Today’s News 3rd August 2023

• "Persistent Threat Actors": Norway Government Ministries Suffered 4 Month Long Cyberattack
  “Persistent Threat Actors”: Norway Government Ministries Suffered 4 Month Long Cyberattack

  Norway’s government ministries have fallen victim to a cyberattack that lasted “at least four months”, according to a Bloomberg article that broke early Wednesday morning. The attack was carried out via a vulnerability linked to mobile device management, the report says. 

  Norwegian and US cybersecurity agencies confirmed that the vulnerability affecting Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile “allowed advanced persistent threat actors…to gather information from several Norwegian organizations, and gain access to and compromise a Norwegian government agency’s network from at least April”.

  A joint cybersecurity advisory was issued on August 1 and can be read in full here. 

  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Norway’s National Cyber Security Centre said: “Mobile device management systems are attractive targets for threat actors because they provide elevated access to thousands of mobile devices.”

  Ivanti has released patches for the vulnerabilities already, on July 23 and July 28, Bloomberg reported. 

  

  The news comes just weeks after it was reported that Chinese hackers had accessed the email of a U.S. ambassador and had compromised “hundreds of thousands” of U.S. government emails. 

  We noted, citing the Wall Street Journal in late July that hackers “linked to Beijing” accessed the email account of the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, in an attack that reportedly has “compromised at least hundreds of thousands of individual U.S. government emails.”

  Daniel Kritenbrink, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, was also hacked in the cyber-espionage attack. While it remains unconfirmed, the two diplomats are believed to be the two most senior officials at the State Department targeted in the alleged spying campaign disclosed last week.

  Unlike previous so-called “Russian hacking” campaigns which dominated the news between 2016 and 2022 and which were fabricated by the FBI to cover up the FBI’s own criminal activity, and where everything about the perps was known instantaneously, the “contours” of the Chinese hacking campaign aren’t fully known.

  According to the Journal, while the infiltration was limited to unclassified emails, “the inboxes of Burns and Kritenbrink could have allowed the hackers to glean insights into U.S. planning for a recent string of visits to China by senior Biden administration officials, as well as internal conversations about U.S. policies toward its rival amid a period of delicate diplomacy that has been challenged repeatedly in recent months.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/03/2023 – 02:45

• UK Windfall Tax Here To Stay Despite Energy Sector Overhaul
  UK Windfall Tax Here To Stay Despite Energy Sector Overhaul

  Via OilPrice.com,

  • The UK government’s latest energy announcements include pledges for carbon capture and storage and the release of more oil and gas licenses in the North Sea, but they do not signal a reversal in the windfall tax.

  • Despite a review of the oil and gas sector’s tax regime, changes to the Energy Profits Levy will not be considered, and the windfall tax will remain in effect until March 2028.

  • The windfall tax, along with a special 40% corporation tax rate for oil and gas producers, has led to North Sea producers pulling out of domestic projects and has raised concerns about the UK’s investment climate.

  Downing Street’s latest energy announcements this morning will not lead to a reversal in the controversial windfall tax, despite industry hopes of it being softened to make the country’s investment climate more attractive.

  Many of the new measures were trailed in the media before they were announced this week, including the pledges for carbon capture and storage and at least 100 more oil and gas licences in the North Sea.

  These proposals will likely provoke a reaction from climate protestors and activists, including Just Stop Oil – which have been active with demonstrations across the country since last summer.

  But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appeared to pull a rabbit out of the hat with confirmation of a review of the oil and gas sector’s tax regime, with a potential announcement later this year.

  This will not , however, mean the windfall tax – first introduced by Sunak and toughened under Chancellor Jeremy Hunt – will be removed any time soon.

  

  Five more years of government windfall tax

  In its call for evidence from the industry, the government confirmed that the focus is on the long-term investment climate of the North Sea, and that changes to the Energy Profits Levy will not be considered.

  For now, it appears Downing Street considers its recent introduction of a so-called ‘price floor’ – the Energy Security Investment Mechanism – will be sufficient.

  This withdraws the windfall tax when oil prices decline to $71.40 per barrel and gas prices slide below 54p per therm.

  Brent Crude oil is currently priced at $85.10 per barrel, while gas is priced at 67.7p per therm on the UK’s benchmark, well above the thresholds.

  In contrast to industry hopes, the consultation will focus on the investment climate beyond March 2028, when the Energy Profits Levy will finally conclude, so the windfall tax should stay until then.

  Robin Allan, chairman of the association, told City A.M. he welcomed today’s announcement of funding for new carbon capture projects and at least 100 further North Sea oil and gas licences, but warned that that the country’s “broader fiscal regime remains uncompetitive.”

  “We look forward to responding to the planned review of taxes on the sector. Whilst we remain concerned that the UK’s broader fiscal regime remains uncompetitive, this consultation will be a great opportunity to review net zero capital allowances, which can support the North Sea oil and gas sector’s commitment to decarbonise the supply chain.”

  This perspective was backed by Ithaca Energy, which argued that “fiscal stability is paramount for the industry given the large and long duration of capital investments.”

  A spokesperson told City A.M.: “The Energy Profits Levy in its current form continues to impact investment across the UK North Sea with windfall taxes remaining despite softening in commodity prices and profits no longer being windfall in nature.”

  Government faces challenge to woo North Sea

  As it stands, the Energy Profits Levy is set at 35 per cent and runs through to its end date despite fossil fuel prices and wholesale costs easing – with the government not expected to trigger its price floor at any point over the next five years.

  This is on top of the special 40 per cent corporation tax rate oil and gas producers pay – nearly double the rate of other industries.

  The tax has contributed to North Sea producers pulling out of domestic projects.

  So far this includes Total slashing £100m plans to work on an infill well on Elgin this year, Enquest planning to leave its Kraken field in the North Sea to “natural decline, and Harbour Energy cutting jobs at its Aberdeen base alongside shifting investment to the US and South America.

  Meanwhile, Ithaca Energy has been locked in talks with the government over the UK’s investment climate before it moved forward with commitments for Rosebank, as first reported by City A.M.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/03/2023 – 02:00

• Technocensorship: The Government's War On So-Called 'Dangerous Ideas'
  Technocensorship: The Government’s War On So-Called ‘Dangerous Ideas’

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

  – Ray Bradbury

  What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.Seventy years after Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 depicted a fictional world in which books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled, we find ourselves navigating an eerily similar reality.

  Welcome to the age of technocensorship.

  On paper – under the First Amendment, at least – we are technically free to speak.

  

  In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

  Case in point: internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.

  By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

  This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.

  The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.

  Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

  This is the very definition of technofascism.

  Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

  The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

  Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

  As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal: “The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”

  Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

  The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

  Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

  This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it.

  In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

  Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will all be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

  This is how it starts.

  First, the censors went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “hate speech.”

  Then they went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden.

  By the time so-called extremists found themselves in the crosshairs for spouting so-called “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.

  Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

  Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

  Watch and learn.

  We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

  Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

  Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.

  As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

  The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.

  Be warned: it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

  Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

  If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

  It’s happening already.

  With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”

  Little by little, Americans are being conditioned to accept routine incursions on their freedoms.

  This is how oppression becomes systemic, what is referred to as creeping normality, or a death by a thousand cuts.

  It’s a concept invoked by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond to describe how major changes, if implemented slowly in small stages over time, can be accepted as normal without the shock and resistance that might greet a sudden upheaval.

  Diamond’s concerns related to Easter Island’s now-vanished civilization and the societal decline and environmental degradation that contributed to it, but it’s a powerful analogy for the steady erosion of our freedoms and decline of our country right under our noses.

  As Diamond explains, “In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism… Why didn’t they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?”

  His answer: “I suspect that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper.”

  Much like America’s own colonists, Easter Island’s early colonists discovered a new world—“a pristine paradise”—teeming with life. Yet almost 2000 years after its first settlers arrived, Easter Island was reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they failed to preserve paradise for future generations.

  The same could be said of the America today: it, too, is being reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they are failing to preserve freedom for future generations.

  In Easter Island’s case, as Diamond speculates:

  The forest…vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation… The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect… Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.”

  Sound painfully familiar yet?

  We’ve already torn down the rich forest of liberties established by our founders. It has vanished slowly, over the decades. The erosion of our freedoms has happened so incrementally, no one seems to have noticed. Only the older generations, remembering what true freedom was like, recognize the difference. Gradually, the freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry have become fewer, smaller and less important. By the time the last freedom falls, no one will know the difference.

  This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: with a thousand cuts, each one justified or ignored or shrugged over as inconsequential enough by itself to bother, but they add up.

  Each cut, each attempt to undermine our freedoms, each loss of some critical right—to think freely, to assemble, to speak without fear of being shamed or censored, to raise our children as we see fit, to worship or not worship as our conscience dictates, to eat what we want and love who we want, to live as we want—they add up to an immeasurable failure on the part of each and every one of us to stop the descent down that slippery slope.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are on that downward slope now.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/03/2023 – 00:00

• Brazil Ends Tightening Cycle With Larger Than Expected 50bps Rate Cut; Other Central Banks To Follow
  Brazil Ends Tightening Cycle With Larger Than Expected 50bps Rate Cut; Other Central Banks To Follow

  In the end, Lula got his wish and won his quiet war with Brazil’s central bank.

