Mar 25

Today’s News 25th March 2024

  • Muslims Overrepresented In UK Prison Population By Almost Three Times
    Muslims Overrepresented In UK Prison Population By Almost Three Times

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    Figures released by the UK government reveal that Muslims make up 18 per cent of the prison population, despite comprising only 6.5 per cent of the population in general.

    “Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data has revealed that there were 15,594 Muslim prisoners in England and Wales in September last year, accounting for 18 per cent of all inmates despite comprising only 6.5 per cent of the population,” reports the Telegraph.

    Muslims represent the only religion that is overrepresented in prison compared to their general population figure.

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    In another revealing statistic, around 19.9 per cent of those Muslim prisoners are white, which is three times the general population, where only 7.8 per cent are recorded as white.

    According to the Telegraph, the number emphasizes “that gangs in some jails are ordering prisoners to become Muslims or face violence.”

    “A report two years ago by Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terror legislation, revealed that Muslim terrorists had been able to seize control of prison wings and set up sharia courts behind bars because prison staff were so concerned about being accused of racism,” reports the newspaper.

    Meanwhile, on the continent, the Interior Minister of the State of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, blamed the increasing migrant population for a spike in crime in the region.

    “According to the crime stats, a total of 39.6 percent of the 266,390 suspects in crimes across the state last year were non-Germans despite only comprising 16 percent of the state’s population. This corresponds to an increase of 20.5 percent compared to 2022 when 32,037 immigrants were suspected of criminal offenses,” reports Remix News.

    “We will not accept the increase in crime, even if it is a nationwide trend for which foreigners and immigrants are particularly responsible,” Herrmann said in a press release.

    In related comments, French politician Marion Marechal explained the increasing sense of isolation that Europeans are starting to feel as a result of mass migration and globalism in general.

    “I am waking up at the age of 34 in a European Union which is a digital colony of the United States, an economic colony of China, a demographic colony of Africa, and is becoming a religious and cultural colony of Islam,” she said.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/25/2024 – 02:00

  • Escobar: It's War – The Real Meat-Grinder Starts Now
    Escobar: It’s War – The Real Meat-Grinder Starts Now

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred…

    Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.

    The money quote:

    “Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”

    Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.

    Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.

    Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.

    That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.

    Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.

    And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.

    Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.

    Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.

    The sponsors remain the same

    Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.

    The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.

    Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.

    That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.

    It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.

    The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…

    … Donald Trump.

    Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.

    ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same. The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”

    But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

    The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.

    It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian

    The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”

    Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.

    And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”

    In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.

    The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable. The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.

    Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.

    Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.

    It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.

    Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.

    So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.

    Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.

    So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance. The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.

    In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity,  now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.

    There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.

    Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.

    As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 23:20

  • Moscow Terror Attack Suspects Hauled Before Court, One Literally Unconscious
    Moscow Terror Attack Suspects Hauled Before Court, One Literally Unconscious

    Update(2235ET): Images widely circulated Sunday showing the Moscow concert hall terror attack suspects being hauled before court. One of them was literally unconscious as clearly they have been severely roughed up – and likely tortured – by security services. Russian authorities haven’t been shy about this considering the number of videos now circulating showing portions of the intense and physical interrogations in action. The maximum penalty is reported to be life imprisonment, though it’s likely that torture or continued harsh physical punishment awaits them. According to more details from Russian media:

    A Moscow court convened late on Sunday to hear prosecutors’ demands on pre-trial detention for a group of men detained in the aftermath of Friday’s Crocus City Hall attack, which claimed lives of over 130 people.

    The suspects, all of whom are nationals of Tajikistan, appeared individually. Thus far, terrorism charges have been levelled against 32-year-old Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, who faces a life sentence if found guilty. Prosecutors told Judge Timur Vakhrameev that the suspect had admitted his guilt. 

    The court has opted to rule behind closed doors.

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    Below is what is known of the four thus far, based on statements in Russian media: 

    1) Dalerjon Mirzoev – Confessed – 32, Illegal Immigrant from Tajikistan, overstayed work visa, father of 4 young children.

    2) Saidakrom Rachabalizoda – 28, allegedly born in Tajikistan, lives in Moscow.

    3) Shamsiddin Fariduni – 24, Born in Tajikistan, factory worker, father of an 8-month-old baby.

    4) Muhammadsobir Fayzov – Hairdresser, wheeled in on a stretcher to court. All have reportedly been charged under Russia’s “Terrorist Act” for their alleged involvement in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack.

    * * *

    Russian state media has underscored that “partners and geopolitical rivals alike have joined the chorus expressing horror in the wake of the Crocus City Hall attack.”

    This has somewhat surprisingly included a statement of solidarity from Washington, as the death toll has has risen to 137 killed. “The United States strongly condemns yesterday’s deadly terrorist attack in Moscow,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Saturday statement. “We condemn terrorism in all its forms and stand in solidarity with the people of Russia in grieving the loss of life from this horrific event.”

    Reports: The Burj Khalifa lights up in the colors of Russia and says: “UAE stands in solidarity with Russia.”

    Even NATO issued a statement of condolence, with NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah saying on X that the Western military alliance “unequivocally condemn the attacks targeting concertgoers in Moscow.” 

    “Our deepest condolences to the victims and their families,” she said, adding that “nothing can justify such heinous crimes.” Pope Francis too has offered special prayers for victims on Sunday.

    But still Western officials hit back at President Putin’s attempts to link the terror attack, which ISIS-K has reportedly taken responsibility for, to Ukraine. Both the president and Kremlin officials have alleged the gunmen were trying to escape through Ukraine territory, utilizing a ‘window’ of support from across the border.

    The fire which raged for many hours in the wake of the terror attack gutted the Crocus complex and part of the roof caved in. Below is stunning video of the aftermath:

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    UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has told Sky News that Britain has “very little confidence in anything the Russian government says.”

    “We know that they are creating a smokescreen of propaganda to defend an utterly evil invasion of Ukraine. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a tragedy when innocent people lose their lives, when you have horrible bombings,” Hunt said. Hunt further emphasized that London takes “what the Russian government says with an enormous pinch of salt… after what we have seen from them over the last few years.”

    Meanwhile Russia continues to investigate who was ultimately behind the attack as it currently has eleven people in custody, and among them are said to be the four gunmen.

    Videos have emerged online showing some of their apprehensions as well as confessions, surrounded by several Russian security service personnel.

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    While Russian authorities are still very early in their investigation, the ‘confessions’ and claims and counter-claims which are still emerging remain bizarre and murky:

    On Saturday, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan posted footage of the interrogation of one of the suspects. The man in the video claims that he went on the killing spree after he was promised 500,000 rubles ($5,400).

    The suspect also claimed that his handlers had instructed him as to where the attack should take place. He said he was ordered to “kill people there… doesn’t matter who.” The suspect claimed that the terrorist act was organized on Telegram with an unknown person who provided weapons.

    Russia has said the attackers are not Russian citizens…

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    The gunmen had later the same day of the attack been apprehended in Bryansk Region, “not far from the border with Ukraine,” according to Russian official statements.

    Amid an ongoing flurry of speculation over the circumstances surrounding the Crocus Hall massacre, and the question of whether state actors or intelligence services may be involved, more videos have emerged which appear to tie the attackers to the Islamic State.

    Prior social media claims that asserted one or more attackers were Ukrainian appear to have been debunked. Various theories continue to be advanced, also by mainstream pundits. Independent journalists such as Glenn Greenwald have pointed out that there are many more questions than there are answers at this point, but an MSM narrative has already quickly solidified.

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    In a statement released Sunday, the Russian Investigative Committee detailed that “Four sets of combat ammunition, with more than 500 bullets and 28 magazines, and two Kalashnikov assault rifles, which the attackers were armed with, were confiscated from the scene of the tragedy.”

    The SITE Intelligence Group, which is often cited and relied upon in Western media, claims that the Islamic State through its official channels has “revealed the four fighters involved in the Moscow concert hall operation” and is “boasting” about its “fiercest attack in years.” Russia has long been an avowed enemy of ISIS, especially after the Russian military intervention in Syria starting in 2015, when Putin joined Assad in battling jihadists in the war-ravaged country.

    ISIS propaganda channels have reportedly released cell phone videos from the attackers themselves…

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    Meanwhile, the Russian government has continued to question what intelligence concerning the planned attack that Washington may have had ahead of time. In a March 7 emergency alert, the US Embassy in Moscow said it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.”

    The embassy further urged all US nationals in the country to remain vigilant and “monitor local media for updates.” The Kremlin has demanded answers and even raised the possibility of Western involvement, given also the current claims that the terrorists may have had a ‘Ukraine connection’. 

