Dec 29

Today’s News 29th December 2023

  • How We Averted The Polycrisis
    How We Averted The Polycrisis

    Good thing India didn’t join the sanctions, explains Andrew Korybko.

    Maybe there’s a lesson in there for more people and countries.

    Also, maybe it’s too late for some.

    Even if the deindustralization of Germany has barely started.

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

    A representative of India’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry told a department-related parliamentary standing committee that their country’s Russian oil imports helped stabilize the global energy market and prevent havoc from breaking out according to a recent report from The Indian Express. What follows are the excerpts that they cited from that event, which will then be analyzed so that the reader can fully appreciate India’s latest contribution to the world:

    “If they (Indian refiners) had not imported Russian oil into India, which may be a big number of 1.95 million barrels per day, that deficiency would have created a havoc in the crude oil market and the prices would have shot up by about $30-40.

    The crude oil market is such that in the market of 100 million barrels per day, if the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) says that they are going to reduce it by one or two million barrels per day, prices increase by 10 to 20 per cent and reach up to $125-130.

    If India does not absorb–I would call it absorption–1.95 million barrels per day, these prices would have reached $120-130. It would have created a havoc. Diplomatically, we are a sovereign country and could say that we have been doing what is good for the country as well as the world.”

    This insight aligns with what was earlier shared in these five analyses from June 2022-March 2023:

    * 14 June 2022: “Russian-Indian Energy Diplomacy Helps Delhi Balance Washington”

    * 30 November 2022: “Russia’s Energy Geopolitics With China & India”

    * 16 January 2023: “The US Discredited Its Own Sanctions By Buying Refined Russian Oil Products Via India”

    * 8 February 2023: “The West’s Anti-Russian Sanctions Made India Indispensable To The Global Energy Market”

    * 1 March 2023: “Russia Will Keep Up The Pace Of Oil Exports To India Despite Increased Chinese Demand”

    If India hadn’t resisted Western pressure, then the whole international community would have suffered.

    To explain, many Global South states were already struggling to deal with COVID-connected debt problems prior to the West’s anti-Russian sanctions worsening their food insecurity, so an energy price crisis on top of that could have pushed them over the edge into an uncontrollable polycrisis. Not only could this have led to spiraling unrest that could have spread throughout this swath of the world, but the security and humanitarian consequences would have also destabilized the West as well.  

    Those countries among that New Cold War bloc that are dependent on resources and markets there might have felt compelled to launch unilateral military interventions, while large-scale refugee flows could have crashed into their societies with all that entails for exacerbating preexisting tensions. This worst-case scenario was averted through India’s principled neutrality towards the Ukrainian Conflict, which saw this globally significant Great Power resist Western pressure to boycott Russian energy.

    If Delhi had capitulated to their demands, then the abrupt removal of so much energy from the market would have plunged it into chaos. The remaining producers couldn’t have replaced Russia’s lost share, thus leading to a competition among the wealthiest countries (namely China and the EU) to purchase their remaining resources. All the while, the debt-beleaguered and newly food-insecure Global South would have been unable to maintain its minimum energy needs, thus setting the polycrisis into motion.

    As the unnamed Indian official told parliament, “we have been doing what is good for the country as well as the world”, which highlighted the growing convergence between India’s national interests and those of the international community. This South Asian Great Power practices what can be described as a hyper-realist grand strategy wherein India not only prioritizes its national interests as policymakers conceive them to be, but candidly acknowledges this approach and also details those same interests.

    By doing so, India removes all ambiguity about its interests, which therefore makes it the most predictable partner that anyone can have. This policy is premised on the trust that India has cultivated with everyone since they don’t have any reason to question its representatives’ sincerity whenever they speak about their national interests. Some might have different views and even dislike India’s policies, but nobody can credibly claim that those representatives are lying about what that they want and why.

    Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov praised this approach and the multi–alignment that it naturally led to during a press conference with his Indian counterpart on Wednesday when saying that:

    “I believe this policy is not just important for Russia and all other countries around the world, but it is the only policy worth conducting that will ensure respect and reputation and be beneficial in India’s cooperation with other countries that show similar respect to all members of the international community.”

    The West will never appreciate what India did for the world, but the Global South is beginning to realize that the polycrisis that many of their officials feared would unfold shortly after the anti-Russian sanctions were promulgated was largely averted through India’s drastically scaled imports of that country’s oil. This stabilized the market, which made it easier for them to manage their debt and food security problems, thus preventing this part of the world from slipping into full-scale instability to everyone’s detriment.

    *  *  *

    Support the Automatic Earth with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 23:30

  • Assault On 10 Cities: Israel Mounts Largest Raid On West Bank Since War's Start
    Assault On 10 Cities: Israel Mounts Largest Raid On West Bank Since War’s Start

    Events of the last few days have made it clear that Israel is intent on widening its Gaza offensive, even after pressure from the White House and other allies to reign in operations which have killed many thousands of civilians, and PM Netanyahu himself has urged troops “do not stop” and they must fight “to the end” toward the goal of destroying Hamas.

    One Gaza resident identified as Rami Abu Mosab was cited in a Wednesday CBS report as follows: “It was a night of hell. We haven’t seen such bombing since the start of the war.” Central and southern Gaza are still being pummeled. 

    Via Reuters

    Palestinian civilian deaths have continued to mount, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issuing a rare statement of regret over the December 24 attack on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, which killed an estimated 70 people.

    An IDF statement to CNN said that during “operations in the Gaza Strip against Hamas terrorist targets, IAF fighter jets struck two targets adjacent to which Hamas operatives were located on December 24, 2023.”

    “Before the strikes were carried out, steps were taken by the IDF to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians in the area,” it added. “A preliminary investigation revealed that additional buildings located near the targets were also hit during the strikes, which likely caused unintended harm to additional uninvolved civilians.” Israel says it is continuing to investigate the matter.

    In another key sign that the war is indeed widening further, Israeli forces are conducing unprecedented raids in the West Bank. Al Jazeera has described the IDF’s “most intense raids yet on cities in the occupied West Bank as they pressed on with one of the largest incursions in the territory since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October.”

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

    The operations included no less than ten cities: 

    At least one person was killed after Israeli troops launched a coordinated overnight assault on 10 cities including Hebron, Halhul, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, el-Bireh, Jericho and notably the centre of Ramallah, which is the administrative headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.

    The raids, which continued until early on Thursday morning, targeted Palestinian money exchange outlets.

    “This was a raid like we haven’t seen in the centre of Ramallah, like no other. Since October 7 we haven’t seen a raid of this size,” Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said, reporting from near the scene on Thursday.

    The headquarters of six money exchange companies were reportedly raided, apparently the result of Israeli authorities accusing these of aiding in ‘terror financing’ and activities. Several casualties among Palestinians have been reported.

    The Palestine Monetary Authority issued a statement denouncing the raids. “The Israelis arrested a number of the owners of these companies and seized sums of money from their safes, after blowing them up.” The authority further said it considers the attack “an act that violates all international norms, laws, charters and agreements, and aims to undermine confidence in the Palestinian banking and banking sector.”

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

    Regional sources say that Israeli forces seized about $2.5 million. “The Israelis say [the money exchanges] have been used by the resistance movements to finance their activities,” a correspondent said.

    In total at least 312 Palestinians have been killed by the military or Israeli settlers in the West Bank since the Hamas terror attack of Oct.7 – while nearly 5,000 Palestinians have been arrested amid clashes with security forces.

    * * *

    Scenes like the below will likely persist on the streets of the West Bank for the coming months and foreseeable future…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 23:00

  • Critical Drug Shortages Plague US Amid Unabated Reliance On China
    Critical Drug Shortages Plague US Amid Unabated Reliance On China

    Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The ongoing scarcity of critical medications has trapped Americans between a rock and a hard place.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Active national drug shortages hit a 10-year high this year, leaving many health care providers, pharmacies, and hospitals without enough life-saving and supportive medications, according to data collected by the University of Utah Drug Information Service.

    A survey by the same university in July found that 99 percent of the 1,123 pharmacists who responded—many of whom work in hospitals—reported shortages. One-third of the pharmacists listed the shortages as “critically impactful,” which is defined as being forced to ration medication or delay or even cancel medical treatments.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists 124 medications in short supply as of Dec. 21; the list topped out at 309 earlier this year.

    The shortage applies to multiple categories, including antibiotics—both amoxicillin and azithromycin are on the list—and staple analgesics such as ketamine, as well as nitroglycerin injections, a vital tool in helping to control congestive heart failure in heart attack patients.

    Securing medication is also a challenge for those managing chronic illnesses.

    Jennifer, a Waterford, Michigan, resident who asked that her last name not be disclosed, told The Epoch Times that she was only recently able to start taking her Type 2 diabetes medication again after being stranded without it for the second time since July 2022.

    She started taking Ozempic again on Dec. 10, after being unable to fill her prescription for weeks.

    Ozempic is one of the many drugs affected by current shortages; that’s reportedly due, in part, to Ozempic’s off-label use as a weight-loss supplement. The manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, lists the official reason for the shortage as “increased demand.”

    “The pharmacist told me it’s on back order and, ‘You need to call around to see if other stores or pharmacies have it in stock.’ And I’m like, no, that’s your job,” Jennifer said.

    She was noticeably frustrated—there are physical consequences of having gaps in her medication. In addition to managing her A1C levels, the drug comes with unpleasant side effects for some patients, which take time to wear off.

    A woman walks past a CVS Pharmacy in Washington on Nov. 2, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    One of these is extreme lightheadedness, which Jennifer has encountered each time she’s restarted taking Ozempic after enduring a usage gap. She said she gets dizzy to the point of feeling like she’s about to “pass out” after resuming the medication.

    “I haven’t taken it for weeks, and now I’m having a reaction [side effects] since it’s all been flushed out of my system,” she said.

    Unpleasant side effects aside, Jennifer says she feels like she doesn’t have a choice other than to ride out the medication gaps when they happen, because the drug has helped manage her diabetes so well.

    But medication scarcity isn’t a new problem. U.S. drug shortages have plagued Americans for nearly 20 years.

    A 2011 study observed that increasingly frequent drug shortages had been a problem during the past decade. They were attributed to the same hurdles the industry faces today: Challenges in acquiring raw materials, manufacturing and regulatory problems, and supply chain disturbances.

    There’s also the heavy reliance on other countries to manufacture pharmaceuticals, which some U.S. lawmakers say leaves the country too dependent on foreign drug manufacturing.

    “Currently, about 90 percent of drugs dispensed at U.S. pharmacies are generic drugs that overwhelmingly come from communist China and India,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a September statement upon introducing his American Drugs Act, which would create “a strong incentive for companies to invest in domestic pharmaceutical production.”

    A worker inspects bottles of drugs on a product line at a pharmaceutical factory in Weinan, China, on April 6, 2006. (China Photos/Getty Images)

    “Americans can’t trust communist China and can’t allow any reliance on Xi’s evil regime for life-saving medicine,” Mr. Scott said.

    Currently, the United States leans heavily on other countries to manufacture key starting materials (KSM) and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), which are the critical building blocks of pharmaceuticals.

    As of 2021, China became the world’s leading supplier of both KSMs and APIs, according to a report issued by the European Parliament.

    In March, a U.S. congressional strategic preparedness committee noted that up to 95 percent of generic sterile injectable drugs used for critical acute care in the United States rely on KSMs from China and India.

    Reliance on foreign production of U.S. pharmaceuticals is an issue that former President Donald Trump identified and attempted to address during his term. Alongside the America First Healthcare Plan, President Trump’s $354 million deal in 2020 with U.S.-based Phlow Corp. was an effort to increase domestic manufacturing of generic drugs and APIs.

    More than three years later, in September, Phlow said it was manufacturing APIs for the “federal government, to be stored in the nation’s first reserve of APIs.”

    “This will ensure the resiliency and availability of critical medicines in times of geopolitical crises, trade disputes, natural disasters, or future public health emergencies,” Eric Edwards, CEO and co-founder of Phlow, said in a statement.

    He said the company is also making KSMs and “rebuilding a resilient domestic supply chain.”

    A pharmacist prepares to fill a prescription at a community health center in Aurora, Colo., on March 27, 2012. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    The Biden administration has also responded to the widespread outcry over drug shortages, prompting a November White House announcement that the Defense Production Act (DPA) will be used to encourage investment in the domestic manufacturing of  “essential medicines, medical countermeasures, and critical inputs that have been deemed by the president as essential to the national defense.”

    The DPA grants a sitting president extensive authority to manage vital economic resources, including the power to expand domestic production.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 22:35

  • Report Details CIA's Struggles To Rebuild Spy Network In China: "No Real Insight Into Leadership Plans"
    Report Details CIA’s Struggles To Rebuild Spy Network In China: “No Real Insight Into Leadership Plans”

    This week The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy investigative article titled “American spies confront a new, formidable China,” which highlights setbacks and difficulties of the CIA’s ability to spy on China even as the Biden administration has called the country a top ‘pacing threat’. 

    A main theme of the report is seen where the WSJ quotes a former US intelligence official who acknowledged, “We have no real insight into leadership plans and intentions in China at all.” The report reviews what led up to this state of things, namely the CIA’s catastrophic failure in China about a decade ago, and the agency’s struggle to rebuild its network in the tightly controlled Communist surveillance state.

    The 2012 incident refers to when dozens of US spies were reportedly caught red-handed in China. Very likely this major bust-up of an alleged CIA network was a key trigger for President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption drive, given that government corruption left Beijing exposed to vulnerabilities by Western spy agencies. Dozens of CIA assets were reportedly imprisoned between 2010 and 2012, and others reportedly executed. In 2018, a Foreign Policy report estimated that the number caught consisted of 30 CIA assess, and described further the spy ring was discovered largely due to a botched communication system.

    AFP/Getty Images

    Last summer CIA officials gave rare public statements confirming the agency has been busy trying to rebuild its spy networks inside China. The arena of human intelligence was believed left particularly weakened after 2012. CIA Director William Burns said last July before the Aspen Security Forum, “We’ve made progress, and we’re working very hard over recent years to ensure that we have strong human intelligence capability to complement what we can acquire through other methods.”

    And now Burns has issued a fresh quote and updated statement to the Journal, saying “We are approaching the PRC as a global priority, more than doubling the budget resources devoted to the China mission over the past three years, and establishing the China Mission Center as CIA’s only single country mission center to coordinate the full agency’s efforts on this issue.”

    Burns added: “Even as we are balancing multiple priorities including ongoing conflicts, we remain intensely engaged on the strategic long-term challenge posed by the PRC.”

    Chinese state media has meanwhile responded on Thursday, blasting Washington as the true “source of chaos” in the international order…

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

    Below are some further key quotes and highlights from the fresh WSJ report (subheadings by ZH)…

    * * *

    Beijing’s spycatchers and CIA’s monumental blunder

    “Beijing’s spycatchers all but blinded the U.S. in China a decade ago when they systematically rounded up a network of Chinese agents working for the CIA. As many as two dozen assets providing information to the U.S. were executed or imprisoned, among them high-ranking Chinese officials.”

    Other geopolitical flashpoints have complicated the CIA’s China focus

    “The pivot hasn’t been simple. Hamas’s surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have demanded White House attention and intelligence resources, complicating CIA Director William Burns’s drive to ensure China is the top long-term priority. One agency veteran said that handling the two crises, while keeping a sustained focus on Beijing, will test the agency’s agility.”

    Vast majority of China US intel today comes from signals/electronic snooping

    “Today, U.S. spy satellites closely monitor China’s military deployments and modernization plans, while cyber and eavesdropping tools scoop up vast swaths of Chinese communications. Beyond that, U.S. knowledge of Xi’s plans comes mostly from inference and from parsing his frequent public statements, officials said.

    China is a much tougher intelligence target than it was a decade ago, when the agents were lost. Xi’s security-first state employs Orwellian surveillance systems that vastly complicate spy operations inside the country. And U.S. intelligence must track China’s progress in fields as disparate as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. 

    …The vast majority of U.S. intelligence on China now comes from electronic snooping—intercepting phone calls, emails and every other form of digital communication, the current and former officials indicated. Such signals intelligence can rarely replace human spies in divining an adversary’s true intentions or weaknesses, officials say.”

    Leveraging corruption for human intel

    “The CIA leveraged endemic corruption in the upper reaches of the Communist Party and government ministries to recruit dozens of officials as paid agents, former officials familiar with the events said. But in a catastrophic setback, this network was obliterated as China caught the traitors in its midst one by one.

    A flaw in the CIA’s covert communications with its agents, exploited by Beijing, is the suspected cause of the compromise, former officials said. The details of what went wrong aren’t publicly known, and it is unclear if anyone at the agency was held accountable.”

    Horrendous!

    “Horrendous. Horrendous. Horrendous,” a former senior U.S. official said of the losses in China. “And I have doubts about whether there’s been much of a recovery since then.”

    China has ramped up its own spying in America

    “China also ramped up its own human espionage, often using social media sites such as LinkedIn to contact and recruit former U.S. intelligence officials. Its successes included Kevin Patrick Mallory, a former CIA officer who had become deeply in debt and sold secrets for cash, including the identities of U.S. intelligence officers due to travel to China. Mallory was convicted in 2018. 

    In August, the Justice Department revealed the arrest of two U.S. Navy sailors charged with providing military information to China. Both were U.S. naturalized citizens born in China.”

    * * *

    Regional analyst and China watcher Arnaud Bertrand has a contrarian take on the new WSJ report…

    This CIA network they discovered and dismantled in 2012 was undoubtedly one of the key triggers for Xi’s anticorruption drive, when they noticed the extent to which they could be infiltrated… To be added to the now VERY long list of US actions on China that backfired big time.

    Funny the WSJ now laments the US has “no real insight into leadership plans” as if this was somehow abnormal: it should be the norm, countries should be sovereign, free to make their own decisions in private and without foreign interference.

    In fact this is what International law dictates! Sadly only China seems to actually put that in practice nowadays… I am still waiting on Europe holding the US accountable for Snowden’s revelations that they basically systematically listen in on European leaders…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 22:10

  • Israel: Time For Diplomacy With Hezbollah Running Out As Expanded War Looms
    Israel: Time For Diplomacy With Hezbollah Running Out As Expanded War Looms

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

    A member of the Israeli war government says the chance for a diplomatic settlement with Hezbollah is getting low. The fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border is intensifying between the IDF and Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group conducted its heaviest barrage of northern Israel on Wednesday. 

    Senior Israeli minister Benny Gantz indicated that Tel Aviv is preparing for a war with Hezbollah. “The situation on Israel’s northern border demands change,” Gantz said. “The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out, if the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the [Israeli military] will do it.”

    Image via IDF

    Fighting along the border broke out after Israel began its historically brutal military operations in Gaza. Hezbollah says its attacks on Israel are to force the IDF to split its army between Gaza in the south and its northern border with Lebanon. 

    On both sides of the war, civilians have been killed. The IDF is alleged to have committed a war crime by using US-supplied white phosphorus in southern Lebanon and intentionally killing a Reuters reporter. 

    Gantz’s remarks follow other Israeli officials’ comments explaining that Hezbollah must withdraw several miles from the border, or Tel Aviv will escalate its bombing of southern Lebanon. The US is pressuring Hezbollah to accept the Israeli demands. And earlier this month:

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on a visit to troops near the border that Israel would “single-handedly turn Beirut and South Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Yunis” if Hezbollah started an all-out war.

    Washington has also threatened to directly intervene if Israel is attacked over its genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip. However, the White House has applied pressure on Tel Aviv not to escalate the conflict with Hezbollah. The Joe Biden administration has steadfastly opposed using the $3.8 billion in military aid the US provides to Israel every year to get Tel Aviv to curtail its attacks on Gaza, Syria, or Lebanon. 

    The IDF conducted an airstrike on the home of a Hezbollah member on Tuesday night, killing two of his relatives. On Wednesday, Hezbollah responded by two large attacks on cities in northern Israel.

    The Times of Israel reported, “Rockets fired from Lebanon pummeled the towns of Rosh Hanikra and the city of Kiryat Shmona.” The outlet said there were no other injuries. 

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

    The Israeli war on Gaza has provoked groups across the Middle East to attempt to apply pressure on Tel Aviv and Washington to end the campaign to ethnically cleanse the Strip. The Houthis have stifled Red Sea shipping, Shia groups in Iraq and Syria have targeted American forces over 100 times, and Hezbollah has traded fire with Israel on a near-daily basis since October 7.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 21:45

  • These Are The Health Problems Americans Are Most Worried About
    These Are The Health Problems Americans Are Most Worried About

    Finances are top of mind for many Americans when it comes to health concerns, according to a survey by Statista’s Consumer Insights conducted November 10-23.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, six in ten respondents said that they were either very or rather concerned about their financial situation if they were to become seriously ill.

    Infographic: The Health Problems Americans Are Most Worried About | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The survey asked respondents in seven other countries the same question, and found that the U.S. is fairly alone in their financial worry.

    Where air pollution followed in rank 5 for the U.S., it was the most cited concern in Brazil, India, Mexico and France.

    The second most commonly selected concern in the U.S. – harmful substances in food – was also the second pick for respondents in India, France, China and Germany.

    As the chart above shows, around four in ten U.S. respondents said they felt either very or rather worried about antibiotic resistance – a threat expected to increase drastically in the coming years.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 21:20

  • TikTok Demanding Users Enter iPhone Passwords To View Content: Reports
    TikTok Demanding Users Enter iPhone Passwords To View Content: Reports

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

    Chinese-owned video streaming platform TikTok has reportedly been asking users for their iPhone passwords in order to view content, sparking concern among individuals using the app.

    TikTok logo on an iPhone in London on Feb. 28, 2023. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

    Reports that the platform began asking users to enter their iPhone passwords in order to watch videos on the app first began emerging in November, according to Dexerto, with the publication noting users took to social media to raise the alarm.

    Yet TikTok—which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020—has not explained the reasoning behind the need for users to enter their highly personal and sensitive information.

    Dexerto noted the move coincided with security updates from Apple aimed at protecting users from password theft if devices are stolen.

    The most recent iOS update on Dec. 12 effectively provides a second layer of security for iPhone users by making it harder for thieves to access important information including passwords from Apple mobile devices that have been stolen.

    At the time of that update, a spokesperson for Apple told The Epoch Times, “As threats to user devices continue to evolve, we work tirelessly to develop powerful new protections for our users and their data. iPhone data encryption has long led the industry, and a thief can’t access data on a stolen iPhone without knowing the user’s passcode.”

    There is no clear link between the iOS update and TikTok users being asked to enter their iPhone passwords. According to technology publication Dataconomy, the issue could be due to software glitches, an update to the app, security measures or updates, or a content filter known as “restricted mode.”

    TikTok’s Legal Challenges Mount

    Some users have managed to overcome the issue by ensuring they have the latest version of TikTok on their devices, while others have been able to bypass entering their sensitive passwords by simply pressing “cancel” when asked to enter their information, Dataconomy reports.

    The Epoch Times has contacted TikTok for further comment.

    The concerns regarding sensitive data requests being made on TikTok come as the platform faces a growing number of lawsuits.

    A legal challenge filed by the state of Indiana alleged the app deceived users by falsely claiming the social media platform was safe for children and that users’ personal information was protected. However, that lawsuit was dismissed by a county judge in November.

    The state of Montana has also sought to implement a complete ban on TikTok amid safety concerns, although again that lawsuit has faced setbacks, having been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge last month.

    In September, European regulators fined the platform $368 million for its alleged failures to protect children’s privacy.

    TikTok Use Surges

    Officials in Washington have also repeatedly raised concerns over the safety of the video-streaming site, noting that data on users in the United States could potentially fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), given that the platform is subject to laws in China requiring the company to hand any and all data in its possession over to the CCP if requested.

    ByteDance has denied this is the case and says it stores U.S. user data on servers.

    Still, the United States has already banned TikTok from government devices, as has Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.

    Concerns have also been raised over the possibility of the app being used to spread propaganda, particularly in light of research indicating that a growing number of TikTok users now get their news from the video-sharing app, with almost a third of adults between 18 and 29 regularly using the platform for news.

    Despite the ongoing safety and privacy concerns, TikTok has over 150 million American users amid a surge in popularity, according to the platform’s CEO Shou Zi Chew.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 20:55

  • Democratic Mayors Of New York, Chicago, Denver Plead For Help As Migrant Storm Worsens
    Democratic Mayors Of New York, Chicago, Denver Plead For Help As Migrant Storm Worsens

    The Democratic mayors of three sanctuary cities, Chicago, New York City, and Denver, warned their metro areas are quickly approaching a breaking point due to the ongoing surge of illegals bussed up from the southern border this year. 

    “We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night,” NYC Mayor Adams said during a virtual news conference with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. 

    Adams warned: “For many months, we were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached a breaking point.” 

    “We are no longer able to do that because of the volume and numbers,” he added. 

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

    In an executive order, Adams has now requested all charter bus companies to provide a 32-hour advance notice on the arrival of migrants.

    According to Adams’ office, more than 7,000 illegals have entered the intake system in the last two weeks. The city estimates 157,600 illegals have arrived since late spring. 

    In Chicago, another progressive metro area that once welcomed illegals with open arms, Mayor Johnson warned, “We have reached a critical point in this mission that absent real, significant intervention immediately, our local economies are not designed and built to respond to this type of crisis,” adding “We are literally building a system as we go along.”

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

    Adams’ and Johnson’s complaints about the migrant crisis were similar to those of Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver. He said, “We, at this point now, have had more migrant arrivals in our city than any city in America per capita.” 

    In a press release, the mayors called the influx of migrants in their cities a “humanitarian crisis” and urged “all levels of government and our federal partners” to provide assistance to ensure migrants “are treated with dignity and humanity.” 

    The trio of mayors blamed the migrant crisis on Texas Governor Greg Abbott, indicating Abbott “triples down on efforts to use asylum seekers as political pawns.” 

    However, the mayors, for good reason and likely fear of retribution, entirely omit that the Biden administration’s disastrous open southern border policies are at the center of what sparked the invasion of millions of migrants (and individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list) from all over the world into the US ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

    The mayors even left out how the Biden administration unleashed a misinformation campaign against taxpayers, claiming the border was “secure.” 

    Remember in May, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka declared: “I want to be very clear, our borders are not open.” 

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

    It seems that the Democratic mayors of some sanctuary cities were virtue-signaling all along. They now face the reality of a migrant crisis, a consequence of their own party’s failed progressive border policies. What a mess. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 20:11

  • About A Third Of Republicans Believe Votes Won't Be Counted Correctly In 2024
    About A Third Of Republicans Believe Votes Won’t Be Counted Correctly In 2024

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    An Associated Press-NORC survey released this week found that some 32 percent of Republican voters believe votes likely won’t be counted correctly ahead of the 2024 primaries and election.

    People count California recall ballot votes at a Los Angeles Registrar site at the Los Angeles Fair Grounds in Pomona, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    About a third of GOP voters told pollsters that they have a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that votes in the Republican primary elections and caucuses will be counted correctly. Around three in 10 Republicans have a “moderate” level of confidence, while 32 percent said they have either “only a little” confidence in elections or “none at all.”

    The AP poll found that 72 percent of Democrat voters have high confidence their party will count votes accurately in its primary contests, while they are more likely than Republicans to have a high level of confidence in the Republican Party’s vote count being accurate.

    Meanwhile, about one-quarter of Republicans say they have at least “quite a bit” of confidence that the votes in the 2024 presidential election will be counted accurately, significantly lower than Democrats. Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults overall—or 46 percent—believe the same, which is in line with an AP-NORC poll conducted in June.

    The AP-NORC poll also found a widespread lack of trust in both major political parties among U.S. adults overall. Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults, or 46 percent, told pollsters that they are pessimistic about the means by which the country’s leaders are selected.

    Only 3 in 10 Democrats say they are confident the Democratic party’s process will result in a candidate whose views represent most Americans. About one-quarter of Democrats believe the process will produce a candidate whose views represent their own.

    Similarly, about 3 in 10 Republicans say the GOP process will produce a candidate who represents a majority of Americans. About one-third of Republicans expect they’ll get a nominee whose views represent their own.

    “Nothing will be fair because the last election was rigged,” Julie Duggan, a Chicago resident who backs former President Donald Trump, told AP. “I don’t trust any of them at this point.”

    Mark Richards, a Democrat and 33-year-old middle school teacher in Ohio, told AP that he believes President Joe Biden will be nominated again despite what the polls show. “I feel like there’s got to be someone better out there, but I don’t think another Democrat is going to unseat Joe Biden,” he said.

    Other Poll Results

    Over the summer, a poll from Monmouth found that about 3 out of 10 Americans believe that President Biden only won the 2020 election due to voter fraud. The survey results were nearly the same as a similar Monmouth poll that was carried out in November 2022.

    Nearly all Democrat voters, or 93 percent, said President Biden won the election fairly, while about 21 percent of Republican voters believe he won it fair and square. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans, according to that poll, said he won the race “due to voter fraud.” Meanwhile, 58 percent of independent voters said the president won without any fraud.

    In August 2023, a CNN poll found that among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, about 69 percent believe that the 2020 election wasn’t legitimate, or an uptick from 63 percent from a CNN survey that was conducted earlier in the year.

    The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,074 adults and was conducted between Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based system. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

    Earlier this month, according to a report, about 20 percent of 2020 voters claimed that they took advantage of election laws that were rescinded or loosened due to the COVID-19 pandemic to commit voter fraud. That included filling out ballots for other people, it found.

    “For the past three years, Americans have repeatedly been told that the 2020 election was the most secure in history. But if this poll’s findings are reflective of reality, the exact opposite is true. This conclusion isn’t based on conspiracy theories or suspect evidence, but rather from the responses made directly by the voters themselves,” Justin Haskins, director of the Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center, said in a statement.

    The publication of that report drew a response from President Trump, who called on Republican officials to take action.

    “This is the biggest story of the year, and Republicans must do something about it,” the former president wrote in mid-December on his social media platform, Truth Social. He said that if nothing is done, the issue will cast a shadow over the November 2024 election.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 20:05

  • Democrat Secretary Of State Kicks Trump Off Maine Ballot
    Democrat Secretary Of State Kicks Trump Off Maine Ballot

    A day after former president Trump’s lawyers demanded the Maine secretary of state recuse herself from her upcoming decision on the former president’s ballot eligibility under the 14th Amendment – citing her past statements about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot; Shenna Bellows – a Democrat – has kicked Trump off the state’s primary ballot.

    The letter from Trump’s lawyers seeking Bellows’ recusal cites two social media posts Bellows issued the day Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, which concerned the Capitol riot.

    “The Jan 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election. Today 57 Senators including King & Collins found Trump guilty. That’s short of impeachment but nevertheless an indictment. The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed,” Bellows wrote on Twitter, the platform now known as X.

    The letter also takes aim at a post Bellows issued on the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, in which she reposted a news report highlighting Bellows’s efforts to protect election workers.

    “One year after the violent insurrection, it’s important to do all we can to safeguard our elections,” Bellows wrote.

    Thus, the lawyers argued, Bellows “has already passed judgment” on Trump’s “core assumptions.”

    But, as The Hill reports, unlike other states, where plaintiffs have sued over Trump’s eligibility in court, Maine’s system first allows the secretary of state to weigh in – unilaterally, Judge Dredd-style.

    As she explains, ‘she is the law!’

    Challengers can then appeal in state court.

    Bellows determined that the former president could not run for office due to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    She argued his actions violated the 14th Amendment.

     

    Maine is now the second state to bar the president citing 14th Amendment claims, following Colorado’s Supreme Court decision.

    As we noted previously, the question will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court, which constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley says “will be overturned because it is wrong on the history and the language of the 14th Amendment.”

    As I have previously written, the disqualification of Trump is based on the use of a long-dormant provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

    After the Civil War, House members were outraged to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, seeking to take the oath with an array of other former Confederate senators and military officers.

    They had all previously taken the same oath and then violated it to join a secession movement that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

    That was a true rebellion.

    January 6, 2021, was a riot.

    As a reminder, Maine has only four electoral votes but it’s one of two states to split them, and Trump won one of Maine’s electors in 2020.

    Caden Pearson reports at The Epoch Times that the Trump campaign issued a statement denouncing the decision, vowing to move quickly to fight the Maine secretary of state’s “atrocious decision” in state court to prevent it from taking effect.

    “The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist, and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.

    “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter. Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot.

    “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power,” he added.

    Mr. Cheung noted that state and federal courts in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Arizona, Florida, Rhode Island, and West Virginia, along with 10 more federal jurisdictions, have rejected “these bad-faith, bogus 14th Amendment ballot challenges.”

    “We know both the Constitution and the American people are on our side in this fight. President Trump’s dominating campaign has a commanding lead in the polls that has dramatically expanded as Crooked Joe Biden’s presidency continues to fail,” the Trump campaign spokesperson added.

    “We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect, and President Trump will never stop fighting to Make America Great Again.”

    Jason Meister, a member of President Trump’s campaign advisory panel in New York, told The Epoch Times that the Maine action would fail.

    “These 14th amendment challenges are last gasping breaths of a dying party,” he said.

    Isn’t it the very definition of ‘tyranny‘ that one person unilaterally decides that the residents of Maine do not deserve democracy?

    And just like that, as Jonathan Turley noted in a post on X:

    “Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has decided to add her name to the ignoble list of Democratic officials claiming to defend democracy by preventing its exercise for millions of Trump supporters.“

    All of which means, as Ben Shapiro wrote earlier, that “2024 is going to be the most insane and ugly presidential election in American history. And that’s saying a lot, since 1968 and 2020 are both years that existed. Under what circumstances, precisely, would Democrats accept the result of a Trump election? Under what circumstances, precisely, would Republicans accept the result of a Biden election?”

    “The weaponization of the legal system creates an all-consuming fire, burning everything in its path. There is simply no 2024 result likely to result in anything but complete—and perhaps violent—chaos at this point.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 19:40

  • Fetterman To Carville: 'Shut The F*** Up' Over Biden's Sagging 2024 Prospects
    Fetterman To Carville: ‘Shut The F*** Up’ Over Biden’s Sagging 2024 Prospects

    Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman spontaneously ripped into fellow Democrat James Carville, telling the seasoned pundit and former Bill Clinton ’92 lead strategist to “shut the fuck up” about President Biden’s increasingly dim prospects for re-election.     

    The most slovenly goon to ever grace the Senate leveled his profane attack in a Politico interview published on Wednesday. Politico reminded him that, a few months back, he’d predicted Biden would win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes — but that Biden’s standing in the Keystone State had slipped, with Trump leading in multiple polls. 

    Fetterman’s Senate duty uniform: sneakers, droopy gym shorts and a hoodie (Reuters via New York Post)

    After first saying there’s plenty of time between now and the election and that’s he’s not worried, Fetterman opened fire on the 79-year-old quasi-reptilian election sage from Louisiana:   

    “While there are Democrats that are being very critical about the president. … I’ll use this [as] another opportunity to tell James Carville to shut the fuck up.

    Like I said, my man hasn’t been relevant since grunge was a thing. And I don’t know why he believes it’s helpful to say these kinds of things about an incredibly difficult circumstance with an incredibly strong and decent and excellent president. I’ll never understand that.”

    When Politico gave Carville a chance to respond to Fetterman’s fusillade, he fired back with dry wit:

    Asked if he’d like to respond, Carville said other Democratic senators “apparently haven’t gotten the memo yet” that he’s not relevant. “His colleague Sen. Casey asked me to host a fundraiser with him last week,” he said. “Sen. Brown asked me to go to Cleveland to campaign with him.” Of Fetterman, he added: “I’m glad he’s feeling better.”

    Last winter, Fetterman was hospitalized for six weeks over his severe depression. He’d previously suffered a stroke during his 2022 Senate campaign, in which he officially defeated Donald Trump-endorsed TV doctor Mehmet Oz. 

    In September, Carville dropped his own F-bomb to warn fellow Democrats against keeping Biden on the top of the 2024 ticket.

    “Let’s assume the election was November the third of this year and the candidates are Joe Biden, the Democrat, Donald Trump, Republican Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan, No Labels, and Cornel West. Trump would be a betting favorite. If I told you I would give you even money, you would not take that bet. All right. And so somebody better wake the fuck up!”

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

    Carville’s outline of the 2024 field had a glaring omission: independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who’s grabbing a hefty 22% share in three-way polling against Biden and Trump, and beating both of them outright among independents, according to Quinnipiac.  

    A December Bloomberg/Morning Consult Pro survey found Trump is beating Biden in seven surveyed battleground states: North Carolina (+11), Georgia (+7), Wisconsin (+6), Nevada (+5), Michigan (+4), Arizona (+3) and Fetterman’s Pennsylvania (+1). The survey used a ballot that included Kennedy, Cornel West and Jill Stein.  

    In his Politico interview, Fetterman also took a swipe at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he’d previously described as “running for president right now” but without the “guts to announce it.” Fetterman said it’s odd for Newsom to debate DeSantis, and to “make a very splash visit to China when the leaders are actually coming to your very own state” or to “[make] donations to obscure South Carolinian politicians.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 19:35

  • "They're Openly Telling Us They're Going To Brainwash The Next Generation Of Americans…"
    “They’re Openly Telling Us They’re Going To Brainwash The Next Generation Of Americans…”

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State,” is back from the recent so-called COP28 conference in Dubai, UAE. 

    Newman continues to report on the not-so-secret plan to destroy everything in America by pushing scams on the West in energy and education. 

    Let’s start with what Newman calls the “scam” of CO2 reduction.  Newman explains,

    “The thing that really jumped out at me with this whole UN COP28 summit, my big take away… is they were talking about phasing out carbon emissions and phasing out fossil fuels, but that’s just for the suckers in the Western world. 

    That’s just the United States under Joe Biden.  That’s just for European Union under their treacherous leaders.  

    The communist Chinese, the Arab dictatorships, the Russians and all the different socialist kleptocracies, they were literally making oil deals at this summit. 

     That’s not my opinion, speculation or even exaggeration.  We have the leaked documents showing the COP28 President, which was held by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)… that show they were plotting to make oil deals with Beijing.  They were plotting to make oil deals with the Columbians.  They were plotting to do oil and gas deals off the coast of Africa.  So, on the one hand, the Western media and the United Nations are telling Westerners that you need to dismantle your energy systems.  You need to stop all your coal fired power plants.  Biden said he wanted to get rid of methane emissions…

    That would take out all the natural gas plants and take out 60% of our power generation in the United States.  The Arabs, communist Chinese and the globalists are laughing all the way to the bank.  They are not really working on phasing out oil or phasing out fossil fuels.  They are working on phasing out the Western world, which is also known as Christendom or the ‘Free World.’”

    While Newman was there, he saw several U.S. Senators at the conference.  Newman said,

    “I confronted multiple U.S. Senators about this.  I said, hey, the communist Chinese are bringing two new coal fired power plants on line every single week. 

    The Chinese CO2 emissions are massively larger than the entire Western world combined.  Are you saying we need to jump off a cliff and beg the Chinese to jump after us? 

    And the response was basically, yeah, we are going to ask them real nice.  Give me a break. 

    They all understand this is a scam.  They want to deindustrialize the Western world.  They want to shift economic and, ultimately, military power away from the United States and what used to be known as the ‘Free World’ towards the other pole in this multipolar world order that they are building, especially Beijing. 

    The third world kleptocracies are going to play ball with the New World Order…

    John Kerry (who was at the COP28 conference) says, ‘Nothing can stop this transformation.  This is the biggest transformation in human history.  Nothing and nobody can stop it.’  The United Nations had all these billboards and placards in Dubai that said the transformation was unstoppable…

    All I can think of when they are saying this stuff, and I am seeing all the billboards, is that is very similar to what they said when they launched the Titanic. . . . The Bible says, ‘Pride goes before the fall.’  We will see about that, but they certainly want the people in the world to believe this is unstoppable.”

    Newman is especially worried about what the UN has planned for education and brainwashing the children of the world.  Newman says,

    “We actually got there on the COP28 ‘Education Day.’  The first ad I saw said ‘Education Transformation COP28.’  This was a huge part of the festivities.  They are openly telling us that they are going to brainwash the next generation of Americans, Germans, Japanese, South Koreans and the West to believe this hoax with all their heart. . . .

    The brainwashing of our children and the dumbing down of our children is the most significant weapon in their arsenal. 

    They will never be able to get this to pass unless they can brainwash enough of our children…

    We’ve got to protect our kids.  If we don’t stop the brain washing of our kids, it’s all over.”

    There is much more in the 38-minute interview.

    Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with hard-hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the new book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death.”  Newman is back to report on what he saw at the demonic anti-America UN COP28 conference in Dubai, UAE, for 12.23.23.

    *  *  *

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

    To pre-order Newman’s new book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” click here. Newman’s website is called LibertySentinel.org.  There is lots of free information and articles. For a copy of Alex Newman’s popular book “Deep State,” click here, and for the DVD, click here.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 19:15

  • "Expect To Be Shot", Ohio Prosecutor Tells Would-Be Store Looters
    “Expect To Be Shot”, Ohio Prosecutor Tells Would-Be Store Looters

    Hamilton County Ohio Prosecutor Melissa Powers was forced to weigh in on the issue of self-defense during robbery attempts after indicting a smoke shop manager who allegedly shot a 16 year old boy to death after he attempted to rob the store.

    The manager of the store, 29 year old Tony Thacker, shot the would-be robber on his way running out of the store, prompting the prosecutor to bring charges. But her comments also came with a stern warning to looters. 

    “There is simply no justification for shooting at someone as they are running away,” she said in a statement reported by the NY Post and the Cincinnati Enquirer. “However, I want to make perfectly clear — these retail thefts will not be tolerated. If you try to rob a store, you should expect to be shot.”

    Thacker was inside the store when numerous people threw rocks through the front window to gain entry, the report says. Thacker lived in the back of the business and, when he went to investigate, found a 16 year old and a 19 year old.

    Thacker wasn’t allowed to own a firearm due to a previous felony he received as a child. Nonetheless, he shot the 16 year old and continued to shoot at the other suspects before they attempted to leave the scene in stolen vehicles. 

    Prosecutor Melissa Powers

    The manager than reportedly tried to disable the store’s alarm and hide the shell casings, the report says. He was indicted on charges of felonious assault, tampering with evidence and illegal possession of a firearm and his brother, who helped with the attempted cover up, was charged with tampering with evidence. 

    The 19 year old faces potential life in prison and is facing charges of murder, burglary and possession of criminal tools. Three other suspects were also arrested, the report says. They also face murder and burglary charges. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 18:50

  • Leprosy, Polio, Malaria, TB, Measles… And Massive Unscreened Illegal Immigration
    Leprosy, Polio, Malaria, TB, Measles… And Massive Unscreened Illegal Immigration

    Authored by James Varney via RealClear Wire,

    Successful public health campaigns and medical advances have enabled the United States to conquer a range of disfiguring and damaging diseases. Polio, which paralyzed thousands of Americans annually, was wiped out by widespread vaccinations. In 1999 the nation’s last hospital for lepers closed its doors in Louisiana. A global campaign eradicated smallpox, while lethal tuberculosis, the “consumption” that stalked characters in decades of literature, seemed beaten by antibiotics. Measles outbreaks still occur from time to time, but they are small, local, and easily contained.

    Recently, however, some of these forgotten but still formidable infectious diseases have begun to reappear in the U.S. For two years running, polio has been detected in some New York water samples, and this fall, leprosy re-emerged in Florida, where cases of malaria have also been recorded.

    Health officials say they are not sure why these and other infectious diseases are resurfacing. One distinct possibility, which officials are loath to discuss, is that the millions of migrants who have crossed into the country in recent years could be bringing the scourges with them, since many are from countries where such rare diseases persist and vaccination programs are not robust.

    “The recent polio and leprosy cases are almost certainly imports to the U.S.,” said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and scientist at Stanford University, one of the most outspoken critics of official COVID-19 narratives in the last pandemic that later proved flawed.

    And the Biden administration, an aggressive promoter of often mandatory vaccination last time, now is offering little public comment on the connection between disease and the porous borders with which its immigration policy has become widely identified.

    Neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the Department of Homeland Security would discuss the issue with RealClearInvestigations. Legal immigrants are required to receive vaccinations for a host of diseases, but the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged it does not have vaccination records for the millions who have entered the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed border controls upon taking office in January 2021.

    “It’s not like there is some Typhoid Mary out there, but this is something people are seeing and thinking about, even if they don’t want to discuss it publicly,” said Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the Biden administration’s border policies.

    The reticence of federal agencies has not stopped some local officials, however, from raising public health alarms over massive immigration. New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan warned in April that at least half of the migrants who have poured into the city had not been vaccinated against polio. The potentially paralyzing and life-threatening virus remains endemic in two countries in the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the World Health Organization. Since President Biden ordered what proved to be a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, an estimated 90,000 Afghans have come to the U.S. under the terms of Operation Allies Welcome.

    It is not clear if those migrants met the polio vaccination requirement. DHS did not respond to a question about whether medical histories were reviewed in the fast-tracked entry of Afghans who got out of their country before the Taliban reimposed its control.

    Vasan’s warning pointed directly to the southern border, which has seen record-shattering arrivals on the Biden administration’s watch.

    “More than 50,000 people have come to New York City in the past year shortly after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border,” he wrote in an 11-page letter. “I am writing now to underscore how critical it is that health care providers take a wide range of considerations into account when working with people who are seeking asylum.”

    Citing outbreaks of chickenpox in shelters for illegal immigrants, Vasan also noted the arrival of newcomers who either began their journey in a country where tuberculosis is present or passed through such countries en route to the U.S.

    The New York City Health Department did not respond to questions from RealClearInvestigations or to a request to speak with Dr. Vasan, but the numbers have only grown since he sent his letter. Since spring 2022, more than 100,000 migrants had arrived in the city, and more than 67,200 were living in taxpayer-funded housing at the end of November, according to the New York Times.

    Last year, the first recorded polio case in the U.S. since 2013 was diagnosed in New York State, with the victim described only as an “unvaccinated man.” Also in 2022, poliovirus was found in the water supply of four New York counties, including Long Island, and New York City. Another positive test result was recorded in Rockland County this year, according to the state.

    In the U.S., polio vaccinations remain part of “the routine childhood immunization process” under which the CDC recommends four doses. Adults who grew up in the U.S. are vaccinated, the agency said.

    The last occurrence prior to the New York diagnosis had been in 1979. Since November 2022, the CDC has begun wastewater testing for the poliovirus, so long extinct in the U.S., in selected areas, but the agency did not respond to questions about those investigations. It does provide information on COVID and monkeypox, the latter a disease that primarily afflicts the gay population.

    A thorough investigation, exploring all avenues of transmission and trying to source a virus to its root, is common among virus hunters, and the idea that millions of people coming to the U.S. could inadvertently carry with them some infectious disease is but one possibility. For example, thus far researchers have been unable to pinpoint where the infamous Ebola virus originates in equatorial Africa.

    ‘Historically Atypical Countries’

    The situation in the United States is further complicated by the fact that DHS officials don’t know where all of the more than 7.5 million migrants who’ve arrived since Biden took office are living. Those whom Border Patrol agents have encountered and processed have immigration court dates, but those dates are years in advance. Many people with uncertain immigration status lack health insurance and stay off the grid as much as possible, meaning even if the U.S. launched some kind of vaccination program it would not know where to concentrate its efforts.

    In addition, the historic flood of illegal immigration during the Biden administration has also featured a much more global population. DHS uses the term “historically atypical countries” to describe the panoply of countries outside of Mexico and Central America from which illegal immigration has soared. Between 2011 and 2022, the number of annual encounters involving immigrants from historically atypical countries soared from fewer than 8,000 to almost 1 million. The first six months of 2023 saw more than half of official encounters – these numbers do not include what Border Patrol calls “gotaways” for whom little information is available – from historically atypical countries. But infectious diseases largely forgotten in the U.S. remain public health issues in both hemispheres, and many of those nations have much less robust vaccination programs than most modern Western nations.

    In 1988, when the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, wild poliovirus was evident in 125 countries, but the zone where it remains endemic has shrunk to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with most recent cases occurring along the countries’ nearly 1,600-mile border, according to the CDC. Vaccination campaigns have proved problematic under the militant Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, according to the CDC. Oral vaccines in “parts of the south and northeast regions” are “allowed only at health facilities, mosques, and polio vaccination sites.”

    In March, Al Jazeera reported that the Taliban would allow a polio vaccination program for children, but precise figures on the country’s overall vaccination rate remain unclear. The World Health Organization estimates that 76% of Afghanistan’s children have received a polio vaccine.

    But some countries have even lower vaccination rates. On Nov. 30, for instance, some 700 people, including many from Senegal and Nigeria, walked into the U.S. at the Texas border. Only 63% of Senegal’s children have been vaccinated for polio, and various fevers, hepatitis, and malaria are endemic there. Measles, which the U.S. declared eliminated here in 2000, are an issue, too. The WHO estimates 22 million children missed their first measles vaccine last year and more than half of them live in just 10 countries, all of which fall in the “historically atypical” immigration list.

    Measles cases have risen in the U.S., from 13 individual cases in 2020 to 121 in 2022, according to the CDC. Recent outbreaks in Ohio and Illinois have all occurred among unvaccinated children, according to state health officials. The age and nationality of victims is not made public, but the measles vaccination rate is below 70% in many countries that have sent immigrants to the U.S. recently.

    While few are publicly pushing the panic button, some public health officials worry that a creeping mistrust of vaccines in the wake of the pandemic may make more Americans vulnerable to dangerous and even deadly scourges. Syphilis, for example, has been on the rise for many years but rose sharply during the pandemic.

    COVID-19 has drawn the lion’s share of attention from the public health bureaucracy since 2020, leading to shortfalls in other areas, some experts said.

    “All of these diseases are more prevalent in part because of lockdown policies which diverted public health resources and attention worldwide away from its traditional priorities of controlling the spread of these deadly infectious conditions,” Dr. Bhattacharya said, referring to measles and other maladies.

    And just as there is no cure for polio, there is no vaccine for some infectious diseases. Malaria, for example, the mosquito-borne fever that killed more workers than yellow fever did when the Panama Canal was built, remains endemic in tropical zones, and its path to rare outbreaks in the U.S. usually follows either a trip made abroad or someone moving here, according to health officials in Florida.

    Department spokesman Jae Williams told RCI the exact sources of many infectious disease outbreaks in the Sunshine State remain unknown, but the huge increase in illegal immigrants could be a clue.

    “It’s always a possibility, and our most recent malaria cases appeared to be a strain from Central America,” he said. In other words, the malaria could have been brought by a newcomer or picked up by someone who traveled there and returned.

    Central Florida this summer saw leprosy return, although the exact source remains a mystery, Williams said. Information about the age, sex, and nationality of victims is not public, and most of those who contracted the infectious, skin-disfiguring disease were described only as “landscapers.” Various accounts have speculated armadillos are to blame, but armadillos are not newcomers to the region. The theory holds that somehow the leprosy bacteria, which generally requires prolonged contact and against which most humans have developed immunity over millennia, is in the dirt armadillos wallow in, and the cases that broke out among landscapers then would be linked to the animals they encounter.

    But leprosy is not endemic in Florida. It is most common in parts of southeast Asia, equatorial Africa, and Brazil.

    “The influx of people, sure it’s a problem and it’s always a possibility,” Williams said. “But we don’t really know.”

    Nevertheless, the questions are being asked with more frequency. On Dec. 19, Ashley St. Clair, a conservative commentator, set off a firestorm on X, formerly Twitter, that her Delta flight from Phoenix to New York was filled with people who had recently been processed, released, and brought to the airport by Border Patrol.

    “All the pilots, airline staff, and passengers want to know is: what medical screenings are being done?” she wrote.

    Delta did not respond to questions from RCI about what knowledge it had been provided about its passengers.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 18:25

  • First Costco, Now Walmart? Major Retailers Now Offer Gold Bars
    First Costco, Now Walmart? Major Retailers Now Offer Gold Bars

    X users report that Walmart is the latest major retailer to offer a variety of gold products in its online store. This comes several months after membership-based wholesale retailer Costco began selling 1 oz. gold bars. 

    “Walmart is selling gold and silver. Are you awake yet? This is a financial change,” one X user said. 

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

    Another X user said: “First Costco, Now Walmart.” 

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

    Here’s what others are saying:

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

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

    Walmart appears to be getting on the precious metals action following Costco CFO Richard Galanti’s comments earlier this month about incredible gold bar demand among consumers: 

    “You’ve probably read about the fact that we’re selling one-ounce gold bars. We sold over $100 million of gold during the quarter.” 

    Galanti continued:

    “When we load them [gold bars] on the site, they’re typically gone within a few hours.”

    Costco’s and Walmart’s gold rush comes as gold prices have soared 14% since early October to a new record high of $2,088 this week. Gold’s strength has been underpinned by traders’ aggressive pricing of Federal Reserve rate cuts.

    The yellow metal “is the answer for many things at the moment – whether it’s inflation carrying on, rate cuts or the uncertainty with very costly wars going on,” said Jo Harmendjian, portfolio manager at Tiberius Group AG.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 18:00

  • Is The US Ready For China's Mass-Produced Humanoid Robots?
    Is The US Ready For China’s Mass-Produced Humanoid Robots?

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Chinese regime has unveiled plans to mass produce humanoid robots in an apparent effort to insulate itself from reliance on foreign powers by replacing Chinese workers with machines.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Ministry of Industry and Information Technology unveiled its plan to mass-produce humanoid robots in a November guidance document. The sweeping ramifications of the policy are still being uncovered.

    The strategy aims to make the CCP the world’s leader in the field of robotics by building a “humanoid robot innovation system,” developing artificial brains and limbs by 2025, according to the document.

    By using a “whole-of-nation system,” the document says, the regime can harness “disruptive” technologies to “profoundly change human production and lifestyle and reshape the global industrial development pattern.”

    The move carries national security implications and, according to several reports, will help the CCP maintain economic advantage even as its population dwindles following decades of severe restrictions on childbirth.

    A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank found that the regime is effectively replacing people with robots to maintain a competitive edge in labor-intensive manufacturing industries.

    Communist Robots

    China’s robotic push will also proliferate the CCP’s communist ideology and serve as an invaluable tool for the regime to champion its own interests.

    In April, a draft proposal by the regime’s internet regulator suggested that all content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) should be mandated to “reflect the socialist core values” espoused by the CCP.

    The regime’s robotic guidance document goes further.

    According to the new document, all new robots and AI-powered artificial brains should be “guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

    Adam Savit, director of the China Policy Initiative at the America First Policy Institute think tank, said that the regime could use the robots to spread communist ideology throughout the global marketplace.

    “They will certainly try,” Mr. Savit told The Epoch Times. “The CCP takes advantage of any and all means available, especially innovative new technologies, to spread its ideology and expand its influence.”

    Mr. Savit pointed to social media giant TikTok, which is owned by the CCP-affiliated ByteDance, as “the most successful and disturbing example” of the regime’s use of technology to spread its worldview.

    A man uses a mobile phone to take a photo of a Xiaomi robot at the 2023 World Robot Conference in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2023. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

    To counter the risk, he said, the United States needs to do more to limit the outflow of its own research and technology to China to dampen the regime’s efforts.

    “There is an urgent need to curtail U.S. outbound investment into China, especially for critical high-tech sectors like AI, quantum computing, and advanced semiconductors,” Mr. Savit said.

    “A Biden administration executive order limiting such investments is set to be enacted in 2024. It’s a good start but it has been criticized for vague and likely ineffective enforcement mechanisms.”

    The ideological underpinnings of the robot initiative underscore two more of Beijing’s strategic policies: military-civil fusion and forced technology transfer.

    Military-civil fusion, the policy through which Beijing seeks to ensure that all civil technologies also provide the party with military utility, is borne out in the guidance document’s call to “support [robot] enterprises to join forces with universities and institutions,” ensuring the regime can leverage the technology and any associated research.

    Likewise, the initiative will likely increase the risk posed to U.S. companies and their intellectual property as the regime searches for ways to “encourage foreign companies and institutions to set up R&D centers in the country,” where the CCP will have access to the related data.

    CCP access to foreign companies’ data is a key issue in global security because of Chinese laws that categorize data as a national resource, thereby allowing the regime to seize any information stored on servers in the country.

    The push for mass adoption of humanoid robots will require untold amounts of data, as the guidance document outlines that the project will seek to build a large language model training database to train AI brains for its robots and to innovate the “automatic” annotation of new data into usable information.

    Apart from data, the regime also seeks to develop its own high-end semiconductors to facilitate “motion control and cognitive decision-making” in the robots, as well as “the integration of sensing, decision-making, and control” mechanisms.

    With that in mind, the regime hopes to deploy its new communist humanoid robots to operate sensitive sites where it may have reservations about using human operators.

    According to the guidance document, such sites include hydropower stations, wind farms, and other critical electricity systems, as well as other “strategic locations” where “highly reliable” robots would be preferred to their less expendable human counterparts.

    Capturing Global Markets

    The CCP’s robotic renaissance is already well underway.

    In 2022, China installed 290,000 non-humanoid industrial robots. The United States, by comparison, installed 39,000.

    China has now surpassed the United States in robot density, meaning it has deployed more robots relative to workers, and the communist nation now operates the largest operational stock of robots in the world.

    Such metrics are key to understanding the regime’s ability to use automation to gain economic advantage in the years to come, according to a report by the International Federation of Robotics.

    “Robot density is a key indicator of automation adoption in the manufacturing industry around the world,” International Federation of Robotics President Marina Bill said.

    “China’s rapid growth shows the power of its investment so far, but it still has much opportunity to automate.”

    To that end, Beijing appears intent on capturing the robotic market abroad, using foreign technology and state-run research institutions to centralize power over the manufacturing process before shipping its robots worldwide.

    A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank found that the CCP seeks to earn a long-term advantage by establishing and controlling the supply chains required to create advanced robotics.

    KUKA robotic arms operate semi-finished products on an air conditioner assembly line at a factory in Guangzhou, China, on July 16, 2022. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Beijing aims both to achieve a high degree of self-sufficiency and to capture a significant share of the global market for a wide array of advanced products and components,” the report states.

    This could result in the regime obtaining significant economic and military advantage in the future due to the cascading effects of being the first to mass-produce humanoid robots. By controlling the initial technology, the regime can dictate how the technology evolves.

    “If it can gain an edge in what has been described as a fourth industrial revolution in manufacturing, while reducing its dependence on high-tech imports, China may be able to boost its own prospects for long-term growth while diminishing those of its competitors,” the report reads.

    “Because future products and military systems will build on them, breakthroughs in technologies such as artificial intelligence could also yield enduring advantages.”

    Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, said that “the really scary thing” about the regime’s guidance document is that it could lead to the CCP gaining more influence in establishing international standards and rules over AI and robotics.

    “You can guess what that means: China’s robotics industry becomes the global standard, pushing aside any competition, including setting the moral standard,” Mr. Herman told The Epoch Times.

    “[It’s] not a good sign if we want to have sensible and responsible standards for future development of this potentially disruptive technology [that] everyone can live with.”

    Mr. Herman expressed optimism that the United States is seeing a proliferation of its own robotic companies. Still, he’s worried about the nation’s lack of a coherent strategy for AI development.

    “The difference is that, clearly, China sees this robot push as part of its $110 billion campaign announced in 2017 to become the world’s leading AI nation by 2030,” Mr. Herman said.

    “We don’t have a national AI strategy, let alone a strategy relating to the intersection of robotics and AI.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:40

  • Venezuela Launches 5,000+ Troop Exercise In Response To UK Warship's Approach
    Venezuela Launches 5,000+ Troop Exercise In Response To UK Warship’s Approach

    Just on the heels of the recent panic over the risk of a Venezuela invasion of its neighbor Guyana, fears which finally subsided over a week ago upon a mutual pact pledging that both would avoid direct conflict, the UK sent a warship to patrol off Venezuela’s coast. 

    Britain previously said it would dispatch the HMS Trent near Guyana by December’s end as a significant show of support for the government in Guyana’s capital Georgetown, on concerns Nicolás Maduro would make moves to claim the vast, mineral-rich Essequibo region, which borders his country but has been part of Guyana – a member of the British Commonwealth and the only English-speaking nation in South America – for more than a century.

    A December 14 report in The Guardian suggested tensions were cooling fast: “The leaders of Guyana and Venezuela promised in a tense meeting that neither side would use threats or force against the other, but failed to reach agreement on how to address a bitter dispute over a vast border region rich with oil and minerals that has concerned many in the region,” the publication said at the time. But on Thursday’s there’s been a new shocking development reversing this hoped-for state of ‘cooler heads prevailing’ and which raises the potential for the UK and Venezuela to directly clash in Caribbean waters.

    HMS Trent, UK Navy

    AFP reports breaking statements from Maduro’s office as follows:

    Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday ordered more than 5,600 military personnel to participate in a “defensive” exercise, after Britain said it was sending a Royal Navy warship to waters off neighboring Guyana.

    Maduro said he was launching “a joint action of a defensive nature in response to the provocation and threat of the United Kingdom against peace and the sovereignty of our country.”

    Prior to the current standoff the HMS Trent had reportedly monitored the Caribbean in search of drug smugglers as a military offshore patrol vessel. It is armed with heavy guns and typically carries a unit of Royal Marines and a combat helicopter.

    The vessel has been confirmed now in regional waters:

    HMS Trent was reported to have made a stop in Bridgetown, Barbados, after leaving its homeport at Gibraltar earlier this month. The vessel is scheduled to head towards Guyana this week and anchor off Georgetown to participate in a series of training exercises with the country’s navy and other allies, the BBC reported.

    Venezuelan presidency press office handout showing Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.

    The border dispute has been a source of tension and disagreements going all the way back to the 19th century, but Maduro recently sponsored a referendum on whether his government should use force to finally resolve it. He then provocatively announced that 95% of Venezuelan citizens voted in favor of a forced annexation. This drew quick condemnation from Caracas’ longtime enemies the US and Britain.

    On Wednesday Venezuelan forces were placed on a ‘high state of alert’ following the reports of the British warship moving toward the coast.

    Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López issued a blistering warning on X in response to HMS Trent’s presence. “A warship in waters yet to be demarcated?” he said.

    Source: Financial Times

    “How does that fit with the commitment to good neighborliness and peaceful coexistence? And the agreement not to threaten or use force against each other under any circumstances? We remain alert to these provocations that put the peace and stability of the Caribbean and our America at risk!” he warned, saying that the prior agreement with Guyana’s leader Irfaan Ali about use of force has been called into question.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:20

  • The Chicago Mayor's Hat Trick Of Dreadful Policies
    The Chicago Mayor’s Hat Trick Of Dreadful Policies

    Authored by Charles Lipson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    When your city elects a mayor whose main job qualification is “organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union,” you get what you paid for, or rather what the powerful CTU paid for. With Mayor Brandon Johnson, you get a special bonus, an unwelcome one. His proposed policies are unworkable, unaffordable, and deeply unpopular in the city that elected him less than a year ago.

    Three policies stand out for particular ridicule. Mayor Johnson wants to:

    1. Start city-owned and -operated groceries in some underserved areas. The government that wants to take on these difficult new tasks is already failing at such basic services as fixing potholes and policing dangerous neighborhoods.

    2. Ticket the buses bringing illegal immigrants to Chicago, mostly from Texas. He calls them “rogue buses” because they are not “coordinating” with the city. Giving them a ticket or even impounding the vehicles is his solution. The bus companies’ own solution is to drop off the passengers in the suburbs, which immediately send them to Chicago. Johnson then rages at the Texas governor and never mentions President Biden.

    3. Close down all the selective-enrollment (magnet) schools in Chicago, the only ones where students actually read above grade level. If we judge by the likely outcome, Johnson’s policy is really designed to drive middle-class families with kids out of the city. The teachers union backs the plan, enthusiastically. They must know how good the other schools are since the president of the CTU sends her own child to a private school. Meanwhile, she is working with Gov. JB Pritzker to kill school choice for everyone else.

    The local joke about Mayor Johnson is that his only success has been to lower the price of downtown Chicago real estate.

    How do voters like Johnson’s ideas and his administration? Not much, it turns out. His poll numbers are roughly the same as those for used car salesmen with loud suits and back lots filled with rusting clunkers. The mayor’s erstwhile supporters have abandoned him. Except for the Chicago Teachers Union.

    The CTU is easily the most powerful union in Illinois and, most likely, the strongest local teachers union in the country. It was their members who went door-to-door for Johnson’s election. It was their members who tacked up Johnson’s campaign posters and donated the dollars for his TV ads. Now, it is their members who comprise Johnson’s dwindling band of supporters. If it weren’t for them, the mayor could hold a “Reelect Brandon Johnson” rally on a unicycle.

    Most of Johnson’s policies are standard-issue leftist remedies for big cities. To paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan, “He is the very model of a modern progressive mayor.” That model is not working. Not in Chicago and not elsewhere. Progressive mayors and prosecutors across the country have made their cities dangerous and ungovernable. Unfortunately, failure has not changed their minds or their policies. Brandon Johnson is no exception.

    Consider the mayor’s proposal for the city to own and operate grocery stores in impoverished areas. Let’s call them “CastroMarts.”

    Johnson is right to say some neighborhoods have become “food deserts.” He should ask himself why that is so. Part of the answer is poverty, but those areas were poor before the grocery stores abandoned them. What changed is that those areas are now plagued with organized retail theft, which is almost never prosecuted.

    Without delving into the root causes of rampant crime (Kamala Harris is searching for them in Central America), it’s up to local police to stop the predation, and it’s up to local prosecutors to go after the robbers and looters. That’s not happening in Chicago – or in San Francisco, Washington, Seattle, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland, or Portland. Those city governments have abandoned their fundamental responsibilities to “serve and protect.”

    Is the theory here that somehow thieves wouldn’t steal from city-owned grocery stores? What’s the evidence for that – or that city workers could do a better job than trained professionals? Those businesses operate on very thin margins and require efficient, experienced management. If you don’t sell meat and produce quickly, they rot.

    The words “quick” and “efficient” have never been used in the same sentence as “Chicago city worker.” Better adjectives would be “slow,” “unionized,” and “well-paid.” When you apply the correct adjectives to grocery store ownership, you get sclerotic management, high prices, and an endless string of taxpayer subsidies. You will get CastroMart, not Walmart.

    Brandon Johnson’s notions about education are just as compelling. His latest brainstorm is to close the best schools in the city. His stated reason is “equity,” which apparently means “leveling down.” There is no allegation that admission to these selective schools is biased. It is purely merit-based. Yet Chicago’s school board, working closely with the CTU and the mayor, recently approved a plan to “transition away” from these schools. That’s a polite way of saying, “We are going to kill them if we can.”

    The teachers union defends this euthanasia because of what they call the schools’ “deep inequity.” The facts belie the catchphrase. Over half the students in the 11 selective high schools come from low-income families. Around 70% are black or Hispanic. Where’s the “deep inequity”?

    Parents are up in arms. They see powerful, entrenched interests trying to deny their children a good education and cynically justifying it in the name of progressive ideals. They’re right.

    Johnson’s proposals for migrants are just as popular. Chicago has long proclaimed itself a “sanctuary city,” a label it adopted when sending that virtue signal was costless. It’s not costless anymore. Chicago leaders’ response is to offload all that expensive virtue onto other cities. They are retaining the “sanctuary” slogan, oblivious to the irony.

    The number of migrants coming to Chicago is still a trickle compared to those surging into Texas and Arizona across an open border. Even so, Chicago can’t handle the modest numbers. It doesn’t have any place to put them or any money to pay for the vital services they require. You see them now camped out on cold city streets and begging for spare change. It’s heartbreaking. Chicago’s real answer to reducing their number is “winter.”

    Johnson’s original plan was to set up migrant camps across the city. Voters went berserk. Johnson got the message and backed down. His latest plan is to put the migrants in hotels and at O’Hare Airport, issue tickets to the buses that bring them, and blame it all on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

    While Johnson has no answers for this deepening mess, he didn’t create it. President Biden did that. Biden is the Einstein who decided to dismantle all of Trump’s programs, such as “Remain in Mexico,” that helped stem the flow of illegals. What was Biden’s rationale? Because the programs were Trump’s. That’s it. To replace them, Biden put in … well, nothing. Surprisingly, that has not worked well.

    Even the staunchest Democrats recognize the political problems that unchecked immigration is creating. Some are from pushback in the general population, which can see the failure. Some come specifically from the black community, which is furious about this wave of migrants who compete with Americans for jobs, housing, and social services. Hispanics living here legally are none too happy either.

    Since Democrats depend on both minorities, especially African Americans, to win elections, the internal fissures over immigration pose real problems. They divide ideological progressives from fellow leftists who are more attentive to their minority constituents. The difficulties will only get worse as the numbers keep rising and the Biden administration keeps resisting efforts to close the border. Those tensions are already visible in Chicago’s minority neighborhoods.

    But immigration is only one of Brandon Johnson’s headaches. On issue after issue, he has no sensible plans to move forward and few ideas about how to cope with the city’s spiraling problems. His administration is a shambles, and voters know it. They need help. In fact, they are demanding it. They want safety, education, and other basic services. They have learned to their regret that they won’t get any of them from the incompetent, unpopular ideologue in City Hall.

    Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 17:00

  • Bank Bailout Fund Usage Soars To Another Record High As 2023 Sees Greatest Annual Money-Market Inflows Ever
    Bank Bailout Fund Usage Soars To Another Record High As 2023 Sees Greatest Annual Money-Market Inflows Ever

    After two weeks of outflows, money-market funds returned to inflows in the week ending 12/27, adding $16.4BN to $5.89TN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which means 2023 saw the largest annual money-market inflow ever – a whopping $1.151TN. That is the seventh year in a row of annual MM inflows…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But, with recession odds declining rapidly, are we about to see MM outflows accelerate?

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    Retail money-market funds capped the year with yet another inflow (+$13.3BN) meaning there was only one weekly outflow from retail funds in 2023. Institutional funds saw a $3.4BN inflow also…

    Source: Bloomberg

    In a breakdown for the week to Dec. 27, government funds – which invest primarily in securities like Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and agency debt – saw assets rise to $4.81 trillion, an $18.9 billion gain. 

    Prime funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, meanwhile, saw assets fall to $951.4 billion, a $3.8 billion decrease.

    “The big question is how overweight are investors in money markets,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco, said in a Bloomberg Television interview earlier this week.

    “Some exposure makes sense. That’s part of being diversified. But there is significant overweight on the part of some investors and I do think that starts to come out.”

    Interestingly, bank deposits are rising rapidly in the last few weeks as are money-market funds…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, with year-end liquidity needs growing, the exodus from The Fed’s reverse-repo facility has stalled (for now)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The Fed’s balance sheet shrank by $11.3BN last week to its lowest level since March 2021…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Usage of The Fed’s bank bailout facility rose by another $4.5BN last week to a new record high of $136BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But Regional bank shares don’t care…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The BTFP-Fed Arb continues to offer ‘free-money’ (and usage of the BTFP has risen by $26.7BN since the arb existed):

    The rate on the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program – which allows banks and credit unions to borrow funds for up to one year, pledging US Treasuries and agency debt as collateral valued at par – is the one-year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points.

    That figure is currently 4.83%, down from 5.59% in September.

    For institutions that have an account at the Fed, they can borrow from the BTFP at 4.83% and park that at the central bank to earn 5.40% – the interest on reserve balances.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 57bp spread is the widest level since the Fed introduced the facility to support a struggling banking system after the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York.

    Finally, equity market caps continue to soar after recoupling with bank reserves at The Fed (though the stalling in the drawdown of the RRP has slowed the expansion again this week in a bigger way)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    WTF are banks going to do when The Fed shuts down this ‘temporary’ bailout program in March?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/28/2023 – 16:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest