Aug 09

Today’s News 9th August 2023

  • Illegal Migrants Should "F**k Off Back To France", Says Deputy Chair Of UK Governing Party
    Illegal Migrants Should “F**k Off Back To France”, Says Deputy Chair Of UK Governing Party

    Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

    If illegal migrants aren’t content with the conditions on Britain’s new migrant barges, they can “f**k off back to France,” the deputy chairman of the U.K.’s governing Conservative party has claimed.

    Lee Anderson, the Conservative MP for Ashfield, made the incendiary remark to the Express newspaper, in which he added: “I think people have just had enough.

    “These people come across the Channel in small boats, if they don’t like the conditions they are housed in here then they should go back to France, or better, not come at all in the first place.”

    Anderson, who has been a deputy chairman of the governing party since February 2023, was commenting on the ongoing migration crisis on England’s southern border, which resulted in a record 45,755 migrant crossings last year, the majority of whom subsequently claim asylum.

    His blunt remark was defended by Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, who admitted that Anderson’s language was “salty” but his point “not unreasonable.”

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    “Lee Anderson expresses the righteous indignation of the British people. He does it in salty terms and that’s his style, but his indignation is well placed,” Chalk told Nick Ferrari on LBC.

    “People coming from a safe country… They should claim asylum in the first country (in which they arrive). It shouldn’t be an open shopping list of where you want to go,” he added.

    On Anderson’s remarks, the justice secretary said his Conservative colleague “expresses himself in his characteristically robust terms, but there is a lot of sense, in my respectful view, in what he says.”

    The Conservative government has been attempting to reduce a considerable backlog to the asylum process and relocate asylum seekers currently residing in hotels, at a cost of around £6 million per day to the British taxpayer, to more cost-effective accommodation including disused army bases and migrant barges.

    One such barge has now docked on the tied island of Portland in the southern English county of Dorset, and the first asylum seekers embarked on the vessel on Monday.

    They were greeted by a small group of pro-refugee demonstrators at the Portland dock, holding “Welcome” signs and handing out packs of toiletries.

    Anderson also took aim at those in support of the migrants, questioning whether they would be “welcome” in their own homes, and calling them hypocrites for supporting the housing needs of illegal migrants but not of homeless Brits across the country.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 02:00

  • Suit Against Tech Giant Shines Light On U.S. Complicity In Chinese Torture
    Suit Against Tech Giant Shines Light On U.S. Complicity In Chinese Torture

    Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

    The wheels of justice often turn slowly, but when it comes to U.S. corporate complicity in China’s record of religious persecution, human rights activists say they are finally picking up speed and moving in the right direction.

    Top reformers in Washington, D.C., are heralding a recent twist in a 12-year legal battle that could have far-reaching implications for all U.S. companies that have sold surveillance or tracking technology to China.  

    Last month, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lawsuit accusing technology giant Cisco Systems Inc. and two former executives of assisting the Chinese government in identifying and targeting Falun Gong practitioners for arrests, torture, and execution could proceed to trial. The ruling largely reversed a lower district court’s 2014 decision to dismiss the claims against Cisco and John Chambers, its former chief executive officer, and Fredy Cheung, the former vice president of its Chinese operations.

    The three-judge appellate panel’s July ruling did not determine the validity of the claims. Instead, it found that the Falun Gong practitioners had presented enough evidence for their case to proceed to trial in California where it was filed.

    The legal turn of events is encouraging human rights advocates who have spent decades scrutinizing U.S. corporate involvement in China’s repression of dissidents and religious minorities and its genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population.

    “Far too long, many elite leaders of America’s most profitable corporations have aided and abetted the Chinese Communist Party’s heinous human rights abuses, including genocide,” Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, told RealClearPolitics. Smith, who chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, has spent three decades in Washington fighting for human rights.

    “This long overdue and wrongly delayed lawsuit underscores the excruciating pain and suffering that corporations like Cisco enable by deliberately cooperating and turning a blind eye to the Chinese Communist Party and its inherent egregious human rights violations and repression in order to make a profit,” Smith added.

    Cisco has denied any wrongdoing and has labeled the allegations in the lawsuit baseless. But U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon, writing for the appellate court, said that the plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence to proceed to trial and that Cisco’s actions amounted to “aiding and abetting” China’s Falun Gong repression, and had a “substantial effect on the commission of violations of international law, including torture.”

    Smith last month held a hearing scrutinizing current U.S. companies’ complicity with China’s forced labor and persecution of many religious and ethnic minorities, as well as dissidents. Testimony from human rights experts highlighted a high-profile case involving forced labor used to make Milwaukee Tool products at Chishan Prison in China. With China’s recent aggression against Taiwan and its military build-up, other witnesses testified about sales by U.S. defense giants, such as Boeing and Raytheon, to the Chinese government.

    The National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball ties to China also came under scrutiny in the form of testimony from Enes Kanter Freedom, a former NBA player for the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks. Kanter Freedom was dropped from the NBA in early 2022 after speaking out about China’s human rights abuses and for wearing shoes emblazoned with the words “Free Tibet” and “Free the Uyghurs.”

    Tencent, a Chinese tech company that partnered with the NBA to live-stream the games, abruptly pulled all Celtics games from the Chinese internet after Kanter Freedom, who played for the Boston team at the time, called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator.” Tencent and the MLB in 2017 announced a wide-ranging partnership that includes live-streaming 125 games, including the All-Star Game and the World Series.

    “It’s shocking that some American corporations are leaving ethics behind and adopting CCP values in China,” Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, told RCP. “That’s what China demands, and too many are willing to comply.”

    In 2006, Rep. Smith first started investigating charges from Falun Gong members that Cisco helped construct, operate, and maintain China’s so-called Golden Shield, better known as the Great Firewall of China, an Internet surveillance system put in place by China’s Ministry of Public Security for the surveillance of dissidents, human rights defenders and those practicing banned religions, such as the Falun Gong.

    In the late 1990s, the Chinese government labeled the Falun Gong a dangerous cult that threatened Communist control of the country and banned it, setting up an office specifically designed to persecute Falun Gong followers. China then pursued large-scale detentions, torture, forced conversions, and executions of Falun Gong members, which have been well documented by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, and many other respected organizations around the world. In 2019, the China Tribunal, a government commission in the U.K., found that forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong victims and other prisoners had taken place on a significant scale throughout China for years.

    In the current case, brought on behalf of several Falun Gong practitioners by the D.C.-based Human Rights Law Foundation, the plaintiffs argue that Cisco purposefully customized its router technology to allow the Chinese government to identify, track, and detain Falun Gong members. The evidence that Cisco executives specifically helped design the technology to target Falun Gong followers includes Cisco marketing material touting its highly advanced video and image analyzers as the “only product capable of recognizing over 90% of Falun Gong pictorial information.”

    The lawsuit also accused Cisco of providing the Chinese government with a library of carefully analyzed patterns of Falun Gong Internet activity, or “signatures,” that enable the Chinese government to identify Falun Gong Internet users; several log/alert systems that provide the Chinese government with real-time monitoring and notification based on Falun Gong Internet traffic patterns; applications for storing data profiles on individual Falun Gong practitioners for use during interrogations and “forced conversions” that included torture; and a nationwide video surveillance system which enabled the Chinese government to identify and detain Falun Gong practitioners.

    Cisco was not only aware that its customizations would be used to repress the Falun Gong, but it also geared all of its work to further that goal, the plaintiffs argue. The lawsuit partly stemmed from an internal Cisco document leaked to reporters on the eve of a 2008 U.S. Senate human rights hearing. The 90-page document, an internal Cisco presentation, showed that the company’s engineers regarded the Chinese government’s extensive Internet censorship program as an opportunity to expand its business with the CCP and marketed its routers to China, specifically as a tool of repression.

    The Senate hearing also examined the role of other U.S. companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, for cooperating to varying degrees with China’s and other foreign governments’ censorship programs.

    The Cisco presentation directly acknowledged that one of Golden Shield’s stated goals was to “combat ‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles.” It attributed the quote to Runsen Li, the Chinese government’s then-information technology chief in charge of developing the project.

    Mark Chandler, Cisco’s senior vice president of legal services, testified to the Senate that he was “appalled” and “disappointed” when he saw that quote in the presentation.

    “It is very regrettable that one of our engineers quoted directly from Mr. Runsen Li, the Chinese government’s head of IT for the Golden Shield project,” Terry Alberstein, a senior director of corporate communications at Cisco, told Wired.com in 2008. “They do not represent Cisco’s views, principles, or its sales and marketing strategy or approach. They were merely inserted in that presentation to capture the goals of the Chinese government in that specific project, which was one of many discussed in that 2002 presentation.”

    Cisco acknowledged selling roughly $100,000 worth of routers and switches that became part of the Golden Shield project, according to Alberstein. However, he denied that the company customized them for China’s censorship goals.

    Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, chaired that 2008 hearing and argued that U.S. companies have a “moral obligation” to protect freedom of expression.

    Terri Marsh, who filed the suit in her capacity as executive director and senior litigation partner of the Human Rights Law Foundation, said unique aspects of the case showed that Cisco was not providing “generic” products to a totalitarian regime. Instead, Cisco created features “to facilitate torture and track the progression of efforts to forcibly convert practitioners.”

    “Importantly, the complaint alleges that China could not create similar tools at the time, so the timing of the assistance was significant,” Marsh said in an emailed statement to RCP. And, she said, this is not a case where a tool just happened to be misused.

    “Plaintiffs allege that Chinese officials made clear to Cisco that it needed features to further the violent crackdown of Falun Gong believers in China, and Cisco made those features to gain a lucrative foothold in the Chinese market.”

    Marsh added that the decision hinges on the specific allegations of conduct that took place in the United States. “The complaint alleges that the heart of the claims – designing the tools, manufacturing components, and providing ongoing assistance – largely took place in California,” she said.

    Cisco’s communications team did not respond to RCP’s inquiry. In a statement last month to the Los Angeles Times, a company spokesperson denied that the company customized its products to assist China’s Falun Gong persecution.

    “We build our products to global standards, which promote the free flow of information, privacy, and freedom of expression,” the company said. “Cisco has a longstanding commitment to uphold and respect human rights for all people, and we are strongly committed to an open global Internet.”

    Smith and other human rights experts point to Cisco’s internal 90-page presentation and other evidence to discount the tech giant’s defense.

    “Companies must be exposed and brought to justice if they have blood on their hands from partnerships with businesses and offices controlled by a ruthless ruling party working to crush China’s religious believers, ethnic minorities, and dissidents on their hands,” Nina Shea said. “This case will be important in shining the light on this problem and in deterring others.”

    Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 00:05

  • Visualizing The World's Space Debris (By Country Responsible)
    Visualizing The World’s Space Debris (By Country Responsible)

    Earlier in July, a suspicious object washed up on a remote beach in Western Australia. This chunk of golden metal was reported to be a piece of space debris that found its way back to Earth.

    And it is not the only one. Today, as Visual Capitalist’s Freny Fernandes details below, thousands of defunct satellites, spent rocket stages, metal shards from collisions, and other remnants of human space exploration are orbiting the Earth at breakneck speeds.

    In this graphic, Preyash Shah uses tracking data from the Space-Track.org, maintained by the U.S. Space Force, to help visualize just how much debris is currently orbiting the Earth, while identifying the biggest contributors of this celestial clutter.

    Note: Many spent rocket bodies are still actively tracked and controlled by their launch authorities, and the source tracks these separately. Space debris includes spent rocket bodies that are defunct and uncontrolled.

    Ranked: Countries Responsible for the Most Space Debris

    According to the data, there are roughly 14,000 small, medium, and large debris objects floating about in low Earth orbit as of May 2023. And this is not counting the millions of tiny debris fragments that are too small to be tracked.

    Although space debris is a global problem, certain countries have played a larger role in contributing to the clutter. In the 1950s, the U.S. and Russia (formerly USSR) led the space race with the highest number of launched space objects. In the 1970s, they were joined by China, and objects from all three countries account for the vast majority of today’s space debris:

    *China-Brazil space debris originates from various cooperational space programs over the years

    The debris count of Russia—including former launches by the Soviet Union—currently stands at 4,521. But the U.S. and China are not far behind with more than 4,000 each. And though many of these are accumulated over time, thousands of debris are created in single catastrophic moments.

    China’s anti-satellite test in 2007 destroyed its own weather satellite, creating 3,500 space debris pieces. Likewise, the 2009 collision between inactive Russian satellite Cosmos-2251 and operational U.S. communications satellite Iridium 33 created over 2,000 pieces of debris.

    Moving at high speeds, even tiny fragments of debris can cause catastrophic collisions. And with companies like SpaceX launching expansive satellite networks, these numbers are bound to grow.

    Clearer Skies on the Horizon?

    Addressing the space debris issue requires a multi-faceted approach involving international cooperation, advanced technology, and responsible space practices.

    Scientists and engineers are actively exploring methods to clean up debris, including concepts like space-based debris removal systems and novel deorbiting techniques.

    Some space agencies like the European Space Agency are also making plans to ensure their space technology is designed with safe disposal plans to significantly reduce the accumulation of space junk.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 23:45

  • America Is Now A Zombie State
    America Is Now A Zombie State

    Authored by Jacob Howland via UnHerd,

    “Every nation gets the government it deserves,” wrote the philosopher Joseph de Maistre, and some are getting it good and hard right now. De Maistre’s moral interpretation of politics admits of exceptions, but the United States in 2023 is not one of them. A wasting tide of bad education and corruption is rotting the cultural and constitutional piers that, since the Civil War, have kept the US above the waters of chaos.

    (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    The American regime has become a tawdry theatrocracy in which political actors, hypokritai in Greek, play stock characters in a loathsome farce. In the run-up to the 2024 elections, Donald Trump stars as the persecuted saviour, and Joe Biden the righteous defender, of the American republic. Never mind that Trump is self-absorbed and impulsive to the point of criminal stupidity, that Biden is senile and evidently corrupt, and that both of these braying, boorish old men are fraudsters and fabulists. These vices do not matter to their furious followers, who love their man precisely because he is not the hated other. Trump and Biden cannot, and will not, be separated; each needs his opponent as the hammer needs the nail. And above the wretched spectacle sit a click-hungry media, feeding on riot and picking favourites like vulturous pagan gods.

    This drama of political decadence defies easy categorisation. Aristotle wrote that tragedy depicts people who are better, and comedy worse, than us spectators. Biden and Trump are certainly worse than those who voted them into office, but they are not remotely funny. Their antics are repellent and their goofiness unlovable. Observing them and the choral leaders that follow in their train — jerky puppets like Rudy Giuliani sweating hair-dye, or Anthony Fauci claiming to be science itself — Americans feel only shame and dread, without the cathartic release of laughter or tears.

    These trapped emotions spring from the same source. They are visceral responses to the approaching death by senescence of the American experiment in ordered liberty. The problem goes well beyond presidential dementia. The US Senate (from the Latin senex, “old”) looks more like the waiting room of a geriatric neurologist than a council of wise elders. There’s Mitch McConnell, prone to falls and freeze-ups; wheelchair-bound and confused Dianne Feinstein; and John Fetterman, who at only 53 is less fit for public service than any other member of that formerly august body. It’s as if C-SPAN, a network that televises congressional hearings, decided instead to air absurdist, post-apocalyptic horror films.

    The zombification of the Capitol — not to mention our city streets, which have become permanent encampments of the dazed and disturbed — is merely a symptom of the underlying disease. Like all institutions, politics falls apart without regular infusions of constructive energy. A modern democracy is healthy only if its major parties grow organically from their voters, representing their interests by habit and inclination even more than conscious effort.

    But the grassroots politics Tocqueville admired when he visited the US in the 1830s gave way long ago to the top-down astroturfing of technocratic managerialism. Our governing elites represent no one but themselves and their cronies, and they don’t welcome shocks to the system. Insurgent candidates such as Robert Kennedy Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose public elevation of the concerns of many Americans aims to revitalise national politics, are censored and met with active resistance, even by their own parties.

    It’s not just in politics that the wellsprings of individual and social vitality have dried up. Americans are marrying less and later, and having too few children, to reproduce themselves and the families that nurtured them. What is more, our public schools have largely ceased to transmit the accumulated knowledge and civilisational wisdom of the past to the children we do have. A taste for historical repudiation has taken hold across the culture, leading curators to “contextualise” art, city governments to take down statues, colleges to rename buildings, and publishers to censor or rewrite books. But creativity withers when it ceases to be nourished by the oxygenated blood of the tradition. Little wonder that Hollywood increasingly cannibalises its legacy by pouring old films into new plastic scripts.

    Technology has exacerbated our national enervation. We have become charging-stations for our smartphones, which drain psychic energy with insistent distractions and overloads of information-babble. Video calls and work-from-home limit in-person interactions with actual existing individuals, who would otherwise be together for most of their weekly waking hours. Targeted advertising, fine-tuned algorithms, and politically stratified social media sharply decrease our exposure to new ideas. We are immuring ourselves within our own private caves, watching flickering images in darkness.

    AI language-learning models offer a cautionary parable of these larger cultural developments. Programs such as ChatGPT, whose writing remains formulaic and prone to errors, learn by sifting through a sea of digitalised text, a growing share of which consists of AI-generated content. The predictable result of this feedback loop is the kind of levelling we’ve seen across our institutions. Like newspapers that drink their own ink — and which ones don’t, these days? — their product can only get worse.

