Jun 20

Today’s News 20th June 2024

  • Nasrallah Says 'No Place' Safe, Even Threatens Cyprus, If Israel Invades Lebanon
    Nasrallah Says ‘No Place’ Safe, Even Threatens Cyprus, If Israel Invades Lebanon

    Amid widespread reports and statements that Israel and Hezbollah are on the brink of full-scale war, the Shia paramilitary group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has warned of a war “without rules or ceilings” if Israeli forces launch an offensive in Lebanon.

    The words were given in response to Israel’s top generals the day prior announcing that battle plans have been approved for a Lebanon offensive and widening of the war. The IDF statement said it is preparing to “accelerate readiness in the field.”

    “The enemy must wait for us by air, land, and sea. We repeat: If war is imposed on Lebanon, the resistance will fight without rules, controls, or ceilings,” Nasrallah responded Tuesday.

    “Storming the Galilee is a possibility that remains present within the framework of any war that the occupation may launch against Lebanon,” Hezbollah’s Secretary-General continued.

    And that’s when he for the first time of the conflict which began in wake of Oct.7 issued a warning against Cyprus, given that the Greek-speaking island-nation currently has a bilateral defense cooperation agreement with Israel.

    “Opening Cypriot airports and bases to the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon would mean that the Cypriot government is part of the war, and the resistance will deal with it as part of the war,” Nasrallah said.

    He further warned that targets in the Mediterranean would also come under attack. In 2006 the Israeli Navy’s INS Hanit warship suffered a direct hit from a Hezbollah anti-ship missile (likely made by Iran), killing four soldiers.

    His fresh words are also being interpreted by Israeli media to say gas fields in the Mediterranean and energy platforms could also be attacked:

    Israel “knows that what also awaits it in the Mediterranean is very big,” Nasrallah added, without elaborating, possibly insinuating the group could attack its offshore gas rigs.

    The Israeli warship, Hanit, which was attacked by Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon War. TOI/Flash90

    While Israel is not known to have any bases or ports in Cyprus, it has on occasion conducted joint military drills with Cypriot forces.

    More likely is a scenario where Israeli jets would take off from Cypriot bases – or else one of the two British bases maintained on Cyprus. Any bigger Israeli anti-Hezbollah operation in Lebanon would without doubt involve a ratcheting air war over southern Lebanon.

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    Nasrallah in his Tuesday statement warned further, “We developed some of our weapons and used new weapons that we had not used previously.” Israeli leaders are concerned about recent drone image Hezbollah was able to capture over Haifa, which is Israel’s third largest city.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/20/2024 – 02:45

  • Hegemon Orders Europe: Bet On War & Steal Russia's Money
    Hegemon Orders Europe: Bet On War & Steal Russia’s Money

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    The Swiss “peace” kabuki came and went – and the winner was Vladimir Putin. He didn’t even have to show up…

    None of the Big Players did. Or in case they sent their emissaries, there was significant refusal to sign the vacuous final declaration – as in BRICS members Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE and South Africa.

    Without BRICS, there’s absolutely nothing the collective West – as in The Hegemon and assorted vassals – can do to alter the proxy war chessboard in Ukraine.

    In his carefully calibrated speech to diplomats and the leadership of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Putin delineated an incredibly restrained and strategic approach to solve the Ukraine problem. In the context of the Hegemon’s escalatory green light – actually in practice for several months now – for Kiev to attack deeper into the Russian Federation, Putin’s offer was extremely generous.

    That is a direct offer to the Hegemon and the collective West – as the sweaty T-shirt actor in Kiev, apart from illegitimate, is beyond irrelevant.

    Predictably, NATO – via that epileptic slab of Norwegian wood – already proclaimed its refusal to negotiate, even as some relatively awake members of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) started discussing the offer, according to Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin.

    Moscow sees the Verkhovna Rada as the only legitimate entity in Ukraine – and the only one with which would be possible to reach an agreement.

    Russian UN representative Vasily Nebenzya cut to the chase – diplomatically: if the generous proposal is refused, next time conditions for starting negotiations will be “different”. And “far more unfavorable”, according to Duma Defense Committee head Andrei Kartapolov.

    As Nebenzya stressed that in case of a refusal the collective West will bear full responsibility for further bloodshed, Kartapolov elaborated on the Big Picture: Russia’s real target is to create a whole new security system for the Eurasian space.

    And that, of course, is anathema to the Hegemon’s elites.

    Putin’s security vision for Eurasia harks back to this legendary speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Now, with the steady advance of an irreversible multi-nodal (italics mine) and multi-centric new system of international relations, the Kremlin is pressing for an urgent solution – considering the extremely dangerous escalation of these past few months.

    Putin once again had to remind the deaf, dumb and blind of the obvious:

    “Calls to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, which has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, demonstrate the extreme adventurism of Western politicians. They either do not understand the scale of the threat they themselves create, or they are simply obsessed with the belief in their own immunity and their own exclusivity. Both can turn into a tragedy”.

    They remain deaf, dumb and blind.

    A proposal that does not solve anything?

    A fiery debate is raging in informed circles in Russia about Putin’s proposal. Critics blast it as a capitulation – forced by selected oligarchs and influential business circles, adverse to an “almost war” (the preferred motto) that keeps postponing the inevitable decapitation strike.

    Critics argue that the military strategy is totally subordinated to a political strategy. And that would explain the serious problems in the Black Sea and in Transnistria: the political center of power refuses to conquer the number one economic/military target, which is Odessa.

    Additionally, Ukraine’s weapon supply chains are not being properly interrupted.

    The key critical point is “this is taking too long”. One just needs to look at the example of Mariupol.

    In 2014, Mariupol was left in the control of nazi-banderista gangs as part of a financial deal with Rinat Akhmetov, the owner of the Azovstal works. That’s a classic case of oligarchs and financiers prevailing over military objectives.

    Putin’s generosity, visible in this latest peace offer, also elicits a parallel with what happened in Dara’a in Syria: Russia also negotiated what looked at first like a peace deal. Yet Dara’a remains a mess, extremely violent, with Syrian and Russian soldiers at risk.

    It gets really tricky when the current proposal only asks NATO not to be encroached in Kiev; but at the same time Kiev will be allowed to have an army, based on the (aborted) April 2022 negotiations in Istanbul.

    Critics also argue that Putin seems to believe that this proposal will solve the war. Not really. A real de-nazification campaign is an affair of decades – involving everything from full demilitarization to eradicating focuses of extremist ideology. A real cultural revolution.

    The current escalation already is in tune with the orders given by the rarefied plutocracy who really runs the show to messengers – and operatives: nazi-banderista gangs will unleash a War of Terror inside Russia for years. From Ukraine territory. Just like Idlib in Syria remains a terror-friendly environment.

    The Odessa file

    Putin’s strategy may be on to something that escapes his critics. His wish for a return of peace and the re-establishment of sound relations with Kiev and the West has got to be a ruse – as he’s the first to know that’s not gonna happen.

    It’s clear that Kiev will not willingly cede territory: these will have to be conquered in the battlefield. Moreover NATO simply cannot sign its cosmic humiliation on the dotted line, accepting that Russia will get what it is demanding since February 2022.

    Putin’s first – diplomatic – objective though has already been met. He has clearly demonstrated to the Global Majority he’s open to solve the dilemma in a serene atmosphere, while discombobulated NATO keeps shrieking “War!” every other minute.

    The Hegemon wants war? So war it will be – to the last Ukrainian.

    And that brings us to the Odessa file.

    Putin, crucially, did not say anything about Odessa. This is Kiev’s last chance saloon to keep Odessa. If the peace proposal is rejected for good, Odessa will feature in the next list of non-negotiables.

    Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, once again, nailed it: “Putin is patient. Those with ears will hear, those with brains will understand”.

    No one should expect working brains popping up across the West. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has confirmed how NATO is planning massive installations in Poland, Romania and Slovakia to “coordinate transfer of weapons to Ukraine”.

