Today’s News 20th May 2023

• The Big Tech Spy Hunt
  The Big Tech Spy Hunt

  Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The United States and South Korea are getting tougher on technology leaks. The two countries have extensive tech industries to protect. Most important is their technological lead, along with the Netherlands, in small and powerful computer chips used for economic and military applications around the world.

  

  Countries that steal these technologies include China, Russia, and Iran. As U.S. adversaries, they could use them against us and our allies.

  On May 16, the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed five related cases investigated by its new “Disruptive Technology Strike Force.”

  Two of them, both in California, include the alleged theft of source code by Chinese nationals for delivery to competitors in China.

  On May 5, a senior technology engineer was arrested for alleged theft of “metrology software which is used in ‘smart’ automotive manufacturing equipment,” the DOJ said in a press release. The tech could help China build nuclear submarines and military aircraft.

  The other case is of a Chinese national and former Apple engineer who allegedly stole “thousands of documents containing the source code for software and hardware pertaining to Apple’s autonomous vehicle technology,” according to the DOJ.

  He escaped back to China the same night in 2018 that FBI agents searched his home and discovered the documents. It is unclear why the FBI did not immediately arrest the suspect and why it has taken this long to bring charges.

  A third case, in New York, involved a sanctioned “Chinese procurement network established to provide Iran with materials used in weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and ballistic missiles,” the DOJ said. The defendant is a Chinese national who allegedly used a front company to try and provide Iran with isostatic graphite, used in the rocket nozzles and reentry vehicle nose cones of intercontinental ballistic missiles. He is at large in China.

  French officials arrested a Greek national in a fourth case for alleged links to Russian intelligence and acquiring 10 different types of controlled technology for illegal export to Russia.

  

  “As alleged, while ostensibly operating as a defense contractor for NATO and other ally countries, the defendant and his Aratos Group were double-dealing, helping to fuel Russia’s war effort and their development of next-generation weapons,” according to U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

  The Aratos Group operates defense and technology companies in Greece and the Netherlands, which, as NATO countries, can import some controlled U.S. tech. Since 2017, Aratos has allegedly smuggled tech to Russia that can be “used in military applications, including quantum cryptography and nuclear weapons testing, as well as tactical battlefield equipment” by Russian nuclear and quantum research facilities and intelligence services, according to the DOJ.

  Two other Russian nationals were arrested in Arizona in a fifth case for allegedly lying and using front companies and foreign bank accounts to attempt to ship export-controlled aircraft parts to sanctioned Russian commercial airlines.

  As the United States has increased the pressure on economic spies, those from China have gone elsewhere to get similar technologies. In South Korea, for example, confirmed leaks of core technologies increased from 3 in 2017 to 10 in 2021, according to the Financial Times. In the first quarter of 2023, there have already been three such leaks from large automotive, display, and semiconductor companies. Headhunters from China operate front companies and lurk outside South Korean chip fabs in an attempt to poach talent. On offer are salaries three-to-four times prior incomes.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 23:40

• Watch: Scientists Create Real Doctor Octopus Arms  
  Watch: Scientists Create Real Doctor Octopus Arms  

  Scientists from the University of Tokyo have developed a set of robotic arms that can be attached to a user’s back. These arms mimic the appearance of Otto Octavius (also known as Doctor Octopus), a fictional character and one of Spider-Man’s most enduring enemies, who wields mechanical, tentacle-like appendages. 

  Called “Jizai Arms,” the wearable backpack can power up to six detachable robot arms and moves with the user’s body. 

  

  “The system was designed to enable social interaction between multiple wearers, such as an exchange of arm(s), and explore possible interactions between digital cyborgs in a cyborg society,” the scientists wrote in a research note titled “Social Digital Cyborgs: The Collaborative Design Process of JIZAI ARMS” that was published in the ACM Digital Library, a database of full-text articles and bibliographic literature covering computing and information technology. 

  “From our role-playing sessions, we found that our bodies could precisely sense the attachment/detachment of arms, and we especially felt a strong impact when detaching or reducing the number of robotic arms worn,” the scientists stated in the paper. 

  

  “We also suggested adding customizability to the robotic arms to generate a sense of social ownership, an individual’s sense of ownership towards a specific artificial body part shared among multiple persons, as a future research topic,” they continued. 

  This technology reminds us of Octavius’ mechanical tentacles. 

  

  Besides, artificial intelligence — we might also want to prepare for a world of cyborgs.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 23:20

• Do Whites Also Deserve Reparations?
  Do Whites Also Deserve Reparations?

  Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,

  In the United States, calls for reparations are, once again, heating up. A Duke University professor recently called for $14 trillion in reparations for the descendants of American slavery (roughly $350,000 per recipient).

  The professor, William Darity, isn’t the only one calling for reparations. The mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, has established a task force that will explore compensation for black citizens. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has signaled his support for the idea. Detroit’s Reparations Task Force is currently exploring forms of compensation for the city’s black residents. Similar events are taking place in St. Louis. In early May, California’s reparations task force approved recommendations that could see some black residents receive $1.2 million each as compensation for slavery and racial discrimination.

  

  Reparations are a terrible idea.

  Calls for race-based compensation appeal to emotion, not logic. First, how do we define slavery? Contrary to popular belief, African Americans weren’t the only victims of slavery. As Stephan Talty, an author who has researched slavery in great detail, has noted, white people were also the victims of slavery.

  In a piece for Salon, a hyper-progressive online magazine, Talty discussed the fact that, contrary to popular belief, white slavery did occur prior to the occurrence of the Civil War. Talty referenced the work of Joel Augustus Rogers, a historian who meticulously documented the many ways in which whites were kidnapped and sold into slavery. These kidnappings occurred from the early 1700s right up until 1861, the year the Civil War started. Some of the victims were orphans or unwanted babies, while others were impoverished immigrants. White slavery occurred in America. This is an inconvenient truth that receives little or no attention, probably because it contradicts the “white privilege” narrative that continues to do the rounds.

  Even if we were to agree on a definition of slavery, how are we supposed to verify those that claim to be victims? Then, of course, there’s the matter of financing reparations. Where will the money come from?

  For comment on the matter, I reached out to David W. Rasmussen, the director of the Policy Sciences Center at Florida State University. Rasmussen recently published a paper discussing reparations for black citizens, and why such a system of redress for past injustices deserves criticism.

  Rasmussen told me that although it’s easy to make the case that black citizens are owed reparations—the right to own slaves is embedded in the Constitution, after all—this doesn’t mean that the case being made has any real substance. The idea of reparations, noted Rasmussen, fails for many reasons.

  First off, reparations are expensive, with “reasonable” estimates ranging from about $500 billion to $2.7 trillion. The highest estimate of damages is $7 quadrillion, he said, “a figure that emerges because damages are compounded at an annual interest rate of 6 percent.” For the mathematically challenged, a quadrillion is 1,000 trillion.

  Moreover, black reparations would benefit about 12 percent of the population.

  In other words, said Rasmussen, “We are asking 88 percent of the population to pay as much as $500 billion (probably over a period of years) to bear the cost.”

  All Americans, including those who are currently struggling to put food on the table, would bear this cost (40 million Americans, more than 25 percent of the population, currently live in poverty). Only 30 percent of Americans are in favor of some form of reparations. “Many of these,” according to Rasmussen, “may find a $500 billion price tag a hard sell.” Indeed.

  It’s common for those in favor of reparations to insist that all descendants of slaves, regardless of their economic situation, should receive reparations. Thus, individuals such as Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey, would be eligible. Rasmussen, like many other Americans, is against income transfers to high-income households—and for good reason. It makes absolutely no sense.

  Which begs the question: What, if any, palatable alternatives to reparations exist?

  Rasmussen asks, “If we are genuinely interested in helping black families locked in poverty in communities with high crime, inferior housing, and bad schools, why not address those problems?”

  He’s right. Rather than creating race-related policies, the United States must create policies that address specific problems. This is the only way forward, largely because Native Americans, Hispanics, and poor whites would also stand to benefit. Again, contrary to popular belief, the United States is no longer divided by race. It’s divided by class. To be specific, it’s divided by four distinct classes: upper, middle, working, and lower, with more and more Americans falling into the final two categories.

  As noted earlier, tens of millions of people of various skin colors are living in abject poverty. To truly help those in need, those struggling to survive, we need to move past the idea of reparations for black individuals. Now, more than ever, we must move past the desire to use skin color as a defining metric.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 23:00

• Visualizing The Decline Of Affordable Housing In The US
  Visualizing The Decline Of Affordable Housing In The US

  Over 80% of U.S. residents have chosen to live in an urban setting, as of 2023.

