- How To Solve Violence In The US? End Democrat-Run Cities And Bring Back Asylums
How To Solve Violence In The US? End Democrat-Run Cities And Bring Back Asylums
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
One of the most common strategies used by the political left to attack 2nd Amendment supporters is to ramp up the anti-gun hype every time a crime involving a gun is committed. They don’t care much about the tragedy itself, they only care about how they can use it for political gain. However, it’s very important to understand that this is not only about removing gun rights for leftists – It’s also about creating a false association in the public consciousness that guns = crime.
That is to say, they want to condition people to believe that once guns are gone, crime and murder will be gone also. But, firearms have been an integral part of American society for hundreds of years, and gun ownership has been present through times of relative peace as well as times of increased violence.
In the case of countries like the UK with incredibly strict gun laws, muggings, rape and homicides have been rising with knife attacks in particular increasing by 80%. While it is technically more difficult to murder a person with a knife, it’s also a lot easier for larger, stronger assailants and gangs to succeed in harming people when those people have no equalizer. Disarmament makes life EASIER for criminals, not harder.
So, if guns are not the catalyst for rising violence, then what is? In reality, the very people who want guns taken from the hands of law abiding Americans are the same people largely responsible for the spike in homicide rates. Imagine that…
In the US, violent crimes and murders are exponentially higher in Democrat run cities, many of them with increased gun control measures. In fact, of the top 30 most violent cities in the US, 27 of them are Democrat controlled. Wherever leftists dominate politically, violence, theft, rape and murder are sure to follow. Anti-gun proponents often try to cite high homicide numbers in certain conservative states like Texas, but the majority of those crimes are actually committed in cities run by leftists.
The truth is, blue cities are dragging red states and the rest of the country down. According to the statistics, in theory, if the public was to replace all Democrat city politicians with conservative leadership murder rates would immediately plunge across the US by virtue of policy.
But what is it specifically about Democrat leadership that leads to far higher crime? There are other trends to consider, such as incarceration rates in any given state or county, severity of punishment for violent crimes and repeat offenders, and let’s not forget a subject a lot of people don’t want to talk about – The separation of the mentally ill from the rest of society. Leftists often support revolving door policies for criminals, reduced sentences for violent crime (if the perpetrator is a minority) and they are adamantly opposed to incarceration for those with dangerous mental illness.
They’re happy to take away the 2nd Amendment rights of innocent Americans, but they have no interest in keeping criminals in prison or keeping mentally unstable people away from normal society. Perhaps because their goal is NOT to reduce violence, but to use exponential violence in society as a reason to erode the constitution.
Incarceration does in fact work, far better that gun control does. But in order to understand the incarceration rate and its effectiveness in stopping violence, we have to look at two systems simultaneously – Prison incarceration and mental asylum incarceration. The following data shows US incarceration per capita in various prison systems for the past century:
The next graph shows homicide rates per capita for between 1900 to around 2010
And this graph shows homicide rates from the 1960’s up to the 2020s.
One issue that is immediately noticeable is that prison numbers spiked massively starting in the mid-1980s, after which homicide rates began to plunge. Also note that less incarceration in the early 1900s coincides with much higher murder rates across the nation. But what about that dip in murders from the 1930s to the 1960s? What caused that?
Well, it’s not necessarily an economic problem as many progressive might suggest. The country was hitting peak prosperity in the 1920s and murder rates were still sky high. On the opposite end, the system was still in depression turmoil in the 1930s to 1940s, but homicide rates plunged. So, what caused violent crime to fall in that era?
The only factor that seems to coincide with this period of relative peace is the sudden increase in psychiatric incarceration from around the 1930s onward.
While prison rates remained low and mostly static between the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, the number of mental asylums holding dangerous patients was growing. And, like magic, violence in the US dropped off a cliff.
By extension, as asylums began to shut down in the 1970s, murders jumped back once again to record highs. Without asylums and with low prison incarceration, homicides spread like wildfire and it did not stop until the mid-1980s when prison rates spiked. In other words, the prison system and the legal system had to finally pick up the slack left behind as the mental asylums disappeared.
Finally, take note of the recent jump in homicides and violence in the past few years in graph #3 – It matches almost exactly with falling incarceration trends in Graph #1. This has been mostly encouraged by Democrat policies in blue cities and blue states. Also keep in mind that the Democrats of today are part of a new woke cultism – They are not necessarily the same Democrats from 30 years ago. Woke Democrats want all barriers to criminal activity removed, including incarceration.
Furthermore, mental illness in the US is on the rise. Over 42% of Gen Z has been diagnosed with at least one mental health condition and psychiatric drugs are doing little to help. We have minimal mental illness facilities in place to deal with the influx of unstable people permeating society. We are about to REPEAT the pattern of the early 1900s, with a lower prison population and no asylums, violence will likely continue to spiral out of control.
To be sure, in the past there were some terrible practices involving mental health establishments and it doesn’t do anyone any good to repeat those mistakes. In the early days of psychiatry they caste a wide net that caught a lot of dangerous people, but they also locked up anyone with marginal mental problems as well. This led to abuses.
That said, it’s foolish to dismiss the numbers; asylums worked. They helped to reduce murders dramatically. At least 1% of the human population has psychopathic traits (including lack of empathy) and these people cause at least 30% of all crime in the US. At least 3% of the human population exhibits psychotic tendencies, which means they are prone to abrupt violence without treatment. Something has to be done to address the mentally unstable in our nation. Their odds of recidivism are extremely high, and they will keep committing the same crimes over and over again until they are stopped.
This is the elephant in the room that the political left doesn’t want to talk about. They try to hide it with social justice platitudes and feel-good welfare programs, but these things are clearly useless. Separating dangerous and insane people from the rest of the population is the only sure method for saving lives in the long run and keeping civilization intact.
The solution is simple and two-fold: Get rid of leftist leaders in major cities that set violent repeat offenders free, and bring back mental health facilities to lock up the crazies if necessary. This is the ONLY WAY to stop the avalanche of violent crime that awaits Americans as the next few years unfold.
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Fri, 06/02/2023 – 23:40 - Hong Kong Set To Become Crypto Trading Hub, Opens Exchange Licensing Ahead Of Retail Trading
Hong Kong Set To Become Crypto Trading Hub, Opens Exchange Licensing Ahead Of Retail Trading
After years of brutal crackdowns, crypto trading is coming back to China… or at least Hong Kong for now.
On Thursday, Hong Kong took a step toward becoming a cryptocurrency hub with the start of applications for licenses to run trading platforms and exchanges, Nikkei reported. Trading of cryptocurrencies in the Chinese territory has been restricted to institutional investors and other professionals since 2018, but Hong Kong’s new regulations will allow retail trading as soon as the second half of 2023, which means that HK will soon emerge as the conduit by which billions in Chinese retail savings mysteriously disappear into the outside world, a function that until not too long ago was served by Macau.
Officials said the city’s move to welcome crypto, which comes amid global regulatory headwinds for the industry, is backed by safeguards for investors.
“Hong Kong’s comprehensive virtual assets regulatory framework follows the principle of ‘same business, same risks, same rules’ and aims to provide robust investor protection and manage key risks,” said Julia Leung, CEO of the Securities and Futures Commission. “This will enable the industry to develop sustainably and support innovation.”
Requirements for obtaining a license include capital of at least 5 million Hong Kong dollars ($638,000), measures to combat money laundering and the appointment of experienced managers.
“Operators of virtual asset trading platforms who are prepared to comply with the SFC’s standards are welcome to apply for a licence,” the commission said in a May 23 notice. “Those who do not plan to do so should proceed to an orderly closure of their business in Hong Kong.”
More than 80 companies have expressed interest in obtaining a license, authorities say. Mainland Chinese companies are particularly eager to enter the Hong Kong market, because they face a total ban on providing cryptocurrency-related services at home.
A subsidiary of Chinese state-owned property developer Greenland Group plans to apply for a license, local media report. Online lender ZA Bank said on May 24 that it would partner with licensed companies to offer trading services for individuals.
