Today’s News 1st February 2025

• Escobar: Dancing To Trump's Disco Inferno
  Escobar: Dancing To Trump’s Disco Inferno

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  In the late 1970s Donald Trump, in his early thirties, cocky as ever and recently married to Ivana in 1977, could be seen on and off hitting the electric New York City night life especially at glamour/hard partying disco dive Studio 54.

  

  A certified dancefloor killer at Studio 54 was Disco Inferno by The Trammps, mixed by dance wizard Tom Moulton, released in 1976, two years before perennial Trump favorite YMCA – now resuscitated to global furor as the soundtrack to Trump 2.0 dance moves.

  For all practical purposes, Trump is now the DJ turning the whole planet into a Disco Inferno (“folks are screaming, out of control”), as everything is “so entertaining when the boogie started to explode”. And the Trump “boogie” serially exploding is no less than the non-stop amplified sound of theater, bombast and uncontrolled chaos.

  The spectacle of Trump’s sound and fury – a torrent of executive orders, photo ops, carefully scripted illusionist tricks, breathless headlines – signifying…something veils the same old imperial mindset, now blasting out in the open as a weaponized three-ring circus. Stagecraft invariably trumps substance as every smirk and scowl is media-weaponized to the enthralled, bloodthirsty arena spectators.

  Mr. Disco Inferno won a mini-trade war with Colombia in only 10 hours, after posting an image depicting himself as an Al Capone-style Mafia boss in pinstripe suit and fedora hat, standing next to a sign that reads “FAFO”, which means “F**k Around and Find Out”.

  He will win the proxy war in Ukraine. In 24 hours. Sorry, in 100 days. Sorry, maybe more. And “if they don’t settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I’m going to put massive tariffs on Russia and massive taxes and also big sanctions.” Why? Because, “you know, I love the Russian people.”

  He brags that the United States “has the largest amount of oil and gas” (it does not) and is going to use it; he will “ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down oil prices” (they will say no); because if “the oil price came down, the war in Ukraine would end immediately” (this is definitely not a “cause and effect” case).

  He will make “the largest tax cuts in US history.” The US can ensure LNG supplies to Europe (of course, at a huge mark-up); the US “does not need Canada to make cars, as well as Canadian oil and gas”;the United States’ “massive oil and gas reserves” will allow it to “become a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of AI and cryptocurrencies”.

  Buried in the sound and fury is the fact that the US can count on a steady stream of gas for domestic needs but that turns problematic when it comes to exports. Hence the expropriation obsession – as in outright Empire of Plunder: the US badly needs Iraqi, Syrian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Iranian and Russian reserves. Because even if carefully exported, there is insufficient liquification facilities in the US to supply the EU. And that’s why Europe remains largely dependent on Russian LNG and other sources since the sabotage of the Nordstreams.

  Satisfaction…came in a chain reaction

  Yes: there is incoming blood on the dancefloor.

  To get into the real groove of Disco Inferno, we might as well focus on the top three challenges for Trump 2.0:

  1. the tech war against China;

  2. the geoeconomics war against the Global Majority;

  3. and the proxy war in Ukraine.

  The irruption of Hangzhou-based Chinese tech start-up DeepSeek on the global stage was something for the ages, instantly decimating the spun-to-death “small yard, high fence” American strategy to smash China’s tech advances.

  DeepSeek should indeed be seen as the “biggest dark horse” in the open-source Large Language Model (LLM) domain, now identified from Jakarta to Wall Street and Silicon Valley as potentially Beijing’s secret weapon in the AI war with the US. Even Mr. Disco Inferno was forced to admit DeepSeek’s breakthrough as a “wake-up call”.

  At the heart of the matter we find two clashing models: neoliberal hypercapitalism versus meritocratic socialism.

  The head of DeepSeek, Liang Wenfeng, is a fascinating geek. His given name (Wenfeng) means “Vanguard of Culture”; one of the meanings of his family name (Liang) is “bridge”. So he may be seen – as he is in China – as Mr. Bridge to the Vanguard of Culture (here’s Mr. Bridge in an excellent interview , in Chinese; please use auto-translate).

  Mr. Bridge pulled a spectacular Sun Tzu on US sanctions over exporting advanced graphic processing units (GPUs), especially Nvidia’s advanced chips. Moreover, Chinese Big Tech firms cannot compete with the financial firepower of US Big Tech.

  So the answer was to develop cost-efficient powerful LLM models, without access to literally hundreds of thousands of Nvidia H100s chips. DeepSeek stated they had used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and only $5.6million to train a model with 671 billion (italics mine) parameters: that’s a very small fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train models of the same size.

  And everything was developed locally, via scores of PHDs from the top Chinese universities – Peking, Tsinghua, Beihang – and not American Ivy League experts.

  So in a nutshell DeepSeek is a 100% Chinese LLM companywhich was capable to come up with open-source models and a free downloadable app for every consumer to use. That in itself destroys the current American-imposed neoliberal hypercapitalist AI business model.

  The rules of the game indeed are being rewritten. So what is the – predictable – American response? Call for more sanctions. In parallel, DeepSeek was forced to suspend new registrations because its site suffered a massive cyberattack. Talk about the price to pay for eviscerating a humongous $1 trillion off the techno-feudalists gathered at the New York Stock Exchange.

  Mr. Disco Inferno of course supports the commodifying of all data compared to free data for everyone. Right before the DeepSeek shock, he had – theoretically – secured as much as $1 trillion from the Saudis, including to a large extent investments to develop AI and data centers in the US.

  The new game of course is just beginning. Stargate, OpenAI’s joint venture with Japan’s SoftBank, also heavily plugged by Trump, plans to spend at least $100 billion on AI infrastructure in the US. In parallel, Elon Musk’s xAI is massively expanding the Colossus supercomputer to contain more than 1million GPUs to help train its Grok AI models.

  I couldn’t get enough, so I had to self-destruct

  Now to the war against the Global Majority. Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson is adamant: in an absolutely must read essay, he concisely explains that “when Trump promised his voters that the United States must be the ‘winner’ in any international trade or financial agreement, he is declaring economic war on the rest of the world.”

  The key Hudson take away: If nations in the Global South are to save their economy “from being plunged into austerity, price inflation, unemployment and social chaos”, they will have to “suspend payments on foreign debts denominated in dollars.”

  It’s a work in progress: “Circumstances…are forcing the world to break away from the US-centered financial order. The US dollar’s exchange rate is going to soar in the short term as a result of Trump blocking imports with tariffs and trade sanctions. This exchange-rate shift will squeeze foreign countries owing dollar debts in the same way that Mexico and Canada are to be squeezed. To protect themselves, they must suspend dollar debt service.”

  There may be serious problems ahead for Mr. Disco Inferno: “Trump’s America First political theater that got him elected may get his gang unseated as the contradictions and consequences of their operating philosophy are recognized and replaced. His tariff policy will accelerate US price inflation and, even more fatally, cause chaos in US and foreign financial markets. Supply chains will be disrupted, interrupting US exports of everything from aircraft to information technology. And other countries will find themselves obliged to make their economies no longer dependent on US exports or dollar credit.”

  Prof. Hudson notes how Trump “thinks that the US economy is like a cosmic black hole, that is, a center of gravity able to pull all the world’s money and economic surplus to itself. That is the explicit aim of America First. That is what makes Trump’s program a declaration of economic war on the rest of the world. There is no longer a promise that the economic order sponsored by US diplomacy will make other countries prosperous. The gains from trade and foreign investment are to be sent to and concentrated in America.”

  The EU, in the Global North, is even more vulnerable to “America First”. Davos came and went with a mere blip on the screen, apart from the odd US banker bragging about “peak pessimism” in Europe – linked to the incoming Trump tariff tsunami – and head of the European Central Bank Christine “Look at my new Hermes scarf” Lagarde wondering it was “not pessimistic” to say that Europe is facing an “existential crisis”.

  The US-EU trade balance stands at a hefty 1.5 trillion euros a year, including massive Atlanticist investment flows. But what really matters is the financial mess in individual EU nations, especially top two Germany and France, with their Via Dolorosa to be extended ad infinitum when it comes to their cost of borrowing driven by tax cuts in the US.

  I heard somebody say (Burning Burning) burn that mother down

  And now to the Forever Wars front.

  Mr. Disco Inferno, posing as a humanitarian for the non-stop camera clicking, has asked vassals Jordan and Egypt to de facto become accomplices in ethnic cleansing, absorbing as many as 1.5 million people from Gaza. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly “prohibits the forced transfer of protected people out of or into occupied territory”.

  Turning a genocide into a real estate opportunity  in a “phenomenal location” will proceed in parallel with energetically courting the Saudis, after MbS in Riyadh promised last week to invest at least $600 billion – and up to a possible $1 trillion – in the US.

  The official Saudi position is on the necessity of “strategic investments” to “stabilize long-term revenue streams” – not to mention consolidate lavish spending on all those US-made weapons systems. Call it a classic geopolitical case of Power of Capital merging with The Strategy of Chaos.

  Telling Riyadh how to dance is one thing. To entice the Russian bear to the dancefloor is a completely different proposition.

  As star French historian Emmanuel Todd has brilliantly demonstrated , “Trump’s job will be to manage the defeat of the US against Russia.” That’s the toughest call ever. Trump’s supreme anathema is to be seen as a loser.

  So there are only two feasible options.

  1. To “end the war” by not really ending it, just postponing it to the end of the decade, stealing a de facto Russian victory via massive spin and a gargantuan P.R. campaign.

  2. Keep weaponizing Kiev – especially via NATO vassals, while posing as a peacemaker who cannot deliver because of Russia. That will be a toxic variant of the current “war until the last Ukrainian”.

  That kind of gimmickry won’t fly in Moscow. Putin and the Security Council have made it extensively clear the conditions for a real end to the war – not a pause for NATO rearmament.

  The authentic-or-not 100-day plan for a possible deal that has been circulating in the Washington-London-Kiev echo chambers touches on a few probabilities: a Putin-Trump phone call in the next two weeks or so; a possible meeting, bilateral (Trump-Putin) or trilateral (with the Ukrainian actor; quite unlikely) until mid-March; start of negotiations on the main parameters; a possible ceasefire by Easter; an International Peace Conference by the end of April, mediated by US, China, some EU members and some from the Global South; presidential elections in Ukraine at the end of August.

  Key parameters: Ukraine as a neutral state, and not a member of NATO; member of the EU by 2030; Ukraine does not reduce the size of the army; does not officially recognize Russian sovereignty over conquered territories; “some” sanctions against Russia lifted immediately after the conclusion of the peace agreement, some – over the course of three years – depending on Russia’s compliance; all restrictions on the import of Russian energy to the EU to be lifted; and last but not least, the thorny matter of a “European peacekeeping contingent”.

  The CIA is feeding all sorts of misinformation to Trump on everything from the real state of things in the battlefield to the state of the Russian economy. As it stands, Russians watch all the bombast with barely a smirk. Peskov: “Moscow still hasn’t received word from Washington about possible Trump, Putin contact… Readiness for meeting remains.”

  So far, nothing. Totally empty game playing. Perhaps Trump, in secrecy, may be practicing his master shot: “The heat was on, rising to the top / Everybody going strong, and that is when my spark got hot”.

  Time to hit the dancefloor.

  (Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
  (Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
  (Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
  (Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot

  Well, it may turn out that the really hot spark will be detonated not by Mr. Disco Inferno, but by dance partner Vladimir Putin.

  *  *  *

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 23:25

• Prediction Consensus: What The Experts See Coming In 2025
  Prediction Consensus: What The Experts See Coming In 2025

  As we look ahead to 2025, there is no shortage of expert forecasts and predictions for what will happen to the world’s economy, markets, geopolitics, and technology in 2025.

  In this now sixth year of Visual Capitalist’s Prediction Consensus (part of our comprehensive 2025 Global Forecast Series presented by Inigo Insurance), Kayla Zhu has summarized the most common predictions and forecasts by experts into a single visual of what they expect to happen in 2025.

  Drawing from our predictions database of over 800 forecasts compiled from reports, interviews, podcasts, and more, the Prediction Consensus “bingo card” and this article offer an overview of the most cited trends and opportunities that experts are watching for the rest of the year.

  

   

  Geopolitical Predictions for 2025

  Increased geopolitical uncertainty and volatility is top of mind for many forecasters heading into 2025, as global trade dynamics restructure around tariffs and potential counter-tariffs.

