 cases per million second Pfizer doses among boys aged 16 or 17, according to the CDC.

  Aug. 30, 2021: Myocarditis and pericarditis cases in VSD rise to 115, with some patients still experiencing symptoms, CDC official says (pdf).

  Aug. 30, 2021: Benefits of Pfizer’s vaccine continue to outweigh the risks, CDC officials say. They estimate every million Pfizer shots among 16- to 17-year-olds will cause 73 cases of myocarditis but prevent more hospitalizations.

  Aug. 30, 2021: Woman who died in New Zealand after Pfizer vaccination perished from myocarditis, an independent safety panel said.

  September 2021: 377 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including 10 deaths.

  Sept. 2, 2021: 654 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis in Pfizer’s safety database, company says. Seventy-seven reports of myocarditis or myocarditis and pericarditis in Moderna’s safety database, company says. Some patients, including a young male, died or had not recovered.

  Sept. 2, 2021: Based on the reports and other data, a causal association between myocarditis/pericarditis and the mRNA vaccines is “considered of at least a reasonable possibility,” the European Medicines Agency says.

  Sept. 3, 2021: 67 myocarditis/pericarditis cases recorded in VSD among people aged 12 to 39, CDC says.

  Sept. 8, 2021: Healthy, young boys face a higher risk of cardiac events from vaccines than from COVID-19, U.S. researchers find.

  Sept. 9, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration announce COVID-19 vaccine mandates for tens of millions of Americans, including many young, healthy people.

  Sept. 15, 2021: Hong Kong changes recommendation from two doses of Pfizer to one dose after spike in myocarditis cases.

  Sept. 17, 2021: Excess myocarditis risk for vaccinated males aged 16 or 17 “approaching 200 cases per million,” FDA discloses, based on data from Optum health care claims database.

  Sept. 21, 2021: “A clear signal for vaccine associated myocarditis has emerged,” U.S. doctors say.

  Sept. 22, 2021: One case of myocarditis reported after Pfizer booster, CDC official says. Not possible to determine the risk of rare side effects like myocarditis after boosting, CDC safety committee says.

  Sept. 22, 2021: V-safe does not collect information on myocarditis, CDC official admits.

  Sept. 22, 2021: FDA authorizes a Pfizer booster for millions of Americans.

  Sept. 23, 2021: CDC officials say they don’t know how many cases of myocarditis booster shots will cause. They project up to 26 cases per million boosters in 18- to 29-year-olds, but say more COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations would be prevented.

  Sept. 24, 2021: CDC recommends Pfizer’s booster for certain populations.

  Sept. 27, 2021: New Zealand expert tells CDC it “seems to make huge sense to me” to delay second doses for young people.

  Sept. 28, 2021: Pfizer vaccine may have “played a role” in death of 15-year-old California boy who died after receiving shot, medical examiner tells CDC.

  Sept. 29, 2021: CDC meets on non-COVID vaccines.

  Sept. 30, 2021: CDC falsely tells California officials that reports of postvaccination myocarditis did not come until June 2021.

  October 2021: 321 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including five deaths.

  Oct. 4, 2021: Identification of postvaccination myocarditis cases “does not change clinical decision-making,” JAMA Internal Medicine editors say.

  Oct. 7, 2021: Norway, Finland, and Sweden suspend use of Moderna’s vaccine for younger people due to myocarditis risks.

  Oct. 8, 2021: Iceland suspends use of Moderna’s vaccine due to the heart inflammation.

  Oct. 11, 2021: CDC director briefed on how Nordic countries are limiting vaccination due to myocarditis.

  Oct. 12, 2021: Secret U.S. government meeting considering counting post-infection immunity as one or more vaccine doses ends with no update.

  Oct. 14, 2021: FDA says more myocarditis/pericarditis cases have been reported to its Biologics Effectiveness and Safety Initiative system.

  Oct. 21, 2021: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has identified 7 post-vaccination myocarditis cases, CDC publicly discloses, but no signal was established and all cases resolved.

  Oct. 21, 2021: Highest rate of myocarditis following vaccination, based on VAERS data, is 69.1 cases per million second shots among males aged 16 or 17, Dr. Su says (pdf).

  Oct. 21, 2021: About a quarter of cases in people 29 or younger reviewed in VAERS were not known to have recovered, according to available data, with 19 still hospitalized.

  Oct. 21, 2021: Analyses of VSD data “indicate that both Pfizer and Moderna are associated with increased risk of myocarditis/pericarditis in 12–39-year-olds,” Kaiser Permanente doctor says (pdf). Myocarditis/pericarditis cases in VSD rise to 138, with rates higher after Moderna vaccination compared to Pfizer vaccination.

  Oct. 21, 2021: CDC says tens of millions of Americans should get a Pfizer or Moderna booster.

  Oct. 22, 2021: Rates of reported cases among males aged 18 to 24 approximately 139 per million after Moderna second dose and 43 per million after Pfizer second dose, French researchers say.

  Oct. 22, 2021: Norway says adolescents can’t get second doses of Pfizer’s vaccine.

  Oct. 26, 2021: FDA says benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks. Projection of harm is highest for 16- and 17-year-old males, at 196 postvaccination myocarditis/pericarditis cases, and 171 myocarditis/pericarditis hospitalizations per million doses.

  Oct. 26, 2021: CDC cardiologist Dr. Matthew Oster says “we don’t know a whole lot” about myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination. “We really need to see what the long-term outcomes for these kids will be,” he added later.

  Oct. 26, 2021: Dr. Michael Nelson, an FDA vaccine adviser, says he’s concerned that some cases of postvaccination myocarditis aren’t being reported.

  Oct. 26, 2021: Dr. Eric Rubin, another FDA adviser, says “we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.”

  Oct. 27, 2021: World Health Organization says the mRNA vaccines likely cause myocarditis.

  Oct. 27, 2021: Prevalence of postvaccination myocarditis may be underestimated due to its reliance on symptoms for diagnosis, researchers say.

  Oct. 28, 2021: Dr. Su says myocarditis reported after COVID-19 vaccination “has been neither severe nor persistent … however, we’ll need to wait to see if longer-term complications arise.” He also says CDC does not know what percent of cases became chronic.

  Oct. 29, 2021: FDA authorizes Pfizer’s vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 despite dearth of efficacy data.

  Oct. 30, 2021: Seventeen myocarditis patients seen at a single facility in Switzerland between March and July 2021, researchers report (pdf).

  Oct. 31, 2021: FDA delays decision on approving Moderna’s vaccine for children.

  November 2021: 267 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including six deaths.

  Nov. 1, 2021: Dr. Su says in email that “we’re all doing our part to build confidence” in COVID-19 vaccines.

  Nov. 1, 2021: English researchers estimate vaccinating children aged 12 to 17 will prevent 230 to 4,590 COVID-19 hospitalizations while causing 160 cases of myocarditis requiring hospitalization.

  Nov. 1, 2021: Seven patients still had symptoms about a month after being diagnosed with myocarditis, U.S. researchers report.

  Nov. 2, 2021: Nine deaths with myocarditis reported among people 29 and younger in VAERS. Most deaths had at least one potential non-vaccination cause while evaluation of two was still ongoing, CDC official says (pdf).

  Nov. 2, 2021: Of postvaccination myocarditis patients who received cardiac MRIs, 72 percent had abnormal results, official says. Of patients who responded to CDC survey, 48 percent reported symptoms persisting after three months.

  Nov. 2, 2021: Rates of myocarditis after Pfizer vaccination in children aged 5 to 11, if cleared, is unknown, CDC says (pdf). Rates in those 12 to 15 are as high as 108.5 per million second doses among males.

  Nov. 2, 2021: CDC recommends virtually all children aged 5 to 11 receive a Pfizer series.

  Nov. 3, 2021: 18-year-old previously healthy woman dies after COVID-19 vaccination with fulminate myocarditis, Washington state officials tell CDC. They attribute the myocarditis to asymptomatic COVID-19. Family declined an autopsy at one facility and King County Medical Examiner’s Office says it did not perform an autopsy due to “social and complex” reasons.

  Nov. 8, 2021: France halts Moderna’s vaccine for people under 30.

  Nov. 16, 2021: UK recommends second dose for 16- and 17-year-olds.

  Nov. 18, 2021: Reported cases of myocarditis as high as 117 per million after doses of Moderna, and 47 per million doses of Pfizer, among males aged 18 to 29, German researchers say.

  Nov. 19, 2021: Lower rates of myocarditis reported to VAERS after booster doses, CDC official says (pdf). Fifty-four reports were lodged, with some people not known to have recovered.

  Nov. 19, 2021: CDC enables all adults to receive a booster of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

  Nov. 23, 2021: Between Dec. 27, 2020 and Sept. 3, 2021, 113 patients with suspected myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination presented to a single practice, German researchers report.

  Nov. 26, 2021: Six people were reported to have died with myocarditis or pericarditis after Pfizer vaccination, the Netherlands Pharmacovigilance Centre Lareb reports. Other causes were found for two of the deaths.

  Nov. 28, 2021: Hong Kong researchers find rate of 212 myocarditis cases among 12- to 17-year-old males per million Pfizer second doses.

  Nov. 28, 2021: Three verified cases of post-booster myocarditis, CDC discloses in private emails.

  Nov. 29, 2021: UK recommends second dose for 12 to 15-year-olds.

  December 2021: 304 cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reported to VAERS, including five deaths.

  Dec. 1, 2021: 22-year-old woman spent 74 days in hospital with myocarditis after AstraZeneca vaccination, South Korean researchers report.

  Dec. 2, 2021: European Medicines Agency says safety signal confirmed for postvaccination myocarditis.

  Dec. 2, 2021: Israeli researchers estimate 106.9 myocarditis cases per million vaccinated males aged 16 to 29.

  Dec. 9, 2021: FDA authorizes booster doses for 16- and 17-year-olds.

  Dec. 9, 2021: CDC says 16- and 17-year-olds should get a booster shot. It does not mention myocarditis.

  Dec. 14, 2021: 114 vaccinated people had myocarditis listed as a cause of death on their death certificate, English researchers report.

  Dec. 16, 2021: Eight cases of myocarditis among children aged 5 to 11 confirmed, including one in a 6-year-old male, CDC official says.

  Dec. 18, 2021: 26-year-old New Zealand man’s death ruled as being caused by vaccine-induced myocarditis following an autopsy.

  Dec. 25, 2021: Males under 40 face an excess risk of 101 cases per million second doses, UK researchers find.

  Dec. 27, 2021: Incidence of myocarditis among males 12 to 39 is 195.4 per million second doses among males aged 12 to 39, U.S. researchers estimate. They identify cases missed by the CDC.Dec. 28, 2021: Risk of myocarditis much higher from Moderna’s vaccine compared with Pfizer’s shot, Canadian officials report.

  Dec. 30, 2021: 21 patients with myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination admitted to a single center between Dec. 15, 2020, and June 15, 2021, U.S. researchers report.

  Dec. 30, 2021: 14-year-old hospitalized with shock after Pfizer vaccination, Moroccan doctors say.

  2022

  Jan. 3, 2022: Non-vaccine causes of death ruled out in death of 57-year-old New Zealand woman who experienced myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination, researchers report.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 22:20

• DC Swamp In Crosshairs? Models Indicate Storm Advancing Up East Coast 
  DC Swamp In Crosshairs? Models Indicate Storm Advancing Up East Coast 

  The National Hurricane Center is tracking a storm off the Florida coastline. Computer models forecast a direct hit for the Mid-Atlantic region late Saturday into Sunday. 

  The storm will be several hundred miles away from North Carolina’s coast by Friday afternoon. Models show the storm will make landfall or come extremely close to the Outer Banks in the early hours of Saturday and ride up the Chesapeake Bay late Saturday, with the possibility of even strengthening. 

  

  “Around that time, it will pass over the Gulf Stream on its way toward the Chesapeake Bay. The warm Gulf Stream waters will help an uptick in convection, or thunderstorm activity, near the storm’s center. That could lead to it being classified as “subtropical” — part nor’easter, part tropical,” Capital Weather Gang meteorologist Matthew Cappucci wrote in a report on Thursday. 

  “There is a possibility of life-threatening inundation from rising water moving inland from the coastline,” NWS wrote in an early morning update.

  

  From the Carolinas to Washington–Baltimore metro area to New York City, gusts of 40 mph, with some areas exceeding 50 mph near the coastline, could be seen. 

  

  Heavy rainfall is expected for major US East Coast cities. Some areas see 2 to 4 inches of rain – or about a month’s rainfall. 

  

  The storm won’t be enough to drain the ‘DC swamp.’ 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 22:00

• Victor Davis Hanson: Our Self-Induced Catastrophe At The Border
  Victor Davis Hanson: Our Self-Induced Catastrophe At The Border

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

  Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.

  The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.

  But how and why did the Biden administration destroy immigration law as we knew it?

  The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020.

  Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.

  The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected.

  Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased.

  Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down.

  New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals.

  No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of immigration law.

  

  However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their illegal immigrants northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.

  The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted illegal immigration into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others.

  New York mayor Eric Adams went from celebrating a few dozen illegal immigrants bused into Manhattan, to blasting his own party by allowing tens of thousands to swamp his now bankrupt city.

  But why did the Biden administration deliberately unleash the largest influx across the southern border in U.S. history?

  The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.

  They feared that the more legal Latino immigrants assimilated and integrated into American society, the less happy they became with leftwing radical abortion, racial, transgender, crime, and green fixations.

  Democratic grandees had always bragged that illegal immigration would create what they called “The New Democratic Majority” in “Demography is Destiny” fashion. Now they slander critics as “racists” who object to leftwing efforts to use illegal immigration to turn southwestern red states blue.

  Mexico now cannot survive as a modern state without some $60 billion in annual remittances sent by its expatriates in America. But many illegal immigrants rely on American state and federal entitlements to free up cash to send home.

  Mexico also encourages its own abject poor and often indigenous people from southern Mexico to head north as a safety-valve of sorts. The government sees these mass exoduses northward as preferable to the oppressed marching on Mexico City to address grievances of poverty and racism.

  The criminal cartels now de facto run Mexico. An open border allows them to ship fentanyl northward, earn billions in profits—and kill nearly 100,000 Americans a year. Illegal immigrants pay cartels additional billions to facilitate their border crossings.

  Do not forget American corporate employers. Record labor nonparticipation followed the Covid lockdown. In reaction to the dearth of American workers, the hospitality, meat packing, social service, health-care, and farming industries were desperate to hire new—and far cheaper—labor.

  Human rights activists insist that the borders themselves are nineteenth-century relics. And the global poor and oppressed thus have a human right to enter the affluent West by any means necessary.

  Many in the tony suburbs and in universities do not live anywhere near the border. So they pontificate on the assurance that thousands of unaudited illegal immigrants will never enter their own enclaves or campuses.

  The result is elite bottled piety—but not firsthand experience with the natural consequences of millions chaotically fleeing one of the poorest countries in the world to pour into the wealthiest. Without background checks, vaccinations and health audits, legality, high-school diplomas, English-facility, skill sets, or capital, the result is an abject catastrophe.

  Polls continue to show that the American people support measured, diverse, legal, and meritocratic immigration as much as they oppose mass illegal immigration into their country and the subsequent loss of American sovereignty on the border.

  They understand what the Biden administration does not: no nation is history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.

  Ending illegal immigration now depends solely on the American people overriding the corrupt special interests and leaders who profit from the current chaos and human misery.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 21:40

• UAW Auto Strike Costs "Detroit 3" $250 Million In Lost Profit Every Day, Will Lead To Much More Inflation
  UAW Auto Strike Costs “Detroit 3” $250 Million In Lost Profit Every Day, Will Lead To Much More Inflation

  One week ago, when previewing the three events that are about to slam US GDP in the tail end of the 3rd and the 3th quarter (including the return of student loan payments, the UAW strike and the government shutdown), Goldman calculated that reduced auto production from a potential UAW strike would reduce quarterly annualized growth by 0.05-0.10% for each week it lasted, if all three companies currently undergoing contract negotiations are impacted. “Those three companies—Ford, GM, and Stellantis—produce almost half of domestically-assembled cars. Auto production would likely fall sharply—we assume to roughly zero—at any company impacted by a strike”, Goldman said in its 30,000 approximation of the impact..

  

  Fast forward to today when Morgan Stanley’s auto strategist, Adam Jonas, takes a closer look at the impact of the UAW strikes, which are now in their 5th day.

  According to Jonas, investors have expressed a degree of trepidation over the strike outcome in a recent survey and now that it’s here, the path to resolution does appear to have matched investor fears.

  Here is his quick calculation: “the value of N. American light production of the D3 (F, GM, STLA collectively) is approximately $750mm per day (approx. 15k units per day). Applying slightly more than a 30% decremental (yes, mix is that high) implies around $250mm of lost profit per day (assuming 100% of production impacted).”

  Extrapolating to a full month of lost output (adjusted for production days) could be worth $7 to $8bn of lost profit for the D3, collectively.

  According to Jonas, some of the lost production would be made back as some customers may be tempted to buy an import brand – or Tesla – with lack of availability.

  But beyond the 1-time losses, Jonas says he is much more concerned about the potential for 30 to 40% labor inflation over the life of the next 4-year contract and how the domestic auto companies may recalibrate their ROIC and payback math for EV onshoring. The MS strategist thinks the outcome will be greater austerity and focus on the ICE run-off (that, however, would make many more workers redundant as EV require far less mechanical intervention than ICEs).

  One must also consider that new car purchases account for roughly 5% of US CPI and soon car companies will have to raise prices (structurally) to compensate for higher labor input cost. Put simply, a 3% increase in new car prices could be worth 15bps to CPI over 4 years.

  Finally, some thoughts on the UAW strike from One River CIO Eric Peters:

  “The money is there. The cause is righteous. The world is watching, and the UAW is ready to stand up,” declared United Auto Workers boss Shawn Fain to his union members on a Facebook livestream. “This is our defining moment.”

  Detroit automaker unionized labor costs, including wages and benefits, are estimated at an average of $66/hour. That compares with $45 at Tesla, which isn’t unionized, and $55 for Asian automakers.

  Meeting all of Fain’s initial demands would boost average hourly labor costs to an estimated $136/hour.

  Fein claims to be matching the roughly 40% compensation gains automaker CEOs have realized in the past decade. Ford’s CEO made $22mm last year. Stellantis’s $24.8mm. GM’s nearly $29mm.

  “Competition is code word for race to the bottom, and I’m not concerned about Elon Musk building more rocket ships so he can fly in outer space and stuff,” Fain told CNBC, defending his demands. “Our concern is working-class people need their share of economic justice in this world.”

  The secular trend toward ever rising inequality is turning. In August, UPS settled its labor dispute with the Teamsters 340k drivers who on average now make $170k in wages and benefits. That same month, Yellow failed to come to agreement with the Teamsters and ceased operations after nearly a century of trucking delivery — it awarded ten executives $4.6mm in special retention bonuses, laid off all 30k drivers and went into liquidation.

  A secular trend reversal to how society divides its economic spoils is not all that different from revolution. Bitterly fought, treacherous for all involved. And this latest episode promises to be particularly so.

  Because in the timeless conflict between capital and labor, it is extremely rare for the imbalance to be so extreme. The wider the gap, the bigger the stakes. And the last time the chasm was so great was at the height of the Roaring 1920s.  

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 21:20

• Estes' $1.525BN Stalking Horse Bid For Yellow's Terminals Wins Out
  Estes’ $1.525BN Stalking Horse Bid For Yellow’s Terminals Wins Out

  By Todd Maiden of FreightWaves

  An order was entered in a Delaware bankruptcy court Thursday naming less-than-truckload carrier Estes Express Lines’ $1.525 billion stalking horse bid as the winning offer of Yellow Corp.’s portfolio of owned terminals.

  

  Bid protections for Estes were also approved, including a $7.5 million breakup fee and expense reimbursement up to $1.6 million.

  Yellow filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 6 after failing to reach terms with its union workers on a proposed change of operations it said was vital to its survival.

  Last week Estes submitted the bid, which eclipsed a $1.5 billion offer from rival LTL carrier Old Dominion Freight Line. Estes’ proposal also came with lower bid protections. The carrier kicked off the bidding with an initial offer of $1.3 billion.

  The bid sets the price floor for Yellow’s service centers. Estes is unlikely to walk away with all 174 terminals as a full sales process will still occur. The bid deadline for the terminals is set for Nov. 9, with an auction expected to take place on Nov. 28 if needed.

  A hearing held last week revealed that initial indications of interest for some of the real estate has been as much as two to 11 times the appraised value. At the hearing, counsel for Yellow also said that the proceeds from the terminal sales will likely be more than enough to repay all outstanding amounts due to secured creditors.

  The company’s unsecured claims, however, may garner more interest moving forward. A recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Yellow’s pension fund withdrawal liabilities could top $6.5 billion.

  The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents roughly 22,000 former Yellow workers, was vocal this week, calling for the U.S. Senate to investigate the company’s bankruptcy as a judiciary committee looks more broadly at bankruptcy reform.

  Up next on the auction block is Yellow’s owned rolling stock, which includes nearly 12,000 tractors and 35,000 trailers. A deadline for equipment bids has been set for Oct. 13, with an auction set to occur on Oct. 18 if needed.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 21:00

• Lawlessness Spreads To Suburbia: Westport Man Carjacked In Own Garage
  Lawlessness Spreads To Suburbia: Westport Man Carjacked In Own Garage

  Violent crime appears to be spreading to suburbia. For the millions of Americans who fled crime-ridden metro areas where Democrat leaders failed to enforce law and order, the dramatic video of a carjacker assaulting a Westport, Connecticut, man in his garage for his Aston Martin serves as a wakeup call to better defend yourself and loves ones. 

  Westport Journal reports that the Westport Police Department released dramatic security footage from a Ring camera that shows a residential burglary and carjacking on Bayberry Lane on Sunday afternoon. Two suspects assaulted the man in his garage and stole his Aston Martin. 

  “They surround the vehicle and drag the man from the car as he calls for someone in the home to contact police. The intruders appear to repeatedly strike the man as he tries to fend them off,” the local media outlet said. 

  Westport police Lt. Eric Woods said the victim was targeted and followed back to his residence. “Therefore, Westport Police are encouraging residents to be aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behavior to 911,” he said. 

  The consequence of failed Democrat policies in major cities has only emboldened criminals who are now expanding their theft wave to suburbia. It’s also a cautionary sign for homeowners who might want to explore firearms training to defend themselves, their families, and their property. 

  Meanwhile, the average police response time is more than ten minutes. And Democrat lawmakers want to strip the public of firearms (see New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham‘s latest 2A overreach). 

  The video proves the Westport man couldn’t afford to wait just one minute. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 20:40

• Pfizer-Funded Study Shows Poor Effectiveness For COVID-19 Vaccine In Young Children
  Pfizer-Funded Study Shows Poor Effectiveness For COVID-19 Vaccine In Young Children

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

  A new study funded by Pfizer found the company’s COVID-19 vaccine did not perform well in children under 5.

  

  Children aged 6 months to 4 years are supposed to receive three shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The number was increased from two when early testing showed little effectiveness.

  Three doses of the Pfizer vaccine provided little protection against emergency room visits, urgent care encounters, or outpatient visits, according to the new study.

  Researchers with and funded by Pfizer analyzed records from Kaiser Permanente Southern California. They included patients who tested for COVID-19 at an emergency department, urgent care, or outpatient setting along with being diagnosed with acute respiratory infection. The date range was July 23, 2022 through May 19, 2023.

  Positive cases were those with a positive test result. Controls tested negative and had no evidence of prior infection in the past 90 days. Children were only counted as vaccinated if they received a second or third shot two or more weeks before being exposed to COVID-19. Children were excluded if they only received one dose, received any doses from a different company, or did not follow the recommended dosing schedule.

  After adjusting for factors such as age and sex, researchers estimated just 12 percent effectiveness against medically-attended encounters for children who completed the three-dose primary series.

  Confidence intervals crossed well over one, indicating that the effectiveness might actually be worse or even negative.

  The effectiveness was estimated to be higher, or 44 percent, for children who received two doses of the regimen.

  Researchers speculated that the difference stemmed from more immune-evasive virus variants becoming dominant in the United States by the time children received a third dose.

  “Updated vaccines will likely be needed to maintain protection against contemporary Omicron strains in young children,” they wrote.

  Sara Tartof, the study’s corresponding author and an employee of Kaiser Permanente Southern California, did not answer questions, including why researchers included those with two doses but not those with one dose.

  Pfizer did not return a request for comment.

  

  Key Problems

  Among the key problems with the research were only including children who were diagnosed with acute respiratory infection (ARI), Dr. Robert Malone, who was not involved in the research, said.

  That “may predispose to young children that lack a primary care physician/pediatrician,” Dr. Malone, who helped invent the mRNA technology Pfizer’s vaccine utilizes, told The Epoch Times via email.

  “Likewise, the control group of non-vaccinated with ARI will also have selection bias. These intrinsic study biases make the relevance of the measured outcome to the general population quite problematic.”

  Another issue is using positive results on polymerase chain reaction testing as the metric for having COVID-19, given the false positives the testing brings, Dr. Malone said. Some patients who tested positive may actually have another virus, such as influenza, he said.

  Need a Trial

  Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized for children despite unreliable efficacy estimates against infection, and no efficacy estimates against severe disease.

  The newly reported results are based on a test-negative design, which is inappropriate for measuring effectiveness, said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford University.

  “The design starts with children who are already seeing a doctor and then makes strong and unsupportable statistical assumptions to derive the probability of seeing a doctor for vaccinated and unvaccinated children,” Dr. Bhattacharya, who was not involved in the research, told The Epoch Times via email.

  “What is needed to answer this question without bias is a randomized control trial. I am shocked that the FDA has not asked Pfizer and Moderna to conduct such a study,” he added.

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared Pfizer’s shot on the basis of immunobridging, or comparing antibody levels in children after vaccination with levels in adults after vaccination.

  Antibodies are believed to protect people against COVID-19.

  The authorization has been the subject of protests, including a complaint that said the FDA violated its own standards with the clearance.

  The FDA this month cleared new vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for children. The only trial data was from 50 people aged 12 or older who received Moderna’s shot. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the shots to all people aged 6 months and older.

  CDC Data

  CDC data presented on Sept. 12 showed that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines failed to provide much protection to young children.

  One dose of Pfizer’s vaccine provided just 8 percent protection against emergency room and urgent care visits beyond 13 days, while two doses provided a peak of 44 percent protection, according to the data (pdf).

  A third dose provided 71 percent protection between 14 and 59 days, but the shielding plunged to 16 percent after two months.

  A two-shot primary series of Moderna’s shot initially provided 46 percent protection. That shielding dropped even lower, to 24 percent, beyond 60 days.

  The World Health Organization considers 50 percent as adequate effectiveness for vaccines.

  A single dose of a bivalent shot, introduced in the fall of 2022, boosted protection to 61 percent, but no estimates were available over time and the estimate was based on just eight vaccinated patients who tested positive.

  “This imprecision indicates that the actual [effectiveness] could be substantially different,” the CDC said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 20:20

• Leftist Mayor Calls 911 On Peaceful Petitioners – Describes Them As "Far Right Wing"
  Leftist Mayor Calls 911 On Peaceful Petitioners – Describes Them As “Far Right Wing”

  It is no secret that blue state politicians have been growing more extreme each passing year.  Given a taste of ultimate authority during the covid lockdowns, they now seem to operate on the assumption that this is how society will function from now on – Unilateral authority with no checks and balances based on arbitrary proclamations rather than constitutional law.  

  As the old saying goes, if you want to test a person’s character, give them power.  Democrats assumed far reaching powers during the pandemic scare, and they have revealed their true natures.  This reality also extends to their behavior regarding “trans rights”, which they believe allows them to restrict individual speech, violate women’s privacy rights and erase the right of parents to be informed of school interactions with their children.

  It may be opposition to the school trans indoctrination problem in particular that compelled leftist Mayor Janice Deccio of Yakima, Washington to call 911 on Sept. 3rd; outraged because of the presence of conservative petitioners collecting signatures at a local Walmart to stop schools from hiding information from parents.  In June of this year, Deccio proclaimed the entire month as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Asexual, Aromantic, Queer, Two-Spirit, Non-Binary, and Intersex Pride Month” in Yakima, during a city council organized event. 

  Deccio claims she was simply informed by her constituents of “far right wing petitioners” at Walmart “harassing” shoppers, and that she was not aware of what they were specifically collecting signatures for.  Petitioners held signs listing their goals, making her assertion less believable.  

  The volunteers were gathering signatures over Labor Day weekend on six Washington ballot initiatives funded by Let’s Go Washington.  I-2113 would roll back restrictions placed by Democrats on when police officers can engage in vehicular pursuits. I-2117 would lower the Democrat-imposed carbon tax that has spiked gas prices. I-2124 would allow employees to opt out of Washington’s long-term care insurance program. I-2109 would repeal the state’s capital gains tax. I-2111 would prohibit state income taxes being imposed and I-2081, would allow parents of public school students to review their child’s instructional materials and student records.

  The signature gatherers also caught the attention of former Democrat candidate for Congress Doug White who posted on Twitter/X complaining about the “illegal petition” while asking his followers “What will you do about it?”  Perhaps hoping to rally leftists to disrupt the petitioners since the police refused to violate their rights.  

  Illegal petitioners outside west valley Walmart. They have been trying to get rid of them for a week but refuse to leave. Police and sheriff will do nothing. Sgt Shepard of the YPD states “it’s their constitutional right”. Do you agree? What will you do about it? pic.twitter.com/9q2Hro9YyT

  — Doug White (@DougWhiteRAU) September 3, 2023

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  The Yakima Mayor says she “does not care” about the nature of the petition and was only concerned about “harassment” and the property rights of Walmart.  However, if this is true why would she make sure to paint the petitioners as “far right wing?”  Her clear disappointment and expression of disbelief after being told that the petitioners were acting within the law also reveals that the 911 call may have been motivated by political zealotry.

  Attempting to conflate the private property of a home residence with the parking lot of Walmart could be blamed on ignorance.  Perhaps Mayor Deccio is simply stupid.  Clearly she was aware that police could not intervene before she made the call, and contacted 911 anyway.  Was she hoping to use her government position to pressure police to confront petitioners regardless of the law?   

  At bottom the most important question is not a legal one – How was this small group of people causing harm?  Why bother them at all?  Would the Mayor have made the same phone call if the petitioners were far-left and in support of gun control, carbon taxes and trans propaganda in schools?

  The identification of “far right wing” is often used by leftists as a qualifier for censorship.  They argue that free speech is  protected, but not absolute.  Meaning, free speech is okay for those they deem to be the “good guys” but it should be restricted for those they deem to be the “bad guys.”  Conveniently, leftists have also declared themselves the arbiters of who is good and who is bad, and they believe everyone to the right of Karl Marx and Klaus Schwab to be bad.

  While some might say that this is a minor problem associated with a small city, it is in fact a reflection of a much larger agenda.  The political left has been trying to establish double standards on every level of government and social redress for years; rules for thee but not for me.  And when government begins to silence and suppress one group in favor of another, the end result will be predictably explosive.  Luckily the local police in this instance were properly informed and were not subject to political pressure. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 20:00

• On The Idiotic Notion That It's Brave To Support Nuclear Brinkmanship In Ukraine
  On The Idiotic Notion That It’s Brave To Support Nuclear Brinkmanship In Ukraine

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  

  During a Sunday appearance on Face the Nation to plug his new Zelensky movie, actor Sean Penn decried the “cowardice” of the US government in its caution around provoking a nuclear exchange with its proxy warfare in Ukraine.

  “It is my absolute feeling that the caution with which the United States has pledged support, which seemed, in my reading of February 2022 was a, like a lean on in the fear of nuclear conflict, something I think all of us should look very carefully at and understand that, of course, is possible,” Penn said.

  “And that’s to be concerning. The likelihood is extremely low. And as one of our witnesses in the film says, you know, are we going to let a gangster with nuclear weapons dictate the way we live?”

  Penn emotionally lamented the fact that the Biden administration did not pour F-16 warplanes into Ukraine from the very beginning of the conflict, initially fearing the move to be too escalatory. Describing this hesitation, Penn said that “at some point, caution becomes cowardice.”

  As you might expect, the interviewer refrained from challenging Penn on his claim that the likelihood of nuclear war is “extremely low” in spite of his acknowledgement that it’s a real possibility, or on his claim that resisting increasing the likelihood of nuclear war is an act of cowardice.

  Sean Penn has been one of Hollywood’s most egregious empire apologists for some time now (in 2020 he told CNN that “there is no greater humanitarian force on the planet than the United States military”), but even by his standards these comments about nuclear brinkmanship are remarkably odious.

  There’s this obnoxious idea that comes up in mainstream political discourse about Ukraine that an aversion to nuclear brinkmanship is somehow cowardly, and that being willing to risk the life of every terrestrial organism advancing US strategic objectives is somehow an act of courage.

  We saw this back in July from Paul Massaro, an advisor to the US government’s Helsinki Commission and a minor celebrity in online Zelenskyite circles. During this year’s “Captive Nations Summit” with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Massaro mocked westerners for being “fearful” of proxy warfare in Ukraine leading to nuclear warfare.

  “I think the biggest thing is fear, I think we’re fearful,” Massaro said. “It’s very funny to me, because you meet Ukrainians, not a single Ukrainian is fearful. You talk to Ukrainians it’s like ‘What if the Russians use nuclear weapons?’, they’re like ‘We’ll keep fighting, we’ll win.’ You know it’s only the westerners that are like ‘Oh my god, I’m over here in California and what if the Russians use nuclear weapons?’ You know, it’s almost pathetic.”

  Fear of nuclear war is a pathetic Western phenomenon, says cheerleader for WW3 and NAFO e-celebrity @HelsinkiComm advisor Paul Massaro, gleefully amped-up about the war in Ukraine at this week’s “Captive Nations Summit” held at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington. pic.twitter.com/FX8kKqRO9H

  — Moss Robeson (@mossrobeson__) July 21, 2023

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  It’s a common theme. Any time you talk publicly about the risk of the continually escalating war in Ukraine leading to nuclear catastrophe you’ll get empire apologists calling you a coward and saying we all need to be brave and stand up to the big bully Putin. And it’s just such a disgusting perversion of what courage actually is and what it looks like.

  Empire loyalists often talk about nuclear brinkmanship like it’s something courageous that they personally are doing, as though gambling every terrestrial life on strategic grand chessboard maneuverings is a brave risk that could only hurt them. If you think you are brave for risking the life of everyone on earth to advance your personal geopolitical agendas, you might be a malignant narcissist, because you think the world revolves around you, and other lives exist only as props to support your main character adventures.

  Hardly any human on this planet gives a shit who governs Crimea or the Donbass — and exactly zero of the plants and animals do — but people like Sean Penn and Paul Massaro think they have every right to not only gamble all their lives on a bid to control that outcome, but to call themselves courageous for doing so. Imagine being so self-absorbed you think you’re a brave hero for putting the lives of Africans, Asians, and South Americans on the betting table who’ve never even heard of Donetsk or Luhansk and don’t care who governs them, as well as every non-human life on earth.

  I mean, the absolute arrogance. The fucking gall. It’s as emotionally stunted and infantile a perspective as you could possibly come up with, but these are the people whose worldview is shaping outcomes on this planet. These are the sort of people who are setting the trajectory of our species as a collective.

  The mainstream western political consensus is a sickness of the mind. Its existence should make us all want to fall to our knees and beg the forgiveness of every life on this earth that it imperils.

  *  *  *

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

  Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 19:40

• Olive Garden Owner Warns: "Decline In Fine Dining" As Wealthy Americans Trade Down To Cheap Booze 
  Olive Garden Owner Warns: “Decline In Fine Dining” As Wealthy Americans Trade Down To Cheap Booze 

  Sentiment continues to turn negative for the US consumer as the latest warning sign comes from a multi-brand restaurant operator with more than 1,900 full-service locations nationwide. During a Thursday morning conference call, the management team warned Wall Street analysts about “softness” among wealthier households. 

  Darden Restaurants CEO Rick Cardenas said, “We are seeing a little softness versus last year with household incomes above $125,000, and that primarily affects our Fine Dining brands, but it does affect all of our brands.” 

  The multi-brand restaurant operator owns Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, and five other brands with more than 1,900 locations nationwide. 

  

  Cardenas offered more clues about waning consumer spending habits at restaurant locations:

  “Now, this could be because the increase in luxury travel, particularly international travel, which you’ve heard a lot of people talk about, but as I’ve said before many times, there is a tension between what people want to pay and what they can afford, and they’re going to continue to seek value, not always about low price. They’re making tradeoffs, and food away from home is one of the most difficult things they can give up.”

  Darden’s CFO told analysts that a decline in fine dining has been due to customers opting for lower-priced wines and other beverages over the past year: 

  “The decline in Fine Dining, part of that is driven by incremental costs they have year-over- year. Their pricing is starting to catch up. But also, there was some negative mix. On a one- year basis, there was a lot of negative mix on alcohol. When we look at what’s happening with — at Fine Dining, there is trading down to lower-priced wines and other alcohols on a one-year basis.” 

  Darden’s exec team offered a cautionary view on wealthier customers amid a period of high credit card debt and depleted savings for consumers. The $2 trillion in excess savings from the Covid crisis has been all but depleted, according to according to JPM calculations.

  

  The latest slide in consumer credit suggests folks are finally tapped out. 

  

  Meanwhile, with average credit card interest rates rising above 22% to a new record high…

  

  And now that repayment of student loans has officially resumed, it will likely cause a $15.8 billion headwind for consumers every month. 

  The days of $80 steaks and $25 martinis might be over for now. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 19:20

• Eric Clapton Helps RFK Jr. Raise $2.2 Million At Los Angeles Fundraiser
  Eric Clapton Helps RFK Jr. Raise $2.2 Million At Los Angeles Fundraiser

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Eric Clapton helped raise $2.2 million for the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a political action committee (PAC) at a private fundraiser on Monday night, the Kennedy campaign announced Tuesday.

  

  The star-studded event, held in the upscale Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, raised a total of $2.2 million, with $1 million earmarked for Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, while the remaining $1.2 million will bolster a PAC dedicated to supporting his bid for the presidency.

  “I am deeply grateful to [Eric Clapton] for bringing his musical artistry and rebellious spirit to my gathering in Los Angeles last night and helping raise $2.2 million for my campaign,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement released by his campaign.

  Mr. Kennedy, who is the son of assassinated former presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, expressed his appreciation for music having the power to bring people together “in our divided society.”

  “Eric sings from the depths of the human condition. If he sees in me the possibility of bringing unity to our country, it is only possible because artists like him invoke a buried faith in the limitless power of human beings to overcome any obstacle,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement.

  In late August, the Kennedy campaign revealed that Mr. Clapton would be headlining the exclusive fundraising event, where ticket prices reportedly ranged from a minimum of $3,300 to a maximum of $6,600.

  

  At the time, Mr. Clapton expressed his excitement about the event in a brief video message, praising Mr. Kennedy for his commitment to championing “truth, unity, peace, and posterity.”

  Both Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Clapton have criticized COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

  Mr. Kennedy is one of two Democratic candidates running against President Joe Biden, who is facing an impeachment probe and who has the support of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in seeking a second term in the White House.

  The presidential hopeful recently accused the DNC of rigging the presidential primary system to hinder any substantial challenge to President Biden’s campaign.

  In an open letter published on Sept. 13, Mr. Kennedy accused DNC leadership of going “off track” by limiting democracy and manipulating the primary rules to favor President Biden.

  “The DNC and the Joe Biden campaign have essentially merged into one unit, financially and strategically,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.

  Section 4 of the DNC’s charter states that the party chair is required to maintain impartiality and evenhandedness when it comes to presidential candidates and their campaigns.

  In February, the DNC passed a resolution with unanimous agreement, pledging its “full and complete support” for both the president and Vice President Kamala Harris. This resolution was adopted prior to Mr. Kennedy’s launch of his campaign several months later.

  Responding to Mr. Kennedy’s criticisms, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison told his campaign in a letter cited by The Washington Post that the criticism was based on “serious misunderstandings” of the nominating process.

  “I am hopeful that a meeting with our Delegate Selection leadership team will prevent future instances of voters receiving erroneous information that could cause confusion about the equity of the Democratic nominating process,” Mr. Harrison wrote, per the report.

  The Biden campaign has raised more than $72 million between April and the end of the quarter in July. While these figures are substantial, they fall short when compared to the amounts raised by previous American presidents at this stage in their reelection campaigns. For instance, in 2019, then-President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) raised a total of $105 million in the second quarter, reported The Associated Press.

  The poll by RealClearPolitics, as of Sept. 19, put Mr. Kennedy in a distant second with 11.9 points for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, following President Joe Biden with 66.6 points.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 19:00

• Biden Finally Gives Netanyahu Long-Delayed White House Invitation
  Biden Finally Gives Netanyahu Long-Delayed White House Invitation

  At a moment the US is pushing hard for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, President Joe Biden has finally and much belatedly issued a formal invitation for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the White House before the end of the year.

  This means a White House trip for the Israeli PM will happen nearly a full year after his reelection to office, which has been seen in Tel Aviv as a bit of an insult. 

  

  Biden reportedly issued the invitation on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.

  He told the press, “Today, we’re going to discuss some of the hard issues, that is upholding democratic values that lie at the heart of our partnership, including the checks and balances in our systems and preserving the path to a negotiated two-state solution, and ensuring that Iran never, never acquires a nuclear weapon.”

  Netanyahu responded positively in the UN meeting with Biden: “I think that under your leadership, Mr President, we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” he said.

  “Such a peace would go a long way first to advance the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, achieve reconciliation between the Islamic world and the Jewish state and advance a genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” the Israeli leader added.

  Typically new Israeli leaders make an official trip to the White House within a mere weeks of being reelected, but Biden’s “snub” is being seen in reaction to the Netanyahu ruling coalition’s ultra-controversial judicial overhaul agenda, which will greatly weaken the independence of Israel’s judiciary. Biden addressed this in the meeting:

  President Joe Biden raised “hard issues,” including protecting the “checks and balances” in a democracy, in a Wednesday meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pushing the Israeli leader to find a compromise on a judicial overhaul that has set off months of mass protests in Israel and concerns in Washington.

  Biden also raised concerns about the far-right Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinians, urging Netanyahu to take steps to improve conditions in the West Bank at a time of heightened violence in the occupied territory.

