- New 6-Nation Pacific Pact Proposed To Beat Back Beijing's Unrestricted Warfare
New 6-Nation Pacific Pact Proposed To Beat Back Beijing’s Unrestricted Warfare
Authored by Daniel Teng via The Epoch Times,
Democratic countries are proposing a new Pacific-wide pact to strengthen cooperation and development efforts in the region to combat Beijing’s influence building and hybrid warfare operations.
The “Partners in the Blue Pacific” would involve the United States, Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to provide “closer, more purposeful, and more ambitious cooperation.”
“Too often, our efforts have been uncoordinated, creating duplication in some cases and gaps on the others,” according to a concept note about the pact. The partnership was earmarked by U.S. Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell at a Center for Strategic and International Studies meeting on June 23.
The program would look at strengthening the Pacific Islands Forum, facilitate regular engagement and dialogue between partners, and map existing projects and coordinate future ones to avoid “lost opportunities.”
The development of the Partners in the Blue Pacific will come in close consultation with Pacific leaders and will target areas such as climate change, maritime security (China’s illegal fishing fleet), health, education, and providing better access to infrastructure.
Working Together to Deal with the ‘Grey Zone’
South Pacific expert Cleo Paskal has called for better coordination and for democratic nations to leverage each other’s strengths to deal with Beijing’s unrestricted or grey zone warfare in the region.
“Each of the Quad [Australia, India, Japan, and the United States] members have their own unique track records and capabilities to contribute,” she wrote in The Australian newspaper along with Anthony Bergin of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“France is [also] a key Pacific player with nearly 3,000 defence personnel in the region. We need to get our relationship back on track for that reason alone.”
The South Pacific has become a hotbed of geopolitical competition as the Chinese Communist Party pushes to win influence over Pacific leaders in the region.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent tour to eight nations in the region exemplified this trend, with the minister signing a swathe of new bilateral deals to tighten cooperation.
Paskal warned that the increasing influence of Beijing also saw the weakening of democratic institutions and the gradual rise of authoritarianism.
“Those weapons are used to weaken the target country from the inside and to fragment and create disorder in the target country so that it is less able to withstand Chinese influence,” Paskal previously told The Epoch Times.
“That process of creating instability and fragmentation can be described as creating a state of ‘entropy’—of political, social, and economic entropy—where things start to just break down. And in that state of disorder, China can create a new order with itself and its proxies at the centre.”
Crumbling Democratic Institutions
A key example is the signing of the security deal between Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and Beijing, which could pave the way for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy to station troops, weapons, and naval ships in the region.
Sogavare’s prime ministership has not been without controversy. One report revealed that 39 of 50 pro-Beijing members of Parliament received payments from the National Development Fund operated in conjunction with the Chinese Embassy.
While opposition leader Matthew Wale accused the prime minister of not delivering basic services, over-centralising power, and exploiting the country’s timber industry for the benefit of a few logging companies and to line his own pockets.
Late last year, local anger erupted, and protests were held in the capital Honiara against Prime Minister Sogavare, which resulted in three deaths and the Chinatown district being razed.
“You start to get this distortion in the society that creates an enormous amount of social anger. If you are from a democratic background, you think that’s a bad thing,” Paskal said. “But if you accept this premise of entropic warfare being the desired outcome from Beijing, you actually do want to create disruption within the society.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 23:40 - The Link Between Soaring Food Prices & Political Instability
The Link Between Soaring Food Prices & Political Instability
The Russian war in Ukraine has had immediate repercussions for global food markets given the countries’ role as major exporters of essential agricultural products, such as wheat, sunflower oil, barley and corn, while also affecting perishable foods like fruits and vegetables.
As shown in FAO data, the price of basic food products has surged since the invasion of Ukraine after already having followed an upward trend since 2020 over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.
You will find more infographics at Statista
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, in the past, similar surges in the price of food have led to unrest, mostly in developing countries, and even coincided with the Arab Spring in 2011, when populations in North Africa and the Middle East cornered by oppressive regimes and feeling the additional squeeze on their livelihoods due to high prices rose up and toppled several regional regimes. The current level of food prices is even surpassing the peaks observed in 2011 and 2008, when food and other prices rose dramatically, causing unrest in several African countries as well as in Bangladesh, Haiti, Indonesia and Yemen. The onset of the global financial crisis put an end to the price surge that year.
In the current situation, Human Rights Watch has warned that food crisis could hit North Africa and the Middle East again, as several countries in the region are major importers of Russian or Ukrainian food products.
According to Cornell University economics professor Chris Barrett, the potential for unrest is again heightened.
As of early June, food prices had already fueled protests all over the world, including in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 23:20 - Everybody's Guilty: To The Police State, We're All Criminals Until We Prove Otherwise
Everybody’s Guilty: To The Police State, We’re All Criminals Until We Prove Otherwise
Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
The burden of proof has been reversed.
No longer are we presumed innocent. Now we’re presumed guilty unless we can prove our innocence beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Rarely, are we even given the opportunity to do so.
Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government has turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head.
Each and every one of us is now seen as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker in the eyes of the government.
Consider all the ways in which “we the people” are now treated as criminals, found guilty of violating the police state’s abundance of laws, and preemptively stripped of basic due process rights.
Red flag gun confiscation laws: Gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats. These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, will put a target on the back of every American whether or not they own a weapon.
Disinformation eradication campaigns. In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association. In the government’s latest assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—the Biden Administration has likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists. This latest government salvo against consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information” widens the net to potentially include anyone who is exposed to ideas that run counter to the official government narrative. In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly. In this way, government and corporate censors claiming to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns are, in fact, laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
Government watch lists. The FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.
Thought crimes. For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous. It’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted. There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors ranging from thought crimes and hate speech to whistleblowing that qualifies for persecution (and prosecution) by the Deep State. It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.
Security checkpoints and fusion centers. By treating an entire populace as suspect, the government has justified wide-ranging security checkpoints that subject travelers to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA and VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes. Fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, track the citizenry’s movements, record their conversations, and catalogue their transactions.
Surveillance, precrime programs. Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. Coupled with surveillance cameras that blanket the country, facial recognition technology allows the government and its corporate partners to warrantlessly identify and track someone’s movements in real-time, whether or not they have committed a crime. Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one’s behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations. With the increase in precrime programs, threat assessments, AI algorithms and surveillance programs such as SpotShotter, which attempt to calculate where illegal activity might occur by triangulating sounds and images, the burden of proof has been turned on its head by a surveillance state that renders us all suspects and overcriminalization which renders us all lawbreakers.
Mail surveillance. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”
Threat assessments and AI algorithms. The government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state. Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
No-knock raids. No-knock, no-announce SWAT team raids are what passes for court-sanctioned policing in America today, and it could happen to any one of us. Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid. No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters such as serving a search warrant, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Police carry out tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year nationwide.
Militarized police. America is overrun with militarized cops—vigilantes with a badge—who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.” It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, trained to act as judge, jury and executioner in their interactions with the public, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry. This is how we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat “we the people” like suspects and criminals.
Constitution-free zones. Merely living within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States is now enough to make you a suspect, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.