    Add to it the epileptic slab of Norwegian wood stating that NATO is “discussing” bringing their nuclear weapons to a state of combat readiness “in the face of the growing threat from Russia and China”.

    Once again Old Stolty gives away the game: note this is all about the Hegemon’s paranoia with the top two “existential threats”, the

    Russia-China strategic partnership. That is, the leaders of BRICS coordinating the drive towards a multipolar, multi-nodal (italics mine), “harmonic” (Putin’s terminology) world.

    Stealing Russian money is legal

    Then there’s the blatant theft of Russian financial assets.

    At their sorry spectacle in Puglia, in southern Italy, the G7 – in the presence of the illegitimate sweaty T-shirt actor – agreed to shove an extra $50 billion in loans to Ukraine, funded by the interest on Russia’s frozen and for all practical purposes stolen assets.

    With impeccably twisted logic, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – whose hairdressing and wardrobe revamp conclusively did not apply to her brains – said that the G7 “will not confiscate frozen assets of the Russian Federation”; “we are talking about the interest that they accumulate over time.”

    As financial scams go, this one is a thing of beauty.

    Essentially, the main customer (the Hegemon) and its instrument (the EU) are trying to mask the actual theft of those “frozen” Russian sovereign assets as if this was a legal transaction.

    The EU will transfer the “frozen” assets – something around $260 billion – to the status of collateral for the American loan. That’s the whole thing – because only the income deriving from the assets would not be enough as collateral to secure the loan.

    It gets even dicier. These funds will not leave Washington for Kiev; they will remain in town to the benefit of the industrial-military complex churning out more weapons.

    So the EU steals the assets, under a flimsy legalese pretext (Janet Yellen already said it’s OK) and transfers them to the U.S. Washington is immune if everything goes wrong – as it will.

    Only a fool would believe that the Americans would give a sizable loan to a de facto country 404 with a sovereign debt rating in the abyss. The dirty job is assigned to the Europeans: it’s up to the EU to change the status of Russia’s stolen/”frozen” assets to collateral.

    And wait for the ultimate dicey gambit. The whole scheme concerns Euroclear, in Belgium – where the largest amount of Russian funds is parked. Yet the decision on this money-laundering scam was not taken by Belgium, and not even by the EUrocrats.

    This was a Hegemon-imposed G7 decision.

    Belgium is not even part of the G7. Yet in the end, it will be the EU’s “credibility” as a whole that will go down the drain across the whole Global Majority.

    And the deaf, dumb and blind, predictably, are not even aware of it.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/20/2024 – 02:00

  • The Gain-Of-Function Experiment That Could 'Eliminate Humans From The Face Of The Earth'
    The Gain-Of-Function Experiment That Could ‘Eliminate Humans From The Face Of The Earth’

    Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScience,

    A Google search for “Frio Cave” makes the Uvalde County, Texas destination look like a tourists’ dream. One quickly learns that the cave is home to tens of millions of Mexican free-tailed bats, and that you can sometimes witness the flapping horde streaming out of their dark, dank home just before sunset, clouding the sky in a “once in a lifetime experience.”

    But Frio Cave has a darker history that visitors websites don’t mention. More than fifty years ago, two humans contracted rabies while spelunking there.

    That humans would get infected with rabies while visiting a bat-infested cave isn’t altogether surprising. Bats are a reservoir for the terrifying disease – 99% fatal to humans once symptoms – like hyperactivity, hallucinations, seizures, and fear of water – develop. A simple bite from one of the millions of bats could have transmitted a lyssavirus that triggers rabies. However, in this instance, the spelunkers apparently weren’t bitten. Rather, it seems they caught the virus from the air itself.

    A team of scientists subsequently investigated. They found that rabies virus could be transmitted to animals housed in empty cages within the cave, apparently just via the atmosphere itself. Moreover, the virus was isolated from samples collected via air condensation techniques.

    The episode raised a disturbing prospect. Had rabies, the deadliest virus for humankind, gone airborne?

    To be clear, it had not, at least not in a manner that would result in ultra-contagious, human-to-human spread. The sheer number of rabies-carrying bats in the cave likely transformed it into a “hot-box” of infection. Rabies remains transmitted almost entirely through bites and scratches from infected animals, and it is rapidly inactivated by sunlight and heat. However, for safety, members of the general public are now only allowed to enter Frio Cave on guided tours that remain near the mouth of the cave.

    That doesn’t mean that rabies virus couldn’t mutate to become transmitted through the air. It’s an RNA virus, and these are known to have high mutation rates. Indeed, scientists have found “a vast array of antigenic variants of this pathogen in a wide range of animal hosts and geographic locations.”

    Moreover, as two Italian scientists wrote in a 2021 article, “Even single amino acid mutations in the proteins of Rabies virus can considerably alter its biological characteristics, for example increasing its pathogenicity and viral spread in humans, thus making the mutated virus a tangible menace for the entire mankind.”

    Another possible route for this to occur would be through a “gain-of-function” experiment, in which researchers employ gene-editing to tweak the rabies virus, making it evade current vaccines and endowing it with the ability to spread through the air like measles or influenza. Gain-of-function research has earned increased public scrutiny of late as there’s a small, outside chance it may have produced SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

    Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine, commented on the potential to augment rabies through gain-of-function in a recent Substack post.

    “In the absence of an effective vaccine, it could eliminate humans from the face of the earth. The good news is that no one has tried to make rabies virus more contagious. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible or that no one would be willing to try.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 23:05

  • The U.S. Could Take A Page From Australia's Natural Gas Playbook
    The U.S. Could Take A Page From Australia’s Natural Gas Playbook

    Authored by Paul Everingham via RealClearEnergy,

    The U.S Government could do far worse than to look to Australia’s natural gas policy as it considers the future of LNG exports.

    Gas production from the U.S.  and Australia is essential to global energy markets. Australia was the world’s leading LNG exporter in 2020 and 2021, a mantle the U.S. assumed in 2023.

    But the LNG industry in both countries has faced great policy uncertainty in recent times. In the U.S., this arrived with the unexpected January announcement of a halt to pending LNG export approvals, while Australia’s policy environment has been clouded for several years by cumbersome regulatory processes that stifled project development.

    The Future Gas Strategy released by the Australian Government in May addresses many of these concerns and establishes a roadmap future gas production investment. It outlines a clear role for gas in Australia’s energy transition, ensuring reliable power generation as major renewable energy projects are rolled out.

    Critically, it identifies the vital long-term contribution that Australian LNG will make in ensuring energy security for traditional customers in Asia and supporting emerging nations in the region as they look to reduce their reliance on high-emitting coal.

    While the Future Gas Strategy is underpinned by International Energy Agency (IEA) projections for global gas demand, it notes great variations between differing scenarios and early indications that real-life demand may exceed modelling. It acknowledges forecasts for much higher gas demand in Asia from reputable sources that know the region best, such as the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan.

    Thus far, flexibility around demand forecasts, including those of Asia, doesn’t seem to have had much of a place in dialogue around the U.S LNG export halt.

    As the U.S Chamber of Commerce has identified, the Department of Energy has seemingly sidelined gas projections from the U.S. Government’s own Energy Information Administration to use IEA data. However, many of the IEA projections are not forecasts based on practical assessments of future need but instead work backwards from decarbonization targets.

    Backcasting is not the same as providing accurate forecasts of future need on which to base energy policy.

    While climate targets are necessary to deliver the Paris Agreement, backcasting fails to account for the energy realities of growing, emerging economies. This runs the risk of creating a future shortfall of low-carbon gas, forcing economies in Asia back to coal or creating energy insecurity.

    Important climate objectives won’t be achieved if Asia’s growing coal use becomes even more entrenched. Global coal use reached record levels in 2023, with three out of every four tons consumed in India, China and Southeast Asia. Without sufficiently available and affordable volumes of LNG from a range of exporting countries, this pattern will be hard to break.

    The Australian Future Gas Strategy reflects this, describing how “continued supply of LNG can reduce the carbon intensity of our region’s energy mix, including by replacing more emissions intensive fuels like coal.”