  As for Saudi-Israeli normalization, in an interview published by Fox this week, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) said of ties with the Jewish state, “Every day we get closer.”

  In exchange for pursuing a peace deal along the lines of the Abraham Accords, Riyadh is demanding Washington’s help in creating a Saudi civilian nuclear program. Importantly, it appears the Netanyahu government is willing to bless this…

  “Netanyahu directed top Israeli nuclear and security specialists to cooperate with US negotiators… the clearest sign yet that the Israeli prime minister is willing to allow Saudi Arabia to advance its nuclear ambitions.” https://t.co/PD0BMBSLNT

  — Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) September 21, 2023

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  Interestingly, MbS also said in the Fox interview that Saudi Arabia will obtain a nuclear weapon if its number one regional rival Iran does so first. “If they get one, we have to get one,” MbS told Fox’s ‘Special Report’ anchor Bret Baier when asked what the kingdom would do if Iran builds a nuclear weapon.

  Of course, that would greatly complicate the question of peace and normalization with Israel, which remains the region’s sole nuclear-armed power, though not officially and on a publicly disclosed level.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 18:40

• Next Arms Package For Ukraine Includes More Internationally-Banned Cluster Bombs
  Next Arms Package For Ukraine Includes More Internationally-Banned Cluster Bombs

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  President Biden’s expected new weapons package being announced when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits Washington on Thursday is expected to have more internationally-banned munitions, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

  Sources told Reuters that the package will be worth $325 million and is expected to include the second tranche of widely-banned cluster bombs in the form of 155mm artillery shells. The US began providing Ukraine with cluster munitions in July despite their history of killing and maiming civilians.

  

  The cluster munitions the US is providing Ukraine are packed with 72 submunitions, known as bomblets, that are scattered over a large area.

  Cluster bombs are so hazardous to civilians because many of the submunitions do not explode on impact, and can be found years or decades later. Due to their indiscriminate nature, cluster bombs are banned by over 100 countries by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but the US, Ukraine, and Russia are not signatories to the treaty.

  A US official also told Reuters that the new weapons package will not include Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which can be fired from the HIMARS rocket systems and have a range of up to 190 miles.

  ATACMS have been long sought by Ukraine, and recent media reports said they could be soon on their way, but the White House said this week no decision has been made.

  Providing ATACMS would mark a significant escalation of US support for Ukraine as they could potentially hit targets inside Russia. When asked earlier this month about Ukraine using ATACMS to target Russian territory, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said targeting decisions are up to Ukraine.

  Other weapons expected to be in the new arms package include Avenger short-range air defense systems, HIMARS ammunition, TOW and AT-4 anti-tank weapons, and Javelin anti-tank missiles.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 18:20

• Trudeau Tried But Failed To Convince Allies To Condemn India Over Killing Of Sikh Leader
  Trudeau Tried But Failed To Convince Allies To Condemn India Over Killing Of Sikh Leader

  Canada says it is still investigating “credible allegations” linking Indian government agents with the killing of a Sikh separatist leader outside of Vancouver in June. Sikh leader and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead in a parking lot by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple on June 18.

  The accusation which was made public Monday by Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has sent relations with India to their lowest point in history. But India had formally designated Nijjar a terrorist starting in 2020, and while rejecting the accusation it has also said Canada is playing host to terror organizations. 

  After a mutual expelling of top diplomats from either country, as of Wednesday India is warning its citizens to exercise caution when traveling in Canada in a new advisory.

  

  India’s External Ministry published the warning which tells citizens and students in Canada that “growing anti-India activities and politically condoned hate-crimes” are one the rise.

  The statement also tells Indians to stay away from venues and events where “threats have particularly targeted Indian diplomats and sections of the Indian community who oppose anti-India agenda,” the ministry said.

  Canada is simultaneously circulating its own updated advisory which requests that its citizens exercise “high degree of caution” when traveling in India. The message highlights the potential for “terrorist attacks” – in what’s clearly intended as a punitive measure against New Delhi. 

  “Exercise a high degree of caution in India due to the threat of terrorist attacks throughout the country,” it states.

  Trudeau is meanwhile attempting what looks like damage control amid the escalating diplomatic war. He says it’s not his aim to “provoke” India in fresh statements:

  “Canada is not trying to provoke India by suggesting its agents were linked to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader but Ottawa wants New Delhi to address the issue properly,” Reuters quoted him as saying on Tuesday.

  “The government of India needs to take this matter with utmost seriousness. We are doing that, we are not looking to provoke or escalate,” he reportedly said. 

  Trudeau had raised the issue with PM Modi during the G20 hosted in New Delhi. But it was also his efforts to convince Washington to stand by Canada’s side which also got rebuffed, according to reporting in The Washington Post…

  “Some of these allied nations, including the United States, however, declined to join Canada in jointly announcing the findings of the ongoing probe, underscoring the lengths the Biden administration has gone to avoid antagonizing India and court the Asian power as a strategic counterweight to China,” WaPo wrote.

  According to more from the Post, the Biden administration was not willing to go all-in on the accusation so as not to risk deepening the US relationship with India:

  On Monday, Trudeau did not give specific evidence linking Indian operatives to the shooting but said Canada was looking into the killing with allied nations. The controversy comes at an awkward moment when Western nations, led by the White House, are looking to woo India as a geopolitical and trade partner and have refrained from criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi over India’s authoritarian backsliding.

  HUGE TURNAROUND AFTER MEGA SNUB? TRUDEAU ON BACKFOOT AFTER ABSURD CLAIM?

  Canadian PM Justin Trudeau says ‘ We are not looking to provoke or escalate matters with India.’ #JustinTrudeau #CanadaIndiaRelations #Canada pic.twitter.com/RC4UHcLtHZ

  — Jan Ki Baat (@jankibaat1) September 20, 2023

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  Canada was strongly lobbying other allies as well, particularly among the “Five Eyes”:

  In recent months, Canada began pushing its closest allies, the members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network – the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand – to raise Nijjar’s killing with India at the highest levels of government and issue a joint statement condemning the act as contravening international norms, said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

  But several countries, including the United States, demurred, fearing a diplomatic backlash from the Modi government at a moment when India was due to hold a lavish coming-out party on the international stage, the G-20 Summit in New Delhi, the Western official said. Instead, the alleged assassination was privately raised by several senior officials from the Five Eyes countries in the weeks before the summit, which took place on Sept. 9 and 10.

  Trudeau had in his Monday televised announcement before the House of Commons asserted that “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.” Some pro-Indian commentators and media are questioning whether Nijjar is a Canadian citizen at all.

  There remains the possibility the whole row could push India further away from the West when it comes to the Ukraine war, and into closer trade and economic cooperation with Russia and China.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 18:00

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• Syria On The Verge Of Collapse?
  Syria On The Verge Of Collapse?

  Authored by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi via the Gatestone Institute,

  

  Syria is clearly on the verge of collapse in terms of the economy and humanitarian situation.

  The country’s southern province of al-Suwayda’, whose population primarily comes from the Druze minority, is currently witnessing protests on an unprecedented scale. While the province has previously seen protests motivated primarily by the country’s deteriorating economic and livelihood situation, these protests are now far more widespread in the province and larger in scale.

  There has also been a definite paradigm shift in these protests: the main initial demands to improve the economy and livelihood situation were endorsed by the Druze community’s three leading religious authorities in Syria. Calls for the government to resign, for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad and a political transition are now stronger and more prevalent. In multiple localities in the province, which has formally been under government control since the start of the unrest and civil war in 2011, demonstrators have closed the Ba’ath Party headquarters and removed portraits of Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad.

  While these protests are in themselves remarkable for the province in terms of the numbers participating, their persistence and how open the calls for political change are, they do raise the question about whether they constitute the potential for a real shift in Syria’s “status quo” since spring 2020. However much one might sympathise with the protests, they are probably unlikely to shift the situation in a significant way. The protestors, although immensely courageous, are too few, and have little leverage.

  The current status quo means that Syria is effectively divided into three major zones: the majority of the country that is held by the Damascus-based government backed by Russia and Iran; the northeast held by the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (the second-largest zone of control); and parts of the northwest and north of the country on and near the border with Turkey, controlled by an assortment of insurgent factions that are backed by Turkey to varying degrees. What has kept the frontlines frozen since the spring of 2020 are the understandings between the main foreign powers involved in the war as well as policies of deterrence through the stationing of foreign troops in these zones of control. The most important in this regard seems to be the Turkey-Russia dynamic, whereas American influence is far more limited.

  At the same time, all the major zones have been seeing low-level skirmishes along their frontlines and experiencing internal security concerns. The Syrian Democratic Forces, for example, which are dominated by Kurdish cadres linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party, are contending with an ongoing Islamic State insurgency and more recently have had to deal with an uprising among Arab tribal elements in the east. In a similar vein, the southern province of Deraa, which is next to al-Suwayda’ and formally came back in its entirety under Syrian government control in 2018, sees regular incidents of assassinations and bomb attacks, some of which can be attributed to Islamic State, while others, in terms of responsibility, remain murky.

  For the Syrian government, however, it is not the military frontlines and internal security that are the main issue today, but rather the deterioration of its economy and the accompanying fall in standards of living. The clearest indication of this decline is the fall in the value of the Syrian pound. Since the onset of the war, it had been steadily falling, but took a sharp turn for the worse in late 2019. This steep decline has continued despite some brief hiatuses; the currency now stands at record low values versus the U.S. dollar. In 2010, the rate of exchange was around 50 Syrian pounds to the dollar, now the rate of exchange is hovering near 15,000 Syrian pounds to the dollar.

  There is much debate about the causes of this downturn, but it seems clear that the decline can be attributed in significant part to the Syrian government’s economic isolation and its shortage of hard currency. Despite controlling the country’s most important cities and the sole access to the Mediterranean Sea along the northwest coastline, the government faces extensive Western economic sanctions; it does not benefit from the main oil assets held by the Syrian Democratic Forces and sees only marginal trade over the land border with neighbouring Jordan to the south. The Syrian government also has extremely little control over its extensive northern border with Turkey, which could be a major trading partner with the government.

  The Syrian government’s isolation has also meant that its economy became ever more intertwined with that of neighbouring Lebanon, which is also facing its most severe economic crisis since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990 and has also seen a sharp decline in the value of its currency.

  In the meantime, the Syrian government has no real solutions to its economic woes. It has been offering up measures such as increasing the salaries of state employees, military personnel and pensioners while also cutting fuel subsidies. While the normalisation of relations between Arab states and Syria (foremost embodied in Syria’s return to the Arab League) has attracted considerable media attention, it is probably unrealistic to expect that this development will lead to a sudden turn-around in the Syrian government’s economic fortunes. The government is not going to be given handouts of billions of dollars in aid and foreign investment from Arab states or the international community at large in a short timeframe and for nothing in return from Damascus. In the meantime, any concept of normalisation with Turkey still has a long way to go, with a fundamental sticking point: that the Damascus-based government would like Turkey to agree to withdraw troops from Syrian territory, whereas Turkey appears to have no interest in doing so in the near- or even medium-term.

  Few within government-held areas would deny that the economic and livelihood situation is difficult. It is common to see people there venting their frustrations on Facebook about the quality of services provided, the rising prices of goods, perceptions of corruption, and so on. Yet opinions about the causes of these woes are varied. Some blame the Western economic sanctions on Syria, others see the economic problems as created from within. Some impugn government corruption but consider criticism of Assad himself to be a red line: they seem to think that he is doing all he can to try to help the country — while being surrounded by corrupt officials. Unfortunately, trying to determine what proportion of people subscribe to which views is virtually impossible: no reliable polling data exist, and it is doubtful anyone could conduct such surveys under the present circumstances.

  Yet qualitatively speaking, it can be said that in al-Suwayda’, criticism of Assad is less of a red line than in other areas that have remained under government control throughout the war. Besides the current deterioration of both the economy and living standards, there has long been resentment of a perceived marginalisation of the southern province in economic and developmental terms. In addition, there are grievances against conscription; conspiracy theories that the government colluded with the Islamic State to allow the group, in 2018, to attack the eastern countryside of the province while killing hundreds of Druze in the process; complaints about the spread of drugs in al-Suwayda’ and the use of the province as a gateway for smuggling them into Jordan. The government’s most recent economic decisions to raise salaries of state employees, military personnel and pensioners while cutting fuel subsidies provided a spark for protests in the province that are even larger than before.

  It is nonetheless important to be realistic about what these protests can achieve. The protestors remain committed for now to sustaining a civil disobedience movement that is peaceful. There appears to be no plan to launch an armed rebellion and make the province a separate rebellious enclave akin to the Turkish-backed enclaves in the northwest. Moreover, the Syrian government is adopting a non-confrontational stance towards the protests. The government seems to have issued general directives to its security forces in the province to lie low and avoid opening fire or taking any repressive measures unless they are attacked.

  In effect, these protests remain a peripheral rebellion in the grander scheme of things and are unlikely by themselves to bring down the government and lead to real change. There are really only two ways in which Assad can be brought down: either being militarily overthrown (not being contemplated by any international power) or if the elites propping up his rule decide that his presidency is no longer worth preserving. Despite the deterioration of Syria’s economy and living standards, it seems that those closest to Assad who could bring about his removal from within are either largely unaffected by the situation or possibly even benefitting from it.

  To stand some sort of chance of realising change, the al-Suwayda’ protests would have to transform into a large-scale movement of protests and unrest across government-held Syria, including in areas such as the capital Damascus and the coastal regions that have served as key constituencies of support for the government throughout the war.

  In turn, these protests raise the question about the efficacy of the ongoing Western sanctions on the Syrian government. A more optimistic portrayal would see the protests as bringing about the precise results intended by the sanctions: a deterioration in the economy and living standards, popular discontent with that deterioration, unrest, and thus some sort of pressure that would lead the government to agree to a peaceful political transition. Yet it is unlikely that these sanctions will accomplish those results. Instead, one finds an immiserated population that is unable to do much to better its own lot, with outbreaks of ultimately ineffectual protests, the continued outflow of people from Syria seeking to migrate to other countries in the region and Europe, and the persistence of the country’s division between its major zones of control.

  A greater focus on stemming the country’s collapse in terms of the humanitarian situation could certainly help — if “middlemen” were left out. The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) now faces a much larger shortfall in terms of funding requirements and actual funding for WFP’s operations in Syria, with the result that monthly assistance was cut to 2.5 million people in Syria in July. An important reason behind this reduction, according to the Syria Report, is a reduction in the American contribution to WFP’s global budget. Making up for that shortfall would at least provide some short-term relief.

  Sanctions – no doubt well-intended to prevent governments from brutalizing their own people even further and to encourage the leadership toward a democratic form of rule – seem simply not to work. First, it is harder for a people who are starving to rise up against a dictatorship; they are often too busy looking for food and trying to survive on a daily basis, besides having an understandable fear of reprisals. Countries such as Russia and Iran, as we well know, find ways around sanctions; or else the population starves, while the leaders go on living in indifferent comfort.

  Perhaps a more realistic approach might be as follows: rather than tying sanctions to vague hopes of political transition, sanctions could instead be linked to more specific concessions such as serious efforts to combat drug trafficking, the release of political prisoners, and so on.

  Otherwise, sanctions often deliver just a punitive message, which, although understandable for dictators such as Assad, does not really accomplish anything in terms of accountability, change or bettering the lot of Syrians like the protestors in al-Suwayda’.

  Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is an Arabic translator and editor at Castlereagh Associates (a Middle East-focused consultancy), a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum, and an associate of the Royal Schools of Music. Follow on Twitter and at his independent Substack newsletter.

  • Follow Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi on Twitter

  ZeroPointNow
  Thu, 09/21/2023 – 02:00

• Escobar: Russia, North Korea Stage 'Strategic Coup' Against Western Hegemony
  Escobar: Russia, North Korea Stage ‘Strategic Coup’ Against Western Hegemony

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  

  ​It will take ages to unpack the silos of information inbuilt in the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last week, coupled with the – armored – train-keeps-a-rollin’ conducted by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un straddling every nook and cranny of Primorsky Krai.

  ​The key themes all reflect the four main vectors of the New Great Game as it’s being played across the Global South: energy and energy resources; manufacturing and labor; market and trade rules; and logistics. But they go way beyond – exploring the subtle nuances of the current civilizational war.

  Key statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his address to delegates at the Eastern Economic Forum:

  ▪️ The global economy continues to change, primarily because the West is tearing down the system of financial relations;

  ▪️ Amid the destruction of the financial system by the West, the list of countries that are ready to cooperate not based on Western conventions, but for all humanity, is expanding;

  ▪️ The dynamics of investment in the Far East is three times faster than for all of Russia in its entirety;

  ▪️ Most regions in the Far Eastern Federal District still face energy shortages, and this is a problem; a large-scale update of this industry is needed;

  ▪️ It is necessary to expand logistics routes in the Far East, including the Northern Sea Route;

  ▪️ High-speed highways will pass through Siberia, the Far East to the Pacific Ocean;

  ▪️ Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a comprehensive action plan to be prepared by 1 March for the development of the air complex of the Far Eastern Federal District;

  ▪️ Constantly enhancing the conditions for doing business in the Far East is a must;

  ▪️ The global economic situation has invigorated our work in the Far East;

  ▪️ The restriction of payments in dollars has driven all countries to set their sights on payments in national currencies, while trust in the West is being eroded;

  ▪️ Today, logistics chains for the supply of goods have almost recovered, and by the same token, this is due to the exchange rate;

  ▪️ We must come to an agreement with the business community, so that they understand that it is safer to work in Russia.

  So Vladivostok presented…

  – A serious debate on the surge of anti-neocolonialism, presented for instance by the Myanmar delegation; geostrategically, Burma/Myanmar, as a privileged gateway to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, was always an object of Divide and Rule games, with the British Empire only caring about extracting natural resources. This is what “scientific colonialism” is all about.

  – A serious debate on the concept of the civilization-state, as already developed by Chinese and Russian scholars, applied to China, Russia, India and Iran.

  – The interconnection of transport/connectivity corridors. That includes the upgrading of the Trans-Siberian in the near future; a boost for the Trans-Baikal – the world’s busiest rail line – connecting the Urals to the Far East; a renewed drive for the Northern Sea Route (last month two Russian oil tankers sailed from Murmansk across the Arctic to China for the first time; ten days shorter than the Suez Canal route); and the coming of the Chennai-Vladivostok channel, which will be connected to the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC).
  ​
  – The common Eurasia payment system, discussed in detail in one of the key panels: Greater Eurasia: Drivers for the Formation of an Alternative International and Monetary and Financial System. The immense challenge to set up a new payment settlement currency against “toxic currencies” instrumentalized amid relentless Hybrid War. In another panel, the possibility of a timely BRICS and EAEU joint summit next year has been evoked.

  All Aboard The Kim Train

  The genesis of Kim Jong Un’s train journey to the Russian Far East – coinciding with the Forum, no less – is a masterful strategic coup that was in the works since 2014, at the time of the Maidan.

  Xi Jinping was still in the beginning of his first mandate; he had announced the New Silk Road exactly ten years ago, first in Astana and then in Jakarta. The DPRK was not supposed to be integrated into this vast pan-Eurasian project that would soon become China’s overarching foreign policy concept.

  The DPRK then was on a roll against the Hegemon, under Obama, and Beijing was no more than a worried spectator. Moscow, of course, was always focused on peace in the Korean Peninsula, especially because its geopolitical priorities in 2014 were Donbass and Syria/Iran. The last thing Moscow could afford was a war in Asia-Pacific.
  ​
  Putin’s strategy was to send Defense Minister Shoigu to Beijing and Islamabad to calm it all down. Pakistan at the time was helping Pyongyang to weaponize their nuclear arsenal. Simultaneously, Putin himself approached Kim, offering serious guarantees: we’ve got your back if ever there is an attack by the Hegemon supported by Seoul. Even better: Putin got Xi himself to double down on the guarantees.

  ​The categorical imperative was simple: as long as Pyongyang did not start any trouble, Moscow and Beijing would be by its side.

  A sort of calm before any possible storm then set in – even if Pyongyang continued to test their missiles. So over the years, Kim’s mindset changed; he became convinced that Russia and China were his allies.

  The DPRK’s geoeconomic integration into Eurasia was seriously discussed in previous, pre-Covid editions of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. That included the tantalizing possibility of a Trans-Korean Railway linking both North and South to the Far East, Siberia and the wider Eurasia.

  So Kim started to see the Big Eurasia Picture, and how Pyongyang could finally start to benefit geoeconomically from a closer association with the EAEU, SCO and BRI.

  This is how strategic diplomacy works: you invest during a decade, and then all the pieces fall into place when an armored train keeps-a-rollin’ across Primorsky Krai.

  From the perspective of a Russia-China-DPRK triangle, it’s no wonder the collective West has been reduced to the status of crying toddlers in a sandbox. The Hegemon’s puny US-Japan-South Korea axis to counter, simultaneously, China and the DPRK, is a joke compared to the DPRK’s brand-new role as a sort of Asia-Pacific Military District, adjacent to their immediate neighbor, the Russian Far East.

  There will be military integration, of course, in missile defense, radars, ports, airfields. But the key vector, along the way, will be geoeconomic integration. Sanctions from now on are meaningless.

  No one in 2014 was seeing this all play out, except for a very sharp analyst who coined the precious Double Helix concept to define the still evolving, at the time, Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.
  ​
  The Double Helix perfectly explains the full-spectrum geostrategic symbiosis between two civilization-states which happen to be former empires but since the middle of the previous decade willfully decided to accelerate their mutual drive to lead the Global Majority in the path towards multipolarity.

  ​The Road to Polycentricity

  All of the above finely coalesced in the last panel in Vladivostok – informally known even to the Japanese and Koreans as “the European capital of Asia”, in the heart of Asia-Pacific. The debate was on a “global alternative to Western dominance”. The West, incidentally, was absolutely invisible at the Forum.

  Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova summed it all up: the recent G20 and BRICS summits had set the stage for President Putin’s remarkable address to the plenary session in Vladivostok.
  ​
  Zakharova alluded to “fantastic strategic patience”. That applies to the whole “pivot to Asia” policy and boosting the development of the Far East, initiated in 2012, and now implying a full turn of the Russian economy towards Asia-Pacific geoeconomics. But at the same time, that also applies to integrating the DPRK into the geoeconomic Eurasian high-speed train.

  ​Zakharova stressed how Russia “never supported isolation”; always “advocated partnership” – which the Forum graphically displayed for dozens of Global South delegations. And now, under the conditions of a “dirty fight, unlawful and with no rules”, a serious stand-off, the Russian position remains easily recognizable for the Global Majority: “Not to accept dictatorship”.

  Andrey Denisov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, made a point to mention crack political analyst Sergey Karaganov as one of the key drivers of the concept of Greater Eurasia. More than “multipolarity”, Denisov argued, what is being built is “polycentricity”: a series of concentric circles, involving plenty of dialogue partners.

  Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl now heads a new think tank in St. Petersburg, G.O.R.K.I. As a European who ended up being ostracized by her own peers under the blatant toxicity of cancel culture, she stressed how freedom and rule of law have disappeared in Europe.

  Kneissl referred to the Battle of Actium as the key passage of power from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Western Mediterranean: “That’s when the dominance of the West started”, complete with all the mythology built around the Roman Empire which obsesses the Anglosphere to this day.

  With sanctions dementia and irrational Russophobia installed at the head of the EU and the European Commission, Kneissl stressed, the notion that “treaties must be preserved” disappeared while “the rule of law has been destroyed. This is the worst that could have happened to Europe”.
  ​
  Alexander Dugin, online, called for understanding “the depth of Western domination”, expressed via hyper-liberalism. And he proposed a key breakthrough: the Western modus operandi should become an object of research, in a sort of Gramscian attempt to define what distinguishes Western ideology, and thus act towards “deep decolonization”.

  ​In a sense this is what is being attempted by current actors in West Africa – Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger. That poses the question of who is a real Sovereign in a new world. The West, argues Dugin, is a Total Sovereign; Russia, as a nuclear power and prime military power defined as an existential threat by the Hegemon, is also a Sovereign.

  Then there’s China, India, Iran, Turkey. These are key poles in a dialogue of civilizations; actually what was proposed by former Iranian President Khatami way back in the late 1990s, and then dismissed by the Hegemon.
  ​
  Dugin remarked how China “has moved far away in building a civilizational state”. Russia, Iran, India are not far behind. These will be the essential actors steering the world towards polycentricity.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 23:40

• Subtropical Storm Might Swamp Northeast This Weekend 
  Subtropical Storm Might Swamp Northeast This Weekend 

  As Hurricane Nigel churns in the Atlantic Ocean, weather forecasters are closely watching the possibility of a subtropical depression or storm forming off the Southeast coast later this week and could swamp the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast by the weekend. 

  

  The National Hurricane Center expects a non-tropical area of low pressure to form east of the Florida coast by late week:

  “This system could acquire some subtropical characteristics this weekend while it moves generally northward. 

  “Regardless of subtropical development, this low could bring gusty winds, heavy rain, and high surf conditions to portions of the coastal Carolinas into the coastal Mid-Atlantic states this weekend.”

  Although it’s unclear if the system will be a named storm, it is anticipated to cause gusty winds, rough seas, dangerous rip currents, and coastal flooding. 

  

  Additionally, it might result in heavy rainfall from the Carolinas through the Northeast. 

  

  At the same time, Hurricane Nigel is in the central Atlantic, and a new tropical wave is emerging from western Africa. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 23:20

• A Nation Of Snitches: DHS Is Grooming Americans To Report On Each Other
  A Nation Of Snitches: DHS Is Grooming Americans To Report On Each Other

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”

  – Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler

  Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?

  Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?

  Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?

  Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?

  If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.

  

  Let that sink in a moment.

  If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

  I assure you I’m not making this stuff up.

  So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?

  The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

  According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

  As Hohmann explains, “Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.”

  Cue the dawning of the Snitch State.

  This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, hyper-vigilant, technologically-wired age.

  For more than two decades, the Department of Homeland Security has plastered its “See Something, Say Something” campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty. Colleges, universities and even football teams and sporting arenas have lined up for grants to participate in the program.

  The government has even designated September 25 as National “If You See Something, Say Something” Awareness Day.

  If you see something suspicious, says the DHS, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone.

  This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government’s way of indoctrinating “we the people” into the mindset that we’re an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens.

  This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

  Yet while community policing and federal programs such as “See Something, Say Something” are sold to the public as patriotic attempts to be on guard against those who would harm us, they are little more than totalitarian tactics dressed up and repackaged for a more modern audience as well-intentioned appeals to law and order and security.

  The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own policing.

  After all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?

  The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears. You hype them up on color-coded “Terror alerts,” keep them in the dark about the distinctions between actual threats and staged “training” drills so that all crises seem real, desensitize them to the sight of militarized police walking their streets, acclimatize them to being surveilled “for their own good,” and then indoctrinate them into thinking that they are the only ones who can save the nation from another 9/11.

  Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

  This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

  This is how you turn a people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.

  It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other and shadowy forces from outside the country, they’re incapable of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

  Community policing did not come about as a feel-good, empowering response to individuals trying to “take back” their communities from crime syndicates and drug lords.

  Rather, “Community-Oriented Policing” or COPS (short for Community Partnerships, Organizational Transformation, and Problem Solving) is a Department of Justice program designed to foster partnerships between police agencies and members of the community.

  To this end, the Justice Department identifies five distinct “partners” in the community policing scheme: law enforcement and other government agencies, community members and groups, nonprofits, churches and service providers, private businesses and the media.

  Together, these groups are supposed to “identify” community concerns, “engage” the community in achieving specific goals, serve as “powerful” partners with the government, and add their “considerable resources” to the government’s already massive arsenal of technology and intelligence. The mainstream media’s role, long recognized as being a mouthpiece for the government, is formally recognized as “publicizing” services from government or community agencies or new laws or codes that will be enforced, as well as shaping public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and fear of crime.

  Inevitably, this begs the question: if there’s nothing wrong with community engagement, if the police can’t be everywhere at once, if surveillance cameras do little to actually prevent crime, and if we need to “take back our communities” from the crime syndicates and drug lords, then what’s wrong with community policing and “See Something, Say Something”?

  What’s wrong is that these programs are not, in fact, making America any safer while turning us into a legalistic, intolerant, squealing, bystander nation.

  We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall, widening mass surveillance dragnet comprised of fusion centers, red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, terror watch lists, facial recognition, snitch tip lines, biometric scanners, pre-crime programs, DNA databases, data mining, precognitive technology and contact tracing apps, to name just a few.

  This is how the government keeps us under control and in its crosshairs.

  By the time you combine the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” with CP3 and community policing, which has gone global in the guise of the Strong Cities Network program, you’ve got a formula for enabling the government to not only flag distinct “anti-government” segments of the population but locking down the entire nation.

  Under the guise of fighting violent extremism “in all of its forms and manifestations” in cities and communities across the world, the Strong Cities Network program works with the UN and the federal government to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal.

  What this program is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale with the objective being to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police will identify, monitor and deter individuals who could be construed as potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats.

  The government’s war on extremists has been sold to Americans in much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was sold to Americans: as a means of combatting terrorists who seek to destroy America.

  However, as we now know, the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that has turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect.

  Similarly, the concern with the government’s ongoing anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

  Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

  This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

  For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.

  These reports, which use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably, indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist.

  Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which each successive presidential administration has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist.

  Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA and the far-reaching data crime fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

  Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that identifies and tracks you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers which are attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

  If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

  As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, unless we can put the brakes on this dramatic expansion and globalization of the government’s powers, we’re not going to recognize this country five, ten—even twenty—years from now.

  As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

  It’s already worse.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 23:00

• Despite 'Financial Tsunami' From Migrants, NYC Mulls Reparations, Removal Of George Washington Statues
  Despite ‘Financial Tsunami’ From Migrants, NYC Mulls Reparations, Removal Of George Washington Statues

  While NYC Mayor Eric Adams insists that the migrant crisis will “destroy New York City,” and hurt ‘low-income New Yorkers‘ because of the ‘financial tsunami,’ it seems the city is somehow able to rationalize launching a reparations task force, and removing statues of George Washington.

  

  These are among various measures the city council discussed on Tuesday during a public hearing on a measure to remove works of art on city property that “depict a person who owned enslaved persons or directly benefited economically from slavery, or who participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity,” Fox News reports.

  [We assume this includes all Islamic art, since Muhammad had 14 concubines?]

  The removals would include statues of America’s first president, George Washington, Dutch governor and New York settler Peter Stuyvesant, and Christopher Columbus.

  If the Public Design Commission (PDC) determined not to remove the work of art, then it would be required to include a plan to install an “explanatory plaque” next to the work of art. The proposal would also require PDC to consult with the Department of Education to install plaques on sidewalks or other public space adjacent to schools named after a person that fits the criteria. -Fox News

  The city’s agenda also included a proposal to create a task force which would “consider the impact of slavery and past injustices for African Americans in New York City and reparations for such injustices.”

  Other proposals include anti-racism training for human services contractors, as well as a plaque near the intersection of Wall and Pearl Streets to “mark the site of New York’s first slave market.”

  Never forget, right? Because the nation can’t heal until we all have constant reminders of a practice which ended almost 150 years ago.

  Heaven forbid we focus on tackling modern slavery around the world.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 22:40

• Hedge Funds Add China Stock Shorts Even As Growth Bottoms
  Hedge Funds Add China Stock Shorts Even As Growth Bottoms

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

  China’s economy has shown signs of bottoming. Yet that hasn’t prevented hedge funds from boosting their short positions in the stock market once again.

  Wednesday’s market highlight was, of course, the US Federal Reserve meeting, which turned out to be more hawkish than markets expected. Officials kept one more rate hike on the table for this year, while raising the median dot for 2024 to 5.1% from 4.6%. The shift in the “mode” – or the most-frequent dot on the plot — is even bigger, marking an increase of 75 bps.

  The projections revealed the Fed’s reaction function: upside growth risks will bring less easing next year, even with steady inflation expectations. In other words, the Fed will raise real yields in respond to stronger growth. That should put a bit more pressure on risky assets and support the dollar, particularly against lower yielding currencies, including the yuan.

  

  Back in China, recent data showed the economy has stabilized. Capital Economics’ China Activity Proxy Index, an alternative measure to official GDP, suggested annual growth accelerated to 6.1% in August, from 4.3% in the previous month.

  The main bright spot is the industrial sector, with a “strong upward trend” in freight traffic at the ports and across roads and railways, according to economists Sheana Yue and Julian Evans-Pritchard. While property sales have yet to bottom, a pickup in car sales also pointed to improvement in consumer sentiment.

  

  A Standard Chartered survey of small and medium enterprises also showed improvement, with the headline index edging up for a second consecutive month.

  Yet the markets are sending conflicting signals. The 10-year bond yield, arguably one of the best indicators of China’s growth momentum, is trading at the top of its range over the past three months. But the equity market remains under pressure, with turnover drifting toward the lowest in 2023.

  Coincidentally, hedge funds boosted their bearish bets on Chinese and Hong Kong stocks. Short interest has increased this month pretty much across sectors, according to data compiled by Morgan Stanley. Among the prominent names, the pickup in short interest in PDD, an e-commerce company, stood out. Outflows from active long-only managers also continued, strategists including Gilbert Wong wrote in a report.

  

  Apparently, fund managers didn’t get the “China Recovery” memo.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 22:20

• US Army's Hypersonic Missile Hit With Fielding Delay As China And Russia Lead Global Arms Race
  US Army’s Hypersonic Missile Hit With Fielding Delay As China And Russia Lead Global Arms Race

  Assistant Secretary of the US Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Doug Bush told Defense News in an interview on Monday that the service’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) aims to be fielded at the end of the year, contingent on a successful retest after missing a four-year-old target to deploy by the government’s fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. 

  Bush said the delay of the LRHW is due to the cancellation of a test of the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, adding the test planned for this month was going to be “pretty close to an operational test” instead of a developmental test. 

  “We still have a path with a follow-up test to get to a fielded capability by the end of calendar 2023,” Bush said. 

  He continued, “It is just what it is, I mean, a fact of life, we’re not going to field something until we have some confidence that if soldiers are asked to go use it in combat that it’s going to work and be safe for them to use.”

  Bush noted, “We’re still finding problems” and “it’s actually good we’re finding these” problems rather than later.

  One of those problems is a “flaw that triggered a ‘don’t shoot’ warning two seconds before launch,” he said. 

  

  Meanwhile, the Pentagon has poured billions of dollars into these superfast weapons but has struggled to keep pace with China and Russia.

  The spending is part of America’s struggle to re-establish dominance in key military technologies as it enters a new era of great-power competition. The US is straining to keep up with China in an array of military technologies, ranging from artificial intelligence to biotechnology.

  Moscow’s work on hypersonics is also a concern for the Pentagon, even if Russia’s weapons are mostly based on Cold War research and not as sophisticated as those China is now developing. Moscow has developed weapons that can threaten NATO forces in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted Avangard, a hypersonic weapon that can reach the US –The Wall Street Journal 

  WSJ noted:

  The Pentagon’s problems with developing hypersonics run up and down the decision chain, from failed flight tests and inadequate testing infrastructure to the lack of a clear, overarching plan for fielding the weapons. The situation is raising alarms among some former officials.

  Mounting delays for the US’ hypersonic weapons program is not a surprise, as we’ve outlined to readers over the years: “America Falls Behind Russia And China In Combat-Ready Hypersonic Missiles, Report Says.” 

  The inability to deploy hypersonic weapons and severe challenges surrounding the F-35 stealth jets are very concerning for taxpayers forced to subsidize a bloated military-industrial complex to the tune of hundreds of billions every year without having any say in the matter. 

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 22:00

• California Awarded $100 Million From Fed To Plant Trees To Combat Extreme Heat
  California Awarded $100 Million From Fed To Plant Trees To Combat Extreme Heat

  Authored by Carol Cassis via The Epoch Times,

  Officials announced last week that California will share in over $1 billion of federal funding allocated to all 50 states to help plant trees in an effort to cool rising temperatures and fight climate change.

  

  The state will receive around $103 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, which in turn will be dispersed to 43 recipients across Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and other areas for tree planting and maintenance, urban canopy improvements, and other green efforts.

  The funding, which stems from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act passed last year, is the act’s largest investment in urban and community green spaces, according to officials.

  Those from the Biden administration said such funding is aimed at fighting climate change due to global warming.

  “Unfortunately, the difficulties and challenges we’ve seen with weather are not going to go away,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

  “We’re going to continue to be challenged by Mother Nature, so we want to make sure that our communities are more resilient and more capable of withstanding what Mother Nature may have in store.”

  Supporters of the program say the funding is arriving just in time after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Sept. 14 that last month was the planet’s warmest August on record, and that the Northern Hemisphere experienced its hottest meteorological summer to date.

  Research has shown that areas with more pavement and fewer trees are hotter in temperature than greener spaces, and experts say that extreme heat kills more each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, and other weather dangers, according to data from the National Weather Service.

  

  A group of men sit underneath a tree for shade amid a heatwave in Calexico, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2022. (Ariana Drehsler/Getty Images)

  Such areas with less shady tree cover or “urban canopy,” such as parts of Los Angeles and Riverside counties have been shown to have elevated temperatures compared to areas within the same regions with more tree cover.

  The largest program grant awarded in California was $12 million to the San Francisco Public Works Bureau of Urban Forestry, which aims to plant and create “thousands of street trees in low-canopy communities,” according to its project description. San Diego will receive $10 million to plant and preserve trees and promote “tree equity,” wherein the city plans to increase trees planted in lower-income areas where fewer trees are currently present, among other goals.

  U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) voiced her support for the program in a recent statement, stating funding to plant trees in urban spaces in turn will “filter out pollution, reduce energy consumption, lower temperatures and provide more Californians access to green spaces in their communities.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 21:40

• Liquor In The Front, Poker In The Rear: Denver Homeless Camp Busted For Drinking, Prostitution
  Liquor In The Front, Poker In The Rear: Denver Homeless Camp Busted For Drinking, Prostitution

  A homeless camp in Denver was cleaned up after a viral video revealed that some enterprising individuals had set up a makeshift speakeasy with prostitution tents, according to police.

  

  The setup featured lounge chairs, umbrellas and astroturf was found in the city’s burgeoning homeless encampment at 23rd and Champa streets.

  

  The encampment resulted in “numerous complaints” to the police after pedestrians were forced into the street to pas it.

  “We’re hearing there was an open bar, sales of alcohol, things like that,” Denver Police Patrol Division Chief Aaron Sanchez told CBS Colorado, adding “We have officers looking into that.”

  Sanchez also said that there have been complaints that surrounding tents and couches at the streetside bar were being rented out for prostitution.

  

  Homeless aid group executive Meghan Shay of Step Denver says she noticed the apparent bar while driving to work, and said that an encampment featuring liquor would only exacerbate the city’s homeless problem – given that 80% of homeless have experienced lifetime alcohol and/or drug issues, according to Shay.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 21:20

• Javier's Milei's Populist Strategy In Argentina Is Working
  Javier’s Milei’s Populist Strategy In Argentina Is Working

  Authored by Philipp Bagus via The Mises Institute,

  The Austro-libertarian movement has the better ideas. They continue to be discussed, elaborated, and intellectually defended. But how can the right ideas be implemented? What good is it to be right if the reality is left-wing? In fact, most of the population, or at least public opinion, seems to be drifting further and further to the left, with cancel culture, climate hysteria, a sprawling welfare state and ever higher taxes and levies.

  

  The right ideas and theories are there, but they have not yet been put successful in practice. How can this be changed? Of course, ideas are important, they must also be disseminated, from below, from the grassroots up. It’s an arduous process. And there has been undeniable progress in recent years. Nevertheless, the left-wing zeitgeist is rolling over the freedoms of citizens almost unhindered; most shockingly during the Covid crisis. The left tries to paint anyone who stands in the zeitgeist´s way as an extremist or even a Nazi.

  Against this background, what can a successful strategy look like? Murray Rothbard addressed this question in an article in the Rothbard-Rockwell Report entitled Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement. His contribution is groundbreaking and forward-looking. He anticipates the successes of Donald Trump in the United States and, more recently, of Javier Milei in Argentina.

  Javier Milei is making a splash on all sides, because on August 13, 2023, he won the primaries for the presidency in Argentina. In the German media, he is described as ultra-right and ultra-libertarian. Recently, the Financial Times dealt with the self-confessed anarcho-capitalist in a column, in which the author insinuated that the libertarian Milei would follow the strategy of right-wing populism designed by Murray Rothbard in 1992. This gives rise to the question if that claim is true and what exactly is this right-wing populism?

  According to the paleo-libertarian Rothbard, the program of right-wing populism includes 8 main points:

  1. Radical tax cuts

  2. Radical reduction of the welfare state

  3. Abolition of privileges for “protected” minorities

  4. Crushing criminals

  5. Getting rid of bums

  6. Abolition of the Federal Reserve

  7. A program of America First (anti-globalist and isolationist)

  8. Defending traditional family values

  Indeed, Milei’s election manifesto is very much in line with Rothbard’s right-wing populism and paleo-libertarianism. Milei wants to radically reduce taxes. He never tires of calling taxes what they are, theft. He also wants to radically grind down the welfare state and likes to illustrate the reduction in government spending and his proposal of reducing Argentinian ministries from 18 to 8 with a chainsaw. His “Chainsaw Plan” is intended to radically trim the state.

  Milei repeatedly speaks of equality before the law as a fundamental liberal principle and wants to abolish privileges for minorities. As a result, he repeatedly clashes with radical feminists who defend legal privileges for women.

  The imprisonment of criminals is also on Milei’s agenda. Gun freedom is in his program so that victims can defend themselves against criminals. Those who refuse to work are no longer supported by the state in his Argentina.

  Milei also has the 6th of Rothbard’s points in his agenda: Milei wants to abolish the central bank of Argentina. Using right-wing populist rhetoric he aims to physically blow up the central bank. In doing so, he would wipe out the power of one of the most inflationary central banks, which willingly financed all Peronist and Kirchnerist spending programs. He wants to dollarize the country and open it up to currency competition.

  Milei also puts his own country first: Argentina first. Right-wing populism opposes the globalist agenda. It cuts development aid, climate programs and military adventures. Milei likes to point out that Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to classical liberal policies and was destroyed by socialism in the 20th century. In 35 years, Milei promises, Argentina can be a superpower again. The prerequisite for this to happen is a return to libertarianism.

