May 15

Today’s News 15th May 2023

  • Germany Unveils €2.7BN Ukraine Arms Package As Zelensky Tours Europe
    Germany Unveils €2.7BN Ukraine Arms Package As Zelensky Tours Europe

    Over the weekend Germany unveiled a a new weapons package worth 2.7 billion euros ($2.95 billion) for Ukraine, at a moment President Volodymyr Zelensky is meeting with Western leaders in Europe.

    “An important visit for approaching victory of Ukraine!” Zelensky tweeted after arriving in EU and NATO member Italy on Saturday. He met with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for 70 minutes, thanking her for “for helping to save lives”, after which he met with Pope Francis in the Vatican, reportedly lobbying the pontiff to back Kiev’s own peace plan.

    Via EFE

    Zelensky then traveled to Germany on Sunday, the day after Berlin confirmed the massive new defense aid package.

    Naturally, the Ukrainian leader is already pressing for more – as The New York Times writes of the trip to meeting with Scholz: “Speaking to journalists side by side at the chancellery on Sunday morning, Mr. Zelensky and Chancellor Olaf Scholz traded remarks of gratitude and praise. But their responses to some questions — namely on fighter jets — reflected that Kyiv is still struggling to gain traction with Berlin and other Western allies on some of its key demands.”

    Apparently German could only roll out the red carpet for Zelensky in a guilt-free way only after pledging the billions in new arms:

    Mr. Zelensky was escorted to Berlin by German fighter jets for his first trip to Germany since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began more than a year ago. He met first with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Berlin’s Bellevue Palace and was then received with military honors by Mr. Scholz at the chancellery.

    The grand reception came a day after Germany had announced its largest package of military aid yet for Kyiv and as the two nations seek to turn the page on months of rocky relations.

    Zelensky wrote on Twitter in conjunction with his Berlin visit Sunday: “German air defense systems, artillery, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are saving Ukrainian lives and bringing us closer to victory,” and stressed: “Germany is a reliable ally!”

    All of this is a huge about-face for Germany, which has been hesitant since the start of the conflict to jump headlong into a proxy war situation which may eventually escalate into a direct Russia-NATO clash. But Berlin grew bolder with the supply of Leopard II battle tanks. Zelensky attempted to address German concerns Sunday:

    Ukraine has no plans to hit targets in Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said in Germany, where Kyiv secured a big new defence aid package.

    “We are not attacking Russian territory,” he said after talks in Berlin with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

    “We are preparing a counterattack to de-occupy the illegitimately conquered territories,” Mr Zelensky added.

    But the past couple months of increasing drone attacks from Ukraine, particularly on Russian oil facilities, show differently.

    Pentagon leaks examined by The Washington Post also reveal that Zelensky has secretly greenlighted attacks inside Russian territory:

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

    On Saturday there were multiple Russian aircraft downed in the same border region near Ukraine, with many observers saying this may have been a cross-border shoot-down situation which would mark a huge advance in Ukraine’s capabilities. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/15/2023 – 02:45

  • Play It Again Uncle Sam… Debunked Syrian Chemical Weapons Card In Ukraine
    Play It Again Uncle Sam… Debunked Syrian Chemical Weapons Card In Ukraine

    Authored by Finian Cuningham,

    Western media are now accusing Russian forces of preparing to use chemical weapons (CW) of mass destruction in Ukraine, thereby making the case for greater NATO military intervention.

    The CW card is a complete dud. That Western media are playing it shows they are also complete duds, and that their role is as sinister as mass drug-dealing.

    Deliberate provocation by Western powers is the watchword. Britain this week supplying long-range missiles, as well as depleted uranium artillery shells, and drone attacks on the Kremlin are part of a sequence to solicit never-ending escalation. Accusing Russia of planning to use chemical weapons of mass destruction, as with earlier claims of Russia willing to use nuclear weapons, is all part of the orchestrated provocation.

    The degradation of Western media standards has become so bad that they can get away with retailing such nonsense to consumers of this “information”.

    First of all, Russia does not have any chemical weapons. As a signatory to the international treaty known as the Chemical Weapons Convention (1997), the Russian Federation verifiably destroyed all of its arsenals as per its signatory obligations. The complete decommissioning of these weapons by Russia in 2017 was verified by the Organization for the Prohibition on Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

    The United States is the only major power that has not fully implemented the CW convention by retaining stockpiles of these weapons.

    Not only is speculation about Russian forces possibly using CW in Ukraine baseless, but the Western media are also deploying the shoddy lie used earlier against Syria. Incredibly, for anyone cognizant of the facts, such calumny is still peddled to blame the wrong people when the real perpetrator in Syria was Western-backed militants and their CIA and MI6-sponsored media accomplices, the so-called White Helmets.

    Western media continue to claim that the Syrian government forces of Bashar al Assad used CW against civilians during the decade-old civil war in the Arab country. Russia supported the Syrian army to defeat NATO-backed radical extremists.

    Now the Western media are moralizing that the United States and other Western powers took no punitive action against Syria over CW which, it is contended, is acting as a precedent for Russia to use these weapons in the Ukraine conflict.

    Euronews quotes Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British military intelligence officer, as saying:

    “The international community needs to reaffirm that any use of chemical or biological weapons would not be acceptable in any shape or form… I’m sure NATO and the West would act if they [Russia] used chemical weapons in Ukraine. But having said that they stood by when Assad used such weapons in Syria and that might embolden Putin.”

    This is an outrageous lie being propagated by the Western media. It has been documented by independent investigations that the CW attacks in Syria were actually carried out by NATO-backed mercenaries in false-flag operations to provoke Western military intervention. One of those false flags in the city of Douma in April 2018 succeeded in its nefarious aims. Following the incident – dutifully amplified at the time by Western media for gaslighting the Western public – U.S. President Donald Trump bombed Syria “in revenge” along with British and French allies.

    However, it turned out later that Syria, Russia and Iran were vindicated in their initial claims that the CW incidents in Syria were false-flag stunts. Indeed, it was shown that personnel in the UN watchdog, the OPCW, engaged in a cover-up to implicate the Assad government when the real perpetrator was the jihadists backed by the West, as reported by Aaron Maté and other independent journalists.

    The accusatory claims against the Syrian government did not stand up to scrutiny. Following its joining of the CWC treaty, less than a year later Syria destroyed all of its CW stockpiles in 2014, as verified by UN inspectors.

    How could Syrian government forces then use CW in later alleged incidents? Besides, there was no tactical advantage from a military point of view in using such munitions even if there were stealth stockpiles remaining.

    Likewise, Russia does not possess CW and besides has no tactical need for them. In the current Ukraine conflict, Russia has the upper hand militarily in securing the Donbass territory bordering Ukraine, and its forces have all but taken control of the strategically important city of Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) after months of intense battle. Russian drones have been effective in targeting Ukrainian troops taking cover in civilian homes and buildings.

    The real analogy is that the NATO-backed Kiev regime forces are on the back foot in a similar way to how NATO-backed mercenaries in Syria were facing a rout. Just like the Syrian jihadists tried to do, the incentive is for the Kiev regime to deploy CW in a desperate bid to trigger a direct U.S. and NATO military intervention.

    After all, the much-ballyhooed counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces has failed to materialize despite months of Western media hyping up. The Kiev puppet president Vladimir Zelensky has this week again played down a counter-offensive being launched unless more Western weapons are delivered.

    Certainly, the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis in the Azov and Aidar battalions are deranged enough to deploy CW like the cut-throat counterparts that NATO previously deployed in Syria. The Ukrainian Nazi worshippers have been firing U.S. and British-supplied shells at the civilian nuclear plant at Zaporozhye for months in the same insane gamble to deliberately create a catastrophe.

    The chemical-weapon scenario in Ukraine is a deplorable propaganda ruse aided and abetted by Western media who reference the nonsense by pumping out the debunked lie about Syria.

    Such media have indulged the worst Russophobia, demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russians generally as “mad savages”. Lamentably, the Western public has been conditioned to expect the worst in Ukraine, including the deployment of nuclear and chemical weapons by Russia, despite Moscow’s categorical denials.

    The shameful irony is that those who are capable of the worst conduct and the most desperate, despicable measures are the Western regimes and their NeoNazi surrogates in Ukraine. The imperial powers want to escalate the war in Ukraine against Russia. War is the refuge for their historically failing global dominance.

    Western media are the new opium of the people, purposed to daze and confuse, unconscionably, too, at a time of immense danger when the wrong, disastrously consequential decisions are permitted.

    People need to kick the habit, go cold turkey and disabuse themselves of the Western media’s lying web. Before the world is thrown over the abyss.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/15/2023 – 02:00

  • Elites' Lies Meant To Deliver Us From Reality
    Elites’ Lies Meant To Deliver Us From Reality

    Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

    “Because he can.” 

    That’s the answer one has to give to those who ask how Alvin Bragg, a local district attorney in office by the slimmest of margins – and then only because of a huge subsidy from the anti-American billionaire George Soros – can get away with antics like indicting Donald Trump, a former (and, possibly, future) president of the United States, and, now, with charging former Marine Daniel Penny with manslaughter because he (along with at least two others) intervened to stop Jordan Neely from attacking fellow passengers on a New York subway. 

    Because he can.

    As a friend remarked when digesting the spectacle of Penny being led away in handcuffs, totalitarian movements often start slowly, almost timidly, but as they gain power, they become more brazen. After a certain point, they do outrageous things just to intimidate the public and demonstrate their power.  

    We now know that the FBI, the CIA, and other elements of America’s security apparatus intervened directly in the decision making of Twitter and other social media companies to influence the course of the 2020 election. One part of that intervention had to do with organizing 51 senior former intelligence figures to sign a letter declaring that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

    That was a lie. They knew it was a lie. It didn’t matter. They did it because they knew they could get away with it.

    The United States is on the verge of being inundated with thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens. Many are from South or Central America. Hundreds are from China, even though they are crossing that notional line we used to be able to call, without irony, our southern border. Why did the Biden Administration decide to enact a real-life Camp of the Saints invasion of the United States?

    Because it could. There was no immediate price to pay. 

    In her classic study, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt makes several observations that bear on our current situation. “There is no doubt,” she observes, 

    that the elite was pleased whenever the underworld frightened respectable society into accepting it on an equal footing. The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it. They were not particularly outraged at the monstrous forgeries in historiography of which all totalitarian regimes are guilty and which announce themselves clearly enough and totalitarian propaganda.

    It’s not only the compact between the elite and the underclass that is relevant to our experience in the United States today. There is also the incontinent deployment of the word “democracy,” not as a term describing a specific form of political organization but rather as a cognitively empty but talismanic vocable around which political animus can be nurtured and set to work. The latest variation is Our DemocracyTM, dragged out whenever the process of political demonization needs a boost.

    “It has been frequently pointed out,” Arendt notes, “that totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them.” 

    The reaction to the January 6, 2021 jamboree at the Capitol—an event egged on and at least in part organized by (alleged) state actors like Ray Epps—is a case in point. As he showed last week in his exchange with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Donald Trump began trying to diffuse the potential for violence at that protest the day before, on January 5, and he continued through the day on January 6. No matter. The script called for him to be the villain of the piece, so the villain he is publicly accounted to be. 

    So many things in our social and political life today seem surreal.

    The prospect that “misgendering” someone might be against the law—i.e., a tort that did not even exist yesterday is now illegal; the whole phenomenon of so-called “transgenderism,” a revolt against reality if there ever was one; the bizarre obsession with race, involving the demonization of whites and the fabrication of an imaginary sin called “white supremacy,” on the one hand, and the groveling obeisance of phantasmagoric “reparations” to blacks, on the other. You can’t tune into the internet these days without being confronted with scenes of blacks rampaging through fast-food restaurants, school corridors, or shops like Target and Walmart. They smash and steal and smash and what happens to them? Nothing. All this and more is part of what Arendt called totalitarianism’s “experiment against reality.” 

    “Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines,” she pointed out,

    “totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations.”

    “The shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings.” That is what our masters are pretending to insulate us from with their fantastic lies about human nature, economic reality, and empirical truth.

    The only silver lining in this minatory storm cloud is the fact that such movements, though unconscionably cruel, arbitrary, and destructive, are also astonishingly fragile.

    The last word goes to Arendt.

    “Nothing is more characteristic of the totalitarian movements in general, and of the quality of fame of their leaders in particular than the startling swiftness with which they are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/15/2023 – 00:00

  • Is The Next Commodity Super-Cycle Right Around The Corner?
    Is The Next Commodity Super-Cycle Right Around The Corner?

    In recent years, commodity prices have reached a 50-year low relative to overall equity markets (S&P 500).

    Historically, lows in the ratio of commodities to equities have corresponded with the beginning of new commodity supercycles.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti shows in the infographic below, using data from Incrementum AG and Crescat Capital LLC, the relationship between commodities and U.S. equities has varied greatly over the last five decades.

    What is a Commodity Supercycle?

    A commodity supercycle occurs when prices of commodities rise above their long-term averages for long periods of time, even decades. Once the supply has adequately grown to meet demand, the cycle enters a downswing.

    The last commodity supercycle started in 1996 and peaked in 2011, driven by raw material demand from rapid industrialization taking place in Brazil, India, Russia, and China.

    Source: Bank of Canada, IHS

    While no two supercycles look the same, they all have three indicators in common: a surge in supply, a surge in demand, and a surge in price.

    In general, commodity prices and equity valuations tend to have a low to negative correlation, making it rare to see the two moving in tandem in the same direction for any long period of time.

    Commodity Prices and Equity Valuations

    In line with the above notion, commodity prices and equity valuations have often been at odds with one another in past market cycles.

    During the 1970s and early 1980s, for example, rising oil prices led to a significant decline in stock prices as higher energy costs hurt corporate profits. In contrast, during the first half of the 2000s, low oil prices were accompanied by a strong equity bull market that ended with the 2008 stock market crash.

    The relationship, however, is not always straightforward and can be affected by various other factors, such as global economic growth, supply and demand, inflation, and other market events.

    With the most recent commodity supercycle peaking in 2011, could the next big one be right around the corner?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 23:00

  • Most People Believe That Life In America Is "Worse" Than It Was 50 Years Ago
    Most People Believe That Life In America Is “Worse” Than It Was 50 Years Ago

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    If you could go back and live in 1973, would you do it? 

    To me, that is not an easy question to answer. 

    I think that for many of us it would be a real challenge to adjust to a world without the Internet and so many of the other technologies that we enjoy today.  But I also think that if we were suddenly transported back to that time we would be absolutely shocked by how freely people lived.  In 2023, there are literally millions of different laws, rules, regulations and ordinances that constrain how we behave down to the smallest detail.  A lot of us still think that we are “free”, but that hasn’t actually been true for a very long time.  In addition, the values of our society are completely different from what they were in 1973.  Over the past 50 years our culture has been completely turned upside down, and we can see the nightmarish consequences of this cultural revolution all around us.

    Of course there was no time in U.S. history when life was perfect.  But when Pew Research recently asked people if life in America “is better, worse, or about the same as it was 50 years ago”, an overwhelming majority of respondents said that life is worse today…

    The survey showed Americans with a negative view on how life is for people now. They were asked, “In general, would you say life in America today is better, worse, or about the same as it was 50 years ago for people like you?”

    Over half, 58 percent, said they believe life is “worse” for people like them than it was 50 years ago. That reflects a 15-point increase from the 43 percent who said the same in July 2021.

    Only 23 percent said they believe life is “better,” and 19 percent said it is “about the same.”

    Needless to say, if many of us had to pick the best years in American history, 1973 would not be among the top few choices.

    The economy was really struggling and the fashions were absolutely horrible.

    But if you watch this 1973 street footage from New York City, you can see that life was pretty good and people seemed to be pretty happy…

    Would I want to trade my current life for a life in 1973?

    No.

    But if I could trade the people and values of 1973 for the people and values of 2023, I would do that in a heartbeat.

    Our society is falling apart all around us, and that is because the character of this nation has been fundamentally transformed.

    Crime rates are spiking in our major cities, mass killings are happening at a record pace, our streets are filled with drug addicts, and the biggest crooks of all are walking the halls of power.

    In addition, we live at a time when millions of Americans are afraid to leave their homes because our society is literally teeming with predators.  For example, the next time a hotel manager tells you that he wants to check in on you, it may not be because he is concerned about your air conditioning unit…

    A manager at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Nashville has been charged with aggravated burglary and assault after he reportedly entered a guest’s room and sucked on his toes.

    According to Metro police, 52-year-old David Neal was the night manager at downtown Nashville’s Hilton Hotel, located in the 100 block of 4th Avenue South.

    Police said Neal allegedly made a key card and used it to enter the guest’s room on March 30 at around 5 a.m. The guest told police he woke up and found Neal sucking on his toes. He immediately confronted Neal and recognized him as the person who had come into his room the day before with another employee to address an issue the guest was having with his TV, according to investigators.

    There are millions of others just like him all over the country.

    And some of them even get invited to the White House.

    Of course it is debatable whether we even have a “country” at this point because we essentially have no southern border.

    Thousands upon thousands of migrants illegally enter the U.S. every single day, and this isn’t just causing enormous issues in the border states.

    In the state of Indiana, approximately 22 percent of all students in the public schools “receive lessons in both English and Spanish”…

    But it’s not just a problem in the border states. Take Indiana, for example, where Indianapolis police have just declared the capital city a sanctuary for the invasion. WISH reported last year: “Across Indiana, there are nearly 78,000 students called ‘English Learners’ who receive lessons in both English and Spanish. The number of English learners in Indiana schools has increased by almost 27,000 from six years ago.” FAIR estimates that 22% of Indianapolis students are LEPs!

    And now that Title 42 is expiring, the surge of migration that we have been witnessing is likely to become an avalanche…

    Tens of thousands of migrants are reportedly surging at the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of Title 42’s expiration.

    In the Texas border city of El Paso, about 2,200 migrants are currently camped or living on the streets a few blocks from major ports of entry that connect El Paso with the Mexican city of Juárez. The city is prepared to open up shelters next week if needed at two vacant school buildings and a civic center.

    So the pace of societal change is only going to accelerate even more in the years ahead.

    I just wish that things would go back to the way they once were.

    We live at a time where almost everything is corrupt.  For example, if I order a chicken sandwich at a restaurant, I want them to give me a piece of meat that comes from a dead chicken.

    But instead, our “chicken-based products” often contain fillers such as “seaweed” and “wood pulp”…

    Fried chicken is a favorite for millions of Americans – but many of the options offered by America’s biggest fast food chains contain other unexpected ingredients.

    These restaurants will often fill their food with additives, preservative and even other proteins in order to keep costs to a minimum and give their offerings a longer shelf life. Others may use buzzwords such as ‘premium’ or ‘all-white meat’ to describe their poultry-based offerings.

    But more surprising ingredients – such as beef, seaweed and even wood pulp – can be found in the recipe for some chicken-based products at major restaurants.

    Yuck!

    And don’t even get me started on the “meat glue” that is used to hold many of our meat products together.

    The reason so many people eat “organic” today is because they want to eat like people did 50 or 60 years ago.

    In fact, many of the “movements” that we are witnessing right now are simply attempts to recapture what life in America was once like.

    We have lost so much, and we are losing even more with each passing day.

    But there are still many of us that remember how great America was in the old days, and we simply are not willing to stand by and just accept the new version of “America” that is now being forced upon us.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 22:30

  • Haiti's Escalating Gang Violence
    Haiti’s Escalating Gang Violence

    Violence in Haiti claimed the lives of at least 846 people in the first three months of 2023, according to a report released by the UN Human Rights Office.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, outbreaks have increased in frequency and intensity in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, with armed gangs having expanded into areas previously deemed safe, such as Kenscoff and Pétion Ville.

    Infographic: Haiti’s Escalating Gang Violence | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In the same quarter, an estimated 13,490 people are believed to have fled their homes due to the violence and socio-economic situation. Several schools and healthcare facilities have had to shut in Port-au-Prince, while the escalations have led to a restriction of movement, impeding access to basic services, including food and water.

    The country has been facing a particularly intensive period of political and social crisis since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. Following his death, the ensuing power vacuum has been filled by rival gangs, while Moïse’s successor, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has faced challenges over his legitimacy within the country.

    Tom Phillips of The Guardian draws attention to the complexity of the situation, highlighting how the country’s overlapping crises are rooted also in a history of international interventions, including the U.S. occupation from 1915-1934, as well as the impacts of “reparations” to France, and the devastating earthquake of 2010 that killed up to 300,000 people.

    Both Prime Minister Henry and the UN High Commissioner Volker Türk have called on the international community to deploy a time-bound “specialized support force” to assist the country’s authorities. However, some Haitians reject the proposal of international intervention based on past experiences of foreign forces in the country.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 22:00

  • US-China Tensions Thawing As Washington Fears Allies Will View Policies As Too Aggressive
    US-China Tensions Thawing As Washington Fears Allies Will View Policies As Too Aggressive

    Authored by Connor Freeman via AntiWar.com,

    Renewed meetings between senior American and Chinese officials may suggest the fragile relations between the world’s two largest economies could begin to thaw with increased communication and diplomacy, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

    National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna last week. Wang, the director of China’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission, spoke with Sullivan for eight hours over the course of two days. The meeting was pulled together quickly, US and Chinese officials told the Post, and marked the highest level dialogue between the two sides since President Joe Biden met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Bali last November. The leader-level meeting helped ease tensions after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taipei last August, paving the way for further diplomacy, eyeing a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

    Talks took place over two days last week in Vienna. Image: Xinhua

    Though Washington’s top diplomat would have met with Wang, and likely President Xi, earlier this year, the long planned visit was canceled by Blinken on the eve of his departure last February amid concerns over a Chinese meteorological balloon traversing the continental US as a result of unexpected weather . The balloon was shot down by an American F-22 off of South Carolina’s coast.