Asset forfeiture schemes. Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Hard-working Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have been associated with some criminal scheme. As libertarian Harry Browne observed, “Asset forfeiture is a mockery of the Bill of Rights. There is no presumption of innocence, no need to prove you guilty (or even charge you with a crime), no right to a jury trial, no right to confront your accuser, no right to a court-appointed attorney (even if the government has just stolen all your money), and no right to compensation for the property that’s been taken.”
Vehicle kill switches. Sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, “vehicle kill switches” could quickly become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to put the government in the driver’s seat while rendering null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. As such, it presumes every driver potentially guilty of breaking some law that would require the government to intervene and take over operation of the vehicle or shut it off altogether. The message: we cannot be trusted to obey the law or navigate the world on our end.
Bodily integrity. The government’s presumptions about our so-called guilt or innocence have extended down to our very cellular level. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws and forced breath-alcohol tests to forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no real privacy, no real presumption of innocence, and no real control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. The groundwork being laid with these mandates is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race. “Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age. Yet the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning. Get ready, folks, because the government has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.
Limitations on our right to move about freely. We think we have the freedom to go where we want and move about freely, but at every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. For instance, license plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars. With tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country, police can track vehicles and run the plates through law enforcement databases for abducted children, stolen cars, missing people and wanted fugitives. Of course, the technology is not infallible: there have been numerous incidents in which police have mistakenly relied on license plate data to capture suspects only to end up detaining innocent people at gunpoint.
The war on cash and the introduction of digital currency. Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal. The rationale (by police) is that cash is the currency for illegal transactions given that it’s harder to track, can be used to pay illegal immigrants, and denies the government its share of the “take,” so doing away with paper money will help law enforcement fight crime and help the government realize more revenue. A cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—plays right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).
The Security-Industrial Complex. Every crisis—manufactured or otherwise—since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn. What this has amounted to is a war on the American people, fought on American soil, funded with taxpayer dollars, and waged with a single-minded determination to use national crises, manufactured or otherwise, in order to transform the American homeland into a battlefield. As a result, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, denied due process, and killed.
These programs push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.
The ramifications of empowering the government to sidestep fundamental due process safeguards are so chilling and so far-reaching as to put a target on the back of anyone who happens to be in the same place where a crime takes place.
The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.
In effect, you will disappear.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our freedoms are already being made to disappear.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 23:00 - New Study Finds Hawaii, Oregon, Among Least Affordable States To Live In
New Study Finds Hawaii, Oregon, Among Least Affordable States To Live In
Careers board Lensa produced a new study this week laying out the least and most affordable states to live in in the United States. The study looked at “the affordability gap in states around the US, comparing the cost of living to the average wage to reveal the percentage difference.”
To arrive at its conclusions, it looked at grocery costs, housing prices, the cost of utilities and transportation costs.
The study found that “Hawaii was the least affordable state in the US with the national average wage being a whopping 20.32% less than the average cost of living. Hawaii also had one of the highest housing spends in the study, spending $13,864 on housing.”
In second place was Oregon, followed by Maine and Oregon. This chart shows the top 15 least affordable states to live:
As far as the most affordable places to live, the study found: “Virginia was named the most affordable state in the US with the national average wage being a whopping 49.64% higher than the average cost of living. Virginia also had one of the lowest transportation costs, spending $8,716 per year on transport.”
Illinois followed closely behind, with the national wage being 44.8% higher than the average cost of living, the study said. Texas came in third.
The study also found:
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California and New York are also featured in the least affordable states. California’s national wage was only 4.38% higher than the average cost of living. New York’s national average wage was only 8.54% higher than the average cost of living.
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The top three most affordable states all had a 40% difference between the national average wage and the cost of living, whilst the others also had a 30% difference between the national average wage and the cost of living.
You can view the full study here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 22:40 -
- Satellite Imagery Shows Construction Of US Military Facility In Pacific
Satellite Imagery Shows Construction Of US Military Facility In Pacific
Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,
Satellite imagery revealed that the United States is constructing a new military facility in the Pacific, possibly preparing an alternative landing site for its airforce should the military bases on Guam become inoperable.
Land-clearing activity has been spotted at Tinian International Airport in the Northern Mariana Islands, based on satellite images obtained by The War Zone on June 15.
An annotated satellite image showing the full scope of planned construction as part of the Tinian Divert Airfield project. USAF
Past satellite imagery from the Planet Lab suggests that construction work at the site started in May.
This appears to correspond to the Tinian divert airfield projects that commenced in February, which will cost about $162 million and are expected to complete by 2025.
At the first project’s ground-breaking ceremony in February, brigadier-general Jeremy Sloane, commander of the 36th Wing, emphasized the importance of the Tinian divert airfield projects for the U.S. forces.
“Its airfield, roadway, port, and pipeline improvements will provide vital strategic, operational, and exercise capabilities for the U.S. forces and support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” Sloane said, DVIDS reported.
In May 2019, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands government signed a 40-year lease agreement with the U.S. Defense Department, which was worth $21.9 million for the U.S. Air Force’s divert airfield on Tinian.
This was consistent with the U.S. Air Force’s decision in 2016 to designate Tinian International Airport as a backup site if the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam becomes unavailable due to a natural disaster or enemy attack.
The divert airfield project would also include the construction of fuel storage, maintenance facility, and other infrastructure on Tinian to support cargo and tanker aircraft, and training exercises.
US Upgrading Military Bases in Guam to Counter China
The Pentagon said in its global defense review last year that Washington will be focusing on the upgrade and expansion of military bases in Guam and Australia “to deter potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea.”
Mara Karlin, deputy assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense, said the Indo–Pacific region was marked as the focal point for the U.S. military in the review, in which it “directs additional cooperation with allies and partners across the region.”
“In Australia, you’ll see new rotational fighter and bomber aircraft deployments, you’ll see ground forces training and increased logistics cooperation,” Karlin said.
“More broadly across the Indo–Pacific, you’ll see a range of infrastructure improvements in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Australia.”
The review was commissioned by the Biden administration in February 2021, and while it provided some details of the future of the military’s global posture, the review was largely classified.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 22:20 - Prepare For A Tidal Wave Of Evictions
Prepare For A Tidal Wave Of Evictions
A tidal wave of evictions could be ahead. More than eight million Americans are behind on rent payments, and the CDC’s series of eviction moratoriums has long since expired. In other words, the government safety net to keep people off the streets is gone.
With no federal eviction moratorium in place, 8.4 million Americans, or about 15% of all renters, who are behind on rent, are at risk of being evicted. The new figures were part of a Census Bureau survey conducted between June 1 to June 13 of households and was first reported by Bloomberg.
The survey found that 3.5 million households were somewhat likely to leave their rented spaces (homes/apartments) within the next two months because of an eviction. Most of these folks are of the working poor class and situated in large metro areas from New York to Atlanta, where the cost of living, including shelter, food, and fuel, has skyrocketed.
About 6.7 million households said their rents increased, on average, $250 per month over the last year. The increase doesn’t sound like a lot but remember that many of these folks are being crushed under the weight of the highest inflation in four decades. Their credit cards are maxed out, and savings are drained as wages fail to keep up with soaring consumer prices.