    Cultural exhaustion, social withdrawal, and the general enfeeblement of life forces are the practical expression of a will to nothing. There is a name for this spiritual and intellectual condition, and it is nihilism. Nihilism is demonic to the extent that the will to nothing is still a will, a life force. That it is only a negative one is by no means reassuring, because it is easier and more economical to tear down than to build up. Destruction is dramatic and accomplishes the illusion of vitality with relatively little energy. And who in this apocalyptic time, including the nihilist, doesn’t want to feel even a little alive?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 23:25

  • Wagner "Taking Advantage" Of Niger Instability, Blinken Charges
    Wagner “Taking Advantage” Of Niger Instability, Blinken Charges

    After Victoria Nuland’s Monday visit to Niger didn’t bear much fruit, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused Wagner group of seeking to take advantage of the instability in the West African country to spread its and Russia’s influence.

    “I think what happened, and what continues to happen in Niger was not instigated by Russia or by Wagner, but… they tried to take advantage of it,” he told BBC Tuesday.

    Image via Italy24 News

    “Every single place that this Wagner group has gone, death, destruction and exploitation have followed,” Blinken added. “Insecurity has gone up, not down”.

    As we detailed earlier, Acting Deputy Secretary of State Nuland attempted to warn Niger’s junta leaders not to cooperate with Wagner for the same reasons. 

    Blinken further stressed that the instability in Niger and the region is a “repeat of what’s happened in other countries, where they brought nothing but bad things in their wake.”

    The comments come after multiple international reports said that Niger’s coup leaders are in talks with Wagner, amid fears that a Western-friendly African bloc of neighboring countries (ECOWAS) could intervene militarily to restore ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, who is currently under house arrest.

    According to a recent CFR briefing, Wagner has an extensive presence across Africa, helping various governments chiefly with security and counter-terrorism operations and training:

    The Wagner Group has established operations in several African countries, where many of its operations focus on security issues. It has often provided security services and paramilitary assistance and launched disinformation campaigns for troubled regimes in exchange for resource concessions and diplomatic support. Wagner is most active in the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya, Mali, and Sudan, all of which have a tenuous relationship with the West due to colonial legacies and inherent political differences.

    Demonstrators in favor of the coup in Niger have of late been frequently seen waving Russian flags, as an indicator of deep anti-Western sentiment.

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    Alarmingly, while both French and American troops are in the region, Wagner mercenaries are just next door from Niger in Mali. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had positively celebrated the coup and blasted past French and Western colonialism in Africa:

    In a long message posted to social media, Prigozhin blamed the situation in Niger on the legacy of colonialism and alleged, without evidence, that Western nations were sponsoring terrorist groups in the country. Niger was once a French colony and, before this week’s putsch, it had been one of the few democracies in the region.

    From the West’s perspective, looming large in the background is expanding Russian influence in Africa.

    But those African leaders who are currently standing with Niger’s coup leaders warn of NATO influence instead, remembering the disastrous legacy of US-NATO intervention in Libya in 2011…

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    There have recently been hyped headlines claiming Putin is eyeing extending his influence to Niger and across West Africa. But the reality also is that US AFRICOM has long had a significant military presence in the form of drone and special operations bases across the continent.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 23:05

  • Trump Derangement At The Washington Post
    Trump Derangement At The Washington Post

    Authored by Richard Benedetto via RealClear Wire,

    The Washington Post has a Donald Trump obsession. Some might call it a vendetta.

    Although the flamboyant former president has been out of the White House for more than two and a half years, he gets far more front-page coverage in the Post than the current president, Joe Biden.

    And nearly all of the Post’s reporting on Trump is negative.

    To be sure, Trump’s endless legal troubles are big news and should be thoroughly covered. But in the pages of the capital city’s venerable daily paper the nation’s economic, social, educational, health, and foreign affairs problems facing the incumbent president take a back seat to Trump’s ongoing indictments of one kind or another.

    For June and July – a period of 61 days – Trump’s name appeared 33 times in Washington Post Page-One headlines.

    Biden, who is the current president, skated away with just 14 Page-One mentions.

    Moreover, 31 of the 33 headlines with Trump’s name in them were negative. For example:

    • “Justice Dept. reveals damning details in Trump case”
    • “U.S.: Trump flouted law all along way”

    In contrast, eight of the 14 Biden mentions were positive, such as these:

    • “Biden announces new loan forgiveness”
    • “Biden’s border authority affirmed”

    Something is wrong here. Trump is not the president; Biden is. That is not to say that Trump is not newsworthy. He is. After all, polls show he is the leading Republican contender for the 2024 presidential nomination.

    But more than twice as much front-page coverage of Trump as of Biden seems a little over the top.

    Is news about Trump more important than news about the man who is currently charged with leading the nation through these perilous times and who is making decisions that affect our lives every day? And isn’t the front page where we expect to find coverage of the day’s most important events?

    Editors running the Post apparently think their readers care more about Trump’s legal troubles than Biden’s leadership through these perilous times. Maybe they do. We live in highly partisan, and highly polarized, times.

    To be sure, every newspaper is free to place stories anywhere their editors decide to put them. There are no formal rules for what must be played on the front page. Each newsroom is free to make its own choices.

    Most newspapers have what is called a daily Page-One meeting. There, the paper’s top editors gather and discuss the stories they think should be placed on Page One. Each editor makes a pitch for their favorites. Clearly, Post editors agree with robot-like regularity that Trump, not Biden, is the top story of the day.

    This past week Trump was in the media spotlight for being indicted again by a federal grand jury and appearing in court in Washington to plead “not guilty” to charges stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Tons of Page-One coverage of that in the Post, as it should be.

    But where was Biden when all this was coming down? He was on vacation at his Delaware beach house, riding his bike, and sunning himself on the sand: lots of nice pictures for TV.

    Do you think it was by accident that Biden just happened to be on vacation while Trump was in the dock? Or do you think Biden knew the indictments were coming down – after all, it was his own Justice Department that brought them – and decided to get out of town and leave the big news spotlight all to Trump?

    My guess is the latter.

    In sum, those who study the Post’s front pages over time might conclude that the newspaper – in its choice of story placement and the negative tone of the headlines – is out to get Trump. Or, conversely, out to boost Biden.

    Either way, they wouldn’t be far from wrong.

    This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

    Richard Benedetto is a retired USA Today White House correspondent and columnist. He has taught politics and journalism at American, Georgetown, and George Mason Universities for 17 years.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 22:45

  • China Buys 23 Tons Of Gold In 9th Straight Month Of Purchases, Total Rises To Record 2,137 Tons
    China Buys 23 Tons Of Gold In 9th Straight Month Of Purchases, Total Rises To Record 2,137 Tons

    Not only is China ravenously buying up all the physical gold it can get its hands on – something it has been doing pretty much non stop since 2009, for the most part covertly with occasional periods of public disclosure meant to achieve specific political goals – more importantly, it is letting the world know it is buying up all the physical gold it can get its hands on.

    On Monday, the Chinese central bank revealed that in July it increased its gold reserves for a ninth straight month as central bank purchases – in big part out of China – continue to underpin the price of the precious metal, offset selling by ETFs.

    The bullion held by the People’s Bank of China rose by 740,000 troy ounces, or about 23 tons, bringing the country’s total stockpile to a record 2,137 tons, with around 188 tons added in a run of purchases that began in November. What China’s true purchases are, however, remains a mystery and will be revealed only when Beijing is ready with whatever it has in mind next for its currency.

    As we reported previously, China has led central bank buying of gold in 2023 as it continues to diversify its reserves away from the weaponized US dollar. That’s helped keep prices buoyant despite rising interest rates around the world, which typically sap demand for non-interest bearing bullion. One can only imagine what will happen once rates start diving and when the exponential increase in US debt forces the Fed to resume monetizing it.

    Official purchases are key to the outlook for prices this year, according to the World Gold Council. The industry body expects central banks to keep adding to their holdings, although at a slower pace than last year when demand surged in the hunt for alternatives to the dollar after the US sanctioned Russia’s reserves following its invasion of Ukraine.

    Meanwhile, the PBOC also reported that China’s total foreign currency reserves rose by $11.3 billion to $3.204 trillion in July, up 3.2% on the year and 0.4% on the prior month, and higher than the $3.193 trillion consensus estimate.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 22:25

  • China Slides Into Deflation, Despite Jump In Core Print And Unexpected Rebound In Sequential CPI
    China Slides Into Deflation, Despite Jump In Core Print And Unexpected Rebound In Sequential CPI

    China has found itself in a bit of a quandary: on one hand, as we reported moments ago, in its zeal to portray the economy as the second coming of that brilliant vision and magnificent execution of economic utopia that is “Bidenomics”, Beijing barred not only all bearish commentary in financial and economic circles, but also any mention of “deflation”; on the other hand China is – well – deflating: stuck between a collapsing property sector, deleveraging consumers, crashing stock market, slumping exports, and accelerating deglobalization, the only place where Chinese prices can go up is the same imaginary socialist utopia where Bidenomics is actually something different than a drunken sailor’s deficit-busting spending spree.

