Jun 07

Today’s News 7th June 2022

  • "Ticking Timebomb": 500,000 UK Small Businesses Could Imminently Go Bust 
    “Ticking Timebomb”: 500,000 UK Small Businesses Could Imminently Go Bust 

    As a stagflationary storm looms over the UK economy, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) chairman warned of a tsunami of small business closings without new support packages from the government. 

    FSB chairman Martin McTague, recently told BBC Radio 4’s Today, “there is still a massive problem with small businesses. They are facing something like twice the rate of inflation for their production prices, and it’s a ticking timebomb. They have got literally weeks left before they run out of cash and that will mean hundreds of thousands of businesses, and lots of people losing their jobs.”

    McTague referred to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, showing that 2 million (or about 40%) of the UK’s small businesses had less than three months of cash in reserves to support operations. He noted that 10% (or 200,000) were in grave danger, and 300,000 only had a few weeks of cash left. 

    “It is a very real possibility because … they don’t have the cash reserves. They don’t have any way they can tackle this problem,” McTague said. 

    FSB chairman’s warning comes as April UK inflation hit 9%, the highest level since 1982. Inflation has been widely sparked not just by loose monetary policy conditions during the virus pandemic but now soaring energy costs as Europe tries to ween itself off Russian fossil fuels and monetary tightening by the central bank. 

    McTague gave one example of a hotel owner in Scarborough, a resort town on England’s North Sea coast, which had profits wiped out because soaring power bills were five times higher than normal levels. 

    “They weren’t able to trade any longer without essentially trading at a loss and therefore damaging the future of their business and everybody that worked for them,” he said. 

    Soaring inflation and faltering growth is a perfect recipe for a stagflationary macro backdrop that is already crushing small businesses and households. ONS data showed the economy contracted by .1% in March, and the economy appears to be sliding into what could be the beginning of a recession. 

    Meanwhile, Bloomberg data shows the Bank of England is on an aggressive hiking path this summer to quell inflation. Tightening into a downturn will only add even more pressure on small businesses by making lending more expensive and stifling demand. 

    Recession fears and economic turmoil have sent the pound to a two-year low. 

    A combination of higher energy prices, a slumping pound, faltering economic growth, a deteriorating environment for small businesses, weak households, trade restrictions on Russia, a central bank that is tightening, and overall inflation at four-decade highs have all produced a toxic environment for the UK economy. 

    No wonder the UK Misery index is soaring to the highest level since 1994. 

    Meanwhile, Barclays’ small and medium-sized enterprises barometer shows 75% of British firms are worried about the challenging macro climate and how it could dramatically impact their operations. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/07/2022 – 02:45

  • NATO Kicks Off Baltic War Games With Finland, Sweden As Russia Tensions Boil
    NATO Kicks Off Baltic War Games With Finland, Sweden As Russia Tensions Boil

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced it will launch military drills with 7,000 troops in the Baltics. The provocative war games will include Sweden and Finland. Stockholm is hosting the exercises after applying for NATO membership last month.

    The war games, dubbed Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22), are based in Stockholm. BALTOPS 22 will primarily consist of naval operations and run from June 5-17. The drills will involve 45 ships and 75 aircraft. Sixteen nations will participate, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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    The annual war games are taking on increased significance as Helsinki and Stockholm recently submitted their applications to join NATO. The USS Kearsarge is in the Swedish capital city for the war games. According to Chairman of the Joint Chief, Gen. Mark Milley said, part of the ship’s mission is a show of force to Russia.

    “I think the Kearsarge being here is a pretty strong statement,” Milley said. “This is a big exercise with 7000-8000 soldiers from 16 countries, two of which are not NATO members.”

    Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson added, “This shows President Biden’s security assurances are followed by actions.”

    Several NATO members gave security guarantees to Sweden and Finland as they go through the membership process. The security guarantees are meant to prevent a Russian attack before Stockholm and Helskinki receive protection under the alliance’s mutual defense pact.

    Russia says it will not react to Finland and Sweden joining the North Atlantic alliance but warned against a military buildup in the Nordic counties.

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    Antti Pelttari, head of Finland’s intelligence service, confirmed Moscow had not targeted Helsinki with reprisals since it submitted its NATO application. “It has been rather quiet, and let’s hope it stays that way,” he said in an interview with Financial Times. “It’s a positive thing that nothing has happened.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/07/2022 – 02:00

  • Why Uvalde Doesn't Justify Gun Control
    Why Uvalde Doesn’t Justify Gun Control

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    The deaths of 21 people, including 19 children, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, are a nightmare that I can’t even fathom. It is pure evil.

    Yet millions of Americans seem prepared to accept this nightmare as the new normal.

    They don’t ask what could turn an 18-year-old boy into a monster who could look innocent children in the face and shoot them to death while dozens others were screaming, while blood splattered and puddled in the classrooms, while his own life ticked down to its final meaningless minute.

    They just assume there are more like him – waiting, planning, marking time, ready to do the unthinkable.

    And their proposed solution is to take guns away from law-abiding American citizens on the assumption that evil people will be deterred from doing evil if they can’t obtain (take your pick) either long guns or handguns (or both).

    Why do I get the feeling these presumably well-intentioned people don’t know what evil is? Don’t they realize that mass murder is never normal? Perhaps more importantly, why do they think that the government can hinder evil by passing new laws that will restrict gun ownership?

    The crisis isn’t that children kill other children with guns; the crisis is that children want to kill other children with guns. And more broadly, there is a moral crisis in our country because we teach children that right and wrong are no longer absolutes, that they are rather subjects for debate. And the more we debate right and wrong, the more that evil gains a foothold in our society.

    But it is easier to talk about guns than it is to talk about evil. It is easier to blame guns than it is to blame our sick society for what happens to our children. If you want to prevent mass murder, the answer isn’t to take guns out of classrooms; it is to put God back in classrooms, and to fearlessly teach children about good and evil, about right and wrong, about the basis for our laws and our civilization. A society that is unwilling to acknowledge a higher power is unlikely to have any answers for children who question authority.

    Even if we can’t reverse the secularization of America, there are steps that can be taken to improve public safety without restricting gun rights.

    If you want to prevent psychotic teenagers from acting out their dreadful fantasies, for instance, try providing mental assistance when they make threats to kill people. Even better, don’t prescribe dangerous psychotropic drugs that can result in hallucinations, paranoid delusions, mood swings, depression, and “abnormal” thoughts. Those are all listed side effects for Adderall, one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for teenagers with behavioral problems.

    Instead of taking guns away from people who have never even contemplated committing a crime, how about this? Pass laws that make it a felony to threaten violence against children or to threaten random violence in public places. Then prosecute those crimes and lock up the people who are deemed a threat by a jury of their peers. Don’t do what the California state Senate just did and vote to remove the requirement that police be notified when students make threats against a school official. That is just plumb crazy.

    Of course, reliance on the police to solve all our problems is also crazy.

    That is the logical fallacy at the heart of the argument of would-be do-gooders like Beto O’Rourke who want to grab your guns. Think about it. They are asking us to turn our safety (and our children’s safety) over to the care of law enforcement when it was law enforcement that let us down at Uvalde. From the video and testimonial evidence, it appears that police were called to the scene of the massacre quickly and then waited. Waited while children died. Waited while children were risking their lives by making 911 calls to beg for help. Waited. For more than an hour. Waited. Until finally Border Patrol officers took matters into their own hands and shot the demon.

    Do you see the irony? The people of Uvalde trusted the government to protect their children, and children perished. But give one parent a gun at Uvalde and there’s at least a 50/50 chance he or she would have ambushed the shooter and killed him. And the more law-abiding people who have guns, the better off the rest of us will be when crazed shooters decide to go on a killing spree.

    Unfortunately, too many people looking for easy solutions want to take guns out of the hands of citizens and put all the power for our protection in the hands of government. That goes against our lived experience, not just at Uvalde but in society overall.

    In case after case, we the people have been conditioned to believe that the government is incapable of protecting us from criminals.

    Consider the summer of 2020 when our cities were burning and mobs were rampaging in state after state. What did the government do to protect us? Nothing. They decided it was safer to let the mobs riot, to let the looters loot, to let the fires burn – perhaps because they were afraid they would be “defunded” if they actually fought to protect citizens from dangerous criminals. Gun owner Kyle Rittenhouse decided to try to protect Kenosha, Wisconsin, and he was arrested and charged with murder for his trouble.

    Moreover, in city after city, Democratic prosecutors have decided it is easier to let criminals go than to send them to jail. This crusade against “mass incarceration” is also known as sweeping the dirt under the rug. The problem isn’t that too many people are in jail; the problem is that too many people commit crimes. Left-wing prosecutors like George Gascon in Los Angeles are adding fuel to the fire by releasing criminals back into society without punishment, thus giving them incentive to commit more crimes. Refusing to prosecute gun crimes guarantees that more guns will be used in crimes.

    And let’s not forget the most glaring example of the government abdicating its responsibility to protect the public from criminals – Joe Biden’s open border. How many millions of people have to enter our country illegally before you lose confidence in the government to do its job? Well, I’m well past that point. Like millions of other Americans, I don’t trust the government. Can you think of any reason why I should, when the Department of “Homeland Security” not only allows unvetted immigrants into the country illegally but then flies them to their preferred destination? It’s that same government, by the way, which says that people like me (i.e., Republicans) are domestic terrorists and would like nothing better than to lock us up just like King George wanted to lock up those unruly colonists who insisted on something called “liberty.”