This shocking revelation is a reminder that today’s current economic backdrop, which some say is stagflationary, could quickly morph into recession and surging jobless.
So who will the Biden administration blame for the coming tidal wave of evictions? He can’t keep blaming “Putin.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 22:00 - Brzezinski's Proxy War Playbook
Brzezinski’s Proxy War Playbook
Authored by Patrick Macfarlane via The Libertarian Institute,
In 1998, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbiegnew Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur that the CIA “knowingly increased the probability” that the Russians would invade Afghanistan by covertly supporting the Mujahideen before the Soviet invasion. Later in that same interview, Brzezinski claims that this covert intervention caused the end of the Soviet Union:
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
In July 2014, almost six months after the Maidan Revolution and Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea, Brzezinski hinted at a similar plan for Ukraine, although he couched it in defensive terms.
He wrote on the Atlantic Council’s blog:
If Ukraine has to be supported so that it does resist, the Ukrainians have to know the West is prepared to help them resist. And there’s no reason to be secretive about it. It would be much better to be open about it and to say to the Ukrainians and to those who may threaten Ukraine that if Ukrainians resist, they will have weapons. And we’ll provide some of those weapons in advance of the very act of invasion. Because in the absence of that, the temptation to invade and to preempt may become overwhelming. But what kind of weapons is important. And in my view, they should be weapons designed particularly to permit the Ukrainians to engage in effective urban warfare of resistance.
In September 2014, Brzezinski revisited the topic in an MSNBC interview:
Brzezinski: For the moment, the NATO alliance—as well as Europe and America jointly—have not been giving military aid to Ukraine. But I would not exclude the possibility of some defensive weaponry being given to the Ukrainians before too long, simply if the Russians, and particularly Putin, continue to try to intimidate Ukraine. That’s not the same thing as defending them; it’s helping them defend themselves.
MSNBC: Is that the middle path you think the United States is going to take—something more than economic sanctions, but less than proxy war?
Brzezinski: I think so. It seems to me that if we really are serious about Ukraine having the right to be an independent state with a friendly relationship with Europe, but not necessarily a member of NATO, and if Ukraine is not only threatened but actually victimized by Russia using force, then some defensive arms — publicly given — but only defensive weaponry, handed over to the Ukrainians makes eminent sense. It contributes to greater stability and it’s more likely to deter Mr. Putin than if he’s in effect given the green light to use as much force as he feels like.
Despite Brzezinski’s defensive framing in Ukraine, Washington’s support for the Ukrainian military bears many similarities to its support of the Mujahideen.
The first documented CIA support to the Mujahideen came in July 1979 when “a small political action program [was approved] to support the burgeoning [Afghan] insurgency through Pakistan.” After the invasion, Washington’s clandestine assistance to the Mujahideen sought to “get arms in [their] hands and keep them fighting.”
These efforts consisted of sales of military equipment through the Pakistani ISI. The most effective support included the transfer of Stinger missiles, which equipped the Mujahideen to destroy Russian helicopters. In the Reagan years, these transfers were facilitated by the deployment of “CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary officers.”
In early February 1980, Brzezinski visited Pakistan for a series of meetings with then-Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq to discuss American support to Pakistan in the wake of the Soviet invasion. As a part of the delegation, Brzezinski made a “symbolic visit” to Afghan refugees in the Khyber Pass. Speaking of the Mujahideen, he told the refugees:
We know of their deep belief in God and we are confident that their struggle will succeed. That land over there is yours. You’ll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail. And you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again, because your cause is right and God is on your side.
In January 2022, a month before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was revealed by US intelligence officials that the CIA had been providing covert assistance to the Ukrainian military since 2014. The program began under Barack Obama, was expanded under Donald Trump, and continued under Joe Biden. According to Yahoo News:
The multiweek, U.S.-based CIA program has included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like “cover and move,” intelligence and other areas, according to former officials.
…The program has involved “very specific training on skills that would enhance” the Ukrainians’ “ability to push back against the Russians,” said the former senior intelligence official.
The training, which has included “tactical stuff,” is “going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,” said the former official.
One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. “The United States is training an insurgency,” said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians.”
Although some of the cited intelligence officials denied the training aimed to “create an insurgency,” much of the training is dually applicable. The semantic squirming that Brzezinski and other intelligence officials employ in their attempts to distinguish defensive support from prepping an insurgency is literally in-credible. This is especially true considering the type of weapons that complimented this training: “sniper rifles, armed boats, RPGs, and Javelin anti-tank missiles[.]”
Further, in an address that is eerily similar to Brzezinski’s 1980 visit to the Khyber Pass, Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) spoke to the Ukrainian 36th Separate Marine Brigade. During the January 2, 2017 address, Graham and McCain praised the Ukrainian soldiers.
Graham: “I admire the fact that you will fight for your homeland. Your fight is our fight. 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of the Russian aggression. It is time for them to pay a heavier price…Our promise to you is to take your cause to Washington, inform the American People of your bravery, and make the case against Putin to the World.”
McCain: “I believe you will win. I am convinced you will win and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win. We have succeeded not because of equipment but because of your courage. So I thank you and the world is watching because we [] cannot allow Vladimir Putin to succeed here, because if he succeeds here, he will succeed in other countries.”
In the 1980s, Brzezinski’s covert “bleeder” strategy was calculated to give the USSR “its own Vietnam,” which Brzezinski later claimed caused the end of the Soviet Union.
Zbigniew Brzezinski on CIA arming of Afghan proxies: “compared to the Soviet Union and its collapse, the Taliban were unimportant” pic.twitter.com/1mier7M9x8
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 27, 2017
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In spring and early summer 2022, the goal of Washington’s involvement in Ukraine became more openly stated: regime change in Moscow. Was this always the objective?
Unlike the debatable effect of Brzezinski’s 1980s Afghanistan intervention, Washington’s involvement in Ukraine was directly cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a casus belli. In his February 2022 speech, Putin stated:
Any further expansion of the North Atlantic alliance’s infrastructure or the ongoing efforts to gain a military foothold of the Ukrainian territory are unacceptable for us. Of course, the question is not about NATO itself. It merely serves as a tool of US foreign policy. The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile “anti-Russia” is taking shape. Fully controlled from the outside, it is doing everything to attract NATO armed forces and obtain cutting-edge weapons.
Brzezinski’s influence on the foreign policy establishment is immense. Brzezinski was among the first to call for the end of Putin’s government. He was also among the first to compare Putin to Hitler. Brzezinski’s protégés include such figures as Barack Obama, Madeline Albright, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, and Antony Blinken.
CIA paramilitaries have been active in Ukraine training elite special operations forces to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists since soon after the 2014 US-sponsored coup.
The US spy agency boasted that its influence “cannot be overestimated.”https://t.co/45T1mNiLNU
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 18, 2022
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Although Washington’s actual role in provoking the Soviet invasion is debatable, one must wonder: if the Russian invasion of Ukraine were to bring the end of Putin’s Russia, would Brzezinski’s ghost and its lineage of Straussian ghouls champion Washington’s role in exacerbating the conflict? More importantly, if regime change is the goal, what cost must the world be made to pay?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 21:40 - Here Comes Deflation: Toyota Asks Suppliers To Lower Prices As Volumes Ramp
Here Comes Deflation: Toyota Asks Suppliers To Lower Prices As Volumes Ramp
Could it be possible that deflation is finally on its way? It seems as though Toyota thinks so.
