May 31

Today’s News 31st May 2024

  • Putin Expects NATO, And Possibly Poland In Particular, To Escalate The Proxy War In Ukraine
    Putin Expects NATO, And Possibly Poland In Particular, To Escalate The Proxy War In Ukraine

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

    President Putin shared a lot of insight about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine during the press conference that he held during his latest trip to Uzbekistan. The first point of relevance that he made is that Zelensky is no longer regarded by Russia as Ukraine’s legitimate leader after his term expired. According to President Putin’s “tentative estimate” of this legal question, Rada Speaker Stefanchuk should now be seen as Zelensky’s legal successor.

    The Russian leader also speculated that the only reason why the incumbent remains in power is for him to carry out scandalous moves like possibly lowing the draft age to 23 and even 18 years. In his words, “I believe that after this and other unpopular decisions are made, those who are acting today as representatives of executive government would be replaced with people who would not be responsible for the unpopular decisions made. These representatives will be simply replaced in a snap.”

    Moving along, in response to a question about NATO chief Stoltenberg’s suggestion for members to let Ukraine use their arms to hit targets inside of Russia like the US just tacitly approved of Kiev doing, he reminded everyone that long-range precision strikes require space reconnaissance data. Since Ukraine lacks these capabilities, such strikes can only be carried out with NATO support, including through instructors inside Ukraine masquerading as mercenaries for plausible deniability purposes.

    President Putin advised the West to think twice about this and then addressed Russia’s fresh push into Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, which he confirmed was in response to the shelling of Belgorod and aimed at carving out a “security area” exactly as he earlier warned he’d order if those attacks didn’t stop. On the topic of Belgorod, he lamented that the Western media doesn’t report on Ukraine’s strikes there, and hinted that his envisaged “security area” could expand to stop longer-range attacks if need be.

    He was later asked about Ukraine inviting French “instructors”, to which he responded by saying that his forces regularly “hear English, French, or Polish on the radio” when listening in their opponents, thus confirming that their mercenaries have long been deployed there. Of those three, President Putin believes that the Polish ones are the least likely to leave, which is an allusion to Russian officials’ prior claims that it plans to annex Western Ukraine or at least incorporate it into a sphere of influence.

    As for how he sees everything ending, he reaffirmed his commitment to peace talks and reminded everyone that it’s Ukraine that unilaterally froze this process, not Russia. Mid-June’s upcoming “peace talks” in Switzerland are only designed to “create a semblance of global support” for the West’s unilateral demands of Russia aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat upon it. Suffice to say, President Putin promised that this won’t succeed, and he concluded by saying that it’ll only be more painful for Ukraine.

    Reflecting on his remarks, the Russian leader signaled that he’s sincerely interested in peace but is also preparing for an escalation in the conflict since NATO’s latest moves suggest that it’s still disinterested in compromising. The US is using Zelensky as its figurehead for implementing unpopular decisions aimed at indefinitely perpetuating this doomed conflict, after which it’ll likely replace him with someone else once public opinion demands it.

    Even in that scenario, however, it’s unclear whether another Ukrainian regime change would precede the recommencement of genuine peace talks that ensure Russia’s national security interests. President Putin’s words about Poland came amidst it expressing support for using Western arms to strike targets inside of Russia, countenancing shooting down missiles over Western Ukraine, and repeating its position that a conventional intervention in that neighboring country can’t be ruled out.

    From the looks of it, Poland is indeed preparing to conventionally intervene in Ukraine if Russia achieves a military breakthrough, which could spike the risks of World War III by miscalculation due to the US’ dangerous game of nuclear chicken that it’s playing as explained here. In sum, the NATO-Russian security dilemma is spiraling out of control, and Russia might use tactical nukes in self-defense to stop any large-scale NATO invasion force that threateningly crosses the Dnieper towards its newly unified regions.

    Therein lies the importance of President Putin hinting that his country might expand its “security zone” to defend against Ukraine’s use of long-range precise strike systems against targets within its pre-2014 territory. He wants NATO to know the territorial extent to which Russian forces might go in the event that the front lines collapse, which is essentially dependent on them and their decision to allow it to use such Western arms with the bloc’s space reconnaissance support.

    The message being sent is that Russia has no interest in going beyond those geographical limits that NATO itself is responsible for setting through its abovementioned decision, which is meant to prevent the bloc from overreacting if their opponents achieve a military breakthrough. A Polish- and/or French-led conventional intervention would already be dangerous enough, but that invasion force’s potential crossing of the Dnieper could trigger a tactical nuclear response from Russia in self-defense.

    The latest military-strategic dynamics suggest that a conventional NATO intervention is seriously being considered, even if it’s only a partial one that remains west of the Dnieper. The signals coming from NATO as a whole and Poland in particular show that they want an escalation in order to continue fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, but President Putin just countersignaled that his country is prepared for all eventualities.

    It’s therefore up to the West whether or not everything spirals into World War III.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 02:00

  • The 3 Layers Of The Technocratic State
    The 3 Layers Of The Technocratic State

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    There are three layers to the U.S. state that lord it over the American people and the world: deep, middle, and shallow. It’s a typology of how technocracy works in practice. Let’s talk about how it works and how the layers interact.

    Donald Trump popularized the term deep state, and it is a good one. There is a large and serious literature on the topic. It refers mostly to the long-operating and largely out-of-public eye intelligence agencies and their cut-outs in the private sector. It is inclusive of security agencies, which means CIA but also some portions of the FBI, NSC, NSA, CISA, DHS, top brass at the Pentagon, and more besides.

    They are the most powerful force in American politics and have been for many decades. Anyone who calls them out is called a “conspiracy theorist” simply because there is a lack of documentation for these claims that everyone knows are true. They are “classified,” Washington’s magic term for anything they want to hide from you.

    Lately, there has been an opening up on this topic, thanks very much to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump, journalist Mike Benz, and many others who have worked so hard over the years to expose the cabal. This new attention is mostly due to a series of audacious plots that unfolded since 2016: the bogus claim of Russia interference in the election, as manufactured by the deep state, the surreptitious weaponization of the justice system still ongoing, as well as the pandemic policies that had deep-state fingerprints all over them.

    The middle state is the administrative bureaucracy, the civil service, as they are called. Invented by the Pendleton Act of 1883 and growing through wars and crises, and deeply entrenched in the 21st century, it is more than 2 million strong and consists of more than 400 agencies, some innocuous and some deeply threatening. Elected politicians only pretend to control the middle state but the reality is the opposite. They are the people with permanent positions, institutional knowledge, and the focus to preserve the status quo no matter who shows up in town for the party.

    Very often, newly elected politicians come to town naively hoping to make some difference. They quickly encounter an awesome and impenetrable force all around them, staffers moving from office to office, random people from agencies about which they have never heard, and attending briefings designed to introduce the newbie to the ways of Washington but which are really designed to intimidate them into compliance. Most newly elected leaders arrive with no real understanding of this system.

    This is what Trump faced when he was elected. He believed that the president was supposed to be in charge, like a CEO or an owner of a company. That’s the only world he knew, one in which he was at the top of the heap and his word was a marching order. He figured that this day would arrive after the inauguration. It did not. He simply couldn’t get over it and never was willing to simply play the marionette as others had done, in exchange for plaudits and payoffs.

    Once Trump figured it all out, he assigned his trusted staff to do something about it. He issued a series of executive orders to get the middle state under control. In May of 2018, he took his first steps to gain some modicum of control over this deep state. He issued three executive orders (E.O. 13837, E.O. 13836, and E.O.13839) that would have diminished their access to labor-union protection when being pressed on the terms of their employment. Those three orders were litigated by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and sixteen other federal labor unions.

    All three were struck down with a decision by a D.C. District Court. The presiding judge was Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was later rewarded for her decision with a nomination to the Supreme Court, which was affirmed by the U.S. Senate. The prevailing and openly stated reason for her nomination was said to be mostly demographic: she would be the first black woman on the Court. The deeper reason was more likely traceable to her role in thwarting actions by Trump which had begun the process of upending the administrative state. Jackson’s judgment was later reversed but Trump’s actions were embroiled in a juridical tangle that rendered them moot.

    Later came a wonderful executive order that would have reclassified a range of middle-state employees as “Schedule F” and thus subject to control by the elected president. That order caused Washington to fly into wild panic. Joe Biden reversed the order on his first day in office. They have had four years now to pass restrictions to prohibit that from happening again.

    As recently as last week, Biden’s Office of Personnel Management finalized rules to make it difficult for Trump to strip civil servants in policy making roles of their permanent positions. Yes, the plot against a possible second Trump term is fully engaged already.

    The third layer is the shallow state. It consists of legacy media outlets such as CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, in addition to social media companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, as well as common internet tools like Google and Wikipedia. It includes military contractors and tax-supported academia as well.

    These are all captured institutions, with revolving doors with the deep and middle states. The reporters at these large media outfits have close relationships with the top bureaucrats at the agencies they cover, which is why the agencies themselves are rarely investigated closely.

    When lockdowns came, Facebook and all the mainline social media companies instantly signed up to be both propagandists and censors. When they worried about the impact on their business models, middle and deep state bureaucrats hounded them to step it up and serve their masters. They mostly complied. We know all this by virtue of tens of thousands of pages of correspondence that is now moving through the courts, possibly resulting in judgments that would bring back the First Amendment.

    The shallow state also includes a major swath of the banking and financial sector that depends fundamentally on the benevolence of the middle-state Federal Reserve to provide an uninterrupted stream of liquidity to fuel its operations. In some sense, the entire system mapped out here depends on this funding source, without which the lockdowns, wars, welfare state, and enormous corporate subsidies (to pharma, agriculture, and the Green New Deal) could not and would not exist.

    What is and isn’t included in the shallow state is obviously debatable on many levels. What about an institution that massively benefitted from lockdowns, such as Amazon, but didn’t actively lobby for the policy? How does the fact that its founder and major investor also owns the Washington Post which did push for lockdowns affect the judgment? And what about online learning companies that got rich solely due to school closures? Are they also shallow state? There are good discussions to have here.

    The relationship between the three layers is perfectly illustrated in the way pharmaceutical companies work. They do the bidding of the deep state with biodefense work that is classified, making both pathogens and antidotes. They work with the middle state, with board members and managers of companies going back and forth with the NIH and FDA, sharing royalties on new patented consumer products. The companies then dominate advertising on all the main media venues, which means that the media covers up for them at every turn and echoes deep and middle state priorities.

    If you are seeking to set up and manage a 21st-century technocratic regime, the ideal mechanism of compulsion and coercion is centered in the shallow state, because it is private, consumer-facing, and trusted more than any other layers of the state. Every form of coercion can be “market washed” as if these are purely private actions taking place. The strategic objective of any really good plan for hegemony, then, is to push the agenda from the deep state, through the middle state, and land in the shallow state for distribution to the public.

    This is because the shallow state is the most effective tool for bringing about results. You want the large corporations and big finance to be the ones to move against political enemies, and you want the major media rather than the agencies to distribute the propaganda. You want the doctors to sell the drugs and the search engines to generate the message. Whatever trust remains is centered on these shallow-state institutions and therefore they are the ones you want to capture to do your bidding.

    Yes, it all sounds very corrupt. It is. And it has absolutely nothing to do with this document called the Constitution, which is supposed to be the real law of the law. For the three-layer state, this document simply doesn’t matter. A quiet coup has taken place over the decades that has entrenched this wild system in contradiction to everything the Founding Fathers desired.

    All three are right now plotting to resist a possible victory by Donald Trump in November. The notion that he would win in 2016 seemed outlandish. But the prospect of returning after a four-year hiatus to gain the presidency again is nearly miraculous. In any case, it is something no one imagined possible a few years ago.

    Indeed it is easily one of the biggest political comebacks in history, and amounts to the closest thing we’ll likely ever see to a genuine revolution in modern times. What comes of it, we’ll have to find out but this much is clear: the whole of the three-layered state has done everything to stop it. Right now, the whole system is in complete freak-out mode, in full display of the whole world.

    There is plenty of reason to doubt aspects of the Trump agenda. I’ve personally authored what is by now a large literature against features of the ideology that drives it.

    But there is no getting around the real issue today. We are nearing a perfect battle between the people, who are supposed to rule or at least have some line of influence over the regime, and this three-layer cartel of overlords that is actually in charge.

    No one who aspires to freedom and dignity can possibly defend this status quo, so it makes sense to look forward to its overthrow, if it is at all possible.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 23:45

  • PCE Preview: A 3 Year Low?
    PCE Preview: A 3 Year Low?

    Two weeks after the latest CPI print came in fractionally below estimates and sent yields to their May lows, tomorrow at 8:30am, we will get the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, the April core PCE inflation numbers.

    EXPECTATIONS: headline PCE prices are seen rising +0.3% M/M in April (prev. +0.3%), with the annual rate expected to be unchanged at 2.7%. The core measure is seen rising +0.3% M/M (prev. +0.3%), while the core rate of annual PCE is seen unchanged at 2.8% Y/Y, although even a modest dip in the annual print would lead to the lowest annual increase in three years, since April 2021.

    CPI AND PPI: As noted above, and as Newsquawk writes in is PCE preview, headline CPI data was cooler than expected in April, while the core CPI metric saw the smallest increase since December; and while the PPI data for the month surprised to the upside in the month, analysts noted that the internals — components that feed into the PCE data – were more constructive (insurance sectors, health and medical components, air transportation). As a reminder, PCE gives far lesser weight to Housing/Shelter, as well as transportation (recall that transportation insurance is soaring right now and is the biggest drive of CPI inflation), which is why overall core inflation viewed through the lens of PCE is far lower.

    Ahead of the data, Goldman Sachs said using CPI, PPI and import prices, “we estimate that core PCE increased 0.26% M/M, a pace well below the 0.36% average of the prior three months, but probably not sufficient for a July cut if maintained in May and June.” That said Goldman estimates that the market-based core PCE index—which has been referred to by Fed Chair Powell in recent remarks—rose just 0.18%, a pace GS says would be quite consistent with a July cut if maintained.

    FED: After a hawkish set of FOMC meeting minutes, and some cautious chatter from Fed officials, as well as constructive incoming data (decent PMI data for the month saw Fed cut pricing diminish sharply); money markets are pricing no easing at the Fed’s June 12th meeting, and only a 10% chance of a cut in July. The first fully discounted rate cut is seen in December, although markets are assigning a c. 80% probability of a cut in November. Goldman recently pushed its first rate cut forecast from July to September.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 23:04

  • The Rise In America's Billion-Dollar Extreme Weather Disasters
    The Rise In America’s Billion-Dollar Extreme Weather Disasters

    Since 1980, there have been 383 extreme weather or climate disasters where the damages reached at least $1 billion. In total, these disasters have cost more than $2.7 trillion.

    Created in partnership with the National Public Utilities Council, this chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross, shows how these disasters have been increasing with each passing decade.

    A Growing Concern

    The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracks each disaster and estimates the cost based on factors like physical damages and time losses such as business interruption. They adjust all costs by the Consumer Price Index to account for inflation.

    Both the number and cost of extreme weather disasters has grown over time. In fact, not even halfway through the 2020s the number of disasters is over 70% of those seen during the entire 2010s. 

    Severe storms have been the most common, accounting for half of all billion-dollar disasters since 1980. In terms of costs, tropical cyclones have caused the lion’s share—more than 50% of the total. Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in 2005, remains the most expensive single event with $199 billion in inflation-adjusted costs.

    Electricity and Extreme Weather Disasters

    With severe storms and other disasters rising, the electricity people rely on is significantly impacted. For instance, droughts have been associated with a decline in hydropower, which is an important source of U.S. renewable electricity generation. 

    Disasters can also lead to significant costs for utility companies. Hawaii Electric faces $5 billion in potential damages claims for the 2023 wildfire, which is nearly eight times its insurance coverage. Lawsuits accuse the company of negligence in maintaining its infrastructure, such as failing to strengthen power poles to withstand high winds. 

    Given that the utilities industry is facing the highest risk from extreme weather and climate disasters, some companies have begun to prepare for such events. This means taking steps like burying power lines, increasing insurance coverage, and upgrading infrastructure. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 23:00

  • Minimum Wage Folly
    Minimum Wage Folly

    Authored by John Stossel via The Epoch Times,

    California now leads the nation in imposing dumb wage laws…

    The state just raised the hourly minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom said: “We saw the inequities. … We had a responsibility to do more.”

    Unions pushed for the higher minimum, and in Democrat-run states, unions usually get what they want.

    CNN announced, “Half a million California fast food workers will now earn $20 per hour!”

    Gullible leftists at the Center for American Progress claim, “A higher minimum wage would boost millions of families out of poverty and further stimulate the economy.”

    Yippee! It’s a happy cycle! Win-win.

    But wait, if it’s a win-win, why just make the minimum $20? Why not $30? Or $100?

    Because the government requiring higher wages is not a win-win.

    Interfering with market prices always creates nasty unintended consequences.

    Frédéric Bastiat, in his work “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen,” points out that there are always seen and unseen consequences when government force impacts economic decisions. “Almost always,” he wrote, “the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal.”

    In this case, the immediate consequence is that existing workers get a raise. Great. That’s the seen. That’s what the media, unions, and Center for American Progress see. But the unseen effect is bigger, and worse:

    No. 1: Thousands of Californians have already lost jobs because some restaurants closed. Others lost income because their employer cut worker hours. The chain El Pollo Loco cut employees’ hours by 10 percent.

    Pizza Hut announced that it will lay off more than 1,000 delivery drivers. One, Michael Ojeda, understandably asked, “What’s the point of a raise if you don’t have a job?”

    No. 2: Workers who still have jobs will lose them because now their employers have more incentive to automate. Chipotle just created a robot that makes burrito bowls. Even CNN acknowledged, “Some restaurants are replacing [fast food workers] with kiosks.”

    Story continues below advertisement

    No. 3: Prices go up.

    The day Mr. Newsom signed the bill, he was asked, “Can Californians expect the prices of their McDonald’s and Starbucks to go up?”

    Mr. Newsom deceitfully replied: “I’ve heard that rhetoric before. And it didn’t happen!”

    Nonsense. It did happen. It always happens when government forces wage increases. In this case, Starbucks prices have increased as much as 15 percent. Customers will pay about $200 per year more for their coffee. A chicken burrito at Chipotle will cost up to 8 percent more.

    No. 4: Perhaps the worst unseen harm from minimum wage laws is that young and unskilled people won’t even be hired. They won’t gain valuable experience from a first job at a fast-food restaurant.

    In 2014, when Seattle politicians raised the minimum wage to $15, I asked some teenagers what a higher minimum wage could do for them.

    “Minimum wage actually hurts my chances of getting employed,” said one, Rigel Noble-Koza. “If I cost more, why would a company take a risk on hiring me? They’ll hire the worker with more experience instead.”

    Another, Dillon Hodes, talked about his friend who had fast-food work but got her hours cut because “she was young and inexperienced.”

    Of course, these students were unusual. They were finalists in a Stossel in the Classroom contest. They aren’t economically ignorant. They knew to look for the unseen.

    If only politicians were that smart.

    Government price fixing such as minimum wage laws hurt the young and the poor, the very people these laws are supposed to help.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 22:30

  • Biden Allows Ukraine To Use US Weapons To Attack Inside Russia In Highly Dangerous Escalation
    Biden Allows Ukraine To Use US Weapons To Attack Inside Russia In Highly Dangerous Escalation

    Given the last days of momentum and growing pressure coming from some NATO countries, this was perhaps inevitable: the United States has now greenlighted Ukraine’s use of American-supplied weapons against Russian territory in a huge escalation which takes the world a big step closer to WW3 and nuclear-armed confrontation.

    Politico is reporting Thursday afternoon, “The Biden administration has quietly given Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia — solely near the area of Kharkiv — using U.S.-provided weapons, two U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the move said Thursday, a major reversal that will help Ukraine to better defend its second-largest city.”

    American soldiers in front of a HIMARS light multiple rocket launcher, Zuma Press

    An anonymous US official was cited a saying, “The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use U.S. weapons for counter-fire purposes in Kharkiv so Ukraine can hit back at Russian forces hitting them or preparing to hit them.”

    The same official stipulated that the policy of not allowing long-range strikes inside Russia “has not changed.” However, this is surely going to be a distinction without substance or meaning from Russia’s point of view, as it makes attacking Russia’s sovereign territory with US weaponry ‘allowable’ for the first time. According to more details of what are expected to be the immediate implications: 

    In effect, Ukraine can now use American-provided weapons, such as rockets and rocket launchers, to shoot down launched Russian missiles heading toward Kharkiv, at troops massing just over the Russian border near the city, or Russian bombers launching bombs toward Ukrainian territory. But the official said Ukraine cannot use those weapons to hit civilian infrastructure or launch long-range missiles, such as the Army Tactical Missile System, to hit military targets deep inside Russia.

    It’s a stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight. But worsening conditions for Ukraine on the battlefield –– namely Russia’s advances and improved position in Kharkiv –– led the president to change his mind.

    Ukraine has been complaining that all restrictions need to be taken off if it is to defend against Russia’s recent major offensive in Kharkiv, which was launched from across the border. For example, Russian artillery is able to fire from rear positions within the Belgorod region near the border. It meanwhile remains part of Moscow’s stated aim to push the border deeper into Ukraine to create a ‘buffer zone’ – making it harder for pro-Kiev forces to shell Russian towns and villages.

    Politico’s fresh reporting is consistent with something Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday. While visiting Moldova – itself feeling the pressure of the war right next door – Blinken laid out that the US does not “encourage or enable” Ukrainian attacks inside Russia – but he then moved the goalpost by stressing the US would “adapt and adjust” this position based on developing battlefield needs.

    A reporter followed up by asking if he meant the White House will now support Ukrainian attacks inside Russia. Blinken responded with: “Adapt and adjust means exactly that.”

    On a covert level this was likely already happening all along…

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    Russian President Vladimir Putin warned earlier this week there will be “major consequences” if NATO countries support long-range strikes on Russian territory. While it’s long been clear that US, UK, French, and other West-supplied weaponry has been used against Crimea, this has yet to be the case when it comes to Russia proper. Or at least any such attack has not been made public yet.

    This significant shift underscores the desperation of Western allies as Ukrainian forces have been getting rolled back in the Kharkiv region. It seems Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels simply cannot stomach a Ukrainian loss – but this desperation is leading to deepened and highly dangerous Western deepening involvement in the conflict. 

    Meanwhile…

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 22:00

  • As King's Health Deteriorates, Who Will MbS Appoint As Crown Prince?
    As King’s Health Deteriorates, Who Will MbS Appoint As Crown Prince?

    Via Middle East Eye

    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is close to becoming king as the health of his elderly father, King Salman, deteriorates; he was recently treated for a lung infection. While Mohammed bin Salman’s succession to the throne may seem inevitable and straightforward, he will face two challenging decisions: appointing a crown prince and designating a deputy crown prince.

    When appointing a future crown prince, he theoretically needs to consult Saudi Arabia’s 1992 basic law of governance, which stipulates that rulers are drawn from the male descendants of Ibn Saud, with the “most upright among them” selected for the role. 

    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, via AFP

    But a 2017 amendment by King Salman notes that after the sons of Ibn Saud, there should be “no king and crown prince belonging to the same branch of the founder king’s descendants.”

    In practice, as king, Mohammed bin Salman would have enough power to ignore the amendment and appoint one of his brothers as crown prince – but this would not be without consequences. He would appear even more ruthless in excluding other branches of the House of Saud. 

    Such a move would further alienate the large pool of cousins belonging to important branches, such as al-Fahd and al-Sultan, neither of which has been humiliated like al-Nayef and al-Abdullah. So far, despite rumors about who Mohammed bin Salman may select as crown prince, the decision has been kept secret.  

    It is also uncertain as to whether the future monarch would follow the path of King Abdullah, who created the role of deputy crown prince in 2014 (before dying the following year), fearing a power vacuum if he and his crown prince both died within a short period of time. But the post of deputy crown prince has been vacant since 2017, the year Mohammed bin Salman ascended to the role of crown prince.

    Establishing power

    King Salman never appointed a deputy crown prince, for two reasons. First, the young age of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was in his early thirties in 2017, made it unlikely that he would die any time soon and require a deputy to step in.

    Second, and more importantly, King Salman would have struggled to find a suitable deputy crown prince, as he and his son antagonized several branches of al-Saud lineage, namely Nayef and Abdullah.

    Former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef received the most humiliating blow when he was sidelined after decades of holding highly sensitive and important positions in the interior ministry and intelligence services. He was put under house arrest and has since disappeared from public life.

    King Abdullah’s son Mutaib, the former chief of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, was equally humiliated when he was sacked from his military role; he has also disappeared from public life following allegations of corruption.

    King Salman and his son have not endeared themselves to these two branches of the royal family and their descendants. The king could still have chosen a deputy crown prince from the other remaining important branches, but he didn’t.

    Perhaps King Salman wanted his own son to have time to establish his power base without the patronage of older senior princes, most of whom had held senior positions in government as ministers or military commanders. 

    Royal prerogatives

    Over the last seven years, Mohammed bin Salman has been a solo crown prince. He effectively became the state, amassing tremendous power over every aspect of government and life in Saudi Arabia, from the military to entertainment.

    Mohammed bin Salman has been an absolute ruler, listening only to his close friends, foreign advisers, consultants and coterie. His domestic and foreign policies reflect his own desires, rather than consultation with a large group of senior and more experienced princes. A deputy crown prince would have been a nuisance, to say the least.

    In addition, the majority of eligible candidates for the positions of crown and deputy crown prince are still haunted by the memory of the Riyadh Ritz Carlton, which doubled as a detention center after Mohammed bin Salman launched a wide-ranging “anti-corruption” crackdown against powerful officials in 2017. He later released them after they paid billions of dollars to the state.

    As future king, Mohammed bin Salman will face the challenge of appointing an eligible crown prince and a deputy, both of whom must not challenge him or appear stronger than he is due to experience, age or aura. He will have to choose less powerful and more docile princes, so that they do not undermine his authority and single-mindedness.

    No doubt, Saudi society will be irrelevant to the process, as these decisions are strictly royal prerogatives. The future of the leadership is beyond a disenfranchised society that lacks pressure groups or civil organizations. Religious scholars, merchants and tribal groups will have no say in the matter; they will simply be summoned to the palace to pledge allegiance to whomever Mohammed bin Salman chooses.

    This is how a repressive absolute monarchy works. It does not consult – let alone share power – with its own royals, not to mention elites and notables.    

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 21:30

  • Russian Firms Adopt Stablecoins In Cross-Border Transactions With Chinese
    Russian Firms Adopt Stablecoins In Cross-Border Transactions With Chinese

    The stablecoin sector is gaining momentum after a new Bloomberg report revealed that Russian commodities firms have adopted fiat-pegged digital currencies to execute cross-border transactions with Chinese counterparts. 

    Russian commodities firms, trading anything from base metals to timber, have started using Tether Holdings Ltd.’s stablecoin to settle cross-border transactions with Chinese customers and suppliers. These settlements are being routed through Hong Kong. 

    The appeal of stablecoins comes as the US Treasury Department has unleashed endless rounds of sanctions on Chinese and Russian companies for various reasons, ranging from a trade war between Washington and Beijing to a hot war in Eastern Europe. 

    The increased utilization of stablecoins comes more than two years after Russia invaded Ukraine and highlights how Moscow has adapted to a changing economic environment where seven Russian banks were banned from the SWIFT messaging system. 

    The lasting effect of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy only makes stablecoins more useful, including for cross-border transactions. It also helps mitigate the risk of frozen overseas bank accounts—something the Russians found out after they invaded Ukraine. Even unsanctioned Russian companies have found stablecoins a safer alternative to the traditional Western banking system. 

    “With stablecoins, the transfer may take just 5-15 seconds and cost a few cents, making such transactions pretty efficient when the sender already has an asset base in stablecoins,” said Ivan Kozlov, co-founder of Resolve Labs. 

    Kozlov continued, “In countries that are facing dollar liquidity issues and capital controls, cross-border settlements through cryptocurrencies and, specifically, dollar-linked stablecoins, are a relatively common practice, and not only in commodities.” 

    The growing adoption of stablecoins in Russia’s global trade reveals that Western sanctions have failed to implode the Russian economy. There’s even been news of the Russian Central Bank experimenting with crypto payments for international transactions. 

    About a year ago, Rosbank, one of Russia’s major banks, launched a facility that enabled importers to settle transactions using crypto. Since then, additional banks have started offering similar services. 

    The stablecoin trend doesn’t end with Russia. Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, has slowly moved oil sales to USDT after the US recently imposed sanctions on the country. 

    Even as these developments show cryptocurrencies have use cases, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Neel Kashkari, stated in April, “[Bitcoin has] no actual utility in the economy, other than being a nice toy that some people enjoy owning and trading.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 21:00

  • Boston On The Brink As Millennial Mayor Pushes Decriminalization
    Boston On The Brink As Millennial Mayor Pushes Decriminalization

    Boston’s 39-year-old Mayor, Michelle Wu, wants to follow in the footsteps of San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver, New York, and other liberal strongholds – where property crimes, including grand larceny and motor vehicle theft, have seen a sharp increase in recent years.

    Boston’s progressive Mayor Michelle Wu wants to decriminalize certain offenses

    As the Daily Mail reports, Wu wants to make crimes including shoplifting and disorderly conduct off-limits to prosecution. She also wants to include certain categories of breaking and entering, wanton and malicious property destruction, larceny under $250, and trespassing as non-prosecutable crimes. She did toss in drug possession – which is fine as long as crimes like disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace are enforced.

    Those who commit such wanton crimes would receive little more than a slap on the wrist.

    The offenses are all on a ‘do-not-prosecute’ list that was created by former Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins.

    Rollins, who later joined the Biden administration but resigned amid ethical violations, had advocated for the non-prosecution of more ‘low-level’ offenses. 

    During her 2021 campaign, Wu was asked by left-wing nonprofit Progressive Massachusetts whether she supports Rollins’ list, to which she responded “Yes.” When asked if she supported closing the Boston Police gang database, she also said yes. She also supports firing any Boston PD employees involved in the January 6th protest in Washington DC.

    Via the Daily Mail

    The Police gang database notably played a critical role in the federal bust of 40 individuals allegedly connected to a violent street gang which had operated for years out of a Boston housing project.

    Wu, the city’s first female and Asian American Mayor, has promised to reallocate police funds to other city priorities, and believes in ‘demilitarizing’ law enforcement by eliminating the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and police dogs. Further, Wu wants police records on use-of-force to be made public, which critics say could endanger officers’ safety.

    So, embolden criminals and de-fang cops. Right.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 20:54

  • The Improvement Of Russian-Taliban Ties Opens Up New Opportunities For India
    The Improvement Of Russian-Taliban Ties Opens Up New Opportunities For India

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

    Russia is poised to strategically partner with the Taliban upon the impending removal of its domestic terrorist designation, which will in turn revolutionize bilateral relations with Afghanistan. Readers can learn more about each complementary aspect of this policy here and here. The present piece presupposes at least passing knowledge of what Russia aims to achieve and why, particularly the interconnected security and economic drivers behind these latest developments.

    In brief, Russia envisages building up the Taliban’s capabilities so that they then more adequately contain and hopefully defeat those ISIS-K terrorists that have established themselves in Afghanistan. Once the security situation is stabilized, transnational connective infrastructure projects from Russia to South Asia via Afghanistan can then finally begin to take shape. These include a gas pipeline, an overland oil export route facilitated by a planned Afghan hub, and a railway, the latter two of which can go hand-in-hand.

    These ambitious goals are expected to accelerate multipolarity processes upon their completion through the fulfillment of Russia’s related Ummah Pivot and Greater Eurasian Partnership concepts, the last two pieces of which are Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Comprehensively expanding strategic ties with Afghanistan will in turn enable the symmetrical expansion of those with Pakistan if Islamabad has the political will, which remains to be seen though considering the expansion of US influence there.

    The way in which Russian-Pakistani relations evolve might also inadvertently stoke suspicions in India if they move too fast, some of whose experts and policymakers fear that Russia is increasingly beginning to fall under Chinese influence, which readers can learn more about here and here. The tangible consequences of exacerbating this perception could abruptly disrupt multipolarity processes if they empower India’s pro-US faction in the event that newly troubled ties with the US improve.

    The most effective way to preemptively counteract this scenario is for Russia to pioneer an Afghan development quartet between those two, India, Iran, and Uzbekistan aimed at fully incorporating that war-torn country into the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC). This would build upon November 2022’s Russian-Indian-Iranian Troika on Afghanistan in the new conditions of Moscow recognizing the Taliban as that country’s official leaders and Russia turning Uzbekistan into a regional logistics hub.

    President Putin’s recent offer to help Uzbekistan reach more markets for growing its economy could take the form of incorporating it into this proposed quartet for optimizing all parties’ multilateral cooperation along the NSTC. While it appears inevitable that Afghanistan will one day facilitate Russian-Pakistani trade, even if it still takes some time for Islamabad to patch up its problems with Kabul and clinch associated pacts with Moscow, this could reassure India that its influence won’t be lost in that event.

    India worries that a Russian-brokered improvement in Taliban-Pakistani ties incentivized by the earlier mentioned connectivity projects could lead to a surge of regional Chinese influence upon the northern expansion of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Central Asia via Afghanistan. The only way to calm these concerns is for India to beat China to the chase by having the NSTC become the bedrock of Afghanistan’s reconstruction and future economic development before CPEC does.

    Considering the way in which Afghan society is organized, those trade opportunities that are opened up by the NSTC could lead to the informal creation of local patronage networks that would help India maintain its influence there amidst the possible surge of CPEC-driven Sino-Pak influence in the future. Getting ahead of the curve by cultivating loyal elites through sustainable economic means would go a long way towards assuaging India’s fears that the latest Russian-led processes are to China’s advantage.

    The enormous rupee stockpile that Russia accumulated in India over the past two years largely as a result of their unprecedented energy cooperation brought about by generous oil discounts, which spiked bilateral trade to a record $65 billion last year, could also be relied upon in pursuit of this end. These rupees could be invested in coordination with India into pioneering an Uzbek-Afghan-Iranian trade corridor that could incorporate the planned oil hub in Herat for further ramping up Russian-Indian trade.

    Streamlining this branch of the NSTC could unlock innumerably profitable opportunities for all stakeholders, especially Russia and India, not to mention accelerating the pace at which the suggested Afghan patronage networks could be created for preemptively counteracting Sino-Pak influence there. Through these means, India would be less likely to perceive the improvement of Russian-Afghan and eventually -Pakistani ties as benefiting their Chinese rival, thus discrediting that country’s pro-US faction.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 20:30

  • Israel Intercepts Cruise Missile Launched From Iraq
    Israel Intercepts Cruise Missile Launched From Iraq

    Israeli media is reporting on a dangerous escalation after the military announced it shot down an inbound projectile which came “from the east” – which is a phrase typically used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to describe attacks from Iraq.

    Time of Israel is describing “cruise missiles” fired from Iraq and shot down over northern Israel on Thursday. The inbound projectiles were initially thought to be drones. Other Israeli outlets pointed to a single cruise missile inbound over Israel and possibly accompanied by drones, however.

    There were no injuries, nor were there any claims of responsibility, but Israeli officials are eyeing the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which is a coalition in Iraq associated with the country’s Popular Mobilization Forces.

    However, there was a statement about drones being sent. “Following the interceptions, the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq claimed to have launched drones towards Eilat,” Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) reported.

    “Earlier today, following sirens regarding a hostile aircraft infiltration in the Golan Heights area, the IDF intercepted a cruise missile that approached Israel from the east,” the IDF said.

    The IDF continued, “Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in the Eilat area, an IAF fighter jet, together with the IDF Aerial Defense Array, successfully intercepted two hostile aircraft that approached Israeli territory from the east, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said.”

    While Iran’s Shia paramilitary forces have been relatively quiet of late, especially compared to the opening months of the Gaza war when they sent drones and mortars regularly against US bases in the region, this could be a response to some of the recent Israeli attacks on Syria and southern Lebanon.

    Wednesday saw an Israeli airstrike hit deep inside Syria, in Baniyas city, though it’s unclear what the precise target was. Syrian government sources said a girl was killed and ten civilians wounded in the attack.

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    Israeli sources have long claimed the IDF airstrikes in Syria are geared toward disrupting Iranian operations there, but Damascus says it is a brazen violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 20:00

  • Toddler's 'Modern Art' Paintings Sell For Thousands
    Toddler’s ‘Modern Art’ Paintings Sell For Thousands

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Paintings by a 2-year-old boy from Germany are selling for up to $7000, with buyers comparing them to Picasso.

    The Times reports that Laurent Schwarz’s portraits of elephants, horses and dinosaurs “would not look out of place in modern art galleries in Munich or Berlin.”

    The boy’s mother uploaded some photos of the paintings to social media, and soon enough ‘collectors’ were bidding thousands of Euros for them at Munich’s biggest art fair, ART MUC.

    The report also notes that “A New York gallery has contacted the family offering to put Laurent’s work on display.”

    His mother states “They’re abstracts and what’s unusual is how he integrates discernible figures into them, which people often mention to us and which makes them so popular,”

    Yeah ok. Good lad, but they do just kinda look more like random paint slapping by a toddler:

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    Do the people buying these paintings know that they are purchasing the dawbings of a child who cannot talk yet?

    This story is entirely plausible because much of so called ‘modern art’ frankly looks like it has been made by toddlers.

    As far as paintings by kindergarteners go, Laurent Schwarz’s are quite good. They’re nice and colourful and the boy’s parents say they are putting all the money made from them into a savings account for him.

    Fair enough.

    But there are fully grown ‘artists’ out there purposefully trying to paint and make ‘art’ like toddlers in an effort to cash in on this trend.

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    Their  ‘work’ is even being slapped up in public and revered in a weird ritual of pretence that it isn’t completely fuck ugly.

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    Such ‘works’ are only being revered by sections of society and bought for thousands because of the atrocities against art by adults that have been placed on a pedestal as somehow ‘deep and meaningful’ when in reality they have no meaning, sometimes literally:

    If you don’t engage in the charade, prepare to be cast out as ‘unsophisticated’:

    In many cases this stuff is just paint smeared on a canvas, or in some cases it is literally trash thrown on the floor.

    In some cases it’s trash thrown on the floor in an effort to ruin actual proper art:

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 19:30

  • Israel's Gantz Moves To Dissolve Knesset, Hold New Elections, In Anti-Netanyahu Drive
    Israel’s Gantz Moves To Dissolve Knesset, Hold New Elections, In Anti-Netanyahu Drive

    Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz is mounting a new challenge against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the coalition government, on Thursday announcing his centrist party is proposing holding a parliamentary vote on dissolving the Knesset.

    “The head of the National Union Party, Pnina Tamano-Shata, has put forward a bill to dissolve the 25th Knesset. This follows the request of party leader Minister Benny Gantz to move forward in broad agreement to an election before October, a year since the massacre,” the fresh statement from Gantz’s party said.

    Image: Flash90

    Gantz had already previously verbalized a plan to hold new elections by October, and two weeks ago he demanded in a provocative ultimatum that Netanyahu has until June 8 to present a clear strategic plan for the Gaza war.

    Below is the outline that Gantz previously articulated while lambasting the lack of a clear plan from Netanyahu:

    ”Bring our hostages home, topple the Hamas regime, strip the Gaza Strip, and ensure Israeli security control. Alongside maintaining Israeli security control, establish an American-European-Arab-Palestinian administration to civilly manage the Strip and lay the foundation for a future alternative to Hamas and Abbas, return the residents of the north to their homes by September 1, and rehabilitate the Western Negev, promote normalization with Saudi Arabia as part of an overall move that will create an alliance with the free world and the Arab world against Iran and adopt a service plan that will lead to all Israelis serving the state and contributing to the supreme national effort.”

    Gantz had continued in that prior statement: “The people of Israel are watching you. You must choose between Zionism and cynicism, between unity and division, between responsibility and neglect – and between victory and disaster.”

    Huge anti-Netanyahu protests have continued in Tel Aviv and in front of government buildings and even Netanyahu’s residence, and have been led by hostage victims’ families. They are outraged there’s been lack of clarity or prioritization of getting the rest of the hostages home, also as truce negotiations with Hamas have all but collapsed.

    It is anything but clear if Gantz has the votes to dissolve Knesset, but Netanyahu’s Likud party quickly shot back on Thursday with a terse statement: “The dissolution of the unity government is a reward for [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar, a capitulation to international pressure and a fatal blow to efforts to free our hostages.”

    But Gantz Tamano-Shata party reasoned that “The 7th of October is a disaster that requires us to go back in order to receive the public’s trust, to establish a broad and stable unity government that can lead us safely in the face of the enormous challenges in security, the economy and, above all, in Israeli society. Submitting the bill now will allow us to bring it up in the current session.”

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    To review, Gantz joined Netanyahu’s government soon on the heels of the Oct.7 terror attack last year. “Gantz’s centrist bloc split up in March and his party does not on its own control enough seats in parliament to bring down the ruling coalition,” Reuters notes.

    Critics of Netanyahu say he will use his role as a wartime leader to hold onto power as long as possible. As it stands, and assuming no opposition-led intervention succeeds, there is no election scheduled before the final quarter of 2026.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 19:00

  • Lawsuit Seeks End To 'Lawless' Noncitizen Voting In Pennsylvania
    Lawsuit Seeks End To ‘Lawless’ Noncitizen Voting In Pennsylvania

    Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The conservative advocacy group America First Legal (AFL) filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Department of State, seeking to end a directive that allows noncitizens to vote in state and federal elections.

    Illegal aliens from Cuba line up in Marathon, Fla., to board a bus to be driven to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection station on Jan. 5, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 requires that an individual applying to vote must mention a current and valid driver’s license and the last four digits of their Social Security number on the voter application form.

    HAVA mandates that local election officials confirm the numbers are valid and current by using available databases.

    “However, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania maintains a voter registration system that blatantly violates this federal law,” the May 21 complaint alleges.

    HAVA prohibits a state from accepting or processing a voter application registration that does not fulfill its identity proof provisions.

    In 2018, the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued a “HAVA Matching Directive” which states that a voter registration application “may not be rejected” solely based on the fact that an applicant’s driver’s license and Social Security number do not match any database.

    Under the directive, the Secretary of the Commonwealth asked “all 67 county boards of election to ignore HAVA’s verification mandate and to register any applicant” to vote even if the individual does not fulfill identification requirements.

    “This lawless directive does not just violate federal law; it creates a regime where an untold number of ineligible voters, including non-citizens, can register to vote in all state and federal elections in the Commonwealth,” the lawsuit said.

    In the HAVA directive, the Pennsylvania Department of State cited a previous case to argue that HAVA’s data comparison process was intended only for storing and managing the official list of registered voters. HAVA was not supposed to be used as “a restriction on voter eligibility,” it stated.

    The department asked counties to ensure their procedures “comply with state and federal law” while implementing the HAVA directive.

    This meant that if there are “no independent grounds” to reject a voter application other than a non-match of identification, the application cannot be rejected and should be “processed like all other applications.”

    AFL asked to repeal the HAVA Matching Directive and replace it with a regulation in compliance with HAVA.

    Gene Hamilton, America First Legal executive director, pointed out that Americans across the nation have “legitimate concerns” about the security of elections.

    And yet, he said, Pennsylvania adopted and maintained a voter registration process that “clearly and unambiguously violates basic federal law intended to provide a minimum baseline of security.”

    He called on the Secretary of State to abandon the “unlawful practice” and comply with the federal rules to ensure fraud doesn’t occur.

    The Pennsylvania State Department responded in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times: “All voters in Pennsylvania must be United States citizens in order to register to vote, and no directive or guidance from the Department says otherwise. Residents seeking to register to vote must prove their citizenship.”

    Noncitizen Voting Issue

    According to the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), foreign nationals registering to vote in U.S. election races is not uncommon.

    PILF data show that Pima County, Arizona, canceled 186 voter registrations due to citizenship issues between 2021 and 2023, with seven having voting histories.

    Similarly, 222 voter registrations in Maricopa County, Arizona, were canceled between 2015 and 2023 for similar issues, with nine people having a history of casting votes.

    “The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (Motor Voter) provides the most common pathway for foreign nationals to get registered to vote. The 24 states plus D.C. which automate Motor Voter, not giving the immigrant the chance to decline registration, exacerbate the problem,” PILF said.

    On May 8, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, or S.4292, which seeks to ensure that only American citizens take part in federal elections.

    The Act requires proof of citizenship during voter registration, outlining acceptable documentation to prove citizenship. States are required to set up alternative verification processes for citizens who do not have standard documents.

    The legislation also mandates that states purge noncitizens from their voter rolls. Penalties would be instituted for knowingly registering noncitizens as voters.

    Sen. Lee pointed out that illegal immigrants and other noncitizens are being improperly registered as voters, allowing them to cast votes in federal elections.

    This “foreign election interference” must be stopped, especially since trust in the voting process is now more important than ever, he said.

    “Voting is both a sacred right and responsibility of American citizenship, and allowing the people of other nations access to our elections is a grave blow to our security and self-governance.”

    Multiple left-leaning groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, American Humanist Association, Democracy Matters, National Action Network, and Stand Up America oppose the SAVE Act.

    In a May 16 letter to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), members of the Committee on House Administration, the organizations called the SAVE Act a “dangerous departure” from ensuring that all Americans have the freedom to vote.

    Requiring documentation of American citizenship is aimed at “fear-mongering and divisive rhetoric,” they claimed.

    Voters in every state are already required to verify their citizenship status when registering to vote, they said. As such, the SAVE Act is “unnecessary and dangerous.” The purpose of the Act was to make voting “more difficult, particularly for voters of color.”

    A congressional hearing on noncitizen voting was held on May 16. Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) said there was no proof of noncitizens voting in elections and that there should be a focus on “MAGA Republicans howling about this nonissue.”

    Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) pointed out that 100 noncitizens were recently identified in voter rolls in Ohio. He called for strict policies to ensure that only Americans vote in elections considering that 7 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States under the Biden administration.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 18:30

  • Iran's Khamenei Receives Assad, Hails Syria's Resistance To Regime Change Efforts
    Iran’s Khamenei Receives Assad, Hails Syria’s Resistance To Regime Change Efforts

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in Tehran on Thursday for a rare state as part of a condolence message in the wake of the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash earlier this month.

    Assad met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as the Islamic Republic’s acting President Mohammad Mokhber. Assad expressed condolences also for the death of Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials who went down in the May 19th crash in a mountainous region near Azerbaijan.

    The trip also comes amid the backdrop of the Gaza war, as well as daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbolllah, also amid recent Israeli attacks on Syria. Ayatollah Khamenei hailed Syria as central to the ‘resistance’. He told the Syrian president “Syria’s special position in the region is distinguished because of this identity, and this important feature must be preserved.”

    Image source: Khamenei.ir

    “This identity has always contributed to the national unity of Syria,” he added, describing that Damascus’ resistance to Western hegemony was initially forged by Assad’s father, the late Hafez. Khamenei said, “everyone should see the special privilege of the Syrian government, that is, resistance, in front of their eyes.”

    According to more from state media, Iran’s Supreme Leader spoke on the last decade of Western-Gulf-Israeli efforts to overthrow the Syrian government: 

    Ayatollah Khamenei said the Westerners and their acolytes in the region tried to overthrow Syria’s political system and remove it from the regional equations through the war they waged against the country, but they did not succeed. 

    “Now they want to use other methods, including promises that they never fulfill, in order to take Syria out of the regional equations,” he added.

    Among these current methods includes sanctions that aim to starve and choke Syria and its population, as well as the ongoing US occupation of northeast Syria, where the country’s vital supplies of oil and gas are located. Officials in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, and Moscow have long charged Washington with plundering Syria’s natural resources.

    Though not religiously aligned (Iran is a Shia religious state while Syria has a largely Baathist secular identity), Damascus and Tehran have since 2011 forged deeper ties. That’s when Western and Gulf states began pouring massive supplies of weaponry and money into jihadist rebel forces in a large-scale covert campaign to topple Assad.

    Out of the West-backed insurgency came ISIS, Syrian al-Qaeda, and an array of Sunni terrorist groups. Israel also covertly supported this Sunni terror insurgency aimed at rolling back ‘Iranian influence’ and the so-called ‘Shia axis’.

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    In response, Iran deepened its military presence throughout Syria at the invitation of the Assad government. In 2015, Russia also intervened as an ally of the Syrian government, and at its request. This is part of the ‘resistance’ that Iran’s leaders speak of, which also includes Lebanese Hezbollah.

    Without Syria, Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah pushing back against Western/Gulf regime change efforts, there’s a big likelihood that an al-Qaeda aligned entity would be in control of Damascus today. It might be an uncomfortable truth for many, but it is a historical fact nonetheless. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 18:00

  • Our Revolutionary Times: VDH
    Our Revolutionary Times: VDH

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies.

    Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization.

    Since the 1960s, universities have always been hotbeds of left-wing protests, sometimes violently so.

    But the post-October 7 campus eruptions marked a watershed difference.

    Masked left-wing protestors were unashamedly and virulently anti-Semitic. Students on elite campuses especially showed contempt for both middle-class police officers tasked with preventing their violence and vandalism and the maintenance workers who had to clean up their garbage.

    Mobs took over buildings, assaulted Jewish students, called for the destruction of Israel, and defaced American monuments and commentaries.

    When pressed by journalists to explain their protests, most students knew nothing of the politics or geography of Palestine, for which they were protesting.

    The public concluded that the more elite the campus, the more ignorant, arrogant, and hateful the students seemed.

    The Biden administration destroyed the southern border. Ten million illegal aliens swarmed into the U.S. without audit. Almost daily, news accounts detail violent acts committed by illegal aliens or their surreal demands for more free lodging and support.

    Simultaneously, thousands of Middle Eastern students, invited by universities on student visas, block traffic, occupy bridges, disrupt graduations, and generally show contempt for the laws of their American hosts.

    The net result is that Americans are reappraising their entire attitude toward immigration. Expect the border to be closed soon and immigration to become mostly meritocratic, smaller, and legal, with zero tolerance for immigrants and resident visitors who break the laws of their hosts.

    Americans are also reappraising their attitudes toward time-honored bureaucracies, the courts, and government agencies.

    The public still cannot digest the truth that the once respected FBI partnered with social media to suppress news stories, to surveil parents at school board meetings, and to conduct performance art swat raids on the homes of supposed political opponents.

    After the attempts of the Department of Justice to go easy on the miscreant Hunter Biden but to hound ex-president Donald Trump for supposedly removing files illegally in the same fashion as current President Biden, the public lost confidence not just in Attorney General Merrick Garland but in American jurisprudence itself.

    The shenanigans of prosecutors like Fani Willis, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg, along with overtly biased judges like Juan Merchant and Arthur Engoron, only reinforced the reality that the American legal system has descended into third-world-like tit-for-tat vendettas.

    The same politicization has nearly discredited the Pentagon. Its investigations of “white” rage and white supremacy found no such organized cabals in the ranks. But these unicorn hunts likely helped cause a 45,000-recruitment shortfall among precisely the demographic that died at twice their numbers in the general population in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Add in the humiliating flight from Kabul, the abandonment of $50 billion in weapons to the Taliban terrorists, the recent embarrassment of the failed Gaza pier, and the litany of political invective from retired generals and admirals. The result is that the armed forces have an enormous task to restore public faith. They will have to return to meritocracy and emphasize battle efficacy, enforce the uniform code of military justice, and start either winning wars or avoiding those that cannot be won.

    Finally, we are witnessing a radical inversion in our two political parties.

    The old populist Democratic Party that championed lunch-bucket workers has turned into a shrill union of the very rich and subsidized poor. Its support of open borders, illegal immigration, the war on fossil fuels, transgenderism, critical legal and race theories, and the woke agenda are causing the party to lose support.

    The Republican Party is likewise rebranding itself from a once-stereotyped brand of aristocratic and corporate grandees to one anchored in the middle class.

    Even more radically, the new populist Republicans are beginning to appeal to voters on shared class and cultural concerns rather than on racial and tribal interests.

    The results of all these revolutions will shake up the U.S. for decades to come.

    Soon we may see a Georgia Tech or Purdue degree as far better proof of an educated and civic-minded citizen than a Harvard or Stanford brand.

    We will likely jettison the failed salad bowl approach to immigration and return to the melting pot as immigration becomes exclusively legal, meritocratic, and manageable.

    To avoid further loss of public confidence, institutions like the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the DOJ will have to re-earn rather than just assume the public’s confidence.

    And we may soon accept the reality that Democrats reflect the values of Silicon Valley plutocrats, university presidents, and blue-city mayors, while Republicans become the home of an ecumenical black, Hispanic, Asian, and white middle class.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 17:40

  • New Louisiana Law Makes It Illegal To Approach A Police Officer Engaged In Executing Their Duties
    New Louisiana Law Makes It Illegal To Approach A Police Officer Engaged In Executing Their Duties

    A new law in Louisiana makes it illegal to approach a police officer within 25 feet in certain situations, ostensibly the state’s way of keeping officers executing their duties free from swarms of woke camera-wielding liberals offering up their scholarly legal takes in the midst of official business. 

    Critics argue that the new law, criminalizing approaching a police officer within 25 feet under certain conditions could restrict the public’s ability to film police, a key method for ensuring accountability.

    The law, which takes effect on August 1, imposes penalties of up to $500 and/or 60 days in jail for those convicted of knowingly or intentionally nearing an officer after being told to stop. Although the law does not explicitly mention filming, opponents contend it could interfere with observational rights and potentially violate First Amendment freedoms.

    Those advocating for the law say it would “create a buffer-zone to help ensure the safety of officers and that bystanders would still be close enough to film police interactions,” according to AP.

    AP notes that cellphone videos by bystanders, notably in cases like George Floyd’s 2020 death, have been pivotal in highlighting police misconduct and prompting discussions on police transparency.

    Similar legislative efforts to restrict filming distances have been seen, such as a 2022 Arizona law that tried to ban filming police within 8 feet upon request, which was blocked by a federal judge as unconstitutional after challenges from media groups and the ACLU. This ruling underscored the established right to film police in action.

    The author of the measure, State Rep. Bryan Fontenot, said: “At 25 feet, that person can’t spit in my face when I’m making an arrest. The chances of him hitting me in the back of the head with a beer bottle at 25 feet — it sure is a lot more difficult than if he’s sitting right here.”

    Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, has spoken out against the law: “Each of us has a constitutional right to freely observe public servants as they function in public and within the course and scope of their official duties.”

    He added: “Observations of law enforcement, whether by witnesses to an incident with officers, individuals interacting with officers, or members of the press, are invaluable in promoting transparency.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 17:20

  • Assembly Passes Measure Allowing Illegal Immigrant Students To Work At California Colleges And Universities
    Assembly Passes Measure Allowing Illegal Immigrant Students To Work At California Colleges And Universities

    Authored by Sophie Li via The Epoch Times,

    A bill that would allow students who are illegal immigrants to work at California colleges and universities passed the state Assembly on May 22.

    Currently, students must obtain a work permit to hold jobs on campus. That would change under Assembly Bill 2586, introduced by Assemblyman David Alvarez of San Diego.

    “America has always promised that if you work hard, you will have the opportunity to succeed,” the lawmaker said May 24 in a statement.

    “Creating these pathways to secure employment is essential.”

    The bill passed on a vote of 59-4.

    Under the bill, schools cannot disqualify a student from employment for failing to provide proof of a federal work authorization unless it is required specifically for a position by federal law or as a condition of a grant funding the position.

    If the bill were to become law, the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California Community College (CCC) systems would not enforce the federal ban on hiring illegal immigrants.

    The legislation is based on the premise that California’s public colleges and universities should be exempt from the 1986 federal Immigration Reform and Control Act, which prevents employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

    When Congress passed the act, it “did not curtail states’ historic power to determine the employment qualifications of state employees. As a result, [the act’s] prohibition on hiring undocumented persons does not bind state government entities,” UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy wrote in a 2022 memorandum it published.

    If passed, the three systems will begin implementing the change by Jan. 6, 2025.

    An analysis of the bill cited the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from 2023 estimating that California has the most illegal immigrant college students in the nation, with around 83,000 across its higher education systems.

    “These students have fulfilled their obligation and are ready to be our future teachers, scientists, doctors, and public servants,” Mr. Alvarez, the assembly member, said.

    While the UC did not take a stance on the bill, President Michael Drake issued a statement in January declaring it not feasible for several reasons.

    According to Mr. Drake, employees might face criminal or civil prosecution for knowingly engaging in practices prohibited by federal law, and the UC could incur civil fines, criminal penalties, or be barred from federal contracting for violating the immigration reform act. It could also lose billions of dollars in federal contracts and grants contingent on compliance.

    “We have concluded that the proposed legal pathway is not viable at this time, and in fact carries significant risk for the institution and for those we serve,” the president said.

    The bill is currently awaiting assignment to a committee in the state Senate.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 17:00

  • Watch: Trump Responds After NY Guilty Verdict
    Watch: Trump Responds After NY Guilty Verdict

    Update (1710ET): Former President Donald Trump has been found guilty on all 34 counts in his New York ‘hush money’ trial. The outcome makes him the first former president to become a convicted felon.

    Trump reportedly stared ahead motionless as the verdict was read.

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    The trial centered on allegations that Trump falsified business records in order to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 US election. Prosecutors under Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg argued that Trump oversaw a scheme to influence the 2016 election by using Trump Organization records to conceal the payments.

    “Everything Mr. Trump and his cohorts did in this case is cloaked in lies,” said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass. “The evidence is literally overwhelming.”

    Trump Responds

    “This is a rigged, disgraceful trial,” Trump said in response, adding “The real verdict will be on November 5.”

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    Judge Juan Merchan will now decide Trump’s sentence on July 11 – days before Republicans are set to select him as the 2024 nominee. The crime has a maximum sentence of four years in prison. That said, Merchan could also opt for home confinement, probation, supervised release, fines or community service.

    Biden Campaign Responds

    “In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law,” reads a statement.

    “Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain. But today’s verdict does not change the fact that American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”

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    Trump is certain to appeal the verdict, which could take months or even years – however Democrats now have their ‘Felon Trump’ talking point which they think will help Joe Biden come November. 

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    As ‘Techno Fog’ of The Reactionary notes, 

    The target might have been Trump, but the real goal was to influence the 2024 election, no matter the shaky facts and dubious legal theories of the case. Democracy must be saved even through unlawful and unethical means. The enemies of society must be hunted, the obstacles to progress must be destroyed.

    As the years-long Trump investigation and prosecution continued, and as New Yorkers continue to deal with rampant crime and theft and felony assaults – which they often don’t even report due to “the revolving-door criminal injustice system” – Trump was pursued with rare intensity. The bodega shopkeepers, facing a shoplifting and armed robbery epidemic which empties their shelves and puts their lives at risk, are besides themselves. As are normal citizens whose safety is at risk daily. If only their interests were political. If only the perpetrator were the Republican presidential frontrunner and not a career criminal then perhaps they would see justice.

    In trial, venue matters. It’s strategic, it’s the selection of a favorable judge and jury. Monsanto is sued in San Fransisco and the jury pours them out for $289 million. Cook County (Illinois) is notorious for high jury verdicts. So too is Philadelphia and Lansing, Michigan. Corporate defendants tremble in fear at being sued in working class cities along the Gulf coast. Texas brings suit against the Biden Administration in the Southern District of Texas – Galveston Division because the one federal district judge there (a Trump appointee) will not hesitate to stop unlawful acts or policies. Hawaii brought suit in Honolulu against the Trump Administration and obtained a temporary restraining order against Trump’s travel ban from an Obama-appointed judge. He was reversed by the Supreme Court, but that process took over a year.

    And as ‘End Wokeness’ notes, there’s no turning back from the new precedent which has just been set by Democrats.

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    Meanwhile, WinRed, the Republican donation platform, is currently overwhelmed.

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    The 77-year-old Trump still faces criminal trials in Washington and Georgia over alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as one in Florida pertaining to his handling of classified national security documents taken from the White House.

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    The jury empaneled in the NY v. Trump case said it has reached a verdict.

    The 12-person jury – which has requested 30 minutes to fill out the paperwork  – will soon enter the courtroom and announce what it has decided. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged former President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, and Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.

    Judge Juan Merchan will invite the jury in to read its verdict.

    Prior to receiving the jury’s note around 4:20 p.m., Merchan had indicated he would excuse the jury for the day at 4:30 as a growing number expected a mistrial due to a hung jury however the presence of a verdict means that we will shortly know if the jury has found Trump “guilty” or “not guilty.”

    Prosecutors needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic performer, in the lead-up to the 2016 election to silence her about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.

    Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, was the prosecution’s “star witness.”He testified that he personally made the $130,000 payment to Daniels using a home equity line of credit in an effort to conceal the payment from his wife.

    Cohen said he did this because Trump told him to “handle it” and prevent a negative story from coming out ahead of the election.But Trump’s defense attorneys maintained that the president never directed Cohen to do so.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 16:47

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