May 28

Today’s News 28th May 2024

  • The Collective Shrug Over Fico Assassination Attempt Exposes The Drive For War
    The Collective Shrug Over Fico Assassination Attempt Exposes The Drive For War

    Authored by Craig Murray

    The collective shrug with which the Western media and political class noted the attempted assassination of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has been telling.

    Can you imagine the outrage and emotion that would have been expressed by Western powers if not Fico but a pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian leader within the EU had been attacked? The new orders for weapons that would have been presented to the arms manufacturers, the troops that would have been deployed, the sabers that would have been rattled?

    Prime Minister Róbert Fico at the E.U. Parliament in Strasbourg in July 2016.European Parliament, Flickr

    Instead we have the media telling us that Fico opposed sending arms to Ukraine and opposed threatening Russia. We are told he did not accept the mainstream narrative on Covid vaccinations. The media do not quite say he deserved to be shot, but they come very, very close.

    Fellow EU leaders followed correct form in making statements of shock and disgust at the attack on Fico, but they were formal and perfunctory. The “not actually one of us” message was very clear.

    There are now an ordered set of neoliberal beliefs to which anybody in a Western nation participating in public affairs must subscribe, or they are beyond the pale. Not to subscribe to all of these beliefs makes you a “populist”, a “conspiracy theorist”, a “Putin puppet” or a “useful idiot”.

    These are some of the “key beliefs”:

    No. 1) Wealth is only created by a small number of ultra-wealthy capitalists on whom the employment of everybody else ultimately depends.
    No. 2) The laws governing financial structures must therefore tend to concentrate wealth to these individuals, so that they may deploy it as they choose.
    No. 3) State-created currency must only be concentrated in and distributed to private financial institutions.
    No. 4) Public spending is always less efficient than private spending.
    No. 5) Russia, China and Iran pose an existential threat to the West. That comprises both an economic threat and a physical, military threat.
    No. 6) Colonialism was a boon to the world, bringing economic development, trade and education to people of inferior cultures.
    No. 7) Islam is a threat to Western values and to world development.
    No. 8) Israel is a necessary project for spreading Western values to the uncivilized Middle East.
    No. 9) Security necessitates devoting very substantial resources to arms production and the waging of continual war.
    No. 10) Nothing must threaten the military and arms industry interest. No battle against corruption or crime can override the need for the security military industrial complex to be completely unchallenged and internally supreme.

    Dependent Orthodoxies

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    Within this architecture of belief, other orthodoxies hang dependent, such as the correct way to respond to a complex pandemic, or support for NATO and impunity for the security services. (Support for Israel is probably better portrayed as a dependent point, but with the subject of Gaza so prominent at the moment I have figuratively moved it into the main structure.)

    Any deviation on any point of belief is a challenge to the entire system, and thus must be eradicated. You will note there is no room whatsoever, within this architecture of thought, for values like freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. They simply do not fit. Nor is it possible within this architecture to incorporate actual democracy, which would give people a choice of what to believe.

    Read the rest at Consortium News…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/28/2024 – 02:00

  • A Final Indignity To The Arsenal Of Democracy?
    A Final Indignity To The Arsenal Of Democracy?

    Authored by Thaddeus McCotter via American Greatness,

    It is Memorial Day weekend. A time for us to commemorate and reflect upon the ultimate sacrifices given by our fallen citizen-soldiers and the enduring grief of their families and loved ones, which were and are selflessly borne in the defense of their fellow Americans and our free republic.

    This spirit of self-sacrifice is rarely evidenced by far too many of the elected officials who will publicly eulogize these same fallen patriots and extend condolences to their families and loved ones. While exhorting others to emulate the example of those who made the ultimate sacrifice, these disingenuous politicians refuse to risk an ounce of political capital—not by opposing public sentiment—but by supporting it in the defense of our national security. Why? Because they fear alienating major corporations and their own party leaders.

    While currently occurring primarily in “Blue States,” abetting communist Chinese subnational incursions into our states has been a bipartisan disgrace—and this is despite the bipartisan warnings of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities.

    The complicit politicians’ reasoning is as follows: using taxpayer money to subsidize CCP-linked businesses locating in states will provide jobs and boost the economy of not only the local populace but also the profits of these companies’ American corporate partners. In sum, having failed to implement the necessary fiscal and free market policies to produce domestic economic growth, these politicians have latched onto these Chinese-linked companies as an electoral lifeline. Apparently, these politicians think the public believes a job is a job and will not care about the use of their tax dollars to import CCP-linked companies into our backyard.

    To wit: my home state of Michigan, which during World War II was rightly lauded with the name “The Arsenal of Democracy.” The “greatest generation” of Michiganians not only fought in foreign fields, they toiled in machine shops’ and factories’ floors to produce the armaments needed not only for our forces but for our allies as well. One shining example of American industrial and military might was the Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run Facility (Air Force Plant 31).

    As the Detroit Historical Society records, Willow Run was built in 1941 with $200,000,000 investment by the federal government. At its wartime peak,

    …Willow Run was able to achieve remarkable production rates. At its peak in 1944, it produced a B-24 [bomber aircraft] every hour. By 1945, it was able to produce 70 percent of its B-24s in two nine-hour shifts, with pilots and crew members sleeping on 1,300 cots as they waited for the B-24s to roll off the assembly line. The Ford Motor Company eventually produced half of their 18,000 total B-24s at Willow Run.

    Yet, over time, even as the threats to America ebbed and flowed, morphed and intensified, Willow Run ebbed in the minds of policymakers and the public. In 1953, Willow Run changed hands by lease and, ultimately, by deed from Ford to General Motors; and by 2010, Willow Run plant became a casualty of GM’s bankruptcy proceeding:

    Most of the plant was demolished in 2014 but a 175,000 foot portion was offered to the Yankee Air Museum, housed in a hangar until a 2004 fire. After successful fundraising, the Museum reopened in 2017 in the historic building.

    “The American Center for Mobility claimed the remainder of the massive site and in 2018 opened a proving ground and research facility for self-driving cars, the only one in Michigan and one of ten in the U.S., as designated by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation.

    What is of note to the present discussion is this: back in 1941, the U.S. government expended taxpayer dollars to an American corporation to provide employment in making armaments for the defense of our nation.

    Today, state governments are expending taxpayer dollars to CCP-linked companies that use the mantra of “jobs” to deflect from the potential to undermine our national security. All this for a talking point how “[Politician Name] Created [X Number of] Jobs.” (Sadly, the economic mendacity of this message remains lost upon far too many of our citizenry.)

    And the offending politicians show no signs of slowing in their feckless endangering of our national security. As the Daily Caller’s Nick Pope reports:

    Michigan Democrats shot down an effort to significantly expand the vetting process for China-tied companies seeking to cash in on state incentives earlier in May.

    Republican lawmakers in both chambers of the state’s legislature pushed budget amendments that would have prohibited the use of state funds to subsidize corporations originating from adversarial countries like China, but neither amendment made it into the budgets that passed on May 9 and May 15. House and Senate Democrats leveraged their control of each chamber to shoot down both amendments.

    The reason for the partisan divide is the support of the democratic administration of Governor Gretchen Whitmer for “Gotion, a company looking to build a subsidized facility in the Grand Rapids area… The state announced in October 2022 that it would be providing Gotion with incentives worth $715 million to attract its $2.4 billion factory to Michigan.”

    This is despite the fact that Gotion

    …is tied to China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) via its parent company, Gotion High-Tech. The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported extensively on the company’s links to China and the CCP, which include Gotion High-Tech’s employment of more than 900 CCP members as of 2022 and the fact that a visiting delegation of CCP officials set up a talent recruitment work station at Gotion’s California headquarters in 2017.

    This is not a one-off by the wholly Democrat-controlled Michigan legislature, who, according to state Senator Jonathan Lindsey (R-17):

    Governor Whitmer and the Democrats in Michigan are so married to this idea of taking Michigan taxpayer dollars and giving them to these corporations with ties to China, they refuse to budge. Last year they voted against preventing tax dollars from supporting child slave labor in China. This year they voted against reviews and limitations on those dollars flowing toward our global adversaries. What they’re doing is absolutely wrong for the people of Michigan.

    As Michigan Senate minority leader Aric Nesbitt (R-20) further points out, “It’s shocking to watch the Democrat majority in Michigan hand over hundreds of millions in tax dollars from struggling Michigan families to multinational corporations that pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party in their corporate documents.”

    Yet, what of the Ford Motor Company, the quintessentially American corporation that was a major artery pumping munitions and materiel through the heart of the Arsenal of Democracy and into our military and allies’ hands? Like the Willow Run plant, Ford has another project seeking public subsidies. Unlike the Willow Run plant, however:

    …Ford’s licensing deal with CATL, a Chinese battery manufacturer, has also drawn scrutiny. Ford planned to open a facility in [Michigan] – with the help of state incentives in excess of $1.5 billion – where it would manufacture batteries using CATL’s technology and know-how, but the company has since scaled down its planned factory, according to CNBC.

    Perhaps it is an elected official and Navy veteran, State Representative Andrew Beeler (R-64), who, being well versed in the self-sacrifice made by our men and women in uniform and their families, so well expressed his consternation and concerns:

    I didn’t spend years in the Navy pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party in the South China Sea only to come to the Michigan Legislature and give them government handouts… But House Democrats voted to let hostile foreign powers keep spreading influence and gathering intelligence on Michigan taxpayers’ dime.

    Given the bipartisan opposition to spending taxpayer money to subsidize CCP-linked companies, one might be tempted to chalk this up to a case of imbecilic political hacks cutting off their nose to spite their face and hoping no one notices. Granted, it would not be the first time. Yet this is far worse. These useful elected idiots are spending taxpayer dollars to buy the CCP the razor that barbaric regime will use to cut our throat. That this is happening in Michigan could well constitute a final—suicidal—indignity to the arsenal of Democracy.

    That this is happening at all constitutes an unconscionable affront to the citizen-soldiers who gave their last full measure of devotion for us.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 23:00

  • Israeli & Egyptian Troops Clash At Rafah Border, Leaving One Dead
    Israeli & Egyptian Troops Clash At Rafah Border, Leaving One Dead

    In a significant escalation, an Egyptian soldier has been shot dead at the Rafah border crossing after a rare exchange of gunfire erupted between the two sides.

    Israel’s Channel 14 described that Egyptian security forces “fired on an Israeli truck at the Rafah crossing” and that immediately soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “responded to this with gunfire.”

    Rafah border crossing, Israeli Army/AFP

    Quickly after, officials on both sides of the border agreed to cease firing, and the incident is under investigation.

    International reports including in Bloomberg and the BBC say that an Egyptian soldier at the border was left dead in the shootout. Israel media sources are calling it “a violation of the peace agreement with Egypt.”

    The IDF subsequently confirmed: “There was a shooting incident on the Egyptian border; the [incident] is under investigation, [and] dialogue is taking place with the Egyptian side.”

    Times of Israel has quoted the country’s Army Radio to describe current Israeli narrative of the incident:

    The Ynet news site and Army Radio quoted unnamed Israeli military sources blaming Egypt for the deadly exchange of fire.

    According to the reports, Egyptian forces opened fire first on Israeli troops at the Rafah Border Crossing, who responded with fire of their own.

    The situation at the Rafah border crossing has been incredibly tense after Israel’s military took over operations of the Gaza side. Palestinian officials had previously operated the post, but earlier this month the IDF took it over as part of the ongoing Rafah offensive.

    Tensions with Egypt are also at boiling point given the concern that hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by Israel’s offensive could pour into the Sinai.

    A US-backed peace treaty has guided Israel-Egypt relations since 1979…

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    Egypt’s economy has already long been under strain and Cairo says it can’t absorb mass numbers of displaced Palestinians. Large walled and enclosed ‘tent cities’ have been erected in the scenario where tens of thousands get across the border.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 22:20

  • Fear Trump… Or Bust?
    Fear Trump… Or Bust?

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    As Trump continues to show leads in critical swing states, as various lawfare-inspired cases against him seem to the public to be more persecutions than prosecutions, and as Joe Biden appears daily more incoherent and lost, the left on spec has resorted to warning the nation about all the supposedly catastrophic consequences of a future Trump presidency…

    Ironically, the left seems oblivious to the reality that one reason Trump leads Biden in the polls is precisely because voters can compare the four-year record of the prior Trump presidency to Biden’s last 40 months.

    Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that Trump will conspire with oil executives to spike gasoline prices. But even after Biden drained the strategic petroleum reserve before the 2022 midterms and is now again doing the same as the 2024 election approaches, gas prices have averaged only one-third cheaper than under Trump.

    Trump tried to top off the reserve but was blocked by Democrats in Congress. Nevertheless, he left Biden a nearly full reservoir of 638 million barrels (about 90 percent full), which Biden has now drained by some 270 million barrels to the present 51 percent full—and the levels are falling further as voting nears.

    We are warned that 77-year-old Trump looks haggard after his long hours in court. He seems sleepy, we are told. He has aged terribly, the media tell us. But polls show that concern over Biden’s dementia greatly outweighs normal worry over septuagenarian candidate Trump.

    Why would any sane pro-Biden handler bring up Trump’s supposed gait or occasional forgotten word when that only reminds the public of the contrast with Biden, whose speeches seem delivered in something other than English and whose transcripts must be heavily edited to airbrush away his incoherence?

    We are told that Trump will increase racial tensions. Almost daily, blacks and Hispanics are warned that Trump is a racist—even as polls show that he may well receive the highest percentage of minority votes by any Republican in modern history and has some chance of winning outright the Hispanic vote. Oddly, the media is now attacking minorities on the Marxist principle of false consciousness, as if they are deluded into voting against themselves rather than being perceptive critics of the Biden disaster of high inflation, green mania, a deluge of illegal aliens, and loss of deterrence abroad.

    It was not Trump, but Biden, who, during the last election cycles, called one African-American journalist a “junkie” and warned another podcaster, “You ain’t black,” if he voted for Trump. And during his presidency, on occasion, Biden has referred to black subordinates as “boy,” uses the ossified term “Negro,” and has a long history of racist drivel and smears, from “put y’all back in chains” to referencing Barack Obama as the first “clean” and “articulate” presidential candidate to proudly reminding us that his home state of Delaware was once a “slave state.”

    As Trump’s polls climbed and the Fani Willis persecution was sidetracked by her own false testimonies, conflicts of interest, and the hiring of her unqualified clandestine paramour, hysterical cries mounted that a reelected Trump would use the powers of government to go after his enemies.

    As Jack Smith’s federal indictment became calcified over issues of presidential immunity, his failed efforts to ram through the prosecution before the election, and his office lying over tampering with evidence seized at Mar-A-Lago, tired warnings of Trump’s weaponization to come of the bureaucracy mounted even more.

    Now that the jury is out in the Alvin Bragg fiasco and his star witness, Michael Cohen, a convicted liar, has likely again perjured himself and admitted to stealing $60,000 from the Trump organization, Trumpophobia has further peaked.

    In other words, the more evidence mounts that Trump’s enemies have manipulated the court system in the manner that they previously impeached him twice, tried him as a private citizen in the Senate, sought to remove him from state ballots, rounded up ex-intelligence officers to lie about the authentic Hunter Biden laptop on the eve of the 2020 presidential debate, and were exposed concocting the Russian collusion yarn by hiring a foreign national in the 2016 campaign, paradoxically, the more the left-wing media warns America that a President Trump would do exactly what they have been doing by emulating their weaponization of the courts, the bureaucracy, and the Congress.

    It gets stranger still.

    The left warns the country that Trump will deport some or many of the 10 million illegal aliens that Joe Biden and his impeached Homeland Security director Alejandro Mayorkas have deliberately welcomed in.

    Consider the logic: the current president destroyed a once-secure border and, for political purposes, illegally rendered immigration law enforcement null and void. But we are still supposed to fear his successor, who would resecure the border, return millions of recently crossed illegal aliens to their countries of origin, and restore the sanctity of federal law. In Orwellian fashion, the Biden administration is now suing exasperated states that are doing their part to help enforce immigration laws that Biden has deliberately shredded.

    The absurdity extends to foreign policy. Team Biden and the media are issuing warnings here and abroad that another Trump presidency would tear apart the global order.

    Really? Vladimir Putin has invaded neighboring nations in three of the last four administrations, but did not only during the Trump 2017-2020 years. Why?

    Before October 7, even Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan preened that his Middle East portfolio was “quieter than in two decades”—but only after Trump’s destroyed ISIS, took out the terrorist Iranian general Soleimani, ended the disastrous Iran deal, cut off aid to Hamas, designated the Houthi terrorists, crafted the Abraham Accords, pledged full support for Israel, our only democratic ally in the Middle East, and achieved U.S. oil independence.

    In contrast, Putin invaded Ukraine and may well absorb much of its eastern half. The U.S. suffered its greatest military humiliation of the last half century in fleeing from Kabul and handing over billions of dollars in weapons to the terrorist Taliban, abandoning our NATO-allied forces, sympathetic Afghans, and American contractors.

    Hamas killed more Jews in a single day than any since the Holocaust. A full-scale war rages in Gaza. Hezbollah has displaced thousands of Israelis with its daily attacks. And for the first time in history, Iran has attacked in force the Israeli homeland.

    China, with impunity, sent a spy balloon across the continental US. Some 25,000 Chinese male illegal aliens mysteriously barged into the U.S. And China has helped kill 100,000 Americans a year through its fentanyl exports to the Mexican cartels.

    Given all that, are we supposed to worry that “sharp as a knife” Biden’s disastrous foreign policy will be ruined by a return to the peaceful record of the earlier Trump presidency?

    So, what is Trumpophobia?

    The syndrome displays a number of symptoms.

    One, the left always projects its sins onto its opponents.

    It accuses Trump of doing precisely what it has done, as a way of avoiding blame for its self-inflicted disasters. And the left so vehemently projects because it knows what it would do if it were Trump and was treated as he has been by them.

    Two, desperate Democrats are scrambling to find some bizarre way to depose both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, especially should Biden have a disastrous, historic preconvention June presidential debate.

    As a result, the 2024 campaign has never been about comparison of 2017-2020 to 2021-2024. But rather, it has already descended into the Democratic de facto smear that “Trump is even worse than Biden.” And that fixation instills fears of what Trump might do rather than what he actually has done.

    Three, the left feels Biden may do more than just lose the Democrats the presidency, Senate, and its close margin in the House.

    His hyperinflation seriously damaged the middle class. He turns them off with his arrogance, screaming speeches, loud, obnoxious gibberish, compulsive lying, and generally impotent appearance.

    His racial condescension and pandering fool no one. As a result, Biden may well redefine the two parties as race is replaced by shared class concerns. Wealthy blacks may vote for Biden because they are black and wealthy, but more and more middle-class blacks may vote for Trump because they feel his policies benefit the middle class like themselves.

    The public increasingly agrees that the Democrat Party is the party of the very rich, the bicoastal privileged, and the subsidized poor, while the lower and middle classes feel far more confident and secure with Republicans.

    Four, the left fears a more organized, savvier Trump second term might hit the ground running‚ and thus rapidly and professionally instill a conservative agenda to stop the current neo-socialist revolution.

    Given all that, 2024 for the left is little more than “Fear Trump or Bust.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 21:40

  • United Airlines Plane Catches Fire At Chicago’s O'Hare Airport
    United Airlines Plane Catches Fire At Chicago’s O’Hare Airport

    By Tom Ozimek of The Epoch Times

    An engine caught fire on a United Airlines flight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on May 27, causing the pilots to abort takeoff.

    United Airlines flight 2091 from Chicago to Seattle experienced an engine fire at around 2 p.m. local time at O’Hare airport shortly before takeoff, a spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

    The incident led the FAA to temporarily suspend arrivals to the airport, with normal operations resuming at around 2:45 p.m. local time, the spokesperson added.

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    The aircraft, an Airbus A320, was towed to the gate where passengers “safely deplaned,” per the FAA spokesperson.

    A spokesperson for United Airlines confirmed in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times that the flight in question, which was scheduled to depart for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, was delayed after experiencing an “issue” with the engine, “which our local ground crew and emergency responders immediately addressed.”

    “The plane was towed to the gate, passengers deplaned normally and no injuries were reported. We are working to make alternative travel arrangements for customers,” the spokesperson added.

    The United Airlines spokesperson said that 148 passengers and five crew members were on board the aircraft when the incident occurred.

    “The fire department and medical personnel met the aircraft out of an abundance of caution,” the spokesperson said.

    A post circulating on social media purportedly shows images and video of the grounded United Airlines flight 2091 with several fire trucks on standby.

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    While details of the engine fire remain unclear, it comes as a federal watchdog recently launched an audit of the FAA to evaluate its oversight of United Airlines’ maintenance programs after a run of safety events at the carrier were linked to mechanical problems.

    Continue reading at The Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 21:34

  • Memorial Day 2050: How Will Future Americans Look Back On This Moment?
    Memorial Day 2050: How Will Future Americans Look Back On This Moment?

    Memorial Day 2024… honoring the men and women who bravely fought and died while serving in the US military. Across the country, many Americans will visit cemeteries and hold memorials for the fallen, and participate in patriotic parades. 

    Years down the road, or even by the middle of this century, will future historians and populations look back on this moment with a sense of regret, loathing, and disgust? 

    Will future generations of Americans one day be honoring the fallen of a World War 3 nuclear-armed confrontation with Russia? At this moment, Washington planners keep marching the nation (and the world) toward the abyss, seen in public messaging like the following…

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    What will the children and grandchildren of this current generation say when they look back and reflect on this moment?

    Will there be tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands more fallen to memorialize on Memorial Day 2050?

    Let us hope and pray this is not the case.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 21:00

  • We Are Entering A New Phase In The War In Ukraine
    We Are Entering A New Phase In The War In Ukraine

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    Today we will just highlight a few things:

    • Thanks to all my colleagues and everyone who has served, and I want to spend an extra moment to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
    • If you missed this month’s Around the World, it is an important read as it outlines Academy’s take on:
      • Israel commencing operations in Rafah.
      • Russian forces advancing on Kharkiv.
      • Xi meets with Putin in China.
      • U.S. force reduction in the Sahel.
    • While we cover the Xi and Putin meeting in the Around the World, I think there is also a case to be made that we are entering a new “phase” in the war in Ukraine. One where Russia will attempt to use social media to convince everyone that “peace” should be achieved, and where Russia is able to hold on to much of the land it occupies in Eastern Ukraine. It seems to be more than a coincidence that Putin appears to be publicly amenable to this sort of outcome after the meeting with Xi. It would also not be surprising given the information learned by observing how much social media seems to be able to shape political outcomes in the U.S. (the war in Gaza as a prime example). Could we be at the early stages of where we see the sort of deal we have been expecting for some time?
      • Our base case is that both sides will ultimately get forced into settling for some agreement that satisfies both countries, while not being particularly appealing to either country. Basically, Ukraine will cede some land and receive some of Russia’s frozen dollar reserves as payment, enabling them to pay some debts and embark on the reconstruction of their country.
      • Any such deal will be good for Europe as the rebuilding efforts will create demand for labor and equipment, but it will also be inflationary (at least initially). Globally, there would be some excitement as one of the Geopolitical Risks is taken off the table, but ultimately, not much will change as new global orders have already taken shape and will continue to do so, regardless of the outcome with Russia and Ukraine.
    • Overall, Geopolitical Risks remain topical. In our first Geopolitical Risk Perception vs Reality, we discussed the difficulty of incorporating geopolitical risk into “actionable” strategies. We focused on Cyber, Trade War, Commodities, the Middle East, Russia, and “wildcard” risks. We continue to see the markets underestimating the risk on the trade war and commodity front, while other risks seem to be perceived reasonably accurately relative to our view of the actual risk. If anything, Russia may have drifted into the “green” (potential positive surprise) from what we considered a neutral risk.
    • On the markets front, a few things seem to pop up again and again in discussions:
      • How are markets so strong with all of the Geopolitical Risks? We have tried to address that in the Risk vs Perception piece, and also in Hedging the Unhedgeable. There is no easy answer to this one, though I think the market has done a reasonable job and I’d look to own commodities and companies that would benefit from reconstruction in Ukraine or an effort to extract AND process more commodities “domestically” (either in the U.S. or with countries that we are very comfortable with politically and geographically – i.e. better control and access to those countries).
      • Last week we suggested that the market was Too Narrowly Focused on inflation and the minutiae of Fed policy. After a week of conversations, I don’t think that is the case. The market participants I speak with all seem to have coalesced around a reasonable view on the Fed:
        • We will get a cut or two this year, and a few more next year. No one seems to care much about whether it is 0, 1, 2, or 3 this year.
        • No one is really worried about the possibility of a hike, and people are consigned to the view that if we get a hike, it will only be because the economy remains incredibly strong, so it won’t be a big deal.
        • No one, in their main analysis and positioning discussions, is watching the tape nervously as economic data comes out.
        • Yet, the markets seem to respond to each headline as meaningful. Since I find it so difficult to identify people who care that much about any given headline, I can only assume that it is the “machines” that care. That algos and quant models are driving the show. Not sure whether that is good or bad, but it goes a long way to explaining the difference in what I see and hear versus what is actually happening in and around economic data. I do have to admit that the Citi Economic Surprise Index bounced last week and is less negative, which helps to explain why the 10-year ended the week near the high end of our range of 4.3% to 4.5%.
      • More and more notes about complacency and low volumes. I saw somewhere that SPY, a large S&P 500 ETF, had its 2nd lowest volume day in a year (only higher than the early close during Thanksgiving and one of the lowest full day volumes in years). VIX dropped back to 12. Anemic volumes may be helping push markets higher, but they are giving little confidence to investors, leading me to wonder how much the “machines” are in charge.
      • AI remains the big story. Having said that, I’m not sure how many people had NVDA up roughly 10% with the Nasdaq 100 down on Thursday. That certainly wasn’t a scenario I thought was plausible, yet It happened. Once again, it makes me wonder about market participation and liquidity.

    As we spend time with friends and family at barbeques this weekend, these are the thoughts/questions we are facing as we start the week, and for many, there are no obvious answers. Maybe we continue to grind higher on stocks, setting new records (most barely above the prior record or where we were months ago), or maybe something shakes things up (likely a trade related or geopolitical event, that can be tied directly to the earnings prospects of companies).

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 20:20

  • Absurd: Radical Leftist Rashida Tlaib Speaks At Conference Connected With Terrorist Group 
    Absurd: Radical Leftist Rashida Tlaib Speaks At Conference Connected With Terrorist Group 

    Rashida Tlaib, a Congresswoman from Detroit and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, spoke over the weekend at the “People’s Conference for Palestine,” linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

    This group, an Arab nationalist movement with Marxist-Leninist ideology, is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US. It has public-facing arms, such as Samidoun, working on behalf of the group, and active cells in many countries in Europe and North America. 

    During the Saturday speech, Tlaib referred to members of the audience as the “squad” and demanded President Biden establish a “red line” on Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza. She criticized the president for “attacking the authority” of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel’s mission to eliminate Hamas in Gaza. 

    Among the speakers was Wisam Rafeedie, an activist linked to PFLP. The US State Department has designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization. 

    According to the Director of National Intelligence, PFLP is a terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It unites Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology. It promotes the destruction of “Israel as integral to the struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East and ultimately establish a Communist Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the DNI writes on its website. 

    DNI provides more valuable insight into the terror organization: 

    The PFLP fostered links and carried out attacks with leftist militant groups across the world during the 1970s and was actively involved in the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, during which the group carried out suicide operations and launched multiple joint operations with other Palestinian terrorist groups. The PFLP’s operational tempo has since declined, with only two attacks in the last five years, most recently in 2019 that killed an Israeli teen and injured multiple others.

    “I don’t need to tell you that you’re on the right side,” Tlaib said in her speech in Detroit, adding, “I don’t need to. But I’ll be damned if I wait ten years before they apologize to all of you for doing what was right at this moment.”

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    A recent statement by Israel’s Ministry of Defense specifies, “Samidoun organization was designated as a terrorist organization as it is part of the PFLP.” 

    “Representatives of the organization are active in many countries in Europe and North America, led by Khaled Barakat, who is part of the leadership of PFLP abroad. Barkat is involved with establishing militant cells and motivating terrorist activity in Judea & Samaria and abroad,” MoD said. 

    Barakat is married to leftist radical Charlotte Kates, the coordinator of Samidoun and a Rutgers University School of Law graduate. 

    According to NGO Monitor, PFLP and Samidoun “had a strong presence at encampments, demonstrations, and riots on American college campuses. Students have been documented carrying PFLP posters, flying the PFLP flag, hosting PFLP-linked speakers, and reading PFLP publications.” 

    The degrees of separation between PFLP and Samidoun are only a few steps, and now it should become increasingly apparent a terrorist group has been directly/indirectly fueling the chaos across America’s elite colleges and universities. Yet, the Biden administration could care less, and the FBI is nowhere to be found publicly.  

    As for Tlaib speaking at the PFLP-linked event in Detroit, we’ll refrain from adding our commentary. Instead, here are some reactions from X users:

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    Where is the FBI?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 19:40

  • The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier & Our Societal Detachment From War
    The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier & Our Societal Detachment From War

    Authored by John Weeks via The Libertarian Institute,

    Modern nation states have developed an impressive symbolic innovation to memorialize their war dead, the tomb of the unknown soldier:

    “No more arresting emblems of the modern culture of nationalism exist than cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers. The public ceremonial reverence accorded these monuments precisely because they are either deliberately empty or no one knows who lies inside them, has no true precedents in earlier times…The ancient Greeks had cenotaphs, but for specific, known individuals whose bodies, for one reason or another, could not be retrieved for regular burial.” [Emphasis added]

    According to Arlington National Cemetery, which has hosted “The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” since 1921, its creation addressed a longstanding problem:

    “Through the ages, one of the consequences of warfare has been large numbers of unidentified dead.”

    Another consequence of warfare is that combat veterans return home. They present a similar problem, one that is addressed through our symbolic representations of warfare.

    The living experience themselves as obligated to the dead, but also responsible to safeguard themselves against death’s pollution. The French sociologist Robert Hertz (who died in combat during World War I) described “primitive” societies:

    “The period which follows death is particularly dangerous in this respect; that is why the corpse must be exorcised and be forearmed against demons. This preoccupation inspires, at least partly, the ablutions and various rites connected with the body immediately after death: such as, for instance, the custom of closing the eyes and other orifices of the body with coins or beads; it also imposes on the survivors the duty of keeping the deceased company during this dreaded period.”

    Our enlightened society is no longer characterized by widespread, professed belief in demons. But we continue to act as if we believed in such entities, especially concerning the dead. Coins placed on eyes is no longer the standard, but eye caps are routinely inserted to keep them closed. Regardless of whether one is a theist, deist, atheist or whatever else you’ve got, no one wants dead eyes “looking” at them.

    The modern funeral industry has created an intricate series of rituals for the “dreaded period” between death and burial. Fun fact, modern embalming has its roots in the American Civil War. The next time someone tells you war is great because it leads to innovation, think of a field of corpses and the rise of embalming chemistry.

    This responsibility and revulsion is true both within the family and within our nation, which masquerades as a Great Family with its Founding Fathers, daughters of liberty, bands of brothers, Uncle Sam and president as Great Father. Unknown war dead must be cared for and kept from polluting us somehow. The tomb of the unknown soldier fills this need. And in a nation with millions of people, even the identified war dead are unknown to most members of the national community.

    Hertz said:

    “The ideas and practices occasioned by death can be classified under three headings, according to whether they concern the body of the deceased, his soul, or the survivors.”

    The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier assures survivors that the bodies of the war dead have been appropriately “exorcised and forearmed against demons,” their souls have been secured passage to a glorious afterlife and the living have avoided the pollution they can cause.

    But what of our returning combat veterans? If war is hell, then these are men and women who have been to hell and back. Like Odysseus in The Odyssey and Aeneas in The Aeneid, they descended to the Underworld, gained powerful knowledge and then returned to the world of the living.

    Their bodies survived the war, but their souls have been damaged or even killed. Their souls need healing or resurrection. At the same time, they are a threat to the civilian psyche. Our society does a terrible job of healing and resurrecting our soldiers’ souls, as evidenced by the fact that four times as many combat soldiers and veterans of the Global War On Terrorism have committed suicide as have been killed in combat. But our society does a great job at protecting the civilian psyche.

    How many Americans realize that during World War II the U.S. Army raped its way across Europe? Spielberg didn’t put that in Saving Private Ryan, did he? There’s a lot that wasn’t put in that movie. There’s no torture, no suicide, and no soldiers murdering commanding officers. In one scene, the American GIs actually allow a Nazi prisoner to go free. I personally know of a World War II veteran who walked out of the theater after that absurd fantasy appeared on the screen.

    There are also no Soviets in the film, even though the Soviet Union killed most of the Nazis.

    Saving Private Ryan is representative of American portrayals of war. Despite its reputation for realism, it is extraordinarily detached from the experiences of our soldiers. And that’s because it isn’t for them. It’s for the civilians who never descend to the Underworld. Our culture encourages us to believe that our military is awesomely destructive. But it also encourages us not to dwell too much on all the actual death being dealt out. And certainly not to realize it rapes and tortures. That’s what the enemy does!

    That veteran who stormed out of Saving Private Ryan liked to say, “There are no autopsies in war.” We can extend that to say there are no autopsies of the souls of the soldiers who return from war. We prefer their souls embalmed, made up, and buried quickly. A war veteran’s daily immersion in our culture is like going to his own funeral and hearing a priest eulogize someone completely alien to him.

    On Memorial Day, let’s do our veterans the honor of recognizing that while we value their service and can romanticize their heroics, we are only capable of celebrating their return. When it comes to confronting where they’re returning from, we really cannot handle the truth.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 19:00

  • "Global Trade War Looms, But It's Not Just Trade War To Fear"
    “Global Trade War Looms, But It’s Not Just Trade War To Fear”

    By Michael Every of Rabobank

    History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking

    The UK election and the “I will protect you, but forgot my umbrella” Tory campaign have both been shaken up by its pledge to bring back conscription for 18-year-olds. This is seen as a desperate gamble and sad joke by many commentators, and even ex-military leaders say it’s silly to enroll unskilled, unwilling young adults when the armed forces need more equipment of all sorts, which the recent 2.5% of GDP defense spending pledge falls very far short of. Yet the joke must also be on those laughing when the global backdrop is so very serious.

    Stop thinking about Friday’s US PCE deflator data for a moment and look at the bigger picture. The main Bloomberg headline today is the G7 warning China over its trade practices. They want “balanced and reciprocal collaboration,” and will “consider taking steps to ensure a level playing field.” The US is already going to let tariff exclusions on hundreds of Chinese items expire, and the EU may be leaning towards a high tariff on Chinese EVs. Elsewhere, China is asking South Korea to maintain stable supply chains, as it moves closer to the US, and even Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have recently raised tariffs on Chinese steel.

    In short, global trade war looms, and as Bastiat noted, “If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” The problematic inverse is that even Adam Smith implied if some goods cross borders, soldiers don’t need to, and others won’t be able to when needed.

    It’s not just trade war to fear. China just finished a huge military exercise that clearly rehearsed a blockade of Taiwan and says it will no longer accept US congressional delegations to Taipei: one including the CEO of Nvidia just opted to visit anyway. Tens of thousands of Taiwanese are on the streets protesting a “parliamentary coup” led by the pro-China KMT party and its ally aimed at weakening the new president, further stirring the national-security pot.

    Russia apparently wants a ceasefire in Ukraine, which would allow it to keep all it has already taken. Of course it does: those are the most attractive terms available for anyone in that position. However, a further escalation in fighting still seems more likely. Indeed, NATO chief Stoltenberg now backs allowing Ukraine to use Western weapons to hit Russian forces inside Russia’s pre-2014 territory, which will only deepen the perception in Moscow that it is at war with the West and not just Ukraine. Russian responses obviously could range from the military within Ukraine, where fears of the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons may again re-emerge following recent military drills with them, but likely in the grey zone of sabotage and economic warfare wherever they can hurt most – which for the EU is lots of places.

    The US just lifted its ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The Israel-Hamas war continues despite the recent rulings of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, the latter giving a more nuanced legal opinion than many initially read into it. Israel’s fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon continues to escalate in tandem. Related Houthi attacks just claimed their first (unsuccessful) strike on a ship in the Med: others will follow, maybe closing off another major international waterway; and when do the Houthis share that military technology with forces in East and West Africa who want to block Western shipping going that alternative route rather than via Suez? Freight rates already spiking again, with warnings this can get worse. Relatedly, Russia just struck a Red-Sea-port-for-guns deal with Sudan, meaning they now have belt of influence and boots on the ground right across the Sahel.

    If you have time today, read ‘Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking’ by Peter Zelikow. It’s the most detailed historical argument yet showing what I flagged in 2018 as a key risk markets were ignoring – that the US would see a coordinated pushback from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which it would be ill-placed to resist with its current economic structure. The author says, “a serious possibility of worldwide warfare may be only in the 20–30% range. But that assessment is not reassuring.” Indeed, it isn’t!

    While he agrees US defense supply chains will be rebuilt –transforming it, global trade, and markets– the next 1-3 years will prove exceptionally perilous as this all happens. He specifically warns, “The US does not have the strategic initiative in the present conflict. It is reacting to choices made by others, which its analysts may not anticipate and understand… I believe the anti-American partnership has probably decided to double down. They are probably preparing in earnest for a period of major confrontation.”

    Yet markets are wishing for large rate cuts. The only way this makes sense is the geopolitical argument of keeping debt servicing costs low enough to expand military production: but today that implies locking in higher inflation too. Hence my view that we will need a hybrid tight-and-loose fiscal-and-monetary policy, as was the case prior to our roll-out of neoliberal global financialisation in the 1980s.

    Those in the real economy cannot be as blithe as markets: the physical economy is changing. We can see that in the global trade war that looms, and the policies being offered in the UK and the US.

    And if the politics and the physical economy must change more, logically so must central bank architecture: it’s impossible it remains the same against that kind of backdrop. Coincidentally, an Australian senator recently lashed out at the RBA in a manner applicable to all Western central banks now:

    “The RBA is clueless as to how monetary policy works. In 1985, Paul Keating lifted government capital controls. This meant that private banks were no longer restricted as to how much money they could borrow from offshore banks and what they used it for.

    The private banks had $8bn in foreign debt in 1985. By 2008 they had $800bn in foreign debt. This lifted house prices from 4 times average earnings to around 12 times average earnings. Banks now lend 70% to households and only 30% to business… The 1937 Banking Royal Commission recommended that the central bank should control the volume of credit in the system as opposed to private banks.

    In 1992, the RBA was made independent, and APRA was split off in the late 1990s. It’s a sad reflection on just how little monetary policy is understood that RBA officials had no idea as to what I was talking about when I asked why they don’t establish an infrastructure bank.

    It beggars belief that the RBA could print $300bn to pay people to stay at home and get brainwashed by State Premiers but not actually set about funding Australia’s infrastructure, which would actually solve our productivity crises, which is what is driving inflation.”

    Just include national security in with ‘infrastructure’, and you are where I’ve said we would be: which is a long, long way from thinking that US personal consumption expenditure is the most important global metric to be focusing on.

    Of course, financial markets will Keep Calm and Carry On: because they are in denial; 20-25% is ‘not worth trading’ as a tail risk; they have no idea how to translate into their specific assets; if they take the WW3 view, they might as well just ‘Buy All the Things’ anyway; and, as Zelikow puts it, “It is really hard, cognitively and institutionally hard, to hold open a doorway to the emptiness of what we don’t know and adapt to changing circumstances.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 18:20

  • Trust The "Science"…That Just Retracted 11,000 "Peer Reviewed" Papers
    Trust The “Science”…That Just Retracted 11,000 “Peer Reviewed” Papers

    It’s yet another reminder of why blindly ‘trusting the science’ may not always be the best go-to move in the future.

    217 year old Wiley science publisher has reportedly “peer reviewed” more than 11,000 papers that were determined to be fake without ever noticing. The papers were referred to as “naked gobbledygook sandwiches”,  Australian blogger Jo Nova wrote on her blog last week. 

    “It’s not just a scam, it’s an industry,” she said. “Who knew, academic journals were a $30 billion dollar industry?”

    According to Nova‘s post, professional cheating services are employing AI to craft seemingly “original” academic papers by shuffling around words. For instance, terms like “breast cancer” morphed into “bosom peril,” and a “naïve Bayes” classifier turns into “gullible Bayes.”

    Similarly, in one paper, an ant colony was bizarrely rebranded as an “underground creepy crawly state.” 

    The misuse of terminology extends to machine learning, where a ‘random forest’ is whimsically translated to ‘irregular backwoods’ or ‘arbitrary timberland’.

    Nova writes that shockingly, these papers undergo peer review without any rigorous human oversight, allowing egregious errors, like converting ‘local average energy’ to ‘territorial normal vitality’, to slip through.

    The publisher Wiley has confessed that fraudulent activities have rendered 19 of its journals so compromised that they must be shuttered. In response, the industry is developing AI tools to detect these fakes, a necessary yet disheartening development. Nova writes:

    The rot at Wiley started decades ago, but it got caught when it spent US $298 million on an Egyptian publishing house called Hindawi. We could say we hope no babies were hurt by fake papers but we know bad science already kills people. What we need are not “peer reviewed” papers but actual live face to face debate. Only when the best of both sides have to answer questions, with the data will we get real science:

    In March, it revealed to the NYSE a $US9 million ($13.5 million) plunge in research revenue after being forced to “pause” the publication of so-called “special issue” journals by its Hindawi imprint, which it had acquired in 2021 for US$298 million ($450 million).

    Its statement noted the Hindawi program, which comprised some 250 journals, had been “suspended temporarily due to the presence in certain special issues of compromised articles”.

    Many of these suspect papers purported to be serious medical studies, including examinations of drug resistance in newborns with pneumonia and the value of MRI scans in the diagnosis of early liver disease. The journals involved included Disease Markers, BioMed Research International and Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience.

    The problem is only becoming more urgent. The recent explosion of artificial intelligence raises the stakes even further. A researcher at University College London recently found more than 1 per cent of all scientific articles published last year, some 60,000 papers, were likely written by a computer.

    In some sectors, it’s worse. Almost one out of every five computer science papers published in the past four years may not have been written by humans.

    In Australia, ABC has reported on this issue, reflecting concerns over diminishing public trust in universities, which are increasingly seen as businesses rather than educational institutions. This perception is fueled by incidents where universities, driven by financial incentives, overlook academic fraud.

    The core of the scientific community is corroded, exacerbated by entities like the ABC Science Unit, which rather than scrutinizing dubious research, often shields it.

    This ongoing degradation calls for a shift from traditional peer review to rigorous live debates, ensuring accountability by having people argue their cases in real time.

    In December 2023, Nature posted that more than 10,000 papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record.

    You can read Nova’s full blog post here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 17:45

  • Friday Airline Travel Sets Record For Passenger Screenings: TSA
    Friday Airline Travel Sets Record For Passenger Screenings: TSA

    Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

    Friday set a new record for the most airline passengers screened by U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials in a single day, according to the agency.

    “On Friday, May 24, 2,951,163 individuals were screened at checkpoints nationwide, surpassing the previous record on Nov. 26, 2023. We recommend arriving early,” the TSA said in a May 25 post on the social media platform X.

    On Nov. 26 last year, the TSA screened a slightly lower figure of 2.90 million travelers. The third-highest screened day was on May 23, when officers screened 2.89 million people.

    The record numbers come days after the TSA said it was prepared for the “highest passenger volumes the agency has seen at airport security checkpoints nationwide during this summer’s travel season,” according to a May 16 press release. The summer travel season begins on the Memorial Day weekend and runs through Labor Day.

    The agency forecasted that May 24 would be the busiest travel day of the Memorial weekend, anticipating almost three million passengers.

    For the week of May 23-29, the TSA expects to screen over 18 million passengers and crew, which would be a 6.4 percent increase in checkpoint volume compared to the same period last year.

    TSA Administrator David Pekoske said the agency was coordinating with airport, airline, and travel partners and was “more than ready” to handle the expected high travel volumes.

    “We are also continuing to deploy state-of-the-art checkpoint technology that increases security effectiveness, efficiency and enhances the passenger experience and our retention and recruitment numbers are the highest they’ve ever been.”

    Airlines for America (A4A), an association of airline companies, also predicts a “record-setting” summer season for air travel this year.

    In a May 14 press release, A4A forecasts that U.S. airlines will carry 271 million passengers worldwide this summer season between June 1 and Aug. 31, a 6.3 percent increase from last summer. If the prediction comes true, it’ll eclipse the previous record set last year when 255 million individuals went airborne.

    To accommodate higher demand, U.S. carriers will be offering more flights this summer. Airlines have planned more than 26,000 scheduled flights per day for the season, up by over 1,400 from 2023.

    “Our carriers have adjusted their schedules to adapt to current realities of our National Airspace System (NAS), helping to alleviate some of those pressure points and making for a smooth summer travel season,” A4A’s senior vice president of communications, Rebecca Spicer, said.

    Profitability of Airlines

    The higher U.S. airline passenger numbers come as the industry attempts to consistently match pre-pandemic operating revenue levels.

    Between 2013 and 2019, operating revenues netted more than $200 billion every single year. Revenues in 2018 came in at $240 billion, which increased to $248 billion in 2019.

    In 2020, following worldwide restrictions and lockdowns, revenues crashed to $131 billion, then rose to $194 billion in 2021, and netted nearly $280 billion in 2022. However, revenues fell to $223 billion in 2023.

    The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is expecting the global airline industry’s net profits to hit $25.7 billion in 2024, a slight improvement from 2023’s $23.3 billion. This points to a 2.7 percent net profit margin rate for the year.

    Willie Walsh, the IATA’s director general, pointed out that the $25.7 billion net profit in 2024 is a “tribute to aviation’s resilience” given the major losses the industry suffered in recent years.

    However, industry profits “must be put into proper perspective,” he said. “A net profit margin of 2.7 percent is far below what investors in almost any other industry would accept … On average, airlines will retain just $5.45 for every passenger carried. That’s about enough to buy a basic ‘grande latte’ at a London Starbucks.”

    Even though operating profits in 2024 are expected to jump by 21.1 percent, net profit margins are only projected to rise by 10 percent, which the IATA blames mostly on increased interest rates.

    New Screening Protocols

    Meanwhile, the TSA announced that airline passengers could expect to encounter some new checkpoint technologies this year.

    For instance, the agency is using the second generation Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2). Like its earlier version CAT, the updated CAT-2 will confirm the authenticity of a passenger’s identity with their photo ID as well as flight details and pre-screening status.

    However, the updated version comes with new camera features, with passengers potentially having to agree to have a photo of them taken in real time for identity verification. This is done to ensure that “the person standing at the checkpoint is the same person pictured on their ID,” the agency said.

    The TSA highlighted that photos taken will not be stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made. However, the agency said it may retain the image for conducting tests to evaluate tech effectiveness.

    “Passengers who do not want their photo taken may ask the Transportation Security Officer (TSO) for a manual ID check without penalty and losing their place in line.”

    Multiple airports have also installed Computed Tomography (CT) units, which the agency claims will “significantly improve” scanning and threat detection of carry-on bags. CT units generate a 3D image of passengers’ bags, thus reducing the need to physically search their contents.

    The TSA has so far deployed 2,050 CAT units at 223 airports, out of which 238 units are the updated CAT-2 versions. The agency has set up over 820 CT units at more than 240 airports.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 17:40

  • Boeing's Starliner Crewed ISS Mission Will Still Launch Despite Helium Leak
    Boeing’s Starliner Crewed ISS Mission Will Still Launch Despite Helium Leak

    After a nearly one-month delay, NASA and Boeing are moving forward with the CST-100 Starliner launch despite a helium leak. This crewed mission will mark the first time the spacecraft ferries astronauts to the International Space Station.

    On Friday, NASA and Boeing officials told reporters that a problematic valve was replaced after the scrubbed May 6 launch attempt. Shortly after, engineers found a “small” helium leak with Starliner. 

    NASA Associate Administrator Ken Bowersox said, “It’s taken a while for us to be ready to discuss” the helium leak problem. 

    “It’s so complicated. There are so many things going on. We really just needed to work through it as a team,” Bowersox said.

    NASA and Boeing say a defective seal caused the leak in one of the flanges of the spacecraft’s helium propulsion system. It was not immediately clear whether the seal was installed improperly or manufactured incorrectly.

    Steve Stich, the manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, explained the Starliner can still fly with the helium leak:

    “Should we be wrong about something, we could handle up to four more leaks.

    “And we could handle this particular leak if that leak rate were to grow, even up to 100 times in this one (propulsion module).”

    Stich pointed out that NASA has “flown vehicles with small helium leaks” before, including “a couple of cases” from Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s rockets. 

    Another review of the leak is slated for Wednesday. The rocket and capsule are set to be rolled out onto the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 17:00

  • The Fed Vs. The Treasury: All Roads Lead To Inflation
    The Fed Vs. The Treasury: All Roads Lead To Inflation

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    In the fight against inflation, is it the Fed or the Treasury that calls the shots? The answer is, it’s both.

    The Fed raises interest rates to make loans less attractive and bring inflation down, but The Treasury has its own set of magic tricks to artificially “stimulate” or “tighten” the economy as well.

    One of them is a Treasury buyback program, something that was just reincarnated for the first time in about two decades. This is where the Treasury repurchases its own outstanding securities from the open market to increase liquidity, stoke, demand, and bring down yields. 

    If Treasury markets can’t be reigned in, the Fed expands its balance sheet by buying those Treasury securities to add liquidity and stability. These “open market operations” are usually the “money printing” that people are talking about happening at the Fed. “QE” refers more specifically to operations where the Fed is buying other assets beyond just Treasury securities, as occurred in the 2008 crisis and during COVID. But the Treasury buying back its own issued debt is, in essence, QE by another name.

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    While this occurs outside the halls of the Federal Reserve itself, Treasury buybacks are merely a different way to print money from nothing. The US is running a deep, sustained fiscal deficit with no true debt ceiling — so the Treasury buys back its own securities by issuing new debt, which it creates out of thin air. With spending far exceeding revenue, higher interest rates plus more debt means that fiscal deficits accelerate. The short-term stimulative effect of this somewhat offsets the Fed’s tightened monetary policy but digs a deeper hole in the longer term.

    One method the Treasury uses is to shorten the average duration of securities so that debts mature sooner. That means more short-term debt (like Treasury bills) versus long-term debt (like Treasury bonds). This encourages more capital flows into the banking sector and helps stave off instability. If it fails, the big banks still win: when smaller banks fail, they’re usually just absorbed by bigger ones where the profits are private but the losses are socialized. The “Too Big to Fail” club becomes even bigger and more powerful.

    When the Treasury issues more short-term debt, it’s waging war on the Fed’s higher interest rate policy. Both the Treasury and Fed need to keep Treasury yields down, but tightened monetary policy encourages higher yields. If yields get too high, the bond market — and challenged industries like commercial real estate that rely on debt — are screwed. So while the Fed tightens, the Treasury must loosen. Yields have since gone down, but if inflationary pressures and other factors push them back past 5%, both the Fed and Treasury are trapped.

    “Higher for longer” policy at the Fed is even more essential for holding back inflation as the Treasury injects liquidity into markets. If the Fed lowers rates now, the results of simultaneously expansionary monetary and fiscal policy will send consumer prices soaring.

    So are the Fed and Treasury in opposition, or are they working together, one changing its policy to prevent a disaster caused by the policies of the other? The answer is complex, but the oversimplified version is that the two have locked the economy into a game of musical chairs where, eventually, the music is bound to stop.

    The end result of the Treasury’s showdown with the Fed will still be out-of-control inflation. Both artificially contract and expand the money supply, and their policies have both created an inescapable trap. COVID QE is one big unexploded bomb that is sitting in the center of that trap. And even with the Fed holding off on interest rate cuts in the short term, the Treasury’s buybacks are QE by a different name. With too much inflationary pressure and not enough tools to stop it, the end result of all this fiscal and monetary tinkering will be a disaster for the dollar.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 16:20

  • CEO Of Russia's Second-Largest Bank Warns: "US Is Inevitably Headed For A Serious Economic Crisis"
    CEO Of Russia’s Second-Largest Bank Warns: “US Is Inevitably Headed For A Serious Economic Crisis”

    Last September, we told readers that the US national debt was skyrocketing at a staggering $1 trillion every three months—roughly every 100 days.

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    Since then, the debt spending has gotten worse. 

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    Out-of-control spending has delayed the US economy’s day of reckoning in this year’s presidential election cycle. But it has become very evident an economic crisis looms in the years ahead. 

    One River Asset Management CIO, Eric Peters, recently said, “I have a growing conviction that in the coming 2-5 years, we’re going to face a US debt sustainability crisis, sparking a major global market event.” 

    BofA CIO Michael Hartnett recently noted what we said previously about the unsustainable debt explosion… 

    And now, fresh comments from Andrey Kostin, CEO of Russia’s second-largest bank, have emerged—comments that Western mainstream media dare not share with their audiences. Why is that? … Well, the Washington censorship blob wouldn’t allow it.

    Russian state-owned news agency TASS cited Kostin’s interview with the Fontanka publication, who warned if it wasn’t for the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, a sovereign debt crisis would’ve already been underway in the US. No matter what, he warned the US economy is on the verge of an economic crisis. 

    “I am thoroughly convinced that America is inevitably headed for a serious economic crisis. The amount of debt currently held by the US today has reached inconceivable, astronomical levels. And the dollar’s monopoly on the global stage is the only thing enabling the Americans to maintain such a level of debt. If the Chinese or the Arabs took their money out of the US, a complete collapse would ensue for the financial sector and the government,” he said. 

    Kostin added:

    “If the West fails to revise its policy I think that the move toward the collapse of the colonial system will only accelerate.” 

    Kostin noted that China has been disposing of US government debt. Last month, we asked: “Is China’s ‘Dumping’ Driving US Treasury Yields Higher?” 

    China’s Treasury holdings are back to levels not seen since June 2009. 

    It’s not just China. Treasury holdings are ‘relatively’ flat (based on Fed custody data), while according to The IMF, the world’s sovereign nations have been panic-buying gold.

    It’s not just Kostin sounding the alarm about a looming US debt crisis — Wall Street analysts have echoed the same dire warnings. 

    Here’s a question: What ever happened to the economic collapse of Russia via endless Western sanctions? 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 15:40

  • Saving Our Democracy This Memorial Day
    Saving Our Democracy This Memorial Day

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    “We must stop Donald Trump.”

    – President “Joe Biden”

    Surely it was the right thing to do for President “Joe Biden” to remind the nation of the tragic loss of George Floyd four years ago this Memorial Day weekend.

    At the time, the man known as “the Black Thomas Edison” was rumored to be this close to achieving an economically viable system for producing electricity via atomic fusion using the fentanyl molecule (C22H28N2O) combined with the nuclei of alcohol (C2H6O), releasing enough energy from one gram to power a city the size of Minneapolis for a day.

    The math he left behind on his chalkboard spells it out:

    17.6 MeV×1.60218×10?13 J/MeV?2.82×10?12 J

    You see how that works?

    Alas, Dr. Floyd had apparently ingested a small amount of these experimental substances accidently before leaving his lab May 25, 2020, when he encountered the white supremacist police officer Derek Chauvin outside a Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis’s “Powderhorn” neighborhood. For reasons never understood, despite manifold judicial inquiries, the officer dragged the Great Man out of his car — where he was polishing some of the requisite algebra in his notebook — and for no reason at all placed one knee, and all his weight, on Dr. Floyd’s neck, constricting his airway and causing his death.

    The nation erupted in violence, and you know the rest of the story: no cheap energy for you, you nation of white supremacist asswipes!

    And so it has gone since that fateful day: one darn thing after another.

    Luckily though — and with a little help from Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) – the vigilant “Joe Biden” presides in the White House, keeping America safe for democracy, by democracy, and of democracy. The country has never experienced so much democracy. The Brookings Institution even warns that the country might be close to a democracy overload, in which the popular will is so immense that everyone in all fifty states thinks the same morally correct thoughts all day long without giving offense or making any space unsafe or dis-including any diverse category of human (except white supremacists) from his, her, or they’s share of the nation’s limitless wealth.

    “Joe Biden” has been especially effective at containing the Grand Golem of all white supremacists, Trump, from deconstructing our utopian democracy. This Trump uttered perfidious misinformation that the 2020 election was less than fair and upright. He is under indictment in Fulton County, GA, for conspiring to transmit this incorrect thinking to other white supremacists and creating an unsafe space for GA Sec’y of State Brad Raffensberger by asking him to “find” additional votes. What log was Bradraff supposed to look under, anyway (ha ha!)?

    The case is being guided by Fulton County DA, the indomitable Fani Willis, at least for now, as she awaits a process known as getting the bidness from a white supremacist so-called ethics committee in the Georgia State Senate, where she has been falsely accused of mis-spending state money on vacations with erstwhile special prosecutor Nathan Wade. These trips were, of course, fact-finding efforts. One fact found is that the white supremacist cruise ship directors attempt to kill black people by luring them into all-you-can-eat buffets at sea, from which escape is impossible.

    “Joe Biden” also got Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Lawfare paladin Jack Smith to prosecute this nefarious Trump in the most upright of all federal court districts, Washington, DC, for instigating what “Joe Biden” recently called an “erection” against our democracy. Trump, you see, told a gigantic mob of white supremacists to penetrate our nation’s capitol building so as to obstruct certification of the 2020 electoral vote and murder then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if possible, along with all congresspersons of color. Legal experts at MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann (of the Mueller Special Counsel office), and Andy McCabe (former Deputy Director of the FBI), have already found this Trump guilty, and they know about these matters better than anybody, so the trial under Judge Tanya Chutkan may be unnecessary.

    Things are not going quite so well for SC Smith in the Martin County Federal Court of Judge Aileen Cannon, where this Trump stands accused of fobbing off with classified government documents, claiming some fabricated sort of presidential privilege — unlike “Joe Biden” who got his classified docs before he was president and therefore does not have to claim any such privilege (and was understandably “forgetful” when asked about the docs by the other SC Robert Hur). In any case, AG Garland can always dispatch an FBI SWAT team to Judge Cannon’s home to spur an attitude adjustment on the bench, if required.

    Hopes really rest, though, on the current case against the Grand Golem Trump in Judge Juan Marchan’s Manhattan courtroom, where the most supreme of all white supremacists stands accused of book-keeping irregularities in furtherance of federal crimes so unspeakable that they have never actually been spoken. The case, engineered by veteran DC Golem hunters Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Lisa Monaco, and Matthew Colangelo, fronted by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, goes to the jury after final arguments this week.

    Judge Marchan is expected to instruct the jury to vote guilty because no other conclusion is possible. Thus, Judge Merchan will be celebrated far and wide for saving our democracy. But that’s not all. After the most excellent verdict of guilty X-23-Plus, he will have the pleasure of sentencing this Trump to life in the Rikers Island prison complex, where it will be difficult for the Grand Golem to organize any white supremacist activities and will be relegated to a diet of baloney sandwiches for the duration of his term.

    The only downside for this scenario is that Trump might get elected President of the USA despite conviction, and on January 20, 2025, commence operations to put “Joe Biden” and all the others in his train of officials in jail for the rest of their natural lives. You have to wonder if they’re thinking about that this holiday weekend.

    *  *  *

    Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 15:00

  • "Holy F**K": US Military Hid Quantico Breach Attempt By Jordanians In Box Truck In Possible Dry-Run
    “Holy F**K”: US Military Hid Quantico Breach Attempt By Jordanians In Box Truck In Possible Dry-Run

    Weeks ago, two individuals in a box truck attempted to breach the gates at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Triangle, Virginia. Armed guards immediately stopped them, and the base’s top brass quickly covered up the incident.

    The reason for burying this incident? It’s an election year for President Biden – and this type of news is politically explosive. The suspects were two Jordanian nationals, one reportedly on the FBI’s terrorist watch list, raising suspicions that they entered illegally through the Biden administration’s open southern border, as one report says, adding this could’ve been a dry run for a potential vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack.

    Potomac Local News first reported the incident. Since then, the New York Post has exposed how the May 3 incident was potentially covered up, even for those on the base for two weeks. 

    Matt Strickland was the first to report the incident to the local media outlet. He told NYPost, “After I [raised the alarm], I had people who work at Quantico messaging me saying, ‘Holy f—k, when did this happen?” 

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    He said, “Two weeks after it happened, Quantico finally put an email out to employees on base letting them know.” 

    “It was basically ‘F—k, guys, I guess we aren’t going to be able to keep this secret, we should try to do some CYA’ [cover your ass],” said Strickland, a former Blackwater contractor and combat incident analyst at the National Ground Intelligence Center. 

    Strickland said, “Every American has a right to know what happened at Quantico,” adding, “Citizens have a right to know what is going on in their backyard.” 

    Why is that, you ask?

    Well, as the NYPost explained:

    Some reports speculated the two men arrested had recently crossed the southern border into the US, and one was [said to be] on the US government’s terrorist watch list.

    Strickland was told one of the people involved had a Virginia ID, while the other was a terrorist. The Post has not been able to independently verify either rumor.

    Both men are in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Authorities would not comment further, only saying the two will remain in ICE custody until deported.

    Strickland continued:

    “Who would they be keeping that information from? The reasoning would be so the terrorists, or whoever the Jordanians are working for, don’t know all the information. But whoever those two Jordanian men are working for already know what they planned to do and that they were apprehended.

    “The only people who don’t know what happened are the American people.”

    This is why Strickland believes the incident was abruptly covered up:

    “The secrecy is purposeful because it was illegal immigrants, one of who was on the terror watch list, who breached the gates. 

    “And they’re allowing these illegal immigrants to come across the border.”

    The NYPost’s Editorial Board asks…

    And this is not the first incident. We covered a report over the weekend of two undocumented Chechens, with one using a “telephoto lens” – taking photos outside the home of an elite US Army special forces colonel near Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, in North Carolina.

    None of this should be surprising to ZeroHedge readers. The Biden administration’s experiment of letting unvetted and unvaxxed illegal aliens into the nation – upwards of ten million – is truly shocking. Even the Department of Homeland Security admitted the southern border has been open to terrorists and criminals. The FBI has made similar warnings, with known terrorists apprehended on the border. 

    Recall earlier this year, Ohio Sheriff Richard K. Jones warned, “There are more red flags going off now than before 9-11” thanks to open southern borders. 

    Also, an Iranian intelligence officer is running around America, plotting assassination attacks against former and current government officials. 

    Don’t forget the countless terrorists that have already crossed the border and are unknown at this point because of open southern border policies. 

    Great job, Democrats. The American people will never forget how open southern borders have fueled chaos nationwide—all because you want a new voting base. How selfish. This issue will haunt the party in the upcoming elections, as the majority of Americans are fed up.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 14:20

  • David Stockman On The Continual Rise In The Cost Of Living… And Why The Fed Has No Shame
    David Stockman On The Continual Rise In The Cost Of Living… And Why The Fed Has No Shame

    Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

    Jay Powell did it again assuring the 1% that he has their back.

    Markets recovered their poise over the last 24 hours, as investors were relieved after Fed Chair Powell stuck to his recent views on the economic outlook. In his remarks yesterday, he said that recent data didn’t “materially change the overall picture” and that on inflation “it is too soon to say whether the recent readings represent more than just a bump.” In addition, he reiterated that if “the economy evolves broadly as we expect, most FOMC participants see it as likely to be appropriate to begin lowering the policy rate at some point this year.” So that all helped to validate market pricing, which still expects 71 bps of rate cuts from the Fed by the December meeting.

    Needless to say, the man has no shame. And that’s to say nothing of intellectual firepower. There is not even a smidgen of a case that rate cuts in the present context will help main street, and the Fed heads and their Wall Street megaphones don’t actually even try to make that argument.

    Instead, they argue for rates cuts by default. If by some tortured version of the CPI (i.e. the “supercore” index, which eliminates 61% of the CPI items by weight) they can espy the in-coming inflation trend settling into a liberally defined vicinity of 2.00%, that’s purportedly good enough to end the money-printing pause that has been in place since March 2022. Thereafter, it’s back to business as usual, flooding the canyons of Wall Street with cheap credit and a new burst of financial asset inflation.

    Never mind that in this particular inflation-cycle, the general price level is up by 28% since January 2017 and that tens of millions of households and businesses have been badly damaged, even as others harvested windfall gains. When it comes to inflation and all the other so-called macroeconomic metrics on their dashboards, past history–even the recent past—is dead to the Fed heads.

    Instead, it’s all about the current and especially the prospective rate of change as embodied in the silly “dot-plots” they gurgle around in their brains and update four times per year.

    And we do mean silly. After all, if the consensus of the 19 geniuses who participate in the dot-plot guessing game espies say a 2.27% gain in the supercore index over the next year, so what?!

    The fact is, the US economy needs a lot more relief from its recent inflationary pounding than the Fed’s guesstimated rate of slowdown in the forward year rise of the price level. After all, here is the increase in the core cost of living items since January 2017.

    Change in Core Cost-of-Living Components Since January 2017:

    • Food: +32%.

    • Shelter: +34%.

    • Energy: +35%.

    • Transportation Services: +36%.

    In the case of savers, retirees, wage-earners in globally impacted industries where wages haven’t kept up with the CPI, isn’t the above enough punishment? Doesn’t it actually amount to state-directed expropriation of their living standards and modest accumulated wealth?

    In any event, what the hell is so almighty urgent about rate cuts when the economy is still growing apace and the cumulative inflation of the last seven years has not been relieved in the slightest?

    Increase In Major Cost-of-Living Components of the CPI Since January 2017

    The dog-eared claim that rate cuts will enhance the growth rate of output, jobs, investment and spending on main street just doesn’t wash. Artificially low interest rates overwhelmingly fuel borrowing for speculation and financial engineering (e.g. stock buybacks) on Wall Street, not borrowing for productive investment on main street or even for enhanced “consumption” by the household sector, which is now buried in debt up to the gills after decades of easy money.

    In fact, the only way that easy money causes households to spend more than the growth rate of their incomes is if they steadily increase their debt-to-income or leverage ratio. That generates incremental borrowings, which in turn can supplement spending derived from current period income.

    And that’s exactly what happened in the half-century leading up to the great financial crisis. The household debt-to-income (wage and salary basis) ratio posted at 70% in 1960, but vaulted skyward thereafter, especially after Greenspan opened the spigots at the Fed after 1987. By Q1 2009 that household leverage ratio stood at 227% (purple area), and it was that massive increase in leverage which goosed household spending during this interval of time.

    No more. Since Q1 2009 the household sector has been slowly but steadily deleveraging, with the ratio now down to 166% as of Q4 2023. What that means is that the Fed’s magic “stimulus” elixir simply doesn’t work any more in the household sector. It gooses organic spending not one whit.

    Explosion of Household Debt Leverage During 1960 to 2009 and Deleveraging Since Then

    As to the supply-side growth canard, it cannot be gainsaid that the amount of monetary stimulus has been off the charts relative to all prior history. In fact, the Fed’s balance sheet at @ $7.5 trillion is still more than 8X its pre-crisis level in Q4 2007.

    Yet when it comes to real growth of value-added production during the six year period from Q1 2018 to Q4 2023, the chart below tells you all you need to know. To wit, real value added output in the health care, education and social services sector grew at a 2.71% per annum rate, which was 3X the 0.90% real growth rate of the nondurable goods production sector.

    Self-evidently, the former sector does not need easy money or ultra-low interest rates to grow. Demand in the health, education and social services sector is overwhelmingly financed by government fiscal transfers, including the massive subsidies implicit in the medical care deductions and preferences of the IRS code.

    Indeed, the red line in the chart below represented the fastest growing sector of the US economy by far during that six year period, but we’d dare say none of those gains depended upon low interest rates. The sector’s munificent funding actually flows from statutory entitlements and long-standing tax code provisions, which generate essentially the same level of demand and sector output whether the Federal funds rate is 1% or 7%.

    At the same time, it is highly unlikely that a return to low rates will do much for the moribund growth rates in the industrial economy, as represented here by real-value added in the nondurable goods industries. Long ago, much of US production of shoes, shirts, sheets, household supplies and the like was off-shored to lower cost venues abroad. And locking in the current inflated domestic costs levels plus another 2-3% per year going forward will not bring them back.

    In sum, the Fed’s fiddling with interest rates is largely irrelevant to the supply-side path of the two industries shown below, and countless more just like them.

    Real Value Added: Education, Health Care and Social Assistance Sector Versus Durable Goods, 2018 to 2023

    Finally, it is tantamount to laughable to claim that the Fed needs to revert to the rate cutting modality in order to stabilize the financial markets and main street economy and to compensate for the purported inherent volatility of the free market.

    Oh, puleese!

    Every one of the main street recessions and financial market crises of the past six decades has been caused by the state and the machinations of its central banking branch. The very idea that there is an implicit third mandate called “financial stability” (after inflation control and full employment) is risible. It puts you in mind of the young man who killed both parents and then threw himself upon the mercy of the court on the grounds that he was an orphan!

    At the end of the day, sharply cutting rates any time this year or for some time to come thereafter would amount to a financial crime. After just a short stay of approximately eight months barely in positive territory (purple area) since July 2023, inflation-adjusted or real rates would be back below the zero bound, where they have destructively dwelled for much of the last several decades, as the chart makes crystal clear.

    Inflation-Adjusted Federal Funds Rate, 2001 to 2024

    Of course, that development would be heartily welcomed by Wall Street speculators and the Washington war-mongers and spenders alike. And that’s exactly the reason it should not be done.

    *  *  *

    The truth is, we’re on the cusp of an economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 13:40

  • Global Outrage After Deadly Israeli Strike On Refugee Tent Camp In Rafah
    Global Outrage After Deadly Israeli Strike On Refugee Tent Camp In Rafah

    There have been widespread reports of a civilian massacre following a Sunday Israeli air strike on a camp for displaced Palestinians in the besieged southern city of Rafah, which the Gaza Health Ministry says killed 45 people, including women and children.

    Israel says it is investigating the strike, amid widespread international condemnation and as horrific videos of the attack aftermath circulate widely, with Israel’s top military prosecutor calling the attack “very grave”.

    Major-General Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi said in a briefing the Israeli army “regrets any harm to non-combatants during the war” and that “The details of the incident are still under an investigation, which we are committed to conducting to the fullest extent.”

    Fire rages after the airstrike, via Al Jazeera

    The targeted area of the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood had been a recognized UN-run “safe zone” which lies about 2km to the northwest of the Rafah city center.

    Incredibly graphic and disturbing social media videos show people burning in tents and rescuers carrying mangled and burned children’s bodies. According to an eyewitness description:

    Mohammad al-Mughayyir, a senior official at the civil defense agency, told AFP that at least 40 Palestinians were killed and at least 65 wounded in the Israeli strikes.

    “We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs… We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly,” Mughayyir said. Eyewitnesses told Reuters that tents were “melting” after the bombardment, burning people alive. 

    The Israeli strikes followed a rare Hamas rocket launch on Tel Aviv earlier the same day, which included at least eight projectiles, most of which were intercepted.

    An international humanitarian organization, ActionAid, said it was “outraged and heartbroken” that the strike hit a tent area to a UNRWQ warehouses stocking “vital aid.”

    “The images coming from our partners of burned bodies are a scar on the face of humanity and the global community, which so far has failed to protect the people of Gaza. One of our own ActionAid colleagues narrowly escaped this atrocity, having left the shelter just a day before the attack,” ActionAid said.

    A Hamas statement called it a “massacre” and said the group also holds the United States responsible as it supplies Israel’s military with weaponry.

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    The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Mahmoud Abbas charged Israel with deliberately targeting civilians. “The perpetration of this heinous massacre by the Israeli occupation forces is a challenge to all international legitimacy resolutions.” He alleged the IDF was “deliberately targeting” refugee tents.

    The high casualty event has elicited statements of condemnation from leaders across the Middle East and Europe, as well as from some Democratic Congressional members in the US. This has included EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell who demanded that the ICJ call for immediate ceasefire must be adhered to.

    German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s words were especially strong. “No Israeli hostage will be freed if more people now have to shelter in tents,” Baerbock said. “International humanitarian law applies for all, also for Israel’s conduct of the war,” she added.

    Against this avalanche of criticism, also at a moment of investigations and legal actions by both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) – both accusing the Israeli side of genocide – the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have pushed back, saying Hamas militants were in the area that was hit Sunday.

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    “The strike was carried out against legitimate targets under international law, through the use of precise munitions and on the basis of precise intelligence that indicated Hamas’s use of the area,” the IDF said. “The IDF [Israeli army] is aware of reports indicating that, as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/27/2024 – 13:00

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