- "Not One Inch": A Brief Review Of The Archives On NATO Expansion
“Not One Inch”: A Brief Review Of The Archives On NATO Expansion
Authored by Michael Chapman via The Libertarian Institute,
Although the Joe Biden administration and much of the major media contend that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO expansion, U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) told Valuetainment Founder Patrick Bet-David that Vladimir Putin has opposed “the movement of NATO to his borders” for “at least 15 years” because he sees such expansion “as a threat.”
Macgregor’s view is shared by the University of Chicago’s Distinguished Service Professor John Mearsheimer, considered one the world’s leading scholars on “realist” foreign policy. He argues that Russia considers NATO expansion into Ukraine as an “existential threat,” a position it has publicly held since at least 2008.
Yet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the conflict “was never about NATO enlargement” or “about some threat to Russia’s security.” Blinken also claims that Russia’s assertion that it was promised NATO would not spread eastward after the collapse of the USSR is false.
So who is telling the truth? Let’s look at the record.
On Bet-David’s June 28 PBD Podcast, Macgregor explained that Putin has “been talking at least for 15 years about his opposition to the movement of NATO to his borders. He’s made it very clear that he regarded it as a threat. One of the reasons he moved into Crimea was that he saw that becoming a NATO naval base principally for the U.S. Navy, obviously in the Black Sea. So, he moved on that first and then said, look, this has got to stop.”
Declassified documents in the National Security Archive at George Washington University show that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, starting in 1990, was given many assurances by U.S. and European leaders that they would not expand NATO eastward to Russia. “Not one inch eastward,” said then-Secretary of State James Baker.
Ukraine, the cradle of Kievan Rus (Russia), is on Russia’s western border, and western Ukraine borders Poland, Hungary, and Romania.
The archives document that one of the earliest assurances to Gorbachev came from a speech by the German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in January 1990. In a cable to Washington, DC, the U.S. Embassy stated that Genscher made clear that NATO should rule out an “expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e., moving it closer to Soviet borders.”
In a February 10, 1990 meeting between German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Gorbachev, the archive reports that the “West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east.”
The archive further states, “Not once, but three times, [U.S. Secretary] Baker tried out the ‘not one inch eastward’ formula with Gorbachev…He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that ‘NATO expansion is unacceptable.’”
Baker also assured Gorbachev that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” [Emphasis added]
After being briefed by Baker, Chancellor Kohl told Gorbachev, “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.”
On May 31, 1990, President George H.W. Bush said to Gorbachev, “[W]e have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion. That is why we are speaking in favor of German unification in NATO…Such a model, in our view, corresponds to the Soviet interests as well.”
In 1991, British Prime Minister John Major assured Gorbachev, “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” As for NATO inclusion of East European countries, Major said, “Nothing of the sort will happen.”
After a meeting in July 1991 with NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner, a Russian memo reads, “Woerner stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO (13 of 16 NATO members support this point of view).”
The archive article concluded, “Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO.”
After Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin became the first president of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Vladimir Putin became president in May 2000, serving until 2008. He then returned to the presidency in 2012.
Professor John Mearsheimer warns Glenn Greenwald that the Ukrainian counteroffensive will result in significant casualties due to the Russian army’s overwhelming artillery advantage, air superiority, and the undermanned and undertrained Ukrainian forces.
Professor Mearsheimer… pic.twitter.com/35dZa45MPQ
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 3, 2023
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According to Professor Mearsheimer, author of “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,” “Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.”
“For Putin, the illegal overthrow [in 2014] of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a ‘coup—was the final straw,” said Mearsheimer. “He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.”
“The United States pushed forward policies towards Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues see as an existential threat to their country, a point they have made repeatedly for many years,” Mearsheimer said in a June 2022 speech at the European Union Institute. “Specifically, I am talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.”
“The United States is not seriously interested in finding a diplomatic solution to the war, which means the war is likely to drag on for months, if not years,” added Mearsheimer. “The United States and its allies are helping lead Ukraine down the primrose path.”
Mearsheimer made those remarks one year ago. Today, the Ukraine-Russia war is still ongoing and the U.S. has made no serious effort to broker a peace deal.
President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and their cheerleaders in the major media relentlessly deny that potential NATO expansion into Ukraine had anything to do with Russia’s invasion in 2022. Such an assertion, they claim, is Putin propaganda. However, the historical record does not support their story, “not one inch” of it.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/25/2023 – 02:00 - The US Government's New 'Ministry Of Truth': The Cybersecurity And Infrastructure Security Agency
The US Government’s New ‘Ministry Of Truth’: The Cybersecurity And Infrastructure Security Agency
Authored by Peter Schweizer via The Gatestone Institute,
Mission creep is a serious problem in the federal government, and the ongoing investigations by House Republicans into “weaponization” of government misdeeds have shown how pervasive and deep the problem can be.
A new report by the House Judiciary Committee documents how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries.” The agency, under the administration of President Joe Biden and under the leadership of Jen Easterly (pictured), ramped up efforts to flag “misinformation and disinformation” on social media. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) The FBI, Justice Department, CIA and even the Internal Revenue Service all look as we have seen, like tempting operatives for use against political opponents or to run interference for allies. But what about an agency that is supposed to protect us against cyber threats? A new interim report from the House Judiciary Committee highlights politically motivated mission creep where we might least have expected it: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CISA, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, was created in 2018 with a simple, non-political mission statement: “To prepare for, respond to, and mitigate the impact of cyberattacks.” As reported here previously, CISA works to prevent state-sanctioned hackers from attacking and compromising America’s digital infrastructure. The agency exists to warn companies and government entities of pending computer vulnerabilities. It also works to stop ransomware attacks on American companies and their computer networks, and to minimize damage from cyber exploits by foreign and domestic sources. In short, CISA’s mission brief was to watch out for attacks on our digital “boxes and wires.”
Instead, as the House Judiciary Committee report documents, CISA “has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries.” The agency, under the administration of President Joe Biden and under the leadership of Jen Easterly, ramped up efforts to flag “misinformation and disinformation” on social media. According to documents the committee obtained only through subpoena, CISA considered the creation of an anti-misinformation “rapid response team” capable of physically deploying across the United States to stamp out what it would decide constituted such “misinformation.” The agency went, for example, from ensuring the digital security of American voting systems to censoring criticism of those systems.
The internal communications of agency staff and members of its outside advisory group show they knew they were on thin legal ground. Members of CISA’s advisory committee agonized that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work, ” the report said.
After the Biden administration was sued in federal court, CISA outsourced its censorship operation to a non-profit group funded by CISA itself. The Judiciary Committee report charges that the outsourcing was an implicit admission that CISA knew that its censorship activities were unconstitutional. CISA, meanwhile, said that it outsourced material to another agency to “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”
Today, a look at the agency’s website and Twitter accounts shows only its statutory activity – issuing warnings about ransomware attacks and “zero-day” exploits, warning about hardware vulnerabilities, and some educational advice for ordinary Americans on staying safe during their online activities. This is important work, as the US is under constant cyberattack from state-sanctioned, or state-tolerated, hackers operating from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. These hackers extort millions of dollars from companies and institutions through overt attacks that can cripple their networks and computers. Cyber criminals go in hard, looking for cash, while cyber espionage attacks attempt to go in quietly, harvesting secrets without detection. Stopping them at the firewall is a matter of national security.
So, to dilute that mission with a politically motivated dive into censorship is unconscionable and dangerous. The Judiciary Committee is right to pursue this inquiry to prevent CISA from going off the rails again, as their own mission pledges.
There is more to see here, however, and more to root out than just a thwarted attempt by a government bureaucracy to police the political speech of the American people in violation of the First Amendment. It is the use of funded or politically affiliated non-profit groups to do the government’s dirty work for it. Note that when pressed by a pending lawsuit over its actions, CISA offloaded its “election misinformation” activity to a non-profit organization called the Center for Internet Security (CIS). It was this group, CIS, that served as a singular conduit for election officials to report what they alone determined were false or misleading claims about elections to the large social media platforms of Facebook and Twitter, according to the report.
This parallels the behavior of the Justice Department under then Attorney General Eric Holder during the Barack Obama administration. The Government Accountability Institute did research into the DoJ’s pattern of using “consent decrees” to force private companies with threats of anti-discrimination lawsuits to donate funds to one or more designated non-profit organizations on a list helpfully provided by the Justice Department. These groups were largely “social justice warriors” who would then use the money to exert political pressure. This practice was immediately banned by the Trump administration when it took office in 2017, but that ban was quietly reversed by Biden four years later.
CIS enjoyed government funds for its work, much of which is focused on anti-cyberattack activity, as it should be. But its actions in enforcing censorship of “election misinformation” were revealed in the now-famous dump of internal chatter known as “the Twitter files.”
Not only that, but the woman who in October 2020 made the fateful decision for Twitter to censor the New York Post‘s 2020 scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Vijaya Gadde, became a member of CISA’s “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation” subcommittee after the Biden administration took office. Gadde, you may recall, was unceremoniously fired by Elon Musk on his first day of owning Twitter.
Gadde was a member of this subcommittee, known as the “MDM Subcommittee,” which also counted Dr. Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, and Suzanne Spaulding, a former legal adviser for the CIA. According to a report in The Intercept, this committee in 2022 recommended that CISA closely monitor “social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, hyper partisan media, talk radio and other online resources.”
The MDM committee’s report urged the agency to take steps to halt the “spread of false and misleading information” and recommended that CISA stay up to date with the ongoing research on “debunking vs. pre-bunking” information that the committee tars as either unknowingly false (misinformation), deliberately planted by hostile foreign actors (disinformation), or what it termed “malinformation,” defined in its report as “information that may be based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
What the Judiciary Committee’s work so far has highlighted is the creation of “feedback loops”: that an agency of the government can create and use advisory boards to go well beyond its statutory mission, giving it cover for exercising power Congress never meant it to have.
How many more federal agencies are doing similar things?
Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the new book, Red Handed: How American Elites are Helping China Win.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 23:40 - Thomas Jefferson University President Resigns After "Liking" Inconvenient Tweets
Thomas Jefferson University President Resigns After “Liking” Inconvenient Tweets
By Molly Gamble of Becker Hospital Review
Mark Tykocinski, MD, has resigned from his roles as president of Thomas Jefferson University and interim dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College in Philadelphia.
Jefferson CEO Joseph G. Cacchione, MD, wrote in an email to the university community July 20 that Dr. Tykocinski is exiting his leadership roles “to focus on his research,” according to a copy of the message obtained by Becker’s. Dr. Cacchione said Dr. Tykocinski’s cancer immunotherapy research has reached a pivotal stage. He will continue his work as a professor.
Dr. Tykocinski started as president of Thomas Jefferson University July 1, 2022. He previously served as the university’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and as dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Much of his research centers on immunotherapy and gene therapy — he holds a series of patents related to protein and cellular engineering.
“We appreciate Dr. Tykocinski’s years of transformational service to Jefferson and wish him an abundance of success in his scientific and other endeavors given their importance to humanity,” Dr. Cacchione wrote.
Board member Susan Aldridge, PhD, is now the interim president of Thomas Jefferson University, and Steven Herrine, MD, vice dean of undergraduate medical education, will serve as interim dean of the medical school. Dr. Cacchione’s email notes that the university’s searches for a provost and medical school dean were nearing completion.
Dr. Tykocinski’s resignation followed controversy this spring when tweets he had “liked” were called into question. Some tweets questioned the validity and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and called gender reassignment surgery “child mutilation.”
Dr. Tykocinski said he used the “like” function on Twitter to bookmark tweets — not endorse them — in an effort to learn more about the subject matter and better understand particular points of view.
At the time, Dr. Cacchione conveyed disappointment in Dr. Tykocinski’s “careless” use of the social media network to the Jefferson community. “At his level, he is held to a higher standard and should have known better,” Dr. Cacchione wrote in an email to faculty, employees and students.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 23:20 - Obama's Personal Chef Found Dead Near Family's Martha's Vineyard Mansion
Obama’s Personal Chef Found Dead Near Family’s Martha’s Vineyard Mansion
The personal chef of former president Barack Obama was found dead in a “paddleboarding accident” near the family’s $12 million mansion on Martha’s Vineyard (which is situated at sea level, a paradox for fervent believers in the melting iceberg theory).
Massachusetts State Police confirmed that the paddleboarder whose body was recovered from Edgartown Great Pond on Monday was Tafari Campbell, 45, of Dumfries, Virginia.
According to the AP, Campbell was employed by the Obamas and was visiting Martha’s Vineyard. The Obamas were not present at the home at the time of the accident. In a statement, the former president and his wife, Michelle Obama, called Campbell a “beloved part of our family.”
Tafari Campbell “When we first met him, he was a talented sous chef at the White House – creative and passionate about food, and its ability to bring people together,” the couple said. “In the years that followed, we got to know him as a warm, fun, extraordinarily kind person who made all of our lives a little brighter.”
“That’s why, when we were getting ready to leave the White House, we asked Tafari to stay with us, and he generously agreed. He’s been part of our lives ever since, and our hearts are broken that he’s gone.”
Campbell had worked in the White House during Obama’s eight years in Washington. During that time he helped create some of the most famous presidential recipes, included a beer brewed from ingredients grown at the White House.
On Sunday, Campbell went missing in the waters of Edgartown Great Pond on Martha’s Vineyard. When it was time for the first family to depart Washington, they asked Mr Campbell to join them and he “generously agreed” the Obamas’ statement added.
“He’s been part of our lives ever since, and our hearts are broken that he’s gone. Today we join everyone who knew and loved Tafari – especially his wife Sherise and their twin boys, Xavier and Savin – in grieving the loss of a truly wonderful man.”
The Obama’s beach house is a seven-bedroom, eight-and-a-half bathroom, 6,892-square-foot mansion set on almost 30 acres on the Edgartown Great Pond. The search was launched on Sunday night for “a male paddleboarder who had gone into the water, appeared to briefly struggle to stay on the surface, and then submerged and did not resurface,” according to a police report.
“Another paddleboarder was on the pond with him at the time and observed him go under the water,” it added; it wasn’t clear why the other paddleboarder did not intervene and rescue Obama’s cook.
On Monday, his body was found “approximately 100 feet (30 meters) from shore at a depth of about eight feet”.
It remains unclear how a healthy 45-year old male, who is reportedly a good swimmer, can drown in what is literally an 8 feet deep pond.
The Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit is investigating his death, but it is believed to have been an accident, CBS News reported.
The Obamas said Campbell is survived by his wife and their twin boys.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 23:18 - CIA & MI6 Seek To Recruit Among Russia's Elite After Wagner Rebellion
CIA & MI6 Seek To Recruit Among Russia’s Elite After Wagner Rebellion
The CIA and allied intelligence services are expanding efforts to recruit “insider” and high-level Russians to spy for the West, following last month’s short-lived mutiny by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, which was widely perceived as a serious challenge to Putin’s grip on power.
The CIA director himself has called the Wagner rebellion an “opportunity” to continue to exploit cracks in the Russian system, also amid continued domestic uncertainty for the future amid the Ukraine war. Director William Burns in remarks to the Aspen Security Forum late last week bluntly told the audience that the US intelligence community sees a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to exploit influential levels of Russian society and government. He had said something similar earlier in the summer.
He openly called for recruits from among Russia’s elite while saying, “I think Putin is already a little bit uneasy as he looks over his shoulder.”
The comments also came as Putin cracks down on ‘angry patriots’, or pro-war hardliners who think Putin has been too hesitant in executing the war effort. One prominent blogger and ex-security official, Igor Girkin, who led Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in 2014, has recently been arrested on “extremism” charges.
The CIA’s Burns continued in his remarks from last week: “What it resurrected was some deeper questions … about Putin’s judgment, about his relative detachment from events and even about his indecisiveness.”
“I think in many ways it exposed some of the significant weaknesses in a system that Putin has built,” he said further.
Also last week during a speech in Prague, MI6 Chief Richard Moore had a similar assessment, saying “our door is always open” for Russian officials who are fed up with the war.
“There are many Russians today who are silently appalled by the sight of their armed forces pulverizing Ukrainian cities, expelling innocent families from their homes, and kidnapping thousands of children,” Moore said last Wednesday.
“I invite them to do what others have already done this past 18 months and join hands with us. Our door is always open,” he said.
Meanwhile, there are fresh figures out this week on Russia’s continuing war-driven capital flight:
A record $253 billion has been pulled out of Russia since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian Central Bank has said.
The net capital outflow from Russia starting February 2022 and ending June 2023 was calculated by the Bank’s Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Forecasting.
“Net inflows on current transaction accounts [of $236 billion] and net outflows on financial accounts have reached unprecedented levels,” the Bank’s experts said in their analysis published Monday.
The flight of $239 billion from Russia last year, including $13 billion in the pre-invasion month of January, was four times the amount that was pulled out of the country in 2021, according to the analysis.
Burns additionally commented on the West’s support to Ukraine as sending a “message” to Beijing related to threats against Taiwan…
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reinforced China’s doubts regarding a potential incursion into Taiwan, said CIA Director, William Burns pic.twitter.com/Mq6I1UvGeU
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 21, 2023
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As for Wagner, it’s been widely acknowledged that Prigozhin fundamentally sought a coup within the defense ministry. While he did issue rare criticism directly at Putin amid the events of June 23-24, he later explained he wasn’t trying to overthrow the government. He has lately been seen at Wagner camps inside Belarus, but also appears to be moving freely in and out of Russia via his private plane as well.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 23:00 - Border Patrol Chief Relieved Of Command Same Day He Testified Before Congress
Border Patrol Chief Relieved Of Command Same Day He Testified Before Congress
Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
House Republican leaders have raised the prospect that a Border Patrol chief was the target of retaliation by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief after the Border Patrol official sat for a transcribed interview with Congress.
Migrants use a rope ladder to illegally climb over the U.S. border wall separating the United States from Mexico in El Centro, Calif. on October 6, 2022. (Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images) Gregory K. Bovino, the chief patrol agent of the El Centro Border Patrol sector in California’s imperial valley, offered a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee and House Homeland Security Committee on July 12, 2023. According to Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), within hours of finishing his testimony, Mr. Bovino was informed that he had been relieved of his command at the El Centro sector and “reassigned to a vague, indefinite, and temporary headquarters assignment.”
The timing of Mr. Bovino’s reassignment raised suspicions for Mr. Comer and Mr. Green that the CBP had reassigned the Border Patrol official in retaliation for his testimony.
In a letter to acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller, the two lawmakers shared allegations from a whistleblower that Mr. Bovino’s new assignment is “one of no certain mission, no articulable purpose, and without any timeline of completion.”
“The whistleblower further alleges that this practice is consistent with the way in which CBP officials have dealt with employees who they wish to leave the agency, by placing maximum pressure on them to relocate, retire, or resign,” the Republican lawmakers added.
Citing further whistleblower allegations, Mr. Comer and Mr. Green raised allegations “that Chief Bovino may have produced written testimony in preparation for this hearing that was dissatisfactory to CBP officials: so much so that he was verbally reprimanded by headquarters officials.”
The Republican lawmakers called on the acting CBP commissioner to provide answers about the reassignment. The lawmakers specifically asked for all CBP documents and communications relating to Mr. Bovino’s employment. They also asked for records of any discussions between CBP and Department of Homeland Security or White House officials pertaining to Mr. Bovino’s past congressional testimony or appearances as a witness for transcribed interviews.
The lawmakers further called upon Mr. Miller to be ready to brief House committee staff on this issue by July 28 at the latest.
NTD News reached out to CBP for comment but the agency did not respond by the time this article was published.
According to a CBP statement obtained by The Washington Times, Mr. Bovino was previously reassigned to a headquarters position in 2021, and his subordinates ‘did an excellent job’ handling the El Centro border sector while he was gone. The CBP also claimed it’s dealing with a broader reorganization effort after the overall U.S. Border Patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, retired in June.