    Later that month, Blinken stoked tensions further and confronted Wang on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Blinken claimed, without evidence, that China “sent a surveillance balloon over our territory, violating our sovereignty.” In response, during the following months, Beijing effectively froze the US out of high level, bilateral talks.

    A senior US official speaking to the Post described the meeting this week between Sullivan and Wang as “candid” and “constructive.” Sullivan was said to have “raised the cases of detained American citizens in China and counternarcotics operations as well as regional security issues,” namely Taiwan.

    Under Biden, the US has been expanding a massive buildup in the Indo-Pacific targeting Beijing and concurrently increasing military as well as diplomatic ties with Taipei. In recent weeks and months, President Tsai Ing-wen was hosted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for talks in California, making McCarthy the highest level US official to host a Taiwanese leader on US soil since Washington severed diplomatic ties with Taipei, and recognized Beijing, almost 50 years ago.

    In the 2023 NDAA bill, signed by Biden, Washington committed billions of dollars in military aid to Taiwan, and deployed an unprecedented 200 troops to the island, training the breakaway province’s forces for war with the mainland. China views Washington’s Taiwan policy as consistently violating the One-China principle , which Xi told Biden is the “first red line that must not be crossed.”

    Lack of communication between both sides combined with Washington’s confrontational posture and significantlyexpanded military presence in the South China Sea, for instance, raises the chances that an accident, miscalculation, or standoff will be impossible to solve diplomatically and potentially lead to a major conflict.

    Sullivan also reportedly discussed the war in Ukraine with Wang and “shared concerns” about Beijing possibly arming Moscow – echoing a months-old propaganda claim originally made by Blinken, without evidence, during his meeting with Wang in February. China denies Washington’s accusation, which is based on “scant intelligence,” according to an official from a G7 country speaking to Reuters.

    According to the Post, after the Vienna meeting, both sides “expressed a willingness to de-escalate tensions and said they intend to maintain a strategic communication channel.” These latest talks closely followed a tense exchange between Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

    A Chinese Foreign Ministry readout, said Qin made clear that the US must “respect China’s bottom line and red line, and stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests. In particular, we must correctly handle the Taiwan issue, stop hollowing out the one-China principle, and stop supporting and condoning ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”

    Burns also recently met with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao for what the US envoy described as an “open and detailed discussion on the bilateral trade relationship.” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and special climate envoy John Kerry all plan to soon make trips to Beijing. Last week, Kerry said he was invited to visit Beijing in the “near term.”

    The Post report also said the tentatively improving conditions may boost the likelihood that Blinken could visit Beijing later this year. One Chinese official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there were “barriers” to overcome before any visit could take place. Beijing “has always been willing. … It’s now the responsibility of the US side to ensure their actions match their words.”

    The same official emphasized there are areas where the two sides could make “meaningful progress,” such as climate change, but added that Taiwan and trade policy continues to “cloud discussions.” In addition to increasing sanctions and decoupling withparts of China, the White House seeks to significantly limit US investments in the country as well as cripple China’s semiconductor industry.

    It remains to be seen what, if any, meaningful concessions Washington is willing to make with respect to its provocative China policies. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported the US is demanding “a flurry of meetings and phone calls” with Chinese counterparts from the lowest to the highest levels for public relations reasons. Sources say the administration is concerned that their allies in Europe and Asia think the US is growing too hostile and unwilling to ease tensions with Beijing. Their hope is that if Xi refuses to engage, then Washington can paint China as recalcitrant.

    Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at theLibertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on the Conflicts of Interest podcast. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com, Counterpunch, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also appeared on Liberty Weekly, Around the Empire, and Parallax Views. You can follow him on Twitter@FreemansMind96 .

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 21:30

  • Runoff In Turkey Looks Certain As Erdogan & Kilicdaroglu Fall Short
    Runoff In Turkey Looks Certain As Erdogan & Kilicdaroglu Fall Short

    Update(2010ET): Kemal Kilicdaroglu has pulled off a bit of an upset, in a potential political earthquake which could rock Turkey, given now there’s a real shot at unseating President Erdogan as the incumbent has stayed below the 50% mark, with 97% of the vote counted by 3am local time. That means a likely May 28 second round between the two candidates. Live tracker is here as votes continue coming in. The latest per an Al Monitor correspondent: 

    • Erdogan does NOT claim victory 
    • Runoff seems likely 
    • Counting ongoing, waiting absentee 
    • Official results wait to Monday 
    • Opposition questioning integrity of ballot counting

    As for the vote for parliament, Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and allied Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) are set to retain their majority. Erdogan sounded upbeat in late night speech…

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    “Throughout our political life, without exception, we have always respected the decision of the national will. We respect it in this election as well, and we will respect it in the next elections,” Erdogan said. But he added: “We believe we will win in first round” – while also saying he’s ready to go to a second round if that’s the outcome.

    Kilicdaroglu meanwhile charged Erdogan with “blocking the will of Turkey” – which is perhaps a preview of the political fighting and chaos to come of the next two weeks: 

    Kemal Kilicdaroglu has said that the Erdogan camp keeps objecting to the results from certain ballot boxes to block the system.

    “There are ballot boxes that have been objected to six times, 11 times,” he said, adding: “You are blocking the will of Turkey.”

    Kilicdaroglu said: “You cannot prevent what will happen through objections. We will not allow a fait accompli.”

    The real surprise tonight – and disruptor for both sides – was a third candidate, Sinan Ogan of the ultra-nationalist Ancestor Alliance. He took around five percent of the vote and and prevented an outright win (surpassing 50% of the vote is required for victory) for either of the two leading candidates.

    Will Ogan endorse Erdogan or Kilicdaroglu in the runoff? This will likely determine the outcome in two weeks.

    * * *

    Update(1630ET): Erdogan has slipped below the 50% mark with about 90% of the votes counted.

    If no one crosses the 50-percent mark, the top two candidates will enter a second round run-off, which would be set for May 28.

    And here’s Anka news agency at 94.45 percent of ballot boxes opened:

    • Erdogan: 49.02 percent
    • Kilicdaroglu: 45.2 percent
    • Ogan: 5.3 percent

    Anadolu says 89.2 percent of ballot boxes have been counted:

    • Erdogan: 49.94 percent
    • Kilicdaroglu: 44.3 percent
    • Ogan: 5.3 percent

    There’s been controversy over just how Erdogan’s early surge was being reported, per Middle East Eye:

    Anadolu Agency has released a statement saying it is publishing results data based on signed and stamped ballot box records and it doesn’t make any preference. The state news agency releases the results as they come out, it insists.

    Earlier, Istanbul Mayor Ekram Imamoglu, an opposition vice presidential candidate, accused Anadolu of misrepresenting the results by indicating a very large early lead for Erdogan (which has now shrunk).

    The agency says its 2,500 employees, along with a polling companies, have been working hard to get the data. It says it will take legal action against the parties “inaccurately” blaming the agency for the election results.

    * * *

    Update(1435ET): TRT World is reporting over 70% of votes counted, Erdogan still holds a firm lead according to multiple outlets and their data:

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    Update(1355ET): This is still a very early picture, given also the opposition is complaining that state media is utilizing selective electoral data in its early reporting, with many analysts predicting the gap will close as counting continues…

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    However, Kilicdaroglu’s CHP is providing very different figures of the results trickling in…

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    Per Middle East Eye:

    A well-placed source within the Turkish government told MEE’s Ragip Soylu that the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) projection, based on current data, suggests there is a 50 percent chance that Erdogan will win the first round with 50.2 or 50.4 percent.

    There is also a 50 percent chance that there will be a runoff.

    * * *

    (Update 11:53ET): Polls are closed and vote counting is underway across Turkey as President Erdogan’s political future hangs in the balance after two decades in power. Al Jazeera has compiled the following notes of what to expect in the hours and days ahead: 

    • Polls closed at 5pm (14:00 GMT) and counting is under way.
    • Preliminary results are expected later on Sunday, but the official results may take up to three days to be confirmed. There are no exit polls.
    • A candidate needs more than 50 percent of votes in the first round to win outright. If no one crosses the 50-percent mark, the top two candidates will go head to head in a run-off two weeks later, with this year’s vote set for May 28.
    • Pre-election polls gave a slight lead to Kilicdaroglu, 74, the joint candidate of a six-party opposition alliance who leads the centre-left, pro-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP.
    • Some have expressed concerns over whether Erdogan would cede power, if he lost. Erdogan, however, said in an interview with more than a dozen Turkish broadcasters on Friday that he came to power through democracy and would act in line with the democratic process.

    So far no major security incidents or irregularities have been reported by either side.

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    Interactive coverage is here as results come in. With about 10% of the votes counted, here’s where things stand at this early stage…

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    Analysts believe Erdogan’s numbers will likely to drop as more ballots are counted.

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    Emerging numbers out of Istanbul: 

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    * * *

    Polls are nearing closure in Turkey on Sunday late afternoon (local) in what is shaping up to be the biggest challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade grip over the country, by his main rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Kemalist and secular Republican People’s Party (CHP).

    Over 64 million people are eligible to vote in this election, which also will decide the next parliament for a five-year term. By all accounts voter turnout has been high even into the final two hours before polling stations close at 5pm local time (14:00 GMT). No results are expected to trickle in for many hours, as Turkish law prevents releasing any results until 9pm (18:00 GMT, or 2pm Eastern US).

    Middle East Eye observes that “Schools, where voters have been casting their ballots, were noticeably more crowded by midday in Turkey than in previous elections, MEE correspondent Yusuf Selman Inanc reported.”

    “Experts predict that this election will see one of the highest voter turnouts in Turkey’s history,” the report continues. In this first round if no candidate secures over 50%, the vote heads to a run-off two weeks later. Any potential runoff would he held on May 28. The CHP’s Kilicdaroglu is representing six different parties as a unity candidate who are desperate to see Erdogan booted from power.

    Among the issues driving public anger, which could result in an upset ousting the incumbent, includes worsening economic conditions and especially the devastating Feb. 6 earthquake and its aftermath – and the subsequent scandals which have since been exposed related to Erdogan’s AK Party officials overseeing years of shoddy construction of buildings across central and southern Turkey and cutting corners. It’s widely perceived that this greatly exacerbated the death and destruction, in a natural disaster which took over 50,000 lives across southern Turkey.

    Yesterday, as a final campaign message, Erdogan lashed at Washington while hoping to whip up anti-US fervor and passion among his conservative Islamist supporters.

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    Speaking Saturday in Istanbul’s Umraniye district, Erdogan referenced comments made by President Joe Biden in 2020 when he was on the campaign trail which said the US should encourage Erdogan’s opponents to defeat him at the polls.

    “Biden gave the order to topple Erdogan, I know this. All my people know this,” said Erdogan “If that is the case, then the ballots tomorrow will give a response to Biden too.”

