Sep 20

Today’s News 20th September 2023

  • Syrian President Assad Heads To China For 1st Official Visit Since 2004
    Syrian President Assad Heads To China For 1st Official Visit Since 2004

    Via The Cradle,

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will travel to China on September 21 to participate in a Syrian-Chinese summit at the official invitation of his counterpart Xi Jinping. According to Syrian state media, Assad will lead a high-level political and economic delegation for official meetings in the cities of Beijing and Guangzhou.

    Syria’s official delegation will include Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and Finance Minister Samer al-Khalil. This will mark Assad’s first official visit to Beijing since 2004.

    Via Enab Baladi

    Analysts expect several bilateral agreements to be signed during Assad’s visit as part of China’s larger strategy to cement its position as a power broker in West Asia.

    Beijing has already proved instrumental once this year in helping Syria come in from the cold after Chinese officials brokered the historic Iran-Saudi rapprochement that also saw a normalization of ties between Gulf states and Damascus.

    In the weeks that followed the Saudi-Iran deal, Syria was also welcomed back into the Arab League, a development which China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called evidence that “when the shadow of the US shrinks, the light of peace spreads.”

    In March, Chinese officials urged the US to end its illegal military occupation of Syria and stop looting its resources, stressing that its continued presence has worsened Syria’s humanitarian crisis.

    “China has throughout the years defended Syria’s territorial integrity and many times used its veto power at the UN Security Council to prevent interventions in the Arab country’s internal affairs,” Kosai Abido, a Syrian political analyst and author, told Press TV this week.

    “Since China is considered a friendly state for Syria and has significant economic power, cooperation agreements with this country should be expanded to include food, pharmaceutical, and technology sectors,” Abido added.

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    Last year, Chinese and Syrian officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) welcoming Damascus into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a mega-infrastructure project that seeks to bring capital and infrastructure to Global South countries while dramatically strengthening connectivity for commerce, finance, and culture.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/20/2023 – 02:00

  • Competition Is Demonized, Participation Trophies An Acceptable Norm? Not In This Man's World
    Competition Is Demonized, Participation Trophies An Acceptable Norm? Not In This Man’s World

    Authored by Frank Bill via SOFREP,

    Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.  -Bruce Lee

    Over the past several years, a trend has emerged to label anything that deals with men, exercise, and masculinity as toxic.

    In July of 2023, MSNBC reshared a year-old-tweet by extremism expert Cynthia Miller-Idrissthat she penned in March of 2022, sounding the alarm that young men were being radicalized and recruited through encrypted chat groups, they’re ‘lured with health tips and strategies for positive physical changes.’ Researchers reported this as “fascist fitness.”

    (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/06/fascist-fitness-how-the-far-right-is-recruiting-with-online-gym-groups)

    (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/pandemic-fitness-trends-have-gone-extreme-literally-n1292463)

    The author goes on to mention that physical fitness has always been central to the far right, referencing Mein Kampf and Hitler’s fixation with boxing and jujitsu. The author goes on to claim that far-right groups are setting up mixed martial arts and boxing gyms in Ukraine, Canada, and France.

    Mrs. Cynthia Miller-Idriss speaks of extremism and fitness as it connects to an obsession with the male body, training, masculinity, testosterone, strength, and competition. She talks of how combat sports are appealing to the far right because fighters are trained to accept physical pain, become warriors, and embrace solidarity, heroism, and brotherhood. I’m guessing she thinks that when a person, male or female, joins a CrossFit gym, a powerlifting gym, boxing, Muay Thai gym, or jujitsu school, a community from all walks of life, the bonds and confidence they build there is supposed to be a form of extremism.

    She sums this up by going full-on crazy Charles-Manson-Helter-Skelter, saying, “It’s championed as a tool to help fight the ‘coming race war’ and the battles that will proceed it.”

    Hard men learn to do hard things. Suck it up. SOFREP original illustration.

    The author’s article delivered backlash from the likes of Podcaster Joe Rogan, an avid strength trainer and jujitsu practitioner who tweeted, ‘Being healthy is “far right.” Holy fuck. Then, the comment section exploded.

    Considering I’ve never been an avid gym member (I go to the local gym when I’m on vacation), but I’ve had a home gym, been strength training with Olympic weights and body weight calisthenics all of my life since age 11, as a kid I looked up to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Reg Park, Clint Eastwood, and Sylvester Stallone. I grew up on the pugilism of pro boxing, being motivated by everyone from Jack Johnson, James Braddock, Muhammad Ali, to Arturo Gatti. That doesn’t include my training in Martial Arts from age 12 until my mid-30s. Being influenced by men like Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Jackie Chan. Men who overcame adversity through their chosen training. Why? One might ask, because fitness requires effort, goal setting, discipline, and a resilience of self. These guys didn’t get participation trophies. They earned their way in life while overlooking negativity.

    Stand back, or you could be splattered with testosterone. SOFREP original illustration.

    Does that make me a racist? No, it does not. I’ve taught, studied, and trained in many disciplines throughout my life, including Korean Tae Known Do, Traditional Chinese Kung Fu, Western and Eastern Boxing, Brazilian Jujitsu, and Jeet Kune Do with all creeds and colors of people.

    White supremacy was never part of the curriculum. Community, bonding, and hard work were front and center.

    Fitness is the single most important daily endeavor that a person can embark upon. Movement molds a person into a better person. Creates discipline. Promotes health, mental and physical.

    Examples from influencers/authors/podcasters such as Jocko Willink, Joe Rogan, Cameron Hanes, Mike Rowe, Joe DeSena, and David Goggins, though sometimes extreme, promote leadership, positivity, and goodwill. And no-nonsense motivation to be a little better each and every day. And they give back to their community.

    Discussing what society has lost with retired Strength and Conditioning Coach Jim Steel from the University of PA, we narrowed it down to the simplistic: people have gotten away from the rewards of hard work. A stronger mind, a stronger body, and a positive attitude. In other words, society no longer realizes our country wouldn’t be where it is without overcoming negativity and putting in the hard work to create better men. Men who built roads, bridges, and infrastructure. Farmed land to produce food. Fought in wars. Battled racism. Every person who succeeds in life has had obstacles to overcome to get to where they’re at.

    Sadly, in this day and age, we’re the one country that can complain and criticize how free we are. And about the men who fought for this freedom.

    Why not consider this? Another friend, Strength and Conditioning coach Zach Even-Esh, writes a daily newsletter. They’re informative and inspirational; one of the issues he’s encountered over the past 10-plus years when training younger athletes is the average teenager can’t do 10 pull-ups or push-ups. As a people, we’re letting our kids proceed backward.

    Competition is demonized. Victimhood and participation trophies have become the acceptable norm, and kids have become weaker.

    This carries over to becoming an adult. Testosterone levels in men have declined. Gen Z and millennials have lower testosterone when compared to their predecessors. Declining about 1% per year since 1980. Why is this? Many factors. Eating too much processed/junk food (fast food, chips, soda, white sugar). Stress from jobs that require less movement than in the past, like sitting behind a desk and staring at a monitor for hours on end. Mental health issues. Tight underwear. Not smoking (nicotine raises T; I don’t condone smoking). Not getting enough sleep. Oh, and men don’t get enough movement throughout their day. They don’t exercise. And guess what could curb or even eliminate all of these issues and raise men’s testosterone: exercise. Lifting weights, calisthenics, or bodyweight movements. Getting outdoors and getting your Vitamin D from sunlight, from daily walks, sprints, or push mowing your lawn. Getting eight hours of sleep. And eating real food.

    (https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-the-man-your-father-was/?sh=65be5dcc8b7f)

    Look, men have egos, and they have testosterone; that’s what makes us men. But in this day and age, we’re constantly being labeled as toxic. No wonder there’s a decline in testosterone. It’s the pampering of culture, the removal of hard work and grit. Doing hard things.

    To paraphrase JFK, “We chose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” SOFREP original illustration.

    Growing up in a blue-collar family, my father was constantly helping his in-laws on their farm, providing for my mother and me but also for his mother and his community of friends. He served in the Vietnam War as a Combat Engineer. He worked three jobs and took care of our home, and he was humble.

    We’ve simplified life and removed effort and dedication. Commitment. Discipline. Work ethic. Goals. And most of all, pride. We’ve replaced it with excuses and weakness.

    My advice to young men, stay off of social media and turn your phone off. Start journaling. Set daily goals. Read books. Learn a skill. Help others. Get outdoors. Go walking or hiking daily.

    Lift weights, do bodyweight exercises, or join a gym. Quit making excuses. You’re not a victim.

    Every man who’s succeeded in life did it by working hard and being dedicated. Regardless of how they were treated, shunned, or turned down, they did it by being resilient. It’s called being a man.

    —

    If you are enjoying this piece, why not subscribe to SOFREP + and have access to tons more great content, like this: Lions Led by Political Lambs: Why an Absence of Military Leaders is an Invitation for Enemies

    SOFREP and Frank Bill go together like ribs and BBQ sauce. Click on the links to check out more of his fantastic body of work: The Ravaged, with Norman Reedus; the novels Back to the Dirt (May 2023), The Savage and Donnybrook, the latter of which was turned into a film in 2018; and the story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana, one of GQ’s favorite books of 2011 and a Daily Beast best debut of 2011. – GDM

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/20/2023 – 00:05

  • Cape Cod Residents Outraged At Democratic Governor's Migrant Housing Plan
    Cape Cod Residents Outraged At Democratic Governor’s Migrant Housing Plan

    Earlier this month, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in response to the surging number of migrants in state-managed shelters. Then, last week, the governor mobilized the National Guard to assist with the migrant crisis. Now, residents are outraged with the governor’s decision to house the migrants as Biden’s southern border crisis spreads nationwide. 

    Local newspaper The Bourne Enterprise reports anger spreads across the Cape Cod peninsula as “residents turned out in force to express opposition to the state’s opting to provide temporary housing for migrant families who have been relocated to Massachusetts.” 

    “Protesters outside the building that evening held signs reading “Americans First”; inside, residents at the lectern cited potential board of health regulations, as well as concerns with whether the public school system can accommodate children from the immigrant families,” the paper said. 

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    Dozens of residents attended the Bourne Select Board meeting at the Bourne Veterans Memorial Community Center earlier this month to voice their opposition to Gov. Healey’s plan to transform parts of the Joint Base Cape Cod and local area hotels into migrant shelters. 

    Gov. Healey recently asked US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for help to combat the migrant crisis after her Democratic colleagues in the White House and on Capitol Hill have been determined to undermine Trump-era border policies for open border ones – that have led to millions of illegals pouring into the country over the last several years. 

    The governor has stated, “Massachusetts is in a state of emergency,” and commended the deployment of the National Guard to assist with the migrant crisis. 

    In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams warned in recent weeks that the migrant crisis will “destroy” the metro area. 

    It’s all fun and games for Democrats until Biden’s disastrous open border policies flood progressive metro areas with illegals. 

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    Then these Democrats preach “NIMBY.” 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 23:45

  • Transcending Technopessimism
    Transcending Technopessimism

    Authored by Rachel Lomasky via RealClear Wire,

    The following is a condensed version of “Transcending Technopessimism” by Rachel Lomasky, published at Law & Liberty.

    Technopessimism is reaching a fever pitch, fueled by headlines like, “Meta’s AI internet chatbot starts spewing fake news,” “Self-driving Uber Car Kills Pedestrian in Arizona,” “Artificial Intelligence Has a Racial and Gender Bias Problem.” Artificial Intelligence can be sexist, racist, or just profoundly stupid. The knee-jerk reaction to these sensational headlines is to call for limits and constraints on AI. But we need to pause and realize that to err is both human and AI. Substitute a human for the AI in those headlines, and they become completely mundane. AI misconduct garners great attention, but that’s because human transgressions are taken for granted, not because technology is necessarily worse. In many cases, even the most egregious of AI errors can be audited and corrected. In extreme cases, AIs can be shut down. Society generally frowns on “shutting down” humans whose behavior is stupid or insulting.

    Consider, for example, new NYC legislation that requires AI to be audited for bias before making hiring decisions. Proponents argue AI can be biased against certain classes of applicants. If these biases exist in the training set, it is because human agents have previously been biased. When an algorithm is a jerk, we can fix it, e.g. by changing the training data, and we can confirm that it is fixed before deploying into the wild. It’s very difficult to determine whether human biases have been remediated, especially given how deeply rooted they can be.

    Similarly, people worry about a lack of transparency behind AI’s recommendations. Indeed, the best performing algorithms often offer little clarity in decision-making. But even black-box algorithms are extremely clear when compared to the mushy black boxes inside humans. Introspection illusion, a field of psychology, explains why humans are so bad at explaining their decision-making logic. On the other hand, suites of tools explain AI results, even for nontransparent algorithms. Given a resume, the AI response is deterministic. The same is rarely true of a human, who may not even respond consistently over a single day.

    Manipulation by the social media algorithms is another popular source of apprehension. Social media platforms maximize the time that users spend on the platform by providing them content that interests them. Judgmental people argue that we should not want that content. However, these platforms are just the latest iteration of advertising manipulating us. Humans have manipulated other humans since time out of mind. Social media manipulates, but perhaps even less than forces like family, religion, government, and other media. We have mechanisms in place to try to minimize and mitigate these effects, and we should have similar remediations for AI.

    Many people fear AI can’t understand ethics, regardless of whether it is actually acting ethically. A favorite meme is the Trolley Problem applied to self-driving cars, trying to decide whom to kill in an accident situation. But humans are most likely not applying utilitarianism, duty-based ethics, or any other deep thinking when they’re about to crash. On the contrary, they are thinking, “Holy crap, I’m about to hit that thing! Must swerve!” Or at the very best, “Seems like fewer people to the right.”

    Sometimes the alternative to an AI isn’t a human, but nothing at all. In many cases, AI provides a service that simply couldn’t scale if provided by humans. For example, human translators couldn’t match the functionality of Google Translate. Likewise, humans cannot scan all credit card transactions looking for fraud. Even in areas of psychotherapy, where humans are clearly better equipped to provide the service, AI allows it to scale.

    Often AI technologies are used both for evil and for good. Computer vision is used for surveillance, encroaching on privacy. But it is also employed in wildlife conservation, such as monitoring endangered species and preventing poaching. AI algorithms analyze images, acoustic data, and satellite imagery to identify and track animals, assess population dynamics, and detect illegal activities. We should judge the application, not the tool.

    It can be difficult to put AI transgressions into perspective because people lack a deep technological understanding, and mysterious, complex systems scare people. The problem is exacerbated by sensationalized and deliberate misinformation on the part of Hollywood and the media. These factors lead many to believe the problem could be even worse than the headlines. Additionally, there is Frederic Bastiat’s “Seen vs. Unseen” distinction: A self-driving car hit a pole, but how many accidents by distracted humans would AI cars prevent? A racist AI sent the wrong person to jail, but how many errors are made by judges, some of whom have nefarious motives? Without comparing these AI misdeeds with the human alternatives, the default reaction is to hinder AI. In many cases, this is short-sighted and counterproductive. Our concerns with AI should always be viewed through the lens of comparison to human failings.

    Rachel Lomasky is Chief Data Scientist at Flux, a company that help organizations do responsible AI. Throughout her career, she has helped scientists train and productionalize their machine learning algorithms.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 23:25

  • SBF's Parents Steeped In Democrat Dark Money And 'Illegal' Election Tactics
    SBF’s Parents Steeped In Democrat Dark Money And ‘Illegal’ Election Tactics

    The parents of alleged crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried were involved in Democrat dark money and 2020 election tactics deemed ‘illegal’ by a right-leaning political research firm.

    Barbara Fried and husband Sam Bankman, parents of SBF

    Allan Joseph Bankman and his wife, Barbara Fried (who are currently being sued to claw back some a portion of $26 million to “fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds” as part of FTX’s bankruptcy), have found themselves in the middle of fresh controversy.

    In a Monday lawsuit seeking the clawback, the pair were accused of siphoning off millions in firm funds to benefit their “pet causes,” with Bankman – who says he helped FTX “navigate tax issues,” allegedly “considered having funds made available by Sam through Arabella,” one of the largest dark-wing money advisory groups in the USA, whose board Bankman sat on according to court documents.

    “This meant that Bankman had unfettered access to the FTX Group’s financials and corporate structure — two things that would have alerted him that money was moving between and among the FTX Exchanges, FTX Insiders, and other legal entities,” reads the filing.

    Bankman’s advisory role was revealed in a footnote on P. 19 of the lawsuit.

    Arabella manages major left-wing nonprofit groups which then sponsor entities that pay no tax. The company has come under heightened scrutiny from conservatives over this “dark money” arrangement, the Washington Examiner reports.

    The lawsuit, which seeks to claw back funds Bankman and Fried allegedly “fraudulently transferred and misappropriated,” cites the “New Venture Fund,” which “offered a platform through which FTX.US and its donors could contribute to select charitable causes.”

    Lawyers for Bankman and Fried hit back, saying that “This is a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara and undermine the jury process just days before their child’s trial begins.”

    Illegal election tactics?

    Meanwhile, according to a report from a right-leaning political research firm, Barbara Fried authored a memo in late 2019 that encouraged Democrats to donate to a 501(c)(3) known as The Voter Registration Project or Everybody Votes, the NY Post reports.

    The Stanford professor argued that getting more Democrats registered to vote would be far more effective than simply donating to candidates, and encouraged donors to give 90% of their election contributions to Everybody Votes.

    “Non- partisan voter registration” charities are “4 to 10 times more cost-effective” at “netting additional Democratic votes,” Fried wrote in the memo.

     The charity ended up raising a whopping $190 million, according to recent filings cited by the Capital Research Center.

    Since charities and foundations don’t reveal donations until years after the fact, they are specifically forbidden from operating to benefit a political party, in effect or in intent, according to the author of the report, Parker Thayer.

    Fried also told people to keep quiet about the strategy, which “managed to stay out of the news and as far as we know out of Republicans’ sight-lines,” she wrote. “It will come as no surprise to Republicans—and be of little interest—that yet another organization is trying to fund voter registration in battleground states.

    “But the magnitude of our efforts, the details of targeting, and the names of the organizations we are recommending would be of great interest to them.”

    According to an anonymous longtime GOP fundraiser and strategist, “This is the darkest of dark money.”

    The news comes just days after federal prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried of using $100 million in stolen customer funds for political donations. While there’s no evidence that he gave money to voter registration efforts or that his mother was involved in any wrongdoing, it underscores the impact the entire family had on politics.

    In 2020, Vox reported on the memo from Mind The Gap and the millions the group raised aimed to raise.

    But the new report from Capital Research Center reveals how effective the memo was with Democratic mega donors. Warren Buffett’s charitable foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, donated $5 million to voter registration efforts while George Soros donated $10.4 million, the report adds.

    So many fingers in so many pies…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 23:05

  • The War On Marriage Must End
    The War On Marriage Must End

    Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    I woke up earlier this week to two depressing articles that on the surface seem unrelated but are actually connected.

    (StockSnap/Pixabay)

    They both speak to the existence of a war on marriage in our culture that will destroy the fabric of our country if not dealt with. This is a war that surfaced ideologically in the early years of the Soviet Union in a way oddly similar to a primitive version of our “woke,” but was soon withdrawn as impractical even there.

    Not here.

    This war is now being fought in the USA on a deeper cultural level that could actually be more pernicious and ultimately succeed with monumental societal implications.

    The first of these articles—“The Dating Pool Dropouts” by Olivia Reingold at The Free Press—details the declining number of men even attempting to find a life partner. Marriage itself has been declining for years.

    Ms. Reingold describes a number of reasons for this, adding that “part of it also boils down to this: it’s hard for men to find partners at a moment when women are outpacing them both at school and work. Young women now hold 1.6 million more college degrees than men, and in a growing number of cities, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and New York, they make as much as—or more than—their male counterparts. And even if they become mothers, odds are four in ten will become the breadwinners of their households.”

    And yet we have feminists still yammering on about “equal pay.” Go figure.

    You would also think these now-successful women might enjoy having a working-class man in the house who knows how to fix the plumbing or the electrical, but such is not the behavior of human society, ours anyway. If a man does not have a college degree, the fancier the better, he is filtered out on the dating apps.

    What has evolved from this, according to the article, is pervasive loneliness among the younger generation.

    Ms. Reingold also points out that, statistically, married people are happier. But most of us have known that from simple observation.

    Meanwhile, with the male sex in decline, we have a war on gender—or more accurately, massive, and likely deliberately instigated, gender confusion, making matters worse and putting marriage in further jeopardy.

    He is reporting on a battle in San Bernadino County where a school system is fighting back against the state of California. The state’s attorney general is suing to nullify that system’s ruling that parents must be notified by the school if their under-18 children are attempting to transition.

    Defending the parents is the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit, public-interest litigation center. Good on them.

    This is a portion of the massive struggle going on across the nation, all part of this war against the family that is being fought by the left—that apparently has not learned the lessons of the former Soviet Union to which I referred—on many fronts.

    Disbanding the family in favor of the state is their intention. It is also another step toward globalism.

    The tragedy is that it is also a road to serious human unhappiness.

    When Klaus Schwab said, “You will have nothing and you will be happy,” he was also, by inference, implying the dissolution of the family. You don’t need a spouse. You have the World Economic Forum (WEF), or what flows from it, to take care of you.

    If you recognize in this elements of Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, children denouncing their parents, you are not mistaken. It’s close to happening here, indeed probably already has in isolated instances.

    Not inconsequentially, I have also been reading Dennis Prager’s “Rational Bible”—at the moment the volume on Exodus—so it contains lengthy discussion of the Ten Commandments.

    I know I sound almost like an idiot for doing so, but I recommend, particularly, in these times with the family in jeopardy, the Fifth Commandment:

    “Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 22:45

  • Red State Pharmacists Use 'Religious' Loophole To Deny Patients Ivermectin: Doctor
    Red State Pharmacists Use ‘Religious’ Loophole To Deny Patients Ivermectin: Doctor

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

    Doctors claim a law created to protect pro-life workers from going against their religious beliefs is being employed by pharmacists to deny patients access to ivermectin.

    “Right to refuse” laws initially enacted in many states to shield pro-life pharmacists from being forced to violate religious convictions are used by pharmacists as legal cover for denying patients COVID-19 treatments that they find objectionable, according to a medical expert.

    In Texas, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a practitioner and founder of Coalition of Health Freedom, told The Epoch Times that the law, along with greater discretion granted to pharmacists during the pandemic, has become a roadblock in ensuring her patients receive the care needed, especially when it comes to prescribing ivermectin off-label to treat COVID-19.

    “I can’t imagine how anyone can claim a religious or moral belief in denying my patients access to ivermectin, but that appears to be exactly how they are able to legally do this,” said Dr. Bowden. “It makes no sense and creates significant delays in getting patients access to the medications they need.”

    (Courtesy of Mary Talley Bowden)

    In Texas, pharmacists are allowed wide discretion under House Bill 2561, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in September 2017. The law permits pharmacy workers the right to refuse to fill a patient’s prescriptions for moral and religious reasons, with the text of the bill specifying “freedom of speech regarding a sincerely held religious belief.”

    Dr. Bowden said that in recent years, many pharmacists have anointed themselves as medication gatekeeper in deciding which drugs may or may not be prescribed. As a result, doctors are having to invest increasing amounts of time and resources toward finding ways to get prescriptions filled that would be better directed toward patient care, according to Dr. Bowden.

    “I never had an issue before COVID. Now it’s an everyday issue I have to deal with as a doctor, and it’s just draining,” said Dr. Bowden.

    What have become known as “right to refuse” laws vary by state. Six states—Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, and South Dakota—have laws or regulations that specifically allow pharmacies or pharmacists to refuse to honor prescriptions for religious or moral reasons, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Seven other states—Alabama, Delaware, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas—allow them to refuse a prescription but prohibit pharmacists from obstructing patient access to medication.

    Further, most state practice codes allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription if, in their judgment, the validity of the medicine is in question, abuse of a drug is suspected, or to protect the health and welfare of the patient. However, pharmacists expanded the scope of their discretion during the pandemic, according to Dr. Bowden.

    ‘We Need an Intervention’

    Ivermectin has been around for decades but became the center of controversy in 2020 after medical opinion became divided over its effectiveness as a treatment for COVID-19. In the aftermath, many pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions for the medication.

    By 2023, the issue had made its way into a courtroom in a case brought by Dr. Bowden and other medical professionals when, on Aug. 8, a lawyer representing the FDA confirmed that doctors were free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

    “FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

    Despite statements from the FDA affirming that right to doctors, Dr. Bowden says many pharmacists nationwide are still refusing to fill prescriptions issued for ivermectin issued to patients for the treatment of COVID-19.

    In most cases, according to Dr. Bowden, individual pharmacists aren’t the ones to blame and are often only carrying out orders from corporate leadership. However, she claims to have also seen examples where pharmacists prevented her patients from getting their medication as a result of their own “personal agenda.”

    Dr. Bowden believes the only way absent of new legislation ensuring a patient’s right to the fulfillment of the prescription written by their health care expert is for people to keep putting pressure on the pharmacies to leave the practicing of medicine to the doctors.

    “Consumers can fight back, but there is going to be a price to pay in terms of time and money,” said Dr. Bowden. “Whether that means boycotting pharmacies that refuse to fill your prescriptions, and having to travel further to a different pharmacy, or pushing for new legislation to protect patient rights, there is no easy solution.

    “But it is clear that we need an intervention of some kind, and soon.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 22:05

  • Consumer Revolt? Survey Reveals Many Plan To Spend Less As Shopping Season Approaches 
    Consumer Revolt? Survey Reveals Many Plan To Spend Less As Shopping Season Approaches 

    Several major retailers have already raised concerns about a downturn in consumer spending that may persist through the crucial holiday shopping season. Many mid to low-tier consumers are stretched thin in the era of ‘Bidenomics,’ grappling with rising credit card debt, diminished savings, and steep interest rates. Additionally, tens of millions of consumers are resuming their student loan payments this month. These factors are headwinds that may spark a growth scare narrative. 

    Online review platform Trustpilot published a new survey of 2,000 consumers, finding that many have less disposable income than in previous years. However, some respondents are finding ways to leverage up to fund purchases: 

    • Today’s economic crisis is undoubtedly contributing to consumer stress levels this year with 1 in 3 considering going into credit card debt to purchase holiday gifts this year. 

    • This is followed by 41 percent considering Buy Now Pay Later services, while another 2 in 5 would cut down on essential expenses such as food and gas to afford their gift purchases. 

    • 34 percent would look at dipping into their savings, and 1 in 3 would consider starting a side hustle to offset the costs.

    Bad news for major retailers, Trustpilot revealed:

    • 41 percent are considering opting out of purchasing physical gifts that require wrapping and going digital for gifts. 

    • 38 percent are saying no to white elephant gift exchanges and Secret Santa, 38 percent are skipping gatherings that require travel, and 34 percent are ditching family gatherings altogether.

    The survey further showed more alarming news: 

    “That said, on average, Americans who shopped during the 2022 holiday season intend to spend 39 percent less this year, and cost is driving purchasing decisions.” 

    The planned reduction in holiday spending was blamed mostly on the multi-year inflation storm:

    “Respondents noted an increase in price of items (43 percent) and shipping costs (42 percent) would prevent them from shopping with a business this holiday season. In fact, if delivery prices were to increase, 64 percent would reduce their overall spending to offset the cost, 64 percent would only shop in-store, and 60 percent would only shop with businesses that offer free shipping.”

    “People are financially struggling in today’s economy, which is only heightened during the holidays,” Mieke De Schepper, Chief Commercial Officer at Trustpilot, wrote in the report. 

    The survey comes as we determined in a recent consumer credit report that “US consumer had finally tapped out.” And we also noted it’s extraordinarily rare for consumers to be in this worse shape… 

    Plus, add the restart of student loan payments this month that will curb household spending by upwards of $15.8 billion per month – or $190 billion per year. 

    Corporate America panicked about “student loans” this past earning season as chatter on earnings calls soared to the highest level ever. 

    These mounting headwinds for consumers are why Macy’s only plans to hire 38,000 full and part-time workers this holiday season – much fewer than last year and the lowest number since 2008. Meanwhile, Nordstrom recently warned about a slowdown in consumer spending. Remember weeks ago when Walmart slashed pay for new hires? All of this suggests the economic downturn has arrived. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 21:45

  • Voter Registration Charities: A Massive, Overlooked Scandal
    Voter Registration Charities: A Massive, Overlooked Scandal

    Authored by Parker Thayer via RealClear Wire,

    “Nonprofit voter registration” doesn’t sound interesting. Yet nonprofit voter registration, or the use of tax-exempt charitable organizations to conduct and fund voter registration drives, is one of the most important and underreported political scandals of our time.

    Nonprofit voter registration, and the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) activities that usually accompany it, have become the heart of a billion-dollar industry in America. According to Candid’s Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy database, since 2011 nearly 60,000 grants have been made for “Voter Education, Registration, and Turnout” and “Civic Participation,” benefitting 15,000 different organizations to the tune of $5.9 billion dollars.

    Most of the largest grantors and grantees in this industry are left-leaning. Despite IRS rules prohibiting 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit groups from engaging in partisan electioneering, it has long been an open secret that the purpose of their work is to register voters from favorable demographics in order to help get Democrats elected. The voter registration industry has always retreated behind the fig-leaf of “nonpartisanship” when necessary, which has protected it from serious scrutiny..

    Until now, that is. My recent special report, How Charities Secretly Help Win Elections, ripped away that fig-leaf. The report reveals the untold story of a nondescript charity named the “Voter Registration Project” that was used to funnel over $100 million into a five-year voter registration scheme hatched by Clinton campaign operatives to help Democrats win elections in 2020. Using tax forms, leaked documents, and leaked emails, the report shows how the scheme aimed to register over 5 million “non-white” voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada; how it was developed through multiple drafts and edits into a highly sophisticated plan dubbed the Everybody Votes Campaign; and how that plan was eventually adopted by a super PAC tied to Sam Bankman-Fried that instructed billionaire donors to keep it completely secret since it was the most “cost-effective” method for “netting additional Democratic votes.”

    The report even shows several of the plan’s major donors admitting, in signed tax forms, that their “charitable” grants to the Voter Registration Project were made for the express purpose of supporting the super PAC that had recommended it to them. It was the largest, most organized, and most blatantly partisan nonprofit voter registration drive in American history. By our estimates it generated between 1 and 2.7 million swing-state votes for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

    Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Americans are expected to believe the excuse, given on the Everybody Votes Campaign’s new website, that their left-wing donors are merely “committed to creating a more representative democracy by building and supporting large-scale, long-term voter registration in communities of color.” Their website notably boasts that 76% of the 5.1 million voters they have registered were people of color, but then curiously declines to mention which states said people of color were from. A recent job listing from the organization shows that their targets states for 2024 will be Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

    That’s right, the donors and directors of the Everybody Votes Campaign care deeply about the civic participation of “communities of color.” So deeply, in fact, that they have been, and will be, registering millions of minority voters, but only in the most important presidential swing states. No room for California and New York (two of America’s most populous states) nor Mississippi and Louisiana (which have the highest Black population by percentage).

    It should be obvious to anyone who looks a little deeper than the mission statement that “Everybody Votes” is more than a little bit of a misnomer.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 21:25

  • No Big Deal: Newsom Defends Hunter Biden Influence Peddling Scheme
    No Big Deal: Newsom Defends Hunter Biden Influence Peddling Scheme

    On today’s episode of Damage Control Theatre…

    California Governor Gavin Newsom, who will undoubtedly be decanted if and when Joe Biden can’t manage to mount a 2024 campaign, says that Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling scheme – in which prominent foreign businessmen, including the “fucking spy chief of China,” paid the Biden family millions to affect US policy while Joe was VP – is no big deal.

    “One of the things that Republicans are relentless on, of course, is Hunter Biden,” CNN host Dana Bash asked Newsom, adding. “There is no evidence that Joe Biden benefited from anything that Hunter was doing, but Republicans have shown that Hunter Biden – he tried to leverage his father’s name, and that the president allegedly before he was president joined phone calls that Hunter Biden’s business associates were on. Do you see anything inappropriate there?”

    To which Newsom, whose career was undoubtedly helped by his family’s connections with the Pelosis, replied: “I don’t know enough about the details of that. I mean I’ve seen a little of that,” adding “If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries – not just in politics – where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect. That’s hardly unique.”

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    “I don’t love that any more than you love it or other people I imagine love that. We want to see a lot less of that, but an impeachment inquiry? Give me a break,” he continued according to Fox News.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom justified Hunter Biden’s business dealings in an interview with CNN. (John Nacion/WireImage)

    “Threatening a government shutdown again after we went through that process with the debt ceiling. This is student government,” he added. “This is a joke. Ready, fire, aim. I mean, this is a perversity that the founding fathers never conceived of and imagined. So, if that’s the best they can do, give me a break. That’s about public opinion.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 21:05

  • Sperry: Did Hunter Biden Lie In His Own Memoir To 'Protect The Family'?
    Sperry: Did Hunter Biden Lie In His Own Memoir To ‘Protect The Family’?

    Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClear Wire,

    In a raft of glowing reviews, Hunter Biden’s 2019 memoir “Beautiful Things” was celebrated as an “unflinchingly honest” (Entertainment Weekly), “confession and an act of contrition” (Guardian), that was “candid” and “doesn’t hold back details” (New York Times) of his substance abuse and broken relationships.  

    While describing the book as an “unvarnished confessional,” the Washington Post exalted it as a “harrowing, relentless and a determined exercise in trying to seize his own narrative from the clutches of the Republicans and the press. 

    In the years since, testimony from a former business partner, Devon Archer, and newly disclosed emails indicate that the president’s son’s memoir was an exercise in spin rather than truth-telling, especially concerning his father’s role in his foreign business dealings, which are now the subject of a House impeachment inquiry. That evidence shows how the Bidens used the memoir to create a politically charged narrative – one largely embraced by the mainstream media – that distorted the truth to protect the family.  

    On page 118, for example, Hunter writes that after accompanying then-Vice President Joe Biden to China on Air Force Two in 2013, he merely introduced his father to a well-connected Chinese investor. It was a quick greeting that lasted just long enough for a handshake. “While we were in Beijing, Dad met one of Devon’s Chinese partners, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the American delegation’s hotel, just long enough to say hello and shake hands,” Hunter wrote. “Li and I then headed off for a cup of coffee.” 

    The account seems to comport with now-President Biden’s repeated denials that he discussed business with his son or had any substantive involvement with his partners. 

    However, Archer told a different story to U.S. lawmakers during a deposition earlier this year. “Jonathan Li and [Vice] President Biden had coffee,” Archer said, according to a recently released transcript of his interview with the House Oversight Committee. “They had coffee in Beijing,” he recalled, suggesting there may have been talk about their business relationship.

    Li would later offer Hunter a 10% stake worth potentially millions in a Chinese investment fund controlled by the state Bank of China. The fund, BHR Partners, is based in Beijing. 

    Archer’s testimony included other details ignored or distorted in the memoir. He said the vice president called Hunter while he was meeting with Li in Paris, and Hunter put his father on speakerphone so he could join their conversation. And in early January 2017, while Biden was still in the White House, Hunter arranged for his father to write letters of recommendation for Li’s son and daughter to Ivy League colleges. 

    Before committee lawyers began questioning Archer during the July 31 closed-door hearing, they warned him that providing false testimony could subject him to criminal prosecution for perjury. Hunter, in contrast, was under no such legal peril while writing his manuscript.

    The same Oversight panel that quizzed Archer will now lead a formal impeachment inquiry, announced this month by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to investigate whether Biden used his office to enrich his family. Investigators are weighing subpoenaing Hunter Biden, which makes examining his claims in his memoir highly instructive as to his and his father’s credibility. They’re also tracing millions of dollars wired from China into a maze of accounts that ended up in the hands of Hunter and several other Biden family members, belying claims by the president that Hunter received no money from China. 

    Hunter also raked in millions from Ukraine while his father was “point man” for Ukraine policy as vice president. 

    Hunter addresses the controversy in the sixth chapter of “Beautiful Things,” describing the allegation that he traded on his father’s influence in Ukraine to land an unusually lucrative five-year stint on the board of the corrupt Ukraine energy giant Burisma Holdings as “the decade’s biggest political fable.” 

    He insisted neither he nor his father, who as vice president husbanded Ukraine’s new regime, did anything criminal or corrupt. “There is, in short, no there here,” Biden wrote. 

    Hunter then explained how he came to serve on the Burisma board, raking in $83,000 a month despite having no experience in the energy sector. Biden claimed that Archer, his international consultancy partner, brought Burisma into their business orbit after first meeting Burisma’s founder in Kyiv. 

    “During one such trip to Kyiv, he met Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner and president of Burisma,” Biden said. “After returning from Kyiv, Devon told me about his talk with Zlochevsky.” 

    But Archer, who served on the Burisma board alongside Biden, relayed a different account to Congress, testifying he first met the Russian-tied Ukrainian oligarch in Moscow, not Kyiv. 

    In fact, Archer said he sat down with Zlochevsky in the Russian capital on the same day that Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. “It was just me meeting [with him],” Archer added. Within days, Burisma asked him to join the board. And Hunter Biden came aboard shortly thereafter. 

    Archer’s disclosure that their relationship with Burisma was hatched in Moscow is at odds with the political narrative President Biden has carefully crafted, demonizing Russia as Enemy No. 1 of America and NATO. Hunter’s telling of the genesis, with the initial meeting with Zlochevsky taking place in Ukraine’s capital, is far more palatable. 

    Hunter wrote that he only agreed to accept Zlochevsky’s offer in order to enable Ukraine to strengthen its energy independence from Russia. He said the prospect of helping build a “bulwark” against Russian oil and gas imports assuaged “whatever dissonance I might have felt between idealism and generous compensation.” He said he was more interested in “fighting” for the Ukrainian people against an aggressive neighbor, which aligns his employment with Burisma with his father’s pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia stance. 

    “Having a Biden on Burisma’s board was a loud and unmistakable fuck-you to Putin,” Hunter maintained. 

    But according to Archer’s testimony, Burisma hired them in part to help expand its energy operations outside of Ukraine – particularly in the U.S., where the energy industry is heavily regulated by the federal government, and having such politically connected Americans on the board was valuable to the oil and gas conglomerate. Plus, he and Hunter were motivated by the windfall Burisma was paying them: “It was a million dollars per year [apiece] on the board contracts,” Archer confirmed. 

    Hunter further contends in his memoir that his father didn’t know about his joining the Burisma board until he read about it in the Wall Street Journal on May 13, 2014. But White House emails show the vice president’s staff was coordinating damage control weeks earlier when the news first broke in the foreign press.  

    And Archer testified that a month earlier, he had met with Vice President Biden in his White House office with Hunter, who had arranged the meeting. Their high-level pow-wow took place on April 16, the day after records show Archer received his first payment from Burisma. 

    It’s not clear what the trio discussed in Biden’s office, but Hunter had emailed Archer a Burisma strategy memo just three days earlier. Also on April 13, Hunter had emailed Joe Biden’s best friend Ted Kaufman and the vice president’s then-deputy counsel Alex Mackler to discuss Ukrainian politics. On April 21, Biden visited Ukraine to offer energy and economic aid. 

    But that’s not the biggest whopper Hunter apparently told about Burisma in his book. On page 127, he claimed: “No one at Burisma had even hinted at wanting me to influence the [Obama-Biden] administration.” 

    Several Burisma emails to Hunter, along with Archer’s congressional testimony, put the lie to this claim. 

    On May 12, 2014, for instance, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi sent an “urgent” email to Hunter – who by then was officially on Burisma’s payroll – demanding to know “how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions.” At the time, Ukrainian prosecutors were aggressively investigating Burisma for corruption. 

    Several months later, in the spring of 2015, Pozharskyi emailed Hunter to thank him for giving him the “opportunity to meet with your father and spent [sic] some time together.” Archer confirmed that the then-vice president sat down for dinner with the Burisma official and others at the Cafe Milano in D.C. the previous evening. The meeting, long denied by Biden officials, was held in a private room in the back of the restaurant. 

    In late 2015, after Viktor Shokin took over the prosecutor general’s office in Ukraine and turned the screws on Burisma, Pozharskyi again turned to Hunter Biden for assistance. 

    Archer testified that Hunter called his father to help deal with Shokin’s investigation at both Pozharskyi’s and Zlochevsky’s request following a Burisma board meeting at the Four Seasons in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015. 

    “They were getting pressure and they requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said, explaining the pressure was coming “from Ukrainian government investigations into Mykola [Zlochevsky].” 

    Archer suggested their benefactors wanted Hunter to use his influence with the vice president to get Kyiv to take “the heat” off Burisma. He testified he did not overhear Hunter’s phone call, but noted “he called his dad.” 

    At the time, Hunter Biden was not registered as a foreign agent as required by federal law when lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign entity. Federal prosecutors revealed at a recent court hearing that Hunter is actively under investigation for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that was used to prosecute several Trump advisers.  

    Two days after the Dubai phone call, Biden flew to Kyiv and warned the Ukrainian president that he had to fire Shokin or he wouldn’t get a promised $1 billion in aid. Three months later, after withering pressure from Biden, Shokin was removed from office. 

    “[Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma,” Shokin said in a recent Fox News interview. 

    In his memoir, Hunter maintained that his father had Shokin ousted because he wasn’t doing enough to tackle corruption, which matches the current spin of the White House. 
     
    “A priority for my dad was the ouster of the country’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, for his failure to adequately investigate corruption,” he wrote. “Among the high-profile companies that Shokin was criticized for not pursuing: Burisma.” 

    In effect, Hunter implied he relished more criminal scrutiny for his own employer, an odd position to take particularly given the millions he was getting paid. But as Archer testified, it’s simply not true.

    Democratic counsel for the Oversight Committee tried to get Archer to agree with the White House spin that Shokin’s firing was “bad for Burisma … because they had Shokin under their control.” 

    “No,” Archer said. “Burisma never informed me of that.” 

    Quite the opposite, he said, Burisma viewed Shokin as a threat after the prosecutor seized its founder Zlochevsky’s assets, including his house and cars. 

    If Shokin was not in fact soft on Burisma and Joe Biden did not press for his ouster to better fight corruption, it would seem to leave just one possible reason for his ham-fisted demand: to protect Burisma for the sake of his son – and the millions he was hauling in. 

    House impeachment investigators want to know whether Biden engaged in a quid pro quo: shaking down Ukraine’s former president for a political favor that would benefit his son by threatening to withhold a U.S.-backed aid package from the country. According to one Republican staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, they also want to know if Joe Biden or his staff helped Hunter draft the chapter of his book, titled “Burisma,” or had a hand in editing it. 

    “Beautiful Things” was published by an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which had no comment. Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell did not reply to requests to speak about the discrepancies in his client’s book.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:45

  • Ray Epps Charged With Misdemeanor In Long-Delayed Wrist-Slap
    Ray Epps Charged With Misdemeanor In Long-Delayed Wrist-Slap

    While dozens of January 6th political prisoners languish behind bars, the man caught on camera repeatedly inciting them to enter the Capitol, Ray Epps, was just given a long-delayed slap on the wrist.

    A review of Epps’ behavior surrounding J6;

    In July, Epps’ attorney revealed that his client was going to be criminally charged, after Epps sued former Fox news host Tucker Carlson for defamation.

    Epps hired attorney Michael Teter – formerly of Perkins Coie, the firm notorious for helping the Clinton campaign hatch the Steele dossier and collaborating with the FBI to push the Trump-Russia hoax. Teter immediately sent a letter to Carlson demanding that the former Fox News host retract “false and defamatory statements” that Epps was a J6 government plant.

    Epps, 62, was identified as a key instigator of the riot who has long been suspected of being a fed (or a fed asset), told his nephew in a text message: “I was in the front with a few others. I also orchestrated it.“

    Julie Kelly compares a similarly charged defendant… whose sentencing keeps getting kicked down the road.

    We wonder how this will affect Tucker’s defense?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:35

  • NYT In Rare About-Face Now Says Ukraine (Not Russia) Behind Mass Casualty Missile Strike On Market
    NYT In Rare About-Face Now Says Ukraine (Not Russia) Behind Mass Casualty Missile Strike On Market

    The New York Times has issued a surprise about-face regarding the September 6 deadly missile strike on the center of the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, which is in Donetsk Oblast.

    Initially it was universally reported among all major international press that it was a Russian attack which killed at least 15 civilians and injured 30 more. It was among the single deadliest strikes on a civilian area since the start of the war, given a busy market had been directly impacted. 

    The fresh Tuesday Times report underscores that less than two hours after the market was struck, “President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russian ‘terrorists’ for the attack, and many media outlets followed suit.” The NY Times was at the time among those major outlets which uncritically went with Zelensky’s version of events.

    Getty Images

    But the missile came from the Ukrainian side, with the NY Times’ investigators finding that it was a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile that hit the busy civilian area and killed and wounded scores.

    One of the key videos which the NYT analyzed to reach this conclusion was actually provided by Zelensky’s office, ironically enough. 

    According to the New York Times report, “evidence collected and analyzed by The New York Times, including missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts and social media posts, strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system.”

    “Further evidence reveals that minutes before the strike, the Ukrainian military launched two surface-to-air missiles toward the Russian front line from the town of Druzhkivka, 10 miles northwest of Kostiantynivka,” the report continues.

    The newspaper’s own correspondents were actually in Druzhkivka and reported hearing the outgoing missile launches which started at 2pm, and one journalist even record the sounds.

    In contrast to Kiev’s claims that it was a Russian missile launched by an S-300 system, the Times details the following:

    In the aftermath of the attack, Ukrainian authorities said Russian forces used a missile fired by an S-300 air defense system, which Russia has used both to intercept aircraft and strike targets on the ground. But an S-300 missile carries a different warhead from the one that exploded in Kostiantynivka.

    The metal facades of buildings closest to the explosion were perforated with hundreds of square or rectangular holes, probably made by cube-like objects blown outward from the missile.

    Measurements of the holes — and fragments found at the scene — are consistent in size and shape with one weapon in particular: the 9M38 missile, which is fired by the mobile Buk antiaircraft vehicle. Ukraine is known to use the Buk system, as is Russia.

    The investigative analysis also makes heavy use of open source intelligence, including photos and videos of the projectiles flying over the area, and the aftermath of the deadly strike. 

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    The timing of the unusual NYT piece laying blame on the Ukrainian side is interesting, given it coincides with President Zelensky being in the US where he addressed the UN General Assembly and is later expected at the White House.

    Ukrainian officials and pro-Kiev pundits are outraged at the NY Times’ reporting, and have rejected the conclusion reached. Here’s one somewhat comical case in point of the NYT authors themselves being attacked for the findings…

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    It also [presents the difficult question of whether there may be other atrocities or mass casualty events which were blamed on Russia, but were the result of weaponry from the Ukraine side. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:25

  • California Legislature Approves $25 Per Hour Healthcare Worker Minimum Wage Bill
    California Legislature Approves $25 Per Hour Healthcare Worker Minimum Wage Bill

    By Kelly Gooch of Beckers Hospital Review

    The California legislature has passed a bill that would establish a $25 hourly minimum wage requirement for workers in hospitals and other medical settings.

    The bill, proposed in February, now awaits a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom and comes after union and hospital representatives reached agreement on how such a requirement could be addressed.

    Under the bill, cities and counties would be blocked from increasing pay via ballot measures for 10 years. 

    Workers at healthcare facilities with 10,000 or more full-time equivalent employees would earn $23 per hour starting in 2024, with pay increasing to $25 an hour in 2026. That affects workers including nursing assistants, medical coders, launderers and hospital gift shop workers, according to the Los Angeles Times.

    Workers at a hospital with a high governmental payer mix, an independent hospital with an elevated governmental payer mix, a rural independent covered healthcare facility, or a covered healthcare facility that is owned, affiliated or operated by a county with a population of less than 250,000 as of Jan. 12 would earn $18 per hour starting next year, with pay increasing to $25 an hour in 2033. 

    Urgent care clinics, skilled nursing facilities and other smaller facilities would be required to pay workers $21 per hour in 2024, with pay increasing to $25 per hour in 2028, according to the Los Angeles Times.

    The bill allows some healthcare facilities to apply for a temporary pause or alternative phase-in schedule of the minimum wage requirements if they have documentation proving financial distress. 

    Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, described the bill as a balanced approach that supports workers and protects jobs and access to care in vulnerable communities.

    “The bill creates a pathway to improving wages for our lower-wage healthcare workers, while also recognizing the needs of our state’s most troubled hospitals,” Ms. Coyle said in a statement shared with Becker’s. 

    “And, by preempting local ballot measures on minimum wage and compensation, all healthcare workers will be paid equitably regardless of where they work. SB 525 demonstrates hospitals’ commitment to healthcare workers, patients, and communities.”

    Tia Orr, executive director of Service Employees International Union California, also praised the bill.

    “Healthcare in California will be more accessible and equitable because workers and healthcare providers stood together and stood up for patient care,” she said in a statement. 

    She added that the bill also invests in a strong, diverse workforce. 

    “By and large, Black and brown workers have held the lowest-paid and most overlooked jobs in healthcare, so SEIU workers are particularly proud of this landmark investment in equity,” Ms. Orr said.

    Read more about the bill here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 20:05

  • Zelensky Seeks To Cancel Russia At UN, Asks Why "Russian Terrorists" Have A Place
    Zelensky Seeks To Cancel Russia At UN, Asks Why “Russian Terrorists” Have A Place

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to use his visit to the United Nations in New York to get Russia canceled from the international assembly. He questioned how it is that “Russian terrorists” have a seat at the UN. He also warned that Russia is poised to expand its war beyond Ukraine – an assertion with no evidence.

    “If in the United Nations there is a place for Russian terrorists,” Zelensky said, “it’s a question to all the members of the United Nations.” …Except that of course Russia doesn’t hold just any UN seat, but it’s permanent member of the UN Security Council, and exercises veto power in that capacity over the UNSC’s most important resolutions and major decisions.

    Via BBC

    Zelensky made the comments on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), when he visited a hospital in Staten Island which is treating some 18 wounded Ukrainian soldiers. Zelensky has long warned that the UN is “hostage” to Russian policy.

    As for his UNGA speech the same day, given before some 140 nations, and after Biden spoke earlier, Zelensky went on the verbal attack against Russia, giving comments in English.

    “The goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order,” Zelensky said. He laid out that Russia is weaponizing essentials for survival like food and energy.

    “The goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order,” Zelensky said, also seeking to portray a pattern of Putin’s “aggression” from Georgia to Syria to Moldova. 

    He also alleged Moscow is committing “genocide” – and repeated media claims of Russia having “kidnapped” some tens of thousands of children. “Time goes by; what will happen to them?” He then called it “clearly a genocide.”

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    However, these reports of “Russia kidnapping children” have been based on the trend of Russian-speaking families of the Donbas in many cases willingly relocating to Russian territory, also given there had been a civil war raging there since 2014 involving pro-Kiev Ukrainians attacking pro-Russian Ukrainians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

    Zelensky also used it as an occasion to condemn any potential peace plan offered by a third party which requires that Ukraine cede territory. The New York Times wrote, “Ukraine has been seeking backing for a 10-point settlement program that demands a full Russian withdrawal and payment of reparations.”

    “Zelensky pitched the audience an idea for a summit with that program on the agenda — something Ukrainian diplomats say would be a symbolic success, even without any means to enforce such a settlement on Russia,” the report noted.

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    The UN audience applauded when at the end of his remarks Zelensky said the world must work to “end the aggression on the terms of the state that was attacked.” He’s expected to later travel to Washington, where he’ll lobby for billions more in American taxpayer dollars to be pledged toward the war effort.

    * * *

    Meanwhile, employing his UN-speak, Zelensky for a moment talked about the world body’s “climate policy objectives”…

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 19:45

  • Trump Gambles On GOP Support For Abortion Compromise
    Trump Gambles On GOP Support For Abortion Compromise

    Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Manchester, N.H., on April 27, 2023. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    In a wide-ranging interview on with NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, former President Donald Trump described his approach to a potential federal abortion ban.

    “It’s a very polarizing issue. Because of what’s been done, and because of the fact we brought it back to the states, we’re going to have people come together on this issue,” he said.

    President Trump said he would seek to bring together a bipartisan group, hear all sides, and create consensus.

    “We will agree to a number of weeks, which will be where both sides will be happy. We have to bring the country together on this issue.”

    15 Weeks?

    He claims the activists pushing for abortion on demand with no restrictions represent only an extreme view that even many pro-life Democrats are against.

    “Nobody wants to see five, six, seven, eight, nine months,” he said, adding that laws that allow mothers to terminate babies even after they have been delivered alive should be done away with.

    Asked whether he would sign a 15-week ban that made it to his desk, he said “no.”

    “Let me just tell you what I’d do. I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable,” he said. “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months. You’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy. Because 92 percent of the Democrats don’t want to see abortion after a certain period of time.”

    He said many people have offered up the “15-week” period for a ban, which is early into the second trimester, but he wouldn’t consider legislation without bringing more people into the room first.

    “I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said, declining to say whether he would support a federal ban.

    “I’m not going to say I would or I wouldn’t,” he said, adding that he was proud of the overturning of Roe v. Wade because it gave the power back to the states.

    “For 52 years, people including Democrats wanted it to go back to states so the states could make the right,” he said. “I did something that nobody thought was possible, and Roe v. Wade was terminated, [it] was put back to the states. Now, people, pro-lifers, have the right to negotiate for the first time.”

    He clarified that the consensus he hoped to bring could result in state-level action instead of a federal ban.

    “It could be state or it could be federal. I don’t frankly care,” he said. “From a pure standpoint, from a legal standpoint, I think it’s probably better [remaining a state issue], but I can live with it either way.”

    “The number of weeks is more important,” he said, sharing that the public opinion on abortion has changed greatly in the last few years. “The most powerful people that are anti-abortion are okay with that [banning abortion after a certain period] now. And you know what? They weren’t okay with that even a year ago.”

    Former Vice President Mike Pence, for instance, previously stood his ground on the idea of a full abortion ban and no exceptions. He recently called on other GOP candidates to support a federal 15-week ban.

    Exceptions

    He further called out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, runner-up in the GOP lineup of candidates, for his six-week ban.

    “I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” he said, without specifying a reason. He added that exceptions in any abortion ban were critical. “I think people should have exceptions. I think if it’s rape or incest or the life of the mother, I think you have to have exceptions. It’s very important.”

    Tudor Dixon, a Republican who ran for and lost the governor’s seat in Michigan last year, recently said on a podcast that President Trump gave her advice on abortion policy which she failed to take.

    He had told her to “talk differently about abortion” when she took a hardline, no-exceptions approach.

    “We could not pivot in time, and it really, you were absolutely right, sir,” Ms. Dixon said.

    “And that’s what happened to a lot of other people and—didn’t happen to me because, you know, there’s a way of talking about it. They’re the radicals. They’re the radicals, and you have to explain it. And I think exceptions are very important. I think you need the exceptions. You and I talked about that,” President Trump said.

    DeSantis Responds

    Mr. DeSantis’s campaign responded on social media after President Trump singled out Florida’s six-week ban, criticizing his political rival’s conciliatory approach.

    “Trump says he will compromise with Democrats on abortion so that they’re nice to him,” the campaign wrote on an X, formerly Twitter, post. “RonDeSantis will NEVER sell out conservatives to win praise from corporate media or the Left.”

    Mr. DeSantis’s communications director Andrew Romeo added that previous compromises with Democrats brought “disastrous” results such as an unfinished border wall.

    Several states have a “heartbeat” abortion bill, which bans the procedure once a heartbeat is detectable in the womb, which is normally around the six-week mark. Most of these states have included exceptions in their abortion laws from the beginning, though Texas initially passed a no-exceptions ban, and later added exceptions.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 19:25

  • Permanent Strike: Ford Lays Off 600 Workers Due To UAW Strike
    Permanent Strike: Ford Lays Off 600 Workers Due To UAW Strike

    As a result of the UAW strikes, 600 Ford employees will now be taking a permanent strike. 

    Just hours after it was reported that Stellantis could be shuttering 18 facilities as part of a new “improved” contract with the UAW, Ford faces additional realities of the ongoing strike: it has laid off 600 workers at the Michigan Assembly Plant’s body construction department, ABC Detroit reported. 

    The company said this week: “Our production system is highly interconnected, which means the UAW’s targeted strike strategy will have knock-on effects for facilities that are not directly targeted for a work stoppage. In this case, the strike at Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and paint departments has directly impacted the operations in other parts of the facility.”

    “Approximately 600 employees at Michigan Assembly Plant’s body construction department and south sub-assembly area of integrated stamping were notified not to report to work Sept. 15. This is not a lockout. This layoff is a consequence of the strike at Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and paint departments, because the components built by these 600 employees use materials that must be e-coated for protection. E-coating is completed in the paint department, which is on strike,” it continued.

    At the stroke of midnight last Friday, the United Auto Workers initiated their labor strike, focusing their initial efforts on three facilities—Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly Complex in Toledo, and a General Motors factory in Missouri.

    To add insult to collateral-damage-injury, Stellantis, in a recent bargaining move with the United Auto Workers union, has floated a contract proposal — that could result in the shuttering of 18 American facilities, according to CNBC, citing sources familiar with strike discussions. 

    On Tuesday, the head of United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, declared he will unleash additional strikes across manufacturing facilities of General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., and Stellantis NV on Friday. This move is contingent on the three automakers not properly addressing the union’s demands for a new four-year labor contract for its 146,000 members. 

    “Either the Big Three get down to business and work with us to make progress in negotiations, or more locals will be called on to stand up and go out on strike,” UAW boss Fain said in a YouTube video published Monday evening. 

    Fain said, “We’re not waiting around, and we’re not messing around. So, noon on Friday, Sept. 22 is a new deadline.” 

    The union said Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have “failed to put fair contract offers on the table.” A union representative told Bloomberg “no new offers” have come from the automakers “since the union made its latest proposals on Sept. 14, right before its strike began.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 19:05

  • Yuan Dominates US Dollar In China Cross-Border Payments
    Yuan Dominates US Dollar In China Cross-Border Payments

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist,

    While the yuan is struggling in the foreign-exchange market, it continues to grow its market share in China’s cross-border transactions as the No. 1 payment currency.

    That reflects progress of the yuan’s internationalization in trade, as well as growing influence of foreign capital flows to China’s financial markets.

    The official settlement data Friday showed the yuan’s share in cross-border payments and receipts rose to a record 54% last month, compared with 41% for the dollar.

    The data include goods and services transactions, as well as cross-border investments.

    Since foreign investors trade Chinese stocks and bonds in the yuan, the ongoing opening of the capital market over the years has lifted the yuan’s market share in total transactions.

    August, for example, saw foreign investors sell a record amount of Chinese stocks, which should inflate the yuan’s share in total cross-border transactions.

    Even so, it’s still a long way before the yuan becomes a dominant international currency. 

    The latest data from SWIFT shows the yuan’s share in global payments rose to 3.1% in July, from 2.8% in June. It was dwarfed by the dollar’s 46% share and the euro’s 24%.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 18:45

  • UN To Discuss How To Better Control The World At Annual General Assembly
    UN To Discuss How To Better Control The World At Annual General Assembly

    The UN’s charter outlines a grand mission statement of benevolent purpose, with its supposed root mission being the pursuit of global peace and security.  It is therefore ironic that the institution relies on a host of fabricated crisis events and ongoing conflicts in order to remain relevant.  As UN Secretary António Guterres argues: “The UN is not a Vanity Fair, it is a political body.”  And really, that is the problem.  There is no use for the UN other than to act as a foil for the eventual imposition of a faceless and unaccountable world government.

    The organization will always strive for more centralization as long as it exists; it does not care about peace, it cares about power.  Thus, every new crisis event is seen as an opportunity for these people, not as a threat that needs to be solved.    

    If you want to find the source of most of today’s political and social discord, all you have to do is examine the history of interventions by the UN.  For example, the very existence of ESG lending programs designed to create incentives for corporations to push woke propaganda and carbon controls on the populace started in the halls of the UN.  If you want to know where the rush towards “sustainable development goals” and where the concept of the 15 Minute City comes from, just check the white papers of the UN.  If you want to know who is funding a large portion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives globally, keep your eyes on the UN.

    While think-tanks like the WEF and summits like Davos are designed to keep political and financial elites informed on the overall agenda ahead, the UN is more of a vehicle for public engagement and implementation.  They are the “governing body” that is supposed to give legitimacy to the globalist obsession with world government.  They are the friendly face of the beast, and they come with many gifts and promises of justice and equity.    

    Of course, not everyone is buying it.  In fact, the general assembly this week appears to be centered on that very issue – UN officials are frustrated that their goals have been put on hold and the public is not taking them seriously.  This is the sentiment expressed by António Guterres in the following self organized UN interview summarizing the key topics to be discussed at the assembly.

    Main takeaways include:

    The lack of attendance by four of the five permanent security members with veto power, including Britain, France, Russia and China.  Only Joe Biden will be present at the meeting, and we have to wonder given his fading cognitive abilities how much that will actually matter.  

    Climate change hysteria will once again be at the forefront of UN talks.  The UN has consistently made false claims of record high temperatures (the records they use only go back 140 years and the Earth’s temps have been far higher in the past).  They also make false claims of increasing weather disasters (there is no evidence that today’s weather events are any more dangerous than those of the past century, and no evidence that man-made carbon has any effect on the weather).

    The UN wants to phase out fossil fuels, but this is impossible without a severe degradation of production and population.  There is no “green energy” alternative available to fill the void that fossil fuels will leave behind.  It would be a monumental disaster.  

    The UN wants to “reform” the international financial system.  Meaning, most likely CBDCs will be a point of interest at the assembly, as well as concepts like Inclusive Capitalism.  Reading between the lines, any trace of free markets will be done away with and replaced with a fully socialist framework; all in the name of “financial equity.”  The UN has consistently presented the idea that the economy must be fair, but there is no such thing as economic fairness.  Under socialism it is impossible to make everyone equally wealthy because governments cannot create wealth.  All they can do is steal wealth and make everyone equally poor.  

    UN sentiments on the covid pandemic match with those we have seen out of the WEF and WHO, which is that they are visibly perturbed that their efforts for universal medical authoritarianism failed.  We have seen this time and time again – Globalists are indignant over the lack of compliance from numerous countries and local governments on the lockdowns, mandates and vaccine passports.  

    Specifically, they are angry that the public was able to disseminate counter-information about covid even in the face of widespread censorship by Big Tech working in concert with political leaders.  They don’t like that so many of their covid claims have been debunked.  The UN wants a stronger World Health Organization with more influence over national pandemic response decisions as well as more control over what information is allowed to circulate online.  

    The Ukraine war will be presented as a prime scapegoat.  The UN blames the war for many of their programs on climate being disrupted (who cares about climate hysteria when the threat of WWIII looms large?).  However, it’s important to point out that the UN has made no viable effort to offer a diplomatic solution to the conflict.  In fact, it seems as if they prefer the war to continue (Zelensky will be there to beg for even more money to keep the coflagration going).   

    Guterres indicates that he sees no chance of peace “according to UN charter and international law.”  In other words, the UN is taking the same hard line stance as NATO, refusing to offer any concessions and avoiding all peace negotiations unless Russia exits Eastern Ukraine and Crimea completely, which is not going to happen.  The UN knows that this means the war will continue as long as NATO countries continue to supply arms to Ukraine, unless Russia eliminates every facet of the existing Ukrainian government.  

    Finally, the UN will be talking a lot about AI, but in the capacity of regulation more that capability.  The UN has sought to become the global regulator for AI for years as they continue to suggest that individual nation states cannot be trusted with the power that AI commands.  Why should the UN be trusted with AI more than anyone else?  This question is never addressed.

    This year’s assembly has launched with some undertones of angst, but this may very well be a part of the theater.  After all, globalists need international strife and chaos so that they can then offer their solution of centralization as the cure.  The UN might be hitting a brick wall today in terms of their climate and pandemic agendas, but there is always that next major crisis that could open doors for them in the near future.         

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/19/2023 – 18:25

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