- Gears Of The Refugee Machine
Gears Of The Refugee Machine
Authored by Spike Hampson via the Brownstone Institute,
A solid majority of American citizens now recognize that Biden’s many millions of alleged refugees are anything but the real deal. In all probability, some of these illegal immigrants are members of the “tired and poor” seeking a shortcut into the United States, but also include a number of spies, drug mules, human traffickers, criminals, and convicts. As for legitimate refugees, in all likelihood they represent less than 10% of the total.
The moment Biden took office, he invited the world to come to America — illegally.
He dismantled the proven methods used to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and publicly encouraged foreigners to come through the Southern border. As the numbers of illegal immigrants increased, the border patrol were shifted from patrolling the border to sitting behind desks and helping illegal immigrants to gain entry into the country. Most of the border patrol resent having been converted into neutered bureaucrats but had to follow orders or else get drummed out of the corps.
In short, Americans (indeed, the entire world) now realize that the Biden administration is dedicated to getting as many illegal aliens into the country as possible. This is, of course, aiding and abetting illegal behavior, but rampant corruption in the media, academia, and politics ignores or dismisses it.
Captive to leftist agendas, these institutions view citizenship as an antiquated concept that, along with an anachronistic constitution, must be eradicated — no holds barred.
Since Biden became president, his ushers have guided roughly nine million illegals into the United States. By pretending that they are refugees from war or persecution, it was possible to cloak them in sympathetic attire: ‘No compassionate person would ever reject a poor, mistreated refugee.’
At the start of Biden’s presidency, the flow of illegal immigrants originated from relatively few countries, most of which were in central America. In those days, a majority were impoverished people seeking a better life — illegal in their entry but not malevolent in their intent. A certain remainder, however, were not good people.
But over the past three years the border jumpers have started coming from all around the world — so much so that they now represent over 160 different countries. Most of them, by the way, are healthy, single, young men.
Since war and persecution are considered to be the causes of refugee flows, one should ask if it is reasonable to believe that three-quarters of all the countries in the world are afflicted by war or oppression. Next, one might ask why it is that women and children and the elderly are less susceptible to becoming refugees than healthy young men.
This refugee epidemic is an orchestrated phenomenon, planned and supported by international organizations in cahoots with the United States government. It is not intended to solve a refugee problem. Its purpose is obviously something other than an amelioration of the suffering of displaced people.
Since this refugee invasion is tearing apart our country, the federal government — especially the Department of Homeland Security — should be publishing detailed statistics regarding daily, weekly, monthly, and cumulative numbers for illegal immigrants admitted into the United States. There should be similar tabulations for deportations, gotaways, etc. Comparable tables should be readily available for age and sex structure. Parallel statistical fact sheets regarding contraband and drug seizures along with relevant data regarding the apprehended smugglers should be made public as well.
As long as the government was anxious to scare the bejeezus out of everybody regarding Covid-19, it had no trouble publishing data regarding infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. The fact that it is not doing anything similar for the ongoing refugee invasion suggests it is trying to hide something.
Since there are only about 35 countries in all of the Americas, this infiltration out of Mexico across our Southwest border includes invaders from about 130 additional countries located overseas. Those people fly to the Americas, but not to the United States (which is their destination). We can draw a couple of conclusions: they are not poor and they would have trouble getting into the United States legally. Most anybody who could get into the US on a visitor’s visa and then simply overstay would do that rather than flying to, say, Mexico City and then hoofing it northward.
Huge chunks of the American populace have been hoodwinked into thinking that anybody who crosses the border illegally is just trying to grab a share of the good life and should be allowed to remain. But, alas, the invasion is an orchestrated phenomenon. We have known for years that various countries and non-governmental organizations have been organizing and assisting the mass movement of people up through Mexico to and across the US border.
This was evident even back in the first year or two of the Trump presidency when organized caravans of illegal immigrants were arriving with the specific intent of numerically overwhelming the border patrol.
We now know that even the United Nations is involved in housing, feeding, and transporting would-be illegal immigrants headed north. It follows that our federal government is the main source of funding for much of this UN effort. The American citizenry remains ignorant about this.
Border crossings in Central America are tightly regulated for people like you and me, but clustered hoards of illegal immigrants are magically waved through from one country to the next. There are six or seven border crossings to be made before reaching the United States. Do you really think administrations in those countries are unaware of the situation? The unencumbered passage of millions of migrants is only possible if critical palms have been well greased — by Yankee dollars that Americans have paid in taxes.
For those who are unaware, the frontier zone between Central America’s Panama and South America’s Colombia is called the Darien Gap — a thick, wet jungle of hill country through which no road passes. Until recently, it was rarely penetrated and only by extreme adventurers or suspect characters, but now has three different jungle trails for illegal wannabes headed north. On any given day, thousands of people complete the trek, virtually always in large groups accompanied by several guides.
This 50-75 miles of jungle trekking has become a conduit for those from the Caribbean and South America who can find no easier pathway to the US. It is also favored by many of those coming from overseas since the country of Ecuador does not require a visa for entry and the circumvention of designated border crossings into Colombia is relatively easy.
Those with means but from countries whose citizens are severely restrained from traveling to other countries fly to Quito, circumvent the Colombian border stations, hazard the Darien Gap, and use either their feet or buses and trains to reach the US border. And virtually always this is done as part of a large group consisting mostly of strangers.
Many Americans are unaware of the degree to which illegal migrants are recruited and assisted by international and non-governmental organizations — all of which wish to see the United States Southern border eradicated. The flood of illegal immigrants across the border is clearly an invasion being sponsored by a globalist ideology.
What with the assistance of the UN and nongovernmental agencies, the Panamanian end of the Darien Gap now has established encampments offering meals and dry sleeping arrangements for the clusters of migrants who make the passage. More sinister is a separate camp specifically for Chinese passage-makers.
Evidently, crossing the Darien Gap takes the lives of some who become sick or have an accident, but the attrition is not sufficient to deter the flow. The larger point is that getting into the United States from distant locations involves a support system designed to game the American border controls. Millions of illegal border crossers are part of something bigger and more nefarious than simple, individualistic decisions to sneak into the United States.
American citizens are being exploited by the globalist elite that view countries as anachronisms. So convinced are they of their own moral superiority that the wishes of America’s ordinary people carry no weight. What we on this side of the border view as a chaotic influx of illegal immigrants is in fact a planned effort, a coordinated attempt to break down the integrity of the United States, the only country in the world still in a position to defeat the globalist agenda.
It is a difficult battle since much of America’s elite has been seduced into believing that globalism imposed from the top down is the ideal way to achieve the “unification of all humanity” — an idealistic goal that would just happen to put many of those same elite in control of the envisioned New World Order. The ordinary American who disapproves of illegal immigration wants it to stop but many of the national leaders want it to continue (although they hide their true intentions).
For all its flaws and weaknesses, for all its corruption, the United States remains the final bastion for protection of individual rights. The system being imposed from the top down will inevitably sacrifice the will of the people to the globalist vision — and that will prove to be the essence of tyranny and a wellspring of untold suffering.
Those interested in this topic might appreciate the more detailed observations of Bret Weinstein in the Dark Horse Podcast. He develops a hypothesis (i.e. a possible explanation of a phenomenon) that there are in fact two different migrations going on, one involving very large numbers of people from a great variety of source areas and evidently motivated by a desire for a better life, but the other being a purely Chinese flow that enjoys greater affluence and therefore less hazardous transit.
Bret explores the possibility that this sub-stream is in fact a Trojan migration designed to inject into the United States a sort of fifth column of healthy young males that with the ripeness of time will be well-positioned to undermine America whenever a US-China conflict becomes kinetic. He observes that this stream maintains a separate identity until having completed the journey through the Darien Gap but then presumably becomes integrated into the larger flow before reaching the United States border, thereby masking its distinct character. The meat of Bret Weinstein’s hypothesis is discussed between the 10th and 110th minutes of the podcast.
A retired academic, Spike Hampson did a PhD in population geography at the University of Hawaii and the affiliated East West Center. For most of his career he was a geography professor at the University of Utah and a ski instructor at Deer Valley.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 23:40 - US Digital Video Spend Beats TV Ads
US Digital Video Spend Beats TV Ads
The market for moving image advertisement formats is developing away from linear television and towards digital video formats such as streaming, apps and social media.
As Katharina Buchholz reports, according to data from the Statista Market Insights, U.S. spend on digital video ads is estimated to reach almost $85 billion this year – more than the around $59 billion U.S. advertisers are expected to spend on traditional TV advertising.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Spending on digital video ads grew rapidly over the past couple of years, overtaking slightly decreasing TV ad spending in the process.
TV and video advertising refers to moving image advertising formats that are transmitted via traditional TV channels as well as in all forms of digital video channels. Traditional TV advertising covers all advertising expenditure on pay-for and freely distributed TV providers and networks as well as digitally distributed and terrestrial TV network operators. Digital video advertising, on the other hand, includes advertising formats like web-based videos, app-based videos as well as videos on social media and streaming apps that are seen on computer screens, smartphones, tablets and other internet-connected devices.
The gap between the two markets will continue to grow. The situation in the U.S. mirrors international developments, aided by the country’s advertising market being the largest in the world by some margin.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 23:20 - Biden: Candidate Of The Elites
Biden: Candidate Of The Elites
Authored by Steve Cortes via RealClear Wire,
Remember when Democrats advocated for working-class Americans?
My maternal relatives were all Irish Catholic Democrats in decades past. They were deeply conservative in their personal lives and social views, and concurrently deeply committed to the party of John F. Kennedy and Tip O’Neill.
Those days now seem like an era of antiquity compared to the radical, even Marxist, Democratic Party of the 2020s. The Biden-Harris Democrats push secular humanist ideology while acting fully in concert with the economic ruling class of America, all at the cavalier expense of middle- and lower-income citizens.
This observation is not merely my opinion, but rather the widespread view of working-class Americans, as revealed by the latest battleground state polling conducted by my labor advocacy organization, the League of American Workers. These surveys of swing states, conducted by North Star Opinion Research, reveal a stark and consistent class divide in America. Those who are already financially successful are thriving under Biden and approve of his job performance, while the masses of wage earners fall behind, endure economic anxiety, and blame Joe Biden and the Democrats.