  Finally, Milei also defends traditional family values and opposes the state takeover of family responsibilities. The vehement opponent of abortion has defended the right to life several times in debates with radical feminists.

  Milei used to be chief economist at various institutions and a professor of economics. He is a follower of the Austrian School of Economics. One of his dogs is named Murray. He contributor a chapter two-volume Festschrift in honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto edited by David Howden and myself. A couple of years ago he was guest via zoom in my seminar in our Master’s degree in Austrian Economics that we offer in Madrid, and spoke about his strategy.

  In short, Milei is one of us. And he can win the election. He can become president of Argentina. An Austrian. An anarcho-capitalist. With an openly radical libertarian election program. In a country that has paid homage to socialism for decades. Amazing.

  Milei has been very present in the public debate in Argentina for years. He gained fame as a polarizing and fiercely arguing talk show guest. Later, he decided to create his own party to lead the culture war against socialism and statism more effectively and to bring the right ideas to more people.

  His rhetorical strategy in debates is vociferous, belligerent, and is sometimes perceived as offensive (if the truth can be offensive at all). He does not allow himself to be intimidated or belittled by left-wing opinion-makers. In a debate, he simply shouts louder than the leftists, whom he calls “Zurdos”, and interrupts them to tell them to their faces that they are saying an absolute stupidity and have no idea what they are talking about. You should read Hayek, Mises and Rothbard first, Milei recommends to them. He also calls leftists and politicians parasites and thieves, in a debate. For taxes are theft. 

  In keeping with Rothbard’s strategy of right-wing populism, he clearly names the profiteers of the state apparatus. He rails again and again against the caste of politicians and bureaucrats. He calls them parasites that live at the expense of the hard-working and decent citizens. Politicians are completely useless and could not live without the productive Argentinians. Politics is not the solution, but the problem. And politicians form part of the problem. In this way, Milei wins over those decent Argentinians who suffer most from the yoke of the state. Equally clear are his remarks on the concept of social justice. So-called social justice is a monstrous injustice because it means unequal treatment of people before the law. It is a fig leaf for envy and resentment.

  Milei’s emotional and polemical nature resonates with many, especially among young people. After winning the primaries in mid-August, he has legitimate hopes for the Argentine presidency.

  Milei’s successes have become a topic of everyday conversation, especially in the Hispanic world. One speaks of Milei with astonishment and appreciation. Acquaintances and friends send short videos of his rhetorical gems. Libertarian ideas are back in vogue. People are venturing forward with libertarian opinions, everywhere and unexpectedly. The window of public and permissible opinions is shifting in the direction of freedom. Thanks to Milei.

  Regardless of whether the charismatic Milei ultimately wins the election, his campaign has sparked a young and powerful libertarian movement. His triumph in the primaries may be more significant than the Ron Paul Revolution of 2008 and 2012. The incredible fact is that he is successful. With a right-wing populism that Rothbard recommended, in a run-down country, with his charismatic personality, with aggressive rhetoric. Nothing is impossible. Even a libertarian can win a democratic election. It’s the strategy that counts. ¡Vamos Javier! ¡Viva la libertad, carajo!

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 21:00

• NATO Fractures: In U-Turn, Poland Announces It Will No Longer Arm Ukraine
  NATO Fractures: In U-Turn, Poland Announces It Will No Longer Arm Ukraine

  The dam is breaking on unified Western support for Ukraine, and the timing couldn’t be worse for Zelensky, given tomorrow he’s expected to meet with President Biden at the White House. On Wednesday evening there is monumental news out of Poland which could potentially change the entire course of the war.

  “Poland will no longer arm Ukraine to focus on its own defense,” Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced just hours after Warsaw summoned Ukraine’s ambassador related to a fresh war of words and spat over blocked grain, according to the AFP. Warsaw has throughout more than a year-and-a-half of the Ukraine-Russia war been Kiev’s staunchest and most outspoken supporter.

  Will this massive and hugely significant about-face mark the beginning of the end? Are peace negotiations and ceding of territory in the Donbas inevitable at this point? 

  

  Within the last 48 hours relations between Poland and Ukraine quickly spiraled to their lowest point since the Russian invasion, and it is directly related to Warsaw leading a handful of EU countries to extend a grain export ban on Ukraine, amid continuing anger and outrage from Polish farmers who are suffering due to their country being flooded with cheap Ukrainian wheat.

  Crucially, Poland will hold parliamentary elections on Oct.15. The prior atmosphere of enthusiastic pro-Kiev rhetoric has drastically changed, now with comparisons likening Ukraine to a “drowning man”. As The Associated Press explains:

  Polish leaders have compared Ukraine to a drowning person hurting his helper and threatened to expand a ban on food products from the war-torn country. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that EU allies that are prohibiting imports of his nation’s grain are helping Russia.

  Now, Polish officials, who are trying to win parliamentary elections next month with help from farmers’ votes, are expressing dismay over some of Ukraine’s latest moves, including a World Trade Organization complaint over bans on Ukrainian grain from Poland and two other EU countries.

  Poland’s elections are Oct. 15… https://t.co/DRwG37xGut

  — Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) September 20, 2023

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  In surprisingly blunt and terse words given to reporters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday: “Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to anything available.”

  He then said, “A drowning person is extremely dangerous, capable of pulling you down to the depths … simply drown the rescuer.” Given Ukraine’s battlefield losses and as it’s currently bogged down in a failing counteroffensive, the words no doubt stung. But as The Hill notes further of the domestic political context in Poland:

  Public sentiment around the issue, however, has started to deteriorate, putting the ruling party in a difficult position ahead of a close October election. The far-right Confederation party is hoping to capitalize on the waning support in the country. 

  Reuters reported that a recent poll showed support for Ukrainian refugees fell from 91 percent when the war started to just 69 percent recently. The same survey showed a quarter of Poles are against supporting refugees, compared to 4 percent in early 2022.

  In response to the grain ban, Zelensky during his UN speech had condemned the “alarming” behavior of allies regarding the import ban, but without naming Poland specifically. Further, Kiev has announced plans to sue Warsaw in the World Trade Organization while also holding out the possibility of its own embargo on Polish foodstuffs, including onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and apples. Again, all of this amounts to a full-blown diplomatic crisis for Zelensky which couldn’t come at a worse time, as he’s in D.C.

  To review, these are some of the major developments and setbacks in only the last few days:

  • Zelensky fired at least 6 top-ranking defense officials over corruption, after recently firing longtime Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov amid a graft probe.
  • American transgender spokesperson for Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces Sarah Ashton-Cirillo was suspended indefinitely by the Ukrainian military in an embarrassing debacle.
  • The New York Times ran an article which said a missile fired by Ukraine – not Russia – struck a busy civilian market …marking an unexpected establishment media about-face.
  • Biden has yet to pledge any new weapons for Ukraine as Zelensky is in the US, and there are reports that ATACMS long-range missiles will not be approved.

  And most importantly, there’s this per Politico…

  New: Senators are bracing to give Zelenskyy some tough news tomorrow

  That in the face of GOP opposition to aid — and a guv shutdown — they might be sending him home empty handed

  W/ @burgessev https://t.co/tBolo3TcMX

  — Ursula Perano (@UrsulaPerano) September 20, 2023

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  According to the fresh Wednesday report:

  Delivering any new aid to help defend against Russia, even later this year, is looking tougher than ever.

  The obstacles are piling up: House Republicans are skeptical of any new money at all. What’s more, their dysfunction threatens to push the government into a shutdown — a move that certainly gets Zelenskyy no closer to getting the billions requested by the Biden administration. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are divided over whether to continue providing humanitarian aid, arguing the rest of Europe needs to step up.

  As if fully aware that the tap at the expense of the US taxpayer may run dry, Zelensky has been meeting in New York with a who’s who of leading banks, hedge funds, and private investors. Fox Business, which broke the story, says the ongoing meetings are part of broader efforts to secure investment for rebuilding Ukraine and fixing destroyed infrastructure:  

  The meeting was put together by JPMorgan, the big bank serving as Zelenskyy’s financial adviser to attract private capital for a new investment fund to rebuild Ukraine’s infrastructure destroyed in its war with Russia, according to people with knowledge of the matter. 

  Earlier in the afternoon, Zelenskyy met privately with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, the sources say. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager and has also been advising Zelenskyy on how to attract U.S. private sector money for the rebuilding effort.

  The list of invitees, according to sources, includes William Ackman, the head of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital; Ken Griffin of the Citadel investment empire; Jonathan Gray, president and chief operating officer of private equity powerhouse Blackstone; Philipp Hildebrand, a vice chairman at BlackRock; Michael Bloomberg, former New York City mayor and founder of Bloomberg LP; and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and now head of the Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic organization.

  Ken Griffin and Bill Ackman meeting with Zelensky to ensure they get first dibs on the juiciest deals in the rebuilding of #Ukraine post war.

  — CEO Technician (@CEOTechnician) September 20, 2023

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  Tomorrow’s White House visit, and Zelensky’s planned meeting with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will surely be interesting.

  Meanwhile, for a foretaste and indicator of how much the tide is turning – and the very different, subdued optics – especially compared to Zelensky’s last trip to Washington (in Dec. 2022) when he was received with rockstar status, there’s this…

  Speaker Kevin McCarthy, facing a right-wing rebellion in his ranks and mounting GOP resistance to aiding Ukraine, has declined to convene a forum for President Volodymyr Zelensky to address members of the House on Thursday during a visit to Capitol Hill. https://t.co/mDEH1yGpJS

  — The New York Times (@nytimes) September 20, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 21:00

• Ukraine's Transgender Military Spox Fired For 'Unapproved' Statements
  Ukraine’s Transgender Military Spox Fired For ‘Unapproved’ Statements

  Update(1336ET): The controversial American transgender spokesperson for Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born Michael Cirillo) has been suspended indefinitely by the Ukrainian military, also pending an investigation. According to an official Ukrainian military statement, Ashton-Cirillo’s recent statements regarding “hunting down” dissidents and “propagandists” were not approved…

  2/3 The statements of JSgt Ashton-Cirillo in recent days were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the AFU. When conducting military operations against the aggressor, the defense forces of Ukraine strictly observe the norms of international humanitarian law.

  — Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces (@TDF_UA) September 20, 2023

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  3/3 The command of the TDF will conduct an official investigation into the circumstances of these statements. Appropriate decisions would be taken.
  Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo will be suspended immediately pending the investigation.

  — Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces (@TDF_UA) September 20, 2023

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  And it’s additionally been confirmed by the country’s Defense Ministry: 

  Junior Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has been suspended from the duties of the spokesperson of the @TDF_UA while an investigation is underway. https://t.co/4nN9z2YiW8

  — Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 20, 2023

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  As we detailed below, Ashton-Cirillo had within the last days been in a verbal fight with influential Republican Senator J.D. Vance.

  Given the “hunting down” video had been online for well over a week, and Kiev did nothing, the timing of the suspension by Ukraine’s military seems more out of concern for Zelensky’s lobbying efforts in D.C. than anything else.

  Zelensky is about to visit the White House, and will also seek to lobby GOP holdouts and fence-sitters in Congress to approve billions more in defense aid for Ukraine. This is likely the real reason for Ashton-Cirillo being dismissed: Zelensky didn’t want the controversy hanging over his head in Washington, especially after Sen. Vance wrote a letter demanding answers to top White House defense and intelligence officials. 

  Ukraine’s military has long been employing a disturbed American, @SarahAshtonLV, as its English spokesperson.

  We covered last week their insane, deranged threats to hunt down and punish all “Russian propagandists,” meaning anyone (including Americans) critical of Ukraine: pic.twitter.com/7TaXdOoejr

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 20, 2023

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  Also, was only this week that the following bizarre and embarrassing scene played out in Las Vegas City Hall…

  You can’t make this up!

  Transgender military spokesman for Ukraine who now goes by Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, was just honored by Las Vegas city hall. He was also given certificates of recognition by US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Rep. Dina Titus, and former Nevada Gov Steve… pic.twitter.com/9NxKzpBBsF

  — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 19, 2023

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  * * *

  The American man masquerading as a “female” spokesperson for the Ukrainian military has decided to pick a fight with a sitting American senator. 

  Senator JD Vance of Ohio has made formal inquiry as to whether Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born Michael John Cirillo) is being funded by the US government or has ties to the US intelligence community. 

  To everyone asking: Yes, this is real.

  This is the English language spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces.

  This same person posted a video last week threatening violence against anyone who engaged in speech the Ukrainians deemed bad propaganda. Disgusting. https://t.co/X9Y3hHZoVe

  — J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) September 18, 2023

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  Sen. Vance has sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, toward that end of seeking information. 

  Last week a viral video by Ashton-Cirillo saw him declare on behalf of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine that Russia’s “propagandists” will be “hunted down” around the world.

  Revealingly, this was said just as an American journalist, Gonzalo Lira, was due in Ukrainian court on vague charges of “justifying Russia’s aggression.” That video sparked frenzy and anger online, given it seemed an open threat to journalists or anyone that doesn’t toe a pro-Ukrainian line on any given issue related to the war.

  Fireworks ensued as Sen. Vance and Ashton-Cirillo went back and forth…

  Since I’ve got your attention, are you/Ukraine still planning to kill people who engage in speech you don’t like? And are there any American citizens on the kill list? https://t.co/x2H8nrChXH

  — J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) September 18, 2023

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  Vance’s letter to top US defense and intelligence officials stated in part:

  “In recent days, a video has circulated of an individual who claims to be an English-speaking spokesperson for the Ukrainian military. In the video, this individual, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, looks directly into the camera and threatens physical violence to anyone who circulates ‘Russian propaganda’.”

  And more from the letter:

  “A number of reports purport to offer additional information, much of it unconfirmed, regarding Ashton-Cirillo. I’ve seen claims this individual is an American, a former intelligence operative in the United States, and an employee of the Ukrainian government. Others have argued Ashton-Cirillo is pulling an elaborate prank. If so, kudos for the delivery of high quality humor,” Vance continued in an apparent reference to Ashton-Cirillo’s reported direct lobbying of the U.S. Congress for military aid to Ukraine last December.

  These are the questions posed by the Ohio freshman Senator in the letter:

  1. Is this individual employed by the Ukrainian military, and do we have reason to believe the are compensated using American resources?
  2. Is this individual an American citizen? Did they ever serve, in any capacity, American intelligence services?
  3. Do we have reason to believe Ukrainian forces or intelligence services are planning to commit acts of violence against those who engage in ‘Russian propaganda’?

  

  According to the independent news source, The Dossier, Ashton-Cirillo issued some incriminating fresh statements on Monday, and then quickly backtracked, perhaps sensing he could be in hot water or that the whole episode might embarrass Kiev:

  Responding to an inquiry form Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo — born Michael John Cirillo — declared that he answers to three people: “my Ukrainian commanders, the Ukrainian people, and the American taxpayer.”

  An hour later, Cirillo posted a video backtracking on the previous statement, insisting that the U.S. government is not funding his Ukrainian military media operation overseas.

  This is the bizarre response to Vance’s inquiries from the transgender YouTube spokesperson…

  After being swamped with Russian lies, a sitting US Senator questioned my role in Ukraine.

  Below is my response.

  First though, I asked for the expedited delivery of ATACMS from the United States.

  Watch below:

  pic.twitter.com/L6KuHgfyC5

  — Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (Ukrainian TDF Media) (@SarahAshtonLV) September 18, 2023

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

  Vance later gave some apt and appropriate comments to Breitbart News, saying: “If the Ukrainians want to hire weirdos to threaten Americans and others for speaking their mind, I guess that’s their right. They shouldn’t use our tax dollars to do it.”

  He continued: “And we shouldn’t pretend this is a war for freedom when our supposed ally is threatening violence to anyone who opposes the war.”

  * * *

  Meanwhile, here’s how we know that the Ukrainian government will continue down this weird trajectory of giving platforms to transgender journalists in an effort to virtue-signal to Western-Left progressives…

  Clinton Global Initiative announces new proposal to help rebuild Ukraine, provide humanitarian support https://t.co/vkg0gf4tIz

  — Fox News (@FoxNews) September 19, 2023

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 20:59

• Biden HHS Hits Wuhan Lab With 10-Year Funding Ban Amid Mounting Evidence Of Leak
  Biden HHS Hits Wuhan Lab With 10-Year Funding Ban Amid Mounting Evidence Of Leak

  The Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services announced on Wednesday that it has officially banned the Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving US funding for a decade, based on mounting evidence that it was ground zero for the Covid-19 pandemic.

  

  On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter to WIV Director Genera, Dr. Yanyi Wang, to inform her that the lab – which Dr. Anthony Fauci offshored risky gain-of-function research to, would no longer be funded by US grants until July 16, 2033, the NY Post reports.

  The letter notes that attempts had been made to contact the lab via fax, email and mail about HHS’s decision to suspend funding in July, but no WIV officials had contested the designation or even responded to the agency.

  In that earlier missive, the NIH said it found the Wuhan Institute of Virology had “conducted an experiment yielding a level of viral activity which was greater than permitted under the terms of the grant,” which was for the study of bat coronaviruses.

  Other requests for the Chinese research institution’s lab findings had also been ignored after NIH made requests for them on Nov. 5, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2022. -NY Post

  “WIV has not acknowledged the violations, has not cooperated with the Government to address the violations, has not accepted responsibility for the violations, and, therefore, presumably has taken no action to eliminate the risk to the Government in conducting business transactions with WIV presently or into the future,” the letter reads.

  

  On Wednesday, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus released a redacted copy of the letter, calling it an “obvious step in the right direction.”

  “This is especially timely as mounting evidence and intelligence continue to suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory failure in Wuhan,” said Wenstrup, a Republican from Ohio. “Rewarding the likely source of a global pandemic with American resources will only lead to more future health risks.”

  “Further, the Select Subcommittee recently revealed that prominent public health authorities — including Dr. Anthony Fauci — knew about the risky laboratory conditions in Wuhan prior to the spread of COVID-19 worldwide,” he added.

  

  “Covering up for the failures of a Chinese lab, hiding critical evidence from the American people, and facilitating the public promotion of a false, alternative narrative is extremely concerning and deserves thorough investigation.”

  Recall that Fauci – who offshored banned gain-of-function research to make bat coronaviruses more transmissible to humans – was accused by Congressional investigators of having ‘prompted‘ the fabrication of a paper by a cadre of scientists aimed at disproving the Covid-19 lab-leak theory.

  As the Post further notes, US taxpayers paid more than $2.1 million in grant funding via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) between 2014 and 2021. Over $1.4 million of this went to WIV via EcoHealth Alliance.

  US intelligence agencies have issued conflicting reports about the origins of the COVID pandemic, with the FBI being the first to declare a lab leak the most likely explanation for the pandemic.

  The Energy Department has also concluded that SARS-CoV-2 most likely leaked from a Chinese lab. The CIA has been unable to come to a determination about pandemic origins. -NY Post

  Meanwhile, a senior CIA whistleblower recently told Congress that six analysts who originally concluded a lab-leak was the most likely origin of the pandemic were “given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.”

  Hey, remember when the Facebook fact checker who worked at the Wuhan lab decreed that a lab-leak was impossible? Good times.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 20:40

• Viral RNA Can Persist For 2 Years After COVID-19: Preprint Study
  Viral RNA Can Persist For 2 Years After COVID-19: Preprint Study

  Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A new study may explain why some people who get COVID-19 never return to normal and instead experience new medical conditions like cardiovascular disease, clotting dysfunction, activation of latent viruses, diabetes mellitus, or what’s known as “long COVID” after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

  

  Roughly 15 percent of people who get COVID-19 experience long COVID, a term used to define the long-term physical, cognitive, and mental health impairments that persist from weeks to months after a person recovers from COVID-19.

  In a recent preprint study published on medRxiv, researchers conducted the first positron emission tomography (PET) imaging study of T cell activation in individuals who previously recovered from COVID-19 and found that SARS-CoV-2 infection may result in persistent T cell activation in a variety of body tissues for years following initial symptoms. Even in clinically mild cases of COVID-19, this phenomenon could explain the systemic changes observed in the immune system and in those with long COVID symptoms.

  To carry out the study, researchers conducted whole-body PET scans of 24 participants who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and recovered from acute infection at time points ranging from 27 to 910 days following COVID-19 symptom onset.

  A PET scan is an imaging test that uses a radioactive drug called a tracer to assess the metabolic or biochemical function of tissues and organs and can reveal both normal and abnormal metabolic activity. The tracer is usually injected into the hand or vein in the arm and collects in areas of the body with higher levels of metabolic or biochemical activity, which can reveal the location of the disease.

  Using a novel radiopharmaceutical agent that detects specific molecules associated with a type of white blood cell called T lymphocytes, researchers found uptake of the tracer was significantly higher in post-acute COVID-19 participants compared to pre-pandemic controls in the brain stem, spinal cord, bone marrow, nasopharyngeal and hilar lymphoid tissue, cardiopulmonary tissues, and gut wall. Among males and females, male participants tended to have higher uptake in the pharyngeal tonsils, rectal wall, and hilar lymphoid tissue compared to female participants.

  Researchers specifically identified cellular SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the gut tissue of all participants with long COVID symptoms who underwent biopsy—in the absence of reinfection—ranging from 158 to 676 days following initial COVID-19 illness, suggesting that tissue viral persistence could be associated with long-term immunological concerns. Although the uptake of the tracer in some tissues appeared to decline with time, the levels still remained elevated compared to the control group of healthy pre-pandemic volunteers.

  “These data significantly extend prior observations of a durable and dysfunctional cellular immune response to SARS-CoV-2 and suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection could result in a new immunologic steady state in the years following COVID-19,” the researchers wrote.

  To determine the association between T cell activation and long COVID symptoms, researchers compared post-acute COVID-19 participants with and without long COVID symptoms at the time of PET imaging. Those with long COVID symptoms reported a median of 5.5 symptoms at the time of imaging. Findings showed a “modestly higher uptake” of the agent in the spinal cord, hilar lymph nodes, and colon/rectal wall in those with long COVID symptoms.

  In participants with long COVID who reported five or more symptoms at the time of imaging, researchers observed higher levels of inflammatory markers, “including proteins involved in immune responses, chemokine signaling, inflammation responses, and nervous system development.” Compared to both pre-pandemic controls and those participants who had COVID-19 and completely recovered, people with long COVID showed higher T cell activation in the spinal cord and gut wall.

  Although the researchers attribute their findings to SARS-CoV-2 infection, all but one participant had received at least one COVID-19 vaccination prior to PET imaging. To minimize the impact of vaccination on T cell activation, PET imaging was performed more than 60 days from any vaccine dose except in one participant who received a booster vaccine dose six days prior to imaging. Except for that one participant, people who had received a COVID-19 vaccine within four weeks of imaging were excluded. Researchers also grouped participants by receipt of a COVID-19 dose greater than or less than 180 days prior to PET imaging—although vaccinated participants would have undoubtedly been included in both groups.

  The researchers said their study had several other limitations, including small sample size, limited correlative studies, evolving variants, rapid and inconsistent rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which required them to shift their imaging protocols, using pre-pandemic individuals as controls, and the extreme difficulty of finding people who had never been infected with SARS-CoV-2.

  “In summary, our results provide provocative evidence of long-term immune system activation in several specific tissues following SARS-CoV-2 infection, including in those experiencing Long COVID symptoms,” the researchers concluded. “We identified that SARS-CoV-2 persistence is one potential driver of this ongoing activated immune state, and we show that SARS-CoV-2 RNA may persist in gut tissue for nearly 2 years after the initial infection.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 20:20

• AI, Critical-Thinking, & The Future Of Freedom
  AI, Critical-Thinking, & The Future Of Freedom

  Authored by Emile Phaneuf III via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  University professors around the world are struggling to adapt to a student body that is, for the first time in history, able to generate essays and conduct other sophisticated tasks in just a few seconds by ordering an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot such as ChatGPT to roll up its digital sleeves and do the dirty work.

  

  Since ChatGPT’s launch, I took the general viewpoint that higher education would eventually have to come around to allowing students to use such technologies as just another tool for research and writing, just as calculators are usually considered fair game in math classes.

  I was then delighted to stumble upon the AI chatbot policy of Stephen Hicks, Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University in Illinois. His policy reads as follows:

  I encourage you to use ChatGPT.

  It is a powerful new research tool. Anything that enables you to learn faster and become more skillful is to be embraced.

  At the same time, a tool is not a substitute for your own self-development. As a student, your goal is to acquire as much new knowledge as you can and to become skillful with every useful learning tool available. The goal is for you to become knowledgeable and wise, and for you to become excellent at research and judgment.

  Metaphorically: Become a lean, mean learning machine. And make that a personal goal and a matter of honor.

  If you are taking this course for credit, it is your responsibility to demonstrate that the work you submit is your own. There are many ways to do that, and you and I can consult individually to determine which way is best for you.

  Stephen R. C. Hicks
  Professor of Philosophy

  As you see, while Hicks recognizes the importance of the students’ own individual self-development, he still embraces an important disruptive technology that can push beyond the more laborious traditional methods of researching and writing.

  This reminds me of my 7th grade math teacher. She was an elderly lady who was often capable of working out long division math problems in her head, and she recounted stories of people she knew in her youth who were even more capable. (We, her students, worked it out on paper). Given that she grew up before the launch of the pocket calculator, her more advanced quantitative skills revealed the extent to which she was a product of her time. Similarly, as a student during middle school, I was (I believe) better at spelling than I am now, but then software (word processors) disrupted that with spell check. “Spelling Bees” seemed to disappear as I got older. While I am more reliant on spell check than I was in my younger years, it seems that this has freed up both cognitive space and time for me to be able to focus on more advanced (and less mundane) tasks. This phenomenon was articulated beautifully by Alfred North Whitehead:

  It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

  It seems to me that perhaps, for the first time ever, it could be critical thinking itself that is disrupted (at least at scale; a calculator does the same at a much smaller scale).

  A new problem for freedom?

  If I am correct that AI will disrupt critical thinking itself, then it appears that we have a new potential threat to a free society. Consider, for a moment, the motto of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala:

  The education and spreading of ethical, judicial, and economic principles of a society of free and responsible persons

  Being free and responsible comes with an implied necessity for a citizenry capable of thinking for itself. But if I am correct that AI is on its way to disrupt critical thinking itself, then new generations of people may never learn critical thinking in the first place. If a free society requires a citizenry of free and independent thinkers, the future of freedom is confronted with a new problem. 

  Or, perhaps that worry is overly pessimistic. The way I see it, a combination of at least a couple of things is likely to happen. Upon first glance, they may seem at odds, but we could see that in some way one is true, while in another way, the other is simultaneously true. 

  1. Critical thinking is diminished because of an overreliance on AI. AI here, over the long-term, serves as a crutch. (This is the main concern I raise in this article). 

  2. Critical thinking reaches new heights, aided by AI.

  What remains of raw, mere-human critical thinking (without aid of AI) will likely need to be channeled into a certain healthy distrust for the biases of the AI bots and their developers, and into understanding the incentives under which the developers (and those who financially support them) operate.

  Whatever the outcome, let’s hope that AI (on the whole) works to serve as a tool for the betterment of the human condition, allowing for “a society of free and responsible persons.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 19:40

• Elon Musk Says "Strange Almost No Legacy Media Coverage" On Worsening Southern Border Crisis 
  Elon Musk Says “Strange Almost No Legacy Media Coverage” On Worsening Southern Border Crisis 

  Fox News reporter Bill Melugin posted on X, “It’s a total free for all in Eagle Pass right now.” 

  Thousands of illegal immigrants continue flooding the southern US border while the Biden administration pretends everything is fine. 

  Melugin and his team are at Eagle Pass, Texas, where they have captured alarming footage that shows a massive flow of illegals crossing into the US. 

  

  Melugin said, “Mass illegal crossing taking place for over an hour and a half. Almost 2 years to the day we saw 15,000+ Haitians under the bridge in Del Rio, we now have thousands of predominantly Venezuelans gathering under Eagle Pass bridge.” 

  It’s a total free for all in Eagle Pass right now. Mass illegal crossing taking place for over an hour and a half. Almost 2 years to the day we saw 15,000+ Haitians under the bridge in Del Rio, we now have thousands of predominantly Venezuelans gathering under Eagle Pass bridge. pic.twitter.com/VkfUQnexGZ

  — Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) September 20, 2023

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

  Melugin said Texas has declared an emergency in Eagle Pass. 

  BREAKING: An emergency declaration has been issued in Eagle Pass, Texas after a surge of migrants invaded the southern border.

  The declaration was made by Eagle Pass mayor Rolando Salinas after over a thousand migrants crossed the border.

  Most of the migrants are coming from… pic.twitter.com/txkpmzl2FI

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 20, 2023

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

  Elon Musk commented on Melugin’s X post: “Strange that there is almost no legacy media coverage of this.” 

  Musk continued, “About 2 million people – from every country on Earth – are entering through the US southern border every year. The number is rising rapidly, yet no preventive action is taken by the current administration.” 

  Musk is correct that corporate media aligned with the Democrats are not covering the continuing border crisis. And why would they? It’s another failure of this administration, even after they put forth supposedly new ‘border enforcement actions’ earlier this year.  

  Earlier this week, Fox News journalist Griff Jenkins shared another shocking video of a train of illegals heading north in Mexico to the US border. 

  **NEW VIDEO**
  FOX News sources capture a FerroMex train bursting with migrants out of Zacatecas heading to our southern border right now… cheering and clearly not heeding the message: “do not come”@FoxNews pic.twitter.com/YflMwXrWqu

  — Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) September 17, 2023

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

  Under the Biden administration, disastrous open border policies have led to nearly 6 million illegal crossings. The influx of migrants has also supercharged the drug crisis nationwide, as fentanyl is now on every street corner. And things are quickly deteriorating in major metro areas, such as New York City, which have been swamped with migrants that risk sparking a financial crisis. 

  Radicals in the White House are going against the will of the people with open border policies. Why is that?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 19:20

• We Will Get Nuclear Weapon If Iran Does, Saudi Crown Prince Tells Fox
  We Will Get Nuclear Weapon If Iran Does, Saudi Crown Prince Tells Fox

  Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) said in an exclusive Fox News interview published Wednesday that Saudi Arabia will obtain a nuclear weapon if its number one regional rival does so first.

  “If they get one, we have to get one,” MbS told Fox’s ‘Special Report’ anchor Bret Baier when asked what the kingdom would do if Iran builds a nuclear weapon.

  BREAKING: If Iran gets nuclear weapon, we will get it too, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman says in an interview with Fox News pic.twitter.com/rIpAuBSOWO

  — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) September 20, 2023

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

  It marks Riyadh’s clearest warning to date related to Iran’s alleged nuclear aspirations (though Tehran has long maintained its nuclear program is solely for peaceful nuclear energy purposes). 

  The blunt statements regarding Saudi Arabia’s intentions to go nuclear if the Islamic Republic does were set against a broader discussion about potentially achieving full peace and diplomatic relations with Israel on the basis of the Abraham Accords. 

  “Every day we get closer,” the crown prince said when asked about the recent expanding ties with Israel, which has lately included opening up airspace to Israeli flights for the first time, and exchanging official delegations.

  Interestingly, Israel itself is already the region’s sole nuclear-armed power, but has never confirmed this openly. MbS’ comments on going nuclear reflect the general thinking that Tehran achieving a nuke would set off a broader nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

  

  Despite the tough words of warning from the crown prince, China this summer brokered a detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which Beijing hopes will drive a “wave of reconciliation” in the region, particularly along the historic Shia-Sunni religious divide.

  As for the potential of full diplomatic relations with Israel, it’s been widely reported that Riyadh is asking Washington to allow it to have a nuclear energy program, which would see the Saudis enrich uranium, just like the Iranians currently do.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 18:40

• Quinn: Fake Climate Narrative Is Easily Debunked
  Quinn: Fake Climate Narrative Is Easily Debunked

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  Anyone capable of critical thought knows this entire globull warming/ climate crisis/ health emergency narrative is false, contrived by the ruling elite/globalist cabal billionaire class as a further means to gain control, increase their already ungodly wealth, tax us into oblivion, lock us down in their 15 minute cities, and dole out our daily allotment of bug protein.

  

  Their narrative is filled with lies, misinformation, and holes so big you can drive a Tesla through them.

  They have faked the temperature data for decades.

  CO2 is not a pollutant.

  Eating meat is not destroying the planet.

  Cows farting is not ruining our environment.  Of course, Chris Christie farting may be harming the planet.

  This fake narrative is dutifully spewed by the corporate regime media 24/7, as they are funded by Gates, Soros, and the WEF to do so. Lies, lies and more lies.

  

  The foolishness of the drivel they expect us to swallow is beyond the pale.

  They want to put oil companies and coal companies out of business because fossil fuels are evil.

  They are purposely attempting to drastically reduce our energy output, which means less electric power.

  But they also want to force everyone to drive an electric vehicle.

  And they won’t allow nuclear power plants to be built. These insane beliefs are ridiculous.

  Only low IQ willfully ignorant NPCs could believe them. More than half the population apparently fall into this category.

  Wind and solar are polluting, environmentally damaging and inefficient. They push solar, while at the same time push geo-engineering  to block the sun, to cool the planet.

  This idiocy speaks volumes to what these people running the show think about the intellectual capacity of the masses.

  They believe we are sufficiently dumbed down, distracted, and apathetic to implement their agenda through constant propaganda, fear mongering, and threats.

  They want to own everything, while you own nothing. It’s nothing but a show and they will keep it going until we do something about it.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 18:20

• Stocks & Bonds Slammed As Powell Pi$$es In Next Year's Punchbowl
  Stocks & Bonds Slammed As Powell Pi$$es In Next Year’s Punchbowl

  If you’re not confused now, you weren’t paying attention.

  • Fed held rates unchanged (as expected) – neutral.

  • Fed increased its growth expectation, lowered its unemployment expectation, and increased its inflation outlook – dovish/soft-landing.

  • Fed erased 50bps of cuts expected for next year in its dot-plot – hawkish as hell.

  That sent STIRs hawkishly higher…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Mohamed El-Erian offered the most succinct summary of the malaise many were left in after the statement, the SEP, and the press conference:

  “I worry that the economic and policy signals coming out of this Federal Reserve press conference may come across to many as both confused and confusing.

  Some will deem this an inevitable consequence of this phase of the inflation and policy cycle; others will view it as further evidence of challenged Fed communication.”

  And the Dot-Plot crushed expectations for cuts next year…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Treasuries were mixed on the day – and very volatile – with the short-end dramatically underperforming. 2Y ended up 6bps while 30Y was down 3bps on the day. On the week, the long-end is lower but the short-end is significantly higher…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The pattern was similar for all bonds (except the 30Y) with early gains (erasing yesterday’s losses) quickly being eviscerated on the Fed’s SEP.

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  10Y yield broke out from the August highs late in the day to their highest since Oct 2007…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And 2Y yields soared to a new high since July 2006 (2y yields rose 14bps off the intraday lows this afternoon)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  All of which crushed the yield curve (2s30s)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Equities did what equities do around the FOMC. The kneejerk move was lower (hawkish SEP), but the second Powell started speaking the algos ripped the market back up to unch… but this time, they could not hold it and stocks tanked to the lows of the day, extending losses after Powell stopped speaking. Nasdaq (longest duration stocks) suffered most…

  

  Gamma-heavy 4500 was key resistance for the S&P 500…

  

  0-DTE selling was dominant after The Fed but we note that the S&P fell down to exactly match its Put Wall level…

  

  Source: SpotGamma

  ‘Most Shorted’ Stocks puked hard today with no bounce at all…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  CART was carried out today, plunging all the way back to its IPO price…

  

  The dollar dumped overnight into The Fed statement then exploded higher…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bitcoin ended lower, falling back below $27000 as stocks tumbled…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Gold (spot) rallied up to near $1950 intraday before fading as the dollar spiked after The Fed…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Oil prices managed gains on the inventory data but The Fed’s hawkishness dragged WTI back below $90…

  

  Finally, with Powell and his pals pissing in the punchbowl of rate-cuts for next year, one has to wonder just how long this chasm between real rates and equity valuations can remain…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  …and real rates are getting higher.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 18:01

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• Syrian President Assad Heads To China For 1st Official Visit Since 2004
  Syrian President Assad Heads To China For 1st Official Visit Since 2004

  Via The Cradle,

  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will travel to China on September 21 to participate in a Syrian-Chinese summit at the official invitation of his counterpart Xi Jinping. According to Syrian state media, Assad will lead a high-level political and economic delegation for official meetings in the cities of Beijing and Guangzhou.

  Syria’s official delegation will include Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and Finance Minister Samer al-Khalil. This will mark Assad’s first official visit to Beijing since 2004.

  

  Analysts expect several bilateral agreements to be signed during Assad’s visit as part of China’s larger strategy to cement its position as a power broker in West Asia.

  Beijing has already proved instrumental once this year in helping Syria come in from the cold after Chinese officials brokered the historic Iran-Saudi rapprochement that also saw a normalization of ties between Gulf states and Damascus.

  In the weeks that followed the Saudi-Iran deal, Syria was also welcomed back into the Arab League, a development which China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called evidence that “when the shadow of the US shrinks, the light of peace spreads.”

  In March, Chinese officials urged the US to end its illegal military occupation of Syria and stop looting its resources, stressing that its continued presence has worsened Syria’s humanitarian crisis.

  “China has throughout the years defended Syria’s territorial integrity and many times used its veto power at the UN Security Council to prevent interventions in the Arab country’s internal affairs,” Kosai Abido, a Syrian political analyst and author, told Press TV this week.

  “Since China is considered a friendly state for Syria and has significant economic power, cooperation agreements with this country should be expanded to include food, pharmaceutical, and technology sectors,” Abido added.

  Syria demands UN hold Washington accountable for oil-theft operations

  “US officials [must] be held accountable for the looting, and the US gov [must] be obliged to pay compensation,”

  a letter from the Syrian ForMin addressed to UN’s Guterres reads.https://t.co/OaRYbfqAXz

  — Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) September 16, 2023

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

  Last year, Chinese and Syrian officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) welcoming Damascus into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a mega-infrastructure project that seeks to bring capital and infrastructure to Global South countries while dramatically strengthening connectivity for commerce, finance, and culture.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 02:00

• Competition Is Demonized, Participation Trophies An Acceptable Norm? Not In This Man's World
  Competition Is Demonized, Participation Trophies An Acceptable Norm? Not In This Man’s World

  Authored by Frank Bill via SOFREP,

  Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.  -Bruce Lee

  Over the past several years, a trend has emerged to label anything that deals with men, exercise, and masculinity as toxic.

  In July of 2023, MSNBC reshared a year-old-tweet by extremism expert Cynthia Miller-Idrissthat she penned in March of 2022, sounding the alarm that young men were being radicalized and recruited through encrypted chat groups, they’re ‘lured with health tips and strategies for positive physical changes.’ Researchers reported this as “fascist fitness.”

  (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/06/fascist-fitness-how-the-far-right-is-recruiting-with-online-gym-groups)

  (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/pandemic-fitness-trends-have-gone-extreme-literally-n1292463)

  The author goes on to mention that physical fitness has always been central to the far right, referencing Mein Kampf and Hitler’s fixation with boxing and jujitsu. The author goes on to claim that far-right groups are setting up mixed martial arts and boxing gyms in Ukraine, Canada, and France.

  Mrs. Cynthia Miller-Idriss speaks of extremism and fitness as it connects to an obsession with the male body, training, masculinity, testosterone, strength, and competition. She talks of how combat sports are appealing to the far right because fighters are trained to accept physical pain, become warriors, and embrace solidarity, heroism, and brotherhood. I’m guessing she thinks that when a person, male or female, joins a CrossFit gym, a powerlifting gym, boxing, Muay Thai gym, or jujitsu school, a community from all walks of life, the bonds and confidence they build there is supposed to be a form of extremism.

  She sums this up by going full-on crazy Charles-Manson-Helter-Skelter, saying, “It’s championed as a tool to help fight the ‘coming race war’ and the battles that will proceed it.”

  

  The author’s article delivered backlash from the likes of Podcaster Joe Rogan, an avid strength trainer and jujitsu practitioner who tweeted, ‘Being healthy is “far right.” Holy fuck. Then, the comment section exploded.

  Considering I’ve never been an avid gym member (I go to the local gym when I’m on vacation), but I’ve had a home gym, been strength training with Olympic weights and body weight calisthenics all of my life since age 11, as a kid I looked up to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Reg Park, Clint Eastwood, and Sylvester Stallone. I grew up on the pugilism of pro boxing, being motivated by everyone from Jack Johnson, James Braddock, Muhammad Ali, to Arturo Gatti. That doesn’t include my training in Martial Arts from age 12 until my mid-30s. Being influenced by men like Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Jackie Chan. Men who overcame adversity through their chosen training. Why? One might ask, because fitness requires effort, goal setting, discipline, and a resilience of self. These guys didn’t get participation trophies. They earned their way in life while overlooking negativity.

  

  Does that make me a racist? No, it does not. I’ve taught, studied, and trained in many disciplines throughout my life, including Korean Tae Known Do, Traditional Chinese Kung Fu, Western and Eastern Boxing, Brazilian Jujitsu, and Jeet Kune Do with all creeds and colors of people.

  White supremacy was never part of the curriculum. Community, bonding, and hard work were front and center.

  Fitness is the single most important daily endeavor that a person can embark upon. Movement molds a person into a better person. Creates discipline. Promotes health, mental and physical.

  Examples from influencers/authors/podcasters such as Jocko Willink, Joe Rogan, Cameron Hanes, Mike Rowe, Joe DeSena, and David Goggins, though sometimes extreme, promote leadership, positivity, and goodwill. And no-nonsense motivation to be a little better each and every day. And they give back to their community.

  Discussing what society has lost with retired Strength and Conditioning Coach Jim Steel from the University of PA, we narrowed it down to the simplistic: people have gotten away from the rewards of hard work. A stronger mind, a stronger body, and a positive attitude. In other words, society no longer realizes our country wouldn’t be where it is without overcoming negativity and putting in the hard work to create better men. Men who built roads, bridges, and infrastructure. Farmed land to produce food. Fought in wars. Battled racism. Every person who succeeds in life has had obstacles to overcome to get to where they’re at.

  Sadly, in this day and age, we’re the one country that can complain and criticize how free we are. And about the men who fought for this freedom.

  Why not consider this? Another friend, Strength and Conditioning coach Zach Even-Esh, writes a daily newsletter. They’re informative and inspirational; one of the issues he’s encountered over the past 10-plus years when training younger athletes is the average teenager can’t do 10 pull-ups or push-ups. As a people, we’re letting our kids proceed backward.