  For many forecasters, President Donald Trump’s return to office is anticipated to escalate U.S.-China tensions, potentially triggering increased economic competition, protectionist policies, and global fragmentation.

  “For now, America’s rivalry with China will manifest itself as a trade war, as Mr Trump imposes restrictions and ramps up tariffs—including on America’s allies”

  – Tom Standage, The Economist

  The geopolitical landscape is likely to become more volatile as both nations navigate a complex and increasingly adversarial relationship, with the U.S. intensifying its protectionist stance under Trump while China looks to strengthening its BRICS partnerships.

  

  Amid U.S.-China tensions, experts expect the geopolitical landscape to remain fraught as Sudan endures one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, marked by famine and mass displacement with limited aid while Syria faces a precarious transition following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

  However, some conflicts are predicted to wrap up this year, with a number of experts optimistic that 2025 could mark the end of the Russia-Ukraine war as it nears its third anniversary. Another significant conflict saw a breakthrough as Israel and Hamas reached a Gaza ceasefire in January 2025, offering a brief respite after 15 months of hostilities.

  Along with these ongoing geopolitical issues, several major elections are on the horizon for 2025, including Canada, Germany, Belarus, the Philippines, and Australia.

  Economy and Markets Forecasts for 2025

  Based on the hundreds of economic forecasts and predictions we’ve sifted through, many analysts and experts share matching views on what’s ahead for inflation, interest rates, and economic growth in 2025.

  Global inflation forecasts for 2025: Inflation is expected to continue easing in 2025 across many economies, with global inflation expected to drop from 5.8% in 2024 to 4.3% in 2025. However, some experts predict tariffs could drive acute inflation as firms pass additional costs onto consumers.

  Interest rate forecasts for 2025: Further interest rate cuts are projected for the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank in 2025, while the Bank of Japan was expected to bump rates by 25 bps this year, and has already followed through with their rate hike to 0.50%–a level not seen since the 2008 global financial crisis.

  

  Global markets forecasts for 2025: Forecasters are quite bullish on the markets, with positive S&P 500 forecasts in the 10% to 20% range and an expected broadening of returns beyond the Magnificent 7 expected for 2025. Consensus expectations see U.S. equities leading earnings while Europe rebounds and Asia softens.

  Gold prices are expected to continue to surge this year, with experts positioning it as both an effective hedge against geopolitical and economic uncertainties and a general portfolio diversifier. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are also expected to see growth as the Trump administration advances pro-crypto policies and global economies develop more structured regulatory frameworks for digital assets.

  Global real GDP growth forecasts for 2025: The outlook for global growth continues to be fairly stable heading into 2025. Global GDP growth forecasts range from 2.7% to 3.2%, squarely in the range of IMF’s 10-year average (2015-2024) of 3.1%.

   

  “With some shocks set to ease, such as Russia-Ukraine, along with a bonfire of regulations and tax cuts in the U.S. economy, the global economy is likely to perform better than last year.”

  – Mo Tanweer, academic associate Pembroke College, University of Cambridge and consultant to Inigo Insurance

  The U.S. and China are both expected to experience slower growth in 2025, with the IMF projecting U.S. GDP growth at 2.7%, down 0.1 percentage points from 2024, and China’s at 4.6%, down 0.2 percentage points from last year.

  Technology and AI Predictions for 2025

  Advancements in artificial intelligence innovation and infrastructure show no sign of slowing down in 2025.

  Just this January, President Trump announced the Stargate Project, a $500 billion AI infrastructure venture led by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX, aimed at building data centers across the United States to secure American leadership in AI technology, with an initial $100 billion deployment starting in Texas.

  Significant strides in AI are in the works this year, including agentic AI systems and artificial general intelligence (AGI) which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have all stated are well-within possibility in the near future, possibly this year.

  

  However, as companies scale up their AI operations, both capital expenditures and energy costs are projected to rise, highlighting the need for improvements in energy efficiency and renewable sources in shaping AI’s future and aligning it with environmental objectives.

  Robotics and autonomous driving technology are also expected to continue to advance as AI systems become more sophisticated, with experts forecasting autonomous driving to become “safe and reliable” by 2025 and relatively mainstream across major cities in the United States.

  2025 Forecasts: The Year of Recalibration

  As we head into 2025, notable shifts are taking shape across geopolitical, economic, and technological landscapes. The year stands out as a pivotal moment of global recalibration—where established systems are being challenged, reimagined, and restructured.

  Trump’s return to the White House is expected to dramatically reshape U.S. foreign and economic policy, with a particular focus on trade measures and protectionist strategies.

  His administration’s approach is likely to test international relationships, potentially accelerating economic competition and global fragmentation while simultaneously pursuing domestic market stimulation and supportive policies for emerging technologies like AI and digital assets.

  However, as a whole the world is carefully rebalancing economically. Inflation is gradually cooling, markets show optimism, and central banks are strategically adjusting interest rates. The global economic engine is humming at a steady, if not spectacular, pace, with GDP growth remaining stable despite slowing projections for major economies like the U.S. and China.

  Perhaps most notably, technology—and particularly artificial intelligence—emerges as a transformative and disruptive force. Massive investments in AI infrastructure and predictions about artificial general intelligence signal a technological watershed, but are also being challenged by efficiency and cost innovations made apparent by China’s open source Deepseek R1 model release.

  From geopolitical tensions to technological innovations, the year promises to be a period of strategic adaptation, where countries, markets, and technologies reassess and realign themselves to address the complex challenges of our interconnected world.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 23:00

• The Demoralizing Downward Spiral Of Algorithmic Culture
  The Demoralizing Downward Spiral Of Algorithmic Culture

  Authored by Thomas Harrington via the Brownstone Institute,

  In need of a letter certifying that I do not suffer from a disease of international concern, I headed out to my primary care practitioner last Monday.

  Knowing how busy most doctor’s offices are these days, I decided I’d make it easy on the staff by bringing a) a copy of the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) regulations on diseases of international concern b) a list of the diseases currently covered under this rubric and c) explicit instructions about the elements such a letter must include (i.e. letterhead of the practice, stamp of the practice, doctor’s signature etc.).

  They assured me that they were familiar with this procedure and that it would be no problem.

  And when I mentioned that it would be great if they could do it in both English and Spanish, I was assured that would be no problem either as there was a Spanish-speaking provider on staff who could write it up in that language.

  But again, in the interest of facilitating things, I provided them with a copy of this very type of certification letter written for me some time back by a doctor in Spain. This “letter,” such as it was, consisted of one sentence of 27 words in Spanish and a couple more than that when rendered into English.

  Given that there were two staff members present, and that one of them was scrolling on her phone, I figured it would be a simple matter of one of them quickly writing up the letters, checking my file to see if I had any of the diseases of international concern (I had been there a week previous for my annual checkup) and catching my doctor (or one of his colleagues) between patients for a quick signature.

  However, when I asked the woman in front of me how long it would take, she replied, “Three to five business days. That’s the procedure. We’ll call you when it is done”.

  When I told them that I needed it for an appointment first thing on the following Monday in New York and that if I didn’t have all the documents, it would be months before I got another one, they just repeated the mantra that it would be done toward the end of the week, probably late on Friday.

  On Friday, at 1:45 I received a call saying the letter was ready for pickup. Relieved, I entered the office, checked the letter quickly, and headed out. Upon rechecking it at home, however, I realized that it had not been signed by the doctor, which was one of the first requirements on the list of directions I had handed them on Monday.

  So back I went to the office and explained to them it would be inadmissible for the bureaucratic procedure in question without that signature. By this time it was getting toward 3:15 in an office scheduled to close at 5:00.

  The woman behind the counter said she really didn’t know what she could do. I said, “Why don’t you just write it up and grab one of the doctors in the practice (I had been shifted by them from one doctor to another owing to scheduling jam-ups on their end during the last few years) to sign it?” adding, “After all, it does not involve disclosure of any of my personal clinical details other than the fact that I do not have any of the mentioned diseases.”

  After listening to me and saying nothing, she ran off to talk to her manager.

  When she got back she said, “I’m going to put an order in for it,” and began typing into her computer looking for the page where she could “put in an order” for something that could literally be done in 2-3 minutes. I said somewhat incredulously “Put in an order at this point?” and repeated the idea of typing the letter anew and grabbing one of the doctors between appointments.

  She said “That’s not the procedure” and besides, “Your doctor is no longer in the office,” implying that while they could shift patients from one doctor to the other according to their scheduling needs, my asking that a member of the same ostensibly interchangeable team of doctors carry out this simple task on the same premise was an anathema.

  After another trip to the invisible manager, she returned saying I could leave and that they’d call me when and if the issue is resolved.

  An hour later I received a call saying everything was arranged and that I could come and pick up the letter.

  With a smiling face, she handed me the 27-word letter. But there was only one problem. It was signed not by a doctor but an APRN. When I explained that the directions clearly said that it needed to be signed by a doctor and that the foreign government agency I was taking it to was notorious for rejecting documents that did not conform exactly to their requirements, a confused frown returned to her face.

  She asked me to sit in the waiting room and ran off to the manager again. It was now 4:45 in the afternoon, 15 minutes before closing time.

  About 10 minutes later, the heretofore invisible manager emerged, and with a smiling face, assured me that the issue would be resolved shortly. And so it was.

  At 4:55 she emerged with the letter signed by the only remaining MD at the office, grabbing her, I presume, as she emerged from one of her sessions with a patient.

  In other words, the issue had been finally resolved by the very unalgorithmic, but highly practical and personal manner I had proposed four days earlier.

  So, what’s the moral of the story?

  Before getting to that, I should perhaps say what it is not; the idea is not to point out that the nice people at the office are all irretrievably stupid…at least not yet.

  Rather it is to demonstrate a phenomenon that is rampant in culture that we seldom talk about openly, never mind decry with all the fury that it deserves.

  

  It is the story of how a managerial elite possessed of generalized contempt for the bulk of their fellow citizens and a slavish adherence to an extremely narrow, algorithmically-generated notion of “efficiency” has created scores of so-called idiot-proof systems that dehumanize and demoralize those who work in or engage with them.

  And while these systems are wildly successful at walling off the corporations that design them from the need to listen to and mindfully serve those who buy their goods and services, they are not, as my little story above shows, even efficient in any meaningful sense of the term.

  Those of us of a certain age who have worked in office settings all know (or knew) that person, that wonderful person with a vibrant personality, quick intelligence, and top-notch social skills to whom you could always turn to get things done in a pinch.

  She—and yes, it was usually a she—knew where all the bodies were buried and the strengths and weaknesses of every person in the house, something she would leverage to make things happen in the most unobtrusive and efficient way possible, pulling those she worked with out of tight spaces again and again along the way.

  It pains me to say this, but it seems these linchpins of workplace culture are in extremely short supply today.

  And it’s not, as many people assume, because we lack people with the aptitude to perform in this impressive multimodal manner in our society.

  No, it is because, despite all the HR-generated rhetoric proclaiming the opposite, the people who design and run the systems within which we work are often true nihilists for whom the magical and life-giving processes of human relations, and what some students of psychological development call “human becoming,” mean next to nothing.

  Caught in the “measure-grab-and-control” tyranny of the algorithmic mind, they cannot even begin to imagine how those they see as lesser than them, might, if left to their own devices, be capable of generating greater efficiencies than their vaunted oh-so-rational systems…and usually with a heaping portion of increased human joy as part of the bargain.

  Worse yet, they do not realize that putting people in systems that assume they are stupid will, in the long run, make those who have intelligence (and what person doesn’t?) truly and profoundly stupid, sad, and ultimately unresponsive to anyone or anything in the long run.

  Is that what the managerial elite truly want? Or is it that their imaginations are already so impoverished by fantasies of algorithmic perfection that they truly do not understand the wave of spiritual destruction they have set in motion and feed daily?

  I honestly wish I knew.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 22:35

• Japan's Aging Problem In One Chart
  Japan’s Aging Problem In One Chart

  Japan’s population aged 65 and over has reached an all-time high of 36 million, accounting for 29.3% of the total population.

  With such a large portion at retirement age, the country faces the challenge of maintaining its workforce capacity.

  This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, visualizes Japan’s population aged 65 and over compared to the total population from 1950 to 2045 forecasts, based on data compiled by the Statistics Bureau of Japan.

  

  Half of Japanese Companies Report Employee Shortages

  Japan has the world’s highest proportion of the population aged 65 and over. While the country’s population has been declining, the proportion of older citizens continues to grow and is projected to reach 34.8% by 2040.

  As the population ages, Japan’s labor force is expected to shrink significantly. A recent research note from Morgan Stanley’s Robert Feldman estimates that, based on past demographic trends, the labor force could decline from approximately 69.3 million in 2023 to around 49.1 million by 2050.

  Year	Population	Population 65+	Population 65+ (%)
  1950	83M	4M	4.9%
  1955	89M	5M	5.2%
  1960	93M	5M	5.7%
  1965	98M	6M	6.3%
  1970	105M	8M	7.3%
  1975	112M	10M	8.4%
  1980	117M	19M	10.1%
  1985	121M	14M	11.8%
  1990	124M	16M	13.0%
  1995	126M	19M	15.0%
  2000	127M	22M	17.4%
  2005	128M	25M	19.6%
  2010	128M	29M	22.8%
  2015	127M	33M	26.3%
  2020	126M	36M	28.6%
  2023	124M	36M	29.4%
  2024	124M	36M	29.3%
  2030F	123M	37M	30.1%
  2035F	120M	38M	31.9%
  2040F	117M	41M	34.8%
  2045F	113M	41M	36.4%

  Currently, 51% of companies in Japan report a shortage of full-time employees.

  To address this issue, Japan has implemented immigration programs to attract skilled workers. In 2024, a record 2 million foreign workers were employed in Japan, with plans to add up to 800,000 more over the next five years.

  If you enjoyed this topic, check out this graphic that shows how different generations will shape the global population by 2035.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 22:10

• Fifth Circuit Declares Federal Age Limits On Adult Gun Ownership Unconstitutional
  Fifth Circuit Declares Federal Age Limits On Adult Gun Ownership Unconstitutional

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has issued a major ruling on the Second Amendment, declaring that federal prohibitions on gun sales to adults between the ages of 18-20 are unconstitutional. The case is Reese v. ATF. For gun rights advocates, it may have been better if this decision had been handed down during the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration will likely support the ruling and might not appeal to the Supreme Court.

  

  The case concerns 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and (c)(1), and related regulations, including 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.99(b), 478.124(a), and 478.96(b). These provisions are the basis for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to bar Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) from selling or delivering handguns to adults under the age of twenty-one.

  Writing for the panel (with Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee. and Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, a George H.W. Bush appointee), Judge Edith Hollan Jones relied on the 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen to find that the prohibition was not grounded in the historical tradition of the amendment:

  Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among “the people” whose right to keep and  bear arms is protected. The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th century evidence “cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.

  …In sum…[statues which ‘prohibit Federal Firearms Licensees]…from selling or delivering handguns to adults under the age of twenty-one. and their attendant regulations are unconstitutional in light of our Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation.”

  The decision reverses the ruling of Judge Robert Rees Summerhays of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee.

  The case involved some interesting historical arguments about how some states set the age for the militia at 21 rather than 18. The effort to ground the provisions in a historical context proved unavailing since most states set the age at 18.

  “The government’s theory inverts historical analysis by relying principally on mid-to-late-19th century statutes (most enacted after Reconstruction) that restricted firearm ownership based on age. Then the government works backward to assert that these laws are consistent with founding-era analogues focusing on the minority status and general “irresponsibility” of eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds.”

  Instead, the court found ample support for the right of young adults to bear arms:

  “[C]ontrary to the government’s recitation of concerns expressed in the colonial and founding eras about the “irresponsibility” of those under twenty-one, these young individuals were expected to keep the peace rather than disturb it. In addition to serving in the militia, eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds could be obliged to join the posse comitatus, for which the minimum age was often fifteen or sixteen, and bring “such arms or weapons as they have or can provide”…Before the emergence of standing police forces, the posse comitatus was made up of civilians who accompanied sheriffs or other officials in pursuit of fugitives. … In early colonial America, the posse was “transformed . . . from an instrument of royal prerogative to an institution of local self-governance” that “all but precipitated the American Revolution.” Citizens could be called to “execute arrests, level public nuisances, and keep the peace;” they faced fines or imprisonment if they refused. Instead of refusing to arm young Americans for fear of their irresponsibility, founding-era regulations required them to be armed to secure public safety.”

  Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group associated with former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, called upon the Trump Administration to appeal the decision:

  “We hope the federal government will fight this reckless ruling by seeking rehearing en banc, or taking the case directly to the Supreme Court.”

  There is an argument for the Solicitor General to defend the federal law as a matter of course. However, the ruling is consistent with the views of many in the Administration.

  Had this decision come down under the Biden Administration, an appeal would likely have been taken and this could have strongly reinforced the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Success at the Supreme Court would have extended this precedent nationally. Of course, there is always the unknown of how Chief Justice John Roberts would react to such limits. Roberts has previously signaled his willingness to entertain reasonable limits.

  The case, however, will add persuasive authority for challenges in various states to age limitations.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 21:45

• The Biodefense Oligarchy And Its Demographic Defeats
  The Biodefense Oligarchy And Its Demographic Defeats

  Authored by Joe Murphy via The Brownstone Institute,

  Some years back, in calmer times before the storm, we officers at sea held the wardroom mess in accordance with that classic naval tradition. It was modernized and conducted over secure video, so those of us in the Med studied with those in the Gulf and those in the BAM,¹ but it was all the same. Our study was Thucydides. 

  

  The Peloponnesian War is too large for a deployment’s worth of weekly studies to cover, so after each session, I filled my evening with further reading. As the Oak Hill² passed Sicily, I was drawn to the history of the Sicilian Expedition. History is studied to draw lessons for present times. Athens’ lessons are abundant for ours.

  In the midst of the 30-year Peloponnesian War, factions of Athens deemed an invasion of Sicily critical to overall victory. Inherent to their argument was the reality that Sicily would be impossibly lucrative if victorious. So it was then, so it is now: potential profit often clouds sound judgment. 

  The opposition lost and the attack proceeded. It took the entire fleet and all its citizen manpower and it was entirely defeated. During the multi-year effort, the factions that drove it fused into an oligarchy that perpetuated itself and its war until its incompetence and complete defeat undermined its despotism. It still took the Demos physically overthrowing the Oligarchy for democracy to be restored in Athens.³ 

  Athens could rebuild the ships. But it could not rebuild the men. Thirty thousand citizen sailors were lost in the expedition – the heart of Athens’ civilizational power. The demographic catastrophe is considered a cause of Athens’ eventual defeat in the war and its civilizational decline.⁴

  Two decades ago, factions argued that biowarfare threats were so significant that biodefense responsibility needed to be removed from the purview of the uniformed military and placed within NIAID under NIH and under HHS. There were structural and efficiency reasons to do this but the intangible reason was that the uniformed military officer corps would not stain its honor with biowarfare. It had held the line with the bioweapons convention since Nixon axed the US bioweapons program, so it had to be removed from the picture for the factions to proceed.

  This action, called BioShield, fused the pharmaceutical industry with biodefense and fused the public health agencies with the intelligence community. The two entities in America not held accountable by law or practice, the vaccine industry and the intelligence community (IC), were joined into one. Though done to achieve a positive aim, it is obvious in hindsight that this fusion would create unaccountable oligarchy. Its most apparent manifestation is the director of NIAID’s salary, the highest in government and higher than the president’s, with corresponding tangible worldwide political power. This power structure was known previously to insiders⁵ but only became visible to the public during the Covid response. It also goes without saying that merging medicine with biodefense under the pretext of foreign biothreats is impossibly lucrative. So it was then, so it is now: potential profit often clouds sound judgment.

  The biodefense oligarchy spread its tentacles across government and industry. There is pie to be had and it is lucrative. Adversaries make advances in biotechnology so funds must keep coming and riskier and riskier research must be done to supposedly stay ahead of those adversaries, especially if it proves true that the DOD and NIH traded advanced technology to those adversaries so the IC could gain access and spy on their laboratories.⁶Now with more advanced technology, the IC must do more spying on those adversaries and NIAID more research. The biodefense oligarchy is a reinforcing feedback loop. It perpetuates its reason to exist. 

  There does not appear to be a valid evaluation as to whether the biothreat rates such an apparatus in the context of the overarching threat picture the United States faces. It is unclear if the warriors, the combat armsmen, and the unrestricted line officers are involved in the assessment since they ceased to be involved years ago in an act of false piety (to which the origin of the Covid fiasco can be traced). And the director of NIAID will just turn off funding to the universities in the Congressman’s district when the Congressman raises opposition to the arrangement if the universities in his district have not already complained, for the oligarchy’s funds are substantial. The biodefense grantee taps DOD and NIAID for biodefense funds.

  That’s two pots. Because of “the threats,” they can tap IC funds. Three pots. With the Global War On Terror creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the delegation of defense functions to DHS, including biodefense, there’s a fourth pot. There are actually even more pots, as the DEFUSE proposal shows, to the consternation of federal agents trying to piece the web together.⁷ There is pie to be had and it is lucrative.

  As with the Athenians’ Sicilian Expedition, the biodefense oligarchy became stronger as it accrued failures. The predominant failure is the creation and release of SARS-CoV-2 and the consequent response. Biodefense acolytes called Covid a war and treated it as so, forcing the nation into a war footing. War demands resources and faltering war campaigns demand more resources to keep them afloat. Resourcing demands organization – consolidation – and consolidation equates to more power.

  All governments accrue more powers in wartime. Jacob Siegel, a 9/11-generation veteran like me, wrote a fantastic Tablet essay⁸ on the disinformation complex which addressed the fusion of the biodefense apparatus with the GWOT-Patriot Act apparatus during the Covid event (I have near verbatim unpublished essays that say the same, and my peers and I discuss this repeatedly, so it is equally fascinating that our generation sees this so clearly).

  Essentially, Americans were subjected to a counterterror-insurgency strategy implemented against them by the administrative state in response to the virus. This architecture was for war overseas but was implemented against the American people. With too many interests involved, the expanding apparatus could not be stopped, even by the party in power (which is the nature of oligarchy). As occurred overseas, counterinsurgency failed and in failure imposed despotism and broke the social compact of the country. Alas, the biodefense oligarchy only accumulated more power.

  War added a final element to the oligarchy. SARS-CoV-2 occurred amidst a predicted class conflict⁹ between the credentialed class and everyone else (laptop class, expert class, essential v. nonessential, etc.).¹⁰ The landscape of politics had arranged in recent years to where the dominant credentialed caste aligned with the Democrats. This class and party alignment postured this faction to align with the biodefense oligarchy when the Covid “war” started, which is what happened. So biodefense + public health + vaccine industry + intelligence community + social class + political party + “war” = American Oligarchy.¹¹

  In such a landscape, the Demos emerged in opposition, another parallel to Athens. The Demos is the opposition party plus the rebellion. In counterinsurgency, the goal is to protect the people from the insurgent. In the Covid war, the “war” against the insurgent virus involved the biodefense oligarchy imposing war on the American people to “keep safe” [from the insurgent]. Since the people are oppressed in counterinsurgency, many rebel. The rebellion expands as the authorities’ ineptitude against the actual threat becomes too obvious for mass propaganda to conceal. The ineptitude also weakens and fractures the oligarchy. During the coup against Biden in July, a Harris staffer quipped that Biden was the oligarchy that needed to go away. Oligarchy complained to oligarchy that it was an oligarchy.¹² This turned out to be a signal of the oligarchy’s pending implosion. Absent war, the oligarchy’s factions could no longer hold. 

  Present politics mirror the Athenian conflict between the Oligarchy and Demos, with November’s electoral victory another parallel to the Demos’ ultimate victory. How ultimate this Demos’ victory will be will play out in time. For, like Athenian history, America’s story will pivot on our version of the failed Sicilian Expedition. 

  America’s Sicilian Expedition is the creation and response to SARS-CoV-2. It is the compounding of errors from the Biodefense Oligarchy that culminates in our equivalent to Athens’ loss of its 30,000.

  First is the death toll from SARS-CoV-2 itself. SARS-CoV-2, a synthetic virus or a reverse genetics system or a synthetic self-spreading vaccine – a living thing created in man’s hubris in “defense” against potential natural or man-made pathogens – harmed and killed many people.¹³This number is clouded by the Lockdown and treatment debacle. This number will remain disputed until the actual origin and nature of SARS-CoV-2 is known – what it is down to the amino acid level – and the statisticians and systems dynamicists rework the calculations. These losses were painful, but they were predominantly the old. The creation of and losses to SARS-CoV-2 itself equate to the initiation of the Sicilian Expedition. These losses are not equivalent to the loss of the fleet and its 30,000 citizen-warriors.

  The losses from the vaccines are. These losses came well after the start of the war, at a time when the purpose and value of the war and the perpetuation of it could be re-evaluated. Moreover, these losses are in the young. These losses are concealed by the oligarchy but visible: the athlete who drops on the field, the runner who clutches his heart and face-plants on the street corner, the hyper-fit lieutenant who lies dead on the side of the road, the major collapsed during the fitness test with his peers pinning his violently stroking body to stop him choking on his tongue, the captain who collapses dead in his home before his wife and children, the veteran who wakes suddenly in the night, clutches his wife, screams, and dies instantly of pulmonary embolism, the little girl playing erratically with the neighborhood kids, the mothers over dinner watch weeping that she is not the same girl since the heart medicine. 

  The oligarchy was forced by reality to acknowledge that the shots cause cardiac injuries. The data accumulates for autoimmune conditions, menstrual irregularities, miscarriages, cancer, and numerous other ailments – vertigo, tinnitus, hypertension, colitis, Bell’s palsy, full-body rash, Guillain-Barre, and of course the clots and the clots and the clots. Like most Americans, my wife and I have dozens of family and friends with these injuries. Some estimate the country is losing a Vietnam’s worth of men every year since the shots were introduced.¹⁴ Twenty-four percent reported knowing someone killed by the shots.¹⁵ What is the compound interest on this loss rate? I can name eighteen wounded or dead veterans. My battalion’s casualties from two Afghan War deployments were half that.

  Few take the shots anymore because they know. Governments and even the media now acknowledge that there are excess deaths. But, unlike the Athenians, the number is not known because the authorities refuse to do the math. The number is visible though. For instance, the Navy cannot man its ships.¹⁶ America already cannot man its fleet. There are other factors that contribute, but every organization is short people and every organization knows it is short people, for everyone in the organizations complains about it. The manpower shortage is not just a recruitment issue. The nation does not know if it is already Athens, and it should.

  The physical manpower injury is compounded by moral injury. The healthy veteran gets sudden cancer, is near dead a month later, but miraculously and thankfully survives. He is left in a daze with no cause. The wounded themselves cannot even discuss the possible cause of their injuries less the acolytes of the oligarchy shame them, which perpetuates the moral injury. Another gets clots. Repeatedly now, the same time every year, as if the mRNA made his cells permanently produce spike protein at a consistent rate in a consistent location to eventually mass and annually clot. Naturally, his wife is concerned that one of these years the just-in-time blood thinners will not work and the injury will take him.

  They live with moral injury and with no redress. Can he charge his chain of command with murder ahead of his death? Naturally, away from the acolytes, the injured discuss their physical and their moral injuries, usually with the unvaxxed, most of whom were forced out, adding to the manpower shortage. There it is spoken: Their sons will not serve. The manpower loss is compounding and multi-generational.

  The magnitude of this loss is great. In itself, it demands resolution. But the situation is actually far worse than the visible injury of our people. The risks and harms from the gene-encoded (mRNA) vaccine technology are direct from either the biotechnology itself or the use of the spike protein as the epitope. More significantly, indirect risks exist as well and at greater scale. Any single-epitope vaccine can cause the body to only generate immunity against that epitope and make a person vulnerable to the illness when the virus adapts that epitope (i.e. Antibody Dependent Enhancement). But the vaccinated also suffer from IgG4 antibody class switching.¹⁷ In this situation, the body adapts to the vaccine by treating the epitope as an allergen. This makes the person even more vulnerable, for the body ignores the virus when infected. That individual now risks becoming even sicker.

  Recall that the US funded risky research with intent to gain insight into what the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was doing with coronaviruses.¹⁸ There was a focus on spike proteins for legitimate purposes because work was being done worldwide on enhancing spike proteins to study (“study?”) them, and also because the PRC has published research intent to weaponize coronaviruses because of the spike proteins.¹⁹ It is known amongst investigators that the IC leveraged the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance for Type II Diplomacy access into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to learn what its scientists were doing with epitopes like spike proteins. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; it is the IC’s job to spy. But the IgG4 matter shows that large numbers of Americans are now indefinitely vulnerable to a spike protein that emerged out of Wuhan. The biodefense oligarchy made the population vulnerable to the very thing the biodefense apparatus was operating in Wuhan to ostensibly protect us from. 

  The existence of this vulnerability is now replicated in numerous research studies. The severity in scale and duration of this vulnerability is unknown, but it should be known.

  Aside from the strategic failure this matter is, the indirect casualties of a flawed response – specifically, the lack of detailed risk analysis to the individual and to the population of a mass vaccination course of action (with additional risk from the unready mRNA technology and the spike protein epitope) – compound the direct injuries and losses and contribute to the overarching demographic damage suffered from America’s version of the Sicilian Expedition. 

  Sicily Redux.

  This is the reason the origin of SARS2 must be known. Not for retribution or reconciliation, not to prevent a man-made pandemic from occurring again. These are valid, but are not the reason. It must be known to accurately assess the demographic damage from the response, to know the near and long-term effects, to know the myocardial state of the nation’s fighting-aged men, and to know the cruel annual compound interest in deaths the mRNA decision will bring, to know the citizenry’s vulnerability to the [PRC]²⁰ spike protein, to know the duration of our civilization’s vulnerability. 

  To those who argue that it would be too costly for America to acknowledge its role in creating SARS-CoV-2, or that America cannot afford for its enemies to know how bad the vaccine injuries in the military are – arguments I heard repeatedly in these years as a whistleblower – the potential magnitude of the screwup, Sicily Redux, our equivalent to Athens’ loss of 30,000, both the physical and moral injury, far surpasses the financial and reputational costs to admitting the truth. The failures will only exacerbate as the new administration declassifies intelligence, for the cardiac and IgG4 risks of using the spike protein as the mRNA epitope could have been extrapolated from the suppressed Department of Energy assessment had the cover-up not fouled informed risk analysis.²¹

  Whether America’s version of the Sicilian Expedition will have the same result as the Athenians’ remains to be seen. The parallels inform how our maritime democracy navigates its way forward. The primary lesson is that which every quality sports team and mature military formation understands: lie to yourself about yourself and you will be weak; know yourself – know your weaknesses – and you will be stronger. Or unperiled in a hundred battles, as a Chinese military philosopher once said. 

  This young man asks that a mature republic do the same. Far too many amongst us feel the losses but lie to themselves about their nature. This is yet another moral burden stacked onto the others. The situation is not healthy for the individual, or the nation.

  As the burden is felt, so is the newfound energy in the land. The Demos is in rebound. It dismantles illicit oligarchy. It returns accountability and vigor to the state. Let it not be spoiled by discounting the physical loss of an errant expedition. Let it not be further spoiled by ignoring the moral injury accrued from that failure. A great republic learns from the past.

  References

  1. BAM – Bab el Mandeb Strait. Colloquialism used by Marines and sailors.
  2. LSD-51 USS OAK HILL
  3. The Oligarchy of 400 took power in 411 BC. It transformed into the “5000” oligarchy shortly afterwards before the Athenian Navy liberated Athens and re-established democracy. https://www.britannica.com/event/Peloponnesian-War
  4. Athens replaced the citizen sailors with slaves. Thucydides reports that Greece at large was stunned that Athens endured another decade following the catastrophe.
  5. I learned about the fear of Dr. Fauci’s influence in my first month as the 2020-2021 Commandant’s Fellow at DARPA. The power structure and internal biosecurity enterprise battles were also explained to me at this time.
  6. David Asher Interview – The Vince Coglianese Show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI43JEUfXOQ
  7. DEFUSE project proposal: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal/. For the unaware reader, I uncovered the possible blueprint for SARS-CoV-2, called Project DEFUSE, while a Marine Corps fellow at DARPA in 2021. This is public information reported numerous times and included in books and a movie.
  8. Siegel: “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Tablet Magazine. March 28, 2023. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-ho…
  9. See George Friedman’s 2020 book The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond amongst others.
  10. See Michael Lind’s “The New National American Elite” as a reference, also referenced by Siegel in Section XI of his work. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-national-american-…
  11. The Athenians recorded and historically referred to their oligarchy as the Oligarchy.
  12. https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/biden-debate-replace-advisers. There is another article where a young Harris staffer quips that Biden’s team is an oligarchy.
  13. See DRASTIC for the 2018 EcoHealth Alliance Project DEFUSE proposal to DARPA: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal/. See Alex Washburne for the reverse genetics system hypothesis: https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/reverse-genetic-systems.
  14.  Canary in a COVID World, Canary House Publishing, edited by C. H. Klotz, P. 117-118
  15. “‘Died Suddenly’? More Than 1-in-4 Think Someone They Know Died From COVID-19 Vaccines – Demographics”, Rasmussen Reports, poll conducted 28-30 Dec 2022. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/public_surveys…
  16. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/navy-sailor-shortage-ship-readiness/3625593/; https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106525; https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2024-09-10/navy-gao-fleet-readiness-report-15128703.html; https://news.usni.org/2024/08/22/navy-could-sideline-17-support-ships-due-to-manpower-issues
  17. See Quay and Berenson. https://x.com/quay_dr/status/1872681596400394461?mx=2; https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/very-urgent-do-covid-mrna-vaccines; Also https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12979-024-00466-9#Fig2
  18. This is known from whistleblower reporting and congressional inquiry. It is also known amongst investigators that Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance performed Type II Diplomacy. There is nothing ostensibly wrong with the IC doing its job to obtain hard-to-get information. It broaches immorality when it contributes to cover-up when lack of oversight leads to a leak and corresponding pandemic.
  19. The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, 2015.
  20. Keeping this bracketed in case it turns out the spike protein was designed and/or made in the US and tested in Wuhan.
  21. I possess the security clearance to view Covid origins intelligence and analysis.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 21:20

• Gay Dragons And Black Samurai: Woke Game Companies In Crisis As Consumers Walk Away
  Gay Dragons And Black Samurai: Woke Game Companies In Crisis As Consumers Walk Away

  The entertainment sector has been at the core of the woke movement over the course of the last ten years, integrating Critical Race Theory, feminism, gay and trans propaganda, climate change hysteria, anti-gun rights messaging and pro-socialist rhetoric into their content at breakneck speed.  There has always been progressive politics in movies and TV, but this new social justice takeover was a highly coordinated tidal wave; a Blitzkrieg of hard-left ideology into every possible media space.

  One group of consumers noticed the threat very early on – Gamers picked up on the leftist subversion of their hobby almost immediately in 2013.  They would go on to launch “Gamergate” in 2014, a movement to expose the feminist hijacking of games journalism and the hobby at large.  They were punished for their foresight, accused of “misogyny”, “bigotry”, “racism” and even terrorism, but they were correct.  There was indeed a far-left agenda to dominate the gaming world and extort companies into adopting social justice propaganda. 

  The plan succeeded spectacularly.  Most corporations eventually folded and instituted DEI programs outright.  Gaming developers were some of the worst perpetrators and their products quickly became replete with woke indoctrination.  The one thing they didn’t count on, though, was a consumer revolt. 

  

  It’s hard to say what they expected; maybe they assumed that once the market was saturated with leftist content the average customer would give up hoping for a normal game with a good story, compelling characters and fun mechanics and simply buy whatever the critics told them to buy.  Instead, gamers stopped buying anything and walked away.

  Any product with leftist messaging, race swapping, LGBT characters or situations, etc. is exposed long before the project is released.  The more insidious developers have actually sought to stop people from reporting on the content of these games using intimidation and legal measures, but nothing they do will save them.  These businesses are, rightfully, collapsing.  

  More recent casualties include Ubisoft, which reportedly stands on the edge of financial ruin due to multiple woke failures.  Ubisoft is also sitting on perhaps on of the most woke AAA game releases of all time – Assassins Creed: Shadows.  

  The group hitched their wagon to an activist historian named Thomas Lockley with a wild tale – The supposedly “true story” of a black slave named Yasuke who traveled on a Portuguese ship to Japan and became a samurai.  Instead of making a game about a Japanese samurai in Japan’s Azuchi-Momoyama period, they instead chose to use Lockley’s research as the basis for their plot.