  As BBG’s Sebastian Boyd writes, Brazil’s central bank “couldn’t help but surprise traders today”, and it did so not only with the first rate cut in three years, ending its tightening cycle – which sent the Selic target rate from 2% in March 2021 to 13.75 % in August 2022 – but also did so with a bigger cut than many expected.

  

  The Copom cut the policy rate by 50bp to 13.25% in a tight 5-4 split decision, after keeping it at 13.75% for exactly one year. The four dissenting votes were for a milder 25bp cut. 

  Going into the meeting, swaps traders were roughly evenly split between 25 and 50 bps, while 30 of 41 economists in Bloomberg’s survey expected a 25-bp cut and 11 saw 50 bps. The bank said it considered cutting the Selic by a quarter-point, but chose to make a larger cut because of continuing improvement in the country’s inflation outlook.

  “If the scenario evolves as expected, the committee members unanimously anticipate further reductions of the same magnitude in the next meetings, and it judges that this pace is appropriate to keep the necessary contractionary monetary policy for the disinflationary process,” the Central Bank of Brazil said in a statement.

  And while Brazil wasn’t the first central bank to cut its key interest rate first – Uruguay was first, and Chile also followed with a larger-than-expected cut last week – it is by far the biggest so far. Interestingly, the decision was not unanimous. Both the new appointee, Gabriel Galipolo and the president Roberto Campos Neto voted for 50 bps.

  The decision was dovish to market expectations but not to market pricing. The (bi-modal) market consensus was leaning towards a 25bp rate cut: of the 41 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, 31 expected a 25bp rate cut and 10 a larger 50bp rate cut.

  Even with the larger-than-expected cut Wednesday, the gap between inflation and the Selic rate remains wide and even deeper cuts may be in store, said Gino Olivares, chief economist at Azimut Brasil Wealth Management.

  If the central bank trims half a percentage point for the next three meetings, “we will have the Selic at 11.75% at the end of the year, which is still a contractionist level,” Olivares said. “In the future, they will have to evaluate whether to accelerate the pace of easing.”

  As the WSJ notes, the central bank began raising the Selic after inflation started to pick up toward the end of 2020 and then rose faster as the Brazil’s economy recovered from the pandemic-induced slowdown. The Russian invasion of Ukraine later pushed inflation even higher as energy and food prices gained amid supply disruptions.

  Higher interest rates are now having the expected effect on inflation and the economy, and other factors are also helping calm concerns at the central bank, said Matheus Pizzani, an economist at brokerage CM Capital Markets.

  “The more recent evolution of inflation has been closer to what was hoped,” Pizzani said. High rates are helping slow the economy, concerns about the new Brazilian government’s fiscal policies have eased, and the outlook for services inflation is improving, he added.

  * * *

  In justifying its decision, the Copom – which just a few months ago was contemplating raising its inflation target – signaled the need to maintain a contractionary monetary stance until the disinflationary process consolidates and inflation expectations anchor around its targets. The Copom stated that the improvement of the inflation backdrop, reflecting in part the lagged effects of monetary policy, coupled with the reduction of longer-term inflation expectations provided “the necessary confidence to start a gradual cycle of monetary policy easing”.

  The Copom considered the option of reducing the Selic rate to 13.50%, but concluded that it was appropriate to adopt a 50bp cut in this meeting due to an improvement in the inflation dynamics, reinforcing, however, the firm objective of keeping a contractionary monetary policy to re-anchor expectations and bring inflation to the target over the relevant horizon.

  The forward guidance points to the maintenance of the current pace of rate cuts in the next meetings (view held by all directors if the macro scenario evolves as expected). The characterization of the balance of risks for inflation suffered significant modifications but remained broadly neutral. The conditional inflation forecast for end-2024 did not improve (remained at 3.4%; i.e., still above the 3.0% target by end-2024 target.

  Some economists say part of the current decline in Brazil’s 12-month inflation readings are temporary, stemming from fuel tax cuts the government applied last year. That effect is likely to dissipate in coming months, leading to a possible uptick in the headline inflation measure even as the economy slows, said CM Capital’s Pizzani.

  “Inflation readings will increasingly reflect actual supply and demand imbalances,” he said. He sees inflation bouncing back to 4.8% in December, before falling to 3.8% a year later.

  Looking ahead, Goldman expects the Copom to cut the Selic rate by 50 bp at the three remaining 2023 meetings, driving the Selic to 11.75% by end-end.

  Here are some more details on the rate cut from Goldman

  • 1. For the Copom, the decision to cut 50bp to 13.25% “is compatible with the strategy of convergence of inflation to around the target over the relevant horizon for monetary policy, which includes the 2024, and to a lesser extent 2025, calendar years.” We highlight that 2025 entered the relevant horizon for monetary policy in the August meeting (previously the only relevant horizon was the 2024 calendar years).
  • 2. The Copom reiterated the need to maintain a contractionary monetary stance until the disinflationary process consolidates and inflation expectations anchor around its targets.
  • 3. The Copom stated that the improvement of the inflation backdrop, reflecting in part the lagged effects of monetary policy, coupled with the reduction of longer-term inflation expectations, after the recent decision of the National Monetary Council on the inflation target, “have given the necessary confidence to start a gradual cycle of monetary policy easing”.
  • 4. The Copom considered the option of reducing the Selic rate to 13.50%, but it concluded that it was appropriate to adopt a 50bp in this meeting due to an improvement in the inflation dynamics, reinforcing, however, the firm objective of keeping a contractionary monetary policy to reanchor expectations and bring inflation to the target over the relevant horizon. For the Copom, the current context, characterized by a stage in which the disinflationary process tends to be slower and with partial reanchoring of inflation expectations, requires serenity and moderation in the conduct of monetary policy.
  • 5. Forward guidance: No acceleration in the pace of rate cuts. For the Copom, if the macro scenario evolves as expected, its members unanimously anticipate further cuts of the same magnitude in the next meetings, and judge that this pace [-50bp] is appropriate to keep the monetary stance contractionary necessary for the disinflationary process.
  • 6. Finally, the Copom emphasized that the total magnitude of the easing cycle throughout time will depend on the inflation dynamics, especially the components that are more sensitive to monetary policy and economic activity, on inflation expectations (in particular long-term expectations), on its inflation projections, on the output gap, and on the balance of risks.
  • 7. The Reference Scenario with a BRL/USD that follows a PPP path starting at 4.75 (vs. 4.85 at the June meeting), the Selic path of the market scenario, and where oil prices follow approximately the futures curve for the next six-months, and rise 2% per year thereafter, shows headline inflation at 4.9% by end-2023 (5.0% at the June meeting and still above the 3.25% target), 3.4% by end-2024 (3.4% at the June meeting and closer to the 3.00% target), and 3.0% for end-2025 (vs 3.1 in the June QIR). The assumption for inflation in regulated tariffs/prices rose for 2023 (+40bp to 9.4%) and were unchanged for 2024 (at 4.6%). That is, in this scenario the conditional inflation forecasts for end-2024 remained above the target.
  • 8. The characterization of the balance of risks for inflation suffered significant modifications but remained broadly neutral.
    • a. As upside risks to the inflation outlook and inflation expectations, the Copom mentions: (i) greater persistence of global inflationary pressures; and (ii) stronger than expected services inflation resilience/stickiness due to a tighter output gap. The Copom added risk (ii) and deleted as upside risks to inflation: “some residual” uncertainty about the final design of fiscal framework to be approved in Congress and, more relevant for monetary policy, its impact on the expectations for public debt and inflation paths, and on risky assets and a deeper or more persistent unanchoring of long-term inflation expectations.
    • b. As downside risks, the Copom stated: (i) a deeper than expected deceleration of global economic activity, particularly due to adverse conditions in the global financial system; and (ii) stronger than expected impact on global inflation from synchronized monetary policy tightening. As downside risks the Copom added risk (ii) and deleted from the statement the risks from: (i) additional decline of the price of commodities measured in local currency (although a sizeable part of this movement has already been observed); and; (ii) a slowdown in domestic credit origination that is deeper than what would be compatible with the current stance of monetary policy.
  • 9. The Copom’s updated scenario can be summarized as follows.
    • a. The global environment remains uncertain, with some disinflation at the margin, but against an environment with still high core inflation and labor market resilience in many countries.
    • b. On the domestic front, the Copom repeated that “the recent set of indicators remains in line with the baseline scenario of activity deceleration” in the coming quarters.
    • c. Notwithstanding the recent reduction of headline inflation, the Copom anticipates an increase in annual headline inflation during 2H2013. Moreover, several core inflation measures have declined recently but remain above the inflation target.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 23:40

• Sound Of Freedom: FBI Finds 200 Sex Trafficking Victims, Including Children
  Sound Of Freedom: FBI Finds 200 Sex Trafficking Victims, Including Children

  While the pedo-loving propagandists at the once-great Rolling Stone and other major media outlets attacked the anti-child-trafficking film “Sound of Freedom,” calling it a “QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking” which is “designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer” — the FBI announced Tuesday it rescued more than 200 sex trafficking victims during a two-week nationwide operation in July. 

  Known as “Operation Cross Country,” nearly every FBI field office was involved in the annual two-week operation that led to the arrest of 126 suspects of child sexual exploitation and human trafficking offenses, and 68 suspects of trafficking were identified or arrested. 

  The bureau and its local partners found 59 minor victims of child sex trafficking and sexual exploitation and another 59 children who had been reported missing. 

  “Human traffickers prey on the most vulnerable members of our society, and their crimes scar victims — many of them children — for life. The FBI’s commitment to combatting this threat will never waver, and we will continue to send our message that these atrocities will not be tolerated,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

  “Sex traffickers exploit and endanger some of the most vulnerable members of our society and cause their victims unimaginable harm,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said

  Garland continued, “This operation, which located 59 actively missing children, builds on the tremendous work the FBI has undertaken over many years to rescue minor victims and arrest those responsible for these unspeakable crimes. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners across the country to prevent human trafficking; increase detection, investigation and prosecution of human trafficking crimes; and expand support and services to protect and empower survivors.”

  The FBI worked with a child protection organization, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and concentrated efforts on “identifying and locating victims of sex trafficking and investigating and arresting individuals and criminal enterprises involved in both child sex and human trafficking.”

  While the operation was underway, Jim Caviezel’s anti-child-trafficking Sound of Freedom film was released nationwide on theater screens and became a summer blockbuster. However, a chorus of mainstream hit pieces denounced it as a “QAnon” conspiracy flick.

  

  Even Bloomberg.

  Is ‘Sound of Freedom’ a QAnon dog whistle, or is it just another thriller? @nberlat saw the movie and has an answer. https://t.co/qmk1Sa7DNg via @opinion

  — Bloomberg (@business) July 15, 2023

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

  We should be grateful for the people who made the film and put a spotlight on the unspoken truth of child sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. We should be asking why the mainstream corporate press made a concerted effort to play down the issue. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 23:20

• The Global Warming Hoax Is A Rerun Of A Plot As Old As Mankind
  The Global Warming Hoax Is A Rerun Of A Plot As Old As Mankind

  Authored by Rob Smith via RealClear Markets,

  What were the Redneck’s last words before he died? Answer: watch this fellas! Men are conquerors, if this were not true, America would’ve never been discovered. Our “conquer” DNA makes us do things that women will never understand. Admittedly, some of the things we do can fairly be described as “stupid.” But, we have to do what we have to do.  A couple weeks ago, I was in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was late evening, and I was sitting on a park bench in a lovely and lush park with an enchanting young lass. The sun was setting, and her perfume blended with the subtle, cool breezes blowing off Long Island Sound, enriching the amorous senses of your author. But suddenly, I had to get up. I walked 50 paces and proudly peed on some city park shrubbery. The ingénue was quite puzzled. However, I had to do what I had to do to tell Greenwich, Conn that I was the boss of it. Rick put Elsa on the plane in Casablanca, this was kind of the same thing.

  

  My son Coleman and I exercise our conquer gene in multiple ways. One of which is, if we see water we have to go in. Swimming in Maine when not even the natives will put their toe in the water is our way to tell the ocean, we own you, you are our bitch and we are not afraid of you. Like I said, I don’t expect you ladies to understand. Last year Coleman and I were hiking down a canyon in Southern California. When we got to the bottom, there was a lagoon with what looked like venomous snakes swimming across it. Coleman gave me a look that said “c’mon dad, let’s do it,” and promptly dived in. I have never been prouder of my son for doing anything stupider!

  Lately, the mainstream and very liberal news media has been telling us that we are experiencing record high temperatures in their efforts to spread fear and get us to swallow the hoax of climate change. It’s not that hot, indeed it has been a mild summer.  News flash: it is supposed to be hot in the summer. Now one of the cognitive benefits of doing “stupid conquer” stuff is having historical memory about the condition of the elements.  Not terribly long ago, when I should’ve been a responsible adult since I had 3 children to put through private school, my other stupid male friends and I participated in what we called “The Heat Bowl.” On what we deemed were likely the hottest days of the year, generally around 105 degrees, we would play tennis (on hard courts) under the boiling sun. I remember many a Heat Bowl and many 105-degree days. By the way when John Blankenship got heat stroke after one of our matches, we teased him unmercifully because that’s all a part of being a stupid male. Ladies, I trust you are taking notes. I remember many consecutive weeks in the high 90s, and summers when the thermometer was well over 100 for 7 days. I remember being in Virginia Beach when it was 110 degrees. My buds and I had a contest to see who could walk the farthest barefoot on the hot sand. My feet did not fare well that day, and I was called the P word.

  So to the Main Stream Media, I raise my middle finger, you can’t fool me because I actually have a memory. With this said, I am amazed at all those who don’t. Yesterday, this lady who comes into Starbucks every day was complaining about the “record” heat. She’s one of those New York Times reading types.  She’s married to some academic and she walks 10 blocks to Starbucks wearing one of those “I” whatever you call it facemasks. She’s in her mid-70s, you would think she might have a memory without having to consort with the NYT and NPR to tell her how to think, but no, she is a robot whose memory card has been yanked out.

  I fear for my country. It is as though everyone was “born yesterday” and they wake up, log onto social media and are then given their orders on what to believe.  Yet, no one seems to remember how wrong many of our “distinguished experts” and media personalities have been in the past and how many times. If it happened more than two days ago, well it didn’t happen. So in an effort to save western civilization, here are a few tips that will keep you from being a mindless drone and a Stepford Wife to the mainstream media:

  • Don’t believe anything you read or any video you watch. Everybody has an agenda, even your very humble and modest author. My agenda is simple and noble, I want to save western civilization. However, all the other pundits out there are evil manipulators. Before you swallow what these charlatans say, check what tribe they belong to and who might be greasing their palms. Who do they want to suck up to and what are their past life experiences? Have they ever owned a company and had to fret about not making payroll on a Friday?  Has the pundit ever had an independent thought or does he just mouth what everyone else in his tribe mouths?

  • The lessons of history teach us virtually everything we need to know about economics, politics, sociology, philosophy and the nature of man. To learn the lessons of history, never pay any attention to any university professor, especially an Ivy League professor ( see # 1 above). In fact, your first synapse of thought should be to disbelieve whatever they say. Read lots of history (nonfiction) written by authors who are independent and NOT university professors. Discuss what you have read with “real” people who are engaged in the private sector for their livelihood and have practical knowledge and life experiences dealing with all the vagaries of the human condition.

  • Does the pundit practice what Plato called the “noble lie?” Is he so obsessed with his holiness and righteous mission that he feels justified in purposefully lying to achieve what he deems to be the greater good?

  • Don’t be bedazzled by fancy titles and those who cling to the title of “expert.” Many experts justify their existence by creating new theories of thought that bring attention to themselves, as opposed to solving practical issues. Fancy talkers are not necessarily fancy thinkers. My dad used to use the term “slaughters the King’s English,” as in “she’s a great waitress, but boy does she slaughter the King’s English.” No one loves clever semantics executed with proper Strunk and White precision more than I do, but there are a lot of “Bubbas” and “Tammy Sues” whose verb conjugations aren’t perfect, but who are smart as a whip with intelligence skills that the tweed jacket and ascot wearing college professor does not have.

  • How many times has the pundit been wrong?  I’ve never experienced this sensation, but if I ever were to be wrong about anything, I would imagine I would have great remorse and would be extraordinarily careful in the future to phrase my punditry in a truthful manner. Most of our pundits, politicians and media personalities lie with impunity because they know in two days’ time your memory card will be wiped clean. When a pundit has been wrong many times and shows no remorse or willingness to reverse course, the pundit has an agenda and is not interested in the truth

  • The door-to-door vacuum salesman is trying to sell you a vacuum.  That’s obvious, but many don’t realize that the pundit and news personality is also a salesman. Treat the pundit and news personality the same way you treat the vacuum salesman. Shop around and vet several vacuum salesmen, both door to door and those at the appliance store. Talk to real people who use vacuums like the ones you are considering buying.

  Memory. The best answers to every vexing investment decision, public policy problem or even questions on relationships all stem from having and retaining a long memory. What works, what doesn’t work and why. The world’s memory is history. The virtue signalers, the Karens and the woke all want to twist and subvert history for their own self-indulgent reasons, almost always stemming from some sort of hatred or antipathy towards people in the present. To them, history is a tool to “get something” today. To others such as your humble author, it is a tool to learn how to prevent future mistakes. How do you know what to believe? History is human nature. Place yourself in the exact time frame and under the exact circumstances, be honest and ask yourself what you would have done.  99.9% of the time, you would not have been Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Nathan Hale, you would’ve pursued your self-interest which we are all prone to do. History is always the result of the way we are wired.