Border Patrol Chiefs Previously Blocked From Speaking to Congress
Mr. Bovino was one of several Border Patrol sector chiefs who were invited to testify at a House Oversight Committee hearing earlier this year, but Mr. Comer accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of blocking some of the Border Patrol officials from doing so. Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez and Tucson Sector Chief John Modlin did testify, but Mr. Bovino and others did not appear for the hearing.
“It is unfortunate that you are trying to prevent the American people from hearing candid and truthful testimony of U.S. Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agents,” Mr. Comer wrote in a Jan. 27 letter (pdf) to Mr. Mayorkas. “This is necessary oversight, which you and your Department are attempting to block.”
After Mr. Bovino and other Border Patrol officials were blocked from attending the Feb. 7 hearing, Mr. Comer sent a letter (pdf) to Mr. Miller, requesting that he help facilitate interview times for Mr. Bovino and the other Border Patrol officials. Mr. Bovino’s July 12 transcribed interview was the culmination of this earlier effort to get him to talk to members of Congress.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 22:40 - Every Mask Is A Nail In The Coffin Of Humanity
Every Mask Is A Nail In The Coffin Of Humanity
Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,
Aren’t you tired hearing about masks? Mask-talk is almost as ubiquitous as Hitler-talk. Well, if the shoe fits…Just because we are tired hearing about appropriate things to discuss, does not mean they should not be discussed. At least that is how I see it. Obviously.
Mask-talk may be annoyingly worn thin, but seeing a mask on the street still makes my blood boil—even more so than it used to. It has become a symbol of ignorance to me if seen in places that don’t require it, and a symbol of compliance and apathy when in places that do require it, such as medical facilities here in Canada. But as shameful as it is to admit, I am guilty of throwing the damn thing on when visiting my urologist, after being told I would have to leave if I didn’t.
Can you believe that? Me? Complying?
There are two types of “non-compliers,” one complies from a place of ignorance, a place of succumbing to authority because that is the “right thing to do.” The other complies when they know the truth but comply because it is just too much trouble not to, doesn’t want to make a scene, and knows at this point that one person standing up and facing the consequences isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans. In other words, being a coward.
Heard that one before, eh? One might ask, “which is worse?”
The second reason to comply is still no good reason, and I come to you here fully exposed and deeply ashamed. But…I wore a FAKE MASK. Even though that makes no public statement, it does make me feel mischievously satisfied. Mind you, I do not wear masks anywhere else, public or private—only in medical facilities (albeit fake, but not even that anymore).
I make this distinction because, in the context of this article, it is an important one to make. I think the person who wears the mask for the second reason stated above, is not stabbing humanity in the eye with an ice pick. There will come a time when those reasons will no longer fly, and wearing a mask, even when required, will be a powerful betrayal to be avoided. I do not believe we are at that point now.
Some may disagree with this reasoning, but the mask isn’t the problem, it is the reason we wear them that is. There is also a tiny bit of rationale in wearing masks in a medical facility. A tiny bit.
I do not think we will win this war allowing ourselves to be mowed down with a machine gun when we refuse to wear a mask. If we can get away with persecution and punishment by pretending to follow the rules, then so be it. Revolutionaries have done this in the early days of a revolution for centuries. There are more effective ways to fight these injustices then getting kicked out of a doctor’s office because you refuse to wear a mask.
I can clearly see the other side of this argument. I would stand up and applaud anyone who refuses to comply and is then humiliatingly banished from the premises. More power to them; such a person is a hero. But I also at the same time applaud the person who is fighting this fight in other ways and chooses to “pretend” to follow the rules in order to get medical care if it is needed (ala a fake mask!). But, for me personally, I am on the fence. And I may slip down to the other side of it soon enough and make a spectacle of myself in the near future by telling the receptionist at the hospital they can take their mask and shove it.
I sat down in the waiting room at my urologist’s office with my fake mask on and feeling rather smug, “I showed them,” I said to myself. Yeah, sure, whatever. My urologist is pretty cool—young, ambitious, a good surgeon (at least he appeared that way to me when he cut out a sizable stone from my kidney a few years ago). I fancy myself a decent judge of character and summed him up as one who would think all this mask crap was a farce. I was mask-less when he came into the little exam room; it was just the two of us. He had a mask on.
“You can take that off,” I said, “don’t keep it on because of me.” He sat down and made no movement to remove it.
“You don’t really think that does any good, do you?” I said after an awkward pause. He then launched into the speech the sheep-folks give when dealing with a client or patient who indicates they believe in all that conspiracy hoopla out there. He wanted to remain kind of neutral, which was not a success. It was obvious.
I shut up. But left the fake mask in my hand, off of my face. I was devastated. “Of all people,” I thought. This is very sad.
I had no way to know if he was just toeing the company line or sincerely believed in his rant. These doctors have been threatened beyond comprehension to walk the straight and narrow, and probably don’t think the mask thing is really a hill to die on. I guess I am one of them myself. At this point it really does not feel like the hill to die on—but am I wrong? I think about all the rebels and dissidents during soviet times. They did not walk around with a sign on them saying “F—k Lenin.” They knew their protest would be lost. “Live to fight another day.”
I left the doctor’s office pretty depressed. I put the fake mask away and checked out, and then walked out, barefaced. The fact I was deceiving everyone with a fake mask no longer appealed to me. I no longer felt excused being an undercover agent for the cause, worried I would lose my cover if I stood on a chair and lit my mask on fire screaming, “viva la revolución!” I was a spy after all, best to lay low. That attitude lost a bit of its appeal.
Doctors don’t seem to have a problem following the rules in order to stay in practice. Most of them don’t even think about it. The orders come down from above and they acquiesce. I wouldn’t be surprised if the CDC, FDA, AMA or whoever else in authority, told doctors to administer gasoline through an IV to cure some new (fake) disease afflicting the masses, most of the “soldiers of medicine” would comply.
Maybe I am being too harsh here. And maybe they comply with something like mask wearing because they see no harm in it, and if it is required for them to keep their license (the license that allows them to help people, which is the real concern in their mind) they are perfectly willing to do it. To be honest, wearing a mask in a medical facility with a ton of sick people milling about (with pathogens that a mask could block) may not be such a stupid idea.
But when does this sort of compliance based on these sorts of reasons, start to backfire on us? Maybe we truly are at a point here where the sacrifice of not getting into to see the doctor becomes necessary to preserve humanity?
Yes, it is that big of a problem now. Being forced to wear a mask has nothing to do with preventing disease, whether people think it does or not, it doesn’t. It has everything to do with marking those who are willing, happily, to comply with arbitrary authority. The mask is a symbol of humility and degradation. It is a submissive gesture, just as shackles are on a slave, or the Star of David is, if it is sewn onto the coat of a Jew.
Complying with mask wearing, if you are doing so because you are afraid of a ghost virus, or of authority that will punish you if you don’t wear one, is being compliant to a lie. That is why it is not a choice. People believe they are wearing masks because it is their right to choose to wear one. But their decision to wear one as their choice, is based on a lie. Any decision based on a lie is false, it is wrong, and it is a nail in the coffin of humanity.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 22:20 - Senate Democrats Sneak Gun Control Into Military Funding Bill
Senate Democrats Sneak Gun Control Into Military Funding Bill
Submitted by Gun Owners of America,
Senate Democrats are attempting to sneak an authorization of an outdated gun control law into the “must pass” National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the US Military budget.
The law in question is the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act, which was championed by groups like Handgun Control Inc, now known as the Brady Campaign. The Act set the stage for the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.
Gun Owners of America is working in Congress today to ensure that history does not repeat itself with either of these attacks on your rights.
The Act itself bans any firearm that cannot be detected by metal detectors. But back in the 1980s, when this bill was written, detection technology was in its infancy. Nowadays, we have sophisticated detection technology that doesn’t rely on metal detection to find firearms. In fact, modern detection technology can spot all objects, including guns regardless of the materials of their construction.
The Act itself not only hinders innovation in the firearms industry, but the potential for the weaponization of this law is huge, similar to how the 1934 NFA was weaponized to attack pistol braces and expand ATF’s illegal registry.
A weaponized ATF might do this using the “Major Components” section of the Undetectable Firearms Act. To state it simply, the section makes clear that all guns and the major parts need to be recognizable by an x-ray machine. Who knows what they could twist into new law via “Regulatory Authority,” or how this could affect newer technologies, like 3D printed firearms, which have been a target of the anti-gun machine since their inception with the Defense Distributed Liberator.
Anti-Gun politicians like Chuck Schumer knew that they wouldn’t be able to reauthorize this contentious piece of unconstitutional legislation through traditional means, so this reauthorization was added to the NDAA via a process called a substitute amendment.
These substitute amendments are typically used for fixing grammar or spellchecking bills, but it’s also a way to get law into the final bill text without having it be voted on.
Requiring firearms to meet archaic standards of metal detection technology from the 1980s is pure feel-good security theater. Reauthorizing the Undetectable Firearms Act will not keep anyone safe from criminals or terrorists intent on doing harm.
Only law-abiding gun owners and hobbyists will obey this weak, ineffective, and outdated law. On the other hand, if Congress wants to help bolster security at a sensitive location, it ought to invest in and prioritize modern detection technology.
So, you’re probably asking: “What can we do to stop this from becoming law?”
Well, the answer lies in the lawmaking process. Both the Senate and the House have their own versions of the NDAA. Because the Senate version has this awful poison pill, but the House version doesn’t, we can stop this by demanding its removal.
This is where we need your help. Please, call your Senators and Representatives and tell them to remove the “Permanent Authorization of Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988” from the NDAA immediately!
* * *
We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 22:00 - "Another Pay-To-Play?" Hunter Art Buyer Revealed As "Friend" Who Received Favor From Biden White House
“Another Pay-To-Play?” Hunter Art Buyer Revealed As “Friend” Who Received Favor From Biden White House
While the DOJ continues to run cover for the Bidens, a new report from Insider reveals yet another shady looking transaction involving the first family.