  (Leftists are known to be particularly hostile towards the Japanese because of their highly controlled immigration policies. Featuring a black samurai protagonist is obviously meant as a jab at Japanese culture). 

  

  As it turns out, Lockley’s research is likely exaggerated (or fabricated) and he has been accused by the Japanese government of potential fraud.  Yasuke was never a samurai; he was treated as an oddity by the Japanese emperor who had never seen a black man before.  He became a fixture at the emperor’s court for a short period, but was never given the title of samurai, nor did he have time to learn any of the warrior disciplines that samurai are renowned for.  The man existed, but the idea of him being a samurai is complete fiction.  

  Statements made by Ubisoft also seem to indicate that the characters of Assassins Creed will be gay, including Yasuke.  So, a black gay samurai in feudal Japan who is supposed to be an assassin?  Genius.  He wouldn’t stand out at all.

  Ubisoft is stuck with this project.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are already invested and they have delayed the release multiple times.  Most gamers are well informed of the fallacies and propaganda in the title and it is expected to bomb hard once it is finally put on the market.  The company is now engaging in mass layoffs across multiple studios, apparently in preparation of the vast sums of money they’re about to lose. 

  Another big developer that’s in the midst of an implosion is Bioware, which is now being downsized by Electronic Arts after the embarrassing release of their highly expensive Dragon Age: The Veilguard title.  The company hired gay and trans consultants and developers to inject LGBT propaganda into the fantasy project and the results were hilariously bad, including trans “dragon people” and gay pirates preaching about neo-pronouns.

  The layoffs come less than two weeks after Dragon Age game director Corinne Busche announced her own departure from BioWare, and just a week after EA said Veilguard had underperformed sales expectations.  In reality, the game was an unmitigated failure.  EA said Veilguard was “down nearly 50% from the company’s expectations.” 

  Gaming developers were some of the first people to join the woke insurrection of American media, so it’s fitting that they are now among the first people to go bankrupt and lose their jobs because of it.  Get Woke, Go Broke.

  Hopefully, these collapsing companies will stand as a smoldering reminder that the consumer runs the show, not the creators.  The free market is still a thing, and it decides if a game is going to succeed or crash and burn.  The gaming industry in its hubris has been begging for a slap in the face for years, and now they have it. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 20:55

• Top DOJ Official Resigns After Attempted Reassignment
  Top DOJ Official Resigns After Attempted Reassignment

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The man who led the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section has resigned, according to a new letter.

  Corey Amundson, who had been in charge of the section for years before the Trump administration recently reassigned him to work on immigration issues, has stepped down.

  

  “I am honored and blessed to have served our country and this department for the last 23 years,” Amundson wrote in his letter to Acting Attorney General James McHenry.

  “I spent my entire professional life committed to the apolitical enforcement of the federal criminal law and to ensuring that those around me understood and embraced that central tenet of our work.”

  The Department of Justice (DOJ) did not respond to a request for comment.

  Amundson started working for the DOJ out of Louisiana in 2002, according to his LinkedIn profile. He shifted to Washington about 10 years ago.

  The profile lists his experience with the DOJ as ending in 2025.

  Amundson was tapped in 2019 during Trump’s first term to become chief of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section. That put him in charge of overseeing public corruption and other politically sensitive investigations.

  Amundson is one of an estimated 20 career officials inside the DOJ to be reassigned to a new Sanctuary City Working Group inside the associate attorney general’s office.

  At least two of those officials, Amundson and George Toscas from the National Security Division, had some involvement in the two criminal investigations against Trump.

  Former special counsel Jack Smith said in his final report that his team “consulted regularly” with the Public Integrity Section on topics such as serving subpoenas, bringing election fraud charges, and a U.S. Constitution clause that provides immunity to members of Congress who are furthering legislative acts.

  Amundson’s resignation letter did not make reference to his section’s role in the Trump cases.

  However, it cited a number of other high-profile cases he helped oversee, including the public corruption cases against Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), and Fugees hip hop group member Prakazrel Michel.

  The DOJ, in addition to the recent reassignments, recently fired a number of officials who worked on Smith’s team.

  The reassignments and terminations have drawn scrutiny from Democrats, who expressed concern about the treatment of individuals they said were “excellent career prosecutors.”

  The moves contradicted Trump’s “repeated pledges to maintain a merit-based system for government employment,” Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said in a letter to DOJ officials.

  “By removing them from their positions in this hasty and unprincipled way, you have very likely violated longstanding federal laws,” they added later.

  The DOJ has not responded to an inquiry about the letter.

  Jacob Burg and Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 20:30

• Better Than Ozempic? How To Engage The Vagus Nerve For Weight Loss
  Better Than Ozempic? How To Engage The Vagus Nerve For Weight Loss

  Authored by Zena le Roux via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  We often hear about the brain-gut connection and how the vagus nerve keeps our mood in check. But did you know that this same nerve quietly shapes our metabolism every day?

  The vagus nerve acts as a metabolic control center, affecting hunger, fullness levels, weight, and blood sugar. The effect of vagal stimulation on weight loss is an emerging area of interest.

  Guiding Metabolism

  The vagus nerve helps signal feelings of fullness after eating by communicating signals from the gut to the brain. It regulates hunger hormones (such as leptin), influencing food choices and satiety levels. Stimulating this nerve may, therefore, offer a less invasive alternative to traditional bariatric surgery for weight loss.

  “A well-functioning vagus nerve can help regulate appetite and prevent overeating, which is key for maintaining a healthy metabolic state,“ Nasha Winters, a naturopathic doctor and integrative oncology specialist, told The Epoch Times. ”This is the ‘I’ve had enough’ signal, but even goes further to the ‘I am enough’ signal.”

  The vagus nerve connects the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) with organs that help regulate the absorption of food and storage of nutrients. It innervates organ systems that contribute to metabolism, ensure energy balance, and prevent fluctuations in body weight.

  This nerve is involved in blood glucose regulation by prompting the pancreas to release insulin. It also signals the liver to store and release glucose and triggers the release of bile and digestive enzymes.

  Another reason that vagus nerve stimulation may support weight management and metabolic health is its ability to reduce inflammation, a significant driver of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome refers to conditions—including high blood sugar, high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and excess belly fat—that together increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

  Vagus Nerve Therapy for Weight Loss

  Device-based vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is often used to improve metabolism. Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is a great option, Jodi Duval, an Australia-based naturopathic physician and owner of Revital Health, told The Epoch Times. The tVNS method delivers gentle electrical impulses and sends signals through the ear to regulate hunger and digestion.

  Other alternative and complementary therapies have also been shown to suppress inflammation and increase vagus nerve activity. These approaches include acupuncture and biofeedback, a method that uses sensors to help you learn to control automatic body functions. Calming the nervous system in this way helps maintain stable blood glucose levels and optimize digestion, both essential for efficient metabolic function. Meditation has also been suggested for the clinical management of metabolic syndrome and obesity.

  Another promising type of vagal nerve therapy for weight loss is vagal nerve blocking, often referred to as VBLOC therapy, according to Lena Beal, a registered dietitian nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

  VBLOC transmits electrical pulses to the vagus nerve at regular intervals, interrupting normal signaling between the brain and the stomach and decreasing hunger and food intake. Because of its pulsed nature, VBLOC does not affect other VNS outcomes, such as reduced inflammation or stabilized blood sugar.

  “The higher the electrical current of the stimulator, the greater the weight loss, with some cases leading to significant weight loss,” Beal told The Epoch Times.

  The effects of VNS appear to be more noticeable in individuals with a higher body mass index (BMI) or those classified as obese.

  Vagus Nerve Therapy Versus Ozempic

  Vagus nerve therapy and semaglutide (found in Ozempic and Wegovy), the trending weight-loss drug, tackle weight loss in very different ways, Duval said.

  “Ozempic mimics a natural hormone that controls blood sugar and appetite, making it a potent tool for rapid weight loss,“ she said. “However, it is a medication, meaning it can come with side effects and is not normally a long-term solution for everyone.”

  Common adverse effects of semaglutide include nausea, diarrhea, constipation, and stomach pain.

  Vagus nerve stimulation, in contrast, works more subtly by restoring the body’s natural balance. It may take longer to see results, but it addresses the root causes of metabolic dysfunction, such as stress and inflammation, and comes with added benefits such as improved mood and digestion, Duval said.

  “It’s a long-term investment in overall health rather than a quick fix,” she said.

  tVNS

  • Cost: $1,000 to $2,500 for the device, plus additional fees for sessions or consultations
  • Average Weight Loss: 3 percent to 5 percent
  • Side Effects: skin irritation, headache, and dizziness

  VBLOC

  • Cost: between $18,000 and $22,000 per year
  • Average Weight Loss: about 8.5 percent
  • Side Effects: indigestion, heartburn, abdominal pain

  Ozempic and Wegovy

  • Approved For: Type 2 diabetes (Ozempic); BMI greater than 30, or BMI greater than 27 with other medical conditions related to obesity (Wegovy)
  • Cost: $12,000 to $15,000 per year
  • Average Weight Loss: about 12 percent
  • Side Effects: gastrointestinal upset (nausea, diarrhea, bloating), retinal damage, and pancreas inflammation
  • People often partially regain weight when the medication is discontinued.

  “The vagus nerve acts as the body’s communication superhighway, connecting the brain and the gut,” Duval said. “Think of it as your body’s internal coach, softly reminding you when it’s time to rest and digest. Essentially, the vagus nerve is your internal guide, helping keep your metabolism balanced and healthy.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 20:05

• Trump Says DC Black Hawk "Was Flying Too High… By A Lot"
  Trump Says DC Black Hawk “Was Flying Too High… By A Lot”

  Update (0825ET): President Trump has chimed in, confirming the altitude of the Black Hawk was too high…

  

  Additionally, it appears the chopper had a few close-calls that night…

  TRANSTERROR? Was the Blackhawk pilot actively trying to hit a passenger jet? Flight tracking seems to show that the pilot had three near misses before hitting the American Airlines jet. pic.twitter.com/vjWUqV7zPN

  — @amuse (@amuse) January 31, 2025

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

  *  *  *

  While there are countless facts still left to be uncovered and scrutinized, there’s an early indication that the worst US air disaster since 9/11 may have resulted from a flight-path deviation by the Army helicopter that collided with a passenger jet landing at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. Remarkably, it appears an identical disaster may have been narrowly avoided just one day earlier, when an airline pilot chose to abort landing after deeming another helicopter was dangerously close. Control-tower staffing is also emerging as a major concern — including a decision to allow one controller to leave work early. 

  Exclusive dash-cam video obtained by The Washington Post shows a previously unseen angle of the moment a plane and helicopter collided over the Potomac River on Wednesday night. https://t.co/1VErSdPVDW pic.twitter.com/kTicwRejsz

  — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 30, 2025

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

  Based on a determination of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter’s last location before colliding with American Airlines 5342 from Wichita, the Army chopper was flying above its authorized flight path, according to anonymous sources who spoke to the New York Times. The American CRJ300 stopped transmitting tracking data at 375 feet — suggesting impact occurred far above the 200-foot ceiling imposed on helicopters in that area. 

  

  The Black Hawk was reportedly under the command of a female pilot with more than 500 hours of flight time. The male instructor pilot had more than 1,000 hours, while the crew chief is also said to have logged hundreds of hours. Given the shorter duration of helicopter flights, those hours are substantial, according to Jonathan Koziol, a retired Army chopper pilot who’s assigned to the Unified Command Post that’s been organized to coordinate the post-disaster efforts at the airport.

  The Army has not released the names of the crew members, but the names of the two males aboard the Black Hawk have emerged via other channels: Staff Sgt. Ryan O’Hara and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves. All were assigned to Bravo Company, 12th Combat Aviation Battalion, headquartered at nearby Fort Belvoir.

  While there are many social media posts purporting to identify the female pilot as a male-to-female trans National Guard member who on Tuesday publicized his transition, ZeroHedge cannot find authoritative confirmation of those claims as this article is being written. On Monday, President Trump issued an executive order barring transgender people from openly serving in the military. Update: The trans pilot in question, Jo Ellis, has released a video confirming he is still alive and was not piloting the Black Hawk. 

