- Lukashenko Confirms Russian Tactical Nukes Already Being Transferred To Belarus
Lukashenko Confirms Russian Tactical Nukes Already Being Transferred To Belarus
Despite urgent warnings from US and Western allies, Moscow is moving forward with plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus. The two longtime allies which form what they call a ‘union state’ signed a deal Thursday to formalize deployment of Russian nukes on Belarusian soil. All of this comes dangerously as Ukraine’s cross-border sabotage attacks on Russian territory have clearly escalated.
Alarmingly for Ukraine and its NATO backers, Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko said soon after the deal was signed that the transfer of non-strategic nuclear weapons from Russia to Belarus is already underway.
Iskander tactical missile system And Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said in Minsk alongside Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu: “Deployment of nonstrategic nuclear weapons is an effective response to the aggressive policy of countries unfriendly to us,” according to regional media.
Additionally Shoigu stated that “In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere.”
Starting months ago international reports said that Russian tactical nukes would soon be in Belarus, but there were conflicting reports over whether it had actually happened yet.
Additionally, as AP highlights, “Also unclear is how many nuclear weapons would be kept in Belarus. The U.S. government believes Russia has about 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, which include bombs that can be carried by aircraft, warheads for short-range missiles and artillery rounds.”
All of this was put in motion starting in late March, when Russian President Vladimir Putin first announced that Minsk requested the presence of Russian tactical nukes. According to TASS at the time, “As the Russian leader indicated, the construction of storage facilities for tactical nuclear weapons will be completed in Belarus by July 1.”
“Moscow has already provided Minsk with Iskander tactical missile systems capable of carrying nuclear weapons and has helped Minsk to re-equip its military aircraft to carry specialized weapons,” TASS noted in its prior reporting. “As well, Belarusian missile crews and pilots have undergone training in Russia.”
NATO has called the move “dangerous and irresponsible” – while EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell previously said, “Belarus hosting Russian nuclear weapons would mean an irresponsible escalation & threat to European security. Belarus can still stop it, it is their choice. The EU stands ready to respond with further sanctions.” Currently the EU is preparing an 11th round of anti-Russia sanctions.
Lukashenko tells a TV reporter that the transfer of nuclear warheads from Russia to Belarus has already begun, though he’s a bit evasive when asked if a nuke is already on Belarusian soil. pic.twitter.com/eD7j2lPS0g
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) May 25, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But it must be recalled that the Unites States stations tactical nuclear weapons in places like Turkey as well some NATO locations in Europe. Turkey is merely across the Black Sea from Russia. This NATO ‘nuclear sharing’ program has been a reality for decades.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu additionally explained on Thursday that NATO is using the Ukraine crisis to build up its military infrastructure there:
“NATO is using the Ukrainian crisis as a pretext for building up its groups. Another stage of the alliance’s expansion has been launched. Military infrastructure is being modernized in Eastern and Central Europe, strike weapons are being deployed, and the scale and intensity of joint exercises are increasing,” Shoigu said at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Council of Defense Ministers.
He also highlighted “the growing aggressive rhetoric and joint ‘nuclear missions’ by NATO countries in Eastern Europe for practicing the use of nuclear weapons delivery systems, as well as the upgrading of the components of the US global missile defense system.”
This seems an ‘answer’ to the Western allies in terms of the rationale for proceeding with tactical nukes in Belarus.
But for some important context…
You will find more infographics at Statista
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/26/2023 – 02:45 - Thanks To Sanctions, The US Is Losing Its Grip On The Middle East
Thanks To Sanctions, The US Is Losing Its Grip On The Middle East
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Last Friday, members of the Arab League welcomed the Syrian regime back to the organization. Representatives from several Arab member states shook Syrian leader Assad’s hand and gave him, a “warm” reception according to several news outlets. Syria was suspended from the league in 2011, but on May 7 in Cairo the league agreed to reinstate the Assad regime.
This represents a reversal from years of isolation placed on the regime, and a break with US policy which remains staunchly opposed to Assad. Indeed, the League’s rapprochement with Assad should be seen as a repudiation of US policy, and especially as a sign of how Washington’s influence among Leage members—the most powerful of which are Saudi Arabia and Egypt—has waned.
Moreover, this is just the latest bad news for Washington’s influence in the region coming mere weeks after Iran and Saudi Arabia reestablished diplomatic relations.
In both cases, we find regimes that Washington had sought to isolate and sanction, but both states have instead been expanding their relations with other states in the region with the help of China. Meanwhile, both Beijing and Riyadh have increased their ties with Russia. These development help illustrate how growing US attempt to impose—or threaten to impose—hard line sanctions against a growing number of regimes has only accelerated a global movement away from the US dollar and away from Washington’s orbit.
Saudi Arabia Increasing Ties with Iran and Syria
In March of this year, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced a resumption of relations following a deal brokered by China. The Saudi regime—a longtime Washington ally—had apparently not told the Biden administration of the meetings with Iran and China. Shortly after the agreement was announced, the administration dispatched CIA Director William Burns to Saudi Arabia where he reportedly “expressed frustration with the Saudis,” telling “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the U.S. has felt blindsided by Riyadh’s rapprochement with Iran and Syria.”
Although the White House now claims to be supportive of the new agreement between Riyadh and Tehran, this support is really just an admission that there’s not much Washington can do about it. After all, for decades, US policy has been to isolate Tehran and in recent years, Washington has imposed harsh sanctions, including Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” designed to cripple Iran even more. The Biden administration took no significant steps to reverse the Trump position. The Saudi regime’s newfound openness to Iran is thus contrary to US policy, and it is not plausible that Washington is in any way pleased with the change.
From Washington’s perspective, the situation got even worse this month when the Arab League readmitted Syria, also apparently without consulting Washington. Since 2011, the US has imposed draconian sanctions on Syrian in a manner similar to Iran. Syria’s newfound reintegration into the Arab League is thus also contrary to the US’s ongoing efforts to isolate the Assad regime which the US has repeatedly claimed must by subjected to “regime change.”
Growing Ties with Russia
New overtures by the Saudis toward both Syria and Iran also run afoul of Washington because both Iran and Syria are important allies of Moscow. With the US now inflicting harsh sanctions on the Russian regime, anything that helps Damascus and Tehran has the potential to help Moscow as well.
Both the Saudis and the Chinese have shown growing efforts to forge ties directly with the Russian regime as well. At a Chinese-Russian summit in February 2022, both regimes stated they plan to forge even closer ties. This has apparently not changed even after a year of heightened hostilities from the US and NATO aimed at Moscow. In fact, it is likely that Russia-China relations are closer than they’ve ever been in the post-Soviet era. This has clearly been a problem for Washington as China continues to provide an important market for Russian exports in the face of US sanctions. Both states have also made efforts to move away from the US dollar and settle international trade in other currencies.
This might all be dismissed as the scheming of foreign powers that were never reliable “partners” or allies of the US in the first place. But Saudi Arabia is another matter, and the Saudis are apparently willing to play nice with the Russians, Chinese, and other members of the latest supposed “Axis of Evil.”
The Saudi regime has grown closer to Moscow in the wake of US sanctions against Russia. For example, “Saudi Arabia and the UAE, traditional Middle Eastern allies of the United States, are not shying away from importing, storing, trading, or re-exporting Russian fuels despite American efforts to persuade them to join a crackdown on Russian attempts to evade the Western sanctions on its oil.”
In other words, US efforts to get the Arab world to isolate Russia are failing, and Russian ties with the Middle East are actually improving.
This can be seen in the fact that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)—which is dominated by its largest producer, Saudi Arabia—has shown no interest in helping the US in its sanctions war against Russia. Instead, OPEC has cut production levels to raise oil prices, which benefits Moscow. The US has opposed these cuts, and now some anti-Russia factions in the US are exploring ways to punish OPEC for its lack of enthusiasm in cooperating with US efforts against Russia.
At this point, a trend has clearly emerged: as the US further attempts to tighten its geopolitical grip on the global economy through economic sanctions, fewer and fewer states worldwide appear interested in playing along.
Indeed, the spread of US sanctions provides good reason for other regimes to increase efforts to forge close ties with other regimes as insurance against becoming the victims of US policy. After all, the US has been quite free and easy with threatening “uncooperative” countries with so-called secondary sanctions as a punishment for doing business with states like Syria and Russia. The US has been explicit in this and in February, as CNN reported at the time, “the United States is ramping up efforts to choke off Russia’s economy and it has set its sight on the Middle East. . . . A top US Treasury official arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday to warn the regional business hub that helping Moscow evade sanctions wouldn’t be without consequences.” China had already been “warned” in a similar fashion.
Yet, it appears that the US’s ongoing sanctions war against a growing percentage of the world population is having the opposite of its intended effect. The US threatens to sanction Saudi Arabia and China, and in return, both countries become even more willing to seek cooperation with some of the regimes Washington has attacked the most.
While Washington pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy throughout the Middle East, Beijing brokers deals to increase regional stability. While the US ratchets up efforts to isolate its many enemies, the Chinese, the Saudis, the Arab League, and OPEC all shrug and look to increasing international communication and trade. The Washington foreign policy establishment shows few signs that it is even noticing. The US regimes foreign policy “tool box” continues to be centered on sanctions, violence, and making demands on both its allies and its professed enemies. The rest of the world is moving on, however, and Washington may be among the last to accept the new reality.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/26/2023 – 02:00 - Rein In The FBI: Put An End To Their Gestapo Tactics
Rein In The FBI: Put An End To Their Gestapo Tactics
Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“One of the creeping hands of totalitarianism running through the democracy is the Federal Bureau of Investigation… Because why does the FBI do all this? To scare the hell out of people… They work for the establishment and the corporations and the politicos to keep things as they are. And they want to frighten and chill the people who are trying to change things.”
– Howard Zinn, historian
Power corrupts. We know this.
In fact, we know this from experience learned the hard way at the hands of our own government.
So why is anyone surprised to learn that the FBI, one of the most power-hungry and corrupt agencies within the police state’s vast complex of power-hungry and corrupt agencies, misused a massive government surveillance database more than 300,000 times in order to target American citizens?
This is how the government operates, after all.
First, they seek out extraordinary powers acquired in the wake of some national crisis—in this case, warrantless surveillance powers intended to help the government spy on foreign targets suspected of engaging in terrorism—and then they use those powers against the American people.
According to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FBI repeatedly misused Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to spy on the communications of two vastly disparate groups of Americans: those involved in the George Floyd protests and those who may have taken part in the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol.
This is par for the course for the FBI, whose modus operandi has historically been to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” perceived threats to the government’s power.
Indeed, the FBI has a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures.
Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, the FBI’s targets were civil rights activists, those suspected of having Communist ties, and anti-war activists. In more recent decades, the FBI has expanded its reach to target so-called domestic extremists, environmental activists, and those who oppose the police state.
In 2019, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism, without any apparent thought for the Constitution’s prohibitions on such overreach.
That misguided pledge sheds a curious light on the FBI’s ongoing spree of SWAT team raids, surveillance, disinformation campaigns, fear-mongering, paranoia, and strong-arm tactics meted out to dissidents on both the right and the left.
Yet while these overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear, none of this is new.
Indeed, the FBI’s love affair with totalitarianism can be traced back to the Nazi police state.
As historian Robert Gellately recounts, the Nazi police state was so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.
Since then, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and used them repeatedly against American citizens.
With every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.
These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where secret police control the populace through intimidation, fear and official lawlessness on the part of government agents.
Consider the extent to which the FBI’s far-reaching powers to surveil, detain, interrogate, investigate, prosecute, punish, police and generally act as a law unto themselves resemble those of their Nazi cousins, the Gestapo.
Just like the Gestapo, the FBI has vast resources, vast investigatory powers, and vast discretion to determine who is an enemy of the state.
Much like the Gestapo spied on mail and phone calls, FBI agents have carte blanche access to the citizenry’s most personal information.
Much like the Gestapo’s sophisticated surveillance programs, the FBI’s spying capabilities can delve into Americans’ most intimate details (and allow local police to do so, as well).
Much like the Gestapo’s ability to profile based on race and religion, and its assumption of guilt by association, the FBI’s approach to pre-crime allows it to profile Americans based on a broad range of characteristics including race and religion.
Much like the Gestapo’s power to render anyone an enemy of the state, the FBI has the power to label anyone a domestic terrorist.
Much like the Gestapo infiltrated communities in order to spy on the German citizenry, the FBI routinely infiltrates political and religious groups, as well as businesses.
Just as the Gestapo united and militarized Germany’s police forces into a national police force, America’s police forces have largely been federalized and turned into a national police force.
Just as the Gestapo carried out entrapment operations, the FBI has become a master in the art of entrapment.
Just as the Gestapo’s secret files on political leaders were used to intimidate and coerce, the FBI’s attempts to target and spy on anyone suspected of “anti-government” sentiment have been similarly abused.
The Gestapo became the terror of the Third Reich by creating a sophisticated surveillance and law enforcement system that relied for its success on the cooperation of the military, the police, the intelligence community, neighborhood watchdogs, government workers for the post office and railroads, ordinary civil servants, and a nation of snitches inclined to report “rumors, deviant behavior, or even just loose talk.”
Likewise, as countless documents make clear, the FBI has had no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians, spy on celebrities and high-ranking government officials, and intimidate and attempt to discredit dissidents of all stripes.
In fact, borrowing heavily from the Gestapo, between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted an intensive domestic intelligence program, termed COINTELPRO, intended to neutralize domestic political dissidents. As Congressman Steve Cohen explains, “COINTELPRO was set up to surveil and disrupt groups and movements that the FBI found threatening… many groups, including anti-war, student, and environmental activists, and the New Left were harassed, infiltrated, falsely accused of criminal activity .”
Sound familiar? The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Those targeted by the FBI under COINTELPRO for its intimidation, surveillance and smear campaigns included: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, the Black Panther Party, Billie Holiday, Emma Goldman, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Felix Frankfurter, John Lennon, and hundreds more.
The Church Committee, the Senate task force charged with investigating COINTELPRO abuses in 1975, denounced the government’s abuses:
“Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.”
The report continued:
“Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed—including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.”
Whether 50 years ago or in the present day, the treatment being doled out by the government’s lethal enforcers has remained consistent, no matter the threat.
The FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s time to rein in the Federal Bureau of Intimidation’s war on political freedom.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 23:40 - Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs Will Kill As Many As Cancer By 2050; UN Report
Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs Will Kill As Many As Cancer By 2050; UN Report
Deaths from drug-resistant infections are set to skyrocket by 2050, according to the UN 2023 report ‘Bracing for Superbugs: Strengthening environmental action in the One Health response to antimicrobial resistance.’
Unless drastic action is taken to tackle the problem, it could also lead to a GDP shortfall of $3.4 trillion annually in the next decade and push 24 more people into extreme poverty.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, according to recent estimates, in 2019, 1.27 million deaths were directly attributed to drug-resistant infections globally, while 4.95 million deaths were linked with bacterial AMR. That’s now well above the death counts of major killers HIV/AIDS and malaria, which were estimated to have claimed the lives of 860,000 and 640,000, respectively, that year. As the following chart shows, antibiotic-resistant infections could kill as many as 10 million people in just three decades – on par with the 2020 death toll from cancer.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Although the risks of AMR will impact people worldwide, Low-Income Countries (LICs) and Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) are expected to see the highest death tolls. By region, Asia is predicted to see the highest number of AMR-related deaths per 10,000 population in 2050 (4,730,000), followed by Africa (4,150,000), Latin America (392,000), Europe (390,000), North America (317,000) and Oceania (22,000).
According to the report, AMR also exacerbates inequalities within societies and so groups including women, children, migrants, refugees, people employed in sectors such as agriculture or healthcare, as well as those living in poverty will be particularly vulnerable to drug-resistant infections.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 23:20 - Legislation To Block Biden's ATF Rule Stalls As Millions Set To Become Felons Overnight
Legislation To Block Biden’s ATF Rule Stalls As Millions Set To Become Felons Overnight
Submitted by Gun Owners of America,
Most Americans are unaware that a new rule from President Biden’s ATF is less than one week away from turning millions of fellow citizens into felons overnight.
The new rule targets firearms that utilize a brace, a device originally designed to aid disabled veterans in shooting guns without assistance. These braces were approved for sale and use by ATF themselves.
An estimated 40 million of these firearms are owned by law-abiding citizens. Those citizens, unless aware of the ATF’s rule change, will become felons on June 1st – unless the House votes on H. J. Res. 44 to overturn the ban using the Congressional Review Act.
This process allows both chambers of Congress to pass a resolution of disapproval to nullify the regulation, and a vote in the Senate would not be subject to filibuster rules.
When the clock strikes midnight on May 31st, up to 40,000,000 pistol-braced firearms will be deemed illegal by the ATF.
And the law-abiding Americans who own these guns will become felons.
Congress can stop this tyranny by passing my bill, H.J.Res. 44.
But we must act NOW.
— Rep. Andrew Clyde (@Rep_Clyde) May 23, 2023
The Republican-controlled House has already cleared the resolution through committee. Currently, there are 189 cosponsors of the bill. But for some reason, it is not scheduled a vote before Congress goes into recess or the rule goes into effect.
This vote is extremely important because it would force members of the Senate, with vulnerable Democrats in gun-friendly states, to go on the record while answering this question: will you vote to allow this administration to turn many of your constituents into felons overnight?
Even though the CRA likely would be vetoed by the President, getting these members of Congress on record holds them accountable to their constituents. It would look ridiculous if they voted no on an issue like this which affects such a large swath of the population, but then turned around and preached about being “pro-gun.”
Ben from GOA explains why the ATF’s ‘free’ tax stamp for your braced firearms isn’t exactly free…
This is where we need your help.
You can call your elected officials at (202) 224-3121.
Tell them to demand that your representative tell Speaker McCarthy to schedule a vote for this important issue that impacts millions of Americans.
And if they aren’t already, let them know to support S.J. RES. 20 if they’re in the Senate & H.J. RES. 20 if they’re in the House of Representatives
* * *
We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 23:00 - Iowa Poll: Trump Holds 3-to-1 Lead Over DeSantis
Iowa Poll: Trump Holds 3-to-1 Lead Over DeSantis
Authored by Jake Bevan via RealClear Wire,
An abortive rally and an expanding field of challengers hasn’t hurt Donald Trump’s standing in Iowa, according to a new poll from Emerson College. In results released Thursday morning, 62% of Republican voters indicated they would choose Trump as the party’s nominee, giving the former president a 3-to-1 margin over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who clocked in at 20%. Mike Pence and Nikki Haley are tied for third with 5%.
DeSantis, who formally declared his run Wednesday during a Twitter livestream with Elon Musk, has long been considered the most significant challenger to Trump for the GOP nomination, but the gap between the two has been expanding. Although the governor made a pair of widely covered visits to Iowa earlier this month, any corresponding boost in the polls has yet to materialize. The Emerson survey places him about on par with the current RCP national average.
Nonetheless, the DeSantis campaign may have exposed a fault line within the GOP’s base. The new poll found that although Trump was preferred by Republican voters across the board, he was especially favored by those under the age of 35 (75%) and without a college degree (70%). DeSantis is much closer among Republicans with a postgraduate degree.
The poll found that either candidate would beat President Biden handily in Iowa if the election were held today. A rematch between Trump and Biden shows a 49%-38% Trump lead in the Hawkeye State, with 10% voting third party and 6% undecided. DeSantis leads Biden 45%-38%.
Despite this — and despite a meager 35% job approval rating in the state — Iowa Democrats remain united behind Biden. Emerson found 69% of them ready to support his reelection in 2024. Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes in a distant second at 11%.
The survey also showed that the top concern among Iowans is the economy, with 31% of all voters citing it as the most important issue facing their state. This was followed by education (15%), “threats to democracy” (15%), immigration (10%), abortion access (9%), and health care (8%).
Election integrity continues to be an especially divisive issue. Although the majority of those polled stated that Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was legitimate, 46% of Iowa voters — including 43% of independents — said it was not. There was, predictably, a split along party lines: 91% of Democrats believe the election results to be sound, and 78% of Republicans do not.
Iowans are also anxious for their state’s caucus to retain its first-in-the-nation status, a roughly 50-year-old tradition that has cemented Iowa as a cornerstone of the American political landscape and transformed the sparsely populated, rural state into a kind of presidential power broker. Its status has been threatened this year following a move by Democrats to swap Iowa with South Carolina in their primary lineup.
About three-fourths of voters found it “very” (40%) or “somewhat” (34%) important that Iowa keep its perch as first in the nation. Republicans were particularly animated by the issue, with 86% saying it was important.
Voters in Iowa are also divided, though less informed, when it comes to the looming prospect of America’s first-ever default on its national debt. Half of them (49%) are against raising the debt ceiling, compared to 36% in favor, with 16% unsure.
The one area where Iowans from both parties unequivocally agreed? The need for televised presidential debates. A whopping 92% of all caucus voters found that participation in debates was important prior to making a decision. Trump has cited his poll numbers as proof that he need not debate with any of his party’s numerous upstart candidates. Iowans do not agree.
Emerson’s poll was conducted May 19-23 among 1,064 registered voters. The margin of error is roughly 2.9 percentage points.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 22:20 - Who Made The Most US Unicorn Acquisitions Since 1997?
Who Made The Most US Unicorn Acquisitions Since 1997?
The elusive unicorn is no longer a myth in the U.S. startup world, with over a thousand private startups reaching a $1 billion valuation in the last 25 years.
While some of these startups eventually go public and go on to become household names, it’s also common for founders to exit through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), by selling their startup to another organization. In fact, over half of the 1,110 unicorns in the U.S. have made some sort of an exit—either through an IPO, a direct listing, a SPAC or an acquisition—since 1997.
Ilya Strebulaev, professor of finance and private equity at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, brings us this visualization featuring the companies that acquired the most unicorns over the last 25 years.
Strebulaev’s database lists 137 private and public companies along with PE firms who’ve acquired at least one unicorn since 1997, totaling 177 acquisitions.
The Biggest U.S. Unicorn Acquirers
In total, 27 companies have acquired two or more unicorns, accounting for nearly 38% of all acquisitions. 110 companies have acquired just one unicorn.
Company/ PE Group Acquired Meta 5 Cisco 4 Alphabet 4 Amazon 3 Nortel Networks 3 Bristol-Myers Squibb 3 Johnson & Johnson 3 Merck & Co. 3 AT&T 3 Recruit Holdings 2 IBM 2 Microsoft 2 Thoma Bravo 2 Headspace Health 2 Allergan 2 Qualcomm 2 Rakuten 2 Adobe Systems 2 Eli Lilly 2 Vista Equity 2 Dell 2 Uber 2 Oracle 2 Nestle 2 Lucent Technologies 2 Broadcom Corporation 2 GlaxoSmithKline 2 BlackBerry 2 Searchlight Capital Partners 1 Singtel 1 Vmware 1 Internet Capital Group 1 Hellman & Friedman 1 AppLovin 1 Ciena Corporation 1 Redback Networks 1 Aether Systems 1 Fresenius Medical Care 1 Electronic Arts 1 Genentech 1 Inktomi 1 VistaJet 1 Ariba 1 Keurig Dr Pepper 1 Fullscreen 1 Sycamore Networks 1 Novartis 1 TP ICAP 1 eBay 1 DoveBid 1 McKesson 1 IG Group 1 Empower Retirement 1 Dentsply Sirona 1 Novo Nordisk 1 Centocor 1 Bausch Health 1 Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma 1 Medtronic 1 Mubadala Investment Company 1 Cint Group 1 Qualtrics 1 Rocket Companies 1 Saudi Arabia’s PIF 1 Prosus 1 Cigna 1 One Medical 1 Exact Sciences 1 Teladoc Health 1 Ericsson 1 SoFi 1 PayPal Holdings 1 Bayer 1 Monsanto 1 AMD 1 Aurora 1 Marvell International 1 Bill.com 1 ADC 1 Dealertrack 1 Cox Enterprises 1 L’Oreal 1 AstraZeneca 1 Workday 1 Iron Mountain 1 Splunk 1 Stonepeak 1 American Express 1 OfferUp 1 VMware 1 Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan 1 Groupon 1 Allstate Corporation 1 LinkedIn 1 SAP 1 Mindbody 1 Mallinckrodt 1 Walmart 1 GMT Communications 1 Brightstar Capital 1 Enterprise Holdings 1 Healtheon Corporation 1 Apple 1 PetSmart 1 Epiphany 1 Rice Energy 1 Unilever 1 SBA Communications 1 Bridgepoint Advisers 1 Aurea 1 Vector Capital 1 FireEye 1 Littlejohn & Co 1 Alexion 1 SoftBank Investment Advisers 1 Francisco Partners 1 Betfair Group 1 Shift Technologies 1 Hudson’s Bay 1 Illumina 1 Hewlett Packard Enterprise 1 AbbVie 1 Salesforce 1 Hanergy 1 Teleflex 1 Twilio 1 Okta 1 Celgene 1 NantCell 1 VMware & EMC Corp 1 Intuit 1 Yahoo! 1 Netmarble Games 1 F5 Networks 1 Roche 1 Centerbridge Partners 1 Total 177 Meta, the parent company of Facebook, leads the pack with the most unicorn acquisitions in the U.S., purchasing five unicorns since its founding in 2008, including: Kustomer, WhatsApp, Instagram, CTRL-Labs, and Oculus VR.
Notably, WhatsApp—which closed at a purchase price of $19 billion—was Meta’s most expensive acquisition yet, over nine times their next most expensive purchase, Oculus VR.
Meanwhile, Alphabet (now the parent company of Google) and Cisco are tied in second place with four U.S. unicorn acquisitions each.
- Alphabet: YouTube, Actifio, Nest Labs, Looker Data Sciences
- Cisco: Cerent, Duo Security, AppDynamics, Jasper
Unlike its Big Tech peers, Apple has only made the one U.S. unicorn acquisition: navigation company HopStop that helped bring public transit features to Apple Maps.
Meanwhile, 56% of acquirers received venture capital funding of their own when they were private companies. This includes pack leaders like Meta, Cisco, Alphabet, and Amazon.
Are Unicorn Acquisitions Slowing Down?
Unicorn acquisitions are driven by two factors: the rate at which new unicorns are minted, and the climate for M&A transactions more broadly.
To begin with, the minting of new unicorns is largely influenced by the venture funding environment. Funding opportunities increase when interest rates go down, which makes riskier, venture-scale ideas more enticing. During the last decade of persistently low interest rates up until 2022, unicorns flourished more than ever.
Meanwhile, as tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta began seeing outsized profits in the 2010s, venture investors and their LPs looked to get in on the ground floor of tech startups that could emulate their success, often paying premium valuations for the chance. Simultaneously, big tech looked to acquire unicorns themselves, both to augment their business lines and to squash potential competitors.
However, the era of “easy money” may have come to an end, and privately-held startups have seen valuations drop in recent years. This means that for the next little while—at least until monetary policy stops tightening—unicorns could become a rarer sight.
Unicorn acquisitions may also see a similar fate. Persistent inflation and the government anti-trust push are just some of the other factors that have led to VC-backed startup acquisitions falling to their lowest quarterly levels in a decade. The more expensive the valuation, the harder to find a buyer, which means that some unicorns may even lose their $1 billion tag even when they do get acquired.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 22:00 - Dangerous Global Shift From Dollar Driven By CCP And US Policy, Experts Say
Dangerous Global Shift From Dollar Driven By CCP And US Policy, Experts Say
Authored by Alex Newman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The trend away from the U.S. dollar in global trade and finance is accelerating rapidly as inflation persists, government debt levels explode, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) roams the planet negotiating deals in other currencies.
A Chinese bank employee counts US dollar bills at a bank counter in Nantong in China’s eastern Jiangsu province on Aug. 6, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images) The economic and political implications of the dollar’s possible loss of its prized status as global reserve currency are hard to overstate, according to experts.
In fact, such a development—if and when it occurs—could prove catastrophic to U.S. consumers as their spending power evaporates, economists are warning amid debt-ceiling negotiations that have sent tremors around the world.
Numerous analysts who spoke with The Epoch Times warned that the CCP and other U.S. adversaries were actively advancing the global effort to undermine the dollar.
However, current and former U.S. lawmakers and policymakers also placed much of the blame on the Biden administration, U.S. government spending, and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies.
“The dollar is clearly at risk from foreign enemies who wish to challenge American power and domestic fools who believe the American credit card has no limits on spending,” explained Kevin Freeman, host of the Economic War Room and an authority on economic warfare.
In comments to The Epoch Times, Freeman, who has briefed top U.S. military officials and policymakers, pointed to CCP strongman Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin as foreign adversaries seeking to undermine the dollar.
The Saudis and numerous powers across Africa and Latin America have joined the “anti-dollar cabal” in recent months, he added.
But the U.S. government deserves some of the blame for the developments, he said.
“Sadly, we are making it easy for them with massive debt increases, an erratic foreign policy, and Washington’s arrogance that ignores the threat,” said Freeman, who also serves as a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy.
Multiple members of Congress who spoke with The Epoch Times echoed the concerns about the Biden administration’s role in the accelerating shift away from the dollar.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) pointed to the president himself. “Joe Biden’s war mongering, runaway inflation, and irresponsible spending sprees have threatened our currency’s value,” he said.
A broad range of experts who spoke with The Epoch Times were divided on when or even if the U.S. dollar might lose its status as global reserve currency, and what that could mean for the U.S. economy and the American people.
While many are warning of calamity, some even said there may be a “silver lining” to the U.S. dollar losing its global position.
But regardless of when or how the saga plays out, the significance of the trends surrounding the U.S. dollar and its role in the world will be profound and highly disruptive at the very least, experts said.
De-dollarization
Thanks to the unchallengeable supremacy of the United States in the aftermath of World War II and the dollar’s nominal backing by gold at the time, and later its endorsement by oil exporters as the “petro-dollar,” the American currency has reigned supreme among currencies for over 70 years.
The dollar still benefits from what is known as the “network effect” as well as the fact that U.S. capital markets are the deepest and most liquid in the world, experts told The Epoch Times.
But if current trends away from the dollar and political instability continue, analysts say the American currency’s coveted status as the global reserve could be shaken or even lost for good. In fact, the process is already underway, some experts warned.
The dollar’s share of global reserves just two decades ago was at about 75 percent, according to experts and analysts. Today, estimates suggest it is under 50 percent and shrinking fast.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva (L) talks with BlackRock Chair and CEO Laurence D. Fink during a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, on Jan. 23, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images) Speaking at the 2023 Milken Institute Global Conference, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva highlighted the trend.
“There has been a gradual shift away from the dollar,” she said, adding that the euro, the British pound, and the CCP’s yuan were all gaining ground.
While Georgieva said she did not anticipate an imminent rise of a viable alternative as “we may migrate to central bank digital currencies massively,” that does not mean it will not come eventually.
Non-Western central banks are also buying gold in record quantities, and analysts expect that demand to remain strong.
“We think this trend of central bank buying is likely to continue amid heightened geopolitical risks and elevated inflation,” Swiss bank UBS said in a note.
“In fact, the US decision to freeze Russian foreign exchange reserves in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine may have led to a long-term impact on the behavior of central banks.”
Even traditional U.S. allies have been conducting deals in non-dollar currencies. In late March, for example, the French government completed its first cross-border liquified natural gas deal in Chinese yuan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Chinese President Xi Jinping before an extended-format meeting of heads of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit (SCO) member states in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on Sept. 16, 2022. (Sputnik/Sergey Bobylev/Pool via Reuters) Also in March, authorities in Brazil—an economic powerhouse that historically has had close relations with the United States—also inked a deal with the CCP to trade in domestic currencies rather than the dollar.
The trends are accelerating. According to a recent note by prominent currency analyst Stephen Jen at Eurizon SLJ, the dollar lost market share in 2022 at 10 times the pace as during the previous 20 years—a trend he says most analysts have missed.
The speed at which this is happening is dramatic, too. “Adjusting for these price changes, the dollar, we calculate, has lost some 11 percent of its market share since 2016 and double that amount since 2008,” added Jen, who previously worked at Morgan Stanley.
Much of the recent acceleration has to do with U.S. policy on Ukraine. “This erosion in the USD’s reserve currency status has accelerated precipitously since the start of the war in Ukraine,” noted Jen, pointing to “exceptional actions” against Russia that “startled” large reserve-holding countries.
“What we witnessed in 2022 was sort of a ‘defund-the-global-police’ moment, whereby many reserve managers in the world disagreed with the conduct of both Russia and the US.”
CCP Agenda
Calls for a new global monetary system and reserve currency are not new, though. Even a decade ago, the CCP was promoting the idea through its propaganda machine.
“What may also be included as a key part of an effective reform is the introduction of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States,” Liu Chang wrote in an opinion piece for Xinhua, a CCP propaganda and intelligence-gathering operation.
Analysts said the Xinhua editorial was undoubtedly approved by senior CCP officials and clearly reflected Beijing’s views.
One benefit of such a policy would be to “encourage Washington to play a much more constructive role in addressing global affairs,” the CCP piece continued, calling for a “de-Americanized” so-called “new world order.”
It was hardly the first time the CCP touted the idea. In a 2009 report by People’s Bank of China chief Zhou Xiaochuan dubbed “Reform the International Monetary System,” the CCP called for an “international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run.” The proposed global currency could be issued by the IMF, he said.
In other words, almost 15 years ago, the highest echelons of power in Beijing were plotting a global currency to replace the dollar as the world reserve.
When asked about the idea at a Council on Foreign Relations event, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner shocked observers. “We’re actually quite open to that,” he said, causing the dollar to plunge.
Many of the same policymakers from the Obama administration in 2009 who were supportive of the idea remain in positions of influence in the Biden administration today.
And as The Epoch Times reported in 2021 amid the CCP virus crisis, the IMF has been moving in that direction with its special drawing rights, a sort of proto-global currency issued by the global financial institution.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 21:40 - Alabama Lawmakers Advance 'What Is A Woman' Bill Defining Male, Female Sex
Alabama Lawmakers Advance ‘What Is A Woman’ Bill Defining Male, Female Sex
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Alabama State Capitol stands in Montgomery, Ala., on May 15, 2019. (Julie Bennett/Getty Images) Alabama lawmakers advanced legislation on May 24 that seeks to define an individual’s sex based on their reproductive systems under state law.
HB405 (pdf), known as the “What is a Woman” Act, was introduced by Republican state Rep. Susan DuBose.
The House Health Committee voted along party lines to approve the bill, which now heads to the House floor for a vote.
Under the legislation, a “female” is defined as an individual whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova, and a “male” is defined as an individual whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female.
The legislation also defines “woman” and “girl” as human females, while the terms “man” and “boy” refer to human males.
Elsewhere, the term “mother” is defined as a parent that is of the female sex under state law, while the term “father” is defined as a parent that is of the male sex.
“When it comes to sex, ‘equal’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘identical,’” the legislation states. “When it comes to sex, ‘separate’ is not inherently unequal.”
The legislation includes an exception in the case of individuals who are born with a medically verifiable diagnosis of a “disorder or difference in sex development,” and such individuals will be provided legal protections and accommodations afforded under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the measure.
Bill Protects Women, Lawmakers say
“Notwithstanding any state law to the contrary, there are legitimate reasons to distinguish between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons or other detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, bathrooms, and other areas where biology, safety, or privacy are implicated,” the measure states.
“Policies and laws that distinguish between the sexes are subject to intermediate constitutional scrutiny, which forbids unfair discrimination against similarly-situated males and females but allows the law to distinguish between the sexes where such distinctions are substantially related to important governmental objectives,” it adds.
The measure would also require any state department, school district, or public school to include an individual’s biological sex in all reporting of health, crime, economic, or other data.
DuBose has argued that the bill is needed to prevent violence from occurring in “women’s spaces,” telling AL.com that such incidents are occurring in places “throughout our nation” that are open to transgender women, who are biological males.
The Republican lawmaker stressed that the bill “is in no way trying to deny their existence, or their rights or their relevance or their importance,” referring to transgender women, adding that she believes the legislation will “affect a few women that are in these very specific situations,” and not the majority of people.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 21:20 - NYC Mayor Eric Adams Asks To Suspend 'Right To Shelter' Rule, Citing Illegal Immigrant Influx
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Asks To Suspend ‘Right To Shelter’ Rule, Citing Illegal Immigrant Influx
Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams is arguing in court for the suspension of the city’s “Right to Shelter” requirement, citing the ongoing influx of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers in the city.
Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a press conference near the site of a parking garage collapse in New York on April 18, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) Following a 1984 court decision known as the “Callahan consent decree,” New York City has had to provide shelter for virtually all homeless people who apply. Adams has been seeking a suspension or modification of this “Right to Shelter” rule and on Tuesday his office formally requested (pdf) that a New York City judge pause the shelter rule.
The Adams administration has been feeling a strain on its shelter capacity as a result of a prolonged influx of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. The Mayor’s office has estimated more than 65,000 illegal immigrants and asylum have arrived in New York City since last year and more than 44,000 continue to use city shelters. In total, New York City is currently supporting 93,000 individuals in its shelter program; a number that “far exceeds the City’s previous highest-ever-recorded population of 61,000 individuals.”
Adams is seeking to modify the shelter rule by adding a provision that states: “The obligations to provide shelter to both homeless adults and to adult families shall be stayed when the City of New York acting through the New York City Department of Homeless Services (‘DHS’) lacks the resources and capacity to establish and maintain sufficient shelter sites, staffing, and security to provide safe and appropriate shelter.”
Adams defended his calls to suspend the “Right to Shelter” requirements in a Tuesday press statement.
“We are in no way seeking to end the right to shelter. Today’s action will allow us to get clarity from the court and preserve the right to shelter for the tens of thousands in our care—both previously unhoused individuals and asylum seekers,” Adams said. “Given that we’re unable to provide care for an unlimited number of people and are already overextended, it is in the best interest of everyone, including those seeking to come to the United States, to be upfront that New York City cannot single-handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border.”
Illegal Immigrant Bussing Straining NYC Shelters
In his petition to the court to suspend the shelter rule, the Adams administration noted much of the strain on the city’s shelter system is a result of other states deliberately bussing illegal border crossers to New York City.
“The main driver of this increase was an influx of asylum-seekers arriving here from the southern border of the United States, in large part orchestrated by out-of-State actors seeking to score political points by exporting the responsibility and attendant fiscal burdens of caring for this population out of their state and, by political calculation, to the City of New York,” the court petition states.
Last year, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began bussing people who illegally crossed the U.S. southern border into Texas over to other states. Abbott’s bussing strategy has primarily targeted so-called “sanctuary cities,” which do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities that might arrest or deport illegal immigrants. New York City is one such “sanctuary city.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 21:00 - The Debt Ceiling Game Is Parent-Child With A Bad Nash Equilibrium
The Debt Ceiling Game Is Parent-Child With A Bad Nash Equilibrium
By Dhaval Joshi of BCA Research
The Debt Ceiling Game Is Parent-Child With A Bad Nash Equilibrium
- In game theoretical terms, the debt ceiling standoff is the Parent-Child game.
- The ‘Child’ is the Democrats who can cut spending a lot (be very good), cut spending a little (be quite good), or not cut spending (be bad). The ‘Parent’ is the Republicans who can refuse to lift the debt ceiling (punish), or lift the debt ceiling (not punish).
- For the Republicans, the best strategy is not to lift the debt ceiling unless the Democrats cut spending a lot, or unless the economy starts to tank.
- For the Democrats, the required spending cuts will lessen as the economy starts to tank, but the likelihood will increase that a recession damages President Biden’s re-election hopes.
- The debt ceiling game’s endpoint will avoid default only if it implies economic pain.
The 2001 four-times Oscar winning movie A Beautiful Mind starred Russell Crowe as John Nash, the mathematician who revolutionized game theory by introducing the concept of the ‘Nash equilibrium’. It’s a great movie, well worth watching if you haven’t already.
Nash’s big breakthrough was to define the steady state of a game, by identifying the combination of choices from which no player can gain by unilaterally changing his choice. This is the Nash equilibrium. When all players know each other’s payoffs, the Nash equilibrium becomes the game’s logical endpoint (Figure 1).
Right now, the Democrats and Republicans are playing a game that our US Political Strategists have long warned poses a higher-than-usual risk of national debt default BCA Research – Shades Of Gridlock: Risk Of US Debt Default. The Democrats (Dems) must concede spending cuts for the Republicans (Reps) to lift the debt ceiling and prevent the US government from defaulting on its debt. This raises the questions: What is the game? What are the payoffs? And what is the Nash equilibrium?
The Debt Ceiling Game Is The Parent-Child Game With A Bad Nash Equilibrium
Game theorists, as well as parents, will recognize the debt ceiling standoff as the Parent-Child game, in which “the child” can be good or bad, and “the parent” can punish or not punish. In this case, the child is the Dems who can cut spending a lot (be very good), cut spending a little (be quite good), or not cut spending (be bad). The parent is the Reps who can refuse to lift the debt ceiling (punish), or lift the debt ceiling (not punish).
What are the payoffs to the Reps and Dems? In this case, the payoffs come from the overarching prize of winning the 2024 Presidential Election. This is because each of the six combination of choices produces a potential swing from independent voters. Given that a Reps gain is a Dems loss, each payoff takes the form (X, -X), where the first number is the likely swing to the Reps, and the second is the mirror-image swing from the Dems.
The payoffs are the sum of two components. The first component comes from the economic impact. A US debt default would almost guarantee a recession, and a recession within a year or so from a Presidential Election tends to generate a huge swing to the non-incumbent party, in this case the Reps. Say the swing is 5 percent. Then the payoff for this component would be (5, -5) (Figure 2).
President Biden himself has recently acknowledged this gain to the Reps and loss to the Dems:
“I think there are some MAGA Republicans in the House who know the damage that (a debt default) would do to the economy, and because I am president, and the president’s responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame”
Working against this is the second component, which measures independent voters recoiling from the party that is the non-compromiser, and is therefore to blame for the recession.
If the Dems are ‘quite good’, meaning that they cut spending a little, but the Reps still ‘punish’, then this may cost the Reps some votes for being the non-compromiser, say (-2, 2). Note that the specific number here is not important, just that the loss for being the non-compromiser is less than the gain from recession (Figure 3).
So, what is the Nash equilibrium in this game setup? Unfortunately, it is a bad equilibrium in which the Dems are ‘quite good’ but the Reps best strategy is ‘punish’. It is a Nash equilibrium because neither side can gain by unilaterally changing its choice. For the Reps, as Biden has alluded, the gain from a recession (5, -5) outweighs their loss from being the non-compromiser (-2, 2), giving them a payoff of (3, -3), compared to (0, 0) if they compromise (Figure 4).
How To Shift To A Good Nash Equilibrium
Now let’s say that the Reps’ loss from being the non-compromiser becomes larger than their gain from a recession. This could happen in one of two ways. Either because the Dems are ‘very good’, meaning they cut spending a lot, making it tough to justify ‘punish’. Or because the economy starts to tank, meaning that being the non-compromiser becomes very costly. Say the Reps payoff for being the non-compromiser worsens to (-6, 6) (Figure 5 and Figure 6).
In either case, the Nash equilibrium shifts to a good equilibrium in which the Dems cut spending a lot in a non-tanking economy, or cut spending a little in a tanking economy. And the Reps best strategy is ‘don’t punish’, meaning to lift the debt ceiling.
Some Conclusions
It is not my intention to take sides in the debt ceiling standoff. Rather, it is just to point out the best strategies in a plausible game theoretical setup, and what it means for the game’s endpoint.
For the Reps, the best strategy is not to lift the debt ceiling if the Dems cut spending a little, until the economy starts to tank, because this is when the cost of being the non-compromiser becomes penalizing (Figure 7 and Figure 8).
For the Dems, cutting spending a lot will be politically difficult. The required spending cuts will lessen as the economy starts to tank, but the likelihood will increase that a recession damages Biden’s re-election hopes.
This raises the question, what if the game finishes at a different endpoint to the Nash equilibriums – for example, with the Dems cutting spending a little in a non-tanking economy and the Reps lifting the debt ceiling? This would imply one of the following:
One possibility is that neither the Reps nor the Dems understand the game theory. However, Biden’s remarks suggest that they do, at least implicitly.
Another possibility is that the Reps are altruistic, putting the country before their own political ambitions. But call me cynical, I don’t believe that any political party would give a free pass to its opponent unless the country were in crisis, which it is not. Meaning, the Reps can wait until the market or the economy starts to tank.
A third possibility is that the Reps are convinced that a recession is coming anyway, so why force it and risk looking like the bad guy? In this case, appearing to be the good guy might be a win-win for the Reps, but a bad omen for the economy.
To sum up, the debt ceiling game’s Nash equilibrium is a bad equilibrium in which the Dems are ‘quite good’ but the Reps best strategy is ‘punish’ until the economy starts to tank. The debt ceiling game’s endpoint will avoid default only once it implies economic pain. Hence, it reinforces our 6-12 month horizon defensive positioning in asset allocation, sector allocation, and currency allocation.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 20:40 - LinkedIn Censors Presidential Candidate Who Says Fossil Fuels 'Required For Prosperity'
LinkedIn Censors Presidential Candidate Who Says Fossil Fuels ‘Required For Prosperity’
LinkedIn, whose founder Reid Hoffman funded a ‘Russian bot’ hoax against GOP candidate Roy Moore & underwrote Trump accuser E. Jean Carrol’s lawsuit, has locked the account of GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for expressing “fact-based views as a presidential candidate about climate policy and Biden’s relationships with China.”
“Big Tech election interference has begun,” tweeted Ramaswamy, who included correspondence from LinkedIn regarding the decision.
Big Tech election interference has begun: @LinkedIn locked my account & censored me this week for posting videos where I expressed fact-based views as a presidential candidate about climate policy and Biden’s relationships with China. They said it violated their policies relating… pic.twitter.com/ND2dFVnGAg
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 25, 2023
Note that the third strike is for claiming that the “climate agenda is a lie” and that “fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity.”
“Two years ago, Big Tech censored people who argued that we shouldn’t close schools for Covid,” he said in a separate tweet. “Now they’re censoring presidential candidates for arguing that fossil fuels are required for prosperity. They didn’t censor me because it’s false. They censored me because it’s true…”
Two years ago, Big Tech censored people who argued that we shouldn’t close schools for Covid. Now they’re censoring presidential candidates for arguing that fossil fuels are required for prosperity. They didn’t censor me because it’s false. They censored me because it’s true… https://t.co/TYElXRdVLZ
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 25, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
When it comes to the left, as usual, speech for me, but not for thee…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 20:25 - Mayor London Breed Chased Off By Violent, Screaming Mob During Presser In SF Junkie Nest To Denounce Drug Epidemic
Mayor London Breed Chased Off By Violent, Screaming Mob During Presser In SF Junkie Nest To Denounce Drug Epidemic
Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,
From the annals of “What was she thinking?,” here’s San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed.
According to the New York Post:
San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the city’s board of supervisors were forced to retreat inside after a meeting they attempted to hold in a notorious open-air drug market was disrupted by jeers, shouting and a woman who hurled a brick into the crowd, according to a report.
On Tuesday, city leaders decided to hold the meeting outdoors in United Nations Plaza to highlight problems plaguing the area — including surging fentanyl overdoses — and to discuss potential solutions, KRON4 reported.
Breed and Supervisor Aaron Peskin took to the podium and proclaimed the city has been tolerating “illegal, out-of-control behavior for far too long.”
“Many San Franciscans do not feel safe,” Peskin said.
“Brazen drug dealing and deteriorating street conditions have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis on our streets.”
But less than 10 minutes after the meeting began, it was cut short as the crowd hurled insults at the mayor and supervisors until they just walked away from the podium, according to KRON.
Suffice to say, it didn’t end well.
Breed’s city has been turned into a crime- and homeless-infested hellhole on her watch. A feces-strewn open-air drug market in many quarters, where junkies, addicts, criminals, vagrants, and bums all gather together for their drug deals, panhandling, and shoplifting projects. This particular hellhole, at United Nations Plaza, has always been a center of mayhem — I remember it as a trash-strewn, urine-soaked junkie redoubt when I lived in the city 30 years ago.
It hasn’t changed any, except that an infusion of city money to NGOs to “help” the homeless has made it a lot nastier. Anyone who’s ever lived in that city would know that that’s not the place you go for a well heeled press conference announcing all the new government money you are going to be spending to end crime in the city.
You don’t go into a tiger’s lair to talk about how you’ll be taming the tigers. You don’t go into a terrorist den and denounce terrorism if you have anything resembling a brain. And you especially don’t go into an open-air drug market, full of dealers and their customers, to talk about how you’ll be ending the fentanyl crisis, putting junkies in compelled treatment, and shutting the scene down because “everyone” opposes this activity.
Actually, what should be news to Breed is that some people are for it — the dealers, their addicted clients, and the NGOs that thrive on “serving” and perpetuating the situation for the sake of winning more government funding.
This is their home. This is their habitat. This is the place they made, and they don’t want any changes, other than more money coming in. Like everyone else, they have “interests.”
Bad people exist, and in some places, they are all bad people.
A smart mayor would send in the cops and maybe the bulldozers with no warning.
Not Breed.
She was last seen insisting that “this is a safe city,” kid you not.
She just learned the hard way it’s not, but don’t expect her to make that connection.
What this shows is how remarkably naïve Breed is about the problems plaguing her city, even just blocks from San Francisco’s City Hall.
Don’t count on any of her proposed “solutions” to make so much as a dent in that city’s problem.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 20:20 - Dollar Tree Plunges After Profit Tumbles As Thieves Pillage Stores
Dollar Tree Plunges After Profit Tumbles As Thieves Pillage Stores
The consumer market is splitting into: the first, luxury segment, which caters to the ultra wealthy has never had it better, especially in Europe where the luxury index is trading at a record premium to the rest of the market (although that particular bubble may be bursting)…
… and then there are retailers catering to the “income income cohorts” such as Dollar General and Dollar (and 25 cents) Tree, and which are not only getting crushed… they are also getting robbed.
Shares of ultra-discounted Dollar Tree plunged on Thursday, tumbling more than 11% after the company trimmed its full-year profit forecast after missing quarterly profit estimates, hurt by slowing demand for discretionary items and elevated cost pressures.
With stubborn inflation, the company is experiencing a fall in demand for higher-margin discretionary goods compared to perishables like snacks and cookies, that has dented margins at a time when costs have been elevated.
And, like so many other suffering retailers, DLTR has Soros-DAs to thank for its woes: while the company showed an increase in sales, which rose 6.1% in the quarter to $7.32 billion, it slashed its profit outlook due to shrink — a polite word for theft (EPS of $1.47 missed estimates of $1.52).
“While we are seeing early results from our initiatives, we are not immune to the external pressures affecting all of retail, notably, the margin impact of elevated shrink and the product mix shift to consumables,” CEO Rick Dreiling said in a news release. “While we are maintaining our full-year 2023 sales outlook, we are adjusting our EPS outlook as we expect the elevated shrink and unfavorable sales mix to persist through the balance of the year. We still expect earnings to be more back-end loaded this year as the benefits of lower ocean freight rates flow through.”
As a result of the reduced spending and increased theft, the Chesapeake, Virginia-based company said it now expects fiscal 2023 earnings of $5.73 to $6.13 per share, compared with its prior outlook of between $6.30 and $6.80 per share.
“We were very surprised by the cut. We are not sure why shrink wasn’t known when guidance was provided last quarter,” said Wells Fargo analyst Edward Kelly.
Retail shrinkage — typically in the form of retail theft — has been a problem for several retailers. Among them is Target, which has reported a surge in retail crime, which is projected to cause an estimated $500 million more in losses and stolen merchandise this year over last. Then again, the retailer’s decision to turn to transactivism and alienate the majority of its shopper will cause far more damage to the company’s stock price than mere theft.
“The unfortunate fact is violent incidents are increasing at our stores and across the entire retail industry,” Target Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell said last week. “And when products are stolen, simply put they are no longer available for guests who depend on them. Left unchecked, organized retail crime degrades the communities we call home. As we work to address this problem, the safety of our guests and our team members will always be our primary concern. Beyond safety concerns, worsening shrink rates are putting significant pressure on our financial results.”
Both Dollar Tree and rival Dollar General are in the midst of a major renovation project. The retailers are investing in these overhauls, which include increased refrigerator and freezer capacity, to accommodate demand from consumers across all income brackets for less costly groceries than those found at traditional supermarkets.
Hopefully by the time they are done, they still have some non-stolen inventory to sell…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 20:00 - Biden DOJ Drops All Charges Against Soros-Backed DA Who Resigned: Turley
Biden DOJ Drops All Charges Against Soros-Backed DA Who Resigned: Turley
The Department of Justice’s special counsel, Jack Smith, is continuing his work toward possible criminal charges against former President Donald Trump. While I continue to doubt the viability of criminal charges based on Trump’s speech before the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, I have repeatedly said that the Mar-a-Lago matter could present a serious threat for Trump.
However, a recent (and little-reported) decision by the DOJ may complicate the final decision in the case with new concerns over a double standard in charging decisions.
Last week, the Justice Department announced that it would not charge Rachael Rollins, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, despite a referral from the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which found evidence that she lied to investigators and may have improperly sought to influence an election. Rollins resigned from office on Friday.
The OIG released detailed findings against Rollins for allegedly seeking to influence a Suffolk County, Mass., district attorney election last year. She also was accused by the OIG of lying under oath during an investigation into the matter. The report states that “on December 16, 2022, pursuant to the Inspector General Act, 5 U.S.C. § 404(d), the OIG referred the false statements allegation to the Department for a prosecutive decision. On January 6, 2023, the Department informed the OIG that it declined prosecution.”
According to the OIG, Rollins sought to help Boston City Councilman Ricardo Arroyo in the Democratic primary for Suffolk’s district attorney by providing derogatory information to the Boston Globe and Boston Herald regarding his opponent, then-interim D.A. Kevin Hayden. The OIG said the information included “non-public, sensitive” DOJ material that Rollins acquired as a result of her federal position. The material suggested that Hayden was being investigated for public corruption.
The OIG further found that Rollins leaked more material after Arroyo lost to Hayden.
The OIG accused Rollins of violating a host of Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, including Section 2635.702 (the use “of public office for private gain”) and Section 2635.703 (the use “of nonpublic information”).
The most serious charge was that Rollins “falsely testified under oath … when she denied” providing the non-public information to the Herald reporter.
The investigation also found an array of other violations, including disregarding ethical warnings on political activities and soliciting expensive sports tickets.
What is most striking about the OIG report is that Rollins took some of these steps after barely being confirmed by the U.S. Senate because questions were raised over her judgment and partisanship. Rollins was confirmed in 2021 after Vice President Kamala Harris cast a tie-breaking vote due to all 50 Republican senators opposing her nomination. Every Democratic senator voted for her despite the concerns, including a video from January 2021 in which she threatened the arrest of reporters.
The DOJ’s declination of charges follows a similar pattern that suggests a higher threshold standard applied by prosecutors in charging one of their own.
Conversely, this is the same department that pursued figures like Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for false or misleading comments made to agents about a meeting with Russian diplomats. The media heralded that case, and legal experts clamored for prosecution.
Now, the Justice Department is considering charges against Trump for false statements given to investigators on classified material at Mar-a-Lago. (He also faces other possible legal action, of course, including potential state charges in Georgia for election law violations.)
With Rollins, after an investigation found that she lied to investigators, the DOJ refused to file any charges at all. It is unclear what the DOJ felt was lacking in those findings or the underlying evidence. However, as shown by prior declinations — in cases like the contempt referral against former Attorney General Eric Holder, or the determination that former FBI Director James Comey removed FBI material and, through a friend, leaked it to the media — the Justice Department often seems to find insurmountable problems when asked to charge a fellow prosecutor or investigator
The Rollins case could be raised by the Trump team with other declined criminal cases as evidence of selective prosecution, if Trump is indicted. Although some in the media will cry “whataboutism,” charging decisions are made in the context of other cases to ensure consistency and to avoid selective prosecution. While state and city prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and Letitia James may run for office on promises of selectively targeting Trump, federal prosecutors usually aspire to a higher standard.
The DOJ already has a full plate of previously declined prosecutions outside of the DOJ, from the Holder and Comey cases to the perjury allegations leveled against Obama national intelligence director James Clapper, and more. It also will face a reckoning over the classified documents found in President Biden’s various offices and residences; those documents were clearly divided and moved repeatedly, and Biden’s lawyers — like Trump’s — completed searches only to have more documents discovered in these locations.
If the past is any indication, most of the media would not delve too deeply into such contradictions if Trump is charged. And selective prosecution complaints are notoriously difficult to litigate. Even if the Justice Department did not secure a favorable judge for such a case, most judges are leery of adjudicating claims of motivation and bias.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has long maintained he is above politics and treats the DOJ’s targets equally without regard to political pressure. For some of us who supported his confirmation, he seemingly has shrunk in stature in office — but he has not disappeared. He will have to make the final decision in conjunction with any recommendation by special counsel Smith. Episodes like the Rollins case will only complicate that decision.
Jonathan Turley, an attorney, constitutional law scholar and legal analyst, is the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 19:40 - Russian Jets Intercept US Bombers Over Baltic For 2nd Time In Days
Russian Jets Intercept US Bombers Over Baltic For 2nd Time In Days
Russia on Thursday announced it had scrambled fighter jets to intercept two inbound US strategic bomber planes in order to prevent them from “violating the state border” over the Baltic Sea.
It marks the second such dangerous intercept incident in merely three days. While such incidents over the Black and Baltic seas are not uncommon, it is unusual for more than one encounter to be reported within only a matter of days, suggesting the two super powers are increasingly bumping up against each other in the region amid the unpredictable backdrop of the Ukraine war.
Russia’s military described that an Su-27 fighter jet alongside an Su-35 were deployed in response to identifying “the air targets as two US Air Force B-1B strategic bombers“.
USAF B-1B Lancer, US Air Force “The violation of the state border was prevented,” the defense ministry said – and after the US bombers were turned back the Russian jets “returned safely to their air base.” It said that the intercept flight was “carried out in strict accordance with international rules for the use of airspace.”
In addition to this week’s intercepts of US planes, other Western aircraft, including French and German surveillance planes, were shadowed by Russian jets in recent weeks.
Tuesday saw a similar incident play out, also involving a pair of US bombers. But the Pentagon downplayed it as “nothing significant”.
The National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation had the described of Tuesday’s incident, “The crew of the Russian fighter classified the air targets as two US Air Force B-1B strategic bombers and occupied the established air watch zone.”
Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder had additionally confirmed it: “My understanding is that it was a safe and professional interaction with Russian aircraft. So nothing significant to report on that front,” he said in a prior briefing.
The US could be back to probing Russia’s aerial defense perimeter following a mid-March incident which saw a US MQ-9 drone crash into the Black Sea.
Video of the mid-March incident…
BREAKING: U.S. military releases dramatic declassified video taken by MQ-9 Reaper drone that shows the moment that a Russian Su-27 fighter jet collided with it after attempting to spray the drone with jet fuel. https://t.co/XGoVQN7ppJ pic.twitter.com/X9vH6qtFGf
— ABC News (@ABC) March 16, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The US Department of Defense later published a short video of a Russian fighter jet performing an unsafe maneuver while dumping jet fuel on the drone, damaging it and ultimately causing it to crash. The US had said it would temporarily pull back how close its aircraft patrol near Russia’s borders.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 19:20 - How Black Lives Matter Got Police Violence Wrong
How Black Lives Matter Got Police Violence Wrong
Authored by Christopher J. Ferguson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
In the early 2000s the United States enjoyed comparative racial optimism. Majorities of both black and white citizens felt race relations were improving. Even left-leaning NPR highlighted “colorblindness” as an ideal. A generation later, race relations have nosedived. We hear regularly about “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” Colorblindness now is considered racist. This whiplash may leave many people wondering what happened.
The 2014 Collapse in Race Relations
The collapse in race relations began in 2014. Exactly why this year was pivotal is unknown, though it coincides with the debunked “hands up, don’t shoot” framing of the Michael Brown killing and a larger “great awokening” wherein extreme identitarian views became more influential on the political left. Since 2014, little data suggests race disparities have gotten worse. Racist attitudes in the United States are at historic lows. However, news media coverage worrying over racism soared.
I studied this issue empirically in 2021. I wanted to see whether actual police shootings of unarmed black men correlated with race relations or whether news media coverage highlighting police shootings of black men was a better predictor. It turns out race relations are unrelated to actual police shootings, but correlate with news media coverage, which tends to obsess over shootings of black Americans while ignoring shootings of other individuals.
The Moral Panic Over Race and Policing
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, the United States experienced a “racial reckoning.” News media claimed police were systemically targeting black Americans for fatal violence. Defunding or even literally abolishing policing became serious policy proposals. The United States, we were told, was systemically racist.
Data on policing and race is complex and nuanced. Police killings of unarmed suspects are rare, according to the Washington Post, and they’ve been declining. Numbers peak at 95 for all races in 2015, declining to 32 for all races in 2021.
When it comes to police shootings of unarmed individuals, white suspects are shot more often than black suspects (by contrast, Asians are rarely shot by police compared to either group). Though more unarmed whites than blacks are killed by police, black suspects are indeed proportionally overrepresented. We can see the proportional differences in the following chart:
However, commission of violent crime is also ethnically disproportional. Black and Hispanic men commit violent crimes disproportionally more often than do white or Asian men. That police shootings and commission of violent crime so neatly track one another is not a coincidence.
One might conclude that, perhaps, overrepresentation of black Americans as perpetrators of violent crime might be due to overpolicing of black communities. However, when we look at victims of homicide, most of which are the same race as the killers, we see the same pattern of black victims being overrepresented. This means the overpolicing hypothesis does not fit the data.
It is also worth noting that most young men of any ethnicity do not commit violent crimes. Race itself is not a determinant of violent crime. In one recent study, although racial composition of neighborhoods predicted violent crime, race no longer predicted violent crime once other community factors such as insufficient food, housing issues, air pollution and proportion of single-parent homes are controlled..
Studies largely find the same thing when it comes to excessive use of police force. In another recent study, we found that class issues, particularly communities experiencing higher levels of mental health issues among residents — not race — predicted reports of excessive police force (except for Latinos, who reported less police force). To be fair, studies on this do vary in conclusion. However, in my view the weight of evidence suggests that class, not race, predicts excessive police force.
We found that higher levels of mental health problems among community residents predicted reports of excessive police force. This is probably because police are likely coming into contact with mentally ill residents who may escalate an encounter that began over something trivial. Other studies also suggest the chronically mentally ill more often experience physical force during police encounters. The mentally ill may struggle to respond to aggressive police commands. Thus, relatively minor encounters initially may intensify into dangerous situations. Better police training with mental illness may help.
Progressive “Fixes” Have Often Made Things Worse
Though often ostensibly speaking on behalf of minority groups, progressive theories on race have often made practical situations worse. The most obvious cost to low-income neighborhoods has been in delegitimizing or even defunding police and the predictable surge in crime that created. Evidence does suggests that the George Floyd protests and riots were associated with increased resignations of police officers as well as decreased policing in high-crime neighborhoods. These in turn, were associated with increased violent crime.
There are more subtle, harmful impacts as well. Informing people that they are at ever-present danger from police can be traumatizing. Research has long demonstrated that convincing people they are victims causes them to perceive injustice where it may not actually occur.
It doesn’t help the Black Lives Matter organization has undermined confidence in its mission through a lack of transparency on financial matters and spending millions on mansions for its leaders, with comparatively little to show for how they have helped ordinary Black poor or working-class people.
There is a wide space between thinking the United States is a racial utopia and that it’s an early 20th century apartheid state. But if we promote pessimistic narratives that are not well-grounded in data and focus on “solutions” that emphasize our differences and conflicts, we may actually risk the exact bad outcomes we hoped to alleviate.
Christopher J. Ferguson is a professor of psychology at Stetson University in Florida and author of “Catastrophe! The Psychology of Why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 19:00 - Seattle Official Rejects Calls For Resignation Over Homeless, Pedophile, Sex-Offending Board Nominee
Seattle Official Rejects Calls For Resignation Over Homeless, Pedophile, Sex-Offending Board Nominee
A Seattle official is refusing to resign after defending a convicted pedophile sex offender nominated to a local homelessness board.
Shanee Colston (L) defended convicted sex offender Thomas Whitaker-Raven Crowfoot (R) During a May 3 Zoome meeting of a subcommittee of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCHRA), Committee co-chair Shanee Conston shouted down a Marine veteran and sexual assulat survivor Kristina Sawyckyj, after she brought up that the candidate, Thomas Whitaker-Raven Crowfoot is a convicted sex offender who had “touched” her on a previous occasion.
“We have a code of ethics on this board and Thomas Whitaker-Raven Crowfoot is a sex offender — repeat sex offender — and I have had a bad experience with him,” said Sawyckyj, before an angry Colston cut her off and berated her for ‘outing’ the sex offender.
“That’s just not okay, at all. I won’t stand for that as a co-chair. We’re not here to discover people’s backgrounds,” yelled Colston. “And I’m actually glad that is the case that he’s here because sex offenders are another population that is most vulnerable that don’t have housing. People do change.”
“This is about equity and everyone, everyone, deserves housing. I don’t care if they’re a sex offender. I don’t care if they’re Black. I don’t care if they’re indigenous. I don’t care if they’re a criminal. I don’t care if they’re coming out of jail or prison. Everyone deserves housing,” she continued.
A second board member tag-teamed with Colston, asking Sawyckyj if she had taken the matter to the police – which she said she had.
Watch:
In case you are wondering, no this is not The Onion and yes, Crowfoot is a pedophile sex offender. As KATV.com reports, 38-year-old Thomas Whitaker-Raven Crowfoot, was convicted of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes in 2012, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office. Crowfoot was also charged with raping a minor in 2010, according to Publicola, and was also convicted of harboring a minor, who was a 13-year-old that he reportedly had sexual relations with.
Earlier this week, KCRHA Chief Program Officer Peter Lynn appealed unsuccessfully for Colston to resign over the issue, KOMO-TV reports.
The organization said in a statement that it “shares the concerns of our community about the nomination of a registered sex offender for the Continuum of Care Board, and does not support that nomination” of Whitaker to the board, Fox News reports. “We agree that the behavior by the current Board Co-Chair in shouting down the board member who identified that the nominee is a registered sex offender was unacceptable, and we immediately asked the Co-Chair to resign.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 18:40 - Man Paralyzed For 12 Years Walks Again Thanks To Brain, Spinal Cord Implants
Man Paralyzed For 12 Years Walks Again Thanks To Brain, Spinal Cord Implants
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A paralyzed man has been able to walk again for the first time in years simply by using the power of his mind thanks to implants fitted in his brain and spinal cord.
Gert-Jan Oskam, 40, victim of a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed, walks with his implants during a press conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, on May 23, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images) Gert-Jan Oskam, a 40-year-old Dutchman, was paralyzed in his legs and partially paralyzed in his arms following a cycling accident 12 years ago during which he suffered spinal cord damage.
He was told he would never walk again.
However, after being fitted with a device called a “brain–spine interface,” Oskam regained the ability to voluntarily move his legs and feet just by thinking about it, according to a study published May 24 in the journal Nature.
He can now stand, climb stairs, and even traverse complex terrains with the help of a walking aid, according to researchers.
“I feel like a toddler, learning to walk again,” Oskam told the BBC. “It has been a long journey, but now I can stand up and have a beer with my friend. It’s a pleasure that many people don’t realize.”
An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Grégoire Courtine, Professor Jocelyne Bloch, and others from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, fitted Oskam with the brain–spine interface, which works by creating a direct link between “cortical signals and the analogue modulation of epidural electrical stimulation targeting the spinal cord regions involved in the production of walking,” according to researchers.
How the Device Works
Put simply, the device restored the neurological link between the brain and the spinal cord, which is typically severed during accidents such as Oskam’s.
The device was implanted into Oskam’s skull, meaning it is not visible to the naked eye. When Oskam thinks about walking, the implant detects electrical activity in the cortex, the outer layer of the brain, and sends brain waves wirelessly to a computer that Oskam wears in a backpack.
The information is then transmitted to a pulse generator inserted into his spinal cord, effectively switching on muscles and allowing him to produce specific movements.
Gert-Jan Oskam, 40, victim of a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed, poses with his implants that allows him to walk naturally during a press conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, on May 23, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images) Oskam also underwent around 40 rehabilitation sessions using the brain–spine interface, after which he regained the ability to voluntarily move his legs and feet.
Researchers believe Oskam’s movements would not have been possible with spinal stimulation alone and that the training sessions “prompted further recovery in nerve cells” which were not completely severed during his injury.
As well as being able to walk while using the device, Oskam can also walk short distances without the device, provided he uses crutches.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 18:20
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