For example, the latest poll of 600 likely voters in battleground North Carolina shows Trump with a commanding 7-point lead over the president in a three-man matchup. If you add Robert F. Kennedy’s 16% in the poll, an impressive majority of North Carolina voters favor the populist candidate. The survey’s details and crosstabs make clear that the primary driver is economic anxiety, especially among those of modest means. For instance, overall sentiment for Biden on the economy remains brutal, with only 35% approval and 61% disapproval. But numbers for Biden on the economy are even worse among working class and aspirational constituencies.
In answering the question, “Does Joe Biden’s economy provide the opportunity for working-class Americans to improve their standard of living?” only 31% of North Carolinians overall said yes. But the voters of Appalachian North Carolina, in the less-affluent western portion of the state, were even more pessimistic with only 23% affirming that Biden provides opportunities for working-class voters.
Among hard-working Hispanics in the Tar Heel state, only 13% believe Biden provides upward mobility. Hispanics are the most entrepreneurial demographic in America, and overwhelmingly, they reject the crony capitalism of the current Democrat Party which is fully co-opted by big business and unconcerned with Main Street prosperity.
This pessimism tragically sours citizens on the American Dream as a whole. In our survey, among non-college graduates in North Carolina only 25% believe that the “American Dream is still attainable.”
On the other side of the economic ledger, the credentialed elites of America grow downright ebullient with their circumstances, the direction of the country, and Biden’s job performance. The Wall Street Journal highlighted this massive chasm in sentiment in a recent Kimberley Strassel column, “The US vs. Them Election.”
To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the rich in America in 2024 are very different from the masses, and not just in bank account size, but also in worldview. Strassel cites polling from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity of citizens with incomes above $150,000 per year and advanced graduate degrees who live in high-density metro areas. A stunning 84% approve of Biden’s job performance in the White House.
In addition, 74% of those highly credentialed voters said their finances are getting better, compared to only 20% of non-elites. A big part of that ruling class optimism flows from the stock market at all-time highs as Biden’s inflation helps lift asset prices. But regular Americans largely miss the benefits of asset appreciation since they do not enjoy substantial equity and real estate holdings. (The top 10% of households own 93% of all stock holdings in America, including retirement accounts.)
Aside from economic issues, the credentialed elites also embrace a totally divergent culture and worldview from the masses in America. For example, a whopping 84% of elites with an Ivy League degree have a high opinion of journalists. That approval, not coincidentally, exactly matches elites’ approval of Joe Biden. Simultaneously, overall trust in media plunges to match an all-time low, with only 32% of Americans reporting trust in media per Gallup, which has surveyed trust in the press since the 1970s.
Looking toward November, this macro divide provides opportunity for patriotic populists, from Trump to down-ballot candidates. The Democrats have lost their way and now surrender to the whims of the elites.
In contrast, the populist right can highlight the class divide in America and provide workable fixes that will restore broader prosperity. Ending the flow of illegal workers and trade protectionism for American laborers will form pillars of a true America First workers’ agenda. Such an agenda will win elections and, more importantly, win back prosperity and confidence for the forgotten American middle class.
Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 23:00 - Newsom Sued Over Transgender Policy, Teachers Claim They Are Forced To Lie To Parents
Newsom Sued Over Transgender Policy, Teachers Claim They Are Forced To Lie To Parents
Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Teachers are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta in federal court over policies they say force them to conceal the transgender status of young students from parents.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom awaits the arrival of President Joe Biden at San Francisco International Airport, on Nov. 14, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) The lawsuit comes after the governor signed several laws in September 2023 that expanded California’s protections for LGBT individuals.
One law establishes timelines for required so-called cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff. Another law creates an advisory body to determine the needs of LGBT students. A further law requires families to demonstrate willingness to meet the needs of a child in foster care, regardless of the child’s sexual orientation or gender identity. There is also a law requiring elementary and secondary schools to have gender-neutral bathrooms for students.
“California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ+ community, and we’re committed to the ongoing work to create safer, more inclusive spaces for all Californians,” Mr. Newsom said at the time.
“These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance, and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities.”
At the same time, the governor vetoed legislation that would have compelled judges making custody and visitation orders to consider whether a parent accepts a child’s professed gender identity.
In the lawsuit, San Diego-area teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who are devout Christians, filed suit to object to policies they say mandate dishonesty.
The legal complaint in the case, Mirabelli v. Olson, was originally filed in April 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California against the Escondido Union School District (EUSD), in San Diego County, and officials with the California State Board of Education.
The lawsuit was prompted by the K–8 school district’s recent policies affecting transgender students.
The policies require teachers to assist in a student’s transgender “social transition” by accepting a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender-diverse identity and, during school hours, using any pronouns or a gender-specific name requested by the student.
At the same time, the policies allegedly require teachers to revert to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with parents, in an effort to conceal information regarding a child’s asserted gender identity.
The teachers objected on moral and religious grounds to the policies and said they were uncomfortable at the prospect of keeping secrets from parents about their children’s gender identities at school. They asked the district to exempt them from the policies but their requests were denied.
On Jan. 29, the teachers amended the complaint to add Mr. Newsom and Mr. Bonta, both Democrats, as defendants in the lawsuit.
“These previously named defendants are all operating under the supervision and control of the governor, who has ultimate responsibility for overseeing the state’s education system,” said Paul Jonna, an attorney from the Rancho Santa Fe-based law firm LiMandri and Jonna. Mr. Jonna is also serving as special counsel for the Thomas More Society, the public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit.
“The Escondido Union School District has asserted that it is compelled by the state to adopt and enforce parental exclusion policies in which California dictates the deception requiring teachers to lie to parents about their students.
“That leads to the conclusion that the state, and therefore, the governor is the driving force behind the violation of Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West’s constitutional rights.”
EUSD requires all elementary and middle school teachers to “unhesitatingly accept a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender diverse identity, and … [to] ‘begin to treat the student immediately’ according to their asserted gender identity,” according to the legal complaint.
“There is absolutely no room for discussion, polite disagreement, or even questioning whether the child is sincere or acting on a whim,” the complaint continues. “Once a child’s social transitioning has begun, EUSD elementary and middle school teachers must ensure that parents do not find out.”
“EUSD’s policies state that ‘revealing a student’s transgender status to individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information, without the student’s consent’ is prohibited, and ‘parents or caretakers’ are, according to EUSD, individuals who ‘do not have a legitimate need for the information,’ irrespective of the age of the student or the specific facts of the situation.”
The teachers, removed from the classroom by management, have already won several rounds in their legal battle against EUSD policies. The teachers claimed that the school district retaliated against them for filing suit and harassed them.
Last month, District Judge Roger Benitez ordered the school district “to return plaintiffs Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West back to the classroom.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Mr. Newsom and Mr. Bonta for comment but didn’t receive a reply as of publication time.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 22:20 - WSJ Tells Readers: "To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast"
WSJ Tells Readers: “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast”
President Biden’s attempt to sell Americans on ‘Bidenomics’ could be one of the most significant marketing failures by an administration in an election cycle in modern times.
According to Bloomberg data, the number of news stories mentioning “Bidenomics” in corporate media erupted in June 2023. This was around the time when the White House launched its propaganda campaign to persuade
trickthe American people about the alleged successes of the president’s economic policies.As the number of “Bidenomics” news stories soared, polling data via Real Clear Politics shows the president’s job approval rating fell. In other words, the American people quickly called bullshit on this PR campaign.
In this era of failure, legacy media told consumers inflation is their fault. But ignore the Federal Reserve’s massive easing program during the Covid era and the federal government helicopter dropping trillions of dollars blindly across the economy.
Remember this Bloomberg opinion piece from 2022 that told readers who made under $300k and suffer from high inflation: “Try lentils instead of meat.”
And now, the Wall Street Journal told readers: “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast.”
As another reminder, lower inflation touted by the White House does not mean lower prices.
And the consumer environment is getting worse – not better ahead of the elections.
The Atlantic pointing fingers at consumers for inflation, Bloomberg advising readers to eat lentils, and WSJ suggesting skipping breakfast are all indicators of the US economy’s distress, in stark contrast to the White House’s continuous assurances that everything is fine.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 22:00 - Seattle English Students Told It's "White Supremacy" To Love Reading, Writing
Seattle English Students Told It’s “White Supremacy” To Love Reading, Writing
Authored by Jason Rantz via KTTH (emphasis ours),
Students in a Seattle English class were told that their love of reading and writing is a characteristic of “white supremacy,” in the latest Seattle Public Schools high school controversy. The lesson plan has one local father speaking out, calling it “educational malpractice.”
Lincoln High School in Seattle teachings on white supremacy leads to controversy. (School photo courtesy of the school district website; quiz images provided by a parent in the school district) As part of the Black Lives Matter at School Week, World Literature and Composition students at Lincoln High School were given a handout with definitions of the “9 characteristics of white supremacy,” according to the father of a student. Given the subject matter of the class, the father found it odd this particular lesson was brought up.
The Seattle high schoolers were told that “Worship of the Written Word” is white supremacy because it is “an erasure of the wide range of ways we communicate with each other.” By this definition, the very subject of World Literature and Composition is racist. It also chides the idea that we hyper-value written communication because it’s a form of “honoring only what is written and even then only what is written to a narrow standard, full of misinformation and lies.” The worksheet does not provide any context for what it actually means.
“I feel bad for any students who actually internalize stuff like this as it is setting them up for failure,” the father explained to the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.
The father asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution against his child by Seattle Public Schools. He said the other pieces of the worksheet were equally disturbing.
The worksheet labels “objectivity,” “individualism,” and “perfectionism” as white supremacy. If students deny their own racism — or that any of the nine characteristics are legitimately racist — is also white supremacy. Denialism or being overly defensive is a racist example of an “entitlement to name what is an [sic] isn’t racism and that those with power have a right to be shielded from the stresses of antiracist work.”
The father argues the concepts are “incoherent and cannot stand any sort of reasoned analysis.” And he notes that it’s set up to ensure students accept every concept without ever questioning the claims.
“How is a 15-year-old kid supposed to object in class when ‘denial and defensiveness’ is itself a characteristic of white supremacy? This is truly educational malpractice.”
Terms and definitions regarding white supremacy given to Lincoln High students. White students told to apologize in yet another Seattle high school controversy
Another aspect of the white supremacy lesson at this Seattle school involved a video titled “Getting Called Out: How to Apologize” by Franchesca Ramsey. It’s reportedly presented in the context of white students expressing what the teacher views as “white supremacy.”
Read the rest here…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 21:40 - Egypt Erects 8-Square-Mile Walled Enclosure In Sinai Desert For Rafah Refugee Spillover
Egypt Erects 8-Square-Mile Walled Enclosure In Sinai Desert For Rafah Refugee Spillover
In a press briefing earlier this week IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi said, “We know that it is more difficult for us to fight in an environment where there are over a million people and another 10,000 Hamas operatives” – as we highlighted previously.
There are now some 1.5 million people crammed into the far southern city, which is more than six times its pre-war population, according to UN estimates. Egypt is now fearing the crisis will spill over its border, and is racing to erect a large walled compound to physically keep refugees from Gaza out, amid fears a bigger Israeli ground assault is imminent.
Displaced Palestinians in Rafah, via Reuters Egyptian officials have said they are constructing an 8-square-mile walled enclosure in the Sinai Desert close to the border, in an anticipation of at least some Gazans getting into Egypt. It appears this a ‘plan B’ of sorts in order to contain the anticipated swarms of refugees coming into the Sinai desert, but without allowing them freedom of access to the rest of Egypt.
According to the The Wall Street Journal, this would be a massive military guarded camp of sorts, which could see over 100,000 people settle there:
For weeks, Egypt has sought to bolster security along the frontier to keep Palestinians out, deploying soldiers and armored vehicles and reinforcing fences. The massive new compound is part of contingency plans if large numbers of Gazans do manage to get in.
More than 100,000 people could be accommodated in the camp, Egyptian officials said. It is surrounded by concrete walls and far from any Egyptian settlements. Large numbers of tents, as yet unassembled, have been delivered to the site, these people said.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying his army will need to fight Hamas in Rafah, a Palestinian city on the Egyptian border, Egyptian officials think a broad Israeli offensive could happen within weeks.
But officials say Egyptian border security would still seek to limit refugee numbers coming into the camp to around 50,000 or 60,000 people.
Assuming a brutal Israeli military siege of Rafah happens as anticipated, and as Gazans essentially have nowhere else to go, this Egyptian camp has all the makings of what will likely to become the next permanent Palestinian refugee camp – as is the case with similar settlements which have long been in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Already large tent cities have popped up after months of Israel’s campaign in Gaza…
Meanwhile, Hamas and Israel are no closer to a ceasefire, and a new report has emerged Thursday strongly suggesting the Biden administration in reality has no interest in peace, and is staying mum while Israeli decision-making gets more hawkish. According to Axios:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Secretary of State Tony Blinken last week that a direct or indirect U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state “would be a prize for those who planned and orchestrated the Oct. 7 massacre,” two Israeli officials told Axios.
Such recognition by the U.S. would change decades of American policy that advocated for a Palestinian state only as a result of direct negotiations with Israel. The Israeli government is increasingly concerned if that happens, it would put more pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state.
One displaced Gazan has been cited in WSJ as follows: “Some people are already on the Egyptian border, and if the bombing intensifies, they will go directly to Sinai. It’s the worst of decisions.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 21:20 - The Curse Of Ultra-Pasteurization
The Curse Of Ultra-Pasteurization
Authored by Sally Fallon Morell via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
In the summer of 1983, an outbreak of listeriosis occurred in Massachusetts. Forty-nine people became sick and 14 of those—29 percent—died. Listeria is the bad actor among pathogens. Most pathogens make people sick but don’t kill them—listeria, on the other hand, often kills, especially the very young, the elderly, and the immune-compromised.
(Andrey Burstein/Shutterstock) Listeria most commonly occurs in deli meats, seafood, raw vegetables, soft cheeses, and poultry. But the 1983 outbreak was different. It came from pasteurized milk. Health officials isolated listeria from the raw milk that came into the pasteurizing plant. “At the plant where the milk was processed, inspections revealed no evidence of improper pasteurization.” The officials were perplexed but noted that “L monocytogenes is quite resistant to heat. … The ability of L monocytogenes to exist as an intracellular parasite may have increased likelihood that some organisms survived pasteurization …”
They came to an interesting conclusion, “These results … raise questions about the ability of pasteurization to eradicate a large inoculum of L. monocytogenes from contaminated raw milk.”
A year later, a huge outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium occurred in Illinois, with a second wave in 1985. The pathogen was found resistant to most common forms of antibiotics. “Two surveys to determine the number of persons who were actually affected yielded estimates of 168,791 and 197,581 persons, making this the largest outbreak of salmonellosis ever identified in the United States.” At least five people died. The outbreak affected people in six states—Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Indiana. Health officials concluded that the milk was contaminated after pasteurization by salmonella, which persisted in the plant despite efforts to eradicate it.
The Arrival of Factory Farming
Something else was going on during those years—dairy farms were getting bigger. Consolidation began in the 1930s with pigs and in the 1950s with chickens. In the 1970s, agriculture secretary Earl Butz told farmers to “get big or get out,” and by the mid-1980s, this trend was in full force. “Get big or get out,” also meant, “Get inside.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture was advising dairy farmers to “become more efficient” by keeping their cows in barns and feeding them grain.
Large amounts of grain are not a natural diet for cows, nor is it natural for cows to live in close quarters with no way of distancing themselves from their fresh manure. To keep the cows alive in such conditions of filth, antibiotics became necessary. It was a recipe for antibiotic resistance and stronger, mutated pathogens.
With the outbreaks of the mid-1980s, the dairy industry realized that under these new conditions, pasteurization was not working. Unfortunately, their solution to the problem was not to go cleaner, but to go hotter. Enter UHT—ultra-high temperature processing.
Old-fashioned, “low-temperature” pasteurization takes milk to 150 F—hot enough to destroy most of the enzymes in milk, many of which protect against pathogens, while others attach to vitamins and minerals in order to make them easy to absorb. High-temperature pasteurization (also called flash pasteurization) takes milk to 161 F, hot enough to kill all the enzymes and denature some of the proteins.
Ultrapasteurization takes milk to 284 F—hotter, much hotter, than the boiling point—by rushing this most fragile, delicate food past superheated stainless steel plates. The process kills bacterial endospores—tough, dormant structures produced by many pathogens, which allows them to “hibernate” and come back to life when conditions are sufficiently favorable (such as the small intestine). The process also kills everything else, including nutrients, enzymes, and proteins.
UHT milk comes packaged in aseptic, sterile containers—it needs no refrigeration and has a shelf life of six to nine months—a boon to retailers. The process was developed in Europe—I remember seeing stacks of these aseptic containers in supermarkets in France when I lived there in the early 1980s and wondering why anyone would buy milk that didn’t spoil.
In the early 1990s, the Italian company Parmalat introduced its UHT milk to the United States. American consumers resisted purchasing unrefrigerated milk, so the industry packaged it in traditional containers and sold it from the refrigerator aisle.
According to Parmalat’s website, “UHT milk is the same as fresh milk but simply uses a different pasteurization process. It contains a lot of nutrients that are good for your body, just like fresh milk.” It adds, “With our special pasteurization process, our milk doesn’t need to be stored in the fridge until opened. This means you can store as many bottles as you want and never run out of milk.”
A 2019 study from China titled “Processing milk causes the formation of protein oxidation products which impair spatial learning and memory in rats,” indicates that UHT milk is not like fresh milk at all. The researchers subjected milk to four processing techniques: boiling, microwave heating, spray drying, and freeze-drying. (Boiling takes milk to 212 F—ultra-pasteurization is much hotter.)
All four techniques (even freeze-drying) caused “various degrees of redox state imbalance and oxidative damage in plasma, liver, and brain tissues.” Feeding damaged milk proteins to rats resulted in learning and memory impairment—why would any parent want to give UHT milk to their kids?
The researchers concluded that “… humans should control milk protein oxidation and improve the processing methods applied to food.”
Other researchers have noted that “The major protein modifications that occur during UHT treatment are denaturation and aggregation of the protein, and chemical modifications of its amino acids.” Damaged milk proteins are likely to cause allergies. Today, milk allergy is the number one allergy and according to statistics provided by the Asthma and Allergy Network, we can estimate that modern milk causes approximately twenty deaths from anaphylactic shock per year!
Most milk sold today in supermarkets is UHT milk—even organic milk is UHT. But it is not used in fermented products—check the labels for sour cream or cheese. These products are made from pasteurized—not UHT milk—most likely because UHT milk is so dead that it will not ferment. That’s another way of saying that UHT milk is indigestible, as fermentation is a form of digestion.
A recent listeria outbreak causing two deaths and more than twenty hospitalizations initiated a Feb. 5 recall of pasteurized cheese, yogurt, and sour cream—an indication that pasteurization doesn’t ensure safety in fermented dairy foods.
UHT milk has served as a temporary fix for the dairy industry, but it will ultimately be its undoing. Milk consumption in the United States has declined by half since 1970, and the dairy industry has been unable to reverse the trend. It blames competition from sodas and plant-based “milk,” but won’t admit that UHT processing makes milk unpalatable, allergenic, and indigestible.
How to Find Good Old-Fashioned, Unprocessed Milk
The public is wising up to the problems of consuming ultra-processed food, and UHT milk is by any definition an ultra-processed food. This may be why sales of raw milk are booming. The website realmilk.com receives more than 320,000 visits per month, mostly to the Raw Milk Finder page. The site lists 3000 sources of raw milk in the United States and there are many more dairies that choose not to be listed—yet raw milk farmers are reporting that they can’t produce enough to meet the demand. Raw Farm in California provides raw milk products from a herd of 1,200 cows, and they sell it all.
My prediction: Within 20 years UHT milk will be a thing of the past, recognized as a misuse of technology, a rust belt solution that ruins the goodness of Nature’s perfect food. We have many elegant technologies today—stainless steel, on-site testing, a national cold chain, and moveable electric fencing that makes grazing feasible—which allow us to get clean raw milk safely to every person in America. “Get bigger, go hotter” is not the future. The future is small and medium grass-based farms selling raw milk directly to grateful customers.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 21:00 - Mr. Bean Was Right – And So Was Toyota
Mr. Bean Was Right – And So Was Toyota
Authored by Duggan Flanakin via RealClear Wire,
When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as a eco-traitor.
Atkinson had added, “We’re realizing that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.” These include, he said, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic fuels that would extend the lives of older vehicles long after governments are demanding they be scrapped.
Atkinson, who has a bachelor’s in electrical and electronic engineering and a master’s in control systems, urged Britons to “look at a bigger picture” to include greenhouse gas emissions during the manufacture of electric vehicles and to evaluate the whole life cycle of motor vehicles.
Relying on a dash of common sense, Atkinson noted that pushing so heavily so soon for EVs that have major flaws will result in “millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries.” Technologic developments with hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which can power existing internal combustion engines, may prove a better long-term solution. For one reason, the owners of the world’s 1.5 billion ICE vehicles could continue enjoying them.