“We welcome the licensing guidelines issued yesterday by the Hong Kong SFC, and we are excited to offer the new investment opportunities brought by virtual assets to our users,” ZA Bank CEO Ronald Iu said.
In Asia, South Korea and Singapore have taken the lead in regulating the crypto market, attracting some businesses that fled the U.S. and other countries. Hong Kong was regarded as being tough on the industry after China’s move to ban related services in 2021, but the city has reversed its stance.
In October, Hong Kong announced a policy of promoting virtual currencies. An exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking bitcoin listed on the Hong Kong exchange in December.
“The fact that an international finance hub like Hong Kong is setting out to create and support a crypto trading environment means a boost of investor confidence in the industry,” said Eddie Chou, a blockchain lecturer and fintech consultant.
A cloud has hung over Hong Kong’s status as an international financial hub since China imposed a national security law in 2020 that critics say erodes the city’s autonomy.
“Without Beijing’s approval and backing, there can be no policy change in Hong Kong,” an asset management executive here said. “They may intend to treat it as an exception like Macao, the only place in China where casinos are allowed, and use it as a testing ground” for crypto.
That is precisely what Beijing is doing, because even in China the local elite understands that as a result of the massive Chinese capital account monetary firewall, the country needs some way to transfer some of those trillions in savings offshore.
For now, Hong Kong regulators are promising a firm hand.
“Our regulations will be tight,” Eddie Yue, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said at the Bloomberg Wealth Asia Summit in May. “We will let the industry develop and innovate. We will let them create the ecosystem here, and that actually brings a lot of excitement. But that doesn’t mean light-touch regulation.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 23:20 - Family Of College Student Who Died From COVID-19 Vaccine Sues Biden Administration
Family Of College Student Who Died From COVID-19 Vaccine Sues Biden Administration
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The family of a college student who died from heart inflammation caused by Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has sued President Joe Biden’s administration, alleging officials engaged in “willful misconduct.”
George Watts Jr. in a file image. (Courtesy of the Watts family) U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials wrongly promoted COVID-19 vaccination by repeatedly claiming the available vaccines were “safe and effective,” relatives of George Watts Jr., the college student, said in the new lawsuit.
That promotion “duped millions of Americans, including Mr. Watts, into being DOD’s human subjects in its medical experiment, the largest in modern history,” the suit states.
The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act allows lawsuits against certain people if they have engaged in “willful misconduct” and if that misconduct caused death or serious injury.
COVID-19 vaccines are covered by the act due to a declaration entered during the Trump administration in 2020 after COVID-19 began circulating.
“DOD’s conduct and the harm caused as alleged within the four corners of the lawsuit speaks for itself,” Ray Flores, a lawyer representing the Watts family, told The Epoch Times via email. “I have no further comment other than to say: My only duty is to advocate for my client. If the DOD conveys a settlement offer, I will see that it’s considered.”
The suit was filed in U.S. court in Washington.
The Pentagon and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.
Watts Suddenly Died
Watts was a student at Corning Community College when the school mandated COVID-19 vaccination for in-person classes in 2021. He received one Pfizer dose on Aug. 27, 2021, and a second dose approximately three weeks later.
Watts soon began experiencing a range of symptoms, including tingling in the feet, pain in the heels, numbness in the hands and fingers, blood in his sperm and urine, and sinus pressure, according to family members and health records.
Watts went to the Robert Packer Hospital emergency room on Oct. 12, 2021, due to the symptoms. X-rays showed clear lungs and a normal heart outline.
Watts was sent home with suggestions to follow up with specialists but returned to the emergency room on Oct. 19, 2021, with worsening symptoms despite a week of the antibiotic Augmentin. He was diagnosed with sinusitis and bronchitis.
While speaking to his mother at home on Oct. 27, 2021, Watts suddenly collapsed. Emergency medical personnel rushed to the home but found him unresponsive. He was rushed to the same hospital in an ambulance. He was pronounced deceased at age 24.
According to a doctor at the hospital, citing hospital records and family members, Watts had no past medical history on file that would explain his sudden death, with no known history of substance abuse or obvious signs of substance abuse. His mother described her son as a “healthy young male.”
Dr. Robert Stoppacher, a pathologist who performed an autopsy on the body, said that the death was due to “COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.” The death certificate listed no other causes. A COVID-19 test returned negative. Dr. Sanjay Verma, based in California, reviewed the documents in the Watts case and said that he believed the death was caused by the COVID-19 vaccination.
Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment.
Watts Took Vaccine Under Pressure
The community college mandate included a 35-day grace period following approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were given emergency use authorization early in the pandemic. The FDA approved the Pfizer shot on Aug. 23, 2021. It was the first COVID-19 vaccine approval. But doses of the approved version of the shot, branded Comirnaty, were not available for months after the approval.
Read more here…
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Fri, 06/02/2023 – 23:00 - Tanks, F-16 Jets Won't Be Ready For Ukraine Counteroffensive: Pentagon
Tanks, F-16 Jets Won’t Be Ready For Ukraine Counteroffensive: Pentagon
Ukraine continues to tout that its planned major counteroffensive is coming and is imminent, event after Russia’s significant victory over the strategic Donetsk oblast city of Bakhmut.
But Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Mark Milley has been quoted in The Associated Press this week as confirming that US Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets which the US and Western countries have previously promised Ukraine will not be ready in time for the counteroffensive. He said the approved training on these sophisticated and advanced weapons systems for Ukrainians has begun, but that it will take “considerable time”.
“Everyone recognizes Ukraine needs a modernized Air Force,” Milley said. “It’s going to take a considerable amount of time.”
President Biden had last month belatedly approved giving European countries the ability to transfer F-16s to Ukraine, but Ukrainian pilots – long experienced only on Soviet and Russian-made aircraft, must be trained extensively on the US-designed and produced aircraft. This could take six months to a year or more.
According to the AP, “Milley said detailed planning on class sizes, the types of flying tactics and locations for training was underway now between the U.S. and allies such as the Netherlands and the U.K. that have already pledged to provide F-16s.”
It’s as yet unclear whether the US itself is going to eventually provide the jets directly to Ukraine forces, or if simply it will support third party countries giving them.
The U.S. has not said yet whether or not it will provide jets, but President Joe Biden has said the U.S. will support F-16 training.
As for Abrams tank training, which has already been underway, “About 200 Ukrainian soldiers began an approximately 12-week training course in Germany on the U.S. tanks over the weekend to teach them how to maneuver, fire and conduct combined arms operations with the advanced armored system,” the AP details. Support crew for tank fueling and fuel truck maintenance are also undergoing instruction, and that makes up another 200 troops.
In total about 300 tanks have been pledged by the Western allies, including German-made Leopard 2 tanks and UK Challenger main battle tanks. Washington is expected to deliver 31 seventy-ton Abrams tanks to Kiev by the fall.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 22:40 - The $200 Billion Electric School Bus Bust
The $200 Billion Electric School Bus Bust
Authored by Duggan Flanakin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Beatles once sang, “All you need is love.” But will Kamala Harris’ professed LOVE for electric school buses – plus the $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies she announced last October – be enough to usher in the new paradise?
Hmm. Let’s do the math. The $1 billion in rebates pledged is to help purchase 2,500 electric school buses in some 391 school districts around the nation. But there are in fact about 500,000 school buses transporting children to and from school, to and from ball games and other events, nearly every school day.
By simple calculation, this suggests it will take a $200 billion investment just to replace existing school buses – which must be done, Kamala tells us, by the 2030 deadline or else CHILDREN WILL DIE.
Do factories, batteries, and other raw materials exist to build (or retrofit) 500,000 school buses – and every other vehicle in America today – by 2030? By 2050? Does that much money exist? Does that much electricity exist?
To be sure, the demand (from mostly leftist school boards) is out there. Nearly 2,000 school districts applied for the free money last year, pushing the demand SO HIGH “that the EPA had to double the amount of funding” from the initial pledge of $500 million.” Should Kamala keep her job in 2024, the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program is committed to handing out another $4 billion over the next five years.
