Oct 01

Today’s News 1st October 2024

  • Enough Already: Stop Provoking Russia
    Enough Already: Stop Provoking Russia

    Authored by Carus Michaelangelo via The Mises Institute,

    Like many people, I eagerly await Scott Horton’s upcoming book, Provoked, which will explain in detail the US provocations that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But will it come too late?

    Since the Russia-Ukraine war began, the Biden administration, in collaboration with the Ukrainian government and much of Europe, has continued incessantly provoking Putin toward a wider conflict with the West. One can recognize the dangerous path we tread without justifying any of Russia’s responses to these provocations.

    The US and Europe have armed Ukraine to the teeth.

    The West has funded Ukraine’s military effort—and a great deal of corruption—to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Supposedly this is good for the US because it aids the US military-industrial complex, but this will be cold comfort in the event of war with Russia. 

    Ukraine sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline, but everyone rushed to blame Russia initially. Ukraine launched an invasion of Russia’s Kursk region in early August, apparently surprising the US government. Since the invasion and the Wall Street Journal’s revelations about the Nord Stream pipeline, the US government’s support for Ukraine has not changed one iota. Indeed, the Kursk incursion ultimately met US approval.

    The US government supplied Ukraine with ATACMS missiles that exploded a beach in Crimea in April. And now, Ukraine is again launching attacks on Moscow, this time sending drones that have attacked residential buildings and an airport. Is our blank check to Ukraine—as its action steadily increases in desperation—going to make war less likely, as the war hawks seem to imagine? Hardly.

    The US makes an elementary blunder: they treat war with Ukraine as a proxy war. But to Russia, it is anything but. Our Ukrainian proxy is not fighting a Russian proxy, but Russia itself. Just because the fighting was taking place in neighboring Ukraine, rather than in Russia, changes nothing. US money, weapons, and intelligence are being used to make war on Russia. It is that simple to Russian leaders.

    The US establishment is playing a dangerous game. Blinded by their own hubris into thinking that they know better, they claim that Putin bluffs when he hints that he may use nuclear weapons, or when Russian officials indicate Russia is changing its nuclear doctrine in response to the West’s actions. Establishment hacks claim Putin is a “coward” who will back down to displays of power and resolve from the West. (One might call this the “coward, coward, coward” narrative). The Ukrainian government, unsurprisingly, spins the same yarn.

    Of course, this narrative is blatantly inconsistent and self-serving. Michael McFaul, former US Ambassador to Russia and a fanatical Russia hawk, at one and the same time knows Putin will back down to US deterrence, but can state with a straight face that, “Putin consistently acts belligerently even when the costs would seem to outweigh the benefits.” Moreover, he says, “American policymakers also underestimate the Russian leader’s tolerance for risky behavior, often assuming he will respond predictably to threats and inducements.” Well, which is it? Do we know Putin will back down, or is he unpredictable and willing to take costly actions driven by fear? It is no exaggeration to say that everything hinges on this single, unverifiable speculation about Putin.

    When their narrative invariably runs into the harsh mistress of reality, they resort to page one of the Washington, DC playbook—unprecedented action and funding was not enough, we need to do and spend even more. If the West does not fund Ukraine or if we make peace with Russia, Putin hawks say, we are rewarding aggression. Hundreds of billions of dollars to signal that we cannot “reward aggression” is the typical Beltway or out-of-touch, think tank logic: take costly, symbolic action that makes no difference. Because in the end, it will have made no difference, other than to prolong the conflict and increase death and suffering. Doing more will only move us closer to the brink. As revealed in the New York Times in late August, the Biden administration at one point “feared the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher.” Yet, we escalate further.

    At every step, the US political establishment has been an obstacle to peace. Victoria Nuland, Biden’s former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, recently admitted what we already knew: that the US helped sabotage a peace proposal that could have ended the Russia-Ukraine war in its infancy. Their incessant refrain that Putin could not be trusted, and that he was salivating at the prospect of moving on to Eastern Europe after Ukraine, was not helpful either. History will remember that the war could have been over almost immediately, and countless Ukrainians alive today, had the US establishment had peace in mind, rather than Putin in their crosshairs.

    When will US leaders say enough is enough: it’s time to end our support for Ukraine; it’s time to pull back from the bellicosity against nuclear powers; and it’s time for peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none? To paraphrase Murray Rothbard, while some may prefer death in nuclear war to Russian rule over Ukraine, most Americans—and many Ukrainians—rightly prefer not to end up in a “free world” cemetery.

    Some European leaders are coming around to peace. But only an intense and sustained campaign for peace from the American people can counter the hawkish establishment impulses to defend Ukraine at all costs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/01/2024 – 02:00

  • Essential Liberty Vs. Temporary Safety
    Essential Liberty Vs. Temporary Safety

    Authored by Carl M. Cannon via RealClearPolitics,

    This article was originally published on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 – with the election in 40 days, which in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a number of profound significance. It signals, among other things, the difficulty of maintaining one’s spiritual faith in the face of adversity.

    The Bible tells us that the rains of the “great flood” lasted 40 days and 40 nights. Moses fasted for 40 days – and spent 40 days and nights atop Mount Sinai waiting to receive the Lord’s law. The New Testament tells us that Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in preparation for his ministry – and ascended to heaven 40 days after his crucifixion.

    Is it merely a metaphor? Perhaps. But a comforting one, as the number 40 also suggests that God has patience with us. This year, in America, He will need it.

    Friday is also the day of the week when I reprise a quotation intended to be uplifting or educational. Today’s words of wisdom concern the secular issue of criminal justice policy, as rendered not in the Old Testament, but in the Old West – by none other than Wild Bill Hickok.

    But first, some context: Eight years ago this week Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump held their first debate. More than midway through the session – by then they were openly contemptuous of one another – the pair sparred over criminal justice policy. The context was rising homicide rates, particularly in Chicago and several other large cities.

    The two candidates talked past one another. Trump tried to pin the violent crime increase on progressive Democratic Party reforms such as getting rid of “stop and frisk” in New York City. Clinton denied crime was really increasing and, with an assist from NBC anchorman Lester Holt, tried to pivot the discussion into a conversation about race.

    Suffice it to say that nothing enlightening was uttered that night. But, in fairness, criminal justice policy is complicated. It’s difficult to even know the basic facts. In 2024, for example, despite assurances from Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats (repeated word-for-word by the press) that violent crime is declining in this country, the picture isn’t that simple.

    The source for the Democrats’ claim is the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report, which does show declining homicide rates. But the FBI numbers aren’t as solid as they once were. The reasons vary. For one thing, not every major police department even reports their numbers to the FBI anymore. Also, there is some evidence that more crimes, even serious felonies, are going unreported.

    Another government metric, which comes from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, is the National Crime Victimization Survey. It’s not perfect, either, but it shows an increase in crime. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, as it often is, but I will say this: When someone smugly assures you that crime is going down, check and see if you still have your wallet in your pocket or purse.

    Which brings me (at long last) to Wild Bill Hickok.

    Crime, a perennial political hot potato in this country, was the main issue in a local election held in central Kansas more than a century and a half ago. Tired of being brutalized by itinerant cowboys and local roughnecks who liquored up in the saloons in the county seat of Hays City, the citizens of Ellis County turned to an outsider in a special election on August 23, 1869.

    The results were disputed, but ultimately Wild Bill Hickok was installed as sheriff. It didn’t take long for people to notice a difference.

    Just a few days later, a bad hombre from Missouri named Bill Mulvey showed up in town. Mulvey’s reputation as a mean drunk preceded him, and the journey to Hays hadn’t mellowed him out. When informed that Wild Bill was the new law in town, Mulvey shot out the mirrors in the saloon where he was drinking whilst using bad language and issuing menacing warnings.

    They were not veiled threats. Mulvey went so far as to boast that he’d come to Kansas to kill Bill Hickok. This may have just been whiskey talk, but as events unfolded it happened the other way around.

    According to one eyewitness account, Mulvey rode up the street on his gray horse, rifle at the ready. Wild Bill strode out to meet him. Hickok broke the ominous silence by suddenly calling out to an imaginary gunman behind Mulvey.

    “Don’t shoot him in the back!” Hickok shouted. “He is drunk.”

    When Mulvey turned around, Hickok drew his pistol and shot him in the head.

    A few weeks later, at 1 a.m. on September 27 – 155 years ago today – Hickok and his deputy came upon a gang of drunken cowboys tearing the hell out of John Bitter’s Beer Saloon. When Hickok ordered them to desist, one of the men, Samuel Strawhun, turned as if to rush the sheriff. Hickok quickly shot and killed him, quelling the melee.

    The city fathers of Hays were left to contemplate that after only five weeks in office, Wild Bill Hickok had killed two men in the name of restoring order. Voters mulled it over, too, and in the regular November election that year, Hickok was voted out of office in favor of his deputy.

    This tension between freedom and law and order is not a new one.

    Benjamin Franklin referenced it in the context of frontier strife between settlers and Native Americans in 1755. Twenty years later at a conference in Boston intended to forestall war between the colonists and the British, Ben Franklin reprised a slightly different version of his aphorism. The Massachusetts Conference, as it was called, was in vain. War was coming. And Franklin’s comment explains why: “They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety,” he wrote, “deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

    And that is our quote of the week.

    Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics and executive editor of RealClearMedia Group. Reach him on X @CarlCannon.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 23:25

  • Escobar: Watching The China River Flow
    Escobar: Watching The China River Flow

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Leading website Guancha has published the transcript of a first-class lecture at Renmin University on China-U.S. relations by Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World. Jacques is one of the very few Westerner scholars with on the ground experience who actually understands the Chinese psyche and way of life in contrast to the West.