For sharing his insights, Atkinson was immediately smacked around by snarky reporters and EV “experts.” Simon Evans, deputy editor at Carbon Brief, slammed Atkinson for not adhering to Carbon Brief’s own “evidence” from years back stating that EVs cut “planet-warming emissions” by two-thirds on a life cycle basis and calling EVs “an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.”
How dare he?
Michael Coren, writing in the Washington Post, portrayed Atkinson as an iconoclast clinging to his petrol car, lampooned hydrogen and synthetic fuels as expensive and impractical, and compared ICE vehicles to hobby horses. Coren argued that “making every car burn [hydrogen] is not a good idea,” yet implied that forcing every driver to buy an EV is a very good idea.
Eight months later, though, the detractors who had hoped to make Atkinson an example of a troglodyte were singing a different tune, in the wake of a collapse in the British EV market.
Mr. Bean was condemned in the House of Lords by the Green Alliance as “partly at fault for ‘damaging’ public perceptions” of EVs and as a dangerous enemy of Britain’s drive to Net Zero. The Guardian, which published Atkinson’s tome, was accused indirectly of failing to adhere to “high editorial standards around the Net Zero transition.”
[Translation: ONLY glowing reports on EVs are acceptable public speech.]
It couldn’t have been the exorbitant cost of auto insurance for EVs, their tendency to catch fire and burn for days, or the high cost and long wait times for parts and repairs – or the long waits at charging stations to plug in and wait for enough charge at least to reach the next destination. Nor could it be that people are uncomfortable enriching China as their own auto companies face bankruptcy? No – it was allowing someone to publicly question the rush to electrification.
Halfway around the world, Toyota, which “lagged behind” its major competitors in ditching their ICE vehicle fleets for all-EV production lines, “is riding a windfall of hybrid vehicle sales on its way to posting projected net profits of more than $30 billion.” While Ford lost $4.7 billion trying to create an EV market, dropping its net profit to just $4.2 billion, Toyota now appears to be in better financial shape than its American and European competitors.
Over a year ago, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda had cautioned that the EV transition would “take longer than the media would like us to believe.” Ford, GM, Stellantis, and many other automakers worldwide played nice with the political and financial giants while Toyota’s management stepped away from the rhetoric, looked at the numbers, and chose a commonsense approach to the evolving world auto marketplace.
The company did sell 15,000 pure EVs in the U.S. in 2023, but they also sold 40,000 plug-in hybrids and more than 600,000 non-rechargeable hybrids out of total U.S. sales of 2,248,477 vehicles, a 6% increase from 2022 levels. Ford fell short of its goal to produce 300,000 EVs a year by 2023 and has revised its earlier forecast of 2 million EVs by 2026. Worse, Ford now expects to lose as much as $5.5 billion on EVs in 2024.
Over in Europe, Volvo just announced it is withdrawing support for its marquee electric vehicle Polestar and hopes to sell its 48% stake, possibly to a Chinese buyer. Just days earlier, Polestar had cut 450 jobs, about 15% of its workforce.
Elsewhere in Europe, EV sales are expected to decline in 2024 in Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, and Renault just scrapped plans to spin off its Ampere EVs, blaming a lack of interest from investors and a slowdown in sales.
EV sales in the United Kingdom also flatlined in 2023, prices for used EVs fell sharply, raising questions about their residual value. Even EV-friendly Switzerland admits it will take at least 20 years to fully electrify its fleet; while EVs and hybrids today comprise about 30% of Swiss new car sales, these vehicles amount to less than 4% of the total national fleet.
Oil and gas companies are getting the message, too. BP, which once billed itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” has been encouraged by an activist investor to reduce its investments in renewables and recommit to oil and gas. A major reason – oil and gas investments in recent years have boomed while investments in renewables have faltered. Bluebell Capital Partners asserted that BP’s commitment to renewable has left its stock price undervalued by 50% compared to ExxonMobil and Chevron.
President Biden’s demand that the U.S. comply with his EV mandates was dealt a major blow last month, when auto rental giant Hertz, heretofore the nation’s largest fleet operator of electric vehicles, announced it was selling all 20,000 of its EVs and not buying any more. The company cited high repair costs and weak demand for EV rentals. Karl Bauer of iSeeCars.com, noting that mainstream consumers were already hesitant to buy and EV, said “the larger impact of the Hertz EV fire sale is the perception hit to the technology.”
The fictional Mr. Bean is known (and revered) for his original and often absurd solutions to problems and his total disregard for others while solving them, and for his pettiness and occasional malevolence. Had the British press mocked Mr. Atkinson for a Bean-like performance, the climate emergency propagandists might have laughed him off successfully.
But they are not able to laugh without derision.
The real Mr. Atkinson, like the decision makers at Toyota, is espousing commonsense wisdom such as “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” Extending the lifespan of existing vehicles, even with currently high-cost hydrogen or synthetic fuels, is far better for the environment than junking them for electric vehicles that require diesel fuel to power charging stations.
If, as we are told, EV batteries will soon be smaller, cheaper, and stronger, that day has not yet come. Just as likely, the cost of hydrogen and synthetics will also drop significantly, and those fuels can power existing ICE vehicles. Most of all, if there truly was a “climate emergency,” diplomats would be quicker to end military conflicts and ending the rush by China and India to build more and more coal-fired power plants (needed, of course, to charge EV batteries).
What Mr. Bean and Toyota are truly saying to the world is that mandates – government deciding what can and cannot go to market – and the huge subsidies that go along with them (which would be unnecessary in a true emergency) are at war with the wisdom of the market, which relies on true public opinion as to what is best for the consumer.
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 20:20 - Insensitive Racial Prejudice? Classic Tomb Raider Games Re-Released With “Trigger Warnings”
Insensitive Racial Prejudice? Classic Tomb Raider Games Re-Released With “Trigger Warnings”
Was the world more racist 28 years ago compared to today? Or, are people today simply more inclined to see “cultural insensitivity” where none exists? We all know the answer – Diversity and inclusion now infect every aspect of our society and every form of entertainment. They are no longer a matter of academic discourse, but a matter of political imperative.
Why? Because a tiny group of obsessed cultists demands it. In the west we’re supposed to walk on eggshells whenever minority issues are at play. In fact, we’re supposed to place minority issues above all else and beg for forgiveness for every imagined trespass, even when it comes to video games.
If you grew up in the 1990s the notion of “harmful stereotypes” was probably furthest from your mind. You didn’t care if a movie or video game starred a female or minority character, you only cared if the product was fun, exciting and well made. This was before the dark days of woke entitlement when race was usually meaningless, jokes were just jokes, words were just words and if you robbed an ancient tomb in a game that didn’t mean you would ever do something similar in real life.
Leftists have no grasp of this concept. In the 2020s, words are violence, feelings are reality and playing the wrong game could conceivably get you canceled. This seems to be the attitude of software developer Crystal Dynamics, the license holder of the beloved Tomb Raider video game franchise.
The classic IP launched by Eidos Interactive in 1996 just after the premier of the Sony Playstation became an immediate hit. The 3D graphics were cutting edge for the time, including cinematics, beautiful environments and an emotional musical score. However, it was the character of Lara Croft that had gamers hooked: A sexy female version of Indiana Jones who lusted after adventure and treasure.
Crystal Dynamics abandoned and erased the old Lara Croft not long after they got their hands on the licensing, making new games featuring a dark and depressing anti-Croft. She was a short, stumpy, grumpy and decidedly less flirtatious feminist desperate to make amends for her grave robbing past and white privilege. The company made it clear with their story changes as early as 2013 that the original character was “problematic” to them.
Though feminists derided Tomb Raider as a fantasy for teenage boys rather than an empowering symbol for girls, the early games had a decidedly large female fanbase with 30% to 40% of players (depending on the poll) being women (a large number for the action/adventure genre). Both men and women loved the old Tomb Raider, and this led to a call from consumers for a remaster of the first three classic games.
Fans asked for a remaster for years with almost no feedback from Crystal Dynamics. People began to suspect that, perhaps, the company hated the old franchise so much due to their politics that they were refusing to acknowledge its existence and even willing to lose money.
This now appears to have been confirmed. Crystal Dynamics was purchased by Embracer Group in 2022 and the new owners jumped immediately on the prospect of remastering the old games for a highly anticipated re-release. While CD is owned by Embracer, they still retained some control over the development rights to Tomb Raider.
Most likely, the re-release of the originals was not their idea nor something they agreed with, but they had no choice. Instead, they decided to sabotage the remastered versions by including “trigger warnings” at the beginning of the games.
“The games in this collection contain offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices. These stereotypes are deeply harmful, inexcusable, and do not align with our values at Crystal Dynamics. Rather than removing this content, we have chosen to present it here in its original form, unaltered, in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it.”
The company does not specify what instances of racial prejudice or stereotypes they’re referring to. They also don’t explain what harmful impact the old games could have possibly had. One wonders if they ever played the original games, because their trigger warnings make little sense.
The problem with leftists is, the violations of their social justice sensibilities never need to be specific, they can be vague or even imaginary. When woke gatekeepers decide that a franchise is bad, for any reason, the collective follows without question.
As we witnessed with the turbulent release of the Harry Potter themed ‘Hogwarts Legacy,’ leftists are rabidly insistent that all popular media and creators conform to their DEI ideology. After Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling spoke out openly against the insanity of the trans movement and men pretending to be women, Hogwarts Legacy was targeted for destruction.
The planned boycott failed in hilarious fashion, with Legacy becoming one of the best selling titles in recent gaming history. Leftists were livid, and for good reason; they had stuck their necks out too far too fast. Their egomania made them vulnerable and their failure made the public realize that the reach of woke activists was far smaller than many people assumed. The woke left was a paper tiger, an astroturf movement backed only by corporations but not by a large percentage of the population.
In the case of Tomb Raider, it feels as if Crystal Dynamics is asking gamers to boycott their own product. Or, perhaps they’re afraid that the classics (under the oversight of new management) will outsell their newer feminist catalog and make them look foolish. The woke movement is in many ways nothing more than a war on nostalgia and our love of the past. They don’t have to have a logical reason to hate a particular pop icon. It doesn’t matter if the vast majority of people love a thing, if it’s not modernized and DEI dominated then leftists want it gone.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 20:00 - The Reagan Miracle, 40 Years Later
The Reagan Miracle, 40 Years Later
Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Wire,
Forty years ago, America was at a peak of optimism, technological opportunity, and self-confidence.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter suffered the worst electoral college defeat for an incumbent president in American history. By 1984, President Ronald Reagan had turned the country around – and the American people knew it.
We had cut through Carter’s malaise and the politics of limitation and embraced Reagan’s belief in a better future. “You ain’t seen nothing yet” was one of his favorite terms.
Psychologically, we had shifted from fear of technology and desperate catastrophism to the positive belief that we could invent a better future. It was no accident that on March 23, 1983, President Reagan gave a nationwide speech about a “Strategic Defense Initiative.” The liberal media – which generally hated Reagan – ridiculed his proposal as “Star Wars.” Today, a modernized version of the same system is effectively defending Israel from missile attacks.
The economy was rapidly recovering from the Carter stagflation, which had peaked at 13 percent inflation and 8 percent unemployment (Reagan dubbed these statistics “the misery index.”)
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher faced the same struggle in Great Britain. With commitment and courage which rivaled his friend Thatcher, Reagan endured a deep recession to break the back of inflation in America. He paid a cost in lost Republican congressional seats in 1982. However, the medicine had worked. Gross national product increased 6 percent in one year from the fourth quarter of 1982 to the fourth quarter of 1983. The overall economy was rushing back.
Americans were sufficiently confident about the future. Reagan’s slogan for 1984 was “Morning in America,” and Americans believed it.
The optimism carried over into foreign policy. When asked about the long conflict with the Soviet Empire, Reagan commented simply: “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.” On every economic, technological, and psychological front, Reagan was crowding the Soviets into collapse. The U.S.S.R. dissolved 11 years after Reagan was sworn in for his first term.
President Reagan’s achievements were amazing. But we have wandered off the path of optimism and success. We must relearn what made Reagan successful – and what made America the “shining city on a hill.”
A new book by Craig Shirley (the leading Reagan historian and biographer) called “The Search For Reagan” is a superb introduction to the complex, determined, cheerful – but deeply realistic – man who turned America around.
In 1984, I made my own contribution to the potential Reagan was creating when I wrote my first book, “Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future.”
In that book, I wrote “there exists for the United States today a window of opportunity…to create a bright and optimistic future for our children and grandchildren.” However, I warned “If..we continue the policies of the last twenty years, that window will close and we will bequeath to them a pessimistic future of economic and social decay.” Over 272 pages, I outlined the kind of visionary future which Reaganism could create.
Tragically, a large part of the Republican Party had no understanding of Reagan’s optimism, idealism, and passionate belief in a better future. His willingness to work for visionary goals seemed unrealistic to traditional politicians – yet, it was the key to Reagan’s success.
Shirley’s new book – and my 40-year-old statement of the America that could have been created – are useful guides. I hope you will read them. Just like we did with Carter in 1980, I believe we can leave Joe Biden’s malaise. Four years from now, we can be in a remarkably safer, stronger, more prosperous country. We only need to relearn the habits and policies that work.
If we come together and determine what we must do now to create a better future, we can return to “morning in America.”
For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 19:40 - Special Counsel Casts Pre-Election Doubt On Biden 'Burisma Bribe' With Dramatic Airport Arrest
Special Counsel Casts Pre-Election Doubt On Biden ‘Burisma Bribe’ With Dramatic Airport Arrest
Last June, the leaked contents of a stonewalled FBI document, form FD-1023, alleging that President Joe Biden was paid $5 million by an executive of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, where his son Hunter sat on the board, and also received an alleged $5 million.
The form, dated June 30, 2020, was from a “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS) who had detailed multiple meetings and conversations they had with a top Burisma executive over the course of several years, beginning in 2015. The CHS had been working with the FBI as a regular, reliable source of information since 2010, and has been paid approximately $200,000 by the bureau.
Now, as the 2024 election heats up, that source – Alexander Smirnov, 43, has been arrested and charged with lying about the bribes by special counsel David Weiss, who is investigating Hunter Biden.
According to the NY Times, “The story Mr. Smirnov told investigators was part of a series of explosive and unsubstantiated claims by Republicans that the Bidens engaged in potentially criminal activity — allegations central to the party’s efforts to impeach the president.”
Smirnov faces a two-count indictment for making false statements and obstructing the government’s long-running investigation into Hunter Biden. He faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
Smirnov was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday after disembarking from an international flight, and was expected to appear on Thursday before a federal judge.
According to the indictment, Smirnov lied when he said that Hunter Biden promised to protect Burisma “through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” and was only in contact with Burisma executives in 2017, after Biden left office.
Smirnov is accused of exaggerating his “routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma” into “bribery allegations” against Joe Biden.
Which raises the question – if Smirnov told the FBI about the alleged bribery in confidence – and had no expectation of a ‘leaked’ FD-1023 becoming central to Republican investigations, what did he have to gain from lying?
And why charge him with lying now?
If this paid, long-term, trusted FBI confidential human source really did lie to his FBI handler when he alleged that Joe and Hunter Biden each had received a $5m bribe from Burisma, then he deserves what he gets.
But:
1. Why didn’t Weiss investigate the CHS’ allegations in the…— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 15, 2024
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Weird how the corrupt DOJ never managed to charge Christopher Steele, who peddled lie after lie after lie about Trump to DOJ. In fact, instead of charging him, they paid him. https://t.co/JPxwOMmXHZ
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 16, 2024
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 19:20 - Climate Agenda Set To Push Food Prices Even Higher, Analysts Say
Climate Agenda Set To Push Food Prices Even Higher, Analysts Say
Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
As inflation remains stubbornly high, farmers throughout the Western world are warning that cost increases from the net zero movement will drive food prices still higher, while simultaneously putting many smaller farmers out of business.
A customer shops for meat at a Safeway store in San Francisco, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) January inflation numbers showed that prices increased by 3.1 percent over what they were a year ago, indicating that the fight against inflation, while progressing, has not been won.
Overall, prices have surged by nearly 18 percent since January 2021 when President Joe Biden took office.
Americans are struggling in an economy in which, by official statistics, nearly one-fifth of the value of their dollars has evaporated in three years—though many will say the cost of food and other essentials has become more expensive than what the official numbers state.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which tracks food prices, offers an optimistic assessment of the coming year. After having gone up 9.9 percent in 2022, the USDA states, “[food] prices grew more slowly in 2023,” increasing by only 5.8 percent.
“Food prices are expected to continue to decelerate in 2024,” the USDA projects.
While some predict that the worst is behind us, analysts of the U.S. farming industry say there is another round of price inflation in the works, which will come from the Biden administration’s “whole of government” effort to reduce global temperatures.
A recent report by the Buckeye Institute attempts to quantify the cost of Bidenomics to farmers.
The report, titled “Net-Zero Climate-Control Policies Will Fail the Farm,” projects that farmers will see costs rise by at least 34 percent, which will increase the household grocery bill for an American family of four by more than $1,300 per year.
“Complying with net-zero emissions policies and corporate ESG reporting requirements will increase prices of farm inputs, the costs of which will ultimately be passed onto consumers at grocery stores and restaurants,” the report states.
“This is where the left is going, trying to get to net zero,” Rea Hederman, executive director of the Buckeye Institute’s economic research center, told The Epoch Times. And the costs imposed on farmers are in addition to price hikes from inflation, weather, or other factors that typically impact food prices.
“The fact that the federal government printed too much money, this is on top of that,” Mr. Hederman said, “and it’s a sustained increase, not a temporary fluctuation in food prices, because you’re building higher baseline operating costs that are going to be permanent for farmers going forward.”
The report analyzed an average U.S. farm, which is about 700 acres in size, producing corn. It then summed the costs of complying with net zero mandates, as well as price increases on fuel, fertilizer, and other supplies from the various net zero initiatives that are either in place or expected to take effect.
The report projects that the cost base of this farm will escalate from $192,000 to $257,000 as a result. As costs trickle down to consumers, the grocery bill for a family of four would increase from $8,320 to $9,650—a 15 percent increase.
“It’s important for people to understand that when you’re raising costs to farmers, that is being passed on to consumers of food, and some types of food are going to be impacted more,” Mr. Hederman said. “So for example, beef is going to go up more than oranges because if you’re raising the cost of corn, that’s an input to beef, so beef suffers a double whammy.”
The average price of ground beef increased from $3.97 per pound in January 2021 to $5.03 per pound in January 2024, according to Federal Reserve statistics.
Cattle ranchers are struggling not only with higher feed and fuel costs but also drought in many parts of the United States, which has reduced herd size.
According to EPA estimates, agriculture accounted for 10.6 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, with the bulk of those emissions coming from livestock and fertilizer.
Projected food price increases from net zero policies (Source: The Buckeye Institute) Beef a Luxury
Climate activists often oppose animal farming for this reason, and within that category, beef is the number one target. Of all livestock, beef produces the most greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for about 60 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from farming, studies suggest.
Jais Valeur, CEO of Danish Crown, Europe’s top meat processor, told Denmark’s Berlingske newspaper in 2021 that beef will soon become a luxury because of the emissions from producing it.
“It will be a bit like champagne, namely a luxury product,” Mr. Valeur said. “The beef cattle will be a luxury product that we eat when we need to pamper ourselves.”
Olive oil, salt, and pepper are all you need to make your steak delicious. (Yuriy Golub/Shutterstock) Many farmers have argued that, while larger corporate farms may be able to weather the additional pricing pressure, net zero policies will be particularly harmful to smaller farms, which will concentrate food production among an ever smaller number of producers.
“Everybody needs food to survive, so farms can pass on a great deal of that cost,” Mr. Hederman said. “But our belief is that family farms, smaller farms, a lot of them will sell out or go out of business because they do not have as much access to capital.”
Farming, with its use of heavy equipment for planting, harvesting, and transportation, is a capital intensive business. It also requires large amounts of working capital to finance the period between planting crops or raising animals, and when produce or livestock can be sold to market.
This has raised concerns that because of the environmental, social, and governance movement (ESG), which has taken hold among many Wall Street financial institutions, banks will start to penalize farms that fail to comply with ESG criteria, including to reduce emissions.
On Jan. 29, agriculture officials from 12 U.S. states sent letters to banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, urging them not to impose net zero criteria on farmers.
The banks are all members of the U.N. Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), which commits members to achieve U.N. net zero goals throughout their loan portfolios.
While these commitments are confirmed on bank websites, a JPMorgan spokesperson told The Epoch Times that “JPMorgan Chase does not have an agriculture emissions intensity reduction target” and that “we make our own banking, lending, and underwriting decisions and don’t relinquish decision-making to third parties.”
UN Paris Accords Set the Terms
In 2016, the Obama administration signed the United States up to the United Nations Paris Climate Accords.
The agreement commits America to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 percent by 2030 and to reach economy-wide net zero emissions by 2050.
In 2017, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement.
On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he recommitted the United States to the Paris Accords.
According to the Buckeye report, the biggest drivers of the current price hikes are the increased cost of fertilizers, many of which are derivatives of natural gas, and the increased cost of diesel and propane.
“After recommitting the United States to the net-zero climate-control agenda, the president and Congress revived significant misguided features of the once-failed ‘Green New Deal’ through the Inflation Reduction Act,” the report states.
This includes using executive orders to restrict oil and natural gas supply, blocking drilling leases on federal lands, canceling pipelines, blocking exports of liquid natural gas, and enacting a Securities Exchange Commission mandate to require audited reports of greenhouse gas emissions, which would apply to farmers.
“These federal initiatives and requirements will prove expensive and economically destructive here—just as they have been in Europe,” the report states.
‘Canary in the Coal Mine’
Europe leads the United States in enacting net zero provisions, and farmers there have been squeezed by rising costs as a result. Farmer protests have erupted throughout Europe over the past year, most recently breaking out in the UK and France, in response to government efforts to cut the use of synthetic fertilizers and clamp down on agricultural CO2 emissions, with the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
In the face of popular dissent, government officials in Europe have begun to backpedal on their commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030, and by 90 percent by 2040.
The European Commission, which is the executive of the European Union, indicated that it would now consider exempting farmers from many of its climate mandates.
“You can look at Europe as the canary in the coal mine,” Mr. Hederman said. “We’re seeing what happens when you drive up fertilizer costs, playing out all over Europe right now.
“European governments are starting to have second thoughts about the draconian nature of the rules they are implementing, because they’re realizing this is not going to be sustainable and because farmers are furious,” he stated.
A slogan which reads “Hunger will be our fate” is displayed on a tractor as farmers block the entrance of a Leclerc supermarket in Le Mans, northwestern France, on Jan. 26, 2024, as part of a nationwide day of protests called by several farmers unions on pay, tax and regulations. Farmers have fumed at what they say is a squeeze on purchase prices for produce by supermarket and industrial buyers, as well as complex environmental regulations. (GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP) As farmers struggle, some climate activists see a solution in food alternatives, such as insect-based and fungi-based foods.
In a 2021 interview with the MIT Technology Review, Microsoft founder Bill Gates discussed developments in laboratory production and scientific modifications to livestock farming. Mr. Gates is an investor in synthetic food manufacturing companies, including Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Upside Foods.
“I don’t think the poorest 80 countries will be eating synthetic meat [but] I do think all rich countries should move to 100 percent synthetic beef,” he said. “You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 19:00 - Biden 'Mis-Remembered' Again: Hur Never Brought Up Beau's Death, The President Did
Biden ‘Mis-Remembered’ Again: Hur Never Brought Up Beau’s Death, The President Did
Hours after last week’s release of special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents — which described the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” — Team Biden pushed their man in front of reporters in a hopeless bid to demonstrate that his mind is fully intact.
It backfired in various ways, most notably when Biden referred to Egyptian President Sissi as the president of Mexico — in a week in which he’d already twice confused the dead male German chancellor Helmut Kohl with the living female Angela Merkel, and confused the late French president François Mitterand with President Emmanuel Macron.
Now, sources say a more significant Biden statement during that press conference was also false.
First, some more background. In addition to not remembering what years he served as vice president, the special counsel report said that, in his interview with investigators, Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
At his press conference, Biden lashed out at Hur for insensitively grilling him about Beau’s death from cancer at age 46:
“I know there’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
“How in the hell dare he raise that.”
President Biden slams Special Counsel Robert Hur’s claim that he struggled to remember details about his son Beau’s death. pic.twitter.com/2d4sAlRuDC
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 9, 2024
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Big Media ran with Biden’s narrative. For example, at The New York Times, an utterly credulous, unquestioning Katie Rogers — sounding every bit like a Biden campaign proxy — devoted an article to Biden’s Beau-centered attack on Hur, describing Biden’s “chin quivering either from anger or sadness.” In what’s positioned as a straight news article, she concluded with this state-media salute:
A president who has infused his son’s memory into his presidency wanted to make one thing clear, to both the special counsel’s office and to his critics. “I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away,” Mr. Biden said.
Rogers and other “journalists” covering the story didn’t even entertain the possibility that Biden — who routinely invokes Beau in various remarks to secure the sympathy of his audience — was the one who brought Beau’s death up during the 5-hour special counsel interview.
Now, citing two sources with knowledge of the interview, NBC News reports that it was indeed Biden who raised the topic of his son’s death. They say he did so when investigators asked about his activities at his Virginia rental home between 2016 and 2018, a time during which Biden was working with a ghost writer on a memoir about the loss of Beau, who died in 2015:
Biden began trying to recall that period by discussing what else was happening in his life, and it was at that point in the interview that he appeared confused about when Beau died, the sources said. Biden got the date — May 30 — correct, but not the year.
Joe Biden credibly links his son’s cancer death to his exposure to toxic military burn pits in Iraq, but often incorrectly tells audiences Beau died in Iraq (Khalid Mohammed/ Pool via AP and MilitaryTimes) The NBC News report comes after several days of Biden defenders parroting the questionable attack on Hur. “Why in the hell are you asking that question?” asked Obama Attorney General Eric Holder on MSNBC. “What does that have to do with the retention of classified documents?”
Team Biden’s exploitation of Beau’s death didn’t end with media spin — they also used it in a Biden-Harris fundraising email. Packaged as if it were sent by Jill Biden, it contains this enormously hypocritical line, purportedly from the First Lady: “I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points.”
All that said, Democrats’ campaign to persuade Americans that Biden is fit for office isn’t working: 62% of registered voters have “major concerns” about whether Biden has the requisite mental and physical strength to serve five more years.
It couldn’t help when Biden, lashing out at Hur, went blank as he tried to remember the name of the church that gave Beau the rosary beads that Biden wears daily:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 18:25 - Biden Staffer Who Mishandled China, Iran Secrets Retains High-Security Pentagon Job
Biden Staffer Who Mishandled China, Iran Secrets Retains High-Security Pentagon Job
Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClear Investigations,
While Special Counsel Robert K. Hur has raised the issue of mental deterioration in explaining why he declined to prosecute 81-year-old Joe Biden for illegal retention and sharing of classified documents, the president chose another rationale to declare himself not culpable: He shifted the blame to the staffers who boxed up his records as he left the vice president’s office in 2017.
At a press conference hastily assembled after the report’s release, Biden said he assumed his aides had shipped “all” the documents to the National Archives in College Park, Md. “I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved and where,” he said. “I thought they were being moved to the Archives. I thought all of it was being moved [there].”
The president’s explanation does not address how and why he shared classified material with a ghostwriter, but it shines a light on the longtime assistant who was in charge of packing his papers, Kathy S. Chung.
Chung, an old friend of Hunter Biden, began working for Joe Biden in 2012 when he was vice president. She told investigators she oversaw the transfer of the contents of Biden’s file cabinets and desk drawers into 15 boxes when he moved out of the West Wing in January 2017. While other office material did go to the National Archives, Hur rebuked Biden for keeping more than 600 pages of classified information – including military secrets and intelligence sources and methods – in unlocked and unauthorized containers at multiple locations, including a tattered box in the garage of Biden’s Delaware home. The stash included information marked “top secret” involving Iran, China, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. Some of the secrets are compartmented by codewords and can only be stored and read in a secure facility known as a SCIF.
The Biden documents that Chung herself packed, unpacked, and repacked “are the most highly classified, sensitive and compartmented materials recovered during our investigation,” Hur wrote.
Yet the prosecutor let Chung as well as Biden off the hook in also declining to press charges against her, explaining that he found plausible her account that she packed and kept the classified papers “by mistake, ”even though she had prior government experience handling and identifying classified information and was told in a Jan. 3, 2017, National Security Council memo to be sure to remove “only unclassified personal records,” and despite providing inconsistent answers to investigators.
After the election, Biden appointed Chung to a top Pentagon position serving as assistant to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, where she has access to the nation’s most sensitive military secrets.
Hur also went to great lengths to protect her identity in his 388-page report. He refers to her only as “Executive Assistant” and her face is deliberately blurred through pixilation in a photo he published of her sitting in front of a file cabinet in her West Wing office, where she stored Biden’s secret papers.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served as President Barack Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency director and President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, is among those who believe Chung deserves far more public scrutiny. “What is very clear is Chung needs to be further investigated,” Flynn told RealClearInvestigations. “She should have her clearance immediately suspended and probably revoked completely.”
This is not the first time Chung has been found to have mishandled sensitive government documents. In the late 1990s, when she worked with Hunter Biden at the Commerce Department as an administrator, she and her boss Melissa Moss were cited by a federal judge for failing to turn over documents sought in a Freedom of Information Act case, as RealClearInvestigations first reported. They were accused of withholding and even destroying key documents in a search that the judge ruled “grossly inadequate” and “unlawful.”
A lawyer for Chung did not respond to requests for comment.
Chung was interviewed twice by FBI agents: once on Jan. 4, 2023, and again on Sept. 28, 2023. Details of Chung’s key role in one of Washington’s worst violations of laws safeguarding national security secrets are reported here for the first time. Hur’s own report, however, undermines his conclusion that Chung was likely unaware of the voluminous classified material she repeatedly handled.
The record shows that Chung personally dispersed the sensitive material to at least three locations in the years when Biden was out of office, 2017-2021 – including two temporary office sites before they were “discovered” in 2022 at the Penn Biden Center in D.C. in an unlocked office frequented by visitors. She routinely retrieved files Biden requested – some stamped with the label “EYES ONLY” which she knew to mean the contents inside were classified. And many of the classified folders include markings in her handwriting. She also helped identify material in 2022, when the president’s retention of classified documents became an issue after his Department of Justice raided Donald Trump’s Florida home in search of secret material.
The path that the highly sensitive national security documents took from the White House is a circuitous one fraught with potential breaches of security.
‘Eyes Only’
In the last days of Biden’s vice presidency, Chung packed up his files from his West Wing suite, the bulk of which were stored in the front office she manned. She said she packed the materials in boxes provided by the General Services Administration in an operation that took “a couple of days” in January 2017. Chung told investigators she “did not believe the files contained classified documents.” She claimed she did not pay close attention to what she was packing, because she was in a hurry. However, she also said she knew at the time that Biden “was going to write a book,” which she helped him research.
Chung first shipped the 15 boxes to a nearby “transition office” leased by the GSA, where some of the boxes were unpacked and where she met with Biden over the next six months. At the same time, Biden rented a home in McLean, Va., where Hur said some of the classified materials appear to have ended up in Biden’s basement office.
It’s unclear if Chung had a role in moving any of the boxes to the McLean rental, but after the GSA lease expired in May 2017, she reloaded the boxes in her car and moved them to a private office that she leased in D.C., according to a partial transcript of her closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee. “It was near Chinatown,” she told lawmakers during her April 4, 2023, deposition.
The boxes containing highly classified papers remained at the site for several months. Curiously, Hur mentions this location only in passing, even though it was an important link in the chain of custody. It does not appear that he investigated the security system there. Nor does it appear that Chung was asked what she or Biden did with the files while they were stored there. In a footnote, Hur noted that Biden met with the former prime minister of Ukraine at that temporary office space in May 2017.
Then in October 2017, Chung relocated the 15 boxes a few blocks away to the newly built Penn Biden Center on the sixth floor of another D.C. office building, where she unpacked Biden’s White House documents – including some marked “top secret” – and placed them into a three-drawer filing cabinet in her outer office adjoining Biden’s office, which was designed to resemble his old West Wing suite. Other documents were left in boxes stacked in an unlocked storage closet, refuting initial White House claims they were stored in a “locked closet.” Remarkably, the entire office suite was never locked up, which meant virtually anybody who got past the security guard in the lobby of the building had access to the classified files stored there.
“Mr. Biden’s office did not lock,” Hur noted in his report, “and the adjoining outer office where Mr. Biden’s executive assistant maintained his files was always accessible through Mr. Biden’s office.” In a footnote, Hur added that “the Vice President’s office could only be locked from the inside using a panic button.”
Office security got even more “relaxed” in early 2019, Hur revealed, when visitors to the Penn Biden Center no longer needed a key fob or an escort to access the sixth floor of the building. Biden’s office, filled with secret government documents including high-level memos on China, was left virtually open to the public – including University of Pennsylvania students who took classes at the center and were allowed to work in the office space during the day.
The center is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, which has received several million dollars from anonymous Chinese donors since opening the center. In 2020, the center hosted a symposium featuring Chinese communist officials.
It’s not known if Hunter Biden – who introduced Chung to his father in 2012 and got her the job in his White House office – escorted any of his Chinese business partners to the sixth floor. But Hunter had access to the center. The Chinese nationals, who paid Hunter millions of dollars, have been connected to Chinese military intelligence. One of them, Chi Ping “Patrick” Ho, who was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation and later convicted of bribery, kept an office in the D.C. area.
Hur said his team was unable to determine exactly who may have had access to the loosely stored intelligence papers and whether they passed through foreign hands: “We cannot account for all visitors to the center.” Why? The security contractor deleted all the visitor logs for the years 2017 through 2021, he explained.
Chung claimed she doesn’t remember seeing any classified papers or any classified markings on the documents she packed, unpacked, and ultimately repacked – at the request of Biden’s lawyers – in 2022.
“The executive assistant did not specifically recall any of the folders containing classified documents, although she acknowledged that they could have been files she maintained for Mr. Biden in the West Wing,” Hur wrote in his report.
Chung was quite familiar with their contents, however. Many of the file folders were marked with her handwriting. Numerous files also contained handwritten notes from Biden advising Chung that he wanted the contents “saved” or “filed,” rather than archived, in case he wanted them later.
“Mr. Biden occasionally asked his executive assistant to retrieve material for him from the files she maintained,” Hur noted, including classified material.
For example, on Dec. 12, 2015, then-Vice President Biden wrote a note to Chung in the corner of a classified paper requesting another classified document he wanted saved for his records. Clearly marked “SECRET,” the document was a “call sheet” detailing the purpose of a call between the then-Ukrainian prime minister and Biden, along with Biden’s talking points for the call. Biden instructed Chung to “[g]et copy of this conversation from Sit Rm [the Situation Room] for my Records please.” Chung, in turn, obtained the transcript Biden ordered and filed it along with the classified call sheet inside a folder labeled “VP Personal,” and stored the folder in a credenza behind her desk, according to the special counsel’s report, which includes an appendix inventorying all of the classified materials investigators recovered from Biden’s sprawling collection.
The Secret Call Sheet
GOP lawmakers leading an impeachment inquiry of Biden want to get their hands on the call sheet and the transcript of Biden’s conversation with the Ukrainian leader, because the conversation took place around the time Biden pressured him to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating a Ukrainian oligarch who was paying his son Hunter millions of dollars to sit on the board of his energy conglomerate, Burisma Holdings.
On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter to Garland asking for the materials by Feb. 19 or he would compel their production through a subpoena. “There is concern that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings,” Comer explained.
FBI agents asked Chung how she could miss so many classified documents in the files she repeatedly handled. She told them she was trained to identify classified documents by the orange or red coversheets that were “usually always” included with such papers. And the classified documents that were recovered did not have such covers, she said, and were mixed in with unclassified materials, so they did not jump out at her.
But the classified Ukraine materials were contained in an envelope marked “EYES ONLY,” as were classified CIA materials she handled concerning the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Still, the envelopes were not technically marked classified, she told the investigators; and besides, she never saw the “EYES ONLY” stamps while packing, unpacking, and repacking the envelopes.
Hur accepted her explanation. “Even if she had seen the envelope,” he wrote, “it is reasonable to believe she did not know the contents were classified and would not have looked inside to check because of the EYES ONLY stamp.” Therefore, he concluded, there was “insufficient evidence” to charge Chung with willful retention of the classified documents in the EYES ONLY envelopes recovered at the Penn Biden Center.
However, in her congressional testimony Chung indicated that she did know that an EYES ONLY stamp on an envelope meant the contents were classified. After a House Oversight Committee staffer asked her, “Can you describe for me how you might know a document’s classified?” Chung replied: “Things that I’ve come across always had a cover on it. It was either orange or red, or it was in an envelope, and those were usually for EYES ONLY.”
At the time of her April 4 testimony, congressional investigators did not know what classified materials had been recovered by the FBI. They did not know she had handled the EYES ONLY Ukrainian and Iranian materials.
Cutting Chung Slack
When Hur’s team interviewed Chung several months later, they had access to the transcript of her earlier testimony. Apparently, Hur never challenged her to explain the inconsistency between what she was telling his investigators and what she told congressional investigators.
Chung had another reason to recognize the classified nature of the Iran nuclear files she maintained: She was directly involved in their production and delivery. The documents were part of a CIA briefing Biden had requested for a closed-door White House breakfast meeting with U.S. senators he held in January 2015 to lobby for their support for the Iran nuclear deal. Before the meeting, Chung worked with a military aide to deliver the Iran briefing papers to the vice president, according to emails.
“Can you pls put note on the docs he [Biden] was asking about to highlight it,” Chung wrote the military aide, who replied, “They just went up [to Biden] and the document said for VP eyes only.”
FBI investigators were able to confirm with the CIA that the Iran “EYES ONLY” package Chung secured and filed for Biden was the same manilla envelope of materials recovered from the Penn Biden Center. Inside the envelope were the CIA briefing papers clearly marked “TOP SECRET” and “INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT.” It also contained about 10 pages of handwritten notes Biden took regarding the briefing, all of which were deemed classified.
Nonetheless, Hur said he found her actions “innocent,” and that she removed the highly classified materials from the White House “unwittingly.” He said the same thing about her retaining classified White House memos about China.
“In her interview with the Special Counsel’s office,” he concluded, “she credibly stated that she did not know the files she maintained included marked classified documents.”
Hur even offered “the possibility that the executive assistant and Mr. Biden simply forgot about them.”
Regarding the unlawful retention of the Iran documents, Hur asked Biden about his 2015 meeting with senators over the Iran nuke deal and his CIA briefing notes during his two-day interview with the president last October. “Mr. Biden had no recollection of the breakfast or the handwritten notes,” the prosecutor reported. Yet in his own 2017 memoir, Biden states that the Iran deal “may be the most momentous” event of the eight years he and Obama were in office. And he specifically boasted of his “effort to convince Congress to sign off on the pact.”
After leaving office, Biden had a continuing interest in the Iran nuclear deal, including defending it against criticism by President Trump, who threatened to pull out of the pact and did so in 2018. In response, Biden prepared speeches and memos with Penn Biden Center staff advocating for the deal. They also developed talking points on the subject for Biden’s meetings with Israeli leaders at the center. Holding on to the Iran intelligence and notes would have helped Biden formulate such arguments and been useful source material for his memoir.
As the guardian of his files, Chung helped Biden research the book, “Promise Me, Dad.” It’s not known if Biden or Chung referenced any of the materials from the boxes in the original manuscript of his book, which was published in November 2017 and revealed insider accounts of Biden’s various roles in U.S. foreign policy, including Ukraine. It also mentioned the Iran nuclear deal, but did not go into detail about the negotiations. Biden listed Chung first among people he acknowledged for their contributions: “Thank you for all of this, and more, to Kathy Chung.”
Chung also worked with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer. In February 2017, about a month after Biden left office, Hur said Biden discussed a classified memo on Afghanistan with Zwonitzer while they met at his McLean, Va., rental home. Zwonitzer taped their conversation, and though he deleted his recordings after learning a special prosecutor had been appointed to investigate Biden’s classified docs scandal, Hur was able to get FBI computer-forensics experts to restore the audio. (Hur declined to prosecute Zwonitzer because he said he couldn’t be sure he was trying to obstruct his investigation.) On the tapes, Biden can be heard saying he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Downstairs from where they met was Biden’s office, where he stored his papers.
Hur believes Biden was referring to the same marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan that FBI agents found in 2022 in his Delaware garage. (He moved the files he kept in his private office in McLean to Wilmington in 2019.) Biden last week denied sharing any classified intelligence with his ghostwriter, and he asserted he has no idea how the classified papers on Afghanistan military strategy and troops wound up in a box in his garage.
Also part of Biden’s book team was Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer, who brokered the contract with the publisher Flatiron Books, an imprint of MacMillan Publishers. Bauer happened to be one of the lawyers who tried to ship Biden’s Penn Biden stash of documents to his home in Wilmington and to a law office in Boston just a few months before the Justice Department raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate looking for classified documents.
In effect, Hur exonerated Chung and Biden over the highly classified documents that were stashed in closets, credenzas, and cabinets at the Penn Biden Center. He concluded that the boxes of secret White House papers simply ended up there “by mistake.”
“The evidence suggests that the marked classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center were sent and kept there by mistake,” he concluded in his report. “Therefore, we decline any criminal charges related to those documents.”
The Department of Justice gave former President Trump and his aides no such benefit of the doubt concerning the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump for “willful retention of classified documents,” among other alleged crimes. He also charged two Mar-a-Lago employees with conspiracy to conceal classified records and obstruction of justice.
Trump is expected to file a motion to dismiss the DOJ’s case against him, arguing “selective prosecution” based on DOJ declining to indict Biden over similar allegations. His lawyers have until Feb. 18 to file such pretrial motions.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 18:20 - Today In CRE's Collapse: Philadelphia's 1515 Market Put Into Special-Servicing With $59.4 Million Left On Mortgage
Today In CRE’s Collapse: Philadelphia’s 1515 Market Put Into Special-Servicing With $59.4 Million Left On Mortgage
Another day, another city, another collapse in the commercial real estate market.
This week the property in question is a 20 story building located at 1515 Market St. in Philadelphia, which Philadelphia Business Journal notes has “joined a growing list” of distressed office properties in the city.
Almost $60 million in debt backed by the building was moved to special servicing in December, the report says. Owner Accesso Partners, based in Florida, has a $59.4 million balance on the building, which it acquired in 2014 for $85 million.
The loan is set to mature in January 2025, the report notes. It was originated by J.P. Morgan and has since been converted into a commercial mortgage backed security (CMBS) and sold.
It is one of several buildings within just blocks of Philadelphia City Hall, located in dead-center city, that have been transferred to special servicing over the last 9 months.
Accesso told PBJ that it had asked for the loan to be transferred to special servicing so it could negotiate an extension. And if you believe that one, we have some real estate in Alaska we’d like to sell you…
The building houses Temple University’s Center City campus, which has been the building’s flagship tenant since 2001. It extended its lease in 2022 for 5 years, the report notes. It covers more than 130,000 sq. feet and two floors.
However, no other tenants have more than 16,000 feet.
The building generated about $6.6 million in net operating income when the loan was written in 2014, however that number has now fallen to under $4.4 million in 2022. Like many other places across the U.S. economy, revenue has fallen while interest expense has risen as a result of rate hikes.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 18:00 - Watch: Fani Willis Testifies Over Romantic Relationship With Nathan Wade
Watch: Fani Willis Testifies Over Romantic Relationship With Nathan Wade
Fani Willis has been called to testify over her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade – and boy is she defensive…
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Watch:
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$hit has really hit the Fani in Fulton County.
On Thursday, special prosecutor Nathan Wade testified under oath that he charged several lavish vacations with DA Fani Willis to his corporate credit card while working on the Trump case, and was later reimbursed in cash by Fani.
BREAKING: Nathan Wade testifies that he paid for all the vacations he took with Fani Willis with his business credit card.
And that she then reimbursed him in CASH.
This what at a time he was getting paid by Willis’ office for the prosecution of Trump. pic.twitter.com/9DUq3hedOX
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 15, 2024
The relationship between Wade and Willis is the subject of an evidentiary hearing as part of Willis’ sprawling racketeering case brought against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for their alleged efforts to overturn (or ‘correct’ – depending) the results of the 2020 US election in Georgia.
Wade also testified that his marriage was “irretrievably broken in 2015,” and that his wife agreed to a divorce – but they held off because their children were still in school.
Oh…
2020. Fani Willis is asked why the people of Fulton County should support her for District Attorney.
“Because they deserve a DA that won’t have sex with his employees, because they deserve a DA that won’t put money in their own pocket.” pic.twitter.com/uo8wD1wnnR
— MAZE (@mazemoore) February 15, 2024
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Fani fudged…
In a confirmation of what we reported last week from Wade’s divorce proceedings, a former “good friend” of Willis’ testified that her romantic relationship with Wade began after they met at the judicial conference in the fall of 2019, directly contradicting assertions made by Willis in court filings about the timing of their relationship. Willis claimed that she and Wade “have been professional associates and friends since 2019,” and that “there was no personal relationship” between her and Wade in Nov. 2021 when she hired Wade and paid him over $600,000 to help her prosecute Trump.
Appearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee via Zoom, Yeartie said Willis and Wade may have begun dating in October or November 2019, shortly after the two met at the conference that year.
During questioning from Sadow, who is representing Trump in the case, Yeartie testified that Willis told her she was engaged in a romantic relationship with Wade in 2020 and 2021, and said she witnessed “hugging, kissing,” and “just affection” between the two before November 2021, when Wade was hired by Willis. -CBS News
Fulton County DA’s office lawyer Anna Cross attempted to raise doubts about Yeartie’s credibility, asking her questions about her performance while working for Willis, and whether she was ever disciplined for poor performance. Yeartie admitted that she’d been written up once, referencing a “situation” in which she was told she would be terminated if she didn’t resign.
OMG.
The Atlanta DA gave her boyfriend a contract to help her prosecute Trump.
That prosecution is done and done.https://t.co/xgKdr8fe8N
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) February 15, 2024
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This adds to previous reporting suggesting that Willis paid Wade’s divorce attorney!
🚨🚨🚨 EXCLUSIVE🚨🚨🚨
In addition to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis paying her lover Nathan Wade nearly $700,000 of taxpayer funds, Fani also spread the money from the Fulton County coffers to Terrence Ahmed Bradley, who is Nathan Wade’s divorce attorney/tenant.… pic.twitter.com/7I1tKkWedn
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 20, 2024
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According to former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg, “It might be appropriate for Ms. Willis to consider removing herself from this case now.”
“This is getting ugly and it’s getting messy.”
Former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg speaks at recess in the Fulton County D.A. misconduct hearing. Rosenberg adds, “It might be appropriate for Ms. Willis to consider removing herself from this case now.” pic.twitter.com/AHOqcxvv4D
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 15, 2024
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You can watch a recap of Wade’s testimony below:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 17:47 - India's Natural Gas Consumption Set To Triple by 2050
India’s Natural Gas Consumption Set To Triple by 2050
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,
India’s industry expansion and rising oil refining to meet higher fuel demand are set to drive a tripling of the country’s natural gas consumption by 2050, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.
In 2022, India’s natural gas consumption amounted to 7.0 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), with over 70% of the demand coming from the industrial sector. By 2050, India’s natural gas consumption is set to more than triple to 23.2 Bcf/d, according to EIA’s estimates.
Among India’s five consuming sectors, the industrial sector’s share of gas consumption will grow the most, rising to 80% of total consumption, followed by the transportation sector rising to 10%.
India’s gas consumption in oil refining is expected to grow significantly to keep up with India’s domestic demand for oil products, the EIA notes. By 2050, gas consumption will surge by more than 250% for the production of basic chemicals and by more than 400% for refining, with the two industries together accounting for about 79% of India’s industrial natural gas demand in 2050.
India is boosting its refining capacity. The country should add 1.12 million bpd to its current total each year until 2028, a junior oil minister told India’s parliament at the end of 2023.
Total Indian refining capacity is expected to increase by 22% in five years from the current 254 million metric tons per year, which are equal to around 5.8 million bpd, Rameswar Teli said.
Per the EIA forecasts, India’s gas demand – buoyed by oil refining and other industrial production – is expected to grow at an annual rate of 4.4% by 2050, more than twice the 2.0% annual growth rate of gas consumption in China, the next-fastest-growing country.
India’s economy is growing faster than all other major economies, and so is its demand for energy.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 17:40 - Yesterday's Hysteria-Inducing Intelligence On Scary New Russian Space Weapon Quickly Downgraded
Yesterday’s Hysteria-Inducing Intelligence On Scary New Russian Space Weapon Quickly Downgraded
Yesterday all of the major news networks paused their coverage of literally everything else to turn their focus through the whole afternoon to the “major, imminent, grave, terrifying security threat” and ‘fire-alarm’ based on apparent US intelligence related to the Russians(!) and reports that they possess new space defense technology, which is possibly even nuke-related.
Ambiguous reports pointed to a weapon designed to be used to take out satellites. On Thursday the White House has finally revealed more about the nature of the ‘threat’, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby belatedly confirming it is related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing,” but that “This is not an active capability that’s been deployed.”
Putin, who lectured endlessly on ancient and medieval Russian history to Tucker Carlson, also has ultra-scary anti-satellite weaponry in his arsenal. Or in other words, compared to yesterday’s atmosphere of temporary panic and CNN pundits’ hurried breathing, less than 24 hours later it ends up being the big nothingburger which many predicted it would be. This trend of inflated and fear-mongering headlines is very likely to continue right up to the November election, as we’ve noted.
And just like that, Wednesday’s big ‘threat’ now simply becomes ‘troubling’…
“And though Russia’s pursuit of this particular capability is troubling there was no immediate threat to anyone’s safety,” Kirby continued.
“We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth,” Kirby added.
Initially, Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio set Capitol Hill media correspondents into a frenzy of speculation after he issued an ominous-sounding statement about “information concerning a serious national security threat.”
Amazing that some people still think the news is real 😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2024
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Rep. Turner didn’t help matters in saying “there is no need for public alarm”—words typically taken by the public to mean now is precisely the time to worry and that the government is in fact sounding the alarm.
Kirby mentioned this in his Thursday press briefing, saying the administration was busy reviewing the new intel when Turner “regrettably” released his statement. “We have been very careful and deliberate about what we decide to declassify downgrade and share with the public,” Kirby said.
Oh, just kidding around like we always do! pic.twitter.com/9b9VAJ4urK
— Tim Shorrock (@TimothyS) February 15, 2024
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Perhaps nothing really even too “new” as NATO has already been fearful of such a weapon for years following a 2021 Russian action in space…
Russia destroys its own satellite in orbital missile test. This happened back in 2021. It cleared scared the crap out of NATO. Russia must’ve really decided to place anti-satellite weapons in space now. pic.twitter.com/sgGOqSRMw1
— Irish Fella (@kulawesome) February 14, 2024
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As for Biden and his team, this served as a nice ‘test case’ demonstrating the ease with which they can run something up the flagpole, instantly capturing a day’s news cycle and spotlight, though it is also true many more Americans are now seeing through this tactic.
Still more creative scare-mongering to come…
And that’s how we get Russian sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads https://t.co/jiAFgkqZck
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 15, 2024
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/15/2024 – 17:20
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