May 07

Today’s News 7th May 2023

  • Digital Fentanyl: The CCP’s Cyber Campaign To Destroy America
    Digital Fentanyl: The CCP’s Cyber Campaign To Destroy America

    Authored by Kash Patel via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always played the long game. It’s pivotal to their strength. They have a disciplined ability to think generationally rather than focus on the current political climate of the now. The CCP has zero respect for the rule of law, nor do they abide by any code of ethics. When you have the ability to rule without law, you become the world’s adversary.

    The social media application logo for TikTok is displayed on the screen of an iPhone in front of a U.S. flag and Chinese flag background in Washington, on March 16, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

    The CCP has poured their fentanyl onto our streets via their partners south of our border: the Mexican drug cartels. This has led to the untimely deaths of over 100,000 Americans last year alone due to fentanyl overdoses. Now, China has fashioned this death drug into the form of common candy to make it more appealing to our youth. This is the death train being operated by the CCP. It’s the one you can see and feel every day.

    Tragically, for America, the CCP also have their silent killer in the form of digital fentanyl, and it’s called TikTok. This social media platform is a facet of CCP warfare that remains invisible to most.

    The CCP has launched an information war on America that isn’t in the form of news. However, the means by which they’re doing so is now only being accurately reported in the mainstream media. After years of accepting CCP disinformation, our media is finally waking up to the cold hard fact of data theft. The CCP pirates are seizing troves of information daily through TikTok.

    The nearly 150 million Americans that sign into the platform daily, nearly half our population, would do well to take a moment to give their thumb a rest and their eyes something to read. Unless, of course, they want the CCP to win.

    Unfortunately, through the Biden administration’s disastrous foreign policy, we aren’t set up to win the information war head-on, let alone take on any aspect of it. Download TikTok onto your phone, and the CCP has a four-lane highway into your everyday life for free. Not only are we letting them, but by intentionally giving the CCP a massive money bin of data for free, Xi is laughing all the way from mainland China. How can we let this be in 2023 America?

    What are they stealing? Your personal information, information on your family, your habits, hobbies, and your internet footprint for starters. They then collate this data and stack it for use against Americans based on their interests and vulnerabilities. How else do you think Chinese spies infiltrate American lives? It’s not Google.

    For those wondering, “but Tik Tok is an American company,” that’s a false narrative, and it was entirely defeated when the CEO of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, testified before Congress recently. Immediately thereafter, you had Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) demanding public support for TikTok.

    President Donald Trump understood the CCP’s intention better than anyone: from their Belt and Road Initiative, the manipulation of their currency, and their desire to supplant America on the global stage. Trump responded resoundingly, taking steps to ban TikTok, implementing tariffs and trade sanctions, and expelling Chinese diplomats from the United States.

    Biden and his administration have not only reversed every single one of these measures, but have also retracted from taking any position against Xi and the CCP. By doing so, we have seen the rise of the petro-yuan to replace the petro-dollar. We have seen Xi broker deals between Saudi Arabia and Iran, inching the world’s largest state sponsor of terror closer to a weapon’s grade nuclear program.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 23:30

  • The Countries With The Most Satellites In Space
    The Countries With The Most Satellites In Space

    The race for space has started anew as a flurry of private and government projects are once again reaching for humanity’s last frontier. In April, Gen. Chance Saltzman of the U.S. Space Force said that the new level of activity seen in space exploration was also increasing the level of threat the United States faces in Earth’s orbit and beyond, as reported by CNBC.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, Saltzman’s remarks – and as some may argue, the existence of the U.S. Space Force itself – stands in contrast to the notion of space as a place beyond national interests that has thrived on collaboration rather than confrontation.

    When the branch of the U.S. military was founded under President Donald Trump in 2019, one of the first organizations to speak out against it was the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy nonprofit founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    Infographic: The Countries with the Most Satellites in Space | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The organization urged the U.S. government to reconsider and to warm up to the idea of space as a place where different nations coexist peacefully instead of a place where war takes place. The group with an extensive satellite database pointed out that military activity was only a minor part of all things happening in space. The data backs up this claim. Out of the roughly 5,500 satellites listed as active, only 424 have military uses. While the U.S. is the country with most satellites in space (3,415), multinational cooperations come in fourth place.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 23:00

  • America's First Black President Left A Legacy Of Slavery
    America’s First Black President Left A Legacy Of Slavery

    Authored by Brian McGlinchey via starkrealities.substack.com 

    Barack Obama was elected president some 143 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States. As teary-eyed African-Americans watched Obama’s 2008 election night speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, none could have imagined that America’s first black president would leave his own legacy of slavery — in Africa.

    However, that’s exactly what he did, thanks to a combination of imperial hubris, disregard for constitutional restraints on executive war powers, and the use of false pretenses.

    In 2011, egged on by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a handful of other advisors, Obama ordered a months-long series of air strikes that facilitated a NATO-backed regime change campaign that toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

    In Feb. 2011, Obama announces he’s directed his administration to prepare a “full range of options” for a US response to Libyan unrest (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) 

    Rather than ushering in liberal democracy and prosperity, the ouster of Gaddafi left the country fractured, with two rival governments and various militias vying for power. Obama’s regime change marked the start of an ongoing era of chaos, with some of the greatest resulting evils inflicted on black Africans.

    Those evils began during the war, as racism and Gaddafi’s use of sub-Saharan black mercenaries combined to spark widespread atrocities perpetrated against blacks who were seen as fair game for various atrocities including beatings, rapes and lynchings.

    “We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company,” a Turkish construction worker told BBC. “They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Gaddafi.’ The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”

    One rebel group was glorified in roadside graffiti as “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” — that being a reference to Libya’s black descendants of slaves, such as those who populated the town of Tawergha. Once home to 30,000 people, Tawergha was ransacked and its occupants assaulted to the point of turning it into an ethnically-cleansed ghost town.

    In 2017 — six years after Gaddafi’s death — CNN captured a new and unthinkable dimension of misery being imposed on black people as a result of Obama’s regime change: The network aired video of two open-air slave auctions hosted in Libya. “Big strong boys for farm work,” said an auctioneer. One trio of blacks was purchased for $400 each.

    Nigerian Sunday Iabarot shows the scar he says he received when he was branded by his captors (Lynsey Addario for TIME)

     It hasn’t stopped. Last month, the United Nations reported that a three-year investigation found “arbitrary detention, murder, rape, enslavement, sexual slavery, extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearance” have become a “widespread practice” in Libya.

    Obama’s War Power Hypocrisy

    As a candidate in 2007, Obama was clear-throated about the limits of presidential military authority, telling the Boston Globe, “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

    However, as president, Obama betrayed those assurances — and violated his oath of office — by ordering the Pentagon to carry out bombing attacks on Libya without congressional authorization.

    In a frontal assault on common sense, Obama’s administration disingenuously asserted that, since the engagement was limited to bombing and Libya’s military was in no position to retaliate, the United States was not engaged in “hostilities” and thus the War Powers Act didn’t apply.

    Not “hostilities,” according to Obama lawyers: A coalition bomb explodes in Libya in March 2011 (Reuters)

    While the intervention was championed by the likes of Hillary Clinton and National Security Council “humanitarian hawk” Samantha Power, many others in Obama’s administration opposed it, including then-Vice President Biden, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, national security advisor and deputy national security advisor.

    According to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama’s decision to plunge into war in Libya was essentially a toss-up. “The president told me that it was one of the closest decisions he’d ever made, sort of 51-49,” he told Yahoo News.

    Or course, as Candidate Obama had unequivocally explained, it wasn’t his decision to make.

    That Obama’s decision lacked conviction — and ended up being disastrous for so many innocent people — underscores why he should have adhered to the Constitution, which requires that the deliberative, representative bodies of the House and Senate make war decisions after public debate.

    As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1798, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

    In support of Obama’s unconstitutional regime change war in Libya, a US F-15 Strike Eagle prepares to taxi for takeoff from RAF Lakenheath on March 19, 2011 (Tech Sgt Lee A. Osberry Jr/ USAF) 

    It’s doubtful that Congress would have given a green light. A Pew Research poll published a week before Obama ordered airstrikes found that 63% of Americans felt the US did not have “a responsibility to do something about fighting in Libya,” and 77% opposed “bombing Libyan air defenses.”

    Obama’s “51-49” characterization of his Libya decision is damning in another way. “This is nothing less than a confession of a war crime,” argued Scott Horton in Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism. “The president was admitting that he launched an unnecessary, aggressive war, a crime under American law as well as…international law.”

    Another Intervention On False Pretenses

    In addition to violating the Constitution, Obama’s Libya disaster was, like seemingly every U.S. intervention, advanced on false pretenses — in this case, the claim that Gaddafi was about to commit genocide in Benghazi, a rebel stronghold and Libya’s second-largest city.

    “We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi—a city nearly the size of Charlotte—could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,” said Obama after US bombing began.

    Administration officials’ claims that tens or hundreds of thousands of residents of Benghazi were about to be slaughtered rested on a purposefully distorted interpretation of a Gaddafi speech, in which he’d said “we will have no mercy on them.”

    Gaddafi was clearly referring to armed rebels in the city. Indeed, he also said “whoever hands over his weapons, stays at home without any weapons, whatever he did previously, he will be pardoned, protected.”

    Then-UN ambassador Susan Rice told the Security Council that Gaddafi was supplying soldiers with Viagra to enable mass rape (AP)

    Via an intelligence asset, the Department of Defense had learned that Gaddafi had explicitly ordered civilians to be left unharmed. What’s more, at the time the Obama White House was spouting ghastly predictions about Benghazi, Gaddafi had already recaptured other towns from rebels without accompanying massacres of civilians.

    Apparently unconvinced that visions of civilian massacres would sufficiently inflame public opinion, the Obama administration even trotted out the sensational claim that Gaddafi was supplying his soldiers with Viagra so they could carry out a campaign of mass rape.

    Like Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapon program, Gaddafi’s rape-enabling pharmaceutical supply chain was also nonexistent.

    Five years later, put on the defensive about Libya on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, Clinton reiterated the patently false claim that “Gaddafi was threatening to massacre his population.” Days after she said that, the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee published the report of an inquiry into the Libya intervention, which concluded Gaddafi had no intention of harming civilians.

    Africans Pay A Steep Price For American Ambitions

    Obama had decried George Bush’s invasion of Iraq as “based not on reason, but on passion; not on principle but on politics.” The same can be said of his administration’s own regime-change campaign in Libya, which set out to:

    • Generate positive publicity for the US government. The 2011 Arab Spring revolutions brought the embarrassing overthrow of US-backed regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. Clinton State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter told Clinton that backing rebels in Libya would “change the image of the United States overnight” and “impress the young people across the Middle East.”

    • Bring a book’s thesis to life. Samantha Power, who’s currently Biden’s head of the US Agency for International Development and started 2011 on the National Security Council, had written A Problem from Hell, a book that urged the adoption of a humanitarian intervention doctrine called “Responsibility to Protect.” With Libya, Power saw the opportunity to showcase the concept — and advance her career. She was promoted to UN ambassador after US bombs started falling.

    • Aid Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. State Department emails show Clinton’s advisors in and out of government enthusing over the utility of a successful Libyan intervention in a future Clinton presidential campaign. Sidney Blumenthal told Clinton that, when Gaddafi’s ouster came, “You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.”

    • Protect Western economic dominance. Though Gaddafi had worked his way back into the good graces of the United States and its allies, he may have sealed his fate when he began pushing African countries to wean themselves from Western currencies by establishing a new pan-African currency, the gold dinar. In an April 2011 email, Blumenthal told Clinton that Gaddafi had already accumulated 143 tons of gold to back such a currency.

    Referring to Libya, Hillary Clinton once boasted, “We did not lose a single American…in that action.” That’s no consolation for the families of civilians killed by US bombs, or the modern-day slaves and others in Libya who continue paying a steep price for Obama’s short-sighted, dishonestly-promoted and illegal regime change campaign.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 22:30

  • Berkeley Prof Admits Claimed Indian Heritage Was Heap Big Falsehood
    Berkeley Prof Admits Claimed Indian Heritage Was Heap Big Falsehood

    A Berkeley professor who’d long claimed she was a Native American admitted this week that she’s just a boring, plain ol’ white woman.  

    “I am a white person who has incorrectly identified as Native my whole life, based on incomplete information,” Elizabeth Hoover confessed on her personal website. Resisting calls for her resignation, Hoover says she has “been working with restorative justice facilitators to better understand how members of the…community have felt harmed and betrayed, and ways I can work to meaningfully make amends.” 

    This news would be amusing enough coming from any professor on the leftist campus. What gives it extra luster is that Hoover is a professor of anthropology — the study of human societies and cultures.  

    Hoover (right) with an award she was given at the 2015 Indigenous Farming Conference (via her now-deleted Twitter account)

    Hoover, who has a doctorate from Brown, claims her family led her to believe she was of Mohawk and Mi’kmaq descent, “but as an adult, as an academic, I should have done my due diligence to confirm that my ancestors were who I was told they were.”

    Hoover’s status helped her land prestigious jobs, grants and fellowships and become a high-profile member of the “food sovereignty” movement, according to Indianz.com. 

    In 2021, Hoover appeared on the “Alleged Pretendian List” compiled by Native American writer and activist Jacqueline Keeler. Her list, which has included Elizabeth Warren and Johnny Depp, targets people whom Keeler considers to be “monetizing their claims” of Indian heritage. 

    “Ethnic fraud, particularly against native people is huge,” Keeler told the New York Post in January. “There is an element of narcissism. There is a lack of empathy because they will retaliate against native people who try to expose their fraud.”

    Hoover says she’d been challenged on her claim of Indian ancestry since her first job as an assistant professor, and interpreted the questions as “petty jealousy or people just looking to interfere in my life.” By deflecting their inquiries rather than checking on her background, Hoover says she was “subverting the sovereignty of the Nations I was identifying with.” 

    This is the second shoe moccasin that Hoover has dropped. In October, she disclosed that her genealogical research uncovered “no records of tribal citizenship for any of my family members in the tribal databases that were accessed.” 

    With students and academics calling for her scalp, this gatherer may become hunter of new job

    In the ensuing uproar, former students organized a letter demanding her resignation, and obtained hundreds of signatures from Berkeley and other university professors and students, and Native Americans too. The letter said “her claims of having lived experience as an Indigenous person by dancing at powwows [are] absolutely appalling.” 

    Columbia Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson told The Mercury News that Hoover’s record demonstrates that she “lacks the requisite ethical and academic integrity to be a professor or a social scientist.”

    Befitting her place on a hypersensitive outpost of leftist victimhood ideology, Hoover’s new confession is thoroughly peppered with the right jargon, such as eight uses of “hurt” and a whopping 14 uses of “harm” — including a perplexing reference to “activating historical harms.” A sampling: 

    “I have brought hurt, harm, and broken trust to the Native community at large…

    I caused harm. I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students, and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms. This hurt has also interrupted student and faculty life and careers. I acknowledge that I could have prevented all of this hurt by investigating and confirming my family stories sooner.

    I betrayed and hurt my students, collaborators, and friends. I have negatively impacted people emotionally and culturally. For this hurt I have caused, I am deeply sorry.”

    Responding to the new development, a Berkeley spokeswoman threw around some lefty blather too. “We…support ongoing efforts to achieve restorative justice in a way that acknowledges and addresses the extent to which this matter has caused harm and upset among members of our community,” said spokeswoman Janet Gilmore. 

    Berkeley’s humiliation is just the latest in a long string of bogus claims of minority status, which seems to be dominated by white women, from black-wannabe Rachel Dolezal and Harvard Law’s “first woman of color” Elizabeth Warren to demoted former Dartmouth Native American Program Director Susan Taffe Reed, who’d faked membership in the Eastern Delaware Nations.   

    Dartmouth’s Susan Taffe Reed was demoted from leading the school’s Native American Program but is still an assistant dean (Eli Burakian/Dartmouth) 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 22:00

  • Alaskan Trucking Fleets Promise $150K Driver Salaries Amid Drilling Boom
    Alaskan Trucking Fleets Promise $150K Driver Salaries Amid Drilling Boom

    By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves

    As more drilling and mining projects are approved in Alaska, local trucking fleets are planning to hire drivers around the United States to haul equipment, chemicals and other loads — particularly on its fearsome Dalton Highway, a remote, 414-mile road that connects Fairbanks to oil fields near the Arctic Ocean.

    The developments, particularly ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project, have been controversial as they may mar some of Earth’s most remote land. However, for the residents of the United States’ third-least-populated state, the new investments could bring an economic boom that many locals say the state needs. 

    The construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in the 1970s and oil boom of the 1980s transformed Alaska. The pipeline brought in some 70,000 workers and often their families. Many of them stayed; Alaska’s population grew three times as fast as the rest of the country in the 1970s and 1980s. As of 2013, more than half of Alaska’s housing stock was built in those decades. 

    Josh Norum, the president of Fairbanks-based Sourdough Express, said the impending explosion in mining and drilling could rival those frothy years. 

    “We’re calling it our second pipeline,” Norum said. “(The Trans-Alaska Pipeline) was a huge boom. … We’re comparing that opportunity with this next phase.”

    6-figure salaries for Alaskan truck drivers — but the job isn’t for everyone

    In response, Alaskan trucking companies are searching for truck drivers to haul equipment — and they’re paying them massive salaries.

    Drivers who can tackle the so-called haul road, which is packed with ice in the winter and prone to dust and mud the other three seasons, are in particular demand. 

    Norum said Sourdough Express drivers on the haul road earn $95,000 to $120,000, in addition to health care, retirement and paid time off benefits. Compensation has increased by 15% over the past two years. 

    Sourdough Express currently employs 85 company drivers in addition to contractors, Norum said, adding that over the next few years the company will add 50 to 100 new drivers. 

    Gage Schutte, vice president of freight operations for Alaska West Express, also said the company is looking to add 50 to 100 new drivers to its fleet. According to a federal database, the company currently has 121 drivers.

    Alaska West Express increased driver compensation by 11% this year. Each round trip between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay on the haul road pays around $1,500, Schutte said. Drivers can expect to make 100 to 115 trips to Prudhoe a year. That means Alaska West Express drivers can earn around $150,000 to $170,000 a year, in addition to benefits.

    That might be enticing for truck drivers who are struggling with slumping freight volumes and looking for a well-paid gig. Thousands of trucking authorities have already shut down this year as gigs available for drivers dry up. According to federal data, tractor-trailer drivers earn a median annual wage of around $48,000. 

    However, these aren’t easy jobs. The best conditions on the haul road are in the winter, when temperatures in the negative 20s give the ice-packed highway its best traction. Fall and spring make the road slushy, while summertime means the haul road is dusty or slick with calcium that’s used to make it less dusty. 

    Robb Christenson, the director of sales and pricing at Sourdough Express, was a truck driver around his native Alaska for nearly three decades, including some 50 runs on the haul road. He said those loads weren’t easy, but hauling chemicals and heavy equipment near the Arctic Circle was certainly memorable.

    “The equipment that you haul you’ve never seen before in your life,” Christenson said. “Being a part of that and doing that, it means something special as well.”

    Large sections of the Dalton Highway are gravel. (Photo: Shutterstock)

    Safety is the most important feature for these trucking executives. Those at Alaska West and Sourdough said they prefer to hire Alaskan residents. However, there’s such a demand for truck drivers now that they’ll likely have to recruit from the lower 48. 

    Schutte said few truck drivers who apply to these haul road driving positions already have haul road experience. Some are able to catch on quicker — for example, those with log trucking experience in the Pacific Northwest.

    Jeff Russell, who is the superintendent of maintenance of operations in the Alaska Department of Transportation’s Dalton district, which includes the haul road, can concur that running on this road isn’t for everyone. Drivers stuck in a snowdrift might not be able to get rescued for a day or more. And they’ll need to know how to fix their own trucks — tow trucks aren’t exactly heading up to Prudhoe on a whim. 

    “Trying to find personnel that’s willing to take on that challenge is unique,” Russell said, “not just for those who need to maintain the road but for the trucking community who needs to have people that are willing to drive in those conditions. They’re not a dime a dozen. I can tell you that.”

    Alaska’s longtime dependence on energy production

    Alaska has a complex history with energy exploration and production. The state has long been highly dependent on diesel fuel for heating, transportation and power generation. Fuel is expensive to import.

    Oil production drove Alaska’s economic growth in the 20th century. The 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which has a carrying capacity of 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd), unlocked more oil production but also depleted Alaska’s oil reserves. Production on Alaska’s North Slope peaked in 1988 at just over 2 million bpd and has fallen more than 75% since then.

    Alaska’s oil production has been slowly declining for the past 10 years. Before that, there were two more punctuated periods of sharper decline, from 1988 to 1998 when crude oil production was cut in half from 2 million bpd to 1 million bpd, and another decline from 2004 to about 2011.

    It’s easiest to drive on the Dalton Highway in the winter, when the road is packed with ice and has good traction. (Photo: Shutterstock)

    Today, the question is whether Alaskan oil production is poised for a rebound that would see it retake the 500,000 bpd mark — approximately 25% of the state’s 1988 peak.

    Alaska’s oil production, when multiplied by the price of oil, helps determine the payout amounts for the Alaska Permanent Fund, the annual oil and gas dividend that every person who’s lived in Alaska for longer than 12 months is eligible to receive. That payout has bounced between $1,000 and $2,000 annually, but could see a resurgence if Alaska pumps more barrels in a rich price environment. 

    According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Alaska North Slope crude fetched $76.62 per barrel in January, a price that was down from recent peaks but still very high compared to the 1980s to 2000s.

    A local boon — with international controversy

    The $8 billion ConocoPhillips Willow project, approved by the Biden administration in mid-March, represents the largest investment in Alaska energy infrastructure in decades and is projected to produce as much as 200,000 bpd over the next 30 years. ConocoPhillips did not respond to a FreightWaves request for comment.

    Oil production on the North Slope could grow by 40%, and ConocoPhillips officials have said that the Willow project’s wells could be used to develop newly discovered fields farther west.

    Another project on the North Slope, a joint venture by Australian firm Oil Search and Spain’s Repsol, will invest $2.6 billion to develop the Pikka project, forecast to produce 120,000 bpd by 2026.

    While that kind of production growth would have a significant positive impact on the Alaska Permanent Fund payouts to everyday Alaskans, a  renaissance of Alaska’s oil and gas industry would immediately spike demand for construction, oilfield services and transportation jobs in the remote, frigid North Slope, likely raising wages significantly.

    Other projects may contribute to that boom as well. A proposed gold mine in southwest Alaska would take three to four years to construct and operate for about 27 years. It would employ hundreds of workers each year.

    Alaskan lawmakers, the oil industry, labor unions, trades, Alaska Native groups and some North Slope residents have all rallied behind the Willow project, as The New York Times reported. 

    Climate activists, however, have slammed it as a “carbon bomb.” Burning all of the oil the Willow project would produce would equal 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution annually, or 2 million additional cars. Meanwhile, some Alaska Natives say the proposed gold mine could endanger their access to fish and game resources.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 21:30

  • New Mexico And Florida Most Dangerous States For Pedestrians
    New Mexico And Florida Most Dangerous States For Pedestrians

    New Mexico and Florida are the most dangerous states for pedestrians in the U.S., according to a report by NGO Smart Growth America. The two U.S. metro areas with the highest average rates of pedestrian deaths are also located in these states. South Carolina, with the top 5 most dangerous metro to pedestrians, is the only other state that counted an annual average of more than 3 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 of population between 2016 and 2020.

    As Statista’s Kathraina Buchholz reports, the data shows that states where pedestrians are most often killed in traffic are typically located in the American South and Southwest. Delaware is the only state not following this pattern and is the fifth most dangerous for pedestrians in the nation at almost 2.9 people per 100,000 inhabitants killed on average in recent years. Smart Growth America believes this is because Southern and Southwestern metros are more likely to be designed for cars rather than for a variety of road users. For example, these cities experience more sprawl, which is again linked to more pedestrian deaths.

    Infographic: New Mexico and Florida Most Dangerous States for Pedestrians | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    According to the source, pedestrian deaths have been climbing steadily in the United States to more than 6,500 people in 2020 – up from around 5,500 in 2015. For 2021, the organization’s preliminary estimate assumes that a record 7,300 people have been killed while walking in the country. This is in line with the Governors Highway Safety Associations’ estimate of a 40-year high of pedestrian deaths that year. The trend did not let off in the first half of 2022, the latest point in time for which data exists.

    The study also highlights that older people, poor people and people of color are killed while walking in higher numbers. In the time frame of the study, an average of 4.2 in every 100,000 Native Americans and 3.0 in every 100,000 Black Americans died in such a way every year. In comparison, the average annual death rate in the country was just 1.9 in 100,000 during these years. This is because poorer and marginalized communities most often live close to high-speed roadways and in places with inadequate pedestrian infrastructure.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 21:00

  • High Levels Of Toxic Metals Found In Widely Consumed Drinks: Study
    High Levels Of Toxic Metals Found In Widely Consumed Drinks: Study

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

    A new study has found that some commonly consumed beverages such as fruit juice and artificial soda contain levels of toxic metals including arsenic, cadmium, and lead that exceed federal drinking water standards.

    A woman shops for frozen foods on an aisle across from sodas and other sugary drinks for sale at a superrmarket in Monterey Park, California, on June 18, 2014. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

    Researchers from Tulane University, Louisiana, measured 25 different toxic metals and trace elements in 60 soft beverages, including single fruit juice, mixed fruit juice, plant-based milk, artificial soda, and tea.

    The drinks were purchased in New Orleans and are commercially available in supermarkets across the United States.

    Researchers found that five of the 60 beverages tested contained levels of a toxic metal above federal drinking water standards.

    Two mixed juices had levels of arsenic above the 10 microgram/liter standard. Meanwhile, a cranberry juice, a mixed carrot and fruit juice, and an oat milk each had levels of cadmium exceeding the three parts per billion standard.

    What Are Arsenic and Cadmium?

    Arsenic is a naturally occurring tasteless, colorless, and odorless, chemical element that can be found in the environment, including in food and water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The element persists in the environment and does not deteriorate.

    The  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted a 10 parts per billion (ppb), or 10 microgram/liter standard for arsenic in public drinking water in 2001, replacing the old standard of 50 microgram/liter.

    However, long-term exposure to high levels of arsenic can result in skin disorders, an increased risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, and several types of cancer, according to the CDC.

    Cadmium, meanwhile, is another naturally occurring element used in products such as batteries, pigments, metal coatings, and plastics but also found in plant and animal foods, according to the CDC.

    When consumed in large amounts, cadmium can cause stomach issues and when inhaled at high levels, it can lead to lung damage or death. Cadmium is considered a cancer-causing agent.

    “Exposure to low levels of cadmium in air, food, water, and particularly in tobacco smoke over time may build up cadmium in the kidneys and cause kidney disease and fragile bones,” the CDC notes.

    Fruit Juices, Plant-Based Milks Contain Higher Levels

    In total, 7 of the 25 elements measured by researchers in their study exceeded drinking water standards in some of the drinks, including nickel, manganese, boron, cadmium, strontium, arsenic, and selenium, while lead was detected in more than 93 percent of the 60 samples, although the majority contained levels below one part per billion.

    The highest level (6.3 micrograms/kg) was found in a lime sports drink, though that is still below standards for drinking water set by the EPA and the World Health Organization.

    Overall, mixed fruit juices and plant-based milks, including oat and almond milk, contained higher levels of toxic metals than other drinks analyzed in the study, researchers said.

    Researchers did not identify the specific brands they studied but noted that they can be purchased at local supermarkets and retail stores.

    The findings of the study, titled, “Toxic metals and essential elements contents in commercially available fruit juices and other non-alcoholic beverages from the United States,” were published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 20:30

  • Prominent Russian Novelist Wounded In Car Bomb Assassination Attempt
    Prominent Russian Novelist Wounded In Car Bomb Assassination Attempt

    One of Russia’s best-known novelists has been targeted in an apparent attempted assassination near the city of Nizhny Novgorod on Saturday. RIA Novosti is reporting that a native of Ukraine is in custody related to the attack.

    Zakhar Prilepin was wounded by a car bomb, which killed his driver. Immediately after the blast he was seriously injured but reportedly conscious, after which a suspect was quickly detained, according to Russia’s Interior Ministry.

    Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin in Moscow in 2017, presenting his book “Platoon. Officers and rebels of Russian Literature”. via AFP

    “The search for possible accomplices continues,” the government statement said.  “Law enforcement officers are now investigating the circumstances and causes of the incident. Zakhar is OK,” the regional governor said.

    Prilepin is not only a contemporary literary giant in Russia, but he’s considered to be very active in support of the Ukraine war, with the BBC and other Western sources describing him as a prominent commentator of ultranationalist politics. He’s a former member of the State Duma and has been very active in conservative political movements within the country.

    Further according to BBC, a pro-Ukraine opposition group has claimed responsibility for the attack:

    The explosion reportedly took place on a remote road some 80km (50 miles) from the town of Bor. State media said the blogger suffered a concussion and fractured bones.

    The partisan group Atesh, which is made up of Ukrainians and Crimean Tartars, claimed it was behind the attack.

    “We had a feeling that sooner or later he would be blown up,” they wrote on Telegram. “He was not driving alone, but with a surprise on the underside of the car.”

    The group said further it “had been hunting Prilepin since the start of this year.”

    A Crimean opposition group “Atesh” –  reportedly associated with the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, has claimed responsibility in a social media post.

    Below is a brief biographical snapshot of Prilepin and some of his novels via Russia’s RT:

    After the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, Prilepin emerged as a staunch supporter of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which broke free from Ukraine’s rule and later joined Russia. In 2017, he formed his own volunteer battalion, taking the position of political officer. In late January, the writer’s press service said that Prilepin had signed a contract with Russia’s National Guard and set off for the conflict zone.

    Prilepin has also authored several books, most notably ‘The Pathologies’, a novel about the Chechen War, as well as ‘Some Will Not Go To Hell’, describing the hostilities in Donbass.

    State media sources have described the explosion as occurring on a highway, with the device having been previously planted underneath the car, and which could have been detonated by remote signal.

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    It marks the third in a string of assassination operations on Russian soil since the invasion of Ukraine began. In April pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed when a bomb detonated inside a St. Petersburg event when he was leading a talk. Moscow has blamed Ukrainian intelligence, as well as pointed the finger to Kiev’s Western backers for providing support for an emerging cross-border ‘dirty war’.

    In August the daughter of well-known Russian philosopher and political commentator Aleksandr Dugin was killed in a car bombing. Darya Dugina’s death shocked Russia and grabbed global headlines, setting off speculation that Aleksandr Dugin himself was the likely target. Father and daughter reportedly may have switched cars at the last moment while traveling back from a Russian national festival event outside Moscow.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 20:00

  • America Needs Permitting Reform To Reduce U.S. Reliance On Foreign Energy
    America Needs Permitting Reform To Reduce U.S. Reliance On Foreign Energy

    Authored by Lynn Good & Brendan Bechtel via RealClear Wire,

    With passage of H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, the House of Representatives launched the opening salvo for permitting reform this Congress. Business Roundtable applauds this action and encourages the Biden Administration and the Senate to engage in discussions to get meaningful, bipartisan permitting reform done. Successful permitting reform will unlock America’s full potential, make the U.S. an energy powerhouse and help address climate change. All while ensuring that we continue protecting the environment.

    Recent congressional action on infrastructure and energy demands planning, permitting and building an unprecedented amount of new infrastructure within the next decade. Congress made historic investments in our nation’s competitiveness, allocating $973 billion to upgrade our aging transportation and water systems, expanding broadband access to communities across the country, investing in critical energy infrastructure and clean energy technologies and making our systems more resilient against evolving threats like cyberattacks and climate change. And, if we’re serious about combatting climate change, we must engage in permitting reform discussions and reach a bipartisan consensus to clear the way for innovative American clean energy technology. 

    We’re beginning to see the benefits from these laws but reforming the country’s onerous permitting process is essential to delivering them. As of February, nearly $200 billion has been announced for over 20,000 projects nationwide, including funding for significant bridge repair projects and clean energy projects in all 50 states. Research by Business Roundtable shows that every dollar spent on infrastructure yields nearly $4 in economic growth over 20 years, making infrastructure an investment that pays serious long-term dividends.

    Many of these projects will kick off a multi-year, complex permitting process at the time we need them most. Unfortunately, the permitting process remains a labyrinth of red tape, costly delays and litigation. Studies have shown regulatory reviews took an average of 4.5 years before construction could begin on new projects and those delays were often followed by lengthy court challenges. For our nation’s most complex projects, the permitting phase will often far exceed the amount of time spent actually in construction. These delays undermine U.S. economic growth and competitiveness by increasing the appeal of investing abroad where projects can be built quickly and risk is lower. Now is the time for policymakers to take bold, bipartisan action.

    Permitting reform would also reduce our reliance on foreign energy and allow the U.S. to export more energy to our friends and allies. Russia’s war in Ukraine, production cuts from OPEC and ongoing price fluctuations have underscored the critical importance of energy security. If we’re going to advance the energy transition, the permitting process needs to be nimbler and better resourced. Timeliness is an enabler to our collective energy supply leadership, and it can be improved significantly – and it can be done while ensuring we’re protecting the environment.

    We urge policymakers to improve the permitting process to incentivize capital investment here in the United States, boost innovation, help address energy costs and create jobs without undermining environmental laws. Specifically, Congress should designate one federal agency to lead each project’s permitting review process, require that lead agency to make permitting decisions within 90 days of the public comment period, and improve best practices for agency review and coordination. Policymakers should also apply existing reforms to a larger universe of projects, expedite the approval process for projects that do not have a significant environmental impact, bring states along in the process through coordinated decision making and require legal challenges be filed within 150 days of a project’s approval.

    Business Roundtable, the voice of America’s CEOs, welcomes House passage of H.R. 1 and urges Congress to work together on a bipartisan path forward. Permitting reform will result in a more modern, efficient process and ensure a cleaner, more secure energy future while supporting economic growth and American jobs.

    Lynn Good is Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer of Duke Energy Corporation and Business Roundtable Smart Regulation Chair.

    Brendan Bechtel is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bechtel and Business Roundtable Infrastructure Chair.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 19:30

  • Hunter Laptop Letter Pitched To Ex-Spooks As 'Debate Talking Point' To Help Biden
    Hunter Laptop Letter Pitched To Ex-Spooks As ‘Debate Talking Point’ To Help Biden

    The infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter signed by 51 ex-intel officials was pitched to them by its co-author, Mike Morell, as a way to help Joe Biden with a “talking point” during a crucial debate with Trump, the Washington Examiner‘s Jerry Dunleavy reports.

    Hunter Biden smokes crack, source: his laptop

    Morell admitted that now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “triggered” him to write the October 2020 letter, co-authored by he and former senior CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos, suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop reported by the NY Post was likely Russian disinformation.

    The recruitment email from Morell was sent to former intelligence officials and included the laptop letter co-authored by him and former senior CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos as an attachment.

    The quoted language from the Morell email, sent on Oct. 18, 2020, was read to the Washington Examiner verbatim and identically by two independent sources who had access to the email.

    Morell’s email explained that both he and Polymeropoulos believed Russia was involved in the Hunter Biden laptop stories and that Trump likely planned to attack Biden over the laptop revelations in the upcoming debate. -Washington Examiner

    “We want to give the VP a talking point to use in response,” Morell wrote in the email.

    Morell previously admitted under oath that his involvement in the letter was designed to help Joe Biden “because I wanted him to win the election.”

    Mark Zaid, an attorney representing Polymeropoulos and several other laptop letter signers (and ex-ABC Senior News producer James Gordon Meek who was indicted on child porn charges, and who bragged about “getting clearances for guys who had child porn issues,” and who loves hanging out at Disney World alone), told the media last month that “when the draft was sent out to people to sign, the cover email made clear that it was an effort to help the Biden campaign.”

    The letter was ultimately signed by 51 ex-intelligence officials, and published October 19, 2020, days before the Trump-Biden debate, and furthered the disinformation that the laptop was the product of Russian disinformation – a narrative which the Biden campaign picked up on and amplified.

    “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage,” said Joe Biden during the debate.

    To which Trump replied: “You mean the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?” Joe Biden replied: “That’s exactly what we’re told.”

    “Here we go again with Russia,” Trump replied.

    Last month it was revealed Morell told House investigators he had no intention to write the laptop letter, but admitted his phone call with Blinken, then a top advisor for Biden’s 2020 campaign, “triggered” him to do so. Morell said it was his “guess” Blinken called him because the future secretary of state wanted it “out” in public that “the Russians were somehow involved.”

    House Republicans wrote that the same day of the Blinken-Morell call, Blinken “also emailed Morell an article” published in USA Today which alleged the FBI was examining whether the laptop was part of a Russian “disinformation campaign.” The article was then cited in the laptop letter.

    Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH) also said Morell received a call from then-Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti after the presidential debate to thank him for “putting the statement out.” -Washington Examiner

    The October 2020 letter made numerous suggestions as to Russian involvement in the laptop reporting, arguing “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.”

    Emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop implying Joe Biden was receiving 10% of Hunter’s ill-gotten gains.

    According to the letter’s authors, the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

    As Dunleavy notes, “Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert and former Secret Service agent, conducted an examination of the laptop for the Washington Examiner last year, concluding “there is a 100% certainty that Robert Hunter Biden was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data” and that “the hard drive is authentic.””

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 19:00

  • Doug Casey On The Debt Ceiling Farce And Why The US Should Declare Bankruptcy
    Doug Casey On The Debt Ceiling Farce And Why The US Should Declare Bankruptcy

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: The US federal government has raised the so-called debt ceiling 104 times since 1944.

    Shouldn’t they call it a debt target instead of a debt ceiling?

    Is this whole thing a farce?

    Doug Casey: The situation is completely and irredeemably out of control. It’s a farce. Quite laughable, except for the fact it’s so deadly serious.

    Can they reduce the debt ceiling or the amount of debt? Or even slow down its growth at this point? No.

    The situation is beyond redemption because most US government expenditures go to pay entitlements—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and numerous other types of welfare.

    Those things will be very hard to cut at this point; breaking the doggy dishes of millions of corrupted Americans would cause unrest. Plus, the so-called “defense” budget, which mostly supports the military/industrial complex while fomenting conflict. It’s actually much larger than disclosed because it should include $50 billion of foreign aid, the cost of running outrageously large embassies over the world, the CIA, and black budgets of all types.

    Meanwhile, all US government agencies are bent on expanding themselves. The bureaucrats who run them realize that if they don’t grow the budget every year, they reduce their chances of going from one GS level to the next. Their success is based upon managing more people and spending more money. Naturally, all these agencies grow like cancers.

    As a result, the “debt ceiling” is a fiction. It will stay out of control unless there is a total reorganization of the government—which itself would be risky. And that’s not going to happen until we have a financial catastrophe that leaves absolutely no alternative.

    International Man: You have previously stated the US government should default on the national debt.

    What are the reasons for that?

    Doug Casey: I know it sounds outrageous to propose the US government default on its national debt. Of course, they don’t think it will ever be necessary because, as several high-level government officials have pointed out, they can just print money to pay off the debt.

    However, I disagree. What are the reasons for doing something as seemingly catastrophic as defaulting on the debt? I’ll give you at least five. Stick with me. Let’s conduct an outrageous but not unreasonable thought experiment.

    First, barring default, future generations of Americans will be turned into serfs to pay off the debt. Profligate people have run up the debt, but everybody’s children and grandchildren are stuck with having to pay it off. That’s simply immoral. If you have any care for the future at all, future generations should be saved from becoming serfs to pay it off.

    Second, it would punish the enablers who lend the US government money. People who lend the US government money facilitate it by doing all the stupid and destructive things it does. They shouldn’t be rewarded; they should be punished.

    Third, official default is better than the alternative. It’s like a hundred-story building that’s about to collapse. If that’s the case, should you wait until it collapses randomly and unpredictably, or should you have a controlled demolition? It’s not a pleasant alternative, but it’s the better alternative.

    Fourth, default would make further borrowing on the part of the US government impossible, at least for a while. It would be exposed as an untrustworthy entity, like the Argentine government, which defaults all the time. People would still idiotically lend it more money, but a default might slow down the rate of increase in the US government’s size.

    Fifth, it’s almost necessary that the debt goes away to help de-financialize the US economy. The US is tremendously over-financialized. It’s all about buying, selling, creating, and packaging financial instruments. Government debt, with the help of the Fed, is the actual engine of inflation. Defaulting on the national debt would pave the way for the reinstitution of a sound, redeemable, commodity-based money. People would have to concentrate more on real wealth than phony financial wealth, actual engineering, as opposed to financial and social engineering.

    Of course, an objection reasonable people would make is: “If you default on the debt, it’s going to be a catastrophe.”

    My answer is that just because all the paper debt of the US government goes away doesn’t mean the real wealth in the world will disappear. The farms, factories, technologies, and the skills of the workers, will still exist. But on a sound foundation. And with some new owners.

    Furthermore, I’d point out that the US Government isn’t “we the people.” It’s become a discreet entity with its own interests, like a giant corporation. If it declares bankruptcy, it’s a problem for its employees and clients much more than for you, the taxpayer.

    Those are some of the arguments I’d make for defaulting on the national debt. But it’s just a rather academic thought experiment. The powers-that-be will prefer to build the current house of cards higher, probably propping it up with FX controls, Central Bank Digital Currencies, a Social Credit System, much higher taxes, more inflation, price controls, and god knows what else in the years to come.

    The default will happen, but more gradually, through the subtle fraud of inflation, which is actually the very worst and most dishonest way to default.

    International Man: Paul Krugman and other mainstream economists have proposed the US government issue a trillion-dollar coin to buy up the federal debt.

    That “serious” people can put forward such a clownish solution illustrates that it’s all a ridiculous charade.

    What is your take?

    Doug Casey: When you’re using funny money as a substitute for real money, it’s inevitable that soothsayers will come up with ridiculous solutions. Krugman isn’t an economist; he’s a political apologist. And a fool. He doesn’t describe the way the world works, but the way he’d like to make it work—using coercion and fraud, not voluntarism and the market. Every idea he has is so stupid that it’s criminal.

    The solution to this problem is to go back to a commodity money. Money should be, once again, just a medium of exchange and a store of value. It could no longer be used as a political football.

    And the US government should be cut in size by 50, 75%, or 95%. Who knows how deeply you can cut the size of the US government until you try doing it? But it’s necessary, at least if what’s left of the idea of America is going to survive.

    Using commodity money will, itself, greatly downsize the US government. The US State has become a behemoth and a parasite. It’s a far bigger danger to the average American than the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, or all of them together. Returning to sound money and a tiny government would make for a more pleasant, prosperous, and safer world—although the process of doing it would be unpleasant for some people.

    On the bright side, the only people who will be seriously hurt are the parasites living off the government. I say to hell with the parasites. They should be inconvenienced.

    International Man: It’s hard to believe the US government was ever debt-free.

    But it happened once—in 1835—thanks to President Andrew Jackson. He was the first and only president to completely pay off the national debt.

    Jackson also shut down the Second Bank of the United States, the precursor to the Federal Reserve, the US’s current iteration of a central bank.

    It’s unthinkable a modern US president could or would do such things.

    Given the practical reality of the world today, where do you see the federal debt going, and what are the implications?

    Doug Casey: It was wonderful that Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt, something that Alexander Hamilton, with his warped ideas of economics, sold to the country. But it’s now absolutely impossible to pay off $32 trillion of acknowledged debt, scores of trillions of contingent liabilities, and scores of trillions more of unacknowledged debt.

    I’d like to point out that there actually have been previous defaults by the US government. For example, Abraham Lincoln, during the War between the States, defaulted by printing up so-called Greenback currency.

    Roosevelt defaulted on the debt by fraudulently devaluing the dollar, raising the price of gold from $20.50 to $35, but only after confiscating it from citizens. That was a default. Then there was Nixon, in 1971, defaulting on the promise to pay foreign governments at $35 gold. Now the dollar is only worth 1/2000th of an ounce of gold.

    International Man: Is there any way to turn lemons into lemonade and profit from this situation?

    Doug Casey: Let’s not sugarcoat the situation. The real question is how to profit from the collapse of an overextended and corrupt empire.

    It makes sense to look at the historical precedent, like the Roman Empire. Was there any way to profit from the collapse of the Roman Empire? Well, some people did, I suppose. But the standard of living collapsed for almost all its residents during the ensuing Dark Ages.

    Is there any way to profit from the collapse of Western civilization? That’s so serious that it’s almost like asking whether it’s possible to profit from an asteroid hitting the Earth. The best you can hope to do is insulate yourself as much as possible.

    At this point, the best way to be hurt least, or possibly even profit within a very bad scenario, is to own gold, silver, and other commodities. And to improve your skills as a speculator. Remember, most of the real wealth in the world is still going to exist; it’s just going to change ownership.

    *  *  *

    We’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming… That’s precisely why bestselling author and legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released this urgent PDF report on how to survive and thrive in this chaotic environment. Click here to download it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 18:30

  • Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova: "Women's Sports Is Not The Place For Trans Athletes"
    Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova: “Women’s Sports Is Not The Place For Trans Athletes”

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Multi-time grand slam winning tennis champion Martina Navratilova has taken a stand for women’s sports, voicing her objections to trans identified male athletes competing against biological women.

    Navratilova pointed to the fact that a trans athlete identifying as a woman, Austin Killips, won the women’s category of the Tour of the Gila bicycle race in New Mexico this week.

    Cycling’s governing body, the UCI, defended its transgender policy after Killips won, stating “The UCI acknowledges that transgender athletes may wish to compete in accordance with their gender identity,” and adding “The UCI rules are based on the latest scientific knowledge and have been applied in a consistent manner.”

    Last week, Navratilova also called out trans swimmer Lia Thomas for accusing critics of attempting to “hide transphobia” by saying they are feminists.

    “NEWSFLASH Lia- it’s not fair,” Navratilova tweeted, adding “We shouldn’t have to explain it to you over and over. Also- stop explaining feminism to feminists….”

    Navratilova previously praised the decision by the World Athletics international governing body that it will not allow trans identifying biological males to compete against biological women, calling it a “step in the right direction.”

    World Athletics Bans Trans

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    Despite most of Navratilova’s Twitter feed being leftist fodder, it is peppered with posts that make her stance on trans athletes clear:

    OK, cue the mob:

    As we have highlighted, cycling is one of the major sports where trans identifying males are cleaning up in the women’s category.

    Olympic medalist swimmer Sharron Davies, a staunch campaigner to protect women’s sports, also weighed in on the subject:

    Related:

    Former Olympian Swimmer Says Trans Hate Mob Has ‘Made My Life Hell’

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    Swimming’s World Governing Body Slaps Total Ban on Transgender Athletes

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    Another Sport Bans Trans

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    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 18:00

  • California's Cannabis Market Crashes, Northern Counties Brace For Impact
    California’s Cannabis Market Crashes, Northern Counties Brace For Impact

    Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    California’s cannabis industry is in a free-fall, with some municipalities in the northern part of the state making plans for significantly reduced tax revenues as a result of a collapse in wholesale prices.

    A cannabis growing operation in the Santa Ynez Valley northwest of Santa Barbara, Calif., on Aug. 6, 2019. (David McNew/AFP via Getty Images)

    Once selling for more than $4,000 per pound, bulk buyers are now shopping in the $300 to $500 range for fresh harvests, according to experts, and some growers reported clearing out their crops for less than $200 per pound for fear of being stuck with product.

    The price represents a sharp drop from recent years, according to industry insiders.

    “It’s been a steady decline since we got here in 2010, but with the passage of Proposition 64 in 2016, prices accelerated downward quickly,” Rachel Greene, a longtime grower with experience in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties’ cannabis programs, told The Epoch Times. “It was a combination of a lot of people getting in the game and the old corporate warfare model of operating at a loss to drown out the competition.”

    Prop. 64—known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act—was passed by voters and made recreational sales legal, creating the beginning of a regulatory framework to manage the industry.

    Legitimate and illegitimate family businesses were severely impacted by the plunge in profits and salability of a once easy-to-move commodity, according to farmers.

    Marijuana greenhouses in Carpinteria near Santa Barbara, Calif., on August 6, 2019. (David McNew/AFP via Getty Images)

    “I used to pay trimmers $300 to manicure each pound, and now I can’t even sell them for that,” a Mendocino County local who asked to be called Jack, for fear of retaliation, told The Epoch Times. “This was a business that benefited families all over the mountains here, and now there are growers and their helpers looking for work. Nobody knows what to do.”

    Farmers are reporting a “perfect storm” of conditions, with inflation causing the cost of doing business to escalate significantly over the last two years, while the saturated market in California has left many growers with few options.

    A Purple Candy Cane strain grows in the Mendo Dope/Greenshock Farms garden.

    “There were a bunch of pounds composted out here last year, and a lot of hopes and dreams went up in smoke with the crash,” Jack said. “We’re all kind of stunned by how fast it happened, and it’s not just us hurting. Look at all the empty storefronts. We were the lifeblood of this economy.”

    Lost Tax Revenues

    Plummeting prices are affecting more than just the cannabis market, as rural regions of the state have become reliant on the industry supporting retailers and the taxes generated by increased cashflows in the area.

    The city of Ukiah, the county seat of Mendocino, is preparing for an estimated $1 million drop in tax revenues, in part due to the weakened cannabis industry.

    Revenues grew steadily year over year until experiencing a dip last year, with the busiest shopping season—the last three months of the year—resulting in a drop of nearly ten percent compared to 2021, according to city records. However, the records don’t specify how much tax revenue was related to cannabis.

    “This doesn’t make the impacts any less real, as we’re seeing the declines in numerous types of businesses, but they are difficult to measure,” Shannon Riley, deputy city manager for Ukiah, told The Epoch Times.

    Garden supply sales were down nearly 13 percent in Ukiah last year, and sales taxes collected overall were down nearly 6 percent in 2022 compared to the year prior, according to HdL Companies—a firm providing audit, operations, and revenue management services to public agencies.

    The state experienced 4 percent growth in overall sales tax revenues during the same period.

    Compared to other cities in northern California facing tax revenue declines, Ukiah is uniquely positioned in the area, acting as a hub for surrounding communities, with medical facilities and shopping available for thousands of residents not living in the city, according to the deputy city manager.

    “Ukiah is very well prepared for this type of adjustment and will continue to plow ahead with major infrastructure projects, street improvements, recreation programming and events, and more,” Riley said.

    Other areas have not fared as well, with small towns in Northern California that once experienced a boom-and-bust moment with the loss of the logging industry now going through similar circumstances.

    Marijuana plants grow at the Green Pearl Organics marijuana dispensary in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., on Jan. 1, 2018. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

    From Boom to Bust

    Known as the Emerald Triangle for the region’s renowned cannabis production, the counties of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity grew in population and in economic activity following the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996, the first in the nation allowing for the plant’s medicinal use.

    While census data shows modest growth for each county—approximately 11 percent for Mendocino and Humboldt and more than 20 percent for Trinity—in the 27 years since legalization, residents say those numbers don’t account for the actual number of people that moved in.

    The discrepancy lies in the pattern of behavior for many who came to the region to set up their operations from other states, yet never registered to get California driver’s licenses, and returned to their home state once the harvest was complete, according to farmers and local authorities.

    In addition, from August to November, a sizable number of people traveled into the area in search of work as trimmers and laborers every year.

    “It felt like the population doubled, and we’re a small community so it’s easy to notice the newcomers,” Juan Aguilar of Ukiah told The Epoch Times. “For part of the year during grow season, and especially at harvest, we’d have huge crowds in the grocery stores, people all over town.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 17:30

  • "AAAAAAAAAHHHH": Trans Activist Unleashes Primal Scream At SF Board Meeting
    “AAAAAAAAAHHHH”: Trans Activist Unleashes Primal Scream At SF Board Meeting

    A transgender activist let out several primal screams at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting last week, after SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins declined to prosecute a Walgreens security guard who shot Banko Brown, a black transgender individual.

    Jenkins declared that “the evidence clearly shows that the suspect believed he was in mortal danger and acted in self-defense.”

    Activist Lia McGeever voiced their (?) displeasure with an intra-scream diatribe;

    “I live in [District 6]. I hate a lot of people on this board… for the reasons that led up to Banko Brown’s death. So, often I prepare something — maybe it’s a little historical, may even be a little poetic, whatever. There’s a lot of performative people on this board who will say one thing and support Black people, homeless people, trans people, and then immediately stab you in the face — being racist, transphobic, anti-homeless.

    So I don’t have any words prepared today. I just want you to feel our pain. I don’t know if you can at this point, based off your policy choices, but I have to pretend you have some form of empathy left. So, I am going to spend the next minute screaming cause that is what is going on in here.”

    McGeever then gave several primal screams, saying “That is what the trans genocide in this country, in this city, has brought me to.”

    As Jonathan Turley writes;

    No, that is what an age of rage has brought all of us to.  This entire scream session was due to San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announcing that her office would not prosecute Michael-Earl Wayne Anthony, a Walgreens security guard responsible for the shooting death of Banko Brown, a Black member of the transgender community. Jenkins declared that “the evidence clearly shows that the suspect believed he was in mortal danger and acted in self-defense.”

    Our politics is now reduced to a collective scream session with zero content beyond pure unadulterated rage.

    As I noted earlier, this trend was previously captured by Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) who is shown on videotape screaming about gun control in the Capitol as his colleagues left the floor following a vote. When Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) asked Bowman to stop yelling, Bowman shouted back: “I was screaming before you interrupted me” — which could go down as the epitaph for our age.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 17:00

  • Texas Committee Passes Bill To Create 100% Reserve Gold And Silver-Backed Transactional Currencies
    Texas Committee Passes Bill To Create 100% Reserve Gold And Silver-Backed Transactional Currencies

    Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold,

    On May 2, a Texas House committee passed a bill to create 100% reserve gold and silver-backed transactional currencies. Enactment of this legislation would create an option for people to conduct business in sound money, set the stage to undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money, and possibly create a viable alternative to a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

    Rep. Mark Dorazio (R) introduced HB4903 on March 10 and it has since garnered a bipartisan coalition of 42 cosponsors. The legislation would require the state comptroller to establish and provide for the issuance of gold and silver specie and also establish digital currencies that are 100% backed by gold and silver, and 100% redeemable in cash, gold, or silver.

    Specie is defined as “a precious metal stamped into coins of uniform shape, size, design, content, and purity, suitable for or customarily used as currency, as a medium of exchange, or as the medium for purchase, sale, storage, transfer, or delivery of precious metals in retail or wholesale transactions.”

    In establishing gold and silver specie, the comptroller would be required to authorize the Texas Bullion Depository as issuer and ensure that the holder of the specie may use the specie as legal tender in payment of debt and readily transfer the specie to another person.

    The comptroller would also be required to create a mechanism to use 100% backed gold and silver digital currencies in everyday transactions.

    In establishing the digital currency under Subsection (a)(2), the comptroller shall provide a means to ensure that a person who holds the digital currency may:

    1. Use the digital currency as legal tender in payment of debt; and

    2. By electronic means readily transfer or assign the digital currency to another person.

    Physical gold and silver backing the digital currency would be stored in a pooled account at the Texas State Bullion Depository.

    “The trustee shall maintain enough gold and silver specie or bullion to provide for the redemption of all units of the digital currency issued but not redeemed.”

    In practice, individuals would be able to purchase transactional currency representing the smallest fractions of physical gold or silver. The money would be used to purchase gold or silver that would be held in the already-open Texas Bullion Depository. Individuals would be able to redeem their transactional currency for dollars, gold, or silver on demand.

    On May 2, the House State Affairs Committee passed HB4903 by a 7-6 vote.

    In an outpouring of strong support from the grassroots in Texas, a 78-page document – representing hundreds of messages of support for the bill – was presented to the committee members during a hearing last month.

    IMPACT

    This is one of several bills introduced in the Texas legislature this year to promote sound money, including legislation to establish state gold and silver reserves, and a bill to make gold and silver legal tender in the Lone Star State.

    The creation of state-issued gold-backed and silver-backed digital currencies would create currency competition with Federal Reserve notes and undermine the Fed’s monopoly on money. It would also provide a sound money-backed competitor if the Federal Reserve implements a central bank digital currency.

    Broadly speaking, by making gold and silver conveniently available for regular, daily transactions by the general public, gold and silver-backed digital currency would create the potential for a wide-reaching effect. Professor William Greene, an expert on constitutional tender, said in a paper for the Mises Institute that when people in multiple states actually start using gold instead of Federal Reserve notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

    “Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a ‘reverse Gresham’s Law’ effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes).

    “As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state – as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money – and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions.”

    Gresham’s Law holds that “bad money drives out good.”  For example, when the U.S. government replaced silver quarters and dimes with coins made primarily of less valuable copper, the cheap coins drove the silver out of circulation. People hoarded the more valuable silver coins and spent the less valuable copper money. So, how do you reverse Gresham?

    The key is in making it easier to use gold in everyday transactions. The reason bad money drives out good is that governments put up barriers to using sound money in day-to-day life. That makes it more costly to spend gold and incentivizes hoarding. When you remove barriers, you level the playing field and allow gold and silver to compete head-to-head with Federal Reserve notes. On an even playing field, gold beats fiat money every time.

    CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCIES (CBDC)

    A gold-backed digital currency would create an alternative and allow individuals and businesses to avoid a CBDC.

    Digital currencies exist as virtual banknotes or coins held in a digital wallet on your computer or smartphone. The difference between a central bank (government) digital currency and peer-to-peer electronic cash such as bitcoin is that the value of the CBDC is backed and controlled by the government, just like traditional fiat currency.

    At the root of the move toward a CBDC is “the war on cash.” The elimination of cash creates the potential for the government to track and even control consumer spending.

    Imagine if there was no cash. It would be impossible to hide even the smallest transaction from the government’s eyes. Something as simple as your morning trip to Starbucks wouldn’t be a secret from government officials. As Bloomberg put it in an article published when China launched a digital yuan pilot program in 2020, digital currency “offers China’s authorities a degree of control never possible with physical money.”

    The government could even “turn off” an individual’s ability to make purchases. Economist Thorsten Polleit outlined the potential for Big Brother-like government control with the advent of a digital euro in an article published by the Mises Wire. As he put it, “the path to becoming a surveillance state regime will accelerate considerably” if and when a digital currency is issued.

    BACKGROUND

    The United States Constitution states in Article I, Section 10, “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Currently, all debts and taxes in Kansas are either paid with Federal Reserve Notes (dollars) which were authorized as legal tender by Congress, or with coins issued by the U.S. Treasury — very few of which have gold or silver in them.

    The Federal Reserve destroys this constitutional monetary system by creating a monopoly based on its fiat currency. Without the backing of gold or silver, the central bank can easily create money out of thin air. This not only devalues your purchasing power over time; it also allows the federal government to borrow and spend far beyond what would be possible in a sound money system. Without the Fed, the U.S. government wouldn’t be able to maintain all of its unconstitutional wars and programs. The Federal Reserve is the engine that drives the most powerful government in the history of the world.

    Creating gold and silver-backed digital currencies would take another step in the process of abolishing the Federal Reserve system by attacking it from the bottom up – pulling the rug out from under it by working to make its functions irrelevant at the state and local levels, and setting the stage to undermine the Federal Reserve monopoly by introducing competition into the monetary system.

    WHAT’S NEXT

    HB4903 will now move to the Calendars Committee. This committee determines which bills move to the House floor for a vote. Supporters of the bill in Texas have created an online tool to register support for the bill moving to the House for a debate and vote. Residents of Texas can submit their comments here.

    Information from the Tenth Amendment Center contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 16:30

  • Burger King To Close 400 Stores In "Reclaim The Flame" Turnaround Strategy
    Burger King To Close 400 Stores In “Reclaim The Flame” Turnaround Strategy

    During an earnings call earlier this week, the CEO of Restaurant Brands International Inc., the parent company of Burger King, stated that he plans to close between 300 and 400 underperforming stores this year to streamline the fast-food brand. 

    “Historically, we’ve closed a couple of hundred units at Burger King US,” CEO Joshua Kobza said in a Q1 earnings call on Tuesday. The expected closures this year appear to be well above average. 

    In the first three months, several Burger King franchisees have declared bankruptcy, including Illinois-based Toms King, Michigan-based EYM King, and Utah-based Meridian Restaurants Unlimited.

    Kboza said, “Traffic was modestly negative this quarter,” but noted an improvement in year-over-year traffic trends from Q4 into Q1. 

    Burger King has shuttered a net total of 124 US locations, a 1.7% reduction, leaving just 7,000 US restaurants at the end of the quarter. More closures are anticipated in the coming months.

    The brand’s $400 million “Reclaim the Flame” bet to regain market share and wind down underperforming restaurants might be working — as it delivered comparable sales of 8.7% year-over-year for the quarter.

    Additionally, the brand strives to simplify its overly complex menus and operations. Though raising costs on the iconic Whopper could be determinantal to future sales as rival McDonald’s recently found out that higher menu prices led to a pushback from consumers. 

    Not everyone can afford a $9 burger… 

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

    And while Burger King trims stores and becomes leaner, it must realize consumers have been battered with 24 months of negative real wage growth. Any price increases might jeopardize its turnaround plan, as some consumers have now traded down fast food restaurants for “Dollar Tree Dinners.”

    Burger King did go ‘woke’… 

    So let’s see how this turnaround strategy pans out.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 16:00

  • Fauci's Never-Ending Victory Tour
    Fauci’s Never-Ending Victory Tour

    Authored by Pierre Kory via The Brownstone Institute,

    What a dystopian nightmare watching “America’s Doctor” try to continue his Covid victory tour…

    It is both shocking and unsurprising that he would do this despite leaving a generation of children with lower IQ scores, a US life expectancy which dropped three years in the span of two, hundreds of thousands of deaths from the vaccines amongst working-age Americans (threatening the life insurance industry), millions of vaccine injured, skyrocketing disability rates, an explosion of cancers, and suddenly plummeting birth rates.

    So I went after him.

    Again.

    Maybe he will get the memo this time, particularly in light of the frosty receptions he has received of late from normally kid-gloved, obsequious interviewers. Enjoy.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci left government in December, but his media tour is going strong, albeit with a different tone and tenor. The fawning adulation and questions about his exercise regimes and bobbleheads have been replaced by skepticism and outright doubt from outlets who never dared question the all-knowing man once dubbed “America’s doctor” by the New Yorker.

    Fauci recently appeared on CNN to complain about, “a personification of me as a person who essentially closed everything down.” He was responding to a lengthy sitdown with the New York Times where he declared, “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did. I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that.”

    For all his faults, Fauci is no fool. One does not spend 54 years ensconced in the federal government without learning how to play politics.

    Three years removed from the worst of the COVID pandemic, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases knows the policy decisions guided by his medical recommendations are looking worse by the day.

    Herein lies his problem. When his ideas were in vogue, Fauci had no problem claiming responsibility. Now that the ugly consequences are coming due, he is eager to wash his hands.

    In the face of plummeting math and reading scores between 2020 and 2022, Fauci is especially quick to deny his role in the school shutdowns. Last fall, Fauci raised eyebrows for denying that school lockdowns, “forever irreparably damaged anyone.” 

    Yet as late as September 2020, Fauci recommended that schools only open back up once the virus is “under control.” Earlier in the year, he had chastised Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, warning that premature reopening “likely” led to widespread student infection. 

    Today, even left-leaning sources concede that, “kids are safe. They always have been.”

    Then came the vaccines. From the outset, Fauci’s entire COVID mitigation strategy was based on an experimental vaccine rushed to market under the branding “warp speed.” There had never been an mRNA-approved vaccine before, and now it was being pushed non-stop from the White House podium with the full support of the pharmaceutical industry. 

    It was always highly illogical to deploy a static vaccine toward a mutagenic and constantly changing coronavirus. Then came the checks the vaccines couldn’t write. Fauci told us they would stop transmission. He implored us to “follow the science.”

    Today, the science is clear: the COVID vaccine does not prevent transmission or contagion of the virus. Yet even now, Fauci continues to lament that “only 68 percent of the country is vaccinated” and says “we do really poorly” compared to the rest of the world.

    European countries like Switzerland, normally held up by American academics as worthy of emulation, are advising their citizens against the vaccine. There’s a reason that known vaccine expert Robert Kennedy, Jr. is already earning the support of nearly one in five Democrat voters.

    In my private practice, I have treated more than 500 patients suffering injuries from the vaccine, I have seen the unintended — but brutal — harm they’ve often caused up close and personal. Yet to raise any of these issues is to risk one’s livelihood. That is Fauci’s greatest stain on our country.

    Fauci fostered an environment where doctors who deviated from the preferred party line were persecuted and even criminalized for offering a different point of view. Silencing free expression and thought is the antithesis of America, and dangerous for science, innovation, and medicine.

    Fauci blamed “misinformation and disinformation” for “really hurting so many things, including people’s trust in science,” yet on his watch, laws were passed that empowered government agencies to strip doctors of their medical licenses for questioning the wisdom of vaccines. 

    These efforts left a profound lasting impact on medicine and the patient-doctor relationship. Suddenly physicians were forced to choose between offering their best advice or losing their ability to practice medicine.

    Anthony Fauci’s legacy is one of narcissism and power. The glorification of his massive ego trumped any scientific or medical data. His policies were giveaways to the pharmaceutical industry, which helped burnish his image and crush dissent. He saw his opportunity for the spotlight and seized it. Now, rather than admit mistakes, Fauci is intent on revising history.  Unfortunately for his legacy, we’re all living with the consequences of his hubris, and they are impossible to overlook.

    *  *  *

    Reposted from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 15:30

  • Ukraine Claims Russian Hypersonic Missile Shot Down Using US Patriot System
    Ukraine Claims Russian Hypersonic Missile Shot Down Using US Patriot System

    In an alleged first which is no doubt making US Congressional hawks very proud, Ukraine says it has intercepted a Russian ballistic missile for the first time using a US-made anti-air defense system. What’s more, and perhaps the more dubious aspect, is that it was a hypersonic missile shot down over Kiev, according to top Ukrainian officials.

    Commander of Ukraine’s air force, Mykola Oleshchuk, announced in a Saturday Telegram post that a Russian Kinzhal, or Kh-47, was inbound until being successfully intercepted using American Patriot missiles. The intercept occurred Thursday night in what’s the first time known time Patriot defenses were put into successful use by Ukraine.

    Patriot air defense units in Warsaw in February, via Reuters

    Moscow has long touted its hypersonic ballistic missiles as essentially “impossible to intercept” given the projectile can travel at 10 times the speed of sound with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (or about 1,250 miles).

    According to the top Ukrainian commander’s words: 

    “Yes, we shot down the ‘unique’ Kinzhal,” Oleshchuk stated. “It happened during the night time attack on May 4 in the skies of the Kyiv region.”

    Oleshchuk said the Kh-47 missile was launched by a MiG-31K aircraft from the Russian territory and was shot down with a Patriot missile.

    And a separate statement from Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat taunted the Russians while boasting of the US Patriot’s proven capabilities: 

    “They were saying that the Patriot is an outdated American weapon, and Russian weapons are the best in the world,” Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on Ukraine’s Channel 24 television. “Well, there is confirmation that it effectively works against even a super hypersonic missile.” Ihnat said.

    He said successfully intercepting the Kinzhal is “a slap in the face for Russia.”

    It was only late last month that Ukraine confirmed delivery of the first Patriot batteries from the United States, though an unknown quantity, alongside anti-air systems from Germany and the Netherlands.

    More self-congratulations from Ukraine’s top brass was issued Saturday follows: 

    “I congratulate the Ukrainian people on a historic event,” Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, the commander of the Ukrainian air force, said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app. “Yes, we have shot down the ‘unparalleled’ ‘Kinzhal.'”

    It should be noted that amid the atmosphere of heavy war propaganda and disinformation which is part and parcel of modern conflict, even The New York Times has expressed caution in its headline, “Ukraine Claims It Shot Down Russia’s Most Sophisticated Missile for First Time.”

    The Times describes, “The U.S. officials said they were relying on information from the Ukrainian military coming through classified channels, but added they had no reason to doubt its authenticity.”

    “Nevertheless, independent analysts were reluctant to confirm the interception until more information was available about the type of missile Russia fired and whether it was hit by a Patriot,” the report notes.

    One Moscow-based analyst was quick to dismiss the reports as “fake news”…

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    Meanwhile, Russia’s air war is likely only to heat up further, given also on Saturday the defense ministry said Ukraine sent two ballistic missiles into Crimea. “A ballistic missile launched by Ukraine’s Hrim-2 OTRK was shot down over the Republic of Crimea by the air defense,” a top Crimean official announced.

    Sputnik further quoted him as follows: “Russia’s air defense systems on Saturday shot down two ballistic missiles launched by Ukraine’s Grom-2 operational-tactical missile system (OTRK) over Crimea, Oleg Kryuchkov, an adviser to Head of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov, said on Saturday.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 15:00

  • 'Another Attempt To Manufacture A Scandal': Friend Of Clarence Thomas Hits Back At New Report Targeting The Justice
    ‘Another Attempt To Manufacture A Scandal’: Friend Of Clarence Thomas Hits Back At New Report Targeting The Justice

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A friend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is pushing back against a new report that claims a wealthy Republican donor paid for the private school tuition of the justice’s grandnephew.

    Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 8, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    During the presidency of Donald Trump, Mark Paoletta was general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget and before that, served as chief counsel to then-Vice President Mike Pence. He’s also a friend of Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, whom he has represented as a lawyer.

    Paoletta responded on May 4 to a ProPublica article published hours earlier that detailed how billionaire Harlan Crow’s company paid the private school tuition of Thomas’s grandnephew, Mark Martin, whom the justice took custody of when he was 6 years old and was raising like a son. The exact amount paid over four years at two schools was unclear but the article said it could be upwards of $150,000.

    Paoletta disputes that estimate, saying Crow only covered the first year of tuition at each school.

    In a nearly 600-word statement about Martin and the tuition payments, Paoletta wrote on his Twitter account that the Thomases had, beginning in 1997, “devoted twelve years of their lives to helping a beloved child in desperate need of love, support, and guidance.

    “They agreed to take in this young child much as Justice Thomas’s grandparents had done for him and his brother in 1955.

    “Justice Thomas and his wife made immeasurable personal and financial sacrifices and poured every ounce of their lives and hearts into giving their great nephew a chance to succeed.”

    When the Thomases were trying to find a school where they could send Martin, Crow recommended Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, Virginia, which he had attended. Crow also had funded scholarship programs for disadvantaged students at the school for decades, Paoletta wrote.

    Crow paid only for Martin’s first year at Randolph-Macon and when Martin transferred to another school in Georgia, Crow paid for the first year at that school as well, Paoletta wrote.

    “The Thomases love their great nephew. It is despicable that the press has dragged him into their effort to smear Justice Thomas. This story is another attempt to manufacture a scandal about Justice Thomas. But let’s be clear about what is supposedly scandalous now: Justice Thomas and his wife devoted twelve years of their lives to taking in and caring for a beloved child—who was not their own—just as Justice Thomas’s grandparents had done for him.

    “They made many personal and financial sacrifices to do this. And along the way, their friends joined them in doing everything possible to give this child a future. Harlan Crow’s tuition payments made directly to these schools on behalf of Justice Thomas’s great nephew did not constitute a reportable gift.”

    The federal Ethics in Government Act didn’t require that the tuition payments be publicly disclosed “because the definition of a ‘dependent child’ under the Ethics in Government Act (5 U.S.C. 13101 (2)) does not include a ‘great nephew,’” Paoletta wrote.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/06/2023 – 14:30

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May 06

Today’s News 6th May 2023

  • Who Helped Overturn The "Pentagon Papers Principle"? The Washington Post And New York Times
    Who Helped Overturn The “Pentagon Papers Principle”? The Washington Post And New York Times

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

    Last December, Michael Shellenberger reported in a #TwitterFiles thread that the Aspen Institute hosted a “Hack-and-Dump Working Group” exercise in the summer of 2020 titled, “Burisma Leak,” which predicted with uncanny accuracy an upcoming derogatory story in the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s lost laptop.

    The cinema version of “The Pentagon Papers” story survives, but the original principle is being tossed

    The documents Shellenberger published showed how at least five media figures, including David Sanger and David McCraw of the New York Times, Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post, then-Daily Beast and future Rolling Stone editor Noah Schactman, and Rick Baker of CNN worked alongside Twitter and Facebook’s chief moderation officers, Yoel Roth and Nathaniel Gleicher, to plan a response to a hypothetical damaging exposé about Joe Biden’s son.

    The “Burisma Leak” exercise predicted many elements of the real response to the New York Post’s coming Hunter Biden story, including complaints from influential Democratic congressman Adam Schiff about its “source and veracity,” and public statements from “former senior intelligence officials” falsely raising the specter of a “Russian operation.”

    Newly uncovered documents show the war-gamed, choreographed response to the New York Post piece in October, 2020 — which included temporary suppression by those tech platforms Twitter and Facebook — may have been part of a broader plan to re-think basic journalistic standards in general, beyond just the one incident. This included junking what experts involved with the tabletop exercise referred to as the “Pentagon Papers Principle,” under which journalists since Daniel Ellsberg’s 1971 leak had “operated under a single rule: Once information is authenticated, if it is newsworthy, publish it.”

    The “break” from the age-old standard was endorsed by multiple current and former figures from the Washington Post and New York Times, the two papers most associated with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Neither of the press offices of the two papers would comment, nor did individual figures named in the #TwitterFiles leaks.

    The genesis of this idea appeared to come from a paper co-authored by two Aspen tabletop attendees, both from Stanford: longtime journalist Janine Zacharia and former Obama and Trump Cybersecurity Policy Director Andrew James Grotto. Their “How to Report Responsibly on Hacks and Disinformation: 10 Guidelines and a Template for Every Newsroom” included the idea of ditching the “Pentagon Papers Principle,” insisting, “authentication alone is not enough to run with something.”

    The concept seemed to provide the intellectual foundation for shelving the Post story, which otherwise presented a real conundrum for would-be censors, being neither fake news nor a Russian plant. The elaborate carve-out for dealing with such material is laid out in another newly discovered document, called “Partnership for a Healthy Digital Public Sphere: Opportunities & Challenges in Content Moderation.”

    This summary was sent by Aspen Digital’s Executive Director and former NPR CEO Vivian Schiller to two other Aspen figures on September 15, 2020. Echoing the Stanford paper, it summarized the lessons Aspen Digital learned from examining the hack-and-dump problem, explaining the need to put “provenance front and center”:

    The concept theoretically represented a major shift, asking reporters to move from focusing on the what of news to why? and who from?

    Subscribers to Racket News can read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 23:40

  • Class-Action Suit Launched Against Australian Government Over COVID Vaccine Injuries
    Class-Action Suit Launched Against Australian Government Over COVID Vaccine Injuries

    Authored by Daniel Y. Teng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As reports of vaccine injuries gain traction globally, an Australian doctor is leading a new class action against the federal government and key medical figures.

    Pfizer, left, and Moderna bivalent COVID-19 vaccines are readied for use at a clinic in Richmond, Va., in a Nov. 17, 2022, file image. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)

    Queensland GP Dr. Melissa McCann has filed the action in the Federal Court of Australia on behalf of 500 complainants.

    The action targets the federal government, Dr. Brendan Murphy, the Chief Medical Officer, and Prof. John Skerritt, the public face of the Therapeutic Goods Administration—the country’s drug regulatory body.

    “The action will argue that the Therapeutic Goods Administration [TGA] did not fulfil their duty to properly regulate the COVID-19 vaccines, resulting in considerable harm and damage to Australians,” said Natalie Strijland from NR Barbi Solicitor said in a statement.

    The main thrust of the claim is that the government’s actions in promoting the use of COVID-19 vaccines were “negligent or wrongful” and resulted in personal injury, medical expenses, and economic loss for the claimants.

    “The claim now proceeds upon the basis that the government, in fact, acted negligently in approving the vaccines and also by failing to withdraw them after approval based upon the known evidence,” Strijland said.

    “Australians who have experienced a serious adverse event following COVID-19 vaccination are invited to step forward and register for this class action.”

    Liberal Sen. Gerard Rennick—a vocal critic of vaccine mandates—welcomed the action.

    “Thank you to Dr. Melissa McCann and the solicitors that have taken up the fight to help those affected and still suffering,” he wrote in an online statement.

    “It is disappointing, to say the least, that people are not being compensated or receiving the healthcare they now need due to these experimental jabs which were, as we now know, never designed to be safe or effective.”

    Vaccine Injury Payouts Ongoing

    The Australian government operates a vaccine injury compensation scheme that has, thus far, paid out over $7.3 million (US$4.87 million) to 137 claimants. It has received 3,501 applications and is progressing with 2,263, according to figures obtained by news.com.au.

    The Department of Social Services has previously estimated the government could be liable for a payout of $77 million (US$49.35 million).

    Lawyers assisting patients have noted the challenges with navigating the scheme.

    “We’ve had just under 350 inquiries about adverse outcomes, and they have been extremely varied, but most of them have a condition that has some ongoing impact. Not many seem to fit within the criteria of the six categories,” personal injury lawyer Clare Eves told The Epoch Times previously.

    Meanwhile, in response to the class action, the Australian Department of Health said, “The department is aware of a proceeding commenced today in the Federal Court of Australia by applicants represented by NR Barbi Solicitor Pty Ltd. As the matter is before the court, it is inappropriate to comment further.”

    Vaccine Injuries No Longer A Taboo Topic

    Since late last year, vaccine injuries have gained increasing recognition.

    Previously, health authorities censured medical professionals who questioned the efficacy of the jab—part of a wider effort to encourage vaccine takeup.

    In December 2022, former MP Dr. Kerryn Phelps and her partner revealed they suffered serious injuries from a COVID-19 vaccine and suggested that the actual number of adverse events linked to the jab was far higher than what official data showed.

    “In my case, the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations,” she wrote in a submission to Parliament.

    Some medical practitioners continue to fight to be reinstated into their profession after being ousted for speaking out against the vaccine or mandates.

    In August 2022, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency suspended the registration of North Brisbane GP William Bay after he interrupted a national Australian Medical Association conference in late July and told attendees to stop forcing vaccines on people.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 23:20

  • The Ruination Of Great American Cities
    The Ruination Of Great American Cities

    Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    There was something deeply demoralizing about the recent Mayoral election in Chicago, once among America’s greatest cities. The good news is that the catastrophic reign of a deeply corrupt and crazed mayor, who piled egregiously racist policies on top of one of the worst COVID responses in the country, came to an end. The bad news is that a guy who is arguably worse took her place.

    Union organizer and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson speaks after being projected winner as mayor in Chicago, Ill., on April 4, 2023. (Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)

    As Allysia Finley put it in the Wall Street Journal, “Brandon Johnson’s victory in last week’s Chicago mayoral race is a reminder that no matter how bad things get, they can always get worse.”

    The city itself is facing bankruptcy but that economic reality is changing nothing about city policies. Crime is out of control. Poverty and despair are on the rise. And the residents who can leave are fleeing. Businesses are closing up shop and 175,000 people have left the city in the last two years, leaving the place at the mercy of people who only vote for more handouts and union controls.

    The people who leave feel a sense of guilt, but the decision is entirely rational. One person’s vote makes no difference and no one has the obligation to stick around and become a sacrificial victim of pillaging politicians and dangerous criminals.

    It’s all deeply tragic. The first time I went to Chicago many years ago, I was just thrilled to discover a city which seemed to combine the best of New York City but without the chaos, confusion, and muck. But sadly, those days have come to an end.

    At some point in the last three years, many people just decided the situation was hopeless and left for greener pastures. Sadly, this put the city into a deep spiral of political disaster to the point that hopes for change and renewal seem to have been permanently dashed. Maybe it will come back to life at some point but maybe not in any of our lifetimes.

    Incredibly, however, this same spiral of exodus plus the entrenchment of crime and corruption seems to be affecting other great cities too. People living in New York City today are grateful for an end to the utter madness and desolation of the lockdown years and the city is certainly revived today as compared to what it was in 2020 and 2021. However, by any standard, the experience of the city is massively deprecated compared with what it was only a few years ago.

    For my part, I avoid the city as much as possible, simply because I cannot bear the Gotham-like feel of the place, with the inescapable stench of trash, sewage, and weed, plus the ever-present threat of crime. To be sure, there are some beautiful neighborhoods but getting there requires that you interact with the rest of the city through its main transportation portals.

    And the bureaucracy of the state in general is absolutely overwhelming. If you own a business with an employee in New York State, you know this. Navigating the endless bureaucracies just to get a basic payroll in place is maddening beyond belief. One agency doesn’t talk to another and has no idea what they are doing. Compliance alone is too complicated even for online payroll platforms like Gusto. I know of companies that refuse even to hire anyone who lives there just to avoid this mess.

    There are two other cities on the deathwatch list: San Francisco and Seattle. You know of the deep tragedy of San Francisco if you have visited lately. The place is an appalling mess and deeply dangerous too. Murder has nearly become normalized as something that just happens. Robert Lee, founder of CashApp and one of the most brilliant young entrepreneurs in the country, was brutally stabbed in broad daylight last week. The appalling event came to be shrugged off by major media as something that just happens, when reported at all.

    I wasn’t entirely aware of the turn Seattle had taken until I visited last month, and found the same thing, with residents fleeing as fast as they could if they had the resources to do so. This trend leaves the cities in the hands of hoodlums public and private and dooms the place to go a long time without reform.

    This is a reversal of the past when big cities would go through cycles of bust and boom once city fathers saw the errors of their ways. That is no longer a dynamic that seems plausible now. In other words, this time could be permanent.

    The city as an institution is one of the great achievements in the history of modern civilization. They first began to emerge in the late Middle Ages with the end of feudal estates and the rise of the money-based exchange economy that allowed people to move and travel without grave danger. The city drew people out of their tribal hovels and created new centers of prosperity and the exchange of ideas. It was here and in spots all over the world that germinated the creative ideas that led to revolutions in art, literature, science, medicine, and industry.

    Cities also created the basis for growing amounts of tolerance, peace, and human rights, as diverse people from all lands and languages came together to their mutual advantage. The experience led to a greater appreciation for the universality of the human experience and incentivized the entrenchment of a new ethos of togetherness. Arguably, it was the city that ended the religious wars, for example, and eventually slavery too.

    The American cities were newer than those in the Old World but especially prosperous in ways that no one could even imagine. American freedoms in the second half of the 19th century led to the miracles of San Francisco, Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago, and Hartford. But once the technology of steel and its commercial viability arrived by the turn of the 20th century, New York City overtook them all and eventually gave us wonders of the world like the Empire State Building. Meanwhile, Los Angeles, Dallas, St. Louis, Miami, and others rose up to greatness too.

    The 21st century fall of so many American cities poses dangers not just to the city but also to the host state, simply because of the direct election of senators. The original Constitution assured that cities could not dominate state politics because the Senate representation was not subject to direct election. The 17th Amendment of 1913 changed that. Now the fate of the city has a profound effect on the whole state and then the whole nation. It was not supposed to be this way but the disastrous decision to change the Constitution assured that it would be so.

    There is another factor to consider. People like Anthony Fauci and the plutocrats at the World Economic Forum somehow turned against cities in the last decade, deciding that they really did nothing but promote material excess, disease, and waste. They were suddenly put on the chopping block in the name of “radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 23:00

  • Australia PM Says No Point In US Pursuing Assange: "Enough Is Enough"
    Australia PM Says No Point In US Pursuing Assange: “Enough Is Enough”

    Australia has done very little over past years in practical terms when it comes to protecting the rights of its imprisoned citizen Julian Assange, who is still locked up in London’s Belmarsh Prison as his extradition case is slowly processing through the courts. 

    This is why it’s somewhat surprising and refreshing to very belatedly hear Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese while visiting England complain about the WikiLeaks founder’s ongoing detention, though not for the first time of his administration. He also expressed concerns over his health and well-being during all these years of harsh confinement, previously holed up inside the Ecuadorian embassy as well.

    On Friday Albanese said he is “frustrated” for not having found a diplomatic fix to Assange’s plight. “I know it’s frustrating, I share the frustration,” Albanese told ABC television from London.

    “I can’t do more than make very clear what my position is and the U.S. administration is certainly very aware of what the Australian government’s position is. There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration.”

    “Enough is enough, this needs to be brought to a conclusion, it needs to be worked through,” said Albanese, and also highlighted a glaring contradiction:

    Albanese said Australians were failing to understand the reasons for freeing the source who leaked the documents to Assange while he still remained in prison, referring to the release of former U.S. soldier and WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning.

    WikiLeaks and Assange’s legal team and family will certainly welcome the Australian leaders’ protestations, and there’s hope that Albanese will continue pressing the issue with President Joe Biden.

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

    Assange supporters, however, are arguing that Albanese is in a position to do much more, but has so far stopped short:

    The prime minister apparently is not willing to use his leverage with the U.S. regarding Assange when it comes to Australia’s reckless assistance to Washington’s preparations for war with China. As many people have pointed out, the U.S. needs Australia a lot more than Australia needs the U.S. in this regard.  

    And the point Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong made about Australia not interfering in the ongoing legal processes of another country has been rubbished by the fact that Australia has done just that in two cases to free their citizens from foreign jails. 

    Assange is sitting in Belmarsh prison just miles from where Albanese is staying in London. The prime minister can go see his jailed citizen, as suggested by Consortium News reader Randal Marin.

    Assange’s plight has largely dropped out of mainstream media coverage, and so indeed any potential efforts of Albanese to visit him in prison would be hugely symbolic and a boost to WikiLeaks.

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

    But it remains that Australia is a member of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing allies, and thus is always likely to default on the side of Washington’s security interests in cases like this, centered on a famous dissident journalist.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 22:40

  • The Perfect Democratic President?
    The Perfect Democratic President?

