Apr 26

Today’s News 26th April 2024

  • The Great Game Returns To Central Asia
    The Great Game Returns To Central Asia

    Via EurasiaNet.org,

    • Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reanimated US and EU interest in Central Asia.

    • China has eclipsed Russia as the region’s largest trade partner.

    • Central Asian trade is diversifying away from Russia and towards the West.

    The Great Game is playing out once again in Central Asia, but it is getting a new name and adopting a different set of rules. Economics, not politics, is defining the terms of the current superpower competition for regional influence, according to a report prepared by a Kazakh research institute. 

    There is a key difference governing the global rivalries in Central Asia in the 19th and 21st centuries: these days, regional states, not outsiders, wield the more influence over potential outcomes, according to the report, titled Pursuing Multi-Vectorism Through Business Diplomacy: The Path for Central Asia. The report was published by the Talap Center for Applied Research. 

    “The region, previously the theater of the Great Game in the confrontation of superpowers, is now trying to become an opportunity zone,” the report states.

    Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in 2022, and the imposition of Western sanctions to punish Russian aggression, changed Central Asia’s geopolitical dynamics by reanimating US and European Union interest in the region. By extension, Russia’s actions encouraged the diversification of trade and investment, changing East-West trade patterns connecting China and Europe. Sanctions have diminished the utility of the Northern Corridor via the trans-Siberian railway, while providing impetus for the growth of the Middle Corridor via Central Asia.

    These changes have shifted Central Asia’s center of geo-economic gravity. China has eclipsed Russia as the region’s largest trade partner, while the overall trend is toward diversification of trade partners. The West’s share of Central Asian trade under the present dynamic is set to keep rising.

    “The trade and investment dynamics in the region show a significant shift of diversification with non-traditional markets of Europe, North America, South Asia, and the Middle East since 2022,” the Talap report notes.

    “This has become possible due to a traditional, multi-vector policy for the region, which, under the stress of escalating conflicts, was transformed into a policy of emphatic non-alignment – a firm rejection of any involvement in the conflict.”

    The report notes that the contacts between the European Union and Central Asian states have “have gained a special dynamism” since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

    It also notes that public opinion in the region indicates that a majority of regional residents do not want to get dragged into the confrontation between the West and Russia, which is supported by China. 

    The prevailing circumstances have forced Central Asian states to “balance a genuine interest in developing their ties with the Western world while being surrounded by Iran, Afghanistan, China, and Russia, countries with which the West has strained and even tense relations,” the report says.

    Maximizing economic multi-vectorism will require some work by Central Asian governments to enhance the predictability of the regional business climate. Vaguely defined trade rules and property rights, along with the unreliability of regional judicial systems, remain big impediments to Western investment. The lack of mechanisms to enforce contracts or resolve corporate disputes also constitutes an investment barrier. In addition to bolstering the independence of the judicial system, the Talap report recommends reforms to regional tax codes to foster more “equitable” business environments. 

    “The investment climate in Central Asia reflects a difficult balance between the determination of governments to take advantage of growing interest in the region and the inertia of institutional barriers,” the report states.

    “To take advantage of these opportunities, the countries of the region have to address existing institutional and regulatory barriers for both domestic and international companies and investors, strengthen the rule of law, enforce fair and open competition, implement business friendly tax regulations, and align trade, customs and logistical standards.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 23:45

  • Gaza Aid Flotilla With 1,000 Passengers, Tons Of Supplies Poised To Sail – As IDF Awaits
    Gaza Aid Flotilla With 1,000 Passengers, Tons Of Supplies Poised To Sail – As IDF Awaits

    A flotilla of ships packed with a thousand activists, human rights observers and more than 5,500 tons of food and medical supplies is ready to sail from Istanbul to for Gaza. To do so, they’ll need the Turkish government to let them leave the port, and then run the risk of being subjected to a deadly Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attack — as their predecessors were in an infamous 2010 incident.  

    “The Freedom Flotilla has the support of millions around the world who are outraged at the failure of our governments to protect the Palestinians people from Israel’s genocidal actions, including the deliberate starvation of over two million people,” said the organizing coalition’s Zohar Chamberlain-Regev. 

    The group has three ships ready to go: one packed with food and medical supplies, and two ships for passengers who hail from 40 different countries. The cargo ship also has eight ambulances and a fire truck aboard — a grim reminder of the IDF’s Nov 3 bombing of an ambulance convoy next to Al-Shifa hospital that killed 15 and wounded dozens. 

    A horse lies dead next to an ambulance bombed by the IDF just outside a Gaza hospital on Nov 3 (Momen al-Halabi / AFP – Getty Images via NBC News)

    CodePink’s Medea Benjamin is among those hoping to set sail, but says she’s worries about diplomatic interference. “The Turkish government might cave to pressure from Israel, the United States and Germany, and prevent the boats from even leaving Istanbul,” she wrote on Tuesday. 

    “We expect that Turkey will not be bought off and we will indeed sail,” Palestinian-American human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf optimistically said at a press conference hosted on one of the ships. “Anything less than this is collaborating with the illegal siege on Gaza, and we don’t think that is what the Turkish government will do.”

    The three Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessels docked in Istanbul 

    While the IDF has said little, an Israeli news outlet reported that the Israeli military has already started “security preparations” for commandeering the flotilla. In an infamous 2010 incident, the IDF killed 10 activists aboard a Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel, the Mavi Marmara. 

    With that precedent in mind, organizers have been giving volunteers “non-violence training” and educating them on what the Israeli forces may use on them — such as tear gas and concussion grenades. 

    The Freedom Flotilla Coalition was founded in 2010 to circumvent economically-devastating travel and trade restrictions imposed by the State of Israel on the 25-mile-long Gaza strip. Long before the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, the Zionist state has blocked the people of Gaza from having an airport or even a seaport.  

    From the first days of Israel’s post-Oct. 7 attack on Gaza, Israel made clear its intentions to cause widespread devastation in the strip. “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Oct. 9. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

    A crowd of Palestinians seeking food in Rafah (via Btselem)

    On Tuesday, US Special Envoy for Humanitarian Issues David Satterfield belatedly acknowledged that the risk of famine in Gaza is “very high.” This comes long after a various news outlets and humanitarian organizations have reported on increasingly desperate measures Gaza residents have resorted to, including boiling weeds and eating animal food. Acute malnutrition among young children is soaring, and UNICEF says the entire population is in increasing peril:

    “The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) projected that 1.1 million people face catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC Phase 5) and are at risk of famine in the Gaza Strip, the highest number of people ever recorded in this category by the IPC system.”

    US money helps enable the IDF-imposed blockade on Gaza — and more US money is spent circumventing it with airdrops like this 

    On Wednesday, President Biden signed off on a controversial foreign aid package that included another $26 billion for Israel. In his State of the Union address, Biden announced that the Pentagon would create a floating port off the Gaza coast to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid. Some six weeks later, construction hasn’t even started, but a spokesman on Tuesday said it should begin “in the coming weeks.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 23:25

  • "Taken Out By The FBI, CIA, & Bob Woodward" – Tucker Carlson Says Watergate Was Orchestrated To Remove President Nixon From Office
    “Taken Out By The FBI, CIA, & Bob Woodward” – Tucker Carlson Says Watergate Was Orchestrated To Remove President Nixon From Office

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    I have several times reported the same…

    Nixon was removed because he was making arms limitation agreements with the Soviets and opening to China.

    This was normalizing the enemy that the military/security complex needed for its budget and power.

    It was for the same reason that President Kennedy was assassinated by the military/security complex.

    The growing suspicion about Kennedy’s assassination meant that the military/security complex could not risk a second violent assassination, so Nixon was politically assassinated.

    The same strategy was applied to Trump.

    When Trump said he intended to normalize relations with Russia, he presented himself as the same threat to the military-security complex as Kennedy and Nixon.

    That is what Russiagate was about, and what documentsgate, Jan 6 Insurrection, and two failed impeachments are all about.

    When Russiagate and the impeachments failed, they decided to steal the election.

    When Trump’s support survived all of this, they decided on the indictments.

    In the least, the indictments will keep Trump off the campaign circuit and use up his resources in legal fees.

    It is the determination and ability of the military/security complex to protect its budget and power that makes peace impossible and wars our way of life…

    Watch Tucker Carlson discuss this below (with key quotes via @CollinRugg):

    “Richard Nixon was taken out by the FBI and CIA, and with the help of Bob Woodward.”

    “[Woodward] was that guy. And who is his main source for Watergate? Oh, the number two guy at the FBI. Oh, so you have the naval intelligence officer working with the FBI official to destroy the president. Okay. So that’s a deep state coup.”

    “Richard Nixon was elected by more votes than any president in American history in the 1972 election.”

    “The most popular president in his reelection campaign, and two years later, he’s gone, undone by a naval intel officer, the number two guy at the FBI and a bunch of CIA employees.”

    “You tell me what that is. Those are the facts. Those are not disputed facts.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 23:05

  • Tennessee Is First State To Criminalize Adults Who Help Minors Receive "Gender-Affirming" Care Without Parental Consent
    Tennessee Is First State To Criminalize Adults Who Help Minors Receive “Gender-Affirming” Care Without Parental Consent

    Tennessee’s GOP-controlled Statehouse on Thursday approved approval criminalizing adults who help minors receive gender-affirming care without parental consent, clearing the way for the first-in-the-nation proposal to be sent to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk for his signature.

    As the AP reports, the bill mirrors almost the same language from a so-called anti-abortion trafficking proposal Tennessee Republican lawmakers approved just a day prior. In that version, supporters are hoping to stop adults from helping young people obtain abortions without permission from their parents or guardians.

    Supporters of Lee, a Republican, are certain he will sign them into law. Lee eagerly approved a sweeping abortion ban and a ban on gender-affirming care for children. He has also never issued a veto during his time as governor.

    While the Republican supermajority touted the proposed statutes as necessary to protect parental rights, critics – most of whom likely have purple hair and some oh whom occasionally enjoy child porn in a secret folder on their computer – warned about the possible broad application (as in what, the minor child’s parents will know what their child is up to?). Violations could range from talking to an adolescent about a website on where to find care to helping that young person travel to another state with looser restrictions on gender-affirming care services.

    “This is a parent’s rights bill, nothing more, nothing less,” Republican Rep. Bryan Richey, the bill’s sponsor, said during House debate earlier this week. “At the end of the day, parents should have final say what medical procedures their children are receiving, and nobody else.”

    The Human Rights Campaign says Tennessee has enacted more anti-LGBTQ+ laws more than any other state since 2015, identifying more than 20 bills that advanced out of the Legislature over the past few months.

    That included sending Gov. Lee a bill banning the spending of state money on hormone therapy or sex reassignment procedures for prisoners — though it would not apply to state inmates currently receiving hormone therapy — and requiring public school employees to report transgender students to their parents, as if requiring parents to know that their child – having undergone years of criminal brainwashing and propaganda as even Bill Mahr now admits – has mental problem is some kind of crime.

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    Tennessee Republicans previously also passed a measure that would let LGBTQ+ foster children be placed with families that hold anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs. Lee signed it into law this month.

    “Tennessee lawmakers are on the verge of enacting more than twice as many anti-LGBTQ+ laws as any other state, a staggering assault on their own constituents,” Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

    To date, no state has placed restrictions on helping young people receive gender-affirming care, despite the recent push among more than 20 Republican-led states — including Tennessee — to ban such care for most minors.

    Instead some Democratic-led states have been pushing to shield health care providers if they provide services that are banned in a patient’s home state. Most recently Maine’s Democratic governor signed a bill Wednesday protecting providers of abortion and gender-affirming care from legal action brought by other states.

    The proposal has created a disagreement between Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and attorneys general in several other states, including Tennessee. The other states have warned of legal action over the law; Frey dismissed such threats as “meritless.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 22:45

  • Excess Deaths In Japan Hit 115,000 Following 3rd COVID Shot; New Study Explains Why
    Excess Deaths In Japan Hit 115,000 Following 3rd COVID Shot; New Study Explains Why

    Authored by Joe Wang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new study on harms resulting from the COVID vaccine was published on April 8 in the U.S.-based peer-reviewed medical science journal Cureus. It represents the largest study to date on adverse effects of the COVID vaccine, and the results are shocking, to put it mildly.

    In the study, titled “Increased Age-Adjusted Cancer Mortality After the Third mRNA-Lipid Nanoparticle Vaccine Dose During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan,” five Japanese scientists used an entire dataset of the country’s 123 million population (Japan has the highest vaccination rate in the world) to study excess cancer mortalities coinciding with mass COVID vaccination.

    The authors also provide a sound explanation as to why these deaths occurred after the mRNA injection.

    As a former vaccine researcher, I read the Cureus article with great interest. My fellow Epoch Times columnist, Megan Redshaw, has written an excellent article on this study. Here, I would like to highlight some points that I think are worth reiterating.

    Excess Deaths Following the Third Shot

    The study shows there were 1,568,961 total deaths in Japan in 2022. About 1,453,162 deaths were expected based on statistical predictions using pre-pandemic information, which means there were 115,799 excess deaths in 2022.

    The 115,799 “age-adjusted excess number of deaths” in 2022 occurred after two-thirds of the Japanese population had received the third dose of COVID vaccine.

    Based on Japan’s Ministry of Health data, I calculated that there were 39,060 COVID deaths reported in 2022. So, the majority of Japan’s excess deaths in 2022 were not caused by COVID infection, but rather are strongly associated with the vaccination.

    Harm Done by the Vaccine, Not the Virus

    The study shows that in 2020, after COVID-19 began to spread in Japan but before vaccination was available, the age-adjusted number of deaths was 28,000 fewer than what was predicted. And in 2021, as the virus continued and there was limited COVID-19 vaccination (it started in February), there were 25,000 more deaths than what was predicted.

    Based on the number of excess deaths in 2022, the Japanese scientists concluded: “Statistically significant increases in age-adjusted mortality rates of all cancer and some specific types of cancer, namely, ovarian cancer, leukemia, prostate, lip/oral/pharyngeal, pancreatic, and breast cancers, were observed in 2022 after two-thirds of the Japanese population had received the third or later dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-LNP vaccine.”

    “These particularly marked increases in mortality rates of these ERα-sensitive cancers may be attributable to several mechanisms of the mRNA-LNP vaccination rather than COVID-19 infection itself or reduced cancer care due to the lockdown,” the authors wrote.

    In plain English, this study revealed the mRNA COVID jab is likely the cause of the extra deaths that occurred in Japan.

    6 Types of Cancer Had Significant Excess Deaths

    The study presented the numbers for all-cause death, but also looked into the details of deaths caused by cancer. It found that of the 20 types of cancer, six of them—ovarian, leukemia, prostate, lip/oral/pharyngeal, pancreatic, and breast cancer—had statistically significant excess mortalities in 2021 and increased further in 2022.

    The significant increase in mortalities for the six specific cancer types cannot be blamed on a shortage of health-care services during the pandemic. Reduced cancer screening and health care due to lockdowns should increase deaths for all cancers. However, such an increase was not observed in other types of cancers in Japan in 2022.

    So what is so special about the six specific cancer types? They are all known as estrogen receptor alpha (ERα)-sensitive cancers.

    The scientists explained why these cancers not only occurred after vaccination, but also killed people in a short period of time after they received the shot.

    Cancer After the Jab: A Scientific Explanation

    I worked as a research scientist at Sanofi Pasteur, one of the world’s largest vaccine companies, for more than 10 years. As the person who spearheaded Sanofi’s SARS-CoV-1 vaccine development in 2003, I personally found the hypothesis presented by the Japanese scientists very reasonable.

    Please bear with me on the scientific terms, because they are important in understanding the possible roles the mRNA vaccine may have played in cancer development.

    ERs (estrogen receptors) are a group of proteins found inside cells. They are receptors that can be activated by the sex hormone estrogen. ERα is one of the two classes of ERs, an important regulator in the body’s reproductive system.

    Research published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances in November 2022 screened 9,000 human proteins to see which protein binds better with the spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2, and found the S protein specifically binds to ERα. The binding “upregulates the transcriptional activity of ERα.”

    In other words, the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 (from infection or vaccination), when introduced into the human body, binds to ERα and functions as a nuclear receptor coregulator, interfering with the cell’s normal function and leading to malfunction of the cells and organs.

    This may explain why death caused by the six types of ERα-sensitive cancers increased in 2022 in Japan after two-thirds of the population received the third dose of the mRNA vaccine.

    The vaccine carries the S gene of SARS-CoV-2, hijacking the host cells to produce S proteins. The S proteins produce inside the cell, then bind to ERα, disrupting the cell’s normal function and leading to cancer development.

    Cancer is a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body.

    For any healthy person, some cells die, some age, and some become cancerous. All this happens without the person knowing it because the body’s immune system is constantly working to deal with such problems. However, if the immune system is compromised, illness then develops, including cancer.

    Plenty of evidence has started to emerge showing that the COVID-19 vaccine has the potential to severely interfere with the human body’s immune system. This new Japanese study provides further evidence of the extent of this phenomenon.

    Vaccination and Suppression of Cancer Immunosurveillance

    It has been shown the mRNA vaccine not only has the potential to cause cancer, it may also weaken the immune systems’ ability to recognize and repress cancerous tumours.

    In a study published last October, Konstantin Fohse and colleagues reported vaccination with BNT162b2 modulated innate immune responses, resulting in a weakened cancer immunosurveillance.

    The damage caused by COVID vaccines would have been less if the vaccination wasn’t as widespread, and the dosage of the vaccines were not as high due to boosters.

    The Japanese scientists found that for each Pfizer-BioNTech dose, there are about 13 trillion SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-LNP molecules. For Moderna, the number is 40 trillion. Since the average human body has about 37.2 trillion cells, one COVID-19 mRNA-LNP dose would have enough molecules to spread into each and every human cell.

    As I wrote previously, contrary to what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s claim that “after the body produces an immune response, it discards all of the vaccine ingredients” because uridines in normal RNA are now replaced with pseudo-uridines in this COVID-19 mRNA-LNP, we know the modified RNA now lives in the body for months and can even find its way into babies through breast milk.

    The Japanese study was written before October 2023 using information from 2022 and earlier. As COVID vaccination continues in many countries, it is scary to think how many people may die or develop cancer if the 2022 trend continues.

    Uncertain Future

    As authorities across the world still claim that the COVID-19 vaccine is “safe and effective” and continue pushing vaccination, it is uncertain what the future holds.

    This is because the COVID-19 mRNA-LNP molecules already in the bodies of hundreds of millions of people will remain there and continue producing the S protein, interfering with the immune system and causing cancer and other diseases.

    Studies like the one by the Japanese scientists should have been undertaken in countries such as the United States, Canada, and the UK and published in top medical journals without censorship so that we can learn from mistakes and prevent the mistakes from happening again. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

    However, hopefully more and more scientists and researchers will be brave enough to point out the very obvious: that the COVID-19 vaccine is not safe.

    It is worth noting that the Cureus medical journal was recently acquired by the Springer Nature Group in December 2022. The group also owns renowned scientific publications such as Nature and Nature Medicine.

    COVID vaccine injury has been a taboo subject for scientists and medical journals. Many people were cancelled when they tried to defy the censorship. It is refreshing to see Springer Nature publish the Japanese study.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 22:25

  • Palmer Luckey's Anduril & General Atomics Selected By USAF For Next Round Of AI Drone Program 
    Palmer Luckey’s Anduril & General Atomics Selected By USAF For Next Round Of AI Drone Program 

    The US Air Force’s hot pursuit of drone wingmen, known as collaborative combat aircraft, flying alongside piloted stealth fighter jets such as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II and Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, is a major effort to modernize its fleet and advance defensive and offensive capabilities in a world erupting into chaos.  

    On Wednesday, the USAF announced that Palmer Luckey’s defense tech startup Anduril and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems were selected to build and test wingmen drones for the next phase of the CCA program. This means the pool of competitors has shrunk from five to two, eliminating Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. We don’t think the military is ready for 737 Max drones. 

    “The companies not selected to build these production representative CCA vehicles, and execute the flight test program, will continue to be part of the broader industry partner vendor pool consisting of more than 20 companies to compete for future efforts, including future production contracts,” the service wrote in a press release. 

    USAF wants to deploy more than 1,000 wingmen drones that can carry out a wide range of missions, including electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and dogfighting. 

    Commenting on the announcement, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the CCA started “just over two years ago” as part of his “Operational Imperatives, to pursue collaborative combat aircraft.”

    “The progress we’ve made is a testament to the invaluable collaboration with industry, whose investment alongside the Air Force has propelled this initiative forward. It’s truly encouraging to witness the rapid execution of this program,” Kendall said.

    General Atomics has pitched the Air Force on its autonomous collaborative drone known as “Gambit.” 

    While Anduril has submitted a high-performance autonomous air vehicle called “Fury.”

    “There is no time to waste on business as usual,” Anduril chief executive Brian Schimpf said in a release, adding, “With the CCA program, Sec. Kendall and the Air Force have embraced a fast-moving, forward-looking approach to field autonomous systems at speed and scale. … Anduril is proud to pave the way for other non-traditional defense companies to compete and deliver on large-scale programs.”

    We’ve been saying for years that the next major conflict will be fought with hypersonic weapons and drones. And that’s precisely the technology being used in Ukraine. 

    Luckey’s startup, Anduril, aims to cement America’s lead in the military technology race, as the bloated military-industrial complex risks blowing the lead. 

    “We need a new breed of defense technology companies to reboot the arsenal of democracy,” Anduril states on its website.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 22:05

  • Hertz Increases The Number Of Electric Cars It Wants To Get Rid Off To 30,000 From 20,000
    Hertz Increases The Number Of Electric Cars It Wants To Get Rid Off To 30,000 From 20,000

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    Hertz raised the number of electric vehicles it plans to sell this year as it is cutting its EV fleet to reduce losses that have weighed on the car rental giant’s earnings.

    In the first quarter, Hertz upsized its EV disposition plan by 10,000 vehicles, for a total of 30,000 EVs intended for sale in 2024. Most of these EVs will be Teslas.

    The company incurred a $195 million charge to vehicle depreciation to write down the EVs held for sale which were remaining in inventory at quarter-end to fair value and recognize the disposition losses on EVs sold in the period, Hertz said in a statement on Thursday

    Vehicle depreciation in the first quarter of 2024 increased by $588 million, or $339 on a per unit basis. Of the $339 per unit increase, $119 was related to EVs held for sale, the company said. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

    Hertz reported a much larger loss for the first quarter than analysts had forecast. Adjusted net loss stood at $392 million, or $1.28 loss per diluted share.

    This compares with an analyst consensus estimate of a loss of $0.45 per share.

    Following the earnings release on Thursday, Hertz’s stock crashed by 21% on the NASDAQ but ended off the lows, still down 19%…

    Hertz was an early mover in buying EVs to rent to customers, but it and other car rental companies have recently started to sell the EVs they had previously purchased due to weaker customer demand for EV rentals. 

    Hertz, unlike other rental firms, has a more risky approach because it fully owns all the EVs it has bought and is losing money if the resale value slumps.

    As it did.

    Earlier this year, Hertz said in a regulatory filing to the SEC it is selling roughly one-third of its electric vehicle fleet, highlighting the risk of its first-mover strategy when it comes to EVs.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 21:45

  • President With Crackhead Son Frees 5 Crack Dealers, Ditches Promise To Release All Pot Criminals
    President With Crackhead Son Frees 5 Crack Dealers, Ditches Promise To Release All Pot Criminals

    President Biden has granted clemency to five crack dealers, ordering their early release for dealing the drug in recognition of Second Chance Month.

    Yes, this guy…

    Meanwhile, the Biden administration has made zero progress on a campaign promise to release “everyone” in prison for marijuana offenses, the NY Post reports.

    “America is a Nation founded on the promise of second chances. During Second Chance Month, we reaffirm our commitment to rehabilitation and reentry for people returning to their communities post incarceration,” whoever writes Biden’s statements said on Wednesday.

    “We also recommit to building a criminal justice system that lives up to those ideals and ensures that everyone receives equal justice under law. That is why today I am announcing steps I am taking to make this promise a reality.”

    Biden, who wrote or cosponsored some of the nation’s harshest federal drug laws in the 1980s and ’90s, said that he chose to issue commutations to the five crack offenders because they would have been given more lenient sentences today — continuing a long-running effort dating to the Obama administration to identify and retroactively reduce such sentences.

    It’s unclear why Biden chose to free none of the estimated 2,700 federal marijuana-dealing inmates, as he promised to do at a Democratic primary debate in 2019. -NY Post

    Biden has defended his broken promise to free all marijuana offenses, citing his 2022 mass pardon for people convicted of simple marijuana possession (none of whom were actually in prison), counts. Cannabis advocates call bullshit, however, saying that they understood “everyone” to mean incarcerated dealers as well.

    Biden also pardoned 11 people who have already completed their prison sentences, allowing them to vote and own guns again.

    “I am using my clemency power to pardon 11 individuals and commute the sentences of 5 individuals who were convicted of non-violent drug offenses,” said Biden’s writer. “Many of these individuals received disproportionately longer sentences than they would have under current law, policy, and practice. The pardon recipients have demonstrated their commitment to improving their lives and positively transforming their communities. The commutation recipients have shown that they are deserving of forgiveness and the chance at building a brighter future for themselves beyond prison walls.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 21:25

  • Senate GOP Must Seize Opportunity To Expand Trump Tax Cuts
    Senate GOP Must Seize Opportunity To Expand Trump Tax Cuts

    Authored by Stephen Moore and Adam Brandon via RealClear Politics,

    President Joe Biden came into office promising to repeal President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – a law that turbocharged American job growth and U.S. national competitiveness. In the first two years of the Biden administration, there was a chance that the president could have succeeded in undermining the law.

    Yet, today, as Biden finishes his term, the Trump tax cuts are not only still standing but may be strengthened.

    That is, if Senate Republicans seize the opportunity before them.

    In January, the House overwhelmingly passed the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act (H.R. 7024), a major new tax relief package that builds on the successes of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Its relief targets the engines of American productivity including full deductibility for Research and Development costs, full and immediate expensing, as well as interest deductibility and restoration of deductibility of depreciation and amortization costs.

    Passing this bill enhances American competitiveness with China, boosts job creation, increases wages for workers, and promotes new investment and innovation.

    As Jay Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers put it, “Remember the 2017 tax reforms? They were rocket fuel for our industry. We kept our promises to raise wages, hire workers, and invest in our communities. We would not be outpacing other countries without them.”  

    But it also does something else: The bill extends important cost recovery provisions of the 2017 Republican tax cuts signed by President Trump, an essential step in achieving full permanency of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

    Without congressional action, President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of 2025.

    While Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo and some colleagues have raised objections about provisions of the bill that would expand the Child Tax Credit, Crapo and other GOP senators need to keep sight of the significance of this measure in a larger fight.

    Passing the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act would vastly improve Republicans’ bargaining position going into the fight over the future of the Trump tax cuts.

    And right now, advocates for job growth and competitiveness must be prepared for this fight.

    At a March 12 hearing on the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) declared, “This set of policies isn’t going to be on the table in 2025 if this bill stalls out.” It’s understandable for Republicans to dismiss this as empty talk, given that the GOP faces a highly favorable Senate map in this year’s elections.

    But, in politics, nothing is certain. Remember the “red wave” that wasn’t? Even if Republicans retake the Senate, Wyden and allies could follow through on their threat if Democrats retain the White House or take back the House.

    Conservative Republicans have every reason to support the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act. The bill would be financed by repealing the employee retention tax credit, a COVID-era program that has been rife with fraud. Over 40 conservative and free-market organizations have urged lawmakers to pass the pro-growth legislation. Other organizations and leaders from across the conservative movement have strongly backed the bill. At the same time, far-left Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) have railed against the legislation.

    If GOP senators want to save their signature economic success of the past decade, they must get to yes on this tax reform.

    Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and is the author of “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring America.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 21:05

  • SEC Expected To Deny Spot Ether ETFs In May, Consensys Sues Over 'Security' Status
    SEC Expected To Deny Spot Ether ETFs In May, Consensys Sues Over ‘Security’ Status

    There are increasing doubts among industry insiders that the SEC will approved Spot Ether ETFs in May, according to a report from Reuters.

    According to four people who participated, recent meetings between issuers and the SEC have been one-sided and agency staff have not discussed substantive details about the proposed products.

    That is in contrast to the intensive and detailed discussions between issuers and the agency in the weeks before its landmark approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in January, said the people who declined to be identified because the talks are private.

    As CoinTelegraph reports, before the historic approval, the SEC rejected spot BTC ETF filings for over a decade.

    It only changed its stance after Grayscale Investments won a court victory against the securities regulator in August 2023.

    Many analysts agree that the SEC is likely to further delay possible approval of Ether ETFs.

    “It seems more likely that approval will be delayed until later in 2024, or longer,” VettaFi ETF data analyst Todd Rosenbluth reportedly said, adding that the regulatory landscape is still too “cloudy.”

    Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas previously estimated chances of the SEC approving a spot Ether ETF in May at around 35% in March.

    He also noted that he’d sourced “good intel” to suggest that the SEC may be giving the silent treatment to prospective fund issuers on purpose.

    Price action has sown ETH relatively underperforming BTC from the initiation of the spot bitcoin ETFs as hope fades for ETH… for now…

    Balchunas also mentioned that SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s stance on Ether could also impact the decision process as he has refused to give clarity on whether Ether was a security.

    We have detailed the furore over the classification of Ether as a security (or not) a number of times (most recently here and here), but today saw the situation escalated as Consensys, a major backer of the Ethereum blockchain, filed a lawsuit against the agency in Texas federal court, asking the court, among other things, to resolve one of the biggest legal uncertainties hanging over the crypto industry by stating that Ethereum’s digital token, Ether, is not a security.

    Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts reports that in its 34-page legal filing, Consensys uses dramatic language to argue that the SEC’s efforts to exert jurisdiction over Ethereum is both illegal and a threat to blockchain technology more broadly.

    “The SEC’s unlawful seizure of authority over ETH would spell disaster for the Ethereum network, and for Consensys. Every holder of ETH, including Consensys, would fear violating the securities laws if he or she were to transfer ETH on the network,” the complaint states.

    “This would bring use of the Ethereum blockchain in the United States to a halt, crippling one of the internet’s greatest innovations.”

    Gensler’s tactics have angered many in the crypto industry who have complained the SEC has failed to provide clear rules or to create a regulatory model that accounts for the distinct features of blockchain technology.

    The controversy over Ethereum has been especially heated since the SEC has signaled repeatedly in the past that the blockchain’s tokens, like Bitcoin, are not securities and therefore outside its jurisdiction.

    This includes a landmark 2018 speech where a senior official stated that Ethereum had become “sufficiently decentralized” as well as the agency’s decision last year to allow Ethereum futures trading—an implicit acknowledgement that Ether is a commodity. Meanwhile, video has surfaced of Gensler himself, in his role as a private citizen, telling hedge funds in 2018 that Ethereum is not a security.

    However, as we detailed here, these precedents (and his own words) have failed to dissuade Gensler, who appears to be using a recent feature of Ethereum, known as staking, as grounds for the recent legal campaign.

    As a reminder, the release of so-called ‘Hinman documents’ last June had revealed the role of network decentralization in the SEC’s thinking on whether a digital token should be classified as security or not.

    In particular, JPMorgan points out that SEC officials had acknowledged in the past that tokens on a sufficiently decentralized network are no longer securities because there is no “controlling group˙ in the Howey sense (the Howey Test relates to the U.S. Supreme Court case to determine whether a transaction qualifies as an investment contract).

    “If there is no spot Ethereum ETF approval in May, then we assume there is going to be a litigation process after May,” Panigirtzoglou told The Block earlier in the month.

    “We believe that the most likely scenario is that the SEC eventually loses this litigation (similar to what happened with the Grayscale and Ripple legal battles last year), which means that eventually, the SEC will approve spot Ethereum ETFs (but not as soon as this May).”

    In an interview with Fortune, Consensys founder Joe Lubin described as “preposterous” the theory that staking transformed Ethereum from a commodity into a security.

    “The act of staking is really just posting a security bond so you can get paid to contribute labor and resources to help operate the Ethereum protocol. Now they’re trying to turn that into some sort of investment contract,” Lubin said.

    Lubin also stated that Gensler’s legal position appeared to be an attempt to halt the overall growth of crypto, and to justify the SEC blocking pending applications by companies to launch spot ETFs for Ethereum following the huge popularity of Bitcoin ETFs.

    “They are trying to regulate a technology on its merits, which the SEC shouldn’t be doing. They’re trying to stifle certain kinds of innovation. And they’re trying to do that because probably they see Ether spot ETFs as a floodgate that’s going to bring a lot of capital into our ecosystem,” said Lubin.

    As Fortune notes, the Consensys lawsuit was filed in Texas, which dovetails with a broader strategy of the crypto industry to tee up eventual legal appeals in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

    The circuit has shown greater skepticism of agency actions than other courts and, if the industry can win a favorable judgment, it would likely tee up an appeal for the Supreme Court.

    Meanwhile, against that clearly politically-motivated push by Gensler (anything to placate Warren after he was forced to acquiesce over spot bitcoin ETFs); on April 24, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) officially approved the first batch of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, including three BTC and three ETH ETFs by China Asset Management, Harvest Global Investments and Bosera.

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

    Following approval, Hong Kong’s crypto ETFs are expected to start trading on April 30.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 20:45

  • Taxing Unrealized Gains Would Obliterate The U.S. Economy
    Taxing Unrealized Gains Would Obliterate The U.S. Economy

    Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

    Having used up all of the rest of the batshit, insane, counterintuitive economic dirty tricks left in the “we’ll literally do anything but cut spending” bag, the Biden administration is pushing what could be the most destructive idea for our country since prohibition: taxing unrealized gains.

    As part of its budget proposal for the 2025 fiscal year, the Biden administration is trying to raise an addition $4.3 trillion over 10 years in the worst way possible: imposing a minimum tax equal to 25 percent of a taxpayer’s taxable income and unrealized capital gains less the sum of their regular tax, for taxpayers with wealth over $100 million.

    Putting aside the fact that this high-risk idea only amounts to a pittance, $430 billion per year (25% of which we just sent to foreign nations over the weekend in one fell swoop of a pen and it’s only April), the introduction of taxing unrealized gains could be one of the worst slippery slopes we ever dare to roll our country’s economy down.

    I mean, shit, we could save $1 trillion just by not sending $100 billion a year to other nations for starters. But I digress. For an outline of exactly what an unrealized gains tax is, here’s the American Institute on Economic Research:

    A tax on unrealized capital gains means that individuals are penalized for owning appreciating assets, regardless of whether they have realized any actual income from selling them. 

    If you purchased a stock for $100 this year, for example, and it increased to $110 next year, you would pay the assigned tax rate on the $10 capital gain. You didn’t sell the asset, so you don’t realize the $10 appreciation, but must pay the tax regardless.

    Taxing unrealized capital gains contradicts the basic principles of fairness and property rights essential for a free and prosperous society. Taxation, if we’re going to have it on income, should be based on actual income earned, not on paper gains that may never materialize.

    AIER notes that implementing such a tax not only deeply infringes upon personal liberty and private property rights — but I can’t help but think about how it also sets a destructive wrecking ball rolling down a slippery slope for the first time in our nation’s history.

    And, given the precarious state of our nation’s finances, it doesn’t seem like the best time to start spitballing about new risky ideas that may or may not catch on only because they sound like they are addressing the problem of a widening wealth gap that Federal Reserve policies created and continue to exacerbate to begin with.

    If the administration really wanted to address the problem of wealth inequality, it would be setting its sights on the central bank that sacrificed price stability so it could spray trillions of dollars in “stimulus” toward financial assets, while cutting American families paltry checks of just $600, during COVID. When I did the math during COVID, the total amount spent to bail out the country when we decided to shut down the economy and have the Federal Reserve replace it with a fiat house of cards amounted to something like $17,500 per every citizen in the United States.

    Except, again, only $600 of that went to each individual. The rest went to the financial sector, in turn widening the inequality gap further as billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos saw tens of billions of dollars added to their net worth in a matter of months.

    And so now, rather than take tangible, decisive action to actually address the problem, the Biden administration is putting forth a plan that won’t just be negative for the country, it could very well be the hill that our country’s economy dies on. And to be honest, I’m not being hyperbolic.

    Over the last few years, we have seen an extraordinary exodus from places like New York and California, to places like Florida and Texas, because the former states were essentially taxing far too much relative to the benefits of what they were providing for citizens.

    California and NY exodus - a MILLION residents have left since July 2020 | Daily Mail Online

    Source: Daily Mail

    Ergo, places like California have seen people like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk move to Texas, while states like New York have seen businesses like Ken Griffin’s Citadel move to Florida. There’s nothing to read between the lines about when it comes to this capital flight out of one state and into another. It is simple cause and effect: at some point, people simply don’t think it is worth living in these states due to the taxes being too high.

    It’s a quintessential example of the Laffer Curve. Tax too much, people are disincentivized to generate productivity, or in this case, live in your state.

    Biden’s proposal to raise regular capital gains taxes is one thing, albeit still egregious; it is far lesser noxious of the two proposals. Taxing unrealized gains is an exponentially worse type of taxation that introduces not just a higher tax rate and a 3rd type of income tax, but a completely new system for taxation – one that taxes people’s assets as they appreciate, not just when they realize the gains of said appreciation.

    “But it will only be against people worth more than $100 million,” proponents of the idea will exclaim. Hell, I’m not worth 1% of that, so why should I even care?

    First off, it can’t be understated how earth-shattering it is to put this terrible idea into motion, regardless of who it is going to affect. You can’t justify a stunning overreach on people’s constitutional rights and civil liberties just because they sit in a certain tax bracket. And it is a line that, once crossed, the government won’t backtrack on. Once taxing unrealized gains makes its way into the zeitgeist, it sticks around for good. And, if it sticks around, it’ll only be another meaningful step moving the U.S. economy closer to an anemic corpse of a state-planned economy.

    A tax of this nature creates a vacuum that does nothing but suck the vibrancy out of an economy. In addition to setting a new moral hazard standard, the tax directly targets the people with the most capital at work in our country. By specifically targeting the people that have the means to create new enterprises and invest using this capital, and then driving them out of the country, the tax is a surefire way to suck the lifeblood out of what’s left of the United States economy.

    Make no mistake: it will be a clarion call for billionaires to simply move out of the United States and into tax havens. And think about it — these are the people that have the means to up and simply leave the country and relocate anytime they want. For them, if it makes financial sense, they will do it. Implementing this unrealized gains tax will set the ball in motion, you can mark my words. The rich will be as good as gone.

    🔥 40% off FOR LIFE: Use this special coupon link and get 40% off an annual subscription, good for as long as you wish to remain a subscriber.

    And when billionaires decide to up and leave the United States, all of the tax revenue they were generating otherwise — not just the unrealized gains tax — leaves with them. In other words, an unrealized gains tax will push them past their limit and result in catastrophic consequences for the country’s tax revenue as a whole. It’ll literally do far more harm than good. If I can understand why, a fifth grader can. That means the ultra-rich, who are much smarter than I am, definitely understand it. They’re not going to be interested in hanging around and forking over this much more cash “for the good of the cause”. They already likely have a plan in such case this tax is passed, and — as a hint — it isn’t to happily hand over a check to the Biden administration and say “thanks for being such great stewards of my capital, keep up the good work”.

    In reality, it likely involves yachts, dual passports, “investments” in places like Bermuda and Mauritius, attending F1 races and tennis matches, expensive champagne and Eastern European escorts (hereinafter referred to as: “The Hunter Biden Experience”).

    But seriously, setting aside the billionaires for a moment, the tax is going to dampen everybody’s incentive to try and earn and invest to begin with. Who wants to invest in the market if they’re going to be taxed on their gains the very next day?

    Possibly the worst part of this idea is its timing. The country is running a massive deficit now that looks to continue to widen because of our government’s refusal to cut spending on both sides of the aisle. As a reminder, you can only push the tax base so far before they turn tail and run. I know I’ve made jokes in the past (read: yesterday) about our government going through all of the solutions mandatory before arriving at any solution that works in the slightest, but this would be the granddaddy of all examples if implemented.

    The timing of this proposed solution couldn’t be worse. We are at a point in our country’s fiscal history where we need balance more than ever.

    We have the largest deficit and the most debt relative to GDP we have had in recent history.

    The BRICS nations, including Russia, China, and India, are actively pursuing ways to break off of the Western banking system and challenge the U.S. dollar.

    Inflation is running rampant and high interest rates are more than likely to cause our economy to slow down in marked fashion.

    We’re running deficits, but we need the tax revenue we are currently bringing in if we have any hope of cutting spending to balance our budget and right the country’s ship economically. The loss of tax revenue as a result of capital flight from the United States responding to this proposed unrealized gains tax would be catastrophic and would accelerate the country’s financial and monetary demise, not help it.

    Share this post on social media if you enjoyed.

    QTR’s Disclaimer: I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR, reprinted under a Creative Commons license or with the permission of the author. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 20:25

  • How Hard Is It To Get Into An Ivy League School?
    How Hard Is It To Get Into An Ivy League School?

    Ivy League institutions are renowned worldwide for their academic excellence and long-standing traditions. But how hard is it to get into one of the top universities in the U.S.?

    In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu details the admission rates and average annual cost for Ivy League schools, as well as the median SAT scores required to be accepted. The data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and was compiled by 24/7 Wall St.

    Note that “average annual cost” represents the net price a student pays after subtracting the average value of grants and/or scholarships received.

    Harvard is the Most Selective

    The SAT is a standardized test commonly used for college admissions in the United States. It’s taken by high school juniors and seniors to assess their readiness for college-level academic work.

    When comparing SAT scores, Harvard and Dartmouth are among the most challenging universities to gain admission to. The median SAT scores for their students are 760 for reading and writing and 790 for math. Still, Harvard has half the admission rate (3.2%) compared to Dartmouth (6.4%).

    *Costs after receiving federal financial aid.

    Additionally, Dartmouth has the highest average annual cost at $33,000. Princeton has the lowest at $11,100.

    While student debt has surged in the United States in recent years, hitting $1.73 trillion in 2023, the worth of obtaining a degree from any of the schools listed surpasses mere academics. This is evidenced by the substantial incomes earned by former students.

    Harvard grads, for example, have the highest average starting salary in the country, at $91,700.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 20:05

  • Judge Shoots Down Effort To Identify FBI, Undercover Police On Jan. 6
    Judge Shoots Down Effort To Identify FBI, Undercover Police On Jan. 6

    Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A federal judge in Washington D.C. has denied seven motions from a defendant seeking to identify FBI agents in Jan. 6 crowds and gain access to undercover videos shot by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers, at least one of whom incited the crowds at the U.S. Capitol.

    Former FBI special agent John Guandolo (center) with two possible active FBI special agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

    In a 22-page order, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled against William Pope on a range of motions filed in his Jan. 6 criminal case since May 2023.

    Judge Contreras partially granted a government cross-motion to modify the evidence protective order in the case. “I now have the most restricted discovery access conditions of any Jan 6 defendant,” Mr. Pope wrote on X.

    “All I’m asking for is a fair fight in court, but he’s denying me rights to defend myself Pro Se that aren’t denied to attorneys,” Mr. Pope told The Epoch Times in a statement. “Even though some January 6 attorneys have filed highly sensitive materials as public exhibits, or leaked them on social media, I have not released a single sensitive or highly sensitive file governed by the protective order.”

    Mr. Pope, 38, publisher of the news website Free State Kansas, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, covering the protest and subsequent violence.

    Federal prosecutors charged him with civil disorder, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, impeding ingress or egress in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

    He faces a July 22 trial.

    Sought FBI Agents

    Mr. Pope most recently asked the court to compel federal prosecutors to identify all FBI special agents or other employees who were “material witnesses” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and produce “all photographs, videos, and records related to their presence.”

    In that motion, Mr. Pope cited two suspected FBI agents who attended Jan. 6 events at the Capitol with former special agent John Guandolo, who once served as the Bureau’s liaison with U.S. Capitol Police.

    Mr. Guandolo “has said in interviews that he was with several active-duty FBI agents on January 6, and that he and those agents have been interviewed by the FBI regarding their observations,” Mr. Pope wrote in his Feb. 12 motion.

    One of the men was seen on security video clapping enthusiastically as a large crowd of protesters rushed up the east steps to the Columbus Doors. “Oh, oh, oh man, this is huge,” the man said, heard on Mr. Guandolo’s cell phone video that showed the crowd ascending the steps.

    The other suspected agent was seen on Capitol Police security video meeting with an FBI SWAT team shortly after its BearCat tactical vehicle rolled onto the House Plaza at about 2:30 p.m. Twenty minutes later the SWAT team responded to the South Door after the shooting of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

    Federal prosecutors argued they have no obligation to investigate the identity or roles of FBI agents on Jan. 6. The judge concurred.

    “The Court agrees with the government and finds that defendant has failed to show that the government has an obligation to produce the requested material,” Judge Contreras wrote.

    In another motion denied by Judge Contreras, Mr. Pope sought to compel the U.S. Department of Justice to inventory and provide access to all Capitol Police security video it has had in its possession.

    Mr. Pope said footage is missing from some of the 1,800 USCP security cameras, and prosecutors have only produced 6,000 hours of security video in discovery. A U.S. House committee that oversees Capitol Police has released 20,000 hours of an expected 40,000 hours it will post publicly.

    William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, carries an American flag just inside the Senate Wing Door at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    Mr. Pope wrote that the importance of the security video—thousands of hours of which are now available on Rumble—is underscored by an investigation suggesting two Capitol police officers perjured themselves in the first Oath Keepers trial in the fall of 2022.

    Video obtained by Blaze Media showed that a supposed confrontation between Officer Harry Dunn and the Oath Keepers could not have occurred as he described under oath. Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus, who testified that he witnessed the confrontation, was in another part of Capitol grounds at the time.

    ‘Not Beneficial’

    “While Pope asserts that the missing camera footage is ‘highly relevant to January 6 cases, including [his] own,’ … he does not explain what he expects the footage to show or why that footage would assist in his defense,” Judge Contreras wrote. “Much of the camera footage that Pope requests depicts areas where Pope never set foot. That footage is therefore not beneficial to Pope’s case.”

    The judge also denied Mr. Pope’s Aug. 21, 2023, motion seeking video shot by more than two dozen members of the MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit on Jan. 6. He first requested access to the Electronic Surveillance Unit videos in March 2023.

    Former FBI special agent John Guandolo with suspected FBI agents Colleague 1 and Colleague 2, along with an unidentified man labeled in court filings as Colleague 3, on the Southwest Walk of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

    The August 2023 motion cites MPD internal affairs investigations of MPD officers Nicholas Tomasula and Lt. Zeb Barcus. Hundreds of pages of documents on Mr. Tomasula were heavily redacted, Mr. Pope said, and “the two reports have led to more questions about misconduct by undercover police.”

    Mr. Tomasula was identified as the MPD officer heard on video encouraging protesters on the Northwest Steps to keep going and enter the Capitol. He was heard participating in crowd chants such as, “Whose House? Our House!”

    At the foot of the Northwest Steps, as a protester climbed up a makeshift ladder onto the balustrade, Mr. Tomasula shouted: “C’mon, man, let’s go! Leave that [expletive],” his video showed. Mr. Tomasula got help from a protester climbing onto the balustrade, then shouted to protesters moving up the steps, “C’mon, go, go, go!”

    Federal prosecutors admitted in 2023 that Mr. Tomasula acted as a provocateur embedded in the crowd on Jan. 6.

    Judge Contreras concluded Electronic Surveillance Unit video is only relevant to the extent Mr. Pope can identify an undercover officer whose path he crossed.

    “While evidence of undercover officers instigating the riot on January 6 could—hypothetically—be helpful and material to Pope’s case, Pope’s motion ‘never identifies a single individual he interacted with whom he now suspects to be an undercover actor,’” Judge Contreras wrote.

    “Pope does not say that he himself spoke with or was induced by any undercover officer,” the judge wrote. “Therefore, he cannot make an entrapment defense with the evidence he seeks from the government, and the material he seeks is irrelevant and immaterial.”

    Mr. Pope complained that prosecutors restricted his access to some of the investigative materials, which he described as “highly explosive” and “exculpatory.”

    In previous filings, Mr. Pope described several self-identified Antifa supporters who were intercepted by undercover MPD officers on Jan. 6, including one who was carrying a gun.

    Metropolitan Police Department undercover detectives Ricardo Leiva and Michael Callahan were part of a three-man Electronic Surveillance Unit team at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. District Court/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    MPD officers made a traffic stop at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 of a vehicle containing three Antifa operatives: Jonathan Kelly, Logan Grimes, and Dempsey Mikula.

    “Undercover officers who stopped their vehicle said they had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons,” Mr. Pope wrote. “No footage of this incident has been produced by the government in discovery. However, Kelly live-streamed part of the police stop to Facebook.”

    Metropolitan Police arrested Mr. Grimes—who identifies as a woman and uses the name Leslie—for carrying a pistol without a license and being in possession of a high-capacity magazine and unregistered ammunition, according to Mr. Pope. The charges were dropped on Jan. 7, 2021.

    In a previous filing, Mr. Pope identified undercover MPD officer Ryan Roe, who encountered a still-unidentified protester seen cutting down green plastic temporary fencing on Capitol grounds. Mr. Roe said to #FenceCutterBulwark, “Appreciate it, brother,” according to his video.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 19:45

  • Luxury DC Apartment Building Replaces Front Desk Staff With Amazon Lockers, Sparking Tenant Protest 
    Luxury DC Apartment Building Replaces Front Desk Staff With Amazon Lockers, Sparking Tenant Protest 

    Tenants of a luxury apartment building blocks from the White House were furious this week after they discovered the building’s management company fired all front desk workers and replaced them with Amazon delivery lockers.

    Journalist Samuel Breslow of the media outlet The Forward wrote on X about tenants of CityCenterDC, a mixed-use development consisting of two condominium buildings, two rental apartment buildings, two office buildings, and a luxury hotel, on 10th St NW, or about a five-minute walk to the White House, “protested the surprise decision to fire front desk staff, replacing them with Amazon delivery lockers.”

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

    The building described the move to replace human workers with Amazon lockers as a “technology advancement aimed at enriching your stay.” 

    Apartments.com shows that CityCenterDC’s rent ranges from $2,500 a month for a studio to $15,300 for a luxury apartment. 

    On Instagram, user washingtonianprobs posted Breslow’s story. Folks there weren’t thrilled: 

    “All the crime and violence goin around the last thing they should do is leave the front desk unattended,” one Instagram user said. 

    Someone asked: “How did the property management company think that replacing the front desk ppl with lockers is the same?”

    “Goes to show how disconnected they are with people outside of their status. They don’t realize that replacing front desk staff with storgage boxes is taking away jobs from people and altering folks livelihood,” another user said.

     For ZH readers, this example of AI automation job loss is not surprising. Recall this Goldman note: “AI Will Lead To 300 Million Layoffs In The US And Europe.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 19:25

  • Saudi Arabia's Massive Futuristic Vanity Projects Falter Amid Gaza War
    Saudi Arabia’s Massive Futuristic Vanity Projects Falter Amid Gaza War

    Authored by Giorgio Cafiero via The Cradle

    Launched in 2017, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, a sprawling high-tech development on the northwestern Red Sea coast, was introduced as the crown jewel of Vision 2030. This futuristic desert megaproject, extending over some Jordanian and Egyptian territory, was cast as a bold leap toward economic diversification under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). But, recent geopolitical setbacks have raised significant concerns about the viability of some of NEOM’s components.

    Initially celebrated for its revolutionary design, The Line, a linear city within NEOM, was to redefine urban living. Yet, recent reports suggest a dramatic scaling back. Earlier this month, Bloomberg revealed a massive reduction in the metropolis’ scope – from 105 to 1.5 miles – and a decrease in likely inhabitants from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000 by 2030. Furthermore, funding uncertainties and workforce reductions indicate a project in jeopardy.

    While this adjustment does not signify a wholesale failure of Vision 2030, it does prompt a re-evaluation of the project’s most ambitious elements. 

    Experts suggest that The Line’s original scale was overly optimistic, lacking the necessary urban infrastructure for such an innovative endeavor. Financial and geopolitical challenges, including regional instability and insufficient foreign direct investment, further complicate NEOM’s future.

    Not so straight-forward 

    The drastic downsizing of The Line “appears to be a reassessment of timeline feasibility,” Dr Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, tells The Cradle. “There are many experimental, world-first dimensions within the NEOM gigaproject, and some are eventually going to need rightsizing or rethinking.”

    Also speaking to The Cradle, Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University, believes the project’s contraction to be a good thing:

    Reports that The Line may be scaled back significantly is actually a positive move if it injects greater realism into a project whose initial scale appeared fanciful and difficult to translate into reality. Greater pragmatism in designing and delivering the gigaprojects associated with Vision 2030 is a good thing and means there is a greater likelihood of the projects making it off the drawing board.

    Given financial and economic factors, The Line was never feasible as initially presented. Ultimately, the amount of wealth the Saudis generate from oil is not enough to finance the most ambitious of MbS’ Vision 2030 projects. And Riyadh has not been able to lure the levels of foreign direct investment needed to make these extremely expensive vanity projects realizable. 

    “The vast scope of [The Line] always struck me and many other observers as aspirational rather than realistic,” explains Gordon Gray, the former US ambassador to Tunisia. 

    Some analysts have pushed back against the recent avalanche of negative media coverage…

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    Speaking to The Cradle, Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North African analyst at risk intelligence company RANE, says: 

    I’d argue that the goals for The Line were unrealistic from the start, given that there’s virtually no urban infrastructure in the area, and it’s very difficult for cities to be started from scratch like that, regardless of the amount of investment poured in. Even if Saudi Arabia had, for example, done something extreme like declare NEOM to be their new capital city, it would still probably struggle to attract residents as we’ve seen from other historical examples like Brazil’s shift of its capital to Brasília.

    Nonetheless, The Line and other singular projects had a purpose that was not necessarily about actually implementing the projects themselves. “The point of The Line, in particular, was to create a raison de parler – for people to actually talk about Saudi Arabia, to create a massive public debate globally where people are saying there’s something amazing happening in the desert,” Dr Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, tells The Cradle. 

    It attracts attention. That sort of discourse – positive or negative – creates a buzz. That buzz was supposed to attract investors who wanted to be a part of this, help Saudi Arabia build a city of the future, and try to do something completely outlandish and absolutely unconventional.

    Gaza: a wrench in the works

    The leadership in Riyadh has understood that the success of Vision 2030 heavily depends on attracting substantial foreign direct investment into the Kingdom. Ultimately, stability in Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region is crucial.

    Consequently, Riyadh’s recent foreign policy has been less ideological, focusing instead on maintaining amicable terms with all major players in West Asia to advance Saudi business, commercial, and economic interests. 

    Within this context, Riyadh has worked to reach a peace deal with Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, made an effort to preserve the Beijing-brokered 2023 Saudi–Iranian détente, restored relations with Qatar and Syria, and mended fences with Turkiye.

    Therefore, beyond financial and economic constraints that require a reassessment of the most ambitious Vision 2030 projects, such as The Line, Israel’s brutal six-month war on Gaza and the expansion of that conflict into the Red Sea have created headwinds for Saudi Arabia’s geoeconomic plans.

    As Arhama Siddiqa, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, explains to The Cradle:

    Given the current instability in the Red Sea region, investors may hesitate to support a large-scale project like NEOM due to perceived risks. Even if the direct security threat to NEOM is minimal, the overall instability in the area can deter investors from committing substantial resources to a long-term venture. Additionally, the broader [West Asia] conflict further complicates the situation, adding another layer of uncertainty. Addressing these security concerns could require Saudi Arabia to allocate more resources to regional security measures, potentially diverting funds from the NEOM project.

    There is no denying that Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification agenda is vulnerable to naval operations in the Red Sea. NEOM and other Red Sea projects require vessels to be able to freely travel from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab al-Mandab and up to Saudi Arabia’s west coast. 

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    The Gaza war’s potential spillover into this vital waterway continues to raise concerns for Saudi officials about the impact on the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. These dynamics help explain Riyadh’s frustration with the White House for not leveraging its influence over Israel to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. It has led to Saudi Arabia’s decision to abstain from joining any US-led security initiatives and military operations in the Red Sea and Yemen.

    The Israel–NEOM connection 

    Israel’s geographic proximity to northwestern Saudi Arabia, its technological advancement, and its vibrant startup culture position the occupation state as a promising partner for Vision 2030 and the NEOM project, particularly in biotechnology, cybersecurity, and manufacturing. 

    Writing in March 2021, Dr Ali Dogan, previously a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, went as far as arguing that “relations with Israel are necessary for Saudi Arabia to complete NEOM.” 

    Dr Mohammad Yaghi, a research fellow at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, similarly stated that NEOM “requires peace and coordination with Israel, especially if the city is to have a chance of becoming a tourist attraction.” However, Saudi Arabia’s leadership role in the Islamic world, exemplified by the monarch’s title as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” makes any formal normalization of relations with Tel Aviv highly sensitive. 

    Initially, it was thought that while the UAE and Bahrain could establish overt relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia would continue to engage covertly, ensuring essential collaborations like those rumored in the tech sector could progress discreetly. 

    An example being in June 2020, when controversy arose over Saudi Arabia’s alleged engagement with an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which the Saudi embassy later denied.

    Yet, almost seven months into Israel’s campaign to annihilate Gaza, can Saudi Arabia still look to Tel Aviv as a partner in NEOM? It appears that amid ongoing crises in the region, chiefly the Gaza genocide, Riyadh must be careful to avoid being seen as cooperating with the Israelis in covert ways, and full-fledged normalization seems off the table for the foreseeable future. 

    Nonetheless, after the dust settles in Gaza and the Red Sea security crisis calms down, Saudi Arabia will likely maintain its interest in fostering ties with Israel as part of an “economic normalization” between the two countries. This could be important to Vision 2030’s future, particularly in NEOM. But Israel’s unprecedented military campaign in Gaza will likely alter West Asia in many ways for decades to come. Even after the current war in Gaza is over, anger toward Israel and the US will continue.

    Without a doubt, the Israeli–NEOM connection will be increasingly sensitive and controversial, both in the Kingdom and the wider region – a factor that the leadership in Riyadh cannot dismiss.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 19:05

  • Secret Service Agent Assigned To Kamala Harris Hospitalized After Fighting Other Agents
    Secret Service Agent Assigned To Kamala Harris Hospitalized After Fighting Other Agents

    A Secret Service agent assigned to protect Vice President Kamala Harris got into a physical altercation with several other agents Monday morning around 9 a.m. near Joint Base Andrews, located near Washington DC.

    The agent in question was immediately “removed from their assignment,” the Secret Service told the NY Post.

    “A US Secret Service special agent supporting the Vice President’s departure from Joint Base Andrews began displaying behavior their colleagues found distressing,” said Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications.

    According to CBS News, “the agent spouted gibberish, was speaking incoherently and provoked another officer physically,” and “pushed the special agent in charge while they were near the lounge of Joint Base Andrews.”

    They were immediately handcuffed and detained by other Secret Service agents who intervened, and ambulances were called to the scene. An initial medical evaluation concluded that there was no indication of substance abuse.

    The USSS remains in a temporary holding pattern until further information becomes available, the sources said. After the agent receives additional medical attention and further evaluation, it will be determined if they can return to work. An internal review will be conducted and the USSS will assess if the agent’s top secret security clearance will be removed for medical or disciplinary reasons, sources explained. -NBC News

    Harris was at the Naval Observatory at the time according to the USSS, and the incident had “no impact on her departure from Joint Base Andrews” on the day in question.

    According to RealClearPolitics journalist Susan Crabtree, “there are DEI concerns among the USSS community about the hiring of this agent,” adding “Other agents and officers within the USSS are asking questions about the agent’s hiring process, whether the USSS did enough to look into the agent’s background and monitor the agent’s mental well-being…”

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 18:45

  • The Fallacy That Rules The World
    The Fallacy That Rules The World

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    Smart people know to avoid fallacies.

    One of them is known as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

    It’s Latin for “after this, therefore because of this.”

    The classic example concerns the rooster and the sunrise.

    Every morning before the sun comes up, the rooster does his crazy crowing routine, waking up everyone around. Shortly after, the light begins to appear on the horizon.

    If you knew nothing else, and you watched this happen over and over, you might conclude that the rooster is causing the sun to rise.

    Of course, this is testable. You could kill the rooster and see what happens. The sun still comes up. But wait just a moment. Just the fact that this one rooster is dead doesn’t mean that all roosters are gone. Some rooster somewhere is crowing and causing the sun to rise. So your little experiment doesn’t disprove the theory.

    What a conundrum, right?

    If someone is convinced that a bird is controlling the sun, there is probably no way to convince him otherwise.

    We can laugh at this example. How can someone be so dumb? Actually, this basic fallacy affects all science in all times, all places, and all subjects. The presumption that a regular pattern showing something happens and then something else happens with regularity implies causation is baked into human thinking. Now and always.

    It’s a fallacy, meaning that it is not necessarily true. It could be true, however, subject to serious investigation. And therein lies the real problem. We need to figure out what causes what. But discerning causal agents from accidental ones is the biggest issue in all thinking.

    The need to know is baked into what it means to be a rational creature. We just cannot help ourselves. That’s why this fallacy persists everywhere.

    There is also the famous case of malaria. It was once believed that infections were worse at nightfall, so the theory was that it was caused by cold air at night. Not crazy, right? Except that the real reason was that the mosquitoes came out in the evenings. They were the real culprit. But a bad theory based on fallacy prevented many people from seeing it.

    My goodness, we were overwhelmed by this during the COVID-19 experience. The fake science was overwhelming.

    Day after day, we saw loads of fake science of this sort being dumped on the world.

    Look, California’s cases are down and California bans gatherings, therefore coercive measures are controlling virus spread!

    Not so fast.

    These factors could be completely unrelated. We might not even have good data on infections at all. Those are subject to testing (accurate or not) and might be completely wrong on a population level. Even if the data were correct, the low infections could be caused by weather, prior immunity, or something else that we have not considered.

    Early on, I can recall looking at these amazing real-time charts of infections and deaths and believing that I had a window into reality. Several times, I even posted things along the lines of “See, Arizona has achieved herd immunity,” without understanding that the data were wildly inaccurate and subject to testing, reporting, and a host of other factors. Even the data were suspect: Misclassification was rampant.

    And here too, the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc bit everyone extremely hard. But most of us went along with it.

    So crazy did it all become that people including bureaucrats at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started inventing nutty theories such as that masking protects against virus spread, which science had long proven to be untrue. It became even crazier: You can sit without a mask but walking and standing causes viruses to spread, so that’s when you have to wear a mask!

    Absolutely nuts!

    It was the same after vaccination.

    Countless famous people took to social media to announce they had COVID-19 but it was a mild case thanks to the vaccine. There is simply no way they could know that. They knew for sure that they had the vaccine and they knew for sure that their case of COVID-19 was mild. But believing that one caused the other was simply a matter of faith. It might have been mild regardless. It might have been milder. As time went on, we encountered many studies showing that more vaccination was associated with more infection. Did one cause the other? It’s hard to say.

    And yet vast numbers of vaccine studies in the past several years have been affected by this problem. Particularly vexing is the problem of the “healthy user bias,” which is that people who were vaccinated tend to be more compliant and conscientious in other ways too, which meant that initially, it seemed like they had better health outcomes from COVID-19 vaccination, but the results were actually attributable to this bias.

    This was revealed in later studies. But the problem of discerning cause and effect from random noise still persists.

    The field of medicine has long dealt with this problem. We are mortified that the practice of bleeding patients persisted for centuries even up to the 19th century. How could they have been so stupid? Well, they had a theory that disease was caused by bad humors in the blood so it needed to be drained. Then they observed that the patient got better.

    Well, the patient might have gotten better anyway and even faster without bleeding. But it took many centuries to finally realize that. Many non-allopathic medicine people had been screaming about this issue for a long time, but they were ignored as cranks. That’s because bleeding was a conventional practice endorsed by the people with the most professional prestige.

    Once you see this fallacy at work, you cannot unsee it. It’s everywhere in medicine but also in economics, health, horticulture, law and sociology, and all the physical world sciences. The gun debate is a good example. There is high crime and there are lots of guns, so people conclude that the guns cause the crime, whereas the presence of guns might simply be a response to crime and a means of protection. Without them, the crime would be far worse.

    The fallacy in question drives vast amounts of politics today. There is a tendency to blame any existing president for all existing economic conditions, but the real cause might date further back in time. Still, nearly every debate follows the same lines: This happened; therefore, his actions or inactions caused it. It could be true or it might be the same as the rooster and the sunrise.

    We flatter ourselves now that we are beyond such fallacies. They belong only to the superstition-ridden ages of the past. That’s complete nonsense. We are probably more inundated by this fallacy now than ever. Whatever it is that people trust and believe in at any particular time is what people identify as the key to curing whatever malady is around.

    Today, people believe in pharmaceuticals. Whatever the issue is, it can be solved by a new lab-created potion. As a result, we are soaked as a society in these, even though the evidence for many of them is scant. The more you look at, for example, the effect of psychiatric drugs, the less it becomes clear whether and to what extent these help or actually may worsen the real problem.

    It’s even true with antibiotics. All parents use amoxicillin on childhood ear infections today. But my grandmother swore by putting warm mineral oil in the ear and avoiding conventional meds completely. It took me only a few minutes to discover a 2003 study that randomized whether kids got herbal oils with or without antibiotics. Results: no difference.

    The implications are profound. We are so attached to pharma and allopathic strategies that we might be overlooking vast naturopathic and homeopathic methods that work better.

    Seizing on one solution and sticking with it prevents the human mind from being creative about other possible and better solutions. Generations can go by in which fallacies rule the day. We can laugh about roosters and sun, bleeding and disease, dances and rain, but how many times do we commit these fallacies in our world today but our dogmatic attachments prevent us from seeing them?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 18:25

  • Houthis Launch Attack On US Cargo & Navy Ships Following Two Weeks Of Quiet
    Houthis Launch Attack On US Cargo & Navy Ships Following Two Weeks Of Quiet

    Yemen’s Iran-linked Houthis have announced new aggressive actions in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea regions, saying late Wednesday that projectiles were launched against more US and Israeli-owned commercial vessels, and that a US warship was also targeted. This follows a period of relative quiet this month.

    Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a video address that an antiship ballistic missile was launched against the Maersk Yorktown cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, resulting in a direct hit.

    The US military subsequently confirmed the fresh attack on the “US-flagged, owned, and operated vessel with 18 US and four Greek crew members”; however, the statement indicated no casualties or damage. The projectile may have exploded near the ship without hitting it.

    File image, Maritime Executive

    “There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition, or commercial ships,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in the statement, without indicating whether there was any level of an actual direct strike on the ship. Commenting further, Maritime Executive details:

    They received a report from a vessel of an explosion in the water approximately 72 nautical miles southeast of the port of Djibouti. The statement only said that there had been an explosion “at a distance,” and that the crew and vessel were reported safe. 

    CENTCOM further described that within hours of the attack on the Maersk Yorktown, US forces “successfully engaged and destroyed” four drones over Yemen.

    The government of Greece this week also said it has been engaged in fresh counter-Houthi actions:

    The Greek Ministry of National Defense said on Thursday that one of the country’s military ships serving in the European Union’s naval mission to counter the Houthis in the Red Sea intercepted two drones launched towards a commercial ship from Yemen.

    The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) had earlier confirmed an incident some 72 nautical miles (133km) southeast of the port of Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden.

    These kind of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and off Yemen’s coast have somewhat waned of late, compared with the near daily intensity of the prior months, and some analysts have speculated that the Houthis are running low on their missile and drone arsenal. 

    Prior to Wednesday’s new incidents, the last significant Houthi attacks prior to that came two weeks ago. This could also be due to the prospect of some kind of Red Sea truce negotiations which have been reported of late.

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    A Yemeni official has been cited in regional outlet The National as saying, “In response to the Yemeni group’s attempts to target Israeli ships, the US has not only resorted to military action but also sought to convey proposals that would incentivize the militants to stop their attacks.”

    “Messages containing incentives were sent from the Americans to Sanaa in recent weeks. These messages were delivered through envoys and mediators, including western officials, with the Omani capital, Muscat, also playing a significant role,” the source added.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 18:05

  • Get Ready To Be Hammered By Property Taxes
    Get Ready To Be Hammered By Property Taxes

    It’s not just record capital gains taxes that Americans have to look forward to if they choose “4 more years, pause” of the senile occupant in the White House: As Epoch Times’ Jeffrey Tucker reports, property taxes are also about to soar.

    Below we excerpt from his latest report on where the Biden tax tsunami sill strike next:

    Get Ready to Be Hammered by Property Taxes

    There have been very few points of financial solace in the past few years apart from rising financial markets. Part of that has been an incredible increase in home valuations. This comes from inflation, yes, but also from shifts in supply and demand for home purchases. Demand is as it always was but realizing it is another matter.

    The problem is on the supply side. In most places around the country, homes are not going on the market at the same and predictable pace they once were. This is for reasons of soaring costs of new mortgages. Many homeowners purchased back when interest rates were absurdly low and negative in real terms, perhaps 2 or 3 percent.

    Selling now means paying huge capital gains taxes and then applying for a new mortgage at 7.5 percent. The implications of that seemingly small change are actually gigantic, and making it work without paying drastically more in monthly bills means moving to a cheaper area of the country or downsizing the quality and size of the home.

    Rather than make that choice, many homeowners are stuck living right where they are even if they would prefer some other job or home elsewhere. They are frozen in place but, hey, at least these people have homes that they own, right?

    Not only that but the valuation that you see on Zillow is going up and up. Yay!

    Not so fast. In the United States, you pay property taxes on your home. This reality gives rise to the perennial question: do you really own your home if maintaining that title requires paying huge property taxes on the place annually? If you don’t pay, the house is taken over by the state, period. It feels a bit like renting doesn’t it? Indeed, the difference between renting and owning can get a bit blurry.

    Property taxes are the way schools are funded in the United States generally speaking and with some exceptions. Taxes are organized according to school districts, the lines of which are extremely strict. The identical home one street from the next can have a big difference in price based entirely on market perceptions of quality of the schools in the relevant district.

    This is a major reason why “school choice,” whereby anyone from any district can attend any other, has never made much progress politically in the United States. It means a tremendous scrambling of ownership valuations. No one wants that.

    You pay these taxes whether you use the schools or not and whether or not you even have children at all. That’s what makes them public schools. The public shares in the expense but the reality is that it is not the public but just property owners from one district to another, with subsidies added by state governments and the federal government, plus “booster” organizations formed by parents.

    If you are living in a district and stuck in a home because you cannot move due to expense, you are still stuck paying taxes regardless. These are assessed annually based not on the price at which you purchased the home but on the value of the home at present market value. That doesn’t seem fair either. Why should you continue to have to pay more and more in taxes based on valuation that you are not actually seeing in any kind of profit?

    You are a sitting duck, forced to cough up whatever the assessors and tax collectors decide you have to pay.

    This year alone, we are seeing huge increases in market valuations that are reflected in taxes you have to pay whether you use public schools or not. The taxes on many mid-sized homes in Texas, for example, are going up thousands of dollars right now. The fear in Georgia is so large that some activists have put on the ballot an initiative to cap property taxes to insulate them from market pressures.

    Adding to the frustration here is the terrible reality of school closures from 2020–2022. Even if you wanted to use the schools, you could not because the authorities said that there were viruses in the schools that the children would spread and bring home. There was never any evidence at all that schools were uniquely guilty of viral spread but the perception was used as the excuse to force everyone into Zoom school, which taught the kids nothing.

    We are now faced with years of learning loss that keeps getting worse, not to mention soaring absenteeism. The routines of an entire generation were disrupted and not returned to normal.

    Continue reading at Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 04/25/2024 – 17:45

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