- Opposing Critical Race Theory Doesn't Make You A "White Supremacist"
Opposing Critical Race Theory Doesn’t Make You A “White Supremacist”
Authored by Julian Adorney via The Mises Institute,
Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founders of critical race theory (CRT), recently decried what she called the “war on wokeness” (by which she seems to mean a war on CRT). According to her, this “war on wokeness” is “the road to an authoritarian state that’s paved through the history of white supremacy.”
It’s true that the “war on wokeness” has taken on authoritarian overtones of late. Many Republicans are rejecting the ideas of pluralism and free speech that underpin the American ideal and pushing through broad laws aimed at banning the teachings of CRT. In their desire to stop “wokeness,” these laws often muzzle dissenters and are so broadly written that they can throw the baby out with the bathwater. Free speech advocates have roundly condemned these laws and for good reason.
But it’s also true that critical race theory has serious problems. You don’t have to be a “white supremacist” or trying to promote an “authoritarian state” to be skeptical of CRT.
First, prominent critical race theorists (“Crits” as they call themselves) lean hard into race essentialism. In their book Is Everyone Really Equal?, Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo (of White Fragility fame) lay out some quotations that they disagree with. One such quotation is, “People should be judged by what they do, not the color of their skin.” Sensoy and DiAngelo dismiss this idea as “predictable, simplistic, and misinformed.”
It’s tough to overstate how inimical this concept is to modern-day American values. Martin Luther King Jr. famously proclaimed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” For Sensoy and DiAngelo, this dream is “misinformed.”
In another section, Sensoy and DiAngelo list traits (allegedly) held by members of the “dominant group” in society (white people, straight people, men, etc.) and contrast them with traits they claim are held by members of “minoritized groups” (black people, LGBTQ folks, women, etc.). Traits held by the dominant group include “presumptuous, does not listen, interrupts, raises voice, bullies, threatens violence, becomes violent.”
Traits held by the minority group include “feels inappropriate, awkward, doesn’t trust perception . . . finds it difficult to speak up, timid.” For Sensoy and DiAngelo, members of the majority group are angry bullies who don’t care about anyone except themselves, and minorities are timid children who can’t speak up or look after themselves. Is it any wonder that many minorities find this kind of rhetoric offensive?
A second reason to oppose CRT is that many Crits don’t admit that society can ever really get better. In the book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, Richard Delgado (another founder of CRT) and Jean Stefancic argue that American race relations don’t improve. They call many of the civil rights gains of the 1950s and 1960s—including Brown v. Board, the landmark Supreme Court case that desegregated schools across the country—“shams.” According to the authors, these gains are merely “hollow pronouncements issued with great solemnity and fanfare, only to be silently ignored, cut back, or withdrawn when the celebrations die down.”
For Delgado and Stefancic, meaningful social change is almost impossible. Unless all of society changes at once, “change is swallowed up by the remaining elements, so that we remain roughly as we were before.” This is an ideology that has little room for the gains of the Civil Rights Movement or the dramatic decrease in bigotry in the sixty years since. A foundational American story is that our society is imperfect but getting better, but CRT only has room for the first half of that statement.
Finally, critical race theory is explicitly opposed to the Enlightenment ideals upon which America was founded. Sensoy and DiAngelo say that CRT initially advocated “a type of liberal humanism (individualism, freedom, and peace)” but stress that it “quickly turned to a rejection of liberal humanism.” Values such as freedom and individualism are, apparently, not particularly welcome in Crit circles.
According to Delgado and Stefancic, “Critical Race Theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order.” CRT is opposed to “equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” If you want the law to treat people equally regardless of their immutable characteristics (i.e., race, gender), then, by their founders’ own admission, CRT is not for you.
Critical race theory isn’t all bad, and there are concepts like intersectionality that can help us to recognize the struggles and advantages of people who don’t look like us. But the field has deep problems, and more and more Americans of all ethnicities are picking up on this. Maligning critics as “white supremacists” is unlikely to fix those problems.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 23:30 - Hedge Fund CIO: Only Thing Worse Than Pausing Prematurely Is Having A Fed Chair Who Lacks Decisiveness And Determination
Hedge Fund CIO: Only Thing Worse Than Pausing Prematurely Is Having A Fed Chair Who Lacks Decisiveness And Determination
By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“Chair Powell, what’s the value in pausing and signaling future hikes versus just hiking now?” asked Nick Timiraos from the WSJ. “I mean, not to be flippant, but I don’t lose weight just by buying a gym membership; I have to actually go to the gym,” continued the reporter, as his colleagues in the press corps looked on in awe, praying to someday engineer such a perfect question, delivered so casually, beautifully. “Sixteen of your colleagues put down a higher year-end ’23 rate today. A majority of you think you’re going to have to go up by 50 basis points this year. So why not just rip off the Band-Aid and raise rates today?”
* * *
“We’re two-and-a-half years into this or two-and-a-quarter years into this,” said the Fed Chairman at his press conference, leaving interest rates unchanged at 5.00-5.25%, below the latest 5.3% annual core CPI. “And forecasters, including Fed forecasters, have consistently thought that inflation was about to turn down, and, you know, typically forecasted that it would, and been wrong,” continued Powell.
In a hyper-financialized world where money can be created and extinguished with the click of a mouse, no one fully understands inflation, let alone can accurately forecast it.
“I think if you look at core PCE inflation overall, look at it over the last six months, you’re just not seeing a lot of progress. It’s running over 4.5%, far above our target, and not really moving down,” he said. “We want to see it moving down decisively, that’s all. We are, of course, going to get inflation down to 2% over time,” declared Powell, doing his best to sound confident.
Because of course, the only thing more inflationary than having a central bank which has paused with inflation more than double its target, is having a Fed Chairman who appears to lack decisiveness and determination.
“We want to do that with the minimum damage we can to the economy, of course. But we have to get inflation down to 2%, and we will. And we just don’t see that yet,” he said, desperate to engineer a soft landing, which of course is what all Fed Chairs must first attempt, elusive as such outcomes are.
“As anyone can see, not a single person on the committee wrote down a rate cut this year nor do I think it is at all likely to be appropriate, if you think about it. Inflation has not really moved down. It has not so far reacted much to our – to our existing rate hikes and so we’re going to have to keep at it.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 22:30 - Armed ATF & IRS Agents Hit Montana Gun Store With "Soviet-Style Intimidation Raid"
Armed ATF & IRS Agents Hit Montana Gun Store With “Soviet-Style Intimidation Raid”
Heavily armed agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided a gun store in Great Falls, Montana, last week in what was described by a local lawmaker as a “Soviet-style intimidation raids.”
Tom Van Hoose, the owner of Highwood Creek Outfitters, told the local media outlet KRTV that 20 heavily armed agents swarmed his gun shop on Wednesday morning, confiscated 13 years of 4473 forms, and copied the firearm acquisition and disposition book.
“The fact that they think we make so much money as a gun business that they had to come investigate all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars whatever it is we supposedly absconded with, anybody that knows the margins in the gun business knows they’re not that high,” said Van Hoose.
He said the reason for the raid is unclear. He believes it could be part of a nationwide trend by Biden’s ATF:
“I can only assume that it’s because of the style of weapons that we have and the press that’s so against them.
“The current administration seems to be hell-bent on getting those guns out of the hands of average Americans.”
Van Hoose spoke to the firearms blog The Truth About Guns, stating that the IRS claimed he had underreported and failed to report millions of dollars of income. The shop owner denied the accusation.