    Joe Biden wants to suspend the Constitution and deny American citizens the right to bear arms of their choice. Of course he does, because it is the easiest answer to a complicated problem, and because it would consolidate power in the hands of the government. Last week, Biden spoke earnestly and forcefully to a prime-time audience and told us that the shooting at Uvalde was enough, that no more innocent people need die if we just turn over our guns. Coincidentally, an hour before Biden spoke, I was watching an episode of the TV series “Alex Rider,” where these frightening words were spoken:

    “From Facebook data to Internet oversight, what we can see is that if your message is strong enough, you can take away people’s liberties, and they will applaud you for doing it.”

    Unfortunately, such a message is not just fiction. Consider yourself warned.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 23:40

  • Pizza Hut Pushes Drag Queen Book For Kid's Summer Reading Program
    Pizza Hut Pushes Drag Queen Book For Kid’s Summer Reading Program

    Restaurant chain Pizza Hut is the latest company meddling in divisive political issues, as they promote a children’s book this summer that features a young boy who dresses in drag. 

    Since 1984, Pizza Hut has been running a reading program for PreK through sixth-grade classrooms called “BOOK IT!” incentivizing children to read a list of books to achieve awards, such as free pizza. 

    In celebration of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month, the fast-food chain owned by Yum! Brands added “Big Wig,” which tells the story of a young boy who competes in a neighborhood drag competition. 

    The publishers, Simon and Schuster, said the book “celebrates the universal childhood experience of dressing up and the confidence that comes with putting on a costume.” 

    “And it goes further than that, acknowledging that sometimes dressing differently from what might be expected is how we become our truest and best selves,” the publishers continued. 

    The book’s author, Jonathan Hillman, who graduated from Hamline University in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program, tweeted about his book being featured in Pizza Hut’s book club for young kids. BOOK IT! ‘s website shows the book is for kids from Pre-K to 3yo. 

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    Critics of the children’s book suggested a boycott over woke corporatism. 

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    Some pointed out this is a “plan to indoctrinate kids.” At such a young age, children’s brains are like sponges taking in everything around them…

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    None of this woke activism comes as a surprise considering Pizza Hut is owned by Yum! Brands. Last month, Taco Bell, also owned by Yum!, introduced “Taco Bell Drag Brunch” at select Taco Bell Cantinas across the US.

    Seems like Yum! ‘s out-of-touch executives are pushing woke activism through its fast-food chains. The consequences could be severe for Yum! as the saying goes, ‘get woke, go broke,’ as Americans are becoming increasingly outraged that such corporate and government messaging is being aimed at their children. 

    Even former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi is fed up with woke corporate activism, recently saying: “Corporations have no business being on the right or the left because…their sole job is to build equity for the investors.”

    Besides Pizza Hut, liberal-run Ben & Jerry’s launched a multi-state media campaign with billboards to combat anti-trans legislation in several states, such as Florida. Here’s an example of one of the billboards in Georgia. 

    And it’s not just woke corporate America that is getting push-back. Kuwait’s government summoned a senior US diplomat at the US Embassy in Kuwait for tweeting a rainbow flag in celebration of Pride Month. 

    How much is too much? Corporate America and the US government are hellbent on spreading an agenda of wokness. 

    Podcaster Joe Rogan has called woke corporate execs and employees “mentally ill.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 23:20

  • Demographers Warn Of Impending Population Collapse
    Demographers Warn Of Impending Population Collapse

    Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Amid the deluge of dire predictions that the human population will rise exponentially, deplete the earth’s resources, and overheat the planet, two recent demographic studies predict the opposite—that the number of people will peak within the next several decades and then begin a phase of steady, irreversible decline.

    A father prepares to change the diaper of his newborn daughter as his wife looks on in a hospital in Apple Valley, California, on March 30, 2021. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

    In some places, including Japan, Russia, South Korea, and most countries in Europe, that population collapse has already begun. China is not far behind.

    The United Nations has predicted that humanity will continue its rapid expansion into the next century, growing from just under 8 billion today to more than 11 billion by 2100. An oft-repeated interpretation of this data is that people are having too many babies, and many of the models for climate change and environmental degradation are based on projections like these. In August, the U.N. declared a “code red for humanity” over climate change and overpopulation, and analysts at investment bank Morgan Stanley stated that the “movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing.”

    However, a demographic study funded by the Gates Foundation and published in the Lancet, a medical journal, paints a much different picture. This study, conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, predicts that the global human population will peak at 9.7 billion within several decades, and then start to decline. “Once global population decline begins,” the authors write, “it will probably continue inexorably.”

    The Lancet study projects that by the end of this century, China will have shrunk by 668 million people, losing almost half of its current population, and India will lose 290 million. Despite all efforts to reverse this trend in China, including eliminating the one-child policy and providing incentives for child-rearing, couples are not cooperating; China experienced its fifth consecutive record low birth rate in 2021.

    Findings like these are the basis for Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s statement in May that “civilization is going to crumble” from the loss of so many people. Musk had previously declared at a speaking event in 2019 that “the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse.” Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba Group, also present at the event, said, “I agree.”

    Elon Musk (R), Co-founder and CEO of Tesla, and Jack Ma, co-chair of the UN High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, speak onstage during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on Aug. 29, 2019. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

    Manoj Pradhan, economist and co-author of “The Great Demographic Reversal,” predicts that population loss will bring dramatic economic, political, and societal changes. “The future is going to look very, very different from the past,” he said. Some of the things we are experiencing today, such as high inflation, labor shortages, and the sacrifice of economic well-being to protect the elderly and the vulnerable, offer a “peek into the future.”

    The most populous countries in the world today are China and India, both with about 1.4 billion people, together comprising one-third of the world’s population. The United States is a distant third, with 330 million. Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, and Japan round out the top 10.

    According to the Lancet and other studies, populations will soon start to fall throughout Asia and South America, catching up with chronic declines that are already taking place in Europe. Simultaneously, Africa will be one of the few areas that continue to grow their population, though even in Africa growth rates are falling. Nigeria is projected to gain 585 million people by the end of this century, becoming the world’s second-most populated country after India, with China falling to third and the United States falling to fourth. Japan, Russia, and Brazil will soon drop out of the top 10 altogether.

    The key discrepancy between those who project rapid expansion and those who predict decline centers on fertility rates. Dr. Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, co-authors of “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline,” combed through global fertility data and traveled across six continents speaking with people throughout Asia, Africa, South America, and the West. What they discovered concurs with the Lancet Study; both statistically and anecdotally, birth rates around the world are significantly below what the U.N. has projected.

    Driving the population collapse is what Bricker and Ibbitson call the “fertility trap.” For a country to sustain its population, women must have an average birth rate of 2.1 children. Once a country’s fertility rate falls below 2.1, it never comes back.

    In 2020, the U.S. fertility rate was 1.6, the lowest rate in America’s history and a sharp decline from 3.7 in 1960. Europe’s average fertility rate is 1.5. Among other top-10 countries, the Lancet Study reports that Japan’s fertility rate is currently 1.3. China’s fertility rate ranges from 1.3 to 1.5, depending on the source, but some estimates put it as low as 1.15.

    Russia’s fertility rate is 1.6. Deaths substantially outnumber births in Russia today, and it is projected to lose up to one-third of its population by 2050. A January Foreign Policy report stated that Russia’s loss of population means it will soon struggle to field enough soldiers for a major military conflict, likely a factor behind its recent threats to use nuclear weapons.

    In 1960, the average woman worldwide had 5.2 children. Today that number has fallen to 2.4 and is projected to decline to 2.2 by 2050, barely at replacement level across the globe. By 2100, the Lancet predicts global fertility will be 1.66, taking into account current trends of urbanization, women’s education, workforce participation, and access to birth control.

    Going from a birth rate of 5 to a birth rate below 2, writes Stanford University Economist Charles I. Jones, is the difference between “exponential growth in both population and living standards and an empty planet, in which incomes stagnate and the population vanishes.” Jones’ March 2022 report, titled “Consequences of a Declining Population,” describes what he calls the “empty planet result,” featuring not only a decline in human prosperity, but also a depletion of culture, ideas, and innovation. “Economic growth stagnates as the stock of knowledge and living standards settle down to constant values,” Jones writes. “Meanwhile, the population itself falls at a constant rate, gradually emptying the planet of people.”

    For countries below the replacement rate, immigration can help sustain their population for a time, but there are few countries that allow significant immigration and even fewer that are managing it effectively. The global drop in fertility, however, means that even countries like the United States and Canada, which have been growing their populations through immigration, may soon hit their peaks as well.

    While a future with fewer people may have environmental benefits, one demographic problem is that, as humanity shrinks, the composition of societies changes dramatically. Longevity is a key factor slowing the population collapse—the average human lifespan has increased from 51 years in 1960 to 73 years today. The Lancet predicts that by century’s end there will be 2.4 billion people older than 65, compared with only 1.7 billion under the age of 20. The median age worldwide has gone up from 22 years in 1960 to 30 years today, and is projected to increase to 41 years by 2100.