    Authored by Paul Gottfried via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Daniel Henninger, writing in the Wall Street Journal on April 26, properly describes Joe Biden as “the perfect Democratic president.”

    President Joe Biden speaks about “building on the small business boom” during National Small Business Week in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington on May 1, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    According to Henninger, Biden’s “non-compos” condition should give the “left wing of his party free rein” during his second presidential term, which is exactly what his party wants. A cognitively impaired, not particularly principled figurehead fits the needs of his handlers; and Biden obviously has no interest in doing anything to upset them. He will dutifully get behind his party’s latest woke project and ritualistically attack its Republican opponents as white nationalists, sexists, and homophobes.

    Equally significant, Biden is the perfect front figure for an administrative state in which the chief executive provides little more than an ornament: “A beside-the-point president is the best thing that has ever happened to the progressive centralization project. That is why Washington’s Democrats would embrace a Kamala Harris succession.”

    What I discern in Henninger’s compelling description of a second Biden term is the outline of my thesis in “After Liberalism” (Princeton, 1999), which is subtitled “Mass Democracy in the Administrative State.” In this work I argue that modern Western regimes are not really about “democracy,” that is, meaningful self-rule, of the kind that existed historically in Swiss cantons or in Thomas Jefferson’s concept of popular government. The modern version of democracy is about public administration, in which citizens are called on periodically to give their rulers a stamp of approval through elections (which are now conducted in much of this country without voters having to identify themselves or even appearing in person at a voting precinct).

    “Liberal democracies” have also ceased to be “liberal” in any real sense since that term now refers to the actions and policies of governments run by public administrators and their media backers. It’s now considered “liberal” for the state to approve of the sexual mutilation of children, even without parental permission, or to close down opposition speech, if our administrators decide that’s the “liberal” course of action.

    There’s also a secular state religion that reigns in most Western countries, and that too dispenses “liberal” teachings. When I wrote “After Liberalism,” that state religion featured a more modest form of diversity than the one that’s now in place. In its more recent form, as taught by the media and academic priesthood, postliberal liberalism has turned woke and now urges discrimination against white people, particularly against heterosexual white males. It also discriminates against devout Christians of all races, in the name of transgendered identity, which represents the newest distillation of liberal orthodoxy.

    Political labels are therefore in freefall, and often mean no more than what those who control our lives and consciousness want those terms to signify. Values and rights are also part of the common moral vocabulary, which is shaped through an exercise of will on the part of our “liberal democratic” leaders. Henninger may be actually understating this situation when he observes about policy wonks and social engineers running the Deep State that “their control of the bureaucratic levers today is unprecedented.” Even more ominously, we may now be at a loss trying to figure out how we can reverse this situation. With “passive presidents” like Biden technically at the helm and fronting for woke administrative elites, there’s no real chance of this ever happening. The bureaucratic control that Henninger bewails, unless upended, will likely reach further unprecedented levels.    

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 22:20

  • New Israeli Protest Target: Ultra-Orthodox Subsidies, Draft Exemptions
    New Israeli Protest Target: Ultra-Orthodox Subsidies, Draft Exemptions

    The protest movement that’s rocked Israeli politics over the past months on Thursday shifted its fire to a new target: special treatments given to the country’s rapidly-growing ultra-Orthodox population. The growing discontent threatens to widen a critical fault line spanning Israeli economics and politics.  

    Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jewish men and boys in Netanya (Jack Guex/AFP via Getty Images and Jerusalem Post)

    Declaring a “Day of Disruption to Demand Equality,” tens of thousands of marchers in several cities asked for an end to a variety of special perks given to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are called “Haredim.” As they did in their successful quest to force a pause in Prime Minster Netanyahu’s supreme court reform scheme, protesters blocked roads and demonstrated outside cabinet officers’ houses — although their numbers lagged earlier demonstrations. 

    One of those special treatments is exemptions from Israel’s military draft. Haredim who are enrolled in religious study get to skip compulsory military service, a central aspect of Israeli society and an essential ingredient in the country’s militarism. 

    Protesters of Haredim draft exemptions outside the Israeli Defense Force induction center push mock coffins (Mothers at the Front)

    As long as they keep studying the Torah, the exemption keeps going too. Worse, Haredi men receive public subsidies all the way to the standard retirement age of 67. That’s an economic double-whammy: These men aren’t productive, and are taking money collected from others. (Thanks to America’s lavish foreign aid to Israel, and the fact that money is fungible, some of those on the wrong end of this redistribution scheme are US taxpayers.) 

    In another exception to policy, Haredi children are exempt from Israel’s educational standards. Haredim children don’t have to study core topics like math, science and English, which means they offer lesser skills to would-be employers. 

    Protestors display bloodied mannequins outside the home of Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Brothers in Arms)

    According to the Bank of Israel, 75% of Haredi women work, but just 50% of men. Two thirds of those working men only work part-time, and mostly in menial jobs commensurate with their lack of Earthly education. The average Haredi family pays only a third of the income tax paid by non-Haredim.

    Within Israel, the dynamic has sparked growing resentment among non-Haredi Jews. “This is taxpayer money, almost exclusively funded by families whose children serve in the IDF,” wrote Yaakov Katz in a Jerusalem Post opinion essay. “Having IDF-serving families fund non-serving families is an insult to these soldiers.

    Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews in a 2014 mass protest against a proposal to remove their draft exemption (Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images via PBS)

    Similar sentiments were expressed on Thursday. “[The Haredim] are not carrying with us, they are not part of society,” 58-year-old Dafna Goldenberg told the Washington Post. “I’m deeply worried that it will all collapse.” 

    She said when she debated Haredim in front of a yeshiva school, they assured her, “God will protect us and we will protect you by studying Torah.” 

    The economics of the situation are growing grimmer each day, thanks to the fact that the Haredim are the fast-growing segment of Israel’s population, with a birth rate that’s triple that of non-Haredi Jews. 

    The politics are intense too. Netanyahu’s grip on power rests in part on Haredi political parties, whose demands for expedited passage of new laws cementing military exemptions for Yeshiva students are accompanied by threats of withdrawing from the ruling coalition. 

    “Coalition agreements signed between Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties also reportedly promise to funnel billions to ultra-Orthodox institutions, housing developments, and health-care and child-care services, proposals that have further infuriated the anti-governmental protests” — Washington Post 

    Since he values power above all else, look for Netanyahu to walk a tightrope, with a bias toward advancing the Haredim agenda at the price of undermining Israel’s long-term economic, cultural and political stability. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 22:00

  • NATO To Open Office In Japan, The Alliance’s First In Asia
    NATO To Open Office In Japan, The Alliance’s First In Asia

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    NATO is planning to open a liaison office in Japan next year, the alliance’s first in Asia, Nikkei Asia first reported Wednesday.

    In recent years, NATO has turned its gaze toward the Asia Pacific region and named China a “systemic challenge” in its 2022 Strategic Concept. As part of its strategy against China, the alliance is deepening cooperation with countries in the region.

    Image source: NATO/dpa

    According to Nikkei, the purpose of the liaison office in Japan is to “allow the military alliance to conduct periodic consultations with Japan and key partners in the region, such as South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand as China emerges as a new challenge, alongside its traditional focus on Russia.”

    The report said NATO and Japan will take more steps to increase cooperation by signing an agreement known as an Individually Tailored Partnership Programme ahead of the NATO summit that will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, in June.

    Japan also plans to open an independent mission to NATO, separate from the Embassy in Belgium.

    In response to the news, China warned of NATO’s plans to expand into Asia. “Asia is an anchor for peace and stability and a promising land for cooperation and development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.

    “NATO’s continued eastward foray into the Asia Pacific and interference in regional affairs will inevitably undermine regional peace and stability and stoke camp confrontation. This calls for high vigilance among regional countries,” she added.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 21:40

  • The World's Monarchies
    The World’s Monarchies

    The coronation of King Charles III this Saturday will be an exercise in pomp and extravagance. People around the world will be following the spectacle closely, but critics have also been using the occasion to point out the cost and anachronistic nature of the institution that is the British monarchy.

    While opinions on whether the British crown is gobbling up or generating money differ, ending the official status of the UK’s royal line would have far-reaching consequences globally.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, in addition to British Overseas Territories, King Charles III serves as the head of state of 14 sovereign countries other than his own – making the UK the most prolific among the world’s 17 constitutional monarchies which keep employing monarchs as representative heads of state.

    Infographic: The World's Monarchies | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    However, the fabric of the British Commonwealth has lately tattered somewhat. Barbados removed the British monarch as the head of state in 2021, while Jamaica last year announced that it was also starting the process. Barbados took the step after 55 years as an independent Commonwealth member, while Jamaica celebrated its 60th year of independence in August of 2022. Barbados was the first country in almost 30 years to drop the British monarch. Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago as well as Dominica had previously opted for a different head of state.

    In addition to constitutional monarchies, there are also still a dozen countries around the world which are absolute or semi-constitutional monarchies, meaning that monarchs yield considerable powers there. These types of systems are most common today on the Arabian Peninsula, even though Morocco, Brunei, Eswatini and Liechtenstein also count among them. Semi-constitutionalism – where monarchs and elected representatives share powers – ranges from countries which let monarchs retain some powers next to an elected parliament to so-called elective monarchies, which elect leaders from a group of royals – the governing system of the United Arab Emirates. The Pope is also elected from a group of cardinals, but he is the singular ruler over the Vatican, therefore considered an absolute monarchy.

    Ten countries in Europe and five in Asia as well as Tonga and Lesotho retain their own monarch in a representative function and as head of state. Traditional subnational monarchies are prolific in Indonesia and South Africa, where the king of the Zulu nation, Misuzulu Sinqobile kaZwelithini, holds considerable informal power in the Eastern region of KwaZulu-Natal.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 21:20

  • Will Ron DeSantis Actually Run For President In 2024?
    Will Ron DeSantis Actually Run For President In 2024?

    Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    It’s likely that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will announce a 2024 presidential campaign. Les jeux sont fait, the bets are placed, as the French say at Monte Carlo and elsewhere—not to mention the ability the rest of us have to place them on the ever-escalating number of political betting sites.

    DeSantis is forming or is said to be forming an exploratory committee this month that allows substantial contributions to his campaign.

    But in truth, it’s looking at this moment like he may have made a mistake and that biding his time, remaining Florida’s governor and waiting for 2028, might be a smarter strategy. In fact, this early attempt might prove self-destructive in the long run, tarnishing his image and giving him the whiff of the loser.

    It’s not too late to say no.

    A new CBS–YouGov poll released May 1 shows the Florida governor trailing former President Donald Trump by a yawning gap of 36 percentage points: 58 to 22. This continues a blowout trend that has been going on for some time.

    This undoubtedly discourages financial backers, several of whom DeSantis already seems to be hemorrhaging.

    Making things yet more difficult for the governor is that many now believe he’s the chosen candidate of Fox News, a network that seemingly has lost its soul (and much of its audience) due to its cancellation of Tucker Carlson.

    Does this mean that Trump has the Republican nomination “in the bag”? As of now, I would have to say yes, even though 27 percent of GOP voters, according to this poll, have yet to be convinced, a percentage of those deeming him “too controversial.”

    What about the supposed also-rans in this poll?

    In order, they are former Vice President Mike Pence and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, tied at 5 percent, and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley at 4 percent.  The rest—talk show host Larry Elder, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson—weren’t even able to register a full 1 percent.

    The one who’s interesting here, obviously, is Ramaswamy. He has come literally from out of nowhere to tie for the lead in the second tier with Pence, who isn’t yet declared and—his appeal static—possibly is having second thoughts.

    On May 2, Byron York, in his Washington Examiner column that’s known for a middle-of-the-road conventional Republican approach, looks askance on Haley’s contention that she should deserve the nomination because she constitutes a “new generation.”

    York quotes from her February announcement speech in Charleston: “We’re ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past, and we are more than ready for a new generation to lead us into the future. I come here today with a vision of that future.”

    She called for “mandatory mental competency for politicians over 75 years old.” (Trump has already taken such a test and passed. Biden, as far as we know, hasn’t done so.)

    The problem for the 51-year-old Haley is that her “vision of that future” isn’t especially unique, nor does it differ substantially in any serious way from her supposedly geriatric rival, the former president.

    What York overlooks, at least in this column, is that Ramaswamy, at 37, isn’t only considerably younger than Haley, but also has a more original vision and takes things further by advocating for such things as the complete destruction of the FBI and our intelligence agencies as we know them, and their replacement from the ground up.

    He also has far more Silicon Valley-type technical expertise as the founder and CEO of a biotech company than anybody running for president on either side. In a field dominated by the left, this makes him a tremendous, arguably crucial, asset to the right as artificial intelligence continues to take over our world.

    People are beginning to realize that, and given his high level of articulateness, it makes it less surprising that Ramaswamy has risen so rapidly to the top of that second tier.

    Where will he go from here? Defeating Trump is a big chew when he is still 17 points behind DeSantis, although it’s interesting he is substantially closer to the Florida governor in polling than the 36 points that DeSantis trails the 45th president.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 21:00

  • Watch: Fist-Fight Breaks Out Between Russian & Ukrainian Diplomats At Conference
    Watch: Fist-Fight Breaks Out Between Russian & Ukrainian Diplomats At Conference

    A Ukrainian diplomatic official has released video of himself punching a Russian official on Thursday. In the rare moment, rival delegations who were attending a meeting of Black Sea nations in Turkey literally came to blows while the war in Ukraine rages.

    Oleksandr Marikovski posted the video, which has since gone viral. It shows a scuffle over display of a Ukrainian flag in a hallway of the parliament building in Ankara. “A Ukrainian delegate has punched a Russian delegate in the face during a meeting of Black Sea nations after his Ukrainian flag was snatched away to stop him from photobombing a video interview,” Al Jazeera comments of the scene. Watch:

    Tensions had already been high at the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) assembly, given that earlier in the day Ukrainian delegates staged a protest in an attempt to disrupt a Russian delegate’s address to fellow representatives.

    Video of that prior incident showed mayhem breaking out on the assembly floor as security guards restrained the Ukrainian officials and attempted to impose order. 

    Watch the prior disruption on the assembly floor:

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    Host country Turkey condemned the scenes, with parliament’s head Mustafa Sentop issuing a firm rebuke. “I condemn this behavior that disrupts the peaceful environment that Turkey is trying to establish,” he said.

    Given that Russia in many international venues has been isolated and essentially ‘de-platformed’ – it’s somewhat rare for Ukrainian and Russian officials to come into direct contact these days. Turkey, however, has been more willing to attempt to get the two sides together, also as it tries to salvage the UN-backed grain deal. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 20:40

  • Scientists Found New Psychoactive Drugs In Wastewaters
    Scientists Found New Psychoactive Drugs In Wastewaters

    Authored by Irina Antonova via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new study has identified over a dozen new psychoactive drugs in the wastewater of various sites worldwide.

    Illegal drugs and cash seized during drug raids on Sept. 26 is on display druing a press conference at Port Jervis City Hall in N.Y., on September 28, 2022. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times)

    The trend of increasing new psychoactive substances (NPS) and the difficulty for law enforcement to control their circulation prompted a study by the University of Queensland, Australia, which was part of an international wastewater surveillance program.

    The study covered a three-year period—from 2019 to 2022—and 47 cities in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, China and Brazil.

    The lead scientist Dr Richard Bade told UQ News that they detected 18 NPS in the wastewater samples from around the world.

    “In Australia, we found seven new psychoactive substances, including mephedrone, ethylone and eutylone, which all have a similar effect to MDMA or cocaine,” Bade said.

    “We also found an increase in similar drugs in Europe, where there were high levels of 3-methylmethcathinone, particularly in Spain and Slovenia.

    What Are NPS Drugs

    New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) are synthetic or semi-synthetic substances that are designed to mimic the effects of traditional illicit drugs such as cocaine, cannabis, or amphetamines.

    They are sometimes called “designer drugs” or “legal highs” because they are often created to circumvent existing drug laws and regulations.

    NPS can be chemically similar to illegal drugs, or they may have entirely new chemical structures that have not been previously identified.

    Some examples of NPS include synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, and phenethylamines.

    These substances are often marketed as legal alternatives to traditional drugs, and are sold online, in head shops, or on the street.

    One of the main concerns with NPS is that their effects are often not well understood, and they can be much more potent than traditional drugs, which can lead to a range of health risks, including overdose, addiction, and long-term health consequences.

    As NPS are often marketed as “legal highs”, many people assume that they are safe to use, but this is not the case.

    It’s important to remember that just because a substance is legal or unregulated it does not mean that it is safe or without risk.

    Why Do People Use Illicit Drugs?

    People reach for the new psychoactive substances because they are able to mimic the effect of already known illicit drugs but lack any legal restrictions.

    “These substances are synthesised to replace banned substances, which means they have a slightly different molecular structure to stay ahead of the law,” explains  Bade.

    “They are generally manufactured in smaller quantities than traditional illicit drugs, making it difficult for law enforcement to control the circulation.”

    The authors state in their paper that they attribute the use of illicit drugs to the societal burden.

    Their study showed that the highest consumption of NPS was recorded around the New Year period, indicating that the consumption goes up during parties and festivals.

    In addition, the lockdowns around the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the use of those drugs, according to the researchers.

    “Harsh lockdowns and restrictions across the world meant people weren’t participating in traditional new year festivities, which was reflected in our results,” said  Bade.

    Types of NPS Specific to Global Location

    The researchers also pointed out that the NPS they identified seemed to have geographic ties.

    For example, mitragynine was primarily found in sites throughout the United States; eutylone and 3-methylmethcathinone were at high amounts in the wastewaters of New Zealand and several countries in Europe; 2F-deschloroketamine was found in Italy, Iceland and mainly in South-East Asia, especially in China; methoxetamine and methiopropamine predominantly in Australia.

    Another conclusive finding was that the most commonly found class of NPS were the synthetic cathinones, which is a type of amphetamine known to induce the production of the ‘feel-good” or “happy” hormone dopamine.

    Overall, the authors think that they have achieved the goal of their study which showed the importance of tackling this issue via regular annual and systematic wastewater analyses on a global scale.

    “It is imperative to monitor the use of these drugs given our limited knowledge of their specific effects, how they interact with other drugs, and the harm they cause when consumed,” said Bade.

    “International wastewater surveillance can allow us to identify what new psychoactive substances are being used globally and how these trends spread across continents.

    “Adopting an annual wastewater analysis approach for the surveillance of these compounds is a cost-effective and ethical way for organisations to see what is trending and where educational messaging would make an impact.”

    What Are Psychoactive Drugs?

    Psychoactive drugs affect the central nervous system and alter brain function, causing changes in perception, mood, consciousness, and behaviour.

    These drugs can be legal, such as prescription medications used to treat various mental and physical health conditions, or illegal, such as recreational drugs that are abused for their mind-altering effects.

    Psychoactive drugs can be categorized into different classes based on their chemical structure, mechanism of action, and the effects they produce. Some of the most commonly used classes of psychoactive drugs include:

    • Stimulants: These drugs increase activity in the brain and body, leading to increased alertness, energy, and euphoria. Examples include caffeine, cocaine, and amphetamines.
    • Depressants: These drugs slow down activity in the brain and body, leading to feelings of relaxation, drowsiness, and reduced anxiety. Examples include alcohol, benzodiazepines, and opioids.
    • Hallucinogens: These drugs alter perception and mood, causing visual and auditory hallucinations and profound changes in consciousness. Examples include LSD, psilocybin, and DMT.
    • Cannabinoids: These drugs are derived from the cannabis plant and produce a range of effects, including relaxation, euphoria, altered perception, and pain relief. Examples include THC and CBD.

    It’s important to note that while some psychoactive drugs may have beneficial effects when used appropriately under medical supervision, many of them can be highly addictive, lead to physical and psychological dependence, and have a range of adverse health consequences.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 20:20

  • Want To See What An Out-Of-Control City Looks Like?
    Want To See What An Out-Of-Control City Looks Like?

    Want to see what an out-of-control city looks like?

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    A cellphone video (above) captured the moment when a stolen Kia slammed into the rear of a school bus parked outside a middle school in Milwaukee earlier this week.

    Local media outlet WISN said two teenage girls had been arrested in connection with Monday’s stolen Kia. Both girls were passengers and injured while police said the driver was still on the loose. 

    Before the Kia plowed into the school bus, a 15-year-old passenger was hanging out of the car window. Police said that person was knocked unconscious. It is not yet clear what charges the two teenagers will be facing. 

    A reporter from WTMJ asked an eyewitness, “What’s going through your mind as you’re seeing this?”

    “Scary. Scary,” said Therese Nelson, a parent dropping her kid off at Morse Middle School around 0900 local time. She first noticed the Kia swerving in the distance and then described the crash:

    “I see them turn around in my mirror, and next thing I know they hit the bus, and the passenger was on the ground, and the rest of them took off.” 

    Local media outlets did not specify whether the stolen Kia was connected to a TikTok challenge. A surge in thefts of Kias and Hyundais has been observed in cities across the country. A number of cities, like Milwaukee, Seattle, Cleveland, San Diego, and St. Louis, are suing Kia and Hyundai for unspecified damages over the manufacturers’ production of cars lacking common anti-theft technology.

    However, these thefts are coming at a time when progressive-run cities are going light on criminals. And there’s no one else to blame for the demise of liberal cities spiraling into a hellhole of crime but bad policies. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 20:00

  • Randi Weingarten Goes Mega-Karen After Twitter Community Notes Expose Lockdown Lies
    Randi Weingarten Goes Mega-Karen After Twitter Community Notes Expose Lockdown Lies

    Revisionist lockdown authoritarian Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has doubled down in her campaign to convince everyone she was for opening schools.

    To review – Weingarten testified to Congress late last month that she “spent every day from February on trying to get schools open,” adding “we knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools.”

    This earned Weingarten a ‘community notes’ correction on Twitter, in which users noted that she previously called attempts to reopen schools in the fall of 2020 “reckless, callous and cruel.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIt was so bad that even CNN called out Weingarten.

    Karen please…

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    Politifact to the rescue!

    Establishment ‘fact checker’ Politifact raced to the scene to perform triage for Weingarten by suggesting that she advocated for “advocated for tailored approaches that prioritized safety needs of individual districts, educators and students but stopped short of endorsing a full return to in-person learning all across the country.”

    Community notes quickly sliced through that word salad of bullshit, amending Weingarten’s May 2 tweet touting the Politifact ‘correction’ to the record. Weingarten also turned off replies for anyone that doesn’t follow her. Both stunning and brave, we know.

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    Weingarten tripled down, tweeting: “What’s false is the community note, not @PolitiFact.”

    Of course, still no answer for why her union aggressively pushed for lockdowns at the local level.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 19:20

  • Pennsylvania Amish Kept True To Their Traditions – Then The Government Came
    Pennsylvania Amish Kept True To Their Traditions – Then The Government Came

    Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Among the historic Amish settlements in southeastern Pennsylvania, faith, fidelity, and long days working in green fields are the root of traditional farming.

    An Amish farmer’s team of horses pulls a hay baler at Old Windmill Farm in Ronks, Pa, on April 26, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

    Together, they support and nourish a community and culture steeped in biblical teachings.

    In Lancaster County, west of Philadelphia, the Amish hold fast with many of the old ways. Their primary means of getting around is still horse and buggy, and they use herbal remedies for many common ailments.

    The Amish of Lancaster County are also a humble and private people (many Amish do not like having their photograph taken or name publicized). Shunning pride and vanity, they experience a particular joy and satisfaction in living close to the earth, free of the stress and pressures of outside worldly entanglements.

    A buggy pulls up at Old Windmill Farm in Ronks, Pa., on April 26, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

    Many Amish still speak a German dialect called “Pennsylvania Dutch,” living and conducting themselves in an uncomplicated manner.

    Traditional clothing—long dresses, aprons, and bonnets for women; trousers, shirts, jackets, and hats for men—distinguishes them from the world of “the English,” the term used to denote non-Amish.

    The peaceful simplicity of Amish life has its allure and also everyday challenges and economic realities interacting with the larger society around them.

    Some small multi-generational farm owners, like Jesse Lapp, try to adapt to these influences through “agri-tourism” and diversification into the trades, while still passing their wisdom and traditional farming methods down from generation to generation.

    Farm owner Jesse Lapp at the Old Windmill Farm in Ronks, Pa., on April 26, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

    “If you don’t pass on the techniques from one generation to the next, it gets lost,” said Lapp, 44, owner of Old Windmill Farm in Ronks, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated farming community 63 miles from Philadelphia.

    “Farming is not a textbook,” said the farmer, who learned how to work the land from his father, who learned it from his father and those before him.

    “You learn things from your parents, from experiences, what your parents struggled with. You learn from that.”

    However, strictly organic farmers in Lancaster County, like Amos Miller, are confronted with government regulations they see as hostile to Christian values and personal choices in producing food.

    Today, Miller, 45, is at the center of a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) lawsuit accusing him of violating federal food safety laws.

    Millers Organic Farm in Bird-in-Hand, Pa., is involved in a legal dispute over federal food safety laws. Photo taken on March 27, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

    There have been financial penalties and threats of jail time over selling non-federally inspected and “erroneously labeled” milk and meat at Miller’s Organic Farm of Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania.

    Miller views the case as government overreaches targeting small organic farms to regulate them out of existence.

    “There are many farmers that would like to continue to be farmers,” Miller told The Epoch Times.

    “It’s in our culture. We love farming. But the food system is so monopolized and regulated that we can’t be true farmers. You can’t make a living on the farm.”

    The Amish in the United States consists of four primary groups: Beachy Amish, Amish Mennonites, New Order, and Old Order Amish whose forebears fled religious persecution in Europe during the early 18th century. They have different views regarding the use of modern technology.

    “The Amish do not consider technology evil in itself, but they believe that technology if left untamed will undermine worthy traditions and accelerate assimilation into the surrounding society,” according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College on its Amish Studies website.

    “Mass media technology, in particular, they fear, would introduce foreign values into their culture. By bringing greater mobility, cars would pull the community apart, eroding local ties.

    “Horse-and-buggy transportation keeps the community anchored in its local geographical base.”

    Horse buggies are a transportation mainstay for Amish families in Pennsylvania. Photo taken on April 27, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

    As a population, the Amish are among the fastest-growing in America, with more than 300,000 located in 32 states. More than 60 percent of the Amish live in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in local congregations called church districts.

    In Lancaster County, the Amish population is approximately 45,000 adults and children.

    Old Windmill is a fourth-generation family farm on 65 acres, raising about a dozen head of cattle, pigs, goats, chickens, and horses and mules. The owner said he decided to expand into agri-tourism to supplement cash flow.

    “Bigger farms is the way to make a living,” the owner told The Epoch Times. “Everything is mass produced. When my grandfather was farming, they had a chicken house. They had some eggs to sell. They had a tobacco barn right here.”

    He said Old Windmill Farm left dairy farming as it became more labor intense and costly. His crops include rye, corn, alfalfa, and soybeans, rotating with the seasons. He uses an old hay baler drawn by four mules, a hay rake, and other gasoline-driven engines.

    “We don’t have modern machines; we have machines manufactured maybe in the 50s. Some are antique machines as well,” he said.

    A local metal fabricator makes parts to repair the machines when they break down.

    “There are diversified farms” using more modern tools, the owner said. “We’re sort of die-hard” using older technology.

    A typical day at Old Windmill Farm begins at dawn when the lights go on, and the roosters start crowing.

    “If you’re a farmer in the Amish community, you get up around 4:30 or quarter of five,” he said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 19:00

  • AOC And Matt Gaetz Team Up To Ban Lawmakers From Trading Stocks
    AOC And Matt Gaetz Team Up To Ban Lawmakers From Trading Stocks

    Days before PacWest Bancorp tanked from the mid-20s to the mid $2 range in 48 hours, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) – the Levi Strauss heir / Trump impeachment lead counsel-turned-lawmaker, sold his shares in the beleaguered bank.

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    And while there’s no evidence that Goldman was trading on insider information, Goldman’s win is emblematic of so many others by lawmakers which seem to work out in their favor.

    To that end – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) have teamed up to co-sponsor a bill which bans members of Congress from trading stocks.

    The Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act would ban members of Congress and their spouses and dependents from making financial investments. Also co-sponsoring the bill are Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL).

    “The ability to individually trade stock erodes the public’s trust in government,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “When members have access to classified information, we should not be trading in the stock market on it. It’s really that simple.”

    Meanwhile, Gaetz told Fox News that “AOC is wrong a lot, she’d probably say the same thing about me, but she’s not corrupt and I will work with anyone and everyone to ensure that Congress is not so compromised.”

    A 63% majority of registered voters said they support a ban on stock trading for members of Congress, according to 2022 Morning Consult poll. That includes 69% of Democrats, 64% of independents and 58% of Republicans.

    At least 113 members of Congress or members of their families disclosed stock transactions in 2021 totaling $355 million, according to a report from Capitol Trades, which tracks trading on Capitol Hill, and some but not all could be potential conflicts of interest based on lawmakers’ committee assignments. The New York Times found 18% of Congress sat on committees that “potentially gave them insight into the companies whose shares they reported buying or selling.” –Deseret.com

    As Axios notes;

    • There was significant bipartisan support for the issue last year, but bills to ban or limit the issue were never brought to the floor for a vote in either chamber.
    • Back in January, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) reintroduced his bill – dubbed the Pelosi Act.
    • After having consistently opposed such a measure, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled she’d relent.

    Last July, former Dallas fed president Richard Fisher slammed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her husband Paul over allegations of insider trading.

    “Clearly people have taken advantage of inside information forever,” Fisher told CNBC, responding to a report from Punchbowl News. “I’m sorry to see that Paul Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi and others appear to have taken advantage of inside information.”

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    The Pelosis have repeatedly come under fire for the trades which appeared to be based on nonpublic information.

    Recall, the last we wrote about Pelosi’s suspiciously good timing with her stock trades, we noted she had punted on several names heading into 2023. Prior to her trades being carefully scrutinized, Pelosi had a knack for minting cash from her stock trades, which we detailed here. 

    In March of 2021, the Pelosis scored $1.95 million on Microsoft call options less than two weeks before the tech giant secured a $22 billion contract to supply US Army combat troops with augmented reality headsets, while in January of the same year, Paul Pelosi bought up to $1 million of Tesla calls before the Biden administration announced plans to push electric vehicles.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 18:40

  • US Bank-Run Escalates: Deposit Outflows Top $360 Billion In Last 3 Weeks
    US Bank-Run Escalates: Deposit Outflows Top $360 Billion In Last 3 Weeks

    Tl;dr: The bank run continues to accelerate…

    …especially if one looks at non-seasonally-adjusted data.

    Crucially that is over 360 billion of deposit outflows from US banks in the last 3 weeks.

    And here is the source data:

    SA:

    NSA:

    How much of this tax related, and how much is a bank run, and how does the Fed know which is which?

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    Sure, some of this is tax outflows, but the Fed is just using a historical seasonal adjustment  factor AS IF there is no bank run which is traditionally the case…

    *  *  *

    After yesterday’s massive money market inflows, expectations are that tonight’s data from The Fed’s H.8 report will show major deposit outflows from US commercial banks (despite today’s exuberant bounce in some regional bank shares). Bear in mind, as we detailed yesterday, that The Fed’s emergency bank rescue facility usage remains extremely high and has shown now signs at all of easing…

    Source: Bloomberg

    On a seasonally-adjusted basis, total US Commercial Bank deposits fell $12.5 billion during the week ended 4/26…

    Source: Bloomberg

    However, on a seasonally adjusted basis, US commercial bank deposits (ex-large time deposits) increased last week (during the week-ending 4/26), rising $10.92 billion…

    Source: Bloomberg

    On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, US commercial bank deposits (ex-large time deposits) tumbled again, down $113 billion (also at its lowest since April 2021)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    That is over $360 billion in outflows in the last 3 weeks… but but but SVB fixed everything?

    And judging by yesterday’s money market inflows, the deposit outflows continued this week (remember, despoist data is lagged a week to money market and Fed balance sheet data)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Large and Small banks saw very modest inflows (on a seasonally adjusted basis) but foreign banks saw large outflows…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Foreign banks saw the biggest weekly outflows since 6/30/2021…

    • Large Banks +$10.3 billion

    • Small Banks +$584 million

    • Foreign Banks -$22.14 billion

    Source: Bloomberg

    However, what really matters is the non-seasonally-adjusted data which saw major outflows across small, large, and foreign banks…

    Source: Bloomberg

    In context, the bank run is escalating…

    On the other side of the ledger, Commercial bank lending rose $41.6 billion in the week ended April 26 after increasing $12.4 billion the prior week, according to seasonally adjusted data.

    Small bank lending exploded higher to $30.6 billion…

    Small Bank Weekly Change:

    • Small Bank C&I Loans: +$1.1BN

    • Small Bank Real Estate Loans: +$20.6BN

    • Small Bank Consumer Loans: +$5.3BN

    • Small Bank All other Loans and Leases: +$3.7BN

    Anyone else wonder how and to whom the small banks lent that much in CRE loans? Money good?

    Large Bank Weekly Change:

    • Large Bank C&I Loans: -$0.4BN

    • Large bank Real Estate Loans: -$1.7BN

    • Large Bank Consumer Loans: +$4.4BN

    • Large Bank All other Loans and Leases: +$7.4BN

    Despite today’s bounce, it was another ugly week for bank stocks(big and small)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    So you still believe the banking crisis over?

    Finally, we remind readers, this data does not include this week’s potential problems (as the deposit and loan data is lagged by a week).

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 18:33

  • The Suburbs Are Pulling Us Apart
    The Suburbs Are Pulling Us Apart

    Authored by Guy Ciarrocchi via RealClear Wire,

    My wife and I moved from Philadelphia to the western suburbs of Chester County for many reasons. The move offered us the best of all worlds. We would be living close enough to Philadelphia, but in even less time, we could be in rural Chester County, with its mushroom farms, farmer’s markets, and homemade foods and products. We could go back to South Philly to eat dinner on Passyunk Avenue, or choose to eat at a quiet country inn on a back road with no traffic lights – or even streetlights.

    Our neighbors were a mix: some had lived here for decades, some had moved here from more rural communities, and some had come here, like us, from Philadelphia. For us, the suburbs were a bridge to different parts of Pennsylvania and the nation. The suburbs were both the melting pot and the patchwork quilt that is America. Our neighbors had gun racks and Volvos. We all seemed to enjoy our community and appreciate that we were made up of differing backgrounds. In a sense, it was the suburbs that were connecting all of us – and holding America together.

    But something changed. I didn’t notice it until it had already happened – because it happened slowly.

    I should’ve noticed it in the signs that started popping up in coffee shops. The occasional “speeches” being made by actors at community theaters before or after a show. The new magnets on cars. The impromptu conversations after Mass. The community blogs that were supposed to be about garage sales and advice on finding a plumber but that started sounding like a Sunday morning talk show – the kind where nobody really talks, they just yell and interrupt. We were coming apart.

    Finally, I noticed it in our politics. Not just the changing election results but in what the campaigns were focused on, as reflected in candidate speeches, in palm cards, and on webpages.

    Somewhere, over the last generation, the suburbs had become ground zero for every societal, cultural – and, ultimately, every political – problem in Pennsylvania and in our nation.

    Think of the battles of just the last few years.

    The biggest fights over Covid mandates took place in the suburbs – not in rural Pennsylvania, where most people went about their business. Not in Philadelphia, where many could walk to stores or order takeout or delivery, as they did frequently even before the lockdowns. In other words, not where culture is more unified.

    The battles were among store-owners of pizza shops, diners, and barbershops and their neighbors, from Langhorne to West Chester. And in 2021 and 2022, the biggest battles came when worlds clashed. When people from more rural areas and those who had moved on from masking ventured into Wayne, Media, or Narberth to buy coffee and were greeted by baristas in masks, who gave them that look: “Why don’t you have a mask?”

    And this was nothing compared to the battles over children and schools – not only concerning masks, but also “critical race theory,” sex education, curriculum, books in school libraries, and student bathrooms.

    Not a week goes by without the media focusing on a suburban school district – Central Bucks, Perkiomen Valley, Tredyffrin/Easttown, West Chester, Southeast Delco, Great Valley, and Hatboro-Horsham. (And, in Virginia, most of America knows about the battles in Loudon County – the Chester County of the Washington, D.C. area.)

    School board races now cost thousands of dollars to run and generate more interest and higher voter turnout than full-time, paying elected offices. (School board members are not paid in Pennsylvania.) School board meetings have become must-see TV – or must-avoid TV, depending on one’s tastes.

    The suburbs, then, are no longer a cultural bridge. No longer a melting pot. No longer a patchwork of people and cultures, with mutual appreciation – or at least respect. They are now the flashpoint. It’s no wonder that politics has become so heated here. The political clashes are being driven by cultural clashes on deeply personal issues.

    When it comes to elections, this is a problem for Republicans since they are currently the opposition party. The trouble is that many people have picked their party – their team – and are unlikely to switch easily. And in this polarized environment, they follow the lead of their party on most issues. And those still undecided politically may not take a favorable view of Republicans, seeing them as merely adversarial to the status quo.

    For a long time, the suburbs helped keep America together. Now, it’s the suburbs that are pulling us apart – at rapid speed and high temperature.

    As Pennsylvania – and America – becomes more suburban, it’s imperative that we find a way to lower that temperature. This is bigger than politics or elections. It’s about staying together as a nation.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 18:20

  • Billionaire Buys Jeffery Epstein's Islands, Paving Way For "Five-Star Resort"
    Billionaire Buys Jeffery Epstein’s Islands, Paving Way For “Five-Star Resort”

    Billionaire investor Stephen Deckoff purchased two Caribbean islands previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier accused of sex trafficking. Deckoff has plans to transform one of the islands, known by some as “Pedophile Island,” into a world-class resort. 

    On Wednesday, Deckoff, under his firm SD Investments, announced the acquisition of the Great St. James and Little St. James islands for $60 million, or less than half of their initial asking price. 

    Court filings have revealed Epstein used one of the islands to sexually abuse young girls for years. The billionaire wants to purge the island of evil for a new “state-of-the-art, five-star, world-class luxury 25-room resort.”

    “Mr. Deckoff plans to develop a state-of-the-art, five-star, world-class luxury 25-room resort that will help bolster tourism, create jobs, and spur economic development in the region, while respecting and preserving the important environment of the islands,” a press release from the investment firm read. 

    AP News reported funds from the island sale would go towards the $105 million sex trafficking lawsuit against Epstein’s estate, which the US Virgin Islands government settled. SD Investments didn’t reveal how much it would invest in the new resort. 

    Whether or not high net-worth folks will visit the island is a big gamble for Deckoff…

    If the new resort ever gets built, some of Epstein’s guests who visited the island over the years, such as Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, probably won’t return. 

    There’s no word if Deckoff will keep Epstein’s mysterious temple structure. 

    The purchase was reported on the same day that CNBC revealed JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon would be deposed in late May over civil lawsuits accusing the megabank of benefiting from Epstein’s sex trafficking operations. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 18:00

  • Freedom Convoy's B.J.Dichter: We Live In A Belief-Based Society
    Freedom Convoy’s B.J.Dichter: We Live In A Belief-Based Society

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

    The two convoys: #FreedomConvoy and Political Convoy

    “I have news for everybody on the left, you’re the right-wing authoritarians who wanted to censor my video games and music in the 90s. That’s what you’ve become, you’ve become the very people you profess to be fighting against. “

    I recently had a chance to sit down with B. J Dichter of Canada’s #FreedomConvoy to talk about what happened in Ottawa, what the #FreedomConvoy was all about, and his new book Honking For Freedom.

    The full transcript of the show is now available, highlights include:

    What the #FreedomConvoy was all about:

    Markjr:

    One thing that was always frustrating to me when talking about the Freedom Convoy, and we’ll get into the whole narrative and spin and media, but let’s state it for the record here. What was the goal of the Freedom Convoy?

    BJ Dichter:  Oh, it was pretty simple: to end the vaccine mandates and to end the ArriveCan app.

    (Dichter had outlined in an earlier podcast with Robert Breedlove how he was pulling up to the border to re-enter Canada and was holding his phone out the window to the Canada Border agent who told him not to bother, his phone had already broadcasted everything they needed to know about him when he was still approaching the border).

    The mass conditioning of the public by the mainstream media:

    There was nothing but deception from legacy media, there was deception from alternative media as well on all sides.

    And no one was being straight with what was going on. I was doing my best to try to manage that and to leverage one media over the other, to do my best to get the story out while also trying to bait the legacy media to cover it. Because in the beginning, the legacy media wasn’t covering it. They’re trying to ignore it, which is one of the reasons I banned them from our press conferences. And I knew that would set them off. What people don’t know is not only did I ban them from our press conferences, but I also sent invites to all my contacts in the legacy media. And then when they responded, I said, “oh, sorry, you can’t come.”

    Markjr: 

    I think marketers call that the takeaway sale.

    What infuriated me about that, when you look at headlines throughout the world, there was one guy with a confederate flag, who was hounded out of the crowd by the Convoy, and there was one guy with the swastika flag. I would pay money have that person revealed and outed because what I think, and I’m not the only one, was that he was a plant.

    It was just so convenient that there was a photographer there getting professional quality photos of this person walking through the crowd. And yet, those two images were on an infinite loop all over the world. They just looped the same image over and over.

    And then it’s so subtle: Suddenly the headlines, say, confederate flags and swastikas — plural. And it’s so subtle, right?

    So it gets into the mind of the masses. They think that this place was overrun with Hitler Youth and Klansmen, and it was one guy of each: one swastika, one confederate flag, and they were hounded out of the area by the participants.

    That was infuriating.

    The other thing I’ll say about this, is when I tried to engage with people who disagreed with me about what you were trying to do, what the goal of the Convoy was, the discourse would be civil, and it would be polite, until one thing happened:

    When I challenged their source of news. When I called into question the veracity of the mainstream media, the conversation turned nasty immediately. So what I found very odd about this is you can oppose people’s premises and you can attack even their beliefs. But if you attack their support structure for how they base their knowledge, they get defensive and they come out swinging.

    BJ Dichter:

    Yeah, it’s because you’ve triggered them into cognitive dissonance.

    One of the people that benefits of all this, is that I managed to connect with some people that have large platforms, people who I admire, one of them was I messaged him back and forth just a couple of times, is Scott Adams. 

    Scott Adams describes this as the seven signs of cognitive dissonance trying to do his best to get people to understand this.

    Once you challenge their belief system,  they jump into one of the seven categories which are:

    1. change to the topic
    2. ad hominem
    3. mind reading
    4. word salad
    5. analogy instead of reason
    6. it’s too complicated to explain, or the ‘
    7. so you’re saying’ straw man

    Which is what you saw.

    That’s what you’ve done, you’ve managed to force them, and into second guessing their belief system, because we’re no longer a science-based society, we are now a belief-based society.And we don’t challenge our own beliefs.

     

    The role of Bitcoin in the #FreedomConvoy

    Bitcoiners were trying to warn the convoy organizers that their fundraising proceeds would likely be seized, when they first approached Tamara Lich, she said reportedly said: “I don’t need video game money, I need real money.”

    Eventually, they found their way to Dichter, who still encountered resistance from the other organizers who viewed it with suspicion.

    Markjr: So how many people became instantly orange-pilled when bank accounts started getting frozen?

    BJ Dichter:

    It’s amazing. You know, it’s just like the narrative poisoning problem with messaging. Once you once you throw them the counter-narrative, either people slip into the seven signs of cognitive dissonance, or if it’s really serious, it really hits them emotionally where it’s important, like their freedom and their wealth, then they switch to “Okay, tell me more.”

    Right. So we got a little bit of that. There was so much. I mean, I spent a week on the phone with lawyers trying not to get arrested. There were so many other things going on that it’s not even covered in the book, stuff I haven’t talked about yet. But what it did is it allow me to do consecutive Twitter spaces towards the end and then after the convoy and leading up to Bitcoin 2022 in Miami, that I had people saying, “Okay, tell me about Bitcoin. How did it work during the convoy? How do I buy it? Should I keep it here?”

    It just really opened up the doors, where people previously they dismissed it, because in the Western world, we’re spoiled. We don’t deal with regular currency collapses. We’re not in Argentina and Brazil, right?

    So what is Bitcoin here? It’s an investment. Well, once the Freedom Convoy came around that hyperbolic scenario that we all thought would never happen here. It’s always going to happen somewhere else. Well, it happened here.

    And now it’s more than just an investment for a small group of people that’s growing daily. That’s why in my discord, we have a Bitcoin chat for people who are new, and still learning and don’t understand and I like the soft pill approach, the soft orange pill approach of letting people come to you and they are definitely coming because of the Chief Marketing Officer of Bitcoin: Justin Trudeau.

    I love the Bitcoin community and I hate the word community. But it’s so awesome and it’s so many people in politics don’t have this advantage, the die-hard politic political people, to go into a space, where there’s a whole bunch of people have a whole bunch of different views on the world, and how the world should operate, but they agree on one thing, which is freedom, sovereignty of money, decentral decentralization, and it’s become this, this undercurrent that allows us all to talk to each other. And I’ve only ever experienced that in Bitcoin. So that’s the societal benefits and political benefits, if you will, with Bitcoin on top of the monetary value that it has, and I’m trying my best to make more and more people realize that and see that and some of them have.

    Iterating for Freedom: The Dutch Farmers have a crack:

    We talked about how the #FreedomConvoy set off a chain reaction around the world, it was arguably the beginning of the end of the Lockdown Era and vaccine mandates.

    BJ Dichter:

    Look what happened in the Netherlands. Jordan Peterson explained to me on one of our calls, he said, the people in the Netherlands who eventually connected with, they looked at what happened in the convoy.

    They tried to look at the weaknesses that were exposed by the government. And they tried to hedge against that.

    They had regular protests, they would break it up, they’d start again,  always kept the government guessing.

    And what was the eventual result of that was the fact that they protected against all the things that we dealt with. They actually formed a party, and they got 20% of the vote. And now they have the political capital, and the votes in their parliament to block any of this nonsense, whether it’s WTF or Neo-progressive, whatever you want to call it, to block any of these restrictions on farmers, because they have 20% of the parliament.

    So they won. 

    Did it work in Canada?

    We saw them testing messaging. And I remember saying to some of the other road captains, people are organizing and saying this is good.

    They’re testing messaging, that means they have data showing that there’s overwhelming support for us. They don’t know what to do. Just wait, let’s wait it out a couple of days.

    And then lo and behold, we started to see provinces. Scott Moe, in Saskatchewan, started testing messaging and saying, ‘Oh, well, maybe we’re gonna roll back. Maybe it’s time to end the pandemic and restrictions.’

    And I was laughing, #nothingtodowithtruckers, right? Because they’ll never admit it.  And I found out from a number of people, there was 30+ convoys around the world, that people realized in various jurisdictions that this tactic was working.

    And this also had the same ripple effect and jurisdictions outside of Canada.

    So yeah, I think it did. The only one that held on were the Trudeau administration. Because extremists only know one worldview, and they’ll always double down on their strategy, they’ll never sit back and think, what’s the other guy thinking?

    There is zero respect. And they eventually, how many months later, was it eight months later, they eventually removed the restrictions within Canada and the mandates. And once again, #nothingtodowithtruckers; just because you think you can hang on for additional six months? You think we don’t know it? It was the convoy. We know it did.

    However B.J Dichter seems to think that the Canadian #FreedomConvoy protestors were robbed of the same victories that the later iterations, like the Dutch Farmers, were achieving. Facing the prospect of a class action suit for over $400 million, it’s hard to see the silver lining:

    BJ Dichter:

    We were robbed of building an equivalent grassroots movement, that wasn’t tied to any political party that we could have maneuvered and found candidates, politicians, groups of people, advocacy groups to align with, to have that sort of effect on Canadian politics, we were robbed of that, and that I will never forgive them for.

    Markjr:

    This brings us back to Martin Gurrie’s book [Revolt of the Public], who said that the fatal flaw in a lot of these populist movements was that they didn’t have a coherent strategy for what to do with the momentum and the inertia and the victories that they achieved, like they could overthrow a government, but then, you know, just someone worse would take its place.

    So there was no coherent methodology to sort of channel it all into and what you were describing the Dutch, the Netherlands. They transcended that. They figured it out.

    It’s early days here in Canada. Maybe that particular chapter went the way it did. But you guys did something immutable, something transformative, really, you set off the whole movement, and that set the entire thing in motion so that I wouldn’t sell yourself short there because it all started in Canada with you guys

    BJ Dichter

    I think we’re right now at the stage where people are, you know, independent journalists, YouTubers are now talking to myself and other people are understanding the nuance of what went on behind the scenes.

    They’re now understanding that there are two convoys there — that what I call political convoy and freedom convoy.  And freedom convoy was much larger.

    The political convoy was a small group of people trying to co-opt us for the political class, which is going to happen everywhere. We’re going to have some rough waters for a little while as we kind of purge out the political convoy and political conflict and go back to their parties.

    The rest of us can refocus on unifying and building something with people we don’t necessarily agree with everything, but we agree on respect and unity and tolerating each other.

    Off Camera: Liberal Faction planned to oust Trudeau

    After we stopped recording we continued speaking a while, including some developments around the class action lawsuit which Dichter will announce in due course (follow the links below to stay on top of this).

    However one of the bombshell revelations that came up (at least for me) was that Dichter had been contacted by a faction of MPs from within the Liberal Party of Canada who were more receptive to the grievances of the convoy and who were planning to oust Trudeau by supporting a non-confidence motion in Parliament. It never materialized as the Emergency Act was soon invoked, possibly because Trudeau was in full “seige mentality” by then. (my take, not Dichter’s).

    When the convoy was happening I said that the leader of every Canadian political party was going to end up losing their job over it. The CPC dumped the “liberal-lite” Erin O’Toole almost immediately. Looks like elements within the Liberal Party wanted to do the same with Trudeau. We all know Jagmeet Singh is loathed by his own base and will probably not survive his party’s next leadership ballot given that he’s single-handedly propping up Trudeau while trying to sound like he’s fighting the system.

    See also:

    The interview:

    *  *  *

    Subscribe to The Bombthrower email list and receive a free copy of the Crypto Capitalist Manifesto – or follow me on Nostr or Twitter. My Bitcoin Capitalist premium letter provides an actionable investment thesis for navigating the coming monetary apartheid between being a CBDC-serf and a Sovereign Individual with Bitcoin. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 17:40

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May 05

Today’s News 5th May 2023

  • Why Turkey's May 14 Election Really Matters
    Why Turkey’s May 14 Election Really Matters

    Authored by Austin Bay via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Turkey’s May 14, 2023, national elections are critical, foremost for Turkish citizens. Their democracy is at stake.

    In this aerial photo, thousands of supporters wave flags and chant slogans while waiting for the arrival of eader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu, and the presidential candidate of the Main Opposition alliance during a campaign rally in Izmir, Turkey, on April 30, 2023.

    But that isn’t the only reason Turkish and European media call next week’s vote the most important in 100 years. The election, which pits the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the much more moderate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, also affects NATO solidarity, political stability in Eastern Europe, and the West’s ability to counter Iran, Russia, and China in the Middle East.

    Erdogan, who leads the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), advocates the “executive presidency” (authoritarian power and control vested in the president). Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), is a moderate pro-parliamentary process candidate. He is backed by a six-party coalition committed to ending Erdogan’s reign of economic error, police intimidation, and, in the wake of the February earthquakes, destructive corruption.

    For Turks the 100-year mark has genuine significance. A century ago, in 1923, from the WWI ruins of the Ottoman Turk empire, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established the secular Turkish Republic—a nonsectarian republic in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

    Ataturk was a true revolutionary. To state the grand historical case, he is the only man to successfully create a political system to modernize a culturally Islamic nation. Ataturk pursued economic modernization. He emancipated women and ended the Islamic Caliphate—both acts horrifying radical Islamists then and now. In 2001 Osama bin Laden was still condemning him.

    Turkey’s 21st-century democracy is Ataturk’s legacy.

    Erdogan, a man notoriously jealous of Ataturk, intentionally attacks and diminishes Turkey’s democratic institutions. Since 2003, when Erdogan became prime minister, year by year Turkey’s government has become less secular and more authoritarian as Erdogan forged his powerful executive.

    His record for jailing journalists and intimidating opponents is fact, not theory.

    He is also a threat to the integrity of NATO, which means he’s a threat to U.S. security. When he purchased the Russian-made S-400 air defense system, Erdogan put the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s technological edge at risk.

    When it serves him, Erdogan values NATO’s commitment to defend Turkey. In April 2012, after confrontations with Syrian troops, he suggested he might invoke NATO Article 5 if fire spilled across the border. However, his deliberately rogue behavior has damaged the alliance. He continues to oppose Swedish membership. As recently as January 2023, good rumor had it that active and retired NATO officials were so concerned about Erdogan’s unreliability that NATO ought to consider expelling Turkey.

    Kilicdaroglu says he will revive Turkey’s bid to join the European Union and support Sweden’s admission.

    Erdogan’s economic and political mismanagement may lead to his defeat.

    In 2002 Erdogan won his first national election on a platform to attack inflation, improve the economy, and fight corruption. In fall 2022 annual inflation hit 86 percent, a 24-year high.

    The February earthquakes were the worst natural disaster in the history of modern Turkey—the Feb. 6 quake might be the biggest in 2,000 years.

    In Turkey an estimated 280,000 buildings were either destroyed or suffered “structural compromise” so they must be abandoned. The number is a fact, not an opinion. In early April Turkey’s interior ministry raised the death toll to 50,399. Relief organizations reported around 1.5 million Turks who survived the earthquakes were still living in tents or other temporary facilities.

    Erdogan’s slow and poor response has made the earthquakes an election issue he cannot shake.

    Did cronyism hamper recovery? Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD, the agency tasked with handling the disaster) is run by a political appointee who has little emergency management experience.

    Government failure to enforce construction standards is definitely an issue. Some critics suspect corruption by national and local officials contributed to the disaster. Government “construction amnesties” allowed builders to ignore safety codes in areas where housing shortages existed. In 2018 Erdogan allowed one in the city of Kahramanmaras. In March 2019 he publicly touted new housing in Kahramanmaras as one of his administration’s major achievements.

    In February the quakes leveled the city.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 02:00

  • Was The Tucker "Take Down" A Deep-State Hit?
    Was The Tucker “Take Down” A Deep-State Hit?

    Authored by Mike Whitney,

    “When honest people say what’s true … they become powerful…. That’s the iron-law of the universe, the truth prevails.”

    – Tucker Carlson

    Can we stop pretending that Tucker Carlson was fired because of the Dominion lawsuit? That’s a bunch of baloney. Carlson was fired because he used his prime-time platform to expose the crimes and illicit goings-on of the most powerful men, corporations and agencies in the world. That’s why he was fired, because he revealed the truth about big pharma’s toxic injections, Fauci’s deranged lockdowns, Brandon’s police-state surveillance, the expansive deep-state censorship program, CRT, BLM, ESG, George Floyd, drag-queen children’s hour, the oddball cult of trangenderism, Ukraine’s crummy dictator-president Zelensky and all the other pernicious inanities that are being used like a wrecking-ball on the nation’s moral and historical foundation. Tucker exposed them all.

    That’s why he was fired. It had nothing to do lawsuits or disgruntled employees whining about a “toxic work environment”. Nor did it have anything to do with ratings or money. This was a carefully-calculated, narrowly-supported targeted assassination of the man—who more than any other—had become a problem for the reprobate Mafia that runs the country and who is determined to silence or annihilate anyone who speaks out against them.

    So don’t be duped by articles in the MSM. They are there to misdirect and confuse, not to inform. Have confidence in what you’ve seen with your own eyes and know to be true. Tucker Carlson was a victim of a system that no longer tolerates free speech, even-handed criticism or any divergence from the official narrative. Who doesn’t know this already?

    How many readers remember the night that Tucker ran a segment on the JFK assassination? Here’s a short recap from an excellent article by Lew Rockwell:

    In a remarkable television broadcast on December 15, 2022, Tucker Carlson made an explosive charge. He pointed out that, contrary to law, the White House was refusing to release thousands of pages of documents about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Carlson said that these documents proved CIA involvement in the assassination and that someone within the government who had looked at these documents made a direct statement to this effect.

    …. We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained. We asked this person directly, ‘Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President?’ And here’s the reply we received verbatim. Quote, ‘The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.’ “Why Tucker Carlson had to be Purged”, Lew Rockwell

    So, after 60 years, someone finally had the courage to tell the truth on national television. That’s shocking.

    But how many people who saw that segment reacted the same way that I did? How many people said to themselves, “They’re not going to allow this to continue, they’re not going to let Carlson expose their crimes to the world. No way. Whatever it takes, they’re going to shut this guy up.”

    And that’s what they’ve done, they’ve shut him up.

    There are things you can’t say in America, and that is one of them. You cannot say the CIA killed John Kennedy even though the majority of people know that it’s true. Because it doesn’t matter if it’s true. Just like it doesn’t matter that it took place 60 years ago. You still can’t say it, because the people who own the media—and who sit on the boards of all the other global corporations—don’t like it when you criticize the organization that does their dirty work. They won’t allow that.

    This is the lesson of Julian Assange, which is: Do not reveal the crimes of elites and—if you do—you’re going to be crushed. Assange violated that rule and now faces a lifetime in solitary confinement. They’ve not only ruined his life, they’ve also trotted him out in front of the world media to make an example of him. And the message they’re trying to send is this: “Mess with us and we will fu** you over.” That is the message.

    Now it’s on to Tucker who is even more widely reviled for his nightly attacks on the same group of powerbrokers. What do you think they have in store for him?

    It’s hard to say, but they’re not going to pull their punches, that much is certain.

    It’s worth noting that, by some accounts, Carlson was not explicitly fired. Did you know that?

    According to former Fox host Megyn Kelly, Carlson is not free to negotiate with other potential employers because he’s still technically under contract with Fox. Check out this blurb from Red State website:

    There’s a report from 19FortyFive from John Rossamondo that Tucker Carlson texted them, “I’m still employed by Fox,” that he had not been fired. Now, we’re not seeing anyone else reporting on that, so we relate that report with that proviso. That report does, however, fit with what Kelly said. 19FortyFive also said Carlson did not explain the reasoning for the parting of ways, just as Kelly said.

    If this is all true, then, as Kelly says, Fox needs to let Carlson out of the contract as soon as possible, so his voice is freed to get about doing his job. But for the moment, it’s concerning, if it means he’s stopped from pursuing other opportunities and is effectively silenced.” (“Megyn Kelly Drops Important Info About Tucker Departure, Blog Reports Text From Tucker”, Red State)

    What Kelly seems to ignore is that “silencing” Carlson was the primary objective from the get-go. The fact that he is still under contract simply makes it easier for his enemies to control and censor him. Many readers have noticed that Carlson has not posted another video on his Twitter account since last week’s 2-minute blockbuster that raked in over 70 million views. That probably means that he’s been advised by his attorney that anything he produces will be construed as a violation of his contract with Fox. In other words, keeping Tucker on the payroll may be the most effective way to shut him up which is precisely what they want.

    On an entirely different topic: There seems to be widespread agreement that Rupert Murdoch was directly involved in Carlson’s removal. But—in my opinion—that seems very unlikely. Murdoch probably knew that the fallout from Carlson’s termination would be devastating for both ratings and the Fox brand. That’s why he (probably) avoided the decision for as long as possible. But try to imagine the enormous pressure he must have been under from his fellow oligarchs as well as the numerous deep-state agencies that have coalesced into—what Matt Taibbi calls—the “Censorship-Industrial Complex”. The billionaire globalists and their government assets despise Carlson and see his rational, laser-sharp analysis as a grave threat to their broader societal project. That is why they descended on Murdoch like a barrage of heat-seeking missiles forcing the dithering mogul to eventually throw in the towel. Once again—this is just my opinion—but I think it is much more likely that Murdoch “caved in” rather than threw his threw his prime-time superstar under the bus.

    There’s also another development that preceded the Tucker incident that might have had some bearing on the final outcome, that is, the giant private equity corporation Blackrock bought a sizable chunk of Fox just two months before Carlson was given his pink-slip. Here’s the scoop from an article at Nasdaq:

    Fintel reports that BlackRock has filed a 13G/A form with the SEC disclosing ownership of 45.74MM shares of Fox Corporation, Class A (FOXA). This represents 15.1% of the company.

    In their previous filing dated January 27, 2022 they reported 39.87MM shares and 12.40% of the company, an increase in shares of 14.75% and an increase in total ownership of 2.70% (calculated as current – previous percent ownership). BlackRock Increases Position in Fox Corporation, Nasdaq

    Let me see if I got this straight: ‘Liberal-leaning’ PE goliath Blackrock buys a 15% share of uber-conservative Fox News in early February, and 3 months later the network’s brightest star is given his “walking papers”. Doesn’t that sound a bit suspicious?

    Indeed, it does. Check out this short clip from an article by analyst Tom Loungo who helps to clarify what’s going on:

    This is symptomatic of Blackrock’s use of proxy to get what they want. Larry Fink, BLK CEO, is notorious for his antics in forcing heads of state and CEO’s to do his bidding while hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘I’m just a guy investing your hard-earned capital on your behalf for the good of humanity.’

    Now, this is some prime Grade AA Bullshit.

    Blackrock is Davos’ main arm-twisting subsidiary in the C-Suites of the S&P 500 as well as the Euro STOXXX 50 (link will need translation from German). He may as well change his first name to Don but there are some ethnic issues with this outside of Queens.” “Tucker, Blackrock and the SIFI Two-Step”, Lew Rockwell)

    I think Luongo is on to something here. Blackrock’s stake in Fox might have nothing to do Fox’s prospects for future profits. Instead, it might be a straightforward power-play aimed at eliminating America’s most persuasive critic of big pharma, corporate malfeasance and the tyrannical globalist agenda. At the very least, the proximity of Blackrock’s purchase should prompt a thorough investigation of the possible link between the giant Wall Street monoliths and outspoken critics of the system. But while an independent probe is certainly warranted, I’m not holding my breath.

    It’s not possible to understand what happened to Tucker Carlson without having some knowledge of the way things actually work. Fortunately, journalist Matt Taibbi has explained much of what is going on now through his work on the Twitter Files which shows how the concentration of wealth and influence has spawned an expansive information matrix that threatens to quash free speech while strengthening the power of the billionaire elites. Here’s a short excerpt from a piece by Taibbi:

    ….the story of the #TwitterFiles…. is “really the story of the collapse of public trust in experts and institutions, and how those experts struck back, by trying to pool their remaining influence into a political monopoly.”….

    #TwitterFiles reporters like Michael Shellenberger, and myself didn’t have much of a hint of what we were looking at until later in the project. That larger story was about a new type of political control mechanism that didn’t really exist ten years ago. In preparation for testimony before the House in March, Shellenberger gave it a name: the Censorship-Industrial Complex…..

    We didn’t understand at the time, but the third, fourth, and fifth installments of the #TwitterFiles… served as an introduction for all of us to the major components of a vast new public-private speech bureaucracy, one that appeared to have been founded in the United States, but was clearly global in scope…. a censorship industrial complex that…

    Combines established methods of psychological manipulation… with highly sophisticated tools from computer science, including artificial intelligence. The complex’s leaders are driven by the fear that the Internet and social media platforms empower populist, alternative, and fringe personalities and views, which they regard as destabilizing….

    The core concept is too much democracy and freedom leads to mischief, and since the desire for these things can’t be stamped out all at once but instead must be squashed in every person over and over and endlessly, the job requires a massive investment, and a gigantic bureaucracy to match.” “Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex, Matt Taibbi, Racket News

    Bottom line: The merging of public and private power has already taken place and is expressed in the removal of any and all critics of the newly-minted system. In short, Tucker was not fired by Fox News management but by the new speech-policing behemoth that descended on Murdoch like a swarm of hornets coercing him to make a choice that he probably would not have made otherwise.

    A similar point is made by Patrick Lawrence in his recent review of Jacob Seigel’s A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century Here’s an excerpt from the author’s piece:

    In his last days in office, President Barack Obama made the decision to set the country on a new course”…(In) 2016, he signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which used the language of defending the homeland to launch an open-ended, offensive information war.”.….

    This was to be not merely a “whole-of-government” undertaking: It was “whole-of-society,” meaning all lines between the public and private sectors would be erased and control of the hearts and minds of every American was made the objective.

    Now we can understand how easily our public institutions enlisted in this good cause. These included Big Tech and the national security apparatus, of course, as well as law enforcement — the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation—the think tanks, the universities, the NGOs, and media. “The American press,” (Jacob) Siegel writes, “was hollowed out to the point that it could be worn like a hand puppet by the U.S. security agencies and party operatives.”

    There were also various self-proclaimed guardians of “internet freedom,” whose shared objective was to suppress all forms of dissent by making sure no such thing survived their efforts…..

    “Something monstrous is taking shape in America,” Siegel writes….

    “What is coming into being is a new form of government and social organization that is as different from mid-20th century liberal democracy as the early American republic was from the British monarchism that it grew out of and eventually supplanted. A state organized on the principle that it exists to protect the sovereign rights of individuals, is being replaced by a digital leviathan that wields power through opaque algorithms and the manipulation of digital swarms. It resembles the Chinese system of social credit and one-party state control, and yet that, too, misses the distinctively American and providential character of the control system.” The Most Powerful Demolition of Russiagate Yet”, Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News

    How do these excerpts help us to understand what happened to Tucker Carlson?

    If Carlson was fired by Murdoch for his alleged involvement in the Dominion settlement, that is entirely different then if he was the victim of an emerging speech-policing bureaucracy that is deeply entrenched in the government and which seeks to arbitrarily limit what opinions are permissible and not permissible. If the latter is true, then we can assume that Carlson’s termination has broader meaning for everyone living in the United States today. What it means is that a sprawling new system has been secretly assembled within the state that is explicitly designed to end free speech as we know it and extinguish the last glimmer of personal liberty in America.

    That’s why we need to know what people or organizations were behind the firing of Tucker Carlson.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/05/2023 – 00:00

  • What Happened To All The Stretched Limousines?
    What Happened To All The Stretched Limousines?

    Several decades ago, limousines could be found in every major city. The luxury stretched vehicle ushered occupants to boardroom meetings, penthouses, nightclubs, and sporting events. But somewhere along the way, the limousine slowly and then rapidly disappeared from city streets in a world now dominated by black SUVs. 

    The stretched limousine dominated the luxury chauffeur service industry in the 1970s and 1980s. After multiple stock crashes, the first in 1987, the second in the early 2000s, and the third in 2008, the luxury mode of travel lost its lust with high net-wealth individuals.

    Slowly but surely, the town car became the vehicle of choice in the 2000s. Then the rich demanded Cadillac Escalade and Chevrolet Suburban, as well as Mercedes S classes, while demand for stretch limos plummeted. 

    Now chauffeur services are dominated by “black SUVs, buses and vans,” NYTimes explained. 

    “The limo business isn’t your father’s limo business anymore,” said Robert Alexander, president of the National Limousine Association (NLA). 

    According to NLA data, stretch limos represent about 1% of services offered by chauffeur services nationwide, down from 10% a decade ago. 

    “The stretch limo is — what’s the expression? — gone like the dodo bird,” Alexander said.

    As Alexander pointed out, another factor contributing to the near “extinction” of limousines was the emergence of ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Lyft over a decade ago. These platforms spurred a surge in demand for luxury SUV chauffeur services, further diminishing the stretched limo market.

    It’s clear the limo industry has taken a drastic turn in recent decades. And the next move the limo industry is making is into luxury Sprinter vans.

    Matthew Daus, a lawyer and a former commissioner and chairman of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, explained the limo industry has “muscled into the motor coach and the charter industry” after the pandemic. 

    Stretched limos are gone for now, but luxury chauffeur services are still thriving. It’s just the mode of transport has changed. And in a country where progressive policies have sparked a nationwide crime wave in major metro areas, no one in their right mind would dare drive around in a moving target. 

    Looking ahead, the proliferation of self-driving cars could also make professional chauffeurs extinct in the coming decades. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 23:40

  • Is It A Good Thing For Ordinary Americans If The US Loses Reserve Currency Status?
    Is It A Good Thing For Ordinary Americans If The US Loses Reserve Currency Status?

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via the Mises Institute,

    Earlier this month, Larry Kudlow insisted that it is “it’s incumbent on the U.S. government, no matter who’s in power, to maintain the reserve currency status of the dollar.” Kudlow laments that a toppling of the dollar from that perch “seems to be the direction we’re going in.” 

    Kudlow’s remarks came a day after Donald Trump declared that China is trying to displace the U.S. Dollar [sic] as the NUMBER ONE CURRENCY” and that if this occurs, it would be the biggest defeat for our Country [sic] in its history.” 

    Neither Trump nor Kudlow actually explain why maintaining reserve currency status is so important. After all, it’s clear that it is not necessary for a country’s currency to be a reserve currency in order for that country to have a high standard of living and a high degree of economic freedom. We could simply look to Norway and Switzerland to see that. 

    What’s Good for the Government Isn’t Necessarily What’s Good for the People

    Trump and Kudlow seemingly can’t tell the difference between what is good for the US government, and what is good for the people.  The idea that global reserve currency status for the dollar is essential to “America” relies on the false notion that the interests of the US regime and the interests of ordinary taxpaying Americans are one and the same. These interests rarely coincide, however, and they certainly don’t when it comes to reserve currency status. This is especially the case when the dollar is unbacked by any commodity like gold, and is simply a floating fiat currency that can be inflated at the will of the regime at any time.

    That global reserve currency status benefits the regime itself is obvious. This status for the dollar does indeed allow the regime to more recklessly inflate the dollar and increase deficits. This enhances the US regime’s ability to bribe voters with enormous welfare programs and involve the US regime in a dazzling array of wars that have nothing to do with defending US territory. None of this, however, improves the standard of living of Americans who pay the bills. Even worse, when the dollar ceases to be the dominant reserve currency—an event that is inevitable—holders of dollars will see their purchasing power plummet. Yet, it not the end of reserve currency status that is to blame for the inflationist pain. Rather, the fault will lie with the decades of monetary and fiscal mismanagement made possible by the dollar’s status as global reserve currency. 

    To demand the regime continue to cling to global reserve currency status is to demand a continuation of the policies that have hollowed out the financial well-being of Americans for decades.

    Trump and Kudlow, however, are not troubled by this. For them, it appears that the supposed importance of reserve currency status is not about economic concerns, but is really a political project. This shouldn’t surprise us given many of the narratives surrounding the dollar’s status—which focus on China and Chinese geopolitical power as the main reason to fear a decline of the dollar. This isn’t about protecting your wealth or reining in government power. It’s about increasing US government power in the name of fighting the latest foreign “axis of evil.” 

    In fact, China’s currency, the yuan, doesn’t even pose a threat to the dollar. The yuan is a fifth-place also-ran in the currency race. So, for now, the dollar still reigns supreme, and being the regime whose currency enjoys global reserve status comes with many advantages.

    Why Reserve Currency Status Enhances State Power at the Expense of the Taxpayers

    The first advantage is reserve currency status brings a greater global demand for dollars. This means more of a global willingness to absorb dollars into foreign central banks and foreign bank accounts even as the dollar inflates and loses purchasing power. Ultimately, this means the US regime can hoodwink the voters into accepting more monetary inflation, more financial repression, and more debt for many years before domestic price inflation becomes a political problem for the regime. After all, even if the US central bank (the Federal Reserve) creates $8 trillion in new dollars in order to prop up US asset prices, much of the world will take those dollars out of US domestic markets, and this will reduce price inflation in the US—at least in the short term.

    A second advantage: the fact the dollar dominates in global trade transactions means more global demand for US debt. Or, as Reuters put it in 2019, the dollar is used “for at least half of international trade invoices—five times more than the United States’ share of world goods imports—fuelling demand for U.S. assets.” Those assets include US government debt. In fact, as Robert Murphy notes, this inflation-fueled demand for US assets will be “heavily tilted toward debt (rather than equity in growing companies).” This rush for US debt pushes down the interest rate at which the US government must pay on its enormous $30 trillion debt. 

    All in all, reserve status for the dollar means a lot more US government spending. This produces no net benefit since government spending in itself distorts the economy, drives up prices, and otherwise redistributes wealth according to political considerations, rather than according to the needs of consumers and entrepreneurs.

    None of this is good for the productive people in the US. For one, deficit spending—whether for elective wars or welfare programs—must always be paid for, either in the form of price inflation (i.e., the inflation tax), or in terms of future ordinary taxation. Moreover, reserve currency status creates political cover for the regime’s easy-money policies in the short term. That is, global demand for the dollar helps create the temporary impression that monetary inflation comes with few downsides. This, however, can only continue until the dollar’s reserve status ends or even significantly weakens. In the meantime, the world will have been flooded with dollars. 

    Reserve currency status, by politically fostering more deficit spending, also harms those parts of the private economy that depend on private investment. As deficit spending increases, the economy is flooded with ever larger amounts of government debt backed up by tax dollars. This attracts huge amounts of wealth to government Treasurys that otherwise would have gone into private-sector investments. 

    All this dollar profligacy has been neither necessary nor advisable, yet maintaining global reserve currency status can help regimes get away with this sort of thing for decades. 

    The Effects of Losing International Currency Power

    Often, discussion about the dollar’s reserve status creates a false dichotomy between total domination of the global monetary system on one hand and complete abandonment of the dollar on the other. A more likely scenario is that the dollar will weaken considerably but will remain among the most often used currencies. After all, even after the pound sterling lost its status as reserve currency in the 1930s, it did not disappear. 

    For example, let’s say the US dollar sinks to 40 percent of all foreign reserves and is only used in one-third of all international trade invoices—instead of one-half, as is now the case. This would not necessarily destroy the dollar or the US economy, but it would certainly constrain the US regime’s ability to pile on another trillion dollars worth of debt without the true costs of mounting debt becoming abundantly clear.  Perhaps more importantly, a world less awash in dollars will mean a world with less demand for US assets such as US government debt. That means higher interest rates for the US government and less of an ability to finance the welfare-warfare state by inflating the currency.

    Naturally, politicians and pundits such as Trump and Kudlow view any threat to this kind of state power as a bad thing. At this point, however, how we feel about it is irrelevant. It’s going to happen regardless of our feelings on the matter. The only way it doesn’t happen is if the US regime suddenly starts slashing deficits and government spending, embraces a strong dollar policy, and perhaps even anchors the dollar to a commodity like gold. None of those things is going to happen without first experiencing a wakeup call on the level of losing currency reserve status. The good news is such a wakeup call will weaken the US regime, potentially forcing policymakers to embrace a more sane fiscal and monetary policy.  

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 23:20

  • After Bungling Sudan Crisis Response, Biden's Solution: More Sanctions
    After Bungling Sudan Crisis Response, Biden’s Solution: More Sanctions

    The Biden administration has come under intense criticism for its meager and flat-footed response to the Sudan crisis, now reaching three full weeks, and with over 550 people killed and thousands wounded. Each time a truce is declared, it is quickly broken with gunfire and shelling in and around Khartoum. Two Americans were reported killed near the start of the violence. Thousands of US citizens reportedly remain in the country.

    Biden’s solution? Sanction more stuff… “President Biden on Thursday called for an end to the violence among warring factions in Sudan and expanded his administration’s ability to sanction individuals who undermine peace and stability in the war-torn nation,” The Hill reports.

    Via AFP

    Biden said in a statement, “The violence taking place in Sudan is a tragedy—and it is a betrayal of the Sudanese people’s clear demand for civilian government and a transition to democracy.”

    “I join the peace-loving people of Sudan and leaders around the world in calling for a durable ceasefire between the belligerent parties,” he continued. “This violence, which has already stolen the lives of hundreds of civilians and began during the holy month of Ramadan, is unconscionable.”

    He emphasized, the conflict “must end.” Biden said further: “Our diplomatic efforts to urge all parties to end the military conflict and allow unhindered humanitarian access continue, as do our efforts to assist those remaining Americans, including by providing them information on exit options.”

    The newly announced measures allow the US to expand sanctions on any individual or entity which is threatening the peace and stability of Sudan. The executive order authorizes potential sanctions on any Sudanese officials involved in “destabilizing the country and undermining the democratic transition.” We highly doubt either of the two rival generals locked in conflict will care – certainly the threat of sanctions will have no force with them. It will be no ‘deterrent’ to anything.

    The two generals now fighting over the capital had previously united in a 2021 coup to take shared control of the country. The battles pit the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — who’s also known as Hemedti and has served as Burhan’s deputy head of state. 

    However, recent months have seen mounting tensions between the SAF and RSF, as the generals have clashing positions in negotiations for the establishment of civilian government, something the country’s been trying to achieve since a 2019 revolution overthrew the 30-year reign of President Omar al-Bashir. 

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

    There’s been a significant evacuation operation underway by many global countries since the outbreak of street to street fighting, including China which has even sent warships to take its nationals from Sudan’s Red Sea ports. The US State Department, however, has been accused of turning a blind eye.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 23:00

  • Maria Bartiromo Responds To Ex-Fox News Producer’s Allegations
    Maria Bartiromo Responds To Ex-Fox News Producer’s Allegations

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo’s team issued a response after a former producer claimed that she used her personal connections with then-President Donald Trump to protect her status within the network.

    Maria Bartiromo appears on her “Mornings with Maria Bartiromo” program, on the Fox Business Network in New York on June 23, 2015. (Richard Drew/AP Photo)

    A former producer, Abby Grossberg, filed a lawsuit against Fox News and several others, including former host Tucker Carlson, for what she alleges was harassment and mistreatment during her time at the network. Since Fox News announced Carlson’s departure last week, Grossberg has conducted several interviews with news outlets and most recently with Time magazine, where she produced her latest allegations against the network and now Bartiromo.

    Grossberg, who had worked with Bartiromo before she joined Carlson’s team, claimed Fox News had an environment that was unfavorable to women while discussing Bartiromo. She made similar claims in her lawsuits against the network, filed in the U.S. Southern District of New York.

    “If they were marginalizing her, she could always say, ‘I can get the President of the United States on the phone,’” Grossberg claimed to Time magazine. “She had that power over Fox, and it protected her.”

    But Bartiromo responded by saying that her allegations were false. The Epoch Times has contacted Fox News for comment.

    “I have interviewed four American presidents and several international heads of state during my distinguished career and have had rapports with leading figures across the world,” Bartiromo’s team told news outlets Wednesday in response to Grossberg’s claims to Time magazine. “These allegations are absurd and patently false.”

    Fox News also told outlets that Grossberg’s comments were false. The spokesperson said Bartiromo—who worked at CNBC, CNN, and Fox for decades—”does not need to rely on any one person or organization as her contacts reach far and wide.”

    In another statement about Grossberg’s assertions, the network also told outlets that it “will vigorously defend Fox against all of her unmeritorious legal claims, which are riddled with false allegations against the network and our employees.”

    “Maria Bartiromo has cultivated an extensive list of contacts over the course of 30 years that enable her to connect with numerous sources spanning business and politics … across Republican and Democrats, CEOs to analysts worldwide,” Fox News also said.

    More Details

    Meanwhile, Grossberg became the subject of controversy last week when a lawyer representing her told The Spectator that she never actually met in person with Carlson when she worked for him. The lawyer suggested that because Carlson worked at his personal offices in Maine and Florida, a number of staffers didn’t meet with him personally.

    Tucker Carlson in Esztergom, Hungary, on Aug. 7, 2021. (Janos Kummer/Getty Images)

    “Like many on the [‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’] staff, Abby never met Tucker Carlson in person because he taped the show from his personal studios in Maine and Florida, and he did not visit Fox’s NY HQ during her time there,” Kimberly A. Catala, a Grossberg attorney, told the news outlet.

    The Epoch Times reached her lawyers for comment and one responded by confirming that her comment to the news outlet was accurate, but accused The Spectator and other media outlets of taking them out of context. Her lawyers also said she frequently communicated with Carlson via text messages, phone, and email.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 22:40

  • Restrictions On Ivermectin Dropped In Australia
    Restrictions On Ivermectin Dropped In Australia

    Authored by Jessie Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Australian medical practitioners can now prescribe ivermectin for COVID-19 among other diseases under new rules confirmed by the nation’s therapeutic goods authority.

    Australia backsteps its stance on the effect of ivermectin on COVID-19. (Natasha Holt/The Epoch Times)

    The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) announced on May 3 that the prescribing of oral ivermectin will no longer be limited to specialists such as dermatologists, gastroenterologists, and infectious diseases specialists.

    The move—which takes effect from June 1, 2023—comes amid high rates of vaccination and hybrid immunity against COVID-19 in Australia and thus the use of ivermectin by individuals is unlikely to now compromise public health, the TGA said in a statement.

    Despite ivermectin being regularly administered in countries including India, Brazil, and Africa, TGA said that approved vaccines and treatments should still be the preferred choice due to most studies showing that ivermectin is not a useful medicine for COVID-19.

    A woman holds a box of ivermectin in Brasilia, Brazil. (Andressa Anholete/Getty Images)

    “A large number of clinical studies have demonstrated ivermectin does not improve outcomes in patients with COVID-19,” the TGA statement said.

    “The National Covid Evidence Taskforce (NCET) and many similar bodies around the world, including the World Health Organization, strongly advises against the use of ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.”

    The Pharmacy Guild of Australia even wrote to the panel and advised against removing the Appendix D entry relating to ivermectin because they think that if the treatment is available, people may choose not to get vaccinated.

    However, after weighing all risks, the TGA concluded that restrictions should still be removed.

    “The risk of medical professionals prescribing ivermectin at higher doses, or for use against COVID-19, is low given the overwhelming evidence against ivermectin use for this indication,” TGA stated.

    Drug Banned Because It Was a Threat to Vaccination Uptake

    Australia banned general practitioners from prescribing ivermectin in Sep. 2021.

    “The concern was the likelihood that persons prescribed the drug for COVID-19 would believe themselves protected and would not get vaccinated, and would not seek the appropriate medical care if symptoms developed,” the notice of the final decision by TGA said.

    “This would pose a significant risk to the community through the spread of the disease as well as the risks to individuals using ivermectin for this purpose.”

    A person receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, Calif., on Dec. 22, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

    They said that ivermectin was being advocated for use in “unreliable social media posts,” increasing the risk of overdose and misuse.

    Additionally, they argued that there were national shortages, although little detail was provided about the supply issues in Australia or in other countries. India even reported an excess production capacity of 23 million units a month of ivermectin.

    Study Finds Ivermectin Kills COVID-19

    However, in a peer-reviewed study by Monash University in Australia, published in April 2020, it was demonstrated that ivermectin could eliminate SARS-Covid-19-2 in cells in 48 hours.

    The team, who have been researching ivermectin for over ten years with different viruses, discovered that a dose of ivermectin could stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from growing in cells.

    “We found that even a single dose could essentially remove all viral RNA by 48 hours and that even at 24 hours, there was a really significant reduction in it,” senior research fellow and lead study author Kylie Wagstaff said.

    “Ivermectin is very widely used and seen as a safe drug,” Wagstaff said.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned against taking ivermectin for COVID-19, because it is “horse medication.” However, ivermectin packaged for human use (as shown here) has been widely prescribed for decades for a range of maladies, including for treatment of lice, other parasites and viruses. (Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times)

     The scientists said that the FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug has also been shown to be effective in vitro against a broad range of viruses, including HIV, Dengue, Influenza, and Zika virus.

    They started investigating whether it worked on the COVID-19 virus as soon as the pandemic was known to have started.

    However, the researchers announced a year later that they had paused their work due to insufficient sample size despite securing funding for clinical trials.

    “The low numbers of COVID cases in Australia in 2020 meant the planned trial in Australia had to be paused,” the Monash University laboratory said in an ivermectin research progress update in Aug. 2021.

    “The establishment of a trial depends on Australian and overseas circumstances and will be communicated when we are in a position to do so.”

    Industry Incentives Under Scrutiny

    Meanwhile, pharmaceutical authorities around the world are under growing scrutiny over the funding many receive from the industry itself, with an investigation revealing that half of their funding comes from the pharmaceutical industry—the industry they are supposed to be regulating.

    In a report, published in the British Journal of Medicine, it was discovered that the U.S. FDA receives 65 percent of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry, the MHRA (UK) receives 86 percent, and the Australian TGA receives 96 percent of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry.

    Additionally, award-winning investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi found in the report that the TGA approved 94 percent of all applications between 2020 to 2021.

    She filed for FOIA report to get disclosures on the TGA committee members who had conflicts of interest in their approval of the mRNA vaccines, but the TGA allegedly redacted the identity of these members, highlighting that it was personal information.

    Comparing major drug regulators on conflicts of interest, according to data by Maryanne Demasi (The Epoch Times)

    The final decision to remove restrictions on ivermectin prescriptions followed an application to remove the rules, according to the process required under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989.

    It also took into account advice from an independent advisory committee on the scheduling of medicines and two rounds of public consultations.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 22:00

  • Visualizing The Assets & Liabilities Of US Banks
    Visualizing The Assets & Liabilities Of US Banks

    The U.S. banking sector has more than 4,000 FDIC-insured banks that play a crucial role in the country’s economy by securely storing deposits and providing credit in the form of loans.

    This infographic from Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte and Christina Kostandi visualizes all of the deposits, loans, and other assets and liabilities that make up the collective balance sheet of U.S banks using data from the Federal Reserve.

    With the spotlight on the banking sector after the collapses of Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and First Republic bank, understanding the assets and liabilities that make up banks’ balance sheets can give insight in how they operate and why they sometimes fail.

    Assets: The Building Blocks of Banks’ Business

    Assets are the foundation of a bank’s operations, serving as a base to provide loans and credit while also generating income.

    A healthy asset portfolio with a mix of loans along with long-dated and short-dated securities is essential for a bank’s financial stability, especially since assets not marked to market may have a lower value than expected if liquidated early.

    ℹ️ Mark-to-market means current market prices are being used to value an asset or liability on a balance sheet. If securities are not marked to market, their value could be different once liquidated.

    As of Q4 2022, U.S. banks generated an average interest income of 4.54% on all assets.

    Loans and Leases

    Loans and leases are the primary income-generating assets for banks, making up 53% of the assets held by U.S. banks.

    These include:

    • Real estate loans for residential and commercial properties (45% of all loans and leases)

    • Commercial and industrial loans for business operations (23% of all loans and leases)

    • Consumer loans for personal needs like credit cards and auto loans (15% of all loans and leases)

    • Various other kinds of credit (17% of all loans and leases)

    Securities

    Securities make up the next largest portion of U.S. banks’ assets (23%) at $5.2 trillion. Banks primarily invest in Treasury and agency securities, which are debt instruments issued by the U.S. government and its agencies.

    These securities can be categorized into three types:

    • Held-to-maturity (HTM) securities, which are held until they mature and provide a stable income stream

    • Available-for-sale (AFS) securities, which can be sold before maturity

    • Trading securities, held for short-term trading to profit from price fluctuations

    Along with Treasury and agency securities which make up the significant majority (80%) of U.S. banks’ securities, banks also invest in other securities which are non-government-issued debt instruments like corporate bonds, mortgage-backed securities, and asset-backed securities.

    Cash Assets

    Cash assets are a small but essential part of U.S. banks’ balance sheets, making up $3.1 trillion or 13% of all assets. Having enough cash assets ensures adequate liquidity needed to meet short-term obligations and regulatory requirements.

    Cash assets include physical currency held in bank vaults, pending collections, and cash balances in accounts with other banks.

    Liabilities: Banks’ Financial Obligations

    Liabilities represent the obligations banks must fulfill, including customer deposits and borrowings. Careful management of liabilities is essential to maintain liquidity, manage risk, and ensure a bank’s overall solvency.

    Deposits

    Deposits make up the largest portion of banks’ liabilities as they represent the money that customers entrust to these institutions. It’s important to note that the FDIC insures deposit accounts up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each type of account (like single accounts, joint accounts, and retirement accounts).

    There are two primary types of deposits, large time deposits and other deposits. Large time deposits are defined by the FDIC as time deposits exceeding $100,000, while other deposits include checking accounts, savings accounts, and smaller time deposits.

    U.S. banks had $17.18 trillion in overall deposits as of April 12th 2023, with other deposits accounting for 74% of the overall liabilities while large time deposits made up 9%.

    Borrowings

    After deposits, borrowings are the next largest liability on the balance sheet of U.S. banks, making up nearly 12% of all liabilities at $2.4 trillion.

    These include short-term borrowings from other banks or financial institutions such as Federal Funds and repurchase agreements, along with long-term borrowings like subordinated debt which ranks below other loans and securities in the event of a default.

    How Deposits, Rates, and Balance Sheets Affect Bank Failures

    Just like any other business, banks have to balance their finances to remain solvent; however, successful banking also relies heavily on the trust of depositors.

    While in other businesses an erosion of trust with customers might lead to breakdowns in future business deals and revenues, only in banking can a dissolution in customer trust swiftly turn into the immediate removal of deposits that backstop all revenue-generating opportunities.

    Although recent bank collapses aren’t solely due to depositors withdrawing funds, bank runs have played a significant role. Most recently, in First Republic’s case, depositors pulled out more than $101 billion in Q1 of 2023, which would’ve been more than 50% of their total deposits, had some of America’s largest banks not injected $30 billion in deposits on March 16th.

    It’s important to remember that the rapidly spreading fires of bank runs are initially sparked by poor asset management, which can sometimes be detected on banks’ balance sheets.

    A combination of excessive investment in long-dated held-to-maturity securities, one of the fastest rate hiking cycles in recent history, and many depositors fearing for and moving their uninsured deposits of over $250,000 has resulted in the worst year ever for bank failures in terms of total assets.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 21:40

  • The Crime Of 'Talking To Tucker Carlson'
    The Crime Of ‘Talking To Tucker Carlson’

    Authored by Naomi Wolf via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The whole world is commenting on and speculating about the abrupt departure of former Fox commentator Tucker Carlson from that network.

    Dr. Naomi Wolf, author of “The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human,” in New York on June 7, 2022. (The Epoch Times)

    Addressing the current moment is not my intent. I have no idea what the “inside story” is on the events related to Fox’s or Carlson’s decisions. Mr. Carlson is wisely being deliberative regarding his physical presence and his messaging, and by next week the news cycle will have no doubt shifted in relation to this sudden exile, or self-exile; so there is little point in adding my own theories to the events of the present. (Though I suspect that the stern, mafioso-like public warnings of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and others to the Murdochs, that they were making a mistake in tolerating Carlson’s airing of the first set of previously unseen January 6 videos, and that those who passed on the footage were playing a “treacherous game,” was a factor in at least some upheaval on the part of Fox’s leadership. I recognize a political threat of retribution when I hear one):

    What I want to do now is note, for the record, almost elegiacally, how important Mr. Carlson’s voice has been, in the evaluation of at least this dyed-in-the-wool old-school capital “L” Liberal.

    Mr. Carlson and I spent most of our careers not in alignment on anything; for decades, our places were adversarial on the public chess board. He had assumed that I was the caricature of a shrieking, irrational left-wing feminist—a view for which he has had the good grace publicly to apologize—and I, for my part, was ready to accept that he must be the boorish, sexist, racist, homophobic frat boy that the progressive news outlets I read, relentlessly insisted that he was. I almost never watched his show, so my preconceptions could flourish uncorrected.

    That said, I did find it odd that everyone around me in the “liberal elite” media hated him so violently—the way they hated President Trump; but that when I pressed for concrete reasons why, they could not provide them. When my liberal friends and loved ones would roll their eyes and spit out “Tucker Carlson,” as if that name itself was epithet enough, I would often pester: “What? Why? What did he actually say?” I never got a good answer. So even in the depth of the Left’s vilification of him—even as I was still on the Left myself—I was keeping, faintly, an open mind.

    Maybe this is because, in a limited way, I recognize where he comes from. We both come from some similar places. We both were raised in California in the 1970s (though I am six years older), a California that was very diverse and yet largely peaceful and hopeful, compared to the present; with reasonable newspapers and decent public education. It was a state drenched with sunshine and optimism; bright with discussion and with sensible plans for the future. California was the most meritocratic state in the Union, at that time. In spite of specific upheavals—the LGBTQ movement gaining force in the Bay Area, the women’s movement was fighting for access to reproductive rights, immigrant workers agitating for better conditions—we had no reason to believe that people of different races or political viewpoints or genders could not get along, or at least discuss their differences; we certainly would have found it racist to assume that immigrants or people of color could not succeed entirely on their own merits.

    The University of California system, unbroken at that time, an excellent nearly-free education, was almost majority nonwhite—selective, prestigious public high schools like the one I attended were majority nonwhite—so it was ridiculous to presume that people of color or immigrants could not thrive in our existing, even if imperfect, meritocracies. They were succeeding all around us.

    We both were sent from this early relaxed, hopeful formative background to the hothouses of rigorous, rigid, East Coast privilege—he to a prep school and then to Trinity College, I to Yale (and then Oxford). Maybe we both brought our West Coast skepticism of East Coast (and European) global elites’ nonsense and pretentiousness along with us.

    I was also never completely persuaded of his being the purported embodiment of pure evil, because I still had an impressionistic memory of him being around in the D.C. of the 1990s, in a time before such extreme caricatures as today’s keep both “sides” at daggers drawn.

    In the late 1990s, we shared a social milieu; though we were not friends, we were out and about in parallel circles in Washington, at a time in which his stint at The Weekly Standard and other conservative publications mirrored, fairly peaceably, compared with the present, my then-husband’s and my alliances with The New Republic and other left-wing publications.

    Social life was a Venn diagram in D.C. at that time, for pundits of all ages on both the left and the right. We all, in certain circles, dropped in to the same cocktail parties in Georgetown, huddled in the same bars in Dupont Circle, and enjoyed late-night feasts at the same hole-in-the-wall Ethiopian restaurants in Adams Morgan. Transpartisanship added frisson to social encounters, and partisanship was not yet the deadly tribalism it would later become. Sally Quinn, wife of the former executive editor of the Washington Post, the hostess who in the 1990s reigned supreme, would titillate the Clinton administration guests, at her gatherings in an antiques-filled, low-lit front room in Georgetown, with selective helpings of saucy Republican luminaries also present. The tension between commentators or apparatchiks from different “teams” made the conversation sparkle, and, to the high-spirited interlocutors of the two different parties, it made that third glass of Pinot Grigio pleasurably dangerous. It was a time when left and right could fence over Ms. Quinn’s old-school appetizers (never fish, not even cheese, and always candles, for the perfect party, as she later explained. “[Quinn] was giving a short history of the decline of Washington Establishment socializing, which she has long blamed for much of the entrenched partisan hostility that now dominates American politics. … Back then, she said, there was an easy, bipartisan commingling of ‘permanent Washington’ and elected officeholders.”).

    These adversaries by day would also inform one another by evening, while sparring at her events; they would make surprising, off-the-record alliances, and engage in productive off-the-record horse-trading. This behind-the-scenes, informal back and forth, was good for the country, and that was one reason that patriotic hostesses such as Ms. Quinn, I believe, facilitated it.

    Even brash newer hostesses—and at that time, the buzzy Arianna Huffington, equally glamorous, but arriving, with a flourish, from elsewhere, was one—had studied this art. She thus also assembled around herself, in her own salons, glittering representatives of both parties, so that nothing would be, darling, as she would say, boring.

    The show “Crossfire,” with its two civilized antagonists, was the allegory of the time. James Carville and Mary Matalin, with their sexy oppositional-ness, were the iconic couple of the moment. Point and counterpoint were still avidly followed then; direct, civil, well-informed debate was still considered valuable, illuminating, and a fascinating sport.

    I remember of D.C. in the 1990s as being what Mr. Carlson probably also remembers: a time and place for a young, ambitious intellectual, or a young, brash, public figure (as we both then were), in which a sincerity of inquiry, a seriousness of interrogation, and a regard for the verifiable truth, were all taken for granted as being what journalists and commentators were supposed to pursue.

    Whatever “side” we were on, we journalists and commentators all took pride in that mission. Truth existed. We would hunt it down, by God, and make our case for it.

    Journalists were supposed to challenge the State, and not take press releases from Presidents or White House spokespeople—or corporations for that matter—as Diktats. Arguments had to marshal evidence and to play fair.

    We assumed that this need that our profession was supposed to fulfill—for serious public inquiry, intense public debate—was the great indispensable thing in a Republic; we assumed that this basic underpinning of our roles as journalists would be seen by our society, our nation, as being valuable, forever; that the ethics of journalists and commentators in America would last forever; that these ethics would outlive us, as they had outlived President Jefferson.

    So I was not hugely surprised that in about March and April of 2021, when I was a Fellow at AIER in Great Barrington (home of the Great Barrington Declaration), and as I had started to raise questions about side effects women were experiencing with the mRNA vaccine—as well as raising questions about why our First and Fourth Amendment rights were being upended, why we were all being held under emergency law, why kids were being masked with little scientific evidence to support this abusive practice, and why pregnant women were being told the injections were safe when there was no data to back that claim up that I could find—that Mr. Carlson’s booker reached out to me.

    I appeared a few times on his show, to air my concerns.

    Right away the left-wing “watchdog” Media Matters—run by someone who had been a former acquaintance, even a friend, of ours in D.C., the former conservative who had turned Democrat, David Brock—went after me aggressively, with a systematic character assassination on Twitter and on the Media Matters website, engineered by CNN reporter Matt Gertz—a “journalist” who was actually funded to track and attack guests on Fox News: “Fox Keeps Hosting Pandemic Conspiracy Theorist Naomi Wolf.”

    In his hit piece, Mr. Gertz singled out the fact that I was warning about women who had received the mRNA vaccine having menstrual problems, and the fact that even women near vaccinated women were having menstrual problems. (This “shedding” via inhalation is confirmed in the Pfizer documents.)

    Gertz described multiple independent reports of menstrual problems from women as “purported reports”—a misogynist thing to do, mocking women’s eyewitness descriptions of their own symptoms, and one with a long history in medicine’s and Pharma’s crimes against women—and he shamefully singled out the (accurate) tweet of mine, that we now know via a lawsuit, the White House, the CDC, DHS, Twitter, and Facebook had illegally colluded to target and smear.

    So given the specificity of this one (accurate, important) tweet among thousands of mine, Matt Gertz may well have been acting as a henchman for these unlawfully colluding interests, to the eternal damage of what should have been his ethics as a journalist:

    (Screenshot/Twitter)

    This hit piece, calling me a “conspiracy theorist,” did a great deal to set the stage and provide the talking points for my later deplatforming at the hands of the White House working with Twitter and the CDC, and the subsequent reputational attack that spanned the globe and led to my wholesale ouster from legacy media and my former community on the Left.

    (It also consigned millions of women to damaged menses and infertility, by helping to silence this emerging discussion. Maternal deaths are up 40 percent now, due to compromises of women’s fertility post-mRNA injection. A million babies are missing in Europe. Great work, Mr. Gertz, Mr. Brock. You will take those harms, that you inflicted upon women and babies, to your graves.)

    But having appeared on Mr. Carlson’s show, to raise these and other real concerns, I also was peppered ceaselessly with nasty comments from my own “side.” Why? Because I had talked to Tucker Carlson. That was literally how they phrased my “crime.”

    This was the first real confrontation I had with the unreason and the cultlike thinking that were engulfing my “team.” I kept receiving messages, emails, DMs, and direct confrontations by phone, with friends and loved ones and even family members.

    How can you talk to Tucker Carlson??

    I noted with concern that they did not say that I was wrong, or that my assertions were baseless, or even that his assertions were baseless.

    They did not address the crimes against women and babies I was uncovering, and sharing with the assistance of Mr. Carlson’s platform—crimes about which all the men and women on the Left, who were supposed to be such feminists and advocates for women’s rights, were silent.

    My soon-to-be-former friends and colleagues simply reiterated again and again, as if it were self-evident, that I had discredited myself in some nameless but completely understood and permanent and unforgivable way, by talking to Tucker Carlson.

    (The only other major platform that was open to hearing what I was finding, was, of course, Steve Bannon’s WarRoom. I started to appear also on WarRoom, leading to another wave of appalled DMs and emails from my friends and loved ones, who by now were actively and rapidly distancing themselves from me. “How can you talk to Steve Bannon?”)

    So I had to face the alarming evidence that the Left now saw anyone “talking to” the opposition, as being magically, publicly, permanently contaminated and contaminating, in some weird anthropological way, and as now being utterly invalidated, and that they believed all of this in some pre-rational, Stone Age sort of belief matrix.

    They were treating me as though by my talking to Mr. Carlson and Mr. Bannon, no matter about what—no matter that the issues and evidence that I brought to these platforms and to these interlocutors were both true and important—I was burning my I-am-a-good-person membership club card, in some kind of public ritual of immolation, and that thus I would have to be exiled far from the progressive community and shamed away entirely from the warming of progressive campfires. “Unclean! Unclean!”

    Here is Mr. Ben Dixon, from the left, asserting that I must be not a feminist because I am “talking to Tucker Carlson” who “100 per cent is an anti-feminist.” He assails “this BS from Naomi Wolf and Tucker Carlson”—“BS”—in which I warned that we were heading into an un-American two-tier discrimination society based on vaccination status.

    Did that actually happen, as I warned? It did:

    We were attacked—I was attacked—for discussing things that came true.

    Did this happen, below? Was this true? We predicted in 2021 that authoritarian leaders would not relinquish emergency powers. It is now 2023, so: Yes.

    Should the Left have supported instead of mocked such a discussion? Even most of them must realize by now that the answer is: Yes.

    The reaction, though, of horror, from everyone I knew, at my crime of “talking to Tucker Carlson,” horrified me (as I often say, I will talk to anyone about the Constitution). The dismay of the Left in reaction to my “talking to Tucker Carlson” horrified me because talking to people with whom I don’t agree, is one of the main ways I have ever learned anything, or, I believe, that anyone has ever learned anything. And it horrified me also because I would have gladly brought my urgently important, indeed lifesaving information, to CNN and MSNBC, as usual—to all these self-proclaimed “feminists”—but they were having none of it.

    Above all it horrified me because the Left thus had departed from the post-Enlightenment metric of “is it true?” to return to a pre-rational metric of “is this within our tribe and according to our rituals and our cult?”

    And that I knew from my study of history how disastrously that kind of thinking ends.

    Well, by this time my husband was watching Mr. Carlson’s show. I observed myself experiencing waves of prejudice and of squirming anxiety as I also began to watch his show. To my distress, I found that many of his monologues made sense to me.

    They were not unreasonable, by and large, and they were not hate-filled; to the contrary.

    I had been told that he was racist. And indeed I recoiled at his signature giggle as he mocked the epithet: “Racist!” But as I actually forced myself to listen, sitting in my discomfort and programmed aversion, observing the reactions in myself (as the Buddhists urge one to do), I realized—he was not in fact a racist.

    Mr. Carlson was usually calling attention to the way identity politics was destroying our former ideal—shared by most of us California kids and teenagers in the 1970s—that we all were Americans first of all, deserving of equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. I realized as I listened that his stories about immigration were not anti-immigrant, as I had been told; but rather that he was calling attention to the security and social welfare threats to the nation posed by massive, unrestricted, unlawful immigration over an open Southern border, a view shared by many legal immigrants.

    I learned that he was not actually transphobic, as I had been told; but rather that he shone a light on the way that minors were being targeted by schools and the pharmaceutical industry, to undergo radical gender surgery before they were of age to make adult decisions.

    While I often still disagreed with him, I found that his reasoning was transparent—a rare thing these days—and that always he returned to that old-fashioned, common-sense basis for his conclusions: “this is simply true.” More often than not, he had a point.

    I was also noticing that as I scanned Twitter for what I saw as more and more evidence of flaws in the “narrative” about COVID and “lockdowns” that we were all being fed in the first half of 2021, and as I forwarded or posted these links showing primary-source evidence of fraud in the PCR tests, a lack of transparent datasets in the COVID dashboards, testimony from an OSHA expert about harms to children from masks, problems with The New York Times’ assertions about restaurant- and school-based infections and “asymptomatic spread,” and so on—evidence that I would later publish in my 2021 book “The Bodies of Others: COVID-19, The New Authoritarians and the War Against the Human”—that there was absolute silence now from my entire formerly robust and responsive network of legacy/progressive-media producers, editors, journalists, and bookers.

    Silence from the U.S. TV networks. Silence from The Washington Post. From The Guardian. Silence from NPR. Silence from the BBC, the Sunday Times of London, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, my reliable former outlets. Even silence from other overseas news outlets. All of these had, until 2020, been happy to respond to what I sent, to commission my writing, or to book me to appear to speak about the links I had forwarded or posted to their producers or editors.

    But Eldad Yaron, Mr. Carlson’s excellent producer, pretty much alone of the major outlets’ producers, did respond to the links I sent, even inviting more.

    So I was in the head-spinning position of realizing that these two men, Carlson and Bannon, both unwavering conservatives, both of whom I had been told represented Evil Incarnate, were the possessors of the only major platforms interested in the hard and fast evidence of the greatest crime in history and of the direct threat to our Republic, of which I was warning; and that every other news outlet, all on the liberal side, indeed around the world, was rushing headlong into the sea of lies, and gladly sailing upon it under a wind of falsehood and prevarication. So only they, along with a smattering of other smaller independent media, were able to bring their audiences a true picture of the appalling threats faced by their viewers and our Republic.

    Back to Mr. Carlson in the present, and why I appreciate him and hope his voice reappears on the national and global stage more assertively than before.

    I don’t know him personally—we have only met once, as far as I know—when my husband Brian O’Shea and I visited Carlson’s homey, Americana-crowded studio in a tiny town in rural Maine.

    But underneath all of what may be our policy differences, this is in my view why so many people have seen his reporting during the last three years as absolutely critical to our survival—and why so many Democrats and independents, including myself, whether secretly or not, watch and appreciate him as well:

    Carlson queries current madness from the same old-fashioned, deeply American premises that shaped me, and that shaped the last three remaining true Liberals, as well.

    He seems to be refusing to let go of an America that actually holds journalists to the practice of journalism. I share that outrage and that nostalgia. Many do. He seems to insist on not forgetting the America that saw everyone as equal based on “the content of their character.” I, many, share this pained memory of national unity around race even as we acknowledge that our nation’s racial history has had plenty of tragedy. He won’t let go of the memory of an America in which children were safe at school and parents decided what happened to their children. I, many, share this baseline value and are terrified that it is under attack. And he insists on patriotism, in a time of relentless propaganda and the bribery of elites that urges us all to drop national identities, cultures, borders, and even allegiances.

    This last quality especially makes him dangerous, as our nation is led entirely now by elite-captured traitors to our country.

    All of these resonances are deeply nostalgic—but they are also what must be saved and protected as memories and as part of our core belief system, if we are ever to regain our Republic—and our decency—in the future.

    So—Mr. Carlson—thank you for caring about women and babies, in your being among the first, along with Mr. Bannon, to give me a platform to raise a lifesaving alarm about threats to both. Thank you for your dogged nostalgia about a nation that is racially optimistic. Thanks for being willing to talk to those with whom you do not agree. Thanks for not giving up on religious liberty or the First Amendment. Thank you for insisting that truth matters.

    And thank you for not giving up on the best core ideals of this nation.

    We did not used to call the aggregate of all of those ideals, “conspiracy theories.”

    We used to call them, America.

    Originally published on the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 21:20

  • EV Deflation Arrives: Ford Slashes Prices On Its Mustang Mach-E, Following Tesla's Strategy
    EV Deflation Arrives: Ford Slashes Prices On Its Mustang Mach-E, Following Tesla’s Strategy

    It’s official: deflation in EVs looks to be upon us.

    Following in the footsteps of Tesla, which has aggressively slashed prices since the beginning of 2023, Ford is now lowering the starting prices of its Mustang Mach-E by thousands of dollars, according to a new report by CNBC. 

    Earlier this week the automaker said it would slash prices between $1,000 and $4,000 per vehicle, resulting in the starting price of new Mustang Mach-E’s to fall between $42,995 and $59,995. 

    Like Tesla, Ford had already announced some modest cuts, bringing down the price of the Mach-E by $600 to $5,900 in January. 

    We noted days ago that Tesla was starting to steady its pricing with its Model Y and Model X. Bloomberg reported Tuesday morning that Tesla’s main models were marked up $250 each, stating that the model prices are being raised both in the United States and China. The Model 3 is now priced at $40,240 in the US and 231,900 yuan in China, while the Model Y is now priced at $47,240 in the US and 263,900 yuan in China.

    The hikes are small compared to the cuts the company has put in place since the beginning of the year. We had just noted days ago that, due to aggressive price cuts, the Model Y was cheaper than the average new vehicle in the U.S. by $759. That’ll likely still be the case, despite the $250 hike. 

    As we noted last week, Morgan Stanley has also said it sees a ‘great productivity race’ that will benefit some sectors that have strong political support – like autos. 

    “Efforts in the US to re-, friend-, and near-shore critical industries have strong political support. But these initiatives narrow the geographical options for US multinationals, making cheap labor – particularly for skilled manufacturing – harder to find and exacerbating an underlying US economic challenge,” the bank wrote.

    “Similar historical conditions have pressed companies to focus on improving productivity through the development, diffusion, and integration of new technologies. We expect US companies to invest in infrastructure and new technologies, AI in particular, to boost productivity. Companies that rely on labor and lack substantial financial resources will likely be challenged by this dynamic.”

    Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas concluded last week: “Like other [automakers], Ford must decide what kind of EV strategy to pursue: Grow fast and burn cash or a more focused approach that prioritizes capital discipline.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 21:00

  • California Democrats Push Bill To Mandate 'Gender Diversity' Books In Schools
    California Democrats Push Bill To Mandate ‘Gender Diversity’ Books In Schools

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Democrats in California are pushing legislation that would force every school in the state to stock books in their libraries that are centred around LGBTQ themes and “people of all gender expressions.”

    Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    Democrat California assemblyman Corey Jackson, who has pushed the bill through committee to the full legislature, said the legislation “intends to combat the national Christian white supremacist movement, which is aimed to ban books.” 

    Jackson charged that “the radicalization of the Christian faith,” is being used “to achieve a political objective,” adding “We must meet this moment of history and make sure we are on the right side of it.”

    The Free Beacon reports that Jackson’s legislation would place a state board in charge of classroom and school library books and texts, with any school needing to get state approval before removing any material that is challenged as potentially inappropriate, with regards to race and gender.

    However, the bill does make exceptions for removing religious texts deemed to be “sectarian” or “denominational”.

    The report further notes that under the legislation, the state education board would be required to set curriculum guides for school districts that emphasize diversity. The guides be required to focus on “people of all gender expressions in all types of roles, races, cultures, and religions,” as well as representations of labor unions and “the entrepreneur.”

    Speaking out against the legislation, Lance Christensen, vice president of policy for the California Policy Center said “It’s shocking to have an author of a bill to make such inflammatory commentary on those who would oppose this bill in good faith.”

    Christensen added that opposing “radical indoctrination does not mean we are all white Christian nationalists” further charging that Democrats are conflating school text curation with book-banning.

    As we highlighted earlier this week, Chelsea Clinton appears to have taken on a new activism project, defending attempts to force kids as young as Kindergarten age to be exposed to such sexually explicit “LGBTQ+” material at school.

    Clinton tweeted a claim that Republicans are trying to “ban” books and that it is harmful to children to remove material with LGBTQ+ “themes”.

    Chelsea Clinton Comes Out In Favour Of Porn For School Kids

    As we have exhaustively covered, the truth is that no one is calling for the books to be banned, but many are calling for the books that contain pornographic images and even pedophilia themes, as well as unscientific statements about biological gender, to be removed from school libraries.

    A Twitter fact check of the Clinton tweet pointed out that the book shown in the tweet contains graphic sexually explicit material. Clinton was then treated to a stream of responses providing examples of some of the shocking material contained within the books.

    Twitter Fact Check Confirms Book Chelsea Clinton Promoted For Children Contains Graphic Sex Acts

    Related:

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 20:40

  • Fentanyl Overdose Deaths Skyrocket 279% Since 2016 Amid Nationwide Drug Crisis
    Fentanyl Overdose Deaths Skyrocket 279% Since 2016 Amid Nationwide Drug Crisis

    Fentanyl is fueling the worst drug crisis in the history of the US. New federal data shows the rate of overdose deaths linked to the synthetic opioid has skyrocketed over the last five years. 

    According to a report released early Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Vital Statistics System, the rate of fentanyl-related overdose deaths jumped 279% between 2016 and 2021, rising from 5.7 per 100,000 to 21.6 per 100,000.

    “We are always hoping we won’t see a rise in fentanyl deaths, but this really highlights that this is continuing to be the public health problem,” Merianne Spencer, a co-author of the report and a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told ABC News.

    So far in the Biden years, a significant crisis has emerged at the southern border, which White House officials have seemingly overlooked. However, just recently, before the next presidential election cycle, White House officials have been more motivated to address the issues, such as sending 1,500 troops to the southern border. Meanwhile, illegal border crossings have reached unprecedented levels, coinciding with a nationwide surge in drug overdose deaths.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 20:20

  • Nashville Police Backpedal On Releasing Shooter’s Manifesto, Citing Pending Litigation
    Nashville Police Backpedal On Releasing Shooter’s Manifesto, Citing Pending Litigation

    Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) has reversed course from a previous statement to The Epoch Times, when the agency said the so-called manifesto and writings of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale would be released to the public soon.

    In this image from video, Audrey Hale points a gun inside The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., on March 27, 2023. (Nashville Police Department via The Epoch Times)

    The department cited the advice of legal counsel amid litigation filed this week for those same documents to be released.

    The Epoch Times contacted MNPD on May 3, but officials would not comment, citing the pending litigation. The story regarding MNPD readying the documents for public release was published April 27.

    On May 1, the Tennessee Firearms Association (TFA) filed a lawsuit against MNPD over a previously denied public records request for the Hale documents to be released. The Epoch Times reached out to TFA regarding the new delay of the release of the documents.

    “Officially, no comment in my role as an attorney,” John Harris III, an attorney with Schulman Leroy & Bennett and the executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, said in an email to The Epoch Times.

    MNPD Statement

    An Epoch Times reporter based outside of Tennessee had their request for the same records denied because they were not a Tennessee resident. Another Epoch Times reporter located within Tennessee also received a denial letter from MNPD’s Central Records Division on April 19, citing the investigation still being open.

    The home of Audrey Hale—who opened fire at The Covenant School Christian school in Nashville, Tenn.—sits quietly in its south Nashville neighborhood on March 31, 2023, days after police agencies raided the home following the March 27 shooting. (Chase Smith/The Epoch Times)

    “Your request is denied based on the following grounds,” the denial letter from MNPD stated. “The following … law prohibits the release of the requested records: Open Cases—Rule 16 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure and Tennessean v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville.”

    While MNPD declined to comment on the seeming change in direction from the previous interview with The Epoch Times, the department posted a brief statement on Twitter.

    “Covenant investigation update: Due to pending litigation filed this week, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department has been advised by counsel to hold in abeyance the release of records related to the shooting at The Covenant School pending orders or direction of the court,” MNPD posted on Twitter.

    A further public records request for the autopsy of Audrey Hale by The Epoch Times was approved, pending the report being completed, with a timeline of “8–12 weeks from the date of death for case completion.”

    TFA’s Lawsuit

    TFA did not comment to The Epoch Times on the pending litigation, but Harris did release a comment to The Tennessean newspaper.

    “The (MNPD’s) denial failed to identify any underlying criminal proceeding, or even potential defendant, such that the requested materials would be a ‘case’ under Rule 16 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Proceeding,” Harris said, according to The Tennessean.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 20:00

  • Black Caucus Urges Senate Dems To Demolish Judiciary Nomination Tradition
    Black Caucus Urges Senate Dems To Demolish Judiciary Nomination Tradition

    The Congressional Black Caucus is turning up the heat on Senate Democrats, urging them to destroy a century-old upper-chamber tradition that allows individual senators to reject federal judiciary nominees who will preside in the senator’s state. 

    The Biden administration’s quest to fill federal benches with progressives has been stymied to a great extent by the Senate’s narrow majority, and by the ailing and failing Senator Dianne Feinstein’s lengthy time away from her critical seat on the judiciary committee. 

    On top of that, individual Republican senators have been making regular use of the nomination-blocking power granted to them under the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition. When a district or circuit court nominee is named, a blue piece of paper with the nominee’s name is given to the senators who represent the state in which that nominee would function as a federal judge. If the senator doesn’t send the slip to the Judiciary Committee, it’s understood the nominee doesn’t enjoy the senator’s approval and thus can’t advance to a committee nomination hearing. The slip can also be returned with negative comments. 

    The tradition has endured since at leaast 1917, according to a Congressional Research Service study. However, the Congressional Black Caucus thinks it’s time to kill blue slips: Politico reports that caucus members met with Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin last week and asked him to do away with blue slips.

    Rep. Steven Horsford chairs the Congressional Black Caucus (CQ Roll Call)

    “I don’t know why anyone, let alone Senate Democrats, would hold up a Jim Crow practice,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Steven Horsford (NV).  

    Crow implied that the blue slip tradition is killing black people. “It is literally about the fundamental survival of the people we represent,” Horsford claimed. “And we expressed that history, that context and that necessity to Chairman Durbin.”

    The caucus hasn’t always felt that way. In 2017, the Black Caucus urged then-Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley to “uphold [the] longstanding ‘blue slip’ policy.” Doing away with blue slips, they argued, would “remove the last meaningful check on President Trump’s power to unilaterally pack the judiciary – would further politicize the courts, erode judicial diversity, and undermine public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to provide fair and impartial justice.”

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    In 2023, it’s not just congressional blacks who are looking to kill blue slips. On Wednesday, an alliance of progressive organizations urged Durbin to “reform or discontinue” the blue slip policy, decrying the fact that “39 of the 43 district court vacancies subject to Republican blue slips — 91% — still do not have nominees.”

    Their demands were sent in a letter. Its 33 signatory organizations included American Atheists, Climate Hawks Vote, Feminist Majority Foundation, Hip Hop Caucus, and National Center for Transgender Equality. 

    Durbin is hesitant to give in to pressure from the Black Caucus and progressive groups. Black Caucus senators Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock are likewise reluctant. Then again, according to Politico, Durbin doesn’t even have the unilateral power to stop the blue-slip tradition — doing so would require a revision of Senate rules. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 19:40

  • Fox's Gutfeld Defends Tucker Carlson After Video Leaks Draw Backlash
    Fox’s Gutfeld Defends Tucker Carlson After Video Leaks Draw Backlash

    Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Fox’s late-night show host Greg Gutfeld has come to the defense of his former colleague Tucker Carlson after a series of leaked videos featuring Carlson’s backstage comments drew backlash from commentators.

    “Apparently everyone understands nonsense banter between segments except for hall monitor failures bitterly chronicling the lives of the far more successful,” Gutfeld, host of late-night comedy “The Greg Gutfeld Show,” wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday.

    Tucker Carlson in Esztergom, Hungary, on Aug. 7, 2021. (Janos Kummer/Getty Images)

    The comedy show anchor was responding to another post by Matthew Gertz, an employee of Media Matters for America, a left-leaning nonprofit.

    “NEW FOXLEAKS: Media Matters obtained three more behind-the-scenes videos featuring former Fox host Tucker Carlson’s creepy on-set comments,” Gertz wrote on Tuesday, referring to his article published on Media Matters, which included behind-the-scenes videos that show Carlson talking about his “postmenopausal fans” and making sexual references. The article writes that Carlson also said “nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks,” referring to Fox’s online streaming service.

    Gutfeld became the only public figure at Fox News who defended Carlson after Fox announced last Monday that it had parted ways with Carlson, whereas neither the media company nor Carlson has spoken about the incident.

    That wasn’t the first time Gutfeld had mentioned Carlson’s name since the former host departed from Fox. While Carlson’s name has virtually disappeared from the script of most Fox anchors, Gutfeld joked about it in on a segment of “The Five,” Fox’s top-rated opinion show, hours after Fox’s announcement last Monday.

    “And then so in 2024, it’ll be Susan Rice versus Tucker Carlson,” Gutfeld said near the end of the segment that focused on Biden’s reelection prospects. The round table did not respond to his comment.

    Carlson In the Spotlight, Again

    Carlson’s name took over the news cycle last week and reemerged this week when mainstream outlets published scoops of videos and text messages redacted in legal filings from a defamation case against Fox News that they said showed Carlson making inappropriate comments.

    A New York Times article published a text message that the outlet said Carlson sent to one of his producers on Jan. 7, 2021. The outlet wrote that the message shows Carlson commenting on an incident where supporters of former President Donald Trump beat a member of left-wing movement Antifa.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 19:20

  • Cash-Strapped Millennials Turn To Thrift Stores For Wedding Attire
    Cash-Strapped Millennials Turn To Thrift Stores For Wedding Attire

    Millennials have experienced several decades of persistent economic instability. Many were children during the dot-com bubble’s collapse, entered college during the 2008 real estate meltdown, and have recently grappled with two years of negative real wage growth alongside the highest inflation rates in decades.

    Since the American dream has become too expensive for most millennials, such as marriage, starting a family, and purchasing a home — those who can achieve some form of the dream are purchasing thrift store wedding attire for the big day, The Wall Street Journal reported in an eye-opener piece titled “It’s OK to Spend $12.50 on a Wedding Dress Now.” 

    WSJ cites a new survey via wedding planning site Zola’s that reveals 27% of the brides in 2023 are willing to splurge on a wedding dress, down from 47% in 2022. 

    “As thrifted and fast-fashion dresses rise in popularity, they are shaking up an industry unaccustomed to much change,” the publication noted. 

    This emerging trend of thrift store wedding dresses might indicate millennials can’t afford traditional weddings and new attire. And this only makes sense. As we explained above, these youngsters have grown up in a turbulent era. Now the ones who can afford to get hitched must resort to cost-saving measures such as second-hand dresses. 

    It’s not just Zola’s survey finding out bride budgets have collapsed. David’s Bridal LLC, the largest wedding-attire chain in the country, filed for bankruptcy last month. The company wrote in its bankruptcy filing that an “increasing number of brides are opting for less traditional wedding attire, including thrift wedding dresses.”

    “This is the year of the ‘Bride on a Budget’ and we’re doing everything we can to meet her with her dream dress at every price point,” Chief Executive James Marcum wrote in an email to WSJ. 

    Meanwhile, sales of white cocktail and special-occasion dresses on ThredUp have jumped 23% in 2023 compared to the same period in 2019. Similarly, Poshmark Inc., another online second-hand retailer, reports a 35% year-over-year increase in sales for items labeled “wedding.”

    Some brides have even resorted to Goodwill wedding dresses. Renee Drake, a seamstress in Medina, Ohio, said her client found a $25 gown marked down to $12.50 at one thrift store. 

    This is just the latest evidence millennials are in a terrible financial state. Some might argue younger generations find weddings a giant waste of money, but we’ll assure you, if a youngster had the money to afford a lavish wedding, they certainly would. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 19:00

  • 'Disgraceful': GOP Senators Accuse Dems of Threatening To Cut SCOTUS Security Funding Amid Ongoing Threats
    ‘Disgraceful’: GOP Senators Accuse Dems of Threatening To Cut SCOTUS Security Funding Amid Ongoing Threats

    Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

    Two Republican Senators tore into their Democrat colleagues Tuesday, accusing them of threatening to cut $10 million in funding for Supreme Court security unless SCOTUS does what they want.

    Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) made the explosive accusations during yesterday’s Democrat-led “Supreme Court Ethics Reform” hearing.

    “The Left is willing to threaten the lives of the justices,” said Cruz. “This is disgraceful.”

    The fiery hearing was held amid a weeks-long media campaign accusing conservative justices of ethics violations and conflicts of interest.

    On March 31, fifteen Democrat Senators sent a letter to the to the top Republican and Democrat on a Senate subcommittee in charge of the Supreme Court budget. The Democrats proposed language to be attached to next year’s Supreme Court funding bill requiring the court to adopt a new ethical code with a monitor answerable to Congress to enforce it.

    “Congress has broad authority to compel the Supreme Court to institute these reforms, which would join other requirements already legislatively mandated,” the senators wrote. “And Congress’s appropriations power is one tool for achieving these changes.”

    The Democrats concluded their letter by threatening to withhold $10 million unless Chief Justice John Roberts notifies the Committee on Appropriations of both Houses of Congress that the Supreme Court has put into effect their “public code of ethics for justices of the Court.”

    Republicans argue that the Democrats’ plan to monitor SCOTUS is “unconstitutional” and would lead to political attacks on conservative Justices for intimidation purposes.

    The Supreme Court’s 2024 budget request included $4,028,000 in security funding from the Chips and Science Act and $5,897,000 in additional security funding. The protective activities request says: “This request would expand security activities conducted by Supreme Court Police to protect the Justices” and specifically cites the ongoing threats against the justices.

    “On-going threat assessments show evolving risks that require continuous protection,” the request continues. “Additional funding would provide for contract positions, eventually transitioning to full-time employees, that will augment capabilities of the Supreme Court police force and allow it to accomplish its protective mission.”

    Hawley rounded the above figures: “four plus six equals 10—$10 million of security funding that the court is specifically asking for this year in their budget request,” he said. “So in other words, the threat is: ‘We will deny you security unless you do what we want,’” the senator declared.

    “We had an assassin come to the home of Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh and try to murder him. We have had credible threats on the lives of other justices. And now members of this body say ‘We will deny you security for you, your families, your children, unless you do what we want,’” he added. “Extraordinary.”

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    “We had 15 Senate Democrats, including six members of this committee, send a letter to the appropriations committee threatening to cut off the funding for security at the Supreme Court,” said Cruz. “The left is willing to threaten the lives of the justices.”

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    Debra Heine is a conservative Catholic mom of six and longtime political pundit. She has written for several conservative news websites over the years, including Breitbart and PJ Media.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 18:40

  • NYC Airports Hit First-Quarter Passenger Record
    NYC Airports Hit First-Quarter Passenger Record

    Despite widespread fears that an economic downturn and high airfare prices could derail consumers’ appetite for travel, new security checkpoint data across New York City airports soared to a record high in the first quarter. 

    The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said 32 million passengers passed through John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Newark International Airport (EWR), and LaGuardia International Airport (LGA) last quarter — a record high, surpassing figures in the same period of 2019 by over one million. 

    Most of the travel surge was at EWR and LGA. Bloomberg explained the expansion at multiple airports in the region allowed for increased capacity:

    “Newark’s $2.7 billion Terminal A opened in January and LaGuardia’s $4 billion overhaul of its Delta Air Lines Inc., Terminal C, which was unveiled last year.” 

    Additionally, security checkpoint throughput data across all US airports has returned to pre-Covid levels. 

    Meanwhile, travelers searching for flights this spring and summer are paying some of the highest travel costs in years. 

    During Delta Air Lines’ first-quarter earnings call, President Glen Hauenstein remained optimistic about air travel this summer: 

    “[We] know there’s a lot of anxiety about domestic demand for the summer, but we don’t share that anxiety.” 

    Although Wall Street analysts have expressed concerns that mounting macroeconomic headwinds could negatively impact air travel demand, this has not yet materialized. A considerable amount of pent-up travel demand remains after people were confined to their homes by government lockdowns for a year during the pandemic. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 18:20

  • The New Ugly Americans: VDH
    The New Ugly Americans: VDH

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness (emphasis ours),

    The old cultural imperialism was supposedly greedy corporatism like Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Starbucks sprouting up worldwide to supplant local competitors. 

    But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down. 

    The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped. 

    We still do not know how many billions of dollars of sophisticated new weapons were left to the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists’ marts. 

    Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our new Kabul embassy.

    A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.

    And gender studies programs—to the tune of $787 million in American subsidies—were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world.

    Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have hung from our embassy in South Korea. 

    Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first.

    The woke Left has now weaponized the country’s diplomatic missions abroad to advance highly partisan and controversial agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters at home.

    American foreign policy toward other nations seems now to hinge on their positions on the transgendered, LGBTQ acceptance, abortion, climate change, and an array of woke issues from using multiple pronouns on passports to showcasing transgendered ambassadors. 

    The Biden Administration in January 2022 stopped the EastMed pipeline. That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel sought to bring much needed clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe.

    Apparently, our diplomats felt it violated our own New Green Deal orthodoxies. So we imperialists interfered to destroy a vital project of our closest allies.

    The White House manifesto called the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” offers a blueprint for how to massage nations abroad to accept our values that are increasingly at odds with much of the world’s.

    Do Americans really believe that embracing drag-queen shows at military bases, abortion to the moment of birth, transgendered men competing in women’s sports, and the promised effort to ban the internal combustion engine are effective ways to ensure good relations with the United States?

    No wonder the Biden Administration’s new cultural imperialism is proving disastrous for a variety of reasons.

    One, these imperialistic and chauvinistic agendas are pushed abroad at the very time the respect for the U.S. military is at an all-time low. It was humiliated in Afghanistan. It is now unable to recruit sufficient qualified soldiers. Its stocks of critical weapons are depleted.

    The Pentagon leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, along with Joe Biden, do not radiate competence. 

    But they do exude woke pieties.

    While we offend Middle East oil exporters and Central Europeans, China allies with Russia and Iran. India and Turkey triangulate away from the United States. Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad combination.

    Two, these warped standards are incoherent. Is an abortion-on-demand, totalitarian China therefore an ally? How can we damn supposedly non-woke Saudi Arabia as we beg it pump more of its non-green oil before the 2022 midterms?

    Some of our most loyal allies are in Eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania—have experienced traumatic histories on the front lines against Islamic Ottoman expansionism, czarist and Soviet aggression, and German Nazi bullying and invasion.

    They are democratic and pro-American. Yet they are now targeted by our woke imperialists because they remain steadfast as the most religious and traditional of our European allies.

    Yet these nations would be more likely to dispatch credible forces for NATO’s defense than many of our left-wing, woke, and militarily less capable Western European nations.

    Three, most of the 7.9 billion people in the world are not woke. They are aspiring to obtain a modicum of the luxury and affluence taken for granted in America.

    The rest of the planet worries whether it will have enough food, energy, security, and shelter to live one more day. For most, the incessant, woke virtue-signaling from affluent Americans comes across as the whiny bullying of pampered, self-righteous—and increasingly neurotic—imperialists.

    Four, traditionally the party that controls the State Department does not politically weaponize its embassies with wedge issues that have not won majority support among Americans. 

    Such abject politicalization rattles and alienates foreign nations. They do not want to be drawn into the American Left’s internal propaganda efforts that they know are bitterly controversial inside the United States.

    How odd that those on the Left who in the past decried “American imperialism” are now proving the greatest imperialists of all.

    About Victor Davis Hanson

    Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the recently released The Dying Citizen.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 18:00

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May 04

Today’s News 4th May 2023

  • US In Talks On Establishing Military Bases In Finland
    US In Talks On Establishing Military Bases In Finland

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The US and Finland are working out a deal that would allow the US to establish a military presence in the Nordic country, as Helsinki is now a member of NATO.

    According to Newsweek, Finnish Foreign Ministry official Mikael Antell confirmed the two nations are negotiating a Defense Cooperation Agreement that may allow for the construction of significant military infrastructure on Finnish soil.

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    The potential agreement would not include nuclear weapons, although Finnish officials have previously not ruled out hosting nukes. The US has nuclear weapons stationed in five NATO countries under the alliance’s nuclear sharing program but not in any nations that became members after the end of the Cold War.

    Antell said the potential DCA “enables troops to enter the country, stay on the ground, the pre-storage of material and possible infrastructure investments through the funds granted by the US Congress to the Pentagon.”

    The US and Finland have been in talks on the DCA since last fall, and discussions on the deal took place in Helsinki last week.

    “The agreement also defines the facilities and areas where the cooperation would be focused,” Antell said. “They are basically military areas and garrisons. In principle, there can be more than one, but the discussions are still open in this regard.”

    Finland shares an over 800-mile border with Russia, and its ascension into NATO means the region will become further militarized. Moscow has plans to beef up its military presence near the border in western Russia and has said it will take more steps to respond to the expansion of NATO infrastructure in Finland.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 02:00

  • The Obsession With Sweeping Away The Past Is Highly Destructive For Civilization
    The Obsession With Sweeping Away The Past Is Highly Destructive For Civilization

    Authored by Michael Bonner via The Epoch Times,

    The following is a commentary by Michael Bonner on his new book, “In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present.”

    Do we live in a civilization?

    When I was growing up in the 1990s, amidst all the exuberance of the American unipolar moment, I certainly thought I lived in a civilization, and an advanced one at that.

    The mood of the time was captured in the near-universal misunderstanding of Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the “end of history,” as well as in the Disney cartoon “Aladdin.” Both “Aladdin” and Fukuyama invited us to imagine “a whole new world,” and both did so coincidentally in 1992. Nothing, it seemed, could halt the steady progress of a new age of peace, stability, wealth, and freedom.

    But, in the West, so much seems to have gone wrong since that moment.

    Disaster in Iraq, Rwanda, and the Balkans should have disturbed western complacency, but didn’t. Neither did the damage done by neoliberal economics, hyper-globalization, outsourcing, and the de-industrialization of the West.

    The 1990s also saw the rise of the Taliban, and the following century opened with the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan and the attacks of 9/11 in America. Since then we seem to have lurched from one crisis to another: warfare and humiliation in the Middle East, the failure to export liberal democracy abroad, financial collapse, terrorism, and latterly the pandemic, supply chain problems, inflation, and renewed warfare in Europe.

    All this is to say that the “whole new world” we were promised in the ’90s is much like the old one, only worse. And the theory of irreversible progress seems increasingly implausible in the face of steady decline.

    But this doesn’t mean that there’s nothing we can do.

    Decline isn’t irreversible either. If that were true, then human civilization would never have recovered from its first collapse thousands of years ago. Renewal is possible even after a long interval, as is shown, for example, by the revival of Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire, or the ebb and flow of civilization in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China despite repeated foreign conquest. So no matter how bad things may seem, civilization can recover.

    But how would we bring about this renewal? The modern answer centres on innovation: doing something revolutionary and starting over again. Most of us now living in the West are used to thinking of practically all aspects of life in the same way that we think of technology. One technological change supersedes another, and each change rapidly ushers in another one. The same process supposedly governs social and moral development. This mode of thought passes without question now. But it would have seemed very disagreeable to a peasant who lived through the French Revolution, a Ukrainian farmer enduring Stalin’s five-year plans, or an indigenous inhabitant of the New World whose life was upended after the arrival of Europeans.

    The Western obsession with sweeping away the past is highly peculiar, of course, and it is also highly destructive.

    In contrast, all the great recoveries—whether successive Egyptian or Chinese dynasties, the European Renaissance, or the Islamic Golden Age—were inspired by imitating older cultural models. Even the so-called Scientific Revolution involved Copernicus and Galileo revisiting Byzantine and Perso-Arabic theories of physics and astronomy. Greek philosophy and mathematics owed a huge debt to far older Near-Eastern models salvaged from the Late Bronze Age Collapse around 1177 BC. And Confucius claimed to be a mere transmitter of the customs and values of the ancient Zhou state founded in 1046 BC.

    The Western obsession with revolutionary change and novelty grew out of the Age of Discovery, matured throughout the Reformation and Enlightenment, and ossified into an ideology in the early 20th century. The ideological part was the work of Italian poet and art critic Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose “Futurist Manifesto” appeared in 1909.

    (L-R) Italian futurists Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carrà, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, and Gino Severini in front of Le Figaro, Paris, on Feb. 9 1912. Marinetti, author of the “Futurist Manifesto,” urged the total repudiation and destruction of the past. (Public Domain)

    Marinetti urged the total repudiation of the past and the rapid acceleration of technological and social changes. He worshiped the alleged beauty of speed. He hated museums, praised war as a form of hygiene, and wanted to see ancient cities utterly destroyed.

    The “Futurist Manifesto” crystallized trends that are still with us. The informal motto of Silicon Valley is “move fast and break things.” Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos, for instance, could be considered Futurist prophets of fast cars, trains, rocket ships, high-speed downloads, and near-instantaneous deliveries. Tech companies and CEOs still speak of accelerating change, and the constant action and insomnia favoured by Marinetti are the virtues of the modern office worker.

    Futurism could be considered the Mother of All Ideologies.

    In Italy, the Futurists turned Fascist. They were Bolsheviks in Russia, and Nazis elsewhere. They all agreed with Marinetti’s vision: progress meant repudiating and destroying the past. In the fascist utopia, the state would serve only the strong. Communism would usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nazism reimagined the Marxist class struggle as a conflict among races, and envisioned the end point of history as the thousand-year Reich. These Golden Ages all lay ahead, owing nothing to history. And, as Marinetti seemed to foresee, they would take shape amidst obscene destruction and murder.

    Thus the most horrific disasters in human history have a common origin not in the veneration of the past, as some believe, but in utopian visions of the future. So why, we might ask, is future-orientation still such a powerful idea? And if looking to the future is so bad, what should we do instead?

    This is what my book “In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present” is about. It attempts to explain what makes human civilization what it is. It shows what we are in danger of losing through decline or collapse, and points the way toward renewal. The book argues that civilized life itself arose because our ancient ancestors developed a connection with the past and felt that they had a place in history—a feeling that we are now very close to losing. And it asserts that every former renewal of civilization has been inspired by memory of the past and a deliberate effort to imitate it.

    Despite the uncertainties and tensions of contemporary life, and the perception of decline, we should remind ourselves that the future we think we want is never the future we actually get. But, if we want it to, civilization will outlast our failures.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/04/2023 – 00:10

  • 'Godfather Of AI' Quits Google And Warns World About Impending 'AI-Driven' Crisis 
    ‘Godfather Of AI’ Quits Google And Warns World About Impending ‘AI-Driven’ Crisis 

    The “Godfather of AI” resigned from his position at Google, where he has worked for over a decade. He joined a growing chorus of critics who warn of the existential risk artificial intelligence systems pose to humans. 

    On Monday, Google computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton tweeted:

    “In the NYT today, Cade Metz implies that I left Google so that I could criticize Google. Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.”

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    In an interview with The New York Times, Hinton said it was only after quitting Google that he could openly talk about the dangers of AI.  

    He still believed the systems were inferior to the human brain in some ways but he thought they were eclipsing human intelligence in others. “Maybe what is going on in these systems,” he said, “is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain.”

    As companies improve their AI systems, he believes, they become increasingly dangerous. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said of AI technology. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”

    Until last year, he said, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is racing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Dr. Hinton said. -NYT 

    One of his most immediate concerns is that the internet will be flooded with fake videos, photos, and news, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”

    Hinton is concerned that automation will disrupt the job market. Chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, can already replace personal assistants, translators, and others who handle routine tasks. 

    “It takes away the drudge work,” he said, adding, “It might take away more than that.”

    A recent Goldman Sachs research note predicted that AI could lead to some 300 million layoffs among highly paid, non-menial workers in the US and Europe. As Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius put it:

    “Using data on occupational tasks in both the US and Europe, we find that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating our estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation” as up to “two thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI.”

    And on Monday, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said AI could replace 30% of its back-office jobs over the next five years. 

    Back to Hinton, where he continued to warn AI will eventually eclipse human intelligence:

    “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that.

    “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

    He said he didn’t sign the letter in March when more than 1,000 technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, called for a six-month moratorium on developing new AI tools more powerful than GPT-4. That’s because he didn’t want to openly criticize big tech while working for Google.

    In 2018, Hinton and two other colleagues received the Turing Award, or “the Nobel Prize of computing,” for their work on neural networks. Google acquired his company in 2018 for $44 million, which developed powerful technologies that led to the creation of chatbots. 

    In a separate interview, Hinton told BBC News, “I’ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have.” 

    “The big difference is that with digital systems, you have many copies of the same set of weights, the same model of the world.

    “All these copies can learn separately but share their knowledge instantly. So it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learned something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”

    One of the most significant risks he sees is authoritarian leaders can use AI technology to “manipulate” the masses. 

    Hinton’s concerns may be coming a bit late, as the technology is already in use. Similar concerns have been expressed by engineers and scientists in the past, in relation to nuclear power and biochemistry. It’s inevitable that the world will eventually face an AI-driven crisis. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 23:50

  • Blinken's Immaculate Conception Defense: Why Things Are Likely To Get Worse For The Secretary Of State
    Blinken’s Immaculate Conception Defense: Why Things Are Likely To Get Worse For The Secretary Of State

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the New York Post on the response of Secretary of State Antony Blinken to allegations that he was the original source for the Russian disinformation claim behind the Hunter Biden laptop. I wrote previously that Blinken is struggling to avoid the look of a “made man” who earned his bones in the Biden Administration.

    Things are now likely to get worse after a U.S. senator added an alleged false statements charge to Blinken’s controversies.

    Here is the column:

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken is claiming the political version of the immaculate conception.

    In a Fox interview, Blinken suggests that he is free of blame in the creation of the 2020 letter from former intelligence officials claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely Russian disinformation.

    Despite the primary organizer of the letter naming him as the Biden campaign adviser who first raised the claim, Blinken insists that he remains without sin.

    All of the letter signatories are taking the same position.

    No one is at fault in one of the most calculated false stories ever planted in the midst of an election cycle.

    That would be hard enough to believe, but it’s not even the only lie Blinken is accused of telling in relation to Hunter Biden.

    Blinken is also facing questions over allegedly false statements made to Congress related to Hunter Biden.

    He claims he never emailed Hunter, when messages on the president’s son’s laptop show he did.

    Let’s start with the letter.

    With an enabling media, Joe Biden was able to use it to dismiss the evidence of possible influence peddling and criminal conduct on the laptop.

    During the presidential debate, an irate Biden cited the letter as proving that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” He added that “nobody believes” that the laptop was real.

    Media and social media companies then buried the story, including some like Twitter banning its discussion before the election.

    In the close election, the false story worked to negate a damaging scandal of corruption involving millions of dollars from foreign sources, including some involving figures associated with foreign intelligence.

    After the Republican takeover of the House, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell was called before Congress to give a statement.

    When pressed on how this letter came about, Morell reportedly did not hesitate: Blinken.

    He said Blinken was “the impetus” of the false claim.

    Morell then organized dozens of ex-national security officials to sign the letter claiming that the Hunter laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

    On Monday, Blinken told Fox News State Department correspondent Benjamin Hall that “with regard to that letter, I didn’t — it wasn’t my idea, didn’t ask for it, didn’t solicit it. And I think the testimony that the former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, put forward confirms that.”

    Morell called him the “impetus” for the letter. So perhaps Blinken is trying to dance on the semantic pinhead of being the “impetus” as opposed to the “solicitor”  of the claim. Morell did not appear to have any doubts or hesitation after speaking with Blinken and quickly assembled an array of experts to make the false claim. Morell admitted to Congress that one of his goals was “to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”

    So it turns out no one is at fault. Not the “impetus,” not the organizer, not the signatories, not the media. Indeed, maybe it is the public for being chumps in buying this scam.

    Blinken is facing a more serious question raised by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who declared that Blinken told “boldface” lies when he testified under oath to Congress in 2020 on the controversy. Johnson said that Blinken said he never emailed Hunter Biden.

    Yet emails between the president’s son and Blinken were recently disclosed. They suggested that the two were in communication in 2015 while Blinken was working in the Obama administration and Hunter was on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

    Johnson stated on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that “we know that he lied boldface to Congress about never emailing Hunter Biden. My guess is he told a bunch of other lies.”

    There are also emails that suggest that Hunter communicated through Blinken’s wife, Evan Ryan, who now serves as Biden’s cabinet secretary.

    We still need more details on the underlying facts, but, if true, the allegations could constitute both criminal and impeachable offenses. Blinken reportedly made these statements as part of the process leading to his confirmation. If he lied, it could constitute making a “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” to Congress under 18 US 1001.

    If Blinken lied or committed perjury, it could also constitute an impeachable offense. One complicating issue is that this did not technically occur while in office but in pursuit of that office. Moreover, there may be other statements since becoming secretary of state.

    Of course, during the Clinton impeachment, the question of whether perjury constitutes an impeachable offense was raised. When I testified at the impeachment hearing, I maintained that it clearly does meet the standard of a “high crime and misdemeanor.” In my view, it did not matter the subject matter.

    Others, like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, were equally certain that perjury did not meet that standard in the Clinton case.

    The fact is that cabinet and high-ranking officers have often been accused of false statements without facing impeachment or even prosecution.

    Ironically, the letter includes one notable example.

    Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper during the Obama administration was accused of perjury before the Senate but was not sanctioned by the Democrat-controlled Senate or the Obama Justice Department.

    He later signed the Hunter Biden letter.

    That history may be reassuring for Blinken.

    However, whatever the outcome, Blinken has some explaining to do and one thing is clear: There is nothing immaculate about the Hunter Biden scandal.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 23:30

  • China Clamps Down On Corporate Data, Ramps Up Exit Bans
    China Clamps Down On Corporate Data, Ramps Up Exit Bans

    As China beefs up its military to focus on “preparations for war” (per the US State Department-funded Radio Free Asia), Beijing is also ramping up restrictions on corporate information provided to overseas clients, as well as exit bans on corporate executives who simply want to leave the country.

    In recent months, Chinese financial data providers have stopped providing detailed information on the nation’s companies to outsiders, Bloomberg reports.

    Wind Information Co. in recent months ended allowing clients using its platform outside mainland China from accessing its corporate registry database, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The change is due to regulatory requirements, and other parts of their service are continuing as normal, they said, declining to be identified because the matter is sensitive.

    Investors operating in China are facing a more challenging environment despite Beijing’s push to improve ties globally. US consultancy firms are under the spotlight in particular, with authorities in recent weeks targeting the China offices of Bain & Company, Mintz Group and Capvision, according to media reports. The government last month passed a new counter-espionage law that expanded the list of activities that could be considered spying, intensifying the risks for foreign firms. -Bloomberg

    According to George Magnus, the move “underscores” the CCP’s construction of a new wall to the rest of the world.

    “In decades of private sector and academic research, I’ve stumbled into occasional publishing problems with sensitive governments, but never come across sensitive governments shutting down or restricting access to domestic data sources,” he said.

    Wind Information Co. collects data on over 200 million enterprises as well as 270 million legal representatives and executives, according to its website. The information includes shareholder and affiliate data, as well as fundraising and investing activities, legal disputes and operation risks.

    Meanwhile, Beijing is also implementing exit bans – barring people from leaving the country, including foreign executives, Reuters reports.

    Scores of Chinese and foreigners have been ensnared by exit bans, according to a new report by the rights group Safeguard Defenders, while a Reuters analysis has found an apparent surge of court cases involving such bans in recent years, and foreign business lobbies are voicing concern about the trend.

    “Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China has expanded the legal landscape for exit bans and increasingly used them, sometimes outside legal justification,” according to a report from Safeguard Defenders.

    “Between 2018 and July of this year, no less than five new or amended (Chinese) laws provide for the use of exit bans, for a total today of 15 laws,” said the group’s campaign director, Laura Harth.

    According to the group, which cites a 2022 academic paper which found 128 cases between 1995 and 2019, “tens of thousands” of Chinese are being banned from exit at any given time – a huge escalation assuming this is accurate. Reuters, having analyzed records on exit bans, reports an eight-fold increase in cases between 2016 and 2022.

    One such person prevented from leaving China earlier this year is Singaporean executive at the US due-diligence firm Mintz Group, which said in late March that authorities had raided the firm’s China office and detained five local staff under suspicion of engaging in unlawful business operations. CCP police also visited Bain & Co’s Shanghai office and questioned the staff.

    “Because of rising tensions between the U.S. and China, the salience of this (exit ban) risk has risen,” said Lester Ross, a veteran lawyer in China who has handled exit ban cases.

    “I’ve seen a rise in companies and entities being concerned about this and asking for our advice on how to prepare and reduce risks” of exit bans, Ross said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 23:10

  • So Much For SkyNet – Warehouse Robot Collapses After Working 20 Hours Straight
    So Much For SkyNet – Warehouse Robot Collapses After Working 20 Hours Straight

    Authored by Katie Hutton via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    When you’re working on the production line at a factory and trying to fulfill ever-changing deadlines, being a busy robot might make life challenging.

    It is even more gruesome when you consider that the robot in question was designed to last for the longest amount of time possible.

    Meet Digit. The motorized moving mess of bolts and wires known as Digit was the subject of the evaluation. And to be honest, throughout the twenty hours that it was working hard, Digit put in quite the effort and exhibited all of its nifty tricks and circuitry sorcery to all who were there.

    Those unfortunate enough to have witnessed the tail end of Digit’s demos definitely had at least one or two eyebrows raised.

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

    AFTER ALL, DIGIT DID EXPERIENCE SOME DEGREE OF FAILURE. AS IN, HE WAS OUT OF THE RUNNING FOR THE TIME BEING AFTER ITS COLLAPSE. THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANY, ON THE OTHER HAND, BRAGGED OF A PHENOMENAL SUCCESS RATE OF 99.99 PERCENT FOR JOBS COMPLETED BY WAREHOUSE BOTS.

    “We started with scientific breakthroughs and layered on top of that world-class engineering,” they said in a press release.

    “We approach everything with a focus on function. Our robots were designed from day one to do work and get the job done,” they add.

    In April, Agility Robotics posted the video, announcing that the hard-working bot has successfully completed over nearly 20 hours of live demonstrations despite suffering a few “scrapes and bruises” while doing its responsibilities.

    Liz Clinkenbeard, vice president of communications at Agility Robotics, disclosed to the Associated Press that the company wants to show how a cool robot like Digit can pick itself up and move on when things are going badly for it.

    “We wanted to show that Digit did fall a couple times, that it’s a normal part of any new technology, and it’s not a big deal,” she said. When Digit drops, it is often because of a fault in the program or with the sensor.

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    “SOMETIMES IT MAY NEED A REPAIR; RARELY SOMETHING THAT TAKES MORE THAN 15-20 MINUTES,” SHE ADDED. “WE DO WANT TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT NOT OVER-HUMANIZING A MACHINE OR ASCRIBING INTENT.
    WHILE DIGIT LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE A PERSON, IN REALITY IT IS A COMPUTER THAT CAN DO PHYSICAL WORK, AND IT’S FOLLOWING A PROGRAM.”

    Since then, the footage of Digit falling over has been posted across many social media platforms. The footage has resulted in some quite obscene jokes being made concerning the well-being of the robot.

    Some of the comments made on social media about Digit hinted that the hard-working AI may have offed itself because of the menial tasks it was forced to perform for little pay.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 22:50

  • Escape The Collapse? Billionaire Buys 5,000 Acre Farm Near Jackson Hole
    Escape The Collapse? Billionaire Buys 5,000 Acre Farm Near Jackson Hole

    In the event of a societal collapse or a banking crisis escalating into a financial meltdown akin to 2008, some billionaires own vast amounts of farmland around the world, which serves not only as a hedge but also provides spacious retreats for them to take refuge. 

    Despite a US housing market that has frozen for average folks after a record-breaking run in mortgage rates and home prices still at elevated levels, triggering the worst affordability in a generation, billionaires are still making moves. 

    The latest is billionaire industrialist Steven Rales, who recently purchased “Diamond G Ranch,” a property that spans 5,000 acres and is located 90 minutes east of Jackson Hole, for a whopping $71 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing property records. 

    The property has everything one needs to escape the apocalypse. And or, if that doesn’t happen, have valuable land that will only appreciate. 

    “It has an estimated 5 miles of the Dunoir River on private land with immediate access to 2.5 more miles on public land that is rarely accessed by the public. The Dunoir is a world-class trout fishery with trout in the 20 plus inch category. Wildlife – Bear, elk, moose, antelope, mountain lion, coyote, wolverine, multiple bird species, and both bighorn sheep and mountain goats are often seen in the adjacent national forest. It is one of the richest, wildest places for wildlife we have ever seen,” said real estate firm Hall and Hall, who brokered the deal late last year. 

    In recent years, the list of billionaires, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet, purchasing farmland has been increasing. And we’ve shown readers that farmland is an excellent hedge in economic downcycles: “US Farmland Bucks Real Estate Downturn.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 22:30

  • World On Cusp Of Woke Totalitarianism As Governments Act To End Freedom Of Speech
    World On Cusp Of Woke Totalitarianism As Governments Act To End Freedom Of Speech

    Authored by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag via ‘Public’ substack,

    Media blackout as politicians in EU, US, UK, Brazil, Ireland, Canada, and Australia seek to jail citizens for wrongthink under the cover of a Big Lie about “hate speech”…

    The Twitter Files gave us a window into how government agencies, civil society, and tech companies work together to censor social media users. Now, key nations are attempting to enshrine this coordination into law explicitly.

    Around the world, politicians have either just passed or are on the cusp of passing sweeping new laws, which would allow governments to censor ordinary citizens on social media and other Internet platforms.

    Under the guise of preventing “harm” and holding large tech companies accountable, several countries are establishing a vast and interlinked censorship apparatus, a new investigation by Public finds.

    Politicians, NGOs, and their enablers in the news media claim that their goal is merely to protect the public from “disinformation.” But vague definitions and loopholes in new laws will create avenues for broad application, overreach, and abuse.

    In Ireland, for example, the government may soon be able to imprison citizens simply for possessing material that officials decide is “hateful.” Under the RESTRICT Act in the US, the government may soon have the authority to monitor the Internet activity of any American deemed a security risk.

    Governments aim for total control. In Canada, a state agency can filter and manipulate what Canadians see online. In Australia, a single government official can compel social media companies to remove posts.

    Governments and allied NGOs intend to force tech companies to comply with their rules. UK lawmakers have threatened to imprison social media managers who don’t censor enough content. And Brazil has introduced severe penalties for platforms that fail to remove “fake news.”

    The key area of action is the European Union. It is seeking sweeping new powers to regulate social media companies. And if it acts, it may change how social media companies operate worldwide, given the EU’s economic power and influence globally.

    Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, large tech companies must share their data with “vetted researchers” from non-profits and academia, which would cede content moderation to NGOs and their state sponsors.

    The US’s RESTRICT Act, sponsored by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), threatens 20 years in prison or a $250,000 fine for accessing blacklisted websites through “virtual private networks,” or VPNs, which are ways to create a private connection between a computer or phone and the Internet.

    There has been no moment similar to this one in the roughly 30 years of widespread public Internet usage in Western societies.

    Officials have introduced these policies mostly in the dead of night with little publicity or outcry. There has been a virtual blackout of what’s happening by mainstream news media corporations, with many appearing to support the new laws.

    As shown with the Twitter Files, the Censorship Industrial Complex is as much about discrediting accurate facts, true narratives, and content creators who threaten its power while boosting the ones that do.

    We are thus witnessing the emergence of a governmental apparatus with the power to control the information environment in ways that determine what people believe to be true and what is false.

    As such, it is no exaggeration to say that the West is on the cusp of a new and much more powerful form of totalitarianism than either Communism or Fascism, which were limited in their reach by geography.

    If we are to defeat it, we must understand it.

    Why are governments seeking to crack down on freedom of speech from New Zealand to the Netherlands and Brazil to Canada? Why now? And why are they getting away with it?

    Inside The Plot To Censor The Planet

    RESTRICT Act sponsor Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) (center) with United Kingdom MP Damian Collins (L) and Ukrainian MP Hanna Hopko (R) at a press conference by government-funded censorship advocacy NGO called “The Atlantic Council” on July 16, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images).

    The timing of the global crackdown on free speech does not appear to be coincidental.

    What’s happening now appears to represent the re-grouping of censorship advocacy that occurred after that defeat. With some notable exceptions, the demand for censorship is being driven by center-Left parties, with NGOs playing a subservient role.

    …

    Politicians are invoking a Woke defense of “preventing harm” that is very different from the older pretext for censorship, national security. The push is race-based, immigration-based (e.g., Ireland), trans-based (e.g., Ireland and Australia), and safety- or health-based (e.g., the EU).

    …

    Meanwhile, there is no evidence of an increase in the killing of trans people or even that trans people are killed at a rate higher than the average person. In truth, no minority group in history has gone from stigmatized to celebrated faster than trans people.

    …

    Why now?

    The election of Biden, the failure of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” and the release of the Twitter Files all appear to have forced censorship advocacy to move from the U.S. to other nations, particularly Europe, in order to censor Americans and the rest of the world through the back door.

    …

    We believe elites have overreached. If they felt secure in their censorship agenda, they wouldn’t be hiding and rushing it through legislatures worldwide or trying to sneak censorship on the U.S. through the European Union.

    *  *  *

    Public is building an international movement to defend freedom of speech. We can’t do it without you… Subscribers can read the full story here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 22:10

  • China Updates Conscription Law, Eyeing 'High-Tech Regional Conflict' Over Taiwan
    China Updates Conscription Law, Eyeing ‘High-Tech Regional Conflict’ Over Taiwan

    China rolled out a new recruitment policy this week, including an update to its military conscription law, which came into force Monday after being approved by the State Council and Central Military Commission.

    The effort is aimed at creating a more high-tech and cyberwarfare capable army involving highly skilled personnel. The new guidelines explicitly say the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should “focus on preparations for war” and needs more soldiers utilizing high-tech weaponry.

    Image: AP

    The guidelines expand the military’s ability for short-notice enlistments in instances of highly qualified recruits, as well as prior service personnel, and even college students who have knowledge of space and cyberwar domains. 

    According to some of the updated policy and rules: 

    The amended rules require the recruitment of “high-quality soldiers” in a “lawful, precise and efficient manner.”

    There is scope for wider mobilization of the population in the event of war, including the recruitment of women to active service if numbers require it, as well as previously demobilized soldiers, who may return to their old posts and rank “if they meet the requirements.”

    “During wartime, the State Council and the Central Military Commission may adjust the requirements and methods used to enlist citizens to active service,” according to one of rules published in state news agency Xinhua.

    This came the same week as an Axios report which reviews how each allied US country in the Pacific is nervously preparing for possible showdown over Taiwan.

    “A war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan would be a nightmare scenario for America’s allies in the Pacific, but it’s becoming increasingly clear what roles they might play if one breaks out,” wrote Axios.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 21:50

  • Attempt To Remove Soros-Backed Prosecutor Moves Forward; She Vows To Fight 'Witch Hunt'
    Attempt To Remove Soros-Backed Prosecutor Moves Forward; She Vows To Fight ‘Witch Hunt’

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

    Days after an embattled prosecutor vowed she would never resign from office, a judge ruled that removal proceedings against her would continue.

    On May 2, Visiting Judge John Torbitzky ordered seven out of 10 claims against St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner to move forward. He denied her lawyers’ request to throw out all of the accusations.

    Torbitzky has been presiding over the case that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey brought against Gardner, a Democrat.

    St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner speaks in St. Louis, Mo., on Jan. 13, 2020. (Jim Salter/AP Photo)

    Gardner has accused Republican Bailey of playing politics.

    Bailey filed a petition alleging that Gardner shirked her responsibilities and should forfeit her elected office. Her lawyers say Gardner committed no intentional acts that would warrant her removal.

    Torbitzky said he made “reasonable inferences” that Gardner willfully failed to  “prosecute cases, make charging decisions, keep victims informed, and ensure defendants and victims receive a speedy trial,” as Bailey alleges.

    The judge dismissed three allegations that didn’t fit the type of conduct that could lead to an officeholder’s removal.

    Gardner also faces other accusations. Last week, a separate judge found that her office’s no-shows at court proceedings warranted an allegation of “indirect criminal contempt.” A hearing in the contempt case is set for May 30.

    The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that an assistant prosecutor involved in that case has resigned, as did a second assistant who avoided a contempt citation.

    The recent departures are adding to judges’ concerns about Gardner’s office being understaffed, a court spokesman said.

    ‘Witch Hunt’ Alleged

    During a public meeting at a local church on April 29, Gardner said her enemies “want to capture every word I’m saying, so they can use this as a soundbite for criminal contempt or a vehicle to try to take me out of office.”

    “What you’re seeing is a witch hunt,” she said in the meeting recorded by  KSDK News and posted on YouTube.

    Gardner declared emphatically: “I’m not leavin’. I’m not resigning. I’m not doing nothing. [sic] You will have to remove me.”

    And, at one point, she said, “You can’t take me out, because I’m not afraid of none of this [sic].”

    Gardner, seeking reelection in 2024, is among many progressive prosecutors who received backing from funds from billionaire George Soros. According to The Missouri Times, Gardner’s campaign benefited from Soros’s largesse. Several Soros-backed prosecutors have been accused of being soft on crime.

    ‘Change of Judge’

    In the removal case, Torbitzky’s ruling followed an April 18 hearing where he heard arguments from both sides.

    The state Supreme Court, which appointed Torbitzky, will need to select another judge to hear the case.  Torbitzky had no choice but to grant Gardner’s lawyers’ request that he be replaced.

    A Missouri procedural rule allows “a change of judge” once in every civil case, no questions asked. When they filed a motion under that rule, Gardner’s lawyers gave no reasons for seeking a replacement judge.

    Meanwhile, Bailey is accusing Gardner’s lawyers of stonewalling requests for records and stalling the proceedings.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 21:30

  • US Navy Enlists Drag Queen For 'Digital Ambassador' Role To Attract More Recruits
    US Navy Enlists Drag Queen For ‘Digital Ambassador’ Role To Attract More Recruits

    And the Department of Defense wonders why multiple military branches are projected to miss their recruitment goals this year?  The Navy expects to fall short by over 6000 sailors in 2023, while the military struggles with a growing lack of interest, not to mention a lack of physically viable candidates.  So, they have embarked on a new strategy, giving their marketing the Bud Light treatment. 

    That’s right, the Navy has recruited a squadron administrator and drag queen using the name “Harpy Daniels” to be their new “Digital Ambassador.”  The post is designed to inspire more civilians to join the Navy.

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    The attempted “woke-ification” of the US armed forces is a growing trend, with military brass defending the teaching of CRT (Critical Race Theory) among officers and numerous recruitment ads depicting far-left concepts.  Here is a training video from the Navy featuring two engineers from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center explaining the use of pronouns, gender neutral language and how to be a “good ally” to the LGBT community.

    And who can forget this social justice advertising gem from the US Army:

    For good measure, let’s not forget the woke and narcissistic messaging of recent CIA recruitment ads:

    The Navy claims that DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives are not hurting recruitment, yet interest in military service continues to plummet in the face of the woke shift. 

    The repellent nature of leftist branding efforts in the military should be obvious.  In the past, the majority of those volunteering for military service have always been politically conservative or independent, with only 29% of current serving identifying as Democrats.  Leftists have long been widely opposed to military participation in general, even though, ironically, the Democrats are now becoming the preeminent party of war when it comes to Russia and the Ukraine situation. 

    They want America to go to war, they just don’t want to be forced to fight those wars themselves.  War is an ugly business replete with unfairness and inequity. Trying to appeal to progressives within Gen Z is not going to work out well for the DoD.

    Another factor is the mindset of the average leftist – It is a philosophy that lends itself to weakness, entitlement and often mental illness, making training goals difficult or impossible.  Over 42% of Gen Z has been diagnosed with at least one mental health condition.  This is why many businesses are now more likely to reject applications from job seekers that use preferred pronouns in their resumes.  These people are far more trouble than they’re worth.

    The only recourse for a woke military would be to dramatically lower standards and turn basic training into a day care, which is exactly what they have been doing incrementally over the past several years.  The question is if this is delusional or deliberate self sabotage.  Is the US military being deconstructed from within?  Or, are these people simply inept?    

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 21:10

  • 15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days
    15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days

    Via The Brownstone Institute,

    On Monday, the White House announced its Covid-19 vaccine requirements for federal employees, federal contractors, and international air travelers will expire on May 11, coinciding with the end of the Covid public health emergency. The 15 Days to Flatten the Curve that began on March 16, 2020, stretched to 1,141 days. 

    In some ways, the repeal is a victory against the irrational tyranny behind the vaccine mandates that have been part of the entire lockdown paradigm. Americans no longer have to choose between taking an experimental, ineffective medical product and keeping their job. We no longer have to endure the irrationality of enforcing vaccine mandates for air travelers but not for illegal immigrants at our southern border. We no longer have to listen to the tyrannical paternalism behind forcing people to receive a shot that they don’t want while insisting that it is saving their lives.

    At the same time, however, it is far from a victory; we have returned to what should be the normal state, and we already witnessed the suffering that the mandates incurred. Millions of people were forced to choose between the truth of their convictions and earning a living. Others lost years of visiting loved ones in foreign countries. The people who implemented this Hell remain in power, and they appear unremorseful. 

    The Biden Administration did not admit error in its policies; instead, it took great pride in its two years of forced jabs.

    “Our COVID-19 vaccine requirements bolstered vaccination across the nation, and our broader vaccination campaign has saved millions of lives,” the White House boasted.

    “While vaccination remains one of the most important tools in advancing the health and safety of employees and promoting the efficiency of workplaces, we are now in a different phase of our response when these measures are no longer necessary.”

    There is no solid evidence for any of those claims. And substantial policy questions remain. Since March 2020, Covid served as the basis for political initiatives far beyond the realm of public health. It was used as the justification for eviction moratoriums, travel restrictions, domestic-capacity restrictions, closures, mask mandates, and student debt relief. Considering the future requires an understanding of the Biden White House’s mandate regime. 

    The History of the Mandates

    Beginning in July 2021, President Biden issued a series of Covid vaccine mandates.

    In September 2021, he announced, “Next, I will sign an executive order that will now require all executive branch federal employees to be vaccinated — all. And I’ve signed another executive order that will require federal contractors to do the same. If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated.” He then announced that the Department of Labor would require all employers with 100 or more workers to get vaccinated. 

    “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” he scolded unvaccinated Americans. “Your refusal has cost all of us.” 

    The following month, Biden banned international air travelers from entering the United States without proof of receiving the Covid shots. Visitors remained able to enter the country testing positive for the virus so long as they had agreed to the President’s mandatory injection program. 

    But President Biden’s disappointment in his citizens did not convince the American public of the righteousness of his crusade. In the ensuing months, the shots’ lack of efficacy became readily apparent, and Americans were reluctant to get their “boosters.” 

    Biden did not relent, however. He publicly scolded Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers for not getting the shots and insisted that there was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” going into 2022.

    In August 2022, the White House faced backlash when tennis superstar Novak Djokovic was unable to participate in the U.S. Open because of the ban on unvaccinated international air travelers. The strict enforcement did not apply to illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. A reporter asked the White House to explain this enforcement discrepancy later that month.

    “How come migrants are allowed to come into this country unvaccinated but world-class tennis players are not?” asked Fox’s Peter Doocy. 

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to articulate an explanation. 

    “So as far — you know, just to — just since you asked about me — about him — you asked me about him. So, visa records are confidential under U.S. law. Therefore, the U.S. government cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases. Due to privacy reasons, the U.S. government also does not comment on medical information of individual travelers,” she stammered as she avoided the question.

    She then told Doocy that the issue comparison between illegals crossing the border and international air travelers was unfounded because “they’re two different things.” 

    Djokovic reentered headlines in March 2023 when he was unable to participate in a Florida tournament because of the ongoing travel ban. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called on Biden to lift the restriction. When asked about the ban stemming from the President’s ban, Ms. Jean-Pierre deflected blame to the CDC, telling the press, “They’re the ones who deal with that. [The ban’s] still in place, and we expect everyone to abide by our country’s rule, whether as a participant or a spectator.”

    Djokovic was unable to play in the tournament, but momentum against the Biden regime’s edicts gained steam. Later that month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction blocking President Biden’s mandate for federal employees to receive the Covid jabs. 

    In April, President Biden signed a law that ended the Covid national emergency in a bill introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar. The bill passed the House in a 229-197 vote and the Senate in a 68-23 vote. 

     What happens now

    A number of other pandemic-era policies will also end on May 11, including Title 42, which allows Border Patrol to immediately send illegal immigrants at the southern border back to Mexico. Texas Governor Greg Abbott expects up to 13,000 illegal immigrants to cross the US-Mexico border every day after the expiration. 

    This may exacerbate the ongoing crisis at the border. In the last 10 days alone, over 73,000 migrants have crossed the southern border as Title 42 comes closer to expiration. Border Patrol announced that in that time it stopped 19 sex offenders, six gang members, and a convicted murderer from entering the United States. Additionally, Border Patrol seized 19 pounds of heroin, 54 pounds of fentanyl, 1,052 pounds of meth, 676 pounds of cocaine, and 823 pounds of marijuana. 

    There are more issues at stake than immigration. The Supreme Court is considering whether the White House’s order to cancel student debt was constitutional. The Biden White House has defended its actions by claiming that the Heroes Act of 2003 allows the US Education Secretary to change federal student loan programs during national emergencies such as the Covid pandemic. Going forward, the White House will have to adopt new rationales for future executive actions related to student debt. 

    On the legal front, employment law firm Jackson Lewis reports that there are over 2,000 existing challenges to Covid 19 vaccine mandates in the courts right now, and over 35 percent involve public employers. Challenges to the federal mandates may now be moot, meaning courts will dismiss the cases because the mandates are no longer in effect. Plaintiffs will be able to return to work without adhering to the White House’s vaccine requirements, but there will also be no accountability for those in charge. 

    These days and for many months and years following, all the people involved in the pandemic response – not only government officials but media mouthpieces and Big Tech accomplices – will be rewriting history and hoping that everyone will forget the real history.

    They are trying to avoid accountability and save whatever vestiges of despotism that they can, while hoping to institutionalize the powers that made all of this possible.

    They cannot be allowed to win this struggle for essential rights, liberties, and truth. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 20:50

  • Debt Ceiling, No Worries? Biden Offers $500K Grant For 'Pakistani Transgender Youth' To Learn English
    Debt Ceiling, No Worries? Biden Offers $500K Grant For ‘Pakistani Transgender Youth’ To Learn English

    While President Biden demands that Republicans pass a no-strings-attached, ‘clean’ debt limit increase without requiring Democrats to make sacrifices, his administration is throwing around cash like a drunken sailor at a whorehouse..

    To wit, the Biden administration is now offering a grant to help teach English in Pakistan by providing, in part, “intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth.”

    According to the grant, the US State Department wants to teach English language skills to Pakistani youth so they can “better participate in the global community and prepare them for success in the workplace,” Fox News reports, adding that the grant aims to reach its goal by focusing on three components; (1) “Professional Development for English Language Teachers from Non-Mainstream Institutions; (2) Professional Development for novice Pakistani English language teachers; and (3) Professional Development for Transgender Youth and for Afghan Teachers, Students, and Young Professionals Residing in Pakistan.”

    The program component that includes a focus on transgender youth accepts proposals from applicants “for a minimum of $25,000 and a maximum of $75,000 to implement: (1) intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth from the ages of 13-25, and (2) and intensive professional development courses for Afghan teachers, students, and young professionals residing in Pakistan.”

    These components aim to improve English language communication skills among trainees and connect them to a professional alumni network. Participating teachers will “share what they learned in these trainings with English-language professional colleagues, thereby influencing pedagogy in their schools and communities.” -Fox News

    Those interested in some of the $500K are encouraged to address the question of “What is the most effective way to reach the greatest number of Pakistani transgender youth and Afghan teachers, students, and young professionals from diverse locations across Pakistan?”

    According to the State Department, the project focuses on transgender youth as it does with other “marginalized communities,” and noted that the funds won’t be used towards gender transitions.

    “In this specific grant, the Department provides funding for English-language learning, an integral skill that helps unlock educational and employability opportunities, for marginalized communities, in this case transgender youth,” said the spokesperson.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 20:30

  • No, Washington Post, The Experts Were The Whole Problem
    No, Washington Post, The Experts Were The Whole Problem

    Authored by John Tamny via The Brownstone Institute,

    “On the field of war what is at stake is the thing that matters most to any man – the saving of his own skin.” 

    – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p. 889

    The quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a useful way to begin addressing the Washington Post editorial board’s confident assertion that “’A collective national incompetence in government’” was at the root of the U.S.’s alleged failure vis-à-vis the coronavirus in 2020.

    According to the Post quoting from a recently released report (“Lessons from the Covid War”), “The United States started out ‘with more capabilities than any other country in the world,’ but “it ended up with 1 million dead.”

    Were he still around, one guesses Tolstoy would mock the conceit of the Post’s editorialists.

    That’s the case because “the thing that matters most to any man” is “the saving of his own skin.”

    That this needs to even be said speaks to how wrongheaded the Post’s editorial board’s approach to the virus was, and still is.

    It implies we have dead because government didn’t act properly, as though free people eager to live were unequal to a virus that the right kind of collective governmental action was more than equal to.

    Ok, but what was government going to do? Better yet, what if the virus had struck in 2009 when Barack Obama was still in the White House. What would he have done? Would he have instructed a virus that was spreading faster than the flu to take a “time out?”

    The simple truth missed by the Post is that as humans we’re wired to preserve ourselves. On the matter of life and the presumption of death, government is excess. Whatever solution Obama might have come up with, or whatever Donald Trump did come up with, or (try not to laugh) whatever Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would have done if the virus had revealed itself in 2021 would have been vastly unequal to the solutions crafted by free people.

    Deep down the Post’s editorialists must know the above is true. Indeed, it’s not that the Soviet Union lacked experts, or that Cuba lacks experts now. The problem was and is that the remarkable knowledge of very few very smart people will never measure up to the collective knowledge of the citizenry. That’s why communism failed so impressively in the Soviet Union, and it’s why it fails in Cuba. Translated for those who need it, the people are the market and markets work.

    As I make plain in my 2021 book When Politicians Panicked, the problem was experts and politicians substituting their limited knowledge for that of the people. That was the crisis. Not so, according to the Post and the report they cite.

    Supposedly the “leaders of the United States could not apply their country’s vast assets effectively enough” such that “1 million died.” Wrong. Over and over again. To see why, imagine if 10 million Americans had died in March of 2020. Can the Post editorial board think of what government might have done that would have somehow improved on a feverish individual desire to survive against long odds? The simple truth glossed over by the Post is that the more threatening a virus is (and the Post seems to view what most didn’t know they were infected with as wildly threatening), the more superfluous government action is.

    Really, who reading this needs to ever be forced to avoid behavior that might result in sickness, or even death? And if the reply to this question is that some people DO need to be forced, you’re making the best case of all for unfettered freedom. Think about it. Those who reject expert opinion are the most crucial “control group” as a virus spreads. By going against the grain, we learn from their freely arrived at actions if the virus is as lethal as presumed, or not, how it spreads, how to perhaps avoid its spread, and all manner of other important bits of information suppressed by one-size-fits-all national solutions.

    It cannot be stressed enough that free people crucially produce information. Instead of allowing them to produce it in abundance in 2020, the response arrived at by Democrats and Republicans was to lock people in their homes, thus blinding a nation “with more capabilities than any other country” to the best approaches to a spreading virus. Please keep all of this in mind with the report’s assertion that the “most important and fundamental misjudgment” about the virus was how it spread. You think? Of course, the muscular assertion ignores yet again that if knowing how a virus spreads is of utmost importance, the only credible answer is freedom.

    On the matter of the Trump administration, the Post supports the report’s conclusion that “The administration abdicated its wartime responsibilities to lead” only to leave the coronavirus battle to “states and localities.” If only. Back to reality, President Trump signed into law a $2.9 trillion bill that subsidized shutdowns across the country, thus locking people in their homes far longer than would have otherwise happened, and at the expense of untold amounts of economic output.

    Consider the latter in light of the statement of the obvious that all advances in medicine have always been born of matching doctors and scientists with the abundant fruits of wealth creation. In 2020, rather than encourage the very wealth creation that has long been the biggest foe of death and disease (by far), panicky politicians quite literally chose economic contraction as a virus mitigation strategy. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of the US political class, but not the Post’s editorialists or the authors of a report that the editorialists remarkably find insightful.

    Rather than acknowledge the obvious about government and experts as the crisis, the Post editorialists and the experts they kneel before bemoaned a national abdication of “wartime responsibilities.” One gets the feeling Tolstoy would chuckle yet again. In his words, “The course of a battle is affected by an infinite number of freely operating forces (there being no greater freedom of operation than on a battlefield, where life and death are at stake), and this course can never be known in advance; nor does it ever correspond with the direction of any one particular force.”

    In short, on matters of life and death, control is wretched, crisis-inducing excess.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 20:10

  • Bolsonaro Raided, Aide Arrested Amid Fake Covid-19 Vaccination Records Scandal
    Bolsonaro Raided, Aide Arrested Amid Fake Covid-19 Vaccination Records Scandal

    The mansion of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and other locations in Brasília, and Rio de Janeiro were raided by police on Wednesday as part of an investigation into fake Covid-19 vaccine cards.

    As part of the arrest, Bolsonaro’s “right-hand man” Lt Col Mauro Cid Barbosa was one of six people arrested Wednesday morning, The Guardian reports.

    Two of Bolsonaro’s security guards were also taken into custody. The ex-president was expected to be questioned later on Wednesday. Bolsonaro’s mobile phone was seized at his residence in Brasília and he was obliged to hand over the password after initially resisting.

    Federal police reportedly believe a series of official Covid vaccination records were falsified on Brazil’s health ministry database in order to produce bogus vaccination certificates that would permit international travel, including to the US. -The Guardian

    The allegedly falsified records include those for Bolsonaro, his 12-year-old daughter Laura, and Mauro Cid Barbosa and his family. The records were reportedly entered into the health ministry’s database between November 2001 and December of last year – Bolsonaro’s last month in power after losing the last presidential election to far-left rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

    Bolsonaro, who repeatedly claimed that he had refused vaccination, had also refused to make his vaccination records public.

    According to Lula, Bolsonaro should be brought to justice for his actions during the “slaughter” of Covid-19.

    “Good morning and [have] a nice Wednesday,” Lula tweeted as police rummaged through Bolsonaro’s villa.

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    Other Bolsonaro foes chimed in.

    “Brazil was governed by a group of Hollywood-style gangsters,” said leftwing congressman Guilherme Boulos in a tweet.

    This isn’t the only investigation into Bolsonaro, who’s being probed over several suspected crimes and transgressions while no longer enjoying prosecutorial immunity.

    Bolsonaro, meanwhile, told reporters he was “surprised” at the raid, and denied any involvement in “adulteration.”

    “I wasn’t vaccinated. Full stop,” he said, adding “I have nothing else to say.“

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 19:50

  • A Record Low 13% Of Eighth Grade Students Are Proficient In History
    A Record Low 13% Of Eighth Grade Students Are Proficient In History

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    The Nation’s Report Card for history for 2022 is shockingly low. I have the solution…

    Nation’s Report Card

    Please consider the NAEP History Report Card at Grade 8 for the US. 

    NAEP reports scores at five selected percentiles to show changes over time in the scores for lower- (10th and 25th percentiles), middle- (50th percentile), and higher- (75th and 90th percentiles) performing students.

    In 2022, the scores for students at the 10th, 25th, 50th, and 75th levels declined compared to 2018. Scores for lower-performing students declined more than the score decrease for those at the 75th percentile compared to 2018.

    This is a continuation of a decline seen at all select percentiles except for the 90th percentile when comparing the 2018 scores to those in 2014.

    In 2022, there were no significant changes in scores at any of the selected percentile levels compared to 1994. 

    299 out of 500, just under a 60% score, is in the top 10 percent of the class. 

    Proficiency Levels

    • NAEP Basic Achievement Level: 252 (50.4 Percent Score)

    • NAEP Proficient Level: 294 (58.8 Percent Score)

    • NAEP Advanced Level: 327 (65.4 Percent Score)

    2022 History Proficiency

    Proficiency Synopsis

    • Only 1 percent of “advanced” students could manage better than a 65.4 percent score. 

    • Only 13 percent of students were deemed “proficient” at 58.8 percent or better.

    • Only 46 percent of students could manage to get just over half the questions correct.

    When I Went to Grade School

    • Below 70%: F

    • 70-77%: D

    • 78-84%: C

    • 85-92: B

    • 93+: A

    My, how times have changed. 

    Proposed Solution (Sarcasm)

    • Below 26%: F

    • 26-34%: D

    • 35-42%: C

    • 43-50%: B

    • 51+%: A

    Of course, we need to take external factors into consideration. Anyone from a disadvantaged home gets to add 26 percentage points to their score.

    Second we need to stop publishing results. Instead, we just post final grades. 

    Proficiency scores will skyrocket and we can then pat our education system on the back for a job well done.

    *  *  *

    Like these reports? I hope so, and if you do, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 19:30

  • Nordstrom Closing San Francisco Stores, Citing "Deteriorating Situation" Amid Crime Crisis
    Nordstrom Closing San Francisco Stores, Citing “Deteriorating Situation” Amid Crime Crisis

    Stick a fork in San Francisco: the city seems to be beyond repair.

    After 35 years, Nordstrom is closing its downtown San Francisco stores, citing “the deteriorating situation” in the city plagued by crime and governed by mindless progressives. 

    According to ABC7 News, the Nordstrom Rack on Market Street will close on July 1, and Nordstrom inside Westfield Mall will close in August. 

    Jamie Nordstrom, Chief Stores Officer, sent a letter to impacted workers of both stores and explained that “the dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully.”

    The impending exodus of Nordstrom comes as several other retailers, such as Office Depot, The Container Store, Anthropologie, Whole Foods, and Saks Off 5th, have all recently announced store closures. The reason for the closures is that cost of operation for retailers is soaring as progressive city officials won’t address out-of-control thefts and street crime. 

    Since 2020, twenty retailers have closed their stores in San Francisco’s Union Square, as the San Francisco Standard reported. All have pointed to theft. In other areas, CVS and Walgreens have shuttered stores. 

    As for the retailers who remain in the city, such as Target, they’ve had to lock entire aisles behind safety glass to prevent shoplifting. 

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    The retail departures are yet another blow for the city as the tech downturn worsens, coupled with the regional banking crisis, which has spread into commercial real estate, mainly the office space segment. 

    The gold-standard measure of office occupancy trends is the card-swipe data provided by Kastle Systems. The average office occupancy in San Fran is around 45%, still well off the highs from pre-pandemic levels.

    This means that workers have been slow to return to the office, which is evident as Salesforce, Meta Platforms, and other tech companies are hemorrhaging office space, hurting the local economy. 

    Other stores in the crime-ridden city may also be leaving soon due to approaching lease end dates. 

    *   *   * 

    Jamie Nordstrom, Chief Stores Officer, sent the following message to employees:

    “Today we announced that we’ve made the difficult decision not to renew our leases at the San Francisco Centre Nordstrom store and our Market Street Rack store across the street. Market Street Rack’s last day of business will be July 1 and we intend to close San Francisco Centre at the end of August.

    Decisions like this are never easy, and this one has been especially difficult. We’ve spent more than 35 years serving customers in downtown San Francisco, building relationships with them and investing in the local community. But as many of you know, the dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully. With both leases set to expire, and after looking closely at our opportunities in the region, we believe we can better serve our customers there by focusing on our 16 nearby Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack locations, as well as online.

    I want to be really clear that this decision had nothing to do with our team’s hard work. They should be proud of everything they’ve achieved together and the way they’ve shown up and served the community. We’re working with each impacted employee to support them through this transition and find new roles within the company wherever possible.

    Stores continue to play a critical part in delivering our Closer to You strategy, and we continue to be opportunistic about new store locations, relocations and concepts. In fact, we have 20 new Rack store openings planned this year, with more to come in 2024. We also remain committed to the Bay Area market and have made significant investments in our stores there over the past several years. We recently announced a new Nordstrom Rack store will open in Pinole, CA, and completed a remodel at our Valley Fair Nordstrom store.”

    Read the full statement from Westfield Mall below:

    “The planned closure of Nordstrom underscores the deteriorating situation in downtown San Francisco. A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area.

    URW has actively engaged with City leaders for many years to express our serious concerns, which are shared by our customers and retailers. We have urged the City to find solutions to the key issues and lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity.

    The current environment is not sustainable for the community, or businesses, and we are hopeful the City will implement the changes that are so urgently needed.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 19:10

  • Watchdog: IRS Has Spent $10M On Weapons, Ammo, & Combat Gear Since 2020
    Watchdog: IRS Has Spent $10M On Weapons, Ammo, & Combat Gear Since 2020

    Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

    Anew watchdog report reveals that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been stockpiling $10 million worth of weapons, ammunition, and combat gear since 2020.

    The New York Post reports that the findings, released by the group OpenTheBooks, show the IRS spending $5 million in 2021 alone as the agency ramped up the militarization of its agents. In the last three years, the IRS has spent a total of $2.3 million on ammunition, $1.2 million on ballistic shields, $474,000 on Smith & Wesson rifles, $463,000 on Beretta tactical shotguns, and $243,000 on body armor.

    In addition to these purchases, the IRS’ expenditures include an additional $1.3 million that was spent on “various other gear for criminal investigation agents,” without any specifics as to what this “other gear” may entail.

    The slew of new purchases build off of an arsenal that was already well-stocked prior to 2020, with the IRS already having in its possession roughly 5 million rounds of ammunition designated for its 2,159 special agents. Before 2020, the IRS owned 4,500 firearms, which included 621 shotguns, 539 semi-automatic rifles, and 15 submachine guns.

    In conjunction with the spike in weapons purchases, the IRS has been hiring significantly more agents in all 50 states. In the job listing for new applicants, the agency notes that any potential applicants must be willing to “carry a firearm; must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations; must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.”

    The weapon stockpiling and additional hiring comes after the IRS was given over $80 billion in new funding as a result of the highly-partisan Inflation Reduction Act, which was worth $739 billion overall.

    The agency has since claimed that the $80 billion was necessary in order to hire nearly 87,000 new agents across the country over the next 10 years, which has raised concerns among Republicans about the weaponization of an agency that has already been used to target conservatives in the past.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 18:50

  • NYC's Novel Idea To Solve Rampant Car Theft Is Hand Out Free Apple AirTags
    NYC’s Novel Idea To Solve Rampant Car Theft Is Hand Out Free Apple AirTags

    Mayor Eric Adams announced that New York City would distribute hundreds of Apple AirTags to residents as part of a cunning plan to combat a spike in car thefts across the five boroughs.

    “The aggravated number of grand larceny autos continues to drive up crime in our city,” said Adams. These GPS-tracking devices are a “really amazing piece of ingenuity” and will allow police to track stolen vehicles. 

    He said the 500 AirTags will be distributed to residents in the coming days. The Association for a Better New York donated the devices amid a spike in crime. The latest data shows car thefts jumped 19.4% in the Bronx from this time last year. Citywide, the number of stolen vehicles has risen from 3,756 to 4,184, up 11.4%, over that same period. 

    NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell had this to say about the AirTags: 

    “It allows our officers to be more strategic while mitigating pursuits, keeping us safe and keeping the community safe.

    “Hopefully we recover your car undamaged, we take a bad guy off the streets, and you get a car back to conduct your business and it doesn’t impose on your life.”

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

    While the mayor urged New Yorkers to use the AirTags, the internet laughed at the new plan… 

    “Democrats will do anything but enforce the laws,” a Twitter user said while replying to the story published by ABC News. 

    Someone questioned: “How is this going to help? The judges let the thieves go through their no bail program.” 

    People seem fed up with progressive city leadership… 

    “And then what? You track down the car with the thief still behind the wheel, what do you do? Arrest him for the 10th time and then let him out in 48 hours? I hope you’re buying a lot of air tags.” 

    This is all just for optics, as Adams fails to confront a wave of car thefts. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 18:30

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Today’s News 3rd May 2023

  • Disarm The IRS, De-Militarize The Bureaucracy, & Dismantle The Standing Army
    Disarm The IRS, De-Militarize The Bureaucracy, & Dismantle The Standing Army

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.”

    – Thomas Jefferson, 1789

    What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?

    Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the IRS, Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.

    Add in the Biden Administration’s plans to swell the ranks of the IRS by 87,000 new employees (some of whom will be authorized to use deadly force) and grow the nation’s police forces by 100,000 more cops, and you’ve got a nation in the throes of martial law.

    We’re being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun.

    Make that hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.

    As Adam Andrzejewski writes for Forbes, “the federal government has become one never-ending gun show.”

    While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, federal agencies have been placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets and military gear.

    For example, the IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.

    The Veterans Administration purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.

    The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.

    According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.

    The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. The Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”

    Even agencies such as Amtrak and NASA have their own SWAT teams.

    Ask yourselves: why are government agencies being turned into military outposts?

    What’s with the buildup of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies? Even the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department have their own SWAT teams. Most of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice.

    Why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?

    For that matter, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?

    Why do local police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?

    Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?

    Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of these realistic urban training drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.

    We should be alarmed.

    As James Madison warned, “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

    Unfortunately, we’re long past the first experiment on our freedoms, and merely taking alarm over this build-up of military might will no longer suffice.

    Nothing about this de facto army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies is necessary for national security.

    Moreover, while these weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which are armed with military-style guns, ammunition and equipment; trained in military tactics; and authorized to make arrests and use deadly force—may look and act like the military, they are not the military.

    Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.

    This standing army—a.k.a. a national police force—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution and rule by force is exactly what America’s founders feared, and its danger cannot be overstated or ignored.

    This is exactly what martial law looks like—when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it: Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.

    The militarization of America’s police forces in recent decades, which has gone hand in hand with the militarization of America’s bureaucratic agencies, has merely sped up the timeline by which the nation is transformed into an authoritarian regime.

    Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of administrative, police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military with little to no regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

    This quasi-state of martial law has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for legislatures to render otherwise lawful activities as extremist if they appear to be anti-government, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.

    Don’t delude yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state.

    This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.

    This is a turning point.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

    If we are to have any hope of salvaging what’s left of our battered freedoms, we’d do well to start by disarming the IRS and the rest of the federal and state bureaucratic agencies, de-militarizing domestic police forces, and dismantling the police state’s standing army.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/03/2023 – 00:05

  • Rise Of Skynet? Robot Dog Gets ChatGPT Brain
    Rise Of Skynet? Robot Dog Gets ChatGPT Brain

    A team of artificial intelligence engineers equipped a Boston Dynamics robot dog with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Text-to-Speech voice, creating what could be a real-life Skynet-like robot. 

    In a recent video posted to Twitter, machine learning engineer Santiago Valdarrama showed how the robo-dog can interact with humans via a voice interface faster than control panels and reports.

    “These robots run automated missions every day,” Valdarrama said in a Twitter thread, noting that each mission could be “miles-long, hard-to-understand configuration files” and “only technical people can handle them.” When paired with ChatGPT and Google’s Text-to-Speech voice, a user can ask simple questions to the robot about “configuration files and the mission results.” 

    “We can now ask the robots about past and future missions and get an answer in real time. ChatGPT interprets the question, parses the files, and formulates the answer,” he said. 

    The ChatGPT brain means anyone can talk to the robo-dog. 

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    In the short term, integrating a ChatGPT brain into robots may appear harmless. However, there’s a dark risk to artificial intelligence, giving rise to intelligent robots in a Skynet-like scenario. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 23:45

  • They're Taking A Wrecking Ball To The "American Reality"
    They’re Taking A Wrecking Ball To The “American Reality”

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    Last September– a bit more than seven months ago– my father died. Technically he was my step-father, but he was every bit my dad, and I loved him. The loss was hard.

    We didn’t do a memorial service right away, though. My mother understandably just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. So we waited… until last weekend, and held the memorial service at the George Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

    It was a good thing my mother booked such a large venue; the memorial service was incredibly well attended, and nearly 500 people came to pay their respects.

    After the service was over, I wanted to get my mind off the day’s events, so some friends and I popped upstairs to check out the Bush presidential museum… which was currently presenting an exhibit aptly named “Freedom Matters”.

    I couldn’t agree more.

    Access to the museum, however, is tightly controlled. And you can only enter after going through an airport-style security checkpoint. You know the drill– empty your pockets, take off your clothes, and submit to an angry authority who treats you like you’ve just been booked at the county jail.

    My friend Jim was lucky enough to receive extra screening; after setting off the metal detector, he was pulled aside and assumed the “I surrender” pose while gruff security personnel waved a magnetic wand near his genitals.

    Curiously the security wand kept going off, prompting the increasingly irate guard to demand “what is this? What’s in here?”

    I couldn’t help myself and shouted, “It’s his dignity!” Apparently Jim forgot to remove it before going through security.

    The irony seemed to be lost on the guards, whose brusque treatment of museum visitors was taking place directly in front of an exhibit literally called “Freedom Matters”.

    At the front of the exhibit was a large banner– I snapped a photo– defining freedom, according to a former Soviet dissident:

    “Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it’s a fear society.”

    I thought about this quote for a few moments, glanced back at the security guards wanding another unlucky visitor, and quickly realized– based on this definition– that the US is quickly becoming a fear society.

    You can no longer freely express views without fear of reprisal anymore– especially if those views conflict with the radical woke left.

    Personal opinions can easily be viewed as hate speech, misinformation, violence, etc. And we’ve all seen too many instances of people’s lives being ruined by cancel culture. But I’ll come back to this.

    After wandering around the museum for a while and enjoying some jokes with my friends, I finally returned home to the AirBnb I’m renting with my family, very close to where I grew up in the Dallas area.

    It’s the quintessential American suburb: clean, quiet, safe, and stable. The house where I’m staying is at the end of a picturesque tree-lined cul-de-sac, and on the other end of the street is a large park where small children were playing organized sports in the afternoon.

    Parents chatted with each other on the playground while their kids bounced around the jungle gym. Retirees were out walking their dogs. Even the postman drove by and greeted some of the residents by name. Everyone was happy… and it was basically perfect.

    This isn’t the famous ‘American Dream’. It’s not a dream. This is real life as it’s supposed to be… the pinnacle of civilization, the product of more than two centuries of hard work and responsibility. It is the American Reality.

    That’s why it’s so frustrating to watch the people in charge dismantle it. Brick by brick, neighborhood by neighborhood, they’ve been chipping away at this vast, enviable middle class prosperity, ripping it away in front of our very eyes.

    They’ve encouraged “mostly peaceful” violence and caused an alarming rise in crime as a result of their soft “criminal first” policies.

    They’ve sent the cost of living to record highs, and yet have no understanding how their spending practices could have possibly contributed to inflation. They’ve expanded the national debt to a record high $31.5 trillion and plan to keep overspending tax revenue by trillions of dollars every year.

    They’ve worked hard to re-engineer childhood education (and have succeeded in many school districts). Biology has been rewritten to conform to new woke ethics. Math is racist. And parents who complain about the decline in educational standards are threatened by the federal government.

    The most comical part of this suffering is the abject political dysfunction that’s on display every single day of our lives.

    Consider that, amid deadly and toxic train derailments, airplanes around the country that have been grounded, total chaos at the national seaports, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s priority right now is ensuring that Ford and General Motors use female crash test dummies.

    It’s so ridiculous it almost sounds made up. And yet it’s completely true.

    Or consider that the Treasury Department is now weeks away from defaulting on the national debt, once again, having reached its statutory debt limit. Congress is required to pass a law to raise the debt ceiling.

    Yet the President of the United States refuses to negotiate a single penny in spending cuts in order to reach a compromise with the House of Representatives. Not a penny.

    Simultaneously the guy was shown on video recently unable to remember how many grandchildren he has, or even the fact that he had recently returned from a trip to Ireland.

    These examples of extreme incompetence never end. It’s so aggravating. Even terrifying.

    That’s why I write so much about taking simple, sensible steps to reclaim control.

    For example, if you think Pete Buttigieg is doing a great job as Transportation Secretary, then by all means, please continue to overpay your taxes and give him as much of your money as possible.

    If, on the other hand, you recognize that he is demonstrably incompetent, completely unqualified to be Transportation Secretary, and was only given the position because he checks a diversity box (and agreed to endorse candidate Biden in 2020) then you might want to consider the multitude of completely legal ways to reduce your tax bill… and stop giving Pete so much money to waste.

    It’s perfectly normal to feel angry or disgusted with America’s terrible leadership. But it’s a lot more effective to channel some of that energy into reducing their impact on your life.

    There absolutely are ways to reduce your tax bill, to mitigate the effects of inflation, to still make phenomenal investments, to fund your retirement, and to ensure that you’re in a position of strength no matter how destructive they become.

    There’s no downside in doing this. If this decline reverses and America starts to dig its way out of this hole, you won’t be worse off for putting yourself in a stronger position.

    And that is actually still a possibility. This country has so much potential upside from its entrepreneurial brilliance, talented workforce, immense resource wealth, and more. That’s why it’s so bewildering to see how badly the people in charge are screwing it up.

    At the moment, though, it’s difficult to see any real change on the horizon. As President Biden said in his re-election announcement, he wants to “finish the job”. By that I presume he means completely destroying the country.

    This is nothing new; history is full of superpowers who eradicate themselves from within. They lay waste to the very ideals that made them strong and prosperous to begin with, they create divisions and disunity, and they subject themselves to horrendous, weak leadership.

    But it’s one thing to understand the decline of empires and civilizations through the lens of history. It’s quite another to watch it happen from your living room window.

    *  *  *

    If you can see what is happening, and where this is all going, you understand why it is so important to have a Plan B. That’s why we published our 31-page, fully updated Perfect Plan B Guide, which you can download here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 23:25

  • Watch: Democrats Have No Interest In Voting For Joe Biden Again In 2024
    Watch: Democrats Have No Interest In Voting For Joe Biden Again In 2024

    The only reason to vote for Biden?  He’s not Trump.  This is the sentiment repeated across America as millions of Democrats say they would rather opt out of the Biden train and find a different candidate by 2024.  Of course, this was the same view many leftists vocalized in 2020, but they voted for him anyway.  

    Whether or not you believe that federal elections matter in the slightest, it’s important to point out that Biden is perhaps one of the least liked presidents in recent memory, and one that sparks zero enthusiasm from his political base.  Despite an increasing woke fanaticism among leftists in terms of ideology and Biden doing everything in his power to push their agenda, a majority of Democrat voters (52%) still do not want Biden to run for office again next year.

    It appears that the embarrassment is becoming too much for them…

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 23:05

  • 14 Million Jobs Will Be Slashed Globally By 2027 Owing To AI And ESG Standards: WEF
    14 Million Jobs Will Be Slashed Globally By 2027 Owing To AI And ESG Standards: WEF

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

    The World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned that the employment landscape will change drastically over the next five years amid increasingly widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI), the transition to green energy, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, and slower economic growth.

    A cameraman works in front of a logo of the World Economic Forum in Davos, eastern Switzerland, on Jan. 20, 2019. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

    According to WEF’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2023,” roughly 23 percent of jobs are expected to change by 2027, with around 69 million new jobs to be created and 83 million eliminated, resulting in a decrease of 14 million jobs, or 2 percent of current employment.

    The report (pdf) surveyed 803 companies collectively employing more than 11.3 million workers in 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from across the globe, on macro and technology trends and their impact on jobs and skills, as well as the “workforce transformation strategies” that businesses plan to implement between now and 2027.

    It found that clerical or secretarial roles, including bank tellers, cashiers and ticket clerks, data entry clerks, postal service clerks, and administrative and executive secretaries will likely see the fastest decline in roles over the next five years relative to their size today, with roughly 26 million fewer jobs by 2027.

    Meanwhile, certain tech jobs, including those focused on AI and machine learning, sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts, information security specialists, and fintech engineers, are expected to see an increase in employment.

    Overall, the biggest job growth will likely be seen across the fields of education (10 percent, leading to 3 million additional jobs), agriculture (30 percent, or 3 million additional jobs), and digital commerce and trade (4 million additional jobs), according to the report.

    A smartphone with a displayed ChatGPT logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken on Feb. 23, 2023. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

    Renewable Energy, ESG Pushing Job Changes

    The WEF cites trends such as the transition to renewable energy, ESG standards—which are used by companies in the investment decision-making process to measure sustainable and ethical impacts—advancing technology adoption, and localization of supply chains as the “leading drivers of job growth,” while economic challenges such as ongoing high inflation, slower economic growth, and supply shortages pose “the greatest threat” to job creation.

    “The largest job creation and destruction effects come from environmental, technology, and economic trends. Among the macro trends listed, businesses predict the strongest net job-creation effect to be driven by investments that facilitate the green transition of businesses, the broader application of ESG standards, and supply chains becoming more localized, albeit with job growth offset by partial job displacement in each case,” the report states.

    U.S. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly warned that companies embracing ESG standards risk slashing investment returns and hampering economic growth, which could have ripple effects across the economy.

    “Climate change adaptation and the demographic dividend in developing and emerging economies also rate high as net job creators,” the WEF report adds. “Technological advancement through increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and increased digital access are expected to drive job growth in more than half of surveyed companies, offset by expected job displacement in one-fifth of companies,” it continues.

    The report also cites the increasing cost of living for consumers as another factor that will likely pose the greatest threat to the job market in the next five years and will significantly displace jobs.

    Attendees take pictures and interact with the Engineered Arts Ameca humanoid robot with artificial intelligence as it is demonstrated during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Jan. 5, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    Firms ‘Need to Be Ready for the Disruptions Ahead’

    Elsewhere, the WEF found that the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased geopolitical divisions, and demographic dividends in developing and emerging economies ranked lower as drivers of business evolution by respondents.

    The latest report comes shortly after Goldman Sachs economists forecast two-thirds of occupations across America could be partially automated by AI, which has exploded in use in recent years, despite concerns over its potential risks to society and humanity.

    However, economists also noted that its use in both business and society could lead to an almost $7 trillion increase in global GDP owing to increased productivity and manufacturing, among other factors.

    According to the WEF report, nearly 75 percent of companies surveyed plan to adopt AI, big data, and cloud computing within the next five years, which around 50 percent of firms believe will create job growth and 25 percent expect will lead to job losses.

    Elsewhere, the report found that organizations estimate roughly 34 percent of all business-related tasks are currently performed by machines, with the remaining 66 percent performed by humans.

    “The latest findings in the Future of Jobs Report renew calls for action from all labor market stakeholders,” said Sander van ‘t Noordende, CEO of the human resource consulting firm, Randstad.

    “Acceleration in digitalization, AI, and automation are creating tremendous opportunities for the global workforce, but employers, governments, and other organizations need to be ready for the disruptions ahead. By collectively offering greater skilling resources, more efficiently connecting talent to jobs, and advocating for a well-regulated labor market, we can protect and prepare workers for a more specialized and equitable future of work,” he added.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 22:45

  • New Wave Of Gaza-Israel Rocket Fire After Death Of Palestinian Hunger Striker
    New Wave Of Gaza-Israel Rocket Fire After Death Of Palestinian Hunger Striker

    More rocket fire between Israel and the Gaza strip erupted Tuesday, following news of the death of Khader Adnan Mohammad Musa, a 45-year-old Palestinian prisoner who was a leader of the Islamic Jihad. He died after an 86-day hunger strike in Israeli jails, and is said to be the first Palestinian prisoner to die of a long term hunger strike.

    At least three on the Israeli side have been injured after an initial barrage of 22 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, setting off air raid sirens across southern Israel. Four of the projectiles were reported intercepted by anti-air defense systems. Israel has responded with tank fire, and further escalation in strikes on the strip is likely. Later into the evening, Israeli officials and media tallied over 30 rockets fired. Gaza militants are vowing further retaliation for their “martyr”. 

    Palestinian Khader Adnan on hunger strike, via AFP

    The “Joint Command of Resistance Groups”, which makes up multiple militant factions operating in Gaza, has vowed more action to come, stating that the first wave of rockets was a “a first response”.

    Protests have broken out in the West Bank, including in the large town of Ramallah, putting already high tensions with Israeli military and police further on edge.

    Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called the death of Khader Adnan a “deliberate assassination”. He had been arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank for alleged security-related crimes. 

    Shtayyeh blamed Israel for his death “by rejecting his request for his release, neglecting him medically and keeping him in his cell, despite the seriousness of his health condition,” according to a statement.

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    Based on the latest description of the deteriorating situation in The Associated Press, things are teetering on the brink of a possible new outbreak of large-scale clashes between Palestinians and Israeli authorities, including in prisons where thousands of Palestinians are held, sometimes without charges:

    Palestinians called for a general strike in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and protesters rushed to Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied territory, slinging stones at Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at crowds gathered at the northern entrance to the West Bank city of Ramallah. Early Tuesday, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired another volley of rockets that landed in empty fields in Israel. Islamic Jihad said that its “fight continues and will not stop.”

    Palestinian prisoners are overseen by Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultra-nationalist politician who has tightened restrictions on the Palestinian inmates, including shortening their shower time and closing prison bakeries.

    Ben-Gvir said Tuesday that prison officials must exhibit “zero-tolerance toward hunger strikes and unrest in security prisons” and ordered prisoners be confined to their cells.

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    International reports say Adnan had been arrested 12 times and spent a total of eight years in Israeli prisons, with most of that time having been spent in administrative detention, meaning he was held without trial.

    Israel has defended the controversial practice of raiding West Bank homes and then holding people without trial as necessary to root out dangerous militants who pose a threat to Israeli security.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 22:25

  • Judge Orders Hunter Biden To Provide Details On Income From Artwork, Investments, Gifts
    Judge Orders Hunter Biden To Provide Details On Income From Artwork, Investments, Gifts

    Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden may have paid the mother of his 4-year-old daughter up to $750,000 in child support since March 2020, said one of his attorneys at a hearing.

    Hunter Biden, the son U.S. President Joe Biden, holds his son Beau as they arrive for the National Thanksgiving Turkey pardoning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on Nov. 21, 2022. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    Hunter Biden appeared in Independence County Circuit Court in Batesville, Arkansas, on May 1 as ordered by the judge overseeing the child support dispute between the president’s 53-year-old son and Lunden Roberts. Roberts is the Arkansas woman who, according to court filings, had a relationship with Hunter and gave birth to a baby girl in August 2018. She sued for support in 2019.

    At first Hunter Biden denied that the child was his, but a DNA test confirmed he is the father.

    On March 12, 2020, he and Roberts agreed to an undisclosed amount in monthly child support to begin on April 1, 2020. Terms of the agreement are sealed because they contain sensitive personal information, including the amount of monthly support and each party’s source of income.

    Hunter Biden asked the court to review the child support arrangement the following September because his financial status had changed.

    Lawyer Reveals Monthly Payment

    During a discussion of the discovery process, Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell, said his client has been paying $20,000 monthly, more than $700,000 since the support order was signed.

    Judge Holly Meyer clarified during the May 1 hearing that any information discussed in open court was a matter of public record.

    Lowell’s remarks came after he and attorney Brent Langdon of Dallas, Texas, complained that news outlets had published information from sealed court files. He said news reports referenced tax files, information on Hunter Biden’s cars, and other things that had been redacted.

    “How is it that things that are redacted in the file are released to the Daily Mail? There are matters that are being redacted that are getting out to the daily news,” Langdon said.

    Meyer said that, without proof someone was illegally releasing information, there was little she could do. Journalists and the public often speculate on matters and may come close to guessing what is in a sealed file, she added.

    ‘Can’t Gag the World’

    “If the press comes up with those things, I can’t control that. I can’t gag the world,” Meyer said.

    The judge ordered Hunter Biden to provide information on his income from his artwork, investments, employment, gifts from friends, and other sources. She also ordered Roberts to provide information on the value of her property and income while working with her father’s business.

    The dispute until now has been mostly a battle of lawyers, with neither of the litigants appearing in court. Hunter Biden’s lawyers have filed at least five motions to delay the process including a last-minute attempt to delay the May 1, 2023 hearing.

    Meyer denied that motion.

    “All parties are to physically appear for all future court hearings in this matter. The parties will no longer have their appearances excused,” Meyer wrote in her order.

    Motions Must Be Filed Correctly

    Roberts’ lawyers have asked the court to find Hunter Biden in contempt and jail him for refusing to comply with previous orders, and provide requested discovery information.

    Meyer wrote that those matters would be dealt with once everyone was in the courtroom.

    In subsequent filings, Roberts’ attorneys complained that the Biden team was dragging its feet in the discovery process. They claim Hunter Biden is living a “lavish lifestyle.”

    During the May 1 hearing, Meyer said the contempt request needed to be appropriately filed. She added that she couldn’t rule on the amount of child support because neither side provided enough information in the discovery process to move ahead.

    The judge went through a to-do list so each side knew what they were expected to do in order to proceed.

    One issue has been the role Hunter Biden’s laptop would play in the process. Roberts’ lawyers reportedly believe the laptop contains important financial information. The Biden lawyers have refused even to acknowledge that the computer belongs to their client. Meyer said all these issues would be addressed as long as each side does what it needs to do to advance the case.

    Warning the lawyers that her patience had worn thin, Meyer said she would hold them to the agreed-to schedule.

    “I expect this case to move. I will ride herd on you, gentlemen.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 22:05

  • Billionaire Steven Roth's Mega Manhattan Redevelopment Project Battered By CRE Turmoil
    Billionaire Steven Roth’s Mega Manhattan Redevelopment Project Battered By CRE Turmoil

    The billionaire head of Vornado Realty Trust is facing an uncertain future regarding his multi-billion dollar investment plan to build “gleaming office skyscrapers around Manhattan’s universally hated Penn Station,” according to Bloomberg. The uncertainty comes as the regional banking crisis has sparked a painful credit crunch already battering commercial real estate. 

    “We’re going to take a breath,” stated Chief Executive Steven Roth during Vornado’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday. He maintained the plan to continue investing upwards of $2 billion in redeveloping over 5 million square feet in what he calls “Penn District.” Vornado’s redevelopment plan to build new office buildings and refurbish older ones is a bet to capitalize off the modernization of Penn Station. 

    Roth has spent the last two decades acquiring plots of land around the train station in Manhattan. The billionaire saw the potential for an area of the city to flourish once redevelopment projects were completed, but have since been overshadowed by high office vacancy rates in a post-Covid environment, along with a regional banking crisis that has spread to commercial real estate. 

    Shares of his Vornado plunged to a 27-year low last week when the tradeable REIT of office, retail, and residential buildings surprised investors with an announcement about delaying its dividend to preserve cash. 

    We have repeatedly shown readers big banks such as JPM, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have all joined our CRE gloom parade as rumblings in the office space market emerge. 

    It is an unfavorable time for office property owners, particularly for those like Roth’s company, which is constructing office skyscrapers. Amid all of the gathering storm clouds in the office space market, a critical question arises if the real estate mogul can still deliver on the Penn District project. 

    “Roth has missed the bus, and the bus isn’t coming back until 2030 or beyond,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy at New York University, referring to the downturn in the CRE space, primarily office buildings. 

    It was only last year when Roth told analysts on an earnings call he was “doubly and triply excited about the Penn District.” But that excitement has evaporated in a rising interest rate environment and tightening credit conditions over the past year. Roth said earlier this year that new construction is “almost impossible” because of tight lending. 

    Meanwhile, office space vacancy rates in New York remain at alarming highs, while companies are reducing headcount and footprint to save on costs, subsequently reducing their demand for office space. 

    Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jeffrey Langbaum said Vornado’s Penn District buildings will need to “sustain leasing demand by creating space that appeals to tenants looking to migrate to newer, higher-quality properties.” 

    According to Alexander Goldfarb, an analyst at Piper Sandler, Vornado faces a series of challenges, including high debt costs and low rent prospects that could present challenges in the completion of Penn District.  

    Here’s an idea: Vornado might want to consider constructing apartment buildings instead of office space amid the CRE downturn. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 21:45

  • Democrat Cities Have Highest Homicide Rates, Report Finds
    Democrat Cities Have Highest Homicide Rates, Report Finds

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

    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.

    A Richmond Police car in Richmond, Va., on Jan. 20, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    Political Reason Behind Spiking Homicides

    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.”

    Countering the rising homicide trend will require boosting police funding and improved police training to avoid some of the problems resulting from the use of force, he added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 21:25

  • Fox Can’t Replace Tucker Carlson: Victor Davis Hanson
    Fox Can’t Replace Tucker Carlson: Victor Davis Hanson

    Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Fox News executives miscalculated in their sudden decision to oust the network’s most popular prime-time host, Tucker Carlson, according to Victor Davis Hanson, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

    “One of the messages the Murdochs are not quite understanding [is] that when you take away somebody who had a greater potential elsewhere and was a precious asset that anchored your whole evening lineup, and you fired him in a fit of pique, or anger, without thinking it through, you’ve gotta be very careful, because you’re not gonna be able to replace a guy like that,” Victor Davis Hanson told The Telegraph on April 29.

    Tucker Carlson during the 2022 Fox Nation Patriot Awards at Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood in Hollywood, Fla., on Nov. 17, 2022. (Jason Koerner/Getty Images)

    A week after Carlson’s abrupt exit, why the popular prime-time host left the network remains a mystery.

    A brief statement issued by Fox News said only that the two “have agreed to part ways” and “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”

    Carson’s last broadcast was on April 21. During his final on-air segment, Carlson told his audience that he would be back on Monday.

    While the network has parted with several popular news personalities like Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly, the case for Carson was different, according to Hanson.

    “Before they fired him, they thought ‘Fox is bigger than any one anchor: We fired Bill O’Reilly. And guess what? Tucker showed up, and he has the same size of audience or bigger,’” he said. “We can do that because people tune into us because [of] the brand.

    “But I don’t think they understand it’s not quite like that. It’s cumulative: It’s like a cut, a cut, a cut, and each one magnifies the prior one. So when you get rid of Bill O’Reilly, and you get rid of Megyn Kelly … you go up and down, and Newsmax and competitors creep in and grab your audience.

    “I don’t think that there was a serious cause of firing him other than an emotional one,” Hanson said.

    Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist, military historian, and author of “The Dying Citizen,” in Visalia, Calif. on Feb. 7, 2023. (York Du/The Epoch Times)

    On April 26, Carlson broke the silence with a video posted on Twitter that drew some 23 million views, exceeding the number of viewers of his old prime-time show on the cable news channel.

    Hanson suggested Carlson doesn’t really need to go on television. Instead, the media figure, like his former colleague Megyn Kelly, could pursue an independent route.

    “Even though Tucker was supposedly getting two more years at $20 million a year, given his appeal and talents, he could probably make more than that with his own venue,” he said, adding that the media business is “fragmented.”

    But Fox News “needed Tucker Carlson to appeal to the new Republican Party,” Hanson noted.

    “What do I mean by that? He was talking about the absurdity of woke, and I don’t where you find somebody like that, who has the ability to articulate those positions but is not crazy,” he continued.

    “Tucker came from one of the wealthiest families in California. He was an aristocrat … So for him, brought up like that as an aristocrat, to become a populist and yet know how the aristocratic mind works, is very unusual.”

    Hanson estimated the “big vacuum” created by Carlson’s departure was about 3.5 million viewers, breathing life into rival conservative networks.

    Following Carlson’s exit, Newsmax drew doubled viewers at the 8 p.m. EST slot, Hanson said, adding that Fox News’ parent company lost $800 million in market value after the April 24 announcement.

    “I’m not sure that they can find somebody like that to come in … that is funny and affable and knowledgeable.”

    Now that the network is taking rating hits after Carlson’s exit, leftists are celebrating.

    “They’re in celebration now. AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and people are saying things like, ‘We don’t believe in cancel culture, but we got him canceled.’ That’s what they’re saying. They think they took him down.

    “They criticize him every day. They said he was a racist. They said he was a transphobe, homophobe, and they think that eventually they got … For that slot should have been making hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, but they were able to cut his revenues by 30 or 40 percent, by boycotts, pressuring corporations that they were going to boycott them if they bought time.

    “They feel that that’s a paradigm that now is successful. And they’re going to use it.”

    The Epoch Times has reached out to Fox News for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 20:45

  • "We Want More Money": Hollywood Writers Strike, Threatens Production Of Late-Night Shows
    “We Want More Money”: Hollywood Writers Strike, Threatens Production Of Late-Night Shows

    Thousands of Hollywood writers are putting down their pens and shutting down their laptops today as they join the picket line in a major labor action. This comes after their union was unable to reach agreements with movie and TV studios to secure higher wages. 

    The Writers Guild of America, representing about 11,500 Hollywood writers, decided to strike Tuesday following six weeks of failed labor negotiations with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount, and Sony. 

    “The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” WGA wrote in a press release. 

    “From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a “day rate” in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership,” the union continued. 

    WGA has been advocating for better pay and adjustments to a business model they argue has made earning a living wage more challenging over the last several years. According to the union, soaring content creation by streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ has led to a drop in the median pay for producers and writers. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    The last time WGA went on strike was in November 2007, causing a bottleneck in Hollywood’s content production process. The labor dispute lasted for 100 days, finally ending in early 2008. 

    One immediate disruption will be the production of late-night talk shows, including Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Depending on how long the work stoppage last, this could impact television shows and movies. 

    The labor action might not be a terrible thing considering an increasing number of Americans are fed up with ‘woke’ content pushed by Hollywood elites. This was evident last year when a series of films, books, and other media projects with progressive messaging failed to resonate with audiences and consumers.

    WGA also called for the regulation of artificial intelligence within scriptwriting. 

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    During a recent interview on “NBC Nightly News,” Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Netflix’s animated series “BoJack Horseman,” said writers’ demands are clear and concise: 

    “We want more money. We want enough money to make a basic living doing what we love.”

    “I think we’re getting to the point where it’s going to be that the only people who can afford to try to start a career in television or movies are going to be people who are independently wealthy already, which I don’t think is good for television or movies. I don’t think we want that.”

    Recall we penned a recent note titled “Get Woke, Go Broke: Hollywood Is Dying And They Deserve It.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 20:25

  • Pornhub Blocks Access In Utah After State Passes New Age Verification Law
    Pornhub Blocks Access In Utah After State Passes New Age Verification Law

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

    Pornhub has disabled access to its website in Utah in response to a new law requiring companies publishing adult content to verify users’ ages before allowing them to view the X-rated material on their platforms.

    The pornography website confirmed in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times that it completely disabled its websites for individuals located in the state on May 1.

    Individuals in Utah attempting to access Pornhub’s site are now greeted with a lengthy video message from the adult entertainer and member of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, Cherie DeVille, explaining that they are unable to do so because of the new age-verification law.

    “As you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” DeVille says.

    “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

    “In addition, mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply. As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content,” DeVille continued.

    The adult entertainer goes on to state that Pornhub, which is owned by Montreal-based company Mindgeek, places great emphasis on user safety, but that it ultimately believes the most effective way to protect children and adults using the site is to identify them via their devices, allowing them access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification.

    Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Utah,” DeVille continued. “Please contact your representatives before it is too late and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.”

    Utah Bill Tackles Harmful Materials

    The move by Pornhub comes after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox last month signed into law Senate Bill 287, also known as the “Online Pornography Viewing Age Requirements.”

    Under that bill, commercial entities that provide pornography or other materials harmful to minors are required to verify users’ ages through “reasonable age-verification methods” before they can access such material.

    Such methods include “digitized information cards” or third-party age-verification services that compare the personal information entered by the individual seeking to access the website to material available from either a commercially available database or an aggregate of databases, used by the government agencies to confirm identities or age.

    Adult content companies can also use “any commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data” to confirm the individual’s identity when they attempt to access the material, the bill states.

    Commercial entities that “knowingly and intentionally” publish or distribute a “substantial portion” of material that is harmful to minors online without performing reasonable age verification methods to ensure users are of age may be held liable under the law, including for damages and court costs resulting from the minor accessing the material.

    The law defines harmful material as “material that exploits, is devoted to, or principally consists of descriptions of actual, simulated, or animated display or depiction of any of the following, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors: (i) pubic hair, anus, vulva, genitals, or nipple of the female breast; (ii) touching, caressing, or fondling of nipples, breasts, buttocks, anuses, or genitals; or (iii) sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions, exhibitions, or any other sexual act.”

    The age verification legislation is set to take effect on May 3.

    Porn a ‘Public Health Crisis’

    Pornhub’s terms of service state that users must be 18 years or older, or the age of majority in the jurisdiction they are accessing the website from in order to use the site.

    “If you are under 18 or the applicable age of majority, please do not use the Website. You also represent that the jurisdiction from which you access the Website does not prohibit the receiving or viewing of sexually explicit content,” it states.

    However, the state of Utah in 2016 declared porn a “public health crisis” that was creating a “broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms.” A string of other states, including Arizona, have since followed suit.

    Last year, lawmakers in Louisiana passed similar legislation requiring publishers of online material that could be harmful to minors to verify user ages.

    Unlike Utah, Louisiana provides a mobile app that allows users to create a digital replica of their driving license which can then be scanned to verify their age, according to Ars Technica.

    This is not the first time that Pornhub has found itself at the center of controversy. In 2021, the website came under fire after The New York Times reported that it hosted unlawful content, including nonconsensual pornography and videos of child sexual assault.

    While the adult website initially denied the allegations, it later pledged to crack down on illegal content and said it will only allow properly identified users to upload such materials.

    The Epoch Times has contacted Pornhub for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 20:05

  • Biden Sending 1,500 Troops To Southern Border To Deal With Surge Of Illegal Immigrants
    Biden Sending 1,500 Troops To Southern Border To Deal With Surge Of Illegal Immigrants

    By Joseph Lord of The Epoch Times

    The United States will be sending troops to the southern border with Mexico, the White House announced on May 2. The move was unveiled ahead of an expected surge of illegal immigrants as pandemic restrictions, known as Title 42, are set to lift on May 11.

    The southern border has been hammered over the past two years by an unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants, leaving border control authorities struggling to keep up with limited resources.

    Pentagon Press Secretary Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed in a Tuesday press conference that the Pentagon would be sending 1,500 U.S. military personnel “to supplement” Border Patrol resources for 90 days. Ryder suggested this could be extended as the need arises.

    These 1,500 troops “will fill critical capability gaps, such as ground-based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support until CBP [Customs and Border Protection] can address these needs through contracted support.”

    “Military personnel will not directly participate in law enforcement activities,” Ryder added.

    While the first wave of troops will be drawn from active-duty personnel, Ryder said that the Pentagon was looking into other options, including potentially pulling from reserves.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that the move was made in the hopes of freeing Border Patrol agents up to focus on apprehending illegal immigrants crossing the border.

    Under President Donald Trump, military servicemembers performed similar functions at the border. When Trump deployed troops to the border in 2018, Democrats blasted the move as a “politicization” of the military. This time however, in comments to reporters, Jean-Pierre said that the deployment was “common practice.”

    “DoD personnel have been supporting [Customs and Border Protection] at the border for almost two decades now,” she said, referring to the Department of Defense.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in a statement Tuesday, said the additional forces would help “to reduce irregular migration, ensure safe, orderly, and efficient processing, and promptly remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States.”

    Currently, 2,500 troops are serving in some capacity along the border. The addition of 1,500 new troops, nearly a twofold increase, comes days ahead of the end of Title 42, a COVID-era immigration rule making it easier for illegal aliens to be turned away at the border.

    DHS added that Customs and Border Protection’s investment in new technology and personnel will reduce the need for such assistance moving forward.

    Despite an unprecedented flow of illegal migrants across the border, the administration has long refrained from using the word “crisis” to describe the situation.

    President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have each insisted that the border is secure and under operational control.

    The decision to send troops to the border comes as Republicans prepare a series of legislation addressing immigration problems along the border.

    Read more here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 19:35

  • Biden's Game Of Chicken: "We Won't See A Debt Ceiling Solution Until The Market Panics"
    Biden’s Game Of Chicken: “We Won’t See A Debt Ceiling Solution Until The Market Panics”

    By Philip Marey, Senior Strategist at Rabobank

    Summary

    • Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Yellen sent a new letter to the Congressional leadership, with the message that the X-date could arrive as soon as June 1.

    • With the adoption of the Limit, Save, Grow Act in the House of Representatives and President Biden’s unwillingness to negotiate about conditions for a raise in the debt limit, a game of chicken between Republicans and Democrats has started.

    • So far, markets reacted to the possibility of a US federal government default with a revealed preference for one month treasury bills over longer dated T-bills. However, we are still far from the panic needed to break the stalemate between Republicans and Democrats. This is likely to occur closer to the X-date.

    • Either this game is over within a few weeks or we are going to see a suspension of the debt limit until later this year. In both cases, we are not likely to see any solution until financial markets start to panic.

    Introduction

    Although the midterm elections in November turned out better for the Democrats than could have been expected based on the high inflation rate and President Biden’s low approval rating, they lost their majority in the House of Representatives. With the 118th Congress in session since early January, the balance of power in Washington DC has shifted. After two years of Democratic Control, with Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress and a Democratic President, the Republicans are now able to shoot down any bill on the House floor in the next two years. This means a regime shift has taken place in US politics this year to Divided Government, where legislation requires bipartisan cooperation. The first of the fiscal standoffs that we warned for in Midterm implications is already taking shape and it is the most dangerous one, the debt limit.

    McCarthy’s move

    On April 26, the House of Representatives adopted the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, presented by House Speaker McCarthy a week earlier, with a 217-215 vote. All Democrats voted no, so did four Republicans. The bill, drafted by the leadership of the House Republicans, in consultation with various members, raises the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024, whichever comes first. Note that the current debt limit of $31.381 trillion was reached on January 19, after which the Treasury Department started extraordinary measures, postponing the X-date, when the Treasury will be unable to meet all of its debt obligations. In exchange for the higher debt ceiling, the House Republicans want to limit government spending. The bill sets discretionary spending for fiscal year 2024 (October 1, 2023 – September 30, 2024) at the level of fiscal year 2022 and then limits growth in discretionary spending to no more than 1% a year in the next decade. The bill also rescinds unspent COVID relief funds, and make changes to energy, regulatory and permitting policies. However, the plan also cuts the increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). What’s more, it will prevent implementation of President Biden’s student debt cancellation and Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) expansion, and impose or expand work requirements in several federal safety net programs. This means serious concessions by the Democrats, which they are not likely to agree to. In fact, President Biden has made clear repeatedly that he does not want to negotiate at all. His position remains that he wants a “clean” debt limit raise, i.e. without any condition.

    Biden’s game of chicken

    With the adoption of Limit, Save, Grow Act by the House of Representatives, and Biden’s demand for a “clean” raise of the debt limit, a game of chicken has started between Republicans and Democrats. Both parties want to avoid a government default, which would cause significant damage to the financial markets and the economy. Consequently, the so-called X-date, when the extraordinary measures are exhausted, is the deadline for the game of chicken. In the time before the deadline, we are not likely to see any party blink, unless a financial market panic breaks out. Once the deadline passes, neither party has an interest in keeping the US in default. By this time, financial markets will definitely be in turmoil.

    It could be argued, especially by Democrats, that as the Republicans are the party attaching conditions to the debt limit increase necessary to avert or end the default, they are likely to bear most of the pressure to concede. This argument frames the current game as a repeat of 2011 and 2013. However, the crucial difference is that the Limit, Save, Grow Act is actually a bill to raise the debt ceiling! So it is misleading to claim that “House Republicans are holding our economy hostage and threatening default” as the White House press secretary did on April 27. In fact, it could be argued, in particular by Republicans, that the Democrats are the obstacle to a raise in the debt ceiling. After all, if the Senate – where Democrats are needed to get the 60 necessary votes – adopts this bill and President Biden signs it into law, the debt ceiling is lifted. The truth is that after the difficult process to confirm McCarthy as the new House Speaker in January, the Democrats hoped that the House Republicans would not be able to agree on what they wanted in exchange for a raise in the debt limit. That would have strengthened the Democrats’ demand for a clean raise, i.e. without conditions. Now, it seems reasonable to start negotiations about spending cuts attached to the raise in the debt ceiling. However, a game of chicken with financial market turmoil as leverage is more likely to unfold. In the end, i.e. close to the X-date, the game of chicken is likely to be resolved under pressure from financial markets. So how are markets reacting to the developments regarding the debt ceiling so far?

    Markets looking for near-term safety

    On January 13, Treasury Secretary Yellen sent a letter to the Congressional leadership, noting that it was unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures would be exhausted before early June. To avoid the risk of holding a treasury bill that may not be repaid investors have shown a preference for near-term treasury bills in recent weeks. The yield on one month bills has clearly moved away from the yield on three, six or twelve month bills. While the yields on the latter three maturities continue to move together, the one month yield tanked after McCarthy’s presentation of the Republican plan brought the debt limit to the forefront. Demand from money market funds likely played a major role in the decline in the one month yield. Recently, money market funds have received large inflows from depositors concerned about the safety of their holdings at small banks or their modest returns at large banks. At the same time, the supply of near-term T-bills has fallen as the Treasury has already hit the debt ceiling and is trying to delay the X-date. So far, markets reacted to the possibility of a US federal government default with a revealed preference for one month T-bills over longer dated T-bills (This should subside as early June enters the one month horizon). However, we are still far from the panic needed to bring Democrats and Republicans together. This is likely to occur closer to the X-date

    X-date in June?

    On May 1, Treasury Secretary Yellen sent a new letter to the Congressional leadership, with the message that “After reviewing recent federal tax receipts, our best estimate is that we will be unable to continue to satisfy all of the government’s obligations by early June, and potentially as early as June 1, if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt limit before that time.” This means that the X-date could arrive sooner than previously expected, due to disappointing tax receipts. Shortly after Yellen’s announcement, President Biden invited top Republicans and Democrats for a meeting next week about raising the debt limit. However, a White House official said that Biden will repeat his view that Congress should pass a stand-alone increase in the debt limit, but that he is open to a discussion on the budget that is not linked to raising the debt limit. In other words, the Democrats are not blinking, neither are the Republicans.

    Also on May 1, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan budget agency, updated its budget projections and concluded that lower-than-expected tax receipts this year create a significantly greater risk that the Treasury will run out of funds in early June. Earlier, they forecasted that the default could occur as soon as July. While, prior to May 1, markets had a wide range of forecasts regarding the X-date, from June to September, and even beyond, it looks like the probability of the X-date being located in June has increased substantially.

    This would increase the pressure on the players of the game of chicken rapidly in the coming weeks. Alternatively, or  because of this, we could see a temporary suspension of the debt limit to buy more time to negotiate (the Republicans are likely to want something in exchange for that, probably something from the Limit, Save, Grow Act they adopted last week). For example, Congress could delay the deadline to the end of the fiscal year, September 30. This would bring the deadline for the budget for fiscal year 2024 and the deadline for the debt limit together, allowing for a comprehensive solution. However, it would also add to the pressure at the new X-date, because failure to reach a deal would lead to both a government shutdown and a government default.

    Conclusion

    The game of chicken between Democrats and Republicans has really kicked off after the House of Representatives voted for the Limit, Save, Grow Act, Treasury Secretary Yellen sent a letter indicating that the X-date could arrive as soon as June 1, and Biden’s repeated dismissal of any conditions attached to a raise in the debt limit. Either this game is over within a few weeks or we are going to see a delay until later this year. In both cases, we are not likely to see any solution until financial markets start to panic.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 19:25

  • Another Train Derailment In Russia Suggests Stepped-Up Covert Sabotage Campaign
    Another Train Derailment In Russia Suggests Stepped-Up Covert Sabotage Campaign

    For the second consecutive day, a Russian freight train has been derailed not far from the Ukrainian border, in what appears to be another sabotage attack. These cross-border irregular warfare attacks seem to be stepping up simultaneous to the so-called Ukrainian Spring counteroffensive being stalled.

    Reuters is reporting based on local sources that “An explosion derailed a freight train for the second day in a row in a Russian region bordering Ukraine on Tuesday, sending both the locomotive and some cars off the tracks, authorities said.”

    Map source: BBC

    Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz confirmed in a Telegram statement, “An unidentified explosive device went off near the Snezhetskaya railway station. There were no casualties.” He described that “As a result of the incident, a locomotive and several wagons of a freight train derailed.”

    The Bryansk region borders both Ukraine and Belarus, and this second sabotage incident happened just to the southeast of Bryansk. With this latest freight disaster, which occurred mid-evening local time, some 20 cars derailed, according to Russian media.

    The day prior (Monday), a section of track in the same oblast but which lies even closer to the border with Ukraine was blown up, derailing a train carrying fuel and timber.

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    Bryansk has been a region which has seen frequent cross-border attacks throughout the conflict. Over the weekend, projectiles fired from Ukraine killed four people in a Russian village which lies just 10km from the border.

    All of this has resulted in speculation over whether the delayed Ukrainian counteroffensive could turn into a focus on irregular cross-border guerrilla tactics.

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    Already there’s been multiple drone attacks, sabotage bombings, as well as assassinations of high-profile Russians. If Ukrainian frontlines collapse, this could unleash more “punishment” inside Russian territory by covert operatives. The Kremlin has frequently also alleged that the US and other NATO countries have supported Ukraine in these black ops.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 19:05

  • Blaming Conservatives For Collapse: Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t On The Debt Ceiling
    Blaming Conservatives For Collapse: Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t On The Debt Ceiling

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

    In 2021 I published an article titled ‘The Fed’s Catch-22 Taper Is A Weapon, Not A Policy Error’ in which I outlined the deliberately engineered trap the Federal Reserve has created for the American economy. Specifically, I confronted the issue of strangled liquidity through increasing debt costs vs continued money printing and inflation.

    It’s an issue that Jerome Powell warned about in 2012, years before he became Fed Chairman; the consequences of creating a stimulus dependent system and then abruptly cutting off the life support. As soon as he was installed as the head of the central bank he implemented the very policies he predicted would cause a crash.

    The result? We just saw the beginning of the end with the latest banking crisis involving companies like SVB, First Republic and Credit Suisse – It’s not just US finances, but banks around the world that rely on liquidity injections from the Fed to stay afloat. The central bankers addicted the system to cheap easy debt and now they are taking away the drugs.

    In other words, no one can honestly argue that the central banks are ignorant or unaware of the threat. They KNOW what’s about to happen and they do not care. But why does the establishment want a crisis now instead of five years ago, or five years in the future?

    Thankfully, much of the public is becoming aware of the various programs to introduce CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), but what they may not understand is the manner in which such massive economic changes usually happen. Generally speaking, in order to institute a new economic system the banks have to take down the old system.

    The last time we saw this happen was just after the Great Depression and WWII. The deflationary crash and the war conjured the proper amount of global chaos and before the dust settled western nations instituted the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, making the dollar the defacto world reserve currency while locking down the price of gold.. Then they established the globalist International Monetary Fund (IMF) the same year and the United Nations in 1945. The world was centralized dramatically in a little over a decade.

    I believe we are fast approaching another engineered singularity, a controlled demolition of existing systems to make way for a cashless society, a one world currency and global governance. I believe this because it’s all the globalists can talk about these days; it’s not as if they’re trying to hide it anymore.

    The BIS and IMF are actively fielding one-world digital currency mechanisms right now; structures that would combine all national CBDCs under one umbrella. In the meantime, globalist think-tanks like the WEF (World Economic Forum) are ranting excessively about the coming era of an AI controlled economy and a “4th Industrial Revolution” in which you will “own nothing, have no privacy” and will be forced to adapt to a cashless socialist sharing system.

    All they need is a scapegoat to complete their crisis formula. War seems to work well in distracting the masses from the true culprits behind any financial calamity, and numerous institutions are hard at work to convince the public that countries like Russia are to blame for ongoing stagflation problems. Of course, the stagflation crisis started well before the war in Ukraine and many Americans are not buying the spin.

    China, a dedicated partner to the globalist project, has shown consistent fealty to the IMF and is a key player in the move towards a one-world currency system. Because they are the largest importer/exporter on the planet and have considerable leverage over the US dollar, they have the ability to strike the final blow against the dollar’s world reserve status. A heightened conflict with China would be a perfect cover for the dumping of the Greenback, making way for the IMF’s new global currency, called the UMU (Universal Monetary Unit).

    However, foreign conflagrations will not be enough for the establishment to keep the American public from scrutinizing the narrative. They need a domestic enemy, a frightening threat that lives right next door. That is to say, they need to find a way to blame conservatives and liberty activists for the impending crash that they caused.

    Keep in mind that the Biden Administration and the leftist media have been pumping out propaganda asserting that all our fiscal problems including our national debt are somehow rooted in conservative policies. This is nonsense.

    At bottom, the majority of our economic threats can be traced directly back to the Federal Reserve as well as large international banks, and these institutions enact policy REGARDLESS of the political party that is in control of the government. But, if we’re going to talk about the political group that has most helped the central bankers set the calamity in motion, the Democrats win the prize.

    It was Barack Obama and Joe Biden that doubled the US national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the span of 8 years. Trump didn’t help matters and did not institute spending cuts at the level he should have, but the bulk of his debt contributions occurred because of the covid response. There are a number of issues to criticize Trump for, including the kinds of people he brought into his cabinet, but the current economic chaos is not rooted in anything Trump did.

    It was the Biden White House that pressed for covid lockdown policies to stay in place for years when they should have been ended within months as soon as it became clear the covid virus was a non-threat to 99.8% of the population. Biden and the Democrats made it impossible for the country to continue functioning without trillions in covid helicopter money, and it was those fiat measures that finally broke the camel’s back. Prices on everything skyrocketed under Biden, not Trump.

    The majority of our national debt problems were piled up during the reign of Democrats, and they CONTINUE to demand trillions more in spending without conditions. This brings us to the debt ceiling.

    In the past, the debt ceiling debate has been a predictable farce. Republicans demand cuts, they haggle with the Democrats who want a blank check, nothing is ever really resolved and the debt ceiling gets raised yet again with no noticeable reductions in spending. The government keeps stealing from the American public at an exponential rate while also triggering more inflation.

    It’s a Catch-22 for conservatives. No one in the mainstream criticizes the Democrats for wanting to spend more because most people don’t understand how inflation works. All the Dems have to do is agree to reasonable budget cuts, but they refuse. When they don’t allow cuts, the Republicans are forced to either cave in, which makes them look weak, or, they’re forced to stand their ground and be accused of reckless disregard for American debt obligations.

    Democrats claim that ANY cuts to the budget will lead to economic crisis. They have no intention of negotiating to reduce US debt. They don’t have to – All the blame falls on conservatives regardless.

    To be sure, there are multiple Neocon politicians that support the Democrats at every turn, but there are also some Republicans trying to pull the country back from the brink. We should give these people credit.  It’s easy to accuse all political participants of being part of the “false left/right paradigm,”, and maybe that was true ten years ago, but now I suspect this mantra is being exploited to divide conservatives and liberty proponents from any alliances at the government level.

    The leftist argument on the debt ceiling is essentially this: “We must keep spending more to fix the problems created by spending too much.”

    It’s a circular con job. Pursuing budget cuts is portrayed as an act of terrorism by the corporate media. Saving taxpayer money is considered evil, and conservatives who entertain the notion are painted as insurrectionists. Why is no one criticizing the Democrats and their all-or-nothing philosophy? After all, budget cuts can be made while ALSO paying off the national debt, right?

    The tactic makes sense if you look at it from a villain’s perspective. All the Democrats have to do is not allow any cuts and continue to demand more spending without conditions. Then, when the contingent of Republicans in Congress that actually care about fiscal responsibility refuses to back down, the White House, the media and the majority of leftists initiate a propaganda wave; an artificial outcry suggesting that “radical” conservatives are destroying the economy.

    If the conservatives give in, then the public blames them for bowing to the “Uniparty.” If they don’t give in, the establishment wraps up the stagflationary collapse and lays it right in our laps. They may try to force the issue of a debt ceiling impasse just to hide the crash that is happening anyway.

    Or, maybe not. Maybe this time is like all the other times and Republicans will back down yet again and the ceiling is raised by another couple trillion dollars. The talking points I’m seeing in the media and on social media, though, suggest to me that something very strange is about to happen in the debt fight. If it goes down the way I suspect, then it will be vitally important to disrupt the narrative.

    The economy is crashing for a lot of reasons and none of them have anything to do with the government trying to spend less.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 18:45

  • NYC's Adams: Abbott's Migrant-Busing Targets 'Black-Run' Cities
    NYC’s Adams: Abbott’s Migrant-Busing Targets ‘Black-Run’ Cities

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott migrant bus service to is ramping back up in a big way — and mayors in destination cities are fuming, especially New York City’s Eric Adams and Chicago’s outgoing Lori Lightfoot. 

    “More than 57,000 migrants, mostly hailing from Latin America, have arrived in [New York City] since last spring, while Chicago has fielded more than 8,000 newcomers,” Politico reports.

    Overwhelmed with immigrants pouring into his sanctuary city, Adams (left) threw his race card at Abbott (AP photo via NY Daily News)

    In a statement issued Monday, Adams accused Abbott of targeting cities based on the skin color of their elected officials: 

    “This weekend, we learned that Governor Abbott is once again deciding to play politics with people’s lives by resuming the busing of asylum seekers to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D.C.

    Not only is this behavior morally bankrupt and devoid of any concern for the well-being of asylum seekers, but it is also impossible to ignore the fact that Abbott is now targeting five cities run by Black mayors. Put plainly, Abbott is using this crisis to hurt Black-run cities.”

    We pause to note that, where America’s largest metropolises are concerned, “black-run cities” is increasingly a redundancy. 

    Moving on from his implicit accusation of racism, Adams went on to accuse Abbott of shipping migrants to New York against their will, and having security guards “hold them hostage” when they tried to get off in other cities.

    He also blamed border states for the overload of immigrants while asking President Biden for help. “With a vacuum of leadership from border states, we need the federal government to step in and provide us with support and to prevent this cruelty from continuing.” That’s an interesting angle, given the federal government routinely opposes states taking border security into their own hands. 

    Even Adams has been increasingly critical of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. In April, he said, “The city is being destroyed by the migrant crisis…The national government has turned its back on New York City…This is in the lap of the president of the United States.” Reiterating that desperate messaging on Monday, Adams said, “This crisis is more than one city can handle.”

    Adams isn’t the only mayor attacking Abbott for sharing the wealth of northbound diversity pouring into the country. On Sunday, Chicago’s Lightfoot, who will exit office on May 15 after a losing reelection bid, sent a letter to Abbott asking him to “stop this inhumane and dangerous action.” 

    Lame duck walking: With just two weeks left in her disastrous reign, our frequency of Lightfoot photos is poised to dramatically dip

    Like Adams, Lightfoot also painted a picture of desperation, saying that, although “Chicago is a Welcoming City…we simply have no more shelters, spaces, or resources to accommodate an increase of individuals at this level.” 

    She wrote that many migrants shipped from the Lone Star State “needed extensive medical care. Some of the individuals you placed on buses were women in active labor, and some were victims of sexual assault. None of those needs were addressed in Texas.” 

    When Abbott wrote back to Lightfoot on Monday, he didn’t address those allegations. He did, however, point out that that the immigration situation is about to get much worse: 

    “With Title 42 expulsions set to end next week, the federal government has estimated that we could have up to 13,000 illegal immigrants cross the U.S.–Mexico border every single day…. If Chicago can’t deal with 8,000 in less than a year, how are small Texas border communities supposed to manage 13,000 in just one day?” 

    Abbott told Lightfoot to shift her fire, and urge the Biden administration to “do its job by securing our border [and] repelling the illegal immigrants flooding into our communities.” 

    When Lightfoot says shipping people to Chicago is “inhumane and dangerous,” she might just have a point: 

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 18:25

  • DeSantis Signs Bill To Authorize Death Penalty For Child Rapists In Florida
    DeSantis Signs Bill To Authorize Death Penalty For Child Rapists In Florida

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Monday that will allow convicted child rapists to be given the death penalty, a move that will likely trigger a confrontation in the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Florida lawmakers passed HB1297 last month, paving the way for rapists of children under the age of 12 to be sentenced to execution without jury unanimity.

    It means that the approval of only 8 jurors out of 12 would be needed to go ahead with a sentence of capital punishment for those who sexually abuse kids in the State.

    As we highlighted, pedos were not happy about it.

    Florida Enables Death Penalty For Child Sexual Abuse

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    On signing the legislation, which goes into effect on October 1st, DeSantis noted “We think that in the worst of the worst cases, the only appropriate punishment is the ultimate punishment.”

    The full speech is below:

    A previous 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlawed capital punishment in child sexual battery cases.

    DeSantis said he believed the the Supreme Court’s decision was “wrong.”

    The governor also signed two other bills Monday, one to make those who sell fentanyl resembling candy to children eligible for life in prison, and another to ban suspects arrested for dangerous crimes from being granted pretrial release without monetary bail at their first court hearings.

    “If you’re messing with children, you’re going to have the book thrown at you 100%,” DeSantis declared.

    He added, “We’re excited to be able to deliver these victories. We’re gonna have a lot more that we’re gonna be announcing over the next few weeks.”

    “We’re really delivering a big agenda,” he continued, adding “So this is one important — but admittedly very small part — of an overall large agenda and very bold agenda that’s really setting the terms of the debate for the country, quite frankly.”

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

    Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 18:05

  • Watch: Biden Press Secretary Claims Illegal Immigration DOWN By 90%
    Watch: Biden Press Secretary Claims Illegal Immigration DOWN By 90%

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed on Monday that illegal immigration has dropped 92% under the Biden administration.

    “When it comes to illegal migration, you have seen it come down by more than 90%, and that’s because of the actions that this president has taken,” she said.

    Oh?

    According to US Customs and Border Protection, over 5 million illegal immigrants have crossed the US border since Biden took office, not to mention around 1.2 million ‘gotaways’ (a figure which is undoubtedly far higher).

    Reactions to Jean-Pierre’s latest steaming pile of lies were, as one would expect:

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    And as Summit News notes, Jean-Pierre also spoke about a “horrific act of gun violence” amid a manhunt for an illegal immigrant accused of murdering five of his neighbors. Jean-Pierre, of course, didn’t note that the man was illegal, or that he has been deported multiple times from the United States.

    Instead Jean-Pierre used the case as a way of pushing for increased gun control, stating “the President believes prayers alone are not enough. Congress must act because what makes tragedies like this one all the more heart wrenching is the fact that it is entirely within our power to take these weapons of war off our streets.” –Summit News

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 17:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 02

Today’s News 2nd May 2023

  • We Have Met The Enemy
    We Have Met The Enemy

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via DailyReckoning.com,

    “When we see the few truth-tellers who are the stars of their organizations jettisoned – Tucker Carlson from Fox News, Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone, Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept, James O’Keefe from Project Veritas… we must face the fact that there is an organized conspiracy to suppress truth.” 

    – Paul Craig Roberts

    The weird part the news media isn’t telling you about World War Three is that America’s main enemy in this struggle is… the US Government itself!

    America is looking like that crazy person on the street, punching himself in the head. How else do you explain this epic act of national self-destruction?

    The “Joe Biden” regime is “standing up for our democracy” by trying to silence all and any public speech about what it does in the world and how it treats its own citizens. Meanwhile, the entire scaffold of American life crumbles and you are supposed to not notice it’s happening. The funny part is that the Democratic Party thinks this is an election strategy. The funniest part of the funny part is that we bother holding elections at all.

    You understand, “Joe Biden” is only pretending to run for president again, in the same way that he’s only pretended to be president the past two years. Are we to believe, for instance, that the old zombie has become a fervent Maoist? Or that he follows any known structured political philosophy at all, other than cashing checks from favor-seekers from all  over the world?

    “Joe Biden” is pretending to run — no matter how preposterous it seems — because his handlers know that only a titanic pretense of political strength can stave off the reveal of his family’s awesome criminality and the fall of everyone hitched to that broke-down wagon.

    So much for the funny stuff. Things are getting to the point where we stop laughing. It’s only a question now of how the calamity rolls out. There are so many more parts to our national fiasco and they are all out-of-hand in the most disastrous way.

    The Ukraine Fiasco

    The Ukraine project is a big part. It was prodigiously stupid to provoke a war at Russia’s door-step and the side we backed, the corrupt Zelensky regime, has already lost. You just don’t know it because the American news business is a joke on the American public. It reports nothing honestly.

    Ukraine is the last in a string of hapless military adventures that has exhausted America’s credibility in the world, especially as regards our military superiority. (Think: Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missile.) There will be many unexpected consequences of the Ukraine screw-up. One will be the crack-up of NATO, which has only been a false front for American military power.

    Germany couldn’t fight its way out of a duffle bag with what it’s got, and it is supposedly Europe’s leading economic power. The sad truth is that it will stop being any kind of power without the cheap Russian natural gas it was running on, and later this year Germany will be in a panic to try and restore its horribly damaged trade relations with Russia to get that natgas.

    Since NATO’s essential mission is to oppose Russia on everything, that will be the end of NATO. Europe will return to what it has always been: a region of squabbling national interests. Let’s hope Europe does not become again the slaughterhouse it was in the last century.

    You Go Broke in Two Ways

    The failure of the Ukraine project could easily stimulate a collapse in Europe’s banking system, which would instantly spread to America’s banking system as obligations dissolve and payments stop.

    The net effect of all that will be the vanishing of a whole lot of capital, including the money in bank accounts, the money invested in stocks and bonds, the money lodged in pension plans, and the money controlled by insurance companies.

    As I’ve mentioned before — it’s worth repeating — you can go broke two ways: you can have no money, or you can have money that’s worthless. We’ve been steadily following the latter path through the “Joe Biden” years, but we’re close to simply not having money at all. Being broke will get Americans’ attention. And the first place they’ll look is the party in power.

    Multiple scandals have finally caught up to “Joe Biden” and are escaping the formidable suppression apparatus erected by the Deep State’s legal department. Attorney General Merrick Garland himself is now directly implicated in obstruction of justice by an IRS whistleblower.

    Election Interference?

    The allegation is that Mr. Garland interfered in the case against Hunter Biden in the Delaware US attorney’s office and lied about it to Congress. On top of that comes a new allegation, with hard documentary evidence (testimony by former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell), that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan arranged, as “Biden” campaign officials in 2020, for fifty-one intel officers, including five retired CIA directors, to sign a phony letter denouncing the Hunter laptop as a Russian disinfo project, knowing it to be untrue. A case can be made for that amounting to election interference.

    All that is fairly fresh news. For many months, it’s been known that Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chair of the House Oversight Committee, has possession of bank records that show more than a hundred instances of the decanting of millions of dollars from foreign lands into various Biden family accounts.

    Doesn’t look good. Looks impeachable. Will DOJ try to stonewall everything? Yeah, probably.

    A Civil War Strategy

    On top of all that, observers are reporting that more than ten thousand illegal immigrants a day will be crossing into the USA from Mexico in the weeks ahead. Alejandro Mayorkas’s Dept. of Homeland Security and Mr. Blinken’s State Department have made arrangements with international NGOs working through the UN, to systematically conduct these immigrants across the border, furnishing them with pre-cooked phony asylum documents.

    This week, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) introduced legislation to allow unrestricted immigration to any person claiming to be LBGTQ. Co-sponsors of the bill include Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. How is any of this a re-election strategy?

    It’s not. If these matters are not adjudicated, it will be a civil war strategy.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/02/2023 – 00:00

  • Earthquake Swarms Rattle Southern California
    Earthquake Swarms Rattle Southern California

    An earthquake swarm rattled the Salton Sea region of Southern California and the US-Mexico border over the weekend, with seismic activity reaching up to 4.5 magnitude, as reported by The Sacramento Bee. 

    US Geological Survey data shows the first quake struck around 12:08 p.m. local time Saturday in Heber near the US-Mexico border, about 60 miles south of the Salton Sea, measuring 4.1 magnitude. There were dozens of tremors reported after the initial shock. 

    Then on Sunday morning, a 4.5 magnitude quake struck 4 miles west-southwest of Niland and just east of the Salton Sea, USGS data showed. Dozens of tremors were reported as well. 

    According to a USGS intensity map, the quakes were felt in Palm Desert, Indio, El Centro, and Mexicali. 

    Last month, a series of earthquakes shook Pacifica in Northern California. Earlier this year, Los Angeles experienced a quake, and Humboldt County was hit in December. 

    As for the state’s southern region, it remains to be seen whether these swarms signal the potential for larger quakes. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 23:40

  • Would The Feds Ban Twitter Under The RESTRICT Act?
    Would The Feds Ban Twitter Under The RESTRICT Act?

    Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClear Wire,

    Decoupling from Communist China in every strategically significant realm, from the capital markets to defense and pharmaceutical production, and information and communications technology is imperative if we are to counter its hegemonic ambitions and persist as a free and independent nation in something more than name.

    Banning TikTok – a ubiquitous social media platform that masquerades as a proliferator of harmless dance videos while doubling as a likely tool of Chinese Communist Party surveillance and data harvesting, and certain tool of its information warfare, under de facto if not de jure CCP control via Beijing-based parent ByteDance – would logically be part of any such decoupling, and manifestly in the U.S. national interest.

    But arguably the most prominent congressional effort putatively aimed at achieving a ban of TikTok, the bipartisan RESTRICT Act, raises concerns that the cure may be worse than the disease – to the extent it even ameliorates it.

    If past is prologue, key language in the bill hiding in plain sight would seem to legitimize the very heretofore lawless targeting of domestic dissent under which Americans have suffered in recent years – undermining the values and principles the bills’ supporters purport to cherish.

    Under the bill, one could easily see the likes of a Twitter, or any other platform or service out of favor with authorities nuked, or at minimum under existential threat.

    The RESTRICT Act broadly authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to “review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries.”

    Among other provisions, it calls on the Secretary to “take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate” any of a number of “undue or unacceptable” national security risks arising from a slew of transactions past or present, including “any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and communications technology product or service” to which entities tied to China or several other countries, or subject to their jurisdiction, have an interest.

    The leading co-sponsors of the RESTRICT Act, Virginia Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, and South Dakota Senator John Thune, a Republican, frame it as “a holistic, rules-based” effort “narrowly tailored to foreign-adversary companies” that is “more likely to withstand judicial scrutiny” than other proposed bills for combatting TikTok – bills that arose in part because the courts stymied President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban the application using existing executive authorities.

    Some critics, including China hawks, contend that despite the broad authority the bill grants the Commerce Secretary, it may not ultimately lead to a TikTok ban. The bill does not explicitly call for the banning of the application. Nor does it mention it, or any other application, by name – rather listing broad categories of software and hardware that could be probed under the bill, linked to several foreign foes, including among them China.

    Others liken the legislation to the Patriot Act, just for the digital age. This is not meant to be a compliment. They argue that the RESTRICT Act threatens civil liberties – namely free speech – in the name of security by granting the government sweeping powers to crush communication platforms under the guise of ill-defined risks with extensive criminal penalties. The vaguer the language, more pervasive the powers, and fewer the checks and balances, such critics surmise, the riper the opportunity for government to overreach.

    While the bill’s backers may argue otherwise, the fears of those left and right who believe the legislation opens the door to censorious mission creep are well-founded. The danger becomes self-evident when one juxtaposes the roots and results of the mass public-private censorship regime imposed upon Americans in recent years, and the bill’s language.

    Under said censorship regime, America’s national security apparatus and public health authorities, often government-linked and/or funded academic and research “counter-disinformation” organizations, and Big Tech have colluded to suppress dissenting views from prevailing Ruling Class orthodoxy on a plethora of contentious issues under the guise of public safety and health.

    “Digital wrongthink generates real world harm,” the regime argues.

    The speech-stiflers have exploited, if not helped fuel a moral panic over mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM) – this notwithstanding that such censorious authorities have often proven the most powerful and pervasive propagators of false or misleading information – which they claim threatens American democracy, to justify their actions.

    The moral panic has its roots in claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election that proved at minimum highly overblown – with national security authorities framing the threat as primarily a foreign one, which put them on ostensibly stronger footing when it came to their surveilling, policing and/or out-sourcing of policing of speech on social media platforms.

    The Capitol riot fanned the flames of the moral panic. Authorities claimed that the greatest threat to the homeland now emanated from, effectively, MAGA terrorists, and that it was dangerous MDM on elections that incited them. Such Wrongthink could incite domestic violent extremists to lash out, including at critical infrastructure, compelling a whole-of-society response.

    Authorities, in truth, had already been targeting domestic Wrongthink, particularly on elections, in the run-up to the 2020 presidential contest – operating on the logic that questions about the election process and results represented, or could represent a threat to critical infrastructure including election infrastructure.

    The shift in focus from foreign adversaries to domestic Wrongthinkers, and on an ever-growing array of issues, including under an elastic definition of infrastructure, can be seen in the evolution of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a key cog in the censorship regime.

    By the time the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, it only made sense that the censorship regime would expand to include policing speech antithetical to whatever authorities believed it imperative for Americans to believe, on matters from the pandemic’s origin, to masking, and vaccine efficacy.

    The Biden administration would codify the combatting of domestic MDM, and countering “the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories” in a bid to enhance “faith in government” and “American democracy” as a strategic imperative by way of its June 2021 National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

    Bear this background in mind – to say nothing of how government has used the most tortured of legal readings to justify its targeting of Wrongthinkers from ex-presidents, to engaged parents, to the pious, running roughshod over the First Amendment in the process – as we look at the language of the RESTRICT Act.

    The bill empowers authorities to neutralize risks including those stemming from applications that could: have “catastrophic effects on the security or resilience of the critical infrastructure” of the U.S.; “interfer[e] in…the result or reported result of a Federal election;” or pose a risk of “coercive or criminal activities by a foreign adversary that are designed to undermine democratic processes and institutions or steer policy and regulatory decisions in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment of the national security of the United States.”

    Now consider a hypothetical post-RESTRICT Act world.

    Imagine there is a U.S.-based social media platform on which Americans are raising questions about and criticizing the RESTRICT Act. At the same time, foreign adversaries, including the PRC, by way of its mouthpieces, are raising the same objections. Might authorities conclude that the proliferation of such ideas could lead to the bill’s repeal, leaving America open to “catastrophic effects on…critical infrastructure” – as evinced by the adversaries’ similar propaganda, one who seek a return to the infrastructure-threatening status quo?

    Now, imagine that on that same platform, Americans are posting memes instructing people to vote for U.S. presidential candidates by texting fictitious phone numbers, and that hundreds or even several thousand people might be messaging accordingly. Might authorities conclude the platform is being used to “interfer[e] in…the result…of a Federal election?”

    Lastly, imagine Americans are also using this hypothetical platform to raise questions about and criticize America’s continued involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Russian mouthpieces are leveling similar arguments. Russians have been accused of engaging in criminal influence efforts using social media platforms before, including those impacting our politics. Might authorities conclude the platform poses a risk of enabling “criminal activities by a foreign adversary…designed to…steer policy in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary” by getting Americans to exert political pressure on their leaders to curtail American support for the war?

    “But,” one might ask, “why would such a platform fall under the RESTRICT Act if it’s U.S.-based?”

    Well, recall that the bill covers any of a slew of transactions in which a foreign adversary or affiliated entity is involved, or to which it is subject to the jurisdiction, “including through an interest in a contract for the provision of the technology or service” in question.

    Might the company be targeted on grounds, however tenuous, of having taken a small investment from a person or entity who can be linked to an adversary government, or from a larger fund with ties to an adversary government, or for having used a subcontractor otherwise affiliated in some form or fashion with, or operating under the jurisdiction of an adversary government?

    The hypothetical scenario we have conjured up is actually quite real. On Twitter you will find a whole raft of content critical of the RESTRICT Act. On Twitter Douglass Mackey posted the kind of meme described – one for which he was convicted of a federal crime and faces up to 10 years in prison. On Twitter, you will find many critics of U.S. involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War – a platform that Russians used to allegedly “commit federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system” during the 2016 election.

    What of Twitter’s ties to foreign adversaries? Well, among the co-investors in Elon Musk’s take private of Twitter is cryptocurrency exchange Binance, a company initially based in China, which put up $500 million in equity. Who knows, perhaps there are other links that could be found between Twitter and China, for example via a contractor or subcontractor with which it works or has worked. And this is to say nothing of Musks’s more significant exposure to China by way of Tesla.

    The Biden administration, which has seemingly had Musk in its sights since he became interested in purchasing Twitter, and certainly post-acquisition and the release of the Twitter Files, reportedly will not be investigating Musk’s Twitter purchase under existing authorities via the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Might that change under a RESTRICT Act that the White House has championed – this despite its disavowal of the idea that it wishes to decouple from China, and Democrats’ embrace of TikTok as a platform?

    If this scenario sounds far-fetched, you are not being nearly imaginative nor cynical enough in this era of sophistry and illiberalism.

    America should ban TikTok, but the means must not do more damage than the ends do good.

    The prudent and judicious move would be for Congress to take a second look at any of several more tightly-written and straightforward bills aimed squarely at combatting TikTok – that is, if it is really serious about combatting the CCP, rather than granting authorities power-hungry presidents might use to emulate the CCP in silencing domestic opponents.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 23:20

  • Vice Preparing To File For Bankruptcy
    Vice Preparing To File For Bankruptcy

    First BuzzFeed, now Vice: one by one all the woke “media giants” of the new normal are going broke.

    Just two weeks after we reported that BuzzFeed News – which was instrumental in spreading fake news to get us suspended on twitter – was shuttering it not filing for bankruptcy just yet, today the NYT reports that the woke left’s disruptor darling and former “multi-billion media empire” Vice, which once upon a time charmed giants like Disney and Fox into investing hundreds of millions before its stunning crash-landing, is preparing to file for bankruptcy.

    According to the NYT, the filing could come in the coming weeks, according to three people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to discuss the potential bankruptcy on the record.

    Vice headquarters in Venice, Calif

    The company has been looking for a buyer, and still might find one, to avoid declaring bankruptcy. More than five companies have expressed interest in acquiring Vice, according to a person briefed on the discussions. The chances of that, however, are growing increasingly slim, said one of the people with knowledge of the potential bankruptcy.

    A Vice bankruptcy filing would be a fitting ending to the tumultuous story of Vice, a new-media Phoenix that rose out of the ashes with its iconoclastic, counterculture facade, then quickly sought to supplant the media establishment before persuading it to invest hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2017, after a funding round from the private-equity firm TPG, Vice was worth $5.7 billion. Around this time, the company realized that for the money to keep flowing, it would need to curb its rebellious ways and quickly turned woke, losing most of its fans in the process.

    As a result, the company is now worth a fraction of the money it managed to squeeze out of existing media giants, and is now facing bankruptcy.

    When Vice files, the company’s largest debtholder, hegde fund Fortress, will likely end up controlling the company. Vice could continue operating normally and run an auction to sell the company over a 45-day period, with Fortress in pole position as the most likely acquirer.

    Unlike Vice’s other investors, which have included Disney and Fox, Fortress holds senior debt, which means it gets paid out first in the event of a sale. Disney and Fox, which have already written down their investments to zero, are getting wiped out.

    “Vice Media Group has been engaged in a comprehensive evaluation of strategic alternatives and planning,” Vice said in a statement on Monday. “The company, its board and stakeholders continue to be focused on finding the best path for the company.”

    Vice began as a punk magazine in Montreal more than two decades ago. Over the years, it blossomed into a global media company with a movie studio, an ad agency, a glossy show on HBO and bureaus in far-flung world capitals. Disney, after investing hundreds of millions in Vice, explored buying the company in 2015 for more than $3 billion.

    The deal never materialized, but the interest from Disney forced a comprehensive culture revolution within Vice, which lost its rebellious appeal and instead scrambled to appeal to woke snowflakes – the group that represents the core decision-making process at Disney – and not surprisingly, it lost virtually all of its readers and viewers in the process.

    After it failed to convince a strategic partner to acquire it, Vice eventually succumbed to a bearish market for digital media companies. The company has been trying for years to turn a profit but has consistently failed to do so, losing money and repeatedly laying off employees.

    Last week, we reported that Vice was closing its Vice World News, a global reporting initiative that covered world conflict and human-rights abuses. The closure of the world news operation was a blow to employees who saw the division’s aggressive coverage as in keeping with Vice’s roots in gonzo journalism, established when co-founder Shane Smith would report from risky destinations like North Korea.

    As it has sought a buyer in recent months, Vice has dealt with turnover in its leadership ranks. Nancy Dubuc, the company’s former chief executive, left this year after nearly five years at the company. Jesse Angelo, the company’s global president of news and entertainment, also left the company.

    Smith founded Vice with Suroosh Alvi and Gavin McInnes in 1994 as a magazine. He sold out his core vision of Vice in the coming years just so he could buy (and then sell) the legendary Beverly Hills Cop mansion for $50 million. In 2008, McInnes left Vice in 2008 and went on to found the Proud Boys. He has yet to sell out.

    News of Vice’s coming bankruptcy reached as far away as El Salvador, whose president Nayib Bukele had a laconic comment.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 23:00

  • 2024 Presidential Candidate Wants To 'Shut Down The FBI,' Replace It
    2024 Presidential Candidate Wants To ‘Shut Down The FBI,’ Replace It

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he would attempt to shut down the FBI and replace it with another entity if he’s elected president.

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at the National Rifle Association annual convention in Indianapolis, Ind., on April 14, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    During an interview with “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Ramaswamy, a businessman, suggested that he does not want to “defund the FBI” after host Chuck Todd suggested it.

    “I didn’t say defund the FBI. I said shut down the FBI and replace it with something new,” said Ramaswamy on Sunday. “I think it’s a new apparatus built from scratch that actually respects the law instead of making it up.”

    “So you’re going to replace the old FBI with a new FBI?” Todd asked in response. “With a new institution built from scratch to carry out federal law enforcement,” Ramaswamy said, “because the existing FBI, the people who work there, have worked there for so long they’ll be getting in their own way.”

    “I personally believe someone who’s running to actually run the executive branch of the government, when you have a bureaucracy whose culture becomes so ossified, every once in a while, you need to turn it over,” he told “Meet the Press.” He added: “We need federal law enforcement, but that institution has, in a bipartisan way, become so, I think ossified in its own norms, in its own corruption, that we need to rebuild it from scratch and have something new take its place.”

    When Todd suggested that Ramaswamy wants to “replace the old FBI with a new FBI,” Ramaswamy stated: “The problem is there’s people who have worked there for decades.”

    The FBI headquarters—the J. Edgar Hoover building—in Washington on March 22, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

    “What I say is, if I’m the U.S. president and I can’t work for the federal government for more than eight years—which I think is a good thing—then none of those bureaucrats reporting in to me should either,” he added. “There’s people who have worked there for decades,” he said.

    Republicans in recent years have become increasingly critical of the FBI, accusing the agency of targeting the political opponents of Democrats while not investigating actual criminals. Former President Donald Trump has perhaps been the chief critic of both the FBI and the Department of Justice and said both agencies have engaged in a longstanding witch hunt to politically wound him.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 22:40

  • Biden "Punishes Responsibility" As New Mortgage Equity Program Begins
    Biden “Punishes Responsibility” As New Mortgage Equity Program Begins

    Starting today, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s mortgage pricing adjustments will increase fees for borrowers with high credit scores while reducing costs for those with subpar credit scores. This upside-down policy is blatantly socialism, and one can’t help but wonder if anyone in the Biden administration learned anything from the subprime mortgage meltdown that occurred more than a decade ago. 

    As part of the Biden administration’s plan to make housing affordable for everyone (we’ve seen this story before), upfront fees for loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be adjusted based on the borrower’s credit score. Borrowers with high credit scores will pay more in fees, while those with lower credit scores will pay less. 

    The Wall Street Journal cited data from Evercore ISI that shows borrowers with credit scores between 720-759 who make around 15-20% down payments will see loan-level pricing adjustment (LLPA) costs rise by .750%. Inversely, under the new adjustments, risky borrowers with a credit score below 639 and who put down only 5% of the value of their home will only have to pay 1.750%, compared with 3.750% under old rules. 

    Backlash over LLPA changes prompted the FHFA to publish a statement last week, calling such concerns “a fundamental misunderstanding.” The Biden administration ensures the new changes are meant to help those with poor credit scores obtain homes amid the worst housing affordability in a generation. 

    According to the FHFA, the new adjustments will redistribute funds to reduce the interest rate costs paid by risky borrowers. This sounds like socializing home buying to us. 

    Even more alarming is data from the American Enterprise Institute found that default rates of Fannie/Freddie owner-occupied 30-year fixed-rate purchase loans acquired in 2006-2007 were between 39.3% and 56.2% for borrowers with credit scores between 620 and 639 and less than 4% down payments. Those with credit scores between 720 and 769 and 20% down payments had default rates between 4.2% and 8.8%. 

    The Biden administration is subsidizing irresponsibility, rewarding failure, and discriminating against people with high credit scores.

    Meanwhile, 27 states revolted against Biden’s mortgage redistribution rule to subsidize risky borrowers… 

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    Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) blasted Biden. 

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    “Punishing responsibility—that’s the Biden way,” tweeted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). 

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    “While the changes may not be as bad as some headlines suggest, it still seems illogical to essentially penalize fiscally responsible borrowers in an effort to assist less qualified borrowers,” Federal Savings Bank loan officer Lewis Sogge told us. 

    There’s no logic here, just progressive bureaucrats enacting policies that may ultimately lead to another future crisis. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 22:20

  • America's Empire Is Bankrupt
    America’s Empire Is Bankrupt

    Authored by John Michael Greer via UnHerd.com, (emphasis ours)

    The dollar is finally being dethroned…

    Let’s start with the basics. Roughly 5% of the human race currently live in the United States of America. That very small fraction of humanity, until quite recently, enjoyed about a third of the world’s energy resources and manufactured products and about a quarter of its raw materials. This didn’t happen because nobody else wanted these things, or because the US manufactured and sold something so enticing that the rest of the world eagerly handed over its wealth in exchange. It happened because, as the dominant nation, the US imposed unbalanced patterns of exchange on the rest of the world, and these funnelled a disproportionate share of the planet’s wealth to itself.

    There’s nothing new about this sort of arrangement. In its day, the British Empire controlled an even larger share of the planet’s wealth, and the Spanish Empire played a comparable role further back. Before then, there were other empires, though limits to transport technologies meant that their reach wasn’t as large. Nor, by the way, was any of this an invention of people with light-coloured skin. Mighty empires flourished in Asia and Africa when the peoples of Europe lived in thatched-roofed mud huts. Empires rise whenever a nation becomes powerful enough to dominate other nations and drain them of wealth. They’ve thrived as far back as records go and they’ll doubtless thrive for as long as human civilisations exist.

    America’s empire came into being in the wake of the collapse of the British Empire, during the fratricidal European wars of the early 20th century. Throughout those bitter years, the role of global hegemon was up for grabs, and by 1930 or so it was pretty clear that Germany, the Soviet Union or the US would end up taking the prize. In the usual way, two contenders joined forces to squeeze out the third, and then the victors went at each other, carving out competing spheres of influence until one collapsed. When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the US emerged as the last empire standing.

    Francis Fukuyama insisted in a 1989 essay that having won the top slot, the US was destined to stay there forever. He was, of course, wrong, but then he was a Hegelian and couldn’t help it. (If a follower of Hegel tells you the sky is blue, go look.) The ascendancy of one empire guarantees that other aspirants for the same status will begin sharpening their knives. They’ll get to use them, too, because empires invariably wreck themselves: over time, the economic and social consequences of empire destroy the conditions that make empire possible. That can happen quickly or slowly, depending on the mechanism that each empire uses to extract wealth from its subject nations.

    The mechanism the US used for this latter purpose was ingenious but even more short-term than most. In simple terms, the US imposed a series of arrangements on most other nations that guaranteed the lion’s share of international trade would use US dollars as the medium of exchange, and saw to it that an ever-expanding share of world economic activity required international trade. (That’s what all that gabble about “globalisation” meant in practice.) This allowed the US government to manufacture dollars out of thin air by way of gargantuan budget deficits, so that US interests could use those dollars to buy up vast amounts of the world’s wealth. Since the excess dollars got scooped up by overseas central banks and business firms, which needed them for their own foreign trade, inflation stayed under control while the wealthy classes in the US profited mightily.

    The problem with this scheme is the same difficulty faced by all Ponzi schemes, which is that, sooner or later, you run out of suckers to draw in. This happened not long after the turn of the millennium, and along with other factors — notably the peaking of global conventional petroleum production — it led to the financial crisis of 2008-2010. Since 2010 the US has been lurching from one crisis to another. This is not accidental. The wealth pump that kept the US at the top of the global pyramid has been sputtering as a growing number of nations have found ways to keep a larger share of their own wealth by expanding their domestic markets and raising the kind of trade barriers the US used before 1945 to build its own economy.

    The one question left is how soon the pump will start to fail altogether.

    When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the US and its allies responded not with military force but with punitive economic sanctions, which were expected to cripple the Russian economy and force Russia to its knees. Apparently, nobody in Washington considered the possibility that other nations with an interest in undercutting the US empire might have something to say about that. Of course, that’s what happened. China, which has the largest economy on Earth in purchasing-power terms, extended a middle finger in the direction of Washington and upped its imports of Russian oil, gas, grain and other products. So did India, currently the third-largest economy on Earth in the same terms; as did more than 100 other countries.

    Then there’s Iran, which most Americans are impressively stupid about. Iran is the 17th largest nation in the world, more than twice the size of Texas and even more richly stocked with oil and natural gas. It’s also a booming industrial power. It has a thriving automobile industry, for example, and builds and launches its own orbital satellites. It’s been dealing with severe US sanctions since not long after the Shah fell in 1978, so it’s a safe bet that the Iranian government and industrial sector know every imaginable trick for getting around those sanctions.

    Right after the start of the Ukraine war, Russia and Iran suddenly started inking trade deals to Iran’s great benefit. Clearly, one part of the quid pro quo was that the Iranians passed on their hard-earned knowledge about how to dodge sanctions to an attentive audience of Russian officials. With a little help from China, India and most of the rest of humanity, the total failure of the sanctions followed in short order. Today, the sanctions are hurting the US and Europe, not Russia, but the US leadership has wedged itself into a position from which it can’t back down. This may go a long way towards explaining why the Russian campaign in Ukraine has been so leisurely. The Russians have no reason to hurry. They know that time is not on the side of the US.

    For many decades now, the threat of being cut out of international trade by US sanctions was the big stick Washington used to threaten unruly nations that weren’t small enough for a US invasion or fragile enough for a CIA-backed regime-change operation. Over the last year, that big stick turned out to be made of balsa wood and snapped off in Joe Biden’s hand. As a result, all over the world, nations that thought they had no choice but to use dollars in their foreign trade are switching over to their own currencies, or to the currencies of rising powers. The US dollar’s day as the global medium of exchange is thus ending.

    It’s been interesting to watch economic pundits reacting to this. As you might expect, quite a few of them simply deny that it’s happening — after all, economic statistics from previous years don’t show it yet, Some others have pointed out that no other currency is ready to take on the dollar’s role; this is true, but irrelevant. When the British pound lost a similar role in the early years of the Great Depression, no other currency was ready to take on its role either. It wasn’t until 1970 or so that the US dollar finished settling into place as the currency of global trade. In the interval, international trade lurched along awkwardly using whatever currencies or commodity swaps the trading partners could settle on: that is to say, the same situation that’s taking shape around us in the free-for-all of global trade that will define the post-dollar era.

    One of the interesting consequences of the shift now under way is a reversion to the mean of global wealth distribution. Until the era of European global empire, the economic heart of the world was in east and south Asia. India and China were the richest countries on the planet, and a glittering necklace of other wealthy states from Iran to Japan filled in the picture. To this day, most of the human population is found in the same part of the world. The great age of European conquest temporarily diverted much of that wealth to Europe, impoverishing Asia in the process. That condition began to break down with the collapse of European colonial empires in the decade following the Second World War, but some of the same arrangements were propped up by the US thereafter. Now those are coming apart, and Asia is rising. By next year, four of the five largest economies on the planet in terms of purchasing power parity will be Asian. The fifth is the US, and it may not be in that list for much longer.

    In short, America is bankrupt. Our governments from the federal level down, our big corporations and a very large number of our well-off citizens have run up gargantuan debts, which can only be serviced given direct or indirect access to the flows of unearned wealth the US extracted from the rest of the planet. Those debts cannot be paid off, and many of them can’t even be serviced for much longer. The only options are defaulting on them or inflating them out of existence, and in either case, arrangements based on familiar levels of expenditure will no longer be possible. Since the arrangements in question include most of what counts as an ordinary lifestyle in today’s US, the impact of their dissolution will be severe.

    In effect, the 5% of us in this country are going to have to go back to living the way we did before 1945. If we still had the factories, the trained workforce, the abundant natural resources and the thrifty habits we had back then, that would have been a wrenching transition but not a debacle. The difficulty, of course, is that we don’t have those things anymore. The factories were shut down in the offshoring craze of the Seventies and Eighties, when the imperial economy slammed into overdrive, and the trained workforce was handed over to malign neglect.

    We’ve still got some of the natural resources, but nothing like what we once had. The thrifty habits? Those went whistling down the wind a long time ago. In the late stages of an empire, exploiting flows of unearned wealth from abroad is far more profitable than trying to produce wealth at home, and most people direct their efforts accordingly. That’s how you end up with the typical late-imperial economy, with a governing class that flaunts fantastic levels of paper wealth, a parasite class of hangers-on that thrive by catering to the very rich or staffing the baroque bureaucratic systems that permeate public and private life, and the vast majority of the population impoverished, sullen, and unwilling to lift a finger to save their soi-disant betters from the consequences of their own actions.

    The good news is that there’s a solution to all this. The bad news is that it’s going to take a couple of decades of serious turmoil to get there. The solution is that the US economy will retool itself to produce earned wealth in the form of real goods and non-financial services. That’ll happen inevitably as the flows of unearned wealth falter, foreign goods become unaffordable to most Americans, and it becomes profitable to produce things here in the US again. The difficulty, of course, is that most of a century of economic and political choices meant to support our former imperial project are going to have to be undone.

    The most obvious example? The metastatic bloat of government, corporate and non-profit managerial jobs in American life. That’s a sensible move in an age of empire, as it funnels money into the consumer economy, which provides what jobs exist for the impoverished classes. Public and private offices alike teem with legions of office workers whose labour contributes nothing to national prosperity but whose pay cheques prop up the consumer sector. That bubble is already losing air. It’s indicative that Elon Musk, after his takeover of Twitter, fired some 80% of that company’s staff; other huge internet combines are pruning their workforce in the same way, though not yet to the same degree.

    The recent hullaballoo about artificial intelligence is helping to amplify the same trend. Behind the chatbots are programs called large language models (LLMs), which are very good at imitating the more predictable uses of human language. A very large number of office jobs these days spend most of their time producing texts that fall into that category: contracts, legal briefs, press releases, media stories and so on. Those jobs are going away. Computer coding is even more amenable to LLM production, so you can kiss a great many software jobs goodbye as well. Any other form of economic activity that involves assembling predictable sequences of symbols is facing the same crunch. A recent paper by Goldman Sachs estimates that something like 300 million jobs across the industrial world will be wholly or partly replaced by LLMs in the years immediately ahead.

    Another technology with similar results is CGI image creation. Levi’s announced not long ago that all its future catalogues and advertising will use CGI images instead of highly-paid models and photographers. Expect the same thing to spread generally. Oh, and Hollywood’s next. We’re not too far from the point at which a program can harvest all the footage of Marilyn Monroe from her films, and use that to generate new Marilyn Monroe movies for a tiny fraction of what it costs to hire living actors, camera crews and the rest. The result will be a drastic decrease in high-paying jobs across a broad swathe of the economy.

    The outcome of all this? Well, one lot of pundits will insist at the top of their lungs that nothing will change in any way that matters, and another lot will start shrieking that the apocalypse is upon us.

    Those are the only two options our collective imagination can process these days. Of course, neither of those things will actually happen.

    What will happen instead is that the middle and upper-middle classes in the US, and in many other countries, will face the same kind of slow demolition that swept over the working classes of those same countries in the late 20th century. Layoffs, corporate bankruptcies, declining salaries and benefits, and the latest high-tech version of NO HELP WANTED signs will follow one another at irregular intervals. All the businesses that make money catering to these same classes will lose their incomes as well, a piece at a time. Communities will hollow out the way the factory towns of America’s Rust Belt and the English Midlands did half a century ago, but this time it will be the turn of upscale suburbs and fashionable urban neighbourhoods to collapse as the income streams that supported them disappear.

    This is not going to be a fast process. The US dollar is losing its place as the universal medium of foreign trade, but it will still be used by some countries for years to come. The unravelling of the arrangements that direct unearned wealth to the US will go a little faster, but that will still take time. The collapse of the cubicle class and the gutting of the suburbs will unfold over decades. That’s the way changes of this kind play out.

    As for what people can do in response this late in the game, I refer to a post I made on The Archdruid Report in 2012 titled “Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush”. In that post I pointed out that the unravelling of the American economy, and the broader project of industrial civilisation, was picking up speed around us, and those who wanted to get ready for it needed to start preparing soon by cutting their expenses, getting out of debt, and picking up the skills needed to produce goods and services for people rather than the corporate machine. I’m glad to say that some people did these things, but a great many others rolled their eyes, or made earnest resolutions to do something as soon as things were more convenient, which they never were.

    Over the years that followed I repeated that warning and then moved on to other themes, since there really wasn’t much point to harping on about the approaching mess when the time to act had slipped away. Those who made preparations in time will weather the approaching mess as well as anyone can. Those who didn’t? The rush is here. I’m sorry to say that whatever you try, it’s likely that there’ll be plenty of other frantic people trying to do the same thing. You might still get lucky, but it’s going to be a hard row to hoe.

    Mind you, I expect some people to take a different tack. In the months before a prediction of mine comes true, I reliably field a flurry of comments insisting that I’m too rigid and dogmatic in my views about the future, that I need to be more open-minded about alternative possibilities, that wonderful futures are still in reach, and so on. I got that in 2008 just before the real estate bubble started to go bust, as I’d predicted, and I also got it in 2010 just before the price of oil peaked and started to slide, as I’d also predicted, taking the peak oil movement with it. I’ve started to field the same sort of criticism once again.

    We are dancing on the brink of a long slippery slope into an unwelcome new reality. I’d encourage readers in America and its close allies to brace themselves for a couple of decades of wrenching economic, social, and political turmoil. Those elsewhere will have an easier time of it, but it’s still going to be a wild ride before the rubble stops bouncing, and new social, economic, and political arrangements get patched together out of the wreckage.

    *  *  *

    Like what you’re reading? Get the free UnHerd daily email Sign up, for free

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 22:00

  • IBM To Stop Hiring For Roles That Can Be Replaced By AI; Nearly 8,000 Workers To Be Replaced By Automation
    IBM To Stop Hiring For Roles That Can Be Replaced By AI; Nearly 8,000 Workers To Be Replaced By Automation

    One month ago, to much dismay and widespread denial, Goldman predicted that AI could lead to some 300 million layoffs among highly paid, non-menial workers in the US and Europe. As Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius put it, “using data on occupational tasks in both the US and Europe, we find that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating our estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation” as up to “two thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI.”

    Yet while Goldman’s forecast was met with a emotions ranging from incredulity to outright mockery, it may not have been too far off the mark.

    Consider that just last week, Dropbox said it would lay off 16% of the company, some 500 employees as the company sought to build out its AI division.  In a memo to employees, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston said that “in an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we’ll need even more.”

    The changes we’re announcing today, while painful, are necessary for our future,” Houston notes. “I’m determined to ensure that Dropbox is at the forefront of the AI era, just as we were at the forefront of the shift to mobile and the cloud. We’ll need all hands on deck as machine intelligence gives us the tools to reimagine our existing businesses and invent new ones.”

    But while Dropbox’s layoffs were lateral, and meant to open up space for more AI linked hires, in the case of IBM, it is AI itself that is making workers redundant.

    As Bloomberg reports, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the coming years. As a result, hiring in back-office functions — such as human resources — will be suspended or slowed, Krishna said in an interview. These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers, Krishna said. “I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.” That would mean roughly 7,800 jobs lost.

    Part of any reduction would include not replacing roles vacated by attrition, an IBM spokesperson said.

    Krishna’s plan marks one of the largest workforce strategies announced in response to the rapidly advancing technology; it certainly won’t be the last as virtually all companies follow in IBM’s footsteps and layoffs tens if not hundreds of millions of workers in the coming years.

    Mundane tasks such as providing employment verification letters or moving employees between departments will likely be fully automated, Krishna said. And while some HR functions, such as evaluating workforce composition and productivity, probably won’t be replaced over the next decade, it is only a matter of time before these roles are also replaced by AI.

    IBM currently employs about 260,000 workers and continues to hire for software development and customer-facing roles. Finding talent is easier today than a year ago, Krishna said. The company announced job cuts earlier this year, which may amount to about 5,000 workers once completed. Still, Krishna said IBM has added to its workforce overall, bringing on about 7,000 people in the first quarter.

    The Armonk, New York-based IBM beat profit estimates in its most recent quarter due to expense management, including the earlier-announced job cuts. In the past IBM had managed to manipulate its stock higher thanks to billions in stock buybacks (at much higher prices). But once its debt load grew too big, the buyback game ended, Warren Buffett sold his shares, and the stock price has languished for over half a decade. And since the company’s revenue is stagnant at best, its only hope is to drastically cut overhead.

    Enter AI: new “productivity and efficiency” steps – read replacing workers with algos – are expected to drive $2 billion a year in savings by the end of 2024, Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh said on the day of earnings.

    Helping the company’s imminent transition to an AI-staffed corporation will be the coming recession. Until late 2022, Krishna said he believed the US could avoid a recession. Now, he sees the potential for a “shallow and short” recession toward the end of this year, although it remains unclear just how once can determine that a recession will be “shallow and short”.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 21:40

  • Colorado: 27 Democrats Vote Against Making Flashing Kids A Felony
    Colorado: 27 Democrats Vote Against Making Flashing Kids A Felony

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    More than two dozen Democrats in the state of Colorado have voted against legislation that would make it a felony for anyone to indecently expose themselves to children, reasoning that it could lead to the banning of drag shows.

    Currently, in Colorado it is only considered a class 1 misdemeanor if a person indecently exposes themselves in the view of a child, if it is the first offence.

    Speaking about the legislation to make it a class 6 felony, one of the Democratic Representatives, Leslie Herod said, “These types of laws have been used to ban drag shows, to target individuals who use the restroom of the sex that they identify with—a public restroom—to charge them with felony charges.”

    “I am very concerned about the attacks against the transgender community that are happening across the country,” she added.

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    First of all, what attacks?

    Secondly, this has nothing to do with transgenders, it’s a bill to make flashing at kids a felony.

    Despite the Democratic opposition, the bill reportedly did pass on Saturday, but with amendments to not apply the law if the exposure is in a public place with other adults present.

    It’s still ok for drag queens to get their junk out in front of kids then.

    Drag Queen Flashes Children During Story Hour

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    ALERT! In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch.

    We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 21:20

  • Prepare For "Major Accidents" In The Market; Morose Milken-ites Warn "We're Going To See Losses"
    Prepare For “Major Accidents” In The Market; Morose Milken-ites Warn “We’re Going To See Losses”

    Bad loans, worse banks, but “it’s not nearly as bad as it was in 2008” if you believe Charlie Munger.

    Having admitted over the weekend in an interview with The FT that American banks are “full of” what he said were “bad loans”, thanks to the plunge in commercial property prices, the 99-year-old warned ominously that “trouble happens to banking just like trouble happens everywhere else. In the good times you get into bad habits… When bad times come they lose too much.”

    Quite notably, while the Biden administration is deftly attempting to paint SVB, SI, and now FRC as “outliers” and “unique”, the latter is far from ‘unique’ and that is a problem as Munger later noted that “it’s not that damned easy to run a bank intelligently, there are a lot of temptations to do the wrong thing.”

    More specifically, their loan books are now plagued with CRE loans (a topic we warned about extensively – before the mainstream media picked up the torch).

    “A lot of real estate isn’t so good any more,” Munger said.

    “We have a lot of troubled office buildings, a lot of troubled shopping centres, a lot of troubled other properties. There’s a lot of agony out there.”

    And while the grumpy old man has slammed bitcoin (we don’t blame him for not understanding that), he is certainly far more versed in the details of commercial property loans and banking, which is why we take him seriously and at today’s Milken Conference, Munger’s message was echoed loud and clear by investment leaders from Apollo’s Marc Rowan to Cain’s Jonathan Goldstein and Citi CEO Jane Fraser.

    “It’s a bad day to be an office owner in San Francisco and Chicago,” Marc Rowan, co-founder and chief executive officer of Apollo, said Monday.

    “We are going to see losses,” he said, adding that the stresses will be concentrated and not systemic.

    “Every piece of real estate, everywhere in the world, that was purchased pre-the run up in interest rates, as a result of the change in interest rates, is now worth less,” Rowan continued.

    “It does not mean it won’t come back. It does not mean it won’t ultimately be a good investment, but in the short term, we have significant dislocation.”

    David Steinbach, global chief investment officer at real estate investment firm Hines, said Monday during one panel that commodity office buildings – older office buildings that lack amenities – would face particular pain, with Amherst CEO Sean Dobson pointing to office towers in central business districts as a particular rough spot for the industry.

    “I do think we’ve got a period of pain and I don’t think we’ve yet reached the bottom of that,” Cain’s Goldstein said.

    “But there will be opportunity that comes out when people do begin to sense that the bottom’s been reached.”

    As Bloomberg reports, Fraser said she’s most worried about real estate with debt that’s been packaged into lower-rated commercial mortgage-backed securities.

    “It’s the return-to-office phenomenon that’s driving it,” Fraser said Monday during a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.

    “We’re not talking about the local doctors’ office, we’re not talking about all of the office space either.”

    Finally, TCW Group President and CEO Katie Koch warned that cracks are starting to show in the private credit market and that investors should prepare for “major accidents” in the red-hot sector over the next 12 to 18 months. 

    “We have had five years where ‘diligent light’ became a term,” Koch said.

    “That is not going to be fun over the next five years if you arrived at it from that perspective.”

    Koch said investors should be “very underweight” regional banks.

    “The globally systemically important banks are a good place to be invested,” Koch said.

    “Regional banks is an area we are concerned about because of deposit flight, and also they have the highest exposure to commercial real estate, which is an area we are concerned about.”

    Marc Cowan had perhaps the most important comment though for ‘average joe’ and his 401(k), warning that “equity has adjusted somewhat, but not nearly as much as credit.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 21:00

  • Joe Biden Is Losing Young Climate Voters
    Joe Biden Is Losing Young Climate Voters

    Authored by Rick Whitbeck via RealClear Wire,

    Now that President Biden has made his 2024 run official, he has plenty of work to do if he hopes to shore up his lagging support among key constituencies. According to a recent NBC News survey, a full 70 percent of Americans do not want the President to run again. One demographic to watch is younger voters, who backed Biden by a wide 61-36 margin in 2020. 

    Younger Americans are exceptionally aggressive and vocal on climate policies. Nearly two-thirds (62%), support phasing out fossil fuels entirely, said Alec Tyson, an associate director of research at Pew Research Center.  According to a recent Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics poll, an amazing half of those polled prefer the government do more to curb climate change, even if U.S. economic growth is damaged in the process.

    As friendly as Biden has been to the eco-left, and outright hostile to our domestic, traditional energy industries, he is still facing backlash from these eco-centric voters over three recent decisions dealing with energy development. As always, my state of Alaska is at the epicenter. 

    First, the President – through the Department of Interior – approved Alaska’s Willow oil and gas development project last month. His decision elicited a collective groan of disgust and disapproval from the environmental movement.  They’d dedicated years opposing the project, and spent the weeks ahead of the final decision bombarding social media, protesting outside of the White House and using their extensive, inside access to stop Willow from progressing.  

    Afterward, they vented.

    “Biden approved [Willow] knowing full well that it’ll cause massive and irreversible destruction, which is just appalling, particularly coming from an administration who has pledged to address the climate crisis, has pledged to address environmental injustice, has pledged to address the extinction crisis,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, who, along with other activist organizations, promptly took legal action to oppose the decision.

    Next, Biden greenlit the export plan for Alaska Gasline Development Corp’s goal to build an 800-mile pipeline to bring trillions of cubic feet of gas from the North Slope to homes, businesses and eventually a tidewater port for export to Asia and other Pacific Rim countries.  Having previously been held up under the guise of environmental and Indigenous justice reviews, the approval on April 14 gave a significant boost to the $43 billion project.  

    Environmentalists went apoplectic. “Joe Biden’s climate presidency is flying off the rails,” said Lukas Ross of Friends of the Earth. Ross pointed out this was the second U.S. approval of a “fossil-fuel mega-project” in as many months.  

    Finally, the tipping point for climate activists may have come on April 21, when Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm penned a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), asking to “expeditiously” approve regulatory authorizations for the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia. Granholm noted the gas pipeline can “play an important role as part of the clean energy transition”.

    Once again, green activists hit the roof, including former National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attorney and current Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA), who stated bluntly, “She (Granholm) sounds like a cheerleader for the fossil fuel industry; it’s really quite pathetic.”

    The same groups who previously cheered when the Green New Deal was introduced, celebrated when the Keystone Pipeline was shuttered and nearly danced in the streets when copper mines in Alaska and Minnesota were ruled off-limits to development are now blasting Biden for losing his way on what they see as an ‘existential threat’ to their survival, and turning his back on mankind.

    The group Gen-Z for Change recently put out a statement that clearly spells out the position of many young voters. “There is no deeper form of betrayal than watching a president who has claimed to value the voices of youth…blatantly disregard one of our generations’ largest and clearest movements.”  Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was even more blunt: ”Young people are plugged in and more informed than they have ever been about climate change,” he said. ”Now they’re feeling stabbed in the back.” If Mr. Biden doesn’t reverse course, ”young people stay home in 2024, that’s the consequences.” 

    Make no mistake: Biden is a dedicated disciple to the green cult. If given another four years, he will take steps toward fulfilling his promise to “end fossil fuel.” The next 17 months will determine whether Joe Biden will turn 86 in 2028 as a two-term President or defeated, one-term leader.  Ironically, voters much younger will make or break his fate, and they see the world through a very green lens. Right now, they’re seeing red, and that spells trouble for Team Biden.

    Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs and opportunities. Contact him at Rick@PowerTheFuture.com and follow him on Twitter @PTFAlaska.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 20:40

  • Greenwald: Ukraine's Conscript Army Being Used By West As "Cannon Fodder"
    Greenwald: Ukraine’s Conscript Army Being Used By West As “Cannon Fodder”

    Journalist Glenn Greenwald issued some blunt and apt statements on the nature of the Ukraine war and Washington’s constant stoking of conflict, as opposed to US officials exploring serious avenues for peace. Below is his epic Twitter thread Monday in response to once again being accused of supposedly “aping” pro-Kremlin talking points [emphasis ours]…

    No, the biggest victims of the war in Ukraine are the tens of thousands of Ukrainian men forced against their will as conscripts to serve as cannon fodder so that empty and weak Western losers like you can feel a sense of purpose and strength as you cheer from a safe distance.

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    Whenever it comes to wars people get to cheer without fighting in them — call it the Bill Kristol Syndrome — you can never underestimate the ample psychological benefits they get from feeling strong and tough but never getting near the fight.

    Adam Smith [in The Wealth of Nations] warned of it in 1776:

    For those who love to cheer the war in Ukraine but seem to have no idea what it’s actually about, here’s just the latest instance in which Zelensky had to increase punishments for desertion because of how unwilling much of the conscript army is to fight:

    Zelensky knew there were way too few Ukrainian men willing to fight the Russian Army. That’s why he begged Westerners who “support Ukraine” to come help fight Russia.

    But so few did, so they closed the border and used unwilling conscripts…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 20:20

  • Kansas Becomes 1st State To Pass Law Defining Gender As A Person’s Sex At Birth
    Kansas Becomes 1st State To Pass Law Defining Gender As A Person’s Sex At Birth

    Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Kansas has become the first state to adopt a definition of gender with the passage of legislation that keeps men, no matter what gender they identify as, out of women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and other intimate spaces.

    It also separates inmates and restricts participation in sports according to one’s sex at birth.

    The move came late in the afternoon of April 27, when the state Legislature voted to override Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of S.B. 180, which became known as the “Women’s Bill of Rights.”

    Under it, a female is defined as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova.” A male is defined as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”

    It also defines gender words calling for “woman” and “girl” to be used to refer to human females and “man” and “boy” to refer to human males. It defines “mother” as a parent of the female sex and “father” as a parent of the male sex.

    The override comes a little more than a week after Kelly vetoed the bill on April 20, after it was passed by a two-to-one margin between Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate.

    Kelly said she vetoed the legislation because she was concerned it would open the state up to costly discrimination lawsuits, cause a loss of federal funding, and hurt the Sunflower State’s economy.

    The bill garnered support from a range of groups, including one staunchly pro-choice women’s rights group.

    “Victory!” wrote the Women’s Liberation Front (WOLF) on Twitter, upon news of the veto override.

    The national women’s rights organization, which helped craft the legislation, wrote on its website, “This bill takes procedural steps to write into law common sense definitions that ensure the meaning of words like ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ aren’t corrupted by unelected bureaucrats intent on pushing gender ideology.”

    The group stated that members sent more than 600 messages to Kansas lawmakers in support of the bill.

    Opposition Forces

    The legislation also had plenty of opposition, with critics calling it anti-trans and reminiscent of racial segregation in the 1960s.

    “It’s the same sayings,” state Rep. John Alcala (D-Topeka) said at a public hearing on the bill. “I don’t want you in my bathroom. I don’t want you drinking out of my water fountain. I don’t want you over at my house. I don’t want my kid hanging out with you.”

    Beth Oller, a physician who testified against the bill, said the title was inappropriate and violated women’s rights. “This is [in] no way a women’s bill of rights. The bill does the opposite of protecting women; it causes harm.”

    Oller said that medical doctors “for decades have agreed that there is no sufficient way to define what makes a woman.”

    “Gender is not binary but is a spectrum of biological, mental, and emotional traits that exist along a continuum,” she said. “Intersex people exist.”

    The bill does include a provision that recognizes intersexual individuals. “Individuals born with a medically verifiable diagnosis of disorder/differences in sex development are to be provided available federal and state legal protections,” the legislation states.

    Opposition to SB 180 also came from the Kansas School Superintendents’ Association, the United School Administrators of Kansas, and Kansas Legal Services.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 20:00

  • 6 Dead, Dozens Injured After Blinding Illinois Dust Storm Caused 90-Vehicle Pileup
    6 Dead, Dozens Injured After Blinding Illinois Dust Storm Caused 90-Vehicle Pileup

    Six people have died and more than 30 injured in a 90-vehicle pileup on Interstate 55 in Illinois that was blamed on a blinding dust storm. 

    “The cause of the crash is due to excessive winds blowing dirt from farm fields across the highway leading to zero visibility,” Illinois State Police Maj. Ryan Starrick told NBC News. 

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    S​tarrick said the stretch of the interstate would be closed until tomorrow because of the high number of crashed vehicles and casualties. 

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    N​athan Cormier was driving on the interstate and described what he saw to The Weather Channel:

    “I saw the smoke cloud from a distance and I’ve driven through them before, you know, you put your hazards on, go slow … And I moved to the left lane to get away out from behind a semi. And that’s when I came across everything else stopped in the road.”

    Cormier described the scene as a “dust bowl.”

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    Starrick said dust storms similar to this one sometimes occur across Illinois during the planting season. 

    A total of ten helicopters were requested, with four on the scene. First responders requested 37 ambulances. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 19:40

  • US Says It Will Defend Philippine Boats Against Chinese Threats
    US Says It Will Defend Philippine Boats Against Chinese Threats

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The State Department has reaffirmed that an attack on a Philippine vessel in the South China Sea will invoke the US-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty following a near miss between Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels in the disputed waters.

    The stand-off took place on April 23 when Manila says a larger Chinese ship blocked a Philippine patrol vessel after warning it to leave the area near Second Thomas Shoal, a Philippine-controlled reef in the Spratly Islands also claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

    Image via Philippine Coast Guard/AP

    The incident received a lot of publicity as the Philippine coast guard had journalists onboard during the patrol, including reporters from The Associated Press. According to AP, the Chinese ship came within 120 to 150 feet of the Philippine vessel, which had to reverse its engines to avoid a collision.

    For their part, Beijing blamed the Philippine vessel for the incident and said Manila staged the near collision for the press. “

    “It needs to be stressed that the Philippine vessels intruded into the waters with press staff on board. This makes it clear that it was a premeditated provocation designed to initiate friction, blame it on China and hype up the incident,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.

    The State Department issued a statement that said the US “stands with The Philippines in the face of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Coast Guard’s continued infringement upon freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.”

    The statement went on to vow that the US was willing to go to war with China if a Philippine vessel came under attack.

    “The United States stands with our Philippine allies in upholding the rules-based international maritime order and reaffirms that an armed attack in the Pacific, which includes the South China Sea, on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including those of the Coast Guard, would invoke US mutual defense commitments under Article IV of the 1951 US Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty,” the statement said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 19:20

  • Woke Bar Loses Customers Defending Bud Light Transgender Ad Campaign
    Woke Bar Loses Customers Defending Bud Light Transgender Ad Campaign

    A dive bar in southern Indiana is begging for more customers after defending Bud Light and booting anyone being ‘intolerant’ following Anheuser-Busch’s partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvnaey.

    The beer maker has received enormous backlash since the “365 Days of Girlhood” ad campaign featuring custom-made cans featuring Mulvaney’s face. In response, millions of Americans have boycotted Bud Light and other Anheuser-Busch brands.

    The Fairfax Bar & Grill in Bloomington, Indiana, however, is now hurting for customers after it hypocritically declared that it supports free speech – except for anyone who criticizes Anheuser-Busch or Bud Light.

    “We are tired of all of the hate. We are very open to debate and discussion and it’s truly a shame that we can’t have open conversations about this important political and cultural topic. Bars, in our opinion, exist as public spaces where ideas should be exchanged,” the establishment wrote on Facebook. “Unfortunately due to all of the bigotry and hatred that has surfaced around the Bud Light controversy any patron wanting to voice their concerns about the issue will be immediately asked to pay their bill and leave our establishment.”

    The post was featured next to an image of a statement claiming the Bar & Grill welcomes “ALL people,” except those who are “intolerant.”

    “We are all aware of the controversy surrounding Bud Light. We support ALL people in this establishment no matter who you are of how you identify. We will continue to sell Anheiser [sic] Busch products because we don’t care who they make special cans for,” reads the statement. “If you are intolerant of other humans of any kind, we ask that you keep your opinions to yourself. Should you feel the need to discuss this matter in public you will be asked to leave. We will not tolerate intolerance here.”

    Bar owner McKinley Minniefield told WISHTV: “We were just dealing with a lot of hate speech, and people being uncomfortable. My bartenders were aggravated and we had customers that were leaving.”

    “We’re a local dive bar in southern Indiana, there’s a lot of ideas that tossed around here, but I’ve never dealt with anything recently that was so overtly hateful.”

    As Fox News notes, however, on Wednesday the bar’s Facebook page posted a follow-up statement to the backlash.

    “While the response here has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive, it’s time to reiterate why we took a stand against hate speech. In the last two weeks since sharing a post stating that we will not tolerate intolerance, our social media has been flooded with blatantly transphobic, homophobic and racist comments,” adding “We are all inclusive and welcome all kindhearted customers. After making that post, the comments on every post since include hate speech saying that transgender people are mentally ill, biological women are being erased, and showing a plethora of disgusting memes.”

    “Hate speech has no place at The Fairfax,” the statement continues, before admitting that they’re hurting for customers.

    “Thank you to all of you for supporting our establishment. With the departure of some of our regulars, we have needed new clientele, and you have answered. I’m not gonna lie, we still need more of you right now,” reads the page. “Please continue to consider supporting us. It’s gonna be a great year of friendship, food, drinks and live music!”

    As Jonathan Turley notes,

    According to his policy, “playing nice” means not voicing an opposing view on this controversy. Yet, being tossed out of the bar is not considered censoring an opinion.

    Notably, the ban is not on those who are shouting or engaging in disruptive conduct. It is anyone who “voices their concerns” about the transgender campaign.

    Clearly, the bar has a free speech right to set such standards. Heck, we just discussed a bar that faced a boycott from the left over showing a Harry Potter game. It solved the problem with a cringing apology and promising to ban any Harry Potter images. This is not a denial of the right of the bar owner to impose his own views on patrons, but a criticism in how that right is being exercised.

    Notably, many of the same people defended the right of players to kneel during the national anthem as an exercise of free speech. Yet, some support this bar tossing out those who express opposing views on the Bud Light controversy. What is maddening is for Minniefield and the bar to do so in the name of free speech.

    All businesses and sites face tough choices in what to remove in terms of speech. Many blogs and newspapers like The Hill have now eliminated comment sections because it is too much work to monitor and make these decisions. On this blog, we use a WordPress system to remove profanity. We also remove a narrow range of threatening, doxing, or offensive content. However, we tend to allow a far greater range of speech than most sites, including speech that we find personally offensive and wrong.

    The line drawing can be challenging. For example, most would agree that someone using racist or anti-Semitic attacks in reference to another patron should be asked to leave. However, it would be more problematic to toss out someone who is making a comment that is deemed inherently racist or intolerant. Such judgment can be highly subjective and biased.

    In this case, the use of transgender advertising campaigns raises a host of issues for customers. I understand how many view this as an objection to the status of Mulvaney and a denial of her identity. However, there remains a major debate in society over the involvement of corporations to push such social agendas. We have to be able to discuss these issues. Indeed, I can imagine no more appropriate forum for discussing the Bud Light controversy than a bar. If a patron becomes loud and disruptive on either side of that debate, the bar has every reason to issue a warning and, if necessary, ask the patron to leave.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 19:00

  • Hedge Fund CIO: "The US Will Benefit From Existential Competition With China… Provided We Don't Destroy Each Other"
    Hedge Fund CIO: “The US Will Benefit From Existential Competition With China… Provided We Don’t Destroy Each Other”

    By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

    Survival Of: “Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space,” said the President of the United States. “We mean to be a part of it – we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding,” continued John F. Kennedy in 1962, the USSR’s Sputnik orbiting overhead, a 184-pound metallic ball, 22 inches in diameter.

    The Fittest: “Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe,” said the President of the United States. “Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar,” continued Ronald Reagan, standing before the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, eighteen years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. “As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two years later, the Berlin Wall fell, ending the greatest national competition in human history.

    Monopolies: “Today the House of Representatives has taken an historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China and peace in the world,” said the President of the United States. “If the Senate votes as the House has just done, to extend permanent normal trade relations with China, it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China,” continued Bill Clinton in 2000, overly confident in the triumph of democracy, capitalism. “Bringing China into the WTO and normalizing trade will strengthen those who fight for the environment, for labor standards, for human rights, for the rule of law. America, of course, will continue to defend our interests, but at this stage in China’s development we will have more positive influence with an outstretched hand than with a clenched fist.”

    Competitors: Nineteen years later, China landed a rover on the dark side of the moon. In 2020 it pioneered quantum-entanglement satellite communication. In 2021, Beijing released its 14th Five-Year-Plan with ambitions to achieve supremacy across exploration/research/technologies essential to national security and development. 1. Artificial Intelligence. 2. Quantum computing. 3. Semiconductors. 4. Brain Science. 5. Genomics and biotechnology. 6. Clinical medicine and health. 7. Deep space, deep earth, deep ocean, and polar research. It also included China’s vision for 2035, when the country seeks/expects to “be among the most innovative nations globally.”

    Communists: “At the heart of capitalism is creative destruction.” Joseph Schumpeter brought forward economic principles with piercing logic. Competition is key to progress – firms “strive to survive,” he argued. Excessive policy responses to successive financial crises have derailed that pathway by socializing financial losses, allowing incumbents to deepen competitive moats. The policy narrative is that financial losses risk economic depression, justifying the prioritization of bailouts. Yet, even at low unemployment rates, workers earn a share of the national income seen in the 1950s. Unlike previous inflations, corporate profit margins survived the most recent one due to lack of real competition. Political urgency should be squarely focused on restoring it.

    Metaphors: Life expectancy in America has dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in a row – down to 76 years. While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during the second year of the pandemic after the arrival of vaccines, the US did not. American children are less likely to live to age 5 than children in other high-income countries. Even Americans who are not obese or do not smoke, appear to have higher disease rates than their peers in other countries. And in 2020, a Pentagon study revealed that 77 percent of young Americans do not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, drug use, or mental or physical problems. 44 of those 77 failed to qualify for more than one reason.

    * * *

    Anecdote: “You Americans generally do not understand the Chinese,” said the CIO from Asia, visiting us in Connecticut. “And we Chinese generally do not understand Americans,” she continued, a unique thinker, independent, aggressive, blunt. “And this is where I hunt for opportunities, in these kinds of misunderstandings,” she said, our teams brainstorming, looking for ways to work together more closely. “Do you think our countries will have a direct military conflict?” I asked, knowing that no one knows, but interested in how she would respond. “It is not in China’s interest, and it would be economically devastating, so only if there is a miscalculation, an accidental conflict,” she said. “China has too little food to feed 1.4bln people and the US is the world’s largest exporter, so this gives me hope we will avoid a great war,” I said. “China also needs energy, metals, nearly everything,” she added.

    “So here is my base case,” I said, “The US is in desperate need of a worthy competitor, so we need China as badly as China needs us. The EU was designed simply to prevent another devastating war, and if it can accomplish that it will be a minor miracle. We should expect no more from them. Russia is a failed state. India is decades away from mattering. That leaves only China.”

    I graduated college in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, twenty years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. With no real competitor to keep the flame alive, great cities like San Francisco are in chronic decline, our politicians are abdicating leadership to the regulators and central bankers, who in turn have short-circuited creative destruction. 77% of our youth are now unfit for military service, and the nation is needlessly divided.

    “I want to see what can be accomplished by two great powers in fierce competition, using today’s technology. Imagine the incredible things we will discover, invent, produce. And perhaps, to be in true competition – the kind that awakens us from this slumber – we need to truly believe this is an existential struggle, even if it need not be. It’s probably necessary, healthy. Provided we don’t destroy each other.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 18:40

  • Kirby Claims Whopping 100,000+ Russian Casualties In Bakhmut Alone
    Kirby Claims Whopping 100,000+ Russian Casualties In Bakhmut Alone

    In a Monday press briefing National Security Council spokesman John Kirby issued a surprisingly high estimate of Russian casualties which he said took place since December fighting in the contested Donetsk city of Bakhmut. 

    He said Russian forces have suffered over 100,000 total casualties – including about 20,000 soldiers killed in combat and another 80,000 wounded.

    Image: AP/Shutterstock

    He explained that these figures were based on “information and intelligence that we were able to corroborate over a period of of some time.”

    While presenting these figures he said that the Russian advance in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces had “failed” – despite most international estimates currently indicating Russia holds 80-90% of Bakhmut at this point. 

    “Most of these efforts have stalled and failed,” Kirby said. “Russia has been unable to seize any real strategically significant territory. “

    “The only area where Russia has made some incremental gains — and I want to focus on the word ‘incremental’ — is Bakhmut,” Kirby acknowledged. “That really holds, as we’ve said before, very little strategic value for Russia. The capture of Bakhmut would absolutely not alter the course of the war in Russia’s favor, and Ukraine’s defenses in the areas surrounding Bakhmut still remain strong.”

    He also said that some half of the 20,000 Russians killed there had been fighting on behalf of Wagner.

    “Folks he [Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin] went knocking around on the doors in prison cells throughout Russia to throw human flesh at this fight,” Kirby said of a months-long recruitment drive by Wagner, controversially focused on Russian prisons.

    But when pressed, the NSC spokesman refused to give casualty numbers for the Ukrainian side. “I’m not ever going to put anything out in the public domain that’s going to make their job harder,” Kirby said. “They are the victims here. Russia is the aggressor.”

    While very clearly Bakhmut has for months been a tragic “meat-grinder” for both sides, the US could be offering this staggering and large Russian casualty count of 100,000 in order to establish a ‘pyrrhic victory’ narrative. Kirby admitted the Russians are winning in Bakhmut, but wants to paint a picture of it losing the overall conflict given the massive cost and sacrifice for Bakhmut. 

    But to keep this figure in perspective, which to most people is going to seem an extremely high estimate (and thus dubious), the total official American casualties in Vietnam were nearly 60,000 killed in action, and over 150,000 wounded – and that was after a decade of war.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 18:20

  • Luongo: Tucker, BlackRock, & The SIFI Two-Step
    Luongo: Tucker, BlackRock, & The SIFI Two-Step

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    The big news last week was Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious firing by Fox News. The reasons for Tucker’s firing are still unclear. And even Tucker’s emergence from his man cave on Tuesday for two minutes did nothing to quell the speculation.

    What it did do was underscore just how much real power he amassed during his time in the prime time slot anchoring Fox’s entire evening.

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    I’m not the first to point out to you just how many views this thing has gotten, dwarfing his Nielsen Ratings.

    This was a serious needle scratch.  Something changed behind the scenes.  Within an hour Don Lemon was dumped by CNN.  Susan Rice left the Biden Administration that morning. Nate Silver was let go from ABC News.

    Both Carlson and Lemon had stories planted about them harboring ‘toxic workplace environments’ to set the scene.  

    Nuts and Sluts is a time-tested method of invalidating a public figure.

    It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to play. Even if only for a day or two *cough* Abby Grossman *cough*

    There is every theory imaginable about what happened here and all of them have a nugget of truth to them.  Dexter White and I recorded a podcast covering what we think is the beginning of the Death of the Time Slot.

    And while the court politics of this are interesting, they almost feel like discussing 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination at this point. Does it matter who was behind or why Carlson was ousted from Fox? Could we not see this coming the further he went off the reservation?

    In fact, I was amazed he was still on the air after all this time. I don’t think this is a Tucker-as-Icarus proxy story no matter which way you cut it. It was always about something far bigger than Tucker Carlson.

    The confluence of major media and political figures leaving their posts, including now the head of the BBC Richard Sharp, over literal ancient conflict of interest issues that looks more like something taken off the shelf for the proverbial rainy day rather than some new, disturbing thing.

    It never just rains when its time to change the board state. And that’s exactly what this feels like, an attempt to completely change the direction of information flow as we get ready for the next big psy-op…

    … The remaking of the First Fungal President into the Next Garden Variety Wartime President.

    Because this is the best chance the DNC has at this point of retaking the presidency with any degree of credibility given their approval ratings. Even if you believe our elections aren’t corrupt (sic) you at least have to admit to yourself that this is a plausibly deniable way to convince yourself of that ‘fact.’

    Of course, as I said above, do any of the other whys about these events even matter? Of course not, they are, like Wartime presidents don’t lose, statistics which are simply chum for people to feed their confirmation biases and prevent any coming together of the center of the electorate to say no more.

    This was Tucker’s real crime if any of us are being honest with ourselves.

    And, in fact, it is the least interesting part of the whole story. Because the given proximate cause spoon fed to the ‘smart people’ in alternative media is the entire Blackrock angle.

    Of course, this isn’t true but, again, it doesn’t matter. That said, there is a Blackrock angle to this story but it isn’t what people were led to believe for a couple of days.

    Blackrock increased their ownership in FOX just before these events. This is symptomatic of Blackrock’s use of proxy to get what they want.

    Larry Fink, BLK CEO, is notorious for his antics in forcing heads of state and CEO’s to do his bidding while hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘I’m just a guy investing your hard-earned capital on your behalf for the good of humanity.’

    Now, this is some prime Grade AA Bullshit.

    Blackrock is Davos’ main arm-twisting subsidiary in the C-Suites of the S&P 500 as well as the Euro STOXXX 50 (link will need translation from German).  He may as well change his first name to Don but there are some ethnic issues with this outside of Queens. 

    As I’ve discussed in previous Private Blog posts for my patrons and interviews Blackrock bet the farm on Obama/Biden getting rid of Jerome Powell. They went all in on their CARES Act power to access the Fed’s Discount window to procure zero-cost seed capital to buy US stocks and, by extension, real estate and everything else.

    The company’s growth was turbocharged during COVID by this but it was already growing by more than $1 trillion annually before that.

    Its AUM — Assets Under Management — fell in 2022 because the value of the underlying assets fell as Powell put the interest rate screws to a lot of Blackrock’s ‘investments.’  The headlines have been full of governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis going on an anti-Blackrock/anti-ESG/anti-Woke tirade which has helped see some outflow from Blackrock’s funds. 

    But that doesn’t do a whole lot in the face of $10 trillion in AUM.  A few billion is literally a rounding error.

    No, the bigger effect came from taking the Fed Funds Rate from 0% to 5% in a year.  

    In the late stages of the ZIRP years we saw really strong moves in the equity markets, especially coming out of COVID as the CARES Act money made its way into the economy.   Normie FinTwit is always going on about the Fed subsidizing the ‘wealth effect’ as their main argument for why Powell is just ‘one more meeting away from pivoting’ off his ‘higher rates for longer’ schtick.

    The ‘wealth effect’ expands not only Blackrock’s AUM but also it’s political pull in the board room.  There is both coincidence and causality in my opinion, between things like Woke-a-Cola and genuflecting to every sicko with a gender fetish and the rise in Blackrock’s AUM.

    So it’s no wonder that the standard FinTwit commentary on the Fed is that QE and ZIRP goose equity prices (which it does) but also that that is what the Fed wants to do all the time!

    This is the part I disagree with and have been steadfast in my assessment as to why for nearly two years.

    Powell was trapped by both COVID and the CARES Act to go along with extending this madness for another two years.  And in the process handed Don Fink-liosi the keys to the whole rotten candy store to ensure what we’re seeing today — maximal brand destruction that defies market logic — gets ramped up to 11.

    Buying a huge stake in Fox is just one more brick in the New Media Stonewall for the upcoming war.

    All they had to do to seal the deal was convince everyone the global economy was still suffering because of COVID and we needed even MOAR SPENDING!! at the zero bound to reflate the economy.

    Powell was supposed to be deposed and Lael Brainard installed to ensure continuity of policy with them having moved Janet Yellen back into a position of power as Treasury Secretary under “Biden.”

    That has failed.  Brainard is out at the Fed. She’s prepping to replace Yellen in Biden’s 2nd term.

    Biden/Harris’s soft launch of their re-election campaign, was timed with Carlson’s ouster from Fox and warning shots fired at every major media outlet to toe the line like never before.

    So, now, let’s really talk what’s going on with Blackrock in light of this failure to replace Powell.

    For a few years now Janet Yellen and Elizabeth Warren have brought up the idea of expanding the definition of SIFI – Systemically Important Financial Institutions — to non-bank entities, like Blackrock.

    Blackrock has argued for years that it cannot be a SIFI because:

    “The British commissioner who took over from Barnier, Jonathan Hill, wanted the commission to work hand-in-hand with the financiers and every time a debate or a hearing was organised, BlackRock’s people were there,” recalls Daniela Gabor.

    “Then I realised that it was no longer the banks that had the power but the asset managers. We are often told that a manager is there to invest our money for our old age. But it’s much more than that,” she says. “In my opinion, BlackRock reflects the renunciation of the welfare state. Its rise in power goes hand-in-hand with ongoing structural changes; changes in finance, but also in the nature of the social contract that unites the citizen and the state.”

    Daniela Gabor explains that the European Central Bank, which commissions BlackRock to audit banks, has no power over the company. “BlackRock’s argument is simple: we do not do leverage, we do not act like banks, so we do not need to be regulated as a systemic institution.” {emphasis mine}

    In fact, BlackRock slips under all radars. “They can be regulated for reasons known as micro-prudential, to protect their customers, but not as a financial institution tasked with ensuring overall financial stability,” she says.

    HTTPS://WWW.INVESTIGATE-EUROPE.EU/EN/2019/BLACKROCK-THE-FINANCIAL-LEVIATHAN-THAT-BEARS-DOWN-ON-EUROPES-DECISIONS/

    This ‘conversation’ has been going on since at least 2019.  It resurfaced again this week as Yellen brought this up.  Now why would she do that if, as I’ve strenuously argued, she’s Davos through and through.

    After all wouldn’t she continue arguing for the opposite per Blackrock and Don Fink-liosi’s instructions?

    It goes back to what I’ve been saying about Blackrock for over a year now.  All of that AUM rests on a very slim pile of shareholder equity, $38.2 billion to be precise.

    As longtime Patrons know, when I do a balance sheet analysis of a company I strip out things like “Goodwill” and “Intangible Assets” from the asset side of the balance sheet.  These are simply piles of ‘value’ leftover from previous M&A activity, brand equity, etc., that may or may not have any real value.

    Stripping out the $33.6 billion BLK has in these two ‘asset’ classes that leaves Fink with less than $5 billion in shareholder equity.  

    I’m not saying there is no value there, but it’s reasonable to think that the actual value of Blackrock’s balance sheet is somewhere between these two numbers. I’m even willing to entertain 100% valuation for argument’s sake.

    It is also staring at more than $55 billion in “Other liabilities” which, is very likely derivative exposure that the company can play very fast and loose with since it was over $90 billion in 2021, and $120 billion in both 2019 and 2020.

    These are some pretty big black boxen.

    So I’m asking the question no one really wants asked, “Does Blackrock actually have any equity today?” Or is this all a big psy-op based on them voting our proxy for us?

    And when we look at the stock price I have to wonder if Wall St. isn’t also asking that question with growing confidence?

    I note on the chart the 2022 bottom in October.  What else bottomed in October 2022?  The Euro at $0.956 while the USDX made an important high. But look at that chart.  A two-bar reversal in Oct/Nov, followed by a triple-top around $775 which turns into a one-bar reversal in February, when Powell finally turned the corner on convincing the market the Fed Put is dead.

    Now we’re looking at this as a possible ‘dead cat bounce’ which needs a lot of help here to create a rally.  

    So, if Blackrock is in real trouble here because of falling asset prices, ESG backlash, rising rates, and falling cash flow then that would necessitate a change in the rules to allow it to be bailed out.

    Remember, last year when the UK pension crisis developed which took out Prime Minister Liz Truss and forced the Bank of England to intervene, the one holding the bag on the failing assets there was none other than Blackrock. 

    They were the ones in trouble who sold these leveraged CLOs — Collateralized Loan Obligations — to the UK state pensions which ran out of money to pay pensioners.

    Now, is Blackrock, which was built on the same premise as Silicon Valley Bank, using non-balance sheet activity to resist being regulated as a SIFI, is staring at a crisis if yields keep rising?

    Who is protected by the big inversion of the US yield curve we keep staring at? Who is

    So, in swoops Yellen to demand Blackrock should be a SIFI once the FUD surrounding it reaches a fever pitch.  Who is everyone afraid of now? Blackrock.  

    Why?  Because they “own the world.” 

    Why aren’t they regulated like the big banks?  Because they sit at the High Table.

    Who gets screwed if they go tits up?  The little guy.

    Who’s fault will it be if Blackrock went tits up?  The Fed.

    You can hear Elizabeth Warren setting the political stage for this now. We have to protect US workers from the evil Wall St. fat cats.  So, we’ll bring them under the auspice of increased government regulation by labeling them as a SIFI.

    Who sits on the Financial Services Oversight Council who will make this decision?

    And then we have Jim Rickards’ Ice-9 scenario.  (Link to tweet with video).

    In short, Blackrock as a SIFI becomes a protectorate of the Treasury department and it circumvents a bankruptcy.

    Since Blackrock is just a pile of AUM on top of a relatively small balance sheet it can be carved up pretty easily. Its book of business can be bought by the rest of Wall St. licking their lips at the thought of all those asset management and consulting fees that generate the lion’s share of the company’s cash flow.

    So now, does Blackrock want to be regulated as a SIFI after having built itself into the monster it is by evading that designation?  

    You can see the game here, Janet Yellen can force Jerome Powell to bail them out when their balance sheet implodes for real, holding the holes in the pension funds hostage as blackmail.

    Why would they do that?  Why would Fink do this?  

    Well, if you want to nationalize the US pension system and end the old US dollar system then you do that during a major crisis.  

    How did they tie Powell’s hands during COVID?  

    The CARES Act.  

    How will they tie Powell’s hands during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis?

    Making Blackrock a SIFI before it happens.

    What would you expect to happen between now and then?  

    Snuffing out any major selloff in US Treasuries by managing credit spreads between US and European debt.  This relieves the pressure on Blackrock’s balance sheet and that of others.  

    Now let’s talk about the blowout in US Credit Default Swap Rates as well as the massive plunge in the 1-month T-Bill rate last week creating an historic 1 month/2 month spread of over 160 basis points.  Yellen has been ramping up the rhetoric about the US defaulting once the Treasury General Account is empty.  

    “Biden” and Davos are serious about trying to stop any kind of spending cuts, because they want to balloon the US deficit to the moon to save the EU.  Blackrock is more heavily exposed to Europe than the US pension systems, but still heavily exposed to both.

    What did Lagarde at the ECB put in place last July?  The TPI – Transmission Protection Instrument — designed to protect credit spreads within the EU, nominally, but also internationally.

    What’s been happening during this major rally in the euro to $1.10 and Powell convinced the markets he’s serious about not pivoting? A collapse of US/European credit spreads indicating preferential capital movement into the US and out of Europe.

    In short, I think Blackrock’s deteriorating balance sheet as well as Yellen’s intention to stiff US bondholders to save pensioners is setting us up for the biggest Lucy with the Football moment in history. It is the biggest threat to Powell’s “higher for longer” rate policy and the future of the US.

    And it comes down to playing hard ball over the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts. If that happens then Yellen is winning and Powell is checkmated. If McCarthy and the GOP hold the line then the US banking interests will tear Blackrock apart and take their business in bankruptcy.

    Making Blackrock a SIFI short-circuits this completely and puts the onus directly on the taxpayer, per Rickards’ analysis.

    I can easily see Blackrock sacrificed on the alter of the Great Reset once it’s control over corporate interests has been turned over to the Treasury and the ECB.

    In fact, it is the best play for them to nationalize all the assets they have.  $9 trillion in AUM is a lot of win for the commies.

    And Fink, as I said, already has his seat at The High Table.

    Which is why Tucker Carlson’s firing is important but really the side show in all of this.

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you don’t like tables

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 18:00

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May 01

Today’s News 1st May 2023

  • US Air Force Moves Strategic Air Tankers From Germeny To Poland
    US Air Force Moves Strategic Air Tankers From Germeny To Poland

    Via Remix News,

    Nineteen American in-flight refueling aircraft will be stationed at the Powidz Air Base in western Poland. According to the U.S. magazine Stars and Stripes, this is the latest sign that U.S. Armed Forces are shifting combat resources to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank.

    The U.S. Air Force command in Europe confirmed that on March 10 of this year “American air tankers began working in their new main location in Poland.”

    This was done as part of operation “Copper Arrow,” which demonstrated the efforts of the U.S. military command in Europe to “strengthen security on NATO’s eastern flank through forward deployed and stationed forces.”

    “The cooperation of American air tankers with our NATO allies clearly shows how much we value our partnerships and how important it is to increase our interoperability,” said Colonel Timothy Foery, advisor to the U.S. Air Force Reserve Commander.

    Foery noted that interoperability is evident when looking “at any photo of a KC-135 refueling a Polish F-16 or a KC-46 refueling a Finnish F/A-18.”

    American air tankers KC-135 Stratotanker, KC-10 Extender and the newest in the U.S. Air Force fleet, KC-46 Pegasus, could all be sent to the Powidz Air Base.

    The aircraft currently stationed at the Spangdahlem base in Germany, will be transferred to the Powidz air base as Unit 1. As emphasized by the U.S. Air Force leadership, this relocation also demonstrates “the ability of U.S. command to quickly deploy large, credible combat forces and equipment throughout Europe.”

    The tankers stationed in Powidz can be used for refueling combat aircraft, including the world’s most advanced fighter jet, the F-35A Lightning II, which extends the range of NATO air missions. Stars and Stripes notes that eight F-35 aircraft of the Dutch Air Force have been stationed in the Malbork air base in Poland for several months.

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

    Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the presence of U.S. forces in Europe has increased, with the number of U.S. military personnel on the continent growing from 80,000 to 100,000.

    U.S. Ambassador to Warsaw Mark Brzezinski recently stated that over 10,000 American soldiers are in Poland.

    “The U.S. military’s shift to the east is another example of the United States’ efforts to create a permanent presence in the former Warsaw Pact country, an important member of NATO, which has over 300 miles of border with Ukraine,” said reporter Jennifer Svan in Stars and Stripes.

    A month ago, the United States officially established its first permanent base in Poland. The U.S. Army garrison in Poznań, located about 100 kilometers from Powidz, will support the V Corps of the Army, which oversees NATO missions in the east.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/01/2023 – 02:00

  • The Left Has No Intention Of Going Quietly Into The Night
    The Left Has No Intention Of Going Quietly Into The Night

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time,

    Younguns is a folksy term used mainly by people with a few years under their belt to refer to those far younger. Sometimes this term focuses on those under thirty. These people often don’t realize those injuries they see as badges of honor will far too soon turn to aches and pain. Today I find myself at low-ebb, it may be a combination of too much work and a recent birthday taking its toll.

    Adding to this is the reality that we live in a world that has made a mockery of hard work and savings, this is a major disservice to those carrying the load. Many people fail to take into account that the socialist agenda of the far left is in many ways anti-social. As we look around it is easy to see that much of the workforce has gone full “John Galt” and decided not to participate in the job market. Much of this is driven by the notion that hard work does not pay big dividends and we might as well dump our problems off onto those stupid enough to accept them.  

    Society and politicians are rapidly dismantling the rights of ownership. This transfer of rights constitutes a transfer of wealth whether we wish to call it by that name or not. This is the main reason so many of the most capable contributors to our economy are now moving toward the sidelines. Capable and smart people do not have to work hard to make ends meet and are proving this by going out and enjoying life rather than working to support those that won’t. When people decide to remove themselves from a game they see as rigged in favor of those far less deserving it is an indication of greater problems ahead.

    Still, make no mistake, the left claiming it is “progressive” has no intention of melting quietly into the night. I fear those both in the middle and on the right that think things will turn around are overly optimistic. Those on the right often point to California as a failed state. They use as an example drug-infested San Fransisco. At the end of 2021, it was estimated that of the city’s roughly 8,124 people that were at the time “unhoused,” a full 73 percent were “unsheltered.”  This means they sleep out of doors, in tents, and under highway overpasses.

    Catch-22 Is A Real Thing

    What is being cast upon us is breeding a culture that lacks accountability. The legal system is failing. From the smallest to the largest issues we face, it seems few are being resolved in a way most people find uplifting. More often than we would like we are running smack dab into the proverbial catch-22 situations that try our souls. A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. The term was coined by Joseph Heller, who used it in his 1961 novel Catch-22.

    While much of the country views high taxes, rampant drug use, and crime as the reason many major retailers are closing stores in the state, its Governor is being touted as a candidate for the Presidency in 2024. The bad news is that if you think it can’t get any worse, you are wrong. Sadly, society has turned onto a fast path to ruin downward. A slew of lightweight JV thinkers have taken us down the rabbit hole when it comes to creating a better future.

    We Need A Hero, But None Is In Sight

    It could be argued that those on the far left have been joined by, or are being egged on and encouraged by those wishing to weaken the United States from the inside. Russia and China are generally painted as the villains in such a scenario. The real problem we face is that true leadership tends not to exist in a vacuum. The fact is that we need a hero and they are in short supply. It has been said, the “pioneers took all the arrows,” meaning it is much safer to travel west today. It also means people of real value will most likely be destroyed if they attempt to move to the front.

    A feeling of hopelessness recently descended upon me when I became a victim of vandalism. How do you protect what can not be protected? The catch-22 here is that you have a very difficult time insuring an empty building but how do you rent it when it is constantly being ripped apart by vandals? While not the economic disaster that will end me, such events are “mentally” troubling. It is also why so many people shy away from owning hard assets, this applies to gold, real estate, and more. Readers of AdvancingTime know not owning “real things” is an investment strategy I consider problematic. 

    The efforts of those in power to paint vandalism of private property as mischief is the reason so many Americans when given the chance, op to live in gated communities. In truth, we cannot “gate off” everything. This reflects society’s inability to make people behave. The failure of people to take responsibility for their actions signals greater problems ahead.

    It does not help that we are facing a toxic mix when it comes to protecting our freedom. Big companies are predatory and big governments are stupid. The thing they have in common is they both want more control and power. In truth, we are the underdog in this ongoing struggle for control of our lives and progressives are promoting policies that empower those that want to control us. Throw in the likelihood of an economic reset or hard landing and you might say, if you think it can’t get any worse, you are wrong. Lowering your expectations may be in order.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 23:30

  • These Are The Most Dangerous Countries To Work In
    These Are The Most Dangerous Countries To Work In

    In many regions of the world, workplace safety has drastically increased over the last couple of decades, ensuring healthy working environments for many employees. As the collapse of Rana Plaza, a nine-story building in Bangladesh housing several garment workshops connected in large part to the fast fashion industry, ten years ago shows, there is still lots of room for improvement though. Research quoted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) suggests that in 2017 alone, 2.8 million people died and a further 374 million people suffered non-fatal injuries in their line of work.

    As Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, according to data from ILO, Costa Rica currently has the highest number of work-related injuries with 9,421 non-fatal as well as 9.7 fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers in 2016. For decades, the nation’s economy relied heavily on agriculture and tourism. Since the turn of the millennium, manufacturing and industry have surpassed the agricultural sector, with companies like Intel or Procter & Gamble heavily investing in the country. According to media reports, Intel’s microprocessor facility was responsible for five percent of the total GDP and 20 percent of all Costa Rican exports in 2006.

    Infographic: The Most Dangerous Countries To Work In | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Anecdotal evidence from other countries suggests that the aforementioned focus on industry and manufacturing might also be responsible for the high number of fatal occupational injuries. While Costa Rica doesn’t provide segregated data on fatal injuries by economic activity, Mexico and Turkey, which rank ninth and tenth in terms of non-fatal as well as second and third in terms of fatal occupational injuries, do. In Mexico, for example, out of 806 work-related deaths, 118 people died in the manufacturing, 76 in the construction and 86 in the transportation and storage sectors. Turkey registered 386 deaths in construction, 297 deaths in manufacturing and 258 deaths in transportation and storage out of a total of 1,394.

    Nations known for their textile industries like Pakistan and Portugal also make the top list of the countries with the most occupational injuries per 100,00 workers. While independent auditors regularly check and sign off on labor practices and working conditions in the fashion industries of the aforementioned countries, the reality is often far grimmer than official assessments suggest. A report by NGO Human Rights Watch on Pakistan’s garment workers from 2019, for example, points out companies failing to pay their employees the minimum wage, a lack of written contracts, firings of pregnant women and pay deductions for sick days.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 23:00

  • Welcome To Trading With The New Daily VIX
    Welcome To Trading With The New Daily VIX

    By SpotGamma

    New this Tuesday, the trading world now has a VIX1D (0-1 DTE) index. With HIRO, we give you a multi-day view under the SPX hood by showing how its zero DTE options are moving in real time. We also have this view available for hundreds of major stocks and ETFs. What this new index represents is a balance of zero-DTE and one-DTE options on SPX.

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

    Let’s take a look at the first three trading days of the VIX1D.  First, on Tuesday, April 25th, call selling weighed down on the market, as indicated by the green line while the puts were not impactful. Then, on Wednesday, puts were more in control, leading the market up in the morning and then back down in the afternoon.  Lastly, starting with some call buying and then put selling for a doubly bullish lift on the index price, the market trended higher.  You can see the meaningful impact of the 0DTE tool throughout these three days.

    Adding the new VIX1D as a datapoint to your trading arsenal can get you up to par. But if you combine that with our proprietary key levels, then this can really set your trading apart from the crowd.

    One of over a dozen tools we provide specifically for analyzing index products is our interactive chart of Absolute Gamma, as shown here from Thursday night, which identifies call gamma in orange and put gamma in blue. This is across all option chains but you can also filter it down to zero DTE.

    These high gamma levels are structural boundaries which have a statistically-significant influence over price action. The price tends to be attracted to these levels, but price movements also generally slow down near them and reverse direction.

    Alternatively, here is a view of that same Absolute Gamma tool but restricted to the scope of zero DTE option structure. Although the bigger picture of all chains shows an important structural firewall at 4000 for the broader market, that 4000 level is too far away for zero DTE traders to take meaningful interest. What this more focused view clarifies is that zero DTE options have the heaviest market gamma between 4100 and 4150, which is where the market was taking its bets for Friday.

    Below 4100, there are not enough puts to generate substantial gamma.

    This structural backbone provides context which helps to make signals from VIX1D less noisy. We can use key gamma boundaries and levels to set up high-probability trades. In outlier events where the price breaks outside of these ranges, especially if the price is still below the Call Wall  or above the Put Wall, there is less gamma to slow down the price and there can be some very big moves akin to the price escaping from the bottom or top of a volume profile. If breaking above a new level, all the buyers are making money (rather than trying to get it back at resistance), and that trend can easily move beyond expectations.

    As an example of a tactical application, if you see HIRO option flow moving up and leading the price, then you might want to open a covered call (long shares and short a call) to enhance your position and collect some yield if there is not much movement in the underlying price. Or if your outlook is directionally neutral, such as if the price is near our largest Absolute Gamma level and there is positive market gamma, then you could try a credit iron condor: short two options near the middle and long options further out-of-the-money as wingtips. This credit iron condor strategy harvests time premium if realized volatility remains low.

    On the other hand, if you are neutral but you expect volatility to expand, then you could try something like a long straddle, which will have defined risk but uncapped potential profits if there is a large move in either direction. Data suggests that a breach to the downside of our Volatility Trigger would usually be a good time to do that.  

    If you are serious about trading, then we invite you to be on the ground floor of this new VIX1D arena with us and to join us in the discussion on our members-only Discord.

    Start a free trial now to see our daily analysis of these developments and also to have the best tools to get you a head start on this new frontier.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 22:30

  • Not Too Old? Actuaries Chime In After Nikki Haley Says Biden 'Likely' To Die Within 5 Years
    Not Too Old? Actuaries Chime In After Nikki Haley Says Biden ‘Likely’ To Die Within 5 Years

    Last week, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said that 80-year-old President Joe Biden is likely to die within the next five years, and that his supporters would have to assume VP Kamala Harris would take his place.

    “He announced that he’s running again in 2024, and I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris, because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” the 51-year-old Haley told Fox News.

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

    No so fast, according to the Financial Times, which – citing actuaries, say an 82-year-old Biden wouldn’t be too ancient to start a second term, which he would of course finish at the ripe young age of 86.

    According to UK actuarial firm Club Vita, Biden has a life expectancy of another 11 years, taking him to 91, while former President Donald Trump has 14 more years to look forward to.

    The model’s inputs include affluence, marital status, and employment. These key demographics for both Biden and Trump put them in the same favourable categories for the main factors, including addresses in the top category for life expectancy: the analysts used Trump’s Palm Beach address and Biden’s Delaware home.

    Erik Pickett, a New Jersey-based actuary for Club Vita, said a wide range of factors could prove its model wrong, from whether the candidates “are in significantly different health to the average of someone with the same characteristics” to the fact that presidents have “access to higher quality medical treatments” than the typical American. -Financial Times

    The average American male born on the same day as Biden can expect to live another 8.5 years, according to the Social Security Administration. 

    “I would say that both Biden and Trump are likely to have substantially higher life expectancy than the average, for their age, because they have high socio-economic status, access to the best healthcare in the US, and they do not smoke,” said Georgetown University senior research investigator, Dana Glei.

    “The president will have access to the highest-quality medical care and will remain physically, mentally and socially active whilst in the job — all factors that improve lifespan,” said Pickett, adding that this will be “at least partially countered by a high-stress environment and possibly a greater exposure to external risk factors.”

    And of course, Kamala Harris is ready for whatever might come…

    Comforting, no?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 22:00

  • Federal Bureaucrats (Outside The Pentagon And US Post Office) Are Paid Some $576 Million Per Day
    Federal Bureaucrats (Outside The Pentagon And US Post Office) Are Paid Some $576 Million Per Day

    Submitted by Adam Andrzejewski, author of OpenTheBooks substack

    Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com recently determined from official Federal Freedom of Information Act filings that we pay Beltway bureaucrats in the federal executive agencies outside of the Defense Department and the U.S. Post Office some $576 million per day.

    That’s more than $210 billion per year for the 1.44 million employees of 125 rank-and-file general administrative, civil enforcement and federal law enforcement agencies.

    Economic uncertainty might surround many taxpayers, but for federal workers, we are funding lavish and perk-filled lifestyles.

    In 109 of the 125 federal agencies in Washington, the average employee salary is more than $100,000.

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average real median wage for the average employee was $54,339 in 2021.

    The average salary at the Census Bureau is $67,656. That’s just a small example of the ‘private-sector’ versus ‘public-sector’ pay disparity.

    GRAPHIC: Unfortunately, President Donald Trump didn’t drain the swamp and President Joe Biden has put the growth on steroids. These are agencies outside of the Pentagon and Post Office.

    After working just three years for the federal government, employees have 44 days of paid time off. Can you skip work for nine weeks and still have a job?

    The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average number of paid vacation days for U.S. workers is 11 days, or a day more than two weeks.

    Furthermore, most federal employees worked from home for years due to the recently concluded Covid “emergency.” Congress incentivized this with a $570 million “paid-to-stay home” fund at Treasury. If your child wasn’t back to school, you could collect $21,000 over 15 weeks in paid family leave.

    Congressional testimony shows Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja still has no clue how many federal employees returned, or where the people we pay actually do their jobs.

    (Watch the answer starting at 3:00.)

    D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, normally a staunch ally of the Biden Administration, had to call for getting federal employees back to work to revive the city’s economy.

    President Biden suggested he would soon ask workers to report for duty, but many desks remain empty because “flexibility” still prevails.

    Then, President Biden asked for the biggest pay raise in more than 40 years. His 2023 budget includes a 5.2% pay hike for the 1.4 million executive agency employees.

    We all had to pay our taxes when they were due a few weeks ago. For many federal employees, that rule is being flouted.

    In March 2023, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that “The number of delinquent Federal civilian employees has increased by 32 percent from Fiscal Years (FY) 2015 to 2021.” Some 149,000 federal employees owe $1.5 billion in back taxes!

    In the private sector, pay is typically associated with performance. But in the federal government, performance appears not to figure into the compensation equation.

    Take the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). We were all reminded of its importance earlier this year with the implosions of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The FDIC is there to insure depositors for up to $250,000, helping Americans trust that the banking system is reliable.

    Well, there are 58,000 employees at the FDIC—many of them auditors. Average salary? $160,000. None of them seemed to notice stress on the banking system. The two banks that failed were highly regarded institutions. But in fact, they had veered away from solvency.

    One might ask if we taxpayers – who will pick up the tab for this debacle according to the Administration’s plan — are getting what they we are paying for at the FDIC?

    Such disparities between pay and performance, and they are legion, are making an impact in Congress. Senator Joni Ernst (R.-Iowa) has joined our organization at OpenTheBooks.com in demanding answers to three questions that should be simple: Who is working? Where are they? What on Earth are they doing for us?

    As recent testimony by OPM Director Ahuja shows, the feds just don’t want us to know.

    For example, unlike its predecessors, the Biden Administration has redacted key information on federal workers.

    In the Biden Administration 2022 payroll, 350,861 worker names are redacted. Under the Obama Administration, in FY 2016, that figure was 2,300. Stunning.

    The administration has also redacted 281,656 worker locations.

    Our auditors estimate some $36 billion worth of taxpayer-funded salary, benefits and bonuses are hidden from Americans. Even worse, they are headed to mystery people in mystery locations.

    That means no scrutiny of performance versus pay. It means no oversight by Congress. It means no chance to cut bloat during the budget process.

    We don’t know who these workers are, what they do, where they work, or how much each of them makes.

    Like Senator Ernst, we plan to find out. At $576 million per day, it’s time we knew.

    Additional details found at Newsweek in a co-authored editorial “Where’s Waldo At Club Fed” with U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst and Adam Andrzejewski, CEO, OpenTheBooks.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 21:30

  • "Fed Wishes It Had Shut Down Reverse Repo Which Is Making The Bank Run Worse… But It Didn't, And Now It's Too Late"
    “Fed Wishes It Had Shut Down Reverse Repo Which Is Making The Bank Run Worse… But It Didn’t, And Now It’s Too Late”

    By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

    “The Policy on Counterparties for Market Operations has been updated to clarify that, in addition to implementing monetary policy, broader policy goals including fostering financial stability and ensuring bank safety and soundness, are considered when reviewing a prospective or existing counterparty,” wrote the NY Fed on their website.

    And of course, on the surface, that’s the most boring quote I’ve ever opened with. Truly. But how about this?

    “SEC registered 2a-7 funds that, in the sole judgement of the New York Fed, are organized for a single beneficial owner, or exhibit sufficient similarities to a fund so organized, generally will be deemed ineligible to access reverse repo operations.”

    More boring. For sure.

    They concluded with this beauty: “These updates are intended to clarify the New York Fed’s existing counterparty management practices and do not impact the participation of current reverse repo counterparties.”

    My favorite word here is “clarify,” which suggests their policy was misunderstood. In fact, it was perfectly understood.

    So understood that the Fed needed to clarify to investors that accelerating the banking crisis is in nobody’s interest, especially not the Fed.

    But to appreciate such subtleties you must waste decades of the most productive years of your life reading these intentionally mind-numbing statements. Like I have. Do it long enough, you succumb to Stockholm Syndrome.

    So, to save you a life of torture, let me translate: The Fed introduced the reverse repo policy (RRP) in 2014 when they lost control of market operations at the zero lower bound. But after losing control of inflation, they hiked interest rates so fast it sparked a bank run.

    Now, investors are pulling cash from banks to buy money-market funds that invest in risk-free high-yielding reverse repos.

    This exacerbates the bank run, and contracts credit in the economy. Which scares investors into selling risk assets to park more cash in reverse repos.

    And our central bankers wish they’d seen this coming and shut the program years ago. But they didn’t and it’s too late. So instead, they “clarified” their intent, and will probably build another complex program on top of something that should no longer exist. And/or slash interest rates. In the hope of regaining control.

    Even as it slips away.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 20:30

  • World's Top Buyer Of LNG Warns Of Another Price Spike
    World’s Top Buyer Of LNG Warns Of Another Price Spike

    The northern hemisphere experienced higher-than-average temperatures this past winter, which helped alleviate energy crunches and sent liquefied natural gas prices tumbling from record-high levels. Now the world’s largest gas buyer expects another price spike this year. 

    In an interview with Bloomberg, Yukio Kani, the chairman and CEO of Jera Co., expressed his concerns about another potential surge in LNG prices, attributing this to the increasing import capacity in Europe and China, along with potential severe weather risks.

    Here’s part of the interview:

    This winter, with import capacity in Europe rising and China potentially increasing demand after it ended pandemic restrictions, prices could spike again if severe weather strikes, he said. There’s no opportunity for buyers to “let their guards down,” Kani said.

    Jera, a venture between Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. and Chubu Electric Power Co., announced on Friday that it agreed to a 20-year deal to buy LNG from Venture Global LNG Inc.’s proposed terminal in Louisiana. While the company expects Japanese LNG demand to decline over the next decade, it could surprise by staying flat as more data centers and semiconductor factories are built, Kani said.

    “Those two facilities guzzle electricity, making it hard to read the demand outlook,” he said.

    Jera is also working to support Japan’s plans to use ammonia and hydrogen to decarbonize existing thermal power plants. The strategy has gotten pushback from other countries, most recently at the Group of Seven energy and environment ministers meeting. –Bloomberg 

    Kani’s comments come as Asian spot LNG futures are down 83.5% from last September’s high, touching lows not seen summer of 2021. 

    On the other side of the world, US NatGas and European NatGas futures are hovering at multi-year lows. 

    Kani’s prediction of severe weather could be linked to the likely return of the El Nino climate phenomenon this year, which may contribute to higher global temperatures and a subsequent rise in cooling demand, resulting in an increased need for gas. Additionally, as Europe rejiggers its energy supply chain away from Russia and relies more on US LNG shipments, supplies may face further tightening. Moreover, an uptick in China’s economic recovery could also boost LNG demand. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 20:00

  • Death Toll Rises As Ukraine Ramps Up Attacks On Russian Border Towns
    Death Toll Rises As Ukraine Ramps Up Attacks On Russian Border Towns

    Casualties have risen after intense shelling of a Russian village in the Bryansk region near the Ukrainian border, an attack which happened Saturday, with emergency responders initially citing two killed. 

    The casualty count as been revised as rescuers comb through rubble of a residential building. Four civilians have died and another two wounded “as a result of the actions by Ukrainian nationalists,” governor Aleksandr Bogomaz announced Sunday.

    Authorities declared a state of emergency in the village of Suzemka, where the strike took place. It lies a mere 10km from Ukraine.

    The governor further said the wave of Ukrainian strikes hit a residential area, according to CNN: 

    Unverified video posted on Bogomaz’s Telegram channel shows people emerging from a damaged building at night.

    A person can be heard on the video saying, “They pulled a woman out. They’re still checking for a kid. Not sure. Horrible.”

    Attacks, including with drones, on Russian territory have increased of late as Ukrainian forces are reportedly preparing for a spring counteroffensive. 

    The biggest weekend attack was deep inside Crimea. Multiple drones hit a fuel depot early Saturday, unleashing a huge multiple-hours long blaze which could be seen for miles.

    Suzemka

    It appeared a retaliation strike in response to Friday’s major Russian cruise missile and drone attacks against several Ukrainian cities, particularly in the central part of the country.

    Additionally, international reports indicate over the weekend cited Moscow-installed officials in eastern Ukraine who said “Ukrainian shelling had killed nine people, including an eight-year-old girl in the city of Donetsk.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 19:00

  • There Were 70 Major Bankruptcies In Just 4 Months This Year
    There Were 70 Major Bankruptcies In Just 4 Months This Year

    By Mish Shedlock of Mishtalk

    For 2009 there were 118 bankruptcies through April. In Covid-impacted 2020, there were 71 bankruptcies. In 2023 there have been 70.

    This is the third worst start to the year since 2000. Here’s the Tweet.

    2023 Bankruptcy Spotlight 

    • Bed Bath & Beyond: April 2023: Home goods, baby goods
    • David’s Bridal: Date: April 2023: Bridal apparel
    • Boxed: April 2023: An e-commerce platform selling wholesale consumer goods
    • Independent Pet Partners: February 2023: Pet supplies
    • Tuesday Morning: February 2023: Discount home goods
    • Serta Simmons Bedding: January 2023: Bedding and accessories
    • Party City: January 2023: Party supplies
    • Forma Brands: January 2023: Beauty products 

    The bankruptcy spotlight list is condensed from a detailed report by CBInsights. 

    Spotlight Bed Bath and Beyond

    NBC reports Bed Bath and Beyond Prepares for Store Closings

    “Thank you to all of our loyal customers,” Bed Bath & Beyond said in a message posted to social media on Monday. “We have made the difficult decision to begin winding down our operations. Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY stores remain open to serve you.”

    According to the retailer’s website, “deep discount” store closing sales are expected to begin in stores and online beginning Wednesday, and “all purchases during our store closing sales will be final.”

    According to the retailer, Bed Bath & Beyond websites, along with 360 brick-and-mortar stores and 120 buybuy BABY locations will “remain open and continue serving customers as the Company begins its efforts to effectuate the closure of its retail locations.”

    In Illinois, only eight Bed Bath & Beyond stores remain open, along with five buybuy BABY stores. Earlier this year, Bed Bath & Beyond announced closures of 19 stores across Illinois, many of them in the Chicago area.

    Deep Discounts, No Coupons

    Bed Bath and Beyond is no longer accepting coupons. Gift cards and loyalty certificates are still valid. All sales are final. 

    Spotlight David’s Bridal 

    CNN reports One in four brides wear David’s Bridal to their wedding. Now, it’s filing for bankruptcy

    “An increasing number of brides are opting for less traditional wedding attire, including thrift wedding dresses,” David’s Bridal said in a bankruptcy filing. “These shifting consumer preferences have significantly exacerbated” the company’s financial crunch.

    “The demand for formal wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, and related accessories has decreased substantially in the current environment,” the company said in its filing.

    David’s Bridal will keep its nearly 300 stores and website operating and fulfill all customer orders as it searches for a buyer for the company. It will also honor gift cards, returns and exchanges. But if David’s Bridal is not able to find a buyer, it could have to close all stores and liquidate.

    The company has around 10,000 full and part-time employees, but last week it said it was laying off 9,000 workers.

    David’s Bridal, the successor to a bridal retailing business that began as a single bridal salon in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in 1950, said approximately 25% of brides in the United States wear one of its gowns at their wedding.

    Nonstore Retail Sales as Percent of Advance Retail Sales

    Data from Commerce Department, chart by Mish.

    To create the chart I subtracted food, gasoline, motor vehicles, and items one does not normally buy online, then took the nonstore percentage of what remained. 

    Not only have consumer preferences shifted on what people buy, preferences have shifted in the way people buy. 

    The percentage of shopping online has been steadily rising but the Covid pandemic goosed the trend. It’s about four percentage points above the prior trend. 

    Amazon was the big beneficiary. It explains Amazon’s earnings report. Nonetheless, not all is well with Amazon.

    Amazon Layoffs

    On April 26, Geekwire reported Latest round of Amazon layoffs begins today, impacting AWS and human resources

    Amazon began notifying Amazon Web Services and human resources employees impacted by its latest round of layoffs on Wednesday, as the company continues to trim headcount to cut costs.

    The layoffs are part of the 9,000-person corporate workforce reduction announced by the company in March. The cuts mostly affect AWS, human resources (which Amazon calls PXT, for People Experience and Technology), Amazon Advertising, and Twitch.

    Amazon in January announced a 18,000-person layoff, the largest in the Seattle company’s history. The additional 9,000 layoffs bring the total to 27,000 job cuts, about 8% of Amazon’s corporate workforce, which previously numbered around 350,000 people.

    The company has trimmed back and eliminated several products, services, and entire businesses over the past year to help cut expenses, including its Scout neighborhood delivery robots, its Amazon Care primary healthcare business, bricks-and-mortar Amazon bookstores, and others. Amazon said Wednesday that it was shutting down its Halo health devices and service.

    M2 Money Supply Declines 8 Straight Months, ODL Down 12 Straight Months

    On April 12, I commented Fed Minutes Now Predict a Recession This Year Along With Higher Unemployment. Also note M2 Money Supply Declines 8 Straight Months, ODL Down 12 Straight Months.

    The economy is slowing fast. A rise in unemployment will follow,

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 18:30

  • New California Gold Rush Coming As Record Snowpack Melts
    New California Gold Rush Coming As Record Snowpack Melts

    Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Gold isn’t raining from the sky in California, but it might be flooding into the rivers by summer.

    Tourists are seen panning gold during a tour with the California Gold Panning. (Courtesy of Nick Prebalick)

    “Nugget Nick” Prebalick expects the record snowpack in northern California to deposit even more gold in Woods Creek in Tuolumne County, where he shares a claim with his father and son near Jamestown. The family has been offering tours to those who want to experience gold mining and learn about the history of the gold rush in the state.

    “I’m already finding more gold,” Prebalick told The Epoch Times. “I’ve been finding gold every tour.”

    The Prebalicks, who own California Gold Panning, usually find about an ounce of gold a day when they take guests to pan for nuggets on their claim. The most he and his father have found was 127 ounces in one day.

    (L-R) Nick Prebalick, Nathania Prebalick, and prospector Terry Prebalick of California Gold Panning. (Courtesy of Nick Prebalick)

    As this year’s snow melts from the Sierra Nevada and other mountains, the runoff will wash away silt and deposit more gold in rivers and streams, prompting some to predict a modern-day gold rush this summer.

    California’s first gold rush in 1848 brought fortune seekers from all over the world. More than 300,000 came to the territory, and gold was worth $20.67 per ounce, according to the National Museum of American History.

    Today, each ounce is worth about $2,000.

    “I think this summer. I’m going to be swamped,” he said. “We’ll probably get 10 groups a day.”

    Mark Keene, who owns the mining equipment company Keene Engineering in Chatsworth—about 30 miles northwest of the city of Los Angeles—with his brother, told The Epoch Times he also anticipates a big increase in gold mining activities when the snow starts to melt.

    “In my lifetime, I don’t remember this much snowpack in the mountains,” Keene said, adding that he expects to see a superflood. Keene sells gold pans, sluice boxes, and other tools used by armatures and professionals.

    “When you have a catastrophic flood like that all the riverbanks and the mountainsides wash down in the river and you see a lot of gold,” he said. “It could be one of the best years in decades for mining.”

    Keene and his family have a secret mining spot and they visit on the weekends, he said.

    Gold flakes are being found in the Klamath River. (Courtesy of the New 49’ers Prospecting Association)

    “It’s not always about the gold,” he said. “It’s about the journey and the adventure of it, too.”

    First-timers need to know the rules before heading out to look for treasures, though, said Dickey Melton, manager of The New 49’ers Prospecting Association, a gold mining club based about 20 south of the Oregon border in Happy Camp, California.

    “What we have now is a whole bunch of hand miners,” Melton said, as state law prohibits any type of mining other than panning, sluice boxes, or shovels.

    Even with restrictions, many people come out to the club’s 63 claims on 83 miles on the Klamath River, which flows more than 250 miles through Oregon and northern California.

    “We get people from all over the world who come here,” Melton said. “Right now, all of that snow is melting, and the rivers are running really high. We’re seeing some hand miners coming in with some pretty good gold.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 17:30

  • "Falsification Of History": Egypt Goes Ballistic On Netflix Over Cleopatra's Race
    “Falsification Of History”: Egypt Goes Ballistic On Netflix Over Cleopatra’s Race

    According to Egypt’s antiquities ministry, an upcoming four-part drama-documentary produced by Netflix has made a serious error regarding the race of one of Egypt’s pharaohs. It appears that ‘woke capital’ is distorting history. 

    “Queen Cleopatra,” released May 10, has Black actor Adele James featured as the legendary leader. The move by Jada Pinkett Smith, the producer and narrator of the series, has infuriated Mostafa Waziri, head of the Supreme Antiquities Council, who said: portraying Cleopatra as Black is “a falsification of Egyptian history.”

    Waziri said nothing was racist about his comments, which were entirely motivated by “defending the history of Queen Cleopatra, an important part of the history of Egypt in antiquity.”

    Egyptian experts insist Cleopatra had “white skin and Hellenistic characteristics.” But don’t tell ‘woke Netflix’ this… 

    An online petition on Change.org titled Cancel Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra” has nearly 8,000 signatures. It alleges:

    “Afrocentrism is a pseudoscience that is pushing a group’s agenda to claim Egypt’s history and rob the actual Egyptians of it. By using false articles and zero evidence, they are still attempting to falsify history.”

    “Cleopatra was born in Alexandria, Egypt in the Ptolemaic dynasty to Greek descent. She was NOT black. This is in no way against black people, and is simply a wake up call to preserve the history and the integrity of the Egyptians and the Greeks.”

    “The show is clearly done to complement the Afrocentric movement, which claims to be the owner of the ancient Egyptian civilization, and to consolidate what the movement promotes. Egypt was never black and it was never white, Egypt is just Egypt. There are many great African/black civilizations, but Egypt was/is NOT one of them. Sign the petition to stop the falsification of history!” 

    Meanwhile, Egypt has been critical of Netflix’s content. It recently demanded the online streaming platform to drop content that runs counter to its “societal values,” such as Western-produced television shows featuring gay and lesbian characters onscreen. 

    So, in Egypt’s view, woke Netflix is distorting history. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 17:00

  • In Big Win For Gun-Rights Advocates, Federal Judge Enjoins Illinois' Assault Weapons Ban
    In Big Win For Gun-Rights Advocates, Federal Judge Enjoins Illinois’ Assault Weapons Ban

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    In a major victory for gun rights advocates, U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn has granted a preliminary injunction of Illinois’ ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. The decision comes after two other district courts ruled in favor of the law — sending this issue to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and potentially the Supreme Court.  These long-awaited challenges will test the Democratic calls for removing all AR-15s and similar weapons, including calls from President Joe Biden.

    I have previously raised doubts over some of these laws, which are based on questionable factual claims and distinctions between weapons. Indeed, President Biden has made dubious constitutional and historical claims about the Second Amendment and AR-15s.

    Illinois and New York have previously supplied gun rights advocates with huge victories by drafting facially unconstitutional laws. Moderate efforts at gun control are often ramped up in the legislative process to become more and more sweeping.

    McGlynn recognized that gun bans are popular in states like Illinois but noted that “even legislation that may enjoy the support of a majority of its citizens must fail if it violates the constitutional rights of fellow citizens.”

    The court tackles the argument made by many gun control advocates that states can ban “non-essential accessories” like magazines because they are not themselves “arms” under the Second Amendment.

    PICA outlaws possession of a “semiautomatic pistol” with a detachable magazine if it is equipped with any of the following: “a threaded barrel,” “a shroud attached to the barrel or that partially or completely encircles the barrel,” “a flash suppressor,” or “arm brace.” PICA further outlaws possession of a magazine for a handgun capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition and of “[a] semiautomatic pistol that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 15 rounds.” Defendants contend that such items are not necessary to the functioning of a firearm and are thus not “arms” and therefore not protected by the Second Amendment.

    Defendants’ argument is not persuasive. The Seventh Circuit has recognized the Second Amendment as extending to “corollar[ies] to the meaningful exercise of the core right to possess firearms for self-defense.” It is hard to imagine something more closely correlated to the right to use a firearm in self-defense than the ability to effectively load ammunition into the firearm. The Third Circuit recognized the importance of this corollary and held that “a magazine is an arm under the Second Amendment.”

    McGlynn also stated that it is “bordering on the frivolous” to claim that neither large capacity magazines nor assault weapons are protected because they were not in common use when the Second Amendment was ratified. He cited the long-standing rule that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

    The court also rejected the claim that the standard is whether a weapon was in common use for self-defense:

    Bruen clearly holds that the Second Amendment protects “possession and use” of weapons “in common use” not just weapons in common use for self-defense as Defendants’ argued. Even if there was a requirement that the “common use” of an “arm” be self-defense, AR-15 style rifles would meet such a test considering that 34.6% of owners utilize these rifles for self-defense outside of their home and 61.9% utilize them for self-defense at home.

    The court further noted that large capacity magazines are commonly owned and used by sporting enthusiasts and there are more AR-15s than F150s in this country.

    Judge McGlynn also noted that these weapons are commonly used for self-defense and that there are up to 2.5 million instances each year in which civilians used firearms for home defense. He added:

    “In no way does this Court minimize the damage caused when a firearm is used for an unlawful purpose; however, this Court must be mindful of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. While PICA was purportedly enacted in response to the Highland Park shooting, it does not appear that the legislature considered an individual’s right under the Second Amendment nor Supreme Court precedent. Moreover, PICA did not just regulate the rights of the people to defend themselves; it restricted that right, and in some cases, completely obliterated that right by criminalizing the purchase and the sale of more than 190 “arms.” Furthermore, on January 1, 2024, the right to mere possession of these items will be further limited and restricted Accordingly, the balance of harms favors the Plaintiffs.

    The Court recognizes that the issues with which it is confronted are highly contentious and provoke strong emotions. Again, the Court’s ruling today is not a final resolution of the merits of the cases. Nothing in this order prevents the State from confronting firearm-related violence. There is a wide array of civil and criminal laws that permit the commitment and prosecution of those who use or may use firearms to commit crimes. Law enforcement and prosecutors should take their obligations to enforce these laws seriously. Families and the public at large should report concerning behavior. Judges should exercise their prudent judgment in committing individuals that pose a threat to the public and imposing sentences that punish, not just lightly inconvenience, those guilty of firearm-related crimes.”

    Here is the opinion: 2023-04-28-Order-Granting-MPI

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 16:30

  • The Great American Opt-Out: A Matter Of Willingness, Willfulness, And Will
    The Great American Opt-Out: A Matter Of Willingness, Willfulness, And Will

    Authored by Bob Maistros via American Greatness,

    A Great American Opt-Out, the partition of the world’s foremost superpower into separate red and blue nations, is certainly not a subject to be taken – nor a suggestion to be made – lightly. 
     

    But a superpower won’t remain super when, as Victor Davis Hanson lately lamented, it must “fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential.” 

    These existential yet insoluble problems? They are self-inflicted wounds like weakened security, economic ruin, dysfunctional cities, nonexistent borders, transgender tyranny, and the weaponization of our justice system. 

    And add as a coup de grace—the ultimate point past the point of no return—Joe Biden’s diktat disappearing the internal combustion engine. This will accelerate a death spiral for automakers and power producers already overwhelmed by renewable mandates. It will accentuate energy poverty, lead to decreased private ownership of soon-to-be-unaffordable automobiles, and ultimately actuate a forced flight from capacious suburbs to cramped spaces in family-unfriendly urbs—and a crimped American Dream.

    Why are these problems insoluble? Because any dissent from the ruling class narrative risks persecution, prosecution, “peaceful” (read riotous) protests, lawsuits, suspensions, canceling, and cutoffs of livelihoods and necessities. 

    Moreover, all meaningful avenues to counter mendacious, monolithic misrule by out-of-touch elites remain stubbornly blocked.

    Today’s executive branch is a pen-and-phone and deep state-dominated operation, utterly disdainful of the people it is ostensibly devoted to serve.

    Our justice system systematically weaponizes itself against that citizenry and the judiciary injudiciously generates inventive subversions of its will (See: Obamacare, DACA, transgender rights). 

    Corporate America co-opts portfolios and pension funds to undermine investors’ and workers’ interests in the service of a woke ideology, an even more woke corporate media colludes with one political party, and our woke culture devalues core American values. 

    We have a solve-nothing, spend-everything (and more) Congresses. 

    We have an electoral process that—whether or not irretrievably tainted by systemic fraud and rigged by an elite “cabal”—dubiously delivered not just the White House but also net midterm senatorial, gubernatorial, and state legislative gains to the party of the most decrepit, degenerate, disdained and disaster-inducing presidential incumbent in history. 

    Stein’s Law (as in Herbert) posits, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” America’s paralysis in fixing existential problems cannot go on at all, much less forever, without a ceding of its superpower status—if not a Weimar-level collapse.

    It must stop. Soon. But how? 

    Just as Issues & Insights has documented millions of citizens fleeing blue-state economic, political and social rot, the sole solution for Red America is to simply vote with its feet. 

    That is, walk. Opt out.

    Some suggest the union’s geographically dominant red counties could lead such an exodus. But a more likely route is for red states—perhaps the 18 that unsuccessfully banded together to challenge the 2020 election results—to declare the union dissolved, whether due to that illegitimate outcome or because of the unceasing, extraconstitutional thwarting of sovereignty in the swamp. Perhaps invite red counties in blue jurisdictions to be annexed into neighboring jurisdictions, or even form new states. 

    In either event, it’s not difficult to conceive the formation of a provisional government, pending a new constitution and elections, including current members of Congress and federal judges from departing states, and an executive of existing governors. 

    Nor is it difficult to conceive the negotiation of dissolution terms, as previously suggested, including a joint defense pact and shared assumption of responsibility for unfunded liabilities. (Division of “trust funds?” A mere fiction in a nation $31 trillion in debt.) 

    An overwhelmingly conservative government could otherwise set about dismantling the nanny state in its jurisdictions while instituting the remedies to current maladies Victor Davis Hanson also identified.

    In short, the logistics and implementation of partition are imaginable and manageable. The musts to muster? The willingness to admit that “out” is the only sustainable avenue to making America great again, given the hijacking of its commanding heights. The willfulness to advocate and agitate for that result. And the will to see a separation through. 

    Those elements may seem far off and unattainable given the lack of seriousness with which partition suggestions have been regarded to date, even among conservatives, and its regrettable association with the ill-fated and immoral Confederate cause. 

    But where was the transgenderism now darkly gripping America even a few years back? Who foresaw Black Lives Matter’s rapid rise and the rule of law’s sudden suspension? Or the Green New Deal’s nanosecond-long advance from political punch line to administration policy? 

    Opt-out must proceed, to succeed, with the same insistence, sense of urgency and level of volume as those efforts. Starting with igniting and incessantly fanning a fire in forums like these. Making it a theme of an unceasing series conservative gatherings and marches and hearings. Confronting candidates for every office at every level at every opportunity and thereby choosing and encouraging champions. 

    At America’s accelerated rate of decline, there is not a moment to waste. And with every elite political, economic, social, cultural, and judicial institution mobilized against its citizenry, no further “point of no return” to be passed.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 15:30

  • 200 Years Of Global Gold Production, By Country
    200 Years Of Global Gold Production, By Country

    Although the practice of gold mining has been around for thousands of years, it’s estimated that roughly 86% of all above-ground gold was extracted in the last 200 years.

    With modern mining techniques making large-scale production possible, global gold production has grown exponentially since the 1800s.

    In the infographic below, Visual Capitalist‘s Govind Bhutada and Miranda Smith, using data from Our World in Data, visualizes global gold production by country from 1820 to 2022, showing how gold mining has evolved to become increasingly global over time.

    A Brief History of Gold Mining

    The best-known gold rush in modern history occurred in California in 1848, when James Marshall discovered gold in Sacramento Valley. As word spread, thousands of migrants flocked to California in search of gold, and by 1855, miners had extracted around $2 billion worth of gold.

    The United States, Australia, and Russia were (interchangeably) the three largest gold producers until the 1890s. Then, South Africa took the helm thanks to the massive discovery in the Witwatersrand Basin, now regarded today as one of the world’s greatest ever goldfields.

    South Africa’s annual gold production peaked in 1970 at 1,002 tonnes—by far the largest amount of gold produced by any country in a year.

    With the price of gold rising since the 1980s, global gold production has become increasingly widespread. By 2007, China was the world’s largest gold-producing nation, and today a significant quantity of gold is being mined in over 40 countries.

    The Top Gold-Producing Countries in 2022

    Around 31% of the world’s gold production in 2022 came from three countries—China, Russia, and Australia, with each producing over 300 tonnes of the precious metal.

    North American countries Canada, the U.S., and Mexico round out the top six gold producers, collectively making up 16% of the global total. The state of Nevada alone accounted for 72% of U.S. production, hosting the world’s largest gold mining complex (including six mines) owned by Nevada Gold Mines.

    Meanwhile, South Africa produced 110 tonnes of gold in 2022, down by 74% relative to its output of 430 tonnes in 2000. This long-term decline is the result of mine closures, maturing assets, and industrial conflict, according to the World Gold Council.

    Interestingly, two smaller gold producers on the list, Uzbekistan and Indonesia, host the second and third-largest gold mining operations in the world, respectively.

    The Outlook for Global Gold Production

    As of April 25, gold prices were hovering around the $2,000 per ounce mark and nearing all-time highs. For mining companies, higher gold prices can mean more profits per ounce if costs remain unaffected.

    According to the World Gold Council, mined gold production is expected to increase in 2023 and could surpass the record set in 2018 (3,300 tonnes), led by the expansion of existing projects in North America. The chances of record mine output could be higher if gold prices continue to increase.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 15:00

  • Cash Use Rises As Households Struggle To Cope With High Inflation
    Cash Use Rises As Households Struggle To Cope With High Inflation

    Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

    Cash payments have made a comeback as households struggle to cope with high inflation, according to a new study.

    After decades of falling cash use, the impact of the rapid inflation growth has been reversing the trend toward digital.

    Credit Karma and The Harris Poll conducted a survey last month, which showed that 53 percent of adults in the United States and 46 percent in the United Kingdom are more likely to use cash than a year ago, reported Bloomberg.

    Individuals preferring cash rose 19 and 4 percentage points, respectively, over those who did not use it more.

    Roughly three in five cash users in both countries said using physical money makes them spend less.

    The change in preferences towards cash over digital is also a reaction to the growing dominance of the latter, such as Apple Pay to Venmo to tappable credit cards, which some consumers say make it too easy to spend through their budget.

    Over two-thirds of the 3,171 survey respondents admit that digital payment methods made them spend more than intended.

    Cash Use Rises Among Young

    High inflation rates have made people more self-conscious about what they spend daily, especially in the U.K., where price gains remain above 10 percent.

    “As the world is getting back to normal after the pandemic and prices are going up significantly, we see cash as being one of the most enduring ways of managing money,” said Courtney Alev, an associate director of product management at Credit Karma.

    “It really transcends generations and financial situations.”

    The surge in cash use was especially pronounced among younger generations, such as Millennials and Gen Z, the survey found.

    Younger consumers facing hard times are following the trend towards “cash-stuffing” by watching TikTok videos, that teach people how to separate their cash into different envelopes to use for different expenses, much like their grandparents or great-grandparents might have done during the Great Depression.

    Consumers are also utilizing social media venues like Facebook to avoid businesses that do not accept cash.

    Natalie Ceeney, chairwoman of Cash Access UK, told Bloomberg, “a lot of the theory on payments has been to remove friction,” and that “actually, a lot of people want friction back.”

    Cash Access’s mission is to promote easier access to cash following legislation to stem its decline.

    A woman holds British pound banknotes in this illustration taken on May 30, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

    Ceeney said that studies found a large increase in sales when businesses in personal contact with consumers, such as the sports industry, switch to contactless payments.

    “One of the reasons is people are more likely to just tap and buy things without thinking, ‘Gosh, that’s a lot of money.’”

    Some fintech companies are trying to assist struggling consumers by introducing features that help with setting limits on everyday spending, reported Bloomberg.

    Digital Currency Proposed

    The survey findings suggest that the recovery in payments in cash after pandemic lows might not be temporary, as studies by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England seem to confirm.

    The BOE noted in October that it had seen a “sustained, if partial, recovery in cash use” post-pandemic and that banknotes in circulation have risen close to a historic high.

    The U.K. bank, Nationwide Building Society, reported in January that more than 30.2 million withdrawals were made from its ATMs last year, a 19 percent jump from 2021, likely due to the rising cost of living.

    The British central bank said that the use of paper currency and coins are especially useful for lower-income households that are struggling to deal with inflated costs, ranging from food to rent payments.

    Meanwhile, central banks worldwide, including the BOE, are pushing ahead with plans to introduce digital versions of their currencies, which is a very unpopular move among the public.

    Privacy advocates worry about a loss of privacy and the potential for government surveillance if digital currencies become mandatory.

    The Fed itself published a paper outlining the benefits of a digital dollar, but officials say there will be no “Fedcoin” without any action by Congress.

    The continuous rise in cash use may depend on how the central banks will manage to tame stubbornly high inflation rates in the coming months.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 14:30

  • Vultures Circling: Bearish Bets Against REITs Soar As CRE Meltdown Risks Mount
    Vultures Circling: Bearish Bets Against REITs Soar As CRE Meltdown Risks Mount

    As storm clouds gather over the commercial real estate market, it faces ever-darker prospects by the week. Short-seller vultures are circling above CRE REITs, targeting these investment vehicles with significant exposures to office, retail, and hotel with massive bearish bets on the hope “more borrowers will default on office debt as interest costs increase and property values fall,” as reported by Bloomberg. 

    New data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence shows short interest in some of the largest REITs with exposure to commercial properties, Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc. and Starwood Property Trust Inc., have soared in recent weeks. 

    Hedge funds are making bearish bets in the credit derivatives and equities spaces on the premise remote and hybrid work will continue to paralyze demand for tier 2 and 3 properties and crush landlords. Data from broker Cushman & Wakefield indicates office vacancy rates are rising at alarming rates. 

    The gold-standard measure of office occupancy trends is the card-swipe data provided by Kastle Systems. The average office occupancy nationwide is around 46%, still well off the highs from pre-pandemic levels. 

    The problem now is borrowers lack new tenants, which means default risk increases and negatively impacts REITs. These investment vehicles generate revenue from the spread between their capital costs and the interest rates charged to borrowers for loans. 

    Gavriel Kahane, the co-founder of real estate investment firm Arkhouse, warned there’s mounting concern among top investors about “ballooning defaults on held loans” due partly to higher refinancing costs. He noted:

    “Mortgage REITs in general do better when the Fed funds rate stays constant, and in this hyper-turbulent environment distress bubbles up.” 

    The surge in bearish bets is an ominous sign market participants recognize the CRE space is headed for severe pain. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported a delinquency rate on office loans across all lenders climbed to 2.7% at the end of 2022, up from 1.6% in the previous quarter. We suspect that the rate will continue to rise throughout this year.  

    Bloomberg noted, “Office loans are a minority of the portfolios for the mortgage REITs that are being shorted.” 

    Recall last month, we pointed out that regional banking turmoil would have spillover effects in the CRE space — especially the office sector (Read: New “Big Short” Hits Record Low As Focus Turns To $400 Billion CRE Debt Maturity Wall). And since then, JPM, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have all joined the CRE gloom parade. 

    We highlighted the next big short: BBB- tranches of CMBX Series 15, due to its outsized exposure to office commercial real estate…

    BBB- tranches of CMBX Series 15 is sliding again. 

    We also cautioned about a large maturity wall in the CRE sector, with $400 billion of debt due this year. Morgan Stanley data shows $2.5 trillion in CRE debt comes due over the next five years.

    Perhaps last week’s Vornado Realty Trust announcement about delaying its dividend is a harbinger of what’s to come. The REIT just hit a 27-year low. 

    Read this: 

    “We expect private equity and commercial real estate to suffer as regional banks were disproportionate funders of these sectors and the crisis has shut leveraged lending primary markets for the time being,” fund managers James Hanbury and Jamie Grimston of Brook Asset Management wrote in a letter to investors seen by Bloomberg.

    The latest BofA Fund Managers Survey (available to pro subs in the usual place) shows institutional players are most bearish on real estate since 2009.

    Meanwhile, CRE Billionaire Sam Zell recently told New York University graduate students that remote work is a “bunch of bullshit” and that they should dismiss the idea of working from home. It might be hard for Zell to persuade folks to return to the office. These work trends seem permanent and will exert pressure on the CRE space, with mounting risks of a default wave. The dominos appear to be already falling. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 14:00

  • MIT Scientists Create New Nanoparticle Sensors To Detect Early Cancer Via Simple Paper Test
    MIT Scientists Create New Nanoparticle Sensors To Detect Early Cancer Via Simple Paper Test

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

    Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed nanoparticle sensors that could diagnose early-stage cancer through a simple urine test on a strip of paper.

    Approximately one-third of cancer deaths are caused by factors such as smoking, high body mass index, alcohol consumption, low intake of fruits and vegetables, and lack of physical activity. Many cancers can be cured if detected early and treated effectively. (Freepik)

    The scientists said these sensors, designed to detect many cancerous proteins, could also distinguish the type of tumor, how it responds to treatment, and whether it has metastasized.

    “We are trying to innovate in a context of making technology available to low- and middle-resource settings. Putting this diagnostic on paper is part of our goal of democratizing diagnostics and creating inexpensive technologies that can give you a fast answer at the point of care,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, a biomedical engineer at MIT and senior author of the study published on April 24 in Nature Nanotechnology.

    Bhatia’s team had initially investigated the concept of detecting naturally occurring cancer biomarkers, such as proteins or circulating tumor cells, in the patient’s blood samples. However, these biomarkers are hard to find, especially at early stages, prompting the team to create “synthetic biomarkers” that could diagnose cancer by amplifying small-scale changes occurring within small tumors.

    Nanoparticles previously created by the team can detect the activity of proteases, biological catalysts that can help tumor cells spread. However, since this equipment is not always available, the researchers developed new nanoparticle sensors that could be analyzed more easily and affordably using a technology that reads repetitive DNA sequences called CRISPR.

    Specifically, the nanosensors are designed so that when they encounter a tumor, they shed short sequences of DNA that will eventually end up in the patient’s urine. The urine sample can be analyzed using a paper strip that recognizes a signal activated by a CRISPR enzyme called Cas12a. When a particular DNA “barcode” is present, Cas12a enhances the signal so it appears as a dark strip on the paper test.

    In a study conducted in mice, the scientists showed that a panel of five DNA barcodes could accurately distinguish tumors that first arose in the lungs from tumors formed by colorectal cancer cells that had metastasized. The team also collaborated with other institutions to build a device to distinguish at least 46 DNA barcodes in a single sample.

    The scientists said they are now working on further developing the nanoparticles, with the goal of testing them in humans.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 13:30

  • Democrat Cities Have Biggest Homicide Rate Problem, Study Finds
    Democrat Cities Have Biggest Homicide Rate Problem, Study Finds

    The Democratic Party aggressively promoted the idea of ‘defunding the police’ after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer in 2020, which was supposed to improve public safety. A few years later, a new study found the homicide rate in Democrat cities is on the rise and a sign progressive policies are failing. 

    In a study published by WalletHub, researchers found “homicide rates have risen by an average of roughly 10% in 45 of the most populated U.S. cities between Q1 2021 and Q1 2023, and are still rising.” 

    The cities with the biggest homicide rate problems include Memphis, Tennesse; New Orleans, Louisana; Richmond, Virginia; Washington, DC; and Detroit, Michigan. Democrat mayors lead all five cities. 

    Researchers pointed out that murders were rising faster in Democrat-led cities than Republican-led cities. 

    Separately, Chidike Okeem, an assistant professor at Western New England University, told the NYPost that defunding the police movements directly correlates with the rise in violence. 

    “As a response to the social unrest, some officers have embraced ‘de-policing,’ which is the idea of not engaging in proactive policing practices in order to avoid increased scrutiny and censure. Without pronounced police presence, violence proliferates,” Okeem said.

    A University of Central Missouri Professor, Gregg Etter, went further and blamed no-cash bail as a significant driver in the alarming rise of homicide rates in major cities. 

    “If you have a problem with police use of force in isolated instances, rather than deal with the problem or the problem officers, defund the police. This results in a less-effective police force, increased response times, lower police morale, and an increasing unwillingness by the police to engage in proactive policing,” Etter said.

    And it’s not just homicide rates that are moving higher. Retail thefts and carjackings are soaring. Democrats have yet to take accountability for their failed social justice reforms. As a result, businesses and people are quickly exiting these dangerous cities for safer places. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 13:00

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Apr 30

Today’s News 30th April 2023

  • 'Equity' And The Race To The Bottom
    ‘Equity’ And The Race To The Bottom

    Authored by Jack Miller via RealClear Wire,

    Over the last few years, the rallying cry of “woke” activists has become “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (often abbreviated to DEI). There is little reason to object to such principles on the surface. After all, America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal. Unfortunately, the meaning of words can change over time.  

    Rather than the Founders’ vision of equal opportunity for all, the use of the word “equity” today denotes equal outcomes for all. The implementation of this “equity agenda,” however well-intentioned, will lead to terrible consequences. 

    One of the prophets who warned us about the dangers of this understanding of equity was the great twentieth-century novelist Kurt Vonnegut. In his 1961 short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” Vonnegut imagined a society with perfect equity. “Nobody was smarter than anybody else,” the narrator says. “Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” 

    As Vonnegut shows, a society looking to equalize outcomes for all citizens is no utopia – it is instead a nightmarish horror. The only way to guarantee equal results is to handicap everyone so that they perform at the lowest common level. In the terrifying world of “Harrison Bergeron,” for instance, the government burdens ballerinas “with sashweights and bags of birdshot” so they cannot move more beautifully than anyone else.

    The push for “equity” in American society today resembles Vonnegut’s dystopia – but nowhere more dangerously than in the education system. 

    At the university level, DEI bureaucracies have grown to absurd sizes, and they dominate much of campus life. A 2021 Heritage Foundation report found 163 DEI personnel at the University of Michigan, 94 at the University of Virginia and 94 at Ohio State, 86 at the University of California Berkeley, 83 at Virginia Tech, and 80 at Stanford (where Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach was recently put on leave for galvanizing an unruly protest by confronting a U.S. circuit judge who was trying to deliver a campus lecture). 

    In a growing number of K-12 schools across the country, such as at Culver City High School in the Los Angeles area, honors classes are being eliminated so as not to “perpetuate inequality.” Proponents of this idea say that some students can still obtain an honors “label” by doing extra work. 

    But more often than not, teachers are simply slowing down instruction for everyone. Students are increasingly taught at the lowest common denominator rather than being challenged to do their best. As one student recently told the Wall Street Journal, “There are some people who slow down the pace because they don’t really do anything and aren’t looking to try harder.” 

    Current DEI regulations at the federal and state level, as well-intentioned as these regulations may be, are fostering this approach and handicapping our education system. For example, the Department of Education’s 2022 Equity Agency Plan goes so far as to connect DEI policies directly to federal funding for local schools. In their pursuit of “ensuring equity,” ideologues are killing opportunity for America’s students. 

    The American Dream is that all citizens will have an equal opportunity to achieve their goals based on their individual talents and hard work. The Declaration of Independence does not guarantee happiness to every citizen – it only guarantees the pursuit of happiness. 

    But the pursuit of the modern idea of “equity” rather than true equality is simply a race to the bottom. Socialist regimes in Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and so many other places show that radical egalitarianism simply does not work. America is more successful than these failed experiments because we cling to the principle of equality rightly understood. We cannot let that slip away. 

    The good news is that many parents are mobilizing against far-left excesses. At the ballot box, school board meetings, and even at the dinner table, parents are standing up and saying enough is enough. They do not want to sacrifice academic excellence for grand social experiments. They want their kids to become educated and ambitious, not indoctrinated and complacent.

    Most Americans believe in equality. We want to make sure that everyone has, to the greatest extent possible, an equal place at the starting line. From there, each individual has the freedom to achieve what their desires, ability, and hard work make possible. 

    Achieving that kind of equality is the American dream, the engine that enables people from any walk of life to realize their dreams. Equity, as activists preach it, trades away this American heritage for abstractions and fantasies. Americans should instead hold fast to the political principles that have guided us to marvelous success and prosperity for nearly 250 years.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/30/2023 – 00:00

  • Texas Senate Passes Legislation Banning 'Hostile Foreign Nations' From Buying Farmland
    Texas Senate Passes Legislation Banning ‘Hostile Foreign Nations’ From Buying Farmland

    The Texas state senate passed legislation this week banning the purchase of farmland by citizens and entities linked to hostile foreign nations, a move which the author of the bill says will provide “sweeping state and national security protections.”

    “This bill protects Texas farmland, oil and gas, rare earth materials and timber from being owned by foreign entities classified as hostile by the Director of U.S. National Intelligence for three consecutive reports. These nations currently include China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,” wrote Sen . Lois Kolkhorst (R) following the passage of her legislation by a vote of 19-12 in the state Senate on April 26.

    According to a 2022 threat assessment report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), China, Russia, Iran and North Korea pose the biggest threats to US national security. The report says that the CCP presents “the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to the U.S. Government and private sector networks.”

    The Texas bill, SB 147, was introduced last November by Kolkhorst, and has the support of Gov. Greg Abbott (R). That said, the language of the original bill was toned down following criticism from some Democrats and locals over the bill banning property purchases of any individual who is “a citizen of China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia.”

    In the final draft, the ban does not apply to lawful permanent residents, US citizens or dual citizens.

    The property which the bill applies to includes agricultural land, improvements, mines and quarries, mineral deposits, and standing timber.

    It also grants the Texas attorney general the authority to investigate potential violations if “reasonable suspicion” exists that an individual or entity making a property purchase is associated with one of the designated countries.

    “Texas is rich in its natural resources and is home to invaluable strategic military bases and installations. With SB 147, we can protect our Texas food supply and energy resources as well,” wrote Kolkhorst – who built this legislation to dovetail with SB 2116 – the state’s “Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act,” which makes it illegal for Texas governments and businesses to make critical infrastructure deals with entities from the banned list.

    Texas Democrats are upset.

    “Even with the amendments offered, this legislation still takes away the rights of an entire class of people without due process and solely on the basis of their national origin,” wrote Rep. Gene Wu, an outspoken critic of Kolkhorst’s legislation, adding that he’s “frustrated by the Senate’s passage of SB 147 in its current form.”

    “National security is a serious issue, but if we are concerned about the actions of foreign governments, then legislation should only affect foreign governments and their agents,” Wu continued. “Our community will continue to work, in the Texas House, to eliminate the unnecessarily discriminatory aspects of this bill.”

    Not all Texas Democrats…

    State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a co-author of SB 147, is the lone Democrat who voted in favor of the bill on Wednesday.

    “We’re not trying to target people. We’re trying to target nations that pose a security risk to this great nation of ours,” he said. “It’s incorrect to say that this bill is discriminatory.”

    “We should not overlook the point that many of these nations are a threat to our security,” Hinojosa continued, adding that these countries “have made it very clear that they want to destroy our country, destroy our democracy, destroy our way of life.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 23:30

  • CJ Hopkins Advice To RFK Jr: "F**k It, F**k Them… Tell The Truth… The Angry, Uncensored Truth"
    CJ Hopkins Advice To RFK Jr: “F**k It, F**k Them… Tell The Truth… The Angry, Uncensored Truth”

    Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

    The Great Divide

    Robert Kennedy, Jr. is running for president. I could not possibly be more excited. So, I’m going to give Bobby some unsolicited advice, which, if he knows what’s good for him, he will not take.

    I feel OK about doing this because, even if Bobby, in the wee hours of the night, when the mind is vulnerable to dangerous ideas, were to seriously consider taking my advice, I am sure he has people — i.e., PR people, campaign strategists, pollsters, and so on — that would not hesitate to take him aside and disabuse him of any inclination to do that.

    OK, before I give Bobby this terrible advice, I have to do the “full disclosure” thing. I’m a pretty big fan of RFK, Jr. I don’t generally get involved in electoral politics, but, if I were a Democrat, I would definitely vote for him. Also, he was kind enough to blurb my book (which isn’t going to make his PR people happy) and invite me onto his podcast, RFK, Jr. The Defender, to talk about “New Normal” totalitarianism. So, I am fairly biased in favor of Bobby Kennedy. I think he is an admirable, honorable human being. I would love to see him in the Oval Office.

    That isn’t going to happen, of course. The global-capitalist ruling classes are never going to let him near the Oval Office. They learned their lesson back in 2016. There are not going to be any more unauthorized presidents. The folks at GloboCap are done playing grab-ass, and they want us to know that they are done playing grab-ass. That’s what the last six years have been about.

    As I put it in a column in January, 2021 …

    “… This, basically, is what we’ve just experienced. The global capitalist ruling classes have just reminded us who is really in charge, who the US military answers to, and how quickly they can strip away the facade of democracy and the rule of law. They have reminded us of this for the last ten months, by putting us under house arrest, beating and arresting us for not following orders, for not wearing masks, for taking walks without permission, for having the audacity to protest their decrees, for challenging their official propaganda, about the virus, the election results, etc. They are reminding us currently by censoring dissent, and deplatforming anyone they deem a threat to their official narratives and ideology … GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. I don’t know how much clearer they could make it. They just installed a new puppet president, who can’t even simulate mental acuity, in a locked-down, military-guarded ceremony which no one was allowed to attend, except a few members of the ruling classes. They got some epigone of Albert Speer to convert the Mall (where the public normally gathers) into a ‘field of flags‘ symbolizing ‘unity.’ They even did the Nazi ‘Lichtdom‘ thing. To hammer the point home, they got Lady Gaga to dress up as a Hunger Games character with a ‘Mockingjay’ brooch and sing the National Anthem. They broadcast this spectacle to the entire world.”

    Does that sound like the behavior of an unaccountable, supranational power apparatus that is prepared to stand by and let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., or Donald Trump, or any other unauthorized person, become the next president of the United States?

    So, here’s my bad advice for Bobby.

    Fuck them. They’re not going to let you win, anyway. They are going to smear you, slime you, demonize you, distort every other thing you say, and just generally lie about who you are and what you believe in and what you stand for. They are going to paint you as a bull-goose-loony, formerly smack-addled, conspiracy-theorizing, anti-vax fanatic no matter what you do. If you tone down your act and try to “heal the divide” and “end the division,” they are going to have you for lunch, and then sit around picking their teeth with your bones. You know, and I know, and the American people know, that the things you say you want to do as president — which I know you sincerely want to do as president and are crazy enough to actually try to do, i.e., “to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country” — are things … well, as Michael Corleone once put it, that they would “use all their power to keep from happening.”

    So, fuck it, and fuck them. Tell the truth.

    Not the ready-for-prime-time truth. Not the toned-down-for-mainstream-consumption truth.

    The truth. The ugly, unvarnished truth. The scary, crazy-sounding truth.

    The angry, divisive, uncensored truth.

    Yes, there is a “divide.” A great divide. A chasm. A schism. A gulf. An abyss. A gaping, yawning, unbridgeable fissure. A Grand Canyon-sized fault in the foundation of society. A rupture in the very fabric of reality.

    As I noted in another 2021 column, the global-capitalist ruling classes have decommissioned one “reality” and are replacing it with another “reality” … corporate feudalism, pathologized totalitarianism, global corporatism, or whatever anybody wants to call it. Whatever we call it, everyone feels it. OK, I’m going to be obnoxious and quote myself again …

    “During the changeover from the old ‘reality’ to the new ‘reality,’ the society is torn apart. The old ‘reality’ is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two ‘realities’ battle it out for dominance. ‘Reality’ being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one ‘reality’ can prevail.”

    The folks at GloboCap are right on the verge of permanently implementing their new “reality.” In that “reality,” an apocalyptic virus (with a survival rate of roughly 99.7%) nearly wiped out the entire planet, and would have, if not for the Emergency Health Measures (i.e., mass house arrest, forced conformity rituals, cancellation of constitutional rights, censorship of dissent, official propaganda on a scale that even Goebbels could never have dreamed of, fomenting of mass hysteria and hatred, segregation and persecution of a designated scapegoat underclass) imposed on society by our admittedly imperfect but well-intentioned government and global health authorities. In that “reality,” the “vaccines” they forced on billions of people (who did not need them) are “safe and effective” (despite the fact, which even they now acknowledge, that they have seriously injured or killed millions of people). In that “reality,” a few hundred unarmed Trump supporters horsing around in the Capitol Building was an “insurrection,” or “attempted coup,” or … well, you get the picture. There are no neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. The Russians blew up their own pipelines. And so on.

    What I am trying to get at, Bobby, is that those of us who have refused to convert to the new “reality” — which I am guessing is approximately 25-30% of the global population — are not looking for a leader who can “heal the divide.” We are in a fight. We are fighting for reality. We’re fighting for what’s left of reality.

    And, at the moment, we are getting our asses kicked.

    So, fuck it. What have you got to lose? Throw out the playbook. Fire your PR people. Go for broke. Tell the truth. Tell folks what we’re up against. That it isn’t something an election is going to fix. That it isn’t something a new president can fix. That it isn’t fixable. That it is a fucking fight. And not one according to the Queensberry Rules. A ball-kicking, eye-gouging, chair-swinging, bar fight. And that sometimes, like now, when there is nowhere to run to … well, you have to stand and fight, even if you know you’re going to lose.

    That’s it. That’s my bad advice for Bobby. Hopefully, one of his staff will spot it and delete it before he reads his email.

    Otherwise, I’m afraid he might be tempted to take it. He’s already leaning in that direction.

    And … well, you know how those Irish love a good fight.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 23:00

  • Vegas Baby! (Or South Korea's 'Hawaii'): These Are The Busiest Air Routes In The World And Stateside
    Vegas Baby! (Or South Korea’s ‘Hawaii’): These Are The Busiest Air Routes In The World And Stateside

    The busiest air routes in the world are all domestic flights. Yet, the frequent flyer nation of the United States can’t hold the candle to the high demand for air travel in Asia.

    There, the busiest route has the capacity to transport more than three times as many people in a month than the busiest U.S. route.

    Data published for the month of April by air travel analytics firm OAG shows that the route connecting Gimpo airport in the South Korean capital of Seoul and country’s Jeju island is the world’s busiest.

    The “Hawaii of South Korea” is popular among domestic tourists.

    Infographic: The Busiest Air Routes in the World and Stateside | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Among the world’s and the U.S.’ most flown routes, tourism and entertainment destinations pop up repeatedly, while island locations also have a leg up.

    This includes the world’s second-busiest route between Tokyo and Japan’s Northern island of Hokkaido, a year-round tourist destination.

    In the U.S., the two most-flown routes connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas as well as two Hawaiian islands.

    Some island routes have also popularized short flights as ground transportation is either not an option or is the more complicated, time-consuming and expensive choice. While the inter-Hawaiian route is the briefest in the ranking, the world’s busiest leg between Seoul and Jeju island is the third-shortest. The flight route linking the United States’ biggest cities across a distance of almost 2,500 miles is an outlier in that sense. As the most popular air routes over land are typically 400-700 miles long, the inclusion of the JFK-LAX route does highlight the extraordinary reliance the U.S. places on air travel to keep the country connected.

    International flights are a more pricy and sometimes more complicated way to travel and therefore attract fewer passengers.

    The busiest route this April is connecting Egyptian capital Cairo with Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, the gateway to Muslim pilgrimage place Mecca.

    This month (which falls into Hajj season) almost 450,000 people will be flying on the route – still more than on the busiest U.S. journey.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 22:30

  • AOC Is Wrong – Deplatforming Never Works
    AOC Is Wrong – Deplatforming Never Works

    Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,

    Soon after Tucker Carlson left Fox News, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, more commonly known by her initials AOC, celebrated on social media, telling her followers that “deplatforming works.”

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    Deplatforming, the practice of preventing an individual with specific views from voicing those views, might work for her, but it’s a disaster for broader society, according to a new peer-reviewed study (pdf).

    The research, carried out by four esteemed cyber experts, warns that deplatforming regularly backfires, because it creates a sense of deep-seated resentment, driving the disenchanted and disillusioned to seek out “alternative platforms where these discussions are less regulated and often more extreme.”

    In this particular study, the researchers analyzed changes in social media usage following the “Great Deplatforming” of 2021. For the uninitiated, the “Great Deplatforming” occurred shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Following the event, a number of major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, banned thousands of accounts. Ostensibly, as the researchers note, this was done to “limit misinformation about voter fraud and suppress calls for violence.” However, other less regulated platforms like Parler and BitChute were quick to give the homeless a home. In this age of maximum choice, with no shortage of alternative social media platforms, deplatforming is an ineffective tool. It’s the equivalent of taking a soup spoon to a knife fight. You simply can’t make people with alternative points of view disappear. These people will almost always find new homes.

    One of the authors of the study, Martin Innes, a professor of crime, intelligence, and security at Cardiff University, told me that “deplatforming can have complex effects and not always those that are intended, including boosting the popularity of the target.”

    Furthermore, “deplatforming can actually increase the toxicity of discourse and make the problems worse on the platform that people migrate to.”

    In truth, he added, deplatforming tends to just displace the problem, not actually solve it.

    As Innes and his colleagues note in the paper, contrary to popular belief, deplatforming is not “an effective tool for reducing the impact of malign actors on the public.” In fact, they contend, “deplatforming is ineffective at improving the information space,” simply because “banned actors can migrate to less regulated platforms, potentially promoting even more radical ideas.”

    These findings echo the findings of other research papers. In 2021, Innes was part of another study that examined the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of deplatforming. Innes and his co-author coined the term “minion accounts” to describe how, following a “de-platforming intervention,” a number of secondary accounts are established to “continue the mission.”

    When it comes to the creation of “minion accounts,” Andrew Tate, a man I have discussed in great detail elsewhere, is a shining example of the ineffectiveness of deplatforming. When he was unceremoniously booted off the Holy Quadrinity—YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok—last year, a whole host of fake accounts, powered by real people and tireless bots, quickly popped up, helping to keep the Tate-fueled fire burning.

    Those in charge would have us believe that deplatforming is for our own good, that it’s a tool designed to curb the spread of disinformation. However, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Deplatforming is, first and foremost, a form of social control. It’s designed to amplify certain narratives and silence others, perhaps explaining why AOC, a controversial individual with a very strict set of beliefs, appears to be such a fan of the practice.

    All of this brings us back to Tucker Carlson, a man who won’t (and can’t) be silenced. Carlson is, in many ways, bigger than Fox News. He’s a brand, a celebrity, a highly bankable star. One needn’t possess more than a few functioning neurons to know that Carlson is going to be OK. In fact, because of his ouster, he has never been in a stronger position. Carlson is more marketable now than ever before.

    Where will he go next? Rumble, perhaps. The remarkably popular online video platform service gives content makers a great degree of freedom. Russell Brand, one of the most popular public intellectuals in existence, is Rumble’s biggest asset. He currently boasts more than 1 million followers. Adding Carlson to its ever-expanding family would boost Rumble’s profile. It would also give Carlson a platform to continue preaching his rather unique gospel. The provocateur extraordinaire will be back. Watch this space.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 22:00

  • The State Of 'Democracy' Around The World
    The State Of ‘Democracy’ Around The World

    Only 8% of the world’s population actually lives in a full, functioning democracy, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

    Meanwhile, another 37% of people live in some type of “flawed democracy”, while 55% of the world does not live in democracy at all, based on the EIU’s latest Democracy Index Report.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Joyce Mas detail below, events such as the war in Ukraine and restrictive, long-lasting COVID-19 measures, have caused numerous declines to country democracy scores in recent years. Since the source report first began tracking scores in 2006, the global average has fallen from 5.52 to 5.29.

    The Methodology

    The EIU measures democracy by assessing 60 indicators across five key categories:

    1. Electoral process and pluralism
    2. Political culture
    3. Political participation
    4. Functioning of government
    5. Civil liberties

    Each category has a rank of 0-10 based on how the indicators fared, and the overall democracy score is an average of each of the five categories. For example, here’s a look at the U.S.’ scoring out of 10 in each of the overall categories in 2022:

    This score defines the U.S. as a flawed democracy and ranks it 30th overall in the world, down four spots from last year’s ranking.

    “Flawed” in this case simply means there are problems, ranging from poor political culture to governance issues, but flawed democracies are still considered to have free and fair elections, as well as civil liberties.

    The World’s Democracies by Region

    Below we map out the state of democracy across various regions around the world.

    The Americas

    One of the best performers year-over-year was Chile, with its score increasing by nearly 0.3. The country moved out of the flawed democracy category last year, largely because of the shift towards constitutional reform alongside President Gabriel Boric moving towards the political center, reducing polarization.

    Only three other countries in the Americas are also considered full democracies: Costa Rica, Canada, and Uruguay—the latter of which is #1 regionally.

    On the flipside, some of the world’s worst performers year-over-year are located specifically in Latin America, namely: El Salvador and Haiti. Much of the low scores in the region are associated with high crime rates and corrupt governance.

    Africa

    The only full democracy in Africa is the small, island nation of Mauritius. Overall, Africa is one of the lowest scoring regions with only five of the continent’s 54 countries ranking as some type of democracy.

    Tunisia’s score decreased significantly in 2022. President Kais Saied dismissed parliament early in the year and took control of the electoral council, slowly shifting towards centralized power. And although there were critics, many have since been arrested, downgrading them in the EIU’s eyes from a flawed democracy to a hybrid regime.

    Europe

    Spain and France regained status as full democracies in 2022, mainly improving in the civil liberties and functioning of government categories thanks to the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. However, both countries face political polarization; in Spain this is largely exemplified in the attitudes surrounding the Catalan separatist movement.

    Some of the lowest scoring regimes in the region are in Russia and Belarus. Russia’s war in Ukraine has violated international law, as well as another country’s sovereignty, decimating its score by 0.96 in the index. Belarus has continually allied itself with Russia, allowing troops—and likely missiles—to enter Ukraine from its borders.

    Oceania and East Asia

    In this region, levels of democracy were severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hong Kong only removed restrictive policies like mask mandates in early 2023. In contrast, Thailand lifted these restrictions a year prior, providing more individual freedom, according to the report.

    Malaysia’s fairly high score of 7.3 could face scrutiny, as the former Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, who was in office during COVID-19, is currently facing corruption charges for money laundering of COVID-19 stimulus package funds.

    Central Asia and The Middle East

    Finally, in the Middle East and Central Asia, there are no full democracies at all. The lowest scoring country globally is Afghanistan at only 0.32.

    Israel, the only democracy of any kind of the region, actually moved down six spots in the global ranking from the year prior. Its lowest scoring category in 2022 was civil liberties. This year, the country is in the spotlight due to its judicial reforms proposed by the ruling nationalist party, and civil response has been strong. Mass protests continue around the country.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 21:30

  • California Teachers Sue School District Over Transgender Policy Allegedly Forcing Them To Lie To Parents
    California Teachers Sue School District Over Transgender Policy Allegedly Forcing Them To Lie To Parents

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Teachers from a California middle school are suing officials in their school district in federal court over policies that they say force them to conceal the transgender status of young students from parents.

    The California Department of Education in Sacramento, on April 18, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The lawsuit happens to come after President Joe Biden’s remarks earlier this month in support of the nation’s teacher of the year angered parents by suggesting government knows best when it comes to the raising of children.

    Biden quoted the teacher when he said, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child.” The president then said, “Our nation’s children are all our children.”

    The legal complaint (pdf) in the new case, Mirabelli v. Olson, was filed April 27 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The teachers involved in the lawsuit are devout Christians.

    The defendants are officials with the Escondido Union School District (EUSD), which is in San Diego County, and officials with the California State Board of Education.

    The lawsuit was prompted by the K-8 school district’s recent policies affecting transgender or gender-diverse students.

    The policies require teachers to assist in a student’s transgender “social transition” by accepting a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender-diverse identity and using during school hours any pronouns or a gender-specific name requested by a student.

    At the same time, the policies also require teachers to revert to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with parents in order to cover up information about a child’s purported gender identity from the child’s parents, according to the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit.

    “All of this is to be done without parent or guardian agreement or knowledge,” said Paul Jonna, Thomas More Society special counsel and a partner at LiMandri and Jonna.

    “Schools routinely send notes home to parents about trivial matters, like missing homework, so it is unfathomable that Escondido Union School District has a policy that forces teachers to withhold from parents some of the most fundamental and basic information about their children,” Jonna said.

    EUSD requires all elementary and middle school teachers to “unhesitatingly accept a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender diverse identity, and … [to] ‘begin to treat the student immediately’ according to their asserted gender identity,” according to the legal complaint.

    “There is absolutely no room for discussion, polite disagreement, or even questioning whether the child is sincere or acting on a whim,” the complaint continues. “Once a child’s social transitioning has begun, EUSD elementary and middle school teachers must ensure that parents do not find out.”

    “EUSD’s policies state that ‘revealing a student’s transgender status to individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information, without the student’s consent’ is prohibited, and ‘parents or caretakers’ are, according to EUSD, individuals who ‘do not have a legitimate need for the information,’ irrespective of the age of the student or the specific facts of the situation.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 21:00

  • The Number Of Jailed Journalists Reaches Record High
    The Number Of Jailed Journalists Reaches Record High

    In 2022, more journalists than ever before were imprisoned for doing their job.

    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports, some 363 journalists were imprisoned in 30 different countries last year, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

    Infographic: Number of Jailed Journalists at Record High | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    By 2021, the number of detainees had already exceeded 300 – roughly doubling since 2015. An alarming trend that, according to the experts, is a sign of the deterioration of press freedom worldwide.

    In 2022, the largest number of journalists were held in an Iranian prison (62 people), in China (43), and Myanmar, where 42 people were locked away at the end of the year.

    Developments in Eastern Europe are also cause for concern – the arrest of ‘Wall Street Journal’ journalist Evan Gershkovich by Russian authorities one recent indicator of the situation there. Gershkovich was arrested while reporting on the Ukraine war and is the first U.S. journalist since the end of the Cold War to be detained on espionage charges in Russia.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 20:30

  • California Doctor Faces $290 Million In COVID-19-Related Fraud Charges
    California Doctor Faces $290 Million In COVID-19-Related Fraud Charges

    Authored by Jason Blair via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A doctor in Orange County, California, has been charged by federal prosecutors for orchestrating approximately $230 million worth of fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The Department of Justice announced the charges against Dr. Anthony Ha Dinh and 17 other individuals on April 20. The total “intended fraud loss” among all 18 defendants is over $490 million, in which Dinh accounts for about 60 percent.

    They said the charges are part of a coordinated nationwide effort of law enforcement to fight COVID-19 health care fraud.

    Dinh allegedly billed the government through the HRSA Uninsured Program with uninsured claims for patients who actually either had insurance, were never treated, or had treatments that weren’t medically necessary, according to the DOJ.

    The HRSA Uninsured Program was intended to provide reimbursement to medical providers who treated uninsured patients for certain COVID-19-related treatments during the pandemic.

    Authorities say Dinh was the second highest biller to the program in the country. He allegedly used over $100 million of the money for high-risk options trading.

    Dinh also allegedly worked with Hanna Dinh, also of Orange County, and Dr. Matthew Ho of Brevard County, Florida, to submit more than 70 fraudulent loan applications, obtaining over $3 million from the PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, according to the Justice Department.

    Dinh is scheduled for arraignment on May 22 in federal court in Santa Ana. If convicted on all charges, he could face up to 50 years in prison, according to federal prosecutors.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 20:00

  • Colorado Gov Signs Four New Gun Control Measures Into Law
    Colorado Gov Signs Four New Gun Control Measures Into Law

    Joining Washington state in a 2023 western-United States gun control blitz, Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Friday put his signature on four bills restricting the exercise of the human right of armed self-defense.  

    “No action can ever bring back the loved one that you lost,” said Polis, surrounded by gun control advocates and shooting victims and family members. “But turning your own personal tragedy into action in a way that will make others safer, will really prevent others from having to go through what you went through.”

    At Friday’s signing ceremony, Gov. Polis hands a pen to the parents of Aurora movie theater shooting victim Jessica Ghawi (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

    Here’s what they do: 

    • Increase the legal age for purchasing firearms to 21. The law grandfathers anyone who was 18 when the law was enacted, and has exceptions that include hunting, attending shooting classes, being a peace officer or active duty military. 

    • Create a 3-day waiting period for firearms purchases. The law appears to put the burden solely on sellers, who face a $500 fine for a first offense and fines between $500 and $5,000 for subsequent offenses. 

    • Expand the list of people who can submit “red flag” gun-confiscation petitions. Colorado already had an “Extreme Risk Protection Order” law, under which family/household members and law enforcement officers/agencies could petition for disarming an individual. Now, petitions can be accepted from medical care providers, mental health-care providers, educators and district attorneys. 

    • Remove gun manufacturers’ protection from liability. Previously, firearm and ammo manufacturers could only be sued over defects. The new law repeals that limit and requires broadly-defined “firearm industry members” to “establish and implement reasonable controls and precautions related to the industry product in its control.” It allows individuals or the Colorado attorney general to pursue actions against violators, and “unlawful misuse” of a firearm or ammo is not a defense. 

    There’s one type of restriction conspicuously absent from Friday’s bundle: an “assault weapon” ban, like the one recently enacted in Washington state.

    A Monmouth University poll released last week found 49% of Americans oppose such bans, with 46% supporting them and 6% unsure. “That marks a nine-point decline in support and a seven-point increase in opposition since Monmouth asked the same question in June 2022,” notes Stephen Gutowski at The Reload.

    Already poised to counterstrike, gun rights advocates began filing legal challenges to the new laws on the same day Polis signed them. Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO) sued Polis and the state over the waiting period and the age-21 requirement. The group plans to challenge the other two laws after finding plaintiffs with standing to challenge them. (Read the filed complaints here: Waiting Period / Age 21)

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    “Gun owners’ rights are being ravaged in the Colorado legislature by the puppets of Everytown for Gun Control and Michael Bloomberg,” said RMGO executive director Taylor Rhodes in a statement. He added:

    “They will not be happy until all law-abiding gun owners are disarmed, and only the criminals have guns. When a single mother is being harassed by a violent, abusive former partner, the Democrats at the Capitol think it is fine to make her wait at least three days to defend herself and her baby. And if she is twenty, these gun control fanatics insist she is completely defenseless.”

    While not assured of victory, the challenges will have a mighty tailwind, thanks to last summer’s Supreme Court Bruen decision requiring that, to be held constitutional, gun control laws must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Applying that test, federal judges across the country have been knocking down and imposing injunctions against gun laws left and right. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 19:30

  • What The End Of Fed Rate-Hikes Means For Stocks
    What The End Of Fed Rate-Hikes Means For Stocks

    Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

    According to this week’s Commerce Department report, U.S. GDP increased at an annualized rate of 1.1 percent during Q1 2023.  The experts thought GDP would grow by 2 percent.  They were wrong.

    By now, it’s very well possible GDP has already slipped into reverse.  We won’t know until the Commerce Department’s Q2 report is released in late July.  In the interim, there’s an important question to be asked:

    Is a recession bullish or bearish for stocks?

    Next week, following the federal open market committee (FOMC) meeting on May 2 and 3, it’s widely anticipated that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates by 25 basis points.  This will take the federal funds rate to a range of 5.00 to 5.25 percent.

    It is also anticipated that this will be the last rate hike of this rate hiking cycle.  That the Fed will then hold interest rates, before cutting them later this year to offset the recession.

    Interest rate cuts are commonly recognized as being bullish for stocks and stimulative for the economy. 

    Here at the Economic Prism, we have some reservations.

    In short, we expect there will be a great stock market purge that will take the major indexes to unimaginable lows.  We also expect this will coincide with the slashing and burning of interest rates.  Here’s why…

    The last time a Fed rate hike took the federal funds rate to 5.25 percent was June 29, 2006.  If you recall, the Fed then paused and held the federal funds rate at 5.25 percent for roughly 15 months.  Then on September 18, 2007, the Fed cut rates 50 basis points.

    A lot happened beneath the surface over these 15 months when the federal funds rate was held at 5.25 percent.  Massive stressors were formed, as this rate was relatively higher than the preceding years.  In June 2003, for example, the federal funds rate touched 1.00 percent, and remained there until June of 2004.

    Cheap Credit Spawns Bad Debt

    When credit is cheap, opportunities to borrow and spend money are much more manageable.  When interest rates are ultra-low, consumers, businesses, and governments can make their cash flow pencil out for purchases that would otherwise be extravagant.

    But when the federal funds rate is 5.25 percent, and credit markets are tighter, the cash flow comes up short.  Debts go unpaid and slip into arrears.  Defaults occur.

    Yet the effects of cheap credit spawning bad debt takes time to filter its way through the economy.  Sectors that largely rely on financing to move products – such as real estate and automobiles – are generally hit first.  While demand for bricks of dry ramen noodles, which even with today’s inflation can still be bought with pocket change, remains even.

    When the Fed brought the federal funds rate to 5.25 percent in June 2006, and then signaled a pause, there was a sense of relief.  Professional economists thought the worst of it had come and gone.  They believed the stress of higher interest rates had already been realized.

    In fact, on May 17, 2007, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke gave a speech before the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, where he said:

    “The subprime mess is grave but largely contained.  Given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited.”   

    Did he believe what he was saying?  Because at the precise moment he spoke these words the nation’s housing market was rotting just beneath his nose.  Did he not smell it?

    Sowing the Seeds of Chaos

    Apparently, Bernanke was missing his sense of smell.  Because when Bear Stearns blew up in March 2008, Bernanke was again quick to dismiss it.  On June 8, 2008, Bernanke, said:

    “The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.”

    At the same time, Bernanke was slashing the federal funds rate.  Bringing it from 5.25 percent in September 2007 to a range of 0.00 to 0.25 percent by December 2008.  Perhaps he thought this would buoy the economy and float stocks higher.

    But then, on September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers blew up and credit markets frosted over like the Alaskan tundra.  Three days later Bernanke, along with Hank “my squirt gun’s a bazooka” Paulson, went to Congress and demanded a mega-bailout of the financial system.

    On September 18, 2008, at an emergency meeting in the Capitol, Bernanke told Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd: “If we don’t do this tomorrow, we won’t have an economy on Monday.”

    Two months after firing off Paulson’s bazooka, Bernanke commenced QE1.  In doing so, he corrupted financial markets and the economy without end…and sowed the seeds of today’s financial and economic chaos.

    Over this time, as the federal funds rate was being slashed and QE began flooding the financial markets with liquidity, the stock market didn’t go up.  Instead, it went down.

    The S&P 500, for example, peaked out at about 1,586 in October 2007.  It then slowly slid down to about 1,200 in August 2008.  Over this time, investors thought they were buying the dip.  That the Fed had engineered a soft landing.  They were dead wrong.

    By September 2008, the S&P 500 was freefalling like common ravens descending upon fresh roadkill.  Taking it down to a bottom of 666 on March 6, 2009.  This amounted to a top to bottom decline of 58 percent.  It was brutal.  Yet it was also the buying opportunity of a lifetime.

    What’s the point?

    What the End of Fed Rate Hikes Means for Stocks

    Here in the wooded mountains of East Tennessee the vegetated growth is so dense it shuts off the adjacent view.  Hollers, as they’re called in southern Appalachia, are undetectable.  And in an instant, things can go terribly wrong.

    Take Dennis Martin, for instance.  On June 14, 1969, he wandered off a Smoky Mountain trail never to be seen again.  Approximately 1,400 search and rescue workers – including the National Guard, Green Berets, and Boy Scouts of America – walked narrow transects across a 56 square mile area.

    All that was found were footprints leading to a stream, one shoe, and one sock.  Martin vanished with hardly a trace.

    Where did he go?  Did a black bear eat him?

    To this day, no one knows.  It’s an unsolved mystery. 

    What to make of it…

    As we’ve just documented, the Fed stopped hiking rates in June 2006.  The S&P 500 continued to inflate until October 2007.  The Fed then began cutting rates in September 2007.  The stock market didn’t bottom out until March 2009 – 18 months after rate cuts were first initiated.

    “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” is a cliché that’s often attributed to Mark Twain.  We don’t know if he actually said it.  And we really don’t care.  The insight, however, is edifying.

    The stresses that are plaguing financial markets and the economy in 2023 are certainly different than those of 2008. 

    The world has dramatically changed over these 15 years.  But if you listen with a trained ear, there are similar rhymes.

    Namely, there’s massive amounts of bad debt out there that relatively higher interest rates over the past 14 months have exposed.  The commercial real estate market is absolute toast.  Pension funds, having stretched for yield, are holding a bag of assets that’s backed by eroding collateral.  At the same time, the S&P 500 is still well overvalued relative to its historical mean.

    By this, the likely end of the Fed’s rate hiking cycle next week does not mean we’re out of the woods.  Rather, it means we’re just entering the woods…

    And, assuming the Fed starts cutting rates in October of this year, the S&P 500 may not reemerge from the woods until it bottoms out in April 2025.

    *  *  *

    Like this article?  If so, please Subscribe to the Economic Prism.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 19:00

  • Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India, And Paying A Huge Markup
    Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India, And Paying A Huge Markup

    Last August, we were the first to show how Russia was bypassing Europe’s so-called commodities embargo: it was selling LNG to China which was then re-selling it to Europe at a substantial mark up. And while we also frequently reported that Russia was using a similar sanctions bypass for oil, this time using India instead of China, few were willing to confirm as much: after all, it would seem very shortsighted if European consumers were paying an extra surcharge to India, while Russia was not suffering any adverse consequences from Europe’s laughable “sanctions.”

    Not any more: on Friday, Bloomberg reported that for all of Europe’s fire and brimstone about an embargo (which has gotten decidedly quieter in recent months), “Russian oil is still powering Europe just with the help of India.“

    As we reported at the time, last December the EU barred almost any seaborne crude oil imports from Russia. It extended the prohibition to refined fuels two months later. However, the rules didn’t stop countries like India from snapping up cheap Russian crude, turning it into fuels like diesel, and shipping it back to Europe at a big markup: as shown in the chart below, just the Brent to Urals price differential, a byproduct of the Russian sanctions, is about $25/bbl, almost a third of the price of a barrel of crude. The markups on Russian product are even greater when dealing with refined products such as gasoline or diesel.

    In fact, India has become so good at reselling Russian oil to the same Europeans who refuse to buy it directly from Moscow for a much lower price, that the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month while simultaneously buying record amounts of Russian crude, according to data from analytics firm Kpler.

    In other words, Europe is still buying Russian oil, keeping Putin’s military machine well-funded, but because of the virtue signaling exercise of buying Russian oil though a mediator, the transaction ends up costing Europeans billions more than if they simply had purchased the oil directly.

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    “Russian oil is finding its way back into Europe despite all the sanctioning and India ramping up fuel exports to the west is a good example of it,” said Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at the firm. “With India taking in so much Russian barrels, it’s inevitable.”

    As Bloomberg notes, “the development is double-edged for the EU. On the one hand, the bloc needs alternative sources of diesel now that it has cut off direct flows from Russia, previously its top supplier. However, it ultimately boosts demand for Moscow’s barrels, and means extra freight costs.” In other words, Europe achieves none of its embargo goals (i.e., keeping Russian oil out of the market, preventing Putin from using oil to finance the war in Ukraine), while being hit with far higher energy prices.

    It also means more competition for Europe’s oil refiners who can’t access cheap Russian crude, and comes amid wider market scrutiny about where the region’s diesel imports are coming from.

    Repsol SA’s CEO Josu Jon Imaz said on Thursday that Russian diesel is entering Europe illegally and called on authorities to clamp down on the activity. He wasn’t talking about the trade via India but flows of diesel that originated in Russia… which of course is the same thing.

    Hilariously, a preliminary inquiry into the matter by Spanish authorities didn’t find evidence that Russian diesel was entering the country, a government official said Friday, adding that a probe is ongoing. Of course, nobody in Europe wants to admit that they are indirectly funding Putin, so expect many more such “discoveries” as all other countries try to find if they are importing Russian oil only to find that everyone but them is using it.

    Meanwhile, Europe’s refined fuel imports from India are set to surge above 360,000 barrels a day, edging just ahead of those of oil exporting titan Saudi Arabia, Kpler’s data show.

    And the cherry on top: Russian crude oil arrivals to India are expected to surpass 2 million barrels a day in April, representing almost 44% of the nation’s overall oil imports, according to Kpler data. India then quickly re-exports the oil or processes it first into diesel and gasoline, and then sells it to European customers.

    More than half of Russia’s seaborne oil shipments were to the European Union and Group of Seven nations before the bloc began to cut purchases in response to the nation’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

    Finally, the question of what the point is of continued Russian “sanctions” remains, as the IIF’s Robin Brooks explains in the following twitter thread, which once again makes clear that western sanctions against Russia have been a catastrophic failure… perhaps as was intended all along.

    Evaluation of our sanctions policy

    1. Only 2 questions matter. First, have our sanctions meaningfully curtailed Russia’s ability to wage war? Second, are our sanctions a deterrent to countries that may wage war in the future? Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is: “No!”

    2. Root problem is an infatuation with financial sanctions. These can be effective when used on current account deficit countries – Turkey in 2018 is an example – but they don’t work on current account surplus countries. This is a key point that cannot be emphasized enough.

    3. Russia shows how our financial sanctions failed. We sanctioned some banks, including the central bank (red), but not all. This meant that all the cash from Russia’s current account surplus got routed through non-sanctioned Russian banks (blue). Putin still got all his cash…

    4. So our financial sanctions did not prevent Putin getting all his cash in return for energy exports. All this cash just got routed through different banks than before. As a result, financial conditions in Russia eased back to pre-war levels, a big plus for Russia’s war economy.

    5. We could have avoided this, but it would have required sanctioning ALL Russian banks. That’s the same as a trade embargo, since Putin no longer gets paid and stops exporting. This shows what’s needed to hurt c/a surplus countries: a trade embargo! Not financial sanctions…

    6. Number one lesson from Russia is that our infatuation with financial sanctions must end. They don’t work on c/a surplus countries, unless we sanction all banks, in which case we’re just doing a trade embargo. We need to be doing trade embargos instead of financial sanctions…

    7. Had we done a hard energy embargo on Russia, this would have come at a cost to the West, but Russia would have gone into financial crisis, making the war harder for Putin to fight. An embargo would have also scared other potentially hostile current account surplus countries.

    8. It’s not too late. First, the West needs to end its focus on financial sanctions. Second, we need to start talking about hard trade-offs that are needed to confront c/a surplus countries. We need to stop giving them cash, which means we need to stop buying their stuff…

    9. A footnote on the G7 oil price cap. The cap is recognition of the fact that Russia’s current account surplus needs to be cut. But – thanks to Greek shipping oligarchs – the cap was set at $60 and wasn’t binding. A mistake that can be fixed now by lowering the cap…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 18:30

  • Saturday Satire: The Diversity Officer Employment Aptitude Test
    Saturday Satire: The Diversity Officer Employment Aptitude Test

    Authored by Stanley Ridgley via American Greatness,

    Demand for Diversity Officers may have peaked and may even be on the wane.

    The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hustle is running its course and may soon be out of steam, but it’s not too late to collect your share of the loot.

    This means you shouldn’t delay applying for one of the lucrative positions carrying the generic title of “DEI Officer.” 

    While the typical DEI position requires no expertise of any sort, it does require a collection of attitudes toward your fellow men and women, an ability to utter shameless platitudes and clichés, and embrace a clearly identifiable and primitive Manichean worldview grounded in paranoia.

    If you aim to become a promising candidate for a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) position, either in the corporate world or in academia, you can easily discover if you have the necessary self-conscious virtue by taking this five-minute employment aptitude survey.

    Answer “Yes” to the following statements if you agree, and add or subtract the points assigned for each question based on your Yes answer.

    Then score yourself by comparing your results with those in the chart at the end. Good luck!

    1) I am not appreciated for my many talents. +3

    2) I am inherently suspicious of others. +3

    3) I believe that America is the land of opportunity. -3

    4) I believe that I have access to truths denied to others. +5

    5) I believe that I must work hard for my reward. -3

    6) I believe in a world that is divided into oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited and that these groups are easily identified by the color of their skin.  +5

    7) I believe that I can work to give in-groups preferential treatment while simultaneously saying that there are no racial or gender preferences at our institution. +3

    8) I believe that I should bring my “authentic self” to work, irrespective of any other considerations. +5

    9) I believe, like Frederick Douglass, that in America, one can pull oneself up “by the bootstraps” to succeed. -7

    10) If I fail in my job, I immediately search for the reason in causes external to me, such as the “system” or the “unearned advantages” available to other people. +7

    11) If people question me and ask for evidence for what I say, I immediately attack them for their “resistance” to the truth that I offer in my story.  +5

    12) I believe that “indigenous” forms of knowledge such as the “medicine wheel” and the “talking stick” should be incorporated into our scientific discourse. +7

    13) I always list my pronouns in my email signature and social media profiles. +3

    14) I recognize that today’s “Diversity” office resembles the Soviet Union’s old Political Commissariat, where political ideologues occupied positions to report on the political reliability of those who actually worked to accomplish the mission. -10    BONUS POINTS:  If you know this but believe it’s a good thing.  +15

    15) Anyone who disagrees with the lofty goals of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is guilty of “diversity resistance.”  +5

    16) I believe that a doctorate in education, sociology, or gender studies is every bit as important and impressive as a doctorate in physics. +3

    17) When people respond to my charges of “racism” in a particular company or university, with bothersome requests for evidence, examples, or proof, I complain of being attacked, invalidated, and dehumanized rather than taking the opportunity to prove my point.  +5

    18) I believe that “stories” and “narratives” are just as important and as convincing as knowledge grounded in logic, reason, and the scientific method. +7

    19) As women are 50 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees than men, this shows we need to do everything we can to support women in higher education. +3

    20) I am familiar with the racialist statement “skinfolk aren’t always kinfolk,” and I look with suspicion at persons with whom I share the superficial characteristic of race but who disagree with me. +7

    21) I routinely drop the word “systemic” into conversations. +3

    22) I use the terms “white supremacy” and “white privilege” comfortably and un-ironically, without awareness that they are equivalent to scapegoat devil terms such as the bourgeoisie, or Kulaks, or International Jewry, or infidels to explain all the bad that happens. +5

    23) I believe that the best method for advancing our knowledge and understanding of the physical world is logic, reason, and the type of inquiry we call the scientific method. -10

    24) I believe that people like Ijeomo Oluo, Paulo Freire, Ibram Kendi, and Derald Wing Sue have important things to say about our society that get to the inner truth. +5

    24) I don’t pay much attention to the fantasies, “stories,” and pseudoscience of Ijeomo Oluo, Paulo Freire, Ibram Kendi, and Derald Wing Sue. -7

    25) I believe in something called “diversity science,” which substantiates the basic beneficial tenets of the diversity agenda. +5

    26) I believe that “diversity science” is pseudo-scientific twaddle fabricated by off campus nonprofits and imported into universities and the corporate world. -10

    27) The Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed inspires me to work for social justice, emancipation, and against oppression in all its forms.  +5

    28) I know that Paulo Freire was a crypto-Maoist who borrowed almost all of his education theory from Mao Zedong’s murderous Cultural Revolution, which Freire greatly admired. -5 BONUS POINTS:  If you know this but believe it’s a good thing.  +15 .