On Friday, Congressman Matt Rosendale sent a letter to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, asking for answers and calling the raid “outrageous.”
“Under Director Dettelbach’s leadership of the ATF, a pattern of intimidation and harassment against hardworking Americans has emerged – Montanans will not tolerate these political witch hunts. I remind both Director Dettelbach and Commissioner Werfel that Congress has the power of the purse, and I will ensure that funding for these agencies is not weaponized against the American people,” Rosendale said in his letter.
He continued: “I request that the ATF and IRS cease conducting these Soviet-style intimidation raids.”
At 0730hrs on June 14, 2023, Twenty (20) Heavy Armed Agents From the IRS Criminal Investigation and Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Raided Highwood Creek Outfitters, a Gun Shop and Indoor Firing Range in Great Falls, MT.
Tom VanHoose, the Store Owner was Served a Warrant… pic.twitter.com/H7gomdt4sH
— Tony Kambeitz (@Kambeitz9) June 17, 2023
* * *
Here’s Rosendale’s full letter to the ATF and IRS:
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 22:00 - 55% Of The Public View The Trump Indictment As "Politically Motivated"; Harvard Poll Finds
55% Of The Public View The Trump Indictment As “Politically Motivated”; Harvard Poll Finds
A Harvard/Harris poll is bad news for Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department. The poll shows that 55% of Americans believe Trump’s indictment is politically motivated and 56% believe that it constitutes election interference. The poll captures the level of distrust for the Justice Department and further demonstrates what I described yesterday as the failure of Merrick Garland at the midpoint of his tenure as Attorney General.
The view of the case appears to be worsening. Now there is less than a majority viewing the indictment as well-founded and justified. The poll shows that 83% of Republicans and 55% of Independents view the indictment as a political exercise. Not only do 56 percent view it as election interference but only 44 percent see it as “the fair application of the law”:
Harvard Harris Poll:
— 55% of Americans say Trump’s indictment is politically motivated, (including 83% of Republicans and 55% of Independents)
— 56% consider Trump’s federal indictment to be an interference by the Justice Department in the 2024 Elections pic.twitter.com/9UtnV0UtD2
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) June 16, 2023
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The poll is also bad news for Biden. Some 65 percent believe Biden “mishandled” classified material while 72 percent take that view with Clinton’s email scandal.
The Justice Department and the media appear to have “lost the room” with the American people. They are primarily appealing to Democrats who (at 80%) support the indictment.
The FBI and the Justice Department made this perception worse through continual leaks to the media and allegedly staging the photo above after the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
By his own measure, Garland has failed to restore the credibility and trust in the Justice Department. It now appears worse than when his predecessor, Bill Barr, was in office.
It is also an indictment of the media. After years of “advocacy journalism” and biased reporting, the public now tunes out the media. This is a strong indictment with troubling allegations and evidence. Yet, it does not matter because the media long ago lost much of the country with one-sided, unrelenting coverage.
It also means that this case could conceivably never see a jury unless Special Counsel Jack Smith succeeds in pushing for a speedy trial before the election. A majority of the public now supports a pardon for Trump if he is convicted. With these polls, the pressure of other Republican candidates to pledge a pardon is likely to increase. Indeed, as suggested in another column, Biden may want to consider a pledge to commute any sentence to try to defang this building election issue.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 21:30 - China Withholds Cremation Data From Late 2022 After Ditching "Zero Covid" Policy
China Withholds Cremation Data From Late 2022 After Ditching “Zero Covid” Policy
China has halted the release of national data on how many cremations too place at the end of 2022, a figure which would allow the world to see the true impact on the wave of Covid-19 infections which were sweeping the country during that period.
A man carries a box containing cremated ashes near a funeral house in Wuhan, China during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in April 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs omitted the data from its quarterly report – a figure which was consistently included for the fourth quarter going back at least 10 years, the South China Morning Post reported Thursday.
According to experts, China’s official data on deaths following the end of Beijing’s “zero covid” policy has been significantly underestimated despite claiming to have scored a “major and decisive victory” over the virus.
Before 2020, fourth-quarter cremation data was typically released in the first two months of the following year, along with other civil affairs data such as social welfare and marriage registrations.
Though the time lag for data releases has increased slightly since 2020, when the country was first hit by Covid-19, the most recent release came after a longer-than-average delay of six months after the end of the quarter.
Several provincial-level regions also scrapped the release of cremation services data for the fourth quarter of last year.
On June 9, the same day the national numbers were released, Chongqing’s civil affairs bureau published a notice that said it would suspend the release of civil affairs data indefinitely following an instruction from the Ministry of Civil Affairs. -SCMP
The bureau also said that 2023 data would be temporarily withheld, and would be “synchronised with the new provisions on data publication in the newly approved ‘Statistical Survey System for Civil Affairs’ by the National Bureau of Statistics.”
An analysis by SCMP reveals that over a dozen provincial-level regions broke from tradition and dropped cremation figures from public releases.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 21:00 - FDA Alert: Frozen Strawberries Recalled Across US After Hepatitis Reports
FDA Alert: Frozen Strawberries Recalled Across US After Hepatitis Reports
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week expanded a recall of frozen strawberries due to a potential contamination of hepatitis A, according to an agency news release.
Product package label of recalled strawberries by Willamette Valley Fruit Co. (FDA) On Monday, the Willamette Valley Fruit Company based in Oregon announced the recall of frozen strawberries that are sold at Walmart, Costco, and HEB retail stores under the brand names Rader Farms Organic at Costco and HEB as well as Great Value at Walmart, the FDA notice said. The strawberries were grown in Mexico, the agency added.
The FDA notice further said that Walmart locations across the United States sold the Great Value strawberries, while the impacted products were sold at Costco stores in Colorado, Texas, Arizona, and California between Oct. 3, 2022, and June 8, 2023. A list of products, lot numbers, and best by dates is available on the FDA’s recall website.
Hepatitis A, a contagious liver disease that results from exposure to the hepatitis A virus, can “range from a mild illness lasting a few weeks to a serious illness lasting several months,” the FDA said. A common vector for the virus is via contaminated food, officials say.
Hepatitis A disease occurs between 15 and 50 days of exposure, officials also said. The symptoms include jaundice—a yellowing of the skin and eyes—as well as pale stool, abnormal liver tests, abdominal pain, fatigue, and dark urine.
“In rare cases, particularly consumers who have a pre-existing severe illness or are immune compromised, hepatitis A infection can progress to liver failure … persons who may have consumed affected product should consult with their health care professional or local health department to determine if a vaccination is appropriate, and consumers with symptoms of Hepatitis A should contact their health care professionals or the local health department immediately,” the FDA said.
But the notice said that no illnesses have been associated with the recalled strawberries so far.
A building on the campus of the Walmart Home Office is pictured in Bentonville, Ark., on April 19, 2023. (Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo) The FDA called on consumers not to eat the frozen strawberries. “Consumers are urged to check their freezers for the recalled product, not to consume it and either discard the product or return it to the store for a refund,” the agency said.
An FDA investigation has traced hepatitis A infections from strawberries that were imported from Mexico’s Baja California state, reporting five linked cases of the illness in March. The strain of hepatitis A in the cases was identical to the one that cause an outbreak of infections in 2022, according to the FDA.
In March of this year, Wawona Frozen Foods, California Splendor, Scenic Fruit recalled frozen strawberries sold under multiple brands, including PCC Community Markets, and Trader Joe’s, Kirkland Signature, Simply Nature, Vital Choice, Made With, and Wawona, the FDA said.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 20:30 - FBI Groomed Developmentally Challenged 16-Year-Old To Become A Terrorist, Then Arrested Him
FBI Groomed Developmentally Challenged 16-Year-Old To Become A Terrorist, Then Arrested Him
Earlier this month, the FBI announced the arrest of 18-year-old Mateo Ventura of Wakefield, Massachusetts, over allegations that he provided financial support to ISIS. According to the DOJ’s press release, Ventura was indicted for “knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources that he intended to go to a foreign terrorist organization.”
Yet, according to the government’s own criminal complaint, Ventura never gave a dime to any terrorist groups, while the only “terrorist” he actually had any contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him when he was 16-years-old and convinced him to produce gift cards with small amounts of cash on them. The FBI agent told Ventura not to tell anyone about their ‘intimate online relationship,’ including his family, according to The Intercept.
Contrary to the sensational narrative fed to the news media of terrorist financing in the U.S., the charging documents show that Ventura gave an undercover FBI agent gift cards for pitifully small amounts of cash, sometimes in $25 increments. In his initial bid to travel to the Islamic State, the teenager balked — making up an excuse, by the FBI’s own account, to explain why he did not want to go. When another opportunity to travel abroad arose, Ventura balked again, staying home on the evening of his supposed flight instead of traveling to the airport. By the time the investigation was winding down, he appeared ready to turn in his purported ISIS contact — an FBI agent — to the FBI. -The Intercept
Whats more, Ventura’s father, Paul, told the outlet that his son suffered from childhood developmental issues which were so bad that he was forced to leave school due to constant bullying from other students.
“He was born prematurely, he had brain development issues. I had the school do a neurosurgery evaluation on him and they said his brain was underdeveloped,” said Ventura. “He was suffering endless bullying at school with other kids taking food off his plate, tripping him in the hallway, humiliating him, laughing at him.“
In short, instead of an actual terrorist – or terrorist adjacent, Ventura’s case is yet another example of the FBI grooming a mentally unfit young man to commit a crime that would not have other wise occurred.
“There is still significant use of informants and undercover agents in FBI investigations who aren’t just gathering information about potential crimes but are actively suggesting ideas for crimes or making it easier for people to do the things that they claim they want to do,” said Naz Ahmad, acting director of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility, or CLEAR, project at the City University of New York School of Law. “There are documented cases where the government has provided people everything that they needed to execute a plot. Informants and undercover agents have often been used as a tool in these investigations to prod things along.”
In 2021, Paul Ventura said that armed FBI agents visited his home to inform him that his son had been browsing websites “he should be looking at,” and connected the father with who the FBI said was a counselor – who Paul says had no knowledge of his son’s ongoing communications with the undercover FBI agent.
“Two years ago, the FBI came to my house and they took his computer and said he’s on these sites he shouldn’t be on. We said OK, and he wasn’t arrested at that time or anything. I didn’t hear from them again after that, but I guess over time things escalated,” said Paul. “I wasn’t home a lot because I work, and he wasn’t at school because of the bullying. Instead of them telling me that he’s doing what he’s doing online and to take his computer away, they let him keep doing it.”
In their case against Ventura, the government reveals that the boy began communicating with the undercover FBI agent when he was 16-years-old, and told the agent of his desire to make “hijrah,” which means to migrate to territories under ISIS control. Yet, by the time the discussion happened, ISIS had been largely eliminated throughout Iraq and Syria. The DOJ says that the undercover FBI agent impersonated an ISIS member by using broken English, who then encouraged Ventura to pursue his ISIS dreams, and then told the boy not to tell anyone about their conversations.
VENTURA: I reached out to brother [A.D.] for hijrah [migration] I dont know if it is still possible but if it is I know it will take sometime.
OCE: Ahh
OCE: Inshallah [if Allah wills it] I help u, but before talk have rule my brother.
OCE: U must no talk about what said here or intention to anyone. No tell family.
No tell friend. No tell ikhwan [brothers] at masjid [mosque]. No one. This for both are safety.
OCE: Intention stay between U and Allah azzawajal [the mighty and majestic].
Venture than sent a $25 Google Play gift card to the undercover agent, along with the redemption code. The FBI agent also had the 16-year-old record an audio file of himself pledging allegiance to the leader of ISIS and then sending the clip via chat.
Over the next year two years, Ventura continued sending small amounts of cash through gift cards to the FBI agent, mostly through gaming stores like Steam, PlayStation Network, and Google Play. The amounts of his small transactions, which spanned over roughly two years, added up to a total of $965 during the time that he was a juvenile, and another $705 after he became a legal adult.
All the while, Ventura’s conversations with the FBI undercover operative online continued, including promises to make a passport and assurances that he would teach himself Arabic “very fast” in case he traveled to Egypt on behalf of the group.
In the end, Ventura appeared to get cold feet. In September 2022, when he was 17 years old, he told the agent that he could no longer “go for hijrah,” because he had been “hurt very bad in fall and can no longer walk.” The injury was an excuse that the FBI — which, according to the affidavit in the case, interviewed Ventura six days thereafter — concluded had been made up by the teen. -The Intercept
This January, just after Ventura turned 18, he resumed contact with the FBI agent via encrypted messaging – apologizing for the long time since they had last spoke. He expressed interesting in traveling to the Islamic State, while the two also discussed the possibility of Ventura dying in an attack by ISIS fighters somewhere in the world – or possibly attending a training camp.
Ventura, at the FBI agent’s direction, took a video of himself which he sent over the chat in which he noted that he had grown a beard. The FBI agent told him that he looked “strong” and “Look (sic) like lion.”
He then sent another $25 via a Google Play gift certificate, and finally – on April 10, booked a flight on Turkish Airlines to Egypt.
Instead of actually boarding the flight, however, Ventura contacted the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center to report a tip – and demanding “10 million dollars in duffel bags” if he were to provide information on future terrorist attacks. “I known (sic) you thought I am retarded fool but jokes on you I will not admit I sent this or communicate until the cash is delivered,” he said, according to the criminal complaint.
In the next few days, Ventura called the FBI several more times to offer to ‘help’ fight terror – including to help stop a future ISIS terrorist attack, and to provide information on the people who would be carrying them out, in exchange for money and legal immunity.
According to the affidavit, on April 20, Ventura was informed in a FBI phone call that information he had provide was “not specific and therefore not actionable.”
Then in early June, Ventura was arrested and charged with one count of “knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” based on the gift cards.
As the Intercept notes, while Ventura’s arrest was framed by the DOJ as the foiling of an Islamic State funding operation, there’s no evidence that Ventura had actually been in contact with the terrorist group – yet he now faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of providing material support to a terrorist group.
Amazing…
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 20:01 - As Blinken Floats "Israel Status" Plan For Ukraine, US Drifts Into Next Forever War
As Blinken Floats “Israel Status” Plan For Ukraine, US Drifts Into Next Forever War
David Sachs has asked the unsettling question, Is Ukraine about to become a Forever War?
At the moment that not only is the West risking escalation by continually testing Russia’s red lines, which could even enter the nuclear arena by supplying main battle tanks and soon F-16 jets, Zelensky continues demanding an invitation to NATO, even threatening to sit out the upcoming major NATO summit in Vilnius in July.
While NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and other officials have said Ukraine will not become a full member anytime soon, but have hinted that it would be likely only after the war is concluded, certain security guarantees are currently on the table, but which will only ensure a drawn out, massive Washington commitment.
For example, the Biden administration has been talking up the possibility of giving Ukraine “Israel status” – which would involve a commitment of permanent and rotating weapons shipments and foreign aid, akin to what Washington has long done for the Jewish state.
Sachs commented on the “Israel status” possibility as follows:
This consists of long-term security guarantees (which run for ten-year intervals in Israel’s case) including weapons, ammunition, and money “not subject to the fate of the current counteroffensive or the electoral calendar.”
In other words, America won’t reassess support even if the counteroffensive fails. Indeed, support won’t cease even if voters want to make a change in the next election. Some observers may see here a classic bait and switch.
This would obviously mean continued American involvement and escalation of its role on the losing side.
Washington enjoyed widespread public support (and importantly the support of its allies) for its policies so long as Ukraine could be presented as “winning”…
“Last year, after Ukraine retook land around Kharkiv and Kherson, the American people were assured that the Ukrainians would complete the job in the spring and summer of 2023,” observed Sachs. “This new Ukrainian counteroffensive would roll back Russian territorial gains, perhaps even threaten the Russian hold on Crimea, and thereby drive Moscow to the negotiating table and end the war. Many Americans supported the $100+ billion in appropriations for Ukraine on this basis.”
But, he continued, “The implicit promise was that this was a one-time expense, not the baseline for an annual appropriation in a new Forever War.”
“Zelensky should be at the negotiating table but instead tours the world selling his forever war as Ukraine is destroyed and conscripted Ukranians are killed by the tens of thousands.”
~ Mick Wallace
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) April 16, 2023
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The pattern looks very familiar, Sachs concluded in his fresh comments:
Now a difficult start to the counteroffensive coupled with a proposed multi-year deal at Vilnius makes clear that this was a lie or a pipe dream. But isn’t this what always happens? Administrations ease us into war with promises of quick and easy victory, and then once involved, tell us we can’t back out no matter the cost because American credibility is at stake. It’s Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq all over again, except this time with a nuclear-armed adversary creating the heightened risk that the war could escalate into WWIII at any point.
Indeed we’ve barely exited two-decade long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and already are well into another ‘forever occupation’ in northeast Syria, with no actual strategic goals or “mission” to speak of.
David Sachs has more detailed analysis in his new article at Responsible Statecraft entitled, Will upcoming NATO summit launch forever war in Europe?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 20:00 - Taliban & China Discuss Banking Cooperation
Taliban & China Discuss Banking Cooperation
The Taliban’s governor of the Afghan central bank Hidayatullah Badri met with Chinese envoy Wang Yu this week to discuss banking ties and business, the bank’s spokesperson informed Reuters on Friday. “In this meeting, economy, banking relations, business and some related topics were discussed,” said Badri.
Although Beijing does not have formal diplomatic ties with the Taliban government, China is among the few countries that have maintained a diplomatic presence in Kabul since the Taliban took back the country following the US’ disastrous withdrawal in 2021.
Illustrative: prior Taliban delegation to China Following the withdrawal, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Italian news outlet La Repubblica that China would be its principal partner in rebuilding Afghanistan after a 20-year US occupation.
China is also interested in bringing the West Asian nation to join Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
US sanctions and banking restrictions have dealt heavy damage to Afghanistan’s banking system, which has been cut off from the global financial system. These policies have served as the primary cause of the country’s ongoing economic crisis.
Afghanistan’s central bank has been unable to supply adequate liquidity to banks due to its inability to print money and the illegal freeze of nearly $10 billion in foreign reserves, $7 billion of which are held at the Federal Bank of New York.
China has recently shown an economic interest in its neighbor, and is seeking investment opportunities in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) – particularly in mining.
In April, the Taliban said that a Chinese firm was interested in investing $10 billion in lithium extraction as part of a project that would allegedly employ over 120,000 Afghans.
“Afghans are looking forward to exploiting their lithium and other mining deposits for their benefit,” Shahabuddin Delawar, the Taliban’s minister for mining, said.
At the start of the year, the Taliban signed an oil extraction deal with Chinese firms Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co. (CAPEIC).
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 19:30 - Bear Markets: How Deep Is Your Loss?
Bear Markets: How Deep Is Your Loss?
According to one popular definition, the S&P 500 entered a bull market on June 8, 2023. That means the index has risen 20 percent from its most recent low, which it hit on October 12 of last year.
That day also marks the end of the previous bear market, which began on January 3, 2022 and lasted nine months, during which the index fell 25.4 percent.
As Statista’s Felix Richter notes, that’s relatively harmless compared to other recent bear markets, as the chart below shows, which are often accompanied by drops of 30 percent or more and have lasted 13 months on average since 1973.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Perhaps more important to the average investor is the question of how long it usually takes the market to recover from a bear market, i.e. how long it takes for it to return to its previous high.
In that case, a little more patience is required, because as of market close on June 15, the S&P 500 was still 7.7 percent off its January 2022 peak. That explains why some commentators refuse to call it a bull market just yet.
Moreover, a bull market requires a broad upward trend according to some definitions and the latest rally has been fueled almost entirely by a few (tech) heavyweights.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 19:00 - Planned Parenthood Execs Among Highest Paid In Nonprofit Sector: Report
Planned Parenthood Execs Among Highest Paid In Nonprofit Sector: Report
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Executives working for Planned Parenthood are among the highest-paid in the United States in the not-for-profit sector, according to a new report.
A Planned Parenthood logo on a clinic in a file photo. (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images) The American Life League’s STOPP International, a Catholic grassroots pro-life organization, published the findings in its report (pdf) titled “The STOPP International 2023 Report on Planned Parenthood CEO Compensation.”
Its research was conducted in March 2023 and based on the latest numbers available through public information, including Planned Parenthood websites, according to the organization.
STOPP International found that the average salary for a CEO at Planned Parenthood rose from $237,999 in 2015 to $317,564 in 2020, marking a 33.4 percent increase over five years, and placing them in the 98th percentile of U.S. wage earners.
The lowest compensation for a Planned Parenthood CEO was $124,045, based on the latest data from 2019 to 2021, while the highest was $616,926.
STOPP International found that all 53 CEOs made over $100,000 a year, while 39 made over $200,000 a year, 27 took home over $300,000 a year, and 13 made over $400,000 a year.
Six of the CEOs took home over $500,000 a year and one made over $600,000 a year, the report found.
‘Exorbitant Salaries’
Overall, the total compensation paid to all Planned Parenthood affiliate CEOs increased from $13.3 million in 2015 to $16.8 million in 2020, marking a 26.3 percent increase, according to the report.
That is compared to the $55,628.60 average wage for U.S. workers in 2020, as stated by the U.S. Social Security Administration.
It also differs drastically from the average salary for nonprofit CEOs in the United States as of May 25, which was $184,809, according to Salary.com, although the salary range typically falls anywhere between $139,690 and $238,124.
The report also noted that of all 53 Planned Parenthood affiliate CEOs, only four were black and three were Hispanic.
The lowest-paid CEO was a black woman, the report said, adding that she was paid less than the CEOs of 16 Planned Parenthood affiliates that “produced less income than the one she presided over,” while the top-paid CEO was a white woman.
“Planned Parenthood continues, year after year, to dramatically increase the salaries of its affiliate corporation CEOs and its New York headquarters staff while continually crying poverty and seeking and receiving more and more taxpayer money,” the report said.