  And, as Visual Capitalist’s Chris Dickert and Pernia Jamshed detail below, with that number set to rise to nearly 90% by 2050, house prices are rising, with significant consequences to housing affordability. 

  This visualization, the second in the Reimagining Home Series from our sponsor Boxabl, takes a deep dive into the evolution of the housing market in the U.S.

  

  Housing Affordability At Its Lowest Ebb in Decades

  The U.S. house-price-to-income ratio, which tracks house prices in multiples of annual income, has steadily climbed since the mid-1980s, when the market was recovering from a real estate crash earlier that decade.

  Historically, the ratio has hovered between three and four. But in the early aughts, the ratio passed four and kept going, reaching a high of 5.11 in 2005. The ratio fell somewhat in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage meltdown, but never returned to historical averages. New records were set in 2014 (5.33), and again in 2021 (5.61).

  Note that because median housing prices and median household incomes are released at different frequencies, quarterly versus annually respectively, in order to calculate the ratio, housing prices were averaged on an annual basis.

  Year	Median House Price	Median Household Income	Ratio
  1984	$79,950	$22,415	3.57
  1985	$84,275	$23,618	3.57
  1986	$92,025	$24,897	3.70
  1987	$104,700	$26,061	4.02
  1988	$112,225	$27,225	4.12
  1989	$120,425	$28,906	4.17
  1990	$122,300	$29,943	4.08
  1991	$119,975	$30,126	3.98
  1992	$121,375	$30,636	3.96
  1993	$126,500	$31,241	4.05
  1994	$130,425	$32,264	4.04
  1995	$133,475	$34,076	3.92
  1996	$140,250	$35,492	3.95
  1997	$145,000	$37,005	3.92
  1998	$151,925	$38,885	3.91
  1999	$160,125	$40,696	3.93
  2000	$167,550	$41,990	3.99
  2001	$173,100	$42,228	4.10
  2002	$186,025	$42,409	4.39
  2003	$192,125	$43,318	4.44
  2004	$218,150	$44,334	4.92
  2005	$236,550	$46,326	5.11
  2006	$243,750	$48,201	5.06
  2007	$244,950	$50,233	4.88
  2008	$229,550	$50,303	4.56
  2009	$215,650	$49,777	4.33
  2010	$222,700	$49,276	4.52
  2011	$224,900	$50,054	4.49
  2012	$244,400	$51,017	4.79
  2013	$266,225	$53,585	4.97
  2014	$285,775	$53,657	5.33
  2015	$294,150	$56,516	5.20
  2016	$305,125	$59,039	5.17
  2017	$322,425	$61,136	5.27
  2018	$325,275	$63,179	5.15
  2019	$320,250	$68,703	4.66
  2020	$336,950	$68,010	4.95
  2021	$396,800	$70,784	5.61

  Housing data is available up to the first quarter of 2023, when median prices eased off from a record-high $479,500 at the end of 2022 to $436,800 in the first quarter of this year.

  Because median household income is currently only available up to 2021, it’s not possible to calculate the ratio past that. However, unless there was an unusually large increase in income, the ratio has likely remained near record highs.

  And throughout the seemingly unstoppable rise in house prices over the 38 years covered above, income has failed to keep up. Between 1984 and 2021, median incomes rose 3.16x from $22,415 to $70,784, while median housing prices increased nearly 5.26x to $423,600, up from $78,200.

  Issue Top of Mind For Local Communities

  Amid the steady erosion of housing affordability, U.S. residents have reacted with rising concern. In 2018, when the Pew Research Center asked about major problems affecting local communities, the top spot went to Drug Addiction at 42%, compared to 39% on the Availability of Affordable Housing.

  In 2021, the situation reversed itself and housing affordability was the #1 problem according to 49% of respondents, an increase of 10%. Drug Addiction, on the other hand, fell to 35%.

  In general, younger Americans (55%), urban residents (63%), and those with lower incomes (57%) expressed more concern than their counterparts.

  Is There a Doctor in the House?

  So what’s causing the erosion of housing affordability in the U.S.?

  Ultimately, the U.S. is not building enough houses to keep pace with population growth. And you can see this in the housing start data. In January 1959, there were around 1.7 million housing starts, compared to January 2023, when there were 1.3 million. And this decrease happened despite the fact that the U.S. population nearly doubled, from 176 to 335 million. 

  Lots of different forces are working together at the local level to stop more houses from being built. Space is one reason. Local zoning laws that limit the construction of multi-family homes is another culprit. The COVID-19 pandemic has also caused global supply chain issues, leading to rising material costs for housing.

  And the icing on the cake? Rising interest rates are making it even harder for first-time homebuyers to enter the market.

  Thinking Outside of the Box on Housing

  With housing affordability at its lowest ebb in over a decade and people worried that they won’t be able to find a place to live, it’s time to think outside of the box.

  Boxabl uses advanced, mass production techniques to build and ship homes that significantly lower the cost of home ownership for everyone.

  This is the second piece in the Reimagining Home Series. Part 1 takes a deep dive on urbanization in the U.S., while the third and final piece looks at how modular homes could be a solution to the U.S. affordability crisis.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 22:40

• Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Twitter, Google, Facebook In Liability Case Over User-Posted Content
  Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Twitter, Google, Facebook In Liability Case Over User-Posted Content

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Supreme Court unanimously sided with Twitter, Google, and Facebook, finding in a pair of decisions on May 18 that the Silicon Valley giants are shielded from liability for content posted by users.

  

  The lawsuits arose after deadly Islamic terrorist attacks overseas. Victims’ families argued that the Big Tech companies were liable because they allowed terrorist videos to be posted online or failed to do enough to police the terrorist accounts posting the videos.

  Big Tech and its supporters had been deeply concerned that the court could eviscerate Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996, which generally prevents internet platforms and internet service providers from being held liable for what users say on them. They say the legal provision, sometimes called “the 26 words that created the internet,” has fostered a climate online in which free speech has flourished.

  Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have attacked Section 230, calling for it to be repealed, but in the twin rulings, the Supreme Court sidestepped the Section 230 issue, much to the relief of the tech companies.

  During oral arguments on Feb. 21, the justices struggled over the extent to which social media platforms should be held liable when terrorist groups use the platforms to promote their cause.

  Chief Justice John Roberts said that despite any algorithm YouTube may use to push users to view videos, the company is “still not responsible for the content of the videos … or text that is transmitted.”

  Justice Elena Kagan told a lawyer for one of the families, “I can imagine a world where you’re right that none of this stuff gets protection.”

  “And, you know, every other industry has to internalize the costs of its conduct. Why is it that the tech industry gets a pass? A little bit unclear,” she said.

  “On the other hand, I mean, we’re a court. We really don’t know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet,” Kagan said at the time.

  The Supreme Court’s new 38-page decision (pdf) in Twitter Inc. v. Taamneh, court file 21-1496, was written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

  

  Twitter asked the court to review a lower court ruling in favor of a Jordanian national killed in an ISIS terrorist group attack in an Istanbul nightclub. The company argued it shouldn’t be held responsible for acts of international terrorism if the group used its platform. The family of the late victim, Nawras Alassaf, claimed that social media platforms didn’t do enough to take down ISIS videos.

  Thomas wrote that the plaintiffs sought to hold Twitter, Facebook, and Google “liable for the terrorist attack that allegedly injured them,” but the court concluded that “plaintiffs’ allegations are insufficient to establish that these defendants aided and abetted ISIS in carrying out the relevant attack.”

  The connection between the online platforms and the nightclub attack was “far removed,” he wrote.

  “The allegations plaintiffs make here are not the type of pervasive, systemic, and culpable assistance to a series of terrorist activities that could be described as aiding and abetting each terrorist act by ISIS,” Thomas wrote.

  The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

  The Supreme Court’s brief, three-page decision (pdf) in Gonzalez v. Google LLC, court file 21-1333, was unsigned. Google’s parent company is Alphabet Inc.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 22:20

• IRS To Pilot Its Own Tax E-File Platform In 2024 – What Could Go Wrong?
  IRS To Pilot Its Own Tax E-File Platform In 2024 – What Could Go Wrong?

  In 2024, the IRS will launch a pilot program to offer its own, government-run, income tax return-preparation website, according to a report the universally-despised agency provided to Congress on Tuesday. The report follows a $15 million study of the concept. 

  If there were ever a proposal absolutely guaranteed to be a multifaceted disaster, this is it. Boobus Americanus, however, is apparently champing at the bit: IRS surveys find 72% of Americans are “very” or “somewhat interested in” a free government tool for calculating taxes. What are they missing?    

  For starters, the IRS and all of us animals on the government’s taxpayer ranch approach this endeavor with an enormous conflict of interest. We don’t want to pay a penny more than we absolutely have to, while the government is hell-bent on extracting an entirely fictional “fair share” — and more — from each of us. 

