Today’s News 7th May 2023

Authored by Kash Patel via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always played the long game. It’s pivotal to their strength. They have a disciplined ability to think generationally rather than focus on the current political climate of the now. The CCP has zero respect for the rule of law, nor do they abide by any code of ethics. When you have the ability to rule without law, you become the world’s adversary.

The CCP has poured their fentanyl onto our streets via their partners south of our border: the Mexican drug cartels. This has led to the untimely deaths of over 100,000 Americans last year alone due to fentanyl overdoses. Now, China has fashioned this death drug into the form of common candy to make it more appealing to our youth. This is the death train being operated by the CCP. It’s the one you can see and feel every day.

Tragically, for America, the CCP also have their silent killer in the form of digital fentanyl, and it’s called TikTok. This social media platform is a facet of CCP warfare that remains invisible to most.

The CCP has launched an information war on America that isn’t in the form of news. However, the means by which they’re doing so is now only being accurately reported in the mainstream media. After years of accepting CCP disinformation, our media is finally waking up to the cold hard fact of data theft. The CCP pirates are seizing troves of information daily through TikTok.

The nearly 150 million Americans that sign into the platform daily, nearly half our population, would do well to take a moment to give their thumb a rest and their eyes something to read. Unless, of course, they want the CCP to win.

Unfortunately, through the Biden administration’s disastrous foreign policy, we aren’t set up to win the information war head-on, let alone take on any aspect of it. Download TikTok onto your phone, and the CCP has a four-lane highway into your everyday life for free. Not only are we letting them, but by intentionally giving the CCP a massive money bin of data for free, Xi is laughing all the way from mainland China. How can we let this be in 2023 America?

What are they stealing? Your personal information, information on your family, your habits, hobbies, and your internet footprint for starters. They then collate this data and stack it for use against Americans based on their interests and vulnerabilities. How else do you think Chinese spies infiltrate American lives? It’s not Google.

For those wondering, “but Tik Tok is an American company,” that’s a false narrative, and it was entirely defeated when the CEO of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, testified before Congress recently. Immediately thereafter, you had Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) demanding public support for TikTok.

President Donald Trump understood the CCP’s intention better than anyone: from their Belt and Road Initiative, the manipulation of their currency, and their desire to supplant America on the global stage. Trump responded resoundingly, taking steps to ban TikTok, implementing tariffs and trade sanctions, and expelling Chinese diplomats from the United States.

Biden and his administration have not only reversed every single one of these measures, but have also retracted from taking any position against Xi and the CCP. By doing so, we have seen the rise of the petro-yuan to replace the petro-dollar. We have seen Xi broker deals between Saudi Arabia and Iran, inching the world’s largest state sponsor of terror closer to a weapon’s grade nuclear program.

Read more here…

The race for space has started anew as a flurry of private and government projects are once again reaching for humanity’s last frontier. In April, Gen. Chance Saltzman of the U.S. Space Force said that the new level of activity seen in space exploration was also increasing the level of threat the United States faces in Earth’s orbit and beyond, as reported by CNBC.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, Saltzman’s remarks – and as some may argue, the existence of the U.S. Space Force itself – stands in contrast to the notion of space as a place beyond national interests that has thrived on collaboration rather than confrontation.

When the branch of the U.S. military was founded under President Donald Trump in 2019, one of the first organizations to speak out against it was the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy nonprofit founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The organization urged the U.S. government to reconsider and to warm up to the idea of space as a place where different nations coexist peacefully instead of a place where war takes place. The group with an extensive satellite database pointed out that military activity was only a minor part of all things happening in space. The data backs up this claim. Out of the roughly 5,500 satellites listed as active, only 424 have military uses. While the U.S. is the country with most satellites in space (3,415), multinational cooperations come in fourth place.

Authored by Brian McGlinchey via starkrealities.substack.com 

Barack Obama was elected president some 143 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States. As teary-eyed African-Americans watched Obama’s 2008 election night speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, none could have imagined that America’s first black president would leave his own legacy of slavery — in Africa.

However, that’s exactly what he did, thanks to a combination of imperial hubris, disregard for constitutional restraints on executive war powers, and the use of false pretenses.

In 2011, egged on by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a handful of other advisors, Obama ordered a months-long series of air strikes that facilitated a NATO-backed regime change campaign that toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Rather than ushering in liberal democracy and prosperity, the ouster of Gaddafi left the country fractured, with two rival governments and various militias vying for power. Obama’s regime change marked the start of an ongoing era of chaos, with some of the greatest resulting evils inflicted on black Africans.

Those evils began during the war, as racism and Gaddafi’s use of sub-Saharan black mercenaries combined to spark widespread atrocities perpetrated against blacks who were seen as fair game for various atrocities including beatings, rapes and lynchings.

“We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company,” a Turkish construction worker told BBC. “They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Gaddafi.’ The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”

One rebel group was glorified in roadside graffiti as “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” — that being a reference to Libya’s black descendants of slaves, such as those who populated the town of Tawergha. Once home to 30,000 people, Tawergha was ransacked and its occupants assaulted to the point of turning it into an ethnically-cleansed ghost town.

In 2017 — six years after Gaddafi’s death — CNN captured a new and unthinkable dimension of misery being imposed on black people as a result of Obama’s regime change: The network aired video of two open-air slave auctions hosted in Libya. “Big strong boys for farm work,” said an auctioneer. One trio of blacks was purchased for $400 each.

 It hasn’t stopped. Last month, the United Nations reported that a three-year investigation found “arbitrary detention, murder, rape, enslavement, sexual slavery, extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearance” have become a “widespread practice” in Libya.