    Then things got especially complicated because just days after China banned the use of deflation, it was set to report its latest July CPI and PPI… which it did moments ago.

    And as a reminder, in our preview of today’s CPI print we said that “odds are that CPI will come in just barely positive and all shall be well… or else we are about to see a whole lot of imprisoned Chinese economists, analysts and strategists.”

    Well, we can now say that we were half right. Yes, on one hand, China has no choice but to admit deflation, pardon disinflation (we don’t want the Chinese secret police knocking on our door at 3am) had arrived, and sure enough the National Bureau of Statistics, the greatest congregation of goalseek scientists ever gathered, just announced that in July CPI dipped -0.3% Y/Y, down from June’s unchanged print but just slightly stronger than the -0.4% Y/Y estimate. At the same time PPI also dropped for the 10th consecutive month, but it appears to have finally hit a bottom and after sliding -5.4% Y/Y in June it dropped ever so slightly less, or -4.4%.

    In other words, this was the first time since Nov 2020 that both Chinese CPI and PPI printed negative.

    But wait, there’s more. Because while China did indeed enter deflation, pardon, disinflation on an annual basis, the sequential number is where the real goalseeking action was: with consensus expecting a drop of -0.1% which would have marked the sixth consecutive monthly decline and the longest stretch on record, after last month’s 0.2% decline, Beijing reported that for the first time since February, China experienced sequential inflation of 0.2%.

    Still, that would hardly quiet the inflation hawks and Beijing had to engage in aggressive damage control; sure enough, statistics bureau attributed the decline in consumers prices to the high base of comparison with last year, saying the contraction is likely to be temporary and consumer demand continued to improve in July.

    “With the impact of a high base from last year gradually fading, the CPI is likely to rebound gradually,” Dong Lijuan, chief statistician at the NBS, said in rare additional comments to accompany the official data. Needless to say, he didn’t use the dreaded D-word which would have bought him an immediate one way ticket to deflation-reeducation camp.

    There was better news in the latest core inflation print, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, and which doubled to 0.8% from 0.4%, a sign of “underlying, although subdued, demand in the economy” according to Bloomberg.

    Similar to the US, a breakdown of the consumer inflation figures showed prices for household goods, food and transport contracted, while prices of services spending, like recreation and education, climbing.

    Of course, all of the above “data” is just theatrics as everyone knows the true plight of China’s economy. Using the GDP deflator — a measure of economy-wide prices — China was in deflation in the first half of the year. The International Monetary Fund defines deflation as “a sustained decline in an aggregate measure of prices,” such as the CPI or the GDP deflator.

    And while deflation boosts the case for more monetary and fiscal stimulus, the central bank is facing several constraints that’s making it cautious, including a weaker yuan and record debt levels in the economy. Analysts expect the PBOC to take moderate steps to ease monetary policy for the rest of this year. It is unclear what incremental fiscal stimulus measures Beijing will undertake, but one thing is clear: it has to do something or else that record youth unemployment rate will soon transform into the one thing every Chinese leader fears the most: a middle-class insurrection.

    The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index trimmed an earlier loss of as much as 0.9% to trade 0.3% lower as of 9:50 a.m., while the onshore benchmark CSI 300 Index of stocks traded little changed.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 22:24

  • Independent Journalist Receives Jan. 6 Grand Jury Subpoena
    Independent Journalist Receives Jan. 6 Grand Jury Subpoena

    Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Independent journalist Steve Baker says he was served a subpoena signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Anita Eve, demanding all of the video he shot at and near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He said the subpoena likely means the DOJ is investigating him for alleged felony crimes.

    D.C. Metropolitan Police Department riot officers clash with protesters on the west front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Steve Baker)

    “They want to silence me,” Mr. Baker said during an Aug. 7 Spaces broadcast on X, formerly known as Twitter.

    Mr. Baker said he was told to show up in Washington on Aug. 16 to turn over his material. He was given an alternative: to surrender his video to the FBI in his home state of North Carolina. He told The Epoch Times that he plans to appear in person in Washington.

    Mr. Baker said he believes his work covering Jan. 6 unrest at the Capitol is protected by the First Amendment. He said he didn’t damage property, encourage anyone to enter the building, or participate in chants or actions by protesters.

    It’s the second time in 2023 that Mr. Baker has called for public attention to what he believes could be DOJ prosecution of him for his work on Jan. 6, 2021.

    In March, he said a high-profile journalist called him at 6:30 a.m. one day with a warning from a DOJ insider. “‘Your friend in Raleigh, tell him to be careful,’” the message said. “‘He has awakened a couple of people’s attention to his work, and they’re not happy about it at all.’”

    Mr. Baker has been a frequent, vocal critic on social media regarding the DOJ’s handling of Jan. 6 cases, citing his observations of the events on Jan. 6, 2021. He has criticized Congress for not aggressively investigating the issues ignored by the original anti-Trump Jan. 6 Select Committee.

    It’s the second time since Jan. 6, 2021, that Mr. Baker has been in the crosshairs of the FBI and DOJ. He said he was threatened in 2021 with a charge of interstate racketeering for licensing his Jan. 6 video footage to HBO and other media outlets.

    Mr. Baker showed up for an interview with the FBI in August 2021, but that meeting was delayed because of a federal rule that requires the attorney general to sign off on interviewing any member of the press, he said. In November 2021, Mr. Baker was told he would be charged “within the week.”

    “The interstate racketeering charge was just absurd on its face,” Mr. Baker said.

    The 2021 investigation hasn’t resulted in charges.

    “We never heard from them again for over 20 months, until Friday,” Mr. Baker said.

    Mr. Baker said he believes what triggered the current DOJ investigation was a story about the U.S. Capitol Police that he has been developing for 10 months. That story is close to fruition but still requires more video research in Washington, he said.

    Paramedics from the D.C. Fire and EMS Department perform CPR on protester Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by police near the Speaker’s Lobby on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Steve Baker)

    “Fact is … ‘they’ know the story I’ve been working on for ten months and am about to drop,” Mr. Baker wrote on X. “They are not going to stop it from coming out. Their timing for this action is fully transparent.

    “I will not go gentle into that good night.”

    He declined to share more details on the Capitol Police story.

    Mr. Baker also published a recent story on social media about U.S. Army special forces at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A special unit from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, had soldiers on Capitol grounds that day for as yet undefined purposes, he wrote.

    The Epoch Times has reached out to the DOJ for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 22:05

  • Is Tonga's Volcano Eruption Set To Warm Earth?
    Is Tonga’s Volcano Eruption Set To Warm Earth?

    The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) undersea volcano eruption in January 2022 was larger than any nuclear blast conducted by the US, and the shockwave was felt worldwide. A new study reveals the eruption, which injected large amounts of water vapor into the stratosphere in an unprecedented way in our lifetime, might cause global temperatures to warm temporarily. 

    “The amount of water vapor injected into the stratosphere after the eruption of HTHH was unprecedented, and it is, therefore, unclear what it might mean for surface climate. We use climate model simulations to assess the long-term surface impacts of stratospheric water vapor (SWV) anomalies caused by volcanic eruptions. The simulations show that the SWV anomalies lead to strong and persistent warming of Northern Hemisphere landmasses in boreal winter, and austral winter cooling over Australia,” wrote Martin Jucker, the leader researcher on the study from the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre. 

    Titled “Long-term surface impact of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai-like stratospheric water vapor injection,” the paper examines the aftermath of the eruption “and reveals that surface temperatures across large regions of the world increase by over 1.5°C for several years, although some areas experience cooling close to 1°C. Additionally, the research suggests a potential connection between the eruption and sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.” 

    Large volcanic eruptions cause the climate to cool because sulfur dioxide is typically emitted into the atmosphere. But Tonga is different because the underwater caldera shot 146 metric megatons of water into the stratosphere, potentially contributing to atmospheric warming over the next five years. 

    Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist, added his perspective and tweeted, “This new Hunga Tonga research study (in peer review) is revelatory. Seriously, we need to consider the volcano as an unexpected, decade-long, natural warming spike.” 

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    Don’t worry. We’re sure the climate alarmists in the White House have a solution to all of this: stop driving automobiles, eat insects, and own nothing. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 21:45

  • China Bans Negative Economic Commentary, Mentions Of "Deflation"
    China Bans Negative Economic Commentary, Mentions Of “Deflation”

    The last time China threatened its analysts and reporters against being “bearish” on the economy and “at odds with the government’s bullish statements” was in early 2016 when China had just suffered through a historic devaluation and capital flight which drained over $1 trillion in Chinese reserves, and when fears that failing to short-circuit the capital flight (which would soon launch Bitcoin off from its base around $400 to the then-cycle high of $20,000) could lead to full-blown economic collapse.

    As the WSJ reported at the time, the “stepped-up censorship” was an effort by Beijing to “quell growing concerns about the country’s economic prospects as it experiences a prolonged slowdown in growth,” and that to stem what earlier this year was a flood of money leaving the country, Chinese regulators and censors are trying to create a climate dubbed “zhengnengliang,” or “positive energy”, said the newspaper.

    In short: Beijing realized that it was of critical importance to preserve confidence in the economy, no matter how fake, and it resorted to the ultimate step indicating that a collapse was nigh.

    Well, China is doing it all over again, which in keeping with this mornings catastrophic Chinese trade data, confirms just how close to the edge China once again is.

    As the FT reports, Chinese authorities are (again) putting pressure on, which is a polite way of saying barring, prominent local economists to “avoid discussing negative trends such as deflation, as concerns mount about Beijing’s ability to boost a flagging recovery in the world’s second-biggest economy.”

    According to the report, “multiple local brokerage analysts and researchers at leading universities as well as state-run think-tanks said they had been instructed by regulators, their employers and even domestic media outlets to avoid speaking negatively about topics ranging from fears of capital flight to softening prices.”

    Seven well-regarded economists told the Financial Times that their employers had told them some topics were off-limits for public discussion. The China Securities and Regulatory Commission, the stock regulator, has accused brokerage analysts of playing up risks facing the economy, which is suffering from weak consumer demand, declining exports and an ailing property sector.

    Two think-tank scholars and two brokerage economists, all of whom serve as government advisers, said there was pressure to present economic news positively in order to increase public confidence. “The regulator doesn’t want to hear negative comments about the economy in public,” said an adviser to the central bank. “They wanted us to interpret bad news from a positive light.”

    Needless to say, but the FT says so anyway, analysts noted that growing self-censorship among economic research professionals, on whom investors often rely in a market where reliable data is difficult to come by, underscored Beijing’s efforts to control the flow of information.

    “You’ve got an economic slowdown that would worry any country, coupled with a China that always likes to put on a brave face to the world and a leadership that is particularly image-conscious,” said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong. “Put those three factors together and it’s the recipe for a very non-transparent economy.”

    The clampdown of negative economic commentary follows a barrage of dismal economic data that has undermined investor confidence and hindered Beijing’s efforts to spur a robust post-Covid rebound. Gross domestic product expanded just 0.8 per cent in the second quarter against the previous three months. Last month, the Communist party’s politburo admitted the recovery was making “tortuous progress”.

    More awkwardly, with Beijing seeking to restore faith with limited stimulus measures, certain subjects are taboo, such as deflation.

    China’s producer price index has declined for eight straight months since October, while annual consumer inflation hit a two-year low of zero growth in June. Citigroup economists said core goods prices, which strip out volatile food and energy costs, had already entered a “deflationary zone” thanks to weak consumer demand.

    Yet senior officials from the country’s official statistics bureau and the central bank have ruled out the possibility of deflation. “Deflation does not and will not exist in China,” Fu Linghui, a National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson, said last month.

    In response to this bizarre crackdown, Albert Edwards correctly pointed out that “When this happens it screams crisis” and reminds readers of his recent article discussing precisely this: that China is now in deflation.

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    And what makes it even more awkward is that in just a few minute, (western) economists expect that China will report that it is officially in deflation when it reveals that its CPI for the month of July dropped negative after printing at 0.0% last month, the lowest level in over two years…

    … although since this is China, odds are that CPI will come in just barely positive and all shall be well… or else we are about to see a whole lot of imprisoned Chinese economists, analysts and strategists.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 21:28

  • Rep. Justin Amash Defends President Trump Over 2020 Election Indictment
    Rep. Justin Amash Defends President Trump Over 2020 Election Indictment

    Former U.S. representative for Michigan’s 3rd congressional district and founder of the Liberty Caucus, Justin Amash, who was the first Republican congressman to call for the impeachment of President Trump, has now taken to Twitter to defend him. 

    On Sunday, Amash – who is well known for his distaste of President Trump – made a post on Twitter outlining why he believes Trump’s indictment is in error because of Trump’s actions being “political contention”. 

    “I may not like Trump, but I love our Constitution, so I feel compelled to speak out. The latest indictment, which I encourage everyone to read, attempts to criminalize Trump’s routine misstatements of fact and law in connection with the 2020 election,” Amash wrote. “But this is precisely the sort of wrong that must be addressed politically under our Constitution, not criminally.”

    “Our system can’t survive if political disputes are removed to the criminal realm. There’s no limiting principle to such an approach,” he continued.

    He wrote: “Remind me again which former presidents have been indicted for going to war without congressional approval, spying on Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment, abusing emergency declarations to bypass checks and balances, or ignoring legal advisers to pursue a clearly unlawful policy.”

    “We don’t criminalize these actions, egregious as they are, because they are matters of political contention. We’re allowed to disagree about the workings of our constitutional system without fear of criminal reprisal,” he continued. 

    Amash added: “Politicians are constantly misguided and just plain mistaken about a lot of things—often remarkably so. It endangers all Americans to begin treating politicians’ false beliefs regarding political or constitutional matters, even when they’re obviously wrong, as criminal offenses.”

    “We impeach people for violating the public trust—for political misconduct or serious incompetence. We reject them. We vote them out. We never again elect them. We don’t imprison them,” he wrote. 

    Finally, he concluded: “As an aside: Even on Jack Smith’s own terms—even assuming the applicability of the cited statutes to a political dispute—the indictment falls woefully short. Showing that others repeatedly told Trump he was wrong is not sufficient to prove he sought to defraud the United States or to corruptly obstruct an election. Proving Trump’s state of mind beyond a reasonable doubt—proving fraudulent or corrupt intent—requires much more than Smith alleges.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 21:05

  • States Stop Credit Card Companies From Tracking Gun Purchases, Though It May Not Last
    States Stop Credit Card Companies From Tracking Gun Purchases, Though It May Not Last

    Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Credit card companies were preparing to track the purchase of firearms and ammunition of every American citizen. While a flurry of bills lobbed by state legislators caused all of them to reconsider those plans, it may only be a temporary victory.

    Almost one year ago, an effort was launched to create a new Merchant Category Code (MCC) to track the purchases of firearms and ammunition. However, inspired by the uproar of Second Amendment constituents, Republicans in the United States Senate, as well as lawmakers in several states, have launched legislative efforts that have successfully shut them down—for now.

    On March 21, United States Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced SB 898. This bill prohibits the Internal Revenue Service from auditing a taxpayer based on the MCCs.

    So far, seven states have joined the resistance.

    On March 29, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice approved House Bill 2004. In summary, the measure will “prevent the use of payment card processing systems for surveillance of Second Amendment activity and discriminatory conduct.” The bill would also preclude financial institutions that violate this law from qualification in bidding on state contracts.

    On April 6, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 295 into law, also prohibiting financial institutions from using MCCs to identify or track firearms purchases.

    On April 16, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves approved HB1110. In addition to prohibiting the use of MCCs to identify or track firearms purchases in Mississippi, the measure prohibits state governmental agencies as well as public or private individuals from keeping any record or list of privately owned firearms or their owners. The legislation also warns that data collected from this MCC would almost inevitably end up in some federal government databases.

    On April 29, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signed HB1487 (pdf).

    On May 12, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis approved CS/SB 214.

    On May 19, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed SB359 into law.

    On June 10, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB2837, which will become effective on Sept. 1. The measure will prohibit financial institutions operating in Texas from requiring or assigning a firearms code, defined as “any merchant category code approved by the International Organization for Standardization for a firearms retailer, including Merchant Category Code 5723.”

    On July 13, California’s legislators introduced a gutted and amended version of Assembly Bill 1587, originally introduced on Feb. 17 as a measure about the state’s Health and Safety Code regarding multifamily housing, which now requires credit card issuers to use the MCC unique to retailers of firearms and ammunition.

    ‘They’re Not Finished’

    West Virginia Delegate Chris Phillips (R) called the legislative effort in his state “a caucus priority.”

    West Virginia Delegate Chris Phillips. (Perry Bennet/West Virginia House of Delegates)

    “I think it’s vitally important that we protect citizen’s Constitutional rights from intrusion by government and big business,” Mr. Phillips explained.

    He also believes that such an MCC “would have a chilling effect” on an individual’s willingness to risk purchasing a firearm and a retailer’s willingness to sell them.

    “We’ve seen a lot of gun dealers being targeted by credit card companies that refuse to process transactions for them,” he said. “This opens that door far wider for that, I’m afraid.”

    Mr. Phillips also suggests the MCC effort has more to do with restricting gun rights than preventing any shootings.

    “Unfortunately, I’m afraid the aim of gun control advocates isn’t stopping mass shootings, it’s gun control, and they will piecemeal it and take every inch they get until they take a mile,” he said.