  Getting back to the Heat Bowl. History is replete with the devilishness of kings and their proxies who spread fear so they can have an excuse to take away your liberty. The Climate Change hoax is a rerun of a plot that’s been foisted on mankind throughout recorded history. This play is as old as Pericles’ Odean theatre.

  Luckily, there are stupid men who do stupid things and you Dear Reader can go watch the yearly Heat Bowl contests on ESPN Classics and see that it was much hotter then than it is now.

  Robert C. Smith is Managing Partner of Chartwell Capital Advisors and likes to opine on the Rob Is Right Podcast and Webpage.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 23:00

• Biden Now Wants To Arm Taiwan Using Ukraine Budget
  Biden Now Wants To Arm Taiwan Using Ukraine Budget

  In a bombshell new report, Financial Times has revealed that President Biden plans to formally ask Congress to use funds to arm Taiwan utilizing the supplemental budge for Ukraine. 

  The report states that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget “will include funding for Taiwan in the supplemental request as part of an effort to accelerate the provision of weapons, according to two people familiar with the plan.”

  If approved by Congress, this would be a major milestone in Washington’s bolstering Taiwan’s defense, given the self-ruled island would for the first time ever receive American arms through what’s called “foreign military financing.”

  

  It would also mark a first time use of the “presidential drawdown authority” for Taiwan, meaning the Pentagon would tap its own stockpiles which has long been used to supply Ukraine.

  The FT report has come on the heels of last Friday’s newly announced White House aid package of up to $345 million for Taiwan. 

  China’s Taiwan Affairs Office issued another blistering condemnation of US military support to Taiwan, underscoring that Beijing’s efforts to unify the island to the mainland will continue undeterred. 

  “No matter how much of the ordinary people’s taxpayer money the … Taiwanese separatist forces spend, no matter how many U.S. weapons, it will not shake our resolve to solve the Taiwan problem,” Taiwan Affairs Office said, adding “…Or shake our firm will to realize the reunification of our motherland.”

  Meanwhile, Nikkei Asia has observed in some fresh analysis that the Chinese PLA military has steadily increased and even sped up preparations to blockade Taiwan ever since the Pelosi visit. This has continued unabated, FT observes, writing:

  China has greatly increased its conducting of military drills simulating the containment of Taiwan since then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island a year ago. Nikkei analyzed the possibility of China’s invasion of Taiwan, using drone-taken images and views by experts.

  Even the range of activities by the Chinese military around Taiwan has changed. Before Pelosi’s visit on Aug. 2 of last year, Chinese military planes and ships rarely moved around to the east of Taiwan. Instead, they primarily engaged in activities southwest of the island. Over the past year, they have become active in the Western Pacific, or the Philippine Sea, having Taiwan to the west.

  Both of the large Chinese aircraft carriers–the Shandong, which was its first domestically developed aircraft carrier–and the Liaoning, have been spotted in waters near Taiwan, and are becoming more active in conducting war simulations, alarming Taipei further.

  Looking at GDP and economic growth, one might ask the obvious: why does Taiwan need our constant taxpayer dollars on a continual basis (akin to Ukraine)? 

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 22:40

• Steve Bannon Pushes Trump/Kennedy Ticket For 2024
  Steve Bannon Pushes Trump/Kennedy Ticket For 2024

  Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

  Steve Bannon has reiterated his preference for a Trump/Kennedy ticket for the 2024 presidential run, suggesting that the combination would produce a “massive landslide” win, even as the possibility remains almost nil.

  

  The former White House chief strategist expects a “firestorm of the lawfare will start next spring” for the former president, Mr. Bannon said during a Sunday episode of the podcast “Bannon’s War Room,” referring to the mounting legal issues which Mr. Trump faces at the moment.

  If Trump can “walk through that fire,” he can get “55 percent or more of the country.”

  And then, “if somehow it worked out [that] you could get Kennedy as a running mate – and I don’t know, that is far from even technically can happen because of the structure of the Democratic and Republican parties and ballot access and all that – you could get 60 percent or higher in the country and win a massive landslide.”

  Steve Bannon talked about Trump and RFK Jr. being on the same ticket:

  “I think if somehow it worked out that you could get Kennedy as a running mate …you could get 60 percent or higher in the country.” pic.twitter.com/vllluxntit

  — PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) July 31, 2023

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  Mr. Bannon had earlier suggested a Trump/Kennedy ticket in April.

  During one of the podcasts, Mr. Bannon said that former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was his top choice for Mr. Trump’s vice president. However, if she were not available, “Kennedy would be an excellent choice.”

  Ms. Lake carries a high opinion of RFK Jr. In July, she criticized people who called Mr. Kennedy a “MAGA Democrat,” pointing out that “they just don’t want outsiders in the political machine, they don’t want outsiders coming into the swamp, draining the swamp.”

  “They just want just the pre-approved, controllably, easily blackmailed, and easily bribed people like Biden and the whole swamp system down there.”

  In addition to Mr. Bannon, many other conservatives are open to the idea of a Trump/Kennedy challenge for the 2024 election.

  In an April 29 social media post, former national security advisor Michael Flynn said that he was “really starting to like this presidential candidate’s attitude,” referring to Kennedy.

  Conservative talk show host Steve Deace said in an April 6 post to social media that “as long as he doesn’t go trans, a man with high character and courage like RFK Jr. will be tempting.”

  GOP operative Roger Stone has also extended support for a Trump/Kennedy challenge.

  Despite the support, Mr. Kennedy has dismissed the possibility of teaming up with Mr. Trump.

  “Just to quell any speculation, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will I join Donald Trump on an electoral ticket. Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to governance, and our philosophies of leadership could not be further apart,” Mr. Kennedy said in a May 10 post on social media.

  Trump/Kennedy Similarities, DeSantis’s View

  Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy share numerous similarities. For one, they have both been targeted by the mainstream media.

  In an interview with Fox in late July, Mr. Kennedy said that he has been “really slammed in a way that I think is unprecedented, even more than President Trump was slammed by the mainstream, by the corporate media.”

  In May, The Washington Post ran an opinion piece with the headline: “His name is Kennedy. His campaign is pure Trump.”

  “Like Trump, Kennedy is given to skillful demagoguery, casually misleading with the conviction of a truth-teller … What makes Kennedy most like Trump, though, is the overlay of conspiracy and contempt that tinges nearly everything he says, the destructive distrust in the electorate he seeks to channel,” the article said about Mr. Kennedy.

  Mr. Trump has long been a victim of censorship, with the most famous example being (formerly) Twitter censoring his social media posts and canceling his account. Mr. Kennedy has been met with similar censorship attempts.

  Prior to a July 20 hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Democrats circulated a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), asking that Mr. Kennedy be de-platformed from a scheduled testimony.

  Mr. Jordan and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) dismissed such censorship attempts. “The hearing that we have this week is about censorship,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters at the time when asked about the letter. “I don’t think censoring somebody is actually the answer here.”

  Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential candidate, also has a favorable view of Mr. Kennedy, suggesting that he would consider the Democrat for a health position in his administration if he wins the 2024 race.

  However, Mr. DeSantis dismissed Mr. Kennedy as a choice for vice president, citing the Democrat’s opposition to the U.S. Supreme court’s strike-down of affirmative-action policies at American universities and his pro-climate change activities.

  Popularity and Poll Rankings

  Mr. Kennedy enjoys a great deal of appeal among the American public.

  “A new Harvard-Harris poll puts my favorability rating at 47 percent—higher than Trump (45 percent), DeSantis (40 percent), Biden (39 percent), and every public figure in the poll,” Mr. Kennedy said in a July 23 post on social media.

  “And do you know what’s even more remarkable? My unfavorability rating was the lowest among all candidates, at only 26 percent. That shows that the relentless media attacks just aren’t working. People don’t believe the media anymore—with good reason.”

  In polls, Mr. Biden has a massive lead over Mr. Kennedy. An average of multiple poll results showed Mr. Biden having more than 64 percent support in the Democratic primary polls, far ahead of Mr. Kennedy’s 15 percent.

  Mr. Biden also has more financial backing for the elections. According to data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Mr. Biden raised close to $20 million in the first half of the year, triple the $6.36 million raised by Mr. Kennedy.

  Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy have expressed high regard for each other. In an interview with Newsmax in June, Mr. Trump said he was impressed with how Mr. Kennedy has boosted his popularity in polls.

  “I respect him—a lot of people respect him. He’s got some very important points to be made,” the former president said, referring to Mr. Kennedy.

  During a town hall hosted by News Nations in late June, Mr. Kennedy said he was “proud that President Trump likes me, even though I don’t agree with him on most of his issues.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 22:20

• Biden's Open-Border Policies Create Depression-Era "Hooverville" In New York's Central Park
  Biden’s Open-Border Policies Create Depression-Era “Hooverville” In New York’s Central Park

  The Depression-era shantytowns known as Hoovervilles, are about to make a triumphal return smack in the middle of New York’s Central Park.