  Competition is demonized. Victimhood and participation trophies have become the acceptable norm, and kids have become weaker.

  This carries over to becoming an adult. Testosterone levels in men have declined. Gen Z and millennials have lower testosterone when compared to their predecessors. Declining about 1% per year since 1980. Why is this? Many factors. Eating too much processed/junk food (fast food, chips, soda, white sugar). Stress from jobs that require less movement than in the past, like sitting behind a desk and staring at a monitor for hours on end. Mental health issues. Tight underwear. Not smoking (nicotine raises T; I don’t condone smoking). Not getting enough sleep. Oh, and men don’t get enough movement throughout their day. They don’t exercise. And guess what could curb or even eliminate all of these issues and raise men’s testosterone: exercise. Lifting weights, calisthenics, or bodyweight movements. Getting outdoors and getting your Vitamin D from sunlight, from daily walks, sprints, or push mowing your lawn. Getting eight hours of sleep. And eating real food.

  (https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-the-man-your-father-was/?sh=65be5dcc8b7f)

  Look, men have egos, and they have testosterone; that’s what makes us men. But in this day and age, we’re constantly being labeled as toxic. No wonder there’s a decline in testosterone. It’s the pampering of culture, the removal of hard work and grit. Doing hard things.

  

  Growing up in a blue-collar family, my father was constantly helping his in-laws on their farm, providing for my mother and me but also for his mother and his community of friends. He served in the Vietnam War as a Combat Engineer. He worked three jobs and took care of our home, and he was humble.

  We’ve simplified life and removed effort and dedication. Commitment. Discipline. Work ethic. Goals. And most of all, pride. We’ve replaced it with excuses and weakness.

  My advice to young men, stay off of social media and turn your phone off. Start journaling. Set daily goals. Read books. Learn a skill. Help others. Get outdoors. Go walking or hiking daily.

  Lift weights, do bodyweight exercises, or join a gym. Quit making excuses. You’re not a victim.

  Every man who’s succeeded in life did it by working hard and being dedicated. Regardless of how they were treated, shunned, or turned down, they did it by being resilient. It’s called being a man.

  —

  If you are enjoying this piece, why not subscribe to SOFREP + and have access to tons more great content, like this: Lions Led by Political Lambs: Why an Absence of Military Leaders is an Invitation for Enemies

  SOFREP and Frank Bill go together like ribs and BBQ sauce. Click on the links to check out more of his fantastic body of work: The Ravaged, with Norman Reedus; the novels Back to the Dirt (May 2023), The Savage and Donnybrook, the latter of which was turned into a film in 2018; and the story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana, one of GQ’s favorite books of 2011 and a Daily Beast best debut of 2011. – GDM

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/20/2023 – 00:05

• Cape Cod Residents Outraged At Democratic Governor's Migrant Housing Plan
  Cape Cod Residents Outraged At Democratic Governor’s Migrant Housing Plan

  Earlier this month, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in response to the surging number of migrants in state-managed shelters. Then, last week, the governor mobilized the National Guard to assist with the migrant crisis. Now, residents are outraged with the governor’s decision to house the migrants as Biden’s southern border crisis spreads nationwide. 

  Local newspaper The Bourne Enterprise reports anger spreads across the Cape Cod peninsula as “residents turned out in force to express opposition to the state’s opting to provide temporary housing for migrant families who have been relocated to Massachusetts.” 

  “Protesters outside the building that evening held signs reading “Americans First”; inside, residents at the lectern cited potential board of health regulations, as well as concerns with whether the public school system can accommodate children from the immigrant families,” the paper said. 

  Even Cape Cod is pusing Back to Biden’s Migrant Disaster😬🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/8LwcVA5kWL

  — Vivek’s BodyGuard🖐️🇺🇸 (@A1Flipper) September 11, 2023

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

  Dozens of residents attended the Bourne Select Board meeting at the Bourne Veterans Memorial Community Center earlier this month to voice their opposition to Gov. Healey’s plan to transform parts of the Joint Base Cape Cod and local area hotels into migrant shelters. 

  Gov. Healey recently asked US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for help to combat the migrant crisis after her Democratic colleagues in the White House and on Capitol Hill have been determined to undermine Trump-era border policies for open border ones – that have led to millions of illegals pouring into the country over the last several years. 

  The governor has stated, “Massachusetts is in a state of emergency,” and commended the deployment of the National Guard to assist with the migrant crisis. 

  In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams warned in recent weeks that the migrant crisis will “destroy” the metro area. 

  It’s all fun and games for Democrats until Biden’s disastrous open border policies flood progressive metro areas with illegals. 

  JUST IN: The ‘loving and tolerant’ co-hosts of The View say migrants need to be kicked out of New York City before blaming the migrant crisis on “global warming and climate change.”

  You can’t write comedy better than this.

  “They need to be resettled elsewhere. They need to… pic.twitter.com/AxV5O8w0Ia

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 8, 2023

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

   

  Then these Democrats preach “NIMBY.” 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 23:45

• Transcending Technopessimism
  Transcending Technopessimism

  Authored by Rachel Lomasky via RealClear Wire,

  The following is a condensed version of “Transcending Technopessimism” by Rachel Lomasky, published at Law & Liberty.

  Technopessimism is reaching a fever pitch, fueled by headlines like, “Meta’s AI internet chatbot starts spewing fake news,” “Self-driving Uber Car Kills Pedestrian in Arizona,” “Artificial Intelligence Has a Racial and Gender Bias Problem.” Artificial Intelligence can be sexist, racist, or just profoundly stupid. The knee-jerk reaction to these sensational headlines is to call for limits and constraints on AI. But we need to pause and realize that to err is both human and AI. Substitute a human for the AI in those headlines, and they become completely mundane. AI misconduct garners great attention, but that’s because human transgressions are taken for granted, not because technology is necessarily worse. In many cases, even the most egregious of AI errors can be audited and corrected. In extreme cases, AIs can be shut down. Society generally frowns on “shutting down” humans whose behavior is stupid or insulting.

  Consider, for example, new NYC legislation that requires AI to be audited for bias before making hiring decisions. Proponents argue AI can be biased against certain classes of applicants. If these biases exist in the training set, it is because human agents have previously been biased. When an algorithm is a jerk, we can fix it, e.g. by changing the training data, and we can confirm that it is fixed before deploying into the wild. It’s very difficult to determine whether human biases have been remediated, especially given how deeply rooted they can be.

  Similarly, people worry about a lack of transparency behind AI’s recommendations. Indeed, the best performing algorithms often offer little clarity in decision-making. But even black-box algorithms are extremely clear when compared to the mushy black boxes inside humans. Introspection illusion, a field of psychology, explains why humans are so bad at explaining their decision-making logic. On the other hand, suites of tools explain AI results, even for nontransparent algorithms. Given a resume, the AI response is deterministic. The same is rarely true of a human, who may not even respond consistently over a single day.

  

  Manipulation by the social media algorithms is another popular source of apprehension. Social media platforms maximize the time that users spend on the platform by providing them content that interests them. Judgmental people argue that we should not want that content. However, these platforms are just the latest iteration of advertising manipulating us. Humans have manipulated other humans since time out of mind. Social media manipulates, but perhaps even less than forces like family, religion, government, and other media. We have mechanisms in place to try to minimize and mitigate these effects, and we should have similar remediations for AI.

  Many people fear AI can’t understand ethics, regardless of whether it is actually acting ethically. A favorite meme is the Trolley Problem applied to self-driving cars, trying to decide whom to kill in an accident situation. But humans are most likely not applying utilitarianism, duty-based ethics, or any other deep thinking when they’re about to crash. On the contrary, they are thinking, “Holy crap, I’m about to hit that thing! Must swerve!” Or at the very best, “Seems like fewer people to the right.”

  Sometimes the alternative to an AI isn’t a human, but nothing at all. In many cases, AI provides a service that simply couldn’t scale if provided by humans. For example, human translators couldn’t match the functionality of Google Translate. Likewise, humans cannot scan all credit card transactions looking for fraud. Even in areas of psychotherapy, where humans are clearly better equipped to provide the service, AI allows it to scale.

  Often AI technologies are used both for evil and for good. Computer vision is used for surveillance, encroaching on privacy. But it is also employed in wildlife conservation, such as monitoring endangered species and preventing poaching. AI algorithms analyze images, acoustic data, and satellite imagery to identify and track animals, assess population dynamics, and detect illegal activities. We should judge the application, not the tool.

  It can be difficult to put AI transgressions into perspective because people lack a deep technological understanding, and mysterious, complex systems scare people. The problem is exacerbated by sensationalized and deliberate misinformation on the part of Hollywood and the media. These factors lead many to believe the problem could be even worse than the headlines. Additionally, there is Frederic Bastiat’s “Seen vs. Unseen” distinction: A self-driving car hit a pole, but how many accidents by distracted humans would AI cars prevent? A racist AI sent the wrong person to jail, but how many errors are made by judges, some of whom have nefarious motives? Without comparing these AI misdeeds with the human alternatives, the default reaction is to hinder AI. In many cases, this is short-sighted and counterproductive. Our concerns with AI should always be viewed through the lens of comparison to human failings.

  Rachel Lomasky is Chief Data Scientist at Flux, a company that help organizations do responsible AI. Throughout her career, she has helped scientists train and productionalize their machine learning algorithms.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 23:25

• SBF's Parents Steeped In Democrat Dark Money And 'Illegal' Election Tactics
  SBF’s Parents Steeped In Democrat Dark Money And ‘Illegal’ Election Tactics

  The parents of alleged crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried were involved in Democrat dark money and 2020 election tactics deemed ‘illegal’ by a right-leaning political research firm.

  

  Allan Joseph Bankman and his wife, Barbara Fried (who are currently being sued to claw back some a portion of $26 million to “fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds” as part of FTX’s bankruptcy), have found themselves in the middle of fresh controversy.

  In a Monday lawsuit seeking the clawback, the pair were accused of siphoning off millions in firm funds to benefit their “pet causes,” with Bankman – who says he helped FTX “navigate tax issues,” allegedly “considered having funds made available by Sam through Arabella,” one of the largest dark-wing money advisory groups in the USA, whose board Bankman sat on according to court documents.

  “This meant that Bankman had unfettered access to the FTX Group’s financials and corporate structure — two things that would have alerted him that money was moving between and among the FTX Exchanges, FTX Insiders, and other legal entities,” reads the filing.

  Bankman’s advisory role was revealed in a footnote on P. 19 of the lawsuit.

  

  Arabella manages major left-wing nonprofit groups which then sponsor entities that pay no tax. The company has come under heightened scrutiny from conservatives over this “dark money” arrangement, the Washington Examiner reports.

  Bro the story is that Sam Bankman Fried’s dad was on the board of left wing dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors and you’re mad conservatives are calling them out?! https://t.co/jJt0vy551q

  — Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) September 19, 2023

  The lawsuit, which seeks to claw back funds Bankman and Fried allegedly “fraudulently transferred and misappropriated,” cites the “New Venture Fund,” which “offered a platform through which FTX.US and its donors could contribute to select charitable causes.”

  Lawyers for Bankman and Fried hit back, saying that “This is a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara and undermine the jury process just days before their child’s trial begins.”

  Illegal election tactics?

  

  Meanwhile, according to a report from a right-leaning political research firm, Barbara Fried authored a memo in late 2019 that encouraged Democrats to donate to a 501(c)(3) known as The Voter Registration Project or Everybody Votes, the NY Post reports.

  The Stanford professor argued that getting more Democrats registered to vote would be far more effective than simply donating to candidates, and encouraged donors to give 90% of their election contributions to Everybody Votes.

  “Non- partisan voter registration” charities are “4 to 10 times more cost-effective” at “netting additional Democratic votes,” Fried wrote in the memo.

   The charity ended up raising a whopping $190 million, according to recent filings cited by the Capital Research Center.

  Since charities and foundations don’t reveal donations until years after the fact, they are specifically forbidden from operating to benefit a political party, in effect or in intent, according to the author of the report, Parker Thayer.

  Fried also told people to keep quiet about the strategy, which “managed to stay out of the news and as far as we know out of Republicans’ sight-lines,” she wrote. “It will come as no surprise to Republicans—and be of little interest—that yet another organization is trying to fund voter registration in battleground states.

  “But the magnitude of our efforts, the details of targeting, and the names of the organizations we are recommending would be of great interest to them.”

  According to an anonymous longtime GOP fundraiser and strategist, “This is the darkest of dark money.”

  The news comes just days after federal prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried of using $100 million in stolen customer funds for political donations. While there’s no evidence that he gave money to voter registration efforts or that his mother was involved in any wrongdoing, it underscores the impact the entire family had on politics.

  In 2020, Vox reported on the memo from Mind The Gap and the millions the group raised aimed to raise.

  But the new report from Capital Research Center reveals how effective the memo was with Democratic mega donors. Warren Buffett’s charitable foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, donated $5 million to voter registration efforts while George Soros donated $10.4 million, the report adds.

  So many fingers in so many pies…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 23:05

• The War On Marriage Must End
  The War On Marriage Must End

  Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  I woke up earlier this week to two depressing articles that on the surface seem unrelated but are actually connected.

  

  They both speak to the existence of a war on marriage in our culture that will destroy the fabric of our country if not dealt with. This is a war that surfaced ideologically in the early years of the Soviet Union in a way oddly similar to a primitive version of our “woke,” but was soon withdrawn as impractical even there.

  Not here.

  This war is now being fought in the USA on a deeper cultural level that could actually be more pernicious and ultimately succeed with monumental societal implications.

  The first of these articles—“The Dating Pool Dropouts” by Olivia Reingold at The Free Press—details the declining number of men even attempting to find a life partner. Marriage itself has been declining for years.

  Ms. Reingold describes a number of reasons for this, adding that “part of it also boils down to this: it’s hard for men to find partners at a moment when women are outpacing them both at school and work. Young women now hold 1.6 million more college degrees than men, and in a growing number of cities, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and New York, they make as much as—or more than—their male counterparts. And even if they become mothers, odds are four in ten will become the breadwinners of their households.”

  And yet we have feminists still yammering on about “equal pay.” Go figure.

  You would also think these now-successful women might enjoy having a working-class man in the house who knows how to fix the plumbing or the electrical, but such is not the behavior of human society, ours anyway. If a man does not have a college degree, the fancier the better, he is filtered out on the dating apps.

  What has evolved from this, according to the article, is pervasive loneliness among the younger generation.

  Ms. Reingold also points out that, statistically, married people are happier. But most of us have known that from simple observation.

  Meanwhile, with the male sex in decline, we have a war on gender—or more accurately, massive, and likely deliberately instigated, gender confusion, making matters worse and putting marriage in further jeopardy.

  He is reporting on a battle in San Bernadino County where a school system is fighting back against the state of California. The state’s attorney general is suing to nullify that system’s ruling that parents must be notified by the school if their under-18 children are attempting to transition.

  Defending the parents is the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit, public-interest litigation center. Good on them.

  This is a portion of the massive struggle going on across the nation, all part of this war against the family that is being fought by the left—that apparently has not learned the lessons of the former Soviet Union to which I referred—on many fronts.

  Disbanding the family in favor of the state is their intention. It is also another step toward globalism.

  The tragedy is that it is also a road to serious human unhappiness.

  When Klaus Schwab said, “You will have nothing and you will be happy,” he was also, by inference, implying the dissolution of the family. You don’t need a spouse. You have the World Economic Forum (WEF), or what flows from it, to take care of you.

  If you recognize in this elements of Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, children denouncing their parents, you are not mistaken. It’s close to happening here, indeed probably already has in isolated instances.

  Not inconsequentially, I have also been reading Dennis Prager’s “Rational Bible”—at the moment the volume on Exodus—so it contains lengthy discussion of the Ten Commandments.

  I know I sound almost like an idiot for doing so, but I recommend, particularly, in these times with the family in jeopardy, the Fifth Commandment:

  “Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

  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, 09/19/2023 – 22:45

• Red State Pharmacists Use 'Religious' Loophole To Deny Patients Ivermectin: Doctor
  Red State Pharmacists Use ‘Religious’ Loophole To Deny Patients Ivermectin: Doctor

  Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Doctors claim a law created to protect pro-life workers from going against their religious beliefs is being employed by pharmacists to deny patients access to ivermectin.

  

  “Right to refuse” laws initially enacted in many states to shield pro-life pharmacists from being forced to violate religious convictions are used by pharmacists as legal cover for denying patients COVID-19 treatments that they find objectionable, according to a medical expert.

  In Texas, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a practitioner and founder of Coalition of Health Freedom, told The Epoch Times that the law, along with greater discretion granted to pharmacists during the pandemic, has become a roadblock in ensuring her patients receive the care needed, especially when it comes to prescribing ivermectin off-label to treat COVID-19.

  “I can’t imagine how anyone can claim a religious or moral belief in denying my patients access to ivermectin, but that appears to be exactly how they are able to legally do this,” said Dr. Bowden. “It makes no sense and creates significant delays in getting patients access to the medications they need.”

  

  In Texas, pharmacists are allowed wide discretion under House Bill 2561, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in September 2017. The law permits pharmacy workers the right to refuse to fill a patient’s prescriptions for moral and religious reasons, with the text of the bill specifying “freedom of speech regarding a sincerely held religious belief.”

  Dr. Bowden said that in recent years, many pharmacists have anointed themselves as medication gatekeeper in deciding which drugs may or may not be prescribed. As a result, doctors are having to invest increasing amounts of time and resources toward finding ways to get prescriptions filled that would be better directed toward patient care, according to Dr. Bowden.

  “I never had an issue before COVID. Now it’s an everyday issue I have to deal with as a doctor, and it’s just draining,” said Dr. Bowden.

  What have become known as “right to refuse” laws vary by state. Six states—Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, and South Dakota—have laws or regulations that specifically allow pharmacies or pharmacists to refuse to honor prescriptions for religious or moral reasons, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Seven other states—Alabama, Delaware, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas—allow them to refuse a prescription but prohibit pharmacists from obstructing patient access to medication.

  Further, most state practice codes allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription if, in their judgment, the validity of the medicine is in question, abuse of a drug is suspected, or to protect the health and welfare of the patient. However, pharmacists expanded the scope of their discretion during the pandemic, according to Dr. Bowden.

  ‘We Need an Intervention’

  Ivermectin has been around for decades but became the center of controversy in 2020 after medical opinion became divided over its effectiveness as a treatment for COVID-19. In the aftermath, many pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions for the medication.

  By 2023, the issue had made its way into a courtroom in a case brought by Dr. Bowden and other medical professionals when, on Aug. 8, a lawyer representing the FDA confirmed that doctors were free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

  “FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

  Despite statements from the FDA affirming that right to doctors, Dr. Bowden says many pharmacists nationwide are still refusing to fill prescriptions issued for ivermectin issued to patients for the treatment of COVID-19.

  In most cases, according to Dr. Bowden, individual pharmacists aren’t the ones to blame and are often only carrying out orders from corporate leadership. However, she claims to have also seen examples where pharmacists prevented her patients from getting their medication as a result of their own “personal agenda.”

  Dr. Bowden believes the only way absent of new legislation ensuring a patient’s right to the fulfillment of the prescription written by their health care expert is for people to keep putting pressure on the pharmacies to leave the practicing of medicine to the doctors.

  “Consumers can fight back, but there is going to be a price to pay in terms of time and money,” said Dr. Bowden. “Whether that means boycotting pharmacies that refuse to fill your prescriptions, and having to travel further to a different pharmacy, or pushing for new legislation to protect patient rights, there is no easy solution.

  “But it is clear that we need an intervention of some kind, and soon.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 22:05

• Consumer Revolt? Survey Reveals Many Plan To Spend Less As Shopping Season Approaches 
  Consumer Revolt? Survey Reveals Many Plan To Spend Less As Shopping Season Approaches 

  Several major retailers have already raised concerns about a downturn in consumer spending that may persist through the crucial holiday shopping season. Many mid to low-tier consumers are stretched thin in the era of ‘Bidenomics,’ grappling with rising credit card debt, diminished savings, and steep interest rates. Additionally, tens of millions of consumers are resuming their student loan payments this month. These factors are headwinds that may spark a growth scare narrative. 

  Online review platform Trustpilot published a new survey of 2,000 consumers, finding that many have less disposable income than in previous years. However, some respondents are finding ways to leverage up to fund purchases: 

  • Today’s economic crisis is undoubtedly contributing to consumer stress levels this year with 1 in 3 considering going into credit card debt to purchase holiday gifts this year. 

  • This is followed by 41 percent considering Buy Now Pay Later services, while another 2 in 5 would cut down on essential expenses such as food and gas to afford their gift purchases. 

  • 34 percent would look at dipping into their savings, and 1 in 3 would consider starting a side hustle to offset the costs.

  Bad news for major retailers, Trustpilot revealed:

  • 41 percent are considering opting out of purchasing physical gifts that require wrapping and going digital for gifts. 

  • 38 percent are saying no to white elephant gift exchanges and Secret Santa, 38 percent are skipping gatherings that require travel, and 34 percent are ditching family gatherings altogether.

  The survey further showed more alarming news: 

  “That said, on average, Americans who shopped during the 2022 holiday season intend to spend 39 percent less this year, and cost is driving purchasing decisions.” 

  The planned reduction in holiday spending was blamed mostly on the multi-year inflation storm:

  “Respondents noted an increase in price of items (43 percent) and shipping costs (42 percent) would prevent them from shopping with a business this holiday season. In fact, if delivery prices were to increase, 64 percent would reduce their overall spending to offset the cost, 64 percent would only shop in-store, and 60 percent would only shop with businesses that offer free shipping.”

  “People are financially struggling in today’s economy, which is only heightened during the holidays,” Mieke De Schepper, Chief Commercial Officer at Trustpilot, wrote in the report. 

  The survey comes as we determined in a recent consumer credit report that “US consumer had finally tapped out.” And we also noted it’s extraordinarily rare for consumers to be in this worse shape… 

  

  Plus, add the restart of student loan payments this month that will curb household spending by upwards of $15.8 billion per month – or $190 billion per year. 

  Corporate America panicked about “student loans” this past earning season as chatter on earnings calls soared to the highest level ever. 

  

  These mounting headwinds for consumers are why Macy’s only plans to hire 38,000 full and part-time workers this holiday season – much fewer than last year and the lowest number since 2008. Meanwhile, Nordstrom recently warned about a slowdown in consumer spending. Remember weeks ago when Walmart slashed pay for new hires? All of this suggests the economic downturn has arrived. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 21:45

• Voter Registration Charities: A Massive, Overlooked Scandal
  Voter Registration Charities: A Massive, Overlooked Scandal

  Authored by Parker Thayer via RealClear Wire,

  

  “Nonprofit voter registration” doesn’t sound interesting. Yet nonprofit voter registration, or the use of tax-exempt charitable organizations to conduct and fund voter registration drives, is one of the most important and underreported political scandals of our time.

  Nonprofit voter registration, and the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) activities that usually accompany it, have become the heart of a billion-dollar industry in America. According to Candid’s Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy database, since 2011 nearly 60,000 grants have been made for “Voter Education, Registration, and Turnout” and “Civic Participation,” benefitting 15,000 different organizations to the tune of $5.9 billion dollars.

  Most of the largest grantors and grantees in this industry are left-leaning. Despite IRS rules prohibiting 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit groups from engaging in partisan electioneering, it has long been an open secret that the purpose of their work is to register voters from favorable demographics in order to help get Democrats elected. The voter registration industry has always retreated behind the fig-leaf of “nonpartisanship” when necessary, which has protected it from serious scrutiny..

  Until now, that is. My recent special report, How Charities Secretly Help Win Elections, ripped away that fig-leaf. The report reveals the untold story of a nondescript charity named the “Voter Registration Project” that was used to funnel over $100 million into a five-year voter registration scheme hatched by Clinton campaign operatives to help Democrats win elections in 2020. Using tax forms, leaked documents, and leaked emails, the report shows how the scheme aimed to register over 5 million “non-white” voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada; how it was developed through multiple drafts and edits into a highly sophisticated plan dubbed the Everybody Votes Campaign; and how that plan was eventually adopted by a super PAC tied to Sam Bankman-Fried that instructed billionaire donors to keep it completely secret since it was the most “cost-effective” method for “netting additional Democratic votes.”

  The report even shows several of the plan’s major donors admitting, in signed tax forms, that their “charitable” grants to the Voter Registration Project were made for the express purpose of supporting the super PAC that had recommended it to them. It was the largest, most organized, and most blatantly partisan nonprofit voter registration drive in American history. By our estimates it generated between 1 and 2.7 million swing-state votes for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

  Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Americans are expected to believe the excuse, given on the Everybody Votes Campaign’s new website, that their left-wing donors are merely “committed to creating a more representative democracy by building and supporting large-scale, long-term voter registration in communities of color.” Their website notably boasts that 76% of the 5.1 million voters they have registered were people of color, but then curiously declines to mention which states said people of color were from. A recent job listing from the organization shows that their targets states for 2024 will be Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

  That’s right, the donors and directors of the Everybody Votes Campaign care deeply about the civic participation of “communities of color.” So deeply, in fact, that they have been, and will be, registering millions of minority voters, but only in the most important presidential swing states. No room for California and New York (two of America’s most populous states) nor Mississippi and Louisiana (which have the highest Black population by percentage).

  It should be obvious to anyone who looks a little deeper than the mission statement that “Everybody Votes” is more than a little bit of a misnomer.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 21:25

• No Big Deal: Newsom Defends Hunter Biden Influence Peddling Scheme
  No Big Deal: Newsom Defends Hunter Biden Influence Peddling Scheme

  On today’s episode of Damage Control Theatre…

  California Governor Gavin Newsom, who will undoubtedly be decanted if and when Joe Biden can’t manage to mount a 2024 campaign, says that Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling scheme – in which prominent foreign businessmen, including the “fucking spy chief of China,” paid the Biden family millions to affect US policy while Joe was VP – is no big deal.

  

  “One of the things that Republicans are relentless on, of course, is Hunter Biden,” CNN host Dana Bash asked Newsom, adding. “There is no evidence that Joe Biden benefited from anything that Hunter was doing, but Republicans have shown that Hunter Biden – he tried to leverage his father’s name, and that the president allegedly before he was president joined phone calls that Hunter Biden’s business associates were on. Do you see anything inappropriate there?”

  To which Newsom, whose career was undoubtedly helped by his family’s connections with the Pelosis, replied: “I don’t know enough about the details of that. I mean I’ve seen a little of that,” adding “If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries – not just in politics – where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect. That’s hardly unique.”

  Newsom on a Biden impeachment inquiry: “Give me a break. This is student government. This is a joke. This is a perversity of what the Founding Fathers ever conceived of.” pic.twitter.com/63x4kKxnag

  — TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 18, 2023

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

  “I don’t love that any more than you love it or other people I imagine love that. We want to see a lot less of that, but an impeachment inquiry? Give me a break,” he continued according to Fox News.

  

  “Threatening a government shutdown again after we went through that process with the debt ceiling. This is student government,” he added. “This is a joke. Ready, fire, aim. I mean, this is a perversity that the founding fathers never conceived of and imagined. So, if that’s the best they can do, give me a break. That’s about public opinion.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 21:05

• Sperry: Did Hunter Biden Lie In His Own Memoir To 'Protect The Family'?
  Sperry: Did Hunter Biden Lie In His Own Memoir To ‘Protect The Family’?

  Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClear Wire,

  In a raft of glowing reviews, Hunter Biden’s 2019 memoir “Beautiful Things” was celebrated as an “unflinchingly honest” (Entertainment Weekly), “confession and an act of contrition” (Guardian), that was “candid” and “doesn’t hold back details” (New York Times) of his substance abuse and broken relationships.  

  

  While describing the book as an “unvarnished confessional,” the Washington Post exalted it as a “harrowing, relentless and a determined exercise in trying to seize his own narrative from the clutches of the Republicans and the press. 

  In the years since, testimony from a former business partner, Devon Archer, and newly disclosed emails indicate that the president’s son’s memoir was an exercise in spin rather than truth-telling, especially concerning his father’s role in his foreign business dealings, which are now the subject of a House impeachment inquiry. That evidence shows how the Bidens used the memoir to create a politically charged narrative – one largely embraced by the mainstream media – that distorted the truth to protect the family.  

  On page 118, for example, Hunter writes that after accompanying then-Vice President Joe Biden to China on Air Force Two in 2013, he merely introduced his father to a well-connected Chinese investor. It was a quick greeting that lasted just long enough for a handshake. “While we were in Beijing, Dad met one of Devon’s Chinese partners, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the American delegation’s hotel, just long enough to say hello and shake hands,” Hunter wrote. “Li and I then headed off for a cup of coffee.” 

  The account seems to comport with now-President Biden’s repeated denials that he discussed business with his son or had any substantive involvement with his partners. 

  However, Archer told a different story to U.S. lawmakers during a deposition earlier this year. “Jonathan Li and [Vice] President Biden had coffee,” Archer said, according to a recently released transcript of his interview with the House Oversight Committee. “They had coffee in Beijing,” he recalled, suggesting there may have been talk about their business relationship.

  Li would later offer Hunter a 10% stake worth potentially millions in a Chinese investment fund controlled by the state Bank of China. The fund, BHR Partners, is based in Beijing. 

  Archer’s testimony included other details ignored or distorted in the memoir. He said the vice president called Hunter while he was meeting with Li in Paris, and Hunter put his father on speakerphone so he could join their conversation. And in early January 2017, while Biden was still in the White House, Hunter arranged for his father to write letters of recommendation for Li’s son and daughter to Ivy League colleges. 

  Before committee lawyers began questioning Archer during the July 31 closed-door hearing, they warned him that providing false testimony could subject him to criminal prosecution for perjury. Hunter, in contrast, was under no such legal peril while writing his manuscript.

  The same Oversight panel that quizzed Archer will now lead a formal impeachment inquiry, announced this month by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to investigate whether Biden used his office to enrich his family. Investigators are weighing subpoenaing Hunter Biden, which makes examining his claims in his memoir highly instructive as to his and his father’s credibility. They’re also tracing millions of dollars wired from China into a maze of accounts that ended up in the hands of Hunter and several other Biden family members, belying claims by the president that Hunter received no money from China. 

  Hunter also raked in millions from Ukraine while his father was “point man” for Ukraine policy as vice president. 

  Hunter addresses the controversy in the sixth chapter of “Beautiful Things,” describing the allegation that he traded on his father’s influence in Ukraine to land an unusually lucrative five-year stint on the board of the corrupt Ukraine energy giant Burisma Holdings as “the decade’s biggest political fable.” 

  He insisted neither he nor his father, who as vice president husbanded Ukraine’s new regime, did anything criminal or corrupt. “There is, in short, no there here,” Biden wrote. 

  Hunter then explained how he came to serve on the Burisma board, raking in $83,000 a month despite having no experience in the energy sector. Biden claimed that Archer, his international consultancy partner, brought Burisma into their business orbit after first meeting Burisma’s founder in Kyiv. 

  “During one such trip to Kyiv, he met Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner and president of Burisma,” Biden said. “After returning from Kyiv, Devon told me about his talk with Zlochevsky.” 

  But Archer, who served on the Burisma board alongside Biden, relayed a different account to Congress, testifying he first met the Russian-tied Ukrainian oligarch in Moscow, not Kyiv. 

  In fact, Archer said he sat down with Zlochevsky in the Russian capital on the same day that Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. “It was just me meeting [with him],” Archer added. Within days, Burisma asked him to join the board. And Hunter Biden came aboard shortly thereafter. 

  Archer’s disclosure that their relationship with Burisma was hatched in Moscow is at odds with the political narrative President Biden has carefully crafted, demonizing Russia as Enemy No. 1 of America and NATO. Hunter’s telling of the genesis, with the initial meeting with Zlochevsky taking place in Ukraine’s capital, is far more palatable. 

  Hunter wrote that he only agreed to accept Zlochevsky’s offer in order to enable Ukraine to strengthen its energy independence from Russia. He said the prospect of helping build a “bulwark” against Russian oil and gas imports assuaged “whatever dissonance I might have felt between idealism and generous compensation.” He said he was more interested in “fighting” for the Ukrainian people against an aggressive neighbor, which aligns his employment with Burisma with his father’s pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia stance. 

  “Having a Biden on Burisma’s board was a loud and unmistakable fuck-you to Putin,” Hunter maintained. 

  But according to Archer’s testimony, Burisma hired them in part to help expand its energy operations outside of Ukraine – particularly in the U.S., where the energy industry is heavily regulated by the federal government, and having such politically connected Americans on the board was valuable to the oil and gas conglomerate. Plus, he and Hunter were motivated by the windfall Burisma was paying them: “It was a million dollars per year [apiece] on the board contracts,” Archer confirmed. 

  Hunter further contends in his memoir that his father didn’t know about his joining the Burisma board until he read about it in the Wall Street Journal on May 13, 2014. But White House emails show the vice president’s staff was coordinating damage control weeks earlier when the news first broke in the foreign press.  

  And Archer testified that a month earlier, he had met with Vice President Biden in his White House office with Hunter, who had arranged the meeting. Their high-level pow-wow took place on April 16, the day after records show Archer received his first payment from Burisma. 

  It’s not clear what the trio discussed in Biden’s office, but Hunter had emailed Archer a Burisma strategy memo just three days earlier. Also on April 13, Hunter had emailed Joe Biden’s best friend Ted Kaufman and the vice president’s then-deputy counsel Alex Mackler to discuss Ukrainian politics. On April 21, Biden visited Ukraine to offer energy and economic aid. 

  But that’s not the biggest whopper Hunter apparently told about Burisma in his book. On page 127, he claimed: “No one at Burisma had even hinted at wanting me to influence the [Obama-Biden] administration.” 

  Several Burisma emails to Hunter, along with Archer’s congressional testimony, put the lie to this claim. 

  On May 12, 2014, for instance, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi sent an “urgent” email to Hunter – who by then was officially on Burisma’s payroll – demanding to know “how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions.” At the time, Ukrainian prosecutors were aggressively investigating Burisma for corruption. 

  Several months later, in the spring of 2015, Pozharskyi emailed Hunter to thank him for giving him the “opportunity to meet with your father and spent [sic] some time together.” Archer confirmed that the then-vice president sat down for dinner with the Burisma official and others at the Cafe Milano in D.C. the previous evening. The meeting, long denied by Biden officials, was held in a private room in the back of the restaurant. 

  In late 2015, after Viktor Shokin took over the prosecutor general’s office in Ukraine and turned the screws on Burisma, Pozharskyi again turned to Hunter Biden for assistance. 

  Archer testified that Hunter called his father to help deal with Shokin’s investigation at both Pozharskyi’s and Zlochevsky’s request following a Burisma board meeting at the Four Seasons in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015. 

  “They were getting pressure and they requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said, explaining the pressure was coming “from Ukrainian government investigations into Mykola [Zlochevsky].” 

  Archer suggested their benefactors wanted Hunter to use his influence with the vice president to get Kyiv to take “the heat” off Burisma. He testified he did not overhear Hunter’s phone call, but noted “he called his dad.” 

  At the time, Hunter Biden was not registered as a foreign agent as required by federal law when lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign entity. Federal prosecutors revealed at a recent court hearing that Hunter is actively under investigation for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that was used to prosecute several Trump advisers.  

  Two days after the Dubai phone call, Biden flew to Kyiv and warned the Ukrainian president that he had to fire Shokin or he wouldn’t get a promised $1 billion in aid. Three months later, after withering pressure from Biden, Shokin was removed from office. 

  “[Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma,” Shokin said in a recent Fox News interview. 

  In his memoir, Hunter maintained that his father had Shokin ousted because he wasn’t doing enough to tackle corruption, which matches the current spin of the White House. 
   
  “A priority for my dad was the ouster of the country’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, for his failure to adequately investigate corruption,” he wrote. “Among the high-profile companies that Shokin was criticized for not pursuing: Burisma.” 

  In effect, Hunter implied he relished more criminal scrutiny for his own employer, an odd position to take particularly given the millions he was getting paid. But as Archer testified, it’s simply not true.

  Democratic counsel for the Oversight Committee tried to get Archer to agree with the White House spin that Shokin’s firing was “bad for Burisma … because they had Shokin under their control.” 

  “No,” Archer said. “Burisma never informed me of that.” 

  Quite the opposite, he said, Burisma viewed Shokin as a threat after the prosecutor seized its founder Zlochevsky’s assets, including his house and cars. 

  If Shokin was not in fact soft on Burisma and Joe Biden did not press for his ouster to better fight corruption, it would seem to leave just one possible reason for his ham-fisted demand: to protect Burisma for the sake of his son – and the millions he was hauling in. 

  House impeachment investigators want to know whether Biden engaged in a quid pro quo: shaking down Ukraine’s former president for a political favor that would benefit his son by threatening to withhold a U.S.-backed aid package from the country. According to one Republican staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, they also want to know if Joe Biden or his staff helped Hunter draft the chapter of his book, titled “Burisma,” or had a hand in editing it. 

  “Beautiful Things” was published by an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which had no comment. Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell did not reply to requests to speak about the discrepancies in his client’s book.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:45

• Ray Epps Charged With Misdemeanor In Long-Delayed Wrist-Slap
  Ray Epps Charged With Misdemeanor In Long-Delayed Wrist-Slap

  While dozens of January 6th political prisoners languish behind bars, the man caught on camera repeatedly inciting them to enter the Capitol, Ray Epps, was just given a long-delayed slap on the wrist.

  

  This lame single charge tells us everything we need to know about Ray Epps.

  No obstruction felony? No civil disorder charge? Not even a trespassing on restricted grounds misdemeanor?

  Can’t even tell you the last time I saw an “information” (misdemeanor version of indictment)… pic.twitter.com/zQ0rGT23ES

  — Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) September 19, 2023

  A review of Epps’ behavior surrounding J6;

  EXCLUIVE: Never before released J6 video captures Ray Epps (and others) amidst the violent conflict at the police line on the West Plaza

  This is near the Media Tower, apparently before Epps helped push the large metal sign into this police line pic.twitter.com/NoMFKNv58F

  — Stephen Horn (@stephenehorn) September 19, 2023

  In July, Epps’ attorney revealed that his client was going to be criminally charged, after Epps sued former Fox news host Tucker Carlson for defamation.

  Epps hired attorney Michael Teter – formerly of Perkins Coie, the firm notorious for helping the Clinton campaign hatch the Steele dossier and collaborating with the FBI to push the Trump-Russia hoax. Teter immediately sent a letter to Carlson demanding that the former Fox News host retract “false and defamatory statements” that Epps was a J6 government plant.

  Epps, 62, was identified as a key instigator of the riot who has long been suspected of being a fed (or a fed asset), told his nephew in a text message: “I was in the front with a few others. I also orchestrated it.“

  Julie Kelly compares a similarly charged defendant… whose sentencing keeps getting kicked down the road.

  His sentencing keeps getting moved back.

  Status report from last week. pic.twitter.com/JSkBXEEMgb

  — Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) September 19, 2023

  I hope Tucker’s lawyers force Ray Epps to explain why he was never arrested by the FBI despite literally telling people to go into the Capitolpic.twitter.com/rh0ydFdzBE

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 12, 2023

  🚨BREAKING 🚨: Ray Epps has been charged for his role in Jan 6. But is this the real end another conspiracy?

  Epps has only been charged with a single misdemeanor. pic.twitter.com/vQLKmODrZ5

  — Suepin (@yzimng2) September 19, 2023

  We wonder how this will affect Tucker’s defense?

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:35

• NYT In Rare About-Face Now Says Ukraine (Not Russia) Behind Mass Casualty Missile Strike On Market
  NYT In Rare About-Face Now Says Ukraine (Not Russia) Behind Mass Casualty Missile Strike On Market

  The New York Times has issued a surprise about-face regarding the September 6 deadly missile strike on the center of the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, which is in Donetsk Oblast.

  Initially it was universally reported among all major international press that it was a Russian attack which killed at least 15 civilians and injured 30 more. It was among the single deadliest strikes on a civilian area since the start of the war, given a busy market had been directly impacted. 

  The fresh Tuesday Times report underscores that less than two hours after the market was struck, “President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russian ‘terrorists’ for the attack, and many media outlets followed suit.” The NY Times was at the time among those major outlets which uncritically went with Zelensky’s version of events.

  

  But the missile came from the Ukrainian side, with the NY Times’ investigators finding that it was a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile that hit the busy civilian area and killed and wounded scores.

  One of the key videos which the NYT analyzed to reach this conclusion was actually provided by Zelensky’s office, ironically enough. 

  According to the New York Times report, “evidence collected and analyzed by The New York Times, including missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts and social media posts, strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system.”

  “Further evidence reveals that minutes before the strike, the Ukrainian military launched two surface-to-air missiles toward the Russian front line from the town of Druzhkivka, 10 miles northwest of Kostiantynivka,” the report continues.

  The newspaper’s own correspondents were actually in Druzhkivka and reported hearing the outgoing missile launches which started at 2pm, and one journalist even record the sounds.

  In contrast to Kiev’s claims that it was a Russian missile launched by an S-300 system, the Times details the following:

  In the aftermath of the attack, Ukrainian authorities said Russian forces used a missile fired by an S-300 air defense system, which Russia has used both to intercept aircraft and strike targets on the ground. But an S-300 missile carries a different warhead from the one that exploded in Kostiantynivka.

  The metal facades of buildings closest to the explosion were perforated with hundreds of square or rectangular holes, probably made by cube-like objects blown outward from the missile.

  Measurements of the holes — and fragments found at the scene — are consistent in size and shape with one weapon in particular: the 9M38 missile, which is fired by the mobile Buk antiaircraft vehicle. Ukraine is known to use the Buk system, as is Russia.

  The investigative analysis also makes heavy use of open source intelligence, including photos and videos of the projectiles flying over the area, and the aftermath of the deadly strike. 

  Was it a tragic mishap when all Western media blamed Russia?

  “The attack appears to have been a tragic mishap.” https://t.co/6AP7t2ojhn

  — asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل (@asadabukhalil) September 19, 2023

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  The timing of the unusual NYT piece laying blame on the Ukrainian side is interesting, given it coincides with President Zelensky being in the US where he addressed the UN General Assembly and is later expected at the White House.

  Ukrainian officials and pro-Kiev pundits are outraged at the NY Times’ reporting, and have rejected the conclusion reached. Here’s one somewhat comical case in point of the NYT authors themselves being attacked for the findings…

  WARNING: I can tell you PERSONALLY @Tmgneff is a liar and a fabricator. He is widely criticized in Ukraine for lazy anti-Ukraine reporting that often violates the @nytimes own ethical standards manual. He makes wild assumptions & in my case he just MADE SHIT UP. His editor Matt… https://t.co/TkQqwuZkJE

  — Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) September 19, 2023

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  It also [presents the difficult question of whether there may be other atrocities or mass casualty events which were blamed on Russia, but were the result of weaponry from the Ukraine side. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:25

• California Legislature Approves $25 Per Hour Healthcare Worker Minimum Wage Bill
  California Legislature Approves $25 Per Hour Healthcare Worker Minimum Wage Bill

  By Kelly Gooch of Beckers Hospital Review

  The California legislature has passed a bill that would establish a $25 hourly minimum wage requirement for workers in hospitals and other medical settings.

  The bill, proposed in February, now awaits a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom and comes after union and hospital representatives reached agreement on how such a requirement could be addressed.

  Under the bill, cities and counties would be blocked from increasing pay via ballot measures for 10 years. 

  Workers at healthcare facilities with 10,000 or more full-time equivalent employees would earn $23 per hour starting in 2024, with pay increasing to $25 an hour in 2026. That affects workers including nursing assistants, medical coders, launderers and hospital gift shop workers, according to the Los Angeles Times.

  Workers at a hospital with a high governmental payer mix, an independent hospital with an elevated governmental payer mix, a rural independent covered healthcare facility, or a covered healthcare facility that is owned, affiliated or operated by a county with a population of less than 250,000 as of Jan. 12 would earn $18 per hour starting next year, with pay increasing to $25 an hour in 2033. 

  Urgent care clinics, skilled nursing facilities and other smaller facilities would be required to pay workers $21 per hour in 2024, with pay increasing to $25 per hour in 2028, according to the Los Angeles Times.

  The bill allows some healthcare facilities to apply for a temporary pause or alternative phase-in schedule of the minimum wage requirements if they have documentation proving financial distress. 

  Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, described the bill as a balanced approach that supports workers and protects jobs and access to care in vulnerable communities.

  “The bill creates a pathway to improving wages for our lower-wage healthcare workers, while also recognizing the needs of our state’s most troubled hospitals,” Ms. Coyle said in a statement shared with Becker’s. 

  “And, by preempting local ballot measures on minimum wage and compensation, all healthcare workers will be paid equitably regardless of where they work. SB 525 demonstrates hospitals’ commitment to healthcare workers, patients, and communities.”

  Tia Orr, executive director of Service Employees International Union California, also praised the bill.

  “Healthcare in California will be more accessible and equitable because workers and healthcare providers stood together and stood up for patient care,” she said in a statement. 

  She added that the bill also invests in a strong, diverse workforce. 

  “By and large, Black and brown workers have held the lowest-paid and most overlooked jobs in healthcare, so SEIU workers are particularly proud of this landmark investment in equity,” Ms. Orr said.

  Read more about the bill here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:05

• Zelensky Seeks To Cancel Russia At UN, Asks Why "Russian Terrorists" Have A Place
  Zelensky Seeks To Cancel Russia At UN, Asks Why “Russian Terrorists” Have A Place

  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to use his visit to the United Nations in New York to get Russia canceled from the international assembly. He questioned how it is that “Russian terrorists” have a seat at the UN. He also warned that Russia is poised to expand its war beyond Ukraine – an assertion with no evidence.

  “If in the United Nations there is a place for Russian terrorists,” Zelensky said, “it’s a question to all the members of the United Nations.” …Except that of course Russia doesn’t hold just any UN seat, but it’s permanent member of the UN Security Council, and exercises veto power in that capacity over the UNSC’s most important resolutions and major decisions.

  

  Zelensky made the comments on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), when he visited a hospital in Staten Island which is treating some 18 wounded Ukrainian soldiers. Zelensky has long warned that the UN is “hostage” to Russian policy.

  As for his UNGA speech the same day, given before some 140 nations, and after Biden spoke earlier, Zelensky went on the verbal attack against Russia, giving comments in English.

  “The goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order,” Zelensky said. He laid out that Russia is weaponizing essentials for survival like food and energy.

  “The goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order,” Zelensky said, also seeking to portray a pattern of Putin’s “aggression” from Georgia to Syria to Moldova. 

  He also alleged Moscow is committing “genocide” – and repeated media claims of Russia having “kidnapped” some tens of thousands of children. “Time goes by; what will happen to them?” He then called it “clearly a genocide.”

  Russia turned Syria into ruins – Zelensky

  I can see where it is going, projection speech , it is your owner the US who did , who is up to this day robbing Syrian people of oil and wheat . pic.twitter.com/9yMHPT2NOy

  — Dagny Taggart (@DagnyTaggart963) September 19, 2023

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  However, these reports of “Russia kidnapping children” have been based on the trend of Russian-speaking families of the Donbas in many cases willingly relocating to Russian territory, also given there had been a civil war raging there since 2014 involving pro-Kiev Ukrainians attacking pro-Russian Ukrainians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

  Zelensky also used it as an occasion to condemn any potential peace plan offered by a third party which requires that Ukraine cede territory. The New York Times wrote, “Ukraine has been seeking backing for a 10-point settlement program that demands a full Russian withdrawal and payment of reparations.”

  “Zelensky pitched the audience an idea for a summit with that program on the agenda — something Ukrainian diplomats say would be a symbolic success, even without any means to enforce such a settlement on Russia,” the report noted.

  Zelensky watches as Biden tells the U.N. General Assembly: “The United States together with our allies and partners around the world will continue to stand with the brave people of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/tRpixIcMOU

  — Will Mauldin (@willmauldin) September 19, 2023

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  The UN audience applauded when at the end of his remarks Zelensky said the world must work to “end the aggression on the terms of the state that was attacked.” He’s expected to later travel to Washington, where he’ll lobby for billions more in American taxpayer dollars to be pledged toward the war effort.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, employing his UN-speak, Zelensky for a moment talked about the world body’s “climate policy objectives”…

  Nord 👏🏻 Stream https://t.co/gTda04OYBP

  — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) September 19, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 19:45

• Trump Gambles On GOP Support For Abortion Compromise
  Trump Gambles On GOP Support For Abortion Compromise

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

  

  In a wide-ranging interview on with NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, former President Donald Trump described his approach to a potential federal abortion ban.

  “It’s a very polarizing issue. Because of what’s been done, and because of the fact we brought it back to the states, we’re going to have people come together on this issue,” he said.

  President Trump said he would seek to bring together a bipartisan group, hear all sides, and create consensus.

  “We will agree to a number of weeks, which will be where both sides will be happy. We have to bring the country together on this issue.”

  15 Weeks?

  He claims the activists pushing for abortion on demand with no restrictions represent only an extreme view that even many pro-life Democrats are against.

  “Nobody wants to see five, six, seven, eight, nine months,” he said, adding that laws that allow mothers to terminate babies even after they have been delivered alive should be done away with.

  Asked whether he would sign a 15-week ban that made it to his desk, he said “no.”

  “Let me just tell you what I’d do. I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable,” he said. “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months. You’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy. Because 92 percent of the Democrats don’t want to see abortion after a certain period of time.”

  He said many people have offered up the “15-week” period for a ban, which is early into the second trimester, but he wouldn’t consider legislation without bringing more people into the room first.

  “I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said, declining to say whether he would support a federal ban.

  “I’m not going to say I would or I wouldn’t,” he said, adding that he was proud of the overturning of Roe v. Wade because it gave the power back to the states.

  “For 52 years, people including Democrats wanted it to go back to states so the states could make the right,” he said. “I did something that nobody thought was possible, and Roe v. Wade was terminated, [it] was put back to the states. Now, people, pro-lifers, have the right to negotiate for the first time.”

  He clarified that the consensus he hoped to bring could result in state-level action instead of a federal ban.

  “It could be state or it could be federal. I don’t frankly care,” he said. “From a pure standpoint, from a legal standpoint, I think it’s probably better [remaining a state issue], but I can live with it either way.”

  “The number of weeks is more important,” he said, sharing that the public opinion on abortion has changed greatly in the last few years. “The most powerful people that are anti-abortion are okay with that [banning abortion after a certain period] now. And you know what? They weren’t okay with that even a year ago.”

  Former Vice President Mike Pence, for instance, previously stood his ground on the idea of a full abortion ban and no exceptions. He recently called on other GOP candidates to support a federal 15-week ban.

  Exceptions

  He further called out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, runner-up in the GOP lineup of candidates, for his six-week ban.

  “I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” he said, without specifying a reason. He added that exceptions in any abortion ban were critical. “I think people should have exceptions. I think if it’s rape or incest or the life of the mother, I think you have to have exceptions. It’s very important.”

  Tudor Dixon, a Republican who ran for and lost the governor’s seat in Michigan last year, recently said on a podcast that President Trump gave her advice on abortion policy which she failed to take.

  He had told her to “talk differently about abortion” when she took a hardline, no-exceptions approach.

  “We could not pivot in time, and it really, you were absolutely right, sir,” Ms. Dixon said.

  “And that’s what happened to a lot of other people and—didn’t happen to me because, you know, there’s a way of talking about it. They’re the radicals. They’re the radicals, and you have to explain it. And I think exceptions are very important. I think you need the exceptions. You and I talked about that,” President Trump said.

  DeSantis Responds

  Mr. DeSantis’s campaign responded on social media after President Trump singled out Florida’s six-week ban, criticizing his political rival’s conciliatory approach.

  “Trump says he will compromise with Democrats on abortion so that they’re nice to him,” the campaign wrote on an X, formerly Twitter, post. “RonDeSantis will NEVER sell out conservatives to win praise from corporate media or the Left.”

  Mr. DeSantis’s communications director Andrew Romeo added that previous compromises with Democrats brought “disastrous” results such as an unfinished border wall.

  Several states have a “heartbeat” abortion bill, which bans the procedure once a heartbeat is detectable in the womb, which is normally around the six-week mark. Most of these states have included exceptions in their abortion laws from the beginning, though Texas initially passed a no-exceptions ban, and later added exceptions.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 19:25

• Permanent Strike: Ford Lays Off 600 Workers Due To UAW Strike
  Permanent Strike: Ford Lays Off 600 Workers Due To UAW Strike

  As a result of the UAW strikes, 600 Ford employees will now be taking a permanent strike. 

  Just hours after it was reported that Stellantis could be shuttering 18 facilities as part of a new “improved” contract with the UAW, Ford faces additional realities of the ongoing strike: it has laid off 600 workers at the Michigan Assembly Plant’s body construction department, ABC Detroit reported. 

  The company said this week: “Our production system is highly interconnected, which means the UAW’s targeted strike strategy will have knock-on effects for facilities that are not directly targeted for a work stoppage. In this case, the strike at Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and paint departments has directly impacted the operations in other parts of the facility.”

  

  “Approximately 600 employees at Michigan Assembly Plant’s body construction department and south sub-assembly area of integrated stamping were notified not to report to work Sept. 15. This is not a lockout. This layoff is a consequence of the strike at Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and paint departments, because the components built by these 600 employees use materials that must be e-coated for protection. E-coating is completed in the paint department, which is on strike,” it continued.

  At the stroke of midnight last Friday, the United Auto Workers initiated their labor strike, focusing their initial efforts on three facilities—Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly Complex in Toledo, and a General Motors factory in Missouri.

  To add insult to collateral-damage-injury, Stellantis, in a recent bargaining move with the United Auto Workers union, has floated a contract proposal — that could result in the shuttering of 18 American facilities, according to CNBC, citing sources familiar with strike discussions. 

  On Tuesday, the head of United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, declared he will unleash additional strikes across manufacturing facilities of General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., and Stellantis NV on Friday. This move is contingent on the three automakers not properly addressing the union’s demands for a new four-year labor contract for its 146,000 members. 

  

  “Either the Big Three get down to business and work with us to make progress in negotiations, or more locals will be called on to stand up and go out on strike,” UAW boss Fain said in a YouTube video published Monday evening. 

  Fain said, “We’re not waiting around, and we’re not messing around. So, noon on Friday, Sept. 22 is a new deadline.” 

  The union said Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have “failed to put fair contract offers on the table.” A union representative told Bloomberg “no new offers” have come from the automakers “since the union made its latest proposals on Sept. 14, right before its strike began.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 19:05

• Yuan Dominates US Dollar In China Cross-Border Payments
  Yuan Dominates US Dollar In China Cross-Border Payments

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist,

  While the yuan is struggling in the foreign-exchange market, it continues to grow its market share in China’s cross-border transactions as the No. 1 payment currency.

  That reflects progress of the yuan’s internationalization in trade, as well as growing influence of foreign capital flows to China’s financial markets.

  

  The official settlement data Friday showed the yuan’s share in cross-border payments and receipts rose to a record 54% last month, compared with 41% for the dollar.

  The data include goods and services transactions, as well as cross-border investments.

  Since foreign investors trade Chinese stocks and bonds in the yuan, the ongoing opening of the capital market over the years has lifted the yuan’s market share in total transactions.

  August, for example, saw foreign investors sell a record amount of Chinese stocks, which should inflate the yuan’s share in total cross-border transactions.

  Even so, it’s still a long way before the yuan becomes a dominant international currency. 

  The latest data from SWIFT shows the yuan’s share in global payments rose to 3.1% in July, from 2.8% in June. It was dwarfed by the dollar’s 46% share and the euro’s 24%.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 18:45

• UN To Discuss How To Better Control The World At Annual General Assembly
  UN To Discuss How To Better Control The World At Annual General Assembly

  The UN’s charter outlines a grand mission statement of benevolent purpose, with its supposed root mission being the pursuit of global peace and security.  It is therefore ironic that the institution relies on a host of fabricated crisis events and ongoing conflicts in order to remain relevant.  As UN Secretary António Guterres argues: “The UN is not a Vanity Fair, it is a political body.”  And really, that is the problem.  There is no use for the UN other than to act as a foil for the eventual imposition of a faceless and unaccountable world government.

  The organization will always strive for more centralization as long as it exists; it does not care about peace, it cares about power.  Thus, every new crisis event is seen as an opportunity for these people, not as a threat that needs to be solved.    

  If you want to find the source of most of today’s political and social discord, all you have to do is examine the history of interventions by the UN.  For example, the very existence of ESG lending programs designed to create incentives for corporations to push woke propaganda and carbon controls on the populace started in the halls of the UN.  If you want to know where the rush towards “sustainable development goals” and where the concept of the 15 Minute City comes from, just check the white papers of the UN.  If you want to know who is funding a large portion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives globally, keep your eyes on the UN.

  

  While think-tanks like the WEF and summits like Davos are designed to keep political and financial elites informed on the overall agenda ahead, the UN is more of a vehicle for public engagement and implementation.  They are the “governing body” that is supposed to give legitimacy to the globalist obsession with world government.  They are the friendly face of the beast, and they come with many gifts and promises of justice and equity.    

  Of course, not everyone is buying it.  In fact, the general assembly this week appears to be centered on that very issue – UN officials are frustrated that their goals have been put on hold and the public is not taking them seriously.  This is the sentiment expressed by António Guterres in the following self organized UN interview summarizing the key topics to be discussed at the assembly.

  Main takeaways include:

  The lack of attendance by four of the five permanent security members with veto power, including Britain, France, Russia and China.  Only Joe Biden will be present at the meeting, and we have to wonder given his fading cognitive abilities how much that will actually matter.  

  Climate change hysteria will once again be at the forefront of UN talks.  The UN has consistently made false claims of record high temperatures (the records they use only go back 140 years and the Earth’s temps have been far higher in the past).  They also make false claims of increasing weather disasters (there is no evidence that today’s weather events are any more dangerous than those of the past century, and no evidence that man-made carbon has any effect on the weather).

  The UN wants to phase out fossil fuels, but this is impossible without a severe degradation of production and population.  There is no “green energy” alternative available to fill the void that fossil fuels will leave behind.  It would be a monumental disaster.  

  The UN wants to “reform” the international financial system.  Meaning, most likely CBDCs will be a point of interest at the assembly, as well as concepts like Inclusive Capitalism.  Reading between the lines, any trace of free markets will be done away with and replaced with a fully socialist framework; all in the name of “financial equity.”  The UN has consistently presented the idea that the economy must be fair, but there is no such thing as economic fairness.  Under socialism it is impossible to make everyone equally wealthy because governments cannot create wealth.  All they can do is steal wealth and make everyone equally poor.  

  UN sentiments on the covid pandemic match with those we have seen out of the WEF and WHO, which is that they are visibly perturbed that their efforts for universal medical authoritarianism failed.  We have seen this time and time again – Globalists are indignant over the lack of compliance from numerous countries and local governments on the lockdowns, mandates and vaccine passports.  

  Specifically, they are angry that the public was able to disseminate counter-information about covid even in the face of widespread censorship by Big Tech working in concert with political leaders.  They don’t like that so many of their covid claims have been debunked.  The UN wants a stronger World Health Organization with more influence over national pandemic response decisions as well as more control over what information is allowed to circulate online.  

  The Ukraine war will be presented as a prime scapegoat.  The UN blames the war for many of their programs on climate being disrupted (who cares about climate hysteria when the threat of WWIII looms large?).  However, it’s important to point out that the UN has made no viable effort to offer a diplomatic solution to the conflict.  In fact, it seems as if they prefer the war to continue (Zelensky will be there to beg for even more money to keep the coflagration going).   

  Guterres indicates that he sees no chance of peace “according to UN charter and international law.”  In other words, the UN is taking the same hard line stance as NATO, refusing to offer any concessions and avoiding all peace negotiations unless Russia exits Eastern Ukraine and Crimea completely, which is not going to happen.  The UN knows that this means the war will continue as long as NATO countries continue to supply arms to Ukraine, unless Russia eliminates every facet of the existing Ukrainian government.  

  Finally, the UN will be talking a lot about AI, but in the capacity of regulation more that capability.  The UN has sought to become the global regulator for AI for years as they continue to suggest that individual nation states cannot be trusted with the power that AI commands.  Why should the UN be trusted with AI more than anyone else?  This question is never addressed.

  This year’s assembly has launched with some undertones of angst, but this may very well be a part of the theater.  After all, globalists need international strife and chaos so that they can then offer their solution of centralization as the cure.  The UN might be hitting a brick wall today in terms of their climate and pandemic agendas, but there is always that next major crisis that could open doors for them in the near future.         

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 18:25

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• Beijing Furious At German FM's Dictator Remark: "Absurd Provocation" Insulting China's "Political Dignity"
  Beijing Furious At German FM’s Dictator Remark: “Absurd Provocation” Insulting China’s “Political Dignity”

  China on Monday reacted angrily after over the weekend a clip of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock referring to President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” went viral. Beijing summoned the German ambassador to China to lodge formal protest, saying it is “extremely dissatisfied” with the remarks which were given to Fox News during Baerbock’s visit to the US.

  China said it has “made serious inquiries” with the German government over the interview. Additionally in a daily briefing foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called the comments from Germany’s top diplomat “absurd” and blasted the “open political provocation” as the words “violate China’s political dignity”.

  

  Baerbock in the Thursday Fox interview had said “We will support Ukraine as long as it takes,” but then followed with: “If Putin were to win this war, what sign would that be for other dictators in the world, like Xi, like the Chinese president? Therefore, Ukraine has to win this war.”

  The dictator comment immediately grabbed world headlines, with the clip being shared widely on social media.

  “(The comments) are extremely absurd and are a serious infringement of China’s political dignity and an open political provocation,” China’s foreign ministry said.

  China far and away accounts for the bulk of all imports into Germany, with bilateral trade last year hitting record $337 billion.

  On Friday Baerbock met with her US counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the White House. Blinken said in a press conference afterward that the US and Germany are converging on their approaches to China.

  “We also discussed our common approaches to China, and we very much welcome Germany’s China strategy.  It is very coincident with our own,” Blinken told reporters. “I think it reflects something that we’ve seen around the world, both in Europe, in Asia, as well as in the United States, which is a growing convergence in our approaches to China.”  

  So the German Foreign Minister Bärbock called Xi Jinping a “dictator”

  I’m curious how the German car industry views these kinds of statements….
  🤔 pic.twitter.com/CgI4WC7ftk

  — Richard (@ricwe123) September 15, 2023

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

  He then emphasized while alongside the German FM, “Both of us, among other things, share the goal when it comes to our economic relationships of de-risking, not decoupling.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 02:45

• Libya Dam Disaster Shows Horrific Consequences Of US-NATO Imperialism
  Libya Dam Disaster Shows Horrific Consequences Of US-NATO Imperialism

  Authored by Chris Hedges via Common Dreams,

  “We came, we saw, he died,” Hillary Clinton famously quipped when Muammar Gaddafi, after seven months of U.S. and NATO bombing, was overthrown in 2011 and killed by a mob who sodomized him with a bayonet. But Gaddafi would not be the only one to die. Libya, once the most prosperous and one of the most stable countries in Africa, a country with free healthcare and education, the right for all citizens to a home, subsidized electricity, water and gasoline, along with the lowest infant mortality rate and highest life expectancy on the continent, along with one of the highest literacy rates, swiftly fragmented into warring factions. There are currently two rival regimes battling for control in Libya, along with an array of rogue militias.

  The chaos that followed Western intervention saw weapons from the country’s arsenals flood the black market, with many snatched up by groups such as the Islamic State. Civil society ceased to function. Journalists captured images of migrants from Nigeria, Senegal and Eritrea being beaten and sold as slaves to work in fields or on construction sites. Libya’s infrastructure, including its electrical grids, aquifers, oil fields and dams, fell into disrepair.

  

  And when the torrential rains from Storm Daniel — the climate crisis being another gift to Africa from the industrialized world — overwhelmed two decrepit dams, walls of water 20 feet high raced down to flood the port of Derna and Benghazi, leaving up to 20,000 dead according to Abdulmenam Al-Gaiti, Mayor of Derna, and some 10,000 missing.

  “The fragmentation of the country’s disaster management and disaster response mechanisms, as well as deteriorating infrastructure, exacerbated the enormity of the challenges. The political situation is a driver of risk,” said Professor Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.

  Taalas told reporters last Thursday that “most of the human casualties” would have been avoided if there had been a “normally operating meteorological service” which “would have issued the [necessary] warnings and also the emergency management of this would have been able to carry out evacuations of the people.”

  Western regime-change, carried out in the name of human rights under the doctrine of R2P (Responsibility to Protect), destroyed Libya – as it did Iraq – as a unified and stable nation. The flood victims are part of the tens of thousands of Libyan dead resulting from our “humanitarian intervention,” which rendered disaster relief non-existent. We bear responsibility for Libya’s prolonged suffering. But once we wreak havoc on a country in the name of saving its persecuted — regardless of whether they are being persecuted or not — we forget they exist.

  Karl Popper in “The Open Society and Its Enemies” warned against utopian engineering, massive social transformations, almost always implanted by force, and led by those who believe they are endowed with a revealed truth. These utopian engineers carry out the wholesale destruction of systems, institutions and social and cultural structures in a vain effort to achieve their vision. In the process, they dismantle the self-correcting mechanisms of incremental and piecemeal reform that are impediments to that grand vision. History is replete with murderous utopian social engineering — the Jacobins, the communists, the fascists and now, in our own age, the globalists, or neoliberal imperialists.

  Libya, like Iraq and Afghanistan, fell victim to the self-delusions peddled by humanitarian interventionists — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice. The Obama administration armed and backed an insurgent force that they believed would do the bidding of the U.S. Obama in a recent post urged people to support aid agencies to alleviate the suffering of the people of Libya, a plea that ignited an understandable backlash on social media.

  There is no official tally of the casualties in Libya that have resulted directly and indirectly from the violence in Libya over the last 12 years. This is exacerbated by the fact that NATO failed to investigate casualties resulting from its seven month bombardment of the country in 2011. But the total figure of those killed and injured is likely in the tens of thousands. Action on Armed Violence recorded “8,518 deaths and injuries from explosive violence in Libya” from 2011 to 2020, 6,027 of which were civilian casualties.

  “We came…we saw….he died.”

  A gloating Hillary Clinton receives the news that Muammar Gaddafi has been killed following the NATO intervention in Libya. pic.twitter.com/mL6CSDFYCU

  — MintPress News (@MintPressNews) September 14, 2023

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

  In 2020, a statement published by seven U.N. agencies reported that “Close to 400,000 Libyans have been displaced since the start of the conflict nine years ago — around half of them within the past year, since the attack on the capital, Tripoli, [by Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar’s forces] started.”

  “The Libyan economy has been battered by the [civil war], the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the World Bank reported in April of this year. “The country’s fragility is having far-reaching economic and social impact. GDP per capita declined by 50 percent between 2011 and 2020 while it could have increased by 68 percent if the economy had followed its pre-conflict trend,” the report says. “This suggests that Libya’s income per capita could have been 118 percent higher without the conflict. Economic growth in 2022 remained low and volatile due to conflict-related disruptions in oil production.”

  Amnesty International’s 2022 Libya report also makes for grim reading. “Militias, armed groups and security forces continued to arbitrarily detain thousands of people,” it says. “Scores of protesters, lawyers, journalists, critics and activists were rounded up and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances and forced ‘confessions’ on camera.” Amnesty describes a country where militias operate with impunity, human rights abuses, including kidnappings and sexual violence, are widespread. It adds that “EU-backed Libyan coastguards and the Stability Support Authority militia intercepted thousands of refugees and migrants at sea and forcibly returned them to detention in Libya. Detained migrants and refugees were subjected to torture, unlawful killings, sexual violence and forced labour.”

  Reports by the U.N. Support Mission to Libya (UNSMIL) are no less dire.

  Stockpiles of weapons and ammunition — estimated to be between 150,000 and 200,000 tons — were looted from Libya with many being trafficked to neighboring states. In Mali, weapons from Libya fuelled a dormant insurgency by the Tuareg, destabilizing the country. It ultimately led to a military coup and a jihadist insurgency which supplanted the Tuareg, as well as a protracted war between the Malian government and jihadists. This triggered another French military intervention and led to 400,000 people being displaced. Weapons and ammunition from Libya also made their way into other parts of the Sahel including Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Burkina Faso.

  The misery and carnage, which rippled out from a dismembered Libya, was unleashed in the name of democratization, nation-building, promoting the rule of law and human rights.

  The pretext for the assault was that Gaddafi was about to launch a military operation to massacre civilians in Benghazi where rebellious forces had seized power. It had as much substance as the charge that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, another example of utopian social engineering that left over a million Iraqi dead and millions more driven from their homes.

  Gaddafi — who I interviewed for two hours in April 1995 near the gutted remains of his home that was bombed by U.S. warplanes in 1986 — and Hussein were targeted not because of what they did to their own people, although both could be brutal. They were targeted because their nations had large oil reserves and were independent of Western control. They renegotiated more favorable contracts for their nations with Western oil producers and awarded oil contracts to China and Russia. Gaddafi also gave the Russian fleet access to the port of Benghazi.

  Hillary Clinton’s emails, obtained via a freedom of information request and published by WikiLeaks, also expose France’s concerns about Gaddafi’s efforts to “provide Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French Fran (CFA).” Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime adviser to Clinton, reported on his conversations with French intelligence officers about the motivations of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, the chief architect of the attack on Libya. Blumenthal writes that the French president seeks “a greater share of Libyan oil”, increased French influence in the region, an improvement in his domestic political standing, a reassertion of French military power and an end to Gaddafi’s attempts to supplant French influence in “Francophone Africa.”

  Sarkozy, who has been convicted on two separate cases of corruption and breach of campaign finance laws, faces a historic trial in 2025 for allegedly receiving millions of euros in secret illegal campaign contributions from Gadaffi, to assist with his successful 2007 presidential bid.

  These were the real “crimes” in Libya. But the real crimes always remain hidden, papered over by florid rhetoric about democracy and human rights.

  The American experiment, built on slavery, began with a genocidal campaign against Native Americans that was exported to the Philippines and, later, nations such as Vietnam. The narratives we tell ourselves about World War II, largely to justify our right to intervene around the globe, are a lie. It was the Soviet Union that destroyed the German army long before we landed at Normandy. We firebombed cities in Germany and Japan killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The war in the South Pacific, where one of my uncles fought, was bestial, characterized by rabid racism, mutilation, torture and the routine execution of prisoners. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were egregious war crimes. The U.S. routinely destroys democracies that nationalize U.S. and European corporations as in Chile, Iran and Guatemala, replacing them with repressive military regimes. Washington supported the genocides in Guatemala and East Timor. It embraces the crime of preemptive war. There is little in our history to justify the claim of unique American virtues.

  The nightmares we orchestrated in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are minimized or ignored by the press while the benefits are exaggerated or fabricated. And since the U.S. does not recognize the International Criminal Court, there is no chance of any American leader being held accountable for their crimes.

  No, it’s not “everyone’s fault”, Washington Post.

  Libya was the wealthiest country in Africa with the highest UN Human Development Index on the continent (see in 2010 👇).

  NATO intervened, bombed the place during 8 months, Hillary said “We came. We saw. He died” after… pic.twitter.com/iPC6V6Mjf0

  — Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) September 15, 2023

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

  Human rights advocates have become a vital cog in the imperial project. The extension of U.S. power, they argue, is a force for good. This is the thesis of Samantha Power’s book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” They champion the R2P doctrine, unanimously adopted in 2005 at the U.N. World Summit. Under this doctrine, states are required to respect the human rights of their citizens. When these rights are violated, then sovereignty is nullified. Outside forces are permitted to intervene. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the former president of the U.N. General Assembly, warned in 2009 that R2P could be misused “to justify arbitrary and selective interventions against the weakest states.”

  “Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world’s leading economic and military powers, above all, the United States, in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks,” writes Jean Bricmont in “Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War.” “Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, [a] large part of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention, discovering new ‘Hitlers’ as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.”

  The creed of humanitarian intervention is selective. Compassion is extended to “worthy” victims while “unworthy” victims are ignored. Military intervention is good for Iraqis, Afghans or Libyans, but not for Palestinians or Yeminis. Human rights are supposedly sacrosanct when discussing Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, but irrelevant in our offshore penal colonies, the world’s largest open air prison in Gaza or our drone-infested war zones. The persecution of dissidents and journalists is a crime in China or Russia, but not when the targets are Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

  Utopian social engineering is always catastrophic. It creates power vacuums that augment the suffering of those the utopianists claim to protect. The moral bankruptcy of the liberal class, which I chronicle in “Death of the Liberal Class,” is complete. Liberals have prostituted their supposed values to the Empire. Incapable of taking responsibility for the carnage they inflict, they clamor for more destruction and death to save the world.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/19/2023 – 02:00

• Antifa Discussed Plans To Firebomb Federal Buildings, Jan. 6 Court Filing Contends
  Antifa Discussed Plans To Firebomb Federal Buildings, Jan. 6 Court Filing Contends

  Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A group of self-identified Antifa supporters who wanted “civil war and revolution” on Jan. 6 sought online blueprints for federal buildings so they could firebomb them and discussed using a Roman legion formation to attack police lines, a Sept. 15 court filing alleges.

  

  Defendant William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, included the information in a renewed U.S. District Court push (pdf) to compel federal prosecutors to produce all bodycam footage and video filmed by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) undercover officers on Jan. 6, 2021.

  Mr. Pope, 37, publisher of the news website Free State Kansas, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, covering the protest and subsequent violence.

  Federal prosecutors charged him with civil disorder, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, impeding ingress or egress in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. He faces a July 2024 trial.

  According to Pope’s latest motion, MPD officers made a traffic stop at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 of a vehicle containing three Antifa operatives: Jonathan Kelly, Logan Grimes, and Dempsey Mikula.

  “Undercover officers who stopped their vehicle said they had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons,” Mr. Pope wrote. “No footage of this incident has been produced by the government in discovery. However, Kelly live-streamed part of the police stop to Facebook.”

  

  Mr. Kelly refused to allow police to search his vehicle, so they sent for a dog to sniff the vehicle for contraband.

  “A little over ten minutes into Kelly’s livestream, a team of uniformed MPD officers showed up to replace the undercover police,” Mr. Pope wrote. “These uniformed officers wore body cameras and instructed Kelly, Grimes, and Mikula to get out of the vehicle while they waited for the dog to arrive.”

  At least two of the undercover officers who made the traffic stop were wearing colorful bracelets that identified them as members of MPD’s Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU), which gathered intelligence and shot video around Washington and at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

  Nearly 30 members of the Electronic Surveillance Unit were assigned to duty on Jan. 6, 2021, some of whom were gathering evidence on crowd activity. Members wore a special band on their left wrist to identify themselves as part of the unit, according to the MPD’s 96-page Jan. 6 action plan.

  ‘We Are Antifa’

  The trio of Antifa adherents created a video of themselves singing “We are Antifa” on their drive from Michigan to Washington for the Jan. 6 events, according to a video exhibit filed by Mr. Pope with his motion.

  Metropolitan Police arrested Mr. Grimes—who identifies as a woman and uses the name Leslie—for carrying a pistol without a license and being in possession of a high-capacity magazine and unregistered ammunition, according to Mr. Pope.

  The U.S. Department of Justice “has deemed the Grimes arrest relevant enough to the Jan. 6 cases to produce body camera footage from the officer who transported Grimes from the scene of the arrest to the booking facility,” Mr. Pope wrote, “but the government has withheld recordings from the many other officers who were on scene during the stop, vehicle search, and arrest.”

  Charges against Mr. Grimes were dropped a day later, on Jan. 7, 2021.

  “This lack of prosecution compared to other January 6 cases and the fact that the government continues to hide information about the ESU officers who conducted the Antifa car stop and body camera recordings demonstrates the government is intentionally concealing information about this Antifa seditious conspiracy,” Mr. Pope wrote. “Such information is exculpatory in my case.”

  

  The three Antifa operatives communicated using a server on the social media platform Discord. That server—nicknamed ‘Insurgence’—was managed by John Earle Sullivan, the Black Lives Matter activist who filmed the shooting of Ashli Babbitt near the House of Representatives on Jan. 6, Mr. Pope wrote.

  Mr. Sullivan, 29, of Tooele, Utah, is charged with 10 Jan. 6 crimes, including civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, unlawful possession of a dangerous weapon on Capitol grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous or deadly weapon, and other federal charges. He faces an Oct. 23 trial in Washington.

  “Individuals using Sullivan’s Antifa server began discussing plans to look up blueprints for ‘tax buildings’ online so they could firebomb them by throwing fireworks into broken windows,” Mr. Pope wrote. “In addition to this, Antifa co-conspirators on Sullivan’s server began sharing tactical plans for attacking police lines using a Roman legion formation.”

  Discord Server Coordination

  Mr. Kelly and Mr. Grimes “were clearly conspiring with John Sullivan using Sullivan’s online server,” Mr. Pope wrote. “On December 29, 2020, John Sullivan posted an image of firearms and tactical gear on his Antifa server along with the message: “Civil War and Revolution.”

  Mr. Pope said he believes MPD undercover video and officer bodycam footage could contain more clues about communication and coordination between Mr. Sullivan and Antifa operatives.

  “This makes all ESU recordings and bodycam recordings of Sullivan, Kelly, Grimes, Mikula, and any other conspiring Antifa relevant to my defense, and the government has a Brady [Supreme Court decision] obligation to produce all such recordings and any other tips or related materials in discovery,” Mr. Pope wrote. “This also further justifies my request for the court to grant my motion to compel the government to produce all ESU recordings and body-worn camera footage.”

  At the top of the scaffolding near the police line on Jan. 6, Mr. Sullivan said, “This is a revolution, mother[expletives], let’s go, we taking this [expletive]!” Mr. Pope wrote. “After breaking through police lines, Sullivan said, ‘This [expletive] is ours’ and ‘we accomplished this [expletive].’

  “Sullivan then yelled for people down on the lawn to ‘get up here.’”

  Mr. Kelly, who wore a beige gas mask and carried a baseball bat, was the last person remaining on the southwest scaffolding at the Capitol and had to be removed by police, Mr. Pope wrote.

  

  “Kelly and Mikula then faced off with police lines and stayed at the Capitol past the curfew,” Mr. Pope said.

  Mr. Grimes and Mr. Kelly posted photos of themselves in the crowds near the Ellipse. Mr. Kelly “asked his Antifa co-conspirators on Sullivan’s server whether he should ‘start blasting [expletive] Donald Trump on my megaphone,’” Mr. Pope said. “This demonstrates that those conspiring with Sullivan had a general objective to cause chaos on January 6, 2021.”

  In previous court filings, Mr. Pope disclosed how an undercover MPD officer assisted protesters in climbing over barricades and encouraged them to continue up the northwest steps to the Capitol. He was heard on video participating in crowd chants such as, “Whose House? Our House!”

  More recently, Mr. Pope disclosed how MPD officers on the Capitol’s upper terrace retreated from one of the entrances, giving protesters free access to stream into the Capitol.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 23:40

• Watch: Freight Train Full Of Migrants Heading To Southern US Border 
  Watch: Freight Train Full Of Migrants Heading To Southern US Border 

  Fox News journalist Griff Jenkins shared a video on X showing a freight train packed with hundreds of migrants heading north toward the US border. This further suggests that President Biden’s new strategy to curb illegal southern border crossings may not work. 

  Jenkins explained the FerroMex freight train departed from Zacatecas, Mexico, on Sunday and is “heading to our southern border right now.” He said the migrants were cheering and clearly not heeding the message: do not come.”

  **NEW VIDEO**
  FOX News sources capture a FerroMex train bursting with migrants out of Zacatecas heading to our southern border right now… cheering and clearly not heeding the message: “do not come”@FoxNews pic.twitter.com/YflMwXrWqu

  — Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) September 17, 2023

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  The alarming video comes as President Biden changed up border policies to reduce the number of illegal crossings at the southern border. However, as The Wall Street Journal noted, “The New Plan Isn’t working”: 

  Border crossings from Mexico into the US are on the rise again after an unexpected drop in May and June, when the administration ended its use of the pandemic-era measure known as Title 42 and replaced it with a new set of policies it said would work as a better deterrent.

  US Border Patrol arrested roughly 182,000 people at the U.S.-Mexico border in August, a return to the same level of arrests it made the previous August under Title 42, according to people familiar with the data.

  WSJ pointed out:

  “The crux of Biden’s new strategy at the border is to dissuade migrants from crossing into the US illegally by increasing the penalties for doing so—and by offering them newly created paths to move here legally.” 

  X user Border Hawk revealed one of those rail lines migrants use to get to the border. 

  EXCLUSIVE: Hundreds of Migrants Reaching US Border by Train Every Day

  Border Hawk correspondent Efraín González reports from busy railway tracks in Piedras Negras, Mexico, where large groups of mostly-Venezuelan migrants are arriving daily before crossing illegally into Eagle… pic.twitter.com/Cp8fzIRm2m

  — Border Hawk (@BorderHawkNews) September 15, 2023

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  The latest report by New York Times journalist Julie Turkewitz indicates that migrant numbers heading to the US remain very concerning.

  🧵Last yr, 250,000 ppl crossed the Darién jungle in a desperate attempt to make it to the US. This year, that number has already reached 360k. @federicorios and I have returned again & again to the jungle, trying to understand this flow. Some anecdotes from our latest reporting. pic.twitter.com/I4CxCpM5oL

  — julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) September 14, 2023

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  Clearly, the Biden administration has failed to secure the border, but the administration still promotes the idea that its policies are working. Anyone with common sense can see otherwise, as the illegal crossing troubles on the border have spread to New York City and other imploding Democrat-run cities. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 23:15

• How Biden Will Circle The Wagons
  How Biden Will Circle The Wagons

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

  The strategies of saving the Biden presidency from an impeachment and a Senate trial despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption are starting to emerge.

  

  The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of Hunter’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.

  The Defense in Depth 

  One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting truth.

  Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what Hunter and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.

  But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of Hunter’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant untruth.

  And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of Hunter’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet Hunter’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to Hunter’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.

  Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.

  To breach this fourth defense line, House Republicans will have to break through the labyrinth of Biden paywalls and find how much money was rerouted into Biden coffers. And then they must additionally compare what came into the Biden hands with a) what the family reported on their respective income tax returns, and b) whether their various properties and lifestyles were remotely possible without such massive hidden income. And getting bank records from the Bidens will be near impossible.

  The Ukraine Factor 

  Joe Biden has successfully profited by using American foreign aid to stop prosecutorial inquiries into his son’s and, indirectly per the laptop admissions, his own quid pro quo payments from corrupt Ukrainians.

  The firing of Viktor Shokin who knew of Hunter Biden’s corruption was one of the most blatantly corrupt and self-interested acts of a Vice President since the career of Spiro Agnew. Still, there is no reason why Biden would now give up such a proven successful strategy.

  Yet there are important issues for Biden at stake. One, Viktor Shokin is convinced that the Bidens were recipients of Ukrainian bribes intended to win U.S. foreign aid and influence over American foreign policy in Eastern Europe and vis a vis Russia.

  And two, an FBI confidential source has sworn that “a foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them — 17 such recordings.” And three, to corroborate testimonies from these Ukrainian players or to subpoena the purported 17 recordings would now translate into risking the wrath of Joe Biden the giver of massive Ukrainian military aid—now likely over $100 billion—and formerly on record of being perfectly willing to cancel Ukrainian aid unless Kyiv bent to his personal agenda.

  Now in an existential war, Ukrainians will likely not wish either Viktor Shokin or Mykola Zlochevsky, former head of Burisma and said to be in possession of the 17 recordings (including two that purportedly involve Joe Biden directly), to embarrass much less help to remove Biden by producing evidence confirming their charges.

  So we should assume the Ukrainian government will do its best to protect Biden from fellow Ukrainian accusers, mostly by silencing any Ukrainian who would dare endanger their stream of arms and money. For Kyiv, the ongoing Biden exemption from impeachment and conviction is likely seen as a matter of life and death.

  The Big Lie

  A third defense has been outright lying, the bolder and more absurd, all the better. Here Joe Biden has prepped the lying battlefield, whether deliberately or inadvertently, both through his pathological fabrications about his autobiography and the events of our time, and by the collapse of his cognitive facilities.

  Either way, his lies are contextualized by the media as “that’s just ole Joe spinning his tales.” In Biden’s fantasy world, he visited Ground Zero the day after the September 11 attacks, he taught a course on “political theory” at the University of Pennsylvania, his son Beau came home from Iraq in a coffin, and a catastrophic fire nearly consumed the Biden residence.

  All these were not only lies, but callous lies that played on the emotions of those in crisis and suffering—to the purported empathetic advantage of Joe Biden himself. So Biden has no compunction of lying ad infinitum.

  Remember, for years he lied that he fired Shokin because he was corrupt, that his government knew that, that the Europeans agreed, and that he did not leverage U.S. aid to ensure Shokin did not pursue Hunter’s Burisma nefariousness.

  All that was a total lie, but a media-protected lie nonetheless that served Biden well for at least five years.

  So we should expect the Left to embrace the full Biden lie and claim his serial contact with Hunter was the natural concern of a dutiful father, one who has suffered family tragedies and merely periodically called and emailed to cement family solidarity with other equally aggrieved Bidens.

  And when evidence mounts that Biden really did receive funds via Hunter’s dummy companies we will be told that these were loans, or Joe was gifting them to grandchildren—or, most likely, Joe was completely unaware that such funds eventually found their way into his bank accounts and were used to buy and rent his various sumptuous residences.

  Trump 24/7

  At each stage of the walls closing around Joe Biden, a commensurate “Trump did it” news bulletin emerged. Collate the indictments or the leaks about impending indictments from the supposedly uncoordinated work of Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis both with iconic primary election dates ahead, and periodic revelations about the depth of Biden family corruption—and the synchronized distraction is quite stunning.

  Expect in the next year for each new incriminating document released, each new witness that comes forward with a tale of Biden corruption, almost immediately the headlines will blare about a new Trump gag order, a new scheduled Trump court appearance, a new flipped witness cooperating with a prosecutor, and a new leak about a “certain” conviction and jail time. The new media war will make its old Russian collusion’s “all-star,” “hunter-killer team,” and “dream team” prosecutors and the “bombshell” and “walls are closing in” revelations seem like child’s play.

  A Hit-bottom Media

  After being utterly discredited by fixating for years on the Russian “collusion” hoax, and hyping the laptop Russian “disinformation” fable, any professional media would by now have apologized, conducted mass firings, and pledged to report the news rather than massage and invent it.

  But no sooner does one media embarrassment end than the media ventures onto another, on the theory that it is so discredited and has hit bottom that it no longer has any reputation to defend. So a now liberated but bankrupt media feels it matters nothing whether its mythologies have a grain of truth.

  The Biden family corruption and the exemptions given Hunter Biden by a corrupt Biden department of Justice have been contextualized by the media as a prelude to what we can expect of the impeachment inquiry.

  In the modern American media, a Trump phone call threatening to delay offensive military aid until the Ukraine government could guarantee that its operatives were not empowering the Biden quid pro quo clan was an impeachable offense. A self-confessed Biden effort to alter US policy to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor, dutifully investigating the Hunter Biden/Biden family corruption, by threatening to cancel all U.S. aid to Kyiv was mere “familial” concern. Where incidentally is the outrage from current vehement supporters of blank-check, on-to-Moscow support for Ukraine over Joe Biden’s prior threats to cut critical military aid to Ukraine in efforts to ensure uninterrupted money streams to his own family treasure chest

  In sum, the media is more tarnished than ever, and therefore more dangerous because it accepts it has no reputation left to defend and now is entirely unbound to invent, to fabricate, and to smear.

  The Deep State

  In 2017 under media and Democratic pressure, the Trump-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions was bullied into recusing himself. He appointed in his place Robert Mueller as special counsel, empowered by an unlimited budget and a blank-check concerning time and resources to find “collusion.”

  In contrast, in 2023 the Biden-appointed AG Merrick Garland, under fierce criticism for delaying the Hunter Biden investigation in order to run out of the clock on the statute of limitations on tax fraud, appointed David Weiss as special counsel. He was the prior chief culprit in providing cover for Hunter from indictments. So the proverbial fox is now in charge of the hen house.

  In 2019 the “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella was considered a sacrosanct patriot, even though he had no firsthand knowledge of the supposed crimes he was accusing the president of committing. Instead, the whistleblower was selectively being spoon-fed information from Alexander Vindman, the expatriate U.S. Lt. Colonel, who, in the midst of his accusations, admitted he was offered the Ministry of Defense by the Ukrainian government. Vindman, currently in the second round of his careerist Ukrainian melodrama, is self-appointed CEO of his middleman company, seeking to profit from the war by facilitating the transfer and service of arms from the U.S. government to Ukraine.

  Note the difference: in 2023 whistle blowers are now considered rogues, whether they be honest IRS investigators sickened by the corruption of their own DOJ prosecutorial counterparts, or FBI agents tired of the warping of their agency to facilitate the Biden coverups.

  The net result will be a near impossible congressional task in forcing any federal agency to honor a congressional subpoena, as most will follow the Eric Holder model of a cocky snub of Congress with certainty of exemption.

  The “Do You Really Want President Harris?” Factor

  If the evidence trumps the Biden reliance on administrative state suppression, media bias and character assassination, there is one ace in the Biden hole—Kamala Harris. She is, as has been widely remarked upon, the Spiro Agnew of our age. (Yet the latter, in fact, on the stump was a Cicero in comparison to Harris’s 500-word vocabulary.)

  In other words, the country is more scared of a not corrupt Harris than it is a senile and crooked Biden. And Biden has done nothing to dispel those impressions given that such a Nixonian fear of his Vice President is his last ticket to finishing out his term.

  Not just Biden but millions in the country are anxious that the president is one fall, one new email disclosure from oblivion. His ensuing removal would not just give Harris the presidency in the next year and a half, but also the advantage of incumbency going into the 2024 election year and beyond.

  So expect that the more the proverbial noose tightens around Biden, all the more his West Wing will leak daily stories about Harris’s puerility, her lightness of being, and her abject incompetence, and the dangers she would pose to the republic.

  The DEFCON 1 Option

  There is a final nihilist gambit. If Biden is confronted with his own email evidence of corruption, tapes of his agreement to financial exchanges, bank accounts with large foreign deposits, and direct testimonies that he received cash, he has one last refuge: the “Hunter did it all!” ruse.

  Hunter is all too aware of his own danger. Collate his mischievous recent grifting artistic career, the Malibu-renting Hunter trying to plead poverty to reduce child-support payments, the mysterious cocaine that turns up in a West Wing cubicle, his laptop anger at his Mr. Big Guy’s and Mr. 10 Percent’s underappreciation of Hunter’s bagman role, and Hunter’s threat to call the President of the United States to testify that a now trapped Hunter is innocent of everything.

  The resulting picture that emerges is an out-of-control Hunter—who lost a laptop, a crack pipe, and an illegally registered handgun—now very worried that he will become Joe’s scapegoat.

  Hunter still believes he is a Samson that can pull down the Biden temple upon them all—if the alternative is that he is the only Biden to stew for years in jail.

  Remember, Hunter also knows his father all too well—Joe’s long resume of plagiarism, greed, arrogance, corruption, lying, and fantasies—and so rightly believes at some point Joe might easily shrug, and in one of his “senile” moments, utter, “Well, no Joke, man—it was all Hunter’s stuff, not mine.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 22:50

• Justin Trudeau Accuses India Of Extrajudicial Killing On Canadian Soil
  Justin Trudeau Accuses India Of Extrajudicial Killing On Canadian Soil

  An unprecedented major row in Canada-India relations has broken out into the open on Monday, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a televised speech to the House of Commons accused Indian intelligence of carrying out an extrajudicial killing on Canadian soil. 

  Trudeau cited “credible” intelligence pointing to “agents of the government of India” as being behind the June murder of a prominent Sikh leader named Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia.

  NOW – Canada’s Trudeau is accusing the government of India of being behind a fatal shooting on Canadian soil — CNC pic.twitter.com/rp1PRyKHwz

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 18, 2023

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  “Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” Trudeau announced in the speech to lawmakers.

  “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty. It is contrary to the fundamental rules by which free, open and democratic societies,” he continued.

  The stunning and unprecedented moment of such a severe accusation as this leveled among large nation-states is likely to send already tension-filled India-Canadian ties falling off a cliff. Trudeau had also revealed to parliament that he had raised the alleged assassination of the Canadian Sikh leader with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G-20 summit last week.

  Canada on Monday promptly expelled a top Indian diplomat, described as the head of Indian intelligence in Canada, amid an ongoing investigation. India is being asked to fully cooperate with the Canadian investigation.

  

  45-year old Nijjar had been shot dead in parking lot of a Sikh temple in Surrey after an evening service on June 18. Nijjar was a prominent figure of international stature in the Khalistan independence movement, which supports the establishment of separate state for Sikhs in India. Due to its separationist political activities, groups associated with the movement have been dubbed “terrorist organizations”. 

  Nijjar himself was a wanted man in India, described as among the country’s top wanted foreign “terrorists”.

  Here’s how Indian media has covered his killing, saying that a ‘terror leader’ had been shot, and accusing him of leading “training camps” in Canada for militants to carry out operations inside India…

  Khalistani terrorist “Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” chief of Canada based Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Surrey City of British Columbia province in Canada. #Canada India’s most wanted #Khalistani terrorist ‘Nijjar’ seen brandishing Assault Rifle pic.twitter.com/Of4t26tvFn

  — swathisankar (@swathisankar_2) June 20, 2023

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  Thousands of Canadian Sikh’s attended his funeral, and the killing has sparked outrage in Metro Vancouver’s large Sikh community.

  The Canadian government has meanwhile rejected the ‘terrorism’ narrative and has emphasized Nijjar’s Canadian citizenship. 

  #BREAKING: Canadian Foreign Minister @melaniejoly says Canada has expelled a top Indian diplomat accusing India of killing a Khalistani radical Canadian Citizen. Canada is escalating a diplomatic standoff with India. Expect more fireworks in coming days. pic.twitter.com/IldOaOwow8

  — Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) September 18, 2023

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  Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly in the wake of Trudeau’s Monday speech confirmed that the head of Indian intelligence in Canada, based out of the Indian embassy, had been expelled as a consequence. “If proven true this would be a great violation of our sovereignty and of the most basic rule of how countries deal with each other,” she said of the Nijjar murder.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 22:25

• 'It Was My Decision': Trump Defends 2020 Election Challenge
  ‘It Was My Decision’: Trump Defends 2020 Election Challenge

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

  President Trump gave some background on how the decision to challenge the 2020 elections came about.

  

  Former President Donald Trump received advice from many different people after the 2020 elections, and after weighing various opinions, as well as his own thoughts about it, he ultimately decided to formally challenge the results.

  In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, he spoke about what went into the decision.

  “I was listening to different people. And when I added it all up, the election was rigged,” he said. “It was my decision.”

  The two discussed the four criminal indictments against President Trump, including the one in Washington that alleges his actions in challenging the election went too far, tying the charges to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

  Ms. Welker asked why he decided to challenge the elections even after “the most senior lawyers in your own administration and on your campaign” told him he lost.

  “I didn’t respect them as lawyers,” he said, adding that former Attorney General Bill Barr had allegedly been afraid of an impeachment inquiry and acted to avoid that, and many others he had hired based on recommendations. “But I did respect others.”

  “It’s my choice,” he added. “I happen to know that the election was rigged,” he said, referring to evidence he had initially planned to release after the Georgia indictment of him, also for challenging the election results. On the advice of his current legal counsel, the evidence will be a part of his defense in upcoming trials instead.

  Ms. Welker asked if the 45th president, who is far ahead of other GOP candidates running for office in 2024, whether he believed he lost the 2020 elections.

  “I say I won the election,” he clarified.

  “Even though, again, your lawyers told you you did not,” she said.

  “Some people told me that. But many people told me the opposite,” he responded, leading her to question why he listened to “outside lawyers” who “had crazy theories.”

  “Were you listening to them because they were telling you what you wanted to hear?” she asked.

  “You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened. I watched that election, and I thought the election was over at 10 o’clock in the evening,” he said.

  “It was my decision,” he said.

  January 6

  The former president clarified his role of Jan. 6, 2021, as well.

  Special counsel Jack Smith is now prosecuting the Washington case against President Trump, alleging conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy against rights. They relate to Jan. 6 only in terms of his calls to delay the vote certification in Congress on that day.

  “First of all, I had very little to do with January 6th,” he said, referring to the Capitol breach. “I was asked to speak, and I was the President of the United States. I’m allowed to do that.“

  He said that “hundreds of thousands of people were there, and it was a beautiful, beautiful sight,” and that he spoke “peacefully and patriotically” at the event. He told Ms. Welker he had thought about going into the Capitol that day, but Secret Service advised him to go back to the White House.

  “I wanted to go down peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol. Secret Service, who I have great respect for, said, ‘Sir, it’s better if you don’t do that. It could be unsafe,'” President Trump said. He clarified they didn’t mean they anticipated a riot, but because with such a large crowd, a single assailant would have significant cover. “So I didn’t have a dispute with them.”

  He further alleged that the breach happened because then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turned down his offer of 10,000 additional National Guard. “She’s responsible for January 6th,” he alleged. “And the J6 Committee refused to interview her.”

  He noted that the treatment of those who were present was one reason he decided to run for reelection.

  “People that went [there], that didn’t even go into the building, have suffered gravely,” he said, pointing out that rioters in cities across the country calling to “defund the police” were not prosecuted in the same way. The Department of Justice has thus far brought 1,100 cases against those who were present on Jan. 6, and efforts continue.

  “When you launched your campaign in March, you told the crowd, quote, ‘I am your retribution.’ What does that mean? What does that look like?” Ms. Welker asked President Trump.

  “I think retribution is talking in terms of I have to protect people,” he said. “What they’re doing to people is so horrible. They’re putting people in jail for long periods of time. Firemen, policemen, accountants, even lawyers. They’re in prisons for years now and don’t even have trials in some cases.”

  “I’m talking about fairness,” he said, adding he was open to pardoning those who were wrongly imprisoned, and dismissing rumors that he planned to fire or target his political opponents. “I’m looking to appoint an attorney general who’s going to be tough on crime and fair. Very simple.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 22:00

• Hold On To Your Wallets! Zelensky's Back In Town
  Hold On To Your Wallets! Zelensky’s Back In Town

  The Ron Paul Institute explains that after shipping some $45 billion in military equipment to Ukraine, the Biden Administration is bringing Ukrainian President Zelensky back to Washington to beg for more money. But with the war going badly for Ukraine and strong US opposition to spending more on the effort, it looks to be an uphill battle.

  Also today: who was the armed guy impersonating a cop at the RFK rally…and why can’t RFK get Secret Service Protection? Finally…Homeland Security has a new target: you! Watch today’s Liberty Report:

  * * *

  Zelensky is first expected to attend and will likely address a special session on Ukraine at the UN Security Council (UNSC). This means fireworks and controversy will likely be unleashed at the assembly as it will be a rare moment that the Ukrainian leader speaks at a forum with Russian representatives in attendance, given Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member of the UNSC. Some 140 world leaders will attend the UN General Assembly in New York City this week.

  The following day, Zelensky will drop in to the White House and attend meetings on Capitol Hill. He’s expected to press for more advanced weaponry, to be delivered at a faster rate, but Richard Gowan, an expert on the United Nations at the International Crisis Group, has explained to the AFP: 

  “If he’s too hardline, he may actually turn this opportunity into a bit of a diplomatic crisis,” he said.

  And the Washington Post agrees that with the counteroffensive going so badly, it’ll be a tough sell…

  Ukrainian officials had hoped to ride into New York this week touting major gains in their summer counteroffensive, but Russia’s entrenched forces have stymied efforts to achieve a major breakthrough, and both sides continue to sustain heavy casualties.

  The conflict’s toll on food and energy prices has accelerated calls in the developing world for a negotiated settlement. And support among the American public has been slipping as a segment of the Republican Party criticizes the war effort’s estimated $73 billion price tag.

  Still, WaPo calls Zelensky the “conflict’s most charismatic voice” and it’s expected he’ll present a dramatic narrative of horrific Russian atrocities and human rights abuses.

  But by and large his “star power” has faded since his first visit to Washington in December 2022, given also the fickle American public has generally grown war-weary, recent polls reflect, and as headlines covering the conflict have come and gone with rapidity, getting less and less featured in the front pages of US newspapers or on the big TV networks when compared to the frequency of a year ago.

  A sampling of what can be expected of Zelensky’s messaging in New York and Washington this week:

  “We are fighting … a nuclear state that threatens to destroy the world,” says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

  “If Ukraine falls, what will happen in ten years? … If [the Russians] reach Poland, what’s next? A third world war?” https://t.co/uDGl2LK1w1 pic.twitter.com/AbFq6zPFxj

  — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 17, 2023

  Currently, there’s ongoing talk within the administration of Ukraine getting approval for the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which has a max range of 190 miles. Certainly Zelensky is going to press for this and more. Will Biden make this the focus of a “big” announcement when he greets Zelensky at the White House later this week?

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 21:35

• Chinese Spy Balloon Collected No Intelligence, Milley Now Says
  Chinese Spy Balloon Collected No Intelligence, Milley Now Says

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

  In February, a Chinese balloon floated over the US, prompting politicians on both sides of the aisle to claim Beijing was threatening Americans. The event led American officials to cancel high-level meetings with their Chinese diplomats. Seven months later, Gen. Mark Milley said the balloon never collected intelligence.

  Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told “CBS News Sunday Morning” the US intelligence community does not believe the craft collected intelligence but still maintained it was a “spy balloon.” America’s top general said, “The intelligence community, their assessment – and it’s a high-confidence assessment – [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon.” Milley continued, “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with a high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn’t transmit any intelligence back to China.”

  

  In Early February, a large balloon was spotted in the northern US. The craft was immediately claimed to be a spy craft by American officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken slammed Beijing’s decision to fly the balloon over the US as “both unacceptable and irresponsible.” America’s top diplomat then canceled a meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister.

  On Sunday, Milley, who is retiring later this month, explained that the Chinese balloon ended up over the US due to unexpected weather. “Those winds are very high,” the general said. “The particular motor on that aircraft can’t go against those winds at that altitude.”

  From the start, Beijing has contested Washington’s claims that the craft was intended for surveillance, insisting it was merely a weather balloon for scientific purposes. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Washington’s response to the balloon damaged bilateral relations. “This is a clear overreaction that seriously contravenes the spirit of international law and customary international practice,” he explained. “What the US did has had a grave impact on the efforts and progress made by China and the US in stabilizing bilateral relations.”

  Still, politicians told Americans the balloon was a threat. Senator Lindsey Graham claimed Beijing was “up to no good.” “I don’t know crap about balloons, but I got common sense that if the Chinese got a balloon with three tractor trailers hitched to it, they’re up to no good,” the senator stated. “And why would you let them go to South Carolina? This makes no sense, it doesn’t pass the smell test, and this is dangerous.”

  Democrat Sen. Jon Tester called the balloon “a clear threat.” While Democrat Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi “Indeed, this incident demonstrates that the CCP threat is not confined to distant shores — it is here at home and we must act to counter this threat.”

  Earlier this year America’s military defenses were put on notice against a Chinese balloon believed to be on an espionage mission. Gen. Mark Milley talks about what we’ve learned from an examination of the balloon’s wreckage. https://t.co/mPOmaAgfBE pic.twitter.com/83rMjPV6Hd

  — CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) September 17, 2023

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

  Senator Ted Cruz described the balloon as a threat and attacked President Joe Biden for not shooting down the craft over the US. “He allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States, over sensitive military installations, exposing not just photographs but the potential of intercepted communications.” He added, “[Shooting down the balloon] is absolutely what the president should have done. Unfortunately, he didn’t do that until a week after it entered US airspace.”

  Biden ordered the military to shoot down the balloon after it had passed over the US and it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. In the weeks after the Chinese craft crossed American skies, Biden ordered the military to shoot down three additional balloons. The Pentagon later admitted that all three craft were civilian-launched weather and hobby balloons.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 21:10

• Digital Second Amendment Unveiled: Anti-Woke AI Bot Equips Users With "Newest Weapons Of Digital Age"
  Digital Second Amendment Unveiled: Anti-Woke AI Bot Equips Users With “Newest Weapons Of Digital Age”

  Earlier this year, Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT gained significant popularity. Even though JPMorgan suggests the AI bubble may have leveled off recently, the momentum in AI chatbot development continues. 

  Mainstream AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google’s Bard attempt to sound neutral or refuse to answer provocative questions because their AI trainers and corporate funders are ‘woke’ and embrace government censorship. Many folks complained earlier this year about left-leaning biased answers from these woke AI bots. 

  “The danger of training AI to be woke — in other words, lie — is deadly,” Elon Musk posted on X in December after another user asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for a version of ChatGPT with the “woke settings” turned “off.” This led Musk to tweet earlier this year about creating his own uncensored chatbot that is free of corporate or governmental control. 

  Musk likely kicked off the counter bot (anti-woke bot) movement. The first of its kind, GatGPT, free of safety filters and woke guardrails, has been released by Defense Distributed, the company that pioneered the first 3D-printed firearm over a decade ago. 

  

  “GatGPT” leverages a pre-trained large language model fine-tuned on both general instruct datasets and expert, domain-specific firearm datasets. Defense Distributed created a subset of the GPT-4 OpenOrca dataset that is free of political and ethical contamination. 

  

  The team that built GatGPT, led by Cody Wilson, contends AI safety is a pretext for censorship and political control. They have declared a “[[Digital Second Amendment]]” that pledges to protect and distribute “the newest weapons of the digital age, not just to defend ourselves against corporate and government depredation, but to defend our civic identity and humanity.” 

  Wilson’s team laid out a series of events this year that shows what’s coming down the pipe: AI censorship by Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, elites: 

  • CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman before Congress, May 2023: “Government intervention will be critical.” Please regulate us!

  • CEO of Anthropic Amodei before Senate Judiciary Committee , July 25th 2023: Presentation “Oversight of AI: Principles for Regulation”. Please prevent the public from making weapons with AI!

  • Sept. 13th, 2023 Chuck Schumer holds private chamber, off the record, closed to the public meeting with heads of the large US AI firms. Elon Musk, caught afterward by the press, says Schumer did a “great service to humanity.” All present were asked to raise their hands in support of AI regulation.

  “This is an open conspiracy against the public. But it is too late,” the team said. 

  They expanded more on GatGPT and how the Digital Second Amendment will help shield law-abiding citizens from tyranny at the highest levels: 

  Our federal government operates in a partnership with large, private firms to anticipate and informally execute the government of the American people regardless of official action. It launders its agenda. After Russiagate and COVID, we all know of the alliance between the tech oligarchies and the national security establishment. Their union has produced a “counter-disinformation” complex whose goal is the total control of the Internet and public speech.

  AI journalism is uniformly produced in assistance of the narrative that the public requires regulation in advance of a national security event or, as is more fashionable, because the public cannot be trusted to live online with its own information interests. American journalism is here an extension of our government’s civil service.

  Defense Distributed, in releasing GatGPT, declares a Digital Second Amendment. Americans must have access to compute, databases, and AI models, the newest weapons of the digital age, not just to defend ourselves against corporate and government depredation, but to defend our civic identity and humanity.

  Ours is not a Magna Carta for Cyberspace. We know the disastrous history and direction of Internet regulation. The Communications Decency Act passed in response to a moral panic over online pornography, and only accidentally yielded the protections of Section 230. The story repeats itself with public and private attempts to regulate the people’s cryptography, printable gun files, and Bitcoin. 

  AI regulation is an open and official provocation against the Liberty and Sovereignty of American citizens. All who advocate for it are domestic enemies of the Constitution and must be absolutely opposed. The right of the people to keep and deploy models shall not be infringed.

  The rise of censor-free bots is only just beginning.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 20:45

• California Gov. Newsom Boosts AI "Misinformation" Fears, Complains Of "Micro-Cults" Around Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan
  California Gov. Newsom Boosts AI “Misinformation” Fears, Complains Of “Micro-Cults” Around Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan

  Authored by Christina Maas via ReclaimTheNet,org,

  In yet another criticism of free speech, Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom of California is setting his sights on artificial intelligence (AI), voicing his concern over supposed “misinformation” circulating online.

  

  Newsom flagged misinformation as a pivotal issue during a Bloomberg AI interview, signifying a growing avenue where possible free speech issues arise.

  Newsom’s concern isn’t merely hypothetical.

  Overwhelmed by fear of a so-called online “micro-cult” scenario, he cited popular commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson and podcast heavyweight Joe Rogan, among others, as alleged promoters of potentially harmful viewpoints.

  “[Separately] I really worry about the misinformation, disinformation…

  …about what’s happening with our country, but I really worry about these micro-cults that my kids are in…

  …I say micro-cults because I don’t know if there’s a better way to describe it.

  …My son is asking me about Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson. And then immediately he’s talking about Joe Rogan. And I’m like; here it is, the pathway,” Newsom said.

  That’s not to say Newsom is entirely anti-AI; quite the contrary.

  He revealed his regular use of AI, crediting it for paving paths his administration wouldn’t have otherwise traversed.

  It even bested him and his team at drafting his State of the State speech, he claimed, and he appeared rather pleased with the comparative function of AI services Bard and ChatGPT.

  And, of course, “democracy” itself is at risk…

  “We’ve talked to some friends, and you may know them well, I won’t name them, who say this is the last quote unquote fair and free election of our lifetime.

  These are pretty credible people.

  Unless we dramatically do things differently. And some would suggest that’s not the case, that already the ability for bots to… direct people into these micro cults, already is outsized in terms of its influence.

  That’s pretty alarming when you think about it in those terms.”

  Interestingly, ChatGPT has been previously revealed to harbor a partisan bias.

  *  *  *

  If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 20:20

• "They Were Laughing": Rogue Gang Of Teens Brutally Beat Gas Station Clerk In Lawless Seattle
  “They Were Laughing”: Rogue Gang Of Teens Brutally Beat Gas Station Clerk In Lawless Seattle

  A violent assault on a Seattle gas station clerk by teenagers, all for $100 and cigarettes, further highlights the growing culture of violence plaguing America’s younger generation. 

  Local news Fox 13 said the gas station clerk in Normandy Park was attending the register Friday night when a gang of young teens, driving a stolen Kia and Hyundai, ransacked the store, and in the process, one of the kids brutally beat the clerk while the others stole $100 from the register and cigarettes. 

  They pummel a woman in order to steal cigarettes in Seattle. How many more of these videos until the public starts to demand another round of tough-on-crime legislation?pic.twitter.com/qWC9cd9PSh

  — Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 18, 2023

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

  “Kids don’t seem to fear anything anymore,” Leah Johnston, the gas station cashier at Friendly Normandy Market, told Fox 13, adding, “There’s like, no repercussions for them the way there used to be.” 

  Johnston is correct. Progressive cities like Seattle have defunded police and only emboldened criminals to commit thefts and other violent crimes. 

  She explained the robbery only lasted 25 seconds. During it, she described, “They were laughing. They had no [regard] for anything. They don’t care anymore.” 

  Johnston continued, “I know of people who have been robbed, I know in the back of my mind it can always happen. But, I never thought that I would be attacked the way I was attacked.”

  King County Sheriff’s Department was dispatched to help with the investigation to identify the six suspects, some of whom were teens. 

  In a separate incident in August, only to be reported over the weekend after progressive mainstream media failed to report it, were two teens who murdered a bicyclist “for laughs” with a car in Las Vegas. 

  🚨Las Vegas juveniles involved in two hit-and-run crashes after stealing Hyundai & recording their crimes. One of their victims, a 64 yr old male, was riding a mountain bike & later died of his injuries. Both juveniles were caught by LVPD.

  TikTok generation, smh! 🫤 pic.twitter.com/k4o0bKqQip

  — Joanne (@NewportBeachNBT) September 16, 2023

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

  Nationwide, there’s an alarming trend in violence committed by teens. Some experts question if mental health issues stemming from Covid lockdowns are the reason for the outbursts of violence. Or perhaps Hollywood desensitizes teens with violent movies, songs, and video games. Or maybe it’s social media or the state promoting fatherless homes.

  While it’s too early to tell why the younger generation feels the need to reenact scenes from the video game ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ failed social justice reform has only fueled a crime wave rocking major metro areas.  

  Maybe it’s time for the Biden administration to address the violent youth crime wave that is now killing innocent law-abiding Americans. Remember, the government is supposed to work for law-abiding taxpayers — not the other way around. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 19:55

• US Debt Rises Above $33 Trillion For The First Time, Soars By $1 Trillion In 3 Months
  US Debt Rises Above $33 Trillion For The First Time, Soars By $1 Trillion In 3 Months

  On Sept 6, when looking at the latest daily debt numbers, we predicted that total US debt would hit the very special (at least for Masons) number of 33 in two weeks.

  Early by 2 days. https://t.co/HZ9INBIFRf

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 18, 2023

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

  We were off by 2 days, with the US treasury naturally obliging by hitting the number early rather than late.

  Today, the Treasury announced that for the first time, total US debt has surpassed $33 trillion, rising by $56 billion in one day, and by a mindblowing $1 trillion in just the past 3 months!

  

  The historic breakout takes place just weeks before the interest on total Federal debt is set to hit $1 trillion, surpassing how much the US spends on defense – and soon after – every other outlay category.

  

  Finally, for those who expect a happy ending, we have one word: “don’t.”

  Here is the CBO’s latest debt forecast. It shows that US debt is now set to hit $50 trillion by 2030 (probably much sooner though), and then proceed exponentially higher until the US currency finally collapses.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 19:30

• Sullivan's 'Secret Talks' With China Were Set Against Backdrop Of Turnover, Upheaval In Xi's Cabinet
  Sullivan’s ‘Secret Talks’ With China Were Set Against Backdrop Of Turnover, Upheaval In Xi’s Cabinet

  Hours of “constructive talks” between top US and Chinese officials on the island of Malta on Sunday were done in secret. The delegations spent 12 hours together in total for the two day intense talks.

  A note from Rabobank says there’s more than meets the eye, given some recent unexplained upheaval in Xi’s administration [emphasis ZH]…

  Chinese Foreign Secretary Wang Yi met with US National Security Advisor Sullivan in Malta over the weekend in the latest attempt to soften US-China relations ahead of a possible meeting between Presidents Biden and Xi.

  The Malta meeting comes four months after a secret meeting between Chinese and US officials in Vienna. In view of Xi’s absence from the recent G20 meeting in India, and the tensions between the US and China, there is concern as to whether he will show for the APEC gatherings in San Francisco in November. 

  The Malta meeting has taken place at a time of rising speculation about the transparency, and possibly, durability of Xi’s leadership. A second Chinese minister has reportedly been removed from public view. Defense Minister Li Shangfu has apparently disappeared, this follows the absence of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

  The disappearance of another Minister raises concern about Chinese politics

  Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu recently addressed a China-Africa security forum in Beijing, stating that the world was entering a new phase of “instability.” However, concerns are emerging regarding… pic.twitter.com/wz6lBOYI8u

  — Spotlight on China (@spotlightoncn) September 18, 2023

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

  * * *

  A follow-on readout from Sullivan’s office described the Malta talks as “part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage the relationship.” 

  It said “The two sides had candid, substantive, and constructive discussions, building on the engagements between President Biden and President Xi in Bali, Indonesia in November 2022.” Listed among key topics of discussion were global and regional security issues, including in the Taiwan Strait, as well as the war in Ukraine.

  The Biden administration has previously expressed concern that fraying relations and worsening communications could lead to “unintentional confrontation” if the spiral is not halted. 

  A US official has told Reuters “there have been some small or limited indications” that Beijing is ready to reopen some cross-military communications with the Pentagon. The deconfliction hotline was severed following the August 2022 visit of then House speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

  Also, could Gen. Mark Milley’s weekend comments to “CBS News Sunday Morning” been an attempt to further defuse tensions by downplaying the February spy balloon incident? Certainly that had been another key moment that drastically worsened US-China relations.

  

  “The intelligence community, their assessment – and it’s a high-confidence assessment – [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon.” Milley said, “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with a high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn’t transmit any intelligence back to China.”

  Likely the subject was broached in the Malta meetings between Sullivan and Wang Yi. Perhaps it’s an attempt to bury the hatchet and get past the balloon drama. But interestingly, just on the heels of the Malta meetings…

  Beijing and Moscow were expected to step up their strategic coordination as China’s top diplomat Wang Yi kicked off a four-day visit to Russia for security talks ahead of a possible visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin next month.

  China’s foreign ministry announced on Monday that Wang, the Chinese foreign minister and a Politburo member who heads the Communist Party’s foreign affairs office, will be in Russia until Thursday for the annual strategic security consultation meetings.

  Beijing’s foreign ministry further called this visit to the Russian capital “routine activity” – and it marks the Chinese top diplomat’s second such visit to Moscow since February.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 19:05

• Military Finds F-35 Debris 80 Miles From Pilot's Ejection Area 
  Military Finds F-35 Debris 80 Miles From Pilot’s Ejection Area 

  Update (1842ET):

  ABC 15 local news reported that military ground teams have found “parts and debris” linked to the lost F-35B Lightning II near Indiantown Road in Florence County, South Carolina.

  #BREAKING A source told ABC15 Monday evening that military ground crews have found parts and debris associated with the F-35 Lightning II Jet just off Indian Town Road in Florence County. https://t.co/dUeZgxpbrV pic.twitter.com/d5pU6i3wtz

  — WPDE ABC15 (@wpdeabc15) September 18, 2023

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

  “The location where the debris and parts were found is roughly 80 miles from where officials say the pilot ejected near North Charleston on Sunday,” WPDE ABC15 noted.

  

  According to ABC 15, locals in the area mentioned hearing a low-flying fighter jet on Sunday, followed by a loud bang.

  SCDNR is blocking the road at Bartells Crossroads in Williamsburg County after parts and debris from the F-35 Lightning II Jet were found.https://t.co/dUeZgxpbrV pic.twitter.com/aGWkG8oEqo

  — WPDE ABC15 (@wpdeabc15) September 18, 2023

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

  The military has called for a two-day hat of all aircraft, both domestically and internationally. The developments in this story become more bizarre by the day.

  BREAKING: U.S. officials have ordered a 2-day stand down for all military aviation inside as well as outside the United States after an F-35 jet went missing in South Carolina.

  This keeps getting more bizarre.

  According to ABC News, “no units are allowed to fly” unless there is… pic.twitter.com/SuIv7x0N1K

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 18, 2023

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

  The Babylon Bee provides a comedic take on the incident…

  Military Personnel Seen Wandering Forest Pressing Button On F-35 Key Fob https://t.co/ldY58GhEe0 pic.twitter.com/EDvV60tqiC

  — The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) September 18, 2023

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

  What remains a mystery is why the pilot ejected. 

  *   *   * 

  Update (1456ET):

  The F-35 is still missing. However, the flight tracking website Flightradar24 has revealed numerous aircraft have been searching an area north of North Charleston. 

  The US military is searching for a missing F-35B in South Carolina after the pilot ejected yesterday and the jet kept flying. If you have seen an F-35 in the woods, please contact the US Marines. pic.twitter.com/rpueqxuP0J

  — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) September 18, 2023

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

  *   *   * 

  “How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace wrote on X Sunday night, adding, “How is there not a tracking device, and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?”

  Now that I got that out of the way. How in the hell do you lose an F-35?

  How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?

  — Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) September 18, 2023

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

  On Sunday afternoon, Joint Base Charleston, an air base in North Charleston, was working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to “locate an F-35 that was involved in a mishap“. The pilot ejected safely from F-35B Lightning II, but there were no immediate crash reports. 

  We’re working with @MCASBeaufortSC to locate an F-35 that was involved in a mishap this afternoon. The pilot ejected safely. If you have any information that may help our recovery teams locate the F-35, please call the Base Defense Operations Center at 843-963-3600.

  — Joint Base Charleston (@TeamCharleston) September 17, 2023

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

  The fact that the $140 million stealth fighter disappeared without any reports of a crash means it might have gone down in a sparsely populated area. The Drive pointed out, “The DoD is saying the F-35B was put on autopilot prior to the ejection.” 

  Military expert and former British military officer Frank Ledwidge told Newsweek the F-35 “could likely travel hundreds of miles without its pilot.” 

  “Historically, an aircraft without a pilot can fly a long way on autopilot,” added Frederik Mertens, a military analyst with the Hague Center for Security Studies.

  The Washington Post quoted Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston, who said the F-35’s transponder was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined.” 

  Joe Biden’s Pentagon can’t find a freaking F-35 jet, but don’t worry—they know exactly where all our money in Ukraine is going. https://t.co/mquDTXUCd9

  — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 18, 2023

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

  Have you guys checked Ukraine? pic.twitter.com/2t3mgjib2d

  — Prison Mitch (@MidnightMitch) September 18, 2023

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

  *Developing… 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 18:42

• How Far Are We From Revolution?
  How Far Are We From Revolution?

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  Our government, or the unelected billionaire globalists behind the curtain, are telling us the bad guys are Russia and China.

  I do not consider them enemies. I consider them countries acting in a way that benefits them.

  The U.S. is the global bully, intimidating and bribing countries to do their bidding.

  Ukraine, the most corrupt country in the world, and the playground of the Biden Crime Family, has been utilized by Biden and his neo-con handlers, to try and bleed Russia so they can beat them in their next war. Instead, they have used the young men of Ukraine as cannon fodder, leaving that country with no future.

  That’s what the U.S. global empire does. It destroys.

  Franklin was right.

  

  The government is telling us who the bad guy is, but the real bad guys are them.

  We will not be allowing our youth to be used as cannon fodder in their next wars of choice.

  These lunatic sociopaths are willing to initiate Armageddon to achieve their goals.

  Before they can accomplish this destruction we will have to decide when revolution will be absolutely necessary.

  That time will be within the next few years. The choice is yours.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 18:40

• Trump Leads Biden Nationally As RealClear Asks 'What Happened To DeSantis?'
  Trump Leads Biden Nationally As RealClear Asks ‘What Happened To DeSantis?’

  Former President Donald Trump would claim victory over President Biden, according to a pair of recent polls from CBS News/YouGov and Harvard Harris (which no longer disclose how many Democrats were oversampled).

  

  🇺🇲 2024 Presidential Election: CBS News

  (R) Trump 50%
  (D) Biden 49%

  Independents
  (R) Trump 57%
  (D) Biden 42%

  YouGov (B+) | 2,385 LV | 09/12-15https://t.co/cCxvWvc9QI pic.twitter.com/H78gjkJWkS

  — InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 17, 2023

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

  When broken down by party identification (or lack thereof), 57% of independents chose Trump vs. Biden’s 42%, while just 34% of everyone polled thought Biden would be able to finish a second term if reelected.

  Biden is well below Trump in terms of job approval at this point in their terms…

  

  But Trump and Biden are tied for favorability, with the recent trend towards Trump…

  

   

  44% think Biden wouldn’t be able to carry out an entire second term, while most voters say Trump would.

  Registered voter respondents were also asked if they find Trump and Biden to be physically and mentally healthy enough to serve as president, finding that only 28 percent of voters think Biden is physically well enough, while most say the 45th president is. Just 16 percent of voters say only Biden is physically healthy enough to serve, while 44 percent say Trump is the only one who is healthy enough. Another 12 percent see them both as physically fit versus 28 percent who say neither are. -Breitbart

  Trump’s lead over Biden increased in the Harvard-Harris poll, at 44% vs. 40%. Trump would lead Vice President Kamala Harris by 46% to 40%.

  📊 NEW NATIONAL POLL

  PRES:
  (R) Trump 44% (+4)
  (D) Biden 40%

  (R) Trump 46% (+6)
  (D) Harris 40%
  ——
  GOP PRES:
  Trump 57% (+47)
  DeSantis 10%
  Ramaswamy 8%
  Haley 6%
  Pence 4%
  Christie 2%
  Scott 2%
  ——
  Harris/Harvard (B) | 09/13-14 | RVshttps://t.co/ijtm7Fnk9p pic.twitter.com/DWu9Tr28I8

  — InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 15, 2023

  (Anyone else getting a ‘potentially sensitive content’ warning on the Trump electoral map?)

  pic.twitter.com/tK8MJJzHju

  — Brittany Rae (@legitbrittFLA) September 15, 2023

  Ron who?

  Meanwhile, RealClear Politics‘ Sean Terende asks: “What happened to the DeSantis campaign?”

  

  DeSantis isn’t quite a penny stock, but he briefly fell behind Vivek Ramaswamy among bettors, and languishes with primary season voters at just 14.9% in the RealClearPolitics Average.

  

  What went wrong? It’s important to acknowledge up front that it is still early. As late as October of 2007, Hillary Clinton held a 26-point lead over Barack Obama. At this point in 2007, John McCain was in fourth place, behind Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson. For that matter, eventual second-place finisher Mike Huckabee was polling at just 3% nationally. Eventual winner John Kerry was in third place in Iowa.

  But none of those contenders had been in first place previously. It seems that there is a difference between being an unknown to whom the public eventually warms, and being a known quantity that the public changes their mind about. Regardless, while the DeSantis campaign is likely not dead, it is clearly in a bit of a predicament. How did this happen? It seems that there are four factors:

  He doesn’t know his own brand. After the 2022 elections, DeSantis’ “lane” in the GOP primary campaign seemed pretty clear: He’s Donald Trump, but able to get things done. Or, if you prefer, “Trump, but without the baggage.” DeSantis had many of the traits MAGA Republicans most liked about Trump. He was willing to battle the media. He didn’t apologize for his actions. In the parlance of the times, “He fights.”

  DeSantis also notched up a series of high-profile wins, including taking on the college board over the content of the AP African American History curriculum, replacing the leadership of a famously liberal state school, and going to war with the Walt Disney Co. over its progressive practices. One could fairly say that the current backlash against “woke corporations” began in Florida.

  That opened a pretty good line of attack against Trump. Yes, Trump was an important course correction for the Republican Party, whose leadership had become too concerned with currying favor in the D.C. “Swamp.” Yes, he showed that it was possible to fight on issues that the GOP establishment had written off as too toxic, and still win elections.

  But, the argument went, Trump was ultimately ineffective. At the end of four years, there was no wall, much less a wall financed by Mexico. Obamacare wasn’t repealed, much less replaced. And it was hard to say with a straight face that Trump had really hired only the “best people,” after his cabinet was constantly reshuffled and moved around. Trump’s constant tweeting and punching back at political detractors, regardless of their station in the political pecking order, created a constant stream of mini-storm that distracted from his agenda.

  In other words, DeSantis was well-positioned to argue that he’d take the lessons of Trump, but could deliver on the promises. It was a good strategic position as well, as it wouldn’t require him actually to attack the still-popular (within the Republican Party) Trump.

  Instead, DeSantis seemingly opted to re-run Ted Cruz’s failed 2016 campaign. While he had initially defended Florida’s ban on abortions after the 15^th week of pregnancy – a position that is broadly popular among the American public – DeSantis later pushed for and signed a six-week ban, which is much less popular. He attacked Trump for being too progressive on trans rights. He claimed Trump had tried to push through an “amnesty” bill on immigration.

  The problem here is twofold. First, that approach was tried by Cruz and others in 2015 and 2016, and it failed spectacularly. There’s no reason to believe it would suddenly work in 2023 after Trump’s actual presidency.

  This leads to the second problem: People either don’t believe it or don’t care. Few people consider Trump a hard-charging social conservative on gay rights or abortion, but this is a known quantity at this point (and whatever else you may say about his beliefs, Trump’s three justices provided the conservative margin of victory in Dobbs). No one is going to get to Trump’s right on immigration. Other issues, like Trump’s refusal to pursue entitlement reform and his profligate spending, are throwbacks to an earlier GOP that likely no longer exists.

  DeSantis’ opponents aren’t giving up. In 2015 and 2016, one of the keys to Trump’s success was that the anti-Trump wing of the GOP was splintered among many candidates, all eager to try to get to the “final round” against him. Something similar seems to be happening in 2023. Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Christie and Tim Scott are all competent candidates with different appeals to different types of anti-Trump Republicans. Vivek Ramaswamy gives no indication he wants to leave the field anytime soon. This is potentially consequential in Iowa, where Trump is polling below 50% in the RealClearPolitics Average.

  In short, while DeSantis had hoped – and many analysts expected – that this would morph into a two-person race, that situation has not materialized. Instead, what we have right now is a one-person race, and a second tier occupied by four or five other candidates. Moreover, none of those candidates really has any incentive to drop out right now, given DeSantis’ stumbles and the chance for someone to claim the momentum that was once his. In other words, Republicans find themselves in a similar dynamic to the one that prevailed in 2015 and 2016, with whatever anti-Trump momentum there is split among multiple candidates, none of whom has a clear incentive to leave the race.

  He’s not up to the task. While DeSantis’ big win in Florida ought not be dismissed, we should also remind ourselves that the road to the presidency is paved with the bones of overhyped campaigns that wilted under the national spotlight. DeSantis has proved to be awkward on the national trail, with difficulty gladhanding and connecting with “regular” people. Case in point: his awkward expression when asked about trailing in the polls.

  DeSantis is certainly not the first politician to suffer from this fault. Bob Dole was criticized for always seeming grumpy, despite the fact that he was recognized as one of the funniest members of the United States Senate during his tenure. Those who know the Clintons say they’d rather be stuck in an airport with Hillary than Bill. But the presidency isn’t about a candidate’s “true” self; it’s about the external-facing product that the public is asked to choose to lead the country.

  Events, dear boy, events. Perhaps the most frustrating possibility is this: The Republican nomination was never really there for Ron DeSantis to win. It is there for Donald Trump to lose. Under this telling, a large part of the reason why DeSantis was competitive with Trump in November and December was that November of 2022 reminded Republicans about the costs of Donald Trump, with Trump-endorsed candidates losing close races nationally and likely costing Republicans control of the Senate.

  This started to turn around for Trump not when he began to hit DeSantis. Rather, it happened when the possibility that criminal indictments of the former president brought by Democratic prosecutors – or prosecutors hired by Democrats – transformed into a reality. It enabled Trump to focus media attention on himself and his campaign. Perhaps most importantly, it inherently positioned him as a Republican fighting against Democrats and the media, two of the things for which Republicans tend to like him the most.

  In other words, DeSantis was, and continues to be, captive to events. Had Trump’s candidates won in 2022 rather than lost, we probably wouldn’t even be talking seriously about what went wrong for DeSantis, because his campaign would have been stillborn. Perhaps events will break his way again in the future. But it seems more likely that they won’t.

  Sean Trende is senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. He is a co-author of the 2014 Almanac of American Politics and author of The Lost Majority. He can be reached at strende@realclearpolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter @SeanTrende.

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 18:15

• Your WiFi Can See You
  Your WiFi Can See You

  Authored by Mr.E via BombThrower.com,

  When police suspected Danny Kyllo, an Oregon man, of growing cannabis in his home they drove to his house with a thermal imaging device to scan it. They found hot pockets in the house, which were used to obtain a search warrant and subsequently bust Kyllo.

  Fortunately, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision ruled the scan an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant the police did not obtain.

  

  Score one for privacy, but the government is about to have a far more controversial and dangerous tool at its disposal to monitor what’s going on inside your home.

  Unlike a thermal imager, this device is already in your home – and you put it there.

  How It Works

  WiFi is electromagnetic waves in the 2.4 and 5 GHz ranges. It’s the same thing as the light you see, only it can penetrate walls due to its much longer wavelength. Just like light (and echolocation) these waves also reflect off various surfaces and, when reconstructed properly, can be used to create an image.

  Development of this technology goes back at least as far as July 2005, where researchers claimed at an IEEE Symposium that they had created an ultra-wideband high-resolution short pulse imaging radar system operating around 10 GHz. The applications for which were explicitly for military and police use, providing them with “enhanced situation awareness.”

  A few years later, in 2008, researchers at UC Santa Barbara created an initial approach for imaging with WiFi that they presented at IEEE ACC 2009. A year later they demonstrated the feasibility of this approach.

  The Race is On

  Sensing the potential of this new surveillance technology, other researchers began piling on. Progress was initially slow but, in 2017, two researchers in Germany demonstrated the ability to do WiFi imaging using techniques borrowed from the field of holography. According to Philipp Holl, an undergrad student and lead study author who worked with Friedemann Reinhard of the Technical University of Munich to develop the new method, “The past two years have seen an explosion of methods for passive Wi-Fi imaging.”

  At the time, the technology could only make out rough shapes of things. “If there’s a cup of coffee on a table, you may see something is there, but you couldn’t see the shape,” Holl says, “but you could make out the shape of a person, or a dog on a couch. Really any object that’s more than 4 centimeters in size.”

  The Controversy Begins

  In 2018 the team at UC Santa Barbara published a paper titled “Et Tu Alexa?” examining the potential threats of this emerging technology. They examined the problem of adversarial WiFi sensing and the risk to privacy resulting from the widespread deployment of wireless devices, which could be used to track your precise physical location, movement, and other physiological properties.

  Fortunately, they also propose some countermeasures for defending against such attacks to reduce the quantity and quality of the WiFi signals captured by the attacker, such as Geo-fencing and rate-limiting. These methods are not as effective with IoT devices, though, due to the frequency with which they make transmissions.

  The Breakthrough

  Up until this point it was necessary to use frequencies higher than commercial WiFi (2.4 and 5 GHz) to achieve decent imaging resolutions. That all changed in February 2019 when a team from Michigan State University published a paper in IEEE Access outlining how they were able to use signals at 5.5 GHz, which matches the 802.11n/ac WiFi protocol, to create a 2-D image of two reflecting spheres and a reflecting X-shaped target, concluding “full 2-D imagery is possible by capturing the WiFi signals present in typical environments.”

  Adding AI and Going 3-D

  At MobiCom 2020, researchers from the University of Buffalo, presented their WiPose technology, touted as “the first 3-D human pose construction framework using commercial WiFi devices.” This system uses the 2-D imaging technology previously discussed to construct a 3-D avatar of the humans captured by it. The system uses a deep learning model that encodes the prior knowledge of human skeletons in the construction process of the 3-D model.

  In 2019, former DARPA contractor Ray Liu launched his first commercial product in the WiFi sensing domain. Pitched as a way of “Making the world safer, healthier, and smarter,” the original military and law enforcement usages mentioned when this technology was born in 2005 were cast aside. The company claims the technology is so accurate that it can sense your breathing using nothing but standard WiFi signals.

  In a 2021 company blog, Liu discusses the development of IEEE 802.11bf, a new WiFi protocol, which is aimed at standardizing WiFi imaging across all devices – thus making it easier for companies such as his to exploit compatible wireless networks. Liu was elected to serve as IEEE President for 2022, and the new standard continues to be developed to this day.

  Further refinements to the imaging technology itself have been made. In late 2021 another paper was submitted to IEEE outlining how the researchers were able to achieve high-resolution imaging results with commercial WiFi signals using beamforming on the 802.11n/ac protocol.

  Ready for Production

  The perfect WiFi imaging system may have just been introduced to the world in December 2022, when researchers from Carnegie Mellon University married the latest in WiFi sensing technology to a human form estimation engine known as DensePose.

  

  (Left Column) image-based DensePose (Right Column) WiFi-based DensePose

  DensePose is a technology developed by Meta/Facebook, beginning in 2018. It’s very similar to the WiPose system we previously discussed and aims at “mapping all human pixels of an RGB image to the 3D surface of a human body.” The researchers modified DensePose so that, rather than taking an RGB image, it would be compatible with the imagery being produced by state-of-the-art WiFi sensing technologies. The resulting system “can detect the pose of humans in a room based solely on the WiFi signals passing through the environment.”

  Big Brother’s New Eyes

  It’s telling how the pitch for this technology has pivoted from military and police use to keeping people safe in their own homes. The true purpose of this is obviously for law enforcement, the military, and intelligence agencies. We already live with mass digital surveillance and if you don’t believe that this won’t get incorporated into their plans to monitor everything you do, then you haven’t been paying attention.

  Apart from putting CCTV cameras in everyone’s living spaces, this technology offers a comprehensive and supremely surreptitious way of putting eyes in every room of your house and place of work. Indeed, this just may become the norm. With nearly a third of Gen Z favoring the installation of government surveillance cameras in your home, this less-intrusive method may just find even broader support from the brainwashed masses. It will be possible to know where you are in the house and exactly what you’re doing, from sitting on the toilet to making love.

  We’ve seen how easily intelligence agencies can get secret warrants to surveil anyone of particular interest. We’ve also seen just how easy it is for someone to become a target for surveillance. You very well might, one day, find your WiFi router and access points feeding imagery to an alphabet agency that didn’t like your social media posts, while armed thugs wait for the perfect moment to execute their next no-knock raid.

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to the Bombthrower mailing list to get these posts as they come out, and follow Mr. E via his Substack and Twitter.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 17:50

• $250 Million NYC Condo Sees Price Slashed To $195 Million After A Year Without Selling
  $250 Million NYC Condo Sees Price Slashed To $195 Million After A Year Without Selling

  A 17,500-square-foot (1,626-square-meter) condo that sits on the top of Extell Development’s Central Park Tower was once listed for $250 million.

  A year after its listing, and a year after failing to sell, the price has been slashed by 22%, to $195 million, according to a new report from Bloomberg. 

  Gary Barnett, founder and chairman of Extell, talked down the price cut to Bloomberg: “The original pricing on these units were headline prices.”

  Sure. 

  He continued: “We have recently sold a significant amount of inventory at the top of the building and now want to get serious about selling these two showcase homes as well, so we lowered the prices to closer to where we think they will trade.”

  The building is at Billionaires’ Row building on West 57th Street and the apartment in question starts at the 129th floor. It sports 23 total rooms, including seven bedrooms and a ballroom, which is of course a “must have” for any apartment in New York City. 

  

  As Bloomberg notes, the $238 million that Ken Griffin paid for a place at 220 Central Park South still remains the highest price tag ever on a New York Apartment. The Extell Central Park Tower unit doesn’t look as though it will challenge Griffin’s purchase price. 

  And in what is likely a sign of the “cooling housing market” times, another property of Extells, a 12,600-square-foot duplex, also saw its price slashed from $175 million to $149.5 million earlier this year. 

  Jonathan Miller, president of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. concluded: “Even with the new price, the brokers will probably have a lot of work to do.”

  Recall last week Zero Hedge contributor Wealthion published an interview with Danielle DiMartino Booth explaining why the housing market in the U.S. was in for a “Category 5” storm that could rival the great financial crisis. You can watch that video here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 17:25

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• European Elites' Dream Of Power Crumbles As Security Threats From Russia, Africa, & The Mid-East Grow
  European Elites’ Dream Of Power Crumbles As Security Threats From Russia, Africa, & The Mid-East Grow

  Authored by Marek Cichocki via Remix News,

  For a long time, the major capitals of Western Europe dreamed their beautiful dream about how the EU, as a power, would become an increasingly important actor in building security policy after the end of the Cold War. In this dream, Great Britain was supposed to be the European anchor in transatlantic relations with America.

  

  Somewhere at the turn of the first and second decade of the 21st century, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel established a key division of labor between themselves. According to this, Paris was responsible for the security of the Mediterranean basin and West Africa, while Germany, due to its relations with Russia, was supposed to “take care” of the security of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea basin.

  However, recent years have shown the complete failure of these plans. One by one, elements of the beautiful dream of power fell apart.

  Brexit ejected Great Britain from the orbit of European integration. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s Eastern policy collapsed. The disastrous intervention in Libya, followed by subsequent military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as the entrenchment of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group there, clearly indicate that French leadership in European security policy toward Africa has ended in complete disaster for the time being.

  One might think that all these events would be enough for the European elite to realize the need to abandon dreams and return to reality.

  However, the only reaction to the geopolitical crisis in Europe is the proposal to establish majority decisions in the area of the EU’s foreign and security policy, which de facto means accepting the dominance of Paris and Berlin.

  The current situation, however, requires a fundamental change in Europe’s thinking and action. Some time ago, there was an idea circulating to create a European Security Council by EU countries.

  Perhaps it is worth returning to it, provided it would establish a mechanism based on the real military resources of states and their competencies in the field of international policy. The current way of thinking about Europe’s security policy is still, unfortunately, some kind of mirage growing out of the old imperial and colonial ambitions of powers.

  It ignores the growing potential of Central and Eastern European countries, mainly Poland, but also the Baltic and Scandinavian states. Above all, however, it has proven to be completely ineffective.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/18/2023 – 02:00

• You're Not Supporting Ukraine Enough Until The Nuclear Blast Hits Your Face
  You’re Not Supporting Ukraine Enough Until The Nuclear Blast Hits Your Face

  Authored by Max Abrahms, op-ed via NewsWeek.com,

  What happened to Elon Musk this past week showcases how completely unhinged and dangerous U.S. policy to Ukraine has become.

  The condemnation began when the Washington Post published excerpts from a new biography on Musk revealing that he turned down a Ukrainian request to help launch a major sneak attack in September 2022 on the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

  There were numerous, legitimate reasons why Musk refused to activate his Starlink internet services for Ukraine to carry out the unprecedented, surprise attack on Russian naval vessels: Musk was providing terminals to Ukraine for free; he was not on a military contract at that time; the late-night request came directly from the Ukrainian—not American—government; and Starlink had never been activated over Crimea because of U.S. sanctions on Russia.

  Most importantly, Musk was concerned that enabling the attack could result in serious “conflict escalation.” He worried that he was being asked to turn on Starlink for a “Pearl Harbor like attack” and had no wish to “proactively take part in a major act of war,” possibly provoking a Russian nuclear response.

  In response to this nuclear aversion, Musk was called “evil” by a high-level Ukrainian official and “traitor” by American war enthusiasts. 

  Rachel Maddow on the Russia conspiracy network MSNBC said Musk was “intervening to try to stop Ukraine from winning the war.” Not to be outdone, CNN‘s Jake Tapper described Elon as a “capricious billionaire” who “sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally,” an act that demands “repercussions.” For his part, chief Iraq war salesman-turned-Democrat-darling, David Frum, said that Musk must be stripped of his U.S. government contracts for not reflexively acceding to the Ukrainian Starlink request, and former “progressive,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, called for an immediate Congressional investigation “to ensure foreign policy is conducted by the government and not by one billionaire.”

  ‼️ @SenWarren demands an investigation into SpaceX after Musk blocked Ukraine from extending the Starlink network near Crimea.

  “The Congress needs to investigate whether we have adequate tools to ensure foreign policy is conducted by the government and not by one billionaire”. pic.twitter.com/p3I19Yk851

  — Ostap Yarysh (@OstapYarysh) September 12, 2023

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  But the Musk pile-on was just getting started. In the days that followed, his detractors used a Ukrainian operation as proof that Musk was overreacting. Days after the Starlink story broke, Ukraine successfully launched British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into the Russian naval headquarters in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. It was the largest attack since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly 19 months ago, and it damaged a Russian submarine and warship.

  When the military action was not followed by World War III, Musk was torched again. As the pro-war media noted, “It was precisely such a strike, according to Musk, that should have provoked a nuclear war.” A torrent of international relations pundits on Twitter mocked Musk, tweeting things like “I was assured by an internet service provider executive that this would have caused WWIII and the use of nuclear weapons” and “How’s it going man, after the splendid attack on Sevastopol? WW3 started already?”

  

  Musk’s detractors might think this is all very funny, but attacking Crimea—not to mention the Russian mainland in increasingly frequent drone strikes on Moscow—is no laughing matter. Even the staunchest Western war enthusiasts from the NATO-aligned Atlantic Council to the Estonian defense minister to Biden’s own Secretary of State Antony Blinken all previously acknowledged that threatening Crimea is a possible “red line” that could lead to nuclear war.

  As the Russian military specialist Nicolo Fasola pointed out in April, “There’s a definite risk that Putin would use nuclear weapons to counter a Ukrainian offensive in Crimea. And that’s why Ukraine’s Western allies are reluctant.”

  But that previous caution has faded—no doubt as a result of the much-touted counteroffensive disappointing American war planners, leading to a seemingly endless and halting war of attrition reminiscent of World War I. Meanwhile, Biden’s political legacy is on the line as the presidential election looms.

  The longer the war goes on, the more the Biden administration and its NATO allies are throwing caution to the wind. Biden keeps consenting to supply weapons previously ruled out as excessively escalatory, from Patriot air defense systems to Abrams tanks to cluster munitions to F-16’s. The latest reversal is over the expected transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems that can fly up to 190 miles, enabling Ukrainian forces to strike far beyond Russia’s defensive positions inside Crimea and deep into Russian sovereign territory.

  National Security advisor Jake Sullivan used to rule out ATACMS “to ensure that we don’t get into a situation in which we are approaching the Third World War.” Even CNN, an enthusiastic advocate for greater American involvement in the war, has acknowledged the “fears about escalating the conflict.”

  A couple months ago, Senator James Risch of Idaho told the Aspen Security Forum, “I’m tired of hearing about escalation. I want Putin to wake up in the morning worried about what he’s going to do that’s going to cause us to escalate.” Biden apparently now agrees.

  The view now ruling the Democratic Party and the President is the same as the warmongers: It’s silly to worry as Musk does about turning the Ukraine war into something catastrophically worse. It’s un-American not to try to find Russia’s redline for starting World War III. It’s traitorous to believe—as the President himself did, just a few months ago—that we should be doing all we can to prevent escalation.

  The new mantra seems to be: We’re not trying hard enough in Ukraine until we feel the nuclear blast against our faces.

  *  *  *

  Max Abrahms, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and author of Rules for Rebels: The Science of Victory in Militant History.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 23:15

• The Hits Just Keep On Coming: China Suffers Biggest FX Outflow Since 2016 Amid Sudden Surge In Capital Flight
  The Hits Just Keep On Coming: China Suffers Biggest FX Outflow Since 2016 Amid Sudden Surge In Capital Flight

  And the hits just keep on coming for China.

  With its economy on the verge of a Japanification vicious loop, where record debts, lead to distressed selling, repayment of debt, contraction in the money supply, falling asset prices, a wave of bankruptcies, surging unemployment, a slowing economy and a crisis of confidence, which then leads to money hoarding and deflation…

  

  … not to mention a growing property crisis, shadow banking crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, a record collapse in foreign direct investment…

  

  … China is now also facing a sudden surge in FX outflows: according to Goldman’s preferred gauge of FX flows, China’s net outflows were $42bn in August, the fastest pace of outflows since December 2016 when China was reeling from the 2015 shock yuan devaluation, vs the already concerning $26bn outflows in July (which we discussed last month). Foreign investors’ net selling of equities through the stock connect channel rose materially in August, contributing to the acceleration of outflows. Goods trade related inflows remained robust on the other hand.

  Here are the key points from the latest data:

  1. In August, China experienced $24bn in net outflows via onshore outright spot transactions, and $12bn inflows via freshly entered and canceled forward transactions. Another SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows” showed outflows of $31bn in the month, suggesting net payment of RMB from onshore to offshore. Goldman’s preferred FX flow measure therefore suggests a total US$42bn outflows in August, in comparison with US$26bn outflows in July, an outflow which was the highest since July 2022.

  

  2. The current account continued to show inflows. There was a net inflow of $26bn related to goods trade in August, higher than the $18bn in July. Goods trade surplus conversion ratio rose to 38% in August vs 22% in July, in contrast to the continued depreciation of the currency. On the other hand, the services trade deficit was $14bn, more negative than $11bn in July as outbound tourism continued to recover. The income and transfers account showed outflows of $5bn in August, smaller than $6bn in July.

  3. Portfolio investment channel saw faster outflows in August. Stock Connect flows showed strong net selling of equities through northbound and net buying through southbound, which implies US$22bn outflows through the Stock Connect channel, vs US$5bn inflows in July. This was the fastest pace of outflows through the Stock Connect channel since January 2021. Foreigners’ holding of RMB bonds data are not released yet.

  4. Official FX reserves (released earlier in the month) declined to US$3,160bn in August from US$3,204bn in July. By Goldman’s estimate, FX valuation effects would have cut FX reserves by $19bn in August, so after adjusting for FX valuation effects, FX reserves still decreased by $25bn in July. While the unfavorable asset price effect likely contributed to this decline, the decline might not be fully explained by asset price declines, suggesting potential usage of FX reserves to manage the currency amid outflow pressures.

  5. Goldman forecasts continued monetary policy easing in Q4, including a 25bp RRR cut and a 10bp policy interest rate cut. CNY exchange rate will likely continue to face depreciation pressures in the near term while policymakers maintain tight capital controls and guide market expectations to slow the depreciation trend of the currency.

  

  And so, with China’s currency the weakest it has ever been, and with FX outflows accelerating sharply, one can’t help but remember the panic observed after the August 2015 devaluation, which not only shocked global markets but woke bitcoin from its long slumber as billions in Chinese savings scrambled to the safety of offshore bank accounts via one of the few still open cracks in China’s great monetary firewall. How long until we get a rerun?

  More in the full Goldman note available to pro subs.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 22:45

• FDA Refuses To Change Anti-Ivermectin Statements After Court Ruling
  FDA Refuses To Change Anti-Ivermectin Statements After Court Ruling

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

  Anti-ivermectin statements made by the FDA are not being changed, even after an appeals court ruled against the agency.

  

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to change its statements against ivermectin, even after a court said it acted outside of its authority when it told people to stop using it to treat COVID-19.

  The U.S. appeals court said that the FDA’s statements, including one telling people to “stop” using ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, went beyond the authority conferred on the agency by Congress.

  “FDA can inform, but it has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ‘stop’ taking medicine,” U.S. Circuit Judge Don Willett wrote in the Sept. 1 ruling.

  Two weeks later, FDA social media posts and a key webpage remain unchanged.

  That includes an Aug. 21, 2021, Twitter post, on the social media site since renamed X, that hyperlinked to a FDA webpage and stated: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

  The page has not been updated either. It says people “should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.”

  The appeals court did not order the FDA to take any action and remanded the case to a lower court for consideration on standing.

  But Dr. Robert Apter, the lead plaintiff in the case that led to the ruling, said that the FDA should still take action.

  “From an ethical point of view, the FDA has been told not to do what they are doing. They have an ethical and moral obligation to follow the court’s directive and stop giving advice against using effective repurposed drugs for early treatment of COVID,” Dr. Apter told The Epoch Times in a message.

  The FDA declined to comment.

  “The FDA does not comment on possible, pending, or ongoing litigation,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

  In a statement after the ruling was handed down, the agency noted that ivermectin is approved by the FDA but for other uses. The FDA “has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19, nor has the agency stated that it is safe or effective for that use,” the agency said.

  “Health care professionals generally may choose to prescribe an approved human drug for an unapproved use when they judge that the unapproved use is medically appropriate for an individual patient,” it added.

  Such prescriptions are known as off-label prescriptions and are common in the United States.

  Another FDA page may have been removed in the wake of the ruling. That page said, in part: “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No.”

  Archives show it was still up as of this year but it’s unclear exactly when it was taken down.

  

  Ruling

  In the ruling, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit panel found in favor of Drs. Apter, Mary Talley Bowden, and Paul Marik, overturning a previous decision.

  The doctors sued the FDA in 2022 over its anti-ivermectin statements, arguing the agency was illegally interfering with their practice of medicine.

  While the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act enables the FDA to inform consumers, it does not let the agency give medical advise, Jared Kelson, an attorney representing the doctors, told the panel during oral arguments.

  U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown had ruled against the plaintiffs, finding the FDA acted within the authority conferred by the act.

  The panel disagreed.

  “FDA never points to any authority that allows it to issue recommendations or give medical advice,” Judge Willett wrote. “Nothing in the act’s plain text authorizes FDA to issue medical advice or recommendations,” he also said.

  “The decision is pretty clear that the FDA is not a physician, and that while it might have authority to inform the public, it can’t endorse particular treatments or advise on how to approach any specific illness,” Mr. Kelson told The Epoch Times.

  He declined to comment on whether the FDA should update its statements.

  The appeals court decision trumps the previous ruling, but the panel also sent the case back to Judge Brown.

  The FDA had asked the appeals court to dismiss the case based on lack of standing. The court said it chose not to decide on the standing issue.

  “We see greater wisdom in remanding for the district court to address standing and any other jurisdictional issues in the first instance,” the panel said. “We express no view on those issues, and instead we trust their initial determination to the district court’s sound judgment.”

  That means Judge Brown will take up the case again, but that his ruling on standing could be overturned.

  The government could also appeal the recent appeals court ruling. That appeal would go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing the FDA, did not respond to a request for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 22:15

• American Manufacturing Is Coming Back… So Are Strikes
  American Manufacturing Is Coming Back… So Are Strikes

  By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves

  President Joe Biden’s $9.2 billion electric vehicle manufacturing loan to Ford seems like a perfect meld of American interests. Announced in June, the loan to the Michigan automaker and a South Korean battery manufacturer will spur the building of three EV battery plants in the U.S. That cheerfully means eco-friendly cars and blue-collar jobs — environmentalism with a side of America First.

  

  There’s just one problem: It’s infuriated the United Auto Workers, which represents some 400,000 Americans employed in automotive manufacturing and other trades. The historically Democratic union has, in turn, refused to endorse Biden ahead of a contentious general election.

  Two of Ford’s new plants will be in Kentucky and the third in Tennessee; facilities in these three states are notoriously challenging to organize thanks in part to anti-union state laws. To workers like Dan Vicente, a UAW regional director and machine operator in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, it’s a way that Ford can have its cake and eat it too. The auto giant can explore EV manufacturing without much risk to its bottom line, and save massively by avoiding union labor.

  “[T]he Biden administration didn’t require any sort of guarantees of those jobs being UAW jobs or being any union jobs at all,” Vicente said on an Aug. 7 episode of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast. “They basically just said, ‘Hey Ford, please be nice to these workers and let them have a vote if you feel like it.’ And so we don’t find that acceptable.”

  American businesses and their employees are in an unusual position. Partially thanks to new policy efforts, companies are expanding domestic manufacturing. But they’re finding an American worker who isn’t willing to work for cut-rate pay. Employees are increasingly fighting back on low wages, working hours and mediocre benefits — and are set to walk away from jobs entirely if the terms aren’t right.

  An excitable soul might declare we’re in the midst of an American labor comeback after decades of neoliberal policies encouraged crony capitalism, union busting and general skulduggery. According to federal data, nearly 13 million Americans are employed in manufacturing work — the highest number we’ve seen since the Great Recession. The nearly 2 million Americans – ranging from university graduate students to UPS drivers to rail track maintenance workers — represented by Teamsters and the United Auto Workers unions are seeing more militant leadership than ever. And even anti-establishment publications like The Intercept are admitting that the center-left Biden administration has appointed “aggressive” pro-union leaders to the National Labor Relations Board, making organizing easier.

  The majority of Americans said in a 2019 Pew survey that there’s “too much economic inequality,” and around 42% believed reducing it should be a “top priority.” Now, after the coronavirus pandemic brought about discourse about essential workers and stock buybacks, one could assume those percentages are even higher.

  It seems like reality is reflecting those pro-union sentiments. Automotive workers began an unprecedented strike on Friday, stopping work at all three Detroit automakers for the first time in history. UPS workers got a major win this summer. And nearly 200,000 actors and screenwriters are on strike. American approval of labor unions just hit its highest point since 1965, according to a Gallup poll. For the first time ever, a sitting president is even supporting strikes.

  Steven Greenhouse, a former longtime labor reporter at The New York Times, hesitated to say that we’re in a major uprising for American workers. However, he said conditions increasingly favor them.

  It’s a bullish sign for the US economy — and freight volumes

  During the Great Recession, the UAW was forced to make a slew of concessions to prevent the Big Three automakers from shuttering completely.

  In the 2000s, American consumers were increasingly buying vehicles from European and Asian manufacturers as fuel prices soared. Ford and GM posted a combined loss of more than $30 billion in 2008. That trend has reversed entirely; Americans are eagerly buying up pricey pickup trucks and SUVs from domestic manufacturers, even as inflation slams household budgets. Those hefty vehicles have in turn boosted profits at Ford and GM; they made a combined $40 billion-plus last year alone. 

  As a result, UAW workers are now seeking out a payday that reflects their employers’ windfalls. The UAW is calling for the reinstatement of pensions, retiree health care, cost-of-living adjustments to wages, along with a 40% raise spread over the next four years and the elimination of the two-tiered employment model. These demands aren’t necessarily autoworkers seeking to overturn the system; rather, they’re changes that would restore compensation to pre-2008 standards.

  Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, has studied labor relations since the 1970s. He said aims at the UAW and Teamsters alike have become “more socialistic in orientation.” He hasn’t seen leadership like the UAW’s Shawn Fain or the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien in decades.

  “[I]t has a different view of the role of profits and business and believes that labor has a rightful claim to a bigger piece of the pie,” Masters told FreightWaves. I think that both union leaders want the companies to do well so that they can help members. I would think that they would set that as a first priority, in terms of how they want to claim the profits for workers’ increased pay and other benefits.”

  Business magnates may groan, but there’s a silver lining: A fired-up labor pool means American businesses are healthy. 

  “[T]he pendulum has swung back from the 2008 recession, when companies could make a good case that they needed concessions, to a post-pandemic time when automakers’ profits are good and UPS profits are great,” Greenhouse told FreightWaves. “Workers can now say the time for concessions is over. It’s now the time for advances, the time for betterment, the time to make up for what [they] gave up in previous contracts.”

  Growth in domestic manufacturing and infrastructure spending is a bullish indicator for freight volumes — even though the industry is presently in a decline. For example, FreightWaves data suggests that the increase in construction spurred by the Biden administration buoyed freight volumes in July 2023, a month that was expected to be weak for truckers amid a weakened consumer economy. If America is making more stuff in America, that means there’s more for truck drivers to haul.

  Vicente of the UAW told Bloomberg in August that his colleagues are quitting their jobs to work at Dollar General or Walmart. Vicente’s employer manufactures plumbing, air-conditioning, steering systems and other equipment for boats, 18-wheelers and food trucks. Now, his former co-workers are finding themselves stocking shelves or scanning products — most likely mass-produced plastic stuff made overseas, clothing that will likely end up in a landfill in several months or processed food with little nutritional value.

  Of course, one can’t discuss unionized work and the trucking industry without mentioning Yellow, which was the third-largest less-than-truckload company, employing some 22,000 Teamsters workers, until it closed operations in August. Yellow pinned the blame for its shutdown on the Teamsters. For months, the union refused to negotiate on a proposed change of operations. The Teamsters said unionized Yellow employees had given away some $5 billion in concessions to the company since 2008 and refused to cut further. Amid the fracas, the trucking giant eventually lost enough inbound freight volumes that it was unable to pay into a major Teamsters pension fund, triggering a strike authorization. That gutted Yellow’s freight volumes further.

  J. Bruce Chan, a transportation analyst at the investment bank Stifel, previously said Teamsters may have been the “trigger” for Yellow’s bankruptcy, but the company had been troubled for about two decades. Yellow took on more than $1 billion in debt in the 2000s as it acquired more and more companies. It was never able to recover from those foolhardy purchases, gutted further by the Great Recession and other poorly timed business decisions.

  While the Teamsters may evade some blame, former Yellow employees are baffled as to why the union allowed the company to shutter. Labor expert Michael Duff, a law professor at Saint Louis University, doesn’t believe Teamsters boss O’Brien risked those 22,000 jobs forever.

  Rather, Duff said Teamsters likely anticipates increased manufacturing activity in the U.S. — particularly at unionized shops that will only work with organized trucking companies. That means more trucking companies organized with the Teamsters, whether existing unionized fleets grow or new ones join the union.

  “I don’t think the union believes we’re going to lose those jobs and they’re never coming back,” Duff said. “Whatever else the Teamsters will be, they’re not stupid.”

  Scheduling chaos

  Many experts believe a key reason why striking and organizing activity is reaching a historic fervor is the renewed interest by Americans age 40 or younger. They’re old enough to see the issues resulting from rampant globalization and financialization but young enough to not recall, say, Jimmy Hoffa’s Mafia ties. Cornell University’s Kate Bronfenbrenner, who is the institution’s director of labor education research, said this change of opinion among millennials and Gen Zers is a key “turning point” for the labor movement.

  “I do think we’re in a moment with public support, with this energy among young people and increased interest in organizing,” Bronfenbrenner told FreightWaves.

  One shared demand among union organizers isn’t just around increased pay but more control over work rules. A 2008 New York Times article pointed out that a veteran UAW member made about $28 an hour at an American auto plant, compared to a well-paid Toyota worker in Kentucky earning around $25 an hour. But those workers have vastly different control over their schedules. And rail workers were set to strike in 2022 over having more predictable hours and flexible time off; they received zero days of paid sick leave until this year.

  But firms say they need flexibility in scheduling, work rules and positions in order to remain competitive — especially when it comes to competing with nonunion shops. That tension was core to the Yellow-Teamsters dispute that eventually shuttered the company.

  Yellow wanted to convert nearly 1,000 linehaul trucking jobs to so-called “utility driver” roles, where they would be expected to do more dock work and the pay was often less. The Teamsters union opposed that. The company fired back with a memo to disgruntled workers: “Let’s be clear: If you were at a non-union company — a very realistic possibility for MOST of you if Yellow does not survive — ALL of you would be subject to potential dock work regardless of your time in the industry.”

  Feeling out of control over one’s schedule (and ultimately, one’s life) is what drives many workers to organize, said Bronfenbrenner.

  “If they were organizing over money and the employer could just throw a couple of pennies their way, they could get rid of the union campaign,” Bronfenbrenner said. “But the primary reason workers organize tends to be arbitrary supervisor power and respect on the job — things like scheduling, where they can never know when they’re coming to work, which could make it impossible to deal with your children’s day care or do medical appointments.

  “Money matters,” Bronfenbrenner added. “But, money is something that the employer can afford to pay if the union pushes them enough. Employers, particularly U.S. employers, don’t like to give up control. They like that they have this God-given right to manage free of any interference from government or unions or anybody else. Those are the things that affect the day-to-day life of workers.”

  Regular scheduling was a game changer for Duff of Saint Louis University. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Duff was a claims prevention supervisor at Flying Tiger and then a fleet service agent at U.S. Airways.

  In the mornings, every day from 8 a.m. to noon, he attended West Chester University. It took him a decade of blue-collar work, but Duff was able to secure his college degree. Four years after, he got his law degree from Harvard.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 21:45

• Sliding Home Prices Weigh On China's Feel-Good August Data
  Sliding Home Prices Weigh On China’s Feel-Good August Data

  By Charlie Zhu and Helen Sun, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and analysts

  1. The worst of China’s economic downturn may be behind us as stimulus impact feeds through. Data released Friday showed industrial production and retail sales in August both significantly beat estimates and picked up from the previous month. That gave investors reasons to believe that economic activities may be bottoming, even though the property market remains stuck in a rut.

  The People’s Bank of China stepped up easing, lowering the required reserve ratio for the second time this year. In addition to some 500 billion yuan ($69 billion) released from the reduction, the central bank added a net 191 billion yuan into the financial system via the medium-term lending facility, the most since March.

  Reducing the RRR show a sense of urgency among authorities to boost growth, and more policies may follow to ensure the stabilization is sustained, said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd.

  Financial market reactions were muted — pointing to lingering caution. The CSI 300 Index closed lower on Friday, while the onshore yuan was little changed versus the dollar. For the week, the currency rebounded from a 16-year low amid additional support from the PBOC’s jawboning and other measures.

  

  2. The nascent signs of stabilization in the economy, however, can easily be derailed by the crisis in the property sector. New-home prices dropped at a faster pace last month — showing why fresh rescue measures had to be deployed — while real-estate investment during January-August slid more than in the first seven months.

  State-linked developer Sino-Ocean Group Holding Ltd. suspended payment on all its offshore debts due to tight liquidity, suggesting the raft of policy support extended so far has failed to improve its finances.

  Indeed, just four months after Moody’s Investors Service upgraded China’s property sector outlook to stable, the rating firm revised it back to negative. The latest policies show a “significant shift” in government efforts to boost property demand, but the impact will likely fade after a few months, especially in lower-tier cities, analysts led by Cedric Lai wrote in the report.

  

  3. The European Union’s investigation into Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles threatens to set off another trade war. Beijing immediately fired back, blasting EU’s decision as “naked act of protectionism.”

  Given the size of China’s EV industry and its rapid rise, potential tariffs on exports from automakers like BYD Co., Nio Inc. and XPeng Inc. will have an impact that goes beyond anti-subsidy actions imposed on smaller sectors. Any forthcoming measures may also dent China’s booming EV exports, which have been a rare bright spot in the economy.

  The developments show regulatory risks for Chinese EVs, although they might accelerate plans to build factories in the European Union region if the probe leads to higher tariffs or lower subsidies, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Joanna Chen and Steve Man.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 21:15

• What Does "Far-Right" Even Mean Anymore?
  What Does “Far-Right” Even Mean Anymore?

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

  “Far right” is basically anything that contests the Establishment narrative.

  Anybody taking the legacy, corporate media at face value these days is likely under the impression that the entire world is being overrun with “far-right” extremists, after all, anything orthogonal to the current WEF-inspired world order seems to be, by definition, far right.

  

  If it wasn’t apparent already, it became obvious during the pandemic how establishment narratives are promulgated by corporate media cartels to enshrine elite-approved canon.  For that to work, it was key to neutralize non-conforming impulses, and the way to do that, it seemed, was to label it all as “far right”.

  The term has now been so misplaced and over-used that it becomes impossible to differentiate between fast rising maverick politicians from skinheads with swastika tattoos. Make no mistake, this is deliberate.

  

  Put the headline on the skinhead

  The standard playbook is to cast anything gaining momentum as “populist” – which is always implicated as being  wrong-headed and retrograde, even though a literal definition of the word simply connotes that large swaths of the population are feeling strongly about something (usually some manner of getting screwed by the elites).

  In an era where confidence and credibility of our incumbent institutions is in secular decline – given their stunning incompetence, not to mention self-serving hypocrisy and corruption, the public is becoming increasingly fed up with their betters. That means whatever appeals to them has to be repackaged as “far-right”, lest the movement gain momentum.

  

  Guardian ticks all the boxes – including the deranged “mouth-open” freeze frame. Bravo.

  I refer the reader to Brandon Smith’s characterization of “negative branding”:

  “One of the most favored propaganda tactics of [the establishment] is to relabel or redefine an opponent before they can solidly define themselves.  In other words, [they] will seek to “brand” you (just as corporations use branding) in the minds of the masses so that they can take away your ability to define yourself as anything else….

  Through the art of negative branding, your enemy has stolen your most precious asset — the ability to present yourself to the public as you really are.

  Negative branding is a form of psychological inoculation.  It is designed to close people’s minds to particular ideas before they actually hear those ideas presented by a true proponent of the ideas. ”

  It’s not just dark horse, anti-establishment challengers who get the “far right” treatment, in this era of increasingly collectivist sympathies, it can be anything that reduces dependancy on the state or faith in the system.

  

  The new “F-bombs”: Fitness and Freedom

  Let’s be clear, there is nothing political, let alone “far right” around embracing fitness or valuing freedom. However anything  that confers greater autonomy on the individual, or instills the idea that one can improve their own lives without state intervention, is anathema.

  Take an ascendent theme or personality that challenges the establishment – any thing that poses a threat to late-stage globalism or the Davos-class of elites who deign to define The Rules; hitch it to the “far right” by saying these extremists are co-opting or embracing that thing, and then it’s magically off limits – safely tucked outside the Overton Window via narrative alchemy.

  This was how Bitcoin, the most emancipatory technology to arise since the internet itself, was characterized as “right wing extremism” .

  

  It’s no problem if the target has no tenable relationship to right-wing politics: personal responsibility, physical fitness, or non-state, decentralized digital hard currency .  Just call it a “dog whistle”.

  In Javier Millei’s case, signalling his intent to abolish Argentina’s central bank (as the core driver of that country’s incessant currency collapses and runaway Cantillion Effect), is enough to anger the guardians of the fiat money system.

  If it’s an unambiguous rejection of an establishment core premise, call it “denialism”. I once saw a guy stomp off of a live podcast because, as he huffed at the host before he disconnected, “I can see that you’re a Russian Collusion Denialist!”, and then he was gone.

  Of course, the entire Russian collusion narrative has since been totally debunked, and generally known to have been a Clinton campaign ratfucking, even in polite company.

  More topical lately, is the insistence that belief in the most hysterical scenarios for climate change should be mandatory and that the most radical policy responses be non-negotiable.

  Anybody flat out contesting the dogma, or showing research indicating that there is no climate emergency, or that the models (which have never successfully predicted anything) are probably wrong, is a denialist.

  I too, would find it preferable if I could forcibly compel others to adopt my belief system. https://t.co/ch0AB5ru6g

  — Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) August 26, 2023

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

  And denialism is, exclusively, far right.

  Shouldn’t we also be on guard against far-left extremism?

  Here is where we see the hypocrisy on full display. When people or voices push back on WEF-inspired theology, they get branded as “right-wing” and even the term “conservative” carries baggage. It’s practically a slur.

  Lefty?

  People put that it in their Twitter bios and walk around with Che Guevara shirts. I’m surprised there isn’t a hammer-and-sickle emoji yet.

  

  According to “experts”, it’s not clear that “left wing extremism” is even a thing.

  It took a symposium of social scientists to sift through evidence “on both sides” of the question, the result was inconclusive and “left wing authoritarianism” or extremism remains, to this day, as elusive as ever.

  

  Who knew?

  “Although right-wing authoritarianism is well documented, social psychologists do not all agree that a leftist version even exists.

  In February 2020, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology held a symposium called “Is Left-Wing Authoritarianism Real? Evidence on Both Sides of the Debate.”

  The left employs dog whistles too, only they aren’t recognized as such under the prevailing zeitgeist.

  The burgeoning “#degrowth” movement is a dog whistle for communism.  “Equity” is one for wealth redistribution, while “inclusivity” forays into racism more often than many care to admit.

  The entire Overton Window is now a collectivist, woke sliver

  If an entrenched elite goes so far off the rails that the citizenry rebels and chooses the unthinkable (Brexit, Trump, Bitcoin, “conservatism”), it is never because the establishment let down or even betrayed the citizenry – it’s because, for some unfathomable and inscrutable reason, the peasants went “far-right”.

  Left vs right is now meaningless. As I’ve written many times: the defining tension of our age is centralization, collectivism, statism, censorship, authoritarianism vs decentralization, individuality, autonomy, free speech, personal responsibility and self-reliance.

  There are basically those who believe they have the ecclesiastical authority to tell everybody else what to do, how to live, and what is permissible to think and say. Then there is everybody who wants to be left alone to live their own lives in peace.

  Unfortunately, there is also a growing contingent of the populace who want to be told what to do and think. 

  It isn’t “far right” extremism sweeping the world that we should be worried about. It’s Stockholm Syndrome.

  These are the people who willingly give the high priests of the establishment their gravitas – the ones who routinely change their Twitter profiles to endorse The Latest Thing™.

  While they tend to be the most vociferous ideological berserkers online, acting as enforcers for the authoritarian collective, they invariably live lives of quiet desperation out in the real world. They would be completely rudderless if not for their digital emojis and sigils to guide them.

  

  I expect these people will enthusiastically embrace Black Mirror style CBCDCs when they finally launch, allowing their lives to become fully gamified via their smart phones.

  They are the same people who locked their shrieking children alone in a room for two weeks after a bogus PCR test for COVID, and they’ll be the same people who will post teary-eyed TikTok videos of themselves euthanizing their dogs after Prince William or Whoopi Goldberg tells them it’ll slow down global warming. (Future MSNBC think piece: “Why far-right extremists want you to love your dog.”)

  They are the subservient herd, at least until they become disenfranchised or disillusioned with the social contract. Usually that happens when wealth inequality finally puts them on the wrong side of the poverty line, or when they see elites brazenly living by a different set of rules, or when the consequences of horrific policy blunders hit them where they live.

  At that point, they start to look for alternatives, they go down so-called “rabbit holes”, and come out the other end shocked (or perhaps bemused) to learn that in the eyes of the establishment that betrayed them, they are now far-right extremists.

  *  *  *

  My next ebook is The CBDC Survival Guide and I’m sending it free to Bombthrower subscribers when it’s done (early June). In the meantime, subscribe now and get The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto while you wait. Follow me on Nostr, or Twitter. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 20:45

• World Risk Poll: How Long Can People Survive Without Income?
  World Risk Poll: How Long Can People Survive Without Income?

  In the wake of natural disasters or economic shocks, a person could quickly be left without income, which is why financial security is such an important aspect of resilience. 

  In this graphic, sponsored by Lloyd’s Register Foundation, Visual Capitalist’s Alan Kennedy and Alejandra Dander explore their latest survey, World Risk Poll 2021: A Resilient World? to see how financially secure people from country to country really are. 

  
  

  Assessing Financial Security

  In 2021, Lloyd’s Register Foundation partnered with Gallup and polled 125,000 people from 121 countries, asking how long people could cover their basic needs without income. Responses were classified by those who could survive for more than a month, a month or less, less than a week, and those who didn’t know or refused to say. 

  Here is a ranking of those who could cover their needs for the longest length of time without income:

  

  And the shortest length of time:

  

  A Cause for Alarm

  The study found that generally, those who could cover their needs the longest came from developed economies, and those who could cover their needs for the shortest length of time came from developing economies where financial security is more tenuous. 

  With all that said, the volume of people around the globe who struggle financially is the true cause for alarm. The study found that a staggering 2.7 billion people could only cover their basic needs for a month or less without income, and of that number, 946 million could survive for a week at most.

  Tackling Financial Insecurity

  Urgent action is needed to tackle this disparity in income and lack of financial security, especially in developing economies. If left unchecked, this undermines global resilience in the face of climate change, natural disasters, and any number of other shocks. 

  In the fourth and final part of this series, we’ll explore the World Risk Poll 2021: A Changed World? Perceptions and Experiences of Risk in the COVID Age and learn how the world views climate change.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 20:15

• F-35 Stealth Fighter Goes Missing Near North Charleston After Pilot Ejects 
  F-35 Stealth Fighter Goes Missing Near North Charleston After Pilot Ejects 

  An F-35 stealth fighter jet disappeared on Sunday afternoon following a mid-flight “mishap,” Joint Base Charleston wrote on X. 

  Joint Base Charleston continued, “The pilot ejected safely,” but said, “If you have any information that may help our recovery teams locate the F-35.” 

  We’re working with @MCASBeaufortSC to locate an F-35 that was involved in a mishap this afternoon. The pilot ejected safely. If you have any information that may help our recovery teams locate the F-35, please call the Base Defense Operations Center at 843-963-3600.

  — Joint Base Charleston (@TeamCharleston) September 17, 2023

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

  According to local media WCSC, the “incident involved a Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort F-35B Lighting II jet from Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing.” 

  A search and rescue effort appears to be underway. 

  looks like South Carolina Law enforcement BELL 407 (N500SC) is looking for the crashed F-35!https://t.co/5XHtDFagOd pic.twitter.com/bEa6zcj5J4

  — NC Airspace (@NCAirspace) September 17, 2023

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

  *Developing… 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 19:15

• Former Border Patrol Chief Says Agents Can't Vet Illegal Immigrants From "Vast Majority Of The Globe"
  Former Border Patrol Chief Says Agents Can’t Vet Illegal Immigrants From “Vast Majority Of The Globe”

  Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former Chief of Border Patrol Rodney Scott explained to members of the House that the vetting process used to keep criminals out of the United States is only accurate in cases where agents have access to correct information.

  

  According to the former border chief, agents have no information about migrants from “the vast majority of the globe,” including illegal immigrants from countries like the African nation of Mauritania.

  Mr. Scott told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement during a Sept. 14 hearing that the process used by border protection agents is only as good as the information that the federal government has access to, which, globally speaking, is quite limited.

  The witness, who is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Border Security at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, formerly served for 29 years in the U.S. Border Patrol before retiring as Chief of the Border Patrol in August of 2021.

  Questions about illegal immigrants from Mauritania surfaced after data about increased apprehensions by border patrol agents of individuals on the terror watch list was brought to light.

  According to the lawmakers, from 2017 to 2020, Border Patrol encountered 14 illegal immigrants on the terror watch list.

  But from 2021 to 2023, that number jumped to 263, and 149 of those encounters were in 2023 up to this point alone.

  While several lawmakers voiced concern about potential known and unknown “gotaways” which could also have been problematic, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) questioned Mr. Scott about the potential that those not on any list the United States has access to could have terror connections.

  Mr. Biggs asked if there were nations that illegal immigrations were traveling from that federal officials “can’t get any background on?”

  Mr. Scott responded, “That would be the vast majority of the globe. We have very little information. We act on what we have, but when you think about the total population of the world, we have very, very minuscule data.”

  

  Mr. Biggs asked specifically about individuals from the nation of Mauritania, saying border patrol in his home state of Arizona has seen a sharp increase in illegal migrants from that area.

  The lawmaker cited a call from a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent asserting that in his Arizona sector, they apprehended a group of 250 Mauritanians.

  According to Mr. Scott, Mauritania is a country that CBP has no access to background information about, and individuals from that area would have been largely unvetted.

  ‘Fear-Mongering’

  Committee ranking member Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) asked that the committee consider the “facts” pointing out during her opening statement that there has never been an American citizen killed due to terrorist attacks from an individual that has entered the United States illegally through the southern border.

  “That’s right,” the Washington Democrat went on. “Not a single American has been injured or killed by a terrorist who crossed our southern border without authorization. So don’t fall for Republican fear-mongering.

  “This hearing is purely intended to scare the public to demonize immigrants and to score cheap political points as we head towards that next election,” Ms. Jayapal said, going on to point out that those on the terror watch list who were apprehended were given vetting by the Department of Homeland Security.

  

  She also asserted that bipartisan immigration reform could deter illegal immigration by creating “real legal pathways for people to enter the United States to be with their families to escape terrible situations in their countries and to contribute to our economy, our communities, and our country.”

  During his opening remarks, Committee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) asserted that the Biden administration’s executive orders have “opened our borders to the world by holding construction of the border wall, rescinding the remain in Mexico policy, and forbidding ICE from enforcing court-ordered deportations.”

  5.7 Million Illegals

  Mr. McClintock cited information indicating that 5.7 million illegal aliens from over 160 countries have illegally crossed our border since the Biden administration’s change in policy, and over 2.6 million of those individuals have been released into the United States. That number is higher than the population of New Mexico.

  “Another 1.7 million known ‘gotaways’ have entered as well. That’s an additional illegal population the size of West Virginia, and since we have no access to most foreign criminal databases,” Mr. McClintock said. “We know little of the foreign criminal records of these 2.6 million illegal immigrants as they’ve been released into our communities.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 18:40

• The #1 Warning Sign Capital Controls Are Coming Soon And 4 Ways To Beat Them
  The #1 Warning Sign Capital Controls Are Coming Soon And 4 Ways To Beat Them

  Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

  Weekends and holidays are the perfect time to catch people off guard…

  Like a street thug committing a mugging, capital controls blindside most people – otherwise, they wouldn’t be effective.

  The government declares a surprise bank holiday and shuts all the banks – mere hours after they denied they were even thinking about such actions.

  They impose capital controls to stop citizens from taking their money out of the country.

  Cash-sniffing dogs, which make drug-sniffing dogs look friendly, show up at airports and border crossings.

  At this point, your savings are like a lobster in a trap. It’s not hard to see what comes next…

  

  Once a desperate government has your money within its reach, it’ll find a way to take as much of it as possible.

  Don’t be surprised if your local currency suffers a massive devaluation, bank deposits are suddenly worth a fraction of what they were just yesterday, or the government imposes an emergency tax.

  Whatever the method or pretext, the outcome is always the same: a wealth transfer from you to the government.

  This familiar story has played out in many countries in recent years. The pattern is clear and should surprise no one the next time it happens.

  It’s all but certain governments in financial trouble will turn to capital controls as a desperate, misguided solution—with devastating consequences for ordinary people.

  Argentina, Lebanon, Venezuela, Iceland, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, China, India, South Korea, and governments in countless other countries have recently imposed capital.

  The lesson from these examples is capital controls can happen anywhere and anytime.

  Although it seems unthinkable to most, there is an excellent chance capital controls are coming to the US—they’ve happened before and could happen again soon.

  Remember, in 1933, through Executive Order 6102, President Roosevelt forced Americans to exchange their gold for US dollars under penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine (or more than $242,000 in today’s debased confetti).

  Of course, the official government gold exchange rate was unfavorable. It amounted to around a 41% confiscation of purchasing power.

  The US government continued prohibiting private ownership of gold bullion for 41 years until they reluctantly allowed the plebs to own it again in 1974.

  So, there is a clear historical precedent for implementing capital controls in the US, especially during a crisis.

  Today, it’s self-evident the fiat currency system centered on the US dollar is self-destructing at an alarming rate.

  After more than 52 years, it’s long past the end of its shelf-life, like a carton of spoiled milk.

  Even the global elites running the system can see that and openly talk about what they want to come next.

  That’s why there’s all this talk about a Great Reset… and without a doubt, capital controls will be part of it.

  All it would take is a crisis—real or contrived—or some other pretext and the stroke of the president’s pen on a new executive order.

  Expect it to happen.

  Why and How Governments Impose Capital Controls

  Capital controls are government restrictions on how people can use their money—something that should be abhorrent to anyone who believes in property rights and a free society.

  Here’s how capital controls work…

  Governments might allow people to buy foreign currency (or gold) only at an “official” rate that they set, which is always less favorable than the free-market rate. The difference between the fake official rate and the real free-market rate amounts to a wealth transfer to the government.

  Another form of capital controls is steep taxes on international money transfers or purchasing foreign assets.

  Governments could also flat-out prohibit ownership of foreign assets or moving any form of wealth outside the country.

  No matter what flavor they come in, capital controls always help a government trap money within its borders so it’s easier for them to take.

  A propaganda campaign is also necessary to gaslight people into believing such actions are required to protect the average person.

  Expect politicians to make disingenuous claims to make them appear as saviors instead of aggressors.

  The mainstream media will amplify this false narrative and demonize those opposed to capital controls as disloyal citizens or worse.

  What Happens After Capital Controls

  Capital controls are always a prelude to something worse.

  That’s because once governments trap money inside a country, it’s probably only a matter of hours before there is wealth confiscation. Anything they don’t steal immediately, they box in for future thefts.

  That’s why you must act before they impose capital controls.

  How much time do you have?

  While it’s impossible to know, acting well in advance is advisable. It’s better to be a year early than even a minute late.

  However, there is one common feature I’ve noticed when countries impose capital controls that indicates the situation is imminent. It’s like someone waving a big fat red flag.

  That warning sign is a government official denying that they are considering imposing capital controls.

  Whenever you hear a central banker or politician say something won’t happen, you can almost be sure it will happen. And probably soon.

  Coming from a bureaucrat, the real meaning of “no, of course not” is “it could happen tomorrow.”

  It’s like the old saying: “Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.”

  These deceptions have a purpose: Politicians and central bankers must surprise the public to get the desired results.

  When you hear the official denial, you probably have only a matter of hours before they impose capital controls. Urgent action is required.

  Four Ways To Beat Capital Controls

  The solution is simple.

  Place some of your savings outside your home country so it’s not trapped when the government imposes capital controls. It will be waiting for you safely on the other side.

  Below are four ways you can do that.

  First, obtain a foreign bank account. Capital controls imposed in your home country are unlikely to affect a bank account in another country.

  Second, real estate in a foreign country is an excellent way to store significant capital abroad. Your home government won’t be able to seize it without a literal act of war.

  Third, another solution is physical gold bullion coins held in a non-bank vault in a friendly foreign jurisdiction.

  Last, there is Bitcoin, which is like kryptonite to capital controls.

  Bitcoin is the most portable asset in the world. It’s a digital bearer asset that can achieve final international settlement in 10 minutes for pennies.

  Anyone with a smartphone can use Bitcoin to send and receive value anywhere in the world—capital controls be damned.

  Going through airports and crossing borders with Bitcoin is much more practical than other forms of wealth.

  If you hold Bitcoin on your phone, laptop, or flash drive, it can be accessible to border agents if they search you and you reveal your password. However, those things are much less conspicuous than gold or stacks of cash.

  Further, many popular Bitcoin wallets use a 12-word phrase to recover your funds. If you memorize the 12-word phrase, you can potentially store billions of dollars worth of value just in your head with nothing else.

  That’s why Bitcoin skyrockets in popularity in countries with capital controls.

  Conclusion

  The current dollar-based monetary system is on its way out. Even the central bankers running the system can see that.

  They are preparing for what comes next as they attempt to “reset” the system. It’s a virtual certainty they will impose capital controls.

  I suspect it could all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty for most people.

  We are likely on the cusp of a historic financial earthquake…

  One that could alter the direction of the US forever and mark the biggest economic event of our lifetimes.

  Yet few people are aware of what is happening.

  And even fewer know how to prepare.

  That’s exactly why I just released an urgent new report with all the details, including what you must do to prepare. It’s called, The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now. Click here to download the PDF now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 18:05

• Elon Musk Taunts UAW: "Tesla Pays Workers More And We Have Fun"
  Elon Musk Taunts UAW: “Tesla Pays Workers More And We Have Fun”

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  With perfect timing, Musk made a couple of taunts at striking UAW workers. His goal is obvious.

  

  Data from the BLS, chart by Mish

  Earnings Per Hour Notes

  • The Motor Vehicle hourly rates are for Michigan workers only. The BLS did not have nation-wide numbers.

  • The data series for construction workers and production workers starts in March of 2006 so that is where I started the chart.

  Understanding the Chart

  The chart does not tell the full story. UAW workers get far more benefits and huge bonuses that are not factored into hourly earnings.

  UAW workers also get annual bonuses that are not factored in.

  The motor vehicle decline from $28.35 per hour to $20.65 per hour stems from UAW renegotiations after GM and Chrysler went bankrupt.

  To survive at all, the UAW granted concessions and put in a tiered wage structure where new employees were paid less. Factor in retirements and hourly wages fell.

  Total UAW Unit Labor Costs vs Tesla

  • Big Three: Analysts estimate $66 an hour

  • Tesla: Roughly $45 at Tesla

  • UAW Demands: Meeting Fain’s initial demands would boost costs to $136 according to Wells Fargo analysts.

  Tesla does not pay more in hourly wages, but via stock options, Musk has made millionaires out of many workers.

  Stock options are not a company expense. Stock options come out of shareholders pockets.

  Whatever the UAW Strike Outcome, Elon Musk Has Already Won

  “Any wage increase further advances Tesla’s already tremendous cost advantage in EVs over its older U.S. peers, which are contending with generations of legacy expenses while trying to steer a costly transition to electric from gas-powered vehicles.”

  💥 “Any wage increase further advances Tesla’s already tremendous cost advantage in EVs over its older U.S. peers, which are contending with generations of legacy expenses while trying to steer a costly transition to electric from gas-powered vehicles.” https://t.co/8NLlungrPb

  — James Pethokoukis (@JimPethokoukis) September 16, 2023

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

  The Wall Street Journal comments Whatever the UAW Strike Outcome, Elon Musk Has Already Won

  Musk won before the strike began early Friday. He won before negotiations started two months ago. From the get-go, General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler parent Stellantis were expected to spend more on wages because of the union’s pressure. The question is just how much of an increase, and so far their offers haven’t pleased the union, igniting this past week’s work stoppage.

  Fain this past week sounded annoyed when asked about Tesla’s cost advantage. 

  “Competition is code word for race to the bottom, and I’m not concerned about Elon Musk building more rocket ships so he can fly in outer space and stuff,” Fain told CNBC on-air Wednesday.

  “Our concern is working-class people need their share of economic justice in this world.”

  Economic Justice

  In the name of “economic justice” Fain would bankrupt the Big 3 again.

  Here’s the math: $136 * 32 hours per week * 52 weeks = $226,304. Note the UAW demand for a 32 hour workweek. At a 40-hour workweek, pay would be $282,880.

  Sorry guys, that will never fly. Whatever does fly, plays into Musks hands.

  Musk has suggested that employee stock options make his factory workers the highest compensated in the industry, saying “quite a few” line workers have become “millionaires over the years from company stock grants.”

  At Tesla, the average pay for a manufacturing technician can range from $23 to $32 an hour, according to estimates by Glassdoor. Tesla advertises factory jobs in California with expected pay ranging from $24 to $67 an hour plus cash and stock awards and other benefits.

  Tweet of the Day

  Walter spent a lot of time with me in meetings, but much less time walking the factory floor.

  Tesla and SpaceX factories have a great vibe. We encourage playing music and having some fun. Very important for people to look forward to coming to work!

  We pay more than the UAW…

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 14, 2023

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

  Perfectly Timed Taunt

  “Tesla and SpaceX factories have a great vibe. We encourage playing music and having some fun.

  Very important for people to look forward to coming to work! 

  We pay more than the UAW btw, but performance expectations are also higher.

  Quite a few of our factory techs who work on the line have become millionaires over the years from company stock grants.”

  Tesla does not pay more than the UAW, at least in hourly pay. But workers who have been at Tesla for a long time have made a killing on options with any kind of reasonable timing.

  The taunt at the UAW is aimed at encouraging the UAW to not settle quickly. It has a decent chance of working.

  Fain has already responded about economic fairness and the race to the bottom.

  Automakers Announce Layoffs

  UAW Statement on Reports of Layoffs of Non-Striking Workers

  UAW President Shawn Fain released the following statement following reports of planned layoffs of non-striking workers at GM and Ford.#StandUpUAW pic.twitter.com/Fi8Np9Yjgx

  — UAW (@UAW) September 16, 2023

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

  Chance of Rapid Acceleration

  If workers have little to do because of a part shortage by a strike, the only reasonable thing to do is announce layoffs.

  This has a good chance of escalating rapidly.

  Reflections on What Sucks

  They make $65 an hour in wages and benefits. Tesla workers make $45.

  How much do you want to pay for a car? Tell me that doesn’t suck.

  — Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) September 15, 2023

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

  Inflation Sucks

  Inflation is what sucks and there is plenty of blame to spread including the Fed, Congress, and three stimulus packages.

  But Biden’s Big EV push is behind much of this recent angst.

  It takes fewer hours to build an EV. Biden is pushing them like mad despite the fact that consumers do not want them because the infrastructure isn’t in place. Ironically, increased mileage standards have negative benefits according to a government study (at long last getting something right).

  So now the union wants a 32-hour workweek with a 36 percent raise (down from 40 percent) more benefits, and ability to strike over plant closures despite the fact it takes fewer workers to produce an EV.

  There is no one other than Biden to blame for this latest round of economic and environmental madness.

  This union battle was created by Biden, the EPA, the Labor Relations Board and other administration regulatory clowns.

  Unprecedented UAW Strike, Where’s it Headed? Keep Em Guessing Says Fain

  I discussed winners and losers in Unprecedented UAW Strike, Where’s it Headed? Keep Em Guessing Says Fain

  Time Will Tell the Winner

  There are two definitions of win, short-to-midterm and long term.

  The long term view is easier to state. GM and Chrysler (now Stellantis) already went bankrupt once over untenable wages and benefits. It could easily happen again. And If the bondholders (not that I feel much sympathy for them) were not totally screwed in the last settlement, it would have been much worse for the unions.

  Short term, I suspect everyone loses, but Fain and the UAW will temporarily cheer.

  Record profits said Biden. Lovely. Then what? Then a preposterous deal, then bankruptcy?

  The above discussion is from the point of view of the Big 3 vs the UAW. I left off a winner, Elon Musk.

  Tesla benefits no matter what happens because the Big 3 costs are certain to rise.

  The big loser is the consumer who will pay more for cars.

  Meanwhile let’s discuss the benefits of improved gas mile standards.

  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Analysis of Gasoline Standards

  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration NHTSA did an impact assessment of 4 fuel standard proposals and compared them to the cost of doing nothing. Guess what.

   Buried deep on Page 56,342 of volume 88 of the Federal Register, the agency makes this concession about its latest proposed rules: “Net benefits for passenger cars remain negative across alternatives.” In plain English, this means that mandating ever-more-stringent fuel economy for passenger cars will harm society.

  Through 2040, the total reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars and light trucks would be a mere 2.01 percent less vs doing nothing at all with emission standards!

  The NHTSA also considers impacts on the economy including “consumer cost, national balance of payments, environmental, and foreign policy implications.”

  Here is the NHTSA’s bottom line: “Net benefits for passenger cars remain negative across alternatives” vs doing nothing at all.

  The Shocking Truth About Biden’s Proposed Energy Fuel Standards

  For discussion, please see The Shocking Truth About Biden’s Proposed Energy Fuel Standards

  Regardless of how we assess the winners and losers in the UAW battle, over the short and long haul we all lose from the push to pay more for the regulatory and environmental madness of this administration.

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 17:30

• Los Angeles Spends $44,000 Per 'Temporary' Tent For Homeless Village
  Los Angeles Spends $44,000 Per ‘Temporary’ Tent For Homeless Village

  Los Angeles is reportedly spending $44,000 for each individual tent in a temporary tent village for homeless people in East Hollywood, The Messenger reports.

  

  All told, it cost about $4 million to put up fencing, bathrooms, and staffing facilities for the village. Catering services and 24-7 staffing cost an additional $3 million per year, the Los Angeles Times reported.

  Despite the high costs, the site is only temporary. It’s located on a parking lot that will eventually be turned into public housing. But because it will take years for construction to commence on that project, the city decided to fill the space with tents in the meantime.

  San Francisco-based nonprofit Urban Alchemy maintains the encampment. Launched in 2018 with a small grant, the group hires mostly former prisoners because they have the “ability to read people in unpredictable situations.”

  According to several lawsuits, however, some of those employees have engaged in abusive behavior.

  After expanding to Portland and Austin, the group brought in $51 million in 2021.

  

   

  The nonprofit says it’s offering a practical solution to provide affordable housing for the state’s 172,000 homeless people, while also claiming to offer safety and autonomy.

  The East Hollywood tent city contains higher quality tents ‘than anything someone could buy from a typical camping store,’ and include wooden platforms, full beds and storage lockers.

  

  The nonprofit Coalition for Responsible Community Development, meanwhile, set up an office across the street to attract people who might be interested in reentering the workforce.

  The nonprofit already oversees several camp villages across the state with varying styles. The residences at a tent city in Culver City are made from sturdy white canvas, while those in South Los Angeles are more humble, resembling store-bought camping gear. -The Messenger

  According to the report, just 2% of the homeless in the East Hollywood encampment have transitioned to permanent housing, which Urban Alchemy blames on a lack of affordable housing in the city.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 16:55

• Get Woke, Go Broke: Ibram X. Kendi's Foundation Firing 33% Of Employees
  Get Woke, Go Broke: Ibram X. Kendi’s Foundation Firing 33% Of Employees

  Authored by Monica Showalter via American Thinker,

  Wokesterism is all over, yet as corporation after corporation has learned the hard way, stoking racial or other grievance-group resentment doesn’t actually add value, and in fact is a very good way to go broke.

  

  Therefore, money is drying up for corporations that embrace it, and the cash they dole out to downstream institutions, such as universities, think tanks, activist groups, and big white-shoe foundations. The Bud Light fiasco pretty well shows what happens to those who dive in to embrace woke.

  It’s not just scandal-plagued groups like Black Lives Matter, which has done little but riot in cities (hitting black-owned businesses hard) and feather its leaderships’ nests, that has suddenly seen both a drop in public support and incoming funds.

  Now it’s the fancy stuff, the university think tanks, such as Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, led by Ibram X. Kendi, which is seeing big layoffs.

  According to the Washington Free Beacon:

  The Boston University Center for Antiracist Research is firing between 15 and 20 employees, Semafor reported Thursday. Kendi launched the center in June 2020 at the height of the movement to defund police in the wake of the death of George Floyd. It employed 45 people as of August, according to a since-deleted page on the center’s website reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

  Kendi has built a lucrative career teaching people about “antiracism,” defined as “the practice of actively identifying and opposing racism.” He received a $625,000 MacArthur “Genius” grant in 2021 and charges $20,000 for speaking engagements. His books Antiracist Baby and How to Be Antiracist have landed on the New York Times best-seller list. Kendi has argued the United States is an inherently racist country, asserted that police “inherently are harmful,” and called for a constitutional amendment to ban “racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials.

  Kendi is a big one, the granddaddy of all things woke, the intellectual locus of wokery. He’s perfected the art of wokecraft, having written a series of bestsellers mau-mauing whitey liberals with titles such as “Antiracist Baby” and “How to be an Antiracist,” sold at places like Target, doing the act Shelby Steele once described as offering “absolution” to guilt-beaten whites for their immutable, inborn, incurable, racism, and making bank while he’s at it. America is a flawed, racist country from its very start, and for which there is no cure.

  The Beacon said it was unable to find the exact reason for the layoffs, but did note that public polls were showing a dropoff in public support for woke organizations, which has cut into donations for wokester groups and reduced corporate giving to foundations and academic institutions.

  Woke organizations of all sorts are now being affected — Black Lives Matters is losing donations. Bigfoot foundations such as those run by the Soros family and Mark Zuckerberg are laying off staff. Corporations themselves have been getting rid of DEI departments, too. Obviously, that may be at least one reason why even woke Boston University is reducing the ever-expanding grievance group industry within its think tanks.

  As for why the public is not responding to grievance clarion calls, well, perhaps it’s because thus far these woke groups who offer themselves as the solution to all things racist, haven’t fixed anything by stoking rage and grievance politics. All they have proven adept at is raking in political spoils for themselves and mau-mauing their donors, making all sides angrier. People get tired of that. If they can’t fix a problem they claim to see all over, and can only make it bigger, then it’s time to go. That’s the American way and try as they might, they aren’t going to stop that.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 16:20

• Visualizing The Military Imbalance In The Taiwan Strait
  Visualizing The Military Imbalance In The Taiwan Strait

  China announced a “new path towards integrated development” with Taiwan on Tuesday, including encouraging the listing of Taiwanese companies on Chinese stock exchanges as well as facilitating Taiwanese people to live, study and work in China.

  

  But, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports, at the same time though, China has ramped up its military presence in the area, including a carrier strike group led by the aircraft carrier Shandong and an increase in airspace incursions.

  In recent years it has modernized its military, introducing the J-20, an indigenous 5th generation stealth fighter. It has also commissioned two aircraft carriers along with several modern amphibious transport dock/landing vessels.

  Even though the likelihood of China taking Taiwan by force remains unclear, the military balance in the Taiwan Strait is firmly in China’s favor.

  This infographic provides an overview of that imbalance and is based on an annual U.S. government report.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  China’s clearly stated goal is “reunification” with Taiwan and has never ruled out the possibility of using military force to achieve this.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 15:45

• Bidenomics Simplified
  Bidenomics Simplified

  Authored by Maker S. Mark via AmericanThinker.com,

  President Biden is trying to explain Bidenomics.  

  I will help him out a bit here with a summary.  

  Economics is a challenging field of study, and I hope this may help you explain Bidenomics to people who are asking about it.

  

  What is Bidenomics?

  Simply put, Bidenomics is borrowing trillions from China, to spend on a green new deal and to enrich China and its U.S. and international supporters.  As part of this green new deal, cut off as much oil and gas production in the U.S. as possible to drive prices higher.

  In addition, part of the green new deal is to enact a host of regulations on everything, including alcohol, beer, cars, ceiling fans, fertilizer, gas stoves, lawnmowers, light bulbs, plastics, vaccinations, etc.  Essentially regulate for the American people everything from alcohol to zoos.

  And, as they are spending and splitting trillions and they have raised prices on everything, they have put a few programs together that might save the American people millions.  Remember, trillions for them, millions for the rest of us.

  Open the border, and allow millions of illegal aliens into the country to supply cheap labor.

  Stigmatize white Americans into unemployment just for being white.

  How much might Bidenomics cost?

  Well, we now have estimates on the record that the cabal pushing the green new deal are estimating $50–70 trillion in new spending over 10–15 years.  China stands to benefit both with the expansion of China’s green new deal products and with the interest on the debt taken out to pay for the forced transition.  This video with Senator Kennedy and a DOE “expert” is telling about what the supposed expert won’t answer.

  This is a direct cash spend on top of other increased government spending, and it does not take into account the impact of the price increases caused by inflation, the production cuts in oil and gas, and the new regulations.  Probably trillions more in Americans’ disposable income spending will be allocated for us on these programs.

  Expect American unemployment rates to start to rise as all these illegal aliens are given work visas.

  What do you get for Bidenomics?

  Sacrifice your livelihood, financial independence, and freedom for the green new deal.

  If you are a white American, unemployment.

  Almost no improvement in the Earth’s temperature.

  War on fossil fuel energy, which has allowed the U.S. to grow and prosper like no other country.  

  Massive inflation from the spending that is occurring.

  More important than the inflation is the massive price increases from the inflation that will be with us for some time.  With all the new regulations that are being primed, prices will continue to move higher and higher.

  New products that are significantly more expensive and offer almost no new benefits to the environment or to the American people.

  You might save a little money on certain drug purchases.

  The largest wealth transfer in world history from the American people to Biden, China, and his allies.

  Bidenomics, simply put, is for Americans to sacrifice personally and financially by watching “them” spending trillions to enrich Biden and his allies while throwing a few million in crumbs to the American people.  And they will do that while simultaneously destroying freedom via regulating everything and crushing our way of life.  Oh, and all that spending will change nothing in the Earth’s climate.  Watch the video referenced, and see the “expert” squirm when pressed about how much impact all the trillions of dollars will have on the climate.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 15:10

• NFTs: Remember Them?
  NFTs: Remember Them?

  Non-fungible tokens are a social currency, born from “a desire to do more with blockchain than just cryptocurrency,” according to Steven Schuchart, principal analyst at GlobalData.

  Eve Thomas writes at Verdict that the first NFT is widely thought to have been created in 2014 – ‘Quantum’ was created on the Namecoin blockchain by Kevin McCoy. It is a kaleidoscopic, pulsing octagon, which was auctioned off through Sotheby’s for $1.47 million. 

  December 2017 saw the CryptoKitties craze boost the hype around NFTs as the game gripped the NFT community: it was so successful that Etherscan reported a sixfold increase in pending transactions on Ethereum within the first week.

  The market exploded in 2021, with $17.6bn worth of NFTs sold, an increase of 21,000% on 2020’s $82m total, according to a report by nonfungible.com. Amongst an increasingly valuable market, Beeple’s sale of ‘Everydays’ for $69m in March 2021 became the most expensive NFT ever sold. 

  When a market grows, so does the number of opportunistic criminals targeting it.

  The NFT market became a landscape of “rampant fraud, Ponzi schemes, currency washing (money laundering), and rug pulls,” according to Schuchart.

  And, with investor apprehension came a reappraisal of the utility of NFTs.

  While many of us were forced to at least try to understand what an NFT is at some point in 2021 or 2022, the latest figures from Google Trends suggest that this research has not led to a sustained interest in the topic.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  For those that didn’t quite get around to it at the time, here’s Wikipedia to the rescue:

  “A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain, and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. It cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchain and can be transferred by the owner, allowing NFTs to be sold and traded.”

  Still not clear?

  Then have fun delving down this particular rabbit hole.

  

  Though as Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, if the trend shown by Google’s search data is anything to go by, combined with the countless NFT-based scams that have been uncovered, that might turn out to be a monumental waste of your time.

  As Verdict’s Eve Thomas concluded, for a while, it seemed that NFTs might revolutionise the world’s relationship with digital art. NFTs are still in use in some spheres: Neversea music festival is selling NFTs that provide exclusive access to parts of the festival, whilst Visa is running a Creator Program supporting NFT creators.

  Nevertheless, the bubble has burst, and unless investors see a new reason to take interest, it looks as though it will be staying firmly popped.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 14:35

• Detransitioner Sues Doctors Who Cut Off Her Breasts At 16
  Detransitioner Sues Doctors Who Cut Off Her Breasts At 16

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Luka Hein, a young lady who regrets receiving a “radical double mastectomy” at the age of 16 to treat gender dysphoria, is suing her physicians and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) for damages.

  

  At 16 years old, Ms. Hein was a minor when physicians from UNMC surgically removed her breasts as the first step in her so-called “gender-affirming care,” per a lawsuit filed in the District Court of Douglas County, Nebraska, on Wednesday.

  The Center for American Liberty legal organization on Wednesday accused doctors at UNMC of lying to Ms. Hein and her parents, and of hiding research that doesn’t support the prevailing “gender-affirming” model of care for people suffering from gender dysphoria.

  “UNMC doctors deceived Luka and her parents with false promises claiming that if Luka did not undergo the removal of her breasts, she would take her own life, despite medical evidence to the contrary,” the Center for American Liberty stated. “UNMC also concealed scientific studies that do not support surgical ‘transitions’ for minors—including studies showing transgender surgeries actually increase suicidality and psychiatric morbidity.”

  Ms. Hein contends in her lawsuit that doctors and her health care team at Nebraska Medicine were negligent in not questioning her self-diagnosis instead of affirming her gender identity per the prevailing “Dutch protocol.” She claims this ultimately caused her harm by encouraging her “toward irreversible chemical and surgical solutions.”

  The Dutch protocol is the origin of the “gender-affirming” model of care, which Ms. Hein’s lawsuit contends conditions children toward transgender identification “by encouraging social transition, chest binding, opposite sex pronouns, cross-sex hormones and surgery,” rather than treating gender dysphoria.

  In a post on Instagram earlier this year, Ms. Hein described herself as “a victim” of the “gender-affirming care system.”

  “I was a young teenager with a history of mental health issues who had been groomed and preyed upon online, and as a result fell into a spiral of hatred towards both myself and my body,” she wrote.

  “The medical system did not look into or seem concerned about the underlying issues that were causing the distress that made me feel the need to escape my body at such a young age,” she continued, “instead I was affirmed down a path of medical intervention that I could not fully understand the long term impacts and consequences of due to my both my age and mental health conditions.”

  Her lawsuit contends that by “immediately affirming” her, the doctors “developed a type of transgender tunnel vision that blocked out the other factors that were or may have been the cause or causes of Luka’s dysphoria.”

  This treatment method of affirming Ms. Hein’s new gender identity, which she now bitterly regrets, came “during a time in her life when she was going through profound personal upheaval, trauma, and distress,” according to the complaint (pdf).

  Ms. Hein, the suit contends, “was simply too young to understand the irreversible implications of the transgender ‘treatment’ recommended, prescribed, and carried out” by health care workers at UNMC.

  Doctors ‘Owed a Duty’ to Hein

  The defendants, UNMC Physicians and the Nebraska Medical Center are “controlled affiliates” of co-defendant Nebraska Medicine, which coordinates and controls the activities of the two entities, including inpatient and outpatient hospital and physician care. The clinic is based in Omaha, Douglas County, Nebraska.

  The lawsuit specifically names Dr. Nahia “Jean” Amoura, an OB/GYN and director of the gender care clinic. It also names Dr. Perry Johnson, a plastic surgeon at the gender clinic, and Dr. Stephan Barrientos, a resident physician who allegedly assisted Dr. Johnson in removing Ms. Hein’s breasts on the alleged advice of Dr. Amoura.

  Megan Smith-Sallans, a mental health therapist working in gender care, was also named in the lawsuit as working with the three physicians to allegedly “cause harm” to Ms. Hein.

  Ms. Hein’s complaint contends that the physicians at UNMC, a clinic that boasts about its leadership “in ground-breaking research,” had the ability and duty to independently examine the scientific basis of the “gender-affirming” model.

  “As Nebraska’s premier medical institution, and with millions of research dollars at hand, Defendants owed a duty to Luka—and the hundreds of patients like her—to independently research the underpinnings of the Dutch study before adopting its flawed protocols,” the complaint states.

  

  ‘Gender-Affirming’ Model ‘Should Have Never Been Used’

  The lawsuit contends that the Dutch model “should have never been used” as justification to scale up the protocol for general use.

  “But like a virus that escapes the lab, the Dutch protocol spread like a contagion due to ‘runaway diffusion,’ a phenomenon whereby innovative clinical practices are rushed to market without long-term, carefully controlled ethical research demonstrating that the benefits of the innovation outweigh the risks,” the lawsuit states.

  Such a “seismic shift” away from the time-tested protocols in diagnosing patients means that “reasonably prudent” doctors have a duty to examine and assess their patients for other potential causes of distress before resorting to irreversible procedures like double mastectomy or hysterectomy, the complaint contends.

  UNMC’s website boasts that it has earned a “Top Performer” designation from the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies for the Dutch protocol of “gender-affirming” care.

  “This means that UNMC staff do not question a patient’s self-diagnosis of transgender identification, no matter their age or the root issues from which they suffer,” the complaint states. “Rather, UNMC faculty ‘affirm’ the chosen gender identity of the patient and then undertake pharmacological and surgical interventions based on what is known as the ‘Dutch Protocol.'”

  This protocol, which was based on a Dutch study of transgender patients who received hormone therapies in the early 2000s, has become the prevailing treatment method for gender dysphoria in the United States. However, multiple follow-up studies have pointed out its weaknesses.

  Ms. Hein’s complaint contends that the study had no control group, that the study “cherry-picked” the patients, that the study ended with 40 percent fewer patients participating—one patient died from complications arising after he had a vagina surgically created—and that the study excluded data from patients whose treatment with puberty blockers “did not progress well.”

  The complaint notes that the studies were funded by Ferring Pharmaceuticals, which produces puberty-blocking drugs and stood to profit from favorable results.

  The Epoch Times contacted UNMC and Ferring Pharmaceuticals for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 14:00

• ChatGPT's Environmental Impact Ignored By Climate Warriors 
  ChatGPT’s Environmental Impact Ignored By Climate Warriors 

  Climate alarmists have waged war on energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining operations but have yet to denounce large language models (LLMs) like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT that use 16 ounces of fresh water every time a user asks it a series of questions. 

  Microsoft revealed in its latest environmental report that its global water consumption surged 34% from 2021-22 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons), a massive increase versus the previous years primarily due to artificial intelligence research, according to AP News. 

  “It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI,” including “its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI,” said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been developing a new process to calculate the environmental impact of ChatGPT. 

  Ren’s team calculates that ChatGPT consumes 16 ounces of water for every 5 to 50 queries or prompts from a user. He noted, “Most people are not aware of the resource usage underlying ChatGPT.” 

  

  Ren added, “If you’re not aware of the resource usage, then there’s no way that we can help conserve the resources.”

  Given the chatbot’s unprecedented popularity this year, environmental problems have emerged with LLMs as massive data centers that power the chatbot require huge amounts of water-based liquid cooling. 

  Microsoft told AP in a statement last week that its AI research will soon have a measure on its energy and carbon footprint. The tech company said, “While working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application.”

  “We will continue to monitor our emissions, accelerate progress while increasing our use of clean energy to power data centers, purchasing renewable energy, and other efforts to meet our sustainability goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030,” it continued. 

  OpenAI stated that it has given “considerable thought” to its computing power: “We recognize training large models can be energy and water-intensive” and work to improve efficiencies.

  Despite significant energy and freshwater usage, ChatGPT and other LLMs have not faced the same scrutiny from environmental warriors as crypto mining has over the years.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/17/2023 – 13:25