    Idaho Rep. Ted Hill (R) said, “The whole idea was clearly a back door surveillance mechanism for lawful gun owners,” that “isn’t going to solve anything else but that.”

    While the bill got “a lot of pushback from the banks,” Mr. Hill said it was “overwhelmingly passed,” with 62 of Idaho’s 70 delegates voting in support of the measure.

    While those pushing the MCC appear to have backed down, Mr. Hill firmly believes “they’re not finished.”

    “The Credit Card companies have been backing out on this initiative to track these codes as the penalties are significant and the risk is high,” said Mr. Hill. “It’s a short-term victory for now. We suspect that they will try again. They will try to figure out another way to do it.”

    The Background

    On September 9, the Switzerland-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced that it would create a new MCC specific to merchants who sell firearms and ammunition.

    As explained by Merchant Maverick, an MCC is a four-digit number that identifies a type of business and the sort of goods or services they provide. MCCs are assigned by credit card companies and can affect the fees a card user is charged for credit card purchases. While the ISO determines MCC codes and their meanings, it is the credit card companies that assign the codes to individual merchants.

    Those codes are then used by banks and payment service providers to assess risk and establish fees.

    According to its website, the ISO is “an independent, non-governmental international organization” comprised of 168 members. The ISO has a history of promoting guidance (pdf) for “social responsibility” and advocating the idea that “respect for society and environment” is the “right thing” to do.

    Representing the United States in the ISO is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). According to ANSI’s 2023 Roster (pdf), Kristina Breen of Visa International Service Association is on the Board of Directors.

    ‘Our Duty to Report Suspicious Activity’

    The new code was in response to a petition by Amalgamated Bank, self-described as a conglomerate of “political animals” who support “hundreds of progressive political organizations, campaigns and candidates” like “Biden/Harris,” “Warren Democrats,” and “Nancy Pelosi.”

    Announcing the ISO’s approval of the petition on Sept. 9, 2022, Priscilla Sims Brown, President and CEO of Amalgamated Bank, said, “We all have to do our part to stop gun violence, and it sometimes starts with illegal purchases of guns and ammunition.”

    Without explaining how the new MCC would “stop gun violence,” Ms. Sims said, “The new code will allow us to fully comply with our duty to report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales to authorities without blocking or impeding legal gun sales.“

    “This action answers the call of millions of Americans who want safety from gun violence and we are proud to have led the broad coalition of advocates, shareholders, and elected officials that achieved this historic outcome,” she said.

    Second Amendment advocates say these codes will be used to intimidate gun owners and dealers will be used by banks to deny financial services to gun merchants. Those concerns are not unfounded.

    In 2019, gun dealers testified before Congress alleging that banks denied their loan applications because the gun industry had been blacklisted through an inter-agency initiative called Operation Choke Point, a secret program created under the administration of Barack Obama. The program—which involved the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Justice, and additional government agencies—served to cut off banking and financial services for any business or industry the administration deemed to be political adversaries. The program ended when Mr. Obama left office.

    On Sept. 20, 2022, a total of 24 attorneys general sent a letter (pdf) to the heads of credit card companies, banks, Congress, and President Joe Biden advising, “We will marshal the full scope of our lawful authority to protect our citizens and consumers from unlawful attempts to undermine their constitutional rights.”

    “Please keep that in mind as you consider whether to proceed with adopting and implementing this Merchant Category Code,” the letter concluded.

    The Credit Card Companies

    On Sept. 13, 2022, Visa shared its perspective of the proposed MCC.

    “We do not believe private companies should serve as moral arbiters,” reads the statement in part. “Asking private companies to decide what legal products or services can or cannot be bought and from what store sets a dangerous precedent. Further, it would be an invasion of consumers’ privacy for banks and payment networks to know each of our most personal purchasing habits. Visa is firmly against this.”

    According to its 2023 Roster (pdf), Kristina Breen of Visa International Service Association is on the Board of Directors.

    In response to the litany of bills drafted in opposition to the new MCC, Visa announced in a March 9 update that “These legislative actions disrupt the intent of global standards and create significant confusion and legal uncertainty in the payments ecosystem regarding this code and its use, including with acquirers, issuers, merchants and payment networks. We have therefore decided to pause implementation of the MCC at this time.”

    Discover told Reason by email that it was also eliminating the new code, MCC 5723, from its April 1 Network Release.

    American Express announced in a March Special Bulletin, “The pause of the enablement of the Merchant Category Code for Gun and Ammunition Shops, which was to be effective on April 14, 2023.”

    Citing the same reason, Mastercard also “decided to pause work on the implementation of the firearms-specific MCC.”

    ‘This Is Getting Overblown’

    Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, understands “the concerns.” But she believes “this is getting overblown on both sides both in terms of what gun control advocates claim the MCC is for and in terms of the actual threat that they pose.”

    “It won’t accomplish any of the gun violence prevention strategies that gun control advocates claim,” Ms. Swearer told The Epoch Times. “At the same time, it’s limited in what it enables the government to do in terms of more restrictive gun controls or tracking gun sales than it already has the capacity to do.”

    She also noted the “variety of ways people can circumvent this.”

    “They can use a debit card. They can use cash,” she said.

    “Gun control advocates think that this would somehow allow credit card companies to flag what they call ‘suspicious purchases,” Ms. Swearer said. “But they never define what that means, what the next steps would be, or how that would actually lead to gun violence prevention in a way that’s practical and effective without being completely insane and tyrannical and involve thousands of investigations into perfectly legitimate gun sales.”

    “That’s part of the problem,” Ms. Swearer asserted, saying that an MCC “can’t tell you what was purchased.”

    “If you are trying to flag suspicious purchases, what constitutes a suspicious purchase when you don’t know what the purchase was?” She asked rhetorically. “Was it a gun and ammo? Was it five guns on sale, or was it $600 worth of beef jerky and camping supplies? You just have no idea.”

    ‘Veiled Gun Control’

    In a statement issued to The Epoch Times, the National Rifle Association (NRA) condemned the MCC effort.

    “The NRA vehemently denounces the use of a firearm-specific Merchant Category Code (MCC), a clear infringement on the sacred Second Amendment rights of every American,” said Billy McLaughlin, Digital Director and Spokesman for the Office of Executive Vice President Wayne Robert LaPierre, Jr. “Orchestrated by left-wing institutions and anti-gun lobbyists, this underhanded maneuver aims to bypass federal laws, effectively implementing a de facto national firearms registry and trampling the Constitution. Amid an environment where lawful gun sales already undergo rigorous scrutiny, this scheme represents an unprecedented assault on the privacy of law-abiding gun owners.”

    The NRA also commended the states of West Virginia, Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota, Florida, Montana, and Texas “for their proactive legislation against the MCC intrusion,” saying “their commitment to safeguarding liberties is inspiring and crucial in upholding our nation’s values.”

    Katie Pointer Baney, the Managing Director of Government Affairs for the United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA), reiterated the NRA’s opinion, calling the MCC effort “veiled gun control.”

    “The new coding approved by the non-governmental agency called the ISO effectively takes firearms and ammunition purchases and codes them into a specific MCC in order to track those sales and to flag so-called suspicious or potential criminal activity,” she explained, echoing Ms. Swearer’s point of the measure’s ambiguity.

    “What are the criteria for suspicious activity, and how will flagging this prevent gun violence?“

    “The USCCA is staunchly opposed to this effort,” she asserted, adding that, while the credit card companies have backed down, “the conversation doesn’t stop here.”

    “It’s an important reminder to Americans why you need to continue to be involved in the legislative process and to ensure that your representatives are fighting to protect your Constitutional rights,” Ms. Pointer Baney admonished. “This pause came because Americans across the country stood up and complained to their representatives and their state AGs. There was outrage over this proposal and it worked.”

    The Epoch Times reached out to Mastercard, Discover, Visa, American Express, the ISO, and the ANSI for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 20:45

  • Newsom Funded Chinese COVID Lab Known To Biden’s FDA
    Newsom Funded Chinese COVID Lab Known To Biden’s FDA

    Authored by MarkPellin via Headline USA,

    The discovery last month of a Chinese COVID biolab in California shocked the nation, but likely came as no surprise to the state’s Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Joe Biden share a moment. / PHOTO: AP

    He helped fund it.

    The now-notorious secret facility, which contained a massive stockpile of “infectious agents,” including coronavirus, and nearly a thousand dead lab mice and vials of unidentified biological fluids, also likely came as no surprise to the Biden administration.

    The FDA last year issued a recall warning for nearly 54,000 COVID rapid tests manufactured by the company that owned the lab.

    Fresno County officials discovered the “unlicensed laboratory” in a warehouse owned by Prestige Biotech, which has ties to multiple Chinese pharmaceutical firms and a president who lives in China and can only be reached by email.

    The company’s CCP links extend to Barry Zhang, who is listed as Prestige BioTech’s registered agent by the Nevada secretary of state. Zhang reportedly was a leader of the Chinese-American Society of CPAs and its work with China’s United Front espionage and propaganda network.

    The founder of the law firm representing Prestige BioTech, Michael M Lin, is reportedly “a regular sponsor of CCP’s United Front events in Nevada.”

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    Prestige Biotech took over the lab from Universal Meditech, after that company went bankrupt following a series of fires. Universal Meditech, a company that also has strong CCP ties, received nearly $400,000 in tax credits from Newsom’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

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    Before going bankrupt, Universal Meditech was awarded its business license from the Newsom administration, “exactly one year to the day before Gov. Gavin Newsom’s State of Emergency Order locking down the entire state over the COVID-19 virus.”

    Universal Meditech continued operations under its new owner Prestige Biotech, which didn’t have a state business license and was only outed when someone noticed a garden hose illegally attached to the bio-lab’s building.

    The nearly 1,000 dead mice found at the Prestige Biotech lab, “were genetically engineered to catch and carry the Covid-19 virus,” Wang Zhaolin, a spokesman for Prestige Biotech, told the San Joaquin Valley Sun.

    “This is an unusual situation,” said Nicole Zieba, a city official with the town of Reedley, where the lab was found.

    “I’ve been in government for 25 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Zieba told local news outlet KTLA. “There was a special room that was built housing about 1,000 white lab mice.”

    Those would be the same lab mice that “were genetically engineered to catch and carry the Covid-19 virus” housed in a secret warehouse owned by reported CCP United Front agents. The same company that manufactured 54,000 FDA-flagged COVID rapid tests and received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Newsom’s office a year before he put California on a lockdown enforced by his and the Biden administration’s tyrannical mandates.

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    “Allowing a Chinese company to practice gain-of-function research on our shores is like inviting biological warfare into our backyard,” said Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.

    Based on legal filings, business reports and court documents, it appears that the CCP’s United Front accepted the invitation. Meanwhile, with his entourage of CCP connections funded by his administration in line, Newsom reportedly is raising millions to back a potential 2024 presidential run, even as he continues to publicly back Biden.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 20:25

  • New EPA Tailpipe Standards Call Electric Vehicle Promises Into Question
    New EPA Tailpipe Standards Call Electric Vehicle Promises Into Question

    Authored by Ethan Brown via RealClear Wire,

    The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ambitious tailpipe emissions standards may be partly canceled out by emissions earlier in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain, said panelists at a RealClearEnergy webinar last Wednesday.

    On April 12, the EPA unveiled new vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act which would mandate auto manufacturers to lower the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from their vehicles to a company wide average of 82 grams per mile by 2032. Currently, the average passenger vehicle emits about 400 grams of CO2 per mile. Only one automaker, Tesla, would meet the standard today.

    But while tailpipes present a major source of emissions for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, today’s EVs emit greenhouse gasses during the mining and processing of minerals and, in many cases, the generation of electricity.

    “You just don’t even know if it’s gonna save carbon emissions, which is the point of the whole exercise,” said Rupert Darwall, Senior Fellow at the RealClear Foundation.

    A 2021 International Energy Agency (IEA) analysis found that compared with an ICE car, an EV achieves about a 50% reduction in life-cycle emissions, which accounts for mining and electricity. The report claims that “emissions from minerals development do not negate the climate advantages of clean energy technologies.”

    But Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, points out that the IEA data relies on approximations based on uncertain assumptions about the supply chains of EV batteries. The range shown on the IEA’s graph could be anywhere from 75% emissions reductions to no reduction at all.

    “No one has any idea where on that range you really lie,” said Mills. 

    Mills published a report last month, Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream, arguing that EVs present far too many uncertainties and limitations for governments to favor them through bans on the sales of ICE vehicles, or stringent standards like the EPA’s. Beyond emissions, the report cites high costs, humanitarian concerns, and reliance on China as issues for EVs. The report predicts “draconian impediments to affordable and convenient driving and a massive misallocation of capital in the world’s $4 trillion automotive industry.”

    “From an engineering sense, flying cars are more likely than all EVs,” Mills quipped in the RealClear webinar.

    Others argue these are not disqualifying limitations, but rather hurdles that can be overcome. In a separate interview, Dr. Al-Thaddeus Avestruz, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, explained that smaller batteries would reduce the demand for minerals, bringing down emissions, cost, and social impact.

    “There are many new battery technologies that have less reliance on these really difficult to sustain materials,” said Avestruz.

    One such technology, for which Avestruz has a patent, involves wireless power transfer. Akin to a wireless charging pad for mobile phones, Avestruz explained that roads and EVs could be equipped to charge cars as they move.

    “You can think of these things as moving chargers that charge over, let’s say, some corridors on the highway, and while moving seamlessly, you just get charged, and you don’t even notice.”

    While this technology could be costly to implement, Avestruz notes that wireless power transfer could enable EVs to use smaller batteries, which would reduce the need for unsustainable minerals.

    “Potentially you can reduce the size of the batteries by half. And so the smaller batteries need less raw materials, they’re lighter, meaning that overall, they’re more efficient.”

    Other commonly proposed solutions to reduce the impacts of minerals include more sustainable mining practices such as the world’s first all-electric lithium mine currently being developed in Nevada, replacing lithium-ion batteries with sodium-ion batteries, and recycling or recovering minerals from EV batteries to use in new EVs or elsewhere. Avestruz received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for a project that aims to use retired EV batteries for energy storage on the electric grid.

    Prior to the EPA’s new tailpipe standards, major automakers such as Ford Motor Company and General Motors had already stated their intent to join Tesla as leaders in the American EV market. In 2021, Ford announced a historic $11.4 billion investment into new EV manufacturing campuses in Tennessee and Kentucky.

    On May 25, Ford CEO Jim Farley joined Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces to announce that starting early next year, Ford customers would gain access to the more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. and Canada. In 2025, Ford’s vehicles will also be equipped with Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector, eliminating the need for an adapter. GM made the same announcement two weeks later.

    “Our goal is really to be as helpful as possible in accelerating towards sustainable transport. That’s also why we open source our patents and many of our designs are open sourced. We’re just glad to be as helpful as possible,” said Musk during the announcement.

    Farley and Musk each acknowledged various concerns about the EV transition such as lithium processing and cathode refining. But ultimately, both CEOs expressed optimism that these challenges could be overcome.

    “We’re going into the second inning of a nine-inning game, so we’re going to make adjustments along the way,” said Farley.

    Ethan Brown is a Writer and Commentator for Young Voices with a B.A. in Environmental Analysis & Policy from Boston University. He is the creator and host of The Sweaty Penguin, an award-winning comedy climate program presented by PBS/WNET’s national climate initiative “Peril and Promise.” Follow him on Twitter  @ethanbrown5151

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 20:05

  • Nancy Pelosi Declares America Will Cease To Exist If Trump Becomes President Again
    Nancy Pelosi Declares America Will Cease To Exist If Trump Becomes President Again

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Nancy Pelosi has called the latest indictment against Donald Trump “beautiful” and asserted that if he is elected as president again, it will mean the end of America completely.

    In the comments to New York magazine, Pelosi stated “The indictments against the president are exquisite,” adding “They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”

    When asked about the possibility of another Trump presidency, Pelosi commanded the reporter “Don’t even think of that.”

    “Don’t think of the world being on fire,” she continued, adding “It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”

    “If he were to be president, it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House,” she added, without a hint of irony.

    Pelosi made the comments after Trump labelled her a “wicked witch” and a “demented psycho” who will reside in hell when she dies.

    As we highlighted last week, Republicans have warned that there is a real chance of Trump being convicted by an Obama appointed DC judge and what is most likely to be a rabidly anti-Trump jury.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

    Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 19:55

  • Hopes Dashed: LK-99 Falls Short Of Room-Temperature Superconductor Glory
    Hopes Dashed: LK-99 Falls Short Of Room-Temperature Superconductor Glory

    Less than a week after South Korean researchers claimed in two new papers that they had developed a superconductor that operates at room temperature under standard atmospheric pressure,which would have mind-blowing implications for transmitting electricity with zero resistance at normal temperatures, all hopes have been dashed by an already-skeptical scientific community.

    In response to the alleged discovery, several labs got to work recreating the superconductor, known as LK-99. Alas, none of them were a success, IFLScience reports.

    “When we are measuring superconductors, the most obvious property of a superconductor is zero resistance,” said Professor Susie Speller of the Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity, in comments to IFLScience in a previous deep-dive on LK-99. “What you look for is for the material to have some resistance. You cool it down, and suddenly it should lose that resistance, and it should be absolutely zero when it’s in the superconducting state. You should see a very clear change in resistance at the temperature where it starts to superconduct.”

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

    Beyond electrical resistance, superconductivity reveals itself through other distinctive traits, including a shift in heat capacity at the critical temperature and the transformation from non-magnetic to diamagnetic behavior. However, these telltale signs were glaringly absent in the experiments involving LK-99.