    Some of the newly released footage is extremely graphic, in one instance showing a man’s throat being slit (the below is censored for online release):

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    Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has on Sunday issued a statement saying that it was the United States which first destroyed anti-terrorism cooperation between the two countries. However, anonymous US intelligence officials who spoke to major US media outlets claim that Moscow was notified that a big terror act was going to happen. But Antonov has said “some things [in this cooperation] worked out… and it is all destroyed today through no fault of our own.”

    “We did not receive any notifications or messages in advance,” Antonov told RIA. However, White House spokesman John Kirby has sought to clarify, “I’m not aware of any advance knowledge that we had of this.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 22:35

  • Will The Democrat Abortion Narrative Work In 2024?
    Will The Democrat Abortion Narrative Work In 2024?

    Authored by Stu Cvrk via The Epoch Times,

    ‘Tis election season, and the political narratives are flying everywhere…

    Let us examine the 2024 Democrat political narrative surrounding abortion, including efforts to leverage the 2022 Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that has roiled American politics for 50-plus years and counting.

    Abortion on Demand as a Political Weapon

    On March 14, Vice President Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, “marking what her office said was the first time a president or vice president has toured a facility that performs abortions,” as reported by the Associated Press. The article correctly points out that this represents an escalation of the “[Democrats’] defense of reproductive rights” political narrative this year.

    Buried in that article was a reference to President Joe Biden. The practicing Catholic is cited as using the phrase “right to choose” as opposed to actually using the word “abortion” when discussing the issue on which the U.S. Constitution is silent.

    Regardless of the euphemism used, President Biden, Ms. Harris, and other elected Democrats support unlimited abortions, and they apparently mean to ride that narrative all the way to November, because they apparently still believe that the 2024 election will be decided by “pro-choice” suburban women who helped make the difference in 2020.

    The Wrong Horse

    There are big problems with that political strategy. First of all, a March 12 Rasmussen poll revealed that “economic issues and immigration matter more to voters than abortion.” This should come as no surprise to anyone, because single-issue pro-abortion voters are generally going to vote Democrat anyway.

    The problem with the claim of the nonavailability of abortion providers is that the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported back in January that the “Number of Abortions in the United States [Is] Likely to Be Higher in 2023 than in 2020.” That means that there were more abortions per annum after the Dobbs decision than when Roe v. Wade was the “law of the land.”

    [Note: the abortion numbers from Guttmacher were 930,000 performed in 2020, with 878,000 performed in the first 10 months of 2023, which, when the November and December totals at around 88,000 per month are added, would greatly exceed 2020.]

    The Right Horses

    Other issues subordinate abortion in Americans’ priorities.

    As the Heritage Foundation headlined on March 12, “Biden’s Border Crisis Comes to the Suburbs.” The article noted that “Biden’s immigration-driven crime wave is now arriving in America’s suburbs and small towns with devastating results” while noting that, regardless of the total number, “every single crime committed by an illegal immigrant is totally preventable.”

    Illegal immigrant crime victimhood is not an elective action for suburbanites while abortion certainly is —and the polls reflect that uncomfortable fact for Democrats as open borders continues to be an issue of great concern to most Americans.

    President Biden suspended the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in January 2021, which initiated the 64 policies recently detailed by U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson that have created the ongoing open border crisis. President Biden could easily reverse all of those policies with the stroke of a pen, yet he refuses to do so by claiming that Congress needs to pass a border bill before he can act.

    Another major political issue that is sidestepped by Democrats is inflation as a direct result of “Bidenomics.” A February article by Reason described Bidenomics as a political messaging strategy that included the following facets: “pandemic aid, industrial policy, handouts for labor unions and public workers … [that] could be reduced to a single, overriding response: government spending.”

    Trillions of dollars of federal government stimulus spending resulted in a year-over-year inflation rate that peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022, which was the highest rate experienced in the United States in over 40 years. Inflation remains stubbornly high as the Federal Reserve interest rate manipulations have consistently missed the inflation target of 2 percent because government spending continues unabated.

    Zerohedge reported on March 12 that the year-on-year U.S. Consumer Price Index was 3.2 percent, which was more than expected. Zerohedge further noted that “consumer prices have not fallen in a single month” during Biden’s presidency. And Americans feel that pain at the grocery store and elsewhere throughout the Biden economy.

    Concluding Thoughts

    Political narrative-shifting to abortion and away from the economy, inflation, and the open border would appear to be a losing strategy, but then abortion has been a litmus test for Democrat politicians for years. Most Democrat voters are pro-abortion, and the strategy seems to be more about shoring up the fracturing Democrat base than persuading independents and others to vote Democrat this year.

    The problem for Democrats is that they apparently misunderstand the changing voter demographics in 2024. Inflation affects Gen Z and blue-collar workers far more than Democrat consultants and pollsters, who are from a different class than those people and don’t directly experience the adverse effects.

    One result, a Harvard CAPS–Harris survey determined that 64 percent of the Gen Z respondents (ages 18-24) approved of Donald Trump’s job as president because the contrast between the Trump and Biden presidencies is clear with respect to the economy and inflation.

    Furthermore, The New York Times recently reported the growing shift of Latinos toward Trump. Of even greater concern to Democrats is the rightward shift of black Americans. The Washington Post reported on a February Gallup poll that must have shocked many Democrats. According to the poll, black Americans in 2020 were “66 points more likely to identify as Democrats than Republicans,” but that spread had decreased to only 47 points in 2023.

    Key voter demographics are shaping up to be much different in 2024 than those in 2016 and 2020. The Democrats appear to be losing their traditional base of minority and younger generation voters because they don’t seem to have a political narrative that resonates with them on the open border or inflation. And that is a real problem, because the abortion narrative is a lower priority this year.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 22:10

  • Trump In Final Countdown To Post $464 Million Bond By Monday
    Trump In Final Countdown To Post $464 Million Bond By Monday

    Donald Trump has until Monday to come up with more than $450 million to stop his properties from being seized by authorities following the results of his New York civil fraud trial.

    According to the ruling by Judge Arthur Engoron, Trump and executives at the Trump Organization inflated his assets. Initially, NY Attorney General Letitia James sought $250 million in damages – but later increased it to $370 million plus interest.

    Trump has been seeking a bond of $464 million ($454 million plus $10 million to cover his sons’ fines) in order to post bond and appeal the case.

    Last week, Trump said he had “almost $500 million” in cash, however his attorney Chris Kise told CNN that Trump wasn’t referring to cash he has on hand.

    “What he’s talking about is the money reported on his campaign disclosure forms that he’s built up through years of owning and managing successful businesses,” he said, which the outlet noted is “the very cash that Letitia James and the Democrats are targeting.”

    Assets including buildings, houses, cars, helicopters and even Trump’s plane are on the chopping block if Trump can’t come up with the money. The former president has asked a state appeals court to allow him to post a smaller bond, or none at all, claiming that irreparable harm would be done if he was forced to sell properties in a ‘fire sale’ that can’t be undone if he wins his appeal against the amount due. The court has not come back yet with a ruling.

    If Trump can’t secure the bond, New York state officials can begin the arduous process of taking his assets. According to experts cited by a very giddy CNN, the first action should be seizing Trump’s bank accounts.

    “The banks are the easiest part, they’ll receive the judgment from the Attorney General – the court order – then the banks will enforce,” said former federal prosecutor Peter Katz, who has handled fraud cases. “They take the funds from the account and put it in the attorney general’s accounts. The other stuff is a little more challenging.”

    According to debt collection expert Alden B. Smith, New York officials are “trying to get their ducks in a row,” adding “They want to find the most liquid of the assets they can restrain immediately. A bank account is the most effective way to do it.”

    Seizing Trump’s buildings and businesses is far more complicated. Once state prosecutors figure out which properties they want to take from Joe Biden’s chief political rival, they will give the sheriff an execution order, a $350 fee, and then the sheriff will post notice for the property in three places. The AG’s office must then advertise it four times, after which the property will be sold at public auction 63 days after the sheriff is given the execution order.

    According to Newsweek, the following Trump-owned properties had “fraudulent” and “misleading” values, and could be on the list (with New York properties taking priority, and those in other states being more complicated to seize).

    • Trump Park Avenue, New York, N.Y.
    • Trump Tower, New York City.
    • 40 Wall Street, New York City.
    • Trump Seven Springs, Westchester County, N.Y.
    • Trump International Hotel, Las Vegas.
    • Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida.
    • Trump National Golf Club Westchester, Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.
    • Trump National Golf Club Charlotte, Mooresville, North Carolina.
    • Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck, Colts Neck, New Jersey.
    • Trump National Golf Club, Washington D.C., Sterling, Virginia.
    • Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley, Hopewell Junction, N.Y.
    • Trump National Golf Club Jupiter, Jupiter, Florida.
    • Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
    • Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia, Pine Hill, New Jersey.
    • Trump International Golf Links Scotland, Aberdeen.
    • Trump International Golf Links Scotland, Turnberry.

    Trump has roughly $200 million in cumulative loans on his properties.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 21:35

  • Complacent About Replacement
    Complacent About Replacement

    Authored by T.L.Davis via Substack,

    To be blunt, this is what it feels like to be conquered. The British have been through it a couple of times, their kingdoms falling to the Romans, the Vikings, making deals and accepting new cultures that obliterated the former. Societies that survive too long lose themselves in their comfort and become complacent about their replacement. It happened to the Aztecs, the Inca, the Mayans, the Apache, the Comanche and the Sioux, who did it to others before that.

    Every single landmass has been invaded and conquered. The Marxists use that as a source of guilt, by calling it “stealing” which it never has been. If the United States had actually been a conqueror, as the Marxists suggest, it would have kept Mexico when it won the war in 1846, instead of just maintaining the landmass that it had before the war, but including the state of Texas after the Republic of Texas voted to join the United States.

    If Americans were the evil land “stealers” they are made out to be, they would have invaded and conquered Canada after they beat the British in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, leaving out that owned by the French. They would have kept Japan after WWII, much the same as Russia had claimed Alaska. Americans don’t want an empire and never have, not that the US Government hasn’t wanted to extend its influence globally and have made vassal states out of a number of nations along the way. The U.S. could have kept half of Europe and Eastern Europe, if they had thought it would not have put them at odds with Russia and started another war right after WWII, but they did have sole possession of the atom bomb and could have won that war, too. The American people were sick of war and yearned for peace and prosperity.

    The difference between all of that and our current situation, is that the United States government is aiding and abetting our own conquest, encouraging it and paying for it with forced taxation and printed funds. I believe there is a legal means of refusing to pay taxes to the federal government, because they have refused to abide by their obligations to maintain borders, ensure the welfare of the people and been woefully negligent in acting in the fiduciary interest of the American people. If we had an actual legal system instead of a corrupt means of punishment, that is.

    To get that right, like all of the others, it seems as if we are going to have to demand it at a point of leverage that the American people seem unwilling to employ as yet. This is the break point. We are either going to pay for our own conquest, or we’re going to throw off these criminal masters and engage in either wholesale secession, civil war or a counter-revolution to the bureaucratic dictatorship that has risen up and supplanted representation. Those are the simple choices. Nothing makes this more clear than the recent 1.2 trillion dollar spending bill recently passed, which was done in the face of popular opposition.

    The decision to do one or the other, i.e., secession, civil war or counter-revolution will be much easier to make once the internal terrorist attacks start, the forfeiture of property to illegals that put too many aged mothers and fathers in their son’s and daughter’s homes and the rape of daughters and sons become commonplace. I urge the American people not to take it out on those committing the acts, other than in self-defense, but much more so on our own bureaucrats, governors, representatives, senators and presidents. The people who are coming here are doing so out of encouragement by our bureaucracies, congress and president. Not one thing has been done to stop it. Not one. All of the caterwauling about it can now be ignored since in the past year, the congress has allowed the FBI to continue its illegal surveillance on the American people, fought to embolden censorship of our speech, funded the caravans coming from South America and Mexico through the UN, paid to support LGBTQ programs and abortion, funded the lawsuits being waged against Texas to keep the border open.

    They are in open hostility toward the American taxpayers, farmers, cattle ranchers, factory owners, automobile manufacturers and oil and gas producers. Not just rhetorical hostility, but regulatory and physical hostility. This is the world we live in; this is the process and methods of conquest to rid the world of the successful and control the low IQ with the brutality they desire to implement on our replacements.

    The one thing that has prevented our annihilation thus far is the Second Amendment, but if we are going to sit by and allow them to use every weapon they have to strip that from us as they have every other right listed in the Bill of Rights, then we have no chance of survival and, to be honest, with that ultimate form of leverage in our back pockets, if we still allow our own conquest, we deserve it.

    *  *  *

    I understand that people don’t want to take on a paid subscription, money is tight for everyone, but if you’ll consider a purchase of books that does not require a commitment, that would do just as well, especially the paperbacks. I know many of you have already done so, thank you.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 21:00

  • Jayapal Says Transgender Athletes Don’t Hurt Anyone, Former Volleyball Player Disagrees
    Jayapal Says Transgender Athletes Don’t Hurt Anyone, Former Volleyball Player Disagrees

    Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A former high school girls’ volleyball player who was injured in a game by an opponent identifying as transgender is calling out a Democrat congresswoman who claims that having transgender athletes in female sports doesn’t hurt anyone.

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on March 21, 2024. (House Judiciary GOP YouTube/Twitter/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    Payton McNabb, a 19-year-old from North Carolina, was struck in the face by a male who identifies as transgender in her varsity high school volleyball match in September 2022. The male knocked Ms. McNabb unconscious in a spike—a move intended to hit the ball in the game.

    The incident forced Ms. McNabb to spend months recovering from headaches and concentration problems. She also missed the remainder of her volleyball season.

    Ms. McNabb said she suffered from a neck injury, concussion, lasting vision impairment, and partial paralysis in the right side of her body, as well as mental anguish.

    “Just getting back from my second doctor appointment this week, a year and a half later, I’m definitely going to have to disagree,” Ms. McNabb posted Thursday on X. “My life is forever changed because of an injury by a boy. So yeah … men have harmed women in our sports. But as long as your feelings don’t get hurt, right?,”

    Ms. McNabb was responding to a clip of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who made an emotional argument during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing over a bill that, among other things, would prohibit male athletes from representing the United States in future women’s Olympic competitions.

    “Why are you doing this?” a teary Ms. Jayapal asked the bill’s sponsors. “It is a tiny portion of people across the country that identify as trans, and not a single one of them is doing anything to harm you or your family.”

    Riley Gaines, an collegiate swimmer-turned advocate of preserving spaces for females, voiced her support for Ms. McNabb.

    “Payton is partially paralyzed on her right side, her vision and memory are impaired, and her sports career ended prematurely because of a man posing as a woman. Democrats who deny this is happening are evil,” she wrote on X, along with a video clip showing the moment Ms. McNabb was hit by the spike.

    A former University of Kentucky swimmer, Ms. Haines was forced to compete against and share a locker room with transgender athlete Will “Lia” Thomas, who captured gold in the 500 freestyle at the 2022 National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Championships. She is also among more than a dozen other female athletes who are suing the NCAA for violating Title IX, a federal law that promises equal treatment and athletic opportunities for women and girls.

    The athletes’ lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Atlanta, alleges that NCAA’s “radical departure from Title IX’s original meaning” is harming women by subjecting them to “a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”

    “Title IX was enacted by Congress to increase women’s opportunities; therefore, no policy which authorizes males to take the place of women on women’s college sports teams or in women’s college sports locker rooms is permissible under Title IX,” the complaint read.

    The female athletes also accused the NCAA of depriving women’s places, titles and public recognition by permitting transgender players who “retained male advantage, size, strength, power, and speed” into women’s sports teams. “The NCAA gives males who wish to compete against women the option to suppress testosterone to a level that is still above the highest level a female can produce without doping,” it noted.

    Democrats Oppose Women Protection Bill

    The lawsuit comes as House Resolution 7187, formally called the Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, advanced out of the committee and went to the full House for a vote.

    Sponsored by 27 Republicans, the bill would require all national governing bodies for amateur sports to “prohibit a person whose sex is male” from participating in exclusively female competitions. This would affect sports events such as Olympic games and national championships.

    Earlier in Thursday’s hearing, Ms. Jayapal invoked her own child who identifies as a transgender girl, imploring those who back the measure to question whether they could still do the same if they had a “trans daughter.”

    “I am the proud mother of a trans daughter, and every time these bills come up, I ask you to think about what it would be like if your daughter was the one that you were talking about,” she said. “What would it be like if you were telling her she does not have the right to be who she is?”

    Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), co-chair of the Equality Caucus, denounced HR 7187 as “a hate bill” that would “incite violence and ultimately remove trans people from public life.”

    “I want trans girls and women to know: You deserve to participate and thrive in the sports you love,” she said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 19:50

  • Willis Vs Willis: Fulton County District Attorney Goes Head-to-Head With Her Prior Self In Trump Case
    Willis Vs Willis: Fulton County District Attorney Goes Head-to-Head With Her Prior Self In Trump Case

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has finally broken her silence with CNN.