Nearly 2,000 school districts applied for the first round of rebates from all 50 states, including Washington, D.C., U.S. territories, and federally recognized tribes. The demand was so high “that the EPA had to double the amount of funding” from its initial pledge of $500 million, a White House official tells Parents on background.
A total of 391 rebates were awarded, and the Vice President anticipates thousands more applications as the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program awards a total of $5 billion over the next five years. That’s 12,500 down, just 487,500 to go!
School districts NOT getting the federal free money are faced with a much different scenario. Even the smaller electric school buses today cost about $250,000 compared with just $50,000 to 465,000 for a diesel-powered bus of the same size. The larger battery-electric buses can run from $320,000 to $440,000 versus just $100,000 for a diesel bus.
Take the Dallas (TX) Independent School District, which has about 860 buses. To replace the entire fleet with large diesel buses would cost, therefore, about $86 million. But those 860 buses, if battery-electric, would cost a minimum of $275 million. And that does not include the cost of charging stations and retraining mechanics. That’s over three times as many taxpayer dollars the school district would have to extract from voters.
All this, of course, has been under the assumption that electric school buses are just as reliable as diesel-powered buses – and that they can keep children warm in winter and cool on hot days as well as buses with diesel engines.
The Ann Arbor (MI) Public Schools Board of Education learned recently from its environmental sustainability director, that the electric school buses they bought have “a lot of downtime and performance issues” and “aren’t fully on the road.” Moreover, the infrastructure upgrades needed to use these buses, which were estimated at just $50,000, “ended up being more like $200,000.”
To the surprise of many educators, electric school buses may break down and require towing. As with any electric vehicle, this poses risks not common to gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles. One is that they are heavier – and thus require larger tow trucks (remember, tow trucks only tow the cabs of 18-wheelers, not the trailers). Towing capacity should be about half the weight of the towing vehicle, and the typical electric school bus weighs 36,000 pounds.
Another thing the electric bussers ignore is the wear and tear on bus tires, which cost about $3,000 per set (likely higher by now, with inflation). Goodyear notes that electric school bus operators have to consider the extra weight of the buses, which makes balancing the tires for load capacity and durability even more important – and more frequently done. The extra weight also means that the tires do not last as long as on lighter weight diesel buses.
Electric bus enthusiasts like Kamala Harris will tell you that spending an extra $150 billion or so is worth the price to theoretically save children from diesel exhaust (despite the major improvements in diesel technology and much cleaner diesel fuel mandated in recent years). But they are silent about the number of actual lives lost by children mining the raw materials for electric vehicle batteries.
Using data supplied by Pacific Gas & Electric, Colorado journalist Cory Gaines noted that the $260,000 cost differential between diesel and electric school buses means that any school district wanting to take advantage of the predicted much lower operating costs will need major help with the huge upfront capital costs. Which means both federal and state subsidies – and higher taxes to pay for the subsidies.
Noting that electric buses have longer downtimes and higher towing costs, plus require (again upfront) costs for installing and maintaining charging stations – and other hidden costs, the payback on the electric school bus (at an average of 16,000 miles per year, a high-end estimate) comes out to about 20 years – longer than the lifespan of the bus. And that’s if nobody dies or is injured by a school bus fire.
Gaines, who runs the Colorado Accountability Project on Facebook, gives an additional caveat for buses operating in cold climates (like the Colorado mountains, the Great Lakes region, and Alaska, where today there is but one electric school bus).
Unlike diesel buses that scavenge waste engine heat for passengers, electric buses have to divert battery energy into heat. On very cold days, the amount of energy needed to keep children warm could exceed the amount used to travel the route. That may not matter on short trips to and from school — but imagine a basketball or hockey team on a bus trip to a game across the state.
Charging the battery for an electric school bus takes up to eight hours using AC power, but with a diminished range in cold weather taking children on long bus trips for any purpose might require an extra day on the road in each direction. That means an extra day each way of feeding and housing the children (and keeping watch over them).
Or school districts could just say, Sorry, kids, no more school travel. We can’t afford it!
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 22:20 - AR & VR Adoption Is Still in Its Infancy
AR & VR Adoption Is Still in Its Infancy
In its quest to making the metaverse the next big thing in tech, Facebook’s parent company Meta unveiled a new virtual and mixed reality headset on Thursday.
Starting at $499.99, the Quest 3 is much more affordable than the Quest Pro that was launched last fall, while offering performance that is far superior to its predecessor, the Meta Quest 2.
“Quest 3 is our first mass-market offering to deliver both cutting-edge VR and MR experiences in a single device, setting a new benchmark for future headsets,” Meta said in its announcement, clearly nodding towards Apple, which is expected to unveil its own long-in-the-making VR/AR headset at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week.
“Ultimately, our vision is to enable you to move through all realities in a way that’s intuitive and delightful,” Mark Rabkin, vice president of VR at Meta said.
“Going beyond the rigid classifications of ‘virtual reality’ and ‘mixed reality’ to deliver truly next-gen experiences that let you effortlessly blend the physical and virtual worlds.”
But, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, while Meta has already invested billions in that vision, so far it remains just that: a vision that has yet to come to life.
According to estimates from Statista Market Insights, users of AR and VR devices are still few and far between, with growth projections until 2027 nowhere near the scale that would make mixed reality “the next computing platform”, at least for now.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Statista estimates that 98 million people will be using VR hardware this year, while 23 million will be dabbling with more advanced AR technology. By 2027, both AR and VR are expected to have surpassed 100 million users worldwide, but that’s still a longshot from the billions of smartphone users across the planet.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 22:00 - Authoritarianism Keeps Surging In Western "Free Democracies"
Authoritarianism Keeps Surging In Western “Free Democracies”
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,
Today in tyranny we’ve got three stories on the rapidly increasing authoritarian abuses in western “free democracies”.
Let’s dig in.
1. Grayzone reporter detained by British counter-terrorism police for doing journalism.
The Grayzone’s Kit Klarenberg was detained by “six anonymous plainclothes counter-terror officers” who “grilled him for over five hours about his reporting” upon returning to Britain on the 17th of May, according to a new report by Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal.
British police detain journalist @KitKlarenberg, interrogate him about The Grayzone
Counter-terror police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival in London and subjected him to a 5 hour interrogation about his political views and reportinghttps://t.co/RmxZGY8efp pic.twitter.com/YftxSR1Cl0
— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) May 31, 2023
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Blumenthal reports that Klarenberg was asked many questions about The Grayzone and his work with the independent outlet, saying police “seized the journalist’s electronic devices and SD cards, fingerprinted him, took DNA swabs, and photographed him intensively,” threatening him with arrest if he didn’t comply.
Blumenthal writes that the police action was likely a retaliation for Klarenberg’s reporting for the outlet, which has angered British officials and establishment media figures with the inconvenient information it has reported about their behavior:
Klarenberg’s interrogation appears to be London’s way of retaliating for the journalist’s blockbuster reports exposing major British and US intelligence intrigues. In the past year alone, Klarenberg revealed how a cabal of Tory national security hardliners violated the Official Secrets Act to exploit Brexit and install Boris Johnson as prime minister. In October 2022, he earned international headlines with his exposé of British plans to bomb the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian Federation. Then came his report on the CIA’s recruitment of two 9/11 hijackers this April, a viral sensation that generated massive social media attention.
Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a UK security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.
Asserting that Klarenberg did nothing more nefarious than engaging in “the same journalistic practice that the West’s most prominent legacy newspapers, from The New York Times to The Washington Post, depend on to break news themselves,” Blumenthal says it appears that “British authorities did not detain Klarenberg for any legal breaches, but because he reported factual stories that exposed the national security state’s own violations of both domestic and international law, as well as the malign plots of its media lackeys.”