  

  Amid a relentless influx of illegal immigrants that has exposed liberal NIMBY hypocrisy in the quote-unquote Sanctuary City that is New York, Bloomberg reports that officials are considering housing migrants in Manhattan’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park as part of a plan to find new sites for some of the more than 95,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the past 15 months.

  “Everything is on the table,” Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said Wednesday at a press conference when asked about housing migrants in city parks. The sites are among 3,000 locations the city is reviewing, she said.

  LIVE NOW: Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom hosts an asylum seeker briefing at City Hall https://t.co/pHBpIWl4fK

  — NYC Mayor’s Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) August 2, 2023

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  Gothamist first reported that New York City is considering erecting tents in the two major parks and on Randall’s Island as possible sites for the asylum seekers, citing unidentified people familiar with the discussions.

  According to Bloomberg, Williams-Isom declined to comment on how imminent the plan is, and didn’t answer a question about who the city is working with on potential plans to house people in city parks, although it is safe to assume that Blackrock is going to expand its role as America’s favorite (and biggest) landlord monopolist by branching out into tents (and collecting a generous multi-billion government handout in the process).

  A memo obtained by CNN earlier this year listed a YMCA in Park Slope, Brooklyn; a recreation center in Staten Island; the campuses of York College and Medgar Evers College; and the parking lot at Citi Field in Queens as possible shelter sites.

  Placing migrants in temporary structures inside either Central Park or Prospect Park would bring high visibility to a crisis that’s dogged Mayor Eric Adams’s administration for months, and cement the city’s transformation into a modern version of the 1970’s crime and drug ridden Manhattan. On Tuesday, scores of people were sleeping and waiting for help on the sidewalks outside the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

  Adams has repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for failing to provide significant logistical or financial aid to the city to help manage the crisis. The mayor and members of New York’s congressional delegation met last week with US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss the issue.

  On Wednesday, Williams-Isom denied the city is letting people sleep on the streets as a tactic to force the federal government to come to the city’s aid; it is however a tactic to ensure that many of the wealthiest New Yorkers depart the city for Florida, taking billions in income tax payments with them. No one in the Adams administration “would use any people to do a stunt,” Williams-Isom said, which is amusing because that’s precisely what people the Adams administration is doing.

  The city’s shelter system housed 107,900 people as of July 30, a record high that has more than doubled since January 2022, when the total shelter census citywide stood at 45,000 people. Some 56,600 of the city’s current shelter residents are migrants.

  

  On rare occasions in Central Park’s history, the iconic public space has been commandeered for housing in emergencies. During the Great Depression, homeless people set up “Hoovervilles” and in a few months, it will be as if a new Great Depression has arrived to what was once the world’s greatest city.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 22:07

• Unnecessary Outrage Stirred By Florida's African American History Curriculum
  Unnecessary Outrage Stirred By Florida’s African American History Curriculum

  Authored by Richard Trzupek via The Epoch Times,

  Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that middle school students in Florida will “be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery.”

  

  Ms. Harris was referring to one of almost 200 focal points of instruction that the Florida Board of Education has adopted for instructors teaching African American history.

  The passage in question says (pdf):

  “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

  Besides being demonstrably true, that sentence is hardly a blanket endorsement of what used to be called “the Peculiar Institution” in antebellum America.

  It’s clear that Florida middle schoolers will be taught that slavery was and is cruel and morally reprehensible. In that context, they will also learn that some slaves learned new skills like farming, smithing, carpentry, etc. during their servitude.

  Repeating that truth hardly removes even one speck of the stain on our national soul that’s tied to slavery in America.

  Some news outlets called VP Harris out for misrepresenting Florida’s curriculum.

  Among those, the hosts on Fox News’s “The Five” discussed the issue, which led to Fox personality Greg Gutfeld making the following comment:

  “Did you ever read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning?’ Vic Frankl talks about how you have to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility. Utility kept you alive.”

  A number of left-leaning news outlets and politicians were horrified, having decided that Gutfeld was defending the Nazi extermination camps for supposedly providing educational opportunities for prisoners. “Let’s get something straight that the American people understand full well and that is not complicated: there was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said. “Full stop.”

  There was much more of the same sort of outrage spread far and wide. Reading the vitriol directed at Gutfeld, who combines thoughtful and witty about as well as any pundit going since P.J. O’Rourke passed away, was a depressing exercise. Depressing because this incident is yet another example of how many Americans have gone deliberately tone-deaf, attributing the worst possible motivations to anyone considered an enemy. What is said isn’t nearly as important as who said it. One can attribute any meaning one wants to words they don’t understand.

  Clearly, the point of Florida’s guidance isn’t to glorify the practice of slavery, it’s to pay homage to the human spirit that can find a way to survive even in the worst of conditions. Clearly, that was Frankl’s point, and in referencing him, Gutfeld’s as well. Heroes aren’t created in cesspools like slavery and genocide. Heroes are forged in the fires of adversity. Just as no Israelite wanted to be under Pharoah’s thumb, no African-American wished to feel the boot-heal of the slave master on his or her neck. When freedom finally came, each would find they not only survived, but—for some—they even grew.

  Recall the moment in “The Shawshank Redemption” when Captain Hadley is holding Andy Dufresne precariously at the edge of the roof, perhaps a moment away from letting him fall to his death. Dufresne explains to Hadley how he can get out of paying taxes on a $35,000 inheritance. It’s a turning point in the movie, the moment Dufresne stops being perpetually abused meat and starts to become a useful, and therefore somewhat respected, human being of sorts. Shawshank will not become heaven, but at least it will no longer be hell.

  I was present at the memorial service recognizing the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Birkenau in 1995. The camps, located near my family’s ancestral home of Krakow, have always made a huge impression on me both for what they tell us about man’s cruelty and for what they tell us about man’s resiliency. I had the privilege to speak to some survivors, and the message I took away was this: In that horror, every prisoner had a choice: give up or try to find a way to keep going. I didn’t get a sense that anyone begrudged or belittled those who gave up. It was understandable, I suppose. But if you tried to keep going, there was little you wouldn’t try.

  That was Frankl’s point. If you’re Andy Dufresne and you have great accounting skills, then you try to leverage those skills to make your life a little less hard. If you’re an inmate of an extermination camp and are an expert carpenter, you try to leverage those skills to get an extra ration, or a good blanket, or anything else that will keep you alive for another day. So no, in pointing this out, Greg Gutfeld wasn’t being outrageous. But the outraged? They’re being ridiculous.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 21:40

• Chinese Government Asks Brokers How To Boost Stock Prices
  Chinese Government Asks Brokers How To Boost Stock Prices

  China’s markets regulator is asking securities firms how to boost stock prices, stoking concerns that Beijing is desperate to restore investor confidence, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

  

  Last week, the China Securities Regulatory Commission held a meeting with several brokerage houses to solicit feedback. Among the measures proposed by the brokers was a possible cut in the stamp duty on stocks trading, as well as a slowdown in IPO traffic to help boost liquidity, the people said.

  The CSRC gave no indications of how they plan to boost the market, though the strategy session with brokers suggests that Chinese officials are highly motivated to carry out an earlier pledge by the Politburo to supercharge the nation’s $10 trillion stock market and boost investor confidence. Raising the prices of stocks, where quite a bit of household savings is tied up, would help Beijing shore up funding for the corporate sector.

  Participating in last week’s consultation was a rare meet-up between the CSRC and global funds, where officials including Vice Chairman Fang Xinghai attempted to calm concerns among foreign investors over investing in China.

  Chinese stocks have been weighed down by the nation’s slowing economy for much of this year, underperforming their emerging market peers at one point by the widest margin since at least 1999.

  The CSI financials subgauge soared 4.6% on Friday, extending gains earlier this week amid market chatter of a stamp duty cut. Hithink Royalflush Information Network Co. surged 17% and China Galaxy Securities Co. jumped by the 10% daily limit.

  The gains helped lift the CSI 300 Index by 2.3%. The benchmark gauge recorded the best weekly performance since November. Overseas investors net purchased 16 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) of mainland shares on Friday, taking the week’s inflows to the largest since January. -Bloomberg

  “The speculation about cutting stamp duty has helped lift market sentiment today, as the move would be following the vows to boost financial markets mentioned during the Politburo” meeting, said Steven Leung, executive director at UOB-Kay Hian Hong Kong.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 21:20

• White House Backs Renewal Of Law Enabling Spying On Americans
  White House Backs Renewal Of Law Enabling Spying On Americans

  Authored by Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute, 

  The Joe Biden administration released a report endorsing the renewal of a controversial law which enables US intelligence agencies to spy on foreign nationals and American citizens on Monday. This comes amid a heated debate in Congress regarding how such surveillance powers are weaponized against the American people, as well as a slew of scandals involving these capabilities being wielded by the FBI against protesters and lawmakers.

  Published by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board, the 42-page report states that a failure of Congress to renew Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act – before it expires at the end of the year – would constitute “one of the worst intelligence failures of our time.”

  

  Section 702 authorizes a tool used by US spy agencies to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreign targets and any Americans with whom they may be interacting. This practice has long been criticized by domestic civil liberties groups because in the process also collected are US citizens’ electronic communications including phone calls, text messages, and emails.

  Unless reauthorized in December, the law will expire. This will be complicated as growing animosity over the spy bureaucracies’ abuse of power continues to prompt stiff opposition and demands for extensive reforms from lawmakers across the aisle and particularly the GOP.

  Most recently, a declassified court document revealed the FBI improperly searched a surveillance database created by Section 702 to search information about a US senator, a state senator, and a state judge.

  A senior FBI official made clear to Politico that the unnamed FBI analyst who snooped on the US senator and the state senator was not authorized to conduct searches using “sensitive query terms,” including the names of people running for office or public officials. The improper searches did not even meet the threshold of being “reasonably likely to retrieve” evidence of a crime or foreign intelligence information.

  Despite the claim that the analyst had evidence that these officials were being targeted by a foreign spy service, the aforementioned FBI official conceded to Politico that if the analyst had sought the required pre-approval from the deputy director for the queries, “they would not have been approved.”

  In light of rampant misconduct, such as the targeting of January 6th and Black Lives Matter protesters during recent years, the White House’s report says “FBI personnel should receive additional training on what foreign intelligence entails.” The administration does acknowledge, however, that the bureau’s conduct “undermined public confidence in its ability to use Section 702 in the way it was intended.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 21:00

• FAA Greenlights Largest Drone For Commercial Operations Across US
  FAA Greenlights Largest Drone For Commercial Operations Across US

  California-based startup Pyka has been cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly the world’s largest electric cargo aircraft in controlled US air space. 

  Pelican Spray is a fully autonomous and 100% electric agricultural aircraft with zero emissions. The fixed-wing aircraft weighs 1,125 pounds and was just approved for commercial operations across the US, according to Bloomberg, citing comments from the operating officer and co-founder Chuma Ogunwole. 

  

  Pyka’s new technology eliminates the need for aviation fuel, thus reducing operating costs for farmers and providing substantial environmental benefits. The drone can provide round-the-clock spraying due to its automation capabilities. It has already proven a huge success for Costa Rica, Honduras, and Brazil farmers. 

  Pyka, founded in 2017, is already selling the spraying version of the drone. Other versions include Pelican Cargo, which can carry 400 lbs of payload up to 200 miles. 

  

  This comes as the FAA prepares for the first crewed flying taxi flights by 2027. 

  

  Bloomberg pointed out:

  Getting FAA authorization for passenger aircrafts is a long and difficult process and a significant hurdle for the electric aviation industry. 

  The main challenge to electrifying commercial passenger aviation, though, is the limitations of battery technology that make it infeasible to fly any meaningful distance with multiple passengers onboard.

  The US military purchased more electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft this week. 

  

  Potential uses of unmanned and manned drones, in fixed-wing or eVTOL configurations, are set to soar by the decade’s end. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 20:40

• The Legal Cases Against Trump Explained
  The Legal Cases Against Trump Explained

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former President Donald Trump is running for the White House while facing three indictments and one more criminal investigation. Never before has a former president been criminally charged—much less a frontrunner in another presidential race.

  As the remaining investigation gets closer to possible charges and the indicted ones inch closer to trials, Mr. Trump has repeatedly pledged that he would continue his campaign even if convicted.

  

  Defense Documents

  The most developed case so far involves Mr. Trump’s keeping of documents from his presidency. Special counsel Jack Smith charged Mr. Trump and two of his employees with 37 felony counts, including illegal retention of national defense information, obstruction of government, and lying to the government.

  While the trial is set for May 2024, some legal observers expect further delays.

  The case traces back to Mr. Trump’s January 2021 exit from the White House. His belongings and some of the documents from his time in office were packed in boxes and shipped to his home at the Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida.

  The indictment argues that it was at this point that Mr. Trump committed 31 counts of illegally retaining national defense information because he “caused” the boxes to be moved. While this crime, under the Espionage Act, requires criminal intent, no evidence has emerged so far that Mr. Trump was aware the 31 documents in question were in the boxes.

  It appears that Mr. Trump was under the impression that he could go through the boxes at his own pace and keep whatever he deemed personal. However, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had a different view; it demanded the return of all presidential documents as soon as possible.

  

  Under the Presidential Records Act, all official presidential records must be handed over to NARA, and former presidents are only allowed to take personal items such as journals and artifacts that weren’t intended for official government business. The problem is, the law doesn’t include an enforcement mechanism.

  In 2012, when Judicial Watch tried to force former President Bill Clinton to turn over dozens of interview tapes from his presidency that he had kept, Mr. Clinton claimed that the tapes were personal, and the court sided with him. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, argued that the court had no way to second-guess a president’s assertion of what is or isn’t personal.

  “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records,” Judge Jackson wrote.

  Mr. Trump has repeatedly cited that case as justification for keeping whatever documents he wanted. However, he faces the charges in Florida, where the case isn’t a controlling precedent.

  Mr. Trump sent 15 boxes of materials to NARA in January 2022. NARA then made a referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ) upon finding that some of the documents had classification markings. Shortly after, the DOJ began an investigation.

  On May 11, 2022, the DOJ obtained a subpoena that compelled Mr. Trump to turn over all documents with classification markings, including electronic files, at Mar-a-Lago.

  Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors have argued that Mr. Trump should have challenged the subpoena as overly broad. The subpoena didn’t specify whether it only covered originals or also copies and whether it covered obviously declassified documents. There are millions of declassified documents online that still have visible classification markings. Locating any such documents in Trump’s possession at Mar-a-Lago—all physical copies ever printed out and all such files on any computers and storage media he owns—would have been a monumental task.

  

  Mr. Trump did no such all-encompassing search. He let his lawyer search some of the boxes brought from the White House.

  Most of the obstruction charges focus on that point, alleging that Mr. Trump had his aide, Walt Nauta, move boxes out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago so that they couldn’t be searched by the lawyer.

  Smith added a few more charges on July 27, alleging that Mr. Trump asked his property manager at Mar-a-Lago, Carlos de Oliveira, to have security camera footage deleted after the DOJ subpoenaed some of the footage in June 2022. Smith alleges the footage showed Mr. Nauta moving boxes in and out of the storage room. The updated indictment doesn’t cite direct evidence that Mr. Trump made such a request—only de Oliviera’s alleged claim that he did.

  Mr. Smith’s adding of new charges and an additional defendant at this point may displease the judge overseeing the case, Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee. Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Smith requested that the case go to trial in December—a rather short timeline if Mr. Smith knew at the time that additional charges may be forthcoming.

  Mr. Trump could theoretically render the whole case moot if he wins the election and issues himself a pardon, although some legal scholars question whether presidents can do that.

  Mr. Smith, former head of the DOJ Public Integrity Section, was appointed a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Nov. 18, 2022, to investigate Mr. Trump’s documents retention as well as his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest and riot at the U.S. Capitol.

  January 6 Case

  On Aug. 1, Mr. Smith revealed his indictment of Mr. Trump in the January 6 investigation. He charged the former president with conspiracy to “impair, obstruct, and defeat” the collection and counting of electoral votes, conspiracy against Americans’ right to vote, obstruction of the electoral vote counting by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, and conspiracy to obstruct the electoral vote counting.

  Mr. Trump said he was informed on July 16 that he was a target of a grand jury investigation in relation to the January 6 incident.

  The case centers on Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud and other illegalities in the 2020 election and how they played into the events at the Capitol, where a part of a massive protest over the election results boiled over into violence, with some people breaking into the building and fighting with police.

  

  The indictment alleges that Trump knew his attacks on the election results were false, largely because some people, including state and federal officials, told him some of the claims were false and he kept repeating them.

  The 45-page indictment also focuses on Trump’s repeated urging of Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from states where Trump had contested the results.

  It further alleged that Trump incited the January 6 violence by telling the protesters that he hoped Pence would “send [the electoral votes] back to the states to recertify,” despite knowing that Pence repeatedly rejected the idea.

  There’s extensive evidence of illegalities during the election, including illegal changes to election rules made with the excuse of the COVID-19 pandemic and some instances of fraud. None of the allegations, however, have been successfully litigated to overturn the election result in any state. Many of the cases have been dismissed for procedural reasons, rather than on the merits of the evidence.

  Mr. Trump has argued that if indicted, the proceedings would give him an opportunity to expose information about improprieties in the election.

  Georgia Election Case

  Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis began investigating Mr. Trump shortly after taking office in the largest Georgia county in January 2021.

  On Jan. 24, 2022, Fulton County Superior Court granted Ms. Willis’s request for a special purpose grand jury that couldn’t bring charges, but can subpoena witnesses. That panel worked for about eight months, interviewing about 75 witnesses starting in May 2022, local media reported.

  Ms. Willis recently said she’s “ready to go,” following up on her previous promises to bring charges by Sept. 1.