“The exorbitant salaries of most Planned Parenthood affiliate CEOs and headquarters executives, and the disparity in salaries by gender and race, are even more revealing once you see that Planned Parenthood—organized as a nonprofit that pays no taxes—reported a total profit (income in excess of expenditures) of $408 million over the past three reporting years,” it added.
Report Findings Criticized
Meanwhile, the nonprofit organization, which provides abortion services and sexual health care, reported an income of $5.2 billion over the past three years, including $1.9 billion in government health services grants and reimbursements, according to the report.
Katie Brown, who serves as director of communications for American Life League, told Fox News in a statement, “It’s disingenuous that in Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report, they claim to be committed to breaking down ‘barriers of structural racism that block access to care,’ when they so obviously haven’t done so in their own organization.”
“If there’s one thing that this report makes clear, it is proof that at Planned Parenthood, the rich get richer while the poor get abortions,” Brown added.
According to its official website, first-trimester abortions at Planned Parenthood come at an “all-inclusive cost” of $600. At such appointments, patients can also receive three months of birth control pills or shots at no additional cost.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 18:30 - Migrant-Smuggling "Influencers" Use TikTok To Advertise
Migrant-Smuggling “Influencers” Use TikTok To Advertise
Migrant smugglers — known as “coyotes” — are advertising their illegal transportation services into the US through the southern border via the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, according to USA Today.
The outlet found dozens of suspected coyotes using popular TikTok hashtags such as “sueno americano” (“American dream”). One coyote, who advertises on TikTok, spoke with the media outlet about how he “facilitates travel for migrants across the border in exchange for money.”
Another coyote influencer told The New York Post he charges around $10,500 to transport a Mexican national into the US. Prices vary on what country the migrant is from.
The proliferation of social media advertising by coyotes is so rampant that the United Nations International Organization for Migration warned about this dangerous trend.
“The TikTok platform is used to promote the ‘services’ offered by human traffickers through short videos. These videos showcase successful cases of irregular border crossings and captivating images aimed at capturing the attention of individuals seeking to migrate irregularly with the assistance of a third party.”
In a statement to USA Today, the US Department of Homeland Security also warned that social media is “creating an environment ripe for the manipulation of information regarding migration policies at the border” and has increased visibility for migrants to use illegal crossing services.
It’s estimated that smugglers, many of which are part of drug cartels, collectively make $13 billion per year. TikTok and YouTube responded to NewsNation about videos advertising illegal border crossing services and said they’re working to combat the issue.
President Biden’s border disastrous open border policies have allowed human traffickers and cartels to capitalize on the chaos.
Meanwhile, talks on Capitol Hill this year have been dominated by both Republicans and Democrats that TikTok is one of the gravest national security threats.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 18:00 - The Beyoncé Effect
The Beyoncé Effect
By Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley global chief economist
Under the heading of “this time is different,” Swedish inflation made global headlines. Beyoncé’s global tour started in Stockholm last month, and hotel and restaurant prices drove a notable upside surprise to Swedish CPI (well, an upside surprise to markets, less of a surprise to our resident member of the Beyhive). Why talk about the pop star in a week dominated by central banks? Even if this inflation proves to be, dare I say it, transitory, it demonstrates how much residual pent-up Covid demand there can be, especially in services, and how it can show up where you least expect it.
Markets have been searching for the peak rate of the hiking cycles and anticipating a pivot to easing. A funny thing happened along the way. The conversation is now about skips and pauses. Investors are learning that central banks can restart hiking cycles after stopping.
The Reserve Bank of Australia and markets had prepared for a pause after the March hike. But at its May meeting, the RBA surprised markets by hiking another 25bp. A further hike at the June meeting underscored that pauses are only as good as the data flow. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Australia Summit after the June policy meeting, the RBA governor pointed to a sudden change in financial conditions, resilient household spending, inflation expectations, and rising unit labor costs as driving further hikes.
In January, the Bank of Canada had said it would take a “conditional pause” from hiking to assess the economy. Both economic activity and inflation proved stronger than expected in January, and at its June meeting the BoC surprised markets by resuming its hiking cycle. The BoC had concluded that monetary policy “was not sufficiently restrictive.”
As the Fed met this week, the market was pricing in a “skip.” The Fed did not hike, but its “dot plot” pointed to two more hikes this year. Should a skip be the base case? Well, Chair Powell corrected himself for using the word “skip.” But the lesson from the RBA and the BoC is not that we should expect a resumption of hikes, but rather that we should not be surprised if hikes resume when data do not cooperate. The Beyoncé effect should keep us from getting too complacent.
Our US team forecasts notable further deceleration for both payrolls and inflation before the July meeting. If our forecast for CPI is realized, the Fed’s forecast for inflation will have to get revised down, and Chair Powell’s insistence that the “July meeting will be live” will likely be rendered moot. A resumption of hikes, therefore, is simply not our base case. But I will repeat a point I have made in the past. The Fed might be done now only to resume hikes much later. Recall that in 1996, after a very slight reversal of a similarly rapid hiking cycle, the Fed held policy constant for a year, only to have the next policy move be a hike.
The situation is somewhat different in the euro area. Inflation remains high, and the inflation forecasts at last week’s meeting supported President Lagarde’s indication of another hike. But we think the last inflation print marked a fairly decisive downward trend in core inflation. By the time the ECB stops hiking, we think that trend will be clear, in contrast to the Fed, where the current inflection point presents two-way risk.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 17:30 - Liberals Voice 'Sense Of Betrayal' After Muslim-Ruled MI City Bans Pride Flags
Liberals Voice ‘Sense Of Betrayal’ After Muslim-Ruled MI City Bans Pride Flags
Liberals who cheered when a Michigan city elected America’s first Muslim-majority city council are now voicing a “sense of betrayal” after the council voted to ban LGBT Pride flags from city property.
In 2015, Hamtramck, Michigan — a Detroit suburb and former Polish and Ukrainian enclave — put itself in an international spotlight when Muslims were elected to four of six city council positions. As the Guardian recounts, liberals rejoiced:
“They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.”
Fast forward another seven and a half years, and — as people of European descent represent an increasingly smaller proportion of the electorate — that slim majority has evolved into a monopoly, with all six slots filled not just by Muslims, but by Muslim men.
Now liberals are recoiling after the city council on Tuesday voted unanimously to bar Pride flags from being displayed on city property, as part of a prohibition that bars “religious, ethnic, racial, political or sexual orientation group flags.”
Bangladeshi-American council member Mohammed Hassan listens to public comments (Sarahbeth Maney/Detroit Free Press/USA Today Network via KWWL) “There’s a sense of betrayal,” said former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, a Polish-American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”
Mayor Amer Ghalib, a Yemeni-American, told the Guardian that LGBTQ advocates are creating tension by “forcing their agendas on others.” He added, “There is an overreaction to the situation, and some people are not willing to accept the fact that they lost.”
An overflow crowd listens as the Hamtramck city council meeting considers banning Pride flags at public buildings (Robin Buckson/The Detroit News via AP) A dismayed Hayley Cain told Associated Press that she moved to Hamtramck from California because it had a reputation as a diverse community. “I’m questioning whether it is…The pride flag represents making space for all humans on all the spectrums, and this is where we’re going as a human species,” she said. “You can’t stop that.”
Community interest in the vote was so high that an overflow crowd packed the hallway outside the council meeting room. During the public comment segment of the meeting, a woman opposing the measure donned a clown nose and gave the kind of emotive, unhinged speech that’s standard of woke leftists — before kissing another woman, eliciting groans of dismay:
Muslims vs. LGBT community: LGBT activists pick fight w/ Michigan Muslims over proposal to ban Pride flags
Woman wearing clown nose gives sarcastic speech mocking Hamtramck, Michigan’s all-Muslim government & majority-Muslim population before kissing woman during debate on… pic.twitter.com/Gbii2M9oQP
— Samirah (@SameeraKhan) June 16, 2023
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“You guys are welcome,” said council member Nayeem Choudhury. “[But] why do you have to have the flag shown on government property to be represented? You’re already represented. We already know who you are.”
Most of the city’s Muslim immigrants come from two countries: Yemen and Bangladesh. A man who immigrated from Yemen at age 7 ridiculed those who want Pride flags flying from government flag poles, saying, “They don’t know…what it’s like to live under severe repression.”
He said he owed his success first to “almighty God” and “then to this great country.” Evoking World War II soldiers who died to secure “peace, prosperity, and freedom,” he said “it’s shameful and embarrassing to have any other flag [than the US flag] in public buildings. You have the freedom to display whatever you wish in your home or your private businesses.”
WATCH immigrant from Yemen during a City Council Meeting in Hamtramck, Michigan slams the city for wanting to fly LGBTQ flag from city property.
“Our soldiers fought, bled, and died in the jungles of Iwo Jima and the beaches of Omaha so that you and I can live with peace,… pic.twitter.com/yu797qQNvS
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) June 16, 2023
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With rhetoric like that from a Yemeni-American, it’s no surprise that, while lagging Biden by some 30 points, Donald Trump performed better with Muslims in 2020 than he did in 2016.
Trump’s uptick wasn’t just about the kind of social conservatism on display in Hamtramck. “I wish 95% of people voted for Trump,” Indian-American Muslim Salman Razzaqi told The Guardian in November 2020. Citing Obama’s rampant interventionism that caused misery from Afghanistan to Syria, Libya and beyond, he added, “[Trump’s] the one who harmed Muslims the least.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 17:00 - US National Debt Hits All-Time High Of $32 Trillion
US National Debt Hits All-Time High Of $32 Trillion
Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The U.S. national debt has surpassed $32 trillion for the first time in U.S. history, Treasury Department data released on June 17 showed.
The U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 23, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times) The national debt as of June 16 is at an all-time high of $32.04 trillion, according to the Treasury’s daily statement (pdf).
This represents about $25 trillion in debt held by the public, and about $7 trillion in intragovernmental debt (pdf).
It comes less than two weeks after President Joe Biden signed into law the Fiscal Responsibility Act. One provision of the June 3 legislation suspends the debt ceiling for 19 months, which means the government can continue to borrow money until the end of 2024.
The debt limit was previously increased in December 2021 to $31.4 trillion.
On June 3, the total national debt was $31.47 trillion, but the business day immediately after Biden signed the bill, federal borrowing increased by nearly $400 billion.
The Congressional Budget Office projects the federal deficit for fiscal year 2023 to be $1.4 trillion.
Although the legislation Biden signed also included some $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, under the Biden administration’s 2024 budget proposal, the gross national debt is projected to exceed $50 trillion by 2033.
That’s over $17 trillion over the next decade, which would be more than the entire national debt held by the public before COVID-19.
The federal government surpassed the $31 trillion mark on Oct. 2, 2022—just over eight months ago.
The $32 trillion mark was reached nine years sooner than what had been projected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, largely due to trillions of dollars of congressionally-approved COVID-19-related spending.
‘Debt Addiction’
“We can’t even get through a single fiscal year anymore without adding a trillion dollars in debt, and $33 trillion is likely just around the corner,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement.
“Our debt addiction saddles the next generation with a debt burden that only grows larger so long as we insist on ducking the hard choices of governing.
“We need a return to responsible fiscal policy if we’re ever going to get ourselves out of this mess. The formula to get there should be simple: no new borrowing—meaning fully offset all new spending or tax cuts—and better yet, hold off on them until our debt is under control; address the drivers of our runaway debt; and reform our broken budget process. It’s not rocket science—it’s pretty darn straightforward, and it’s time for our politicians to get to work before it’s too late.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 16:30 - Climate Authoritarianism: WEF Wants 75% Fewer Private Car Owners By 2050
Climate Authoritarianism: WEF Wants 75% Fewer Private Car Owners By 2050
The climate change boondoggle acts as a mechanism for all kinds of social, economic and political changes that could greatly diminish the freedom and financial survival of the average person.
As the world witnessed with the covid pandemic, global institutions working with governments and corporations are happy to hype up false threats and inspire public hysteria if they think they can use that rising fear to whittle away our individual rights. The hype over “greenhouse emissions” is no exception.
The vast majority of climate and carbon policies appear to be aimed at the west, and this is one of the reasons why we know the claims behind them are fake. China alone accounts for around 32% of all global carbon emissions, with the US accounting for only 14% and the EU accounting for around 8%. Yet, think-tanks like the World Economic Forum and globalist havens like the UN are hyperfocused on the US and Europe while China does as it pleases.
Why? Perhaps because the Chinese population is already well under control and there is no need to use climate fear as a weapon to subdue them? In any case, the greenhouse gas issue is superfluous because there is zero evidence of a causation relationship between carbon emissions and global warming. Even the evidence of correlation is highly suspect. And, if you ask any climate alarmist where there is proof of the “climate crisis” they always rant about, they will predictably point to normal weather events (or wildfires) which have been common since human records started.
We have been hearing a lot lately about efforts to diminish or ban natural gas stoves in the US, to throttle agricultural production in Europe and to restrict meat in the public diet, but the most pervasive carbon restrictions are planned for cars and private transportation. The WEF has recently published a blueprint for reducing individual car ownership by 75% by the year 2050.
The white paper, titled ‘Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility’ establishes various guidelines for shifting the majority of the human population over to mass transportation within compact “smart cities.” The WEF also suggests that over 70% of all people will have to live in these smart cities by 2050 – Currently, 45% of the world lives in rural areas, requiring another 15% of the population to be forced into cities in the next couple decades. Not only that, but 2nd and 3rd tier cities would have to be combined into single homogenized networks. In other words, megacities.
The WEF transportation agenda demands that out of over 2 billion car owners, 1.5 billion people will lose the option of personal transportation. That would leave only 500 million people in the world with the “privilege” of owning a vehicle.
Also keep in mind that the UN also wants net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which means no more gas powered vehicles in the next 25 years.
The WEF paper is awash in meaningless buzzwords covering “equity and inclusion” rhetoric as well as “sustainable development goals” and “stakeholder capitalism” terminology. Reading between the lines is necessary to understand the implications.
To summarize, transportation reduction is an extension of something called Shared, Electric and Automated Mobility (SEAM) Governance Framework, as well as net zero urban planning initiatives. By taking away people’s cars, this forces the populace into smaller and smaller areas where mass transportation is available. These extremely concentrated population regions will be digitally connected and monitored by AI, with unprecedented surveillance measures and the government ability to centralize and dictate public movements, public power usage, public access to food and even public behavior.
All of this is sold as a trade off for Utopian convenience and security, when in reality it means the end of freedom as we know it. China has been acting as a beta test country for these measures, with the some of the largest smart city designs and surveillance grids in the world.
We know that the goal of deconstructing private transport is to herd people into increasingly more compact and oppressive cities, but how would a reduction of car ownership of this scale be accomplished?
