Today’s News 19th May 2024

• George Washington Warned Against A 'Passionate Attachment' To Israel
  George Washington Warned Against A ‘Passionate Attachment’ To Israel

  By Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities 

  As war rages in Gaza, the intensifying debate over the US-Israel relationship spotlights a political paradox: Those Americans who view George Washington with deepest reverence — that is, would-be “conservatives” — are often the ones who most zealously violate the central tenet of his foreign policy philosophy.

  Specifically, their fierce devotion to the State of Israel defies Washington’s admonition against “passionate attachments” to other countries — attachments that, he said, inevitably lead America “astray from its duty and its interest.”

  That’s not to say that excessive advocacy for Israel is confined to the American right: As demonstrated by President Biden’s backing of Israel’s destruction of Gaza, the championing of policies that serve Israel to America’s detriment also runs rampant among establishment Democrats.

  Regardless of your position on the political spectrum, Washington’s foreign policy advice merits your attention, and the US-Israel relationship serves as a case study that validates his warnings about the many evils that spring from “habitual fondness” for a foreign nation…including one that didn’t exist when his warnings were issued.

  

  After deciding not to pursue a third term as America’s first president, Washington gave the country a parting gift: a farewell address delivered not from a podium, but from the front page of Philadelphia’s Daily American Advertiser.

  Washington’s 7,641-word address reads like an owner’s manual for the young republic. He asked Americans to give “solemn contemplation” and “frequent review” to his guidance, which was “the result of much reflection, and no inconsiderable observation.”

  Let’s review some key excerpts of Washington’s foreign policy guidance, starting with the principle he put above all others:

  “Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.”

  With this guidance, Washington echoed the wisdom of other American founders. Thomas Jefferson urged “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” John Quincy Adams approvingly said, “[America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings…She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

  In addition to “passionate attachments,” Washington denounced habitual hostility toward other countries. As we’ll discuss later, the US government’s passionate attachment to Israel is itself the font of hostilities equally unrooted in American interest.

  “The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”

  While it’s a little less universal these days, “habitual fondness” for Israel remains widespread in American politics, particularly on the right and center-left, and more so among government officials than citizens.

  That habitual fondness is routinely manifested by pronouncements that would make Washington, Jefferson and Madison cringe. Drawing from a common well of fawning rhetoric, politicians frequently refer to a supposedly “unbreakable bond” between America and Israel. Another cliche sees officials stating there must be “no daylight” between the two countries. Endorsing DC’s unconditional backing of Israel, and showing utter disregard for future contingencies, President Obama proclaimed that “our alliance is eternal, it is forever.”

  Many politicians go so far as to say Israel is America’s “greatest ally.” One can only imagine reactions in the UK, Canada, Australia and many other countries that have gone to war alongside the United States on multiple occasions in this century, sacrificing lives and limbs as Israel offers little more than encouragement.

  Taking things to mind-bending extremes, you’ll even encounter declarations that “real Americans stand with Israel” — perversely measuring American patriotism by the extent to which one is devoted to a foreign country.

  

  For many — especially evangelical Christians — habitual fondness for Israel has a religious dynamic. Viewed through religious, rose-colored glasses, the State of Israel is transformed from a modern, man-made political entity — led, like all governments, by manipulative, power-hungry politicians who pursue all manner of ungodly policies — into something sacred that supposedly represents and carries out God’s will.

  Exploiting the religious angle, Israel’s advocates — even a US representative speaking in a recent congressional hearing — claim that America is compelled to serve the State of Israel because the bible says God will bless those who bless the nation of Abraham and curse those who curse it — as if today’s modern political entity and what’s referenced in the bible are one and the same.

  Validating Washington’s warning that habitual fondness for a foreign country makes one an unthinking slave to that affection, these same people ignore the Israeli government’s killing of Christians in Gaza and the mistreatment endured by West Bank Christians — to say nothing of recurring incidents of ultra-orthodox Israeli Jews spitting on followers of Christ.

  

  Especially where government officials are concerned, passionate attachments to Israel can bring enormous financial rewards.

  Case in point: Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who’s arguably the most extreme advancer of Israeli interests on Capitol Hill. When he ascended to the Senate in 2014, Cotton benefitted from $960,000 in spending on his behalf by the Emergency Committee for Israel, in addition to $250,000 contributed to a Cotton-backing PAC by New York hedge fund billionaire and Israel-backer Paul Singer, and $100,000 from pro-Israel Boston billionaire Seth Klarman.

  Then there’s Donald Trump, who’s not only made pandering to Israel a staple of his speeches, but, as president, took a variety of actions that had long been on the Israeli agenda. His reward: $20 million for his 2020 re-election bid from Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, in what was reportedly a quid pro quo for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has personally affirmed the idea that habitual fondness has made America “in some degree a slave” to Israel. In a moment of candid conversation with West Bank settlers, Netanyahu was caught on video as he boasted, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily.”

  Those who champion Israel’s interest on Capitol Hill do their own bragging. American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyist Steven Rosen famously pushed a napkin across a table and said, “You see this napkin? In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.”

  Patriotic Americans aren’t the only ones put off by that kind of influence. Marveling at the extraordinary sway his tiny country holds over the world’s foremost power, Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy wrote:

  “A new chapter is being written in the history of nations. Never before has a small country dictated to a superpower; never before has the chirp of the cricket sounded like a roar; never has the elephant resembled the ant – and vice versa. No Roman province dared tell Julius Caesar what to do, no tribe ever dreamed of forcing Genghis Khan to act in accordance with its own tribal interests.”

  President Clinton used a different kind of colorful language as he confronted the upside-down power dynamic. After being lectured by Netanyahu during his first meeting with the Israeli prime minister, an angry Clinton exploded, asking his aides, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?!”

  …read the rest at Stark Realities

  

  Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com  

  * * *

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 23:20

• Ex-CDC Director Says It's High Time To Admit 'Significant Side Effects' Of COVID-19 Vaccines
  Ex-CDC Director Says It’s High Time To Admit ‘Significant Side Effects’ Of COVID-19 Vaccines

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

  Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Thursday that many officials who tried to warn the public about potential problems with COVID-19 vaccines were pressured into silence and that it’s high time to admit that there were “significant” side effects that made people sick.

  

  Dr. Redfield made the remarks in a May 16 interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation, during which he lamented the loss of public confidence in public health agencies because of a lack of transparency around the vaccines, which he said “saved a lot of lives” but also made some people “quite ill.”

  “Those of us that tried to suggest there may be significant side effects from vaccines … we kind of got canceled because no one wanted to talk about the potential that there was a problem from the vaccines, because they were afraid that that would cause people not to want to get vaccinated,” Dr. Redfield said.

  In his role as head of the CDC, Dr. Redfield was part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, a project to surge COVID-19 vaccine development at a time during the pandemic when little was known about the virus and rapid vaccine rollout was widely seen as key to getting the outbreak under control and lockdowns lifted.

  In September 2020, a few months before the first COVID-19 vaccines were given in the United States, Dr. Redfield testified before the Senate that COVID-19 represented the “most significant public health challenge to face our nation in more than a century,” and that the prevailing view among scientists at the time was that the overall case fatality rate of the disease was somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6 percent in the United States.

  “If you were to look right now, individuals under the age of 18, it’s about 0.01 percent, 19 to say 69, it’s more like 0.3 percent. And if you’re over the age of 70, it’s about 5 percent now,” he testified at the time.

  While there’s lingering controversy about the severity of COVID-19, a recent study estimates that the global case fatality rate was 8.5 percent in February 2020 but had plunged to 0.27 percent in August 2022, meaning that the estimated relative risk reduction over that time was a whopping 96.8 percent.

  In his interview on NewsNation, Dr. Redfield said that the vaccines that were developed as part of Operation Warp Speed were “important” and saved “a lot of lives.” However, despite their benefits, the drawbacks of the vaccines must be a matter of open discussion, he said.

  “They’re important for the most vulnerable people, those over 60, 65 years of age. They really aren’t that critical for those that are under 50 or younger. But those vaccines saved a lot of lives, but they also—we have to be honest, some people got significant side effects from the vaccine,” he said.

  “I have a number of people that are quite ill and they never had COVID, but they are ill from the vaccine,” he continued. “And we just have to acknowledge that.”

  Vaccine Controversy

  The severity of COVID-19 remains a matter of debate because it’s unclear whether deaths were overcounted or undercounted due to various factors, such as lack of clarity around the role of underlying medical conditions in fatalities in cases where COVID-19 was listed as the primary cause, or underreporting of asymptomatic infections. Aside from the issue of whether people died “from” COVID-19 or “with” a positive test for SARS-CoV-2, there have also been questions about the role of secondary pneumonia caused by mechanical ventilation.

  Either way, a study from January 2023 indicates that the global case fatality rate from COVID-19 has dropped dramatically over the course of the pandemic. Global case fatalities ranged from 1.7 to 39.0 percent in February to March of 2020, according to the study—but fell to below 0.3 percent in July to August 2022.

  The researchers estimate that the risk of death from COVID-19 has dropped by 96.8 percent over the course of the pandemic.

  Along with a decline in COVID-19 fatalities, there have been growing concerns about vaccine side effects, given that a significant number of vaccinated people have reported various adverse reactions.

  The most common COVID-19 vaccine adverse events are those that affect the body generally, with fever, fatigue, and overall discomfort being the top three, according to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). But there are others.

  For instance, heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis) and inflammation of the lining outside the heart (pericarditis) have both officially been acknowledged by the CDC as a known side effect of Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

  Nervous system disorders have also been reported, with such disorders being the third most common in the Pfizer trials, coming after general and muscle-related adverse events.

  There have also been papers linking spike-protein-based COVID-19 vaccines to skin problems, a dull ringing in the ears known as tinnitus, visual impairments, blood clotting, and even death. Recent reporting from EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders“ program indicates that the likelihood of death associated with COVID-19 vaccines (in close proximity to the shot rather than proven as caused by it) was over 100 times greater than for flu vaccines.

  There are also concerns about a post-vaccination jump in excess deaths and disability.

  The CDC still recommends that people of all ages receive a COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the potential side effects do not outweigh the potential harms of getting sick with COVID-19.

  In a notice published in late April, the agency again called for adults aged 65 and older to get the latest version of the vaccines.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 22:45

• House Republicans Express Concern Over Sharp Uptick On Chinese Migrants Illegally Crossing Border
  House Republicans Express Concern Over Sharp Uptick On Chinese Migrants Illegally Crossing Border

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

  Republicans on the House Homeland Security subcommittee expressed concern as the surge of illegal Chinese migrants hit an all-time high in April after the Biden administration relaxed vetting rules last year.

  

  House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability Chairman Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) held the hearing on May 16 to address the “unprecedented flow of Chinese nationals” illegally crossing the U.S. southern border, which has topped 27,000 since Oct. 1.

  The latest CBP numbers show that 3,324 Chinese nationals crossed the southwest border in April alone—more than the total crossings for the entire 2022 fiscal year.

  This year’s total tops 27,000 encounters, surpassing the 24,000 illegal southwest border crossings during the entire 2023 fiscal year.

  That’s a massive jump from recent years. In 2022, the number of Chinese migrant encounters was slightly more than  2,000 at the U.S. southern border. In 2021, that number was 450.

  Nationwide encounters of Chinese migrants entering unlawfully are even higher.

  When looking at encounters across the country this fiscal year, CBP data shows more than 48,000 encounters so far with illegal Chinese migrants, which includes migrants coming through ports of entry.

  Mr. Bishop said during the hearing he is concerned that the vetting process, which has been decreased from 40 to five questions for Chinese migrants, does little to protect America’s national security. 

  “As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues its quest for geopolitical dominance and threatens our sovereignty, we must examine the risks presented by releasing ever-increasing numbers of minimally vetted Chinese nationals into our communities,” Mr. Bishop said in a statement.

  The Democrats’ Homeland Security website dismissed those concerns, characterizing it as “another Republican Border ‘hearing’ with invasion rhetoric and fear-mongering.”

  Mr. Bishop said Chinese migrants crossing illegally into the U.S. could have “nefarious motives,” noting federal indictments in North Carolina last month showed partnerships between Mexican drug cartels and Chinese transnational criminal organizations engaged in money laundering operations throughout the United States. 

  Experts invited to testify indicated that the vetting process was unlikely to find any criminal background information on Chinese nationals who have never been in the United States because China does not readily share that information with American authorities. Border Patrol officers must rely on foreign nationals to answer questions truthfully.

  Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told the committee that the vetting process was insufficient.

  “At best, this is a mockery of U.S. immigration law and sovereignty, and at worst, it is a huge national security and community safety risk. In addition to many Chinese with connections to the Communist Party, People’s Liberation Army, and other state entities, it is statistically probable that [Department of Homeland Security] DHS is releasing people with criminal records,” he said.

  

  Todd Bensman, a national security fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies, brought along passports and identification cards he found near the border. The stamps inside the passports prove their holders traveled through safe countries that would have granted protection, therefore disqualifying them for U.S. asylum, he said.

  While most Chinese nationals were likely coming to work, Mr. Bensman said there was little doubt that “Beijing spymasters” also noticed a new opportunity at the wide open U.S. southern border.

  However, Meredith Owen, an associate history professor at the University of Maryland, testified that most Chinese are coming to the United States to flee oppression and find jobs.

  She highlighted past actions by the U.S. government targeting Chinese immigrants, which had dire consequences. The Chinese became the first and only nation to be singled out by U.S. immigration law with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, she said.

  The anti-Chinese movement that drove the creation of the act cited Chinese migration as a unique threat to the United States, she said.

  “These fears led to extreme violence against Chinese immigrants, including mob violence and the burning of Chinatowns,” she said.

  Committee member Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said during the hearing she is concerned about how to fix America’s “broken“ immigration system and implied racism was the reason behind opposition to migration.

  

  “We’re here today because Republicans are demagoguing and exploiting the xenophobic and white supremacist ideologies that are fueling the immigration debate in this nation,“ she said.

  Since President Joe Biden took office, there have been more than 9 million encounters nationwide and some 7.6 million encounters at the southwest border alone.

  House Republicans blame Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka’s policies under the Biden administration for the border crisis. 

  The House voted Feb. 13 to impeach the secretary for “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law“ and for the “breach of public trust.”

  However, the Democrat-controlled Senate dismissed impeachment charges against him before holding a trial, leaving Mr. Mayorkas in office.

  Democrats have pointed out that America was built on immigrants and benefits from their labor.

  Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said during an immigration subcommittee hearing in January that “many illegal immigrants“ were needed for agriculture production or “our vegetables would rot in the ground.”

  

  Republicans, however, question the surge of Chinese nationals coming across the U.S. southern border.

  In April 2023, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instructed Border Patrol agents to reduce the number of questions they asked Chinese migrants.

  At the time, agents were facing a record number of illegal crossings from all nationalities.

  The hearing became contentious at times, with committee member Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) saying Mr. Bensman’s organization had been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

  This leftwing group has listed many conservative organizations as “hate” groups, such as parental rights groups headed by moms.

  Ms. Ramirez accused Mr. Bensman of “uplifting the same invasion rhetoric central to the white nationalist and antisemitic Great Replacement conspiracy theory” on social media.

  “There is no hateful antisemitic speech in my Twitter [now called X] feed,“ Mr. Bensman responded. “I am Jewish, and we don’t really get with white nationalists; that’s not our thing, so get your facts straight.”

  Mr. Bensman also suggested she read a book titled, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.” 

  In 2023, Republican senators led by Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) wrote to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka, suggesting some Chinese migrants entering the U.S. illegally may be tied to the CCP.

  “There have been numerous documented instances of Chinese nationals, at the direction of the CCP, engaging in espionage, stealing military and economic secrets,“ according to the letter.

   The letter also noted that China is a significant source of drugs such as fentanyl being trafficked across the U.S. southern border.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 22:10

• Eric Cartman Goes On Ozempic
  Eric Cartman Goes On Ozempic

  South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been master craftsmen at flawlessly capturing and satirizing society’s absurdities since the first episode of the animated comedy series debuted on Comedy Central in August 1997.

  As of May, and 330 episodes later, Parker and Stone are preparing to debut the next exclusive streaming event, “The End of Obesity.” 

  

  “The advent of new weight loss drugs has a huge impact on everyone in South Park. When Cartman is denied access to the life-changing medicine, the kids jump into action,” South Park’s official X account wrote. 

  In the teaser trailer, Eric Cartman visits a doctor about his obesity. The doctor says,  “It’s time for some drastic measures to bring down his weight.” The doctor then asks Cartman, “Have you ever heard of Semaglutides … Ozempic, Mounjaro?” 

  However, Cartman is denied access to Semaglutides and then asks his friends Kyle, Stan, Butters, and Kenny for help. 

  Kyle Broflovski, Cartman’s friend, says these drugs “could be dangerous.” 

  And, of course, Cartman ignores the warnings and says, “Let’s do it!” 

  Leopold “Butters” Stotch, another friend of Cartman’s, says: “We’ve been out navigating the American healthcare system … and I almost died.” 

  The advent of new weight loss drugs has a huge impact on everyone in South Park. When Cartman is denied access to the life-changing medicine, the kids jump into action.

  The new exclusive event SOUTH PARK: THE END OF OBESITY premieres May 24, 2024 on Paramount+! #SouthPark… pic.twitter.com/7A5rQB8q7x

  — South Park (@SouthPark) May 15, 2024

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  What’s troubling, and likely, Parker and Stone have captured this theme in the upcoming episode, set to debut on May 24, is how America’s healthcare system, a combination of big government and big pharma, is doing very little to promote healthy diets and exercise – which by the way would help solve the obesity crisis – instead have chosen the dangerous pathway of over medicating Americans with even more drugs. 

  • Address Metabolic Crisis At Its Root, Don’t Hook Obese Americans On Gov’t-Funded Ozempic
  • Five Simple Policies To Reset America’s “Rigged” Health System

  South Park has released six other streaming events: “South Park: Post COVID,” “South Park: Post COVID: The Return of COVID,” “South Park: The Streaming Wars,” “South Park: The Streaming Wars Part 2,” “South Park: Joining the Panderverse” and the recently released “South Park (Not Suitable For Children).”

  I’m looking forward to this 😂 https://t.co/LGqGlOTiuU

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2024

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 21:35

• US State Department Issues 'Worldwide Caution' Alert For Americans
  US State Department Issues ‘Worldwide Caution’ Alert For Americans

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The U.S. Department of State on Friday issued a “worldwide caution” alert for U.S. citizens to remain alert for possible terrorist attacks or other violent actions against Americans.

  

  In a “security alert” posted on its website, the agency said the warning was sent because of the “potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations, or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests.” Americans who are overseas, it added, are encouraged to use “increased caution.”

  The Department of State said it is also “aware of the increased potential for foreign terrorist organization-inspired violence against” LGBT people, echoing a statement issued by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security earlier this week that terrorist groups such as ISIS could target “Pride” month-related events in June.

  “Stay alert in locations frequented by tourists, including Pride celebrations and venues frequented” by those individuals, the bulletin added. It did not provide any specific details about any alleged or reported terrorist plots.

  Late last year, the State Department issued a similar worldwide alert for Americans following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack in Israel that triggered the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

  About a week ago, the agency issued a statement to U.S. citizens in the Middle East, cautioning them to heed a travel advisory for Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank because of active military operations in the area.

  “Terrorist groups, lone-actor terrorists and other violent extremists continue plotting possible attacks in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza,” it said. “Terrorists and violent extremists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets [or] shopping malls, and local government facilities.”

  The Israel-Hamas conflict has led to a “complex situation” that could have implications for U.S. citizens’ safety, the department said, adding that the Israel Defense Forces currently has control over the Gaza side of Rafah Crossing.

  Israel has said that about 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of about 30 more. Military officials and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said that its forces found the bodies of three Israeli hostages killed by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack, including German-Israeli Shani Louk.

  Mr. Netanyahu called the deaths “heartbreaking,” saying in a statement, “We will return all of our hostages, both the living and the dead.”

  Hamas-led terrorists killed about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and abducted about 250 others in the Oct. 7 attack. About half of those hostages have since been freed, most in swaps for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire in November.

  FBI and DHS Warning

  In a separate bulletin, both the FBI and DHS said that groups such as ISIS, or Islamic State, might “seek to exploit increased gatherings associated” with “Pride”-related events. The terrorist threats could come via the mail, in person, or online, the agencies stated without elaborating or providing specific details.

  The bulletin noted that June 12 is the eighth anniversary of the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando in which 49 people died. After the incident, pro-ISIS groups “praised this attack as one of the high-profile attacks in Western countries” and “supporters celebrated it,” according to the FBI and DHS.

  Both agencies also noted that in February 2023, an ISIS-related message board had included “rhetoric and rallied against the growth and promotion” of LGBT groups.

  The two agencies revealed “possible indicators” of what they called “potential threat activity,” which includes “unusual surveillance or interest in buildings, gatherings, or events” as well as “unusual or prolonged testing or probing of security measures at events or venues,” violent threats made online or in person, and photography of security related equipment or personnel.

  In April, the FBI announced that it had arrested an 18-year-old Idaho man for allegedly plotting to carry out a terrorist attack targeting local churches. The man, identified in court documents as Alexander Mercurio, is accused of telling an FBI informant about his alleged plans and that he wanted to carry out an attack on April 7, but he was thwarted by officials.

  Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) earlier this week warned that an ISIS-linked human smuggling network was discovered at the U.S.-Mexico border, adding that the FBI told him about ISIS-linked “individuals who are facilitating the passage of migrants across the U.S.–Mexican border into the United States.”

  Mr. Cornyn, who was speaking at a congressional hearing, added that he believes that it is only a matter of “when” and not “if” a terrorist attack is carried out on U.S. soil.

  Several weeks ago, FBI Director Chris Wray said foreign terrorist groups are again looking to attack the United States in an “increasingly concerning” way, noting that his agency is attempting to prevent an attack on U.S. soil via terrorist groups such as ISIS-K, a regional branch of ISIS mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  “Foreign terrorists, including ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their adherents, have renewed calls for attacks against Jewish communities here in the United States and across the West in statements and propaganda,” Mr. Wray said in April.

  The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 21:00

• Fierce Fighting Gets Closer To US-Built Gaza Pier Just As Initial Aid Rolls Off
  Fierce Fighting Gets Closer To US-Built Gaza Pier Just As Initial Aid Rolls Off

  While global coverage of the Gaza crisis has focused on the Israeli offensive in the southern city of Raffah of late, fierce battles have erupted in the north of the Strip over the last several days, especially in Jabalia, where the IDF military is in a fierce anti-insurgent style battle set amid narrow alleyways.

  The city which lies 2.5 miles north of Gaza City saw a ‘return’ of Hamas fighters after the IDF months ago conquered it. It has long been deemed among the Strip’s permanent refugee camps. There are reports that Israeli armor has smashed deep into the heart of the camp and city.

  

  Hamas also appears to have stepped-up its attacks on Israeli forces in various locations, and Al Jazeera reports at least 40 Palestinian deaths over the course of the last day.

  “Tanks and planes are wiping out residential districts and markets, shops, restaurants, everything. It is all happening before the one-eyed world,” a resident of Jabalia identified as Ayman Rajab told a regional outlet.

  The same outlet observed that this intensifying fighting is occurring in the same northern region as the US Army-built humanitarian aid pier:

  “People are terrified and they’re trying to get away,” Jens Laerke, UN humanitarian office spokesperson, said in Geneva, adding that most were following orders to move north toward the coast but that there were no safe routes or destinations.

  As the fighting raged, the US military said trucks started moving aid ashore from a temporary pier, the first to reach the besieged enclave by sea in weeks.

  The situation is heating up even as famine is said to be present in this northern area. “To stave off the horrors of famine, we must use the fastest and most obvious route to reach the people of Gaza – and for that, we need access by land now,” deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq announced in a statement, even as initial US aid deliveries via the pier get underway from nearby Cyprus.

  This of course creates the potential that expanded fighting could occur close to the vicinity where American troops are overseeing pier operations just off the coast.

  The Pentagon previously made it clear that if US troops come under fire, they are authorized to defend themselves and fire back. However, the IDF has also said it is providing security on land, and there are at least two Israeli bases established nearby.

  Israel has said of the intense Jabalia fight:

  The Israel Defense Forces said troops killed more than 60 militants in Jabalia in recent days and located a weapons warehouse in a “divisional-level offensive.”

  A divisional operation would typically involve several brigades of thousands of troops each, making it one of the biggest of the war. “The 7th Brigade’s fire control center directed dozens of airstrikes, eliminated terrorists and destroyed terrorist infrastructure,” the IDF said.

  Again, this is all potential recipe for a looming disaster which could suck the Pentagon directly into the chaos of northern Gaza fighting. Some Congressional leaders have recently sought to address this possibility in hearings:

  After the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden is putting troops in harm’s way with a half baked plan to construct a pier in Gaza.

  Watch me question Biden admin officials, @CENTCOM Commander, and @USAfricaCommand Commander during today’s @HASCRepublicans hearing ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/hS5AW54wXS

  — Rep. Rob Wittman (@RobWittman) March 21, 2024

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  As for Hamas, its armed wing is openly advertising that it is pouring its members into the fight. Via its Telegram channel the group said that its fighters:

  • shot an Israeli soldier with sniper fire east of Jabalia
  • attacked a group of 15 soldiers with anti-personnel devices and then used light weapons and hand grenades while they were inside a house in al-Tanour neighbourhood, east of Rafah
  • targeted a Merkava tank with a Yassin-105 rocket in the same neighbourhood
  • shelled Rafah crossing
  • targeted an “Apache” Israeli military helicopter with an anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile (SAM-7)
  • blew up an Israeli military bulldozer east of Rafah

  There further remains the possibility that Palestinian militants could send drones against the pier, which is something both the Pentagon and IDF appear to have prepared for.

  🛰 Several Coyote Block 2 Anti-UAS/UAV deployed on US-built floating pier( also known as JLOTS costs $326 million)
  Threat Perception/Kamikaze UAV- UAS https://t.co/7EYscUvYtn pic.twitter.com/zxHW94CKO7

  — Hurşit Dingil (@hursitdingil) May 18, 2024

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  How will this all end? Things look to continue to get worse, and there’s still no sign of positive momentum toward a ceasefire on the horizon.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 20:25

• Ex-CIA Ray McGovern: Russia & China – Two Against One
  Ex-CIA Ray McGovern: Russia & China – Two Against One

  Authored by Ray McGovern via Consortium News

  Chinese President Xi Jinping’s extremely warm reception of President Vladimir Putin yesterday in Beijing sealed the increasingly formidable Russia-China strategic relationship. It amounts to a tectonic shift in the world balance of power. 

  The Russia-China entente also sounds the death knell for attempts by U.S. foreign policy neophytes to drive a wedge between the two countries. The triangular relationship has become two-against-one, with serious implications, particularly for the war in Ukraine. If US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy geniuses remain in denial, escalation is almost certain.

  

  In a pre-visit interview with Xinhua, Putin noted the “unprecedented level of strategic partnership between our countries.” He and Xi have met more than 40 times in person or virtually. In June 2018, Xi described Putin as “an old friend of the Chinese people” and, personally, his “best friend.”

  For his part, Putin noted Thursday that he and Xi are “in constant contact to keep personal control over all pressing issues on the Russian-Chinese and international agenda.” Putin brought along Defense Minister Andrey Belousov as well as veterans like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and key business leaders.

  Joint Statements Matter

  Xi and Putin signed a strong joint statement Thursday, similar to the extraordinary one the two issued on Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. It portrayed their relationship as “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation…”

  The full import of that statement did not hit home until Putin launched the Special Military Operation into the Donbass three weeks later. China’s muted reaction shocked most analysts, who had dismissed the possibility that Xi would give “best friend” Putin, in effect, a waiver on China’s bedrock policy of non-interference abroad.

  In the following weeks, official Chinese statements made clear that the principles of Westphalia had taken a back seat to “the need for every country to defend its core interests” and to judge each situation “on its own merits.”

  Nuclear War

  Thursday’s statement expressed concern over “increased strategic risks between nuclear powers” — referring to continued escalation of the war between NATO-supported Ukraine and Russia.

  It condemns “the expansion of military alliances and creation of military bridgeheads close to the borders of other nuclear powers, particularly with the advanced deployment of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, as well as other items.”

  Putin has undoubtedly briefed Xi on the U.S. missile sites already in Romania and Poland that can launch what Russians call “offensive strike missiles” with flight time to Moscow of less than 10 minutes. Putin surely has told Xi about the inconsistencies in U.S. statements regarding intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

  For example, Xi is aware — just as surely as consumers of Western media are unaware — that during a Dec. 30, 2021, telephone conversation, Biden assured Putin that “Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.”

  There was rejoicing in the Kremlin that New Years’ Eve, since Biden’s assurance was the first sign that Washington might acknowledge Russia’s security concerns. Indeed, Biden addressed a key issue in at least five of the eight articles of the Russian draft treaty given to the U.S. on Dec. 17, 2021. Russian rejoicing, however, was short-lived.

  There has remained much speculation over whether the two leaders’ respective translators were actually also carrying the ‘nuclear footballs’ while in Harbin:

  Putin and Xi have been shadowed the entire visit by their respective guys presumably lugging their nuclear footballs. I think this is a new look for Russia and China. The message sent is about as heavy as it gets. https://t.co/adSDnSMoJy

  — Jeff Wells (@JeffWellsRigInt) May 16, 2024

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  Foreign Minister Lavrov revealed last month that when he met Antony Blinken in Geneva in January 2022, the U.S. secretary of state pretended he’d not heard of Biden’s undertaking to Putin on Dec. 30, 2021. Rather, Blinken insisted that U.S. medium-range missiles could be deployed in Ukraine, and only that the U.S. might be willing to limit their number, Lavrov said.

  The Mother of All Miscalculations

  When Biden took office in 2021, his advisers assured him that he could play on Russia’s fear (sic) of China and drive a wedge between them. This became embarrassingly clear when Biden indicated what he had told Putin during their Geneva summit on June 16, 2021.

  That meeting gave Putin confirmation that Biden and his advisers were stuck in a woefully outdated appraisal of Russia-China relations.

  Read the rest at Consortium News

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 19:50

• Bill Maher Scolds Pearl-Clutching Lefties Over Harrison Butker Tradwife Speech
  Bill Maher Scolds Pearl-Clutching Lefties Over Harrison Butker Tradwife Speech

  90s Democrat Bill Maher has come to the defense of Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker over a recent graduation speech in which he said that one of the “most important” jobs a woman can have is being a homemaker.

  

  “How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” Butker told graduates at Benedictine College last weekend.

  The NFL just condemned this speech by Super Bowl champion Harrison Butker.

  They 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 don’t want people to hear it.

  It would be a shame if you make it viral. pic.twitter.com/gKy7wJsqpu

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 16, 2024

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  Butker’s speech resulted in a collective gasp from the left, which has spent decades programming young women to believe that becoming a housewife is tantamount to failure, and that real women become titans of industry – delegating the raising of children to others, or hitting peak girlboss and simply not reproducing (and definitely not grappling with deep regret as their eggs expire).

  For example, these assholes:

  

  And so, coming to Butker’s defense is “Real Time” host Bill Maher, who says he doesn’t see “what the big crime is.”

  During a Friday night panel discussion, Maher mocked Butker’s critics for trying to make him out to be “history’s greatest monster.”

  “I can’t express how much this guy is not like me,” said Maher. “He’s religious. He loves marriage. He loves kids… And he’s now history’s greatest monster.”

  “Again, I don’t agree with much with this guy, but I don’t get the thing. He said… ‘Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world.’ Ok, that seems fairly, like, modern. ‘But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.’ I don’t see what the big crime is. I really don’t,” Maher continued.

  “And I think this is part of the problem people have with the left is that lots of people in this country are like this. Like he’s saying some of you may go on to lead successful careers, but a lot of you are excited about this other way that people- everybody used to be. And now can’t that be a choice too?“

  “And I feel like they feel very put upon, like there’s only one way to be a good person and that’s to get an advanced degree from one of those a– h–e factories like Harvard,” Maher continued.

  Watch:

  Bill Maher Drops Unexpected Bomb on Left’s Outrage for Harrison Butker’s Speech

  “I don’t see what the big crime is.”

  “I really don’t. And I think this is part of the problem people have with the left is… pic.twitter.com/d43KlyZJZC

  — The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 18, 2024

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  Basically…

  Presented without comment. pic.twitter.com/9J8aeArVc2

  — Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 17, 2024

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 19:15

• Why Did The US Spend $320 Million On A Rube Goldberg Pier For Gaza?
  Why Did The US Spend $320 Million On A Rube Goldberg Pier For Gaza?

  Authored by Ann Wright via CommonDreams.org,

  Instead of U.S. President Joe Biden marking a red line in the sand demanding that Israel allow aid into Gaza via ground transportation, his inept diplomatic team sent out a plea for help to the U.S. military.

  

  While in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves for 29 years, I thought I had seen some pretty stupid things the military was told by politicians to do. It always begins with politicians deciding the easiest, most sensible solution to a problem would have too much political baggage and cost them votes in the next election. So, they look for a politically expedient solution, one that is invariably very expensive and convoluted.

  Attempting a Military Solution for a Political or Diplomat Problem—AGAIN!!!

  In this vein, all too often, politicians turn to the U.S. military for a solution to a non-military problem. Then some A-type personality in the military presents a hair-brained idea to the politicians, probably never thinking that the idea would be accepted. Then it is accepted to get the politicians out of a jam, and the next thing you know is that the Rube Goldberg, crazy idea is being funded.

  This unbelievable scenario is what has happened with getting humanitarian aid into Gaza for the starving survivors of the Israeli genocide of Gaza. Instead of U.S. President Joe Biden marking a red line in the Israel/Gaza/Egypt sand demanding that Israel allow into Gaza the miles of tractor-trailer loads of food and medicine that have been stalled for months at the Rafah border crossing, Biden’s inept diplomatic team sent out a plea for help to the U.S. military.

  Palestinians in Gaza and citizens around the world will not forget that miles of supplies are just feet away from Gaza at the Rafah crossing and the U.S. will not use its pressure on Israel to open the gates at Rafah.

  And the U.S. military, always looking for validation of its immense “capabilities,” seized the opportunity to use one of its little-known assets—the Army’s Joint Logistics Over the Shore, or JLOTS, system that provides bridging and water access capabilities—to help out the failed U.S. diplomatic efforts to get the U.S.’s “strongest ally in the Middle East” to end the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by letting the massive truck convoys filled with food and medicines into Gaza.

  Normally used to move military equipment across rivers where bridges have been blown up—many times by the U.S. military itself—and sometimes to transfer military equipment from a ship onto shore, the U.S. Army’s small navy swung into action and began sailing to the Mediterranean in U.S. Army ships filled with barges that can be locked together to form landing docks and causeways.

  Rube Goldberg Complex of Construction and Transportation Ideas

  In a Rube Goldberg complex of construction and transportation ideas, the U.S. military anchored to the sea floor three miles off the northern coast of Gaza a floating dock system onto which large cargo ships can dock.

  Cargo ships will off-load pallets and possibly container loads of humanitarian assistance—long-life packaged food and medical supplies—on the three-mile off-shore dock. This cargo will have undergone inspection by Israeli authorities in the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, 200 miles from Gaza.

  The inspection process involves Cypriot customs, Israeli teams, the U.S., and the United Nations Office for Project Services. The U.S. Agency for International Development has set up a coordination cell in Cyprus.

  Two-thousand trucks to offload ONE ship driving 1,800 feet on a causeway that will be dangerously affected by tides, winds, and waves is a recipe for disaster.

  From the cargo ships, food and medical supplies will be transferred into the backs of U.S. Army trucks (probably 2.5-ton trucks) that have arrived on the floating pier brought there by two types of smaller Army boats—Logistic Support Vessels, or LSVs, and Landing Craft Utility boats (LCUs). LSVs can hold 15 trucks each and the LCUs about five.

  The loaded 2.5-ton trucks will be driven back onto the LSVs and motored three miles to the second floating pier system constructed by the U.S. military.

  The trucks will then be driven off the LSVs onto the second pier and down a two-lane, 1,800-foot (six U.S. football fields long) causeway anchored onto Gaza land by the Israeli military. The causeway will be anchored onto Gaza shores by the Israeli military because the U.S. military is forbidden to have “boots on the ground” in Gaza.

  The truckloads of food and medical supplies will then be driven somewhere… and supplies distributed by some organization… yet to be determined according to the latest news reports.

  The empty trucks will then be driven back along the two-lane, 1,800-foot causeway to the floating pier where they will be driven into the small LSVs, and the LSVs then sailed back three miles to the larger off-shore pier and the process begun again. The long causeway should be a cause of alarm for drivers, as the winds and waves so dramatically affected the construction of the causeway that most of the causeway was put together in the calm waters of Ashdod, an Israeli harbor, after winds and waves made construction of the causeway in place off Gaza impossible. Parts of the causeway are now being towed 20 miles from Ashdod harbor to northern Gaza to be linked into place.

  While Thousands of Truck Loads of Cargo Wait at the Rafah Border Crossing, It Will Take 2,000 Truck Loads to Empty Each 5,000 Ton Cargo Ship  

  if a large cargo ship has 5,000 tons of food and medical supplies to be off-loaded, and if each truck can hold 2.5 tons of cargo, it will take 2,000 trucks to take the cargo from one ship. If there are 15 trucks on each LSV, then the LSVs will have to make 133 trips to get the trucks to the 1,800 foot causeway.

  If the LCUs that hold only five trucks are mostly used, then it would take 400 trips to get the cargo to shore.

  Two-thousand trucks to offload ONE ship driving 1,800 feet on a causeway that will be dangerously affected by tides, winds, and waves is a recipe for disaster.

  

  A graphic, not to scale, showing how the aid delivery system will work. (Photo: Department of Defense)

  Will Israel Bomb the Docks, Piers, and Causeway? Remember the USS Liberty!

  The possibility of probability is high that Israeli military jets, drones, and artillery may “mistakenly” target the pier complex… or Hamas or other militant groups may decide that the U.S. complicity in the genocide of over 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza outweighs the meager food and medical supplies the U.S. is bringing into Gaza, which presents another aspect of the recipe for disaster for the U.S. Rube Goldberg pier.

  U.S. military personnel should remember the Israeli attack on a U.S. military ship, the USS Liberty. In 1967, the Israeli military bombed and torpedoed a U.S. ship off Gaza, killing 34 and wounding 171, and almost sunk the ship. The U.S. cover-up for its ally Israel’s brutal, lethal attack on a U.S. military ship continues to this day, as does the U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.

  The World Will Not Forget

  Palestinians in Gaza and citizens around the world will not forget that miles of supplies are just feet away from Gaza at the Rafah crossing and the U.S. will not use its pressure on Israel to open the gates at Rafah, instead offering an expensive, idiotic solution to an easily solvable problem.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 18:40

• Sternlicht's Starwood REIT Running Low On Cash As Redemptions Soar Amid CRE Storm 
  Sternlicht’s Starwood REIT Running Low On Cash As Redemptions Soar Amid CRE Storm 

  Starwood Real Estate Income Trust (SREIT), a $10 billion non-traded REIT ranked second-largest behind Blackstone’s struggling BREIT, faces a severe liquidity crunch as investor redemptions soar amid concerns ‘higher for longer’ interest rates will worsen the commercial real estate storm. 

  The Financial Times reported at the end of last week that SREIT is “running low on liquidity as investors demand their money back” and tapped $1.3 billion of its $1.55 billion credit facility since the start of 2023.

  Redemptions have jumped among concerned investors. In the first quarter, SREIT investors requested $1.3 billion of their cash back. However, the fund only returned $500 million of the requests in the quarter because of a 5% redemption cap. 

  

  Now, Barry Sternlicht’s SREIT is in dire straits. The current pace of redemptions suggests the fund will run out of cash in the second half of the year unless it disposes of properties or expands its credit facility. The filing from last week shows the fund has $225 million left to draw down. 

  The outflows are similar to what happened to Blackstone’s BREIT over the last few years. At least now, BREIT has been able to meet 100% of its redemption requests for the first time since 2022, according to a notice issued by Blackstone to investors on March 1. 

  “Liquidity isn’t something that people think about on the way up, but it can become a concern suddenly,” Phil Bak, chief executive of Armada Investors, which invests in listed REITs. 

  

  Bak said, “When it comes to private REITs, liquidity concerns have been dismissed, and they will become paramount again.”

  FT spoke with an individual close to SREIT who said ‘greater liquidity’ is expected soon after asset sales. They said, “Starwood could sell other assets to raise cash.” 

  The REIT industry has been under severe pressure since Fed chair Powell began raising interest rates in early 2022. Tighter monetary conditions and higher interest rates for the medium term as inflation remains elevated have pressured CRE values of office towers. This has led to a 16% decline in SREIT’s declared net asset value from its peak in September 2022 at nearly $10 billion. 

  For the CRE industry, Goldman’s Lotfi Karoui outlined days ago that the highest share of CRE loans on record will hit maturity walls in the next two years. 

  

  Almost a trillion of CRE mortgages must be paid down, refinanced, or extended by the end of 2024.

  

  The problem is that the Fed’s rate cut cycle has been pushed out to at least the fall. Interest-rate swaps on Friday showed traders pricing about two quarter-point rate cuts by year-end, with about an 80% chance the first one will come in September. 

  

  Between SREIT and BREIT, the smart money has been panic-running for the exit door. Redemption caps have saved these non-traded REITs from totally imploding. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 18:05

• Nickel Prices Log Best Week In Over A Year As Riots In New Caledonia Spark Supply Concerns
  Nickel Prices Log Best Week In Over A Year As Riots In New Caledonia Spark Supply Concerns

  Nickel prices on the London Metal Exchange just had their best week in nearly a year and a half. The surge comes as social unrest rocks New Caledonia. A new report highlighted last week about surging demand for base metals driven by the clean energy push, as well as central bankers hinting at interest rate cuts. This has fueled an upswing in nickel prices and commodity prices. 

  Let’s begin with the unrest and riots that have gripped the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. Additional French troops, including elite security forces, are en route to help authorities restore order. We outlined the latest on the riots in a note titled “France Blames Deadly New Caledonia Uprising On TikTok” on Friday morning. 

  This note will be commodity-centric and focus mainly on the nickel market. Last year, New Caledonia was the world’s third-biggest producer of the battery metal. The tiny Pacific island accounted for 6% of global output, according to the US Geological Survey.

  So far, French miner Eramet SA’s output in the country has been disrupted, and it is currently operating at minimum capacity. This news helped propel nickel futures trading on the London Metal Exchange to its best trading week since early December 2022, rising a little more than 11%. 

  

  Nickel futures are trading at $20,880 a ton, or about the highest level since September 2023. 

  

  “We have seen these riots . . . If New Caledonia has an ongoing problem, then it is going to make a difference,” Dan Smith, an analyst at Amalgamated Metal Trading, a brokerage, told the Financial Times. He noted that traders had been”downbeat” on the nickel market in terms of being oversupplied and that this sudden price spike had caught traders off guard. 

  However, Smith said the “overwhelming consensus” among traders was that the nickel market was “badly oversupplied,” suggesting that the current rally would not last. “Demand is good for nickel [at the moment] but supply is even stronger,” he added.

  Ending the week was a report by the International Energy Agency that forecasted strong demand for nickel and other base metals critical for the transition to cleaner power grids as the powering up America and Europe theme takes off (read: “the Next AI Trade“). 

  “The world’s appetite for technologies such as solar panels, electric cars and batteries is growing fast . . . but we cannot satisfy it without reliable and expanding supplies of critical minerals,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.

  Rising nickel prices come as a massive dislocation of physical copper has sparked a squeeze in prices in New York. 

  

  The Bloomberg Industrial Metal Subindex has soared. 

  

  Spot commodity prices tracked by Bloomberg are also surging. 

  

  Jeff Currie might be right about an emerging commodity supercycle. And, of course, high commodity prices are bad news for Fed Powell’s inflation fight. 

  

  All of this chaos is happening as the world splinters into a multi-polar state, an indication commodity prices will remain elevated. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 16:55

• Billionaires Funding Protests Donate Millions To House Dems
  Billionaires Funding Protests Donate Millions To House Dems

  Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics.com,

  For President Biden and congressional Democrats, the fierce party division over the campus protests and the war in Gaza is full of warning signs during the 2024 election year. The unrest is unlikely to stop when universities break for the summer; protesters are pledging to disrupt the August Democratic National Convention planned to be held in Chicago. 

  Most House Democrats have been reticent on the antisemitic protests and encampments roiling college graduations this month, while a handful have vocally defended or even celebrated the student protests as displays of protected free speech. 

  Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, said she was proud of her daughter, a Barnard College student who was suspended for participating in illegal protests and who was among 100 people arrested after demonstrations at Columbia University in April. Throughout the months of campus protests, members of the progressive “squad,” Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri have applauded “courageous” anti-Israel student protestors while condemning efforts by university administrators and police to dismantle the encampments. 

  A RealClearPolitics analysis of Federal Election Commission data shows one possible reason most Democrats are trying to avoid the campus fray: House Democrats’ reelection campaigns have accepted $6.5 million from three major political families, which have helped bankroll several student groups participating in the protests. The family members cut most of those checks over the last two years, although some of the donations to longstanding House members came over the last decade.

  

  The names are well-known among Democratic funding circles: Soros, Rockefeller, and Pritzker. Yet before the anti-Jewish protests swept college campuses over the last few months, their financial ties to the student groups were not widely known. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a member of the same wealthy Pritzker family, is not among the donors. 

  Several investigative media reports over the last month have uncovered the extensive financial ties between these families and student groups involved in organizing anti-Israel protests and activism across the country predating the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and in its aftermath and during Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. 

  The donors to student groups include George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist and Democratic campaign contributor who helms the Open Society Foundation and his family members; the Pritzkers, the owners of Hyatt Hotels Corporation; and members of the famed Rockefeller family, including relatives of the wealthy American Banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller. The donations have either gone directly to student groups involved in campus demonstrations or to umbrella foundations and organizations, which have, in turn, channeled the funds to the protestors. 

  The House Democratic Congressional Committee and the House Majority PAC, which was founded by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and is directly affiliated with the House Democratic leadership, collected most of those funds, nearly $5.5 million by those two Democratic campaign entities alone, FEC records show. 

  Meanwhile, 30 House Democrats, including Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other members of the leadership, received a combined total of $856,858 from the Soros, Pritzker, and Rockefeller families, while a dozen Democratic candidates in competitive races received a total of $139,000. RCP did not examine Senate recipients. 

  The House members in competitive races who received funds from at least one of the three families include Reps. Mary Peltola of Alaska, Mike Levin of California, Yadira Caraveo of Colorado, Johana Hayes of Connecticut, Eric Sorensen of Illinois, Frank Mrvan of Indiana, Sharice Davids, Jared Golden, Hillary Scholten, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Don Davis, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Gabe Vasquez, of New Mexico, Susie Lee of Nevada, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Paty Ryan of New York, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Andrea Salinas of Oregon, Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania. 

  Craig’s campaigns have received the most of any other House member from the three families: $96,490 since 2018. Lee’s campaign received the second most: $75,000 since 2017. 

  The Democratic candidates who accepted donations from at least one of the three families include Kirsten Engel in Arizona; Adam Gray, Rudy Salas, George Whitesides, and Will Rollins in California; Lanon Baccam in Iowa; Tony Vargas in Nebraska; Lauren Gillen, Mondaire Jones, and Josh Riley in New York; Ashley Ehasz in Pennsylvania; and Michelle Vallejo in Texas.

  Neither the DCCC nor any of the House members and candidates responded to RealClearPolitics’ questions about whether they had any concerns about the financial ties between the Soros, Pritzker, and Rockefeller families to these student groups. 

  Several organizations have played key roles in pro-Palestinian student activism and protests and have received donations from Soros, Pritzker, and Rockefeller family members. The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a pro-Palestinian advocacy group, has received at least $700,000 in Open Society Foundation grants since 2018 and $355,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers since 2019. 

  In 2023, the USCPR had three fellows – Nidaa Lafi, Craig Birckhead-Morton, and Malak Afaneh – all of whom have figured prominently in the nationwide protests, the New York Post reported in late April. The group provides up to $7,800 for its community-based fellows and between $2,880 and $3,660 for its campus-based fellows for spending at least eight hours a week organizing campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.

  While all were involved in student protests over the last several months, the University of California at Berkeley’s Afanah, co-president of Law Students for Justice in Palestine, made the most headlines. Afanah commandeered a microphone during a graduation dinner at the law school dean’s home to speak out against Israel’s war in Gaza. She claimed a First Amendment right to disrupt the gathering and then accused the dean’s wife of assaulting her when she forcefully asked her to leave. 

  The Open Society Foundations defended its funding of these groups and their right to “peacefully protest” in an April 26 X.com post. 

  “We have a long history of fighting antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of racism and hate, and have advocated for the rights of Palestinians and Israelis and for peaceful resolution to the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” the Foundations said. 

  “Our funding is a matter of public record, disclosed on our website, fully compliant with U.S. laws, and is part of our commitment to continuing open debate that is ultimately the only hope for peace in the region,” the organization asserted. 

  Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow are two additional organizations deeply involved in the student protests and backed by the Tides Foundations, which is Soros-funded. Jewish Voice for Peace, which openly describes itself as anti-Zionist, has also received $500,000 in funds from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund over the last five years. David Rockefeller Jr. sits on the Rockefeller Brothers’ board. The group has separately provided grants to both the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center, as Politico reported in early May. 

  The Pritzkers founded the Libra Foundation, which seeds smaller nonprofits, many of which have participated in pro-Palestinian marches, according to the same Politico report. One of them is the Climate Justice Alliance, which has labeled President Biden “Genocide Joe” for his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. 

  Others benefitting from Pritzker largesse include Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, which has helped promote anti-Israel protests, and the Immigrant Defense Project, which participated in a protest in D.C. earlier this year in which police arrested a number of participants. The Pritzkers also help financially support the Tides Foundation, which funds other small left-wing groups, including Adalah Justice Project, a prominent participant in the Columbia University protests and encampment, which police disbanded in early May. 

  House Republicans have launched multiple investigations into the funding of the campus protests and encampments. Earlier this week, the chairs of two GOP-led House committees, the Education and the Workforce and the House Oversight and Accountability panels, sent Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen a letter requesting all suspicious activity reports, or SARs, connected to 20 organizations that have reportedly led, financed, and participated in the antisemitic protests on college campuses. SARs are documents that financial institutions and other professionals file with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to flag law enforcement to potential instances of money laundering or terrorist financing. 

  “It’s no coincidence that the day after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, antisemitic mobs began springing up on college campuses across the country,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, who chairs the Education and the Workforce Committee, said in a statement.

   “These protests have been coordinated and well-organized, indicating that outside groups or influences may be at play. American education is under attack. It’s critical that Congress investigates how these groups, who are tearing apart our institutions, are being funded before it’s too late.” 

  House Oversight Chairman James Comer pledged that his committee would follow the money trail and stressed that the antisemitism “thriving” on many college campuses “must not go unchecked.” 

  Topping the list that Foxx and Comer sent Yellen is Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, which has close ties to several anti-Israel organizations. After the Oct. 7 attacks, Students for Justice in Palestine’s national steering committee distributed a “tool kit” for activists that proclaimed, “glory to our resistance” and included a template for an advertisement showing protesters beneath a Palestinian flag. The image contained a paraglider, an apparent tribute to Hamas’ use of paragliders who slaughtered 360 youthful concert-goers, raped others, and took 44 people hostage during the Oct. 7 attack. That tool kit drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, which accused it of “celebrating terrorism.” 

  Students for Palestine has since been banned or suspended by Brandeis, Columbia, and George Washington University, among other colleges and universities. During his presidential campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banned the group from state campuses, referring to their alleged ties to Hamas.

  “We had a group of Students for Justice in Palestine,” DeSantis said. 

  “They claimed solidarity with Hamas. We deactivated them. We were not going to use tax dollars to fund jihad.”

  A 2016 report from the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis stated that having a chapter on campus is “one of the strongest predictors of perceiving a hostile climate toward Israel and Jews.” 

  The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury official responsible for designating numerous terrorist financiers, said his organization has been watching the financial network behind Students for Justice in Palestine for several years. The group, he said, has an umbrella organization known as Americans Muslims for Palestine, or AMP, a nonprofit that was previously based in Chicago but more recently moved to Falls Church, Virginia. For the last several years, AMP has been embroiled in litigation, accusing it of being an “alter-ego” or shell organization for the Islamic Association for Palestine, or IAP, a disbanded organization linked to Hamas. 

  In 2023, Schanzer testified before the House Ways and Means Committee that IAP had received numerous checks and deposited them into Hamas’ bank account, information uncovered during the litigation. In some cases, the deposits included the memo line “for Palestinian martyrs only,” Schanzer noted. 

  Hatem Bazian, AMP’s founder, was a frequent speaker at IAP forums, and Osama Abuirshaid, who edited IAP’s newspaper, is now AMP’s executive director, Schanzer said. In addition, Abuirshaid has published articles in English and Arabic praising Hamas, noting in them that he has communicated with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. 

  AMP created Students for Justice in Palestine, which started with just a handful of schools and has now expanded to 200 U.S. campuses with chapters. The group is a loosely connected network of autonomous chapters with no named leader. The structure allows it to avoid registering as a nonprofit and filing tax documents. Bazian, who founded the first chapter 30 years ago at the University of California at Berkeley, has described the student organization as “a symbolic franchise without a franchise fee.” 

  Bazian, who is now the chairman of American Muslims for Palestine’s board and a lecturer at Berkeley, has downplayed its ties to the student organization. He says AMP has only provided printed materials and offered grants for students to attend conferences or host speakers but has no supervisory role or control over the Students for Justice in Palestine. 

  Schanzer, however, strongly disagrees. While he stresses that FDD has not produced any evidence of present criminal wrongdoing implicating AMP, he argues that AMP and its organizers deserve intense scrutiny from members of Congress. AMP, he said, has, over the last two decades, provided checks to students at Northwestern, DePaul, and Loyola universities, among others. 

  Last year, Bazian curiously criticized CNN’s Jake Tapper’s “racist” coverage of Rep. Tlaib, arguing in a post from his own X.com account that, “As Jews who believe in human rights and justice, we demand you do better.” Schanzer notes that Bazian is Muslim, not Jewish, and the tweet has led to suspicion that Bazian thought he was logged into Jewish Voice for Peace’s account but mistakenly tweeted from his personal account. 