  

  The core issue of the probe, according to local media, was a telephone call by Mr. Trump to the state’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Jan. 2, 2021.

  The content of the call was selectively leaked to the media to create the narrative that Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to “find” him enough votes to overturn the election.

  When the transcript of the call was released, it turned out that Mr. Trump said he believed hundreds of thousands of ballots had been cast illegally in the state, particularly in Fulton County, which includes the Democrat bastion of Atlanta. He profusely criticized Mr. Raffensperger for failing to sufficiently investigate the fraud allegations.

  “Why wouldn’t you want to find the right answer?” Mr. Trump asked.

  Mr. Raffensperger and his team countered some of the allegations during the call, saying they were already investigated.

  Several times during the conversation, Mr. Trump noted that he only needed to identify about 11,000 illegal votes because that was the margin by which he lost the state.

  “If you check with Fulton County, you’ll have hundreds of thousands because they dumped ballots into Fulton County and the other county next to it,” Mr. Trump said.

  “So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already.”

  Another part of Ms. Willis’s investigation seems to focus on the alternative set of electors who convened at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast their votes for Mr. Trump, despite the official vote count giving the victory to Mr. Trump’s opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.

  Ms. Willis informed the electors that they were targets of her investigation, and at least eight of the 16 were granted immunity in exchange for their testimony, The Washington Post reported in May.

  The state’s Republican Party started a website on July 31 that criticizes the Willis investigation for targeting the electors. It says that the “contingent electors” cast their votes with the express acknowledgment that they would only be counted in case Mr. Trump’s lawsuit challenging the election results in the state succeeded.

  The website points to a similar incident in 1960, when John F. Kennedy sued to overturn election results in Hawaii. A set of Democrat electors had cast their votes for Mr. Kennedy even though the state already certified its vote count, with Richard Nixon as the winner. The lawsuit succeeded and the alternative votes were counted.

  In Mr. Trump’s case, the lawsuit wasn’t heard until Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the counting of the electoral votes. The suit was tossed on procedural grounds, never getting a hearing on its evidence.

  Ms. Willis was barred by a judge from pursuing charges against one of the alternate electors, Georgia’s new lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, after Ms. Willis hosted a campaign fundraiser for Mr. Jones’s opponent in the 2022 race, Charlie Bailey.

  Hush Money Case

  The first criminal charges against Mr. Trump came in March from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in New York.

  Mr. Bragg alleged that Mr. Trump committed 34 felonies because payments marked in his accounting books as legal expenses were in fact reimbursing his then-lawyer Michael Cohen for payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

  

  Ms. Daniels communicated to Trump ahead of the 2016 election that she intended to sell to the press her story alleging she had an affair with Trump in 2006; she said she was willing to keep the story to herself if paid. Mr. Trump indeed had Mr. Cohen pay about $130,000 in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement, which Ms. Daniels ended up breaking. Mr. Trump’s company then reimbursed Mr. Cohen.

  Mr. Bragg is treating the bookkeeping entries for payments to Mr. Cohen as violations of New York law against falsifying business records. Such violations would only be misdemeanors unless committed in the advancement of another crime. Mr. Bragg has argued that is indeed the case, although the indictment fails to specify what was the other crime supposed to be. There has been speculation in the media that the other crime was a campaign law violation. The argument would be that the hush money for Ms. Daniels was, in fact, an illegal campaign contribution.

  Trial is scheduled for March 25, 2024.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 20:20

• Lebron James' "I Promise" School Hasn't Had A Single Student Pass The State's Math Test
  Lebron James’ “I Promise” School Hasn’t Had A Single Student Pass The State’s Math Test

  LeBron James is a G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) on the basketball court. But all that greatness has yet to trickle down in the LeBron James-supported I Promise School classrooms in Akron, Ohio. 

  A new Akron Beacon Journal (ABJ) report said, “This fall’s class of eighth graders at the I Promise School hasn’t had a single student pass the state’s math test since the group was in the third grade.”

  

  The revelations were alarming to some Akron Board of Education members who asked for the data on the school’s progress that opened in 2018 as a part of the Akron Public Schools system and partially funded by the LeBron James Family Foundation. 

  During last week’s board meeting, Akron Public Schools board member Valerie McKitrick said, “Not one? In three years?”

  “It is discouraging,” responded Keith Liechty-Clifford, the district’s director of school improvement.

  ABJ said some board members are questioning whether I Promise is meeting its goals of helping students who are two or more years behind grade level.

  Ohio school board officials are concerned I Promise School, which is 60% black and 28% of the 554 students have disabilities, is failing the youth: 

  “The state has also issued its first concern about the school: Two of I Promise’s biggest subgroups of students, Black students and those with disabilities, are now testing in the bottom 5% in the state, landing the school on the Ohio Department of Education’s list of those requiring targeted intervention,” ABJ reported.

  Board President Derrick Hall voiced concern about the apparent lack of improvement for most I Promise School test scores, even though the students were given abundant resources during Covid. 

  “For me as a board member, I just think about all the resources that we’re providing.

   “And I just, I’m just disappointed that I don’t think, it doesn’t appear like we’re seeing the kind of change that we would expect to see,” Hall said. 

  The school receives local, state, and federal funding as any other public school, as well as $1.4 million from LeBron’s foundation. 

  

  I Promise released a statement about the disappointing test results, deflecting the short-term problems by indicating, “When we started this work to wraparound students through education, we entered this partnership with Akron Public School for the long haul.” 

  While there was no official statement for the exact reason behind the terrible test scores, mounting evidence shows children suffered significant learning loss during Covid lockdowns.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 20:00

• NYT Discloses New Details About Biden's Universal Background Check Mandate
  NYT Discloses New Details About Biden’s Universal Background Check Mandate

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  Earlier this year, we reported on President Biden’s announcement that he’d be directing the Department of Justice to “move the United States as close as possible to universal background checks without additional legislation.” 

  The move to govern by executive fiat is loud and clear. The ATF & DOJ will publish this new rule in the second half of 2024, with a proposal released “soon,” according to a new report by the New York Times —which seems to have access to internal ATF policy.  

  2️⃣Anti-gunners are rebranding private firearm sales as “the gun seller loophole” to justify executive action—rather than the passage of a new law.🤯https://t.co/e0vXbfZu3V

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) August 1, 2023

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

  Other details about the rule in the NYT report include: 

  Anyone who makes “a profit” from selling firearms, perhaps as little as $1, is to be prohibited from selling their privately owned firearms without a Federal Firearms License (FFL) or a background check. 

  According to the report, anti-gun organizations are pushing ATF to limit the number of firearms sales a private citizen may engage in without an FFL. Currently, anti-gunners want to limit collectors and sellers to 5 guns or fewer. An Obama-era regulation would have set the threshold at 1–2-gun sales per person.  

  Failing to register as an FFL holder will carry a penalty of up to 5 years in Federal prison and a $250,000 fine. 

  1️⃣@NYTimes (which leaked the info) stated that the proposal is “expected to be released soon” with a final rule to be published in the “second half of 2024.”

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) August 1, 2023

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

  Universal Background Checks, especially when implemented by executive order, are a blatant infringement — with no basis in the text or history of the Second Amendment.  

  For Universal Background Checks to exist, there must be a registry to support a trace. Forms 4473—transformed by the Biden Administration into permanent gun registration forms — are the only enforcement mechanism for Universal Background Checks, as they would prove who obtained a firearm legally (and has a Form 4473 to prove it) and who did not complete the required registration form (and has therefore violated the law).  

  Registries of firearms always precede confiscation. 

  

  GOA has already announced plans to file a lawsuit to block this rule, but that does not absolve Congress of its responsibility to use every means necessary to defend the Second Amendment. 

  While Gun Owners of America fights for the Second Amendment in the courts, Congress must repeal the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act  —the law that has allowed for ATF to now subvert Congress with this rulemaking. The act has been completely weaponized, gun owners have gained nothing, and America is no safer. 

  Congress must also participate in the rulemaking process and voice its opposition to backdoor universal background registration checks during the public notice and comment period alongside GOA members. After commenting during the proposed rule phase, Congress must also take up a joint resolution of disapproval pursuant to the Congressional Review Act and strike down this unconstitutional infringement. 

  *    *    *

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 19:40

• "Major Artery" In Downtown San Fran Is Deserted
  “Major Artery” In Downtown San Fran Is Deserted

  The term “San Fransicko,” coined by Michael Shellenberger, describes the deteriorating condition of downtown San Francisco, a consequence of the city’s Democrat leadership. It reflects how progressive policies have failed, creating an increasingly unsafe environment. Without law and order, the conditions to raise a family or even operate a business are impossible — and because of that, an exodus continues, creating a ghost town in the city’s downtown shopping district. 

  The 2024 presidential election cycle has already started. President Biden is touting ‘Bidenomics‘ while White House officials pointed to the revival of American factories despite the latest manufacturing data showing a contraction.