While President Joe Biden promised on the 2020 campaign trail that there would be an “absolute wall” between his family’s private business and his official duties, it appears that was yet another lie – as the identities of several buyers of Hunter Biden’s art turned out to be “friends.” One buyer, whose ideitity remains unknown, spent $875,000 on 11 Hunter Biden artworks, while another received a direct benefit from the Biden White House.
The buyer has been revealed as Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a Los Angeles real estate investor and philanthropist who is extremely influential in California Democratic circles, and has given extensively to the Biden administration ($13,414) and the Democratic National Campaign Committee ($29,700). In 2022, Nirsh Naftali hosted a fundraiser headlined by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hirsh Naftali was appointed to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad – a position Hunter had previously suggested he could arrange to have friends seated on. As Insider notes, it’s unknown whether Hirsh’s purchases were before or after the appointment.
In July 2022, eight months after Hunter Biden’s first art opening, Joe Biden announced Hirsh Naftali’s appointment to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. It is unclear whether Hirsh’s purchase of Hunter Biden’s artwork occurred before or after that appointment. Membership on the commission is an unpaid position that is often filled by campaign donors, family members, and political allies — the same crowd that often winds up with US ambassadorial appointments.
…
In the past, Hunter Biden has privately suggested that he could arrange to have friends seated on the commission. Eric Schwerin, Hunter Biden’s longtime business associate, was appointed to the same post by President Barack Obama in 2015. -Insider
“If it was done after her appointment, and she likes the painting, it’s less of an issue,” said Bruce Weinstein, a professional ethicist and ethics trainer. “It’s more of an issue if she’s deciding to buy it beforehand. Then it might be perceived as a quid pro quo.”
Regardless, “if you really wanted to choose the most ethically appropriate course of action, that would not involve any conflict of interest, real or perceived, then you don’t buy the painting,” he concluded.
According to House Oversight Republicans, the report reveals “potentially another pay-to-play scheme” involving the Biden family.
🚨 Major Democratic donor and Biden-appointed commissioner Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali has been revealed as a buyer of Hunter Biden’s art, revealing potentially another pay-to-play scheme. https://t.co/vLx2ZwOMC0
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) July 24, 2023
According to an administration official, Hirsh Naftali’s appointment was made following a recommendation by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and that there’s no connection to the art purchases. They added that she’s deeply involved in Jewish causes in Los Angeles and Israel, which qualifies her for the role – along with her service on a policy board at the RAND Corporation.
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen who is entitled to have his own career as an artist,” said White House spokesperson Ian Sams. “We are not involved in his art sales, and any buyers of his art are not disclosed to the White House.”
Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said that Hunter only learned the identities of Hirsh Haftali and a second buyer after they had purchased his art through the gallery.
Hunter Biden doing something with a straw “The gallery sets the pricing and handles all sales based on the highest ethical standards of the industry, and does not disclose the names of any purchasers to Mr. Biden,” wrote Lowell.
Hunter Biden’s gallerist, Georges Bergès, told Insider: “Names of buyers are strictly confidential,” adding “Any attempt to get them is illegal and will be reported to the proper authorities.”
$875,000 mystery buyer
According to internal documents from Georges Bergès Gallery, a single buyer snagged 11 Hunter Biden artworks for $875,000.
The identity of the $875,000 buyer is unclear. That one buyer represents the majority of the $1,379,000 in receipts that Hunter Biden’s gallery received for his work, the documents show, with the gallery receiving a 40 to 45 percent commission. The $875,000 art buyer resides outside New York and purchased some of Hunter Biden’s largest format works, including a 12-foot-long red-white-and-blue piece painted on sheet metal and entitled “Pandemonium.” -Insider
Insider also reports that the only other art buyer known to Hunter Biden is Kevin Morris, a wealthy LA attorney known as Hunter’s ‘sugar brother’ who was recently spotted smoking a bong on the balcony of his Malubu, California home while Hunter was visiting.
What a small world!
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 22:00 - Desperate SF Grocery Stores Turn To High Tech Upgrade To Combat Theft
Desperate SF Grocery Stores Turn To High Tech Upgrade To Combat Theft
Authored by Bryan Chai via The Western Journal,
As crime continues to soar, businesses and stores are resorting to increasingly restrictive measures to mitigate that destructive spillage.
Whereas many businesses have already adopted some sort of a receipt checkout before leaving the store’s premises, certain Safeway stores in San Francisco are adding a high-tech wrinkle to that established practice, according to KPIX-TV.
In short, these new checkouts in San Francisco have replaced the elderly lady who glances at a customer’s receipt with a physical gate that won’t open until a receipt is scanned.
KPIX reporter Betty Yu tweeted out a video of the new gates in action:
San Francisco Safeway stores install new gates to deter shoplifting 🛒
Safeway has installed gates inside some of their high-theft stores where customers have to scan their receipts to exit. This one is located on Webster Street. @KPIXtv @DaKPIX reports: https://t.co/gi05hGhNqu pic.twitter.com/BgLeiHq4tG
— Betty Yu (@bett_yu) July 16, 2023
It’s a simple setup: There is an automated kiosk located at the exit of the grocery store. After scanning something printed on the receipt, the gates slide open, and the customer is free to go about their day.
At first blush, it feels like there could be a number of hassles associated with this that would turn off local customers. Apart from the actual act of always having to, effectively, “punch-out” of your grocery trip, what happens if there’s an issue with the kiosk?
KPIX notes that Safeway workers can manually override the gate to open it, but that still doesn’t account for what happens if the unit fails altogether (or if there’s a massive power outage.)
Despite those potential annoyances, local customers at these Safeways (KPIX notes that two locations in San Francisco that have adopted these sliding gates) all appear to be for it — because anything appears to be better than the crime wave that has the city in its clutches.
“Everyday,” one customer told KPIX. “You see (shoplifting), you just mind your own business.”
Another customer told KPIX that the new sliding gates are “the best.”
That same customer added: “It’s going to cut down on the crime. I guarantee it cuts down on the crime.”
“The more they shoplift, the more we have to pay for the products,” another shopper lamented to KPIX.
The outlet also noted that, across the customer spectrum, there was a lingering sense of dread about store closures, which is an issue with precedent in the Bay area.
A much-hyped new Whole Foods that opened in San Francisco lasted all of a year before a number of issues — including shoplifting — shuttered the business in April.
Time will tell if these new sliding gates can help mitigate the rampant shoplifting in the area, but that still leaves a number of other issues afflicting the jewel of Northern California — or at least the once considered jewel of NorCal.
Apart from this bubbling retail exodus, San Francisco has been subject to a string of negative headlines, ranging from the bizarre to the tragic.
Earlier this month, San Francisco mothers were being terrorized by youths with baseball bats.
In April, San Francisco was thrust into the negative spotlight when CashApp founder Bob Lee was wantonly stabbed to death in the streets.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 21:40 - How Washington Ruined America’s Future
How Washington Ruined America’s Future
Authored by MN Gordon via Economic Prism,
United States Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen has an incredible job. She writes rubber checks to pay America’s bills. Yet, somehow, the rubber checks don’t bounce. Instead, like magic, they clear.
How this all works, considering the nation’s technically insolvent, is quite miraculous. But it works, nonetheless. Again and again, the Treasury borrows money. And Washington spends it.
Yellen likely knows that full faith and credit is too good to be true. The U.S. government’s gross fiscal mismanagement should call the veracity of its notes into question. But why focus on it when there’s an abundance to be acquired from weekly Treasury bill auctions?
On a recent trip to China, Yellen was spotted by a local food blogger consuming a plate of magic mushrooms. An aide to Yellen later confirmed that she did, indeed, order them. The restaurant’s “staff said she loved [the] mushrooms very much. It was an extremely magical day.”
We don’t know what their acute effects on Yellen were, while she was in Beijing. But the mushrooms appear to be contributing to her chronic hallucinations about the U.S. economy’s current health. This week, for example, while attending the G20 meeting in India, Yellen remarked:
“For the United States, growth has slowed, but our labor market continues to be quite strong. I don’t expect a recession. The most recent inflation data were quite encouraging.”
These, no doubt, are the fantasies of a person under the influence of mind-altering chemicals. Either that, or her mind has turned soft over decades of working as a professional economist for the Federal Reserve and the Treasury.
Tempered Perspective
The unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is, in fact, just 3.6 percent. Yellen can celebrate the data point. But the quality of the jobs being created is not the type that will drive economic growth.
Higher-paying technology and finance jobs are being purged. While leisure, hospitality, and government are the sectors contributing to employment growth. These jobs may be important. Still, they will not create new wealth or help America compete with its global rivals.
Yellen, while under the influence, also remarked that she doesn’t expect a recession. Maybe this is why you should expect one.
Her predictive acumen has missed the target in the past. If you recall, in 2017 she said she did not believe another financial crisis would happen in our lifetime. Since then, we’ve had one financial crisis after another, including the most recent bank failures this spring.
Just this week, Bank of America reported its bond losses in the second quarter increased $7 billion to nearly $106 billion. And Starwood Capital Group just defaulted on a $215.5 million mortgage on an Atlanta office tower. Probably nothing to worry about, right?
In addition, this week Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the mega chip maker, reported its first profit drop in 4 years. Revenue slipped 10 percent from a year ago. What’s more, net income fell 23.3 percent. Wasn’t AI supposed to drive silicon wafer production to commanding heights?
With respect to what Yellen called ‘encouraging inflation data’. While under the influence, she was likely referring to the recent CPI report from the BLS, which showed that in June, consumer prices increased at an annualized rate of 3 percent. This is still 50 percent higher than the Fed’s arbitrary inflation target.
Moreover, the energy commodities component showed a 16.7 percent price decline over the last year. This has coincided with President Biden draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a 40-year low. Without these short-sighted actions, the current inflation data would be much less encouraging.
