Today’s News 15th June 2023

• Intelligence Analyst Sounds Alarm On CCP's Influence Over WHO Through 'One Health' Ideologies
  Intelligence Analyst Sounds Alarm On CCP’s Influence Over WHO Through ‘One Health’ Ideologies

  Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  An intelligence analyst is sounding the alarm on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military strategy of influencing the World Health Organization’s (WHO) policies through “One Health” ideologies.

  

  “We are at war with the Chinese Communist Party,” Brian O’Shea told The Epoch Times. “Many people don’t understand or see this because—as the Chinese say—the God of War has many faces.”

  In this case, the battlefield isn’t men in uniform with artillery, O’Shea said.

  “The battlefield is all around us,” he said.

  O’Shea began his career with the Military Intelligence Corps, where he was trained in electronic warfare and various methods of intelligence analyses before he went into tactical military intelligence with the 1^st Special Forces Group, then later the 5^th Special Forces Group.

  “I learned to spot the patterns and connect the dots,” O’Shea said. “Zooming in and zooming out, I looked at what’s going on the ground and asked: ‘How does this connect on the national level? How does this connect on an international level?”

  O’Shea continued to work in intelligence after his 11 years with the special forces, eventually landing in the private sector working in competitive intelligence.

  Later, he decided that he wanted to offer his skill set to those “who might think these services are out of reach,” providing investigative aid and education to people who are being surveilled, stalked, or have even received death threats, which is how he met his wife: author and journalist Naomi Wolf.

  O’Shea, in addition to being the chief operating officer of Centurion Intelligence Partners, contributes as an investigative journalist to Wolf’s Daily Clout platform.

  ‘Drumbeat at Every Level of Society’

  During the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, O’Shea and Wolf witnessed policies not consistent with science but with authoritarian rule.

  “I remember Naomi saying, ‘They’re never going to let us out,’ and I thought, ‘That’s crazy,’” O’Shea said. “But she was right.”

  Then, as the vaccines emerged, O’Shea said he began to recognize the methods by which the propaganda fueling them was carried out.

  “At first, I thought it was just strange that there was this push for a vaccine for a virus that even the early statistics showed had a 99-plus percent survival rate,” O’Shea said. “It just seemed like one of the programs I would have implemented to propagandize against terrorism. It had this drumbeat at every level of society.”

  The more dots he connected, the more he saw what he believed to be a coordination of efforts.

  “The same people pushing the dangers of the virus were the same people pushing this cure-all vaccine that was supposed to save the world,” O’Shea said.

  One Health’s Mission Creep

  Through its One Health ideology, the WHO can engineer a level of control over its member nations evocative of the CCP’s dominance over its population by modeling and adopting the CCP’s ecological civilization policies, O’Shea said. These policies, like One Health, eventually infiltrate every aspect of life.

  The WHO defines One Health as an “integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems.”

  The WHO presented a draft of a pandemic treaty in May at the 76th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, where national leaders discussed the treaty and 307 proposed amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR).

  The treaty described One Health as the interconnection of “the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems).”

  It seems reasonable, O’Shea said, because humans could very well be affected by the sickness of local wildlife.

  “Where it gets dangerous is where One Health started having something called mission creep,” O’Shea said.

  Mission creep is a military term defined as a mission expanding beyond its scope.

  Formerly called One Medicine, based on the holistic medical theory originating in the 1930s, One Health was revised to include policies such as regulating how governments spend money and how farmers manage agriculture.

  A surveillance system is incorporated to guarantee everyone is adhering to these One Health policies, O’Shea said, creating biosecurity to ensure biodiversity.

  The word “surveillance” is found 11 times in the WHO’s treaty (pdf) titled “Bureau’s text of the WHO CA+,” such as under Article 4 on page 7, where it states, “The Parties shall take prevention and surveillance measures that are consistent with and supportive of effective implantation of the International Health Regulations.”

  There are also guidelines detailed for combating what it calls an “infodemic,” defined as “false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.”

  Zoonotic Spillover and ‘Eminent Domain’

  “Where it gets chilling is when it starts blaming humans for the reason for an outbreak, insisting on our actions that need to be changed,” O’Shea said.

  Among One Health’s objectives is the prevention of zoonotic spillover of pathogens from animals to humans, which the WHO maintains is the predominant cause of infectious disease, as well as the primary cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  “It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health,” the document states. “It also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 06/15/2023 – 02:00

• Misinformation Is A Word We Use To Shut You Up
  Misinformation Is A Word We Use To Shut You Up

  Authored by Daniel Klein via the Brownstone Institute,

  The policing of “information” is the stuff of Naziism, Stalinism, Maoism, and similar anti-liberal regimes. To repress criticism of their dicta and diktats, anti-liberals label criticism “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Those labels are instruments to crush dissent. 

  This paper offers an understanding of knowledge as involving three chief facets: information, interpretation, and judgment. Usually, what people argue fervently over is not information, but interpretation and judgment. 

  What is being labeled and attacked as “misinformation” is not a matter of true or false information, but of true or false knowledge—meaning that disagreement more commonly arises over interpretations and judgments as to which interpretations to take stock in or believe. We make judgments, “good” and “bad,” “wise” and “foolish,” about interpretations, “true” and “false.” 

  On that understanding, the paper explains that the projects and policies now afoot styled “anti-misinformation” and “anti-disinformation” are dishonest, as it should be obvious to all that those projects and policies would, if advanced honestly, be called something like “anti-falsehood” campaigns.

  But to prosecute an “anti-falsehood” campaign would make obvious the true nature of what is afoot—an Orwellian boot to stomp on Wrongthink. To support governmental policing of “information” is to confess one’s anti-liberalism and illiberality. The essay offers a spiral diagram to show the three chief facets of knowledge (information, interpretation, and judgment) plus a fourth facet, fact, which also deserves distinct conceptualization, even though the spiral reminds us: Facts are theory-laden.

  

  Introduction 

  Writing at Discourse, published by the Mercatus Center, Martin Gurri describes “disinformation” as follows:

  The word means, ‘Shut up, peasant.’ It’s a bullet aimed at killing the conversation. It’s loaded with hostility to reason, evidence, debate and all the stuff that makes our democracy great. (Gurri 2023)

  That is from Gurri’s excellent piece, “Disinformation Is the Word I Use When I Want You to Shut Up.” The piece prompted the present essay, the title of which is a variation on his. 

  With such titles, Gurri and I are being polemical, of course. Not all usages of “disinformation” and “misinformation” come from people intent on shutting someone up. But a lot are. The “anti-misinformation” and “anti-disinformation” projects now afoot or in effect are about shutting up opponents.

  In 2019 the Poynter Institute for Media Studies published “A Guide to Anti-misinformation Actions around the World.” There you survey examples of anti-misinformation and anti-disinformation projects and policies, which have no doubt soared further since 2019.

  The policing of ‘information’ is the stuff of Naziism, Stalinism, Maoism, and similar anti-liberal regimes. In my title “Misinformation Is a Word We Use to Shut You Up,” anti-liberals are the “We.” To repress criticism of their dicta and diktats, they stamp criticism as “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Those stamps are Orwellian tools that anti-liberals wield in the hope of stamping out Wrongthink—for example, on climate, election integrity, the origins of the Covid virus, therapeutics such as Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, the effectiveness of masking, the effectiveness of the Covid injections, the safety of the Covid injections, and the effectiveness of lock-downs. “Anti-misinformation” could be deployed in keeping with whatever the next THE CURRENT THING might be, with associated slogans against, say, China, Putin, Nord Stream, racists, white supremacists, MAGA Republicans, “deniers,” et cetera. And then, of course, there’s all that “misinformation” disseminated by “conspiracy theorists”.

  In speaking of “policing,” I mean government throwing its weight and its coercion around against “misinformation” or “disinformation.” And, besides government coercion, there are allies. These allies often enjoy monopolistic positions, stemming either from government handouts, privileges, and sweetheart deals, as with broadcasters, universities, and pharmaceutical companies, or from having cornered certain network externalities, as with certain huge media platforms. Allies of various sorts sometimes do the bidding of the despots because they themselves are threatened and intimidated. The ecosystem leads to their debasement. 

  To support governmental policing of “information” is to confess one’s anti-liberalism and illiberality. Even worse, it is to flaunt them. The motive is to make and signal commitment to anti-liberalism, in a manner parallel to how religious cults sets up rituals and practices for making and signaling commitments (Iannaccone 1992). Vice signals vice, the ticket in some spheres to promotion and advancement. 

  Also, vicious action spurs more of the same to defend against exposé and accountability for past wrongs. In protecting their rackets, the wrongdoers verge upon a downward spiral.

  Knowledge’s richness

  I wrote Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 2012). The book says knowledge involves three chief facets. Those facets help us see why “misinformation” and “disinformation” are words anti-liberals use to shut people up. The three chief facets are information, interpretation, and judgment: 

  • Information exists within a working interpretation, natural to the context of the matter under discussion. 
  • Interpretation takes us beyond the working interpretation. It opens things up to the marvelous generation and multiplying of interpretations; you now face a portfolio or menu of interpretations, and it is a portfolio that can always grow yet another interpretation. 
  • Judgment is the action facet of knowledge. It is about, first, estimating interpretations and, second, taking stock in certain interpretations you estimate highly. Judgment involves a degree of commitment—belief—which propels you to act on the interpretations you take stock in. If you do not actually act on the interpretation you purport to take stock in, you are a hypocrite and a quack. If you are aware of your hypocrisy, you are a liar; if you are not aware of it, you are in denial, self-deluded. Lying, stubborn denial, self-delusion, and cynicism are features of baseness.

  When despots label opposition “misinformation” or “disinformation” they abuse language. They invoke presuppositions built into the word information, presuppositions that are false. When despots label opposition “mis-” or “disinformation, they are, at best, objecting in the interpretation and judgment dimensions of knowledge, or, at worst, they are speaking in a way that has abandoned civil engagement altogether, instead using words as instruments of wickedness. 

  Usually, what people argue fervently over is not information, but interpretations and judgments as to which interpretations to act on. What is being labeled and attacked as “misinformation” is not a matter of true or false information, but of true or false knowledge. The projects and policies now afoot styled “anti-misinformation” and “anti-disinformation” are dishonest, as it should be obvious to all that those projects and policies would, if advanced honestly, be called “anti-falsehood” or “anti-falseness” or “anti-foolishness” or “anti-untruth” campaigns. But to prosecute an “anti-falsehood” campaign would make obvious the true nature of what is afoot: The persecution and silencing of Wrongthink. In misrepresenting matters of interpretation and judgment as one of “misinformation,” they misrepresent the nature of their projects and dodge the responsibility to account for how they judge among vying interpretations. 

  Within the information dimension of knowledge, variance is resolved in a straightforward manner. Very little interpretative engagement and dialogue are called for. The question of whether a movie is in black-and-white or in color can almost always be readily decided, because we basically share an interpretation of “black-and-white” and “in color,” making the question a matter of information. If interpretative effort is called for, the matter is no longer within the information dimension—is Citizen Kane a better movie than Roman Holiday? Only to be ironic would someone say: Dad misinforms you when he says that Citizen Kane is better than Roman Holiday. The irony there would be in the implied high self-estimation, as the speaker sets up his own aesthetic sensibilities in judging movies as a standard so precise and accurate as to warrant “misinform” when Dad disagrees with that standard.

  The despots are without irony. They dodge interpretive engagement by labeling dissenting statements “mis-” or “disinformation.” They are simply bullying and intimidating their opponents.

  We notice that sometimes, as here, announcing BBC Verfiy, the despots use the novel term “mistruth,” which was scarcely ever used prior to a few decades ago (see here). The “mis-” prefix does not well fit on the word truth, which pervades knowledge river-deep, mountain-high. Think of 

  mistake, misspeak, misremember, misplace, mislay, misquote, misdirect, and so on. The prefix “mis-” is proper when the betterness of a readily identifiable alternative—the accurate quotation, for example—is hardly a matter of dispute. I doubt that much time will be spent by BBC Verify on correcting misquotations.

  Misinformed by the supermarket clerk

  I enter a supermarket and ask a clerk where the peanut butter is, and he responds, “Aisle 6.” I go there but don’t find it. I wander about and find it in Aisle 9. 