Through a series of carbon regulations and inflation in prices. Carbon taxes will be used to make purchasing and maintaining a gas vehicle untenable, and inflation in prices of electric vehicles will mean only the wealthy class will be able to buy them. In this way, the establishment can argue that they “never banned cars,” they just created the economic conditions that forced most of the population to abandon personal ownership.
Once we examine net zero projects as a whole entity instead of just the pieces and parts, it becomes clear that these plans have nothing to do with saving the environment and the planet and everything to do with centralization of power.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 16:00 - Those Silly Dads On TV
Those Silly Dads On TV
Authored by Thomas Harrington via The Brownstone Institute,
Have you gotten the memo yet? If not, you must be pretty good at willful blindness as it has been pumped into our homes several times an hour by our mainstream media and its advertising apparatus over the last quarter century or so.
While it has several stylistic variations, its central message is the following:
American fathers are amiable doofuses who mostly care about getting and sitting in front of big screen TVs while their much savvier wives scurry around for them, and provide almost everything of lasting value that the children might need.
Then there’s the other part.
You know, the one that says that when they’re not being purilely useless watching football as they are, of course, venting their well-known and preternatural penchant for verbal and physical violence on the world around them.
Watching this non-stop line of messaging you’d almost believe there are some powerful people out there in media-land who fantasize quite actively about a world without men, or at the very least, a world in which 49 percent of the culture would come to feel tentative and a little stupid about exercising the roles they have played in all healthy societies since the beginning of time.
And what might those be?
Silly little things like modeling essential values like courage and forbearance, or of providing, through their carefully observed and loving knowledge of each of their children’s unique personalities, the accurate parameters for that unique and growing person’s spirited exploration of the world outside the home.
Or counter-balancing the laudable maternal tendency to protect the child at all costs with an ethos of greater intrepidness that acknowledges the constant existence of fear and danger, but that posits them as problems to be managed rather than avoided.
And last but not least, of being, by dint of their generally more physically imposing, and when necessary, aggressive nature the last line of defense against those outside the family who might openly threaten the moral or physical development of his children.
My old colleagues in the academy love to talk about how horribly gender-unconscious some people can be, as in how, when speaking on a given issue a white male of a certain age is, of course, deeply unaware of just how deeply immersed he is in his psychic cage of misogyny and/or supremacism and how he must be re-educated to see the light of his ways.
Could it be a healthy difference of opinion? Nope. In their telling it’s inevitably a case of moral waywardness that can only be remedied by a vigorous program of cultural re-education.
Though I heartily reject the essentialism that is so often implicit in this approach, I would, as I have suggested earlier, be the last to deny that there are, and have long been, gendered approaches to viewing and analyzing key social issues and phenomena.
Where I differ with the zealous re-educators currently holding power in so many of our social institutions is that I am a) not interested in forcibly changing anyone’s view of the world under the pain of social sanction and b) not prepared to cede to one particular social group the exclusive right to talk about how unconsciously internalized gendered thinking can, at times, lead to infelicitous or unbalanced behaviors.
Which leads me to what would appear to be an exceptionally large elephant in the room when we talk about Covid: to what extent can we speak of the response to Covid deployed by our government and virtually all of our leading cultural institutions as a highly gendered one, wherein the traditional male-female dynamic on the matter of security versus risk suddenly became so heavily weighted to the stereotypically “female” side of things?
It would at least seem to be a question worth asking. And yet, nowhere do I see it being asked.
And if in our investigations on this matter we were to be able to substantiate the existence of such a tilt (please note my use of the subjunctive mood), it seems valid to ask how this dramatic departure from the historical gender balance on such matters came about, and/or was engineered to come about.
Coming up with an airtight explanation to such a query that necessarily involves numerous social dynamics would be next to impossible to do.
That said, I think we would be remiss if, in our attempts to respond to the matter we were to obviate the enormous role that media in general, and advertising in particular have come to play in what Even-Zohar calls culture-planning; that is, the way powerful elites use their control of key social institutions to generate versions of social “reality” that make their often predatory aims seem normal, if not laudable. Or how they promote tropes that effectively cancel those values circulating among the citizenry that are most likely to generate resistance to their long-term aims.
I may be wrong, but the last time I checked the BlackRock-level predator class was still an overwhelmingly male bastion. And if there is anything males learn early on, especially if they are ambitious and aggressive ones, is to size up the probable strength of their would-be competitors, and/or those most likely to raise spirited and difficult objections to their grand designs.
I know that if I were one of them, I would, given the undoubtedly greater of ability, should things come to it, of men to physically resist my attempts to cement overall control of the population, do everything in my power through the culture-planning processes at my disposal to make people question the validity of traditional masculine contributions to society.
This, while highlighting the importance of the more traditionally female approach of seeking higher levels of security through a series of quid pro quos with extant (and usually masculine) centers of power.
Think about that the next time you hear the absurd slander of “toxic masculinity” or see yet another amiable and ultimately useless male doofus in a family setting on your TV screen.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 15:30 - Oxford Notes 'Sharp Decline' In Appetite For MSM News In Recent Years
Oxford Notes ‘Sharp Decline’ In Appetite For MSM News In Recent Years
According to Oxford University’s Reuters Institute, 47% of people are interested in the news, down from 63% in 2017. In the UK, the proportion is even lower.
What’s more 36% of people worldwide say they sometimes or often actively avoid the news.
Burnout?
In what may be a sign of information overload, the authors of the report said that there is evidence that audiences “continue to selectively avoid important stories such as the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis as they cut back on depressing news and look to protect their mental health,” according to the BBC.
Of course – thanks to the Trump years and the proliferation of alternative news outlets (ahem) perhaps the realization that most news outlets engage in highly propagandized narrative-shaping in order to control public sentiment on behalf of governments worldwide might also have something to do with it.
The Digital News Report 2023 also concluded that traditional TV and print news media are continuing to decline, while “online consumers are accessing news less frequently than in the past and are also becoming less interested”.
Four in 10 people (40%) say they trust most news most of the time, down two percentage points compared with last year.
In the UK, the BBC was the most trusted news brand, followed by Channel 4 and ITV.
The research also reported that more than half (56%) of those surveyed worry about identifying what news is real and fake online – up two percentage points. -BBC
According to the report, and this is disturbing, Facebook is still the most important social media platform for consuming news, though it’s also suffered a long-term decline, with the number of people accessing it for news content dropping from 42% to 28% over the past seven years.
Meanwhile, Instagram and TikTok have seen increases in use, with 14% of people using Instagram for news and 6% using TikTok.
When it comes to young users, however, then numbers are much higher – with one in five (20%) 18 to 24-year-olds getting their news from TikTok, up from 15% last year, the BBC report continues.
According to Reuters Institute director Rasmus Neilsen, “Younger generations increasingly eschew direct discovery for all but the most appealing brands.”
“They have little interest in many conventional news offers oriented towards older generations’ habits, interests, and values, and instead embrace the more personality-based, participatory, and personalised options offered by social media, often looking beyond legacy platforms to new entrants.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 15:00 - Seymour Hersh: Partners In Doomsday
Seymour Hersh: Partners In Doomsday
Authored by Seymour Hersh via Substack
As Ukraine begins a counter-offensive and Biden’s hawks look on, new rhetoric out of Russia points to a revival of the nuclear threat…
I was planning to write this week about the expanding war in Ukraine and the danger it poses for the Biden Administration. I had a lot to say. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has resigned, and her last day in office is June 30. Her departure has triggered near panic inside the State Department about the person many there fear will be chosen to replace her: Victoria Nuland. Nuland’s hawkishness on Russia and antipathy for Vladimir Putin fits perfectly with the views of President Biden. Nuland is now the undersecretary for political affairs and has been described as “running amok,” in the words of a person with direct knowledge of the situation, among the various bureaus of the State Department while Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on the road. If Sherman has a view about her potential successor, and she must, she’s unlikely ever to share it.
Biden is believed by some in the American intelligence community to be convinced that his re-election prospects depend on a victory, or some kind of satisfactory settlement, in the Ukraine war. Blinken’s rejection of the prospect of a ceasefire in Ukraine, voiced in his June 2 speech in Finland that I wrote about last week, is of a piece with this thinking.
Putin should rightly be condemned for his decision to tumble Europe into its most violent and destructive war since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. But those at the top in the White House must answer for their willingness to let an obviously tense situation lead into war when, perhaps, an unambiguous guarantee that Ukraine would not be permitted to join NATO could have kept the peace.
Ukraine’s counter-offensive is going slowly in its early days, and so news of the war briefly disappeared from the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. The newspapers’ fear of another Trump presidency seems to have diminished their appetite for objective reporting when it delivers bad news from the front. The bad news may keep coming if the Ukraine military’s limited air and missile power continues to be ineffective against Russia.
It is believed within the American intelligence community that Russia destroyed the vital Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River. Putin’s motive is unclear. Was the sabotage aimed at flooding and slowing the Ukraine Army’s pathways to the war zone in the southeast? Were there hidden Ukrainian weapons and ammunition storage sites in the flooded area? (The Ukraine military command is constantly moving its stockpiles in an effort to keep Russian satellite surveillance and missile targeting at bay.) Or was Putin simply laying down a chip and letting the government of Volodymyr Zelensky understand that this is the beginning of the end?
Meanwhile, there has been an escalation in rhetoric about the war and its possible consequences from within Russia. It can be observed in an essay published in Russian and English on June 13 by Sergei A. Karaganov, an academic in Moscow who is chairman of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. Karaganov is known to be close to Putin; he is taken seriously by some journalists in the West, most notably by Serge Schmemann, a longtime Moscow correspondent for the New York Times and now a member of the Times editorial board. Like me, he spent his early years as a journalist for the Associated Press.
One of Karaganov’s main points is that the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine will not end even if Russia were to achieve a crushing victory. There will remain, he writes, “an even more embittered ultranationalist population pumped up with weapons—a bleeding wound threatening inevitable complications and a new war.”
The essay is suffused with despair. A Russian victory in Ukraine means a continued war with the West. “The worst situation,” he writes, “may occur if, at the cost of enormous losses, we liberate the whole of Ukraine and it remains in ruins with a population that mostly hates us. . . . The feud with the West will continue as it will support a low-grade guerrilla war.” A more attractive option would be to liberate the pro-Russian areas of Ukraine followed by demilitarization of Ukraine’s armed forces. But that would be possible, Karaganov writes, “only if and when we are able to break the West’s will to incite and support the Kiev junta, and to force it to retreat strategically.
“And this brings us to the most important but almost undiscussed issue. The underlying and even fundamental cause of the conflict in Ukraine and many other tensions in the world . . . is the accelerating failure of the modern ruling Western elites” to recognize and deal with the “globalization course of recent decades.” These changes, which Karaganov calls “unprecedented in history,” are key elements in the global balance of power that now favor “China and partly India acting as economic drivers, and Russia chosen by history to be its military strategic pillar.” The countries of the West, under leaders such as Biden and his aides, he writes, “are losing their five-century-long ability to siphon wealth around the world, imposing, primarily by brute force, political and economic orders and cultural dominance. So there will be no quick end to the unfolding Western defensive and aggressive confrontation.”
This shakeup of the world order, he writes, “has been brewing since the mid-1960s. . . . The defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the beginning of the Western economic model crisis in 2008 were major milestones.” All of this points toward large-scale disaster: “Truce is possible, but peace is not. . . . This vector of the West’s movement unambiguously indicates a slide toward World War III. It is already beginning and may erupt into a full-blown firestorm by chance or due to the incompetence and irresponsibility of modern ruling circles in the West.”
In Karaganov’s view—I am in no way condoning or agreeing with it—the American-led war against Russia in Ukraine, with the support of NATO, has become more feasible, even ineluctable, because the fear of nuclear war is gone. What is happening today in Ukraine, he argues, would be “unthinkable” in the early years of the nuclear era. At that time, even “in a fit of desperate rage,” “the ruling circles of a group of countries” would never have “unleashed a full-scale war in the underbelly of a nuclear superpower.”
Karagonov’s argument only gets more scary from there. He concludes by arguing that Russia can continue fighting in Ukraine for two or three years by “sacrificing thousands and thousands of our best men and grinding down . . . hundreds of thousands of people who live in the territory that is now called Ukraine and who have fallen into a tragic historical trap. But this military operation cannot end with a decisive victory without forcing the West to retreat strategically, or even surrender, and compelling [America] to give up its attempt to reverse history and preserve global dominance. . . . Roughly speaking it must ‘buzz off’ so that Russia and the world could move forward unhindered.”
To convince America to “buzz off,” Karaganov writes, “We will have to make nuclear deterrence a convincing argument again by lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons set unacceptably high, and by rapidly but prudently moving up the deterrence-escalation ladder.” Putin has already done so, he says, through his statements and the advance deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus. “We must not repeat the ‘Ukrainian scenario.’ For a quarter of a century, we did not listen to those who warned that NATO aggression would lead to war, and tried to delay and ‘negotiate.’ As a result, we’ve got a severe armed conflict. The price of indecision now will be higher by an order of magnitude.
“The enemy must know that we are ready to deliver a preemptive strike in retaliation for all of its current and past acts of aggression in order to prevent a slide into global thermonuclear war. . . . Morally, this is a terrible choice as we will use God’s weapon, thus dooming ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if we do not do this, not only Russia can die, but most likely the entire human civilization will cease to exist.”
Karaganov’s notion of a thermonuclear weapon as “God’s weapon” reminded me of a strange but similar phrase Putin used at a political forum in Moscow in the fall of 2018. He said that Russia would only launch a nuclear strike if his military’s early warning system warned of an incoming warhead. “We would be victims of aggression and would get to heaven as martyrs” and those who launched the strike would “just die and not even have time to repent.”
Karaganov has come a long way in his thinking about nuclear warfare by comparison with his remarks in an interview with Schmemann last summer. He expressed concern about freedom of thought in the future and added: “But I am even more concerned about the growing probability of a global thermonuclear conflict ending the history of humanity. We are living through a prolonged Cuban missile crisis. And I do not see the people of the caliber of Kennedy and his entourage on the other side. I do not know if we have responsible interlocutors.”
What should we make of Karaganov’s warming of doom? Do his remarks in any way reflect policy at the top? Do he and Putin kick around the idea of when or where to drop the bomb? Or is it nothing more than an expression of Russia’s decades old inferiority complex when looking to the gleaming West, where it finds—as we see in the Biden Administration today—endless hostility toward Russia.
“This could be the clarion of a movement in Russia,” one longtime Kremlin watcher told me, “for a dangerous shift of policy or it could or the off-the-wall ramblings of a concerned but deeply Russian academic.” He added that any serious Nato political strategist should read and evaluate the essay.
Is the future of the world really only in Russia’s hands—and not in ours?
Happy Father’s Day.
This piece is from Seymour Hersh’s Substack, subscribe to it here.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/18/2023 – 14:30
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