- The Life And Public Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy By The CIA
The Life And Public Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy By The CIA
Authored by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardian.org,
What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
“Shut your mouth,” said the wise old owl
Business is business, and it’s a murder most foulDon’t worry, Mr. President
Help’s on the way
Your brothers are coming, there’ll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?
Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming”
We’ll get them as wellBob Dylan, Murder Most Foul
Why President Kennedy was publicly murdered by the CIA sixty years ago has never been more important. All pseudo-debates to the contrary – including the numerous and growing claims that it was not the U.S. national security state but the Israelis that assassinated the president, which exonerates the CIA – the truth about the assassination has long been evident. There is nothing to debate unless one is some sort of intelligence operative, has an obsession, or is out to make a name or a buck. I suggest that all those annual JFK conferences in Dallas should finally end, but my guess is that they will be rolling along for many more decades. To make an industry out of a tragedy is wrong. And these conferences are so often devoted to examining and debating minutiae that are a distraction from the essential truth.
As for the corporate mainstream media, they will never admit the truth but will continue as long as necessary to titillate the public with lies, limited hangouts, and sensational non-sequiturs. To do otherwise would require admitting that they have long been complicit in falsely reporting the crime and the endless coverup. That they are arms of the CIA and NSA.
The Cold War, endless other wars, and the nuclear threat John Kennedy worked so hard to end have today been inflamed to a fever pitch by U.S. leaders in thrall to the forces that killed the president. President Joseph Biden, like all the presidents that followed Kennedy, is JFK’s opposite, an unrepentant war-monger, not only in Ukraine with the U.S. war against Russia and the U.S. nuclear first-strike policy, but throughout the world – the Middle-East, Africa, Syria, Iran, and on and on, including the push for war with China.
Nowhere is this truer than with the U.S. support for the current Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, a slaughter also supported by Robert Kennedy, Jr., who, ironically, is campaigning for the presidency on the coattails of JFK and his father Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who would be appalled by his unequivocal support for the Israeli government. By such support and his silence as the slaughter in Gaza continues, RFK, Jr. is, contrary his other expressed opinions, supporting a wide range of war-related matters that involve the U.S.- Israel alliance, which is central to the military-industrial forces running U.S. foreign policy. To say this is dispiriting is a great understatement, for RFK, Jr., a very intelligent man, knows that the CIA killed his uncle and father, and he is campaigning as a spiritually awakened man intent on ending the U.S. warfare state, something impossible to accomplish when one gives full-fledged support to Israel. And I believe he will be elected the next U.S. president.
The Biden administration is doing all in its power to undo the legacy of JFK’s last year in office when on every front he fought for peace, not war. It is not hard to realize that all presidents since John Kennedy have been fully aware that a bullet to the head in broad daylight could be their fate if they bucked their bosses. They knew this when they sought the office because they were run by the same bosses before election. Small-souled men, cowards on the make, willing to sacrifice millions to their ambition.
I believe that the following article – my final one on this matter – which I published two years ago, is worth reading again if you have once done so, and even more important if you have never read it. It is not based on speculation but on well-sourced facts, and it will make clear the importance of President Kennedy and why his assassination lay the foundation for today’s dire events. In this dark time, when the world is spinning out of control, the story of his great courage in the face of an assassination he expected, can inspire us to oppose the systemic forces of evil that control the United States and are leading the world into the abyss.
Despite a treasure-trove of new research and information having emerged over the last sixty years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions.
They have drunk what Dr. Martin Schotz has called “the waters of uncertainty” that results “in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.”
Then there are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission.
Both these groups tend to agree, however, that whatever the truth, unknowable or allegedly known, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, ancient history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred more than a half-century ago, so let’s move on.
Nothing could be further from the truth, for the assassination of JFK is the foundational event of modern American history, the Pandora’s box from which many decades of tragedy have sprung.
PRESSURED TO WAGE WAR
From the day he was sworn in as President on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was relentlessly pressured by the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and by many of his own advisers to wage war – clandestine, conventional, and nuclear.
To understand why and by whom he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, one needs to apprehend this pressure and the reasons why President Kennedy consistently resisted it, as well as the consequences of that resistance.
It is a key to understanding the current state of our world today and why the United States has been waging endless foreign wars and creating a national security surveillance state at home since JFK’s death.
A WAR HERO WHO WAS APPALLED BY WAR
It is very important to remember that Lieutenant John Kennedy was a genuine Naval war hero in WW II, having risked his life and been badly injured while saving his men in the treacherous waters of the South Pacific after their PT boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. His older brother Joe and his brother-in-law Billy Hartington had died in the war, as had some of his boat’s crew members.
As a result, Kennedy was extremely sensitive to the horrors of war, and, when he first ran for Congress in Massachusetts in 1946, he made it explicitly clear that avoiding another war was his number one priority. This commitment remained with him and was intensely strengthened throughout his brief presidency until the day he died, fighting for peace.
Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, this anti-war stance was unusual for a politician, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. Kennedy was a remarkable man, for even though he assumed the presidency as somewhat of a cold warrior vis-à-vis the Soviet Union in particular, his experiences in office rapidly chastened that stance. He very quickly came to see that there were many people surrounding him who relished the thought of war, even nuclear war, and he came to consider them as very dangerous.
A PRESCIENT PERSPECTIVE
Yet even before he became president, in 1957, then Senator Kennedy gave a speech in the U.S. Senate that sent shock waves throughout Washington, D.C. and around the world.[2] He came out in support of Algerian independence from France and African liberation generally and against colonial imperialism.
As chair of the Senate’s African Subcommittee in 1959, he urged sympathy for African independence movements as part of American foreign policy. He believed that continued support of colonial policies would only end in more bloodshed because the voices of independence would not be denied, nor should they be.
That speech caused an international uproar, and in the U.S.A. Kennedy was harshly criticized by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even members of the Democratic party, such as Adlai Stevenson and Dean Acheson. But it was applauded in Africa and the Third World.
Yet JFK continued throughout his 1960 presidential campaign raising his voice against colonialism throughout the world and for free and independent African nations. Such views were anathema to the foreign policy establishment, including the CIA and the burgeoning military industrial complex that President Eisenhower belatedly warned against in his Farewell Address, delivered nine months after approving the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in March 1960; this juxtaposition revealed the hold the Pentagon and CIA had and has on sitting presidents, as the pressure for war became structurally systemized.
PATRICE LUMUMBA
One of Africa’s anti-colonial and nationalist leaders was the charismatic Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. In June, 1960, he had become the first democratically elected leader of the Congo, a country savagely raped and plundered for more than half a century by Belgium’s King Leopold II for himself and multinational mining companies. Kennedy’s support for African independence was well-known and especially feared by the CIA, who, together with Brussels, considered Lumumba, and Kennedy for supporting him, as threats to their interests in the region.
So, three days before JFK’s inauguration, together with the Belgian government, the CIA had Lumumba brutally assassinated after torturing and beating him. According to Robert Johnson, a note taker at a National Security Council meeting in August 1960, Lumumba’s assassination had been approved by President Eisenhower when he gave Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, the approval to “eliminate” Lumumba. Johnson disclosed that in a 1975 interview that was discovered in 2000.
On January 26, 1961, when Dulles briefed the new president on the Congo, he did not tell JFK that they already had Lumumba assassinated nine days before. This was meant to keep Kennedy on tenterhooks to teach him a lesson. On February 13, 1961, Kennedy received a phone call from his UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson informing him of Lumumba’s death. There is a photograph by White House photographer Jacques Lowe of the horror-stricken president sitting in the oval office answering that call that is harrowing to view. It was an unmistakable portent of things to come, a warning for the president.
DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD, INDONESIA, AND SUKARNO
One of Kennedy’s crucial allies in his efforts to support third-world independence was United Nations’ Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. Hammarskjöld had been deeply involved in peacekeeping in the Congo as well as efforts to resolve disputes in Indonesia, both important countries central to JFK’s concerns. Hammarskjöld was killed on September 18, 1961 while on a peacekeeping mission to the Congo. Substantial evidence exists that he was assassinated and that the CIA and Allen Dulles were involved. Kennedy was devastated to lose such an important ally.
Kennedy’s strategy involved befriending Indonesia as a Cold War ally as a crucial aspect of his Southeast Asian policy of dealing with Laos and Vietnam and finding peaceful resolutions to other smoldering Cold War conflicts. Hammarskjöld was also central to these efforts. The CIA, led by Dulles, strongly opposed Kennedy’s strategy in Indonesia. In fact, Dulles and the CIA had been involved in treacherous maneuverings in resource rich Indonesia for decades. President Kennedy supported the Indonesian President Sukarno, while Dulles opposed him since he stood for Indonesian independence.
Just two days before Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, he had accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Sukarno to visit that country the following spring. The aim of the visit was to end the conflict (Konfrontasi) between Indonesia and Malaysia and to continue Kennedy’s efforts to support post-colonial Indonesia with non-military economic and development aid. His goal was to end conflict throughout Southeast Asia and assist the growth of democracy in newly liberated post-colonial countries worldwide.
Of course, JFK never made it to Indonesia in 1964, and his peaceful strategy to bring Indonesia to America’s side and to ease tensions in the Cold War was never realized, thanks to Allen Dulles and the CIA. And, Kennedy’s proposed withdrawal of American military advisers from Vietnam, which, in part, was premised on success in Indonesia, was quickly reversed by Lyndon Johnson after JFK’s murder and within a short time hundreds of thousand American combat troops were sent to Vietnam. In Indonesia, Sukarno would be forced out and replaced by General Suharto, who would rule with an iron fist for the next 30 years. Soon, both countries would experience mass slaughter engineered by Kennedy’s opponents in the CIA and Pentagon.
THE BAY OF PIGS
In mid-April 1961, less than three months into his presidency, a trap was set for President Kennedy by the CIA and its director, Allen Dulles, who knew of Kennedy’s reluctance to invade Cuba. They assumed the new president would be forced by circumstances at the last minute to send in U.S. Navy and Marine forces to back the invasion that they had planned. The CIA and generals wanted to oust Fidel Castro, and in pursuit of that goal, trained a force of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. This had started under President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon. Kennedy refused to go along with sending in American troops and the invasion was roundly defeated. The CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy.
But it was all a sham. Classified documents uncovered in 2000 revealed that the CIA had discovered that the Soviets had learned the date of the invasion more than a week in advance and had informed Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, but—and here is a startling fact that should make people’s hair stand on end—the CIA never told the President. The CIA knew the invasion was probably doomed before the fact but went ahead with it anyway.
Why? So, they could blame JFK for the failure afterwards.
Kennedy later said to his friends Dave Powell and Ken O’Donnell, “They were sure I’d give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the [Navy’s aircraft carrier] Essex. They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.”
This treachery set the stage for events to come. Sensing but not knowing the full extent of the set-up, Kennedy fired CIA Director Allen Dulles (who, as in a bad joke, was later named to the Warren Commission investigating JFK’s assassination) and his assistant, General Charles Cabell (whose brother, Earle Cabell, to make a bad joke absurd, was the mayor of Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed.) It was later discovered that Earle Cabell was a CIA asset.
JFK said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” Not sentiments to endear him to a secretive government within a government whose power was growing exponentially.[8]
KENNEDY RESPONDS AFTER THE BAY OF PIGS TREACHERY
The stage was now set for events to follow as JFK, now even more suspicious of the military-intelligence people around him, and in opposition to nearly all his advisers, consistently opposed the use of force in U.S. foreign policy.
In 1961, despite the Joint Chiefs’ demand to put combat troops into Laos – advising 140,000 by the end of April – Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, “Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.” The president knew that Laos and Vietnam were linked issues, and since Laos came first on his agenda, he was determined to push for a neutral Laos.
Also in 1961, he refused to accede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in a dispute with the Soviet Union over Berlin and Southeast Asia. Walking out of a meeting with his top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, “These people are crazy.”
In March 1962, the CIA, in the person of legendary operative, Edward Lansdale, and with the approval of every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the president with a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Code-named Operation Northwoods, the false-flag plan called for innocent people to be shot in the U.S., boats carrying Cuban refugees to be sunk and a terrorism campaign to be launched in Miami, Washington D.C., and other places, all to be blamed on the Castro government so that the public would be outraged and call for an invasion of Cuba.
Kennedy was appalled and rejected this pressure to manipulate him into agreeing to terrorist attacks on Americans that could later be used against him. He already knew that his life was in danger and that the CIA and military were tightening a noose around his neck. But he refused to yield.
As early as June 26, 1961, in a White House meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s spokesperson, Mikhail Kharlamov, and Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Alexei Adzhubei, when asked by Kharlamov why he wasn’t moving faster to advance relations between the two countries, JFK said “You don’t understand this country. If I move too fast on U.S.-Soviet relations, I’ll either be thrown into an insane asylum, or be killed.”
JFK refused to bomb and invade Cuba as the military wished during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. The Soviets had placed offensive nuclear missiles and more than 30,000 support troops in Cuba to prevent another U.S.-led invasion. American aerial photography had detected the missiles. This was understandably unacceptable to the U.S. government. While being urged by the Joint Chiefs and his trusted advisors to order a preemptive nuclear strike on Cuba, JFK knew that a diplomatic solution was the only way out as he wouldn’t accept the death of hundreds of millions of people that would likely follow a series of nuclear exchanges with the Soviet Union. Only his brother, Robert, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stood with him in opposing the use of nuclear weapons. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon and Rand Corporation analyst, reported a coup atmosphere in the Pentagon as Kennedy chose to settle rather than attack. In the end, after thirteen incredibly tense days of brinksmanship, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev miraculously found a way to resolve the crisis and prevent the use of those weapons.
Afterwards, JFK told his friend John Kenneth Galbraith that “I never had the slightest intention of doing so.”
THE FATEFUL YEAR 1963
In June, 1963, JFK gave an historic speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” and movement toward “general and complete disarmament.”
A few months later he signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.
In October 1963 he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and complete withdrawal by the end of 1965.
All this he did while secretly engaging in negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev via Saturday Evening Post editor and anti-nuclear weapon advocate, Norman Cousins, Soviet agent Georgi Bolshakov, and Pope John XXIII,as well as with Cuba’s Prime Minister Fidel Castro through various intermediaries, one of whom was French Journalist Jean Daniel. Of course, secret was not secret when the CIA was involved.
Kennedy, deeply disturbed by the near nuclear catastrophe of the Cuban missile crisis, was determined to open back channel communications to make sure such a near miss never happened again. He knew fault lay on both sides, and that one slipup or miscommunication could initiate a nuclear holocaust. He was determined, therefore, to try to open lines of communications with his enemies.
Jean Daniel was going to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro, but before he did he interviewed Kennedy on October 24, 1963. Kennedy, knowing Daniel would tell Castro what he said, asked Daniel if Castro realizes that “through his fault the world was on the verge of nuclear war in October 1962….or even if he cares about it.” But he also added, to soften the message:
“I approved the proclamation Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we will have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.”
Such sentiments were anathema, shall we say treasonous, to the CIA and top Pentagon generals. These clear refusals to go to war with Cuba, to emphasize peace and negotiated solutions to conflicts rather than war, to order the withdrawal of all military personnel from Vietnam, to call for an end to the Cold War, and his willingness to engage in private, back-channel communications with Cold War enemies marked Kennedy as an enemy of the national security state. They were on a collision course.
THE ASSASSINATION ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963
After going through the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis and many other military cliffhangers, Kennedy underwent a deep metanoia, a spiritual transformation, from Cold Warrior to peacemaker. He came to regard the generals who advised him as devaluing human life and hell-bent on launching nuclear wars. And he was well aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals and the CIA. On numerous occasions, he spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’état against him.
The night before his trip to Dallas, he told his wife, “But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it.”
And we know that nobody did try to stop it because they had planned his execution from multiple locations to assure its success.
WHO KILLED HIM?
If the only things you read, watched, or listened to since 1963 were the mainstream corporate media (MSM), you would be convinced that the official explanation for JFK’s assassination, the Warren Commission, was correct in essentials. You would be wrong, because those corporate media have for all these years served as mouthpieces for the government, most notably the CIA that infiltrated and controlled them long ago under a secret program called Operation Mockingbird.
In 1977, celebrated Watergate journalist, Carl Bernstein, published a 25,000-word cover story for Rolling Stone, “The CIA and the Media,” in which he published the names of many journalists and media, such as The New York Times, CBS, Time, Newsweek, etc., who worked hand in glove with the CIA for decades. Ironically, or as part of “a limited hangout” (spy talk for admitting some truths while concealing deeper ones), this article can be found at the CIA’s own website.
Total control of information requires media complicity, and with the JFK assassination, and in all matters they consider important, the CIA and the MSM are unified. Such control extends to literature, arts, and popular culture as well as news. Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively documents this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, with particular emphasis on the complicity of the CIA and the famous literary journal The Paris Review. Such revelations are retrospective, of course, but only the most naïve would conclude such operations are a thing of the past.
The Warren Commission claimed that the president was shot by an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald, firing three bullets from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository as Kennedy’s car was already two hundred and fifty feet past and driving away from him. But this is patently false for many reasons, including the bizarre claim that one of these bullets, later termed “the magic bullet,” passed through Kennedy’s body and zigzagged up and down, left and right, striking Texas Governor John Connolly who was sitting in the front seat and causing seven wounds in all, only to be found later in pristine condition on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital. And, any lone assassin looking out the 6th floor window would have taken the perfect shot as the limousine approached within forty feet of the TSBD on Houston St.
The absurdity of the government’s claim, a ballistic fairy tale, was the key to its assertion that Oswald killed Kennedy. It was visually shattered and rendered ridiculous by the famous Zapruder film that clearly shows the president being shot from the front right, and, as the right front of his head explodes, he is violently thrown back and to his left as Jacqueline Kennedy climbs on to the car’s trunk to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull and brain.
This video evidence is clear and simple proof of a conspiracy.
WHO WAS LEE HARVEY OSWALD?
But there is another way to examine it.
If Lee Harvey Oswald, the man The Warren Commission said killed JFK, was connected to the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA, then we can logically conclude that he was not “a lone-nut” assassin or not an assassin at all. There is a wealth of evidence to show how, from the very start, Oswald was moved around the globe by the CIA like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, the pawn was eliminated in the Dallas police headquarters by Jack Ruby two days later.
James W. Douglass, in JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, the most important book on the matter, asks this question:
Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?
This is a key question.
After serving as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s U-2 spy plane Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan with a Crypto clearance (higher than top secret, a fact suppressed by the Warren Commission) and being trained in the Russian language, Oswald left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. After denouncing the U.S., rejecting his American citizenship, working at a Soviet factory in Minsk, and taking a Russian wife—during which time Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union—he returned to the U.S. with a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, only to be met at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey, by Spas T. Raikin, a prominent anti-Communist with extensive intelligence connections recommended by the State Department.
Oswald passed through immigration with no trouble, was not prosecuted, moved to Fort Worth, Texas where, at the suggestion of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, he was met and befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, an anti-communist Russian, who was a CIA asset. De Mohrenschildt got him a job four days later at a photography and graphic arts company that worked on top secret maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba.
Oswald was then shepherded around the Dallas area by de Mohrenschildt. In 1977, on the day he revealed he had contacted Oswald for the CIA and was to meet with the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ investigator, Gaeton Fonzi, de Mohrenschildt allegedly committed suicide.
Oswald then moved to New Orleans in April, 1963 where he got a job at the Reily Coffee Company owned by CIA-affiliated William Reily. The Reily Coffee Company was located in close vicinity to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Naval Intelligence offices and a stone’s throw from the office of Guy Banister, a former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, supplying weapons, money, and training to anti-Castro paramilitaries. Oswald then went to work with Banister and the CIA paramilitaries.
From this time up until the assassination, Oswald engaged in all sorts of contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, many of these theatrical performances being directed from Banister’s office. It was as though Oswald, on the orders of his puppet masters, was enacting multiple and antithetical roles in order to confound anyone intent on deciphering the purposes behind his actions and to set him up as a future “assassin” or “patsy.”
James Douglass persuasively argues that Oswald “seems to have been working with both the CIA and FBI,” as a provocateur for the former and an informant for the latter. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, who worked at the CIA Tokyo Station from 1960-64, in a 1978 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.”
When Oswald moved to New Orleans in April, 1963, de Mohrenschildt exited the picture, having asked the CIA for and been indirectly given a $285,000 contract to do a geological survey for Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, which he never did, but for which he was paid.
Ruth and Michael Paine then entered the scene on cue. Ruth had been introduced to Oswald by de Mohrenschildt. In September, 1963, Ruth Paine drove from her sister’s house in Virginia to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald and bring her to Dallas to live with her, where Lee also stayed on weekends. Back in Dallas, Ruth Paine conveniently arranged a job for Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas Book Depository, where he began work on October 16, 1963.
Ruth, along with Marina Oswald, was the Warren Commission’s critically important witness against Oswald. Allen Dulles, despite his earlier firing by JFK, got appointed to a key position on the Warren Commission. He questioned the Paines in front of it, studiously avoiding any revealing questions, especially ones that could disclose his personal connections to the Paines. For Michel Paine’s mother, therefore Ruth’s mother-in-law, Ruth Paine Forbes Young, was a close friend of his old mistress, Mary Bancroft, who worked as a spy with Dulles during WW II. Bancroft and he had been invited guests at Ruth Paine Forbes Young’s private island off Cape Cod.
Ruth and Michael Paine had extensive intelligence connections. Thirty years after the assassination, a document was declassified showing Ruth Paine’s sister Sylvia worked for the CIA. Her father traveled throughout Latin America on an Agency for International Development (notorious for CIA front activities) contract and filed reports that went to the CIA. Her husband Michael’s step-father, Arthur Young, was the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, a major military supplier for the Vietnam War, and Michael’s job there gave him a security clearance.
From late September through November 22nd, various “Oswalds” were later reported to have simultaneously been seen from Mexico City to Dallas. Two Oswalds were arrested in the Texas Theater, the real one taken out the front door and an impostor out the back.
As Douglass says:
There were more Oswalds providing evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald than the Warren Report could use or even explain.
Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that Oswald impostors were used, as he told LBJ concerning Oswald’s alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He later called this CIA ploy, “the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico…their (CIA’s) double-dealing,” something that he couldn’t forget.
It was apparent to anyone paying close attention that a very intricate and deadly game was being played at high levels in the shadows.
We know Oswald was blamed for the President’s murder. But if one fairly follows the trail of the crime, it becomes blatantly obvious that government forces were at work. Douglass and others have amassed layer upon layer of evidence to show how this had to be so.
WHO HAD THE POWER TO WITHDRAW THE PRESIDENT’S SECURITY?
To answer this essential question is to finger the conspirators and to expose, in Vincent Salandria’s words, “the false mystery concealing state crimes.”
Neither Oswald, the mafia nor anti-Castro Cubans could have withdrawn most of the security that day. Sheriff Bill Decker ordered all his deputies “to take no part whatsoever in the security of that [presidential] motorcade.”
Police Chief Jesse Curry did the same for Dallas police protection for the president in Dealey Plaza. Both “Chief Curry and Sheriff Decker gave their orders withdrawing security from the president in obedience to orders they had themselves received from the Secret Service.” The Secret Service withdrew the police motorcycle escorts from beside the president’s car where they had been on previous presidential motorcades as well as the day before in Houston and removed agents from the back of the car where they were normally stationed to obstruct gunfire.
The Secret Service admitted there were no Secret Service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza to protect Kennedy. But we know from extensive witness testimony that, during and after the assassination, there were people in Dealey Plaza impersonating Secret Service agents who stopped policeman and the public from moving through the area on the Grassy Knoll where some of the shots appeared to come from. The Secret Service approved the fateful, dogleg turn (on a dry run on November 18) where the car, driven by Secret Service agent William Greer, moved at a snail’s pace and came almost to a halt before the final head shot, clear and blatant security violations. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded this, not some conspiracy theorist.
Who could have squelched the testimony of the many doctors and medical personnel who claimed the president had been shot from the front in his neck and head, testimony contradicting the official story?
Who could have prosecuted and imprisoned Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent personally brought on to the White House detail by JFK, who warned that he feared the president was going to be assassinated? (Douglass interviewed Bolden seven times and his evidence on the aborted plot to kill JFK in Chicago on November 2 is a story little known but extraordinary in its implications.)
The list of all the people who turned up dead, the evidence and events manipulated, the inquiry squelched, distorted, and twisted in an ex post facto cover-up clearly point to forces within the government, not rogue actors without institutional support.
The evidence for a conspiracy organized at the deepest levels of the intelligence apparatus is overwhelming. James Douglass presents it in such depth and so logically that only one hardened to the truth would not be deeply moved and affected by his book, JFK and the Unspeakable.
But there is more from him and other researchers who have cut the Gordian knot of this false mystery with a few brief strokes.
OSWALD, THE PREORDAINED PATSY
Three examples will suffice to show that Lee Harvey Oswald, working as part of a U.S. Intelligence operation, was set up to take the blame for the assassination of President Kennedy, and that when he said in police custody that he was “a patsy,” he was speaking truthfully. These examples make it clear that Oswald was deceived by his intelligence handlers and had been chosen without his knowledge, long before the murder, to take the blame as a lone, crazed killer.
First, Kennedy was shot at 12:30 P.M. CT. According to the Warren Report, at 12:45 P.M. a police report was issued for a suspect that perfectly fit Oswald’s description. This was based on the testimony of Howard Brennan, who said he was standing across from the Book Depository and saw a standing white man, about 5’10” and slender, fire a rifle at the president’s car from the sixth-floor window. This was blatantly false because photographs taken moments after the shooting show the window open only partially at the bottom about fourteen inches, and it would have been impossible for a standing assassin to be seen “resting against the left windowsill,” (the windowsill was a foot from the floor), as Brennan is alleged to have said. He would have therefore had to have been shooting through the glass. The description of the suspect was clearly fabricated in advance to match Oswald’s.
Then between 1:06 and 1:15 P.M. in the quiet residential Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Police Officer J.D. Tippit was shot and killed. Supposedly based on Brennan’s description broadcast over police radio, Tippit had stopped a man fitting the description and this man pulled a gun and shot the officer. Meanwhile, Oswald had returned to his rooming house where his landlady said he left at 1:03 P.M., went outside, and was standing at a northbound bus stop. The Tippet murder took place nine-tenths of a mile away to the south where a witness, Mrs. Higgins, said she heard a gunshot at 1:06 P.M., ran outside, saw Tippit lying in the street and a man running away with a handgun whom she said was not Oswald.
Oswald is reported to have entered the Texas Theater minutes before the Tippit murder. The concession stand operator, Warren Burroughs has said he sold him popcorn at 1:15 P.M., which is the time the Warren Report claims Tippit was killed. At 1:50 P.M., Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theater and taken out the front door where a crowd and many police cars awaited him, while a few minutes later a second Oswald is secretly taken out the back door of the movie theater. (To read this story of the second Oswald and his movement by the CIA out of Dallas on a military aircraft on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, documented in great detail by James W. Douglass, is an eye-opener.)
The official narrative of Oswald and the Tippit murder begs credulity, but it serves to “show” that Oswald was a killer.
Despite his denials, Oswald, set up for Kennedy’s murder based on a prepackaged description, is arraigned for Tippit’s murder at 7:10 PM. It was not until the next day that he was charged for Kennedy’s.
THE MESSAGE TO AIR FORCE ONE
Secondly, while Oswald is being questioned about Tippit’s murder in the afternoon hours after his arrest, Air Force One has left Dallas for Washington with the newly sworn-in president Lyndon Johnson and the presidential party. Back in D.C., the White House Situation Room is under the personal and direct control of Kennedy’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, a man with close CIA ties who had opposed JFK on many matters, including the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy’s order to withdraw from Vietnam.
As reported by Theodore White, in The Making of the President 1964, Johnson and the others were informed by the Bundy controlled Situation Room that “there was no conspiracy, learned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest …”
Vincent Salandria, one of the earliest and most astute critics of the Warren Commission, put it this way in his book, False Mystery:
This [announcement from the Situation Room to Air Force One in flight back to Washington, D.C] was the very first announcement of Oswald as the lone assassin. In Dallas, Oswald was not even charged with assassinating the President until 1:30 A.M. the next morning. The plane landed at 5:59 P.M. on the 22nd. At that time the District Attorney of Dallas, Henry Wade, was stating that “preliminary reports indicated more than one person was involved in the shooting … the electric chair is too good for the killers.” Can there be any doubt that for any government taken by surprise by the assassination — and legitimately seeking the truth concerning it — less than six hours after the time of the assassination was too soon to know there was no conspiracy? This announcement was the first which designated Oswald as the lone assassin….
I propose the thesis that McGeorge Bundy, when that announcement was issued from his Situation Room, had reason to know that the true meaning of such a message when conveyed to the Presidential party on Air Force One [and to a separate plane with the entire cabinet that had turned around and was headed back over the Pacific Ocean] was not the ostensible message which was being communicated. Rather, I submit that Bundy … was really conveying to the Presidential party the thought that Oswald was being designated the lone assassin before any evidence against him was ascertainable. As a central coordinator of intelligence services, Bundy in transmitting such a message through the Situation Room was really telling the Presidential party that an unholy marriage had taken place between the U.S. Governmental intelligence services and the lone-assassin doctrine. Was he not telling the Presidential party peremptorily, ‘Now, hear this! Oswald is the assassin, the sole assassin. Evidence is not available yet. Evidence will be obtained, or in lieu thereof evidence will be created. This is a crucial matter of state that cannot await evidence. The new rulers have spoken. You, there, Mr. New President, and therefore dispatchable stuff, and you the underlings of a deposed President, heed the message well.’ Was not Bundy’s Situation Room serving an Orwellian double-think function?
OSWALD’S PREPACKAGED LIFE STORY
Finally, Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty adds a third example of the CIA conspiracy for those who need more evidence that the government has lied from the start about the assassination.
Prouty was Chief of Special Operations in the Pentagon before and during the Kennedy years. He was the liaison between the Joint Chiefs and the CIA, working closely with Director Allen Dulles and others in supporting the clandestine operations of the CIA under military cover. He had been sent out of the country to the South Pole by the aforementioned CIA operative Edward Lansdale (Operation Northwoods) before the Kennedy assassination and was returning on November 22, 1963.
On a stopover in Christchurch, New Zealand, he heard a radio report that the president had been killed but knew no details. He was having breakfast with a U.S Congressman at 7:30 AM on November 23, New Zealand time. A short time later, at approximately 4:30 PM Dallas time, November 22, he bought the Christchurch Star 23 November 1963 newspaper and read it together with the Congressman.
The newspaper reports from the scene said that Kennedy had been killed by bursts of automatic weapons fire, not a single shot rifle, firing three separate shots in 6.8 seconds, as was later claimed for Oswald. But the thing that really startled him was that at a time when Oswald had just been arrested and had not even been charged for the murder of Officer Tippit, there was elaborate background information on Oswald, his time in Russia, his association with Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, etc. “It’s almost like a book written five years later,” said Prouty. “Furthermore, there’s a picture of Oswald, well-dressed in a business suit, whereas, when he was picked up on the streets of Dallas after the President’s death, he had on some t-shirt or something…
Who had written that scenario? Who wrote that script…So much news was already written ahead of time of the murder to say that Oswald killed the President and that he did it with three shots…Somebody had decided Oswald was going to be the patsy…Where did they get it, before the police had charged him with the crime? Not so much ‘where,’ as ‘why’ Oswald?
Prouty, an experienced military man working for the CIA in the Pentagon, accused the military-intelligence “High Cabal” of killing President Kennedy in an elaborate and sophisticated plot and blaming it on Oswald, whom they had begun setting up years in advance.
The evidence for a government plot to plan, assassinate, cover-up, and choose a patsy in the murder of President John Kennedy is overwhelming.[42]
Five years after JFK’s assassination, we would learn, to our chagrin and his glory, that the president’s younger brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, equally brave and unintimidated, would take a bullet to the back of his head in 1968 as he was on his way to the presidency and the pursuit of his brother’s killers. The same cowards struck again.
Their successors still run the country and must be stopped.
EPILOGUE BY JAMES W. DOUGLASS
John F. Kennedy was raised from the death of wealth, power, and privilege. The son of a millionaire ambassador, he was born, raised, and educated to rule the system. When he was elected President, Kennedy’s heritage of power corresponded to his position as head of the greatest national security state in history. But Kennedy, like Lazarus, was raised from the death of that system. In spite of all odds, he became a peacemaker and, thus, a traitor to the system….
Why? What raised Kennedy from the dead? Why did John Kennedy choose life in the midst of death and by continuing to choose life thus condemn himself to death? I have puzzled over that question while studying the various biographies of Kennedy. May I suggest one source of grace for his resurrection as a peacemaker? In reading his story, one is struck by his devotion to his children. There is no mistaking the depth of love he had for Caroline and John, and the overwhelming pain he and Jacqueline experienced at the death of their son Patrick. Robert Kennedy in his book Thirteen Days has described how his brother saw the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of the future of his children and all children. I believe John Kennedy was at least partially raised from the dead of the national security state by the life of his children. The heroic peacemaking of his final months, with his acceptance of its likely cost in his own death, was, I suspect, partly a result of the universal life he saw in and through them. I think he believed profoundly the words that he gave in his American University address as his foundation for rejecting the Cold War:
‘Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.’[43]
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 23:40 - North Korea Moves Heavy Weapons To Border With South, Remilitarizes Outposts Along DMZ
North Korea Moves Heavy Weapons To Border With South, Remilitarizes Outposts Along DMZ
Prior years of efforts toward deconfliction based on a series of agreements between North and South Korea have been quickly unraveling, following major joint US-South Korea military drills last summer and the stationing of a US nuclear capable submarine there last July. The nuclear submarine at a South Korean port was a first in four decades.
Pyongyang responded predictably by ramping up ballistic missile tests, and most recently launching a spy satellite into orbit for the first time. But South Korea’s Defense Ministry on Monday announced a big major step backward, saying the north has begun building up heavy weapons along its border, while reestablishing guard posts.
Border via AP Reconstructing militarized border positions appears to be the Kim Jong Un government’s response to the south last week suspending participation in a pact meant to avert war.
Seoul said this means it will resume surveillance flights along the border. Pyongyang promptly issued a statement: “From now on, our army will never be bound by the September 19 North-South Military Agreement,” it said last Wednesday.
And now The Guardian is detailing that “Media reports cited the South Korean military as saying it had detected troops from the North repairing camouflaged guard posts that the regime had destroyed as part of a comprehensive military agreement in 2018 designed to lower the risk of a confrontation along the heavily armed demilitarized zone (DMZ).”
North Korea has sent troops to restore border posts that were taken down as part of an earlier agreement.
This comes after Seoul partially suspended a 2018 deal aimed at rapprochement, leading to Pyongyang ditching the agreement altogether. https://t.co/ud4pje6r10
— DW News (@dwnews) November 27, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Further, “The South’s military said North Korean soldiers had been observed digging trenches at sites along the border and the regime had sent heavy weapons to the area,” The Guardian continues. “The DMZ has divided the two countries since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war and is seen as a potential flashpoint in any future inter-Korean conflict.”
The South Korean Defense Ministry says it can prove the DPRK is remilitarizing the border, having released a photo set showing new soldiers and arms at freshly constructed outposts along the DMZ.
These same outposts had been destroyed over recent years as relations warmed and tensions eased between the US, South Korea, and North Korea.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered the military to be on a high state of readiness and to monitor troop movements along the border and DMZ. The satellite launch has remained a key issue of contention.
North Korea’s Kim had hailed “new era of a space power” with the Malligyong-1 reportedly in orbit. Pyongyang had claimed that within a mere hours after the launch, Kim was reviewing images of American military bases in Guam.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 23:20 - Media Outlet Criticized For Trying To Normalize 'The Death Of Trump'
Media Outlet Criticized For Trying To Normalize ‘The Death Of Trump’
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Media outlet Business Insider was criticized over the weekend after publishing an article that offered speculation regarding what would happen “if Donald Trump dies while running in the 2024 election.”
In an article published Saturday, the outlet, also known as Insider, listed several different scenarios that would occur if the former president passed away before the GOP primary, during the primary, or between the primary and the general election. Former President Trump, 77, is by far the leading GOP presidential candidate, besting the No. 2 and No. 3 candidates by more than 45 percentage points, respectively.
“If Trump died during primary season—which ends in mid-June—some states may postpone their scheduled primaries,” the article said, in part.
“If Trump died after the last primary contest but before the Republican National Convention, the other GOP presidential candidates would have to make a case to every state delegation at the convention for why they should be the party’s nominee,” it also said.
Insider also recently ran an article with the title, “What happens if a sitting president dies while running for reelection,” including a photo of President Joe Biden. However, unlike the Trump article, Insider did not specifically make reference to President Biden in the headline. And unlike the Trump article, Insider used President Biden’s last name sparingly throughout the article, although it did mention that President Biden turned 81 several days ago.
“If the president died during primary season—which ends in mid-June—some states may postpone their scheduled primaries,” the article stated.
After Insider published the speculative article regarding President Trump’s death during the primary, some conservative commentators offered criticism. Some also claimed it’s part of an attempt to normalize President Trump’s death, suggesting a nefarious plot could be carried out.
“First, Levi Strauss heir Rep. Dan Goldman says Trump must be ‘eliminated,’ and now Business Insider is openly asking: What would happen if Donald Trump ‘dies while seeking reelection’ in 2024?” wrote commentator Charlie Kirk on X.
“Don’t put anything past these people.”
Human Events editor Jack Posobiec also suggested on X that it was “pointed out the media has begun normalizing the death of Trump again. Now this.” He made reference to his conversation with pollster Richard Baris, who made a comment about such reports.
“I think it’s pretty clear what message they’re sending when they speculate about the death of a candidate they claim is ‘worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, etc. combined,'” Mr. Baris wrote in an X post in response.
“The last time they did this, a lefty nutcase decided it was heroic to shoot [Republican Rep. Steve Scalise] and 4 others.”
In 2017, Rep. Scalise (R-La.) was shot during a practice session for the Congressional Baseball Game in Virginia. A 66-year-old self-described Bernie Sanders supporter, James Hodgkinson, was identified as the shooting suspect before he was killed by officers in a shootout.
The Epoch Times has contacted Insider for comment Sunday. The outlet has not publicly responded to the criticism of the Trump article on social media or elsewhere. President Trump also has not made any comments about it.
Based in New York City, Business Insider was purchased in 2015 by German mass media company Axel Springer SE, which purchased popular politics website Politico in 2021. The company also owns European brands Bild, Die Welt, and other media outlets.
What the Polls Show
Several recent polls show that more Americans view President Biden as being too old to serve another term effectively. Fewer Americans believe President Trump is too old to serve.
A Monmouth University poll published last month found 76 percent of voters believe the president is too old, compared to 48 percent who said the same thing about President Trump.
In another poll from The Associated Press-NORC published in August, some 77 percent said President Biden is too old to serve another four years in office. In contrast, around half of American adults said the same about President Trump.
President Biden was asked about his age again over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
“Mr. President, are you too old to be running for re-election?” a journalist asked him while he was shopping in Nantucket on Saturday, according to a clip.
“That’s stupid,” President Biden responded with a smile.
As for the GOP primary, an aggregate of recent polls shows that President Trump has 61.6 percent of the vote, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is No. 2 with 13.7 percent, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has 9.8 percent, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has 4.9 percent, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is at 2.3 percent
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 23:00 - Who Are The World's Biggest Arms Importers (And Exporters)?
Who Are The World’s Biggest Arms Importers (And Exporters)?
In 2022, global military budgets hit $2.2 trillion, an eighth consecutive year of increase.
Part of those budgets were used for the procurement of arms, but which countries are major weapons suppliers, and how do they influence the global arms trade?
In the chart below, Visual Capitalist’s Bhabna Banerjee and Marcus Lu highlight the top 10 countries with the biggest share of global arms exports using data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Which Country Exports the Most Weapons?
The U.S. is the biggest weapons exporter, accounting for 40% of the total volume of international arms transfers between 2018–2022. Nearly one-fifth of these exports headed to Saudi Arabia, and other significant amounts went to Japan (8.6%) and Australia (8.4%).
Below we rank the biggest weapons exporters by share of total volume traded in 2018–2022, as well as their growth or decline from trends recorded in 2013–2017.
Russia (16%) and France (11%) rank close together, followed by China (5%) and Germany (4%) to round out the top five major arms exporters.
However France’s export volumes grown considerably (+44%) from the previous five-year period, thanks to big sales to India, which included 62 combat aircraft and four submarines, one-third of all French weapons trade. This has resulted in France leapfrogging the U.S. as India’s second-largest weapons supplier after Russia.
On the other hand, Russia’s exports by volume has decreased (-31%) even before sanctions kicked in after the invasion of Ukraine. Its biggest trade partners, India and China, have prioritized developing their own weapons industries.
South Korea’s Surging Weapons Exports
Another country whose arms sales are skyrocketing is South Korea, which ranks 9th in the overall share of global arms exports, but has seen a 74% increase in its export volumes. Key recipients include the Philippines, India, and Thailand.
South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has pledged to grow his country into the world’s fourth largest arms exporter by 2027.
Interestingly, South Korea is one of three countries which is both a top-10 arms exporter and importer (along with China and the U.S.) as it has many takers for domestically produced military equipment, while simultaneously being reliant on American-produced long-range missiles and advanced combat aircraft.
* * *
But, as Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Pallavi Rao note, for every weapon being sold, there is a buyer, and countries spend an enormous amount on their militaries, both to secure national interests and maintain their sovereignties.
A huge part of that goes toward acquiring new arms and equipment, often from other nations, as weapons manufacturing becomes extremely sophisticated and specialized.
We highlight the countries with the biggest share of of global arms imports in 2018–2022, using data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Which Country Imports the Most Weapons?
India ranks first in having the biggest share of global arms imports at 11% in the time period between 2018–2022. The world’s fifth biggest economy has the fourth-biggest military budget and relies on Russia to supply most of its foreign arms needs, followed by France and the U.S.
From the Middle East, Saudi Arabia (10%) and Qatar (6%) rank as the second and third-largest importers of weapons, both benefiting from the U.S. as their biggest military trade partner.
Australia, China, and Egypt are all at 5%, with the former primarily supplied by the U.S. while the latter two by Russia. In fact, the U.S. and Russia are the primary sources of arms for 13 of the top 16 countries by share of global arms imports.
Naturally, the two countries are the world’s biggest exporters of military equipment, accounting for 56% of arms exports by volume.
How Arms Imports Align with Geopolitical Events and Alliances
The list of biggest arms importers is also a shorthand for geopolitical hotspots and tense border situations in the world. The India-China-Pakistan trifecta has three nuclear-powered nations in close proximity with each other, with border skirmishes between India and its western and eastern neighbour occurring semi-regularly in the last decade.
Four Middle Eastern nations—incidentally all supplied by the U.S.—speak to attempts to counter Iran’s influence in the region. Meanwhile Australia, Japan and South Korea are bolstering their forces amidst rising tensions with China and North Korea.
With the UK, Ukraine, and Norway rounding out the top 15, the spillover from the Russian invasion—in Ukraine’s case, being the target of the invasion—is also seen clearly.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 22:40 - How Sugar Fuels Cancer In The Body
How Sugar Fuels Cancer In The Body
Authored by Flora Zhao via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
You may have heard that sugar can feed cancer cells. Is that true?
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock) Sugars ‘Nourish’ Cancer Cells
For cancer patients, “sugar intake can indeed nourish cancer cells,” Mingyang Song, associate professor of clinical epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told The Epoch Times.
This is supported by strong epidemiological evidence, he said.
A study published in PLoS One involving 1,011 colon cancer patients with a follow-up period of over seven years found that compared to patients consuming less than two servings of sugar-sweetened beverages per month, those who consumed two or more servings per day experienced a 67 percent increased risk of colon cancer recurrence or mortality.
Another Spanish study published in Clinical Nutrition in 2021 involving over 7,000 participants found that for every additional 5 grams of sugar consumed in liquid form per day, cancer incidence increased by 8 percent. People with the highest intake experienced a 46 percent increase.
A can of soda usually contains 30 to 45 grams of sugar.
A shift in a population’s sugar consumption can significantly affect cancer rates. Lewis Cantley, a well-known biologist and professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School, used Taiwan as an example in an email to The Epoch Times. He wrote that before World War II, Taiwan had relatively low rates of cancers, including colon, endometrial, and breast. That was when sugar-sweetened beverages were scarce. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, with the introduction of Western diets—particularly sugary drinks—cancer rates there steadily began to rise. They’ve now reached a level comparable to those in the United States.
Soft drinks on shelves in Riga, Latvia. Sugary drinks are prevalent across the world. (Tanya Keisha/Shutterstock) Cancer cells require a substantial amount of glucose to survive. In the 1930s, Otto Warburg, a German biochemist, discovered that both cancer cells and normal cells require sugar, but their metabolic pathways differ: Normal cells primarily convert glucose into energy through aerobic respiration, while cancer cells obtain energy through glycolysis instead of using oxygen.
Cancer cells produce very little and inefficient energy due to their unique method of metabolizing sugar, which is why they voraciously consume sugar—at a rate 200 times faster than normal cells. That appetite can have wide-ranging effects.
Cancer cells consume sugar at a rate 200 times faster than normal cells. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock) “Cancer cells, in some sense, hijack metabolic processes in the body,” Lorenzo Cohen, professor and director of the integrative medicine program at MD Anderson Cancer Center and author of “Anticancer Living,” told The Epoch Times.
Sugar–Obesity–Cancer: A Prevailing Theory
“The relationship between sugar and cancer is a complicated one,” said Dr. Jeremy Kortmansky, associate professor of medical oncology at the Yale School of Medicine and clinical director of the Division of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at the Yale Cancer Center.
The prevailing theory is that sugar doesn’t directly cause cancer but rather indirectly contributes to it through obesity.
High energy intake, or too many calories, and low energy expenditure are primary risk factors for many types of cancer, Ellen Kampman, a nutritional epidemiologist and chair in nutrition and disease at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, told The Epoch Times. A high sugar intake in the diet increases energy intake.
“Keeping a healthy weight is the most important thing you can do to prevent cancer,” she said.
A prospective study with over 35,000 participants revealed that people who consumed sugar-sweetened soft drinks more than once per day had an 18 percent increased risk of developing obesity-related cancers than those who rarely consumed such drinks.
A comprehensive review published in Cancers in 2023 indicated that about 48 percent of cancer cases are attributed to obesity. Obesity is linked to 13 types of cancer, including breast, colorectal, endometrial, liver, stomach, and thyroid.
A high-sugar diet can lead to the accumulation of body fat, especially visceral fat. Scientists recognize that the role of fat goes beyond energy storage; it acts as a highly active endocrine organ capable of secreting various substances, including hormones. Excessive fat can lead to an imbalance of these substances, contributing to cancer development.
Fat cells in adipose tissue (magnification 250x). (Ed Reschke/Getty Images) However, there are many other ways that sugar could contribute to cancer, according to experts and various studies.
A Challenging Problem
Proving a direct link between eating sugar and cancer is challenging because of ethical concerns and practical difficulties in conducting such experiments.
“I certainly would not want my children to be in such a trial,” said Mr. Cantley, whose work has significantly impacted cancer cell biology.
Nevertheless, prospective cohort studies—a type of observational study focused on following a particular group of people over a period of time without interfering with their eating habits—can provide valuable insights into the relationship between sugar intake and cancer risk.
One such study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2020, tracked over 100,000 French adults for several years. Those who consumed the most sugar had a 17 percent increased cancer risk compared to those with the lowest sugar intake. This elevated risk was particularly notable for breast cancer, with a 51 percent increase.
This association remained significant even after adjusting for factors such as weight gain and body mass index. The study suggested that sugar may increase cancer risk through mechanisms other than just weight gain.
The Many Ways Sugar May Lead to Cancer
Processed sugar is a potent energy source. Beyond weight gain, it causes a variety of changes in your body that increase cancer risk.
Alters Metabolism
“Another mechanism through which sugar increases the risk of cancer is its impact on metabolism,” Mr. Song said.
High sugar intake can alter the metabolic profile, triggering inflammation and insulin resistance, both risk factors for tumor development.
This is a major mechanism that causes cancer, independently of obesity, he said. Obese people are more prone to inflammation and insulin resistance, but these can also occur in lean individuals.
Sucrose, fructose, and refined carbohydrates cause a significant spike in blood sugar levels. To maintain sugar balance, the body must increase insulin accordingly, and “excess amounts of increased insulin are inflammatory,” according to Mr. Cohen.
Thomas Seyfried, a professor of biology at Boston College, told The Epoch Times that high blood sugar is linked to systemic inflammation, which can lead to mitochondrial damage and, ultimately, cancer.
Sugar causes a variety of changes in your body that ultimately lead to increased cancer risk. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock) Triggers DNA Mutation
Inflammation and insulin resistance can also directly promote mutations in cell genes, leading to alteration in cell behavior.
Mr. Song further explained that the normal cell life cycle is disrupted in such cases. Cells don’t undergo normal timely cell death, instead growing and proliferating without limits, fueling tumor development.
Many experiments have confirmed these mechanisms. For example, mutations of genes related to insulin signaling can contribute to tumor development in various tissues, increasing the risk of certain types of cancers, including breast, endometrial, and thyroid.
A study published in Cell Metabolism found that the likelihood of gene mutations leading to pancreatic cancer increases fivefold in a high-glucose environment compared to a normal one.
Affects Gut Microbiota
“Only in recent years have people started to recognize the significance of gut microbiota [in relation to cancer risk],” Mr. Song said.
Sugar can disrupt the structure and function of gut microbiota and replace beneficial bacteria with harmful ones, ultimately resulting in the development of tumors in the intestines and even elsewhere.
Mr. Song explained several mechanisms by which the gut microbiome affects tumor development. These have also been a focus of recent research.
Sugar can increase certain harmful bacteria, which produce carcinogenic proteins on their surfaces, leading to gene mutations and directly promoting tumor development. Some harmful gut bacteria can also affect metabolism, causing uncontrolled cell growth.
Additionally, certain gut bacteria can harm the immune system, compromising its surveillance function. They may also produce specific metabolites that, upon entering the bloodstream from the gut, induce inflammation and immune dysregulation at distant sites, ultimately contributing to the development of tumors in those areas.
Read the rest here…
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 22:20 - From CeSo To DeSo (Or, How To Really 'Make The World A Better Place')
From CeSo To DeSo (Or, How To Really ‘Make The World A Better Place’)
Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,
Let’s talk about social media, the problems with centralized (Web2 or CeSo) variants, and the road to successful decentralized (Web3 or DeSo) solutions…
Every few months, a blogger or media outlet does a deep dive on social media algorithms and concludes they tend toward dangerous extremes (the WSJ has a good article on Instagram Reels today).
These investigations rightly conclude that whatever safety measures get put into place don’t stand a chance against algos designed to maximize engagement.
This is a fundamental incentive problem, which us crypto folks understand better than anyone.
Web2 social platforms don’t exist to “make the world a better place.”
They exist to maximize shareholder value, which is almost entirely derived from advertising, which is almost entirely tied to “engagement,” which is just a nicer way of getting users addicted, which requires extreme and polarizing content.
It’s a classic quantity vs quality issue, with disturbing parallels to how opioid makers who started out with a noble mission created a generation of addicts.
We can try to shame Big Tech or call for greater regulation, but the best solution to any incentive problem is better incentives, combined with more transparency.
The problem is that no such model exists for Web2 social.
Management has a responsibility to shareholders, and their profits must ultimately come at the expense of users.
Management also doesn’t want to open source their algo, it’s their secret sauce.
They also worry that people would game their algorithms.
Perhaps a false belief given how gamed they already are, but that’s the table stakes.
All of this should be a great opening for Web3 social media.
But disintermediating successful platforms with network effects measured in the billions (of users) is hard.
If there’s one thing I’ve been consistently wrong about in crypto, it’s the difficulty of moving from the philosophical stage (“it should work”) to the product stage (“here is how”) to the success stage (“it’s working!”).
The good news is that these stages are not mutually exclusive.
The more ordinary users (which includes creators and curators) become disenfranchised with the toxicity of Web2 social, the more likely they are to try something different.
And the more the owners of these platforms feel the heat, the more likely they are to pivot.
More platforms are starting to pay content creators (somewhat aligning incentives) and Twitter is going hard into a subscription model (Sybil resistance).
But none feel the heat from a decentralized alternative, so there’s no urgency.
Smart people are trying different approaches to DeSo, which is great.
But my first hunch is that none have cracked the code yet, in part because their user experiences are too similar to CeSo. The content might be ownable via NFTs, the algos might be transparent, the social graphs might be composable, and governance might be user-controlled, but the user journey is often familiar.
YouTube bears little resemblance to the network broadcast model it disrupted, so it stands to reason that whatever replaces it looks radically different from YouTube.
One notable exception is Friend.Tech, its UX is different. But it’s mostly different in embracing the pure financialization of content creation.
My other hunch is that giving into this tendency is a mistake for crypto projects — not just in DeSo but for all non-financial applications. So many crypto projects have fallen into the financialization trap, from online communities to gaming to the Metaverse. But the results have been bad: a pump, followed by a dump, and a new class of potential adoptees burned.
Ordinary people don’t want to participate in casinos that happen to be a MMO or social media platform. They want to play fun games and post quality content, then enjoy certain property rights should their value contribution be unique.
So what does all of that look like for DeSo?
I unfortunately have no idea.
But if history is any guide, someone is building it as we speak.
Web2 social has become so dangerous to society that the need for an alternative is arguably existential. That’s the mother of all incentives.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 22:00 - More Chinese Pro-Growth Signs to Come as 2024 GDP Goal Eyed
More Chinese Pro-Growth Signs to Come as 2024 GDP Goal Eyed
By George Lei, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist
President Xi Jinping is set to visit the Shanghai Futures Exchange and several tech giants on Tuesday, according to a report from the South China Morning Post. The trip, if confirmed, may represent most high-profile attempt yet by the leader to send a pro-business message before the country’s 2024 growth target is decided at next month’s Central Economic Work Conference.
Xi’s potential visit coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone, a testing ground for the country’s economic reforms. Xi is expected to urge local officials to spur cross-border trade and capital flows, according to the SCMP report. Despite China’s reopening this year, the country has found it difficult to attract foreign investments thanks to the deep mental scars left on investors by pandemic-era restrictions.
But Beijing has gone into overdrive trying to spur international business over the past several weeks. Senior Chinese officials have pushed to boost international flights with the US and Europe. On Friday, Beijing permitted citizens from the biggest EU countries to visit visa-free, in yet another step to facilitate cross-border exchanges.
China’s central bank on Monday also pledged to push for lower real lending rates in its third-quarter monetary policy report. The document devoted one of its four columns to discuss fiscal and monetary policy coordination, which is “a timely clarification” amid heightened investor skepticism, according to a research report from Citigroup. Analysts from the US bank, after going through the monetary policy report, believe PBOC would “stay accommodative in managing interbank liquidity” at a time when fiscal impulse is picking up momentum.
Now, the overall policy tone is expected to stay positive in the run-up to the annual Central Economic Work Conference, which will likely take place over the coming weeks. The meeting, which sets the economic growth target for the following year, typically starts between Dec. 8 and 19, according to data compiled by Bloomberg based on public announcements since 2018.
There has been a rigorous debate among market participants on whether Beijing should set a 5% GDP goal for next year — and deliver more forceful stimulus to achieve it — or simply go with consensus at around 4.5%. Recent policy moves seem to tip toward the more ambitious side, offering much needed relief to a fragile stock market.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 21:40 - "It's A Powder Keg": Steve Bannon Warns Tucker Ireland's Post-Stabbing Anti-Immigration Crisis Is "Coming Here, At Scale"
“It’s A Powder Keg”: Steve Bannon Warns Tucker Ireland’s Post-Stabbing Anti-Immigration Crisis Is “Coming Here, At Scale”
Tucker Carlson sat down with Steve Bannon to discuss last week’s terrorist incident in Ireland – where an Algerian immigrant went on a stabbing spree in downtown Dublin, attacking five people – including three children. Following the stabbing, anti-immigrant riots broke out across the country over the government’s general pro-immigrant policies.
“Several days ago, a man in his 50s for reasons that are still not clear stabbed five people outside a school in Dublin, Ireland, including three children, and then almost immediately after, parts of that City erupted into rioting,” said Carlson, adding “The Washington Post stepped in helpfully to explain, here’s the Tweet The Washington Post sent out quote ‘online rumors claimed the perpetrator of a stabbing attack was an immigrant’.”
“Actually, the man was an immigrant,” Carlson continued. “He was from Algeria and as it turns out he’s been living in Ireland for 23 years at public expense, he has never had a job.”
Ireland’s Transformation and the Role of Immigration
The conversation quickly pivoted to the broader implications of immigration in Ireland, with Carlson criticizing the country’s significant transformation due to immigration, suggesting a deliberate plan. “That country has been completely transformed by immigration,” he argued.
Bannon echoed Carlson’s sentiments, criticizing the Irish political class for “selling out” the people and compared the situation in Ireland with the rest of Europe, particularly with the policies of Victor Orban in Hungary and the general trend in Germany.
“Ireland’s probably one of the worst if not the worst because the political class has totally sold out the people,” said Bannon, adding “Ireland is a powder keg and I think what you saw the other day in the response by the Garda, the response by the authorities was immediately to go after Conor McGregor and other folks who were saying hey we need to address this.”
Steve Bannon tells Tucker Carlson: “The Irish politicians are by far the worst that are bought off by the EU. They’re the biggest globalists, they’ve sold out the sovereignty of the Irish, and you’re seeing a natural blowback.” pic.twitter.com/wCsXzbhIw5
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 28, 2023
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The bigger picture
Going beyond Ireland, Carlson and Bannon discussed the situation in the United States and other Western countries – with Bannon voicingconcerns about increasing immigration and its impact on native populations, drawing parallels with Ireland’s situation. “The political class is very tied to Brussels,” Bannon noted, implying a disconnect between the governing elite and the populace.
“The Germans and the people in Brussels, the party of Davos just doesn’t think the working-class European population is very controllable, they think they’re dangerous,” said Bannon.
Steve Bannon tells Tucker Carlson: “We’re going to have a firestorm in this country that is going to pale in comparison, I think, to what you saw in Ireland last week.” pic.twitter.com/JIrOoVPBwW
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 28, 2023
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The pair also touched on future concerns, including rising national debt and the potential for social unrest.
Bannon in particular warned about the financial implications of immigration policies was stark: “We are Beyond broke; we are technically in bankruptcy right now.”
Watch:
Ep. 41 Dublin in flames. What’s happening in Ireland will happen here, at scale. Steve Bannon explains. pic.twitter.com/KzrRUJq0ZL
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 27, 2023
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 21:24 - The Republican Battle Between Neoconservatism And America First
The Republican Battle Between Neoconservatism And America First
Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Vivek Ramaswamy has a favorite term for his enemies on foreign policy: “neocon,” short for neoconservative.
“I want to be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the neocon establishment of the past,” he told moderator Lester Holt during the third Republican presidential debate on Nov. 8 in Miami.
“Corrupt politicians in both parties spent trillions, killed millions, made billions for themselves in places like Iraq and Afghanistan fighting wars that sent thousands of our sons and daughters, people my age, to die in wars,” the millennial businessman continued, rattling off criticisms of pre-Trump foreign policy.
“Do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels?” Mr. Ramaswamy asked. “Because we have two of them on this stage tonight,” taking a swing at Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Ms. Haley later hit back on social media: “I wear heels. They’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition.”
As Ms. Haley pushes past 10 percent in the polls, she is drawing attention from influential donors amid the Israel–Hamas war and the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict. In Miami, she indicated she was willing to bomb Iran in response to proxy attacks against Israel and the United States.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley puts her hand up to Vivek Ramaswamy as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (C) listens during a Republican presidential primary debate in Miami, on Nov. 8, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Alongside foreign policy assumptions from the George H.W. Bush administration, neoconservatism has helped set the tone for foreign policy views that still dominate the GOP establishment, according to both Col. Douglas MacGregor, a senior defense adviser under President Trump, and Steve Bannon, who served as the White House’s chief strategist early in the Trump presidency, and host of the “Bannon’s War Room” podcast.
They spoke with The Epoch Times, along with several others, about the neoconservative streak in American politics and what it means for 2024.
Rise of the Neocons
The word “neocon” conjures up some familiar faces from the last several decades of American politics.
Aside from Mr. Cheney, there’s John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush and a national security adviser for President Trump. Mr. Bolton has since repudiated the 45th president.
In the Senate, there’s the late John McCain (R-Ariz.) and the living Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). On the other side of the aisle, there’s former Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and, from the Cold War era, the late Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.).
But behind the names that get quoted in mass media, is a tight network of intellectuals.
In 2004, Francis Fukuyama, a one-time fellow traveler of the movement, wrote about “the neoconservative moment” for The National Interest.
Mr. Fukuyama, then a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), linked the thinking that guided defense policy in the Bush administration to highly exclusive Washington dinners held during the 1990s. Attendees ranged from columnist Charles Krauthammer to political scientist Samuel Huntington to the “godfather of neoconservatism,” Irving Kristol, and his son, future “Never Trumper” Bill Kristol.
The Kristol family tradition continues today in various influential institutions, including the Washington Free Beacon. Selected by the Republican National Committee (RNC) as a co-host of the upcoming fourth presidential debate in Alabama, the periodical was co-founded by Bill Kristol’s son-in-law.
Like many other first-generation neoconservatives, Irving Kristol began as a follower of communist Leon Trotsky before falling out with the Left during the Cold War. In place of internationalist socialism, Mr. Kristol and his friends pursued a different kind of internationalism—one that relied on the powerful military during and, in Mr. Fukuyama’s reflections, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“It was at one of those dinners that Charles Krauthammer first articulated the idea of American unipolarity,” Mr. Fukuyama wrote.
The Soviet Union had fallen—though communist China remained standing—and the United States was the lone superpower. In the decade before 9/11, that mostly meant peace, at least for the American people.
Joshua Muravchik, an influential neoconservative whose pedigree includes service with Mr. Jackson and work at Hopkins’ SAIS, told The Epoch Times that his movement emerged against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.
While he and a few other liberals still supported the containment doctrine advanced by diplomat George Kennan during the Truman administration, the unpopular conflict in Southeast Asia brought anti-communism into disrepute among American liberals.
The term “neoconservative” was, he said, “meant as an insult because we still regarded ourselves as liberals back in the ’70s.”
Soon afterward—sooner than many thought possible—the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War was over.
“I think we neoconservatives were vindicated,” Mr. Muravchik said.
West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early Nov. 11, 1989, as they watch East German border guards demolishing a section of the wall. (Gerard Malie/AFP via Getty Images) From the Soviet Union to the Middle East
In narrating the history of neoconservatism, Mr. Muravchik moved quickly from the post-Cold War “unipolar moment” to 9/11 and, in short order, the Iraq War.
“The people who had kind of advocated an aggressive international approach, which came to be called the Global War on Terror, were largely from the old group of neoconservatives,” he said.
But history didn’t quite stop between the two periods. In 1996, for example, neoconservative strategist Richard Perle, another “Scoop” Jackson veteran, wrote the “Clean Break” memo for Mr. Netanyahu, who was then about to become Israel’s prime minister. The front page of the report states it drew on a conversation with Douglas Feith, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., and David Wurmser, among others in the movement.
Mr. Perle, who later advised Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during the Bush administration, argued that Israel should be “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.”
“This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,” it continued.
Alongside policies under the second Bush administration, the “Clean Break” memo has led critics of neoconservatism to link the movement to strong U.S. support for Israel, or even a blurring of the lines between the two countries’ respective interests.
Indeed, in “The Neoconservative Moment,” Mr. Fukuyama suggested that Mr. Krauthammer conflated the two countries’ strategic realities during a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.
But very pro-Israel politicians don’t always enjoy the favor of neoconservatives. Notably, many neoconservatives have vocally opposed one of the most pro-Israel presidents in American history, Donald Trump. This placed them in an uneasy alliance with President Joe Biden, one of a small and dwindling number of living lawmakers from the Mr. Jackson era of the Senate.
Saurabh Sharma, a man in his 20s who leads the American Moment networking organization for young conservatives, pointed out that the neoconservative commentator Max Boot had argued for Israel to send weapons to Ukraine.
According to Mr. Sharma, if Israel had done what Mr. Boot suggested “they would have been woefully unprepared when this conflict began.”
Mr. Muravchik, the influential neoconservative, noted the apparent discrepancy between President Trump’s support for Israel and neoconservatives’ views in a 2020 article for American Purpose.
In his interview with The Epoch Times, he elaborated on his objections to President Trump’s approach to foreign affairs.
“He’s been nothing but a suck-up to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. He said he fell in love with [North Korean leader] Kim-Jong Un. He said he thought [Chinese leader Xi Jinping] was a great guy,” he told The Epoch Times.
President Trump’s allies might counter that his maneuvers on the world stage actually put America first by defusing tension while also showing strength. But to Mr. Muravchik and other neoconservatives, Trump’s statecraft looks less like crafty realism and more like appeasement of anti-democratic leaders.
“A hallmark of neoconservatism was the idea, not just having military strength, but trying to make the world an easier place to deal with by making it more democratic,” Mr. Muravchik said.
“If we can encourage the world to become more democratic—if we can encourage more countries to turn away from dictatorship to democracy—it will make the world a more peaceful place and a more pro-American place,” he added.
He said “democracy” hasn’t spread as broadly this century as it did at the end of the 20th century.
“It’s stopped,” he said before correcting himself: “It’s stalled.”
Mr. Sharma suggested President Trump made enemies of the neocons early in his candidacy when he criticized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“[The neoconservatives] made egregious mistakes in the Global War on Terror, and they want to get away with it,” he said, adding that a reorientation of the GOP against wars in the Middle East “means they’re all out of a job.”
Some America First critics of neoconservatism suggest the movement is only part of the story. Understanding why President Trump’s “America First” message provoked such fury requires a broader perspective.
“Control of the [RNC] rests in the hands of the same people that took us into the Middle East—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, and so forth—under Bush Sr.,” said Col. MacGregor, referring to President George H.W. Bush.
According to Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s apparent rejection of the global order that emerged after World War II—“the postwar, international, rules-based order”—united the establishment against him.
“You’re in this situation where the postwar international rules-based order, which has been underwritten financially by American taxpayers and paid for by their sons’ and daughters’ sacrifice and blood, has done nothing but gut jobs and ship every high-value manufacturing job out of the United States into China and other places in the Eurasian landmass,” Mr. Bannon said. “At the same time, our capital all financed it—our private equity capital, all the pension funds. … That order is the order that America First is against.”
Both men rejected the isolationist label often applied to America Firsters.
Col. MacGregor outlined the limited circumstances in which force might be justified.
“Unless we ourselves are attacked, or what we deem to be interests that are vitally strategic to us, we should not attack anyone,” Col. MacGregor said.
“It’s not that we don’t understand how the world is interconnected,” Mr. Bannon said. “It’s obviously interconnected. But the difference in Trump and the American First movement was, you will put America’s interest first—and, particularly, we will not support an international order that allows the Chinese Communist Party to rise from basically a destitute, third world country into an economic superpower on the backs of the American taxpayer.”
Mr. Muravchik argued that Trump-style rhetoric against the Chinese regime is ultimately insincere.
“They’re not worried about China. When it comes time to face up to China, they’re not going to do that,” he said.
The Next Generation
In Col. MacGregor’s view, the RNC hasn’t shifted on foreign policy in decades.
“I don’t think anything, anything has fundamentally changed with the institutional Republican Party,” he said. “And the institutional Republican Party does not represent most of the American citizens who refer to themselves as traditional conservatives.”
Mr. Ramaswamy has targeted neoconservatism with more zeal than anyone gunning for the White House, President Trump possibly excepted.
Before the debate at which he unleashed his “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels” line, he circulated a “No to Neocons” pledge.
Mr. Ramaswamy also called on RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel to resign, while on stage in Miami. According to reporting from Timcast, she then loudly insulted him from the audience, pledging that he wouldn’t get “a cent” from the RNC.
“It’s not her money. It’s the Republican voters’ money,” Ramaswamy senior adviser Tricia McLaughlin told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Ramaswamy has since filed a petition to oust Ms. McDaniel as RNC chair.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Muravchik, the neoconservative intellectual, is no fan of Mr. Ramaswamy.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (R) and King Hussein of Jordan review the honor guard upon Hussein’s arrival for the Arab cooperation council meeting in Amman, Jordan, on Feb. 24, 1990. (MIKE NELSON/AFP via Getty Images) Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 21:00 - WaPo's Taylor Lorenz Helps Biden Admin Peddle Inflation Propaganda
WaPo’s Taylor Lorenz Helps Biden Admin Peddle Inflation Propaganda
The Washington Post‘s Taylor Lorenz (and some other guy) have penned an ‘explainer’ on why a TikTok video of a $16 McDonald’s hamburger is misleading, inflation isn’t that bad, and the viral clip is just some guy who ordered a ‘novelty item’ which ended up with him ‘racking up hundreds of thousands of views.’
Lorenz (and sidekick), noting that it wasn’t just a ‘Big Mac meal,’ smelled blood in the water.
Even though he had ordered a novelty item, Olive’s video about a $16 McDonald’s order went viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of views. After a McDonald’s revenue report recently, the same post went viral again earlier this month, with at least a half-dozen news outlets — including the Washington Examiner, the New York Post and Newsmax — picking up the story of Olive’s pricey patty. One YouTube video from this month with 2 million views inaccurately describes it as “a Big Mac meal” that cost $16. Posts on Reddit, the conservative site Twitchy and elsewhere tied the cost to President Biden’s economic management: Inflation, the theory went, had gotten so out of control that the price of a fast-food burger was approaching $20.
The article then proffers this ‘viral’ hamburger incident as “one of many exaggerated examples of the nation’s economic woes.”
I bought a Sausage McMuffin combo the other day for $8.37. It cost $4.78 two years ago. Go figure.
— Peter J Forcelli (@Forcelli_Author) November 26, 2023
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An anonymous White House official then whispered in Lorenz’ ear, after she wrote: “In reality, inflation has been steadily subsiding, and last week the government reported price hikes had eased yet again in October. The average Big Mac nationally as of this summer cost $5.58, up from $4.89 — or roughly 70 cents — before Biden took office, according to an index maintained by the Economist. That’s up more than 10 percent, but it’s not $16.“
The Big Mac conundrum reflects what Biden aides and senior Democratic officials regard as one of their most vexing challenges ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Even as inflation has fallen to a manageable 3 percent, and although the labor market has remained hot amid strong growth, voters still don’t like the economy, and they blame the president. -WaPo
The WaPo piece aligns perfectly with a White House campaign to convince Americans things are better than ever, and Biden rocks, and he was only inspecting those children for lice.
KJP: “This holiday season, families are seeing lower prices on everyday items from gas to groceries.” pic.twitter.com/6RE0nSQlJ0
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 27, 2023
Of course, regular readers know better than to believe the Biden administration and its media tentacles.
And when you exclude food and energy:
And what’s this, buried towards the bottom of the WaPo report, they admit that disposable income has fallen like a rock.
So it’s officially less shitty than the shittiest it’s been under Biden, but still not as good as it was under Trump. Thanks Taylor (and guy) for explaining Bidenomics!
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 20:40 - Texas’s Green Energy Dream Is Risking Its Electric Grid
Texas’s Green Energy Dream Is Risking Its Electric Grid
Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Since Texas weathered its second-hottest summer on record and faced unprecedented demands on its power grid, the future of energy supply and use in the state—and across the country—has become the subject of national discussion. Air conditioners were in constant use in Texas over the summer as average temperatures reached 85.3 degrees between June and August and didn’t dip below 100 degrees for weeks on end in some cities.
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, freepik) The strain that the soaring temperatures put on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s energy distribution network, is severe, no matter the circumstances.
Making that situation all the more dire is the rapid growth of the state’s population and the rising number of tech companies that are installing or expanding facilities in Texas that require massive amounts of power to operate.
More and more people live and work in a state that’s woefully unprepared to cope with soaring demand.
“Peak demand in ERCOT has grown 14 percent since 2019, while our supply of thermal generation—gas, coal, nuclear—has remained essentially flat,” Brent Bennett, policy director of Life:Powered, an initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
The investment of $99 billion in wind and solar infrastructure in Texas and about $10 billion more in green energy transmission lines has not only failed to improve energy supply but has exacerbated the problem, he said.
Mr. Bennett and others say overinvestment in green energy comes at the expense of investment in sources that actually work.
Texas Swelters
The summer of 2023 was so hot that officials in some areas came close to adopting daily “load shedding,” or power outages, at least as a temporary expedient—protocols similar to those that have made life miserable for many people living in South Africa, whose state-run energy distributor, Eskom, is notoriously ill-managed.
An aircraft drops fire retardant in Riverside County, Calif., on July 14, 2023. Tens of millions of Americans are facing dangerously high temperatures as a powerful heat wave stretches from California to Texas. (DAVID SWANSON/AFP via Getty Images) Texas cities sweltered at 105 degrees or hotter for the most days in a row on record.
On Aug. 20, ERCOT hit a milestone: an all-time weekend peak demand record of 84,805 megawatts (MW), according to Alexander Stevens, manager of policy and communications at the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington-based nonprofit agency. Mr. Stevens compared that figure to the August 2022 peak demand of 78,485 MW.
Even that Aug. 20 weekend peak demand wasn’t as high as the demand on individual days this past summer. On Aug. 10, ERCOT grappled with 85,435 MW of demand and hit 81,674 MW on Sept. 5.
Mr. Stevens attributes the records partly to population growth, noting that from 2000 to 2022, Texas received an influx of 9,085,073 new residents, a record among states and 3 million more than the runner-up, Florida.
The retreat of excruciatingly hot weather over the autumn doesn’t mean that the Lone Star State is out of trouble. With winter approaching and posing its own set of challenges, ERCOT last month began soliciting bids from power providers in the hope of ramping up its reserves by at least 3,000 MW.
Given that 2023 was far from the first hot summer in Texas and that the demographic trends have been underway for many years, some may wonder why the state is scrambling now to try to expand its reserves and avoid more emergencies.
Mr. Stevens and other experts who spoke to The Epoch Times agree that while renewable energy isn’t sufficient to meet demand, politicians who want to appear forward-looking and in line with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) imperatives aren’t listening.
A Green Energy Panacea?
Even with policies specifically tailored to meet Texas’s acute needs, the market would be a challenging one. But, in the face of all these trends, Texas doesn’t receive anything close to the level of investment in energy production and distribution systems and facilities that it requires to meet demand.
In fact, policies that encourage wind, solar, and other so-called green and renewable energy sources not only fail to meet the demand but actively undermine any efforts to sustain and broaden supply networks that aren’t cyclical in nature and vulnerable to changes in the amount of wind or solar energy available at a given time, specialists in energy use have told The Epoch Times.
Part of the issue here is cultural and political. Some people assume that only political and social regressives living in flyover states, with a callous attitude about the environment, would harbor doubts about or oppose generous subsidies for ESG policies.
Many view ESG as essentially well-intentioned and lack any understanding of how such policies actually divert resources from and wreck the competitiveness of the utilities on which millions of people depend for their day-to-day existence, according to energy sector experts.
The escalating crisis in Texas has implications for the availability and reliability of energy throughout the nation, given the tendency in other states to favor ESG-based solutions and the demographic trends that expand energy use without regard for available resources, the experts say.
Misdirected Allocations
The problem comes down to flawed energy policy, William Keffer, director of the Energy Law Programs at Texas Tech University, told The Epoch Times.
“As a general observation, we have allowed our sources for electricity in the state to become lopsided, so that we have too much dependence on the renewables sector—wind and solar—and not as much capacity as we should have when it comes to the dispatchable sources like natural gas, coal, and nuclear,” he said.
Investors looking at opportunities in Texas and elsewhere obviously seek out assets that they expect to generate high returns, and the federal tax credits lavished on wind and solar facilities have helped bring about this lopsided market, he said.
The original idea of providing subsidies to foster renewable energy sources back in the 1990s was understandable, even laudable, but legislators have gone on renewing tax credits for such projects without regard for market dynamics, Mr. Keffer said.
A clause of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act extends the Investment Tax Credit, offering a 30 percent credit for wind, solar, storage, and other renewable initiatives, he pointed out.
The Biden administration is a huge backer of tax credits for investments in wind and solar projects. On May 31, the Treasury Department, the Energy Department, and the IRS released new guidance regarding an allocated credit program, offering a 20 percent tax credit on top of the existing 30 percent credit for wind and solar facilities in low-income communities.
“We just keep on extending these tax credits, which is going to continue to disrupt the market, with people spending their money in ways they would not otherwise,” Mr. Keffer said.
Undercutting the Dispatchables
With such lavish tax credits, wind and solar facilities can essentially sell their energy for close to zero dollars and still turn a profit, according to Mr. Keffer. The producers of dispatchable and badly needed energy sources aren’t in this position, hence they aren’t attractive investment targets, and no one wants to finance the building or expansion of coal, natural gas, or nuclear facilities.
“Wind and solar are always going to beat them to the punch with an artificially low price, such that they can’t sell their electricity at a price that gives them a return on their investment,” he said.
“Coal plants continue to be shut down, and natural gas plants don’t add to their lineup, because nobody wants to invest in a new one.”
Wind turbines in Papalote, Texas, on June 15, 2021. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which controls approximately 90 percent of the power in Texas, has requested that residents conserve power as temperatures surge in the state. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images) Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 20:20 - "We're Entering A Whole New Era": AI Video Generation Becoming 'Shockingly Good'
“We’re Entering A Whole New Era”: AI Video Generation Becoming ‘Shockingly Good’
AI may be a few years away from creating custom-tailored VR movies based on whatever you can imagine, but it’s become surprisingly good over a very short period of time.
As Rowan Cheung of Therundown.ai opines on X, “We’re entering a whole new era of film.”
1. Generating an AI image in Midjourney, and turning it into a video using Runway’s Motion Brush pic.twitter.com/i20SWZvjRr
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) November 27, 2023
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3. Stable Diffusion’s new open-sourced text-to-video generation model pic.twitter.com/AJJ4YgIYfD
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) November 27, 2023
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5. Combining Midjourney images, Stable Diffusion Video, Topaz AI, and Magnific AI by @javilopen pic.twitter.com/4CPz7WgqbX
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) November 27, 2023
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7. More memes pic.twitter.com/exmPv75bg2
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) November 27, 2023
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9. A movie trailer generated by AI pic.twitter.com/dumR3wr6CD
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) November 27, 2023
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I’ll be sharing the latest developments on AI video in my newsletter.
Click here to join 400k+ readers, and you’ll never miss a thing in AI ever again: https://t.co/Gm5KwesnA7
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) November 27, 2023
Of course, let’s not pretend this isn’t exactly where things are headed.
Hows the view?#AIgirl #aigirls #AIgirlfriends #AI美女 #AIArtwork #AIart #aimodel #aiartcommunity #stablediffusion #aivideo #aivideos #runwayml #AnimateDiff #deforum pic.twitter.com/pcRYuQmyzO
— Maya AiCharacter (@AiModelMaya) November 27, 2023
So my friend Emily convinced me to post a video to shake ‘em up! pic.twitter.com/5vQdNj7eGj
— Vicki_verano (@VeranoVicki) August 10, 2023
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If you want to stare at the sun… there’s always my patreon #4thofJuly #bikini #JokeDay #SaturdayMotivation #SaturdayThoughts #SaturdayMood pic.twitter.com/RyaqE2lU6L
— Zoey Platinum (@ZoeyPlatinum) July 1, 2023
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Meanwhile, this AI ‘model’ reportedly earns up to $11,000 per month.
An agency created an AI model who earns up to $11,000 a month because it was tired of influencers ‘who have egos’.
Aitana López is an AI-generated creation by a Spanish agency that grew tired of booking real models.
López can make just over 1,000 euros, or $1,090, per advert… pic.twitter.com/IkL8n6ahJo
— Dragomir Voicu (@VoicuDragomir) November 27, 2023
*blink* pic.twitter.com/mGECoWxVkX
— elekapar.eth (@elekapar) November 27, 2023
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And for Ted…
On a side note, I wonder how many people still think there’s, just, like, a bazillion images just sitting there in the AI model like some kind of huge compressed folder.
Can’t imagine there’s too many busty teddy bear MILFs in the dataset. pic.twitter.com/6nC1Xgrrks— 🎈Yttreia🎈 (How busy am I IRL?: 3/5) (@Yttreia) November 27, 2023
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With VR goggles, fleshlights, Doordash, UBI, and a lifetime supply of Ozimpec, future humans may never leave the house. You may want to read up.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 20:00 - RFK Jr. Has Millions On Hand To Fund 2024 Independent Run
RFK Jr. Has Millions On Hand To Fund 2024 Independent Run
Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has raised millions ahead of 2024. His campaign is already spending it to put together what could be the most notable third-party campaign in recent memory.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a campaign event in Miami, Fla., on Oct. 12, 2023. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images) In an email to The Epoch Times, the Kennedy campaign’s press secretary Stefanie Spear said the current focus is “getting Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in all 50 states.”
“We are spending most of our money on setting up field offices in every state, organizing volunteers, and organizing rallies,” Ms. Spear said.
Since announcing his intent to run as an independent rather than a Democrat in October, Mr. Kennedy has made 13 official campaign appearances in South Carolina, Maryland, Maine, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina.
At the end of September, the last time the Federal Election Commission released fundraising data for presidential campaigns and affiliated political action committees, Mr. Kennedy had raised $15 million.
According to FEC filings, Mr. Kennedy’s principal campaign committee, Team Kennedy, had about $6.1 million on hand at the end of September. It had spent about $8.9 million.
By comparison, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign had more cash on hand at the end of September than Republican Party candidates Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Outside Support
A fund supporting Mr. Kennedy, American Values 2024, said it had raised about $9.8 million in 2023 when its midyear report was filed with the FEC. It is a super political action committee (super PAC), meaning it can raise unlimited amounts of money but cannot directly coordinate with the candidate or campaign.
American Values 2024’s biggest supporter, as of the end of June, was American businessman Timothy Mellon, an heir of the Mellon family, who is now living in Wyoming. He gave $5 million in April. Mr. Mellon was previously a donor to former President Donald Trump.
His second biggest donor was Gavin de Becker, leader of the private security firm Gavin de Becker & Associates, who gave a total of $4.5 million by the end of June.
In 2022, American Values 2024—then called People’s Pharma Movement—raised $550,000 between July 29, 2022, and the end of that year. The principal donor was Mark Gorton, founder of New York-based trading and technology company Tower Research Capital, who gave $500,000 in 2022.
The Epoch Times previously reported American Values 2024 believes it can raise as much as $100 million by the end of 2024. As of the end of June 2023, the super PAC spent about $155,000 to support Mr. Kennedy’s campaign.
The Epoch Times previously reported that No Labels, a Washington-based 501(c)(4) organization focused on electing centrist candidates, intends to be on the ballot in 28 states by the end of 2023 and in all 50 states in time for the 2024 election. The organization has yet to announce a candidate for its ticket.
Campaign Consultants and Materials
So far, the Kennedy campaign has spent a significant amount of money on campaign consultants, printed materials, internet advertising, and a tour bus.
FEC filings show Team Kennedy paid various consultants more than $1 million through the end of September. Most of the money, about $519,000, went to Parker Reed Corp., a Florida-based branding and media consultancy.
Another large tranche, $185,000, went to Dennis Kucinich’s Kucinich Consulting LLC. The longtime congressman from Ohio and two-time presidential candidate served as Mr. Kennedy’s campaign manager until October. He was replaced by Amaryllis Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy’s daughter-in-law.
The Kennedy campaign also paid $179,500 to John Zogby Strategies, which is run by longtime pollster and analyst John Zogby.
So far, Team Kennedy has bought about $54,000 worth of Facebook ads. This ties into the campaign’s stated strategy of going after younger voters who spend less time with traditional media.
FEC filings also show Mr. Kennedy purchased a campaign vehicle for about $190,000 from Land and Sea Specialty LLC of Gibsonton, Florida, in July. The campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with various printing and media companies for campaign materials, too.
Secret Service Requests Denied
Mr. Kennedy’s campaign has requested Secret Service protection from the Biden administration three times but the request has been denied each time, so the campaign is spending about 30 percent of its budget on security, Ms. Spear said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Secret Service to ask about Mr. Kennedy’s protection but didn’t receive a response by press time.
Ken Farnaso, a spokesman for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s campaign, said Ms. Haley does not yet have a Secret Service detail. The Epoch Times reached out to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign but didn’t receive a reply by press time.
However, according to its website, the Secret Service, under U.S. law, is required to protect “major” presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election.
“The Secret Service has no role in determining who is to be considered a major candidate,” the agency’s website says. “The Secretary of Homeland Security determines who qualifies as a major candidate and when such protection should commence.”
According to Team Kennedy’s spending disclosures with the FEC, the campaign is currently paying private firm Gavin de Becker & Associates for security services. Filings list seven transactions between July 7 and Sept. 13 totaling more than $900,000 for security services.
In an interview, Mr. de Becker said his company works security for the campaign. His website says the business “protects several thousand clients, including more than 80 of the world’s most prominent families and at-risk individuals.” Mr. de Becker confirmed he donated to the super PAC, which is not directly tied to the Kennedy campaign.
On Oct. 25, the Kennedy campaign made its most recent appeal to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, detailing recent security incidents.
In a September event in Los Angeles, an armed man posing as a U.S. Marshal was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department after demanding to see Mr. Kennedy. In October, an intruder invaded Mr. Kennedy’s home in Los Angeles twice in the same day and was intercepted by private security, and arrested by the LAPD, twice.
In its letter to Mr. Mayorkas, the Kennedy campaign said for more than 55 years presidential candidates have received a secret service detail much earlier than the 120-day mark required by law.
“Your refusal is the sole outlier, making the Biden Administration the only one to refuse a protection request,” the letter said.
Both Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, and his father, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated in the 1960s in attacks that continue to live on in the American psyche.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 19:40 - Iran Sues Leading Newspaper Over Leaked Top Secret 'Morality Guard' Document
Iran Sues Leading Newspaper Over Leaked Top Secret ‘Morality Guard’ Document
The Iranian public prosecutor’s office has slapped a prominent newspaper with charges over the publication of a top-secret government document outlining the country’s volunteer morality guards – guys who go around whacking women for not wearing hijabs and other violations of Sharia law, who are separate from (but similar to) the country’s official morality police.
Etemad is a leading reformist newspaper in IranImage: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images (via DW) According to DW, citing the judiciary’s Mizan news, a reformist daily newspaper, Etmad, published the “highly confidential” document – an instruction from the Interior Ministry regarding the deployment of thousands of morality guards to enforce the country’s Hijab dress code for women.
While the Iranian government has sought to portray the morality guards as nothing more than civilian volunteers who aren’t part of the ministry, or the official morality police. But the leaked documents shows deep links between the group and the ministry.
Iran’s morality guards came under fire last month following the death of 16-year-old Armita Geravand, who fell into a coma after morality guards reportedly beat her into a coma for not wearing a hijab.
Geravand was hospitalized and fell into a coma in after she reportedly had a confrontation with morality guards on the Tehran Metro for not wearing a hijab. She died in hospital weeks later.
The incident prompted comparisons with the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in the custody of the morality police in 2022.
Her death led to unprecedent women’s rights protests in Iran and around the world. -DW
Iranian authorities have denied that the morality police caused Geravand’s death, which claimed that she fell and hit her head due to ‘low blood pressure,’ MDJ reports. The incident caused eight UN experts to call for an “independent, prompt, and impartial” investigation into the incident, saying that women and girls “should not be punished for wearing or not wearing any specific piece of clothing, and should certainly not be at risk of losing their lives for doing so.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 19:20 - OPEC Slams IEA Over "Moment Of Truth" For Oil
OPEC Slams IEA Over “Moment Of Truth” For Oil
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Days after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that the oil and gas industry faces “a moment of truth” in choosing between fueling climate change and becoming a part of the solution, OPEC criticized the agency for vilifying the industry and for playing down energy security and affordability.
Last week, the IEA published a report saying that a “moment of truth” is coming for the oil and gas industry as most companies are watching the energy transition from the sidelines, with oil and gas producers accounting for only 1% of total clean energy investment globally.
“Producers must choose between contributing to a deepening climate crisis or becoming part of the solution by embracing the shift to clean energy,” the IEA said.
Commenting on the report, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said in a statement on Monday,
“It is ironic that the IEA, an agency that has repeatedly shifted its narratives and forecasts on a regular basis in recent years, now addresses the oil and gas industry and says that this is a ‘moment of truth’.”
“The manner in which the IEA has unfortunately used its social media platforms in recent days to criticize and instruct the oil and gas industry is undiplomatic to say the least. OPEC itself is not an organization that would prescribe to others what they should do,” Al Ghais said.
OPEC also criticized the agency for describing carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) an “illusion”.
Al Ghais concluded: “We do see a ‘moment of truth’ ahead. We need to understand that all countries have their own orderly energy transition pathways, we need an assurance that all voices are heard, not just a select few, and we need to ensure that energy transitions enable economic growth, enhance social mobility, boost energy access, and reduce emissions at the same time.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 19:00 - Sunday Air Travel Broke Records
Sunday Air Travel Broke Records
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced on social media platform X that Sunday marked the busiest day for air travel at airports nationwide, setting a new record.
Yesterday was the busiest day ever at airports in the US, with the @TSA reporting 2,884,783 people screened. It was also an incredibly smooth day of travel with fewer than one-half of one percent of 51,332 scheduled flights canceled. pic.twitter.com/6ZUVmaHyDR
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) November 27, 2023
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“BREAKING NEWS: Yesterday (Nov. 26), TSA screened just over 2.9M individuals at airports nationwide, which represents an agency record – the busiest day ever for air travel,” TSA wrote on X.
BREAKING NEWS: Yesterday (Nov. 26), TSA screened just over 2.9M individuals at airports nationwide, which represents an agency record – the busiest day ever for air travel.
As #HolidayTravel season continues, we remind passengers to please arrive at the airport early.
— TSA (@TSA) November 27, 2023
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Data via Bloomberg shows the number of people passing through security checkpoints at airports was 2.9 million, surpassing pre-Covid levels (2019) and hitting a record high.
Despite the news, airline stocks failed to rally on the news and remained at levels seen during the Covid era. This lackluster performance is mainly attributed to the waning of ‘revenge travel’ and the increasing fuel costs that are squeezing profit margins.
Additionally, despite the severe pilot and air traffic controllers shortage that has disrupted the industry throughout the year, there were no significant delays reported yesterday.
Great job, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg! You’re still employed.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 18:40 - Conor McGregor Brands Irish Leader "A Disgrace" For Claiming Hamas Child Hostage Was "Lost"
Conor McGregor Brands Irish Leader “A Disgrace” For Claiming Hamas Child Hostage Was “Lost”
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
UFC star Conor McGregor has continued his flurry of offence against the Irish government, branding the Prime Minster Leo Varadkar “a disgrace” over comments made about a child who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.
The five time world champion responded to a post on X made by Varadkar about Emily Hand who was returned to her family over the weekend.
Varadkar described the child as being “lost” and claimed she “has now been found and returned.”
McGregor noted that the 8-year-old child was “abducted by an evil terrorist organisation,” adding “What is with you and your government and your paid for media affiliates constantly down playing / attempting to repress horrific acts that happen to children.”
The MMA legend continued, “You are a disgrace. The day after a stabbing of children in Ireland, NOT ONE PAPER HAD IT ON THEIR FRONT COVER. We will not forget.”
She was abducted by an evil terrorist organization. What is with you and your government and your paid for media affiliates constantly down playing / attempting to repress horrific acts that happen to children. You are a disgrace. The day after a stabbing of children in Ireland,… https://t.co/YKyviZDLfW
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) November 26, 2023
As we previously highlighted, McGregor has been outspoken about the impact mass migration is having on his homeland, remarking, “Ireland, we are at war,” and following the stabbing of three children by an Algerian migrant in Dublin last week, he slammed authorities for targeting Irish people who rioted in the streets in response.
McGregor’s comments have prompted Irish authorities to start an investigation to determine if the fighter has violated ‘online hate speech’ laws.
Do not let any irish property be took over unannounced. Evaporate said property. It’s a war.
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) November 22, 2023
Innocent children ruthlessly stabbed by a mentally deranged non-national in Dublin, Ireland today. Our chief of police had this to say on the riots in the aftermath. Drew, not good enough. There is grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place, and… https://t.co/ac6j1GIjXD
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) November 23, 2023
The new ‘laws’ were quickly put into place after the rioting in Dublin, with many, including X owner Elon Musk, noting that Irish people now face potential criminal records just for posting memes, or even just having memes saved on their devices.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our great merch.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 18:35 - Israel Killing Gaza Civilians At Historic Pace, While Using US-Provided Bombs: NYT
Israel Killing Gaza Civilians At Historic Pace, While Using US-Provided Bombs: NYT
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
The New York Times reported Saturday that Israel is killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza at a historic pace. The huge civilian death toll in Gaza is explained by the scale of the bombing campaign and Israel’s willingness to drop US-provided 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas that are packed with civilians.
Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst who advises the Dutch NGO PAX, told the Times that he’s never seen anything like it. “It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,” he said. Garlasco added that to find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, one would have to “go back to Vietnam or the Second World War.”
Houses & buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, via Reuters Israeli officials have frequently cited the Allied strategic bombings of Japan and Germany during World War II to justify their onslaught in Gaza. The comparison includes the US fire bombings of Japanese cities, which killed around 100,000 civilians in Tokyo in one night in 1945, as well as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Israel has also invoked the US air campaign against ISIS, which killed tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria. But even the most brutal battle of the ISIS war does not compare to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza. According to an AP investigation, between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians died during the Battle of Mosul. About a third were killed by US-led coalition airstrikes or Iraqi forces, a third were killed by ISIS, and the cause of death for the rest is undetermined.
The Battle of Mosul lasted for nine months, from October 2016 to July 2017. In less than two months in Gaza, the Israeli bombardment has killed at least 10,000 civilians, based on a conservative estimate cited by The Times.
Source: NY Times The Times report said, “People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of US-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.”
The Israeli onslaught also dwarves the civilian casualties in the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022. In one year and nine months of fighting, the UN estimates at least 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine, including 560 children.
The last update released by Gaza’s Health Ministry on November 10, after just 35 days of Israel’s campaign, said over 4,500 Palestinian children had been killed in Gaza, which the US State Department acknowledged was considered to be a low estimate at the time.
John Mearsheimer: The Israeli for example, have killed more civilians in Gaza in one month than the Russians have killed over 18 months in Ukraine.
The idea that Vladimir Putin is waging a punishment campaign and killing on purpose, large number of civilians is simply not true. pic.twitter.com/joZWb9jnXV
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) November 19, 2023
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Despite the massive civilian and child death toll, the US continues to provide Israel with unconditional military aid. The White House has acknowledged that Israel is killing thousands of innocent people in Gaza but has said there are no “red lines” that would impact US support.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 18:20 - It Will Happen Suddenly
It Will Happen Suddenly
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
As the Great Unravelling progresses, we shall be seeing many negative developments, some of them unprecedented…
Only a year ago, the average person was still hanging on to the belief that the world is in a state of recovery, that, however tentative, the economy was on the mend.
And this is understandable. After all, the media have been doing a bang-up job of explaining the situation in a way that treats recovery as a general assumption. The only point of discussion is the method applied to achieve the recovery, but the recovery itself is treated as a given.
However, as thorough a distraction as the media (and the governments of the world) have provided, the average person has begun to recognise that something is fundamentally wrong. He now has a gut feeling that, even if he is not well-versed enough to describe in economic terms what is incorrect in the endless chatter he sees on his television, he now senses that the situation will not end well.
I tend to liken his situation to someone who suddenly finds all the lights off in his house. He stumbles around in the dark, trying to feel his way. Although he can picture in his mind what the layout of his house is, he is having trouble navigating, often bumping into things. This is similar to the attempt to see through the media and government smokescreens during normal times.
But soon, as his government undergoes collapse, he will be getting some bigger surprises. He will find that the furniture has inexplicably been moved around. Objects are not where they are supposed to be, and it is no longer possible to reason his way through the problem of navigating in the dark.
Many of those who observe the daily news reports are beginning to figure out that they are being fed misinformation. Many are beginning to recognise that neither political party truly represents them or, for that matter, is even concerned for their welfare.
These folks are now navigating in the dark.
But the bigger surprises have not yet occurred. There will be a certain amount of lead-up, plus a great deal of confusion, but the actual occurrences will be sudden. No one will be able to predict the dates on which they occur, except those very few people who control the triggers to these events.
Crashes in the Markets
Major bull markets rarely end with a whimper. They end with a major upside spike. And, unfortunately, brokers and investors alike tend to think that, if the market has been up for the last week, the last month, or the last year, it can be expected to be up again tomorrow. This makes them prime pickings for governments who may choose to falsely inflate a given market, creating an upside spike to encourage investors to toss their last few coins into the pot, just before the bottom drops out.
In previous eras, it could take time for people to sell, and even in panic times, the bloodletting was not instantaneous. However, with the Internet, all that is necessary is a major sell-off by one entity—one that goes through the stops of a large number of investors, and in a flash, the market goes though the floor. (Editor’s note: Stops are orders placed with a broker to sell a security when it reaches a certain price.) The average investor wakes in the morning to find that he has been wiped out.
Commitments by Governments
Should there be a currency crash, as is expected in many countries, promises made by governments will be abandoned suddenly, as though they had never existed. Whilst millions of people will find themselves lost, unable to function without their entitlements, governments will evade their guilt through finger-pointing. Tories will blame Labour; Labour will blame the Tories. (The equivalent will take place in other countries.) The net result will be the disappearance of entitlements, either in part or in total. The public will take out its anger through increased hatred of whichever party it is that they already consider to be the evil one. They will fail to understand that collapse was unavoidable.
Assumed National Strengths Will Vanish
International alliances will fall away. Former allies will suddenly not be at the side of the failing nation.
Former friends will sign alliances with the other side.
Trade agreements will suddenly cease.
Wealth, initiative, and favour will flow to the new foremost country and its allies.
All of the above will happen incrementally—not by any means on the same day—but in each case, the actual occurrence will be sudden.
Just as Julius Caesar was at his peak of power when his fellow members of the Senate drew their knives, a powerful nation is coddled right until the time of its fall. In this regard, the US will see the greatest abandonment of loyalties that any nation will experience.
(The greater the empire, the greater the pretence of loyalty to it. And the greater the abandonment when the fall comes.)
When an empire collapses, it dies slowly. Unless it comes to an end through conquest, it deteriorates in a series of sudden jolts. Its leaders grasp at anything that might cause a delay, even if this means a worse outcome in the end. The process may take years and even decades. However, it is in the first few years that the major events occur—the events that create the most significant damage.
This occurs for two reasons. The first is that the leaders of the country, believing in their own power, believe that they can maintain control of their trade, their overseas control, their military, etc. and find that, when the crashes come, the rats desert the ship in every area. The second reason is that any empire builds its strength upon lies and exaggeration as much as it builds on its true attributes. After a crash, these lies and exaggerations fall away, and in a short time, it becomes clear that the empire was, in its latter stages, a house of cards.
The warning signs are already taking place but are not heavily publicised.
The stage is set, and we are approaching the first major events.
The victims in this play are, unfortunately, the average people, who simply hope to have a decent life. They will be caught unawares and unable to even understand what has occurred, let alone take action to save themselves. Those who have not spent the previous years educating themselves and preparing an alternative life will suffer most greatly.
All who live in a country that is undergoing collapse will be negatively affected. Some will do better than others, but to live on this slim hope is much like being fortunate enough to live on the outskirts of Hiroshima in 1945.
There is little comfort in being one of the least injured. Better to have been in another country altogether – both during the actual event and during the terrible time that is sure to follow.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/27/2023 – 17:40
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