The auto manufacturer is breaking a trend in the industry of succumbing to rising prices and is asking “certain parts companies” to cut prices for the upcoming third quarter now that it expects to be ramping up output.
Based in Japan, Toyota has a history of asking suppliers to share price savings that occur as a result of buying in volume. These cuts usually amount to about 1% price cuts per year, according to Nikkei Asia, who reported the story.
The automaker got no such discount this spring, but Toyota now sees a recovery in output that prompted it to ask suppliers for lower prices.
It also said it wants to “give support to suppliers particularly feeling the squeeze”, which includes helping cover high costs for materials, energy and logistics and helping pay for storage that suppliers have taken on in anticipation of more volume.
Toyota negotiates prices twice a year, Nikkei reported – usually once for the first half of the year and once for the second half. This year, it skipped its negotiations for the first half of the year and is asking for the price cuts heading into the second half.
The company said it expects to build 800,000 vehicles worldwide in July, exceeding the 770,000 produced last year. For the back half of the year, the company sees a global production average of about 850,000 units per month, on par with its all time high.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 21:20 - Did Durham Play Us For A Fool?
Did Durham Play Us For A Fool?
Authored by Emerald Robinson via The Right Way,
It’s the summer of 2022 — and where are all those Durham indictments you were promised? And where’s that much-discussed Durham report? Do you know that you’ve been played for a fool yet — or are you still watching Fox News? Maybe you need another year to figure out the entire game. Maybe you still believe Bill Barr! Didn’t that legendary windbag tell us that the wheels of justice grind very slow but justice is coming?
Let’s turn back the clock two years — in case you forgot what AG Bagpipes promised the American public.
“The attorney general is saying that Americans will recognize some names under investigation as a part of US attorney John Durham’s ongoing investigation. But the attorney general is saying those names won’t include Obama or Biden.” @EmeraldRobinson reports. pic.twitter.com/uQEiENqOmD
— Newsmax (@newsmax) June 10, 2020
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Indictments are coming!
People will know the names of these people!
Criminal prosecutions! Not just a report!
Notice that (then) AG Bill Barr promises justice for the Russia Hoax while at the very same time excluding Obama and Biden as subjects of the Durham investigation.
That’s the moment that you should have known: the fix is in.
The entire “tick tock” narrative that followed was brought to you (mostly) by Fox News and Bill Barr.
People ask me all the time how I knew — all the way back in the early months of 2020 — that the Durham investigation was a sham. (What do I mean by a sham —you ask? I mean a counterfeit of real justice — a ploy — a ruse to mislead the public.) It wasn’t because I had sources at the FBI or the DOJ. I correctly predicted the Durham investigation was a joke because the Huber investigation was a joke, and because the Hillary Clinton email investigation was a joke, and because the Huma Abedin laptop investigation was a joke, and because the Jeffrey Epstein investigation was a joke….
You get the idea.
I correctly predicted that the federal government doesn’t really investigate itself in order to successfully prosecute Democrats. Call it Emerald’s Law.
DURHAM INVESTIGATION: There hasn’t been a lot of movement but reports are saying there were will most likely not be any indictment before the election. Newsmax TV’s @EmeraldRobinson shares more details. https://t.co/VlT7z8drtO pic.twitter.com/pAEn3T6xHg
— Newsmax (@newsmax) September 28, 2020
The people who disagreed with me (publicly at the time) all worked at Fox News, or appeared on Fox News, or were guests on Fox News — and these people were all in the business of misleading their audience because the GOP establishment wanted its voters to be fooled. Bill Barr didn’t really want to arrest or prosecute Democrats — and certainly not in 2020. After all, the GOP establishment was busy collaborating with Democrats in 2020 to steal the November election from President Trump — or don’t you remember?
In other words: the Durham investigation was simply the clean-up phase of Spygate disguised as an investigation of Spygate. This was perfectly obvious at the time — and it remains obvious today. It doesn’t take two years for the DOJ to prosecute its targets. You know that — right? Just ask Roger Stone. When the DOJ really wants to prosecute you, it’s easy to tell because two dozen special agents in SWAT gear appear at your door in a pre-dawn raid with a CNN camera crew already stationed across the street.
And that’s just for the crime of “lying to Congress.”
Did you really think that John Durham need two years to bring serious indictments against the Spygate plotters? Did you really fail to notice that his low-level indictments came just as the statue of limitations expired? Or that Durham brought minimal charges that were always going to bring minimal sentences?
That’s because John Durham was the cleaner.
Don’t tell me that you actually believed that one guy at the DOJ was going to investigate how the DOJ and the FBI and the CIA were trying to sabotage President Trump all by himself? All the majors players in Spygate walked away while Durham sent you on a wild goose chase hunting for commas in charging documents — and that wild goose chase was so successful in conservative media that you’re still talking about two low-level guys getting charged with process crimes four years after Durham supposedly started his investigation.
Durham kept you high on the hopium for four years. That was his real job. He actually made you think that Spygate plotters were going to be prosecuted during the Biden Administration — or the Third Obama Administration as it should properly be called. It’s almost as if you somehow forgot that Obama and Biden were the ones who met on January 5th, 2017 to conceal the Obama Administration’s illegal spying on the Trump campaign (since Trump was now President-Elect) and to formally launch the Russia Hoax.
So the joke is on you.
As I said on Twitter at the time: “At the current rate of speed that Durham’s investigation moves, we can expect the guilty to be prosecuted sometime during the second Hunter Biden administration.”
One of the giant red flags about the Durham investigation from the very beginning was that he allowed Democrat super-attorney (and 2016 Hillary Clinton general counsel) Marc Elias to run around for years interfering in our elections. Durham even allowed the Democrats’ “dirty-ops-org-disguised-as-a-law-firm” Perkins-Coie to separate itself legally from Elias just three weeks before he charged their employee Michael Sussmann! Elias was so certain that Durham was a nothing-burger that he even took over the Black Lives Matter corporate franchise while Durham was still investigating!
How’s that for justice?
You should also notice by now that Democrats never have to play stupid games like “tick tock trust the plan” because they’re too busy actually fabricating evidence, planting false media stories, and falsely prosecuting Trump officials like General Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Paul Manafort.
They’re too busy getting simpletons like (then) AG Jeff Sessions to recuse himself in order to bring down the Trump Administration.
In fact, the Spygate plotters (Obama, Biden, Rice) are currently in control of the White House — in case you hadn’t noticed. How’s that for getting away with it? Sure, Durham made a valiant attempt to transfer the blame for the whole scandal onto Hillary Clinton and her campaign aides — but Hillary Clinton wasn’t meeting with James Comey about the Russia Hoax in the White House and texting Peter Strozk and Lisa Page was she?