Structural Crisis
In short, the U.S. economy’s prospects do not quite align with Yellen’s positive outlook. And if you look out further than just the current data reports, you’ll be greeted with a structural crisis of significant consequence.
In fact, simple arithmetic quickly reveals the precarious predicament the 118th Congress is putting the American people in.
The Treasury Department, the agency Yellen oversees, recently reported that for the first 9 months of the 2023 fiscal year, the federal government ran a budget deficit of nearly $1.4 trillion. That’s a 170 percent increase from the same period last year.
The big surprise, however, was that interest on Treasury debt securities for the first 9 months of FY2023 topped $652 billion. A 25 percent increase for this period a year ago.
Rapid and repeated interest rate hikes by the Fed to contain the raging price inflation of its own making, has blown out the interest owed on Treasury debt. Anyone with half an inkling knew this was coming from miles away.
The growth of federal debt has been out of control for decades. But the rate of debt growth in the 21st century has rapidly accelerated.
The solution that’s commonly offered by the politicians for getting a handle on Washington’s debt problem is for the economy to somehow grow its way out. Countless policies over the years have generally involved borrowing money from the future and spending it today.
Yet economic growth never manages to outpace the debt increases. Instead, the debt piles up higher and higher with each passing year. The simple fact is you can’t grow your way out of debt when the debt’s increasing faster than gross domestic product (GDP).
For example, in 2000 the federal debt was about $5.6 trillion, and U.S. GDP was about $10 trillion. Today, the federal debt is over $32.5 trillion, and GDP is about $26.5 trillion. In just 23 years the federal debt has increased by over 480 percent while GDP has increased just 165 percent.
How Washington Ruined America’s Future
Recently, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation attempted to characterize the $32 trillion federal debt. The number is so large it is difficult to comprehend. Here is some of what the foundation came up with:
The $32 trillion debt is more than the combined values of the economies of China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. It represents $244,000 per household or $96,000 per person in America. And if every household contributed $1,000 per month towards paying down the national debt it would take over 20 years.
Without question, Washington has run up an impossible tab. Yet, what does it have to show for all this recklessness?
America’s cities are decaying from the inside out. The infrastructure is crumbling. The country has been involved in one overseas quagmire after another. And the populace is struggling with gender identification pronouns.
The political will to stop this massive debt pileup has been nonexistent. Democrats and Republicans have both spent like drunken sailors. There’s been no tradeoffs or compromises to cut spending. There’s been zero effort to balance the budget. And now it’s too late.
As mentioned above, interest on Treasury debt securities for the first 9 months of FY2023 topped $652 billion – a 25 percent increase from a year ago. But this is just the beginning.
As interest rates continue to rise, the annual interest on Treasury debt will soon pass $1 trillion. That would put this line item at par with outlays for Social Security, the U.S. government’s largest expenditure.
This would also put spending on interest payments above the combined spending of research and development, infrastructure, and education.
Consequently, by repeatedly borrowing and spending money, piling up massive debt, and then being forced to jack up interest rates, Washington has ruined America’s future.
Yippee! Look Ma, no hands!
[Editor’s note: Is the Pentagon secretly provoking China to attack Taiwan? Are your finances prepared for such madness? Answers to these important questions can be found in a unique Special Report. You can access a copy here for less than a penny.]
Sincerely,
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 20:40 - CMT 'Murders Own Brand' After Pulling Jason Aldean Video
CMT ‘Murders Own Brand’ After Pulling Jason Aldean Video
Country Music Television just went full Budweiser after pulling the singer Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” which makes reference to the right to self-defense and firearms.
Jason Aldean performs at the 2023 ACM Lifting Lives Topgolf Tee-Off And Rock On Fundraiser at Topgolf in The Colony, Texas, on May 10, 2023. (Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images) CMT aired the video for a few days before removing it last Monday, sparking backlash over censorship.
Critics of the video also pointed to the fact that part of Aldean’s video was shot outside a courthouse where a black teenager was allegedly lynched around 100 years ago.
“In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” said Aldean in a Twitter post.
In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.…
— Jason Aldean (@Jason_Aldean) July 18, 2023
Aldean says the lyrics also refer to his childhood, when “we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief,” because “they were our neighbors, and that was above any differences.”
“My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to—that’s what this song is about,” the statement continues.
The production company behind Aldean’s video said that the courthouse was nothing more than a “popular filming location outside of Nashville” which has been used for a number of other productions and shows.
“Any alternative narrative suggesting the music video’s location decision is false,” said the company, adding that Aldean had nothing to do with picking the location.
“I’ve seen a lot of stuff suggesting I’m this, suggesting I’m that,” Aldean told concertgoers recently. “Here’s one thing I feel, I feel everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true. What I am is a proud American … I love our country. I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this [expletive] started happening to us. I love my country, I love my family and I will do anything to protect that.”
“CMT just murdered their own brand and for what? Because a bunch of leftist[s] who don’t even listen to country music complained about Jason Aldean’s music video? Let’s give CMT the Target and Disney treatment. Hold the line!” wrote influencer Charlie Kirk on Twitter.
CMT just murdered their own brand and for what? Because a bunch of leftist who don’t even listen to country music complained about Jason Aldean’s music video?
Let’s give CMT the Target and Disney treatment.
Hold the line!
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 19, 2023
Meanwhile Rep. Ronnie Jackson (R-TX) tweeted: “CMT has gone WOKE! Do they know who their viewers are? Guess not!! I’ll tell you this … I’ll NEVER watch CMT ever again. BOYCOTT CMT!!”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 20:35 - Shrinkflation And Skimpflation Are Eating Our Lunch
Shrinkflation And Skimpflation Are Eating Our Lunch
Authored by Jonathan Newman via the Mises Institute,
Economist Jeremy Horpedahl dismissed the silly claim by anticapitalists that capitalism must engineer food scarcity for the sake of profits. He presented a graph of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data demonstrating a substantial decrease in household food expenditure as a percentage of income—from 44 percent in 1901 to a mere 9 percent in 2021. This is something to celebrate and certainly can be attributed to the abundance of market economies.
But when Jordan Peterson asked, “And what’s happened the last two years?” I went digging. First, I confirmed Horpedahl’s observation: the amount we spend on food as a proportion of our budget has fallen dramatically. Second, I saw what Peterson hinted at: a significant spike in food spending when covid and the associated mess of government interventions hit (figure 1).
Figure 1: Food and personal consumption expenditures, 1959–2023
Interestingly, the spike looks like a blip. Someone oblivious to the events of the past few years might see this chart and say, “Yeah, something strange happened in 2020, but it looks like everything is back to normal.” I’m certain that this doesn’t align with anyone’s experience, however. Even today, no one would say that restaurant visits and grocery store trips cost the same as they did in 2019.
What changed in 2020? Why does this graph not feel right? Assuming the Bureau of Economic Analysis data isn’t totally off (and it is important to be skeptical of government data), why would a January 2023 report on consumer inflation sentiment conclude that “there is a disconnect between the inflation data reported by the government and what consumers say they now pay for necessities”?
The difference lies in the qualitative aspects of our experience as consumers. Spending proportions may have returned to their trend, but that isn’t the whole story. “Shrinkflation” and “skimpflation” have taken their toll on the quantity and quality of the food we enjoy—or maybe the food we tolerate is more apt.
Businesses know that charging higher prices is unpopular, especially when many consumers are convinced that greed is driving price inflation. So businesses resort to reducing the amount of food in the package, diluting the product but keeping the same amount, or otherwise cutting corners in ways that consumers may not immediately notice.
Thankfully, websites such as mouseprint.org document some of these cases:
- Sara Lee blueberry bagels reduced from 1 lb., 4.0 oz. per bag to 1 lb., 0.7 oz.
- Bounty “double rolls” reduced from 98 sheets to 90 (how is it still a “double roll”?)
- Gain laundry detergent containers reduced from 92 fl. oz. to 88 fl. oz. without any obvious difference in the size of the container
- Dawn dish soap bottles reduced from 19.4 fl. oz. to 18.0 fl. oz.
- Green Giant frozen broccoli and cheese sauce packages reduced from 10.0 oz. to 8.0 oz. with no change in the advertised number of servings per package
In some instances of skimpflation, the volume or weight of a product remains the same, but the proportions change. For example, Hungry-Man Double Chicken Bowls (a frozen dinner of fried chicken and macaroni and cheese) maintained a net weight of 15.0 oz., but the protein content dropped from 39 grams to 33 grams.
And while firms are reducing the quantity and quality of the food they sell, consumers are also choosing to purchase less food and even lower-quality food. The January 2023 report on consumer inflation sentiment shows that 69.4 percent of respondents “reduced quantity, quality or both in their grocery purchases due to price increases over the last 12 months.”
We have also seen a widespread and long-lasting change in customer service at restaurants. Many restaurants switched to providing only takeout for months or years. Even though the dine-in option has been reintroduced at some restaurants, the service hasn’t quite been the same, with QR-code menus, shorter hours, less staff, and terse demeanors.
It’s not surprising that the massive government interventions, including creating trillions of new dollars, would have countless effects—some that show up in various statistics but many that do not. For example, if we look back at the period of German hyperinflation, we see surprisingly boring data on food spending proportions (figure 2).
Figure 2: Household expenditures in Germany, 1920–22
Source: Data from Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, The German Inflation, 1914–1923: Causes and Effects in International Perspective, trans. Theo Balderston (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), cited in Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation 1914–1924 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 549. There wasn’t much change in expenditure proportions, despite prices soaring to absurd levels. The food price index over the same period increased 14,613 percent. All prices, not just food prices, were skyrocketing, so the expenditure proportions across categories remained relatively stable.
Historian Gerald D. Feldman commented on the German household expenditure data in a way that sounds familiar: “As one study after another pointed out, however, the full impact of these changes had to be understood in qualitative terms.” There was “reduced quality and quantity of the food consumed” and “poorer quality clothing,” among other qualitative changes.
Government statistics are unable to capture these subtleties. This should be obvious—your personal experience as a consumer is more than just the price you pay for a certain weight of food. We aren’t merely machines; we don’t describe our lives in miles per gallon or kilowatt hours.
This is why Ludwig von Mises attacked the conceited aggregates and indexes purported to measure various aspects of consumers’ lives: “The pretentious solemnity which statisticians and statistical bureaus display in computing indexes of purchasing power and cost of living is out of place. These index numbers are at best rather crude and inaccurate illustrations of changes which have occurred.”
He concludes: “A judicious housewife knows much more about price changes as far as they affect her own household than the statistical averages can tell.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 20:20 - Biden's Gun Control Backfires After Fifth Circuit Ruling: Ghost Guns Legal Once More
Biden’s Gun Control Backfires After Fifth Circuit Ruling: Ghost Guns Legal Once More
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of Defense Distributed and other companies that make and distribute “ghost guns” and denied the Federal Government a “stay” in the case VanDerStok v. Garland.
This ruling allows Defense Distributed, Blackhawk Manufacturing Group (incorporated, doing business as 80 Percent Arms), Second Amendment Foundation (incorporated; Not An LLC, doing business as JSD Supply), and Polymer80 the ability to continue selling unfinished gun parts or 80% receivers legally — a significant blow to President Biden’s war on ghost guns.
Previously, US District Judge Reed O’Connor granted a motion for summary judgment against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) because the agency exceeded its authority. This judgment vacated the entire rule nationwide.
The Federal Government’s response to that judgment was to request a stay, essentially a continuance of the status quo until the case ends. Today’s decision denied that stay, with the court stating:
“Because the ATF has not demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits, nor irreparable harm in the absence of a stay, we DENY the government’s request to stay the vacatur of the two challenged portions of the Rule.”
This is the third time the 5th Circuit has nullified an executive order by President Biden to usher in gun control. Notable cases, such as GOA v. Garland, Mock v. Garland and Cargill v. Garland, have stopped the enforcement of Biden’s “Frame or Receiver” rule.
Defense Distributed had this to say about the favorable ruling:
“The 5th Circuit knows the ATF will not succeed on the merits. This rule was never the result of the popular will, but was instead a cynical ploy to launder Bloomberg gun control priorities through the APA rulemaking process as a reward for gun controllers supporting the Biden campaign in 2020.”
In 2021, Biden directed the Department of Justice and ATF to ban ghost guns using the administrative rulemaking process. The result was ATF’s “Frame and Receiver rule.”
Recall Biden unveiled the new rule to rein in ghost guns and ban the manufacturing of untraceable firearms at an event in the White House Rose Garden in April 2022.
“These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals.
“We’re going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice,” Biden said at the event last year.
The rule intended to prohibit businesses from selling gun kits without a serial number. However, following this new ruling, companies like Defense Distributed and Polymer80, which manufacture ghost guns, are now free to carry on with their product sales and expand.
Also, the ruling allows Defense Distributed to unleash a barrage of lawsuits against any state AG who decides to send a cease-and-desist letter over this legal victory. This is a legal ‘checkmate’ and will deter other states from taking matters into their own hands on this issue, as it often happens as state AGs routinely send these companies threatening letters.
* * *
Here’s the ruling:
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 20:00 - "Can You Ring Your Dad?" Joe Biden Spoke Directly To Hunter's Business Partners Dozens Of Times
“Can You Ring Your Dad?” Joe Biden Spoke Directly To Hunter’s Business Partners Dozens Of Times
President Joe Biden, a serial liar, spoke with Hunter Biden’s business associates via phone, dozens of times, while he was Vice President of the United States, according to testimony expected before Congress this week from Devon Archer – Hunter’s former best friend and business associate.
Joe Biden, Devon Archer The 48-year-old Archer, who’s facing prison time for his role in a $60 million bond scheme, is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee about meetings that were either attended by Joe Biden in person or via speakerphone, when Hunter would call his father and introduce him to foreign business partners or potential investors, the NY Post reports.
“We are looking forward very much to hearing from Devon Archer about all the times he has witnessed Joe Biden meeting with Hunter Biden’s overseas business partners when he was vice president, including on speakerphone,” said Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the committee.
One such meeting was in Dubai late in the evening of Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, after a board meeting of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which was paying Hunter $83,000 a month as a director.
Archer, who also was a director, is expected to testify that, after dinner with the Burisma board at the Burj Al Arab Hotel, he and Hunter traveled six miles north to the Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach to have a drink with one of Hunter’s friends.
While they were sitting outside at the bar, Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior Burisma executive, phoned to ask where they were because Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, needed to speak to Hunter urgently. –NY Post
“Can you ring your dad?”
After Hunter’s drink at the Four Seaons with Archer and pals, Pozharskyi, the Burisma exec, asked Hunter: “Can you ring your dad?”
Hunter called Joe, placed him on speaker, and introduced the Ukrainians to his father as “Nikolai and Vadym,” who “need our support.” Notably, two weeks before the call, on Sept. 24, 2015, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in Ukraine about corruption in Odessa, in which he targeted the Burisma exec, Zlochevsky, by name. Of note, former Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption – and in fact seized four houses in Kyiv, two plots of land and a Rolls Royce belonging to Zlochevsky – who was then living in exile in Dubai.
One month later, Shokin was fired – and Ukraine received a $1 billion loan that Joe Biden had threatened to withhold.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden would brag to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
As Shokin’s probe gathered speed at the end of 2015, Pozharskyi ratcheted up the pressure on Hunter, emails on Hunter’s laptop show.
In an email to Hunter and Archer on Nov. 2, 2015, one month before the speakerphone call, Pozharskyi explicitly demanded that they use their influence to “close down” the criminal investigation against Burisma. -NY Post
Three days after the speakerphone call, then-VP Biden was due to fly to Ukraine to address the Ukrainian parliament on Dec. 9, 2015, about the “poison of cronyism, corruption, and kleptocracy.”
An urgent Burisma – VP Biden call took place on 12/4/2015
What was the significance of that date?
The NYT had requested comment for a on VP Biden’s connections to Burisma.
Burisma was scrambling for a response – and wanted VP Biden’s “support” https://t.co/6wWzM2qyER pic.twitter.com/9jjD23ccm1
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) July 24, 2023
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Archer is also expected to testify to other speakerphone meetings, including a Paris dinner where Hunter put his dad on speakerphone to impress prospective investors – one of as many as two-dozen such instances in Archer’s presence.
Not just Archer
Tony Bobulinski, another former business partner, recalls Hunter offering to ring his dad during a meeting by the pool at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.
“I am also aware of other Biden family business associates confirming that Joe would take phone calls from Hunter in the middle of business meetings and would weigh in via speakerphone,” said Bobulinski. “Sitting with Hunter at Chateau Marmont before I first met Joe Biden on May 2, 2017, Hunter was adamant that his father takes his calls at any time, no matter what his lawyers say or with gatekeepers like [former Biden spokesperson] Kate Bedingfield playing interference.
“The American people don’t fully appreciate yet the key role Joe Biden played in the Biden family global influence peddling … I would equate it to a chairman’s role in a traditional business structure.”
Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden twice in Los Angeles in 2017 as part of the vetting process for him to run a joint venture with Hunter and his Uncle Jim Biden, an a Chinese energy company (CEFC), which would end up netting them millions of dollars in exchange for no obvious products or services.
JUST IN: Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer is set to testify this week that Joe Biden was deeply involved with Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, attending meetings both over the phone and in person.
Despite all of the growing evidence Biden is still… pic.twitter.com/MNrlaTA9k1
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 24, 2023
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 19:50 - Luongo: The DNC Soap Opera Gets A New Villain – RFK Jr.
Luongo: The DNC Soap Opera Gets A New Villain – RFK Jr.
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats ‘n Guns blog,
Last week was a big one for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His testimony in front of a House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government created quite the row.
It should not be a shock to anyone that the DNC is committed to killing RFK Jr’s candidacy. The performance by Democratic members of the committee was just that; performance.
They had their statements prepared, not for the general public but to generate the sound bites the rest of the Davos-controlled media complex will use to cut together propaganda pieces against RFK Jr., regardless of what was said, what data was presented, or anything else.
This is how the game is actually played. People like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz are there to play their part, hog the microphone when appropriate and ‘get the shot.’
And that shot was to try and censor RFK Jr.’s testimony in a hearing about government censorship because he gave an opinion on research about COVID-19’s seeming ethnic bias.
Efforts by Democrats to prevent Kennedy from testifying began earlier this week. On Monday, Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Judy Chu (D-Calif.) sent a letter signed by 102 House Democrats to House Republican leadership, requesting they “rescind Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s invitation to testify.”
According to the letter:
‘Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly attacked two groups that have long been subject to deadly discrimination. His own credibility as a witness is nonexistent. Allowing Mr. Kennedy to serve as a witness before the Select Subcommittee only services [sic] to legitimize his antisemitic and anti-Asian views.’
I guess the DNC still thinks they can shame us into not submission at this level of histrionics.
Then they gave Economic Monologue to the voteless rep from the Virgin Islands to reinforce the NPC’s view of the evil GOP playing politics while the economy burns and jobs are being lost.
If it wasn’t all so badly written it would actually be hilariously funny. But it’s not.
It’s all a big livestreamed soap opera, folks, with bad actors, worse direction, ad hoc script pages coming from the caffeine-addled third stringers in the writer’s room.
They are the only ones left because, like in all things right now, there’s a skills deficit in all sectors of the economy.
If you think the scripts coming out of Hollywood are bad, and most of them are, then you have to realize it’s the same people with the same functional deficits.
It’s tightly scripted on their end to make sure certain phrases are said, captured on film and repeated ad nauseum through the 30 minute news cycle and seeded by bots into the social media cesspit.
However, like Trump, RFK Jr. understands this process all too well. He’s using it to seed ideas into the zeitgeist from alternative media sources which forces them to play whack-a-mole on an issue-by-issue basis.
This isn’t to say that some of the issues he embraces aren’t good cannon fodder for the DNC because they are.
*cough* Chemtrails *cough*
But then that also begs the question why aren’t they making hay about those things.
Because if you want to censor RFK Jr. for lacking “credibility” then this seems like fertile ground, rather than peer-reviewed research, which we are all supposed to unquestionably accept as fact.
Or don’t we “trust the science” anymore?
And he’s doing this months before the primary season begins for real while the DNC is trying to figure out how to replace Joe Biden with California Governor Gavin Gruesome while sidelining Vice-President Kamala Harris.
RFK told the world what his strategy was when he was on with Joe Rogan and he’s following through on those statements. He’s running the Trump Playbook from 2016 but this time using podcasts and alternative media voices rather than just Twitter to seed the zeitgeist.
As I noted last week when I was on a podcast with Alex Mercouris of The Duran, RFK’s retweeting one of their videos on Ukraine and NATO was a massive signal that his staff is plugged into the alternative media at a level I think very few were suspecting.
Every American needs to listen to the first 10 minutes of this conversation to understand the insanity that is driving our suicidal Ukraine policy. https://t.co/EsNFr276Ht
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 9, 2023
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That tweet knocked me for a loop. Then this observation was further reinforced when RFK introduced the concept of gold/bitcoin redeemable US Treasuries is the real body blow to Davos.
This is a concept that I’ve been talking about for more than a year, advancing ideas put forth by Judy Shelton who was rejected by the Senate during the Trump administration joining the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
High-fiving with Kamala Harris after blocking Shelton was one of the last things John McCain did before his brain tumor gave its life for our country and humanity.
We know the idea of the US repairing its balance sheet is Davos’ biggest Achilles’ heel.
A US with a corrupt globalist-tethered president is the fulcrum on which all of their evil rests, folks. And “Joe Biden” is the perfect guy for that job. Like McCain, he wakes up every morning trying to figure out (if he’s figuring anything anymore) whose bread he needs to butter that day.
I can’t put it more succinctly than that. So, 2024 is all about ensuring no sovereigntist-minded person gets into the White House.
And, unlike Trump, RFK is not the same kind of thin-skinned bully looking for payback. He’s a lawyer and the closest thing we have to the inheritor of American royalty. To think he won’t unmake most of what Obama has built over the past 14 years just out of spite is naïve in the extreme.
In fact, I’d expect he already has a well-ordered To-Do List for his first 100 days in office.
For that reason he’s more of a threat than Trump. He’s got the pedigree. He’s got the right strategy. And he’s got, in political terms, the cleanest balance sheet of anyone on the campaign trail, Chemtrails notwithstanding.
This makes him, by far, the most dangerous insurgent candidate they’ve seen in this Fourth Turning yet. Not Trump, not Ron Paul. Certainly not captured Bernie Sanders.
This is why as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was trying desperately to keep him from speaking in front of Congress. It’s why Gavin Newsom all but declared his candidacy for president the same day.
Newsom is being positioned to replace Biden on the campaign trail. Time was running out with the primaries only a few months away. So, they got got crackin’.
Newsom will inherit all of Biden’s money when Joe is forced out of the race. There will be a negotiation between the GOPe and the DNC allowing Joe a way out of this with what’s left of his dignity intact.
The big tell will be them doing to Harris what Obama did to Biden in 2016, sidelining the two-term Vice President to allow Hillary Clinton to run.
It should also be no surprise that Mitt Romney threatened to switch his party affiliation to Democrat officially. He knows he won’t be re-elected in Utah. His work is done, now he gets to vandalize as much as he can before he’s out the door.
Someone is positioning themselves for a either a Vice-Presidency vacancy or a split-party scenario once Joe’s been put out of our misery.
RFK’s rise in stature through the grassroots of alternative media is a big deal. He has his faults. He may be yet another ‘looks good on paper’ candidate. His environmental background is still very problematic for me.
But his championing the Judy Shelton program of gold redeemable US Treasuries is such a huge tell that he’s for real. This is a six-sigma event. It means he understands what Powell et.al. are doing on Wall St. and at the Marriner-Eccles building.
It means they are likely in consultation at the strategic level.
Strategy matters. What information you give your enemies matters. How you go on the offensive while shoring up your flanks matters. I wish someone would tell this to the Ukrainian Military so they stop wasting thousands of men running headlong into Russian target practice.
The Ukraine Middle Finger Trap
The events in Ukraine trace a political throughline right back to Trump’s second impeachment and the 2020 election.
While the DNC was persecuting Trump over the phone call to Zelensky. Back then, like many others I fell for the whole, “they’re impeaching Trump for Joe Biden’s crimes” narrative that was the low-hanging fruit.
But I also made sure to always go one step further reminding everyone that all of the major players on Capitol Hill — Pelosi, Romney, Graham, McCain, the Clintons, Obama, etc. — were guilty as hell in Ukraine. They were all in over their hip-waders in the mud there.
And the reality is… what this impeachment is really about is distracting and covering up the multiple layers of corruption in U.S. foreign and domestic policy stretching back decades. Many of the tendrils emanating from the events surrounding the FISA warrants improperly granted connect directly to the Clintons, Jeffrey Epstein, William Browder and the rape of Russia in the post-Soviet 90’s.
We’re talking an entire generation or more of U.S. officials and politicians implicated in some of the worst crimes of the past thirty years.
The stakes for these people are existential. This is why they are willing to risk a full-blown constitutional crisis and civil war to remove Trump from office.
And it was the easiest thing to see unfold in real time.
Ukraine and corruption there became the new third rail of US politics.
To Trump’s credit he not only touched that rail he lubed himself up in high conduction flux and rolled around on it until the rail exploded.
The result was predictable. They impeached him for it, for pity’s sake! For what? Nothing. It wasn’t what he said but what he signaled he was threatening by trying to broker a deal over Ukraine.
For that alone, I have to give him immense credit. Whether he’s the guy this time to exit us from this mess is an open question.
But what’s important is that Davos’ plans as we have seen them play out since then have all been in the service of bringing us to February 2022 and Russia’s reluctant military operation against Ukraine.
These globalists and Neocon freaks really did think they were going to win this thing. They tore apart the US political system, rewrote whole swaths of the legal code, called in all the markers, activated every shadow operative — Alexander Vindman, Fiona Hill, John Bolton, etc. They even got Mike Pompeo to tear himself away from the Swedish meatballs on the buffet table from time to time.
Now they’ve recalled Nikki Haley from the Waffle House outside of Greenville to run interference on the debate stage this winter. She’s the only one Tucker Carlson didn’t completely eviscerate recently.
The War in Ukraine has been a project close to 30 years in the making. It’s accelerated since Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. There isn’t any one issue that brings out the fangs of the Uniparty more than it.
This is where RFK Jr. can really move the ball forward in a way that Trump can’t.
Their corruption is so endemic it’s not just appalling, it is the thing they have to protect more than anything for their own personal empires.
But now the whole thing is collapsing. The GOPe is seeing the shift in the political winds on Capitol Hill. Blood is in the water not just over Joe Biden, but the entire rotten edifice. Is it possible they’ll finally get to Obama here?
And they are beginning to press their advantage. This is why we have Speaker McCarthy openly going after Biden. Why there are IRS whistleblowers testifying.
Lots of rats are beginning to run out of sinking political ships. It’s a slow process and then it’s an avalanche. Whatever finally takes down Biden will take down so many on the Hill.
Screaming “Anti-Semitism and Racism” at RFK Jr. by Broward’s Queen Debbie of old Queens, NY is so 2016 it’s not funny.
While Elizabeth Warren is nearly ready for her close-up, Mr. DeVille.
You’d think with the writer’s strike going on in Hollywood that some of those guys would be doing under the table work for their paymasters on the Hill. Here’s the scary thought. What if they are? Then this thing is going to get more pathetic than Ilhan Omar stating with a straight face the recent heat wave brought the hottest seven days in the last 120,000 years.
Maybe we really are in hell, and it’s not just other people.
* * *
Join my Patreon if you like air conditioning
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 19:40 - Warring Sides Vie For 'Alternative' Grain Export Plans As Russia Escalates With Strikes On Danube Port
Warring Sides Vie For ‘Alternative’ Grain Export Plans As Russia Escalates With Strikes On Danube Port
UN secretary-general António Guterres on Monday pleaded for Russia to immediately return to the Black Sea grain deal in order to stave off a food crisis amid rising prices.
“With the termination of the Black Sea Initiative, the most vulnerable will pay the highest price,” the UN chief said. “When food prices rise, everybody pays for it. This is especially devastating for vulnerable countries struggling to feed their people.”
But President Putin has been saying the opposite—that Ukraine exports have been intentionally favoring European partners while hard-hit populations in Africa and the Middle East suffer most. He has asserted repeatedly that Moscow did not sign on to the Turkey/UN-mediated grain export initiative in order to unfairly benefit already wealthy and food-secure Western nations.
Via Reuters: Storage tanks damaged by a Russian drone strike are seen in a sea port, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Odesa Region, July 24, 2023. Guterres didn’t address these arguments of Putin, instead he pressed for the Russian Federation to “return to the implementation of the Black Sea Initiative, in line with my latest proposal.”
“I urge the global community to stand united for effective solutions in this essential effort,” Guterres said. “I remain committed to facilitating the unimpeded access to global markets for food products and fertilizers from both Ukraine and the Russian Federation, and to deliver the food security that every person deserves.”
The UN chief’s plan being referenced is described as follows:
He proposed Russia extend it – with a daily limit of four ships traveling to Ukraine and four ships leaving – in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s Agricultural Bank, Rosselkhozbank, to the SWIFT global payments system, which the EU cut off in June 2022.
Putin has also alleged that Ukraine has been hiding military cargo under the guise of exporting foodstuffs.
Because of this suspicion, Moscow days ago warned that foreign vessels seeking to enter Ukraine ports risk being treated as military targets. Ukraine then sought permission from Romania to use its territorial waters as an alternate route. Russia’s military quickly responded on Monday.
“Russia for the first time on Monday attacked a port on the Danube River in Ukraine, close to the Romanian border, Ukrainian and Romanian officials said, destroying a grain hangar in an escalation of its efforts to cripple Kyiv’s agriculture and risking a more direct confrontation with the United States and its European allies,” The New York Times detailed of the fresh attack.
Russia is playing a dangerous game
Last night, they struck targets right next to the Romanian border for the first time.
This video was recorded by Romanians, showing the attacks on the port of Reni, right across the Danube river
Romania is a NATO state pic.twitter.com/mJSvlUbxDh
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 24, 2023
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“The assault on the port in the town of Reni, across the river from Romania, a NATO member, targeted Kyiv’s alternative export routes for grain to reach world markets, days after Russia terminated a deal that had enabled Ukraine to ship its grain across the Black Sea,” the report noted.
And crucially, “The attack is one of the closest Moscow has come to hitting the military alliance’s territory since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.”
Over 50 Cargo Ships are currently Anchored in the Danube River between Ukraine and Romania with most waiting for the Ports of Reni and Izmail in the Odesa Region of Ukraine to Reopen for Grain Shipment after they suffered a number of Strikes by Russia Shahed-136 “Kamikaze” Attack… pic.twitter.com/8d6zAjXpZP
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 24, 2023
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Location of the Russian strikes, just on the Ukraine-Romania border…
Meanwhile, both sides are floating contrasting ‘alternatives’ and replacements to the original Black Sea Grain Initiative, but without the participation of the other. At this point, none of these ideas have been formalized. FT reported days ago:
Russia is pushing a plan to supply grain to Africa and cut Ukraine out of the global market after Moscow’s withdrawal this week from a UN-backed deal, according to three people familiar with the matter. President Vladimir Putin has proposed a replacement initiative whereby Qatar would pay Moscow to ship Russian grain to Turkey, which would then distribute the crop to “countries in need”, the people said.
As for Kiev, it is hoping to establish a land corridor for the export of Ukrainian food products to the EU, according to a fresh statement by Zelensky. But there are two obvious issues based on the greater logistical complexity (and in a warzone): 1) No comparable infrastructure exists to ship the same large-scale amounts by road, and 2) the price of the same shipments will massively increase.
At the same time Russia is likely to escalate its attacks based on its rationale of ‘suspected arms cargo’ being hidden in the shipments. In this way immense pressure is being further brought to bear on Ukraine and its external backers (namely, what’s looking like a full export blockade taking shape), also at a moment of the faltering counteroffensive. Is this the start of the end-game for Ukraine’s defense efforts? Will catastrophe on top of catastrophe for Ukraine finally lead to some kind of negotiations in the near future?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 19:20 - Rep. Jordan Says House Could Move To Impeach Merrick Garland At A "Pretty Quick Pace"
Rep. Jordan Says House Could Move To Impeach Merrick Garland At A “Pretty Quick Pace”
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) indicated on July 23 that Republicans could soon move to impeach U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland following testimony from two IRS whistleblowers.
In an appearance on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Mr. Jordan was asked by host Maria Bartiromo about recent public disclosures made by IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler and whether Republicans will move toward impeaching Mr. Garland.
“It sure looks like now, based on the evidence that keeps piling up, based on what Sen. [Chuck] Grassley released this week, the 1023 form, what we heard from the whistleblowers this past week, and the conflicting statements from the Justice Department, it sure looks like we’re moving in that direction at a pretty quick pace,” Mr. Jordan said on July 23.
“I will tell you this, the speaker has been very clear. Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy has said if we have to go to an impeachment inquiry, we will, in fact, do that.”
In February, Mr. Jordan wrote to Mr. Garland about a possible special counsel investigation of Hunter Biden. The committee chairman said that Mr. Garland didn’t respond to him and has been “pretty quiet.”
“I write him again, the attorney general; again, he doesn’t respond, but guess who does.” Mr. Jordan said. “David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, who’s supposedly handling the case. That, in and of itself, is unusual.”
Later in the interview, Mr. Jordan made reference to the investigation into Mr. Biden and said it “could be more about the president himself” and suggested that President Joe Biden could also face impeachment. An impeachment would have to come after House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is finished with his investigation, he said.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, looks on during a state dinner at the White House on June 22, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Watch the full interview below:
Mr. Garland is scheduled to appear at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in September. Mr. Jordan said that any impeachment effort against Mr. Garland would have to be decided by the entire Republican conference.
Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler appeared before a House committee last week and told lawmakers that federal agencies interfered in an IRS investigation into felony tax fraud related to foreign income connected to Hunter Biden. They said that Mr. Weiss’s authority was being limited by higher-ups in the Department of Justice, which Mr. Garland has previously denied.
“It appeared to me based on what I experienced that the U.S. Attorney in Delaware in our investigation was constantly hamstrung, limited, and marginalized by DOJ officials as well as other U.S. attorneys,” Mr. Ziegler told the panel.
And Mr. Shapley insisted that his allegations about limits on the authority placed on Mr. Weiss were “the absolute truth.”
Mr. Garland “led Congress to believe the case was insulated from improper political influence because all decisions were being made exclusively by Delaware United States Attorney David Weiss,” Mr. Shapley said.
“But that was not true. The Justice Department allowed the president’s political appointees to weigh in on whether to charge the president’s son.”
Last week, some House GOP members floated the idea of impeaching Mr. Garland after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested an impeachment inquiry against him.
“When a prosecutor shields his boss’s son from investigators, it smells like a cover-up. Garland’s DOJ did not aggressively follow the money. Why? Are they afraid where that trail ends?” McCarthy wrote for Fox News. “Clearly, someone is not telling the truth, and Congress has a duty to get answers.”
The Epoch Times contacted the Department of Justice on July 23 for comment but received no response by press time.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 19:00 - Mayorkas Claims Illegal Border Crossings Are Down 65% Due To New Biden Policies, But…
Mayorkas Claims Illegal Border Crossings Are Down 65% Due To New Biden Policies, But…
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The number of illegal crossings at the U.S. Southern border is down more than 60 percent owing to the Biden administration’s sweeping new immigration regulations, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on May 11, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times) Mr. Mayorkas made the comments in an interview at Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on July 20.
The Homeland Security Secretary said officials have seen an approximately 65 percent drop in the number of people encountered at the border since Title 42—the Trump-era policy that allowed Border Patrol agents to turn illegal aliens back to Mexico immediately if they were deemed to pose a health threat amid the COVID-19 pandemic—came to an end.
Title 42 expired in May, prompting widespread concerns that illegal border crossings into the United States would surge.
“We have built lawful pathways for individuals so that they do not need to take that dangerous journey to our Southern border in pursuit of humanitarian relief, ” Mr. Mayorkas said. “We have accelerated our refugee processing, we have instituted family reunification programs, we use our discretionary authority under humanitarian parole and we are meeting people where they are,” he continued.
“At the same time, we have sought to disincentivize people from taking that dangerous journey and we raised the evidentiary threshold that one must meet to make an asylum claim at the border,” Mr. Mayorkas said.
The Biden administration has rolled out a string of initiatives aimed at deterring illegal border crossings since Title 42 came to an end, including a regulation under which most immigrants are presumed ineligible for asylum if they passed through other nations without seeking protection elsewhere first, or if they failed to use legal pathways for U.S. entry.
Illegal immigrants wait to be taken by Border Patrol to a processing facility to begin their asylum-seeking process in Eagle Pass, Texas, on June 25, 2023. (Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images) Border Patrol Data Shows Encounters Down
The administration had also expanded access to CBP One, an app that allows migrants to schedule an appointment to approach a border port of entry, and in some cases, has fitted members of immigrant families who cross the U.S.–Mexico border illegally and seek asylum with a GPS ankle monitor so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials can continuously track them.
However, Mr. Biden has also been criticized for allowing up to 100,000 individuals from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador into the United States under a family reunification parole process, and granting various other pathways for immigrants to obtain legal entry and work authorization.
Despite concerns that illegal border crossings would surge after the expiration of Title, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) recently reported a decline in total encounters with illegal immigrants along the Southwest border in June.
According to CBP data, encounters at the border, including individuals who presented at ports of entry with or without a CBP appointment, fell to their lowest level in more than two years, dropping around 30 percent from the previous month to 144,607 and marking the lowest monthly number since February 2021.
The U.S. Border Patrol recorded 99,545 encounters between ports of entry, representing a 42 percent decrease from May, according to the data.
In a press release announcing the figures, Troy Miller, CBP senior official performing the duties of the commissioner, said the decline in encounters was due, in part, to the agency’s efforts to enforce consequences under Title 8 authorities, which allows expulsions if illegal immigrants don’t qualify for asylum, and the expansion of lawful pathways.
Changes to Data Reporting
Yet while the Biden administration is claiming illegal border crossings are down, House Republican lawmakers have raised concerns over how the administration has allegedly changed the way in which illegal entries into the United States are reported.
Mark Morgan, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told Just The News this week that the Biden administration’s alleged encounter numbers for June are only focused on the Southwest border and not nationwide encounters, which he said paints an inaccurate view of the real number of encounters.
Total nationwide encounters, he said, show that since Mr. Biden took office, encounters have risen 350 percent.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
GOP lawmakers have also been calling for Mr. Mayorkas’s salary to be eliminated in response to what they say is his failure to enforce the southern border amid an increase in illegal immigrants crossing into the United States under his watch.
Republicans are contemplating using the Holman Rule, which allows lawmakers to file amendments to appropriations legislation that would reduce the salary of or fire specific federal employees, or cut a specific program, to reduce Mr. Mayorkas’s salary to zero.
“People are sick of inaction against elected officials who betray their oath and refuse to do their jobs. Congress is given the power of the purse by the Constitution, and if the president’s Cabinet secretaries won’t do their jobs, we should consider using any tool, including the Holman Rule, to defund them and their ability to do further damage,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said in a statement earlier this month.
“Do your [expletive] job or Congress will act,” she said.
Articles of impeachment have also been filed against Mr. Mayorkas over his handling of the border.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/24/2023 – 18:40
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