    A particularly intriguing section of the lecture concerns research by Danny Quah, the dean of the widely respected Lee Kuan Yew Institute in Singapore. This is the money quote:

    “Between 1980 and 2020, Europe’s share of global GDP fell from 26% to 15%. In other words, it fell by 11 percentage points, a very large drop. Although the decline in the United States was smaller, it fell from 21% in the 1980s to less than 16% in 2020. From another perspective, Asia and East Asia are constantly rising. The share in 1980 was 11.5%, and it has risen to 25% in 2020. Among this 25%, China has made the largest contribution, accounting for 18% of the world.”

    What this graphically illustrates is the acute swing in the world’s center of economic gravity – no matter the rhetorical tsunamis emanating from the Hegemon. In 1980 the economic center was Atlanticist. Quah though believes that the economic center will reach the Sino-Indian border only by 2050.

    When we take China compounded with the 10 members of ASEAN, without even considering South Asia, it’s fair to argue that the economic center will already be in the East by 2030, and will be Sino-Indian before 2040.

    Jacques is correct that by then “the ‘Asian Age’ will replace the ‘Western Age’, and since 1750, the world has always been in the Western Age.” On a personal note, after living and working in Asia for most of the past three decades, I qualify our century as “The Eurasian Century”.

    And that, in a nutshell, is the reason why the Hegemon/Atlanticist elites are in Deep Panic mode. The free lunch – of exploiting the wealth of the Global South – is coming to an end.

    Hong Kong back in the spotlight

    China has already designed the masterplan of its development strategy all the way to 2035 and in many aspects all the way to 2049. The current juncture though is extremely tricky.

    The People’s Bank of China is taking the necessary master tweaks of the economy very seriously. Earlier this week the PBoC announced cuts to the outstanding mortgage rate and the reserve requirement ratio: that’s the amount of cash commercial banks need to hold as reserves. The PBoC also cut the benchmark policy rate and boosted capital markets.

    Then the Politburo, chaired by President Xi Jinping himself, intervened in full force, vowing to protect China’s private enterprises; finally stabilise the always wobbly property sector; and adopt the necessary fiscal expenditures.

    That’s the domestic front. On the external front, China is on a roll. The top priority is the slowly but surely internationalization of the yuan. And that’s where the crucial role of Hong Kong comes in – as detailed in a report by Renmin University.

    China is already de-dollarizing at nearly breakneck speed. The U.S. dollar’s share of bilateral trade has already fallen from 80% to less than 50%.

    China is now trading with the world mostly in yuan – and the petroyuan is not even in full force. Since the start of the SMO by Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, the yuan is the de facto Asian reserve currency for Russia. In parallel, Beijing is accelerating currency swaps all across the spectrum and designating more clearing banks around the world.

    Hong Kong is in a class by itself when it comes to state of the art financial institutions. Hence the connection is inevitable for global investors: all sorts of deals are open in China via Hong Kong, with the added bonus of avoiding Hegemon sanctions.

    So from now on Hong Kong will be even more of a Holy Grail for all sorts of yuan-denominated transactions. Talk about a magnet for finance tech wizards.

    Hong Kong is already the world’s top market for the offshore yuan – processing nearly 80% of all settlements. Three months ago, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Special Administrative Region had $151.7 billion in offshore deposits.

    A top HKMA executive not by accident attended the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok earlier this month. With high U.S. interest rates and low PBoC interest rates, offshore yuan bonds will be issued like there’s no tomorrow.

    Nuclear destruction or an imperfect evolving new order

    From Beijing to Hong Kong, Chinese politico-economic elites are quite comfortable with the fact that for the first time in History, the rise of a great power is not being conditioned by imperialism, war, slavery, looting and all of the above, but under what has been codified since the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s late 1970s reforms as “peaceful development.”

    That is mirrored in several concepts such as win-win; mutual prosperity; equality; “community of shared future for mankind”; and as a master geoeconomic project, the interlocking connectivity corridors across the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

    While China invests in infrastructure development around the world, the Hegemon imposes sanctions, engages in bombing, supports variations of the Forever Wars, finances and weaponizes color revolutions.

    Hegemon “strategy” barely qualifying as utter mediocrity ranges from the U.S. government funding a $1.6 billion campaign to smear China to Republicans divided on whether regime change in Beijing is their ultimate goal and the Democrat ambassador in Beijing convinced that Washington’s China policy is not too hawkish.

    Then there’s puny functionary and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell – the man who invented the “pivot to Asia” during the first Obama administration – ordering the Europeans to go hawkish on China and defining Beijing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as “the most significant challenge in our history”.

    Very few IQs above room temperature across Asia pay attention to such clowns. In contrast, what is now emerging in informed discussions from South to Southeast Asia is that BRICS progress will not be steady enough if the emphasis remains on consensual decisions.

    A daring proposition is emerging that Russia and China – the actual BRICS leaders – should announce at the summit in Kazan next month that they are backing a yuan/ruble/gold alliance: as in if the world needs to choose between NATOstan hegemony or a BRICS alternative, better start with sound (real) money.

    Beyond the feasibility of such proposal, there’s a serious critique of Utopia; the Global Majority must be pushed to face the harsh reality it faces – nuclear destruction or an imperfect evolving new order – and make a stand, fast.

    Meanwhile, like a river undisturbed while traversing a rocky wilderness, China silently flows away on its path to peaceful primacy.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 22:35

  • These Are The Hardest-Working US States
    These Are The Hardest-Working US States

    This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, shows the U.S. states that work the hardest, as scored out of 100 by a Wallethub study conducted in July 2024.

    Naturally trying to measure and compare “hard-work” requires a little bit of data analysis.

    How Is Hard Work Quantified?

    Here’s what Wallethub did. First they analyzed all states on 10 indicators and assigned them different weights.

    These indicators are then divided into two categories. The main one, “Direct Work” contributes 80 points to the total score.

    Meanwhile, “Indirect Work” indicators help the state achieve the last 20 points.

    Clearly, states that score better on higher-weighted indicators end up with a higher overall score, as seen below.

    Ranked: America’s Hardest-Working States

    Wallethub states North Dakota is the hardest-working American state, giving it a rounded score of 67/100. The state’s 98% employment rate helped in securing first place.

    Overall Rank State State Code Total Score
    1 North Dakota ND 67
    2 Alaska AK 64
    3 Nebraska NE 60
    4 Wyoming WY 60
    5 South Dakota SD 60
    6 Maryland MD 58
    7 Texas TX 57
    8 Colorado CO 55
    9 New Hampshire NH 54
    10 Kansas KS 53
    11 Virginia VA 52
    12 Oklahoma OK 52
    13 Georgia GA 52
    14 Hawaii HI 51
    15 Tennessee TN 49
    16 Mississippi MS 49
    17 Iowa IA 48
    18 Alabama AL 47
    19 Louisiana LA 47
    20 Missouri MO 46
    21 Minnesota MN 46
    22 Maine ME 46
    23 North Carolina NC 45
    24 Indiana IN 45
    25 Montana MT 44
    26 South Carolina SC 44
    27 Idaho ID 44
    28 Utah UT 44
    29 Arkansas AR 43
    30 Florida FL 43
    31 Vermont VT 43
    32 Arizona AZ 41
    33 Wisconsin WI 41
    34 Pennsylvania PA 40
    35 Washington WA 40
    36 Delaware DE 40
    37 Kentucky KY 40
    38 Massachusetts MA 39
    39 California CA 38
    40 Illinois IL 38
    41 Oregon OR 38
    42 Ohio OH 37
    43 New Jersey NJ 37
    44 Rhode Island RI 37
    45 Nevada NV 37
    46 Connecticut CT 37
    47 New Mexico NM 35
    48 Michigan MI 34
    49 New York NY 34
    50 West Virginia WV 32

    Note: Figures rounded.

    Meanwhile, Alaska ranks second with 64 points, due to its average workweek crossing 41 hours. It’s the only state in the study which crossed the standard 40-hour metric.

    And Nebraska comes in third with 60 points. Wallethub states that more than 7% of its workforce has multiple jobs, the third-highest of all states.

    A quick overview of the map reveals that the strip of states in the center of the country are the hardest-working, with scores falling as one moves east and west respectively. Interestingly this is also America’s farming country, a demanding sector that requires long hours.

    Another interesting phenomenon is how Alaska and North Dakota have high direct work ranks but are bottom of the pack for indirect work.

    Overall Rank State Direct Work
    Factors Rank    		 Indirect Work
    Factors Rank
    1 North Dakota 1 41
    2 Alaska 2 34
    3 Nebraska 5 5
    4 Wyoming 6 2
    5 South Dakota 3 26
    6 Maryland 7 4
    7 Texas 4 31
    8 Colorado 9 7
    9 New Hampshire 12 9
    10 Kansas 10 25
    11 Virginia 16 12
    12 Oklahoma 8 44
    13 Georgia 11 32
    14 Hawaii 14 29
    15 Tennessee 15 36
    16 Mississippi 13 46
    17 Iowa 18 24
    18 Alabama 17 48
    19 Louisiana 19 38
    20 Missouri 24 20
    21 Minnesota 26 8
    22 Maine 33 1
    23 North Carolina 23 30
    24 Indiana 25 28
    25 Montana 27 22
    26 South Carolina 21 42
    27 Idaho 30 6
    28 Utah 35 3
    29 Arkansas 20 50
    30 Florida 22 47
    31 Vermont 31 14
    32 Arizona 28 39
    33 Wisconsin 29 40
    34 Pennsylvania 36 16
    35 Washington 39 13
    36 Delaware 32 37
    37 Kentucky 34 35
    38 Massachusetts 40 15
    39 California 37 27
    40 Illinois 42 19
    41 Oregon 46 10
    42 Ohio 43 21
    43 New Jersey 45 17
    44 Rhode Island 44 23
    45 Nevada 38 43
    46 Connecticut 49 11
    47 New Mexico 41 45
    48 Michigan 48 33
    49 New York 50 18
    50 West Virginia 47 49

    However, Nebraska performs equally well in both categories. The Cornhusker state has a low share of idle-youth, and has the fifth-highest volunteer hours per capita in the country.