Durham even tried to get the American public to believe that the FBI and the CIA had somehow been fooled by Hillary Clinton into investigating Trump. That’s right: the FBI and the CIA claimed to be innocent rubes who were deliberately led astray by Lady Macbeth. Spygate was reduced to something about the Alfa Bank, and whether Michael Sussmann told the FBI that he represented a client when he dropped off “information” on thumb drives at Langley seemingly three days a week in 2017.
The Sussmann media coverage was absurd from the start — but every conservative media outlet on Earth ran these stupidities with a straight face in 2022. There were moments during the trial of Michael Sussmann when it was easy to believe that Sussmann’s case had more to do with Perkins Coie billing the Clinton campaign for two thumb drives — rather than, you know, participating in a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the sitting President.
That’s what happens when you reduce a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the sitting President into a single charge of lying to the FBI. The elephant in the room transforms into a fly, and then the fly gets swatted.
Durham’s job was to run out the clock during the Trump Administration — he was there to protect Obama and Biden and the national security state from any accountability. Think about it. Why did you trust Durham at all? You trusted John Durham because you were told to trust him by Bill Barr — and the same people who told you to trust Barr were the ones who told you to trust Rod Rosenstein. Before that, you were told that Matt Whitaker was riding to the rescue. Do you even remember being told to trust John Huber? And who can forget trusting Jeff Sessions?
Do you see where this is going?
Let’s ask a different question: why do you need to trust anybody? The Left burns down entire cities in coordinated riots to achieve its political objectives. The Left tries to assassinate a conservative Supreme Court justice to stop anti-abortion legislation right after forcing a liberal Supreme Court justice into retirement in order to install an even more left-wing justice. The Left, in other words, trusts nobody because it only cares about results.
Meanwhile, you were told: sit back and watch the show.
You were told: trust the plan.
The question is: why were you dumb enough to believe Durham in the first place?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 21:00 - Cadillac's $300,000 Luxury EV To Be Revealed This Summer
Cadillac’s $300,000 Luxury EV To Be Revealed This Summer
Cadillac has a near-term desire to reclaim its decades-old slogan “Standard of the World” with a $300,000 all-electric luxury sedan unveiled this summer.
WSJ reports the “Celestiq” will be a flagship luxury sedan, equipped with an all-wheel-drive electric powertrain capable of a +300-mile driving range and packed with groundbreaking technologies (including a hands-free assisted-driving system).
Cadillac plans to produce only 500 Celestiqs per year in an $81 million facility at GM’s Global Technology Center in Warren, Michigan.
“The Celestiq price tag could run well beyond $300,000 depending on added features, and the car is scheduled to go into production by late 2023,” WSJ noted, citing people familiar with the project.
Celestiqs will be priced in a range comparable to the Mercedes-AMG S65 ($230k), Bentley Flying Spur ($214k), and Rolls-Royce Ghost ($312k). Cadillac wants Celestiq to be the ultimate status symbol and the Holy Grail of luxury vehicles after being outshined by numerous luxury car makers from Europe for decades.
Here are teaser images of the Celestiq.
Front driver’s side of the vehicle.
Center console of the Celestiq show car.
Fox News says the unveiling could happen as soon as July.
The question remains if Cadillac can reclaim its old slogan: “Standard of the World.”
… and one last question: Who the hell is going to buy a $300,000 Cadillac?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 20:40 - Reactivation Of Chickenpox Virus Following COVID-19 Injections On The Rise
Reactivation Of Chickenpox Virus Following COVID-19 Injections On The Rise
Authored by Meiling Lee via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Doctors and scientists are seeing an increase in the reactivation of the chickenpox virus, known as varicella-zoster virus (VZV), following the COVID-19 injections.
A child gets a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Hartford, Conn., on Jan. 6, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) The chickenpox virus is one of the eight herpes viruses known to infect humans. After a person contracts and recovers from chickenpox, the virus never leaves the body but lies dormant in the nervous system years later until it gets reactivated as shingles, or herpes zoster (HZ).
Federal health authorities claim that there’s no correlation between COVID-19 injections and shingles, but studies show that there is a higher incidence of shingles in people who’ve received the vaccine.
Israel was one of the earlier countries to publish a case series of six women (out of 491 participants) with an autoimmune disorder who developed shingles 3 to 14 days after receiving the first or second dose of Pfizer COVID-19 shot. None of the 99 participants in the control group developed shingles. The study was published in the journal Rheumatology in April 2021.
“To our knowledge, there were no reports of varicella-like skin rash or HZ in the mRNA-based vaccines COVID-19 clinical trials and our case series is the first one to report this observation in patients within a relatively young age range: 36–61, average age 49 ± 11 years,” the authors wrote.
They hoped that publishing the case series would “raise awareness to a potential causal link between COVID-19 vaccination as a trigger of HZ reactivation in relatively young patients with stable AIIRD [autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases].”
Man with scarring from shingles on June 21, 2022. (Meiling Lee/The Epoch Times) In a different case study from Taiwan, researchers reported three healthy men ages 71, 46, and 42 who developed shingles two to seven days following the first dose of the Moderna or AstraZeneca COVID-19 injection.
“HZ does not often appear after the administration of other kinds of vaccinations,” the researchers wrote. “But we believed that there might be a link between COVID-19 vaccine and HZ emergence.”
“One of the reasons is the short delay of onset after vaccination. The other reason is that these three patients were immunocompetent,” they added.
The largest study to date, based on real-world data (pdf) of more than two million patients, found that there was a higher incidence of shingles among the vaccinated (who received a COVID-19 shot within 60 days) than in the unvaccinated cohort, who were diagnosed with shingles within 60 days of visiting a healthcare office for any other reason.
According to the researchers, the risk of developing shingles was calculated as 0.20 percent for the vaccinated group and 0.11 percent for the unvaccinated, and the “difference was statistically highly significant.”
“Reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus appears to be a potential ADR [adverse drug reaction] to COVID-19 vaccines, at least for mRNA LNP-based formulations,” the authors wrote, adding that “vaccination against COVID-19 seems to potentially raise the risk of precipitating HZ [herpes zoster].”
Dr. Richard Urso, an ophthalmologist, and drug design and treatment specialist, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program in April 2022 that of the three to five patients he sees a week with long COVID or problems after receiving the COVID-19 shot, “a huge number of them have reactivated Epstein-Barr, herpes simplex, herpes zoster, CMV.”
Regardless of the rise in reports of shingles after the rollout of the COVID-19 shots, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims that it has not detected any safety signal between the two.
“FDA has not seen a safety signal for shingles/herpes zoster following administration of the approved or authorized COVID-19 vaccines,” Abby Capobianco, FDA press officer told The Epoch Times via email last month, adding that the agency “will continue to closely monitor the safety of these vaccines.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also alleges that “there is no current connection” between COVID-19 vaccines and the reactivation of the chickenpox virus.
CDC spokesperson Scott Pauley said that any adverse reactions experienced after receiving a COVID-19 shot are temporary and a positive sign that the vaccine is working.
“Some people have side effects from the vaccine, which are normal signs that their body is building protection,” Pauley wrote in an email to The Epoch Times. “These side effects may affect their ability to do daily activities, but they should go away in a few days. Some people have no side effects, and allergic reactions are rare.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 20:20 - Vancouver Apologizes To Homeless For Trauma Caused By Street Cleanings
Vancouver Apologizes To Homeless For Trauma Caused By Street Cleanings
The city of Vancouver has apologized to homeless people for causing ‘harm’ during daily street sweeps in which personal belongings have been discarded.
The CBC reports that the apology comes on the heels of a Tuesday evening City Council discussion calling for changes to the way said sweeps are conducted.
Sweeps occur daily Monday through Friday, as a team of city workers accompanied by police officers clear debris from sidewalks of the Downtown Eastside. According to the city, crews are trained to remove litter, garbage and abandoned structures – but not “clearly personal belongings.”
According to homeless advocates, however, the sweepers sometimes throw out items that are valued by vagrants.
In October, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) called for an end to the daily sweeps – after interviews with nearly 100 homeless people reveled that people claim to have lost “invaluable personal belongings” to the cleanup efforts – including indigenous art, family photos and the ashes of loved ones.
“My boyfriend and I had our tents sliced up, and they used the excuse to say they are checking inside to see if there are overdoses taking place,” one homeless woman told the CBC.
During one five-day period in 2021, an estimated $2,410 worth of personal property was seized by sweepers, according to a report conducted by several organizations including Pivot Legal Society.
According to Pivot Legal Society campaigner Meenakshi Mannoe, things are thrown out or stored in a way that makes retrieval difficult.
“People aren’t given notice about where their belongings are taken. They’re not given a receipt on what was taken…. What we hear from folks is that their belongings are trashed.“
The city’s deputy general manager of engineering, Taryn Scollard, said in a statement that “We sincerely regret and apologize for any harm and trauma that has been created as a result of this work and recognize important items have been discarded.”
The Tuesday evening motion called for the city to develop an alternative community-led process for cleanups, rather than the police. What’s more, storage facilities and the creation of a ‘lost and found’ system will be part of the proposed changes.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 20:00 - Assange Put On Suicide Watch After Patel Decision, Family Says
Assange Put On Suicide Watch After Patel Decision, Family Says
Authored by Joe Lauria via Consortium News,
After British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed Julian Assange’s extradition order last week the authorities in Belmarsh prison stripped Julian Assange and threw him into a completely empty cell in an attempt to prevent his suicide, Assange’s father has said.
It was just one more instance in which the prison humiliated his son, Shipton told a rally on Tuesday night at the offices of the junge Welt newspaper in Berlin. About 300 people attended, with an overflow crowd watching on close circuit TV in the courtyard.
“The ceaseless malice that has descended upon Julian, a deluge of malice, the strip-searching of Julian… this is the latest humiliation,” Shipton said. “The staff of the jail, their concern after hearing he has to be extradited to the United States, thought he may commit suicide. Their solution was to strip him naked, and put him in a bare cell.”
John and Gabriel Shipton at Berlin rally. Image source: Joe Lauria Testimony was heard from expert defense witnesses during Assange’s extradition hearing that he might try to end his life in prison once he learned he was going to the United States.
It is not the end of the road for Assange legally, however. His lawyers have until July 1 to file for an appeal of Patel’s decision to the High Court. They also intend to apply for a cross appeal of issues such as the political nature of the charges, the threat to free speech and the reported CIA plot to kidnap or kill Assange before his arrest.
When I first met Julian Assange he was wearing a bullet proof vest and, to be fair, I thought he was a bit paranoid.
Then my offices where we were teaming up with Wikileaks were broken into three times.
Now, with Julian facing life in prison, I know 100% it wasn’t paranoia.
— Iain Overton (@iainoverton) June 23, 2022
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Shipton and Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, are in Berlin to lobby the German government to put pressure on the United States to drop the case against Assange.
On Monday, the Shiptons met with Tobias Lindner, the minister of state, at the German foreign ministry. “It was a practical and appropriate step for Tobias to take, to welcome Julian Assange’s father and bother into the foreign ministry,” John Shipton said. “The invitation in itself and the meeting in the foreign ministry indicates that the German government is sincere in bringing about the freedom of Julian Assange.”
Amnesty: “We call on the UK to refrain from extraditing Julian Assange, for the US to drop the charges, and for Assange to be freed” @amnesty https://t.co/GlWuuUBeOD
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 24, 2022
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But Shipton said he would like to hear a public statement from Germany in support of his son. “We’d like Tobias to confirm what he’s said.”
A German government spokesman on Monday said however that Germany was unlikely to intervene with either the UK or the US: “This is a legal process that is already in motion, so I would be a little wary of political intervention,” he said, the French Press Agency (AFP) reported.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 19:40 - How Far Will This Dead-Cat Rally Bounce: Goldman, JPMorgan Traders Duke It Out
How Far Will This Dead-Cat Rally Bounce: Goldman, JPMorgan Traders Duke It Out
While regular readers are well aware that among Goldman’s flow traders (who actually are damn good at what they do unlike the bank’s equity sellside research desk which is quite often atrocious and just follow the penguin echo-chamber parade) the likes of Scott Rubner (whose reports we cover in our professional subscriber section) are staunch permabulls and always see the light at the end of the tunnel, one name that always takes the contrarian, a growing bearish faction has been headed by Matt Fleury who has recently emerged as one of the biggest Goldman trading desk bears (see from March “Goldman Trader: “The Set Up For An Equity Market Crash Is As High As I Have Seen It” where Fleury was spot on). Which is why we found it notable that earlier this week, just as stocks were tumbling, that none other than Fleury turned strongly (if briefly, or rather ‘tactically’) bullish, saying “equities are very oversold here. I think the scope for a relief rally from here very good into early July.”
Goldman’s biggest desk bear, Matthew Fleury: “Locally, equities are very oversold here. I think the scope for a relief rally from here very good into early July.”
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 22, 2022
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Below we excerpt some of the key charts he highlighted in his note (available to pro subscribers):
1. Percent of SPX names 52 week highs vs lows:
2. The number of SPX names with a 9d RSI sub 30 is 345x.
This is where that will look like if that holds to 14d RSI middle of next week:
3. We are pricing in a large earnings downgrade now:
4. Percent of names in SPX500 trading above 50dma:
5. Percent of names at 52week lows:
6. The bid for FAAMG calls has evaporated
… and so forth. The full note is available to pro subscribers in the usual place.
We bring this up because Fleury was obviously right, and the tactical rally, dead cat bounce, whatever you want to call it is here, with spoos surging 200 points in just the past few days.
Of course, Fleury did not flip from bearish to bullish – he merely timed, correctly, the latest dead cat bounce into what still remains a bear market, and will be a bear market until the Fed pivots (some time in September), and relents dovishly at which point all asset classes will explode higher.
But what about the duration of the current bear-market rally: how long can this dead cat continue to bounce?
For the answer we go to JPM index trader Jason Hunter (whose note is also available to professional subs) who writes this morning that the S&P 500 is trying to build upon the initial rebound from the extreme oversold conditions realized last week, and “needs to clear 3810-3900 resistance to confirm a short-term trend reversal.”