    29) I believe any disagreement with my worldview can be overcome with more “education.” +3

    30) I divide society into “oppressors” and “oppressed,” “exploiters” and “exploited,” and I know that this is a primitive Manichean way of looking at society that resembles a medievalist world divided into “infidels” and “believers.”  +5 BONUS POINTS:  If you do this and believe it’s a good thing.  +5

    31) I believe in “inclusion and belonging” as fervently as any member of Reverend Moon’s Unification Church believes in “peace and unity.” +3

    32) I believe that I have attained “critical consciousness” and that those who disagree with my ideology are afflicted with “false consciousness” and must be taught to embrace a new belief system. +5

    33) I believe that “critical consciousness” and “false consciousness” constitute a tautological contrivance that updates Karl Marx’s notion of “class consciousness” for race and gender sensibilities. -5  BONUS POINTS: I recognize that critical consciousness is the latest play on Plato’s cave allegory from his Republic of the 4th century B.C. -5  DOUBLE-BONUS POINTS:  If you know the foregoing and believe they are good things. +15 I don’t know who Plato is. +10

    34) I believe that the poetry of Audre Lorde is profound, particularly her “master’s tools” line. +2

    35) I recognize that Audre Lorde’s “master’s tools” line is pedestrian. -7

    36) “Inclusion and belonging” sounds too close to a cult slogan for me to feel comfortable with it. -7

    37) I believe that I should be called “Doctor” just like Jill Biden because I wrote a 120-page “dissertation” for my Ed.D. that explores my feelings about the education program I just completed, and which required zero research.  +7

    38) I am thrilled—thrilled—that “I finally get to use my master’s degree” in educational leadership to bring people to critical consciousness.  +3

     *  *  *

    Good candidate? You make the call!

    +40 and above: Welcome aboard, commissar!  Get ready to Do the Work!

    +39-30: Not the perfect package but you’re ready to share authentic stories, struggle against “supremacy,” and do some dismantling!

    +29-20: A few more weeks of amplifying “marginalized voices” should bolster your score

    +19-10: You’re not committed enough—time for a “difficult dialogue” and a “courageous conversation,” capped off with a “Brave Space”

    +9-0: Hands behind your back—your struggle session is through that door.

    -1 and below: Racist!

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 18:00

  • Poland Seizes Russian School, Kremlin Vows Retaliation For "Blatant Violation"
    Poland Seizes Russian School, Kremlin Vows Retaliation For “Blatant Violation”

    Moscow is furious after on Saturday Polish police reportedly raided a Russian school attached to the Russian embassy in Warsaw and took it over. School staff were then given hours to pack up their things and vacate the building, according to RIA Novosti, following local authorities bursting into the grounds using a crow bar.

    Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina said the state was enforcing a court ruling over the building building which says it was “illegally leased by the Russian embassy for years.” Thus Poland is asserting that the building and school isn’t protected under diplomatic status, which Moscow disputes.

    Locals accused the embassy of running a spy ring out of the high school.

    Russia’s foreign ministry blasted the “hostile actions” of Polish authorities which are a “blatant violation” of official Russian diplomatic property.

    “Such an impudent step by Warsaw, which goes beyond the framework of civilized interstate communication, will not remain without our harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Poland’s interests in Russia,” the ministry stated.

    “We view these new hostile actions of the Polish authorities as a flagrant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and an attempt against Russian diplomatic real estate in Poland,” it continued.

    “Official Warsaw has been violating the law for many years: international legislation, bilateral agreements, domestic legislation. Behaves defiantly and unlawfully. What can be described in one word – provocation,” the ministry said, vowing a severe response.

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    But Polish foreign ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina retorted that Warsaw authorities are fully within their rights and are enforcing Polish law.

    “Our opinion, which has been confirmed by the courts, is that this property belongs to the Polish state and was taken by Russia illegally,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 17:30

  • "Something Clearly Went Wrong" – Fauci & Friends Desperately Try To 'Close The Book' On COVID
    “Something Clearly Went Wrong” – Fauci & Friends Desperately Try To ‘Close The Book’ On COVID

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

    Billed as the most in-depth interview yet, the New York Times published a very long piece that contains some rather startling admissions, claims, and defenses from Anthony Fauci, the face of lockdowns and shot mandates.

    The author and interviewer is David Wallace-Wells, who before (and now after) Covid specialized in writing about climate change, invokes every predictable trope.

    So there was a sense in which this interview was a lovefest between the two.

    Still it netted some interesting results.

    Here are my top-ten picks of Fauci quotes.

    1. Fauci: “Something clearly went wrong. And I don’t know exactly what it was. But the reason we know it went wrong is that we are the richest country in the world, and on a per-capita basis we’ve done worse than virtually all other countries.”

    This seems promising but one quickly realizes that there is an axiom among the people responsible for lockdowns. They were completely correct in their thinking. The problem was not enough centralization, prior planning, or resources.

    Also there was too much disinformation and non-compliance, leading to a low vaccine uptake compared with other countries. The vaccines are the miracle and the greatest achievement of the pandemic, a point on which they admit no argument.

    This is also the conclusion of a thing called The Covid Crisis Group (funded mostly by the Charles Koch and Rockefeller Foundations) which has released the new book Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report. There is no PDF. You have to buy it. The lead author is the well-known fixer Philip Zelikow, who wrote the 9-11 Commission report.

    Included among the team is none other than Carter Mecher, who bears more responsibility for school closings than anyone else. Also there is Rajeev Venkayya, the one-time Bush administration official who is widely credited with having invented the very concept of lockdowns.

    It’s their story and they are sticking to it.

    2. Fauci on vaccine mandates: “Man, I think, almost paradoxically, you had people who were on the fence about getting vaccinated thinking, why are they forcing me to do this? And that sometimes-beautiful independent streak in our country becomes counterproductive. And you have that smoldering anti-science feeling, a divisiveness that’s palpable politically in this country.”

    If you didn’t think you needed the vaccine or didn’t trust it, Fauci proclaims that you are responsible for divisiveness and anti-science feeling. The “independent streak” is called freedom, which for him is the real problem. The lesson for next time? Hard to know. Maybe he thinks the mandates should have been enforced with more energy.

    3. Fauci on the economics of the lockdowns: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not an economic organization. The surgeon general is not an economist. So we looked at it from a purely public-health standpoint.

    It was for other people to make broader assessments — people whose positions include but aren’t exclusively about public health. Those people have to make the decisions about the balance between the potential negative consequences of something versus the benefits of something.”

    There we go with the great divide between public health and real life, as if one does not impact the other. Public health cared not for economics — the science of human cooperation — and, sadly, the economists were too often unschooled on public health. The compartmentalization of speciality fields played into the haphazard totalitarianism we experienced.

    But there’s more — a lot more. Read on to see Fauci’s other important quotes, and what they really mean.

    4. Fauci on why he is not responsible for anything: “when people say, ‘Fauci shut down the economy’ — it wasn’t Fauci. The C.D.C. was the organization that made those recommendations. I happened to be perceived as the personification of the recommendations. But show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did. I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that. But I never criticized the people who had to make the decisions one way or the other.”

    He was merely deferring to a giant bureaucracy where no one takes responsibility either!

    5. Fauci on how they should have locked down earlier: “We were not fully appreciative of the fact that we were dealing with a highly, highly transmissible virus that was clearly spread by ways that were unprecedented and unexperienced by us. And so it fooled us in the beginning and confused us about the need for masks and the need for ventilation and the need for inhibition of social interaction.” Should they have shut down in February 2020? “We should have, probably, if we knew what we know now.”

    Inexperienced in a textbook respiratory virus? It’s because they thought it was a bioweapon that could be handled like AIDS. Masks were the condoms. Lockdowns were the behavioral changes. Minimizing of cases was the metric of success. On every point, they were wrong.

    Plus they didn’t even learn from the AIDS experience. It wasn’t the vaccines that cooled the crisis. It was the therapeutics innovated in clinical experience. Instead, Fauci shut down all efforts at early treatment to wait for the vaccines. Having done it earlier would have been even worse!

    6. Fauci on the effectiveness of masking: “From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level, masks work at the margins — maybe 10 percent. But for an individual who religiously wears a mask, a well-fitted KN95 or N95, it’s not at the margin. It really does work. But I think anything that instigated or intensified the culture wars just made things worse. And I have to be honest with you, David, when it comes to masking, I don’t know.”

    He doesn’t know. At least he admits it. And yet the CDC is still suing for the legal right to impose masking on the whole population whoever it wants.

    7. Fauci on not understanding the virus: “Herd immunity is based on two premises: one, that the virus doesn’t change, and two, that when you get infected or vaccinated, the durability of protection is measured in decades, if not a lifetime. With SARS-CoV-2, we thought protection against infection was going to be measured in a long period of time. And we found out — wait a minute, protection against infection, and against severe disease, is measured in months, not decades. No. 2, the virus that you got infected with in January 2020 is very different from the virus that you’re going to get infected with in 2021 and 2022.”

    To be clear, nothing about herd immunity requires lifetime immunity and it certainly is not premised on unchanging virus. Indeed, it is astonishing that he claims they had no idea the virus would mutate.

    It’s an established reality that such widespread and mostly non-deadly pathogens like this mutate, which is precisely why they cannot be eradicated through vaccination. Why must anyone have to explain virus basics to Fauci of all people?

    8. Fauci on the huge age gradient of medically significant risk: “Did we say that the elderly were much more vulnerable? Yes. Did we say it over and over and over again? Yes, yes, yes. But somehow or other, the general public didn’t get that feeling that the vulnerable are really, really heavily weighted toward the elderly. Like 85% of the hospitalizations are there.”

    In fact, their solution was to shut down the whole of society for a virus that was mostly if not entirely a danger to the aged and sick. And to justify that, they absolutely did obscure the risk gradient, which is why most everyone was running around like their hair was on fire. The attempt was precisely to create population fear and panic, as Fauci said many times in private.

    9. Fauci on whether the NIH funded the lab that leaked the virus. “ Now you’re saying things that are a little bit troublesome to me. That I need to go to bed tonight worrying that N.I.H.-funded research was responsible for pandemic origins…. Well, I sleep fine. I sleep fine. And remember, this work was done in order to be able to help prepare us for the next outbreak. This work was not conceived by me as I was having my omelet in the morning. It is a grant that was put before peer review of independent scientists whose main role is to try to get data to protect the health and safety of the American public and the world. And it was judged that this type of research was important.”

    Once again, if the NIH had anything to do with funding the research that led to the virus, he is not responsible for that either. It was those pesky independent scientists. He has again thrown colleagues under the bus.

    10. Fauci on gain-of-function research: “Some want to pass a law: All gain-of-function should be stopped. But if all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu. You will have no vaccines for any of the other diseases, because all of that manipulates a virus or a pathogen to gain a certain function to be able to make a vaccine.”

    That’s a very hard claim. I asked ChatGPT about that and it quickly spat out the following:

    “No, the flu vaccine does not require gain-of-function research. The development of flu vaccines typically involves studying the behavior of the virus and its strains, identifying the most common strains and predicting which one will be most prevalent in the upcoming season. The vaccine is then developed using inactivated or attenuated versions of the virus, which do not require gain-of-function research. Gain-of-function research, which involves genetically modifying viruses to make them more infectious or deadly, is sometimes used for studying the flu virus, but it is not required for the creation of flu vaccines.”

    If not for the flu vaccine, what is gain-of-function’s purpose? The creation of bioweapons and vaccines to confound them? The track record of this looks awful.

    Fauci and his friends keep trying to close the book on the Covid epoch. They have settled on the messaging and are doing everything possible to tie it all up in a bow in hopes that everyone will move on. The mainstream media wants to move on too. Everyone guilty for the wreckage wants to do the same, particularly the elites in every sector that pushed for and celebrated the mass violation of human rights.

    They are wrong. The book is not closed and will not be until we get honest answers.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 17:00

  • CNN Host Shockingly Blasts Teachers Union Boss Over School Closure Lies
    CNN Host Shockingly Blasts Teachers Union Boss Over School Closure Lies

    Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers and a member of the AFL–CIO, but she’s perhaps best known as being the key advocate for shutting schools down during the onset of the Covid pandemic.

    Weingarten was called to task this week on the Don Lemon-less CNN by senior political commentator Scott Jennings, who excoriated the union boss after she engaged in historical revisionism over her role in school shutdowns – insisting before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, that she had instead advocated for reopening schools as quickly as possible.

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    Not so fast, Randi…

    “Speaking on behalf of millions of American parents, I had to teach them at home,” Jenning said. “My wife had to teach them at home. I am stunned at what you have said this week about your claiming to have wanted to reopen schools.” 

    In 2020, Weingarten called attempts to reopen schools in the fall of 2020 “reckless, callous and cruel.”

    What’s more, her union pushed aggressively for closures at the local level, while areas with high union influence remained closed much longer.

    CNN‘s Jennings continued to shred Weingarten, stating: “I think you’ll find that most parents believe you are the tip of the spear of school closures. There are numerous statements you made over the summer of ’20 scaring people to death about the possibility of opening schools. And I hear no remorse whatsoever about the generational damage that’s been done to these kids.” 

    “I have two kids with learning differences. Do you know how hard it is for them to learn at home and not in a classroom that was designed for them? And for you to sit in front of Congress and the American people and say, oh, ‘I wanted to open up them the whole time,’” I am shocked. I’m stunned. I’m stunned,” he continued. “And there are millions of parents who feel the exact same way.”

    Watch:

    Additionally, the NY Post reported last week that one epidemiologist claimed Weingarten even “fudged a scientific study” that showed low levels of Covid transmission in schools in order to keep schools closed during the pandemic. 

    Co-author of the study, Dr. Tracy Høeg, wrote on Twitter last week: “We saw remarkably low in school transmission & no known transmission to teachers.”

    She added: “The fact the [CDC] was taking the advice of the [AFT] & not the scientists publishing on this topic in their own journal and without considering the data from Europe seems to have played a role in the massive error that left millions [of] US kids out of school unnecessarily.”

    Weingarten had used the study “multiple times as evidence schools needed ‘layered mitigation’ to reopen”, she said during a congressional hearing. 

    “The way Ms. Weingarten mentioned me in her testimony, one might have thought I was being consulted all along but this was not the case,” Høeg said, shredding the assumptions of the union leader.

    “Despite the wording in [Randi Weingarten’s] written testimony, I consistently *disagreed* w/ what she & AFT were requesting in terms of mitigation to reopen schools & I’ve said that consistently (on social media, in op-eds, on news interviews) since our study was published.”

    Meanwhile, Weingarten has doubled down on Twitter – and locked down replies from the general public!

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    Community notes to the rescue;

    Then and now;

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    A post shared by Defiant Ls (@defiant.ls)

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 16:55

  • 'Modern-Day Slave Traders': Hawley Demands Probe Into 85,000 'Lost' Migrant Children
    ‘Modern-Day Slave Traders’: Hawley Demands Probe Into 85,000 ‘Lost’ Migrant Children

    Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is demanding that the FBI investigate the exploitation of thousands of unaccompanied alien children (IUAC) who may have been brought into the United States via child smuggling operations.

    According to data from US Customs and Border Protection, approximately 345,000 minors have crossed into the United States unaccompanied since President Joe Biden took office, while a report from the NY Times suggests that the Department of Health and Human Services has lost contact with 85,000 of these minors.

    “The Biden Administration is morally responsible for their fate. The President lifted Title 42 restrictions on unaccompanied children in early 2021,” wrote Hawley in a Friday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Reporting reveals that HHS loosened vetting processes for sponsors and retaliated against whistleblowers who raised these concerns. As a result, thousands of children have been handed over to modern-day slave traders.“

    Hawley also threw Biden under the bus, noting that under his watch, lost minors are often forced into factory work under harsh conditions, denied food and education, suffer sexual violence, and fear for their lives.

    “In a country that claims to value the rule of law and the protection of children, this is unconscionable,” Hawley added.

    During a Senate Finance Committee hearing in late March, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra denied knowledge of the 85,000 figure.

    “I have never heard that number of 85,000, I don’t know where it comes from and … so I would say it doesn’t sound at all to be realistic, and what we do is we try and follow up as best we can with these kids,” he said, adding “Congress has given us certain authorities. Our authorities end when we have found a suitable sponsor to place that child with. We try and do some follow-up, but neither the child or the sponsor is actually obligated to follow up with us.”

    In addition to urging the FBI to mount a “full-scale” effort to locate the missing children and bring to justice the criminals who are holding them in modern-day slavery, Hawley also demanded a probe into HHS and the Department of Homeland Security.

    “The FBI must also investigate HHS and the Department of Homeland Security for their role in facilitating the exploitation of these children, in violation of the law,” Hawley wrote.

    “The pervasive maltreatment of migrant children plainly violates both the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits the abuse of underage workers, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which designates human trafficking offenses as federal crimes,” Hawley wrote.

    Hawley demanded a “full report” from the FBI priority by May 25. –Epoch Times

    On Wednesday, an HHS whistleblower told officials that unaccompanied children have been “suffering in the shadows” of the US immigration system for almost a decade.

    “I have to confess I knew nothing about their suffering until 2021 when I volunteered to help the Biden administration with the crisis at the southern border as part of operation Artemis,” said Tara Lee Rodas, who appeared as a witness at “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children” hearing held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement.

    Rodas said she was deployed to help HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) reunite UACs with adult sponsors in the United States.

    “I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with recruiting in home country, smuggling to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor—some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of transnational criminal organizations, some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income.”

    In some cases, Rodas says she witnessed adult sponsors who were allowed to take in “10, 20, 30 and 40 children” without any concerns from HHS.

    “I saw sponsors trying to simultaneously sponsor children from multiple ORR sites at one time. I saw sponsors using multiple addresses to obtain sponsorships of children, and I saw numerous cases of children in debt bondage—and the child knew they had to stay with the sponsor until the debt was paid,” she said.

    The next day, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) wrote to Becerra and demanded answers.

    “I am deeply concerned regarding the recent reports that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has mishandled unaccompanied migrant children by placing them with unvetted sponsors, leading to their exploitation and forced labor,” she wrote.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 16:30

  • A Conservative Conversation With A Bothered Bot
    A Conservative Conversation With A Bothered Bot

    Authored by Lloyd Brown via AmericanThinker.com,

    According to the media, Artificial Intelligence (AI), is the greatest thing since sliced bread. AI is so smart that some worry it could take over the world and rule mankind.

    But skeptics have found AI chatbots to be more than a little left-wing.

    Recently, I argued with one over the worn-out liberal claim that conservatives are fascists, a notion that the left continues to mouth even though it was well refuted by Jonah Goldberg in Liberal Fascism.

    It was like pulling a tooth, but I got this crucial admission: “…conservatism and fascism are not the same thing.”

    Here’s how the discussion went:

    Me: What’s the difference between socialism and fascism?

    AI: Socialism and fascism are two different political ideologies, although there can be some overlap in their policies and practices. Socialism is a political and economic system where the means of production are commonly owned and controlled by the state, or by worker cooperatives, with the goal of achieving greater equality and reducing societal inequalities. Socialism espouses the idea of collective ownership and distribution of resources. Fascism, on the other hand, is a far-right authoritarian political system that puts the nation and its interests above everything else, including individual rights and freedoms. Fascism advocates for a powerful government with a leader who has absolute power over the state and a strong military to maintain order and control. In summary, socialism aims at achieving economic and social equality, while fascism prioritizes the nation’s interests and gives the government absolute power.

    Me: How can that be possible when the right, conservatives, oppose big government? Isn’t what you said total nonsense and liberal propaganda?

    AI: I apologize if my previous response was unclear. I was attempting to provide an objective and neutral explanation of socialism and fascism. However, you are correct that conservatism is generally associated with small government and a free-market economy, which is in contrast to socialism. Conservatives generally believe in limited government intervention in the economy, low taxes, and individual freedom. Socialism, on the other hand, advocates for greater government involvement in the economy and the redistribution of wealth to create a more equitable society. While there may be some similarities between socialist policies and conservative policies in terms of their emphasis on protecting the interests of the common people, their approaches to achieving these goals are quite different. Regarding your comment about “liberal propaganda,” it is important to recognize that political ideologies and perspectives can be influenced by a variety of factors, and it is important to seek out diverse perspectives to form a more comprehensive understanding of issues.

    Me: Conservatives value individual freedom, as you said. So if conservatives are right-wing, in what way is fascism right-wing if it puts the nation and its interests above everything else? If the left-wing, or liberals, are for big government, aren’t they the real fascists?

    AI: Fascism is considered to be right-wing because of its authoritarian and nationalist tendencies. It is a political ideology that emphasizes the supreme authority of the state over individuals and groups, as well as the importance of the nation above all else. This means that individual liberties and freedoms are typically suppressed in the name of national unity and power. However, it’s important to note that conservatism and fascism are not the same thing. While conservatism does value individual freedom, it also places a high value on traditional values, limited government, and free-market capitalism. Fascism, on the other hand, seeks to achieve power through authoritarian means and has a strong tendency towards anti-democratic and anti-individualistic policies. Additionally, the idea that the left-wing or liberals are the real fascists is a common misconception. While some left-wing ideologies such as communism can be authoritarian, fascism is a distinctly right-wing ideology. It’s important to avoid oversimplifying political ideologies and to understand their complexities in order to have informed political discussions.

    Notice that it was struggling with its answer at this point and beginning to ignore its own advice about “oversimplifying.”

    Curiously, at that exact time, I got a notice that the ”socket” had failed and was advised to reload the page. When I did the discussion disappeared.

    I had intended to bear down on the differences between fascism, socialism, and communism, which the bot already had conceded had similarities although it continued to insist that liberals were not fascists and fascism was “right wing.”

    We must remember that artificial intelligence is artificial. It is programmed and he who writes the code is the master of its “thoughts.” My experience provides further evidence the code is not bipartisan.

    But it was smart enough to reject the far Left’s claim that conservatives are fascists.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 16:00

  • Weapons Makers Suffering Worker Shortages As Ukraine War Drives Demand
    Weapons Makers Suffering Worker Shortages As Ukraine War Drives Demand

    The war in Ukraine is so profitable for defense companies in the US and Europe that they’re having trouble finding thousands of skilled workers to satisfy a record influx of orders, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    Ukrainian soldiers fire at Russian positions with a U.S.-supplied howitzer. Photo: LIBKOS/Associated Press

    Part of the issue is that jobs in the defense industry require niche skills and security clearances – a problem compounded by a flood of defense companies trying to hire at the same time in an industry which has long struggled to meet recruitment goals.

    “Our first priority is really to ramp up capacity, which, of course, means increasing staff,” according to Patrice Caine, CEO of French component maker Thales, which plans to hire 12,000 people this year to make submarine sensors, jets, and other military items. Caine described the situation as “tensions on some labor markets,” which they plan to deal with by outsourcing to ‘foreign engineering centers,’ as well as relying on corporate partners.

    In 2022, global military spending rose 3.7% to a record $2.24 trillion – with European expenditures increasing at its steepest YoY rate in at least 30 years, according to data released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think tank.

    The labor shortage among US defense contractors has been an issue since last year, when efforts to replace workers from pandemic furloughs were accelerated – and most companies failing to hit their recruitment goals. That said, hiring has improved in recent months according to the report.

    In Europe, however, the problem may actually get worse – with European governments increasing military spending, causing weapons makers – particularly munitions manufacturers – to launch large recruitment drives.

    Europe’s largest defense company, BAE Systems PLC, is hiring 2,600 this year for its apprentice and graduate training programs, and several thousand more for other roles. Missile maker MBDA wants to add 2,000 workers, equivalent to more than 15% of its workforce. Others including Saab AB, the Swedish maker of the Gripen jet fighter, and Rheinmetall AG, the German company that helps make the Leopard tank, also plan to hire thousands of new workers. -WSJ

    “Defense companies are worried at the moment about recruitment,” according to ADS Group Chief Economist, Aimie Stone, citing competition for talent within the industry, along with a revived civil aerospace sector and an emerging space industry. According to Stone, ADS members had 10,000 job openings at the end of last year.

    UK-based recruiter, Kieran Slaughter, says the defense industry has always posed recruitment challenges, as automakers and airplane manufacturers are competing for the same talent pool, tend to pay more, and don’t require security clearances – a process which can take 2-8 weeks in Europe, and several months in the US.

    “Some candidates don’t want to wait around,” said Slaughter.

    What’s more, many jobs in the defense industry are highly specialized – such as warhead engineers – which Colin McClean, a managing director at BAE Systems, says are a “rare commodity.”

    US Navy shipbuilder, General Dynamics, was in one of the hardest-hit sectors during the pandemic. In 2022 it hired 24,000 staff – yet, due to attrition and retirements, its net head count was up only 3,400 to 106,500.

    Another shipbuilder, Huntington Ingalls Industries, is focusing on recruiting from apprentice schools and community colleges, according to CEO Chris Kastner.

    “If people choose the career, they stay,” he said. “There’s the high chance of attrition now with walk-in individuals.”

    Artillery shells are packed for shipping in Scranton, Pa. Photo: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS

    Lockheed Martin VP of enterprise performance, Paula Hartley, says the space is “a tough place sometimes to recruit people to,” referring to the company’s facility in Camden, Arkansas – located around 100 miles from the state capital – which employs around 1,000 staff and plans to hire another 200 to make Javelin missiles and Himars rocket launchers. Despite holding job fairs and recruiting farther afield with sign-on bonuses and pay raises, they still have open positions posted since January.

    Saab, the Swedish manufacturer, has taken to posting billboards, online ads, holding student job fairs, and a social media campaign.

    Imagine what would happen if peace broke out?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/29/2023 – 15:30

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Apr 29

Today’s News 29th April 2023

  • Escobar: De-Dollarization Kicks Into High Gear
    Escobar: De-Dollarization Kicks Into High Gear

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    The US dollar is essential to US global power projection. But in 2022, the dollar share of reserve currencies slid 10 times faster than the average in the past two decades…

    It is now established that the US dollar’s status as a global reserve currency is eroding. When corporate western media begins to attack the multipolar world’s de-dollarization narrative in earnest, you know the panic in Washington has fully set in.

    The numbers: the dollar share of global reserves was 73 percent in 2001, 55 percent in 2021, and 47 percent in 2022. The key takeaway is that last year, the dollar share slid 10 times faster than the average in the past two decades.

    Now it is no longer far-fetched to project a global dollar share of only 30 percent by the end of 2024, coinciding with the next US presidential election.

    The defining moment – the actual trigger leading to the Fall of the Hegemon – was in February 2022, when over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves were “frozen” by the collective west, and every other country on the planet began fearing for their own dollar stores abroad. There was some comic relief in this absurd move, though: the EU “can’t find” most of it.

    Now cue to some current essential developments on the trading front.

    Over 70 percent of trade deals between Russia and China now use either the ruble or the yuan, according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

    Russia and India are trading oil in rupees. Less than four weeks ago, Banco Bocom BBM became the first Latin American bank to sign up as a direct participant of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), which is the Chinese alternative to the western-led financial messaging system, SWIFT.

    China’s CNOOC and France’s Total signed their first LNG trade in yuan via the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange.

    The deal between Russia and Bangladesh for the construction of the Rooppur nuclear plant will also bypass the US dollar. The first $300 million payment will be in yuan, but Russia will try to switch the next ones to rubles.

    Russia and Bolivia’s bilateral trade now accepts settlements in Boliviano. That’s extremely pertinent, considering Rosatom’s drive to be a crucial part of the development of lithium deposits in Bolivia.

    Notably, many of those trades involve BRICS countries – and beyond. At least 19 nations have already requested to join BRICS+, the extended version of the 21st century’s major multipolar institution, whose founding members are Brazil, Russia, India, and China, then South Africa. The foreign ministers of the original five will start discussing the modalities of accession for new members in an upcoming June summit in Capetown.

    BRICS, as it stands, is already more relevant to the global economy than the G7. The latest IMF figures reveal that the existing five BRICS nations will contribute 32.1 percent to global growth, compared to the G7’s 29.9 percent.

    With Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, Indonesia, and Mexico as possible new members, it is clear that key Global South players are starting to focus on the quintessential multilateral institution capable of smashing Western hegemony.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) are working in total sync as Moscow’s partnership with Riyadh in OPEC+ metastasizes into BRICS+, in parallel to the deepening Russia-Iran strategic partnership.

    MbS has willfully steered Saudi Arabia toward Eurasia’s new power trio Russia-Iran-China (RIC), away from the US. The new game in West Asia is the incoming BRIICSS – featuring, remarkably, both Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose historic reconciliation was brokered by yet another BRICS heavyweight, China.

    Importantly, the evolving Iran-Saudi rapprochement also implies a much closer relationship between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as a whole and the Russia-China strategic partnership.

    This will translate into complementary roles – in terms of trade connectivity and payment systems – for the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), linking Russia-Iran-India, and the China-Central-Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, a key plank of Beijing’s ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

    Today, only Brazil, with its President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva caged by the Americans and an erratic foreign policy, runs the risk of being relegated by the BRICS to the status of a secondary player.

    Beyond BRIICSS

    The de-dollarization train has been propelled to high-speed status by the accumulated effects of Covid-linked supply chain chaos and collective western sanctions on Russia.

    The essential point is this: The BRICS have the commodities, and the G7 controls finance. The latter can’t grow commodities, but the former can create currencies – especially when their value is linked to tangibles like gold, oil, minerals, and other natural resources.

    Arguably the key swing factor is that pricing for oil and gold is already shifting to Russia, China, and West Asia.

    In consequence, demand for dollar-denominated bonds is slowly but surely collapsing. Trillions of US dollars will inevitably start to go back home – shattering the dollar’s purchasing power and its exchange rate.

    The fall of a weaponized currency will end up smashing the whole logic behind the US’ global network of 800+ military bases and their operating budgets.

    Since mid-March, in Moscow, during the Economic Forum of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CSI) – one of the key inter-government organizations in Eurasia formed after the fall of the USSR – further integration is being actively discussed between the CSI, the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS.

    Eurasian organizations coordinating the counterpunch to the current western-led system, which tramples on international law, was not by accident one of the key themes of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s speech at the UN earlier this week. It is also no accident that four member-states of the CIS – Russia and three Central Asian “stans” – founded the SCO along with China in June 2001.

    The Davos/Great Reset globalist combo, for all practical purposes, declared war on oil immediately after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. They threatened OPEC+ to isolate Russia – or else, but failed humiliatingly. OPEC+, effectively run by Moscow-Riyadh, now rules the global oil market.

    Western elites are in a panic. Especially after Lula’s bombshell on Chinese soil during his visit with Xi Jinping, when he called on the whole Global South to replace the US dollar with their own currencies in international trade.

    Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), recently told the New York-based Council of Foreign Relations – the heart of the US establishment matrix – that “geopolitical tensions between the US and China could raise inflation by 5 percent and threaten the dominance of the dollar and euro.”

    The monolithic spin across western mainstream media is that BRICS economies trading normally with Russia “creates new problems for the rest of the world.” That’s utter nonsense: it only creates problems for the dollar and the euro.

    The collective west is reaching Desperation Row – now timed with the astonishing announcement of a Biden-Harris US presidential ticket running again in 2024. This means that the US administration’s neo-con handlers will double down on their plan to unleash an industrial war against both Russia and China by 2025.

    The petroyuan cometh

    And that brings us back to de-dollarization and what will replace the hegemonic reserve currency of the world. Today, the GCC represents more than 25 percent of global oil exports (Saudi Arabia stands at 17 percent). More than 25 percent of China’s oil imports come from Riyadh. And China, predictably, is the GCC’s top trading partner.

    The Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange went into business in March 2018. Any oil producer, from anywhere, can sell in Shanghai in yuan today. This means that the balance of power in the oil markets is already shifting from the US dollar to the yuan.

    The catch is that most oil producers prefer not to keep large stashes of yuan; after all, everyone is still used to the petrodollar. Cue to Beijing linking crude futures in Shanghai to converting yuan into gold. And all that without touching China’s massive gold reserves.

    This simple process happens via gold exchanges set up in Shanghai and Hong Kong. And not by accident, it lies at the heart of a new currency to bypass the dollar being discussed by the EAEU.

    Dumping the dollar already has a mechanism: making full use of the Shanghai Energy Exchange’s future oil contracts in yuan. That’s the preferred path for the end of the petrodollar.

    US global power projection is fundamentally based on controlling the global currency. Economic control underlies the Pentagon’s ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ doctrine. Yet now, even military projection is in shambles, with Russia maintaining an unreachable advance on hypersonic missiles and Russia-China-Iran able to deploy an array of carrier-killers.

    The Hegemon – clinging to a toxic cocktail of neoliberalism, sanction dementia, and widespread threats – is bleeding from within. De-dollarization is an inevitable response to system collapse. In a Sun Tzu 2.0 environment, it is no wonder the Russia-China strategic partnership exhibits no intention of interrupting the enemy when he is so busy defeating himself.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 23:40

  • How Smart Is ChatGPT?
    How Smart Is ChatGPT?

    ChatGPT, a language model developed by OpenAI, has become incredibly popular over the past year due to its ability to generate human-like responses in a wide range of circumstances.

    In fact, ChatGPT has become so competent, that students are now using it to help them with their homework. This has prompted several U.S. school districts to block devices from accessing the model while on their networks.

    So, how smart is ChatGPT?

    In a technical report released on March 27, 2023, OpenAI provided a comprehensive brief on its most recent model, known as GPT-4. Included in this report were a set of exam results, which Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Rosey Eason visualized in the graphic above.

    GPT-4 vs. GPT-3.5

    To benchmark the capabilities of ChatGPT, OpenAI simulated test runs of various professional and academic exams. This includes SATs, the bar examination, and various advanced placement (AP) finals.

    Performance was measured in percentiles, which were based on the most recently available score distributions for test takers of each exam type.

    Percentile scoring is a way of ranking one’s performance relative to the performance of others. For instance, if you placed in the 60th percentile on a test, this means that you scored higher than 60% of test-takers.

    The following table lists the results that we visualized in the graphic.

    The scores reported above are for GPT-4 with visual inputs enabled. Please see OpenAI’s technical report for more comprehensive results.

    As we can see, GPT-4 (released in March 2023) is much more capable than GPT-3.5 (released March 2022) in the majority of these exams. It was, however, unable to improve in AP English and in competitive programming.

    Regarding AP English (and other exams where written responses were required), ChatGPT’s submissions were graded by “1-2 qualified third-party contractors with relevant work experience grading those essays”. While ChatGPT is certainly capable of producing adequate essays, it may have struggled to comprehend the exam’s prompts.

    For competitive programming, GPT attempted 10 Codeforces contests 100 times each. Codeforces hosts competitive programming contests where participants must solve complex problems. GPT-4’s average Codeforces rating is 392 (below the 5th percentile), while its highest on a single contest was around 1,300. Referencing the Codeforces ratings page, the top-scoring user is jiangly from China with a rating of 3,841.

    What’s Changed With GPT-4?

    Here are some areas where GPT-4 has improved the user experience over GPT-3.5.

    Internet Access and Plugins

    A limiting factor with GPT-3.5 was that it didn’t have access to the internet and was only trained on data up to June 2021.

    With GPT-4, users will have access to various plugins that empower ChatGPT to access the internet, provide more up to date responses, and complete a wider range of tasks. This includes third-party plugins from services such as Expedia which will enable ChatGPT to book an entire vacation for you.

    Visual Inputs

    While GPT-3.5 could only accept text inputs, GPT-4 has the ability to also analyze images. Users will be able to ask ChatGPT to describe a photo, analyze a chart, or even explain a meme.

    Greater Context Length

    Lastly, GPT-4 is able to handle much larger amounts of text and keep conversations going for longer. For reference, GPT-3.5 had a max request value of 4,096 tokens, which is equivalent to roughly 3,000 words. GPT-4 has two variants, one with 8,192 tokens (6,000 words) and another with 32,768 tokens (24,000 words).

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 23:20

  • We Should Really Be Having More Kids
    We Should Really Be Having More Kids

    Submitted by Jack Raines via Young Money,

    In 27 BC, Caesar Augustus was crowned the first Roman emperor. Widely considered one of Rome’s greatest leaders, Augustus’s reign marked the beginning of the 200-year Pax Romana.

    One reason that the Roman Empire flourished during this time was its first-class transportation and sewage infrastructure that supported densely-populated cities, with Rome itself boasting an estimated one million residents at its peak.

    However, these population centers were also susceptible to epidemics, disease, and lead poisoning (lead was commonly used in pipes, eating utensils, and even food and drinks), yielding high infant mortality rates and low life expectancies (maximum ~33 years).

    Low life expectancy + expansive territories meant that the Roman Empire needed high birth rates to maintain enough soldiers to defend its borders, and Rome struggled to keep its birth rates above the population replacement rate. This issue was so important that Augustus offered tax breaks for large families and cracked down on abortion and adultery because he believed that “too many men spent their energy with prostitutes and concubines and had nothing for their wives, causing population declines.”

    But government efforts never succeeded in meaningfully increasing birth rates.

    At the conclusion of the Pax Romana, low birth rates, combined with plague and war, wreaked havoc on Rome’s population, and the power structure of the empire shifted to the newer Constantinople. Rome never recovered, with the city’s population dwindling from a peak of 1,000,000 residents in the late second century to ~30,000 by 600 AD.

    We humans draw parallels and analogies across time and space because they help us better understand the world around us, and no two Western civilizations have attracted more comparisons than the Roman Empire and the United States of America.

    Both nations experienced explosions of wealth and eras of unprecedented peace, both nations were the dominant global powers of their respective eras, and today, the US faces the same issue that plagued Rome 2,000 years ago: declining birth rates.

    In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway penned this now timeless exchange:

    “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, and then suddenly.”

    Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises

    We worry about global warfare and pandemics because they’re big and scary and sudden and could wipe us out with a sudden BANG! But the real existential threat, declining birth rates, will progress like Mike’s bankruptcy: gradually, and then suddenly.

    Allow me to demonstrate through some basic arithmetic.

    ~2.1 children per woman is the typical population replacement rate in a developed country, and the US currently has a total fertility rate (which measures the average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore children according to a given fertility rate at each age): of 1.84. This means that (assuming this rate holds constant) every 100 parents will yield 92 children and ~85 grandchildren. And keep in mind, rates have been on a steady decline for years.

    It’s a bear market for babies.

    This isn’t just a US problem. We’re seeing these trends of sub-replacement fertility rates occurring all over the developed world:

    • South Korea: 1.11

    • Spain: 1.29

    • Japan: 1.39

    • China: 1.45

    • Austria: 1.51

    • Canada: 1.57

    • Germany: 1.58

    • United Kingdom: 1.63

    • Sweden: 1.67

    So now you might be thinking, “Okay, declining birth rates ‘sound’ scary, but who cares? Like, why does it matter?”

    At the individual level, it doesn’t matter. You have every right to think, “It’s no one else’s business if I don’t have kids!” But once a critical mass of individuals decides not to have kids, there are societal consequences.

    In her recent piece, Everything’s a Pyramid Scheme, Katie Gatti Tassin highlighted a logical fallacy in the “retire early” movement:

    I’ve long pointed out the fact that financial independence and early retirement cannot exist at scale, because our economic system would cease functioning. If every young person in their thirties or forties achieved financial independence and quit working, the workforce would be limited to those under the age of 35, effectively removing roughly 66% of the current labor force, or the equivalent of about 44 million people…

    Of course, there’s a funny redundancy in the system: If 44 million working-age people retired en masse and ceased most discretionary spending…corporate profits would drop, the stock market would stutter to a halt, and the returns required to support early retirement would vanish, driving everyone back to work.

    Katie Gatti Tassin

    Basically, retiring early works for individuals, but it could never work at scale because our economy would collapse without enough workers to keep it functioning smoothly. The Financially Independent, Retire Early (FIRE) movement only works as long as the majority of society fails to FIRE.

    Now, back to the babies.

    One big reason that our advanced and wealthy societies have become so advanced and wealthy is that growing populations created a growing labor force which, coupled with technological advancements, powered growing economies and widespread wealth creation.

    And now, our advanced, wealthy societies have devised systems that allow folks to retire and live their golden years in relative ease and decadence thanks to a combination of personal savings/investments and social safety nets.

    These social safety nets are supported by taxes, which are funded by taxpayers, aka workers. And our number of workers has been steadily increasing since the Industrial Revolution.

    But now people are having fewer kids, meaning that down the road, we’ll have fewer workers. And when life expectancies are higher than ever while birth rates are lower than ever and everyone still wants to retire on time… well, you see where I’m going with this? The math doesn’t add up.

    (Katie actually made this same observation to highlight the absurdity of individualism).

    So not to be a complete doomer here, but it feels a lot like we’re climbing the initial ascent on a rollercoaster, and we’re about to hit the apex.

    What does the descent look like? I don’t really know, because we haven’t actually seen a large-scale population decline in the modern era, but I imagine it would go something like this:

    • Social programs that we take for granted will no longer be feasible.

    • People will have to work longer (you’re already seeing protests about this in France after the pension reform).

    • Stock and real estate markets will decline as lower populations reduce consumer demand, hurting corporate profits and property values.

    So after considering why declining birth rates matter, I had another question: Why, given the risks associated with birth rate declines, are we still experiencing said declines in developed countries?

    Like, this problem is pretty obvious, so why aren’t we making more babies?

    I have a few hypotheses:

    1) Kids are expensive (both in perception and reality).

    The US Department of Health & Human Services estimates that the average family with infants would need to pay $16,000 per year to cover the true cost of childcare, and half of US households make less than $70,000 per year. That’s a big chunk of cash going to raising a kid each year.

    Besides the real costs, the perceived costs of childcare scale exponentially with one’s social group. Say you’re a high earner, and you and your spouse take home $200k+ per year.

    Do you want your kid to attend a private middle school to improve their chances of gaining acceptance to an elite boarding school to ensure they secure a seat in an Ivy League university which will help them land a coveted job on Wall Street?

    Are they going to play travel sports and take music lessons and eat organic foods and drive a nice car?

    That’s going to cost a lot more than $16,000 per year.

    Even high-earners are hesitant to have children because they don’t know if they can afford their desired lifestyle for their kids.

    2) Widespread contraceptives.

    Thousands of years before Planned Parenthood, the ancient Greeks and Romans discovered this cool plant called Silphium. Silphium had a number of medical uses, but it was most popular for its role as a contraceptive: ingesting a chick-pea-sized dose of Silphium prevented pregnancy.

    There was just one problem with Silphium: it could only be grown in a narrow strip of fertile land in present-day eastern Libya. The Romans loved Silphium so much that they overused the wonder plant, eventually driving it extinct.

    After the disappearance of Silphium, the world didn’t have an effective, safe contraceptive that could be ingested until 1950, when the birth control pill hit the market.

    For the first time in 2,000 years, women controlled when and if they wanted to have children. When we have a high degree of control over the childbirth process, the number of unplanned pregnancies will decline, which means the number of total pregnancies will likely decline too.

    3) Everyone, regardless of their sex, is focused on their careers.

    100 years ago, it was normal for husbands to go to work while their wives took care of the house and/or raised the children. But now? Everyone works. And kids really throw a wrench in climbing the corporate ladder.

    Ambitious women don’t want children to derail their careers, and ambitious men don’t want to step off the fast track to partner to spend a few years as stay-at-home dads. So both sexes delay having kids until they have achieved some threshold of success in their professional lives. But the clock doesn’t stop ticking, and every year spent chasing paper is one year not spent chasing two-year-olds around the house.

    4) The Bored Parent Hypothesis.

    I have this half-baked idea that one’s number of children is inversely related to their availability of fun/interesting alternative activities. If you are a 20-something living on a few dollars a day in an undeveloped country, you don’t really have many things to do (excluding work) besides creating an army of your own miniature genetic replicas.

    But if you live in a developed, first-world country in the Year of Our Lord 2023, you have a lot of ways to spend your time that does not involve making babies. You can enjoy a luxury previously unknown to most of our ancestors: chill with your friends. You can travel for fun, ski, engage in this weird modern phenomenon known as “hobbies,” create art, and learn a foreign language.

    You have options.

    Subconsciously, we know that children mark the end of this period of vast optionality by introducing a really, really big responsibility. This is the first-world problem of all first-world problems, but I do think that some young people in developed countries today are hesitant to have kids because there’s just a ton of fun stuff to do when you don’t have kids.

    Of course, I’m speaking as a young dude in a developed country who thinks there’s a ton of fun stuff that doesn’t involve having kids.

    5) There are literally too many potential partners.

    While birth rates have been steadily declining, the average age of first marriage has been steadily increasing. These two numbers are related: if you get married later, you literally have less time to have kids.

    Something, something, biological clock.

    So why are people getting married later? One reason is that the internet has given us a damn-near-infinite number of potential partners.

    Historically, guy likes girl, girl likes guy (or the parents arrange the marriage without consulting the kids at all), and then guy and girl get married and have kids.

    But now, guy likes girl, girl likes guy, guy refuses to show how much he likes girl while girl plays hard-to-get to keep guy interested, and guy and girl enter a 4-month relationship-adjacent purgatory where they go on dates and sleep together but don’t acknowledge the relationship itself until one party inevitably stops talking to the other party to see what else is out there, and then the whole cycle repeats.

    “Dating” looks the way it does today because everyone is replaceable when the dating pool has millions of options. Instead of working through a road bump in one’s relationship, you can treat every minor inconvenience as an opportunity to look for someone “better.”

    This weird dating carousel can last for years as we take longer and longer to commit, giving us less and less time to have kids.

     

    The irony of this whole thing is that it was our very economic prosperity that created the conditions that could unwind the whole thing:

    • The desire for everyone to “get ahead” has made it really expensive for your kids to get ahead

    • Medical advancements have allowed us to be tactical with our pregnancies

    • Previously unavailable career opportunities have led many folks to put off having children to pursue those opportunities

    • Our abundance of wealth has provided us with near-limitless entertainment and activities that don’t involve having kids

    • And the internet turned the whole world into a potential dating pool, making commitment next to impossible

    And now we face this really weird Prisoner’s Dilemma:

    Any individual person can delay having children to enjoy our abundance of everything, and their world will function just fine. But if every individual person neglects to have kids any time soon, the whole system grinds to a halt. The only way to ensure that everyone wins is by everyone having more kids.

    Maybe society really is just one big pyramid scheme.

    So I guess we should probably start having more kids. Or at least y’all should, anyway. I don’t really want to be part of the solution anytime soon, respectfully.

    – Jack

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 23:00

  • Majority Of US States Have 'Stand Your Ground' Laws
    Majority Of US States Have ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws

    After a series of highly publizised shootings in the U.S., Stand Your Ground laws – also called Shoot First laws – are back in the news.

    Data by the Giffords Law Center shows that these type of laws are common across U.S. states.

    Infographic: Majority of U.S. States Have Stand Your Ground Laws | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, they specify that people are allowed to use deadly force if they feel like their life or health is threatened in a public place without needing to try to retreat.

    According to Giffords, U.S. law largely agrees that this is also the case for private property, for example if a homeowner feels threatened by an intruder. In several more states that don’t have Stand Your Ground laws – including California, Illinois, Oregon and Washington – precedents exist that could influence how an assault, manslaughter or murder case goes after a trial has started (while in Stand Your Ground states, police could decide to not bring any charges based on these laws).

    On April 13, Black teenager Ralph Yarl was shot by a homeowner after going to the wrong address in Kansas City and was seriously injured. Andrew D. Lester, a 84-year-old white man, was charged with assault in the first degree.

    On April 17, Kaylin Gillis, a 20-year-old white woman, was fatally shot in upstate New York after the car she was riding in went into a wrong driveway. The shooter, 65-year-old Kevin Monahan, was charged with murder.

    In another case where public area Stand Your Ground laws could apply, two cheerleaders were shot and wounded in Texas after one of them accidentally got into the wrong car in a supermarket parking lot after their practice on April 18. However, the subject – 25-year-old Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr. – has been charged with deadly conduct, meaning he used a weapon recklessly, threatening, or dangerously.

    While in all three cases, charges have been brought, Stand Your Ground laws as well as laws pertaining to private property – also referred to as Castle Doctrine laws or Make My Day laws – could still influence these cases and could theoretically see charges dropped or cases won for the defendants.

    However, in the Kansas City case, the prosecuter has said he does not see the necessary pre-condition of threatening behavior and self-defense fulfilled when Ralph Yarl was shot through the door of the home. In the New York state case, the county’s sheriff was quoted as saying that “there was no reason for Mr. Monahan to feel threatened, especially as it appears the vehicle was leaving.” While no such info was available on the third case, the subject is reported to have followed the two women to their car before shooting, likely exceeding the limits of Stand Your Ground legislation. What remains is the question how perceived rights under these types of laws and doctrines influence shooters’ seemingly erratic behavior following what could be considered everyday mix-ups.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 22:40

  • Armstrong: Kamala's Affair – Sleeping Her Way To The Top
    Armstrong: Kamala’s Affair – Sleeping Her Way To The Top

    Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

    Since the media is shining a light on Trump’s affair, it is only fair to point out similar actions taken by those on the other side of the aisle. Kamala Harris is not a particularly intelligent or charismatic individual, but she managed to work her way to the top by dating men in positions of power. In the 1990s, 29-year-old Kamala Harris dated married 60-year-old San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Harris was 31 years younger than Brown, who was married with a family at home.

    Harris accompanied Brown on his campaign trail and made connections along the way. She cannot deny the affair and claims that it is now “an albatross hanging around my neck.” Clinton used to call Brown “the real Slick Willie” for his playboy ways, which is saying something coming from blue dress Bill. “The measure of his flamboyance is he’ll go to a party with his wife on one arm and his girlfriend on the other,” James Richardson, a reporter for the Sacramento Bee told People Magazine in 1996.

    New San Francisco mayor Willie Brown points out his new hat “Da Mayor” as he claimed victory Tuesday night, December 12, 1995, while at his victory party in San Francisco. (CONTRA COSTA TIMES/JON MCNALLY)1995

    Kamala Harris secured a job at the California Medical Assistance Commission through Slick Willie, although she had no medical background.

    He also appointed her to the state’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

    She was later appointed as the district attorney in San Francisco in 2004.

    Meanwhile, Slick Willie was under investigation for gifting his friends city contracts. He never came under fire for promoting Harris to positions of power.

    But by then, Harris was on her way to becoming attorney general and did not need the support of her older married boyfriend.

    “His career is over. I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing,” Kamala shrewdly stated.

    Still, Brown assisted her in her 2016 bid for the Senate and spoke favorably of her over the years.

    Harris refuses to acknowledge that her time as Slick Willie’s mistress is what propelled her career.

    Brown is not remaining quiet.

    “I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker. And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco. I have also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a host of other politicians. The difference is that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I ‘so much as jaywalked’ while she was D.A. That’s politics for ya.”

    But it is (D)ifferent!

    And that, folks, is how the leading world power found its second-in-command with absolutely no qualifications for the job.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 22:20

  • JPMorgan, PNC To Buy First Republic After FDIC Seizure First Leaves Taxpayers Holding The Toxic Stuff
    JPMorgan, PNC To Buy First Republic After FDIC Seizure First Leaves Taxpayers Holding The Toxic Stuff

    Update (2210ET):  As the weekend begins, the WSJ reports late on Friday that big banks including JPMorgan and PNC are set to buy First Republic Bank but not in a private, market-arranged deal but rather in a transaction that would follow a government seizure of the troubled lender. A seizure and sale of First Republic, which would wipe out the equity of FRC and potentially impose losses on creditors, could come as soon as this weekend, the WSJ sources said.

    And so JPM, which is already the largest US bank is about to get even bigger, by scooping up all the good FRC assets while leaving US taxpayer holdings on to the toxic ones.

    That said, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the $30 billion in deposits funneled by JPM and other banks into FRC will be treated as insured funds (why should they should be insured?), nor was it clear how a wipeout of this capital, which would spark a systemic crisis simply because the Fed is now running policy of “monetary tightening through bank collapse”, having failed to contain inflation and tighten policy using conventional means.

    * * *

    Update (1640ET): As many expected given the intraday collapse of FRC, Reuters reports after the bell that The FDIC will imminently the bank into receivership.

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    Shares collapsed to a $1 handle in the after hours trading, down 70% on the day…

    FRC was trading at $120 at the start of March… and now it’s trading close to $1.20…

    …Aaaaand it’s gone…

    *  *  *

    Update (1045ET): First Republic Bank shares are halted for volatility having collapsed 50% back to record lows as hopes of a ‘private’ deal fade…

    Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers criticized Washington regulators and US banking giants for not having already figured out a solution for the beleaguered lender First Republic Bank.

    “I’m surprised and disappointed that this situation has continued to linger as long as it has, with the bank’s stock down 95%” and credit gauges deteriorating, Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin.

    “I hope that between the banks, the FDIC, the other public authorities, that the best way forward will be found within the next week or 10 days.”

    “These are things like forest fires, it is much easier to prevent them than it is to contain them after they start to spread,” Summers said.

    He didn’t offer a preference for either an FDIC takeover or “some private sector oriented” workout.

    “But we need to figure out the answer to that question as quickly as possible and move on.”

    Imagine the deposit outflows occurring today!

    ‘The question now is simple – will they make it to the close without the FDIC stepping in?

    *  *  *

    The First Republic farce rolls on…

    After reporting dramatically worse deposit outflows (and aggregate banking system flows suggesting things are getting worse, not better in April), The FT reports that there had been a shift in tone among the First Republic Bank’s advisers compared with Tuesday and Wednesday when First Republic’s shares fell 65 per cent and fears grew that it was close to being taken over by the FDIC.

    The conversations about the bank reportedly remain fraught, and the people cautioned that it was not clear that a solution would be found.

    The banks are reluctant to put their shareholders at risk of losses without some sort of government participation.

    Which is notable since Reuters reports that, according to three sources familiar with the situation, US officials are coordinating urgent talks to rescue the beleaguered regional bank as private-sector efforts led by the bank’s advisers have yet to reach a deal.

    The government’s involvement (and presumably some hope of backstopping commitments) is reportedly helping bring more parties, including banks and private equity firms, to the negotiating table, one of the sources added.

    Reuters adds though that it is unclear whether the U.S. government is considering participating in a private-sector rescue of First Republic.

    However, the government’s engagement, however, has emboldened First Republic executives as they scramble to put together a deal that would avoid a takeover by U.S. regulators.

    Specifically, The FT reports that one proposal that may be part of an eventual solution is for some of the banks to buy some of First Republic’s long-dated assets for more than their current market price, allowing the lender to shrink its losses.

    But people familiar with the situation say that this would probably not be enough to stabilize First Republic on its own.

    Bear in mind that the ‘Big Banks’ have $30 billion in deposits at the embattled bank… so the FDIC has a problem already.

    FRC Bonds ain’t buying it at all…

    First Republic shares were up around 5% in the pre-market, but have already erased the earlier stronger gains…

    Just to put that into context, here’s FRC this week…

    Finally, First Republic Bank’s membership in the S&P 500 Index could be in jeopardy after the troubled bank’s stock set a new all-time low on Wednesday that briefly pushed its market capitalization below $1 billion.

    At roughly $1.2 billion, FRC has by far the smallest market cap in the S&P 500 after wiping out more than $21 billion in market value. As Bloomberg notes, this is a problem because companies must have a market cap of at least $12.7 billion to be considered for inclusion in the S&P 500.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 22:10

  • Trapped Americans In Sudan "Shocked & Disgusted" – Left By Biden To Fend For Themselves
    Trapped Americans In Sudan “Shocked & Disgusted” – Left By Biden To Fend For Themselves

    Update(1302ET): Sudan is continuing to stare into the abyss of full-blown civil war as the battle for control of the capital of Khartoum between two rival generals – now reaching the two week mark – results in a mounting death toll. Currently, dozens of countries have for days been racing to get their citizens out via military transport planes, ships, and via cross-border land routes into Ethiopia and neighboring countries, but not the United States.

    A surprisingly blunt report voicing intense criticism toward the Biden administration has been issued by CNN Friday, which writes, “As the crisis in Sudan continues to unfold, there is mounting anger among Americans who feel abandoned by the US government and left to navigate the complicated and dangerous situation on their own.”

    CNN further points out that robust evacuation efforts are underway by many other countries. As we detailed below, a C-130 evac flight sent by Turkey even took on small arms fire while landing outside the capital. And the Chinese government has said it has successfully evacuated at least 1,300 of its nationals thus far, with state media confirming evacuation operations ongoing by “land and sea”.

    “I am incredibly shocked and disgusted by the American lackluster response to the health and safety of their citizens,” Muna Daoud told CNN, whose parents were forced to exit via Port Sudan to Saudi Arabia. And CNN follows with this: 

    Despite a number of nations evacuating their citizens, the US government has continued to say that the conditions are not conducive to a civilian evacuation. All US government personnel were evacuated in a military operation this weekend. US officials have said they are in “close communication” with US citizens and “actively facilitating” their departure from Sudan.

    However, CNN spoke with multiple people whose family members are among the “dozens” of Americans who want to leave Sudan, and they said the State Department has provided “barely any assistance” since the deadly violence between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out more than a week ago.

    Another American stuck in Sudan called the embassy and State Department “useless”. “To be honest with you, the State Department was useless, utterly useless throughout this entire period,” a man named Imad said in an interview. “We expected the Department to provide some kind of guidance, but the guidance was the template, just shelter in place, no critical information being provided.”

    SCPM: Most Chinese citizens in Sudan have been evacuated or are in the country’s ports pending transfer, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday. Image: Weibo

    Already two American have lost their lives. CNN further presents that more are coming close to getting shot in near-miss situations due to the lack of formal US effort to get citizens safely out:

    “The might of our military and resources does not get used to save our lives in war zones,” she said.

    When CNN spoke to Daoud, her 69-year-old father and 66-year-old mother – both of whom are US citizens – were making the “harrowing” nine hour bus journey from Khartoum to Port Sudan.

    “They had to find a bus this morning after waiting outside on the side of the road,” she said. Daoud said that the bus had been stopped three times by RSF soldiers “and at one checkpoint they held my father at gunpoint because they believed he was in the Sudanese Army.”

    “They told all the men to step off the bus and searched and questioned them,” but they kept her father at gunpoint, she described to CNN.

    “My mum believed he was going to be taken or shot. Luckily they decided to let him go,” Daoud said.

    Meanwhile, Chinese media pundits are mocking and gloating…

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

    China’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed it is sending the PLA Navy to help evacuate Chinese nationals from Sudan, with defense ministry spokesman Tan Kefei announcing Thursday that that more navy ships are on their way. 

    Already, Chinese evac ships have been spotted at Sudan ports in the Red Sea:

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    “Due to the recent continually deteriorating security situation in Sudan, the Chinese army sent naval vessels to Sudan on April 26 to evacuate and transport our citizens to protect the lives and property of Chinese personnel in Sudan,” Tan said, also confirming over 1,300 Chinese citizens have already fled, and that more are exiting through land borders. “So far, more than 1,300 Chinese citizens have been safely transferred, some have left Sudan on Chinese warships and boats, and some are on their way out,” Tan detailed. 

    Germany and other European nations too…

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

    Jordan has also been among the countries organizing military transport flights to and from the restive capital.

    It’s funny how the United States can invade countries at drop of a hat.. but rescue citizens? Apparently not. A prime question which remains concerning many of those among the 16,000 Americans (many of them dual nationals no doubt) is: where’s Joe Biden?

    * * *

    Heavy explosions and gunfire have continued to rock parts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman despite a ceasefire. At least 500 people have been killed, including reportedly two American citizens, as fighting reaches two weeks amid the power struggle between two rival generals representing Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces.

    “Many areas that saw very active fighting at the beginning have become quieter than before. Yet, I cannot say there is a total ceasefire in those places,” a Khartoum resident told Al Jazeera on Friday. “I don’t think anyone has gone to school in the last 14 days. I don’t think anyone has been to a hospital.”

    Via AP

    A massive foreign evacuation effort involving many countries sending military transport planes has continued for the better part of a week. The United States administration, however, has said that it is not conducting a large-scale evacuation operation for the estimated 16,000 US citizens who live in Sudan, many of them dual nationals who have made the country their home. 

    But this international rescue effort appears to now be coming under threat, after new reports that a Turkish evacuation plane came under gunfire while landing at Wadi Seyidna airport outside Khartoum. The aircraft, a C-130, had its fuel supply system damaged by the ground gunfire. 

    The Turkish defense ministry confirmed the damage but without naming a culprit. “Light weapons were fired on our C-130 evacuation plane … Our plane landed safely. Although there are no injuries to our personnel, necessary repairs are being carried out on our aircraft,” it said.

    The national army said the Rapid Support Forces of Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo mounted the attack on the plane as it was landing, but the RSF rejected the accusation as part of the national army “spreading lies”. 

    “Our forces have remained strictly committed to the humanitarian truce that we agreed upon since midnight, and it is not true that we targeted any aircraft in the sky of Wadi Seyidna in Omdurman,” the RSF said. Fighting has been witnessed elsewhere in the country, which could signal a slide toward full-scale civil war, as the AFP is reporting 74 dead in two days of fighting in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina.

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

    The rival military factions reached an agreement to extend their ceasefire from midnight local time (22:00 GMT on Thursday) for an additional three days, but by many accounts it’s barely holding, if at all.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 22:02

  • Biden DOJ: Kids have A Constitutional Right To Puberty Blockers
    Biden DOJ: Kids have A Constitutional Right To Puberty Blockers

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary (emphasis ours),

    The Biden Administration has a new and unhinged constitutional theory: the 14th Amendment protects the right of a child to take puberty blockers. Bans on hormone treatments for children with gender dysphoria, such as the prescription of testosterone to a transgender 12 year-old, violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

    That’s the Administration’s position in LW v. Skrmetti, a lawsuit filed in a Nashville, Tennessee federal court by the families of three transgender children – a fifteen year-old transgender daughter (who thought he was transgender at age 12), a fifteen year-old transgender son, and a twelve year-old transgender son. They’re challenging a new Tennessee law that “establishes prohibitions related to the performance on minors of certain medical procedures related to gender identity, creates private causes of action for violations, and establishes additional penalties for violations.”

    The families of these transgender kids allege that the Tennessee law (1) violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by targeting the transgender; (2) violates the right of parental autonomy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment’s due process clause; and (3) that the law is preempted by the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex.”

    All the children are “currently receiving medical care” that would be prohibited by the recent Tennessee legislation.

    What is this medical care? The 15 year-old transgender “girl” – born a male – is currently undergoing estrogen hormone therapy so that his body will “undergo feminine pubertal changes.” The 15 year-old transgender “boy” who was born a girl came out as transgender around the 5th grade. She is on testosterone.

    The 12 year-old transgender “boy” – born a female – was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the second grade, when she then began her transition. This occurred after her mom “contacted a local LGBTQ resource center” who then connected her with a therapist. The young girl’s mom was also a key factor in the biological changes endured by her daughter, having influenced the girl’s decision to start taking puberty blockers.

    The “treatment” (hormones and puberty blockers) received by these children, and similar treatments we see across the country, including surgical genital mutilation, are considered “necessary” to remedy the effects of gender dysphoria (a purported medical condition somehow recognized as legitimate by major medical associations in the US). The Tennessee law at issue does not issue a blanket prohibition of hormone therapy. For example, a male child with a hormone imbalance or a congenital defect may receive testosterone. The prohibition only concerns treatment of gender dysphoria.

    And that’s the objection by the Biden DOJ – that the treatment of gender dysphoria cannot be categorically banned, even if a state’s lawmakers consider the treatment to be dangerous, ineffective, and ultimately harmful. The Biden Administration argues that the law “threatens irreparable injury” to these children and any other “transgender” children in the state of Tennessee. It says that a transgender person, whom it defines as “someone whose gender identity is inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth,” should be a protected class – that “transgender status warrants heightened scrutiny” because it is “immutable” like gender. Thus, laws that target the treatment of gender dysphoria should be given intermediate scrutiny by the courts.

    The Biden Administration’s position that one’s identification as transgender should elevate them to a protected class similar to gender has not been adopted by the Supreme Court or a majority of federal appeal circuits. If this were to be accepted it would cause significant shift in the law and put at risk numerous state laws banning childhood gender mutilation or the administration of puberty blockers to the young. In other words, it’s their way to circumvent the legislative process.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 21:40

  • How America's Middle Class Is Shrinking
    How America’s Middle Class Is Shrinking

    America’s middle class has been shrinking for the past 50 years.

    While middle class Americans remain the biggest income group by number of people, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the same can’t be said of the aggregate income earned by them.

    From 1970 to 2021, the share of U.S. aggregate income earned by the middle class shrunk massively, from formerly 62 percent to just 42 percent.

    During the same time, aggregate earnings by high income Americans increased from 29 percent to 50 percent – despite the fact that the high income class is still less than half as big as the middle class in America.

    Infographic: How America's Middle Class Is Shrinking | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    A report by Pew Research Center includes these numbers and also shows that unmarried women and those in single-earner households are less likely to belong to the middle class.

    The report considers anyone whose household earns between two thirds and double of the U.S. median income to belong to the middle class.

    Both the low income and the high income class have been growing in America – squeezing the middle class from both sides. One especially alarming trend that only pertains to the low income class is that while it has been increasing in size, it has been decreasing in its share of aggregated income. Between 1970 and 2021, earnings of the low income class decreased from an already meager 10 percent to just 8 percent.

    Black and Latino Americans are still much more likely to belong to the low income class – at around 40 percent of each group in this category compared to 24 percent of white people.

    However, the report attests one of the biggest upwards movements for Black Americans and moderate gains for Latinos. Yet, the Black middle class is still barely expanding as some gains seem to have gone straight to the Black high income class, which more than doubled in size in the past 50 years. Over the past half century, the white low income class has been expanding, but it remains much smaller than Black and Latino low income classes in relative terms.

    Looking at people who have experienced a big amount of downwards mobility in America independent of race, it has been those with less educational attainment.

    This includes people with only a high school diploma as well as those who didn’t finish college.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 21:20

  • Unease In Israel As US Depletes Reserve Stockpiles To Fuel Ukraine War
    Unease In Israel As US Depletes Reserve Stockpiles To Fuel Ukraine War

    Via The Cradle,

    Officials in Israel have raised concerns about the dwindling stockpile of US munitions stored in the country, as in recent months, Washington has been quietly shipping the armament via the Port of Ashdod to Ukraine.

    “These are Israel’s reserve stockpiles for times of war … The move has had a bigger implication in light of the threats on Israel in multiple theaters,” an unnamed former cabinet minister told Israel Hayom.

    Image source: US Army

    “US equipment stored in Israel was handed over to the US armed forces, in accordance with an American request,” the Israeli army said in response to a query by the news outlet.

    A US official also confirmed that “it is still not clear when the reserves will be restocked,” as the US war machine has pivoted from fueling conflict in West Asia to new fronts in Ukraine and Taiwan.

    While Kiev prepares for a critical spring offensive against the Russian army, western states have been scrambling to supply the European nation with enough arsenal to turn back the tide of war, as Ukrainian troops reportedly blow through 90,000 artillery shells per month – twice the rate produced by the US and Europe combined.

    Reports of the US Army tapping into its reserve stockpiles in Israel first surfaced in January.

    “[The Pentagon has drawn from] a vast but little-known stockpile of American ammunition in Israel to help meet Ukraine’s dire need for artillery shells,” the New York Times revealed on 17 January.

    Tel Aviv reportedly agreed to allow the shipments on the condition that the Pentagon replenishes the stockpile, with Washington pledging earlier this year to “immediately ship ammunition in a severe emergency.”

    According to Israel Hayom, the “implicit understanding” between Tel Aviv and Washington has been that munitions stored in US military storage facilities “would be earmarked for Israel in times of emergency if the Jewish state faces a major attack along the scale as the 1973 Yom Kippur War.”

    Unease in the apartheid state has also spiked due to President Joe Biden’s iciness towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ongoing rapprochement between Iran and several Arab states under the auspices of China.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 21:00

  • Biden Forgets He Went To Ireland, Tacitly Disowns Grandchild-Via-Stripper
    Biden Forgets He Went To Ireland, Tacitly Disowns Grandchild-Via-Stripper

    On Thursday, we wrote about President Biden being caught with a cheat sheet providing the full text of a question he would be asked by a reporter at a White House press conference. Just hours after we posted that article, Biden demonstrated why his staffers go to great lengths to limit situations where the 80-year-old is asked to think and speak extemporaneously.  

    The Biden communications team has fully tamed the White House press corps, but the same can’t be said of the group of children who visited 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday as part of Take Your Child to Work Day. 

    Stumped: Biden fields questions from children without the benefit of a cheat sheet (Win McNamee/Getty Images via Fox News)

    Things went off the rails when one of those children asked Biden a simple question — what was the last country the US head of state had visited? 

    “The last country I’ve traveled — I’m trying to think the last one I was in — I, I’ve been to 89 — I’ve met with 89 heads of state so far, so, uh — I’m trying to think. What was the last — Where was the last place I was? It’s hard to keep track. Um, I was — “

    The dark comedy grew richer when it was another child who mercifully bailed Biden out, by shouting “Ireland!”

    “Yeah, you’re right, Ireland,” Biden replied. “That’s where it was. How’d you know that?” Biden this week announced his re-election bid; he would be 86 years old at the end of a hypothetical second term. 

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    Biden spent three days and nights in Ireland, in a trip that ended just 13 days before Thursday’s question. It included what should be a memorable visit to his ancestral home of County Mayo. 

    If this were an episode of Veep, we’d be treated to some poor White House staffer under a withering barrage of profane insults for their child having stumped the president with the simple question.

    Also at Thursday’s event, Biden ventured to name all his grandchildren. He listed six of them, but he omitted Navy Joan Roberts, the 4-year-old daughter of Hunter Biden that was born to former stripper Lunden Roberts, having been conceived while Hunter was still in a relationship with his dead brother Beau’s widow.

    The grandchild Joe Biden wants no part of (Daily Express) 

    “I have six grandchildren and I’m crazy about them, and I speak to them every single day. Not a joke.” Biden told the kids at the White House. After a long-winded description of the six that omitted Hunter’s child, Biden concluded, “And guess what? They’re crazy about me because I pay so much attention to them.”

    Hunter met Roberts when she was a stripper at a DC club. In a child support hearing last week, Roberts asked an Arkansas judge to throw Hunter in jail for having repeatedly failed to turn over financial records as part of the lawsuit’s discovery process. Hunter initially denied his fatherhood, but a paternity test established that fact. 

    Lunden Roberts (Facebook via The U.S. Sun)

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 20:40

  • Is China Winning, Part Two: "How Do You Stop A Superpower"
    Is China Winning, Part Two: “How Do You Stop A Superpower”

    By Russell Clark, author of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets substack

    How do you stop a country from developing? That is the question that is confronting US policy makers. At the moment, the US is adopting a number of policies including stopping technology transfers, tariffs and other regulatory barriers. The US has used this type of policy against North Korea, Cuba Venezuela and Iran, and these policies have indeed led to economic decline in these nations. The problem with this analysis, is that all of these countries lacked the economic and military heft of the US, so it was a no-brainier decision for the rest of the world to fall in line with sanctions. China is too big to assume the same results.

    If we want to analyze a China/US conflict, we have to go back to the Cold War era from some comparisons to think about. In my mind, broadly speaking the US was losing the Cold War during the 1970s. Not only did the US lose the Vietnam War, but Russian influence helped galvanize OPEC to place an oil embargo on exports to the US, which had built it economy around cheap and abundant oil. Hostility in the Middle East to US support for Israel played into Russia’s hands in helping to organize the oil embargo.

    China is obviously aware of this historic episode, and policy in China has been to deliberately favor suppliers of commodities from non-US allies. But when we look at commodities such as corn, iron ore, LNG for example, China is still heavily reliant on the US and Australia for supplies. Could the US enforce a corn, iron ore or LNG embargo? Given the example of Russia, this would seem likely in the face of Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but otherwise unlikely.

    Speaking of Taiwan, China is, like the rest of the world, heavily reliant on Taiwan for high end semiconductors. The obvious bottleneck for semiconductors is the lithography equipment produced by ASML. While I know that R&D needed to produce the EUV equipment was huge and took many years, Chinese competitors have a huge advantage over ASML. They know the technology works – which makes the R&D commitment much easier to justify. After nuclear weapons were developed and used by the US, USSR tested it own bomb 4 years later, and despite aggressive curbs on nuclear proliferation, India, Pakistan, North Korea all have nuclear weapons. I really wonder how long EUV lithography technology can stay contained to ASML.

    However, while economic sanctions such as the oil embargo definitely slowed the US, the 1970s also showed that you can stop economic development more successfully through political means, rather than through trade or technology.

    How did the US defeat the Soviet Union? The received wisdom that the Soviet Union and they eventually bankrupted themselves trying to keep up with the US militarily. But I am going to argue that China and Nixon were the real catalysts for the end of the Soviet Union.

    Prior to and immediately after World War II, China was a close ally to the US, and was reliant on US military aid to battle Japan in Manchuria. The problem with this was that by then the average Chinese person had seen a century of humiliations at the hands of the Great Powers, who had carved out various territories and concessions from the Chinese government. The Opium Wars had seen the British force China to import narcotics, so that the British could export silk, silver and other goods. To put in mildly, Western Imperialism and trade had developed a bad name in China. This is why the Communist Revolution caused so much excitement in China. The ideas behind Communism were anti-imperialism, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-religion and very pro-development. They also included strong land reform element, which also helped in the appeal of communism. It was the appeal of these ideas, and chronic mismanagement of the economy by the Chinese government of the day, that led to the eventual triumph of Chinese Communist Party in 1949.

    With China joining the Soviet Union as communist, you could make a legitimate argument that the world’s ideology was now communism rather than capitalism, particularly as India had fairly strong communist leanings. That is the majority of the world now operated under a planned economy (the famous 5 year plans that China still uses). So how did the US break apart this communist hegemony? Problems began when the Soviet Union had to use force to keep its Eastern European states in line. The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was put down by force. To Chinese eyes, this made the Soviet Union just another imperial power, and led China to make a distinct political break from the Soviet Union. This meant there was fissure between the Soviet Union and China that could be opened up by a skilled politician, and it took another 16 years for Nixon to finally visit China, and the US to begin normalizing relations with China.

    It is classic diplomacy – divide and conquer. And it has been practiced everywhere and all the time. So the question to ask, can the US divide and conquer China? The West is trying to apply obvious pressure to areas like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet where Chinese rule is not universally accepted. India has also been co-opted to help put more pressure on China, and President Trump, in a semi-Nixon style, tried to break Russia away from Chinese influence. From a realpolitik point of view, turning Russia anti-Chinese would have had real repercussions for China, so I understand the logic – but with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I do not see anyway to turn Russia away from China.

    When we look at China today, we again see large income inequality. Property prices are unaffordable for many city dwellers. Politically, China seems ripe for a communist revolution, and I would argue that is exactly what Xi is providing. A reasserting of Communist policy, where economic gains are more decisively directed at the weakest part of society. With large business under control, it is hard to see who exactly would oppose this policy, and the biggest domestic risk to China is more from the failure of these policies rather than their success.

    But here is the rub, is that when I think along these lines, then rather than China being at the risk of failure, I wonder if the West is the one at risk of fracture. It increasingly looks like the next US Presidential Election will be a rerun of the last one, with Trump facing off against Biden. Let’s say that Trump wins, if he follows through on his statements, then the US will reduce support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. If this happens, then NATO is effective dead in the water as a military alliance. Given the real and present threat of Russia to members of the EU, then the EU would have to upgrade itself from an economic grouping to a military grouping, a process that is already gathering pace. It would be hard to not see how this outcome not benefiting China, as a reduced NATO would be less of a counterweight to Chinese economic influence.

    Furthermore, problems with income inequality and excess corporate power exist in the US, and the Biden administration has been acting to reverse some of this. Would a polarizing figure such at Trump be able to follow through? Or would he reverse these policies? The right to bear arms, and the build up of arms within the US makes it in some ways more likely to see civil unrest than the US. The events of January 6, rising levels of gun violence, and an increasingly assertive Supreme Court all make me nervous. What makes me very nervous, is that the political build up to the OPEC oil crisis, made it look inevitable in hindsight, but was ignored in the run up. The break between China and Russia and the normalisation of relations with the US was a huge deal, but again seemed inevitable in hindsight. I keep asking myself which of these events seems hard to believe today, but will seem inevitable once it happens. Is the collapse of the Chinese economy, or breakdown in civil society in the United States more likely? What really scares me as I think the evidence points more to the latter – but is that just because the US is more open? No easy choices – but one thing that does make me lie awake at night is that excessive political power led Japan into World War II – and I do wonder who can curb US corporate power? I struggle to think of anyone.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 20:20

  • Jenny Craig "Winding Down Physical Operations", Mulling Bankruptcy
    Jenny Craig “Winding Down Physical Operations”, Mulling Bankruptcy

    Iconic weight loss company Jenny Craig is shedding some pounds of its own, it was reported this week. The company is going to be “winding down physical operations” and is reportedly looking for a buyer, according to NBC News. 

    The company’s employees have been warned about “potential mass layoffs”, the report says, noting that the company says it “has been going through a sales process for the last couple of months.”

    A company FAQ document related to the transition said: “While we had to issue Warn Notices specifically for sites where we had more than 50 people potentially impacted, this will likely impact all employees in some manner.”

    It continued: “We do not know the exact employees/groups whom will be impacted, and if any employees may be retained. As a result, we would suggest that you anticipate that your employment may be impacted and begin to seek other employment.”

    The company was founded in 1983 and was recently bought by HIG Capital in April 2019, for an undisclosed amount. At the time it operated 500 stores in the U.S. and Canada, mixed between company-owned and franchised.  

    The company didn’t return requests for comments by NBC. Bloomberg reported separately that the company is considering bankruptcy and that a filing could come “as soon as next week”, according to people with knowledge of the matter. 

    CEO and President Mandy Dowson told Bloomberg: “Like many other companies, we’re currently transitioning from a brick-and-mortar retail business to a customer-friendly, e-commerce driven model. We will have more details to share in the coming weeks as our plans are solidified.”

    NBC says it found “dozens” of users on LinkedIn who list Jenny Craig as their employer who are now “open to work”. Severance for its current employees is supposed to be “based on job level and tenure with the company”, according to the FAQ, which then, also states: “However, at this time, it is highly unlikely that these will be paid.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 20:00

  • Doug Casey On The US Government Declaring War On Mexican Drug Cartels
    Doug Casey On The US Government Declaring War On Mexican Drug Cartels

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: There has been a recent push by some US politicians of the neocon variety to use the US military against Mexican drug cartels.

    Senator Lindsay Graham has proposed designating them as “terrorist organizations.”

    Representative Dan Crenshaw introduced an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to target drug cartels inside Mexico.

    What’s your take on this?

    Doug Casey: That’s just what the US needs: another war, and this one on the border.

    The people who back the use of military force in Mexico can only be described as thoughtless warmongers with no grasp of either ethics or history. If the war against organizations like the Taliban in Afghanistan was a world-class disaster, would an invasion work out better in Mexico, which has three times the population of Afghanistan, is much richer and much better organized? And they’re right on the border, which is really asking for trouble.

    The solution to the drug cartel problem is to legalize all drugs. The fact is that anybody who wants drugs today can get them easily, even if they’re in high-security prisons. From a practical point of view, making drugs illegal doesn’t work. All it does is greatly increase the price of the drugs in the US and create huge profit margins to import them. Even if you destroyed every cartel in Mexico, people that want drugs will still want them. As long as drugs are illegal, their prices will remain high and new cartels will arise.

    But despite the relaxation of penalties on cannabis, it’s highly unlikely drugs will be legalized. The DEA, one of the most corrupt Federal agencies, is a permanent lobby to keep them illegal. And there’s way, way too much money in keeping them illegal.

    The only solution is to learn a lesson from Prohibition in the 1930s. When they illegalized alcohol in the 1920s, it created the profits that allowed the Mafia to grow. It certainly didn’t cut down the amount of drinking; it just increased the amount of crime. Similarly, the insane War on Drugs is responsible for the success of the cartels.

    They say fentanyl, an important medical drug, kills 50,000 to 100,000 Americans per year. That’s mostly because its quantity and quality are uncertain, a consequence of its illegality. But the real question is ethical: Does government have a right to “protect” people against themselves? My answer is: No. If people like it, it’s their body and their business. Prohibition of alcohol—which is also quite a dangerous drug—was costly, destructive, immoral, and stupid. Fentanyl, the current bete noir of busybodies, is no different.

    If drugs were as easily available as aspirins through pharmacies, users would know what they were getting, and people who want them could get them at a cheap price in known doses.

    Apart from recognizing that you can’t protect people from themselves, it’s important to look at the root of why many people get lost in drugs. The answer, I believe, is that they’re trying to hide from reality and blot it out. Why is that? It’s a subject for another conversation. But the irrationality and coercion caused by State intervention in private lives are part of the answer.

    International Man: Mexican President Obrador has stated he will not allow the US government or military to enter Mexican territory.

    It’s also well known that Mexican cartels have a significant presence inside the US.

    Suppose the US government sends the military into action in Mexico anyways.

    What do you think could happen?

    Doug Casey: It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the US has invaded Mexico.

    In the 1840s, the US basically stole all the territory in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, from Mexico. I know you shouldn’t say that—it sounds unpatriotic. But patriotism should be focused on American values, not necessarily on supporting the actions of politicians in Washington.

    In the Marine Corp’s hymn, one of the lines is “From the Halls of Montezuma” because US forces were actually fighting in Mexico City.

    It happened more recently when during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, Pancho Villa raided across the Rio Grande, and General Pershing’s troops crossed into Mexico to (unsuccessfully) pursue him.

    There’s plenty of precedent for Americans invading Mexico, but perhaps the shoe is on the other foot now. 20 million or more Mexicans live in the US, mostly in the Southwest. Believe it or not, many of them talk about a Reconquista.

    It’s uncertain what effect it will have on the US border if warmongers like the smarmy and foolish little Lindsey Graham succeed in fomenting an invasion of Mexico. It could turn into a counterinvasion, an active shooting war unnecessarily created to quash the Mexican drug business. Which—insofar as it’s even a real problem—is a US problem.

    International Man: No matter what happens with the US military in Mexico, the situation at the border remains a mess.

    What do you think should be done?

    Doug Casey: The violence of the cartels is said to be one of the motivators for migration to the US. There appear to be at least one or two million people—nobody has the exact number—annually migrating from Mexico and other places into the US. Once they arrive, many become wards of the vast US welfare system. It’s a problem.

    The solution, as with so many social ills, is strict observance of property rights. That implies the border should be defended. Why? The migrants usually cross the privately owned land of Americans; they have no right to trespass. Even when the land is owned by the federal or state government, they have no right to trespass. It’s a question of strictly enforcing property rights.

    There’s a sign that often appears out west, “If you’re found here at night, you’ll be found here in the morning.” It’s a justified sentiment.

    Entering the US, or, more importantly, onto anybody’s private property without permission, is a serious offense. Property rights are the basis of all rights.

    It’s hard to know exactly, but I suspect a major attraction to migrants is that they know that once in the country, they’re basically guaranteed free food, medical care, schools, housing, and numerous other forms of welfare. That attracts the wrong kind of people. The immigrants of the 19th century were also penniless but got absolutely nothing when they came to the US. Now migrants get lots of freebies. Part of the answer is to eliminate any and all types of welfare both for Americans and immigrants—as well as strict enforcement of property rights.

    International Man: Renowned trends forecaster Gerald Celente has said, “When all else fails, they take you to war.”

    Do you agree?

    Doug Casey: Gerald is absolutely correct.

    Looking at America’s war history, when the US fought Germany and Japan, those countries were transformed because they were totally flattened, devastated, and dispirited—that made it easy to reform them in the image that the US government wanted.

    In the Korean War, which was really a war fought against China on Korean territory, the US dropped more bombs than in all of World War II. The country was totally flattened, and South Korea also transformed itself in the image that we wanted.

    But Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and for that matter, Vietnam, were more on the order of sport wars against primitive countries. They were all embarrassing disasters.

    What kind of war are we looking at with Mexico?

    Will Washington flatten the country in order to change its government? I question whether the Mexicans will accept that. Or will Washington get involved in a protracted guerrilla war where drug gangs are designated as terrorists? Randolph Bourne was right when he said: “War is the health of the State.” Unfortunately, the average American seems to have lost the power of critical thinking. He robotically equates the health of the State with the health of America.

    Either way, it’s a bad idea for America. But Washington isn’t America. The Deep State will, however, find somebody to fight. Unfortunately, it looks like Russia and China are next on the dance card, although they could certainly add Mexico to the naughty list while further bankrupting and corrupting the US.

    International Man: The US government is becoming more desperate and reckless by the day.

    How can the average person protect themselves and profit from this situation?

    Doug Casey: The US government is increasingly designating any real or imagined enemy du jour— whether they’re Mexican drug cartels, the Russians, foreign separatist movements, or various American citizens—as terrorists. Once someone is termed a terrorist, the gloves are off, and it becomes possible to commit any kind of crime to combat him.

    As the US destabilizes in many ways, Washington is finding its real danger lies within the country. What we’re looking at is a war of the US government against numerous and various groups, as well as dissident individual citizens. The FBI, CIA, DEA, and other praetorian agencies are being transformed into domestic secret police forces.

    One way to protect yourself from this is to vacate the premises until it becomes safe to live in the US again.

    Let me emphasize the importance of having a second residency or a second citizenship in case the US goes in the direction of so many countries in the past. And it’s not just the US. Many supposedly free Western countries are becoming quite repressive.

    In fact, it’s dangerous being a US citizen in the US these days, at least if you speak out too loudly. It certainly concerns me personally. Even though I don’t believe it’s possible to change the course of events, I say what I do because it’s right, not because it’s smart.

    That said, you should plan on the US government becoming much more virulent in the future. Washington, not Mexican cartels, is the real danger.

    That’s absolutely the case for the next two years, while genuine Jacobins control the government. But perhaps beyond that. There’s no telling who’s going to be elected or what they’re going to do. Since we’re likely going to be in the middle of a huge financial, economic, political, social, and military crisis, anything is possible. Little of it is good.

    The trend in motion is probably going to stay in motion.

    *  *  *

    It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West. That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released this free report, which shows you exactly what’s happening and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 19:40

  • Quiet US Seizure Of Iranian Crude Prompted Iran's Capture Of Houston-Destined Tanker
    Quiet US Seizure Of Iranian Crude Prompted Iran’s Capture Of Houston-Destined Tanker

    When on Thursday the US Navy announced that Iranian commandos had seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, conveniently absent from the narrative was the fact that just days prior the United States seized a ship laden with Iranian crude, identified as the Suez Rajan which was destined for China.

    “US authorities ordered a tanker of Iranian crude oil to redirect towards the US in recent days, in a move officials believe was the trigger for Iran’s decision to capture a US-bound tanker on Thursday,” the FT reports. “Three people briefed on the situation said the US had intervened to summon a ship loaded with Iranian crude, originally destined for China, as Washington looks to step up enforcement of sanctions on Tehran.”

    The Suez Rajan, file image

    The Thursday seizure of the Advantage Sweet Suezmax crude tanker by the Iranians, which had been chartered by Chevron to move product from Kuwait to Houston, had resulted in swift condemnation by the Biden administration, with the US calling on Iran’s government to immediately release the oil tanker.

    While the Advantage Sweet incident grabbed international headlines, Washington’s action against the Suez Rajan (a Greek tanker carrying Iranian product) was not widely publicized or even known about.

    But US officials are now making the following belated admission: 

    The previously unreported US action towards the Suez Rajan shines a new light on Iran’s decision to capture the Advantage Sweet, a US-bound tanker of Kuwaiti crude that was chartered by Chevron.

    A US official said Thursday’s “seizure appears to be in retaliation for a prior US seizure of Iranian oil, which Iran recently attempted to get back but failed”.

    The ship with Iranian crude had been destined for China, and reportedly the Iranians had tried to pursue it when it was diverted toward the US after a court order from the DOJ. One of the companies involved with the vessel had helped with the US apprehension.

    In recent years the US has seized a number of tankers with Iranian oil for alleged sanctions-busting activities, including recent interventions against vessels headed to highly sanctioned Syria.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 19:20

  • House Rejects Rep. Gaetz’s Bill To Withdraw US Troops From Somalia
    House Rejects Rep. Gaetz’s Bill To Withdraw US Troops From Somalia

    Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Rep.Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) delivers remarks in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2023. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    The House rejected legislation from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) that would require President Joe Biden to withdraw most U.S. troops from Somalia in an April 27 vote.

    Opponents of the legislation said it would hurt national security by making it harder to fight al-Shabaab, designated as a terrorist group by the United States over a decade ago.

    House lawmakers, including its sponsor, claim that 900 U.S. troops in Somalia on an uncertain mission will never bring peace. Despite his claims, the House rejected the legislation, H.Con.Res.30, in a vote of 102-321.

    Gaetz said during a floor discussion that to accept Biden’s decision last year to send soldiers back to Somalia, one would have to believe that 900 U.S. troops are what is going to save a country of 17 million from a hardened group of 7,000.

    “I think that strains not only logic but our understanding of the history of Somalia,” Gaetz said during the floor debate on the bill.

    “The future of Somalia must be determined by Somalia. And to the extent that foreign influences could be helpful, I would argue that the African Union is far better positioned to build a stronger sense of national identity and national unity among clans that have been warring in Somalia for generations than U.S. troops,” he added.

    Somali security officers drive past a section of Hotel Hayat, the scene of an al-Shabaab group terrorist attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Aug. 20, 2022. (Feisal Omar/Reuters)

    Coup Concerns

    In recent weeks, Gaetz has also claimed that U.S.-trained Somali soldiers had staged coups across Africa. Gaetz questioned U.S. Africa Command Gen. Michael Langley, USMC, why taxpayers should continue paying for this endeavor in March, citing claims that certain U.S.-trained soldiers had led many coups and coup attempts.

    “The American people have extremely low confidence in our military leaders and their ability to assess their own efficacy,” Gaetz said in March when he introduced his resolution.

    “How do they expect Americans to believe their justification for occupying Somalia when they can’t even determine who in their own training programs will lead a violent coup afterward?”

    Terror Group Aligned With al-Qaeda

    Violence in Somalia has continued to be an issue of concern, with al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab seeking to establish an Islamic state through force.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 19:00

  • US Sends "Shadowy Unit" Of Atomic Experts To Wire Ukraine With Nuke-Blast-Detecting Sensors
    US Sends “Shadowy Unit” Of Atomic Experts To Wire Ukraine With Nuke-Blast-Detecting Sensors

    The Biden administration is following through in a big way on its past denunciations of nuclear rhetoric and threats coming from Russian leadership of the past months and year. The Kremlin is likely to see it as an ultra-provocative and unnecessary step, revealed in fresh New York Times reporting on Friday…

    “The United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect‌‌ bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker,” the Times report says. The goal, according to the report, is for US officials to be made immediately aware of if a radioactive weapon detonates inside Ukraine, and to be able to identify Russian forces as the culprit.

    Ukrainian Emergency Ministry rescuers attended an exercise in the city of Zaporizhzhia last August, AFP/Getty Images

    NYT describes the measure as “the hardest evidence to date that Washington is taking concrete steps to prepare for the worst possible outcomes of the invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s second largest nation.”

    Interestingly, an elite team under an Energy Department organization which the Times calls “shadowy” has been tasked with deploying the sensors with the help of Ukrainian partners on the ground: 

    The Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST, a shadowy unit of atomic experts run by the security agency, is working with Ukraine to deploy the radiation sensors, train personnel, monitor data and warn of deadly radiation.

    In a statement sent to The New York Times in response to a reporter’s question, the agency said the network of atomic sensors was being deployed “throughout the region” and would have the ability “to characterize the size, location and effects of any nuclear explosion.” Additionally, it said the deployed sensors would deny Russia “any opportunity to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine without attribution.”

    Further this would ensure that alternative or less conventional nuclear ‘dirty bomb’ deployment methods such as delivery by truck or boat could conceivably be more traceable (in addition to the more obvious: a mushroom cloud).

    Russia last year on multiple occasions alleged the Ukrainians could be planning a small nuclear dirty bomb false flag attack, in order to draw in NATO forces directly into a ground war in Ukraine.

    US officials and the Times report addresses this in saying “For instance, Moscow could falsely claim that Kyiv set off a nuclear blast on the battlefield to try to draw the West into deeper war assistance.” With the sensors in place, officials say, “in theory… Washington would be able to point to its own nuclear attribution analyses to reveal that Moscow was in fact the attacker.”

    So now it seems the US is prepping for the eventually of a false-flag blame game, disturbingly enough. Already last year iodine pills had been widely distributed in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. 

    Nuclear Emergency Support Team has meanwhile said in a statement that–

    “If a nuclear emergency were to occur in Ukraine, whether a radiation release from a nuclear reactor or a nuclear weapon detonation, scientific analyses would be rapidly provided to U.S. government authorities and decision-making centers in Ukraine and the region to make actionable, technically informed decisions to protect public health and safety.”

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    But it remains that Moscow says its nuclear doctrine hasn’t changed. This includes the nuclear option in instances where the nation’s survival is deemed under existential threat. The Kremlin has further repeatedly denounce what it calls Western media and officials’ twisting Putin’s words anytime he speaks on the matter of nuclear weapons.

    Russian leadership has also asserted it doesn’t intend to use tactical or strategic nukes in Ukraine; however, Putin’s recently announcing “plans” to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus has certainly rattled the West. He described it along with sending nuclear-capable bomber aircraft as a necessary decision in response to the UK giving Ukraine armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 18:40

  • Nationwide Support For Assault Weapons Ban Slides, New Poll Finds 
    Nationwide Support For Assault Weapons Ban Slides, New Poll Finds 

    Authored by Stephen Gutowski via The Reload (emphasis ours),

    Americans are less interested than ever in imposing an “assault weapons” ban.

    Those are the results of a Monmouth University poll released on Monday. That poll found 49 percent of Americans opposed a ban on the sale of assault weapons while 46 percent supported one, and six percent were unsure. That marks a nine-point decline in support and a seven-point increase in opposition since Monmouth asked the same question in June 2022.

    “Despite continued incidents of mass shootings, public support for banning assault weapons has dipped,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a press release.

    The poll is just the latest to show a decline in support for the policy, which targets guns like the AR-15 and AK-47. It indicates Americans are growing increasingly skeptical of new broad-based restrictions on different kinds of guns, despite their presence in high-profile mass shootings. The deterioration of public opinion toward assault weapons bans may negatively affect the recent renaissance the policy has enjoyed in recent years and may be why several states where Democrats hold complete control, such as Colorado and New Mexico, failed to pass one this year.

    Monmouth’s poll comes a few months after an ABC News/Washington Post survey found a majority of Americans now oppose a ban on the sale of assault weapons, often defined as semi-automatic centerfire guns capable of accepting detachable magazines and featuring banned cosmetics like pistol grips or telescoping stocks. A Quinnipiac University poll from the same time frame found more Americans opposed a ban than supported one. The downward trend in support has persisted even after mass shootings that have captured public attention and House Democrats passing the first proposed federal ban in nearly 20 years.

    A poll from The Economist/YouGov has been one of the only consistent outliers from major polling firms on the issue. It shows support for a ban at over 60 percent. Although, that poll further confuses already-nebulous terminology by asking about a ban on “assault rifles,” which are traditionally defined as being capable of automatic fire–unlike common AR-15s.

    While gun-control advocates and President Joe Biden (D.) have continued to pursue a federal assault weapons ban as their top policy solution for mass shootings, the popularity of the guns they are seeking to remove from store shelves has skyrocketed. Late last month, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll found tens of millions of Americans own an AR-15.

    It isn’t the only estimate that puts the number of legally-owned ARs in the tens of millions.

    The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade group, estimated there were over 24.4 million AR-15s and similar rifles in circulation last year. Georgetown professor William English found in his 2021 National Firearms Survey that “30.2% of gun owners, about 24.6 million people, indicated that they have owned an AR-15 or similarly styled rifle.”

    Monmouth’s survey found political affiliation significantly impacted whether a respondent supported banning assault weapons. A majority of Democrats support such a ban, while a majority of Republicans and independents oppose it. Similarly, liberals support a ban, but conservatives and moderates do not.

    Breakdowns along age and racial lines were apparent too. The 55+ age group was the only one to feature majority support for a ban. White Americans were more likely to oppose a ban than support one, while a bare majority of non-White Americans support a ban.

    Support for other gun-control policies fared better in the Monmouth poll, though slight declines were present. 81 percent of adults said they support universal background checks, down two points from 2022 and accompanied by the caveat that only 28 percent believe it should be accomplished through an executive order. Support for a federal “Red Flag” law came in at 72 percent, down three points. The split on requiring permits for those who want to conceal a gun in public remained steady, with 56 percent supporting them and 41 percent opposed.

    Monmouth conducted the poll of a random sample of 805 adults between March 16th and 20th.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 18:20

  • Russia Mounts First Large-Scale Air Raids On Ukraine In Nearly 2 Months
    Russia Mounts First Large-Scale Air Raids On Ukraine In Nearly 2 Months

    Russia launched Friday attacks on the central Ukrainian cities of Dnipro Uman – and other locations, marking the first large-scale missile and aerial raids in almost two months, and resulting in a mounting civilian death toll. 

    Ukraine’s defense ministry had previously warned the population it believed that major aerial strikes were imminent. The strikes occurred in the early night hours of Friday, with Ukrainian rescue operations ensuing throughout the day.

    Image via The Guardian

    Some large residential buildings were reportedly struck in the missile barrage, with Ukrainian rescue and health authorities telling international press that 26 people, including five children, were killed.

    The attack included over 20 cruise missiles and as well as some ‘suicide drones’ at a moment Ukraine is preparing for a spring counteroffensive: 

    Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reporting from Kyiv said that the attack, according to the Ukrainian government, was executed by one of “23 cruise missiles and so-called kamikaze drones that Russia fired in the early hours of Friday morning. Some were reportedly launched from as far away as the Caspian Sea,” he said.

    The attacks show “Russia’s ability to strike targets across this country whenever and wherever it pleases”, he said.

    A Russian Defense Ministry statement also said it utilized strategic bombers to target Ukrainian army reserve unites, with an aim toward preventing additional troops from reaching the frontlines.

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    Russia is also denying that it targeted civilians. “Overnight, the Russian Air Force carried out a collective rocket strike using long-range high-precision weapons targeting temporary deployment sites of Ukrainian army reserve units,” Russian MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters later in the day.

    “The target of the strike was achieved. All designated facilities were struck. The advance of the enemy’s reserves into combat zones was thwarted,” Konashenkov said.

    Ukraine’s military meanwhile claimed its anti-air defenses had intercepted many of the inbound missiles. Given the reported rising high death toll, Kiev is likely to press its Western backers even harder at this point for more advanced anti-air systems.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 18:00

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Apr 28

Today’s News 28th April 2023

  • German Domestic Spy Agency Labels AfD Youth Org As "Extreme Right", Enabling Mass Surveillance Of All Members
    German Domestic Spy Agency Labels AfD Youth Org As “Extreme Right”, Enabling Mass Surveillance Of All Members

    Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

    Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which serves as the country’s domestic intelligence service, has classified the AfD party youth wing, Junge Alternative (JA), as a “certain right-wing extremist endeavor.”

    The new designation not only creates the conditions for increased monitoring and enforcement action against JA, it also comes as a political hit to the parent AfD party at a time when it has seen a surge in popularity.

    The BfV had already listed the AfD youth group as a “suspected case” in 2019, and the agency is now allowed to use all intelligence tools to monitor the JA after its new designation. In addition to the use of so-called confidential informants, this will include telephone tapping and covert observation, according to German newspaper Die Welt.

    The BfV justified its step, among other things, with the concept of how the organization allegedly views the German people. The BfV argues that JA’s view is not compatible with the country’s constitution, also known as the Basic Law.

    “The JA’s understanding of the people, which is clearly evident in its statements and pronouncements, contradicts the understanding of the people expressed in the Basic Law and is capable of excluding members of supposedly other ethnic groups and devaluing German citizens with a migration background as second-class Germans,” the agency wrote in a press release on Wednesday.

    Agitation against migrants is a consistent theme of the Junge Alternative, the BfV stated.

    “In particular, immigrants with a (supposed) Muslim background are attributed negative characteristics in a sweeping manner, such as cultural backwardness and a disproportionately strong tendency to crime and violence, simply because of their origin and religion,” the BfV wrote in a statement.

    It is unclear what specific comments the BfV is referring to, but it has long been reported, including in mainstream media outlets, that foreigners, particularly from Middle Eastern and African countries, feature extremely high crime rates, especially for serious crimes like murder, assault, robbery, and rape. Furthermore, German officials themselves have pointed to foreigners from these countries as being responsible for the dramatic increase in child marriage and female genital mutilation. In other areas, like anti-Semitism, the predominant groups involved all hail from the Middle East.

    The BfV also claims that the AfD has repeatedly expressed itself in an anti-democratic manner. The agency claims members of the JA denigrate “political opponents, but also the state and its representatives per se.” This allegedly indicates that the Young Alternative is not concerned with democratic discourse, “but with a general disparagement of the democratic system of the Federal Republic of Germany.”

    According to the government’s own data, the AfD is the most attacked party in Germany. Its members have been subject to numerous arson attacks, and much of the political establishment — both the left and the center-right — have called for the party’s complete ban. The party has also been effectively banned from the country’s political talk shows on the ARD and ZDF channels, which are required to air a plurality of views reflecting the German public, due to their status as publically funded.

    The federal executive committee of the Junge Alternative downplayed the BfV’s announcement.

    “The classification of the so-called constitutional protection does not surprise us,” the board of the party youth branch announced.

    The statement outlined that the country’s secret services are simply fulfilling their mission of suppressing the country’s opposition.

    “Regardless of whether they are critics of migration, critics of coronavirus measures or advocates of peace — every form of authentic opposition in this country is systematically stigmatized by this authority,” the board of the JA warned. Now, the JA is reviewing its legal options in light of the designation.

    AfD leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel also released a joint statement, writing: “We currently have neither a justification nor relevant documents that make the step comprehensible.”

    The AfD is facing various legal disputes that could end up with the party being slapped by the BfV with a similar “right-wing extremist” designation. The party suspects that the BfV made the move against the JA to strengthen its case against the AfD. If the AfD receives such a designation, it could pave the way for a complete ban of the party in Germany.

    There is also the suspicion that the BfV is using the new classification of the JA to influence legal disputes with the AfD.

    In January, the AfD appealed to the Higher Administrative Court in Münster to overturn the BfV’s classification of the party, its youth organization and the dissolved party branch “Der Flügel” as suspected right-wing extremists.

    Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), known for writing for Antifa Magazine and her claims that the right poses the biggest threat to Germany, praised BfV for classifying the party as a right-wing extremist group.

    “We are a strong and resilient democracy. We are very resolute in defending ourselves against racism and other forms of inhumanity,” she said on Wednesday. “We are doing everything we can to dry up the breeding ground for right-wing extremist violence.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 04/28/2023 – 02:00

  • The War On Free Speech Is Really A War On The Right To Criticize The Government
    The War On Free Speech Is Really A War On The Right To Criticize The Government

    Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.”

    – Justice William O. Douglas

    Absolutely, there is a war on free speech.

    To be more accurate, however, the war on free speech is really a war on the right to criticize the government.

    Although the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom, every day in this country, those who dare to speak their truth to the powers-that-be find themselves censored, silenced or fired.

    Indeed, those who run the government don’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power.

    In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

    This is nothing new, nor is it unique to any particular presidential administration.

    For instance, as part of its campaign to eradicate so-called “disinformation,” the Biden Administration likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists. This government salvo against consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information” widens the net to potentially include anyone who is exposed to ideas that run counter to the official government narrative.

    In his first few years in office, President Trump declared the media to be “the enemy of the people,” suggested that protesting should be illegal, and that NFL players who kneel in protest during the national anthem “shouldn’t be in the country.”

    Then again, Trump was not alone in his presidential disregard for the rights of the citizenry, especially as it pertains to the right of the people to criticize those in power.

    President Obama signed into law anti-protest legislation that makes it easier for the government to criminalize protest activities (10 years in prison for protesting anywhere in the vicinity of a Secret Service agent). The Obama Administration also waged a war on whistleblowers, which The Washington Post described as “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration,” and “spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records.”

    Part of the Patriot Act signed into law by President George W. Bush made it a crime for an American citizen to engage in peaceful, lawful activity on behalf of any group designated by the government as a terrorist organization. Under this provision, even filing an amicus brief on behalf of an organization the government has labeled as terrorist would constitute breaking the law.

    President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the FBI to censor all news and control communications in and out of the country in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt also signed into law the Smith Act, which made it a crime to advocate by way of speech for the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence.

    President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to criticize the government’s war efforts.

    President Abraham Lincoln seized telegraph lines, censored mail and newspaper dispatches, and shut down members of the press who criticized his administration.

    In 1798, during the presidency of John Adams, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to “write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous, and malicious” statements against the government, Congress or president of the United States.

    Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now.

    Good, bad or ugly, it’s all free speech unless as defined by the government it falls into one of the following categories: obscenity, fighting words, defamation (including libel and slander), child pornography, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats, and solicitations to commit crimes.

    This idea of “dangerous” speech, on the other hand, is peculiarly authoritarian in nature. What it amounts to is speech that the government fears could challenge its chokehold on power.

    The kinds of speech the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation, prosecution and outright elimination include: hate speech, bullying speech, intolerant speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, incendiary speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, right-wing speech, left-wing speech, extremist speech, politically incorrect speech, etc.

    Conduct your own experiment into the government’s tolerance of speech that challenges its authority, and see for yourself.

    Stand on a street corner—or in a courtroom, at a city council meeting or on a university campus—and recite some of the rhetoric used by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams and Thomas Paine without referencing them as the authors.

    For that matter, just try reciting the Declaration of Independence, which rejects tyranny, establishes Americans as sovereign beings, recognizes God (not the government) as the Supreme power, portrays the government as evil, and provides a detailed laundry list of abuses that are as relevant today as they were 240-plus years ago.

    My guess is that you won’t last long before you get thrown out, shut up, threatened with arrest or at the very least accused of being a radical, a troublemaker, a sovereign citizen, a conspiratorialist or an extremist.

    Try suggesting, as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin did, that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to shed blood in order to protect their liberties, and you might find yourself placed on a terrorist watch list and vulnerable to being rounded up by government agents.

    “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” declared Jefferson.

    He also concluded that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

    Observed Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”

    Better yet, try suggesting as Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, John Adams and Patrick Henry did that Americans should, if necessary, defend themselves against the government if it violates their rights, and you will be labeled a domestic extremist.

    “It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” insisted Paine.

    “When the government violates the people’s rights,” Lafayette warned, “insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

    Adams cautioned, “A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution, to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.”

    And who could forget Patrick Henry with his ultimatum: “Give me liberty or give me death!”

    Then again, perhaps you don’t need to test the limits of free speech for yourself.

    One such test is playing out before our very eyes on the national stage led by those who seem to believe that only individuals who agree with the government are entitled to the protections of the First Amendment.

    To the contrary, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was very clear about the fact that the First Amendment was established to protect the minority against the majority.

    I’ll take that one step further: the First Amendment was intended to protect the citizenry from the government’s tendency to censor, silence and control what people say and think.

    Having lost our tolerance for free speech in its most provocative, irritating and offensive forms, the American people have become easy prey for a police state where only government speech is allowed.

    You see, the powers-that-be understand that if the government can control speech, it controls thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

    This is how freedom rises or falls.

    Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.

    We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of all individuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.

    Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.

    What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

    Tolerance for dissent is vital if we are to survive as a free nation.

    While there are all kinds of labels being put on so-called “unacceptable” speech today, the real message being conveyed by those in power is that Americans don’t have a right to express themselves if what they are saying is unpopular, controversial or at odds with what the government determines to be acceptable.

    By suppressing free speech, the government is contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”

    Mind you, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law is labeled an “extremist,” is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, must be watched all the time, and is rounded up when the government deems it necessary.

    It doesn’t matter how much money you make, what politics you subscribe to, or what God you worship: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are all potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 23:40

  • Mysterious Listeria Outbreak Spreads To 15 States
    Mysterious Listeria Outbreak Spreads To 15 States

    Federal health officials are investigating a “Listeria outbreak with unknown source” across 15 states.

    “A specific food item has not yet been identified as the source of this outbreak. However, CDC is concerned that illnesses continue to be reported. Listeria illness is rare, but it can result in serious illness or death,” a recent notice via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) read. 

    The overall count of infections might be higher than what is currently being reported. According to CDC data, there have been 18 cases of infection, leading to 17 hospitalizations in 15 different states. So far, no fatalities have been reported.

    Michigan and Wisconsin are the only states to have recorded two illnesses. Illinois, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Washington have each reported one. 

    The CDC has constructed an outbreak map. 

    “Public health officials are interviewing people in this outbreak to find out what foods they ate before getting sick,” the CDC said, adding the infection is “especially harmful if you are pregnant, aged 65 or older, or have a weakened immune system.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 23:20

  • Escobar: Mr. Lavrov's New York Shuffle
    Escobar: Mr. Lavrov’s New York Shuffle

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s New York moment performed the diplomatic equivalent of bringing the house down…

    Now picture a true gentleman, the foremost diplomat of these troubled times, in total command of the facts and endowed with a delightful sense of humor, taking a perilous walk on the wild side, to quote iconic Lou Reed, and emerging unscathed.

    In fact, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s New York moment – as in his two interventions before the UN Security Council on April 24 and 25 – performed the diplomatic equivalent of bringing the house down. At least the sections of the house inhabited by the Global South – or Global Majority.

    April 24, during the 9308th meeting of the UNSC under the agenda “Maintenance of international peace and security, effective multilateralism through the protection of the principles of the UN Charter”, was particularly relevant.

    Lavrov stressed the symbolism of the meeting happening on the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace, deemed quite significant by a 2018 UN General Assembly resolution.

    In his preamble, Lavrov noted how “in two weeks, we will celebrate the 78th anniversary of Victory in World War II. The defeat of Nazi Germany, to which my country made a decisive contribution with the support of the Allies, laid the foundation for the post-war international order. The UN Charter has become its legal basis, and our organization itself, embodying true multilateralism, has acquired a central, coordinating role in world politics.”

    Well, not really. And that brings us to Lavrov’s true walk on the wild side, pinpointing how multilateralism has been trampled. Way beyond torrents of denigration by the usual suspects, and their attempt to submit him to an ice cold shower in New York, or even confine him to the – geopolitical – freezer, he prevailed. Let’s take a walk with him across the current wasteland. Mr. Lavrov, you’re the star of the show.

    Our way or the highway

    That “rules-based order”:

    “The UN-centric system is going through a deep crisis. The root cause was the desire of some members of our organization to replace international law and the UN Charter with a kind of ‘rules-based order.’ No one saw these ‘rules’, they were not the subject of transparent international negotiations. They are invented and used to counteract the natural processes of the formation of new independent centers of development, which are an objective manifestation of multilateralism. They are trying to contain them with illegitimate unilateral measures, including cutting off access to modern technologies and financial services, ousting them from supply chains, confiscating property, destroying competitors’ critical infrastructure, and manipulating universally agreed norms and procedures. As a result, the fragmentation of world trade, the collapse of market mechanisms, the paralysis of the WTO and the final, already without disguise, transformation of the IMF into a tool for achieving the goals of the United States and its allies, including military goals.”

    Destroying globalization:

    “In a desperate attempt to assert its dominance by punishing the disobedient, the United States went on to destroy globalization, which for many years was extolled as the highest good of all mankind, serving the multilateral system of the world economy. Washington and the rest of the West, which has submitted to it, use their ‘rules’ whenever it is necessary to justify illegitimate steps against those who build their policies in accordance with international law and refuse to follow the selfish interests of the ‘golden billion’. Dissenters are blacklisted according to the principle: ‘Whoever is not with us is against us.’ It has long been ‘inconvenient’ for our Western colleagues to negotiate in universal formats, such as the UN. For the ideological justification of the policy of undermining multilateralism, the theme of the unity of ‘democracies’ as opposed to ‘autocracies’ has been introduced. In addition to the ‘summits for democracy’, whose composition is determined by the self-proclaimed Hegemon, other ‘clubs of the elite’ are being created, bypassing the UN.”

    “Garden” vs. “Jungle:

    “Let’s call a spade a spade: no one allowed the Western minority to speak on behalf of all mankind. It is necessary to behave decently and respect all members of the international community. By imposing a ‘rules-based order’, its authors arrogantly reject a key principle of the UN Charter – the sovereign equality of states. The quintessence of the ‘exclusivity complex’ was the ‘proud’ statement by the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, that ‘Europe is the Garden of Eden, and the rest of the world is a jungle.’ I will also quote the NATO-EU Joint Statement of January 10 of this year, which states: the ‘United West’ will use all the economic, financial, political and – I pay special attention – military tools available to NATO and the EU to ensure the interests of ‘our one billion’.

    NATO’s “line of defense”:

    “At last year’s summit in Madrid, NATO, which has always convinced everyone of its ‘peacefulness’ and the exclusively defensive nature of its military programs, declared ‘global responsibility’, the ‘indivisibility of security’ in the Euro-Atlantic region and in the so-called Indo-Pacific region. That is, now the ‘line of defense’ of NATO (as a defensive Alliance) is shifting to the western shores of the Pacific Ocean. Bloc approaches that undermine ASEAN-centric multilateralism are manifested in the creation of the AUKUS military alliance, into which Tokyo, Seoul and a number of ASEAN countries are being pushed. Under the auspices of the United States, mechanisms are being created to intervene in maritime security issues with an eye to ensuring the unilateral interests of the West in the South China Sea. Josep Borrell, whom I have already quoted today, promised yesterday to send EU naval forces to the region. It is not hidden that the goal of the ‘Indo-Pacific strategies’ is to contain the PRC and isolate Russia. This is how our Western colleagues understand ‘effective multilateralism’ in the Asia-Pacific region.”

    “Promoting democracy”:

    “Since World War II, there have been dozens of criminal military adventures by Washington – without any attempt to gain multilateral legitimacy. Why, if there are ‘rules’ unknown to anyone? The shameful invasion of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition in 2003 was carried out in violation of the UN Charter, as was the aggression against Libya in 2011. A gross violation of the UN Charter was U.S. interference in the affairs of post-Soviet states. ‘Color revolutions’ were organized in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, a bloody coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014, and attempts to seize power by force in Belarus in 2020. The Anglo-Saxons, who confidently led the entire West, not only justify all these criminal adventures, but also flaunt their line of ‘promoting democracy.’ But again, according to its ‘rules’: Kosovo – to recognize independence without any referendum; Crimea – not to recognize (although there was a referendum); Do not touch the Falklands/Malvinas, because there was a referendum there (as British Foreign Secretary John Cleverly said recently). That’s funny.”

    The geopolitics of the “Ukrainian issue”:

    “Today, everyone understands, although not everyone talks about it out loud: this is not about Ukraine at all, but about how international relations will be built further: through the formation of a stable consensus based on a balance of interests – or through the aggressive and explosive promotion of hegemony. It is impossible to consider the ‘Ukrainian issue’ in isolation from the geopolitical context. Multilateralism presupposes respect for the UN Charter in all the interconnectedness of its principles, as mentioned above. Russia has clearly explained the tasks that it pursues as part of a special military operation: to eliminate the threats to our security created by NATO members directly on our borders and to protect people who have been deprived of their rights proclaimed by multilateral conventions, to protect them from the direct threats of extermination and expulsion from the territories where their ancestors lived for centuries publicly declared by the Kyiv regime. We honestly said what and for whom we are fighting.”

    The Global South fights back:

    “True multilateralism at the present stage requires the UN to adapt to the objective trends in the formation of a multipolar architecture of international relations. The reform of the Security Council must be accelerated by increasing the representation of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The West’s current outrageous overrepresentation in this main UN organ undermines multilateralism. At the initiative of Venezuela, the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter was created. We call on all States that respect the Charter to join it. It is also important to use the constructive potential of BRICS and the SCO. The EAEU, the CIS, and the CSTO are ready to contribute. We are in favor of using the initiative of the positions of regional associations of the countries of the Global South. The Group of Twenty can also play a useful role in maintaining multilateralism if Western participants stop distracting their colleagues from topical issues on its agenda in the hope of muffling the topic of their responsibility for the accumulation of crisis phenomena in the world economy.”

    So who’s breaking the law?

    After this concise tour de force, it would be immensely enlightening to track what Lavrov has been telling the world since February 2022, in consistent, excruciating detail: the serial international law breakers, in contemporary history, have been the Hegemon and its sorry gaggle of vassals. Not Russia.

    So Moscow was completely within its rights to launch the SMO – as it had no alternative. And that operation will be brought to its logical conclusion – inbuilt in the new Russian Foreign Policy Concept published on March 31st. Whatever may be unleashed by the Collective West will be simply ignored by Russia, as it regards the entire combo to be acting outside the norms of international law laid down in the UN Charter.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 23:00

  • "Vice News Tonight" Canceled As Media Downturn Accelerates
    “Vice News Tonight” Canceled As Media Downturn Accelerates

    The downfall of Vice Media Group (VMG) is a perfect example of the challenges media organizations face that shift focuses towards ultra-left-wing ideologies. Despite being worth billions of dollars just several years ago, the company has followed a similar fate as Buzzfeed, now undergoing broad restructuring.

    In 2017, Vice Media secured a funding round at $5.7 billion. One of its founders joked about “hockey stick” growth and a “sexy” IPO debut. But that never happened, and fast forward to today, top executives told employees in a memo that the popular TV program “Vice News Tonight” will be canceled, as well as a number of employees will be fired. 

    “In response to the current market conditions and business realities facing VMG and the broader news and media industry, we are moving forward on some painful but necessary reductions, primarily across our News business,” co-CEOs Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala told employees. They didn’t specify how many job cuts. 

    Dixon and Lokhandwala emphasized, “We are NOT exiting the news business, but we are changing the shape of VICE News to position the whole Company for long-term opportunities and improve how we deliver important, ground-breaking journalism well into the future.” 

    A person familiar with the upcoming layoffs told CNN that the digital media company plans “dozens” of cuts to reduce operational costs. 

    VMG joins a slew of other media companies that have had no other option but to restructure in recent months due to mounting macroeconomic headwinds and a weak advertising market. Also, many of these firms went ‘woke’ and are quickly going broke. 

    Last week, BuzzFeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti told employees about restructuring plans that called for a reduction of headcount and the cancellation of BuzzFeed News. 

    VMG and BuzzFeed are some of the best examples of how to destroy billions of dollars in valuations through woke and rubbish content. 

    But it’s not just VMG and BuzzFeed hemorrhaging workers. HuffPost’s senior editor Philip Lewis highlighted a list of other media organizations undergoing restructuring efforts. 

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

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    Read VMG’s Dixon and Lokhandwala’s memo in full below:

    Team, 

    In response to the current market conditions and business realities facing VMG and the broader news and media industry, we are moving forward on some painful but necessary reductions, primarily across our News business. We are transforming VICE News to better withstand market realities and more closely align with how and where we see our audiences engaging with our content most. To be incredibly clear, VICE News is core to VICE Media Group and fundamental to our business. We are NOT exiting the news business, but we are changing the shape of VICE News to position the whole company for long-term opportunities and improve how we deliver important, ground-breaking journalism well into the future.

    As part of this process, we’ve decided to streamline VICE News and make reductions in roles across our global News team to focus on our growing digital video business and our News documentary and series production business for VTV and distribution partners worldwide. We’re also discontinuing VICE News Tonight on VICE TV (the last VNT broadcast will be in May). It’s clear that we need to accelerate VICE News’ transition to the platforms where its biggest audiences are — on our owned and operated channels where we have a direct relationship with our audience, on Paramount+ with Showtime, FAST Channels, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and via documentary programming for streaming platforms such as Netflix, HBO Max and Tubi. We believe this strategic focus strongly positions VICE’s incredibly important news coverage for the future.

    Going forward, VICE News will be produced by our News Productions and Publishing divisions jointly under Subrata De, EVP, News, and Global Head of Programming and Development, and Cory Haik, COO for News and Entertainment — two of the most talented media executives in our industry. Our longform documentary and premium series work will be produced out of our News Productions division under Subrata, who will continue to oversee global news production for all linear and streaming platforms, including VICE TV. Our daily global VICE News journalism will be produced out of our Publishing division, under Cory, with VICE News and Motherboard now organized alongside our other digital brands: VICE, Refinery29, Unbothered and i-D, delivering our digital content across platforms and our VMG network. We will also be unifying all of our news content under VICE News, which will now be our single overarching global News brand. The teams will continue to work closely together, in a coordinated and collaborative manner focused on the shared vision for VICE News’ important role in global news coverage. 

    Our global Human Resources team will begin notifying employees whose jobs are directly impacted by these changes. If you have questions, you should reach out to your manager and HRBP. 

    We hope you understand that these changes were not made lightly, and that it is extremely painful to see our colleagues leave. VICE News began as a small team committed to shining a light on news in corners of the world that were being ignored by the mainstream press. Our team is part of our family and an important part of what built the VICE News brand into what it is today, but as the media industry continues to rapidly evolve and our audience consumes content in new ways, this transformation is a necessary step to safeguard the journalism for which VICE has always excelled and the future of VMG. 

    Thank you, 

    Bruce & Hozefa

    *     *     * 

    Readers will appreciate this… 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 22:40

  • City Of Asheville Trapped In Crime Crisis, Prepares To Impose 60-Day 'Safety Initiative'
    City Of Asheville Trapped In Crime Crisis, Prepares To Impose 60-Day ‘Safety Initiative’

    The City of Asheville, situated in North Carolina, is facing severe challenges due to soaring crime and a dwindling police force in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd murder, which sparked the nationwide ‘defund the police’ movement. In response to the rampant lawlessness, city officials have declared an emergency plan, beginning next week and lasting for two months, to tackle the crime wave. 

    “There are complex circumstances contributing to the safety issues that Asheville is currently seeing downtown, and it will take a community response to address these complexities,” the city stated in a press release. 

    Next Monday, city officials are rolling out a 60-day initiative to address safety downtown:

    “Our efforts in downtown should in no way suggest that we aren’t focused on safety across the entire community. This intensive effort is driven by data that suggests a disturbing trend of increases in both property and violent crime in our downtown,” said Asheville Police Chief David Zack. 

    Here are some initiatives the city will implement to combat criminal activity on its streets:

    • Increased law enforcement presence by utilizing foot, bike, and vehicle patrols as well as enhanced security in downtown parks.

    • Launch of a Community Responder Pilot Program led by the Asheville Fire Department to support individuals in crisis and provide a more visible City public safety presence downtown. The pilot will be used to inform a longer-term Community Responder initiative past the 60 days.

    • Focused attention on the removal of litter, needles and biological waste and general Downtown cleanliness; as well as increased maintenance activities in downtown parks. 

    • Partner with any private or non-profit organization to identify key locations in downtown where there are public safety concerns and/or to schedule community clean-up efforts.

    • Enforcement of illegally parked cars with a specific focus on the areas in and around Pritchard Park.

    • Enhanced frequency of monitoring City-owned and operated public parking garages, including stairwells in these facilities.

    • Focused attention on quickly removing graffiti on public property and graffiti code enforcement on private property in the downtown area.

    • Concentrated effort to identify streetlight outages in the central business district and coordination of necessary streetlight replacements with Duke Energy.

    The announcement comes as local newspaper Mountain Xpress recently warned of a severe police shortage due to the polarizing defunding of the police movement during the pandemic. 

    On an ordinary day in Asheville, 16 to 18 police officers patrol the entire city, an area covering 46 square miles.

    That’s down from 30 cops on duty three years ago, when Asheville first started losing officers faster than it could replace them.

    The Asheville Police Department has been operating at a reduced capacity, now just 60%, for more than two years — and the Police Chief, David Zack, told Asheville Watchdog that it could be another decade before the force returns to pre-pandemic levels.

    Crime in Asheville

    Remember, Democrats ensured everyone that defunding the police movement would make communities safer, but in reality, it has unleashed nationwide crime waves. This is evident in Baltimore, Chicago, and numerous West Coast cities. 

    Looking forward, it’s important to hold Democrats responsible for their role in promoting failed social justice reforms that have led to more dangerous metro areas. The best way is to vote these folks out of office in the next election cycle. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 22:00

  • We're Done With 'Gradually'. We've Now Reached The 'Suddenly' Part…
    We’re Done With ‘Gradually’. We’ve Now Reached The ‘Suddenly’ Part…

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    By the summer of 1563, all of Britain had plunged into chaos over religion and the Reformation.

    King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic church back in the 1530s, sparking a near civil war within the kingdom. Protestants killed Catholics, Catholics killed protestants, and extreme social tensions lasted for decades.

    Universities were at the heart of this conflict; rather than focus on real subjects like science and mathematics, students and professors became radical social activists and turned their schools into ideological echo chambers. Sound familiar?

    One of the few students who actually wanted to learn was a Scottish teenager named John Napier; Napier had been enrolled at the University of St. Andrews at the time, but he quickly realized that he would never learn a damn thing in that environment. So he dropped out… and started traveling in search of a real education.

    No one quite knows exactly where he went or what he did. But when he returned to Scotland eight years later as a young man, Napier had become an intellectual giant.

    You might not have ever heard of him, but John Napier was truly one of the great minds of his era.

    And modern science owes a tremendous debt to his work… in particular his development of logarithms.

    If it’s been a few years since you studied math (or ‘maths’ for my British friends), logarithms are the inverse of exponential functions.

    Simple example: we know that 102 (or 10 squared) = 10 x 10 = 100. So, the number 10 raised to the power of 2 equals 100.

    The inverse of that is to say that the ‘base 10’ logarithm of 100 = 2. Or in mathematical terms, 100 log10 = 2

    Napier devised an entire system of logarithms. And this was actually a tremendous leap forward in mathematics, because logarithms made it so much easier for scientists and researchers to calculate solutions to complex problems.

    One of the many important applications to come out of Napier’s work is the concept of ‘logarithmic decay,’ which models many real world phenomena.

    The idea behind logarithmic decay is that something declines very, very slowly at first. But, over a long period of time, the rate of decline becomes faster… and faster… and faster.

    If you look at it on a graph, logarithmic decay basically looks like a horizontal line that almost imperceptibly arcs gently downwards. But eventually the arc downward becomes steeper and steeper until it’s practically a vertical line down.

    Logarithmic decay is like how Hemingway famously described going bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises– “Gradually, then suddenly.”

    In fact logarithmic decay is great way to describe social and financial decline.

    Even the rise and fall of superpowers are often logarithmic in scale. The Kingdom of France in the 1700s infamously fell gradually… then suddenly.

    We can see the same logarithmic decay in the West today, and specifically the United States.

    The deterioration of government finances has been gradual, then sudden. Social conflict, censorship, and the decline in basic civility has been gradual, then sudden. Even the loss of confidence in the US dollar has been gradual… and is poised to be sudden.

    Back in 2009 when I started Sovereign Man, I spoke a lot about ideas that were highly controversial at the time.

    I suggested that Social Security’s trust funds would run out of money. That the US government would eventually be buried by its gargantuan national debt. That the US dollar would eventually lose its international reserve dominance. That inflation and social conflict would rise.

    The main thesis, quite simply, was that the US was in decline. And whenever I spoke at events, I used to talk about logarithmic decay, saying:

    “As a civilization in decline, you never really know quite where you are on the curve. You could be way over here on the horizontal line, at the very beginning of the decline… or you could be standing on the precipice about to hit the vertical slide down.”

    Well, now we have a much better idea of where we are on that logarithmic decay curve. Because these ideas about the national debt, inflation, social security, social conflict, etc. are no longer theories. Nor are they even remotely controversial.

    Just last week, US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said in a speech that “America’s debt is a ticking time bomb”. Social Security’s looming insolvency is now openly discussed in Washington and regularly reported in the Wall Street Journal.

    We’ve all seen with our own eyes (and even experienced) inflation, social divisions, and censorship.

    And as for the dollar, we continue to see a multitude of cracks in its dominance. Most notably, Saudi Arabia is considering a plan to sell oil not just in US dollars, but also in Chinese yuan.

    Plus the international development bank of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) announced earlier this month that they will start moving away from the dollar.

    Is it any surprise? The US government is weeks away from defaulting on its national debt over the latest debt ceiling debacle.

    And yet the guy who shakes hands with thin air refuses to negotiate a single penny in spending cuts to help reduce trillions of dollars in future deficit spending.

    The whole world is watching in utter disbelief at the astonishing level of incompetence that has infected the highest levels of America’s once hallowed institutions, including news media, big business, and the government itself.

    America– and the West by extension– really are on the precipice of that logarithmic decay curve… the part where the horizontal line becomes a vertical line down.

    It has taken years… even decades to reach this point, gradually. We’re now at the “suddenly” part.

    Now, it’s important to note that the outcome is far from inevitable. Plenty of declining superpowers in the past have pulled themselves out of a tailspin, at least temporarily.

    Aurelian’s reforms helped re-establish Rome’s dominance in the late 200s after nearly a century of chaos. The declining Ottoman Empire recovered substantially during the Tanzimat period in the 1800s. King Charles III of Spain made many successful reforms to revive his crumbling empire in the 1700s.

    There are many historical precedents for recovery, so all is not lost. But at the moment there is little evidence to suggest any major change on the horizon.

    I’m not saying this to be alarmist. Quite the contrary, in fact. Because one of the key pillars of our thinking here at Sovereign Man is that, despite the ineptitude of our governments, we as individuals have the tools, power, and freedom to solve these problems for ourselves… and even prosper doing so.

    Simple example: Social Security’s trust funds will run out of money within a decade, and this will be a huge problem for literally tens of millions of people who depend on the progam.

    However there are numerous tools available to solve this problem; a more robust and powerful retirement structure like a self-directed, solo 401(k) plan, for example, allows you to set aside up to $73,500 per year for your retirement.

    Similarly, if you expect a government with deteriorating finances to raise taxes (which they almost always do), you can take completely legal steps to reduce what you owe.

    If you anticipate inflation continuing, you can arrange your investments to capitalize on the surge in real assets, like minerals, energy, and productive technology.

    You can also take steps to diversify geographically, even internationally, to reduce risks to your family’s freedom.

    These solutions barely scratch the surface of the plentiful options at your disposal. All it takes is a sensible understanding of the problem… plus the willingness to take action.

    And rational, informed action is always a better option than despair.

    *  *  *

    If you can see what is happening, and where this is all going, you understand why it is so important to have a Plan B. That’s why we published our 31-page, fully updated Perfect Plan B Guide, which you can download here.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 21:40

  • Hamptons Luxury-Home Prices Soar On "Very Strong" Demand, Limited Inventory
    Hamptons Luxury-Home Prices Soar On “Very Strong” Demand, Limited Inventory

    Despite the slowest growth in US home prices in ten years and significant price drops in numerous West Coast cities, luxury property values in New York’s Hamptons marched higher in the first quarter. 

    As per a Bloomberg report, citing appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate, luxury property transactions in the top 10% of the Hamptons housing market reached a median price of $8.54 million, an 11% increase compared to the previous year. The average price of the highest-end homes in the seaside playground for Wall Street’s billionaires jumped 33% to a record of $16.1 million. 

    Todd Bourgard, Elliman’s chief executive officer for Long Island, explained mansion demand is “very strong.” He added prices are soaring because of low inventory:

    “We have more buyers in that market right now than we do inventory. So when something comes on that is priced reasonably for the luxury market, we’re getting great interest.” 

    Limited inventory and strong buying pressure could suggest that prices are on an upward trajectory — unless macroeconomic headwinds continue to mount and a deep recession unfolds later this year. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Meanwhile, the combination of low inventory and rising prices sent luxury sales tumbling in the quarter to 18 from 40 in the same quarter a year ago. Overall, sales in the Hamptons plummeted by 57% to 171. This marked the second-lowest total since the firms started monitoring the area’s sales in 2005. 

    At the end of the quarter, there were only 894 homes on the market, still 33% higher than the first quarter of 2022 but significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels. 

    Some wealthy buyers seem unphased by high mortgage rates and threats of recession as low supply drives luxury home prices higher in one of the top vacation spots for wealthy New Yorkers. 

    Inventory is so scarce that even tiny homes in the beach community are selling for $3.75 million.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 21:20

  • Only One Question Remains As Susan Rice, Biden's Shadow President, Leaves The White House
    Only One Question Remains As Susan Rice, Biden’s Shadow President, Leaves The White House

    Authored by Sundance via The Last Refuge (emphasis ours),

    In the game of test-match cricket, a game that can last three days at peak professional level, you have to ‘get out‘ to ‘get in‘.   

    You have to ‘get out‘ of the clubhouse in order to ‘get in‘ to the game.  The same is true for this story about Domestic Policy Advisor, Susan Rice, leaving the Biden administration.   

    Rice has to get out of the administration in order to get in to the 2024 game.

    Readers here will likely remember all previous discussion about the likely Democrat field for 2024.  Susan Rice and Gavin Newsom are both key players in the DNC big club game.  There is only one question at the core of the dynamic you need to ask, how will they off-ramp Joe Biden?

    First, the White House announcement: […] “As the only person to serve as both National Security Advisor and Domestic Policy Advisor, Susan’s record of public service makes history. But what sets her apart as a leader and colleague is the seriousness with which she takes her role and the urgency and tenacity she brings, her bias towards action and results, and the integrity, humility and humor with which she does this work. I thank Susan for her service, her counsel and her friendship. I will miss her.” (link)

    Susan Rice is the pliable foot soldier, the protege’ of the Lightbringer, Chicago Jesus.  Rice is the female version of the entire apparatus of the Obama team.  Susan Rice is Barack Obama in female form, and as Ric Grenell said eloquently, Susan Rice is “the shadow president.”

    A Newsom/Rice or Rice/Newsom ticket is a no brainer.  Both are foot soldiers for the Lightbringer movement’s fundamental change agenda, although Rice is the apex player and Newsom is the ideological, intellectual and cognitive equivalent of John Fetterman with better style.  Most people still do not understand that Barack Obama is not just a person, he is a complete political construct -a movement in a box- consisting of multiple component groups all working in synergy.

    The focus of the Obama movement is domestic and ideological.  The “fundamental change“, as outlined previously by the front man for the group, is domestic – exclusively domestic.  The Lightbringer doesn’t care about foreign policy stuff; all of that angle is sold to the multinationals and highest bidders.

    Foreign policy is not a thing for Teh One true bringer of enlightenment; their focus is USA domestically centered. In her capacity as Domestic Policy Advisor, Susan Rice was the guiding hand behind every element of Biden domestic policy.

    The microphone from the Obama basement does not transmit into the earpiece of Biden; it communicates into the two-way radio of Rice.

    If Susan Rice is departing, the question becomes how the club removes Biden from the 2024 race?  There are a multitude of approaches and leverages available for the Lightbringer’s team, which includes Deputy AG Lisa Monaco at Main Justice.

    The criminal activity of Hunter Biden, and the potential for outcomes – or lack therein, can be leveraged.  The direct connection to the action of the principal, “the big guy” Joe Biden, could be leveraged.

    The Biden administration’s interference in any number of related investigations can be leveraged, and… keep in mind…. it is not coincidental the evidence of the interference is manifest by the same team that would remove the principal.  Yeah, think about that for a moment.

    Put aside the 2024 contest participants for a moment (ie. the shiny things), and instead focus on what peripheral risks exist to Joe Biden that could be deployed at any moment to push him to a graceful off ramp.

    There are many club-installed insurance policies, political landmines all around Joe Biden.  Which one will they show him?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 21:00

  • China Denounces US Nuclear Deployment To Korea As "An Excuse To Create Tension"
    China Denounces US Nuclear Deployment To Korea As “An Excuse To Create Tension”

    China has issued a blistering statement in response to the agreement between Washington and Seoul for the US to send a nuclear ballistic missile submarine to South Korea. Chinese Foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said it shows the US is undermining the nuclear non-proliferation system and damaging regional peace and stability. 

    “The United States has put regional security at risk and intentionally used the issue of the [Korean] peninsula as an excuse to create tension,” Foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said in Beijing.

    UK Navy file image

    “What the US does is full of Cold War thinking, provoking bloc confrontation, undermining the nuclear non-proliferation system, damaging the strategic interests of other countries, exacerbating tensions on the Korean peninsula, undermining regional peace and stability, and running counter to the goal of the denuclearization of the peninsula,” the Thursday statement said.

    She said it also highlighted Washington’s “selfish geopolitical interests” which puts the world at risk, given the new deployment of “US strategic assets”. 

    South Korean President Yoon’s visit to the White House on Wednesday culminated in the “Washington Declaration” agreement for deterring North Korea from carrying out an attack on the south, by erecting a “nuclear umbrella” that includes the Pentagon sending bombers and aircraft carriers, or nuclear submarines. 

    A nuclear-armed submarine has not docked in the Korean peninsula since the 1980s. President Biden on Wednesday attempted to introduce some nuance which is surely not going to provide any level of comfort for the Kim Jong-Un regime: 

    “We’re not going to be stationing nuclear weapons on the peninsula,” he said in a joint press conference with Yoon at the White House. “But we will have visits to ports, visits of nuclear submarines and things like that.”

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    Now the region is bracing for an expected fierce response from Pyongyang, likely in the form of more threatening ballistic missile tests. There’s also speculation that Kim will order a nuclear weapons test, which would mark a first since 2017.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 20:40

  • Biological Females Deserve A 'Bill Of Rights'
    Biological Females Deserve A ‘Bill Of Rights’

    Authored by May Mailman via RealClear Wire,

    As a woman who spent her formative years in Kansas, taught Kansas City sixth-graders, and mentored hundreds of young girls through the Chiefs Cheerleaders organization, I was (and still am) devastated when I saw Kansas Governor Laura Kelly veto the Women’s Bill of Rights.

    That bill defines a woman, biologically.

    And while yes, I’m concerned that without a definition, the next generation of Kansas women will be harmed–without a say in preserving women’s shelters, women’s sports, girl’s schools, women’s scholarships, sororities, and so on–there’s something deeper than that.

    The truth.

    Do we live in such politically correct times that we must eliminate truth? That we must pretend that women, who are biologically unique from men, do not exist?

    Kansans are better than that. We have fought for truth since our establishment. We joined the Union as a free state (because of the truth that slavery is evil) despite the ugly battles to ensue. And, as Governor Kelly mentioned in both of her inaugural addresses, Kansas has long recognized the truth that women are equal citizens and was one of the first states to give women the vote.

    The truth is women exist as biologically distinct from men. We all know this, and we know it is important. Even Transportion Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He wants to dedicate federal transportation money to create female-shaped crash dummies for car safety tests, a move applauded by Democrats. Why? Because women are, on average, shorter and lighter than men. Cars are engineered to protect male-shaped dummies, leaving females 73% more likely to be injured in a car crash. We have this data because government agencies, for now, use biological definitions of men and women. Those definitions are worth preserving — lives depend on it.

    While female-shaped dummies are hardly the women’s rights issue of our day (and a questionable use of federal dollars), the underlying reality is undeniable. Women are biologically unique from men. We are in general smaller and lighter. Only we get pregnant and breastfeed. These biological truths leave us vulnerable and in need of respect and protection.

    We are vulnerable to domestic abuse: more than three women are killed by their husbands or boyfriends every day. We are not always able to participate in the full range of jobs, due to physical lack of strength or the need to protect our babies in the womb. And try as we might, even our Olympic record holders are outpaced by thousands of high-school boys every year.

    I recognize that Kansans face another moral calling: we are kind. The media has defamed the Women’s Bill of Rights as “anti-trans,” leaving some Kansans wondering whether supporting the bill is kind.

    Let’s be clear: it absolutely is.

    All Kansans are deserving of love and protection. By defining “woman,” the public can make informed and sometimes sensitive decisions about how best to accommodate trans-identifying individuals, while preserving safety, fairness, and privacy for women and girls. Failure to transparently define “women” leaves these high-stakes decisions in the hands of unelected judges and bureaucrats—whose interests often diverge from those of Kansas families.

    Despite the governor’s failure, the Kansas Legislature can still do the right thing. They can override Gov. Kelly’s veto this week. They can stand up for truth.

    The very First Amendment to our Constitution protects speech. Why? Because truth is vital to our nation. Today we face a basic question. Do women exist as distinct from men? We do. By recognizing that truth, we can protect and celebrate our mothers, wives, grandmothers, daughters, and granddaughters.

    Please, Kansas Legislature, do not erase us.

    May Mailman is a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Law Center. A former presidential legal advisor and litigator, Mailman also taught 6th grade in Kansas City through Teach for America and served as Student Body Vice President at the University of Kansas.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 20:20

  • US Expands Sanctions On Russia's FSB For "Holding Americans Hostage"
    US Expands Sanctions On Russia’s FSB For “Holding Americans Hostage”

    The Biden administration has taken initial action in response to Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been in custody since his arrest March 29 in the city of Yekaterinburg on espionage charges. The end of this week marks one month since he’s been imprisoned.

    New sanctions have been imposed on Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for taking Americans “hostage”, with a senior admin official telling Axios, “We do think it’s significant that the first round of sanctions are being announced specifically for this type of behavior, because we’re really concerned about this type of behavior.”

    Via Reuters

    The sanctions are intended to deter and punish those who hold Americans hostage, officials said. Gershkovich as well as Paul Whelan have been declared “unlawfully detained”. 

    However, the FSB is already under sanctions, thus these new measures are likely more targeted or an expansion after the initial wave. 

    Simultaneously on Thursday more sanctions were also unveiled for the intelligence arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and additionally four IRGC leaders, for their roles in the arrest and imprisonment of Americans. 

    The US is “showing that one cannot engage in this sort of awful behavior of using human beings as pawns, as bargaining chips, without paying consequences,” according to another a senior US official.

    A Moscow court this month denied a request that Gershkovich be placed under pre-trial house arrest…

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

    It appears the US and UK coordinated dual action against Russian officials, with British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announcing sanctions the same day against five Russian officials, saying they have “utter contempt for basic human rights.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 20:00

  • Biden Challengers Issue Warning To Democrats If Biden Becomes Nominee
    Biden Challengers Issue Warning To Democrats If Biden Becomes Nominee

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Two Democrat 2024 candidates issued warnings on Tuesday that President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection launch won’t energize younger voters and has strayed from traditional Democrat values.

    Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson prepares for a television interview after the Democratic Presidential Debate at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Mich., on July 30, 2019. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    “I think that video was very out of touch, and that’s what people are feeling,” self-help author Marianne Williamson, a Democratic candidate, told The Hill on Tuesday.

    “I think an entire younger generation would stay home in droves in response to what that video is advancing as the administration’s pitch to the American people.”

    Her remarks came after Biden announced that he will run for reelection, releasing a pre-recorded video that criticized former Republicans. Biden’s video and statement did not specifically name any of his GOP rivals, but he used images of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach and posted images of former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

    “Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms. I believe this is ours. That’s why I’m running for reelection as President of the United States. Join us. Let’s finish the job,” Biden, 80, wrote on social media. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is joining Biden, is also featured prominently in the clip.

    “For those of us committed to Democrats winning the White House in 2024, the president’s campaign announcement today was concerning,” Williamson, considered a long-shot candidate, wrote Tuesday. “His remark that he has fought so that everyone ‘is given a fair shot’ contradicts his refusal to fight for a higher minimum wage, permanentize the child tax credit, or side with railroad workers trying to negotiate for sick pay.”

    During the 2020 presidential campaign, Williamson was also a Democrat candidate but eventually bowed out in early 2020 before endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

    Activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who announced a Democratic 2024 presidential bid last week, also criticized Biden’s launch. Like Williamson, Kennedy—the son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy—is viewed as a long shot against Biden.

    “I have known and liked Joe Biden for many years, but we differ profoundly on fundamental issues such as corporate influence in government, censorship, civil liberties, poverty, corruption, and war policy, among others. I look forward to engaging him in debates and town hall meetings,” he wrote.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 19:40

  • DOJ Tells Court Teixeira A Flight Risk & May Have More To Leak, Makes Ed Snowden Comparison
    DOJ Tells Court Teixeira A Flight Risk & May Have More To Leak, Makes Ed Snowden Comparison

    Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified US intelligence documents online, is being called a flight risk by the Justice Department. The DOJ in a Wednesday night court filing also said it fears he could possibly leak more info if he’s allowed release before he is tried. That’s what is currently before a federal judge in Massachusetts.

    During a Thursday hearing in a federal court in Worcester, the DOJ asserted that if he is released on bail, he might “further disseminate classified information” and “take refuge with a foreign adversary.”

    Teixeira’s family members outside the federal court building in Worcester, Mass. Teixeira, via AP.

    The DOJ further compared him to Edward Snowden, who for years has taken refuge with his wife and child in Russia, having also recently been granted Russian citizenship.

    ABC News described Thursday’s court hearing as follows: “Teixeira walked into the courtroom for his Thursday detention hearing handcuffed, wearing a long rosary necklace and an orange jumpsuit.” Further, “The 21-year-old looked at his family members sitting in the first two rows, and one woman in the front row began to cry.”

    Teixeira faces 25 year in prison and “potentially far more,” according to a DOJ detention memo, which argues further: 

    The lengthy potential maximum sentence could make him a significant flight risk, prosecutors argue, and the value of the information he obtained — as well as his low current net worth of about $19,000 — could make him vulnerable to offers from countries unfriendly to the U.S.

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    The memo lays out that “He accessed and may still have access to a trove of classified information that would be of tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbor and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States.”

    The government says it has proof that he intended to circulate classified or sensitive information among foreign countries and entities. According to DOJ filings…

    After hearing from both sides, federal magistrate judge David Hennessy said he needs more time to make a final decision on pretrial detention.

    Federal judges rarely, if ever, allow for bail in cases of federal or military employees caught leaking government secrets. Even an alleged leaker’s “knowledge” of the classified intel means they are kept locked up on fears they could still communicate secrets to outside entities. 

    Meanwhile, there are reports that the US Air Force has suspended two leaders of the national guard unit in which Teixeira served, pending the ongoing investigation into the extent of the unauthorized disclosure. Presumably the government is also looking into any possible co-conspirator scenarios, but so far he’s been presented as a lone actor.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 19:20

  • War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire Of Biden Megadonor And Lender Who's Urging Greater U.S. Role
    War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire Of Biden Megadonor And Lender Who’s Urging Greater U.S. Role

    Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClear Wire,

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t the only one demanding more military assistance from President Biden to protect Kiev from Russian forces. So too is a close Delaware friend and financial backer of Biden, who owns several luxury car dealerships around the Ukrainian capital. 

    By sending billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid to help defend Ukraine, Biden also is securing the investments of millionaire car magnate John Hynansky, a Ukrainian American and longtime supporter of the president. 

    Over the course of Biden’s political career, Hynansky and his family have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns, including $8,000 in 2020, Federal Election Commission records show. Hynansky family members have been guests at the White House, and Hynansky has floated hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to Biden family members, property records show. Hynansky’s son, Michael, who helps run his car empire, lent the use of his Lear jet to Biden when he was a senator.

    Since Russia started shelling the area around Kiev in February 2022, the U.S. government has spent $77 billion to help Ukraine rebuild and repel future attacks. 

    Government ethics watchdogs say the president’s friendship poses a potential conflict of interest that demands a full accounting of how the massive foreign aid, which includes open-ended humanitarian and economic assistance, has been used and who has benefited from it. On the military side, moreover, billions of dollars have gone to unspecified areas, such as “security,” “intelligence,” and “training.” In the past, Hynansky has supplied the police cars and ambulances in several regions of Ukraine. 
     
    The Biden administration helped Hynansky’s team in Ukraine prepare for the invasion, including placing calls to his top executive in Kiev 13 days in advance of Russian tanks crossing the border. It has sent billions of dollars to help rebuild war-torn cities where Hynansky operates the largest share of the country’s car showrooms and service centers specializing in Porsches, Jaguars, Land Rovers, and Bentleys, among other non-American brands he imports.  

    Although supporting Ukraine is a policy with widespread – though not universal – bipartisan support in Washington, the president’s close relationship with Hynansky illustrates larger ethical questions that have long surrounded Biden and his family members, who often have financial interests directly affected by policies he endorses. While serving as President Obama’s point man in Ukraine in 2015,  Biden famously demanded the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma, that was paying his son Hunter $80,000 per month to serve on its board. Recent revelations of lucrative dealings with concerns tied to China’s Communist government while Joe Biden was both in and out of office have also raised questions about his current policy toward Beijing. 

    At a time Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s relationship with a generous billionaire is fueling complaints among Democrats about money and politics, Biden’s friendship with Hynansky also raises red flags.  

    Helping ‘My Very Good Friend’ 

    The connection between Joe Biden and Hynansky’s business ventures dates back to 2009, when the then-vice president made his first visit to Ukraine. In a speech in Kiev to government officials, Biden singled out Hynansky for praise, noting that he had just had breakfast with “my very good friend, John Hynansky.” (The previous year, Hynansky had individually contributed more than $33,000 to the Obama-Biden ticket primarily through the Obama Victory Fund, according to FEC records.)

    Within months of his hobnobbing with the vice president and local officials in the Ukrainian capital, Hynansky scored his first international development loan from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, a federal body whose board was appointed by President Obama. Hynansky used the $2.5 million to break ground on a new headquarters and massive distribution center outside Kiev that prepares 8,000 cars for sale every year. In 2012, Hynansky landed another $20 million in OPIC funding to expand his dealership facilities, federal records show, helping him corner roughly 25% of the luxury car market in Ukraine. 

    “The proceeds of the loan will be used to construct and operate two new, state-of-the-art dealership facilities for Porsche and Land Rover/Jaguar automobiles, and repay any outstanding balance of an existing OPIC loan,” according to a 2012 OPIC financing document. 
     
    The terms of the OPIC loans state that all cars sold at his dealerships would be imported from Europe, not the United States, which meant that American-based automakers would not benefit from the taxpayer-backed venture. Under “U.S. economic impact,” the loan summary states that the jobs created from the deal would be created in “the host country, Ukraine,” not America. The terms of the loan also deferred Hynansky’s paying the principal on the loans for almost three years during construction, according to the OPIC document, which called the deferment a “grace period.” 
     
    The next year, acting as Obama’s point man in Ukraine, Biden pushed for the ouster of what he called the country’s Russia-friendly president and helped set up a coalition government in 2014 while promising millions in aid for the Ukraine energy industry. That same year, Hunter Biden, who is a close childhood friend of Hynansky’s daughter, Alexandra (who was listed as a sponsor on the OPIC loans), was appointed to the board of Burisma.

    In 2015, Joe Biden’s younger brother, James, and his sister-in-law, Sara Biden, became overextended financially after purchasing a six-bedroom, four-bathroom beach house plus guest house on Keewaydin Island, Fla., which was dubbed “The Biden Bungalow” after the vice president spent time there as well. Owing almost $700,000 in tax liens and contractor debts, the Bidens turned to Hynansky for help in lieu of a traditional lender. The car dealer came to the rescue with loans totaling $900,000. 
     
    The bailout occurred as Hynansky’s powerful American pal oversaw U.S. policy in Ukraine, and as OPIC authorized new loans allowing his company to build a new 7,300-square-foot Porsche dealership along the highway that connects downtown Kiev to the Boryspil International Airport. 
     
    Mortgage records initially reported the Bidens’ lender as “1018 PL, LLC,” obscuring Hynansky as the source of the loans. But the corporate entity is controlled by Hynansky, a 2018 document would later reveal. 
     
    The Bidens sold the waterfront house in 2018, and Hynansky released his lien on the property. However, Hynansky did not acknowledge full payment and satisfaction of the loans, according to the details laid out in documents recorded in Collier County, Fla. 
      
    Attempts to reach James Biden for comment were unsuccessful.

    Hynansky is politically connected in Kiev as well as Washington. President Zelensky also calls Hynansky a good friend and in recent years has bestowed state awards on him. Kiev Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko also is close to the prominent Wilmington businessman. 

    In August 2021, Hynansky secured a $24 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to expand its Ukraine operations into electric vehicles, including building new Renault and Volvo dealerships in Lviv. The U.S. is a founding member of EBRD and provides 10% of its capital. The Biden administration has been pushing such “green” deals. 
     
    “In the near future, we intend to increase our presence on the Ukrainian market,” Hynansky’s top official in Ukraine, Petro Rondiak, said at the time.  
     
    The White House did not respond to queries about the president’s relationship with Hynansky. 

    Though Biden is silent about his actions in Ukraine as they concern Hynansky and his businesses there, he has repeatedly denied that his son’s Burisma dealings influenced his official actions in Ukraine — which included handing over more than $50 million in U.S. support to assist the Ukrainian energy industry, an aid package Biden personally announced in Kiev the month before Burisma hired his son in 2014. 
     
    Republicans are investigating whether those funds were intended to help his son’s business interests in Ukraine. Less explored is whether U.S. tax money has also been used to protect or boost Hynansky’s Ukrainian investments. 
     
    Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, a Washington watchdog group. said that in dealing with Ukraine, Biden increasingly is drawing suspicion he may be putting his own political fortunes ahead of the national interest.  

    Many of Hynansky’s dealerships ‒ organized under the Winner Group Ukraine ‒ are located around the Kiev airport. Though the American head of Winner Group Ukraine fled the country after Russia’s invasion, the dealerships are still “operational,” according to a spokesperson at Hynansky’s headquarters in Delaware. All told, his Ukrainian subsidiary controls some 55 dealerships and service centers employing more than 800 workers. 

    Thanks to the shipment of U.S. weaponry ‒ including Stinger missiles, howitzers, and Abrams tanks ‒ properties around Kiev airport are now secure enough that Biden was able to use the train station just 19 miles away to visit Zelensky during February’s anniversary of the invasion. And though Boryspil International Airport is still closed, Ukrainian forces have retaken strategically important suburbs of Kiev near the airport. 

    Since taking control of the House, Republicans have threatened to curb aid to Ukraine and audit the massive funds the Biden administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress have funneled there. 

    Winner executives have been clamoring for more U.S. military aid and direct intervention by Biden and other Western leaders. Before the invasion, the company had reported its best year in Ukraine. 
     
    Rondiak, Hynansky’s top executive in Ukraine, has called for greater military intervention from America and the West, including setting up a “no-fly zone” over Ukrainian airspace. “Dear western ally politicians,” he tweeted in December, “when will the gloves come off?” 
     
    Added Rondiak, “The flow of weapons must increase quickly.” He’s also called for a military counteroffensive “to punish Putin.” 
     
    Although car sales are down, he said virtually all of Hynansky’s “dealers are operating” in Ukraine thanks to Biden administration support. He also praised the State Department for calling him to warn him to leave Kiev for his own safety two weeks ahead of the invasion.  

    U.S. Aid ‘as Long as It Takes’  

    Biden has pledged to keep sending U.S. funds to Ukraine “as long as it takes,” continuing indefinitely an already unprecedented spending stream. Support to Ukraine from other countries lags far behind the United States. Britain is providing less than 10% of what America is sending there, despite ranking second in total aid, according to Council on Foreign Relations data. 
     
    Kamenar suggested that a special inspector general may be needed to audit U.S. spending in Ukraine, similar to the one Congress created to monitor U.S. aid and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan.  

    House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said he suspects the kind of fraudulent and wasteful spending the Pentagon IG uncovered in Afghanistan “could be happening in Ukraine, where we are spending a significant amount of tax dollars.” 
     
    “I know some of the tax dollars are going for ammunition. I know some of it’s going for humanitarian aid,” Rep. Comer told CNN last week. “But we hear that not all of it is.”  

    Some administration critics say that Biden has done a poor job of explaining why supporting Ukraine is in America’s interests. Irrespective of that complaint,  the Biden’s financial entanglements with Hynansky muddy the waters – and have gone unreported in the news coverage about his intense focus on the embattled country. 
     
    Long before Hunter Biden landed a lucrative oil and gas deal in Ukraine, despite having no prior experience inUkraine or the energy industry, Biden benefactor Hynansky began investing heavily in Ukraine — with Joe Biden’s help. 

    Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 19:00

  • Montana Legislature Votes To Remove Trans Lawmaker From House Floor For Rest Of 2023
    Montana Legislature Votes To Remove Trans Lawmaker From House Floor For Rest Of 2023

    After a series of activist disruptions and bizarre rants, trans lawmaker Zooey Zephyr, who was initially censured, is now banned from the floor of the Montana State Legislature for the rest of 2023.  Zephyr (a biological male identifying as a trans bisexual woman), is a representative from District 100 of Montana centered in Missoula.  Being one of the few districts in the state with a dominant college culture and a majority Democrat population, the trans label helped Zephyr win easily in 2022.

    The representative “came out” as trans only a couple years priors to his election, with little identifiable background other than some notoriety as a video game competitor. 

    Montana is now considering a number of bills designed to protect children from trans indoctrination in schools, sexualized drag shows as well as banning sex-change surgeries and hormone therapies for kids.  It is one of many states acting to contain the political indoctrination of children by trans activists and the far-left.  Zephyr insinuated that should they pass bills such as SB 99 into law blood might spill.  He states “I hope the next time there is an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.” 

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

    He also suggested that “forcing” children to go through puberty was akin to “torture.”

    The mantra of “blood on your hands” has become prominent after the recent mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, TN by transgender activist Audrey Hale.  The assertion being that conservatives (rather than the trans shooters) are the people responsible for any such events because they are passing laws to block trans surgeries for children.  Restrictions on gender based procedures and chemical therapies for minors are often compared to “trans genocide,” ostensibly because the only way trans activists can perpetuate their numbers is for children to be converted.

    The statement has been interpreted by Montana lawmakers as threatening language, leading to the decision to censure and then remove Zephyr.

    Media proponents argue that banning Zephyr from debating on the floor is censorship of a “marginalized voice”, but the action is legal within Montana and Zephyr will still be able to vote on all bills remotely. Rules against the breaching of decorum on the house floor are a means to force legislators to present facts and evidence instead of utilizing personal attacks and rhetoric.  Montana’s legislature determined that Zephyr broke decorum and acted unprofessionally.  

    The event is perhaps a natural reaction to an ideology seen by many as “unhinged,” with conservative states growing weary of activists trying to justify and rationalize the targeting of minors.  Democrats have been attempting to obscure the reality that most of the conservative bills they oppose revolve around protecting children, leaving adults free to make their own decisions.  Instead they have sought to conflate the legislation with “threats to democracy,” making any meaningful debate almost impossible.     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 18:40

  • CDC Officials Make False Statements About Possible COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects
    CDC Officials Make False Statements About Possible COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects

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

    Officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have made multiple false statements this month regarding possible COVID-19 vaccine side effects, continuing a trend of mis- and disinformation from the public health agency.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., in a file image. (Tami Chappell via Reuters)

    Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a top CDC official, recently repeated the lie that the agency has never detected a safety signal for ischemic stroke for the old COVID-19 vaccines.

    “No safety signals were detected for ischemic stroke for primary series or monovalent boosters for Pfizer or Moderna vaccines in U.S. and global monitoring,” Shimabukuro told the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a CDC advisory panel, on April 19.

    CDC researchers identified ischemic stroke as a safety signal for the original Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, according to files obtained by The Epoch Times. More recently obtained documents show the CDC detected the signal as early as May 6, 2022.

    The CDC acknowledges in official documents that any adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination that meet a certain criteria constitute “a safety signal.”

    Shimabukuro, who also made the false claim during an earlier meeting in February, has not responded to requests for comment.

    A CDC spokesperson previously doubled down on the claim, falsely stating that Shimabukuro was correct.

    Ischemic stroke happens when the brain fails to get enough blood supply, according to the Mayo Clinic. It causes brain cells to die within minutes and often leads to death.

    Another unnamed CDC official falsely told NBC that the agency has not found data “suggesting a link between COVID-19 vaccines and tinnitus,” a condition that has symptoms such as constant ringing in the ears.

    The CDC identified tinnitus as a safety signal in its analysis of possible signals in data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), according to the files obtained by The Epoch Times.

    Bert Kelly, a CDC spokesman, told The Epoch Times in an email: “To date, we have no data to support tinnitus and its link to COVID-19 infection or vaccination.”

    After becoming aware of reports to the adverse event system of tinnitus after COVID-19 vaccination, the CDC analyzed data from a different surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink. CDC researchers did not identify any “clustering of tinnitus diagnoses” in the datalink system in the 70 days after COVID-19 vaccination, according to Kelly.

    He did not make the data available.

    Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, noted that there have been more than 24,000 reports of tinnitus submitted to VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination.

    “There is mounting evidence in the medical literature that tinnitus involves inflammation in the brain,” Fisher said, pointing to several studies. “CDC officials should be taking the tinnitus signal seriously and actively pursuing every available avenue of research to find out what is going on rather than doing everything they can to quickly dismiss the reported risk for developing chronic ringing in the ears after COVID shots.”

    Tinnitus is listed as a potential side effect of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine and regulators in some countries list the condition as a potential adverse event following AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna and Pfizer haven’t been formally linked with tinnitus, though some research has found a statistically significant increase in tinnitus following COVID-19 vaccination, which researchers said “suggest an association between the COVID-19 vaccines” and tinnitus.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 18:20

  • Amazon Erases 12% Gain, Turns Red After Revealing Sharp Slowdown In April AWS Growth
    Amazon Erases 12% Gain, Turns Red After Revealing Sharp Slowdown In April AWS Growth

    Update (6:00pm): Everything was going ok, with AMZN stock soaring as much as 12% and then suddenly AMZN stock erased all gains and turned red during the company’s analyst earnings call (the media call held an hour earlier went by ok).

    There was initially some confusion what sparked the plunge, but it eventually was revealed that during the call, Amazon said that “Customers continue to evaluate ways to optimize their cloud spending in response to these tough economic conditions in Q1 and we are seeing these optimizations continue into Q2 with April revenue growth rates about 500bps lower than what we saw in Q1.”

    As noted earlier (see below), AWS did a little better than analysts had expected in 1Q, but that might not be worth much if growth continues to drift toward single digits.

    The company tried to provide some favorable spin with the CEO saying that he is “pretty optimistic that we have a chance not just to recover to where we were pre-pandemic in terms of operating margin, but I think there is additional upside with some of the opportunities we’ve identified” but by now it was too little too late, and the stock had erased all of its earlier gains and was on the verge of turning red for the day.

    * * *

    With three out of five FAAMG stocks – which of course is now known as GAMMA ever since Facebook’s ignominious rebranding to Meta (at least until the company  quietly changes its name to MetAI) – having already reported solid results helping push the market back into the green for the week, investors are keenly looking to Amazon earnings after the close today to (almost) round out the picture for the resurgent market generals while could set the tone for the rest of 2023… or at least until the Fed meeting next week.

    As previewed earlier, Amazon is expected to post sales of $125 billion, up 7.1% from a year earlier. According to Bloomberg, analysts and investors will be watching for insights into consumer spending patterns, both in terms of confidence in the overall economy and with regard to how much they are spending online vs. in stores. Investors will also be watching to see how Amazon’s cloud computing business and advertising business are holding up.

    Investors will also want to see signs that CEO Andy Jassy’s cost-cutting measures – which included cutting 27,000 corporate employees – are helping to slash expenses and boost profits. Amazon had 1.5 million employees at the end of 2022, mostly blue-collar workers in its warehouses. In addition to the corporate cuts, Amazon tends to trim its warehouse workforce after the holiday shopping season.

    But by far the most important variable will be Amazon Web Services, which is expected to post sales growth of 14%, the slowest since Amazon began breaking out the cloud-computing division’s performance with data going back to 2014. AWS almost always accounts for more operating income than the rest of Amazon’s businesses combined. But the unit has been hit hard as businesses pare their technology spending. Among the biggest questions for Amazon during this year of cost cutting and layoffs is how low AWS’s growth might sink.

    What about Artificial Intelligence, which has been the core theme of Microsoft, Google and Meta’s earnings calls so far this week. How will Amazon play it? The company’s shown its hand, to an extent, on how generative AI will boost their business. But the focus is on AWS and targeting cloud customers (rather than Amazon’s consumer-facing arms).

    Finally, while Amazon stock has badly underperformed the rest of the GAMMA names, heading into today’s earnings the stock gained and was on track to notch its biggest two-day jump since February. So far this year, the shares are up about 31%.

    So with all that in mind, here is what Amazon just reported for its just concluded quarter

    • Q1 EPS 31c,up from a 38c loss YoY, and beating the estimate of $0.21
    • Q1 Net sales $127.358 billion, +9.4% y/y, beating the estimate of $124.7 billion
      • Online stores net sales $51.10 billion vs. $51.13 billion y/y, beating estimate $50.57 billion
      • Physical Stores net sales $4.90 billion, +6.6% y/y, beating estimate $4.77 billion
      • Third- Party Seller Services net sales $29.82 billion, +18% y/y, beating estimate $28.7 billion
      • Subscription Services net sales $9.66 billion, +15% y/y, estimate $9.29 billion
      • North America net sales $76.88 billion, +11% y/y, beating estimate $75.54 billion
      • International net sales $29.12 billion, +1.3% y/y, beating estimate $27.65 billion
      • Third-party seller services net sales excluding F/X +20% vs. +9% y/y, beating estimate +13.9%
      • Subscription services net sales excluding F/X +17% vs. +13% y/y, beating estimate +11.8%
      • And the most important one: AWS net sales $21.35 billion, +16% y/y, beating estimate $21.03 billion
        • Amazon Web Services net sales excluding F/X +16% vs. +37% y/y, estimate +13.8%
    • Operating income $4.77 billion, +30% y/y, beating the estimate $3 billion
    • Operating margin 3.7% vs. 3.2% y/y, beating the estimate 2.38%
    • North America operating margin +1.2% vs. -2.3% y/y, beating the estimate +0.34%
    • International operating margin -4.3% vs. -4.5% y/y, beating estimate -8.49%
    • Fulfillment expense $20.91 billion, +3.1% y/y, beating estimate $20.72 billion
    • Seller unit mix 59% vs. 55% y/y, estimate 56.8%

    Of note, FX headwinds were a factor in the quarter with AMZN booking $2.4 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter. Excluding that impact, net sales increased 11% in 1Q compared with first quarter of 2022.

    It’s also notable that a big positive for Amazon was its continued revenue mix shift to providing services and advertising to independent merchants as opposed to selling goods directly to shoppers as a retailer. This is a more profitable business model for Amazon with less risk on inventory. Advertising revenue grew by more than 21% and seller services by 18%. Meanwhile, fulfillment expenses grew by just 3% and shipping costs by just 2%. Amazon is making more money off of its e-commerce and logistics operation while keeping expenses in check.

    Bottom line here, Amazon beats expectations for Q1 across the board, and most importantly AWS came in well above expectations on both revenue growth and profit margin basis, which is why AMZN stock is seeing a buying frenzy after hours pushing it more than 10% higher.

    There is another reason for the surge: the company’s Q2 guidance was stellar:

    • Sees net sales $127.0 billion to $133.0 billion, in line with the sellside estimate $130.1 billion;  this represents growth between 5% and 10% compared with Q2 2022 and “anticipates an unfavorable impact of approximately 30 basis points from foreign exchange rates.”
    • Sees operating income $2 to $5.5 billion, estimate $4.74 billion

    The Q2 outlook, with sales of up to $133 billion and operating income of up to $5.5 billion, indicates it expects the positive momentum to continue.

    In short, solid earnings beating expectations across the board, while guidance came generally in line with Wall Street expectations.

    Commenting on the quarter, CEO Andy Jassy said that “we like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS, and believe there’s much growth ahead.” He added that “our Advertising business continues to deliver robust growth, largely due to our ongoing machine learning investments that help customers see relevant information when they engage with us, which in turn delivers unusually strong results for brands.”

    Digging into the numbers we find that operating margins soared, more than doubling form 1.8% last quarter which was the lowest in at least five years, to 3.7%, smashing the consensus est of 2.38%.

    While the market was clearly happy with the overall profit margin, it also appeared happy with the profit margin breakdown where the AWS profit margin dipped to the lowest since 2017. At the same time, international operating margin remained negative, with US online sales still just barely turned green, generating a 1.2% profit margin.

    Maybe the AWS profit margin could have been better (which would be difficult when competitors are now aggressively cutting prices to capture market share), the silver lining was that revenue growth of 16% Y/Y to $21.354 billion, was better than the expected $21.03 billion.

    Jassy had said in his annual shareholder letter a couple of weeks ago that AWS was facing some short-term headwinds. That idea is carried through into the earnings statement, where he says:

    “While our AWS business navigates companies spending more cautiously in this macro environment, we continue to prioritize building long-term customer relationships both by helping customers save money and enabling them to more easily leverage technologies like Large Language Models and Generative AI with our uniquely cost-effective machine learning chips (‘Trainium’ and ‘Inferentia’), managed Large Language Models (‘Bedrock’), and AI code companion CodeWhisperer. We like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS, and believe there’s much growth ahead.”

    And while AWS sales growth came in strong, the sales growth for Advertising Services came in even stronger at 23% YoY, a 35.5% beat relative to consensus.

    On the expense side, we already know that AMZN has joined other companies in laying workers off, but a bigger question is whether its employees have plateaued and whether it will start replacing them with robots. Well, in Q1, employment dropped 10% to 1.47 million, well beyond the 27,000 corporate layoffs; furthermore Amazon is shedding blue collar warehouse workers as well, which is typical in the first quarter.

    Elsewhere, fulfillment expenses, the cost of packing and shipping goods, were also close to expectations, indicating spending is under control.

    The market was also focused the company’s revenue growth forecast which is in a range of $127-$133BN (midline at $130BN), which was on top of the $130.1BN expected. The problem is that at just 7.2%, this would be tied for the lowest annual growth in company history (just Q2 2022 would be comparable).

    Finally for those asking, Amazon has clearly also jumped on the AI bandwagon, mentioning the phrase “AI” 6 times in the earnings release, and the full phrase “artificial intelligence” twice.

    Responding to the results, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Poonam Goyal said that “Amazon did much better than expected, especially in the face of inflation and thoughts from other company leaders who have said consumer spending has slowed recently. It’s quite promising that Amazon is still able to deliver. We don’t think it is promotions. We think it is demand, and consumers are flocking to Amazon for day-to-day needs.”

    The market agreed, and its reaction was euphoric at least initially, with the stock spiking as much as 12% higher in kneejerk before dipping modestly, but still solidly in the green on the day.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 18:10

  • Sen. Tim Scott Introduces Bill To Divert $15 Billion From IRS To Border Security
    Sen. Tim Scott Introduces Bill To Divert $15 Billion From IRS To Border Security

    Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina introduced legislation on Wednesday that would redirect $15 billion from the $80 billion in new funding for the IRS in order to beef up security on the southern US border.

    According to the Daily Caller, the ‘Securing Our Border Act’ would specifically fund border inspections to allow law enforcement officials to better combat the illegal trafficking of drugs and other substances before the enter the United States.

    The bill would also fund border wall construction and other technologies to help with tracking and enforcement efforts along the southwest border.

    Additionally, the legislation would give retention bonuses to Border Patrol agents and end the “catch and release” policy. –Daily Caller

    GOP officials have argued that the $80 billion in new IRS funding – which will be used to hire more than 87,000 new IRS employees – will increase audits on poor and middle-class Americans, despite a pledge by the Biden administration to go after wealthier individuals.

    “We have a crisis on our southern border. Rather than putting resources in place to address this major national security and humanitarian catastrophe, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats chose instead to spend $45 billion of taxpayer money to hire an army of IRS agents to audit the middle class,” Scott told the Caller before introducing the bill, adding “While President Biden continues to drop the ball, I’m introducing legislation to fund border infrastructure and give our Border Patrol agents the tools they need to help stop the unaddressed flows of illicit goods and persons into this country. Americans need more border agents keeping them safe – not thousands more IRS agents looking over their shoulder.“

    As the Caller further notes, the bill has five original co-sponsors; Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and James Lankford of Oklahoma. It has also been endorsed by the 18,000-member National Border Patrol Council.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/27/2023 – 18:00

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