    Interestingly, many of America’s hardest-working states have much lower cost of living requirements. See how the data shakes out in The Income an Individual Needs to Live Comfortably in the States.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 22:10

  • Is Huntington Beach Ahead of the California Curve?
    Is Huntington Beach Ahead of the California Curve?

    Authored by Christian Milord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Once again, Surf City in California appears to be ahead of the curve on common sense issues.

    For years, Huntington Beach officials have fought for ideas like voter ID requirements in political elections and for greater local autonomy regarding residential housing construction in the city over the next decade. The city has also pushed back against the concept of California as a sanctuary state.

    Crowds gather for the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Aug. 4, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

    Along with a few other city councils and school boards in California, including the Chino Valley Unified School District, Huntington Beach City Council has battled for the protection of parental rights regarding their own children’s wellbeing in the schools.

    The council has filed a lawsuit against several state officials over Assembly Bill 1955 (labeled the “Safety Act”), which mandates that public schools hide any changes in the gender identity or sexual orientation of students from parents, unless the student gives permission to share the information.

    This month, the Huntington Beach City Council filed suit with support from America First Legal Foundation in its fight to protect parental rights. A number of parents have also signed on to the recent lawsuit against the state. Under the Education Code, parents have the “absolute right” to access student records.

    Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark has called the bill an “egregious piece of legislation that seeks to compel educators to keep secret from parents sensitive, private, and often life-saving information related to their child’s gender issues and/or expression.”

    Why would any school official want to hide critical information from parents regarding this issue unless they have something to hide? Students are in the community and with their families about 80 percent of an average week, so why would any school think they can dictate terms to parents? While some parents do abandon children or are derelict in their duties, most parents are in charge of their children’s upbringing and protection. Their children don’t belong to government entities.

    One would hope that state leaders would have recognized by now that the unscientific transgender issue is primarily a social contagion. It is being advanced by social media influencers and some medical personnel who haven’t clearly thought out the moderate to longterm effects of gender transitions. What they label as “gender-affirming care” actually condemns healthy young people, who might have some gender identity confusion, to a life of regret and suffering.

    Indeed, some nations in Europe and elsewhere have paused cross-sex hormones and radical sex change surgeries for children. They have begun to realize the devastating effects and suffering of transition recipients who were not fully informed about the mental and physical consequences of such life-altering decisions.

    Whether the state’s intentions are good or not, controversial gender issues and political activism aren’t within the province of public education. The role of public education is to impart a rigorous curriculum that will build character and prepare students for higher education and for life in general. Public education should not be using minors as guinea pigs in an experiment that defies moral and natural laws.

    Most children have challenges as they experience puberty. These youngsters learn to deal with the process of growing up with some counseling, guidance, and spiritual advice from parents and others who genuinely care about their entire wellbeing. Despite individual human flaws, most can celebrate the gender they were born with, as it was gifted by God and their parents.

    In recent years, Sacramento has waded into the culture wars that have an impact on businesses and taxpayer-funded government agencies such as public schools. Sacramento ought to stick to providing essential services, such as educational improvements, fire prevention and suppression resources, infrastructure repair, law enforcement, water storage facilities, etc. Leave personal and sensitive issues out of the classroom, because students already have enough challenges to cope with on a daily basis.

    Moreover, instead of inserting divisive issues into the schools and keeping parents in the dark, school officials at all levels ought to focus on raising test scores in the public schools. They should approve additional charter schools, keep phones out of the hands of students during the school day, and teach both academic and occupational courses to secondary students. Kudos to the “Parents’ Rights” city of Huntington Beach and other governing bodies that fight back against the pervasive unlawful intrusions of Sacramento politicians.

    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
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 21:45

  • China Offers Easing "Gift" To Homebuyers, Sparking Continued Iron Ore & Property Market Euphoria 
    China Offers Easing “Gift” To Homebuyers, Sparking Continued Iron Ore & Property Market Euphoria 

    Iron ore and Chinese property stocks surged after three of the country’s largest metro areas loosened homebuyer rules. This move follows last week’s central government stimulus package, which was aimed at stabilizing the vicious downturn in the housing market.

    Bloomberg reports that Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen eased homebuying rules: 

    On Sunday, the trading hub of Guangzhou became the first tier-1 city to remove all restrictions, saying it will stop reviewing homebuyer eligibility and no longer limit the number of homes owned.

    Both Shanghai and Shenzhen said they will allow more people to purchase residences in suburban areas, as well as allow others to buy more homes. Shanghai, China’s financial hub, and Shenzhen, the southern city known for its tech industry, also announced they were lowering minimum downpayment ratios for first and second homes to 15% and 20%, respectively, in a bid to boost demand.

    Goldamn’s James McGeoch told clients this AM: 

    The weekend Spec was that China fiscal would come ahead of the holiday, as a “gift” to the 75th anniversary on National Day, released in the press release of the Second State council Meeting. Focus on property and consumption in the headlines i have read and the iron ore indexes up a short 10% (SGX $112 and DCE +10%).

    Iron ore’s stunning multi-day reversal has sent prices from $90/ton to $108/ton. Gains overnight topped 11%, adding to 11% last week following the central government’s move to deploy stimulus (read here).

    A separate note from Goldman’s Thomas Evans early last week told clients to “fade iron ore rallies” on potential short covering ahead of the long holiday in China, noting “steel overcapacity and growing supply in iron ore are the two biggest headwinds to ferrous supply chain, which can’t be fixed any time soon.”

    In equity markets, a Bloomberg gauge of Chinese real estate stocks jumped as much as 14% after the news. There was also mention that China’s central bank would allow mortgage refinancing.

    Bloomberg’s Jake Lloyd-Smith penned a note this Am titled “Iron Ore’s Sudden Euphoria May Be Overdone,” in which he said: 

    Beijing’s pre-holiday salvo, plus follow-through steps in key urban centers, will do much to improve the mood. Over time, this may stabilize the real estate market. But whether that’s enough to persuade mills that have been complaining of an industry-wide crisis to change course and actually increase steel output on a sustained basis in the coming quarter remains to be seen.

    The slowdown in China’s property market has been a significant challenge for steelmakers, with some slashing production and warning about an outlook that mirrors 2008 and 2015. 

    Meanwhile, Citigroup analysts led by Wenyu Yao noted that China’s stimulus will be supportive: “Bullish momentum could persist into LME Week.”

    The most interesting aspect of China’s recovery will be its shape. Analysts warn that the property market still faces headlines. 

    “It may take time and could still prove challenging to turn around residents’ bearish views with existing policies,” Morgan Stanley’s Cheung told clients. 

    Perhaps the days of a ‘V-shape’ recovery are long past. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 21:20

  • Democrats Sue Georgia Election Board Over New Ballot Rule
    Democrats Sue Georgia Election Board Over New Ballot Rule

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

    National and state Democrats are suing the Georgia Election Board to stop a new rule that requires workers to hand count ballots in the upcoming presidential election.

    A worker carries a bin of ballots to be scanned at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga., on Jan. 5, 2021. Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images

    In a filing released on Sept. 30, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia said the rule is illegal because the board only has the authority to promulgate regulations that are “conducive to the fair, legal, and orderly conduct of primaries and elections” and “obtain uniformity.”

    Approved by the board on Sept. 20, the rule requires workers to hand count ballots to confirm that the number of ballots matches the number generated by machines.

    If the new rule is allowed to take effect, “the general election will not be orderly and uniform—large counties will face significant delays in reporting vote counts, election officials will struggle to implement new procedures at the last minute, poll workers will not have been trained on the new rule because it was adopted too late, and the security of the ballots themselves will be put at risk,” Democrats allege.

    The suit, set to be lodged in the Superior Court of Fulton County, notes that the attorney general and secretary of state of Georgia both opposed the rule. The office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said that the rule likely exceeded the board’s authority and appeared “to conflict with the statutes governing the conduct of elections.”

    Members of the election board did not respond to requests for comment on the legal action by publication time.

    Democrats are asking the court to invalidate the rule and permanently block it.

    The rule, approved by a 3–2 vote, requires the hand count to be done before the election is certified.

    “I can guarantee you, as a voter, I would rather wait another hour to ensure that the count is accurate than to get a count, or to get a number, within that hour, and then to find out at the close of an election, after certification has already taken place, that we have people suing because the count was not accurate,” Janelle King, one of the members who voted for the rule, said before the board voted on it.

    Sara Tindall Ghazal, one of the members who voted against the rule, cited the number of election officials who said it should not be implemented. The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials is among the groups that expressed opposition.

    Ghazal also expressed concerns over the board possibly overstepping its authority.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 20:55

  • Time Is Running Out: US Port Strike Could Begin Tuesday; Goldman Finds Highly Exposed Retailers  
    Time Is Running Out: US Port Strike Could Begin Tuesday; Goldman Finds Highly Exposed Retailers  

    Time is running out for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the US Maritime Alliance (USMX)—a coalition of port operators and carriers—to form a new labor contract as the existing one expires at midnight. A no-deal scenario would mean thousands of longshoremen at three dozen facilities across 14 Gulf and East Coast ports would begin striking at 12:01 am EST. Tuesday would mark the beginning of a major supply chain storm (inflation surge) in a no-deal scenario.

    Goldman analyst explained last week that a walkout by ILA members would jeopardize $5 billion in daily international trade coming into the Gulf and East Coast ports. 

    Goldman’s Jordan Alliger told clients, “Upwards of $4.9bn per day is at risk in international trade along the East and Gulf coasts, along with the potential for supply chains to likely become less fluid due to emergent congestion, which in turn could result in a re-emergence of transport price inflation.”

    “The biggest wild card in the presidential election that nobody’s talking about? The looming port strike that could shut down all East and Gulf Coast ports just 36 days before the election,” Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen wrote on X earlier this month. 

    On Monday morning, with just a little over half the day left, a team of Goldman analysts led by Brooke Roach provided clients with the “current state of the supply chain and freight environment for the retail industry.” 

    • What is happening: The International Longshoreman Association and US Maritime Alliance contract is set to expire on September 30th. Our US transports analyst, Jordan Alliger, detailed the potential ramifications should labor disruption arise at East / Gulf Coast Ports in this note published on 9/26. While we take no view on the likelihood of any outcome, our team has fielded an increased number of investor queries focused on potential disruption to US retail as a result of potential congestion, which could come at a critical shipping period for US retailers ahead of the holidays.

    • Comments from retail associations: The American Apparel and Footwear Association estimates that 53% of all US apparel, footwear, and accessories imports are routed through the East and Gulf Coast ports. The AAFA also noted risk from East Coast / Gulf port disruption to impact West Coast port operations, creating strains/delays across the supply chain. Separately, the Retail Industry Leaders Association has also stated that while retailers have activated contingency plans to mitigate potential effects of work disruption, it becomes harder to mitigate the longer a work stoppage goes on.

    • Our view on potential impact: We surveyed our hardlines and softlines coverage universe to assess exposure, and we found the majority of companies who responded pointed to the following: (1) A higher rate of reliance on West Coast ports for their primarily Asia-sourced product; (2) Proactive rerouting and other plans ahead of potential disruption to ensure critical product arrives on-time for holiday; (3) Other contingency plans in place, including airfreight for select items. Many companies indicated they were already planning for higher freight expense in 2H due to a variety of risk factors, with port contract negotiations one factor alongside ongoing Red Sea disruption and higher rates on spot product. That said, we note that the magnitude of potential disruption is likely a function of the length of any work disruption and subsequent port congestion (which could likely impact both West and East Coast ports). Historically, a longer period of congestion for retailers has typically been associated with a higher risk of delayed product arrival, which can be a headwind to full-price sales for holiday or seasonal items. Full detail of exposure by company is listed in the tables below.

    Here is the historic labor action example the analysts laid out:

    • While not an exact corollary given the higher level of importance of West Coast ports to the retail industry (a function of Asia-based supply chains), we note one historical example in 2014/15. The West Coast port labor dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association lasted from June 2014 through February 2015, with the situation worsening in January and February as an apparent work slowdown escalated to closure of 29 ports for several days around Presidents’ Day weekend in 2015 before reaching an agreement on February 20th, 2015. Delayed product impacted seasonal timing of spring apparel product launches, with inventory drawdown during the initial period of disruption (likely due to delayed shipments) and then a subsequent build in inventories which lasted through the year for many companies. Several of our covered companies cited port delays as a driver of gross margin pressure, with promotional pricing in mid-2015 seen across department stores, specialty retail, mass retailers and apparel/accessories brands.

    The analysts then surveyed retailers about their freight exposure at US ports. In one instance, Dollar Tree warned that half its products pass through Gulf and East Coast ports.

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    Some retailers warn that supply chain snarls could spark chaos for them:

    Source: Goldman Sachs 

    Another industry survey found which retailers will be the most flexible in an East Coast port strike environment.

    Source: Goldman Sachs 

    Earlier this morning, when Biden was asked about “Yemen strikes,” the president responded incoherently to reporters: “I’ve spoken to both sides. They gotta settle the strike. I’m supporting the collective bargaining effort. I think they’ll settle the strike.”

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    Dr. Jill has had enough. 

    What’s embarrassing for the nation is that Democrats lied to the American people about the president’s cognitive collapse. No wonder domestic and foreign policy is a mess.

    Meanwhile… 

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    Bro.

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    Isn’t that your job?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 20:45

  • Watch: Russian Jet Buzzes NORAD Warplane Off Alaska
    Watch: Russian Jet Buzzes NORAD Warplane Off Alaska

    The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has revealed more details of a close call incident between US fighter jets and Russian aircraft off the coast of Alaska which took place one week ago.

    Four Russian military planes had breached Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) – though which is still deemed international airspace – before being intercepted and shadowed by US planes. But on Monday NORAD published video of the incident, which for the first time reveals that a Russian Su-35 came very close to the American jets. Watch:

    “The conduct of one Russian Su-35 was unsafe, unprofessional, and endangered all – not what you’d see in a professional air force,” NORAD said in a fresh statement.

    The video shows that while US pilots were mirroring a Russian long-range bomber from a safe distance, the Russian Su-35 buzzed the US aircraft at a high rate of speed, apparently in an effort to warn the US plane off.

    Immediately after the Sept.23rd incident NORAD had tried to downplay the encounter…

    “The Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” it wrote in a press release. “This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat.”

    But clearly based on the video the Russian jets did maneuver threateningly close to the American fighters. The American pilot’s voice is caught on video acting shocked and surprised at how close the Russian jet came.

    NORAD has previously said Russian bomber flights near Alaska occur “regularly”. But recently China has also joined some Russian patrols of northern Pacific areas, including areas extending near Alaska.

    The threatening aerial maneuvers by the Russian side are likely on the increase as a result of tensions connected with the Russia-Ukraine war, in which NATO has been upping its involvement.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 20:30

  • 'Go For Gold' – Goldman Sachs Raises Precious Metal Price Forecast Amid "Secret Buyers"
    ‘Go For Gold’ – Goldman Sachs Raises Precious Metal Price Forecast Amid “Secret Buyers”

    Despite having rallied 29% YTD and 47% since 2022, gold continues to set all-time highs, reaching $2,685/toz on Thursday.

    Goldman Sachs Precious Metals analysts have raised their gold price forecast from $2,700/toz to $2,900/toz for early 2025 for two reasons.

    • First, our economists now look for faster declines in short-term interest rates in the West and China, and we recently showed that the gold market doesn’t fully price in the rates boost to Western ETF holdings backed by physical gold yet, which tends to be gradual.

    • Second, our new nowcast shows that EM central bank purchases on the London over-the-counter (OTC) market continue to fundamentally drive the rally since 2022, and we believe that these structural purchases will remain elevated.

    Under Goldman’s forecast, moderating but still significant central bank purchases on the London OTC market drive about 2/3 of the expected rise of the gold price to $2,900/toz in early 2025.

    The gradual rise in ETF flows following the Fed rate-cuts our economists expect drives the remaining 1/3 of price upside.

    This forecast also relies on our rule of thumb that 100 tonnes of physical demand lifts gold prices by at least 2.4%, the lower bound of our regression estimate.

    Following Goldman’s analysis of structurally higher demand from central banks, they developed a nowcast of central bank demand in the London OTC market, where most of these transactions take place.

    Central Banks Continue to Drive the Rally Since 2022

    Top of mind for investors is “Who is the ‘secret’ gold buyer?“, as gold has rallied 47% since 2022, despite rising rates which typically predict lower prices.

    While the gold-price-to-rates relationship remains intact in changes, the ‘secret’ buyer has elevated prices and reset the relationship in absolute levels.

    Our new nowcast shows that EM central bank gold purchases on the London OTC market continue to drive the rally since 2022. Our nowcast of central bank and other institutional demand in the London OTC market shows that purchases remained strong through July, averaging 730 tons annualized year-to-date, or about 15% of global annual production estimates.

    China’s central bank, the PBoC, is a key focus for gold investors, given its reported streak of 18 consecutive months of purchases since November 2022. Our estimates of China’s institutional gold purchases in the London OTC market align with the PBoC reports, but tend to be higher, start earlier, and last longer.

    While the PBoC reported no additional purchases after April, our nowcast estimates 50 tonnes of institutional purchases from China on the London OTC market in May, with no further activity in June and July.

    Goldman’s nowcasting model leverages customs data and knowledge of the London OTC market, the largest hub for trading large 400 oz gold bars, which central banks and other institutions favor due to their size and lower cost per ounce, and which are typically too expensive for most retail buyers. London also provides storage for ETF holdings, central bank reserves (held in custody at the BOE), and unallocated gold accounts. Changes in these gold bar holdings in London vaults are a proxy for OTC net demand and match UK net imports, which are available by trade partners.

    Our nowcasting model is the sum of two components:

    (1) UK exports of gold bars to the world ex-Switzerland, and

    (2) the portion of UK exports of gold bars to Switzerland we identify as central bank demand.

    Goldman differentiates between UK gold bar exports to Switzerland and other countries because the former typically represent retail demand while the latter indicate central bank and institutional demand. The UK, with no (significant) gold mines or accredited refineries producing large 400 oz bars, primarily imports these large bars from Switzerland, the global refining hub, when London institutional demand or ETF inflows are high. Conversely, when demand in London is low, the UK exports large 400 oz bars back to Switzerland, where they are refined into smaller bars and sent to retail markets.

    Go for Gold

    We reiterate our long gold recommendation due to i) the gradual boost from lower global interest rates, ii) structurally higher central bank demand, and iii) gold’s hedging benefits against geopolitical shocks, including tariffs, Fed subordination risk, debt fears, financial, and recessionary risks.

    After an already very large price rally, we end by addressing the potential factors that may moderate our base case of significant additional upside to gold prices.

    These potential factors to monitor include a potential softening in our nowcast of central bank demand (for instance because of easing in geopolitical tensions), potentially lower-than-expected ETF inflows (if central banks cut rates less than expected), or a potential sharper-than-expected pullback in China’s retail demand due to price sensitivity or a sharper-than-expected gain in consumer confidence.

    Professional subscribers can read the full report from Goldman Lina Thomas on what is driving Goldman’s increased gold price forecast.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 20:25

  • Brown Bananas, Crowded Ports, Empty Shelves: What To Expect If Major Port Strike Erupts On Tuesday 
    Brown Bananas, Crowded Ports, Empty Shelves: What To Expect If Major Port Strike Erupts On Tuesday 

    Authored by Anna Nagurney, Professor and Eugene M. Isenberg Chair in Integrative Studies, UMass Amherst, via The Conversation: 

    Whether you’re buying a can of sardines or a screwdriver, getting products to consumers requires that supply chains function well.

    The availability of labor is essential in each link of the supply chain. That includes the workers who make sure that your tinned fish and handy tools smoothly journey from their point of origin to where they’ll wind up, whether it’s a supermarket, hardware store or your front door.

    Amazingly, 90% of all internationally traded products are carried by ships at some point. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was hard not to notice the supply chain disruptions. For U.S. ports, there were many bouts of congestion. Demand for goods that were either more or less popular than they would normally be became volatile. Shortages of truckers and other freight service providers wreaked havoc on land-based and maritime transportation networks.

    Consumers became exasperated when they saw all the empty shelves. They endured price spikes for items that were suddenly scarce, such as hand sanitizer, computer equipment and bleach.

    I’m a scholar of supply chain management who belongs to a research group that studies ways to make supply chains better able to withstand disruptions. Based on that research, plus what I learned while writing a book about labor and supply chains, I’m concerned about the turmoil that could be around the corner for cargo arriving on ships.

    Concerns over pay and technology

    The International Longshoremen’s Association’s six-year contract with the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports will expire on Sept. 30, 2024, at midnight unless the two sides reach an agreement before that deadline. Without a breakthrough, the 45,000 port workers intend to take part in a strike that would paralyze ports from Maine to Texas.

    Should they walk off the job, it would be the first such work stoppage for the East Coast ports since 1977.

    Labor and management disagree over how much to raise wages, and the union also wants to see limits on the use of automation for cranes, gates and trucks at the ports in the new contract. The union is seeking a 77% increase in pay over the next six years and is concerned that jobs may be lost because of automation.

    Dockworkers on the West Coast, who are not on strike, are paid much higher regular wages than their East Coast and Gulf Coast counterparts who are preparing for a strike. The West Coast workers earn at least an estimated US$116,000 per year, for a 40-hour work week, versus the roughly $81,000 dockworkers at the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports take home, not counting overtime pay.

    Management is represented in the talks by the U.S. Maritime Association, which includes the major shippers, terminal operators and port authorities.

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    What to expect if there’s a strike

    As many as 36 ports would have to stop operating if a strike happens, blocking almost half of the cargo going in and out of the U.S. on ships.

    If the strike lasts just a day, then it would not be noticeable to a typical consumer. However, businesses of all kinds would no doubt feel the pinch. J.P. Morgan estimates that a strike could cost the U.S. economy $5 billion every day.

    Even if only a one-day strike happens, it could take about five days to straighten out the supply chain.

    If a strike lasts a week, the results would quickly become apparent to most consumers.

    Some shipping companies have already begun to reroute their cargo to the West Coast. Even if there’s no strike at all, costs will rise and the warehouses could run out of room.

    The effects on everything from bananas and cherries to chocolate, meat, fish and cheese could be severe, and the shipping disruption could also hamper trade in some prescription drugs if the strike lasts at least a week.

    If the strike were to last a month or more, supplies needed by factories could be in short supply. Numerous consumer products would not be delivered. Workers would be laid off. U.S. exports, including agricultural ones, might get stuck rather than shipped to their destinations. Inflation might increase again. And there would be a new bout of heightened economic anxiety and uncertainty – along with immense financial losses.

    All the while, West Coast ports would face unusually high demand for their services, wreaking havoc on shipping there too.

    Yes, we’d have no bananas

    My research group’s latest work on supply chain disruptions and the effects of various transportation disruptions, including delays, quantifies the impact on the quality of fresh produce. We did a case study on bananas.

    This isn’t a niche problem.

    Bananas are the most-consumed fresh fruit in the U.S.

    Many of the bananas sold in the U.S. are grown in Ecuador, Guatemala and Costa Rica. About 75% of them arrive at ports on the East and Gulf coasts.

    Although bananas are relatively easy to ship, they require appropriate temperatures and humidity. Even under the best conditions, their quality deteriorates. Long delays will mean shippers will be trying to foist mushy brown bananas on consumers who might reject them.

    Alternatively, banana growers may opt to find other markets. It’s reasonable to expect to find fewer bananas and much higher prices – possibly of a lower quality. Flying bananas to the U.S. would be too expensive to sustain.

    Fresh meat and other refrigerated foods could spoil before they can complete their journeys, and fresh berries, along with other fruits and vegetables, could perish before reaching their destinations.

    If there’s a port strike, tons of fresh produce, including bananas, that would arrive after Oct. 1 would end up having to be discarded. That is unfortunate, given the rising food insecurity rate in the U.S.

    1947 Taft-Hartley Act

    More than 170 trade groups are urging the Biden administration to intervene at the last minute to avoid a strike.

    The government can invoke the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which allows the president to ask a court to order an 80-day cooling-off period when public health or safety is at risk.

    However, President Joe Biden reportedly does not plan to invoke it – even as he urges the two sides to settle their differences.

    So if you’re planning to bake banana bread or were thinking you might get an early start on your holiday shopping, I’d advise you to make those shopping trips as soon as possible – just in case.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 20:05

  • Heroes And Villains
    Heroes And Villains

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

    “It’s really hard to govern today… The First Amendment stands as a major block.”

    – John Kerry.

    Thus spake the Haircut-in-Search-of-a-Brain who ran for president in 2004. Something must have been amiss in Conception Central the night God made John Kerry. Maybe they were low on inventory up there for the stuff that goes inside the head, so they overdid it on the roofing material. Maybe they assigned him an extra testicle, too, in compensation. It certainly took balls (but not brains) to assert from the stage of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that free speech is cluttering up America’s march to totalitarianism.

    Mr. Kerry’s hapless utterance tells you all you need to know about how the party of John F. Kennedy turned years later into a demon-driven cult seeking to smash everything that was once noble and upright about our country. If there is any such thing as disinformation — and the claim is dubious since, really, there is only truth and untruth — then the chief dispenser of it is our own depraved government. Every morsel it issues is some species of Orwellian counter-think.

    Just yesterday, former Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking of Mr. Trump returning to office, told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki:

    “They will use the mechanisms of the DOJ to go after people who are their political foes. This is something that has never really happened in the history of this republic.”

    Mr. Holder may have been born at night, but probably not the night before last.

    Apparently, he has not noticed the uses to which current AG Merrick Garland has put “Joe Biden’s” DOJ, bending heaven, earth, and the law to put Mr. Trump behind bars and bankrupt him — not to mention the scores of Trump-adjacent lawyers prosecuted in cockamamie cases based on their efforts to pursue ballot fraud in the 2020 elections.

    Hillary Clinton was similarly on-point last week with Margaret Hoover on PBS’s Firing Line, declaring:

    “The press needs a consistent narrative about the danger that Trump poses.”

    Of course, she asserts this incessantly — and the media parrots her — without ever specifying what that danger is. So, I will tell you: Hillary Clinton and hundreds of Democratic Party affiliated officials past and present fear that they will be subjected to legal process in crimes ranging all the way up to treason for their conduct the past decade, including the mass murder and injury of millions with their Covid policy, their deliberate abetting of millions crossing the border illegally, their use of several government agencies to abridge the First Amendment, their abuse of DOJ and FBI power in malicious prosecutions, their shell games funneling taxpayers’ money to hundreds of crony NGOs, and their use of Ukraine as a money laundry for the entire Beltway criminal cartel. Surely even more than that.

    It was the last item on that list that prompted impeachment No. 1 of Mr. Trump, who came uncomfortably close to inquiring about it in that fateful 2019 phone call to President Zelensky. And, of course, it was exactly in that maw of corruption that the Biden family helped itself to millions of grifted dollars while Joe was out-of-office, and his bagman-crackhead son gamboled about the globe shaking loose more millions from exotic money-trees wherever he landed. All of which is to say that the “danger” Mr. Trump poses is to them personally and directly, certainly not to “our democracy,” their phony war-cry. So, now you know.

    Many of these players have gone to ground the past year or more. You don’t hear much these days from the likes of Jim Comey, John Brennan, Jim Clapper, Andy McCabe, Tony Fauci, Peter Hotez, and many more who were so active shooting their mouths off on cable news after the blob managed to install “Joe Biden” as its “beard” in the Oval Office. Now, they all lie low in terror as the immense battery of lawfare against Mr. Trump failed spectacularly to stop him from running again, and the first two attempts on his life went awry. Meanwhile, Garland, Mayorkas, Christopher Wray, remain in the trenches, reduced to stonewalling every and all efforts to get straight answers out of them as to how badly they are running things. And out in front of all of them you have their supposed protector, Kamala Harris, the most feckless candidate imaginable. No wonder they’re so desperate.

    In contrast to all this low-down treachery in-and-around the craven Party of Chaos and, its corrupt, depraved agents fearing the turn of genuine law against them, there was the Rescue the Republic event on the mall in Washington Sunday. The intelligence and honesty on view there was a startling reminder of the sentiments that birthed our country in the first place. RFK, Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Jordan Peterson, Matt Taibbi, Senator Ron Johnson, Del Bigtree, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Robert Malone, and many more figures aligning with the Trump campaign, delivered one stirring message after another informing us that the cardinal virtues of honor, fortitude, courage, and justice are still alive in the background of this sore-beset nation. I’ve never heard a more eloquent extempore appeal to our shared human virtues than the speech delivered by UK national Russell Brand, supposedly a comedian. It was Shakespearean.

    And so, tomorrow we slot into October, the month of promised “surprises” and generally not the happy kind. Hillary alluded to that in her Firing Line palaver. Does her posse (Huma, Alex Soros) have something up their sleeves? Fake Special Prosecutor (illegally appointed and unconfirmed by the Senate) Jack Smith is coming into Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC federal courtroom with a big fat brief detailing his superseding indictment cooked up to replace the previous case derailed by the Supreme Court decision earlier this year on presidential immunity. Teams of assassins are roaming the land hunting Mr. Trump. And those are just the known unknowns.

    But there’s something else in the air little more than a month away from this fateful election day. It feels like just enough Americans have recovered their senses to act against war, censorship, wide open borders, and the despotic rule of a malevolent bureaucratic blob nobody voted for. Mail-in ballot fraud is already being discovered. Mr. Trump might survive this campaign ordeal after all despite his enemies’ best efforts. The nation could climb out of this slough of self-destruction and despair after all. We used to say proudly this is a free country. It can be that again.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 19:15

  • Israel Launches Ground Invasion Of Lebanon: Operation Northern Arrows
    Israel Launches Ground Invasion Of Lebanon: Operation Northern Arrows

    Update(1908ET): Israel has named the new cross-border offensive “Operation Northern Arrows”. Below is an early description by the IDF as posted to Telegram and other government channels [emphasis ZH]:

    IDF troops have begun limited, localized and targeted raids against Hezbollah terror targets in the border area of southern Lebanon

    In accordance with the decision of the political echelon, a few hours ago, the IDF began limited, localized, and targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon. These targets are located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.

    The IDF is operating according to a methodical plan set out by the General Staff and the Northern Command which IDF soldiers have trained and prepared for in recent months.

    The Israeli Air Force and IDF Artillery are supporting the ground forces with precise strikes on military targets in the area.

    Some Lebanese accounts have claimed that Hezbollah has already killed and wounded some invading Israeli soldiers, but these reports will remain hard to verify within the opening hours of the campaign and amid the fog of war.

    Heavy strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs during the night hours (local):

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    New strike on Damascus:

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    * * *

    Update(1630ET): The Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon has begun, with various regional news correspondents saying IDF tanks have been spotted breaching areas earlier deemed ‘closed military zones’.

    “Israeli forces have launched limited incursions in Lebanon, the United States said, as Israel vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah and sealed part of the border after killing the Iran-backed militants’ leader,” AFP reports.

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    Thus a ground war has begun in Lebanon a mere month before the US presidential election. Meanwhile neither President Biden nor VP Kamala Harris have had much to say. Quite the opposite: they might prefer to hide from the media. 

    There are meanwhile reports that it was a US-provided 2,000 pound bomb which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last Friday. Israel’s use of the US-supplied “bunker busters” has been described Monday as follows:

    A video published by the Israeli military on Saturday showed jets it said were used to carry out the attack carrying at least 15 2,000-pound bombs, including the US-made BLU-109, according to Trevor Ball, a former senior explosive ordnance technician for the US Army who reviewed the footage for CNN.

    Biden has meekly called for ceasefire, while simultaneously backing the high level assassination. 

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    Intense airstrikes are now once again hitting the Lebanese capital…

    * * *

    Israel has been busy over the weekend striking multiple fronts. Not only has it expanded airstrikes on Beirut in the wake of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s Friday death, but it is attacking Yemen and Syria as well.

    Starting late last week into Saturday, Yemen’s Iran-linked Houthis announced the launch of several ballistic missiles toward Tel Aviv, which Israel’s military said were intercepted. And on Friday, in an incident which went underreported (given headlines were focused heavily on Beirut events), three US warships in the Red Sea came under simultaneous rocket attacks from the Houthis.

    “The Houthi said they had targeted three U.S. warships which media reports tonight are identifying as the guided missile destroyers USS Spruance and USS Stockdale and the littoral combat ship USS Indianapolis. They were reported to have been north of the Bab el-Mandeb at the time,” The Maritime Executive reported.

    “U.S. officials are confirming that warships in the Red Sea were targeted with possibly the largest barrage since the conflict began with the Houthis in Yemen nearly 10 months ago,” the publication added.

    On Sunday Israeli jets had the assistance of US military intelligence as they conducted a massive airstrike on Yemen’s key port of Hodeidah. It happened in the early evening local time. Axios reports that “sensitive” Houthis facilities were on the target list.

    Yemen’s Health Ministry in the aftermath announced that at least four people were killed and 40 others injured in the Israeli raid, which left massive plumes of smoke over the area. Videos show a huge fire engulfing the port.

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    Israeli media has confirmed that it was the biggest Israeli strike on Yemen since the conflict began in the wake of Oct.7 of last year. “Dozens of Israeli aircraft, including F-15I fighter planes, participated in the operation, striking 1,800 kilometers from Israeli territory after the Houthis fired three ballistic missiles on the Tel Aviv and central Israel areas in recent weeks, including one on Saturday,” Jerusalem Post details.

    During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Friday United Nations speech, the Israeli leader said his country is fighting a war on seven fronts. He brought props, as has been his pattern at major UN speeches:

    The Israeli leader explained “the blessing” was establishing a “landbridge” from India to Israel. The blessing requires Saudi Arabia to enter the Abraham Accords and normalize ties with Israel. Netanyahu claimed that would have happened, but the October 7 Hamas attack prevented the deal.

    In the map titled “the curse,” five countries were represented in black: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. The Israeli leader claimed that Tehran was working to eliminate Tel Aviv using its allies in the region. Netanyahu presented the conflict as a battle between forces of civilization against barbarism.

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    He is now targeting the very countries he listed in the speech. According to more details of the Hodeidah attack from Yemeni sources:

    In a statement, the army said “dozens of air force aircraft” struck power plants and sea port facilities at the Ras Isa and Hodeidah ports. The attacks killed at least four people – including a port worker and three electrical engineers – and wounded 30 others, according to Yemen’s ministry of health.

    Also on Sunday, and also largely underreported in Western media, there was another Israeli raid on Syria, which reportedly targeted a base with ‘pro-Iranian’ assets. It happened on the outskirts of the capital Damascus. “At least seven pro-Iran militants were injured in an Israeli strike in the countryside of Damascus, near the Syria-Lebanon border, a war monitor reported on Monday, amid soaring regional tensions against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war,” regional source Rudaw reports.

    “Seven elements, most of them non-Syrians, were injured in an Israeli airstrike on a border crossing on the Syrian-Lebanese border in Rif Dimashq from the Syrian side,” the report said. A similar raid occurred on Friday, as Israel was bombing Beirut. Syrian state SANA said the Friday aggression killed five Syrian soldiers.

    Meanwhile on Monday Israel has expanded its strikes in Lebanon to include targeted attacks on central Beirut, which is a first since the 2006 war. The apparent targets included three senior figures in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Subsequently the leftist group which conducted airline hijackings in the 1970s said its officials Mohammed Abdel Aal, Emad Odeh, and Abdel Rahman Abdel Aal were killed in Beirut’s Cola district.

    Aftermath of the airstrike on an apartment building in central Beirut:

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    The Guardian described of the attack, “Initial footage from the scene showed two storeys of an apartment building completely blown out, and onlookers running towards the building. Two bodies could be seen lying on the street on top of a car outside the building, seemingly ejected by the force of the blast.”

    As if all this weren’t a chaotic enough powder keg ready to explode further, Iran-backed paramilitaries in Iraq are now ramping up attempts to directly attack Israel, with a fresh drone operation against Israel’s port city of Haifa:

    The Islamic Resistance in Iraq said in a statement today that it attacked four Israeli targets in response to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza.

    It said that it attacked two “vital” targets in the Israeli port city of Haifa using drones, as well as two other unspecified targets.

    Amid what’s clearly a rapid escalation on several fronts in the Middle East, the US Commander-in-Chief doesn’t seem to know what’s going on…

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    This despite Yemen and the Red Sea being scene of what one US military commander previously called America’s most serious and intense naval combat going back to WW2.

    In northern Israel, the IDF continues building up forces along the border with Lebanon, as well as in the Golan region, ahead of a potential ground invasion. There have also reportedly been repeat incursions into Lebanese territory by Israeli special forces troops. Hezbollah has continued sporadic missile fire into northern Israel over the past days as well, but the big expected retaliation for Nasrallah’s killing has yet to come on any large scale.

    Netanyahu on Monday issued a new warning: “There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach.  There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country,” he said, describing that Israel is in “a war for our very existence.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 19:08

  • Pittsburgh Restaurant Claims 'Momentary Confusion' After Denying JD Vance Entry, Threatening With Arrest
    Pittsburgh Restaurant Claims ‘Momentary Confusion’ After Denying JD Vance Entry, Threatening With Arrest

    Pennsylvania is a major battleground state in the 2024 presidential election, but many Americans may not be aware of how tenuous the situation is for Democrats. Stats show that since 2016 the state has seen an exponential increase in conservative and independent voters and a steady decline in Democratic support. The majority of presidential polls show a dead-heat between Trump and Harris, and if we take into account the fact that most polls have been weighted in Kamala’s favor with extra Democrats surveyed, it’s not looking good for her.

    When an election is so ideologically contested and the popular divide is so brutal, malicious behavior from one side or the other is likely.  It just so happens that all the malicious behavior during this campaign has been on the left side of the political spectrum (including two attempted assassinations against Donald Trump by Act Blue donators). This is not the America of decades past in which people were opposed based on policy and when the election was over they moved on – This time people are opposed based on core morality and there is no moving on.

    Another example of this dynamic is a recent controversy involving Trump’s running mate JD Vance – who made an impromptu stop at a popular Pittsburgh restaurant chain called Primanti Bros.  Washington County GOP chair Sean Logue was one of what he said was about 100 Trump supporters inside the restaurant who had been tipped off that Vance would make a stop there. They arrived an hour early. 

    “The manager told patrons, other Republicans, that Vance is not allowed to make a campaign stop at Primanti Brothers,” Logue said. “And then when there was pushback to say, ‘Wait a second, Kamala Harris just did this a month ago,’ the response was, ‘Well, if he wants to sit down and order food, we can’t stop him.”

    When Vance did arrive ahead of an event in Monroeville, Logue said that the restaurant’s manager ran out to tell him that he was not allowed inside, that he couldn’t have a campaign stop there, and that if he did go inside – they’d call the police and file trespassing charges.

    Vance handled the situation with class.

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    The Pittsburgh chain has been a favorite of politicians for years.  Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton swung by the Primanti’s in Market Square in 2016 and And GOP presidential candidate John McCain went to the one in the Strip District in 2008, chatting up customers as he waited for his order.

    Primanti Bros. was already a subject of controversy after they allegedly kicked out real customers so that Kamala Harris could bus in her own crowd of supporters for a staged campaign meet and greet. 

    Trump supporters have called for a boycott of the business after what they argue was unfair treatment of Vance.  Primanti Bros. has released a statement on the incident, but not an apology. 

    They say the incident was due to “confusion” and that Vance was eventually invited in.  Witnesses argue that this is untrue.  Republican Allegheny County Councilman Sam DeMarco stated:

    ‘While Senator Vance was extremely gracious today about being denied entry to Primanti’s today, this statement is NOT accurate…Senator Vance was denied entry and he and his team were NOT welcomed into the restaurant after the initial “confusion.” ‘

    ‘Primanti’s perhaps isn’t being told the truth by their Manager who threatened to call the police if he entered. Senator Vance spoke with and took photos with patrons outside in the parking lot but there were no interactions inside other than him going in to pay for everyone’s food…’

    The political leanings of the restaurant’s owners or manager are not known, but judging by their pettiness one can easily guess.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 18:50

  • Ahead Lies Ruin: The Decay Of Social Trust
    Ahead Lies Ruin: The Decay Of Social Trust

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Loss of social trust has consequences.

    There are three solvents of social trust: 1) the self-aggrandizement of insiders; 2) decay of competence, and 3) precarity, generated by soaring inequality / cost of living and the decay of social mobility, all of which erode confidence in the social contract, i.e. our confidence that the system isn’t rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

    These are of course related, but let’s tease them apart. Once insiders focus on maximizing their personal gain as the purpose and goal of their employment, the value of the institution’s service to the public / customers decays behind a flimsy screen of self-serving PR promoting the successes of the hollowed-out institution.

    Even if insiders are devoted to serving the public, if their ability to perform the necessary work is impaired due to under-competence, the public’s trust decays. Rather than look for incompetence, which presumably could be fixed by replacing the incompetent with the competent, the real problem is under-competence, a subject I addressed in The Catastrophic Consequences of Under-Competence (subscribers/patrons only).

    The basic idea here is the organization has lost the core competencies needed to handle anything other than day-to-day processes. In other words, those inside the organization think they have what it takes, until challenges arise that they do not fully recognize or understand due to institutionalized under-competence. Here is an excerpt from my essay:

    We all understand human error: someone was tired and misread the situation, or they were impatient. We also understand incompetence: the individual simply didn’t have the knowledge and experience needed to make the right decisions and take corrective action.

    Author Charles Perrow studied organizational weaknesses that generate flawed responses to what he calls “normal accidents,” responses that made the situation far worse. In other words, the system itself increases the risks of normal accidents becoming catastrophic accidents.

    In other words, as organizations become more complex, the staff no longer has the competence required to manage challenges and crises that were previously considered part of the job.

    When self-interested insiders no longer care about the organization’s under-competence, this is toxic to social trust. On a society-wide scale, this decay erodes the social contract, the unstated but implicit understanding that the system is functional and fair, i.e. a level playing field, and we “get what we pay for,” i.e. we will receive fair value for our work and money.

    Soaring inequality, the rising cost of living and the decay of social mobility are all indicators of an increasingly unlevel playing field and a decline in the value of our work and money, even as we’re constantly assured that we have the best of everything.

    This reliance on artifice and propaganda is also toxic to social trust. When we sense that we’re just marks / chumps being ripped off by corporations and institutions, and the gains are going to the few at our expense, we lose trust in the system.

    No wonder social trust has been declining for decades. This is inversely correlated to rising inequality: as inequality increases, social trust declines.

    The widening gap between the the few and the many is reflected by this chart: those who find the system works very well for me have great trust in the institutions that employ and enrich them, while the rest of us, i.e. the marks and chumps being stripmined, have very little trust in our elites or the institutions that empower them.

    Consider Higher Education, the vast “industry” of universities and colleges tasked with imparting higher levels skills and knowledge. That the emergence of student loans–from near-zero two generations ago to $1.75 trillion in “free money” to higher education–enabled a vast expansion of shiny new buildings and well-paid administrators is beyond question.

    This chart shows federally backed student loan debt–$1.48 trillion–out of a total (federal and private-sector debt) of $1.75 trillion. Note that Higher Education managed to expand for decades without any federally backed student debt. In 20 years, federally backed student debt rose from $87 billion to $1.48 trillion. How did the “industry” survive all those postwar decades as it expanded at an unprecedented rate?

    Two generations ago, critics inside and outside the “industry” were already questioning the value of the education being offered to students, for example Ivan Illich’s Disabling Professions and Deschooling Society , and Donald Schon’s The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action, in which Schon, a professor at M.I.T., explored how little was understood about how students learn real-world skills in management and other professions.

    That student enrollment in the Higher Education industry has plummeted from 18 million to 15 million in the past few years reflects not just demographics but an erosion of trust in the value of what’s being taught. The real test of the value of what’s been sold as a valuable education lies ahead, when extraordinary challenges will reveal that what’s been taught largely qualifies as under-competence.

    The same can be said of what’s being sold by Corporate America, as the quality, durability and value of goods and services has declined to the point of parody: in effect, Corporate America’s “party line” is: our products and services are garbage, but if you upgrade to Premium, you’ll suffer less.

    That this doesn’t inspire trust in the status quo is obvious to the many, but the few continue living in their protected bubble, confident that since I’m doing so well, everyone is doing well.

    Loss of social trust has consequences which are difficult to predict. The first-order effect is precarity, the general sense that life is increasingly precarious on multiple levels. The second-order effects start with the unraveling of the social order and proceed from there.

    *  *  *

    Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    Subscribe to my Substack for free

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 18:25

  • US Forces At Baghdad Airport Come Under Rocket Attack
    US Forces At Baghdad Airport Come Under Rocket Attack

    Update(1808ET): It appears the pro-Iranian Iraqi paramilitary factions are going on the offensive in response to the Friday assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.

    “At least two Katyusha rockets were fired at a military base hosting U.S. forces near Baghdad International Airport, two Iraqi military officials told Reuters early on Tuesday.” 

    Air defenses at the base have reportedly intercepted the rockets. The location has come under attack several times before. This weekend saw large protests outside of the US Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone and clashes with local police, as largely Shia demonstrators tried to access the embassy compound.

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    * * *

    Update(1143ET): There are several breaking reports that Israel’s military (IDF) is preparing to launch a “limited” ground invasion of South Lebanon. Fox Pentagon correspondent Liz Friden writes:

    Israel will launch a “limited” ground incursion into South Lebanon. Incursion is imminent. Will be smaller in scale than in 2006 and last a shorter period of time.

    The White House has since announced that President Biden opposes an Israeli ground operation. He is still calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon, after saying he supported the Nasrallah assassination in the name of “justice” for past attacks on Americans.

    Biden in fresh remarks issued somewhat weak and meager statements opposing the imminent ground op…

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    The new ground op was first signaled Monbday by Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant, who said the “next phase of the war against Hezbollah will begin soon.” The IDF has been amassing troops near the Lebanese border for several days now.

    Gallant said while visiting the north and as reported by the Times of Israel: “The next stage in the war against Hezbollah will begin soon … We will do this. And as I said here a month ago [that] we will shift the center of gravity [to the north], this is what I say now: We will change the situation and return the residents home.”

    Israel expanded attacks into central Beirut on Monday, killing three senior members of the leftist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Aerial forces also struck the Lebanese town of Ain Deleb. The country’s health ministry says at least 45 people were killed.

    And another first of the conflict:

    Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired a “Nour missile” at Israel, which sources familiar with the Lebanese militant group told Reuters is a ballistic missile.

    The missile hit the village of Kafr Giladi in northern Israel, the statement said, adding that it had fired it in response to “Israeli violations of cities, villages, and civilians.”

    * * *

    In a defiant speech, Hezbollah’s #2 who survived Friday’s Israeli decapitation strikes of the group’s leadership which killed Hassan Nasrallah, vowed that the Iran-backed group is ‘ready’ to take on any potential Israeli ground offensive into Lebanon.

    Deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem on Monday insisted Hezbollah will continue to fight despite the huge series of blows which began with the pager explosions. “We are quite ready, if the Israelis want a ground incursion, the resistance forces are ready for that,” Qassem declared.

    Sheikh Naim Qassem gave a defiant speech Monday asserting the organization will survive and ultimately ‘win’.

    He told the Lebanese people to be “reassured, victory is our ally, we need a bit of patience” and claimed that “Israel was not able to affect our (military) capabilities.”

    “Israel is committing massacres in all areas of Lebanon until there is no house left without traces of Israeli aggression in it,” he continued. “Israel attacks civilians, ambulances, children and the elderly. It does not fight fighters, but rather commits massacres.”

    At one point in the speech he called out the United States for shipping billions in weaponry to Israel, and for providing intelligence and other support. He called Washington “a partner with Israel, through unlimited military support – culturally, politically, financially.” The Biden administration had quickly tried to say it had no prior awareness that Israel was about to assassinate Secretary-General Nasrallah and his top leadership on Friday.

    Qassem stressed, “We will win, just as we won in our confrontation with Israel in 2006.” But he indirectly acknowledged the group’s mounting losses, saying, “There are deputy commanders and there are replacements in case a commander is wounded in any post.”

    He also hinted at something high on everyone’s mind, including Israel’s: the question of a successor to Nasrallah. As related by Al Jazeera: 

    He added that Hezbollah will install a new leadership soon via “internal mechanisms”. The choice of new leadership is clear, Qassem continued, without offering further details.

    He said a new chief will be chosen “at the earliest opportunity.” Nasrallah had long been an easily recognized figure even on an international front, gaining the respect of both the Arab world and across the religious divide. At times, even Christians and Sunnis and secular leaders in the region would praise his ‘resistance’ to Israel and ability to command tens of thousands of effective fighters. 

    Who might be next?

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    Much media speculation has focused on Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah and one who even resembles him in appearance. However, he’s said to be even more hardline. According to one profile of the potential successor: 

    Hashem Safieddine, a potential successor to his slain cousin Hassan Nasrallah, is one of Hezbollah’s most prominent figures and has deep religious and family ties to the Shiite Muslim movement’s patron Iran.