Well, with spoos now trading at 3,890, it appears that the reversal is now here, even if heading into today’s data the signals skewed bullish as Hunter adds, echoing Fleury: “the deep oversold conditions and bullish momentum divergence signals already in place imply an increased probability for additional upside into July.”
How far does the JPM strategist see the move extending? According to Hunter, “the potential bullish momentum signal on the weekly time frame that can trigger this Friday would bolster that upside bias for the early weeks of summer. We believe the move will extend toward key resistance levels near 4100 over that period... A move through that area is required to bullishly shift the medium-term trend dynamics, something we think would coincide with shifting inflation and policy rate expectations.”
But before everyone rushes to mortgage their newborn and pledge their left kidney to buy spoos, a less euphoric take comes from our friends at SpotGamma, who point out in their morning note that “rallies into June OPEX should be categorized as “short covering” and subject to failure.” That said, the Gamma geeks add that they look for a “positive drift” into 6/30 expiration, with SPX 4000 their major upside level into 6/30. On the other side, the 3600 JPM 6/30 short put strike (3620) is their major downside support into June 30th (the June 30 expiry removes large put positions and may expose the market to further downside into July).
Some more observations from SG:
While volume & OI continues to build at 3800 in SPX, its 380 in SPY thats gained some decent size. If you check the data table below you will see that 4000 is the largest gamma level for SPX (aka “Absolute Gamma Strike”) while its 380 in SPY. This is looking like its setting up a pretty clean range of 3800-4000 into next Thursday (June quarterly OPEX).
We noted last week that the loss of June OPEX would bring a reduction in negative gamma due to puts expiring. This equates to a reduction in volatility (as dealers have smaller hedges), which generally produces upward drift in markets. You can see the lower vol thats been produced below. The bottom histogram shows us the distribution of S&P prices for the last 5 days (red) vs last 30 days (light blue).
Spotgamma also ends on a bullish tone, however, and notes that if equity vol is going to start coming in here (VIX now <28) that should be a key driver of higher equity prices into the June 30 expiration.
In short, the onus is now on the bears to push risk lower.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 19:37 - These Are The World's Angriest Countries
These Are The World’s Angriest Countries
Nearly everybody experiences anger in everyday life, whether it’s frustrations about making ends meet, the state of public transport or a misunderstanding at work. Gallup’s 2021 Global Emotions Report set out to gauge emotions (including anger levels) in more than 100 countries around the globe.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, anger tends to manifest itself more often in certain parts of the world, particularly in the Middle and Near East.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Gallup found that 49 percent of people in Lebanon had experienced anger on the day before they were surveyed, the highest rate recorded anywhere in the world. After years-long economic turmoil and high inflation, a massive explosion in Beirut’s port destroyed large parts of the city in 2020, once more stoking anger at the country’s government for not enforcing safety measure or having the capacity to help those who were harmed.
High levels of anger were also measured in Turkey, which had been dealing with runaway inflation even before the war in Ukraine and whose government has taken a turn for the authoritarian lately. Armenians, who experienced a flare-up of war in 2020 with neighbor Azerbaijan, also had elevated levels of anger. After years of war, Iraqis and Afghans also have a long list of topics to be angry about which includes a lack of basic public services in many parts of the countries.
Mali and Sierra Leone were the angriest countries outside the Middle East, Near East and Persia, with 35 percent of respondents having experienced anger the previous day.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 19:20 - Giant Sunspot Currently Facing Earth And Still Growing Capable Of Emitting Powerful Solar Flares
Giant Sunspot Currently Facing Earth And Still Growing Capable Of Emitting Powerful Solar Flares
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
A fast-growing giant sunspot that can emit solar flares has more than doubled in size in recent days and is currently facing Earth, according to experts.
Sunspots are dark areas of strong magnetic fields on the sun’s surface. They appear dark because they are much colder than other parts of the sun’s surface, having formed at areas where magnetic fields are particularly strong, according to NASA.
Because of the strong magnetic field, magnetic pressure increases while the surrounding atmospheric pressure decreases, resulting in the lower temperatures.
Sunspots are also associated with eruptive disturbances such as solar flares, which are fast moving eruptions of radiation, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which is when large masses of plasma and highly magnetized particles violently eject from the sun. Flares move at the speed of light and take about eight minutes to reach earth, while CMEs can take three to four days to reach earth.
The fast-growing sunspot noted by experts is known as AR3038.
“Yesterday, sunspot AR3038 was big. Today, it’s enormous,” Tony Phillips, the author of SpaceWeather.com wrote on Wednesday.
“The fast-growing sunspot has doubled in size in only 24 hours,” Phillips added.
The expert noted that the magnetic field surrounding AR3038 could potentially blast M-class solar flares, or medium-sized flares, towards Earth.
Photos from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory taken on June 22 show the sun with numerous sunspots, with AR3038 looking particularly big after evolving over the past few days.
The sunspot has doubled in size each day for the past three days and is roughly 2.5 times the size of Earth, C. Alex Young, associate director for science in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in an email to USA Today.
‘No Cause for Concern’
However, Rob Steenburgh, the acting lead of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Forecast Office has said there is no need to panic, noting that sunspots naturally grow in size.
“This is what sunspots do,” he told USA Today. “Over time, generally, they’ll grow. They go through stages, and then they decay.”
Young also noted that while the sunspot is producing flares, it “does not have the complexity for the largest flares” and there is only a 30 percent chance that it will create medium-sized flares. The chances it will create large flares are even smaller at 10 percent, the expert said.
W. Dean Pesnell, the project scientist of the Solar Dynamics Observatory, also offered reassurance that there is no need for concern, telling the publication that AR3038 is a “modest-sized active region” that “has not grown abnormally rapidly and is still somewhat small in area.”
As of June 22, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), which monitors solar flares, has not issued any warnings for them.
However, if solar flares such as an X1-class solar flare are released from the sun, they can potentially create disruptions to communication satellites and long-distance cables here on earth, wreaking havoc with the world’s internet.
Another expert, Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo, lead scientist at the SouthWest Research Institute in San Antonio, also stressed that there is no need for concern, explaining: “I want to emphasize there is no need to panic,” and that the sunspots “happen all the time.”
“We are prepared and doing everything we can to predict and mitigate their effects. For the majority of us, we don’t need to lose sleep over it,” Muñoz-Jaramillo said.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 19:00 - Roadway Congestion Returns To China, Signals Tighter Global Oil Supplies
Roadway Congestion Returns To China, Signals Tighter Global Oil Supplies
A surge in road traffic has been seen in China after two of the largest cities reopened following two months of lockdowns and restrictions, indicating the economy could be restarting and refined crude product demand is rising.
BloombergNEF examined Baidu traffic data and found Beijing and Shanghai roadway congestion jumped once travel restrictions under the zero-tolerance strategy to combat infections eased in early June.
The return of the two most important cities sent an index monitoring congestion of 15 Chinese cities with the highest vehicle registration above a January 2021 baseline.
The reopening of China comes as COVID infections in Shanghai and the rest of mainland China have dramatically receded after spiking in March, peaking in April, and moving lower through May.
As China eases COVID restrictions in top cities and congestion data soars, it’ll boost demand for crude and refined products.