    People push baby strollers along a business street in Beijing on July 13, 2021. (WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)

    A large portion of the earth’s population will be older, beyond childbearing age, and more dependent on an ever-shrinking pool of productive young people to care for them in retirement. This inverse pyramid of the few supporting the many is most likely unsustainable. One phrase that is commonly used by researchers regarding countries like China is that they are “getting old before they are rich enough to get old.”

    Urbanization

    Demographers say there are several causes of declining fertility rates, but they point to one factor that seems to be driving the rest: urbanization. When people move from the countryside to cities, the economics of having children shifts.

    In purely monetary terms, children are no longer a source of labor for farms, etc., but rather an expense. In the United States, the average cost of raising a child to adulthood, not including college expenses, is $267,000. Another consequence of urbanization is that women become educated, employed, independent, and have better access to contraception. Regardless of which country they’re in, women react the same way, by having fewer children and having them later in life.

    According to the “Empty Planet” authors, fewer than a third of the world’s people lived in cities in 1960. Today, just over half of the world’s population are urban dwellers; by 2050, that number is expected to increase to more than two-thirds.

    Africa is projected to increase from 44 percent urbanized today to 59 percent by 2050, Asia from 52 percent to 66 percent. The rest of the world’s population is already more than 80 percent urbanized. The U.N. study predicts that China will go from having been 16 percent urban in 1960 to 80 percent urban by 2050. And China’s demographic problems are exacerbated by the fact that its one-child policy, although officially ended in 2016, has created a shortage of women today. Currently, China has 34 million more males than females, leaving a large portion of its male population now reaching adulthood without the prospect of having a family.

    Is Japan Our Future?

    Some say that if you want to see your future, look at Japan today. Japan is 92 percent urbanized and its population is shrinking by about half a million people every year. It is a fairly homogenous society with little immigration, and its marriage and birth rates have declined steadily, leaving it a “super-aged” nation with 20 percent of its population now older than 65. As Japan ages and empties, its economy has stalled and asset values have fallen.

    Japan’s Nikkei stock market index crashed during the 1990s from a high of 39,000 to 20,000, marking the “start of a long adaption from a young, fast-growing economy to an aging, slow-growth new normal,” explained economist Martin Schultz. Japanese stocks never fully recovered; three decades later, the Nikkei index is currently at 27,000.

    After rising dramatically for decades, Japan’s per capita GDP flatlined in 1995 and has not grown significantly since. With an aging and declining population, sales of adult diapers in Japan now exceed that of infant diapers, and some of the emptier places in Japan have even taken to posing life-sized dolls in public places to make these locations feel less deserted.

    Asked if Japan was our future, Pradhan said “sadly, no, because that would’ve been quite comforting. Japan had its demography turning negative while the rest of the world was swimming in labor.” Japanese companies were able to prosper through the decline by shifting labor to places with abundant populations, while workers at home developed automation to increase their productivity. Consequently, Japan so far has avoided the inflation and debt levels that shrinking and aging populations will bring.

    As countries produce less and dedicate more and more resources to caring for the elderly, Pradhan said, “we’re going to see an increase in debt-to-GDP ratios to the extent that no one has ever imagined.” This will lead to lower growth and chronic inflation. Stagflation could become a permanent feature.

    On the positive side, labor shortages will likely lead to higher wages and greater equality among working-age people. And there will be great demand for technologies to replace the more rudimentary tasks and free up human labor.

    Pradhan cited the example of the Japanese government providing subsidies for nursing homes to buy robots to carry out the simpler aspects of elderly care. “Japan’s productivity is one source of hope for all of us.” It is also possible that medical breakthroughs could improve the health of the elderly and extend peoples’ productive years, allowing retirement to be pushed later in life.

    Another thing that will be in high demand is empathy in taking care of others, which families traditionally had done for parents and grandparents. “I think that’s something that in a mechanized society, we’ve lost,” Pradhan said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 23:00

  • ​​​​​​​Axon Halts Stun-Gun Drone Project After Exodus Of Ethics Board 
    ​​​​​​​Axon Halts Stun-Gun Drone Project After Exodus Of Ethics Board 

    Taser-maker Axon Enterprise Inc. says it will “pause” stun-gun-equipped drone development for schools after some members of its ethics advisory board resigned. 

    Last Thursday, Axon announced stun-gun-equipped drones and artificial intelligence-powered surveillance systems for schools following the tragic May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Hours after the release, the company’s AI Ethics Advisory Board released a statement specifying it instructed the company to limit a pilot program for the taser drone, only to be used by police. The board said a majority voted against moving forward with the project. 

    “However, in light of feedback, we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to further engage with key constituencies to fully explore the best path forward,” Chief Executive Rick Smith said in a press release on Sunday. 

    “It is unfortunate that some members of Axon’s ethics advisory panel have chosen to withdraw from directly engaging on these issues before we heard or had a chance to address their technical questions. We respect their choice and will continue to seek diverse perspectives to challenge our thinking and help guide other technology options that we should be considering,” Smith continued.

    One of the ethics board members, Wael Abd-Almageed, told Reuters he and eight members resigned from the 12-member panel. He said many on the board had significant concerns the drone could be used beyond schools and “exacerbate racial injustice, undermine privacy through surveillance and become more lethal if other weapons were added.”

    “What we have right now is just dangerous and irresponsible, and it’s not very well thought of and it will have negative societal consequences,” he said.

    Axon, formerly known as Taser, sells body-worn cameras and policing software to most police departments across the country. 

    As for now, Axon appears to have shelved the taser drone but shows the dystopic technology coming down the pipe that could be misused by law enforcement and or government agencies against the American people. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 22:40

  • Progressive Prosecutor Movement Goes On Trial In California Primary
    Progressive Prosecutor Movement Goes On Trial In California Primary

    Authored by Cara Ding via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Three prosecutors at the forefront of the progressive movement in California will be put to the test on June 7.

    San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin looks on during a news conference in San Francisco, Calif., on May 10, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s chief prosecutor, faces a recall election in the primary. Polls suggest there is a good chance that he will lose.

    Diana Becton and Tori Berber Salazar, chief prosecutors of two counties just east of San Francisco, face uphill reelection bids against career prosecutor challengers.

    All three are founding members of the Prosecutors Alliance, a first-of-its-kind prosecutor organization pushing progressive changes in the California criminal justice system. The fourth founding member, George Gascón, is also mired by a robust recall campaign in Los Angeles.

    Boudin, a former public defender and son of incarcerated parents, was elected in 2019 on a progressive platform. He set out policies to restrict cash bail and sentencing enhancements for offenders, while ramping up criminal prosecutions against police officers.

    His term, coinciding with the pandemic years, has been marked by an uptick in property crimes and homicides, according to San Francisco police data.

    The political committee that is most active in the recall campaign, San Franciscans for Public Safety Supporting the Recall of Chesa Boudin, spent nearly $4.5 million in 2022, according to the latest campaign finance disclosures published by the San Francisco Ethics Commission. The treasurer of the committee is Mary Jung, former San Francisco Democratic Party chair.

    Four committees opposing the recall spent a combined $2.1 million in 2022. Among them, a committee set up by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California spent $263,171.

    A San Francisco Examiner poll conducted a week ago finds 56 percent of San Francisco voters in favor of recalling Boudin, 32 percent opposing the recall, and 12 percent undecided. Another poll commissioned by the Boudin campaign finds likely voters evenly split on the recall.

    Contra Costa County

    Diana Becton. (Courtesy of Diana Becton reelection campaign)

    In Contra Costa County, incumbent Diana Becton faces a reelection bid against career prosecutor Mary Knox.

    Becton, a former judge, was first elected in 2018 on a progressive platform. During her term, she stopped prosecuting certain drug possession cases, piloted a resentencing program to reduce sentencing lengths, and started a data collection project to identify racial disparities within the system.

    Knox told The Epoch Times that she disagreed with Becton’s policy to stop prosecuting a wide range of drug possession cases. Prosecuting the cases incentivizes people with serious addictions to get court-ordered treatment and reigns in drug-fueled crimes such as thefts, robberies, and burglaries, she said.

    “I think the crime will only increase until we start enforcing our laws the way they are written. It is the district attorney’s ethical duty to file charges when the facts prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a crime was committed and not let your own personal beliefs get in the way,” Knox said.

    Becton told The Epoch Times in a statement that her office focuses resources on prosecuting violent crimes.

    Knox also finds fault with the way Becton handled organized retail thefts at high-end stores. During the pandemic, Becton set a higher standard for prosecutors to charge looters, which emboldened the thieves, Knox said.

    Becton said that her office continues to file charges in organized retail thefts.

    Mary Knox. (Courtesy of Mary Knox)

    Knox raised $385,978 this year, out-raising Becton by about $143,000, according to the latest campaign finance disclosures published by Contra Costa County’s election office.

    However, far more money was spent by super PACs that have chosen to get support Becton’s campaign. These super PACs can raise and spend as much as they like, but they are prohibited from coordinating directly with any candidates.

    California Justice and Republic Safety PAC spent a whopping $963,884 on TV ads, digital ads, mailers, etc. in supporting Becton and opposing Knox in 2022, according to the latest data.

    George Soros, who has a record of supporting progressive prosecutor candidates, chipped in at least $652,000 into the PAC. Smart Justice California Action Fund put in $300,000.

    Lift Up Contra Costa Action PAC, affiliated with Tides Advocacy, also spent tens of thousands in supporting Becton.

