Today’s News 12th September 2023

• Inside China's Global Military Expansion
  Inside China’s Global Military Expansion

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  For two decades, China’s communist regime has poured tens of billions of dollars into low- and middle-income nations, funding massive port projects in the name of global development.

  

  However, experts and lawmakers are warning that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, seeks to expand its global military presence by creating new overseas naval bases out of the commercial ports it has funded and built abroad.

  According to a new report by AidData, a think tank that analyzes government aid expenditures on international development projects, the regime has spent nearly $30 billion on overseas port infrastructure since 2001.

  For those in Congress who are tasked with countering the threat from a newly expansionist CCP, the regime’s pursuit of new basing opportunities is an alarming development that requires immediate action.

  Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who chairs the House Select Committee on the CCP, believes that the only means of countering such an expansion is through increased military and diplomatic investments by the United States. Such investments in partner nations, he hopes, will counter the creeping influence of the CCP.

  “The Chinese Communist Party’s expansion of its overseas naval presence is a blaring alarm, and we keep hitting snooze,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times.

  

  “To counter the CCP’s malign influence and military aggression, the United States needs to both boost its own military-industrial capacity and be more present in the Indo-Pacific, expanding development and diplomacy with key partners to ensure they don’t succumb to debt-trap diplomacy.”

  China Seeks Global Military Expansion

  AidData’s report, “Harboring Global Ambitions,” analyzes more than 20 years of official investments by China’s state-owned entities into overseas seaport projects that might form the groundwork for a new naval base.

  From 2000 to 2023, Beijing spent a staggering $29.9 billion through loans and grants for 123 different projects at 78 ports in 46 low- and middle-income nations, according to the report.

  Each of these projects was funded directly by Beijing or state-owned companies.

  This means that the report doesn’t even begin to look at the potential spending of shadow corporations without official ties to the regime, nor does it account for the regime’s policy of military-civil fusion, which demands that all private Chinese entities create a military advantage for the CCP.

  Paul Crespo, president of the Center for American Defense Studies think tank, believes that the monumental effort is partly driven by the regime’s desire to hold the United States at threat anywhere in the world.

  “China is rapidly creating a large, offensive, blue water navy capable of challenging the [United States] far beyond the western Pacific, especially during a war over Taiwan,” Mr. Crespo said.

  “In addition to allowing it to threaten our supply lines, China has long wanted to make the [United States] feel the way it feels with a foreign superpower navy on its doorstep.”

  The CCP currently only acknowledges one overseas military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. Chinese officials have long acknowledged a more global ambition for their military, however, and suggested that similar bases could be in the works.

  Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in 2016 that China was amenable to working with partner nations to develop similar facilities to that in Djibouti.

  

  Likewise, the 2020 edition of “Science of Military Strategy” (pdf), published by China’s National Defense University, suggested that a new network of long-range naval facilities was necessary to extend China’s reach.

  “To improve the naval force’s ocean-going support capabilities, in addition to the development of large-scale accompanying support ships, we must also attach importance to the construction of long-distance maritime comprehensive replenishment points, and multi-channels to ensure naval forces carry out overseas military operations in the ocean,” the document reads.

  Mr. Crespo, who previously served as a naval attache at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that such a network of bases would be a prerequisite for the long-term sustainment of China’s increasingly global military presence.

  “To challenge the U.S. Navy globally, China needs bases for rearming, refueling, [resupplying], and to repair its rapidly expanding fleet,” Mr. Crespo said.

  Similarly, the AidData report places the regime’s many overseas investments within the broader context of a tug-of-war for global influence with the United States.

  

  In contrast to Mr. Gallagher’s ironclad commitment to counter might with might anywhere in the world, the report suggests that such an approach may only worsen global tensions.

  “The [United States] and allies must be vigilant and allocate resources wisely, fostering alliances and partnerships with countries considering moving toward China,” the report reads. “But Western coalitions should not overreact to news or rumors of China establishing a base here or there.

  “A headlong rush by a Western country or alliance to establish new bases overseas as a means of counterbalancing might provide exactly the justification or cover China needs to site a naval base of its own.”

  Whatever approach the United States takes, it remains an open question just where exactly the next CCP base will spring up.

  By comparing total investments in individual port projects and weighing the strategic value of a geographic location, the strength of the CCP’s relations with the local elites, regional political stability, and the nation’s voting alignment with China on the world stage, the AidData report suggests a few countries as top contenders for new Chinese military infrastructure.

  

  The choices stretch from the Indo-Pacific to the Atlantic, with each region offering distinct advantages and disadvantages.

  Indo-Pacific Base Most Likely

  The Indo-Pacific is, perhaps, the most logical place for a new military base.

  The CCP seeks to break out past the first island chain, thereby securing its commercial and military vessels’ free rein of the seas. Likewise, it seeks greater control of fishing territories and precious resources throughout the region, from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.

  If the CCP is to hold the United States and its allies at immediate threat and gain unfettered control of the world’s most valuable trade routes, it needs greater control of the Indo-Pacific.

  Sam Kessler, geopolitical analyst at risk management firm North Star Support Group, believes that a base in this region is the logical step for the regime in its ascent to global domination.

  “At this current moment, it is realistic to see Beijing focusing on building future naval bases that are closer to their area of influence rather than be sprawled out on various continents,” Mr. Kessler said.

  Likewise, the AidData report finds that “the Pacific and the Indian Oceans are China’s highest priority maritime environments.”

  In particular, the report finds Hambantota in Sri Lanka the most likely contender for China’s next overseas base due to its strategic location off of India, the popularity enjoyed by the regime among local elites, and its track record of voting in line with CCP interests internationally.

  Indeed, the CCP owns a 99-year lease on Hambantota Port. The agreement is a result of what some analysts dub China’s “debt trap” diplomacy: The lease was negotiated in exchange for relief of more than $1 billion in Chinese debt.

  

  Mr. Kessler agrees. The strategic and economic benefits of a Sri Lankan base are just too valuable to overlook.

  “Like the Belt and Road Initiative, the CCP needs a networking web or a shield of protection that surrounds their main realm of control, which is mainland China,” Mr. Kessler said.

  “Ports with high-level investments like Gwadar and Hambantota serve strategic value and enable the CCP to extend their power projection capabilities throughout the Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific, Middle East, and also Eurasia.”

  Indeed, Beijing has invested more than $2 billion into the Hambantota International Port in the past two decades, making it the CCP’s single-largest port investment. The CCP has also invested more than $430 million into Sri Lanka’s nearby Port of Colombo, which could offer similar or support facilities. Both would allow China to rule the seas as a direct rival to India.

  Sri Lanka, though an obvious choice, isn’t the only possibility. The AidData report and Mr. Kessler note the possibility of Gwadar in Pakistan and Port Luganville in Vanuatu, near Australia.

  To that end, the regime has invested some $577 million into Gwadar and $97 million into Port Luganville, each offering its own benefits.

  A Vanuatu base would allow the regime to break its apparent containment by U.S. and allied forces, according to the report, while one in Pakistan would further cement the regime’s expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative into the Middle East and allow it greater control of the vital Strait of Hormuz.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/12/2023 – 02:00

• Has The West Closed All Its 'Project Ukraine' Exits?
  Has The West Closed All Its ‘Project Ukraine’ Exits?

  Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

  Many analysts and commentators have been speculating about how the US and NATO will find their way to an endgame in the Ukraine conflict. Some focus, for humanitarian or pragmatic reasons, on a negotiated settlement between the US and Russia. Even though as a matter of form Ukraine would be party to such a deal, with Ukraine now fully dependent on Western arms and funding, there’s no pretending who is really driving this train.

  We described earlier how the various factions in the US/NATO side would spend huge amounts of time arguing among themselves to come up with ideas for how exit the conflict that they’d developed in a vacuum, with no substantive exchange with Russia and not even any real consideration of repeated statements by Russian officials, including draft treaties presented in December 2021 and in the aborted peace talks in Marcy 2022.

  The new peace chatter seems to amount to:

  Ceasefire > *Magic* > Russia goes away with its tail enough between its legs that we and Ukraine can declare victory

  At first we thought this dynamic was the result of splits among various key parties. After all, multiparty negotiations are messy.

  But upon further reflection, it may be that the West has effectively set boundary conditions for itself that make ending the war impossible… absent changes in leaders of key governments that result in a willingness to relax boundary conditions and/or such a visible collapse of Ukraine’s military that the West has to rethink its self-imposed constraints.

  

  The West wants to have a Schrodinger’s war: to pretend that its involvement in the conflict is in an indeterminate state when the US and NATO are clearly co-belligerents.

  Keep in mind that so far, NATO members have slipped the leash of Ukraine attempts to depict various shellings as attacks on NATO members

  Remember, we and others have pointed out that there is no reason to assume the belligerents will hammer out an agreement, since many conflicts end without a deal.

  And as we said from very early on, there isn’t good reason to think one will happen here.

  A top priority for Russia is to get Ukraine to commit to neutrality or otherwise keep it out of NATO’s hands, while the US position is that nobody outside NATO has a say in who might be a NATO member. And for Ukraine, or at least the Banderites, the war must be kept going as long as possible. Once US/NATO money and materiel largely evaporates, the current Ukraine leaders will be at the mercy of the Russian government, with their personal power and prospects for further enrichment very much diminished. A few might survive and even prosper, but as a group, they will suffer a very big fall.

  And as noted the US and NATO are still trying to escalate….or at best, escalating because past measures like the great Ukraine counteroffensive have failed. And worse, Western experts are admitting that Russia has been improving its tactics and weapons over the course of the war, as Simplicius the Thinker recounts in his latest post. So the US, which earlier nixed F-16s for Ukraine now will be sending them. ABC has reported that the US is now likely to send ATACMS missiles, which have a longer range than HIMARS. Many commentators Ukraine will use to strike Crimea and the Kerch Bridge.1

  Why do we think the West has caught itself in a bind?

  For Russia, the war is existential. Too many Western officials have depicted victory as Russia being so battered that Putin is ousted and even the breakup of Russia. Russian opinion has hardened due those pronouncements, along with Western efforts not just to support the Ukraine war, but also to cancel Russian athletes, performers, and even its culture, and to continued Ukraine missile strikes on the civilian Donetsk city.

  At least for now, the US/NATO combine is acting as if the war is existential, even though, as Ray McGovern has pointed out, there is not a shred of evidence that Russia has any interest in acquiring territory in NATO countries. Consider how Germany has allowed itself to be deindustrialized and has not acted in response to the Nord Stream attack, which the German press depicts as the handiwork of its ally Ukraine, and the US cannot plausibly have not known what was up. Those actions show the depth of commitment.

  As for Russia’s posture towards Ukraine, Putin rejected the efforts of the Donbass separatists to join Russia prior to the special military operation, and moved to annex the four oblasts that Russia had partially occupied only after the embarrassing pullbacks from Kherson and Kharkiv last year. That left the civilians who had helped the Russians exposed to reprisals, and others in areas where Russia had taken ground worried about Russia’s commitment. But now that sentiment in Russia has hardened and the West is not backing down, Russia seems destined to gobble up more of Ukraine. And what happens to Western Ukraine then is very much an open question.

  However the US/NATO position that the NATO will always have an open door policy may wind up being existential for NATO. If the US were to get over itself, it could agree to stop NATO expansion eastward where it is now (not that Russia would necessarily believe that) which might allow NATO to continue to exist only a bit bruised via how badly the NATO-trained and equipped forces in Ukraine fared versus Russia. Instead, NATO is actually doubling down, for instance via the pleasing-nobody compromise floated by a deputy of NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, of Ukraine ceding land to Russia in return for an immediate NATO membership. What about “Russia will not accept NATO on its border” don’t you understand? This sort of thing only further confirms the notion that the West has no interest in considering Russia’s security needs.

  And Russia can’t have missed Anthony Blinken’s position when head of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley had the temerity last fall to suggest that Ukraine negotiate after it had recaptured some ground so as to improve its bargaining position. Milley was made to walk his mention of negotiations back at that time. Blinken committed the US and NATO to continuing to arm Ukraine to revisit the war at a later date. Key extracts from his Washington Post interview with David Ignatius:

  Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined his strategy for the Ukrainian endgame and postwar deterrence during an interview on Monday at the State Department….

  He also underlined President Biden’s determination to avoid direct military conflict with Russia, even as U.S. weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force. “Biden has always been emphatic that one of his requirements in Ukraine is that there be no World War III,” Blinken said.

  Russia’s colossal failure to achieve its military goals, Blinken believes, should now spur the United States and its allies to begin thinking about the shape of postwar Ukraine — and how to create a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity and allows it to deter and, if necessary, defend against any future aggression. In other words, Russia should not be able to rest, regroup and reattack.

  Blinken’s deterrence framework is somewhat different from last year’s discussions with Kyiv about security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5. Rather than such a formal treaty pledge, some U.S. officials increasingly believe the key is to give Ukraine the tools it needs to defend itself. Security will be ensured by potent weapons systems — especially armor and air defense — along with a strong, noncorrupt economy and membership in the European Union.

  The Pentagon’s current stress on providing Kyiv with weapons and training for maneuver warfare reflects this long-term goal of deterrence. “The importance of maneuver weapons isn’t just to give Ukraine strength now to regain territory but as a deterrent against future Russian attacks,” explained a State Department official familiar with Blinken’s thinking. “Maneuver is the future.”

  Given that the current Ukraine government continues to insist that it must recapture all of the pre-2014 Ukraine, it’s clear that any rearming of Ukraine by the West would lead to new hostilities…and not instigated by Russia.

  However, as an aside, the Post also unwittingly tells us why Project Ukraine is doomed. The US has not adapted to the new ISR paradigm which Russia is perfecting with every passing day. As various military experts have pointed out, maneuver warfare (which among other things depends on massing forces to punch through enemy lines) is no longer possible with a peer power. Your build-up of men and materiel will be seen and attacked before you launch your big punch.

  Keep in mind what Blinken’s position also implies: the US believes it can run what amounts to a two front war. Blinken posits Russia somehow loses in Ukraine so as to allow the US and NATO to rearm it at their leisure so as to harass, um, pressure Russia further down the war. At the same time US is also determined to Do Something to its official Enemy #1, China. Since economic sanctions are working about as well against China as they have against Russia, what does the US and its Pacific allies have left besides military escalation? Or will mere relentless propaganda be enough to snooker the credulous American public?

  So unless the US relents, Russia has no option but to continue to prosecute the war until Ukraine is prostrated or Russia has otherwise precipitated regime change in Kiev. Russia needs to capture Ukraine, either politically or practically. This outcome becomes even more important if the US sends ATACMS. Russia will need an even wider buffer zone (300 km versus 77 km for the HIMARS previously sent) to prevent their use against Russian territory.

  However, an undeniable Ukraine loss, no matter how much porcine maquillage US and EU spokescritters apply, will, as Alastair Crooke in particular described long-form in a recent Duran program, will rattle smaller NATO members, who will doubt they can rely on NATO to come to their rescue. NATO may still be fit for purpose as a defensive alliance. However, the fact that the US and NATO members sent in a whole mess of heavily-hyped wunderwaffen that did pretty much nothing to blunt Russian operations, and some of which were impressively destroyed, like Leopard 2 and Challenger tanks and the West is not responding with a Sputnik-level effort to get Western firepower up to Russian levels, means there is good reason to doubt how well the NATO shield would hold up if tested.

  Mind you, Crooke explained in a related article that US is (or the hawks think it is) moving in the direction of a long, low intensity conflict, which is consistent with the Blinken remarks above. But that US/Ukraine hope ignores again that the war is generally very much going in Russia’s direction, with Ukraine continuing to throw men and materiel against Russian positions, and Russia only engaging in fairly minor advances in and near Kupiansk to produce even more of the same. Russia wanted to attrit Ukraine and is getting that outcome. And Russia can and will increase the intensity when it suits Russia.

  One would think, given both the weakening Ukraine position, and the all-too-obvious need for the Biden Administration not to suffer a visible defeat in Ukraine, the optimal time would be between March and October 2024. However, that still may not take the form of the too-eagerly-hoped for big arrow attacks unless the Ukraine army is severely degraded.2 But the flip side is when Russia finally cracks the last Ukraine line of defense in the Donbass, there’s not much in the way of defensible positions west of Lugansk up to the Dnieper.3

  In other words, the way to an end game is regime change. And the weak regimes are all in the West.

  *  *  *

  1 Admittedly, the US has pushed back the delivery date of Abrams tanks to next year….but they are so heavy they would probably be useless in the soon-to-arrive mud season. Dima at Military Summary today noted that Russia has not engaged in the sort of massive missile strikes of Ukraine that had been its habit, although it is still regularly striking selective targets, such as yesterday an ammo depot in Kiev, rumored to hold depleted uranium shells. He speculates they are accumulating stocks for big strikes in the winter to again damage the electrical grid. If Russia indeed has been caching missiles, they could also be keeping them in reserve for major retaliatory strikes.

  2 Another issue is that Russia knows it is dealing with people who do not have a good grip on reality, and you don’t make sudden moves around crazy people, particularly when they possess nukes.

  3 This makes the continuing fight over Bakhmut rational. That is on the third of four Ukraine defensive lines, but the last is seen as weak. If Russia were to move forces up to the Dnieper, it is hard to see how the West could not see that as undeniable evidence of Russian success, which would threaten the position of the Ukraine regime with its patrons.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 23:40

• Another One Fails: Subprime Auto Dealership Hit With "Unprecedented Changes To Auto-Retail Landscape"
  Another One Fails: Subprime Auto Dealership Hit With “Unprecedented Changes To Auto-Retail Landscape”

  Earlier this year, we discussed the ‘big profitability squeeze‘ on auto dealerships and the subsequent failure of a subprime dealership with dozens of locations. Now, another dealership has failed as cracks across the industry worsen. 

  A popular used car dealership in South Florida, called “Off Lease Only,” filed for Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in the District of Delaware last Thursday, citing “unprecedented changes to the automotive-retail landscape.”

  

  “The industry has been impacted by inventory scarcity, and vehicle price inflation stemming from supply chain disruptions and multi-year declines in new vehicle production,” the company wrote in a press release. 

  The company also blamed elevated used car prices and soaring interest rates that “further deteriorated conditions in the automotive retail market, weakening consumer demand and affordability.” 

  Off Lease Only’s demise was due to collapsing demand after used car interest rates skyrocketed while used car prices remained elevated, sparking an affordability crisis. 

  

  The Florida-based company listed assets and liabilities each of between $100 million and $500 million on its bankruptcy filing. It noted a range of strategic options were being explored for “an orderly wind-down of the business.” 

  In April, another subprime auto dealership called US Auto Sales abruptly closed dozens of locations and filed for bankruptcy in August amid headwinds gathering in the used car market.  

  The fact is, mid/low-tier consumers can’t afford monthly $1,000 payments for a used car as costs for shelter and food remain elevated. Further, many of these folks are financially tapped out, as we shared in the latest note titled “Slide In Consumer Credit Accelerates As Excess Savings Exhausted, Average Credit Card Rate Hits 22%.”

  Consumers are in very bad shape.  

  

  And if consumers were hoping for relief in used car prices, think again: “Used Vehicle Prices May Have Bottomed For The Year.” 

  

  We can only imagine there are many other subprime dealerships on the verge of collapse. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 23:20

• Taibbi: A Day That Never Ended
  Taibbi: A Day That Never Ended

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via ‘Racket News’ substack,

  America thought it left the War on Terror behind, but the emergency never stopped expanding…

  

  Twenty-two years ago jet planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York. Within two hours they fell, starting fires that still burned eight days later, on September 19th, when Attorney General John Ashcroft asked for a sweeping expansion of executive power, telling congress on a Wednesday to have a bill by the end of the week.

  “We need every tool available to us,” Ashcroft said, and congress quickly delivered with “roving” wiretaps, warrantless searches, “trap and trace” searches, law enforcement and intelligence access to grand jury information, use of FISA monitoring for non-foreign situations, reduction or elimination of predicate requirements for FBI investigations, and elimination of judicial review for most of these activities, among many other things in the USA PATRIOT Act.

  It all passed on October 26th, marking just the beginning of what turned into a long period of radical change.

  From 2001 to 2008 the U.S. internationally became the world’s Death Star, constructing the most fearsome military-intelligence state ever seen.

  Between 1.9 and 3 million Americans served in wars after 9/11, as the open-ended 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force led not only to invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but deployments in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Niger, and parts unknown, the list of foes covered by the AUMF remaining classified.

  Passage of new military commissions law made Guantanamo Bay the face of an anything-goes secret justice system, kept filled with “combatants” by troops from a swelling archipelago of 750 foreign bases.

  A “targeted killing” program headed by a fleet of CIA-run drone programs was likewise kept busy by a vast global surveillance net, newly consolidated after the creation of the 240,000-person Department of Homeland Security, the largest federal reorganization since the Defense Department’s birth in 1947.

  It’s forgotten, but Barack Obama was sent to the White House in what a lot of the voting public at the time considered a referendum on the security state.

  The genteel Obama played up “constitutional lawyer” credentials, announcing in a national security address at the Wilson Center in 2007 his opposition to the “color-coded politics of fear” and “a war in Iraq that should never have been authorized.”

  Candidate Obama added it was time to “turn the page” with more peaceful means of “drying up” support for terrorism, a strategy that hurtled him past favored Hillary Clinton in primary season.

  Privately however he’d already met with people like Richard Clarke, who told him, “As a president, you kill people.”

  This is who Obama would actually be in office, an “idealist without illusions” who expanded the buildup, institutionalized the “kill list,” and in one of his last major acts, created a new counter-disinformation authority that helped birth the censorship state.

  The 5th Circuit Court’s decision in the Missouri v. Biden case last week, which allowed the Department of Homeland Security (and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA) to squirm free of an anti-censorship injunction, underscored the central delusion of post-9/11 America.

  Voters thought they shut down the War on Terror in 2008, but American citizens were instead swallowed up by it, made subjects of the global dragnet.

  From the Towers to Trump to Covid to today, the emergency state not only never receded but tried continually to expand, looking to make the panic of twenty-two years ago a forever thing.

  How do we end this day?  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 23:00

• City Slickers Caused Rural Populations To Explode During Pandemic — Leaving A Trail Of Resent And Strained Infrastructures
  City Slickers Caused Rural Populations To Explode During Pandemic — Leaving A Trail Of Resent And Strained Infrastructures

  The influx of transplants from urban living to rural areas during the pandemic has been well documented, as the lure of a cheaper cost of living and wide open spaces vs. the prospect of riding out lockdowns in a $5,000 / month postage stamp was no brainer for many.

  

  And so for the first time in three decades, rural America’s population has outgrown that of urban areas, driven by remote work, affordability and lifestyle changes. Tech-savvy Californians have led this great migration. Driven by exorbitant living costs and an ever-intrusive (and tax-thirsty) state government, they are fleeing the Golden State for places like Montana. However, this movement is sparking backlash from longtime residents, with bumper stickers saying, “Don’t California my Montana,” highlighting the growing resentment.

  The result? Rural America is booming – yet, underneath the surface problems are beginning to emerge – most notably resent among longtime locals over now-prohibitively expensive real estate prices, and a growing strain on infrastructures around the country.

  The trend is sparking resentment as house prices in the top 10 rural counties that have seen the biggest population increases surging more than 40% over the past three years. Schools are overloaded and the shift is even impacting farmland prices. -Bloomberg

  Farmland prices are also at record highs, driven by higher commodity prices and inflation hedging.

  “There’s a lot of resentment,” said Maggie Doherty, a writer and columnist living in Flathead County, Montana. “There’s bumper stickers that say ‘Montana’s full’ or ‘Don’t California my Montana.’” she told Bloomberg.

  Tech-savvy Californians are leading this great migration. Driven by exorbitant living costs and an ever-intrusive (and tax-thirsty) state government, they are fleeing the Golden State for places like Montana. However, this movement is sparking backlash from longtime residents, with bumper stickers saying, “Don’t California my Montana,” highlighting the growing resentment.

  In Jackson County, Georgia, finding affordable homes is now near impossible – as prices rose 50% in the first half of this year vs. three years earlier, according to Zillow. Thanks to Jackson’s proximity to Atlanta, the county has attracted a flood of hybrid workers.

  

  “There’s been a lot of battles politically over building and where to build,” said Jackson County Democratic head Pete Fuller. “There are organized groups that do not want affordable housing being built.”

  Rents are also surging. In the past two years, according to Zillow, Harnett County and Moore County in North Carolina, Gallatin County in Montana, and Iron County in Utah have all seen rent increases between 13% to 24%, Bloomberg reports.

  “Rent is completely through the roof,” said Tennessee resident Wendy Cerne. “There are a lot of new people that have moved into the region and I’ve experienced that first hand.”

  As noted above, the price of farmland has never been this high either.

  “Anything that helps broaden and deepen what I would call the opportunity set for off-farm income is good for producers, which is a good underpinning for land prices,” said Tom Halverson, CEO of rural lender CoBank ACB.

  “The states in the South and East have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of this population movement,” he said. “They also are the parts of the agricultural production complex in this country that that are most reliant on off-farm income. So there’s an interesting correlation dynamic there.”

  

  No Affordable Retirement in California

  Bob Ficken, a retiree from California, encapsulates the dilemma: “Retiring in California is near impossible. The state ends up taking between 25% and 30% of everything you make.”  This situation, coupled with deteriorating cityscapes in urban areas, is fueling the rush towards rural America.

  Political Fault Lines

  The demographic shifts are also exacerbating existing political divides. As newcomers bring along their political preferences, battleground states like Georgia and North Carolina become even more unpredictable, adding a layer of complexity to the 2024 presidential election calculus.

  The migration has the potential to change voting patterns in both the places people are leaving and the ones they’re going to, adding an additional layer of unpredictability in battleground states like Georgia and North Carolina in the 2024 presidential election. -Bloomberg

  And lastly, aging infrastructures are being tested like never before.

  “You see huge issues with infrastructure as well with roads, roads that were not meant to handle truck traffic a lot of times are breaking down,” said Fuller, adding “There’s been two new high schools built here in the last couple years just to accommodate growth.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 22:40

• 'Utter Madness:' Elon Musk Reacts To California's Proposed Gender Affirming Law
  ‘Utter Madness:’ Elon Musk Reacts To California’s Proposed Gender Affirming Law

  Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  Tech entrepreneur and California resident Elon Musk criticized an assembly bill in the state, calling the proposed law to require that parents affirm their child’s transgender identify for custody rights “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  Mr. Musk’s comment came as the Democratic-majority State Assembly approved the legislation on Sept. 8, sending it to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

  The bill, AB 957, incorporates parents’ “affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression” into the concept of a child’s “health, safety, and welfare.” If passed, the bill will require a judge to consider whether a parent affirms a child’s ideas about gender transition when determining custody or visitation rights.

  “This bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Mr. Musk wrote on Friday on X, formerly called Twitter. “What it would actually mean is that if you disagree with the other parent about sterilizing your child, you lose custody. Utter madness!“

  The bill was initially introduced by Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, a Democrat, in February. She previously argued the legislation doesn’t prioritize a parent’s gender-affirming over other judicial criteria that determine custody disputes.

  “If you have a child going through that system, a judge has discretion, like they do looking at the totality of circumstances related to the health, safety, and welfare of a child, to consider different factors,” the Assemblywoman told ABC7 in June after the bill made its way through California Legislature.

  “One of the factors, not the factor, but one of the factors, would be the parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity.”

  At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Ms. Wilson said the bill was intended to address “parents antagonistic to their child’s gender identity.”

  State Sen. Scott Wilk, a Republican, said there have been many policies introduced to protect children during his 11 years in the state legislature. But now, he said, it’s time to start protecting parents.

  “In recent years, we have put government bureaucrats between parents, children, and doctors when it comes to medical care. And now, we have this, where if a parent does not support the ideology of the government, [children] are going to be taken away from the home,” Mr. Wilk said. “If you love your children, you need to flee California.”

  How to Raise Children

  On Sept. 6, the bill cleared the state Senate in a near-party-line vote, 30-9. Democrats argue that the legislation would help to protect the well-being of LGBTQ+ children whose parents are going through a divorce.

  Every Republican in the state Senate voted against the bill, with state Sen. Kelly Seyarto, who represents Murrieta in Southern California, arguing that lawmakers were interfering too much with how parents choose to raise their children.

  The Democrat governor now has until Oct. 15 to either sign the bill into law or veto it.

  Some parental rights groups warned the bill would leave parents involved in a child custody battle with no choice but to consent to recommendations of gender change for their child at any age, for any gender identity.

  “Newsom needs to veto it because if he doesn’t, he is aligning with breaking up families. He’s aligning against parents and also judicial discretion. It’s the state control of our judges,” Jennifer Kennedy, spokesperson for Our Duty, a parental rights group, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 8. “Why would Newsom attack families already in crisis? He needs to read the room and veto AB 957.”

  Ms. Kennedy, a civil rights attorney, argued the bill would infringe parental rights and remove the discretion of judges to consider the facts involved in child custody disputes on a case-by-case basis.

  “The affirming parent will always be given the benefit of the doubt. They will always be favored in custody and visitation, so it’s completely unconstitutional.”

  ‘Legislated Evil’

  Chloe Cole, who agreed to have a “gender-affirming” surgeon remove her breasts at the age of 15—a life-changing decision she regrets after reaching the age of majority—also took to social media to voice her opposition.

  “This issue is wildly unpopular yet the Cali Gov pushes forward with more and more radical policies,” she said in response to Mr. Musk’s post. “@ProtectKidsCA is trying to introduce ballot measures that will stop the sterilization of kids in California.”

  Michael Seifert, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of PublicSq, called the bill a “legislated evil.”

  “California is determined to discover rock bottom,” he said in a post on Friday. “I’m so glad we left that state.”

  “I don’t even recognize my former home anymore.”

  The Associated Press and Brad Jones contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 22:20

• What Electricity Sources Power The World?
  What Electricity Sources Power The World?

  In 2022, 29,165.2 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity was generated around the world, an increase of 2.3% from the previous year.

  In this visualization, Visual Capitalist’s Chris Dickert and Sam Parker look at data from the latest Statistical Review of World Energy, and ask what powered the world in 2022.

  

  Coal is Still King

  Coal still leads the charge when it comes to electricity, representing 35.4% of global power generation in 2022, followed by natural gas at 22.7%, and hydroelectric at 14.9%.

  

  Source: Energy Institute

  Over three-quarters of the world’s total coal-generated electricity is consumed in just three countries. China is the top user of coal, making up 53.3% of global coal demand, followed by India at 13.6%, and the U.S. at 8.9%.

  Burning coal—for electricity, as well as metallurgy and cement production—is the world’s single largest source of CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, its use in electricity generation has actually grown 91.2% since 1997, the year when the first global climate agreement was signed in Kyoto, Japan.

  Renewables on the Rise

  However, even as non-renewables enjoy their time in the sun, their days could be numbered.

  In 2022, renewables, such as wind, solar, and geothermal, represented 14.4% of total electricity generation with an extraordinary annual growth rate of 14.7%, driven by big gains in solar and wind. Non-renewables, by contrast, only managed an anemic 0.4%.

  The authors of the Statistical Review do not include hydroelectric in their renewable calculations, even though many others, including the International Energy Agency, consider it a “well-established renewable power technology.”

  With hydroelectric moved into the renewable column, together they accounted for over 29.3% of all electricity generated in 2022, with an annual growth rate of 7.4%.

  France’s Nuclear Horrible Year

  Another big mover in this year’s report was nuclear energy.

  In addition to disruptions at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, shutdowns in France’s nuclear fleet to address corrosion found in the safety injection systems of four reactors led to a 4% drop in global use, year-over-year.

  The amount of electricity generated by nuclear energy in that country dropped 22% to 294.7 TWh in 2022. As a result, France went from being the world’s biggest exporter of electricity, to a net importer.

  Powering the Future

  Turning mechanical energy into electrical energy is a relatively straightforward process. Modern power plants are engineering marvels, to be sure, but they still work on the same principle as the very first generator invented by Michael Faraday in 1831.

  But how you get the mechanical energy is where things get complicated: coal powered the first industrial revolution, but heated the planet in the process; wind is free and clean, but is unreliable; and nuclear fission reliably generates emission-free electricity, but also creates radioactive waste.

  With temperature records being set around the world in the summer, resolving these tensions isn’t just academic and next year’s report could be a crucial test of the world’s commitment to a clean energy future.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 22:00

• Israeli Officials Make First Ever Public Visit To Saudi Arabia
  Israeli Officials Make First Ever Public Visit To Saudi Arabia

  Via The Cradle,

  An official Israeli delegation has arrived in Saudi Arabia to serve as observers during the 45th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, marking the first public visit by government officials to the kingdom.

  An Israeli official who spoke with AP said the delegation is led by Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director-general in the Israeli foreign ministry, and includes several diplomats. The official also stressed that the delegation is “not on a bilateral visit.”

  

  “We are happy to be here – it’s a good first step … We thank UNESCO and the Saudi authorities,” a member of the delegation who did not want to be named told AFP.

  The delegation reportedly traveled through Dubai on their way to the kingdom. They only take part as observers due to Tel Aviv quitting UNESCO in 2017 and accusing the organization of being “biased” over Israel’s historical abuses against Palestinians and the military occupation of their land.

  Last week, Israeli media accused the kingdom of “delaying granting visas” for the delegation, as the group was reportedly set to include Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and Education Minister Yoav Kisch. In March, Riyadh refused Israel’s request to grant entry to Cohen for the UNESCO conference.

  The public visit by low-level Israeli officials to Saudi Arabia has been described as a coup for the US in its plans to secure a normalization agreement between the two nations.

  Normalization would be part of a so-called “mega-deal” with the US, which also calls for a defense pact from Washington, access to more advanced weaponry for the Saudis, and US help in developing a civilian nuclear program that would include uranium enrichment on Saudi soil.

  Saudi Arabia has also publicly declared that normalization hinges on the implementation of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for the creation of an autonomous Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has reportedly set conditions to support Saudi-Israeli normalization.

  As part of a Saudi-Israel deal, Palestinians have requested admission to the UN as a full member, ie statehood

  US officials rejected this, showing again that the US has in practice abandoned the 2-state solution

  Only breadcrumbs seem to be on offer…https://t.co/sfkfuGPFoP

  — Trita Parsi (@tparsi) September 11, 2023

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

  Although the current visit by Israeli officials is being hailed as a major step toward normalization, last year, the kingdom relaxed its entry rules for Israeli passport holders. Furthermore, reports suggest dozens of Israeli businesspeople traveled to Saudi Arabia over the past year.

  Hebrew media revealed last year that several senior security and political figures, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the kingdom over the past decade. Israeli tourists have also been spotted in the planned futuristic megacity of NEOM in Saudi Arabia, which is still under construction.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 21:40

• Computer Models Show Hurricane Lee Could Make Landfall In New England 
  Computer Models Show Hurricane Lee Could Make Landfall In New England 

  Hurricane Lee formed nearly a week ago (read here) and rapidly intensified into a Category 5 (read here) on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Lee has since been downgraded to a Cat. 3 with risks of restrengthening into a Cat. 4 this week while it churns toward the northeast Caribbean. New computer models show landfall impacts could be across Maine and the rest of New England.

  Lee was located about 340 miles north of the northern Leeward Islands, with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, according to a 0500 ET update by the National Hurricane Center. 

  “A slow west-northwestward motion is expected during the next couple of days, followed by a gradual turn toward the north by midweek,” NHC said. 

  

  The weather agency has no coastal watches or warnings in effect for the US mainland but does expect dangerous surf conditions across the Lesser Antilles, the British and US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas through this week. 

  Computer models favor Lee to ride parallel hundreds of miles offshore of the US East Coast by late week, with landfall impact concerns in the New England area next week. 

  

  “It remains too soon to know what level of impacts, if any, Lee might have along the US East Coast and Atlantic Canada late this week, especially since the hurricane is expected to slow down considerably over the southwestern Atlantic,” NHC said. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 21:20

• What If We Had A Functional Media?
  What If We Had A Functional Media?

  Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

  Could you imagine the difference if, in the fall of 2020, the Washington Post had accepted a copy of the Hunter Biden hard drive and actually investigated the thousands of emails, photos, text messages, and other evidence that implicated not just Hunter but his father Joe Biden in sundry unethical and criminal enterprises?

  What about CBS, NBC, and ABC?

  Shouldn’t we as news consumers expect these leviathans “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved,” as the new owner of the New York Times declared way back in 1896?

  Yet in October 2020, when the New York Post wrote a series of stories describing the corrupt nature of the Biden family as exposed by the Hunter Biden laptop, there were few mainstream media outlets that dared to follow.

  Or really, not dared, but chose. Because there is nothing daring about doing your job correctly.

  You would think that when all the major social media companies like Facebook and Twitter blocked any discussion of the New York Post’s reporting on the laptop, these other major news corporations would have come to the aid of the Post.

  If any of them had done their own investigation of the laptop, do you think that Twitter could have continued to censor the news under the false claim that it was Russian disinformation? Hardly.

  But no mainstream media outlets were willing to put their own reputations on the line to support free speech – because their reputations are based entirely on being guardians of the left, and protecting Hillary, Barack and the Bidens is more important than fidelity to any chimeric sense of fairness and honor.

  

  And Hunter Biden’s laptop is just a symptom.

  In instance after instance, most of the media either closes its eyes to stories that implicate liberals or Democrats in unethical or illegal behavior, or pretends they are of no importance. Examples abound, from the whitewashing of Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the invention of the Russia collusion hoax to the complete lack of curiosity about the sweetheart deal offered to Hunter Biden by the so-called independent Justice Department.

  It’s no wonder that much of the public at large is convinced there is no evidence that warrants the impeachment of Joe Biden for bribery or treason.

  That’s what happens when you depend on biased news sources to form your opinion.

  And what’s worse: These are not just biased news sources, but ignorant ones. Take, for example, the case of Philip Bump of the Washington Post.

  Bump, a prized columnist and news analyst, was recently embarrassed by podcast host Noam Dworman, who is best known as the owner of a New York City comedy club. Bump claimed there was no evidence that President Biden had done anything improper in regard to his son’s business deals with foreign adversaries, and when Dworman rattled off some of the most important evidence suggesting otherwise, Bump took off his headset and walked away.

  The interview ended when Dworman asked Bump: “What do you take from [Hunter’s] text message to his adult daughter — Hunter texted her, “I had to give 50% of my income to Pop.”

  Bump, the Washington insider who molds public opinion by telling the rest of us what to think, declared meekly, “I have no idea what that means. I don’t. I have no idea what that means.”

  And let’s be clear.

  He doesn’t want to know what it means. That’s because he is not a real journalist; he is a propagandist for Democratic officials, ideas, and policies.

  Most importantly, it is when Dworman challenged Bump to acknowledge what a real journalist would do – ask questions of Hunter Biden’s daughter to get to the bottom of the story – that the columnist walked out.

  DWORMAN: Has anybody asked her?

  BUMP: I don’t know. I don’t know!

  DWORMAN: Don’t you think somebody should ask her?

  Hell no, because then the mainstream media would be serving the American public instead of Joe Biden. Perhaps even more nefariously than what it has done to protect the Bidens, the media has fed the public with a steady stream of lies about Donald Trump. Most relevant today, as the former president faces 91 felony counts and four indictments, is the insistent drumbeat of claims that Trump led an insurrection against the federal government or that he knowingly lied about election fraud.

  Again, just like with the Hunter Biden laptop, the average citizen is supposed to sheepishly accept the dismissive reporting of the media about election irregularities as the unadulterated truth, and any deviation from that narrative is met with silence or scorn.

  We have a perfect example of that in the investigative reporting of the Gateway Pundit last month that revealed extensive election fraud in Michigan during the 2020 election. If you are scratching your head, and asking what the heck I’m talking about, then it’s because you have fallen victim to the media’s refusal to cover any news that reflects positively on President Trump.

  Chances are, you have never even heard of the Gateway Pundit unless you are a dedicated conservative who has sought out alternative sources of news that counter the mainstream narrative. Anyone else would probably be scared away by the public assessments of such left-wing institutions as Wikipedia, which calls the Gateway Pundit “an American far-right fake news website…. known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.”

  But if you want to know the facts about a police investigation that started in October 2020 and found that more than 10,000 mostly fake voter registrations were submitted to election officials in Muskegon County, Michigan, you would need to read the Gateway Pundit, or one of the conservative websites that picked up their stories. Because there is no way that the New York Times or NBC will ever report on this explosive story.

  And it doesn’t matter whether the Gateway Pundit is a conservative advocacy website or not.

  True, the website doesn’t have journalistic credentials, but who cares?

  Journalism as an institution is in total disrepair. No one cares about credentials; we care about credibility. What matters is the evidence the website’s reporters provide to substantiate their claims that a pattern of election fraud in Michigan and other states was discovered prior to the 2020 election and then covered up after the election. And there is plenty of evidence. Most importantly, the Gateway Pundit’s reporters obtained the Michigan State Police report that detailed an extensive preliminary investigation found credible evidence of a scheme to create fake voters.

  In many ways, the oppression of the Muskegon election interference story parallels the techniques used to oppress the New York Post’s laptop story. If you do a Google search for “Muskegon voter registration police report” (without the quotes) you will see an interesting pattern. 

  First, the blacklisting of Gateway Pundit from the Google results. Second, the utter silence of the elite media on this hugely significant story. Third, a number of so-called “fact checks” that downplay the veracity of the story. The only thing missing is a letter from 51 intelligence agents calling the whole thing a “Russian information operation.”

  The closest we ever got to a mainstream news acknowledgment of the Gateway Pundit’s reporting was when the Detroit News ran a shocking admission from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office that the facts of the story were accurate and that the election fraud was reported to the FBI:

  Nessel’s press secretary, Danny Wimmer, said the total number of suspected fraudulent forms delivered to the Muskegon clerk by the individual was 8,000 to 10,000 ahead of the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election.

  ‘The city clerk in Muskegon detected the fraudulent material provided and alerted the proper authorities,’ Wimmer said in a statement. ‘A thorough investigation was conducted by multiple agencies within the state and no successful fraud was perpetrated upon the state’s election process or qualified voter file.’

  In other words, because the 10,000 fake registrations were detected by an alert election official, there was nothing to worry about. Huh?

  First of all, attempted election fraud on that scale should worry us all, but more importantly, there is no reason to think that all the election fraud was caught just because one election scammer was caught one time.

  The Michigan State Police report on the investigation was extensively redacted, but on page 14, the authorities failed to redact the name of GBI Strategies, a Democrat-aligned election-turnout specialist that has been confirmed as having 2020 operations in multiple states. The office of GBI Strategies that was searched under a warrant turned up as many as 19 vehicles used by the company’s workers, certainly more than one lone worker would need. In addition, the woman who tried to submit more than 10,000 fake registrations told state police that she had “done work” in Detroit, Ypsilanti, Southfield, Flint, and Lansing as well as Muskegon.

  Despite Nessel’s celebration of how 10,000 fake registrations were detected by an alert election clerk, there is absolutely no reason to believe that thousands of fake registrations were also uncovered in those other cities where GBI Strategies was hard at work. Conclusion? Joe Biden’s victory by 154,000 votes in the Great Lakes State may have been less great than we were led to believe. In fact, it may not have been a victory at all. The only way to find out would be to demand a forensic audit of voter registrations submitted in the month or two prior to the election.

  But that will never happen if the only voice demanding it is the Gateway Pundit. Because just as there was a concerted campaign to discredit the New York Post when it revealed the extent of the corruption in the Biden family as exposed on Hunter’s laptop, there has been an equally dishonest campaign to discredit the Gateway Pundit.

  Although you won’t find one story published by the Gateway Pundit when you look at the top 100 results of a Google search for the Muskegon police report on election fraud, you will not surprisingly find three “fact checks” claiming the story is fake news. Politifact, Lead Stories, and Newsweek all managed to find their way into the top 100 search results to debunk a story that Google was pretending didn’t even exist.

  Each of these “fact checks” followed the same pattern. They repeated the evidence in the Michigan State Police report that the Gateway Pundit based its reporting on, and then they said “It doesn’t matter” because the state attorney general said no fraud occurred. Really? That’s what we call a fact check these days?

  How about this? Let’s get the New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post and NBC to assign their best investigative reporters to comb through voter registration records in Michigan. Why not track down the CEO of GBI Strategies and question him about what techniques the company uses to increase voter turnout, which states they operated in during the 2020 election, and what relationship exists between GBI Strategies and the Democratic Party or the Biden campaign?

  But that will never happen, which is why the Gateway Pundit and similar citizen journalist organizations are necessary. They may not be perfect, but they provide a service we can’t get from most media outlets today  – they aren’t a mouthpiece for the official narrative being sold to us by the Deep State, the Democratic Party, and the donor class.

  And until the mainstream media rediscovers the value of reporting the news “without fear or favor,” I’ll rely on the Gateway Pundit, Breitbart News, and Citizen Free Press to provide the news the powers that be don’t want me to know.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 21:00

• NATO Prepares For Biggest Military Exercise Since Cold War, And Close To Russia
  NATO Prepares For Biggest Military Exercise Since Cold War, And Close To Russia

  The upcoming Steadfast Defender NATO war drills, set for early 2024, are expected to be the biggest military exercises in Europe since the end of the Cold War, the Financial Times is reporting Monday.

  At a moment the war in Ukraine grows more and more unpredictable, given neither Russia nor the West have shown any signs of backing down, the FT writes that “Nato is preparing its biggest live joint command exercise since the cold war next year, assembling more than 40,000 troops to practice how the alliance would attempt to repel Russian aggression against one of its members.”

  

  Like with the ongoing, smaller ‘Northern Coasts’ war games currently being executed by NATO in Baltic waters, the Steadfast Defender 24 drills will simulate how the military alliance would respond in the face of a hypothetical Russian invasion. 

  NATO officials were quoted in FT as saying the planned exercises are seen as a key part of “demonstrating to Moscow that the alliance is prepared to fight.”

  Steadfast Defender is slated to run in February and March, and is likely to be seen as a provocation by Moscow given it will take place in various locales across Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states – the latter which border Russia. According to more from the FT report detailing the upcoming giant war game:

  “It will start in spring next year and is expected to involve between 500 and 700 air combat missions, more than 50 ships, and about 41,000 troops, Nato officials said.”

  “It is designed to model potential maneuvers against an enemy modelled on a coalition led by Russia, named Occasus for the purposes of the drill.”

  Crucially, the Baltic Sea coastline – where NATO has increasingly flexed its military might with more and more exercises – is very important to Russia as its strategic Kaliningrad exclave sits on it, sandwiched between two NATO members, Poland and Lithuania. Last year’s Defender drills had been the largest up to that point, and they continue to get expanded year-by-year.

  A July Politico report explained that “NATO has steadily increased its control of the Baltic Sea — a crucial maritime gateway for the Russian fleet which has bases near St. Petersburg and in the heavily militarized Kaliningrad exclave.”

  Who would be free to roam around the “NATO Lake” without suspicion? #Nordstream

  The Baltic Sea Became a Nato Lake https://t.co/llOiEApK0X

  — Gilda Mundson (@GildaMundson) September 28, 2022

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  The publication also noted that “During the Cold War, only Denmark and Germany at the far western edge of the Baltic were in the alliance. Poland joining NATO in 1999 and the three Baltic republics in 2004 put most of the sea’s southern shore under alliance control.”

  Russia has meanwhile at times “answered” these games by staging large drills in the Black Sea. But dangerously at this moment the western Black Sea region is in a state of war, given Russian warships are launching missiles against Ukraine from there.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 20:40

• Novak Djokovic For Director Of The World Health Organization
  Novak Djokovic For Director Of The World Health Organization

  Authored by Roger Simon via The Epoch Times,

  Myriad posters on X, formerly Twitter, late on Sept. 10 noted (36-year-old!) Novak Djokovic’s 24th Grand Slam championship.

  Extending his own men’s record – Margaret Court won as many when tennis was as Tiddlywinks to today’s game – was accomplished in front of signs for Moderna Inc., the maker of COVID-19 shots and a main advertiser for this year’s U.S. Open.

  

  Yet, as the world well knows, the greatest tennis player of all time – and arguably among the greatest athletes ever – forswore the COVID-19 vaccinations on offer, even though it meant that he would be banned from numerous tournaments, every one of which he would have been seeded No. 1.

  

  He also was banned from the United States and Australia altogether.

  Think of what his statistics would be had this not been so. They’re already unbelievable.

  Instead of taking the shots, he followed his own rigorous health regime of diet and exercise that few of us could emulate. I know I couldn’t.

  The results, however, speak for themselves, including, shortly, an unheard-of 400 weeks at world No. 1.

  Djoker, as he is called, also is an intelligent fellow who speaks several languages.

  So, I have a not-so-modest proposal. Why not make Novak the director-general of the World Health Organization?

  He would certainly do a better job than the objectively pro-Chinese communist incumbent who drags behind him all kinds of COVID-19-related misjudgments and misrepresentations.

  Instead of diktats from the top, we would have an actual example of physical excellence to mirror and inspire us.

  What would be better for humanity on average: to be a race of people who are gluten-free, pescatarian, and exercise daily, or a race that takes COVID booster shots annually or semi-annually on the advice of some totalitarian statists who claim medical expertise?

  I would bet my proverbial house on the former. In a landslide.

  Yes, Mr. Djokovic has had his moments when he has been too lax, such as when he did some partying with his fellow tennis players, and several contracted COVID-19.

  But undoubtedly, he has learned from the experience, just as he has an uncanny ability to learn from his opponents on the court and defeat them.

  You may think this is a silly recommendation, but in reality, it’s not.

  The appointing of a Novak Djokovic to a role such as that would have great symbolic significance, reminding us that the ultimate control over our bodies is most often our own.

  We can be masters of our physical fates, at least for a while, through our behaviors.

  Our mental fates are intimately tied to that.

  But, yes, I readily admit that isn’t going to happen. Mr. Djokovic isn’t about to retire as a tennis player. He seems to have more Grand Slam championships in him.

  How many exactly, only God knows.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 20:20

• Watch: Germany's Baerbock Humiliated In Dressing Down By Ukraine Foreign Minister
  Watch: Germany’s Baerbock Humiliated In Dressing Down By Ukraine Foreign Minister

  German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was utterly humiliated by her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in a joint press conference on Monday. Baerbock had traveled to war-ravaged Ukraine on her fourth visit since Russia’s invasion. She engaged the Zelensky government in high level talks, at one point announcing 20 million euros more in humanitarian aid (Berlin has now provided 380 million euros this year).

  But naturally the Ukrainian side pressed her on supplying more advanced weapons, in particular the Swedish-German produced long-range Taurus cruise missile. That’s when Kubela lashed out at Germany’s top diplomat in a deeply embarrassing moment for Berlin…

  Kuleba wipes his feet on Annalena Baerbock. When asked if she gave him any hope that Germany will supply Ukraine with Taurus missiles:

  “No, she didn’t go beyond the official position of the German government… but you’ll do it anyway, it’s just a matter of time”

  Embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/9oSChwxJ1e

  — Olga Bazova (@OlgaBazova) September 11, 2023

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

  Things took a turn at the joint presser when a journalist asked about the difficulties of the counteroffensive along the southern front, and posed whether Kubela thinks Kiev’s Western backers should supply weapons like the Taurus “quicker and faster”….

  Kubela then explained he had pressed the German delegation for Taurus deliveries as soon as possible, but that Baerbock left him no “hope” in these meetings. He then in a smug and patronizing tone looked toward her and said:

  “No, she didn’t go beyond the official position of the German government… but you’ll do it anyway, it’s just a matter of time.”

  “You will do it anyway, its just a matter of time, and I don’t understand why we are wasting time,” Kuleba said in response to a question at a press conference.

  Kubula then described that more and more Ukrainian lives have been lost due to Western delays in weapons approval and deliveries. The suggestion was that it’s Berlin’s fault (and that of other slow to play along allies).

  Online commentators were quick to point out how “embarrassing” and “pathetic” the moment was for the German side. Others pointed out the “arrogance” on display by Kubela, given also she made the lengthy, dangerous trip into Kiev to announce new humanitarian aid. Such “gifts” weren’t enough.

  One regional commentator had this to say in response to the clip: “So here we have a US protectorate (Germany) being publicly mocked by a US proxy (Ukraine). One of the pitfalls of military alignment — the interests of the alliance as defined by the alliance leader is always supreme.”

  The UK and other Kiev backers have previously charged (typically behind closed doors) that Zelensky is generally being ‘ungrateful’…

  Perhaps the Ukrainian side didn’t like that Baerbock had pointed to deeply rooted corruption among the country’s leadership. Reuters had cited that she earlier in the meetings said “Ukraine’s place was in the European Union” but then “urged it do more to fight corruption” if it hopes to be let in.

  Increasingly, both the Biden administration as well as staunch supporters like Poland have vented occasional frustration at Zelensky and his officials being “ungrateful”.  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 20:00

• School Rehires Transgender Female Coach After He Used Girls' Locker Room & Bathroom
  School Rehires Transgender Female Coach After He Used Girls’ Locker Room & Bathroom

  Via The College Fix,

  Board members of the Gettysburg Area School District in Pennsylvania recently voted to rehire a transgender female tennis coach despite reports he had used a girls’ locker room and bathroom in the past year.

  

  According to PennLive.com, the school board rehired Sasha Yates on September 5 by a 6-2 vote after deadlocking 3-3 on the issue a few weeks earlier.

  The report notes board members provided “scant” details about Yates’ coaching contract, but denied it was due to his gender preference.

  It also mentions – briefly – that a year ago Yates had received a memo from Gettysburg High School Principal Jeremy Lusk “outlining concerns” and noting it is “imperative to maintain professional boundaries.”

  These concerns included Yates (pictured above) changing in and “walking through” the girls’ locker room, and “talk[ing] to students about undergarment preferences and menstruation.”

  A more detailed report in The Epoch Times from late August notes that Yates, formerly known as “David,” had been coaching at Gettysburg since 2018. He switched to “Sasha” last year, and after being terminated in the spring reapplied in July.

  The board’s initial 3-3 vote had maintained Yates’ termination; this was overturned last week.

  Why was Yates let go in the first place?

  The Times notes that in the fall of 2022 Yates changed his clothes in the girls’ locker room — “stripping down to bra and panties” — where the (girls) soccer team also was changing.

  Members of the team had reported “it was clear from what they saw that Mr. Yates was still fully a man.”

  The following spring, Yates used a girls’ bathroom in which a member of the softball team was present. Yates reportedly “tried to strike up a conversation” with the 16-year-old female athlete, leading the girl to text her coach “[T]his damn tennis coach just walked into the girls bathroom … Like, [expletive] You’re a [expletive] man.”

  The girl’s father brought the matter to the attention of school officials, whereupon he was informed Yates “would not be rehired for another season of coaching.”

  He thus considered the matter closed.

  That is, until Yates’ name popped back up on a list of school coaches this summer.

  “Now, everybody in this area seems to be crying that it is hate—that nobody wants this guy back because he’s transgender and it’s hate,” the father said.

  “This has absolutely nothing to do with hate on my part. I don’t care what the guy wants to call himself. My job as a parent is to protect my child. And he had no business going into that bathroom, and his actions proved that he cannot be trusted.”

  Why was Yates brought back?

  The Times notes that following the bathroom incident, a solicitor convinced board members not to fire Yates immediately as they could end up being sued.

  The solicitor then warned about a possible lawsuit if the board did not rehire Yates after he (re)applied.

  PennLive reports while there were more people who spoke against Yates at the latest board meeting, “the majority of the comments were still squarely in the coach’s corner.”

  A PennLive editorial essentially ignores the locker room and bathroom incidents, opting instead (in conditional language) to call for Pennsylvania lawmakers “to protect LGBTQ+ people”:

  The state legislature should move immediately to provide clear protections for LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and ensure what many fear is happening in Gettysburg doesn’t happen again.

  No one should face discrimination because of their sexual orientation. No one should face obstacles to securing housing or access to services because they are gay, lesbian, or transgender. No one should be denied a job or face being fired because of their sexual orientation.

  But supporters of Coach Yates believe that is the reason she hasn’t gotten her contract renewed to continue teaching tennis.

  PennLive also quotes a student on the boys tennis team who said “there’s no validity to the disgusting claims […] about [Yates]” and that he “cannot stand here and refuse to acknowledge that blatant transphobia is the main motivation behind this commotion.”

  The student also claimed a cisgender coach who had used the locker room would not have faced similar scrutiny.

  But the softball player’s father reiterated that Yates’ initial termination wasn’t “because of what he calls himself” – it was “because of his actions and the fact that he can’t follow directions.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 19:40

• 'We Would Have Done Everything Differently': Gavin Newsom Takes Mulligan On Botched Pandemic Response
  ‘We Would Have Done Everything Differently’: Gavin Newsom Takes Mulligan On Botched Pandemic Response

  California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who’s definitely not running for President in 2024 (until he does), is now on a damage control tour to rewrite history over his draconian pandemic mandates, which made California the “single worst state in every way” when it came to lockdowns, according to state Rep. Kevin Kiley (R).

  

  “I think we would’ve done everything differently,” Newsom told NBC‘s “Meet the Press” in a pre-taped interview which aired Sunday. “I think all of us in terms of our collective wisdom, we’ve evolved. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We’re experts in hindsight. We’re all geniuses now.“

  Even host Chuck Todd pressed Newsom on his lockdown strategy, saying “You found a way to allow the motion picture industry and the movie industry to get back to work during COVID, but you didn’t allow people to grieve together at funerals or at churches.”

  Wow. Chuck Todd calls out Newsom:

  “You found a way to allow the motion picture industry and the movie industry to get back to work during COVID, but you didn’t allow people to grieve together at funerals or at churches.” pic.twitter.com/bmF4fFD0Uh

  — Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 10, 2023

  California state Rep. Kevin Kiley (R) called Newsom out in a Sunday post on X, writing; 

  Newsom is now admitting he botched California’s COVID response. But this is not, as he claims, a matter of “hindsight” being 20/20. We fought back against his disastrous decisions at the time because they so clearly ran afoul of science, common sense, and the basic precepts of a free society.

  Newsom now says “we didn’t know what we didn’t know.” But all 49 other Governors knew better. California was the single worst state in every way: the most onerous school shutdowns, business shutdowns, and church shutdowns; the most draconian mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and vaccine passports; the most complete collapse of checks and balances, personal liberties, and self-government.

  Despite all of this – despite the incalculable damage he did to our young people, our businesses, and our democratic institutions in the name of “public health” – California wound up with an excess mortality rate exceeding the national average, even though we had the benefit of a relatively young population.

  At every turn, Newsom prioritized getting himself in the headlines and rewarding Special Interests over the health and well-being of Californians. It was the most consequential political failure in modern American history – and the most disgraceful.

  Others echoed Kiley’s sentiment: 

  This was completely INTENTIONAL. Newsom cannot be permitted to get away with it again.

  April 2, 2020 “Newsom says coronavirus is an ‘opportunity for reimagining a more progressive era’. Let’s call this the corollary to Rahm Emanuel’s “Never let a crisis go to waste”.…

  — ReneJayeee (@MorningInUSA123) September 11, 2023

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

  And when confronted about this French Laundry dinner…

  He LIED and told the public it was outdoors.

  He still has not addressed that lie.

  — Myrtle (@MyrtlesGirdles) September 11, 2023

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  Internal polling must be TERRIBLE.

  Or else Republicans found out how Democrats cheated and 2024 may be a functional election.

  Cuz Ted Lieu and Newsom don’t care about your rights. They would murder your children and laugh.

  Trump 2024 has them shook! pic.twitter.com/blA1zFc6oL

  — Cernovich (@Cernovich) September 10, 2023

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

  The reason we can’t accept Newsom’s “hindsight” argument is b/c it isn’t authentic.

  An authentic admission of wrong involves not only repentance, but pushing out the ideologues and elevating the dissentershttps://t.co/I2ZPbITiWq https://t.co/qfJX6FYbas pic.twitter.com/iDj5MC5mgu

  — PoIiMath (@politicalmath) September 11, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 19:20

• Victor Davis Hanson: The Frightened Left
  Victor Davis Hanson: The Frightened Left

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

  An impeachment inquiry looms and the shrieks of outrage are beginning.

  

  The Left is now suddenly voicing warnings that those who recently undermined the system could be targeted by their own legacies.

  So, for example, now we read why impeachment is suddenly a dangerous gambit.

  True, the Founders did not envision impeaching a first-term president the moment he lost his House majority. Nor did they imagine impeaching a president twice. And they certainly did not anticipate trying an ex-president in the Senate as a private citizen.

  In modern times, the nation has not rushed to impeach a president without a special counsel investigation to determine whether the chief executive was guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

  But thanks to the Democrats, recent impeachments now have destroyed all those guardrails. After all, Trump was impeached the first time on the fumes of an exhaustive but fruitless 22-month, $40 million special counsel investigation—one designed to find him guilty of Russian “collusion” and thus to be removed from office but found no actionable offenses at all.

  Instead, dejected Democrats moved immediately for a second try. In September 2019 a few weeks after Trump had announced his 2020 reelection bid, the Democratic House began to impeach the president on the new grounds that he had talked to the President Zelensky of Ukraine and said he might delay offensive arms shipments—unless the Ukrainians could demonstrate that they had ended corruption and, in particular, were no longer influenced by the Biden family quid pro quo shakedowns.

  Trump was proven right: the Biden family is not just corrupt, but, in particular, Joe Biden as head of the family and Vice President had intervened in the internal politics of an aid recipient, by threatening not to delay but rather to cancel outright all U.S. aid to Ukraine—unless it fired Viktor Shokin, a Ukrainian prosecutor.

  Shokin was then looking into the misadventures of Biden’s son Hunter, and why the Vice President’s imbecilic son was receiving lucrative compensation on the boards of a Ukrainian energy company Burisma, yet without any demonstrable expertise or education in matters of energy policy.

  Since Trump was impeached, we now know that Joe Biden did lie that he had no connection with or even knowledge of his son’s business. And we know that the fired prosecutor believed the Bidens were recipients of bribes. We know that contrary to Biden’s assertions, he was not following State Department policy.

  In contrast, the U.S. had, in fact, lauded Shokin’s efforts to repress corruption. In sum, Biden was undermining the stated policy of the U.S. government to protect his son’s—and his own—efforts to leverage money from Kyiv by monetizing the influence of his own Vice Presidency. In some sense, Biden was guilty of the very “treason” charge—altering U.S. foreign policy for personal benefit—by which Rep. Adam Schiff had earlier falsely accused Trump.

  Given that reality, it is easy to argue that the House impeached Donald Trump in 2019 for crimes that he did not commit, but which the current president Joe Biden most certainly had during his Vice Presidency.

  But weaponizing impeachment is just one baleful legacy of the Left.

  There are plenty more of their own precedents that Leftists now would not wish to have applied to themselves:

  • Will the next president have the FBI pay social media censors to suppress the dissemination of any news it feels is unhelpful to the reelection of a Republican president?

  • Is it OK now for the next Vice President to invite his son onto Air Force Two to cement multimillion dollars deals that benefit both, with Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian oligarchs who enjoy government ties?

  • Should a conservative billionaire stealthily insert $419 million late in the 2024 campaign to absorb the work of registrars in key voting precincts?

  • If a Democratic president wins the 2024 election should conservative groups riot at the Capitol on Inauguration Day? Should a conservative celebrity yell out to the assembled crowd of protestors that she dreams of blowing up the White House? And if a Republican wins, should he prosecute any Democratic rioters who once again swarm Washington on Inauguration Day and charge them with “insurrection,” meting out long prisons sentences to the convicted?

  • Is Joe Biden now vulnerable to being impeached for systematic family corruption, or using the Department of Justice to obstruct the prosecution of his son in his last days in office, and then being tried in the Senate as a private citizen?

  • If the Republicans gain the Senate, will they move to end the filibuster in agreement with Democratic assertions that it is “racist” and a “Jim Crow relic”?

  • If the midwestern Electoral College “Blue Wall” seems to reappear, or if Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada recreate new blue walls, will there be a conservative effort to end the constitutionally mandated Electoral College?

  • If in 2024 there is a narrow Democratic win in the Electoral College, should conservative celebrities conspire to run ads urging the electors to reject their constitutional duties and not vote in accordance with their state’s popular vote that went Democratic? Should a Republican third-party candidate sue to stop a state’s selection of its electors on grounds the voting machines were rigged?

  • If Supreme Court decisions begin to appear to favor the left, will Republicans talk of packing the court, or have the DOJ turn a blind eye when mobs began to swarm the homes of liberal justices? Should the conservative media go after liberal judges with serial accusations of corruption? Should the Republican Senate leader assemble a mob of pro-life protestors at the doors of the court and call out Justices Sotomayor or Jackson by name, with threats that they will soon reap the whirlwind they have sowed, given they have no idea of what is about to “hit” them? Should conservative legal scholars urge the country to ignore Supreme Court decisions deemed liberal?

  • Will local prosecutors in red jurisdictions begin filing criminal charges against leading Democratic candidates on various charges, among them accusations of old inflated real estate assessments, campaign finance laws, questioning ballot results, or taking classified documents home? If Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton were to run in 2024, will their past illicit behavior gain the attention of a city or state attorney in Utah, West Virginia, or Wyoming?

  • If Joe Biden continues to decline at his present rate, will Republicans demand he be given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment? Will they subpoena Ivy League psychiatrists to testify that an intervention is needed to remove him from office? And will an FBI director and a deputy Attorney General plan to wear wires, and record Biden in his private moments of senility, as a way of convincing the cabinet or Congress that he is demonstrably mentally unfit for office?

  • In the 2024 election, should the Republican nominee hire a foreign ex-spy to compile falsehoods about the Democratic opponent and then seed them among the media, and Department of Justice? Should the FBI hire such a Republican contractor and likewise use him to gather dirt on the Democratic nominee?

  • If there appears incriminating evidence concerning a Republican nominee, should the FBI retrieve such evidence, keep it under wraps, lie about its veracity, and instead go along with media and ex-intelligence officers assertions that it is a fraudulent production of Russian intelligence?

  • Will conservative CIA and FBI directors, and the Director of National Intelligence be given exemptions from prosecutions for systematically lying while under oath in Congress or to federal investigators?

  • Will conservative celebrities ritually on social media, without fear of censorship, brag about ways of decapitating, shooting, stabbing, burning, or blowing up the Democratic nominee?

  • Since in many states the statues of limitations have not yet expired for arson, murder, assault, looting, and attacks on 1,500 police officers during the summer 2020 riots, will state prosecutors now begin identifying those 14,000 once arrested and mostly released, and begin refiling charges of conspiracy, racketeering—and “insurrection”?

  • Will they also file insurrection charges against those who torched a federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic Washington DC church, or conspired to riot and swarm the White House grounds in an effort to attack the President of the United States?

  • Will they file charges against Vice President Kamala Harris for “inciting” ongoing violent demonstrations with monotonous, emphatic, and repetitive threats in the weeks before her nomination? Contrary to liberal “fact checkers” at time of nationwide violence, Harris certainly did not distinguish violent from non-violent protests, but in fact implied that they were intimately tied to the upcoming election and beyond. So given the hundreds of police officers injured, the hundreds of millions in property damage, and the dozens killed, what exactly did Harris mean by tying that ongoing summer of often violent protests to Election Day?:

  “But they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop, and this is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day. Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they’re not going to let up — and they should not. And we should not.”

  Was the above more or less inflammatory than Trump’s January 6 remarks for which in part he is under indictment:

  “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore…I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”?

  In sum, the Democratic leadership along with the media long ago deemed that Donald Trump posed such an existential threat to democracy that they were entitled to destroy democratic norms to destroy him.

  Their actions were predicated on three assumptions: one, they had that right because they were more sophisticated, morally superior, and smarter than the rest of America and thus deserved the exemption to blow up customs and norms to achieve the “correct” ends; two, whatever damage they did to long-standing protocols of equal justice under the law paled in comparison to the damage that Trump supposedly would or did do; and three, their conservative opposition either lacked the wherewithal, the brains, or the audacity to emulate such behavior and thus there was no worry anyone would dare do to them what they did to others.

  And now? For the first time, given recent polls, the Left is scared that a Republican House and perhaps soon a Republican Senate and White House might follow its own precedents, and use new leftwing guidelines to enact conservative agendas.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 19:00

• CJ Hopkins & The (Continued) Criminalization Of Dissent
  CJ Hopkins & The (Continued) Criminalization Of Dissent

  Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  So, the Berlin State Prosecutor has launched another criminal investigation of me.

  

  Apparently, I’m being charged with reporting on the original investigation of me that the Berlin State Prosecutor launched in June.

  What happened is, the prosecutor visited my blog and read a column I published in July, The Criminalization of Dissent (Revisited), which included screenshots of the alleged “hate-crime” Tweets that the original criminal investigation is based on, and that resulted in the Order of Punishment that the Berlin District Court handed down two weeks ago. So, the prosecutor opened a new criminal investigation and sent my attorney an official notice explaining the gravity of the additional charges.

  The charges are of the utmost gravity. I am officially accused of “relativizing” or “minimizing” the crimes of the Nazis … by republishing the two Tweets that I originally tweeted.

  Here, once again, are the Tweets …

  

  Yes, that’s right, I just published them again. I am going to explain why I published them again.

  I’m not going to explain the Tweets again. I have explained them in several previous columns. I have explained them to Matt Taibbi of Racket News, Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone, James Freeman, Patrick Henningsen, Elena Louisa Lange, Dirk Pohlmann, and Christine Black at Brownstone Institute (forgive me if I’m forgetting anyone). I explained them to Stefan Millius of Weltwoche, and to another journalist at a big Swiss newspaper. My attorney has explained them, in German, to the prosecutor, and to German audiences on Kontrafunk. RT published a piece explaining them. I believe they have been exhaustively explained.

  Not that they ever really needed explanation. You would have to be a certified moron to believe they “minimized,” or “relativized,” or in any way made light of the crimes of the Nazis. You and I are not certified morons. Neither is the Berlin State Prosecutor. Neither is the District Court of Berlin. Not to put too fine a point on it, the charges are horseshit, and everyone involved knows it. They are a blatant pretext to crackdown on dissent.

  OK, now let me explain why I just published the Tweets again, knowing full well that the Berlin State Prosecutor is probably going to read this column, become extremely agitated, and charge me with additional “hate crimes.”

  No, I am not a glutton for punishment. I’m not at all enjoying my introduction to the so-called “German legal system.”

  It is taking up my time.

  It is making me angry.

  It is upsetting my wife, which I do not appreciate.

  It is costing me a lot of money.

  It has forced me to ask other people for money, which is something I do not like to do.

  It’s screwing with my sleep.

  It is distracting me from my work.

  And so on. Which is exactly the point.

  The goal of horseshit prosecutions like mine (and those of many other dissidents currently) is (a) to punish us for speaking out against “New Normal” totalitarianism by making our lives as miserable as possible, (b) to make examples of us to discourage others from speaking out, and (c) to intimidate us into shutting the fuck up.

  Totalitarians, fascists, and other power freaks are essentially just glorified schoolyard bullies. They may cloak themselves in the mantle of the law, but their modus operandi is brute force. Beneath all the bullshit, their message is simple: “either do what we say, or we will hurt you.”

  OK, prepare yourself, because I’m going to give you some advice. I do not generally like to do that, but, in this case, I’m going to make an exception.

  Never, ever, give in to a bully.

  The second you do, that bully owns you.

  What the bully wants, more than whatever he is demanding, more than anything else in the world, is your fear. The bully interprets your fear as respect, because the bully doesn’t understand respect. The bully craves your fear, and your obedience, because they reify the bully’s “authority.” They enable the bully to feel powerful and important. The bully needs to feel “powerful” and “important” because the bully feels weak and unimportant, and afraid. All fascists are essentially cowards. They are cowards, and nihilists, who hate themselves, and fear themselves, and hate and fear life, which is why they are so obsessed with controlling everything.

  The point is, never give in to a bully. Never reify a bully’s “authority.” If you do, you will find yourself sucked into the bully’s sadistic, nihilistic “reality.” You will be playing by the bully’s rules. And that is all “reality” actually is, a set of rules we agree to play by, or, in this case, do not agree to play by.

  So, getting back to my criminal case, and the Berlin State Prosecutor’s latest attempt to bully me into shutting up and demonstrating my “respect” for the “authority” and “power” of the Berlin State Prosecutor, fuck that. I do not respond well to threats. I do not take orders from totalitarians and fascists, or any other type of authoritarians or bullies. So that is why I have republished those Tweets, and why I will continue to republish those Tweets every time the German authorities threaten me with additional criminal charges for refusing to obey their “authority.”

  Again, I am under no illusions. I expect the prosecutor to file new charges and issue further threats, which I will defy, which will lead to additional charges, and so on. I am not looking forward to that, but I don’t have any other choice, not if I want to be able to respect myself.

  If you have any doubts about whether that will happen (i.e., an endless cycle of new bullshit criminal charges stemming from my repeated refusal to respond to the German authorities’ bullying), well, let me tell you about another dissident the German authorities are currently persecuting. I’ll do it quickly, and then I’ll let you go.

  As many of my readers are aware, I am presently holed up in an undisclosed location in the Italian countryside.

  Michael Ballweg, the founder and lead organizer of the “Querdenken” movement, was also here for a while. Michael, who is an excellent cook, whipped up some delicious “extremist” dinners, after which we all sat around “denying Covid,” “conspiracy theorizing,” brainwashing each other with “Russian propaganda,” and “delegitimizing the state,” and so on. Late at night, when the other “extremists” were sleeping, Michael and I discussed our criminal cases.

  Michael’s case is a bit more serious than mine. Michael just spent nine months in jail. The German authorities have seized his assets, and frozen all his funds, so he is homeless, and bankrupt, and they are prosecuting him for attempted fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, or, in other words, for launching a protest movement. If you’re not familiar with Michael and Querdenken, you can read the official propaganda disseminated by the usual “mainstream” media or the Intelligence officers who edit Wikipedia, or … here’s a Spiked article to start you off. Then, go ahead, do your own research.

  The most absurd aspect of Michael’s case is the German authorities’ “theory of his crimes.” According to this theory, Michael’s devious scheme was to commit serious fraud by … well, basically, launching a nationwide protest movement that was certain to get a ton of media attention and incur the wrath of the German authorities. As any criminal mastermind will confirm, the best way to commit major fraud is to absolutely infuriate the government by organizing a series of massive protests, and generate tons of media attention, because you definitely want as much publicity as possible while you are defrauding your unsuspecting supporters of their voluntary donations to your cause.

  Seriously, this is their “theory of the crime,” which would make Michael Ballweg the most idiotic and incompetent fraudster in the history of fraud.

  I could go on about his case, and mine, or those of the numerous other dissidents that are currently being made examples of, and about the broader GloboCap crackdown on dissent, which is happening, not just in New Normal Germany, but all throughout the New Normal Reich, but I need to end here and go water some plants. I am serving as “caretaker” of this thoughtcriminal sanctuary, and I take my responsibilities seriously.

  I’ll keep you (and the Berlin State Prosecutor) posted on my further “hate crimes.” In the meantime, best wishes from somewhere in Italy!

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 18:20

• IPO Renaissance Not So Clear: ARM 5x Oversubscribed, InstaCart Big Down-Round
  IPO Renaissance Not So Clear: ARM 5x Oversubscribed, InstaCart Big Down-Round

  Amid concerns of mounting economic headwinds and market volatility, there is renewed optimism that the 18-month slowdown in the initial public offering market, which collapsed equity underwriting revenues, could be due for a rebound. 

  On deck this week is the IPO for UK-based chip designer Arm Holdings Plc, which is more than five times oversubscribed. Financials Times spoke with people familiar with the IPO that said the company would raise about $4.9 billion with shares priced at the high end of $47 to $51 per share. The deal is expected to close as early as Tuesday. 

  Strong demand for the chip designer that SoftBank Group Corp owns could be what is needed to break the ice on the frozen US IPO market. A group of top tech companies have indicated interest in “purchasing up to an aggregate of $735 million of the ADSs offered” in ARM’s offering, including Apple, Nvidia, Google, AMD, and Taiwan Semiconductor. 

  However, Arm could be an outlier.

  Also on Monday, Instacart, one of the largest online grocery delivery firms, submitted an updated filing for its upcoming IPO, indicating a money raise of $616 million, with a value of $9.3 billion — or about 25% less than its private valuation two years ago.

  Following a surge in growth stocks that pushed US equity benchmarks to near-record highs, investors have been drinking the Wall Street ‘AI Kool-Aid’ with hopes of a robust stock market recovery. 

  “As we sit here in late August, looking towards the fall, IPO volumes are actually up 140% this year,” RBC Capital Markets’ John Kolz wrote in a recent note. 

  Kolz continued, “Follow-on issuance is up 43%. Converts are up 140%. But those numbers are off an extremely depressed base. The NASDAQ is up 27%, but there’s been virtually no tech IPOs. Deal volumes have been decent, but performance thus far has been fair at best. There’s real-time momentum in the markets right now, but what does that mean for rest of the year, and for IPOs specifically?”

  RBC’s Mike Ventura reaffirmed Kolz’s view: “If you think of the year-over-year comparisons you’ve listed, most of that deal volume came from a well-defined window in May and June, ahead of corporate blackouts. The market data has investors feeling good. The knock-on effect of the very strong follow-on performance has already led to a few green shoots in the IPO market.”

  While the headline of an oversubscribed Arm IPO brings relief for investors, there is still an unsettled macroeconomic environment where risks of a hard landing (read: Goldman questioning the soft landing narrative) mount despite investors latching onto the ‘Goldilocks’ view. 

  Moving beyond the AI bubble, which even JPMorgan’s top tech trader Ron Adler warned might have just popped, we shared a note Monday morning that shows a collapse in Bloomberg’s Smart Money Flow Indicator.

  There are rumblings under the surface… 

  

  Whether it’s the prospect for ‘higher for longer’ interest rates, another rate hike, or a scare in consumer spending, the market could be just one narrative away from de-risking, suggesting the IPO market recovery might be too premature and possibly a 2024 story.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 18:00

• 22 Years Later: America's Journey From Impenetrable Fortress To A Power In Decline
  22 Years Later: America’s Journey From Impenetrable Fortress To A Power In Decline

  Authored by Jordan Schachtel via ‘The Dossier’ Substack,

  America was an impenetrable fortress.

  That’s at least what the news and the believably competent people in charge said at the time.

  We just assumed that nobody would ever mess with us.

  Until one day, the Twin Towers came crashing down.

  

  On the morning of September 11, 2001, our country was widely understood as the lone hyper power that whooped that bad guy Saddam not so long ago. We also had just bombed the brakes off of Yugoslavia, but that was necessary to keep peace and such. When it came to military prowess, we were the NBA All Stars, and everyone else’s defense capabilities added up to a high school basketball team. At least that’s what we were told. China was not yet on the radar. America was the uncontested hegemon. And we were nice enough to maintain global order as the World Police, too!

  Before September 11, it was just assumed that the government would keep us safe from any foreign threats. One could just imagine how all of those ultra intelligent, wise and moral bureaucrats from those three letter agencies would have all of these super secret Star Wars-like tech measures in place to protect us from the barbarians beyond our shores.

  Looking back on it now, September 11, 2001 was the first day of my life that broadly challenged my preconceived notion that the government was our partner in preserving our freedoms and our constitutional system of order.

  

  What the heck? Why didn’t our ultra competent Pentagon defense systems protect us and shoot down the bad guys before they could hit us? Hmm, must’ve been a catastrophic error or something…

  But instead of allowing for an internal investigation into the developing paradoxes being introduced into the Millennial mind, the current regime quickly distracted the citizenry with the likes of Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, the Taliban, and co.

  I was in middle school across the river in New Jersey, and still remember that day like it was yesterday, when we were abruptly pulled out of class and sent home. Some of those kids’ parents worked in the original World Trade Center. For some classmates who lost a loved one, it would mark the last time I ever saw them. I hope they’re doing well now. Everyone knew someone, or several someones, who never made it back from work that day.

  In the New York City metro area, it was a time of disbelief, sadness, unity, and rage.

  

  Everyone remembers the unity. Many have to be reminded of the rage.

  There was an overwhelming sense that we needed to get even, and as soon as humanly possible.

  The likes of Ron Paul and other non-interventionist forces were shouted down as treasonous.

  It was time to get even, even if we didn’t really understand who or what our enemy comprised.

  The American war machine weaponized this rage, this indignant mission, into a multi decade boondoggle in dozens of nations.

  At the time of the 9/11 attacks, foreign policy was more of an intellectual exercise for the dorks in D.C.

  Very few Americans knew anything about the Muslim world, let alone Afghanistan (and later Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc).

  The people who claimed they knew stuff didn’t really know anything either. We were the easiest of marks.

  As the wars continued, George W. Bush reminded the nation that we had to “fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”

  

  But wait, how did they get here in the first place?

  There was no time for those kind of “insensitive” questions, even years after the 9/11 tragedy. It was always time to get the bad Al Qaeda guys, harbored by their Taliban sponsors. The mission was ever expansive, and it didn’t seem to matter. Anyone who wasn’t on board with the War On Terror agenda was on the side of the terrorists, we were told.

  Trillions in spending and thousands of lost American lives later, our country is no more secure than it was on 9/10/2001. Moreover, our sacred liberties have been trampled upon, and the country once understood as an impenetrable fortress is a power in decline.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/11/2023 – 17:40

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