Dai Jiaquan, a director at the oil research department at CNPC, recently said a roadway recovery could boost demand by 1.6 million barrels a day on a quarterly basis from July to September. This comes as the US summer driving season is well underway, and North America, as well as much of the world, is structurally short refined products, such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, mainly because of refinery capacity woes.
Vitol Group Chief Executive Officer Russell Hardy told the audience Tuesday at the Qatar Economic Forum that China’s increasing fuel demand in an already tight global market means prices won’t drop that much.
“The market’s a little bit concerned that we’re running out of spare capacity and is beginning to factor that into prices,” Hardy said.
He continued: “It depends on lockdowns, but we’d expect it to steadily come back through the second half of the year.”
Hardy’s similarly bullish message was echoed by Exxon Mobil CEO who said this week that global oil markets may remain tight for another three to five years largely because of a lack of investment since the pandemic began.
So +$100/bbl Brent oil is the new normal?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 18:40 - 2 Dozen States To Restrict Abortions After Supreme Court Decision
2 Dozen States To Restrict Abortions After Supreme Court Decision
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
More than two dozen states will move to restrict abortions following the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The Guttmacher Institute, a research group, says that 13 states have “trigger laws” that bar most abortions that will take effect immediately after the ruling Friday.
They are Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
Five more states had respective bans on abortion from the time before the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.
They include Alabama, Arizona, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and South Carolina, according to the Institute, have laws that ban abortions after the 6-week mark. Those laws will be revisited after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, the legislatures of Florida, Indiana, Montana, and Nebraska appear likely to ban abortion based on previous and current efforts, the group says.
Overall, 26 of 50 U.S. states are likely or certain to ban abortion after the ruling was handed down Friday, the Institute says.
“Beyond the 26 states certain or likely to attempt to ban abortion immediately, other states have demonstrated hostility toward abortion by adopting multiple restrictions in the past, but are not likely to ban abortion in the near future. Notably, North Carolina has a pre-Roe abortion ban in place, but it is unclear if the state’s law would be implemented quickly. However, this analysis may change in the next few years,” according to the institute’s website.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion group, estimates that 25 states are likely to ban abortion. That group believes that Montana, Iowa, and Florida will not—but that North Carolina and Pennsylvania will.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in an opinion for the majority Friday, wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed Roe, was incorrect on the day it was decided and must be overturned. The authority to regulate abortion doesn’t rest in the court system, he argued, adding that only legislatures have that power.
“We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Alito wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that he would have stopped short in ending Roe, adding that he would have upheld the Mississippi law at the heart of the case.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
“With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,” they said in their opinion.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 18:20 - AIPAC Lobbies Against Probe Of US-Palestinian Journalist Likely Murdered By Israeli Sniper
AIPAC Lobbies Against Probe Of US-Palestinian Journalist Likely Murdered By Israeli Sniper
Twenty-four U.S. senators sent a letter to President Biden on Thursday urging an FBI and State Department investigation of the May 11 killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank. They did so in defiance of the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which actively lobbied against the letter.
Abu Akleh, a star reporter for al Jazeera, was shot in the head on May 11 in the West Bank town of Jenin, as she and her crew reported on an Israeli raid on a refugee camp. The Al Jazeera crew and other witnesses said Israeli forces were responsible, but the Israeli government raced to blame “Palestinian terrorists firing indiscriminately,” tweeting a video that purported to support the claim.
However, demonstrating a sharply heightened capacity for honest reporting about Israel when Israel’s victim happens to be a journalist, several major U.S. media outlets have investigated the incident and concluded Abu Akleh was most likely killed by Israeli security forces.
CNN was particularly forceful, saying its multifaceted forensic investigation concluded that Abu Akleh was “shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces.” In addition to video and acoustic evidence, the tight shot group on the tree she was standing next to was indicative of careful and deliberate fire, an expert told CNN. Abu Akleh and her crew were all wearing helmets and vests marked “PRESS.”
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Associated Press said its reconstruction of the incident “lends support to assertions from both Palestinian authorities and Abu Akleh’s colleagues that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.”
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The Washington Post said its examination of several dozen videos, social media posts and photos of the event, along with two physical inspections of the area and two independent expert acoustic analyses of the gunshots, “suggests an Israeli soldier…likely shot and killed Abu Akleh.”
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Late to the party and lukewarm in language, the New York Times on Monday said the bullet that struck Abu Akleh “was fired from the approximate position of an Israeli military vehicle.”
According to Reporters Without Borders, Israel has killed at least 30 journalists since 2000, including two Palestinians shot by IDF snipers while reporting on protests near the Gaza-Israel border in 2018.
Israel has demanded that the Palestinian Authority turn over the bullet that killed Abu Akleh. The Palestinian Authority says it will only furnish the bullet to an outside third party or United Nations investigation.
In their Thursday letter to Biden calling for a State Department and FBI investigation, 24 Democratic and independent senators wrote:
“We believe that, as a leader in the effort to protect the freedom of the press and the safety of journalists, and given the fact that Ms. Abu Akleh was an American citizen, the U.S. government has an obligation to ensure that a comprehensive, impartial, and open investigation into her shooting death is conducted — one in which all parties can have full confidence in the ultimate findings.”
On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price deflected calls for an FBI probe, saying the Biden administration instead wants Israel and the Palestinian Authority to share evidence and “bridge” their investigations. Pressed on Israel’s capacity to pursue an honest investigation, Price said, “Israel does have the wherewithal to conduct an investigation that is transparent, that is impartial, and that – importantly – culminates in accountability.”
The Senate letter follows a similar one last month signed by 57 House members. The senators said the need for “an independent investigation under U.S. auspices to determine the truth…has been made even more urgent by the new information that has emerged in recent weeks.”
AIPAC, which on Thursday thanked the House appropriations committee for approving another $3.3 billion in “security assistance” to Israel, urged senators not to sign the letter. In its messaging to legislators, AIPAC said “the circumstances surrounding the death of Ms. Abu Akleh remain unclear despite the hasty conclusions of various media outlets.”
The moderate pro-Israel lobby organization J Street—which calls itself “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace” and seeks to supplant AIPAC as the most influential pro-Israel force among Democrats—issued a statement on Thursday endorsing the drive for a U.S. investigation.
Earlier, J Street senior vice president Dylan Williams took to Twitter to condemn AIPAC’s maneuvering:
AIPAC is lobbying against a Congressional letter urging an independent US investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
It’s unconscionable that an American organization would lobby against the US investigating the killing of its own citizen pic.twitter.com/tMjQ1lH8wp
— Dylan Williams (@dylanotes) June 22, 2022
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It’s almost as if Williams is accusing AIPAC of putting loyalty to Israel ahead of loyalty to America. (Don’t try that at home, kids.)
Thank you House Approps Subcommittee for fully funding $3.3B in security assistance to Israel.
This is a message of strong, bipartisan support for the 🇺🇸🇮🇱 alliance AND a clear rejection of attempts to weaken the relationship with new political conditions on support for Israel.
— AIPAC (@AIPAC) June 23, 2022
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/24/2022 – 18:00 -
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