    It also challenges the Australian gas industry to keep reducing its own carbon footprint, including through development of carbon capture and storage technology. I am sure Australian gas producers are up for that challenge, just as I know the U.S. gas industry is committed to doing everything within its power to address greenhouse gas emissions.

    U.S. gas producers already operate under one of the world’s most comprehensive and stringent methane management frameworks, established by the Environmental Protection Agency.

    A comprehensive recent study by the Berkeley Research Group, underpinned primarily by methane emissions data from operations, demonstrates U.S. LNG is far cleaner than the coal currently being used for power generation in Asia.

    The U.S. gas industry and its customers right now are facing uncertainty, the enemy of long-horizon investments with major capital outlays, such as those into LNG. An open-ended halt to approvals makes long-term decision-making on LNG infrastructure all but impossible.

    U.S. LNG has already showed it can be a force for good from an energy security perspective, stepping up to stabilize Europe’s energy systems after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It can be similarly beneficial for allies in Asia, ensuring supply diversity, along with availability and affordability of gas that coal-dependent emerging nations are actively seeking.

    The Australian Government has now publicly recognized the global benefits of its natural gas.

    By expeditiously resolving the halt, the Biden Administration can do likewise – giving U.S. LNG exporters and Asian trading partners the certainty needed to move rapidly towards an achievable low-carbon future, at scale and without killing economic opportunities.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 22:30

  • Life Of O'Brien
    Life Of O’Brien

    By Teeuwe Mevissen, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

    Yesterday, news came out that Trump’s last national security advisor Robert O’Brien has written an article that will be published in the next edition of the renowned foreign policy magazine Foreign Affairs. While it is of course not sure that Trump will win the upcoming election – although we still see this as our base case scenario – O’Brien could very well become part of Trump’s administration again.

    Indeed, only recently Robert O’Brien said he remains in regular contact with the former president. So what does O’Brien propose according to the news that leaked out yesterday? Perhaps this could be summarized best by quoting O’Brien himself who apparently writes that: “As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favour,”.

    But let’s provide a bit more detail. Economically he apparently suggests decoupling from China. Furthermore he ”argues that the 60% tariffs on China that Trump has floated should be only the first step, followed by tougher export controls ’on any technology that might be of use to China‘ and other measures”. Given how interwoven both economies still are and given that we are talking about the two largest economies in the world, it should be clear that such a policy would have a significant impact on the global economy as well.

    But it doesn’t end with trade. O’ Brien also proposes a highly assertive, if not aggressive, foreign policy aimed at deterring and containing China in the region. “This morass of American weakness and failure cries out for a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength,” as O’ Brien puts it. He continuous by suggesting to help ”expand the militaries of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, increase military assistance to Taiwan and boost missile defense and fighter jet protection in the region”. 

    Last but not least on the military side of things he advocates new underground nuclear testing and the resumption in the US of the production of uranium-235 and plutonium 239 which is used for nuclear warheads. When we add recent remarks from Stoltenberg to dust the West’s nuclear arsenal off and take into account Putin’s tour to North-Korea we might want to return to the life of O’ Brian and look at the bright side of life!

    * * *

    Meanwhile, US retail sales growth disappointed and even contracted with 0.1% when car sales were not included. Industrial production however rose far more sharply than expected with 0.9% MoM while a rise of 0.3% was expected. Looking at yesterday’s inflation data from the Eurozone there was some good news indeed. While a leap in services inflation had been reported in May and the final measure for headline and core inflation came in unchanged versus the preliminary readings of respectively 2.6% and 2.9%, much of this rise could be attributed to so called one offs, in particular the impact of the Easter holidays.

    We also saw that administered cost increases played a significant role. These are costs that are partly or wholly set by governments, municipalities and the like. According to our calculations this contributed some 0.15ppt to the rise in services inflation. The implication of this is that the May inflation numbers were not as bad as they looked. And, stripping this out of the regular core measure and excluding indirect taxes, Eurozone ‘super core’ inflation stayed unchanged in Maty at 2.6% and remains on a (very gentle) downward path. With cost pressures expected to continue to come down gradually, we retain our view of two more ECB rate cuts for this year bringing the deposit rate at 3.25% at the end of this year.

     Turning to the UK, there the inflation news out this morning was a little less bright, but enough to keep the faith. In May 2024, the monthly CPI registered at 0.3% m/m, a rate slightly above target. However, the annual rate did see a decline to 2%, thanks to a favourable base effect. A significant factor contributing to the decrease was the food sector, where prices dropped 0.3% m/m this May, contrasting with 0.9% m/m increase in May last year. On the other hand, the transport sector provided the most substantial upward pressure, albeit only partially counterbalancing the overall trend.

    Within the realm of services, the decline was driven by recreational and personal services, notably catering, package holidays, and cultural services. This was somewhat mitigated by the costs associated with housing services. With inflation falling to the 2% target, the spotlight shifts to the Bank of England. Our UK watcher Stefan Koopman thinks it’s improbable that interest rates will be cut at tomorrow’s meeting, but the numbers are good enough to make a cut in August still the base case. He also thinks that Rishi Sunak may seize the opportunity to associate himself with this ‘success’ today.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 21:55

  • US Army Soldier Handed Stiff Prison Sentence By Russian Court For Theft
    US Army Soldier Handed Stiff Prison Sentence By Russian Court For Theft

    Another American citizen in Russian custody has been handed a stiff prison sentence by a Russian court, but this time Kremlin authorities say it has nothing to do with espionage and that it’s not a political matter.

    On Wednesday a court in the far eastern city of Vladivostok sentenced active duty Army soldier, 34-year old Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, to nearly four years in prison on a conviction for theft. He had pled guilty to stealing, and there are reports he had also been charged with making threats of murder.

    Gordon Black in court. AFP/Getty Images

    He had been arrested in Vladivostok on May 2, after which he’s been in pretrial detention, for allegedly stealing 10,000 rubles (or roughly $112) from his Russian girlfriend. He also stood accused of assaulting the woman, but did not admit guilt to that or the death threats.

    The whole story is bizarre especially given that the personal travel of active duty military personnel is typically highly controlled or monitored by their bases and command. So how did a US Army Staff Sgt. end up going to Russia?

    Black had been stationed at Camp Humphreys in South Korea, and the Department of Defense now says he took an unauthorized trip to Russia after he was formally processed out of Camp Humphreys to be transferred to a base in Texas. What’s more is that he may have gone through China while en route to Russia, Reuters says.

    He had first met the Russian girlfriend, identified in media reports as Aleksandra Vashchuk, in South Korea and subsequently traveled to see her. Black’s family has claimed that he was “set up” by the Russian girl. CNN summarizes of some of the details:

    Speaking to the Pervomaisky District Court on Monday, Black said he took the money from the woman’s purse, but the next day transferred $125 to her. He said he spent the money on food and three nights in a hotel, according to RIA.

    He also said the woman was to collect a deposit of 10,000 rubles from the landlord after the end of the lease of the apartment for which he was paying, RIA said.

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    Meanwhile two other Americans with more serious cases – and who have been declared by the US as “wrongfully detained” – are still in Russian prisons: former Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. Their detentions stem from alleged espionage.

    Another American, school teacher Marc Fogel, has served nearly three years in Russian prison on a drug-related conviction; however, the US government has not declared him wrongfully detained, which has outraged his family which is now suing the federal government.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 21:20

  • DOJ Charges Texas Doctor Who Exposed 'Gender-Affirming' Care For Minors
    DOJ Charges Texas Doctor Who Exposed ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care For Minors

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

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday unsealed an indictment against Dr. Eithan Haim, who last year leaked evidence of cross-sex hormone procedures being performed at a Texas hospital despite the facility claiming to have halted them, with the surgeon facing four felony counts for alleged violations of a medical-records law that could land him in prison for up to 10 years.

    Protesters opposing medical transgender procedures for youths gathered at the American Academy of Pediatrics convention in Anaheim, Calif., on Oct. 7, 2022. (Courtesy of TreVoices.Org/Scott Newgent)

    The DOJ announced on June 17 that it had charged Dr. Haim for obtaining protected individual health information for patients who were not under his care, allegedly acting without authorization and with intent to cause malicious harm to Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH).

    The controversy centers on the fact that TCH, the largest children’s hospital in the country, publicly declared in March 2022 that it was halting “hormone-related prescription therapies for gender-affirming services” for minors, citing potential legal and criminal liability after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared that prescription of puberty blockers was “child abuse” under Texas law.

    Documents leaked by Dr. Haim purportedly showed that the hospital continued to perform some “gender-affirming” therapies after the announcement, including one procedure on an 11-year-old three days after it made the declaration.

    Ultimately, Texas legislators adopted a ban on sex-change procedures and puberty blocker prescriptions for children, which went into effect in mid-2023 after a legal challenge. TCH declared that year that it would no longer offer any transgender medical procedures for children.

    Dr. Haim, who was set to make a court appearance on June 17 before U.S. Magistrate Yvonne Y. Ho in Houston, faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 maximum possible fine if convicted on charges of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

    A request for comment on Dr. Haim’s indictment sent to TCH public relations department was not immediately returned.

    Alamdar Hamdani, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, who announced Dr. Haim’s indictment, said in a statement that the “defendant is presumed innocent unless convicted through due process of law.”

    On June 16, a day before he was set to head to court, Dr. Haim issued a message about the case.

    “We will face down those who are committed to corrupting our institutions and who are destroying the future my daughter deserves,” he wrote in a post on X. “So to all the fathers out there, I would say one thing. We can never submit to our children’s destroyers, we must fight relentlessly to preserve their dignity, and we must be ready to sacrifice for their future.”

    More Details

    Last year, Dr. Haim anonymously leaked evidence to City Journal’s Christopher Rufo that TCH was conducting transgender treatments on minors in the days after publicly announcing in 2022 that it would no longer be offering such procedures.

    “After assessing the Attorney General’s and Governor’s actions, Texas Children’s Hospital paused hormone-related prescription therapies for gender-affirming services. This step was taken to safeguard our healthcare professionals and impacted families from potential criminal legal ramifications,” TCH said in a March 2022 statement to media outlets.

    That came after the Texas attorney general in February 2022 released an opinion from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that certain procedures done on minors “such as castration, fabrication of a ‘penis’ using tissue from other body parts, fabrication of a ’vagina‘ involving the removal of male sex organs, prescription of puberty-suppressors and infertility-inducers, and the like are all ’abuse’ under section 261.001 of the Texas Family Code.”

    In its statement announcing a pause on certain “gender-affirming” therapies, TCH said its mission is “to create a healthier future for all children, including transgender children, within the bounds of the law.”

    Mr. Rufo’s article cited the documents provided by Dr. Haim and concluded that despite TCH’s announcement, it hadn’t stopped performing transgender procedures on minors including the use of implantable puberty blockers.

    Mr. Rufo’s article cited TCH spokeswoman Kelley Carville as declining comment at the time.

    A request for comment on the case sent to Ms. Carville was not immediately returned.

    In a follow-up article, Mr. Rufo wrote that “nothing in the information provided to me identified any individual” and that the documents provided by Dr. Haim had been “carefully redacted.”

    Mr. Rufo cited one of Dr. Haim’s attorneys, Marcella Burke, as expressing confidence that the trial would end with her client being declared innocent.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 20:45

  • Grid Collapse: Ecuador Hit By Nationwide Power Blackout
    Grid Collapse: Ecuador Hit By Nationwide Power Blackout

    A nationwide power blackout hit Ecuador on Wednesday afternoon, plunging 17 million people into darkness. Authorities are working to repair a faulty transmission line that was responsible for the outage.

    “The immediate report that we received from the CENACE (National Center of Energy Control) is that there is a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnection, so there is no energy service on a national scale,” Public Works Minister Roberto Luque wrote on X.

    Luque added, “We are concentrating all our efforts on resolving the problem as quickly as possible.”

    The blackout has paralyzed a major subway system in the South American country. There are reports that hospitals in major cities are without power. This comes months after Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa declared a power emergency and ordered eight-hour nationwide rationing due to lower hydroelectricity power generation levels. 

    Internet tracking website NetBlocks reports that Ecuador’s national connectivity plunged to 44% shortly after the power outage. 

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    *Developing… 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 20:10

  • House Ethics Panel Probing Alleged Gaetz Obstruction, Misconduct
    House Ethics Panel Probing Alleged Gaetz Obstruction, Misconduct

    Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The House Ethics Committee, in a rare statement on June 18, announced that it is investigating new claims of misconduct against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), including whether he sought to obstruct government probes of his conduct.

    Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) leaves a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Oct. 3, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    The statement was issued a day after the congressman blasted the Ethics Committee over what he called a political attack.

    The committee defended its investigation, saying it was “confident in the integrity of its process,” which has involved interviewing dozens of witnesses, reviewing thousands of pages of documents, and issuing 25 subpoenas to date.

    The secretive committee began examining a litany of allegations against Mr. Gaetz in April 2021 before deferring its work at the request of the Justice Department. When that request was dropped in May of last year, the committee resumed its work.

    Previous claims against Mr. Gaetz included allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, sharing inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misuse of state identification records, personal use of campaign funds, and accepting a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift.

    “Based on its review to date, the Committee has determined that certain of the allegations merit continued review,” the panel said in a statement, noting that it would extend its probe of the claims surrounding sexual misconduct, drug use, and improper gifts.

    The committee said it will take no further action on the other claims, though it said new allegations had surfaced that merit review. Those include the obstruction claims and accusations that Mr. Gaetz offered special privileges and favors to people with whom he had a personal relationship.

    Mr. Gaetz has categorically denied all the allegations against him, which stemmed from a Justice Department investigation into whether he and fellow Florida Republican Joel Greenberg paid or offered gifts to underage girls and escorts for sex.

    Mr. Gaetz was not charged in that investigation.

    Prior to the committee’s statement, the congressman suggested the panel’s ongoing investigations were retribution for his role in ousting former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from the House speakership last October.

    “Instead of working with me to ban Congressional stock trading, the Ethics Committee is now opening new frivolous investigations. They are doing this to avoid the obvious fact that every investigation into me ends the same way: my exoneration,” the congressman wrote on X.

    “This is Soviet. Kevin McCarthy showed them the man, and they are now trying to find the crime. I work for Northwest Floridians who won’t be swayed by this nonsense and McCarthy and his goons know it.”

    Mr. Gaetz spearheaded efforts to strip Mr. McCarthy of the gavel, which eventually succeeded with the help of seven other Republicans and 208 Democrats. Many Republican members remain angry over that move, which some say hurt the party politically. The Ethics panel’s investigations predate the current GOP House majority.

    The Ethics Committee did not respond to a request for comment by press time. A spokesperson for Mr. Gaetz said that his social media post speaks for itself.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 19:35

  • "Taking Our Extra Time": Boeing Delays Starliner's Return To Earth Amid Thruster Issues
    “Taking Our Extra Time”: Boeing Delays Starliner’s Return To Earth Amid Thruster Issues

    Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft’s return from the International Space Station to Earth will be delayed until mid-next week as NASA and astronauts troubleshoot helium leaks and try to figure out why some of the thrusters failed during the latest test flight.

    At a press briefing on Tuesday, Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said Starliner would end its first crewed mission to the ISS no earlier than next Wednesday – or about three weeks after it first launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. 

    “We want to give our teams a little bit more time to look at the data, do some analysis, and make sure we’re really ready to come home,” Stich said. 

    He emphasized that during the ISS docking on June 6, five of Starliner’s 28 reaction control thrusters malfunctioned but noted four managed to recover and come back online.

    “We’re taking our extra time given that this is a crewed vehicle, and we want to make sure that we haven’t left any stone unturned,” Stich said, adding, “We also want to look at the systems, and potential interaction between the systems, and make sure we haven’t missed something before we return. And we’re getting a lot of great data while we’re at the space station for not only this flight but for the next flight.”

    Over the weekend, Boeing and NASA conducted a thruster hot-fire test. Stich expressed a high level of confidence in Starliner’s return, stating that everyone involved in the mission ‘feels very confident.’ 

    Starliner is designed for six-month missions. The spacecraft can stay docked at the ISS for 45 days. 

    The latest in-flight problems follow years of challenges Boeing has faced with Starliner. These problems compound the ongoing issues with the company’s commercial jet program that CEO Dave Calhoun was grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 19:00

  • 'Manufacturing Obituaries': Media Falsely Reports Noam Chomsky's Death
    ‘Manufacturing Obituaries’: Media Falsely Reports Noam Chomsky’s Death

    Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

    Some popular media outlets and international political figures came under fire Tuesday for falsely reporting the death of U.S. academic and social critic Noam Chomsky, who is fighting to recover in Brazil after suffering a massive stroke last year.

    “Chomsky did not die. I just spoke to Valéria, his wife,” said Brazilian journalist Cauê Seigner Ameni. “He is well,” Valéria Chomsky confirmed to ABC‘s Chris Looft. Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo, a hospital in Brazil’s largest city, said in a statement that Chomsky was discharged on Tuesday to continue his treatment at home, according to The Associated Press.

    picture alliance via Getty Images

    The New Statesman ran—and subsequently deleted—a Chomsky obituary Tuesday following rumors of the 95-year-old’s passing. Other outlets including Jacobin kept or tweaked Chomsky obits, with telltale signs like the word “obituary” in their URLs belying their inaccuracy.

    Commentators from across the political spectrum also posted reaction—from mournful on the progressive left to gleeful among liberals and right-wingers—to false reports of Chomsky’s death.

    “Shameful and sad that Valéria Chomsky had to deny news of Noam Chomsky’s death over the phone here in Brazil, because a bunch of places decided to publish pre-written obituaries and posts at the first online rumor,” Brazilian academic Sabrina Fernandes said on social media.

    “Since no outlet that reported the death decided to post an errata, it only got worse,” she added, condemning “the online scoop and attention industry… waiting… like vultures.”

    Responding to numerous reports of Chomsky’s death in the Latin American corporate media, Mexico City-based Rutgers School of Communications professor Andrew Kennis—whose book Digital Age Resistance contains a foreword co-authored by Chomsky—told Common Dreams that “it is both a fitting and cruel irony that the fundamentally flawed, trillion-dollar-valued, conglomerate-owned, mainstream news media system has once again erred in its ways.”

    “No, Noam is not dead. Instead, he’s struggling to recover with the unflagging dedication of his partner, who transported him the first chance Noam’s health permitted her to do so to receive top-rate medical care in Brazil,” Kennis added.

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    Some observers worked the title of one of Chomsky’s more than 100 books—Manufacturing Consent, which he wrote with Edward Herman—into their commentary on the false reports.

    “Chomsky is NOT dead. If Chomsky was dead, he would be turning in his grave to see how quickly rumors spread and how social media functions,” said Croatian philosopher and Chomsky collaborator Srećko Horvat. “He might as well still call it: ‘manufacturing obituaries’.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 18:25

  • Japan To Issue Bonds With Shorter Maturities As BOJ Begins Tapering QE
    Japan To Issue Bonds With Shorter Maturities As BOJ Begins Tapering QE

    With the constant implosion in the yen threatening to spark both runaway inflation and a currency crisis in Japan, especially after the latest toothless decision by the Bank of Japan, it finally appears that the BOJ is set to either hike rates, or trim its massive bond buying program, or some combination of both.

    And since the BOJ is absolutely terrified of losing control of the Japanese bond market, of which it has been a majority holder for years, it was not surprising to learn that Japan’s Ministry of Finance is already weighing a plan to shift more of its bond issuance to shorter maturities, a major change as the central bank moves to cut purchases of government debt, one which will ensure less turmoil in the all important long-end, where duration is far higher, and where supply should be lower if the BOJ ends up purchasing less.

    According to Bloomberg, Finance Ministry officials have prepared a draft proposal that calls for increasing the proportion of issued bonds with shorter maturities, with an expert panel expected to endorse the plan on Friday.

    The move comes as the Bank of Japan’s decision to cut its bond purchases encourages the government to seek new sources of funding. The BOJ held about ¥590 trillion ($3.7 trillion) in JGBs as of the end of March, representing more than half of the total outstanding. It’s necessary to reduce the amount of yield risk supplied to the market by shortening durations, according to the proposal, which also cites floating-rate bonds as an option.

    Similar to the so-called Yellen Twist, which saw the US Treasury flood the market with Bills in mid/late 2023 to avoid a surge in long-dated yields at a time when the US is issuing record amounts of debt, shortening maturities on bond sales would represent a stark shift from the recent trend in which the Japanese ministry has tended to extend the maturities on bonds it sells as the nation’s policy interest rates have stayed around zero for decades and the BOJ used its yield curve control mechanism to cap long-term yields.

    The BOJ has been terrified of implementing major changes to the country’s petrified bond market, where the BOJ has long been the first and last buyer of any resort: while the central bank ended YCC in March, when it raised interest rates for the first time in 17 years, it did so in the most dovish way imaginable, effectively guiding the market to expect barely any further tightening for the foreseeable future. The yen tumbled. Then, last Friday, the BOJ said it will release details of its plans to reduce bond buying at the July 31 conclusion of its next policy meeting; and since the market was expecting the central bank to actually do something this time instead of just more talk, the yen tumbled even more.

    But it now appears that some definitive move is coming, and ahead of the July disclosure, the bank is meeting with market participants to hear their views.

    The finance ministry’s working draft, prepared ahead of a ministry meeting with market participants and experts on June 21, notes that shortening maturities would increase refinancing and interest risks for the government, so it recommends expanding the pool of government bond holders as much as possible.

    The ministry sent out a questionnaire to market participants, including potential bond buyers such as insurance companies, banks and foreign investors, at the last panel meeting in May. The ministry plans to release the results of that survey in addition to its proposal for future issuance on Friday, the person said.

    According to Bloomberg, the banking sector could become a major new customer to replace the BOJ, a respondent noted in the MOF’s survey. But we strongly doubt it in light of the latest news that Japan’s “farmer” bank, the $700 billion Norinchukin is getting stopped out of its foreign bond holdings which it must sell to plug huge “unrealized” losses. And if Nochu has to sell foreign bonds, how can one possibly expect it to buy Japanese bonds just when yields are expected to keep rising for the foreseeable future as the BOJ embarks on its first tightening campaign in decades.

    The bottom line is that while the BOJ’s plan suggests that the key to JGB management policy is “to create an environment in which the banking sector can hold JGBs with confidence”, the realty is that since in Japan monetary policy has been a total disaster for years, the one guaranteed outcome is that a bond crisis is imminent.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 17:50

  • Jim Jordan Weighs In On House Resolution Nullifying Bannon, Navarro Charges
    Jim Jordan Weighs In On House Resolution Nullifying Bannon, Navarro Charges

    Submitted by Headline USA,

    A newly drafted resolution in House of Representatives would declare former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked Jan. 6 Committee illegitimate and invalidate the contempt of Congress charges that the J6 committee filed against four top advisers—one of whom has spent the past three months in prison, with another expected to report to jail at the end of June.

    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, center, flanked by Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters about efforts to investigate President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023.  (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

    According to journalist Julie Kelly, the House resolution is being sponsored by Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., and backed by several GOP heavy-hitters, including Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Jim Banks of Indiana and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida.

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    However, it also faces at least one powerful skeptic: Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

    In an exclusive interview with Headline USA on June 7, Jordan said that even though he supported the principle of it, he didn’t see it being constructive from a practical standpoint, including helping ex-Trump adviser and well-known right-wing pundit Steve Bannon avoid his sentence.

    “I think both of those contempt [charges] were ridiculous,” Jordan said, in reference to Bannon and Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, during a June 7 fundraiser for congressional candidate Mark Harris in Monroe, N.C.

    “I opposed them on the House floor when they happened—both Navarro and Bannon—I spoke against them, as well as when they did it to our friend and North Carolina former representative Mark Meadows, when they did to him, spoke against all that,” Jordan added. “But I don’t think that would change—you could have that vote, but I don’t think it’ll change anything relative to what the courts have said and what happens to Bannon. … Even if we pass it, I don’t think it would have an impact.”

    The proposal first picked up steam earlier this month after Massie raised it to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. and found many prominent supporters in the Twittersphere.

    “This course of action is not only justified but necessary to restore fairness and balance in our government,” wrote blogger and influencer Alexander Muse.

    “Rescinding these subpoenas and repudiating the January 6th Committee would send a clear message that politically motivated persecutions have no place in our Republic,” he added. “It would also be a significant step towards protecting the integrity of executive privilege and ensuring that partisan politics do not undermine our democratic institutions.”

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    Massie, through his communications director, declined to comment, citing the libertarian lawmaker’s a busy schedule.

    It’s possible, however, that Jordan, a longtime friend and ally of Meadows, sees the prospect of unintended consequences arising from efforts to right the past grievance legislatively, now that Washington, D.C., courts have already ruled on the matter.

    It is highly likely, for example, that Democrats might use a similar tactic in the future to invalidate other committees whose work is legitimate.

    Moreover, giving Bannon a get-out-of-jail-free card would have troubling implications for Meadows—who opted to cooperate with the J6 committee—and Navarro, whose four month sentence will soon be completed.

    The resolution might also derail plans that Jordan and Johnson already have in mind for holding Attorney General Merrick Garland accountable—either legally or otherwise—after he gave himself a free pass last week for the exact same alleged crime: refusing a congressional subpoena on the basis of executive privilege.

    Following Garland’s defiance, Johnson announced that he would be certifying the contempt report with U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves and asking a federal court to enforce it.

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    While Graves is unlikely to act, the move may help to extend its shelf life in the hopes that a future Trump administration could pursue it.

    “It is sadly predictable that the Biden Administration’s Justice Department will not prosecute Garland for defying congressional subpoenas even though the department aggressively prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for the same thing,” Johnson said in a statement. “This is yet another example of the two-tiered system of justice brought to us by the Biden Administration.”

    It is also the latest procedural effort, however, for a GOP majority that often has been derided for its ham-fisted toothlessness relative to Pelosi’s iron-fisted ruthlessness in undermining the prior Trump administration.

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    Despite having a laptop teeming with incontrovertible evidence that has now been acknowledged by the FBI as authentic in a court of law, Republicans have been unable to press their impeachment case in any impactful way—and, to some extent, the presence of a two-tiered justice system is a problem of their own making.

    In a fiery speech ahead of last Wednesday’s contempt vote for Garland, Jordan offered a sharp rebuke of President Joe Biden’s top wingman and attack dog in the Justice Department.

    “It’s simple—Attorney General Garland holds information vital to the committee’s legislative oversight and the House impeachment’s inquiry. … The department has a legal obligation to turn over the requested material,” Jordan said.

    “Attorney General Garland’s willful refusal consitutes contempt of Congress,” he continued.  ” … Our oversight and and impeachment responsibilities are too important to allow the attorney general to willfully disregard this.”

    The contempt charge came following Garland’s refusal to turn over the audio recording of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents probe, which Hur cited as evidence that Biden was too senile to stand trial and that no reasonable jury would convict him due to his failing memory and lack of lucidity.

    The public release of the tapes would likely show that Biden either perjured himself by putting on a bogus act for a probe that has already determined to let him off the hook—or, perhaps more damningly, that the heavily scripted and choreographed Biden presented to the public conceals a commander-in-chief who is genuinely non compos mentis, despite seeking another four-year term.

    In addition to the House committees undertaking an impeachment inquiry, several mainstream media outlets have sued to obtain the recordings under the Freedom of Information Act.

    Yet, the contempt vote against Garland resonated for Republicans on another level after Garland’s overtly political decision to follow through on prosecuting Bannon and Navarro.

    The true objective of the Jan. 6 committee—to push a false, one-sided narrative onto the public that pinned all the blame on President Donald Trump and his supporters—has become ever more apparent as additional information begins to surface.

    Indeed, it amassed several terrabytes worth of data from its Star Chamber proceedings, which it then refused to hand over to Republicans upon ceding power and even attempted illegally to delete.

    Following bombshell footage last week that showed Pelosi admitting responsibility for the security failures at the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., denounced the committee as “biased,” according to Just the News.

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    “[I]t was a political hack job, and the American people and the history books should not take this as any factual account of what happened that day,” he said in an appearance on Real America’s Voice.

    Because they had no direct role in anything related to the Jan. 6 uprising at the Capitol, Bannon and Navarro, along with Meadows and Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, suspected a fishing expedition was afoot to gather testimony that the committee could then use selectively for its own ulterior objectives.

    But despite citing “executive privilege” as their reason for refusing the subpoenas—arguing that their private conversations with Trump were exempt from oversight—Garland’s DOJ pushed House Democrats’ contempt charges via corrupt, anti-Trump D.C. district judges such as Tanya Chutkan, who declared that Trump had no constitutional right to shield himself from bloodthirsty Democrats’ congressional tribunal.

    Pending a Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity that is expected to drop Thursday morning, Chutkan is now overseeing another case against Trump—special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution charging Trump with efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    That case was likely based heavily on the criminal referral supplied by the Jan. 6 committee, emblematic of the sort of mini-ecosystem through which congressional Democrats, corrupt DOJ prosecutors and D.C. federal judges have colluded in order to leapfrog from one political attack on Trump and his allies to the next by agreeing to validate each other.

    “Everyone knows it’s wrong, everyone knows this lawfare has gotten out of control,” Jordan noted in his interview with Headline USA.

    He pointed to efforts that the House was undertaking to derail those efforts, such as a measure to defund any special counsel not approved by the Senate. (Smith is the only one who has not been.)

    Nonetheless, thoze efforts seemed to be mostly symbolic, an exercise in performative outrage.

    Only time may tell if Burlinson’s resolution can succeed in breaking that cycle.

    Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 17:15

  • 'This Is Noah' – The Short Story Of A Fentanyl-Addicted Child In Utopian Hellhole San Francisco
    ‘This Is Noah’ – The Short Story Of A Fentanyl-Addicted Child In Utopian Hellhole San Francisco

    The radical leftists in San Francisco City Hall need a reality check about their destructive progressive drug policies that have effectively handed out implicit death sentences. A policy course correction is desperately needed as overdose deaths reached a record high last year. 

    If you have lived or visited San Francisco in recent years, parts of the metro area have been transformed into a utopian progressive hellhole of drugs, death, violent crime, feces, needles, and abandoned retail stores.

    As of last year, overdose deaths in San Francisco topped a record high of 800. Open-air drug markets and homeless encampments are widespread in the downtown area. Failed progressive public health policies are responsible for why the city’s drug overdose rate is nearly double the nation’s. In terms of cities over 500k in population, San Francisco was number four in overdose deaths. 

    Tens of thousands of drug addicts roam the city streets of the metro area, where the drug of choice is fentanyl. This drug, which is 100 times more potent than morphine, is flooding the nation through President Biden’s open southern borders. And it’s being cooked by Mexican cartels that receive chemicals from China (read: House Subcommittee Finds “New Evidence” That China Fuels America’s Fentanyl Crisis). 

    With the overdose crisis only worsening, we want to share with readers a heartbreaking short documentary of a kid way too young to be addicted to fentanyl – getting high in downtown San Francisco. This kid should be entering college, or at least working a productive job, and aims one day to start a family and benefit the nation. But no, he’s addicted to drugs, wasting his life away in the utopian hellhole of a city.

    Citizen journalists are stepping up to the plate since corporate leftist media cannot – nor want to do actual reporting. Instead, they push propaganda from woke leftists in the White House or whatever their mega-corporate sponsors say.

    X user jj smith documented his interactions with 19yo Noah. This video was filmed between Oct. 2022 and through at least the first half of 2023 and shows the young addict’s life on the streets of downtown San Francisco.

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    “The Progressive movement has enabled more drug use in San Francisco more than ever before, and the non-profits who are taking millions of dollars from, have done absolutely nothing to getting kids like Noah help. They feel it’s better to hand out tin foil and straws, rather than getting them the help they truly need,” Jaime Puerta, founder of Victims of Illicit Drug Use or VOID, wrote in a statement in response to the video. 

    This heartbreaking short video makes you want to hug your kids – if you got them – and also reflect on the political elites who have created this environment that has sparked a drug overdose death crisis that is killing two Vietnams of Americans per year.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 16:40

  • What Recession: NYC Targets Crackdown On $250 To $1000 Dinner Reservation Resellers
    What Recession: NYC Targets Crackdown On $250 To $1000 Dinner Reservation Resellers

    It’s tough to make the case for a recession when Bloomberg just pointed out that more than 30,000 people have flocked to a service called Appointment Trader to help them make ritzy dinner reservations in New York City on a secondary reservation market. 

    The service helps make $250 to as much as $1,000 dinner reservations at some of New York’s best dining spots, though the practice of buying reservations has now come under threat by “New York’s proposed Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act”, the report says.

    We bet you didn’t even know there was a proposed Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act.

    And despite the cost, scoring a table at popular spots like Carbone, Cote, Coqodaq, or Don Angie won’t necessarily get easier, the report says, noting that reservation resellers are still seeing high demand. 

    Joel Montaniel, chief executive officer of reservation booking platform Sevenrooms, who works with companies like Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, told Bloomberg: “There are some restaurants that people can’t get into.”

    “I’ve even talked to restaurateurs, we’ve hosted them on panels and asked them for tips to get in, and they say, ‘I don’t have them,’” he continued.

    If New York Governor Kathy Hochul signs the recent bill into law, websites will need restaurant permission to offer bookings. Aimed at curbing bots used by scalpers, the law targets practices blamed for making reservations at popular restaurants harder to get, favoring wealthier diners.

    Platforms like Resy, Sevenrooms, and OpenTable, which partner directly with restaurants, won’t be affected. However, services like Appointment Trader and Cita might no longer advertise the city’s top tables. Appointment Trader Founder Jonas Frey argues that his platform’s success is due to the existing scarcity of reservations, not the cause of it.

    Frey said: “There were just too many diners for too few restaurants. I believe we’re serving a need. That’s why it worked.”

    “We’re certainly not going to stop operating because we can’t operate in New York,” he added. 

    Sevenrooms data shows NYC restaurant cancellations rose to 19% last month from 17.5% last year, while the national rate fell to 11.6%. Appointment Trader’s Jonas Frey argues his service addresses reservation scarcity, not causes it, and plans to shift focus if the law impacts operations.

    Amy Zhou of Gracious Hospitality supports the bill, citing significant revenue loss due to bot-driven cancellations at popular venues like Cote Korean Steakhouse.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 16:05

  • Modi's Nod To Closer Ties With Taiwan Suggests India's Evolving 'Act East Policy'
    Modi’s Nod To Closer Ties With Taiwan Suggests India’s Evolving ‘Act East Policy’

    Authored by Venus Upadhayaya via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    After being sworn in as India’s prime minister for a third consecutive term, Narendra Modi received congratulatory messages from a diverse array of world leaders around the globe.

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gives a victory symbol at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters in New Delhi on June 4, 2024. (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

    However, one leader who stood out was Taiwan’s newly elected president, Lai Ching-te. In response to his message, Mr. Modi not only thanked Mr. Lai but reciprocated with a message highlighting the strengthening ties between China’s two frontline adversaries.

    Geopolitical analysts told The Epoch Times that the exchange of messages between the two leaders shows that India’s Act East policy—an initiative to promote economic, strategic, and cultural relations within the Asia-Pacific region—is shaping up and now encompasses Taiwan. The cordial exchange also highlights strategic concerns shared by the two countries, and their mutual dependence for economic growth.

    “India’s Act East policy is taking shape, while its definition and scope of ‘Indo-Pacific’ is broadening. New Delhi used to be focused on East Africa and up to the Malacca Strait. However, over the last few years, it has engaged in port calls in [the] Philippines, PNG [Papua New Guinea] and actively pursued relations with Taiwan, thus expanding from Malacca Strait to the Taiwan Strait,” Akhil Ramesh, a geo-political analyst who leads the India program at the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum, said.

    Taiwan is currently recognized as a sovereign nation by only 12 nations. While India hasn’t officially recognized Taiwan, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been on the rise, particularly since 2020’s bloody Galwan conflict caused Indo–China relations to plunge. Taiwan’s exports to India increased by 13 percent last year, and as of February 2024, Taiwanese businesses have made investments in India.

    Ming-Shih Shen, director of national security research at Taipei’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times in an email that the interaction between Mr. Lai and Mr. Modi on social media platform X is based on what they want from each other.

    “Taiwan President Lai Ching-te needs the attention and support of the international community and hopes to cooperate with regional powers to deter China, because India can threaten China from the west, and Taiwan and India have a common geopolitical interest, so there is more space for cooperation,” Mr. Shen said.

    Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te delivers his inaugural speech after being sworn into office at the Presidential Office Building in Taipei, on May 20, 2024. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

    Modi’s and Lai’s Interaction

    The interaction between Mr. Modi and Mr. Lai occurred immediately after the election results were declared on June 4 and before Mr. Modi was formally sworn in on June 9.

    “My sincere congratulations to Prime Minister @narendramodi on his election victory,” Mr. Lai said in a message on X on June 5. “We look forward to enhancing the fast-growing #Taiwan-#India partnership, expanding our collaboration on trade, technology & other sectors to contribute to peace & prosperity in the #IndoPacific.”

    In response, Mr. Modi thanked Mr. Lai for his “warm message” and said he looks forward to “closer ties” as India and Taiwan “work towards mutually beneficial economic and technological partnership.”

    The exchange between the two newly elected leaders garnered considerable attention online. Mr. Lai’s message has 2.5 million views to date, while Mr. Modi’s response has 2.7 million views. However, the exchange didn’t go over well in China.

    At a regular news conference on June 6, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning not only protested the interaction between Mr. Modi and Mr. Lai, but denied the existence of a Taiwanese president.

    “First of all, there is no such thing as ‘president’ of the Taiwan region,” Ms. Mao said in response to a question by a Bloomberg reporter. “As for your question, China opposes all forms of official interactions between the Taiwan authorities and countries having diplomatic relations with China. There is but one China in the world. Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China.”

    Ms. Mao told reporters that China had already lodged a protest with India about Mr. Modi’s response to Mr. Lai.

    “The one-China principle is a universally recognized norm in international relations and a prevailing consensus in the international community,” she said. “India has made serious political commitments on this and is supposed to recognize, be alarmed about, and resist the Taiwan authorities’ political calculations. China has protested to India about this.”

    Indian Border Security Force troops patrol as an Indian army convoy passes through on a highway leading toward Leh, which borders China, in Gagangir, India, on June 19, 2020. (Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)

    Toward a Shared Global Footprint

    Experts say that a shared Chinese threat has actually drawn Taiwan and India together. The two countries have shared interests, and Mr. Modi’s response to Mr. Lai gives a clear message that their relationship is governed by that. The Indian prime minister’s response also denotes India’s wish to graduate from a regional role to a larger role in the world.

    “India is reaching higher and wants to play a larger role in global affairs. So far, it has limited itself to [being] a regional player dealing with a string of pearls and other challenges China poses,” said Mr. Ramesh. “By stretching itself far and wide, to Taiwan in the East and East Africa in the West, or the more recent IMEC [India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor], India wants to expand its global footprint.”

    By expanding that footprint, India is aiming at “global leadership, power through increased trade and commercial activity,” he said.

    Mr. Shen said that India doesn’t necessarily need Taiwan to compete with China. However, Taiwan’s chip and semiconductor technology has become a new cooperation sector between the two countries, one that can help India to promote high tech and enhance its economy.

    “Especially after Taiwan has begun to invest in India, in the future, if it wants to improve India’s semiconductor technology or artificial intelligence development, Taiwan is an indispensable partner,” he said.

    During his second tenure, Mr. Modi’s government began the country’s ambitious semiconductor mission with an outlay of $10 billion in 2021. It advanced toward the goal with the Indian cabinet’s approval early this year of three new plants, which are estimated to generate 20,000 advanced technology jobs and about 60,000 indirect jobs.

    Perhaps the most strategically important of these is a semiconductor fabrication plant worth $11 billion by India’s Tata Group, in collaboration with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. The facility will be located in Dholera, Gujarat, in western India.

    According to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, which represents Taiwan diplomatically in India, the investments in India until February of this year were primarily in electronics, information and communication technology, petrochemicals, steel, shipping, footwear manufacturing, automotive and motorcycle components, finance, and construction industries.

    Mr. Shen predicted that Taiwan–India relations will continue to deepen and strengthen.

    “In addition to open economic, trade and scientific and technological exchanges, maybe more in security and defense industry cooperation will begin as the relationship between the two countries gradually deepens. India needs [to] strengthen its defense and aviation industry capabilities, and Taiwan needs the defense industry cooperation market,” he said.

    An outdoor screen shows news coverage of China’s military drills around Taiwan, in Beijing on May 23, 2024. China began on May 23 what it called “Joint Sword-2024A” exercises, surrounding Taiwan with warplanes and navy ships and vowing “stern punishment” of separatist forces on the island. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Taiwanese analyst doesn’t believe that India will establish formal relations with Taiwan because it doesn’t want conflict with China. However, if it wants to strengthen its economy and develop enhanced comprehension of China’s military intelligence, it must look to Taiwan.

    Mr. Shen said the main reason for China’s anger at the interaction between Mr. Modi and Mr. Lai is fear.

    “China is afraid that the relationship between Taiwan and India will deepen, so that the Sino–Indian border sovereignty issue and the conflict in the Taiwan Strait will be merged, and China’s enemies may form alliances and cooperation.”

    That situation will be a “nightmare” for communist party leader Xi Jinping, Mr. Shen said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 15:30

  • White House Fuming, Cancels Meeting With Israelis, After Netanyahu's Public Scolding
    White House Fuming, Cancels Meeting With Israelis, After Netanyahu’s Public Scolding

    On Monday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chastised the White House in a rare video message, calling President Biden’s withholding of some defense aid to Israel “inconceivable”. 

    However the White House has hit back, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre soon after the provocative statement issuing a rejection of the Israeli leader’s narrative. “We genuinely do not know what he’s talking about. We just don’t,“ she told reporters.

    She noted in a Monday afternoon briefing that “there was one particular shipment of munitions that was paused, and you’ve heard us talk about that many times.” Jean-Pierre then emphasized, “There are no other pauses — none — no other pauses or holds in place.”

    Via ABC News

    But here’s what the Israeli prime minister had charged in the video: “It’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel. Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies,” he had said.

    Behind the scenes, this has reportedly left Biden admin officials fuming. The White House has as a result taken the rare step of canceling a high-level US-Israel meeting in protest. The scheduled meeting was to focus on Iran.

    A senior US official told Axios on Tuesday, “This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts.” The official further described, “The Americans are fuming. Bibi’s video made a lot of damage.”

    The same report said that some of the Israeli officials were already en route to Washington when the meeting was canceled, however, other sources said the meeting was merely postponed and tried to downplay that it was a punitive action.

    The US gives Israel over $3 billion in foreign aid every year, and has also pledged billions more in weapons, including advanced fighter jets, throughout the course of the Gaza war. “Biden’s team was angry and shocked by Netanyahu’s ingratitude,” another US official was quoted in Axios as saying.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken has meanwhile confirmed that Washington is “continuing to review one shipment… with regard to 2,000-pound bombs because of our concerns about their use in a densely populated area like Rafah.”

    Netanyahu is fully aware that his words could also play heavily in the November US presidential election…

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

    The White House has for months maintained contradictory policies on Gaza – on the one hand decrying the soaring civilian death toll which are especially the result of large-scale airstrikes, and on the other supplying Israel’s military with the very bombs used to inflict such atrocities. 

    Progressives and Democrats are increasingly pulling their support from Biden over the issue, and this week’s fresh spat with Netanyahu could be Biden’s attempt to show his base he won’t be bossed around by a foreign ally. The White House has continually said the Israelis shouldn’t cross ‘red lines’ – but Biden has been hesitant to actually impose consequences when said lines are violated – for example in the Rafah ground offensive, which the US has stood against from the start.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 14:55

  • MSNBC Contributor Posts Image Claiming Trump Needed To Be Helped Off Stage
    MSNBC Contributor Posts Image Claiming Trump Needed To Be Helped Off Stage

    Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

    A leftist MSNBC contributor has been raked over the coals for claiming Donald Trump is really the presidential candidate who needs to be helped off a stage, rather than than Joe Biden.

    Brian Tyler Cohen, who ironically hosts a podcast called ‘No Lie’, posted the following image dating from last year on X: (‘No Lie’ Cohen has since deleted his lie)…

    As you can see, the post was quickly flagged by Community Notes.

    Video from the same event clearly shows Trump shaking the hand of his son Don Jr. which is what the photo captured.

    Even other leftists had to admit Tyler Cohen’s post was just misleading.

    He probably already knew this, and was either trying to amass post views, or he just didn’t care.

    This comes in the wake of days of videos being shared of Joe Biden doddering around like a dementia patient or freezing up, having to be rounded up and led away by both the Italian Prime Minister at the G7 summit and by Obama at a Hollywood fundraiser.

    The White House had the gall to claim that the videos were edited or completely fake.

    In reality, it’s the Biden campaign that is editing and spreading misleading videos of Trump:

    Other leftists have tried to claim that Trump is the one who is cognitively impaired because he mixed up the name ‘Jackson’ with ‘Johnson’.

    It’s hardly in the same league as Biden’s clear decline to the point where he can barely function.

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 14:20

  • Dell, SMC, Nvidia To Build Elon Musk's Grok Supercomputer In Memphis
    Dell, SMC, Nvidia To Build Elon Musk’s Grok Supercomputer In Memphis

    xAI’s multi-billion dollar “Gigafactory of Compute” is being constructed in Memphis, Tennessee, and is set to become the world’s largest supercomputer.

    The artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk could be months away from powering chatbot Grok, which is already operational on the X platform.

    A source recently told The Daily Memphian that the supercomputer could start running in 8 to 12 months.

    The supercomputer is intended to power and do computations for Grok, the chatbot run by xAI’s artificial intelligence. The Information, a business publication, reported on May 26 that the supercomputer would be ready by August 2025.

    But a source familiar with the matter told The Daily Memphian that the supercomputer could start running eight to 12 months earlier than expected, making an August 2024 start possible.

    On Wednesday morning, Dell Founder & CEO Michael Dell posted a picture of Dell racks slated for the Grok.

    “We’re building a Dell AI factory with @nvidia to power @grok for @xai @elonmusk,” Dell wrote in a post. 

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

    X user DogeDesigner also reported that Dell is supplying xAI with supercomputer equipment. Musk chimed in on X that Dell “is assembling half of the racks that are going into the supercomputer that xAI is building.” 

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

    X users had many questions, including “Who’s assembling the other half?” and “Liquid-cooled?” 

    Musk then responded to X user Mario Nawfal, saying “SMC,” or Super Micro Computer, will supply the other half. 

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

    As for Musk…

    Perhaps this news will lift Dell and SMC higher on Thursday (today’s a holiday). On Tuesday, Nvidia was crowned the world’s most valuable company.

    Year-to-date gains… 

    “It seems like Elon Musk is assembling an avengers-like team of tech giants and turning them into a formidable force in the AI, with Grok as their secret weapon,” one X user said. 

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

    A secret weapon against the woke censorship mob? 

    GPU power is the new arms race.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/19/2024 – 13:45

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