    Polls on the eve of Sunday’s vote revealed a tight race: “Polls show Erdogan trailing the main opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu a day ahead of one of the most consequential elections in Turkey’s modern history.” According to regional analyst Hakan Akbas, managing director of consulting firm Strategic Advisory Services:

    “There is so much at stake for President Erdogan and his AKP (Justice and Development Party) for the first time, as his 20-year rule over Türkiye may come to an end given the unified opposition has managed to maintain a strong alliance and stay on a hope-building positive campaign.”

    Akbas told CNBC: “The next president of Türkiye will face the challenge of restoring economic stability and state institutions such as the central bank, treasury, and wealth fund and rebuild investor confidence.” He described further, “The country suffers from historically low FX reserves, widening current account deficit, artificially overvalued local currency, undisciplined fiscal balance and persistent, high inflation.

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    Turkey has been notorious for blocking US-based social media, particularly at sensitive moments impacting the country and domestic politics. That’s certainly the case when it comes to national elections like this. 

    This gave way to some weekend controversy centered on Elon Musk regarding Turkish censorship of Twitter and the company’s reaction…

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    * * *

    Below is a note from BofA Global Research: Who is exposed to Turkiye?

    Companies exposed to Türkiye In the light of the upcoming Turkish general elections, in our Screen of the Week we focus on those companies with exposure to the country (Exhibit 1). Our Turkish economist highlights that, regardless of the election outcome, she expects a weaker TRY and tightening economic conditions to address imbalances in the economy (see: Türkiye Viewpoint: Elections in May: is Türkiye heading towards orthodoxy? 30 March 2023). The Turkish exposure of European companies is limited, only 0.14% directly reported revenue exposure in 2021 and they show 284 links from Türkiye in the supply chain, of which 40% are suppliers.

    8th consecutive weekly outflow from Europe

    Europe-focused equity funds recorded the eighth consecutive weekly outflow of $2.34bn last week, with a net -17.8% of funds seeing net inflows. Active funds saw outflows of $1.36bn and passive funds of $0.98bn. Europe-focused funds have seen $8.3bn of outflows YTD: $21.7bn of outflows from active funds and $13.4bn of inflows into passive funds. Growth stocks ($0.2bn) and Spain ($0.03bn) recorded the largest inflows last week, while Switzerland ($0.8bn), Financials ($0.4bn) and Size stocks ($0.3bn) posted the largest outflows. No sector recorded inflows last week.

    BofA ERR: Europe improves after upgrades in Healthcare

    The Global BofA four-week EPS Revision Ratio (ERR) increased to 0.93, led by improvements in Europe and North America. The European BofA four-week ERR rose the most across regions over the week to 1.18, the highest level in the past 4 weeks. This uplift was driven mainly by Healthcare, Italy and Low Risk, whose ratios improved the most last week, while Utilities, Switzerland and Rising Momentum ratios dropped the most.

    * * *

    Below is a snapshot summary of the two main candidates we previously featured in this analysis…

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    Erdogan: The Islamic Populist

    Recep Erdogan, 69, has led Turkey since 2003, first as Prime Minister, then as a ceremonial President, and then as a powerful President. Erdogan grew up in a working class family in the rough Kasimpasa neighborhood in the European part of Istanbul, though he spent some of his childhood in his family’s ancestral hometown of Rize, on the east coast of the Black Sea. Erdogan’s father was a Coast Guard officer. As a young man he played semi-professional football; he remains an avid fan of Istanbul’s Fenerbahce football club and is regularly seen wearing a football scarf with his fashionable suits. In 1994 Erdogan became the Mayor of Istanbul running with the pro-Islamic Welfare party. In 1999, Erdogan was sentenced to four months in prison for reading a poem in 1997 that was said to violate Turkiye’s secularism laws. A man of many talents, Erdogan released an album of lyric poetry before going to prison; it became a best-seller in Turkey. As part of his sentence, Erdogan was banned from running for Parliament, but it was annulled after the AKP, which he founded despite not being allowed to run for office, won the 2002 elections. After the rules were changed to allow him to run for office, Erdogan ran in a special election in 2003 and became Prime Minister days after winning.

    When Erdogan first took power, he was seen as someone that the West could “work with.” In an article for Politico Christian Oliver writes,

    It’s now easy to forget that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once hailed as the paragon of a ‘Muslim democrat,’ who could serve as a model to the entire Islamic world…Finally, there was a master-juggler, who could balance Islamism, parliamentary democracy, progressive welfare, NATO membership and EU-oriented reforms.

    I certainly had forgotten that, if I ever knew it in the first place. I did remember that it was Turkey’s priority to join the European Union, something which faded over the years until the process was suspended over Turkey’s record on human rights, media freedoms, and other such matters. After taking power Erdogan quickly got a reputation in the West for being difficult to work with when he would not allow US troops to be stationed in Turkish or Iraqi Kurdistan during the Iraq War. Over the years Erdogan consolidated power, first through a 2010 referendum which made the President directly elected instead of selected by Parliament. Erdogan became the first directly elected President of Turkiye in 2014. Then there was the 2017 referendum making the Presidency a position with many legal powers. In 2016 there was a coup attempt, allegedly by supporters of US-based exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen. Many have been highly skeptical of the Erdogan regime’s story about the coup, with some suggesting it was entirely staged. What is undeniable is that Erdogan used the coup attempt to remove an enormous number of political opponents; the 2017 referendum took place under a state of emergency.

    Over the past several years, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Erdogan has been taking Turkey on an increasingly independent course. Tensions had already been high due to the war in Syria, where Turkiye had been fighting a sort of proxy war against its own NATO allies. Currently, the West opposes reconciliation with Syria, something both Turkish candidates want to pursue. The continued presence of Syrian refugees has become deeply unpopular in Turkey, and both candidates are looking to send them home. However, Assad has been hesitant to work with Erdogan, both because Turkey continues to occupy much of northern Syria and further Assad has expressed concern about giving Erdogan a “win” in the lead-up to the elections.

    Last May, I wrote about the many moves which Erdogan had been making, all of which indicated a newly empowered Turkey. However, in the last year Turkey has worked to improve relations not only with Syria but also with Greece, particularly following the earthquake. Further, Turkey accepted Finland’s NATO membership, though continues to hold out on Sweden; Kilicdaroglu intends to immediately approve Sweden’s membership if elected. Erdogan has also continued to employ diplomacy regarding the Russia-Ukraine War, though maintaining the Turkey-brokered grain deal has proven tenuous. All of these things have infuriated the United States and Europe and their scribbling class, who continue to view NATO as a sort of “Gentleman’s Club of liberal democracies” and ignore Turkey’s incredible geopolitical importance and enormous military. The clumsy foreign policy of the Western liberal internationalists plays into Erdogan’s hands, who has claimed his opponents are, “in hock to terrorists, the imperialist West, murky international high-finance and LGBTQ+ organizations.” One is left wondering if a publication such as The Economist publishing that they “warmly endorse” Kilicdaroglu does more to help Erdogan than it does Kilicdaroglu; besides the terrorist part, it appears to be factually accurate that the latter three prefer the opposition.

    For all he has done to consolidate power and restore the nation’s pride, Erdogan remains at serious risk due to economic issues. Though many support his modernizing the military, you cannot eat fighter jets. The President using a religious justification to ignore “mainstream” economic advice during an ongoing inflation crisis must be maddening to educated, secular Turks. However, what matters more to the public than economic ideas are what we call “bread and butter” issues in the United States [though perhaps “onion and potato” issues is more appropriate for this election.] It is very bad for an incumbent when the price of staple vegetables becomes a major campaign issue. One Erdogan supporter went so far as to write a song saying, “We will eat dry bread and onions but we will not abandon Erdogan.” That is perhaps true of his devotees, but many will abandon a political leader if he must eat his bread without oil. For his part, Erdogan has vacillated between denying the problem and downplaying it’s significance, saying “you wouldn’t sacrifice your leader for onion and potato.” In Erdogan’s defense, exports have gone up a substantial amount, which is a goal of his economic policies, and average wages and the legal minimum wage have gone up a healthy amount. Unfortunately, none of this is enough to balance out the severe inflation. Still, there is a plausible argument to be made that this is just a sort of economic growing pains. However, being as it is considered that the earthquake response was badly mismanaged, it is difficult to sell the narrative that Erdogan has things under control.

    Kilicdaroglu: the Secular Liberal

    The opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, 74, is everything that Erdogan is not: conventional, polite, professional, and secular. He has a sort of humble professorial demeanor in contrast to Erdogan’s bombastic flair. He has been described as “soft-spoken” and “low key.” One international diplomat with experience in Turkey, speaking to Time on the condition of anonymity, called Kilicdaroglu the “anti-Erdogan,” and further said, “There are points… when a grayer personality is exactly what people want.” This certainly can be true of politics, especially if the public has grown tired of a large personality like Erdogan who has held power for many years. Kemal Kilicdaroglu is appropriately named: he is a staunch Kemalist, who wants to return Turkey to the secular parliamentary democracy envisioned by its founder Ataturk. He is pledging to be a less powerful President than Erdogan- somewhat unusual for a politician- and has said he will only serve one term and then retire to spend time with his grandchildren. An accountant by trade, he intends to follow the economic advice of experts, and certainly would not set financial policies based on his religious views. He is on message, talking about inflation and returning to a more pluralistic political system. Further, Kilicdaroglu wants to have much more NATO-friendly policies, but Western analysts are warning that he won’t make the West’s “dreams come true.” The reality is that though he will be more measured in his speech and behavior, Kilicdaroglu will most likely continue to pursue a largely independent foreign policy which includes resisting the Western sanctions regime against Russia, immediate normalization with Syria, and working to deport Syrian refugees from the country. It is not clear how possible it is to implement Kilicdaroglu’s Syria policies.

    Few articles mention Kilicdaroglu’s personal background and upbringing, in large part because he is almost intentionally uninteresting and does not talk about his personal life. His wife once said he is so soft spoken “You can’t even have a decent argument with him.” [I personally find that untrustworthy, as some of the most sociopathic people can always maintain pleasant demeanor.] According to a profile in Time magazine [the only of several I consulted for this article to contain the story of his childhood] Kilicdaroglu was “born into a family of 9” [so the 8th child?] in a the remote mountain village of Ballica in eastern Anatolia. His family raised goats and he walked to school without shoes. Later, his father got low-level civil service postings which caused them to move to different towns. He was a studious child who played an instrument called the saz and dreamed of becoming a teacher. In college, he got involved in left wing protests and graduated to become a tax inspector. He married a cousin from his hometown, an ancient tradition in that region. While raising his family he worked his way up to the director of the national social security institution [he was, after all, one of the nation’s top rated bureaucrats.] Kilicdaroglu is from a family which follows a minority sect of Islam known as Alevi, which is considered to be a non-mainstream branch of Shia Islam with similarities to Syria’s Alawites. Alevis have been historically oppressed in the Anatolia; it was considered to be breaking a major taboo for him to publicly discuss this religious background.