  

  The Army says the crew was conducting a routine nighttime qualification flight, with the focus on safely navigating helicopter routes in and around Washington. However, more specifically, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the crew was training for a “continuity of government mission.” That’s the name given for a response to an attack on the capital, or a major disaster that hits the city. In such an event, helicopters would be used to evacuate senior federal officials. The crashed helicopter was a standard UH-60; the battalion also flies the VH-60M variant: Distinguished by its gold top, it’s used for VIP transport. 

  

  Every day, more than a hundred helicopters buzz around Reagan National’s flight paths. Roughly 24 hours before Wednesday’s catastrophe, one of those helicopters alarmed the pilot of another commercial flight to the extent she aborted landing and went around. There are no reports on the type of helicopter.   

  A female voice in the cockpit of Republic Airways Flight 4514 informed the tower of the problem at roughly 8:05 p.m. Tuesday, according to the audio recording of air traffic control traffic. The plane took a sharp turn to the west, made a loop to try to make a second approach, and safely landed at 8:16 p.m., flight tracking records indicate. — Washington Post

  Reagan runway chaos: AA jet avoids chopper CATASTROPHE — one day BEFORE ‘Black Hawk’ smash

  Flight AA4514 was forced to abort its landing and circle back after a rogue helicopter crossed its path—an alarming incident now under investigation.

  What is going on? pic.twitter.com/yoixbX945A

  — RT (@RT_com) January 31, 2025

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

  Meanwhile, concerning details have also emerged about the workloads assigned to the Reagan National air traffic controllers at the time of Wednesday night’s crash that killed all 67 aboard the two aircraft. Staffing was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to a preliminary FAA document reviewed by the New York Times. 

  Under normal staffing, one air traffic controller is responsible for helicopter traffic, while another guides landing and departing planes. However, on Wednesday night, one man was juggling both responsibilities. According to the Times, that’s because a supervisor allowed a different air traffic controller to leave before that individual’s shift had ended. There are several other factors that could have contributed to the accident. Among them: 

  • It’s not clear if the Black Hawk pilot was using night vision goggles, which can limit peripheral vision and depth perception, while also being problematic in an urban environment with its abundant lights. 

  • Given the angles of the two flight paths, city lights may have camouflaged the lights of the American Airlines jet. “Going beak-to-beak at night, the lights of the [jet] tend to blend in with the city lights behind [it],” notes aviation YouTuber “blancolirio” in a detailed analysis of Wednesday’s scenario. “Another problem when you’re going head to head with each other is — if there’s no lateral movement in the windscreen — that light [of the other aircraft] is very hard to detect.” 

  • Potential miscommunication: While the tower asked the Black Hawk (“PAT25”) if it had the American Airlines “CRJ” (Canadair Regional Jet) in sight, some are speculating the Army pilots thought the controller was referring to a jet that was taking off to their right, rather than the doomed jet that was landing from their left. Others think they may have been looking at another jet on approach — behind American 5342.  

  Audio between PAT25 and DCA tower asking if they have the CRJ in sight. Affirms and requests visual separation. pic.twitter.com/6VAxx9zmv5

  — NOVA Scanner Updates (@NOVAScanner) January 30, 2025

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 19:25

• Watch: Dramatic Footage Show Private Jet Crashing In Northeast Philadelphia
  Watch: Dramatic Footage Show Private Jet Crashing In Northeast Philadelphia

  Dramatic footage has surfaced on X showing a Learjet 55, operated by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, crashing in Northeast Philadelphia.

  “This evening, a Learjet 55 (XA-UCI) crashed shortly after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. The flight departed at 23:06 UTC, reaching a maximum altitude of 1,650 ft at 23:06:54. Granular ADS-B data shows the last message from the aircraft,” flight tracking website Flightradar24 wrote on X. 

  This evening, a Learjet 55 (XA-UCI) crashed shortly after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. The flight departed at 23:06 UTC, reaching a maximum altitude of 1,650 ft at 23:06:54. Granular ADS-B data shows the last message from the aircraft (non-position report)… pic.twitter.com/FtUBYTgeua

  — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 1, 2025

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

  Northeast Philadelphia Airport Tower: “We have a lost aircraft.” 

  🚨NEW: Audio released shows Air Traffic Control trying to reach the Learjet 55 before the Philadelphia crash

  “We have a lost aircraft…”pic.twitter.com/1ATgAwoCaY

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 1, 2025

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

  A whole bunch of videos from various angles showing the Learjet crash have been uploaded on X.

  First hand video of what happened in northeast Philadelphia pic.twitter.com/LJt912Tw6l

  — Darren Minto (@FB_Darren) February 1, 2025

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

  🚨AIR AMBULANCE CRASHES IN PHILADELPHIA🚨

  I have obtained the registration number of the plane that just crashed in Philadelphia from a screenshot of the engine nacelle in the wreckage.

  It’s a medical air ambulance, and it’s owned and operated by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance. It’s… https://t.co/usYVZQLlay pic.twitter.com/agXjALSNzV

  — Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) February 1, 2025

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

  NEW: Dashcam video shows the plane crash in Philadelphia.

  At least 6 dead, multiple victims on the ground pic.twitter.com/PuPE6pgB8G

  — BNO News Live (@BNODesk) February 1, 2025

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

  BREAKING: New video shows the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Reports of multiple victims pic.twitter.com/elKGRg3xik

  — BNO News (@BNONews) January 31, 2025

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

  BREAKING🚨🚨🚨Watch: Dramatic Footage Shows Private Jet Crashing In Northeast Philadelphia

  Ring Doorbell Camera footage of the Philly plane crash…

  This is wild pic.twitter.com/nUt4qyVlhe

  — kevin smith (@kevin_smith45) February 1, 2025

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

   CBS News Philadelphia reported that the crash occurred near Roosevelt Boulevard and Cottman Avenue.

  Small Plane cash in Philadelphia pic.twitter.com/bV2n71Eck1

  — Randy Jaquez (@RandyAJaquez) February 1, 2025

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

  Several Philadelphia media outlets are reporting several dead. 

  🚨 VERY GRAPHIC: Man runs out of the Philadelphia plane crash site while on fire

  Holy hell.

  This jet crashed in a VERY high traffic area, and a massive explosion occurred.

  Multiple casualties being reported of people on the ground. pic.twitter.com/cor6rPzywz

  — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 1, 2025

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

  dis shit wild check on yall folks man 🤦🏽‍♂️ #philadelphia #planecrash pic.twitter.com/WKGimWPMw8

  — gregswervvo (@swervvo9) February 1, 2025

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

  “We are offering all Commonwealth resources as they respond to the small private plane crash in Northeast Philly,” Governor Josh Shapiro wrote on X. 

  I’ve spoken with @PhillyMayor and my team is in communication with @PhillyPD, @PhilaOEM, and @PhillyFireDept. We are offering all Commonwealth resources as they respond to the small private plane crash in Northeast Philly.

  We’ll continue to provide updates as more information…

  — Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) February 1, 2025

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

  What the hell is happening in American aviation this week: 

  • Reagan Tower Reportedly Understaffed When Army Helicopter Collided With Passenger Jet

  • Watch: F-35 Stealth Jet Crashes In Alaska

  Developing…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 19:24

• Replace The Income Tax With Tariffs?
  Replace The Income Tax With Tariffs?

  Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Commentary

  There was a time, before 1913, when you could keep every penny you earned. You did not have to file with the federal government, telling them what you earned and giving the feds their cut. Your finances were your business and no one else’s. You had the right to earn, own, and keep property, and it was sacrosanct, guaranteed by U.S. law and tradition.

  

  There were no audits, investigations, account freezes, withholdings, or any other forms of payment. There was your productivity and you and that’s all.

  How was the government funded? It earned revenue through tariffs. These are paid directly by importers and indirectly by producers and consumers if the costs can be passed through. As strategies for gaining revenue, this approach is relatively noninvasive. It left the population alone.

  Back in those days, however, the federal government barely existed as compared with today. More precisely, in real terms, the federal government in 1885 spent in inflation-adjusted dollars about 0.05 percent of what it spends today. Even then, people believed that it was too big and wanted it cut back to size.

  Donald Trump has recently been schooling people in the history of revenue strategies and he is teaching something that people have not known. He has explained how this period of American history saw the greatest amount of economic growth we’ve ever seen. He is correct about that and he is also correct that this was the period of the tariff.

  The cause and effect, however, is murky. The main themes of this period were freedom and sound money. The dollar was governed by the gold standard and there was no central bank. The federal government itself had no presence in the life of the American family or typical American business. Those facts more than tariffs account for the difference between then and now.

  As an aside, I cannot remember another U.S. president having as clear an opinion on 19th-century economic history. Most comments by presidents have been limited to pieties about the Founding Fathers or Lincoln but skip over details concerning revenue sources or controversies concerning national banks and the like. Trump is clearly different, highly confident in these details of history that are lost even on most economists.

  Trump has explained that the income tax came along in 1913 as a replacement for the tariff. That is correct in design but the historical reality was slightly different. Tariffs were not abolished entirely. The income tax just became a second and additional source of revenue. Then the Great War came, financed in large part by the central bank (the Federal Reserve) that was created the same year.

  The income tax and the Fed became the financial source of Leviathan power. Both came about in 1913, along with the direct election of Senators that blew up the bicameral structure of Congress and put the big cities in charge of America’s equivalent of the House of Lords.

  Trump’s history lesson opens up the opportunity to examine all of this more closely. In 19th-century terms, he seems to be siding with the Hamilton faction inherited by Henry Clay, the Senator from Virginia who advocated what came to be called “the American System.” This was a policy of protective tariffs, a national bank, and federal subsidies for internal improvements to promote economic growth and national cohesion.

  That’s a pretty good summary of what seems to be Trump’s position. In historical terms, the Clay view contrasted with the Jeffersonian view, which favored a tiny government, free trade, no national bank, no industrial subsidies, and a society of small farmers to serve as the economic engine.

  These days, the debates between the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians seem far less relevant to the current situation. Both Hamilton and Clay would be appalled by the size and scope of government power, and would happily link arms with Jefferson and John Randolph of Roanoke to cut the beast down to size. That seems to be the actual ambition of Trump, to be an agent of change that makes the federal government manageable again.

  As part of this, Trump has floated the idea of abolishing the income tax. And all the people said: yes! But of course that would end in denying vast amounts of revenue to the federal government. No matter how you do the math, there is simply no way that the tariff can make up the difference. The only solution, then, is massive cuts in government spending, which people like Elon Musk have promised but we are waiting to see the plans.

  Again, the last time government was funded entirely by tariffs, government spending was a mere 0.05 percent of what it is today. If we are going to cut it back that much, fantastic, but nothing like that has happened in American history, nothing even close to that. Usually what Washington calls cuts are really just cuts in the rate of increase of spending.

  Without real cuts, and with a curbing or elimination of the income tax, the United States merely ends up with more debt that will be financed by the Federal Reserve and that results in more inflation. Inflation is nothing but a different and more surreptitious form of taxation. Instead of taking money out of your bank account directly, government simply reduces the purchasing power of the dollar itself.

  Let’s return to this idea of abolishing the income tax. The best case for that idea ever made was written by a great journalist named Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) and his wonderful book “The Income Tax: Root of All Evil.” He wrote about the 16th Amendment to the Constitution:

  “[It] puts no limit on governmental confiscation. The government can, under the law, take everything the citizen earns, even to the extent of depriving him of all above mere subsistence, which it must allow him in order that he may produce something to be confiscated. Whichever way you turn this amendment, you come up with the fact that it gives the government a prior lien on all the property produced by its subjects. In short, when this amendment became part of the Constitution, in 1913, the absolute right of property in the United States was violated.”

  Further: “In name, it was a tax reform. In point of fact, it was a revolution. For the Sixteenth Amendment corroded the American concept of natural rights; ultimately reduced the American citizen to a status of subject, so much so that he is not aware of it; enhanced Executive power to the point of reducing Congress to innocuity; and enabled the central government to bribe the states, once independent units, into subservience. No kingship in the history of the world ever exercised more power than our Presidency, or had more of the people’s wealth at its disposal. We have retained the forms and phrases of a republic, but in reality we are living under an oligarchy, not of courtesans, but of bureaucrats.”

  The abolition of the income tax would restore property rights, restore rights to enterprise, and restore the privacy of American citizens not to be spied on and pillaged by arbitrary government power.

