- Escobar: Geopolitical Chessboard Shifts Against US Empire
Escobar: Geopolitical Chessboard Shifts Against US Empire
The geopolitical chessboard is in perpetual shift – and never more than in our current incandescent juncture…
A fascinating consensus in discussions among Chinese scholars – including those part of the Asian and American diasporas – is that not only Germany/EU lost Russia, perhaps irretrievably, but China gained Russia, with an economy highly complementary to China’s own and with solid ties with the Global South/Global Majority that can benefit and aid Beijing.
Meanwhile, a smatter of Atlanticist foreign policy analysts are now busy trying to change the narrative on NATO vs. Russia, applying the rudiments of realpolitik.
The new spin is that it’s “strategic insanity” for Washington to expect to defeat Moscow, and that NATO is experiencing “donor fatigue” as the sweatshirt warmonger in Kiev “loses credibility”.
Translation: it’s NATO as a whole that is completely losing credibility, as its humiliation in the Ukraine battlefield is now painfully graphic for all the Global Majority to see.
Additionally, “donor fatigue” means losing a major war, badly. As military analyst Andrei Martyanov has relentlessly stressed, “NATO ‘planning’ is a joke. And they are envious, painfully envious and jealous.”
A credible path ahead is that Moscow will not negotiate with NATO – a mere Pentagon add-on – but offer individual European nations a security pact with Russia that would make their need to belong to NATO redundant. That would assure security for any participating nation and relieve pressure on it from Washington.
Bets could be made that the most relevant European powers might accept it, but certainly not Poland – the hyena of Europe – and the Baltic chihuahuas.
In parallel, China could offer peace treaties to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and subsequently a significant part of the US Empire of Bases might vanish.
The problem, once again, is that vassal states don’t have the authority or power to comply with any agreement ensuring peace. German businessmen, off the record, are sure that sooner or later Berlin may defy Washington and do business with the Russia-China strategic partnership because it benefits Germany.
Yet the golden rule still has not been met: if a vassal state wants to be treated as a sovereign state, the first thing to do is to shut down key branches of the Empire of Bases and expel US troops.
Iraq is trying to do it for years now, with no success. One third of Syria remains US-occupied – even as the US lost its proxy war against Damascus due to Russian intervention.
The Ukraine Project as an existential conflict
Russia has been forced to fight against a neighbor and kin that it simply can’t afford to lose; and as a nuclear and hypersonic power, it won’t.
Even if Moscow will be somewhat strategically weakened, whatever the outcome, it’s the US – in the view of Chinese scholars – that may have committed its greatest strategic blunder since the establishment of the Empire: turning the Ukraine Project into an existential conflict, and committing the entire Empire and all its vassals to a Total War against Russia.
That’s why we have no peace negotiations, and the refusal even of a cease fire; the only possible outcome devised by the Straussian neocon psychos who run US foreign policy is unconditional Russian surrender.
In the recent past, Washington could afford to lose its wars of choice against Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it simply can’t afford to lose the war on Russia. When that happens, and it’s already on the horizon, the Revolt of the Vassals will be far reaching.
It’s quite clear that from now on China and BRICS+ – with expansion starting at the summit in South Africa next month – will turbo-charge the undermining of the US dollar. With or without India.
There will be no imminent BRICS currency – as noted by some excellent points in this discussion. The scope is huge, sherpas are only in the initial debating stages, and the broad outlines have not been defined yet.
The BRICS+ approach will evolve from improved cross border settlement mechanisms – something everyone from Putin to Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina have stressed – to eventually a new currency way further down the road.
This would probably be a trade instrument rather than a sovereign currency like the euro. It will be designed to compete against the US dollar in trade, initially among BRICS+ nations, and capable of circumventing the hegemonic US dollar ecosystem.
The key question is how long the Empire’s fake economy – clinically deconstructed by Michael Hudson – can hold out in this wide spectrum geoeconomic war.
Everything is a ‘national security threat’
On the electronic technology front, the Empire has gone no holds barred to impose global economic dependency, monopolizing intellectual property rights and as Michael Hudson notes, “extracting economic rent from charging high prices for high-technology computer chips, communications, and arms production.”
In practice, not much is happening other than the prohibition for Taiwan to supply valuable chips to China, and asking TSMC to build, as soon as possible, a chip manufacturing complex in Arizona.
However, TSMC chairman Mark Liu has remarked that the plant faced a shortage of workers with the “specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility.” So the much lauded TSMC chip plant in Arizona won’t start production before 2025.
The top Empire/vassal NATO demand is that Germany and the EU must impose a Trade Iron Curtain against the Russia-China strategic partnership and their allies, thus ensuring “de-risk” trade.
Predictably, US Think Tankland has gone bonkers, with American Enterprise Institute hacks rabidly stating that even economic de-risking is not enough: what the US needs is a hard break with China.
In fact that dovetails with Washington smashing international free trade rules and international law, and treating any form of trade and SWIFT and financial exchanges as “national security threats” to US economic and military control.
So the pattern ahead is not China imposing trade sanctions on the EU – which remains a top trade partner for Beijing; it’s Washington imposing a tsunami of sanctions on nations daring to break the US-led trade boycott.
Russia-DPRK meets Russia-Africa
Only this week, the chessboard went through two game-changing moves: the high-profile visit by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to the DPRK, and the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.
Shoigu was received in Pyongyang as a rock star. He had a personal meeting with Kim Jong-Un. The mutual goodwill leads to the strong possibility of North Korea eventually joining one of the multilateral organizations carving the path towards multipolarity.
That would be, arguably, an extended Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). It could start with an EAEU-DPRK free trade agreement, such as the ones struck with Vietnam and Cuba.
Russia is the top power in the EAEU and it can ignore sanctions on the DPRK, while BRICS+, SCO or ASEAN have too many second thoughts. A key priority for Moscow is the development of the Far East, more integration with both Koreas, and the Northern Sea Route, or Arctic Silk Road. The DPRK is then a natural partner.
Getting the DPRK into the EAEU will do wonders for BRI investment: a sort of cover which Beijing does not enjoy for the moment when it invests in the DPRK. That could become a classic case of deeper BRI-EAEU integration.
Russian diplomacy at the highest levels is going all out to relieve the pressure over the DPRK. Strategically, that’s a real game-changer; imagine the huge and quite sophisticated North Korean industrial-military complex added to the Russia-China strategic partnership and turning the whole Asia-Pacific paradigm upside down.
The Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, in itself, was another game-changer that left collective West mainstream media apoplectic. That was nothing less than Russia publicly announcing, in words and deeds, a comprehensive strategic partnership with the whole of Africa even as a hostile collective West wages Hybrid War – and otherwise – against Afro-Eurasia.
Putin showed how Russia holds a 20% share of the global wheat market. In the first 6 months of 2023, it had already exported 10 million tons of grain to Africa. Now Russia will be providing Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Eritrea with 25-50 thousand tons of grain each in the next 3-4 months, for free.
Putin detailed everything from approximately 30 energy projects across Africa to the expansion of oil and gas exports and “unique non-energy applications of nuclear technology, including in medicine”; the launching of a Russian industrial zone near the Suez Canal with products to be exported throughout Africa; and the development of Africa’s financial infrastructure, including connection to the Russian payment system.
Crucially, he also extolled closer ties between the EAEU and Africa. A forum panel, “EAEU-Africa: Horizons of Cooperation”, examined the possibilities, which include closer continental connection with both the BRICS and Asia. A torrent of free trade agreements may be in the pipeline.
The scope of the forum was quite impressive. There were “de-neocolonialization” panels, such as “Achieving Technological Sovereignty Through Industrial Cooperation” or “New World Order: from the Legacy of Colonialism to Sovereignty and Development.”
And of course the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) was also discussed, with major players Russia, Iran and India set to promote its crucial extension to Africa, escaping NATO littorals.
Separate from the frantic action in St. Petersburg, Niger went through a military coup. Although the end-result remains to be seen, Niger is likely to join neighboring Mali in reasserting its foreign policy independence from Paris. French influence is also being at least “reset” in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Burkina Faso. Translation: France and the West are being evicted all across the Sahel, one-step at a time, in an irreversible process of decolonization.
Beware the Pale Horses of Destruction
These movements across the chessboard, from the DPRK to Africa and the chip war against China, are as crucial as the coming, shattering humiliation of NATO in Ukraine. Yet not only the Russia-China strategic partnership but also key players across the Global South/Global Majority are fully aware that Washington views Russia as a tactical enemy in preparation for the overriding Total War against China.
As it stands, the still unresolved tragedy in Donbass as it keeps the Empire busy, and away from Asia-Pacific. Yet Washington under the Straussian neocon psychos is increasingly mired in Desperation Row, making it even more dangerous.
All that while the BRICS+ “jungle” turbo-charges the necessary mechanisms capable of sidelining the unipolar Western “garden”, as a helpless Europe is being driven to an abyss, forced to split itself from China, BRICS+ and the de facto Global Majority.
It doesn’t take a seasoned weatherman to see which way the steppe wind blows – as the Pale Horses of Destruction plot the trampling of the chessboard, and the wind begins to howl.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 23:30 - Only 1 In 4 Americans Enjoy "Being Social"
Only 1 In 4 Americans Enjoy “Being Social”
International Friendship Day will be celebrated tomorrow, July 30.
To mark it, Statista’s Anna Fleck looks at data from a Statista Consumer Insights survey to see where “socializing” is most often considered a hobby in different countries around the world.
As the following chart shows, Germans, and to a slightly lesser extent the Danish and Spanish, are particularly likely to include spending time with others as one of their main personal pastimes.
You will find more infographics at Statista
By contrast, respondents in the United States and in urban India were far less likely to consider socializing as one of their top hobbies, with only around one in four picking the option.
In the U.S., just some of the hobbies which were selected by a higher share of people included cooking and baking (40 percent of respondents), reading (36 percent), pets (34 percent), video gaming (33 percent) and outdoor activities (31 percent).
In the U.S. at least, a slightly higher share of women said socializing was one of their hobbies (27 percent) versus men (23 percent).
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 23:00 - The Truth Is Out There
The Truth Is Out There
Authored by Emina Melonic via RealClear Wire,
The cacophony of the Internet has been distracting from proper intellectual discussion for quite some time now. Over time, it has added clashes of ideological cymbals and symbols, signifying not much other than anger, destruction, and despair. The fact that Americans are divided has become a forgone conclusion. People have been split into so many subsets that it’s impossible to carry out a proper conversation. We indeed have an American Tower of Babel.
To make matters worse, discourse appears to be the least of our problems. Political philosophy and political life itself have entered a post-everything phase, and this has rendered the very meaning of America on shaky grounds. What can we do in this situation? Is it possible to restore order not only in America but also in society as a whole? Glenn Ellmers’ new book, The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy, offers challenging questions to this problem. Unlike many political analyses of today, Ellmers’ book engages deeply with several thinkers, seeking and providing clear paths out of a disorienting and dense thicket.
Reminiscent of the past tradition of philosophical essays, The Narrow Passage is a concise and sharp reminder of philosophy’s relevance. In a world in which ideologues fancy themselves journalists, and journalists fancy themselves philosophers, Ellmers brings clear and deep thinking into the intellectual fold. Thoughtfully and with supreme confidence as well as intellectual humility, Ellmers dares to do what most writers and cultural critics are afraid of: challenge the mediocrity of ideological dogmatism, be it on the Left or Right.
Guided by the wisdom of Plato, Leo Strauss, and Harry Jaffa, Ellmers explores the idea of political life in the context of dramatic changes our world has seen in the last few years. Ellmers’ book is part philosophical exegesis, part cultural critique, and it is these two elements that make the book and Ellmers’ voice unique. He brings together several elements of political philosophy, and “one of the central themes of this book is this battle between the scientific-bureacratic-rational state (which comes out of Hegel) and the post-modern rejection of all objective standards (which comes out of Nietzsche).”
The extreme use of rationalism has gotten us into such metaphysical trouble. This inevitably leads to moral relativism, and no one is immune. We are more post-modern than we’d like to admit, despite the fact that we may be fighting for age old tradition. We shouldn’t run away from this. In fact, post-modernism cannot be properly dealt with without engaging with thinkers that we deem enemies.
Enter Michel Foucault. While most conservatives either ignore or entirely dismiss Foucault as an unserious thinker, Ellmers engages with his thought in a very careful and deep way. While Ellmers’ philosophical conclusions differ greatly from Foucault’s, he asks us to reconsider Foucault’s arguments for purposes other than the French philosopher envisioned. As Ellmers writes, “Foucault’s central theme was the power discourse, or the relationship between political power, knowledge, and truth…It might be tempting to dismiss [Foucault]…as so much academic babble. But I would argue that we should reflect on Foucault’s argument in part because he is offering a quite accurate description of how today’s intellectuals perceive the world, and therefore how the ruling class, at least to some degree, thinks and operates.”
Foucault understands the strangeness of modern life, and the power structures that are strangling humanity. The discourse Foucault is interested in is the one that reveals the power structure and power struggle. He “shows that what may seem like propaganda and lies to abnormal or mentally recalcitrant subjects are nothing but the ebb and flow of the power discourse as it modulates in response to environmental changes.” In other words, we are just cogs in a big machine. But do we have to be?
“You are being manipulated. But you already know that,” Ellmers writes. You might wonder what technological and social media-influenced manipulations have to do with political life; in reality, it has to do with everything. As Ellmers writes, “…Americans are lied to on a daily basis – by corporate advertisers, medical hucksters and spiritual charlatans, the sensationalist media, and of course the authorities in government.”
Because of this, reality is constantly challenged. If reality itself is questioned, then how can a human being expect to participate in political life? All we have are forms of control, yet all of these attempts at totalitarianism are not definitive and hard. For example, it’s clear what the meaning of censorship is, theoretically speaking, but today’s censorship works in shapeshifting ways. One is censored through ambiguous means reliant on pseudo-morality.
The authoritarians in charge are many, but who are they? Everyone and no one is in charge. The system of tyranny appears to be a mesh of vertical and horizontal lines, absolving the authoritarians of guilt as they enact their tyranny. Ellmers rightly asserts that our awareness of all of this may be an actual hindrance to doing something about it. “Our cynical hyper-awareness of being “in the cave,” our post-modern sophistication, actually drives us deeper underground and away from the natural experiences of moral-political life. We accept the idea of the authoritative political narrative or discourse, and then assume (as Foucault did) that reality is nothing but discourse.”
Throughout his book, Ellmers is not interested in so-called solutions. This is not to say that he is not concerned about the state of the world, or that he doesn’t want to offer certain strategies in combating the chaos that is before us. But he deeply understands that if political philosophy is to be used in any way, then it has to be given room to breathe without any imposition of ideology or specific practical matters. Of course, one could argue that there is nothing more practical than politics because it gets into the heart of the matter of being a citizen. But in a society that appears to have lost interest in deeper thought, one that has gotten used to “content” and “products” that take care of immediate gratification, it will be difficult to figure out how to move away from a mob-oriented politics to one based on citizen and community.
In all this bureaucratic and cultural mess, people are attempting to feel like they belong somewhere, that they have home. “Part of what we are seeing,” writes Ellmers, “in the re-emerging tribalism of both Left and Right may be a creation of profound emptiness in the soul created by the loss of this “belonging,” an attempt to recover a sense of meaning and purpose by recreating a holy community of citizen-believers.”
One cannot blame people for turning to something that may resemble a like-mindedness. But caveat emptor–there are many intellectual frauds out there that are stoking the fires of chaos all for the purposes of their own self-interest. As much as the need to belong is a truly human and noble desire, we ask must ourselves: to what do we really want to belong?
In a 1955 lecture titled “The History of Political Theory,” Hannah Arendt said that “The modern growth of worldlessness, the withering away of everything between us, can also be described as the spread of the desert. That we live and move in a desert-world was first recognized by Nietzsche, and it was also Nietzsche who made the first decisive mistake in diagnosing it.” But even deserts, as Arendt later observes, are full of storms and elements that are beyond our control. This, more than anything, seems to be a human condition, and each generation ends up experiencing it in their own way.
But there is something more at play here, which includes the inevitable impact on the political life of a citizen. Our atomization (perhaps something Foucault already recognized) is spreading despair. As Ellmers writes, “Despair, Jaffa was fond of saying, is not only a sin (because it presumes we have been abandoned by God), but also an intellectual error.” We don’t believe in political life anymore. There is a reason for this–everywhere we look, we see corruption out in the open and we can’t do anything about it.
Maybe we have entered a post-political age, but wouldn’t even that assessment render us weak in embracing our unwanted post-modernism? No matter what, despair should never be an option, even if sadness, anger, and loneliness often rise to the surface. It’s in the act and encounter that we become fully human, and part of that act is a recognition of political life as well as truth. Ellmers’ book is a valuable exploration of the significance and singularity of truth and authenticity, without which political life cannot exist.
Emina Melonic’s work has appeared in National Review, The New Criterion, The Imaginative Conservative, American Greatness, Splice Today, VoegelinView, and New English Review, among others.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 22:30 - Watch: Drones Strike Moscow's Financial District
Watch: Drones Strike Moscow’s Financial District
Early Sunday morning, there are reports of several drone strikes in ‘Moscow City’ – a very high-end business district just 2.8 miles from the Kremlin.
🚨 BREAKING: Drone hits an office building in Moscow, Russia.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 30, 2023
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Footage of the attack pic.twitter.com/63FZmcqOdj
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) July 30, 2023
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⚡️The moment the explosion in Moscow took place this morning.
You can always count on a Russian dashcam. pic.twitter.com/rOarvur1Bo
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) July 30, 2023
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“Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow at night. The facades of the [Moscow] City’s two office towers sustained minor damage. There are no casualties or injuries,” Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on Telegram.
Of course, we have no confirmation that these were Ukrainian drones.
News agency TASS cited emergency services as saying that there was “an explosion” between the fifth and the sixth floor of the 50-story building in the ‘IQ-Quarter’ complex, which has three high-rise buildings.
The aftermath of the strike:
Drone hits “IQ Quarter” high-rise in Moscow, which is home to apartments and government offices. At least 1 person injured pic.twitter.com/bp8VYI3j3h
— BNO News (@BNONews) July 30, 2023
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The following are reportedly videos of the internal damage:
Footage from inside the building that was struck by a drone this morning in Moscow pic.twitter.com/gSnHUrNsLZ
— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) July 30, 2023
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The damaged building has been evacuated, officials said. The evacuations from other Moscow City buildings are underway.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 22:04 - Justice Alito To Democrat Lawmakers: F U!
Justice Alito To Democrat Lawmakers: F U!
Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,
Answering Democrat critics who want to legislatively impose a code of conduct on the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito said Congress has no constitutional authority to regulate the court.
“Congress did not create the Supreme Court” – the Constitution did, Justice Alito told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published July 28.
“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” he said.
“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court – period.”
He was referring to Article III, section 1 of the Constitution, which states:
“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
His Republican supporters say this means Congress has a relatively free hand to regulate lower courts—including creating and abolishing them—but can do very little to the Supreme Court.
Justice Alito said he was not sure if his colleagues on the nation’s highest court agree with this view.
“I don’t know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don’t think I should say. But I think it is something we have all thought about.”
Justice Alito’s comments came after the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly approved a Democrat-backed Supreme Court ethics reform bill on July 20 on a party-line vote.
Republicans oppose the legislation, the proposed Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act (SCERT) of 2023 (S.359), which they say is unconstitutional. They have suggested that Democrats—many of whom want to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices—only want to move against the judicial body because its six-member conservative-leaning majority has been handing down decisions they find objectionable.
The proposed SCERT Act, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chairman of one of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s panels, would direct the Supreme Court to issue a code of conduct governing its own members and require justices to recuse themselves from certain cases. It would also mandate the public disclosure of gifts, paid travel, and income information.
It would allow members of the public to file complaints against justices and appoint a panel of five lower court judges to investigate the complaints. Litigants would be allowed to file a motion to disqualify a justice from a case—a process Republicans say is ripe for abuse.
The measure would impose new rules governing the filing of friend-of-the-court briefs, which seek to influence the court on specific cases and require greater disclosure by the parties filing them.
Most of the left’s ire has been directed at conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. They are upset that wealthy Republican donor Harlan Crow gave Justice Thomas luxurious vacations, tuition support for a grandnephew he raised, and purchased low-dollar real estate from the justice’s family.
Justice Thomas didn’t disclose the events, saying he was advised that it wasn’t required, but has vowed to disclose such events going forward.
But critics have also attacked Justice Alito, who has defended his decisions not to disclose a paid Alaska trip in 2008 and not to recuse himself from a court case in 2014 that was related to the person who paid for the transportation.
The justice said he did not mention the trip in a 2008 report because not disclosing it was the “standard practice” in cases like this.
Justice Alito and the eight other members of the court voluntarily follow disclosure rules that apply to lower court judges and officials in the executive branch.
Democrats like Mr. Whitehouse believe that the very fact that Justices Alito and Thomas have received gifts from wealthy benefactors is corruption in and of itself.
The Supreme Court is “the only court in the country, perhaps the only court in the world, with no ethics process at all,” Mr. Whitehouse said at the committee hearing on July 20.
“Then came the news that six politically active right wing-billionaires have been paying household expenses, engaging in financial transactions, and providing massive secret gifts of travel and hospitality for at least two justices.”
“We are here because the highest court in the land has the lowest standard of ethics anywhere in the federal government. And justices have exhibited much improper behavior, not least in hapless efforts to excuse the misdeeds,” Mr. Whitehouse said.
It is unclear when the full Senate will take up the proposed SCERT Act. If it passes the Democrat-controlled Senate, it seems unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Justice Alito also said in the interview, “I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year.”
Facing political attacks, “the traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is they should be mute” and allow others, especially “the organized bar,” to come to their defense.
“But that’s just not happening. And so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”
In the interview, Justice Alito also addressed the possibility that governments could begin defying Supreme Court rulings, as some did after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated public schools.
Public approval for the court is currently at a low ebb in the nation’s polarized political environment and some states and elected officials have been doing their best to do an end-run around the court’s decisions. Some claim the court itself is illegitimate.
President Joe Biden frequently criticizes the court. After it struck down his student loan forgiveness program in June, instead of accepting the decision, he promptly began working on new ways to grant debt relief.
After the court struck down New York state’s tough concealed carry gun permitting system a year ago, recognizing for the first time a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, New York and other Democrat-led states passed new gun restrictions, some of which have been enjoined by the courts.
After the court’s decision a year ago reversing the 1973 abortion precedent, Roe v. Wade, President Biden began pressing Congress to codify the now-overturned decision. And he’s made abortion one of the centerpieces of his 2024 reelection campaign.
“If we’re viewed as illegitimate, then disregard of our decisions becomes more acceptable and more popular,” Justice Alito said.
“So you can have a revival of the massive resistance that occurred in the South after Brown,” he added.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 21:30 - "Depart Haiti" Now: State Department's Dire Warning To Americans
“Depart Haiti” Now: State Department’s Dire Warning To Americans
Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)
U.S. citizens in Haiti are urged to leave the Caribbean country immediately due to the recent surge in armed clashes between gangs and police.
Police officers patrol a neighborhood amid gang-related violence in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti on April 25, 2023. (Richard Pierrin/AFP via Getty Images) The U.S. Embassy in Haiti and the Department of State issued a “Level 4” travel advisory on Thursday, categorizing Haiti as a “Do Not Travel” destination.
“On July 27, 2023, the Department of State ordered the departure of family members of U.S. government employees and non-emergency U.S. government employees,” the agency said in an updated travel advisory.
“U.S. citizens in Haiti should depart Haiti as soon as possible by commercial or other privately available transportation options, in light of the current security situation and infrastructure challenges,” the travel advisory continues.
U.S. citizens in the capital Port-au-Prince should monitor local news and depart only when it is safe to do so, the warnings read.
Specific neighborhoods, including Vivy Michel, Tabarre, Torcel, Tapage, and Trutier, have been deeply affected by the violent clashes, posing significant risks to residents and visitors.
The ability of the U.S. government to provide emergency services to its citizens in Haiti is currently extremely limited, raising concerns about their safety and well-being.
US Embassy Sounds Alarm
Kidnapping has become widespread in Haiti, with U.S. citizens frequently falling victim. Kidnappers often use sophisticated measures or take advantage of unplanned opportunities, even attacking convoys.
Violent crimes involving firearms, such as armed robberies, carjackings, and kidnappings for ransom, are common and pose risks to both residents and visitors.
“Kidnapping cases often involve ransom negotiations and U.S. citizen victims have been physically harmed during kidnappings,” the agency said, adding that victim’s families have paid thousands of dollars to rescue their family members.
Protests, demonstrations, tire burning, and roadblocks frequently occur in Haiti and can turn violent unexpectedly.
A protestor adds a tire to a burning barricade during a police demonstration to protest the recent killings of six police officers by armed gangs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 26, 2023. (Richard Pierrin/AFP via Getty Images) Critical shortages of gasoline, electricity, medicine, and medical supplies persist, further exacerbating the fragile situation in the country. Medical facilities lack qualified staff and basic resources.
Travelers have reported being followed and violently attacked shortly after leaving the Port-au-Prince international airport, while private vehicles stuck in heavy traffic congestion have been targeted by robbers and carjackers.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 20:30 - "I've Never Seen Anything Like This" – Mysterious Chinese Bio-Lab Discovered In Remote California City
“I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This” – Mysterious Chinese Bio-Lab Discovered In Remote California City
Why would a bio-lab run by a shady Chinese company be operating in Reedley, CA in the central San Joaquin Valley?
What was supposed to be an empty building used only for storage was home to a black-market type of lab testing facility.
YourCentralValley.com reports that the discovery was made after a local code enforcement officer noticed this garden hose poking out a back wall of the building.
Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and THOUSANDS of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.
Additionally they found 900 genetically engineered mice, engineered to catch and carry COVID-19, living in “inhumane” conditions.
773 of the mice had to be euthanized, and officials found another 178 mice already dead.
“This is an unusual situation. I’ve been in government for 25 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba.
Even county health officials were left in shock.
“I’ve never seen this in my 26-year career with the County of Fresno,” said Assistant Director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health Joe Prado.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the substances and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a Health and Human Services letter dated June 6.
Agents also found thousands of package boxes – many with shipping labels from China. Below is a photo included in court documents in California.
NBC News reports that an investigation found the tenant was Prestige BioTech, a company registered in Nevada and unlicensed for business in California. City officials spoke with Xiuquin Yao, who was identified as the company president, through emails included in the court documents.
Yao told officials that Prestige BioTech moved assets belonging to a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., to the Reedley warehouse from Fresno after UMI went under. Prestige Biotech was a creditor to UMI and identified as its successor, according to court documents.
Officials were unable to get any California-based address for either company except for the previous Fresno location from which UMI had been evicted.
“The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified,” court documents said.
As Kyle Bass asks in a brief tweet-thread:
Is this illegal lab the tip of the iceberg? How many additional bioagent labs will be found?
THIS WAS A LUCKY FIND.
The lab was discovered by Reedley, CA city code enforcement officers when they saw a garden hose attached to the building and investigated.
This investigation into this illegal Chinese bio-agent lab must be handled at the highest levels of US law enforcement to determine a comprehensive plan to protect U.S. national security.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 20:00 - Macleod: Inflation Will Return
Macleod: Inflation Will Return
Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,
It is an error to expect inflation to continue to fall in America. All financial market values in the US and elsewhere are predicated on this hope.
The misunderstanding is to assume that the widely expected recession will lead to further falls in consumer price inflation, and that therefore interest rates and bond yields will decline. These hopes are based on Keynes’s rejection of Say’s law, which simply points out there is no such thing as Keynes’s general glut because the unemployed stop producing.
A further point is that banks are increasingly scared of lending risk, which is leading to a credit squeeze. This raises the question, as to how can interest rates fall when there is a growing shortage of credit?
The current economic setup for the US, the Eurozone, and the UK seems set to increase central bank credit replacing commercial bank lending, which will undermine their currencies.
Additionally, government funding requirements will increase materially at a time when cross-border investment flows are threatened by financial bear markets.
The timing of a new BRICS gold-backed settlement currency and China’s determination to consolidate the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s sphere of influence have the potential to offer alternatives for capital flows escaping from the collapsing finances of the western alliance led by America.
Above all, we are witnessing the death of fiat, because it is increasingly difficult to see how the current currency regime based on the dollar will survive.
Market misconceptions
Equities and bonds are priced in the expectation that consumer price inflation will subside and that interest rates will start falling in the not too distant future. This is the underlying reason behind a negative yield curve, with 10-year bond yields yielding significantly less than 2-year maturities. And the chart below shows that this disparity is the highest it has been since the 1980s.
A negative yield curve is also associated with a recession to follow, and the chart confirms that negative yield curves are indeed followed by recessions. But the rate of price inflation will have to remain subdued, because expectations of low long-term rates must be confirmed by events. Indeed, the apparent success of monetary policy over the period covered by the chart without leading to persistent inflation has contributed to the widespread belief that official monetary policies work.
But is the wager in financial markets correct, that this credit cycle will conform with those of the last forty years and that a negative yield curve tells us that with consumer demand dropping, price inflation will subside, and short-term interest rates fall? This is the essence of the belief that bond yields along the yield curve will normalise with lower yields at the front end and that the bull market in equities will remain intact.
Sticking with the chart for the moment, you will notice that at minus 1% the negative yield on the curve far exceeds that of previous occasions, which surely must raise concerns that for once the past is not a guide to the future. Perhaps the forecast recession will be considerably worse than anything in living memory. Perhaps the long end of the yield curve is badly mispriced, being far too low. If the latter is the case, as this article will argue, the outlook for financial asset values is extremely poor.
Illustrated below, charts of the yields on 10-year bonds around the world give little comfort.
Any technical analyst would describe these charts as being in strong bull markets, merely consolidating before going higher. In the cases of Germany and the UK, the shape of the consolidation is immensely bullish. We are, of course, discussing bond yields, which means bond prices are set for further substantial falls. And if bond prices fall, equity values will fall as well. Based on the experience of the last forty years, this is the opposite of what is priced into financial markets.
That a recession will follow seems assured. The bank credit cycle is seeing to that, with money supply not growing or even contracting alarmingly in some jurisdictions. And the neo-Keynesians who make up the bulk of the establishment and investing communities believe recessions are caused by falling demand leading to a glut of unsold products. Therefore, they believe that a recession will always knock inflation on the head. And being forward looking, markets can be expected to discount falling inflation in the expectation of recession.
So much for Keynesian expectations. Keynesians were confused by events in the 1970s, when recession was accompanied by inflation. They had difficulty explaining this phenomenon, believing that inflation of prices was only the result of overstimulation of an economy. They had discarded Say’s law, which pointed out there could be no such thing as a general glut because production output declined with employment. They also airbrushed the conditions of every great fiat currency inflation out of their minds, ignoring the fact that if the GDP statistic had been invented earlier, Germany’s nominal GDP would have risen off the charts in 1918‑1923. And that the lagging inflation deflator would have even shown the economy to be remarkably healthy in real terms through the whole episode of the paper mark’s collapse, which for other than exporters being paid in hard currency impoverished the vast majority of the population.
An additional problem is in the monetarists’ approach, which rarely, if ever, distinguished properly between credit and money. Admittedly, the early warnings of a downturn in economies came from monetarists who pointed to the slowdown of monetary growth in the broad money statistics. They were correct in assuming a correlation between GDP and growth in broad money. But they fell into the trap of believing that the authorities should manage economic policy in the light of changes in the quantity of money. In other words, they have become statists themselves, turning their backs on the ability of free markets to set demand for credit.
Doubtless, today’s monetarists would claim they are merely being practical in the context of the current system, but they cannot have it both ways. In any event, their claims over the relationship between the money supply and prices only hold water in a limited context, as the following conundrum illustrates.
Let us assume that Nation A has an economy of a certain size, measured by output volumes instead of GDP credit totals. Let us also assume that Nation B, using the same currency units and with the same quantity of human resources has an economy twice the size in terms of volume outputs. What will be the difference in the purchasing power of their common currency units?
The first thing to note is that other things being equal, there will be substantial expansion of credit to finance the extra production. In other words, on the same population base, money supply could be approximately twice as high in Nation B compared with Nation A. But this does not mean that prices will be higher in Nation B. It is more likely they will be lower in Nation B than in NationA because of higher output volumes benefitting from economies of scale, investment in more efficient production, and enhanced competition.
From this we can deduce a simple rule governing the monetary relationship. So long as expanded credit is provided for the enhancement of commerce it will not result in price inflation. If, in the example above, Nations A and B were simply the same nation under different conditions, doubling the quantity of credit would not result in similar increases in prices. And the purchasing power of a circulating medium is determined by markets, not its quantity.
There is a further distinction to be made, in this case between credit backed by sound money, which is gold, and credit backed by fiat currency. Sound money is the universally accepted money without counterparty risk, which both legally and derived from long-standing human acceptance is gold. In an earlier article[i], I showed that the expansion of bank credit (which makes up over 90% of the circulating medium) can have a short-term cyclical effect, while the more permanent destruction to its purchasing power comes from the state increasing the quantity of bank notes and commercial bank deposits on its central bank’s balance sheet. The example where the expansion of central bank credit is strictly controlled, while commercial bank deposits are determined by market factors is illustrated in the following chart of Britain under its gold standard for over nine decades, taken from the article referred to above:
We can see from the first chart how under Britain’s gold coin exchange standard, the note issue was stable while commercial bank credit expanded. The crises of 1847, 1857, and 1866 which led to temporary suspensions of the Bank Charter Act of 1844 are notably reflected in wholesale price fluctuations in the lower chart, but the self-correcting nature of disruption to the general price level usually applies with there being almost no net change in the two price indices over sixty years.
The disruptions to prices from the bank credit cycle diminished over time. Undoubtedly, much of this was due to improvements in the banking system. But there is another factor at play: over time, public confidence grew in the government’s commitment to maintaining the gold standard, so cyclical variations in the purchasing power of the currency diminished. In other words, instead of the quantity theory of money determining the relationship between changes in the quantity of currency and prices, it is its users who have the final say.
In a gold-backed credit system, saving is a more attractive proposition. While bank credit expanded over the century, so did savings. According to the Bank of England’s statistical research, in 1830 savings represented 5.3% of GDP. By 1844, at the time of the Bank Charter Act it had risen to 14%. And by 1890, it hit a high of 22.5%. The proportions between current consumption and consumption deferred, which are savings, has a regulating influence on the general level of prices.
Under a fiat currency regime, with respect to savings the same is true today as it was under Britain’s gold standard. In Japan and China, there is a high propensity to save. This means that the expansion of bank credit only partly fuels consumer demand. And the element which consumers save supports investment in production, which tends to reduce prices, thereby offsetting pressures for consumer prices to rise due to higher consumer spending.
The point behind fiat currency, which has ruled us for the last 53 years, is that it gives governments an extra source of finance by inflating its quantity. In this it is fundamentally different from the sound money example which imposes a strict monetary discipline. And governments which have discouraged savings both by taxing them and by encouraging consumer spending have simply added to the tendency for consumer prices to rise and undermine the currency.
Credit theory therefore attributes persistent non-cyclical inflation to the expansion of central bank currency and its credit, and both are associated with excessive government spending leading to budget deficits. For most advanced economies, a global slump leads to lower tax revenues and higher welfare costs. Consequently, budget deficits soar, undermining their currencies. And a currency undermined is reflected in higher consumer prices. The current lull in CPI inflation is merely temporary.
Interest rate management by the state fails
Markets are in thrall with central bank monetary policies, which centre on interest rate management. And despite the recent failure of these policies, economists and investors still believe that central bankers know best, and with a misreading of the great depression in mind, that their control is preferable to rates set by free markets. But there is no clearer example of policy failure than that which is exposed by current events. The suppression of interest rates to zero and below has contributed in no small measure to the mess central banks find themselves in today. Even so, critics blame the incompetence of individual central bank leaderships without appreciating the impossibility of official interest rate management to improve economic outcomes compared with leaving it to free markets.
The groupthinking that pervades in central banking circles denies any radical reassessment of the relationship between interest rates and prices. The idea that interest rates reflect time preference, counterparty risk, and a market-based assessment of change in purchasing power of the currency is not even considered, presumably because an understanding of these factors would rule out the prospects of any official role in setting interest rates. And for the largest stock market priced in the world’s reserve currency, ignoring the true relationship between the dollar’s prospective purchasing power and interest rates is leading it towards disaster.
Foreigners, who at the margin determine the dollar’s purchasing power are the first to turn sellers. They over-own dollars and dollar assets to the tune of $32 trillion, well in excess of US GDP. Not only are there moves afoot in an expanded BRICS to reduce dependence on the dollar, making its ownership less relevant for the nations involved, but if expectations of falling interest rates turn out to be incorrect, there is bound to be substantial foreign liquidation of US financial assets as losses mount on portfolios. Furthermore, it seems that with $6 trillion of the $32 trillion total sitting in bank deposits it is likely that a bear market driven by the receding prospects of falling interest rates, and the prospect of commercial bank credit contracting as well, will undermine the dollar’s exchange rate.
Bank credit is contracting
Bank credit in the US has begun to contract as the FRED chart below shows.
Bearing in mind that the interest cost has increased for borrowers, they are facing mounting liquidity problems particularly for those whose sales growth is stagnating. A combination of higher input costs, persistent supply chain issues, and higher borrowing costs are set to worsen the outlook for bank credit expansion even more, with bankers becoming increasingly concerned over their risk exposure.
The situation in the Eurozone is worse, as the next screenshot from a ZeroHedge article this week demonstrates.
In its bank lending survey, the ECB admitted that “The cumulated net tightening since the beginning of 2022 has been substantial, and the bank lending survey results have provided early indications about the significant weakening in lending dynamics observed since last autumn.[ii]”
However, by attributing the decline in bank lending to falling demand for loans is a common error of interpretation. At a time of economic stagnation — the current situation in Germany particularly refers — businesses do not stop borrowing. Instead, their demand for credit increases. The correct interpretation is that banks are withdrawing their supply of credit, with entirely different connotations. But then an official understanding of the cycle of bank credit was always wanting.
The situation in the UK is similarly alarming, as the Bank of England’s chart below shows.
In the US, Eurozone, and UK, high levels of bank balance sheet leverage and a deteriorating economic and financial outlook seem assured to lead to further contraction of bank credit. But these are also the conditions which lead to increasing credit demand to offset cash flow difficulties for borrowers. Inevitably, interest rates will rise for the minority of businesses that can present exceptionally good cases to their banks for extending credit facilities. Otherwise, they must seek funding from other sources, such as private equity houses, selling assets, or downsizing to reduce costs.
Over the rest of this year, we will see businesses that fail to convince their banks to extend loan facilities begin to go to the wall. Furthermore, the implications for employment, tax revenues, and welfare commitments will increase government budget deficits above current expectations. And funding these increasing budget deficits will require credit expansion by the central banks, offsetting the credit contraction of the commercial banks.
Commercial bank credit, which imparts value to both loans and deposits, with a small theoretical discount for counterparty risk is firmly tied to the value of central bank credit, evidenced in bank notes and commercial bank reserves on the central bank’s balance sheet. The difference between these two forms of bank credit is that other than cyclical variations, changes in purchasing power come entirely from central bank credit. Inevitably, if central banks are forced into expanding the quantity of their credit for whatever reason, then they will almost certainly undermine the purchasing power of their currencies.
Foreign valuations of currencies
In maintaining the purchasing power of the dollar, the US authorities appear to have an insuperable problem. The prospects for the economy are worsening because of the outlook for bank credit. The budget deficit is likely to increase significantly above official expectations. And with the misunderstanding of what interest rates actually represent, being the expected future value of the currency by those who presently hold it, the inflationary implications of funding the US Government’s deficit will require foreign holders not to liquidate their exposure.
For foreigners selling dollars, the alternatives of the euro, yen, or sterling appear equally unattractive, their only positive being that the dollar is over-owned by foreigners, but the others are not. The euro has the additional problem that the entire system of the ECB and its national central bank shareholders are technically bankrupt due to hidden losses on the bonds carried on their balance sheets. And recapitalising the entire system at a time of a gathering bank credit crisis due to contracting credit leading to higher interest rates is virtually impossible. Sterling can be likened to a poor man’s dollar, with a lack of savings and budget deficits similarly set to expand due to the impending recession. And the yen only offers negative interest rates, plus a central bank that also needs recapitalising.
There are two alternative homes for foreign capital flows leaving these currencies. The obvious one is physical gold as an escape from increasingly risky credit tied to fiat currency. But perhaps that argument will have greater force when the new BRICS trade settlement currency being backed by gold is confirmed in the upcoming summit in Johannesburg. The less obvious option is to buy into China’s renminbi.
The case for the renminbi is that China has substantial investment plans in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In partnership with Russia, the two hegemons are determined to protect themselves and their interests from US disruption. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a battle which the US may have already lost. We will know more following the BRICS summit, but with the priority being to neutralise the weaponised fiat dollar, China and Russia are likely to consolidate their position as ringmasters for an enlarged group of nations.
That being the case, while the economies of the western alliance which owes its allegiance to America are sinking into oblivion, the prospects for the combined BRICS+ and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are improving. Unlike the time when President Trump managed to disrupt inward investment flows through the Shanghai-Hong Kong Connect, this time President Biden can only ban US funds from investing in China. In anticipation of demand for inward investment, China expanded the scheme in December last year to widen the range of equities available on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Doubtless, there will be further tweaks to this facility.
The consequences for gold
A resurgence of consumer price inflation during a recession has not happened for a considerable time. It is during recessions that government deficits rise. This time, the US Government’s starting point is deficits of over £1.5 trillion. And as demonstrated in this article, it is the expansion of central bank credit, not commercial bank credit, which undermines currency values on a non-cyclical basis.
At a minimum, the stagflationary conditions of the 1970s appear to be returning, which drove the gold price to rise from $35 to $850 in less than ten years, even though the Fed Funds rate rose from 5% to a peak 19%. The problems for the dollar are shared by others, notably sterling and the euro. But the dollar is also over-owned by foreigners and almost certainly will be dumped by them, in some cases for gold.
There could be an additional problem for the dollar arising from a new gold-backed trade settlement currency, mooted to be discussed at the BRICS summit in August. While there are some signs that it will not be universally popular with the attendees, it is notable that Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister is on record as stating that Russia has accumulated billions of useless Indian rupees as payment for oil sales. The tolerance of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other net exporters for payment in illiquid minor currencies is strictly limited, so payment changes in a more secure currency are bound to be forced through.
Consequently, dollar reserves at central banks representing over forty nations will be exchanged for gold — a trend which has already been evident for the last eighteen months. The gold price is therefore likely to rise materially due to economic factors set to destabilise the economies of America and her western allies. And foreign influences will shift capital away from them into gold, commodities perhaps, and the investment opportunities offered by the two Asian hegemons.
Assuming the new gold backed trade currency is introduced, it seems bound to accelerate a move by Russia and China towards backing their own currencies with gold. Others are bound to follow. Only then will the full benefit of a widespread industrial revolution for most emerging economies be available to them. But the fiat system based on the dollar will be destroyed.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 19:30 - RFK Jr. Says Biden DHS Won't Provide Secret Service Protection
RFK Jr. Says Biden DHS Won’t Provide Secret Service Protection
RFK Jr., whose father was assassinated on the presidential campaign trail in 1968, says the Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied his request for Secret Service protection.
“Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me,” Kennedy tweeted.
“Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.”
Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me.
Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 28, 2023
Here’s Mayorkas’ letter. This screenshot is from Kennedy’s campaign website: pic.twitter.com/cEXUfPmV0c
— Alex Nitzberg (@alexnitzberg) July 28, 2023
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A misleading community note was added to the tweet, which suggests that candidates will only be protected within 120 days of the general election…
The Secret Service’s website suggests the same:
The actual text of the law, however, makes clear that the 120-day guidance is for spouses.
“Major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and, within 120 days of the general Presidential election, the spouses of such candidates.“
Punctuation matters.
Meanwhile, an argument for why Kennedy should receive SS protection:
1) In June of 1968, following the assassination of presidential nominee Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the Secret Service began protecting leading presidential nominees and their spouses. Just days after the assassination the Secret Service became responsible for the safety of five…
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) July 29, 2023
(continued, emphasis ours)
The law authorizes Secret Service protection for major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of the general presidential election. However, the evolution of the protective detail is based upon actual threats and acts of aggression against both the highest public office in the land and those who seek the position.
History shows there is precedent for candidates receiving protection >120 days ahead of the general election.
Donald Trump & Ben Carson were provided Secret Service protection 365 days before Election Day in 2015
Barack Obama was provided Secret Service protection 551 days before Election Day in 2007
7) Ted Kennedy was provided Secret Service protection 410 days before Election Day in 1979https://t.co/1QXvEqLG5D
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) July 29, 2023
RFK Jr is within the time range of the precedent set by the candidates above (465 days from Election Day) and is arguably under even greater threat given the Kennedy family’s tragic history of assassinations.
The Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas) has the discretion and the ability to approve or deny Secret Service coverage to presidential candidates at any point in the campaign.
Given that the Biden Administration began to censor RFK Jr within days of getting into the White House and is continuing that censorship even through last week’s censorship hearing, it is not surprising that a Biden appointee has denied a political opponent’s request for Secret Service protection.
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Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 19:00 - Non-Human 'Biologics' Recovered From UFOs, Whistleblower Testifies
Non-Human ‘Biologics’ Recovered From UFOs, Whistleblower Testifies
Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A former Air Force intelligence officer said the U.S. government has recovered UFO vehicles as well as the “biologics” of the pilots during a House hearing on unidentified flying objects, now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
David Grusch, former National Reconnaissance Officer Representative of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force at the U.S. Department of Defense, takes his seat at a House Oversight Committee hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency” on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 26, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) The Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a hearing on July 26, where testimony was heard from retired Maj. David Grusch, Former National Reconnaissance Officer Representative, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force, Department of Defense, and other expert witnesses.
Mr. Grusch was one of three witnesses at the hearing entitled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) questioned Mr. Grusch about the recovery of “crashed craft[s]” and whether or if their pilots had been found.
“You’ve stated that the government is in possession of potentially non-human spacecraft. But based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts, do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?” Ms. Mace asked.
“That’s something I can’t discuss in a public setting,” Mr. Grusch replied.
“If you believe we have crashed craft—as stated earlier—do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted the craft?” Ms. Mace asked, specifically wanting to know whether any possibly recovered remains had “human or nonhuman biologics.”
“Biologics came with some of these recoveries, yes,” said Mr. Grusch, citing those with involvement in the program directing the recovery attempts had determined that the organisms in question were “non-human.”
“Non-human. And that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program,” he said.
.@RepNancyMace asks about extraterrestrials: “If you believe we have crashed craft…do we have the bodies of the pilots…?”
David Grusch: “As I’ve stated…biologics came with some of these recoveries.”
Mace: “Were they Human or non-human?”
Grusch: “Non-human.” pic.twitter.com/TJVbIRp4jw
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 26, 2023
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He also told lawmakers that he believes the U.S. government has probably been aware of “non-human” activity for nearly 100 years and affirmed to Ms. Mace that he believed there was an “active disinformation campaign within our government to deny the existence of [unidentified anomalous phenomena].”
Fellow witness Ryan Graves, the Executive Director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, testified that he believes around 95 percent of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) currently go unreported by pilots working for the U.S. government.
A Witnesses’ Encounter
Another witness, retired Commander David Fravor, Former Commanding Officer for the U.S. Navy, testified before the committee about being on a training mission in 2004 when he was dispatched to investigate an ariel phenomenon that was detected on the ship’s radar persistently for weeks.
The pilot reported seeing a “small, white, Tic Tac-shaped object” moving rapidly across the water’s surface despite having no rotors or visible means of propulsion.
“As we pulled [our] nose onto the object at approximately one-half of a mile with the object just left of our nose, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared right in front of our aircraft. Our wingman, roughly 8,000 ft above us, also lost visual,” Mr. Fravor said.
Shortly thereafter, the command ship informed Mr. Fravor that the object had returned to its radar after traveling approximately 60 miles in less than one minute.
Legislators believe that as a result of a large amount of likely unreported evidence that supports the presence of unexplained events, two issues arise. The first is that it destroys the public’s faith in their government and that secrecy on the matter degrades the political process.
“The sightings of UAPs have rarely been explained by the people who have firsthand accounts of these situations,” said Rep. Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) during the hearing.
“This is largely due to the lack of transparency by our own government and the failure of our elected leaders to make good on their promises to release explanations and footage and mountains of over-classified documents that continue to be hidden from the American people.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 18:30 - Yellow Ceased "Regular Operations" On Friday
Yellow Ceased “Regular Operations” On Friday
By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves
Yellow, the third-largest less-than-truckload company that’s in the midst of financial chaos, said in a memo to laid-off, nonunion employees viewed by FreightWaves that the company was “shutting down regular operations”.
All locations will be closed and/or lay off some number of employees. As the memo stated:
“We regret to inform you that your employment with Yellow Corporation, or one of its subsidiaries, (collectively referred to as the ‘Company’) will permanently terminate on July 28, 2023, or within 14 days after (the ‘Separation Date’). The Company is shutting down its regular operations on July 28, 2023, closing and/or laying off employees at all of its locations, including yours (the ‘Shut Down’).”
The company on Friday morning laid off an unknown number of office employees, most of which were nonunion. It said in a memo to the laid-off employees that it was unable to alert them previously of this closing of business “because the Shut Down was not reasonably foreseeable.”
John Murphy, who is the Teamsters National Freight director, advised union employees to collect their belongings from all offices and terminals, in the case that Yellow shutters in the coming days and facilities are not accessible.
Murphy noted Teamsters is continuing to look for financing solutions for Yellow. However, he wrote, “the likelihood that Yellow will survive is increasingly bleak. Yellow continues to clear its system, and it appears to be laying off personnel and closing entire terminals across the country. All Yellow employees should, in our opinion, prepare for the worst, as Yellow appears to be headed to a complete shutdown within the next few days.”
Employees were notified of the layoffs on Friday morning in voice-only calls. At least three executives laid off large portions of their teams:
- Yellow Chief Information Officer Annlea Rumfola informed her team of some 300 technology employees that Friday was their last day, according to an employee on the call.
- Steve Selvig, vice president of customer care at Yellow, informed an unknown number of customer service employees that Friday was their last day, according to an employee on the call and a local news publication.
- Yellow Chief Commercial Officer Jason Bergman invited the following teams to a call that said Friday was their last day: local sales divisions 1, 2 and 4; all inside sales; multiple regions of corporate sales; exhibit operations managers; and Yellow third-party logistics sales. This came from two employees on the call. FreightWaves reviewed screenshots of emails sent before and a recording of the call. A Yellow representative told FreightWaves after publication that not all teams invited were laid off.
These layoffs come ahead of a potential Yellow bankruptcy filing. A senior vice president said Yellow is expected to file for bankruptcy on Monday, according to three employees who attended an internal call in which the executive shared this news.
Terminated employees were instructed to receive information regarding their severance pay, health care, W-2s, and other key documents through an Oracle platform, as their access to company systems will be terminated on Friday. According to a memo distributed to terminated employees viewed by FreightWaves, severance for nonunion workers depends on title and length of tenure at the company:
It’s unclear why the Yellow third-party logistics sales team was invited to the layoff call, as the company is actively seeking to sell its logistics arm. A Yellow representative said in an emailed statement after the story was published that the Yellow Logistics organization has remained intact, including the Yellow Logistics salesforce.
A Yellow representative said in an emailed statement to FreightWaves after the story was published that customers can contact Yellow’s support line at 800-610-6500 or customer.care@myyellow.com.
“Yellow has retained a robust customer service team that is fully capable of handling inquiries and assisting with all support that customers might need,” the representative said.
Yellow, a 99-year-old company headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, employs some 30,000 workers. About 22,000 of them are represented by the Teamsters union. Teamsters and Yellow have been locked in a monthslong strife over changing key work rules at the trucking fleet. Now, sources say Yellow may file for bankruptcy imminently.
In a call to Yellow sales teams, Bergman shared a statement on the company’s potential shuttering — and pinned the blame on the Teamsters’ refusal to negotiate with the company:
“Since last January, we have made every attempt to meet with the IBT. The IBT’S refusal to negotiate for nine months, its freezing of our essential business plan, One Yellow and, finally, its strike authorizations caused customers to find alternative freight carriers and it’s had a catastrophic effect on our business. When IBT leaders were finally ready to meet this week, it was too late. By then, the IBT strike threat had already a devastating impact on our business, [unclear] investors and causing customers to quickly depart. Given this impact to our business, we are forced to announce additional headcount reductions of non-union employees.”
In a memo published to members Thursday night, Teamsters blamed Yellow’s management for the company’s financial issues:
“In the meantime, TNFINC and the IBT continue to try to work with the Government to determine whether there is a way to protect the Teamster families at Yellow. TNFINC and the IBT remain willing to work with Yellow and its lenders or potential lenders. Hope, however, is fading. Unfortunately, despite more than a decade of concessions totaling billions of dollars given to the Company by Teamster members as well as a massive government bailout loan in 2020, Yellow may finally be succumbing to its enormous debt burden.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 18:00 - Navy Gets The Nod: President Biden Acknowledges The Existence Of His Fifth Granddaughter
Navy Gets The Nod: President Biden Acknowledges The Existence Of His Fifth Granddaughter
For her entire life, Navy Joan Roberts has been “she who must not be named.”
There is no evidence that her father has ever visited her, let alone held her.
Her grandparents repeatedly denied her existence and said that they had only “four granddaughters.”
The first time Joe Biden was asked about the existence of his granddaughter.
What a vicious monster. pic.twitter.com/SIyWBWum0o
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 29, 2023
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They even gave their dogs stockings at Christmas rather than Navy, who never even bit one let alone a score of Secret Service agents.
As even Democrats began to voice their own shock at the cruelty of the First Couple shunning this child, the Bidens finally relented and recognized her existence, but only barely so.
Pressed by Fox News, the White House issued this statement:
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward. This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter. Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”
Even for those of us who merely followed this saga from the beginning, the statement was maddening and frankly insulting. It suggested that there was some reason, until now, that prevented the Bidens from acknowledging the existence of their fifth granddaughter. That is false. There was no legal, or even tactical, reason for the refusal of the First Couple to acknowledge Navy for four years.
Navy and her mother sought that recognition and the Bidens refused. How was that in the “best interests” of this child? Were they fostering a relationship when they gave the German Shepherds stockings at Christmas but not their grandchild?
Moreover, Hunter has not been “working together” with Lunden for the best interests of his daughter. He has been a callous cad throughout this process, consistently putting his own interests ahead of his child.
Hunter refused to admit that he was Navy’s father for years until forced to accept the results of a court-ordered DNA test.
He then fought child support and even her use of the name Biden. He was threatened repeatedly with contempt of court over his obstruction in the litigation in Arkansas. The statement that he has been working together with Lunden is insulting to anyone who has followed these court proceedings, let alone their granddaughter.
In June, Hunter settled the Arkansas child support case on the condition that Lunden agreed to withdraw her request to change their child’s last name to “Biden.”
Washington is a hard town. I have lived and worked here for decades and I am still amazed by the cold calculations of many in this city. Long-standing values and associations are routinely jettisoned for personal advantage. Here the moral strictures of the rest of the nation are flipped; vice is a virtue and integrity is a weakness.
Yet, even in this place of utter personal corruption, the Bidens shocked the local population. It was not their millions in influence peddling. The Bidens are standouts but hardly unique in that form of corruption. It is not the President’s obvious lies about his knowledge and ties to his son’s foreign dealings. Truth is as relative in Washington as loyalty in this city. However, few have the stomach for how the Bidens treated this little girl. The Bidens spent more time fretting over the “pressure” of the White House on Major and Commander than they did the emotional impact on a four-year-old child who was prevented from even calling herself a Biden.
So what changed after four years to compel this passing recognition in a press statement? It was not the litigation. There was never any legal reason not to recognize their granddaughter since it was confirmed by DNA and court order. It was not any sudden request of the child or her mother. They have been asking for years for such recognition.
It was more likely the disgust expressed even by Democrats that this is simply wrong. The President is about to head out on the campaign trail and had no answer to that objection. In other words, for the First Couple, it is a political not a family matter. If it were the latter, they would have done the decent thing years ago.
Of course, the President cannot go into his loving account of how his granddaughter is “a talker” and playful (like his German Shepherd) because he has never bothered to meet her.
That is now a matter for this little girl to contemplate as she gets older.
However, whatever the impetus of the sudden recognition of Navy’s existence, it was not any legal cause.
The First Couple was free to do the decent thing at any time over the last four years. They simply did not find it in their “best interest” to do so.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 17:30 - "Jackasses! You Little Sh*ts!" – House Rep Curses Teenage Senate Pages
“Jackasses! You Little Sh*ts!” – House Rep Curses Teenage Senate Pages
Wisconsin Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden is facing bipartisan condemnation after giving a group of teenage Senate pages a profane tongue-lashing late Wednesday night. The rookie congressman doesn’t dispute their account, and defended his words — which some reports suggest may have been influenced by alcohol.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden flipped a long-Democratic seat red in the 2022 midterms (Scott Olson via Fox News) Pages are 16- and 17-year-olds — 30 per term — who facilitate Senate functions by delivering messages, carrying legislative papers and preparing the chamber for activity. While not on Capitol duty, the pages live in the Daniel Webster Senate Page residence, which also houses the Senate Page School.
When the Senate is burning the midnight oil, pages often take breaks in the Capitol rotunda. That was the case on Wednesday, as the Senate processed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. A Reuters correspondent says pages were lying on the floor taking photos of the rotunda.
That apparently set Van Orden off, according to a transcript the pages say they wrote in the immediate aftermath of the confrontation:
“Wake the fuck up you little shits. … What the fuck are you all doing? Get the fuck out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑]. Who the f‑‑‑ are you?”
After a page explained their role, Van Orden is said to have replied:
“I don’t give a fuck who you are, get out. You jackasses, get out.”
Democrats and Republicans united in condemning Van Orden. “I was shocked when I heard about it, and I am further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “I want to associate myself with the remarks of the Majority Leader,” chimed in Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way.”
Grateful every day to our Senate pages! These incredible young people are a vital part of our democracy. pic.twitter.com/AauQ6Le2Sg
— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) July 27, 2023
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“Chuck Schumer should think twice before throwing stones from glass houses,” Van Orden spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he hadn’t yet had a chance to speak to Van Orden. “That’s not their normal Van Orden,” he told Politico.
Maybe it was an alcohol-infused Van Orden: PunchBowl News, which was first to report the incident, said Van Orden and his staff were heard loudly partying in his offices before his outraged rant. The outlet’s Max Cohen tweeted at photo said to show a long row of alcohol bottles in the office that night:
Per a source, here’s a photo from last night of a bunch of alcohol in Van Orden’s office. Van Orden and staff were heard partying loudly before he cursed out a group of teenage Senate pages pic.twitter.com/W6KF35nfWt
— Max Cohen (@maxpcohen) July 27, 2023
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Responding to an inquiry from The Hill, Van Orden defended his rough treatment of the high-schoolers with a questionable comparison:
“The history of the United States Capitol Rotunda, that during the Civil War it was used as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died on that floor, and they died because they were fighting the Civil War to end slavery. And I think that place should be treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead. If anyone had been laying on a series of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, what do you think people would say?”
Van Orden is a first-termer and the first Republican to represent Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District in 26 years, after he beat Democrat Brad Pfaff in an open-seat contest by a margin of 51.8% to 48.1%. We’ll see what this incident does for his reelection bid.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 17:00 - Gasoline: The Price Rally That Nobody Saw Coming
Gasoline: The Price Rally That Nobody Saw Coming
Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,
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Gasoline prices have gained around 20% year-to-date.
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This week, gasoline topped $2.90 per gallon and may yet reach $3.
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In the United States, gasoline inventories are lower than the five-year average both because of the gap between demand and production rates but also because of unplanned refinery outages.
The direction of oil prices is top news material. Everyone follows oil prices. Many also follow the prices of the most traded oil derivatives, and some may have noticed something rather alarming in the trend of one of these derivatives.
Gasoline, one of the six most traded petroleum contracts on the global futures market, has gained over 20% in the year to date, according to a recent Bloomberg report. This is more than what crude oil has gained—a lot more.
At the start of this year, Brent crude was trading around $78 per barrel. This week, the international benchmark, which now also includes a U.S. crude grade, touched $83 per barrel.
Gasoline, meanwhile, started the year at less than $2.50 per gallon. This week, gasoline topped $2.90 per gallon and may yet reach $3.
This is a cause for worry for governments around the world because gasoline, along with diesel, plays a lead role when it comes to inflation. When the price of fuels rises, the prices of everything else rises, too, because everything else is being moved from one place to another—from producer to consumer—on vehicles using either diesel or gasoline.
Yet while diesel is a lot more common for goods transportation, gasoline is a lot more popular among regular drivers. Gasoline demand is a closely watched economic indicator that analysts use to gain insight into the state of the economy, among many others.
Right now, the data suggests that gasoline demand is quite healthy, which could be cause for optimism about the global economy were it not for the fact that supply is falling short of expectations. This is fueling concern about more inflation pain despite the efforts of central banks in Europe and North America to tame it with a series of rate hikes.
In the United States, the Federal Reserve announced yet another hike of 25 percentage points for the benchmark interest rate this week. In the same week, gasoline prices moved higher, with the national average adding 4% in a single day. According to the EIA, gasoline stocks are some 7% below the five-year average for this time of the year. And oil drillers are not drilling more. They are drilling less.
In Europe, governments had to step in last year and subsidize fuels amid the energy crunch and the following embargo on Russian crude and fuels. The move drew a lot of criticism from transition advocates who argued the EU is essentially selling out to the oil and gas industry by encouraging the use of its products.
Yet those governments that implemented the subsidies knew very well what they were doing: they were avoiding riots by millions of drivers whose living standard depends quite a lot on affordable fuels.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank just hiked interest rates to the highest in more than two decades. And gasoline is not going down anytime soon. Because there is simply not enough supply, at least not everywhere.
In the United States, gasoline inventories are lower than the five-year average both because of the gap between demand and production rates but also because of unplanned refinery outages, Bloomberg noted in its report, such as the one at Exxon’s Baton Rouge facility from earlier this week. In fact, for this time of year, gasoline inventories are the lowest since 2015…
Media reported that a gasoline production unit was down at the Baton Rouge refinery earlier this week. The reports noted that the unit, a catalytic converter, could be down for several weeks. Needless to say, gasoline prices jumped lively at the news.
In Europe, refining and gasoline production has been disrupted by protests in France and then, last month, Shell’s Pernis refinery in the Netherlands shut down a unit due to a leak.
That and the shutdown of refineries in the past few years on both sides of the Atlantic have combined to create a tight supply picture even as governments consider bans for gasoline-powered cars.
While they consider these bans and even vote on them, consumption is on the increase. Bloomberg reports that gasoline consumption in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy is on the rise. At the same time, because of the embargo on Russian fuels, feedstocks needed to produce gasoline are in short supply on the continent.
Meanwhile, Chinese refiners are producing millions of barrels of gasoline and diesel. They are, in fact, producing so much that there were recently pressuring refining margins for the whole region. But most of the gasoline and diesel that Chinese refiners produce gets consumed locally. Because although it’s the world’s biggest EV market, China is also a giant non-EV market. And fuel demand is on the rise.
The picture that gasoline supply and demand trends paint is one of prolonged tight supply and high prices.
This, in turn, will likely keep inflation untamed despite the best efforts of central banks—efforts, which also unfortunately make life more expensive.
The silver lining: inflation leads to lower consumption of everything. The risk is slipping into a recession.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 16:30 -
- These Are The States That Strike The Most
These Are The States That Strike The Most
Having averted what could have been the biggest work stoppage the US has known since the 1950s, the Teamsters Union agreed a deal with UPS this week that mean the approximately 330,000 UPS drivers, loaders and handlers would not strike, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, it is clear that strikes and work stoppages have returned as a mainstay of U.S. news.
Among recent high profile walkouts, for example, are the Writers Guild of America, among newly unionized Starbucks employees and Amazon drivers, also represented by the Teamsters.
But not every part of the U.S. sees an equal amount of these strikes, data from Cornell University suggest.
You will find more infographics at Statista
While California registered the most strikes since the beginning of 2021 by far at more than 300 individual actions, Texas only registered 33 despite having around three quarters of California’s population.
The same is true for the states of Florida and New York. Despite about equal populations, New York state saw more than 100 strikes in 2.5 years, while Florida only experienced 24 listed by Cornell – showcasing a divide between blue and red states when it comes to strikes. West Coast states Oregon and Washington as well as East Coast state Massachusetts also saw more strikes than suggested by their populations. An outlier in this logic was Missouri, which registered 33 strikes—three more than Texas—with many of them centering on St. Louis. Other cities outside the major centers experiencing a lot of strikes in the specified time frame were Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and Buffalo, where the Starbucks unionization drive started.
The Guardian newspaper identifies the recent developments in the U.S. as a “new wave of organizing” while also concluding that the affected corporations have been engaged in counterattacks, including the firing of workers and the closing down of unionized or unionizing stores. The article also rates U.S. laws as weak in regard to protecting workers who want to unionize. In addition, many Republican-dominated U.S. states have passed so-called Right to Work laws, which prohibit mandatory union membership – contributing to regional differences in the number of union members and strikes.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 16:00 - All Bubbles Pop
All Bubbles Pop
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The problem with bubbles of received wisdom and herd-euphoria is conditions change but the risk of something untoward happening is still perceived as inconsequentially low.
All bubbles pop–and not just stock market bubbles. A speculative bubble is a psychological-social phenomenon in which confidence in the stability of future gains reaches levels where doubts are banished and risks have dissipated into thin air. This confidence can be euphoric or it can be the baseline: this (guaranteed gains) is the way the world works.
This baseline confidence in the system is a form of received wisdom based on recency bias: since gains keep notching higher, the evidence supports expectations of future gains. Thus embracing what is clearly over-confidence (i.e. a bubble) is perceived as rational, and doubting future gains as irrational.
For example, the Higher Education Bubble is popping. The PR machinery that generated the confidence that borrowing immense fortunes to pay for university diplomas was a means to securing guaranteed lifetime gains is breaking down.
This confidence was not euphoric, it was received wisdom based on recency bias: study after study showed those with any flavor of four-year college degree earned far more over their lifetimes than those with only high school diplomas.
But beneath this apparently rock-solid evidence, the realities of debt, supply, demand and the changing nature of work and the economy were eroding the cost-benefit of borrowing fortunes to pay for college. As the percentage of the workforce with college diplomas rose, the scarcity value of degrees declined. The gap between the low level of actual productive skills gained in most college programs and the demands of employers for high levels of real skills widened.
With the money spigots of student debt gushing hundreds of billions of dollars into the higher education sector, universities had zero incentives to limit costs and every incentive to hire more administrators at ample salaries and construct fancy new buildings.
The risks generated by student debts also rose. The received wisdom held that borrowing $120,000 would automatically generate a financial return of many multiple of the total debt payments. But given that the accrued interest, penalties and late fees can double the initial sum borrowed, this drag on lifetime income becomes consequential when combined with the decay of marginal returns on having a college degree.
Now enrollments are plummeting, even in more affordable community colleges. The confidence in guaranteed gains from investing the time and money to get a diploma has been broken, and now bloated, ineffective (in terms of measurable productive skills learned by graduates) universities and colleges are facing declines in revenues that they are unprepared to manage.
5 Charts That Explain the Student Debt Crisis
The higher education bubble is not just a distortion of perceived risk and return; it’s a financial bubble of massive debt, profiteering and mal-investment. Please glance at the chart below of student loan debt, which soared from near zero 20 years ago to $1.77 trillion in highly profitable, high-interest loans owned by the wealthy at the expense of credulous students.
Confidence in guaranteed future gains in the stock market is both received wisdom and a run-with-the-herd euphoria. Humans are social animals acutely attuned to the zeitgeist of the herd. There are strong incentives to join the herd and run with it, and the feeling of euphoria as the herd starts running is intense and gratifying.
Combine the recency bias generated by continual “saves” by the Federal Reserve since 2008 (and arguably from 1998) with the euphoria of the stampeding herd, and the result is a heady super-confidence that risk has dropped to “permanently low levels” while stocks have reached “what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
The problem with bubbles of received wisdom and herd-euphoria is conditions change but the risk of something untoward happening is still perceived as inconsequentially low. Consider the South Seas Bubble. In the early days of globalization and colonial expansion, the opportunity created by the granting of a monopoly for all future profiteering in a vast undeveloped region of the world was obviously compelling. It was clearly a no-brainer to bet on gains.
Early investors were rewarded, and so were those who bought the dip. Even late-comers notched gains, and naysayers and skeptics were silenced by the monumental gains accrued by the herd.
Then the bubble popped, as all bubbles do, and the wealth vanished into the ether. Confidence has many sources, and recency bias and the herd are the most reliable and persuasive. The Internet will grow for decades, and so earnings can grow for decades. This received wisdom, goosed by Fed liquidity, generated a herd-euphoria in 1999 and 2000 that generated spectacular gains for everyone in the herd.
Then the herd went off the cliff, as herds tend to do when risk is perceived as inconsequentially low.
* * *
My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. Read the first chapter for free (PDF)
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 15:30 - Bidenomics Accelerates Death Of American Dream As Housing Affordability Crisis Stokes Mobile Home Demand
Bidenomics Accelerates Death Of American Dream As Housing Affordability Crisis Stokes Mobile Home Demand
Here’s our coverage of the boom and bust of the RV industry:
- April 2021: RV Sales Just Hit An All-Time High
- March 2022: RV Shipments Soar To Record For This Time Of Year
- July 2022: “All Of A Sudden, It Came To A Halt”: After Posting Fresh Records Just Months Earlier, RV Industry Grinds To A Halt
- Nov 2022: RV Boom Over? Monthly Shipments Plunge As Dealerships Overflow With Campers
- May 2023: RV Bust Worsens As Dealers Discount Trailers
- June 2023: RV Bust Kicks Into High Gear As Winnebago Records Big Revenue Miss
The latest results from the RV Industry Association’s June 2023 survey of manufacturers found more of the same: “Total RV shipments ended the month with 24,095 units, a decrease of (-46.4%) compared to the 44,942 units shipped in June 2022. To date, RV shipments are down (-49.2%) with 164,830 units.”
Rather than focusing on the continued RV downcycle — mainly the result of high borrowing costs which popped the demand bubble — we thought the most critical data from this report is the ongoing surge in demand for “Park Model RVs.”
“Park Model RVs finished June up 7.7% compared to the same month last year, with 391 wholesale shipments,” RVIA said in the report.
What are Park Model RVs? Well…
The most logical conclusion one can make about the soaring mobile home demand is possibly the worst housing affordability crisis in a generation has killed the ‘American Dream’ for many. We detailed this in a note last week titled Starter Homes Are Becoming Extinct, Making ‘The American Dream’ Unaffordable.
Following two years of negative real wage growth that has decimated the working poor and parts of the middle class, coupled with tens of millions of folks, have been priced out of the American Dream. It’s so evident that Home Depot now sells trailers called “Gateway Pad.”
Isn’t ‘Bidenomics’ Great?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 15:00 - Rise In Type 1 Diabetes Among Young People Linked To COVID-19
Rise In Type 1 Diabetes Among Young People Linked To COVID-19
Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
There was an unexpected surge in the diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes among children and teenagers worldwide amidst the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study.
The systematic review, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), analyzed 42 studies on diabetes incidence, including 17 studies involving nearly 38,000 people under the age of 19. The review revealed a 14 percent surge in Type 1 diabetes cases in 2020, followed by a 27 percent increase in 2021, compared to before the pandemic.
Furthermore, the research highlighted a rise in Type 2 diabetes incidence and diabetic ketoacidosis, a severe complication of diabetes more common in Type 1 patients, after the start of the pandemic.
What Is the Link Between COVID and Type 1 Diabetes?
The exact connection between COVID-19 and the higher risk of developing diabetes is unclear, according to the authors of the study. However, some doctors disagree.
Type 1 diabetes is well established as an autoimmune disease, where the body attacks its own pancreatic beta cells, a primary source of insulin.
Both viral infections and vaccinations are known triggers for autoimmune diseases, and COVID-19 and its vaccine could be no exception, Dr. Paul Marik, a critical care physician, former tenured professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and co-founder of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, told The Epoch Times.
Numerous case reports have documented instances where patients developed Type 1 diabetes following either COVID-19 infection or COVID-19 vaccination.
The spike proteins present in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as those produced by the body after vaccination, are very likely to be causing autoimmunity, according to Dr. Marik.
“There is few doubts that SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is the most likely trigger of Type 1 diabetes,” Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, an endocrinologist and researcher at Federal University of São Paulo in Brazil, told The Epoch Times via email.
The primary role of COVID-19 spike proteins is to attach to ACE-2 receptors on cell surfaces and enter the cells. Pancreatic beta cells, which have ACE-2 receptors, are vulnerable to infection and potential damage caused by spike protein entry.
Spike proteins also share similarities with human proteins, and their presence may lead the body to produce antibodies that not only target the spike protein but also attack human tissues, including the pancreas.
This phenomenon of molecular mimicry is seen in vaccine-injured patients, and those with long COVID, Dr. Marik said. Studies have found autoantibodies—antibodies that attack the body’s own tissues or cells—in both groups of patients.
Type 2 Diabetes: More Common and Complicated Consequence
The study may mistakenly conflate Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes as the same disease, hence the “no clear underlying mechanism” conclusion, board-certified internist Dr. Keith Berkowitz told The Epoch Times.
Type 2 diabetes, compared to Type 1, is more complex and metabolic, influenced by factors like obesity, processed food, heart disease, blood cholesterol, and hypertension.
Dr. Berkowitz said he has observed a unique blood glucose dysregulation pattern in his post-COVID and post-vaccine patients.
Patients with Type 2 diabetes typically have high blood sugar levels with high or low insulin levels as the beta cells become fatigued. However, Dr. Berkowitz said he observed that some of his patients had low blood sugar alongside high insulin levels, a condition he said he has never encountered before.
“Even my well-controlled diabetic patients are not faring well, especially those who have received both vaccinations and had COVID infections,” Dr. Berkowitz added.
Dr. Berkowitz uses intravenous fluids to address these conditions in Type 2 diabetics, restoring their water balance and blood sugar regulation. “When a diabetic goes to the hospital, the first thing they do is administer intravenous saline because insulin doesn’t work well in a severely dehydrated cell,” he said.
Treatment for Autoimmunity and Type 1 Diabetes
Autoimmunity is a condition where the body’s immune system mistakenly identifies its own cells, tissues, or organs as foreign invaders and attacks them. This can lead to various autoimmune diseases.
But the body may be brought back into balance.
1. Remove COVID-19 Spike Protein
The spike protein may contribute to autoimmune disease, prompting doctors to consider therapies that may remove these inflammatory proteins.
Research suggests that fasting can trigger autophagy, the process of clearing old, damaged, and foreign proteins.
Intermittent fasting and prolonged fasts, even for three days, may “reset” the immune system, potentially reducing autoimmune activity. Fasting, however, is not recommended for children or pregnant or breastfeeding women.
Other recommended therapies for spike protein removal include ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug, and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) supplementation.
2. Supplement With Vitamin D
Vitamin D insufficiency, a common deficiency among the U.S. population, has been linked to autoimmune disorders.
Research shows vitamin D supplementation reduces autoimmune disease risk by 22 percent. Infants given vitamin D also have lower Type 1 diabetes incidence, a 2001 study found.
Vitamin D reduces inflammation and provides infection protection. Some scientists propose it helps the immune system differentiate between self and non-self.
Dr. Cadegiani stated that one of his first therapies is to increase Type 1 diabetes patients’ vitamin D levels between the range of 60 to 90 ng/ml, which is around 6,000 to 9,000 IUs of dietary vitamin D per day.
Vitamin D is also linked to improved insulin sensitivity.
3. Reduce Sugar Intake
Sugar contributes to inflammation, and studies have found that those who consume high levels of sugar over extended periods are at a higher risk of developing autoimmune diseases.
In the case of patients with Type 1 diabetes, Dr. Cadegiani said that cutting glucose and carbohydrate consumption reduces insulin, and, therefore, can prevent the body from forming more autoantibodies against pancreatic beta cells.
4. Hydroxychloroquine
Dr. Cadegiani said that he sometimes prescribes hydroxychloroquine when a patient is positive for Type 1 diabetes antibodies, but still has around normal blood sugar levels.
The anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is a powerful drug that fights autoimmune diseases. It is able to bind to the ACE-2 receptors and prevent spike protein entry and is also able to block spike protein from causing further harm.
It is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in chronic discoid lupus erythematosus, systemic lupus erythematosus in adults, and rheumatoid arthritis, all autoimmune diseases.
Studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine can also reduce blood sugar and is associated with a reduced risk of Type 1 diabetes. The use of chloroquine, a hydroxychloroquine derivative, in Type 1 diabetes cases can reduce inflammation in the body.
5. Plant Supplements
Plant supplements like curcumin and berberine also have anti-diabetic properties and may help prevent Type 1 diabetes.
Curcumin can decrease blood sugar and insulin levels and reduce inflammation and oxidation. Some theories have suggested that curcumin may be able to prevent the immune system from overreacting, which results in autoimmunity.
Curcumin reduces inflammation in the gut, helping with digestion and overall gut health. An unhealthy gut can lead to a dysregulated immune system, increasing the risk of autoimmunity.
Despite being a plant compound, berberine has been found to have potent blood glucose-lowering properties. Berberine has been shown to be protective against pancreatic beta cells and also improve insulin resistance.
Thus, both patients with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes may supplement with berberine. Those already taking medications for diabetes may need to consult their doctors before supplementing with berberine.
6. Diabetes Drugs
Dr. Cadegiani also uses diabetes drugs like metformin and liraglutide to treat and prevent Type 1 diabetes.
Metformin is a common diabetes drug that can reduce blood sugar levels. In Type 1 diabetes, metformin increases insulin sensitivity and action and also increases peripheral glucose uptake.
Liraglutide increases satiety and slows gastric emptying. Studies have also shown that the drug increases pancreatic beta cell mass, improves the cells’ functions, and prevents beta cell deaths, all of which may help prevent Type 1 diabetes.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 14:30 - Ukraine Firing North Korean Rockets At Russian Forces
Ukraine Firing North Korean Rockets At Russian Forces
North Korea may be allied with Russia, but the Ukrainian army has started firing North Korean rockets at Putin’s forces. It’s the latest illustration of how the West’s drive to sustain its proxy war against Russia has turned Ukraine’s arsenal into a wacky smorgasbord of the world’s weapons, transcending both time and geography.
The North Korean rockets are being fired from Ukraine’s Soviet-era Grad multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) launchers. Their use was first reported by the Financial Times, after Ukrainian troops showed them off to the paper’s reporter. The soldiers say the rockets were “seized” from a ship by an unidentified “friendly” country.
Ukrainian soldiers prepare North Korean rockets in Zaporizhzhia (Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images via Financial Times) A Ukrainian defense official implied the rockets may have instead been captured from the Russians. “We capture their tanks, we capture their equipment and it is very possible that this is also the result of the Ukrainian army successfully conducting a military operation.” Or maybe not.
Whatever their precise origin, the rockets are nothing to brag about. A Ukrainian artillery officer told FT that the North Korean rockets — mostly manufactured some 30 or 40 years ago — are used grudgingly, as they’re highly prone to misfiring or failing to detonate. Accordingly, the soldiers cautioned against standing near the launcher while it was in action, saying the rockets “are very unreliable and do crazy things sometimes.”
The Soviet-era BM-21 Grad launcher can fire 40 122mm rockets in 20 seconds and then quickly relocate (The Economic Times) News of the presence of North Korean rockets in Ukraine’s arsenal comes just days after Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang to mark 70 years of the Korean War armistice and to “strengthen cooperation” between the countries.
Western governments have been going to great lengths to keep Ukraine’s army in action, to the point of significantly decreasing their own arsenals. Most recently, the United States started supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions, which are banned by an international treaty that has 108 signatories — but not the United States.
It’s only a war crime of someone else does it?
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in 2022 acknowledging the use of cluster bombs by Russia is a war crime. A year later Biden does same thing pic.twitter.com/bCmmJ51krW
— Veterans For Peace (@VFPNational) July 14, 2023
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Asked about the controversial move, President Biden went off-script and acknowledged the real reason why his administration would provide Ukraine with weapons known to cause disproportionate harm to civilians — weapons that his own administration had condemned when it was suggested that Russia might be using them: “[The Ukrainians] are running out of [155mm artillery shells], and we’re low on it.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/29/2023 – 14:00
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