    Kilicdaroglu entered politics in 2002 at age 53, in what has been referred to as a “retirement hobby.” He began to rise up the ranks of the CHP by using his tax inspection skills to expose corruption in the AKP. In 2010 he became the leader of the party after the head of the party had a sex tape scandal– this was probably an example of the party wanting a “grayer personality.” Though Kilicdaroglu has been unsuccessful at increasing CHP’s parliamentary seats, he has raised his personal profile through a series of non-violent protests, such as a “March for Justice” from Ankara to Istanbul in 2017. Kilicdaroglu models himself after Gandhi, and is sometimes called “Turkiye’s Gandhi.” Further, he has been successful in making in-roads into the nation’s large Kurdish community, who one politician said used to consider the CHP “non-votable,” due to Ataturk’s Turkish nationalism.

    Kilicdaroglu finds himself in a difficult position. He is backed by a disparate coalition while trying to increase parliamentary power. Further, though Kilicdaroglu has been polling ahead in the first round polls, the AKP alliance is ahead in parliamentary polling. The opposition wants to revert back to the old system of governance, or at least make wide-ranging reforms empowering the parliament, but there is no real way to do that without an strong parliamentary majority. Even if the coalition can hold together in the legislature, there is no expectation they will have a large majority. As an anonymous opposition official told journalist Ragip Soylu, the opposition may end up in an ironic position where the only way they can rule and try to reduce the unitary Presidential power is by Presidential decree.

    Kilicdaroglu may not be the most dynamic man, but he can win if enough of the public wants less “exciting” government than they have had from Erdogan. Further, while this sort of constitutional reform may not seem like a campaign issue that will connect with the public, Erdogan’s consolidation of power is unprecedented in modern Turkey and the public has noticed. Since Erdogan has taken so much power it makes it easy to blame all of the country’s problems on him. İlke Toygür of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid said, “Parliament has a very strong symbolic value in Turkey…One of the biggest complaints now is that people lost their links to decision-making candidates.” In this election, it is in some ways true that “democracy is on the ballot.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 21:11

  • "It's Just Not Safe": Decades-Old Baltimore Business Closes Shop Because Of Crime, Blames Democrats
    “It’s Just Not Safe”: Decades-Old Baltimore Business Closes Shop Because Of Crime, Blames Democrats

    In cities stretching from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, New York City, Chicago, and numerous cities along the West Coast, progressive leadership has failed to enforce law and order. These crime-ridden metropolises are experiencing an exodus of businesses of all sizes due to a tidal wave of thefts. 

    The latest incident comes as a mom-and-pop business, operating in Baltimore City for more than four decades, has been forced to shutter operations because of numerous armed robberies. 

    Jody Rosoff, the owner of Doc’s Smoke Shop in Baltimore’s Highlandtown neighborhood, told local media Fox 45 that she has been robbed at gunpoint for the second time in six months and just recently had to shoot an intruder. 

    “This is our second armed robbery in six months,” Rosoff said. 

    She said her business has been operating in the city for decades and now has to close up shop because “it’s not safe for anybody on this street that’s a small business owner.” 

    “We have been here in the city for 44 years. For 44 years, we’ve paid property taxes, retail sales taxes, and we have employed people. It’s just not safe. It’s not safe for my employees or for me. It’s not safe for anybody on this street that’s a small business owner. We can’t afford armed security. The business just isn’t there.”

    It turns out the robber was a convicted felon with a lengthy record spanning more than two decades. She pointed to the city’s progressive leadership for “soft on crime policies” that keep dangerous people on the street. 

    “Shame on the mayor, shame on the judges, and the prosecutors and our former state’s attorney for letting this happen to Baltimore City,” Rosoff said.

    Meanwhile, in the city’s downtown district, shootings, carjackings, muggings, and out-of-control packs of teenagers are wreaking havoc. 

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    Why Democrat leadership has let the city deteriorate so badly is beyond comprehension… There is no accountability with leadership’s failed policies. However, businesses are leaving (read: “Entire Downtown Is Effectively Dead:” Baltimore City Descends Further Into Turmoil).  

    Beyond Baltimore, businesses across NYC, Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco, to name a few, are leaving as crime surges. While Democrats don’t want to be accountable for their failed policies, a symptom of such failure is the exodus of companies (as well as people). 

    The exodus of liberal cities is an ongoing theme post-virus pandemic and will continue until law and order is re-established. Just look at the chaos earlier last week in San Francisco. 

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    Democrats have transformed parts of this country into a clown world by abandoning law and order. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 21:00

  • Judge Orders FDA To Speed Up Release Of COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Data From 23.5 Years To Just 2
    Judge Orders FDA To Speed Up Release Of COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Data From 23.5 Years To Just 2

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A federal judge in Texas this week ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make public data it relied on to license COVID-19 vaccines—Moderna’s for adults and Pfizer’s for children—at an accelerated rate, requiring all documents to be made public by mid-2025 rather than, as the FDA wanted, over the course of around 23.5 years.

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

    In a decision hailed as a win for transparency by the lawyer representing the plaintiffs (the parents of a child injured by a COVID-19 vaccine) in a lawsuit (pdf) against the FDA, the Texas judge ordered the FDA to produce the data about ten times faster than the agency wanted.

    “Democracy dies behind closed doors,” is how U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman opened his order (pdf), issued on May 9, which requires the FDA to produce the data on Moderna’s and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines at an average rate of at least 180,000 pages per month.

    The FDA had argued it would be “impractical” to release the estimated 4.8 million pages at more than between 1,000 and 16,000 pages per month, which would have taken at least 23.5 years.

    Aaron Siri of Siri & Glimstad, who represents the plaintiffs in the legal action against the FDA, called the decision “another blow for transparency and accountability” that builds on an earlier court order targeting Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine data for those aged 16 and older.

    The January 2022 order (pdf), also issued by Pittman, forced the FDA to produce all its data on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 16 and older at a rate of 55,000 pages per month, or much faster than the 75 years the agency had sought.

    “That production should be completed in a few more months,” Siri said in a statement, referring to the earlier Pfizer data for those aged 16 and up.

    The latest order requires the FDA to produce all of its data on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds (and Moderna’s product for adults) by June 31, 2025.

    The FDA did not immediately return a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

    ‘Stale Information Is of Little Value’

    While the judge noted in his order that the court recognizes the FDA’s limited resources dedicated to freedom of information requests (FOIA), he argued that “the number of resources an agency dedicates to such requests does not dictate the bounds of an individual’s FOIA rights.”

    “Instead, the Court must ensure that the fullest possible disclosure of the information sought is timely provided—as ‘stale information is of little value,’” Pittman wrote.

    In order to ensure the FDA can meet the accelerated deadline—so around ten times faster than the agency wanted—the judge ordered the parties to the lawsuit to confer and submit a joint production schedule for the data by May 23, 2023.

    In the earlier case adjudicated by Pittman, the FDA had argued it only had the bandwidth to review and release around 500 pages per month of an estimated total 450,000 pages of material about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 16 and older.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 20:30

  • Toronto 'Anti-Capitalist' Pay-When-You-Can Cafe Shuts Down After Just One Year
    Toronto ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Pay-When-You-Can Cafe Shuts Down After Just One Year

    A Toronto cafe for anti-capitalists, “The Anarchist,” is permanently shuttering after just 12 months in business after following a “pay-when-you-can” business model.

    The Anarchist describes itself as an “anti-capitalist, anti-colonial cafe, shop and radical community space on stolen land.”

    “Unfortunately, the lack of generational wealth/seed capital from ethically bankrupt sources left me unable to weather the quiet winter season, or to grow in the ways needed to be sustainable longer-term,” the owner, Gabriel Sims-Fewer wrote last week.

    The Anarchist, which opened for business in March of 2022, went viral last year, with internet users mocking the leftist cafe for charging high prices for its “speciality” coffee as well as selling “radical” art, books, clothing, jewellery, tote bags, and stickers. –Breitbart

    “Fuck the rich. Fuck the police. Fuck the state. Fuck the colonial death camp we call “Canada”,” Gabriel wrote.

    Sticker for sale on The Anarchist’s website

    “It’s been an amazing experience, connecting with so many great community members, sparking desperately needed debate, raising the blood pressure of Conservatives (that includes you, “anarcho-capitalists” and “Libertarians”), fulfilling the dream of most service workers by not having to tolerate the presence of professional class-traitors (pigs and military), and experimenting with living and working in ways that don’t enthusiastically embrace the pure misanthropy of Capitalism,” he continued.

    How could this have possibly happened?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 20:00

  • NYC Converts Hotels To Shelters To Accommodate Expected Influx Of Illegal Immigrants
    NYC Converts Hotels To Shelters To Accommodate Expected Influx Of Illegal Immigrants

    Authored Efthymis Oraiopoulos via The Epoch Times,

    The historic Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan—shuttered three years ago—is being reopened to accommodate an anticipated influx of illegal immigrants just as other New York City hotels are being converted to emergency shelters.

    Mayor Eric Adams announced Saturday that the city will use the Roosevelt to eventually provide as many as 1,000 rooms for migrants who are expected to arrive in the coming weeks because of the expiration of pandemic-era rules, known collectively as Title 42, that had allowed federal officials to turn away asylum seekers from the U.S. border with Mexico.

    Across the city, hotels like the Roosevelt are being transformed into emergency shelters, many of them within walking distance from Times Square, the World Trade Center memorial site, and the Empire State Building.

    Adams says the city is running out of room for illegal immigrants and has sought help from the state and federal governments.

    He said New York in recent weeks has been seeing 500 illegal immigrant arrivals per day. More than 61,000 have sought services from the city in the past 12 months.

    On Thursday he said that once the rules change, “we could potentially get thousands of people a day in our city.”

    Title 42 is a law enacted in 1944 allowing the federal government to curb immigration to protect public health. The Trump administration imposed these restrictions at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago.

    The restrictions of Title 42 ended on May 11 and more than 10,000 illegal migrants per day are expected to cross the southern border.

    Migrants are seen after crossing the Rio Bravo river with the intention of turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on May 9, 2023. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters)

    New York City officials are expecting to receive busloads of migrants from Texas and other border states. The officials have explored housing the newcomers in airplane hangars, a race track, gymnasiums, or even tents in Central Park. Others could wind up on the streets, advocates feared, despite the city’s court-ordered commitment to provide all residents with access to a place to stay.

    Adams, a Democrat, temporarily suspended on Wednesday portions of New York’s law guaranteeing shelter to all residents. Adams signed an executive order so that the city has no obligation to meet a strict deadline for providing that shelter.

    A few hours later, he sent roughly two dozen illegal immigrants on a bus to a hotel in the upstate town of Newburgh, overriding fierce backlash from local leaders.

    Many illegal immigrants residing in New York have arrived from Texas, after Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott started sending them there on buses, last year.

    Several other Democrat-leaning cities, including Chicago and Denver, have also grappled with a growing number of illegal immigrants and how to provide them with food, medicine, and shelter without significant federal funding.

    According to a New York Times report, even the owner of the iconic Flatiron Building in Manhattan was asked to turn the skyscraper into a shelter, but he declined.

    At a news conference Thursday, Manuel Castro, the commissioner for immigrant affairs, said the city “no longer can physically accommodate people that request emergency shelter.”

    The city has also faced pushback in its early efforts to escort illegal immigrants out of the city. In Rockland County, local officials successfully secured a temporary restraining order banning the city from sending illegal immigrants to a hotel.

    After two dozen illegal immigrants arrived in a Newburgh hotel on Thursday, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus, a Republican, blamed Adams for a “disorganized disaster,” vowing to secure his own restraining order.

    Security stands at the doors of The Crossroads Hotel where two busloads of illegal immigrants arrived hours earlier in Newburgh, N.Y., on May 11, 2023. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

    Speaking to reporters Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said the city faced an “untenable situation.” But she said she also understood the stress faced by county executives and their decision not to support the buses.

    “Our view is to continue working with the counties, but really focusing on continuing to support Mayor Adams because he’s receiving the brunt of most of this,” she said.

    Adams has also accused the White House of “turning its back on New York City,” asking that work permits be given to illegal immigrants to solve the problem.

    Adams said in April that the migrant influx into New York could cost the city more than $4 billion, at a time when the city is already facing a major budget shortfall.

    New Regulation on Illegal Immigrants

    The United States rolled out a regulation on May 10 that presumes most migrants are ineligible for asylum if they passed through other nations without seeking protection elsewhere first, or if they failed to use legal pathways for U.S. entry.

    The rule, which was set to come into effect on Thursday and to expire in two years, will apply to the vast majority of non-Mexican migrants seeking asylum since they typically pass through multiple countries en route to the United States.

    Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing 18,000 Border Patrol agents and support personnel, told The Epoch Times as many as 13,000 illegal migrants a day are expected to cross with the collapse of Title 42 at 11:59 p.m. on May 11.

    “I would say that we’re looking at a minimum of 13,000,” Judd said on May 10. “We’ve arrested more than 10,000 people per day, for the last three days, and that number just continues to go up.”

    Those estimates could reach 16,000 per day if nothing is done to halt the incursion.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said migrants who cross the border illegally without being properly processed will be ineligible for asylum.

    But, Judd said, the Biden administration is misleading the public.

    “That’s a half-truth at best,” he said.

    While people caught illegally crossing the border will be told they can’t claim asylum under the new rule, they will still have the right to appeal, and because the border patrol can’t hold them until their appeal hearings, they will be released into the United States.

    “They’re telling the American people what the intention of the rule is, but they’re not telling them the practical application of the rule,” he said.

    Migrants wait in line to enter the United States from Tijuana, Mexico, on May 11, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Detention facilities are already three times over capacity, leaving the border patrol no choice but to release illegal immigrants.

    “We’re doing mass releases,” he said. “Now, it’s just mass releases to the street because we can’t hold this many people.”

    More than two years of lax border policies have led to this massive influx of illegal migrants and strained the system, turning agents who once patrolled the southern border into desk clerks who process asylum claims, he said.

    “It pulls resources from patrolling the border,” he said. “That’s what arrests mean to us.”

    At 10,000 arrests a day, about 70 percent of border patrol agents are doing administrative duties, he said, adding the Biden administration prefers to use the word apprehensions “to make it sound nicer.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 19:30

  • "The Worst Is Now Behind Us": Q1 Earnings Season Much Better Than Feared
    “The Worst Is Now Behind Us”: Q1 Earnings Season Much Better Than Feared

    For much of 2023, some of the biggest Wall Street bears were betting – quite vocally in certain prominent cases- that Q1 earnings season would finally be the nail in the coffin of the bear market rally. However, with consensus expectations tumbling into the earnings print (as they always do), the bogey to beat ended up being quite easy and as a result, Q1 2023 earnings season has proven to be much better than feared.

    With 90% of S&P companies reporting results, here is where we stand:

    • S&P 500 profits fell by 3% year/year, stronger than consensus estimates of a 7% decline at the start of reporting season.  In Europe, earnings actually rose by 3% y/y which is a positive surprise factor of 10% vs IBES estimates.

    • At a sector level, delivery has been mixed. In the US, Energy, Industrials and Discretionary are recording double-digit EPS growth, while 7 of the remaining sectors are coming in flat or down on a yoy basis. Financials EPS grew by +5% year/year. In Europe, Discretionary, Staples, Financials and Tech have fared better, while Energy, Materials and Communication Services are down double-digit.

     

    • Excluding Energy, S&P 500 year/year EPS growth troughed in 4Q 2022… and Goldman – unlike Morgan Stanley – believes that the worst of the 2023 negative earnings revision cycle is now behind us, to wit: “The earnings backdrop is showing green shoots of improvement. Excluding Energy, S&P 500 year/year EPS growth improved sequentially from -6% in 4Q 2022 to -5% in 1Q 2023.”

    • Revenues grew by 4% in both the US and Europe, above expectations for growth of 3% and 1%, respectively. The proportion of companies beating estimates has picked up in both the US and Europe.

    • Net margins contracted by 99bps, the 3rd consecutive quarter of year/year margin decline, but by less than the 146bps expected. Margins in every sector surprised to the upside, led by Materials and Info Tech.
      • Still, if there was one recurring theme across earnings season it is this: as JPM notes, profit margins are showing increasing signs of a rollover, with Q1 EPS growth minus sales growth the weakest in a while (even if not as bad as initially expected).

    • The aggregate S&P 500 EPS surprise of 5% was in line with the historical median after being below average for most of 2022. The stock price reaction to beats has been rather subdued, though, where stocks that are beating estimates are, on average, outperforming by less than typical. On the other side, those that are missing estimates are being penalized by more than their historical median.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 19:00

  • Turley: America's Blackout On Biden Corruption Is Truly 'Pulitzer-Level Stuff'
    Turley: America’s Blackout On Biden Corruption Is Truly ‘Pulitzer-Level Stuff’

    Authored by Jonathan Turley, op-ed via The Hill,

    This week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal.

    “For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded.

    The response was virtually immediate.

    Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”

    For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren.

    Last year, I wrote a column about how the media were preparing a difficult “scandal implosion” to protect the Bidens and themselves from the backlash from disclosures of this influence peddling operation.

    The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” before the election.

    That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic.

    But the media then ignored what was on that “authentic laptop.” Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries.

    When media outlets such as the New York Post confirmed the emails, the media then insisted that there was no corroboration of the influence peddling payments and no clear proof of criminal conduct. It entirely ignored the obvious corruption itself.

    Now that the House has released corroboration in actual money transfers linking many in the Biden family, the media is insisting that this is no scandal because there is not directly proof of payments to Joe Biden.

    Putting aside that this is only the fourth month of an investigation, the media’s demand of a direct payment to President Biden is laughably absurd. The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling. 

    The House has shown millions of dollars going to at least nine Bidens like dividends from a family business. As a long-time critic of influence peddling among both Republicans and Democrats, I have never seen the equal of the Bidens.

    The whole purpose of influence peddling is to use family members as shields for corrupt officials. Instead of making a direct payment to a politician, which could be seen as a bribe, you can give millions to his or her spouse or children.

    Moreover, these emails include references to Joe Biden getting a 10 percent cut of one Chinese deal. It also shows Biden associates warning not to use Joe Biden’s name but to employ code names like “the Big Guy.” At the same time, the president and the first lady are referenced as benefiting from offices and receiving payments from Hunter.

    Indeed, Hunter complains that his father is taking half of everything that he is raking in.

    None of that matters.

    The New York Times ran a piece headlined, “House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden.” That is putting aside evidence against all the family members around Joe Biden. It also ignored that other evidence clearly shows Biden lied about this family not receiving Chinese funds or that he never had any knowledge of his son’s business dealings. 

    The fact is that the Times may indeed be trying for another Pulitzer Prize. The newspaper previously won a Pulitzer for the now debunked Russian collusion story. It was later revealed that this story was based on a dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and placed in the media by Clinton officials. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward warned the co-winner The Washington Post that the story was unreliable but was ignored. The Pulitzer Committee refused to withdraw the award.

    What Donalds fails to appreciate is that this is sometimes how Pulitzers are made. Roughly 100 years ago, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the Soviet Union despite serving as an apologist for Joe Stalin. Duranty refused to report on actual conditions from mass killing to starvation in the “worker’s paradise.”

    Thus, when the Soviets were starving to death as many as 10 million Ukrainians, the Times ran a Duranty story with the headline “Russians Hungry but Not Starving.” He not only spinned Stalin labor camps that killed millions but also attacked reporters who sought to uncover the truth.

    Years later, Ukraine and various groups demanded that Duranty’s prize be rescinded, but the Committee insisted that there was no “clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception.”

    What is most impressive about this week is that all but a few outlets seem to be angling for the next Duranty Pulitzer. 

    In discussing modern Russian propaganda, researchers at the Rand Corporation described it as having “two distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.”

    Sound familiar?

    Today we are seeing a much more dangerous phenomenon.

    The coverage this week has all the markings of a state media. The consistent spin. The almost universal lack of details. The absurd distinctions. 

    It is the blindside of our First Amendment, which addresses the classic use of state authority to coerce and control media. It does not address a circumstance in which most of the media will maintain an official line out of by consent rather than coercion.

    The media simply fails to see the story. Of course, it can always look to the president for enlightenment.

    Just before his son received a massive transfer of money from one of the most corrupt figures in Romania, Biden explained to that country why corruption must remain everyone’s focus.

    “Corruption is a cancer, a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy,” he said. “

    Corruption is just another form of tyranny.”

    It is just a shame that no one wants to cover it.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 18:30

  • Watch: Did CNN Accidentally Admit The Truth About Illegal Migrants And Title 42?
    Watch: Did CNN Accidentally Admit The Truth About Illegal Migrants And Title 42?

    The political left has been actively pushing for the end of Title 42 as the only existing legal avenue for direct expulsion of illegal immigrants back to their country of origin.  Without the protections in place, border agents will now be forced to release the majority of migrants into the US under asylum. 

    At the same time, the media and the Biden Administration have also been pressing the narrative that there has been “no significant increase” in illegal crossings with the expiration of the policy.  The message is that Title 42 is not as important as the public thinks it is in stopping illegal caravans.  However, the migrants sneaking into the US today might disagree.  

    CNN may have accidentally let slip the reality of impending invasion post-Title 42 when an illegal migrant they interviewed indicated that was the exact reason why he crossed the US border in the first place.  The news crew quickly moves past the segment with little more than a brief acknowledgment of the very thing border states have been warning about for many months. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 18:00

  • NYC May Start Charging Fines That Vary With Offender's Income
    NYC May Start Charging Fines That Vary With Offender’s Income

    New York City council is considering a plan to impose fines for parking and other violations that are adjusted based on the income of the offender. Depending on one’s point of view, it’s either a step toward more proportionate justice or a deeper embrace of Marxism. 

    The proposal for a pilot program to test the concept comes from South Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, whose colorful background includes being a hardcore punk guitarist for the bands Indecision and Most Precious Blood, and working in alternative-energy venture capital at Bear Stearns.  

    New York City Councilman Justin Brannan (Matt Miller via New York Post)

    Brannan didn’t invent the varying-fine concept. It’s been tried in a few US jurisdictions and several European countries. Typically, those programs are used when punishing felony or misdemeanor violations, but Brannan’s scheme would apply to mere civil offenses. 

    If the program moves forward, it would apply to at least 10 local laws, and Brannan would like the higher rates to apply only to those with incomes over $500,000, whom he characterizes as comprising the dreaded top “1 percent.” 

    “Fine amounts are arbitrary as it is so why should a public school teacher and a billionaire pay the same fine?” asked Brannan in an interview with Reason. For instance, a $115 ticket for a working family of four could be a real hardship whereas a $115 ticket for an individual making $500K is a joke and does absolutely nothing to change their behavior.”

    This type of income-dependent financial punishment is called a “day fine.” Here’s how it was explained by the Vera Institute of Justice‘s Judith Green in a 1990 paper: 

    “First, the court sentences the offender to a certain number of day-fine units (e.g., 15, 60, 120 units) according to the gravity of the offense, but without regard to his or her means. Then the value of each unit is set at a share of the offender’s daily income (hence the name ‘day fine’), and the total fine amount is determined by simple multiplication.”

    “Studies have shown that day-fine programs typically lead to more people actually paying their fines, in part because penalties that were once out of reach for low-income and middle-class residents become more manageable,” reports the New York Times. 

    That’s an attractive dynamic for a cash-strapped, migrant-smothered city like New York, which currently has $2 billion in civil fines that have gone unpaid since 2017. At the same time, it sounds like it would be a bureaucratic nightmare to administer. 

    If the purpose of a fine is to inflict pain and change behavior, one might — perhaps grudgingly — see some logic in the day-fine approach. Then again, many of those fines are just victimless-crime, government piracy dressed up in the name of “public safety.” 

    Worst of all, the day-fine scheme is all too reminiscent of the overarching Marxist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”  

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 17:00

  • Daniel Penny Raises $1.6 Million Via GiveSendGo After Being Charged In Death Of Jordan Neely
    Daniel Penny Raises $1.6 Million Via GiveSendGo After Being Charged In Death Of Jordan Neely

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    A crowdfunding campaign supporting the legal defense fund for former Marine Daniel Penny, who was charged in the death of a homeless man on the New York City subway, has surged to more than $1.5 million in a few days.

    His lawyers, Thomas Kenniff and Steven Kaiser, launched the campaign on the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo last week, saying that Penny was only “protecting individuals” on a subway train from what they described as an assailant, who later died. Penny, 24, was arraigned Friday on one count of second-degree manslaughter for allegedly fatally choking 30-year-old Jordan Neely.

    According to prosecutors, they said that Neely—who has a lengthy criminal history and was described as homeless—was “making threats and scaring passengers.” In New York state, a conviction for second-degree manslaughter can result in a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

    “Funds are being raised to pay Mr. Penny’s legal fees incurred from any criminal charges filed and any future civil lawsuits that may arise, as well as expenses related to his defense,” said the crowdfunding page for Penny.

    “All contributions are greatly appreciated. Any proceeds collected which exceed those necessary to cover Mr. Penny’s legal defense will be donated to a mental health advocacy program in New York City.”

    In response to the fundraising, “The outpouring of generosity and support for Daniel Penny is beyond anything we could have imagined,” Kenniff told Fox News. “Daniel is incredibly grateful for the support of so many New Yorkers.”

    The fundraiser was boosted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is reportedly looking to run for president, on Twitter.

    In the incident, a witness, who wished to remain anonymous, told the New York Post that Neely appeared to be having a mental episode and started ranting wildly while on the northbound F subway train on May 1.

    “He said, ‘I don’t care. I’ll take a bullet, I’ll go to jail’ because he would kill people on the train,” a 66-year-old woman said, referring to what Neely said.

    “He said, ‘I would kill a [expletive]. I don’t care. I’ll take a bullet. I’ll go to jail.’”

    Penny did not initially engage Neely, she said. He only got involved when the situation got out of hand, she added.

    The woman told the paper that after the incident, she went back to “thank” Penny. “I hope he has a great lawyer, and I’m praying for him,” the woman said last week. “And I pray that he gets treated fairly, I really do. Because after all of this ensued, I went back and made sure that I said ‘Thank you’ to him.”

    She added: “This gentleman, Mr. Penny, did not stand up. … did not engage with the gentleman. He said not a word. It was all Mr. Neely that was … threatening the passengers. If he did not get what he wants.”

    “Gonna go to jail for life’? What? What penalties involve going to jail for life?” she asked. “Could you tell me? Yeah, it’s not kicking somebody in the shin, or punching somebody in the face.”

    Similar comments were left on the GiveSendGo fundraiser, with a number of donors saying that Penny didn’t do anything wrong and was defending himself.

    Late last week, Penny surrendered to police to face the manslaughter charge. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed days before Penny will be arrested on a charge of second-degree manslaughter in the case.

    “We cannot provide any additional information until he has been arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court, which we expect to take place tomorrow,” Bragg stated Thursday.

    Last week, the law firm alleged in a statement that their 24-year-old client was acting in self-defense when he held Neely in a chokehold on the F train on May 1, which allegedly caused him to die of compression of the neck, according to the medical examiner.

    The attorneys also alleged that their client did not mean to kill Neely, a 30-year-old man whose friends say suffered from worsening mental health. They added Neely had been behaving aggressively toward other passengers on the subway and Penny stepped in to do what he thought was right and seemed reasonable.

    Witnesses reported that Neely was complaining loudly, allegedly shouting, “I want food,” “I’m not taking no for an answer,” “I’m ready to go back to jail,” and “I’ll hurt anyone on this train.” They also reported that he had harassed passengers for years.

    Neely has a lengthy criminal record that includes dozens of prior arrests and also had a warrant out for his arrest related to a felony assault at the time of his death.

    Meanwhile, video footage has emerged online showing Penny and another man who helped to restrain him rendering aid by placing Neely into a “recovery position” after he fell unconscious. The video also shows Neely was still alive after Penny released him from the chokehold.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 16:30

  • Never Forget: A Retrospective On The Media Lies Surrounding COVID
    Never Forget: A Retrospective On The Media Lies Surrounding COVID

    Lest we get too comfortable once again and forget that only a couple years ago the western world was on the verge of perpetual medical tyranny, it is important to look back at the massive media disinformation campaign concerning the effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness) of the pandemic mandates and the mRNA vaccines.  Only two years ago, the public was bombarded by possibly the most aggressive global propaganda attack in modern history.  And, this campaign was a conjoined effort between national governments, global institutions and corporations.    

    Keep in mind, all the hysteria was generated over a virus with a median official Infection Fatality Rate of only 0.23%.  That’s right, all the fear mongering featured in the video below was in reaction to a “pandemic” that 99.8% of the population would easily survive, and this death rate was known only months after the spread started.  Also keep in mind that essentially every single claim made by the media concerning covid featured below ended up being false.  In many cases, the media knew that scientific evidence ran contrary to their narrative, but they promoted that narrative anyway.

    Enjoy this flashback of corporate media covid fear mongering, and never forget…

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 16:00

  • Macleod: The Dynamics Driving The Dollar Down
    Macleod: The Dynamics Driving The Dollar Down

    Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

    This article examines the currency imbalances between US dollars and the other currencies and concludes that should foreign holders decide to reduce their dollar exposure, the consequences for its value would be dramatic.

    The dollar’s problems should be laid at the door of the wishful thinkers who think the state knows better than free markets. It is that which has led to currency imbalances. Central banks attempting to manage economic outcomes by manipulating interest rates and “stimulating” economic activity have acted in defiance of Say’s law, which defines the relationship between production and consumption, and the true role of a medium of exchange. 

    By dismissing this fundamental truth, the US authorities have made a rod for their own backs.

    Their determination to replace gold as the highest form of money with the fiat dollar has led to extraordinary levels of dollar accumulation about to be unleashed onto unsuspecting markets.

    A break below 100.50 on the dollar’s trade weighted index will probably be the signal. It currently stands at 101.50.

    Say’s law says it simplest

    John Maynard Keynes did the world a disservice with his offhand dismissal of Say’s law. Consequently, economists have lost the true relationship between production and consumption. And we have lost our understanding of the true role of currencies as a medium of exchange. Nearly all our economic errors have flowed from this dismissal. 

    In order to understand the seriousness of it with respect to the dollar today, the denial of Say’s law is no less than a denial of the division of labour. Yet, plainly, the division of labour is the basis of all human economic activity. Without having something to sell, we cannot buy the things we need which we are unable to provide for ourselves efficiently or easily. Where we differ from other animals is that we develop our personal skills to maximise the value of our specialised production so that we can increase our wider consumption for the greatest relief of our needs and desires. Our individual skills are the key that provides our wealth. And it is the role of currency as a medium of exchange which allows us to turn our production into our consumption.

    Several things follow from this truism. One is that if we reduce our total production, we reduce our total consumption, because the former leads to the latter. No, say the Keynesians, who put it the other way round. They say that if we reduce our consumption there will be a general glut of goods on the market and then prices will fall, leading to unemployment. The error is to not understand that first we must produce in order to consume, so that there cannot be a general glut, only changes in the level of productive output which are broadly matched by changes in overall consumption.

    Surely, this can be easily understood even by non-experts. But this deliberate error — for that is what it can only have been — has led to a misunderstanding of the role of the medium of exchange. It provides the means to exchange goods of unequal value: for example, a cobbler makes shoes and boots, whose unit value will be greater than the individual food items he requires daily to feed his family. It also provides producers with the credit required to finance production, paying costs incurred before a final product is sold and creditors repaid.

    This is the essence of trade. And so long as transacting individuals only produce to consume, the expansion and contraction of the sum total of money and credit purely in connection with that trade cannot alter their value in terms of goods and services generally. Not so, say Keynes’s macroeconomists, now joined in chorus by the monetarists. They claim that expansion of money and credit alters the general price relation. Both believe in manipulating credit to this end.

    Again, a child should be able to understand the flaw in this argument. The general price relation is only altered when additional currency is introduced by central banks for purposes other than the credit required for the settlement of trade in free markets.

    This is in defiance of the sole function of a medium of exchange, which is to act as the agent for turning our production into consumption. But it does mean that if excess currency accumulates in the form of credit additional to its use as a trade settlement medium, its purchasing power is undermined because it does not originate from the need to turn production into consumption. It is important to understand that it is this excess that changes the price relation, not changes in the level of credit per se. And this is the case with respect to international trade, where currency balances have accumulated.

    When a foreigner holds unspent dollars, that person or entity can be said to be “owed” US domestic goods and services. This logically follows from the unbending precepts of Say’s law. But the majority of foreign owned dollars have actually been exchanged for product of a sort. On US Treasury TIC figures, approximately $24.5 trillion are invested in long-term US Treasuries, corporate bonds, and equities. These constitute incorporeal wealth and are therefore classed in the owners’ minds as assets, just as if they were corporeal wealth, such as property, farmland, livestock, and factories, which are similarly valued in dollars. All these assets represent consumption of the fruits of production.

    It is the unspent dollars held in the correspondent banking system, together with short term Treasury and commercial bills instantly realisable, totalling some $7.2 trillion which represents the unspent balance of foreign production. It arises because foreigners have accepted dollars in payment for their goods and have yet to spend them on US goods and assets.

    What are their alternatives? They can of course hang on to their dollars, spend them on US production (presumably by increasing their ownership of financial and non-financial assets valued in US dollars), sell them to acquire non-American production and assets, or exchange them for the ownership of their own or other currencies of account.

    The altered character of the US economy

    It will not have escaped the reader’s attention that over decades the US economy has reduced its production of corporeal goods relative to the incorporeal. This means that foreigners cannot buy much in the way of semi-manufactured and manufactured goods with their dollars, but overwhelmingly incorporeal assets in the form of securities and services. Accordingly, the US economy is said by some to have been hollowed out.

    Putting services to one side, this means that by acquiring US securities, which have accumulated to a figure larger than US GDP, foreigners are committing to receive continuing dollar income streams. It is an important distinction from spending dollars on physical goods, which are not so immediately exposed to currency risk. 

    But it has been the long-term decline in interest rates driving bull markets which contributed to the accumulation of incorporeal, or credit-based assets by foreigners. And just as surely that the long-term decline in interest rates encouraged the accumulation of purely financial incorporeal assets, at some point the new trend of increasing interest rates will surely lead to an avalanche of foreign liquidation, not just of the assets themselves, but of the underlying dollars.

    But there is a substantial overhang of dollars in foreign hands already, which according to the US Treasury is just over $7.2 trillion, representing about 40% of US bank deposits. Assuming for the moment that there is no official intervention, in aggregate those dollars can only be sold for foreign currencies and gold in possession of American citizens and businesses. But according to the US Treasury’s TIC figures, American ownership of foreign currency balances is only $632bn, and we can safely disregard ownership of the gold available to satisfy dollars sales by foreigners. Therefore, the ownership of dollars in foreign hands outnumbers the available foreign exchange by over eleven times.

    Domestic owners of dollars widely believe that foreigners must hold onto dollars, because they are used to settle purchases of commodities, settle international trade, and to pay interest on dollar debt owed by foreigners. This is certainly true. But what happens if foreign holders of US financial assets begin to fear further rises in dollar interest rates? Pressure will mount for them to reduce their holdings in longer-term assets, realisable in dollars which adds to that eleven to one currency imbalance.

    Partially offsetting the $24.5 trillion foreign ownership of long-term US financial assets is US ownership of foreign financial assets amounting to $14.5 trillion — an unfavourable balance though not so much as is the case with short-term deposits. But additionally, interest rate increases in the US have happened in advance of the other major currencies and if that relationship continues fixed-interest financial asset values in dollars will generally decline ahead of those in other currencies. Assuming this timing relationship holds, there is a risk that the resumption of a global bear market will undermine dollar assets first relative to the euro, yen, yuan, and pound — irrespective of their individual characteristics. 

    The problem for the dollar is heightened by a further factor. When foreigners liquidate dollar investments, they end up owning additional dollars to those already reflected in correspondent bank balances. These are likely to be sold down immediately for the diminishingly small pool of US owned foreign currencies and for gold. The situation is different for US residents holding foreign investments, the vast majority of which are held in American depository receipt (ADR) form. Consequently, an American investor does not have a foreign exchange transaction when selling these assets. Therefore, selling of foreign investments cannot be offset against foreign selling of US investments with respect to the consequences for exchange rates.

    The one-sidedness of this situation is likely to become rapidly apparent when the dollar’s technical position is seen to deteriorate from current levels. The chart below shows the current position for the dollar’s trade weighted index.

    The technical position suggests that this breakdown is set to occur soon, and that a breach of 100.50 (currently at 101.50) is likely to be the precursor for a significant further decline in the trade-weighted index.

    If that happens, it is likely to be sudden.

    Intervention by the Fed and US Treasury

    The lack of US domestic ownership of foreign currencies makes it almost certain that a run on the dollar will be met by official intervention. The Fed is able to draw on swap lines with the other central banks to supply foreign currencies, buying dollars in their place. These arrangements were not designed for currency management purposes, but for providing liquidity in cases such as the Credit Suisse bailout. Accordingly, the swap agreements between the six major central banks (Fed, ECB, BoJ, SNB, BoE, and Bank of Canada) are far too small to stabilise the dollar given the likely scale of a run on it.

    Current swap facilities compared with the scale of the problem are the equivalent of a mouse to an elephant. Increasing them can only take the comparison from a mouse to a rat relative to an elephant. Therefore, the only way a run on the dollar can be addressed is for the Fed to raise interest rates sufficiently to protect it. This is unlikely to be an initial response, but introduced after it is feared that a falling exchange rate adds to producer price and CPI inflation, and that a reluctance by the Fed to increase interest rates would risk undermining confidence in the dollar even further.

    However, if the Fed increases dollar interest rates, it will weaken interest rate dependent asset values causing further securities liquidation by foreign holders. But that is the only solution for stabilising the dollar, even raising them high enough to discourage selling of the dollars raised from selling investments. Put simply, the Fed will then have to choose between protecting securities markets from further value deterioration and protecting the currency.

    Not only would protecting the currency go against the grain of everything the Fed has tried to achieve by maintaining confidence in US financial markets, but it also has a duty to fund the government’s deficit. Sharply higher interest rates are bound to cause an economic slump, reducing taxes, and adding to welfare costs. Funding requirements for the US Treasury will increase significantly at a time when foreign ownership of US Treasuries are being liquidated. Funding costs will also increase. Furthermore, the liquidation of foreign owned assets currently estimated at $24.5 trillion would be accelerated by any attempt to protect the dollar by raising interest rates. Additionally, the strains faced by the commercial banking network would almost certainly lead to a full-on banking crisis.

    For the Fed, it truly becomes a Morton’s fork dilemma. 

    The Asian response

    The extent to which foreign governments, typically members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the non-Asian BRICS+ membership anticipate these developments can only be guessed at. But at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum last June, President Putin explained the negatives for dollar ownership to the attendees from eighty-one foreign official delegations. Since then, declarations of intent and applications to join both SCO and BRICS+ have been made by many nations. But so far, there is little evidence of actual dollar selling by them.

    That they appear to be sitting on the fence between the western alliance and the Asian axis is a significant change from recent times when they would not have dared to question America’s monetary and military standing in the world. The explanation can only be that this crowd’s vested interests have shifted. Not only is an alliance with China and Russia holding out the prospect of a more positive future, but its members are increasingly scared of going down with a dollar-based financial system which has outlived its usefulness. It is easy to imagine why trade prospects with the Asian hegemons are relatively attractive, but to escape from one currency system to another requires a degree of confidence in the latter.

    The signals emanating from Russia and China are positive, but as yet not substantiated. Russia’s Sergey Glazyev, officially appointed to design a new trade settlement currency for the Eurasian Economic Union, was the moving light behind the beefing up of the Moscow Gold Exchange to replace the LBMA facilities withdrawn from Russian miners and refiners in the wake of last year’s sanctions against Russia. He subsequently described in some detail the benefits of a gold-based rouble relative to the dangers of a fiat dollar based monetary system in an article for Vedomosti, a Moscow based financial newspaper on 27 December last. The shift of emphasis from the proposed EAEU trade currency to adopting gold backing for the rouble was notable.

    In China, the signals are still opaque. Saudi Arabia has led an increasing number of nations willing to take payment in yuan for energy exports. Observers have pointed out that if the Saudis use the exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai, they can exchange yuan for gold. If the Saudis and others use this facility, then it amounts to swapping payments in petrodollars for payments in gold.

    The oil for gold trade is still speculation. But it appears that the major Chinese banks are now offering their citizens the facilities to run gold accounts funded by yuan. Could this deliberate act by state-controlled banks amount to preparations for the remonetisation of gold? Could this be the way forward — the way a yuan gold standard will operate?

    There are advantages for both the rouble and the yuan in such a move. For the rouble, a credible link with gold would permit interest rates over time to decline from current levels of 7%—10% to about 3% for obvious economic benefits. The pressure on the yuan is considerably less, with bond yields of most maturities already at between 2%—3%. China could easily adopt a gold standard. Furthermore, her incredibly high savings rate allows Chinese banks to expand credit without driving up consumer prices. It could be argued that China has no current need to secure the yuan to the value of gold, but to ensure rock solid international confidence in it as a currency the move makes enormous sense. Furthermore, both countries have significant quantities of bullion not declared as official reserves.

    Clearly, both Russia and China are moving very carefully. They appear to be putting in place a Plan B in case there is a collapse in the western alliance’s financial system, comprising their fiat currencies, commercial banks, and even central banks. 

    They have no illusions about the risks they face from America’s weaponization of the dollar, and the fact that it leans on its five-eyes security partners to do her will. But it is the western position on gold which is also important. Against all international law, the Bank of England refused to return Venezuela’s gold on its government’s request, plainly on instructions from the Americans. The New York Fed refused to return some of Germany’s gold when requested — eventually conceding to the request.

    We do know from research conducted long ago that the western alliance’s gold reserves are badly compromised through leases and swaps, leading to at least double ownership of much of it. With Russia and China now moving towards the reintroduction of gold backing for their currencies, there is an impending disaster for the western alliance’s decades of monetary deceit. Clearly, for the Asian hegemons to suddenly announce a return to a formal gold exchange standard for their currencies would irrevocably undermine the vanishing credibility in the dollar and its western stablemates. It would amount to a declaration of financial war of ultimate destruction.

    Besides the risk that a financial war would lead to military conflict, it is not in the Asian axis’s strategic interests to be seen to be the guilty party. China still exports large quantities of goods to America and Europe. While her interests are moving more towards trading and investing in Asia, it is nonsensical to deliberately destroy her existing export markets. But the one thing over which China has no control is the actions of America. Both Russia and China have adopted a strategy of passively allowing the Americans to make all the strategic errors, which they have been doing in abundance. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Georgia, Ukraine, then sanctions against Russia — the best the American can claim is occasionally something pyrrhic. 

    The time for Russia and China to declare their new currency arrangements are when such a move would be obviously a protective response to a deepening crisis for the dollar and its companion currencies. Only then would accusations that returning to gold exchange standards as an aggressive act against the west be demonstrably false. But it would be the final curtain on the error of western governments and their central banks buying into Keynes’s cool-aid, ditching gold standards as a barbarous relic, winding down their gold reserves in some cases to zero, and grasping the opportunity to intervene in all things economic in defiance of Say’s law.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/14/2023 – 15:30

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