  The constituency that would favor such a thing in America is practically everyone. Why, then, has no president ever promoted such an idea? Precisely because doing so is incredibly enlightening and consciousness-raising. It forces the realization on the part of the American people that the government is living at their expense. For any political establishment, lording over a population that is newly aware of this is a dangerous proposition.

  There is no getting around the math. If we really are talking about getting rid of income taxes, there is no tariff high enough to make up the difference. There is no choice but to cut spending dramatically. The budget freeze, the freeze on new hires, the freeze on outgoing grants—all of this point in the right direction. We cannot rule out the possibility that the Trump administration will take us to where we need to go.

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 19:15

• NYPD Searching For 6 Suspects Who Stole An MTA Train From Brooklyn And Took It For A "Joyride"
  NYPD Searching For 6 Suspects Who Stole An MTA Train From Brooklyn And Took It For A “Joyride”

  The monetary black hole that is the MTA apparently hasn’t figured out a way to secure its property, despite what appears to be an incessant, neverending need for additional cash.

  That’s because the NYPD is now searching for six suspects who allegedly stole an R train from a Brooklyn storage yard and took it for a joyride, traveling down the tracks.

  The incident occurred around 10 p.m. Saturday near the 71st Avenue station in Forest Hills, Queens, according to Fox 5.

  Fox reported that the suspects operated the train and vandalized its camera by marking the glass panels. No arrests or injuries have been reported. Their identities and whereabouts after leaving the train remain unknown.

  

  ABC reported that surveillance footage shows the hooded suspects leaving the conductor’s compartment and walking through the empty train.

  Police are offering a $3,500 reward for information, as the group is wanted for reckless endangerment. The joyride began around 10 p.m. Saturday at Brooklyn’s 36th Street and 4th Avenue station, but officials haven’t disclosed how far they traveled.

  The suspects fled on foot after vandalizing the train’s camera panels.

  No sooner did we mumble “We’re sure at some point this will be used as some type of impetus for another fare hike…” under our breath than we read that MTA Chairman Janno Lieber criticized the security failures – and then urged investment in better protections beyond basic locks.

  How soon until we’re paying congestion tolls just to walk around in Manhattan?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 18:50

• December FAA Report Cites "Urgent Need To Modernize Air Traffic Systems"
  December FAA Report Cites “Urgent Need To Modernize Air Traffic Systems”

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  Over 60 people died in a preventable plane crash…

  

  Urgent FAA Actions Are Needed to Modernize Aging Systems

  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Air Traffic Control says Urgent FAA Actions Are Needed to Modernize Aging Systems

  FAA had 64 ongoing investments aimed at modernizing 90 of the 105 unsustainable and potentially unsustainable systems; however, the agency has been slow to modernize the most critical and at-risk systems. Specifically, when considering age, sustainability ratings, operational impact level, and expected date of modernization for each system, as of May 2024, FAA had 17 systems that were especially concerning. The investments intended to modernize these systems were not planned to be completed for at least 6 years. In some cases, they were not to be completed for at least 10 years. In addition, FAA did not have ongoing investments associated with four of these critical systems.

  A contributing factor to the lengthy implementation schedules is that FAA does not always ensure that investments are organized in manageable segments.

  Until FAA takes urgent action to reduce the time frames to replace critical and at-risk ATC systems, it will continue to rely on a large percentage of unsustainable systems to perform critical functions for safe air travel. This reliance occurs at a time when air traffic is expected to increase each year.

  FAA has had longstanding challenges with maintaining aging ATC systems.

  For example, the Notice to Air Missions system, which enables air traffic controllers to provide real-time updates to aircraft crew about critical flying situations relating to issues such as weather, congestion, and safety, is over 30 years old.

  For over 4 decades we have reported on challenges facing FAA’s modernization of its ATC systems.

  About One-Third of FAA ATC Systems Are Considered Unsustainable

  • During fiscal year 2023, FAA determined that of its 138 ATC systems, 51 (37 percent) were unsustainable and 54 (39 percent) were potentially unsustainable.

  • FAA categorizes its ATC systems by criticality. Of the 105 unsustainable or potentially unsustainable ATC systems,

  • 29 unsustainable and 29 potentially unsustainable systems have a critical operational impact on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace

  • 16 unsustainable and 9 potentially unsustainable systems have a moderate operational impact on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace

  • 6 unsustainable and 16 potentially unsustainable systems were mission support systems and were not considered critical.

  Aging Components of Systems

  •  73 systems were deployed over 20 years ago, with 40 being deployed over 30 years ago, and six of those deployed over 60 years ago.

  • 32 systems were implemented within the past 20 years

  • Only four systems as recently as 2020.

  GAO Analysis of FAA Systems

  

  Top Issues: System Obsolescence and Finding Replacement Parts

  According to a February 2024 response from FAA technicians, the top issue facing the agency is system obsolescence and difficulty in finding replacement parts. 

  The response also indicated that inadequate staffing of FAA facilities posed a challenge to maintaining systems because some technicians were responsible for areas spanning hundreds of miles.

  FAA has been slow to modernize some of the most critical and at-risk systems. Specifically, when considering age, sustainability ratings, operational impact level, and expected date of modernization or replacement for each system, as of May 2024, FAA had 17 systems that were especially concerning. The 17 systems range from as few as 2 years old to as many as 50 years old, are unsustainable, and are critical to the safety and efficiency of the national airspace. However, the investments intended to modernize or replace these 17 systems are not planned to be completed for at least 6 more years. In some cases, they were not to be completed for at least 10 years.

  Without near-term modernization plans for these systems, critical ATC operations that these systems support may continue to be at-risk for over a decade before being modernized or replaced. Specifically, FAA can take well over a decade to implement modernization investments once initiated.

  GAO Summary

  In summary, FAA’s reliance on a large percentage of aging and unsustainable or potentially unsustainable ATC systems introduces risks to FAA’s ability to ensure the safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of up to 50,000 flights per day.

  Yesterday we saw the result.

  It’s Time to Privatize Air-Traffic Control

  On May 10, 2023, the Bloomberg editorial board said It’s Time to Privatize Air-Traffic Control

  It’s no accident that controllers still track planes with little slips of paper. Congress is making the FAA’s job all but impossible.

  At least eight serious safety incidents have occurred at US airports so far this year, including a near-miss on Feb. 4 when a FedEx Corp. cargo jet flew within 100 feet of a Southwest Airlines Co. passenger flight outside Austin. A few days later, an Air Canada Rouge plane was cleared for takeoff at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport just as an American Airlines Group Inc. jet was given permission to land — on the same runway. The American crew “self-initiated” a go-around to avert catastrophe.

  Under pressure from Congress, the FAA convened a hearing on the mishaps in March, then established an independent team to make recommendations. Such steps are missing the bigger picture: The government shouldn’t be operating the country’s air-traffic-control system.

  Outdated technology has plagued the FAA for decades. Notoriously, US air-traffic controllers still use strips of paper to track planes in their vicinity. The agency chronically struggles to hire technical staff. Its main system for preventing collisions between planes and ground traffic is decades old, short of spare parts, and prone to prolonged failures. An outage last year almost led to tragedy when a truck ambled onto the runway at Connecticut’s Bradley International Airport and narrowly missed an incoming plane.

  Similar problems have bedeviled the FAA’s emergency-alert system, called Notam, first adopted in 1947. It’s meant to warn of potential hazards along a planned flight route. Yet its notices are composed in all-caps block text, employ arcane codes and abbreviations, and can be so riddled with irrelevant information that pilots overlook crucial alerts. On Jan. 11, the Notam system failed entirely, leading to thousands of flight delays. A planned modernization may not be completed until sometime in the 2030s.

  The problem with the Bloomberg recommendation is the same problem with public schools.

  We sure don’t want unions running the system either based on seniority, not merit and competence.

  Not Exaggerations

  The online systems look like the antiquated game of asteroids.

  Rep. Thomas Massie provides this Tragic Video.

  Please give it a play. A portion of the lead image is from that video.

  A friend writes “Almost nobody realizes we are relying on a dinosaur technology when they step on a plane.”

  Floppy Disks In Planes and Trains

  On May 15, 2024 ZdNet commented on Floppy Disk Usage.

  As computer networking and new storage formats like USB flash drives and memory cards emerged, the floppy disk’s reign waned in the mid-to-late 1990s. The end of the floppy disk era came with the introduction of the floppy-less iMac in 1998.

  By the early 2000s, floppy disks had become increasingly rare, used primarily with legacy hardware and industrial equipment. Sony manufactured the last new floppy disk in 2011.

  Some older Boeing 747 models still use floppy disks to load critical navigation database updates and software into their avionics systems. Indeed, Tom Persky, the president of floppydisk.com, which sells and recycles floppy disks, said in 2022 that the airline industry remains one of his biggest customers.

  Closer to the ground, in San Francisco, the Muni Metro light railway, which launched in 1980, won’t start up each morning unless its Automatic Train Control System staff is booted up with a floppy. Why? It has no hard drive and it’s too unstable to be left on, so every morning, in goes the disk, and off goes the trains. It will be replaced, though… eventually. Currently, the updated replacement project is scheduled to be completed in 2033/4.

  The number of near misses is high and rising. It’s a wonder we haven’t had more accidents.

  Sheesh, we cannot even find replacement parts including floppy disks.

  Questions Abound

  How much did we spend on DEI, the Green New Deal, Climate Change, and FAA improvements in the past four years?

  If I am not mistaken we have had seriously misguided priorities in the last four years. And in relation to the FAA, we’ve been lucky with near misses for decades.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 18:25

• US 'In Contact' With Russia, Trump Confirms
  US ‘In Contact’ With Russia, Trump Confirms

  President Donald Trump has acknowledged that the United States and Russia are “in contact” related to the tragic events of the American Airlines passenger plane colliding with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday evening near Reagan National airport in Washington D.C.

  All 64 passengers and crew members aboard Flight 5342 perished, while the three US servicemembers on board the H-60 Black Hawk were killed. No one survived the crash in the Potomac River. Among the 16 figure-skaters on board, two well-known skating coaches who were Russian nationals died: Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.

  Trump in a Thursday briefing told reporters: “We had a Russian contingent – some very talented people – unfortunately on that plane,” emphasizing of the deadly tragedy that he’s “Very, very sorry about that.”

  

  “We’ve already been in contact with Russia,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter. He pledged that the the US “will facilitate” the transfer of the remains of any Russian nationals who died in the crash, and that sanctions and flight bans into Russia will not impact this.

  The Kremlin has since clarified that this did not involve direct contact between Presidents Putin and Trump.

  Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has since indicated there may have been up to four Russian citizens on board the plane when it went down: “According to our embassy, three victims of this plane crash had Russian passports. There is confirmation regarding another, a fourth person who could hold a Russian passport, this information is currently being verified,” the diplomat said.

  Despite Trump’s positive words of condolence, Zakharova strongly suggested that the US side hasn’t been very responsive to Russian requests:

  “Our embassy is communicating with the US Department of State on the entire range of issues,” Zakharova assured reporters, even as it “looks like a one-way communication.” The Russian embassy has been asking questions, “but we have not received substantive responses so far. However, there is communication, and we have been given some general replies,” she explained.

  “We are grateful to the American authorities, with whom we are in constant contact, for the words of support expressed to the families of the victims and their readiness to help with the transfer of the remains to their homeland,” the Russian embassy said in a statement on Thursday.

  

  The question of how quickly Trump and Putin might directly engage in frank dialogue related to seeking to wind down the Ukraine war is being watched by many.

  There’s a likelihood of lower level talks which could hammer out the parameters of such initial dialogue. But the expected Trump-Putin phone call quickly on the heels of Trump’s inauguration doesn’t appear to have happened yet.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 18:00

• China's Boldest Oil Hunt Yet
  China’s Boldest Oil Hunt Yet

  By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com

  In October last year, China’s CNOOC reported record oil and gas production from a field called Deep Sea #1. The field was the company’s first ultra-deep project, an example of the pursuit of new, untapped resources that lie deeper under the sea. Yet it’s not only ultradeep offshore drilling that the Chinese are focusing on. Right now, China is building a new rig that should be able to drill much deeper than any other rig-onshore.

  

  Led by the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, the project involves a number of research institutions and companies. Its purpose: to develop a smart drilling rig that could reach depths of 15,000 meters, or about 50,000 feet.

