Jun 06

Today’s News 6th June 2024

  • Mass Immigration & Decline In Security Intrinsically-Linked, Say Majority Of French
    Mass Immigration & Decline In Security Intrinsically-Linked, Say Majority Of French

    Authored by Thomas Brooke via ReMix News,

    The vast majority of French citizens, including many on the left, believe the growing feeling of insecurity across the country and mass immigration are intrinsically linked, new polling has revealed.

    According to a poll conducted by CSA for CNews, Europe 1, and JDD, 68 percent of respondents see a correlation between immigration and the rise in delinquency in France.

    The link is widely recognized among right-wing voters, with 94 percent of Republican supporters and 93 percent of those aligned with the National Rally acknowledging such a link. However, a significant minority of those who support pro-immigration left-wing parties also share this concern.

    A total of 43 percent of Socialist Party supporters, 38 percent of La France Insoumise (LFI) voters, and 34 percent of Green supporters share the view that high immigration is destabilizing France’s security.

    The link is also widely accepted by voters of French President Emmanuel Macron’s governing Renaissance party, with 68 percent of his supporters agreeing there is a link.

    Women are more likely than men to agree that immigration is affecting national security, with 70 percent of females agreeing with the statement compared to 67 percent of males.

    Similarly, older people view mass immigration less favorably, with 76 percent of those aged 50 and over acknowledging its negative effect on the country, although a majority in every age bracket concurs with that view.

    Immigration is a leading issue in France ahead of the European elections taking place later this week and a topic right-wing politicians like Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella, and Éric Zemmour are campaigning hard on.

    Le Pen and Bardella’s National Rally is expected to dominate the elections and emerge as France’s largest party in the European Parliament, suggesting its hardline approach to mass immigration is resonating with the electorate.

    The party’s successes have led to a tactical shift from previous establishment parties, including the center-right Republicans. When asked recently about the links between mass immigration and national insecurity, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy replied, “Who can seriously say that there aren’t any? This does not naturally mean that a foreigner is a delinquent. But of course, the link is obvious.”

    “The number of foreigners in our prisons and the part they take in delinquency in general are clear. To deny it is nothing more than a new denial of reality,” he added.

    Last August, President Macron said the country needed to “reduce immigration significantly, starting with illegal immigration,” warning the current arrival rate was “not sustainable.”

    This followed remarks by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin a year prior revealing that half of criminal acts in the largest French cities are committed by foreign nationals.

    Polling conducted in December last year showed French citizens remained disillusioned with the government’s open-door immigration policy, with 80 percent of respondents supporting a ban on immigration and nearly two-thirds backing a referendum on the issue.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 02:00

  • 21 Attorneys General Demand Revisions To Law School Admissions Standards
    21 Attorneys General Demand Revisions To Law School Admissions Standards

    Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. (Courtesy of Jonathan Skrmetti)

    Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and attorneys general from 20 other states have called for significant revisions to the American Bar Association’s (ABA)  Standards and Rules of Procedure for the Approval of Law Schools.

    The attorneys general claim in a letter that ABA standards direct law school administrators to violate both the Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibit employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

    Their demand comes in response to the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), which ended the use of so-called affirmative action in higher education.

    “The rule of law cannot long survive if the organization that accredits legal education requires every American law school to ignore the Constitution and civil rights law,” Mr. Skrmetti said in a press release announcing the action.

    “The American Bar Association has long pursued the high calling of promoting respect for the law and the integrity of the legal profession, and we call on the organization to recommit to those ideals and ensure that its standards for law schools comport with federal law.

    “If the standards continue to insist on treating students and faculty differently based on the color of their skin, they will burden every law school in America with punitive civil rights litigation.”

    The coalition of attorneys general emphasized that the ABA’s current Standard 206 on Diversity and Inclusion is incompatible with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

    They argue that Standard 206, as it stands, not only encourages but mandates law schools to engage in race-based admissions and hiring practices, which the Court has deemed unconstitutional.

    Supreme Court’s Landmark Decision

    The Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions was a watershed moment, declaring that the use of race in the admissions processes of Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

    The Court stated unequivocally that racial classifications, regardless of their intent, must meet the “daunting” strict-scrutiny standard, which race-based affirmative action programs in higher education cannot satisfy.

    The ruling underscored that educational institutions cannot use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities, stressing that any attempt to indirectly achieve race-focused outcomes through ostensibly neutral policies would still warrant strict scrutiny.

    This decision necessitates that all educational policies be genuinely race-neutral, aligning with the principle that eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all forms of it.

    Criticism of ABA Standard 206

    Standard 206 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools requires law schools to demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing opportunities for underrepresented groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, and to maintain a student body and faculty diverse in gender, race, and ethnicity.

    The attorneys general argue that this standard compels law schools to consider race in both admissions and employment, directly contradicting the Supreme Court’s directive.

    The letter highlights the problematic nature of Standard 206’s mandate for “concrete action” toward achieving racial diversity, which the attorneys general contend cannot be fulfilled without engaging in unconstitutional race-based practices.

    They say that neither the standard nor its interpretations provide guidance on how to achieve diversity goals without unlawfully using race as a factor, thereby setting law schools up for potential legal challenges.

    Proposed Revisions Insufficient

    The attorneys general also critique the ABA’s proposed revisions to Standard 206, which aim to broaden the diversity criteria to include various identity characteristics.

    They argue that bundling race with other characteristics does not address the fundamental constitutional issues raised by the Supreme Court’s decision.

    The proposed revisions, they assert, still implicitly require law schools to consider race, thus failing to bring the standard into compliance with federal law.

    The letter calls for clarity and alignment with the Constitution, urging the ABA to ensure that complying with binding nondiscrimination laws does not jeopardize a law school’s accreditation.

    The attorneys general stress that the current and revised standards force law schools into a precarious position, balancing between adhering to federal law and meeting the ABA’s accreditation requirements, which could lead to significant legal and operational repercussions.

    The coalition of attorneys general, led by Mr. Skrmetti, argues for the ABA to revise its diversity standards in a manner that fully complies with the Supreme Court’s ruling and federal law.

    They warn that without such revisions, law schools may face punitive civil-rights litigation and risk perpetuating a culture of legal and ethical ambiguity that could undermine the profession and the nation.

    States joining Tennessee in the letter to the ABA were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

    The Epoch Times reached out for comment from the ABA.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 23:20

  • ECB Preview And Scenario Analysis: The First Rate Cut Since 2019
    ECB Preview And Scenario Analysis: The First Rate Cut Since 2019

    Hot on the heels of the first G7 central bank rate cut this cycle, when the BOC cut rates by 25bps this morning, tomorrow the ECB is widely expected to follow suit and lower the deposit rate from 4.00% to 3.75% for the first time since September 2019, with markets assigning a 94% chance to this outcome. With a rate cut effectively guaranteed (absent some shock) focus will be on hints over future rate cuts, with markets not fully pricing in another move until December. Changes to staff projections are likely to be minimal. In their preview, Bank of America strategists agree that a 25bps rate cut is coming, and expect “a lot more to come by mid-2025.” That said, guidance for a meeting-by-meeting approach and data dependence probably won’t change. Small forecast revisions higher to 2024/25 are likely, but 2% core inflation in 2026 should stay, providing a soft signal to a September cut, data permitting.

    In rates markets, a cut by the European Central Bank on Thursday is already fully baked into the curve, with forward pricing nearly 25bp. But as ING Economics notes, it’s the outlook beyond June that is still open, despite communication from officials having started to move out the curve. A back-to-back cut in July is deemed unlikely, with markets attaching only a roughly 10% chance to that scenario. A second cut is almost fully priced by October, but it’s a third cut this year that is hanging in the balance. The pricing further out the curve is also influenced by drivers from abroad: weaker US data as well as sliding oil prices have also helped push rates lower in the eurozone. While EUR markets have been leaning towards a three-cut scenario for this year again, the domestic data on negotiated wages and the latest CPI print over the past weeks would argue for a more hawkish line at the upcoming meeting.

    Therefore, there is room for markets to reprice higher – but in the end, they will oscillate around the two or three-cuts scenario for now unless we get more evidence from the data. This will also spill out into the longer end of the curve, but here the factors from abroad should be felt even more with the US jobs data looming large. This will then determine whether we can get above 2.6% more lastingly in the 10Y Bund yield on a hawkish ECB.

    Courtesy of Newsquawk, here are some other key considerations ahead of the ECB’s first rate cut in five years:

    PRIOR MEETING: As expected, the ECB opted to stand pat on rates once again. The policy statement reaffirmed guidance that rates will be kept sufficiently restrictive for sufficiently long. Furthermore, policymakers will continue to follow a data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach and will not pre-commit to a particular rate path. That being said, and what was a new inclusion for the statement, it was noted that if the Governing Council was to gain further confidence that inflation is converging to the target in a sustained manner, it would be appropriate to reduce the current level of monetary policy restriction. In the follow-up press conference, when questioned about a potential rate cut in June, Lagarde reiterated that the ECB will have a lot more data by the time of the June meeting. In terms of the unanimity of the announcement, Lagarde stated that “a few” dissenters felt “sufficiently confident” about altering policy at the meeting, however, they ultimately rallied around the consensus. This could potentially be in-fitting with source reporting in the wake of the previous meeting which suggested some policymakers floated the idea of a second cut in July to win over a small group still pushing for an April start.

    RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS: In terms of developments since the prior meeting, inflation in May rose to 2.6% from 2.4% with the super-core measure increasing to 2.9% from 2.7% with some of the increases related to base effects. The ECB’s consumer expectations survey for April saw the 12-month inflation forecast nudge lower to 2.9% from 3.0%. For market gauges, the 5y5y forward has ticked marginally higher from 2.35% to 2.36%. Elsewhere, Q1 Eurozone wages rose to 4.69% from 4.45% with the release followed up by an ECB blog stating that “wage growth reflects multiyear adjustment and wage pressures look set to decelerate in 2024”. From a growth perspective, Q1 GDP came in at 0.3% Q/Q vs. prev. 0.0%, whilst more timely survey data showed the EZ-composite PMI moved further into expansionary territory (52.3 vs. prev. 51.7) thanks to a pick up in the manufacturing sector. The accompanying report noted “considering the PMI numbers in our GDP nowcast, the Eurozone will probably grow at a rate of 0.3% during the second quarter, putting aside the spectre of recession”. Elsewhere, the EZ unemployment rate sits at a historic low of 6.4%.

    RECENT COMMUNICATIONS: Rhetoric since the April meeting has seen President Lagarde remark that the ECB will cut rates soon, barring any major surprises, whilst she is “really confident” that they have inflation under control. Chief Economist Lane noted that keeping rates overly restrictive for too long could push inflation below target in the medium-term which would require corrective action. Furthermore, he notes that the ECB thinks inflation over the coming months will bounce around at the current level and then will see another phase of disinflation bringing them back to the target later next year. Thought-leader Schnabel of Germany remarked that some elements of inflation are proving persistent and would caution against moving too fast on rates. At the hawkish end of the spectrum, Austria’s Holzmann has tried to make the case for pausing the July meeting, whilst Netherland’s Knot has stated that projection round meetings will be the key for interest rate decisions. For the doves, Italy’s Panetta commented that the ECB must weigh risk of monetary policy becoming too tight, adding that timely and small rate cuts would counter weak demand, whilst Greece’s Stournaras is of the view that three rate cuts are more likely this year.

    RATES: Expectations are for the ECB to lower the deposit rate for the first time since September 2019. Analysts are unanimous in their view that the deposit rate will be lowered from 4.0% to 3.75% with markets assigning a roughly 94% chance of such an outcome. With a 25bps cut so widely expected, the fight on the GC between the hawks and doves will be what comes thereafter with the former likely to make the case for pausing on rates in July given potential emerging upside risks to inflation, whilst the latter is set to argue that keeping policy too tight could push inflation below target. As such, any tweaks to the policy statement, hinting at further action will be of note to the market. Accordingly, focus for the release will be on how pricing beyond June evolves with the next rate cut thereafter not fully priced until December (total of 56bps of cuts seen by year-end). However, ING cautions that given the data dependency of the Bank, this debate is unlikely to be resolved in June.

    MACRO PROJECTIONS: For the accompanying macro projections, ING notes that since the prior forecast round in March, oil prices have risen (from roughly USD 75/bbl at the time), which would be pro-inflationary. However, offsetting this, is the more hawkish market curve which sees around 113bps of cuts by the end of 2025 vs. around 150bps in March. Overall, the bank expects “a slight upward revision of growth and inflation for this year but no changes to the profile and the timing of inflation dropping below 2%”. That being said, economists at the Bank note “the risks of inflation remaining sticky and not being entirely under control are increasing”.

    March staff projections

    HICP INFLATION:

    • 2024: 2.3% (exp. 2.4%)
    • 2025: 2.0% (exp. 2.1%)
    • 2026: 1.9% (exp. 2.0%)

    HICP CORE INFLATION (EX-ENERGY & FOOD):

    • 2024: 2.6%
    • 2025: 2.1%
    • 2026: 2.0%

    GDP:

    • 2024: 0.6% (exp. 0.7%)
    • 2025: 1.5% (exp. 1.4%)
    • 2026: 1.6% (exp. 1.4%)

    Finally, courtesy of ING, here is a scenario analysis laying out how to position for the various alternatives:

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 22:52

  • "Biden Knew": Hunter, James Biden Slapped With Criminal Referrals Over "Influence Peddling Schemes"
    “Biden Knew”: Hunter, James Biden Slapped With Criminal Referrals Over “Influence Peddling Schemes”

    House Republicans have referred Hunter and James Biden to the DOJ for criminal prosecution, accusing the pair of making false statements to Congress amidst an ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

    The criminal referrals, which were formalized on Monday, culminate from seven months of investigative work by three House committees. The probe alleges an extensive influence peddling operation involving the president’s family, linking millions of dollars in international business deals to potentially corrupt figures and entities, including those connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

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    “Our investigation has revealed President Biden knew about, participated in, and benefitted from his family cashing in on the Biden name around the world,” said Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan of the House Oversight Committee, as well as Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, suggested multiple charges including perjury for Hunter Biden.

