Today’s News 2nd April 2024

• Turkey Expected To Become US' Largest Supplier Of Artillery
  Turkey Expected To Become US’ Largest Supplier Of Artillery

  Authored by Ahmed Adel via GlobalResearch.ca,

  Turkey is set to become the United States’ largest supplier of artillery shells as NATO allies have exhausted their stocks and now struggle to ship ammunition to Ukraine. Turkey’s indirect support for Ukraine is also supplemented by direct support, such as producing drones and warships, yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offers himself as a viable partner in searching for peace between Ukraine and Russia.

  

  “Turkish supplies of trinitrotoluene, known as TNT, and nitroguanidine, which is used as a propellant, would be crucial in the production of Nato-standard 155mm calibre ammunition — potentially tripling production, according to officials familiar with the discussions,” a Bloomberg report said, adding: “Turkey is already on track to becoming the biggest seller of the artillery shells to the US as early as this year.”

  The surge in demand has delayed global orders and has put pressure on defence supply chains, especially for components such as TNT.  According to the outlet, to help alleviate this issue, Turkish defence company Repkon’s production lines are expected to produce about 30% of all US-made 155mm artillery shells by 2025.

  The Pentagon said in a statement about investment in Texas’ defence industry with Turkish counterparts that working with allies “is key to building a global defence industrial base.”

  Additionally, Washington purchased 116,000 rounds of battle-ready ammunition from Turkish company Arca Defense, with delivery expected later this year and further purchases believed to be concluding soon to be ready for delivery in 2025.

  As Bloomberg admitted,

  “The US and European efforts are part of a race to catch up with Moscow, whose war machine has put it in a position to produce or procure – according to some estimates – 4 million rounds this year, including shipments from North Korea. By contrast, the European Union expects to triple its production of artillery shells this year to around 1.4 million units.”

  It is unsurprising that Turkey has been awarded a lucrative contract, given the recent announcement that Erdogan will visit the White House on May 9, the first time since US President Joe Biden took office.

  The agreement with Ankara also reveals a delicate balance between the NATO allies, whose relations have been strained by the Russian military operation in Ukraine and Turkey’s months-long block on Sweden’s membership in the Atlantic Alliance. However, with Turkey greenlighting Sweden’s accession and plans to contribute to Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, the country is now being rewarded with export contracts and approval to upgrade its aging F-16 fighter jet fleet.

  The Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used by the Ukrainian military against Russian forces. The drone maker, Baykar, has initiated the construction of a factory in Ukraine, and the company’s CEO said in February that they aim to complete the project within approximately 12 months and produce around 120 units a year.

  At the same time, it is recalled that in February, France, Greece, and Cyprus blocked financing for the supply of Bayraktar drones and artillery shells for Ukraine, which were to be purchased with European funds. Turkey was set to be financed from EU funds for some time, but once the order was confirmed, the three countries swiftly blocked the financing.

  Although the initiative failed, the US recognised Turkey’s rapprochement with the West and is now rewarding the country with imports and exports in the defence sector. This is despite the fact that the issue of the acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 is not resolved, which is the reason Turkey was booted from the F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet program to begin with.

  Erdogan announced his offer to host a peace summit between Ukraine and Russia earlier this month following a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

  “Since the beginning, we have contributed as much as we could toward ending the war through negotiations,” Erdogan said.

  “We are also ready to host a peace summit in which Russia will also be included.”

  Although Erdogan claims to have contributed as much as possible to ending the war through negotiations, his country has also contributed to prolonging it. It is also recalled that during Zelensky’s visit to Turkey, he visited the shipyard where the two corvettes are being built for the Ukrainian Navy. At the same time, Turkey is providing drones to the Ukrainian military and is now replenishing the US’ artillery stocks. This is even though Ukraine has no chance of winning the war, meaning Turkey is not an honest broker for peace.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/02/2024 – 02:00

• Blaming Russia For "Havana Syndrome" Pushes The Opposite Narrative Than Intended
  Blaming Russia For “Havana Syndrome” Pushes The Opposite Narrative Than Intended

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

  For Russia to have successfully used a mobile directed energy weapon over 1,500 times, including against the US’ “top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency,” then it must have deeply penetrated the US Government in order to discover those elite targets’ identities and locations.

  CBS News, The Insider, and Der Spiegel released the findings of their joint investigation on Sunday blaming Russia for “Havana Syndrome”, which refers to the mysterious ear and head pain that over 1,500 US Government (USG) staffers across the world claim to have experienced since 2016. It appeared timed to coincide with Congress’ plans to vote on Ukraine aid sometime later this month, with the intent obviously being to scare lawmakers into approving more funds for America’s proxy war on Russia.

  

  It might have the opposite effect than intended, however, since those outlets’ dramatic claims paint a picture of deep Russian intelligence penetration of the US’ diplomatic and security services that can’t be remedied by simply sending more money to Ukraine. If what they wrote is true, then Russia has created a mobile directed energy weapon (DEW) that it’s already successfully used over 1,500 times, including against the US’ “top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency”.

  This startling statistic comes from the recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who ran the Pentagon’s investigation into the matter. He claimed that this elite echelon of victims had all “worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well” but were then “neutralized” after their injuries. His allegations contradict the Intelligence Community’s (IC) official review from last year that no DEWs nor foreign adversaries were responsible for these “anomalous health incidents”.

  Those who take the IC’s official review at face value suspect that the prior hysteria about “Havana syndrome” was just a means of fearmongering about Russia, which they also naturally believe is the motive behind the latest joint investigation’s findings. Meanwhile, those who suspected that the IC’s official review was a cover-up take the latest joint investigation’s findings at face value, which means that they truly believe that Russia has deeply penetrated the US’ diplomatic and security services.

  There’s no credible evidence to suggest that this is the case, especially since Russia would have presumably been much better prepared for responding to America’s diplomatic and military provocations throughout the course of their ongoing proxy war if it had moles within both. Nevertheless, the only way that one can believe that it’s systematically targeting members of those institutions who had all worked against it “extremely well” in the past is if it knew who they were and where they lived.

  That in turn obliges one to believe that it must have deeply penetrated them in order to obtain this highly classified information, thus meaning that Russian spies are more highly placed than anyone had thought even after the witch hunt that followed the Russiagate hysteria. Once again, there’s no credible evidence that this is the case, and another argument against this theory is that Russia isn’t targeting any similarly prominent Ukrainian diplomats or security officials despite being at “war” with their country.

  Russia may be behind the “Havana Syndrome” attacks against U.S. officials, investigation by 60 Minutes, Der Spiegel and The Insider claims.

  Havana Syndrome may have its origin in the use of directed energy weapons wielded by the Russian GRU’s infamous Unit 29155. pic.twitter.com/n7X0MIx1mw

  — Clash Report (@clashreport) April 1, 2024

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

  Reflecting on the abovementioned insight, it’s much more likely that Russia has nothing to do with “Havana syndrome” and that the latest joint investigation’s findings are just a desperate attempt to scare lawmakers into approving more Ukraine aid ahead of their planned vote later this month. Any penetration of the IC at the level that this conspiracy theory implies would have led to the past two years unfolding in a very different way and Russia not being caught off guard by the proxy war that broke out.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 23:40

• 'Rich' Gen Z Women Are By Far The Most Optimistic About 'Getting Richer' In 2024
  ‘Rich’ Gen Z Women Are By Far The Most Optimistic About ‘Getting Richer’ In 2024

  The jury is still out on how the global economy is expected to perform in 2024, but as seen during the pandemic, economic turmoil sometimes provides opportunities for the wealthy.

  Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes the percentage of high net worth individual (HNWI) respondents who expect their wealth to increase in 2024, categorized by generation and gender, from the Knight Frank Next Gen Survey, accessible in their latest wealth report.

  

  The survey covered 600 global HNWIs, who are individuals with more than $1 million in assets or make more than $200,000 a year, and then categorized their responses by gender and generation.

  Affluent Gen Z Women Eye Financial Gains in 2024

  At a glance, there’s a very apparent generational difference in the expectations of getting richer in 2024.

  About half (52%) of the surveyed Baby Boomers think their assets will grow, compared to Gen X (56%), Millennials, (69%), and Gen Z (75%).

  

  Note: Percentage of respondents who said they expect their wealth will increase in 2024.

  There’s also a noticeable gender difference. Men tend to be more optimistic than women, with one glaring exception.

  A staggering 81% of the surveyed high net worth Gen Z women expect to make hay this year, making them the most optimistic of all the groups.

  This corroborates a trend where Gen Z women were also the most optimistic in retirement planning. As CNBC reports, a combination of newer avenues of financial resources, and an openness towards advice, has given them a more optimistic attitude than their older counterparts.

  Meanwhile, American Millennials are expected to become the richest generation ever as a $90 trillion asset transfer between Boomer parents and Millennial children begins to take place over the next two decades.

  A huge percentage of that wealth comes in the form of property assets accumulated by generations before them. This especially includes houses, whose prices have skyrocketed over the last two decades.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 23:20

• America’s Controversial Stealth Fighter Jet Can Now Carry Nukes
  America’s Controversial Stealth Fighter Jet Can Now Carry Nukes

  Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  It was a routine Pentagon announcement during a regular briefing the Friday before the president typically submits his annual defense budget request to Congress on the second Monday in March.

  As of October, a spokesman for the Department of Defense’s (DOD) F-35 Joint Program Office told Pentagon beat writers, that “certain” Air Force F-35As have been operationally certified to carry the B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb.

  

  While the revelation hasn’t drawn much interest from general news media in the United States, it has spurred extensive commentary within the defense-tech industry. And it is echoing loudly in Europe, most certainly within the Kremlin where Russian President Vladimir Putin has been openly discussing the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

  The F-35A nuclear certification and introduction of the B61-12 bomb are key components in a tactical nuclear weapons upgrade in Europe by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in response to Russian saber-rattling—and advances—in battlefield nuclear weapons.

  While NATO’s U.S.-built F-16A/Bs and F-16C/Ds and United Kingdom-built PA-200 Tornadoes are also fighter jets authorized to carry nuclear weapons, the F-35A Lightning II is now the first “fifth-generation” stealth fighter to be “dual-capable” of carrying conventional and nuclear weapons, according to the Pentagon.

  The F-35A will soon be among NATO’s primary attack-strike jets. Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey are all stocking their air forces with F-35s, with Germany explicitly doing so because it would be nuclear-capable.

  The March 8 announcement also confirmed the full-scale production of the B61-12 bomb. Their predecessors were housed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. According to some reports, they’ve been replacing them with new bombs since December 2022.

  October’s nuclear certification was two months earlier than the January 2024 deadline the Pentagon set. Although only publicly acknowledged by the United States on March 8, Dutch military officials wrote in a November X post that their F-35As had achieved “initial certification” to carry nuclear weapons.

  Since Pentagon policy prohibits the release of information about NATO partner military capacities, the announcement only addressed “certain” U.S. Air Force F-35As in Europe, with the U.S. fighter wing at Lakenheath in the United Kingdom likely among those upgrading.

  

  “A lot of this is just information warfare, SOP [standard operating procedure] and optics that we got F-35As and allies who have F-35As in Europe,” retired Army Col. John Mills told The Epoch Times.

  Mr. Mills, a 33-year Army veteran and former Director for Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs under the Secretary of Defense, said the F-35A “has always been about Europe.”

  “The message is that the F-35s are now there, and they are nuclear certified, and B61-12s are in storage ready to go, ready to be used, if necessary, out of Lakenheath,” he said.

  Mr. Mills, who has spoken and written extensively on military matters, including about the F-35A in a column in The Epoch Times, said the announcement was aimed squarely at Mr. Putin.

  “Of course,” he said. “He’s the target.”

  “If anything, it does create a little bit of angst on the part of the Russians, because that means the [F-35-As] have more potential platforms, more different areas, more places for the Russians to keep track of,” said Mike Fredenburg, founding president of the Adam Smith Institute of San Diego. He writes frequently on defense tech for a wide range of publications, including National Review and The Epoch Times.

  “The F-35 has pretty good range for a single-engine fighter. It is stealth, and so you could obviously get closer to Russian air space before being effectively targeted than you could, let’s say, with an F-15,” noting that with 600 to 700 F-35s in U.S. and allied air forces, “we have hundreds of them, and at any given time, some of them are probably capable of flying.”

  Mr. Fredenburg admits: “I’m not a huge fan of the F-35.”

  So little so that for those who have followed the aircraft’s checkered development for the past 30 years, he had to quantify how truly significant the F-35A certification is. “I don’t want to say it’s insignificant. It does, I think, potentially create some more instability because nobody else has many stealth fighters,” Mr. Fredenburg told The Epoch Times.

  

  

  “I’d say it’d be more significant if you were putting [a nuclear weapon] on a platform that was more reliable, that you could count on. I guess I could say that.”

  A Long, Haunted History

  “First of all,” Mr. Fredenburg said, “you have to look at the history. From the very beginning, it was doomed. It was too heavy. There’s no way you can make an engine powerful enough to fly a plane that big. The plane is the largest single-engine plane in the world.”

  When first envisioned in the early 1990s, the F-35 was touted by Lockheed Martin as an all-purpose, next-generation stealth joint-force single-engine fighter that would replace up to 16 different types of warcraft, including the Navy’s F-14, the Air Force’s F-16, and the Marine Corps’ Harrier jump jets.

  That was nearly two generations ago.

  Design began in 1994. After a series of delays, dozens of F-35-equipped squadrons were supposed to be operational at a cost of $233 billion by 2010.

  “It didn’t even come close to that,” Mr. Mills said.

  By 2016, the project’s cost had doubled. It remains more than a decade behind schedule and billions over budget with mixed results, some say.

  “What they did is, you know how you ‘soup up’ your car? Put nitrate in it or something like that? Mr. Fredenburg said. “You might be able to get it around a few times before it blows up, but that’s what they did here.

  “They ‘souped up’ the F-22 engine and made it super, super hot to get the horsepower, that thrust, and there’s no way that engine was going to be durable.

  “So,” he continued, “it’s got an engine that can’t do the job. It won’t be reliable ever. Ever.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 23:00

• M-16 Era Ends: Army's 101st Airborne Division Receives Next-Gen Assault Rifles
  M-16 Era Ends: Army’s 101st Airborne Division Receives Next-Gen Assault Rifles

  Army Futures Command announced last week that troops from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, have received the Army’s next-generation rifles and light machine guns chambered in a new 6.8mm round. These new weapons are replacing the decades-old M-4 and M-16 battle rifle platforms. 

  Military Times reports soldiers from 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell were handed XM7 Next Generation Rifle and XM250 Next Generation Automatic Rifle ahead of training in April. 

  Produced by firearm maker Sig Sauer, the XM7 is a 6.8×51mm gas-operated, magazine-fed assault rifle that replaces the M-4 carbine for close combat fighting. The XM250 is a 6.8×51mm gas-operated, belt-fed light machine gun that replaces the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW. Both rifles are chambered in 6.8×51mm, a new round for the Army that will increase range and improve lethality against the most advanced body armor used on the modern battlefield. 

  XM7

  

  XM250

  

  The fielding of these two rifles “is a culmination of a comprehensive and rigorous process of design, testing and feedback, all of which were led by soldiers,” Col. Jason Bohannon, manager of soldier lethality for the Program Executive Office Soldier project, said in a statement. 

  Bohannon continued: “As a result, the Army is delivering on its promise to deliver to soldiers the highest-quality, most-capable small-caliber weapons and ammunition.”

  The latest figures from the Army’s fiscal 2025 budget request show a plan to purchase 111,428 XM7 rifles and 13,334 XM250 automatic rifles. The service also wants to purchase 124,749 XM157 Fire Control devices, also known as next-gen optics, which would be standard on battle rifles through 2030. 

  Both next-gen rifles “ensure increased lethality against a broad spectrum of targets beyond current/legacy weapon capabilities; increased range, accuracy, and probability of hit; reduced engagement time; suppressed flash/sound signature; and improved controllability and mobility,” the Army’s budget explains.

  The new rifles come as the threat of major conflict across the world has never been higher. Conflicts could quickly spiral out of control in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. There is also rising concern about China in the Pacific. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 22:40

• Top Journalism School Mandating Diversity Course To Earn Degree
  Top Journalism School Mandating Diversity Course To Earn Degree

  Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Mandatory wokeness has crept into one of the top journalism schools in the United States.

  

  The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is requiring students to complete the course Diversity and Civility at Cronkite (DCC) in order to earn their bachelor’s degree in journalism.

  The course, which also applies to students studying sports journalism and digital media, redefines such traditional phrases as “America is a melting pot” as race-based microaggressions and teaches future journalists to avoid assuming “unearned benefits” that come with “heterosexual privileges.”

  Examples of outdated heterosexual privileges given in the curriculum include excluding biological males who identified as female from traditional sex-segregated places like women’s locker rooms and women’s prisons.

  “To object to a man using a women’s bathroom is an example of discrimination against transgender individuals,” reads a chapter in the course entitled “Sexuality and Gender Identity.”

  Also part of the seven-unit course is required reading material entitled “A Guide to Gender Identity Terms.”

  It includes lessons that emphasize the importance of asking someone for their preferred pronouns and using them.

  “You should offer your own pronouns first and then ask for the other person’s pronouns,” the reading material states. “While it can be awkward at first, it can quickly become routine.”

  The course also teaches students to view statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” as a microaggression that translates into “People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race,” and “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough,” as implying that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.”

  In response to inquiries from The Epoch Times, the state-run college described the mandatory course as “an entry-level course intended to bring thoughtful, open-minded discourse to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, income, geography and other aspects of personal identities.”

  “The goal of the course is to help students appreciate people’s differences and to channel disagreements toward civil discussion,” the college said in a statement. “With that view, students should be better able to approach reporting and communications projects with a multicultural perspective and inspire mutual respect among students from various backgrounds and beliefs while at the university, and beyond.”

  Opt-Out Possible

  A spokesperson for the Walter Cronkite School, which is part of Arizona State University (ASU) also told The Epoch Times that students may opt out of specific discussions by sending their professor a private email requesting to do so.

  Timothy Minella, Senior Constitutionalism Fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy told The Epoch Times that the required journalism course is especially disturbing because it is being mandated by a public, taxpayer funded college.

  “Students who decide to major in these subjects are not necessarily signing up to be progressive activists,” he said. “A public university that should be serving the entire public, not just the liberal slice of it, needs to return to its core mission of education, not indoctrination.”

  Mr. Minella, who recently wrote a critical analysis of the course after obtaining student assignments and teacher syllabuses through a public records request, said he was especially shocked by an assignment for students contemplating a career in public relations.

  The assignment, as shown by records obtained by Mr. Minella, was based on an NPR interview with Demi Lovato, a pop star who has changed her gender identity multiple times.

  It asks students: “Imagine you’re working at a PR firm and you have a client whose first album is about to drop. Your client’s gender identity is nonbinary and they use they/them pronouns. They have a massive press tour planned. How do you prepare journalists to talk with your client?”

  Mr. Minella said the designers of the course “seemingly attempted to include every aspect of leftist identity politics” they could think up.

  Pushing Diversity

  The growing controversy of state colleges pushing transgender and critical race theory has become widespread.

  On March 2, in a 84 to 30 vote, the South Carolina House approved a bill to ban mandatory diversity training for both students and staff at state universities.

  The bill also bans any diversity mission statements as part of their admissions and employment process. If passed, it would add South Carolina to 22 states that passed similar legislation.

  The issue also rages on in secondary public schools across the United States.

  Earlier this week, two civil rights lawyers filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a group made up of a Little Rock  high school teacher, students and their parents against Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and state Education Secretary Jacob Olivia, over the state’s LEARNS Act. LEARNS stands for Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Readiness, Networking, and School Safety.

  It bans the teaching of CRT and gender ideology in public schools. The group claims the law violates their Constitutional rights to free speech.

  In other recent legal action on the issue, the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel (LC) won its battle with the Osseo Area School District in Minnesota for mandating a course for high schoolers entitled “LGBTQIA+ History and Culture Lesson.”

  In a March 28 email to LC, the school district wrote that “teacher opt-out religious accommodations will be approved” and “students may choose to leave prior to or during the lesson.”

  Mr. Minella said diversity is being pushed to extremes in schools. By his calculations, he found that in the school year 2023, more than 400 students at the Walter Cronkite school, spent more than 2,000 hours of class time learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

  According to Mr. Minella, there are at least 100 classes offered at the journalism school that includes “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” in its core curriculum.

  In addition to the report on the DCC course at the Walter Cronkite School, The Goldwater Institute recently filed a lawsuit against ASU on behalf of two professors who were allegedly threatened with disciplinary charges for refusing to participate in the college’s diversity training.

  In response to inquiries by the Epoch Times about the lawsuit,  an ASU spokesperson said in an email that “universities are” and that the school is “reserving comment until the board is fully briefed at its next board meeting.”

  Its journalism school is named after legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite, dubbed the “most trusted man in America” by a public opinion survey conducted in 1972.

  In a 1973 interview for Playboy Magazine, Mr. Conkrite, who died in 2009, said that “being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause—but examining each case on its merits.”

  He also said in the interview that “most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen.

  “If they’re preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can’t be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism.”

  Not everyone agreed he was the most trusted man in America, including Arizona Republican and one-time presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater—the namesake of The Goldwater Institute.

  Mr. Cronkite was often accused by conservatives back then of taking cheap shots at Mr. Goldwater, known as the “Grand Old Man of The Republican Party.”

  On the day of President John. F Kennedy’s funeral, the CBS newsman reported that Mr. Goldwater was giving a political speech in Indiana instead of attending the President’s funeral when the U.S. Senator was actually in the state to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.

  The five-term Senator died in 1998.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 22:20

• In Russia Mass Deportations Of Muslim Migrants Surge After Moscow Terror Attack
  In Russia Mass Deportations Of Muslim Migrants Surge After Moscow Terror Attack

  There have been widespread reports of mass deportations of Muslim migrants from Russia in the wake of the March 22 terror attack on the Crocus City Hall venue in a Moscow suburb which killed at least 140 people and left hundreds more wounded and injured.

  This trend is said to be the result of a significant uptick in raids by authorities on apartments and dorm complexes known to house Central Asian migrants, amid concerns that Islamic radicals could carry out more attacks.

  

  President Vladimir Putin has put blame on Islamic extremists for the major attack which involved four gunmen planting explosives and randomly shooting into crowds; however, he and Kremlin officials also believe the men had assistance from Ukraine or possibly US or other foreign intelligence.

  The alleged gunmen, who reportedly tried to escape across the Ukrainian border, are all Tajik nationals. A number of other foreigners have also been arrested in the days after the attack. Washington has said ISIS-K was behind it, while condemning Moscow’s allegations that the US or Ukraine could have had something to do with it.

  The regional pro-opposition outlet Meduza has said that in the last week of March, St. Petersburg courts “received 584 cases of administrative offenses in connection with non-compliance with migration legislation.”

  The report indicated that at least 418 foreigners were then ordered to go to special holding facilities to await expulsion from the country. “Another 48 people must pay a fine and leave the Russian Federation on their own,” Meduza wrote.

  In Russia, after the Crocus City Hall mass murder of 143 people by Tajik Muslims, the mass deportations have begun.

  The airport is jammed packed. pic.twitter.com/VRIlNFplXa

  — David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) April 1, 2024

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  An organization of human right lawyers who work in Russia, Perviy Otdel, observed in a statement Friday that in the St. Petersburg region, “Temporary detention centers for foreign citizens are packed, surrounded by special vehicles and buses heading to the airport.”

  The Amsterdam-based Moscow Times linked the surge in deportations to the Crocus City Hall terror attack:

  The countries where the migrants were being sent to were not specified, though it is known that labor migrants in Russia mostly hail from poor Central Asian countries.

  Bailiffs reportedly refer to St. Petersburg’s mass deportations as “Operation Anti-Migrant,” with raids targeting local hostels and apartments. Similar raids were reported in Moscow and other Russian cities.

  Anti-immigrant sentiment surged after four gunmen — who were later identified as Tajik nationals — stormed Crocus City Hall last Friday, killing 144 people and injuring 382 in the shooting and massive fire at the popular concert venue.

  The backlash against Russia’s sizeable Tajik immigrant community is expected to grow. Recent years have seen over one million unemployed Tajiks enter Russia in search of work.

  🚨 Russia: Yesterday Vladimir Osechkin relayed info from FSB sources that an order for indiscriminate mass raids and repressions against Muslims came down in ‘response’ to the Crocus City Hall massacre. Today, the FSB made mass arrests at the Wildberries warehouse in Electrostal. pic.twitter.com/pjr5OkhECN

  — Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) March 27, 2024

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  A separate Moscow Times report has found that “Between 2012 and 2018, over 2,000 Tajik citizens joined terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, making Tajikistan the third highest sender of foreign fighters to the war on a per capita basis.”

  The report continues: “Most joined Islamic State, with some taking up key positions, including the group’s War Minister Gulmurod Halimov, who used to serve as head of Tajikistan’s OMON paramilitary police force.” This means Russia’s monitoring of and crackdown on this migrant community is likely only to grow from this point.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 22:00

• Abigail Shrier's 'Bad Therapy' Exposes How Therapeutic Culture Harms Children
  Abigail Shrier’s ‘Bad Therapy’ Exposes How Therapeutic Culture Harms Children

  Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Preventive mental health therapy for children may be doing more harm than good—and there’s research to prove it, author Abigail Shrier suggests in her new book “Bad Therapy.”

  “What you might not know is that the stuff that travels under the headline ‘mental health’ is really harmful for kids,” she said at a recent book-signing event hosted by the Lincoln Club at Newport Beach. “I’m telling you that according to the best psychological research available, it’s exactly what you would want to do if you wanted to break kids down.”

  In “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up,” which hit The New York Times’ best seller list, Ms. Shrier investigates the mental health industry and its negative impact on children, and concludes that when it comes to preventive therapy—especially for children—more is not always better.

  

  ‘Irreversible Damage’

  Ms. Shrier’s previous book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” led her to the explore the potential harmful effects too much therapy can have on children.

  “Irreversible Damage,” exposed the “social contagion” and phenomena behind the sudden spike in the number of teenage girls identifying as transgender.

  “Twenty percent of seventh-grade classes were deciding they were transgender, and the terminus of this journey, as they call it, was a double mastectomy and infertility,” Ms. Shrier said.

  

  She knew from talking to parents of gender dysphoric children that gender ideology was a social contagion that was spreading, and that a worldwide controversy was brewing. But, at the time, she said, liberals thought she was “picking on a tiny minority of kids who weren’t harming anyone,” and conservatives were asking her, ‘Why would you write about that?’”

  “Nobody wanted to talk about it,” she said.

  “Irreversible Damage” lit a political firestorm with the progressive left and remains a cultural lightning rod. The New York Times condemned the book in a review prompting Target stores to pull it from their shelves and triggering some Amazon employees who threatened to quit their jobs in a failed attempt to get the book banned. 

  The influential book not only shocked parents but it led them to question the gender ideology they discovered was being pushed in schools across America and sparked the parental rights movement across the nation.

  ‘Bad Therapy’ 

  Ms. Shrier began her latest book, “Bad Therapy,” with a couple of questions: “Why was the generation that had gotten the most treatment, the most wellness techniques, the most regular emotional regulation techniques, the most anti-bullying classes, the most miserable? And, why do they have no interest in growing up?”

  She decided to attend a conference about a multi-tiered system of support devoted to the mental health of children in California.

  “I thought I should go and find out what our schools were doing to support the kids I knew were in distress,” she said. “Well, by the end of the three-day conference, I learned that actually every kid is in therapy. They just call it something else. They call it social emotional learning, or anti-bullying classes, and they look a lot like group therapy.”

  Ms. Shrier also discovered a whole body of research on the known harms of therapy such as a study of burn victims who left therapy feeling worse than the control group and people who had lost a loved one feeling sadder than those who didn’t go to therapy, she said.

  “First responders responding to catastrophe have left therapy feeling worse about themselves and their lives and what they went through than those control groups that didn’t,” she said.

  It was then that Ms. Shrier began to realize the symptoms society was seeing in children are “exactly the symptoms you would see in a population that had gotten way, way, way too much therapy,” she said.

  Social Emotional Learning

  Ms. Shrier went to the schools to find out how social emotional learning, or SEL, is taught to children.

  “How do you actually teach SEL? Well, let’s start by sharing a time when you’re happy. Well, that’s boring. Nothing to teach there. Control your joy? Let’s start by all sharing the time when we felt sad, when we felt misunderstood, when we thought we might be bullied,” she said. “Now we’re on a roll. Now we have something for the teachers to teach.”

  The problem is that parents are often blamed for the child’s sadness at school because, after all, “Whose job is it to keep kids safe?” she asked.

  “So now, we’re criticizing parents,” she said. “It’s completely built into the system. And, I’m not saying that because it’s a conspiracy. I’m just saying, naturally, if you want to teach wellness and emotional regulation, the way to do it is to focus on a time when kids felt sad.”

  Ms. Shrier predicts in the book that social emotional learning would lead more children to be sad, anxious, phobic, and alienated from their parents.

  When she finished the book in October, Ms. Shrier didn’t know researchers in Australia and England wondered the same thing and were conducting experiments on wellness techniques and anti-bullying, she said.

  As it turned out, two new studies showed that “kids ended up being sadder and more anxious, more depressed and more alienated from their parents than the control group,” she said.

  Rise of the Expert Class

  The rise in the expert class to break down parental authority has been happening for generations, she said.

  Society began to regard informal relationships “as hazardous and somewhat sinister,” and instead placed their trust in “experts.”

  “So, we didn’t trust grandma as much even though she had raised good kids to adulthood, but to this parenting expert whose oldest child was five, we listened,” she said.

  But, while the overtreatment of children who don’t need therapy is causing damage, she said there are still children and adults who do need therapy.

  “There are kids who need it. But, if you don’t treat them well, you’re only introducing risk,” she said. “They stand to gain nothing.”

  Ms. Shrier stressed that she’s not opposed to therapy or medication.

  “If you have a severe phobia and are afraid to leave your house, by all means get the therapy. It will help you leave your house if it’s done right. If you’re so germophobic you can’t shake people’s hands, get the therapy. … If you have a severely anorexic kid … get your kid the help they need of course,” she said.

  

  Parents need to know that therapy for a child is “an entirely different experience than therapy with an adult, because an adult can say to a therapist, ‘Listen, I really appreciated that, but I wouldn’t call my mom emotionally abusive,’ or ‘Listen  I know you’ve said in the past that’s toxic, but I’m not going to cut off my parents,” Ms. Shrier said.

  Society now treats a healthy-minded child who is a little worried or a bit anxious by sending them to therapy, exposing them to risks such as increased anxiety, increased depression, alienation from their parents, and demoralization, the feeling that they are limited by a mental health diagnosis, and in some ways the sadness of all treatment dependency, she said.

  Children are left feeling that “they can’t do for themselves,” or make decisions, without consulting an expert or an adult, which hinders them from gaining confidence and growing up, she said.

  “We’ve never had an American generation that believes less in its ability to rise to a challenge than this one,” she said.

  ‘They’ve Been Told a Lie’

  Ms. Shrier interviewed a young woman who has received preventive, or prophylactic, therapy since she was 6 years old, when her parents divorced. The woman, called Becca in the book, never stopped going to therapy.

  Although Becca, now 17, has never been diagnosed with a mental illness, she continues to see a therapist to discuss her “anxiety,” Ms. Shrier said.

  When Ms. Shrier asked what Becca and her therapist were currently working on, she replied that the therapist was helping her prepare to make friends in college.

  “This is what we’re seeing in the rising generation. They don’t believe they’re up to the basic challenges of adulthood. They think they need a mental health day off,” she said. “They don’t want to have kids or get married either because they think they’re sick. In some ways, it’s the saddest thing of all, because they’ve been told a lie that they’re all mentally ill; it’s just a question of degrees.”

  ‘Who Objects to Wellness?’

  Policies governing therapy are almost always couched in language that makes them difficult to challenge.

  “They are always being sold as something you can’t object to, like wellness,” she said. “Who objects to wellness?”

  “That’s how all the conversion therapy bans got passed, she said. These bans were sold as a way to stop the cruel practice of trying to force gay young people to go straight, but then they slipped in gender identity language,” Ms. Shrier said.

  So now, therapists who tell a girl she’s a girl and not a boy can be accused of conversion therapy and lose their license, she said.

  Therapeutic Culture

  Therapeutic culture has worked its way into “everything,” Ms. Shrier said.

  And, while anti-bullying classes may sound like a good idea on the surface, how they’re taught and by whom has side-effects, she suggested.

  “You know what you need to do to teach kids not to bully? Teach them right from wrong: ‘Don’t pick on someone smaller than you. Don’t join in,’ and ‘I’m going to be really disappointed if you do. That’s not a behavior we expect in this house. It’s wrong.’ That’s how you teach anti-bullying,” she said.

  “You know what you don’t do? Go into a class with a school counselor and teach all the kids they’re so fragile that if anyone says anything they don’t like they’re going fall apart, because now you have kids who don’t believe they can survive anything. That’s what they’ve been told over and over.”

  The remedy is simple, she said.

  “This is the easiest thing in America to fix. We’ve got a lot of problems, but this one is so easy,” she said. “Mom and Dad can fix it tomorrow. It doesn’t even take any money. You just need to assert your authority and tell kids what’s what. That’s it.”

  Children are dwelling far too much and too long on their problems, and not learning how to perform errands and tasks that build confidence, she said.

  “If a kid takes his problem to a pastor, or grandma, or an aunt, at some point, the aunt or the grandma is going to say, ‘You’re fine. We’ve talked about this enough. Go play!’” she said. “And guess what a therapist won’t say. ‘You’re fine.’ That’s the problem.”

  Almost any activity would be better for children than social emotional learning or “talking about our bad feelings” in schools, she said. “Paint the gym, play ball—they could literally do anything—pick up trash on the side of the highway, and it would be better for them than sitting around talking about their pain,” she said.

  It’s “not fair” to children who have gone through a traumatic experience to talk about their pain right before a math test, she said.

  “You’re not helping them, but you might convince a kid who hasn’t gone through something really hard that actually they were abused, too,” she said.

  How Much Therapy is Too Much?

  Ms. Shrier told The Epoch Times in an interview that while researching “Irreversible Damage” she realized that at the core of the “social contagion” she exposed were the children’s therapists and school counselors.

  “In almost every case, a kid had a therapist or school counselor that encouraged them in the idea that they might be transgender,” she said.

  It was “obvious and disturbing” that mental health professionals had left children “worse off or introduced a new problem,” she said.

  Since too much therapy can increase anxiety and depression, “it can introduce new symptoms, like the idea that you can have gender dysphoria,” she said.

  Ms. Shrier interviewed Arthur Barsky, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and world expert on illness anxiety disorder, somatic symptom disorder, or what used to be called call hypochondriasis—the condition afflicting hypochondriacs.

  Mr. Barsky, she said, told her hypochondriasis isn’t about people imagining pain, but rather hyperfocusing on the normal pains we all feel.

  “If you make that an organizing principle of your life, the pain will magnify,” she said. “That’s what these kids are doing to their emotional lives.”

  Today’s children, many who are leading unhealthy lifestyles, think the solution must be diagnosis, therapy, or medication, but too much therapy has led them to every kind of diagnosis, including gender dysphoria, Ms. Shrier said.

  Parents ‘Terrified’

  ‘Helicopter moms,’ the term for overprotective parents who hover over their children fearing they will be traumatized at school or away from home, have given rise to a new generation of parents who are even more afraid, according to Ms. Shrier.

  “They’re frantic,” she said. “It’s much worse than helicoptering. It’s surveillance parenting.”

  These parents “are actually tracking their kids with an app on their phones,” and calling teachers demanding their children not be seated next to students who might hurt their feelings, she said.

  “They’re calling coaches. They’re calling bosses,” she said.

  And they’re convinced they must protect their child from being “called a bad name at elementary school” because if they don’t the trauma will devastate them, she said.

  “They can never look away,” she said. “They’re terrified of emotional injury. They’re terrified of bullying.”

  ‘Surveillance Parenting’

  While generations of older Americans, including conservative opinion hosts, have mocked the rising generation, often calling them “snowflakes” who need “safe spaces” and “therapy dogs” so they don’t melt over comments they find offensive, Ms. Shrier says the problem runs much deeper than thin-skinned youth.

  “It’s worse than that,” she said. “Kids are not able to deal with normal problems in adult life because they’re genuinely believing themselves sick.”

  American society has been immersed in trauma and therapy culture for more than a generation, and its effects are “profound,” she said.

  “Now kids don’t say ‘I’m shy,’ they say ‘I have social phobia.’ They don’t say ‘I’m worried,’ they say ‘I have anxiety.’ They don’t say ‘I feel sad,’ they have depression,” she said. “That is proof that they were swimming in the language of psychopathology.”

  These parents bought into the notion that preventive therapy was an innocuous intervention, “but it’s not,” she said.

  “It’s false. It’s never been true, but they believed that,” Ms. Shrier said. “Where did they get that idea? They’d all been teased, they’d all been neglected, they’d all had their hearts broken, so why did they become convinced in one generation that their children couldn’t survive that?”

  The answer: “Because the experts told them.”

  This parental generation trusted the mental health experts and believed the “trauma narrative” they were selling, she said. Some became “obsessed” with normal problems children face at school because they grew up to think everybody can use therapy like “a mental tune-up,” even though there is a body of research called iatrogenesis “when a healer introduces a harm.”

  Most parents weren’t aware of the negative side effects therapy can cause, especially for children who don’t need it, Ms. Shrier said.

  Preventive Mental Health

  Some of this therapeutic culture stems from rising divorce rates over the last few decades.

  “A lot of us went to therapy as adults and we thought that really helped, and we assumed it would be the same for a kid,” she said. “It’s not.”

  Mental health experts—the American School Counseling Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Psychological Association—that had nothing to say as children headed into the second academic year of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the lockdowns were “the most obvious detriment to kids’ mental health,” she said, “now present themselves as the cure.”

  These mental health experts behave more like groups that want to enrich themselves than people who are “actually trying” to help the mental health of children, she said.

  “Now, if you need therapy, if you have a disorder, if you have a real problem, it’s worth the risk. It’s when you don’t have a problem, that you only stand to face the risk because you don’t stand to benefit,” she said. “So, I’m not against treatment. What I’m against is what they call ‘preventive mental health,’ which has no proven track record of helping anybody. And, by the way, of course it can’t. It’s treating people who don’t have a problem.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 21:40

• Which US College Major Is The Worst For Finding A Job?
  Which US College Major Is The Worst For Finding A Job?

  Finding a job can often be a Sisyphean task in this rapidly changing modern economy. Highly sought after skills come and go, following the greater tides of technology change, marketplace behavior, and shifting consumer patterns.

  After all, take a look at what’s happening in the tech world.

  Education plays an important role in this job hunting business of course. And some skill sets are losing their sheen, with their practitioners having a harder time than others in securing gainful employment.

  But which ones are the worst right now?

  We visualize the top 10 U.S. college majors, ranked by their unemployment rate, including their underemployment rate for additional context. These figures are of recent college graduates (those aged 22–27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher) and are sourced from the New York Federal Reserve, current up to February 2024.

  

  ℹ️ Underemployment is when workers are working less than full-time or in insufficient jobs for their training.

  Ranked: U.S. Majors with the Highest Unemployment Rates

  Heading the first three spots on this list are all the majors with “art” in their name.

  Nearly 8% of recent Art History, Liberal Arts, and Fine Arts graduates are unemployed, with more than 50% of them underemployed.

  

  At fourth place, 7.8% of recent Aerospace Engineering majors have not found a job—a surprising statistic since engineering is regarded as one of the more stable majors to study.

  In fact from same data source, Industrial and Mechanical engineers have some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

  However, aerospace engineering jobs tend to be clustered around the big companies in an otherwise small industry, with additional requirements for security clearances. Tellingly, the underemployment rate for aerospace engineering graduates is less than 20%, which is the best out of this list.

  At fifth, sixth, and seventh place are History (7.5%), English (6.6%), and Mass Media (6.3%) of which the former two have also seen a rapid decline in undergraduates in the last decade.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 21:20

• Scientists Uncover Mechanism Viruses Use To Cause Cancer
  Scientists Uncover Mechanism Viruses Use To Cause Cancer

  Authored by Emma Suttie via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Viral infections are thought to be a central cause of between 10 to 20 percent of cancers worldwide, representing a significant portion of the global cancer burden.

  

  A recent discovery may further our understanding of how viruses cause cancer.

  Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic uncovered one of the mechanisms that a type of virus called Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) uses to induce cancer.

  The study, published last month in Nature Communications, found that the KSHV virus activated a specific pathway responsible for cell metabolism and the way cells grow and multiply. Using current U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved breast cancer drugs, they were able to reduce the replication of the virus, stop the progression of the lymphoma, and shrink existing tumors in preclinical models.

  Jun Zhao, of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Research and Innovation Center, who holds a doctorate in genetic, molecular, and cellular biology is the study’s lead author.

  “Our findings have significant implications: viruses cause between 10% to 20% of cancers worldwide, a number that is constantly increasing as new discoveries are made. Treating virus-induced cancers with standard cancer therapies can help shrink tumors that are already there, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem of the virus,” Mr. Zhao explained in a news release. “Understanding how pathogens transform a healthy cell into a cancer cell uncovers exploitable vulnerabilities and allows us to make and repurpose existing drugs that can effectively treat virus-associated malignancies.”

  Kaposi Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus

  Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, also known as human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8), is “A type of virus that causes Kaposi sarcoma (a rare cancer in which lesions grow in the skin, lymph nodes, lining of the mouth, nose, and throat, and other tissues of the body). Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus also causes certain types of lymphoma (cancer that begins in cells of the immune system),” according to The National Cancer Institute.

  According to the news release, Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus is similar to other herpesviruses in that it is often asymptomatic and stays in the body laying dormant after primary infection. However, when the immune system becomes weakened or compromised, as it does in many elderly people, transplant recipients, or those with HIV or AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), the virus can reactivate. In these high-risk immunocompromised groups, the reactivated virus “can trigger aggressive cancers.”

  Cancer cells replicate quickly and reprogram the body’s metabolism to help them grow and spread. Most viruses don’t produce their own energy or the molecules they need and therefore hijack the body’s cells to do the work for them. However, the researchers found that the KSHV virus assumes control of two host proteins (CDK6 and CAD) which causes the virus to replicate more quickly and the cells to multiply and spread out of control.

  The news release also states that KSHV-induced cancers are “fast-acting, aggressive and difficult to treat,” and that an estimated 10 percent of people in North America and Northern Europe, and 50 percent of people in Africa have KSHV, although the numbers are thought to be much higher because the virus can present without symptoms and often goes undiagnosed.

  A University of Pittsburgh article about KSHV writes, “It is highly likely that over 95% of persons who are healthy and infected with KSHV do not have symptoms and never will,” and that problems develop once a person’s immune system becomes compromised.

  Viruses and Cancer

  In addition to KSHV, several other viruses are known to cause human cancers. According to the American Cancer Society, the following viruses can cause cancer in humans:

  • Human papillomaviruses
  • Epstein-Barr virus
  • Hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus
  • Human immunodeficiency virus
  • Human T-lymphotropic virus-1
  • Merkel cell polyomavirus

  The American Society of Microbiology states that “Viruses can lead to cancer by associating with host proteins, proliferating when the human immune system is weakened, and hijacking proliferating human cells. Compared to other viruses, human tumor viruses are unusual because they infect, but do not kill, their host cells.” This process allows the human tumor viruses to initiate ongoing infections.

  The research team discovered that the combination of Palbociclib—a drug that is FDA-approved to treat breast cancer and works by blocking CDK6—and a compound that blocks CAD (the two host proteins that are hijacked by the virus) caused a substantial reduction in tumor size and improvements in cancer survival rates in preclinical models. According to the news release, “Most tumors virtually disappeared after about a month of treatment, and remaining tumors shrank around 80%. Survival increased to 100% for selected lymphoma cell lines.”

  Future Impact

  The findings could lead to new options for the treatment of KSHV-associated cancers, which include Kaposi’s sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma, and HHV8-associated multicentric Castleman disease. They could also potentially extend beyond KSHV-associated cancers to other viruses that cause cancer using the same or similar mechanisms.

  As for what the findings mean for the future, Mr. Zhao says, “Cellular metabolism could be hijacked by both viruses and cancers for pathogenesis. By investigating these metabolic rewiring mechanisms, we aim to find the Achilles’ heel of cancer-causing viruses and non-viral cancers. I’m excited to see what the future of this work holds.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 21:00

• La Niña Forecasted To Fuel Explosive Atlantic Hurricane Season 
  La Niña Forecasted To Fuel Explosive Atlantic Hurricane Season 

  Hurricane season doesn’t start until June 1st—or about two months from today, April 1st. Weather forecasters have already warned that the Atlantic Hurricane season could be super active, and that’s a major problem for anyone trying to plan a vacation in the Bahamas later this year or operators of offshore oil/gas wells across the Gulf of Mexico. 

  “The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is forecast to feature well above the historical average number of tropical storms, hurricanes, major hurricanes and direct US impacts,” AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Forecaster Alex DaSilva said.

  DaSilva explained: “Sea-surface temperatures are well above historical average across much of the Atlantic basin, especially across the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and the Main Development Region [for hurricanes].” 

  Besides the very warm Atlantic Ocean water temperatures adding fuel to the fire, the development of La Niña (read: “The Coming Collapse Of El Nino And Flip To La Nina”) in the Pacific results in less disruptive winds, known as wind shear, over most of the Atlantic basin, which means tropical systems will form more easily. 

  

  All three Atlantic hurricane seasons, 2020, 2021, and 2023, La Niña was present and featured well above the 30-year historical average of 14 named storms. 

  DaSilva forecasts 20-25 named storms across the Atlantic basin in 2024, including 8-12 hurricanes. He expects four to seven major hurricanes and four to six storms to land on the Gulf and East Coast. 

  

  And, of course, corporate media will blame fossil-fuel-caused climate change for an active hurricane season while Gen-Z climate buffoon Greta instills more climate anxieties into her hopeless young followers. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 20:40

• California's Deficit Is $222 Billion And The State Is $1.6 Trillion In Debt
  California’s Deficit Is $222 Billion And The State Is $1.6 Trillion In Debt

  By Mike Shedlock of MishTalk

  Governor Gavin Newsom bragged of a surplus, but California is seriously underwater. The next recession will hit the state extremely hard.

  

  Golden State Budget Fantasy

  The City Journal founder Ed Ring comments on the Golden State Budget Fantasy

  While finalizing the upcoming fiscal year’s state budget back in May 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom boasted of an extraordinary projected surplus: $97 billion. The governor immediately collaborated with an enthusiastic state legislature to spend it all. Of course, new spending on new programs and benefits tends to become permanent.

  This has happened repeatedly in California. Between fiscal year 2012–13 and fiscal year 2022–23 (the year with the projected $97 billion surplus), per capita general-fund spending doubled, from just over $3,000 per resident to just under $6,000. (All figures are in 2022 inflation-adjusted dollars.)

  The State Office of Legislative Analyst’s latest report projects a $73 billion dollar deficit for the next fiscal year. It won’t be easy to paper over this debt, but the state may use its opaque accounting system to hide the ball.

  California’s general-fund budgets are reported on a cash basis. The state’s balance sheet, however, uses “accrual-based accounting.” Without getting too far into the weeds, this is an apples v. oranges situation. Instead of the algebraic perfection of private-sector income statements, balance sheets, and cash flows, government accounting provides no easy way to reconcile what you see on the budget.

  Some watchdogs, however, have succeeded in cracking the code. John Moorlach, one of the only certified public accountants to serve in the California State Senate, just published a review of the state’s fiscal health, focusing on the balance sheet. According to Moorlach, California’s balance sheet is in trouble.

  Moorlach declared in a March California Insider interview that the state “now has the largest unrestricted net deficit in the US: $222 Billion.” In plain English, Moorlach is saying that California’s state government accounts have liabilities that exceed assets by $222 billion. No matter how creative Newsom and his financial wizards may be, someday that money will have to be paid.

  A remedy that California has turned to over the years and will undoubtedly turn to now is to accumulate additional long-term debt. Emulating the federal government, but lacking its dollar-printing ability, California’s state and local governments and agencies have racked up over a trillion dollars in debt, primarily in bonds and unfunded pension liabilities. These liabilities, too, must be paid. Since that’s all but impossible, the liabilities must be serviced with payments that, just as at the federal level, will eat up more and more of the operating budgets.

  How Much Is California in Debt?

  The above link says over a trillion. That’s being very generous to California. Click on it to discover … California State and Local Liabilities exceed $1.6 Trillion.

  California’s total state and local government debt now stands at almost $1.6 trillion, or about half the state’s GDP.

  That isn’t an alarming ratio when compared to the national debt, which has now soared to 128 percent of U.S. GDP with no end in sight. But Californians carry this $1.6 trillion state and local debt ($40,000 per capita) in addition to their share of the national debt (about $90,000 per capita).

  That article was from February of 2022. I suspect the liabilities are now close to $2 trillion.

  Cost of Running a McDonalds Jumps $250,000 in CA

  On February 4, I noted the Cost of Running a McDonalds Jumps $250,000 in CA Due to Minimum Wage Hikes.

  A blowback is underway.

  California Restaurants Cut Jobs

  On March 26, I commented California Restaurants Cut Jobs as Fast-Food Wages Set to Rise

  Proposition 103 Backfires

  Citing wildfire risk, State Farm will not renew policies on 30,000 homes and 42,000 business in California.

  

  Also on March 26, I commented Proposition 103 Backfires, State Farm to Cancel 72,000 California Policies

  Blame the state, not insurers.

  Congratulations to NY, IL, LA, and CA for Losing the Most Population

  

  People in California, increasingly getting sick of the state’s progressive madness, are voting with their feet.

  For discussion, please see Congratulations to NY, IL, LA, and CA for Losing the Most Population

  Absolute Basis Losers

  • New York: -631,104

  • California: -573,019

  • Illinois: -263,780

  California Leads the Nation in Unemployment

  The BLS metro shows unemployment rates were up in 218 of 389 metro areas. Nonfarm employment only rose in 59 areas.

  

  On March 15, I noted Unemployment Rates Rose in 218 of the 389 Metropolitan Areas

  Unsurprisingly, California has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 5.7 percent vs. 4.1 percent nationally.

  A Booming Economy?

  California has massive problems although the stock market is at a record high and the economy is allegedly booming. The next recession will hit California exceptionally hard, and it’s not too far off. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 20:20

• Leaked Cell Phone Location Data Reveals 200 Mystery Guests On Epstein's "Pedo Island"
  Leaked Cell Phone Location Data Reveals 200 Mystery Guests On Epstein’s “Pedo Island”

  Data from nearly 200 mobile devices reveal the exact path taken by visitors to Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious ‘pedo island,’ which was tracked to 80 cities around the world spanning 26 states or territories.

  

  The data, obtained by Wired, came from recently bankrupt company Near Intelligence, which allegedly traced the phones which went to and from Little Saint James island, where Epstein allegedly ran an underage sex trafficking network.

  

  Near Intelligence, which rebranded itself Azira amid an internal fraud scandal and other controversies, mapped out more than 11,000 coordinates from 166 locations. Some of the locations point to gated communities in Michigan, Florida, as well as homes in Martha’s Vineyard and Nantuckett and a nightclub in Miami, according to the report.

  The coordinates that Near Intelligence collected and left exposed online pinpoint locations to within a few centimeters of space. Visitors were tracked as they moved from the Ritz-Carlton on neighboring St. Thomas Island, for instance, to a specific dock at the American Yacht Harbor—a marina once co-owned by Epstein that hosts an “impressive array” of pleasure boats and mega-yachts. The data pinpointed their movements as they were transported to Epstein’s dock on Little St. James, revealing the exact routes taken to the island. -Wired

  The tracking data, which dates back as early as July 2016, also includes routes taken inside Epstein’s ‘waterfront temple’ to toe beaches, pools and cabanas located on the 71-acre island. The surveillance data ends on July 6, 2019 – the day Epstein was arrested (for the second time).

  Of course, the report excludes “any precise location data that could be used to identify properties or individuals, to protect the privacy of anyone uninvolved in Epstein’s crimes,” however Wired suggests they document “the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals seemingly undeterred by Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender.”

  

  The data also tracks people to Epstein’s 8,000-acre New Mexico ranch as well as his waterfront mansion on El Brillo Way in Palm Beach, where Epstein was accused of trafficking and sexually abusing numerous “minor girls” as part of his scheme.

  As Wired also reports, “Near’s data is notably missing any locations in Europe, where citizens are safeguarded by comprehensive privacy laws.”

  Several ad exchanges, according to The Wall Street Journal, have reportedly terminated arrangements with Near, claiming that its use of their data violated the exchanges’ terms of service.

  Officially, this data is intended to be used by companies hoping to determine where potential customers work and reside. But in October 2023, the Journal revealed that Near had once provided data to the US military via a maze of obscure marketing companies, cutouts, and conduits to defense contractors. Bankruptcy records reviewed by WIRED show that in April 2023, Near Intelligence signed a yearlong contract with another firm called nContext, a subsidiary of the defense contractor Sierra Nevada. -Wired

  “The pervasive surveillance machine that has been developed for digital advertising now enables other uses completely unrelated to marketing, including government mass surveillance,” according to Vienna-based researcher Wolfie Christl of Cracked Labs.

  The disgraced financier was mysteriously found dead in his prison cell while awaiting trial for sexually abusing and trafficking young women and girls for years along with his partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell.

  

  Near Intelligence filed for bankruptcy in December amid liabilities of around $100 million, less than 12 months after being listed by Nasdaq. An independent investigation commissioned by the board concluded that multiple executives engaged in a years-long “concealed scheme” by which they allegedly cheated the company out of tens of millions of dollars. One of said executives has filed a claim against the company alleging defamation.

  Since the BK was filed, the company ‘quietly resumed operations,’ rebranding itself as newly incorporated Azira.

   

   

   

   

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  A post shared by WIRED (@wired)

  //www.instagram.com/embed.js

  In February, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) urged federal regulators to investigate Near Intelligence over allegations by the Wall Street Journal that its data had been used by a third-party to geofence “sensitive locations,” which included roughly 600 reproductive clinics at the behest of a conservative group.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 20:00

• Tackling The Difficult But Urgent Task Of Depolarizing America
  Tackling The Difficult But Urgent Task Of Depolarizing America

  Authored by Adeline Von Drehle via RealClear Politics,

  The North Hall of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Ridgefield, Connecticut, acts in 2024 much like the town of Gettysburg acted in 1863: as a space to handle our differences as citizens of the United States.

  

  Braver Angels is one of several grassroots organizations to crop up over the past few years that places focus on the depolarization of Americans. They host debates – like the one at St. Stephen’s – where people on different sides of the political aisle can come and respectfully argue with one another under the watchful eye of a moderator. Their volunteers lead workshops, like “Skills for Disagreeing Better,” in which attendees are taught how to navigate a conversation with a political opposite. Members can attend weekly lunches and TED-esque speeches.

  “We are not trying to make everyone a moderate,” said Jessie Mannisto, Braver Angels’ director of debates. “We want to take the emotion out of politics – what we call affective polarization – while we address the difficult questions that are facing us as a society so we can function as a single country.”

  Affective polarization refers to the phenomenon where one’s feelings toward members of their own political party trend positive, while their feelings toward the opposing party become increasingly negative. Readers will be deeply familiar with the sensation, even if they’ve never heard its name before.

  It is affective polarization that leads a conservative voter to think of their liberal counterpart as a morally corrupt person, and the liberal to return the favor by slinging insults ending in “-ist” and “-phobic.” On a personal level, it can dissolve friendships and family bonds.

  While it can be unreliable to gauge how divided a society is by looking at numbers alone, polling shows a historically polarized nation.

  The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions doubled in two decades from 10% to 21%, according to Pew Research Center. In 1965, about 65% of married couples had the same party registration. Today, the figure is greater than 85%. Republicans and Democrats were asked by political scientists Lilliana Mason if they agree that members of the other party “lack the traits to be considered fully human – they behave like animals,” and about 30% in both parties agreed.

  If numbers aren’t your thing, some anecdotal evidence ought to bolster claims of a deep American divide.

  There have been three impeachment inquiries and two impeachment trials in seven years. News juggernauts like MSNBC and Fox have been written off by one side or another as completely biased. An estimated 30% of Americans believe Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate, and about 2,000 of those people felt so strongly about this fact that they stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., in attempt to stall democratic processes.

  This isn’t the most divided time in American history, though people like to say it is. Your neighbors probably aren’t ready to take up arms against you. But this growing problem feels important enough to some that they would seek out an organization like Braver Angels.

  One woman, Rachel (who preferred her last name be left out), decided to search for a depolarizing organization when she noticed she was completely surrounded by like-minded people in a world she described as “fully liberal.” She found it difficult to express her views to her parents, who live in a conservative Illinois town.

  “I would like a society where people with disagreeing viewpoints talk to each other and get to know each other,” said Rachel. “It’s so easy to demonize each other when you don’t know each other.”

  The hope is that by getting people together who disagree with one another and facilitating “repair in citizen-to-citizen relationships,” as the Braver Angels website puts it, there will be less animosity between political parties. 

  We might be able to take an example from a historical social experiment in which the psychologist Muzafer Sherif divided Boy Scouts into two camps. At the end of one week, they learned there was another group at the far end of the campsite. Each group was irrationally disgusted with the other, and the ice only thawed when they were forced to problem-solve together.

  This is kind of like what Braver Angels and organizations like it are attempting to do with the American public. By hosting events where a passionate liberal can have a calm, respectful, face-to-face conversation with their conservative counterpart, volunteers hope to mend our fraying republic.

  “One powerful thing we do is dissolving stereotypes,” said Justin Conner, a Braver Angels workshop facilitator. “Asking yourself why someone thinks differently from you can stimulate self-awareness as the listener. Then ask, where do I see truth and value in what they’re saying and where are some of my ideas flexible?”

  It is incredibly easy to dismiss a post on X or leave a nasty comment on someone’s Facebook page. It is much harder to demonize a person you have spent one or two hours having a civil conversation with, whose eyes have met your own. This is the goal of a depolarization organization.

  “It really is about creating compassion for different perspectives, and depolarization results from that,” said Conner. “Instead of trying to attack the other side, we want to have a much more healthy and robust debate of ideas, which is in many ways the foundation of the country.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 19:40

• Just 38% Of Voters Think Biden Lives Through 2nd Term: Poll
  Just 38% Of Voters Think Biden Lives Through 2nd Term: Poll

  Just 38% of voters think President Ron Burgundy Joe Biden would survive a second term in office, according to a new poll by the Daily Mail and J.L. Partners.

  

  Biden – who last month was essentially found too old and feeble to prosecute by the special counsel’s office investigating his mishandling of classified information, would be 86 at the end of a second term.

  If he doesn’t make it, Kamala Harris would become the left’s new vessel to advance policies with the stroke of a pen. To that end, 36% of those polled believe that Harris will be president by the end of the term, while 29% say they “don’t know” (because they don’t understand how succession works?).

  

  When it comes to Trump, 54% are confident that he would be alive after another term in office, with 21% ‘not confident.’

  

  “Voters think Biden is too old, and they are not changing their mind,” said J.L. Partners co-founder James Johnson.

  “The difficulty for Biden is that views of him are not shaped through events such as his State of the Union address—which people who had seen it felt was fiery—but through consumption of the hundreds of viral social media clips of Biden stumbling and slurring.”

  “That solid perception that he is too old feeds through to a sense he is too weak, and it is a major problem for him going into November,” Johnson continued. “Frankly, they do not think he is up to the job—and that makes his re-election a much harder task.“

  As Modernity.news notes:

  A vote for Biden in November could be a vote for this as president…

  SUPERCUT!@VP Kamala Harris, failed philosopher pic.twitter.com/dPDiCoybOj

  — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 25, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 19:20

• The Implications Of Fatal Debt? Expect More Lies
  The Implications Of Fatal Debt? Expect More Lies

  Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz/gold,

  If you want to understand the direction of debt, rates, the USD, inflation, risk asset markets, gold and the US endgame, it might be better not to listen to the experts.

  

  In fact, Johny Cash is a far better source…

  Five Feet High & Rising

  In a classic 1959 tune by Johny Cash, the singer asks: “How high’s the water mama?”

  This question is then answered by a riff which chants, “she said it’s two feet high and risin.’”

  And with each subsequent refrain, the water level goes to three feet, four feet and then five feet, “high and risin’.”

  In short: An obvious flood.

  And when it comes to debt in the land of the world reserve currency, Johny Cash may have something to teach Jerome Powell and the other DC children drowning the US (and its debt-soaked Dollar) into a slow but steady debt flood.

  Boring?

  I’ve often said that good journalism, like honest economics, is boring.

  One has to understand “hard” indicators like bond yields (which move inversely to bond price) and the high-school level basics of supply and demand forces.

  But as I’ve also said countless times, and will say countless times more: The bond market is THE thing, because bonds are all about DEBT.

  If you understand bonds, and in particular, the Fed’s hidden (real) mandate to save Uncle Sam’s sovereign IOU’s from sinking in price, then you will be able to easily foresee (rather than date predict) the future of risk assets, gold, BTC, the USD and yes, inflation.

  The complex truly is that simple.

  How High’s the Debt Mama? 120% and Risin’

  And if you turn to Johny Cash and ask “How high’s the debt level mama?” well… the blunt answer informs just about everything you need to know.

  So, let’s keep it simple.

  Simple, Not Boring

  Debt is WHERE it all begins, and it tells you exactly HOW the American song ends.

  And just how high is the water (debt) mama?

  Ten years ago, US public debt was $17T “and risin’.”

  Today it’s $34.5T “and risin’.”

  America’s debt to GDP is 120%, its deficit to GDP is around 6%, and every 100 days we add another $1T in borrowing to our shameless bar tab of debt addiction masquerading as capitalism.

  

  Even our own Congressional Budget Office will confess that unless we issue more debt (and print more debased money to monetize it), our Medicare and social security piggy bank will be empty by 2030.

  Meanwhile, the USA is staring down the barrel of $212T in unfunded liabilities yet only $190T in assets.

  In other words, and based on objective math, America literally has the balance sheet of a banana republic.

  No Crisis?

  Apologists (i.e., truth and math-challenged politicos), however, will tell you there is no crisis, even as the water levels rise past our closed eyes.

  The clever ones will remind us that America’s USD comprises 85% of FX transactions, the vast bulk (80%) of international trade settlements, and is in constant “milk-shake” demand from the Eurodollar, derivative and SWIFT payment systems.

  In other words, the Dollar is gonna be just fine.

  Hmmm…

  Facts vs. “Just Fine”

  As warned from day-1 of the myopic (and suicidal) sanctions against Putin in which the US weaponized the world reserve currency, those days of a “just fine” USD simply ended.

  Not all at once, but slow and steady, like a flood’s water line…

  In just 2 years, we’ve seen undeniable signs of de-dollarization from the BRICS+ nations and an extraordinarily telling shift in the petrodollar dynamics (20% of 2023 global oil sold outside the USD), which would have been otherwise unimaginable in the pre-sanction era.

  But, if you remain convinced that America and its reserve currency have magical immunity from the de-dollarization’s slow drip greenback demise, let’s get back to the oh-so boring but oh-so honest cries of the US Treasury market.

  Why?

  Again. Because the bond market is everything.

  As important, the bond market has everything to do with debt, and current US debt is drowning the nation and diluting the USD, one slow trillion at a time.

  Sound sensational?

  Pounding A Fact-Based Fist

  For years, I have pounded my fist reminding readers and viewers that debt destroys nations and currencies. Every time, and without exception.

  And for years I have pounded my fist saying the Powell’s “war on inflation” was a ruse, as every debt-soaked nation needs to debase its currency to inflate away debt.

  And from day-1 of Powell’s claim (lie) that inflation was “transitory,” I’ve been calling his bluff. 

  For years, I’ve argued that the Fed would simply lie about inflation (i.e., grossly under-report it) in order to make it appear statistically lower than what we actually knew/felt it to be.

  Even Larry Summers, who is the classic arsonist (from his repeal of Glass-Steagall to deregulating the derivatives markets) now playing at fireman, has publicly stated that the actual US CPI scale, using pre-1983 housing methods, peaked last year at 18%, not the official 3.7% range…

  If we then tack on a US debt/GDP ratio that is 30% higher today than in 2009, we mathematically see that despite Powell’s repressive “higher-for-longer” rate polices, we’ve made zero dent in our debt—instead, we’ve increased it.

  In other words, our war against inflation is a loss; and our debts have increased.

  And in the last couple of years, I’ve been pounding my fist that Powell would pivot from rising rates, to pausing rate cuts to eventually cutting rates followed in turn by outright money printing (or rather mouse-clicking Dollars) to “pay” Uncle Sam’s debt at the expense of our currency via what Luke Gromen calls “super QE.”

  And all modesty aside, I think I/we have been right…

  Right or Wrong?

  Already, and as of last week, Powell has openly projected rate cuts in 2024, and they are likely to come by or near September.

  We’ll see.

  For now, just the promise (words) of rate cuts have been enough to send Pavlovian (Fed-dependent) markets to all-time-highs despite a real economy already under water.

  And the subsequent decline in the Market Option Volatility Estimate (“MOVE” Index) was a neon-flashing sign that the market is getting ready for a new flood of dollar-diluting liquidity…

  

  Where’s the QE, Matt?

  But what about my forewarned QE?

  What about that ultimate moment when Powell admits full defeat in his so-called “war” on inflation (while quietly seeking inflation) and openly does what many off us (nod again to Luke Gromen et al) already know he will do, that is: Debase the currency to “save” a rigged-to-fail (i.e., debt-based) USA?

  Clearly, it seems, I/we have been wrong about that QE, no?

  Well…Not so fast.

  Coming Through the Back Door

  In fact, Powell, along with his former Fed colleague-turned-mind-numbing Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, have been doing un-noticed back-door QE at staggering levels too complex (or obvious) for the mental midgets in our so-called main stream media to even notice.

  Shocker? Hardly…

  Facts Are Stubborn Things

  The fact is that five times in the last four years, DC has been doing QE by just another name (what I call “backdoor QE”) to avoid the embarrassment of direct QE.

  Notwithstanding the “not-QE” (which really was QE) in 2019 when the Fed bailed out a cash-dry repo market (which, by design, no one understood), the DC magicians have been doing trillions worth of QE-like liquidity measures without having to call it, well QE…

  That is, the Fed and Treasury Dept. have been pulling liquidity out of the drying Treasury General Account, the now retired “BTFP” measures, and the intentionally confusing reverse repo markets.

  More recently (and equally as well intentionally confusing to the masses), the Fed is quietly on the verge of allowing the Fed banks to use unlimited leverage to buy unlimited amounts of USTs off the Fed’s balance sheet via the removal of what the fancy lads call “Supplementary Reserve Ratios.”

  This latest trick, by the way, is just off-balance sheet QE, and yet another symptom of the big banks becoming branch offices of the Fed, as our already centralized America becomes even more grotesquely, well…centralized, which is a classic symptom of a desperate and debt-soaked regime.

  But just in case none of the foregoing tricks of backdoor QE have convinced you of what basically amounts to just QE, we can get our clearest signals from—you guessed it: THE BOND MARKET.

  That is, one of the most obvious examples of “backdoor QE” is the Treasury Department’s open yet ignored trick of issuing most of its recent debt from the short duration end of the yield curve.

  What The T-Bills Are Saying

  By issuing more short-term IOUs in the form of T-Bills, this takes the supply-push inflation pressure off the openly unloved 10Y USTs, whose price declines (and subsequent as well as fatally unpayable yield/rate spikes) not only crushed regional banks, but Uncle Sam’s wallet as well.

  OK. Yield curves and duration implications may sound, well… boring, but stick with me because this really, really matters.

  The extreme levels of T-Bill issuance (as opposed to 10Y IOUs) has immense implications and is a flashing neon sign that the US is not heading into an economic crisis, but is in fact, ALREADY in a crisis.

  Today, T-Bill issuance is at a two-decade high, and comprises greater than 85% of all US Treasury issuance.

  This short-end issuance is far more like QE, i.e. simple money printing—which, we remind you, is highly inflationary/reflationary.

  Hard to believe? See for yourself:

  

  The last time we saw such QE-like desperation from the T-Bill side of the yield curve was during the Great Financial Crisis and the COVID crisis.

  No Crisis? Huh?

  But according to our so-called “leaders,” we are not at all in a crisis today. As they keep reminding us, we are at “full employment” (eh-hmmm) and nominal GDP is growing at 6%.

  Then again, nominal GDP “growing” on the back of over $23T in UST issuance (bonds, notes and bills) is simply debt-driven “growth,” and debt-driven growth is not growth, it’s just debt.

  

  In short, and as Luke Gromen concluded far better than I: “You know the debt crisis is real when the US resorts to short-term debt issuance.”

  Summing Up

  Whenever one is dealing with truth-challenged profiles like the Fed, Treasury Dept or White House, it is far better/simpler to watch what they do rather than what they say, as the difference is approximately 180 degrees…

  All of the evidence above (from debt levels, de-dollarization trends, petrodollar shifts, backdoor QE measures and T-Bill over-issuance) screams of an open and obvious debt crisis which ALWAYS indicates a consequent currency crisis.

  Always.

  And as I have said for years, including a public discussion with Brent Johnson, the US can’t afford a strong USD because its debt levels require a weaker, inflated USD, regardless of its “relative”/DXY “strength.”

  The string cite of evidence above (and beyond just rate cuts) is simply a cleverly veiled way of the Fed and Treasury telling us they want (need) a much weaker USD to save their necks at the expense of the dollar in your portfolio, checking account or wallet.

  Gold, of course, is sniffing this out.

  So are the stock markets and BTC.

  So are the global central banks, who are stacking gold and dumping USTs at record levels.

  The COMEX and London exchanges are also sniffing this out, as physical gold and silver is going from churn motions to actual physical delivery at record levels.

  Meanwhile, even the BIS has made gold a Tier-1 asset.

  Just saying…

  The empirical (rather than “sensational”) evidence of an unloved UST and distrusted (debased and weaponized) USD is there for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

  Gold has hit all-time-highs (and will go much, much higher) simply because the USD is going much, much lower.

  But, of course, no one in DC will say the quiet part out loud.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 19:00

• Canada Marks Most Rapid Population Growth In 66 Years
  Canada Marks Most Rapid Population Growth In 66 Years

  Thanks to an influx of immigrants in 2023, Canada has experienced its most rapid population growth in six decades, according to True North.

  

  As of January 1, 2024, the nation’s population reached a staggering 40,769,890, marking a 3.2% increase from the previous year, the highest annual growth reported since 1957. Canada’s real-time population clock shows that the country’s population has now broken 41 million, just months after breaking the 40 million threshold.

  In Q4, 2023 alone, Canada’s population increased by 241,494 people between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31.

  “In 2023, the vast majority (97.6%) of Canada’s population growth came from international migration (both permanent and temporary immigration), and the remaining portion (2.4%) came from natural increase,” reads a report published last week by Statistics Canada.

  According to the report, temporary immigration has primarily fueled the population increase – as a record 804,901 non-permanent residents, including temporary workers and international students, while 471,771 permanent migrants also arrived in alignment with targets set by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

  According to a recent report by True North’s Candice Malcolm, the number of illegal migrants has exploded tenfold since Stephen Harper was Prime Minister. She said that the total number of newcomers in Canada is approximately 2.2 million people annually.

  Amidst this rapid growth, interprovincial migration has also seen notable shifts, with Alberta recording a significant net gain, the largest seen since comparable data became available in 1972. -True North

  That said, Ontario saw an exodus of 36,197 people to other provinces, which followed a loss of 38,816 people in 2022. 

  Marc Miller, Canada’s Immigration Minister, previously said that the number of foreign workers and international students had resulted in a system that was “out of control,” and recently announced a new target to be introduced in September that would bring temporary residents from 6.2% of the population to 5% within three years.

  Senior BMO economics Robert Kavcic suggested that this reduction could bring Canada’s population growth from more than 3% to around 1%.

  “The 400,000-500,000 range is just about the sweet spot for net immigration that provides needed long-run labour supply, while also being absorbable,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 18:40

• Russia Voices Outrage As Death Toll Rises To 11 After Israeli Attack On Iran's Damascus Embassy
  Russia Voices Outrage As Death Toll Rises To 11 After Israeli Attack On Iran’s Damascus Embassy

  Update(1838ET): Monitors cited in AFP report the death toll from Monday’s Israeli air strike on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus has risen to 11. “The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Iranian embassy annex has risen to 11: eight Iranians, two Syrians and one Lebanese — all of them fighters, none of them civilians,” AFP quoted the war monitor as saying.

  Regional and international reaction came hours later, with Lebanese Hezbollah — a close ally of Iran — vowing that Israel will be “punished” for the attack. As we detailed earlier (below), several top IRGC commanders were killed in the strike at a moment a high-level military meeting was taking place.

  Russia’s Foreign Ministry reacted as follows: “We strongly condemn this attack on the Iranian consular office in Syria. We consider any attacks on diplomatic and consular facilities, the inviolability of which is guaranteed by the relevant Vienna Conventions, to be categorically unacceptable.”

  However, Russia has by and large taken a back seat when it comes to responding to Israeli attacks on Syria. Israeli aircraft typically fire on Syria from over nearby Lebanese airspace, but Syrians have increasingly wondered why Moscow doesn’t use its significant anti-air systems parked in the region to defend against such attacks on its ally the Assad government. But Russia and Israel apparently reached a status quo deal years ago, which allow for the Israeli raids as long as they are ostensibly targeting ‘Iranian assets’. 

  Among the slain in Monday’s attack was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who reportedly oversaw Quds Forces operations in Syria and Lebanon. Clearly Israeli’s intelligence capabilities are significant regarding Iranian movements and operations inside Syria, given Israel clearly knew the where and when of the top level meeting.

  

  A strike like this — against an embassy which is supposed to be ‘protected’ by international diplomatic norms upheld by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations — is somewhat unprecedented and so marks a massive escalation by Israel. 

  David Asher, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and former senior State Department official under the Trump administration had this to say in terms of what’s likely to come next:

  “This is a huge strike against Iran’s Qods Force. Expect to see Iranian missile retaliation directly against Israel. Things are moving beyond proxy war into direct conflict. Crude prices should make a decisive move higher on macro risk,” he told ZeroHedge.

  Others are currently speculating that Israel may be trying to provoke a war with Iran to get the US directly involved on its side. The Hezbollah situation along Israel’s northern border continues to be at crisis levels, given that an estimated 80,000 Israeli citizens remain evacuated from their homes. 

  Recent months have seen Israeli officials float a bold plan for a US-enforced ‘buffer zone’ which would remove Hezbollah from near the Israeli border. While the plan calls for an international peacekeeping force, those troops would essentially become an occupying force in the eyes of Hezbollah and the Iranians. But Israel likely perceives that it needs full Washington support and military backing if it were to pursue a final ‘end all’ battle with Hezbollah, which would certainly collapse all of Lebanon into chaos and crisis. Without doubt, the Netanyahu coalition government wants to see regime change in Tehran as well.

  * * *

  Update(1450ET): Tehran is vowing a “harsh” response to the Israeli attack on its embassy and consulate earlier in the day, which killed at least five to eight people, reportedly including IRGC leaders. Iran’s foreign minister slammed it as “a violation of all international obligations and conventions” while the Syrian government denounced it as a “terrorist attack”. 

  Iran’s Ambassador to Syria Hossein Akbari was not injured in the attack, which appeared to have occurred at the moment a high level meeting was taking place. Iranian state media has since confirmed the death of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the elite Quds Force of the IRGC. There are further indicators that two more top IRGC commanders may be among the slain…

  #Israel‘s strike in #Damascus today is a huge development & a major escalation.

  3 #IRGC-QF Generals:

  – Brig. Gen. Mohammed Zahedi (Commander, #Syria & #Lebanon)
  – Gen. Hossein Aminullah (Chief of General Staff, #Syria & #Lebanon)
  – Maj. Gen. Haj Rahimi (Commander, Palestine) pic.twitter.com/IiEWDYcPQk

  — Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) April 1, 2024

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

  “Tasnim reported that Zahedi’s deputy was also killed in the strike,” regional media further confirms.

  Depending on Iran’s response, this could be the start of an all-out regional war. For months now, Iranian-made ballistic missiles and drones have rained down on Israel, fired by Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and Yemen. This new brazen Israeli attack on Iran’s embassy takes things into uncharted territory, and also opens up the potential for the Iranians to target Israeli embassies abroad.

  The annex or consular building next to the embassy in Mezzeh district was flattened in the strike…

  

  * * *

  There are emerging reports and accompanying video confirmation that an Israeli airstrike destroyed part of the complex of the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital on Monday.

  Syrian state media is also reporting that Israel conducted a rare daytime strike in the vicinity of the Iranian embassy in Damascus. Video shows that the entire front of the embassy complex and drive along with a side annex building have been destroyed. 

  Watch: Airstrikes target a building near the Iranian embassy in Syria’s capital Damascus. Syrian state media says that Syrian air defenses intercepted “hostile targets” in the vicinity of the capital.#Iran #Syria

  Read more: https://t.co/OS9HjjesdS pic.twitter.com/byPNocn9t6

  — Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) April 1, 2024

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

  However, the embassy building itself is standing and appears to have not been directly struck in the attack. Regional reports say an annex of the main embassy was taken out.

  This may have been a targeted strike on a top Iranian security official, given Reuters is now reporting that the strikes killed the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria, Mohammad Reza Zahedi…

  • ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE ON DAMASCUS KILLS LEADER OF IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CORPS MOHAMMAD REZA ZAHEDI, SECURITY SOURCE TO REUTERS
  • IRAN’S ARABIC LANGUAGE AL ALAM TV SAYS IRANIAN CONSULATE BUILDING IN SYRIA HAS BEEN COMPLETELY DESTROYED

  Below is local footage showing a row of vehicles on fire in the attack aftermath:

  Did Israel miss the Iranian embassy or is this a warning?

  6/ pic.twitter.com/ySNhNLyYoq

  — Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) April 1, 2024

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

  Amid unverified early reports, a regional monitor has said the death toll is at eight killed in the strikes on the Iran embassy annex in Damascus.

  According to Israeli media, the attack occurred during a meeting of top-level officials:

  Initial reports citing Iranian media say senior IRGC official Mohammad Reza Zahedi was killed in the alleged Israeli strike. 

  The strike occurred during a meeting involving senior regional figures, adding a layer of complexity to the incident. New images released by Syrian media outlets depict the aftermath of the airstrike, revealing significant damage to the targeted building and its surroundings.

  Reuters cites Iran’s SSN news website, which alleges that the Israeli airstrike specifically targeted Iran’s consulate and ambassador’s residence in Damascus.

  Earlier on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed damage to Eilat navy base on the Red Sea, in what appeared to be an unprecedented targeted drone launch by Iran-backed Iraqi militia.

  

  Oil prices are already reacting to this increased geopolitical tension…

  

  This was a very high risk strike also given the Iranian embassy is right next door to the Canadian embassy. 

  The building that was hit is literally in the middle between the embassy of Iran and the Canadian embassy. For Israel to go for such a strike there’s possibly a senior target. pic.twitter.com/qHvr540cxF

  — Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) April 1, 2024

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

  The Mezzeh area of Damascus is also lined with restaurants, malls, and bars — and also is home to an important military airport and some key government facilities.

  There’s a lot of daily foot traffic at the Iranian embassy too, given that Damascus has long been a Shia pilgrimage spot and sees a constant influx of Iranian visitors.

  

  An Al Jazeera correspondent, Zeina Khodr, has highlighted international law and norms regarding banning aggression against countries’ sovereign diplomatic sites in the following…

  “Killing of top Iran Quds Force commander in Damascus is a major blow … but Iranian media says bldg destroyed was part of Iranian consulate – Israel hit a diplomatic mission which should enjoy immunity – Israel has crossed red lines – how will Iran react?“

  

  This now opens up the possibility that Tehran could strike back at Israel’s embassies and consulates abroad, in yet more worrying and unpredictable escalation.

  Moon of Alabama writes, “Israeli officials in embassies around the world will now be forced to limit their movements in the general public as they are the most likely targets of revenge strikes.”

  developing…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 18:38

• With 'Friends' Like Mexico's Obrador, Who Needs Enemies Like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, & The Ayatollahs?
  With ‘Friends’ Like Mexico’s Obrador, Who Needs Enemies Like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, & The Ayatollahs?

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

  In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador – who prefers to be known as AMLO for short – issued to the Biden administration blackmail demands that sounded more like existential threats.

  AMLO warned the U.S. that the current influx of some 10 million illegal aliens through the southern border will most certainly continue—unless America agrees to his ultimatums.

  One, Obrador says the U.S. must now send $20 billion in de facto bribery payments to Latin American nations, many of them corrupt and dysfunctional.

  Apparently, he thinks it is America’s fault that millions of Latin Americans are fleeing these failed states northward, not the inept and corrupt governments that create such misery.

  Two, AMLO demands amnesty for vast numbers of Mexican illegal aliens currently unlawfully residing inside the U.S.

  He apparently also thinks there is no such thing as U.S. immigration law. Or, if there is, such statutes do not apply to citizens of Mexico. Can we ask Mr. Obrador to simply grant permanent visa-free, no-questions-asked residence to any American living in a vacation complex in Mexico?

  Three, he also requires America to lift sanctions against anti-American Venezuela. That communist government currently is part of the new China/Russia/Iran strategic axis. It is sending thousands of its citizens northward to enter the U.S. illegally.

  Many of them are criminals, as the recent murder of Laken Riley by a felonious Venezuelan illegal alien attests. Dictator Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan regime recently threatened to invade and annex oil-rich Guyana, its smaller neighbor to the east. Maduro’s “security forces” have routinely murdered hundreds of political opponents. This rogue state is apparently Mexico’s newest ally.

  Four, AMLO further requires the U.S. to stop its long embargo of communist Castroite-controlled Cuba, a decades-long avowed enemy of the U.S.

  

  And what, AMLO was asked, would happen if the U.S. were to refuse Mexico’s blackmail threats?

  Obrador abruptly snapped:

  “The flow of migrants will continue” – an admission that Obrador himself has the power to stop or turn on illegal immigrant influxes into the U.S.

  Translated, that means we can expect that another 2-3 illegal aliens will leave Mexican territory to enter the U.S. unlawfully in 2024. Or if Joe Biden is attuned to the political disaster he has created by illegal immigration for his party in November, we should expect this cynical administration quietly—in the fashion on the eve of the last midterms of cancelling student loans, draining the strategic petroleum reserve, or currently slow-walking resupplies to Israel—to send cash to Obrador to limit inflows before the election.

  In his long interview, AMLO also denied that Mexico is one of the most violent countries in the world, despite currently having the ninth highest murder rate among nations. AMLO claims further that there is no corruption in America, although Mexico also ranks among the world’s most corrupt nations.

  As far as the nearly 100,000 American deaths per year attributed to Mexican cartel-produced and illegally imported fentanyl—often deliberately disguised as both illicit and prescription drugs to mask its toxicity and increase its usage—Obrador claims that the fault is solely on Americans who take the drug. He believes Mexicans simply supply the demand regardless of its legality and in such a way to ensure thousands of accidental overdoses.

  AMLO adds quite dishonestly that there is no real drug use in Mexico. Consequently, the cartels supposedly do not threaten the stability of his government. He apparently shrugs that they are an American, not Mexican, problem, despite the cartels’ annual murdering of several hundred Mexican politicians and candidates.

  Finally, under his “Mexico First” policy, AMLO warns he will not pass any law or adopt any policy that is American-inspired.

  Much of AMLO periodic tough-guy rhetoric—in the past he has bragged of the huge expatriate Mexican community and the power it now exercises over American politics—is simply the bluster of an insecure, smaller neighbor overshadowed by its northern colossus, and both mindful and resentful of an often shared troublesome history.

  In addition, Obrador is a radical socialist. He believes a nation’s prosperity is achieved through forced state, or indeed, international redistribution from the wealthier to the poorer—not by guarantees of free markets, individual freedom, consensual government, or the rule of law. Thus, Mexico’s problem is not its misuse of rich natural resources, lack of the rule of law, corrupt federal, state, and local governments, or the cartels, but simply exploitation by its northern neighbor. Obrador never asks himself why a resource-poor Japan or Switzerland is rich and a resource-rich Mexico is poor.

  Two further questions arise in response to Obrador’s unhinged hostility.

  One, why is AMLO now so emboldened to threaten the United States with even more millions of illegal aliens leaving Mexico soil to enter the U.S. unlawfully?

  And two, how will America answer such a belligerent neighbor?

  Obrador is feisty and full of anti-American venom now for a lot of reasons.

  

  One, he was easily able to transit from his country 10 million illegal immigrants into the United States. He believes that with the existing 50 million foreign-born American residents, America is rapidly becoming a country of enough Latin American ex-patriates to ensure Mexico’s influence over American policy.

  In projectionist fashion, Obrador also believes that the American melting pot is dead, replaced by the tribalist salad bowl, in which ethnic groups form large, permanent, and unassimilated blocs and vie for government money and influence against rival ethnicities.

  In such a Hobbesian U.S., Latinos, Obrador believes, will come out on top and thus greenlight Mexico’s agenda. The idea that Mexican immigrants will likely quickly assimilate, integrate, and replace their Mexican identity and allegiance with an American persona, he believes, is now passé.

  More disturbingly, AMLO assumes that Biden deliberately destroyed the U.S. border in order to welcome in the world’s poor and needy en masse. Biden, he believes, is engineering the new demographics. He has enticed a constituency that will repay de facto amnesty with fealty at the polls, and in the next census, he will thus help redefine dozens of congressional districts to favor Democrats. Thus, Obrador thinks his open-border policies synchronize with the open-border wishes of the Biden administration.

  Two, Obrador sees the U.S. decoupling from China. Billions of dollars in American overseas investment are leaving China and being rerouted to Mexico. Hundreds of new factories producing everything from cheap consumer items to cars are now appearing in Mexico entirely for U.S. export.

  Obrador assumes that without such outsourcing and offshoring to Mexico, the U.S. would suffer supply chain disruption, higher consumer prices, and shortages of vital goods—and thus be forced to return to its unhealthy dependence on China. So he believes Mexican labor in the U.S. and Mexican factories at home are indispensable to the U.S. economy, and thus he can say or do what he wishes to any president he chooses.

  Three, while Obrador was for a while scared of Trump, he has utter contempt for the bumbling Biden administration in general, and, in particular, for an enfeebled Joe Biden himself. On a recent Biden trip to Mexico, Obrador beamed as he was filmed personally propping up a shaky Biden as he descended from the stage.

  In Obrador’s view, any country that would open wide its border, welcome in 10 million foreign nationals, without legal sanction, without audit, without even processing, deserves the contempt he extends to it.

  Just as he scans the world stage and sees Biden’s humiliating exit from Afghanistan, its passive response to serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on American installations in the Middle East, and its passivity when China launched a spy balloon over the U.S., so too, like other American belligerents, Obrador feels Biden’s America is now there for the taking. Thus his emboldened threats that no Mexican president of the past has ever leveled.

  Finally, what can the U.S. do to reestablish its sovereignty and remind Mexico that its belligerency, its export of deadly fentanyl, its deliberate sandbagging of U.S. immigration law, its alliances with America’s worst enemies, and its greenlighting of the Mexican cartels’ anti-American, transborder mayhem all have existential consequences?

  So what should the next president do to restore mutual respect and cooperation between our once amicable two countries? Five easy steps.

  1. Quietly finish the wall across the entire border.

  2. Begin deporting to Mexico the ten million illegal aliens who have unlawfully entered and resided in the U.S. over the last three years. Let Mexico disperse them to their countries of origin.

  3. Tax at 10% the $60 billion in remittances that annually flow into Mexico from the U.S. Remittances are Obrador’s largest source of foreign exchange and made possible only by American state and federal governments’ subsidization of Mexican national residents, that in turn frees them to send billions back home to Mexico.

  4. Declare the cartels international terrorist organizations. Begin sanctioning all Mexican banks, corporations, and known Mexico officials that traffic and do business with the cartels.

  5. Deploy the U.S. military to the border, not merely to create deterrence and aid the border patrol, but to end all cartel entry into the United States and to stop all unauthorized cross-border intrusions by Mexican paramilitaries.

  Do all that, and paradoxically, Obrador will begin praising the U.S. and ask once again to cooperate in restoring a secure border.

  Like so many passive-aggressive bullies, Obrador respects the strong adversaries he slanders but he has utter contempt for the weak leaders he praises.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/01/2024 – 18:20

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