    While the development is certainly disappointing, materials science continues to make breakthroughs in superconductivity. New materials are expected to come into the market with revolutionary properties in the next decade or so. They still need to be refrigerated, but using liquid nitrogen as a coolant is not too expensive. Condensing the most abundant gas in the air is as cheap as milk. -IFLScience

    “Whilst being room temperature would be fantastic because there’s no cooling needed, actually, to get to the temperatures we need to use the materials we’ve already got is pretty cheap and pretty easy,” said Speller.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 19:45

  • Taxpayer-Funded Research Seeks To Devise New Stealth Censorship Technology
    Taxpayer-Funded Research Seeks To Devise New Stealth Censorship Technology

    Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

    A new watchdog report claims that taxpayer funds are going towards research that is developing new strategies for stealthily censoring social media content.

    As Just The News reports, the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) issued a warning about the work that was done last year by the Center for an Informed Public (CIP) at the University of Washington. The CIP received taxpayer-funded grants incentivizing the center to develop new strategies such as “virality circuit breakers” and “nudges,” which could ultimately be used to prevent certain social media content from spreading while leaving behind no trace of any alteration or manipulation of the algorithms.

    The CIP study is a clear example of “how to censor people using secret methods so that they wouldn’t know they’re being censored, so that it wouldn’t generate an outrage cycle, and so that it’d be more palatable for the tech platforms who wouldn’t get blowback because people wouldn’t know they’re being censored,” said Mike Benz, the executive director of FFO and a former State Department diplomat.

    CIP’s research was published last summer in the journal Nature Human Behavior, in an article titled “Combining interventions to reduce the spread of viral misinformation.” The researchers outlined four key tools that, when used properly, could reduce the spread of social media content by as much as 63 percent.

    “This approach allows platforms to consider ethical ramifications while minimizing the public relations challenges accompanying direct forms of action,” the researchers wrote, admitting to the stealth element of their work.

    They added that their research set up a “framework…that can be adopted in the near term without requiring large-scale censorship or major advances in cognitive psychology and machine learning.”

    Responding to backlash over their work, one of the researchers at the University of Washington, Jevin West, said that “this research was entirely theoretical, and aimed only to assess the impact that different potential social media interventions would have on the spread of COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation.”

    “Furthermore, the paper made no policy or tactical recommendation to social media platforms or the federal government. There was no follow-up from them and we have no idea what, if anything, any of those entities did with the learnings from our paper,” West continued.

    The research at CIP was funded by two different taxpayer-funded grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The first grant was worth $197,538, and was to be used on a project called “How Scientific Data, Knowledge, and Expertise Mobilize in Online Media during the COVID-19 Crisis.” The second grant, worth $550,000 was designated for a project titled “Unraveling Online Disinformation Trajectories: Applying and Translating a Mixed-Method Approach to Identify, Understand and Communicate Information Provenance.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 19:25

  • Credit Card Balances Hit Record Above $1 Trillion, Suffer "Pronounced Worsening" Amid Surge In New Delinquencies
    Credit Card Balances Hit Record Above $1 Trillion, Suffer “Pronounced Worsening” Amid Surge In New Delinquencies

    Once a quarter, the Fed publishes its Household Debt and Credit report which provides a (lagging) snapshot of household finances in the previous quarter. And while the report gives little incremental data to those who follow the Fed’s monthly Consumer Credit (G.19) statement, which just yesterday revealed the first decline in credit card debt since April 2021…

    … it does provide a convenient snapshot of recent trends in Household balance sheets.

    With that in mind, here is the punchline of the latest report: as of June 30, the Fed found aggregate household debt balances increased by $16 billion in the second quarter of 2023, a modest 0.1% rise from 2023Q1. Balances now stand at $17.06 trillion and have increased by $2.9 trillion since the end of 2019, just before the pandemic recession.

    Taking a closer look at the types of consumer credit balances:

    • Mortgage balances were largely unchanged from the previous quarter, during the second quarter of 2023 and stood at $12.01 trillion at the end of June, in large part due to declining mortgage originations and slowing home prices.

      • Mortgage originations, which include refinances, stood at $393 billion in the second quarter, representing a $70 billion increase from the first quarter. Other balances, which include retail cards and other consumer loans, increased by $15 billion.

    • Balances on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) were essentially flat as well; the outstanding HELOC balance stands at $340 billion.

    • Credit card balances increased by $45 billion, a 4.6% quarterly increase, and stood at $1.03 trillion, a record high.

      • Credit card accounts expanded by 5.48 million to 578.35 million; that’s roughly 2 credit cards for every adult.

      • Aggregate limits on credit card accounts increased by $9 billion and now stand at $4.6 trillion.

    • Auto loan balances increased by $20 billion, continuing the upward trajectory that has been in place since 2011.

    • Student loans balances declined by $35 billion. Student loan balances now stand at $1.57 trillion.

    • Other balances, which include retail cards and other consumer loans, increased by $15 billion.

    • In total, non-housing balances grew by $45 billion.

    And in table format:

    As noted above, mortgage originations, measured as appearances of new mortgages on consumer credit reports and including both refinance and purchase originations, remained a very subdued $393 billion in 2023 Q2 (reflecting a modest increase in purchase originations as refinance originations have collapsed) which however was the first uptick after two years and a rebound from the 9-year low observed in the previous quarter.

    The chart above also shows that the median credit score for newly originated mortgages increased by 4 points, to 769. The median credit score on newly originated auto loans declined by 5 points, after a transitory uptick in the first quarter.

    At the same time, the volume of newly originated auto loans, which includes leases, was $179 billion, largely reflecting high dollar values of originated loans even as the number of newly opened loans remains below pre-pandemic levels.

    Think about that for a second: the above charts show that while the Fed crushed mortgage originations with the highest interest rates in 40 years, it has had zero impact on auto loan originations. In fact, after peaking at 9 two years ago, the ratio of new mortgages to new auto loans has collapsed to a near record low 2.2. It does beg two questions: i) where are Americans still getting the money to fund all those near record auto loans, and ii) what happens to all those auto loans on various bank books once the payments stop.

    The New York Fed also issued an accompanying Liberty Street Economics blog post examining trends in credit card lending and repayment. The blog found that, despite the toll inflation has taken on consumers, there is little evidence of widespread distress on households for now; that’s however is about to change…

    Going down the list, aggregate limits on credit cards were increased by $90 billion in the second quarter, a 2.0% increase from the previous quarter. As noted above, credit card accounts expanded by 5.48 million to 578.35 million, or roughly 2 credit cards for every adult.

    What we found most interesting is that aggregate limits on credit cards increased by $9 billion and now stand at $4.6 trillion. That means that – if Americans decide to “F**k it all” and max out their credit cards, we are looking at another $3 trillion in debt-funded buying power, or as it is called under Bidenomics, “growth”

    And while it is relatively modest, and well below the total credit card debt oustanding, limits on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) were up by $6 billion, or a 0.7% increase.

    Finally, turning to delinquency rates, in Q2 these were roughly flat, with just 2.7% of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency, 2 percentage points lower than the last quarter of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the US.

    That’s the good news: the bad news is that the share of debt newly transitioning into delinquency increased for credit cards and auto loans has been quietly surging with increases in transition rates of 0.7% and 0.4%, respectively.

    As shown below, the Fed notes that “credit cards balances saw the most pronounced worsening in performance in Q2 after a period of extraordinarily low delinquency rates during the pandemic, in large part due to the student loan repayment moratorium.”

    In the most concerning twist, transition rates for credit cards and auto loans are now slightly above pre-pandemic (2019 Q4) levels. Meanwhile, student loan performance was unchanged, with reported delinquency rates at historic lows as the federal repayment pause remains in place until August 31, 2023. That, however, is about to end and we expect that student loan delinquencies will soar in just weeks…

    …. which will also crush the debt repayments plans across all other debt categories, which is also why the Fed tried to quickly brush it away:  “credit card balances saw brisk growth in the second quarter,” said Joelle Scally, Regional Economic Principal within the Household and Public Policy Research Division at the New York Fed. “And while delinquency rates have edged up, they appear to have normalized to pre-pandemic levels.”

    Let’s check back in 2-4 quarters when student loans are back in the picture.

    Some other delinquency notes:

    • Early delinquency transition rates for mortgages edged up by 0.1 percentage point but remain well below its pre-pandemic level.

    • About 114,000 consumers had a bankruptcy notation added to their credit reports in 2023Q2, slightly more than in the previous quarter.

    • Approximately 4.6% of consumers have a 3rd party collection account on their credit report, with an average balance of $1,555, up from $1,316 in the first quarter, reflecting composition changes in 3rd party collections amid new credit reporting regulations.

    The NY Fed’s full Household Debt and Credit presentation deck is below (pdf link):

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/08/2023 – 19:05

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