  Next, there’s the comically-cautionary tale of the rollout of the Obamacare enrollment website in 2013. Even with three years to prepare, it was a cluster**** for the ages. The site crashed immediately upon launch, and then inflicted countless glitches on users after it was up and running.

  

  Even when they function properly, government websites are notorious showcases of confusing communication. Imagine when users inevitably have questions and are compelled to turn to an IRS call center for clarity. Users would have to pray that — after enduring hold time — they’re actually matched with a competent phone rep. A 2002 Treasury audit found reps only came up with the right answer 78% of the time — and that’s just for the average question.   

  At first glance, some might assume using an IRS site would make you less of an audit target. Then again, it’s conceivable the IRS might log your actions as you navigate the site — such as trying different inputs to test the impact on your tax return. Such information could be used as an audit flag. 

  In most states, offering an appealing alternative to TurboTax and H&R Block platforms would require the IRS to also offer state and local tax prep. No way that’s happening anytime soon. 

  The IRS says it hasn’t yet defined the complexity of returns it anticipates handling during the pilot. A prototype of the IRS offering that was run by some taxpayers wasn’t even built to pre-populate with data the government already has via W-2’s and 1099s. As one unimpressed survey participant said, “IRS already knows your tax information. So why wouldn’t I be able to login, put in, say, my [SSN], and then half this information is already filled, and then I just need to put in corrections?”

  Many survey participants felt they should receive expedited return-processing for using a government platform. In its report, however, the IRS said, “The IRS does not, and would not, give preferential treatment to taxpayers who use any particular tax filing method.”

  

  The IRS estimates its direct-filing platform would cost between $64.3 and $248.9 million annually. The running tally for the Obamacare site surpassed $840 million less than a year after it launched. 

  Many other countries send taxpayers “pre-filled returns” that are populated with data the government already collected. Some are so accurate in their ongoing income-tax withholding that little or no adjustment is necessary. That accuracy springs from their dramatically simpler approaches to income taxation.  

  Putting the government-taxpayer conflict of interest aside, until the US income tax is radically simplified — such as with a flat tax with few or no deductions or credits, no differentiation between short- and long-term capital gains, no differentiation between tax rates on investments and earned income, and no disguised welfare handouts like the EITC — an IRS-run tax-filing platform is for the birds. 

  Or maybe we should say “for the birdbrains” — like the survey participants who said these things about the prospect of an IRS tax-prep platform:

  • “It’s probably going to be good; it’s going to tell you everything you need to know because it’s the IRS. The information should be up to date. I would probably expect it to be more accurate doing it directly with IRS than though some other company.”
  • “They probably more want you to do it correctly than some other company.”
  • “Yes [I would trust it]. Because it’s a government website.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 22:00

• Hydrogen’s Scalability Essential To Meet Energy Demand
  Hydrogen’s Scalability Essential To Meet Energy Demand

  Authored by Robert Hebner via RealClear Wire,

  Years ago, I attended a lecture featuring a leader of China’s energy program at the University of Hong Kong. The significant investment of time and resources in every energy technology and commitment to scaling solutions with reduced environmental impact was eye-opening, but also struck me as an inefficient approach.

  

  It is now evident that the world must invest in an all-of-the-above method to meet our energy needs with reduced environmental impact.

  Global demand for energy is projected to double due to a growing population; over half do not have adequate energy today, leading to poverty and premature deaths.

  Currently, fossil fuel-derived energy is the only source available at the scale required to address the growing demand.

  Even if the geopolitical issues around fossil fuels were magically eliminated, nature’s conversion of solar power to fossil fuels includes carbon. We now use energy at a rate that carbon emissions change the climate, which also leads to poverty and premature deaths.

  We need more and better solutions at a large enough scale to matter.

  Hydrogen is attractive because it promises to make intermittent renewable energy available 24/7 everywhere. Moreover, the global hydrogen market is more than $150 billion today, with major growth opportunities in the future grid and transportation sectors.

  The growing demand for energy means a growth in jobs and profits. But there will be winners and losers even in the growing market.

  Governments use incentives to support all energy today. Therefore, the integration of hydrogen into the political system is complicated. For example, the Department of Energy has a goal of developing the technology for producing hydrogen for $1/kilogram by the end of the decade. A kilogram of hydrogen has similar energy to a gallon of gasoline.

  Recent research, however, showed that for a wind farm in West Texas, producing and selling hydrogen makes no economic sense unless the cost of hydrogen was about $3.50/kilogram, due to a production tax credit that rewards wind generated electricity delivered to the electric grid.

  Hydrogen’s carbon footprint is high today, but we have the technology to produce it with a smaller carbon footprint. The U.S. is implementing a graduated tax credit to support the scale-up of cleaner hydrogen, no matter its feedstock.

  We all lose if we make the perfect the enemy of the good. Fewer people suffer or die if we grow from good, to better, to best rather than sitting on good until best is easily achievable.

  Our legacy governance impedes establishing a market where multiple solutions contribute. The system we built assumes the various components compete, not work as a team to meet the growing energy demand in an environmentally sustainable manner.

  We count on our government to provide the required coordination. We must give them the tools and insights they need to do that job well for all of us.

  For hydrogen, parochial perspectives are trying to influence which electrical grid feedstocks are clean enough to receive the full benefits of the 45V tax credit. This is a classic “perfect vs. good” situation.

  Certifying hydrogen as clean when its feedstock comes from an independent and dedicated source is straightforward. However, hydrogen produced in Houston, TX, using grid power is near price parity with the conventional carbon-intensive means of producing hydrogen.

  So, we can have cleaner hydrogen quickly. But the grid, while continually getting cleaner, has a carbon footprint that varies daily. Most prudent folks would say absent proof of greater damage, this approach should receive competitive tax credit today and enhanced tax credits as hydrogen gets cleaner in the future.

  Decades of tax credits and offsets have led to wind and solar being niche suppliers. With its commercially mature massive storage capability, hydrogen might provide the tipping point technology to augment fossil fuels in meeting the growing demand.

  No one solution on its own can meet the challenge. We need flexibility for energy production, conservation, and efficiency. We will prosper with a portfolio of outstanding contributors, not by waiting for an energy superhero.

  Robert Hebner is the director of the Center for Electromechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 21:40

• 30-Ton Shipment Of Explosive Chemical Disappears Between California And Wyoming
  30-Ton Shipment Of Explosive Chemical Disappears Between California And Wyoming

  A 30-ton shipment of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as both fertilizer and as a component in explosives, has gone missing during a rail shipment between Wyoming and California last month, resulting in four separate investigations.

  

  A railcar loaded with some 60,000 pounds of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming on April 12, only to be found empty two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the firm which shipped the ammonium, KQED reports.

  The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC. The report also appeared last week in an NRC database of California incidents managed by the state Office of Emergency Services last Wednesday.

  Ammonium nitrate is commonly used as fertilizer. It’s also an ingredient in high explosives and was used in the homemade bomb detonated in the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

  According to Dyno Nobel, the Ammonium – transferred in pellet form in a covered hopper car similar to those used to ship coal – must have fallen from the car on the way to a rail siding (where a short track connects with the main track) around 30 miles from the town of Mojave in eastern Kern County, in a city called Saltdale.

  

  “The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” said the company, adding that the two-week trip included multiple stops. They report having had “limited control” over the railcar operated by Union Pacific.

  The railcar is being transported back to Wyoming for inspection.

  Meanwhile, a representative for the Federal Railroad Administration says the investigation points to an improperly closed hopper car gate.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 21:20

• Democrat Bill Would Pack Supreme Court To Lessen Conservative Influence
  Democrat Bill Would Pack Supreme Court To Lessen Conservative Influence

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Senate Democrats unveiled a new bill that would pack the Supreme Court by adding four new seats beyond the current nine seats, a move that could lead to the loss of the court’s current conservative majority.

  

  The legislation comes after President Joe Biden’s commission on Supreme Court reform failed in December 2021 to recommend expanding the size of the nation’s highest court. Public approval of the court has fallen in recent years, according to polls. The late Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court in the 1930s after it kept striking down his New Deal policies but the plan ultimately went nowhere after the public and lawmakers from his own party turned against it.

  Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) unveiled his new legislation, the proposed Judiciary Act of 2023 (pdf), at a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court on May 16.

  “Our most fundamentally held freedoms are under attack from an illegitimate, far-right United States Supreme Court,” Markey said.

  “And if we fail to act, it will only get worse. We must fix this broken and illegitimate court. We must expand the United States Supreme Court.”

  The court-packing proposed by Democrats is justified because Senate Republicans repeatedly “broke the rules” about the confirmation of Supreme Court nominees in recent years, Markey claimed.

  After conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Senate Republicans refused to allow a vote on then-President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who is now President Biden’s attorney general.

  Republicans denied Garland “a hearing and a vote that he was entitled to,” Markey said, even though there is no constitutional provision, law, or Senate rule that required the Senate to vote on the nomination.

  “They claimed that they couldn’t fill a seat in a presidential election year, even with the election nine months away, and they kept that seat vacant for 422 days,” the senator said, adding that Obama’s successor, then-President Donald Trump, nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch to the court days after his inauguration.

  “Then, in October of 2020, with head-spinning hypocrisy, Senate Republicans and Donald Trump stole the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, forcing Amy Coney Barrett onto the bench literally as Americans were casting their votes in the presidential elections nine days before Election Day in 2020.”

  “So much for not confirming justices in a presidential year. So we now have two justices on the bench who frankly have no right to be there,” Markey said.

  Americans have suffered since Republicans “hijacked the court,” handing it over to “partisan justices eager to toss aside decades of precedent to satisfy their deep-pocketed right-wing special interest benefactors.”

  Markey said he feared that decisions last year reversing Roe v. Wade, recognizing a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, and curbing the government’s environmental regulatory powers “are just a preview of coming atrocities.”

  Democrats also need to pack the court because Justice Clarence Thomas had made “a mockery of the public trust” by refusing “to recuse himself on cases about efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in spite of the fact that his wife was implicated in them,” Markey said.

  Legal experts say Justice Thomas did not have to recuse himself from such cases merely because his wife, Ginni Thomas, is a conservative activist and Trump supporter.

  “We have to remind him that we have a system of constitutional checks and balances,” the senator said.

  Markey, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and a handful of House members have called on Justice Thomas to resign, a demand that Markey repeated at the media event.

  Democrats also claim Thomas is guilty of improprieties because, among other things, he has accepted vacations from a wealthy GOP donor, his longtime friend Harlan Crow, a Texas billionaire. When left-wing media outlet ProPublica recently reported on the existence of the trips, Thomas said he was previously advised he didn’t have to disclose the vacations but vowed to do so going forward. Legal experts say there is no conflict of interest because Crow has not had any business before the Supreme Court and because it is not illegal for justices to have wealthy, generous friends.

  Markey continued: “The court has put all these rights of all Americans but especially those of people of color, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ rural and low-income communities at risk … [and] it’s only a question of when and who the court is going to target next—that’s because the extremist right wing will not stop.”

  “But we will not stop either. So let’s start with undoing the Republicans’ thievery and adding four seats to the court,” he said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 21:00

• Cars Still Dominate The American Commute
  Cars Still Dominate The American Commute

  As part of National Bike Month, celebrated in the U.S. each May to promote cycling as a fun and healthy mode of transportation, today, May 19 was Bike to Work Day. On this day, people are encouraged to leave their cars behind and hop on their bikes for their daily commute to work. After all, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, cycling to work is still relatively rare in the United States, despite the many benefits it offers in terms of personal health, reduced traffic and emissions savings.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to Statista Consumer Insights, 73 percent of American commuters use their own car to move between home and work, making it by far the most popular mode of transportation. Meanwhile, only 13 percent of the 7,649 respondents use public transportation while 11 percent ride their bike. As Statista’s chart shows, alternatives to the car have become more popular since 2019, but none comes close to challenging the car’s status as the king of the American commute.

  There are several factors contributing to the low adoption of bicycles as a means of everyday transportation: for one, Americans are used to commuting longer distances than people in most European nations, automatically ruling out the bike for many. And secondly, many major cities in the U.S. aren’t exactly bike-friendly.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to a recent study, just two American cities made it into the 50 most bicycle-friendly cities in the world, when taking into account factors such as bicycle infrastructure, safety and usage as well as things as mundane as the weather.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 20:40

• Hypersonics, Nukes Top House Lawmaker's Priorities List
  Hypersonics, Nukes Top House Lawmaker’s Priorities List

  Authored by Audrey Decker via DefenseOne.com,

  Hypersonic missiles and nuclear weapons will get top priority when the House Armed Services committee’s strategic forces panel finally gets to mark up the 2024 defense-policy bill, according to the subcommittee’s chairman. 

  

  HASC markups are on hold while GOP lawmakers seek federal budget cuts by threatening to force the U.S. renege on its debts. 

  Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican whose district is based in Colorado Springs, said his biggest concern ahead of the markup, which was supposed to kick off on Thursday, is the top-line number.  

  Lamborn said he’s “disappointed” the defense policy bill is delayed but “understands” why Congress needs to concentrate on the debt ceiling first.

  “Getting that top-line number, I think, is critical because if that number is reduced as part of a negotiation with the Senate and the White House, I would be very concerned that that would lead to cuts in capabilities in the future,” he told Defense One in an interview.

  A GOP-forced default on outstanding debts would hurt national security in various ways, according to a host of leaders, including the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs chairman, the director of national intelligence, the Air Force secretary, and more.

  If the Pentagon’s top-line number does change, Lamborn said he’s confident programs in the strategic forces portfolio would be in a safe position as “everyone involved” is aware of the need for the Space Force to be fully funded. However, the committees that focus on bigger items, like ships, aircraft, and munitions, might run into some problems, he said.

  “Because we have consensus in the community and with the administration, and I think even the Senate, I think the Space Force is in a good position,” Lamborn said. 

  As chairman of the committee, Lamborn said his top priority is the Pentagon’s hypersonics programs. The pace of development is “way too slow,” and he’s looking to increase funding in the defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, for “different testing capabilities and facilities” to hopefully accelerate schedules, Lamborn said.

  In addition to offensive hypersonic missiles, Lamborn said his committee is adding language calling for a “very active” and robust schedule to field systems that can defend against hypersonics.

  The Pentagon confirmed last week that Ukraine recently used a Patriot missile system to take out a Russian hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal.

  However, Lamborn said the scenario in Ukraine doesn’t mean the U.S. could do the same against a Chinese hypersonic missile. 

  “Russia has a history of exaggerating their capabilities. It may have been a primitive—that is, an older-generation hypersonic weapon that a Patriot would be fully capable of intercepting,” he said. 

  Another priority for the chairman is keeping the Pentagon’s nuclear triad—bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles—on track. There’s concern that “we’re starting to lose the cushion that we have in any of these programs,” Lamborn said.  

  A major problem for U.S. nuclear programs is plutonium-pit production, Lamborn said. Plutonium pits are part of the fission-fusion chain that creates a thermonuclear explosion.“I’m concerned that we have some possible delays coming up in pit production. And I know that the people running different aspects of the program have contingency plans in place, but I hope it doesn’t come to the point where we have to start looking at contingencies,” he said. 

  While Congress monitors the Pentagon’s nuke programs, Lamborn said there will be bipartisan agreement in the NDAA to keep funding research and development for the Navy’s nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile, despite multiple attempts from the Biden administration to kill the program, with the goal of “ultimately fielding SLCM-N.”

  For the committee’s space portfolio, Lamborn said he’s focused on ensuring that the Space Force has the “maximum launch capacity as a country that we can, both in the short term and long term.”

  Now three years since the Space Force was created, Lamborn said he’s happy with the newest service’s progress but there’s “a little ways to go” as he’s heard complaints from industry that there’s still too much red tape when a company wants to work with the Space Force. 

  Lawmakers are also “very frustrated” with the service’s overclassification of information, Lamborn said, which makes it difficult to share information with the government, industry, partners and allies—and explain the Space Force’s “critical needs” to the public.

  It’s hard to legislate a cultural change, but “the next best thing we can do is to highlight the need to be more open while walking that fine line of not divulging proprietary information to the other side,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 20:20

• Goldman Finds "Most Accurate" Reading Of Current CRE Conditions, Predicts 25% Drop In Office Building Prices  
  Goldman Finds “Most Accurate” Reading Of Current CRE Conditions, Predicts 25% Drop In Office Building Prices  

  There are increasing concerns about the severity of the downturn in the commercial real estate market. This week, Moody’s Analytics reported the first quarterly drop in CRE prices in over a decade. The most pressing issue at the moment is determining the extent to which these prices will drop.

  Shedding more color on the potential depth of the downturn is Goldman Sachs chief credit strategist Lotfi Karoui. He told clients on Thursday that there are many ways to track CRE prices, though “the most accurate portrayal of current market conditions” is data via the Green Street Commercial Property Price Index, which suggests trouble ahead. 

  Here’s part of Karoui’s note explaining why Green Street data foretells the coming price plunge in office and apartment property values. 

  Over the past few months, we have been arguing the sizeable valuation gap between public and private real estate markets will start to close through a catch-down in property prices. Taking stock of the catch-down is, however, not that straightforward. There are many ways to track commercial property prices, often offering divergent pictures. 

  We show the performance of four popular commercial property price indices in Exhibit 8, suggesting price depreciation from peak levels anywhere between 15% and 2%. The two main methods of index construction are transaction-based such as RCA and NCREIF’s repeat sales indices, and appraisal-based such as the Green Street Commercial Property Price Index and the Federal Reserve Board Commercial Real Estate Price Index. Each methodology has its own shortcomings. 

  Repeat sales transaction indices often provide the most unbiased estimate of prices as they control for changes in the market’s composition. But the paltry level of transaction volume at present has shrunk the sample size of these indices (Exhibit 9). Appraisal-based indices can also be noisy at times. That said, at the current juncture, they likely provide the most accurate portrayal of current market conditions with Green Street indicating a 25% year-over-year drop in office property values and a 21% drop in apartment property values.

  In Karoui’s view, Green Street’s data seems to be the most precise, forecasting a forthcoming price drop in office and apartment buildings. The index is weighted heavily towards retail, office, and apartments. 

  

  Also, the slide in CRE transaction volumes shows the entire sector might be headed for a deep freeze as lending conditions tighten. 

  

  Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank veteran strategist Jim Reid painted an ominous outlook for the US economy in a note to clients. He pointed to aggressive central bank interest rate hikes breaking parts of the economy as the end of the hiking cycle usually ends with a bang. 

  

  Reid also showed nearly two centuries of US money supply (year-on-year % change) data that shows the fastest collapse since the 1930s. This is a major red flag for the economy and capital markets, and past collapses have led to panics, recessions, and depressions. 

  

  It appears as though a downturn has arrived, with the regional banking and CRE sectors bearing the brunt of the Fed’s tightening over the past year. 

  There is more in the Goldman note from Lotfi Karoui, available to pro subscribers in the usual place.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 20:00

• For Decades, Democrats Have Been Ignoring Evidence And Facts
  For Decades, Democrats Have Been Ignoring Evidence And Facts

  Authored by Vince Coyner via American Thinker,

  About 20 years ago, I read a piece about the North Miami police department eliminating the swimming requirement for the police. With a working knowledge of geography and having visited Miami many times, I thought this was a bit odd and kind of a bad idea. After all, North Miami has hundreds of miles of canals, lakes, and beaches. Predictably, the reason the requirement was being dropped was that “blacks are less likely than whites to know how to swim because of economic disparities between the groups…” In other words, the change was because not enough blacks were qualified to become police.

  

  That was long before the cancer of wokeness had taken hold of much of America. I was dumbfounded. Nobody with a functioning brain would have looked at that situation and said we must eliminate a key element of the job requirements to let more members of “X group” join. But that’s what the people in charge decided. If someone with a functioning brain were actually in charge, he would have said something like, “If our goal is to have a more diverse workforce…” (a questionable assertion in the first place) “and not enough otherwise qualified black candidates can pass the swim test, maybe we should simply take those candidates who meet the other requirements and teach them how to swim.”

  But that’s not what they did. And that is just another demonstration that Democrats aren’t actually serious people seeking to help the communities they represent. No, their goal was to cater to the “equity” crowd, even before it had a name. And they have continued to do so for the last two decades.

  Take gun control. Democrats have been gun-grabbing for decades. They use every mass shooting as a lever to try and wrest guns out of American hands and eviscerate the Second Amendment. While it is certainly the case that gun violence is a problem in America, the reality is, it’s not the guns, it’s the criminals and the Democrats who pamper them.

  There are 350 million people in the United States. Of those, there are 280 million adults, 90 million of whom say they own at least one of America’s 400 million guns, with an average of almost 5 guns each. And how frequently do those 90 million gun owners commit crimes with those guns? Not very often.

  It’s estimated that more than 80% of gun crimes are committed by people who came into possession of their weapons illegally, which means that, conservatively, legal gun owners perpetrated only 20% of gun crimes. There are almost 100,000 shootings in the United States annually (not counting suicides). If we assume that 20% of those shootings were by legal gun owners, that would be 20,000 shootings. To put that in perspective, that would mean that .0002% of legal gun owners commit crimes with their weapons, or conversely, 99.9998% of legal gun owners never use their guns in crimes….

  As a matter of fact, despite what the Democrat media tell you, “Good guys with guns” help stop between one-third and one-half of all active shooter incidents nationwide. But Democrats work continuously to take guns away from all of those apparently “violence eschewing” citizens while at the same time seeking to free actual violent criminals from jail or prison or not send them there in the first place—even as those they free are the ones who actually commit most of the crimes and the worst crimes, and it’s not even close.

  Making matters worse, Democrats rarely seek to focus on the strong correlation between anti-depressants and violence, particularly with young people. They would rather preen in front of cameras and accuse Republicans of having blood on their hands than focus on the real issues that spill so much blood.

  And there is indeed much blood on Democrats’ hands. In what must seem counterintuitive to them, more gun control results in more mass shooting deaths. California is a perfect example. As it’s become more difficult for law-abiding Californians to legally obtain guns over the decades, to the point where it’s actually almost impossible to exercise the right, the rate at which the state exceeds the rest of the country has skyrocketed:

  From 2010 on, California’s per capita rate of mass public shootings was 43% higher than the rate in Texas and 29% higher than in the rest of the United States. Since 2020, the rate in California is 276% higher than in Texas and 100% higher than in the rest of the U.S.

  That is partially because there are fewer of those “Good guys with guns.” In Los Angeles County, where one mass shooting already took place this year, there is one gun permit for every 5,660 adults, and in San Mateo County, where another mass shooting occurred, there is one permit for every 24,630 adults. By comparison, there is one permit holder for every nine people in the 43 right-to-carry states.

  Whether it’s murder on a small scale or a large, this data would only matter if someone were actually interested in solving the problem and reducing the amount of bloodshed. Needless to say, Democrats rarely look at the data and then conclude that making it easier to allow law-abiding citizens to own weapons might actually help reduce said bloodshed.

  Then there’s the border. The Democrat party, led by Liar in Chief Joe Biden, tells us that the American border is secure while Americans watch thousands of illegal immigrants stream across the border every single day. Those poor “asylum seekers” are given phones, have to promise to return to court to adjudicate their cases—sometimes in 5 or 10 years—and are sent on their merry ways. Of course, many of those never even bother to show up for court. And hundreds of thousands more are simply released without even being given a court date. To make things even more ridiculous, while they’re busy gaslighting the entire country, Democrats are shivving their single most solid constituency.

  Of course, the border is not a new problem. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which granted asylum to 2.7 million illegal aliens in return for securing the border. Democrats took the asylum and screwed Reagan and the nation on securing the border. Since then, no president other than Trump has had any interest in securing the border, and he was stymied at every single turn by Democrats and leftist judges. The result is that today there are upwards of 40 million illegal aliens in the country, with millions more crossing the border every year.

  Like the gun data, the data on illegal aliens isn’t hard to understand. It’s pretty simple math. The phones alone that the Biden administration gives to illegals cost $360,000 every day while, in the aggregate, illegal aliens cost Americans $250 billion per year. To put that in perspective, the wall Trump wanted to build was estimated to have a price tag of under $25 billion.

  And now, it’s only going to get worse with Biden ending the Trump era Title 42, which was the equivalent of trying to stop your car by dragging your feet on the ground, a la Fred Flintstone. But now that Title 42 is gone, Biden is sending 1,500 Army troops to help…let even more illegals in!

  Whether it’s standing on shore as victims drown in Miami, not allowing armed citizens to protect themselves and their communities, or simply ignoring the costs associated with illegal immigration, it’s clear that Democrats aren’t serious people and don’t care about the average American. Given that Democrats demonstrate their disdain for citizens every single day, one wonders why anyone votes for them. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?

  Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 19:40

• Tucker Trounces Fox In Favorability Ratings Rout
  Tucker Trounces Fox In Favorability Ratings Rout

  Tucker Carlson has a 63 point lead in popularity over his former employer, Fox News, according to a new survey from consulting agency Change Research.

  

  Carlson’s net favorability among Republicans is currently at +59, while Fox News’ is sitting at -4, a difference of 63 points

  POLL: Tucker Carlson vs. Fox News

  In the aftermath of Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News, Republicans sided with Tucker:

  Net favorability among Republicans:
  Tucker Carlson: +59
  Fox News: -4

  THREAD 🧵 pic.twitter.com/XGr0PM3qCP

  — Change Research (@ChangePolls) May 18, 2023

  Carlson and the network parted ways in late April for unknown reasons – with Fox holding the host hostage via his contract that prevents him from appearing on other networks. 

  To circumvent this, Carlson announced he’ll be featuring his show on Twitter!

  “The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can. But there are always limits. And you know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it,” Carlson said in a video which decried the media for being misleading “in every story that matters every day of the week, every week of the year.”

  On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever is said.

  And, of course, anything misleading will get @CommunityNotes.

  I also want to be clear that we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is… https://t.co/0TMjuYnKUp

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSpeaking of Twitter, the Change Research poll also found that Twitter CEO Elon Musk has a net favorability rating of +53 with Republicans, -17 with Independends, and -75 with Democrats (Carlson is at -84 with the latter).

  

  Just like Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk is popular on the right, very unpopular on the left, and somewhat unpopular with the middle.

  Net favorability among…
  GOP
  Carlson: +59
  Musk: +53

  IND
  Carlson: -30
  Musk: -17

  DEM
  Carlson: -84
  Musk: -75 pic.twitter.com/64IqwPpHp6

  — Change Research (@ChangePolls) May 18, 2023

  As the Epoch Times notes;

  Nicholas Fondacaro, associate editor of the conservative media watchdog NewsBusters, told The Epoch Times that Carlson’s mission, like Musk’s, is about free speech.

  “Carlson seemed earnest in his announcement video that he believes Twitter is the last bastion of free speech, likely because Elon Musk has made it clear that ensuring free speech was his priority when purchasing the platform,” he told The Epoch Times. “Musk has, by most accounts, talked the talk and walked the walk.”

  Musk clarified in a Twitter post that Carlson had not signed any contract with Twitter to broadcast his show on the platform and that the former Fox host would need to follow the same rules that apply to all Twitter users.

  “On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever is said,” Musk said. “And, of course, anything misleading will get @CommunityNotes.”

  “I also want to be clear that we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators,” he continued.

  “Rewards means subscriptions and advertising revenue share (coming soon), which is a function of how many people subscribe and the advertising views associated with the content,” Musk continued.

  “I hope that many others, particularly from the left, also choose to be content creators on this platform,” the Twitter chief added.

  Musk later called on former CNN anchor Don Lemon to do his show on Twitter in what could be seen as an attempt on Musk’s part to encourage a broad array of views on the platform.

  “Have you considered doing your show on this platform?” Musk said in a May 10 reply to Lemon’s April 24 post announcing that CNN had fired him. “Maybe worth a try. Audience is much bigger.”

  

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

  Ratings Shakeup

  After Carlson’s exit, Fox News’ 8 p.m. hour suffered a dip in ratings after creating a replacement program for Carlson’s show called “Fox News Tonight.”

  Other Fox primetime shows, including the 9 p.m. one currently held by Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham’s programs, have also seen their ratings drop.

  “Fox News Tonight” drew 1.3 million total viewers and 136,000 demographic viewers, according to Nielsen ratings.

  In March, Carlson averaged more than 3 million viewers each night. Part of Carlson’s popularity, especially among conservatives, was likely bolstered by his coverage of never-before-seen footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach that he said challenged mainstream narratives that the incident was a “violent insurrection.”

  Fox said that the newly minted show, which the network said was temporary, features a rotating cast of hosts.

  Last week, Trump-era press secretary Kayleigh McEnany hosted the show, and this week, Fox’s Will Cain has had the hosting duties.

  “No decision has been made on a new primetime line-up and there are multiple scenarios under consideration,” a Fox News spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Wednesday.

  Jack Phillips and Jackson Richman contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 19:20

• Nashville School Shooting Investigation Used To Identify Possible Accomplices: MNPD
  Nashville School Shooting Investigation Used To Identify Possible Accomplices: MNPD

  Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Top law enforcement officials with the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD), including the lead investigator in The Covenant School shooting case, have filed motions with the court to stop the release of evidence amid their “ongoing” investigation. In their court filings, law enforcement stated they believed the assailant Audrey Hale, who died on the scene, acted alone, but they “do not know for sure.”

  “Even though the assailant died at the school, the criminal investigative file does not automatically, instantly close,” investigator Lt. Brent Gibson wrote in a court filing. “Investigators must still work to gather and analyze evidence in the case and determine if related crimes were committed, are being planned, or whether other people were involved.”

  

  Gibson went on to say the Covenant investigation is expected to take approximately “12 months,” based upon the “volume of evidence and the number of persons to be interviewed,” along with officers working on a total of 46 homicide investigations in the city so far this year.

  “For comparison purposes, an investigation for a murder-suicide case, where it appears ‘obvious’ what has happened, typically takes eight months,” Gibson added. “While we believe at this time that the assailant acted alone in this case, we do not know for sure. And we need to investigate the matter thoroughly, as we do in all homicides, to rule out any co-conspirators or additional crimes related to this matter.”

  He said he believed the release of the investigative files prematurely could cause “harmful and irreversible consequences.”

  MNPD Weighs In

  The court filings came in a pending open records lawsuit, in which MNPD was forced to turn over unredacted versions of shooter Audrey Hale’s suicide note and journal last week for the judge’s review. The suit was filed after MNPD refused to release the documents to several individuals and groups.

  A hearing and scheduling conference in the lawsuit was scheduled for Thursday, May 18, but Chancellor I’Ashea Myles, in a Wednesday evening ruling, postponed it to Monday, May 22.

  On Wednesday, the officers, alongside several parents of Covenant students, filed their motions with the court, with parents urging the documents to not be released at all.

  

  MNPD said they are using the investigation process to determine whether the “assailant had any assistance with planning the shooting or any assistance with weapons purchases.”

  MNPD Deputy Chief Mike Hagar’s motion with the court stated that officers have been investigating and gathering information about the March 27 shooting since it happened.

  “The MNPD investigation into the matter is still an active, ongoing criminal investigation and an open matter,” he wrote in the filing. “Based on my 34 years of experience in law enforcement, I believe that harmful and irreversible consequences could result from disclosing investigative files prematurely, including in this case.”

  Gibson said officers have been “meeting with, and grieving with the families” alongside working with state and federal agencies, interviewing witnesses, executing search warrants, and gathering documents, items and electronic files from the scene, Hale’s home, and her background.

  MNPD’s Arguments

  Hagar said the investigative file associated with the Covenant shooting is the result of “education and investigative experience utilized by law enforcement officers” to gather information relevant to the crime.

  “It is essential that police investigators be able to gather materials freely and broadly, using their judgment, without fear that materials they gather will prematurely be released to the public and cause prejudice to the effectiveness of the investigation,” Hagar continued. “I have a good faith belief that [MNPD’s] denial… of [the] public records requests were proper.”

  He and Gibson urged the court to allow MNPD to continue and conclude its investigation “in an unrushed, deliberate manner” before the records are released.

  

  Hagar did say, however, that after reviewing the redacted version of the writings submitted to the court alongside the unredacted version, he “does not believe” the release of redacted documents would “impede the investigation.”

  Gibson said on the matter, “Releasing any of the puzzle pieces too quickly could jeopardize putting this intricate puzzle together.”

  Gibson specified the documents and records MNPD is still in the process of gathering, such as social media records from the past two years, internet and bank account records, phone records, autopsy and toxicology reports, records obtained from search warrants, medical records including psychiatric treatment and gun and ammunition account records.

  Gibson also stated they are interviewing individuals identified in all the records and Hale’s actions for the months prior to the incident and following up on information discovered during the course of the investigation.

  “Many of these documents must be subpoenaed, and it takes time to get the records back,” Gibson wrote. “MNPD must then examine the content of the materials and the metadata. MNPD needs to review the assailant’s messaging data, internet search histories, and any other relevant evidence. This often can be a time-consuming process.”

  He goes on to say MNPD hasn’t had an opportunity to interview everyone “connected to the incident” or to review “all the materials it has gathered.”

  Parents Argue Against Any Release

  Earlier this week, the Covenant School and Covenant Presbyterian Church filed motions with the court to become a third-party intervener in the open records suit, stating the release of such documents could cause safety and security concerns as well as release the private information of church and school staff.

  On Wednesday, the parents of Covenant School students filed their motion, stating their filing had the “overwhelming” support of the Covenant community, with their estimations being that “three-quarters” of Covenant families expressed support to intervene in the suit.

  “This brief is filed on behalf of all three families who lost children who have endured a pain that no words can adequately describe,” they wrote. “This brief is filed on behalf of the surviving children who lived through an unimaginable nightmare and who must deal with the repercussions of that nightmare for the rest of their lives.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 19:00

• US Hawks Want Iron Dome For Ukraine, But It Would Be Ineffective 
  US Hawks Want Iron Dome For Ukraine, But It Would Be Ineffective 

  Israel has long rejected the idea of sending its Iron Dome missile defense systems to Ukraine, despite the pleadings of Zelensky and his officials. After all, the Iron Dome has been busy of late given recent missile barrages out of Gaza amid the flare-up in fighting. 

  But the Pentagon has signaled it could be prepared to ship its own Israeli-made Iron Dome systems, after earlier sending Patriot missile systems, the latter which may or may not be effective given Russia is now seeking to overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses.

  

  On Thursday a US general informed a Senate hearing that one of two Iron Dome batteries owned by the United States is ready for deployment to Ukraine. 

  Senator Angus King pressed Army Space and Missile Defense Command chief General Daniel Karbler on why Ukraine has not yet received the Iron Dome: 

  “We sent something like $3 billion to Israel to develop it… Wouldn’t this be a very important resource for the Ukrainians since their principal problem right now is missile defense?” the lawmaker asked.

  Gen. Karbler said that among two Iron Dome batteries in US inventories, one is ready to go if needed:

  “One completed new equipment training, new equipment fielding. It is prepared for deployment. The other one is wrapping up its new equipment training right now. So the army does have one available for deployment if we get a request,” he said.

  Sen. King’s argument is that given the US had a role in developing the system for the Israelis, Washington should have a say in whether Ukraine gets it.

  But the battlefield reality of the Ukraine situation means there are some significant complexities when it comes to deploying the Iron Dome. The system is effective for Israel given it is for Israel a ‘total coverage’ system over specific cities and towns within limited space. But Ukraine’s own wartime situation is very different.

  Ukraine is a vast territory being attacked by Russian aerial bombardments from multiple sides, and even from the Black Sea. The Jerusalem Post also noted analysis this week– 

  “If Israel needs 10 or more Iron Domes to properly defend itself, Ukraine would need dozens or more, which simply do not exist.”

  

  The Israeli publication also emphasized in the analysis: “One or two Iron Domes from the US would make no difference tactically, and at this point, probably would not even make much of a symbolic difference. And even then, the Iron Dome might fail to shoot down Putin’s more sophisticated missiles.”

  The Ukrainians have meanwhile been claiming (dubiously) to have shot down Russia’s hypersonic missiles with the US-supplied Patriots. Russia has called this claim “laughable”. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 18:40

• "Adversarial Actors, Home And Abroad"
  “Adversarial Actors, Home And Abroad”

  Authored by Thomas Neuberger via “God’s Spies” Substack,

  Which non-foreign ‘adversaries’ do elites have in mind when they promote domestic censorship and news blockades?

  

  I want to put three thoughts in front of you, drop three stones in the slipstream of your mind. Perhaps you’ll see the ripples as they cross, note their interaction, hear what their crossing says.

  The future this article previews isn’t new, just newly forgot.

  Domestic ‘Terror’ from the Activist Left

  First, from ace investigator Lee Fang (parts of this piece are subscriber-only):

  DHS and FBI Depict Vegan Activists as Potential Domestic Terrorists

  Imagine a young woman named Jane who recently adopted a vegan lifestyle after learning about factory farming in college. She discusses animal welfare and begins attending protests.

  For most, Jane’s experiences sound remarkably benign.

  But for the Department of Homeland Security, the young woman is following a “path of potential radicalization,” according to new documents released through a public records request.

  The scenario was one of several depicted in a violence prevention workshop from the DHS Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, a division of the agency that works to counter domestic terrorism.

  Jane’s supposed path towards violence — as featured in the DHS workshop — is composed of little more than everyday experiences that many Americans take as they embrace activism.

  In the workshop scenario, Jane reacts with anger when discussing animal cruelty and mentions that she joined a group that has “a reputation for holding controversial protests.” She had not only become “an animal lover,” but had become “militant about food and animal rights, and other issues like testing.”

  Note the “workshop.” This is a report of a DHS workshop on domestic terrorism, where new threats may come from, and what to do. The source doc is here; you can probably guess the rest of what it says. If not, Fang lays it out.

  Here’s the cover portion of the document and summary-first remarks:

  

  Fang’s report includes the FBI component in defining the animal-rights “threat” to internal security:

  

  Can you see where this is headed? If you do, you’re not alone.

  The ‘Foreign-Domestic Switcheroo’

  The second stone drops here. Does what you read above touch what’s below?

  Through a complicated set of leaks (described here), we find “that the Aspen Institute hosted a ‘Hack-and-Dump Working Group’ exercise in the summer of 2020 titled, ‘Burisma Leak,’ which predicted with uncanny accuracy an upcoming derogatory story in the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s lost laptop.”

  Here’s a link to the Aspen Institute document in question. In it we find the following. First, from the Executive Summary (emphasis mine):

  Once a promise of free expression and the democratization of information, the Web and its many channels are now polluted with mis- and dis-information, bots, abuse, lies, and conspiracies – sometimes planned by adversarial actors from home and aboard.

  Then, from the section about dealing with “Reporting and Promoting Hack-and-Dumps”:

  As we countdown to election day, the risk of a major hack and dump of documents aimed at undermining a candidate or party grows more acute. How can news organizations put provenance front and center? What happens when fabricated documents are released alongside genuine (stolen) content? How can social feeds avoid serving as promoters of foreign or other adversarial entities? Aspen Digital is convening Platform Trust and Safety leaders, cybersecurity reporters, journalism ethicists and First Amendment attorneys to develop and adopt new norms guidelines for publication and coverage of hacked documents.

  Note that the Aspen Institute is not just a think tank. It’s where the elites’ 2020 discussion over moderation of hacked content was happening.

  Now consider what “promoters of foreign or other adversarial entities” means? The only other adversarial entity that isn’t foreign is … domestic. Can you trust, given what’s above, that this designation — “other adversarial entities” — is reserved just for Proud Boy types?

  About this, Matt Taibbi writes (emphasis mine):

  First of all, this notion that there may be fabrications mixed in with real content is a suggestion that pops up somewhere in nearly every one of these leak stories, even if all the material proves to be real (old friend Malcolm Nance did the job in 2016 in suggesting the Podesta leaks were “riddled with forgeries”). More importantly however, that last line is a great example of what former cybersecurity official and Foundation for Freedom Online head Mike Benz calls the “foreign-domestic switcheroo.”

  It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets. You can see the subtlety: the original Stanford piece tries to stick to railing against “disinformation” and information from “foreign adversaries,” but the later paper circulated by Aspen slips in, ever so slightly, a new category of dubious source: “foreign or other adversarial entities.”

  These rhetorical devices are essential. It would be preposterous to form (as Stanford did) an “Information Warfare Working Group” if readers knew the “war” being contemplated was against domestic voices. … But if you start by focusing on Russians and only later mention as an afterthought “other adversarial entities,” you can frame things however you want, from espionage to warfare. As reader O’Neill correctly pointed out, “they are now getting close to being explicit about the fact that their motivation for suppressing news is to fight domestic political adversaries.”

  You don’t have to be a lover of these sources to hate what’s you’ve just found out. And I think it’s reasonable to fear, even if you fear Trump more than God herself, what our security agencies do with domestic power.

  Regime Change

  The last stone dropped in the pond is the oldest one. Before most of you were born, the halls of power fully understood that our security agencies, birthed in the Soviet threat, were fully capable — even tasked with the job — of making sure the global world was a safe American playground.

  The list of American-led coups in other countries is long as your leg and both arms. Start here to see most of it. Do these agencies act domestically as they do abroad? The FBI sure does. But what about the CIA and the rest of the alphabet community?

  Here’s what Robert Kennedy, the man who was murdered on his way to the 1968 nomination, thought of the murder that felled his brother Jack in 1963 (via The Hill, emphasis mine):

  [Robert] Kennedy Jr. said the first call his father, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, made after learning his uncle had been shot was to a CIA desk officer.

  “My father said to him, ‘Did your people do this?’” Kennedy Jr. told Fox News’s “Hannity” on Monday. 

  “His next call was to [Enrique Ruiz-Williams], who was one of the Cuban Bay of Pigs leaders who had remained very, very close to our family and to my father,” he continued. “My father asked him the same question.”

  Kennedy Jr. said his father then called John McCone, the head of the CIA, and asked him to come to the family’s house.

  “When I came home [from] Sidwell Friends School, my father was walking in the yard with John McCone, and my father was posing the same question to him, ‘Was it our people who did this to my brother?’” he said. “It was my father’s first instinct that the agency had killed his brother.”

  The Hill later tags this story as a “conspiracy theory,” no doubt to distance itself from both charge and source. But the underlying report is nonetheless true, or RFK Jr. is lying.

  Ripples In the Pond

  What do these data points sum to? I’ll leave it to you. If you love the FBI as some today do, would you love them still if they thought their remit included squelching you and your kind, not just Trump and his, using control of media as their tool?

  As I’ve said before, it’s appropriate to fear what a Trump, or worse, a DeSantis — who unlike Trump, who loves adoration and cash, truly loves power — would do if power were given them.

  Is it therefore not also appropriate to fear these agencies?

  After all, their goals won’t always align with what’s broadly called “the left.” Their goals have never aligned with ours in the past. And unlike Republicans, who are only halfway to their goal, these agencies have power now, and practice using it.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 18:20

• G7 Day 1: Leaders Lecture Russia, China On Nuclear De-escalation While Standing In City Nuked By US
  G7 Day 1: Leaders Lecture Russia, China On Nuclear De-escalation While Standing In City Nuked By US

  Russia and the Ukraine war are of course high on the agenda for G7 leaders meeting in Hiroshima, Japan starting Friday. Given the venue, the summit kicked off Friday morning with the heads of state laying wreaths at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in commemoration of tens of thousands killed when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 6, 1945.

  Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida welcomed the leaders from the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and United Kingdom for the meeting which is being held May 19 -21. EU officials are also present. Speaking from a city which was literally nuked, the G7 leaders called for a “world without nuclear weapons”… but this was aimed only a certain nations, given the statement singles out Russia, Iran, China and North Korea to embrace non-proliferation. The irony was lost on the Western officials, apparently.

  

  The G7 leaders blasted Moscow’s plans to send nuclear weapons to Belarus as “dangerous and unacceptable” and urged for the reimplementation of conformity to the terms of the New START treaty. And on China, the G7 statement said: “China’s accelerating build-up of its nuclear arsenal without transparency nor meaningful dialogue poses a concern to global and regional stability.”

  The leaders further said that support of Ukraine is crucial to global stability and peace, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying “We have once again assured that we will give Ukraine the necessary support for as long as that is required” – in a press briefing on the first day.

  Concerning Russia, the US took the opportunity to unveil expanded sanctions: 

  The Biden administration has added 71 companies to a trade blacklist for supporting Russia.

  The US Department of Commerce’s action targets support for Russia’s military and expands the scope of export controls on Russia and Belarus. The blacklist includes 69 Russian entities, one from Armenia and one from Kyrgyzstan.

  The new export controls target oil and gas projects in Russia and Belarus, Commerce said. Other companies include aircraft repair and parts production plants, gunpowder, tractor and car factories, shipyards and engineering centres in Russia.

  And this amid reports commenting on the ‘success’ on the Russian oil price cap…

  “Following the implementation of the price cap policy, Russia’s oil revenues have fallen substantially compared to both pre-war levels and the elevated level at the onset of the war,” the Treasury said in a fresh report. “Despite selling a consistent volume of oil, Russia makes far less revenue on each barrel because its oil now trades at a significant discount relative to Brent crude, the global benchmark oil price,” the report emphasized.

  

  President Biden on the first day had this key announcement to G7 allies concerning what’s highest on Kiev’s “weapons shopping list”: 

  President Joe Biden informed G7 leaders on Friday that the US will support a joint effort with allies and partners to train Ukrainian pilots on fourth generation aircraft, including F-16s, a senior administration official tells CNN.

  The training is not expected to happen in the US, the official said, and will likely happen entirely in Europe. But US personnel will participate in the training alongside allies and partners in Europe, the official said. It is expected to take several months to complete.

  “As the training takes place over the coming months, our coalition of countries participating in this effort will decide when to actually provide jets, how many we will provide, and who will provide them,” the official said.

  There’s been talk among Western allies of forming a ‘fighter jet coalition’ – which Zelensky has been pushing for. The Ukrainian leader is expected to travel to Japan in order to address G7 leaders in person. On Friday he addressed the Arab League summit meeting in Saudi Arabia, and further met face-to-face with crown prince MbS. 

  Protests in the city which the United States nuked in WWII…

  Protests in Hiroshima against US🇺🇸 President Joe Biden’s visit for the G7 Summit. Biden refuses to apologise for the US using a nuclear bomb on the city in 1945, which killed 140,000 people. After the bombing, the US covered up the effects of radiation on the population by… pic.twitter.com/usauojFtEZ

  — Going Underground (@GUnderground_TV) May 19, 2023

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

  Most estimates put the number of Japanese civilians killed by the Hiroshima nuclear bomb dropped from an American plane at 70,000 or more killed. According to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

  Such numbers were large, and appear to have had a sobering effect on President Harry S. Truman. After the August 9 Nagasaki raid (which he had no apparent foreknowledge of), he would put a stop to further bombing, telling his cabinet that “the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible,” according to an August 10, 1945, diary entry by then-Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace. It is not clear that Truman had any real sense of how many casualties there would have been prior to the attacks. The only pre-Hiroshima estimate on record is the recollection from Arthur Compton that at a May 31, 1945, meeting of the Interim Committee, J. Robert Oppenheimer had suggested that an atomic bomb dropped would kill “some 20,000 people” if exploded over a city. This is not recorded in the meeting minutes, nor in any other report or correspondence, so it does not seem that this estimate had any special weight to the participants. (Compton amended that this estimate had assumed people would seek shelter; given that no warning was issued for the attacks, this did not occur.)

  Oppenheimer would comment obliquely on this variance in before-and-after estimates during the hearing on his security clearance in 1954:

  

  Meanwhile, Rabobank comments as follows on what can be expected concerning ‘punishing’ Russia at the G7, also as the escalatory idea of an outright export ban is still floating around…

  “There appears to be a strong commitment by the G7 to support Ukraine and tighten the economic noose on Russia. Sanctions will be broadened to a wider group of goods, especially those that could facilitate Russia’s war effort. According to Bloomberg, the latest draft of a statement does not talk about a near outright ban on exports to Russia, though.”

  “Meanwhile, existing sanctions will be tightened by removing loopholes to circumvent them. This would include the strengthening of enforcement in regards to third countries through which Russia is importing banned goods. One key risk here is that the G7 (plus ‘coalition of the willing’) drive a wider gap between them and those countries that have taken on a more ‘neutral’ stance in the matter.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 18:00

• Reps. Jim Jordan, Mike Turner Threaten To Subpoena CIA In Hunter Biden Laptop Investigation
  Reps. Jim Jordan, Mike Turner Threaten To Subpoena CIA In Hunter Biden Laptop Investigation

  Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) are threatening to subpoena the CIA to force it to address claims of its involvement in an intelligence community letter to discredit reports on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

  

  Last week, the two Republican-controlled House committees published a report alleging the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) reviewed and approved an October 2020 letter by 51 former U.S. intelligence community officials, which alleged reports about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The Republican report also alleged a PCRB employee may have recruited signatories for the letter discrediting the negative reporting about Hunter Biden and his father, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

  The laptop materials, which were first reported by the New York Post, indicated Joe Biden knew about his son’s foreign business dealings despite having denied such knowledge throughout the 2020 election cycle.

  Jordan and Turner sent a letter (pdf) to CIA Director William Burns on Wednesday, requesting that the agency turn over additional documents relating to its involvement in the October 2020 intelligence community letter. The Republican chairmen threatened to use their subpoena power to compel the intelligence agency to divulge its records.

  PCRB’s Role in Intel Community Letter

  According to the May 10 Republican report (pdf), former CIA officials played an active role in recruiting signatories for the letter discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop reports.

  The report alleges U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was working for the Biden campaign at the time, reached out to former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell on Oct. 17, 2020, to discuss the intelligence community letter. Morell, an Obama-era CIA official, was quick to agree to the plan and actively recruited other signatories.

  On Oct. 19, 2020, two days after discussing the letter with Blinken, Morell sent a final draft of the letter to the PCRB for review. Morell told the CIA board “[t]his is a rush job, as it need to get out as soon as possible.” According to the Republican report, the signatories hoped to give then-candidate Joe Biden a “talking point” to defend against the Hunter Biden laptop reporting during his final presidential debate with Donald Trump on Oct. 22, 2020.

  The PCRB’s sole function is to make sure current and former CIA employees aren’t disclosing classified information in any materials they may release publicly. The board, therefore, has an influential role over current and former agency employees who may be pursuing potentially lucrative book deals about their time working for America’s premier spy agency.

  One such signatory, former CIA analyst David Cariens, told congressional investigators that his book was up for consideration by the PCRB at the time Morell and other former intelligence community officials were looking for people to sign their letter. Cariens told investigators that a CIA employee affiliated with the PCRB informed him of the intelligence community letter and asked if he would sign it. Cariens said “the person in charge of reviewing the book” called to tell him that it had been approved without any changes required and then told him about the letter.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/19/2023 – 17:40

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