- India's Diesel Exports To Europe Soar To Record High
India’s Diesel Exports To Europe Soar To Record High
Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,
India’s diesel exports loading for Europe hit a record high in September amid open arbitrage for westbound shipments, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing tanker-tracking data and analysts.
Last month, diesel cargoes loading from India and bound for Europe averaged between 280,000 barrels per day (bpd) and 303,000 bpd – or roughly half of all Indian diesel shipments in September, according to vessel-tracking data by LSEG, Vortexa, and Kpler cited by Reuters.
At the same time, Indian diesel shipments eastwards to Singapore slumped in September.
The east-west arbitrage on diesel futures in Europe and in Asia jumped last month, which incentivized traders to ship more of the India-produced fuel to Europe, analysts told Reuters.
But the differentials have narrowed in the past week, which means that India’s diesel shipments to Europe are unlikely to repeat in October the highs from September, they added.
The high Indian exports of diesel to Europe last month could help Europe stock on fuel supplies ahead of the winter, on one hand, and potentially ease the downward pressure on refining margins in Asia, on the other hand, according to the traders and analysts who have spoken to Reuters.
The higher shipments in September may have also been the result of the temporary Russian ban on diesel exports to most markets, including Turkey, Serena Huang, Vortexa’s head of APAC analysis, told Reuters.
At the end of last week, Russia lifted the ban on most of its diesel exports, two weeks after announcing export restrictions on diesel and gasoline to curb soaring domestic prices.
The ban on diesel and gasoline exports, enforced on September 21, affected Russia’s diesel exports which have been diverted away from the EU after the embargo kicked in in February. Russia is now shipping diesel to Turkey, the Middle East, North and West Africa, and Brazil in South America.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/12/2023 – 02:00 - Inside China’s Long Game To Infiltrate US Politics
Inside China’s Long Game To Infiltrate US Politics
Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
As Chinese authorities escorted the senior Federal Reserve official from his Shanghai hotel room, they demanded he “say good things about China” when back in the United States.
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock) The atmosphere was “frightening,” the official, who remained unnamed, recalled to the Fed.
That was the first of four times the official was detained and interrogated during a 2019 trip to Shanghai. Chinese authorities threatened his family, tapped his phones and computers, and copied contact information of other Federal Reserve officials from his account on Chinese social media app WeChat, according to Senate Homeland Security Committee Republicans who made public the details in a report last July.
The U.S. official recounted Chinese authorities trying to pry “sensitive, non-public economic data” out of him and insisting that he “advise senior government officials” on sensitive economic issues such as trade tariffs while the United States and China were embroiled in a trade war. They forced him to drink liquor and attempted to make him commit to future meetings to allow them to gather economic intelligence.
Unsettling as it is, the incident was but part of a “long-running and brazen” malicious campaign from China over the course of more than a decade to undermine U.S. economic policy and advance Beijing’s ambition to supplant the United States as the global superpower.
Coercion and threats represent only a sliver of the regime’s toolbox used to target the Western political sphere. A Chinese think tank based in Beijing, in partnering with the state-affiliated Tsinghua University, in 2019 rated White House advisors and U.S. governors by their friendliness to Beijing. The group labeled officials as “friendly,” “ambiguous,” or “hardline” after combing through metrics such as age, work history, public statements, trade activities with China, and length of term.
Time, patience, and thoroughness—these are attributes that Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former Asia Pacific chief at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in the 1990s, sees in the Chinese regime’s craft of infiltration.
“They’ve been capable to work in a very holistic way,” he told The Epoch Times.
China, he noted, doesn’t have a democratic election process that could displace the leadership from power. “So they know that they can plant today something that will be capable to be harvested in five, 10 or 15 years.”
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who has advocated for a tougher stance on China, agreed.
“They’re playing the long game,” he told The Epoch Times.
Biding Their Time
Few if any U.S. leaders, from the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels, are immune to the risk of the Chinese regime manipulating them to bolster its hidden agenda, warned the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in July last year.
By leveraging relationships with U.S. officials—called “using the local to surround the central” in communist slogan terms—Beijing can pressure Washington to back policy outcomes favorable to the regime, such as deepening bilateral economic ties and tamping down criticism of the regime’s abysmal human rights record.
A Chinese spy reportedly drove for the recently deceased Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for 20 years.
Christine Fang with then-Dublin City Councilmember Eric Swalwell at a student event in October 2012. (Screenshot/Social media) Christine Fang, an alleged Chinese spy working for China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, reportedly used campaign fundraising, networking, and romantic relationships with at least two Midwestern city mayors to gain a footing in their spheres of influence.
Ms. Fang also approached Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) when he was a member of the Dublin City Council, raised money for his 2014 reelection campaign, and facilitated an intern’s placement in Mr. Swalwell’s office, according to Axios.
The connection prompted a two-year investigation from the bipartisan House Ethics Committee, which in May ultimately decided not to take any action against the California lawmaker, but cautioned Mr. Swalwell to remain aware of “the possibility that foreign governments may attempt to secure improper influence through gifts and other interactions.”
The United Front network, which helps the Party control the Chinese diaspora, also plays a role in co-opting well-placed individuals for Beijing’s interests.
Lu Jianwang, one of the two alleged operators of a secret Chinese police station in New York, together with his brother, has given tens of thousands of dollars to New York politicians in recent years, including vice chair of the Democratic National Committee Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), New York Mayor Eric Adams, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, campaign finance records show.
People walk by a building (C), which is suspected of being a secret police station on behalf of China’s regime, in New York’s Chinatown on April 18, 2023. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) “Local level officials, state officials are just not going to be as aware of or as attuned to some of these influence efforts—they’re just trying to create jobs,” Sarah Cook, a senior China analyst at the Freedom House, told The Epoch Times.
“The CCP is very good at taking advantage of that, to get people to side with them, to get people in the United States to have a stake in what the CCP also wants. Then later, that can be activated to create situations that are more problematic.”
“I think people at the earliest part of that relationship, don’t realize that,” she added.
As with Ms. Fang’s case, the Chinese influence operations begin early in the local leaders’ careers.
“They’re very, very patient, they have time on their side. Their determination and their focus is remarkable,” Mr. Juneau-Katsuya said of the regime.
He said that Chinese intelligence officers-turned-defectors had detailed to him how they were instructed to be model citizens in the Western world for five to 10 years, working their way up the ladder in society before being “activated.”
“When the security service or the police tried to do a background check, they find absolutely nothing,” he said. “So they are extremely, extremely deep undercover agents in that perspective,” Mr. Juneau-Katsuya said.
‘Lie in Plain Sight’
Taiwan, Uyghur, Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square. The list of the Chinese Communist Party’s trigger words goes on. And the regime has made it clear that no one—in China or anywhere else—should go against its will.
Late at night on March 28, a day after the House overwhelmingly passed Rep. Chris Smith’s (R-N.J.) Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, a furious email from the Chinese embassy’s minister counselor Zhou Zheng arrived at the inbox of an aide to the congressman.
Doctors carry boxes containing fresh organs for transplant procedures at a hospital in Henan Province, China, on Aug. 16, 2012. (Screenshot via Sohu.com) The email, written from a Gmail account registered under Mr. Zhou, declared the bill “absurd” and claimed the “so-called ‘forced organ harvesting’ in China is a farce.”
The bill was the first ever such legislative piece to curb the state-sanctioned killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs, an atrocity that an independent London tribunal in 2019 concluded has taken place in China for years “on a significant scale.”
A number of whistleblowers, including eyewitnesses, have come forward to The Epoch Times to share testimony of the grisly act.
Mr. Zhou, in true Beijing fashion, demanded that the United States stop “baseless hype and anti-China moves and stops preceding [sic] this legislation.”
Mr. Smith said the claims in the email were “a big lie in plain sight.”
“The Falun Gong practitioners and the Uyghurs are being killed for their organs, and it’s tens of thousands every single year, as we know,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Perfectly healthy people being put down in a gurney drugged in order to effectuate two to three of their organs being taken out involuntarily—and they kill them—that is murder. That’s crimes against humanity.”
The New Jersey Republican on April 14 wrote to the Chinese embassy requesting a visa to visit Xinjiang, the northwestern Chinese region where an estimated 1 million Uyghurs are being held in detention camps. He hasn’t heard back.
A few weeks before the email to Mr. Smith, counselor Li Xiang with the Chinese embassy wrote to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), insisting he retract his bill ordering the declassification of information surrounding COVID-19 origins, which had been signed into law on March 20.
Mr. Hawley shrugged it off. “The Chinese government wrote to me and demanded I withdraw my Covid origins bill,” he wrote in a social media post on March 9. “Hahaha. Not a chance.”
An Uyghur woman protests in front of policemen on a street in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, China, on July 7, 2009. (Guang Niu/Getty Images) Mr. Li also hit a wall when he tried to block a scheduled congressional hearing on the origins of COVID-19. Nor was he successful with his warning to House lawmakers not to meet with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen during her visit to Los Angeles.
The audacity of the regime in making demands of an elected member of Congress “incensed” Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), one of the recipients of the threatening letter.
“Basically, I just said, ‘No, you can’t tell me who I can and can’t meet with and I’m going to go ahead and meet with her,’” Ms. Hinson told The Epoch Times. “And that’s what we did.”
“The fact that somebody was bold enough to assume that they could send me an email like that, and threaten and bully me—incredulous.”
“I will not be bullied, my mind is not going to be changed on an email like that, where you are deliberately trying to undermine my ability to do my job.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 23:25 - From Culinary Arts To Cognitive Science: The Median Student Debt For Every US Bachelor's Degree
From Culinary Arts To Cognitive Science: The Median Student Debt For Every US Bachelor’s Degree
According to the Federal Reserve, student loans added up to $1.6 trillion in Q2 2023, making them the third largest category of U.S. household debt behind auto loans ($1.8 trillion) and mortgages ($12 trillion).
The current student debt figure represents a 40% increase from a decade ago, resulting in greater pressure for the federal government to do more to help debtors. For example, on Oct 4. 2023, the Biden administration announced an additional $9 billion in student debt cancellations, bringing the total relief amount to $127 billion.
With student debt becoming a broader social issue, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu has visualized data from the Education Data Initiative to show you the median debt per major for a bachelor’s degree in the country.
Dataset and Highlights
The following table includes all of the data we used to create this graphic. Note that we’re showing median student debt, which differs from the mean average.
To understand how this works, imagine a list of every student’s debt for a given major. The median represents the middle value, meaning half of students owe less than that amount, while the other half owes more.
Major Field of Study 2022 Median Debt
(USD thousands)Behavioral Sciences Social Sciences $42.8 Religious Education Arts and Humanities $32.0 Culinary Arts and
Related ServicesArts and Humanities $28.6 Human Services Social Sciences $28.6 Education Other $28.0 Clinical, Counseling, and
Applied PsychologyHealth and Medicine $27.4 Literature Arts and Humanities $27.0 Natural Sciences Sciences $26.9 Physical Sciences Sciences $26.6 Music Arts and Humanities $26.6 Architecture Arts and Humanities $26.5 Arts, Entertainment, and
Media ManagementArts and Humanities $26.5 Visual and Performing Arts Arts and Humanities $26.5 Health Professions and
Related Clinical SciencesHealth and Medicine $26.0 Communication, Journalism, and
Related ProgramsOther $25.9 Drama/ Theater Arts
and StagecraftArts and Humanities $25.8 Astronomy and Astrophysics Sciences $25.6 Engineering, General Engineering $25.5 Multi-/Interdisciplinary Studies Other $25.4 Aerospace, Aeronautical,
and Astronautical EngineeringEngineering $25.2 Biological and Physical Sciences Sciences $25.2 Foods, Nutrition, and
Related ServicesHealth and Medicine $25.2 Biochemical Engineering Engineering $25.1 Information Science/Studies Sciences $25.1 Film/Video and
Photographic ArtsArts and Humanities $25.0 Social Work Health and Medicine $24.9 Zoology/Animal Biology Sciences $24.7 Civil Engineering Engineering $24.6 City/Urban, Community,
and Regional PlanningSocial Sciences $24.5 Criminal Justice and Corrections Social Sciences $24.5 Mechanical Engineering Engineering $24.5 Radio, Television, and
Digital CommunicationOther $24.4 Business Administration, Management,
and OperationsOther $24.4 Health and
Physical Education/ FitnessHealth and Medicine $24.2 Accounting Other $24.1 Computer & Information Sciences Sciences $24.0 Public Relations, Advertising,
and Applied CommunicationOther $23.9 Chemical Engineering Engineering $23.8 Biology Sciences $23.7 Journalism Other $23.4 Criminology Social Sciences $23.4 Liberal Arts and Sciences,
General Studies and HumanitiesSocial Sciences $23.3 Botany/Plant Biology Sciences $23.3 Psychology Social Sciences $23.3 Public Health Health and Medicine $23.1 Archeology Social Sciences $23.0 Communication and
Media StudiesOther $22.8 Social Sciences Social Sciences $22.8 Chemistry Sciences $22.8 Hospitality Administration/Management Health and Medicine $22.8 Physics Sciences $22.8 History Social Sciences $22.8 Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration,
Nursing Research, and Clinical NursingHealth and Medicine $22.6 English Language and Literature Arts and Humanities $22.5 Sociology Social Sciences $22.3 Computer Science Sciences $22.3 Marine Sciences Sciences $22.2 Political Science and Government Social Sciences $22.0 Science, Technology, and
SocietySciences $21.8 Mathematics Sciences $21.8 Geography and Cartography Social Sciences $21.7 Anthropology Social Sciences $21.7 Animal Sciences Sciences $21.6 Environmental Design Social Sciences $21.2 Agricultural Sciences $20.8 Economics Other $20.7 Statistics Other $20.6 Public Administration Social Sciences $20.6 Philosophy Social Sciences $20.6 International/Global Studies Other $19.9 Business Operations Support and
Assistant ServicesOther $19.1 Cognitive Science Sciences $18.1 International and
Comparative EducationOther $13.0 From this dataset we can see that median debt for most Bachelor’s degrees is in the mid $20,000s range. Two outliers at the upper end are Behavioral Sciences ($42,800) and Religious Education ($32,000), while at the lower end we can see Comparative Education ($13,000) and Cognitive Science ($18,100).
Comparative education is a social science that involves the study of education systems, processes, and outcomes across different countries or cultures.
Looking at this data from a broader perspective, we can also see some trends emerge based on field of study. For starters, most Arts and Humanities degrees fall in the upper half of the ranking, while the bottom quarter of the ranking appears to be largely made up of Social Sciences, Sciences, and various business studies.
What About a Master’s Degree?
Education Data Initiative also includes median debt data for master’s degrees.
Major Field of Study 2022 Median Debt
(USD thousands)Advanced/Graduate Dentistry
and Oral SciencesHealth and Medicine $158,155 Visual and Performing Arts Arts and Humanities $63,830 Radio, Television, and
Digital CommunicationOther $55,554 Social Sciences Social Sciences $54,554 Philosophy Social Sciences $54,260 Journalism Other $53,213 Statistics Other $53,174 Clinical, Counseling, and
Applied PsychologyHealth and Medicine $51,888 Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration,
Nursing Research, and Clinical NursingHealth and Medicine $51,420 Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies Other $48,693 Public Relations, Advertising, and
Applied CommunicationOther $48,366 Sociology Social Sciences $46,871 Health Professions and
Related Clinical SciencesHealth and Medicine $44,598 English Language and Literature Arts and Humanities $44,301 Political Science and Government Social Sciences $43,853 Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies
and HumanitiesSocial Sciences $43,408 Finance and
Financial Management ServicesOther $43,408 Psychology Social Sciences $43,408 Business Administration, Management,
and OperationsOther $43,251 Economics Other $43,053 Literature Arts and Humanities $42,826 Computer Engineering Engineering $42,647 Public Administration Social Sciences $42,154 Arts, Entertainment,
and Media ManagementArts and Humanities $41,238 History Social Sciences $40,948 Computer & Information Sciences Sciences $40,579 Anthropology Social Sciences $40,428 Biology Sciences $40,265 Architecture Arts and Humanities $39,788 Communication and Media Studies Other $39,270 International/Global Studies Other $37,180 Zoology/Animal Biology Sciences $37,056 Hospitality Administration/Management Other $36,203 Marketing Other $35,738 Criminology Social Sciences $35,318 Computer Science Sciences $35,301 Engineering Engineering $33,235 Health and Physical Education/Fitness Health and Medicine $32,372 Agriculture Sciences $30,676 Geography and Cartography Social Sciences $30,657 Education Other $29,434 Chemistry Sciences $28,912 Accounting Other $28,212 Mechanical Engineering Engineering $26,775 Civil Engineering Engineering $26,180 International Agriculture Sciences $23,275 While obtaining a master’s typically results in a greater amount of student debt, it can actually depend on your major. For instance, the median debt for a master’s in Computer Science is $35,300, which is $7,500 lower than a bachelor’s in Behavioral Science.
The biggest outlier from this list is Graduate Dentistry and Oral Sciences, with a median debt of $158,155. While this may sound like a lot, it should be compared to the average salary of a U.S. dentist, which according to Indeed is $225,400 per year.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 23:05 - Guns For Hire: America’s Crisis State Goes Global
Guns For Hire: America’s Crisis State Goes Global
Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great staffs, both of the old parties have ganged aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them in martialling [sic] to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”—Theodore Roosevelt
From being a nation in a permanent state of emergency, America’s crisis state has gone global.
The military industrial complex, which has established itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems (at taxpayer expense, of course), has mired the nation in endless wars abroad waged by U.S. military servicepeople who have been reduced to little more than guns for hire.
Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought—lock, stock and barrel—and made to dance to the tune of the police state, a.k.a. the Deep State, a.k.a. the military industrial complex, a.k.a. the surveillance state complex.
Even Dwight D. Eisenhower, the retired five-star Army general-turned-president who warned against the disastrous rise of misplaced power by the military industrial complex was complicit in contributing to the build-up of the military’s role in dictating national and international policy.
The Biden Administration’s response to the latest carnage in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war merely plays into the hands of a salivating military industrial complex for whom war is merely a means to a larger profit margin.
War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its best buyers and sellers.
Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. military dropped a bomb every 12 minutes.
President Obama, the antiwar candidate and Nobel Peace Prize winner, waged war longer than any American president. His administration’s targeted-drone killings resulted in at least 1.3 million lives lost to the U.S.-led war on terror.
America has long had a penchant for endless wars that empty our national coffers while fattening those of the military industrial complex.
The United States has been at war for all but 15 years in its 247-year history.
Since 9/11, we’ve spent more than $8 trillion to wage wars abroad, including the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt.
The average American pays over $2300 a year in taxes to support the military, half of which goes to military contractors.
Even with America’s military might spread thin, the war drums continue to sound as the Pentagon polices the rest of the world with counterterror activities in 85 countries.
The American Empire—with its endless wars waged by U.S. military servicepeople who have been reduced to little more than guns for hire: outsourced, stretched too thin, and deployed to far-flung places to police the globe—is approaching a breaking point.
Aided and abetted by the U.S government, the American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.
Although the U.S. constitutes barely 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 40% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 10 biggest spending nations combined.
Unfortunately, this level of war-mongering doesn’t come cheap to the taxpayers who are forced to foot the bill.
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry. In fact, the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.
As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”
War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors.
For example, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”
Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.
Consider that the government lost more than $160 billion to waste and fraud by military and defense contractors. With paid contractors often outnumbering enlisted combat troops, the American war effort dubbed as the “coalition of the willing” has quickly evolved into the “coalition of the billing,” with American taxpayers forced to cough up billions of dollars for cash bribes, luxury bases, a highway to nowhere, faulty equipment, salaries for so-called “ghost soldiers,” and overpriced anything and everything associated with the war effort, including a $640 toilet seat and a $7600 coffee pot.
A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing had been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:
$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.
It’s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.
There’s a good reason why “bloated,” “corrupt” and “inefficient” are among the words most commonly applied to the government, especially the Department of Defense and its contractors.
Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. Biden, no different from his predecessors, has continued to expand America’s military empire abroad and domestically, calling on Congress to approve billions that pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.
Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.
Essentially, in order to fund this burgeoning military empire that polices the globe, the U.S. government is prepared to bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse.
Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.
The illicit merger of the global armaments industry and the Pentagon that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 60 years ago has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation’s fragile infrastructure today.
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
This is exactly the scenario Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the growth of and reliance on militarism as the solution for our problems both domestically and abroad bodes ill for the constitutional principles which form the basis of the American experiment in freedom.
As James Madison warned, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:
The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
WC: 1659
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 22:45 - California's 9th Circuit Strikes Again: Liberal Majority Upholds California's Ban On High-Capacity Magazines
California’s 9th Circuit Strikes Again: Liberal Majority Upholds California’s Ban On High-Capacity Magazines
California’s extremely liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled in favor of California, allowing the state’s ban on high-capacity gun magazines to remain in effect while the state appeals a federal judge’s ruling which found the ban unconstitutional.
In a 7-4 vote, the 9th Circuit stayed a Sept. 22 ruling by US District Judge Robert Benitez in San Diego, who found that the state’s ban violated gun owners’ rights to keep and bear arms under the 2nd Amendment. Benitez cited a 2022 decision by the US Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which requires that firearms restrictions be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Following Benitez’s decision, California AG Bob Bonta (D) moved to stay the decision, which the 9th Circuit’s liberal majority quickly did. The Monday ruling applies to a long-running lawsuit brought by the California Rifle & Pistol Association as well as gun owners challenging the ban.
“If a stay is denied, California will indisputably face an influx of large-capacity magazines like those used in mass shootings in California and elsewhere,” wrote the 9th Circuit Democrat majority.
The four Republican-appointed judges on the 9th Circuit dissented, including US Circuit Judge Patrick Bumatay, who said the majority’s attitude towards the 2nd Amendment was “laughably absurd.”
In response to Monday’s decision, Bonta’s office said it was “relieved that the court considered the public safety of Californians in its decision.”
One can join the raging discussion over the decision over at Calguns.net.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 22:25 - Struggle For The World-Island
Struggle For The World-Island
Authored by Francis P. Sempa via RealClear Defense,
In 2017, Robert D. Kaplan wrote an essay describing the geopolitical eclipse of Europe by Asia in the 21st century, and what this meant for U.S. foreign policy. Though Kaplan used the provocative title, “The Return of Marco Polo’s World and the U.S. Military Response,” his analysis was grounded in geography and history. What Kaplan and others have called the Long European War of the 20th century (World Wars I and II, and the Cold War) gave rise to the beginnings of what could be a Long Asian War in which China and the United States struggle for control of the World-Island.
Kaplan described a “new strategic geography” where “Europe disappears, Eurasia coheres,” and the “interactions of globalization, technology, and geopolitics” fulfill Sir Halford Mackinder’s vision of a Eurasian-African supercontinent that he called the “World-Island” in his 1919 book Democratic Ideals and Reality. Mackinder warned that control of the World-Island meant command of the world.
Kaplan was among the first observers to see a link between China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and potential command of the World-Island. In his essay, he noted China’s attempts “to build a land bridge across Central and West Asia to Europe, and a maritime network across the Indian Ocean from East Asia to the Middle East.” Although China called the BRI “infrastructure projects” reminiscent of the medieval Silk Road, the political and geopolitical implications should have been evident from the outset of the program, which President Xi Jinping announced in September 2013.
Mackinder had written about the migrations of Asian hordes into the settled regions of the Old World, laying special emphasis on the Mongol Empire, which at its height stretched from East Asia to eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East, and from Russia to India, China, and parts of Southeast Asia. The Mongols, Mackinder noted, came the closest of all the Asian invaders to achieving effective political control of the World-Island. The two most important factors limiting the Mongol reach were insufficient manpower and technological constraints. China in the 21st century suffers from neither geopolitical weakness.
The remarkable thing about China’s BRI is how it replicates the World-Island on the map. In a fascinating article in The Diplomat entitled “How China’s Belt and Road Took Over the World,” Shannon Tiezzi shows the geographical evolution of the BRI. In 10 years, the BRI has extended its reach to 154 countries. On the Eurasian-African World-Island, only India, North Korea, Jordan, and a few nations of Western Europe have escaped China’s financial and infrastructure grasp. Indeed, the BRI extends beyond the World-Island to nations in the western and southern Pacific, Central and South America, and some islands in the Caribbean (including Cuba). Tiezzi notes that China has spent $564 billion on BRI-related projects in its 10-year history.
China is not sending armies to the nations of its BRI empire, but it is sending bankers, financiers, technocrats, engineers, and spies. Empire-building in the 21st century comes in many shapes and sizes. What beganas an economic and infrastructure initiative has gradually shifted to politics. The BRI, writes China-expert Felix Chang, “has become a key feature of Xi’s foreign policy.” The leaders in Beijing, Chang explains, have “always regarded the initiative as a way to garner political support and create new spheres of influence.” For China, Chang concludes, political aims of the BRI outweigh economic ones. The BRI was a geopolitical program from the very beginning.
Some observers of the BRI focus their analyses on the land road through Central Asia to Europe, but the maritime aspect of the BRI may be even more important. Robert Kaplan understands that more than most geopolitical thinkers. In his Marco Polo essay, Kaplan noted that “the United States is a maritime power, operating from the greatest of the island satellites of the Eurasian supercontinent.” And in the 21st century, as during the mid and late 20th century, maritime power has both naval and air components. China’s maritime Silk Road is a direct challenge to America’s maritime supremacy. It is reminiscent of Imperial Germany’s challenge to Great Britain in the years leading up to the First World War, and of Japan’s challenge to both British and American naval and air power in the western and south Pacific in the years leading up to the Second World War.
Our response, according to Kaplan, should be “to extend the concept of the Asia pivot to encompass the entire navigable rimland of Eurasia, including not only the Western Pacific but the Indian Ocean as well.” U.S. sea power, Kaplan writes, “is the compensatory answer for shaping geopolitics . . . Here is where the ideas of Alfred Thayer Mahan meet those of Halford Mackinder.” Mackinder, it should be noted, recognized the value of predominant sea power to island nations such as Great Britain and the United States. His great fear was that a hostile Eurasian land power (or alliance of land powers) could use the immense resources of continental Eurasia to attain maritime supremacy over the island democracies. If that happened, he wrote in 1904, “the empire of the world would then be in sight.” He even suggested that China, with its long oceanic frontage, allied to Russia could achieve dominance on land and at sea.
The immense growth of Chinese naval power and its proclaimed desire to exert control over the entire South China Sea (including reunifying with Taiwan) should be viewed in the context of the maritime component of the BRI. For it is the maritime route from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean that links Eurasia to the Middle East and Africa, just as the land component of the Silk Road links East Asia to Central Asia and to Europe. It is roads, rails, and shipping lanes that can cohere the Eurasian-African World-Island.
The first battle of the Long Asian War may be fought in the South China Sea. China’s pressure on Taiwan has increased exponentially. In a recent 24-hour period, the PLA launched 103 warplanes toward Taiwan, causing Taiwanese spokespersons to warn of escalation should the provocative and dangerous sorties continue. This comes on the heels of China’s recent expansion of its nine-dash line to ten dashes, including one located east of Taiwan. It also comes in the wake of President Biden’s remark while visiting Vietnam that the United States does not want to contain China. The struggle for the World-Island has begun.
Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 22:05 - Putin Says OPEC+ Output Cuts "Likely" To Continue Into 2024
Putin Says OPEC+ Output Cuts “Likely” To Continue Into 2024
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin told an energy conference in Moscow on Wednesday that Russia and Saudi Arabia would “most likely” extend output cuts into 2024 and warned that clashes in the Middle East could impact oil exports with higher shipping and insurance costs.
“I am sure that the coordination of the OPEC+ partners’ actions will continue,” Putin told the conference.
“This is important for the predictability of the oil market, and ultimately for the well-being of all mankind,” Putin added, noting that while Russia and Saudi Arabia would likely “continue [their] cooperation”, “we need to consult with colleagues – our decisions are made by consensus”.
In the last days of September, OPEC+ decided to keep current oil production cuts in effect until the end of the year, extending 1-million-barrel-per-day supply cuts that began in July through December 31, 2023. Russia also extended its 300,000 barrels per day export cut until the end of the year.
After Brent crude’s brief flirtation with up to $97 per barrel in late September, oil prices have pared gains, again rallying briefly with the Hamas missile attack on Israel over the weekend, which has led to a declaration of war by Israel.
On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz formed an emergency unity government for conflict decision-making as Israel places the Gaza Strip under siege, stripping it and its 2 million people of all power and electricity.
That second rally on the potential for a Middle East conflict to threaten supplies was short-lived. On Wednesday at 12:34 p.m. ET, Brent crude was trading at $86.61, down 1.19% on the day. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was trading at $84.46, down 1.76% on the day.
At the Moscow conference, Putin was standing beside Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, who has asked the Russian leader to “mediate” in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Putin is calling for the creation of a Palestinian state to resolve the conflict, and is using this as a platform to bring attention to what he calls the “failure” of Washington’s Middle East policy, The Moscow Times Reports.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 21:25 - California Introduces "Ebony Alert" To Find Missing Black Kids, Young Women
California Introduces “Ebony Alert” To Find Missing Black Kids, Young Women
A new California law which goes into effect Jan. 1 is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for missing black kids and young black women.
On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed Senate Bill 673 to create the “Ebony Alert” monitoring system, which will allow the Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when black youth, or women, go missing in an area. The Ebony Alert system will utilize electronic highway signs, and encourages authorities to use social media, TV, radio and other systems to spread word when a black child (or woman!) goes missing, NBC News reports.
The Ebony Alert will be used for missing black people between the ages of 12 and 25.
What about Asian, Hispanic and white kids?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 11, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js“Data shows that Black and brown, our indigenous brothers and sisters, when they go missing there’s very rarely the type of media attention, let alone AMBER alerts and police resources that we see with our white counterparts,” state Sen. Steven Bradford (D), who created the legislation, told NBC News earlier this year, adding “We feel it’s well beyond time that we dedicate something specifically to help bring these young women and girls back home because they’re missed and loved just as much as their counterparts are.”
California state Sen. Steven Bradford last year.Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file About 141,000 Black children under the age of 18 went missing in 2022, and Black women over 21 accounted for nearly 16,500 missing persons cases that year, according to the most recent data from the National Crime Information Center. More than 30,000 Black people in the U.S. remained missing at the end of 2022, according to the center. Although about 38% of the people who went missing i in 2022 were Black, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, missing Black people are less likely than white people to have their stories highlighted in the media. Also, missing persons cases for Black people remain open longer than those for white people. Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the foundation, told CNN that a majority of the 6,000 cases of missing Black people in her database remain unsolved. -NBC News
The state’s Amber Alert system, meanwhile, requires that a victim be under the age of 17 or have a proven disability, and authorities must have a reason to believe they’re in danger. Alerts can’t be used for custody battles or runaways.
The problem, according to the report, is that missing black kids are usually classified as runaways – and therefore don’t qualify for Amber Alerts.
“Something’s better than nothing,” said Bradford. “Whether the Amber alert or an Ebony Alert is going to be 100% effective, we don’t go with that false illusion or belief. But it’s better than not doing anything at all.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 21:05 - RFK Jr.'s Strong Stance Against COVID Vaccines Appeals To Some Trump Voters
RFK Jr.’s Strong Stance Against COVID Vaccines Appeals To Some Trump Voters
Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Former President Donald Trump’s defense of Operation Warp Speed remains a sticking point for some of his supporters drawn to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s message and his direct rebuke of the COVID policies.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 2, 2023. (Courtesy of Charlotte Stringer Photography) Attendees of an event at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum where Mr. Kennedy spoke on Oct. 2 discussed with The Epoch Times their concerns and what they appreciated about his message, but noted significant differences between the two.
“As Kennedy has been calling out the truth no matter how much criticism he’s faced for it, Trump has really been silent on the whole COVID sham,” Scott Stringer said.
“In my mind, Trump was tricked.”
Mr. Kennedy has frequently railed against the ties between Big Pharma, the medical profession, and the government that has been toxic for the country, Mr. Stringer said.
“The medical community cannot be trusted,”he said.
In a recent visit to the doctor’s office with his son, he said staff pushed the vaccine, which was unrelated to why they were there.
“I can’t believe they did that with all the medical data that’s come in,” he said.
Charlotte Stringer, Mr. Stringer’s wife, agreed that President Trump needs to admit that he was wrong. This admission, she said, would bring him more support.
The problem is, given his personality, it’s unlikely he will confess to such an enormous mistake, she said.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said. “With that said, I think he’s the best choice to run this country.”
On Mr. Kennedy’s speech, she appreciated his open-mindedness given his history as a person who for years listened to and advocated for mothers of the vaccine-injured while they were being dismissed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Having witnessed churches close and continue to take in tithes while simultaneously getting loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, she said Mr. Kennedy’s stance against the lockdowns, specifically regarding the closure of the churches, resonated intensely with her.
“That really made me have huge respect for him,” she said.
‘We’ve Got to Stop the Shots’
MaryJo Perry, president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights (MPVR), said she’s troubled by President Trump’s unwillingness to admit what she describes as Operation Warp Speed having been a failure.
“I don’t know if his motive is pride, or if there’s something else going on,” she said.
Mr. Trump planned to set up a commission to investigate childhood vaccines back in 2017 after he got elected and was about to take the White House, Mr. Kennedy broke the news and said he would chair the commission after he met Mr. Trump on Jan. 10, 2017.
However, the idea was never implemented and the Trump Campaign didn’t confirm the proposal.
Ms. Perry pointed to a video of Bill Gates stating that he had advised President Trump against the investigation.
“That would be a bad thing, don’t do that,” Mr. Gates said in the interview.
Though she doesn’t know if this was why President Trump abandoned the idea of starting a commission with Mr. Kennedy.
“And then, on the heels of that, we had this Operation Warp Speed that didn’t work, and yet he’s still protecting it,” she said. “That bothers me greatly.”
MaryJo Perry, president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, introduces Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 2, 2023. (Courtesy of Charlotte Stringer Photography) Also present was Dr. John Witcher, founder of MS Against Mandates, who was fired for treating COVID patients with ivermectin.
“Though he never mandated them, he pushed the shots and has said multiple times that he saved 100 million people by rolling out the vaccines,” Dr. Witcher said. “He knows that a lot of his constituents are 100 percent against the vaccine, but he doesn’t want to admit that he was duped by Dr. Fauci.”
“Of course, that’s what Kennedy has been out there saying from Day One,” Dr. Witcher said. “He continues to be against the shot. And we’ve got to stop these shots.”
‘A Man of Integrity’
Overall, Mr. Stringer said that it came off “very clearly” that Mr. Kennedy was “a man of integrity.”
“He believes in his positions, and he’s not afraid to change his views,” he said.
On whether a Trump/Kennedy ticket would work, Mr. Stringer said there’s no question that both love the country, unlike the current administration.
The alliance could have the potential to unify the nation, he said.
But there would need to be an alignment on issues like energy and the COVID vaccines, he said.
“I agree more with Trump on energy, and we’ve got to have a better energy policy, but how does that stand with where Kennedy stands on energy?” Mr. Stringer asked. “Kennedy doesn’t like nuclear energy or coal, and he worked to remove fracking from New York State, though he and Trump seem to agree on wind energy and the fact that it’s gotten out of control.”
On vaccines, they would need to come to an understanding, he said.
“Trump would need to reconcile with the great work Mr. Kennedy has done to expose the truth on vaccines so that Trump can leverage that and say, ‘You know what, I was duped,’” he said.
Both have taken a stance against the Ukraine war, which Mr. Stringer also opposes.
“We do not need to send them another dime,” he said. “I think there’s some suppression of real information on what’s going on over there. I think it’s one of the most corrupt governments and countries in the world, honestly.”
Mr. Stringer said he believes Mr. Kennedy would make a great vice president and a great president.
“He believes in what his uncle and his dad stood for, and I think he could keep us solid in a lot of ways,” he said, referring to the late President John F. Kennedy and the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, respectively.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 2, 2023. (Courtesy of Charlotte Stringer Photography)Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 2, 2023. (Courtesy of Charlotte Stringer Photography) Declaring Independence
Before Mr. Kennedy announced a week later on Monday, Oct. 9, that he would not be running as a Democrat but as an independent, those in last week’s audience were already speculating that he would be leaving his former party.
Mr. Stringer said he wasn’t concerned over whether this decision could end up drawing votes from either side.
“I’m not afraid that anyone speaking the truth is going to split the vote,” he said. “The big question is who’s he going to take the votes from? Biden or Trump?”
Predicting that Mr. Kennedy would leave the Democratic Party, Ms. Stringer wants to see President Trump leave the Republican Party and become independent as well.
“I would love to see them meet in the middle and run together,” she said.
Given the rate of the country’s decline, Ms. Stringer said she’s not overly concerned with hot-button social issues that seem to never be resolved and just wants to see President Trump back in office.
If Mr. Kennedy were to join him, even better, she said.
On concerns over spitting the vote, she believes Mr. Kennedy would take votes away from President Biden.
“There are a lot of people on the left who are seeing what Biden—or whoever is leading him—is doing and wishing they had voted for Trump,” she said. “It’s clear that a man who doesn’t know how to walk across a stage, who falls down, who can’t remember people’s names or state he’s in, is being controlled. He’s not running the show, and many on the left are realizing that their children won’t have a pot to pee in because he is turning this country into a laughingstock to the rest of the world.”
‘Trump Needs to Follow Kennedy’s Lead’
Dr. Witcher said he’s not alone in wanting to see Mr. Kennedy as vice president to President Trump.
“Like many people, I think they could be a great team together,” Dr. Witcher said. “We’ve got to expose the corruption at all levels of government.”
President Trump, he said, has the capacity and gumption to charge forward, while Mr. Kennedy has the experience of fighting against the pharmaceutical industry.
“The COVID vaccine mandates that were enacted are really the biggest issue, and we can’t forget that,” Dr. Witcher said. “There are a lot of people in his camp that voted for him who did not and will not take the vaccine. They saw COVID as a plandemic from day one. Trump needs to follow Kennedy’s lead on that because it’s the reason he’s so popular.”
When asked if he thought Mr. Kennedy would make a good leader, Ron Matis, the political director for the Mississippi District of the United Pentecostal Church, the organization that cosponsored the event with MPVR, said he thought that the most powerful statement he made was that he’s willing to examine all sides of the argument and, if wrong, adjust his worldview accordingly.
“That’s something you don’t hear people who are running for office say,” Mr. Matis said. “They seem to have everything baked in and are not willing to listen, so the fact that he said as a leader he would be open to changing his position based on evidence, I think a lot of people found that refreshing.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 20:45 - Zelensky Asks To Visit Israel In 'Solidarity' As Spotlight Shifts
Zelensky Asks To Visit Israel In ‘Solidarity’ As Spotlight Shifts
Most people at some point in their daily lives have experienced that annoying moment when a “friend” invites themselves over, typically at an inconvenient time, maybe for dinner or an intrusive lengthy conversation.
Perhaps that’s what the Israelis may be feeling after suffering one of the worst disasters in their history, as on Wednesday Axios is out with the following exclusive story: Zelensky asks to visit Israel in show of solidarity.
Two Ukrainian officials have told Axios that Zelensky, who is Jewish, wants to travel to Israel as a “show of solidarity” amid the Gaza war and as Israel is reeling from the weekend terror attacks by Hamas. Israeli officials have also confirmed the request to the publication.
Image: GPO/Times of Israel “Zelensky’s office sent an official request to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office asking to coordinate a visit, the Ukrainian and Israeli officials said,” the report says.
As soon as the Saturday Hamas assault on the Nova Trance music festival and area Jewish settlements began, the entire world and all major international media outlets became transfixed on developments in Israel and Gaza.
Pro-Israel as well as pro-Palestinian protests and counterprotests immediately sprang up in the US and Europe. Facebook profile flags were also switched in the blink of an eye – from Ukrainian to Israeli flags… it’s almost as if the public masses in the West “forgot” about Ukraine, as the Israel-Gaza war enters day five.
It seems the pro-Ukraine cause in general, including efforts in Congress and by the Biden administration to keep the billions in aid flowing, has been sapped of its prior enthusiasm and momentum. Zelensky, having been suddenly removed from the spotlight, now appears to be seeking to link his cause with Israel’s, the cynic might say.
Axios noted, “A visit by Zelensky would boost international support for Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza”—or perhaps it will in Zelensky’s own mind at least.
Zelensky made a surprise visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday to issue a solidary statement in support of Israel…
Zelensky: I urge all leaders to visit Israel and show their support for the people pic.twitter.com/knbqF1TQwp
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) October 11, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity … Israel has the full right to defend itself against terror,” Zelensky had said in a statement that came shortly after the Saturday Hamas attack.
Time will tell if this visit of the Ukrainian president will materialize. There’s as yet no date, and the Israelis are, well… very busy at the moment. Likely much too busy to have to roll out the red carpet for Zelensky to do a Tel Aviv photo op.
Some pundits have said that underlying this is a scramble for valuable US foreign aid, which could be diverted to Israel…
🇺🇦🇮🇱 Zelensky is furious he’s losing attention and US foreign aid to Israel. pic.twitter.com/I5FlV5KnzS
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) October 11, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But the Pentagon has sought to calm Kiev’s fears, promising in a new statement there’s enough aid to go around:
The secretary of defense said Wednesday that the Pentagon is able to continue providing aid to Ukraine in its war against Russian invasion and also support Israel after a Hamas attack Saturday sparked a new and bloody war there.
“Absolutely, we can do both, and we will do both,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at a press conference Wednesday in Germany, where he appeared with newly confirmed Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown to announce the 48th aid package to Ukraine.
But already public support for ‘endless’ support or ‘blank check’ funds to Ukraine was waning, and now as all eyes are on the Middle East, it is likely to further fade. After all, the major news networks have suddenly dropped their coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, airing instead 24/7 updates on Israel, Gaza bombardments, and the plight of the over 100 hostages taken by Hamas.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 20:25 - Offshore Wind Is An Economic And Environmental Catastrophe
Offshore Wind Is An Economic And Environmental Catastrophe
Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,
When it comes to “renewables” wreaking havoc on the environment, wind turbines have stiff competition. For example, over 500,000 square miles of biofuel plantations have already replaced farms and forests to replace a mere 4 percent of transportation fuel. To source raw materials to build “sustainable” batteries, mining operations are scaling up, with no end in sight, in nations with appalling labor conditions and nonexistent environmental regulations. But the worst offender is the wind industry.
America’s wind power industry somehow manages to attract almost no negative coverage in the press, or litigation from environmentalists, despite causing some of the most obvious and tragic environmental catastrophes so far this century. Last August I wrote about the ongoing slaughter of whales off America’s northeast coast thanks to construction of offshore wind turbines:
“When you detonate massive explosives, repeatedly drive steel piles into the ocean floor with a hydraulic hammer, and blast high decibel sonar mapping signals underwater, you’re going to harm animals that rely on sound to orient themselves in the ocean. To say it is mere coincidence that hundreds of these creatures have washed ashore, dead, all of a sudden, during precisely the same months when the blasting and pounding began, is brazen deception.”
Nonetheless, when the story can’t be buried, deception is the strategy. Not one major environmental organization, government watchdog agency, or media outlet has called for a slowdown in industrial offshore wind projects. Instead, they repeatedly claim these allegations are misinformation. And from that paragon of truth, FactCheck.org, we get this: “No Evidence Offshore Wind Development Killing Whales.”
Let’s set aside the obvious negative impact on whale populations of tens of thousands of marine surveying and construction sorties into offshore areas where shipping traffic has never before been concentrated, or the impact of noise and explosions on not one site, such as would be the case with a lone oil rig, but on thousands of sites, each one being prepared for an offshore wind turbine. The destruction wrought by wind turbines extends well beyond what it’s doing to whales.
A report just released by a New England fishermen association summarizes research they completed on offshore wind projects. Their findings are stunning. Just the geographic extent of these proposed offshore wind projects is unprecedented. According to the report, “Federal regulators at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have designated almost 10 million acres for wind farm surveys and development.” That is over 15,000 square miles.
Not included in that allocation are the corridors where high voltage lines will have to cross the ocean floor to transfer electricity from the turbines to land-based power grids. The report found that “electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emanating from subsea cables appear to produce birth deformities in juvenile lobster.” That’s just the beginning.
The report also found that wind farms “increase sea surface temperatures and alter upper-ocean hydrodynamics in ways scientists do not yet understand,” and “whip up sea sediment and generate highly turbid wakes that are 30-150 meters wide and several kilometers in length, having a major impact on primary production by phytoplankton which are the base of marine food chains.” And there’s more.
Wind turbines “generate operational noise in a low frequency range (less than 700 Hz) with most energy concentrated between 2 and 200 Hz. This frequency range overlaps with that used by fish for communication, mating, spawning, and spatial movement,” and “high voltage direct current undersea cables produce magnetic fields that negatively affect the drifting trajectory of haddock larvae by interfering with their magnetic orientation abilities.” Haddock are “a significant portion of U.S. commercial fish landings and are an important component of the marine food chain.”
Nothing to see here, right?
What’s going on off the coast of New England is being allowed to happen because of disgraceful negligence on the part of America’s environmentalist community. What’s about to happen in California is just as bad, and is proceeding without any organized opposition or serious criticism.
Earlier this year, the federal government leased 583 square miles of deep ocean waters off the coast of California for offshore wind farms. When the first phase of these offshore wind developments are completed, these wind farms will deliver 4.5 gigawatts of “clean” electricity to the California grid. That may sound like a lot of electricity. It’s not.
To begin with, even offshore wind only blows intermittently. The most optimistic projections for the actual yield of these turbines are never more than 50 percent. This means that in terms of baseload power, only 2.25 gigawatts will come from these new offshore wind farms. California’s average electricity consumption is 32 gigawatts (of which only 22 gigawatts are produced in-state), which means if these offshore wind farms are ever completed, they’ll supply a mere 6 percent of California’s current electricity demand – the same amount currently coming from Diablo Canyon, California’s last operating nuclear power plant. But how many turbines will this take, and what will they look like?
The biggest wind turbines in the world can now produce 10 megawatts at full output. To generate this much electricity, these machines are 1,000 feet tall, which is more than three times higher than the Statue of Liberty from the water line to the tip of the torch. To achieve a collective capacity at full output of 4.5 gigawatts, 450 of these would have to be built, floated 20 miles offshore, anchored to the seabed with cables nearly a mile long, then from each one a high voltage line would also have to descend 4,000 feet to reach the ocean floor, where it would then lie on the sea bed – some proposals actually call for them to be buried – to transmit electricity to the onshore power grid. Four hundred and fifty floating wind turbines, each one of them with vertical dimensions that are longer than a modern aircraft supercarrier. There are huge and unresolved engineering hurdles involved in developing large floating wind turbines.
Bear in mind, if California’s state legislature gets its way, and the state goes fully electric – think all space heaters, water heaters, dryers, along with all trucks, buses and cars going fully electric – electricity demand will more than triple. While it’s hypothetical, the math is simple and revealing: to get 100 gigawatts of baseload power from offshore wind, you would need 20,000 turbines. And imagine all the high voltage distribution lines, and all the batteries to buffer the massive surges of intermittent power.
To somewhat return to reality, we must acknowledge that none of California’s enlightened planners intend to use offshore wind to generate 100 percent of California’s renewable electricity. But in one of the most reputable mainstream studies produced to date, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, Mark Jacobson, completed a series of simulations, culminating in a report released in December 2021 that called for 20 percent of California’s electricity to derive from offshore wind. Making more conservative assumptions regarding the size of each offshore turbine and the yield, he predicted more than 12,000 offshore wind turbines would be required.
Imagine the logistics.
How many ships will this take? How many submarines and divers? How many port facilities? How many new homes for the construction workers? What about the undersea power cables? What about the storage batteries needed to buffer nearly 20 gigawatts of on again, off again electricity? What about the ongoing maintenance? What about the raw materials needed to build all these leviathans? What about the billions and billions of dollars that will flow into the pockets of the special interests behind this disaster of a project, paid by taxpayers and ratepayers?
Overall, Jacobson’s study projected about one-third of California’s electricity to come from a combination of onshore and offshore wind turbines. Shall we reiterate what else we already know about wind turbines? Their slaughter of raptors, bats, and insects? Their incessant, low frequency sound that is audible for miles and, despite “debunking” articles that defy basic common sense, drives people and animals nuts? The visual blight? The staggering quantity of materials required for their manufacture, and the difficult if not impossible task of recycling the materials after they’ve reached the end of their service life?
Where are the environmentalists?
Where, for that matter, are the economists? Is the mantra “climate crisis” so powerful that literally anything goes, including a scheme that delivers not only environmental but economic catastrophe? In 2020, an in-depth financial analysis by the Manhattan Institute documented how “offshore wind’s costs will far exceed its benefits.” And that was before the supply chain problems, inflation, and interest rate hikes that have forced offshore wind developers from New England to California to greatly increase required rates, or pull out of projects altogether.
Imagine if this was an oil rig, a desalination plant, or a nuclear power plant. The opposition would be apoplectic, and that is not hypothetical conjecture. California had a chance to build another major desalination plant which would have supplied 55,000 acre feet per year of drought proof fresh water to the residents of Orange County, population 3 million. Along with other projects in the works, this desalination plant could have made that relatively arid coastal county completely independent of imported water. But environmentalists fought the project at every turn, and in May 2022, in a unanimous vote, the California Coastal Commission denied the construction permit.
As for oil and gas, California’s state legislators are doing everything they can to destroy production in the state. Despite having massive reserves of oil and gas, Californians have to import more than 75 percent of their oil and more than 90 percent of their natural gas. And when it comes to nuclear power, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, California’s last one, narrowly escapes regulatory shutdown every few years, despite being designed to operate well past the middle of this century.
The scandalous double standard at work here can only be attributed to a combination of powerful special interests representing the wind power industry, interacting with a state legislature and environmentalist movement that is either bought off or alarmingly stupid. As it is, hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidies are on track to pay for offshore wind. If it is not stopped, it will be one of the most egregious cases of economic waste and environmental destruction in human history.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 20:05 - IMF Expects Subdued Growth As "Tightening Starts To Bite"
IMF Expects Subdued Growth As “Tightening Starts To Bite”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published its latest update on the state of the world economy on Tuesday, predicting sluggish growth for 2023 and 2024, as many challenges persist and policy tightening is taking effect.
As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, according to its World Economic Outlook, the organization now expects global GDP to grow by 3.0 percent this year, down from 3.5 percent in 2022.
You will find more infographics at Statista
For next year, the IMF predicts 2.9 percent growth, a slight downward correction from its April 2023 forecast of 3.0 percent.
“Economic activity still falls short of its pre-pandemic path, especially in emerging market and developing economies and there are widening divergences among regions,” the report finds.
“Several forces are holding back the recovery. Some reflect the long-term consequences of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and increasing geoeconomic fragmentation. Others are more cyclical in nature, including the effects of monetary policy tightening necessary to reduce inflation, withdrawal of fiscal support amid high debt and extreme weather events.”
Aside from inflation, which is expected to remain elevated across advanced economies until 2025, many of the problems that weighed on the global economy in 2022 – high debt levels, the war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions – have carried over into 2023, resulting in continued uncertainty and muted growth prospects. And while China’s reopening boosted global growth prospects earlier this year, the country’s property crisis now poses yet another downside risk, not only to domestic growth as a deepening of the crisis could have global spillover effects.
All things considered, the IMF finds that risks to its latest outlook are slightly more balanced compared to six months ago, when the U.S. and Swiss banking crises as well as the specter of a potentially disastrous U.S. debt default cast large shadows over the global economy.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 19:45 - CBDCs: The Ultimate Tool Of Oppression
CBDCs: The Ultimate Tool Of Oppression
Authored by Laura Dodsworth via The Brownstone Institute,
‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever,’ said O’Brien, the grand inquisitor of the totalitarian regime in Orwell’s futuristic novel 1984.
Alternatively, you could imagine a sandal.
Last month I visited Sutton Hoo, the famous Anglo-Saxon burial site of a king and his ship in Suffolk. A gold coin pendant in the museum caught my eye. It depicted a triumphant Roman standing over a conquered barbarian, his sandalled foot placed firmly on the supine opponent’s chest.
Coin depicting Emperor Honorius at Sutton Hood museum. View a better image on the British Museum website. The ship burial probably dates from 625 AD, long after the Romans had left. The gold could have been melted down by the Anglo-Saxons but instead it was fashioned into a pendant. Maybe it conferred the prestige of the Roman world onto the wearer, or was totemic of victory. Perhaps it was an ironic reminder that the Romans were gone and every empire has its day.
The Roman on this coin was the Emperor Honorius, who ruled between 395 and 423. Miserably for Honorius, he was emperor when the Visigoths captured and plundered Rome and when the British Isles slipped from Roman control. In fact, when Romano-British cities asked him for help against barbarian attacks he told them to look to their own defences. You would never know all this from the coin, which is a fine piece of reputational management.
Coins have always been more than lumps of precious metals; they are also a means of propaganda and control.
Early bronze coins depicted cattle, as the state property of Rome was originally comprised of herds of cattle. Then coins featured Roman deities such as Mars, the god of war, or symbols of the state such as the she-wolf with twins. Later in the Republic, images of politicians featured on coins. The first living man to be embossed on a coin was the powerful Julius Caesar. One silver denarius minted around 29 BC shows a Nile crocodile (the symbol of Egypt) with the inscription ‘Egypt conquered.’ And other coins also showed emperors defeating barbarians, gleaming with undistilled power.
Imagine handling a coin which depicts your own subjugation. If you were privileged, hard-working or lucky enough to obtain some of this lucre for yourself, it was nonetheless a reminder of the sandal on your chest. Every time you bought a luxury good, your fingers would slide over the embossed symbol of your defeat. Coins reminded you of your place in the world.
Coins in circulation in the UK are at a record low. In fact, not a single one or two penny coin was issued in 2022. Yet there has never been greater potential to use money for propaganda and control.
Digital money and particularly Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) offer the potential for the government, through the central bank, to see every purchase and transfer you make, in real time. And not just see, but control.
Of course, our governments in the West will say that central bank money in digital form is convenient, safe, and stable. They will promise never to use it as an instrument of control, as an authoritarian government would. Here in the UK, our cosily-named proposed ‘Britcoin’ would supposedly exist alongside cash.
China, the country that took the lead with lockdowns, has taken the lead with CBDCs. It started researching CBDCs in 2014 and has been running live trials of DCNY (Digital Chinese Yuan) for years, with the size and scale increasing each time. The Chinese government has tested expiration dates to encourage users to spend their DCNY quickly, for times when the economy needs stimulus. That’s right, an expiry date for people’s money has already been trialled.
The Chinese ‘Social Credit System’ is a broad regulatory framework that is designed to score and incentivise the trustworthiness of individuals and companies. In other words, the government will either reward or punish various forms of behaviour using real-time monitoring, data gathering and sharing, curate blacklists and redlists, and use punishments, sanctions and rewards.
A report in 2019 found that 23 million people had been blacklisted from travelling by plane or train due to their low social credit score. In 2018 a student was denied access to university because her father was in debt. There isn’t a centralised and transparent set of rules, instead it’s been operated locally so far, but it has been reported that behaviour such as poor driving, spending too long playing video games, or posting fake news can result in low ratings, as well as more serious matters such as not fulfilling court orders.
You won’t find many Chinese critics of the Social Credit System – there is probably a sanction for criticism of government policy. You’d think this system would unite Western commentators in horrified criticism, but it is quite neutrally and even warmly described by some left-leaning writers and think tanks.
We don’t need to look as far as China to understand the implications here in the West. In 2019, Mastercard and Doconomy launched a credit card with a carbon footprint calculator that can switch off your spending when you reach your carbon max. This functionality is voluntary, but it could be an automatic aspect of a CBDC.
Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said that the Government would be required to make the final decision on whether a UK CBDC should be programmable. Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at the Bank, said:
‘You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.’
As this quote reveals, CBDCs won’t just alter our relationship with money but with government. Governments around the world have shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies during the management of the Covid pandemic, and more recently to discourage driving in cities. Behavioural science has been leveraged to manipulate, incentivise and coerce us into behaving as model citizens. Do we want to negotiate with Daddy State to be allowed to spend our ‘pocket money’ as we wish?
An account-based CBDC would give the government enormous power over your money as your identity is connected to the money. A 2020 Bank of England discussion paper gave examples of programmability, for example that smart cars could automatically pay for fuel directly at the dispensing pump, with automated taxation and charitable donations at point of sale.
That all sounds very convenient. But politicians pushing Net Zero goals on an unwilling population could choose to go a step further. If you insist on keeping your private car, despite the inconvenient 20 MPH speed limits, the ULEZ and congestion charges, and the Low Traffic Neighbourhood barriers, they could simply dictate a maximum fuel spend in a given time period. Just ten of your Britcoins on petrol this month, Sir, no more driving for you.
Money grants freedom and so it is also weaponised to deny freedom. Domestic abusers restrict access to money, and therefore essentials such as food, clothing, and travel. Economic abuse is insidious, effective and subtle, and it leaves no bruises. As with the domestic abuser, the potential is there for the government to weaponise money to exert the ultimate financial control.
The jackboot and the sandal were graphic symbols of authority subjugating conquered peoples. If programmable CBDCs are introduced, your own digital financial footprint will be used to control you. The means of control change over time but the insatiable desire for total control remains constant.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 19:25 - Biden Classified Doc Scandal Deepens
Biden Classified Doc Scandal Deepens
More than a year before White House lawyers claim to have ‘discovered’ classified documents at the Penn Biden Center in November of 2022, evidence has emerged that White House employees ‘inspected’ or ‘took inventory’ of them, while another official removed “a few” boxes containing Biden materials that October, according to the House Oversight Committee.
According to a letter to White House counsel Edward Siskel from Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), the official timeline of events provided by the Biden team “omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating.”
Comer says that a Penn Biden Center employee told the committee that on March 18, 2021, senior White House aide Annie Tomasini “[took] inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials” stored at the center, where he established a private office after his vice presidency.
The same witness also said that on Oct. 13, 2022, Oval Office deputy director of operations, Ashley Williams, removed “a few” of Biden’s boxes.
The White House has previously claimed that all relevant documents were either moved to the National Archives or the DOJ, while Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, said that the documents were discovered on November 2, 2022 – a total lie.
The committee, which has conducted three witness interviews, says on five occasions, White House employees, including former White House Counsel Dana Remus, and the president’s former assistant Kathy Chung, a current Department of Defense employee, went to the Penn Biden Center to take inventory, pack up or remove materials. These visits occurred between March 2021 and mid-October 2022. –CBS News
“There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials,” said Comer in his letter.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
We have discovered new information about the number of White House employees involved in President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.
President Biden’s attorney stated that the discovery of classified documents at Penn Biden Center occurred on November… pic.twitter.com/rLN1VJyRKC
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) October 11, 2023
The letter requests transcribed interviews with Remus, Williams, Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, a top adviser to the first lady, and Katie Reilly, a West Wing aide, according to CBS News.
It is also asking for documentation and communication related to the documents. The committee has already interviewed Chung, who was then-Vice President Biden’s assistant.
Democrats, of course, have resorted to whataboutism…
“Former President Trump’s willful retention of hundreds of highly classified documents, his defiance of court-ordered subpoenas, his reported disclosure of our country’s most sensitive national security information, and false statements to law enforcement should worry the Chair of a congressional committee with jurisdiction over government records,” said a spokesman for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. “Instead Chairman Comer is using the Committee to focus on President Biden whose complete cooperation with the Special Counsel’s investigation stands in stark contrast, including voluntarily participating in a two-day interview with the Special Counsel, and opening the doors to his Penn Biden Center office and private residence to investigators.”
As Jonathan Turley noted earlier, the ‘ultimate punchline’ here could be that Special Counsel Robert Hur may be in a sticky situation if he actually finds evidence of a crime.
On its face, the President claims that he had no knowledge of these documents appears dubious at best.
Some classified material reportedly goes back to Biden’s time as a senator — material that he would have had to remove from a sensitive compartmented information facility or secure room on Capitol Hill.
More importantly, the documents from the Obama Administration were removed when Biden left as vice president.
They were then divided and repeatedly moved to different locations. That suggests not just knowledge but a purpose.
Why were they divided and some documents were found in his garage and possibly his library?
If Hur found fingerprints that contradict Biden’s statements, he could face not just some of the same charges brought against Trump but also possible false statement or obstruction charges.
Notably, Biden used counsel to conduct searches and (as in the Trump case) additional classified materials were found after the Biden team said that they had finished their searches.
There are serious questions over whether, in allowing uncleared counsel to search through these documents, evidence may have been lost in how they were stored or appeared in locations like the garage.
Hur can bring charges against third parties, who would not be barred from indictment under the DOJ policy.
But what does Hur then do if he has evidence against the President himself?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 19:05 - Out-Of-Hospital Cardiac Arrests Spiked In 2021, Study Finds
Out-Of-Hospital Cardiac Arrests Spiked In 2021, Study Finds
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Cardiac arrests that happened outside of hospitals spiked in 2021, according to a new U.S. study.
An ambulance in Seattle, Wash., in a file image. (David Ryder/Getty Images) Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests were higher after the COVID-19 pandemic than before the pandemic, U.S. researchers found.
They analyzed data from Seattle and King County in Washington state from the years 2018 to 2021. The dataset consisted of 13,081 patients, including 7,102 who were dead when emergency responders arrived and another 4,952 who were treated but died ahead of hospitalization or in the hospital.
Compared to the prepandemic years, or 2018 and 2019, there were 19 percent more people who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the pandemic period, or 2020 and 2021, researchers said. That included a 10.8 percent increase in those who survived until responders arrived and a 27.2 percent increase in patients declared dead when responders reached the patients.
The increase in those who survived was among 18- to 64-year-olds, with the rate among those 65 and older holding steady.
The numbers were the highest during 2021, after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out.
The researchers did not factor in vaccination status, instead aiming to examine the impact of COVID-19 on out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
Of the people who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests during the pandemic and survived until emergency responders arrived, 6.2 percent tested positive for COVID-19 in the two weeks before the cardiac arrests or the week following the cardiac arrest, or were diagnosed with COVID-19. Just 3.7 percent of a random sample of those who were declared dead on arrival had COVID-19, which was lower than the percentage in a recent Maryland study.
During the pandemic, the Washington state researchers said, survival was less likely among people who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA), consistent with previous research. While 42.6 percent of people survived to hospital admission before the pandemic, just 35.7 percent did in 2020 and 2021. And compared to 2018 and 2019, when 19.2 percent of the patients survived to hospital discharge, just 15.4 percent of patients were discharged alive during the pandemic.
COVID-19 contributed to the downturn in survival, but only a little, the researchers said. They pegged it as responsible for 18.5 percent of the downturn.
The major factors, they said, included social isolation that led to fewer observed events, a delay in health care workers treating patients due to updated equipment and resuscitation protocols, and hampered emergency response times. The factors were described as Utstein characteristics.
“OHCA survival was poorer during the pandemic years, largely owing to changes in systemwide Utstein characteristics, as opposed to patient-specific acute SARS-CoV-2 infection,” Jennifer Liu, an epidemiologist at the Seattle and King County Department of Public Health, and her coauthors wrote. SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19.
Other groups have also said that indirect reasons for the lowered survival rate and increased occurrence rate could stem from reasons such as delayed response times.
Ms. Liu and the other authors declared no conflicts of interest or funding.
Limitations of the paper, which was published by JAMA Network Open, include the data being from one county.
Vaccination Impact?
Ms. Liu did not respond to a request for comment, including why the group did not analyze the possible impact of vaccination on the increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The COVID-19 vaccines can cause myocarditis, or heart inflammation, as well as other cardiac events.
“What most striking is the lack of analysis of a possible correlation of OHCA case rates with the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns that started at the end of 2020 and continued throughout 2021,” Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Epoch Times via email.
“Such correlation has been observed in other studies and since the authors seem to have access to comprehensive case-level data (e.g., medical records), it looked like they could have potentially done that,” Mr. Levi, who was not involved in the research, added. “At the very least the authors should have analyzed the temporal correlation between community vaccination rates and the OHCA case rates.”
Mr. Levi noted that the number of events was primarily grouped in the pandemic and pre-pandemic periods, apart from one graph in the supplementary content, which showed the year with the most events was 2021.
“It is not even clear if there is an increase in 2020 compared to the baseline, or the entire increase is observed in 2021,” Mr. Levi said.
The researchers did find a statistically significant correlation between weekly COVID-19 rates in the community and the weekly rate of OHCA, but only in 2020, not in 2021. Mr. Levi contributed to research that found the worse outcomes among people who suffered heart cardiac arrests during the pandemic in Boston stemmed from a reluctance to seek health care. He and other researchers also found that in Israel, increases in emergency calls for young people for cardiovascular events were significantly associated with COVID-19 vaccination.
Some other papers have found that prior to the vaccine rollout, people who tested positive for COVID-19 and suffered a cardiac arrest were more likely to die when compared to people who did not test positive.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 18:45 - What Do US Teens Want To Be When They Grow Up?
What Do US Teens Want To Be When They Grow Up?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
This supposedly innocent question has been lobbed at children and teenagers for decades, although the answers might differ now due to the rise of social media and the possibility of achieving worldwide fame not being confined to appearing on the big screen or arena stages anymore.
As Statista’s Florian Zandt reports, according to a 2021 survey by YouGov weighted by age and gender, teenage boys and girls in the United States share some similarities when it comes to their dream job – even though the top spots couldn’t be further away from each other.
You will find more infographics at Statista
12 percent of male teens listed professional athlete as their preferred future job, followed by 11 percent who wanted to become an online content creator.
Classic dream jobs like musician (six percent) and doctor or nurse (five percent) still made the top 5, albeit barely.
For females, the latter seems to be the most coveted future job, with 13 percent of teenage girls wanting to become a medical professional, while 11 percent put actress as their dream occupation.
The fact that becoming a YouTuber, streamer or vlogger made the top five for participants of both genders shows the rapid development of financial and societal clout attributed to online personalities, for better or worse.
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the market size for influencer marketing has doubled since 2019 and was valued at $16.4 billion worldwide in 2022.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 18:25 - Netanyahu Vows "Every Hamas Operative Will Die" As Israeli Citizenry Mobilizes For War
Netanyahu Vows “Every Hamas Operative Will Die” As Israeli Citizenry Mobilizes For War
Update(1820ET): PM Netanyahu, just after forming an emergency war-time government with Benny Gantz…
Benjamin Netanyahu:
“Every Hamas operative will die. Hamas is ISIS.” pic.twitter.com/7HBwdwS10f
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) October 11, 2023
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And Gantz too spoke of total societal mobilization in Wednesday night words:
Benny Gantz, who joined an emergency government with Netanyahu, stated on Wednesday that his cooperation with the government is “a clear message to our adversaries and to all Israeli citizens: all of us together are mobilizing.” Gantz said after the Security Cabinet meeting in which he participated, “Just as people from left and right, from the city and the village, go out to fight, decisions of the government will also be made by people from different camps. Now, we are all one camp – the camp of the people of Israel.”
These Israeli leaders don’t seem too concerned (an understatement) about the immense and rapidly mounting civilian casualties among Palestinians caught under the air war with nowhere to go, as a long, bloody ground campaign in the Gaza Strip looks inevitable.
Below is an interesting clip from 2009 of Pat Buchanan offering his thoughts on what’s been a decades-long crisis:
Pat Buchanan warns in 2009 that the brothers of the little girls killed by Israel during the bombing of Gaza that year would grow up to join Hamas and fight Israel. Well, it’s 14 years later and they’re grown up now pic.twitter.com/ZMNjcTv7Pp
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 11, 2023
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IDF reservists have been returning to Israel from abroad in droves…
A welcome party receiving returnee IDF reservists at the airport.#OperationIronSwords pic.twitter.com/Rjsp5JddRo
— Edward (@DonKlericuzio) October 11, 2023
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* * *
Update(1425ET): US National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby confirmed that the United States will be sending the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean, after it was already announced that the USS Gerald R. Ford would be deployed as part of “support” operations related to the Israel-Gaza conflict.
However, Kirby said that the Eisenhower will not be directly joining or escorting. Instead, the carrier will be in the region for availability if called upon. While in a press briefing Kirby tried to downplay the dual carrier deployment as somewhat routine or expected, they will certainly be on standby to potentially intervene if all hell continues breaking loose in the Middle East.
UPDATE: NSC Spokesperson John Kirby confirms the USS Dwight D Eisenhower carrier strike group will be headed to the Mediterranean but says it will not join the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group as a second strike group, but will be available in the area if needed. pic.twitter.com/kpaAxbgXfc
— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) October 11, 2023
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Kirby also confirmed that the US administration is in talks with Qatar as part of mediation efforts to free the hostages being held by Hamas. It’s believed there are Americans among the captives in Gaza, which at this moment is being pounded by Israeli airstrikes. Kirby said the following:
“Obviously, we’re in discussions not only with the Israelis, about what hostage recovery could look like, but with other allies and partners in the region. And there are some countries like Qatar that have open lines of communication with Hamas, so of course, we’re casting the net wide as you would expect, we want to get these all the hostages back with their families, particularly the American hostages, no question about that.”
Meanwhile…
MCCAUL: US SPECIAL FORCES, FBI SHOULD BE USED TO FREE HOSTAGES
* * *
Update(1304ET): The IDF has revised its earlier alert as follows, downplaying the severity of the northern infiltration alert:
IDF spokesperson: Further to the reports of intrusion from the Lebanese border into Israel’s airspace, as of now fear of intrusion has been ruled out.
An updated headline from Times of Israel: IDF says no drone infiltration in north after scares send millions into shelters
An emergency war-time government has been formally announced in Israel:
Israel’s Netanyahu forms unity government with ex-Defense Minister Gantzhttps://t.co/SyuTAWnDTM
— Ayman Abdel Nour (@aabnour) October 11, 2023
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* * *
Update(1250ET): Israeli emergency authorities, specifically the Israeli Homefront Command, has ordered residents in the far northern town of Ma’alot-Tarshiha to stay in their homes and lock their doors, warning of possible infiltration of militants from Lebanon. The alert stayed active for a brief period Wednesday. There are current official reports of an airspace breach from Lebanon, possibly drones sent by Hezbollah:
🚨A report was recieved regarding a suspected infiltration from Lebanon into Israeli airspace.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 11, 2023
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The current top headline at The Times of Israel reads:
Residents across north told to shelter as several aircraft appear to infiltrate Israel
On the other side of the border, Lebanese residents are scrambling for exit as fighting grows, and as evidence of damaged and burning homes and buildings begins to circulate:
Cross-border violence between Lebanon and Israel has escalated into a fourth day, pushing many Lebanese in southern towns to leave as Hezbollah and the Israeli military continue to trade fire.
Hezbollah said it fired precision missiles on an Israeli position across from the Lebanese town of Dharya on Wednesday, drawing retaliatory Israeli shelling that has left a number of houses damaged.
Tensions have been boiling along the Israeli-Lebanese border since Palestinian fighters launched a surprise multi-front assault on Saturday morning. The Israeli military has been heavily bombarding the Gaza Strip since, while Palestinian groups have continued to fire thousands of rockets towards Israel. At least 1,055 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis have been killed.
Sirens are reportedly going off across northern Israel, amid unverified reports of major drone action:
Early reports indicate dozens of drones launched from Lebanon at Israel pic.twitter.com/sBSMox7bpK
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) October 11, 2023
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Amid the escalating and highly dangerous (for the prospect of major, broader war) tit-for-tat Israel-Hezbollah escalation, both sides are vowing “decisive” response to deadly attacks.
News wires are now reporting that 22 Americans have been confirmed killed after the weekend Hamas terror rampage in southern Israel.
The US Embassy in Beirut is meanwhile refuting reports that it is evacuating, but is it a sign of things to come as the south Lebanon situation slides?
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut has not evacuated and is open and operating normally. Reports saying otherwise are false. For more information and travel advisories, visit our embassy website: https://t.co/QDEaP8dkZR
— U.S. Embassy Beirut (@usembassybeirut) October 11, 2023
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A below review of the last hours via journalist Joyce Karam. UPDATE:
- Lebanon front, Israel- Hamas war
- Drones, infiltration from Lebanon
- Israel fired flares
- Residents in N Israel to enter shelter
- Gaza hospitals full capacity
- Israel gets war cabinet
- Evacuations from Israel
- 200,000 Gazans displaced
* * *
A worst-case scenario for Israel is emerging: the dreaded multi-front war involving Hezbollah, which is a much more formidable and better equipped paramilitary force than Hamas.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus has confirmed Wednesday Israel fired rockets into southern Lebanon for at least a second straight day, striking Hezbollah positions after the Iran-backed group struck Israeli soldiers with anti-tank missiles fired from across the border.
Aftermath of Israeli rocket attack on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Dhaira on Monday, via Zuma Press Bloomberg has also confirmed in a note, “Israel said an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon hit one of its military posts near the border, news that saw investors seek haven assets like US Treasuries.” This as an Israeli ground invasion into the Gaza Strip, which is sure to be a bloody campaign, appears imminent after PM Netanyahu told Biden in a Tuesday phone call, “We have to go in. We can’t negotiate now.”
Netanyahu also previously vowed in public statements that “what we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.”
Citing IDF spokesman Conricus further, Fox News underscores that Israeli is now “actively fighting a secondary front” in the north and is surging troops toward that end:
…the Israeli army shelled the Lebanese border town of Duhaira and the surrounding area where the missile attack came from. He also said Israel was actively fighting a secondary front along Israel’s northern border with Hezbollah in Lebanon, in addition to the counteroffensive the IDF is launching in the Gaza Strip.
“We have deployed tens of thousands of additional units along the northern border,” Conricus said, including infantry, special forces, armored forces, artillery, air forces, and “additional assets including intelligence and logistics.”
Cross-border shelling has occurred since Sunday, leading to multiple casualties among Hezbollah members and possibly other Islamic factions. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has also had a presence there and has taken casualties. The IDF said, “The message to Hezbollah is very clear: ‘If they try to attack, we are ready and we are vigilant on our border.’”
At least one “Israeli senior officer” has been killed at the northern border since the exchange of fire has increased. Another two Israeli troops have also been confirmed killed. Hezbollah has claimed to have wounded and killed a “large number” of Israeli troops.
Al Jazeera wrote Tuesday that “At least three Hezbollah members, an Israeli senior officer and two Palestinian fighters have been killed so far in the cross-border fighting.”
And the IDF has confirmed: “In Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah have already fired anti-tank missiles and rockets at our positions and soldiers, fortunately without any significant casualties,” Conricus said. “There has already been an attempt of Islamic jihad terrorists infiltrating into Israel. That attempt was successfully thwarted by the IDF, sadly at the cost of a senior [IDF] officer and two other soldiers.”
Hezbollah has meanwhile issued a fresh statement saying it sees the United States as a direct accomplice in Israel’s killing of Gazans, as the Israeli air war continues, with Palestinian deaths on Wednesday approaching 1,000 after four straight nights of unprecedented bombardment.
Hezbollah issues a statement saying the United States is a ‘full partner’ of Israeli ‘aggression’ on the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah also says that it holds the United States fully responsible for the airstrikes that are killing civilians in Gaza.
— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 11, 2023
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“At least 950 people, including at least 140 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry,” CBS reports. ‘The ministry said in a social media post that at least 5,000 more people in the blockaded Palestinian territory were wounded, most of them women and children.”
Dangerously, and amid fears of a broader regional conflagration, Syria launched missiles on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which didn’t appear to do significant damage. However, Israel has reportedly released an emergency statement for settlements in the area: “Instructions have been given to residents of the Golan to stay near shelters.” Israel says it is forming an emergency war-time government.
ISRAEL PLANS TO ANNOUNCE EMERGENCY GOVT TONIGHT: ISRAEL RADIO
Iran’s Supreme Leaders has issued fresh threats, even while asserting it didn’t have a direct hand in the Saturday Hamas terror rampage into Southern Israel:
The Zionist regime wants to justify the mass murder of the people in #Gaza by attempting to show itself as the victim.
Heads of the usurper regime should know that the response to these atrocities will be a heavier slap to their hideous faces.— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) October 10, 2023
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Complicating matters and sending regional tensions soaring further at a moment of fresh Iran threats, a US carrier group will soon cross the Atlantic to park in waters off Israel as part of “support” operations. A second carrier could also be on its way:
The US might deploy a second aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to support Israel’s attack on Gaza, two Pentagon officials told POLITICO on Tuesday.
In the wake of the Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US announced that it was deploying the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group, which arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean on Tuesday.
The Pentagon officials said that the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group, which includes several other warships, were already scheduled to leave Norfolk, Virginia, this week and that it might be ordered to also deploy near Israel. The Pentagon said that the Eisenhower could leave on Friday and arrive in the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of October.
A double aircraft carrier deployment would be a massive show of force in the region and could risk escalating the situation. Some Shia factions in Iraq have threatened attacks on US bases in the country if the US “intervenes” to support Israel against Hamas.
Hezbollah has issued a statement directly responding to this possibility, saying, “Sending aircraft carriers to the region with the aim of raising enemy morale reveals the weakness of the Zionist military machine.”
More images have begun to emerge of the ratcheting conflict along the Israel-Lebanese border…
⚡️Consequences of the Israeli bombing on homes in the Lebanese town of Al-Dhahira this morning pic.twitter.com/Q6LbSIoIWS
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) October 11, 2023
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In Israel, the death toll from the weekend attack has risen to 1,200 – according to new official statements. The Biden administration has also confirmed that at least 14 of these were US citizens.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 18:20 - Christian Baker Who Refused To Make LGBT Cake Scores Legal Victory
Christian Baker Who Refused To Make LGBT Cake Scores Legal Victory
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips has scored a victory of sorts in his ongoing lawsuit for refusing to bake a gender transition cake, with the Colorado Supreme Court agreeing to hear his appeal.
Baker Jack Phillips decorates a cake in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., on Sep. 21, 2017. (Rick Wilking/Reuters) Last week, in a win for Mr. Phillips’ years-long legal fight, the Colorado Supreme Court finally agreed to hear his case after a lower court held that Colorado authorities can force the baker to put messages on cakes that violate his personal beliefs, according to a case announcements posting.
Mr. Phillips, who in 2018 won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit for declining to bake a custom cake for a same-sex wedding, was sued once again in 2019 for refusing to create a cake for a transgender lawyer celebrating a gender transition.
The attorney, Autumn Scardina, also demanded that Mr. Phillips create a custom cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana, according to court filings.
But Mr. Phillips declined, saying he would not create cakes expressing those messages for anyone.
Then, a lower appeals court held that Colorado authorities could compel Mr. Phillips to put messages on his cakes that go against his religious convictions, prompting Mr. Phillips’ attorneys to file an appeal in April with the Colorado Supreme Court.
Subsequently, in July 2023, following a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of a Christian website designer who argued that Colorado’s law requiring her to create websites celebrating same-sex weddings infringed on her constitutional rights, Mr. Phillips’ attorneys filed a supplemental notice with the state Supreme Court, asking for a hearing.
More Details
In the supplemental filing, Mr. Phillips’ attorneys asked the Colorado Supreme Court to apply the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis and similarly affirm Mr. Phillips’ constitutional right to free speech.
And so on Oct. 3, in a victory for Mr. Phillips’ legal battle, the Colorado Supreme Court finally agreed to hear his case.
“Free speech is for everyone. As the U.S. Supreme Court held in 303 Creative, the government can’t force artists to express messages they don’t believe,” Jake Warner, senior counsel for the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), said in a statement.
“Because the attorney asked Jack to create a custom cake that would celebrate and symbolize a transition from male to female, the requested cake is speech under the First Amendment,” he added.
“You don’t need to agree with Jack’s views to agree that Americans shouldn’t be compelled to express what they don’t believe,” he added.
Mr. Phillips told Fox News in an interview that he hopes the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case gives him hope for an end to his years-long legal fight.
“I hope it is the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m pretty excited about it,” Mr. Phillips told Fox News in an interview.
“The state court turned us down in our first case, but I think they realize now that I serve everybody,” he added.
The Colorado Supreme Court has yet to schedule oral arguments in the case.
Mr. Phillips said the case is about his right to express his religious freedom and to “do so without fear of punishment in the marketplace.”
Supreme Court Decision In Web Designer Case
In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Christian web designer Lorie Smith, who said she would design a website for anyone—including if they identify as LGBT—so long as the requested content doesn’t run afoul of her religious beliefs.
Ms. Smith said that, when clients asked her to include messages that are pro-abortion or same-sex marriage—both views that conflict with her personal convictions—she would refer them to other designers.
Concerned that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission would use the state’s anti-discrimination statute to force her to create websites that convey messages that she disagrees with, she challenged the law to protect free speech.
Like Mr. Phillips, Ms. Smith was represented by ADF.
Lorie Smith, a Christian graphic artist and website designer in Colorado, prepares to speak to supporters outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Dec. 5, 2022. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo) In July 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled against Ms. Smith, holding that the state has the right to force her to create websites with messages that violate her religious beliefs.
Her attorneys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court—and won.
“Like many states, Colorado has a law forbidding businesses from engaging in discrimination when they sell goods and services to the public. Laws along these lines have done much to secure the civil rights of all Americans,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the 26-page majority opinion (pdf), with the court’s three liberal justices dissenting.
“But in this particular case, Colorado does not just seek to ensure the sale of goods or services on equal terms. It seeks to use its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not believe. The question we face is whether that course violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
“In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance,” Mr. Gorsuch wrote.
“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” he added.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 18:05 - Microsoft Must Pay $28.9 Billion In Back-Taxes
Microsoft Must Pay $28.9 Billion In Back-Taxes
“That’s a nice little business you got there, it would be a pity if the IRS confiscated it…”
In an 8K filed by Microsoft after the close, the company said it received notices from IRS seeking additional payment of $28.9b plus penalties and interest for the tax years 2004-2013; the payments stem from disagreements over the tax treatment of intercompany transfer pricing, a well-known corporate tax black hole.
It was not immediately clear if these notices suggested the company had underpaid taxes on purpose or if there was a TurboTax-style glitch, but whatever the reason, $29 billion is a lot of money, even for Epstein island regulars such as Bill Gates.
Naturally, Microsoft said that it disagrees with the notices and will vigorously contest them, and “does not expect” a final resolution on these issues in the next 12 months.
On October 11, 2023, Microsoft Corporation announced the receipt of Notices of Proposed Adjustment (“NOPAs”) from the Internal Revenue Service (the “IRS”) for the tax years 2004 to 2013. The NOPAs were received on September 26, 2023. The primary issues in the NOPAs relate to intercompany transfer pricing. In the NOPAs, the IRS is seeking an additional tax payment of $28.9 billion plus penalties and interest.
As of September 30, 2023, we believe our allowances for income tax contingencies are adequate. We disagree with the proposed adjustments and will vigorously contest the NOPAs through the IRS’s administrative appeals office and, if necessary, judicial proceedings. We do not expect a final resolution of these issues in the next 12 months. Based on the information currently available, we do not anticipate a significant increase or decrease to our tax contingencies for these issues within the next 12 months.
If the US tax service, now staffed with tens of thousands of newly weaponized (literally ) tax collectors is starting to go after the the Magnificent 7’s massive cash hoards to plug the staggering, war-like debt-funded US deficit, Microsoft may be the first but it certainly won’t be the last to get such a ransom demand from the IRS.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/11/2023 – 17:45
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