  Democrats are making concerted efforts to distract the public’s attention from chaotic urban areas under their control. That’s because these crime-ridden metro areas are imploding. The lack of enforcing law and order from progressive city halls caused a mass exodus of businesses and people to relocate to safer places.

  San Francisco has been the epicenter of what can go wrong for urban areas when progressives ram down disastrous social justice reforms — like emboldening criminals to steal from shops because anything valued under $950 is a misdemeanor shoplifting charge. 

  Youtuber METAL LEO’s latest video, “Every Store Is CLOSED On Market St San Francisco,” is a stunning 12 minutes of the city’s downtown shopping district transformed into a ghost town. 

  

  “Market Street is a major artery in San Francisco, California. It had all kinds of shops, malls, bars, restaurants, and stores that are now closed,” the Youtuber said in the video’s description.

  

  He said the video “begins at The Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building and runs southwest through downtown, passing the Civic Center and the Castro District, to the intersection with Portola Drive in the Twin Peaks Embarcadero.” 

  Mayor London Breed will never admit her policies have failed. However, it’s too late for her because a recent poll commissioned by Probolsky Research found 60% of voters in San Francisco “disapprove” of Breed’s performance, and only 22% believe she deserves re-election.  

  Democrats hate when the spotlight is turned on their imploding cities. They will never admit their progressive policies have failed. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 19:20

• Jack Smith Admits To Making False Claim To Court In Trump Case
  Jack Smith Admits To Making False Claim To Court In Trump Case

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Special counsel Jack Smith’s team made a startling admission in its case against former President Donald Trump, acknowledging in a new court filing that it failed to turn over all evidence to Mr. Trump’s legal team as required by law and falsely claimed that it had.

  

  Mr. Smith’s team said in a July 31 court filing (pdf) in its classified documents case against the former president that it had incorrectly claimed during a July 18 court hearing that it had provided all Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage to Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys, as required by law.

  “On July 27, as part of the preparation for the superseding indictment coming later that day and the discovery production for Defendant De Oliveira, the Government learned that this footage had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view the subpoenaed footage,” Mr. Smith’s team wrote in the July 31 filing.

  “The Government’s representation at the July 18 hearing that all surveillance footage the Government had obtained pre-indictment had been produced was therefore incorrect.”

  Under what is called the Brady rule, prosecutors in a criminal trial have a constitutional duty to disclose all evidence to a defendant’s legal team, including information that is favorable to the accused and could reduce a potential sentence.

  Mr. Smith’s team accused Mr. Trump in a new “superseding indictment” (pdf) filed on July 27 of conspiring with his staff to delete some security footage so that the grand jury in the case would not see all the evidence.

  The Department of Justice didn’t immediately return a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

  

  Trump Denies Deleting Tapes

  In the superseding indictment, the special counsel charged Mr. Trump with willful retention of national defense information and two charges in connection to claims that he allegedly told a Mar-a-Lago worker to delete security tapes to prevent a grand jury from seeing them.

  Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira has been named as a third defendant in the superseding indictment, along with Trump aide Walt Nauta and the former commander-in-chief.

  Mr. Trump took to his social media platform to deny the new charges, claiming that Mr. Smith’s new allegation is false and tantamount to election interference ahead of the 2024 contest.

  “The security tapes being deleted was a made up lie by deranged Jack Smith! Election interference,” Mr. Trump wrote in all caps in a post on Truth Social on Aug. 1.

  In the superseding indictment, prosecutors allege that Mr. De Oliveira told another Mar-a-Lago employee that “the boss” wanted a server “deleted” on June 27, 2022. That came about two months before FBI agents raided the Palm Beach resort owned by the former president, uncovering allegedly classified documents in a storage area.

  Mr. Trump has said he used presidential authority to declassify all the relevant documents in the case against him and has denied that he hid any materials from the government.

  In a statement following the July 27 announcement of a superseding indictment and new charges, Mr. Trump’s campaign said that the new allegations were part of a “continued desperate and flailing attempt” to harass the former president.

  “Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden,” the campaign team wrote.

  An average of polling data compiled by RealClear Politics shows a very close matchup between President Joe Biden and Mr. Trump, with the former enjoying a lead of 0.9 percentage points.

  Mr. Smith’s superseding indictment increases the total number of charges in the classified materials case to 40.

  

  Other Trump Cases

  The former president, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is involved in a number of legal disputes.

  U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is investigating Mr. Trump’s role in actions surrounding his challenges to the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Mr. Trump said his attorneys met with U.S. Justice Department officials on July 27 a sign that charges could come soon.

  Mr. Smith has accused Mr. Trump of unlawfully keeping classified national security documents when he left office in 2021 and of lying to officials who tried to recover them.

  Mr. Trump, on June 13, pleaded not guilty to those charges, which include alleged violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes unauthorized possession of defense information.

  A New York grand jury has indicted Mr. Trump for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.

  Also in New York, Mr. Trump faces a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleging fraud.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 19:00

• Faulty COVID Study Claims Republicans Had 43% Higher Death Rate Due To "Vaccine Hesitancy"
  Faulty COVID Study Claims Republicans Had 43% Higher Death Rate Due To “Vaccine Hesitancy”

  We have seen numerous false conclusions made by covid studies over the course of the past few years, with the majority of them relying on assumptions rather than scientific data.  In the majority of cases, these studies attempt to paint conservatives and unvaccinated individuals as a danger to others or a danger to themselves, with a clear political bias in favor of Democrats and pro-vaccine advocates.  In other words, the studies fit the data to support their preconceived notions – The exact opposite of science.

  Leftists are abuzz this week on social media in light of a newly published study funded by Yale University suggesting that Republicans in Florida and Ohio died at a rate 43% higher than Democrats.  This is proof, they claim, that Republicans were wrong about covid mandates and vaccinations and they are paying for it with their lives.  Except, this is not reality.

  

  First, to be clear, every major study on covid deaths puts the median Infection Fatality Rate at 0.23%.  Meaning, on average 99.8% of people are under no serious threat from the virus.  This vital stat is never mention in the Yale study (or in the media, for that matter).

  Yale uses excess mortality data at the county level, coupled with voter registration records to form conclusions on covid death rates in correlation with party affiliation.  Published at JAMA Network under the title ‘Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio During the COVID-19 Pandemic’, it relies on a data drought rather than a complete set of statistics to form its conclusions.  Let’s go through the failings of the study one by one….

  1)  For example, the study admits that it did not have access to the cause of death for the individuals involved.  They simply assume that excess deaths were in fact covid related deaths.

  2)  The study does not include data on vaccination status at the individual level.  Meaning, they had no proof that excess deaths in Republican counties were unvaccinated people.  Again, they merely assume that this is the case.   

  3)  The study also admits that research before the COVID-19 pandemic has found evidence of higher death rates in Republican-leaning counties than Democratic-leaning counties.  Meaning, death rates are supposedly higher within Republican counties regardless of covid.

  4)  The study did not find a significant difference in death rates between Republican and Democrat counties in Florida.  It only found such differences in counties in Ohio.  Already, this suggests a failed premise given it was only applicable in one state.  

  5)  The study excluded voters registered as independent and third party (Why?).  Around 41% of American voters identify as politically independent according to Gallup polls.  Would their inclusion in the study dilute the results contrary to the study’s obvious political bias?

  6) The study gathered excess death data from May 2021, around the time they argue most US adults would have access to the covid vaccines. This is a narrow snapshot in time rather than a comprehensive look at Republican and Democrat deaths over the full length of the pandemic and vaccinations.  It should be noted that infections and fatality rates started plunging months before the vaccines were introduced widely to the public.  This is not a factor the study takes into consideration.     

  

  7)  Out of the four age groups included in the study, Republicans only had higher excess deaths in two of them (and only in Ohio).  The study briefly glosses over the fact that Democratic voters had significantly higher excess death rates compared with Republican voters for the age group 65 to 74 years.  That is to say, the baseline theory that Republicans have more covid deaths is debunked by the study’s own data.  

  Where does this leave us?  To summarize, the Yale study is incomplete and in some ways self contradicting.  In some age groups, Democrats had more excess deaths than Republicans.  In Florida, there was no significant difference in deaths between Republicans and Democrats.  Yet, Yale jumps to a politically charged conclusion in favor of Democrats anyway.  Why?

  A cursory glance at Yale University’s medical departments and their relationship to Pfizer should give people pause before accepting this study at face value.  Pfizer has donated tens of millions of dollars over the past two decades to Yale, including the building of a $35 million medical research center and millions in covid research related grants in the past few years.

  The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has also given millions to Yale specifically for covid research.  Both Gates and Pfizer have a vested monetary and political interest in pushing a pro-vaccine message.  Beyond that, the vast majority of Yale faculty political donations go to Democrat candidates.  Yale is a Democrat run university, so it’s not surprising that they would fund an incomplete study that favors Democrat narratives. 

  The lesson here?  Science is being politically weaponized, and every single new claim from such institutions needs to be thoroughly examined rather than taken at face value.        

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/02/2023 – 18:40

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