  The clerk was mistaken. He gave me false or bad information. The idea Peanut butter is in Aisle 6  is a matter of information, an idea sitting within a set of working interpretations. The working interpretations include those of ordinary human purpose and of ordinary trust and common decency. The clerk and I were not playing a game, nor was it April Fools’ Day. Importantly, the working interpretations include those of plain English—the semantic conventions of “peanut butter,” “6,” the syntactical conventions of English, and so on. 

  April Fools’ Day tricks depart from working interpretations. The tricks create an unexpected asymmetry between the interpretation of the targeted person—who wishes to add a dash of salt to his soup—and the trickster—who unscrewed the top of the salt shaker. The target interpreted the world as presenting a salt shaker with top screwed on as usual. The trickster relished her anticipation of the victim’s shock and surprise in discovering the faultiness of his interpretation of the world. 

  Asymmetric interpretation is essential to humor. Another form of humor is the put-on, as when the trickster feigns his own frustrations, and we enter into the asymmetric interpretations of the amused target of the trick, as in these Buster Keaton put-ons from Candid Camera.

  Likewise, humor often plays upon departures from semantic conventions, as in punning, “Knock, knock” jokes, and “Who’s on First” by Abbot and Costello.

  A precondition of humor is a certain trust and joint interest in the truths that humor gets at. Without those preconditions, there is no humor.

  Despotism conceals its designs. It conceals its true beliefs and intentions. By its nature, it abuses working interpretations. Despotism is untrustworthy. Its relationship with ordinary organic interpretation is never playful. That is why despotism is incapable of being humorous. It cannot make a joke, and it cannot take a joke. Adam Smith wrote: 

  Reserve and concealment…call forth diffidence. We are afraid to follow the man who is going we do not know where.

  Afraid, we attend the despot with diffidence. Despotism is grim.

  I take my peanut butter to the check-out line where the same clerk is working, and say, “I found it—but in Aisle 9!,” trying to be humorous as though a joke had been played on me. Being a mere matter of information, the mistake is readily accepted. The clerk responds, “Ah?! Sorry about that!”

  Unintentional and intentional

  When one person, Bob, misinforms another, Jim, without realizing that the information is false, the mistake is amendable to ready corrected, without fuss, assuming the falseness is realized by Jim or Bob. Such misinformation events are trifling; we don’t debate them or dwell on them. Misinformation is rather like a typo, corrected by a proof-reader. 

  Scarcely ever do we speak of the mistake with the five-syllable Latinate word misinformation. Heavy usage of the word misinformation so often occurs in reference to “anti-misinformation” projects, usage either by the perpetrators and cheerleaders of those projects or by those who fend off threats from the perps. 

  When Bob misinforms Jim intentionally, however, information mistakes are dishonest. They are lies. We dwell on them as lies, not as matters of misinformation. The misinformer is a liar. Some now promulgate the word disinformation. 

  In distinguishing misinformation from disinformation, Dictionary.com explains “the critical distinction between these confusable words: intent.” Wikipedia says the same. Its entry on Disinformation begins: “Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It should not be confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.”

  According to those sources, then, disinformation is lying. It is false information spread by those who know that it is false information. To disinform is to lie.

  The distinction based on intent is not sharp. Is the misinformer who does not know that the information he spreads is false but who failed in performing basic due diligence against its falsity a perpetrator of disinformation? His discourse usually carries with it a claim to have done such due diligence, and that claim would be false. And if he knows he has not done due diligence, he is, once again a liar, though the lie is about his having performed due diligence, not about his knowing that the information is false. Out-and-out lying travels with a vast entourage of shabby norms and shabby understandings of the duties of due diligence. Related here would be the large topics of denial, self-deceit, self-delusion, and hypocrisy. (Adam Smith’s treatment of self-deceit is explained here.) The terminus is cynicism, baseness, and miserableness.

  In ordinary private-sector affairs, outside of politics and outside of heavily governmentalized affairs, lying at the level of information is naturally checked and counteracted. Again, the “information” implies reference to working interpretations. Getting things rights should not be difficult or tricky—issues there are all within the working interpretation. Sure, mistakes are made; but such mistakes are readily and easily corrected. 

  Liars about information lose the trust of their voluntary associates, whether those voluntary associates are friends, customers, trading partners, or employees. If liars lie about simple features of their products or their services, they could be subject to law suits from their trading partners, to public criticism, and to rival exposé by competitors. In ordinary private-sector affairs, everyone has reputational incentives not to lie systematically, and especially not to lie about information, and most of us have strong moral incentives within ourselves against lying. We dread the disapproval of “the man within the breast”—an expression Adam Smith used for the conscience.

  So, you might ask: If private actors without government privileges and immunities scarcely spread false information dishonestly and programmatically, is disinformation really a thing? Before addressing that question directly, let’s turn to the Godzilla of programmatic lying.

  Propaganda: Government’s programmatic lies

  It is government, especially, that lies programmatically. The lying can be at the level of information, but it usually makes more sense to say that its lying is at the level of interpretation: The government promotes interpretations—for example, The Covid virus came from nature—, interpretations that it, the government, itself does not particularly believe. It lies about the virus having come from nature, as it lies about many other big interpretations. It propagates big lies.

  And it lies with confidence. Government is the only player in society that initiates coercion in an institutionalized way. Its coercion is overt. What’s more, it does so on a colossal scale. That is the most essential feature of government. Every government is a Godzilla, and we must learn to live with our Godzilla and mitigate the destruction it wreaks.

  The traditional term for government’s programmatic lying is propaganda—a word that once did not necessarily imply falseness (instead meaning simply ideas propagated), but is now generally used in that necessarily-pejorative sense. The falsehoods of propaganda are typically lies, in that the propagandizers usually do not particularly believe the claims they propagate. 

  Government can lie programmatically because it does not depend on voluntary participation for its support. It subsists on coercion, including restrictions on competitors and opponents, and takings from taxpayers. Organizations in heavily governmentalized settings can also lie programmatically. Crony private-organizations sustain large programmatic lying only when they enjoy privileges, immunities, and protections from the government. 

  “Misinformation” and “disinformation” are weapons anti-liberals wield

  Again, Gurri suggested that, so often, “disinformation” “means, ‘Shut up, peasant.’ It’s a bullet aimed at killing the conversation.” The term “disinformation” scarcely existed before 1980, as shown in Figure 1. The figure contains data through 2019, and it is likely that the recent surge has continued.

  

  Gilbert Doctorow writes of “the introduction of the word ‘disinformation’ into common parlance.” Doctorow writes:

  ---

  The word “disinformation” has a specific context in time and intent: it is used by the powers that be and by the mainstream media they control to denigrate, marginalize and suppress sources of military, political, economic and other information that might contradict the official government narrative and so dilute the control exercised by those in power over the general population. (Doctorow 2023)

  ---

  Gurri and Doctorow are describing what is now the main way, or at least the most troubling and most terrible way, that “disinformation” is used. It must be noted, however, that the word has also been used simply as a synonym of propaganda—and thus something that governments, too, perpetrate. But, now, “misinformation” and “disinformation” are most conspicuously a propagandistic term used in the manner described by Gurri and Doctorow. In that sense, “disinformation” is not a general synonym for propaganda, but is, rather, a word that propagandists use to smear their opponents.

  Meanwhile, in fending off this new species of propaganda, honest people, too, resort to using “disinformation,” as a synonym for propaganda, to fling that specific word back onto the propagandists. Doctorow exemplifies what I mean, as he justly writes:

  In reality, it is these censorious states and the mass media that carry their messages with stenographic precision into print and electronic dissemination who are the ones that day after day feed disinformation to the public. It is cynically composed and consists of a toxic blend of ‘spin,’ by which is meant misleading interpretation of events, and outright lies. (Doctorow 2023)

  Time again we find ourselves having to use the degraded verbalisms of the anti-

  liberals to address and combat their abuses. Sometimes it seems like our civilization revolves around trying to keep the anti-liberals from burning down the house.

  Base humans tend to weaponize things

  But aren’t governments accountable to checks and balance, divisions of power, and the rule of law? Haven’t we learned to tame Godzilla, to chain down Leviathan? 

  It is true that the government of a rule-of-law republic, checked by an honest media, might be quite limited in its programmatic lying. But that’s not how it is today, where dissent is being tarred as “mis-” and “disinformation,” and where the legacy media is morally base in the extreme. Today, regimes are increasingly despotic, and despotic regimes are much less checked and limited. 

  The rule of law means, first and foremost, the government living up to the rules posted on its own website. Governments today don’t do that. Law is applied politically, that is, with extreme partiality, upon a double-standard. Laws are selectively enforced and punishments are selectively meted out. Despots avail themselves of show trials, kangaroo bodies, and galleries filled with stooges. The “anti-misinformation” agenda is misrule.

  Despotism despoils checks and balances. Despotism centralizes power formerly divided. It destroys the independency and autonomy that, theoretically, branches and units, divided and balanced, had once enjoyed. Despotism usurps powers once distributed and balanced. Despotism is unbalanced power.

  Under a despotic regime, the coercive institutions unique to government become weaponized by the despots and their allies. They turn them against their opponents. But weaponization is itself always somewhat constrained by cultural norms. The existence of government implies the existence of a governed society, and the existence of society implies the existence of some basic norms, for example against theft, murder, and lying. David Hume famously pointed out that the governed always vastly outnumber the governors, and hence government depends on “opinion”—if only the opinion to acquiesce to those governors:

  Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. (Hume, Essays)

  I wonder whether the shut-them-up projects of Naziism, Stalinism, and Maoism tarred their opponents with labels akin to “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Even National Socialists and Communists gave some lip service to social norms, with their show trials and righteous objections to “the lying press” (Lügenpresse). But did their languages, at those times, have words that corresponded to the English words information, interpretation, and judgment, along the lines of the distinctions made here? (This ngram diagram makes me wonder.) Was their vocabulary for knowledge like that of English, and did they abuse the presuppositions involved in those distinctions the way that “anti-misinformation” projects do today? For help with this question, maybe we should turn to ChatGPT.

  The contested claims go far beyond information

  Disagreement usually arises over interpretations and judgments as to which interpretations to take stock in or believe. We make judgments, “good” and “bad,” “wise” and “foolish,” about interpretations, “true” and “false.”

  Again, “anti-misinformation” projects presuppose the information dimension where such a presupposition is inapt. When despots declare something to be “misinformation,” the discourser—say, John Campbell, Peter McCullough, Robert Malone—does not readily accept the supposed correction, unlike the clerk in the supermarket example. That is quite decisive proof that presuppositions of the information dimension do not apply. The matter is clearly beyond information.

  The despots tend to invoke certain organizations as the definitive, authoritative sources of “information.” They say, in effect: “The CDC, the WHO, the FDA says the mRNA injections are safe and effective, so anything that suggests otherwise is misinformation.” The farce here is pretending that everyone’s working interpretation consists of the dicta of some such particular organization. Never has an organization or agency had such a Mount-Olympus status for determining, throughout society, working interpretations of complex matters, and particularly not an organization with the foul characters and track-records of the CDC, WHO, FDA, and similar highly governmentalized organizations. The similitude to the Soviet Union under Stalin is obvious. 

  A big part of the interpretation dimension is the estimation of the wisdom and virtue of those who contend for authority. Government is a Godzilla; it is not a validator of an organization’s wisdom and virtue. To be worth a damn, estimations of wisdom and virtue must emerge from arrangements not heavily governmentalized, liberal arrangements, in society, in science, and in public discourse. We shall look not to Godzilla but to certain among the human beings who check Godzilla. 

  What the sincere human looks like

  I wrote above of “quite decisive proof that presuppositions of the information dimension do not apply,” in noting that Peter McCullough does not readily accept the supposed correction. But what if McCullough is a liar? Then it would be no surprise that he does not readily accept the purported correction. What, in other words, about the possibility of disinformation? An insincere disinformationist would stand by his informational statements and persist in misinforming his listeners.

  What does sincere engagement look like? 

  Sincere engagement is sincere in the desire to become better aligned with the larger good, which would correspond to a universally benevolent God. The sincere human does not claim to be universally benevolent. He does not even claim to be more benevolent than the average person. But, compared to the average person, the sincere human scrupulously strives to align his conduct with universal benevolence.

  The sincere human wants to be corrected. He welcomes correction. Sincerity is evident in the human’s openness to engagement. The sincere human welcomes deep-dive conversation, debate, and challenge. He is eager to learn. 

  If the sincere human rejects a purported correction, he is eager to explain the interpretations and judgments that motivate his rejection of the purported correction. He explains why he rejects it. And he welcomes a response to his explanation. He is agreeable to continuing the engagement.

  The sincere human wants to sit down, human-to-human, and hash things out. He wants to enter into the mind of his intellectual adversary and see why the adversary says what he says. The sincere human wants to hear about the adversary’s portfolio of possible interpretations. The sincere human is eager to compare the adversary’s portfolio to his own portfolio of interpretations. 

  In comparing the portfolios, the sincere human may see some interpretations that are not in his own portfolio, and wish to consider those as candidates for incorporation into his own. The sincere human wants to probe their soundness, their worthiness. The sincere human may also see that the adversary’s portfolio lacks certain interpretations that are in his own, and will want to understand why those are lacking from the adversary’s portfolio.

  By hashing things out, the two prattlers should aim to get the contents of their respective portfolios onto the table, making a larger union of the contents of the two portfolios of possible interpretations. They can then explore together the reasons, or causes, for their difference in how they judge among the possible interpretations. They try to dwell in one another’s mind, sympathetically, to get a feeling for the ways of the other’s judgment. After doing so, each can then make a moment in the other’s judgment into an object up for examination, an object for interpretation and estimation. “But why do you draw that conclusion?” 

  The sincere human is frank and open about the calls of his own judgment. He invites the other human to ask, “But why do you draw that conclusion?” Adam Smith wrote: “Frankness and openness conciliate confidence.”

  When two sincere humans disagree, it is as if they say to one another: 

  We both purport to orient ourselves upward, toward alignment with the good of the whole. We both understand that our thinking must focus on the most important things in the issue at hand. We both look at the same world—our interpretations are, as it were, interpretations of the signals presented to us in the book of nature. And yet we draw different conclusions. Let us explore the sources of that difference, in the hope that as a result there will be an improvement, for the good of the whole, in the joint effect of (your revised outlook and my revised outlook), after your outlook and my outlook have been revised by virtue of our conversation.

  That is what the sincere human looks like. He is open, frank, and eager to participate in conversation and debate with adversaries. He is eager to sit down and hash things out. He is eager to delve into the fine points, to nail down the details, to respond to challenges, to document the evidence, to continue the conversation. He relishes engagement as a sort of adventure of the mind. He takes joy in argumentation and scholarship, as actualization of the human potentiality for virtue—of serving God, as it were.

  The sincere human looks like—from what I can tell—Peter McCullough. 

  I single out Peter McCullough as exemplar simply to single out someone. All of those who are eager to engage adversaries illustrate the most salient feature of the sincere human, and the more that that eagerness fits the rest of my description above, the more sincere that human likely is.

  The sincere human loves life, and hence loves the most rewarding, most sublime of life’s experiences. For scholars, researchers, thinkers, and indeed for Man Thinking everywhere, as humans in continual discourse about our duties to the good and our dependence on interpreting the book of nature, one of the most rewarding, sublime experiences is the sort of civil engagement described above. The sincere human, then, holds the norms, practices, and institutions that foster and safeguard that sort of civil engagement to be sacred. The sincere human, therefore, is not only a liberal in the pre-political senses of the word, but also in the political sense christened “liberal” around the 1770s by Adam Smith and other Britons. That is the political outlook that best sacralizes the norms, practices, and institutions of sincere engagement. 

  What the unsincere human looks like

  We now turn to characters opposite of the sincere human. One would be insincere, but I wonder whether another is the human without either sincerity or insincerity. I will use “unsincere.”

  The features of the unsincere human are generally the opposite of the just-described ways of the sincere human. The unsincere human is not open. He is averse to sitting and hashing out differences with adversaries. He may issue brief, peremptory messages. He avoids challenges. He ignores criticism. He does not explain. He refuses engagement.

  The most vicious humans hate to see adversaries finding platforms and channels to challenge their projects; they work to shut them up. Other humans fall in with, or at least stays silent about, the assaults on liberal norms and institutions, such as “anti-misinformation” projects. 

  The unsincere human is illiberal, and he tends to subserve anti-liberalism, even if he does not himself mouth the slogans of anti-liberalism.

  Fact

  I return to elaborating an understanding of knowledge, because I think that getting the understanding across can be useful to sincere efforts to advance the good. (At the end of this paper is a listing of a few philosophers whose thinking my thinking dovetails with.)

  Again, the chief facets of knowledge are information, interpretation, and judgment. What about fact? Is fact not a facet of knowledge?

  Consider the saying, Facts are theory-laden, a saying that got started in the 1960s. To relate that saying to my terminology, think of “theory” as interpretation judged worthy or superior. Theory, then, refers to the dimensions of interpretation and of judgment.  

  Facts are theory-laden is a useful saying, for it reminds us that what one person calls “fact” can be opened up to examination and challenge by another person—or even by the same person, a moment later, after having called it “fact.” The simple truth is that we could, if we had cause to, dig interpretation and judgment out from underneath any of our facts.

  Facts are theory-laden, but when “we” all embrace the laden theory, we call the statements fact. To call something fact is to declare that the laden theory is not the matter under discussion. Fact, then, is a facet of knowledge, but not a chief one. Fact designates statements that no one among “Us” wishes at all to take issue with. Facts are noncontroversial, at least for the discussion within which they are treated as facts. 

  A diagram may be helpful.

  The spiral of knowledge

  Communication picks up midstream of human experience. We proceed upon working interpretations. “Information” is what we call the facts as seen within the working interpretation. 

  Figure 2: The spiral of knowledge, with four phases: 

  fact, information, interpretation, and judgment

  

  Figure 2 offers four phases (or facets) of knowledge, shown in each loop of the spiral. “Facts” reside in a more basic interpretive frame—more basic than what I have called “the working interpretation”—in which “factual” statements are presumed acceptable to all parties of the communication. When Jane and Amy “argue over the facts,” they are, as it were, revisiting what is to be treated as factual. 

  The loops flow one into the next, through time, from outer loops to inner loops. We travel in the clockwise direction. The spiral image on your screen is two-dimensional, but imagine a third. We hope that the spiral winds upward in wisdom and virtue, such that the inner loops are higher than the outer loops. 

  Suppose we sit down together with a telephone book. We call the ink markings “the facts.” Neither of us thinks to dispute statements about the printed numbers on the pages. We then proceed to talk plainly of them as phone numbers. We often forget this working lens—interpreting the facts as phone numbers—because we see through it. 

  One of us, however, may propose another interpretation: Might the list of “phone numbers” contain secret knowledge encoded by spies? 

  Thus, we have multiple interpretations of the ink markings that some understand as “phone numbers.” Those quotation marks signal: what the facts are called when they are seen through the working interpretation. But we may more directly speak of multiple interpretations of the information, as opposed to multiple interpretations of the facts. Thus, rather than interpretively pivoting off the “fact”-level interpretation—that the line reads 678-3554—let’s pivot interpretively off of what I have called “the working interpretation”—that 678-3554 is a phone number—a level up from the factual, and there the pivot then turns to open up the interpretation dimension: “Maybe the phone number is a secret encoded message?” Again, universal acceptance among the “we” is built into “the facts”: None of us disputes that the line says 678-3554. Wherever you want to accommodate interpretive pivoting, move “factual” to somewhere down from there.

  Meanwhile, life rolls on, and we are called to act. The pitch races toward the plate. If the batter waits for a better interpretation, he may be called out on strikes. Again, the action facet of knowledge is judgment. As speaker, we judge of judgments—of our interlocutors and of agents existing within the descriptions we give of things. We convey our judgments of their judgments using judgmental terms. 

  If, among our circle of “we,” judgment is shared, then those judgments may now predicate a further conversation among us, and, thusly, those judgments present statements now treated as fact. Thus, we have completed the phases of the spiral and have moved from one loop to the next, where the sequence of phases may recur.

  Despotic contempt for our circle of “we”

  Again, what is labeled and attacked as “misinformation” or “disinformation” is not a matter of true or false information, but of true or false knowledge. Recognizing that knowledge, not merely information, is at issue is a matter of common decency. 

  The dignity of sincere discourse involves an openness, in principle a universal openness, to other human “we’s” and their pursuits upward in wisdom and virtue. As we can see, the chief facets of knowledge—information, interpretation, and judgment—operate both behind and ahead of our current position in the spiral. Trying to shut us up is to show a despotic contempt for our way of weaving through the phases of knowledge. It is contemptuous towards the development of the many loops within which our sense-making has made a home and now operates.

  By weighing interpretations and making judgments, we establish certain beliefs as fact, to predicate our further conversation. Those beliefs reflect a “we” with those beliefs. Meanwhile, in the wider world, different “we’s” are forming and are addressing the public at large, representing different sets of belief, different ways of making sense of the world. We might call a “we” a distinct sense-making community. 

  The sincere human of any one of these communities is eager to learn from other communities. The sincere human has certain commitments which make it belong to the sense-making community it belongs to, but it is not wedded to that community. In fact, the entire population of that community—that is, the set of people who currently share that way of sense-making—may remake their community’s way of sense-making. Those who learn from other communities may become leaders of intellectual change within their own community.

  Thus, sincere humans favor the freedom of speech and the norms of frank and open discourse for all communities. Besides favoring that freedom, they welcome engagement across communities, for all the reasons given earlier.

  The “anti-misinformation” despots show contempt for communities at odds with their dicta and diktats. Not only are the members of the “anti-misinformation” community unwilling to engage in civil debate, but they promulgate “anti-misinformation” propaganda so as to intimidate their adversaries, to crush dissent. 

  I have explained that the “misinformation” characterization of the disagreement is false. The anti-liberals are presupposing that it is a matter within the information dimension of knowledge, when clearly the disagreement involves contentions in the interpretation and judgment dimensions. Under pretense of combatting misinformation, they are really just stomping on adversaries. As I said at the outset, it is akin to Naziism, Stalinism, and Maoism, regimes that likewise showed despotic contempt for sense-making communities at odds with their own. “Anti-misinformation” projects are a sham, just as “anti-racism” projects are a sham.

  A few words about “hate”

  Just as “anti-misinformation” projects are despotic, so too are “anti-hate-speech” projects. The failure is again one of bad semantics and false presuppositions. “Anti-misinformation” despots tar their opponents with “misinformation,” making an “information” category error based on a false presupposition. “Anti-hate speech” projects tar their opponents with “hate,” again making a category error, for they treat hatred as necessarily hateful—that is, improper. Figure 3 shows the recent onset of “hate speech” and “hate crime.”

  

  But hatred is a necessary and organic part of any coherent system of morals. A coherent system of morals holds love and hate to be counterparts to one another. In a coherent system of morals, love is to be felt toward objects that are loveworthy, and hatred is to be felt toward objects that are hateworthy, although the bounds of propriety for the intensity and expression of the two respective feelings are importantly different, as Adam Smith explained (see esp. TMS, Part I, Sect. II, Chaps. 3 & 4 on the “unsocial” and “social” passions). 

  Moreover, the two respective sets of objects bear a counterpart relation to one another, for that which works systematically against the loveworthy is hateworthy. As Edmund Burke wrote: “They will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.”

  The implicit denial by anti-liberals that hatred is a necessary and organic part of any coherent system of morals is parallel to their implicit denial, in treating interpretive matters as informational matters, that asymmetric interpretation is a necessary and organic part of any coherent society of modern human beings. Just as “mis-” and “disinformation” are words they use to shut you up, “hate speech,” “hate group,” and “hate crime” are words they use to shut you up, ratified by show trials and kangaroo bodies. A proper court of hate would presuppose a distinction between proper hate and improper hate, just hate and unjust hate. In a liberal civilization such “courts” are not governmental. Rather, they remain in the judgment and interpretation of the individual’s own being. If hate is policed in the manner that outward action is policed by governments, 

  we should feel all the furies of that passion against any person in whose breast we suspected or believed such designs or affections were harboured, though they had never broken out into any actions. Sentiments, thoughts, intentions, would become the objects of punishment; and if the indignation of mankind run as high against them as against actions; if the baseness of the thought which had given birth to no action, seemed in the eyes of the world as much to call aloud for vengeance as the baseness of the action, every court of judicature would become a real inquisition. (Smith, TMS, italics added)

  Concluding remarks

  The “anti-misinformation” projects are obvious miscarriages of civility, decency, and the rule of law. We must rediscover the norms of openness, tolerance, and free speech that dignify humankind. Science depends on confidence, and confidence depends on those liberal norms. Those norms are the parents of good science, healthy sense-making, and civil tranquility. There are two roads here, namely:

  1. Freedom —> openness —> confidence —> truth-tracking —> dignity; 
  2. Despotism —> concealment —> diffidence —> bad science —> serfdom and servility. 

  Let’s get back to the right road.

  ---

  We must rediscover the norms of openness, tolerance, and free speech that dignify humankind. Science depends on confidence, and confidence depends on those liberal norms.

  ---

  Appendix: Philosophical affinities

  FWIW: My take on knowledge has affinities to the philosophizing of David Hume, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn, Iain McGilchrist, and many others. It also has affinities to the pragmatists William James and Richard Rorty, but I regard pragmatism—seeing one’s belief as the product of one’s choosing an idea among alternative ideas, and seeing the chosen idea’s betterness (compared to actual alternatives, not compared to the past or to hypotheticals) as necessarily the chief basis for what one shall count as true—as a phase situated on one side of a spiral, counterposed by, on the other side of the spiral, an alternate phase that we may call Humean natural belief. Humean natural belief is belief that has emerged from depths beyond the loop in which we pass between the two phases; Humean natural belief is, within that loop, not to be treated in terms of choice; it is what we would call, as we dwell within that loop, brute reality. To open such brute reality up to the pragmatist phase would mean acceding to another loop of the spiral. But the spiral is indefinite, with no first (or lower-most) loop and no final (or upper-most) loop, so certain brute realities at some loop or level remain brutish for any finite conversation. And all conversations are finite.

  Selective References:

  Burke, Edmund. 2022. Edmund Burke and the Perennial Battle, 1789–1797. Eds. D.B. Klein and D. Pino. CL Press. Link

  Doctorow, Gilbert. 2023. The Western Media Disinformation Campaign: Fall of Bakhmut, a Case in Point. Gilbert Doctorow website. Link

  Gurri, Martin. 2023. Disinformation Is the Word I Use When I Want You to Shut Up. Discourse, March 30. Link

  Hume, David. 1994. Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Link

  Iannaccone, Laurence. 1992. Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives. Journal of Political Economy 100(2): 271–291.

  Klein, Daniel B. 2012. Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation. Oxford University Press. Link

  Polanyi, Michael. 1963. The Study of Man. Chicago University Press.
  Smith, Adam. 1982 [1790]. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie. Oxford University Press/Liberty Fund. Link

  Daniel Klein is professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he leads a program in Adam Smith. He is also associate fellow at the Ratio Institute (Stockholm), research fellow at the Independent Institute, and chief editor of Econ Journal Watch.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 23:40

• ECB Preview: Running Out Of Hawkish Arguments
  ECB Preview: Running Out Of Hawkish Arguments

  By Antoine Bouvet of ING Economics

  We expect the ECB to deliver a 25bp rate hike this week and signal more to come. Rates markets are already priced for this outcome, and softening economic data dents the ECB’s ability to push rates above their 2023 top. The impact on EUR/USD may be short-lived, with dollar rates still likely to be the primary driver of any sustained trend in the pair.

  

  When the European Central Bank governing council meets this week, no one will be shocked to discover that it elected to raise its policy rates by another 25bp. Our colleagues think the bank won’t stop at that and deliver at least one more hike in this cycle. One clue will be in the updated staff forecasts, although, here too, offsetting factors make a radical change unlikely. The ECB should also confirm that, as it heavily hinted at the May meeting, quantitative tightening (QT) will accelerate from July.

  

  Rates stuck in the doldrums but low volatility is positive for risk appetite

  With euro rates stuck in an increasingly narrow range since the start of 2023, there are growing doubts about the ECB’s ability to push yields to new highs with its hawkish rhetoric alone. Slowing economic data and encouraging signs on leading inflation indicators are denting its message. Contrast that to an ECB labouring the point that its focus is on still-stubbornly high core inflation, and on backward-looking indicators in general. In this light, the swap curve implying two more hikes in this cycle (including this week) feels already in tune with the ECB’s hawkish message, leaving limited upside to rates. We would go as far as saying that it is priced to perfection.

  Rates upside could still come from the curve pricing one more hike in this cycle, or pricing out some of the roughly 70bp of cuts implied for 2024. Even then we doubt this would be enough to push 10Y EUR swap rates above its recent high of 3.33%. This is because we assume the curve retains its tendency to flatten when rates rise. In truth, the ‘higher for longer’ narrative was given extra credibility by the Bank of Canada resuming hikes in June after a five months hiatus, but there is a long way to go before markets imply that longer rates should rise above current policy rates. From now on, the curve’s bear-flattening tendency may be reduced, but there is a high bar to clear for euro rates to print new highs.

  Meanwhile, the lack of rates direction is proving a boon to risk sentiment. Macro uncertainty has indeed reduced. Even if rates upside materialises, a repeat of the 2022 surge in rates is very unlikely. In short, the ECB and other central banks are much closer to the end of their hiking cycles than to their starts. Even in case of a sharp drop in rates in case of a hard landing or collapse in inflation, volatility would eventually converge lower. This explains the decline in implied and realised volatility from a peak of around 10bp per day in late 2022, to 6bp currently. This is positive for risk sentiment in rates markets and elsewhere. Sovereign spreads, for instance Italy-Germany 10Y, have narrowed to their tightest level this year, and swap spreads are also shedding the risk premium acquired during the US regional banking crisis.

  

  The ECB balance sheet: firmly set on tightening course

  The ECB, one should think, has already made up its mind in regard to the balance sheet. The TLTROs will mature as planned – or be repaid early if banks choose – and the asset purchase programme (APP) reinvestments will stop from July. This has set also set the excess liquidity in the banking system on a declining trajectory. And we would already have seen more of a decline if the ECB were not also engaged in pushing government cash off its balance sheet and into the market. Those efforts appear to have been fruitful with government deposits at the ECB now at pre-Covid levels again.

  From here, one should see targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs) and APP redemptions unfold their full impact. Taken together they will have a negative net impact on excess revers of around €770bn this year and €850bn next year. Implications for the market, judging by the absolute levels of liquidity look limited, after all €3.4tr and €2.5tr respectively, are still considerably high by historical standard. And after all, the trajectory was well flagged ahead of time. The market appears to agree, looking benignly on the spreads such as the 3m Euribor/OIS which forwards see widening only modestly from currently around 2bp to 7bp towards a little over 10bp by year-end.

  

  What the headline figures don’t tell, is that the impact is also a matter of how liquidity is distributed. One example is Italy’s banking system which has fewer excess reserves than it has outstanding in TLTROs. At the margin, we would expect the decline in excess reserves to gradually lead to more market funding activity – think interbank term deposits, commercial paper issuance or even longer funding – which in turn should pressure up rates and widen spreads.

  Should some banks be seen resorting to the ECB regular market operations, which President Christine Lagarde had flagged at the last meeting as a funding alternative, then we think this would be interpreted as signs of tension in some corners of the system given that someone was willing to pay a 50bp “penalty” despite an apparent abundance of liquidity. If the ECB were to feel that risks are elevated, this meeting would be the last opportunity to address the issue ahead of a large end of June TLTRO redemption.

  FX: June meeting unlikely to be the trigger for a sustained euro rally

  EUR/USD decline throughout the month of May was primarily driven by the hawkish repricing in Fed rate expectations, while market pricing on ECB tightening held relatively stable. The main reference short-term rate differential for FX, the two-year swap rate gap, saw a rewidening of about 60bp since touching the -60bp peak in early May (now around -120bp) when markets were pricing in no more hikes and 75bp of cuts by the Fed in 2023.

  

  What is clear is that the recent big shift in the EUR-USD rate differential has almost entirely been driven by the USD rate leg. We doubt this will change this week, or even beyond the short term.

  Whether the ECB will pre-commit or not to another 25bp hike in July will drive the immediate reaction in EUR/USD, but we suspect that the Fed meeting the day before and above all the data releases in the US in the following weeks will generate swings in the significantly more volatile Fed rate expectations that will ultimately do the heavy lifting in driving EUR/USD moves.

  Our medium-term bullish view on the pair, and our call for levels above 1.15 for the end of the year, primarily rely on a drop in USD rates rather than a material repricing higher in EUR rates.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 23:20

• Yuan Tumbles After Chinese Economic Data Dump; Youth Jobless Rate Hits Record High
  Yuan Tumbles After Chinese Economic Data Dump; Youth Jobless Rate Hits Record High

  An ugly night of data from China tonight suggests the ‘re-opening’ is not gathering pace:

  • China May Retail Sales disappointed, rising 12.7% Y/Y; Est. 13.7% – which is a flashing red indicator. Given the boost from the Golden Week holiday, May retail sales rising just 0.4% from April speaks to how consumer sentiment has yet to show any significant improvement.

  • China May Industrial Output slowed to a 3.5% rise Y/Y; Est. 3.5%

  • China Jan.-May Fixed Investment rose less than expected, up 4% Y/Y; Est. 4.4%

  • China Jan.-May Property investment tumbled 7.2% from a year earlier with the value of new home sales by the 100 biggest developers falling 14.3% in May.

  

  And finally, and perhaps most problematically, the jobless rate for 16-to-24 year olds hits 20.8% in May, another all-time high that is four times the national rate which stands at 5.2%…

  

  As Goldman noted, both cyclical and structural factors have contributed to the elevated youth unemployment rate in China. 

  • On the cyclical front, the correlation between unemployment rate and services sector output gap is much stronger for the 16-24 age group compared with the 25-59 year-olds. NBS’s labor survey shows that services industries such as hotel and catering, education, and information technology sectors tend to hire more young workers. Services sector slackening before reopening therefore contributed to the high youth unemployment rate. The improvement in service sector activity growth in Q1 should lower youth unemployment rate in Q2 by 3pp based on our estimate. While the improvement in service activity growth implies rising demand for young workers, this increase in demand could be more than offset by strong supply seasonality. As we enter the graduation season, youth unemployment rate could rise by 3-4pp and peak in summertime (usually in July or August) before starting to decline from end of Q3, if we look at the seasonal pattern in 2018 and 2019 (prior to Covid).

  • Structural imbalance is another reason behind the high youth unemployment rate. Despite the fact that a rising share of unemployed persons aged 16-24 years old have higher education, there appears to be misalignment of academic disciplines with business requirements. 

  Ken Wong, Asia equity portfolio specialist at Eastspring Investments, said youth unemployment seems to be the big one:

  “It impacts the consumption story and youth unemployment will probably continue to go up a bit more with fresh grads entering the workforce.”

  The National Bureau of Statistics desperately tried to put some lipstick on this pig:

  “The global environment is complex and grim, the domestic economy faces grave pressure of structural adjustment, and the economic recovery’s foundation is not yet solid.”

  There is one silver- lining – the apparent oil demand rose 17.11% from a year ago in May

  Critically, all of this puts more pressure on Beijing to unleash more stimulus (broader stimulus) and is sending the yuan lower…

  

  Steven Leung, UOB Kay Hian executive director, says the data suggests more support will be needed from Beijing: “China has to announce more policies to aid the economy. Among the speculated supportive policies, markets are betting Beijing will roll out more policies to help the consumption sector given the big miss in retail sales. Those policies should be effective given Chinese citizens’ huge savings.”

  Incidentally, China cuts it MLF rate by10bps earlier this evening, same as all the other secondary rate-cuts.

  However, as The Wall Street Journal recently noted, the urgency to throw money at the problem could have reached its efficacy limits since after years of heavy borrowing, many in China are focused on paying down their debts this year—and the result could be weaker growth for a long time to come.

  

  The issue isn’t the central government, whose debts are relatively low as a percentage of gross domestic product, but households, the private sector and local governments. Total debt as a share of GDP hit 295% in China last September, surpassing 257% in the U.S. and an average of 258% in the eurozone, BIS data show.

  Consumers are hoarding cash, with many refusing to take out loans.

  Other countries – most notably Japan –  have been through similar processes, almost always painful.

  As WSJ goes on to note, economists at Société Générale in a recent report said Chinese policy makers need to learn lessons from Japan and prevent a deleveraging mind-set from becoming entrenched, by restructuring more debts or offering direct income support to households to boost consumption. If not, the economists warned, China could fall into a trap in which even zero interest rates wouldn’t stimulate growth.

  “Such a danger seems increasingly relevant for China,” they wrote.

  The bottom line is China’s economy is struggling; Beijing knows it but the best they can do are small piece-meal stimulus measures because China (more specifically the Chinese and their corporations) are already at their limit (even greater debt loads than the US).

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 22:34

• Annual US Excess Deaths Relative To Other Developed Countries Are Growing At An Alarming Rate
  Annual US Excess Deaths Relative To Other Developed Countries Are Growing At An Alarming Rate

  Authored by Patrick Heuveline via TheConversation.com,

  The big idea

  People in the U.S. are dying at higher rates than in other similar high-income countries, and that difference is only growing. That’s the key finding of a new study that I published in the journal PLOS One.

  

  In 2021, more than 892,000 of the 3,456,000 deaths the U.S. experienced, or about 1 in 4, were “excess deaths.” In 2019, that number was 483,000 deaths, or nearly 1 in 6. That represents an 84.9% increase in excess deaths in the U.S. between 2019 and 2021.

  Excess deaths refer to the actual number of deaths that occur in a given year compared with expected deaths over that same time period based on prior years or, as in this study, in other countries.

  In my study, I compared the number of U.S. deaths with those in the five largest countries in Western Europe: England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Those five countries make for a good comparison because they are nearly, if not quite, as wealthy as the U.S. and their combined population is similar in size and diversity to the U.S. population.

  I also chose those countries because they were used in an earlier study from another research team that documented a 34.5% increase in excess deaths in the U.S. between 2000 and 2017.

  The acceleration of this already alarming long-term trend in excess deaths in the U.S. was exacerbated by the fact that the U.S. experienced higher death rates from COVID-19 compared with similar countries. However, COVID-19 alone does not account for the recent increase in the number of excess deaths in the U.S. relative to comparison countries.

  Why it matters

  Rising living standards and medical advances through the 20th century have made it possible for people in wealthy countries to live longer and with a better quality of life. Given that the U.S. is the largest economic power in the world, with cutting-edge medical technology, Americans should have an advantage over other countries in terms of life span and death rates.

  But in the last 50 years, many countries around the world have outpaced the U.S. in how fast death rates are declining, as revealed by trends in life expectancy.

  Life expectancy is an average age at death, and it represents how long an average person is expected to live if current death rates remain unchanged throughout that person’s lifetime. Life expectancy is based on a complex combination of death rates at different ages, but in short, when death rates decline, life expectancy increases.

  

  Compared to about 20 other high-income countries, since around the mid-1970s the U.S. life expectancy has been slipping from about the middle, or median, to the lowest rungs of life expectancy. So the relative stagnation in life expectancy in the U.S. compared with other countries is directly related to the fact that death rates have also declined more slowly in the U.S.

  The U.S. has higher death rates than its peer countries due to a variety of causes. Cardiovascular disease prevalence has been an important driver of life expectancy changes across the globe in recent decades. But while death rates from cardiovascular disease have continued to decline in other parts of the world, those rates have stagnated in the U.S..

  A key reason for this trend is the rise in obesity, as research shows that obesity increases the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. High prevalence of obesity in the U.S. also likely contributed to the relatively high death rates from COVID-19.

  Another cause is that the U.S. has disproportionately high death rates from intentional injuries in the form of homicides, in particular those caused by firearms. Moreover, it also has high death rates from unintentional injuries, in particular drug overdoses.

  People are being exposed to fentanyl without knowing it, and because the synthetic opioid is so highly potent, people are dying in unprecedented numbers.

  What other research is being done

  While these specific causes of deaths should clearly be health policy priorities today, there might be more fundamental causes to the elevated U.S. death rates.

  In the early 1990s, young people in the U.S. between the ages of 15 and 34 were already dying at higher rates than their peers in other countries from a combination of homicides, unintentional injuries – in large part from motor vehicle accidents – and deaths from HIV/AIDS.

  Research is underway to understand the more fundamental societal causes that may explain the vulnerability of the U.S. population to successive epidemics, from HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 to gun violence and opioid overdoses.

  These include racial and economic inequalities, which combined with a weaker social security net and lack of health care access for all may help explain larger health and death disparities compared to European countries.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 22:20

• Reddit CEO Says 'Blackout Storm' Will Pass, Advises Staff Against Wearing Company Swag In Public
  Reddit CEO Says ‘Blackout Storm’ Will Pass, Advises Staff Against Wearing Company Swag In Public

  The 48-hour Reddit “Blackout” might be coming to an end today. However, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has managed to anger many Redditors this week as moderators closed thousands of subreddits to protest API price changes for third-party apps.  

  On Monday, more than 8,000 Reddit communities went dark. Moderators of these forums say the move is to protest the company’s price increases for third-party developers to access its API. Developers such as Apollo, a popular third-party app, warned it would incur a $20 million charge under the new pricing and would shutter operations later this month.  

  “We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor,” CEO Huffman wrote in an internal memo to staff on Monday, obtained by The Verge. 

  “There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest, we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well,” the CEO said. He anticipates that many of the subreddits will come back online Wednesday. 

  Huffman concluded the letter by saying, “I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.” 

  

  We suspect the API changes that go into effect on July 1 are a move by the company to increase a more diversified source of revenue ahead of a future IPO. It appears there’s no reversing course by Huffman. 

  Here’s Reddit’s Huffman full letter to employees: 

  Hi Snoos,

  Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

  We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

  There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

  While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

  I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.

  Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 22:00

• Trump Indictment Rests On Untested Legal Theory, Experts Say
  Trump Indictment Rests On Untested Legal Theory, Experts Say

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  The indictment of former President Donald Trump for holding military documents and obstructing the government from taking them is built on a novel legal theory that has multiple weaknesses, according to several lawyers and other experts.

  The case has been portrayed in the media as being about Trump’s retaining classified documents from his presidency. However, the charges sidestep that issue and instead use a clause in the Espionage Act that criminalizes a failure to hand over national defense information. The indictment further alleges that Trump and staffer Waltine Nauta hid some documents when the government demanded them through a subpoena.

  The alleged Espionage Act violations impose a high burden of proof and raise the question of whether the statute should have been applied to begin with and, if not, whether the underlying investigation should serve as a basis for obstruction charges, some lawyers told The Epoch Times.

  “The key legal issue here is the interplay between the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act,” said Will Scharf, a former federal prosecutor.

  The Presidential Records Act of 1978 stipulates that after a president leaves office, the National Archive and Records Administration (NARA) takes custody of all his official records.

  The law allows former presidents to keep personal documents such as “diaries, journals, or other personal notes” not used for government business.

  

  “If a former President or Vice President finds Presidential records among personal materials, he or she is expected to contact NARA in a timely manner to secure the transfer of those Presidential records to NARA,” NARA’s website states.

  However, the Presidential Records Act isn’t a criminal statute. If a former president refuses to turn over some documents or claims obviously official documents as personal, the worst he could face is a civil lawsuit.

  There’s little case law on such matters. In 2012, Judicial Watch tried to force former President Bill Clinton to turn over dozens of interview tapes he kept from his presidency. Clinton claimed the tapes were personal and the court sided with him. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, went so far as to argue that the court had no way to second-guess a president’s assertion of what is and isn’t personal.

  “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records,” Jackson wrote.

  However, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is now arguing that former presidents can be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for possession of documents that they kept from their presidencies.

  “That’s a totally novel legal issue,” Scharf said. “It’s never been tested before. The Espionage Act has never been used to prosecute in this sort of a setting.”

  

  Some lawyers believe the Espionage Act can’t be used this way because it wasn’t meant to be used in such a fashion. Before 1978, former presidents owned all documents from their presidencies, including any national defense information. There’s never been any suggestion that their holding on to such documents violated the Espionage Act.

  “Congress has been very, very clear … that the act that applies to presidents and former presidents is the Presidential Records Act. The act that applies to everyone else is the Espionage Act, which has different requirements,” said Jesse Binnall, a lawyer that represented Trump in another matter.

  Mike Davis of the conservative Article III Project voiced a similar opinion.

  “Even if President declassifies his presidential records and takes them when he leaves office, he can still get charged under Espionage Act. … Promise that theory won’t fly with Supreme Court,” he said in a tweet.

  Criminal Intent

  Much of the indictment rests on the allegation that Trump kept national defense documents “willfully”—with criminal intent.

  Yet the document falls short in providing evidence for such intent.

  On May 11, 2022, the DOJ obtained a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over all documents with classification markings, including electronic ones.

  One of the key claims is that Trump instructed Nauta to move boxes of documents around before his lawyer came to search the boxes for documents in response to the subpoena.

  Nauta allegedly moved 64 boxes out of a storage room where Trump kept items and documents from his presidency and moved them to Trump’s residence at the resort. Nauta then moved back 30 boxes shortly before Trump’s then-lawyer, Evan Corcoran, searched the storage room for the subpoenaed documents, according to the indictment, which refers to security camera footage obtained from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort via a subpoena.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 21:40

• "Nightmare Scenario": US Government Has Been Secretly Stockpiling Dirt On Americans Via Data Brokers
  “Nightmare Scenario”: US Government Has Been Secretly Stockpiling Dirt On Americans Via Data Brokers

  The US Government has been purchasing troves of information on American citizens from 3rd party data providers, according to Wired, which cites privacy advocates who say this constitutes a “nightmare scenario.”

  

  The United States government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago. 

  The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans’ lives are described soberly and at length by the director’s own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members. -Wired

  “This report reveals what we feared most,” according to attorney Sean Vitka of the Demand Progress nonprofit. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”

  The government has been using ‘craven interpretations of aging laws’ to bypass privacy rights, as prosecutors have increasingly ignored limits traditionally imposed on domestic surveillance.

  “I’ve been warning for years that if using a credit card to buy an American’s personal information voids their Fourth Amendment rights, then traditional checks and balances for government surveillance will crumble,” according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

  During a March 8 hearing, Wyden pressed Haines to release the panel’s report – after Haines said it should “absolutely” be read by the public. On Friday, that’s exactly what happened after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released it amid a battle with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) over various related documents.

  “This report makes it clear that the government continues to think it can buy its way out of constitutional protections using taxpayers’ own money,” said EPIC law fellow, Chris Baumohl. “Congress must tackle the government’s data broker pipeline this year, before it considers any reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” he said (referring to the ongoing political fight over the so-called “crown jewel” of US surveillance, per Wired).

  The ODNI’s own panel of advisers makes clear that the government’s static interpretations of what constitutes “publicly available information” poses a significant threat to the public. The advisers decry existing policies that automatically conflate, in the first place, being able to buy information with it being considered “public.” The information being commercially sold about Americans today is “more revealing, available on more people (in bulk), less possible to avoid, and less well understood” than that which is traditionally thought of as being “publicly available.”

  Perhaps most controversially, the report states that the government believes it can “persistently” track the phones of “millions of Americans” without a warrant, so long as it pays for the information. Were the government to simply demand access to a device’s location instead, it would be considered a Fourth Amendment “search” and would require a judge’s sign-off. But because companies are willing to sell the information—not only to the US government but to other companies as well—the government considers it “publicly available” and therefore asserts that it “can purchase it.” -Wired

  What’s more, the report notes that it’s relatively easy to “deanonymize and identify individuals” based on data that was originally been anonymized prior to its commercial sale. According to the report, the data can do things like “identify every person who attended a protest or rally based on their smartphone location or ad-tracking records,” posing serious civil liberty concerns over how “large quantities of nominally ‘public’ information can result in sensitive aggregations.”

  The report goes on to say that in times past, access to sensitive information about a person was part of a “targeted” and “predicated” investigation. That’s no longer the case.

  “Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, [commercially available information] includes information on nearly everyone,” it reads, adding that both the “volume and sensitivity” of information available for the government to purchase has exploded in recent years thanks to “location-tracking and other features of smartphones” as well as the “advertising-based monetization model” that underpins much of the internet.

  According to the ODNI, this data “in the wrong hands” could be used against Americans “facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming” – all offenses that have been committed by intelligence agencies and the White House in the past.

  “The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits. Yet smartphones, connected cars, web tracking technologies, the Internet of Things, and other innovations have had this effect without government participation,” reads the report.

  Read the report below:

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 21:20

• Federal Agencies Routinely Spy On Phone Calls, Texts, Emails Of American Citizens, Experts Say
  Federal Agencies Routinely Spy On Phone Calls, Texts, Emails Of American Citizens, Experts Say

  Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Despite the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits warrantless government searches, U.S. agencies are proving to be ever more intrusive in their routine surveillance of Americans’ speech and activities.