Obama’s War Power Hypocrisy

As a candidate in 2007, Obama was clear-throated about the limits of presidential military authority, telling the Boston Globe, “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

However, as president, Obama betrayed those assurances — and violated his oath of office — by ordering the Pentagon to carry out bombing attacks on Libya without congressional authorization.

In a frontal assault on common sense, Obama’s administration disingenuously asserted that, since the engagement was limited to bombing and Libya’s military was in no position to retaliate, the United States was not engaged in “hostilities” and thus the War Powers Act didn’t apply.

While the intervention was championed by the likes of Hillary Clinton and National Security Council “humanitarian hawk” Samantha Power, many others in Obama’s administration opposed it, including then-Vice President Biden, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, national security advisor and deputy national security advisor.

According to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama’s decision to plunge into war in Libya was essentially a toss-up. “The president told me that it was one of the closest decisions he’d ever made, sort of 51-49,” he told Yahoo News.

Or course, as Candidate Obama had unequivocally explained, it wasn’t his decision to make.

That Obama’s decision lacked conviction — and ended up being disastrous for so many innocent people — underscores why he should have adhered to the Constitution, which requires that the deliberative, representative bodies of the House and Senate make war decisions after public debate.

As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1798, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

It’s doubtful that Congress would have given a green light. A Pew Research poll published a week before Obama ordered airstrikes found that 63% of Americans felt the US did not have “a responsibility to do something about fighting in Libya,” and 77% opposed “bombing Libyan air defenses.”

Obama’s “51-49” characterization of his Libya decision is damning in another way. “This is nothing less than a confession of a war crime,” argued Scott Horton in Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism. “The president was admitting that he launched an unnecessary, aggressive war, a crime under American law as well as…international law.”

Another Intervention On False Pretenses

In addition to violating the Constitution, Obama’s Libya disaster was, like seemingly every U.S. intervention, advanced on false pretenses — in this case, the claim that Gaddafi was about to commit genocide in Benghazi, a rebel stronghold and Libya’s second-largest city.

“We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi—a city nearly the size of Charlotte—could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,” said Obama after US bombing began.

Administration officials’ claims that tens or hundreds of thousands of residents of Benghazi were about to be slaughtered rested on a purposefully distorted interpretation of a Gaddafi speech, in which he’d said “we will have no mercy on them.”

Gaddafi was clearly referring to armed rebels in the city. Indeed, he also said “whoever hands over his weapons, stays at home without any weapons, whatever he did previously, he will be pardoned, protected.”

Via an intelligence asset, the Department of Defense had learned that Gaddafi had explicitly ordered civilians to be left unharmed. What’s more, at the time the Obama White House was spouting ghastly predictions about Benghazi, Gaddafi had already recaptured other towns from rebels without accompanying massacres of civilians.

Apparently unconvinced that visions of civilian massacres would sufficiently inflame public opinion, the Obama administration even trotted out the sensational claim that Gaddafi was supplying his soldiers with Viagra so they could carry out a campaign of mass rape.

Like Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapon program, Gaddafi’s rape-enabling pharmaceutical supply chain was also nonexistent.

Five years later, put on the defensive about Libya on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, Clinton reiterated the patently false claim that “Gaddafi was threatening to massacre his population.” Days after she said that, the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee published the report of an inquiry into the Libya intervention, which concluded Gaddafi had no intention of harming civilians.

Africans Pay A Steep Price For American Ambitions

Obama had decried George Bush’s invasion of Iraq as “based not on reason, but on passion; not on principle but on politics.” The same can be said of his administration’s own regime-change campaign in Libya, which set out to:

• Generate positive publicity for the US government. The 2011 Arab Spring revolutions brought the embarrassing overthrow of US-backed regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. Clinton State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter told Clinton that backing rebels in Libya would “change the image of the United States overnight” and “impress the young people across the Middle East.”

• Bring a book’s thesis to life. Samantha Power, who’s currently Biden’s head of the US Agency for International Development and started 2011 on the National Security Council, had written A Problem from Hell, a book that urged the adoption of a humanitarian intervention doctrine called “Responsibility to Protect.” With Libya, Power saw the opportunity to showcase the concept — and advance her career. She was promoted to UN ambassador after US bombs started falling.

• Aid Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. State Department emails show Clinton’s advisors in and out of government enthusing over the utility of a successful Libyan intervention in a future Clinton presidential campaign. Sidney Blumenthal told Clinton that, when Gaddafi’s ouster came, “You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.”

• Protect Western economic dominance. Though Gaddafi had worked his way back into the good graces of the United States and its allies, he may have sealed his fate when he began pushing African countries to wean themselves from Western currencies by establishing a new pan-African currency, the gold dinar. In an April 2011 email, Blumenthal told Clinton that Gaddafi had already accumulated 143 tons of gold to back such a currency.

Referring to Libya, Hillary Clinton once boasted, “We did not lose a single American…in that action.” That’s no consolation for the families of civilians killed by US bombs, or the modern-day slaves and others in Libya who continue paying a steep price for Obama’s short-sighted, dishonestly-promoted and illegal regime change campaign.

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com

A Berkeley professor who’d long claimed she was a Native American admitted this week that she’s just a boring, plain ol’ white woman.  

“I am a white person who has incorrectly identified as Native my whole life, based on incomplete information,” Elizabeth Hoover confessed on her personal website. Resisting calls for her resignation, Hoover says she has “been working with restorative justice facilitators to better understand how members of the…community have felt harmed and betrayed, and ways I can work to meaningfully make amends.” 

This news would be amusing enough coming from any professor on the leftist campus. What gives it extra luster is that Hoover is a professor of anthropology — the study of human societies and cultures.  

Hoover, who has a doctorate from Brown, claims her family led her to believe she was of Mohawk and Mi’kmaq descent, “but as an adult, as an academic, I should have done my due diligence to confirm that my ancestors were who I was told they were.”

Hoover’s status helped her land prestigious jobs, grants and fellowships and become a high-profile member of the “food sovereignty” movement, according to Indianz.com. 

In 2021, Hoover appeared on the “Alleged Pretendian List” compiled by Native American writer and activist Jacqueline Keeler. Her list, which has included Elizabeth Warren and Johnny Depp, targets people whom Keeler considers to be “monetizing their claims” of Indian heritage. 

“Ethnic fraud, particularly against native people is huge,” Keeler told the New York Post in January. “There is an element of narcissism. There is a lack of empathy because they will retaliate against native people who try to expose their fraud.”

Hoover says she’d been challenged on her claim of Indian ancestry since her first job as an assistant professor, and interpreted the questions as “petty jealousy or people just looking to interfere in my life.” By deflecting their inquiries rather than checking on her background, Hoover says she was “subverting the sovereignty of the Nations I was identifying with.” 

This is the second shoe moccasin that Hoover has dropped. In October, she disclosed that her genealogical research uncovered “no records of tribal citizenship for any of my family members in the tribal databases that were accessed.” 

In the ensuing uproar, former students organized a letter demanding her resignation, and obtained hundreds of signatures from Berkeley and other university professors and students, and Native Americans too. The letter said “her claims of having lived experience as an Indigenous person by dancing at powwows [are] absolutely appalling.” 

Columbia Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson told The Mercury News that Hoover’s record demonstrates that she “lacks the requisite ethical and academic integrity to be a professor or a social scientist.”

Befitting her place on a hypersensitive outpost of leftist victimhood ideology, Hoover’s new confession is thoroughly peppered with the right jargon, such as eight uses of “hurt” and a whopping 14 uses of “harm” — including a perplexing reference to “activating historical harms.” A sampling: 

“I have brought hurt, harm, and broken trust to the Native community at large…

I caused harm. I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students, and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms. This hurt has also interrupted student and faculty life and careers. I acknowledge that I could have prevented all of this hurt by investigating and confirming my family stories sooner.

I betrayed and hurt my students, collaborators, and friends. I have negatively impacted people emotionally and culturally. For this hurt I have caused, I am deeply sorry.”

Responding to the new development, a Berkeley spokeswoman threw around some lefty blather too. “We…support ongoing efforts to achieve restorative justice in a way that acknowledges and addresses the extent to which this matter has caused harm and upset among members of our community,” said spokeswoman Janet Gilmore. 

Berkeley’s humiliation is just the latest in a long string of bogus claims of minority status, which seems to be dominated by white women, from black-wannabe Rachel Dolezal and Harvard Law’s “first woman of color” Elizabeth Warren to demoted former Dartmouth Native American Program Director Susan Taffe Reed, who’d faked membership in the Eastern Delaware Nations.   

By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves

As more drilling and mining projects are approved in Alaska, local trucking fleets are planning to hire drivers around the United States to haul equipment, chemicals and other loads — particularly on its fearsome Dalton Highway, a remote, 414-mile road that connects Fairbanks to oil fields near the Arctic Ocean.

The developments, particularly ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project, have been controversial as they may mar some of Earth’s most remote land. However, for the residents of the United States’ third-least-populated state, the new investments could bring an economic boom that many locals say the state needs. 

The construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in the 1970s and oil boom of the 1980s transformed Alaska. The pipeline brought in some 70,000 workers and often their families. Many of them stayed; Alaska’s population grew three times as fast as the rest of the country in the 1970s and 1980s. As of 2013, more than half of Alaska’s housing stock was built in those decades. 

Josh Norum, the president of Fairbanks-based Sourdough Express, said the impending explosion in mining and drilling could rival those frothy years. 

“We’re calling it our second pipeline,” Norum said. “(The Trans-Alaska Pipeline) was a huge boom. … We’re comparing that opportunity with this next phase.”

6-figure salaries for Alaskan truck drivers — but the job isn’t for everyone

In response, Alaskan trucking companies are searching for truck drivers to haul equipment — and they’re paying them massive salaries.

Drivers who can tackle the so-called haul road, which is packed with ice in the winter and prone to dust and mud the other three seasons, are in particular demand. 

Norum said Sourdough Express drivers on the haul road earn $95,000 to $120,000, in addition to health care, retirement and paid time off benefits. Compensation has increased by 15% over the past two years. 

Sourdough Express currently employs 85 company drivers in addition to contractors, Norum said, adding that over the next few years the company will add 50 to 100 new drivers. 

Gage Schutte, vice president of freight operations for Alaska West Express, also said the company is looking to add 50 to 100 new drivers to its fleet. According to a federal database, the company currently has 121 drivers.

Alaska West Express increased driver compensation by 11% this year. Each round trip between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay on the haul road pays around $1,500, Schutte said. Drivers can expect to make 100 to 115 trips to Prudhoe a year. That means Alaska West Express drivers can earn around $150,000 to $170,000 a year, in addition to benefits.

That might be enticing for truck drivers who are struggling with slumping freight volumes and looking for a well-paid gig. Thousands of trucking authorities have already shut down this year as gigs available for drivers dry up. According to federal data, tractor-trailer drivers earn a median annual wage of around $48,000. 

However, these aren’t easy jobs. The best conditions on the haul road are in the winter, when temperatures in the negative 20s give the ice-packed highway its best traction. Fall and spring make the road slushy, while summertime means the haul road is dusty or slick with calcium that’s used to make it less dusty. 

Robb Christenson, the director of sales and pricing at Sourdough Express, was a truck driver around his native Alaska for nearly three decades, including some 50 runs on the haul road. He said those loads weren’t easy, but hauling chemicals and heavy equipment near the Arctic Circle was certainly memorable.

“The equipment that you haul you’ve never seen before in your life,” Christenson said. “Being a part of that and doing that, it means something special as well.”

Safety is the most important feature for these trucking executives. Those at Alaska West and Sourdough said they prefer to hire Alaskan residents. However, there’s such a demand for truck drivers now that they’ll likely have to recruit from the lower 48. 

Schutte said few truck drivers who apply to these haul road driving positions already have haul road experience. Some are able to catch on quicker — for example, those with log trucking experience in the Pacific Northwest.

Jeff Russell, who is the superintendent of maintenance of operations in the Alaska Department of Transportation’s Dalton district, which includes the haul road, can concur that running on this road isn’t for everyone. Drivers stuck in a snowdrift might not be able to get rescued for a day or more. And they’ll need to know how to fix their own trucks — tow trucks aren’t exactly heading up to Prudhoe on a whim. 

“Trying to find personnel that’s willing to take on that challenge is unique,” Russell said, “not just for those who need to maintain the road but for the trucking community who needs to have people that are willing to drive in those conditions. They’re not a dime a dozen. I can tell you that.”

Alaska’s longtime dependence on energy production

Alaska has a complex history with energy exploration and production. The state has long been highly dependent on diesel fuel for heating, transportation and power generation. Fuel is expensive to import.

Oil production drove Alaska’s economic growth in the 20th century. The 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which has a carrying capacity of 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd), unlocked more oil production but also depleted Alaska’s oil reserves. Production on Alaska’s North Slope peaked in 1988 at just over 2 million bpd and has fallen more than 75% since then.

Alaska’s oil production has been slowly declining for the past 10 years. Before that, there were two more punctuated periods of sharper decline, from 1988 to 1998 when crude oil production was cut in half from 2 million bpd to 1 million bpd, and another decline from 2004 to about 2011.

Today, the question is whether Alaskan oil production is poised for a rebound that would see it retake the 500,000 bpd mark — approximately 25% of the state’s 1988 peak.

Alaska’s oil production, when multiplied by the price of oil, helps determine the payout amounts for the Alaska Permanent Fund, the annual oil and gas dividend that every person who’s lived in Alaska for longer than 12 months is eligible to receive. That payout has bounced between $1,000 and $2,000 annually, but could see a resurgence if Alaska pumps more barrels in a rich price environment. 

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Alaska North Slope crude fetched $76.62 per barrel in January, a price that was down from recent peaks but still very high compared to the 1980s to 2000s.

A local boon — with international controversy

The $8 billion ConocoPhillips Willow project, approved by the Biden administration in mid-March, represents the largest investment in Alaska energy infrastructure in decades and is projected to produce as much as 200,000 bpd over the next 30 years. ConocoPhillips did not respond to a FreightWaves request for comment.

Oil production on the North Slope could grow by 40%, and ConocoPhillips officials have said that the Willow project’s wells could be used to develop newly discovered fields farther west.

Another project on the North Slope, a joint venture by Australian firm Oil Search and Spain’s Repsol, will invest $2.6 billion to develop the Pikka project, forecast to produce 120,000 bpd by 2026.

While that kind of production growth would have a significant positive impact on the Alaska Permanent Fund payouts to everyday Alaskans, a  renaissance of Alaska’s oil and gas industry would immediately spike demand for construction, oilfield services and transportation jobs in the remote, frigid North Slope, likely raising wages significantly.

Other projects may contribute to that boom as well. A proposed gold mine in southwest Alaska would take three to four years to construct and operate for about 27 years. It would employ hundreds of workers each year.

Alaskan lawmakers, the oil industry, labor unions, trades, Alaska Native groups and some North Slope residents have all rallied behind the Willow project, as The New York Times reported. 

Climate activists, however, have slammed it as a “carbon bomb.” Burning all of the oil the Willow project would produce would equal 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution annually, or 2 million additional cars. Meanwhile, some Alaska Natives say the proposed gold mine could endanger their access to fish and game resources.

New Mexico and Florida are the most dangerous states for pedestrians in the U.S., according to a report by NGO Smart Growth America. The two U.S. metro areas with the highest average rates of pedestrian deaths are also located in these states. South Carolina, with the top 5 most dangerous metro to pedestrians, is the only other state that counted an annual average of more than 3 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 of population between 2016 and 2020.

As Statista’s Kathraina Buchholz reports, the data shows that states where pedestrians are most often killed in traffic are typically located in the American South and Southwest. Delaware is the only state not following this pattern and is the fifth most dangerous for pedestrians in the nation at almost 2.9 people per 100,000 inhabitants killed on average in recent years. Smart Growth America believes this is because Southern and Southwestern metros are more likely to be designed for cars rather than for a variety of road users. For example, these cities experience more sprawl, which is again linked to more pedestrian deaths.

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to the source, pedestrian deaths have been climbing steadily in the United States to more than 6,500 people in 2020 – up from around 5,500 in 2015. For 2021, the organization’s preliminary estimate assumes that a record 7,300 people have been killed while walking in the country. This is in line with the Governors Highway Safety Associations’ estimate of a 40-year high of pedestrian deaths that year. The trend did not let off in the first half of 2022, the latest point in time for which data exists.

The study also highlights that older people, poor people and people of color are killed while walking in higher numbers. In the time frame of the study, an average of 4.2 in every 100,000 Native Americans and 3.0 in every 100,000 Black Americans died in such a way every year. In comparison, the average annual death rate in the country was just 1.9 in 100,000 during these years. This is because poorer and marginalized communities most often live close to high-speed roadways and in places with inadequate pedestrian infrastructure.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new study has found that some commonly consumed beverages such as fruit juice and artificial soda contain levels of toxic metals including arsenic, cadmium, and lead that exceed federal drinking water standards.

Researchers from Tulane University, Louisiana, measured 25 different toxic metals and trace elements in 60 soft beverages, including single fruit juice, mixed fruit juice, plant-based milk, artificial soda, and tea.

The drinks were purchased in New Orleans and are commercially available in supermarkets across the United States.

Researchers found that five of the 60 beverages tested contained levels of a toxic metal above federal drinking water standards.

Two mixed juices had levels of arsenic above the 10 microgram/liter standard. Meanwhile, a cranberry juice, a mixed carrot and fruit juice, and an oat milk each had levels of cadmium exceeding the three parts per billion standard.

What Are Arsenic and Cadmium?

Arsenic is a naturally occurring tasteless, colorless, and odorless, chemical element that can be found in the environment, including in food and water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The element persists in the environment and does not deteriorate.

The  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted a 10 parts per billion (ppb), or 10 microgram/liter standard for arsenic in public drinking water in 2001, replacing the old standard of 50 microgram/liter.

However, long-term exposure to high levels of arsenic can result in skin disorders, an increased risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, and several types of cancer, according to the CDC.

Cadmium, meanwhile, is another naturally occurring element used in products such as batteries, pigments, metal coatings, and plastics but also found in plant and animal foods, according to the CDC.

When consumed in large amounts, cadmium can cause stomach issues and when inhaled at high levels, it can lead to lung damage or death. Cadmium is considered a cancer-causing agent.

“Exposure to low levels of cadmium in air, food, water, and particularly in tobacco smoke over time may build up cadmium in the kidneys and cause kidney disease and fragile bones,” the CDC notes.

Fruit Juices, Plant-Based Milks Contain Higher Levels

In total, 7 of the 25 elements measured by researchers in their study exceeded drinking water standards in some of the drinks, including nickel, manganese, boron, cadmium, strontium, arsenic, and selenium, while lead was detected in more than 93 percent of the 60 samples, although the majority contained levels below one part per billion.

The highest level (6.3 micrograms/kg) was found in a lime sports drink, though that is still below standards for drinking water set by the EPA and the World Health Organization.

Overall, mixed fruit juices and plant-based milks, including oat and almond milk, contained higher levels of toxic metals than other drinks analyzed in the study, researchers said.

Researchers did not identify the specific brands they studied but noted that they can be purchased at local supermarkets and retail stores.

The findings of the study, titled, “Toxic metals and essential elements contents in commercially available fruit juices and other non-alcoholic beverages from the United States,” were published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis.

Read more here…

One of Russia’s best-known novelists has been targeted in an apparent attempted assassination near the city of Nizhny Novgorod on Saturday. RIA Novosti is reporting that a native of Ukraine is in custody related to the attack.

Zakhar Prilepin was wounded by a car bomb, which killed his driver. Immediately after the blast he was seriously injured but reportedly conscious, after which a suspect was quickly detained, according to Russia’s Interior Ministry.

“The search for possible accomplices continues,” the government statement said.  “Law enforcement officers are now investigating the circumstances and causes of the incident. Zakhar is OK,” the regional governor said.

Prilepin is not only a contemporary literary giant in Russia, but he’s considered to be very active in support of the Ukraine war, with the BBC and other Western sources describing him as a prominent commentator of ultranationalist politics. He’s a former member of the State Duma and has been very active in conservative political movements within the country.

Further according to BBC, a pro-Ukraine opposition group has claimed responsibility for the attack:

The explosion reportedly took place on a remote road some 80km (50 miles) from the town of Bor. State media said the blogger suffered a concussion and fractured bones.

The partisan group Atesh, which is made up of Ukrainians and Crimean Tartars, claimed it was behind the attack.

“We had a feeling that sooner or later he would be blown up,” they wrote on Telegram. “He was not driving alone, but with a surprise on the underside of the car.”

The group said further it “had been hunting Prilepin since the start of this year.”

Below is a brief biographical snapshot of Prilepin and some of his novels via Russia’s RT:

After the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, Prilepin emerged as a staunch supporter of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which broke free from Ukraine’s rule and later joined Russia. In 2017, he formed his own volunteer battalion, taking the position of political officer. In late January, the writer’s press service said that Prilepin had signed a contract with Russia’s National Guard and set off for the conflict zone.

Prilepin has also authored several books, most notably ‘The Pathologies’, a novel about the Chechen War, as well as ‘Some Will Not Go To Hell’, describing the hostilities in Donbass.

State media sources have described the explosion as occurring on a highway, with the device having been previously planted underneath the car, and which could have been detonated by remote signal.

⚡️Another video from the place where Zakhar Prilepin’s car was blown up pic.twitter.com/bEvZ7epSkv

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) May 6, 2023

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It marks the third in a string of assassination operations on Russian soil since the invasion of Ukraine began. In April pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed when a bomb detonated inside a St. Petersburg event when he was leading a talk. Moscow has blamed Ukrainian intelligence, as well as pointed the finger to Kiev’s Western backers for providing support for an emerging cross-border ‘dirty war’.

In August the daughter of well-known Russian philosopher and political commentator Aleksandr Dugin was killed in a car bombing. Darya Dugina’s death shocked Russia and grabbed global headlines, setting off speculation that Aleksandr Dugin himself was the likely target. Father and daughter reportedly may have switched cars at the last moment while traveling back from a Russian national festival event outside Moscow.

Authored by Lynn Good & Brendan Bechtel via RealClear Wire,

With passage of H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, the House of Representatives launched the opening salvo for permitting reform this Congress. Business Roundtable applauds this action and encourages the Biden Administration and the Senate to engage in discussions to get meaningful, bipartisan permitting reform done. Successful permitting reform will unlock America’s full potential, make the U.S. an energy powerhouse and help address climate change. All while ensuring that we continue protecting the environment.

Recent congressional action on infrastructure and energy demands planning, permitting and building an unprecedented amount of new infrastructure within the next decade. Congress made historic investments in our nation’s competitiveness, allocating $973 billion to upgrade our aging transportation and water systems, expanding broadband access to communities across the country, investing in critical energy infrastructure and clean energy technologies and making our systems more resilient against evolving threats like cyberattacks and climate change. And, if we’re serious about combatting climate change, we must engage in permitting reform discussions and reach a bipartisan consensus to clear the way for innovative American clean energy technology. 

We’re beginning to see the benefits from these laws but reforming the country’s onerous permitting process is essential to delivering them. As of February, nearly $200 billion has been announced for over 20,000 projects nationwide, including funding for significant bridge repair projects and clean energy projects in all 50 states. Research by Business Roundtable shows that every dollar spent on infrastructure yields nearly $4 in economic growth over 20 years, making infrastructure an investment that pays serious long-term dividends.

Many of these projects will kick off a multi-year, complex permitting process at the time we need them most. Unfortunately, the permitting process remains a labyrinth of red tape, costly delays and litigation. Studies have shown regulatory reviews took an average of 4.5 years before construction could begin on new projects and those delays were often followed by lengthy court challenges. For our nation’s most complex projects, the permitting phase will often far exceed the amount of time spent actually in construction. These delays undermine U.S. economic growth and competitiveness by increasing the appeal of investing abroad where projects can be built quickly and risk is lower. Now is the time for policymakers to take bold, bipartisan action.

Permitting reform would also reduce our reliance on foreign energy and allow the U.S. to export more energy to our friends and allies. Russia’s war in Ukraine, production cuts from OPEC and ongoing price fluctuations have underscored the critical importance of energy security. If we’re going to advance the energy transition, the permitting process needs to be nimbler and better resourced. Timeliness is an enabler to our collective energy supply leadership, and it can be improved significantly – and it can be done while ensuring we’re protecting the environment.

We urge policymakers to improve the permitting process to incentivize capital investment here in the United States, boost innovation, help address energy costs and create jobs without undermining environmental laws. Specifically, Congress should designate one federal agency to lead each project’s permitting review process, require that lead agency to make permitting decisions within 90 days of the public comment period, and improve best practices for agency review and coordination. Policymakers should also apply existing reforms to a larger universe of projects, expedite the approval process for projects that do not have a significant environmental impact, bring states along in the process through coordinated decision making and require legal challenges be filed within 150 days of a project’s approval.

Business Roundtable, the voice of America’s CEOs, welcomes House passage of H.R. 1 and urges Congress to work together on a bipartisan path forward. Permitting reform will result in a more modern, efficient process and ensure a cleaner, more secure energy future while supporting economic growth and American jobs.

Lynn Good is Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer of Duke Energy Corporation and Business Roundtable Smart Regulation Chair.

Brendan Bechtel is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bechtel and Business Roundtable Infrastructure Chair.

The infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter signed by 51 ex-intel officials was pitched to them by its co-author, Mike Morell, as a way to help Joe Biden with a “talking point” during a crucial debate with Trump, the Washington Examiner‘s Jerry Dunleavy reports.

Morell admitted that now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “triggered” him to write the October 2020 letter, co-authored by he and former senior CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos, suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop reported by the NY Post was likely Russian disinformation.

The recruitment email from Morell was sent to former intelligence officials and included the laptop letter co-authored by him and former senior CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos as an attachment.

The quoted language from the Morell email, sent on Oct. 18, 2020, was read to the Washington Examiner verbatim and identically by two independent sources who had access to the email.

Morell’s email explained that both he and Polymeropoulos believed Russia was involved in the Hunter Biden laptop stories and that Trump likely planned to attack Biden over the laptop revelations in the upcoming debate. -Washington Examiner

“We want to give the VP a talking point to use in response,” Morell wrote in the email.

Looks like pitching the Hunter Biden laptop letter as a “talking point” for Joe Biden for the debate with Trump was standard fare for Mike Morell, as here he is doing it in his email to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan too. https://t.co/miY4J3MChx

— Jerry Dunleavy 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) May 4, 2023

Morell previously admitted under oath that his involvement in the letter was designed to help Joe Biden “because I wanted him to win the election.”

Mark Zaid, an attorney representing Polymeropoulos and several other laptop letter signers (and ex-ABC Senior News producer James Gordon Meek who was indicted on child porn charges, and who bragged about “getting clearances for guys who had child porn issues,” and who loves hanging out at Disney World alone), told the media last month that “when the draft was sent out to people to sign, the cover email made clear that it was an effort to help the Biden campaign.”

The letter was ultimately signed by 51 ex-intelligence officials, and published October 19, 2020, days before the Trump-Biden debate, and furthered the disinformation that the laptop was the product of Russian disinformation – a narrative which the Biden campaign picked up on and amplified.

“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage,” said Joe Biden during the debate.

To which Trump replied: “You mean the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?” Joe Biden replied: “That’s exactly what we’re told.”

“Here we go again with Russia,” Trump replied.

Last month it was revealed Morell told House investigators he had no intention to write the laptop letter, but admitted his phone call with Blinken, then a top advisor for Biden’s 2020 campaign, “triggered” him to do so. Morell said it was his “guess” Blinken called him because the future secretary of state wanted it “out” in public that “the Russians were somehow involved.”

House Republicans wrote that the same day of the Blinken-Morell call, Blinken “also emailed Morell an article” published in USA Today which alleged the FBI was examining whether the laptop was part of a Russian “disinformation campaign.” The article was then cited in the laptop letter.

Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH) also said Morell received a call from then-Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti after the presidential debate to thank him for “putting the statement out.” -Washington Examiner

The October 2020 letter made numerous suggestions as to Russian involvement in the laptop reporting, arguing “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.”

According to the letter’s authors, the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

As Dunleavy notes, “Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert and former Secret Service agent, conducted an examination of the laptop for the Washington Examiner last year, concluding “there is a 100% certainty that Robert Hunter Biden was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data” and that “the hard drive is authentic.””

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Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: The US federal government has raised the so-called debt ceiling 104 times since 1944.

Shouldn’t they call it a debt target instead of a debt ceiling?

Is this whole thing a farce?

Doug Casey: The situation is completely and irredeemably out of control. It’s a farce. Quite laughable, except for the fact it’s so deadly serious.

Can they reduce the debt ceiling or the amount of debt? Or even slow down its growth at this point? No.

The situation is beyond redemption because most US government expenditures go to pay entitlements—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and numerous other types of welfare.

Those things will be very hard to cut at this point; breaking the doggy dishes of millions of corrupted Americans would cause unrest. Plus, the so-called “defense” budget, which mostly supports the military/industrial complex while fomenting conflict. It’s actually much larger than disclosed because it should include $50 billion of foreign aid, the cost of running outrageously large embassies over the world, the CIA, and black budgets of all types.

Meanwhile, all US government agencies are bent on expanding themselves. The bureaucrats who run them realize that if they don’t grow the budget every year, they reduce their chances of going from one GS level to the next. Their success is based upon managing more people and spending more money. Naturally, all these agencies grow like cancers.

As a result, the “debt ceiling” is a fiction. It will stay out of control unless there is a total reorganization of the government—which itself would be risky. And that’s not going to happen until we have a financial catastrophe that leaves absolutely no alternative.

International Man: You have previously stated the US government should default on the national debt.

What are the reasons for that?

Doug Casey: I know it sounds outrageous to propose the US government default on its national debt. Of course, they don’t think it will ever be necessary because, as several high-level government officials have pointed out, they can just print money to pay off the debt.

However, I disagree. What are the reasons for doing something as seemingly catastrophic as defaulting on the debt? I’ll give you at least five. Stick with me. Let’s conduct an outrageous but not unreasonable thought experiment.

First, barring default, future generations of Americans will be turned into serfs to pay off the debt. Profligate people have run up the debt, but everybody’s children and grandchildren are stuck with having to pay it off. That’s simply immoral. If you have any care for the future at all, future generations should be saved from becoming serfs to pay it off.

Second, it would punish the enablers who lend the US government money. People who lend the US government money facilitate it by doing all the stupid and destructive things it does. They shouldn’t be rewarded; they should be punished.

Third, official default is better than the alternative. It’s like a hundred-story building that’s about to collapse. If that’s the case, should you wait until it collapses randomly and unpredictably, or should you have a controlled demolition? It’s not a pleasant alternative, but it’s the better alternative.

Fourth, default would make further borrowing on the part of the US government impossible, at least for a while. It would be exposed as an untrustworthy entity, like the Argentine government, which defaults all the time. People would still idiotically lend it more money, but a default might slow down the rate of increase in the US government’s size.

Fifth, it’s almost necessary that the debt goes away to help de-financialize the US economy. The US is tremendously over-financialized. It’s all about buying, selling, creating, and packaging financial instruments. Government debt, with the help of the Fed, is the actual engine of inflation. Defaulting on the national debt would pave the way for the reinstitution of a sound, redeemable, commodity-based money. People would have to concentrate more on real wealth than phony financial wealth, actual engineering, as opposed to financial and social engineering.

Of course, an objection reasonable people would make is: “If you default on the debt, it’s going to be a catastrophe.”

My answer is that just because all the paper debt of the US government goes away doesn’t mean the real wealth in the world will disappear. The farms, factories, technologies, and the skills of the workers, will still exist. But on a sound foundation. And with some new owners.

Furthermore, I’d point out that the US Government isn’t “we the people.” It’s become a discreet entity with its own interests, like a giant corporation. If it declares bankruptcy, it’s a problem for its employees and clients much more than for you, the taxpayer.

Those are some of the arguments I’d make for defaulting on the national debt. But it’s just a rather academic thought experiment. The powers-that-be will prefer to build the current house of cards higher, probably propping it up with FX controls, Central Bank Digital Currencies, a Social Credit System, much higher taxes, more inflation, price controls, and god knows what else in the years to come.

The default will happen, but more gradually, through the subtle fraud of inflation, which is actually the very worst and most dishonest way to default.

International Man: Paul Krugman and other mainstream economists have proposed the US government issue a trillion-dollar coin to buy up the federal debt.

That “serious” people can put forward such a clownish solution illustrates that it’s all a ridiculous charade.

What is your take?

Doug Casey: When you’re using funny money as a substitute for real money, it’s inevitable that soothsayers will come up with ridiculous solutions. Krugman isn’t an economist; he’s a political apologist. And a fool. He doesn’t describe the way the world works, but the way he’d like to make it work—using coercion and fraud, not voluntarism and the market. Every idea he has is so stupid that it’s criminal.

The solution to this problem is to go back to a commodity money. Money should be, once again, just a medium of exchange and a store of value. It could no longer be used as a political football.

And the US government should be cut in size by 50, 75%, or 95%. Who knows how deeply you can cut the size of the US government until you try doing it? But it’s necessary, at least if what’s left of the idea of America is going to survive.

Using commodity money will, itself, greatly downsize the US government. The US State has become a behemoth and a parasite. It’s a far bigger danger to the average American than the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, or all of them together. Returning to sound money and a tiny government would make for a more pleasant, prosperous, and safer world—although the process of doing it would be unpleasant for some people.

On the bright side, the only people who will be seriously hurt are the parasites living off the government. I say to hell with the parasites. They should be inconvenienced.

International Man: It’s hard to believe the US government was ever debt-free.

But it happened once—in 1835—thanks to President Andrew Jackson. He was the first and only president to completely pay off the national debt.

Jackson also shut down the Second Bank of the United States, the precursor to the Federal Reserve, the US’s current iteration of a central bank.

It’s unthinkable a modern US president could or would do such things.

Given the practical reality of the world today, where do you see the federal debt going, and what are the implications?

Doug Casey: It was wonderful that Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt, something that Alexander Hamilton, with his warped ideas of economics, sold to the country. But it’s now absolutely impossible to pay off $32 trillion of acknowledged debt, scores of trillions of contingent liabilities, and scores of trillions more of unacknowledged debt.

I’d like to point out that there actually have been previous defaults by the US government. For example, Abraham Lincoln, during the War between the States, defaulted by printing up so-called Greenback currency.

Roosevelt defaulted on the debt by fraudulently devaluing the dollar, raising the price of gold from $20.50 to $35, but only after confiscating it from citizens. That was a default. Then there was Nixon, in 1971, defaulting on the promise to pay foreign governments at $35 gold. Now the dollar is only worth 1/2000th of an ounce of gold.

International Man: Is there any way to turn lemons into lemonade and profit from this situation?

Doug Casey: Let’s not sugarcoat the situation. The real question is how to profit from the collapse of an overextended and corrupt empire.

It makes sense to look at the historical precedent, like the Roman Empire. Was there any way to profit from the collapse of the Roman Empire? Well, some people did, I suppose. But the standard of living collapsed for almost all its residents during the ensuing Dark Ages.

Is there any way to profit from the collapse of Western civilization? That’s so serious that it’s almost like asking whether it’s possible to profit from an asteroid hitting the Earth. The best you can hope to do is insulate yourself as much as possible.

At this point, the best way to be hurt least, or possibly even profit within a very bad scenario, is to own gold, silver, and other commodities. And to improve your skills as a speculator. Remember, most of the real wealth in the world is still going to exist; it’s just going to change ownership.

*  *  *

We’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming… That’s precisely why bestselling author and legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released this urgent PDF report on how to survive and thrive in this chaotic environment. Click here to download it now.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Multi-time grand slam winning tennis champion Martina Navratilova has taken a stand for women’s sports, voicing her objections to trans identified male athletes competing against biological women.

Navratilova pointed to the fact that a trans athlete identifying as a woman, Austin Killips, won the women’s category of the Tour of the Gila bicycle race in New Mexico this week.

Transgender cyclist Austin Killips wins women’s race, causes outrage- this will happen more and more- women’s sports is NOT THE PLACE for trans identified male athletes https://t.co/1KDuhYqyoh

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) May 3, 2023

Cycling’s governing body, the UCI, defended its transgender policy after Killips won, stating “The UCI acknowledges that transgender athletes may wish to compete in accordance with their gender identity,” and adding “The UCI rules are based on the latest scientific knowledge and have been applied in a consistent manner.”

The UCI claims:
‘The UCI rules are based on the latest scientific knowledge’.
This is incorrect.
All the research to date indicates T suppression, however low, does not eliminate male advantage. 1/ https://t.co/TizpQ7Tra2

— Cathy Devine (@cathydevine56) May 3, 2023

Last week, Navratilova also called out trans swimmer Lia Thomas for accusing critics of attempting to “hide transphobia” by saying they are feminists.

“NEWSFLASH Lia- it’s not fair,” Navratilova tweeted, adding “We shouldn’t have to explain it to you over and over. Also- stop explaining feminism to feminists….”

Lia Thomas Says Her Critics Using ‘Feminism’ Claims To Hide Transphobia- NEWSFLASH Lia- it’s not fair. We shouldn’t have to explain it to you over and over. Also- stop explaining feminism to feminists…. https://t.co/vZxEva3rm2

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) April 26, 2023

Navratilova previously praised the decision by the World Athletics international governing body that it will not allow trans identifying biological males to compete against biological women, calling it a “step in the right direction.”

World Athletics Bans Trans

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