Apr 22

Today’s News 22nd April 2024

  • US-Funded Experiments In China Could Secretly Manipulate Viruses: Email
    US-Funded Experiments In China Could Secretly Manipulate Viruses: Email

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

    Experiments in China funded by the U.S. government could manipulate coronaviruses and leave no trace, according to newly disclosed emails.

    An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

    Details of the experiments showed that changing the viruses could be done and “would leave no signatures of purposeful human manipulation,” an unknown person told the FBI on April 23, 2020, one of the emails showed.

    The details were outlined on a webpage for a grant funded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci until late 2022. The government has funded $4.3 million for the grant. A portion of the funds were sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory located in the same Chinese city in which the first COVID-19 cases appeared in 2019.

    An FBI official forwarded the email to another FBI official about an hour after receipt. “Hey are you going to be in office tomorrow? We just interviewed our person from [redacted] again and he provided us with some alarming new info,” the official wrote. “Give me a call if you can.”

    The identities of the source and FBI officials were redacted in the messages, which were obtained by the nonprofit Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request.

    The FBI and EcoHealth did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    “These smoking gun documents showed the FBI quickly understood that Fauci’s agency funded the gain-of-function research that could disguise the resulting coronavirus as ‘natural,’” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “These new documents further demonstrate the need for a comprehensive criminal investigation into Fauci’s gain-of-function scandal.”

    Robert Garry, who has a doctorate in microbiology and also studied virology, said in private messages that genetic manipulation doesn’t leave signatures. One could “synthesize bits of the genes … with perfect provision and then add them back in without a trace,” he wrote in early 2020 while analyzing COVID-19.

    Mr. Garry and others later wrote in a paper called Proximal Origin that the available evidence showed COVID-19 “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” Two of the authors defended the change during a hearing in Congress.

    Records previously obtained by Judicial Watch showed that the FBI opened an inquiry into the research in Wuhan, which was done under a grant called “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”

    It’s not clear what specific actions the FBI took but the bureau has since determined that COVID-19, a coronavirus, likely originated at the Wuhan lab.

    “You’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2023.

    The U.S. intelligence community as a whole is divided on the matter, with at least one other agency also assessing a lab origin as likely while others are undecided or lean towards the natural origin theory.

    COVID-19 is believed to have come from bats. The grant gave money to scientists to gather bat coronaviruses and experiment on them in labs in Wuhan and elsewhere. China has largely blocked investigations into the origins of COVID-19 and declined to make information from the lab public. Similarities between COVID-19 and a virus on which experiments were proposed in a separate EcoHealth funding application are among the evidence pointing to the lab leak theory, experts say. Others say the available evidence, including early cases at a wet market in Wuhan, suggest a natural origin.

    Experiments funded through the U.S. grant did result in a bat coronavirus that made mice sicker than those infected with the original version, government officials have disclosed. Concerns about work at the lab were raised prior to the pandemic, according to an internal report viewed recently by a U.S. senator. Officials renewed EcoHealth’s grant in 2023 but have barred funding to the Wuhan lab after lab leaders stopped sharing information with EcoHealth and U.S. overseers.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/22/2024 – 02:45

  • London Museum's 'LGBTQ Audio Guide' Wrongly Claims British Monarch Was "Person Of Colour"
    London Museum’s ‘LGBTQ Audio Guide’ Wrongly Claims British Monarch Was “Person Of Colour”

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    A London museum is facing backlash after it was revealed that a special ‘LGBTQ audio guide’ it is providing to visitors is claiming that the wife of King George III was mixed race.

    The audio guide is being used in the Queen’s House in Greenwich, a publicly funded part of Royal Museums Greenwich.

    A section of the guide references a large golden sculpture of Queen Charlotte, claiming: “Queen Charlotte, the nation’s first royal person of colour.”

    The guide then states “Yep, you heard me. The insecure white boys writing history conveniently forget to mention that bit, because… well, structural racism.”

    There is no evidence at all that the queen, who was of German ancestry, was of any other heritage than white European. 

    Indeed, it appears that one basis for the claim may be that the Netflix series Bridgerton and its spin off show Queen Charlotte has a mixed race actor playing the role of the queen.

    The guide was created as part of a ‘LGBTQ history trail’ by a drag performer called Christian Adore, self described as a “homosexual historian” dedicated to unveiling “deliciously gay stories” from history. 

    Clearly there weren’t that many of those stories to relate on a tour of a royal residence dating back to the 1600s.

    The guide also claims that King James I was bisexual and claims that Charles II had a “progressive, genuinely modern understanding of relationships in the 1660s” because he had a string of mistresses.

    The report also notes that in one section of the audio guide a “migrant goddess” lectures  Lord Nelson about “moving over” and sharing his legacy of bravery with boat migrants who are “unsung heroes of the sea.”

    When asked for an explanation, the Museum stated that the guide was “delivered by a number of performance artists, during LGBTQ+ History Month,” and intended to be “light-hearted entertainment.”

    It added that the guide was originally part of an event called ‘Fierce Queens’ in which “we had a black performer playing Queen Charlotte, which is why this segment was included.”

    “It was not written by or performed by members of RMG staff and as a performance piece, was not ‘fact checked’,” the Museum further noted.

    Commenting on the matter, former Royal Navy officer Chris Parry charged that “This level of stupidity simply degrades and defiles our national reputation for historical scholarship… These antics serve to confuse the ignorant and are profoundly racist. Remove public funding.”

    As we have previously highlighted, this insane fringe effort to blackify history has included baseless claims of black ancient Britons, Romans, scholars, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, and even ancient Japanese Samurai warriors.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/22/2024 – 02:00

  • The Intel Agencies Of Government Are Fully Weaponized
    The Intel Agencies Of Government Are Fully Weaponized

    Authored by ‘sundance’ via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

    Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.  This point is where many people understandably get confused…

    In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.

    What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.  This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.

    Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

    The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus.  However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.  The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution.  Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.

    We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake.  However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design.  By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath.  The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.

    As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening.  Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.

    Grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and take a walk with me as we outline how this was put together.  You might find many of the questions about our current state of political affairs beginning to make a lot more sense.

    Remember, it is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding fourth branch of government. Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.

    History provided enough warnings from Dwight D. Eisenhower (military), to John F. Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell. None of those prior reference points are invalid, and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate. However, a generational review is not useful, as the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.

    Instead, we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has now metastasized into a Fourth Branch of Government. It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life.

    If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.

    After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected and few people pay attention to.

    It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos; essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.

    After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020; amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19; I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.

    I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works:

    (1) to control every other branch of government;

    (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight;

    (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight;

    (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch,

    and most importantly (5) who operates it.

    The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.

    The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives is part of that functioning; almost like an NGO. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.

    There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.

    None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected, and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.

    We begin….

    In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).

    Things to note:

    • Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.

    • Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.

    • Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].

    That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).

    Also, watch this short video of James Clapper because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it.  Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video.  This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place.  WATCH:

    [Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]

    The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

    Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos are part of the problem.

    Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.

    The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.

    The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information. You’ll see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.

    • The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.

    Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).

    • When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.

    Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.

    Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.

    Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.

    • While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.

    The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.

    AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives. One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.

    • The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.

    Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest?   Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.

    • At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.

    Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.

    Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.

    In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.

    Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.

    Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place.

    That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.

    • When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60 seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.

    When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.

    THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.

    Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.

    [Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]

    All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60 vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.

    Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett,  getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.

    Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.

    In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.

    Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.

    Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion-GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.

    Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.

    When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their intelligence conduct. Dianne Feinstein stepped down, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.

    Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]

    • To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.

    Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.

    Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?

    Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?

    Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.

    Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?

    Oh, how quickly we forget:

    The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.

    • The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arms length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.

    I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.

    Through the advise and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over-and-over again.

    • Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret. There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.

    No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this?  Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.

    • The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.

    [For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]

    • Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEP} How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member?  They have to go through the SSCI confirmation.  See the problem?

    Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.

    For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.

    The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.

    Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.

    People want examples, reference points for work the Intelligence Branch conducts, specifically how it protects itself.

    Here is an example: Julian Assange.

    Yes, the history of the U.S. national security apparatus goes back decades; however, the weaponization of that apparatus, the creation of an apex branch of government, the Intelligence Branch, originated –as we currently feel it– under President Barack Obama.

    Obama took the foundational tools created by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and used the intelligence system architecture to create a weapon for use in his fundamental transformation. An alliance of ideologues within government (intel community) and the private sector (big tech and finance) was assembled, and the largest government weapon was created. Think about this every time you take your shoes off at an airport.

    After the weapon was assembled and tested (Arab Spring), the Legislative Branch was enjoined under the auspices of a common enemy, Donald J. Trump, an outsider who was a risk to every entity in the institutional construct of Washington DC. Trillions were at stake, and years of affluence and influence were at risk as the unholy alliance was put together.

    To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.

    It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.

    By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}

    In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.

    The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.

    HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA.

    However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints of the international intelligence apparatus; only this time, due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S., the CIA aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies was important.

    Remember, it’s clear in the text messages Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA. Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and Peter Strzok wrote the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief allied intelligence officials connected to the Australian Ambassador to the U.K, Alexander Downer.

    In short, Peter Strzok acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for the Intelligence Branch and CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.

    Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons, the 2015 GOP candidates for President.

    It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S.

    Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting… back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.

    Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s private sector handler [NOTE: remember, the public-private sector partnership], it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Patrick Byrne the instructions on where to send Butina. {Go Deep}

    All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that eventually settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit. The international operations of the Intelligence Branch were directed by the FBI/CIA; and the domestic operations were coordinated by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]

    Recap: 

    • Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA).

    • Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA).

    • Azra Turk, pretending to be a Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI).

    • Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion-GPS).

    • Butina tasked against Donald Trump Jr (FBI). All of these activities were coordinated.

    Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. However, Deripaska refused to participate.

    All of this foreign and domestic engagement was directly controlled by collaborating U.S. intelligence agencies from inside the Intelligence Branch. And all of this coordinated activity was intended to give a specific Russia influence/interference impression.

    The key point of all that background context is to see how committed the Intelligence Branch was to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and DOJ-NSD, put a hell of a lot of work into it.

    We also know that John Durham looked at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talked to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

    On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:

    (Link to pdf)

    On Tuesday April 15th more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….

    The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, and it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.

    Why the delay?

    What was the DOJ waiting for?

    Here’s where it gets interesting….

    The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after Congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”

    (August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

    Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.

    Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.

    “Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

    Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)

    Knowing how much effort the Intelligence Branch put into the false Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange, monitor all activity, and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.

    Within three months of the EDVA grand jury, the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018.

    The DOJ sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissmann probe was ongoing.

    As soon as the Mueller/Weissmann probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).

    As a person who has researched this fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.

    It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange. The Weissmann/Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes for justification, and that narrative was contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.

    • This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.

    The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

    The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC and FBI contractor.

    The CIA holds a self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim; the FBI holds an interest in maintaining that claim; the U.S. media hold an interest in maintaining that claim. All of the foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.

    Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.

    This “Russian hacking” claim was ultimately important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus, it forms the corner of their justification. With that level of importance, well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Julian Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Weissmann/Mueller report was going to be public.

    …. and that’s exactly what they did. They threw a bag over Assange.

    • COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.

    The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.

    The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.

    Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.

    Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.

    ~ 2021 Gang of Eight ~

    The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.

    The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}

    Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”

    Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.

    Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The implication, the very direct and specific implication; the unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was totally informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.

    Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?

    Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March day in 2017 was the total usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch. The G08 notifications to the majority and minority are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.

    Team Obama carried out a political operation using the intelligence community and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact.

    Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which specifically includes the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted. The usurpation was willfully ignored.  The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.

    This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the executive branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue and the lack of immediate legislative branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance. The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.

    The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.

    That’s where we are.

    Right now.

    That’s where we are.

    Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.

    Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus.

    During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, and not a single member of the oversight called it out.

    Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.

    Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….

    Have you seen this mentioned anywhere? Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress? Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate point this out?

    This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.

    Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable.

    There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped). Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today.

    All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

    TECHNOLOGY

    On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.

    We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.

    Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.

    The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.

    However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?

    The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So a brief review of the major players is needed.

    CHINA

    China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.

    Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]

    RUSSIA

    It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.

    The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.

    SAUDI ARABIA

    Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.

    I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood, and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.

    Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?

    Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.

    Israel

    Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.

    As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.

    Summary:

    As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.

    The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battle-space. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them, and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].

    Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.

    Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.

    Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazen they have made public admissions.

    The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.

    Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):

    […] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

    Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.

    Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.

    When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.

    The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.

    The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.

    Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.

    What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.

    July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

    Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

    Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

    The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)

    The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.

    After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of Barack Obama was all about.

    The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.

    WHAT NOW? 

    There is a way to stop and deconstruct the Intelligence Branch, but it requires some outside-the-box thinking and reliance on the Constitution as a tool to radically change one element within government. In the interim, we must remain focused on the three tiers that we need for success.

    • Tier One is “tactical civics” at a local level. Engaged and active citizen participation at the community, city, town and hamlet level of society. This is what might be described as grassroots level, school board level; city council level; county commissioner level.

    • Tier Two is “extreme federalism” at a state level. Engaged and active citizen participation through your State House and State Senate representative. This is state level assembly and action demands upon the State House, State Senate and State Governor.

    • Tier Three the challenge of “federal offices” on a national level {Go Deep}.  This is the part where we need President Donald Trump, and his power to confront the issues comes directly from us.

    I am confident that ultimately “We The People” will win.  How we can execute the solution is more challenging; in the interim, tactical civics and extreme federalism are doable right now, in this next 2024 election cycle.

    It sucks that a UniParty congress extended FISA-702.  However, even if the hail-Mary pass on Monday fails, FISA was still extended for only two-years.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 23:20

  • Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money
    Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money

    Democrats cheered and waved Ukrainian flags, chanting “Ukraine, Ukraine!” in some pavlovian response to Congress passing a bill that will send (another) $61 billion to Ukraine with no questions asked

    Rand Paul, among many others, was incensed:

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    Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was very pleased, personally thinking Speaker Johnson

    I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track.

    Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it.

    The vital U.S. aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger. Just peace and security can only be attained through strength.

    We hope that bills will be supported in the Senate and sent to President Biden’s desk. Thank you, America!

    ‘War is Peace’, America!

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    Of course he’s pleased… why wouldn’t he be, as who knows where that money will end up?

    As Seymour Hersh recently reported, CIA Director Burns had to warn Zelensky to stop stealing so much money.

    The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns.

    His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie.

    The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”

    Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government.

    Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else.

    “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me.

    Zelensky’s half-hearted response and the White House’s lack of concern was seen, the intelligence official added, as another sign of a lack of leadership that is leading to a “total breakdown” of trust between the White House and some elements of the intelligence community.

    Hersh went on to note that one estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”

    But, remember, the first rule of sending money to corrupt Ukraine is… you don’t talk about how corrupt Ukraine is (or you get impeached).

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 22:45

  • Congressmen Are "Terrified Of The Intel Agencies"; Tucker Carlson Warns They'll Frame Them With "Kiddie Porn"
    Congressmen Are “Terrified Of The Intel Agencies”; Tucker Carlson Warns They’ll Frame Them With “Kiddie Porn”

    Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson sat down for a wide-ranging three-hours-plus discussion last week, touching on everything from UFOs, spirituality, and religion; from artificial intelligence costs and benefits to questioning ‘science’ consensus; and from government secrecy and lying to the threat to democracy driven by our domestic intelligence agencies.

    They begin by discussing a recently leaked government project named “Project Aqua” which involves advanced aerospace vehicles and their interaction with humans, leading to medical injuries and even deaths.

    “Here’s what we know is that US servicemen have died as a result of contact with or being in the proximity of these vehicles and we know that because there are a lot of suits working their way through the VA system.”

    The conversation turns specifically to the nature of UFOs, suggesting they could be more than just physical or technological phenomena, potentially tied to spiritual or supernatural origins.

    On supernatural explanations for UFOs:

    “It’s pretty clear to me that they’re spiritual entities whatever that means are Supernatural and which is to say Supernaturals means above the natural above the observable uh nature.”

    The troublesome twosome highlighted how certain revelations or events can lead to a deeper questioning of what is commonly accepted as truth, fostering a mindset of skepticism and curiosity.

    On questioning assumptions:

    “I began a process still ongoing of reassessing a lot of other things like okay well if that was not true what else is not true and what else that they told me was a conspiracy theory might actually have some basis in fact.”

    Rogan reiterates his long-held fear of the potential for artificial intelligence to evolve beyond human control, transforming into a new form of life that could dramatically alter our understanding and existence.

    On artificial intelligence and humanity’s future:

    “Digital Life it’s going to give birth to a new life form and I think we’re real close to that I think we’re way closer than that to that than most people would ever want to admit.”

    Carlson then opens up on his views about the current state of politics and society, particularly criticizing the dishonesty and manipulation in governmental and media structures.

    The perennial topic of power corruption comes up next, with the two men comparing the intoxication of leadership to the historical behaviors of cult leaders and tyrants.

    On power and control:

    “It’s very intoxicating and it’s common in that it’s always existed throughout human history. It’s a thing that people do when they get power—they abuse the fuck out of it.”

    On ideological indoctrination:

    “Woke is clearly a cult; it’s a mind virus… it’s very similar to all kinds of religions… everybody has to believe very specific things and you can’t differ from the doctrine.”

    The pair elaborate further on the influence of ideologies that suppress dissenting views and the impact of governmental lies on public trust, emphasizing the importance of honesty in communication, slamming the government’s tendency to prioritize power over transparency and the well-being of its citizens.

    On the facade of democracy:

    “When they stand up and pass a $60 billion funding bill for Ukraine when 70% of the population doesn’t want it… and they call it a democracy, that will drive you insane because it’s just too dishonest.”

    On personal and governmental honesty:

    “Maybe just assess everything that way – is someone lying? I don’t care what your justification for it is… You can’t participate in lying… try to tell the truth all the time.”

    “You can’t lie. You can’t lie about anything, just don’t lie about anything. Try to tell the truth all the time,” he says.

    “If you just stick with that, you get pretty quickly back to reason and order, don’t you?”

    Joe Rogan contunues by pointing out the themes of control and misinformation, particularly in the context of media, that are growuing more and more powerful. He points out the shift in what is considered mainstream media, highlighting the growing significance of platforms like Twitter and YouTube over traditional news outlets. Rogan stresses the increasing visibility of lies and the public’s growing ability to discern truth from misinformation due to the accessibility of alternative information sources online.

    On the problem with mainstream media:

    “Mainstream media used to be CNN; it’s not really anymore. Mainstream media is what in terms of the volume consumed, more people are consuming things on X [Twitter] than there are on anything else.”

    The former Fox News host exclaims his clear disdain for the manipulation and deceit he perceives at the highest levels of power.

    “This is not self-government. You don’t run this country, we do. Shut up and obey,” says Carlson regarding what the reality of our government really is, adding that “what makes it particularly galling and hard to live with is when you call that system a democracy.”

    Rogan and Carlson also touch upon the effects of technology and social media on personal interactions and societal norms. They discuss the negative impacts of constant connectivity, lamenting the loss of meaningful face-to-face interactions.

    “When people lie and when people bullshit and gaslight, it’s more offensive now than it’s ever been before,” Rogan points out.

    “The lies aren’t sophisticated. It’s something incredibly insulting and demeaning to tell me a lie when I know it’s a lie.”

    And then the discussion gets ominously dark as the pair reflect on the re-authorization of the ‘spying on Americans’ bill (we note that the two gentlemen met before the bill was re-authorized).

    ‘Kiddie Porn’ blackmail fear…

    Stunningly, Carlson tells Rogan that congressmen were “terrified” that intelligence agencies will frame them with “kiddie porn” if they openly opposed the “warrantless spying” bill.

    Specifically, he says US lawmakers “told” him that they are “worried” about being punished by intel agencies if they oppose reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

    “People don’t say that because they’re worried about being punished. They’re worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer. Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I’m not guessing at that. They’ve told me that — including people on the intel committee, including people who run the intel committee,” Carlson said.

    “The people whose job it is to oversee and keep in line these enormous, secretive agencies whose budgets we can’t even know – their ‘black budgets’,” Carlson continued, raising his hands into air-quotes.

    That it is “tyranny”, not democracy, for “unelected people who are not accountable to anyone making the biggest decisions”, Carlson raged, to force congressmen to support reauthorizing “warrantless spying” of American citizens because “they’re threatened.”

    “They’re the parents, the agencies are the children. They’re afraid of the agencies. That’s not compatible with democracy.”

    “It’s playing out in front of everyone, and no one cares and no one does anything about it,” Carlson said.

    “I think the reason is because they’re threatened. And if you look at the committee chairman who allowed this shit to happen year after year, they’re all – and I don’t know, people say, ‘Oh, they’re compromised or being blackmailed,’ whatever. I don’t have evidence of that. But I know them. And they have all the things to hide. I know that for a fact.”

    “It’s not a stretch of imagination to imagine that, you know, some committee chairman who’s allowing warrantless spying on Americans to continue, or whatever abuse they’re allowing… It’s not impossible to imagine that some guy with a drinking problem or a weird sex life — and that’s very common, very common up there — that’s why they’re doing it. Because they don’t want to be exposed,” Carlson added.

    “I said to somebody, a very powerful person, the other day, in a conversation in my kitchen, an elected official – holds a really senior position…

    But I was like, ‘All these people are controlled. They’ve all got weird s*x lives, and all these things they’re hiding, and they’re being blackmailed by the intel agencies.’

    And he said, and I’m quoting, ‘I know.’ I was like, okay, so at this point, we’re just sort of admitting that’s real? Like, why do we allow that to continue?”

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

    Finally, and in a more calming conclusion, Carlson reminisces about his unconventional childhood, emphasizing the value of communal meals and genuine conversations, which he contrasts starkly with the superficial interactions encouraged by social media platforms. Rogan agrees, but fears we have gone to far to ever be able to come back.

    On the value of personal interaction:

    “When you get people in a club and you take their phones away and just have them just be actual human beings and not be filming everything, just being completely trapped with this idea of capturing something and then putting it online, then you get to have a human experience.”

    The dialogue shifts to the topic of creativity and its survival in modern America.

    On the state of creativity:

    “Creativity, art has been completely destroyed and eliminated in the United States. There’s like, you can’t be creative if you’re not honest. It’s that simple, and we can’t be honest so there’s no creativity.”

    Carlson expresses a belief that true creativity cannot exist without honesty, asserting that a lack of genuine expression has led to a decline in artistic and cultural development, except in fields like comedy and music which still manage to thrive amidst societal constraints.

    On the power of rhythm in music:

    “I love the fact that they had two drummers… the architecture is rhythm and it’s the universal sound that every culture appreciates because it reflects something that’s pre-existing that’s in you.”

    On societal change and comedy:

    “Comedy’s never been better. Amazing time. It came close, oh yeah, the walls got breached… It felt like, oh wow, you know, people can’t tell jokes anymore. We kept doing it.”

    Both hosts discuss the vitality of art forms that manage to operate outside the mainstream narratives, suggesting that these are crucial for maintaining a vibrant cultural landscape.

    Overall, the discussion encapsulates a broad critique of contemporary societal issues, from government secrecy and the erosion of personal freedoms to the challenges facing creative expression and public discourse in the digital age.

    Both Carlson and Rogan advocate for a more open, honest, and engaged society that values personal interaction and intellectual freedom above conformity and control.

    “I’m going to go crazy because I just can’t deal with the lying,” Carlson concludes.

    Watch the full three hour discussion below:

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 22:25

  • Tit-For-Tat Responses From Beijing To Trade Restrictions May Bring About A Full-Blown Trade War
    Tit-For-Tat Responses From Beijing To Trade Restrictions May Bring About A Full-Blown Trade War

    By John Liu, Zhu Lin and Abhishek Vishnoi, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and strategists

    China’s most-promising industries are facing a growing threat of trade restrictions from Western governments, blurring the outlook for stocks that have the potential to fuel the nation’s market growth.

    The sectors under scrutiny by Europe and the US are as wide-ranging as electric vehicles, wind and solar projects, medical devices and chips, but have one thing in common: they are of strategic importance to President Xi Jinping’s bid for leadership in the global race toward green transition and high-tech development.

    The rising tensions come at an inopportune time. Stocks were starting to emerge from a multi-year slump as investors bought into China’s efforts to build new growth engines and achieve self-sufficiency along key supply chains. A materialization of those threats can hinder China’s global expansion, while tit-for-tat responses from Beijing may bring about a full-blown trade war that would drastically alter the investment landscape.

    “Geopolitical pressures will only rise — any exports can be targeted since it’s no longer really about trade fairness,” said Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee. “It dampens the export growth drivers for China’s economy.”

    China’s CSI 300 Index has climbed about 3% this year, regaining some footing after a third-annual loss. Performances among leaders in the green and high-tech industry have been mixed as geopolitical risks add to concerns over oversupply and price competition.

    Battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd has jumped nearly 17% onshore this year while EV leader BYD Co. has advanced 6%. Longi Green Energy Technology Co. and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. have lost about 20% each.

    The biggest Chinese firms that get at least a fifth of their revenue from exports command more than a 14% weight in the CSI 300, with many of them including CATL and BYD trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than the benchmark, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    While trade spats have become a permanent feature in China-Western relations under Xi, recent months saw tensions worsen. The European Union has joined US-styled protectionist moves as a complex mix of national security concerns, economic and political considerations play out.

    President Joe Biden’s call for tariffs as high as 25% on some Chinese steel and aluminum products shows how China-bashing will ratchet up in a presidential election year. In Europe, policymakers are responding to growing complaints from local manufacturers that China’s industrial overcapacity is crowding them out.

    The range of targeted products largely overlap with Xi’s industrial priorities labeled “new productive forces.” Investors had been hunting for stock winners since the phrase was listed on Beijing’s top agenda in early March, triggering a brief rally in shares from robotics companies to chip makers.

    “While the new productive forces may have policy tailwinds, these may be somewhat offset by rising geopolitical tensions, particularly in an election year where noise will likely increase,” said Marvin Chen, a strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence.

    The focus is now on which sector will end up next in the crosshairs. EVs have so far been a key target, with Gavekal Research pointing to the EU’s worsening trade balance with China in the industry.

    “The cyclical positioning of Europe and China points to the trade balance tipping in China’s favor,” Gavekal analysts Cedric Gemehl and Thomas Gatley wrote in a note dated April 15. European domestic demand is strengthening, which should spur more purchases of Chinese goods, while EU exports to China are likely to flat-line at best on weak demand, they said.

    Shen Meng, director at Chanson & Co. in Beijing, expects lithium battery makers to face growing pressure. The industry falls under the category of clean tech and has been a top driver of China’s export growth in past years, he said. Key players include CATL, Eve Energy Co. and Gotion High-Tech Co.

    In some sense, there’s a bright side to the tensions as they can help accelerate China’s industrial upgrade. A technical breakthrough by Huawei Technologies Co., which is not listed and faces US sanctions, has spurred a surge in the shares of its suppliers.

    “While immediate impacts of such geopolitical tensions might constrain certain sectors temporarily, the long-term outcome could favor Chinese companies that innovate and adapt to changing regulatory and market dynamics,” said Tareck Horchani, head of prime brokerage dealing at Maybank Securities Pte.  

    The various restrictions mulled will also take time to deliver. A planned probe by Europe into Chinese medical devices procurement has sent stocks like Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co. plunging following the report, but most have since partially recovered their losses.  

    All things considered, the unpredictable nature of geopolitical tensions increases the risk of investing in Chinese stocks, an asset class that many were already avoiding due to regulatory uncertainties and a slowing economy.

    “Any future EU protectionist moves against China will further impede trade and capital flows into the Chinese economy and add to the already heavy downward pressure on its stock market,” said Han Piow Liew, fund manager at Maitri Asset Management Pte. “What all these means is that investing in Chinese stocks in such an environment is an arduous endeavor requiring razor-like focus on stocks.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 22:10

  • Northern California City Relaxes Homeless Rules Amid Federal Lawsuit
    Northern California City Relaxes Homeless Rules Amid Federal Lawsuit

    Authored by Brian Back via The Epoch Times,

    The city council of San Rafael in Marin County, California, voted unanimously in a public hearing last week, to approve a more relaxed version of its ordinance dealing with homeless camps and where they are allowed.

    The ordinance was originally approved by the council in July 2023 to help curb violence, crime, fires, and littering at an encampment dubbed “Camp Integrity” in the Mahon Creek area near James B. Davidson Middle School.

    Several days before the ordinance was set to take effect, a group of homeless residents represented by a local chapter of the California Homeless Union filed a lawsuit to block it in federal court. A judge tentatively granted their request and has since issued preliminary orders to limit certain aspects of the city ordinance.

    San Rafael Mayor Kate Colin told the Marin Independent Journal the city has passed numerous ordinances in recent years as encampments have grown along with increased calls for police and fire response, but “has been sued in federal court every single time.”

    Officials say the ordinance passed Monday, which goes into effect in June, allows campsites to double in size to up to 200 square feet for one person or up to 400 square feet for up to four people living together, provided the camps are located more than 250 feet away from schools and have 10-foot buffers between sites. It also prohibits camping 100 feet from playgrounds—about one-third of a regulation football field—and 10 feet from private property and public utility infrastructure.

    San Rafael’s “Camp Integrity” has grown significantly over the past year with tents and other structures, and the accompanying drug use, sanitation problems, physical violence, and other issues are posing public health and safety hazards, according to the city.

    “My business is surrounded,” Jay Ress, general manager of East Bay Tire Co., told the council at the meeting.

    East Bay Tire purchased its property on Lincoln Avenue two-and-a-half years ago and invested $750,000 to renovate the site, Mr. Ress said. If the situation does not turn around soon they will be forced to shut down, he added.

    “We moved into San Rafael because of the reputation the city has had in supporting the business community,” Mr. Ress said.

    “But with the current situation, that reputation is being completely ruined, and I think the city is doomed to more people leaving.”

    Christine Miller, who with her husband Rick owns the 103-year-old nearby business Marin County Roofing Co., also pleaded with the council in a letter. She wrote the encampment next to her property has led to violent attacks against employees and resulted in the death of at least one homeless person in front of her business.

    “These are not people who lost their jobs and have fallen on hard times,” Ms. Miller wrote.

    “These are people who are addicted to drugs and actively engaging in drug related activity. Nothing is being done to hold them accountable.”

    City staff said rules at “Camp Integrity” have been enforced with incentives and voluntary compliance, and under the new ordinance, no homeless individuals will be charged with violations unless their unlawful conduct is knowing or willful.

    “Is it enforcement never? Is that what you’re saying?” asked City Councilmember Maribeth Bushey.

    Told some enforcement tools do remain available, Ms. Bushey asked, “And when, pray tell, will the city plan to exercise those tools?”

    The law remains unsettled as to whether or not cities have the right to evict homeless campers on public property, and if San Rafael violated their federal injunction, the city could be held in contempt of court, officials noted.

    The “Camp Integrity” homeless encampment on Andersen Drive in San Rafael, Calif., on April 16, 2024. (Brian Back/The Epoch Times)

    In a similar case that could guide the fate of lawsuits targeting San Rafael and other cities, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear opening arguments April 22 in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which explores how far the Oregon city and others can go in policing homeless camps.

    The case addresses the Eighth Amendment dealing with “cruel and unusual punishment,” which has been invoked to block oversight of encampments in cities where limited taxpayer-funded housing is available for homeless individuals. Lower court decisions in the case have focused on whether people are “involuntarily” homeless and would agree to leave an encampment and occupy a shelter bed if available.

    The “Camp Integrity” homeless encampment on Andersen Drive in San Rafael, Calif., on April 16, 2024. (Brian Back/The Epoch Times)

    As “Camp Integrity” has grown, the city has added garbage collection services, hand-washing stations, and six portable restrooms, two of which are ADA compliant. Some of the health and safety upgrades were requested by campers in a city-administered survey.

    Marin County and the City of San Rafael jointly applied for $5.9 million in state funds earlier this year and say they are optimistic they will be awarded the money this month. The grant would add outreach staff, case managers, facilities such as mobile showers, and provide funds for interim housing.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom attended Redwood High School, just a few miles from San Rafael, and he previously lived with his family in a nearby Marin County estate that sold for $5.9 million before he was elected governor.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 21:00

  • Sidney Powell Handed Win After Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort By Texas State Bar
    Sidney Powell Handed Win After Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort By Texas State Bar

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Sidney Powell speaks during a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington on Nov. 19, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    Sidney Powell, a lawyer who filed lawsuits after the 2020 election, got a win in Texas after an appeals court ruled that the Texas bar did not prove that she engaged in misconduct or fraud.

    A panel of judges on the Fifth District of Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas ruled Wednesday that the state bar’s arguments lacked merit and evidence. They found that state bar prosecutors “employed a ’scattershot’ approach to the case” that had alleged Ms. Powell did not have a reasonable basis to file lawsuits that challenged the 2020 election’s outcome in battleground states.

    “The Bar employed a ‘scattershot’ approach to the case, which left this court and the trial court ‘with the task of sorting through the argument to determine what issue ha[d] actually been raised,‘” Justice Dennise Garcia wrote in the court’s ruling. “Having done so, the absence of competent summary judgment compels our conclusion that the Bar failed to meet its summary judgment burden.”

    A separate court had sided with Ms. Powell in the case last year, finding “numerous defects” in the evidence presented by the State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline. The court also found that the bar couldn’t provide evidence that she filed frivolous lawsuits.

    “Under these circumstances and on this record, we conclude the trial court did not err in granting Powell’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment,” the appeals court wrote.

    The State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not yet issued a statement on the matter. A representative for the Texas State Bar told Reuters that the commission would meet to determine its next steps but declined to comment further.

    “The Dallas Court of Appeals has affirmed the Texas state court’s dismissal of the Texas Bar’s case against Powell. After three years of litigation, the Court of Appeals held the Bar had no evidence Powell violated any disciplinary rule in filing four federal lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” she said in a statement this week after the court’s decision.

    In court papers filed with the appeals court, Ms. Powell disputed the bar’s allegations that she provided altered evidence in her legal filings. She said the documents were provided by other attorneys involved in the case.

    The court appeared to agree with her arguments. “Regardless of whether the challenged conduct must be knowing, intentional, or otherwise, a question we need not resolve here, it is axiomatic that dishonesty involves some conscious perversion of truth,” the judge wrote Wednesday.

    Following the 2020 contest, Ms. Powell was among the most prominent attorneys to file lawsuits, alleging there was enough fraud in battleground states that swung it in favor of President Joe Biden. A federal judge in Detroit sanctioned Ms. Powell and other lawyers in 2021 over the lawsuits.

    The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals largely upheld those sanctions, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Ms. Powell’s appeal.

    Ms. Powell in October 2023 pleaded guilty in Georgia and took a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors after she was charged with illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. President Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, has also been charged in the case.

    He and more than a dozen other co-defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty. President Trump has said the Fulton County case is an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election, describing the charges as baseless.

    Under the terms of her plea deal, Ms. Powell had to write an apology. “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” she wrote in the letter, made public in December.

    Fani Willis, the embattled Democrat district attorney of Fulton County who presented the charges to a grand jury, said that the apology letters needed to include “real contrition” but that they did not need to be long.

    Jenna Ellis, another lawyer who was charged and took a plea deal in Fulton County, also wrote an apology letter. However, she read hers aloud in court while pleading guilty.

    In response to Ms. Powell’s apology letter, President Trump wrote on social media last year that Ms. Powell never worked for him in an official capacity.

    “Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged & stolen,” he wrote on Truth Social. He added that Ms. Powell “was not my attorney and never was.” If she was, “she would have been conflicted,” the former president wrote at the time.

    “Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless. He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon,” he added.

    Reuters and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 19:50

  • "Seven F*cking Dollars!": Social Media Influencer Rages After Paying $7 For An Apple At Whole Foods
    “Seven F*cking Dollars!”: Social Media Influencer Rages After Paying $7 For An Apple At Whole Foods

    We’re being told that Bidenomics is working and that inflation is under control.

    Yet, when we see articles about shoppers in America paying $7 for an apple, it’s hard to make peace with the narrative the current administration is trying to convince its populace of. 

    That was the case last week when a Boston-based influencer took to Tik Tok to claim that she paid $7 for an apple – and only an apple – at a Whole Foods, according to a report by the NY Post. 

    “Literally just did grocery shopping at Whole Foods and look at this. Guess how much this is. This is an apple, it’s called a Sugarbee f–king apple apparently and look at it,” she said. 

    She continued: “The size of my palm. I thought it was like probably 2 to 3 dollars. I scanned this motherf–ker I scanned it — 7 f–king dollars, 7!”

    The user @via..li shared a video of her expensive purchase on social media, which has been widely re-circulated. The video, now deleted from her account, featured her removing an apple from a bag outside an unnamed Whole Foods store.

    As the Post notes, Whole Foods’ website prices the Organic Sugarbee Apple at $3.99 per pound across most Boston areas, though rates can differ by location. In her video, the TikToker even confirmed the price with a store employee.

    She added: “Genuinely what economy are we all f–king living in that it costs 7 dollars to buy an apple? I could have sworn that some other like apple that I bought was not 7 f–king dollars. It’s crazy, like 7 dollars for a latte? OK. This apple better be tasting so f–king good.”

    Viewers responded with an array of comments, with some supporting the influencer and others questioning her. One user wrote: “On average a pound will give you 2-3 apples. Maybe her anxiety was leaning on the scale.”

    Another added: “Even more insane when you realize that’s almost an entire hour of labor for some people even in the US. Imagine working an entire hour in exchange for 1 apple…”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 19:11

  • 15 State Officials Warn Bank Of America About 'De-Banking' Of Christians
    15 State Officials Warn Bank Of America About ‘De-Banking’ Of Christians

    Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

    A group of 15 financial officials from 13 states sent a notice to Bank of America, raising concerns about the institution’s “de-banking” of Christians.

    “We write to express our concerns over Bank of America’s troubling track record of politicized de-banking. Bank of America’s de-banking policies and practices threaten the company’s financial health, its reputation with customers, our nation’s economy, and the civil liberties of everyday Americans,” the officials wrote in an April 18 letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.

    “We are especially troubled by Bank of America’s track record of discriminating against religious ministries. Notable examples include Memphis-based charity Indigenous Advance Ministries, the Timothy Two Project, and Christian author and speaker Lance Wallnau.”

    In April 2023, Bank of America shut down the account of Indigenous Advance Ministries, which partners with groups in the African nation of Uganda to provide care and education for orphaned and at-risk children. The bank closed accounts of a Memphis church which donated to the organization.

    Bank of America provided “vague reasons” for the closure of these accounts, claiming the organization’s activities exceeded the institution’s “risk tolerance” and that it no longer wanted to serve its “business type.”

    “Months later—after being confronted by an international media organization—the bank then claimed that it closed the accounts because the for-profit business engaged in ‘debt collection.’ Neither Indigenous Advance Ministries nor the church collect debts, nor was the bank able to point to any policy prohibiting account holders from engaging in such activities,” the letter said.

    “In other words that rationale was a ruse, and even if legitimate, would only apply to one of the closed accounts.”

    In 2020, the bank closed the account of Timothy Two Project International, which trains pastors in more than 65 nations. In a letter to the group, the bank claimed the closure was due to Timothy Two operating “a business type we have chosen not to service.”

    The financial institution also froze the accounts of author Mr. Wallnau, alleging he was suspected of money laundering. However, the bank failed to provide any evidence supporting such accusations.

    While the bank eventually unfroze the account, they required Mr. Wallnau to answer a series of invasive questions.

    “This pattern of religious de-banking strongly suggests that systemic drivers of religious and political bias may be at work within Bank of America,” the letter said.

    “One objective indicator of such a problem is the bank’s egregiously low score on the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, the premier benchmark for measuring corporate respect for free speech and religious freedom. Bank of America scored a meager 8 percent out of a possible 100 percent.”

    The letter pointed out that Bank of America’s vague terms of service allow them to deny services for political or religious views. For instance, the company’s policy says it can refuse services to clients deemed to “promote intolerance … or hate.”

    This policy can be weaponized by the bank against clients who express certain views, which are protected by the First Amendment, the officials wrote.

    “Bank of America funds and partners with anti-free speech organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for American Progress while preventing employees from giving to faith-based groups in their employee gift match program.”

    Bank of America, being the second largest bank in the nation and a recipient of a host of government subsidies, is obligated to ensure equal access to marketplace for all Americans and “not play politics,” officials wrote.

    The letter was written by officials from Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

    They demanded that the institution implement certain recommendations, including eliminating “existing viewpoint discriminatory terms” governing customers, updating its terms of service to include a commitment to not discriminate on the basis of religion or politics, and taking part in a survey to assess how the bank’s policies impact the civil liberties of its customers.

    The Epoch Times reached out to the bank for comment.

    De-banking of Conservatives

    The issue of de-banking conservatives has been a hot topic in recent years. A November 2022 statement signed by 60 financial professionals alleged that banks like JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One, and Morgan Stanley were engaged in political or religious discrimination.

    “JP Morgan Chase refused to process payments for a GOP-aligned organization,” it said.

    In addition, the bank “shuttered the National Committee for Religious Freedom’s account without explanation, demanding that the nonprofit disclose its donors and provide a list of the political candidates it intends to support as a condition of resuming service.”

    Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley refused to do business with organizations that raised “significant human rights, environmental, health, and safety or social responsibility issues.”

    Similarly, credit behemoth Visa mandated that merchants do not use its services in any manner deemed “hateful.”

    “What these vague, unspecified terms mean in practice is subject to the arbitrary interpretation of each of your companies, or any one of thousands of employees charged with enforcing them,” the statement said.

    “Policies like these place customers and clients at risk of being ‘debanked’ simply because a company employee disagrees with their point of view on any number of contentious social issues.”

    Meanwhile, states are taking action to end financial discrimination against conservatives by the banking industry.

    Iowa earlier this year introduced Senate Study Bill 3094, which bans financial institutions from discriminating against customers using a “social credit score.”

    The bill defines “social credit score” as any evaluation of a person’s “speech, religious exercise, association, expression, or conduct protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

    If a financial institution is found violating the law, the attorney general can bring a civil action against the institution. A court can order the institution to pay damages, restitution, or other compensation.

    In February, State Rep. Jason Zachary (R-Tenn.) introduced a similar bill in Tennessee. “This legislation prohibits the 20 largest banks in our country from denying financial services to any Tennessean based on political speech, religious belief, or a social credit score,” he said at a state House Banking and Consumer Affairs Committee hearing.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 18:40

  • NYC High School Soccer Game Cancelled After Migrants Refuse To Leave The Field
    NYC High School Soccer Game Cancelled After Migrants Refuse To Leave The Field

    New York City has long been out of space, but the constant stream of migrants arriving in the Big Apple is truly making it clear just how much of a premium real estate really is on the island. And those who pay for it are apparently no longer entitled to it. 

    A New York City high school soccer game, held on a public field in East Harlem, had to be cancelled this past week after a group of migrants reportedly refused to leave the pitch, according to the NY Post. 

    The match was slated to be the Manhattan Kickers versus FA Euro New York.

    Even after the police showed up, the group of migrants refused to leave the field, the report says. There were about 30 migrants, who “appeared to be African” and “spoke little English”, according to the report. 

    Erik Johansson, the coach of the Manhattan Kickers 17-year-old boys travel team, told the Post: “I directly asked them to leave and some of them kind of took it into consideration, but then four or five of them said, ‘You know what, f–k it, we don’t have to leave, we can do whatever we want.’”

    The police asked to see the teams’ city permits, prompting Johansson to say: “When you show up with two teams in uniform, a ref and two coaches, usually nobody is asking to see your permit.”

    The game was delayed 30 minutes as a result of waiting for permits to be forwarded and, by then, “the teams didn’t feel safe”, the report says. 

    “Even when the game is over, you don’t know if they’re waiting for you, so even if the cops kicked them out, it may not be over. So we just all agreed, this is too dangerous,” Johansson said.

    He told the Post that in his home country of Sweden, “clashes” with migrants on public pitches were “all too common”. 

    “I have seen this before, I know how bad it can get,” he concluded.

    Maud Maron, a mother to a boy that plays on the Kickers, said: “It’s so frustrating that the guys who refused to follow the rules won.”

    She said New York City is becoming “lawless”. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 18:05

  • People Who Rent Will Decide the 2024 Presidential Election
    People Who Rent Will Decide the 2024 Presidential Election

    By Mish Shdlock of MishTalk

    Immigration won’t decide the election. Polls have not yet captured what will. This may come as a surprise, but the top issue housing. More explicitly, it’s shelter costs.

    The Economy

    The economy is a very broad category that encompasses inflation, jobs, unemployment, wages, rent, and housing.

    Other polls split the economy in various pieces, such as inflation and jobs. Not a single poll mentioned housing specifically.

    Q: What is it that young voters really have on their minds?
    A: Rent

    The CPI Rose Sharply in March Led by Shelter and Gasoline

    The CPI rose 0.4 percent in March. Rent was up another 0.4 percent with gasoline up 1.7 percent. Together, the pair was about half of the total rise.

    Rent of primary residence, the cost that best equates to the rent people pay, jumped another 0.4 percent in March.  Rent of primary residence has gone up at least 0.4 percent for 31 consecutive months! 

    The “rents are falling” (or soon will) projections have been based on the price of new leases and cherry picked markets. But existing leases, much more important, keep rising.

    Only 8 to 9 percent of renters move each year. It’s been a huge mistake thinking new leases and finished construction would drive rent prices.

    Rent does not really go up every month. The BLS smooths things out over time. Instead, rent has surged once a year more than wages have kept up.

    Immigration Not the Key Issue Where It Matters

    I sympathize with the view that immigration is the key issue, and perhaps it is to voters nationally.

    Mayors in Chicago, Denver, and New York city are all bitterly complaining. So are governors Greg Abbot in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida. Add in California for good measure.

    Those six states provide 188 of the 270 electoral college votes but none of them are in play.

    The six swing states are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona. Immigration is only a hot issue in Arizona where abortion is also in play.

    Blacks Abandon Biden

    A WSJ Swing State Poll show blacks, especially black males, are abandoning Biden in huge numbers.

    In the swing states, 30 percent of black males now support Trump. That’s up from 12 percent in the 2020 election. Trump support from black females is up from 6 percent to 11 percent.

    The numbers are not directly comparable because the 2020 numbers are national. However, the numbers flash a huge warning sign.

    The WSJ poll confirms the NYT/ Siena poll from last October: Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds

    Young Voters Say Their Discontent Goes Deeper Than Israel and Gaza

    Israel is a big issue in Michigan, likely more so than immigration.

    But across the board, Young Voters Say Their Discontent Goes Deeper Than Israel and Gaza

    Generational Homeownership Rates

    Who Are the Renters?

    The answer is younger voters and blacks. The Apartment List 2023 Millennial Homeownership Report shows Millennial homeownership seriously lags other generations.

    Generation Z homeownership is dramatically lower still. And according to the National Association of Realtors, the homeownership rate among Black Americans is 44 percent whereas for White Americans it’s 72.7 percent.

    That’s the largest Black-White homeownership rate gap in a decade.

    Home Prices Hit New Record High

    The latest Case-Shiller housing data shows home prices hit a new record high.

    Adding insults and costs, the 30-year mortgage rate ended last week at 7.30 percent according to Mortgage News Daily.

    Those looking to buy a home are very angry about being priced out while watching rent soar for nearly three years.

    Explaining the Polls

    The homeownership discrepancy (Black/White, and Young/Old) fully explains the polls. Yet not a single pollster or economist is in tune with relationship.

    A high percentage of blacks and young voters are likely vote for Biden, but the shift vs 2020 is what will matter.

    President Biden and economists in general keep singing the praises of the economy.

    On average the economy is doing OK. And asset holders have generally fared well in this economy. But averages will not decide the election.

    The Abortion Issue Comes Alive in Arizona

    On April 17, I wrote The Abortion Issue Comes Alive in Arizona, It Could Cost Republicans Dearly That’s still my position with an emphasis on the word “could”.

    What About Trump’s Legal Issues?

    Trump will lose some Republicans and undecided voters who may sit the election out on grounds that Trump was part of an insurrection or contributed to one. However, The Need to Prevent a Biden Economic Collapse Outweighs Charges Against Trump

    Republicans are willing to look the other way on the charges against Trump.

    So, if current trends hold, it’s the economy that will matter.

    Specifically, the election will be decided by extreme unhappiness in the block of voters who rent but want to by a home, concluding things were better under Trump.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 17:30

  • Recent IRA Inheritors Get Another Year With No Distribution Requirement
    Recent IRA Inheritors Get Another Year With No Distribution Requirement

    In what’s becoming an annual ritual, the IRS has once again waived required minimum distributions for the current year for people who inherited an IRA from someone who died in 2020 or after. That’s welcome news, but some uncertainty still hangs over a growing number of people whose inherited IRAs are subject to new rules precipitated by the SECURE Act, which was passed in December 2019.  

    That law killed the so-called “stretch IRA” — which let beneficiaries minimize distributions by spreading them out over their life expectancies. The SECURE Act now requires most non-spouse beneficiaries to completely empty an inherited IRA by Dec. 31 of the year containing the 10th anniversary of death. For example, a child who inherited an IRA from a parent who died on Oct. 20, 2021 has until Dec. 31, 2031 to take all the money out. 

    That all seemed straightforward and simple enough. Tax professionals and financial planners universally assumed that people with inherited IRAs subject to the SECURE Act’s “10-year rule” could take out as little or as much as they wanted until the 10th year, when the remainder would have to be withdrawn. 

    Aggravatingly, the IRS had other ideas. When it drafted the regulations to enforce Congress’s “10-year rule,” the despised organization needlessly complicated things for situations where the deceased retirement account owner was old enough to have been subjected to RMD requirements.  

    Specifically, it decreed that — during Years 1 through 9 — heirs would have to take annual required minimum distributions (RMDs) based on their life expectancies and calculated with a factor from an IRS table. Then, in Year 10, they’d have to withdraw whatever’s left. 

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

    The IRS didn’t issue those proposed regulations until 2022 — which meant affected people who hadn’t taken RMDs in 2021 had broken a rule that hadn’t been created yet. That unjustness combined with a broad uproar from taxpayers, tax advisors and financial institutions over the complexity of the proposed regs prompted the IRS to announce that it would waive the penalty for not taking RMDs in 2021 and 2022.

    As the IRS continued wringing its hands over its mess — and as IRA heirs continued wondering if the final regulations might turn out mercifully simpler — the IRS issued another RMD-penalty waiver for 2023. On Tuesday, the IRS similarly announced there’d be no penalty for failing to take RMDs from affected accounts in 2024.

    All the while, the wait for final regulations continues. With its announcement of the 2024 waiver, the IRS said those final regs are expected to apply to RMDs for 2025, which implies they’ll be published later this year — close to five years after the legislation that triggered the need to lay out new rules for taxpayers. 

    This IRA inheritor doesn’t have to take an RMD in 2024, but should consider if a huge withdrawal in Year 10 might backfire

    Generally speaking, withdrawals from traditional IRAs are fully taxable as ordinary income. While we’re conditioned to defer taxation, there may be some circumstances where it’s not in your best interest to wait until Year 10 to take most of the money out.

    For example, if the account is big enough, a large, single withdrawal could push you into a higher tax bracket, or have a domino affect on other elements of your tax return that key off your adjusted gross income. Then there’s the question of what future tax rate you’ll be subjected to in a late-stage empire that’s $34.7 trillion in debt.

    If the IRS goes forward with requiring distributions in Years 1 through 9, you’ll be responsible for making sure you take out at least the right amount; you can take more if it suits your tax-planning. In the first few years after the SECURE Act passed, many financial institutions threw up their hands on inherited IRA RMD calculations, merely telling investors ask a tax advisor. Now, they’re starting to come around. Vanguard, for example, offers an online, inherited IRA RMD calculator that anyone can access.  

    Two final points of emphasis:

    • The 10-year rule only applies to IRAs inherited from owners who died in 2020 or later. Earlier-inherited accounts use the old rules, which allow for “stretch IRA” distributions over their lifetime.
    • The same grandfathered treatment generally applies to IRA-inheritors who fall into any of five classes of “eligible designated beneficiaries”: Surviving spouses, minor children of the account owner, disabled people, the chronically ill, and people who are either older than or not more than 10 years younger than the deceased IRA owner. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 16:55

  • Pardon Me? Michael Avenatti Flips, Willing To Testify On Trump's Behalf
    Pardon Me? Michael Avenatti Flips, Willing To Testify On Trump’s Behalf

    Imprisoned former CNN demigod Michael Avenatti has come out in support of Donald Trump, telling the NY Post that he’s willing to testify on Trump’s behalf after being in contact with Trump’s legal defense team about his willingness to testify against his former client, Stormy Daniels.

    “The defense has contacted me,” Avenatti told the Post in a phone call from Terminal Island, a minimum-security federal prison in Los Angeles where he’s serving a 19-year sentence for extortion, tax evasion, fraud, embezzlement and other federal crimes.

    “I’d be more than happy to testify, I don’t know that I will be called to testify, but I have been in touch with Trump’s defense for the better part of year,” Avenatti continued.

    A person close to the former president confirmed the ongoing discussions.

    While Avenatti made his name as one of Trump’s most ferocious critics — and even publicly called for Trump’s indictment in 2018 — the defense attorney sang a different tune from the clink.

    “There’s no question [the trial] is politically motivated because they’re concerned that he may be reelected,” Avenatti said. “If the defendant was anyone other than Donald Trump, this case would not have been brought at this time, and for the government to attempt to bring this case and convict him in an effort to prevent tens of millions of people from voting for him, I think it’s just flat out wrong, and atrocious.

    “I’m really bothered by the fact that Trump, in my view, has been targeted. Four cases is just over the top and I think there’s a significant chance that this is going to all backfire and is going to propel him to the White House,” he added. –NY Post

    According to Avenatti, “Depending on what happens, this could constitute pouring jet fuel on his campaign.”

    Avenatti captured national attention in 2018 while representing Stormy Daniels, the porn star who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006, and was paid $130,000 by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2016 in order to allegedly buy her silence.

    In November 2018, however, Avenatti’s world began imploding after he was booked on charges of domestic violence. Less than 18 months later he was convicted of trying to extort Nike for up to $25 million. And in 2022, he was found guilty of pilfering $300,000 in book advance money from Daniels – and pleaded guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in the same month.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 15:45

  • Biden's Title IX Trans-formation Puts Women's Progress & Protections "On The Chopping Block"
    Biden’s Title IX Trans-formation Puts Women’s Progress & Protections “On The Chopping Block”

    Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

    The Biden administration’s overhaul of Title IX met with pushback today from lawmakers in favor of preserving female-only spaces.

    Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing

    Among the dissenters was Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who serves as the Education and the Workforce Committee Chair. Ms. Foxx asserted that the Department of Education’s final Title IX rule puts a radical agenda of left-wing ideologues over the safety of women and girls.

    “The Department of Education has placed Title IX, and the decades of advancement and protections for women and girls that it has yielded, squarely on the chopping block,” Ms. Foxx said in a press release from the committee.

    On April 19, the rule overhauling Title IX was finalized by the Biden administration. As a result, universities and colleges nationwide have only a few months to revise their policies regarding the handling of sex discrimination complaints in light of the expanded definition of sex.

    The Title IX Act, which is federal legislation, explicitly forbids any form of sex discrimination in funded educational programs or activities, including sexual harassment and sexual violence.

    The new rule defines sexual harassment as including harassment based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

    In her castigation of the changes, Ms. Foxx went on to say:

    “This final rule dumps kerosene on the already raging fire that is Democrats’ contemptuous culture war that aims to radically redefine sex and gender.

    “The rule also undermines existing due process rights, placing students and institutions in legal jeopardy and again undermining the protections Title IX is intended to provide. Evidently, the acceptance of biological reality and the faithful implementation of the law are just pills too big for the Department to swallow—and it shows.”

    According to the U.S. Department of Education, this redefining of sex is intended to be in accordance with the logic of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, which was issued in 2020. In that case, a child welfare worker was purportedly terminated after his employer discovered that he was gay.

    In its decision, which was reached by a vote of 6–3, the Supreme Court provided a broad interpretation of Title VII, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. The court came to the conclusion that it is unconstitutional to take into consideration sexual orientation and gender identity when making employment choices.

    U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in an April 19 press release, announcing the change:

    “For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised an equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools free from sex discrimination.

    “These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.”

    On his first day in office, President Joe Biden issued a comprehensive executive order that directed all federal agencies to apply the Bostock framework to all of their operations, including Title IX enforcement. This was despite the fact that Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion that Bostock would only narrowly apply to Title VII.

    “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” President Biden’s day-one order stated.

    “Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes.”

    The department’s new rule does not address the issue of transgender athletes competing in high school and college sports, which is now the subject of a rule-making process that is still ongoing. It is considered improbable that a comprehensive sports rule will be established before the general election later this year.

    The White House did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’s request for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 15:10

  • "Hard Crash": Construction Jobs In Philadelphia Set To Plunge As Residential Projects Hit A Wall
    “Hard Crash”: Construction Jobs In Philadelphia Set To Plunge As Residential Projects Hit A Wall

    Construction jobs in Philadelphia could plunge soon as a result of a “glut” of residential projects finishing up with questionable demand waiting behind them, according to a new report from BisNow. 

    In fact, some developers are calling for a “hard crash” after a rush to capitalize on the city’s 10-year tax abatement program “temporarily sent activity into the stratosphere”.

    Construction is bustling along the city’s main thoroughfares as teams tackle a large backlog of projects permitted before the expiration of a key tax abatement program in January 2022. Over 26,000 units were approved in 2021, a significant increase from 2020, with the work expected to conclude within the next 18 months, the report says. 

    Driven by low interest rates and the rush to meet the tax break deadline, a surge in construction began in 2022. Last year saw over 10,000 units hit the market, with another 16,000 upscale units expected to finish in the next 18 months.

    However, new housing permits have dipped significantly, with only 949 issued in January and 986 in February across the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington region, per census data.

    Vince Jolly, founder and president of CVA Commercial Group, said: “It’s not even anticipating a downturn. The downturn’s already here.” 

    He continued, telling BisNow: “I think construction workers, obviously, are going to get hit hard. Because once these jobs dry up, I mean, what else are they going to do?”

    Construction employment in the city increased by 1.5% from 2021 to 2023, with 121,000 local workers in the trade by late last year, according to census data. However, new apartment construction starts have dropped over 30% from their late 2022 peak, and 99 projects comprising 17,000 units have been halted at the proposal stage, as per CoStar data.

    The Riverwards Group Managing Partner Mo Rushdy commented: “That glut of apartments will solve itself, let’s say, by May 2025. The real problem is, No. 1, jobs. We hear from our friend in the trade unions and from others that projects are going to dry up in terms of the residential industry and when it comes to new jobs coming from the pipeline of ’26 and ’27.”

    “I’ll tell you from experience, we’re not even seeking financing,” Rushdy added.

    “I see the bigger players are starting to be impacted. Companies that were very profitable for the past couple of years are barely making it,” Calvin Snowden, founder and managing partner of Philadelphia-based construction management firm BDFS Group said.

    “I’m an engineer, not an economist, [but] I know there’s a problem. I know the interest rates have to come down since the projects don’t make sense anymore. The numbers just don’t work.”

    Despite nearly 100 multifamily projects being put on hold, such as Alterra Property Group’s 352-unit building in University City, some large projects are continuing. Notably, Tower Investments is progressing with its 1,111-unit project in Center City, which represents 6.5% of all units currently under construction in the metro area and is the nation’s 11th-largest ongoing apartment project.

    However, large projects are becoming rare. Mark Cartella of Alterra Group suggests that the industry may see a decline in large-scale projects before smaller ones. Meanwhile, redevelopments are driving activity for Benchmark Construction Group, with projects underway in Fishtown and other areas of high demand like South and North Philadelphia, focusing on both new construction and existing housing.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 14:35

  • Judge Who Handed Down $454 Million Trump Penalty Set To Rule On Validity Of Reduced Bond
    Judge Who Handed Down $454 Million Trump Penalty Set To Rule On Validity Of Reduced Bond

    Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

    After weeks of trying to secure a bond and arguing to an appeals court that a $454 million bond was “impossible,” former President Donald Trump secured a $175 million bond to stay judgment only to now have to make the case all over again why this should satisfy the New York Attorney General and stop her from seizing his properties.

    On April 22, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, the trial court judge who set the $454 million judgment, will hear the attorney general’s challenge to the sufficiency of President Trump’s bond.

    The $175 million figure had been set by the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court, and President Trump has frequently criticized Justice Engoron for “ignoring” appeals court orders, such as when he allowed evidence past the statute of limitations set by the appellate division during the trial.

    Who’s Backing the Bond?

    The attorney general has sought to cast doubt on the stability of LA-based Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), calling it a “small insurer” and arguing it is not authorized to do business in New York.

    They argued that KSIC has never before written a surety bond, and has “a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million.”

    Amit Shah, president of the insurance company, demanded the court compel the attorney general to show cause, or prove the allegation that the insurance company is not sufficient.

    Mr. Shah submitted a sworn affidavit explaining that KSIC now has control over a bank account of President Trump’s that will maintain $175 million cash for the duration of the appeal. The insurance company entered into a collateral agreement with the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Mr. Shah submitted documents establishing that his company is in “good standing” and was approved for excess line eligibility in New York in June 2021.

    “As an eligible excess line insurer in the state of New York, KSIC is, therefore, properly authorized to issue the surety on behalf of Defendants,” he stated.

    This authorization stands as long as the insurance company meets the Excess Line Association of New York’s requirement of maintaining a minimum $47 million policyholder surplus, and Mr. Shah stated his company is maintaining a $48 million surplus minimum.

    He added that as of the end of 2023, the insurance company had $539 million in assets and $138 in equity, and its parent company, Knight Insurance Company, had on a consolidated basis $1 billion in assets and $1 billion in equity. The parent company also maintains $56 million in cash and $937 million in marketable securities to support reinsurance obligations.

    “At my direction, KSIC also performed diligence to confirm its legal authority to act as surety before issuing the subject bond,” Mr. Shah stated.

    “Although KSIC had not before placed a surety bond in New York, KSIC is an excess line insurer in the state of New York.”

    The attorney general also took issue with the fact that KSIC does not have “exclusive right” to the account containing $175 million in cash, and highlighted the fact that it would need “two days’ notice” to move that cash.

    State attorneys urged the court to “not rely on KSIC’s financial summary” because the insurance company “sends 100% of its retained insurance risk to affiliates in the Cayman Islands,” which they argued “artificially bolsters its surplus.”

    They argued that excess line insurers are only authorized if the management is found “trustworthy and competent,” and KSIC did not qualify because “its management has been found by federal authorities to have operated affiliated companies within KSIC’s holding company structure in violation of federal law on multiple occasions within the past several years.”

    Knight is under The Hankey Group of financial companies, which includes the affiliate Westlake Financial Services LLC. The attorney general argued that Westlake was found to have “violated numerous federal laws by pressuring borrowers through the use of illegal debt collection tactics, including using phony caller ID information, falsely threatening to refer borrowers for investigation or criminal prosecution” in 2015 by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The company was fined and provided $44 million in restitution to consumers.

    The attorney general is requesting that President Trump be required to post a replacement bond within seven days.

    30 Companies Said No

    The bond required was originally $454 million, but attorneys for President Trump argued that they had employed four brokers who for weeks negotiated with the largest sureties in the world to no avail.

    Some 30 companies would not fill the bond, they argued, because sureties normally will not take hard assets—like real estate, Trump Organization’s primary asset—as collateral.

    Instead, they would require the bond amount in cash, plus additional premiums given the unusually large size, totaling to what they estimated to be more than $550 million cash.

    On the eve of the deadline for posting bond, President Trump took to social media to claim that he had close to $500 million in cash, but had planned to use much of it on his reelection campaign and did not want to hand it over to a New York court as he fights to keep his buildings.

    He further claimed in a follow-up press conference that the $454 million figure was one the attorney general and judge arbitrarily settled on because they had seen a number similar to it in his bank accounts, which have been disclosed to the court during the course of the civil fraud case.

    The attorney general had originally sought $250 million, which increased to about $370 million by the end of the trial. Plus backdated interest, President Trump was ordered to pay $454 million in all.

    Trump attorneys submitted a sworn affidavit from one of the brokers hired to negotiate the $454 million bond, who explained that in the surety world, $100 million was a large bond, and hardly issued to private individuals. He stated that only a “handful” of sureties are even authorized by the federal government to issue bonds that big, and many had internal policies limiting bonds they issue to $100 million. He also affirmed that sureties do not take hard assets as collateral, because they are not designed to quickly liquidate them in the event a bond has to be paid.

    The attorney general urged the court not to take these affidavits at face value, calling into question the lawyer and broker’s credibility by claiming they had prior connections with President Trump. The state attorneys suggested that the reason President Trump could not fill the bond was instead because his companies may not be in as good standing as he claimed.

    Trump attorneys pointed out that a court-appointed monitor has given the attorneys and court full access to Trump Organization finances since 2022, and the finances have been transparent.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 14:00

  • Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
    Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    Should I Stay or Should I Go?

    Coming up for air after what was an intense week on the geopolitical and market side of things, I’m really being forced to reconsider my current recommendations (bearish bonds, stocks, and credit).

    I keep thinking:

    If I go, there will be trouble
    And if I stay, it will be double

    Bearish rates has worked well from the start. We turned negative on credit right near the lows, so that too has worked. On equities, by the time we turned bearish, it definitely moved against us. We had some drawdowns, and they seesawed back and forth between potentially making sense and looking very stupid (sometimes, on the same day). Well, the Nasdaq 100 (the main focus of our ire) is now down 7% since April 11th (6 trading days). We saw a rather nasty 2% drop on Friday (even after it had largely recovered from overnight Geopolitical concerns) and is now only up 1%. Our call had been that the market was highly susceptible to a rapid 5% to 10% decline, which we stretched to 10% as it continued to “defy” gravity. Remember, for all the hype about “all-time highs” and “tech is all you need”, the Nasdaq 100 closed above 18,300 all the way back on March 1st and barely got any higher than that in what is now almost 2 months.

    We’ve updated this chart since we sent it around in an “informal” report, and the story is even more bleak, though not as bleak as it would have been had the markets closed at 3:45pm when this index was below 17,000.

    Based on closing pricing, no one who bought the Nasdaq 100 since January 18th has made money. If you started the year long, you are now sitting on a relatively measly 1% gain – which just does not seem at all consistent with the hype.

    In Thursday’s T-Report – We Can Drive it Home, With One Headlight, we reiterated our bearish views, while devoting much of the space to the section “AI valuations seem questionable.” There are some big stocks (some in the AI space) down around 10%. If you are keeping track at home, the leveraged single stock ETF that has caught my attention actually had net inflows on Friday, despite being down 20% – indicating that we haven’t seen a wipe out. I also distinctly remember headline after headline when we had record-setting market cap gains for individual companies, yet crickets on what had to be a historic drop in market cap. Another sign that we have not seen a washout.

    But before we go through our analysis and recommendations coming into this week, I have to admit, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” isn’t close to being my favorite song by the Clash. But, I’ve already used “Magnificent Seven”, “Clampdown” seemed too harsh, “Lost in the Supermarket” would have made more sense when inflation was spiking, and “Death or Glory” sadly seems destined to pop up in a piece on geopolitics (the way the world is going). I did want to do I Fought the NDX and I Won, but the Clash cover stuck to the traditional title, and it was the Dead Kennedys who changed it to “I won” rather than “the law won.” But in the end it hasn’t been a resounding win, and I didn’t want to jinx myself too badly if I come out still bearish (spoiler alert, I am).

    Equities

    Today we will focus on what is “new” as the bear case was well covered in the previously referenced One Headlight piece.

    The most bullish thing I can say is that equities are now 5% to 7% cheaper than a week or so ago. So, if you were planning on “backing up the truck” and loading up on stocks, you have that opportunity. You literally have missed nothing by not being massively overweight the Nasdaq 100 since the start of the year. Two issues fighting this come to mind:

    • There have been multiple small dips this year, so how much dip buying capacity remains?
    • My view is that when people say “I would load the boat if that stock drops 5%”, what they really mean is “I would load the boat if that stock drops 5% in otherwise calm markets, for no apparently good reason, basically letting me buy the same story, but 5% cheaper”. Well, the story and market dynamics have changed. Geopolitical risk has risen. Questions about valuation, easily dismissed when stocks seemed to be up every day (they weren’t but that was the narrative), are not so easily dismissed. As the chart highlights, anyone who bought this year is now likely under water on their new investments in this index (or ETFs like QQQ). Don’t get me started on ARKK, my “go to” proxy for “innovation” and “disruption,” which is down 20% on the year now. I will admit, Bitcoin might be a haven for some of the riskiest risk takers, as it is up strongly on the year, though it too has done very little (except cost buyers money) since the end of February. The “halving” is supposed to take it to the next level. How paying someone 50% less (for the same work that they did) helps the price is beyond me. I mean, I get the miners in particular are incentivized to jack up prices, but the “bitcoin always goes higher after the halving” arguments are based on such a small sample size, that I think it will not work this time as the entire crypto universe seems to think it will.

    But anyways, I digress, I just think that enough has changed and enough dips have been bought, that there is no trove of “rescue” money about to flood the market with new buying liquidity.

    Since AI remains too important, I will add one thing to the laundry list from Thursday:

    • Using Google trends, searches for things like ChatGPT are down and declining. Same for some broader themes on AI. You cannot have FOMO without the Fear of Missing Out and I don’t think we are ripe with Fear any longer. If anything, maybe it is the fear that valuations have gotten ahead of themselves.

    Earnings will be important, and we will get several from very important companies this week.

    • Maybe it is my imagination (it could be, since there are few data points so far), but the “reaction function” to earnings seems to have changed. As we rallied late last year and at the start of this year, it seemed that the market focused on positives and dismissed negatives. It also seemed to rally on the “same” news, day after day. One stock in a sector would report positives and the market would take the sector significantly higher. A day or two later another company in the sector would give the market something to cheer about and the entire sector would pop again. Wasn’t some of that good news already priced in? I believe we have much higher hurdles this time and the markets are looking for excuses to sell, rather than to buy. I could be wrong on the reaction function or earnings could all beat by so much that we get a reversal, but I’m skeptical on that.

    Think like an algo.

    • I tend to be a “profit” taker (and “double downer”). When things work, I like to take chips off the table. What I constantly need to remind myself of is that algos are often wired in the opposite direction. They press winners. They tend to follow momentum. They tend to be quick to stop themselves out. I believe algos/quantitative trading models have been exiting stocks. Are they out? Possibly, we have seen higher volumes on this down move. Have they turned from buyers to sellers and are happy to establish shorts and push those? That I don’t know, but my fear of “systematic” trading systems (often described simply as CTAs, but a universe much bigger than that) makes me want to stay bearish.

    In the end, I’ve started to reduce shorts, but remain bearish, and think that the correct strategy is to sell bounces and keep reloading shorts, until something occurs that forces me to change my views.

    Bond Yields

    In the end, on equities, it turned out to be “more of the same” (maybe slightly less pounding on the table), but bonds are far more interesting in terms of “staying” or “going” from a bearish perspective.

    We’ve been bearish on yields for most of this year and it has largely worked. Not a one-way street by any stretch of the imagination, but not bad. In fact, we’ve raised our range on the 10-year yield, from 4.2%-4.4% to 4.3%-4.5% and then from 4.4%-4.6%. I don’t think we’ve officially changed the band, but it is implicit that if 10-years are at 4.62% and I’m still bearish (though far less so than at 3.9% where we started the year), the band must be higher. Do we raise the range again? That is always a dangerous game, as many equity analysts, who felt compelled to raise price targets in the past few months, can tell you. Were we too low originally? Have things changed that significantly? Take the win? I’m not sure if repeatedly raising your bands is something that should be considered in current analysis, but it makes sense (at least for me).

    Aside from many specific reasons to be bearish, we had the catch-all of “nothing that was in place to push 10s to 5% last fall has been resolved.” That is still true.

    What is the bull case for bonds?

    • Inflation. While I was never part of the “Super Users” group, I think I can relate to my understanding of the “gist” of the story – wanting more data to better understand what the heck the BLS actually comes up with for inflation. Let’s for the moment assume that inflation has “become sticky” around 2.5% (to pick a number). Then lets think about all the issues with measuring inflation. Hedonic quality adjustments. Substitution. Difficulty measuring. Flawed measurements (housing and rent, while ignoring the always “curious” use of Owners Equivalent Rent, have a lag effect built in, for gosh knows what “useful” reason). Last month, in at least one of the reports, it all came down to auto insurance. So, let’s assume that any given month is within 0.2% of being an accurate representation for that month (somehow, I feel I’m generous). Then it is at 2.4% annualized. So if we are centered around 2.5% (or 0.2% per month), then we could easily see a month with no inflation that annualizes to “problem solved.” While I believe on-shoring, near-shoring, geopolitical inflation, and the realization that we need to build out traditional and new energy sources, etc., will be inflationary, I would have to bet on seeing what would now be considered a surprise (a month where inflation data looks really good), especially given the current levels of expectations. One big fear I have about remaining bearish, is that not only would I not be surprised to see some good inflation data before the June meeting, but also I would be shocked if we didn’t. More about measurement and reporting than any real change in the underlying inflation rate.

    • Carry. Yes, the path to hell is paved with carry (or interest), but it is real. The back-up in yields provides more protection. While I’m constantly aware that selling can beget more selling (see my equity concerns), the case for “buying the dip” in bonds is stronger. More yield. Interest coming in every month that can be re-invested. Less inversion, making the decision between 2s and 10s more complicated even for “yield hogs” who focus more on yield than duration.

    • “No Bounce” and “American Exceptionalism” have become so consensus that it wouldn’t take much to tip the apple cart and put some level of fear about the state of the economy back on the table. I think earnings, and more importantly outlooks, may paint that picture for us.

    I am worried about “faux” liquidity, even in the Treasury market. Electronic trading and a multitude of platforms tend to make liquidity appear more abundant than it really is. There aren’t 50 people sitting on the bid. There are 10, they just happen to all put them on 5 platforms, assuming they can yank the bid in time. There are really only 5 buyers, the other 5 just “see” them buying, so are along for the ride hoping to scalp some money and thinking they can pull their bids if necessary. That is why we get “air pockets” in pricing and will continue to do so. Positioning is better than it was (not everyone is long), but this “gap” risk is real – in both directions.

    I like the 2-year at 5% and am “tolerant” of 10s at 4.6%.

    Credit

    Credit spreads for me are now largely just a proxy for equites. Yes CDX, credit spreads, and even high yield held their own on Friday amidst the debacle of an equity market, but that will be difficult to sustain.

    I see no fundamental problems in credit, but it is difficult to remain bearish on equities and like credit. Also, the aforementioned “faux” liquidity is even more obvious in credit markets and creates far more gap risk. While that gap risk is usually somewhat symmetric, I think the gap risk to much wider is higher than the risk to a gap tighter. Still like 65-70 as range on CDX.

    Geopolitical Base Case

    Academy Securities has sent a lot out on the current situation in the Middle East. We’ve done what we can with our team of retired Generals and Admirals. Not just via written word (please see the “new” Daily Brief that we’ve been sending on Bloomberg), but also through more video calls than I can keep track of.

    Even with their expertise, there is a range of “error” or “doubt” centered around “what has happened” let alone “what might happen.”

    There have been some fast and furious discussions about deterrence and General (ret.) Ashley highlighted this Rand publication – Understanding Deterrence from 2018. Academy’s game theory centric piece – Geopolitical Chicken – is worth reading if you haven’t already.

    Anyways, my base case is:

    • Iran’s attack on Israel was not just symbolic. They planned to cause damage and are really concerned that they didn’t. I’m agreeing with the argument that you send “a handful” of drones/missiles (all of the lowest quality) if you want to ensure that they don’t get through. Sending 100s with a range of capabilities, was an actual attack that failed. Others make the case that it was symbolic and designed to be destroyed en route. I find that argument less plausible, hence, not my base case.

    • Therefore, much like Russia, they have to recalculate their war effort. If the attack was somewhere between Fail and Epic Fail, you need to rethink your strategy. It is far too early for them to have understood what went wrong, let alone how to “correct” it, so of course they will downplay the Israeli attack on Iranian soil. You cannot afford to have a second failed attack. You might convince the world that you launched a “second symbolic” attack, but that’s a stretch of the imagination.

    Therefore, my base case is that Iran is trying to figure out how to attack again, which may take some time, and a lot could change between now and then, but the current “quiet” is more about a failed attack than any meaningful de-escalation.

    That may or may not be your base case, and even by working so closely with our Geopolitical Intelligence Group, you can find support for a range of “base cases,” but this is my working assumption. This means that I think possible shocks are still on the table. From Hedging Geopolitical Risk I think any shock will be bad for equities, temporarily good for bonds (but fade that quickly), and good for oil.

    Bottom Line

    There is very little I can find in equities. I’m not even “loving” long China (for a trade) versus short Nasdaq 100 (though I’d be remiss to point out for the past 3 months, FXI is up 10.8% while QQQ is down 1.4%). Remember, I think that as time goes by, more people will question whether slower sales into China are a function of problems with the Chinese economy or part of a broader strategy to suppress sales of Western brands in favor of domestic brands – The Threat of Made by China 2025.

    • I still own energy and commodities but biased towards owning the equities (not the underlying commodities). It is interesting that the equities (looking at XLE) did so well on Friday. Maybe reduce some positions here, but this is my favorite sector. Iran seems unlikely to respond soon, given my base case, and my bet is that we see some signals of a slowing economy emerge from earnings calls.
    • Neutral to mildly bullish Treasuries. There, I’ve done it. I’ve flipped. For now, buy some Treasuries. Stick to a 4.45% to 4.6% band on 10s. This is for a “trade” rather than a fundamental shift. If there is any market where deep out of the money options make sense, it could be here, as faux liquidity makes me fear a “flash crash” type of scenario. If this “bull case” sounds tepid, it is because it is tepid, but I’ve flip-flopped here to the bull side (again, for a trade, tepidly, and acknowledging the risk of a gap to much higher yields).
    • Credit. Moderately bearish, based primarily on having a bearish outlook on equities. I don’t see fundamental issues, but that doesn’t matter for the next 10 bps on IG credit. Rising Treasury yields have helped credit spreads (got the higher yield on IG and even High Yield without having to demand wider spreads). If I’m correct and Treasuries bounce, then spreads are likely to feel a little bit of pain as you see a “flight to quality” (as opposed to a “flight to safety”).

    Hopefully, by the time you read this report it is still relevant in a world where countries don’t adhere to a policy of attacking only during U.S. trading hours!

    Good luck navigating this and please feel free to use Academy’s resources, as we as a firm are at your disposal!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 13:25

  • "You Are Quite Openly Jewish": London Police Under Fire For Confrontation With Man Near Anti-Israeli March
    “You Are Quite Openly Jewish”: London Police Under Fire For Confrontation With Man Near Anti-Israeli March

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    The London police are under fire this week for threatening to arrest a man wearing a kippah near a pro-Palestinian march.

    Officers inform Gideon Falter, head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism watchdog, that he was “antagonizing” the protesters by being “openly Jewish” near such a march. He was told that, if he tried to cross the street while being “openly Jewish,” he would be arrested for breach of the peace.

    In the video, one police officer said: “You are quite openly Jewish, this is a pro-Palestinian march, I’m not accusing you of anything but I’m worried about the reaction to your presence.”

    Another officer then added later: “You will be escorted out of this area so you can go about your business, go where you want freely or, if you choose to remain here, because you are causing a breach of peace with all these other people, you will be arrested.”

    Falter was also told that being openly Jewish near such a march was “antagonizing”.

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

    Activists have long protested the dangers of “driving while black” in prompting stops by police and threats of arrest. Falter appears to have established a danger of “walking while Jewish” in London.

    The Metropolitan Police later apologized, but had to issue a second apology after saying in a now deleted statement that

    “In recent weeks we’ve seen a new trend emerge, with those opposed to the main protests appearing along the route to express their views. The fact that those who do this often film themselves while doing so suggests they must know that their presence is provocative, that they’re inviting a response and that they’re increasing the likelihood of an altercation.”

    Calling an openly Jewish man “provocative” only reaffirmed the original statements made by the officers.

    As a result, the police had to issue a new statement, which said that the previous one had “been removed. We apologize for the offense it caused.”

    What is equally disturbing is the threat to arrest a man who was doing nothing wrong based on his identity.

    These threats were being made as protesters were hurling abuses at him because he is Jewish.

    Notably, the United Kingdom has embraced a wide array of criminalized speech, arresting people for hateful or denigrating comments made against groups or individuals.

    A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”

    We also discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crackdown on free speech.

    I have opposed those laws.

    Yet, this incident illustrates the arbitrary enforcement of such laws. The police simply ignored the anti-Semitic comments being leveled at Falter and confronted him on being openly Jewish. 

    That is not to say that I favor the enforcement of criminal speech laws. Rather, it shows the added danger of such laws in their selective enforcement.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 04/21/2024 – 12:50

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