Jan 25

Today’s News 25th January 2025

  • Pentagon's New Mideast Policy Chief Wants To Scale Down US Presence In Region
    Pentagon’s New Mideast Policy Chief Wants To Scale Down US Presence In Region

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The Trump administration has appointed a new Middle East policy chief in the Pentagon who believes the US should scale down its military presence in the region.

    Michael DiMino, a former CIA analyst, was sworn in early this week as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. Before taking the job, DiMino was a fellow at Defense Priorities, a think tank that calls itself the “hub of realism and restraint” and advocates for a less interventionist foreign policy.

    Jewish Insider reported that DiMino’s appointment has alarmed pro-Israel Republicans due to his views on the region. The report cited comments DiMino made during a webinar last year where he said the Middle East does “not really matter” for US interests.

    “Vital or existential US interests in the Middle East are best characterized as minimal to non-existent. And I think if you look at America’s experience as the primary security broker for the region… it has not rendered any lasting political, economic, or security benefits in service of US interests or the American people,” he said.

    DiMino has opposed attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and war with Iran in general and has repeatedly called for the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq and Syria, citing their vulnerability to attacks.

    When President Biden launched a bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthis in January 2024, DiMino opposed it and suggested the US should consider putting pressure on Israel to improve conditions in Gaza since the Israeli onslaught was the reason for the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping.

    “Any multi-billion-dollar effort to fight a war in Yemen would render no political, economic, or security benefits to the United States. Strategies like ‘buck passing’ and diplomatic engagement are perfectly viable, would do the US no harm, and could resolve the crisis. Continued military action in Yemen, by contrast, presents dubious prospects for success,” DiMino wrote in Responsible Statecraft.

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    The US bombing campaign against the Houthis only escalated the situation in the Red Sea and did not deter the Yemeni group at all.

    Now that there is a ceasefire in Gaza, the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, have said they will stop their attacks as long as Israel abides by the truce.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 23:25

  • Visualizing NATO's And Russia's Militarization Of The Arctic
    Visualizing NATO’s And Russia’s Militarization Of The Arctic

    Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arctic has been considered a politically neutral zone, marked by the peaceful international cooperation of scientists.

    But, as Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, as the Arctic ice melts and more land and sea becomes accessible, opportunities for resource extraction and maritime trade routes are opening up, making it increasingly attractive to vying global powers, with some observers questioning confidence in its stability.

    Infographic: NATO’s and Russia’s Militarization of the Arctic | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is considered a turning point in Arctic relations. At the time the war broke out, Russia had been chairing the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that promotes cooperation and coordination between the Arctic States, Arctic Indigenous Peoples and other Arctic inhabitants, covering a range of issues – crucially, excluding military security.

    Seven of the eight Arctic Council members (all but Russia) promptly decided to boycott meetings over the war and only met again in 2023 to oversee the handover of the chairmanship to Norway. Without Russia, which is so large that its northern border makes up 53 percent of the Arctic coastline, the Arctic Council faces criticism over its international legitimacy, as it can no longer claim to be separate from geopolitical conflicts. In 2024, Russia then suspended annual payments to the organization until the council’s full activities involving all members resumed. Some virtual meetings started up again last year with Russian participation.

    Russia has a larger military presence in the Arctic than NATO and has been investing in and upgrading its Soviet-era facilities. Chatham House, a UK think tank, says this is defensive in nature and that the Kremlin is opposed to the idea of starting a conflict in the Arctic. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Moscow is rather “pursuing economic ambitions, protecting its second-strike nuclear capabilities and projecting power into the Central Arctic, Bering Sea and North Atlantic”.

    The Arctic Institute adds to this, saying that Russia’s control of the North Sea Route (NSR) would give an “economic and diplomatic lever with which to extend their regional influence”, highlighting how the Russian Northern Fleet has increased its surface and underwater monitoring of the route. The U.S. Department of Defense takes a stronger rhetoric, stating in its 2024 Arctic Strategy that Russia’s maritime infrastructure could allow it to enforce “excessive and illegal maritime claims” along the NSR between the Bering Strait and Kara Strait in the future. The document also highlights new logistical challenges in the region due to climate change as well as U.S. concern over the competition of a co-operating Russia and China, the latter of which has also shown interest in being a part of the region’s developments, calling itself a “near-Arctic state”.

    NATO too has carried out drills and increased its might in the arena, with the addition of Sweden and Finland to the group last year. The U.S. DoD says it is monitoring developments and improving surveillance and early warning systems in the vast region to “ensure the Arctic does not become a strategic blind spot.” Data published by Foreign Policy illustrates how in Europe, Norway has 13 Arctic bases, including a new addition, Camp Viking, a UK training ground for Royal Marines Commandos.

    This source shows the U.S. to have nine bases in Alaska in addition to those in Greenland and Iceland. Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s reiteration of wanting to buy Greenland in the past weeks, Washington has said it has no plans to increase the U.S.’ current military footprint there. Observers note that continued tensions and military buildup on both sides has the increased risk of miscalculation.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 23:00

  • White House Office Of Gun Violence Prevention Webpage Goes Dark On Trump's 2nd Day
    White House Office Of Gun Violence Prevention Webpage Goes Dark On Trump’s 2nd Day

    Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times,

    Second Amendment advocates are celebrating, and gun control activists are decrying the apparent closing of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

    The Trump administration has not confirmed that the office, opened by an executive order from then-President Joe Biden in 2023, is closed.

    The office’s website was down the day after President Donald Trump officially took office and remains inactive as of Jan. 23.

    The White House did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

    Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), who helped secure funding for the office, decried the closure in a post on the social media platform X.

    In remarks on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 22, Frost said the closure would cost lives.

    “While lives are stolen, this admin is busy signing executive orders that have nothing to do with helping families and keeping them safe,” he said.

    His office did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

    The gun control group Brady criticized the reported closure on its website, saying the office had reduced crime involving guns.

    “The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention wasn’t about politics—it was about strengthening the government’s ability to protect Americans [more than 300 of whom are shot every single day] from guns. By shuttering it, Trump is putting the interests of the gun lobby above our kids, our communities, and our country,” Brady president Kris Brown’s statement reads.

    The office’s critics noted that it was staffed by longtime gun control activists and headed by Vice President Kamala Harris, who supports banning certain semiautomatic rifles and other gun control measures. They questioned the legitimacy of a government office they said was meant to block a constitutional right.

    “That office should have never existed, and President Trump is again proving his commitment to our Second Amendment rights,” Mark Oliva, Director of Public Affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

    The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms echoed the sentiments in a Jan. 22 press release.

    Committee Chairman Alan Gottlieb alleged the office was an attempt by Biden to bypass Congress and advance his gun-control agenda.

    “Biden was trying to advance his gun control schemes with what amounted to a shadow government office because Congress rejected his extremist agenda of gun bans, gun registration, and other Second Amendment infringements,” Gottlieb stated in the press release.

    When the office opened, Kristine Lucius, deputy assistant to the president and domestic policy adviser to the vice president, said its mission was to “prevent gun violence and save lives.”

    Stefanie Feldman was the director of the office in addition to being a White House assistant to the president and staff secretary.

    Greg Jackson, who led the Community Action Fund, which the White House described as “a national, survivor-led gun violence prevention organization focused exclusively on the impact on black and brown communities,” was one of two deputy directors.

    Rob Wilcox, a senior director of federal government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety who also worked for Brady and served on the board of directors of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, was the second deputy director.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 22:35

  • Distrust In Leaders (And Journalists) Ticks Up Again
    Distrust In Leaders (And Journalists) Ticks Up Again

    Edelman has once more released its annual Trust Barometer, capturing a snapshot of how people around the world feel about today’s leaders.

    The findings are hardly positive, with survey data revealing that an increasing proportion of respondents across the 28 polled countries worry that government and business leaders as well as journalists and reporters are purposely misleading people by saying things they know are false or are gross exaggerations.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, around seven in ten people believe this to be the case for each of the groups of leaders, with distrust against journalists and reporters most widespread, albeit marginally.

    Infographic: Distrust in Leaders Ticks up Again | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The share of people who worry about this has increased significantly since the survey was asked in 2021 (up 11-12 percentage points in each case).

    Respondents in the lower income quartile reported feeling greater levels of distrust of these leaders than those in the top quartile.

    Where 63 percent of high income respondents said they had trust in business, government, media and NGOs, the figure was just 48 percent among low income respondents.

    Scientists and teachers were the favored voices when respondents were asked which groups of people they thought could be trusted to do what is right, at 77 and 75 percent, respectively.

    More than 32,000 people were polled across 28 countries in each survey wave.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 22:10

  • China's DeepSeek Bombshell Rocks Trump's $500BN AI Boondoggle
    China’s DeepSeek Bombshell Rocks Trump’s $500BN AI Boondoggle

    Authored by Mark Whitney,

    The future of humanity is being decided as we speak. And it is not being decided on a battlefield in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East or the Taiwan Strait, but in the data centers and research facilities where technology experts create “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of Artificial Intelligence.” 

    This is a full-blown, scorched-earth free-for-all that has already racked up a number of casualties though you wouldn’t know it from reading the headlines which typically ignore recent ‘cataclysmic’ developments. But when President Trump announced the launching of a $500 billion AI infrastructure project (Stargate) on Tuesday just hours after China had released its DeepSeek R1—which “outperforms its rivals in advanced coding, math, and general knowledge capabilities”—it became painfully obvious that the battle for the future ‘is on’ in a big way. And this is not a battle that either side can afford to lose. Here’s how technology expert Adam Button summed it up:

    Imagine we’re back in 2017 and the iPhone X was just released. It was selling $999 and Apple was crushing sales and building a wide moat around its ecosystem.

    Now imagine, just days later, another company introduced a phone and platform that was equal in every way if not better and the price was just $30.

    That’s what unfolded in the AI space today. China’s DeepSeek released an opensource model that works on par with OpenAI’s latest models but costs a tiny fraction to operate. Moreover, you can even download it and run it free (or the cost of your electricity) for yourself.

    The product is a huge leap in terms of scaling and efficiency and may upend expectations of how much power and compute will be needed to manage the AI revolution. It also comes just hours before Trump is expected to unveil a $100 billion investment in US datacenters. The model shows there are different ways to train foundational AI models that offer up the same results with much less cost. It also opens up far more applications for AI that would have been too expensive to run previously, which should broaden the applications in the real economy. 

    – China’s DeepSeek may have just upended the economics of AI, forex live

    Imagine the panic that is spreading across western tech capitals right now. AI was supposed to be the fast-track to absolute societal control and oligarchic rule into the next millennia, but now those pesky Chinese have overturned the applecart leaving western elites with a problem they might not be able to fix. (See—Unchecked AI will lead us to a police state, edri ) They expected that their microchip sanctions would sabotage China’s AI efforts for at least a decade-or-so but, instead, China has come roaring back with a system that has left the tech giants gasping for air.

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    Of course, China’s eye-popping strides in technological development are nothing new as editor Ron Unz pointed out in a recent article where he noted that “between 2003 and 2007, the US led in 60 of the 64 technologies.” Whereas, as of 2022, “China led in 52 of the 64 technologies.” That’s not a competition; that’s a beat-down in a parking lot. Here’s Unz:

    China now leads the world in many of the most important future technologies. The success of its commercial companies in telecommunications (Huawei, Zongxin), EV (BYD, Geely, Great Wall, etc.), battery (CATL, BYD) and Photovoltaics (Tongwei Solar, JA, Aiko, etc.) are directly built on such R&D prowess.

    Similarly, the Chinese military’s modernization is built on the massive technological development of the country’s scientific community and its industrial base…. With its lead in science and technology research, China is positioned to outcompete the US in both economic and military arenas in the coming years…. American Pravda: China vs. America, Ron Unz, Unz Review

    None of this should come as a surprise, although the timing of DeepSeek’s release (preempting Trump’s Stargate announcement) shows that the Chinese don’t mind throwing a wrench in Washington’s global strategy if it serves their regional interests, which it undoubtedly does. Here’s a bit more background from an article by Benj Edwards at Ars Technica:

    On Monday, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released its new R1 model family under an open MIT license, with its largest version containing 671 billion parameters. The company claims the model performs at levels comparable to OpenAI’s o1 simulated reasoning (SR) model on several math and coding benchmarks….

    The releases immediately caught the attention of the AI community because most existing open-weights models—have lagged behind proprietary models like OpenAI’s o1 in so-called reasoning benchmarks. …

    The R1 model works differently from typical large language models ….They attempt to simulate a human-like chain of thought as the model works through a solution to the query. This class of what one might call “simulated reasoning” models, or SR models for short, emerged when OpenAI debuted its o1 model family in September 2024. …

    DeepSeek reports that R1 outperformed OpenAI’s o1 on several benchmarks and tests, including AIME (a mathematical reasoning test), MATH-500 (a collection of word problems), and SWE-bench Verified (a programming assessment tool)….

    TechCrunch reports that three Chinese labs—DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI’s Kimi—have now released models they say match OpenAI’s o1’s capabilities, with DeepSeek first previewing R1 in November. Cutting-edge Chinese “reasoning” model rivals OpenAI o1—and it’s free to download, ars technica

    This is a very big deal. The United States intends to dominate the world in this critical technology and yet the upstart Chinese have not only produced a system that is every bit as good as America’s best, but have made it more affordable, more accessible and more transparent. What’s not to like?

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    (Note—OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory. It is made up of the non-profit OpenAI Incorporated and its for-profit subsidiary corporation OpenAI Limited Partnership. OpenAI has emerged to be one of the primary leaders of the generative AI era. OpenAI is a privately held company that has open sourced some of its technology, but it has not open sourced most of its technology…. In contrast, DeepSeek AI R1 is open source which means its code is publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit. Open source software is developed in a decentralized and collaborative way, relying on peer review and community production.)

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    Here’s more from political analyst Arnaud Bertrand in a post on X:

    Most people probably don’t realize how bad the news (about) China’s Deepseek is for OpenAI. They’ve come up with a model that matches and even exceeds OpenAI’s latest model o1 on various benchmarks, and they’re charging just 3% of the price. It’s essentially as if someone had released a mobile on par with the iPhone but was selling it for $30 instead of $1000. It’s this dramatic.

    What’s more, they’re releasing it open-source so you even have the option – which OpenAI doesn’t offer – of not using their API at all and running the model for “free” yourself.

    If you’re an OpenAI customer today you’re obviously going to start asking yourself some questions, like “wait, why exactly should I be paying 30X more?”. This is pretty transformational stuff, it fundamentally challenges the economics of the market….

    So basically, it looks like the game has changed. All thanks to a Chinese company that just demonstrated how U.S. tech restrictions can backfire spectacularly – by forcing them to build more efficient solutions that they’re now sharing with the world at 3% of OpenAI’s prices. As the saying goes, sometimes pressure creates diamonds. @RnaudBertrand

    Get the picture?

    Everything the US has done to stymie China’s development—including economic sanctions, chips embargoes, military provocations, political meddling, even arresting a Huawei executive (truly pathetic)—has blown up in their faces.

    China’s well-educated, highly motivated, technologically adept workforce have produced a model of AI that equals or exceeds the best the West has to offer at a fraction of the cost and with open sourcing that allows users to
    modify, and distribute the code as they see fit.

    So, which version of AI sounds like a genuine benefit to humankind and which sounds like another scheme for transforming the world into a dystopian police-state controlled by aspiring tyrants and psychopathic control freaks? Here’s more from Bertrand on ‘why China is making AI available so cheap:

    ….it speaks to a different philosophy/vision on AI: ironically named “OpenAI” is basically about trying to establish a monopoly by establishing a moat with massive amounts of GPU and money. Deepseek is clearly betting on a future where AI becomes a commodity, widely available and affordable to everyone. By pricing so aggressively and releasing their code open-source, they’re not just competing with OpenAI but basically declaring that AI should be like electricity or internet connectivity – a basic utility that powers innovation rather than a premium service controlled by a few players. And in that world, it’s a heck of a lot better to be the first mover who helped make it happen than the legacy player who tried to stop it. @RnaudBertrand

    So, it’s basically like everything else in this sick, twisted world where a handful of money-grubbing miscreants muscle their way into a new technology so they can fatten their own bank accounts while planting their bootheel firmly on the neck of humanity. It seems to me that China’s approach is vastly superior in that it’s clearly aimed at providing the benefits of AI to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost. Here are a few random comments on China’s DeepSeek AI that I picked off X that show how excited people are about this groundbreaking version:

    The ramifications of this are huge. Every day China does something incredible, totally unlike the stagnation of the EU, talking all day while accomplishing nothing, or the latest evil plan oozing out of DC. This is just brilliant. & inspiring. & it WILL earn them more goodwill @CaptainCrusty66

    It’s the china recipe book for success for every industry where western oligopolies have dominated. @bbooker450

    AI will become a part of everyday infrastructure like electricity and tap water. DeepSeek is a signficant step towards that, thanks to its cost reduction and open source nature @MrBig2024

    We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive – truly open, frontier research that empowers all…. @DrJimFan

    This is cool…this isn’t just another open source LLM release. this is o1-level reasoning capabilities that you can run locally, that you can modify and that you can study…
    that’s a very different world than the one we were in yesterday. Al, comments line

    Price comparison of OpenAI o1 and DeepSeek AI R1: R1 is significantly cheaper across all categories (96–98% savings). Now you know why big organizations don’t want open-source to continue, If humanity is ever going to benefit from AI, it will be from open-source . @ai_for_success

    China is overturning mainstream development theory in astonishing ways. China’s GDP per capita is only $12,000. That’s 70% less than the average in high-income countries. And yet they have the largest high-speed rail network in the world. They’ve developed their own commercial aircraft. They are the world leaders in renewable energy technology and electric vehicles. They have advanced medical technology, smartphone technology, microchip production, aerospace engineering… China has a higher life expectancy than the USA, with 80% less income. We were told that this kind of development required very high levels of GDP/cap. But over the past 10 years China has demonstrated that it can be achieved with much more modest levels of output. How do they do it? By using public finance and industrial policy to steer investment and production toward social objectives and national development needs. This allows them to convert aggregate production into development outcomes much more efficiently than other countries, where productive capacity is often wasted on activities that may be highly profitable to capital, or beneficial to the rich, but may not actually advance development. Of course, China still has development gaps that need to be addressed. And we know from some other countries that higher social indicators can be achieved with China’s level of GDP/cap, by focusing more on social policy. But the achievements are undeniable, and development economists are taking stock. @jasonhickel

    Unfortunately, the intensity of the competition between the US and China, ignores the inherent risks of Artificial Intelligence and its looming threat to human survival. In a recent analytical piece by the Rand Corporation titled AI and Geopolitics: How Might AI Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations?, the authors provide a disturbing window into a future in which “AI-enabled machines—of equivalent or greater intelligence and, potentially, highly disruptive capabilities” could pose a threat to our own existence. Keep in mind, the line between our historic reality and science fiction has already been crossed just as the probability that our own creation, AI, is likely “to become an actor, not just a factor” in the existential challenges faced by our species. Here’s a short blurb from this truly unsettling article:

    Although technology has often influenced geopolitics, the prospect of AI means that the technology itself could become a geopolitical actor. AI could have motives and objectives that differ considerably from those of governments and private companies. Humans’ inability to comprehend how AI “thinks” and our limited understanding of the second- and third-order effects of our commands or requests of AI are also very troubling. Humans have enough trouble interacting with one another. It remains to be seen how we will manage our relationships with one or more AIs….

    We are entering an era of both enlightenment and chaos…

    The borderless nature of AI makes it hard to control or regulate. As computing power expands, models are optimized, and open-source frameworks mature, the ability to create highly impactful AI applications will become increasingly diffuse. In such a world, well-intentioned researchers and engineers will use this power to do wonderful things, ill-intentioned individuals will use it to do terrible things, and AIs could do both wonderful and terrible things. The net result is neither an unblemished era of enlightenment nor an unmitigated disaster, but a mix of both. Humanity will learn to muddle through and live with this game-changing technology, just as we have with so many other transformative technologies in the past….

    The potential dangers posed by AI are many. At the extreme, they include the threat of human extinction, which could come about by an AI-enabled catastrophe, such as a well-designed virus that spreads easily, evades detection, and destroys our civilization. Less dire, but considerably worrisome, is the threat to democratic governance if AIs gain power over people….

    AI cannot be contained through regulation, so the best policy will aim to minimize the harm that AI might do. This will probably be most critical in biosecurity,[3] but harm reduction also includes countering cybersecurity threats, strengthening democratic resilience, and developing emergency response options for a wide variety of threats from state and sub- and non-state actors…..

    In light of the likely very widespread proliferation of advanced AI capabilities to private- and public-sector actors and well-resourced individuals, governments should work closely with leading private-sector entities to develop advanced forecasting tools, wargames, and strategic plans for dealing with what experts anticipate will be a wide variety of unexpected AI-enabled catastrophic events. AI and Geopolitics: How Might AI Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations?, RAND

    In other words, humanity should encourage their business and political leaders to exercise sound judgement and prepare for unexpected disasters that could terminate the species.

    That is simply not sufficient defense for the challenge we face.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 21:45

  • Conflict In The Middle East: Which Countries Think It Will End In 2025?
    Conflict In The Middle East: Which Countries Think It Will End In 2025?

    The ceasefire announced in January 2025 by Israel and Hamas was celebrated by both sides after months of mediation by the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt. However, lasting peace depends on a series of demands both parties agreed to.

    Beyond the Gaza conflict, the Middle East continues to grapple with civil wars and political instability in countries such as Syria and Iraq.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, presents the results of a survey conducted by Ipsos, which asked people in different countries if they believe the conflicts in the Middle East will end in 2025.

    Methodology: Ipsos surveyed 33 countries between Friday, October 25, and Friday, November 8, 2024. The survey included 23,721 adults aged 18 and older.

    Most Are Pessimistic About the Middle East

    The majority of respondents and countries chose “Unlikely”, meaning that they do not believe conflicts will end in 2025.

    Country Likely (%) Unsure (%) Unlikely (%)
    🇮🇳 India 55 13 32
    🇨🇳 China 50 11 39
    🇮🇩 Indonesia 46 11 43
    🇲🇾 Malaysia 42 20 38
    🇹🇭 Thailand 35 16 49
    🇵🇭 Philippines 34 15 51
    🇿🇦 South Africa 29 19 52
    🇸🇬 Singapore 27 18 55
    🇲🇽 Mexico 25 15 60
    🇵🇪 Peru 22 24 54
    🇮🇪 Ireland 21 12 67
    🇰🇷 South Korea 21 18 61
    🇧🇷 Brazil 20 21 59
    🇷🇴 Romania 19 17 64
    🇮🇹 Italy 19 17 64
    🇨🇭 Switzerland 19 14 67
    🇺🇸 United States 19 16 65
    🇹🇷 Türkiye 18 9 73
    🇪🇸 Spain 17 17 66
    🇨🇱 Chile 17 20 63
    🇩🇪 Germany 16 13 71
    🇭🇺 Hungary 16 21 63
    🇨🇴 Colombia 14 27 59
    🇦🇺 Australia 14 14 72
    🇧🇪 Belgium 14 11 75
    🇵🇱 Poland 13 18 69
    🇨🇦 Canada 12 20 68
    🇫🇷 France 12 13 75
    🇬🇧 Great Britain 12 13 75
    🇳🇱 Netherlands 11 9 80
    🇦🇷 Argentina 11 28 61
    🇸🇪 Sweden 11 8 81
    🇯🇵 Japan 9 24 67
    🌐 Global Country Avg. 22 16 62

    People in the Netherlands and Sweden are the most pessimistic about the resolution of conflicts in the region.

    Meanwhile, China and India have the highest share of respondents who believe the conflicts could end this year.

    In the United States, 52% said it is unlikely, while 26% believe in peace for the region, and 22% remain unsure.

    If you enjoyed this topic, check out this graphic that presents the results of another survey conducted by Ipsos, which asked people in different countries whether they believe the conflict in Ukraine will end in 2025.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 21:20

  • Affordable Broadband Law In New York Led AT&T To Drop 5G Home Service Entirely
    Affordable Broadband Law In New York Led AT&T To Drop 5G Home Service Entirely

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Neither New York nor California understands that companies won’t sell products for a loss…

    Hoot of the Day

    My hoot of the day is AT&T Is Stopping Its 5G Internet Air Service in NY Because of New Broadband Law

    A new broadband law is going into effect this week in New York state requiring internet provider to offer low-income residents access to monthly broadband rates of $15 for 25Mbps or $20 for 200Mbps. As a response, AT&T has decided that it no longer plans to offer its 5G home internet in the Empire State and will begin notifying users about the decision on Wednesday. 

    “While we are committed to providing reliable and affordable internet service to customers across the country, New York’s broadband law imposes harmful rate regulations that make it uneconomical for AT&T to invest in and expand our broadband infrastructure in the state,” the company said in a statement provided to CNET. 

    “As a result, effective Jan. 15, 2025, we will no longer be able to offer AT&T Internet Air, our fixed-wireless internet service, to New York customers.”

    New York first passed its broadband law back in 2021, with an appeals court allowing it to move forward last April after legal challenges looked to thwart it. The US Supreme Court decided in December that it wouldn’t hear challenges to the new law.

    Lessons from California and New York

    In New York, 5G service is now so affordable that you can’t get service at all.

    That’s a minor nuisance compared to California, where policy mandates by Governor Newsom led to cancelled policies.

    CBS News reports Thousands of Los Angeles homeowners were dropped by their insurers before the Palisades Fire

    About 1,600 policies in Pacific Palisades were dropped by State Farm in July, California Department of Insurance spokesman Michael Soller said in an Thursday email to CBS MoneyWatch. An analysis of insurance data by CBS News San Francisco last year found that State Farm also dropped more than 2,000 policies in two other Los Angeles ZIP codes, which include the Brentwood, Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Monte Nido neighborhoods.

    State Farm’s decision reflects a trend of private insurers, including Allstate and Farmers Insurance, of dropping California policies or halting underwriting, leaving homeowners with the choice of getting coverage through the insurer of last resort, the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, or FAIR Plan, or forgo insurance altogether. The FAIR Plan provides basic fire insurance coverage for properties in high-risk areas when traditional insurance companies will not.

    Seems to me that State Farm, Allstate, and Farmers did their homework.

    California would not let State Farm price for risk, so the companies decided not to renew policies.

    Not content with already disastrous stupidity, a new regulation mandates Business
    Insurance Companies in California Must Offer Coverage in Wildfire-Prone Areas    .

    Insurance companies will be legally required to write policies in those areas “equivalent to no less than 85% of their statewide market share.” Coverage won’t increase to that threshold immediately. Instead, companies will be given a requirement of a 5% increase every two years.

    Every insurer in California should leave the state unless they can price according to risk.

    Even if the insurers stay, understand they will have to overprice elsewhere if they underprice fire prone areas.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 20:55

  • These Are The World's Worst Organized-Crime Hot-Spots
    These Are The World’s Worst Organized-Crime Hot-Spots

    Organized crime groups have surged in recent decades, aided by the rise of synthetic drugs, encrypted technologies, and multinational operations.

    For instance, a leading Brazilian mob has 60,000 affiliates spread across 26 countries in addition to its 40,000 members. Moreover, criminal actors are increasingly diversifying their operations, engaging in activities such as human smuggling, drug trafficking, and the exploitation of food supply chains.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows organized crime hot spots around the world, based on data from the Global Organized Crime Index.

    Methodology

    The Global Organized Crime Index analyzes 193 countries based on their scale of criminal activity. It includes three main components:

    • Criminal actor influence and structure: e.g. mafia-style groups, criminal networks, state-embedded actors

    • Criminal market scale and impact: e.g. arms trafficking, heroin trade, human trafficking

    • Each country’s resilience to organized crime: e.g. judicial system, government transparency

    Overall, countries were scored on a scale of 0 to 10 by the extent to which organized crime groups exert control over their direct economic activities.

    Where Organized Crime Groups Are the Most Powerful

    Below, we show the top 30 hubs for organized crime groups worldwide:

    Central and South America have the highest concentration of organized crime globally, with the most widespread criminal activity in Venezuela and Colombia.

    In particular, criminal actors are known for serious extortion practices, human smuggling, and illegal arms trafficking. The economic crisis in Venezuela, which has forced millions to flee, has contributed to the rise in human smuggling and trafficking, with victims being targeted even beyond the Colombian-Venezuelan border.

    In Mexico, criminal actors are increasingly targeting the food industry, including avocados, tortillas, potatoes, and limes, among others.

    Myanmar also stands as a key hub for human trafficking, with an estimated 120,000 victims being used for forced labor in scam centers. These scam centers, which generate billions of dollars, operate largely along border of China and Myanmar, where victims are lured by significant perks.

    Meanwhile, the illicit arms trade in pervasive across Somalia. The jihadist group, al-Shabab, has infiltrated political and economic structures, serving as a key player in illegal arms trafficking. Each year, the group is estimated to make $100 million from its extortion activities alone.

    To learn more about this topic from a homicide perspective, check out this graphic on the world’s highest homicide rates by region.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 20:30

  • Can Trump Save The Dollar?
    Can Trump Save The Dollar?

    Authored by J.R.Macleod via The Mises Institute,

    During his 2024 presidential campaign Donald Trump repeatedly and in grave terms highlighted the possibility of the US dollar losing its world reserve currency status. This occurred at summits with business leaders at the New York and Chicago Economic Clubs.

    Trump occupies a rather unique position in this debate since he recognizes the real possibility of the dollar losing its world currency status, he opposes this change and wishes to prevent it, and yet he is not a paradigmatic member of the ruling class. However mainstream he is—today or in the past—he doesn’t possess the establishment credentials of a Ben Bernanke, for instance.

    Since Trump doesn’t want the dollar to lose reserve currency status, his acknowledgment that this is a real possibility should at least serve as ammunition against those who are oblivious to this change, or who claim that it isn’t happening. Typically, when dollar defenders argue that the loss of reserve currency status is an impossibility, they are arguing against those who wish for this change to happen. When Trump says that the dollar could lose its reserve status—even though he opposes this change—it at least undercuts the factual basis of those dollar defenders who claim its status is secure.

    Admittedly, the possible loss of reserve currency status is not a short-term trend. Anyone claiming the demise of the dollar is imminent—and particularly anyone trying to sell you a financial package on this basis—should be treated with skepticism. But there is a bizarre school of thought which downplays all blows to the dollar’s position, and claims that these events are insignificant. There are, in fact, many significant events occurring, and they are stacking up to present a real threat to the dollar’s position. Events such as Saudi Arabia trading oil in other currencies, BRICs countries developing a new payment system, and China rapidly decreasing its holdings of US treasuries. How can these events not mean anything?

    Source

    If the dollar is in jeopardy, and Trump wants to save it, the question then becomes: can he save it? One approach to achieving this goal would be to manage the dollar more competently. This would involve less creation of new money (inflation), since many national economies were severely destabilized by the massive inflation of recent years. It would also involve a judicious, non-ideological use of dollar-based power, as opposed to weaponizing the dollar over conflicts where a nation perceives its fundamental interests are at stake, and the US interest is peripheral at best, and unjustified at worst. The other approach would be to get tough; to threaten countries who move away from holding the dollar for forex purposes with either economic or military power.

    Trump has made noise about both approaches, though he seems to lean most heavily towards the use of tariffs to prevent nations from breaking away. In my view, the aggressive approach would only accelerate current trends, since this was the path taken from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 up until now, and it created the situation in the first place. A Trump administration managing the dollar the way it used to be managed could placate other nations and slow down current trends, but I think that is all it could do, rather than permanently halt and reverse these developments. A fundamental rupture has occurred and too many important nations perceive it as a fundamental interest to break the power of the dollar as the world reserve currency in the long term. They may be happier if this process is managed slowly and without disruption, but they are committed to it.

    In my view, it is impossible for Trump to stop the process of de-dollarization. Regardless of how much success he is able to achieve, we should also ask whether this is the right goal in the first place. Undoubtedly the dollar losing global reserve currency status would cause significant short-term economic pain for the American people. Trump seems to have the noble intention of avoiding this pain, but we also know that markets can respond to these events and get the economy working again rather quickly when left alone. Beyond markets, there is also the calculation, by which the government could adjust the ratio of its gold holdings to the dollar (assuming implementation of a hard gold standard). This is explained by Murray Rothbard in the final chapter of The Case Against the Fed. In the event that the dollar loses its reserve status, this plan could very quickly restore the currency to a sound position.

    It may seem noble to attempt to reinforce the reserve status of the dollar, but defending the Fed, the fiat dollar, and global reserve currency status are the economic equivalent of defending death by strangulation just because it’s slow. This currency system supports the bloated welfare-warfare functions of the government. It has hollowed out American industry by financialization and the fact that dollars can be created out of thin air to pay for goods and services domestically and abroad. This tremendously undercuts genuine production and wealth generation.

    Because this system creates such an unnatural and unproductive economy, and though this economy has such pernicious effects on society, collapse is inherent in the system sooner or later. The longer the system lasts, the more rot sets in, and the worse the eventual collapse will be.

    This discussion brings us to the subject of institutionalism. There is a powerful tendency in politics to regard an institution as one’s own, long after one’s own faction has lost it, or even where the institution never belonged to one’s own faction in the first place. Accompanying this is the tendency to want to reform institutions recognized as not aligned with one’s own faction, rather than destroy them.

    Being unable to recognize when an institution is opposed to one’s political goals, and being unable to recognize when an opposing institution is irredeemably opposed to these goals and, therefore, not subject to reform, can prevent a faction from achieving its desired political goals. In these cases, all energy—by the fact of being directed into these institutions—is then redirected against the goals the political faction wishes to achieve.

    According to Trump’s stated goals of wishing to revitalize the American economy on behalf of the American people—and not government or corporate special interests—the Federal Reserve and the fiat dollar it supports are irredeemable institutions. Trying to reform and reinforce the status of the dollar as global reserve currency will never achieve these goals. People may be able to point to this or that improvement in economic conditions over the next few years, but I am talking about systemic change and a lasting victory. It is hard to argue that these aren’t necessary over and above small improvements.

    Between the Biden administration inadvertently and obliviously endangering the global reserve currency status of the dollar through its own incompetence, and Trump’s intention to undo this damage, there is a better path. Any future American administration should create a plan to manage the transition away from the fiat dollar as global reserve currency towards a national gold dollar, that is, a national policy of a 100 percent gold-backed dollar, where other countries are free to set their own monetary policy. This would vastly improve the American economy as well as international relations.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 20:05

  • "Nervousness" Ripples Across Coffee Market As Prices Hit Fresh Record Highs
    “Nervousness” Ripples Across Coffee Market As Prices Hit Fresh Record Highs

    Arabica coffee futures surged to record highs on Friday, fueled by the ongoing global supply crunch. The most-active contract climbed nearly 2% in late morning trading, reaching the highest price levels on record dating back to 1972. The multi-year parabolic move in coffee prices only suggests higher Starbucks and/or supermarket market prices in the months ahead if hedges fail to offset bean inflation. 

    The big price jump has traders reducing their exposure to the futures market due to elevated costs, making the market more prone to volatility.

    Bloomberg data shows aggregate open interest — or the number of outstanding contracts — has declined in the past five years while prices moved higher. 

    Bloomberg’s Dayanne Sousa and Mumbi Gitau provided readers with bean supply concerns coming out of top grower Brazil: 

    After record shipments in 2024, Brazil should see a slowdown ahead “mainly due to the next arabica crop likely being smaller,” analysts at Itau BBA bank wrote in a report.

    That’s a concern in a period when global stockpiles remain tight. The fact that previously strong exports from Brazil weren’t enough to replenish world inventories “shows that demand has not yet allowed there to be an excess of coffee on the market,” said broker Thiago Cazarini, president of Cazarini Trading Co.

    Another reminder of the tightness in global supplies was this week’s decline in bean stockpiles held at exchange- monitored warehouses. That could indicate “robust spot demand in Europe,” said Tomas Araujo, a trading associate at StoneX.

    In a separate note, Bloomberg’s Ilena Peng and Mumbi Gitau said:

    Prices have been boosted by concerns about the output in top producer Brazil, where a drought reduced the potential production for the upcoming season. The decline in certified arabica stockpiles held at exchange-monitored warehouses this week is another reminder of continuing supply concerns. The surge is causing nervousness among coffee buyers already faced with tight global inventories and supply chain constraints, said Tomas Araujo, a trading associate at StoneX

    The bean surge should not only make commercial coffee buyers nervous but also leave consumers uneasy, as there are no indications that global food inflation will ease in the first quarter of 2025.  

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 19:40

  • Canadian Premier Says US Retaliatory Tariffs Should Be Targeted
    Canadian Premier Says US Retaliatory Tariffs Should Be Targeted

    Authored by Carolina Avenando via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says he supports targeted counter-tariffs in response to potential U.S. tariffs, but firmly opposes retaliatory export taxes on Canadian goods. His comments come as more premiers are taking issue with different aspects of the “Team Canada” tariff response.

    Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe speaks during a press conference in Regina, Sask., on Oct. 25, 2023. The Canadian Press/Heywood Yu

    Ottawa’s talks on retaliation have recently escalated to include wider measures, such as dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs and export taxes, Moe said at a Jan. 22 press conference, following a meeting between the premiers and the prime minister to discuss Canada’s response to U.S. tariff threats.

    Moe said he isn’t in favour of such “broad-based” retaliatory measures, arguing they would be “hurtful to the entirety of North Americans,” and that he instead supports “very small, targeted” counter-tariffs, designed to change the minds of American policy-makers.

    “We would be against all export tariffs because they’re counterproductive, they’re escalating the conversation around tariffs,” Moe said. “In no way is it our opinion that the Canadian government should be taxing the very products that are creating wealth for Canadians.”

    “But I think we can find a way through some targeted initiatives that don’t have as large an impact on the broader economy, and Canadians and North Americans,” he added.

    U.S. President Donald Trump didn’t impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico on the first day of his presidency on Jan. 20, but suggested they may come on Feb. 1. Trump first threatened tariffs following his election in November 2024, saying the two countries needed to address drug smuggling and illegal immigration at their borders into the United States.

    Converging With Alberta’s Smith

    Moe said he shares Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s concerns on the negative impacts of export taxes on their provinces’ economies.

    Smith has been a vocal opponent of retaliation, particularly export tariffs on Canadian oil and gas, saying they would have devastating impacts on her oil-producing province, whose main trading partner is the United States. Instead, she has advocated for a diplomatic approach, arguing the current U.S. administration is unlikely to respond favourably to threats.

    Last week, Smith was the only premier who refused to sign a joint statement by the prime minister and other premiers in response to U.S. tariffs, saying she could not fully support the federal government’s plan unless it stopped floating the idea of making energy export bans or tariffs part of Canada’s response. She added that, should Ottawa impose such measures, her province would take “whatever actions are needed to protect the livelihoods of Albertans.”

    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and some premiers, including Ontario’s Doug Ford, accused Smith of not being a team player, saying she was advocating for her province at the expense of the country.

    At his Jan. 22 address, Moe said that while he’ll try to “work together where we can” with Ottawa, he will stand up for his province if the federal government implements export tariffs.

    “We’ll be protecting Saskatchewan residents when it comes to the natural resources, which is under the provincial jurisdiction, [including] how we produce them and where we export them tariff-free,” he said.

    Earlier in the day, Quebec Premier François Legault spoke against the idea of Ottawa adopting export bans or tariffs unilaterally, saying such measures should only be implemented if the provinces involved agree.

    Meanwhile, other premiers emerged from the Jan. 22 meeting in support of solid retaliatory measures. “We know these tariffs are coming on Feb. 1,” said Ontario’s Ford. “We need to match those tariffs dollar-for-dollar, tariff-for-tariff, and make sure that it hurts the Americans as much as it hurts Canadians.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 19:15

  • Veteran Democrat Strategist Admits 'Resistance' Has No Response To Trump, Begs Biden To Disappear
    Veteran Democrat Strategist Admits ‘Resistance’ Has No Response To Trump, Begs Biden To Disappear

    Veteran Democrat strategist James Carville admitted on the Politics War Room podcast that the Democrat Party is struggling to keep up with President Donald Trump’s highly productive first week of his second term. Carville, a seasoned political consultant who managed Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, also directed sharp criticism at President Joe Biden to host Al Hunt, urging the former president to “just get out of the way” and make room for a new generation of Democrats to take back power from the America First movement.

    AL HUNT: I wish I could say something good about this week. Maybe in the course of the show, we’ll think of something. But the Trump inaugural and subsequent actions were dark, depressing, demoralizing and not surprising. Trump dominates Washington. I’ve been in this town for what, 55 years. I got to stop counting. And he dominates today like no other president I’ve seen. And he dominates with a reckless disregard for truth and more importantly, for the rule of law.

    JAMES CARVILLE: Well, I guess, you know, we sit here and you look at the crypto giant grift. It’s such a giant grift. Now, the other crypto people are mad because it’s such a grift is infringing on their territory. You look at the pardons of the January six violent criminals who assaulted police officers. All right. You look at his executive order suspending every president has anything to do with DEI. OK, you look at all of his stuff that is starting, you know, deportations, God knows what not. It’s a total confusion over TikTok, which he knows nothing. And what is the response? The Democrats are depressed, doesn’t have a way to deal with this because usually people would put something out and it would be the story of the day. And then you could follow that and they defend the story of people would attack it.

    Now he has 10 things out there of all of the things that you mentioned. What should the Democrats focus on? What they will end up doing is what they always do. They will focus on all 10. And they will do no good to me. The biggest one was the secretary of Treasury, a billionaire, telling the Senate committee that we can’t we can’t have a minimum wage raise. Then wages last raised in 2009. I’d love to know the salaries of the chart, the salaries of high income people since 2009. People over a million dollars, how their wealth is growing, what happened to people who outlawed part of hourly wages growing.

    Of course, we would know the answer to that without a doubt. And the hardest thing to do going forward, and I don’t have a lot of confidence that we can do that, that we can just pick something to the exclusion of 20 other things, because people will say, well, how could you not say something about that? Well, it’s not that I don’t think it’s a big issue. But if I say something about that and I say something about this and I say about this and that and I say something about that and this, I’ve lost my ability to communicate. And this is an unprecedented way that they’re going about this. And Steve Bannon, I think the guy was right. He said, we’re just going to flood the zone with sh*t. And we’re now flooded with sh*t and we just don’t have a response. We just don’t.

    AL HUNT: Oh, James, it’s going to continue for a long time. I think the Biden pardons of Mark Milley, Liz Cheney, Tony Fauci, the January 16th, it made me uncomfortable. And I actually hope a couple of them reject the pardon, which you can do. But Trump and his band made clear they want revenge. They’re going after Mark Milley, Liz Cheney and Tony Fauci, though there is no case whatsoever. So at least I understand the logic of that. You know, right wingers like Jim Banks, a new senator from Indiana, said Liz Cheney ought to be held accountable. For what? For what should Liz Cheney be held accountable for?

    It’s nonsense. I must say, I think that Trump’s pardon of his family is a different matter and totally indefensible. On this show, we both kind of uncomfortably agree the Hunter Biden pardon was understandable because Trump might use it. If Hunter Biden goes to prison, Trump could say, hey, I’m going to send him to X, Y or Z, depending on what Biden says or does. That’s what Trump does. But to pardon his brother, his sister, his brother-in-law, sister-in-law and others, who it’s a preemptive pardon. They haven’t been even charged with anything. I is as bad as Trump’s sleazy pardon of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, all of whom have been convicted or something. You know, probably not. But I really think I’m really upset that Biden did that.

    JAMES CARVILLE: Well, this is the kind of truth of where we are. All of us know Biden. Actually, we know you and I know him personally. And I think it’s fair to say that we’re long time at some level admirers of Joe Biden. And what he’s done to himself is no one wants to hear from this guy anymore. OK, just go to your condo in Rehoboth and stay there. And that’s not because we’re bad people or we mean people. It was all his doing, all his doing, this entire thing in this kind of petty back and forth. Oh, I would have beat Trump. No one believes that at all. And then fighting with Joe Biden and Alexander Pelosi. I mean, just look, guy, you drove, you had a noble career. Your last act was terrible. Just get out of the way. The party’s moving on. I mean, they’re really moving on. And it’s very sad that. But that’s just where we are. And he created this himself. Does he have nobody to blame but himself? Nobody.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 18:50

  • Trump Signals He May Withhold Federal Aid To California Over Water Policies
    Trump Signals He May Withhold Federal Aid To California Over Water Policies

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

    President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he is considering withholding federal aid to California following a series of devastating wildfires if the state doesn’t change its water policies.

    U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Jan. 21, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    In an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, he reasserted that the state’s fish conservation efforts in Northern California are linked to problems with water availability amid the wildfires that erupted earlier this month. He also placed part of the blame on Gov. Gavin Newsom for not being able to quickly tame the fires.

    “I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” he said.

    In the interview, Trump also confirmed that he will visit Los Angeles on Friday after visiting North Carolina, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene last fall. However, the president said he doesn’t know if he will meet with Newsom.

    “Look, Gavin’s got one thing he can do: He can release the water that comes from the north. There is massive amounts of water, rainwater, and mountain water that comes due with the snow, comes down … as it melts. There’s so much water,” Trump said, referring to Newsom, a Democrat.

    On Monday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to “route more water” from Northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the Golden State due to the wildfires in what he said was an attempt to end “radical environmentalism” that was essentially putting fish over people.

    “The recent deadly and historically destructive wildfires in Southern California underscore why the State of California needs a reliable water supply and sound vegetation management practices in order to provide water desperately needed there, and why this plan must immediately be reimplemented,” the White House said.

    At a news conference a day earlier, Trump said that “Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it.”

    “All they have to do is turn the valve,” he said.

    Earlier in January, Newsom wrote a letter to Trump asking him to survey the devastation caused by the Los Angeles fires firsthand and meet with first responders. In an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” the governor also disputed Trump’s assertion about the fish and water shortages in Los Angeles.

    Trump, he said, is “somehow connecting the delta smelt to this fire, which is inexcusable because it’s inaccurate.”

    “Also, incomprehensible to anyone that understands water policy in the state,” Newsom said.

    On Jan. 10, then-President Joe Biden said at an event that local utility companies intentionally shut off the power in Los Angeles, which led to water shortages during the fires.

    “What I know from talking to the governor, that there are concerns out there that there’s also been a water shortage,“ Biden said in a briefing. ”The fact is the utilities, understandably, shut off power because they are worried the lines that carried energy were going to be blown down and spark additional fires.

    “When it did that, it cut off the ability to generate pumping the water. That’s what caused the lack of water in these hydrants.”

    During the Hannity interview, Trump signaled that significant changes could be coming to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) because he would rather see individual states deal with their respective natural disaster responses.

    The president also said he believes FEMA, which is handling some wildfire recovery efforts, has performed poorly over the “last four years.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 18:25

  • Trump Halts Ukraine Aid As State Dept "Totally Went Nuclear" On Foreign Assistance
    Trump Halts Ukraine Aid As State Dept “Totally Went Nuclear” On Foreign Assistance

    The Trump State Department on Friday halted spending on almost all foreign aid grants for 90 days, which also appears to apply to funding for military assistance to Ukraine, Politico reports.

    The guidance, issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was sent to all diplomatic and consular posts, and orders all department staffers to issue “stop-work orders” on nearly all “existing foreign assistance awards.”

    It appears to go further than President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, which instructed the department to pause foreign aid grants for 90 days pending review by the secretary. It had not been clear from the president’s order if it would affect already appropriated funds or Ukraine aid.

    The new guidance means no further actions will be taken to disperse aid funding to programs already approved by the U.S. government, according to three current and two former officials familiar with the new guidance. -Politico

    Rubio also outlined the Trump administration’s stance on spending, saying “Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions,” Rubio wrote. The questions: Does the action make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous?

    The new order reportedly shocked State Department officials.

    “State just totally went nuclear on foreign assistance,” a State Department official told Politico.

    Rubio was confirmed unanimously by the Senate the day before and is the first of Trump’s Cabinet nominees on the job. Previously, he was a senior senator from Florida, and he served on the Foreign Relations Committee for more than a decade. He developed a reputation as a China Hawk and a fierce critic of the neoliberal foreign policy consensus that emerged after the Cold War.

    Shortly after taking the oath of office, he sent a lengthy cable to every US diplomatic and consular post worldwide letting them know that the Biden administration had mistakenly emphasized “ideology over common sense,” and “misread the world.”

    You’ll Never Guess Who Still Gets Aid…

    The document specifies that Israel and Egypt will continue to receive that sweet, sweet US taxpayer money. It also allows emergency food assistance and “legitimate expenses incurred prior to the date of this” guidance “under existing awards,” and also that decisions need to be “consistent with the terms of the relevant award.”

    One State Department official as well as two former Biden admin officials told Politico that the pause appears to stop aid to Ukraine, Jordan and Taiwan, while the report suggests that the guidance could open the US government to civil liability from lawsuits over unfulfilled contracts if the terms are deemed to have been violated, said the current and former officials. That said, the note from Rubio clearly states that decision need to be “consistent with the terms of the relevant award.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 18:04

  • Popeyes Cooking Up Partnership With Don Julio In Possible Mass-Market Tequila Blitz To Save Diageo
    Popeyes Cooking Up Partnership With Don Julio In Possible Mass-Market Tequila Blitz To Save Diageo

    Trending on X late Friday afternoon is a short promotional video about a partnership between Diageo’s Don Julio tequila brand and American fast-food chain Popeyes. The partnership, set to be officially unveiled on January 31, puzzled the hell out of the internet. However, in the context of the ‘great tequila bust‘ and Diageo’s mounting headwinds, the mass-market strategy to push tequila through unconventional sales channels, such as quick-service restaurants, begins to make a whole lot of sense.

    Popeyes’ official Instagram account released a short promotional video with the subtext: “The kitchen is heating up for the big game. Party starts 1.31.25.” Text at the end of the video showed what appears to be a partnership of some sort between Popeyes and Don Julio. Details are scant, and the internet was very confused, while others were excited about tequila and fried chicken. 

    Fried chicken and liquor might sound like a party—or potentially a disastrous combination that could leave Popeyes’ customer base puking up a storm. Maybe the internet is confused, but we are not. 

    British spirits giant Diageo is in dire straits as cash-strapped consumers have dialed back alcohol spending. Goldman analyst Jack McFerran told clients last week that “there is no sign of a bottom, with risks still skewed to the downside” for European shares in the company. 

    In July 2024, CEO Debra Crew warned, “You do see persistent inflation that is really weighing on consumers and weighing on their wallets.”

    Given that cash-strapped consumers have pulled back on liquor, an oversupply tequila crisis has emerged in Mexico, which has caused agave prices to crash the most since the Dot Com crash. 

    Mexico’s Tequila Regulatory Council recently shared data with Financial Times that showed the industry had 525 million liters of tequila in inventory, either aging in barrels or about to be bottled, by the end of 2023. Of the 599 million liters of tequila produced in 2023, about one-sixth remained in inventory. 

    “Much more new spirit is being distilled than is being sold, and inventories are starting to accumulate,” Bernstein analyst Trevor Stirling wrote in a note earlier this month. He said rising inventory levels were due to sliding demand and new distillery capacity coming online. 

    Stirling warned: “The tequila industry is set for a very turbulent 2025.”

    Given the dire oversupplied conditions in Mexico, coupled with Diageo’s sliding demand for its liquor products, it now becomes entirely clear why the spirits company has explored an unconventional sales channel: partnering with a major QSR to potentially launch Don Julio for the mass market and help jump-start demand to draw down elevated tequila inventories. In return, this could add support for Diageo’s imploding stock. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 18:00

  • Trump Terminates Fauci's Security Detail
    Trump Terminates Fauci’s Security Detail

    Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,

    President Donald Trump has terminated former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s security detail.

    Trump justified the move on Jan. 24.

    “When you work for government, at some point, your security detail comes off and you can’t have them forever,” he told reporters in North Carolina, where he is visiting the damage caused last year by Hurricane Helene.

    “So I think it’s very standard.”

    “You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government.”

    Trump has criticized Fauci, who served in his role between 1984 and 2022, over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. [Deborah] Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,” Trump said in March 2021, referring to a 2021 CNN documentary.

    “They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine—putting millions of lives at risk.”

    The Epoch Times has reached out to Fauci via Georgetown University where he works.

    Trump has stripped other former Trump administration officials of their security detail.

    On Jan. 21, the president ended former national security adviser John Bolton’s Secret Service protection.

    “I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has decided to terminate the protection previously provided by the United States Secret Service,” Bolton wrote in a post on X.

    “Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021.

    “The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me.

    “That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination. The American people can judge for themselves which president made the right call.”

    Trump said that Fauci and Bolton “made a lot of money” and therefore could hire their own security.

    On Jan. 23, Trump terminated former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former special envoy for Iran Brian Hook’s security details.

    “When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives? I mean, there’s risks to everything.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 17:40

  • Four In Ten See Hostile Activism As Acceptable
    Four In Ten See Hostile Activism As Acceptable

    Edelman released the 25th edition of its Trust Barometer this week, providing insight on how people around the world feel about today’s leaders and institutions.

    This year’s report highlights the grievances of people who feel a disconnect between the haves and have-nots.

    The survey found that more than six in ten respondents agree that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes (67 percent) and that the wealthy’s selfishness causes many of our problems (65 percent).

    Meanwhile, a majority said that they held a moderate or high sense of grievance against business, government and the rich in 23 out of 26 countries polled.

    This opinion was most commonly shared in Spain, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK and Kenya (all between 70-72 percent).

    But, perhaps most notably, Statista’s Anna Fleck points out that the report also found that as many as four in ten would approve of violence or hostile activism in order to drive societal changes that would give themselves or their family a better future.

    Infographic: Four in Ten See Hostile Activism as Acceptable | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    This belief was particularly widespread among younger respondents, with just over half (53 percent) of 18-35 year olds supporting the statement.

    In terms of the individual actions, around a quarter of respondents said that attacking people online, intentionally spreading disinformation, threatening or committing violence or damaging public or private property would be acceptable as a way to bring about societal change (between 23-27 percent per answer).

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 17:20

  • California AG Files First Charges Against Realtor Over Alleged Post-Fire Rent-Gouging
    California AG Files First Charges Against Realtor Over Alleged Post-Fire Rent-Gouging

    Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed charges Jan 21 against a Los Angeles-area real estate agent in the state’s first notable case of alleged price gouging related to the deadly wildfires that started this month.

    Mike Kobeissi, a real estate agent based in La Canada, faces charges of allegedly raising the rental price of a home in the city on Jan. 11 after thousands of homes were destroyed in a nearby fire, according to the court complaint.

    Kobeissi’s company is located just 7 miles east of Altadena, in Los Angeles County, where the Jan. 7 Eaton Fire killed at least 17 people and destroyed nearly 9,500 homes. The fire continues to burn but was 95 percent contained Thursday after torching 14,021 acres.

    Bonta claims Kobeissi raised the price of a home when a couple tried to rent it.

    The complaint alleges that he violated California Penal Code section 396, which protects residents from price gouging during a state of emergency.

    A representative of Kobeissi’s real estate company called a news report about the charges “false” Thursday, but did not elaborate.

    Newsom declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Ventura counties on Jan. 7.

    In an executive order issued Jan. 12, the California governor suspended the existing time limitations under section 396, and extended the price gouging prohibitions under Jan. 7, 2026, for Los Angeles County.

    The attorney general claims a couple tried to rent a home after the governor’s state of emergency order went into effect.

    The couple was allegedly informed that the price increased by 38 percent after they filed an application for the rental, according to Bonta’s office.

    “They decided not to rent the house due to the increase in price,” Bonta’s office announce in a press release.

    The California penal code prohibits raising prices over a 10 percent limit, or no more than 10 percent of the total cost to the seller, plus the customary markup pre-state of emergency.

    The penalty, if found guilty, can range up to one year in jail and a $10,000 maximum fine, according to the attorney general.

    The California Department of Justice has also sent 500 warning letters to hotels and landlords who have been accused of price gouging since the fires began, according to Bonta’s office.

    Bonta’s office is working with Southern California district attorneys, city attorneys, and other law enforcement partners to investigate more criminal investigations into price gouging, he said.

    Homeowner David Marquez, left, holds a metal detector as his father, Juan Pablo Alvarado, right, and a friend look for the remains of gold jewelry and other silver items inside the walls of their multi-generational home in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025, in Altadena, Calif. AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

    “As I have said repeatedly, the price gouging must stop,” Bonta said Wednesday.

    “Today, we are making good on our promise to hold price gougers accountable, with more to come.”

    Bonta also urged the public to continue reporting possible incidents of price gouging to local authorities, or to his office.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 17:00

  • Great Purge By Trump & Corporate America Could Leave "Thousands Of DEI Experts Unemployed"
    Great Purge By Trump & Corporate America Could Leave “Thousands Of DEI Experts Unemployed”

    After Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration on Monday, the newly appointed US President purged over 1,000 Biden appointees from government roles. Some of these firings were due to their alignment with the radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement. By late Wednesday, Trump had ordered all DEI offices in the federal government to be shuttered.

    The DEI exodus has also continued in corporate America and will only be supercharged this year as the return of meritocracy will reign supreme.

    “The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military,” an executive order signed by Trump on Monday stated. 

    The order continued, “The public release of these plans demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination,” adding, “That ends today.  Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.” 

    The DEI grift in the federal government was nothing more than a power grab movement by far-left Marxist activists who were put into positions of power – not based on meritocracy, but instead on color or gender. And by the way, DEI’s true intention was never to work but to destroy the current system to usher in a socialist reconstruction of America. The woke mind virus was deleted this week.

    But wait a minute, Gun Owners of America showed on Wednesday that at least one DEI head at the ATF was not purged. Instead, the individual was rebranded under a new position. Trump folks should investigate this.  

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

    With the DEI tide quickly going out, journalist John LeFevre pointed out there are “now thousands of unemployed DEI ‘experts’…”

    LeFevre continued: 

    They have useless degrees, minimal skills, wildly unrealistic salary expectations and delusionally-high opinions of themselves.

    These people are unemployable.

    They’re toxic, bad energy, team-killers, and walking lawsuits.

    And the NGOs and academia are getting dismantled next… so they can’t even find a home there.

    A couple of them can join KJP at Jennifer Rubin’s new media empire, “run it back” with Kamala 2028 using the same playbook, or grift off of whatever retarded endeavor Steve Jobs’ widow or Reid Hoffman funds next…

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

    There are no rough estimates on the number of Americans employed in DEI positions across federal, state, and local governments and in corporate America. However, with the tide going out, that number could be in the thousands, if not more. 

    We suspect leadership in the military, government, and companies will now view these DEI activists as major liabilities, as LeFevre noted above. 

    Let’s not forget we pointed this all out in the spring of 2024. 

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

    Good luck being employable. Maybe a non-profit funded by Soros will hire… 

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

    Sigh.

    Make Meritocracy Great Again. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/24/2025 – 16:40

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