    In support of Knox, Contra Costans for Progress and Justice, a PAC formed by a coalition of local organizations and individuals spent $228,548 in 2022. Contra Costa Deputy Sheriff’s Association is the largest donor to the PAC, contributing $190,000.

    In 2020, Knox and four other prosecutors filed a federal lawsuit accusing Becton of discriminative promotion practices. In 2019, Knox filed an unfair workplace treatment complaint alleging that Becton demoted her after she supported Becton’s challenger in the 2018 election.

    San Joaquin County

    Ron Freitas. (Courtesy of Ron Freitas)

    In San Joaquin County, incumbent Tori Verber Salazar faces a reelection bid against career prosecutor Ron Freitas.

    Salazar, a Republican career prosecutor who worked at the gang and homicide unit, was first elected in 2014 and re-elected in an uncontested race in 2018.

    In 2020, Salazar joined Boudin, Gascón, and Becton to form Prosecutors Alliance. The alliance follows the 21 principles for progressive prosecutors developed by Fair and Just Prosecution, Brennan Center for Justice, and Justice Collaborative, including ending cash bail, stopping prosecuting misdemeanors, holding police accountable, expunging criminal records, and ending the death penalty.

    In April, the District Attorney’s portion of the San Joaquin County Attorney’s Association concluded a vote of no confidence in Salazar’s ability to effectively manage the office.

    Freitas told The Epoch Times that he disagrees with the direction set forth by the Prosecutors Alliance. For instance, he thinks stopping prosecuting misdemeanors will embolden the criminals and give rise to more violent crime.

    Freitas raised $222,287 in 2022, outraising Becton by two times, according to the latest campaign finance disclosures published by San Joaquin County.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 22:20

  • Goldman Again Hikes Oil Price Target, Now Sees Barrel Hitting $140, Up From $125
    Goldman Again Hikes Oil Price Target, Now Sees Barrel Hitting $140, Up From $125

    Earlier today we reported that the biggest oil bears among the big banks, Citi and Barclays, just capitulated on their downbeat forecasts – having seen crude steamroll any and every downside catalyst thrown at it and hitting 3 month highs – and were forced to hike their price targets. Of course, their views don’t matter since anyone who had traded based on their reco to short oil is now looking for a new career; but with them out of the way, the big boys are now coming out with a new round of aggressive price hikes. To wit, late on Monday, Goldman published a report in which it again revised its price outlook (higher), saying that structural shortages remain unresolved to this day (despite a brief period in which the oil market enjoyed its first surplus since June 2020), and the bank is raising its peak summer oil price target from $125 to $140, while also hiking it oil prices targets for the rest of 2022 and 2022 by $10 higher than before.

    We excerpt some more details below.

    As Goldman’s Damien Courvalin writes in the note (available to professional subs), with fundamentals weakening in April-May, due to modest declines in Russian exports, record large SPR sales and severe Chinese lockdowns, the oil market to saw its first surplus since June 2020. However, this politically created surplus is already ending (even with the SPR still pumping a cool million every single day until the Democrats are swept out of Congress this November), driven by the ongoing recovery in Chinese demand…

    … with an 0.5 mb/d expected further decline in Russian production following the European ban.

    As such, oil’s structural deficit remains unresolved, with in fact an even tighter oil market through April than the Goldman analyst had expected. Supply remains inelastic to higher prices with core-OPEC (higher) and exempt countries (lower) production shifts broadly offsetting.

    On the demand side, the negative global growth impulse remains insufficient to rebalance inventories at current prices.

    As a result, Goldman believes that oil prices need to rally further to normalize the unsustainably low levels of global oil inventories, as well as OPEC and refining spare capacities.

    Warning that with structural shortages unresolved, Courvalin writes that the rising long-term shortages will require near-term surpluses, and that given both record low inventories and OPEC spare capacity, “the market will solve to balance in the short-term and recreate the necessary buffers in the coming year.”

    Forcing the market to balance in the short-run and create excess inventories next year therefore requires a higher oil price forecast over both periods. Based on Goldman’s estimated 3% demand elasticity and bottom-up estimated shale elasticity, as well as  accounting for the retail vs. Brent price disconnect, the bank forecasts that oil prices will need to average $135/bbl in 2H22 and $125/bbl in 2023, $10/bbl higher than previously. On a monthly basis, this points to a peak summer Brent price of $140/bbl with Goldman’s consumer Brent price expected to reach over $160/bbl.

    Finally, how is Goldman trading this upside? The bank has identified three opportunities to express this bullish view and overcome then near-term fundamental uncertainties.

    • First, long Dec-22 Gasoil, a trade that will perform even if US foreign policy leads to higher OPEC crude supply and that positions for a potential surge in prices this summer.
    • Second, Goldman reiterates its long Dec-23 Brent Top Trade recommendation (and its corollary that energy equities continue to outperform the broader market), as the multi-year supply response has yet to be triggered.
    • Third, the bank reiterates its bullish crude timespread near-term view as refinery runs ramp-up by more than the risks to Russian production and Chinese demand.

    More in the full note available only to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 22:00

  • Fall Of High-Level Party Official Who Faked Economic Data Triggers Concern Over China's Economy
    Fall Of High-Level Party Official Who Faked Economic Data Triggers Concern Over China’s Economy

    Authored by Sophia Lam via The Epoch Times,

    China’s top disciplinary watchdog announced on May 31 that it has removed a former top official in eastern Jiangsu Province from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the regime’s public office.

    Zhang Jinghua, former deputy CCP chief of Jiangsu, was accused of “faking economic figures for personal promotion and meddling in market activities in violation of relevant rules,” among other charges of corruption, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in a notice on May 31. It did not provide any specifics for the accusation.

    Zhang is one of the most recent CCP members of the 19th central committee—the CCP’s top governing body—to fall.

    One day prior, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) held a virtual meeting in which its director, Kang Yi, said that the problem of statistical falsification still exists in China.

    On May 27, the NBS stated that 126 lower-level officials in Hebei, Henan, and Guizhou provinces had been punished for fabricating statistical data.

    This wave of purging data fabrication began in March when the CCDI wrote on its website that some local officials had falsified data to create an illusion of development and manipulated statistical data by “reminding” and ordering relevant departments to make the necessary changes.

    Foreign investment banks have already cut their China growth forecasts after the regime’s COVID-19 lockdowns hit the economy of Shanghai hard, with Nomura predicting growth of 3.9 percent.

    Statistics to Suit Party’s Political Needs

    For the CCP, statistics have three functions, according to Wang He, a China current affairs commentator in a recent interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times: to support decision-making, to serve politics, and to brainwash the people. But the first function is nominal, he said.

    “To effectively support decision-making, the authenticity, timeliness, and completeness of statistical data must be of top priority,” Wang said.

    But the norm in CCP officialdom, Wang said, is to use data to serve the party’s political purposes. He noted that fake data assists CCP officials in their promotion through the ranks, which in turn spurs them to continue forging data for further promotion.

    “The CCP uses false data to fool the people that the situation in China is always great, as lies are a basic element of the CCP’s rule,” Wang said.

    The recent purging of false data by the CCP now is again for political reasons, Wang added, rather than motivated by economic transparency, as the regime is in the critical months before the CCP’s 20th national congress to be held in autumn for political reshuffling.

    China’s GDP Figures ‘Man-made,’ Unreliable: Premier

    Chinese Premier Li Keqiang participates in a press conference at Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing, China, on Nov. 21, 2019. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

    The Chinese regime has long been criticized for massaging its economic data, including GDP figures, population, and other indicators.

    Chinese premier Li Keqiang, then party secretary of northeastern Liaoning Province, reportedly said to Clark T. Randt, Jr., former U.S. ambassador to China, that China’s “GDP figures are ‘man-made’ and therefore unreliable,” over dinner on March 12, 2007, as disclosed by Wikileaks.

    He also acknowledged the economic crisis facing China in 2020 when he told reporters at a presser on May 28 that “there are 600 million people whose monthly income is only 1,000 yuan ($140).”

    China’s population is 1.439 billion; 600 million people is roughly 41.7 percent of the total population.

    In January 2017, Chen Qiufa, then governor of Liaoning Province, confirmed at the provincial people’s congress that the cities and counties of Liaoning had problems with falsifying financial data from 2011 to 2014, as reported by the CCP’s mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency.

    In January 2018, Inner Mongolia revealed that its economic data was substantially falsified—its 2016 industrial output was substantially inflated by 40 percent and that fake growth amounted to 290 billion yuan (roughly $43.5 billion).

    In addition to Liaoning and Inner Mongolia, Jilin Province and Tianjin City were forced to revise their data after they were found to have inflated or manipulated economic statistics over the past few years, according to a Bloomberg report.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 21:40

  • Americans 'Deeply Pessimistic' About US Economy, Inflation
    Americans ‘Deeply Pessimistic’ About US Economy, Inflation

    Last week President Biden insisted that “more Americans feel financially comfortable” since he took office.

    Yet, according to a new poll, 83% of Americans are pessimistic about the US economy – describing it as “poor or not so good,” while 35% say they aren’t satisfied with their financial situation – the highest level of dissatisfaction in the 50 years since the Wall Street Journal-NORC (University of Chicago) poll began.

    The survey found Americans in a sour mood and registering some of the highest levels of economic dissatisfaction in years. The pessimism extended beyond the current economy to include doubts about the nation’s political system, its role as a global leader and its ability to help most people achieve the American dream. –WSJ

    The Journal frames sentiment as “deeply pessimistic,” and says Americans view the nation as sharply divided over its most important values.

    Only 27% of the 1,071 adults polled say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living – a 20% drop from last year, while 46% said they don’t.

    Meanwhile, 38% said their financial situation had gotten worse in the past few years – marking the second time since the 2007-2009 recession that more than 30% of respondents said their finances were worse off, according to 50 years of data.

    Some 60% said they were pessimistic about the ability for most people to achieve the American dream.

    “The promise was this was a place where what you were born into did not determine who you could be. But I think we’ve failed deeply at that,” said Julie Olsen Edwards, an 83-year-old Soquel, Calif., retired community college teacher. “I find myself choking up saying it.”

    What’s driving the results? Inflation, of course.

    The survey results show that high inflation in particular is driving the dim economic outlook, said Jennifer Benz, vice president of public affairs and media research at NORC. Inflation is running at close to its fastest pace in four decades, at an 8.3% annual rate in April, one of several factors weighing on consumers. Households are digging into savings to support their spending, the Commerce Department has said, and the S&P 500 nearly closed in bear territory recently. -WSJ

    The poll does have a bright spot – namely the labor market, with the unemployment rate close to a multi-decade low at 3.6%. Around 2/3 of those polled said it would be ‘somewhat or very easy’ to find a new job with around the same income and benefits – the highest % since 1977.

    That said, the overall results of the poll suggest that Democrats ‘face a dispirited electorate heading into November’s elections,’ as respondents’ despondent view of things suggests that ‘a connective tissue of pessimism underlies Americans’ economic and social attitudes.”

    According to the poll, 86% said that Americans are ‘greatly divided’ when it comes to key values, while over half said they expect the divisions to worsen over the next five years.

    “I’m angry,” said Robert Benda, a 69-year-old retired telecommunications worker who lives in Berthoud, Colo., who says freedom is the most important American value, which Democrats controlling Washington are trying to take away. “Our government is doing what’s right for their special-interest groups, and everybody else be damned.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 21:20

  • US-Backed Kurds Offer To Work With Assad Government To Resist Turkish Invasion
    US-Backed Kurds Offer To Work With Assad Government To Resist Turkish Invasion

    Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

    The most enduring US ally in the Syrian War, the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are very publicly interested in resisting the latest round of planned Turkish invasions of northern Syria, saying they are open to coordination with the Syrian government’s troops to do so.

    Turkey has repeatedly invaded northern Syria and northern Iraq to have a run at Kurdish factions, declaring them “terrorists” in both. The operations in Syria aim at the SDF’s parent organization, the YPG.

    AFP via Getty Images

    The most recent threatened Turkish operation seeks to establish a 30 km “security zone” within Syria. This is roughly in line with past plans threatened, mostly with an eye toward propping up Turkish-backed rebels in the area.

    Syria opposes such raids because that “zone” becomes rebel territory, and the SDF oppose it because it’s carved out of their territory. SDF leaders suggest the Syrians would particularly help if they used air defenses against the Turkish warplanes. According to Middle East Eye:

    The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) would be “open” to coordinating with Syrian government troops to fend off any Turkish invasion of the north, the head of the US-backed militia has said. 

    Mazloum Abdi also told Reuters on Sunday that Damascus should use its air defense systems against Turkish planes. 

    The US-armed SDF are a formidable on the ground force, but were an auxiliary of the US in fighting ISIS, and envision the same role with Syria in resisting Turkey.

    Turkey backed the rebels in Syria almost immediately at the beginning, envisioning the Sunni Arab-dominated rebels being more hostile to Kurdish autonomy, and leaving the YPG in a weakened position.

    Ironically, Turkey’s pro-rebel position set Islamists up in north Syria, and when the US got involved, they backed the YPG in resisting those groups, leaving the YPG and the SDF as a stronger group than they likely were before the war began. Now, they may find themselves natural allies to Syria, and even further entrenched as an autonomous faction in northeast Syria.

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    Turkey, by contrast, has found its border far less stable for its involvement in the war, and its relationship with Syria broken. The rebels plainly aren’t going to win the war, and Turkey will have to deal with the Assad government they worked to undermine.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 21:00

  • Top Gun Inspires Patriotic Fervor As Search Trends To "Become Fighter Pilot" Soar  
    Top Gun Inspires Patriotic Fervor As Search Trends To “Become Fighter Pilot” Soar  

    “Top Gun: Maverick” has raked in a whopping $548.6 million since it premiered in theaters ten days ago. The Tom Cruise sequel to 1986’s Top Gun has shattered multiple box-office records and is one of the most popular movies on multiple streaming platforms. The patriotic action film has served as a call to action for some Americans as internet search trends for becoming a fighter pilot soar to new heights.

    Shortly after Top Gun: Maverick was released on May 27, the internet search trend “how to become a fighter pilot” went absolutely parabolic, hitting a new record high. The movie, or perhaps US military propaganda, produced by Hollywood, has spurred patriotic fervor, something the military has desperately needed as recruiting in the last several years has been dismal. 

    Last week, we pointed out that recruiting tables for the Navy were popping up in the lobbies of movie theaters showing the patriotic film, a move certainly made by the service to boost enlisting numbers by playing off the emotions of moviegoers. 

    Maj. Gen. Edward W. Thomas, commander of Air Force Recruiting Service, told Fox News the military would use Top Gun: Maverick to boost recruitment. A similar phenomenon was seen during the first release of Top Gun during the Cold War.  

    “We did get a good recruiting bump from ‘Top Gun’ in 1986 when I went to the theaters and saw ‘Top Gun’ with my friends in ’86,” Thomas said. “I was already excited about military aviation, but I got even more excited. 

    “We expect ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ to do the same,” he added. “You know, whether people want to aim high or fly Navy, we just want them to get excited about serving the nation in some capacity.”

    The release of the film and soaring search trends of how to become a fighter pilot (remember, most enlisted don’t earn their wings but rather become maintenance crews or security forces or logistics) come as war in Ukraine crosses the 100-day mark and risks mount of further escalation. 

    The question remains if the movie will spur a new wave of enlistments as the US and NATO allies continue to resupply Ukraine with weapons and show no signs of backing down. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 20:40

  • Subpoena Wars: Washington Is On A Path To Mutually Assured Destruction
    Subpoena Wars: Washington Is On A Path To Mutually Assured Destruction

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in The Hill on the subpoena war raging in Washington as the Jan. 6th Committee prepares for its first public hearings this week. This weekend, the Justice Department announced that it would not be prosecuting former chief of staff Mark Meadows and social media director Dan Scavino. As noted below, they took a wiser course of limited cooperation.

    The refusal to prosecute triggered a backlash from Rep. Adam Schiff who wanted to see more criminal charges out of the Biden Administration.

    Here is the column:

    In an initial court appearance following his arrest on Friday for contempt of Congress, former Trump adviser Peter Navarro stood before an obviously concerned federal magistrate. “Every time that you’re speaking,” Judge Zia Faruqui tried to explain, “it could mean potentially putting yourself at risk.”

    It was entirely sensible advice about self-protection — and it was promptly ignored. Navarro, 72, went directly outside and blasted the charge against him, the Democrats, and the FBI.

    Judge Faruqui’s concern was almost charmingly naive. We live in an age of the sensational, not the sensible. The Navarro case is just one skirmish in a subpoena war engulfing Washington. No one seems to be thinking much beyond the next election.

    In the buildup to next week’s start of public hearings by the House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 investigative committee, Democrats have subpoenaed Republican colleagues and held former Trump officials in contempt. Then, instead of simply arranging for Navarro to voluntarily surrender, the Justice Department made a dramatic public arrest of him at an airport and dragged him off to jail in handcuffs.

    These subpoena fights seem to be unfolding with little consideration given to the potential costs, either for Washington institutions or the individuals involved.

    Democrats circle the firing squad

    A variety of polls show, according to the political site FiveThirtyEight, that “Americans are moving on from Jan. 6th — even if Congress hasn’t.” With waning interest in the investigation, congressional Democrats and some in the media have pushed “blockbuster” new disclosures. However, many of their disclosures simply confirm what is already known: Then-President Trump and close associates wanted to challenge Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election and, instead, force Congress to select the next president. I wrote about that likely strategy just a couple weeks after the election, but that fruitless effort turned into a full-fledged riot in the Capitol.

    The House hearings are likely to add details that damn Trump for fueling the riot and failing to immediately call on the rioters to pull back. Yet many of us reached the condemnation stage years ago; I reached that point while Trump was still speaking on Jan. 6, 2020, and opposed his efforts to challenge the certification.

    The problem is not that the committee will move forward with hearings or a report. Despite its partisan composition and agenda, there is always a value to greater transparency about what occurred on that tragic day. The problem is the effort to ratchet up interest through conflict. The committee has taken the rare step of subpoenaing GOP colleagues, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and threatening to hold them in contempt like Navarro and other former Trump officials.

    Despite years of bitter political divisions, the two parties have long avoided using subpoenas against each other. It was viewed as a step toward mutually assured destruction if House members unleashed inherent investigatory powers on each other. House Democratic leaders, however, shattered that long tradition of restraint despite the fact that they may gain little from the effort. What they will lose is a long-standing detente on the use of subpoenas against colleagues — and they are creating a new precedent for such internal subpoenas just months before they could find themselves in the minority. Today’s hunters then could become the hunted, if Republicans claim the same license after November’s elections.

    The House already is a dysfunctional body that allows for little compromise or dialogue between parties. The targeting of fellow members now will remove one of the few remaining restraints on unbridled partisan rage.

    Justice delayed or justice denied?

    Attorney General Merrick Garland is well on his way to setting a record for the prosecution of congressional contempt. The Justice Department has consistently refused to submit congressional contempt cases to grand juries, including a flagrant act of contempt by Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder. There is ample basis for this charge as well. It is not the substance but the selectivity and speed of the charges that is notable. Navarro was only held in contempt in April and is now being prosecuted by a department long known as the place where  contempt sanctions go to die. Yet, the Navarro case could quickly take a wild turn.

    Navarro claims he offered to compromise with the committee but that he was asserting his right to remain silent. Putting aside such mitigating circumstances, the problem for the Justice Department could be the calendar: Despite moving at an uncharacteristically fast pace, the Navarro case likely will extend beyond November’s midterms. If Republicans retake the House, they could seek to retroactively rescind the House’s contempt vote on Navarro.

    Technically, the Justice Department could insist that the act of contempt and the referral vote occurred under the prior Congress. Given the issuance of an indictment, the Biden administration could insist on pursuing the prosecution even if the alleged victim is no longer claiming to be harmed. And some Democrats likely would file to support his continued prosecution, even if a new majority of the House filed to seek dismissal of the case.

    This prosecution and any appeal is likely to extend beyond the duration of the House committee. Last November, the Justice Department indicted former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on the same grounds; his trial will not occur until July. That will be the first such prosecution since 1982, when Rita Lavelle, a former Reagan-era EPA official, was indicted for failing to answer congressional questions. (Lavelle was acquitted of that but then later convicted of lying to Congress.)

    The Biden administration did not have to act on this before the November elections. The statute of limitations for contempt of Congress is five years. If it hoped to get a quick plea and cooperation from Navarro, his defiant courthouse colloquy makes that less likely. The question is whether it will pursue these two misdemeanors — which could result in as little as 30 days and no more than a year in jail — if the next House seeks to rescind the contempt referral.

    Self-defense or self-immolation?

    That brings us back to Navarro. Judge Faruqui encouraged Navarro to consider the basis of his self-defense when Navarro seemed intent on self-immolation. In addition to announcing that he would represent himself, Navarro made an extended statement on the steps of the courthouse in his defense. He then incongruously said he could not discuss “legal matters” before plunging again into his legal defense points.

    Navarro is known as someone who tends toward the path of greatest resistance. In a city known for highly managed criminal defendants with legions of lawyers and PR advisers, Navarro was a captivating figure as he held forth outside the courthouse. Yet for all that he has in terms of personal guts, he lacks legal authority. The problem is that even as he claimed executive privilege to avoid answering any of the House committee’s questions, he was publishing a book and giving interviews on the very subject matter of the subpoenas. It was an ill-considered course that may make him an icon on the right but could also make him a convicted defendant. As he repeatedly pitched his book outside the court, it seemed clear that his priority was not acquittal.

    Navarro at one point asked, “Who are these people?” I have found myself asking the same question about all of the players in this subpoena war. Institutions and individuals alike seem to be in a crazed fit with little concern for how their actions may play out beyond the next election. But the greatest costs will be borne by the public, if our legal proceedings become as performative and shallow as our politics.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 20:20

  • US Moves To Seize 2 Luxury Jets From Roman Abramovich Valued North Of $400 Million
    US Moves To Seize 2 Luxury Jets From Roman Abramovich Valued North Of $400 Million

    On Monday the US moved to seize two luxury private jets from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. It marks one of the greatest single attempted seizures of a Russian oligarch’s personal assets in the wake of the Putin-ordered military invasion of Ukraine, at a total value north of $400 million.

    “U.S. authorities moved Monday to seize two luxury jets — a $60 million Gulfstream and a $350 million aircraft believed to be one of the world’s most expensive private airplanes — after linking both to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich,” The Associated Press reports. One of the planes reportedly has an elaborate paper trail which attempted to shield and obscure Abramovich’s ownership, the DOJ investigators uncovered.

    Illustrative: example of an interior room on a custom Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

    Before it underwent lavish upgrades and customizations, the initial value of his giant Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, currently believed to be parked in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was less than $100 million. While it perhaps could be easier for the much smaller Gulfstream to evade the long arm of US law, the Boeing Dreamliner is without doubt too big to hide, unless it makes its way to Russia.

    The warrant, signed by a federal magistrate judge Monday, indicates the aircraft are in violation of US sanctions given they were moved within a designated time period after sanctions took effect but without a US exemption license.

    “In explaining the move to seize the planes, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft and the Gulfstream G650ER plane are subject to seizure because they have been moved between March 4 and March 15 without licenses being obtained in violation of sanctions placed against Russia,” AP explains.

    “According to the affidavit, Abramovich controlled the Gulfstream through a series of shell companies. The plane, it said, is believed to have been in Moscow since March 15,” the report added.

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    And according to a profile last year of Abramovich’s huge Dreamliner in Forbes Russia, “For personal needs, such huge aircraft are used very rarely” and often the aviation industries of entire countries don’t have one.

    The Dec.2021 profile detailed:

    The Dreamliner, which Abramovich bought, was built in June 2015 for private Swiss airline Privateair but was never handed over to him. In 2019, its equipment began in accordance with the requests of the Russian billionaire. The plane reportedly can to carry up to 50 passengers: 10 seats are provided for security, 10 for staff and 30 for guests, says a Forbes source in the aviation market.

    The flight range of the “dreamliner” is 18,418 km (with 25 passengers on board), the cabin area is 224.4 sq.m. The operator of the new vessel is the same as the previous one, owned by Abramovich – Global Jet Concept. At the same time, unlike its previous Boeing 767 aircraft, which received the code name “Bandit” due to the black “mask” on the cockpit windows, the new vessel is painted with extreme restraint. “It’s fashionable now – it helps to attract less attention,” the source explains.

    Given his high visibility in the West, it’s perhaps not a surprise that Abramovich’s assets (which, until very recently, included Chelsea Football Club, the popular English Premier League team which he recently placed in the hands of a trust ahead of a sale) have been the focus of particular attention.

    Abramovich yacht Eclipse left St Maarten in March. Source: Alamy

    According to a recent FT report, he has at least five mega-yachts worth a combined total of about $1 billion. Two of the most expensive ones ended up in Turkey after fleeing European sanctions. At least one is believed to be in Montenegro.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 20:00

  • Bitcoin Is The Ultimate Representation Of Energy
    Bitcoin Is The Ultimate Representation Of Energy

    Authored by ‘Freedom Money’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    Love, violence and money are interrelated through their connection to energy. As the digital representation of energy, Bitcoin offers a better store of energy.

    “’But how is [Bitcoin] digital energy; how do you get it back to being energy?’ The answer is, I send a billion-dollar block of it to Tokyo, I run it through an exchange … I convert it back into yen and I take the yen and I buy electricity from the Tokyo Power Company.” 

    – Michael Saylor (WBD431)

    While I think most Bitcoiners generally agree with the concept of bitcoin as digital energy, I have seen some pushback that this is not consistent with physics, is just a metaphor or is just plain false. I started writing this paper with the intention to argue that all money actually represents a store of energy and bitcoin is simply the best money available. However, I started finding interesting parallels with both love and violence as alternate methods of channeling energy, so I expanded the scope of this paper to offer my thoughts on these areas as well.

    First, let’s start with energy. What is energy? According to Britannica:

    “Energy, in physics: the capacity for doing work. It may exist in potential, kinetic, thermal, electrical, chemical, nuclear, or other various forms. All forms of energy are associated with motion. For example, any given body has kinetic energy if it is in motion. A tensioned device such as a bow or spring, though at rest, has the potential for creating motion; it contains potential energy because of its configuration.”

    When it comes to what things humans typically think of as energy, there is certainly something to say for our ability to control or direct that energy. Before electrical applications were invented, electricity was probably not commonly thought of as a form of energy. Thus, the energy conversion device is perhaps just as important as the energy itself.

    Modern humans have invented devices that allow us to use and scale all sorts of different types of energy. However, our original energy conversion device was, of course, the ability of the human body to convert the chemical energy in our food into kinetic energy that we inherently control. Today, despite having access to other sources of energy that have scaled immensely, human energy remains extremely valuable.

    Despite our rather limited energy output, humans have evolved to be wildly efficient. With the assumption that an adult human worker uses 2,000 calories (food) per day, we can calculate the rate at which we can control our own energy:

    Human energy calculation

    At a rate of 98.5W, a human who works 40 hours per week, performs approximately 200 kWh of work for their employer in one year. In comparison to electrical energy conversion devices, this is an exceedingly minuscule amount of work. However, if this human has an annual salary of $50,000, the value of their energy output would be $250/kWh. The extremely high value of human energy is largely due to our ability to learn, adapt, engineer solutions and harness other forms of energy to provide valuable solutions to society.

    Note, however, that the energy delivered by each human is exclusively controlled by the individual. I am the only person who can choose to raise or lower my arm; therefore, I am the only person who has control over the actions of my chemical energy conversion device (body). Because of this, humanity is continuously looking for answers to the question: “How do we convince other humans to channel their energy to a specific application?”

    Our species has discovered many ways to motivate humans to channel their energy toward a specific task. In this article I will be discussing the following three broad categories:

    • Love (family, friends, God)

    • Violence (force, threats, war)

    • Money (barter, metals, fiat, bitcoin)

    LOVE

    Love has evolved as part of human society and is the reason that parents choose to use their energy to meet the needs of their children. Love generally maximizes the efficiency of human energy because people who are motivated to cooperate via love genuinely want their work to achieve the best possible outcome. Love is a voluntary, decentralized means of channeling human energy. Each member of society can choose to love or not love another human; love cannot be forced.

    However, love is very challenging to scale. One possible reason for this could be related to Dunbar’s number, which is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Personally, I believe that connection to God allows humans to scale love beyond Dunbar’s number, however, I will reserve my thoughts on this topic for another time.

    VIOLENCE

    Violence, or the threat of violence, can also be used to channel human energy. Controlling energy through violence has its roots in the evolution of life on this planet. One attribute of violence that has made it such an effective means of forcing human cooperation is that violence scales. Specifically, violence can be scaled by engineering weapons that leverage human energy or incorporate more powerful forms of energy, i.e., gun powder, fission, fusion, etc. In addition, unlike love, violence can be stored and stockpiled for future use, offering the ability to scale the threat of violence as a means of channeling human energy.

    However, violence is a non-voluntary, centralized solution to scale cooperation. Violence centralizes power because it favors those with the most powerful weapons, which grants them access to the most human energy and innovation, which enhances their ability to engineer even more powerful weapons. This centralization has led to non-optimal outcomes for humanity as a whole and is generally an inefficient means of directing human energy. Forced labor will never be as efficient as voluntary labor, and centralized decision making will never be better than decentralized decision making.

    MONEY

    Which brings us to money. The invention of money allowed humans to scale cooperation beyond Dunbar’s number without the need for love or violence. Money motivates humans to use their energy toward someone else’s goals by promising them that the money they were paid for their work can be used in the future to deploy the energy of other humans. Similar to violence, money can also be stored and stockpiled for future use. Money is a battery for human energy; the battery is charged as you work for someone else, and is discharged as someone else works for you. Money, therefore, represents stored human energy.

    Unlike violence, money allowed for systems of decentralized decision-making to develop. Money enabled economies to emerge where humans all voluntarily participate in determining the value of different forms of labor. Decisions about what a society needs could therefore be set by the market, where each human decides what they are willing to pay for a good or service. In comparison to violence, money is a significantly more efficient scaling solution for motivating humans to channel their work toward a specific goal.

    However, all forms of money can be corrupted through violence. Money, like life, can be stolen using violence. Decentralized markets can become centralized when violence, or the threat of violence, is used to control human actions. In earlier societies, when governments wanted to use violence to accumulate wealth, they needed to physically take the money from their citizens or from other external entities. Largely after the invention of nuclear weapons, when the threat of violence and the cost of war started reaching unimaginably enormous magnitudes, governments started relying on money printing more heavily to continue acquiring wealth. Paper money that can be printed radically changed the scale at which governments could acquire and deploy money. Increasing the number of monetary units devalues all of the existing money in a given economy and transfers that value to the entity in control of the money supply.

    Note, however, that the amount of work that can be done with this stolen value will decay over time due to price inflation. As the newly printed money enters an economy, the decentralized market pricing mechanisms will take the new supply of money into account and raise all prices relative to how much individuals value their own human energy. Forcing the participants in an economy to reprice goods and services on a continuous basis also offers the opportunity to influence the value each human places on their own labor. Depressing a population, for example, may lead to participants ascribing less value to their own work and will result in lower relative repricing of goods and services after an inflationary event. When wages don’t keep up with price inflation, this can be viewed as a signal that market participants are attributing less value to the deployment of their own energy.

    Although governments may earn money through taxation by providing services determined to be valuable by their citizens, i.e., protecting physical property rights, the majority of monetary energy controlled by modern governments is stolen primarily using the threat of violence to maintain their control over the money printer.

    ENTER BITCOIN

    Users of bitcoin — like users of all other forms of money — can be subjected to violence, or the threat of violence, as a means of forcibly acquiring their wealth. However, the violence needed to forcibly acquire bitcoin from an individual who controls their own private keys must be applied with extreme precision. Neither bullets nor weapons of mass destruction are effective methods of violence for stealing bitcoin. I would argue that the forms of violence required to forcibly acquire bitcoin don’t scale at all in comparison to traditional violence. Therefore, bitcoin is strongly resistant to theft via violence.

    It is also not possible for bitcoin’s value to be stolen via supply inflation. Although the supply of bitcoin in circulation is increasing over time (albeit at an exponentially decreasing rate), the inflation rate is public knowledge and can be accounted for when pricing goods and services. Further, there is 100% market consensus on what bitcoin’s supply inflation will be used for. Newly-minted units of bitcoin are exclusively used to subsidize payments to bitcoin miners for the security and transaction processing services they provide.

    During the early stages of bitcoin’s existence as money, all bitcoin holders contribute to Bitcoin’s security and transaction processing budget via an exponentially decreasing inflation tax. Currently, about 98% of miner revenue is supplied by Bitcoin’s 1.74% annual inflation rate, i.e., block reward, which will be cut in half approximately every four years. In the future, Bitcoin’s security budget will be paid for entirely by market participants who transact over the Bitcoin network, i.e., transaction fees. The block reward is therefore a temporary measure designed to subsidize security while Bitcoin is still in its youth; it would be more accurate to view this form of taxation as a collective payment for a valuable service, rather than theft.

    In conclusion, humans have invented all sorts of energy conversion devices to accomplish our goals. However, humans remain one of the most efficient, flexible and valuable sources of energy conversion available. Therefore, controlling the flow of human-supplied energy remains a fixture of human civilization. Although each human controls their own energy, we can be motivated using methods such as love, violence and money to work together.

    Historically, love has failed to scale in comparison to violence and money. Although violence has proven to scale, it is inefficient and does not optimally orient human progress due to centralization of power and decision-making. Although money offers a more efficient scaling solution for channeling human energy, it has historically been susceptible to violence at scale and fiat based monetary units can be stolen via inflation. Bitcoin is a new form of money that cannot be forcibly acquired using violence at scale and cannot be stolen through inflation.

    Bitcoin represents an opportunity to protect money from the influence of violence, abolish inflation without consensus and restore high quality decentralized market signals. It will take time for society to realize these benefits as bitcoin is still young in comparison to other forms of money and is not currently widely adopted across humanity. If more people start to understand that money represents human energy, I believe humanity will start to demand better money, and when they do, bitcoin will be here for them.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 19:40

  • J6 Committee Dems Hire TV Exec To Literally 'Produce' Hearings
    J6 Committee Dems Hire TV Exec To Literally ‘Produce’ Hearings

    Congressional Democrats on the January 6th Committee have hired former ABC News President James Goldston to “produce” this month’s slate of hearings on the Capitol riot, according to Fox News‘ Chad Pergram, who added that Goldston will “have a hand in all of the hearings this month.”

    Goldman will be “particularly involved” in efforts by the committee to make the prime-time hearings – both this Thursday and another later this month – “TV friendly.”

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    On Sunday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that the Democrats would present a “comprehensive narrative” at the J6 Committee’s first public hearing this week.

    “Our goal is to present the narrative of what happened in this country, how close we came to losing our democracy, what led to the violence,” he told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” adding: “Americans I think know a great deal already — they have seen a number of bombshells already [and] there’s a great deal they haven’t seen. But perhaps the most important is the public has not seen it woven together, how one thing led to another.”

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    It’s all part of the show, folks!

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 19:20

  • Joseph Stiglitz On The Minimum Wage: A Disgrace
    Joseph Stiglitz On The Minimum Wage: A Disgrace

    Submitted by Walter E. Block, Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University

    In his 1993 introductory economic textbook, Economics, Columbia University economics professor Joseph Stiglitz gives the usual dismal science analysis of minimum wage legislation: it creates unemployment for those least likely to be able to bear it: unskilled workers whose productivity is below the level stipulated by law. It hurts the very people who, ostensibly, this enactment was meant to help.

    In his own words, from this textbook:

    “Price floors have predictable effects too…. If government attempts to raise the minimum wage higher than the equilibrium wage, the demand for workers will be reduced and the supply increased. There will be an excess supply of labor. Of course, those who are lucky enough to get a job will be better off at the higher wage than at the market equilibrium wage; but there are others, who might have been employed at the lower market equilibrium wage, who cannot find employment and are worse off.”

    All well and good you say? Not so, very much not so. For this 2001 Nobel Prize winning economist has also come out in favor not for the elimination of this pernicious legislation, nor, even, to leave it alone and hope that inflation can reduce its real value (thus unemploying fewer unskilled workers), but for an increase in the level mandated.

    Specifically, he called for a boost in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour.

    Talk about cognitive dissonance.

    If there were a Nobel Prize for that, Stiglitz would surely win it. You can’t get too much further apart from what this world-famous economist wrote in his textbook and what he calls for in the real world.

    How does Stiglitz reconcile his support of the minimum wage law with his textbook’s denigration of this enactment? That, indeed, is the $64,000 question.

    One possibility is that various economists such as David Card and Alan Krueger have failed to discern any unemployment effects for low wage employees upon an increase in the minimum wage. But that hardly supports Professor Stiglitz’s textbook treatment of this law. What can we say in behalf of the wisdom his textbook seeks to impart to undergraduate students? The answer would be that Card and Krueger and their ilk should dig deeper; and/or not confine themselves to slight increases in this legislation.  Rather they should compare states of the world where it exists at something like $7.25 per hours at today’s prices with its utter and total absence.

    Another ploy sometimes used by supposed economic sophisticates is the argument from monopsony. No, that is not a mis-spelling of monopoly, sometimes characterized as a single seller of a good or service. Monopsony, in sharp contrast, is a single buyer of an item, for example, in this case, labor. The argument from monopsony is the answer to this attempted reductio ad absurdum against the minimum wage law: if it is so great, why not raise it to $1,000,000 per hour, and then we would all be rich? To the extent there is monopsony in the economy, there are strict limits as to how high the minimum may go, before negatively and heavily impacting the labor force via unemployment. Yes to $15 per hour, and, maybe, even $25 per hour, but certainly not to anything very much higher than that; certainly not to anything like millions of dollars hourly.

    But the big problem with this argument is that monopsony, if it exists at all, must necessarily be limited to cases where one or at most a very few firms (oligopsony) hire a certain type of laborer. Possible examples include professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey stars, engineers, chemists, physicists, computer nerds, movie stars, rock musicians, etc. Does this sound like workers who earn in the realm of the minimum wage? Of course not. Thus, this argument too, fails.

    We are left with a big mystery: how can a public figure like Joseph Stiglitz get away with the public embarrassment of blatantly contradicting himself? At the very least, he ought to repudiate what he wrote in his textbook, if he keeps on supporting the minimum wage law. Or, far better yet, he should cease and desist from his present advocacy of this pernicious legislation

    (On a personal note, the value of my Ph.D. degree from Columbia University in 1972 has taken a hit thanks to this man occupying a prominent professorial role there).

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 19:00

  • Texas Power Demand To Hit Record High Amid Sweltering Summer Heat  
    Texas Power Demand To Hit Record High Amid Sweltering Summer Heat  

    Texans are cranking up their air conditions this week as high temperatures across the state are forecasted to exceed triple digits and could strain the state’s power grid. Last week, Houston-based energy firm Criterion Research warned of the incoming surge in power demand. 

    According to Reuters, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), Texas’ main grid operator, expects power demand to reach 75,195 megawatts (MW) on Tuesday, which would surpass August 2019 levels marking a record high. 

    “ERCOT weather-adjusted loads have been increasing rapidly since mid-2021,” said Morris Greenberg, senior North American power analysis manager at S&P Global Commodity Insights.

    As soon as Tuesday, average high temperatures across the state could reach the upper 90s Fahrenheit and breach 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas. Bloomberg forecasts show high temperatures could surge between 100-106 Fahrenheit through mid-month — scorching hot weather will lead to businesses and residents boosting cooling demand. 

    The problem for Texans isn’t just the threat of power blackouts from a strained power grid this summer but soaring energy bills due to the rising cost of power generation. 

    The average price-per-kilowatt hour of electricity for Texas residents has increased 70 percent year-over-year from June 2021, according to The Dallas Morning News’ Mitchell Sherman, who compared new rates offered by state power providers in 2022 to those consumers were offered in 2021. According to Power to Choose, a site through which Texas consumers can compare power plans, Lone Star State residents signing new contracts in June 2022 are paying 18.48 cents per kilowatt hour—10.5 cents more than the averaged rate they were paying in June, 2021 (7.98 cents). — Houston Chronicle

    Power bills for businesses and residents could be a “real sticker shock,” AARP Texas Associate State Director Tim Morstad told Sherman. Rising power bills are primarily due to the soaring price of natural gas. About 45% of Texas’ grid is powered by natgas. 

    ERCOT has said with wind and solar plants boosting power resources, it has enough 91,392 MW of capacity, though when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, the grid could experience energy shortfalls. 

    Texans should be prepared for grid strain and soaring electricity bills. Power grids in the westernmost states warned last month that power-generating capacity might struggle to keep up with demand amid threats of heat waves this summer, resulting in possible rolling blackouts. 

    High inflation and risks of power blackouts sound like many Americans this summer will be experiencing what it’s like to live in a third-world country. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 18:40

  • Watch: Matt Walsh Film Forces Academics To Confront Their Hypocrisies On Gender Identity
    Watch: Matt Walsh Film Forces Academics To Confront Their Hypocrisies On Gender Identity

    Authored by Alexa Schwerha via Campus Reform,

    In Matt Walsh’s Daily Wire documentary What is a Woman?, academics defend their advocacy for radical gender ideology with at least one admitting to having encouraged chemical castration.

    Michelle Forcier, assistant dean of medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, abruptly ended the interview after Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh stated that one drug used in sex reassignment surgery doubles to castrate sex offenders.

    Walsh was referring to Lupron, a testosterone suppressant. Lupron is often used to cure endometrial or prostate cancer but is also castrate predators.

    Now, it is also known for aiding the transition from a woman to a man.

    “You know what, I’m not sure we should continue with this interview because it seems like it’s going in a particular direction,” Forcier said.

    She then accused Walsh of using “malignant” language by referring to hormone suppressants as “drugs.” According to Forcier, such rhetoric is “harmful” to transgender children.

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    Forcier is also a pediatrician.

    Additionally, University of Tennessee Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Patrick Grzanka told Walsh that asking for a definition of “woman” is “essentialist.”

    “It’s a really simple answer,” Grzanka said. “It’s someone who identifies as a woman.”

    Grzanka refused Walsh’s challenge to define the term without using it in the sentence.

    According to Grzanka, gender and sex are conflated terms, and each person is entitled to his or her own “truth.”

    Walsh countered the latter, stating that there is only one, objective truth. Grazanka told Walsh that his understanding of the term “truth” made him uncomfortable and was transphobic. Like Forcier, Grzanka threatened to end the interview if Walsh continued to use it.

    “I’m really uncomfortable with that language,” he said.

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    Marci Bowers, a transgender surgeon who specializes in “gender affirmation surgery,” told Walsh that being a woman is a collection of “physical attributes.”

    According to Bowers, a woman is defined by the “gendered clues” that are displayed to the world.

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    Bowers gave a lecture as a visiting professor for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in October 2020 about Gender Affirming Surgery.

    Bowers is the first transgender person to conduct “transgender surgery.” He has 32 years of experience and boasts of completing “2250 primary [male to female] Vaginoplasties and 3900 Gender Affirming Surgeries overall.”

    The sole voice of reason among the academics came from Miriam Grossman.

    Grossman is a former psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and told Walsh that identifying as an opposite gender does change the person’s identity.

    “I am rooted in reality and science,” she explained. She then confirmed Walsh’s position that there is only “one” reality.

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    What is a Woman? features Walsh as he traveled across the country to seek the answer to the film’s eponymous question.

    However, Walsh was consistently shut down by gender activists when he scrutinized their logic.

    California Representative Mark Takano walked out of the room mid-interview after refusing to engage with Walsh.

    “Turn off the cameras,” he demanded.

    When Walsh called out his signature question as Takano left the room, a staffer responded that he was “not gonna find out.”

    The documentary also includes heartfelt testimony from victims of radical gender theory.

    Walsh sat down with a former teammate of University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

    The swimmer explained how the university actively censored any complaint raised about Thomas being allowed to compete as a woman.

    “There was a lot of things you couldn’t talk about that were very concerning- like [the] locker room situation,” she said. “If you even brought up concerns about it, you were transphobic. If you even bring up the fact that Lia swimming might not be fair, you were immediately shut down [with] being called a ‘hateful person’ or ‘transphobic.'”

    Walsh also spoke with a Canadian father who was jailed after fighting the court system to stop his daughter from being injected with gender-affirming hormones. The father lost the case and his daughter was allowed to proceed with the transition to male.

    The father has been released but is unable to leave British Columbia. 

    What is a Woman? premiered on Wednesday.

    The documentary delicately mixes humor and seriousness that keeps the reader engaged as Walsh one-by-one undermines every argument presented by radical gender activists.

    Walsh covered a spectrum of milestones in the gender debate, most notably the Loudon County, Virginia, investigation that accused the public school system of covering up a sexual assault in the girl’s bathroom after a male was allowed to use it.

    Walsh engages in man-on-the-street style sleuthing to uncover the opinion of everyday Americans in New York, California, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C.

    No matter the location, people had difficulty defining a woman.

    What is a Woman? is a question Campus Reform has asked students, as well.

    Ahead of a Matt Walsh appearance at Georgia Tech, Campus Reform challenged students to answer his famous inquisition.

    “It’s whatever the person defines themself as because there is no set standard because nobody is the same as another person,” one student said. “There’s a whole bunch of different ways you can define a woman.”

    Another guessed that it is “a very personal question” that “depends on the person.”

    Campus Reform Correspondent Jaden Heard, however, had better luck at Auburn University by asking students to instead define a man.

    “A biological male,” one student simply said.

    Campus Reform has contacted every individual mentioned in this article for comment and will update accordingly.

    Follow @Alexaschwerha1 on Twitter.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/06/2022 – 18:20

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