  “The Deep Earth National Science and Technology Megaproject is a forward-looking strategy that aligns with global scientific frontiers while ensuring national energy and resource security,” state news outlet Xinhua said, as quoted by the South China Morning Post.

  Scientific frontiers aside, it’s all about the oil and gas and other mineral resources. That was the purpose of a CNPC project in the Tarim Basin in Northwestern China, where the state oil major experimented with drilling depths of up to 11,000 meters. The drilling began in 2023. Last year, after 279 days of drilling, the drill broke the 10,000-meter mark, per Chinese media reports, making the well the deepest ever drilled in the country. It was also the deepest well drilled in Asia—and the fastest drilled well of over 10,000 meters. The well was completed in March last year.

  Drilling ultra-deep wells is certainly a challenging endeavor.

  The deeper you go, the hotter it gets, and this can interfere with the process, which is why ultradeep drilling is not yet standard practice.

  However, the fact that Chinese energy companies and researchers teamed up on the subject is telling—and it tells us that China is prepared to go to these lengths to increase the degree of self-sufficiency in the energy space.

  The Shendi Take 1 well—the one that CNPC drilled in the Tarim Basin—cuts through 13 layers of rock, reaching formations that are 500 million years old. The new drill that the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences-led team is developing will make it possible to cut even deeper into the Earth’s crust and tap new oil and gas. And there is lots of these at such depths.

  The Shendi Take 1 well is certainly an achievement. But it is not the deepest well drilled in the world. That honor falls to the Chayvo well, drilled offshore Russia’s Sakhalin island by a local subsidiary of Exxon—the operator of the Sakhalin-1 project. The Chayvo well exceeds 12,000 meters in depth, which makes it 15 times longer than the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. The deposit, which the well was drilled into, holds an estimated 2.3 billion barrels of crude oil and 480 billion cu m of natural gas.

  This is the ultimate reason for the ultra-deep drilling exercises: finding new hydrocarbon resources. Because the biggest energy challenge that human civilization faces—as articulated by “Landman” protagonist Tommy Norris—is whether we would find an alternative before it runs out. There are schools of thought that argue there is in fact an unending supply of hydrocarbons in the Earth’s crust. While that remains debatable, it is a fact that the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources lie in greater depths than previously considered standard. Researching ultra-deep drilling is an example of adaptation to the changing realities of energy supply.

  China is the most obvious candidate for such research and experiments. The largest crude oil and gas importer in the world has substantial local reserves of hydrocarbons, but reaching them is more challenging than it is, say, in the Permian. Hence the concerted investment in ultra-deep drilling and the pursuit of “leading-edge scientific breakthroughs as soon as possible” – even as China cements its dominance in the wind and solar sector.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 17:40

• Treasury Dept's Highest-Ranking Career Official Rage-Quits After Musk's DOGE Team Probes Payment System
  Treasury Dept’s Highest-Ranking Career Official Rage-Quits After Musk’s DOGE Team Probes Payment System

  The Treasury Department’s highest-ranking career official quit after a clash with aides of Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to the Washington Post, citing (of course), three anonymous sources.

  

  David A. Lebryk, a decades-long Treasury official who President Trump named as acting secretary upon taking office last week, announced his retirement in a Friday email to colleagues. According to the report, Lebryk had a dispute with Musk surrogates over access to the US government’s payment system used to disburse trillions of dollars every year.

  [Imagine Musk and team uncover decades of improper payments and shady dealings?]

  The Musk surrogates are affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and have been asking since the election for access to the system, according to the report. The requests were reiterated after Trump’s inauguration.

  After Trump pick Scott Bessent was confirmed as Treasury Secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be acting agency head.

  The payment system in question is run by a handful of career officials within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service – which controls the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses, and other entities nationwide – and includes Social Security, Medicare, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, tax refunds, grant recipients, and more.

  The clash is the latest incident involving career ‘deep state’ bureaucrats vs. the Trump administration. And of course, WaPo, the CIA’s favorite tentacle, frames it as follows:

  The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.

  Translation:

  

  Unfortunately for the career bureaucrats, Trump signed an executive order instructing all agencies to ensure DOGE has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which appear to include the Treasury payment systems.

  Musk has previously slammed rising national debt as an existential threat to the country, while DOGE has already made progress in rooting out bullshit programs established by Democrat administrations.

  Updated data on DEI related contract cancellations with full detail: https://t.co/hEBk62KQvN pic.twitter.com/kcPATigb3x

  — Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) January 31, 2025

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 17:20

• Long Awaited JFK Files Could Be Released Soon
  Long Awaited JFK Files Could Be Released Soon

  Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Attorney General have until Feb. 7 to present a full disclosure plan for the records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, according to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 23.

  

  “I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest, and the release of these records is long overdue,” Trump wrote in the order.

  Since Kennedy was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, some have speculated about what the government knows, and the slow release of documents has only heightened suspicions, according to those calling for declassification.

  According to the National Archives, more than 5 million documents, photographs, and other artifacts related to the assassination are in the government’s possession.

  Approximately 99 percent of the records are available for the public to review, although around 5,000 documents remain sealed or redacted.

  Some have additionally questioned the official narratives regarding the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.. The order also calls for King’s records to be released—with the plans due by early March.

  “Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth,” Trump’s order states. “It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”

  While signing the executive order, Trump said, “People are waiting for this for years, for decades, and everything will be revealed.”

  He instructed his staff to hand the pen he used to sign the order to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—the nephew of the deceased president and the son of the slain former senator.

  RFK Jr. has long criticized the government for concealing documents and has suggested the Central Intelligence Agency may have played a role in his uncle’s death.

  He quoted the 35th president in a Jan. 24. post on social media platform X.

  He said JFK warned that ‘The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society, and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secrecy … We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.’”

  He suggested the lack of transparency has eroded the public’s trust in government.

  

  RFK Jr., who has been nominated by Trump as Health and Human Services Secretary, said the government owes Americans the truth and thanked the president for working to release the documents.

  “A nation that does not trust its people is a nation that is afraid of its people,” he wrote. “A government that withholds information is inherently fearful of its citizens’ ability to make informed decisions and participate actively in democracy.”

  A law passed by Congress, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, ordered all government records related to the incident to be released to the public in full by Oct. 26, 2017.

  Exceptions were made for items deemed harmful to intelligence operations, foreign relations, military defense, or law enforcement and that such harm outweighed the public’s right to know.

  When the deadline approached during Trump’s first term, he acknowledged in his order accepting redactions proposed by certain unnamed agencies and executive departments.

  He subsequently directed the agencies to reconsider the redactions within three years and further disclose information.

  The deadline was extended three times during President Joe Biden’s term in office.

  Trump said on an episode of the “All-In” podcast in June 2024 that the CIA was “probably behind” the pressure to delay the release of all the documents during his first administration.

  He said people have been waiting a long time for the information to be declassified, and they deserve transparency from their government.

  “Whatever it is, it will be very interesting for people to see,” Trump said. “And we’re going to have to learn from it.”

  

  Investigative Timeline

  President Kennedy was killed at approximately 12:30 p.m. while riding in a convertible limousine through downtown Dallas, Texas.

  He suffered a head wound and was pronounced dead at 1 p.m.

  Soon after, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by Dallas police officers and charged at 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 23 with the president’s murder.

  The next day, Oswald was shot and killed on live television by Jack Ruby during a prisoner transfer.

  One week after the assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Warren Commission to study the incident.

  Chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the group—which included CIA director Allen Dulles—concluded that Oswald was solely responsible for the crime.

  

  The 888-page report produced by the commission has generated questions from researchers since its release in September 1964.

  Other investigations followed, including one from the Rockefeller Commission in 1975.

  Commissioners studied the CIA’s domestic activities and determined the agency was not involved in the assassination and that the president was not hit by a shot from in front of the vehicle—a claim some have made because Kennedy’s head is seen moving backward in the widely distributed Zapruder film.

  Over the course of 1975 and 1976, the Senate’s Church Committee investigated intelligence agencies’ actions.

  Initial findings led the committee to call for another look at the assassination.

  Lawmakers in the House of Representatives established a Select Committee on Assassinations in 1976.

  The group concluded that the president was likely murdered because of a conspiracy that could have included elements of organized crime.

  However, the committee agreed with the Warren Commission’s findings that Oswald fired the fatal shot and the one that struck the president and then-Texas Gov. John Connally.

  Questions have surrounded the bullet the commission alleges struck both individuals, with the so-called “single bullet theory” a main premise of the Oliver Stone film “JFK” released in 1991

  The new order was one of the president’s promises to voters.

  “When I return to the White House, I will declassify and unseal all JFK assassination-related documents,” Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail last year. “It’s been 60 years, time for the American people to know the truth.”

  In a 1998 report, the Assassination Records Review Board suggested that releasing documents could help restore trust in the government.

  “The suspicions created by government secrecy eroded confidence in the truthfulness of federal agencies in general and damaged their credibility,” lawmakers wrote.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 17:00

• At 5 PM EST, Fed Workers' Pronoun Use On Emails Will Be 'Was/Were'
  At 5 PM EST, Fed Workers’ Pronoun Use On Emails Will Be ‘Was/Were’

  The Trump administration is following through with a mandate the American people gave him to rid the federal government of cultural Marxism, where woke activists have been placed into managerial positions over the years – not necessarily based on merit – but on gender or other nonsense.

  ABC News reports that federal employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry have until 5 pm EST to remove pronouns from their email signatures. The directive was stated in internal memos obtained by the media outlet, citing two executive orders signed by Trump on his first day to dismantle toxic wokeism in the federal government.  

  “Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from CDC/ATSDR employee signatures by 5.p.m. ET on Friday,” Jason Bonander, the CDC’s Chief Information Officer, wrote in a memo to staff on Friday morning. 

  Bonander said, “Staff are being asked to alter signature blocks by 5.p.m. ET today (Friday, January 31, 2025) to follow the revised policy.”

  A similar directive was pushed through the Department of Transportation on Thursday after a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with a commercial jet over the Potomac River. President Trump has slammed years of DEI hirings at the Federal Aviation Administration, made by the Biden-Harris administration.

  Employees at the Department of Energy also received a directive about pronoun elimination in emails to meet Trump’s executive order requirements for the removal of DEI “language in Federal discourse, communications and publications.” 

  Apparently, all federal employees have now received 5 pm EST. deadline to eliminate pronouns from email signatures. 

  All federal employees ordered to eliminate pronouns from all mail signatures by 5PM pic.twitter.com/dBAw0mazEY

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 31, 2025

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

  Former US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, America’s far-left DEI warrior, quietly removed his gender pronouns from social media profiles in recent days. We theorize in the note why…

  Pronoun Warrior Pete Buttigieg Nukes “He/Him” From Social Media https://t.co/01GO10BmIW

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 31, 2025

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

  Fed employees on the subreddit r/fednews are revolting 

  

  Trump signed two executive orders calling for an end to what his administration called “radical and wasteful DEI programs” and aiming to restore “biological truth to the federal government.”

  Under Obama and Biden, pronoun-wielding gender Marxist activists were being installed across all levels of government – not based on merit – but based on gender, race, and other woke attributes that do not increase job performance.

  Wow. So if you call the @DeptVetAffairs, this is one of the first messages you get. It’s instructions on how to add pronouns to your profile.

  When it comes to caring for veterans, their main priority is making sure people aren’t misgendered. Our tax dollars are funding this… https://t.co/tN5BPfMK02 pic.twitter.com/wsPBGs50Ya

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 9, 2024

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

  NEW – State Department has added mandatory pronouns to their email system, according to AP’s Matt Lee.pic.twitter.com/n4OSxiYdtv

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 18, 2023

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

  Transgender Pentagon official:

  “Share your pronouns in your email, particularly if you are a person that doesn’t think they need to.”

  pic.twitter.com/1VuemKroAw

  — Oli London (@OliLondonTV) March 1, 2024

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

  Customs and Border Protection has ordered agents to avoid using “he, him, she, her” pronouns for illegal aliens “until you have more information about, or provided by, the individual.” https://t.co/FdfWmYh3Gd

  — Wesley Yang (@wesyang) October 24, 2024

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

  Karine Jean-Pierre: “I am a black, gay, immigrant woman—the first of all three of those to hold this position.” pic.twitter.com/IhoNrYpbC2

  — Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 16, 2022

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

  Meritocracy will return. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/31/2025 – 16:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest