Today’s News 28th February 2023

• The Great Game Reloaded: Superpowers In The Modern World
  The Great Game Reloaded: Superpowers In The Modern World

  Authored by RFE/RL Staff via OilPrice.com,

  • Munich Security Conference reveals tensions between US and China, with China sensing an opportunity to strengthen its global status.

  • Chinese official Wang Yi accuses US of fueling war in Ukraine, while US Secretary of State Blinken accuses China of preparing to provide weapons to Russia.

  • Despite tensions, European leaders engage with China during Wang’s diplomatic tour of Europe, raising concerns over de-dollarization and digital currencies decreasing Western leverage over China, Russia, and Iran.

  Top foreign policy officials from the United States and China spent most of the last weekend at the Munich Security Conference stressing that their governments were not seeking a new Cold War, but amid tense rhetoric and accusations, a chill across much of the world is already being felt.

  

  Finding Perspective: 

  The Munich gathering is Europe’s premier foreign policy conference and has long been a mainstay for leading officials from the West and elsewhere to hobnob and take the pulse of the current world order.

  This year’s diagnosis was far from optimistic. While the West showed that it is perhaps more united now than in recent years and that support for Ukraine is entrenched — a message reinforced by U.S. President Joe Biden’s unannounced visit to Kyiv — it’s hard to shake the sense that the West remains more out of step than ever with the rest of the world and that the damage done by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can’t be undone.

  Rightly or wrongly, Beijing clearly believes the West is in decline and is now sensing an opportunity to shore up its rising global status.

  In Munich, China was represented by top foreign policy official Wang Yi who projected a message of self-confidence and swagger to Western officials as he took aim at the United States and accused it of fueling the war in Ukraine.

  Wang also said China would launch its own peace plan for ending the war and that it would underscore the need to uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the UN Charter.

  Those calls came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said China may be preparing to give weapons and ammunition to Russia, which would mark a significant escalation in the war and Beijing’s relationship with Moscow.

  China has brushed the accusations aside but not denied them, saying Beijing “will never accept U.S. finger-pointing or coercion on China-Russia relations.”

  In interviews with German and Italian newspapers following the accusations from Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that China supplying weapons would result in a “world war,” and that he hoped Beijing would refrain from doing so after making a “practical assessment.”

  Why It Matters: 

  The United States has few good cards to play with China and, given the fallout from the Chinese spy balloon incident, a stabilization of relations isn’t on the horizon.

  Still, it’s unclear if Beijing is willing to cross this threshold and suffer the consequences for explicitly supplying Moscow with weapons.

  In the meantime, China’s mention of a peace plan was met skeptically by U.S. and European officials, who largely see it as a move about optics as Beijing continues to up its standing across the Global South, where Chinese calls to portray the West as warmongers and itself as a peacekeeper have a receptive audience.

  “China wants to be seen as very strong and as a leader of the global south and a peace promoter,” a senior European Union official told RFE/RL. “[And] no, Europe is not wooed.”

  One Thing To Watch

  It’s hard to go a week without seeing new warnings from Western officials about Chinese intent to take over Taiwan. Such concerns are not unwarranted, especially as Chinese officials — including Wang in Munich — do little to dispel such fears.

  But Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy, recently offered a more sober assessment. In a recent interview with Defense News, he said that he doesn’t “see anything that indicates [an invasion of Taiwan] is imminent in the next couple of years” and that Beijing is far more likely to pursue avenues beyond military force, such as political and economic pressure, in any attempt to annex Taiwan.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 23:40

• Why Is Election Denier Stacey Abrams Overseeing Elections In Nigeria?
  Why Is Election Denier Stacey Abrams Overseeing Elections In Nigeria?

  It’s an odd case of juxtaposition.  A politician well known for refusing to accept election outcomes based on dubious claims is now helping to oversee the “integrity” of elections in an unstable foreign nation like Nigeria.  

  Democrat and failed Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams is famous for her hypocrisy when it comes to accusations of election rigging while attacking conservative candidates for also questioning elections.  Abrams refused to concede to Republican Brian Kemp after the Georgia election results of 2018, claiming that the election was stolen due to voter oppression tied to discrimination.  She specifically targeted rules restricting some mail in ballots and absentee ballots.  Federal courts ruled that there were no grounds for her accusations.

  

  Abrams has long been an avid defender of absentee ballot harvesting tactics and claims rules against the practice are “race related.”  The methodology of ballot harvesting has long been a boon for Democrats in the US as a means to secure election wins through absentee votes, which are collected by political operatives from people’s homes and then delivered to polling places.  Suspicions over ballot harvesting and the potential for vote rigging within the chain of custody have been the cause of numerous election conflicts, including conflicts over the 2020 presidential election.

  The former governor’s candidate is also know for her aggressive opposition to voter ID laws designed to prevent non-citizens from casting in US elections.

  Abrams is, strangely, now in Nigeria, joining the National Democratic Institute (along with the National Republican Institute) on a mission to observe elections and encourage voter participation.  The diplomatic initiative includes a contingent of globalist think-tank representatives from institutions like Atlantic Council and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which is heavily involved in diversity and equity programs similar to ESG efforts.

  Why TF is Stacey Abrams in Nigeria oBsErViNg their elections? https://t.co/fraOsFE6Az

  — Sameera (@SameeraKhan) February 27, 2023

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

  The NDI/NRI are focused on convincing younger voters to appear at polling stations, which seems to be a fair mission.  However, with widespread delays and attacks on some polling stations, there are questions of corruption and foreign interference.  The groups involved in the effort are predominantly concerned with the spread of globalist policies.  

  Why Stacey Abrams and why Nigeria? It’s hard to say, but one of the major candidates for President of Nigeria is Bola Tinubu, a member of the socialist All Progressives Congress party, and Tinubu has some ties to Barack Obama, just as Abrams is a close associate of Barack Obama.  While Joe Biden’s interest in Tinubu is less certain, his former boss and the Democrat Party asked the Nigerian socialist to attend the Democratic National Convention in 2012, allegedly offering him a “gold card invitation”.  The circumstances surrounding the level of favor garnered by Tinubu’s DNC invitation are debated.    

  The leftist oriented Woodrow Wilson Center, which as noted is part of the NDI election oversight operation in Nigeria, has also taken a special interest in Tinubu, inviting him to speak in 2014 on the value of the Opposition Parties in “progressing” Nigeria. 

  It is well known that Obama campaigned for Stacey Abrams in 2018 and 2022 and Abrams received an NAACP “Social Justice Impact Award” from Michelle Obama.  The former First Lady said she was especially impressed by Abrams’ ability to “double down” after losing her bid for the gubernatorial race in 2018.

  Is there an interest among establishment globalists in pushing for Tinubu as president?  Economically, many see Nigeria with its oil reserves and large population as the key to Africa, and there is certainly an interest among internationalists to prevent the People’s Democratic Party, which is viewed as far more conservative, from gaining power. 

  But Tinubu is not the only candidate the globalists have taken an interest in. There is also Peter Obi, who is often referred to as the “Obama of Nigeria” and the head of the Labour Party, another socialist oriented group.  Obi is, interestingly, garnering a large percentage of the youth vote in Nigerian polls, and Stacey Abrams and the NDI have been trying to mobilize those same young voters through ground actions as well as through social media.  This may be a case of the establishment seeking to play two sides of the Nigerian election in their favor.    

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 23:20

• Whitney: The Plan To Wreck America
  Whitney: The Plan To Wreck America

  Authored by Mike Whitney,

  In America, we have an oligarch problem, and it’s much bigger than the oligarch problem that Putin faced when he became president in 2000. The entire West is now in the grips of billionaire elites who have a stranglehold on the media, the political establishment and all of our important institutions. In recent years we have seen these oligarchs expand their influence from markets, finance and trade to politics, social issues and even public health. The impact this group has had on these other areas of interest, has been nothing short of breathtaking. Establishment elites and their media not only stood foursquare behind Russiagate, the Trump impeachment, the BLM riots and the January 6 fiasco, they also had a hand in the Covid hysteria and the host of repressive measures that were imposed in the name of public health. What we’d like to know is to what extent this group is actively involved in the shaping of other events that are aimed at transforming the American Republic into a more authoritarian system?

  

  In other words, are the mandated injections, the forced lockdowns, the aggressive government-implemented censorship, the dubious presidential elections, the burning of food processing plants, the derailing of trains, the attacks on the power grid, the BLM-Antifa riots, the drag queen shows for schoolchildren, the maniacal focus on gender issues, and glitzy public show-trials merely random incidents occurring spontaneously during a period of great social change or are they, in fact, evidence of a stealthily orchestrated operation conducted by agents of the state acting on behalf of their elite benefactors? We already know that the FBI, the DOJ and the intel agencies were directly involved in Russiagate –which was a covert attack on the sitting president of the United States. So, the question is not “whether” these agencies are actively involved in other acts of treachery but, rather, to what extent these acts impact the lives or ordinary Americans, our politics and the country? But before we answer that question, take a look at this quote from from a recent interview by Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

  I was reading a document that was authored by George Soros over 10 years ago in which he talks specifically about this all-out war that would ultimately come against Russia because he said this ‘was the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox christian culture with Russian identity at its core. That has to be removed. So I think that the people who are in charge in the west and the people in charge in Washington think they have successfully destroyed the identities of the European and American peoples, that we have no sense of ourselves, our borders are undefended, we present no resistance to the incoming migrants from the developing world who essentially roll over us as though we owe them a living and that our laws do not count. Thus, far I would say that is an accurate evaluation of what we’ve been doing. And I think that’s a great victory for George Soros and the globalists, the anti-nationalists; those who want open borders what they call it an “Open Society” because you end up with nothing, an amorphous mass of people struggling to survive who are reduced to the lowest levels of subsistence … (Soros) even goes so far as to talk about how useful it would be if it was east Europeans whose lives were expended in this process and not west Europeans who simply won’t take the casualties. This is not a minor matter. This is the kind of thinking that is so destructive and so evil, in my judgement, that that’s what we’re really dealing with in our own countries and I think Putin recognizes that.” (Douglas Macgregor – A Huge Offensive”, You Tube;, 11:20 minute)

  

  The reason I transcribed this comment from MacGregor was because it sums up the perceptions of a great many people who see things the same way. It expresses the hatred that globalist billionaires have toward Christians and patriots, both of which they see as obstacles to their goal of a borderless one-world government. MacGregor discusses this phenom in relation to Russia which Soros sees as “the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox Christian culture with Russian identity at its core.” But the same rule could be applied to the January 6 protestors, could it not? Isn’t that the real reason the protestors were rounded up and thrown into the Washington gulag. After all, everyone knows there was no “insurrection” nor were there any “white supremacists”. The protestors were locked up because they’re nationalists (patriots) which are the natural enemy of the globalists. The MacGregor quote lays it out in black and white. Elites don’t believe that nationalists can be persuaded by propaganda,. They must be eradicated through incarceration or worse. Isn’t that the underlying message of January 6?

  The other underlying message of January 6, is that ordinary people are no longer allowed to challenge the authority of the people in power. Again, political legitimacy in the US has always been determined by elections. What January 6 indicates, is that legitimacy no longer matters. What matters is power, and the person who can have you arrested for questioning his authority, has all the power he needs. Check out this excerpt from a post on Substack by political analyst Kurt Nimmo:

  “Klaus Schwab, a student of the war criminal Henry Kissinger, is a mentor to power-hungry and narcissistic sociopaths. The WEF “Great Reset” is designed to turn the world into an impoverished social concentration camp, where destitute serfs “own nothing” and this, in true Orwellian fashion, will set them free…

  I challenge people to investigate the WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative. According to the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, this “initiative” proposes

  a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalizing a recognized model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf. (Emphasis added.)

  In other words, large transnational corporate “stakeholders” will be deciding where you live, what you eat (insects and weeds), how you reproduce (or not reproduce; children produce carbon emissions), and what you can “rent” from them, or not be allowed to rent if you complain about an unelected globalist “economic” cartel driving humanity into serfdom, worldwide poverty, and depopulation.” (“WEF Calls for Destruction of America’s Middle Class“, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics)

  What Nimmo is saying is that these billionaire elites are now so powerful, that they can openly say they’re going to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” (ie– representative government”) to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.” If I’m not mistaken, that is a pretty unambiguous declaration of a new form of supra-national government, in which only the billionaire stakeholders have a vote in what policies are implemented. But isn’t that the way things work already? On any number of topics from ESG, to digital currencies, to vaccine passports, to AI, to gain-of-function research, to 15-minute cities, to transhumanism, to war with Russia; the decisions are all being made by a handful of people of whom we know every little and who were never voted into office.

  

  And that brings us back to our original question: How many of these oddball events (in recent years) were conjured up and implemented by agents of the deep state to advance the elitist agenda?

  This seem like an impossible question since it’s hard to find a link between these dramatically divers events. For example, what is the link between a Drag Queen Children’s Hour and, let’s say, firebombing a food processing plant in Oklahoma? Or the relentless political exploitation of gender issues and the January 6 public show trials? If there was a connection, we’d see it, right?

  Not necessarily, because the link might not have anything to do with the incident itself, but instead, with its impact on the people who experience it. In other words, all of these events could be aimed at generating fear, uncertainty, anxiety, alienation and even terror. Have the intelligence agencies launched such destabilizing operations before?

  Indeed, they have, many times. Here’s an excerpt from an article that will help you to see where I’m going with this. It’s from a piece at The Saker titled Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Fascism.” See if you notice any similarities with the way things have been unfolding in America for the last few years:

  Yves Guerin-Serac: the Black Ops Grandmaster behind Operation Gladio…. wrote the basic training and propaganda manuals which can be fairly described as the Gladio order of battle.”…

  Guerin-Serac was a war hero, agent provocateur, assassin, bomber, intelligence agent, Messianic Catholic, and the intellectual grandmaster behind the ‘Strategy of Tension’ essential to the success of Operation Gladio. Guerin-Serac published via Aginter Press the Gladio manual, including Our Political Activity in what can aptly be described as Gladio’s First Commandment:

  “Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures…In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of Communist and pro-Soviet activities…Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups.”

  Guerin-Serac continues:

  “Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a situation [breakdown of the state]: blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a large number of victims), and selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons)…

  This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of ‘communist activities.’ After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”

  Anarchic random violence was to be the solution to bring about such a state of instability thus allowing for a completely new system, a global authoritarian order. Yves Guerin-Serac, who was an open fascist, would not be the first to use false-flag tactics that were blamed on communists and used to justify more stringent police and military control from the state….” (“Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Facism”, The Saker)

  Repeat: the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures… This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of (communist) activities…. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”

  In other words, the objective of the operation is to completely disrupt all social relations and interaction, cultivate feelings of uncertainty, polarization and terror, find a group that can be scapegoated for the wide societal collapse, and, then, present yourself (elites) as the best choice for restoring order.

  

  Is this what’s going on?

  It’s very possible. It could all be part of a Grand Strategy aimed at “wiping the slate clean” in order to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.”

  

  That could explain why there has been such a vicious and sustained attack on our history, culture, traditions, religious beliefs, monuments, heroes, and founders. They want to replace our idealism with feelings of shame, humiliation and guilt. They want to erase our past, our collective values, our heritage, our commitment to personal freedom, and the very idea of America itself. They want to raze everything to the ground and start over. That is their basic Gameplan writ large.

  The destruction of the state is being carried out behind the cover of seemingly random events that are spreading chaos, exacerbating political divisions, increasing the incidents of public mayhem, and clearing the way for a violent restructuring of the government.

  

  They can’t build a new world order until the old one is destroyed.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 23:00

• Canadian 'Super Pigs' About To Invade US, Unleash Major Damage
  Canadian ‘Super Pigs’ About To Invade US, Unleash Major Damage

  Already beset by wild boars in southern regions, the US is about to be invaded by hordes of “super pigs” set to spill over from their current ranges in Canada and blaze a multifaceted path of destruction across northern states and beyond.   

  A cross between domestic pigs and European wild boar, these beasts pack a wallop — the largest “super pig” killed so far was well over 600 pounds — and scientists say they’re highly intelligent too. 

  

  Feral hogs already unleash economic damages of about $1.5 billion a year in the United States, and with this imminent gift from our Canadian neighbors, that toll’s growth is set to accelerate. The pigs bring destruction in a variety of ways: devouring crops, uprooting trees, contaminating water, and carrying viruses that can leap into human populations. 

  Typically three feet tall and five feet long, “these pigs are easily the worst invasive large mammal on the planet,” the University of Saskatchewan’s Ryan Brook tells Fox News. 

  “Wild hogs feed on anything. They gobble up tons and tons of goslings and ducklings in the spring. They can take down a whitetail deer, even an adult,” Brook told Field & Stream. “Originally, it was like ‘wow, this is something we can hunt.’ But it’s become clear that they’re threatening our whitetail deer, elk, and especially, waterfowl.”

   

  “The only people who should be worried about this is anyone who lives in North America and eats meat, or eats vegetables, or eats any foods based on grain crops, or spends time outside for any reason,” said Brook, who heads the university’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project and whom a colleague christened “Chairman of the Boar.”

  

  The disaster started when Canadians imported European wild boars in the 1980s to add another agricultural dimension, mating them with domestic pigs to create bigger pigs. After the market for wild boar topped out in 2001, many ranchers simply let them loose into the wild, confident they stood no chance against winter in the Great White North.  

  However, the brainy beasts — whose DNA goes back to Siberia — quickly figured out how to make deep snow caves, even lining the bottoms with cattails scythed with their sharp tusks. “They’re so warm inside that one of the ways we use to find these pigs is to fly first thing in the morning when it’s really cold, colder than -30, and you will actually see steam just pouring out the top of the snow,” Brook told The Guardian.  

  Now, they’re evening constructing above-ground residences that experts like to call “pigloos.” 

  This latest plague upon the United States is likely to be permanent. On the plus side, people in northern states can start enjoying this exhilarating form of hunting — which has the additional leftist-aggravating benefit of leaning heavy on fossil fuels and semi-automatic rifles: 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 22:40

• Sequoia Capital Exec Admits "Even Democrats Like Me Are Fed Up With San Francisco"
  Sequoia Capital Exec Admits “Even Democrats Like Me Are Fed Up With San Francisco”

  Authored by Olivia Murray via AmericanThinker.com,

  I guess all that “culture” (human feces and heroin needles) and “excitement” (rampant crime) of life in a big city is getting a little old for Michael Moritz, a partner at Sequoia Capital.

  But, don’t you smug conservatives get any ideas, these blights aren’t a byproduct of Democrat ideas — San Francisco is merely “held hostage” by “political classes.”

  

  In an essay published by The New York Times today, Moritz acknowledged the city was indeed “crippled” by “homeless encampments” and “drug addicts” before he blamed conservatives for rubbing Democrat noses in the mess. Moritz opened his piece with this:

  Few subjects please Tucker Carlson more than sticking a shiv into the city of his birth – San Francisco. Sadly, Mr. Carlson has plenty of reasons for portraying San Francisco as a crippled city, hence his fondness for broadcasting clips of homeless encampments and drug addicts. But Mr. Carlson and his ilk have less interest in understanding why these problems exist.

  Let me stop Mr. Moritz right there: conservatives lack neither interest in nor understanding about the sorry state of San Francisco. In fact, we care immensely about human suffering, undignified existences, and burdensome realities, but we don’t allow reason and logic to fall by the wayside in pursuit of a utopia that we know exists only in fiction. This balance is what makes us believe a limited government and conservative principles yield the most prosperous results for the greatest number of people. If we were to elevate our feelings over the facts, and in doing so, jettison logic and reason… we’d be Democrats like Mr. Moritz.

  Moritz notes:

  Like it or not, San Francisco has become a prize example of how we Democrats have become our own worst enemy. Causes that we have long espoused… have all been crippled by a small coterie who knows how to bend government to its will.

  He describes this phenomenon as “tyranny of the minority.” Is this a prelude to reinvigorated efforts to abolish the Electoral College? His verbiage leaves room for theorizing…. Funny enough though, in the same essay, Moritz asserts that negative changes have been brought about by “referendums that are a staple of the city’s elections” — is it just me or isn’t that the exact definition of “tyranny of the majority”? Referendums bypass a representative government, usurping lawmaking authority from elected lawmakers. The voters themselves head to the ballot box, and the impulses of the majority decide.

  Perhaps this San Francisco Democrat ought to read the words of James Madison, as the Founder expounded on “the mischiefs of faction” in Federalist 10:

  From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.

  …

  Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

  Moritz also states this:

  The core of the issue, in San Francisco and other cities, is that government is more malleable at the city level than at higher levels of government.

  …

  If the U.S. Constitution requires decades and a chisel and hammer to change, San Francisco’s City Charter is like a live Google doc controlled by manipulative copy editors.

  Again, that seems like a Democrat policy problem to me…. Remind me again which political faction consistently asserts the “need” to “rewrite the Constitution”? Can Moritz’s observation noting that perpetual revisions of foundational documents is a recipe for disaster please be the nail in the coffin for any more leftist cries to scrap our national Constitution? A girl can dream.

  

  Moritz is right, San Francisco is held hostage by political classes, but what “classes” those could possibly be other than leftist ones, I can’t say — and apparently neither can Moritz.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 22:20

• Ohio Sen. JD Vance Suggests PPP-Style Program For East Palestine Residents After Toxic Train Derailment
  Ohio Sen. JD Vance Suggests PPP-Style Program For East Palestine Residents After Toxic Train Derailment

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has proposed that a Paycheck Protection Program, also known as PPP, be rolled out for residents of East Palestine, Ohio following the recent train derailment and a wave of deindustrialization.

  

  In an op-ed for The Washington Post published on Feb. 26, the Republican senator noted that East Palestine is a small town of about 5,000 people with a median income of $44,498.

  “Like many towns near Youngstown, Ohio, it has suffered substantially from the wave of deindustrialization that saw millions of jobs leave for China, Mexico, and other countries,” Vance wrote.

  “Because of this, the concerns of residents have focused on economic development questions over the past several years,” Vance penned. “Every one of those challenges has gotten much more difficult.”

  Vance pointed to the recent derailment of a Norfolk Southern-operated freight train on Feb. 3 that led to a spill of toxic chemicals and a burn of chemicals that left a black plume of smoke over the area. This has led to concerns over the long-term health impacts for residents.

  This, Vance said, has added to an already stressed local economy that “drives people and capital away” from the town, impacting local businesses.

  Thus he proposed introducing a pandemic-era style PPP-style program that would grant businesses the resources they need to stay afloat, enabling them to pay employees and rent.

  

  ‘Town of Good People Will Suffer Mightily’

  He also noted that the small community needs long-term investment from both the federal government and Norfolk Southern Railway.

  “Without special refinancing, homeowners will be underwater as flight from the community drives home prices lower, decimating the tax base on which local schools and public services rely. Farms will require direct support,” Vance wrote. “Underfunded schools will need help. East Palestine will need its own version of the Paycheck Protection Program to protect workers and businesses who lost their livelihoods because of the decisions of others.”

  “Otherwise, an entire town of good people will suffer mightily through no fault of their own,” the senator concluded.

  The PPP program was established under the CARES Act in March 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, to help keep Americans afloat during the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.

  However, while the program did save around 3 million jobs at its peak in the second quarter of 2020, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, it was also rife with fraud.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 21:40

• Apartment Rents Slide Across All US Cities Amid "Crush" Of New Supply
  Apartment Rents Slide Across All US Cities Amid “Crush” Of New Supply

  Back in September, when looking at various leading rental market indicators, we reported that “Manhattan Apartment Rents Finally “Plateau” After Red-Hot Summer” a trend reversal that was also observed at the national level as we observed in “Nationwide Rents Drop For First Time In Two Years.” With rents peaking in August, two months later the retnal drop accelerated as we discussed in “Just Tumbled The Most On Record As Economy Craters“, incidentally something we wrote just hours after the latest FOMC, when Fed chair Jerome Powell clearly hadn’t yet gotten the rent memo as the following two quotes from his November FOMC presser reveal:

  • POWELL: POINT AT WHICH RENT INFLATION SLOWS IS STILL FAR AWAY

  • POWELL: AT SOME POINT YOU’LL SEE RENTS COMING DOW

  Fast forward to today when not just Powell but everyone at the Fed should be fully aware that rents have been sliding for almost half a year now, because as Powell’s favorite WSJ mouthpiece himself wrote today, “apartment rents fell in every major metropolitan area in the U.S. over the past six months through January, a trend that is poised to continue as the biggest delivery of new apartments in nearly four decades is slated for this year” while tenants are now maxed out on how much income they can devote to rent.

  Citing our favorite real-time rental market indicator, listing website Apartment List whose data we used in Sept 2021 when we wrote “What Rental Hyperinflation Looks Like: “Soaring Prices. Competition. Desperation” to explain why rents are far higher than the CPI reports and why the prevailing groupthink consensus of “transitory inflation” was dead wrong, WSJ reported Nick Timiraos writes that renters with new leases in January paid a median rent that was 3.5% lower than they would have paid last August…

  

  … “the first time in five years that rent fell every month over a six-month period, according to the same estimates.”

  

  Realizing what our readers – if not the Fed – knew long ago, namely that to get an accurate picture of rents and inflection points in the apartment rental market one needs to look not at the CPI’s Owner Equivalent Rent data which is delayed by approximately 12 months, Timiraos says that four other market measures by housing-data companies also show that new-lease rents either fell or remained flat in January compared with the previous month, extending a streak of monthly rent declines that began at the end of the summer.

  This can be seen in this Goldman chart which uses primary data from CoStar which also shows that rents peaked in August and have been declining since, even if they clearly have a long way to go to catch down to their pre-covid levels.

  

  The softening rental market follows an unprecedented run for the apartment and home-rental industry put into motion by the pandemic. Pent-up demand for housing exploded in the months after the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines in late 2020 and a surge in people searching for apartments lifted rents 25% over two years.

  But now that covid stimmies have long run out, the recent rental declines are a sign that many tenants have maxed out on how much of their income they can devote to rent, while the specter of layoffs has created new concerns for some. Other would-be renters who are living with family or friends, remain sidelined by prices that are still far too high for their budgets.

  And while some seasonal stalling in rents is normal, Timiraos cautions that according to projections from CoStar, the market faces a significant headwind in the form of a supply “crush”, namely the biggest delivery of new supply since 1986: nearly half a million new apartments are coming on line this year as developers seek to cash in on the high rents that tenants have been paying. Indeed, as discussed over the weekend, countless renters facing the most unaffordable housing market in generations…

  

  … are unable to to buy a home because of higher mortgage rates and steep prices, so rentals have been in high demand.

  Rents, of course, are not alone, and they have retreated alongside sharper recent declines in home-sale prices, which fell 3.6% between June and November, according to the Case-Shiller. Soaring mortgage rates and softening buyer demand have been weighing on home prices, despite a period this year when lower rates sparked an uptick in buyer interest. Ironically, the more unaffordable home purchases have become, the greater the demand for rentals… at least until a tipping point of sorts was hit several months ago.

  

  The good news is that with a long delay, the coming tidal wave of new apartment supply – especially in places where housing inventory remains unusually low to the benefit of home sellers – will give renters more choices, making it not only more difficult for landlords to raise rents at rates seen early in 2022, when rent growth was at a near-20% annual clip, but forcing many to cut rents outright.

  Indeed, the supply of new rentals is already having an impact: according to software company RealPage, the share of apartment tenants who renewed leases declined in January to 52%, the lowest level for that month since 2018; the data suggests some tenants are finding better deals at other buildings.

  “Renters facing lease renewals suddenly have a lot more options,” RealPage economist Jay Parsons said in a report. Landlords are likely to start dropping their renewal rents to prevent tenants from leaving, he added.

  Ironically, asking rents are sliding just as the much-delayed shelter cost component of the CPI basket soared by oar 7.9% in January compared with the same month a year earlier. Of course, as we long ago noted, the impact of rent declines tends to lead what is expressed in the CPI by as much as 12 months. Furthermore, as we discussed recently, many renters are in the middle of leases signed before recent price drops. That is one reason why the rising cost of rent reflected in the CPI shows annual price growth that is still higher than market measures, which track new leases.

  And while rent has been declining sequentially for five months now, rent growth still remains positive on an annual basis according to most data sources; even so the pace of growth is rapidly slowing and if it continues to decelerate beyond winter, it would help pull down services inflation figures, of which housing costs are the biggest component. New-lease rent growth ranged from about 2% to 6% in January compared with one year prior, according to most market reports, down significantly from the pace of growth in early 2022. As more leases expire, analysts expect CPI figures to better reflect the lower costs of new leases.

  Where are the rental drops the biggest?

  Citing the latest Apartment List data, Timiraos notes that in the months since August, new-lease rents have fallen most sharply in some of the nation’s biggest metro areas. Seattle rents have tumbled 8%, while rents in Boston and Las Vegas have fallen 6%, according to Apartment List.

  

  The Seattle metro area’s median rent was $1,706 in January, while in the Boston metro area it was $1,879. Other measurements of rent with different sample criteria show much higher rent prices, but similar long-term trends in price movement.

  Notably, none of the 52-largest metro areas tracked by Apartment List experienced positive rent growth over the period. Indianapolis and Miami were the best performing cities, with rental declines of just 1%. It was all downhill from there.

  

  Rents for single-family homes, which had also increased sharply before last summer, now are stalling, too. The average national asking rent for a house rose just one buck in January, compared with December, to reach $2,070, according to data provider Yardi Matrix.

  Assuring further rental declines, apartment vacancies have been rising since last fall, due to weaker demand from potential renters. Fewer people are flocking to Zoomtowns—communities that experienced a surge in population from an influx of remote workers—such as Boise, Idaho, or Phoenix compared with earlier in the pandemic, a recent report from listing website Zumper notes.

  

  Of course, there is a lot of room to fall: even after a 3.5% decline in new-lease rents since last summer, rents in many cities remain 20% or 30% higher than they were when the pandemic began. Rents in the Tucson, Ariz., Tampa, Fla., and Miami metro areas are all 35% higher than in March 2020, according to an Apartment List report.

  “Renters are still having a tougher time than they were even a year-and-a-half ago,” said Chris Salviati, economist at Apartment List. However, if the Fed keeps rising rates and ignoring the general economic malaise – which the Biden admin is doing everything to cover up – rents should be in freefall in just a few months, but don’t expect the Fed to respond: as usual it takes the US central bank about 6 to 9 months to realize it is always behind the curve.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 21:20

• CDC Spreads False Information About COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring
  CDC Spreads False Information About COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A top U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official gave false information about COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring to the agency’s vaccine advisory panel, and a spokesperson for the agency refused to correct the misinformation.

  

  Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, presented on COVID-19 vaccine safety to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Feb. 24.

  Shimabukuro went over updates to the safety signal for ischemic stroke following Pfizer bivalent booster vaccination that CDC officials detected in one of the agency’s monitoring systems.

  After sharing the updates, Shimabukuro made the false statement.

  “No safety signals were detected for ischemic stroke for the primary series or monovalent boosters for Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines in U.S. and global monitoring,” Shimabukuro said.

  That’s not true. The CDC identified ischemic stroke as a safety signal following Moderna and Pfizer vaccination after analyzing reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a different system, which the agency co-manages.

  Asked for comment, Shimabukuro did not respond. But a CDC spokesperson doubled down on the false claim.

  “The statement from Dr. Shimabukuro’s slides is correct. There have not been any safety signals detected at this time in the U.S. for ischemic stroke for the primary series or monovalent boosters,” Katherina Grusich, the spokesperson, told The Epoch Times in an email.

  The CDC has previously offered misinformation and refused to correct it.

  Barbara Loe Fisher, president and co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, said what unfolded was concerning.

  “Those of us who worked with Congress to secure vaccine safety informing, recording, and reporting provisions in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act—of which VAERS was one—are deeply concerned that federal health officials are deliberately ignoring signals in VAERS and that mRNA COVID shots are causing ischemic strokes and other potentially fatal complications,” Fisher told The Epoch Times in an email.

  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines utilize messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology.

  Bivalent boosters from both companies were authorized in the fall of 2022, but the primary series are still composed of the original vaccines, sometimes referred to as monovalent shots.

  Shimabukuro’s statement had an impact. After his presentation, while the slide with the false information was on the screen, a member of the panel highlighted it.

  “I think it’s important to note [the statement] for the public,” Veronica McNally, president and CEO of the Fanny Strong Foundation, said, before reading it in full.

  Another False Statement

  Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, a member of the advisory panel, also offered false information about the safety signal.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 21:00

• NYC Fire-Sells $200 Million Of COVID-Era PPE Supplies For Just $500,000
  NYC Fire-Sells $200 Million Of COVID-Era PPE Supplies For Just $500,000

  Who would have thought that all of the spur-of-the-moment government spending we engaged in to “beat the virus” over the last several years would turn out to be mismanaged and reckless?

  That certainly seems to be the case now, as it is being reported that about $200 million worth of Covid supplies that were purchased during the Covid era in New York have been fire-sold off for just $500,000, according to Fox 5. 

  Bill Hammond, senior policy fellow at the conservative-leaning think tank The Empire Center, told Fox: “People were dying. There was reasonable concern that it was going to keep getting worse.”

  Among the emergency orders made by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio was an order for 3,000 emergency ventilators that cost the city $12 million. One investigative reporter, Greg Smith, said of the purchase: “They put them in the corner or in the closet or something, and they never turned [them] on.”

  

  And now with de Blasio out of office, new Mayor Eric Adams is in the process of selling excess masks, medical gowns, and ventilators for “pennies on the dollar” in online auctions, the report says. 

  On source told Fox: “The advertisement in the auction was for ‘nonfunctioning medical equipment for scrap metal,’ and they sold it to this junk dealer on Long Island for $24,600. That works out to about eight dollars per ventilator.”

  In sum, the city wound up selling $200 million of Covid-era equipment for just $500,000. 

  “I mean, they’re trying to sell it, so it’s still usable. Why don’t they keep it? Because, I mean, are we really comfortable with the idea that this will never happen again?” Smith asked. 

  Mayor Adams has said that the city requires a 90 day stockpile, which is why he is selling off the rest: “The charter calls for a 90-day stockpile. After that 90 days, we have to make a determination, of my understanding, either to auction it off, give it away, or discard.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 20:40

• The Vulnerabilities Of A High-Tech Society
  The Vulnerabilities Of A High-Tech Society

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  In the title of this piece, I use the term, “high tech” however this is about the vulnerabilities of any advanced civilization. Such societies tend to be specialized with their members dependent on services and jobs being carried out by others in the community to provide the basic necessities they need. If people were suddenly faced with losing the things they need to survive it is easy to envision a situation where survival of the fittest became the mantra of the day and things would rapidly become quite dicey. 

  

  High-tech societies are particularly vulnerable to collapse due to their population being dependent on both the system and others to provide the basic items they need to survive in everyday life. Electricity, food, water, sewer systems, phone and computer connections, transportation, and healthcare fall into this category. Just about everything else we have come to expect and experience as we go through our day depends on technology. 

  Life has become more complex as we transferred the task we did in the past to machines, and this could come back to haunt us. Our growing dependence on computers and devices such as smartphones and computers has dumbed down society. This has compromised the skills we need to endure and survive. We have reached the point where many people can not do simple math or read a map.

  A video by City Prepping reveals just how difficult it would be to survive following a massive disaster where no help or aid comes forth. Imagine being forced to exist for months on your own. The video points out many people will die if such a situation would arise. Would you know what to do? Even if you do, many of the things that would help you and your family survive are easier said and done. 

  The video gives ideas and details on how to survive the first 90 days following a major widespread society-altering catastrophe. It also makes clear and helps drive home the reality that even after that time things would probably not improve rapidly, but that is an entirely different subject. This idea dovetails with previous AdvancingTime articles warning that the government, or governments in general, are incapable of taking care of its population during a major widespread disaster.

  Most People Are Ill-Prepared To Face A Major Disaster

  

  It does not help that most people are ill-prepared to face the obstacles and miseries such conditions would heap upon them. Then there is also mother nature which is very capable of pounding them with additional challenges. While this blog is not a “preppers destination” and generally focuses on cultural and economic issues, it also notes the idea of a total collapse of our society and support system must be considered. This includes the notion of an electromagnetic pulse knocking out and destroying all electronic devices.

  Flowing into this is that military analysts have long warned about the threat of electromagnetic pulses, such a blast of radio waves could burn out most electronic devices. The most extreme version is a nuclear EMP from a high-altitude explosion. It is suggested a ‘ Pearl Harbor’ surprise attack might disable power systems across the continental U.S. and render most electronic equipment unusable. In such a situation, we are talking about a disaster complete with planes falling from the sky and automobiles hopefully coasting to a stop.

  Rebooting Our Systems Would Be Difficult

  

  Ironically, I have to wonder why those going to great lengths and costs to protect certain devices do not think follow-up EMPs would not affect those protected devices as soon as they were removed from their protective bags and put into use. This all feeds into the reality that we would all be screwed. Follow this thought with the Herculean task of ever rebooting our systems.

  Even if you don’t take the threat seriously of such a life-altering event occurring, watching the video I refer to merits a few minutes of your attention. Simply being aware of some of the issues you might someday be forced to face could save your life. Basic survival skills are important and being prepared is linked to thinking about what is often considered the unthinkable. 

  The video also addresses the issue of making the important decision as to whether to flee the area or try to move to what you think will be a safer location following a disaster. This is often referred to as “bugging out.” It points out that if you choose to move, relocating should be done sooner than later. After the first few days as people become desperate, unrest and violence will most likely surge making travel unsafe. Still, the matters of where to go, what to take, and how to get there remain. In my opinion, those city-dwellers living in dark high-rise apartments will find little comfort in their choice as the hallways and stairs become dangerous to navigate.

  Well, that is enough doom-porn for one day, and following this post I will be returning to subjects more in line and related to the world we are more likely to face. Still, remember, even local governments urge people to prepare when a storm is forecast in the offing. Being prepared for an event that may never happen is both a pain in the ass and can be expensive. It also takes a great deal of discipline. Still, when all is said and done, it may be the most important thing you ever do.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 20:20

• US Citizen Killed In Spiraling West Bank Violence
  US Citizen Killed In Spiraling West Bank Violence

  There’s been spiraling violence since Sunday across multiple West Bank towns and villages. Israeli settlers went on a rampage in the Nablus area – burning cars, businesses and attacking random Palestinians – after a Sunday night shooting wherein a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis in the Huwara area.

  Palestinian officials have condemned what they called a “pogrom” which saw some 400 Palestinians injured. This resulted in more shootings by Palestinian gunmen on Monday, including of a motorist identified by US officials as an American.

  

  According to Al Jazeera, “Palestinian media reported stabbings and attacks with metal rods and rocks. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said one person was in hospital after being beaten in the head with a rock, causing fractures to the skull. Another person suffered a beating with a metal rod to the face.”

  There’s since been a series of tit-for-tat revenge attacks from either side, with the latest resulting in the death of an American citizen in his 20s.

  He was shot Monday near the city of Jericho by Palestinian gunmen, the US State Department confirmed:

  According to Reuters, the killing was part of several drive-by shootings conducted by Palestinians along a highway amid escalating violence this week.

  Two Israeli settlers were shot dead on Sunday, reportedly by a Palestinian gunman, prompting other settlers to storm through part of the West Bank.

  The State Department later condemned the killings and “the wide-scale, indiscriminate violence by settlers against Palestinian civilians.”

  US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides issued a statement saying, “Sadly, I can confirm that a U.S. citizen was killed in one of the terror attacks in the West Bank tonight. I pray for his family.”

  Israeli reports describe that gunmen drove up beside the man’s car and shot at him while also opening fire on other cars, and subsequently the gunmen abandoned their car, setting it on fire. No others in nearby vehicles were injured. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 20:00

• Judge Rules Arizona Ranch Owner Will Stand Trial For Alleged Shooting Death Of Illegal Immigrant
  Judge Rules Arizona Ranch Owner Will Stand Trial For Alleged Shooting Death Of Illegal Immigrant

  Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times,

  A 73-year-old Arizona man will go on trial for the alleged second-degree murder of an illegal immigrant on his ranch property in January.

  Justice of the Peace Emilio Velasquez determined at an evidentiary hearing in Nogales Justice Court on Feb. 24 that there was probable cause against George Alan Kelly to proceed to a trial in Superior Court.

  Police initially charged Kelly with first-degree murder in the Jan. 30 shooting death of 43-year-old Mexican national Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, based mainly on inconsistent statements that Kelly made during an interview. 

  The incident allegedly occurred on Kelly’s ranch located near Nogales, a southern border city of 20,837 in Arizona’s Santa Cruz County.

  

  George Alan Kelly enters court for his preliminary hearing in Nogales Justice Court in Nogales, Ariz., on Feb. 22, 2023. (Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool)

  During the Feb. 24 court hearing, the prosecution announced that Kelly would face a reduced charge of second-degree murder, which doesn’t require proof that the alleged crime was premeditated. 

  Prosecutors didn’t elaborate on the downgraded felony charge. Kelly faces two additional charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

  Kelly’s attorney, Brenna Larkin, asked the judge to grant a continuance since the state’s case had “changed drastically” with new disclosures, requiring time for her to prepare a response. 

  “In my experience, it is routine to grant continuances,” Larkin said. “Mr. Kelly should not be treated any differently.”

  “Frankly, I am amazed at the state’s opposition [to a request for a continuance],” she said.

  The judge denied the defense’s motion and the hearing moved forward to determine whether there was sufficient evidence that Kelly committed second-degree murder.

  Kelly, wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and a vest, was present in the courtroom at the Feb. 24 hearing. He remains free after posting a $1 million surety bond on his property.

  Murder or Self-Defense?

  The defense says that Kelly and his wife were having lunch in their kitchen when they heard a single gunshot at about 2 p.m. on Jan. 30. 

  In court documents, Kelly told police that he went out onto his porch and saw a horse running in his direction and then a group of 10 to 15 men in camouflage clothing, wearing backpacks, and armed with AK-47 assault rifles. 

  Kelly claimed he fired multiple warning shots from his AK-47 over the heads of the men when they pointed their weapons at him. The men then scattered and ran off his property.

  During the alleged confrontation, Kelly called a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol liaison on his cell phone to report the incident. 

  An initial search of his property by Border Patrol agents and sheriff’s deputies failed to locate any of the men or the deceased.

  Later in the day, Kelly texted the Border Patrol liaison and left a voice message saying the matter was “worse than he could imagine” and that he “might have shot at something.”

  Kelly reportedly told police he discovered the body of a man after he went to check on his horses around 5 p.m. that day and used a flashlight to mark the location of the body. 

  A second search of the property found Cuen-Butimea lying face down with a single gunshot wound in his back.

  

  Wanda Kelly (C), wife of George Alan Kelly, accused of first-degree murder in the shooting death of an illegal immigrant on Jan. 30, leaves the Nogales Justice Center in Nogales, Ariz., following a hearing on Feb. 22, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

  Police were issued a warrant to search Kelly’s house; during a second search, they discovered Kelly’s AK-47, ammunition, and at least eight shell casings on and around his porch. 

  During the defense cross-examination of a Santa Cruz County detective, Larkin alluded to a federal agent who described the location near Kelly’s ranch as a “high crime area” used for drug trafficking and criminals who steal drugs from the cartels.

  The detective testified that during an interview, he told Kelly it was time to “come forward with the truth” and that the charge of first-degree murder rested largely on Kelly making “inconsistent statements.”

  “I arrested him based on the totality of the circumstances,” the detective testified.

  Prosecutors called a man identified only by the initials D.R.R., who testified that he was with Cuen-Butimea on Jan. 30 when Kelly allegedly started shooting at the group. 

  The witness, wearing a blue hoodie and medical mask to conceal his identity, testified using a Spanish interpreter.

  “[The group was] walking when this gentleman shot at us,” the witness testified. “I saw Gabriel hold his chest.”

  He added that then, Cuen-Butimea rolled his eyes and fell to the ground sideways.

  “I ran. I couldn’t help him.”

  The witness testified that the gunshots, about 15 in total, sounded like rounds from an AK-47 rifle. He said he thought “the government” had shot at him as the group fled back across the border fence and into Mexico.

  Witness Testimony ‘Not Credible’

  Before the judge’s ruling on probable cause, Larkin said there was “no reason” to believe the “absolutely incredible” testimony of the witness and said that police found no shell casings in the quantity matching the witness description.

  “It’s not conceivable that Mr. Kelly aimed from his porch, somehow saw this person, and made this long, difficult shot,” she said.

  “Obviously, there is a dead body here,” she added.

  “There needs to be probable cause that this crime took place [and that] this specific person committed this crime.”

  Larkin asked the judge to “do the right thing” and find no probable cause in the case.

  In the meantime, a fundraising campaign on GiveSendGo had raised $344,460 toward Kelly’s legal defense.

  Shannon Pritchard, who created the campaign, wrote that the original goal was $250,000, calling the amount raised “astounding, miraculous, a blessing to the Kelly family beyond belief.”

  “It is a tragedy that a simple farmer, who should be protected by the government has been abandoned and had to defend himself. That is bad enough, but the government that caused this, now wishes to persecute him,” Pritchard wrote. 

  A Change.org petition that urges the charges against Kelly be dropped collected 11,526 signatures, toward a goal of 15,000.

  At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the border crisis in Yuma, Arizona, on Feb. 23, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb said he thought the $1 million bond set for Kelly was “a little excessive” based on what he has seen.

  

  Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels talks about the fentanyl crisis at the southern border in Arizona on Feb. 16, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

  “Just from what I’ve seen, it seemed a little excessive for a guy who doesn’t have a criminal history and claiming self-defense and is claiming he didn’t even shoot him.”

  Lamb told The Epoch Times that a first-degree murder charge seemed unusual for the case, given the evidence presented.

  “I heard the term premeditated. Premeditated first-degree is pretty hard to prove. From what I’ve heard, it’s going to be tough. But I don’t know the case.”

  Santa Cruz County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Geraldo Castillo told The Epoch Times that the department has “not investigated a crime of this magnitude [previously] involving a migrant and a rancher.”

  “The investigation continues. There’s a lot still ongoing. I will not be able to comment at this time,” Castillo said.

  While prosecutors argued that Kelly shot Cuen-Butimea without provocation, Larkin said the case has been “highly political” from the start.

  “This essentially lit a match over an incredibly intense political powder keg and, predictably, there was an explosion,” Larkin said at a court hearing on Feb. 22.

  Kelly declined to comment to The Epoch Times at the probable cause hearing on Feb. 24.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 19:40

• Peru Is Running Out Of Prison Space For Convicted Ex-Presidents
  Peru Is Running Out Of Prison Space For Convicted Ex-Presidents

  Last week, the US State Department authorized the extradition of former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, after his home country has long sought to try him on corruption charges. The 76-year old has resided in the US since he left office in 2006. He’s since been under US house arrest, and is the latest in a long line of Peruvian leaders who have faced corruption charges.

  But Alejandro’s return to Peruvian custody has sparked concerns over where to house him, given that a special prison built for disgraced former presidents has already run out of space. 

  

  There are so many ex-presidents behind bars, that there’s literally no more space to put them in specialized units, away from general population inmates. 

  As Bloomberg points out, every single Peruvian president who has held office since 1990 has been in jail, or is in jail currently, or has been slapped with a detention order, equaling six total.

  According to Bloomberg, “The Barbadillo jail on the outskirts of Lima is currently occupied by former president Alberto Fujimori, held there since 2007 over death squad killings and corruption, and Pedro Castillo, who attempted a coup in December.” 

  And now with Alejandro headed there, “Adding a third presidential inmate would exceed the two-person capacity stated in documents published by prison authority INPE.”

  The presidential jail was previously home behind bars for other famous (or infamous) heads of state as follows: 

  In addition to Fujimori, Toledo and Castillo, three other ex-presidents have faced detention orders. Ollanta Humala, who governed between 2011 and 2016, was in Barbadillo over allegations that Odebrecht had illegally financed his presidential campaign.

  

  And further, “In 2019, former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was arrested over alleged ties to the same builder, but was ultimately put under house arrest due to health issues.”

  Alan Garcia, who was President of Peru for two non-consecutive terms from 1985 to 1990, and from 2006 to 2011, killed himself when he was served a preliminary arrest warrant notifying him he was headed to jail. Based on these past stats, it’s almost certain at this point that if a person becomes Peruvian president, future jail time awaits them.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 19:20

• Republicans React To Energy Department’s Reported Finding That COVID 'Likely' Leaked From Wuhan Lab
  Republicans React To Energy Department’s Reported Finding That COVID ‘Likely’ Leaked From Wuhan Lab

  Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Republican lawmakers responded to a news report saying that the U.S. Energy Department had concluded the lab leak theory was “likely,” saying that the finding supports what many have long suspected.

  

  A Wall Street Journal article on Feb. 26 reported that a classified intelligence report by the Energy Department said that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  “So the government caught up to what Real America knew all along,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a Twitter post on Sunday.

  The responses came as GOP lawmakers ramp up investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and allegations of government-big tech censorship of the debate.

  The Energy Department was previously undecided on the issue but now joins the FBI in corroborating the lab leak hypothesis, according to the report. Several people who have read the report said the Department’s judgment was made with “low confidence,” the Journal reported.

  Responding to the report on Sunday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that the intelligence community does not have a “definitive answer” on the matter at this point.

  Republican lawmakers have been vocal about the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory soon after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Initially, some health professionals and legacy media outlets dismissed the theory, labeling the theory’s proponents as racist and conspiracy theorists.

  Fauci

  Some lawmakers also accused Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of colluding with big tech companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, and censoring stories about the lab leak theory via what these companies describe as a crackdown on “misinformation.”\

  “Fauci knew this immediately but dismissed it because of funding for the Wuhan lab,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote in another post. “We know what happened next — when Fauci spoke Big Tech censored. I exposed this collusion as AG and I’ll work to ensure this type of censorship never happens again.”

  “Americans knew this from Day One,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “Unfortunately, Big Tech and Big Government silenced them.”

  Republicans and critics of Fauci have raised concerns about the NIAID’s funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology via the non-governmental organization EcoHealth Alliance, including for research described by experts as gain-of-function. The NIAID issued about 3.4 million in grants to EcoHealth.

  Gain-of-function research makes the virus more deadly by enhancing its pathogenicity, its ability to cause disease and harm the host, or transmissibility, how easily it spreads.

  The elites and academics owe everyone who had legitimate questions and concerns about the origins of COVID an apology.

  The American people deserve to see all the information concerning the Chinese lab leak and the origins of COVID. This won’t be forgotten. pic.twitter.com/hKARnyNgab

  — Rep. Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck) February 26, 2023

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

  The NIH has denied that the grants were for gain-of-function research, while Fauci has defended the decision to issue the grants to EcoHealth.

  “More evidence continues to mount that COVID came from the Wuhan lab. We’ve uncovered emails showing Dr. Fauci was warned that the virus looked man-made & came from a lab, but he may have acted to cover it up. Why? We need answers & accountability,” wrote the official Twitter account of the House Oversight Republican Committee.

  Re. China’s lab leak, being proven right doesn’t matter.

  What matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn’t happen again.

  — Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) February 26, 2023

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

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 19:00

• Former Black Panther Discovers One Of Her White Ancestors Arrived On The Mayflower
  Former Black Panther Discovers One Of Her White Ancestors Arrived On The Mayflower

  Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,

  A radical social justice Marxist and former member of the Black Panthers discovered that one of her ancestors arrived in the New World from England on the 1620 Mayflower expedition.

  

  On Tuesday’s PBS episode of “Finding your Roots,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr. interviewed Angela Davis, whom he said came to the show to have the mystery of her lineage solved.

  In the show’s final moments, Gates revealed that the investigation into her ancestry dated back to her tenth great-grandfather, a white man named William Brewster, who was born in England in 1570 and traveled to America on the Mayflower.

  A visibly stunned Davis said, “No, I can’t believe this. My ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower. That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now.”

  Marxist Angela Davis, Who Teaches That America Was Built By Racist Colonizers, Finds Out Her Ancestors Was On The Mayflower pic.twitter.com/j7XBpthT69

  — 757 Patriot (@757patriot) February 26, 2023

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  Davis emerged in California during the late 1960s as a prominent civil rights figure and a member of the Communist Party.

  She’s continued to support radical, far-left politics, and is currently a professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

  Amid her social justice activism, Davis was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for her alleged involvement in the armed seizure of a Marin County Courthouse in California that left four people dead, including a judge.

  It had been shown that Davis purchased the guns used in the attack.

  Davis went into hiding but was eventually arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy charges.

  She was imprisoned for 16 months before being released on bail and later acquitted by an all-white jury in 1972.

  Born in Jim Crow-era Birmingham, Alabama, Davis told Gates she had always assumed that her ancestors were slaves.

  While that’s partially true on her grandmother’s side, she also descends from slave owners, a piece of information that runs contrary to the message of the current social justice movement for which Davis advocates.

  Critical Race Theory

  Davis has been a proponent of Critical Race Theory (CRT), a variation of a concept put forth by German philosopher Karl Marx called “Critical Theory,” which divides people between oppressors and the oppressed.

  The CRT variation of the theory focuses on the concept of “white supremacy” in that it labels white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed while blaming white people of today for slavery that took place in the past.

  …

  Descended From a Patriot Slave Owner

  According to the lineage, Davis’s mother was named Salley Belle, and Belle’s father was a white Alabama attorney and lawmaker named John Austin Darden.

  This was another surprise to Davis.

  When Gates pointed out that John Austin Darden was a prominent member of the community, Davis asked, “Well, was he a member of the Klu Klux Klan or the White Citizen’s Council? That’s something I would also want to know because in those days, if one wanted to achieve that power one had to thoroughly embrace white supremacy.”

  The information of her lineage only drifted further from the social justice dogma.

  Her fourth great-grandfather, Stephen Darden, was born in colonial Virginia in 1750, and later served in the Revolutionary War.

  After the Revolutionary War, Darden moved from Virginia to Georgia, where he owned a farm and six slaves.

  Angela’s grandmother, Mollie Spencer, lived next door to a white man named Murphy Jones, whom the genetic profile showed to be Davis’ grandfather.

  Jones and Spencer had four children together. Murphy later sold Spencer 22 acres of land for $200, PBS reported.

  On processing the information about her ancestry, Davis told Gates, “I always imagined my ancestors as the people who were enslaved. My mind and my heart are swirling with all of these contradictory emotions.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 18:20

• Lithium Industry Reeling After China Shutters 10% Of Global Supply
  Lithium Industry Reeling After China Shutters 10% Of Global Supply

  That’s a nice little EV industry you got over there in the US, it’s be a shame if suddenly it found itself without the most important commodity.

  That’s one way to interpret what just happened in China; another – a less cynical – is the way Bloomberg described it, namely that China’s lithium industry itself is reeling as its top production hub –  responsible for around a 10th of the world’s supply –  faces sweeping closures amid a government probe of environmental infringements.

  The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, also known as the country’s “Lithium capital” follows a local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced to feed rampant demand for the battery material — and to benefit from record global prices. Now, they’re grappling with a close-up inspection by environment officials sent from Beijing.

  

  According to Yicai newspaper, ore-processing operations in Yichun have been ordered to stop as investigators probe alleged violations at lithium mines. That, Bloomberg notes, threatens somewhere between 8% and 13% of global supply, according to various analyst estimates, although it’s unclear for how long the immediate shutdowns will last.

  The sudden probe injects a big dose of uncertainty into a lithium market that has seen  prices drop, bringing some relief to EV manufacturers, as more global output emerges. Jiangxi province was expected to be a big source of extra supply, from a lithium-bearing mineral known as lepidolite.

  “This supervision may mean that the inspection and control over lepidolite mining in China will be more stringent in the future,” said Susan Zou, analyst at Rystad Energy. Companies with operations in Yichun include major battery manufacturers Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. and Gotion High-Tech Co., whose shares both fell more than 1% on Monday.

  Due to the ongoing probe, all lepidolite mining in Yichun aside from those by a state-owned company have been suspended, but refineries are still operational, Daiwa analysts Dennis Ip and Leo Ho said.

  Global lithium prices soared to a record high last year as demand from China’s booming electric-vehicle industry outstripped production. And, as so often happens in commodities, where the cure to high prices is more supply, leading to lower prices, this high-profit, high-demand environment has encouraged miners to skirt regulations.

  Some companies had already been targeted for infringements, including incidents of pollution, over the past year. This is a much wider crackdown, and involves officials from central government departments including the Ministry of Natural Resources.

  Yucai added that Beijing will mainly look at violations at lithium mines and seek to guide the “healthy development” of the industry; they will largely target those mining without permits or with expired licenses.

  Curiously, a recent Goldman report found that the Chinese car industry’s demand for lithium has fallen by more than half in recent months, a dramatic reversal that will drive a further slump in the market. Meanwhile, Chinese prices have dropped more than 30% from last year’s peak.

  

  According to calculations form Citic Securities analyst Bai Junfei, a month-long mining halt in Yichun would reduce lithium output by an amount equivalent to around 13% of the world’s total. Rystad Energy, a consultancy, estimated the amount at 8%.

  “At present, the market speculation is that the probe may stop after the two sessions in China next month,” Rystad’s Zou said, referring to the annual parliamentary meetings due early March.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 18:00

• EPA Orders Temporary Halt To Shipping Of Ohio Toxic Train Crash Contaminated Waste
  EPA Orders Temporary Halt To Shipping Of Ohio Toxic Train Crash Contaminated Waste

  Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Amid objections from Michigan authorities who said they weren’t aware that hazardous materials were headed into their state, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ordered a temporary pause on shipments of contaminated waste from the site of Norfolk Southern Railway’s Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

  “Everyone wants this contamination gone from the community,” EPA Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore said. “They don’t want the worry, and they don’t want the smell, and we owe it to the people of East Palestine to move it out of the community as quickly as possible.”

  

  Shore vowed that the removal process will resume “very soon.”

  On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern train carrying 151 cars derailed in East Palestine, a village of 4

  

  The National Transportation Safety Board reported that the train had 20 cars with hazardous materials, 11 of which derailed.

  To avoid an uncontrolled explosion that officials claimed would send shrapnel into the air, toxic vinyl chloride was intentionally released and burned from five cars on Feb. 6, sending up a massive cloud of black smoke that could be seen for miles around and was likened to a mushroom cloud caused by a nuclear weapon.

  The burn triggered questions about the health effects on the residents of East Palestine.

  EPA Takes Over Waste Disposal

  Norfolk Southern had been responsible for waste disposal until Feb. 24, Shore said. The railroad provided Ohio environmental officials with a list of disposal sites.

  Shore said disposal plans, including locations and transportation routes for contaminated waste, will be subject to EPA review and approval.

  “EPA will ensure that all waste is disposed of in a safe and lawful manner at EPA-certified facilities to prevent further release of hazardous substances and impacts to communities,” she said.

  On Feb. 21, the EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to pay for cleanup costs in East Palestine.

  “Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess that they created and the trauma that they inflicted on this community,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said. “I know this order cannot undo the nightmare that families in this town have been living with, but it will begin to deliver much-needed justice for the pain that Norfolk Southern has caused.”

  Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a Feb. 23 statement, “[Under EPA guidance,] Norfolk Southern brought in large dump trucks to move contaminated soil to U.S. Ecology Wayne Disposal, a licensed hazardous waste disposal facility in Michigan. This will be a continuous effort to properly manage and safely dispose of the waste.

  “So far, 4,832 cubic yards of soil have been excavated from the ground and more may be removed as cleanup proceeds. When the process begins to dig up the tracks and remove the soil underneath, that soil will be hauled away immediately and taken to a proper disposal facility.”

  More than 1.7 million gallons of contaminated liquid have been removed from the derailment site, according to DeWine’s office. Most of the 1.1 million gallons hauled off-site were sent to a Texas-based hazardous waste disposal facility, which has stated that it will no longer accept shipments.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 17:40

• Elon Musk Regains "World's Richest Man" Spot
  Elon Musk Regains “World’s Richest Man” Spot

  Elon Musk has regained his spot as the world’s richest man, unseating LVMH’s Bernard Arnault who briefly assumed the position this year after Tesla’s stock had taken a beating along with Musk’s net worth.

  

  Bezos, Gates, and Buffett aren’t even close…

  

  Thanks to a 5.5% surge in TSLA stock today, 51-year-old Musk’s net worth jumped to $187.1billion…

  

  …while 75-year-old Arnault has seen his net worth drift slightly lower in the last week or so (after LVMH’s strong gains early on), back to only $185.3…

  

  Tesla has recovered to a $650bn market cap (up $315 billion in market cap year-to-date)…

  

  Tesla’s gains this year (+92% YTD) have far outpaced the rally in the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index, which is up about 10% in 2023, and crushed LVMH’s return year-to-date (+14% YTD)…

  

  Musk’s fortune peaked at $340 billion on Nov. 4, 2021… so he is probably still feeling somewhat poorer.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 17:29

• China Blasts US 'Disinformation, Absolute Hypocrisy' On Russia Ties, Vows Retaliation For Sanctions
  China Blasts US ‘Disinformation, Absolute Hypocrisy’ On Russia Ties, Vows Retaliation For Sanctions

  China has delivered a blistering response to the US pressure campaign regarding Beijing’s closer ties with Moscow. In Monday remarks Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, told a press briefing that China is prepared to retaliate if “illegal” sanctions on Chinese companies involved with Russia are not revoked.

  She also rejected accusations from Washington that China is mulling sending weapons to Russia, calling the reports part of US “disinformation”. Instead, she said “The U.S., however, has been fanning the flame and fueling the fight with more weaponry.”

  “This is out-and-out hegemonism and double standard, and absolute hypocrisy,” Mao said. “The Chinese side will continue to do what is necessary to firmly safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies. We will take resolute countermeasures in response to the U.S. sanctions.”

  

  She reiterated China’s position as one which seeks a peaceful solution through negotiations when it comes to the Ukraine conflict. “On the Ukraine issue, China has been actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis,” she said.

  And from there she once again put the blame for escalation back on Washington: 

  “In addition to pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine, the US has been selling sophisticated weapons to the Taiwan region in violation of the three China-US joint communiqués,” Mao noted. “What exactly is the US up to? The world deserves to know the answer.”

  She said that the US is ultimately busy “spreading disinformation that China would supply weapons to Russia and sanctioning Chinese companies under that pretext.”

  One of the Chinese companies in question, Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute, previously came under sanctions for allegedly supplying the Russian mercenary firm Wagner Group  with satellite imagery of Ukraine.

  The real concern is that China is going to sit back and watch the West and Russia drain each other’s combat power.
  They think this will leave them as top dog, and make their jump-off against Taiwan in 2025-2026 that much easier.

  — QuintusCurtius (@QuintusCurtius) February 27, 2023

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  US under secretary of State for political affairs Victoria Nuland said last week that sanctions were against Chinese companies that US had observed “sneaking up to the edge and trying to provide” weapons to Russia.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/27/2023 – 17:20

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