  Nine Americans and Israeli survivors and victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks are suing AMP and Students for Justice in Palestine, alleging that groups collaborated with Hamas to legitimize the Hamas attacks and provide public relations services for the terrorist organization. Meanwhile, the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine sued the state, challenging the Chancellor of the State University System’s order to state universities to deactivate the student group. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 16:20

• Ukraine Launched Its Largest-Ever Drone Attack On Russia While Putin Was In China
  Ukraine Launched Its Largest-Ever Drone Attack On Russia While Putin Was In China

  In what appears an intentionally-timed message, Ukraine’s military launched its largest-ever drone attack on Russian territory while President Putin was visiting China where he held two days of meetings with Xi Jinping.

  “Fifty-one UAVs were destroyed and intercepted over Crimea, 44 over the Krasnodar region, six over the Belgorod region and one over Kursk region,” Russia’s defense ministry announced of the Friday attack.

  This means well over 100 kamikaze drones were sent across several regions, particularly around Belgorod and the Black Sea. Given the Kremlin is claiming its forces intercepted that amount, the total number of UAVs deployed across the border was likely far and above that figure, perhaps even double, as clearly some made it through anti-air defenses.

  

  “Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a mother and child were killed while traveling in a car, and authorities managed to extinguish the fire at the Tuapse refinery,” as cited in Fox News. “The child was in critical condition. Doctors did everything possible to save him,” Gladkov said.

  Sevastopol was forced to cancel all schools and classes, and to close public buildings, and there was confirmation of damage there.

  Ukraine is apparently seeking to retaliate for Russia’s ongoing major Kharkiv offensive, while Putin has linked the new Russian operation to push deeper into the northeast sector of Ukraine with pro-Kiev forces’ constant cross-border drone attacks and shelling.

  Dozens of Russians have been killed and wounded in Belgorod over the last several months. When asked about the worsening situation, Putin told a press briefing in Harbin, China on Friday that “what is happening on the Kharkiv front is their own fault.”

  Referencing places like Belgorod city, Putin says “Civilians are dying there” – explaining that “It’s obvious… they are shooting directly at the city center, at residential areas. And I said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a security zone, a buffer zone. That is what we are doing.”

  Russian media has reported that the aim is to establish this buffer zone at least 10km within Ukrainian territory, making it more difficult for Ukraine forces to shell Russian villages and cities. According to more of Moscow’s intentions in the region via Russian state media:

  Russia has no intention of capturing the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, which is close to the Russian border, President Vladimir Putin has said. Moscow’s forces have been making notable gains in the area in recent days.

  Speaking to reporters at the Harbin Institute of Technology during his two-day visit to China, Putin commented on Russia’s operations in Kharkov Region, asserting that Moscow is achieving success on the battlefield by acting “strictly according to plan.”

  Also on Friday Ukraine’s President Zelensky warned the public that Russia’s summer assault “could consist of several waves. There was the first wave” in the Kharkiv region, and that the country should brace for more.

  Zelensky is meanwhile still claiming his goal is still the “liberation of Crimea”…

  “Zelensky said that after deoccupation, Crimea will become one of the best places to live in Europe: “It will definitely be – when the power of our resilience, our weapons, our diplomacy and the power of justice for Ukraine will ensure the liberation of Crimea from occupation.… pic.twitter.com/mtWnJLLWGp

  — Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) May 18, 2024

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

  There has lately been widespread media acknowledgement that Ukrainian lines are being pushed back rapidly, and Ukraine officials including Zelensky have lashed out at Western allies for a significant delay in weapons and ammo.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 15:45

• US Focused On Hunting Down Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar, In Bid To End War
  US Focused On Hunting Down Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar, In Bid To End War

  Via Middle East Eye

  The United States is focused on tracking down Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, amid a new push by the White House to help Israel declare “total victory” so it can bring an end to the war in Gaza, US officials have told Middle East Eye. Current and former US officials, who spoke with MEE on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the mission, said the US was expanding its search efforts across the region, after believing the 61-year-old was hiding in tunnels deep below Gaza.

  A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media, told MEE that the Biden administration is now exploring possibilities that Sinwar fled to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, and from there may have even escaped to either Lebanon or Syria. 

  

  The White House referred MEE to comments from US national security advisor Jake Sullivan earlier this week, that he wouldn’t comment on intelligence about Sinwar. The current and former officials did not reference any specific intelligence but said one factor driving the debate was that US intelligence was lagging on Sinwar’s last whereabouts. 

  According to the officials, the Biden administration is roughly one month behind on tracking Sinwar’s last known location, which was within the Gaza Strip. 

  Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who also advised four US presidents on national security, told MEE that the lack of clarity surrounding Sinwar’s last location was “pretty bad.” When asked about the timeframe, he said: “One month means you aren’t even close to real-time information.”

  Last month, a Hamas official said that Sinwar had visited combat zones above ground and had held deliberations with the group’s leadership abroad. 

  Speaking to the pan-Arab news outlet Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed (or The New Arab), the Hamas official said Sinwar was not always staying in tunnels, as claimed by Israel, but also performing his duties in the field. MEE could not independently verify the reports on his whereabouts. 

  Tracking Sinwar has taken on a new urgency within the US intelligence community because the Biden administration believes it could help pressure Israel to end the war by declaring victory, the officials said.

  US President Joe Biden alluded to that strategy last week when he told CNN: “I said to Bibi (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), ‘Don’t make the same mistake we made in America. We wanted to get bin Laden. We’ll help you get Sinwar’.”

  The parallel between hunting Sinwar and al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden underlines the extreme difficulty the US and Israel face trying to find Sinwar. The hunt for Bin Laden took ten years, and when he was located, he was in Pakistan, roughly one kilometre away from a military academy of the US’s counterterrorism ally.

  According to the officials, Washington wants to focus Israel’s energy on finding key Hamas leaders such as Sinwar and Mohammad Deif, the head of the al-Qassam Brigades, as a way to avert a wider full-scale assault on Rafah.

  The Biden administration, which continues to provide Israel with military and intelligence support, has said it would withhold offensive arms from Israel if it attacks “population centrers”, referring to Rafah, the southern Gaza border city which currently houses around 1.4 million displaced Palestinians.

  On Sunday, The New York Times reported that US officials believed Sinwar was not in Rafah but likely remains in Khan Younis, a city that Israeli forces laid siege to between December and April. Sinwar himself previously bragged in 2021 that there were 310 miles of tunnels in the Gaza Strip.

  A former US intelligence official familiar with Hamas told MEE that one of Sinwar’s brothers, Mohammad, oversaw tunnel construction between Sinai and Gaza and has deep ties to smuggling networks in Sinai, a factor that could aid Sinwar’s escape. 

  William Usher, a former senior Middle East analyst at the CIA, told MEE, “Right up until 7 October, Hamas had pretty unimpeded access to the tunnel network. They had contingency plans to put key leaders out of harm’s way,” he said. “In the past, Hamas went to Lebanon, Syria and even Iran,” Usher said. “It wouldn’t shock me if Sinwar was hiding there.”

  HAMAS LEADER ISMAIL HANIYEH SAYS
  “WE MUST UNITE AGAINST ISRAEL”

  He emphasized unity in the struggle against their common adversary. pic.twitter.com/PpT6Djda2w

  — Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) May 16, 2024

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

  US boosts intelligence-sharing with Israel

  On Monday, The Washington Post reported that the US was offering Israel new intelligence to help track Hamas leaders in exchange for Israel not launching the assault on Rafah.

  That report was carried by some Israeli news outlets under the title: US withholding “sensitive intelligence” on Hamas from Israel. However, several current and former US and Arab diplomats, as well as defence and intelligence officials, told MEE it was highly unlikely the US would withhold information on Hamas from Israel.

  In January, The New York Times reported that US national security advisor Jake Sullivan ordered the creation of a new task force to collect information on senior Hamas leaders and the location of hostages in Gaza, and share that intelligence with Israel.

  One of the main challenges for the US is that it paid little attention to Hamas in the lead-up to 7 October, analysts and former US officials said. The Palestinian movement is a designated terrorist organisation by the US, but whilst it was boxed into ruling the impoverished Gaza Strip, it was never considered a major threat to the US.

  The last time the US faced a major security threat in Gaza was in 2003, when a US diplomatic convoy was bombed there, killing three Americans. “The US depends on Israel to a large extent to share intelligence with us on what’s happening in Gaza because it has historically been their priority,” Usher said.

  The US officials said that the Biden administration had accelerated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) coordination with Israel. Meanwhile, a former US official said that Israel would be particularly interested in tapping into the US’s geospatial intelligence capabilities.

  Leverage over talks

  One of the routes the US is exploring to track Sinwar is the ceasefire talks, the sources said. While the face-to-face negotiators on Hamas’s behalf are the political leaders based in Qatar, Sinwar is widely believed to have the final say on any agreement, as the group holds captives in Gaza and exercises control over military units.

  Current and former Arab and US officials told MEE that Sinwar is probably relying on a circuitous network of couriers and potentially messaging apps to communicate with Hamas officials abroad. “If he was using a mobile phone, he’d be dead already,” Riedel told MEE.

  An Arab official familiar with Hamas told MEE that the group has had years of experience learning to cloak its communication during previous wars with Israel. “This is a guy from a different generation who is used to communicating off the grid,” the official said.

  According to US officials, whilst Algeria and Turkey also maintain dialogue with Hamas, Washington is leaning on Egypt to rule out whether Sinwar fled to Sinai. Egypt’s military intelligence talks directly to Hamas’s armed wing, giving them better access to Hamas than any of Washington’s other Arab partners. 

  The current and former US and Arab officials told MEE that if Sinwar fled the Gaza Strip, it could be a blow to Hamas’s morale. Although he has been described as “prepared to die in Gaza”, one US official said that Hamas’s endurance on the battlefield after seven months may be impacting his decision-making.

  “He might want to reconstitute for Hamas 3.0,” the US official said. Despite the US effort, some doubt that killing Sinwar would be enough for the US to press Israel into a ceasefire agreement.

  Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told MEE, “killing Sinwar might be sufficient for the US to decide its time for Israel to declare victory and move on, but it’s not clear that it would be sufficient for Netanyahu’s political survival”.

  “Ultranationalists like Ben Gvir and Smotrich will likely still demand a military operation in Rafah.” MEE also reached out to Syria’s UN mission in New York, and Lebanon and Egypt’s embassies in Washington DC for comment on Sinwar’s whereabouts, but didn’t receive a reply by the time of publication. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 15:10

• White House Reacts To Ultra-Rare Putin-Xi Hug During Visit Highlighting Closer Military Ties
  White House Reacts To Ultra-Rare Putin-Xi Hug During Visit Highlighting Closer Military Ties

  The Biden administration has reacted to what might be called the hug heard around the world (or ‘felt’ perhaps). During the last day of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-day visit to China where he met with President Xi Jinping, the two shared an ultra-rare embrace in host city for the visit Harbin.

  During the two leaders’ final ‘goodbye’ interaction, it was Xi who appeared to initiate the hug. One regional expert, Arnaud Bertrand, has commented “It is indeed incredibly uncommon to hug in Chinese culture, especially for senior officials, which is why you can see Putin is taken aback at first.”

  Xi Jinping hugged Vladimir Putin. Heads are exploding in America’s Deep State.

  The multipolar world is here.pic.twitter.com/rIKW166OIh

  — Danny Haiphong (@SpiritofHo) May 17, 2024

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  White House national security communications adviser John Kirby weighed in later in the day Friday, saying somewhat sarcastically, “That’s nice for them.” 

  Kirby went on to say that it’s “no surprise” that Putin and Xi “continue to try to develop this burgeoning relationship” but that that it remains officials in both governments “aren’t necessarily all that trustful” of each other, according to the remarks.

  “What they have in common is a desire to challenge the international rules-based order, challenge the network of alliances and partnerships that the United States enjoys,” Kirby followed with. He said the two are trying to “look for ways to bolster each other’s national security interests as well.”

  However, there have been exceptions when it comes to the diplomatic past and Xi has hugged Western leaders at times too…

  Actually, this is very common these days. In 2019, Xi and Macron hug each other in Shanghai.
  In Xi’s latest state visit to France, Macron hug Xi before Xi climbed the steps to his plane. pic.twitter.com/bPHEvZ7fxI

  — Shen Shiwei 沈诗伟 (@shen_shiwei) May 17, 2024

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

  And an analyst quoted in the NY Times saw it as an expression of “disdain” aimed at Washington. “Xi’s very deliberate embrace of Putin for the cameras wasn’t just to emphasize the closeness of the political relationship between the two countries and their leaders,” said Richard McGregor of the East Asia at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

  “There was also a touch of disdain directed at Washington, which has been pressuring Beijing to withdraw support from Moscow. That clearly isn’t going to happen in any substantive fashion.”

  The visit culminated in a joint statement pledging deepened cooperation in sectors that include energy, the military, and space.

  🇷🇺🇪🇺🇺🇸 US sanctions European partners, it’s what they do – Putin

  “The Europeans swallow it up, once again confirming that they are vassals of America,” pic.twitter.com/TxjFqc46nY

  — DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) May 17, 2024

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

  As for questions surrounding reports that Putin is favorable to China’s vision for a roadmap to peace in Ukraine, Putin was quoted as saying in Xinhua, “We have never refused to negotiate. We are seeking a comprehensive, sustainable and just settlement of this conflict through peaceful means,”

  “We are open to a dialogue on Ukraine, but such negotiations must take into account the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including ours,” he continued. Putin said he informed the Chinese leader in detail about “the situation in Ukraine” and added, “We are grateful for the initiative of our Chinese colleagues and friends to regulate the situation.”

  The city of Harbin was apparently chosen in part as it has Russian cultural roots…

  Putin visits Orthodox Church in Harbin, China pic.twitter.com/NberFgPyG0

  — RT (@RT_com) May 17, 2024

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  Xi had said during the visit, “Both sides agree that a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis is the correct direction.” And further “China’s position on this issue has been consistent and clear, including … the respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and the legitimate security concerns of all parties.”

  The Pentagon meanwhile took the opportunity to issue a fresh warning to China, with Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, he communicated to a Chinese military official “serious concern over the [Peoples Republic of China’s] support for Russia’s defense industrial base that enables Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 14:35

• Expect More Inflation No Matter Who Wins The Election
  Expect More Inflation No Matter Who Wins The Election

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  For many reasons, the Fed will struggle to contain inflation. This is part one on the Fed’s struggle. It covers deficit spending and interest on the debt.

  

  Key Points

  • The government is running a cumulative deficit of $1.1 trillion so far in FY2024 ($46 billion more than the same period in the prior fiscal year when adjusted for timing shifts)

  • Revenues were $2.2 trillion through February

  • Outlays were $3.3 trillion through March

  The above is according to the Bipartisan Policy Organization.

  Those numbers do not include a $95 billion aid bill for Ukraine and Israel that recently passed Congress.

  The projections look worse.

  Revenue and Outlays Projections

  

  “As spending continues to outpace revenues, deficits will exceed $1.5 trillion (an average of 5.6% of GDP) in each of the next ten years. In comparison to May 2023’s budget outlook, deficits are projected to be a cumulative $1.4 trillion less over FY2024-2033.”

  This report as well as White House economic projections, and Congressional Budget Office projections are all too optimistic.

  Q: Why?
  A: None of them factor in a recession all the way through 2054.

  The Fed makes the same optimistic assumptions in its projections.

  Fed Summary of Economic Projections March 2024 vs December 2023

  

  Compared to December of 2023 the Fed upped its central tendency of GDP expectations, core inflation, and the expected Fed Funds Rate as noted in my March 20, assessment Fed’s Dot Plot is More Hawkish Towards Cuts in March vs. December

  The key points are the Fed assumes no recessions and the Fed assumes no matter what Congress does that it will hold inflation to two percent over the long term.

  In other words, the Fed assumes that it is in control when history suggests that it isn’t.

  The Fed has never forecast a recession, nor has the Fed spotted one in real time.

  The deficit is now over $34 trillion with debt held by the public at $27 trillion. Interest on the national debt is over $1 trillion.

  Money that would go for investment instead goes to bondholders.

  Neither party will fix deficit spending. Nor will the Fed.

  And it will get worse in the next recession. Unrestrained fiscal stimulus contributed to the mess we are in, and nothing suggests a policy change no matter who wins the election.

  In the past two decades, the Fed did have some favorable global factors that held down inflation. Those factors are gone. I will discuss the differences in my next segment.

  Meanwhile, please consider my question Dear Jerome Powell, Is Everything Under Control?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 14:00

• Texas Governor Pardons Daniel Perry, Veteran Who Shot Armed BLM Protester
  Texas Governor Pardons Daniel Perry, Veteran Who Shot Armed BLM Protester

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

  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pardoned former U.S. Army Sgt. Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison for shooting an armed Black Lives Matter (BLM) protester who wielded an AK-47.

  

  Mr. Abbott issued a proclamation on May 16 indicating that Mr. Perry has been granted a full pardon and restoration of full civil rights of citizenship, while taking aim at Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza for allegedly directing the lead investigator to withhold exculpatory evidence and demonstrating “unethical and biased misuse” of his office in prosecuting Mr. Perry.

  “Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement announcing the pardon. “I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation.”

  Earlier in the day, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a pardon recommendation to the governor’s office, indicating in a statement that it had “delved into the intricacies” of Mr. Perry’s case, including reviewing police reports, court records, witness statements, and interviews with people linked to the case.

  “The Board voted unanimously to recommend a full pardon and restoration of firearm rights,” the board said in the statement.

  Mr. Garza’s office told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that board’s decision and the governor’s pardon amount to a “mockery of our legal system.”

  “Their actions are contrary to the law and demonstrate that there are two classes of people in this state where some lives matter and some lives do not,” he said.

  More Details

  Mr. Perry was convicted on April 7, 2023, on murder charges for killing Garrett Foster on July 25, 2020, during a BLM protest in Austin, Texas.

  On the night of the shooting, Mr. Perry was working as a ride-share driver and had turned onto a street where Mr. Foster and dozens of other protesters were marching. After Mr. Foster approached Mr. Perry’s car carrying an AK-47 rifle and began to raise the rifle toward Mr. Perry, the former Army sergeant shot Mr. Foster, his attorneys said in his defense.

  Mr. Perry claimed self-defense, but prosecutors claimed he had maliciously driven into a crowd of protesters and that Mr. Foster had the right to approach him and investigate.

  Doug O’Connell, Mr. Perry’s attorney, said in a statement posted on social media that his client is grateful for the pardon and wishes “this tragic event never happened and wishes he never had to defend himself against Mr. Foster’s unlawful actions.”

  “He is thrilled and elated to be free,” Mr. O’Connell wrote, while criticizing the “courtroom travesty” that put him behind bars for what would have been over two decades.

  Mr. Perry served 372 days of his sentence before being freed, Mr. O’Connell said, while blaming Mr. Garza for tampering with witnesses during the case.

  Mr. Garza told The Epoch Times that the pardon sends a message to those Travis County community members who served on the grand jury that their service is meaningless.

  “To the family and friends of Garrett Foster, and to the people of Travis County, we will not stop fighting for justice,” Mr. Garza said.

  Background

  Mr. Perry, who was working as an Uber driver at the time of the shooting, traveled to Austin in July 2020 for work, according to a statement he provided through his attorneys.

  After dropping a client off, Mr. Perry drove his vehicle onto Congress Avenue and encountered the protest, which was blocking the road. His attorney said that Mr. Perry was unaware of the demonstration before encountering the group.

  “When Sgt. Perry turned on the Congress Avenue, several people started beating on his vehicle,” the statement said. “An individual carrying an assault rifle, now known to be Garrett Foster, quickly approached the car and then motioned with the assault rifle for Mr. Perry to lower his window.”

  Mr. Perry complied with the request, initially believing that Mr. Foster was with law enforcement.

  “It has now been confirmed by several witnesses that this individual with the assault rifle then began to raise the assault rifle toward Sgt. Perry,” his lawyer said in the statement. “It was only then that Sgt. Perry, who carried a handgun in his car for his own protection while driving strangers in the ride share program, fired on the person to protect his own life.”

  After Mr. Perry shot Mr. Foster, another person in the crowd began firing on Mr. Perry’s vehicle, prompting him to speed away and, after reaching a safe location, to call the police.

  Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told reporters after the shooting that people on the scene gave conflicting accounts of what happened, though he acknowledged that Mr. Foster may have pointed his gun at Mr. Perry.

  

  Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Perry had provoked the shooting by driving into the crowd of protesters.

  His attorneys argued that prosecutors withheld key evidence from the jury that suggested Mr. Foster was the aggressor. For instance, his attorneys sought to introduce evidence of three incidents that they said showed Mr. Foster had previously tried to intimidate cars on public streets.

  Mr. Perry’s lawyers also repeatedly tried to introduce into evidence a video recording of Mr. Foster, taken by a protester witness on the morning of July 25, 2020. The video showed that when Mr. Foster was asked if he felt like he’d need to use his AK-47, he said: “Na. I think the uh—I mean if I use it against the cops, I’m dead. I think all the people that hate us, and you know, wanna say [expletive] to us are too big of a [expletive] to stop and actually do anything about it.”

  According to Mr. Perry’s attorneys, the evidence showed that Mr. Foster and fellow protesters “routinely harassed vehicles that attempted to interfere with their efforts to ’take the streets.’”

  Texas law indicates that a person is justified in using force against someone when they “reasonably” believe it’s necessary to protect them against another’s use of unlawful force.

  The Board of Pardons and Paroles said in its May 16 statement that, after a “thorough review of the amassed information,” it concluded that Mr. Perry had acted lawfully and recommended he be pardoned.

  Mimi Nguyen-Ly and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report. This article has been updated with comments from Mr. Garza’s office.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 12:50

• Ex-NIH Director Confirms 'No Science' Behind 6-Foot Distancing Rules
  Ex-NIH Director Confirms ‘No Science’ Behind 6-Foot Distancing Rules

  Newly released testimony from former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins confirms that Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx did not base the pandemic-era six-foot social distancing rule on science, and instead were making things up as they went along.

  

  On Thursday, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, released a transcript from Collins’ January closed-door interview, in which he’s asked about a range of issues – including the lab-leak theory and the six-foot social distancing rule.

  “We asked Dr. Fauci where the six feet came from and he said it kind of just appeared, is the quote,” the majority counsel on the committee told Dr. Collins, per the transcript. “Do you recall science or evidence that supported the six-feet distance?“

  “I do not,” Collins replied.

  Counsel then asked, “Is that I do not recall or I do not see any evidence supporting six feet?”

  To which Collins replied “I did not see evidence, but I’m not sure I would have been shown evidence at that point.”

  “Since then, it has been an awfully large topic. Have you seen any evidence since then supporting six feet?” Counsel replied.

  “No,” said Collins.

  BREAKING.🚨@COVIDSelect releases testimony of Dr. Francis Collins, former NIH director who ran America’s Covid response.

  Highlights:
  • 6-feet social distancing made up
  • Wuhan lab leak not ‘conspiracy theory’
  • Fauci had agenda to discredit lab leak
  • Fauci lied
  • NIH… pic.twitter.com/ycFSZKrTQr

  — Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) May 16, 2024

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

  As the Epoch Times notes further, the remarks by Dr. Collins offer further indication that officials issuing guidelines at the height of the pandemic were, at least to some extent, making decisions that were not explicitly supported by scientific data.

  Various officials involved in crafting the U.S. pandemic response, including Dr. Fauci, have said that they were making good-faith decisions based on the available data at the time and that once new information emerged, they adjusted their recommendations accordingly.

  Major factor in the delay of reopening schools due to 6 ft rule

  American Federation of Teachers had it written in the contract

  “Our union had it in their contract. It’s literally why we didn’t reopen the whole year”

  h/t @LeslieBienen

  No one is criticizing Denmark anymore https://t.co/PmiOc9P0J7 pic.twitter.com/CUkYdv7Mf8

  — APBIOonly (@APBIOonly) May 17, 2024

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  Social Distancing In Focus

  As the COVID-19 outbreak spread in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidance describing social distancing to include staying away from congregant settings, avoiding mass gatherings, and maintaining a distance of at least six feet from others when possible.

  The CDC’s latest guidance on respiratory virus infection prevention (updated on April 4, 2024) includes a section on physical distancing. It indicates that putting physical distance between oneself and others can help lower the risk of spreading a respiratory virus.

  “There is no single number that defines a ’safe’ distance, since spread of viruses can depend on many factors,” the guidance states, which comports with studies such as one from 2021 that concluded that the one-size-fits-all six-foot physical distancing rule is invalid.

  However, the CDC’s latest guidance for healthcare settings, updated on March 18, 2024, makes several references to six feet. For instance, it recommends that in dental facilities with open floor plans, one strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is to ensure “at lest 6 feet of space between patient chairs.” It also defines “close contact” between individuals as “being within 6 feet for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period with someone with SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

  New CDC Director Mandy Cohen recalls how she and her colleagues came up with COVID mandates during her time as NC Health Director.

  “She was like, are you gonna let them have professional football? And I was like, no. And she’s like, OK neither are we.”pic.twitter.com/0pZl3dL01D

  — Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) June 2, 2023

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  The Epoch Times has reached out to the CDC with a request for comment on Dr. Collins’s remarks and for clarification on what scientific basis the agency incorporated the six-foot figure into its COVID-19 prevention guidance.

  In March, the CDC also updated its guidance for people who test positive for COVID-19, telling them that they no longer need to isolate for five days.

  The updated guidance indicated that the threat from COVID-19 has fallen to become more similar to that of other respiratory viruses, and so rather than providing additional virus-specific guidelines, the CDC was opting for a “unified, practical approach.”

  In justifying its shift to the new guidelines, which basically treat COVID-19 like any other respiratory virus, the CDC said that many people with respiratory virus symptoms often don’t know which pathogen is causing their symptoms, so a unified approach is more practical.

  Numerous doctors had long urged the CDC to drop the five-day isolation recommendation, though as recently as mid-February, the agency continued to hold off on making the change, citing the need for more consultation.

  In the updated guidelines, the CDC gave a nod to the “personal and societal costs of extended isolation,” including limited paid sick time.

  In October 2020, Francis Collins labeled me, Harvard prof. @MartinKulldorff, and Oxford prof. @SunetraGupta “fringe epidemiologists” for opposing lockdowns and school closures. He embraced and recommended “social distancing” on the basis of nothing. https://t.co/FkLHtUOUnU

  — Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) May 17, 2024

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  A number of experts and studies have warned about the harms of prolonged isolation during the pandemic. For instance, the American Psychological Association said in November 2023 that Americans have suffered “collective trauma” related to the pandemic. The association cited a study suggesting that the heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 outbreak—which, in addition to the social distancing rule, included quarantines, school closures, business shutdowns, and near-universal mandating of masks—had a negative effect on people’s physical and mental health.

  Another study that looked at a wide array of research into lockdowns concluded that such measures can be an effective tool in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic but only if “long-term collateral damage is neglected.”

  The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save,” the study’s authors wrote.

  The researchers also warned about the widespread censorship of dissenting opinions about the lockdowns, noting that it prevents the scientific community from correcting its mistakes and undermines public trust in science.

  *  *  *

  “SICK LIES”

  New York Post goes after Fauci for his lies about dangerous virus research at the Wuhan institute of Virology.

  It’s only going to get worse for these liars.
  (friend sent me this photo from a NY bodega.) pic.twitter.com/tE9xqB0Ffn

  — Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) May 17, 2024

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 12:15

• When Ideological Bubbles Trump Economic Thinking
  When Ideological Bubbles Trump Economic Thinking

  Authored by Paul Mueller via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  Sometimes smart people make remarkably naïve or deeply problematic comments because their view of the world has been molded by narrow ideology, reinforced by significant consensus in their social circles.

  

  Recently Esther Duflo, a Nobel prize winning economist, revealed herself to be such a person. In a Financial Times interview with Simon Mundy, she said the West owed a “moral debt” of about $500 billion annually to the global south due to its contribution to climate change and the resulting harm.

  I’ve questioned such a calculation elsewhere. And I am not commenting on her published economic work, some of which is no doubt decent. Instead, I want to highlight how outrageously naïve global elites, in this case within the economics profession, have become. There are three major examples of Progressive groupthink in this relatively short interview.

  Example 1 – People advance the public good by paying taxes

  I think we need to rely on taxation because that is the way in which traditionally we ensure that everyone in the economy, private companies and individuals, contributes to the public good. 

  Setting aside the dubious claim that all or even most government spending advances the “public good,” what a narrow view of the world!

  Does this mean that farmers or doctors or mechanics only contribute to the public good when they pay taxes? The question (should) answer itself! This reasoning suggests that her taxes contribute to the public good, not her research. But perhaps if her work is funded by tax dollars…

  The idea that taxes advance the public good informs her claim that we ought to further tax the ultra-wealthy. The super rich don’t and won’t contribute to the public good because, she thinks, they can basically avoid paying taxes.

  Example 2 – The ultra-rich don’t pay taxes

  In terms of the ultra-rich, I think everyone has recognized [sic] the fundamental unfairness in the fact that the ultra-rich are not being taxed on the income that they are making from their wealth. You are being taxed on the income you’re making by interviewing me; I’m being taxed on the income I’m making as an academic. But if we are sufficiently wealthy to have a lot of money invested in various places, and we keep reinvesting this money, we never have to take it out, and therefore, we are never taxed on it. If [the super-rich] want to consume, in a lot of cases, they will borrow against their wealth. So it’s a loan, not an “income” — so they are not taxed on it. That seems to be fundamentally unfair.

  This view that the ultra-wealthy can avoid paying taxes by simply reinvesting their money indefinitely has become canonical in Progressive elite ideological circles due to the peddling of misleading or even incorrect data on income and wealth inequality by economists like Picketty, Saez, and Zucman. They do not seem to care much about the nuanced disincentives of different kinds of taxation. 

  A capital gains tax, for example, is a third-order tax. Companies already pay corporate income taxes which, all else equal, reduces the price of a stock. And when people buy stock initially, they usually do so with previous income that has also already been taxed. Group think among elites means that many of them have never even questioned the validity of this data or the downsides of taxing “capital” because it is all “based on a lot of empirical work.” 

  As a result, a smart economist like Duflo can say that a 2-percent wealth tax is “not going to be a big burden on the ultra-rich, because 2 percent of their wealth is only 30 percent of their income from their wealth, which is currently untaxed.” As if ultra-wealthy people have a simple mixed stock/bond portfolio that averages a seven or eight percent return annually without any volatility.

  For some reason Duflo seems to think that the ultra-wealthy don’t pay taxes. Leaving aside the fact that they obviously pay significant property and sales taxes, they often fund consumption with loans but that only lets them defer their taxes, not eliminate them. Afterall, they have to repay bank loans periodically and they can only do so by realizing (taxable) income or capital gains.

  And while the effective tax rate the ultra-rich pay may be small in some years, or even though their tax payments may be small relative to their net worth at a given moment, Duflo misses a major difference between stable employment income and how entrepreneurs amass fortunes: equity and risk.

  Take Elon Musk, someone she mentions by name as one of the ultra-wealthy who should pay a global wealth tax. Yes, his net worth is enormous, but so is its volatility. On paper, Musk lost about $165 billion dollars in one year (November 2021 to December 2022). In the past four months he has lost close to $20 billion dollars in the market value of his Tesla shares.

  In what world does a 2-percent tax on someone’s wealth equal “only 30 per cent of their income from their wealth”? Such a comment epitomizes the naivety among many Progressive elites.

  Then Duflo makes a freshman error when talking about whether raising taxes reduces people’s incentives to work hard and innovate. She says that her “comfort with taxation…is based on a lot of empirical work that shows that rich people will not stop working or inventing because taxation is higher.” This comfort, no doubt, comes from an uncritical acceptance of Piketty-Saez-Zucman data and highly problematic narratives. 

  Ever since the marginal revolution in the 1870s, Econ 101 has included the idea of marginal analysis. Economists should not ask questions like: “will people stop work or stop inventing” as if some on-off switch is being thrown. Instead, we ask “how much more” or “how much less” of a certain behavior will occur, and then argue about the significance of that magnitude.

  Example 3 – Politicians can and will easily implement this proposal

  It’s really necessary. And it’s reasonable. It’s not that hard.

  That’s what she thinks of her proposal to raise $500 billion in taxes annually and redistribute it to countries disproportionately harmed by climate change. She thinks a novel tax on wealth can be implemented at a global level with all the revenue going to targeted recipients — it defies belief! Why would power-hungry and spendthrift legislators let go of the new tax revenue? 

  Duflo might suggest that we need a “nonpolitical” global organization to enforce and collect the tax. But that begs a similar question: Why would power-hungry and spendthrift legislators authorize or allow such an agency to have such authority? That a Nobel Prize-winning economist can hold these naïve views and fail to use simple economic reasoning should give us pause about how ideology and echo chambers can dull our reasoning. 

  Industrialization, and the carbon emissions that accompanied it, created more benefit for people in poor and developing countries than all the philanthropy and anti-poverty programs in history combined, many times over.

  That a leading expert in development economics ignores this is nigh unforgivable.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/18/2024 – 11:40

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