    Safieddine bears a striking resemblance to his charismatic maternal cousin Nasrallah but is several years his junior, aged in his late 50s or early 60s.

    A source close to Hezbollah, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said the grey-bearded, bespectacled Safieddine was the “most likely” candidate for party’s top job.

    Hashem Safieddine

    The United States has had him on its list of “designated terrorists” since 2017, given his leadership within Hezbollah via the group’s decision-making Shura Council, as well as close ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    While Hezbollah sources are currently denying that he’s yet been chosen, Reuters and others have been digging into his background. “Safieddine’s family ties and a physical resemblance to Nasrallah, as well as his religious status as a descendant of Mohammed, would all count in his favor,” Reuters wrote.

    A number of Israeli media sources have labeled him as more extreme than Nasrallah.

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    According to more from his background and closeness to Nasrallah:

    Nasrallah’s younger cousin was born in the southern Lebanese village of Deir Qanoun En Nahr near Tyre in 1960. The young men studied theology together at two Shia institutions – one in Najaf, Iraq and the other in Qom, Iran.

    They are seen from their supporters to be from a well-respected Shia family that has produced both religious scholars and Lebanese politicians.

    Safieddine’s brother is Hezbollah’s representative to Iran, while his son is married to the daughter of Qassem Soleimani – the Iranian general killed in a US drone strike during Donald Trump’s presidency in 2020.

    Back in 2017, he stated of the Trump administration: “This mentally impeded, crazy US administration headed by [Donald] Trump will not be able to harm the resistance.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 17:59

  • Zelensky Tells Fox: Trump Assured Me He Would Support Ukraine
    Zelensky Tells Fox: Trump Assured Me He Would Support Ukraine

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Fox News that former President Donald Trump reassured him that Washington will maintain its support for Kiev should he return to the White House. 

    The Ukrainian leader said Trump made the remarks when the two met last week. “I don’t know what will be after [the] elections and who will be the president… But I’ve got from Donald Trump very direct information that he will be on our side, that he will support Ukraine,” he said. 

    Via Associated Press

    Last week, Zelensky traveled to the US and met with Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden to present Ukraine’s “victory plan.”

    The Wall Street Journal reports that senior US and European officials say the proposal contains no clear path to victory for Ukraine. 

    The plan was described as offering nothing new, and repackaged several old requests for more weapons and permission to use them in Russia. “I’m unimpressed, there’s not much new there,” one official told WSJ. 

    While Democrats have targeted Trump as an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin and not supportive enough of Ukraine, the former president has supported sending arms to Ukraine.

    During his term in the Oval Office, Trump authorized arms transfers to Kiev, something his predecessor Barack Obama refused to do out of fear of crossing Moscow’s redlines. 

    Earlier this year, a massive $60 billion aid package for Ukraine was stalled in Congress. Several key figures in the debate report that Trump broke the deadlock when he threw his support behind the aid. 

    Although Trump has claimed he would end the war if elected in November, he has not outlined a precise plan for accomplishing that.

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    Instead, he has repeatedly stated the 2022 invasion would not have occurred if he had been president. Trump also insisted on Wednesday that Zelensky should have made a peace deal with Putin shortly after the war began. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 17:40

  • A Strange, Unidentified Smell Made Its Way Across Southern Washington Last Week
    A Strange, Unidentified Smell Made Its Way Across Southern Washington Last Week

    Make as many hippie jokes as you’d like, but it appears there is a strange smell making its way across the South of Washington State. 

    Cowlitz County EMS started receiving 911 calls about the smell around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday of last week as it spread through South Kelso, Rose Valley, Kalama, Woodland, and Cumbia County before reaching Portland, a new report from USA Today said.

    Cowlitz County said in a statement this weekend: “The source of the odor and what the odor is/was, are still unknown and under investigation.”

    Leading theories for the smell include “ship, train, highway transportation leak; Scappoose Bio Solids; industry; pipelines; natural gas; Mt St Helens; and ground movement.” 

    The county’s EMS said: “Complaints have varied from unpleasant odors to minor health issues. All agencies continue to work on the situation.” 

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    The USA Today report said that Cowlitz County reported variable wind conditions until 6 p.m. on Tuesday, pushing the odor from Longview toward Portland.

    Several county agencies responded to complaints, coordinating with local and federal authorities to identify the source. The National Weather Service also tracked the odor’s path on social media.

    “By tracking winds, we can estimate the path that it may have taken, briefly drifting down near Vancouver WA before southerly winds around 4AM would have pushed it back north again,” EMS said. 

    They called the smell “unusually very inconsistent.” 

    “Descriptions have varied from, similar to natural gas, propane, burning garbage, burning rubber, ammonia, and others. As of this briefing, complaints have varied from unpleasant odors to minor health issues,” they concluded.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 17:20

  • The UN Just Adopted The "Pact For The Future" Which Lays The Foundation For A New "Global Order"
    The UN Just Adopted The “Pact For The Future” Which Lays The Foundation For A New “Global Order”

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    While everyone was distracted, the global elite got exactly what they wanted.  The UN adopted the “Pact for the Future” on September 22nd, and the mainstream media in the western world almost entirely ignored what was happening.  Instead, the headlines urged us to just keep focusing on Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.  Sadly, the vast majority of the population has never ever heard about the “Pact for the Future”, and so there was very little public debate about whether or not we should be adopting a document which lays the foundation for a new “global order”.  The text of the “Pact for the Future” is available online, but hardly anyone will ever read it and many of the most important provisions are buried toward the end of the 56 page document.  Of course everyone should take the time to actually read this document, because our leaders just committed us to an extremely insidious global agenda that literally covers just about every conceivable area of human activity.

    September 22nd, 2024 is a day that will go down in infamy.

    Once the “Pact for the Future” was formally adopted, the following was posted on the official UN website…

    World leaders today adopted a Pact for the Future that includes a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations. This Pact is the culmination of an inclusive, years-long process to adapt international cooperation to the realities of today and the challenges of tomorrow. The most wide-ranging international agreement in many years, covering entirely new areas as well as issues on which agreement has not been possible in decades, the Pact aims above all to ensure that international institutions can deliver in the face of a world that has changed dramatically since they were created. As the Secretary-General has said, “we cannot create a future fit for our grandchildren with a system built by our grandparents.”

    You would think that the “most wide-ranging international agreement in many years” would make headlines all over the planet.

    But that didn’t happen.

    The UN press release also boldly declares that the “Pact for the Future” will “lay the foundations” for a new “global order”…

    “The Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact, and the Declaration on Future Generations open the door to new opportunities and untapped possibilities,” said the Secretary-General during his remarks at the opening of the Summit of the Future. The President of the General Assembly noted that the Pact would “lay the foundations for a sustainable, just, and peaceful global order – for all peoples and nations.”

    The Pact covers a broad range of issues including peace and security, sustainable development, climate change, digital cooperation, human rights, gender, youth and future generations, and the transformation of global governance.

    I don’t want to live in a new “global order” that includes “all peoples and all nations”.

    I am sure that most of you feel the exact same way.

    Another page on the official UN website tells us that “UN 2.0” is all about creating a “modern UN family”…

    Halfway through the 2030 Agenda, the world is not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It is not too late to change course, if we all rethink, refocus, and recharge. “UN 2.0” encapsulates the Secretary-General’s vision of a modern UN family, rejuvenated by a forward-thinking culture and empowered by cutting-edge skills for the twenty-first century – to turbocharge our support to people and planet.

    We will strive towards this vision with a powerful fusion of innovation, data, digital, foresight and behavioural science skills and culture – a dynamic combination that we call the “Quintet of Change”. It is about evolution towards more agile, diverse, responsive, and impactful UN organizations.

    That sounds so cozy, doesn’t it?

    Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a “family”, right?

    But the truth is that the agenda that they intend to impose on all of us will not be pleasant at all.

    Over the years, much has been written about how insidious the UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals” are.

    Well, the UN is openly admitting that the “Pact for the Future” was specifically designed “to turbo-charge implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals”…

    • The entire Pact is designed to turbo-charge implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

    • The most detailed agreement ever at the United Nations on the need for reform of the international financial architecture so that it better represents and serves developing countries, including:

      • Giving developing countries a greater say in how decisions are taken at international financial institutions;

      • Mobilizing more financing from multilateral development banks to help developing countries meet their development needs;

      • Reviewing the sovereign debt architecture to ensure that developing countries can borrow sustainably to invest in their future, with the IMF, UN, G20 and other key players working together;

      • Strengthening the global financial safety net to protect the poorest in the event of financial and economic shocks, through concrete actions by the IMF and Member States;

      • and accelerating measures to address the challenge of climate change, including through delivering more finance to help countries adapt to climate change and invest in renewable energy.

    • Improving how we measure human progress, going beyond GDP to capturing human and planetary wellbeing and sustainability.

    • A commitment to consider ways to introduce a global minimum level of taxation on high-net-worth individuals.

    • On climate change, confirmation of the need to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

    In one way or another, all forms of human activity contribute to “climate change”.

    And so they intend to strictly regulate all forms of human activity in order to meet their twisted goals.

    The “Pact for the Future” also recognizes a “central role” for the UN and a “coordinated and multidimensional international response” whenever future “global shocks” arise…

    We recognize the need for a more coherent, cooperative, coordinated and multidimensional international response to complex global shocks and the central role of the United Nations in this regard. Complex global shocks are events that have severely disruptive and adverse consequences for a significant proportion of countries and the global population, and that lead to impacts across multiple sectors, requiring a multidimensional and whole-of-government, whole-of-society response.

    The next time that there is a major global crisis, do you want the UN running the show and telling everyone what to do?

    I tried to warn everyone about this.

    I have written extensively about the “Pact for the Future”, but in the end only a very small sliver of the population got fired up about it.

    Now the global elite have achieved their goal, and the opposition that they encountered was barely perceptible.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/30/2024 – 17:00

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