Blumenthal himself was subjected to legal harassment and intimidation in the United States a few years back, arrested and charged with having committed “assault” while reporting on imperial efforts to drive the Venezuelan government out of its embassy in Washington DC. The charges were later dropped.
The Grayzone has been doing some of the best independent reporting in alternative media over the last few years, and should wear its now-evident status as a thorn in the empire’s side with pride.
2. South Australia passes draconian anti-protest law.
Reacting to recent inconvenient demonstrations by environmental activists, the state of South Australia has just rapidly shoved through legislation — without consulting the public — to exponentially increase the penalties for unauthorized protesting. Demonstrators will now face up to three months in jail and fines of $50,000 if they are deemed guilty of the extremely vague offense of “obstructing a public place” with their protesting.
The Human Rights Law Center expresses the following:
South Australia is the latest jurisdiction to impose severe penalties on people for engaging in peaceful protest, joining New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland who have passed anti-protest laws in the last five years. South Australia’s anti-protest laws carry the harshest financial penalties in Australia.
The Bill is excessive and will have a chilling effect on the right to protest in South Australia. The Bill is also potentially unconstitutional and in clear breach of well-established principles of international human rights law.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas acted shocked and offended that anyone could possibly think life-altering penalties for vaguely-defined protest activities might have some effect on protest activities, saying, “One of the things that I have found rather disconcerting around some of the commentary on this piece of legislation is that somehow, it curtails or diminishes people’s right to protest, which is simply not true.”
Hilarious.
Now would probably be a good time to repeat my periodic reminder that Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no national charter or bill of rights of any kind. A lot of attention went into the Australian government’s authoritarianism when its strict Covid measures were in place, but the fact of the matter is that this country has been diving headlong into tyranny since long before Covid, and continues to do so now that the lockdowns are long over. There simply aren’t enough checks and balances in place to prevent this from happening, and not enough will from the public to fight for them while fighting is still possible.
3. State Department dismisses questions about Ukrainian imprisonment of US citizen for speech crimes.
State Department refuses to say whether it will negotiate with Zelensky for the release of detained U.S. citizen Gonzalo Lira: pic.twitter.com/jTD58XjYnw
— Liam Cosgrove (@cosgrove_iv) May 28, 2023
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At a press conference last week the State Department’s new spokesman Matthew Miller flatly brushed off questions about whether the US government was doing anything about the fact that commentator Gonzalo Lira has been arrested and charged with what amount to speech crimes by the Ukrainian government.
Here’s the State Department’s transcript of the exchange:
QUESTION: Thanks. Liam Cosgrove with Epoch Times. So this was a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t seen an official statement on it. A U.S. citizen who is residing in Ukraine has been arrested and that he was a California-born man; he was in the past like a Business Insider contributor, and he had a YouTube channel. He was an outspoken critic of Zelenskyy’s regime. The Ukrainian SBU released a press release saying he was arrested for justifying Putin’s invasion. So ultimately, it added up to speech. And I spoke with Congressman Ted Lieu, a Democrat, and he said he urges the State Department to engage its authorities to work out some sort of negotiation to get him released. So are you guys aware of this? How do we feel about our allies detaining U.S. citizens for speech abroad?
MR MILLER: So I will say in general that we’re aware of the report. We obviously support the exercise of freedom of speech anywhere in the world, and I’ll leave it at that.
QUESTION: So you guys aren’t working to get him released?
MR MILLER: I’m going to leave my comments where I just left them.
It’s not every day a US spokesperson gets asked a question that’s so inconvenient that they just overtly refuse to answer it without even pretending to provide an explanation for doing so.
Lira, a US citizen, is reportedly facing five to eight years in prison for having “publicly justified the armed aggression of the Russian Federation” and “publicly justified the armed aggression of the Russian Federation,” per the SBU.
Are Americans okay with their government risking a very fast, very radioactive third world war to defend the freedom and democracy of a nation that imprisons US citizens for speech crimes? I guess we’ll never know, because nobody’s asking them.
If western governments need to keep ramping up censorship, propaganda and the persecution of journalists in order to defend western freedom and democracy, is it really freedom and democracy? And, is it worth defending?
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 21:40 - US Ditches More New START Treaty Obligations After Tactical Nukes Transferred To Belarus
US Ditches More New START Treaty Obligations After Tactical Nukes Transferred To Belarus
The New START Treaty, which is the final nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia, continues to fall apart after on Thursday the Biden administration said it would walk away from multiple key obligations stipulated under the agreement, after Moscow already effectively ended its participation earlier this year.
The State Department announced in a Thursday fact sheet that the US will initiate “Four lawful countermeasures in response to the Russian Federation’s ongoing violations of the New START Treaty” which it deemed “proportionate” and “reversible.” Further, Russia has been notified in advance of the move.
But the fact sheet underscored that “The United States continues to abide by the treaty’s central limits, and to fulfill all of its New START obligations that have not been included within these countermeasures.”
Crucially, the most important of the countermeasures bans all Russian inspectors from visiting US territories. This was the most important aspect to the agreement, given that among the nuclear reduction treaty’s chief aims is to ensure inspection and monitoring of each side’s nuclear arsenal by the other. However, it had already been on pause since 2020 in relation to Covid restrictions and lockdowns.
Related to central monitoring protocols, the US is also backing away from basic information-sharing with the Kremlin. Washington will now withhold “notifications required under the treaty, including updates on the status or location of treaty-accountable items such as missiles and launchers.”
Additionally, data will no longer be shared about future missile tests, including “telemetric information on launches of US ICBMs and SLBMs,” according to the State Department.
All of this comes very dangerously as nuclear saber-rattling continues in relation to the Ukraine war. Russia has recently ordered tactical nukes to be hosted on Belarusian territory – a move the West has condemned.
Russian officials have long explained that the country’s nuclear doctrine has not changed, warning that nuclear weapons can be deployed only if sovereign Russian territory and the population comes under existential threat. And yet, cross-border attacks from Ukraine have only intensified, including increasing incidents of ground troop incursions, with the use of military hardware, some it provided by NATO allies.
Biden administration acknowledges it keeps crossing Putin’s red lines because he hasn’t launched a nuclear response yet. https://t.co/bmNOu3Ifzf
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) June 1, 2023
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Russia has at the same time accused the West of backing these brazen attacks, and has warned of continued escalation. Putin’s “red lines” continue to be crossed, almost daily at this point.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 21:20 - Federal Judge Blocks ATF Pistol Brace Rule For Major Gun Group
Federal Judge Blocks ATF Pistol Brace Rule For Major Gun Group
Submitted by Gun Owners of America,
On Thursday, Joe Biden planned to enact the largest gun ban in U.S. history—a ban on up to 40,000,000 pistols.
But at the eleventh hour, the executive order gun ban was gutted by three federal courts.
After a months-long legal battle with the federal government, Gun Owners of America secured one such preliminary injunction in Texas v. Garland, preventing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) from prosecuting any GOA members under this new rule.
🚨 BREAKING🚨
GOF and @GunOwners just received the order for our Pistol Brace lawsuit and our case has resulted in a PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION for ALL GOA MEMBERS.
When the clock strikes midnight, millions of GOA members will still be law-abiding Americans. We are thankful for… pic.twitter.com/41LD8WY1Tq
— Gun Owners Foundation (@GunFoundation) June 1, 2023
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Similar rulings were issued by two other federal courts to members of two other advocacy organizations as well—the plaintiffs in Mock v. Garland and SAF v. ATF.
In effect, the Biden Pistol Ban crumbled before it even got off the ground.
Without the injunction, ATF could have already begun kicking in doors and confiscating “illegal” unregistered pistols.
But even though the injunctions are not nationwide, it is now nearly impossible for ATF to differentiate the pistol owners they can prosecute from the Gun Owners of America members and other protected persons.
Notably, Gun Owners of America isn’t satisfied with this limited injunction. In fact, GOA had argued for a nationwide injunction, but the courts refused and only granted limited relief to its members.
In case you missed it, GOA and @GunFoundation secured a Preliminary Injunction last night against the Biden Pistol Ban for GOA Members. This means that when the rule went into effect at 12 AM ET, millions of GOA members were still law-abiding Americans. 👏
We know there are a…
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) June 1, 2023
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That’s why GOA is also urging activists to contact Congress and urge them to provide oversight and to protect all gun owners nationwide.
Using the Congressional Review Act, the ATF rule could be reversed, and the agency could be prohibited from ever enacting a similar rule in the future.
Two joint resolutions of disapproval have already been introduced. H. J. Res. 44, introduced by Rep. Andrew Clyde, has 189 sponsors in the House of Representatives and S. J. Res. 20, introduced by Sen. Kennedy, has 47 sponsors in the Senate.
Public calls for Speaker McCarthy to hold a vote to block the pistol brace rule have only mounted in recent weeks, with several coalitions calling for immediate action—including 27 Attorneys General currently suing the Biden Administration, 2A influencers with over 30,000,000 combined followers, and numerous members of the gun industry.
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We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 21:00 - Russia Says US Hacked 'Thousands' Of iPhones In Espionage Operation
Russia Says US Hacked ‘Thousands’ Of iPhones In Espionage Operation
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on Thursday accused the United States of conducting an espionage operation that compromised thousands of iPhones using sophisticated surveillance software.
A customer tests a smartphone during the launch of the new iPhone XS and XS Max sales at “re:Store” Apple reseller shop in Moscow on Sept. 28, 2018. (Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters) Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab says that dozens of their employees’ devices were compromised as part of the operation.
In a statement, the FSB said that the targets included domestic Russian subscribers, as well as foreign diplomats based in Russia and the former Soviet Union, Reuters reports.
“The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action of the American special services using Apple mobile devices,” said the FSB in a statement, adding that the plot revealed “close cooperation” between Apple and the National Security Agency (NSA). The FSB did not provide any evidence of Apple’s cooperation.
Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said on Twitter that dozens of his employees’ phones were compromised in the operation, which his company described as “an extremely complex, professionally targeted cyberattack” that had targeted workers in “top and middle-management.”
Kaspersky researcher Igor Kuznetsov told Reuters that his company had independently discovered anomalous traffic on its corporate Wi-Fi network around the start of the year. He said Kaspersky did not circulate its findings to Russia’s Computer Emergency Response Team until earlier on Thursday. -Reuters
More from Kaspersky via Twitter;
Triangulation transmits private information to remote servers: microphone recordings, photos from instant messengers, geolocation and data about a number of other activities #IOSTriangulation
— Eugene Kaspersky (@e_kaspersky) June 1, 2023
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We are quite confident that Kaspersky was not the main target of this cyberattack. The coming days will bring more clarity and further details on the worldwide proliferation of the spyware #IOSTriangulation
— Eugene Kaspersky (@e_kaspersky) June 1, 2023
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Important: The activity observed in Operation Triangulation does not overlap with already known iOS campaigns, such as Pegasus, Predator or Reign.
— Eugene Kaspersky (@e_kaspersky) June 1, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsKaspersky says that disabling iMessage will defeat the hack.
Repeat after me: https://t.co/li3xomQY60 pic.twitter.com/HzfZgC0lkN
— Davy Douhine (@ddouhine) June 1, 2023
According to the FSB, the Americans had compromised diplomats from China, Syria, Israel and NATO members.
“The hidden data collection was carried out through software vulnerabilities in U.S.-made mobile phones,” said Russia’s foreign ministry in a statement. “The U.S. intelligence services have been using IT corporations for decades in order to collect large-scale data of Internet users without their knowledge.”
Reuters notes that “The United States is the world’s top cyber power in terms of intent and capability, according to Harvard University’s Belfer Center Cyber 2022 Power Index, followed by China, Russia, the United Kingdom and Australia.”
Russian officials said the plot had been uncovered as part of a joint effort by FSB officers and those of the Federal Guards Service (FSO), a powerful agency that runs the Kremlin bodyguard and was also once the KGB’s Ninth Directorate.
Officials in Russia, which Western spies say has constructed a very sophisticated domestic surveillance structure, have long questioned the security of U.S. technology. -Reuters
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that all officials in the Putin government knew that gadgets such as iPhones were “absolutely transparent.”
“Using them for official purposes is unacceptable and prohibited,” he said, adding that they were free to use iPhones for private communications.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 20:40 - California State Assembly Votes To Ban Driverless Trucks
California State Assembly Votes To Ban Driverless Trucks
By Alan Adler of FreightWaves,
The California State Assembly voted Wednesday to ban driverless trucks from the state’s roadways, requiring a safety driver be present. If passed by the Senate, it would leave the state where most autonomous trucking companies are based as an outlier in adopting the technology.
The 54-3 vote banning autonomous vehicles over 10,000 pounds from operating without a safety driver followed similar majority committee votes on Assembly Bill 316. The measure received support from the Teamsters and other labor groups. They claim driverless trucks would eliminate thousands of good-paying jobs for human drivers.
“The public should not be treated as a lab rat for big corporations to test their technology. Californians deserve a safety-first approach. And this bill would do just that,” Randy Cammack, president of Teamsters Joint Council 42, said in March.
California 2024 Senate candidates U.S. Reps. Katie Porter, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee have voiced support for the legislation. San Francisco Mayor London Breed also has expressed support.
Autonomous vehicle industry wants governor’s support
“AB 316 is a preemptive technology ban that will put California even further behind other states and lock in the devastating safety status quo on California’s roads, which saw more than 4,400 people die last year,” the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association (AVIA) said in a statement after the vote.
“AB 316 undermines California’s law enforcement and safety officials as they seek to regulate and conduct oversight over life-saving autonomous trucks,” said Jeff Farrah, AVIA executive director. “We encourage Governor Newsom and the State Senate to reject AB 316 so Californians will benefit from the safety and supply chain benefits of autonomous trucks.”
In an April 20 editorial, the Orange County Register said opposition to driverless trucking is “classic union featherbedding.”
Dozens of autonomous trucking and technology founders, CEOs, and others wrote to Newsom in June 2022. California in late August released “Driving the Future: Autonomous Vehicles Strategic Framework Vision and Guiding Principles.”
The nine-page document concludes that “AVs hold the promise to be an important part of our mobility future.” But its added that “they are just one part of a broader set of solutions.”
The California Department of Motor Vehicles is considering the framework that could allow autonomous vehicles over 10,000 pounds to hit the road, without consent from the State Legislature.
Self-driving trucking software companies Kodiak Robotics, Plus, Waymo and TuSimple are all based in California. But they only operate their trucks in the state with safety drivers. That is the current practice in other states. Several states have shown willingness to eventually allow the driver to be removed from the truck.
TuSimple is aiming to commercialize a driverless route in Arizona between Tucson and Phoenix as soon as 2024. Pittsburgh-based Aurora is planning to run driverless trucks in Texas by the end of next year.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 20:20 - Phoenix Area Restricts Construction As Groundwater Evaporates
Phoenix Area Restricts Construction As Groundwater Evaporates
With a surge in population growth, soaring urban development, and, of course, desert conditions, it comes as no surprise the Phoenix metropolitan area could one day run out of groundwater. On Thursday, local authorities declared the state would no longer issue building permits for new developments across the metro area unless alternative water sources can be found.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said a newly released study of the Phoenix metropolitan area’s groundwater showed a potential shortage looms. To safeguard supplies, current developments that have been approved can be constructed, but ones that have yet to be approved will have to show alternate water sources. Developers must show state officials they have an alternative “assured water supply” for 100 years from non-local groundwater.
The study found that 4% of the metro area’s demand for groundwater, nearly 4.9 million acre-feet, cannot be met over the next century. If the projections are correct, a massive water shortage could be nearing and have widespread implications for the post-Covid development boom.
Thursday’s announcement is a sign the water-scarce metro area, situated in a desert, has limitations in terms of the number of homes it can support.
“It’s going to make it harder for developments to spring up on raw desert in the far-flung parts of town where developers like to develop,” Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy, told CNN.
The former Phoenix mayor, Terry Goddard, said the study indicates residents are “living on borrowed water.” He added:
“You need to be conscious of every drop. You can’t build unless you know exactly where the water is coming from.”
Last year, Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority began reviewing a proposal for a multibillion-dollar project to construct a water desalination plant in Mexico that would pump water through a 200-mile pipeline to the border state to counter its drought-driven water uncertainty.
Instead of blaming climate change, Phoenix should remember they’re situated in the middle of the desert, and the explosive population growth in the last several years draws down on finite resources much quicker. If the metro area wants to continue to expand, it might have to consider the 200-mile pipeline from Mexico.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 20:00 - US Sent Billions in Funding to China, Russia For Cat Experiments, Wuhan Lab Research: Ernst
US Sent Billions in Funding to China, Russia For Cat Experiments, Wuhan Lab Research: Ernst
Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars went to recipients in China and Russia in recent years without being properly tracked by the federal government, including a grant that enabled a state-run Russian lab to test cats on treadmills, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) speaks at a Senate Republican news conference in the U.S. Capitol on March 9, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Ernst and her staff investigators, working with auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Research Service, as well as two nonprofit Washington watchdogs—Open The Books (OTB) and the White Coat Waste Project (WCWP)—discovered dozens of other grants that weren’t counted on the federal government’s USASpending.gov internet database.
While the total value of the uncounted grants found by the Ernst team is $1.3 billion, that amount is just the tip of the iceberg, the GAO reported.
Among the newly discovered grants is $4.2 million to China’s infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) “to conduct dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses and transgenic mice,” according to a May 31 Ernst statement provided to The Epoch Times.
The $4.2 million exposed by Ernst is in addition to previously reported funding to the WIV for extensive gain-of-function research by Chinese scientists, much of it funded in whole or part prior to the COVID-19 pandemic by National Institutes for Health (NIH) grants channeled through the EcoHealth Alliance medical research nonprofit.
The NIH has awarded seven grants totaling more than $4.1 million to EcoHealth to study various aspects of SARS, MERS, and other coronavirus diseases.
Buying Chinese Puppy Parts
As part of another U.S.-funded grant, hearts and other organs from 425 dogs in China were purchased for medical research.
“These countryside dogs in China are part of the farmer’s household; they were mainly used for guarding. Their diet includes boiled rice, discarded raw food animal tissues, and whatever dogs can forage. These dogs were sold for food,” an NIH study uncovered by the Ernst researchers reads.
Other previously unreported grants exposed by the Ernst team include $1.6 million to Chinese companies from the federal government’s National School Lunch Program and $4.7 million for health insurance from a Russian company that was sanctioned by the United States in 2022 as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s gravely concerning that Washington’s reckless spending has reached the point where nobody really knows where all tax dollars are going,” Ernst separately told The Epoch Times. “But I have the receipts, and I’m shining a light on this, so bureaucrats can no longer cover up their tracks, and taxpayers can know exactly what their hard-earned dollars are funding.”
The problem is that federal officials don’t rigorously track sub-awards made by initial grant recipients, according to the Iowa Republican. Such sub-awards are covered by a multitude of federal regulations that stipulate many conditions to ensure that the tax dollars are appropriately spent.
The GAO said in an April report that “limitations in sub-award data is a government-wide issue and not unique to U.S. funding to entities in China.”
“GAO is currently examining the state of federal government-wide sub-award data as part of a separate review,” the report reads.
Peter Daszak, right, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, is seen in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) The Eco-Health sub-awards to WIV illustrate the problem.
“Despite being required by law to make these receipts available to the public on the USAspending.gov website, EcoHealth tried to cover its tracks by intentionally not disclosing the amounts of taxpayer money being paid to WIV, which went unnoticed for years,” Ernst said in the statement.
“I was able to determine that more than $490 million of taxpayer money was paid to organizations in China [in] the last five years. That’s ten times more than GAO’s estimate! Over $870 million was paid to entities in Russia during the same period!
“Together that adds up to more than $1.3 billion paid to our adversaries. But again, these numbers still do not represent the total dollar amounts paid to institutions in China or Russia since those numbers are not tracked and the information that is being collected is incomplete.”
Adam Andrzejewski, founder and chairman of OTB, told The Epoch Times, “When following the money at the state and local level, the real corruption exists in the subcontractor payments. At the federal level, the existing system doesn’t even track many of those recipients.
“Without better reporting, agencies and appropriators don’t truly understand how tax dollars were used. We now know that taxpayer dollars are traded further downstream than originally realized with third- and fourth-tier recipients. These transactions need scrutiny. Requiring recipients to account for where and how they actually spend each dollar creates a record far better than agencies are capable of generating.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 19:40 - Trove Of Nearly 10K Hunter Biden Laptop Photos, Docs Appear On Organized Website
Trove Of Nearly 10K Hunter Biden Laptop Photos, Docs Appear On Organized Website
Nearly 10,000 photos from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop were uploaded to a new website – BidenLaptopMedia.com, which has been intermittently unavailable since launch due to overwhelming traffic.
Hunter Biden records crack-smoking session on iPhone, 2018 The site, which took months to complete, is the brainchild of former Trump White House aide, Garrett Ziegler, who worked as an aide to economic adviser Peter Navarro.
“It’s taken us a couple of months to, one, go through the photos, about 10,000 of them, and redact the genitalia on the photos,” said Ziegler, adding “The number one thing we’re about… is truth and transparency.”
“If the American people want to know what their first family is like, they’re going to get it. And we’re not going to be taking out photos that paint the Bidens in a good light.”
The site includes;
Pictures (with location metadata)
And lots of personal details;
Screenshot, https://marcopolousa.org/bidenlaptopreport/ According to Ziegler, several photos including private data were redacted, including those containing Social Security numbers, banking information and credit card numbers – as well as multiple nude photos of Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden.
Of the many photos found on the laptop, Ziegler provided Fox News Digital with two never-before-seen photos from the laptop. One photo showed Hunter Biden cozied up to his then-lover Zoe Kestan in 2018. The other image — featuring an array of drugs and a condom wrapper sitting on a table — was from a text message conversation Hunter had with Hallie Biden — the widow of Beau Biden and former lover of Hunter Biden — the same year.
Providing further insight on the type of content viewers can expect on the website, Ziegler said some content that does not carry “news value” will not be featured. –Fox News
“There are, for example, screenshots of Candy Crush games where we are fairly confident in saying there’s absolutely no news value to those,” he said. “So it’s going to be, I would say, 98% of the photos on the device, around 10,000 in total, although it’ll be slightly less than that.”
“It’s going to be a completely authentic recounting of the photos on the device,” he continued.
Our servers for https://t.co/zQirhFz1PJ are under heavy stress and we are working to get it fully functional and secured. Incredible engagement already in the first couple hours. https://t.co/70HD65aFyL
— Marco Polo (@MarcoPolo501c3) June 1, 2023
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 19:20 - Launch Of New Acela Trains Delayed By Three Years
Launch Of New Acela Trains Delayed By Three Years
By Trains.com
Launch of service for Amtrak’s next-generation Acela trainsets has been pushed back into 2024, the Washington Post reports, as testing and computer simulations continue to find problems, most recently with the train’s wheelsets
A new Acela trainset passes the Amtrak/Shore Line East station at Old Saybrook, Conn., on April 5, 2021. Testing issues have further delayed the equipment’s debut That means the new trains will enter service at least three years late, placing increasing pressure on the existing Acela fleet that dates to 2000. Trains News Wire has learned that four of the 20 first-generation Acela sets have been withdrawn from service. Two New York-Washington Acela round trips were dropped from the schedule as of May 8; an Amtrak spokesman said this was “due to a need to perform additional maintenance on Acela equipment.”
Alstom, which is building the 28 new high-speed trainsets, said in a statement to the Post that “modeling of the wheel-to-track interface is particularly complex due to age, condition, and specific characteristics of Amtrak infrastructure on the Northeast Corridor, and especially the existing tracks.” The company said it has been “conducting extensive investigations” to ensure the trains will operate safely and is “confident that this extensive process will demonstrate compatibility of the latest generation of high-speed technology with existing [Amtrak] infrastructure.”
Sources tell News Wire that the computer modeling designed to predict the trainsets’ operating characteristics and enable them to reach maximum speeds over 150 mph were confirmed on the test track at Pueblo, Colo., but could not be verified on some Northeast Corridor sections. Track quality has been upgraded on New Jersey tracks between Trenton and New Brunswick, and Amtrak already hosts legacy Acela trainsets at 150 mph over portions of right-of-way upgraded in the 1990s in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, but track quality varies widely elsewhere.
Amtrak and Alstom announced a $2.45 billion deal to build the new equipment in 2016, with a 2021 target to begin service [see “Amtrak, Alstom reach $2.45 billion deal,” News Wire, Aug. 26, 2016]. But modifications to the trains’ catenary systems — which would lose contact with the catenary wire at top speed — pushed the debut back [see “News report says debut of new Acelas will be delayed by a year,” News Wire, June 3, 2021]. A delay to 2023 was attributed to further testing and modifications [see “Alstom explains latest delay …,” News Wire, April 8, 2022].
Amtrak told the Post last week that “further refinement of analysis, simulations and testing” are needed. Alstom said it has delivered six trainsets to the passenger operator and is preparing to deliver the seventh.
“We want our customers to experience these new trains as soon as possible, but Amtrak cannot operate them for passenger service until Alstom has completed testing and meets all safety requirements,” Amtrak said in a statement to the Post.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 19:00 - US Asks Japan To Sell TNT For Ukraine Artillery Shells
US Asks Japan To Sell TNT For Ukraine Artillery Shells
In a drive to reinforce Ukraine’s arsenal ahead of a long-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia, the US government is working to buy explosive material from Japan for use in 155mm artillery shells, Reuters reported Thursday night.
The request is a test of Japan’s post-World War II philosophy against militarism, as well as the country’s specific restrictions on arms exports. Nonetheless, the Japanese government has assured US representatives the deal will get done.
Ukrainian soldiers firing artillery in the Donetsk region on Dec. 5 (Justin Yau/Sipa USA via AP and NBC News) “There is a way for the United States to buy explosives from Japan,” an unnamed person with knowledge of the negotiations told Reuters. The sale of industrial TNT will clear export hurdles thanks to the fact that it’s considered a “dual-use” product, that isn’t explicitly military in nature — as opposed to, for example, an assembled artillery shell.
At the same time, Japan’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Economy said its export rules require an assessment of the buyer’s intent for the product, including whether the intended use would undermine international security.
Artillery has figured heavily in the Ukraine war, with both sides firing several thousand rounds every day, and manufacturers scrambling to the guns firing. In December, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the US weapons industry would ramp up 155mm artillery shell production from 14,000 rounds per month to 20,000 in this spring and 40,000 by 2025.
News of a Japanese TNT deal comes on the heels of Secretary of Defense LLoyd Austin’s visit to Japan this week. If the deal closes, the explosives will be used by American ammunition manufacturers.
Defense Secretary LLoyd Austin in Tokyo on Thursday (Frank Robichon/Pool via Reuters) Echoing the sentiments of Western hawks, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has previously warned that a Russian triumph in Ukraine could encourage a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Japan has furnished nonlethal aid to Ukraine, including rations, helmets and flak jackets, and in April committed to supplying trucks.
With the pending TNT deal, Japan is putting its toes on the line of non-militarism. The move is bound to cause controversy. “The fact that Japan has decided to give trucks to Ukraine shows that things are changing. However, there doesn’t yet appear to be any political consensus around the issue of sending lethal aid,” the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Tsuneo Watanabe told Reuters.
In December, Japan announced its biggest military build-up since World War II. The $320 billion shopping list includes missiles with sufficient range to hit targets in China. Kishida and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have also made clear their desire to relax export restrictions or eliminate them altogether.
While the proposed Japanese TNT supplier hasn’t been identified, a Reuters review of the country’s manufacturers points to closely-held, Chugoku Kayaku as the most likely firm. In a darkly ironic twist, the company that may advance Japan’s departure from the principles of peace is headquartered in Hiroshima.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 18:40 - Fed Engages In Shocking Seasonal Adjustments To Convert $28BN Bank Deposit Outflow Into $102BN Inflow
Fed Engages In Shocking Seasonal Adjustments To Convert $28BN Bank Deposit Outflow Into $102BN Inflow
Tl; dr: The Fed reportts that domestic (large and small) commercial banks saw NSA flows of -$28.4 billion, while SA flows were +$102.5 billion!
As if it needs to be said, non-seasonally-adjusted deposit flows are ‘actual flows’? And why do we care about ‘seasonally-adjusted’ deposits – they aren’t real assets?
For some more context, the deposit delta (between real outflows and SA outflows) since March 1 is now $150BN+
It seems The Fed is using the ‘fog of banking crisis war’ – knowing this data drops late on a Friday night – to pull the wool over depositors and investors eyes.
hi @NickTimiraos last week you pointed out the divergence between seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted commercial bank deposit data. Will you do so this week again? pic.twitter.com/aLSYpwv060
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 2, 2023
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Following yesterday’s ugly money-market fund (accelerating inflows) and Fed balance sheet (another jump to a record usage of the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program emergency bailout cash), expectations are that bank deposits continued to leave US commercial banks (despite last week’s unexpected rise in deposits and loans by small bank to real estate borrowers – hhmm).
Regional bank shares have risen for three straight weeks – but the context for where they are is key…
And if you wondered what’s driving that – take a look at bank exec’s insider buying (hint).
And if everything’s so awesome, why are banks still using The Fed’s emergency bank bailout facilities so much?
Source: Bloomberg
And so, according to the latest H8 report from The Fed, on a seasonally-adjusted basis, total US Commercial Bank deposits (including large time deposits) increased by $86.5 billion during the week ended 5/24…
Source: Bloomberg
That is the biggest (seasonally adjusted) weekly inflow since June 2021 (and $116 billion of deposit inflows in 2 weeks).
One can’t help but wonder if this giant surge is ‘seasonal-only’ given the timing of the prior jump.
And this inflow occurred as money-market fund inflows hit a new record high (note that deposit data is one-week lagged to MM flows). So where is all this ‘cash’ coming from..
Source: Bloomberg
Under the hood, Large Banks saw a massive $85.6 billion seasonally-adjusted inflow (biggest weekly inflow since May 2020) as Foreign Banks saw outflows (-$159 billion) which were offset by $16.9 billion in inflows to Small Banks…
Source: Bloomberg
So – money flowed into bank deposits, money-market funds, and tech stocks…
Sure!
On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, all bank cohorts saw OUTFLOWS
Source: Bloomberg
Here’s the direct comparison of real NSA flows and ‘fake’ SA flows…
On the other side of the ledger, despite MASSIVE INFLOWS, large banks pulled back on credit extension (loans -$4.405 billion) while Small bank loans rose 7.9 billion…
Source: Bloomberg
As we noted last week, despite this ‘fake’ inflow data, this is far from over as former Dallas Fed head Robert Kaplan dropped some uncomfortable truth bombs on the US banking system:
Phase one was an asset/liability mismatch at several banks
Phase two began with the stock market deciding to do its own supervisory scrubbing
We are now heading into the third phase.
Bank leadership at small and midsize banks are considering how to shrink their loan books in order to address the mark-to-market loss of capital, as well as to guard against potential deposit instability in the future.
Bank leadership is very aware that the economy is slowing, and that we are likely about to enter a challenging credit environment.
While asset/liability mismatches are relatively easy to spot, assessing the quality of loan portfolios is much more complicated.
CEOs of many small and midsize banks are in a tough position.
They can’t easily raise equity because their stock prices are down.
As a result, they are turning to shrinking their loan books, finding places to pull back on existing loans and future loan commitments.
This is making it much harder for small and midsize businesses to get and keep their bank loans.
It is a quiet phase that won’t make headlines but is nevertheless relentlessly going on beneath the surface.
Free to speak his mind, Kaplan concludes rather ominously, “the recent banking turmoil has highlighted the disparity between too-big-to-fail banks and smaller and midsize banks. I worry that increasing the Fed funds rate from here may create further strains on the deposit base for those smaller banks. I’m concerned that, as the Fed raises rates, it is tightening the vice on small and midsize banks and the small and midsize businesses that rely on those banks for funding.”
So, believe what you want America – did deposits soar last week or did they continue their trend of outflows (as evidenced by money-market fund inflows)?
Source: Bloomberg
And finally, the piece de resistance of Fed fuckery – for domestic (large and small) commercial banks, NSA (actual) flows were -$28.4 billion, while SA (magic) flows were +$102.5 billion!
Are non-seasonally-adjusted deposit flows ‘actual flows’? And why do we care about ‘seasonally-adjusted’ deposits – they aren’t real assets?
For some more context, the deposit delta (between real outflows and SA outflows) since March 1 is now $150BN+
It seems The Fed is using the ‘fog of banking crisis war’ – knowing this data drops late on a Friday night – to pull the wool over depositors and investors eyes.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 18:40 - Judge Considers Tossing Clinton Foundation Whistleblower Case After Durham Report Revelations
Judge Considers Tossing Clinton Foundation Whistleblower Case After Durham Report Revelations
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A federal judge is weighing whether to throw out a case against the IRS that alleges the Clinton Foundation violated federal law and should have its tax-exempt status revoked.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a panel at the Vital Voices Global Festival in Washington on May 5, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times) U.S. Tax Court Judge David Gustafson on May 30 asked the government and experts who brought a whistleblower claim to the IRS based on a years-long investigation of the foundation to submit additional filings in light of recent developments in other cases.
Rulings in those cases “may affect the parties’ positions as to the pending motions,” Gustafson wrote in a brief order (pdf), which was first reported by Just the News. “We will order further filings so that the parties may address those recent opinions,” he added.
Those opinions include an appeals court ruling (pdf) in favor of the government in a case brought by a whistleblower who offered what he said was evidence a company was not paying enough taxes.
John Moynihan, a former federal agent, and Lawrence Doyle, a tax expert, brought evidence to the IRS in 2017 that they say shows the Clinton Foundation violated U.S. law by acting as a foreign agent without registering as one.
The IRS denied the claims after interviewing one of the people cited and determining the evidence “was not credible” due to the person’s denials. An appeal of the determination was turned down, prompting Moynihan and Doyle to take the matter to U.S. Tax Court.
The government tried convincing Gustafson to toss the case, but in a 2020 ruling, he rejected the bid, finding that the IRS’s whistleblower’s office had “abused its discretion” by making unsupported statements in its determination.
A new motion to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction was lodged in 2022 and is currently under consideration. The motion and an opposition filing from Moynihan and Doyle were not available on the court docket.
In addition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit opinion in Villa-Arce v. Commissioner, Gustafson referenced two other rulings:
- A ruling (pdf) by the same court found that the tax court had jurisdiction to consider a whistleblower claim but that the court correctly threw out a case brought by a whistleblower.
- A ruling (pdf) by the tax court found that the IRS appeared to correctly deny a whistleblower award to a man who was interviewed during an investigation.
Moynihan and Doyle did not return requests for comment. The IRS and the U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to inquiries.
Earlier Testimony
Appearing before Congress in 2018, Moynihan and Doyle said they uncovered evidence indicating the Clinton Foundation violated the law.
“The foundation began acting as an agent of foreign governments throughout its life and continues to do so. As such, they should have registered under FARA,” or the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Doyle said.
The foundation also intentionally misused funds from donors, Moynihan said.
“The investigation clearly demonstrates the foundation was not a charitable organization, per se, but, point of fact, was a closely held family partnership. As such, it was governed in a fashion in which it sought in large measure to advance the personal interests of its principals,” he said.
The violations mean the foundation should no longer be entitled to its tax-exempt privileges, the experts said.
The Clinton Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson told The Hill when the claim was first sent to the IRS that the foundation has been “subjected to outrageous, politically motivated allegations that have been proven false time and time again.”
WikiLeaks
Files obtained and published by WikiLeaks revealed that the foundation was audited multiple times.
One of the auditor reports said the foundation was “missing several policies/procedures that are required by law” and that “there is no established mechanism for catching problems and mistakes.”
Another (pdf) said that some employees were unaware of policies on conflicts of interest and outside employment and recommended implementing “a clear gift acceptance policy and procedures to ensure that all donors are properly vetted.”
Former President Bill Clinton’s top aide, Douglas Band, wrote in one email that the ex-president received income and “many expensive gifts” from some of the foundation’s donors. Some of the foundation’s employees told auditors that donors “may have an expectation of quid pro quo benefits in return for [a] gift.”
Recent Developments
The new order came after special counsel John Durham’s report revealed that FBI agents launched three probes ahead of the 2016 election into the Clinton Foundation, acting on allegations the foundation had carried out criminal activities.
Top officials tried to shut down the probes but relented after receiving pushback. They still ordered agents to get approval before taking any overt investigative steps.
The investigations were ultimately consolidated in Arkansas and ended after U.S. prosecutors there declined to file charges, according to another set of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The Department of Justice declined to comment on the revelations.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 18:20 - Failing Forward: Recalled San Francisco DA Lands At Berkeley Law, While Lori Lightfoot Brings 'Big D*ck' To Harvard
Failing Forward: Recalled San Francisco DA Lands At Berkeley Law, While Lori Lightfoot Brings ‘Big D*ck’ To Harvard
After failing so hard as San Francisco district attorney that a Democrat-led coalition of residents led a recall effort, Chesa Boudin, the soft-on-crime former ‘Soros DA’ has landed on his feet at UC Berkeley, where he’ll lead the college’s new Criminal Law & Justice Center.
“A lifetime of visiting my biological parents in prison and my work as a public defender and district attorney have made clear that our system fails to keep communities safe and fails to treat them equitably,” Boudin – the child of two cop-killing communists, said regarding the announcement.
Boudin’s adopted father, Bill Ayers, is an Obama family friend and an admitted terrorist who only regretted ‘not planting enough bombs.‘ Ayers’ Weather Underground group took credit for 25 bombings – including at the US Capitol, the Pentagon, the US State Department, the CA Attorney General’s office and a NYC police station, in an attempt to overthrow the US government.
Boudin has also been accused of botching a response to hate crimes against Asians.
And in today’s second case of failing forward – disgraced Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D), who once bragged about having the “biggest dick” in the city, has landed a teaching gig at Harvard less than a month after leaving office.
According to Fox News, “Beginning this fall, Lightfoot will teach a course at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health tentatively titled “Health Policy and Leadership,” according to an announcement from the school.”
The Menschel program, according to the school, “offers a rare opportunity for those who have recently served in top-level positions in government, multilateral institutions, nonprofit organizations and journalism to spend time at the school mentoring and teaching students who aspire to similar roles. Lightfoot will hold regular office hours to meet with students, faculty and staff during her time on campus.” -Fox News
“As mayor, she showed strong leadership in advocating for health, equity, and dignity for every resident of Chicago, from her declaration of structural racism as a public health crisis to her innovative initiative to bring mental health services to libraries and shelters. And of course, she led the city through the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Michelle A. Williams, dean of faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, according to CBS News.
I’ve always loved teaching, and the opportunity to get back to it is something I am excited about. Looking forward to sharing the experiences and perceptions I learned governing through one of the most challenging times in American history with the @HarvardChanSPH community! https://t.co/yepEhBn2IO
— Lori Lightfoot (@LoriLightfoot) June 1, 2023
This is what parents are getting for $55,000 per year?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/02/2023 – 18:00
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