    Willis insisted that she has done nothing wrong while declaring that “the train is coming” for Donald Trump.

    On this occasion, CNN can be excused for not having an opposing view. Willis circa 2020 denounced Willis circa 2024.

    Willis told a CNN reporter “I don’t feel like my reputation needs to be reclaimed. I guess my greatest crime is I had a relationship with a man, that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way. And I know that I have not done anything that’s illegal.”

    The most obvious person to interview in rebuttal of that statement is Willis’s 2020 self. After all, she repeatedly declared that she would not have any romantic relationship with those in her office.

    Willis ran against her former boss Paul Howard, who was embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal involving his relationship with women in his office.

    Willis offered both experience and ethical leadership, including pledging repeatedly that “I will certainly not be choosing to date people that work under me.”

    When confronted with this repeated campaign promise on the stand, Willis came up with a perfectly bizarre spin about Nathan Wade being literally “special” as a special prosecutor. While she hired him, supervised him, and controlled his continued employment with the office, she tried to suggest that he was not really part of the office in the same sense.

    Willis notably stressed that she did nothing “illegal.” She did not address whether she acted unethically.

    The court itself denounced her for unprofessional conduct in this controversy, including her speech at a church suggesting that racism was behind these allegations.

    Moreover, it may be too early to tell if she is entirely free of criminal allegations. Many believe that both she and Wade gave knowingly false or misleading testimony.

    That is a problem not just for them as individuals but for the office in this case.

    Willis and Wade were both prosecuting people for the very same conduct of filing false statements with courts and making false statements. The two lawyers testified in tandem but only one was disqualified.

    While the Court casts doubt on Wade’s testimony on the relationship, it ignored that Willis effectively ratified those claims in her own testimony.

    Putting aside the pledge of a train coming for Trump, there is the problem that there are usually two tracks and another train may be coming for Willis as the state (and potentially the bar) looks into these allegations.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 18:40

  • The World's Top 50 Largest Banks By Consolidated Assets
    The World’s Top 50 Largest Banks By Consolidated Assets

    Banks are often among the biggest companies in the world.

    In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu lists the top 50 banks in the world by consolidated assets, based on a 2023 report from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The data represents each bank’s total assets for the most recent period available.

    Chinese Banks Keep on Growing

    According to S&P, the four largest Chinese banks grew their assets by 4.1% in 2022, reaching a combined total of $19.8 trillion.

    In fact, Chinese banks already account for over a third of the assets held by the largest banks on the planet. Four of the 15 biggest companies in China are banks.

    Rank Bank Headquarters Total Assets
    1 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $5.7T
    2 China Construction Bank Corp 🇨🇳 China $5.0T
    3 Agricultural Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $4.9T
    4 Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $4.2T
    5 JPMorgan Chase & Co. 🇺🇸 US $3.7T
    6 Bank of America 🇺🇸 US $3.1T
    7 Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group 🇯🇵 Japan $3.0T
    8 HSBC Holdings 🇬🇧 UK $2.9T
    9 BNP Paribas 🇫🇷 France $2.9T
    10 Crédit Agricole Group 🇫🇷 France $2.5T
    11 Citigroup 🇺🇸 US $2.4T
    12 Postal Savings Bank of China 🇨🇳 China $2.0T
    13 Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group 🇯🇵 Japan $2.0T
    14 Mizuho Financial Group 🇯🇵 Japan $1.9T
    15 Bank of Communications 🇨🇳 China $1.9T
    16 Wells Fargo & Co. 🇺🇸 US $1.9T
    17 Banco Santander 🇪🇸 Spain $1.9T
    18 Barclays PLC 🇬🇧 UK $1.8T
    19 JAPAN POST BANK 🇯🇵 Japan $1.7T
    20 UBS Group 🇨🇭 Switzerland $1.7T
    21 Groupe BPCE 🇫🇷 France $1.6T
    22 Société Générale 🇫🇷 France $1.6T
    23 Royal Bank of Canada 🇨🇦 Canada $1.5T
    24 The Toronto-Dominion Bank 🇨🇦 Canada $1.5T
    25 China Merchants Bank 🇨🇳 China $1.5T
    26 Goldman Sachs Group 🇺🇸 US $1.4T
    27 Deutsche Bank 🇩🇪 Germany $1.4T
    28 Industrial Bank 🇨🇳 China $1.3T
    29 China CITIC Bank International 🇨🇳 China $1.2T
    30 Shanghai Pudong Development Bank 🇨🇳 China $1.2T
    31 Morgan Stanley 🇺🇸 US $1.2T
    32 Crédit Mutuel 🇫🇷 France $1.2T
    33 Lloyds Banking Group 🇬🇧 UK $1.1T
    34 China Minsheng Banking 🇨🇳 China $1.1T
    35 Intesa Sanpaolo 🇮🇹 Italy $1.0T
    36 ING Groep 🇳🇱 Netherlands $1.0T
    37 The Bank of Nova Scotia 🇨🇦 Canada $1.0T
    38 UniCredit 🇮🇹 Italy $917B
    39 China Everbright Bank 🇨🇳 China $913B
    40 NatWest Group 🇬🇧 UK $868B
    41 Bank of Montreal 🇨🇦 Canada $859B
    42 Commonwealth Bank of Australia 🇦🇺 Australia $837B
    43 Standard Chartered 🇬🇧 UK $820B
    44 La Banque Postale 🇫🇷 France $797B
    45 Ping An Bank 🇨🇳 China $772B
    46 Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria 🇪🇸 Spain $762B
    47 The Norinchukin Bank 🇯🇵 Japan $753B
    48 State Bank of India 🇮🇳 India $695B
    49 Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce 🇨🇦 Canada $691B
    50 National Australia Bank 🇦🇺 Australia $680B

    The Chinese financial market is followed by the American market on our list, with six U.S. banks combining for $13.7 trillion in assets.

    The top 10 on the list include four Chinese banks, two American institutions, two French, one Japanese, and one British.

    The biggest climber on our rank was Swiss UBS Group AG. The bank surged to 20th place from 34th in 2021. Its $1.6 trillion asset size has been adjusted to incorporate troubled Credit Suisse Group AG, which UBS agreed to take over in an emergency deal orchestrated by the Swiss authorities in March 2023.

    Assets held by the 100 largest banks totaled $111.97 trillion in 2022, down 1.5% from $113.67 trillion a year earlier. Some of the reasons include high inflation, interest rate hikes, and the Russia-Ukraine war, which dampened global economic growth and investor sentiment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 18:05

  • FAA Considering Unprecedented "Drastic Measures" For United Airlines After Flurry Of Safety Incidents
    FAA Considering Unprecedented “Drastic Measures” For United Airlines After Flurry Of Safety Incidents

    After weeks and weeks of daily mechanical incidents that prompted many to ask – no pun intended – if the wings have fallen off from the US aviation and airline industries, on Saturday Bloomberg reported that US aviation authorities are considering drastic measures to curb growth at United Airlines, including preventing the carrier from adding new routes, following a series of safety incidents.

    Citing “people with knowledge”, Bloomberg said that the Federal Aviation Administration (or FAA) has discussed temporary actions it may take with the airline’s leadership in recent days. This follows a report from Reuters (“Boeing chair to meet key airline customers without planemaker’s CEO, sources say“) last week hinting that the CEO of Boeing, David Calhoun, may be in jeopardy after the relentless barage of Boeing-linked “mishaps” especially after recent comments by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary who slammed Boeing’s corporate culture. Anyway, going back to United, in addition to route restrictions, the US carrier may be barred from flying paying customers on newly delivered aircraft; indeed the sources said that the FAA already is suspending United’s ability to approve and promote pilots to fly different aircraft models. One wonders if it’s because of, well, this…

    The proposed clampdown would effectively pause growth for an unspecified period at one of the largest US airlines, underscoring the panicked rush to restore confidence in, and heightened scrutiny on commercial aviation safety following a near-catastrophe earlier this year involving a Boeing plane. Since the January incident, in which a panel blew out in midair from an Alaska Airlines jet, United has endured multiple headline-grabbing mishaps including:

    • A plane in Houston ran off the taxiway into a grassy area
    • Another aircraft lost a tire shortly after departing from San Francisco
    • A Houston-to-Florida flight had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines began spewing flames.

    The FAA has announced investigations of those and other incidents.

    The renewed focus reflects stresses on commercial air travel after years of rapid growth coming out of the depths of the pandemic.

    Without addressing the report directly, the FAA told Bloomberg that it already plans to increase oversight of United in the coming weeks to review processes, manuals and facilities, the carrier told employees in a memo. Sasha Johnson, United’s vice president of corporate safety, said in the message that regulators and the company agree it needs “to ensure we are doing all we can to promote and drive safety compliance.”

    Johnson also said the FAA planned to “pause a variety of certification activities for a period of time,” without specifying which ones. The limits under consideration would restrict United from adding new routes beyond those the airline has already sold tickets for.

    Leaders of an Orlando-area local for United pilots sent a message to members saying that the FAA recently stepped in to “take substantial action” against the carrier, including restricting its abilities around pilot approval. The so-called line check process to certify and promote pilots has been paused pending further action from the FAA, according to two people familiar with the situation.

    There are now “regulator-imposed restrictions on our ability to operate and grow our airline,” according to the message from the Local Council 150 chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. “We will also see an increased FAA presence in our daily operation.”

    United Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby this week promised customers that the carrier would review the incidents and its employee training. Perhaps what Kirby should be promising customers is to stop pushing “insane“, disastrous, and potentially deadly, DEI mandates, which were revealed in an interview he did touting his company’s diversity initiatives, which limited white employees while emphasizing more women and minorities in its workforce.

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    Maybe, in retrospect, there’s a reason why there are fewer women and minorities in the air travel industry…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 16:55

  • LAW, IGIW, SAS, GCBE, MBS, ROTST…. A Day For Acronyms
    LAW, IGIW, SAS, GCBE, MBS, ROTST…. A Day For Acronyms

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    A Day for Acronyms

    IGIW

    Let’s start with IGIW. I’m not sure it is an official one, but we can go with I Got It Wrong. I came into this week stating that it would be far more difficult for stocks to bounce 5% than drop 10%. I was looking for yields to continue their upward trajectory. 10-year yields finished the week lower by 11 bps and the Nasdaq was up by almost 3%. I continue to look at a wide variety of sentiment indicators, positioning indicators, etc. and see extremely aggressive positioning, but so far it has worked for those positioned that way.

    GCBE

    Probably another one I just made up, but Global Central Bank Easing was the theme of the week.

    The Bank of Japan (BOJ) hiked rates, finally going back to positive yields! They officially ended “yield curve control,” but the 10-year yield was already at 0.7% (down from almost 1% in November), so that didn’t have much of an impact. It might have been the most dovish “tightening” ever, which says a lot!

    The Swiss National Bank (SNB) surprised the market by cutting rates. Markets responded positively to this surprise move. Maybe I was in a bad mood at the time, but I’m wondering why we spend so much time worrying about what the 20th largest economy by GDP does with rates? I saw some tweets at the time, which seem accurate, but Bitcoin’s market cap is bigger than the Swiss GDP. That is mostly irrelevant and comparing apples to oranges (or chalk to cheese, for our U.K. readers), but it did strike me as a sign of the times. While I’m on this portion of the rant, we seem to care much more about the SNB than we do about the BOC (Bank of Canada), despite Canada’s economy being more than double the Swiss economy, and far more trade is affected by that currency and their interest rate policy.

    The ECB (European Central Bank) and the BOE (Bank of England) set the stage for future rate cuts, buoying global markets.
    The Fed is being taken as being quite dovish as well. I think that take is overstated (Post FOMC Thoughts), but given the overall tone of GCBE, it is an understandable take (at least in the heat of the moment). The FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) does seem a bit nervous about jobs, and the balance sheet is getting to levels where they may need to restrain QT (Quantitative Tightening) as some level of balance sheet is required for our banking system to function efficiently.

    While the central banks have been “jawboning” markets in this direction, this week’s series of back-to-back-to-back meetings seemed to solidify the view for markets.

    One “odd” thing is that I haven’t heard the words “American Exceptionalism” much in reference to these bank policies. Yes, we are all excited that every other bank is definitively dovish, but shouldn’t they be when their economies and markets are behind ours?

    How the election campaign will affect Fed policy remains to be seen, but unfortunately for the Fed, in a world where every decision is held under a magnifying glass and examined for political motivations, it will be difficult to convince many people that their actions are apolitical. I think this is really going to hamstring what they can do in September and November, so a cut in June with maybe another “pre-emptive” cut in July makes sense, but I am not expecting more than that without the economy taking a big hit.

    MBC

    Made By China. Yes, yet another completely made-up acronym, but it fits. I almost went with MCGA (Make China Great Again), since we had these hats, but I really want to keep to our theme on the transition from Made in China to Made by China.

    Sticking to Made By China, we laid out the threats, risks, and opportunities in Made By China 2025.

    In this month’s ATW – Around the World with Academy Securities, we touched on several important issues, but more and more, the geopolitical lens is beings focused on China’s goods and brands. From some conversations in D.C. and Vegas with our GIG (Geopolitical Intelligence Group), it is clear that many departments in D.C. are very focused on China and what is an “appropriate” relationship with China. Much of the focus is at the National Security level, but the definition of “national security” includes things like manufacturing, energy security, etc., making it much more all-encompassing than what people typically think of as “national security.” This is going to affect how we treat China and is, without a doubt, going to impact how China responds to us in ways that the market still doesn’t seem to be pricing in.

    CNY (Chinese Renminbi – or yuan) and the PBOC (People’s Bank of China) should be watched. So far, China has not done a lot, by historical or even U.S. standards, to turn their economy around. They’ve had some stimulus here and there and implemented some rules to stymie stock market sellers. However, so far, their response seems to be appropriate if their economy was merely in the doldrums, and not on the precipice of a serious decline (which many people suspect is the real case).

    But just this past week they allowed the currency to drift above 7.2. Allegedly that level represents key support, and while it has been higher in the past, many have expressed concern that this recent breach could be part of an effort to seriously devalue the currency in an attempt to make their exports cheaper. That seems pretty darn obvious to me. Their way out of their economic malaise is to produce more goods in China. Since companies, in general, are not looking to expand their manufacturing in China, they will need to manufacture and sell their own brands! The concept of “China Inc.” is that the government and corporations are inextricably linked and work together in ways that are just not possible (or even conceivable) in the U.S. and Western Europe.

    Which brings us to Temu and Shein. Neither are acronyms, so they don’t quite fit today’s title, but they are so important to the Made By China theme that they need to be mentioned. Personally, and it is just my preference, I have not used either site and avoid pulling them up, let alone clicking on them. Yes, I am in the camp that has had concerns about the data on TikTok for a long time. In any case, I’m told that many of the products sold on Temu have apps associated with them to access their features. That seems a bit scary to me. Maybe I’m just a paranoid luddite, but…

    Shein, as a representative of “fast fashion,” is likely to be hit by a French bill Penalizing Fast Fashion. I think the argument goes along the lines that “the clothes are so inexpensive and people throw them away much sooner than normal, creating a strain on the environment.” That seems to be a stretch, but yet again, it highlights the selling of Chinese made goods by their own brands. This is a threat to sales from “our” brands, whose stocks are in “our” indices.

    Maybe I’m just more attuned to it, but the number of people who seem to want to “check out a BYD vehicle” seems to have increased. Not sure if anyone I’ve been talking to actually plans to buy one (I’m not even sure if you can), but people are suddenly curious about the brand. Word of mouth marketing is often mentioned as one of the more effective means of marketing a brand, and it almost seems like BYD is getting to that level even in the U.S. You cannot buy them here, though they sell buses here apparently if generative AI is to be trusted and confirmed on Reddit (which should be congratulated on their successful IPO).

    ROTST or ROON

    Okay, I’ve fully Jumped the Shark (JTS) on acronyms. Neither Rallying On The Same Thing (ROTST) nor Rallying On Old News (ROON) are phrases that are commonly used, but what the heck, we’ve come this far, so let’s finish with this.

    I’m not going to apply it to the Fed because I can see where it was “technically” new news, or at least contrasted against fears that had gotten priced in. But two things hit me this week on this front:

    • Semiconductor manufacturer crushes earnings. Stock soars 10% or more. I get it, to some degree, but at what point do we price in that the last quarter, the next quarter, and likely the next year are going to be great? Stocks, in many cases up 50% or more in a short period of time, pop on good news (and yes, it is definitively good news), but how is some of this not priced in? It’s not like every time Steph Curry hits a 3 everyone argues that he is undervalued – it is expected of him, given his current valuation. It has this feeling that the same headlines keep triggering positive responses, but will that last?
    • The excitement of the CHIPS Act finally providing something that almost seemed tangible was interesting. I guess, since it has taken so long for anything tangible to come out of that bill, maybe the market had started to underprice the money that in theory was available. Maybe,  with people becoming too pessimistic about the complexity and restrictions associated with the Act (there are a lot of them), the market wasn’t pricing in much value to companies that now should get priced in. Maybe, but it seems like old news. What was “new” news is the fact that while this money has been earmarked (or allocated, or set aside, or approved), it has not yet been funded. It is yet another form of stimulus and increased debt that the market seems to be ignoring (or at least it did last week).

    BTR

    Since we barely dip, does anyone who has been waiting to BTD (Buy The Dip) need to Buy The Rally (BTR)? Just suck it up, and get max long stocks, bonds, and credit?

    I don’t think so, but I was caught by surprise by how much we could rally while facing many big issues (the biggest of which, by far, is the competition from Made By China). I also was surprised at how much we could rally on what seems (after weeks and weeks of positive news) to be just more of the same news that should already be priced in.

    I know that LAW (Long And Wrong) is sometimes used, but I’m not sure what is the opposite of that? SAS (Short and Stupid)? I do know “don’t fight the Fed” but despite the apparent GCBE, I don’t think I’m fighting the Fed.

    We get a lot of economic data next week, so we will have plenty of opportunities to judge the state of the economy and the trajectory of inflation.

    LOTL

    One subject coming up, especially within Academy’s GIG, is Living Off The Land. My initial reaction was that this was about “preppers” and I felt good about having a well and expanding our garden. Turns out that it is all about cyber. In fact, a particularly nefarious and difficult to catch cyber-attack. CISA published on LOTL back in February. Maybe because it was competing with Super Bowl coverage, it didn’t get the attention it deserves, but it is coming up in more and more conversations. Please look for Academy’s SITREP on this important subject early next week.

    Finally, one thing that I think many across the country can agree with is let’s hope the old adage of March, In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb holds true, as I for one am “done” with winter!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 16:20

  • Chinese-Owned Tanker Hit By Houthi Missile Despite Safe Passage Deal 
    Chinese-Owned Tanker Hit By Houthi Missile Despite Safe Passage Deal 

    Bloomberg’s sources stated on Friday that China and Russia made a deal with Iran-backed Houthis for safe passage of their commercial vessels through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. 

    Fast forward to late Saturday night, US Central Command announced on social media platform X that a ballistic missile fired by Houthi rebels hit a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned chemical tanker called “M/V Huang Pu.” 

    CENTCOM on X provides more details about the attack on the Chinese tanker:

    March 23, the Iranian-backed Houthis launched four anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) into the Red Sea in the vicinity of M/V Huang Pu, a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned, Chinese-operated oil tanker.

    At 4:25 p.m. (Sanaa time), a fifth ballistic missile was detected as fired toward M/V Huang Pu. The ship issued a distress call but did not request assistance. M/V Huang Pu suffered minimal damage, and a fire on board was extinguished within 30 minutes. No casualties were reported, and the vessel resumed its course. The Houthis attacked the MV Huang despite previously stating they would not attack Chinese vessels.

    Between 6:50 and 9:50 a.m. (Sanaa time), US forces, including USS Carney (DDG 64), engaged six Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) over the southern Red Sea. Five crashed into the Red Sea, and one flew inland into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

    It was determined these UAVs presented an imminent threat to US, coalition, and merchant vessels in the region. These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US, coalition, and merchant vessels.

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    What remains unclear is why the Houthis would attack the vessel if there were a safe passage deal. Also, the ship was broadcasting “India All Crew China,” which Houthi rebels could see. 

    A separate Bloomberg report stated that one of the world’s top shippers, Maersk, warned the risk level across the Red Sea “remains elevated.” 

    The shipper says its container ships continue “sailing via the Cape of Good Hope and around Africa is the most reasonable solution at the moment and the one that currently allows the best supply chain stability.”

    Rising tensions in and around the Red Sea, especially with an oil tanker being hit this weekend, have some market observers extremely worried about a spillover in attacks across the region and the crude market, ignoring some of these mounting risks. 

    One of those spillovers that Rapidan Energy Group has pointed out is the increasing risk of a “crippling attack” on Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq facility, the largest crude oil stabilization plant in the world. 

    “Geopolitical disruptions: Wars can temporarily stop production or interrupt trade, but if important oil processing or production facilities, like the Saudi Abqaiq stabilization plant that Iran attacked in 2019, were to be severely damaged over a prolonged period, markets would immediately become tighter,” Rapidan Energy wrote in its 2023 global markets outlook. 

    Given the chaos in Eastern Europe with Ukraine attacking Russian refineries, the global oil market could be nearing a major shock if Houthis begin attacking refineries in Saudi Arabia. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 15:45

  • US-Backed Egypt Sitting Atop Muslim Brotherhood Powder Keg Inspired By Gaza, Failing Economy
    US-Backed Egypt Sitting Atop Muslim Brotherhood Powder Keg Inspired By Gaza, Failing Economy

    Via The Cradle

    On the morning of March 4, the State Security Criminal Court in Egypt sentenced the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohammed Badie to death, along with seven of the outlawed group’s leaders (Mahmoud Ezzat, Mohamed el-Beltagy, Amr Zaki, Osama Yassin, Safwa Hegazy, Assem Abdel Maged, and Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud) for organizing acts of violence eleven years ago in the so-called ‘Platform Events’ case. 

    The case traces back to 2013, days after the Egyptian military ousted the late Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Mursi in a Saudi–UAE-backed coup. 

    Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Badie has been handed multiple death sentences.

    Technically, this ruling marked 80-year-old Badie’s third encounter with a death sentence following the infamous “Rabaa Operations Room” case in 2015. 

    Yet, beyond notions of ‘justice,’ a deeper narrative unfurls – one laden with political gravitas. The court’s ruling wasn’t solely about holding individuals accountable for past transgressions; it was a strategic move by the Egyptian state.

    Ticking time bomb 

    The government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is fearful of the impending social upheaval anticipated as a result of the state’s faltering economy, flawed fiscal policies, decline in Arab world clout, and Egypt’s impotence in the face of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza – all ingredients for a potential powder keg primed to detonate.

    Commentators suggest the next explosion could be of an unprecedented scale, eclipsing the Bread Intifada of 1977 and the 25 January revolution of 2011.

    He recalled the role of the Brotherhood in the 1948 War, and then the effects of the Nakba on Egypt and the policies of the state, aimed at eradicating the popular Islamic social and political movement since the fifties:

    We don’t care if we are sentenced to death and imprisonment. Palestine is our first cause and the cause of the Arab and Islamic nation. Mr Judge, this is the root of the case. We are imprisoned until the deal of the century is completed.

    Regardless of the accuracy of Badie’s supra-temporal statement, it remains undeniable that the events unfolding in Palestine today are likely to cast a shadow on Cairo in the coming years, depending on which way the Egyptian authorities approach Gaza. The potent repercussions of a wrong move weigh heavily on Egypt’s authorities.

    State v Religion

    In this context, it is worth reflecting on Roger Caillois’ discussion in “Man and the Sacred” on the disparity between the state’s temporal perspective and the religious perception of time. 

    A state typically adheres to an objective, temporal, and often linear vision, whereas religious frameworks usually embrace a “supra-temporal” perspective intertwined with a historical understanding – in which, given time, popular struggles will eventually outmaneuver a failed authority.

    While the state endeavors to regulate movement and time, manifesting its authority through institutions such as courts and prisons, Islamists engage in a different arena. They confront the state in streets, alleys, pulpits, and prisons, focusing strategically on the temporal dimension – that is, the “timelessness” of the struggle.

    Indeed, understanding the political standoff between Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood necessitates a deep dive into their historical relationship. 

    The so-called “Arab street” has grown increasingly angry at Egypt’s silence over the Gaza crisis…

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

    From the fraught interactions of the thirties to the dominance of the fifties, followed by a reluctant coexistence in the seventies, then the emergence of the Muslim ‘box’ during the Arab Spring, and subsequently the era of “post-Islamism” (as described by Iranian–American sociologist Asef Bayat), the Brotherhood has gone through various phases in a zero-sum game with the state. 

    This relationship is underpinned by foundational features deeply ingrained in Egyptian political life, which neither the state bureaucracy can overcome nor the Brotherhood can fully assimilate.

    Furthermore, the evolution of the Egyptian state, with its centralized control system spanning over six millennia, has moved through various pivotal periods, each contributing to the unique crises that continue to shape the country’s political scene. 

    The Brotherhood throughout the ages 

    From a historical perspective, the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood can be understood as a civil response to state violence inflicted upon society. In other words, the secular–Islamic tension in Egypt is not merely a cultural clash but rather a consequence of the state’s violent encroachment upon society’s symbolic capital.

    It is also important to view the Muslim Brotherhood primarily as a social movement rather than a political one, akin to its offshoots, Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which also trace their roots to grassroots social activism. 

    During Egypt’s monarchial period, the Brotherhood aligned closely with figures such as Fathi Radwan, Aziz al-Masri, and Muhammad Saleh Harb in opposing Saad Zaghloul and the nationalist, liberal Wafd Party. However, following the monarchy’s demise, the Brotherhood found itself on opposite sides.

    In the turbulent sixties, controversial figures like Sayyid Qutb faced persecution, while Hassan al-Hudaybi, the Brotherhood’s former supreme guide, emphasized their role as “preachers, not judges.”

    During Anwar Sadat’s presidency in the seventies, the Brotherhood oscillated between support and opposition, and in the eighties, it condemned his assassination by militant offshoot al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.

    This helps explain the fluctuating relationship between the state and the Brotherhood throughout modern Egyptian history. 

    A blast from the past 

    The ‘return’ of the Brotherhood, at least to the public’s attention, raises questions about what the Egyptian state wants from society. The government’s costly trophy ‘development-without-demand’ projects – erecting entirely new cities, including a capital city – and the random ‘renaissance funds’ that boomed under Sisi are yet to benefit ordinary Egyptians or resolve Egypt’s longstanding economic and national challenges. 

    Despite the artificial boom attributed to these ego projects, Egypt languishes at the bottom of Arab states in education quality, ranking 139th globally in 2023, and 153rd in health security, as corruption continues to plague its institutions, for which it ranks 130th.

    Arguably, these ‘renaissance’ projects in Egypt today do little more than enrich a financial oligarchy deeply entrenched in the corridors of power, who lack any vision for sustainable development. 

    While the Muslim Brotherhood may officially be banned, its historical role as a support system for the people during times when the state was either unwilling or unable to provide necessitates caution. 

    If the government fails to tread carefully in domestic affairs – particularly with the backdrop of Israel’s assault on Muslims right on Egypt’s border – the Brotherhood could re-emerge from the shadows, colliding head-on with the state once again.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 15:10

  • "Why Do I Have To Have Another Marvel Movie That's All Women?" Billionaire Slams 'Woke' Disney Amid Board Proxy Battle
    “Why Do I Have To Have Another Marvel Movie That’s All Women?” Billionaire Slams ‘Woke’ Disney Amid Board Proxy Battle

    Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, whose Trian Partners owns a roughly $3.5 billion stake in Disney, has entered a fierce proxy fight to join the company’s board.

    Nelson PeltzPhotographer: Calla Kessler/Bloomberg

    Sitting down with the Financial Times, Peltz slammed the DEI-driven entertainment company.

    “Disney is stupid because I’m not trying to fire [chief executive] Bob Iger, I want to help him,” he said, adding: “We don’t fire CEOs.”

    Disney, meanwhile, says that Peltz has not “presented a single strategic idea” to the company while campaigning for two years to secure board seats.

    Peltz hit back, telling the Times: “They say we know nothing about the movie business — we don’t claim we do — but I don’t think they do, with five big losers in a row. They’ve lost first place in animation, they’ve lost first place in features . . . Maybe it’s time to change management in those divisions.”

    Too woke…

    In comments we’re sure the left will seize on, the billionaire investor then criticized Disney for pushing woke messaging as opposed to simply making great content.

    “People go to watch a movie or a show to be entertained,” said Peltz. “They don’t go to get a message.”

    Elaborating further, Peltz asked “Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?” referring to Black Panther.

    The Disney proxy fight is nearing its end, with a shareholder vote scheduled for April 3. And speaking of woke…

    Both sides have been publicizing the support they’ve received from others in the business world. Iger has been endorsed by JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, filmmaker George Lucas and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs and a large Disney shareholder.

    Meanwhile, a group of current and former directors at firms including Mondelez International Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Janus Henderson Group Plc. this week co-signed a letter in support of Peltz.

    As for politics, Peltz – who hosted a dinner in February with Elon Musk, says that Trump is “not a perfect candidate, nor is Biden,” adding “It looks like Trump is all we got.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 14:35

  • Nothing To See Here, Just A Man Waving A Severed Human Leg Around And Eating It
    Nothing To See Here, Just A Man Waving A Severed Human Leg Around And Eating It

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Video footage shot in Wasco, California appears to show a crazed maniac waving around a severed human leg and taking bites out of it before police apprehended him Friday.

    Reports have suggested that the man ‘stole’ the leg from the scene of a train accident, where a person was earlier hit and killed.

    The footage shows the man, identified as 27-year-old Resendo Tellez, holding and examining the limb, with witnesses saying he was eating parts of it, before attempting to walk away waving it around as multiple police cars close in on him.

    WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE

    Here is a censored version, in case the uncensored graphic version above is removed:

    Tellez was arrested on multiple outstanding warrants, and for taking ‘evidence’ from the accident scene.

    He was also charged with misdemeanor removal of human body parts from an area that is not a cemetery without law enforcement approval.

    Some reports claim he was also charged with mutilating the body, supporting the claim that he had devoured some of it.

    This is the kind of thing happening most days now in Democrat run shithole American cities.

    Perhaps NBC News will report the leg as being “abandoned”?

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 14:00

  • TIME To Panic: Joe Biden's Campaign "In Trouble" Despite Obama Warning
    TIME To Panic: Joe Biden’s Campaign “In Trouble” Despite Obama Warning

    “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” –Barack Obama

    With less than eight months before the 2024 election, the Biden re-election campaign is in big trouble. Not only is Biden lagging in the polls vs. Donald Trump, the border crisis he created by shredding all of Trump’s Executive Orders on immigration has resulted in 10 million illegals flooding into the United States – which has left even Democrats livid.

    Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy

    What’s more, Biden is quickly losing the support of young Americans, and the latino vote.

    Things are so bad that TIME magazine has just devoted 3,700 words to let us know that Barack Obama ‘warned’ the Biden campaign last June that defeating Trump would be harder in 2024 (because no pandemic or hoax dossier to set him up?). Six months later, Obama ‘saw few signs of improvement.’

    Obama returned to the White House in December, with a ‘more urgent’ message: the re-election campaign was behind schedule in building out field operations, and that an ‘insular group of advisers’ in the West Wing was hamstringing the effort.

    Now, it’s really bad…

    Three months later, the 2024 general election is under way, and Biden is indeed in trouble. His stubbornly low approval ratings have sunk into the high 30s, worse than those of any other recent President seeking re-election. He’s trailed or tied Trump in most head-to-head matchups for months. Voters express concerns about his policies, his leadership, his age, and his competency. The coalition that carried Biden to victory in 2020 has splintered; the Democrats’ historic advantage with Black, Latino, and Asian American voters has dwindled to lows not seen since the civil rights movement. -TIME

    Meanwhile, Biden’s inner circle is “defiantly sanguine” as a “fog of dread” descends on Democrats.

    The rest of the TIME article is full of anecdotes of dissatisfied Democrats, particularly young voters such as 20-year-old Aidan Kohn-Murphy.

    It has nothing to do, as many assume, with the President’s age. With palpable frustration, Kohn-Murphy enumerates the list of perceived policy “betrayals” as though they were “tattooed on the back of my hand.”

    According to the report, GenZ voters “don’t understand why they should be compelled to cast their ballot for a candidate who has done so many things that are against their values,” said Kohn-Murphy.

    Losing the minority vote

    In 2020, Biden carried 87% of the black vote. Now, he’s polling at just 63%, a sharp decline. Meanwhile four years ago he won hispanic votes by a ratio of 2 to 1. He now trails Trump in that bloc.

    Biden’s support of Israel amid the Gaza war has “tanked his standing with Muslim and Arab voters,” particularly in “must-win Michigan.”

    Overall, Biden’s advantage over Trump among nonwhite Americans has shrunk from almost 50 points in 2020 to 12, according to the latest Times/Siena poll.

    “It boils down to voters of color, and those voters are pissed,” said one former Biden campaign and White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I think it’s very likely he’ll lose.”

    What’s more, nearly two dozen senior Democratic sources told TIME that Biden’s “campaign mechanics, structure, and staffing over most of the past year are partly to blame as well.”

    While Obama was marching to re-election over the summer of 2012, his campaign head count topped 900. Despite plans to hire 350 new staffers, the Biden campaign ended 2023 with only around 70 paid employees, according to campaign finance filings.

    Biden advisers don’t care about the president’s dismal numbers with young and nonwhite voters, as the “Biden brain trust” thinks they’ll vote for him again regardless.

    “We’ve reached out to this group of nonwhite and young voters earlier than any presidential campaign ever has,” according to senior adviser Becca Siegel.

    Good luck with that…

    Illustration by Tim O’Brien for TIME

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 13:25

  • The Insanity In Our World Is Driven By Money Printing
    The Insanity In Our World Is Driven By Money Printing

    Authored by Marty Bent via BombThrower.com,

    Fix The Money, Fix The World

    This chart has been making the rounds on Twitter this week and I think it’s a good image to send you freaks into the weekend with.

    It’s easy to get swept up in the chaos of the day-to-day volatility that exists in our world. Recently, our minds have been inundated with headlines about illegal immigration, squatters and the degradation of private property rights, war across the world, small battles within the larger “culture war”, increasing prices, and the decisions made by central banks around the world. In the midst of all of this chaos it is important to take a step back and remind yourself of what lies at the core of most of these issues; the fact that we’ve completely broken money.

    When you break money, the most important tool humans use to facilitate economic activity, a ripple effect of negative consequences begins to emanate from the root of the world’s engine. Those ripples create the momentum that leads to chaos that we are witnessing today.

    Broken money leads people to store their value in sub optimal vehicles like housing. This drives the cost of real estate up unnaturally and increases the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Sowing seeds of animosity. Seeds that, when left to germinate and grow via the further degradation of the money people use, blossom into ugly flowers of Anarcho Tyranny.

    This has manifested in the trend of people claiming other’s houses by squatting in them when they are left unattended for an extended period of time. The preferential treatment that has been given to squatters over homeowners in recent years can be seen as the regime which controls the money printers throwing the plebs a bone as they struggle to get by, an attempt to push the productive class to violence against a state unwilling to respect private property rights, or a combination of the two.

    Broken money incentivizes governments to allow their borders to be bum rushed by cheap laborers who will take low paying jobs that enable the systemically fragile economy to keep chugging along while simultaneously increasing the chaos that already exists and diluting the values that the natives of this country believe in.

    The excess and decadence enabled by a world run on broken easy money allows people to live in a detached reality that leads them to push objectively false narratives. This is why there are running debates about gender and a retreat from merit based compensation.

    All of this stems from broken money.

    The chart above should act as a reminder to you all that the biggest problem in the world right now is the money. The chart above should also prove to you that the most powerful people throughout the economy are going to fight tooth and nail to protect the broken money because they benefit massively from the fact that it is broken.

    Keep this in mind as the chaos increases and narratives begin to form around using bitcoin as money.

    *  *  *

    Get on the Bombthrower mailing list here and receive a free copy of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto, which outlined all this. However, by the time you read this it may already be too late to sign up for The Bitcoin Capitalist Letter: new subscriptions will be closed once Bitcoin hits a new all-time high.
    Follow Marty’s Bent via TFTC.io

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 12:50

  • Some Democrats Say They Would Save Speaker Johnson From Ouster
    Some Democrats Say They Would Save Speaker Johnson From Ouster

    By Jacob Burg of the Epoch Times

    An unlikely source of aid for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—who is facing a motion from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to oust him after bringing the government funding package to a floor vote—might come from House Democrats.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) (L) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) listen during remarks at a menorah lighting ceremony at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Dec. 12, 2023.

    After all House Democrats voted with a gang of eight Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October 2023, several House Democrats are signaling they would save Mr. Johnson from a similar fate.

    “It’s absurd he’s being kicked out for doing the right thing, keeping the government open. It has two-thirds support of the Congress, and the idea that he would be kicked out by these jokers is absurd,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) told CNN on March 22. He said he would vote to retain Mr. Johnson as House Speaker and hoped other Democrats would do the same.

    Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) expressed a similar sentiment in a March 22 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.  “I do not support Speaker Johnson, but I will never stand by and let [Ms. Greene] take over the people’s House,” he said.

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

    However, some Democrats said their support would be predicated on Mr. Johnson reconsidering the Senate’s foreign-aid package passed in February.

    “I’d want to see his good-faith action before that happened,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said, referring to the possibility of voting to retain Mr. Johnson as speaker.

    Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), before Ms. Greene filed her motion, mentioned that he would vote to prevent Mr. Johnson’s ouster depending on the speaker’s actions regarding aid for Ukraine.

    “If we get a vote on the appropriations bills and we get a vote on the supplemental, there’ll be enough Democrats that Johnson will not be removed as speaker,” Mr. Smith told The Hill in February.

    “That’s just my view.”

    Republicans Against Johnson Ouster

    Ms. Greene filed her motion to vacate Mr. Johnson from the speaker’s chair the morning before the House approved the funding package, 286–134, which is now headed to the Senate before the 11:59 p.m. shutdown deadline.

    However, not all Republicans are eager to face the same gridlock and uncertainty that bedeviled the GOP caucus in the weeks after Mr. McCarthy’s ouster. Even some of Mr. Johnson’s harshest critics from the House Freedom Caucus have dismissed Ms. Greene’s efforts.

    Mr. Gaetz, who initiated Mr. McCarthy’s downfall, said he would not support a motion to vacate Mr. Johnson.

    “When I vacated McCarthy, I made a promise to all of you, to the entire country, that we would not end up with a Democrat speaker,” Mr. Gaetz said on his “Firebrand” podcast on March 22, after the House vote.

    He expressed concern with the dwindling House GOP majority and the possibility of at least a few Republicans voting for a Democratic speaker in the event of Mr. Johnson’s potential ouster.

    “And because I’m not sure of that, do not count me among those who would support a motion to vacate at this time,” Mr. Gaetz added.

    Some Republicans, however, were not nearly as restrained in their responses to Ms. Greene’s motion to vacate.

    “It’s not only idiotic, but it actually does not do anything to advance the conservative movement. And in fact, it undermines the country and our majority,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.).

    Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) of the House Freedom Caucus said Mr. Johnson is the only House Republican capable of leading the caucus “through these dark and challenging times” and that Ms. Greene “just made a big mistake.”

    “To think that one of our Republican colleagues would call for his ouster right now—it’s really … it’s abhorrent to me, and I oppose it,” he said in a video posted to X.

    Ms. Greene told reporters on the Capital steps on March 22 that she is not the only Republican supporting her motion to vacate Mr. Johnson but stopped short of naming anyone.

    “I’ve talked to many who probably won’t go public, but silently, they’re breathing a sigh of relief,” she said.

    That support, at least so far, does not appear to come from others who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy last year.

    Continue reading at The Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 11:40

  • Kamala Harris Announces DOJ-Funded Office To Push 'Red Flag' Gun Laws, Gets Slammed By Parkland Dad Over 'Photo Op'
    Kamala Harris Announces DOJ-Funded Office To Push ‘Red Flag’ Gun Laws, Gets Slammed By Parkland Dad Over ‘Photo Op’

    Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday announced a new national office that will assist states in implementing “red flag” laws – which allow for a judge like this…

    …to approve the temporary removal of firearms from a person believed to be a danger to themselves or others, by a prosecutor like this:

    New York AG Letitia James

    Harris announced the new office, the federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center (Erpo), at a Saturday visit to Parkland, Florida, where she toured the site of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting that killed 17.

    “The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school occurred after there were clear warning signs, but there were no tools to remove the shooter’s firearm,” the White House said in a statement announcing the resource office.

    The office is being funded by a Justice Department grant, and will be operated through the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. It will help state and local governments, as well as law enforcement and others (including behavioral health and social service providers), to “optimize” the use of red flag laws, and will provide training and technical assistance “for a wide variety of stakeholders.”

    Red flag laws have already been implemented in 21 states, of which the White House said that just six had taken advantage of $750 million in funding made available by the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act enacted by the Biden administration.

    Meanwhile, the father of a victim of the Parkland shooting, Ryan Petty, slammed Harris in an interview on Fox News, telling the outlet “The vice president and the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention made it very clear to families early on that nothing short of new gun control was going to satisfy them in protecting our nation’s schools. And that is just a slap in the face to those of us that have worked for six years now to try to protect our nation’s schools.”

    “There are so many ways that we can protect our kids and our teachers at school that don’t require the infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners around the country,” Petty added. “But the vice president and the Office of Gun Violence Prevention don’t want to hear any of those solutions. What they want to do is create an opportunity for the vice president to spout gun control talking points at a site that, quite frankly, is hallowed ground at this point.

    “What’s frustrating to me is that this building should have been demolished years ago, and it’s now being used as a photo op for politicians that want to push an agenda,” he continued.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/24/2024 – 11:05

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