    “Despite this record of evidence, President Biden continues to lie to the American people about his involvement in these influence peddling schemes. It appears making false statements runs in the Biden family. We’ve caught President Biden’s son and brother making blatant lies to Congress in what appears to be a concerted effort to hide Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s schemes,” reads the referral.

    As Just the News reports further, the chairmen identified three instances in which they believe Hunter Biden lied to the committee.

    • “[F]alsely distanced himself from” one of his companies, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC, and its bank account that received millions for foreign entities and individuals. Despite this, that bank account transferred funds to him from those foreign sources.
    • Making false statements about holding a position at that same company. Documents released after the first son’s testimony show he signed a document identifying himself as corporate secretary of the enterprise.
    • Misrepresented a text conversation with Chinese company executive “Zhao” with whom he invoked his father’s presence in a threatening text message. Biden claimed he mistakenly messaged the wrong person, however messages released by one of the committees show he continued to speak with that same executive days afterward.

    The committee also argue presidential brother James Biden lied in his deposition by:

    • Saying he did not meet with Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski while the group pursued a deal with CEFC China Energy.

    “Lying to Congress is a serious crime with serious consequences,” said Jordan. “Hunter and James Biden did just that. They lied to coverup President Biden’s involvement in their family’s international influence peddling schemes that have generated millions of dollars. These criminal referrals are a reflection of criminal wrongdoing by the Biden family, and the Department of Justice must take steps to hold the Bidens accountable.”

    We’re sure Merrick Garland will get right on it!

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 22:30

  • Cognitive Warfare, Mental Manipulation, & Tyranny Of Digital Transformation
    Cognitive Warfare, Mental Manipulation, & Tyranny Of Digital Transformation

    Authored by Jesse Smith via Global Research,

    A centuries-old plan to control humanity on a micro-level is being enforced through the construction of a new bio-digital prison system. Relegated to mere conspiracy theory by legacy media and vehemently denied by accused conspirators, the plan continues unabated with only pockets of resistance — nowhere near enough to bring the house of cards down.

    The plan has been identified by many throughout the decades. It is both simple and complex; subtle yet overt; ancient yet contemporary; and alluring yet appalling. Under the guise of safety, convenience, and inclusion, humanity is being primed to accept complete and total surveillance as a condition of simple existence in a “brave new world.”

    That’s the plan in a nutshell. What follows are the gory details.

    The Era of Cognitive Warfare

    To accelerate the paradigm shift toward total surveillance, cognitive warfare (CW) – a significant upgrade over mere psyops of the past – has been declared on the global population. The purpose of this war is to modify human thought, belief, behavior, and identity. According to a 2021 NATO report, cognitive warfare is defined as (emphasis added throughout):

    “a combined arms approach that integrates the non-kinetic warfare capabilities of cyber, information, psychological and social engineering in order to win without physical fighting. It is a new type of warfare defined as the weaponization of public opinion by external entities. This is carried out for the purpose of influencing and/or destabilizing a nation.”

    A separate NATO report from 2022 adds that cognitive warfare is:

    “…the most advanced form of human mental manipulation, to date, permitting influence over individual or collective behavior, with the goal of obtaining a tactical or strategic advantage. …the human brain becomes the battlefield. The pursued objective is to influence not only what the targets think, but also the way they think and, ultimately, the way they act.”

    The U.S. Naval Institute has also recognized the need for a cognitive warfare strategy, stating:

    “…An individual’s cognition is now a target. Advances in cognitive psychology and information communication technology (ICT) enable actors to target individuals’ situational comprehension and will with precision. In light of these changes, cognitive warfare (CW) has emerged as a new war-fighting concept…

    Cognitive warfare operations will take on many forms and unfold along varying timelines. Some may focus on reinforcing groups’ or individuals’ existing ideals, while others may seek to disrupt cohesion or accepted beliefs. The U.S. approach to CW, however, must uphold U.S. values.”

    Adding that technologies like machine learning and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) boost the efficiency of cognitive warfare, the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP), a frequent NATO collaborator, further opined that:

    “Current and future developments in artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive sciences, neurotechnologies, and other related fields will further increase the risks of mass manipulation and lead to the possibility of the militarization of the mind as the battlefield of the future… The resulting environment is one of “permanent latent struggles” rather than a clearly delineated state of peace and war. This state has been referred to as “new generational warfare”, “unpeace” or conflict in the “noosphere”.

    To summarize what cognitive warfare entails, I offer the following definition:

    the weaponization of public opinion, manipulation and militarization of the human mind, and engineering of individual and collective behavior resulting in permanent new generation warfare, “unpeace,” and conflict in the “noosphere.”

    Wait, what on earth is the noosphere? Unfamiliar to most, the noosphere is a concept advanced largely by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a 20th century Jesuit priest who fused together elements of biblical doctrine, evolution, and mysticism. Teilhard conceived the noosphere as a realm where human minds interacted through increasingly complex social networks. He theorized that the evolving noosphere would eventually reach an “Omega Point,” where the total convergence of collective human consciousness would unify with the “Cosmic Christ.” These teachings were deemed heretical by the Catholic church and Teilhard was publicly denounced. However, his posthumous writings have influenced scores of scientists, futurists, environmentalists, globalists, occultists, new agers, and ironically many Catholics.

    One of Teilhard’s most revealing statements undergirding his philosophy is found in his book Christianity and Evolution, where he wrote: “What I am proposing to do is to narrow that gap between pantheism and Christianity by bringing out what one might call the Christian soul of Pantheism or the pantheist aspect of Christianity.” (p. 56)

    It is Teilhard’s pantheistic views that endear him to the scientific and Big Tech communities. They took up the mantle of advancing the noosphere through technologies like the Internet and social media, hoping humanity would realize Teilhard’s vision. It is this writer’s contention that the supreme goal of CW and the digital revolution is to turn Teilhard’s Omega Point from theory into reality.

    Creating a Collective Human Consciousness

    “The noosphere’s evolution involved the scale of human groups as well as the nature of the information networks that connected humans and technologies of all sorts… With each new information technology, the shared knowledge contained in the collective consciousness of the Noosphere grew, and the rate of its growth accelerated.” [source]

    NATO’s 2021 report indicated that neuroscientific warfare techniques can be used to destabilize “a political leader, a military commander, an entire staff, a population, or an Alliance…” As a result, governments and militaries from many nations are working feverishly to combat the threat mind wars pose to citizens and nations. Their alleged goals are to maintain trust in democratic values and processes while simultaneously implementing greater controls on the flow of information. Paradoxically, they are attempting to maintain (the illusion of) freedom, while authorizing new forms of digitized censorship “for the greater good.”

    What is really taking place is a game of bait and switch where citizens are told that due to the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, identity theft, deep fakes, and cyber-attacks, greater control is needed to police the digital public square. Add in the so-called threat of climate change, financial collapse, war, the energy crisis, future pandemics, and you have what the United Nations (UN) and World Economic Forum (WEF) deem a “polycrisis.” Tools such as artificial intelligence (AI), Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), biometric surveillance, and digital ID, have emerged as the “solutions” to these problems.

    Whether the evolving bio-digital surveillance paradigm is called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), Great Reset, Agenda 2030, or Humanity 2.0, what’s common is the belief that bigger and better tech can transform society “for good” and combat issues of mistrust, corruption, crime, and planetary destruction. However, realizing this utopian vision requires greater levels of transparency, control, conformity, and collective thought. To successfully manipulate the public into either full acceptance or forced submission of this paradigm, the twin brothers of tyranny – surveillance and censorship – have been invoked.

    Klaus Schwab, former Executive Chairman of the WEF, spoke about this new world where privacy is “severely restricted” in a 2013 interview, mentioning:

    Everything is transparent, whether we like it or not. This is unstoppable. If we behave acceptably, and have nothing to hide, it won’t be a problem. The only question is, who determines what is acceptable.”

    In a 2016 interview with Radio Television Suisse, Schwab elaborated further on transparency, stating, “In the new world, you have to accept total transparency. It will become part of your personality… Everything will be transparent. If you have nothing to hide you have no reason to be afraid.”

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    It’s easy to highlight statements from Schwab given his notoriety as a globalist boogeyman. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for his recent withdrawal as the WEF’s front man? Regardless, Schwab is just one of many who champion surveillance technologies to complete the transition to the new world order of total transparency. In iHuman, a documentary on AI, data scientist and Stanford Professor Michal Kosinski echoes Schwab’s convictions regarding the current state of privacy, declaring:

    Of course people should have rights to their privacy when it comes to sexual orientation or political views. But I’m also afraid that in our current technological environment this is essentially impossible. People should realize there is no going back, there’s no running away from the algorithms. The sooner we accept the inevitable and inconvenient truth that privacy is gone, the sooner we can start actually thinking about how to make sure our societies are ready for the post-privacy age.” (emphasis added)

    Once an imagined dystopia but now quickly becoming reality, omnipresent bio-digital surveillance creates an inescapable societal panopticon. The “new world” Schwab refers to is being steered by the technocratic elite running all governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, medicine, and media.

    Publicly, the surveillance society is sold as a way to bring order to a chaotic world splintered politically, racially, economically, socially, and ideologically. Privately, it is recognized as an iterative way to forge collective human consciousness as we march toward the transhumanist vision of “Singularity,” or as Teilhard would claim, the “Omega Point.”

    As this push accelerates, companies like Palantir, Amazon, and Clearview AI along with Big Brother government agencies like NSA, DHS, CIA, and the FBI continue to amass enormous amounts of data containing essentially all activity occurring in the digital space.

    Smart technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) bring the all-seeing eye of technocratic overlords into the private spaces of a growing number of residences and businesses. Backdoors in software and cyber-crime offer access to huge amounts of data believed to be private and protected, but often sold to the highest bidder. Microsoft is upping the ante on personal surveillance. With its new AI-assisted Windows Recall feature that takes screenshots of everything you do on your computer, the PC transforms into an open book recalling your entire life. Could a backdoor allow for the AI algorithm to transmit all private data back to Microsoft and its spook agency partners in real time?

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    As I’ve written previously, Internet of Bodies devices exist to monitor and transmit all personal data to the Internet. This industry is now broadening to include an Internet of Brains, where “human brains connect to the Internet to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication and enable access to online data networks.” The military-intelligence complex has been conducting experiments on the human brain for a long time. The CIA’s MK-Ultra and the White House’s Brain Initiative are just two examples revealing the government’s longing to hack the brain and create a hivemind society where thoughts and actions can be directly controlled through technology and/or mind-altering substances.

    The company behind both reports connecting bodies and brains to the Internet is the RAND Corporation. RAND’s first president, H. Rowan Gaither, declared his goal to be “a society where technocrats ruled using objective analysis.” Author Alex Abella, who wrote the definitive book on RAND, expounded on their technocratic goals, saying:

    RAND’s ultimate goal was to have technocrats running every aspect of society in pursuit of a one world government that would be administered under “the rule of reason,” a ruthless world where efficiency was king and men were little more than machines, which is why RAND studied the social sciences because they were at a loss to work out how to deal with people and how human beings did not always act in their own predictable self-interests.”

    RAND was an early pioneer of cognitive warfare having invented the Delphi Technique for the U.S. Department of Defense during the Cold War. It was originally used to forecast the impact of technology on warfare. It soon became a tool used to fool citizens into thinking their opinions were being used to shape public policy. However, policy makers had already predetermined the course of action. Officials skillfully used the Delphi Technique to steer the decision-making process, making it seem as if the citizens agreed with them.

    RAND has certainly done its part in forging collective consciousness and building the technocratic new world order. Its website openly boasts that “satellites, systems analysis, computing, the Internet – almost all the defining features of the Information Age were shaped in part at RAND.”

    AI, Biometrics and Digital ID – Tools of Freedom or Tyranny?

    “I’ve often said that digital inclusion is extremely important. I think the 21st century’s infrastructure is mobility, broader than cloud. I don’t think it should matter where you are born, where you come from or who you are. You should be part of our society, and to be part of our society, you actually need to be digitally included.”– Hans Vestberg, Chief Executive Officer of Verizon

    In the papers quoted previously on cognitive warfare, malicious manipulation of digital technology is viewed as a heinous crime that must be stopped at all costs. However, it can be argued that cognitive warfare has been perpetuated against the entire world population through the process of digitization itself.

    The Digital Revolution (aka the Information Age or Third Industrial Revolution) transitioned the world from analog and mechanical devices to the digital technology of today. This Third Industrial Revolution is now giving way to the 4IR, where the ultimate goal is to merge man with machines. This futurist archetype denigrates humanity to mere bits of data – ripe for control and manipulation by the data owners.

    Humans once widely considered God’s crowning achievement – reflecting the very image of the Creator of all things – are now being transitioned through self-directed evolution to forge a new identity by becoming one with technology. Venture into any public space and it’s likely you’ll see most people transfixed by their smartphones, oblivious to real humans nearby. But this revolution, largely mainstreamed by Steve Jobs and Apple, was just the beginning. The complete transition requires the unholy trinity of AI, biometrics, and digital ID, to serve as a temporary global brain until humanity reaches the imagined transcendence where godhood itself is achieved.

    AI is simultaneously being heralded as the greatest human achievement ever and excoriated as the greatest threat to human survival. Filmmaker Tonje Hessen Schei unveiled both perspectives in her documentary iHuman. Two of the most eye-opening statements occur within the film’s first ten minutes.

    We are made of data. Every one of us is made of data – in terms of how we behave, how we talk, how we love, what we do every day. So, computer scientists are developing deep learning algorithms that can learn to identify, classify, and predict patterns within massive amounts of data. We are facing a form of precision surveillance, you could call it algorithmic surveillance, and it means that you cannot go unrecognized. You are always under the watch of algorithms.” – Eleonore Pauwels, United Nations University

    Almost all the AI development on the planet today is done by a handful of big technology companies or by a few large governments. If we look at what AI is mostly being develop for, I would say it’s killing, spying, and brainwashing… We have military AI, we have a whole surveillance apparatus being built using AI by major governments, and we have an advertising industry which is oriented toward recognizing what ads to try to sell to someone.”

    – Ben Goertzel, Chief Computer Scientist, Hanson Robotics

    AI has come a long way since the film’s release in 2020, and Big Tech leaders and investors such as Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Peter Diamandis offer a more positive outlook. Some of the good AI is being used for includes detecting deadly weapons, diagnosing life-threatening health problems, protecting biodiversity, and improving access to nutrients and water. Another “good” outcome according to Musk is that “probably none of us will have a job” and instead will have to rely on “universal high income,” a fantasy unlikely to come true. To top it off, he predicts humans will be relegated to “giving AI meaning” while man’s meaning fades away.

    When asked how humans will navigate our identity as AI continues to expand, Ray Kurzweil, futurist and Google director of engineering, said: “It’s going to be merged with us. We already carry around a lot of digital intelligence today and that’s actually how this will be manifest, merging it with ourselves.” During this same event, Peter Diamandis, XPrize Foundation and Singularity University founder, discussed meshing our minds together into a “hive consciousness,” a concept he refers to as “Meta-Intelligence.”

    Can both outlooks regarding the future of AI be true? One describes killing, brainwashing, and oppressive surveillance while the other forecasts planetary and individual problem solving and a glorious merger of man and machine. Are the positives being oversold to suspend doubts and fears regarding potential negative outcomes? Perhaps an examination of digital ID and biometrics can provide some clarity on which view is most accurate.

    One ID to Rule Them All

    Source: World Economic Forum

    The United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) play a prominent role in advancing global digital transformation. Each of the 17 SDGs functions as a roadmap to permanently restructuring a portion of society. All 193 UN member nations are in lockstep with the plan.

    SDG 16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions says that “by 2030, [all countries must] provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” delivering the justification for digital IDs. SDG 1 – No Poverty, advocates for “digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts” to “improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries.”

    According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), further justification for digital legal IDs include:

    • Identifying the displaced – tracking population movements, facilitating swift access to essential information for each human being.

    • Using digital ID for registration – enabling the capture of disaggregated data by age, gender, disability, and income, offering insights into the diverse impacts of disasters on different groups.

    • Disaster preparedness and emergency management – storing valuable personal information, including residence and medical conditions and aid in identifying vulnerable populations and critical infrastructure.

    • Energy system sustainability and resilience – leveraging digital legal ID data to track energy consumption, inspire behavior change, and enhance sustainability measures can mitigate climate-related disasters.

    • Empowering communities – revolutionizing community participation in the energy sector by providing secure access to energy resources and enabling energy trading within community microgrids.

    On the surface, these reasons for digital ID seem legitimate and even noble. The UN and its government and NGO partners always sell the need for digital ID under the guise of:

    • fostering economic and social inclusion

    • tracking immigrants, migrants, and refugees

    • protecting against identity theft and financial fraud

    • simplifying access to government services

    • lessening exposure of personal information through cyber attacks

    • enhancing convenience

    • promoting information integrity

    • mitigating the climate and energy crises

    • reducing human error in identifying individuals

    • slowing human trafficking

    It’s hard to argue these are not altruistic goals. Nonetheless, digital IDs can also be used to:

    • employ 24/7 surveillance and data collection

    • restrict travel and access to goods and services

    • destroy privacy and online anonymity

    • restrict access to social media and Internet services

    • track compliance with medical dictates

    • control access to banking, public services, public spaces, entertainment venues, medical facilities, workplaces, schools, etc.

    • create a social credit system that ranks individuals based on government compliance

    • limit access to vital needs such as water, food, and energy

    • compromise a person’s identity through security breaches

    According to Comparitech, 50 countries already have fully digitized identification schemes, overlooking the dangers highlighted. The rest of the world is also hastily moving forward to create digital public infrastructure (DPI), where digital ID takes center stage. A few recent headlines attest to this urgency.

    Despite all the glowing promises from the UN, digital IDs threaten to give governments the ability to control a person’s life down to minute details. Brett Solomon, a digital human rights advocate and executive director of Access Now, agrees, mentioning that digital ID “poses one of the gravest risks to human rights of any technology…” He further adds that “we are rushing headlong into a future where new technologies will converge to make the risk much more severe.”

    Papers No Longer Needed – Just Your Face

    “If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want — be it a product or a politician. Biometric monitoring would make Cambridge Analytica’s data hacking tactics look like something from the Stone Age.” – Yuval Noah Harari

    One of the converging technologies increasing the threat from digital IDs is biometric identification. This rapidly growing field includes identifying humans through facial recognition, iris and retina scans, fingerprints, voice recognition, gestures, bodily implants, DNA matching, and gait (how humans walk and move).

    Even more frightening is the proposed use to detect:

    Facial recognition stands out as the most pervasive and perhaps most problematic biometric tactic. It is being used by law enforcement and border control, in medical facilities, retail stores, stadiums, airports, and government buildings. It’s utilized by banks and financial services, healthcare, and governments to verify identity. It is also a fundamental building block for the creation of smart cities.

    Each use case may provide benefits such as convenience and security but also poses risks that could exacerbate tyrannical control of the population. With technologies poised to detect emotion and mental state, a Minority Report-style precrime detection regime could be installed. But what happens to those who have been misidentified? What about those penalized for minor infractions like jaywalking or criticizing the government as exemplified in China’s social credit system?

    Digital ID and biometric technologies have been introduced as a technocratic panacea offering greater inclusivity, convenience, and safety. In reality, they reduce human identity to a sequence of cloud-stored data while enabling total surveillance of travel, economic activity, and health status with the potential to obliterate privacy and anonymity.

    I’m sure they exist, but I’ve never met anyone desiring a digital ID, especially after the autocratic fiasco of vaccine passports during the COVID era. According to a report by Iain Davis and Whitney Webb, this resistance is not imaginary, as they indicated “the rollout of CBDCs and the prerequisite digital ID has so far been a disaster for the regime. Regardless of the culture, people in India, China and elsewhere have shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for embracing their planned digital future. In fact, they are actively resisting in many instances.”

    Australia is one country that faced staunch opposition to its digital ID plans. Though its digital ID system legislation was recently passed by Parliament, it did not go without resistance. In fact, concessions were made to those expressing concerns about privacy, biometric testing, and mandatory usage within the legislation. A recent Sky News video describes the extent of the resistance, echoing many of the concerns we have already presented.

    The cognitive warfare-op has been deliberately engineered to make ­people think there is a bottom-up demand for digital surveillance tools. Conversely, the demand is coming solely from the top through the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Bank, G20, World Trade Organization, Rockefeller Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Central Banks, Council on Foreign Relations, Better Identity Coalition, Apple, Google, Visa and Mastercard, ID2020, Digital Impact Alliance, Sovrin Foundation, Thales, Idemia, governments worldwide, and a host of private companies too numerous to mention.

    Digital ID can conceivably allow surveillance of everything one does and says online. With the overemphasis on mis- and disinformation, digital IDs can strengthen Big Tech and government’s ability to control speech. By censoring, deplatforming, and restricting access, ideas and speech deemed “hateful” or contrary to accepted narratives can be suppressed, erased, or prevented from ever appearing.

    One of the ways to dismiss concerns is by reassuring citizens that digital IDs will not become mandatory and that other forms of ID will still be accepted. However, these assurances seem unlikely to last given the billions of dollars being spent on digital ID efforts from governments and corporations worldwide. The switcheroo will probably occur sooner or later.

    A Freer, Decentralized or More Tightly Controlled World?

    “Government is the biggest threat to digital data anywhere around the world… What is national security? All a government needs to do to violate a person’s right to privacy is write a letter and cite national security.” – Solomon Okedara, Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative

    We have been constantly told that the digital genie unleashed can’t be put back in the bottle. Scientists, tech wizards, and bureaucrats are seizing opportunities to craft the future and stake their claim to the billions of dollars up for grabs in research, development, and deployment.

    There’s no doubt that some good may come from their efforts. As history has shown, whether technology is used for good or evil depends on the intent of those who possess and control it. The tools of digital transformation may benefit society, alleviating some of the frustrating, time-wasting processes we regularly engage in. But the potential for social, financial, and even mental control must not be disregarded. Freedom, liberty, and justice depend on eternal vigilance.

    Is it mere coincidence that bio-digital surveillance tech such as AI, digital ID, biometrics, CBDC, IoT, Smart Meters, and 5G all working together can achieve the societal vision described in The Technocracy Study Course of 1945? Is it also by chance that many of the UN SDGs mirror many elements outlined in this publication?

    Technocracy expert Patrick Wood doesn’t believe so, noting that:

    …technocrats demand that every single person in society be forced to participate in their system. Outliers were not to be allowed then, nor are they to be allowed today. Want proof? Look for the motto “Ensuring that no one is left behind” throughout the United Nations’ literature on sustainable development. Another word for “ensure” is “guarantee.” Globalists’ guarantees take the form of “mandates.” – Patrick Wood, The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism (p. 68), Kindle Edition

    Going further, Wood adds that:

    According to The Technocracy Study Course, the anticipated and promised “end products” would be:

    1. A high physical standard of living

    2. A high standard of public health

    3. A minimum of unnecessary labor

    4. A minimum of wastage of non-replaceable resources

    5. An educational system to train the entire younger generation indiscriminately as regards all considerations other than inherent ability – a Continental system of human conditioning. (Ed. Note: human conditioning is not education but rather propaganda-style indoctrination.)

    Not surprisingly, these outcomes overlap perfectly with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted at the 2030 Agenda conference in September 2015:

    • Goal #1 – No poverty

    • Goal #3 – Good health and well-being (the banner on Goal #3 states: “Vaccinate your family to protect them and improve public health”)

    • Goal #8 – Decent work and economic growth

    • Goal #12 – Responsible Consumption and Production

    • Goal #4 – Quality education

    Wood also exposes the supreme value of data to technocratic systems, disclosing that:

    To technocrats, there is no such thing as too much surveillance. When they attain one level of monitoring, their next step is to increase the level of magnification and collect even more data. Their addiction to data is unquenchable and unstoppable!” (p. 126)

    The bio-digital surveillance system of today certainly fits everything Wood highlights. It is akin to a modern-day techno Tower of Babel.

    Whether or not it’s desired, mankind is being pushed toward life in a digital world bereft of privacy, individuality, and agency. The apostles of AI, transhumanism, and bio-digital surveillance are coercing the populace into their collective consciousness paradigm. Using cognitive warfare techniques to implant their vision of transcendence – the Omega Point where man and machine join to become a new godlike creature – we have all been enlisted to join them on their journey. If the path to this imagined utopia begins with warfare, surveillance, and tyranny, it’s fair to question whether the feigned concept should even be pursued. If history is a good indicator, it is likely to end in massive failure and widespread human suffering.

    All the World’s a Stage – for Warfare

    At an event hosted by the Modern War Institute at West Point in 2018, neuroscientist Dr. James Giordano told cadets that:

    … the brain is and will be the 21st century battle scape in many ways, end of story… You will encounter some form of neurocognitive science that has been weaponized not only in your military career but in your personal and professional lives… The more I know about what makes you tick, the more my interactions can be geared with you to make you tick the way I want you to.”

    As early as 1928, propaganda pioneer Edward Bernays understood how mind control could keep the public in line, proclaiming:

    The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

    Bernays may not have envisioned this form of manipulation and control could be miniaturized and replicated for all in a handheld device. There are ghosts in the machines we stare at while we work, inform, and entertain ourselves. These ghosts are directing a covert war against us, deliberately spreading mis-and disinformation to confound, persuade, and control our thoughts and actions. The U.S. Army has made this plain. We would do well to at least understand the nature of the offensive directed against us.

    As the cognitive war rages against each of us, compelling us to accept this paradigm or get left behind, tough decisions must be made, and tough questions must be asked.

    Will we buy into the scheme that equates humanity with mere machinery? Or will we realize that we’ve been awesomely and wonderfully made by a divine Creator?

    Will we participate in our own denigration, meekly complying with the selling of our data, invasion of our privacy, robbing of our wealth, and destruction of our freedom? Or will we resist the militarization of our minds by defying the technocratic tyrants?

    Will we say no to absolute transparency? Or will we keep our heads in the sand as privacy ebbs away into the ocean of bio-digital surveillance?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 22:05

  • Wall Street Admits The Biggest Economic Shocker: All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens
    Wall Street Admits The Biggest Economic Shocker: All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens

    For much of the past year we had been pounding the table on two very simple facts:  not only has the US labor market been appallingly weak, with most of the jobs “gained” in 2023 and meant to signal how strong the Biden “recovery” has been, about to be revised away (as first the Philly Fed and now Bloomberg both admit), but more shockingly, all the job growth in the past few years has gone to illegal aliens.

    We first pointed this out more than a year ago, and since then we have routinely repeated – again, again, and again – yet even though we made it abundantly clear what was happening…

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    … going so far as to point out the specific immigration loophole illegals were using to work in the US for up to 5 years…

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    … and even fact-checking the senile, ballot-harvesting White House occupant on multiple occasions…

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    … we were shocked that the topic of most if not all US jobs going to illegals was still not “the biggest political talking point” of all.

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    That’s about to change, however, because with just under 5 months left until the election, and with immigration by far the hottest political topic out there, others are finally starting to connect the dots we laid out more than a year ago.

    The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” (and available to pro subscribers in the usualk place), writes that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.

    Below we excerpt from the Englander note because we hope that more economists, strategists and politicians will read it and grasp what we have been saying for over a year.

    Echoing what we have said for months, Englander writes that immigration, particularly illegal immigration, “is a political flashpoint that has also become an important factor in assessing economic performance. Detailed data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suggest that half of non-farm payroll (NFP) growth to date for FY24 (started 1 October 2023) has been from undocumented immigrants who have received an Employment Authorization Document (EAD)” (he defines undocumented immigrants as those who entered the US through non-traditional immigration pathways, such as asylum seekers, parolees, and refugees).

    The ability to track EAD issuance to undocumented workers is an advantage in estimating how much they have contributed to employment growth. NFP counts workers with an EAD just like any other. Using that data, it is easy to estimate that undocumented workers have added 109k jobs per month to NFP out of the average 231k increase so far in FY24.

    Which is staggering since last night we showed that about 100K monthly jobs are purely statistical distortions, and the real pace of job growth in the past year has been around 130K.

    So if 100K jobs per month are fabricated birth/death artifacts (i.e., not real jobs but a statistically goalseeked fudge factor), and another 109K jobs per month are illegal aliens, that leaves just about 11K jobs for everyone else, i.e., law abiding Americans.

    It also means that the labor market in the US has – for the past year – been an absolute catastrophe and harbinger of economic disaster (and is why last night we pointed out “The “Unexpected” Reason Why The Fed Will Rush To Cut Rates As Soon As Possible“).

    But wait, as Englander himself admits, the 109K estimate of illegal aliens “may be an underestimate since undocumented immigrants often have limited access to benefits, so they may be heavily motivated to find employment. The GDP impact might be lower if these workers are less educated and face language barriers in the work force.”

    Here, Englander – who did not do the Birth/Death analysis – writes that if one excludes these illegal immigrant workers, “NFP may be running at c.125k per month” and adds that “such a pace is not recession but is hardly boom time and represents a moderate underlying pace of labor demand. It should make the 231k FY24 pace of headline NFP less worrisome to the FOMC. FOMC participants might be less hawkish if the impact of undocumented immigrants on NFP was well estimated and understood.”

    Of course, if the Std Chartered analyst were to factor for the true collapse in Birth-Death adjustments discussed yesterday by Bloomberg…

    … the real number would be, well, zero!

    While the political reason behind the propaganda misrepresentation of the US jobs market is simple: after all, in an election year it is imperative that the Biden economy be portrayed as glowingly as possible, even if it means lying about everything, the cascading consequences from this fabrication are staggering. As Englander concedes, “this added labor supply also may have shifted trend employment and GDP growth, making it hard to gauge whether a strong NFP or even GDP number reflects supply or demand. If supply is driving upside surprises, the takeaway is more optimism that inflation will slow. If demand, the opposite. Soft economic data should be seen through the lens of added labor supply, while strong data releases are ambiguous.”

    Taking a closer look, such increased labor supply – from illegals – should put downward pressure on wage growth relative to a baseline with less immigration (documented or not). In measures such as average hourly earnings, the disinflationary impact would be two-fold:

    1. lower wages overall from an increase of labour supply relative to labour demand and
    2. a composition effect because the undocumented immigrants often work in low wage industries even with EADs.

    However, this is likely to be a gradual process, so the low wage impact may not be immediately visible. In addition, insofar as these workers’ wages reflect relatively low productivity, the composition effect on wages will be offset by a composition effect on productivity – unit labour cost growth may be unchanged.

    These observations notwithstanding, one can assume that the contribution of undocumented immigrants to employment is unlikely to change any time soon. Indeed, over the last 12 months an average of 280k undocumented immigrants per month have been encountered nationally, most whom can or will be eligible to work legally in coming months. The same methodology suggests that these workers contributed about one-third of FY23 employment growth.

    It gets worse.

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that in fiscal 2023 a further 860k individuals crossed the border without contact with US immigration authorities. While these people are not eligible for EADs they may still work off the books or with fake or borrowed documents. As such, their output and spending will show up in GDP, although it is unlikely that much if any of their “labor input” is captured. These, along with others (tourists who overstay visas, students whose visas have expired, etc.) are technically undocumented as well. But since few are eligible for EADs, it is unlikely that they are captured in any BLS survey.

    In any event, Englander estimates that over 800k undocumented immigrants found jobs in FY23, and assumes that 64.2% of EAD recipients (the average for the foreign-born population) are working. However, the employment rate may well be higher since these are likely to be “very motivated” workers, since they are not generally eligible for unemployment insurance and other benefits, so work is a necessity for many.

    Ssing this calculation, and since Nonfarm Payrolls grew 3.1 million in FY23, the 800k would represent more than 25% of NFP growth.

    But what about those record numbers of multiple job-holders we have also discussed.

    Ah yes, to address that Englander next calculates an augmented version of NFP that includes agricultural workers, self- and family-employed workers from the household survey (CPS), and subtracts multiple-job holders. By this measure employment grew 2.7 million (this is largely due to a rise in multiple-job holders, which are subtracted to avoid double counting). So far in FY24, on average over 170k undocumented immigrants have received EAD approvals every month and c.109k have found work based on employment rates. And since NFP has averaged 230k per month, these workers likely accounted for around half of job growth. Again, this number excludes the roughly 100k per month addition coming from birth/death calculation distortions which will soon be revised away as Bloomberg’s chief economist Anna Wong calculated, before concluding that “by the end of the year the printed level of nonfarm-payrolls for 2024 likely will overstate true employment by at least one million.”

    Again, this means that when stripping away the 100K in statistical “jobs” from the 230K monthly payroll number, and then removing the 109K in illegal alien workers, the number of jobs added by ordinary, legal, native-born, Americans in the past year has been – more or less – zero.

    We, for one, can’t wait for Joe Biden to explain how this was remotely possible during his upcoming debate with Trump in three weeks time.

    Much more in the full must-read note – especially to those who will be prepping Donald Trump for his upcoming debate – from Englander available to pro subscribers in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 21:40

  • Renters And Owners Live In Separate Economies
    Renters And Owners Live In Separate Economies

    Commentary by Peter St Onge via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Rashevskyi Viacheslav/Shutterstock)

    It turns out renters and homeowners are living in two entirely different economies, at least according to a new study by the Federal Reserve—which, ironically enough, made it happen.

    In short, renters are in dire straits financially, while homeowners are “continuing to reap the rewards” of cheap pandemic money that left renters with nothing but inflation.

    This is “complicating” the Fed’s crystal ball as homeowners continue to splurge on everything from travel to eating out, “propping up prices with their discretionary spending power.”

    Of course, the Fed’s money printers are what are propping up prices. But the robust homeowner spending means they’re not seeing the distress.

    The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Inflation

    I mentioned in a recent article how the Fed money printer works by injecting new money into asset markets, which leaves the rich richer and the poor coping with inflation.

    That process goes on turbo when they crank up the money printers, which they did during the pandemic to the tune of $7 trillion fresh dollars—one in three.

    Hence the media’s favorite economic theme these days: why Americans can’t see the glory of Bidenomics. After all, if you’re a journalist at The New York Times, or an economics professor at Harvard, everybody at your dinner parties owns a home. They own stocks. They’re doing great, regaling one another with explanations of their investing acumen.

    Alas, the 90 percent aren’t at those dinner parties to regale. They can only speak in ballot boxes.

    Heaven at the Top, Hell at the Bottom

    In raw numbers, the Fed report finds that nearly one in five renters fell behind on their rent in the past year, while rents have soared by 20 percent since the pandemic—coming to nearly $400 for the average renter.

    Renters are more likely to not be able to pay the electric, water, or gas bill in the past month, and they report much higher rates of financial anxiety.

    This all might rankle when CNN lectures them about how amazing the economy is.

    It’s a whole other world for homeowners, who overwhelmingly refinanced during the pandemic at average rates around 3 percent, taking hundreds of thousands out of their Fed-pumped homes.

    They plowed a good chunk of that money into stocks, which also soared thanks to the Fed’s near-zero interest rates—the so-called everything bubble. Courtesy of the Fed.

    That means homeowners actually saved money compared with pre-pandemic. They had a larger mortgage, sure, but at 3 percent, the Fed actually lowered their monthly nut.

    When the smoke cleared, the money-printing orgy was a bonanza for the wealthy. And it was a cruel joke on everybody else, above all on the young stuck watching that ship sail further and further away, giving up on starting a family, instead returning to Mom’s basement to complain about capitalism.

    Conclusion

    The rule of thumb in Washington is that the rhetoric is for the middle and working class—voters—yet the policies are for the wealthy. Because the wealthy donate.

    This means that government policies are bedazzled in sweet nothings about the less fortunate or, these days, the under-represented. But when the music stops, somehow the poor don’t get a thing; it is the wealthy who got the goodies.

    The solution’s easy: Get the government out of the economy. End the Fed, drain the swamp.

    Of course, they’ll fight that with everything they’ve got.

    Originally published on the author’s Substack, reposted from the Brownstone Institute
    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 21:15

  • Gunman Captured After Attack, Lengthy Shootout At US Embassy In Beirut
    Gunman Captured After Attack, Lengthy Shootout At US Embassy In Beirut

    The American Embassy in the Lebanese capital of Beirut has come under attack Wednesday, and a gunman has been shot by Lebanese security forces after the armed man fired at the embassy. At least one embassy security guard was injured.

    The badly wounded suspect was taken into custody following the shootout with soldiers, the military and embassy officials confirmed. Amid still emerging details, it appears to have been an Islamic terror attack, given the assailant had a vest with the words “Islamic State” written in Arabic.

    Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) near the US Embassy, via AP

    “The Lebanese military in a statement said that soldiers shot an assailant, who they only described as a Syrian national,” Associated Press reports. The gunman is currently in a hospital and in policy custody.

    According to more details: 

    No motive was immediately clear. However, Lebanese media have published photos that appear to show a bloodied attacker wearing a black vest with the words “Islamic State” written in Arabic and the English initials “I” and “S.”

    The attack and shootout with security was significant, given eyewitnesses said it lasted nearly half an hour, and involved the man firing an assault rifle toward the embassy from a parking lot across from the diplomatic compound’s entrance.

    An embassy spokesperson said of the wounded Lebanese security guard, “With respect to his privacy we cannot say more, but we wish him a full recovery.” The embassy also confirmed that all embassy personnel were “safe”.

    Unverified image of the attacker captured on cell phone of local eyewitness:

    According to an additional statement by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF):

    “The US Embassy in Lebanon in the Awkar area was exposed to gunfire by a person holding Syrian nationality. Army members deployed in the area responded to the sources of fire, wounding the shooter. He was arrested and transferred to a hospital for treatment. Follow-up is underway to determine the circumstances of the incident,” the army said.

    Harrowing video footage showed the moment the gunman exchange fire with Lebanese soldiers positioned above:

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    Some commentators have underscored that the US will likely use this terror incident to beef up its military presence inside Lebanon.

    Interestingly, even throughout over a decade of the war in Syria, there were no similar terror attacks and shootouts like this specifically targeting the sprawling US Embassy complex in Beirut.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:50

  • US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration's Foreign Policy
    US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration’s Foreign Policy

    Authored by Dennis Kucinich

    Scott Ritter was pulled off a NY-to-Istanbul flight on Monday by US officials and his passport confiscated in a startling new development in the government’s open drive to censor and silence critics of the Administration’s foreign policies at a time when the United States is supplying billions of dollars in arms to foment wider war in Russia, accelerate the attacks on Gazans and set the stage for war with China over Taiwan.

    A Marine veteran and true American patriot, Mr. Ritter is also a noted former Chief UN weapons inspector, author and journalist.  He was enroute to Russia to attend an international conference in St. Petersburg.  

    Mr. Ritter first came to my attention when he testified at a Capitol hearing I sponsored to inquire into the Bush Administration’s plans to attack Iraq. Ritter warned in August of 2002 that a case had not been made for attacking Iraq.  

    Scott Ritter, Getty Images

    Had Congress listened to Mr. Ritter, the US would have been spared the loss of thousands of our soldiers and the waste of trillions of tax dollars. Over one million Iraqis died as a result of the US attack on their country. America’s financial and moral debt will never be able to be repaid, but would not exist if we had simply looked at the evidence he presented.

    Mr. Ritter’s  passport was confiscated yesterday by U.S. authorities without explanation.

    There are several Constitutional issues at stake here:

    1. The taking of his passport was  an illegal seizure, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Ritter asked for, but did not receive a receipt, for the seized passport.  
    2. The seizure represents a punitive attempt to censor his views, a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of the press.
    3. His Fifth Amendment rights to due process were violated. Someone in the State Department made an administrative decision to prevent his travel and to take away his passport.  Since there was no stated reason for the seizure, there was no open court hearing, no evidence to justify the confiscation of Mr. Ritter’s passport was presented publicly.  The whole process has a Kafka-like Trial feeling, where Mr. Ritter cannot find out what he is accused of. 

    The State Department was aware of Mr. Ritter’s travel three weeks before his planned departure, giving rise to the likelihood that the interception was designed to humiliate Mr. Ritter, in addition to the blatant disregard of his Constitutional rights.

    Mr. Ritter has been critical of U.S. foreign policy, and has repeatedly stated his objections to widening war clearly and cogently in his podcasts. While the State Department has jurisdiction over travel, it has no ability to cancel the rights accorded all Americans under the U.S. Constitution, including freedom of movement.

    There needs to be an inquiry into the State Department’s actions here. Many serious questions arise, all of Constitutional import:

    Was Mr. Ritter’s passport seized based on secret evidence, and authorized under President Bush’s Executive Order 13224, which established a national emergency, (now 23 years old!) and reauthorized last year by President Biden?

    Was the passport seized under the Patriot Act? The public has a right to know the reasons why.

    Were the expanded powers given the government in the recent reauthorization of Section 702 of the Patriot Act in play here?  

    Has Scott Ritter been under federal surveillance because of the exercise of his First Amendment rights?

    Was Ritter intercepted because of his attempt to build a bridge of peace toward Russia?

    This is not only about Scott Ritter.  

    Any American, journalist or not, who challenges the state in the current climate may find themselves subject to arbitrary procedures and even politically-inspired prosecution. That is the real state of emergency.  

    Chris Hedges, a man of impeccable journalist credentials, was canceled after he and I engaged in a discussion criticizing US foreign policy, on his show The Real News. 

    Julian Assange’s arrest and imprisonment at the instance of the US government gave fair warning to every journalist of the price which may be paid for exposing official acts of the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq.

    When the Constitutional rights of any of us are under attack, the Constitutional rights of all of us are under attack.  Who else will have their travel restricted because the government does not like what one is saying? Who else will be surveilled? Who else will be prosecuted? Who else will have their Constitutional rights denied?

    Of equal concern was the simultaneous publication by the Washington Post which casts as disinformation the work of journalists, including several Americans, who have challenged the State Department’s narrative with regard to Russia and Iran. 

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    It would seem the Washington Post has taken seriously the sardonic dictum of A.J. Leibling: “Freedom of the Press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” The corporatization of the First Amendment, and the concentration of media into fewer and fewer hands, are major reasons why America is under constant threat of war and why our Constitutional freedoms are in trouble.   

    Independent authors and journalists are struggling to provide a response which protects our freedom of speech. They also have access to the same Constitutional protection of Freedom of the Press as the Washington Post, the New York Times and other large corporate publishers. 

    Governments’ fear of being challenged is as old as the case of John Peter Zenger, who 1734 printed the New York Weekly Journal. Zenger’s persistent prodding of the Crown’s provincial governor resulted in him being charged with libel. He won the case, establishing truth as a defense.

    Today the well understood truth is as deeply offensive to liars as freedom is offensive to tyrants. “Our liberty,” wrote Thomas Jefferson ten years after The Declaration of Independence, “depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

    Today’s independent American journalists are fighting for their freedom, and ours! 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:25

  • "Buy Everything": S&P Hits All Time High As Nvidia Passes $3 Trillion
    “Buy Everything”: S&P Hits All Time High As Nvidia Passes $3 Trillion

    Remember when “developed world” central banks pretended their inflation target was 2%? Well, that lie died a miserable death today – and will do so again for good measure tomorrow – after the BOC cut rates for the first time in 4 years, and less than a year after its last rate hike, from 5.0% to 4.75% even as Canada’s inflation remains a very sticky 2.7%.

    And just to underscore the death of the 2% inflation target, tomorrow the ECB will also cut rates for the first time since March 2016 (and 8 months after the last rate hike), even though core Eurozone CPI remains 3%.

    Of course, despite all the posturing, the Fed won’t be far behind especially once it becomes clear that the myth of strong US job growth was just a mirage (as explained yesterday), and either in July or September, the Fed will join the party despite core US inflation stuck at a blistering 2.8%.

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    It was this long overdue realization that the G7 central banks have officially raised their inflation target by about 1% that helped pushed bond yields to fresh two month lows, and down more some 35bps in just the past week, down for a 5th straight day…

    … as financial conditions have eased dramatically (see chart of Goldman Financial Conditions Index below), undoing any jawboned tightening the Fed tried to inject into the market in recent months: indeed, the latest rate pricing shows a sharp dovish shift in the Fed cut narrative for Sept, rising to 80% vs 45% just one week ago. As Goldman’s trader notes, CTAs will become a focus if yields keep moving lower…

    And with the tidal wave of easing about to be unleashed by all central banks, it is no surprise that the S&P just hit a new all time high of 5,350, up a whopping 30% from the October lows.

    Superficially, there was some intraday variation, with some sectors red (hilariously, energy, which is supposed to power this new AI renaissance continues to get dumped)…

    … yet looking below the surface, those hoping that one day… soon… perhaps… the market will broaden out will be disappointed: while the S&P is up 13% YTD, the “Mag 7″” is up 30%, while the S&P493 is up just 6.5%.

    And when we talk about the Magnificent 7, we mean really just Magnificent  1: Nvidia is now up a ridiculous145% in just the past 5 months…

    … and moments ago NVDA’s market cap rose above $3 trillion, up more than $140 billion today alone, having risen more than $100 billion on 4 of the past 9 trading days…

    … but also briefly topped Apple’s $3.005 trillion, and this pace of insane meltup – which will require every tech company buying AI chips for the next several decades to justify the valuation – will make NVDA the world’s biggest company some time tomorrow!

    And as we boldly go into yet another absolutely massive asset bubble, one where three companies alone have a market cap of $9 trillion, it is not surprising that cryptos – those assets that sniff out fiat destruction ahead of most – are surging, with bitcoin also on the verge of another record high and trading above $71,000 with ethereum also finally breaking out higher…

    … but gold is also starting to move after the recent profit taking, and is up a solid $27 today and fast approaching it own all-time highs.

    In fact, the only commodity that is not exploding higher is oil, which instead if getting crushed to boost Biden’s approval rating; indeed, oil will not be allowed to spike until the election… after which all hell will finally break loose.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:03

  • Visualizing The Training Costs Of AI Models Over Time
    Visualizing The Training Costs Of AI Models Over Time

    Training advanced AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini Ultra requires millions of dollars, with costs escalating rapidly.

    As computational demands increase, the expenses for the computing power necessary to train them are soaring. In response, AI companies are rethinking how they train generative AI systems. In many cases, these include strategies to reduce computational costs given current growth trajectories.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld shows in the following graphic, based on analysis from Stanford University’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, the training costs for advanced AI models has surged.

    How Training Cost is Determined

    The AI Index collaborated with research firm Epoch AI to estimate AI model training costs, which were based on cloud compute rental prices. Key factors that were analyzed include the model’s training duration, the hardware’s utilization rate, and the value of the training hardware.

    While many have speculated that training AI models has become increasingly costly, there is a lack of comprehensive data supporting these claims. The AI Index is one of the rare sources for these estimates.

    Ballooning Training Costs

    Below, we show the training cost of major AI models, adjusted for inflation, since 2017:

    Last year, OpenAI’s GPT-4 cost an estimated $78.4 million to train, a steep rise from Google’s PaLM (540B) model, which cost $12.4 million just a year earlier.

    For perspective, the training cost for Transformer, an early AI model developed in 2017, was $930. This model plays a foundational role in shaping the architecture of many large language models used today.

    Google’s AI model, Gemini Ultra, costs even more, at a staggering $191 million. As of early 2024, the model outperforms GPT-4 on several metrics, most notably across the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark. This benchmark serves as a crucial yardstick for gauging the capabilities of large language models. For instance, its known for evaluating knowledge and problem solving proficiency across 57 subject areas.

    Training Future AI Models

    Given these challenges, AI companies are finding new solutions for training language models to combat rising costs.

    These include a number of approaches, such as creating smaller models that are designed to perform specific tasks. Other companies are experimenting with creating their own, synthetic data to feed into AI systems. However, a clear breakthrough is yet to be seen.

    Today, AI models using synthetic data have shown to produce nonsense when asked with certain prompts, triggering what is referred to as “model collapse”.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:00

  • RNC Making Backup Plans For Presidential Nomination If Trump Sentenced To Prison
    RNC Making Backup Plans For Presidential Nomination If Trump Sentenced To Prison

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

    With former President Donald Trump facing the possibility of being sentenced to prison just days before the Republican National Convention, GOP officials are formulating backup plans in case the former president isn’t able to receive the Republican party’s presidential nomination in person.

    “We’ll be thinking about it, and we’re working on that right now,” RNC Chair Michael Whatley told Newsmax in an interview on June 4, when asked whether the Republican Party is preparing for the possibility that the former president can’t attend the convention because he’s behind bars.

    The convention, which will take place in Milwaukee on July 15-18, is expected to draw thousands, but President Trump might not be one of them, given his recent felony conviction and the possibility that, on July 11, Justice Juan Merchan could sentence him to prison.

    President Trump was recently found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide non-disclosure payments, supposedly to prevent bad press and sway the 2016 election in his favor. He maintains his innocence and says he’s the victim of a vindictive political prosecution meant to derail his 2024 comeback bid.

    Justice Merchan could sentence President Trump for up to four years on each business records falsification count, with a maximum of 20 years.

    The former president said in a June 2 interview on Fox News that he could handle being jailed or imprisoned while calling the people involved in his conviction as “sick” and “evil.”

    Trump Nominee No Matter What

    The former president and his attorneys have vowed to appeal the conviction, with President Trump even calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to step in before the sentencing date and overturn the guilty verdict.

    While a former Manhattan district attorney predicted that President Trump would receive no prison time regardless of any appeals process, GOP officials say they’ll be ready to handle whatever scenario presents itself at the convention.

    “We expect that Donald Trump is going to be in Milwaukee, and he’s going to be able to accept that nomination,” Mr. Whatley said. “And if not, we will make whatever contingency planning we need to make for it.”

    While Mr. Whatley didn’t provide specifics about the contingency plans, he said the RNC will “certainly” have a plan in place to make sure President Trump receives the nomination no matter what.

    “We want to have a show that is going to roll out Donald Trump and his vision for America, which is going to set up this election cycle,” Mr. Whatley said while expressing confidence that President Trump will become America’s 47th president when the Election Day dust settles in November.

    In response to Mr. Whatley preparing for the possibility of Donald Trump virtually addressing the Republican National Convention, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement:

    “Even before Donald Trump became a convicted felon, his inner circle was already staffed by a roster of convicts and fraudsters brought on board for their loyalty to Trump and his MAGA agenda over the rule of law. Now Trump’s hand-picked RNC chair is openly floating Trump calling into the convention from a jail cell because the Republican Party has become completely beholden to a criminal who is willing to undermine our justice system and our democracy to pursue his agenda of revenge and retribution.”

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat who brought the case against President Trump, has not indicated whether he will ask for a prison sentence.

    President Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, said after the guilty verdict was handed down that it’s unlikely President Trump would be sentenced to prison given his age and that he is a first-time offender. Trump attorney Will Scharf told ABC News on June 2 that the former president will “speedily appeal this unjust verdict.” “I think this case is replete with reversible error,“ he told the outlet. ”We plan to vigorously defend President Trump’s rights in the appellate courts all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.”

    ‘Breaking Point’

    President Trump was asked in the June 2 interview on Fox News for his thoughts about a possible punishment, which could include time behind bars.

    “I’m OK with it,” the former president replied. “I saw one of my lawyers the other day on television saying, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to do that to the president.’ I said: You don’t beg for anything.”

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on May 30, 2024 in New York City. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

    At the same time, the former president said he thought the American people would be outraged at such a harsh punishment for him.

    “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” President Trump said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take, you know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

    Asked what Trump supporters should do if the former president were imprisoned, RNC co-chair Lara Trump told CNN they would make their voices heard at the ballot box.

    “Well, they’re gonna do what they’ve done from the beginning, which is remain calm and protest at the ballot box on November 5,“ she told the outlet. ”There’s nothing to do other than make your voices heard loud and clear and speak out against this.”

    While Democrats have taken to referring to President Trump as a “convicted felon” in their political messaging, a recent confidential memo to RNC leadership indicated that the conviction has had no negative impact on President Trump’s popularity among voters in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

    In fact, an average of polls by RealClear Polling as of June 4 indicates that President Trump leads President Biden by 3.2 points in all seven swing states.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 19:35

  • Putin: We Could Supply Long-Range Missiles To Enemies Of West In Retaliation
    Putin: We Could Supply Long-Range Missiles To Enemies Of West In Retaliation

    Update(1932ET): Russian President Putin addressed the annual economic forum in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, where he took the opportunity to put the US and NATO on notice concerning Kiev being given the greenlight to use Western weapons to attack Russian territory (detailed below). 

    He suggested that he’s mulling the option of providing adversaries of the West with Russian long-range missiles. Below is what he said: 

    “That would mark their direct involvement in the war against the Russian Federation, and we reserve the right to act the same way,” Mr Putin told a three-hour meeting with the senior editors of international news agencies.

    Because using such Western weapons involves military personnel of those countries controlling the missiles and selecting targets, Mr Putin claimed Moscow could take “asymmetrical” steps elsewhere in the world.

    “If they consider it possible to deliver such weapons to the combat zone to launch strikes on our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same type to some regions of the world where they can be used to launch strikes on sensitive facilities of the countries that do it to Russia?” he said.

    He then followed ominously with, “We will think about it.” But it remains that clearly Russia needs to keep intact its arsenal and advanced weapon supplies as much as possible, considering it could be in for a years-long conflict in Ukraine and with its Western backers. The proxy fight is set to go on for the foreseeable future, and could easily escalate into direct war with NATO at this dangerous point. There was also this interesting moment during a Q&A with journalists…

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    * * *

    Ukraine is already attacking Russian territory with US-supplied long-range weapons, a fresh NY Times investigation has acknowledged. It comes a mere days after the Biden administration greenlighted Ukraine’s request to fire American weapons onto Russian soil.

    “Yehor Chernev, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had destroyed Russian missile launchers with a strike in the Belgorod region, about 20 miles into Russia,” NY Times wrote, describing it as a ‘first’.

    The Ukraine official said that the army used a US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. The revelation came the same day that a UK Telegraph report detailed NATO logistics plans for US troop ‘land corridors’ in the event of a European ground war with Russia.

    Various social media videos and images appeared to show burning and destroyed S-300 and S-400 systems inside Russian territory…

    Examining some of the new to emerge images, Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, described to the Times, “Given the range, type of target, munition availability and change in the Biden administration’s policy, I think it is probable this strike was conducted with HIMARS.”

    Additionally the report highlighted other evidence pointing to US munitions used in the attack:

    On Saturday, Evgeny Poddubny, a war correspondent for Russian state television, shared photographs of what were presented as fragments of American guided rockets found in Russian territory. It was not possible to independently verify when or where the fragments were found.

    Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk also hinted that the strike was conducted with American weapons. 

    Vereshchuk shared a picture (above) of a burning S-300 system on Telegram – but soon after deleted – with the caption, “It’s burning well. This is a Russian S-300. On Russian territory. The first days after permission to use Western weapons on the enemy’s territory.”

    Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned earlier this week, “I would like to caution American officials against miscalculations which may have fatal consequences. For some unknown reason, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive.”

    Russian media has meanwhile on Wednesday announced the destruction of more foreign weapons stores inside Ukraine with the below statement:

    The Russian Ministry of Defense has reported that its forces have successfully hit weapon and equipment storage sites used by the Foreign Legion fighting alongside Ukraine.

    “Using operational-tactical aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops, and artillery, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation destroyed the weapon and military equipment depots of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Hortitsa operational-strategic group and the ‘Foreign Legion’ fighters,“ the ministry clarified.

    Several videos of destroyed Russian anti-air systems:

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    Thus far the Pentagon has not officially commented, neither confirming nor denying, on whether Ukraine has used US long-range weapons inside Russia yet. But the situation is clearly escalating, and quite rapidly, by the day at this point.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 19:32

  • US Warns Netanyahu Against Major Offensive In Southern Lebanon
    US Warns Netanyahu Against Major Offensive In Southern Lebanon

    The United States is warning Israel against “escalation” in Lebanon following fresh Wednesday remarks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which threatened a major offensive due to ratcheting Hezbollah attacks. “We are prepared for a very intense operation in the north. One way or another, we will restore security to the north,” Netanyahu said on a visit to the region.

    “We don’t want to see that escalation of the conflict which would just lead to further loss of life from both Israelis and the Lebanese people and would greatly harm Israel’s overall security and stability in the region,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded in a daily briefing.

    Associated Press: Israeli forces have been striking targets inside Lebanon as they increasingly exchange fire with Hezbollah.

    The Biden State Dept. spox urged caution while appearing to downplay the latest bellicose words out of Tel Aviv. “The statements from the Israeli government saying that they are ready for military operation, if necessary, (are) different than saying that they have made a decision to conduct a military operation,” Miller continued.

    “We are still in a place where we believe they prefer a diplomatic solution,” he said while adding that the US fully understands the “untenable situation for Israel” on its northern border.

    “There are tens of thousands of Israeli citizens who cannot return to their homes in the north of Israel because it’s not safe to do so because of the … constant Hezbollah shelling and drone attacks in the area,” Miller emphasized.

    Not only have fires ripped across large swathes of the Galilee region this week as a result of wildfires sparked by Hezbollah drone and rocket attacks, but the Shia paramilitary group backed by Iran has been scoring more and more direct hits on IDF bases and settlements in northern Israel.

    On Wednesday an explosive-laden drone was sent against the town of Hurfeish, located several kilometers from the Lebanon border, which wounded at least eleven Israelis, with one in critical condition. Sirens reportedly failed to sound as the drone as inbound, and the IDF says it is investigating.

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    Times of Israel details, “According to initial military assessments, the two drones impacted within a few minutes of each other, with the second seemingly targeting rescue crews who arrived to treat those wounded by the first. Hezbollah has employed such a tactic several times amid the war.”

    Hezbollah took responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying it was retaliation for a Tuesday Israeli attack Naqoura which took out a Hezbollah member.

    The group’s leader, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, has been warning that the world will witness Israeli tanks “burn” if they try to enter Lebanese territory…

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    During the 2006 war Hezbollah shocked IDF commanders by its performance on the battlefield and effective guerilla tactics, and there has since been a general consensus that the group (which receives assistance from the IRGC) is more formidable than previously thought.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 19:10

  • Limited Hangouts: Tidal Waves Don’t Discriminate
    Limited Hangouts: Tidal Waves Don’t Discriminate

    Authored by Lori Weintz via the Brownstone Institute,

    From a Russell Brand video posted May 28, 2024:

    Quote from former CDC Director Robert Redfield: “[The Covid vaccines] really aren’t that critical for those that are under 50 or younger, but those vaccines saved a lot of lives…To be honest, some people got significant side effects from the vaccine. I have a number of people that are quite ill and they never had Covid, but they are ill from the vaccine, and we just have to acknowledge that.

    Russell Brand’s response: “How long can you maintain the sort of slow drag that it was all worth it?… I have a question, why are there so many excess deaths all around the world?…Attempting to continue to claim that the pandemic was a success, that it was well handled, that the medications were effective, that there hasn’t been an extraordinary swindle practiced on the people of the world – seems more and more difficult to do with a straight face.”

    Limited Hangouts:

    To present a “limited hangout” is to put part of the information out there, in order to divert from other facts or activities you don’t want someone to notice. It is a sleight of hand, a way of getting ahead of damning truths that are too big to keep covered up, like the 1,637,441 Vaccine Adverse Event Reports (VAERS) connected to the Covid-19 injections in the US (It’s estimated that VAERS is largely underreported and represents only around 1% of actual adverse events.)

    We apparently have reached a moment of communal introspection with regard to Covid-19 and our pandemic response, leading to increasing limited hangouts. The New York Times in a May 4, 2024 article informs us that some people have been injured by the Covid vaccines and implies, rightly so, that we should help them. The Brookings Institution report of 2024 commends us for saving thousands of lives by “slowing the spread” of Covid through changing our behaviors (aka social distancing and masking) until we could get the Safe and Effective™ vaccines. Everyone from former FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock to former CNN reporter Chris Cuomo now acknowledges that maybe some things could have been handled better. But they all assure us, “We did the best we could with the information we had at the time.”

    An insightful individual who writes under the pseudonym of A Midwestern Doctor accurately describes the New York Times vaccine injury article as a piece, “sculpted to redeem the medical system’s reputation while admitting the absolute minimal amount of guilt necessary to accomplish that objective.”

    Widening the Overton Window

    It’s good to see the Overton window concerning the pandemic response opening up a bit in the mainstream media and government agencies. But it’s important to be very clear that their concessions are largely a limited hangout, designed to deflect from their own failures. In addition, these limited hangouts are an attempt to distract from the continuing goal of controlling everyone through repeated use of “emergencies” that require us to give up our freedom in order to be “safe.” Or at least to be “good citizens,” which was a powerful guilt-inducing motivator during the pandemic to gain compliance from people who weren’t actually afraid of the virus.

    Why Can’t We Just Move on?

    With the expansion of acceptable dialogue, some admissions that mistakes were made, and the Covid pandemic seeming to be fully in our rearview mirror some ask exasperatedly, “Why do you want to keep talking about the pandemic anyway? Why can’t you just move on?”

    I’ll tell you why. There are many powerful people and organizations who are weaponizing “pandemic preparedness” for ulterior motives having nothing to do with health. In fact, the perpetrators of pandemic harms have doubled down, even as they engage in limited hangouts. It appears they believe, probably correctly, that if they say something enough times such as, “The vaccines saved a lot of lives,” people will believe it.

    The Push for Digital ID’s

    Buried in the Times article that finally acknowledges the possibility of some vaccine injuries is the idea that we need a national medical database in order to better track, and therefore compensate for such injuries. This would be a database where all citizens’ medical records are tracked electronically and managed by the federal government. Not only would this complete the government takeover of our medical system that has been underway for years, but it would also be the end of personal privacy. The phrase “national medical database” is a euphemism for “vaccine passports” – required medical proof in order to participate in the public square.

    FDA Still Wants Money for Hazardous Gain-of-Function Research

    Another reason why we can’t just forget about the pandemic is because of people like Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf. In a May 8, 2024 US Senate Appropriations Committee Hearing, Califf requested a total of $3.69 billion for the FDA budget, including an additional $168 million partly to pay for “countermeasures” to prevent a “wider outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza.” Califf states, “If we institute the countermeasures now, and reduce the spread of the virus…we’re much less likely to see a mutation that jumps to humans – for which we’re ill-prepared.”

    Califf, among others, is attempting to generate fear of H5N1 avian flu that has been circulating for decades in various animal populations, and likely won’t become easily transmissible to humans unless someone in a lab tinkers with it. Let’s not forget that the nature of viruses, even lab-made ones, is to be either highly transmissible, or highly virulent, but not both. A virus can’t survive long and infect many others if it kills its host. With the medical advances we have today, we know how to treat the symptoms of illness, even in those infected with a new virus. However, the policy response to a pathogen can be horrific, as seen throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Yet Robert Califf wants even more money for the FDA, partly so they can develop virus countermeasures, which is an Intelligence Community term having to do with biological warfare. In other words, Califf acknowledges that lab-made viruses are being studied around the world, and the viruses created in these labs require antidotal vaccines. Making a pathogen more transmissible, or more virulent, through experimentation is called gain-of-function research, and it is a controversial practice. Not all research in biological laboratories involves gain-of-function, and perhaps some of the research has public health benefits, but there is often lax oversight and poor adherence to containment protocols.

    Lab Leaks Have Led to Multiple Disease Outbreaks in the Past Century

    Epidemiologist Donald A. Henderson, credited with the eradication of smallpox through a targeted vaccination campaign, coauthored a paper in 2014 expressing concerns about gain-of-function research on the H5N1 virus:

    Scientists recently have announced that they genetically modified H5N1 in the laboratory and that this mutated strain spread through the air between ferrets that were physically separated from each other. This is ominous news. Since ferret influenza virus infection closely mirrors human infection and is similarly transmissible, these scientists appear to have created a bird flu strain with characteristics that indicate it would be readily transmissible by air between humans. In fact, the lead scientist on one of the experiments explicitly stated this.

    The question is this: Should we purposefully engineer avian flu strains to become highly transmissible in humans? In our view, no. We believe the benefits of this work do not outweigh the risks. Here’s why. There are no guarantees that such a deadly strain of avian flu would not escape accidentally from the laboratory. (emphasis added)

    There is substantive evidence that various diseases in the past century including the 1976 swine flu outbreak, the surge of Lyme disease in the US, and the Covid-19 pandemic can be traced to lab experiments that escaped and infected the general population.

    The best thing the Appropriations Committee can do for the health of the US and all citizens of the world is put a moratorium on gain-of-function research. While they’re at it, the Senate should consider restructuring that needs to happen at the FDA, and throughout the entire National Institutes of Health (NIH). They could start by removing Califf from his position, as his investments in pharmaceutical companies and stints working for them have surely compromised his ability to properly regulate the products from which he profits. In addition, the Senate should outlaw the current corrupt system in which over half of the NIH’s operating budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies the NIH is charged with regulating.

    Bill Gates and the World Health Organization

    Another reason we cannot just “move past” the Covid-19 pandemic is because in addition to people like compromised Director Robert Califf, we have Bill Gates, the largest donor to the World Health Organization (WHO) just behind the United States and Germany. Gates, with his outsized influence on the WHO, has the stated goal to deliver a vaccine in 100 days against the next virus. He’s heavily invested in mRNA vaccines and has found the returns on investments in vaccines to be highly profitable.

    Gates, who has engaged consistently in pandemic wargame simulations for over two decades, espouses a preparedness plan that involves year-round pandemic teams in every community around the world. These teams would immediately enforce contact tracing and quarantine upon the appearance of any communicable disease until the vaccine can be deployed. In a 2022 TED talk, Gates even provided a visual of his dream, coming soon to a city near you:

    The WHO is pushing for a worldwide Pandemic Treaty, and changes to the International Health Regulations. These changes, if approved by member countries, will allow the WHO unprecedented influence on community responses to epidemic and pandemic threats, as identified by the Director General. The current Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is not a medical doctor, is known to be weak on human rights, and has an uncomfortably close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.  Tedros is among the many unelected persons, including government bureaucrats and public health officials, who wreaked havoc during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Pandemic Preparedness as a Weapon:

    The reason why we must still attempt to unpack the facts is because so many are willing to use “pandemic preparedness” as a weapon, and so few have acknowledged the absolute failure of our Covid-19 pandemic response. For example, the previously referenced Brookings Paper from March 2024, titled “The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on US Cumulative Deaths from Covid-19,” attempts to lend validity to the unscientific human disaster of “social distancing.”

    Social distancing was found to have zero impact on the spread of disease. Former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb even stated that the 6-foot distancing rule was “arbitrary,” and Dr. Anthony Fauci said the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared.” Those admissions bring small comfort to schools, care centers, hospitals, churches, businesses, performing arts, and other organizations, and individuals whose day-to-day lives were harmed, sometimes permanently, by the 6-foot rule.

    Johns Hopkins: Lockdowns Have Had Little to No Effect on Covid-19 Mortality

    A 2022 analysis conducted by professors at Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics considered 18,950 studies on the effectiveness of lockdowns, paring down to 24 that met the screening procedures for their meta-analysis. For purposes of the analysis, lockdown was defined as “at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)…that directly restrict(s) people’s possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel.” The 24 qualified studies were divided into three groups: lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place-order (SIPO) studies, and specific NPI studies, and determined that “Lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” The authors summarized:

    While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.

    New Zealand: a Lesson in Lockdown Failure

    One need only look at the data from New Zealand in the following chart to know that social distancing and locking down entire populations does not prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.

    Because it’s an island, New Zealand was able to keep out visitors and lock down residents. The lockdowns harmed the country in every way, but only delayed the arrival of Covid. In the above chart, the orange line shows mask compliance at almost 90% in September 2021. The black line shows daily new cases. Note the exponential rise of cases in February 2022, despite coerced/forced Covid-19 vaccination.

    As pointed out by former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur, 99.3% of Covid deaths in New Zealand occurred after 60% of the population was fully vaccinated. In Australia, another hard lockdown country, that figure was 93%. In other words, harsh lockdowns can delay the spread of a respiratory virus, but not prevent it. Meanwhile, the lockdowns cause economic mayhem, and social and emotional devastation, and inflict permanent disadvantages on the upcoming generation. Lockdowns are a violation of fundamental human rights and should never be tolerated again as a viable means of containing viral spread, not even if a perfect vaccine antidote can be manufactured in less than 100 days.

    The above, and similar charts for other states and countries, was created by Ian Miller from official publicly available data. It’s mystifying that anyone can actually look at these charts and claim, “Yes, but Covid-19 would have been so much worse if we hadn’t masked, locked down, and taken the vaccine.” How can there be worse results than exponential growth in cases; increased illness, hospitalizations, and deaths in the vaccinated; increased Covid deaths after vaccination, and a marked rise in excess deaths – especially among the young?

    Brookings Advocates for More of the Same in the “Next Pandemic”

    Yet the Brookings paper joins emotionally abusive governments in praising people for engaging in anti-human social distancing because it was effective in “slowing the spread of a dangerous infectious respiratory disease for a long time.” Brookings does acknowledge that these “behavior changes” came at a “tremendous economic, social, and human cost.” The solution, according to Brookings? More of the same, but with more targeted interventions:

    To avoid similar pain from mitigation in the next pandemic, we argue that we need to make investments now not only in vaccine development, but also in data infrastructure so that we can precisely target behavior-oriented mitigation efforts to minimize their economic and social impacts of the next pandemic.

    Brookings advocates for both vaccine development and a centralized “data infrastructure,” so “we can precisely target behavior-oriented mitigation efforts” in the next pandemic. Refer back to Bill Gates’ paradise of swooping in by helicopter with medical SWAT teams ready to take you and yours down in order to save the world. 

    One might consider the times a mask was worn below the chin, a trip was taken to get away from onerous Covid regulations, a fake vaccine card was obtained to facilitate normal life, or a dinner party exceeded the numbers allowed by government decree.  Then project what it might be like as the recipient of targeted “behavior-oriented mitigation efforts” in a world where those behaviors are digitally tracked and “corrected” in real time.

    Bill Gates compares people to computers that need new software, and viruses to something that can be prevented from spreading by dousing them with interventions, like putting out a fire. Both analogies are untethered from real science and tone-deaf to the complexities of the human body, normally functioning societies, and our interdependence with a microbial planet. 

    Believing the Evidence of Your Own Eyes

    The Brookings paper does a lot of talking and citing of selective data but ignores the common sense facts before our eyes. We all observed that social distancing and masking did not prevent the spread of Covid. The data and our own experiences consistently showed that Covid-19 largely was not a serious disease except for the elderly and the medically frail – something that was already known in February 2020. We all noticed that most vaccinated people contracted Covid-19. We also have observed that many multiple-vaccinated people appear to be repeatedly ill with cold and flu symptoms, while many have developed autoimmune illnesses, neurological issues, infertility problems, cancers, and heart issues within the past three years.

    Those with the Megaphone Still Claim the Pandemic Response was a Success

    Yet still the official Covid narrative persists, as does the fear-mongering. On May 16, 2024, the New York Times ran an opinion piece from John M. Barry, a scholar at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, titled “As Bird Flu Looms, the Lessons of Past Pandemics Take on New Urgency.” In his article, Barry claims that the public health measures taken to slow the spread of Covid are effective, but:

    [E]ven the most extreme interventions cannot eliminate a pathogen that escapes initial containment if, like influenza or the virus that causes Covid-19, it is both airborne and transmitted by people showing no symptoms. Yet such interventions can achieve two important goals.

    The first is preventing hospitals from being overrun. Achieving this outcome could require a cycle of imposing, lifting and reimposing public health measures to slow the spread of the virus. But the public should accept that because the goal is understandable, narrow and well defined.

    The second objective is to slow transmission to buy time for identifying, manufacturing and distributing therapeutics and vaccines and for clinicians to learn how to manage care with the resources at hand.

    The number of inaccuracies in just these three paragraphs from Barry’s opinion piece is astounding, qualifying more as outright propaganda than as a limited hangout.

    We hear the word a lot, but a refresher from Britannica on Propaganda is in order:

    Propaganda is the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other people’s beliefs, attitudes, or actions…Propagandists…deliberately select facts, arguments, and displays of symbols and present them in ways they think will have the most effect…To maximize effect, they may omit or distort pertinent facts or simply lie, and they may try to divert the attention of the reactors (the people they are trying to sway) from everything but their own propaganda. Comparatively deliberate selectivity and manipulation also distinguish propaganda from education.  (emphasis added)                                                                       

    Propagandists such as Barry draw on their credentials, and use their writing and reasoning skills, to “distort pertinent facts or simply lie” to prop up the official Covid narrative, in this case. Gratefully there are resources for balanced discussion.  There are credible individuals discussing legitimate studies and data that refute the false statements in Barry’s opinion piece. Unfortunately, many people do not know where to find their work, or simply don’t want to know.

    Power, Control, Money: The Great Motivators

    It would indeed be wonderful to say that the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us. Been there, done that. But unfortunately, there is an entire industry comprised of billionaires, corporate, NGO, military, intelligence, and government interests that is driving the idea of scary pandemics, and preparing radical interventions to deal with them. What could possibly be their motive? Nothing new under the sun. It’s always power, money, and a desire for control driving any human experiment that leads to cruel oppression, misery, and death. We saw it writ large through the campaigns of Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, and Mao. We saw it with Mussolini, Pol Pot, and Pinochet.

    The desire for power at the expense of others is as old as the history of mankind, but for the first time, the campaign is being orchestrated on a global scale. What was revealed during the Covid pandemic was not new ways to handle frightening pandemic-causing pathogens. What was actually revealed was a global trial run of how to bring entire populations into subjugation through fear and medical tyranny under the false assurance of Safety.

    The experiment wasn’t completely successful, largely because the Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) vaccines failed to prevent disease or transmission. It’s not hard to develop a product at “Warp Speed” when all safety regulations and accountability are removed from product development, approval, and distribution. The mRNA platform was not ready for human use, and still isn’t, but the EUA Covid injections were administered to billions of people under cover of a “global emergency.” The debacle of increasingly noticeable vaccine injuries is the direct result.

    Plans to Extend the mRNA Platform to all Vaccines:

    Nonetheless, there are plans to convert traditional vaccines to the flawed mRNA platform, as well as to develop new profitable mRNA injections to treat pandemic-potential viruses in the future. Health and Human Services is currently in discussions with Pfizer and Moderna to produce mRNA flu vaccines to treat H5N1, which announcement led to a surge in biotech companies’ stocks this week, according to the Financial Times.

    An academic who went through WWII in Nazi Germany was interviewed afterward and explained how the horrors of that time gradually grew upon them, over several years, almost without them noticing. He said:

    What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security…

    One had no time to think. There was so much going on…I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to…we were decent people – and kept so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated…that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.” (p. 166-168, They Thought They Were Free, By Milton Mayer)

    Government Intent to Silence Dissent:

    It’s very important to those in charge that we not think and not notice. This is why we hear so much today about the dangers of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, and how much the government wants to protect us from such harmful speech. In fact Homeland Security is so worried they published a Terrorism Threat Bulletin calling people who say things that might undermine public trust in government institutions “domestic threat actors.”

    This bulletin was accompanied by government censorship efforts that led to removed posts and accounts throughout all social media platforms, as well as character defamation, loss of employment, and other forms of persecution – all as a consequence of exercising freedom of speech. It also led to a Disinformation Governance Board created by the Biden Administration, that was “paused” after three weeks of comparison to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984, and following concerns raised about the head of the Board.

    The government’s concerns about correct information do not extend to itself, or its mouthpieces, of which the New York Times is one. Despite the limited hangout acknowledging some “rare but serious” Covid-19 vaccine injuries, the Times is quick to claim there’s no way to know for sure if these people really were injured by the injections. The Times states:

    The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

    Ah, yes. Those nasty anti-vaxxers. The ones that Homeland Security calls domestic terrorists, along with parents who speak out at school board meetings, and people who have concerns about election integrity. Homeland Security says people who question, “sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” So don’t ask questions and just do as you’re told. Whatever happened to the widespread consensus of the truth in Pres. Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help?’”

    Multi-billionaire Bill Gates in his grandfatherly sweater and glasses said in the previously referenced TED talk that it’s, “Kind of weird” how the anti-vaxxers respond to him. He claims his Gavi foundation has saved tens of millions of lives through vaccines. Gates states, “It’s somewhat ironic to have someone turn around and say no, we’re using vaccines to kill people or to make money or…some strange things like, that I somehow want to track, you know, the location of individuals because I’m so deeply desirous to know where everybody is. Uh, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that information.” Cue the helicopters.

    I understand people who want to believe that we did the best we could with the information that we had, and that our efforts to stop a virus made a difference. It’s comforting to believe that those in charge have our best interests at heart. It’s easier and less frightening to believe wise scientists, doctors, and government officials know just what we need to be “safe.” 

    It’s generally thought that we enlightened modern people could never be susceptible to a mass formation like that of Nazi Germany, or Mao’s Cultural Revolution; we would recognize what was going on and we wouldn’t fall for it. There seems to be a general belief that the freedoms guaranteed in the US Constitution are inviolable, and therefore we do not need to fight to retain them.

    A limited hangout may open the Overton window a bit, but it’s being made very clear to anyone who is paying attention that the powers that be are loathe to give up the control they tasted during Covid-19, and next time they intend to completely squash dissent.

    Combatting the Tidal Wave of Corporate and Government Control:

    From attorney Jeff Childer’s Substack on US Memorial Day May 27, 2024, we gain some insight into the call to action for our times:

    Lincoln’s [Gettysburg Address] could just as well have been written for us the living in the equally extraordinary year 2024, Anno Domini. In particular, the second half of President Lincoln’s short speech seems aimed right at us, reminding us that the honored dead made their ultimate sacrifices for a reason.

    Our heroic dead expect that we, the living, will keep fighting to the last man and woman. In Lincoln’s own words:

    It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

    Ours is not a war fought with cannons and musket balls. Our generation’s war is a mental, emotional, and cultural war, a war waged in secret and in lies, a war with needles and mysterious snake oil payloads, a mendacious war waged against truth, thoughts and feelings.

    Keep fighting! Fight for the dead. Fight for the living. Fight for those not yet born. Fight and never stop fighting, until we have achieved a new birth of freedom in America.

    Tidal waves don’t discriminate between those who believe in them, and those who don’t. A wave of censorship and government controls is building, fueled by fears about another pandemic, or climate change, or whatever “emergency” can be exploited to justify government power grabs. The only thing that will stop the censorship and control from washing over everyone is enlightened people who refuse to be swept up, and who work together to push back.

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 18:45

  • Disney Tops Long List Of Woke Failures With Upcoming Release Of Gay Star Wars Show
    Disney Tops Long List Of Woke Failures With Upcoming Release Of Gay Star Wars Show

    A key element of understanding the smooth-brained antics of the woke left is that they are incapable of doing anything “creative” without sexualizing it and politicizing it.  Their collective identity revolves around who they lust after, how to virtue signal to the herd and who is supposedly the most oppressed.  Remove these things from their daily lives and there’s not much left to look at.  They could disappear tomorrow along with all of their media products and the world wouldn’t miss them in the slightest.  

    When a company chooses to pander to this small margin of the population there’s very little profit to be made.  A few years ago ESG lending was the big motivator for corporations to promote far-left ideology – With every progressive product, progressive commercial and progressive employment policy those businesses added to their overall ESG score.

    Cheap debt from global conglomerates like Blackrock created the fuel that made the woke movement possible.  However, with the advent of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes ESG loans were no longer viable and venture capital dried up.

    In other words, woke companies used to be able to distribute propaganda despite ample consumer opposition.  They could pump out all the DEI they wanted, alienate the majority of their customer base and not worry.  Now, those days are over.

    Case in point – The numerous failures of Disney.

    Once a media juggernaut that could not be stopped, the company is currently on the ropes after an endless list of woke bombs.  Their journey to self destruction really started with their attempt to subvert Star Wars; perhaps the most popular franchise in film history.  The addition of feminist politics, forced diversity and an obvious hatred of the original characters drove away their audience until there was nothing left.  In terms of box office receipts, after ten years Disney still has yet to make back the $4 billion they paid George Lucas to get the rights.

    Almost every film and streaming show they have launched in relation to “a galaxy far far away” has met with increasing public disdain.  The decay even spread into Disney’s theme park projects.  They would certainly prefer people forget all about their embarrassing “Galactic Star Cruiser” hotel, a Star Wars LARP experience that cost around $6000 or more for a family for only two days.  

    Under the guidance of Kathleen Kennedy and woke Lucasfilm the hotel refused to use themes from the original movies.  The project imploded within a year after it was thoroughly ridiculed by fans.

    Apparently not deterred by the abject humiliation, Kathleen Kennedy barreled forward with several more increasingly political iterations of the science fiction classic.  This effort tied into Disney’s overall wokification culture, determined to saturate western entertainment with DEI.  Kennedy dismissed all criticism until the creators of South Park dissected her in hilarious fashion.  The anti-woke movement was now officially mainstream and Disney made it all possible.

    Today, there is almost zero chance of a woke movie or TV series success story.  For every ‘Barbie’ there are a hundred bombs like Furiosa or The Marvels.  Of course, film and streaming series productions are usually initiated at least a couple years in advance of release.  So, even with the sweeping sea change in public awareness of woke propaganda, media companies like Disney are still stuck with the garbage projects they already sunk money into back in 2022-2023.  

    This is why we now have ‘The Acolyte’ to look forward to – Another woke Star Wars travesty featuring lesbian representation, a perfect diversity pie chart, and director Leslye Headland, the former personal assistant to Harvey Weinstein.  Headland noted that this version of Star Wars will break from the good vs. evil roots of the franchise and will instead explore morally relative characters.  Truly, a crowd pleaser…

    The Acolyte, to be released this week, is expected to plunge in viewership after the first episode much like every other Star Wars show featured on Disney+.  The corporation and the establishment media are already in damage control mode declaring that the fans are the problem, instead of the show and its content.  It is likely that The Acolyte signals the end of any fantasy that Disney Star Wars will ever win an audience. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 18:20

  • X Urges Supreme Court for Review After Jack Smith Obtained Trump Files
    X Urges Supreme Court for Review After Jack Smith Obtained Trump Files

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    X CEO Elon Musk during the UK Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, in central England, on Nov. 1, 2023. (Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images)

    Elon Musk’s X Corp. has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider stepping in against a process that lets officials obtain information from social media companies and bars the companies from informing people whose information is handed over.

    The process wrongly enables officials to “access and review potentially privileged materials without any opportunity for the user to assert privileges—including constitutional privileges,” lawyers for X said in a filing to the nation’s top court.

    Unsealed documents in 2023 showed that X provided data and records from former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account to special counsel Jack Smith after Mr. Smith obtained a search warrant.

    X was blocked from informing President Trump by a nondisclosure order that Mr. Smith also obtained.

    The order said disclosing the warrant would result in “destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation,” and let President Trump “flee from prosecution.”

    X challenged the order, arguing it violated its First Amendment rights and noting that President Trump might have reason to claim executive privilege, or presidential privilege. The company wanted to alert the former president so he could assert the privilege, but U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled against it, claiming during a hearing that the only reason X was issuing the challenge was “because the CEO wants to cozy up with the former president.”

    A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the ruling from Judge Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

    “The government proffered two compelling interests that supported nondisclosure of the search warrant: preserving the integrity and maintaining the secrecy of its ongoing criminal investigation of the events surrounding January 6, 2021,” U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan wrote. She was joined by Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard and Michelle Childs. Judge Pillard was appointed by President Obama; Judges Pan and Childs were appointed by President Joe Biden.

    The full court denied a rehearing en banc, although four judges said “we should not have endorsed this gambit,” referring to the combination of a warrant and nondisclosure order. “Rather than follow established precedent, for the first time in American history, a court allowed access to presidential communications before any scrutiny of executive privilege,” Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote in a dissent. The appointee of President Trump was joined by Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Justin Walker, other President Trump appointees; and Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

    The Supreme Court should take up the case because the majority’s opinion conflicts with Supreme Court precedent and rulings from other circuits, lawyers for X said in the new petition.

    “This court has long held that holders of executive privilege must have notice and an opportunity to assert privilege before confidentiality of the potentially privileged documents is breached. The decision below departs from that precedent. Because former President Trump was not informed of the warrant before his records were produced, he could not timely assert executive privilege,” they wrote.

    Several circuit courts have issued contrasting decisions, which creates a split that needs resolved, X lawyers said. That included a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that cleared a protocol for a warrant that involved giving people with attorney-client privilege “the first opportunity to identify potentially privileged materials” and did not let investigators access the materials until the parties or the court approved.

    Another circuit split exists in regard to the nondisclosure order, the lawyers said.

    In Freedman v. Maryland, the Supreme Court ruled that “any restraint prior to judicial review can be imposed only briefly in order to preserve the status quo.” While two circuit courts have found the ruling does not apply to nondisclosure orders, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found that some nondisclosure orders must adhere to the ruling.

    The conflict “warrants this court’s review,” X lawyers said.

    The appeals court panel also ruled that the government can draw nondisclosure orders on warrants anytime a warrant would result in the production of any information that has not been publicly available, even when the public is aware “of the broader investigation” and grant jury subpoenas.

    “If the ruling remains in place, the government almost always can obtain a nondisclosure order for a new warrant—no matter how public the investigation—because the warrant itself will always be new and ‘different’ information,” X lawyers argued.

    The case implicates not only executive privilege but other types of privilege, including that between a doctor and patient, the lawyers said.

    “In cases involving executive privilege, which typically arise in the D.C. Circuit, the government can now circumvent the [Presidential Records Act] and deny privilege-holders their opportunity to assert privilege by seeking communications from, and gagging, third parties. And in the tens of thousands of other cases where the government obtains nondisclosure orders, the government can invade other privileges—including attorney-client, journalist-source, and doctor-patient—without notice,” they said. “Meanwhile, the First Amendment rights of service providers like Twitter to notify users in time for them to assert privileges can be irreparably injured.”

    The Department of Justice, which employs Mr. Smith, did not respond to a request for comment. Its response to the filing is due by July 3.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 17:55

  • WHO Confirms Bird Flu Death In Mexico As 'Trust The Science' Experts Want To Test America's 40 Million Cows
    WHO Confirms Bird Flu Death In Mexico As ‘Trust The Science’ Experts Want To Test America’s 40 Million Cows

    The World Health Organization confirmed the first human death linked to avian influenza in Mexico, involving a 59-year-old with no prior history of handling poultry or other animals. This comes as bird flu has been spreading across North America and other regions of the world, infecting various types of animals and humans. 

    “On 23 May 2024, the Mexico International Health Regulations (IHR) National Focal Point (NFP) reported to PAHO/WHO a confirmed fatal case of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N2) virus detected in a resident of the State of Mexico who was hospitalized in Mexico City.

    “This is the first laboratory-confirmed human case of infection with an influenza A(H5N2) virus reported globally and the first avian H5 virus infection in a person reported in Mexico. Although the source of exposure to the virus in this case is currently unknown, A(H5N2) viruses have been reported in poultry in Mexico. According to the IHR (2005), a human infection caused by a novel influenza A virus subtype is an event that has the potential for high public health impact and must be notified to the WHO. Based on available information, WHO assesses the current risk to the general population posed by this virus as low.” -WHO 

    The WHO’s statement continued: 

    “… confirmed case of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N2) virus detected in a 59-year-old resident of the State of Mexico who was hospitalized in Mexico City and had no history of exposure to poultry or other animals. The case had multiple underlying medical conditions. The case’s relatives reported that the case had already been bedridden for three weeks, for other reasons, prior to the onset of acute symptoms.” 

    Earlier Wednesday, Dutch virologist Dr. Marion Koopmans wrote on X, “The expanding list of wild mammals affected by the (global) epizootic of highly pathogenic avian influenza. This data is for the US. Adding mice to the list (the blue circle in New Mexico).” 

    Koopmans also published a USDA map showing bird flu detections in an ever-expanding list of mammals. 

    STAT News recently spoke with Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier, a leading expert on the bird flu, who provided some insight into the outbreak:

    “You have massive outbreaks in wild birds. It spreads over into poultry quite easily. But in humans we see lower numbers, and that to me suggests that the zoonotic risk has decreased.” 

    Meanwhile, Nita Madhav, a former US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher who is now senior director of epidemiology and modeling at Ginkgo Biosecurity, warned Scientific American, “The more it spreads within mammals, that gives it more chances to mutate. As it mutates, as it changes, there is a greater chance it can infect humans. If it gains the ability to spread efficiently from person to person, then it would be hard to stop.” 

    About a week ago, news broke the Biden Administration was nearing a deal to bankroll Moderna’s vaccine against bird flu. 

    Remember Deborah Birx, a physician who served as former President Trump’s Covid response coordinator? Well, she said earlier today about weekly testing of the nation’s cattle herd population. 

    “We should be testing every cow weekly,” Birx said, adding, “We could be pool testing every dairy worker.”

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

    Jordan Schachtel notes… 

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    The WHO’s chief scientist, Jeremy Farrar, has recently said the bird flu amongst cows “is very concerning.” 

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    In recent notes, we penned “The Escalating Threat Of Avian Influenza H5N1 And The Ethical Quandary Of Gain-of-Function Research” and “Former CDC Director Sounds Alarm Over Bird Flu Experiments.”

    The question arises: if human-to-human cases surge and it’s clear that the WHO’s focus for this pandemic is cows, what actions will the government be forced to take regarding these animals? However, don’t worry—if cows are culled to save the planet from bird flu, Bill Gates will be ready to offer cricket burgers and fake meat New York strips.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 17:30

  • "A Blatant Lie": The Biden Campaign Falsely Accuses Fox's John Roberts Of Lying About The Insulin Caps
    “A Blatant Lie”: The Biden Campaign Falsely Accuses Fox’s John Roberts Of Lying About The Insulin Caps

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Winston Churchill once said that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

    It often seems like the Biden White House and campaign has embraced that warning as an operating principle.

    The most recent target was the veteran Fox news anchor John Roberts, who was accused of airing “a blatant lie” in questioning Biden’s claim that he was the first president to push through a cap of $35 on insulin treatments. Roberts was entirely correct, but the campaign has still not removed the false attack on his integrity and accuracy.

    In the interests of full disclosure, I am a legal analyst for Fox News and I have known Roberts for decades. There is no one who I hold in higher regard for his integrity or his intellect than John Roberts. We have known and worked with each other at different networks through the years. Roberts is an old-school journalist with impeccable credentials.

    Yesterday, the Biden campaign launched the attack on Roberts for his questioning of the claim of President Joe Biden that he solely secured the insulin cap. Roberts remarked that he had a recollection that it was former President Donald Trump who pushed the cap.

    “I seem to remember that back in May of 2020, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said that President Trump had signed an executive order to cap the price of insulin for Medicare recipients at 35 bucks. Now, maybe I’m misremembering that, but I think it kind of already happened.”

    The Biden campaign then called it “a blatant lie” in a posting on X that has reached over a million people.

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    Contrary to the Biden campaign’s claims, Roberts’s recollection was entirely correct. Under the Trump Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in May 2020 that the Part D Senior Savings Model participating plans would cap insulin copays to $35 per month’s supply, and over 1,750 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans applied to offer lower insulin costs.

    Trump praised the new policy, which was widely covered by the press.

    There was a Rose Garden event where Trump was praised for his actions:

    Trump later, in July 2020, signed four executive orders aimed at lowering the cost of insulin. That included Executive Order 13937, which required Federally Qualified Health Centers to pass 340B discounts on to patients. Notably, Biden later reversed Executive Order 13937 before those cost-saving measures could take effect.

    This is obviously not the first false statement from the President. However, it is notable that his campaign spread obvious disinformation that was picked up by over a million people but then declined to take down the false claim. The campaign is now in a worse position. To take down the posting is to acknowledge not just that it has lied about Roberts, but that the President lied in taking sole credit for this cap.

    This is the same administration supporting the banning, blacklisting, and throttling of those responsible for disinformation. I would not support such censorship of the campaign. This and other columns refuting the false account is sufficient to combat a “blatant lie” by the Biden campaign. Whether it is his uncle being eaten by cannibals or insulin caps, free speech can correct false claims without government regulation. However, President Biden and his administration continue to push for censorship of others accused for false or misleading statements.

    The fact that John Roberts was right is hardly surprising. However, there remains a “blatant lie” on the Biden campaign’s social media that must still be corrected.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 17:15

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