  

  Often working in collaboration with private companies and banks, agencies like the FBI have been misusing laws against foreign terrorism to vacuum up and sift through the private data of millions of Americans without a warrant or any evidence of a crime.

  As Congress now debates reauthorizing relevant sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that are set to expire this year, the libertarian Cato Institute held a four-day conference last week, which featured calls for major legal reforms by conservative and liberal speakers alike.

  “The violations that we’ve seen have not just been epic in scale, but they’ve also been persistent, over and over again,” Jake Laperruque, a deputy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told attendees.

  “To put a human scale on this, what we’re talking about is not just random typos or wrong clicks; we’re looking at things like pulling up batches of thousands of political donors in one go, without any suspicion of wrongdoing,” Laperruque said. “We’ve had reports of journalists, political commentators, a domestic political party; these compliance violations are the most worrisome type of politically focused surveillance.”

  In 2001, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act as a means to combat foreign terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2008, Congress added an amendment to FISA, Section 702, which authorized warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. persons located outside the country. This amendment, which critics say is the source of much of the abuse, is scheduled to “sunset” on Dec. 31.

  Evidence of Abuse

  Congressional debates about whether to renew Section 702 are coming amid numerous reports that the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies have abused the surveillance authority granted to them by this law. Critics say there is mounting evidence that federal agencies have been using laws, which were intended to target foreign terrorists, to conduct extensive, long-term domestic spying campaigns on U.S. citizens.

  “To prevent Section 702 from being used as an end run around [Fourth Amendment] protections, Congress did two things: It required the government to minimize the collection, sharing and retention of Americans’ personal information … and it required the government to certify to the FISA court on an annual basis that it is not using Section 702 to try to access the communications of particular known Americans,” Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told conference attendees.

  “What has become abundantly clear over the last 15 years is that these protections are not working,” Goitein said. “All agencies that receive Section 702 data have procedures in place, approved by the FISA court, that allow them to run electronic searches … for the purpose of finding and retrieving the phone calls, text messages and emails of Americans.”

  A report by the Brennan Center for Justice states that “since 2006, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans from some of the largest telecommunications providers in the United States, via a series of regularly renewed requests by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

  In addition, the report states that “over the past six years, the NSA has obtained unprecedented access to the data processed by nine leading U.S. internet companies. This was facilitated by a computer network named PRISM. The companies involved include Google, Facebook, Skype, and Apple.”

  Rise of Data Brokers

  Speaking to attendees of the Cato Institute conference, Nathan Wessler, a director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), detailed “the rise of data brokers” that assemble enormous databases of photo IDs that they then sell to law enforcement for profit.

  “Many companies are selling face recognition algorithms to government and private industry buyers,” Wessler said. “That might be state driver’s license photos, arrest photos, federal passport photos.

  “And then there’s another company, ClearView AI, which has been scouring the internet for billions of photos,” he said. “The last I heard, they had a database of 30 billion photos of people from social media, from employer websites, from local newspapers, and anywhere else on the internet where there’s a photo that might be attached to a name, building giant databases of face prints extracted from those photos, and selling that to police departments and other law enforcement around the country.”

  This, Wessler said, “presents a truly unprecedented ability for the government to instantaneously identify anyone in any situation and then take action without usually any kind of court oversight, and often in tremendous secrecy.”

  “We have legacy photo data sets of almost all of us,” said Clare Garvie, counsel at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “As a practical matter, most of us are in numerous of these, and they’ve been almost instantaneously turned into biometric data sets.”

  According to Garvie, the collection of these biometric data sets by law enforcement started around 2001, and has been expanding ever since.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 21:00

• "They Expect To Imprison You": GOP Lawmaker Warns Trump Supporters Against 'DOJ Trap'
  “They Expect To Imprison You”: GOP Lawmaker Warns Trump Supporters Against ‘DOJ Trap’

  A Republican lawmaker has warned Trump supporters against “falling for the trap” of protesting against latest indictment against the former president.

  

  “My fellow conservatives, the DOJ/FBI doesn’t expect to imprison Trump, they expect to imprison you. They want J6 again, in Miami and in your city and in mine. They want MAGA conservatives to react to this perimeter probe and in doing so, set yourselves up for targeted persecution and further entrapment,” said Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, who says the Biden DOJ would love nothing more than to have “J6 again.”

  “They want to intercept a busload of conservatives en route to protest and create conflicts during the stop. They are hoping to provoke conservative Americans. Don’t fall for the trap. Maintain your family. Live your life. Live free and pay close attention and make your voice heard,” Higgins continued, adding “Don’t become an incarcerated pawn in the agenda driven DOJ/FBI strategy to oppress conservatives across America.”

  Trump faces a total of 37 felony counts over his handling of documents after leaving office, including violating the federal Espionage Act and other federal laws for allegedly making false statements, concealing documents and conspiring to obstruct justice.

  

  “Our country is going communist, it’s going Marxist, it’s going really bad. The people of our country aren’t that way, but the people running it are,” Trump said Sunday during a radio interview. “We need strength at this point, and everyone’s afraid to do anything. They’re afraid to talk, and they have to go out and they have to protest peacefully. They have to go.”

  More via the Epoch Times;

  Miami’s police chief, Manuel Morales, has said his department is taking Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday “extremely seriously” and it can handle a crowd of up to 50,000.

  “President Trump can take care of himself in court, he knows we’ve got his back. The DOJ knows they’ve got nothing on him. They’re doing this because they want you to let your anger overwhelm your strategic judgment and they expect you to step willingly into their trap,” Higgins added.

  “We will fight against this oppression. We are indeed, with every ounce of spirit, fighting against the insidious evil that threatens our beloved Republic, but We the People must fight against oppression legally, peacefully, and within the parameters of our Constitution.”

  The Epoch Times has contacted the DOJ for comment.

  Polls

  Before Trump’s indictment was unsealed on June 8, a new Gallup poll revealed that more Americans considered themselves to be conservative on social issues since 2012.

  The poll, which queried 1,011 U.S. adults from May 1 to May 24, found that 38 percent of respondents said they were conservative or very conservative on social issues, up from 33 percent in 2022 and 30 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, the percentage said they were liberal or very liberal on these issues stood at 29 percent, a decrease from 33 percent last year and 34 percent in 2021.

  Among Republicans, the percentage of respondents that said they were socially conservative increased from 60 percent two years ago to 74 percent this year.

  The percentage of Independents who said they were socially conservative increased from 26 percent last year to 29 percent this year. Fewer Independents said they were liberal on these issues, dropping to 23 percent from 29 percent in 2022.

  “Greater social conservatism may be fostering an environment more favorable to passing conservative-leaning social legislation, especially in Republican-dominated states,” the poll said.

  Trump continues to lead the GOP pack in the 2024 race for the White House. According to the latest I&I/TIPP poll, which polled 482 likely Republican primary voters from May 31 to June 2, Trump received 55 percent of support, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a distant second with 19 percent of  support.

  Former Vice President Mike Pence finished third with 6 percent of support, followed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) with 3 percent each.

  “So Trump’s edge, when it comes to his own party, again appears insurmountable at this early stage of the nominating process,” the poll says.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 20:40

• Watchdog Observes Lack Of Oversight, Says 'Increased Risk' US Arms Could Be Lost En Route To Ukraine
  Watchdog Observes Lack Of Oversight, Says ‘Increased Risk’ US Arms Could Be Lost En Route To Ukraine

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

  A report from the Department of Defense Inspector General found Pentagon employees in Poland failed to follow procedures to account for military equipment being transferred to Ukraine. In the shipments of weapons monitored by the office, Pentagon employees failed to properly track the weapons in three of five shipments.

  “DoD personnel did not have the required accountability of the thousands of defense items that they received and transferred at Jasionka, [Poland],” it stated. “We observed that DoD personnel did not fully implement their standard operating procedures to account for defense items and could not confirm the quantities of defense items received against the quantity of items shipped for three of five shipments we observed.”

  

  The Pentagon does not “have reasonable assurance that their database of all defense items transferred to the [Ukraine] via air transport in Jasionka was accurate or complete.” The report added, “14 The DoD may risk providing more or less equipment than authorized by [President Joe Biden], and may not be able to verify the quantity of all defense items before they are transferred to [Ukraine].”

  One example in the inspector general report explains how weapons are shipped without a manifest. “One shipment containing thousands of small arms, night vision optics devices, and various types of cold weather gear did not include an air manifest.” The report continues, “DoD personnel opened crates to identify the types of defense items contained within the crates, but even then the personnel could not verify whether the number of items they identified represented the true number shipped.”

  Since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Washington has shipped tens of billions in weapons to Ukraine, including advanced platforms. The Pentagon inspector general report examined arms shipped to Ukraine directly from American stockpiles. 

  Further problems included Pentagon employees in Poland being unable to identify unlabeled weapons being shipped to Ukraine and incomplete training. “DoD personnel in Jasionka further stated that they developed their own [procedures] based on the procedures followed by the unit performing the mission before them,” the inspector general explained. The Pentagon employees “added additional accountability measures based on their own judgment.”

  The failure to inappropriately monitor the shipments has created discrepancies. The inspector general found a “discrepancy between the number of night vision optics devices reported on paper documents and the number reported via electronic means.”

  The Biden administration and leaders in Congress have insisted that establishing an office to track the billions in weapons being sent to Ukraine is unnecessary. However, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, John Sopko, said without more oversight, weapons will end up on the black market. 

  How many weapons have been lost already? https://t.co/opc9ufzWcv

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 12, 2023

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

  Without sufficient oversight, aid “gets stolen or diverted to local oligarchs or local politicians, or just the average Ukrainian will see the waste,” Sopko explained. The result would mean the loss of “support of the Ukrainian government by the average Ukrainian who’s fighting, dying and bleeding at the front. And that’s what we saw in Afghanistan… And we, the donors, the US, were identified as supporting the corrupt oligarchs.”

  Finnish authorities and leaders in Africa have complained that weapons intended for Kiev have been used by criminals and insurgents. President Muhammadu Buhari said in December that arms “being used for the war in Ukraine and Russia are equally beginning to filter to the region.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 20:20

• "Don't Call It A Skip" – Fed 'Pause' Prompts Wild Swings Across All Assets
  “Don’t Call It A Skip” – Fed ‘Pause’ Prompts Wild Swings Across All Assets

  A ‘pause’ in rate-hikes and a far more hawkish dot-plot than expected spooked markets and then Powell monotonously meandered through his press conference, seemingly providing something for doves to cling to (though we are not sure what).

  

  Powell emphasized that the inflation fight is still a priority: “Without price stability, the economy doesn’t work for anyone.”

  “There’s just not a lot of progress in core inflation.”

  “We want to see it moving down decisively.”

  But:

  “Risks for inflation are still to the upside.”

  Powell says the process of getting inflation back to the 2% target “has a long way to go,” but don’t call this ‘pause’ a skip…

  “The skip — I shouldn’t call it a skip.”

  

  And finally, to ensure the doves are clear:

  “It will be appropriate to cut rates at such time as inflation is coming down really significantly. And we’re talking about a couple of years out.“

  “I think, as anyone can see, not a single person on the committee wrote down a rate cut this year — nor do I think it is at all likely to be appropriate if you think about it.”

  “Inflation has not really moved down. It has not reacted much to our existing rate hikes. We’re going to have to keep at it.”

  The result of all that was a fair amount of chaos.

  First things first, rate-change expectations rose (hawkishly) with all rate-cuts for 2023 now priced-out and the odds of a hike by September significantly higher…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Stocks were even more wild, dumping on the statement/SEP, rallying at the start of Powell’s presser, only to reverse back as he noted ‘no rate cuts forecast by anyone’ and failed to actually offer a dovish bone to the market. The Nasdaq managed gains on the day while Small Caps and the Dow were hit hard (the latter hurt by UNH also) and late-day weakness dragged the S&P red but managed to pull back to unch at the close…

  

  Nasdaq pushed ahead of Small Caps once again, reversing more of last week’s reversal in favor of Small Caps…

  

  With a big OpEx right ahead of us, optionsland is a little chaotic also but today’s 0-DTE traders faded any gains off the PPI aggressively and were right…

  

  Source: SpotGamma

  VIX was smashed lower to a 13 handle!

  

  Banks were dumped but investors rushed to the new safe-haven – AI stocks…

  

  Utter chaos in bond-land with PPI taking yields gradually lower early on. The FOMC statement sent yields vertical – especially at the short-end – leaving the long-end actually lower on the day…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The yield curve (2s30s) plummeted to its most inverted since right around the SVB collapse…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The dollar ended lower – tumbling on the soft PPI, spiking on the FOMC statement, then fading back during the presser…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Gold ended unchanged but had a violent day, rallying on PPI, dumping on FOMC then bouncing then fading…

  

  Oil ended lower on the day with WTI testing down near a $67 handle intraday, hit by Iran headlines, strong inventory builds and the hawkish Fed…

  

  Perhaps most shockingly, crypto was the least volatile asset-class of the day…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Finally, did we just make the blow-off top on this AI cycle?

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Maybe The Fed didn’t like the decoupling from tighter financial conditions after all?

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Now we need to hear the follow-up FedSpeak to set the narrative.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 20:01

• Amazon Locks Man Out Of Smart Home Devices Over False Racism Claims
  Amazon Locks Man Out Of Smart Home Devices Over False Racism Claims

  Amazon locked a Microsoft engineer out of his smart home devices for nearly a week after a delivery driver accused him of uttering a racial slur.

  

  According to a June 4 blog post on Medium, Brandon Jackson found himself locked out of his Amazon Echo Show on May 25. When he contacted customer service, he was given the number of an Amazon executive – which he thought was a scam.

  “When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked,” he wrote. “When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my ‘Ring doorbell.‘”

  Jackson, who is black, said that the accusation was improbable, as many of the delivery drivers in his area are the same race – thus, the racial slur was “highly unlikely.”

  Jackson tracked down the time that the driver would have dropped off his package (May 24 at 6:05 p.m.), and compared it  to footage from his home at the time of the incident – revealing that nobody was home at the time of the delivery. Instead, Jackson thinks that his Eufy automated doorbell said to the driver “Excuse me, can I help you?”

  “The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message,” wrote Jackson, adding that even after he shared the evidence with Amazon, his account remained locked.

  “Despite numerous calls and emails, it wasn’t until Friday afternoon [on May 26] that I received confirmation that the investigation had started,” he wrote, adding that it wasn’t until May 31 that access was finally restored.

  In a statement to NTD News, Amazon said: “we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again.”

  More via the Epoch Times;

  Impact of the Lockout

  While he was locked out of the Amazon account he typically used for his smart home devices, Jackson said he had already thought ahead about alternate ways to control his devices.

  “I already had everything set up so if something did fail I have fallbacks so I wasn’t truly in the dark,” Jackson explained in a subsequent video post about the experience. “But I wrote [my blog post] from the perspective of someone who—what if they didn’t do all that.”

  Jackson, who is an engineer at Microsoft and is relatively tech savvy, shared his concerns for owners of smart home devices who don’t have the same knowledge base and find themselves locked out in a similar incident.

  He said the incident led him to lose trust in Amazon due to how it kept him locked out through the duration of the ordeal.

  “I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation,” he wrote.

  Jackson also argued that Amazon or other companies shouldn’t be able to block people from using the products they purchased because they expressed the wrong opinions.

  “If you bought a toaster right, it doesn’t matter what you did, how bad of a person you were how good of a person you are, you still own the toaster at the end of the day right?” Jackson said. “And if you really did do something that was so horrible and bad that shouldn’t be Amazon or Google or Apple’s call to do anything about that. You know, we already have a system set up for that and that’s what you should be going through.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 20:00

• A Quiet Revolution Is Unfolding Against 'Woke' Corporate America – Here's The Strategy Behind It
  A Quiet Revolution Is Unfolding Against ‘Woke’ Corporate America – Here’s The Strategy Behind It

  Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Consumer boycotts against “woke” corporations such as Target and Anheuser-Busch are the key to reversing race, gender, and environmental activism in corporate America, according to conservative groups.

  

  That’s because customers ditching companies pushing left-wing policies have given conservative groups the traction they needed to fight them legally.

  Scott Shepard is a Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) and director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project, a conservative shareholder activist group.

  Shepard told The Epoch Times the tide is turning against environmental, social, and governance, or ESG.

  “We’re seeing something very different this time. Because it’s not just the conservatives, who are always interested in this sort of thing, it’s the whole country,” Shepard said.

  ESG, which started as guidelines, has now turned into heavy-handed mandates on controversial “social justice” ideologies, he said.

  And a potential breach of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders will expose businesses to legal action like Shepard’s organization has started.

  Even with companies losing billions of dollars, they continue to embrace the concept to the detriment of their shareholders, Shepard said.

  Target came under fire for “Pride Month” merchandise, including rainbow-colored onesies for babies and “tuck-friendly” women’s swimsuits for men identifying as women in front-of-the-store displays.

  

  Likewise, consumers boycotted Anheiser-Busch after the company provided transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney with a personalized can of Bud Light which subsequently went viral on social media.

  Target and Anheuser-Busch both came out with statements as the boycotts intensified. But they fell short of apologizing or continued to support transgenderism and LGBT causes as consumers stayed away.

  Target’s strategy was to blame threats from customers for removing some of the more “controversial” items from their “Pride Month” displays and relocating LGBT items to the back of the store.

  Employees at a Target location in Tennessee, where some wore rainbow-flag gear, gave a mixed review on June 13 about how the boycott was impacting sales.

  “Sundays and Mondays have been less busy. It’s noticeable if you work here long enough. The past few weeks have been slower,” one employee said.

  “It’s kind of hard to say. Day-to-day things are different,” added another.

  Anheuser-Busch came out with pro-America ads featuring Clydesdale horses traversing the country shortly after their campaign with Mulvaney.

  “We never intended to be a part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer,” Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said.

  Besides Target and Anheuser-Busch’s continued support of Pride Month, business titans such as Citi, Bank of America, Cisco, HP, and Pfizer have all changed their social media icons to Pride-themed logos.

  Billionaire Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner, and Shark Tank star, went so far as to call going woke “good for business” over the weekend.

  Boycotts Kryptonite For Woke Firms

  Shareholder lawsuits could be the key to stopping ESG—and prolonged consumer boycotts are making it possible by inflicting huge losses on “woke” companies, Shepard said.

  On June 6, America First Legal (AFL) demanded Target’s corporate books and records amid the backlash against the retailer for selling Pride Month items aimed at children.

  The law firm represents NCPPR, a free market public policy research group, where Shepard is a fellow.

  AFL, headed by former Trump presidential adviser Stephen Miller, accused Target’s management of a “radical LGBT political agenda that has cost the corporation over $12 billion in market valuation since mid-May 2023,” according to a news release.

  The boycotts hit the companies’ market capitalizations, meaning their value dropped on the stock market.

  Target’s market capitalization fell from $72.52 billion to $58.61 billion between May 1 and June 10 and was downgraded on Wall Street twice.

  Anheuser-Busch’s market cap slid even more—from $132.06 billion to $108.96 billion between April 3 and June 2 and was also downgraded.

  Attorneys for AFL said its client has concerns about the possible financial risk posed by selling LGBT-related merchandise since Target admits its customer base is mainly made up of families.

  “This dramatic and sudden loss to shareholders is a direct and predictable result of management’s calculated efforts to please its extreme leftist “stakeholders,” almost none of whom shop at Target, and evidence contempt for the corporation’s core customers,” AFL said in a statement.

  Shepard said stock value losses demonstrate that “woke” corporate boards and executives care more about an ideology than their shareholders.

  “I think it’s now clear people are paying attention,” he said.

  

  “Aside from the hard-left activists, nobody wants trans issues aimed at children; nobody thinks that Target ought to play a central role in deciding whether our children are going to get drawn into all this nonsense,” Shepard said.

  If CEOs and corporate board members continue to “pretend” going woke won’t make them broke, Shepard believes they will likely be sued personally.

  He predicts executives will be forced to pay back the amount they cost shareholders out of their pockets by “running companies according to their own personal preferences, rather than according to objective, neutral rules of running a business.”

  Why Executives Alienate Customers

  Woke isn’t going away without a fight, according to Will Hild, executive director of Consumer’s Research, a nonprofit consumer protection group.

  Consumer’s Research launched a public information campaign on BlackRock and recently created a “woke alert” for consumers. Those who sign up are notified when companies “cave to the woke mob—so you know the brands attacking your values.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 19:40

• Middle School Students Stage Rebellion Against LGBTQ Indoctrination
  Middle School Students Stage Rebellion Against LGBTQ Indoctrination

  Massachusetts, where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired, has now witnessed a revolt against LGBTQ indoctrination, staged by students at a public middle school. 

  The action took place on June 2 at Marshall Simonds Middle School in the suburban Boston town of Burlington, in response to a Pride-themed “spirit day” organized by the school’s Spectrum Club, which is a group of LGBTQ students and their supporters.

  The student body was encouraged to dress in rainbow colors and wear rainbow stickers. The school was decorated with Pride flags and posters, rainbow streamers, and “educational” posters.

  School officials are in panic mode over kids revolting against “Pride Day”

  Kids refused to wear colors and some even chanted that their pronouns are USA pic.twitter.com/xuNBlMCrdq

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 13, 2023

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  However, according to a letter sent to parents from the school’s principal, many students were not in the mood and created — wait for it — an “unsafe environment.” Her list of “specific acts of intolerance” included:

  • “ripping of stickers and pulling down of banners”
  • “handmade signs were torn off the walls and crumbled into water fountains”
  • “groups of students were heard chanting ‘U.S.A. are my pronouns'” 
  • “students glaring intimidatingly at faculty members showing pride”
  • “students were shamed into removing their stickers or covering their clothing”

  Reports indicate that some of the dissent sprang from the school’s failure to acknowledge Memorial Day. In her letter to parents, Perchase acknowledged that it her staff had made an “error.” Many students wore red, white and blue on the Pride day, with some taking their patriotic display to the next level with face paint.  

  Parent Christine Steiner told WCVB that her daughter was offended by an “educational” poster that crossed the line from promoting tolerance of LGBTQ people to taking a shot at straight ones. The poster featured a quote from Tennessee Williams: “What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.” It also depicted two people waving rainbow flags; adhering to the woke rulebook, both were non-white. 

  

  In response to the discord, Perchase said her administration had created a form so students could anonymously report alleged “hateful” incidents that took place that day.  

  At a Monday night meeting of Burlington’s Select Board where the audience was dominated by parents of purported LGBTQ middle schoolers, Nancy Bonassera, co-chair of the Burlington Equity Coalition, demanded “consequences” for students who participated in the pushback against Pride.

  Her group is also demanding that the school district fill a “diversity, equity, inclusion” (DEI) director position that’s been left vacant since last year. The also want the Burlington Select Board — comparable to a town council — to “reinstate the recently disbanded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion subcommittee.” 

  Instead of all that, it’s time for more parents to ask why schools should be fostering celebrations of any flavor of sexuality. 

  Massachusetts isn’t the only blue state to recently see students pushing back against LGBTQ indoctrination. Watch the reaction of students at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, California, when their teacher showed a Pride-flavored video — in a math class.  

  …and be sure to listen for the girl asking what parents everywhere should be asking: “Why are you showing this to kids?”

  Parents of kids at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, California say this video was played to their kids in math class. The kids clearly didn’t want to watch this pride video so the teacher threatened them with Saturday school to get them to watch it. pic.twitter.com/FUnB9DKYrN

  — Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 11, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 19:20

• New Truck Sales Are Robust – But There's Still A Trucking Bloodbath
  New Truck Sales Are Robust – But There’s Still A Trucking Bloodbath

  By Craig Fuller, CEO of FreightWaves

  In the past week, several Twitter users have pointed to government data on retail sales of heavy-duty trucks as one reason why a recession is far off. 

  

  Two examples: 

  You want to know a Leading Indicator I use as a #recession warning? Here is a great one 👇

  Heavy Weight Trucks sales have predicted every recession since 1973! 🚛

  A steep decline is an early warning, that a recession is coming! Right now, Heavy Weight Trucks sales continue to… pic.twitter.com/ozNQKFaByS

  — BACH (@MortensenBach) June 9, 2023

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  Heavy truck sales continue to increase.

  Before the past 7 recessions we saw this decline well before the recession started.

  You want to talk about leading indicators of a recession? I’ll take this every time.

  Yet another clue a recession isn’t imminent like we keep hearing. pic.twitter.com/blLm0bLgiT

  — Ryan Detrick, CMT (@RyanDetrick) June 8, 2023

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  The context of their posts is that because of robust truck orders, the freight market must also be robust. And since the freight market is robust, they believe, it means that the U.S. economy is also robust. They have good reason for believing this. After all, new truck orders are at very high levels and, in a normal cycle, there is a correlation between robust truck orders and freight demand. 

  However, FreightWaves readers likely know better. The freight market is not robust. In fact, it is one of the most difficult freight markets in recent years, with comparisons to the 2009 economy among some fleet executives. 

  The Twitter posters can be forgiven. 

  They are likely just pulling random data charts and drawing their conclusions with little to no freight industry experience and little context. 

  But why are new truck orders robust?

  COVID screwed up the heavy-duty production cycle

  There is a backlog of heavy-duty truck orders. Therefore, the data is not telling us what some think it does. 

  In a normal economy, the health of the freight market is correlated with new truck order data. Not this time. The collapse in the freight market is well-documented from a range of sources, including leading industry surveys and bank reports on nationwide freight expenditure.

  New truck orders are continuing at robust levels, while the freight market collapses. This shouldn’t happen, so why is this cycle different? 

  Mid-sized and large fleets — 100 trucks or more — buy their trucks at regular intervals, regardless of the economy. In fact, some increase purchases during recessions — thanks to incentives from original equipment manufacturers and easy access to drivers. 

  Forty-two percent of the trucks on the road are held by fleets with more than 100 trucks. 

  From 2020-2022, mid-sized and large fleets were not able to get new truck allotments due to supply chain shortages and a strong retail truck market.

  The mid-size and large fleets also held on to trucks longer than usual — two years longer than normal. Some fleets delayed orders in 2020 because of the unprecedented uncertainty and then continued to hold off in 2021 because of the inability to find truck drivers to “seat their trucks.” 

  Now, truck drivers are much easier to find, uncertainty about an “apocalypse” is long forgotten and those trucks they held onto for two extra years are worn out.

  The largest fleets also know that with the availability of truck drivers (so long “shortage”), they will be able to grow market share. So what is occurring in truck order data is not related to robust freight demand, but rather a bulking of orders from the COVID economy among mid-sized and large fleets. 

  The OEMs are aware that the freight market is in recession. This is why they aren’t ramping up production to burn off the backlog. OEMs will keep production at current levels, hoping to time the cycle just in time for a rebound. 

  It is possible that the truck OEMs will miss the recession this time around.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 19:00

• China Rebukes US In Phone Call Ahead Of Blinken's Arrival In Beijing Sunday
  China Rebukes US In Phone Call Ahead Of Blinken’s Arrival In Beijing Sunday

  A Blinken trip to China has finally been confirmed, following the latest, albeit tense, phone call between the US Secretary of State and his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang. Both sides have said Blinken will be in Beijing on Sunday and Monday. Qin told Blinken in the Wednesday call the US must stop meddling in China’s affairs.

  State Dept spokesperson Matthew Miller in a new statement describing the itinerary said, “Blinken will travel to Beijing, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and London, the United Kingdom, June 16-21.” He detailed: “While in Beijing, Secretary Blinken will meet with senior PRC officials where he will discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to responsibly manage the US-PRC relationship. He will also raise bilateral issues of concern, global and regional matters, and potential cooperation on shared transnational challenges.”

  In prior recent exchanges with Blinken, the Chinese FM urged US to “show respect” and stressed it must stop undermining China’s interests. Blinken, for his part, has said the US wants “to avoid miscalculation and conflict” in restoring direct dialogue with Beijing.

  

  The more forceful new remarks from Qin (compared with the somewhat muted US readout), included a call for Washington to “stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition.”

  Of chief importance on the minds of Beijing officials is the newly inked trade agreement between the United States and Taiwan this month which seeks to “strengthen and deepen the economic and trade relationship between.”

  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning at the time said the deal “gravely violates” Beijing’s “one-China” policy under which it views Taiwan as a wayward province and has vowed to retake it by force, if necessary. — UPI

  This newly announced weekend trip by Blinken was supposed to happen in February, but that was abruptly canceled (or perhaps just “postponed”), following the Chinese “spy balloon” shootdown incident early that month and ensuing war of words and Chinese denials of wrongdoing.

  Earlier this month, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu told the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit that any potential future conflict between the United States and China would bring “unbearable disaster for the world”.

  But he said both rival powerful countries should be able to grow together and to avoid confrontation. His words came as the US condemned what it called unsafe and aggressive maneuvers by a Chinese PLA Navy warship in the Taiwan Strait as the American destroyer USS Chung-Hoon conducted a ‘freedom of navigation’ transit on June 3rd. 

  Lately, China has been ramping up its flights and naval maneuvers near Taiwan, and now somewhat routinely violates the Taiwan Strait median line. The US is at the same time sending more and more Navy warships through the strait, provoking Beijing.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 18:40

• "Biden Bucks" And The War On Crypto
  “Biden Bucks” And The War On Crypto

  Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

  I’ve written a lot about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) including the U.S. dollar version that I call “Biden Bucks.” The threat from CBDCs is enormous.

  They are digital (but not true cryptocurrencies), which means they are programmable. The Treasury and Fed can use the CBDC ledger to track your purchases, look at your political contributions, look at your religious affiliations and basically profile you as an enemy of the state or “ultra MAGA.”

  Your “Biden Bucks” could be made to stop working at the gas pump once you’ve purchased a certain amount of gasoline in a week. How’s that for control?

  And in a world of “Biden Bucks,” the government will even know your physical whereabouts at the point of purchase.

  

  But it gets even worse…

  CBDC + AI = Nightmare

  This profiling can be combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and generative pretrained transformer platforms (GPT) to practically read your mind.

  From there, the government can freeze your bank accounts, impose taxes and penalties and put you on a “use it or lose it” fiscal policy stimulus plan that forces you to spend your money within 30 days or have it partially confiscated.

  If any of this sounds extreme, fantastical or otherwise far-fetched, it’s not. It’s already happening around the world.

  China is already using its CBDC to deny travel and educational opportunities to political dissidents. Canada seized the bank accounts and crypto accounts of nonviolent trucker protesters last winter.

  These kinds of “social credit” systems and political suppression will be even easier to conduct when “Biden Bucks” are completely rolled out in the U.S.

  The Associated Press actually tried to fact-check me, saying that my claims are false, that the digital dollar has nothing to do with social control. The whole project is completely innocent and you can trust the government.

  But even the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, which is known as the “central bank of central banks,” has admitted that CBDCs would give central banks “absolute control” of everyone’s money — and the “technology to enforce that.”

  Even The Economist has announced the rise of government-backed digital currencies, warning they will “shift power from individuals to the state.”

  Let’s just say The Economist isn’t known for engaging in conspiracy theories.

  No Competition Allowed

  And this is central to the CBDC plan: As the CBDC dollar is being implemented, it’s important for the government to take away your alternatives. The three main alternatives are physical cash, gold and cryptocurrencies.

  Cash is under attack through multiple channels including “no cash accepted” signs at public events, anti-money laundering rules and simple inflation that might allow you to hold cash, but it won’t be worth very much.

  (In 1969, the U.S. abolished the $500 bill, leaving the $100 bill as the highest denomination. The $100 bill of 1969 is only worth $12 in today’s purchasing power because of inflation. Give it time and it won’t be worth much more than a $5 bill.)

  And cryptocurrencies are also under full-scale attack. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, and its founder Changpeng Zhao, alleging they operated a “web of deception.”

  Among the 13 other counts in the lawsuit are allegations that Binance inflated trading volumes, mishandled customer funds and misled investors about market-surveillance controls. Just one day later, the SEC also sued the Coinbase crypto exchange for failure to register as an exchange under U.S. law.

  During the wave of bank failures in early March, the FDIC closed Signature Bank, which operated a cryptocurrency portal called Signet in addition to normal banking activities. That came days after the failure of Silvergate Bank, which also bridged the normal banking world to the world of crypto.

  None of this is random.

  Governments Never Wanted to Kill the Blockchain — Just to Control It

  The U.S. has opened a full-scale war on crypto. Silvergate, Signature, Binance and Coinbase are just the first victims. They won’t be the last. Crypto has to go if CBDCs are going to be fully implemented.

  Many advocates of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have shared a naïve belief that their digital assets are “beyond the reach of governments,” “cannot be traced” and “cannot be frozen or seized.”

  They’ve learned otherwise. Blockchain does not exist in the ether (despite the name of one cryptocurrency) and it does not reside on Mars. Blockchain depends on critical infrastructure including servers, telecommunications networks, the banking system and the power grid, all of which are subject to government control.

  As I’ve argued for years, governments don’t want to kill the blockchain upon which cryptos are based. They want to control it.

  The fact is governments enjoy a monopoly on money creation and they’re not about to surrender that monopoly to cryptocurrencies.

  But governments know they cannot stop the technology platforms on which the cryptocurrencies are based. Blockchain technology has come too far to turn back. That’s why they’re co-opting it.

  What Happens if CBDCS Get Hacked?

  Here’s one issue with Biden Bucks that hasn’t been adequately addressed: How can you trust them to keep your money secure once you are forced to convert it to a traceable digital currency?

  Hackers routinely target crypto architecture and steal money. What happens if that digital currency gets hacked?

  This is from a 2022 Federal Reserve paper:

  Threats to existing payment services — including operational disruptions and cybersecurity risks — would apply to a CBDC as well. Any dedicated infrastructure for a CBDC would need to be extremely resilient to such threats, and the operators of the CBDC infrastructure would need to remain vigilant as bad actors employ ever more sophisticated methods and tactics. Designing appropriate defenses for CBDC could be particularly difficult because a CBDC network could potentially have more entry points than existing payment services.

  This part is truly terrifying. To repeat:

  Designing appropriate defenses for CBDC could be particularly difficult because a CBDC network could potentially have more entry points than existing payment services.

  If bad actors can already hack crypto platforms with ease, what’s to stop them from hacking a CBDC network with more entry points?

  You might not be able to fight back easily in the world of “Biden Bucks,” but there is one nondigital, nonhackable, nontraceable form of money you can still get your hands on.

  It’s called gold. Get some before it’s too late.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 18:20

• CIA Knew Ukraine Was Planning To Bomb Nord Stream Pipelines: Report
  CIA Knew Ukraine Was Planning To Bomb Nord Stream Pipelines: Report

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Several Western media outlets reported Tuesday that the CIA warned Ukraine last year not to bomb the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that connect Russia and Germany.

  In recent months, US and other Western officials speaking to the media have suggested Ukraine was behind the Nord Stream sabotage. Most reports on the issue have ignored or dismissed the fact that journalist Seymour Hersh has sources who said President Biden ordered the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.

  

  According to unnamed US officials speaking to The New York Times, Dutch intelligence officials told the CIA in June 2022 that they learned of a Ukrainian military plot to attack the pipelines. The CIA then warned Ukraine not to carry out the attack, and US officials now believe it was postponed to September 2022.

  A European official told the Times that Ukraine’s original plan involved Ukrainian special forces renting a submersible vessel to attack the pipelines. The CIA was also said to warn Germany about a potential plot to sabotage Nord Stream.

  The latest Nord Stream allegations were first reported by the news outlet Die Zeit and NOS, a Dutch broadcaster. They claimed that the Ukrainian plot was overseen by Valery Zaluchny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

  For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied Kyiv was involved in the destruction of the pipelines. “I am president, and I give orders accordingly,” he said. “Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine. I would never act that way.”

  The idea that the US suspected Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream bombings first surfaced in a New York Times report that was published on March 7. Sources told Seymour Hersh that the report was a cover-up planted in the paper by the CIA to discredit his story that points the finger at President Biden.

  Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream plot hasn’t been confirmed, but the US is still a prime suspect as it had a clear motive and US officials made threats against the pipelines. On February 7, 2022, President Biden vowed to “bring an end” to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine.

  Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

  Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

  Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.” https://t.co/uruQ4F4zM9 pic.twitter.com/4ksDaaU0YC

  — ABC News (@ABC) February 7, 2022

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  A few weeks earlier, Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, made a similar threat. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward,” she said.

  According to Hersh’s reporting, US Navy divers planted explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines in June 2022 under cover of NATO exercises in the Baltic Sea. He said the explosives were detonated by a Norwegian spy plane dropping a sonar buoy in the area on September 26, 2022.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 06/14/2023 – 18:00

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